[✔️] Dec 16, 2023- Global Warming News Digest |2023 heat record, DW positive changes, Renewables video, Pioneering transition, El Nino, NOAA outlook, 2014 3.6 limit

Sat Dec 16 08:27:24 EST 2023

/*December 16*//*, 2023*/

/[ This year -- this is the hottest year ever for humans ]/
*NOAA: Almost 100 percent chance 2023 will be hottest year recorded*
BY LAUREN IRWIN - 12/15/23 1
There is almost a 100 percent chance that 2023 will be the hottest year 
ever recorded, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 
(NOAA) announced...
- -
According to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, 
there is a “greater than 99% chance that 2023 will rank as Earth’s 
warmest year on record.”
The previous record-breaking year was in 2016, but 2023 was 
“considerably warmer,” by .20 degrees Fahrenheit...
Forecasters are predicting an El Niño climate pattern, meaning periods 
of above-average ocean surface temperature, heading into the spring. The 
planet has been experiencing a La Niña cold phase since 2020.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4362127-noaa-almost-100-percent-chance-2023-hottest-year-recorded/

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/[ Starting with Lancaster California - a positive documentary of 
actions taken ]/
*Global renewables: Pioneering the energy transition | DW Documentary*
Dec 1, 2023  #dwdocumentary #documentary
We are facing the greatest upheaval since industrialization. To stop 
climate change, the energy system must be transformed worldwide. Very 
little time remains to accomplish this. But there are places where this 
renewable future has already arrived.

The documentary explores the question of what needs to happen in terms 
of politics, policies, and society to implement what is technically 
possible, when it comes to renewable energy. To do this, the film visits 
two completely different places. One is in the US and the other, in 
Bavaria. These localities have two things in common: Both have 
completely converted their energy supply to renewables and as a result, 
both now have more money in their coffers today than before.

The documentary provides a global overview of the solutions that already 
exist for a worldwide energy transition. And it asks what challenges 
still need to be overcome -- not only in the laboratories and power 
plants, but also among the movers and shakers who must drive the change 
today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVf2Yw7uFoE

- -

/[ newer documentary from DW ]/
*Part 1:   Will renewables stop the climate crisis? *
Dec 1, 2023  #dwdocumentary #documentary
Mankind is facing the greatest upheaval since industrialization. To stop 
climate change, the energy system must be transformed worldwide and 
fossil fuels must be completely replaced. But is this even possible?

Time is running out. If climate targets are still to be met and the 
survival of future generations is to be ensured, virtually all fossil 
energy sources worldwide will have to be replaced by renewables by 2050. 
That leaves us with almost exactly one generation from today to make 
this massive change. So what needs to happen for the global energy 
transition to succeed?

Part 1 of this two-part documentary looks at the question of whether 
it’s even possible to provide enough green energy for the whole world. 
How can the oil economy be replaced? The film travels to places that 
could one day become the Saudi Arabia of renewable energies. For 
example, gigantic offshore wind farms in the North Sea, or the most 
modern solar fields in Spain. One day, these regions will supply all of 
Europe with electricity.

However, the globally increasing demand for energy must be met in ways 
that are both sustainable and affordable. Researchers at the Technical 
University of Ilmenau in Thuringia are working with a team from the 
California Institute of Technology on high-tech materials that will make 
renewable energies more efficient and less expensive than their fossil 
fuel predecessors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy7vUppYPC8&t=0s

- -

[Part 2:  42 min video ]
*Global renewables: Pioneering the energy transition | DW Documentary*
DW Documentary
Dec 1, 2023  #dwdocumentary #documentary
We are facing the greatest upheaval since industrialization. To stop 
climate change, the energy system must be transformed worldwide. Very 
little time remains to accomplish this. But there are places where this 
renewable future has already arrived.

The documentary explores the question of what needs to happen in terms 
of politics, policies, and society to implement what is technically 
possible, when it comes to renewable energy. To do this, the film visits 
two completely different places. One is in the US and the other, in 
Bavaria. These localities have two things in common: Both have 
completely converted their energy supply to renewables and as a result, 
both now have more money in their coffers today than before.

The documentary provides a global overview of the solutions that already 
exist for a worldwide energy transition. And it asks what challenges 
still need to be overcome -- not only in the laboratories and power 
plants, but also among the movers and shakers who must drive the change 
today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVf2Yw7uFoE

[ YaleClimateConnections ]
*How will El Niño affect the U.S. this winter?*
Strong El Niño events like this one have classic calling cards, but 
surprises still happen — especially on a warming planet.
by BOB HENSON
DECEMBER 12, 2023
The most potent El Niño event in almost a decade is about to exert its 
peak influence on North American weather. Many parts of the world are 
affected by El Niño, a periodic one- to two-year warming of the eastern 
tropical Pacific. In fact, El Niño is the biggest single shaper of 
Earth’s year-to-year weather variations atop human-induced climate 
change. And North America is one of the places where El Niño’s influence 
is most pronounced.
Think of El Niño as the boisterous guest around which people gather, or 
scatter, during the course of a holiday party. For a few months to a 
year or longer, unusually warm water spreads across a vast area centered 
on the equator, extending from South America westward. In Spanish, the 
phenomenon’s name refers to “the Christ child” (literally, the male 
infant). The name arose because of timing: Anchovy fishers had long 
noticed that the waters off Peru sometimes warmed, and their catches 
declined, during the weeks on either side of Christmas.

What kicks off El Niño is complex and not fully understood, but the 
strongest events tend to unfold in a familiar way. Westerly winds 
increase across the tropical Pacific, blunting or even reversing the 
usual east-to-west trade winds. In tandem, warm water is pushed eastward 
toward areas off the South American coast that are typically dominated 
by cold upwelling currents. The unusually warm sea surface and the 
westerly winds interact with each other, helping to stimulate rising air 
and heavy rain across a broad area.

