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The following article discuses various different destructive weather patterns that occur due to the rise of Climate Change and how they can be prevented.

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Extreme precipitation events have produced more rain and become more common since the 1950s in many regions of the world, including much of the United States. In the U.S., the Midwest and Northeast have seen the strongest increases in heavy precipitation events.

Scientists expect these trends to continue as the planet continues to warm. Warmer air can hold more water vapor. For each degree of warming, the air's capacity for water vapor goes up by about 7 percent. An atmosphere with more moisture can produce more intense precipitation events, which is exactly what has been observed.

Increases in heavy precipitation may not always lead to an increase in total precipitation over a season or over the year. Some climate models project a decrease in moderate rainfall, and an increase in the length of dry periods, which offsets the increased precipitation falling during heavy events.

Threats posed by heavy precipitation

The most immediate impact of heavy precipitation is the prospect of flooding. This risk can be heightened in urban areas where impervious pavements force water to quickly run off into sewer systems. Among recent examples:

In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey dumped 48 inches of rain on Houston, breaking the U.S. record for most rainfall from a single event and demonstrating that the biggest threat from tropical cyclones is not always coastal flooding and wind damage.

In July 2016, more than six inches of rain fell in two hours in historic Ellicott City, Maryland, causing more than $22 million in damages.

In September 2013, Boulder, Colorado, received almost a year's worth of rainfall (17 inches) in four days. The resulting flooding destroyed homes, shut down thousands of oil and gas wells, and damaged crops.

In 2010, almost 20 inches of rain fell in the Nashville, Tennessee, area over three days. Losses in Nashville alone totaled over $1 billion.

In addition to flooding, heavy precipitation also increases the risk of landslides. When above-normal precipitation raises the water table and saturates the ground, slopes can lose their stability, causing a landslide. Washington state, which has a particularly high risk of landslides due to its terrain, is anticipating more frequent landslides as a result of climate change-induced increases in heavy downpours.

Excessive precipitation can also degrade water quality, harming human health and ecosystems. Stormwater runoff, which often includes pollutants like heavy metals, pesticides, nitrogen, and phosphorus, can end up in lakes, streams, and bays, damaging aquatic ecosystems and lowering water quality for human uses.

Many cities in the United States use a combined sewer system, where both stormwater and wastewater are mixed, treated, and released. Heavy rainfall can overwhelm such systems, sending excess stormwater, wastewater, and untreated sewage directly into the environment, risking public health and disrupting local fisheries.

How to Build Resilience

Communities can reduce the impacts of heavy precipitation by:

Updating zoning regulations so that buildings and infrastructure are built on higher ground or in areas that are less prone to flooding.

Updating building codes and design guidelines to raise buildings.

Using flood control infrastructure, as was done, for example, by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy.

Limiting the use of non-permeable surfaces like pavement and concrete in developed areas, or replacing pavement with "green infrastructure" that can reduce runoff and flood risks during storms. (See the Hoboken, N.J., Solutions Story.)

Incentivizing actions to reduce flood risk, like those included in the National Flood Insurance Program Community Rating System.

Purchasing flood insurance to cover property losses and business disruptions.

Separating storm water systems from wastewater systems, using holding ponds, or increasing water treatment capacity to avoid sending untreated sewage into local waterways.

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Extreme Precipitation and Climate Change | Center for Climate and Energy Solutions

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Extreme precipitation events have produced more rain and become more common since the 1950s in many regions of the world, including much of the United States. In the U.S., the Midwest and Northeast have seen the strongest increases in heavy precipitation events. Scientists expect these trends to continue as the planet continues to warm.

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The Following article discuses the idea of Ocean Acidification, and how Sea Plants and Kelp can aide in the restoration of marine biology.

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Oregon's picturesque Netarts Bay has long been known for its oysters. But Netarts, like the whole west coast of North America, is getting more acidic. And the oysters don't like it.

Since the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide in the air has seeped into ocean waters and boosted acidity by 30 percent. Globally, the oceans' pH has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1, and could drop another 0.4 units by the end of the century. The problem is worse off the west coast of North America, where acidic bottom-waters are brought up to the surface by onshore winds. Corrosive waters like those suck up the building blocks for shells, and can literally eat away at the skeletons of corals.

Last summer, Oregon State University marine ecologist George Waldbusser and his team boated around Netarts Bay planting baby oysters to see how they would fare. The only ones that thrived were those protected by beds of eelgrass, which seemed to swallow up enough carbon dioxide during the peak of each day to give the oysters a break from acid and a window of opportunity for growth.

"Basically nothing outside of those beds survived," says Waldbusser, who hasn't yet published the work. Meanwhile, the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery in Netarts Bay has started only pulling water into their tanks in the afternoon, when photosynthesis peaks and the water is less acidic.

Waldbusser is part of a small team of scientists now exploring the idea that seagrasses, kelps, and shell beds might be able to counteract the rising tide of ocean acidity in local hot spots, making life a little easier for struggling animals. He and other experts on the West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel, which released its first report this April, recommended that scientists and managers push forward such strategies to suck CO2 out of the water.

The idea is a smaller, gentler cousin to grander schemes of geo-engineering. There have been proposals to soak up the ocean's excess acid by throwing iron, limestone, or olivine into the water, boosting plankton growth, adding the building blocks for shells, or chemically absorbing CO2. But the general response to such plans usually ranges from head-shaking disbelief that they might be feasible or effective, to widespread concern about the possible ecological side effects. The energy needed to mine and distribute rocks, and the unpredictable shift in food webs, have made these schemes unappealing on a global scale.

One study said seagrass meadows should give corals about an 18 percent boost in growth.

On the local scale, however, lower-cost, lower-risk ecological restoration might have the dual benefit of giving threatened sea creatures both a better place to live and a refuge from ocean acid.

Oysters would not be the only creatures to benefit. Derek Manzello manages a long-term ocean acidification monitoring site at Cheeca Rocks in the Florida Keys, as part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Coral Reef Monitoring Program. That particular patch of coral is one of the only reefs in the Florida Keys that is still growing; in other reefs, most corals have died from disease and bleaching since the early 1980s. This is odd because Cheeca Rocks, like other near-shore spots in Florida, sees high temperature swings and large amounts of soil and nutrients dumped into the water, which should limit coral growth. There are several possible explanations for Cheeca Rocks' resistance to these problematic conditions, including that the corals there might be genetically adapted to thrive in harsh conditions. But another possible explanation is that they are living in a low-acidity refuge created by nearby seagrass beds.

In 2012, Manzello showed that Florida's inshore waters, including where Cheeca Rocks sits, are packed with dissolved aragonite, the material that corals need to grow. Acids in the water decrease the aragonite saturation value; if it gets below 1, corals and shells start to dissolve. In pre-industrial times, these inshore waters typically had a saturation value of 4.6. Today, most reefs in Florida and the Caribbean have been eked down to 3.8. But Florida's inshore waters have a happy 4.7.

"This is a huge difference," says Manzello. The reason is the banks of seagrass growing in Florida's inshore waters, like turtle grass and manatee grass, that suck up CO2 as they photosynthesize - particularly in the spring.

Another study out that same year showed the same effect in the tropical Indo-Pacific. Seagrass meadows there have the potential to increase aragonite saturation by up to 2.9 units, and the pH by 0.38. That should give corals about an 18 percent boost in growth, making seagrass a potential tool for marine park managers, the authors write.

The potential is huge. Plants in the ocean, from seagrasses to plankton, add up to just 0.05 percent of the plant biomass on land, but are so pervasive and efficient at sucking up carbon that they cycle through roughly the same amount of carbon every day as all the land-based plants. Yet seagrass ecosystems are being wiped out, thanks to everything from pandemic disease to water pollution and coastal construction projects. The rate of loss has skyrocketed from less than 1 percent of global seagrass cover per year in the 1970s to 7 percent annually in the 2000s, making seagrasses one of the planet's most threatened ecosystems. Efforts to restore or farm such plants could have a host of benefits, including soaking up atmospheric carbon.

Waldbusser cautions that many scientists don't yet know about the effect of seagrasses on ocean chemistry. Some breeds, like the invasive Zostera japonica eelgrass in Oregon, tend to shed their leaves in the winter, and the degrading plant matter boosts carbon dioxide levels in the water rather than lowering them. And if the water is swift flowing, then any patches of water made less acidic by plants will likely be swept away before they have a chance to benefit local shellfish or corals.

