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Methane From Thawing Permafrost | Earth Wise

June 29, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Arctic permafrost contains a massive amount of carbon in the form of frozen soil, which contains remnants of plants and animals that died millennia ago. Estimates are that there is 2 ½ times as much carbon trapped in this Arctic soil than there is in total in the atmosphere today.

As the Arctic warms, the permafrost is starting to thaw. Once that happens, microbes begin to consume the previously frozen organic matter trapped in the soil. As part of this process, the microbes produce large amounts of methane, which is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. Thus, there continues to be great concern that wide-scale thawing of the permafrost would result in massive amounts of methane being released into the atmosphere.

A recent study in northern Sweden revealed a glimmer of hope. The study gauged methane emissions from a swath of permafrost that thawed in the 1980s and another that thawed 10 or 15 years later.

In the first area, as ice melted underground, water on the surface sank down into the soil. As the surface dried out, new plants emerged that helped to keep methane emissions buried underground.

Grasses found in wet areas have straw-like structures that convey oxygen to their roots. The straws also allow methane in the soil to escape into the atmosphere. As the areas dry out, other plants lacking the straws can sometimes replace the grasses. When methane can’t escape, soil bacteria break it down into carbon dioxide.

The result is that the permafrost releases only a tenth of the methane as expected. The hope is that changes in plant cover driven by climate change may limit methane emissions from thawing permafrost.

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Thawing Permafrost In Sweden Releases Less Methane Than Feared, Study Finds

Photo, posted July 7, 2014, courtesy of NPS Climate Change Response via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Floating Solar | Earth Wise

June 7, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The largest floating solar array in Europe, 12,000 panels sitting on top of the Alqueva Reservoir in Portugal – will come online in July. Installing floating solar arrays, which are sometimes called “floatovoltaics”, produce renewable energy while shielding significant expanses of water from the sun’s heat. These dual benefits have led to floatovoltaic projects in multiple countries around the world.

The city of Cohoes, in New York’s Albany County, has proposed an 8,000-panel floating solar array on the city reservoir. Federal funding of $3 million for the project was obtained by local Congressman Paul Tonko and, in May, utility National Grid donated $750,000 towards the project. Engineering work will shortly be underway on the 3.2 megawatt grid of solar panels.

The city of Cohoes pumps its drinking water supplies from the Mohawk River into the 10-acre, manmade reservoir. The surface of the water is the largest undeveloped open space in the city. Such reservoirs constitute prime sites for solar arrays since the space cannot be used for other purposes. In addition, covering the water’s surface with the solar panels greatly reduces evaporation and helps to inhibit the growth of algae.

There are currently only 14 floating solar arrays in the U.S. and all of those are privately owned. The Cohoes municipal array will be the first of its kind. There are nearly 500 reservoirs in New York State and 24,000 nationwide that could be sites for floating arrays. Drought-stricken Western reservoirs like Lake Mead and Lake Powell could be ideal locations of solar arrays. Those reservoirs lose huge amounts of water to evaporation. There are estimates that floating arrays could provide as much as 10% of the nation’s electrical needs.

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National Grid gives Cohoes $750,000 for floating solar array project

Photo, posted August 25, 2010, courtesy of Martin Abegglen via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Is It Really Getting Warmer? | Earth Wise

March 28, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The primary indicator of global climate change is the Global Mean Surface Temperature of the Earth and the world’s nations are trying to keep its increase below 1.5 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial level. That rise in temperature is called the Global Surface Temperature Anomaly and it actually reached an all-time high in 2016 at 1.02 degrees before going back down.

At this point, you might be saying, “hold on there… it hasn’t gotten larger over the past 5 years?” What’s going on?

The global climate is pretty complicated and there are many things that influence it. One of the most significant factors is the El Niño Southern Oscillation or, more familiarly, the El Niño. The El Niño is a periodic and irregular variation in the sea surface temperature of the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean driven by persistent westerly winds. When an El Niño is happening, currents move to the west coast of South America and warm the tropics and subtropics. This causes a spike in the global mean temperature. There was a strong El Niño in 2016.

