[✔️] July 20, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*July 20, 2021*/

[firewatch]
*Calls for outside help as extreme weather fuels Oregon fires*
The worry is that dry conditions, a drought and the recent 
record-breaking heat wave in the region have created tinderbox 
conditions, so resources like fire engines are being recruited from 
places like Arkansas, Nevada and Alaska.
https://apnews.com/article/science-fires-environment-and-nature-oregon-weather-9a8021b4073fc50309ddf9bad479d956 


- -

[fire becomes a new type of weather]
*How Bad Is the Bootleg Fire? It’s Generating Its Own Weather.*
Unpredictable winds, fire clouds that spawn lightning, and flames that 
leap over firebreaks are confounding efforts to fight the blaze, which 
is sweeping through southern Oregon.

    “This fire is a real challenge, and we are looking at sustained
    battle for the foreseeable future,” said Joe Hessel, the incident
    commander for the forestry department.

    And it’s likely to continue to be unpredictable.

    “Fire behavior is a function of fuels, topography and weather,” said
    Craig B. Clements, director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary
    Research Center at San Jose State University. “It changes generally
    day by day. Sometimes minute by minute.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/climate/bootleg-wildfire-weather.html



[SmokeWatch]
*Wildfire smoke forecast, July 20, 2021*
https://wildfiretoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Smoke-forecast-for-3-a.m.-MDT-July-19-2021.jpg
https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/07/19/wildfire-smoke-forecast-july-20-2021/
- -
https://hwp-viz.gsd.esrl.noaa.gov/smoke/#

- -

[no Inhaling]
*Study Finds Lung Damage in Firefighters Years After a Major Wildfire*
https://gizmodo.com/study-finds-lung-damage-in-firefighters-years-after-a-m-1847322117



[Yes we are STILL underestimate -- Michael Mann on video]
*Floods, Fires & Heat Waves: Michael Mann on the New Climate War & the 
Fight to Take Back the Planet*
Democracy Now!
We speak with leading climate scientist Michael Mann about the 
catastrophic impact of the climate crisis around the world. He says he 
and other scientists predicted the extreme weather events now wreaking 
havoc. “We said that if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels and elevating 
the levels of carbon pollution in the atmosphere and we continue to warm 
up the planet, we will see unprecedented heat waves and wildfires and 
floods and droughts and superstorms,” says Mann. His new book is titled 
“The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFt95wpXJ94



[Now that's clear]
*It’s Not a Border Crisis. It’s a Climate Crisis.*
There was a time when rural Guatemalans never left home. But back to 
back hurricanes, failed crops and extreme poverty are driving them to 
make the dangerous trek north to the U.S. border.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/07/19/guatemala-immigration-climate-change-499281



[more or less, yes]
*Climate change and tornadoes: Any connection?*
As greenhouse gases shuffle the atmospheric deck, where and when 
twisters happen is changing.

    Fortunately, human-warmed climate isn’t making violent U.S.
    tornadoes any more frequent. However, climate change may be involved
    in some noteworthy recent shifts in the location and seasonal timing
    of the tornado threat.

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/07/climate-change-and-tornadoes-any-connection/



[We're gonna need a bigger computer]
*Climate change: Science failed to predict flood and heat intensity*
By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analyst
Top climate scientists have admitted they failed to predict the 
intensity of the German floods and the North American heat dome.

They've correctly warned over decades that a fast-warming climate would 
bring worse bursts of rain and more damaging heatwaves.

But they say their computers are not powerful enough to accurately 
project the severity of those extremes.

They want governments to spend big on a shared climate super-computer.

Computers are fundamental to weather forecasting and climate change, and 
computing will underpin the new climate science “Bible”, from the 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) next month.

But former Met Office chief scientist Prof Dame Julia Slingo told BBC 
News: "We should be alarmed because the IPCC (climate computer) models 
are just not good enough.

"(We need) an international centre to deliver the quantum leap to 
climate models that capture the fundamental physics that drive extremes.

"Unless we do that we will continue to underestimate the 
intensity/frequency of extremes and the increasingly unprecedented 
nature of them."

She said the costs of the computer, which would be in the hundreds of 
millions of pounds, would "pale into insignificance" compared with the 
costs of extreme events for which society is unprepared...
- -
Most importantly researchers need to assess whether places such as North 
America or Germany will face extremes like the heat dome and the floods 
every 20 years, 10 years, five years – or maybe even every year. This 
level of accuracy currently isn’t possible.

