Learn from Miami regarding NC 12. Start planning now for it to disappear.

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Learn from Miami regarding NC 12. Start planning now for it to disappear.

 

The Army Corps of Engineers is planning to build sea wall around downtown Miami, 20 feet high in places, to protect the city from storm surges and flooding.

The problem is that Miami sits atop porous limestone through which rising sea waters will soon flood the city — a 100-foot seawall would not make a difference. The rising water from below is well known and understood, and it may have played a role in the recent Miami area building collapse.

It seems some planners in Miami just can’t get their heads around the catastrophe that the city faces — a catastrophe that could lead to eventual abandonment and 4 million environmental refugees fleeing north.

The Highway 12 situation along the Outer Banks has similarities to the Miami situation. There is not the slightest doubt that N.C. 12 is a goner. The only question is when.

University of Miami geologist Hal Wanless argues that a 2- to 3-foot sea level rise will halt development on all the world’s barrier islands. It’s not that the islands will be under water; it’s that low spots will be under water and access roads will be flooded and washed away.

Current estimates of global sea level rise range from 3 to 8 feet max by the end of this century assuming that we don’t reduce the rate of carbon dioxide release.

The evidence pointing to intensifying storms and accelerating rise in sea levels is clear. Oceanographer John Englander has shown that based on satellite observations the sea level rise rate more than doubled between 2000 and 2020.

The Highway 12 situation is not only ripe for increased rates of erosion and island overwash, but the possibility of damaging seaward overwash is greatly increased because of the large bodies of water behind the islands — Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds.

Barrier island dwellers should accept these facts as the gospel truth. They should not delay until the wolf is at the door, which is the case in Miami. Instead, learn from Miami and start planning now.

For planning purposes, I believe the assumption of a decade long maximum future lifespan for N.C. 12 is a reasonable one.

Orrin H. Pilkey. The writer is a professor emeritus of Earth Sciences at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

Heat, drought and fire: how climate dangers combine for a catastrophic ‘perfect storm’

Heat, drought and fire: how climate dangers combine for a catastrophic ‘perfect storm’

<span>Photograph: Fred Greaves/Reuters</span>
Photograph: Fred Greaves/Reuters

 

Northern California’s Dixie fire this weekend swelled to become the single largest fire incident the state has ever recorded, a mammoth that has leveled mountain towns, produced flames that shot 200ft in the air, and scorched through close to 490,000 acres.

“It is just the perfect storm,” says Rick Carhart, the California department of forestry and fire protection (Cal Fire) public information officer, adding that the difficult and steep terrain, parched vegetation, and hot, dry weather had all come together to fuel the conflagration that has sent flames 200ft into the sky.

And, he says, the Dixie fire was just one of a series of large blazes that have affected the area in recent years. “It has been giant devastating fire after giant devastating fire.”

Researchers are concerned that the Dixie fire’s record won’t hold for long. The parched landscapes and increased temperatures that set the stage for bigger blazes this year are not anomalies – they are trends. And the conditions are going to get worse.

A climate crisis trifecta

Drought, extreme heat, and destructive infernos are each devastating in their own right, but together they cause calamity. The combination augments their effects and causes each individual condition to intensify. Scientists say they are seeing the trifecta more frequently in the west and that climate breakdown is the key culprit.

Related: The California tourist town that’s running out of water: ‘It’s a shock’

“This is what climate scientists have been warning about for years now,” says Park Williams, a hydro-climatologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Drought and fire have always been part of the climate in the western US, but increasing heat, which scientists say is directly attributable to human-caused climate change, has had a devastating impact. “These things amplify each other,” Williams says, adding that the effects exponentially increase.

The climate conditions don’t act alone, and fire and and water policies play a part in increasing risks and determining the outcome as well. Most fires are still started by people. The expansion of communities in forested and fire-prone areas adds new dimensions that complicate containment efforts when blazes get big. But what’s happening in the environment has made fires much harder to fight.

That’s why new records don’t just nose out the old ones – they obliterate them. In 2020, the 4.2m acres that burned in California was nearly triple the previous record. This year, fires have burned more than three times as much land as they had by this point in 2020, according to Cal Fire.

“And there’s really no end in sight for the capacity for that type of thing to happen again,” Williams says.

A vicious cycle of heat and drought

Heat affects drought in several ways. Higher temperatures cause precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow. Snow that does fall melts away much more quickly, leaving less to trickle into streams, rivers, and reservoirs. People, plants and animals depend on the snowpack to feed the water systems and with less available, the landscape and anything living in it or off of it will feel the strain.

