Extreme weather and abrupt climate change report - 06/18/2017

Extreme weather and abrupt climate change report

This latest edition of Radio Eco Shock includes a discussion with Paul Beckwith with the latest news as well as with Pavel Serov, a CAGE scientist on pingos and methane hydrates.

Incredible heat records, Biblical downpours not reported. Candian climate scientist Paul Beckwith & Alex get it on the record. Plus from new science from Norway. Bright young mind Pavel Serov on Arctic sea-bed methane risks & rewards. 

See just how little multi-year ice there is

Arctic Sea Ice Age - September 2015 to May 2017

Here are some of the main headlnes.

May Was Earth's Second-Warmest in 137 Years; Only 2016 Was Hotter

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies calculated the Earth's mean temperature over land and water in May was 0.88 degrees Celsius above the 1951-1980 average, second only to May 2016's 0.93 degree Celsius departure from average. May 2017 beat out May 2014 by just 0.01 degrees Celsius for the second-place ranking.

This is the fifth month so far this year to rank among the top three warmest on record for each respective month. February, March and April 2017 ranked as second-warmest, while January 2017 finished in third place.

The largest May warm temperature anomalies were in western Europe, northern Africa, Asia, eastern South America, northern Alaska, northern Canada and near Antarctica. Northern Russia was the most significantly cooler-than-average location.

Millennials have never lived through a colder than average month — and never will

Scorching May continues decades-long streak of above-average months, and global warming is only accelerating

But before our millennial readers start writing us that the term generally refers to people born starting in the early 1980s, consider this: July 1985 is only a cooler-than-average month if you use the base period 1951 to 1980, as NASA does for its data. But humans were warming the planet by burning fossil fuels long before then — the Industrial Revolution began over two centuries ago.

So when you use an 1880 to 1899 baseline to reflect the earlier warming, as Schmidt does in the graph above, you see we have to go back much further to find a colder than average year — or month.

Climate Central looked at the monthly data using the earlier baseline and found that “if you were born after December 1964, you’ve never experienced a month cooler than average on this planet.”

May Continues a Ridiculous Warm Streak for the Planet

Climate Change Effects: Louisiana's Coast Is Sinking More Rapidly Than Anyone Thought, According to Study

From Antarctica, where a research expedition was canceled due to rising temperatures, to the Arctic Sea, where ice continues to melt, the effects of climate change are being felt around the globe. In the United States, temperatures are rising and coastlines are disappearing. One of the areas that has been affected the most is Louisiana, the coastline of which has been in danger for years. According to a new study reported on by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the danger is greater than anyone realized

Scientists say the rapid sinking of Louisiana’s coast already counts as a ‘worst case scenario’

It’s common knowledge that the coast of Louisiana is quietly sinking into the balmy Gulf waters. But new research suggests we may have been underestimating how quickly it’s happening.

A new paper, published Wednesday in the Geological Society of America’s bulletin GSA Today, includes an updated map of the Louisiana coastline and the rate at which it’s sinking into the sea, a process scientists call “subsidence,” which occurs in addition to the climate change-caused process of sea-level rise. The new map suggests that, on average, the Louisiana coast is sinking at a rate of about 9 millimeters, or just over a third of an inch, per year — a faster rate than previous studies have suggested, according to the authors.

How sea ice can still be thick in places in a warming Arctic

Climate Change Pushing Tropical Diseases Toward Arctic

Temperature changes around the globe are pushing human pathogens of all kinds into unexpected new areas, raising many new risks for people.

Wildfires used to be rare in the Great Plains. They’ve more than tripled in 30 years

The grasslands of U.S. Great Plains have seen one of the sharpest increases in large and dangerous wildfires in the past three decades, with their numbers more than tripling between 1985 and 2014, according to new research.

The new study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that the average number of large Great Plains wildfires each year grew from about 33 to 117 over that time period, even as the area of land burned in these wildfires increased by 400 percent.

All-Time Extreme Heat Expected in Southwest U.S.

A dangerously intense heat wave will grip the Southwest U.S. this weekend and may persist through next week. The NWS has already plastered much of the region with excessive heat warnings. A strong ridge of high pressure, expected to rank among the Southwest's hottest on record at upper levels, will pave the way for this prolonged heat wave. The all-time hottest surface temperature records for Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson and Needles may be challenged, as temperatures soar to 115° - 125° Sunday through Thursday next week. The most intense heat is expected Monday through Wednesday, with 120° predicted by Weather Underground for Phoenix on Tuesday. Extreme heat will also extend northwest across the highly populated Central Valley of California.

According to wunderground weather historian Christopher C. Burt, Phoenix has only reached 120° three times at its official NWS site (Sky Harbor Airport):

122° (June 26, 1990)

121° (July 28, 1995)

120° (June 25, 1990)

Weird Weather in Antarctica Has Resulted in Rain, And a Melt Area The Size of Texas

Scientists have documented a recent, massive melt event on the surface of highly vulnerable West Antarctica that, they fear, could be a harbinger of future events as the planet continues to warm.