Seagrasses aren't the only possible solution. Kelp is also well known for soaking up excess nutrients and making waters cleaner for shellfish. Most academic papers looking at the benefits of kelp don't even mention acidification. But it didn't take much for Nichole Price of the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science in Maine to put two and two together. "The biggest challenge in land-based kelp nurseries is keeping the pH low enough because they consume so much CO2," says Price, who wondered how those same photosynthetic algae were affecting ocean waters.

Price teamed up with Ocean Approved, North America's first commercial kelp farmer, to put instruments inside and outside of its kelp farms to see what was going on. In as-yet-unpublished work, they show that the aragonite saturation level is half a unit to a full unit higher within the kelp farm. "That's bigger than the change we expect from ocean acidification," she says. Next year they plan to map the extent of the impact, and test the effect of the kelp on a mussel farm around the corner. That farm, says Price, has already started growing kelp based on these preliminary results.

Researchers will soon start the first large-scale project to plant and grow kelp to suck up CO2.

The key, says Price, is to harvest the kelp so that the carbon it extracts gets removed from the ecosystem. It's hard to compete with Asian kelp suppliers, but local kelp could be dried and used as food or fertilizer, adding a layer of economic diversity to a struggling coastal economy. "There's a lot of potential for shellfish aquaculture, but people are really hesitant [because of acidification]," says Price, who now heads up Bigelow's Centers for Venture Research. Pairing up with seaweeds might be the trick to buy new businesses a bit of insurance against future conditions, she says.

This autumn, researchers will start the first large-scale project to intentionally plant and grow kelp to suck up carbon dioxide. The Puget Sound Restoration Fund, based in Bainbridge Island, Washington, won $1.5 million from the Paul G. Allen Ocean Challenge in April 2015 to investigate the potential for sugar kelp to reduce acidity in local waters, where the pH can hit 7.8. Plans call for starting farming an acre of kelp this October.

Ocean waters can be buffered against acids by non-living material, too. Instead of soaking up carbon dioxide, the strategy here is to add more carbonate to the water. That shifts the aragonite saturation point and, again, makes it easier for shells to grow.

Nearly every estuary that once had a thriving oyster industry hosts an effort to put old shells back into the water, says Waldbusser. Most, if not all, of these projects are focused on giving the oysters or other shellfish something to grow on - their babies prefer to sit on piles of old shells, rather than getting buried or choked by mud. The fact that these shells help to buffer water acidity is an added bonus.

The Chesapeake Bay, he notes, has seen the largest oyster reef restoration effort to date and also possibly the largest (and unintentional) ocean acidification buffering experiment. About 196 million bushels of dredged oyster shells were put back into Chesapeake Bay from 1960 until 2006, before the project coordinators ran low on shells. They're still about 100 million bushels short of where the Chesapeake's ecology would have been had oysters not been extracted for centuries, notes Waldbusser, and the effects on the bay's complex water chemistry have so far been hard to track. But that doesn't mean that shells can't shift pH significantly under different conditions.

In previous work off the coast of Maine, Waldbusser's team, led by Mark Green of Saint Joseph's College of Maine, mixed old ground-up shells with ocean sediments and replanted them. They then looked to see how that affected oysters. Three times as many oyster larvae settled in the shell-rich soils as in the non-shelled soils, they found. The reason, Waldbusser thinks, is because of a change in water acidity within the pores of the sediment.

"You have this incredibly hostile environment in the pore water, which is generally more acidic than the overlying water," says Waldbusser. "Mix shell in and it's a little less hostile."

Waldbusser is familiar with other proposed ways of shifting ocean pH. He wrote a proposal to use the waste CO2 emitted from a hatchery to dissolve calcium carbonate rocks and bubble the products back into the ocean, helping to buffer acidity in much the same way as is done in home aquariums. But it didn't get funded. "There are lots of technologies that exist and things you can do, but it comes back to scalability and unintended consequences," says Waldbusser. Using rocks to buffer ocean water, for example, involves using energy to treat the minerals beforehand so they dissolve, and then you have to worry about toxic levels of nickel or cadmium hitching a ride along with the rocks.

In the end, says Waldbusser, "I always come back to restoration." Replanting the seagrasses or shell banks that used to exist in an estuary is much safer, and often easier, than some industrial schemes. And, he adds, it probably comes with "built-in benefits that we don't even recognize."

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How Growing Sea Plants Can Help Slow Ocean Acidification

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Researchers are finding that kelp, eelgrass, and other vegetation can effectively absorb CO2 and reduce acidity in the ocean. Growing these plants in local waters, scientists say, could help mitigate the damaging impacts of acidification on marine life.

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The Following article discuses the dangerous health benefits caused by Ocean Acidification.

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Your access to the NCBI website at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov has been temporarily blocked due to a possible misuse/abuse situation involving your site. This is not an indication of a security issue such as a virus or attack. It could be something as simple as a run away script or learning how to better use E-utilities, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25497/, for more efficient work such that your work does not impact the ability of other researchers to also use our site. To restore access and understand how to better interact with our site to avoid this in the future, please have your system administrator contact info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

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Your access to the NCBI website at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov has been temporarily blocked due to a possible misuse/abuse situation involving your site. This is not an indication of a security issue such as a virus or attack.

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The Following article discuses the nature of Ocean Acidification, what it is, and how it affects Earth's marine biology.

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The Following article discuses the current deaths due to Climate Change on Earth.

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Directory of resources

The directory provides links to web-accessible resources in categories of relevance to policymaking. Links to climate change portals of UNEP/WHO and other UN agencies are in Section 9. Selected links to other organizations, e.g. academic/research institutes, government and civil society are in Section 10.

Policy brief

Since 1988, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reviewed scientific research, and provided governments with summaries and advice on climate problems. In its most recent report, the IPCC concludes that the average temperature of the earth's surface has risen by 0.6 °C since the late 1800s. It is expected to increase by another 1.4-5.8 °C by the year 2100 - a rapid and profound change. Even if the minimum predicted increase takes place, it will be larger than any century-long trend in the last 10 000 years. The principal reason for the global increase in temperatures is a century and a half of industrialization, with the burning of ever-greater quantities of oil, gasoline, and coal; the cutting of forests; and use of certain farming methods.

Climatic changes already are estimated to cause over 150,000 deaths annually.

That estimate includes deaths as a result of extreme weather conditions, which may be occurring with increased frequency. Changes in temperature and rainfall conditions also may influence transmission patterns for many diseases, including water-related diseases, such as diarrhoea, and vector-borne infections, including malaria. Finally, climate change may affect patterns of food production, which in turn can have health impacts in terms of rates of malnutrition. There is further evidence that unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions would increase disease burdens in the coming decades. The risks are concentrated in the poorest populations, who have contributed the least to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

Over a decade ago, most countries joined an international treaty - the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change - to begin to consider what can be done to reduce global warming and to cope with whatever temperature increases are inevitable.

In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol, which has more powerful (and legally binding) measures, was developed by governments as an addition to the treaty. This protocol came into force on 16 February 2005. The Kyoto Protocol is signed by 128 nations, and commits the participating industrialized countries to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by over 5% below 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012.

In addition to addressing the root causes of climate change, it is also important to take action to adapt to a changing climate. This includes actions that immediately improve the health of the poorest communities and also to reduce their vulnerability to climate change effects in the future.

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The directory provides links to web-accessible resources in categories of relevance to policymaking. Links to climate change portals of UNEP/WHO and other UN agencies are in Section 9. Selected links to other organizations, e.g. academic/research institutes, government and civil society are in Section 10.

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The Following is a list of Trump's quotes regrading Climate Change.

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9 Trump Quotes About Climate Change With Totally Random Photos

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"I'm an environmentalist. A lot of people don't understand that. I think I know more about the environment than most people." - Donald Trump, Aug. 26, 2019

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Rosen, J. (2017, February 09). Arctic 2.0: What Happens after All the Ice Goes?
The Following articles notes the key-points of Glacier-melt, and it's affects on the Ocean.

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As the Arctic slipped into the half-darkness of autumn last year, it seemed to enter the Twilight Zone. In the span of a few months, all manner of strange things happened.

The cap of sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean started to shrink when it should have been growing. Temperatures at the North Pole soared more than 20 °C above normal at times. And polar bears prowling the shorelines of Hudson Bay had a record number of run-ins with people while waiting for the water to freeze over.

It was a stark illustration of just how quickly climate change is reshaping the far north. And if last autumn was bizarre, it's the summers that have really got scientists worried. As early as 2030, researchers say, the Arctic Ocean could lose essentially all of its ice during the warmest months of the year-a radical transformation that would upend Arctic ecosystems and disrupt many northern communities.

Change will spill beyond the region, too. An increasingly blue Arctic Ocean could amplify warming trends and even scramble weather patterns around the globe. "It's not just that we're talking about polar bears or seals," says Julienne Stroeve, a sea-ice researcher at University College London. "We all are ice-dependent species."

