[Newfie]

Starting a new thread might be a good idea. Perhaps on a somewhat broader context about how immigration is being felt around the world.

I did not interpret that as a screed or offensive. It may or may not be accurate, I’ve no way of knowing.

[EnergyUnlimited]

EU, the last part of your screed was wildly off topic and quite offensive.

If you feel some overwhelming need to talk about sexual assault, for some reason, please open your own thread on it somewhere, but keep it out of GW threads please. Thanks.

Hmm... migration of barbarians into Europe is largerly GW related (at least IMO) but the topic is interesting enough in itself.
Don't know, maybe another thread like "Self annihilation of liberal West by embracement of barbarism" is due. Very nice doom related subject for sure.

One can begin reading here:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerscrut ... 3506d1754a

[dohboi]

Racism is never on topic...

And (to get back on topic) if you think that a few people of a culture or color you don't like moving into your neighborhood is your biggest concern, you haven't been paying much attention (or have been spending a lot of energy denying reality).

...•Hundreds of millions of lives are at stake... should the world warm more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, which it will do as soon as 2040, if current trends continue.

•Nearly all coral reefs would die out,
•wildfires and heat waves would sweep across the planet annually, and
•the interplay between drought and flooding and temperature would mean that the world’s food supply would become dramatically less secure.

Avoiding that scale of suffering, the report says, requires such a thorough transformation of the world’s economy, agriculture, and culture that “there is no documented historical precedent.”

[my formatting]

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/ ... -that.html

And this is very likely soft-pedaling the real horrors that await in the not-so-distant future, and the depths that society would have to transform to avoid or even mitigate them:

...What has been called a genocidal level of warming is already our inevitable future. The question is how much worse than that it will get...

...We are on track for four degrees of warming, more than twice as much as most scientists believe is possible to endure without inflicting climate suffering on hundreds of millions or threatening at least parts of the social and political infrastructure we call, grandly, “civilization.”

The only thing that changed, this week, is that the scientists, finally, have hit the panic button.

The 'plan' seems to be (and really always has been since the beginning of industrial society) to save the 'economy' by obliterating the planet. Of course, the global economy will also explode anyway, and probably sooner rather than later, as it already nearly did in '08.

We will learn too late (if anyone is around to think about it) that slash-and-burn economies don't work so well on a global scale when there aren't other handy, habitable globes around to migrate to (in spite of KJ's dreamy optimism on that subject).

[Newfie]

Like you said, new topic.

[dohboi]

Some Arctic ground no longer freezing—even in winter

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/envi ... -expected/

Extract: "On January 16, 2019, a new global study published in Nature Communications confirmed that permafrost is thawing quickly across much of the world. Between 2007 and 2016, permafrost temperature increased by 0.29 ± 0.12 °C globally. The greatest warming was seen in parts of Siberia, up to 0.93 °C. Significant warming was also seen in Antarctica, and less in mountain regions. In much of the Arctic ground temperature increased because of rising average air temperatures, while increased snow thickness in some areas also contributed to warming the ground underneath."
&

Biskaborn et al. (2019), "Permafrost is warming at a global scale", Nature Communications 10, No. 264, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-08240-4

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-08240-4#Fig6

[Cid_Yama]

In a paper published this month by the American Geophysical Union, researchers say sharp rises in levels of methane – which is a powerful greenhouse gas – have strengthened over the past four years. Urgent action is now required to halt further increases in methane in the atmosphere, to avoid triggering enhanced global warming and temperature rises well beyond 2C.

“What we are now witnessing is extremely worrying,” said one of the paper’s lead authors, Professor Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway, University of London. “It is particularly alarming because we are still not sure why atmospheric methane levels are rising across the planet.”

Natural chemicals in the atmosphere – which help to break down methane – may be changing because of temperature rises, causing it to lose its ability to deal with the gas.

Our world could therefore be losing its power to cleanse pollutants because it is heating up, a climate feedback in which warming allows more greenhouse gases to linger in the atmosphere and so trigger even more warming.

link

[dohboi]

Yeah, it looks like the long predicted depletion of OH radicals in the atmosphere may finally be underway in real time, with very dire consequences likely soon to follow.

Can they measure levels of OH in the atmosphere directly, or is it too much of a trace gas and too volatile?

Can it be generated by artificial means?

[dohboi]

And...more feedcbacks pushing us in the wrong direction:

Arctic Bogs Hold Another Global Warming Risk That Could Spiral Out of Control

Increasing spring rains in the Arctic could double the increase in methane emissions from the region by hastening the rate of thawing in permafrost, new research suggests.

...

