[TheClimate.Vote] December 4 , 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Richard Pauli richard at theclimate.vote
Wed Dec 4 05:29:26 EST 2019 

December 4, 2019

[Washington Post opinion]
*We're losing our climate battle. We have no one but ourselves to blame.*
Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post
"We are losing the battle to save our planet, and we have no one to 
blame but ourselves," begins the Washington Post columnist Eugene 
Robinson. He continues: "History will condemn a host of villains, 
starting with President Trump. The United States, as the globe's leading 
economic power, is uniquely positioned to lead the world toward climate 
solutions. Instead, Trump is deliberately worsening the problem by 
pulling out of the Paris climate accord and actively encouraging the 
increased burning of fossil fuels, including coal. Decades from now, we 
may well see this as the Trump administration's worst legacy…We of the 
boomer cohort will long have returned to dust before climate change 
begins to feel like an everyday five-alarm crisis…Our benighted leaders 
fail to give us meaningful action on climate change because we fail to 
demand it. We can't look to the Madrid conference to save the planet. We 
must look within."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/were-losing-our-climate-battle-we-have-no-one-but-ourselves-to-blame/2019/12/02/efe4ce2c-1548-11ea-9110-3b34ce1d92b1_story.html 



[Perhaps he should call it "global warming"]
*It's possible that Trump doesn't actually know what climate change is*
At no point has Trump ever indicated that he understands the connection 
between emissions and climate change. He came close in a tweet in 
September, mentioning emissions reductions in the context of climate -- 
but then continued on to talk about air pollution.
- - -

    Donald J. Trump
    ✔
    @realDonaldTrump
    1. Which country has the largest carbon emission reduction?
    AMERICA!
    2. Who has dumped the most carbon into the air?
    CHINA!
    3. 91% of the world's population are exposed to air pollution above
    the World Health Organization's suggested level.

- - -
He has at times bragged about the United States' reduction in greenhouse 
gas emissions, as he did in prepared remarks in July, although that's 
mostly as a way to defend his record. ("We're doing a very tough job and 
not everybody knows it," he said then.) He has never used the term 
"greenhouse gas," according to the index of his comments at Factba.se. 
He was a signatory to a public statement in support of addressing 
emissions back in 2009 -- but that was on behalf of the Trump 
Organization. Several months later, he publicly disparaged the fight 
against climate change (and somehow again looped in the ozone layer).

So we end where we begin, with uncertainty that Trump knows what climate 
change is, what it constitutes and what powers it. There's certainly a 
political motive for his not raising the subject; climate change is 
viewed through a sharply partisan lens, and many Republicans, like 
Trump, simply dismiss it out of hand as a priority.

To be fair, though, we didn't include Trump's full comments about 
climate change on Tuesday. Here's how he continued his line of thought 
when asked if he thinks about climate change.

"I also see what's happening with our oceans, where certain countries 
are dumping unlimited loads of things in and they float," Trump said. 
"They tend to float toward the United States. I see that happening and 
nobody's ever seen anything like it and it's gotten worse. But, no, it's 
very important to me also. But I want clean air and clean water would be 
number one and number two."

In other words, no. He doesn't really think about climate change.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/03/its-possible-that-trump-doesnt-actually-know-what-climate-change-is/



[Global campaign]
*John Kerry's New Bipartisan, Star-Studded 'War' on Climate Change*
In an interview, the former secretary of state talks about the climate 
news that makes him want to curse, and his new alliance with Arnold 
Schwarzenegger and Leonardo DiCaprio.
- - -
This weekend, Kerry returned to the breach, joining with Arnold 
Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor of California, to launch 
a new bipartisan group that aims to unify the public behind climate 
action. It is named World War Zero, a reference both to its goal of an 
American economy with net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and to the 
wartime-style mass mobilization that Kerry says can get us there.
Other than that mid-century goal, though, World War Zero will not 
endorse any particular candidate or climate policy. (As The New York 
Times noted, its supporters are split on the virtues of fracking.) 
Instead, it aims to offer a unifying story that can anchor other 
efforts, focused on the economic benefits of climate action and the 
national-security and public-health risks of climate change...

