Global warming, climate change and weather extremes

HELL AND HIGH WATER

GLOBAL WARMING – THE SOLUTION AND THE POLITICS – AND WHAT WE SHOULD DO

JOSEPH J. ROMM

WILLIAM MORROW                2007

PART I

Introduction

• The widespread confusion about our climate crisis is no accident. For more than a decade, those who deny that climate change is an urgent problem have sought to delay action on global warming by running a brilliant campaign and spreading multiple myths that misinform debate.
• The science is crystal clear: We humans are the primary cause of global warming. If we fail to act in time, global warming will profoundly and irreversibly remake every aspect of American life.
• There are three driving forces: climate science, energy trends and technology, and global-warming politics. This book is a primer on all three.
• The first half of this book focuses on our country’s future if we don’t reverse course immediately. The second half focuses on the politics and the solution.
• I examine the brilliant disinformation campaign to sow doubt about climate science and the equally clever campaign to create confusion about the crucial climate solutions.
• I lay out how we can achieve deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the electricity and transportation sectors without raising the nation’s overall energy bill. Finally I explore the role of China and the role of the media.

PART I: THE SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE

Chapter 1. The Climate Beast

Punching the climate beast

• Whether human activity will trigger catastrophic climate change depends on two factors: how much heat trapping, climate-altering greenhouse gases we pour into the atmosphere, and how the climate system responds to those gases.
• Long ice ages have been followed by relatively brief, warm interglacial periods, such as the one we’re in now that began with the end of the last ice age some 10,000 years ago. These ten millennia of mild weather have made possible human civilization as we know it today.
• The interglacial period we now live in is a few degrees centigrade warmer than the average temperature of the last ice age.
• Warming can happen fast. Scientific advances reveal that huge temperature swings and a doubling of precipitation occurred in periods as short as decades to years.

The fast fatal feedbacks

• The climate system has strong feedbacks whereby a small initial warming leads to disproportionately huge heating. Warming causes sea ice to melt and glaciers to retreat. Highly reflective white ice is replaced by blue sea or dark land, both of which absorb far more energy.
• Earth’s average temperature will probably rise 1.5ºC by mid-century and by 3ºC by century’s end.
• The last time Earth was 1ºC warmer than today, sea levels were 20 feet higher.  Following the last ice age, sea levels rose more than a foot a decade. The last time Earth was 2º to 3ºC warmer, sea levels were more than 80 feet higher.

The answer to the question of the century

• In 2005, emissions of carbon dioxide generated by fossil fuel combustion amounted to more than 26 billion tons. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen from a preindustrial average of about 280 ppm to 380 ppm in 2005. Concentrations are now climbing by more than 2 ppm a year.
• 60% of the carbon dioxide added during recent decades stays in the atmosphere; the other 40% is taken up by the ocean, vegetation, and soils.
• We have to reduce emissions by 60-80% but have been increasing them by 2% per year for the past decade. Worst of all, the world’s largest emitter, the U.S., refused to reduce emissions, is committed to increasing emissions and blocking other countries from reducing theirs.
• By 2015, the planet will be fully committed to another 1ºC warming, even if we could cut emissions 80% in the span of a few years after 2015. We have the scientific, technical and industrial know-how to solve the carbon and climate problem for the next half-century. The tragedy is that we will have ruined the world because we chose not to make the effort. We lack not the technology but the political will.

Chapter 2: 2000-2025: Reap the Whirlwind

• Since 1970, the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean’s hurricane-forming region has risen 0.5ºC. On our current emissions path, the Atlantic will warm another 1ºC by mid-century, and perhaps another 2ºC beyond that. Hurricane seasons with 4 or more super-hurricanes will soon become the norm.

The era of extreme weather

• In July 2003 the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) catalogued a number of extreme events: Switzerland had experienced the hottest June in the past 250 years; the United States suffered 562 tornados in May, exceeding the previous record of 399 in June 1992.
• New record extreme events occur every year somewhere on the globe, but in recent years the number of such extremes have been increasing.
• Since that WMO report, Europe has experienced even more extreme events, including an extended heat wave that caused more than 35,000 deaths in August 2003.
• 2005 was the hottest in recorded history. In September the Arctic had the smallest amount of sea-ice cover ever recorded by satellites. Mumbai, India, saw that country’s most intense recorded instance of rainfall – 3 feet of rain in 24 hours.
• A 2004 analysis by the National Climatic Data Center found a 14% increase in “heavy rain events” of more than 2 inches in one day, and a 20% increase in “very heavy rain events” of more than 4 inches in one day.
• The U.S. Climatic Extremes Index quantifies climate changes on a scale from 0 to 100 where 100 means the whole country has extreme conditions throughout the year for each of 6 indicators.
• The index extends from 1910 to today, during which time the average has been 20. The most extreme year was 1998, with an index of nearly 44, more than double the average.
• The second-most extreme year was 2005, with an index of about 41. The 17 least-extreme years of the past century all came before 1980.
• The index excludes Alaska – the largest state and the one suffering the most extreme climate change. In January 2005 the city of Valdez, Alaska, hit 54°F, beating the city’s previously warmest January day by 8°.

Global tropical sea-surface temperature is increasing

• There has been an overall increasing trend in July-September Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures (SSTs) during the past 100 years. Even at a depth of 600 feet, the North Atlantic has warmed 0.2°C.
• We have very solid science for concluding that global tropical sea-surface temperature is increasing as a result of human-caused greenhouse warming.
• To disprove this statement, a scientist must not merely come up with an alternative explanation for the remarkable recent warming but be able to identify some as yet unknown and unmeasured effect that is simultaneously negating the well-understood warming from greenhouse gases. Nobody has yet done either.