Heat also bakes moisture right out of the landscape. The hotter it is, the more water plants and animals need to regulate themselves, and that increases water scarcity even further. What makes all this more complicated is that the relationship works in the other direction as well – drought conditions increase heat.

“Heat is both a response to drought and also a driver of drought,” says Andrew Hoell, a meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s physical sciences laboratory. Dry soils radiate and reflect the sun’s energy that otherwise would be used in evaporation. That pushes surface temperatures even higher.

“Just like we get cold when we climb out of a swimming pool, the earth cools off when water evaporates,” Hoell says. “When soils are dry, when it’s hot out, there isn’t as much water available to evaporate. That means the earth doesn’t get to cool off.”

That’s why Hoell calls climate change a “threat multiplier”. As the region becomes hotter and drier, the risk of small sparks quickly igniting into enormous and erratic wildfires magnifies.

Fires add another dimension to the threat

New research also suggests that the wildfires themselves will increase drought and heat, adding a new dimension to the catastrophic cycle. Researchers are discussing hypotheses, Hoell explains, that smoke and aerosols released into the atmosphere by wildfires can alter weather patterns. There are already studies that show wildfires influence the formation of clouds in the sky and could decrease precipitation.

“It is very dynamic and very complicated but that’s where we are going as a science community – we are trying to figure out how wildfires feed back on to drought,” he said.

Researchers are also investigating how reduced canopies from forests decimated in fires expose the snowpack that was once shaded to the sun.

Although more research is needed to better understand these complex relationships, the scientific record is clear that rising heat will lead to an increase in extreme events.

“Global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered,” according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its sixth report, released on Monday, which went on to detail and list the expected increase in both frequency and intensity of hot extremes, ecological droughts, and the reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost, along with other catastrophic conditions.

Related: Major climate changes inevitable and irreversible – IPCC’s starkest warning yet

“Under all future scenarios and global warming levels, temperatures and extreme high temperatures are expected to continue to increase,” the report said of North and Central America, attributing the rise to “human influence”.

Models show that extreme heatwaves are expected to happen more frequently, more intensely, and across larger areas of land in just the next three decades. “Historically we have had between four and six extreme heat events in any given year,” said Steve Ostoja, director of the USDA California Climate Hub. “By 2050, we expect that number to go somewhere between 25 and 30 events. That’s a huge difference. That basically means it is going to be that hot all the time.”

No time to lose

The trends are already being felt. Currently, about half of the contiguous US is in drought, according to federal agencies. The entire state of California is experiencing drought conditions, with more than 88% of the state in the “extreme drought” category, as determined by the US Drought Monitor. Meanwhile, dozens of climate stations across the west documented the warmest June and July on record, as extreme heatwaves spiked temperatures across the region.

Stressed ecosystems have already become more vulnerable. The disasters have taxed trees, which are being ravaged by diseases and pests. Studies show roughly 150 million trees died in the last period of drought and billions of creatures living along the coasts perished during heatwaves this summer.

Climate scientists say that there is still time to make big changes, and there’s a chance that the worst effects of the changing climate can be staved off. But there’s no time to lose.

In the west, the wildfires, drought, and heat are already wreaking havoc. Williams, the climate scientist from UCLA, says there are clear indications that places like California won’t look like they do now for much longer. The landscape is growing arid, and as it gets drier and hotter, there will be more fires. That will lead to fewer forests and more grasslands, shrublands, and deserts.

“Fire has been around for hundreds of millions of years and it is a critical part of the earth’s system,” he said. But the fires of the future will do much more than clear the underbrush. “Now the fires we are seeing are eliminating giant patches of forest entirely,” he added, explaining that many tree species had not evolved to repopulate the giant gaps quickly.

“It could take hundreds of years for ponderosa or Jeffrey pine – which we see a lot of in the Sierra Nevada – to actually reoccupy giant patches of forest,” he said. “By that time the climate might be totally inappropriate for those species anyway.”

How elite, oil-backed think tanks worked to lift the ban on US crude oil exports

Eyes on The Ties

How elite, oil-backed think tanks worked to lift the ban on US crude oil exports

by Rob Galbraith                                   

Brookings Institution senior fellow Charles Ebinger testifies before Congress in favor of lifting the crude oil export ban in 2014 (via C-SPAN)

In early July, Brookings Institution Vice President Darrell M. West blasted Unearthed, an investigative journalism project of Greenpeace UK, in a since-deleted post on the Brookings blog for secretly recording ExxonMobil lobbyists candidly disclosing the company’s playbook for blocking government action on climate change.

