Showing posts with label Nick Breeze. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nick Breeze. Show all posts

Friday, February 23, 2024

Stephen Salter, a giant in combating climate change passes away

   Stephen Salter (2012)
Stephen Hugh Salter, MBE, FRSE, Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design at the University of Edinburgh, was born December 7, 1938, and passed away peacefully on February 23, 2024, at the age of 85.

Stephen Salter was a giant who persisted to dedicate his life to combating climate change, and he did so in many ways until the very end. 

Stephen's work on wave energy led to Salter's Duck (1974), a device able to both generate energy and reduce wave strength. In 1977, Stephen built a multi-directional wave tank at the University of Edinburgh. 

In 2011, Stephen looked at ways to capture methane released in the Arctic, such as by covering lakes and parts of seas by sheets to collect the methane (drawing below).

Empty and filled extruded rubber trough cases with 4 times enlarged views of end and centre

Stephen was perhaps best known for his work on marine cloud brightening, i.e. deploying vessels to spray salt particles into the air in an effort to reduce sea surface temperatures, and thus also reducing sea ice loss and reducing the strength of extreme weather events including storms and hurricanes.

In the video below, Stephen discusses marine cloud brightening in a TEDx talk in 2016. 


Marine cloud brightening | Prof. Stephen Salter | TEDx Talks Published 15 Nov 2016

The image below is from the post Hurricane Moderation at Arctic-news.blogspot.com


In the video below, by theedinburghreporter, Stephen Salter talks about marine cloud brightening.


In the video below, Stephen Salter is interviewed by Nick Breeze (2022). 


Below is a screenshot from the above video by Nick Breeze. 

Stephen Salter discusses sending solar energy back out to space by means of Marine Cloud Brightening.
Screenshot by Sam Carana from video by Nick Breeze.

Stephen Salter (2022): "A jolly small change in reflectivity of the clouds will be sending solar energy back out to space enough to balance what the excess is that's being retained here by greenhouse gases (4:26-4:41). Maybe 10 cubic meters of water a second as sub micron drops sprayed in the right place would offset all the damage we've done since pre-industrial times (5:15-5:24)." 

Our hearts are saddened by this huge loss, and our thoughts are with Stephen's family and his many friends. Stephen's work will not be forgotten.


Links

• Futuristic fleet of 'cloudseeders' - by John Latham (2007)
https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/6354759.stm

• Sea-going hardware for the cloud albedo method of reversing global warming - by Stephen Salter, Graham Sortino and John Latham (2008)
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2008.0136

• Can we capture methane from the Arctic seabed? (2011)

• Professor Stephen Salter receives top Academy Award (2012)

• Leading wave energy pioneer Prof Stephen Salter (2012) 
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/in-depth/leading-wave-energy-pioneer-prof-stephen-salter

• Coded modulation of computer climate models for the prediction of precipitation and other side-effects of marine cloud brightening (2013)

• Marine cloud brightening | Prof. Stephen Salter | TEDxHeriotWattUniversity |  TEDx talk (2016)
• Hurricane Moderation (2018)
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2018/09/hurricane-moderation.html

• Talking to Professor Stephen Salter - TheEdinburghReporter (May 23, 2019)

• Speaking with Professor Stephen Salter - The Edinburgh Report (June 1, 2019)

• Professor Stephen Salter at Holyrood speaking about project to arrest climate change

• John Latham obituary (2021)
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/may/30/john-latham-obituay

• Stephen Salter - Whole interview by Nick Breeze ClimateGenn (2022)



Sunday, January 7, 2024

2024 looks to be worse than 2023


The year 2024 looks to be worse than the year 2023. The above chart shows sea surface temperatures that were extremely high in 2023 followed by a steep rise in 2024, crossing 21°C in early January 2024.

The chart below illustrates this further, showing the daily sea surface temperature anomaly using 1 Sep. 1981 to 31 Dec. 2023 data versus the 1982-2011 mean for latitudes between 60°S and 60°N.

