Raining fairly steady this early Friday on California’s north coast as this particular weather episode seems to be carrying more moisture than forecast.
Showers on-and-off — sunshine floods the senses every-now-and-then.
Pretty-wet so far this year, though. Rainfall totals for March released by the NWS this morning, reveals we made a big splash. My spot way-near the Eureka/Arcata Airport here in Mckinleyville reported a 167-percent of normal for the month — 10.48 inches, compared to just 3.78 for 2015.
Wondrous weather lately in these parts.
A lull to complacency — today is the 46th annual Earth Day, and also today, supposedly a big signing in New York at the UN for the also-supposedly climate deal made in Paris last December.
While at the same time, reportedly Americans so enjoy our weather, we’ve been soothed into near-smugness on the real, actual horror, quickly-coming of climate change.
(Illustration found here).
This drastic, apparently life-threatening shift in our only environment can not be emphasized enough — all other problems, issues, whatever, is way-second to climate change. Comprehending the scope and situation of the ‘greenhouse effect’ even for me was late in arriving — didn’t become reality until 2007, then the WTF! moment.
Only been worse since. As I’ve written before on this blog, there’s a frightful sense of watching the end of an age on my laptop.
Unknowingly, people living in the US the last 40 years have become so accustomed to ‘more favorable weather conditions,’ even a severe, quick-reversal ‘may come too late to spur demands for policy responses to address climate change.’
From Phys.org last Tuesday:
The analysis, published in the journal Nature, found that 80 percent of Americans live in counties where the weather is more pleasant than four decades ago.
Winter temperatures have risen substantially throughout the United States since the 1970s, but summers have not become markedly more uncomfortable.
The result is that weather has shifted toward a temperate year-round climate that Americans have been demonstrated to prefer.
“Rising temperatures are ominous symptoms of global climate change, but Americans are experiencing them at times of the year when warmer days are welcomed,” explains Patrick J. Egan, an associate professor in NYU’s Wilf Family Department of Politics who authored the study with Duke’s Megan Mullin.
However, he and Mullin, an associate professor at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, discovered a looming shift in these patterns when they used long-term projections of temperature changes to evaluate future weather Americans are likely to experience.
According to these estimates, nearly 90 percent of the U.S. public may experience weather at the end of the 21st century that is less preferable than weather in the recent past.
“Weather patterns in recent decades have been a poor source of motivation for Americans to demand policies to combat the climate change problem,” observes Mullin.
“But without serious efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, year-round climates ultimately will become much less pleasant.”
An example of understatement.
Subtly in the beginning created the complacency — since the first Earth Day, the US has slowly gotten warmer (via Climate Central): ‘On average, temperatures in the contiguous 48 states have been warming at a rate of 0.45°F (0.25°C) per decade since 1970.’
Until about now, or course, just ask the folks in Houston.
And with that Paris climate accord, way-too-little, way-too-late. Action vs reality. Scientists found the Paris deal even worse.
From the Guardian yesterday:
The global climate change deal agreed in Paris in December pledged to “hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C.”
Vulnerable countries, such as low-lying islands, have warned that 2C of climate change would wipe their nations from the map.
A difference of half a degree centigrade may be barely noticeable day to day, but the difference between 1.5C and 2C of global warming is a shift into a new, more dangerous climate regime, according to the first comprehensive analysis of the issue.
Understanding the different impacts from 1.5C or 2C of warming has been made more urgent by the recent run of record temperatures, with 2014 and 2015 breaking long-term records and recent months smashing previous highs.
In February, the global temperature was 1.34C above the average from 1951-1980, according to Nasa data.
The new research was published in the journal Earth System Dynamics, and lead author Carl Schleussner, a scientific adviser at Climate Analytics in Germany, said: “We analysed the climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [and] considered 11 different indicators including extreme weather events, water availability, crop yields, coral reef degradation and sea-level rise. We found significant differences [between 1.5C and 2C] for all the impacts we considered.”
…
Jacob Schewe, one of the research team and at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said: “Some researchers have argued that there is little difference in climate change impacts between 1.5C and 2C. Indeed, it is necessary to account for natural variability, model uncertainties, and other factors that can obscure the picture. We did that in our study, and by focusing on key indicators at the regional level, we clearly show that there are significant differences in impacts.”
Prof Nigel Arnell, at the University of Reading, UK, who was not involved in the research, welcomed the new study: “This study demonstrates that the impacts in 2100 are lower under a 1.5C world than under a 2C world and that the difference is greater for some sectors than for others. Impacts on heat extremes are most affected.
“The study also shows that the rate of change over time is really important for future impacts, so in order to really understand the differences between a 1.5C and a 2C world we need to run more comprehensive global climate models with lower rates of [warming] than used so far to see how the climate system responds.”
And worse than worse — via CNN: ‘The deadline for countries to sign the Paris Agreement is April 21, 2017. That’s one year from Friday. Again, that indicates their intent to ratify the agreement. They still have to do so. The text of the agreement says it should become law in 2020, said Cassie Flynn, climate change adviser for the U.N. Development Program. It’s possible it could become official in 2018, she told me, which would be ahead of schedule.’
Who/which ‘schedule,’ huh?
Maybe this one — from Bob Henson at WunderBlog, also yesterday:
Preliminary CO2 data from Mauna Loa, Hawaii, for the week ending April 16 showed a concentration of 408.69 parts per million (ppm), according to NOAA.
The weekly value analyzed by NOAA topped 405 ppm for the first time on March 26 (405.62 ppm), which was itself surpassed by 406.57 ppm on April 9.
The one-day average concentration hit an eye-opening peak of 409.44 on April 9.
That’s close to 4 ppm above any value recorded on Mauna Loa prior to this year.
“We are now witnessing the fastest growth rates of the entire record of CO2 measurements. This record-breaking growth is an expected consequence of the near record-breaking fossil fuel usage combined with the largest El Niño event in several decades.” said Ralph Keeling (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) in a Keeling Curve blog post on Wednesday.
Day of the earth, and I seriously never, ever fully comprehended the influence of Prince…