[✔️] Feb 7 2024 Global Warming News | Atmospheric rivers, Dessler, Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) , 2007 Senate hearing

[Richard Pauli]

/*February*//*7, 2024*/

/[ Top scientist on deluge ]/
A primer on atmospheric rivers
*Climate change runs through it*
Andrew Dessler
Feb 5. 2024
Atmospheric rivers are low-level jets of air that flow out of the 
tropics to the mid-latitudes. They are associated with extratropical 
cyclone systems. For more details, read this.

Sometimes atmospheric rivers originate in the tropics, near Hawaii, and 
those are also called the Pineapple Express. Their origin in the tropics 
also explains why they carry enormous amounts of water vapor.

When these atmospheric rivers hit California, they can cause enormous 
rainfall. The mechanism is straightforward: As an atmospheric river 
encounters the land, particularly the Sierra Nevada mountain range, the 
moist air is forced upwards — a process known as orographic lift. As the 
air rises, it cools and condenses, and rain falls out.

Because the ocean never runs out of water, this weather pattern can 
bring neverending rain to the State. One storm in the 1860s brought 
continuous rain for nearly 43 days, leading to catastrophic flooding 
across much of California, particularly in the Central Valley, which 
transformed into an inland sea, reportedly up to 30 miles wide and 300 
miles long. If such an event occurred today, the damage could top $1 
trillion.

What about climate change, you ask? A warmer planet has more water vapor 
in the atmosphere. And, everything else being the same, an atmospheric 
river carrying more water vapor will cause more rainfall when it hits 
land and starts rising.

Because of the simplicity of this physical argument, the IPCC concluded 
that global warming will increase the precipitation from these events:

*Precipitation associated with extratropical storms and atmospheric 
rivers will increase in the future in most regions (high confidence).1*

Thus, we can conclude with confidence that climate change is making the 
event occurring in California right now worse than it would be without 
climate change.


But by how much? If we assume a purely thermodynamic response (e.g., 
Clausius-Clayperon scaling), rain would increase by about 7% for every 
degree Celsius of warming of the atmosphere. But this neglects the 
dynamic response — e.g., impact of climate change on atmospheric 
circulations.

My reading of the literature suggests that we don’t really have a good 
handle on this. Thus, a firm quantification of the impact of climate 
change on the rain in this event will await formal attribution analysis.

In summary, atmospheric rivers are a high-consequence weather system, 
with significant implications for water resources and flood risk. The 
interaction between atmospheric rivers and climate change is complex, 
but the increase in moisture in the atmosphere will certainly lead to 
more intense rainfall. Changes in atmospheric circulation could 
ameliorate or enhance this, which future research should clarify
https://open.substack.com/pub/theclimatebrink/p/a-primer-on-atmospheric-rivers?r=e3p5r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email


/[ Hottest year,  Lower media attention of rising moisture]/
*"Nearing a tipping point"*
Monthly Summaries
Issue 85, January 2024
January media coverage of climate change or global warming in newspapers 
around the globe plummeted 23% from December 2023. Also, coverage in 
January 2024 dipped 20% from January 2023 levels. Figure 1 shows trends 
in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven 
geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through 
January 2024.

https://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/icecaps/research/media_coverage/summaries/images/85/figure1.jpg
https://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/icecaps/research/media_coverage/summaries/images/85/figure2.jpg
Our team at the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) continues 
to provide three international and seven ongoing regional assessments of 
trends in coverage, along with 16 country-level appraisals each month. 
Visit our website for open-source datasets and downloadable visuals.