    ...it's only by getting people to buy in and recognize the upside
    options that you're going to change the other narrative. We're
    trapped right now. And so how do you break out of that trap? I
    believe you break out of that trap by having conversations with
    people and motivating people to activate themselves…so that it
    becomes an actionable belief taken into elections and into
    boardrooms and into stockholder meetings and into the halls of
    Congress...
    - - -
    The best thing that has happened--beyond the technical component of
    it--is the engagement of young people on a global basis, the fact
    that they're kicking butt out there, going out there and trying to
    hold people accountable. Ultimately, I think that will translate
    into the kind of political accountability that existed back in 1970,
    when the Dirty Dozen were held accountable.

    Meyer: What's the worst thing that's happened?

    Kerry: The worst thing is the fact that the largest nations have
    reneged on genuine efforts to really get there and are playing a
    game--a very dangerous game--with it. The fact that emissions are
    going up in the United States, they're going up in Europe, they're
    going up in China, they're going up in India, they're going up in
    countless countries in the world, that is just--I could use an
    expletive, but it's really unacceptable. It's outrageous.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/12/john-kerry-interview-climate-catastrophic-world-war-zero/602833/



[old word, new life]
*'Existential' chosen as Dictionary.com word of the year*
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/existential-dictionarycom-word-of-year-a4303041.html



[in 5 hours, lake drained and a kilometer of ice lifted up half a meter]
*Drone observes Greenland ice sheet fracturing in real time*
Haye Kesteloo - Dec. 3rd 2019
On Monday, scientists said that they had used a drone to observe an ice 
sheet in Greenland fracturing in real time. A team of researchers 
witnessed the rapid fracturing and draining of a lake on the ice sheet.

It is expected that this phenomenon may become more frequent as climate 
change worsens. Greenland's ice sheet is the second largest in the 
world, and the single largest contributor to global sea-level rise.

Drone observes Greenland ice sheet fracturing in real time
Greenland's ice sheet is over 3,000 feet high and it is normal for the 
surface to melt and form lakes during the summer season. These lakes 
tend to drain very quickly, creating massive waterfalls all the way to 
the base of the ice sheet.

This draining process is extremely difficult to observe firsthand. But a 
team of glaciologists from the Scott Polar Institute at the University 
of Cambridge got lucky when they arrived at the Store Glacier in 
northwestern Greenland in July 2018. Soon after their arrival, 
two-thirds of the lakes disappeared from the surface through a fracture 
in the ice sheet. Roughly 1.3 billion gallons of water drained over the 
course of five hours.

Photos taken with a drone clearly show the before-and-after as a dark 
blue oval shrinks into a smaller, shallower, and lighter blue circle.

The 'thing that drones can do is allow us to take these kind of 
high-quality measurements in regions that aren't safe to access for 
scientists on the ground,' said Tom Chudley, co-first author of the 
study that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of 
Sciences, according to Phys.org.

The team was able to create a 3D map by stitching together thousands of 
photos that included the GPS coordinates that were attached to the 
stills by the drone. The unmanned aircraft have been custom-built at the 
Scott Polar Research Institute to withstand the extreme Arctic 
conditions. The drones were outfitted with autopilot and navigated 
autonomously along pre-programmed flight paths during a mission that 
lasted up to one hour.

The Store Glacier, which is basically a river of ice that slowly moves 
toward the ocean, moves at around 1,800 feet per year. The sudden 
drainage speed of the glacier's movement went from 6 to 15 feet per day, 
according to the team of researchers that included scientists from 
Aberystwyth and Lancaster universities in the UK. The water that drained 
from these lakes effectively worked as a lubricant.

To the team's surprise, the Store Glacier was raised by about 22 inches 
as a result of the water rushing underneath it.