On the other hand, when easterly winds dominate to form a La Niña, cool water comes up from the depths of the Pacific and cools the atmosphere. In 2017 and 2018, there was a fairly strong La Niña, lowering the global mean temperature. 2020 had no El Niño or La Niña, and the global temperature went back up to its previous peak. Last year, there was again a La Niña and the temperature dipped again.

The global mean surface temperature has been rising in the industrial era, but it also fluctuates with the complicated dynamics of the Pacific Ocean.

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Why Isn’t It Getting Warmer?

Photo, posted February 12, 2016, courtesy of Amit Patel via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

January Climate Report Card | Earth Wise

March 9, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The global climate is a complicated thing. While overall trends are relatively straightforward to understand, the details can seem confusing.

January was the sixth-warmest January in the 143 years of global climate record keeping. The global land and ocean surface temperature was 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average.

Meanwhile, the United States had its coolest January since 2014, although the month still ranked nearly a degree above the long-term average across the nation. This January was also the driest January in eight years and was one of the top- 15 driest Januarys on record. That being said, there was the so-called Bomb Cyclone late in the month that dumped 1-2 feet of snow and brought blizzard conditions along the eastern seaboard and set a one-day snowfall record in Boston.

Global conditions and regional and local conditions can be very different. In the big picture, January was the 46th consecutive January and the 445th consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th century average.

And while the US had a fairly cool January, South America saw its second-warmest January on record, Asia had its fourth warmest, and Oceania had its seventh warmest.

Apart from temperatures, Antarctic sea ice coverage was the second smallest January extent in 44 years. Arctic ice was 208,000 square miles below the 1981-2010 average, although it was the largest since 2009.

Even as the global climate warms, local and regional climate conditions will continue to have unique and variable characteristics over the course of time. Every time there’s a bout of cold weather, it isn’t time to stop being concerned about climate change.

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January 2022 was Earth’s 6th warmest on record

Photo, posted January 6, 2013, courtesy of Christopher Michel via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Threat From Thwaites | Earth Wise

January 20, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is the widest glacier in the world. It is about 80 miles across and in places extends to a depth of about 2,600 to 3,900 feet. The glacier is roughly the size of Florida, and it currently contributes 4% of annual global sea level rise as it continues to retreat from a warming ocean.

The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration is a team of nearly 100 scientists dedicated to studying the glacier. According to the scientists, Thwaites has doubled its outflow speed within the last 30 years. The glacier in its entirety holds enough water to raise global sea levels by over two feet, which would be catastrophic.

A third of the glacier flows more slowly than the rest because it is braced by a floating ice shelf that is held in place by an underwater mountain. The concern is that the brace of ice slowing the glacier may not last for long.

Beneath the surface, warmer ocean water is attacking the glacier from all angles. The water is melting the ice directly beneath the glacier causing it to lose its grip on the underwater mountain. Massive fractures have formed and are growing.

Warm water is also a threat for what is called the grounding zone, which is the area where the glacier lifts off the seabed. There are many possible scenarios under which there could be a major ice loss from the glacier. It is unclear how quickly it could occur. It might take decades, or it could be centuries. The threat is large enough and real enough that continued observation and research is essential.

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The Threat from Thwaites: The Retreat of Antarctica’s Riskiest Glacier

Photo, posted October 16, 2012, courtesy of J. Yungel / NASA Ice via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Fire And Ice | Earth Wise

January 17, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In recent years, there have been countless stories about the effects of the changing climate. Many of those stories have been about the dwindling sea ice in the Arctic and many others have been about the worsening wildfires in the western United States. According to a recent study published by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, those two things are very much related.

As sea ice in the Arctic melts from July to October, sunlight warms the surrounding land and sea surfaces. The resulting differences in air pressure create and strengthens a vortex in the atmosphere above the heated area which spins counterclockwise like a cyclone.

The powerful vortex pushes the polar jet stream out of its typical pattern and diverts moist air away from the western United States. With the jet stream moved off its usual course, a second vortex, this time spinning clockwise, forms under the ridge of the polar jet stream above the Western U.S. This second vortex brings with it clear skies and dry conditions: fire-favorable weather.