The importance of sea surface temperatures

Slowing down of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) results in less ocean heat reaching the Arctic Ocean and, instead, a huge amount of ocean heat has been accumulating in the North Atlantic in 2023.

Much of the heat in the North Atlantic could soon be pushed abruptly into the Arctic Ocean, as storms can temporarily speed up currents strongly, carrying huge amounts of ocean heat with them into the Arctic Ocean.


The mechanism behind this has been described often in earlier posts and this page. Meltwater and rain can cause a freshwater lid to form and grow at the surface of the North Atlantic and this, in combination with greater stratification as ocean temperatures rise (above image), can enable more ocean heat to increasingly travel underneath this lid from the North Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean, and especially so at times when Jet Stream changes are causing storms that speed up ocean currents along this path.


The danger is illustrated by the above image, showing a forecast for January 11, 2024, with the Jet Stream moving almost vertically over the North Atlantic to the north. The image below shows heat over the North Atlantic, with temperatures reaching as high as 10.5°C or 50.8°F over Greenland (at the green circle) at 1000 hPa on January 10, 2024, 07:00 UTC.


The image below shows 2 meter temperature anomalies on January 11, 2024. 


Very high sea surface temperature anomalies can occur in the path of the Gulf Stream, as illustrated by the image below showing high sea surface temperatures on January 3, 2024, as high as 11.7°C (21°F) at the green circle, over the counterpart of the Gulf Stream in the Pacific, off the coast of Japan. 


Earlier posts have warned about this, such as this post and this video, almost seven years ago. This could cause events during which much ocean heat moves abruptly into the Arctic Ocean, resulting in seafloor methane releases, overwhelming of the latent heat buffer and causing sea ice loss (and thus albedo loss), as well as loss of lower clouds (thus causing further albedo loss), while open oceans are also less efficient than sea ice when it comes to emitting in the far-infrared region of the spectrum and while an ice-free Arctic Ocean will also release more ocean heat into the atmosphere.


Arctic sea ice volume is very low for the time of year, as illustrated by the above image.

A large part of the thicker sea ice is located off Greenland's East Coast, as illustrated by the above image. Much of the sea ice will therefore rapidly disappear as the water heats up in 2024.


The above image, adapted from tropicaltidbits.com, shows a forecast for October 2024 of the 2-meter temperature anomaly in degrees Celsius, based on 1984-2009 model climatology. The anomalies are forecast to be very high for the Arctic Ocean.

In the video below, Jennifer Francis is interviewed by Nick Breeze. 



The importance of daily air temperatures, Northern Hemisphere


[ from the Extinction page ]
The situation is dire. The Northern Hemisphere is getting hit hardest by high temperatures, as illustrated by the above image. 

The Northern Hemisphere is home to some 90% of the world population of more than 8 billion people, with much of them living in South-East Asia.

As more people become aware of the dire situation, widespread panic may set in.

People may stop showing up for work, resulting in a rapid loss of the aerosol masking effect, as industries that now co-emit cooling aerosols (such as sulfates) grind to a halt.

Many people may start to collect and burn more wood, resulting in an increase in emissions that speed up the temperature rise.

As temperatures rise, more fires could also break out in forests, peatlands and urban areas including landfills and waste dumps, further contributing to emissions that speed up the temperature rise.

The image on the right illustrates how fast a huge temperature could unfold.

As a somewhat sobering footnote, humans will likely go extinct with a 3°C rise and most life on Earth will disappear with a 5°C rise, as discussed in an earlier post.


Climate Emergency Declaration

The situation is dire and the precautionary principle calls for rapid, comprehensive and effective action to reduce the damage and to improve the situation, as described in this 2022 post, where needed in combination with a Climate Emergency Declaration, as discussed at this group.



Links






Saturday, May 22, 2021

Arctic Ocean invaded by hot, salty water


Sea surface temperatures on the Northern Hemisphere have been rising dramatically over the years, as illustrated by above image, indicating that the latent heat tipping point is getting crossed, while the methane hydrates tipping point could get crossed soon, depending on developments.