Some scientists argue that it's futile to wait for the IPCC to say how 
bad climate change will be.

That's partly because the panel's "Bible", which is supposed to gather 
in one place the sum of knowledge on climate change, will actually 
already be out of date when it’s published because review deadlines 
closed before the German and American extreme extremes (sic).
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57863205



[another factor]
JULY 19, 2021
*Global satellite data shows clouds will amplify global heating*
A new approach to analyze satellite measurements of Earth's cloud cover 
reveals that clouds are very likely to enhance global heating.

The research, by scientists at Imperial College London and the 
University of East Anglia, is the strongest evidence yet that clouds 
will amplify global heating over the long term, further exacerbating 
climate change.
The results, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of 
Sciences, also suggest that at double atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) 
concentrations above pre-industrial levels, the climate is unlikely to 
warm below 2°C, and is more likely on average to warm more than 3°C.
https://phys.org/news/2021-07-global-satellite-clouds-amplify.html

- -

[Journal]
*Observational evidence that cloud feedback amplifies global warming*
Paulo Ceppi and  Peer Nowack
PNAS July 27, 2021  https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2026290118
Edited by Isaac M. Held, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, and 
approved June 10, 2021
*Significance*
A key challenge of our time is to accurately estimate future global 
warming in response to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide—a number 
known as the climate sensitivity. This number is highly uncertain, 
mainly because it remains unclear how clouds will change with warming. 
Such changes in clouds could strongly amplify or dampen global warming, 
providing a climate feedback. Here, we perform a statistical learning 
analysis that provides a global observational constraint on the future 
cloud response. This constraint supports that cloud feedback will 
amplify global warming, making it very unlikely that climate sensitivity 
is smaller than 2 °C.

*Abstract*
Global warming drives changes in Earth’s cloud cover, which, in turn, 
may amplify or dampen climate change. This “cloud feedback” is the 
single most important cause of uncertainty in Equilibrium Climate 
Sensitivity (ECS)—the equilibrium global warming following a doubling of 
atmospheric carbon dioxide. Using data from Earth observations and 
climate model simulations, we here develop a statistical learning 
analysis of how clouds respond to changes in the environment. We show 
that global cloud feedback is dominated by the sensitivity of clouds to 
surface temperature and tropospheric stability. Considering changes in 
just these two factors, we are able to constrain global cloud feedback 
to 0.43 ± 0.35 W⋅m−2⋅K−1 (90% confidence), implying a robustly 
amplifying effect of clouds on global warming and only a 0.5% chance of 
ECS below 2 K. We thus anticipate that our approach will enable tighter 
constraints on climate change projections, including its manifold 
socioeconomic and ecological impacts.
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/30/e2026290118



[Models are now judged less perfect]
*In summer of apocalyptic weather, concerns emerge over climate science 
blind spot*
Andrew Freedman - July 20, 2021
The rapid succession of precedent-shattering extreme weather events in 
North America and Europe this summer is prompting some scientists to 
question whether climate extremes are worsening faster than expected.

*Why it matters:* Extreme weather events are the deadliest, most 
expensive and immediate manifestations of climate change. Any 
miscalculations in how severe these events may become, from wildfires to 
heat waves and heavy rainfall, could make communities more vulnerable.

*Driving the news: *The West is roasting this summer, with heat records 
falling seemingly every day. Forests from Washington State to Montana to 
California are burning amid the worst drought conditions of the 21st 
century.

    Authorities in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands are still
    searching for victims of a devastating flood event that killed at
    least 180.

*The big picture: *The discussions and studies under way focus on just 
how unusual each of the recent extreme events have been, and whether 
current advanced computer models and statistical techniques can properly 
anticipate them beforehand.

    Another set of questions revolves around scientists' ability to
    evaluate these events' rarity as well as causes in hindsight.

    For example, the Pacific Northwest heat wave in late June into early
    July, which sent temperatures soaring to 116°F in Portland and 108°F
    in Seattle and 121°F in British Columbia, was so far from the norm
    for these areas that it's causing experts to reevaluate what's possible.

*The intrigue:* Axios spoke to nine leading scientists involved in 
extreme event research for this report. The Pacific Northwest heat wave 
is being viewed with more suspicion than the European floods as a 
possible indicator of something new and more dangerous that researchers 
have missed: a climate science blind spot.