Arctic sea ice has continually declined at least since the late 1970s. It is predicted that there will be periods of entirely iceless Arctic waters before the 2050s. In turn, conditions in the already fire-ravaged West are likely to be further exacerbated. More than three million acres have burned across California alone during the 2021 wildfire season.

Climate conditions in one part of the world can, over time, influence climate outcomes thousands of miles away. The research at Pacific Northwest Laboratory reveals how regional land and sea surface warming caused by Arctic ice melting can trigger hotter and drier conditions in the West later in the year.

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Fire and Ice: The Puzzling Link Between Western Wildfires and Arctic Sea Ice

Photo, posted July 28, 2018, courtesy of Bob Dass via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Greenland Becoming Darker | Earth Wise

July 5, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to research published by Dartmouth University, a weather pattern that pushes snowfall away from parts of Greenland’s ice sheet is causing the continent to become darker and warmer.

Reducing the amount of fresh, lighter-colored snow exposes older, darker snow on the surface of Greenland’s ice sheets. Fresh snow is the brightest and whitest. The reflectivity of snow decreases fairly quickly as it ages. This decrease in albedo – or reflectivity – allows the ice sheet to absorb more heat and therefore melt more quickly.

The research attributes the decrease in snowfall in Greenland to a phenomenon called atmospheric blocking in which persistent high-pressure systems hover over the ice sheet for up to weeks at a time. Such systems have increased over Greenland since the mid-1990s. They push snowstorms to the north, hold warmer air over Western Greenland, and reduce light-blocking cloud cover.

All of this contributes to Greenland melting faster and faster. According to research cited in the study, the Greenland ice sheet has warmed by nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1982. Overall, Greenland is experiencing the greatest melt and runoff rates in the last 450 years, at the minimum, and quite likely the greatest rates in the last 7,000 years.

The Greenland ice sheet is the second largest ice body in the world, after the Antarctic ice sheet. It is 1,800 miles long and about 700 miles wide at its greatest width. Its thickness is between 1.2 and 1.9 miles. If the entire sheet were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 24 feet. So, the darkening of Greenland is a source of great concern.

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Greenland Becoming Darker, Warmer as Snow Changes

Photo, posted April 3, 2012, courtesy of Francesco Paroni Sterbini via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Floating Solar In New York’s Capital Region | Earth Wise

June 8, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

We have previously talked about installing solar arrays on the surface of bodies of water. The idea is especially attractive in places like Japan where land resources are scarce. There are several floating solar installations in the UK and the idea is starting to catch on elsewhere as well.

It is quite possible that the largest municipally owned floating solar array may get built in the city of Cohoes in New York’s Capital Region if a project under consideration for federal funding moves forward.

The proposal is for an installation of 8,000 solar panels to cover about 2/3 of the 10-acre Cohoes reservoir. Cohoes has wanted to erect a solar installation to generate power for its buildings but needed to find suitable vacant land. The 10-acre manmade reservoir could be an excellent location for a floating solar array.

Cohoes would be the first community in the US to build and own a floating array on a manmade reservoir and could serve as a model for municipalities across the nation. Such a project makes additional use of land that is already municipal property. According to the city, the 3.2-megawatt array would generate over 4 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year, saving the city $300-350,000 annually.

Cohoes is seeking $4.59 million in federal funding to support the project and has the support of U.S. Representative Paul Tonko for possible inclusion in the 2022 federal budget.

Apart from generating electricity, putting solar panels on the surface of a reservoir reduces evaporation, lowers algae growth, and actually improves solar panel performance because of the cooling effect of the water.

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Cohoes reservoir could be a floating solar power pioneer

Photo courtesy of Michael Coghlan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Radar Satellites And Hazard Mitigation | Earth Wise

May 26, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Scientists have concluded that the changing climate is primarily the result of increased human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Some of the effects of global climate change include melting glaciers, warming oceans, intensifying storms, and rising seas.

Another consequence of global climate change is natural disasters like floods and wildfires. Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of wildfires and increasing the odds of record-breaking floods in many parts of the United States and all around the world.

As a result, scientists in Australia have turned to technology for better assistance in keeping tabs on these climate change-driven natural disasters. Researchers from Curtin University in Perth, Australia have found that satellites can improve the ability to detect, monitor, prepare for, and withstand natural disasters, including floods, wildfires, and earthquakes.