With the prospect of ice-free Arctic summers on the horizon, scientists are striving to understand how residents of the north will fare, which animals face the biggest risks and whether nations could save them by protecting small icy refuges.

But as some researchers look even further into the future, they see reasons to preserve hope. If society ever manages to reverse the surge in greenhouse-gas concentrations-as some suspect it ultimately will-then the same physics that makes it easy for Arctic sea ice to melt rapidly may also allow it to regrow, says Stephanie Pfirman, a sea-ice researcher at Barnard College in New York City.

She and other scientists say that it's time to look beyond the Arctic's decline and start thinking about what it would take to restore sea ice. That raises controversial questions about how quickly summer ice could return and whether it could regrow fast enough to spare Arctic species. Could nations even cool the climate quickly through geoengineering, to reverse the most drastic changes up north?

Pfirman and her colleagues published a paper last year designed to kick-start a broader conversation about how countries might plan for the regrowth of ice, and whether they would welcome it. Only by considering all the possibilities for the far future can the world stay one step ahead of the ever-changing Arctic, say scientists. "We've committed to the Arctic of the next generation," Pfirman says. "What comes next?"

Blue period

Pfirman remembers the first time she realized just how fast the Arctic was unravelling. It was September 2007, and she was preparing to give a talk. She went online to download the latest sea-ice maps and discovered something disturbing: the extent of Arctic ice had shrunk past the record minimum and was still dropping. "Oh, no! It's happening," she thought.

Although Pfirman and others knew that Arctic sea ice was shrinking, they hadn't expected to see such extreme ice losses until the middle of the twenty-first century. "It was a wake-up call that we had basically run out of time," she says.

In theory, there's still a chance that the world could prevent the total loss of summer sea ice. Global climate models suggest that about 3 million square kilometres-roughly half of the minimum summer coverage in recent decades-could survive if countries fulfil their commitments to the newly ratified Paris climate agreement, which limits global warming to 2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures.

But sea-ice researchers aren't counting on that. Models have consistently underestimated ice losses in the past, causing scientists to worry that the declines in the next few decades will outpace projections. And given the limited commitments that countries have made so far to address climate change, many researchers suspect the world will overshoot the 2 °C target, all but guaranteeing essentially ice-free summers (winter ice is projected to persist for much longer).

In the best-case scenario, the Arctic is in for a 4-5 °C temperature rise, thanks to processes that amplify warming at high latitudes, says James Overland, an oceanographer at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle, Washington. "We really don't have any clue about how disruptive that's going to be."

The Arctic's 4 million residents-including 400,000 indigenous people-will feel the most direct effects of ice loss. Entire coastal communities, such as many in Alaska, will be forced to relocate as permafrost melts and shorelines crumble without sea ice to buffer them from violent storms, according to a 2013 report by the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. Residents in Greenland will find it hard to travel on sea ice, and reindeer herders in Siberia could struggle to feed their animals. At the same time, new economic opportunities will beckon as open water allows greater access to fishing grounds, oil and gas deposits, and other sources of revenue.

People living at mid-latitudes may not be immune, either. Emerging research suggests that open water in the Arctic might have helped to amplify weather events, such as cold snaps in the United States, Europe and Asia in recent winters.

Indeed, the impacts could reach around the globe. That's because sea ice helps to cool the planet by reflecting sunlight and preventing the Arctic Ocean from absorbing heat. Keeping local air and water temperatures low, in turn, limits melting of the Greenland ice sheet and permafrost. With summer ice gone, Greenland's glaciers could contribute more to sea-level rise, and permafrost could release its stores of greenhouse gases such as methane. Such is the vast influence of Arctic ice.

"It is really the tail that wags the dog of global climate," says Brenda Ekwurzel, director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

But Arctic ecosystems will take the biggest hit. In 2007, for example, biologists in Alaska noticed something odd: vast numbers of walruses had clambered ashore on the coast of the Chukchi Sea. From above, it looked like the Woodstock music festival-with tusks-as thousands of plump pinnipeds crowded swathes of ice-free shoreline.

Normally, walruses rest atop sea ice while foraging on the shallow sea floor. But that year, and almost every year since, sea-ice retreat made that impossible by late summer. Pacific walruses have adapted by hauling out on land, but scientists with the US Fish and Wildlife Service worry that their numbers will continue to decline. Here and across the region, the effects of Arctic thawing will ripple through ecosystems.

In the ocean, photosynthetic plankton that thrive in open water will replace algae that grow on ice. Some models suggest that biological productivity in a seasonally ice-free Arctic could increase by up to 70% by 2100, which could boost revenue from Arctic fisheries even more. (To prevent a seafood gold rush, five Arctic nations have agreed to refrain from unregulated fishing in international waters for now.) Many whales already seem to be benefiting from the bounty of food, says Sue Moore, an Arctic mammal specialist at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory.

But the changing Arctic will pose a challenge for species whose life cycles are intimately linked to sea ice, such as walruses and Arctic seals-as well as polar bears, which don't have much to eat on land. Research suggests that many will starve if the ice-free season gets too long in much of the Arctic. "Basically, you can write off most of the southern populations," says Andrew Derocher, a biologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Such findings spurred the US Fish and Wildlife Service to list polar bears as threatened in 2008.

The last of the ice

Ice-dependent ecosystems may survive for longest along the rugged north shores of Greenland and Canada, where models suggest that about half a million square kilometres of summer sea ice will linger after the rest of the Arctic opens up. Wind patterns cause ice to pile up there, and the thickness of the ice-along with the high latitude-helps prevent it from melting. "The Siberian coastlines are the ice factory, and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago is the ice graveyard," says Robert Newton, an oceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York.

Groups such as the wildlife charity WWF have proposed protecting this 'last ice area' as a World Heritage Site in the hope that it will serve as a life preserver for many Arctic species. Last December, Canada announced that it would at least consider setting the area aside for conservation, and indigenous groups have expressed interest in helping to manage it. (Before he left office, then-US president Barack Obama joined Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in pledging to protect 17% of the countries' Arctic lands and 10% of marine areas by 2020.)

But the last ice area has limitations as an Arctic Noah's ark. Some species don't live in the region, and those that do are there in only small numbers. Derocher estimates that there are less than 2,000 polar bears in that last ice area today-a fraction of the total Arctic population of roughly 25,000. How many bears will live there in the future depends on how the ecosystem evolves with warming.

The area may also be more vulnerable than global climate models suggest. Bruno Tremblay, a sea-ice researcher at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and David Huard, an independent climate consultant based in Quebec, Canada, studied the fate of the refuge with a high-resolution sea-ice and ocean model that better represented the narrow channels between the islands of the Canadian archipelago.

In a report commissioned by the WWF, they found that ice might actually be able to sneak between the islands and flow south to latitudes where it would melt. According to the model, Tremblay says, "even the last ice area gets flushed out much more efficiently".

If the future of the Arctic seems dire, there is one source of optimism: summer sea ice will return whenever the planet cools down again. "It's not this irreversible process," Stroeve says. "You could bring it back even if you lose it all."

Unlike land-based ice sheets, which wax and wane over millennia and lag behind climate changes by similar spans, sea ice will regrow as soon as summer temperatures get cold enough. But identifying the exact threshold at which sea ice will return is tricky, says Dirk Notz, a sea-ice researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany. On the basis of model projections, researchers suggest that the threshold hovers around 450 parts per million (p.p.m.)-some 50 p.p.m. higher than today. But greenhouse-gas concentrations are not the only factor that affects ice regrowth; it also depends on how long the region has been ice-free in summer, which determines how much heat can build up in the Arctic Ocean.

Notz and his colleagues studied the interplay between greenhouse gases and ocean temperature with a global climate model. They increased CO ₂ from pre-industrial concentrations of 280 p.p.m. to 1,100 p.p.m.-a bit more than the 1,000 p.p.m. projected by 2100 if no major action is taken to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions. Then they left it at those levels for millennia.

This obliterated both winter and summer sea ice, and allowed the ocean to warm up. The researchers then reduced CO ₂ concentrations to levels at which summer ice should have returned, but it did not regrow until the ocean had a chance to cool off, which took centuries.

By contrast, if the Arctic experiences ice-free summers for a relatively short time before greenhouse gases drop, then models suggest ice would regrow much sooner. That could theoretically start to happen by the end of the century, assuming that nations take very aggressive steps to reduce carbon dioxide levels, according to Newton, Pfirman and their colleagues. So even if society cannot forestall the loss of summer sea ice in coming decades, taking action to keep CO ₂ concentrations under control could still make it easier to regrow the ice cover later, Notz says.