Hurricane intensity increases with increasing tropical sea-surface temperature

• Many factors must coexist to create hurricanes, but a hurricane cannot start without warm water to give it a steady supply of fuel. Tropical cyclones form only if SSTs exceed 80°F.
• The National Climatic Data Center report on Katrina explains that in the Gulf of Mexico during the last week of August 2005 SSTs were one to two degrees above normal, and the warm temperatures extended to a considerable depth through the upper ocean layer.
• Katrina crossed a belt of even warmer water, during which time explosive intensification occurred.
• Ocean warming had penetrated to a considerable depth. One of the ways that hurricanes are weakened is the upwelling of colder, deeper water due to the hurricane’s own violent action. If the deeper water is also warm, the hurricane may continue to intensify.

The frequency of the most intense hurricanes is increasing globally

• Intense hurricanes have become more intense in recent decades. In 2004 an unprecedented four hurricanes hit Florida; 10 tropical cyclones or typhoons hit Japan (the previous record was six).
• Scientists from Georgia Tech and NCAR found a large increase in the number of super-hurricanes (categories 4 and 5) in six different ocean regions, including the North Atlantic.
• Comparing the 1975-1989 period with the 1990-2004 period, they found a more than 50% increase in super-hurricanes.

The future is now

• These are some of the records set in 2005, the warmest year on record, provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
• 27 named tropical storms – from Arlene to Wilma, Alpha to Zeta – formed during the 2005 season. This is the most named storms in a single season, breaking the old record of 21 set in 1933.
• 15 hurricanes formed during the 2005 season. This is the most hurricanes in a single season, breaking the old record of 12 set in 1969.
• 7 category 3 or higher hurricanes formed during the 2005 season. This ties the season record for such hurricanes, first set in 1950.
• 4 category 5 hurricanes formed during the 2005 season (Emily, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma). This is the most category 5 hurricanes recorded in a single season, breaking the old record of 2 set in 1960 and 1961.
• 7 named storms made United States landfall during 2005. This puts the 2005 season in a tie for second place for landfalling storms, behind the 1916 and 2004 seasons where eight named storms made landfall.
• The 2005 season was the most destructive for the United States landfalling storms, largely due to Katrina. Damage estimates for the 2005 season are over $100 billion.
• Dennis became the most intense hurricane on record before August when a central pressure of 930mb was recorded.
• Emily eclipsed Dennis’s record for the lowest pressure recorded for a hurricane before August when its central pressure dropped to 929 mb. Emily’s strength was revised in 2006, so it became “the earliest-forming Category 5 hurricane on record in the Atlantic basin and the only known hurricane of that strength to occur during the month of July.”
• Vince was the first tropical cyclone in recorded history to strike the Iberian Peninsular. Vince was the farthest north and east a storm has ever developed in the Atlantic basin.

Natural cycles versus global warming

• We have two battling hypotheses. In one corner is the global warming theory, which says that forcings (natural and human-made) explain most of the changes in our climate and temperature. In the other corner we have the natural-cycle hypothesis.
• We have seen more than 50% increase in category 4 and 5 storms both globally and in the Atlantic. We can’t know with confidence whether global warming has caused a specific hurricane to develop or intensify. But we can know with very high confidence that global warming has increased the intensity and rainfall of recent hurricane seasons.

2000-2025: Reap the whirlwind

• Americans should plan on the 2004 hurricane season with its 4 super-hurricanes becoming the norm over the next few decades.
• We should not be surprised if a quarter of the hurricane seasons in this era are as severe as those of 2005 with its 5 super-hurricanes.
• As of the end of 2005, this decade has already had 5 of the 6 hottest years on record.

Chapter 3: 2025-2050: Planetary Purgatory

• By the end of the Planetary Purgatory era, 2050, Earth will probably be hotter than it has been in 125,000 years, and warming at 0.33ºC per decade.
• The first brutal impacts will be marathon heat waves that last for weeks, similar to what Europe experienced in August 2003. More than half of European summers will be hotter than 2003 within the next four decades, accompanied by water shortages essential for human life and agriculture.

The present is prologue

• Since the 1970s, the number of very dry areas, as defined by the Palmer Drought Severity Index, has more than doubled to about 30% of the global land.
• Wildfires have been on the rise worldwide for half a century. Although the 2005 wildfire season was record-breaking, the record it broke was from 2000. 2006 has already broken the 2005 record by mid-September.
• Severe drought, occurring with 5% frequency in 1990 is predicted to occur every other year in the second half of this century.
• If we don’t change course soon, the West faces a scorching climate – Hell and No Water – with summers that are far hotter and drier, longer wildfire seasons with more ferocious fires, and, at the same time, far less water for agriculture and hydropower.

The need for systems thinking

• Until annual carbon dioxide emissions drop to about one-fifth of current levels, concentrations of heat trapping carbon dioxide will continue to rise, and with rising concentrations, the pace of climate change will continue to accelerate.
• Suppose that we take some wishy-washy actions to slow emissions growth from 2010 while China and other developing nations continue their booming growth unchecked due to growing populations, industrialization and an expanding middle class, in 2025 the world will finally wake up to the full gravity of global warming and adopt changes that ultimately avoid emissions of 1 billion tons of carbon per year.
• Had we started in 2010, global emissions would have remained frozen at 8 billion metric tons per year. If we wait until 2025, the relatively painless solutions available now will no longer be sufficient to avoid climate catastrophe. Our actions will have to be far more desperate and aggressive.

Climate reality versus climate models

• The earth’s climate system is far from being self-stabilizing. Push it too hard in one direction, you get an ice age, in another direction, you get 80-foot higher sea levels.
• Models that tell us how much warming we will get from a certain level of carbon dioxide emissions do not fully account for all of the vicious cycles and positive feedbacks. Almost certainly, models underestimate the climate’s likely response.