The research team used Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data, which was acquired by the European Space Agency Sentinel-1 satellite. The researchers also used data acquired by other satellites to evaluate these Australia-specific case studies.

According to the researchers, SAR data provides remote monitoring capabilities of Earth’s surface around the clock and in all weather, which is something that traditional optical Earth Observation (EO) imagery cannot do. The ability to function through fog, clouds, rainfall, and smoke is what makes SAR so valuable.

The research team says that the data can be used to improve how people track and respond to natural disasters, by precisely mapping topography, tracking movements of the ground, and mapping damage to infrastructure.

As the climate continues to change, the ability to mitigate hazards like floods and wildfires will be increasingly important.

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Radar satellites can better protect against bushfires and floods

Photo, posted May 11, 2007, courtesy of Bert Knottenbeld via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Harvesting Water From Air | Earth Wise

May 17, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Developing new technologies that harvest water from the air is a growing field of research driven by the fact that more and more people live in areas where fresh water is in short supply. Estimates are that roughly half the world’s population lives in regions with severe freshwater shortages for at least one month each year.

We have previously discussed some of the novel approaches that researchers are taking to enhance water harvesting. The work at UC Berkeley using metalorganic frameworks is a notable example.

One of the key problems in harvesting water from air is that many droplets that condense from water vapor in the air are too small to be collected and when they cover a surface, they can actually impede further condensation.

University of Texas at Dallas researchers have developed a novel surface that encourages tiny water droplets to move spontaneously into larger droplets. The droplets actually self-climb along an oil, ramp-shaped meniscus. The meniscus acts like a bridge along which microdroplets spontaneously climb upward and coalesce with larger water droplets. They call this the coarsening droplet phenomenon. It is enabled by a liquid lubricant with a unique hydrophilic nature. They actually discovered the lubricant’s special properties by accident when in a lubricant test they observed smaller water droplets propel themselves into larger droplets.

Based on experimental data, the coarsening surface enhances the water harvesting rate 200% higher than other techniques. The team continues to work on ways to use the new lubricant to make sustainable water harvesting systems that are mobile, smaller in size, lower in weight, and less expensive. If they are successful, they will essentially be able to harvest water anywhere that has air.

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New Physical Phenomenon Aids Harvest of Water from Air

Photo, posted April 26, 2014, courtesy of Toukou Sousui via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Should We Block The Sun? | Earth Wise

May 10, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There is growing concern that greenhouse gas emissions are not falling quickly enough to avoid dangerous levels of global warming. As a result, there is the impetus to examine other options. Among these are geoengineering, which is one of the most contentious issues in climate policy. Geoengineering embodies many risks that make even seriously considering it seem risky in itself.

Despite this, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine has issued a report saying that governments urgently need to know whether solar geoengineering could work and what its side effects might be.

Solar geoengineering is also called solar radiation modification, which entails reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space. This would likely be accomplished by injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, much like what happens after large volcanic eruptions.

Schemes for solar geoengineering raise numerous issues. Although solar geoengineering might cool the earth’s surface to a global temperature target, the cooling may not be evenly distributed, affecting many ecosystem functions and biodiversity. It would likely upset regional weather patterns in potentially devastating ways, for example by changing the behavior of the monsoon in South Asia. It might dangerously relax public commitments to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Despite these concerns, or perhaps because of them, the committee that produced the report believes that technology to reflect sunlight deserves substantial funding and should be researched as rapidly and effectively as possible. Once any geoengineering projects get into the hands of policymakers, they may gather momentum that bypasses the advice of scientists. So, it important to make progress on the science while geoengineering is still only theoretical.

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Should We Block the Sun? Scientists Say the Time Has Come to Study It.

To intervene or not to intervene? That is the future climate question

Photo, posted August 3, 2018, courtesy of Tomasz Baranowski via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Arctic Methane Starting To Release | Earth Wise

November 24, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

An international team of researchers has found evidence that frozen methane deposits in the Arctic Ocean have started to be released over a large area of the continental slope off the East Siberian coast. High levels of methane have been detected down to a depth of 1,100 feet in the Laptev Sea near Russia.