    For example, Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M
    University, said he is no longer sure if climate models are
    accurately capturing how global warming is playing out when it comes
    to regional extremes specifically.

    "If you'd asked me this three months ago, I would have said 'models
    are doing fine,'" he said. "But this last string of disasters has
    really shaken my confidence in the models' predictions of regional
    extremes," he said.

    "Perhaps we've just been very unlucky, but I think this is an open
    scientific question," he said.

*Zoom in:* Some scientists, such as Michael Mann of Penn State and 
Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in 
Germany, have shown that even the most up-to-date climate models fail to 
capture one of the main mechanisms that's contributing to some of these 
extremes — a phenomena known as "planetary wave resonance."

    Such weather patterns feature stuck, sharply undulating jet stream
    patterns, like a meandering river of air at high altitudes, which
    can lock weather systems in place for long periods. This type of
    weather pattern existed across the Northern Hemisphere in the run-up
    to and during the Pacific Northwest heat wave.

    "We can either assume that the [Pacific Northwest heat] event was a
    remarkable fluke, or that the models are still not capturing the
    relevant processes behind these events," Mann told Axios. "Occam's
    razor, in my assessment, supports the latter of these two
    possibilities."

    Meanwhile, Michael Wehner, who studies extreme events at Lawrence
    Berkeley National Laboratory, said part of the problem may be the
    tendency for climate scientists to be overly conservative in their
    "projection and attribution statements," lest they be labeled
    alarmist. That may soon change, he said.

*Of note: *Society's vulnerability to extreme events is to some extent 
independent of whether climate scientists are missing a new dynamic in 
heat waves or heavy rain events.

    Friederike Otto, a climatologist at the University of Oxford, told
    Axios the extreme weather events in Europe and the Pacific Northwest
    were exactly the types that scientists had been warning would become
    more likely and intense due to human-caused climate change.

    Policy makers should act to improve public warning systems, she
    said. Failures of the warning network in Germany may have
    contributed to the high flooding-related death toll there.

*The bottom line:* Philip Duffy, the executive director of the Woodwell 
Climate Research Center, told Axios that any faster deterioration of 
extreme weather events "would only reinforce the message that current 
actions are not commensurate with the threat we face."

    "We already know what we need to do: initiate rapid decarbonization,
    remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and improve resilience to future
    extreme events," he said. "The severity of recent weather-related
    events only underscores the urgency of this message."

https://www.axios.com/extreme-weather-heat-waves-floods-climate-science-dba85d8a-215b-49a1-8a80-a6b7532bee83.html



[In the Pacific.  Reported by the Atlantic]
*California’s Cliffs Are Collapsing One by One*
Researchers are stepping up their efforts to understand why—and 
when—bluffs come crashing down.
By Ramin Skibba and Hakai Magazine
- -
Collapsing coastal bluffs are a threat wherever waves, earthquakes, and 
intense rainstorms can destabilize steep seaside terrain, and with sea 
levels rising, this risk is increasing. It is a pronounced risk 
throughout many areas along the Pacific Coast of North America, 
especially in Southern California. Considering that many lives, homes, 
and vital infrastructure are at stake, scientists have been trying to 
figure out exactly what causes such cliffs to fall.
- -
Adam Young, a marine geologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at 
UC San Diego, is developing a tool that could eventually be used to 
predict bluff collapses in order to better protect lives and property. 
He and his team have spent three years driving up and down a 
2.5-kilometer stretch of the coast near Del Mar, firing a sensitive 
lidar laser mounted atop their research truck at the cliff sides. 
Through repeat measurements, the equipment can track tiny shifts in the 
ground, and by taking measurements over years the team intends to give a 
warning of potentially vulnerable coastal areas.

Young and his team have focused on two main processes as they map the 
coastal bluffs: the relentless erosion of the lower layers of rock by 
the crashing waves, and the gradual wearing away of the upper layers of 
soil by rainstorms and seeping groundwater. Both can undermine, 
sometimes subtly, the stability of a cliff...

While using lidar is a common approach to studying unstable terrain, 
with measurements often taken from research airplanes once or twice a 
year, Young’s efforts have added a new twist. “The main thing new here 
is doing the high-resolution survey every week, which allows us to 
isolate time periods of when waves are hitting the cliff, or when 
there’s rainfall, giving us a better idea of how these different 
processes are acting on the cliff,” he says.

