[TheClimate.Vote] May 13, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Wed May 13 10:12:50 EDT 2020

/*May 13, 2020*/

[politics policy-Axios]
*AOC joins Biden climate change task force*
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) will join the climate change 
policy task force for Joe Biden's campaign, reports CNN.

Why it matters: The Biden campaign is forming multiple such groups to 
help bridge the policy divide with progressive Bernie Sanders supporters 
in the Democratic Party. AOC is among the most high-profile and 
influential figures in the party's progressive wing.

Biden said last month that he's planning to add new elements to his 
climate policy, and has signaled that he'll prioritize the topic if elected.
AOC co-authored the sweeping Green New Deal resolution and subsequent 
climate proposals.
She's popular among activists who have attacked Biden's climate platform 
as too modest, even though it goes far beyond Obama-era policies.
Driving the news: AOC will be on the task force as Sanders' 
representative, a spokesperson told CNN...
https://www.axios.com/aoc-biden-climate-change-task-force-sanders-90d103f8-2c71-4743-b69f-9a3edea3ad18.html

[drought]
*2000-2010 drought in Upper Missouri River Basin driest in 1,200 years*
A large team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions across 
the U.S. and one in Canada has found that the 2000-2010 drought in the 
Upper Missouri River Basin was the driest in the past 1,200 years. In 
their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of 
Sciences, the group describes their analysis of data from the PAGES 2k 
project and what it showed them...
-  -
In this new effort, the researchers looked at the Missouri River Basin. 
The Missouri River is the longest river in North America. It is fed by 
snow that falls on the Rocky Mountains in the winter and melts in the 
spring and summer, and is one of the main feeder rivers to the 
Mississippi River. To learn more about droughts in the river basin, the 
researchers pulled data from the PAGES 2k project--a network of 
databases and other resources that have been assembled to describe 
conditions on Earth over the past 2000 years. Some of the information in 
its databases includes tree ring data for many parts of the Missouri 
River Basin.

Using this data, the researchers were able to build a timeline for the 
basin that included changes to both temperature and rainfall. They were 
able to see that the drought over the years 2000 to 2010 was the driest 
that had occurred over the past 1,200 years--worse even than that which 
occurred during the dust bowl years. They also found that the main 
driver of the draught was higher than normal temperatures that have been 
influencing streamflow by reducing runoff efficiency since at least the 
latter part of the 20th century. They further note that higher average 
temperatures have also led to higher evapotranspiration in the river 
basin. They close their paper by issuing a warning for the future--they 
expect increasingly severe droughts and water deficits in the region in 
the coming years.
https://phys.org/news/2020-05-drought-upper-missouri-river.html

[Grist relays]
*Coronavirus is a make-or-break moment for climate change, economists say*
By Shannon Osaka on May 11, 2020
- -
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the Obama 
administration's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funneled $90 
billion towards clean energy projects, extending tax credits and 
training workers for green energy jobs. Researchers believe that 
stimulus played a powerful role in the explosive growth of wind and 
solar over the past decade.

The prospect of a climate-friendly recovery looks less likely under the 
current administration. The U.S. government didn't bother to include 
green policies in the $2 trillion stimulus package approved in March. 
And according to recent reports, coal companies have siphoned off over 
$30 million in pandemic support loans intended for small businesses.

But the March relief bill is unlikely to be the last, and 
environmentalists and policymakers around the world are pushing for a 
more climate-friendly recovery plan. Representatives from 17 countries 
in Europe have called on the E.U. to prioritize a "Green Deal" that 
would push the bloc to reach net-zero emissions by 2050; Antonio 
Guterres, the head of the United Nations, has also urged countries to 
face the ongoing downturn with the climate crisis in mind.

Emissions are temporarily down due to global lockdowns, but the 
economists behind the Oxford study warn that they could rebound with a 
vengeance as nations recover. Without the right policies, they write, 
"We will leap from the COVID frying pan into the climate fire."
https://grist.org/climate/coronavirus-is-a-make-or-break-moment-for-climate-change-economists-say/

[brief video about opinion manipulation (and wacky beliefs)]*
* *Plandemic and the seven traits of conspiratorial thinking*
John Cook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rban0JGEimE

[Climate Signals]*
**CLIMATE CHANGE & DROUGHT*
Climate change is making droughts more likely to occur - and more severe 
when they do - in parts of the United States. While the US is no 
stranger to drought, climate change has exacerbated drought conditions 
so that when droughts occur, it is in a hotter climate and, in some 
cases, with lower precipitation.

How has climate change already worsened US droughts?
Snow cover has declined in the Northern Hemisphere significantly over 
the past 90 years, largely driven by climate change.
Warmer temperatures associated with climate change have intensified the 
severity of droughts, particularly in areas already suffering from water 
scarcity.
Climate change can even be detected on some of the droughts in the early 
twentieth-century (1900-1950).
*How does climate change make drought worse?*
Climate change has exacerbated drought in parts of the US primarily by 
decreasing the snowpack and already small amount of water available in 
streams and soils. Most droughts are driven by natural variability in 
precipitation. Climate change-driven hotter temperatures, however, melt 
snowpack earlier, evaporate water in streams and lakes, and evaporate 
water from soils, turning what would have been a moderate drought into a 
much more severe drought. In some limited cases, there is also evidence 
that climate change is changing rainfall patterns, blocking rain from 
reaching areas in need of water. These combined effects have made what 
may have been moderate droughts severe or exceptional instead.
more at - 
https://www.climatesignals.org/climate-signals/drought-risk-increase

[Cli-migrants]
*What data do cities like Orlando need to prepare for climate migrants?*
The challenges of predicting where people will go to escape flooding, 
wildfires and drought
- -
Social media, including Facebook and Twitter, may also be useful for 
tracking large-scale migrations due to climate events that occur on 
short timescales. Yago Martín, who studies urban resilience at UCF, and 
colleagues devised a way to use geotagged tweets to identify and track 
movements of over a thousand Puerto Rican residents in Maria's 
aftermath. The methodology holds promise for tracking future migrations, 
the team reported in February in Population and Environment.