The more far-flung impacts arise as the atmosphere adjusts to this huge 
zone of rising air, just as people get rearranged when a gregarious 
party guest arrives. Sinking air on either side of El Niño typically 
spawns drought and an enhanced fire threat across Indonesia and 
northeast Brazil. More complex interactions happen in the northern 
midlatitudes, including North America. Typically in winter during a 
moderate to strong El Niño, the subtropical branch of the jet stream 
intensifies across the Sun Belt, giving places from Southern California 
to Florida higher odds of a wet winter (including an enhanced tornado 
threat across Florida). Meanwhile, the polar jet stream tends to retreat 
into Canada, reducing the number and strength of polar intrusions and 
favoring relatively mild and dry winter conditions across the northern 
U.S. and southern Canada. (See the recent ENSO Blog post by Nate Johnson 
for more detail on how El Niño helps shape U.S. winter precipitation.)

Every El Niño event is different, and not every classic feature is 
guaranteed to occur each time. Let’s take a look at some potential 
outcomes weather watchers are now paying close attention to...
- -
Looking further out: Odds are rising for a La Niña event (a cooling of 
the eastern tropical Pacific) to take hold by the latter part of 2024. 
Cooler-than-average water is gradually expanding beneath the western 
equatorial Pacific, and seasonal forecast tools such as the North 
American Multi-Model Ensemble are increasingly leaning toward La Niña by 
late 2024. Climatology is pointing the same way: Five of the six El Niño 
events since 1950 that registered as strong in the autumn (meaning an 
Oceanic Niño Index of at least 1.5 when averaged across the three autumn 
months, as was the case this year) were followed by La Niña events in 
the next autumn. Such a sequence would hike the odds of yet another 
active Atlantic hurricane season.

Jeff Masters contributed to this post. Website visitors can comment on 
“Eye on the Storm” posts (see comments policy below). Sign up to receive 
notices of new postings here.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/12/how-will-el-nino-affect-the-u-s-this-winter 

- -

/[ See for ourselves the bold graphics weather map - above normal 
everywhere ]/
*8 to 14 Day Outlooks*
Valid: December 22 to 28, 2023
Updated: 14 Dec 2023
Click below for information about how to read 8-14 day outlook maps
Temperature        Precipitation
...archives of past outlooks (data & graphics), historical analogs to 
todays forecast, and other formats of the 8-14 day outlooks
Archives Analogs Lines-Only Format GIS Data
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/814day/814temp.new.gif
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/814day/

/[The news archive - COPs talks of almost a decade ago - pressed for 3.6 
degrees limit]/
/*December 16, 2014 */
December 16, 2014:
In the New York Times, Justin Gillis observes:

    "After two weeks of grinding meetings in Lima, Peru, the world’s
    climate negotiators emerged this weekend with a deal. They settled
    on preliminary language, to be finalized a year from now in Paris,
    meant to help keep the long-term warming of the planet below 3.6
    degrees Fahrenheit.

    "That upper boundary was first settled on four years ago at another
    round of talks in Cancun, Mexico. On the centigrade scale, it equals
    two degrees above the global average temperature at the beginning of
    the Industrial Revolution...

    "Yet even as the 2C target has become a touchstone for the climate
    talks, scientific theory and real-world observations have begun to
    raise serious questions about whether the target is stringent
    enough."...
    - -
    The warming that has already occurred is causing enormous damage all
    over the planet, from dying forests to collapsing sea ice to savage
    heat waves to torrential rains. And scientists realize they may have
    underestimated the vulnerability of the ice sheets in Greenland and
    Antarctica.

    Those ice sheets now appear to be in the early stages of breaking
    up. For instance, Greenland’s glaciers have lately been spitting
    icebergs into the sea at an accelerated pace, and scientific papers
    published this year warned that the melting in parts of Antarctica
    may already be unstoppable...
    - -
    “The climate is now out of equilibrium with the ice sheets,” said
    Andrea Dutton, a geochemist at the University of Florida who studies
    global sea levels. “They are going to melt.”

    That could ultimately mean 30 feet, or even more, of sea level rise,
    though scientists have no clear idea of how fast that could happen.
    They hope it would take thousands of years, but cannot rule out a
    faster rise that might overwhelm the ability of human society to
    adapt...
    - -
    So, even as the world’s climate policy diplomats work on a plan that
    incorporates the 2C goal, they have enlisted scientists in a major
    review of whether it is strict enough. Results are due this summer,
    and if the reviewers recommend a lower target, that could add a
    contentious dimension to the climate negotiations in Paris next year.

    Barring a technological miracle, or a mobilization of society on a
    scale unprecedented in peacetime, it is not at all clear how a lower
    target could be met.

    Some experts think a stricter target could even backfire. If 2C
    already seems hard to achieve, with the world on track for levels of
    warming far beyond that, setting a tighter limit might prompt
    political leaders to throw up their hands in frustration.

    In practice, moreover, a tighter temperature limit would not alter
    the advice that scientists have been giving to politicians for
    decades about cutting emissions. Their recommendation is simple and
    blunt: Get going now.

    “Dealing with this is a little bit like saving for retirement,” said
    Richard B. Alley, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State
    University. “All delay is costly, but it helps whenever you start.”
    - -
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/science/earth/is-a-two-degree-limit-on-global-warming-off-target.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/science/earth/is-a-two-degree-limit-on-global-warming-off-target.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GU0.9_Rf.zdu4ZrFW4bM0&smid=url-share

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