It’s important to understand the particular qualities of rainstorms, 
waves, and groundwater that result in erosion and trigger landslides, 
especially in the context of the coastal changes scientists anticipate 
as sea levels rise farther, Young says...
- -
According to a 2018 study led by Colgan, the economic threat to Southern 
California stems less from big storms than frequent small ones, which 
are becoming more common. “The combination of erosion and sea level rise 
is what’s going to do in much of the San Diego County coast. It makes 
sense, considering you have a lot of high-value property sitting up on 
those cliffs.”...
- -
Historically, says Griggs, people along the California coastline have 
used armor, such as wooden, concrete, or riprap seawalls and other 
structures, to fortify eroding cliffs, while adding sand to beaches that 
are being washed away. This armor is costly to build and requires 
periodic maintenance, and in many areas, even the densest armoring won’t 
be sufficient. “I think those days are over in California, and in some 
other states as well,” he says.

That means people now have to decide between retreating or continually 
rolling the dice with coastal landslides. “In the long run, there’s no 
way to hold back the Pacific Ocean,” Griggs says. It comes down to one 
question, he says: “What risk are you willing to accept?”
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/californias-cliffs-are-collapsing-one-one/619462/


[Leave it to Time (magazine) to awaken and make a list]
*The Climate Crisis Is a Call to Action. These 5 Steps Helped Me Figure 
Out How to Be of Use*
At the age of 16, perched on a ridge in western North Carolina, I 
scrawled these words into a handbound journal: Want to help the world. 
Be connected with the Earth. Change the way I live. ..
- -
I hear in the question a craving for simple answers to an enormously 
complex challenge—but even more so because I feel responsible for 
providing a good answer. Science tells us that wholesale transformation 
of society is urgent. I want all minds, hearts, and hands to be able to 
make their best contributions, and I understand the agony that not 
knowing how can brew.

There is no simple formula, no fact sheet or checklist, for figuring out 
our roles in the vital work to forge a just, livable future. But I have 
found a series of reflections can help us arrive at some clarity and 
uncover ways to be of use. Rather than stipulating actions that are 
one-and-done or one-size-fits-all, I’ve found that these five steps are 
a way to hold the question and work our way into answers.
- -
*Feel Your Feelings*
There’s no getting around it: the climate crisis brings with it big 
feelings. If we’re awake to what’s unfolding on this planet,... Discuss 
with a trusted friend or counselor. Let the tears come if they need to. 
Our feelings can keep us frozen, or they can be fuel...
Britt Wray’s Gen Dread newsletter is a clearing house for ideas and 
tools at the nexus of climate and psychology.

https://gendread.substack.com/
- -
*Scout Your Superpowers*
Here’s a resource that might help:
The anthology All We Can Save contains a mighty chorus of women leading 
on climate, each essay illuminating different knowledge and skills that 
can be brought to bear.
https://www.allwecansave.earth/anthology
*- -
**Survey Solutions*
The work of climate justice is vast and varied.
The Drawdown Review catalogues the world’s proven climate solutions and 
explores critical ways to accelerate them.
https://drawdown.org/downloads?tca=7kcJDw6Pw--JZ852ds8YOWVhgaaH0QXFCqN9xd63VCc
https://www.drawdown.org/drawdown-review
*- -
**Consider Your Context*
We’re all nested into different contexts—different spaces in which we 
have influence and make decisions
Sometimes an invitation is already in hand.
Here’s a resource that might help: The podcast How to Save a Planet 
spotlights people taking action in many different spheres, from farms 
and coastal communities to startups and halls of power
https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/episodes
- -
*Cultivate a Climate Squad*
When facing a planetary crisis, it’s best not to go it alone

Are you hungry for deeper dialogue about the climate crisis and building 
community around solutions? We are too. That’s why we created All We Can 
Save Circles — like a book club, but a cooler, deeper, extended version. 
Let’s strengthen the “we” in All We Can Save. Circles were created by 
Dr. Katharine Wilkinson.
https://www.allwecansave.earth/circles
- -
We keep evolving, the challenges shift shape or become clearer, the 
solutions expand, the work unfolds in new ways. Given the enormity of 
the task at hand, we need to function like an ecosystem, finding 
strength in our diversity. With more and more people stepping off the 
sidelines, called to take their place in climate, let’s ask this 
question in community and work on figuring out what we can do together.
read the article 
https://time.com/6071765/what-can-i-do-to-fight-climate-change/