Lawrence Carter, a reporter at Unearthed, had published an exposé based on undercover interviews with two ExxonMobil lobbyists who revealed how the company persuaded lawmakers to drastically limit the scope of the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill, backed proposals for a carbon tax to give the appearance of supporting climate action in the belief that the policy was unlikely to ever pass, and backed “shadow groups” to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.

After West criticized the Unearthed report as “erod[ing] trust in civic life,” Kate Aronoff pointed out that Brookings is funded by ExxonMobil and was explicitly named, along with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), as one of “the two big think tanks that we work with and that we’re actively involved in” by one of the ExxonMobil lobbyists in the report.

Aronoff noted in her article at The New Republic that “funding the institutions that help define ideas about what constitutes a reasonable climate debate” can help ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies influence climate policy in ways that are hidden to the general public.

Indeed, while the lobbyists’ unwitting admissions to Unearthed revealed ExxonMobil’s tactics in particularly stark terms, Big Oil’s use of think tanks to shape policy is nothing new. We documented this phenomenon as it related to a specific policy debate in our 2015 report “The Oil Tanks.” The report examined fossil fuel industry funding for Brookings, CSIS, and seven other elite think tanks advocating for repealing the ban on exporting crude oil from the United States.

In 2014, Brookings published a report titled “Economic Benefits of Lifting the Crude Oil Export Ban” written by Charles Ebinger, a senior fellow at Brookings with a long history of advising energy companies and governments on energy issues. In that year Brookings reported receiving between $1.7 and $3.6 million from nine major oil and gas companies, including between $500,000 and $999,999 from ExxonMobil. Further, at the time 15 of Brookings’ 74 were current or former directors, executives, or lobbyists of oil and gas companies who gave an additional $1.3 to $3.1 million to the institute.

Other think tanks profiled in our report who worked to lift the crude oil export ban while taking money from the fossil fuel industry include CSIS, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Atlantic Council, the Aspen Institute, and the Bipartisan Policy Center.

In her article, Aronoff describes the influence that Brookings and other elite think tanks funded with fossil fuel money and other corporate donations have on US policy: “These institutions often feed experts to top posts in the White House and serve as landing pads for ex-administration officials when their parties lose control, weighing in on key policy debates with recommendations for lawmakers.”

We observed this precise dynamic in our 2015 report on the effort to allow oil drillers to begin exporting crude oil from the United States.

Frank Verrastro, senior advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ energy security and climate change program and lead author of the report “Delivering the Goods: Making the Most of North America’s Evolving Oil Infrastructure,” held positions in the White House energy policy and planning staff as well as the Department of Interior’s oil and gas office and the Department of Energy’s domestic policy and international affairs office, according to one bio.

David Goldwyn was co-director of the Atlantic Council’s pro-export report “Empowering America: How Energy Abundance Can Strengthen US Global Leadership.” Previously, as Special Envoy for International Energy Affairs in the State Department, Goldwyn was critical to the Obama administration’s strategy of encouraging eastern European countries to embrace fracking and lease land to US oil companies, including Chevron, a major Atlantic Council donor. Goldwyn has also held roles at other elite, fossil fuel-funded think tanks that promoted lifting the export ban. From 2001 until 2009 when he joined the federal government, Goldywn was a senior associate at CSIS. In 2007, Goldwyn was a member of a Council on Foreign Relations task force on National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency. In 2014, Goldwyn was a member of the Brookings Institution’s natural gas task force, which endorsed liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.

Overall, as we observed in 2015, the effect was to create an “echo chamber of highly influential institutions funded, directed, and staffed by many of the same corporations and people and delivering the same pro-industry messages,” through 2014 and 2015 calling for a major policy shift to benefit the United States oil industry. On December 18, 2015, just two weeks after we published our report, then-President Barack Obama signed a bill lifting the export ban. Now, thanks to the reporting of Lawrence Carter at Unearthed and Kate Aronoff at The New Republic we have evidence, in Exxon’s own words, of how they use elite liberal and right-wing think tanks to advance their agenda in Washington.

‘Code Red for Humanity’: IPCC Report Warns Window for Climate Action Is Closing Fast

DeSmog

‘Code Red for Humanity’: IPCC Report Warns Window for Climate Action Is Closing Fast

By Jake Johnson at Common Dreams       August 9, 2021

“The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.”
 

