NASA — World Just Had Seven Months Straight of Record-Shattering Global Heat
Earth’s temperature difference from normal in April. (NASA)
16
May, 2016
It’s
not just that we’re seeing record global heat. It’s that 2016’s
jump in global temperatures may be the biggest single-year spike ever
recorded. It’s that the world may never again see annual
temperatures below 1 C above preindustrial averages. And it’s that
this high level of heat, and a related spiking of atmospheric
greenhouse gasses due to fossil fuel emissions, is now enough to
begin inflicting serious harm upon both the natural world and human
civilization.
Seven
Straight Months of Record Heat
Last
month was the hottest April in the global climate record.
Not only was it the hottest such month ever recorded — it smashed
the previous record by the largest margin ever recorded. And this
April has now become the seventh month in a row in an unbroken chain
of record global heat.
(When
graphed, this is what the hottest April on record looks like when
compared to other Aprils. Note the sharp upward spike at the end of
the long warming progression. Yeah, that’s for April of 2016. Image
source: Dr.
Stephan Rahmstorf.
Data source: NASA
GISS.)
According
to NASA GISS, global temperatures in April were 1.11 degrees Celsius
(C) hotter than its 20th Century baseline average.
When compared to preindustrial readings (NASA 1880s), temperatures
have globally heated by a total of +1.33 C. And that’s a really big
jump in global heat, especially when one considers the context of the
last seven months. When one looks at that, it appears that global
temperatures are racing higher with a fearful speed.
About
this raging pace of warming, Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Centre
of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of New
South Wales in Australia recently noted
in the Guardian:
“The interesting thing is the scale at which we’re breaking records. It’s clearly all heading in the wrong direction. Climate scientists have been warning about this since at least the 1980s. And it’s been bloody obvious since the 2000s.”
(Record
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, as seen in this Sunday May 15
Copernicus Observatory graphic, are the primary force driving an
amazing spike in global temperatures during 2016. Image source: The
Copernicus Observatory.)
Though
2016 is likely to be a record hot year, overall readings have
moderated somewhat since earlier this year as El Nino has begun to
fade. But that doesn’t mean we’re out of the danger zone. Quite
to the contrary, we’re racing toward climate thresholds at a
never-before-seen pace. And that’s really worrisome. Peak monthly
readings this year hit a ridiculous +1.55 C above 1880s averages at
the height of El Nino during February. And April’s current monthly
record is now tied with January of 2016 in the NASA measure. In
total, the first four months of 2016 now average +1.43 C above 1880s
baselines or uncomfortably close to the +1.5 C mark established
by scientists as the first of many increasingly dangerous climate
thresholds.
“The 1.5C target, it’s wishful thinking. I don’t know if you’d get 1.5C if you stopped emissions today. There’s inertia in the system. It’s [now] putting intense pressure on 2C.”
And
when mainstream scientists start to say things like that, it’s
really time for the rest of us to take notice.
A
Record Hot World Made by Fossil Fuel Burning and Consistent With
Scientific Predictions
Looking
at where the globe warmed the most, we find greatest extreme
temperature departures during April were again centered over the
climatologically vulnerable Arctic. Alaska, Northwest Canada, the
Beaufort Sea, a huge section of Central Siberia, the West Coast of
Greenland, the Laptev and Kara Seas, and a section of North Africa
all experienced monthly temperatures in the range of 4 to 6.5 degrees
Celsius above average. Monthly ranges that are screaming-hot. A
notably larger region experienced significant heat with temperatures
ranging from 2-4 C above NASA’s 20th Century baseline. Overall,
almost every region of the world experienced above average readings —
with the noted exceptions linked to extreme trough zones related to
climate change altered weather patterns and ocean cool pools induced
by warming-related glacial melt.
(NASA’s
picture of a world with a severe and worsening fever during a record
hot April of 2016. Image source: NASA
GISS.)