Global cooling

Given the stakes, some researchers have proposed global-scale geoengineering to cool the planet and, by extension, preserve or restore ice. Others argue that it might be possible to chill just the north, for instance by artificially whitening the Arctic Ocean with light-coloured floating particles to reflect sunlight. A study this year suggested installing wind-powered pumps to bring water to the surface in winter, where it would freeze, forming thicker ice.

But many researchers hesitate to embrace geoengineering. And most agree that regional efforts would take tremendous effort and have limited benefits, given that Earth's circulation systems could just bring more heat north to compensate. "It's kind of like walking against a conveyor the wrong way," Pfirman says. She and others agree that managing greenhouse gases-and local pollutants such as black carbon from shipping-is the only long-term solution.

Returning to a world with summer sea ice could have big perks, such as restoring some of the climate services that the Arctic provides to the globe and stabilizing weather patterns. And in the region itself, restoring a white Arctic could offer relief to polar bears and other ice-dependent species, says Pfirman. These creatures might be able to weather a relatively short ice-free window, hunkered down in either the last ice area or other places set aside to preserve biodiversity. When the ice returned, they could spread out again to repopulate the Arctic.

That has almost certainly happened during past climate changes. For instance, researchers think the Arctic may have experienced nearly ice-free summers during the last interglacial period, 130,000 years ago.

But, one thing is certain: getting back to a world with Arctic summer sea ice won't be simple, politically or technically. Not everyone will embrace a return to an ice-covered Arctic, especially if it's been blue for several generations. Companies and countries are already eyeing the opportunities for oil and gas exploration, mining, shipping, tourism and fishing in a region hungry for economic development. "In many communities, people are split," Pfirman says.

Some researchers also say that the idea of regrowing sea ice seems like wishful thinking, because it would require efforts well beyond what nations must do to meet the Paris agreement. Limiting warming to 2 °C will probably entail converting huge swathes of land into forest and using still-nascent technologies to suck billions of tonnes of CO ₂ out of the air. Lowering greenhouse-gas concentrations enough to regrow ice would demand even more.

And if summer sea ice ever does come back, it's hard to know how a remade Arctic would work, Derocher says. "There will be an ecosystem. It will function. It just may not look like the one we currently have."
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on February 8, 2017.

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Arctic 2.0: What Happens after All the Ice Goes?

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As the Arctic slipped into the half-darkness of autumn last year, it seemed to enter the Twilight Zone. In the span of a few months, all manner of strange things happened. The cap of sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean started to shrink when it should have been growing.

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Tabuchi, H., & Fountain, H. (2017, June 02). Bucking Trump, These Cities, States and Companies Commit to Paris Accord.
The Following articles state the relationship between Corporations and Climate Change.

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A bus-only lane in New York City. Michael Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York, is coordinating a group of politicians, academics and businesses that is committed to the Paris climate accord despite President Trump's decision to withdraw from the agreement. Credit... Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Representatives of American cities, states and companies are preparing to submit a plan to the United Nations pledging to meet the United States' greenhouse gas emissions targets under the Paris climate accord, despite President Trump's decision to withdraw from the agreement.

The unnamed group - which, so far, includes 30 mayors, three governors, more than 80 university presidents and more than 100 businesses - is negotiating with the United Nations to have its submission accepted alongside contributions to the Paris climate deal by other nations.

"We're going to do everything America would have done if it had stayed committed," Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is coordinating the effort, said in an interview.

By redoubling their climate efforts, he said, cities, states and corporations could achieve, or even surpass, the pledge of the administration of former President Barack Obama to reduce America's planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent by 2025, from their levels in 2005.

It was unclear how, exactly, that submission to the United Nations would take place. Christiana Figueres, a former top United Nations climate official, said there was currently no formal mechanism for entities that were not countries to be full parties to the Paris accord.

Ms. Figueres, who described the Trump administration's decision to withdraw as a "vacuous political melodrama," said the American government was required to continue reporting its emissions to the United Nations because a formal withdrawal would not take place for several years.

But Ms. Figueres, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change until last year, said the Bloomberg group's submission could be included in future reports the United Nations compiled on the progress made by the signatories of the Paris deal.

There are 195 countries committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions as part of the 2015 agreement.

Still, producing what Mr. Bloomberg described as a "parallel" pledge would indicate that leadership in the fight against climate change in the United States had shifted from the federal government to lower levels of government, academia and industry.

Mr. Bloomberg, a United Nations envoy on climate, is a political independent who has been among the critics of Mr. Trump's climate and energy policies.

Mayors of cities including Los Angeles, Atlanta and Salt Lake City have signed on - along with Pittsburgh, which Mr. Trump mentioned in his speech announcing the withdrawal - as have Hewlett-Packard, Mars and dozens of other companies.

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Paris City Hall was illuminated in green on Thursday in opposition to President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. Buildings in New York City, Boston and elsewhere around the world joined in. Credit... Christophe Petit Tesson/European Pressphoto Agency

Eighty-two presidents and chancellors of universities including Emory & Henry College, Brandeis and Wesleyan are also participating, the organizers said.

Mr. Trump's plan to pull out of the Paris agreement was motivating more local and state governments, as well as businesses, to commit to the climate change fight, said Robert C. Orr, one of the architects of the 2015 Paris agreement as the United Nations secretary-general's lead climate adviser.

On Thursday, Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Gov. Jerry Brown of California, all Democrats, said they were beginning a separate alliance of states committed to upholding the Paris accord.

"The electric jolt of the last 48 hours is accelerating this process that was already underway," said Mr. Orr, who is now dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. "It's not just the volume of actors that is increasing, it's that they are starting to coordinate in a much more integral way."

The United States is about halfway to its 2025 emissions reduction target, Mr. Orr said. Of the remaining reductions, the federal government - through regulations like gas mileage standards for vehicles - could affect about half.

But in a draft letter to António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, Mr. Bloomberg expressed confidence that "non-national actors" could achieve the 2025 goal alone.

"While the executive branch of the U.S. government speaks on behalf of our nation in matters of foreign affairs, it does not determine many aspects of whether and how the United States takes action on climate change," he wrote.

"The bulk of the decisions which drive U.S. climate action in the aggregate are made by cities, states, businesses, and civil society," he wrote. "Collectively, these actors remain committed to the Paris accord."

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President Trump railed against China, India and other international polluters at an address in which he announced the United States' withdrawal from the Paris climate accord. Credit Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times

Cities and states can reduce emissions in many ways, including negotiating contracts with local utilities to supply greater amounts of renewable energy, building rapid transit programs and other infrastructure projects like improved wastewater treatment. Similarly, corporations can take measures like buying renewable energy for their offices and factories, or making sure their supply chains are climate-friendly.

Governor Inslee said that states held significant sway over emissions. Washington, for example, has adopted a cap on carbon pollution, has invested in growing clean energy jobs and subsidizes electric vehicle purchases and charging stations.

"Our states will move forward, even if the president wants to go backward," he said in a telephone interview.

America's biggest corporations have been bracing for the United States to exit from the Paris climate accord, a move executives and analysts say would bring few tangible benefits to businesses - but plenty of backlash.

A customer at a Citi Bike station in Brooklyn in December. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and two other governors are starting a separate alliance of states committed to upholding the Paris accord. Credit... Bryan Thomas for The New York Times

Multinational companies will still need to follow ever-stricter emissions laws that other countries are adopting, no matter the location of their headquarters. Automakers like Ford Motor and General Motors would still need to build cars that meet stringent fuel economy and emissions standards in the European Union, Japan and even China, not to mention California.

American companies also face the wrath of overseas consumers for abandoning what has been a popular global agreement - customers who could buy more Renaults instead of Chevrolets or Reeboks instead of Nikes.

"Pulling out of Paris would be the worst thing for brand America since Abu Ghraib," said Nigel Purvis, a top environmental negotiator in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and the chief executive of Climate Advisers, a consulting firm.

"Mars stands by the Paris Climate Agreement," said Grant Reid, the chief executive of Mars. The company, best known for its candies, remained committed, he said, to achieving "the carbon reduction targets the planet needs."

It was unclear from Mr. Trump's announcement what commitments the United States would honor in the Paris accord, which include contributions to the operating budget of the accord's coordinating agency, the framework convention.

But Bloomberg Philanthropies, Mr. Bloomberg's charitable organization, is offering to donate $14 million over the next two years to help fund the budget should it be needed, a spokeswoman said. That figure represents the United States' share, she said.