Scanning content in January 2024 coverage, many scientific themes 
continued to emerge in stories during the month. To illustrate, research 
findings focused on snow and climate change earned media attention early 
in the new calendar year. For example, Washington Post journalist Maggie 
Penman reported, “Snow is piling up across much of the United States 
this week, but new research shows this is the exception rather than the 
rule: Seasonal snow levels in the Northern Hemisphere have dwindled over 
the past 40 years due to climate change. Even so, snow responds to a 
warming planet in different ways. “A warmer atmosphere is also an 
atmosphere that can hold more water,” said Alex Gottlieb, a graduate 
student at Dartmouth College and lead author on the new study in the 
journal Nature. That can increase precipitation, spurring snow, or even 
extreme storms and blizzards that offset the effect of snowmelt amid 
warmer temperatures. That has made it harder for scientists to calculate 
how snowpack has changed over time. But the new findings reveal that 
areas of the United States and Europe are nearing a tipping point where 
they could face a disastrous loss of snow for decades to come”.
Research examining continued ice loss in Greenland also generated media 
attention in January. For example, Guardian environment editor Damian 
Carrington reported, “The Greenland ice cap is losing an average of 30m 
tonnes of ice an hour due to the climate crisis, a study has revealed, 
which is 20% more than was previously thought. Some scientists are 
concerned that this additional source of freshwater pouring into the 
north Atlantic might mean a collapse of the ocean currents called the 
Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is closer to being 
triggered, with severe consequences for humanity. Major ice loss from 
Greenland as a result of global heating has been recorded for decades. 
The techniques employed to date, such as measuring the height of the ice 
sheet or its weight via gravity data, are good at determining the losses 
that end up in the ocean and drive up sea level. However, they cannot 
account for the retreat of glaciers that already lie mostly below sea 
level in the narrow fjords around the island. In the study, satellite 
photos were analysed by scientists to determine the end position of 
Greenland’s many glaciers every month from 1985 to 2022. This showed 
large and widespread shortening and in total amounted to a trillion 
tonnes of lost ice”. Meanwhile, Washington Post journalists Kasha Patel 
and Chris Mooney wrote, “The Greenland ice sheet has lost 20 percent 
more ice than scientists previously thought, posing potential problems 
for ocean circulation patterns and sea level rise, according to a new 
study. Researchers had previously estimated that the Greenland ice sheet 
lost about 5,000 gigatons of ice in recent decades, enough to cover 
Texas in a sheet 26 feet high. The new estimate adds 1,000 gigatons to 
that period, the equivalent of piling about five more feet of ice on top 
of that fictitious Texas-sized sheet. The additional loss comes from an 
area previously unaccounted for in estimates: ice lost at a glacier’s 
edges, where it meets the water. Before this study, estimates primarily 
considered mass changes in the interior of the ice sheet, which are 
driven by melting on the surface and glaciers thinning from their base 
on the ice sheet. The study, released Wednesday in Nature, provides 
improved measurements of ice loss and meltwater discharge in the ocean, 
which can advance sea level and ocean models. Loss from the edges of 
glaciers won’t directly affect sea level rise because they usually sit 
within deep fjords below sea level, but the freshwater melt could affect 
ocean circulation patterns in the Atlantic Ocean…The researchers tracked 
changes in 207 glaciers in Greenland (constituting 90 percent of the ice 
sheet’s mass) each month from 1985 to 2022. Analyzing more than 236,000 
satellite images, they manually marked differences along the edges of 
glaciers and eventually trained algorithms to do the same. From the area 
measurements, the team could calculate the volume and mass of the 
changes in ice. Glaciers can lose ice in many ways. One change can 
happen when large ice chunks break off at the edge, known as calving. 
They can also lose ice when it melts faster than it can form, causing 
the end of a glacier to retreat and move to higher elevations. 
Scientists found that a total of 1,034 gigatons of ice was lost across 
all glaciers because of this retreat and calving on their peripheries. 
The loss accelerated since January 2000, with the glaciers losing a 
total of 42 gigatons each year. It has shown no signs of slowing down. 
Most striking, nearly every glacier was shrinking — and in every corner 
of the ice sheet”.
In January, there were also many political and economic-themed media 
stories about climate change or global warming that dominated overall 
coverage this month. For example, Associated Press correspondent Matthew 
Daly reported, “Climate-altering pollution from greenhouse gases 
declined by nearly 2% in the United States in 2023, even as the economy 
expanded at a faster clip, a new report finds. The decline, while “a 
step in the right direction,’' is far below the rate needed to meet 
President Joe Biden’s pledge to cut U.S. emissions in half by 2030, 
compared to 2005 levels, said a report Wednesday from the Rhodium Group, 
an independent research firm.  “Absent other changes,″ the U.S. is on 
track to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 40% below 2005 levels by 
the end of the decade, said Ben King, associate director at Rhodium and 
lead author of the study. The report said U.S. carbon emissions declined 
by 1.9% last year. Emissions are down 17.2% from 2005. To reach Biden’s 
goal, emissions would have to decline at a rate more than triple the 
2023 figure and be sustained at that level every year until 2030, he 
said. Increased economic activity, including more energy production and 
greater use of cars, trucks and airplanes, can be associated with higher 
pollution, although there is not always a direct correlation. The U.S. 
economy grew by a projected 2.4% in 2023, according to the Conference 
Board, a business research group”.