At the moment, the surface temperature of most of the Arctic ocean's is still below 0°C.

Heat is entering the Arctic Ocean from the south, as illustrated by the image on the right. Hot, salty water is entering the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic Ocean as currents dive underneath the ice, causing the ice to melt from below. 
[ click on images to enlarge ]

The image on the right, from the NSIDC article A step in our Spring, compares sea ice age between March 12 to 18 for the years 1985 (a) and 2021 (b).

The bottom graph (c) shows a time series from 1985 to 2021 of percent ice coverage of the Arctic Ocean domain. The Arctic Ocean domain is depicted in the inset map with purple shading.

At the end of the ice growth season in mid-March, 73.3% of the Arctic Ocean domain was covered by first-year ice, while 3.5% was covered by ice 4+ years old. 

This compares to 70.6% and 4.4% respectively in March 2020.

In March 1985, near the beginning of the ice age record, the Arctic Ocean region was comprised of nearly equal amounts of first-year ice (39.3%) and 4+ year-old ice (30.6%).

Sea ice that hasn't yet survived a summer melt season is referred to as first-year ice. This thin, new ice is vulnerable to melt and disintegration in stormy conditions. Ice that survives a summer melt season can grow thicker and less salty, since snow that thickens the ice contains little salt. Thickness and salt content determine the resistance of the ice to melt. Multiyear ice is more likely to survive temperatures that would melt first-year ice, and to survive waves and winds that would break up first-year ice.

The image on the right shows a forecast of the thickness of the sea ice, run on May 20, 2021 and valid for May 21, 2021. 

An area is visible north of Severnaya Zemlya toward the North Pole where thickness is getting very thin, while there is one spot where the ice has virtually disappeared. 

The spot is likely a melting iceberg, the animation on the right shows that the spot has been there for quite a few days, while the freshwater in this spot appears to result from melting amid salty water. 

Overall, sea ice is getting very thin, indicating that the buffer constituted by the sea ice underneath the surface is almost gone, meaning that further heat entering the Arctic Ocean will strongly heat up the water. 

As the animation underneath on the right shows, freshwater is entering the Arctic Ocean due to runoff from land, i.e. rainwater from rivers, meltwater from glaciers and groundwater runoff from thawing permafrost. 

At the same time, very salty water is entering the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic Ocean. 

The map below shows how salty and hot water from the Atlantic Ocean enters the Arctic Ocean along two currents, flowing on each side of Svalbard, and meeting at this area north of Severnaya Zemlya where thickness is getting very low. 

The blue color on the map indicates depth (see scale underneath). 

The image below, by Malcolm Light and based on Max & Lowrie (1993), from a recent post, shows vulnerable Arctic Ocean slope and deep water methane hydrates zones below 300 m depth. 

Malcolm Light indicates three areas: 
Area 1. Methane hydrates on the slope;
Area 2. Methane hydrates on the abyssal plane; 
Area 3. Methane hydrates associated with the spreading Gakkel Ridge hydro-thermal activity (the Gakkel Riidge runs in between the northern tip of Greenland and the Laptev Sea). 


The freezing point of freshwater is 0°C or 32°F. For salty water, the freezing point is -2°C or 28.4°F.

During April 2021, sea ice was about 160 cm thick.

In June and July 2021, thickness will fall rapidly, as illustrated by the image on the right by Nico Sun. 

Sea ice acts as a buffer, by consuming energy in the process of melting, thus avoiding that this energy causes a temperature rise of the water. 

As long as there is sea ice in the water, this sea ice will keep absorbing heat as it melts, so the temperature will not rise at the sea surface and remain at zero°C. The amount of energy that is consumed in the process of melting the ice is as much as it takes to heat an equivalent mass of water from zero°C to 80°C.

The accumulated ice melt energy until now is the highest on record, as illustrated by the image on the right, by Nico Sun.