Jackie Biskupski, the mayor of Salt Lake City and a Democrat, said her administration had recently brokered an agreement with the local utility to power the city with 100 percent renewable energy by 2032.

Global warming is having a significant impact in Utah, she said, especially on water availability and quality. "We feel very strongly that we have an obligation to make sure we keep moving in the right direction on this issue," she said.

"We really have to make choices that reflect our long-term goals, that really address long-term issues of today," she added.

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Bucking Trump, These Cities, States and Companies Commit to Paris Accord (Published 2017)

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Representatives of American cities, states and companies are preparing to submit a plan to the United Nations pledging to meet the United States' greenhouse gas emissions targets under the Paris climate accord, despite President Trump's decision to withdraw from the agreement.

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Scientists: Strong evidence that human-caused climate change intensified 2015 heat waves. (2016, December 15).
The Following article shows real-life examples of Climate Change, how it affects our world today. This article also helps show the idea of Oceans overflowing.

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Human-caused climate change very likely increased the severity of heat waves that plagued India, Pakistan, Europe, East Africa, East Asia, and Australia in 2015 and helped make it the warmest year on record, according to new research published today in a special edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

The fifth edition of Explaining Extreme Events from a Climate Perspectiveoffsite link presents 25 peer-reviewed research papers that examine episodes of extreme weather of 2015 over five continents and two oceans. It features the research of 116 scientists from 18 countries analyzing both historical observations and changing trends along with model results to determine whether and how climate change may have influenced the event.

Evidence for human-influenced climate change was identified for:

Ten extreme heat events, including heat waves in Europe, India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Japan, and Australia

The record average global temperature in 2015

Record-low Arctic sea ice in March

Alaska's intense wildfire season

Extreme drought in southwestern Canada

Extreme May rainfall in southeast China

Florida's "sunny day" flood in September

Record winter sunshine in the United Kingdom

No climate change signal was found for:

Outbreaks of extreme cold in the eastern US and Canada

The late onset of Nigeria's spring rainy season

Heavy daily precipitation in December over Chennai, India

The strongest evidence for a human influence was found for temperature-related events --- the increased intensity of numerous heat waves, diminished snowpack in the Cascades, record-low Arctic sea ice extent in March and the extraordinary extent and duration of Alaska wildfires.

"After five years of the BAMS Explaining Extreme Events report, we're seeing mounting evidence that climate change is making heat waves more extreme in many regions around the world," said lead editor Stephanie C. Herring, a scientist with NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. "As we get better at distinguishing the influence of climate change from natural variability, the local significance and impacts of this global phenomenon are becoming clearer."
Evidence of climate change in 2015 flooding, fires - and sunshine
Numerous other events of 2015 were made more extreme by climate change, the report found. The probability of "sunny day" tidal flooding events in the Miami area, like the one that inundated coastal areas that September, has risen 500 percent since 1994, according to one study. Human-induced climate change likely contributed to the record high intensity of west North Pacific typhoons and the record amount of winter sunshine in the United Kingdom.

But researchers found no evidence of an overall climate change signal in the delayed onset of the Nigerian spring rainy season or in the extreme daily rainfall totals that inundated Chennai, India in December. There was likewise no evidence that the extreme cold winter conditions over the northeast United States in 2015 were made more likely by human-induced climate change.
Lessons learned over the past five years
More than 100 papers examining extreme events have been accepted for publication in this special report since its inaugural issue in 2012. These studies take a place-based and event-specific approach to identifying the role of climate change, and answer the question of how much a particular recent event's likelihood of recurrence or intensity has changed relative to the past.

While there's mounting evidence in the role of climate change in amplifying the severity of heat waves, evidence of a climate change signal has not been found in a majority of extreme precipitation studies published in this special edition, Herring said.

However, she cautioned that the lack of clear evidence of a climate signal did not necessarily mean climate change played no role in an event. A "null" result could mean the event fell within the bounds of natural variability. It could also mean that the framing of the research question or the method of analysis chosen requires further refinement and development.
Identifying analytical methods that work better than others
Contributing authors choose the event they wish to study, so the new studies are neither a random sample nor a comprehensive survey of extreme weather events. They do illustrate how various methods can be applied to extreme event analysis, she said, and in cases where multiple groups look at the same event, the relative skill of different approaches can be compared.

"With this report, we continue to document scientists' growing ability to identify how climate change influences today's weather," said Jeff Rosenfeld, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, which independently conducts the peer reviews for studies included in this special report. "These accessible and brief papers show the scientific community and the public that once seemingly impossible insights about climate impacts are now within the capability of timely, rigorous science."

Five NOAA scientists served as editors of Explaining Extreme Events of 2015 from a Climate Perspective: Herring, James Kossin, and Carl Schreck III of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information along with Martin P. Hoerling and Andrew Hoell with NOAA's Earth Systems Research Laboratory. Peter A. Stott with the UK Met Office Hadley Centre also served as an editor.
For additional information:
View the full report onlineoffsite link .
Visit the Climate.gov Q&A on extreme event attribution.
Explore the NCEI webstory on extreme events of 2015.

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Scientists: Strong evidence that human-caused climate change intensified 2015 heat waves

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Human-caused climate change very likely increased the severity of heat waves that plagued India, Pakistan, Europe, East Africa, East Asia, and Australia in 2015 and helped make it the warmest year on record, according to new research published today in a special edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

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Treat, J. (2017, September 18). What the World Would Look Like if All the Ice Melted.
The Following article helps depict what the Earth would look like in the future due to Global Warming's effect on the Glacier-melt.

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This story appears in the September 2013 issue ofNational Geographic magazine.

The maps here show the world as it is now, with only one difference: All the ice on land has melted and drained into the sea, raising it 216 feet and creating new shorelines for our continents and inland seas.

There are more than five million cubic miles of ice on Earth, and some scientists say it would take more than 5,000 years to melt it all. If we continue adding carbon to the atmosphere, we'll very likely create an ice-free planet, with an average temperature of perhaps 80 degrees Fahrenheit instead of the current 58.

North America

The entire Atlantic seaboard would vanish, along with Florida and the Gulf Coast. In California, San Francisco's hills would become a cluster of islands and the Central Valley a giant bay. The Gulf of California would stretch north past the latitude of San Diego-not that there'd be a San Diego.

South America

The Amazon Basin in the north and the Paraguay River Basin in the south would become Atlantic inlets, wiping out Buenos Aires, coastal Uruguay, and most of Paraguay. Mountainous stretches would survive along the Caribbean coast and in Central America.

Compared with other continents, Africa would lose less of its land to the ultimate sea-level catastrophe, but Earth's rising heat might make much of it uninhabitable. In Egypt, Alexandria and Cairo will be swamped by the intruding Mediterranean.

London? A memory. Venice? Reclaimed by the Adriatic Sea. Thousands of years from now, in this catastrophic scenario, the Netherlands will have long since surrendered to the sea, and most of Denmark will be gone too. Meanwhile, the Mediterranean's expanding waters will also have swelled the Black and Caspian Seas.

Land now inhabited by 600 million Chinese would flood, as would all of Bangladesh, population 160 million, and much of coastal India. The inundation of the Mekong Delta would leave Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains stranded as an island.

Predominantly desert, the continent would gain a new inland sea-but it would lose much of the narrow coastal strip where four out of five Australians now live.

Antarctica

East Antarctica: The East Antarctica ice sheet is so large-it contains four-fifths of all the ice on Earth-that it might seem unmeltable. It survived earlier warm periods intact. Lately it seems to be thickening slightly-because of global warming. The warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, which falls as snow on East Antarctica. But even this behemoth is unlikely to survive a return to an Eocene Climate.

West Antarctica: Like the Greenland ice sheet, the West Antarctic one was apparently much smaller during earlier warm periods. It's vulnerable because most of it sits on bedrock that's below sea level.The warming ocean is melting the floating ice sheet itself from below, causing it to collapse. Since 1992 it has averaged a net loss of 65 million metric tons of ice a year.

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What the World Would Look Like if All the Ice Melted

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This story appears in the September 2013 issue ofNational Geographic magazine. The maps here show the world as it is now, with only one difference: All the ice on land has melted and drained into the sea, raising it 216 feet and creating new shorelines for our continents and inland seas.

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Gillis, J. (2017, July 6). Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change.
The Following article helps illustrate the current state of Climate Change, where we are, and how far along we have left before it's too late.

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The Science of Climate Change Explained: Facts, Evidence and Proof

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Definitive answers to the big questions.

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Lynch, P. (2011, December 14). Secrets from the past point to rapid climate change in the future – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet.
The following article showcases how NASA believes Climate Change will be impacted in the future based on events that have taken place in the past.