"Our results emphasize that these permafrost regions are sensitive to the thermal effects of rain, and because we're anticipating that these environments are going to get wetter in the future, we could be seeing increases in methane emissions that we weren't expecting," said the study's lead author, Rebecca Neumann, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Washington. The study appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

...
In the new study, Neumann and colleagues tracked rainfall, soil temperature and methane emissions at a thawing permafrost bog approximately 20 miles southwest of Fairbanks, Alaska, from 2014 through 2016.

In 2016, a year marked by early spring rain, the team saw soil temperatures at the edge of the bog begin to increase 20 days earlier than usual. Methane emissions across the bog were 30 percent higher than in the two previous years which did not have early spring rains.

The study projects that as the temperature and precipitation in the region continue to increase, the rate of increase in methane emissions from the region may be roughly twice that of current estimates that don't account for rainfall.

and more:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/1902 ... dback-loop

[Tanada]

I believe you can make mass quantities of OH radicals by burning hydrogen in an oxygen poor gas mix. Any water vapor you accidentally make can be condensed back out for electrolyzing again.

[Tanada]

Aparently its even easier than I thought.

-OH Generator

[Cid_Yama]

But, would it be scalable to what would be needed?

[Tanada]

But, would it be scalable to what would be needed?

Like most technology it is an energy consuming reaction so if you have lots of energy to use you can scale it as big as you wish. If your energy supply is constrained however, then you are not going to get much scale improvement.

[dohboi]

Thanks for the discussion.

Of course, this gets us into geo-engineering with all the ethical and other problems attached that we have discussed before, but we do now seem to be in the realm where such discussions are no longer purely academic!

Meanwhile:


Title: "Intelligence official warns of 'abrupt' change", Wednesday, February 14, 2018

https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060073825

Extract: "Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats in written testimony warned of the potential for "abrupt climate change," marking the first time the former Republican congressman from Indiana has used such loaded language in writing."

[Cid_Yama]

First posted in 2014:

OH 'Shield' Depleted Over West Pacific Allowing Methane to Enter Stratosphere

Recent research results show that an atmospheric hole over the tropical West Pacific is reinforcing ozone depletion in the polar regions and could have a significant influence on the climate of the Earth.

An international team of researchers headed by Potsdam scientist Dr. Markus Rex from the German Alfred Wegener Institute has discovered a previously unknown atmospheric phenomenon over the South Seas. Over the tropical West Pacific there is a natural, invisible hole extending over several thousand kilometres in a layer that prevents transport of most of the natural and manmade substances into the stratosphere by virtue of its chemical composition. Like in a giant elevator, many chemical compounds emitted at the ground pass thus unfiltered through this so-called "detergent layer" of the atmosphere. Scientists call it the "OH shield". The newly discovered phenomenon over the South Seas boosts ozone depletion in the polar regions and could have a significant influence on the future climate of the Earth – also because of rising air pollution in South East Asia.

At first Dr. Markus Rex suspected a series of flawed measurements. In October 2009 the atmospheric physicist from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) was on board the German research vessel "Sonne" to measure trace substances in the atmosphere in the tropical West Pacific. Tried and tested a thousand times over, the ozone probes he sent up into the tropical sky with a research balloon every 400 kilometres reported – nothing. Or to be more accurate: almost nothing. The ozone concentrations in his measurements remained nearly constantly below the detection limit of approx. 10 ppbv* in the entire vertical range from the surface of the Earth to an altitude of around 15 kilometres. Normally ozone concentrations in this part of the atmosphere are three to ten times higher.

Although low values at an altitude of around 15 kilometres were known from earlier measurements in the peripheral area of the tropical West Pacific, the complete absence of ozone at all heights was surprising. However, after a short period of doubt and various tests of the instruments it dawned on the worldwide recognised ozone specialist that he might be onto a phenomenon yet unknown to science. A few research years later and after the involvement of other colleagues came confirmation: Markus Rex and his team on board the "Sonne" had tracked down a giant natural hole over the tropical South Seas, situated in a special layer of the lower atmosphere known as the "OH shield". The research results on the newly discovered OH minimum will be published soon in the journal "Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics", with the Institute of Environmental Physics of the University of Bremen and other international research institutions as partners.

"Even though the sky appears to be an extensively uniform space for most people, it is composed of chemically and physically very different layers," Markus Rex explains the complex makeup of the atmosphere. The air layers near the ground contain hundreds or even thousands of chemical compounds. This is why winter and spring, mountains and sea, city and forests all have a distinct smell. The great majority of these substances are broken down into water-soluble compounds in the lower kilometres of the atmosphere and are subsequently washed out by rain. Since these processes require the presence of a certain chemical substance, the so called hydroxyl (=OH) radical, this part of the atmosphere is called the "OH shield". It acts like a huge atmospheric washing machine in which OH is the detergent.