The image below further illustrate the danger. As the temperature of the water keeps rising, more heat will reach sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean that contain vast amounts of methane, as discussed at this page and in this post.

Ominously, methane levels reached a peak of 2901 ppb at 469 mb on May 13, 2021. 

Research

In the extract of a 2008 paper, Natalia Shakhova et al. conclude: ". . we consider release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage as highly possible for abrupt release at any time."


The video below contains excerpts from Nick Breeze's interview with Natalia Shakhova at the European Geophysical Union in Vienna, 2012, on the likelihood and timeframe of a large methane release from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. 

Natalia Shakhova: "The total amount of methane in the atmosphere is about 5Gt. The amount of carbon in the form of methane in this Arctic shelf is - approximately - from hundreds to thousands Gt and, of course, only 1% of [such an] amount is required to double the atmospheric burden of methane."

"But to destabilize 1% of this carbon pool, I think, not much effort is needed, considering the state of the permafrost and the amount of methane involved, because what divides the methane from the atmosphere is a very shallow water column and the weakening permafrost, which is losing its ability to seal, to serve as a seal, and this is, I think, not a matter of thousands of years, it's a matter of decades, at most hundred years." 

(Natalia talks with Igor Semiletov)
Natalia Shakhova: "Just because this area is seismically and tectonically active, and there was some investigation that the tectonic activity was increasing, and the seismic activity, the destabiliation of the ground, just mechanical forcing destabiliation [may suffice to act as] additional pathway for this methane to escape. There are many factors that are very convincing for us [to conclude] that it might happen."

Elaborating on the timeframe.
Natalia Shakhova: "Not any time, any time sounds like it might happen today, it might happen tomorrow, the day after tomorrow . . " 
Igor Simelitov: "It might!"


The image below was created with content from a 2019 paper by Natalia Shakhova et al. It concludes that methane releases could potentially increase by 3-5 orders of magnitude, considering the sheer amount of methane preserved within the shallow East Siberian Arctic Shelf seabed deposits and the documented thawing rates of subsea permafrost reported recently.

In a 2021 paper by researchers from Europe, Russia and the U.S., results from field research are published showing that methane is getting released from locations deep below the submarine permafrost. Lead author, Julia Steinbach, from Stockholm University, says: “The permafrost is a closed lid over the seafloor that’s keeping everything in place. And now we have holes in this lid.” 

In the video below, Nick Breeze interviews Igor Semiletov on methane plumes detected during this 2020 field research over the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS).


In the video below, Nick Breeze interviews Örjan Gustafsson on field research on methane in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS)


In the video below, Peter Wadhams analyses the threat of Arctic methane releases.


In the video below, Guy McPherson discusses the situation.


In conclusion, temperatures could rise dramatically soon. A 3°C will likely suffice for humans to go extinct, making it in many respects rather futile to speculate about what will happen in the longer term. On the other hand, the right thing to do is to help avoid the worst things from happening, through comprehensive and effective action as described in the Climate Plan.

Links

• NOAA Climate at a Glance

• Danish Meteorological Institute - Arctic temperature
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

• Freezing point of water - Climate Change: Arctic sea ice

• Arctic surface temperature

• NSIDC: A step in our Spring, image credit: T. Tschudi, University of Colorado, and W. Meier and J.S. Stewart, National Snow and Ice Data Center/Image by W. Meier

• Arctic sea ice - thickness and salinity - navy.mil
https://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/GLBhycomcice1-12/arctic.html

• CryosphereComputing - by Nico Sun
https://cryospherecomputing.tk

• A 4.5 km resolution Arctic Ocean simulation with the global multi-resolution model FESOM 1.4 - by Qiang Wang et al. 