The slope sediments in the Arctic contain huge quantities of methane and other gases, known as hydrates. Methane has a warming effect 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. The US Geological Survey has identified Arctic hydrate destabilization as one of the four most serious scenarios for abrupt climate change.

The research team aboard a Russian ship said that most of the bubbles they observed coming up from the sea bottom were dissolving in the water, but that methane levels at the surface were four to eight times what would normally be expected.

Frozen methane deposits have been called the “sleeping giants of the carbon cycle.” If these deposit releases were to reach a high enough level, it would be a tipping point that could greatly increase the speed of global warming. With Arctic temperatures now rising more than twice as fast as the global average, the likelihood of a significant release of the frozen methane grows greater all the time.

Temperatures in Siberia were 9 degrees Fahrenheit higher than average from January to June this year. Last winter’s sea ice melted unusually early. This winter’s freeze has yet to begin, which is already a later start than any time on record.

These new discharges of methane are larger than anything found before and are a very worrisome occurrence.

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Arctic methane deposits ‘starting to release’, scientists say

Photo, posted September 26, 2014, courtesy of the Office of Naval Research via Flickr. Photo credit: U.S. Navy photo by John F. Williams/Released.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Hottest September | Earth Wise

November 5, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Here’s a news item that is like many other recent news items: September 2020 was the hottest September since 1880, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The warm September is a part of a year that so far is poised to be at least the second hottest year in the 141-year climate record.

The ten warmest Septembers on record have all occurred since 2005, and the seven warmest Septembers have occurred in the past seven years.

So far, the year-to-date average global temperature has been the second warmest on record, being just 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit lower than the record year-to-date temperature set in 2016. Expectations are that 2020 will end up somewhere among the three warmest years on record for the globe.

September was warm in many places around the world. California and Oregon had their warmest September ever. Europe had its warmest September on record, Asia had its second warmest September on record as did Australia and South America.

So far, it has been the hottest year-to-date on record in Europe, Asia, and the Gulf of Mexico. No land or ocean areas anywhere had record-cold year-to-date temperatures.

Global temperatures represent an average over the entire surface of the planet. The fact that the global temperature is now nearly one Celsius degree above the 20th century average means that a vast amount of heat has been added in order to warm all the oceans, atmosphere, and land by that much. So, every uptick in global temperature is a big deal.

Meanwhile, the average Arctic sea ice coverage for September was the second smallest on record. The 14 smallest minimum annual sea ice extents have all occurred in the past 14 years.

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Earth just had its hottest September on record

Photo, posted September 2, 2020, courtesy of Tim Vrtiska via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Helping Out Corals With Cool Water | Earth Wise

October 22, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Coral bleaching is happening five times more frequently than it did forty years ago. Its increasing occurrence is a result of global warming which leads to marine heat waves – periods of higher ocean water temperatures. Heat stress on living coral animals causes them to expel the algae that live symbiotically within the coral structure. As the algae is expelled, the coral fades in color looking like it is bleached. Without its algae partner, the coral eventually dies.

Given the increasing occurrence of marine heat waves, scientists are seeking novel ways to decrease heat stress in corals. A new study by the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Science is investigating the use of artificial upwelling – the application of cooler, deep water – as a way to mitigate thermal stress on corals.

Upwelling is a natural process in the ocean in which winds push surface water away from a region – for example, a coastline – which then allows the uplift of deeper, colder waters to the surface. Because such deeper waters are typically rich in nutrients, upwelling is important for supporting many of the world’s important commercial fisheries. For this reason, artificial upwelling has sometimes been used to increase fish stocks in certain locations.

The new work placed coral colonies in aquaria in Bermuda and tested the effects of varying amounts and temperatures of deep cold-water pulses upon corals subjected to thermal stress. The results showed that even short intrusions of cooler deep water (less than two hours per day) can mitigate thermal stress in corals. The next steps are to find suitable parameters for artificial upwelling that maximize the benefits while minimizing potential harmful side effects on the corals and the ecosystems they support.

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Can pumping up cold water from deep within the ocean halt coral bleaching?