The OH shield is part of the troposphere, as the lower part of the atmosphere is called. "Only a few, extremely long-lived compounds manage to make their way through the OH shield," says Rex, "then they also get through the tropopause and enter the stratosphere." Tropopause refers to the boundary layer between the troposphere and the next atmospheric layer above it, the stratosphere. Particularly substances that enter the stratosphere unfold a global impact. The reason for this is that once they have reached the stratosphere, their degradation products remain up there for many years and spread over the entire globe.

Extremely long-lived chemical compounds find their way to the stratosphere, even where the OH shield is intact. These include methane, nitrous oxide ("laughing gas"), halons, methyl bromide and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which are notorious as "ozone killers" because they play a major role in ozone depletion in the polar regions.

"We have to realise," reminds the Potsdam atmospheric physicist, "that chemical compounds which enter the stratosphere always have a global impact." Thanks to the OH hole that the researchers discovered over the tropical Pacific, greater amounts of brominated hydrocarbons can reach the stratosphere than in other parts of the world. Although their ascent takes place over the tropical West Pacific, these compounds amplify ozone depletion in the polar regions. Since scientists identified this phenomenon and took it into account in the modelling of stratospheric ozone depletion, their models have corresponded excellently with the actually measured data.

link

Reduced or depleted hydroxyls extends the half life of methane. Methane in the stratosphere degrades, releasing water vapor to the stratosphere which acts like a blanket to reflect IR radiation back to the surface and creates polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) that deplete ozone.

This is far worse news than reflected in the article. We are seeing the first signs of OH depletion in the atmosphere.

[dohboi]

More on possible OH loss and resulting increase in atmospheric methane:


Very strong atmospheric methane growth in the four years 2014‐2017: Implications for the Paris Agreement (doi.org/10.1029/2018GB006009)

Abstract
Atmospheric methane grew very rapidly in 2014 (12.7±0.5 ppb/yr), 2015 (10.1±0.7 ppb/yr), 2016 (7.0± 0.7 ppb/yr) and 2017 (7.7±0.7 ppb/yr), at rates not observed since the 1980s. The increase in the methane burden began in 2007, with the mean global mole fraction in remote surface background air rising from about 1775 ppb in 2006 to 1850 ppb in 2017. Simultaneously the 13C/12C isotopic ratio (expressed as δ13CCH4) has shifted, in a new trend to more negative values that have been observed worldwide for over a decade. The causes of methane's recent mole fraction increase are therefore either a change in the relative proportions (and totals) of emissions from biogenic and thermogenic and pyrogenic sources, especially in the tropics and sub‐tropics, or a decline in the atmospheric sink of methane, or both. Unfortunately, with limited measurement data sets, it is not currently possible to be more definitive. The climate warming impact of the observed methane increase over the past decade, if continued at >5 ppb/yr in the coming decades, is sufficient to challenge the Paris Agreement, which requires sharp cuts in the atmospheric methane burden. However, anthropogenic methane emissions are relatively very large and thus offer attractive targets for rapid reduction, which are essential if the Paris Agreement aims are to be attained.

Plain Language Summary
The rise in atmospheric methane (CH4), which began in 2007, accelerated in the past four years. The growth has been worldwide, especially in the tropics and northern mid‐latitudes. With the rise has come a shift in the carbon isotope ratio of the methane. The causes of the rise are not fully understood, and may include increased emissions and perhaps a decline in the destruction of methane in the air. Methane's increase since 2007 was not expected in future greenhouse gas scenarios compliant with the targets of the Paris Agreement, and if the increase continues at the same rates it may become very difficult to meet the Paris goals. There is now urgent need to reduce methane emissions, especially from the fossil fuel industry.

Link >> https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com ... 18GB006009

And something on it from the msm:

Sharp rise in methane levels threatens world climate targets

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -agreement

"Dramatic rises in atmospheric methane are threatening to derail plans to hold global temperature rises to 2C, scientists have warned."

[Plantagenet]

Very strong atmospheric methane growth in the four years 2014‐2017: Implications for the Paris Agreement (doi.org/10.1029/2018GB006009)

.... The climate warming impact of the observed methane increase over the past decade, if continued at >5 ppb/yr in the coming decades, is sufficient to challenge the Paris Agreement, which requires sharp cuts in the atmospheric methane burden.....Methane's increase since 2007 was not expected in future greenhouse gas scenarios compliant with the targets of the Paris Agreement

Its sad to see so many mis-statements in a peer-reviewed document.