Wildfire in the Pacific Northwest Credit: BLM Oregon & Washington. CC By 2.0

A panel of leading scientists convened by the United Nations issued a comprehensive report Monday that contains a stark warning for humanity: The climate crisis is here, some of its most destructive consequences are now inevitable, and only massive and speedy reductions in greenhouse gas emissions can limit the coming disaster.

Assembled by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — a team of more than 200 scientists — the new report represents a sweeping analysis of thousands of studies published over the past eight years as people the world over have suffered record-shattering temperatures and deadly extreme weather, from catastrophic wildfires to monsoon rains to extreme drought.

The result of the scientists’ work is a startling assessment of the extent to which human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, has altered the climate, producing “unprecedented” planetary warming, glacial melting, sea level rise, and other changes that are wreaking havoc in every region of the globe — wiping out entire towns, imperiling biodiverse ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef and the Amazon rainforest, and endangering densely populated swaths of the world.

“This report is a reality check,” said Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a climate scientist at the University of Paris-Saclay and co-chair of the panel that produced the report. “We now have a much clearer picture of the past, present, and future climate, which is essential for understanding where we are headed, what can be done, and how we can prepare.”

One central finding of the new analysis is that the Paris accord’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is in serious danger as policymakers fail to take the necessary steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Each of the past four decades, according to the report, has been successively warmer than any preceding decade dating back to 1850, atmospheric CO2 has soared to levels not seen in two million years, and “global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered.”

“Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century,” the IPCC panel warns, “unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.”

“Many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and some of the changes already set in motion—such as continued sea level rise—are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years,” reads the report, which was approved by 195 member nations of the IPCC.

“However,” the report emphasizes, “strong and sustained reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would limit climate change. While benefits for air quality would come quickly, it could take 20-30 years to see global temperatures stabilize.”

Panmao Zhai, another co-chair of the IPCC working group, stressed that “stabilizing the climate will require strong, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and reaching net-zero CO2 emissions.”

“Limiting other greenhouse gases and air pollutants, especially methane, could have benefits both for health and the climate,” Zhai added.

The planet has warmed at an unprecedented rate, the IPCC report states.

The new report, the first of three installments, was released just weeks before world leaders are set to gather in Glasgow for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), which activists view as a pivotal moment for the global climate fight.

“Many see COP26 as our last, best chance to prevent global temperatures from spiraling out of control,” Dorothy Grace Guerrero of Global Justice Now wrote last month. “Unfortunately, we are not yet on track to limit global warming to 1.5°C, the threshold that scientists agree will prevent the most dangerous climate impacts. Failure to reach this goal will take a disproportionate toll on developing countries.”

António Guterres, secretary-general of the U.N., said in a statement Monday that the IPCC’s latest findings are “a code red for humanity.”

“The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk,” said Guterres. “Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.”

“There is a clear moral and economic imperative to protect the lives and livelihoods of those on the front lines of the climate crisis,” Guterres continued. “If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe. But, as today’s report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses. I count on government leaders and all stakeholders to ensure COP26 is a success.”

This article was republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Higher water levels in Lake Okeechobee may be part of new Army Corps plan

Higher water levels in Lake Okeechobee may be part of new Army Corps plan

 

Lake Okeechobee may be kept at higher levels for longer periods of time under a new management plan the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is refining now that a $1.8 billion upgrade of the Herbert Hoover Dike is nearly completed.

The Corps picked a preferred alternative, called “CC,” out of six choices and will now work on fine-tuning the plan based on extensive feedback from environmentalists, agriculture representatives, Native American tribes and other leaders on how to balance the conflicting demands on lake waters..

“We are building on the CC foundation in order to get every ounce of benefit out of the new plan,” Col. Andrew Kelly, the Corps commander for Florida, said during a presentation outlining the basics on Monday. “The technical team is now running optimization models and they will come back in September with a better defined plan,” he said.

Thick blue-green algae surrounds boats in the Pahokee Marina on Lake Okeechobee earlier this year. Blooms increased as water temperatures rose and nutrients in the shallow lake got stirred up by wind.
Thick blue-green algae surrounds boats in the Pahokee Marina on Lake Okeechobee earlier this year. Blooms increased as water temperatures rose and nutrients in the shallow lake got stirred up by wind.