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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New research into the Earth's paleoclimate history by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James Hansen suggests the potential for rapid climate changes this century, including multiple meters of sea level rise, if global warming is not abated.

By looking at how the Earth's climate responded to past natural changes, Hansen sought insight into a fundamental question raised by ongoing human-caused climate change: "What is the dangerous level of global warming?" Some international leaders have suggested a goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial times in order to avert catastrophic change. But Hansen said at a press briefing at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco recently that a warming of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would lead to drastic changes, such as significant ice sheet loss in Greenland and Antarctica.

Based on Hansen's temperature analysis work at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the Earth's average global surface temperature has already risen 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1880, and is now warming at a rate of more than 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.2 degrees Fahrenheit) every decade. This warming is largely driven by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide, emitted by the burning of fossil fuels at power plants, by cars and by industry. At the current rate of fossil fuel burning, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will have doubled from pre-industrial times by the middle of this century. A doubling of carbon dioxide would cause an eventual warming of several degrees, Hansen said.

In recent research, Hansen and co-author Makiko Sato, also of Goddard Institute for Space Studies, compared the climate of today, the "Holocene", with previous similar "interglacial" epochs - periods when polar ice caps existed but the world was not dominated by glaciers. In studying cores drilled from both ice sheets and deep ocean sediments, Hansen found that global mean temperatures during the "Eemian" period, which began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 15,000 years, were less than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than today. If temperatures were to rise two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times, global mean temperature would far exceed that of the Eemian, when sea level was four to six meters higher than today, Hansen said.

The average global surface temperature of Earth has risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1880, and is now increasing at a rate of about 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.2 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. This image shows how 2010 temperatures compare to average temperatures from a baseline period of 1951-1980, as analyzed by scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Credit: NASA GISS.

"The paleoclimate record reveals a more sensitive climate than thought, even as of a few years ago. Limiting human-caused warming to two degrees [Celsius] is not sufficient," Hansen said. "It would be a prescription for disaster."

Hansen focused much of his new work on how the polar regions and in particular the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland will react to a warming world.

Two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming would make Earth much warmer than during the Eemian, and would move Earth closer to "Pliocene"-like conditions, when sea level was in the range of 25 meters (82 feet) higher than today, Hansen said. In using Earth's climate history to learn more about the level of sensitivity that governs our planet's response to warming today, Hansen said the paleoclimate record suggests that every degree Celsius of global temperature rise will ultimately equate to 20 meters (66 feet) of sea level rise. However, that sea level increase due to ice sheet loss would be expected to occur over centuries, and large uncertainties remain in predicting how that ice loss would unfold.

Hansen notes that ice sheet disintegration will not be a linear process. This non-linear deterioration has already been seen in vulnerable places such as Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica, where the rate of ice mass loss has continued accelerating over the past decade. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite is already consistent with a rate of ice sheet mass loss in Greenland and West Antarctica that doubles every ten years. The GRACE record is too short to confirm this with great certainty; however, the trend in the past few years does not rule it out, Hansen said. This continued rate of ice loss could cause multiple meters of sea level rise by 2100, Hansen said.

Ice and ocean sediment cores from the polar regions indicate that temperatures at the poles during previous epochs - when sea level was tens of meters higher - is not too far removed from the temperatures Earth could reach this century on a "business as usual" trajectory.

"We don't have a substantial cushion between today's climate and dangerous warming," Hansen said. "Earth is poised to experience strong amplifying feedbacks in response to moderate additional global warming."

Detailed considerations of a new warming target and how to get there are beyond the scope of this research, Hansen said. But this research is consistent with Hansen's earlier findings that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would need to be rolled back from about 390 parts per million in the atmosphere today to 350 parts per million in order to stabilize the climate in the long term. While leaders continue to discuss a framework for reducing emissions, global carbon dioxide emissions have remained stable or increased in recent years.

Hansen and others noted that while the paleoclimate evidence paints a clear picture of what Earth's earlier climate looked like, but that using it to predict precisely how the climate might change on much smaller timescales in response to human-induced rather than natural climate change remains difficult. But, Hansen noted, the Earth system is already showing signs of responding, even in the cases of "slow feedbacks" such as ice sheet changes.

The human-caused release of increased carbon dioxide into the atmosphere also presents climate scientists with something they've never seen in the 65 million year record of carbon dioxide levels - a drastic rate of increase that makes it difficult to predict how rapidly the Earth will respond. In periods when carbon dioxide has increased due to natural causes, the rate of increase averaged about 0.0001 parts per million per year - in other words, one hundred parts per million every million years. Fossil fuel burning is now causing carbon dioxide concentrations to increase at two parts per million per year.

"Humans have overwhelmed the natural, slow changes that occur on geologic timescales," Hansen said.

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national aeronautics and space administration

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Secrets from the past point to rapid climate change in the future - Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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New research into the Earth's paleoclimate history by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James Hansen suggests the potential for rapid climate changes this century, including multiple meters of sea level rise, if global warming is not abated.

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Gills, B. (n.d.). Questions About Climate Change.
The following article helps to predict the result of humanities future if Global Warming isn't handled correctly.

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The issue can be overwhelming. The science is complicated. Predictions about the fate of the planet carry endless caveats and asterisks.

We get it.

And so, as the Paris climate talks get underway, we've provided quick answers to often-asked questions about climate change. You can submit your own questions here.
1. How much is the planet heating up?
1.7 degrees is actually a significant amount.

As of this October, the Earth had warmed by about 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880, when tracking began at a global scale. That figure includes the surface of the ocean. The warming is greater over land, and greater still in the Arctic and parts of Antarctica.

The number may sound low, but as an average over the surface of an entire planet, it is actually high, which explains why much of the land ice on the planet is starting to melt and the oceans are rising at an accelerating pace. The heat accumulating in the Earth because of human emissions is roughly equal to the heat that would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs exploding across the planet every day.

Scientists believe most and probably all of the warming since 1950 was caused by the human release of greenhouse gases. If emissions continue unchecked, they say the global warming could ultimately exceed 8 degrees Fahrenheit, which would transform the planet and undermine its capacity to support a large human population.
2. How much trouble are we in?
For future generations, big trouble.

The risks are much greater over the long run than over the next few decades, but the emissions that create those risks are happening now. Over the coming 25 or 30 years, scientists say, the climate is likely to resemble that of today, although gradually getting warmer. Rainfall will be heavier in many parts of the world, but the periods between rains will most likely grow hotter and therefore drier. The number of hurricanes and typhoons may actually fall, but the ones that do occur will draw energy from a hotter ocean surface, and therefore may be more intense, on average, than those of the past. Coastal flooding will grow more frequent and damaging.

Longer term, if emissions continue to rise unchecked, the risks are profound. Scientists fear climate effects so severe that they might destabilize governments, produce waves of refugees, precipitate the sixth mass extinction of plants and animals in Earth's history, and melt the polar ice caps, causing the seas to rise high enough to flood most of the world's coastal cities.

All of this could take hundreds or even thousands of years to play out, conceivably providing a cushion of time for civilization to adjust, but experts cannot rule out abrupt changes, such as a collapse of agriculture, that would throw society into chaos much sooner. Bolder efforts to limit emissions would reduce these risks, or at least slow the effects, but it is already too late to eliminate the risks entirely.
3. Is there anything I can do?
Fly less, drive less, waste less.

There are lots of simple ways to reduce your own carbon footprint, and most of them will save you money. You can plug leaks in your home insulation to save power, install a smart thermostat, switch to more efficient light bulbs, turn off the lights in any room where you are not using them, drive fewer miles by consolidating trips or taking public transit, waste less food, and eat less meat.

Perhaps the biggest single thing individuals can do on their own is to take fewer airplane trips; just one or two fewer plane rides per year can save as much in emissions as all the other actions combined. If you want to be at the cutting edge, you can look at buying an electric or hybrid car, putting solar panels on your roof, or both.

If you want to offset your emissions, you can buy certificates, with the money going to projects that protect forests, capture greenhouse gases and so forth. Some airlines sell these to offset emissions from their flights, and after some scandals in the early days, they started to scrutinize the projects closely, so the offsets can now be bought in good conscience. You can also buy offset certificates in a private marketplace, from companies such as TerraPass in San Francisco that follow strict rules set up by the state of California; some people even give these as holiday gifts. Yet another way: In states that allow you to choose your own electricity supplier, you can often elect to buy green electricity; you pay slightly more, with the money going into a fund that helps finance projects like wind farms.

In the end, though, experts do not believe the needed transformation in the energy system can happen without strong state and national policies. So speaking up and exercising your rights as a citizen matters as much as anything else you can do.
4. What's the optimistic scenario?
Several things have to break our way.