Photo, posted February 24, 2008, courtesy of Roderick Eime via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Carbon In The Ocean | Earth Wise

October 13, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

New research from the University of Exeter in the UK reveals that the world’s oceans soak up more carbon than previously believed. Previous estimates of the movement of carbon between the atmosphere and the oceans did not account for the temperature differences between the water’s surface and a few meters below.

The new model includes this factor and finds that there is a significantly higher flux of carbon into the oceans.

The study calculated carbon dioxide fluxes from 1992 to 2018 and found that at certain times and locations there was up to twice as much CO2 contained in the ocean as determined from previous models.

The temperature differences between the surface of the ocean and the water at a depth of a few meters is important because the amount of carbon dioxide that can be absorbed in water depends very strongly on the temperature of the water. Anyone with a home soda maker knows this well as the devices always work much better with refrigerated water than room temperature water.

The difference in ocean carbon dioxide uptake measured from satellite data and calculated in the new modeling amounts to about 10% of global fossil fuel emissions, so it is a very significant revision. The revised estimate for carbon dioxide uptake actually agrees much better with an independent method for calculating the amount of carbon dioxide in the oceans. Those measurements came from a global ocean survey performed by research ships over decades.

Now that two so-called big data estimates of the ocean sink for CO₂agree pretty well, there is greater confidence that we understand this important aspect of the planet’s carbon cycle.

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Ocean carbon uptake widely underestimated

Photo, posted December 30, 2012, courtesy of Jerome Decq via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Climate Change And El Niño

December 2, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The term El Niño refers to a large-scale ocean-atmosphere climate interaction linked to a periodic warming in sea surface temperature across the central and east-central equatorial Pacific Ocean. Amazingly, the phenomenon was originally recognized by fishermen off the coast of South America in the 1600s, with the appearance of unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean.

According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme El Niño events, leading to intensifying droughts, worsening floods, and shifting hurricane patterns.

The study, led by scientists in China and the US, looked at data from 33 El Niños dating back to 1901. Since the 1970s, El Niños have been forming farther to the west in the Pacific Ocean, where temperatures are warmer. Strong El Niños can cause severe drought in dry climates such as Australia and India, intense flooding in wetter climates such as the US Pacific Northwest and Peru, and more hurricanes to form in the Pacific and fewer in the Atlantic.

Before 1978, 12 out of 14 El Niños formed east of the International Dateline. Since 1978, all 11 have formed in the central or western Pacific Ocean a shift of hundreds of miles. There have been three so-called super El Niños since the shift – in 1982, 1997, and 2015. These have set new average temperature records and triggered catastrophic natural disasters.

With rising global temperatures, El Niños are likely to continue to intensify, with major impacts on human societies around the world.

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Climate Change is Making El Niños More Intense, Study Finds

Photo, posted January 20, 2016, courtesy of Los Angeles District via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Ice Melt In Greenland

March 12, 2019 By EarthWise 1 Comment

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences warns that Greenland’s ice Is melting much faster than previously thought. The ice loss rapidly accelerated around 2002-2003 and by 2012 the annual loss was nearly four times the rate in 2003.

Most of the new ice melt is in southwest Greenland, a part of the island that wasn’t known to be losing ice that rapidly and is not where most of the large glaciers are in Greenland. The loss is coming from the land-fast ice sheet itself.

Data from NASA satellites and GPS stations scattered around Greenland’s coast shows that between 2002 and 2016, Greenland lost approximately 280 billion tons of ice per year. That is enough melt to cover the entire states of Florida and New York hip deep in meltwater, as well as drowning Washington, D.C. and one or two other small states.

Global warming of just 1 degree Celsius is the main driver behind this massive meltdown of ice. The temperature rise coupled with a negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation causes rapid surface melt of the ice sheet during summers. The Oscillation is a natural, irregular change in atmospheric pressure that brings warm, sunny weather to the western side of Greenland during its negative phase.

The Greenland ice sheet is 2 miles thick in some places and contains enough ice to raise sea levels 23 feet if it all melted. The melting Greenland ice is already slowing the Gulf Stream, which is wreaking havoc with European weather. If we don’t get a handle on global temperature rise, things are only going to get worse.

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