[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming July 20, 2006*
NPR reports on the GOP's show trials, er, hearings regarding climate 
research in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

*Global Warming a Hot Topic in Congressional Hearing*
July 20, 2006

[in 2006 NPR used the scientifically preferred term of 'Global Warming' ]

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

    A Congressional committee yesterday returned to the subject of
    global warming. At issue were two of the thousands of studies
    showing evidence of climate change. Republicans on the House Energy
    and Commerce Committee tried to turn shortcomings in those two
    papers into a much broader attack on climate science.

    NPR's Richard Harris reports.

    RICHARD HARRIS reporting:

    The focus of this argument is a graph that's shaped like a hockey
    stick and which suggests that the planet has warmed abruptly in
    recent decades. Last year, Texas Republican Joe Barton attacked that
    conclusion and went after the scientists who published the paper by
    demanding they turn over their data and their computer programs.

    Representative JOE BARTON (Republican, Texas): A number of people
    basically use that report to come to the conclusion that global
    warming was a fact and that the 1990s was the hottest decade on
    record. And that one year, 1998, was the hottest year in the
    millennium. Now, a millennium is a thousand years. That's a pretty
    bold statement.

    HARRIS: Too bold a statement to make on the basis of that study.
    Last month, the National Academy of Sciences said the study's claims
    were overreaching but largely beside the point in the big picture of
    global warming. But Chairman Barton had handpicked his own reviewers
    as well, and yesterday he called a hearing to discuss their results.
    Democrats wondered why the Energy and Commerce Committee up till now
    has all but ignored global warming.

    Jay Inslee is a Democrat from Washington State.

    Representative JAY INSLEE (Democrat, Washington): Instead of really
    engaging Congressional talent and figuring out how to deal with this
    problem, we try to poke little pinholes in one particular
    statistical conclusion of one particular study where the
    overwhelming evidence is that we have to act to deal with this
    global challenge.

    HARRIS: Inslee pointed out that National Academies of Sciences from
    around the world, including that of the United States, have come to
    the conclusion from many lines of evidence that global warming is
    real and that humans are largely responsible. When the time came, he
    turned to the Republicans' key witness, statistician Ed Wegman.

    Rep. INSLEE: Now, I guess the question to you is do you have any
    reason to believe all of those academies should change their
    conclusion because of your criticism of one report?

    Professor EDWARD J. WEGMAN (Professor Information Technology and
    Applied Statistics, George Mason University): Of course not.

    HARRIS: And the limits of Wegman's expertise became painfully clear
    when he tried to answer a question from Illinois Democrat Jan
    Schakowsky about the well known mechanism by which carbon dioxide
    traps infrared radiation - heat - in our atmosphere.

    Prof. WEGMAN: Carbon dioxide is heavier than air. Where it sits in
    the atmospheric profile, I don't know. I'm not an atmospheric
    scientist to know that. But presumably, if the atmospheric - if the
    carbon dioxide is close to the surface of the earth, it's not
    reflecting a lot of infrared back.

    Representative JAN SCHAKOWSKY (Democrat, Illinois): But you're not
    clearly qualified to...

    Prof. WEGMAN: No, of course not.

    Rep. SCHAKOWSKY: ...comment on that.

    HARRIS: Republicans on that committee were unmoved by the
    discussion. Michael Burgess is a Republican from Texas.

    Representative MICHAEL BURGESS (Republican, Texas): It's false to
    presume that a consensus today - exists today where the human
    activity has been proven to cause global warming, and that's the
    crux of this hearing. I would point out that simply turning off the
    electrical generation plants that provide the air conditioning back
    in my district would not be a viable option.

    HARRIS: Chairman Barton finally allowed that climate change is a
    serious matter and that eminent scientists are deeply concerned
    about it.

    Rep. BARTON: My problem is that everybody seems to think that it's
    automatically a given and that we shouldn't even debate the
    possibility of it and we probably shouldn't debate the causes of it.
    And I think that's wrong.

    HARRIS: But if anyone showed up at this hearing room to hear a true
    scientific debate on global warming they ended up instead with just
    a political debate often far afield from the facts.

Richard Harris, NPR News.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5569901



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