 

Priorities include reducing harmful releases of polluted lake water to the Caloosahatchee estuary on the west and to the St. Lucie on the east, and sending more water south to the parched Everglades and Florida Bay. But the plan also aims to guarantee more water to users, including the sugar industry which has vast fields around the lake. Reducing pollution in the lake and lowering the risk of harmful algae blooms that have plagued Florida’s coasts and hurt local economies were also among the consensus priorities, Kelly said.

The biggest changes from years past: A massive $1.8 billion upgrade of the dike that is scheduled to be completed next year, as well as Everglades restoration projects that will come online in the next few years. The projects include a vast reservoir and storm water treatment area that, once completed in 2023, will allow managers to send more water south when lake levels rise, reducing discharges to estuaries on the east and west.

The aim is to produce water that’s clean enough to replenish the Everglades amid efforts to recreate something close to the original flow of the River of Grass, going south through Shark Valley in Everglades National Park, taking much-needed fresh water all the way south to Florida Bay.

“While we’re encouraged by the Army Corps’ selection, the new Lake O playbook won’t be successful unless it brings relief to the Caloosahatchee estuary without sending additional water to the St. Lucie,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades. “The way to accomplish this is by sending more clean water south during the dry season, rather than stockpiling it in the lake for irrigation south of the lake.”

An algae bloom in the lake in May generated a sense of urgency and pressure on the Corps to accelerate work on the new plan, seen as a solution for the conflicting demands for water from the Everglades’ liquid heart, at least for the next decade. Environmentalists and Everglades restoration advocates argue that the lake has been managed for the needs of agriculture south of the lake, which is primarily sugar.

Farmers and those in the recreation and fishing business around the lake want assurances that they will have the water when they need it. And South Florida’s growing cities also want the certainty of uninterrupted water supply and flood control during the rainy season.

By running the lake in a more balanced way and giving its own operations more flexibility, the Corps hopes to reduce water releases that have been disastrous for the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries. As renovation work on the dike is expected to reduce the risk of a breach, over a foot more water can be kept on the lake during the rainy season. The lake is usually kept between 12.5 feet (to guarantee water supply) and 15.5 feet (to protect the dike). Under the new plan, it could go higher than 17 feet and stay at around that level for more days, Kelly said.

Raising lake levels could have environmental ripple effects, however, on aquatic plants and fish. A higher lake may also be detrimental to the system’s ecology, drowning and killing vegetation that helps clean up nutrients that feed algae blooms.

“When the lake is over 15 feet you are killing the vegetation, and when you kill the vegetation all the water that goes west, east, south will be polluted and it will be a disaster,” Newton Cook, the president of United Waterfowlers Florida, said Monday during the meeting.

Kelly said the Corps’ technical team will run models taking into account the different comments and will present a more detailed plan in September. That plan will receive more public input through the end of October, when the Corps will set a schedule for coordination with the South Florida Water Management District and other agencies involved in the new lake management plan. Their input will be added to the process, and a draft document is expected to be ready in February, he said.

‘Impending disaster.’ Worsening algae bloom on Lake Okeechobee threatens coasts again

‘The Day After Tomorrow’ film foretold a real and troubling trend: The Atlantic ocean’s circulation system is weakening

‘The Day After Tomorrow’ film foretold a real and troubling trend: The Atlantic ocean’s circulation system is weakening

the day after tomorrow 20th Century Fox
A still from the film “The Day After Tomorrow.” 20th Century Fox

In the 2004 film “The Day After Tomorrow,” a climatologist played by Dennis Quaid warns world leaders about a rapid climate shift.

The key factor is an ocean current system called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which moves warm water from the equatorial tropics up to Europe and the north Atlantic. This influx of warmer water contributes to western Europe’s mild, temperate climate.

In the movie, the AMOC stops completely, causing an ice age to begin almost overnight. While the speed and intensity of that cold snap are hyperbolized in the film, the AMOC is very real, and research suggests a slow down of its circulation is a likely consequence of climate change.

In a paper published last week, climate scientist Niklas Boers concluded that the AMOC is approaching a tipping point. If enough fresh water from melting polar ice enters the ocean, the current system will experience an “abrupt weakening,” and destabilize, he told Insider.

A new climate report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) similarly suggests that the AMOC will very likely weaken by the end of the century.

According to Boers, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, this weakening would cause temperatures in Europe to fall, and “the cooling effect would be stronger the further north you go.”

On the US East Coast, meanwhile, sea levels would rise. Parts of central and west Africa would experience persistent drought conditions, since those areas also benefit from the AMOC’s circulation.