1. The Paris Agreement has no mention of methane.
2. Its idiotic to say that increases of methane were not expected and then in the same sentence note that methane has been increasing since 2007.
3. The Paris agreement actually has two sets of targets....one calls for climate warming to be limited to 2°C. This goal is obviously magical thinking, since there is no way to limit climate warming without cutting emissions, and the second target in the Paris agreement, laid in individual countries stated plans for emissions, is to INCREASE CO2 emissions.

Looks like the world is on track to meet and even exceed the commitments made in the Paris accords to INCREASE CO2 (and CH4) emission, even as they fail to limit warming global warming to 2°C. I guess that would be considered a partial success for Obama and the other lying scum dogs who put together this fraud of a climate treaty.

Cheers!

[asg70]

Looks like the world is on track to meet and even exceed the commitments made in the Paris accords to INCREASE CO2 (and CH4) emission

Thanks for doing your part by flying around the world purely for kicks. I really wish you'd stay out of these threads because the moral hypocrisy is deafening.

[Whitefang]

https://www.skeptical-science.com/scien ... r-4-years/

The new Study
Published within the AGU Global Biogeochemical Cycles on 5th February and titled “Very strong atmospheric methane growth in the four years 2014‐2017: Implications for the Paris Agreement“, it lays out the details of what has been happening …
The rise in atmospheric methane (CH4), which began in 2007, accelerated in the past four years. The growth has been worldwide, especially in the tropics and northern mid‐latitudes. With the rise has come a shift in the carbon isotope ratio of the methane. The causes of the rise are not fully understood, and may include increased emissions and perhaps a decline in the destruction of methane in the air. Methane’s increase since 2007 was not expected in future greenhouse gas scenarios compliant with the targets of the Paris Agreement, and if the increase continues at the same rates it may become very difficult to meet the Paris goals. There is now urgent need to reduce methane emissions, especially from the fossil fuel industry.
What exactly has been happening?
In the 1990s, the atmospheric methane burden trended towards quilibrium, which it reached by the end of the 20th century, with little or no growth in its atmospheric burden in the early years of this century. In 1984, the first year with detailed records, the global annual average atmospheric mole fraction of methane in the remote marine boundary layer was 1645 ppb. In 2006, just before the recent growth phase began, it was about 1775 ppb. This then grew rapidly to an annual global mean of 1850 ppb in 2017, a total rise of about 75 ppb in the 2007-2017 period. That increase is continuing.

Why is it increasing, where is it all coming from?
We don’t fully understand what is happening, but there are three ideas discussed within the new study …
An increase in the proportion of global emissions from microbial sources (wetlands) may have driven the increase
Or … a strong rise in methane emissions from the use of natural gas and oil has taken place.
Or … the oxidative capacity –the cleansing power -of the atmosphere has declined, and hence the destruction of methane has slowed. Even if total emissions have changed little or (less likely) even decreased, the observed increased can be explained by this.
It need not be a binary choice. Some or all of the above may together explain it.
The uptick is a surprise and a shock
Although methane’s apparent equilibration in the early years of this century was perhaps only a temporary pause in the human-induced increase in atmospheric methane, the renewed strong methane growth that began in 2007 was so unexpected that it was not considered in pathway models preparatory to the Paris Agreement.
The current growth has now lasted over a decade. If growth continues at similar rates through subsequent decades, evidence presented within the new study demonstrates that the extra climate warming impact of this methane can significantly negate or even reverse progress in climate mitigation from reducing CO2 emissions. This will challenge efforts to meet the target of the 2015 UN Paris Agreement on Climate Change, to limit climate warming to 2°C.
Regardless of why this is happening, the observational fact is huge news, and yet will probably also not attract the attention needed.

“However, that does not look so simple any more. We don’t know exactly what is happening.
“Perhaps emissions are growing or perhaps the problem is due to the fact that our atmosphere is losing its ability to break down methane.
“Either way we are facing a very worrying problem. That is why it is so important that we unravel what is going on – as soon as possible.”
Further Reading
Nature (6th Feb 2019) – Tropical Africa could be a key to solving methane mystery
Armed with an aeroplane loaded with sampling equipment, UK scientists have taken the most detailed measurements yet of the methane in the skies over tropical Africa. The data should help researchers to understand a mysterious spike in atmospheric concentrations of the powerful greenhouse gas, which began in 2007.
The flights started in Uganda in January and ended this week in Zambia. Researchers sampled methane emissions emanating from papyrus swamps, burning farm fields and flatulent livestock. Early results confirm that Africa is playing a major, yet poorly documented, role in the global methane cycle, with enormous consequences for the global climate.
The above field trip is being led by Euan Nisbet. He is also the lead author of the newly published study.