The good news is that large research institutions are beginning to 
recognize the need to fund climate migration research, says UCF 
sociologist Fernando Rivera, who heads the university's Puerto Rico 
Research Hub. He is gearing up to embark on a National Academy of 
Sciences-funded analysis of past and present climate migrations, 
focusing on changes in housing markets, financial services, health care, 
employment and economic development in the communities where migrants 
end up.

The study zooms in on three migration events: from Puerto Rico to 
Orlando in 2017; New Orleans to Houston in 2005 following Hurricane 
Katrina; and the pending resettlement of the few dozen residents of Isle 
de Jean Charles, one of Louisiana's coastal islands about to be drowned 
by rising seas. The goal, Rivera says, is to try to determine lessons 
for future destination communities, such as Orlando...
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/climate-change-migrants-destination-cities-data-orlando
- -
[source material]
*Using geotagged tweets to track population movements to and from Puerto 
Rico after Hurricane Maria*
Abstract
After a disaster, there is an urgent need for information on population 
mobility. Our analysis examines the suitability of Twitter data for 
measuring post-disaster population mobility using the case of Hurricane 
Maria in Puerto Rico. Among Twitter users living in Puerto Rico, we show 
how many were displaced, the timing and destination of their 
displacement, and whether they returned. Among Twitter users arriving in 
Puerto Rico after the disaster, we show the timing and destination of 
their trips. We find that 8.3% of resident sample relocated during the 
months after Hurricane Maria and nearly 4% of were still displaced 9 
months later. Visitors to Puerto Rico fell significantly in the year 
after Hurricane Maria, especially in tourist areas. While our Twitter 
data is not representative of the Puerto Rican population, it provides 
broad evidence of the effect of this disaster on population mobility and 
suggests further potential use...
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11111-020-00338-6

[Beckwith video lecture]
*Mechanisms, Evidence, and Impacts of Climate Tipping Elements: Earth 
System Dynamics*
May 12, 2020
Paul Beckwith
A new review paper called "ESD Reviews: mechanisms, evidence, and 
impacts of climate tipping elements" was published online a few weeks 
ago and assessed the latest science on risks and impacts of various 
tipping elements. In the last video, here, and in the next video I chat 
about the risks of these tipping elements. The discussion includes the 
usual suspects: ice melt, AMOC shutdown, methane release from hydrated 
and permafrost, Amazon forest collapse, etc., but significantly included 
a new one called stratospheric cloud deck evaporation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Ni0O4bUdQ
- - -
[Temp rise in models]
*Stratocumulus Cloud Deck Collapse and other Tipping Elements in the 
Climate System that Can Smush Us*
May 12, 2020
Paul Beckwith
Stratocumulous cloud decks cover lots of ocean and block sunlight 
providing some cooling offset to GHG warming. Typically these clouds are 
1 km above ocean surfaces and are about 370 meters thick, and are 
sustained by long wave radiation cooling at their tops. As CO2 
concentration increases, convective circulation resupplying moisture to 
the clouds from ocean evaporation can be disrupted, leading to less long 
wave cooling cutting off the source of surface moisture, leading to 
disintegration of the clouds and abrupt, acute surface warming of up to 
8 C.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dawRAMgBgwM

- -

[Source]
*ESD Reviews: mechanisms, evidence, and impacts of climate tipping elements*
*Abstract*. Increasing attention is focusing upon climate tipping 
elements - large-scale earth systems anticipated to respond through 
positive feedbacks to anthropogenic climate change by shifting towards 
new long-term states. In some but not all cases, such changes could 
produce additional greenhouse gas emissions or radiative forcing that 
could compound global warming. Developing greater understanding of 
tipping elements is important for predicting future climate risks. Here 
we review mechanisms, predictions, impacts, and knowledge gaps 
associated with ten notable climate tipping elements. We also evaluate 
which tipping elements are more imminent and whether shifts will likely 
manifest rapidly or over longer timescales. Some tipping elements are 
significant to future global climate and will likely affect major 
ecosystems, climate patterns, and/or carbon cycling within the current 
century. However, assessments under different emissions scenarios 
indicate a strong potential to reduce or avoid impacts associated with 
many tipping elements through climate change mitigation. Most tipping 
elements do not possess the potential for abrupt future change within 
years, and some tipping elements are perhaps more accurately termed 
climate feedbacks. Nevertheless, significant uncertainties remain 
associated with many tipping elements, highlighting an acute need for 
further research and modeling to better constrain risks.

How to cite: Wang, S. and Hausfather, Z.: ESD Reviews
https://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/esd-2020-16/

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - May 13, 2009 *
The bipartisan Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act is introduced in the House.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/13/68130/republican-lawmakers-back-carbon.html

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