An on/off switch for the Atlantic’s currents
ocean currents
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation carries warm water from the tropics into the North Atlantic (in red), where the water cools and sinks before flowing back south (in blue). NASA/JPL

 

When the AMOC is flowing quickly, western Europe enjoys a wet and warm climate. Scientists have likened the system to a conveyor belt: Once warmer water reaches the area around the UK, it cools and sinks to the bottom of the Labrador and Nordic Seas. Then that cold water makes a U-turn and snakes along the ocean floor, down to Antarctica’s Southern Ocean.

But if this circulation is sluggish and weak, warm tropical waters don’t get moved up, and the north Atlantic cools.

The AMOC’s speed is determined by a delicate balance of salt and fresh water. Salty water is dense, so it sinks easily. But as Greenland’s ice sheet and glaciers continue to melt, more fresh water is joining the AMOC’s salty surface water, making it lighter and less likely to sink. That clogs up the circulation’s flow.

Prior research suggests that a change in the strength of water circulation in the Atlantic really does precede abrupt climate changes. By examining ice cores dated to Earth’s last ice age, scientists have found that the AMOC alternates between two states – a strong “on” state, where the current system runs quickly, and a weak “off” state where that circulation decelerates.

“A shutdown of the AMOC is the easiest, most efficient way to disrupt the climate system,” Francesco Muschitiello, a geographer specializing in paleoclimatology at the University of Cambridge told Insider, adding, “95% of time when we talk about rapid climate change, it’s associated with AMOC.”

Still, Boers said, any cooling related to the AMOC wouldn’t look like “The Day After Tomorrow” – it “would take a few decades,” and North America “won’t get as cold as the movie suggests.”

It would take at least a few hundred years for the AMOC to re-strengthen
greenland
A small iceberg melting in southern Greenland. Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

 

In the past, when the AMOC reached a tipping point, the transition from strong to weak took a couple of decades, Boers said. But it takes much longer for the system to switch back.

“It typically took a few hundred to a few thousand years for the AMOC to go back to the strong mode,” he said, adding, “if the AMOC were to collapse to the weak mode at some point in the future, it would indeed be very hard to bring it back to the strong mode.”

According to the IPCC report, it’s possible that the AMOC will experience an abrupt collapse by 2100. That collapse, the report authors said, could be triggered by an unexpected additional melted ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet, which has been thawing at an unprecedented rate. A 2019 study found the ice sheet was melting six times faster than it was 40 years ago.

Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean. Getty/MKnighton/Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing

 

It’s unlikely, however, that the Greenland Ice Sheet will ever melt quickly enough to completely stop the AMOC.

A full halt like the one depicted in “The Day After Tomorrow,” would only happen “if the Greenland ice sheet was to melt over the course of a few days,” Muschitiello previously told Insider.

That said, some studies suggest that the AMOC has stopped entirely in the past.

“These major distortions of the AMOC led to the coldest events ever recorded,” Muschitiello said.

In those cases, the cold events may have lasted for up to 1,000 years. If the AMOC were to shut down completely again, Boers said, the only way to undo it would be “to reverse the global temperature trend and get back to pre-industrial conditions.”

As summer winds down, concern rising over ‘multiyear drought,’ Idaho water managers say

As summer winds down, concern rising over ‘multiyear drought,’ Idaho water managers say

 

Idaho water managers are warning of the possibility of a lasting drought following the second-driest March-to-July period in the state’s recorded history.

According to an Aug. 6 drought condition update from the Idaho Department of Water Resources, officials are more worried than ever that the state’s drought won’t resolve quickly.

“With storage being rapidly depleted across the state, concern is rising that we may be entering into a multiyear drought,” wrote hydrologist David Hoekema in the report.

Hoekema said many reservoirs have been depleted this year, which means the state’s water supply will start off the next water year — which begins in October — already at a deficit. He mentioned that the Mountain Home Irrigation District and Big Wood Canal Company shut down water deliveries from storage in June, and said the Little Wood River Reservoir in Blaine County, the most drought-stricken part of the state, was at 2% storage capacity on Aug. 6.

Water resource managers in the Treasure Valley have also warned that they’ll likely have to cut the irrigation season short by a month or so. They’ve urged people to water lawns less often and find other means of conserving the dwindling water supply.

Hoekema said that when the irrigation season ends, officials can analyze what kind of snowpack Idaho will need this year to bounce back from the drought.