• Max, M.D. & Lowrie, A. 1993. Natural gas hydrates: Arctic and Nordic Sea potential. In: Vorren, T.O., Bergsager, E., Dahl-Stamnes, A., Holter, E., Johansen, B., Lie, E. & Lund, T.B. Arctic Geology and Petroleum Potential, Proceedings of the Norwegian Petroleum Society Conference, 15-17 August 1990, Tromso, Norway. Norwegian Petroleum Society (NPF), Special Publication 2 Elsevier, Amsterdam, 27-53.
https://www.elsevier.com/books/arctic-geology-and-petroleum-potential/vorren/978-0-444-88943-0

• Extinction by 2027- by Malcolm Light
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2021/05/extinction-by-2027.html


• Anomalies of methane in the atmosphere over the East Siberian shelf: Is there any sign of methane leakage from shallow shelf hydrates? - by Shakhova, Semiletov, Salyuk and Kosmach (2008)
https://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU2008/01526/EGU2008-A-01526.pdf

• Understanding the Permafrost–Hydrate System and Associated Methane Releases in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf - by Natalia Shakhova, Igor Semiletov and Evgeny Chuvilin 
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3263/9/6/251

• A Massive Methane Reservoir Is Lurking Beneath the Sea 


Monday, January 19, 2015

Temperature Rise

Record High Temperatures in 2014

The year 2014 was the warmest year across global land and ocean surfaces since records began in 1880, writes NOAA, adding the graph below. This graph illustrates that temperatures have risen even when focusing on a relatively short recent period with a linear trendline starting in 1998, which was an El Niño year, whereas 2014 wasn't.

Source: NOAA Global Analysis - Annual 2014
Most Appropriate Trendline

While the purple 1998-2014 trendline serves the useful purpose of dispelling the myth that warming had halted recently, it isn't the most appropriate trendline, since extending this trendline backward to 1880 would leave too many data too remote from the trendline, as is further illustrated by the animated image below.


What about the blue linear trendline that is based on data for all the years from 1880 to 2014? By that same logic, the appropriateness of this trendline must also be questioned. Temperatures in recent years have been well above this trendline. A polynomial trendline seems a much better fit, as illustrated by the image below.


Above image also extends the trendline forward, showing that 2 degrees Celsius warming looks set to be exceeded in 2038, based on the same data.

And while this is a frightening scenario, the picture may well be much too optimistic, because the heat is felt most in the Arctic Ocean, the very location where some of the most terrifying feedbacks are accelerating local warming, as further explained below.

Feedbacks in the Arctic

As NOAA writes, much of the record warmth for the globe can be attributed to record warmth in the global oceans, which reached the highest temperature among all years in the 1880–2014 record.


As above image shows, ocean heat reached a record high in 2014. In other words, it was ocean heat that pushed the combined ocean and land temperature to a record high. Anomalies were especially high in the Arctic Ocean, as illustrated by the image below.


Waters close to Svalbard reached temperatures as high as 63.5°F (17.5°C) on September 1, 2014 (green circle). Note that the image below shows sea surface temperatures only. At greater depths (say about 300 m), the Gulf Stream is pushing even warmer water through the Greenland Sea than temperatures at the sea surface.


Since the passage west of Svalbard is rather shallow, a lot of this very warm water comes to the surface at that spot, resulting in an anomaly of 11.9°C. The high sea surface temperatures west of Svalbard thus show that the Gulf Stream can carry very warm water (warmer than 17°C) at greater depths and is pushing this underneath the sea ice north of Svalbard.


Planetary energy imbalance (0.6 W/m2) equals the amount of energy in exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day, 365 days/year (J. Hansen, 16 Jan. 2015).



Planetary imbalance now is 0.6 W/m2. This has made the rise in ocean heat (up to 2000 m deep) more than double over the past decade. Data from 2005 through to 2014 contain a polynomial trendline that points at a similar rise by 2017, followed by an even steeper rise.

What could cause such non-linear rise?

The answer is feedbacks. Arctic snow and ice loss alone may well cause over 2 W/m2 warming, warns Prof. Peter Wadhams. Another such feedback is methane erupting from the ocean floor, as methane hydrates get destabilized due to higher temperatures.