Chudley, a doctoral student at Cambridge, said, "That's a kilometer of 
ice lifted up half a meter, so you can imagine the kind of pressures 
that were involved."

'It's possible we've underestimated the effects of these glaciers on the 
overall instability of the Greenland Ice Sheet,' said co-first author 
Tom Chudley, a PhD student at the Scott Polar Research and the team's 
drone pilot. 'It's a rare thing to actually observe these fast-draining 
lakes -- we were lucky to be in the right place at the right time.'

In the research paper that was published in the Proceedings of the 
National Academy of Sciences, the team of scientists describe in detail 
the formation of these vast fractures that in turn create water beds 
that speed up the movement of the Store Glacier.

'As we see climate change progressing in Greenland, we're seeing more 
lakes, and we're seeing them get larger, and we're seeing them higher up 
into the colder section of the ice sheet, and we can see that some of 
these lakes are beginning to drain,' said Chudley.

He added, 'Potentially, we're increasing the amount of lakes that are 
draining in new places that we haven't previously identified.'
https://dronedj.com/2019/12/03/drone-observes-greenland-ice/

- - -

[source material]
*Supraglacial lake drainage at a fast-flowing Greenlandic outlet glacier*
  View ORCID ProfileThomas R. Chudley,  View ORCID ProfilePoul 
Christoffersen, Samuel H. Doyle, Marion Bougamont, Charlotte M. 
Schoonman, Bryn Hubbard, and Mike R. James
*Significance*
We present in situ records of a rapidly draining supraglacial lake in a 
fast-flowing sector of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Despite supraglacial 
lake drainage influencing ice sheet dynamics at a variety of scales, 
existing in situ studies have been conducted exclusively at the slower, 
less dynamic land-terminating sector. We describe the scale and extent 
of dynamic response in a marine-terminating system, and identify 1) 
spatially distributed behavior not previously observed in in situ 
studies, and 2) interannual variation unique to fast-flowing glaciers. 
We propose that many lakes thought to drain slowly are, in fact, 
draining rapidly via hydrofracture. As such, rapid drainage events, and 
their net impact on ice sheet dynamics, are being notably underestimated.

*Abstract*
Supraglacial lake drainage events influence Greenland Ice Sheet dynamics 
on hourly to interannual timescales. However, direct observations are 
rare, and, to date, no in situ studies exist from fast-flowing sectors 
of the ice sheet. Here, we present observations of a rapid lake drainage 
event at Store Glacier, west Greenland, in 2018. The drainage event 
transported 4.8 x 106 m3 of meltwater to the glacier bed in ∼5 h, 
reducing the lake to a third of its original volume. During drainage, 
the local ice surface rose by 0.55 m, and surface velocity increased 
from 2.0 m⋅d-1 to 5.3 m⋅d-1. Dynamic responses were greatest ∼4 km 
downstream from the lake, which we interpret as an area of transient 
water storage constrained by basal topography. Drainage initiated, 
without any precursory trigger, when the lake expanded and reactivated a 
preexisting fracture that had been responsible for a drainage event 1 y 
earlier. Since formation, this fracture had advected ∼500 m from the 
lake's deepest point, meaning the lake did not fully drain. Partial 
drainage events have previously been assumed to occur slowly via lake 
overtopping, with a comparatively small dynamic influence. In contrast, 
our findings show that partial drainage events can be caused by 
hydrofracture, producing new hydrological connections that continue to 
concentrate the supply of surface meltwater to the bed of the ice sheet 
throughout the melt season. Our findings therefore indicate that the 
quantity and resultant dynamic influence of rapid lake drainages are 
likely being underestimated.
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/11/26/1913685116



[some science is complex]
CLIMATE MODELLING 2 December 2019
*CMIP6: the next generation of climate models explained*
Climate models are one of the primary means for scientists to understand 
how the climate has changed in the past and may change in the future. 
These models simulate the physics, chemistry and biology of the 
atmosphere, land and oceans in great detail, and require some of the 
largest supercomputers in the world to generate their climate projections.

