Re: Climate Change News & Discussions
Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2022 4:00 pm
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"As crucial Earth systems might be approaching their tipping point, governments still propose to address the issue with tiny increments of action, across decades. It’s as if, in 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the global financial system began to sway, governments had announced that they would bail out the banks at the rate of a few million pounds a day between then and 2050. The system would have collapsed 40 years before their programme was complete. Our central, civilisational question, I believe, is this: why do nations scramble to rescue the banks but not the planet?"
(Common Dreams) "2021 is the 25th year in a row in which Greenland's ice sheet lost more mass during the course of the melting season than it gained during the winter."
That's according to the latest report from Polar Portal, a website featuring observations from Danish research institutions that monitor the Greenland Ice Sheet and the sea ice in the Arctic.
The report explains that while "the early part of the summer was cold and wet with unusually heavy and late snowfall in June, which delayed the onset of the melting season," July saw a heatwave that "led to a considerable loss of ice."
The Greenland Ice Sheet lost about 166 billion tonnes of ice during the 12-month period that ended in August, which is near the annual average since the mid-1980s, the report notes. From September 1986 to August 2021, it has lost about 5,500 billion tonnes, contributing 1.5 centimeters to the average global rise in sea levels of about 12 centimeters.
The ice sheet ended this season with a net surface mass balance of about 396 billion tonnes. Although that "makes the current season the 28th lowest in the 41-year time series," or a "somewhat average year," the report highlights "how our perspective changes in line with climate change," explaining that in the late 1990s, "the same figure would have been regarded as a year with a very low surface mass balance in the climate picture at that time."
(Common Dreams) Last year saw record-breaking high temperatures recorded at more than 400 weather stations around the world, with meteorologists voicing alarm over what climate scientists say is the shape of things to come, according to a report published Friday.
The Guardian reports that 10 countries—Canada, Dominica, Italy, Morocco, Oman, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States—set or matched their national monthly high temperature records last year.
"Climate change is real and it's now," tweeted Catherine McKenna, founder of Climate and Nature Solutions and a former Canadian environment and climate change minister.
McKenna noted the numerous Canadian temperature records that were shattered last year, including in Lytton, British Columbia, where the mercury soared to 49.6°C, or 121.3°F, in late June.
(The Conversation) Q: Your latest research shows ocean heat is at record highs. What does that tell us about global warming?
A: (From climate scientist Kevin Trenberth) The world’s oceans are hotter than ever recorded, and their heat has increased each decade since the 1960s. This relentless increase is a primary indicator of human-induced climate change.
As oceans warm, their heat supercharges weather systems, creating more powerful storms and hurricanes, and more intense rainfall. That threatens human lives and livelihoods as well as marine life.
The oceans take up about 93% of the extra energy trapped by the increasing greenhouse gases from human activities, particularly burning fossil fuels. Because water holds more heat than land does and the volumes involved are immense, the upper oceans are a primary memory of global warming. I explain this in more detail in my new book “The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System.”
Our study provided the first analysis of 2021’s ocean warming, and we were able to attribute the warming to human activities. Global warming is alive and well, unfortunately.