“On a positive note, the tropical Pacific is lining up for another La Niña this winter,” the hydrologist wrote in his report. “A La Niña typically brings higher than normal precipitation to northern Idaho, but could result in deepening drought across the southwestern United States and up into the Bear River basin.”

According to Hoekema, another La Niña system last winter provided “a near average” snowpack for Idaho by March 1. It was the scarce precipitation since then — which set record lows at snow telemetry measurement sites across Idaho and the Northwest — that created a rapidly accelerating drought that took water managers by surprise.

The report said the heart of Idaho’s drought is in the state’s central mountains, which also saw drought in 2020.

“Runoff records indicate that the Big Wood, Big Lost, and Little Lost basins may set record lows this year,” Hoekema wrote. “In other words, 2021 is likely to be considered the drought of record in those basins.”

Fire Threatens Second California Town as Heat Stokes Flames

Fire Threatens Second California Town as Heat Stokes Flames

 

(Bloomberg) — Hot, dry weather is hampering California firefighters’ efforts to combat the Dixie blaze, which swelled over the weekend to become the second-largest in state history and is threatening to engulf a second town.

The fire, which troubled utility giant PG&E Corp. said may have been sparked by one of its power lines, has ripped through more than 489,000 acres (198,000 hectares), destroying the Gold-Rush-era town of Greenville last week. It’s now spreading toward Janesville, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast.

“Our intention is that we will not lose any more structures, we will not lose any more communities,” Mark Brunton, operations section chief with California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said in a briefing Sunday. “That is our priority.”

More than a dozen blazes are burning across California, fueled by a historic drought and heat waves that parched the West and created ideal wildfire conditions. Wildfires have also devastated Greece, Turkey and Siberia this year, and a landmark report Monday from the United Nations found “unequivocal” evidence that human activities have warmed the atmosphere.

The Dixie fire has been burning for almost four weeks and has destroyed more than 600 structures, according to Cal Fire, as the agency is known. The destruction is a growing risk for PG&E, which said last month that a worker had discovered a tree leaning against a power line near the start of the blaze.

The company’s shares were up 0.2% at 3:25 p.m. in New York Monday.

A judge on Friday ordered the utility to identify each of the California wildfires its equipment started this year. PG&E emerged from bankruptcy last year after sparking a series of wildfires in 2017 and 2018 that killed more than 100 people.

The Dixie fire has prompted mass evacuations as it continues to tear across the region, and was just 21% contained on Monday morning. Firefighters were aided over the weekend as the winds shifted in their favor, but higher temperatures this week are helping to fuel the blaze.

“Really hot conditions and really dry conditions are what is fueling the fire,” said Hannah Chandler-Cooley, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sacramento. “It is still pretty dry and that is really not going to improve much.”

The Dixie Fire started on July 13 and destroyed much of the northern Sierra Nevada town of Greenville last week, leveling buildings and melting lamp posts.

“We’re really focusing on this effort just to keep it out of Janesville,” Jake Cagle, an operations sections chief with the U.S. Forest Service, said in a briefing. “We’re doing everything we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

California’s eight biggest wildfires have all burned since December 2017, department statistics show. Last year’s August Complex fire that destroyed more than 1 million acres remains the largest.

Powerful heat wave to cause 100-degree temperatures for 25 million in the U.S. this week

Powerful heat wave to cause 100-degree temperatures for 25 million in the U.S. this week

 

Heat warnings and advisories are in effect for at least two dozen states through the end of the week. 25 million people are projected to see highs reach or eclipse 100°F this week, as yet another powerful heat dome-dominated weather pattern affects a huge swath of the country.

 

Why it matters: The heat wave will combine with drought conditions in the Pacific Northwest to aggravate an already dire wildfire situation, and bring more miserable weather to residents of Portland, Oregon, and other states hit hard by record-shattering heat in late June and early July.

  • This time around, heat and high humidity will combine to make for dangerously hot conditions in the Mid-Atlantic and Central states, too.
  • The hot and dry weather will only worsen the ongoing wildfires and potentially lead to new ignitions from thunderstorms. California’s Dixie Fire, the second-largest blaze in state history and the largest ongoing wildfire in the U.S., grew further overnight toward the 500,000-acre mark, threatening more homes.

By the numbers: A strong area of high pressure across the Pacific Northwest, also known as a “heat dome,” will ratchet up the heat from northern California to Washington state during the Wednesday-through-Saturday period in particular.

  • High temperatures of up to 112°F are possible in inland valleys in western Oregon, the National Weather Service predicts, with little overnight relief in many areas.
  • High temperatures will generally be between 10°F and 15°F above average for this time of year.