In the Antarctic summer of 2016, the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest floating ice platform on Earth, developed a sheet of meltwater that lasted for as long as 15 days in some places.

Scientists Saw A Nearly Unheard Of Antarctic Meltdown

Antarctica is unfreezing. In the past few months alone, researchers have chronicled a seasonal waterfall, widespread networks of rivers and melt ponds and an iceberg the size of Delaware on the brink of breaking away from the thawing landscape.

A new study published in Nature Communications only adds to the disturbing trend of change afoot in Antarctica. Researchers have documented rain on a continent more known for snow and widespread surface melt in West Antarctica last summer, one of the most unstable parts of a continent that’s already being eaten away by warm waters below the ice.

The latest threat to Antarctica: an insect and plant invasion

Rise in tourism and warmer climate bring house flies – and the growth of mosses in which they can live

Antarctica’s pristine ice-white environment is going green and facing an unexpected threat – from the common house fly. Scientists say that as temperatures soar in the polar region, invading plants and insects, including the fly, pose a major conservation threat.

More and more of these invaders, in the form of larvae or seeds, are surviving in coastal areas around the south pole, where temperatures have risen by more than 3C over the past three decades. Glaciers have retreated, exposing more land which has been colonised by mosses that have been found to be growing more quickly and thickly than ever before – providing potential homes for invaders. The process is particularly noticeable in the Antarctic peninsula, which has been shown to be the region of the continent that is most vulnerable to global warming.

Earthquake Causes ATLANTIC TSUNAMI Greenland Hit

 

Drone footage shows aftermath of deadly Portugal forest fire

Portugal has declared three days of national mourning as the country comes to terms with a devastating fire that swept through the center of the nation, killing at least 62 people and injuring 59 others. This drone footage shows the scale of the devastation:

Huge forest fires in Portugal kill more than 60 people mostly in cars trying to flee the inferno

Huge forest fires in Portugal have killed more than 60 people.

Many died in their cars as they fled from huge blaze amid severe heatwave on Iberian peninsula

Millions of tropical sea creatures 'blooming' off B.C. Coast

Millions of non-native creatures known as pyrosomes are "blooming" off the coast of British Columbia and have the potential to devastate an already fragile food 
chain.

Scientists in Canada know very little about the pimply, translucent, tube-like animals — normally found in the tropics —some of which grow to 10 metres in length.

Heavy Rains Are Turning U.S. Corn Fields Into Lakes

Some Nebraska corn fields are so flooded that farmers are posting videos of themselves wakeboarding. The image is amusing, but the realities of the heavy spring downpours are pummeling U.S. grain farmers with soggy fields and threats of crop disease.

In the past 30 days, about 40 percent of the Midwest got twice the amount of normal rainfall, with soils saturated from Arkansas to Ohio, according to MDA Weather Services. While spring showers usually benefit crops, the precipitation has come fast enough to flood some corn and rice fields and trigger quality concerns about maturing wheat.

The approaching crisis: Is the world running out of water?

“OUR planet, the human family and life in all its myriad forms on Earth are in the throes of a water crisis,” the experts are warning.

GROWING up in Australia, most of us probably didn’t think twice about where our seeingly endless supply of water came from. In our young minds, the tap never ran dry.

But the world certainly doesn’t have the luxury to think like that.

Water is absolutely fundamental to life, which makes the increasingly loud warnings about water scarcity and an impending global water crisis so concerning for world leaders.

If current patterns of consumption continue unabated, two-thirds of the world’s population will be facing water shortages as a daily reality by 2025 and global policy makers are scrambling to avoid catastrophe.

Antarctica Is Melting, and Giant Ice Cracks Are Just the Start

The massive iceberg poised to break off the Larsen C Ice Shelf may be a harbinger of a continent-wide collapse that would swamp coastal cities around the world.

Seen from above, the Pine Island Ice Shelf is a slow-motion train wreck. Its buckled surface is scarred by thousands of large crevasses. Its edges are shredded by rifts a quarter mile across. In 2015 and 2016 a 225-square-mile chunk of it broke off the end and drifted away on the Amundsen Sea. The water there has warmed by more than a degree Fahrenheit over the past few decades, and the rate at which ice is melting and calving has quadrupled.

On the Antarctic Peninsula, the warming has been far greater—nearly five degrees on average. That’s why a Delaware-size iceberg is poised to break off the Larsen C Ice Shelf and why smaller ice shelves on the peninsula have long since disintegrated entirely into the waters of the Weddell Sea. But around the Amundsen Sea, a thousand miles to the southwest on the Pacific coast of Antarctica, the glaciers are far larger and the stakes far higher. They affect the entire planet.