Not a word on hydrates, so they go South to Africa to hunt down the methane mystery
Gas passing pigs and chicken, why not go search for the holy grail in Egypt while you are there.
Maybe someone should point them in the right direction, North where the degrading permafrost is located.
Well, not that is matters or changes anything, especially the outcome.

So they got samples of farting animals from Africa, I bet they brought hundreds of them, preserved like ice cores for testing, stored in underground bunkers to keep our gas passing legacy preserved for future generations.
Makes you wonder how these scientists work in the field, wait for a fart then quickly jump behind with the fart bottle or balloon.
Maybe it works with an enclosed set up where 10 cows fart, then measure the concentrations…….
Why would African cows fart more, no need to go to Africa and increase your footprint, find local livestock to do silly tests.

[Whitefang]

Okay, so they were flying high over or through the methane….

Another runaway feedback:

https://authors.library.caltech.edu/92140/

Stratocumulus clouds cover 20% of the low-latitude oceans and are especially prevalent in the subtropics. They cool the Earth by shading large portions of its surface from sunlight. However, as their dynamical scales are too small to be resolvable in global climate models, predictions of their response to greenhouse warming have remained uncertain. Here we report how stratocumulus decks respond to greenhouse warming in large-eddy simulations that explicitly resolve cloud dynamics in a representative subtropical region. In the simulations, stratocumulus decks become unstable and break up into scattered clouds when CO_2 levels rise above 1,200 ppm. In addition to the warming from rising CO_2 levels, this instability triggers a surface warming of about 8 K globally and 10 K in the subtropics. Once the stratocumulus decks have broken up, they only re-form once CO_2 concentrations drop substantially below the level at which the instability first occurred. Climate transitions that arise from this instability may have contributed importantly to hothouse climates and abrupt climate changes in the geological past. Such transitions to a much warmer climate may also occur in the future if CO_2 levels continue to rise.

I remember someone saying a possible, at least according to paleoclimate transitions in the past, a 1 degree a year for 5 to 6 years, then a plateau for 3 or 4 decades, then another series of abrupt heating, a degree a year.
Thus a two step of both 5 degrees Celcius within a decade...…..from glacial to hothouse within 5 to 6 decades.
Say 50 years for the temperature rise, bit of lag for the ice shelves to melt out, another 50 years.
Except maybe the bulk of East Antarctica, that would take longer.
That would give, worst case, 15 and more meters of SLR, and harvest down after the first two degrees, end of argiculture.
I used to think the plateau were the time needed to reach the hydrates in the deep sea/oceans but maybe this is a more likely mechanism for the observed shifts in the past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iM_f_j7H08

Richard Alley on abrupt CC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66LqhBJcz-w

Guy on losing the white stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9HnYJzRzBE

Since 2007 atmospheric methane concentrations have risen strongly; average rate 7 ppb per year. Methane’s Global-Warming Potential multiplies warming vs. CO2 by 34x, 86x, and 150-200x on time scales of 100 years, 20 years, and a few years, respectively. Total radiative forcing of methane is rapidly catching that of CO2, making Paris targets nearly impossible to reach without emergency actions. Continuing on last video, I chat on latest methane science; spatial and temporal variation, isotopic changes, emission locations, etc...

Paul B on methane, part 2

[jawagord]

Global warming has definitely run away, February 2019 has been one for the Calgary record books. And I’m sure it is only a coincidence the suns activity was also at an 11 year low?

This past February was one for the record books. Calgary did not have a single “normal” temperature in February, meaning every high, low and mean temperature were below seasonal. Starting Feb. 1, temperatures dropped below freezing and stayed there for all but one hour on Feb. 22.

An incredibly rare occurance, there has only been one month on record where the temperature stayed below freezing for the entire month — in Jan. 1950 the warmest it got was -6.7 C.

By month’s end this year, the mean (or average) temperature for February was -18.7 C, making this the third-coldest February on record, according to Environment Canada climatologists.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5012846/cold ... nt-canada/

The last time a full calendar month passed without a sunspot was August 2008. At the time, the sun was in the deepest Solar Minimum of the Space Age. Now a new Solar Minimum is in progress and it is shaping up to be similarly deep. So far this year, the sun has been blank 73% of the time--the same as 2008.

These minima have been coming and going with regularity since the sunspot cycle was discovered in 1859. However, not all Solar Minima are alike. The last one in 2008-2009 surprised observers with its depth and side-effects. Sunspot counts dropped to a 100-year low; the sun dimmed by 0.1%;[/b]

http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?vie ... &year=2019