These
counter-trend regions include the Greenland melt zone of the North
Atlantic cool pool, the trough zone over Hudson Bay, the trough zone
over the Northwest Pacific, and the oceanic heat sink zone that is
the stormy Southern Ocean. Observed amplification of warming in the
Northern Polar Region together with formation of the North Atlantic
cool pool and the activation of the heat sink zone in the Southern
Ocean are all consistent with global warming related patterns
predicted by climate models and resulting from human fossil fuel
burning pushing atmospheric CO2 levels well above 400 parts per
million during recent years.
Record
Heat Spurs Unprecedented Climate Disasters
This
pattern of record global heat has brought with it numerous climate
change related disasters. Across the Equatorial regions of the world,
drought and hunger crises have flared. These have grown particularly
intense in Africa and Asia. In Africa, tens of millions of people are
now on the verge of famine. In India, 330 million people are under
water stress due to what is likely the worst drought that nation has
ever experienced. Australia has seen 93 percent its Great Barrier
Reef succumb to a heat-related coral bleaching. And since the ocean
heat in that region of the world has tipped into a range that will
force more and more frequent bleaching events, it’s questionable if
the great reef will even survive the next few decades.
“The thing that’s causing that warming, is going up and up and up. So the cool ocean temperatures we will get with a La Niña are warmer than we’d ever seen more than a few decades ago … This is a full-scale punching of the reef system on an ongoing basis with some occasionally really nasty kicks and it isn’t going to recover.”
In
Florida, ocean acidification due to fossil fuel emissions is
providing its own punches and kicks to that state’s largest coastal
reef. A different effect from warming, acidification is a chemical
change caused by ocean waters becoming over-burdened with carbon.
Kind of like a constant acid rain on the reef that causes the
limestone it’s made out of to dissolve.
And
if the above impacts aren’t enough to keep you awake at night,
unprecedented May wildfires also forced the emptying of an entire
city in Canada. Islands around the world are being swallowed by
rising oceans due to ice sheet melt and thermal expansion. Cities
along the US Atlantic and Gulf Coasts are experiencing ever-worsening
tidal flooding events. Glacial melt in Greenland and Antarctica is
accelerating. And the Arctic sea ice is so thin and melting so fast
that some are questioning if any of it will survive come September.
La
Nina is Coming, But it Won’t Help Much
It’s
worth noting that global atmospheric temperatures will temporarily
cool down from 2016 peaks as La Nina is predicted to settle in by
this Fall. However, greenhouse gasses are so high and Earth’s
energy balance so intense that the global ocean, ice and atmospheric
system is still accumulating heat at an unprecedented rate. As La
Nina kicks in, this extra heat will mostly go into the oceans and the
ice as the atmosphere cools down a little — preparing for the next
big push as El Nino builds once more.
(Global
warming spirals toward dangerous climate thresholds. Graphic by
climate scientistEd
Hawkins.)
This
natural variability-based shift toward La Nina shouldn’t really be
looked at as good news. A massive plume of moisture has risen off the
global oceans during the current heat spike and as global
temperatures cool, there’s increasing risk of very large flood
events of a kind we’re not really used to. La Nina also produces
drought zones — in particular over an already-suffering California
— and the added warming from rising global temperatures will add to
drought intensity in such regions as well.
With
global temperatures predicted to hit around 1.3 C above preindustrial
averages for all of 2016, it’s doubtful that the world will ever
even again see one year in which temperatures fall below the 1 C
climate threshold. And that means faster glacial ice melt, worsening
wildfires, more disruption to growing seasons and crops, more extreme
storms and rainfall events, faster rates of sea level rise, expanding
drought zones, more mass casualty inducing heatwaves, expanding
ranges for tropical diseases, increasing ranges for harmful invasive
species, and a plethora of other problems. Over recent years, we’ve
tipped the scales into dangerous climate change. And with global
temperatures increasing so rapidly, we’re getting into deeper and
deeper trouble.
In
the end, our best hope for abating these worsening conditions is to
rapidly reduce global carbon emissions to zero or net negative. Until
we do that, there’s going to be a ramping scale of worsening
impacts coming on down the pipe.
Links:
Hat
tip to Suzanne
Hat
tip to Colorado Bob
Hat
tip to DT Lange
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