A World Where Heat Haunts Us — 2015 May See Worst El Nino Ever as Global Temperatures Rocket Past
1 C Mark
28
October, 2015
It’s
a world that’s adding
more than 50 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent gasses to
the atmosphere every single year. It’s a year where, according
to Ralph Keeling,
we are likely to never see atmospheric CO2 levels in the 300-399
parts per million range ever again in our lifetimes. And it’s a
time when global temperatures are at their hottest ever recorded by
human instruments — likely to hit a very dangerous range between 1
and 1.2 C hotter than 1880s averages during 2015 and 2016.
(As
of August 2015, 12 month averages were in the range of 0.926 C below
the so called ‘safe limit’ of 2 C warming since 1880. What may
become the worst El Nino on record may combine with a growing
overburden of human hothouse gasses to push global temperatures to
within between 0.9 to 0.8 C of the +2 C limit during 2015 and 2016.
Image source:Skeptical
Science.)
This
is the context we all live in today. A world that’s sweltering in a
toxic atmospheric stew of human hothouse gas emissions. But
underneath that heat-amplifying context, the traditional ebb and flow
of natural variability still has its own set of influences. And this
year,the
warm side of natural variability — in what may become the strongest
El Nino ever recorded — is coming back to haunt us with a
vengeance.
Previous
Worst El Nino On Record
Forget
the so called ‘2 C safe limit’ set by international government
bodies for
a moment and think about all the extreme weather, the droughts, the
wildfires, the loss of access to water, the increasing rates of sea
level rise, the increasing rates of glacial destabilization, and the
rapid declines in ocean health that have all happened since 1997 —
the previous worst El Nino year on record.
Back
then, atmospheric CO2 levels had just breached the 360 parts per
million mark. And, in that year a powerful El Nino — the peak of
the natural variability hot side — shoved global temperatures into
the range of 0.85 C above 1880s averages. It was the strongest El
Nino ever recorded in the modern age. And it was occurring in a
climate in which greenhouse gas concentrations were the highest seen
in about 1 million years. It was a confluence of forces that
propelled the Earth toward a new, more violent climate state. One not
seen for millennia and one that was increasingly outside the ice-age
and inter-glacial norm in which human beings evolved and learned to
flourish.
Over
the 2000s and early 2010s, despite a swing in atmospheric natural
variability back toward ‘cool,’ negative PDO, conditions, global
temperatures continued to climb. Greenhouse gasses were building up
in the atmosphere at record rates. Rates about 6 times faster than
during the Permian hothouse extinction event that wiped out 75
percent of life on land and more than 90 percent of life in the
oceans. As a result, new global high temperature records were hit in
2005 and 2010 even as the oceans drew in a massive amount of
atmospheric heat. Heat that, according to Dr, Kevin Trenberth, would
again back up into the atmosphere as the natural limits for ocean
heat uptake were eventually reached.
By
2014, as CO2 levels climbed into the 400 parts per million range and
atmospheric heat uptake built, it appeared those limits had, indeed,
been overwhelmed. Heat in the upper Equatorial Pacific Ocean began to
spike as massive
and powerful Kelvin Waves rippled across the world’s largest ocean,
setting the stage for a new, monster El Nino.
An El Nino that appeared to be building toward an event that would
rival even the record 1997 El Nino.
2015
El Nino May Become Worst Ever Over Next Few Weeks
At
first, the climb toward a record El Nino was slow. Even as ocean heat
hit El Nino thresholds during the summer of 2014, the atmospheric
response lagged — resulting in a steady climb into weak El Nino
conditions through early 2015. Despite this slow advance, underlying
conditions hinted at an extreme amount of available heat. The Oceanic
hot pool was widespread and very intense — generating a heat bleed
that pushed global atmospheric temperatures to new records for the
year of 2014 and intensifying into 2015. By late Fall of 2015,
atmospheric temperatures had rocketed into a range near 1.1 C above
1880s averages. But the top of the temperature spike was likely still
to come.
For
throughout October El Nino continued to strengthen, reaching
a new height of 2.5 C above average in the benchmark Nino 3.4 zone
last week.
This temperature spike is comparable to a record in the same region
at 2.7 C above average for peak weekly values during the 1997 El
Nino.
(Setting
up for a strongest El Nino on record? Global climate measures now
show the Equatorial Pacific is becoming hot enough to challenge ocean
surface temperature records previously set by the 1997 El Nino. If
new record values are set, they could occur by early to mid November.
Ocean temperature anomaly image source: Earth
Nullschool.)
Unfortunately,
heat continues to build in this benchmark region of the Pacific. A
rudimentary grid analysis of ocean models and readings for this week
indicate daily measures in the range of 2.5 to 2.8 C above average.
Daily measures that show a consistent warming trend. A trend that, if
it continues, is likely to push Nino 3.4 temperatures into a range
comparable with or exceeding the 1997 El Nino high temperature mark
by early-to-mid November.
In
other words, the 2015 Monster El Nino event appears to be setting up
to tie or beat the record-shattering 1997 El Nino over the next few
weeks.
Max
Temperature Spike is Coming
Regardless
of whether we see the 1997 record shattered, it is likely that heat
bleeding off the current Monster El Nino will continue to amplify
atmospheric temperatures on through early Spring of 2016. What this
means is that we haven’t seen the hottest global temperatures out
of this event yet. Preliminary estimates for October are coming in
the range of 1.1 to 1.2 C above 1880s values.
Meanwhile, a peak in
atmospheric temperature is likely to occur within 1-4 months after El
Nino itself peaks. So though 2015 has been a record breaker so far,
we may see global heat intensifying through to 2016 with new monthly
temperatures testing never before seen ranges. This added heat
provided from a Monster El Nino makes it a distinct possibility that
we will see three back-to-back record hot years — 2014, 2015, and
2016.
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