Climate models are constantly being updated, as different modelling 
groups around the world incorporate higher spatial resolution, new 
physical processes and biogeochemical cycles. These modelling groups 
coordinate their updates around the schedule of the Intergovernmental 
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports, releasing a set of 
model results - known as "runs" - in the lead-up to each one.

These coordinated efforts are part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison 
Projects (CMIP). The 2013 IPCC fifth assessment report (AR5) featured 
climate models from CMIP5, while the upcoming 2021 IPCC sixth assessment 
report (AR6) will feature new state-of-the-art CMIP6 models...
- - -
The results so far are show large amounts of future warming; the new 
SSP1-1.9 scenario - intended to limit warming to 1.5C - has a 
multi-model mean warming of 1.6C. Similarly, the SSP1-2.6 scenario - 
which is analogous to the "well-below 2C" RCP2.6 of AR5 - shows mean 
warming of 2.1C. On the high end, the SSP5-8.5 scenario shows a mean 
warming of 5.5C, while the new SSP3-7.0 scenario shows 4.5C of warming.

Some future scenarios have relatively few runs available so far, so the 
initial values should be treated with caution (particularly for the 
multi-model mean) until more models finish their runs. Even those such 
as SSP2-4.5 - with 14 models reporting results - may change notably once 
the remaining models finish their runs and are added to the CMIP6 database.

The results so far differ fairly substantially from those found in CMIP5 
for similar forcing scenarios...
- - -
CMIP6 is a huge modelling effort, substantially more ambitious than 
CMIP5. This has led to some delays, with CMIP6 currently running at 
least a year behind schedule. While the IPCC AR6 is currently being 
drafted, only a relatively limited set of models are available, and it 
seems unlikely that all CMIP6 runs will be completed in time for the 
final AR6 draft.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/cmip6-the-next-generation-of-climate-models-explained



[Some art]
*COP25: WWF and Prado Museum use art to show climate change*
Conservation group WWF and the Prado Museum have joined forces to raise 
the alarm about the impact of climate change, as political leaders and 
diplomats meet at the COP25 climate change summit in the Spanish 
capital, Madrid.

Together they selected four masterpieces from the Prado collection to 
highlight the environmental consequences of various phenomena attributed 
to climate change.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50646625


[amateur archive of live video - Dr James Hansen at COP25]
*Dr. James Hansen - Global Climate Emergency*
Streamed live Dec 3, 2019
UPFSI
Dr. Hansen will discuss the lack of action since change was first 
officially recognized.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y65S0eroF4
https://youtu.be/8y65S0eroF4?t=143



[Seems ironic for a navy]
*New Study: Naval Academy May Have to Move Due to Sea Level Rise*
Hurrican Isabel storm damage and flooding at the U.S. Naval Academy.
A FLOODED U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY FACILITY DUE TO HURRICANE ISABEL
By Marc Kodack

The Naval Academy is at risk from sea level rise and more intense storms 
that may force it to relocate by 2100, according to the featured article 
in the current issue of the U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings journal. 
The Naval Academy has been in Annapolis, Maryland since 1845. It is 
surrounded by water on three sides which increases its vulnerability to 
flooding. Some structures are no more than three feet above the water 
level. In and around Annapolis sea levels have increased by almost a 
foot since the 1920s. The sea level is forecast to rise between "0.6 and 
3.6 feet by 2050."..
https://climateandsecurity.org/2019/11/26/new-study-naval-academy-may-have-to-move-due-to-sea-level-rise/


*This Day in Climate History - December 4, 2012  - from D.R. Tucker*
Climate scientists Michael Mann, James Hansen and Katharine Hayhoe 
discuss the risks of a warming planet at the Commonwealth Club in San 
Francisco, California.

http://c-spanvideo.org/program/GlobalClimateChange50
http://c-spanvideo.org/program/JamesHa

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