As illustrated by the graph below, most of this excess heat is absorbed by oceans and ice. Some of the heat is consumed by the process of melting ice into water, and 93.4% of this excess heat ends up warming up the oceans.

Graph by Sceptical Science based on study by by Nuccitelli et al.
As the Gulf Stream keeps carrying ever warmer water into the Arctic Ocean, methane gets released in large quantities, as illustrated in the images below showing high methane levels over the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (red oval left) and over Baffin Bay (red oval right) with concentrations as high as 2619 ppb.

click on image to enlarge
The images below show methane levels on Jan 25 (top), and Jan 26, 2015 (bottom).



The threat is that huge amounts of methane will erupt from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean over the coming decades, as illustrated by the image below.

For more on this image, see this post and this page.
Demise of the Arctic sea ice and snow cover is another terrifying feedback. The image below features a NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio screenshot showing decline of multi-year Arctic sea ice area over the years.


Below is a video by Nick Breeze who interviews Professor Peter Wadhams on multi-year Arctic sea ice.


An exponential trendline based on sea ice volume observations shows that sea ice looks set to disappear in 2019, while disappearance in 2015 is within the margins of a 5% confidence interval, reflecting natural variability. In other words, extreme weather events could cause Arctic sea ice to collapse as early as 2015, with the resulting albedo changes further contributing to the acceleration of warming in the Arctic and causing further methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.

click on image to enlarge
As the Arctic continues to warm, the temperature difference between the equator and the Arctic declines, resulting in changes to the jet streams and polar vortex.

One such change is a slowing down of the speed at which the jet streams and polar vortex circumnavigate the globe, as discussed in a recent post.

The image on the right shows that the jet streams on the Northern Hemisphere reached speeds as high as 410 km/h (255 miles per hour) on January 9, 2015. Also note the jet stream crossing the Arctic Ocean, rather than staying between 50 and 60 degrees latitude, where the polar jet streams used to be.

The image below shows winds on January 11, 2015, at several altitudes, i.e. at 10 hPa | ~26,500 m (16.5 mile), high in stratosphere, polar vortex (left, at 250 hPa | ~10,500 m (6.5 mile), jet stream (center), and at 700 hPa | ~3,500 m (2.2 mile), high in planetary boundary layer.

click on image to enlarge
As a result, extreme weather events such as heatwaves and storms can be expected to occur with greater frequency and intensity, as also discussed in a recent post. Heatwaves can heat up the water in the North Atlantic, as it flows into the Arctic Ocean, driven by the Gulf Stream, while heatwaves can also warm up the water in rivers that end up in the Arctic Ocean. Heatwaves can also hit the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean directly, causing rapid sea ice melting, while storms can make the ice break up and be driven out of the Arctic ocean,

Demise of the sea ice and snow cover in the Arctic results in further acceleration of warming, not only due to less sunlight getting reflected back into space, but also due to loss of the buffer that currently absorbs huge amounts of heat as it melts in summer. With the demise of this latent heat buffer, more sunlight will instead go into heating up the water of the Arctic Ocean. For more on the latter, see the page on latent heat.


Above image illustrates some of the self-reinforcing feedback loops that have been highlighted in this and earlier posts. Further feedbacks are pictured in the image below.

from the Feedbacks page
Runaway Global Warming

Above feedbacks are already pushing the temperature rise in the Arctic through the 2°C guardrail.



Based on existing temperature data, global warming on land looks set to exceed 2°C (3.6°CF) warming by the year 2034, but methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean could push up global temperature rise even faster, in a runaway global warming scenario.

click to enlarge image
This raises the specter of human extinction. With no action taken, there appears to be a 55% risk that humans will be extinct by the year 2045, while taking little action will only postpone near-term human extinction by a few years. Only with rapid implementation of comprehensive and effective action may we be able to avoid this fate.


Comprehensive and Effective Action

In conclusion, the situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog at climateplan.blogspot.com and as illustrated by the image below.