Threat level: When it comes to fire weather, the Weather Service forecast office in Medford, Oregon, is warning of “excessively hot, very unstable and dry air” across southern Oregon and northern California — where the Bootleg Fire is still burning, in addition to the Dixie and other blazes.

  • Fire weather warnings for potentially extreme wildfire behavior, including the formation of pyrocumulus clouds, go into effect on Wednesday.
  • Portland, Oregon, which set an all-time high temperature record of 116°F back in July, is predicted to reach a sizzling 104°F on Thursday.
  • Meanwhile, in the Eastern U.S., highs in the mid-to-upper 90s°F will affect the urban corridor between Washington and Boston, with scorching heat even reaching parts of New Hampshire and Maine.

Context: The heat wave comes just a day after a landmark climate science report was released by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which definitively linked the increasing frequency and severity of heat waves to human emissions of greenhouse gases.

  • The report described this connection as “established fact,” a striking increase in confidence level since its last major assessment, which is the equivalent of a CT scan for the planet, in 2013.
  • At the same time as the U.S. is feeling the heat and seeing more than 105 large wildfires burn across the country, a brutal heat wave in the Mediterranean region is continuing to fuel deadly blazes in Greece and Turkey.

World is on the brink of catastrophe, warns Government climate chief

World is on the brink of catastrophe, warns Government climate chief

Alok Sharma says a Government report due out on Monday will be the &quot;starkest warning yet&quot; about what the future could hold - GETTY IMAGES
Alok Sharma says a Government report due out on Monday will be the “starkest warning yet” about what the future could hold – GETTY IMAGES

 

The world is getting “dangerously close” to running out of time to avert catastrophic climate change, Cop26 President Alok Sharma has said.

Mr. Sharma – who is tasked with making a success of the upcoming climate talks in Glasgow – said failing to limit warming to 1.5C would be “catastrophic”.

In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Sharma said a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due to be published on Monday, would be the “starkest warning yet” about what the future could hold.

“You’re seeing on a daily basis what is happening across the world. Last year was the hottest on record, the last decade the hottest decade on record,” he said.

He said Cop26 “has to be the moment we get this right”, adding: “We can’t afford to wait two years, five years, 10 years – this is the moment.”

“I don’t think we’re out of time but I think we’re getting dangerously close to when we might be out of time,” Mr Sharma said.

“We will see (from the IPCC report) a very, very clear warning that unless we act now, we will unfortunately be out of time.”

He added: “Every fraction of a degree rise makes a difference and that’s why countries have to act now.”

“We’re seeing the impacts across the world – in the UK or the terrible flooding we’ve seen across Europe and China, or forest fires, the record temperatures that we’ve seen in North America,” he said.

“Every day you will see a new high being recorded in one way or another across the world.”

Fires linked to environmental changes caused by global warming have been raging through Greece and parts of Europe - REUTERS
Fires linked to environmental changes caused by global warming have been raging through Greece and parts of Europe – REUTERS

 

But despite his powerful warnings, Mr. Sharma refused to condemn plans for a new oilfield off the coast of Shetland, that could see a further 150 to 170 million barrels extracted.

The Cambo oilfield could be approved before Glasgow, and potentially be in operation as far into the future as 2050.

Elsewhere, the Government has refused to rule out new licenses for oil and gas in the North Sea or a new coal mine in Cumbria.

The International Energy Agency said in May there must be no new investment in oil and gas projects and coal power plants from this year to have a hope of limiting warming to 1.5C.

But Mr. Sharma refused to criticize the UK Government’s plans for further fossil fuel extraction, saying: “Future [fossil fuel] licenses are going to have to adhere to the fact we have committed to go to net zero by 2050 in legislation.”

He added: “There will be a climate check on any licenses.”

The former business secretary came under fire this week for the volume of flights he has taken since new year in a bid to hash out a deal with countries dragging their feet on emissions targets.

But despite cries of “hypocrite” from political rivals, green groups refused to condemn him and the Government was robust in his defence.

Mr Sharma told the Guardian: “I have every week a large number of virtual meetings, but I can tell you that having in-person meetings with individual ministers is incredibly vital and actually impactful.

“It makes a vital difference, to build those personal relationships which are going to be incredibly important as we look to build consensus.”

He added he was “throwing the kitchen sink” at the negotiations.

The Cop26 climate talks are due to take place from October 31 to November 12 in Glasgow.