In the best case that scientists can imagine, several things happen: Earth turns out to be less sensitive to greenhouse gases than currently believed; plants and animals manage to adapt to the changes that have already become inevitable; human society develops much greater political will to bring emissions under control; and major technological breakthroughs occur that help society both to limit emissions and to adjust to climate change.

The two human-influenced variables are not entirely independent, of course: Technological breakthroughs that make clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels would also make it easier to develop the political will for rapid action.

Scientists say the odds of all these things breaking our way are not very high, unfortunately. The Earth could just as easily turn out to be more sensitive to greenhouse gases than less. Global warming seems to be causing chaos in parts of the natural world already, and that seems likely to get worse, not better. So in the view of the experts, simply banking on a rosy scenario without any real plan would be dangerous. They believe the only way to limit the risks is to limit emissions.
5. What's the worst-case scenario?
There are many.

That is actually hard to say, which is one reason scientists are urging that emissions be cut; they want to limit the possibility of any worst-case scenario coming to pass. Perhaps the greatest fear is a collapse of food production, accompanied by escalating prices and mass starvation. Even with runaway emissions growth, it is unclear how likely this would be, as farmers are able to adjust their crops and farming techniques, to a degree, to adapt to climatic changes. Another possibility would be a disintegration of the polar ice sheets, leading to fast-rising seas that would force people to abandon many of the world's great cities and would lead to the loss of trillions of dollars worth of property and other assets. Scientists also worry about other wild-card scenarios like the predictable cycles of Asian monsoons' becoming less reliable. Billions of people depend on monsoons to provide water for crops, so any disruptions would be catastrophic.
6. ​Will a tech breakthrough help us?
Even Bill Gates says don't count on it, unless we commit the cash.

As more companies, governments and researchers devote themselves to the problem, the chances of big technological advances are improving. But even many experts who are optimistic about technological solutions warn that current efforts are not enough. For instance, spending on basic energy research is only a quarter to a third of the level that several in-depth reports have recommended. And public spending on agricultural research has stagnated even though climate change poses growing risks to the food supply. People like Bill Gates have argued that crossing our fingers and hoping for technological miracles is not a strategy - we have to spend the money that would make these things more likely to happen.
7. How much will the seas rise?
The real question is not how high, but how fast.

The ocean is rising at a rate of about a foot per century. That causes severe effects on coastlines, forcing governments and property owners to spend tens of billions of dollars fighting erosion. But if that rate continued, it would probably be manageable, experts say.

The risk is that the rate will accelerate markedly. If emissions continue unchecked, then the temperature at the earth's surface could soon resemble a past epoch called the Pliocene, when a great deal of ice melted and the ocean rose something like 80 feet compared to today. A recent study found that burning all the fossil fuels in the ground would fully melt the polar ice sheets, raising the sea level by more than 160 feet over an unknown period.

With all of that said, the crucial issue is probably not how much the oceans are going to rise, but how fast. And on that point, scientists are pretty much flying blind. Their best information comes from studying Earth's history, and it suggests that the rate can on occasion hit a foot per decade, which can probably be thought of as the worst-case scenario. A rate even half that would force rapid retreat from the coasts and, some experts think, throw human society into crisis. Even if the rise is much slower, many of the world's great cities will flood eventually. Studies suggest that big cuts in emissions could slow the rise, buying crucial time for society to adapt to an altered coastline.
8. Are the predictions reliable?
They're not perfect, but they're grounded in solid science.

The idea that Earth is sensitive to greenhouse gases is confirmed by many lines of scientific evidence. For instance, the basic physics suggesting that an increase of carbon dioxide traps more heat was discovered in the 19th century, and has been verified in thousands of laboratory experiments.

Climate science does contain uncertainties, of course. The biggest is the degree to which global warming sets off feedback loops, such as a melting of sea ice that will darken the surface and cause more heat to be absorbed, melting more ice, and so forth. It is not clear exactly how much the feedbacks will intensify the warming; some of them could even partially offset it. This uncertainty means that computer forecasts can give only a range of future climate possibilities, not absolute predictions.

But even if those computer forecasts did not exist, a huge amount of evidence suggests that scientists have the basic story right. The most important evidence comes from the study of past climate conditions, a field known as paleoclimate research. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air has fluctuated naturally in the past, and every time it rises, the Earth warms up, ice melts, and the ocean rises. A hundred miles inland from today's East Coast, seashells can be dug from ancient beaches that are three million years old. These past conditions are not a perfect guide to the future, either, because humans are pumping carbon dioxide into the air far faster than nature has ever done.
9. Why do people question climate change?
Hint: ideology.

Most of the attacks on climate science are coming from libertarians and other political conservatives who do not like the policies that have been proposed to fight global warming. Instead of negotiating over those policies and trying to make them more subject to free-market principles, they have taken the approach of blocking them by trying to undermine the science.

This ideological position has been propped up by money from fossil-fuel interests, which have paid to create organizations, fund conferences and the like. The scientific arguments made by these groups usually involve cherry-picking data, such as focusing on short-term blips in the temperature record or in sea ice, while ignoring the long-term trends.

The most extreme version of climate denialism is to claim that scientists are engaged in a worldwide hoax to fool the public so that the government can gain greater control over people's lives. As the arguments have become more strained, many oil and coal companies have begun to distance themselves publicly from climate denialism, but some are still helping to finance the campaigns of politicians who espouse such views.
10. Is crazy weather tied to climate change?
In some cases, yes.

Scientists have published strong evidence that the warming climate is making heat waves more frequent and intense. It is also causing heavier rainstorms, and coastal flooding is getting worse as the oceans rise because of human emissions. Global warming has intensified droughts in regions like the Middle East, and it may have strengthened the drought in California.

In many other cases, though, the linkage to global warming for particular trends is uncertain or disputed. That is partly from a lack of good historical weather data, but it is also scientifically unclear how certain types of events may be influenced by the changing climate.

Another factor: While the climate is changing, people's perceptions may be changing faster. The Internet has made us all more aware of weather disasters in distant places. On social media, people have a tendency to attribute virtually any disaster to climate change, but in many cases there is no scientific support for doing so.
11. Will anyone benefit from global warming?
In certain ways, yes.

Countries with huge, frozen hinterlands, including Canada and Russia, could see some economic benefits as global warming makes agriculture, mining and the like more possible in those places. It is perhaps no accident that the Russians have always been reluctant to make ambitious climate commitments, and President Vladimir V. Putin has publicly questioned the science of climate change.

However, both of those countries could suffer enormous damage to their natural resources; escalating fires in Russia are already killing millions of acres of forests per year. Moreover, some experts believe countries that view themselves as likely winners from global warming will come to see the matter differently once they are swamped by millions of refugees from less fortunate lands.
12. Is there any reason for hope?
If you share this with 50 friends, maybe.

Scientists have been warning since the 1980s that strong policies were needed to limit emissions. Those warnings were ignored, and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have since built up to potentially dangerous levels. So the hour is late.

But after 20 years of largely fruitless diplomacy, the governments of the world are finally starting to take the problem seriously. A deal that is likely to be reached in Paris in December will commit nearly every country to some kind of action. Religious leaders like Pope Francis are speaking out. Low-emission technologies, such as electric cars, are improving. Leading corporations are making bold promises to switch to renewable power and stop forest destruction. Around the world, many states and cities are pledging to go far beyond the goals set by their national governments.

What is still largely missing in all this are the voices of ordinary citizens. Because politicians have a hard time thinking beyond the next election, they tend to tackle hard problems only when the public rises up and demands it.

Still have a question about climate change? You can submit one here.

Read the original article here.

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Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change

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The issue can be overwhelming. The science is complicated. Predictions about the fate of the planet carry endless caveats and asterisks. We get it. And so, as the Paris climate talks get underway, we've provided quick answers to often-asked questions about climate change. You can submit your own questions here.

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Meador, R. (2018, October 15). New outlook on global warming: Best prepare for social collapse, and soon.
The following article is used to show the diminishing Glaciers and how their depletion is an early sign of what is to come.

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Now that you've had a week to absorb the latest assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - that we're about out of time to cut emissions by amounts that could make global warming somewhat manageable - I'd like to introduce you to Jem Bendell and his notion of Deep Adaptation.

"Like" isn't the right verb there, with its sense of preference and maybe even pleasure; maybe that was reflex. Reading and writing about Deep Adaptation has been painful from the start, and I would really rather be talking about anything else today. But I feel a certain responsibility toward Bendell's new research paper, which concludes that recent trends in key climate factors indicate we are headed for "near-term social collapse due to climate chaos."

