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dohboi wrote:Newf, you seem to now be spewing KJ's absolute and utter bs.

How does the population switching to a largely plant-based diet 'hurt billions'?

How does people largely giving up air travel 'hurt billions'?

Yet these two would go a long way to reducing the speed and ferocity of the consequences of Climate Chaos, chaos that will indeed 'hurt," indeed kill, billions!

jedrider wrote:I always thought it was a mistake to include any notion of justice in a climate agreement. How foolish of all concerned.

The “nonbinding” pact declares that climate action must include concern for “gender equality, empowerment of women, and intergenerational equity” as well as “the importance for some of the concept of ‘climate justice.’

It would have been far simpler if they just said "You Die!" as reason enough. Far too late anyway.

“It’s most cool and foggy down in the Bay,” he said of the San Francisco Bay. “You have a sea breeze coming in. But above the sea breeze some of the driest air in North America is coming in. Up in the hills it’s super dry.”

Changes in fire behavior have consequences both for firefighters and for people who live near open spaces, said Anthony.

“What we thought was normal or average isn’t normal anymore,” he said. “We have to change our thinking.”

Abstract
Rapid Arctic warming is hypothesized to favor an increased persistence of regional weather patterns in the northern hemisphere [Francis and Vavrus 2012]. Persistent conditions can lead to drought, heatwaves, prolonged cold spells, and storminess that can cost millions of dollars in damage and disrupt societal and ecosystem norms. This study defines a new metric called long‐duration events (LDEs) ‐‐ conditions that endure at least 4 consecutive days ‐‐ and takes two independent approaches to assessing seasonal changes in weather‐pattern persistence over North America. One applies precipitation measurements at weather stations across the United States; the other is based on a cluster analysis of large‐scale, upper‐level atmospheric patterns. Both methods indicate an overall increase in LDEs. We also find that large‐scale patterns consistent with a warm Arctic exhibit an increased frequency of LDEs, suggesting that further Arctic warming may favor persistent weather patterns that can lead to weather extremes.

Plain Language Summary
Rapid Arctic warming and sea‐ice loss are expected to affect weather patterns around the northern hemisphere. An increased persistent of weather regimes is one hypothesized impact. Long‐lasting weather conditions can lead to destructive extreme events, such as droughts, prolonged cold spells, heatwaves, and flooding. This study uses daily precipitation measurements across the United States, as well as daily large‐scale atmospheric patterns over the eastern Pacific and North America, to assess changes in weather‐regime persistence, and whether any changes are associated with a rapidly warming Arctic. We find an increased frequency in long‐lived patterns in recent decades, especially those with abnormally warm high latitudes, suggesting that further Arctic warming may favor an increase in extreme events caused by prolonged weather conditions.

Scientists at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and the University of Wisconsin-Madison examined daily precipitation data at 17 stations across the U.S., along with large upper-level circulation patterns over the eastern Pacific Ocean and North America.

Overall, dry and wet spells lasting four or more days occurred more frequently in recent decades, according to the study published online today in Geophysical Research Letters. The frequency of persistent large-scale circulation patterns over North America also increased when the Arctic was abnormally warm.

"While we cannot say for sure that Arctic warming is the cause, we found that large-scale patterns with Arctic warming are becoming more frequent, and the frequency of long-duration weather conditions increases most for those patterns," said Francis, who works in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.

The results suggest that as the Arctic continues to warm and melt, it's likely that long-duration events will continue to occur more often, meaning that weather patterns—heat waves, droughts, cold spells and stormy conditions—will likely become more persistent, she said.

"When these conditions last a long time, they can become extreme events, as we've seen so often in recent years," she said. "Knowing which types of events will occur more often in which regions and under what background conditions—such as certain ocean temperature patterns—will help decision-makers plan for the future in terms of infrastructure improvements, agricultural practices, emergency preparedness and managed retreat from hazardous areas."

... Ecosystems either soak up carbon through photosynthesis—a negative feedback that could reduce future warming—or release it through respiration—a positive feedback that could enhance future warming. Understanding how climate change might impact ecosystem photosynthesis and respiration is critical for predicting future carbon dynamics.

"This study suggests we know more about the negative feedback loop and less about the positive one."

Liu's team discovered that whether ecosystems across the U.S. uptake carbon or release it is dependent on water availability. The primary control switches from production to respiration at an annual precipitation threshold between 30 and 35 inches in the contiguous United States. The carbon balance of ecosystems in the dry West is very sensitive to photosynthesis. In contrast, the carbon balance of more mesic Eastern U.S. ecosystems is more sensitive to carbon lost through respiration.

However, climate models do not reflect this precipitation threshold. Liu and his co-authors determined that these models are far too sensitive to photosynthesis and not sensitive enough to respiration, suggesting the Earth's ecosystems may lose more carbon to the atmosphere in the future as surface temperatures continue to warm.

The ocean floor as we know it is dissolving rapidly as a result of human activity.

Normally the deep sea bottom is a chalky white. It's composed, to a large extent, of the mineral calcite (CaCO3) formed from the skeletons and shells of many planktonic organisms and corals. The seafloor plays a crucial role in controlling the degree of ocean acidification. The dissolution of calcite neutralizes the acidity of the CO2, and in the process prevents seawater from becoming too acidic.

But these days, at least in certain hotspots such as the Northern Atlantic and the southern Oceans, the ocean's chalky bed is becoming more of a murky brown. As a result of human activities the level of CO2 in the water is so high, and the water is so acidic, that the calcite is simply being dissolved.

The McGill-led research team who published their results this week in a study in PNAS believe that what they are seeing today is only a foretaste of the way that the ocean floor will most likely be affected in future.

Olivier Sulpis et al, Current CaCO3 dissolution at the seafloor caused by anthropogenic CO2, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2018)

• A cold front has taken an unusually far southward plunge by late-July standards.
• This has brought cooler, less-humid air as far south as parts of the Gulf Coast and Texas.
• Daily record-low temperatures may be set through Friday morning.

KaiserJeep wrote:I remember indignantly complaining to my Mother as I cleaned mud off my bike that the weather man had said we would have "dry weather today". She laughed at me, because the weather has always been chaotic.

dohboi wrote:KJ thinks that because forecasters can't always predict exactly when and whether it's going to rain all the time, therefore no one can be at all sure whether the months of December, January and February are likely to be colder or warmer than the months of June, July and August in the mid latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

It would be laughable, if it weren't clear that the guy is clearly capable of thinking more clearly than that, so much be assumed to be intentionally trying to delude the unwary.