Also in January, media attention was drawn to renewable energy 
installation growth as examples of mode-switching sources to reduce 
emissions-related energy generation. For example, Guardian journalist 
Jillian Ambrose wrote, “Global renewable energy capacity grew by the 
fastest pace recorded in the last 20 years in 2023, which could put the 
world within reach of meeting a key climate target by the end of the 
decade, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The world’s 
renewable energy grew by 50% last year to 510 gigawatts (GW) in 2023, 
the 22nd year in a row that renewable capacity additions set a new 
record, according to figures from the IEA. The “spectacular” growth 
offers a “real chance” of global governments meeting a pledge agreed at 
the Cop28 climate talks in November to triple renewable energy capacity 
by 2030 to significantly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, the IEA 
added. The IEA’s latest report found that solar power accounted for 
three-quarters of the new renewable energy capacity installed worldwide 
last year. Most of the world’s new solar power was built in China, which 
installed more solar power last year than the entire world commissioned 
the year before, despite cutting subsidies in 2020 and 2021. Record 
rates of growth across Europe, the US and Brazil have put renewables on 
track to overtake coal as the largest source of global electricity 
generation by early 2025, the IEA said. By 2028, it forecasts renewable 
energy sources will account for more than 42% of global electricity 
generation. Tripling global renewable energy by the end of the decade to 
help cut carbon emissions is one of five main climate targets designed 
to prevent runaway global heating, alongside doubling energy efficiency, 
cutting methane emissions, transitioning away from fossil fuels, and 
scaling up financing for emerging and developing economies. Last year’s 
relatively mild winter and continued declines in power generation from 
coal-fired plants drove down emissions in the U.S. power and buildings 
sectors, the report said”.
Several cultural-themed stories relating to climate change or global 
warming also ran in January, many were reflections on the previous 
calendar year. Among them, writing in The Bangkok Post, Moe Moe Lwin 
wrote, “the cultural wisdom of our ancestors in Southeast Asia contains 
much knowledge that we urgently need to recollect, or re-learn, in the 
21st century if we are to achieve the goal of limiting temperature 
increase to a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Our ancestors in Southeast 
Asia knew how to live in harmony with nature, exploiting nature’s bounty 
without destroying nature. Traditional ways of agriculture, community 
control of forests and watersheds, building design and construction 
practices, urban layout, and belief systems can be adapted to modern 
needs to make present-day living and working much more 
climate-friendly”. As a second example, New York Times journalists David 
Gelles and Manuela Andreoni observed, “2023 was a year when climate 
change felt inescapable. Whether it was the raging wildfires in Canada, 
the orange skies in New York, the flash floods in Libya or the searing 
heat in China, the effects of our overheating planet were too severe to 
ignore. Not coincidentally, it was also a year when climate change 
started to feel ubiquitous in popular culture. Glossy TV shows, 
best-selling books, art exhibits and even pop music tackled the subject, 
often with the kind of nuance and creativity that can help us make sense 
of the world’s thorniest issues”.

Finally, January 2024 media stories featured several ecological and 
meteorological dimensions of climate change or global warming. For 
example, Wall Street Journal reporter Eric Niiler noted, “The record 
global temperatures that spawned heavy rainfall, disastrous floods and 
raging wildfires in 2023 will likely continue in 2024, according to the 
European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The service is the 
first analysis to declare—after months of speculation—that 2023 was the 
hottest year since record-keeping began in the mid-1800s. 2023’s global 
average temperature, the study found, was 14.98 degrees Celsius, or 
58.96 degrees Fahrenheit. That average was 1.48 degrees C, or 2.66 
degrees F, hotter than the preindustrial baseline, creeping ever closer 
to the 1.5 degrees C threshold the world’s nations have agreed to keep 
warming below to avoid the worst effects of climate change”. As a second 
example (among many), journalist Jonathan Chadwick from The Daily Mail 
reported, “Scientists have long suspected it but now it's official – 
2023 was the hottest year on record. Last year's global average 
temperature was 58.96°F (14.98°C), around 0.3°F (0.17°C) higher than the 
result in 2016, the previous hottest year, experts from the EU's 
Copernicus climate change programme (CS3) reveal. The scientists have 
already revealed that last summer was the hottest season on record, 
while July was the hottest month on record. Experts warn that global 
temperatures are now close to the 2.7°F (1.5°C) limit – and they point 
to greenhouse gas emissions as the cause. 2023 has already been dubbed 
the year Earth suffered the costliest climate disasters like droughts, 
floods, wildfires and lethal heatwaves, largely due to these emissions”.
Thanks for your interest in our Media and Climate Change Observatory 
(MeCCO) work monitoring media coverage of these intersecting dimensions 
and themes associated with climate change and global warming.
- report prepared by Max Boykoff, Rogelio Fernández-Reyes, Jennifer 
Katzung, Ami Nacu-Schmidt and Olivia Pearman
https://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/icecaps/research/media_coverage/summaries/issue85.html



/[The news archive -  ]/
/*February 7, 2007 and 2013 */

• The US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation holds 
a hearing on climate change research and scientific integrity, focusing 
on the George W. Bush administration's slicing and dicing of science and 
data. White House whistleblower Rick Piltz and Nobel laureate Sherwood 
Rowland testify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9vXi61G0MU CSW Director Rick Piltz 
Senate Hearing Testimony - February 7, 2007

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYDQD8AeORA Dr. F. Sherwood Rowland 
Senate Hearing Testimony - February 7, 2007

http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2007/02/07/senate-fireworks-on-climate-an/

http://scienceblogs.com/integrityofscience/2007/02/07/administration-testimony-one-o/

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/01/31/recalling-an-exchange-with-sen-john-kerry-about-climate-change-and-the-bush-white-house/

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/06/03/recalling-an-exchange-with-sen-lautenberg/



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