By the near term, he means less than 10 years from now. By social collapse, he is speaking of unpredictable and interrelated breakdowns, in affluent as well as poor countries. And that's just the beginning: Over the following decades, Bendell sees climate disruption working longer-term injuries to governments, economies, social institutions, agriculture, industries - to civilization, you could say - on a continuum running from "inevitable collapse" to "probable catastrophe" to "possible extinction."

How do we "adapt" to that? By accepting that the world as we've known it is ending, he says, then beginning to envision whatever new one can be built on the ruins. (Also, by abandoning any misplaced notion that we can still avert disaster.)

This may come off as a radical pronouncement in a climate conversation where most everyone concerned with "solving the problem" - scientists, activists, policymakers, philanthropists - labors to find cause for hope, or at minimum an avenue for preventive action.

But even if radical, Bendell's paper is hardly irrational (although in places it is, for research prose, untypically personal and emotional). His scholarship is in sustainability, at the intersection of environment and economics, and he has credentials: a Ph.D, a position at England's University of Cumbria, as well as industry experience, a CV that includes a bunch of papers in peer-reviewed journals (not including the one I'm discussing here; more on that later).

This new work has gone virtually unreported since Bendell self-published it at the end of July, though Bloomberg's Christopher Flavelle took notice and found that Bendell and his ideas are not without an academic following. And the paper's key point - that the velocity of climate change appears to have shifted so dramatically upward since 2014 that its progression is no longer "linear" - aligns with other mainstream research.

For instance, a paper published in August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences discussed data on various "self-reinforcing feedbacks" that seem capable of driving further, "nonlinear" warming of the atmosphere even if emissions are reduced (the melting of the planet's great ice sheets being a prime example). That work, which got more coverage than Bendell's, framed future risk as a series of "tipping points" leading to a "Hothouse Earth" scenario:

This pathway would be propelled by strong, intrinsic, biogeophysical feedbacks difficult to influence by human actions, a pathway that could not be reversed, steered, or substantially slowed. Where such a threshold might be is uncertain, but it could be only decades ahead at a temperature rise of ∼2.0°C above pre-industrial, and thus, it could be within the range of the Paris Accord temperature targets. The impacts of a Hothouse Earth pathway on human societies would likely be massive, sometimes abrupt, and undoubtedly disruptive.

The authors urged a concerted effort to predict and avert these "tipping points," returning the planet to a more hospitable pathway. But they spoke in only mild, general terms about what sort of adaptation would be necessary if such efforts fail.

The option that's left

Adaptation (or, sometimes, mitigation) has always been one of the three leading strategies to address global warming, but until recently it was rarely anyone's first choice.

The No. 1 option has always been to make large, global cuts in those emissions - an effort that, as the IPCC report makes clear, continues to fall far short of what's needed. Option No. 2 has been a grab bag of engineering fixes, like making the planet more reflective with a blanket of upper-atmosphere aerosols, or building giant machines to suck carbon dioxide back out of the air. These notions have been hugely expensive, highly risky, or both (and, not infrequently, fanciful).

Option No. 3, adaptation, has been mostly about making existing systems and infrastructure more resilient - improving the electric power grid, hardening structures against heat waves and storms, making seawalls higher, expanding the wildfire buffer around vulnerable communities, tweaking the practices of industrial agriculture. Lately it has begun to include relocating communities displaced by coastal flooding.

But these approaches have been fundamentally about holding onto the familiar. Bendell says it's too late for that kind of thinking, because the world we know is so quickly disappearing. Key excerpts, lightly compressed and without footnotes:

The warming Arctic has led to dramatic loss in sea ice, the average September extent of which has been decreasing at a rate of 13.2% per decade since 1980, so that over two-thirds of the ice cover has gone. This data is made more concerning by changes in sea ice volume, which is an indicator of resilience of the ice sheet to future warming and storms. It was at the lowest it has ever been in 2017, continuing a consistent downward trend.

Given a reduction in the reflection of the sun's rays from the surface of white ice, an ice-free Arctic is predicted to increase warming globally by a substantial degree. Writing in 2014, scientists calculated this change is already equivalent to 25% of the direct forcing of temperature increase from CO ₂ during the past 30 years. That means we could cut CO ₂ emissions by 25% and it is already outweighed by the loss of the reflective power of Arctic sea ice. One of the most eminent climate scientists in the world, Peter Wadhams, believes an ice-free Arctic will occur one summer in the next few years and that it will likely increase by 50% the warming caused by the CO ₂ produced by human activity.

The observed phenomena, of actual temperatures and sea levels, are greater than what the climate models over the past decades were predicting for our current time. They are consistent with non-linear changes in our environment that then trigger uncontrollable impacts on human habitat and agriculture, with subsequent complex impacts on social, economic and political systems.

As for the consequences:

Already we see impacts on storm, drought and flood frequency and strength due to increased volatility from more energy in the atmosphere. Climate change has reduced growth in crop yields by 1-2 percent per decade over the past century. ...

In ten years prior to 2016 the Atlantic Ocean soaked up 50 percent more carbon dioxide than it did the previous decade, measurably speeding up the acidification of the ocean. This study is indicative of oceans worldwide, and the consequent acidification degrades the base of the marine food web, thereby reducing the ability of fish populations to reproduce themselves across the globe. Meanwhile, warming oceans are already reducing the population size of some fish species.

Compounding these threats to human nutrition, in some regions we are witnessing an exponential rise in the spread of mosquito and tick-borne viruses as temperatures become more conducive to them.

Journal asks for brightening

Gloomy stuff, to be sure, but one would think also of interest to the professional readership of the Sustainable Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, where Bendell submitted his paper for review and publication. But the editors, he says, asked that he revise it to include "existing scholarship ... on ecologically induced social collapse" at a global scale. He found that impossible; a literature review conducted in preparing his own paper hadn't found any such work (although I seem to recall plenty of work on collapse at local to regional scales, both modern and historical, and wonder why that wouldn't meet the journal's needs).

Also, they asked that he "not dishearten readers with the claim of 'inevitable near term social collapse,' " a request he rejected as "a form of censure" (maybe meaning censorship). This is an aspect he addresses in the paper itself:

As researchers and reflective practitioners, we have an opportunity and obligation to not just do what is expected by our employers and the norms of our profession, but also to reflect on the relevance of our work within wider society. ... It is a responsible act to communicate this analysis now and invite people to support each other, myself included, in exploring the implications, including the psychological and spiritual implications.

This situation makes redundant the reformist approach to sustainable development and related fields of corporate sustainability that has underpinned the approach of many professionals. Instead, a new approach which explores how to reduce harm and not make matters worse is important to develop. In support of that challenging, and ultimately personal process, understanding a deep adaptation agenda may be useful.

"Deep adaptation agenda" appears to be Bendell's own coinage, and he has a three-part strategy in mind. It starts with that "resilience" component that everybody is already behind - seawalls and reinforced roofing, etc. - but veers away in advocating for a second stage of "relinquishment" (giving up treasured things that make climate chaos worse, like present-day living standards and homes that overlook the ocean).

And then a third: "restoration" of cultural values and practices "that our hydrocarbon-fuelled civilisation eroded":

Examples include re-wilding landscapes, so they provide more ecological benefits and require less management, changing diets back to match the seasons, rediscovering non-electronically powered forms of play, and increased community-level productivity and support.

The necessity of 'hope'

I don't know why it should come as such a surprise and disappointment to learn that this journal insisted an author restate findings to be less "disheartening." Science and scientific publishing should be above sugar-coating.

But then so should journalism, and over my four decades in the trade I have felt the same kind of pressure to search out and even amplify the hopeful note, the potential solution, the sign of progress, the thing going right instead of wrong, so as not to drive the readers to despair (or, more cynically, to another publication that's less of a downer).

This morning I am wondering if the biggest failing of American media on climate change hasn't been in giving too much credence to the denialist charlatans, but in raising too mild a challenge to assertions that, despite such heavy evidence to the contrary, there's still room to maneuver this runaway truck away from the cliff.

I am not speaking here of MinnPost, not in the slightest. I've never felt any pro-hopefulness pressure from my editors here. But, honestly, if I had, it might well have been redundant, as I long ago got into a bad habit of applying it all by myself.

Not this morning.

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Jem Bendell's paper, "Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy," can be downloaded here without charge.

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New outlook on global warming: Best prepare for social collapse, and soon | MinnPost

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Now that you've had a week to absorb the latest assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - that we're about out of time to cut emissions by amounts that could make global warming somewhat manageable - I'd like to introduce you to Jem Bendell and his notion of Deep Adaptation.