2015: A turning point in the Earth's climate history

[politicus]

Climate news always "explodes" up to a summit, and this time it is no different. This is a few extracts from various articles (in my translation and not using original structure, so hope its OK).

2014 was the warmest year measured on Earth so far. 2015 and 2016 are expected to also be the warmest years directly measured on Earth.

The goal in international climate policy has been to keep global warming below two degrees compared to the level at the beginning of the industrial age. Otherwise we risk dangerous and irreversible climate changes.

But an extensive climate study  from the British national meteorological center now says that over the next few years the increase in temperature is expected to reach 1 degree, so half-way towards the limit.

The reasons are mainly:

1) Continued high CO2 emissions, which reinforces the anthropogenic greenhouse effect.

2) A new and powerful El Niño season is underway. It releases heat from the Pacific Ocean to the atmosphere.

3) A grand cycle in the Pacific, PDO, has begun to swing towards a positive = warm phase. The hot stage can last for decades.

In a few years we will look back on the years here around 2015 as a turning point in the Earth's climate history.

The so-called [ug]lobal hot break[/u], which to some extent prevailed 1998-2013 is not just definitely broken. It seems about to crack like a giant hot air balloon.

So the underlying manmade greenhouse effect, which constantly makes it harder for the earth to get rid of the Sun's heat, is topped by a couple of huge natural phenomena beyond human influence.

1) The current El Niño seems to be the strongest since 1997-98. Back then it propelled 1998 to by far the warmest year of the 20th century. But messed familiar climate patterns, causing damage to that time over 30 billion  dollars. An increase driven by crop failure and extensive forest fires due to drought in large parts of East Asia + devastating floods all the way from Argentina and up to California.

This year's El Niño is not expected to culminate in the winter, but there are already signs that it has begun to change weather and climate halfway across the world - from several super tyfones in the Pacific over a weakening of the Indian monsoon flooding in Buenos Aires. When it culminates in about 3-4 month temperatures are expected in parts of the Pacific to be about 2  degrees above normal.

Worse still is the current changes in a parallel Pacific phenomenon - the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation). It is a natural climate variability in the Pacific, which swings back and forth between cold and warm phases with 15-30 years.

Since the millennium, PDO has been in a negative = cool phase. But almost everything points it now beginning to return to an extended warm period. Also it will by all accounts, along with human greenhouse gas emissions, drive global temperatures up, resulting in more frequent extreme weather on the planet.

Looking at the global temperature curve through the 20th century, scientists see a correlation between the curve waves and cool and warm phases of the PDO. Most clearly in the years 1940-1970, when the PDO was largely negative and thus cool. In the same period, the global average temperature barely raised. After which the curve went abruptly up as PDO was again positive and warm.

Both El Niño and positive PDO are signs that the heat that has built up deep in the world's largest ocean is beginning to return to the surface and thus the atmosphere.

In the same manner as the Pacific has its decades-long cycle, its PDO, then in the Atlantic has a corresponding cycle among climate researchers known as AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation). Since the millennium, the Atlantic oscillation has been positive, which means that it has led slightly warmer water than normal to the surface in Northern Europe, but this year's AMO has begun to weaken, which is a sign of an impending negative and thus cool phase. And chilling, it can easily get to stand on both 20 and 30 years.

It will however not be enough - on the global scale - to counteract the influence of heat from the Pacific Ocean and the anthropogenic greenhouse effect. But in Northern Europe and Eastern North America the consequence will likely be cooler and drier summers.

The German Alfred Wegener Institute claim that previous research has underestimated the consequences of the influx to the North Atlantic by increasing amounts of cold fresh water from Greenland, including the the Jakobshavn Glacier.

The icy melt water (currently several hundred km3 annually, covers it with a lid on top of the heavier and warmer salt water, which more than previously thought will block the warm ocean currents, particularly the Gulf Stream.

So us Northern Europeans and East Coast Americans will live in a relatively cool 'oasis' in the middle of an ever hotter planet. All the while the sea is rising steadily and starts crawling over our half cold shores.

Trouble is it means some of the most CO2 producing areas on Earth will escape many of the consequences (if we do not include climate refugees).

Anyway, hopefully fossile fuels will soon start to be phased out German research team from the Potsdam Climate Institute recently presented a study that shows, that practically all of Antarctica will melt and the oceans rise by more than 50 meters in 1000 years, if people were to burn all known stockpiles of underground coal, oil and gas.

tl;dr: World is fycked, rich countries along the Atlantic shore may live comfortably for 1-2 generations more (discounting potentially enormous refugee streams)