Weather vs Climate – No Fricking Fracking

Study: A Million Years of Data Confirms: Monsoons Are Likely to Get Worse

New York Times: A Million Years of Data Confirms: Monsoons Are Likely to Get Worse. The annual summer monsoon in South Asia begins this month. A new study points to more destructive storms.

Global warming is likely to make India’s monsoon season wetter and more dangerous, new research suggests.

Scientists have known for years that climate change is disrupting monsoon season. Past research based on computer models has suggested that the global heating caused by greenhouse gases, and the increased moisture in the warmed atmosphere, will result in rainier summer monsoon seasons and unpredictable, extreme rainfall events.

The new paper, published Friday in the journal Science Advances, adds evidence for the theory by looking back over the past million years to give a sense of monsoons to come.

Study: Melting ice in Antarctica could trigger chain reactions, bringing monsoon rains to the ice cap

CNN: Melting ice in Antarctica could trigger chain reactions, bringing monsoon rains to the ice cap, study says.

In an ever-warming climate, ripple effects or chain reactions could lead to altered weather patterns across the globe thanks to a melting Antarctic ice sheet, a new study says.

The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, found that as Earth continues to heat up, the land underneath the Antarctic ice sheet will become more exposed. As a result of that process, wind patterns will shift, and rainfall will increase over Antarctica, which could trigger processes that speed up ice loss.

“We found that ice sheet retreat exposing previously ice-covered land led to big increases in rainfall, which through a feedback mechanism dramatically warms the ocean,” Catherine Bradshaw, senior scientist at the UK Met Office and lecturer at the University of Exeter told CNN.

The Daily Climate, April 27, 2021

Articles include: California drought; underreporting GHGs; weather station in the Andes; 26,000 snakes; tools: graphics and climate change; deforesting Brazil; EPA and California air standards; pandemic and snow melt in SE Asia.

Why the intense U.S. drought is now a megadrought

Mashable: Why the intense U.S. drought is now a megadrought.

Climate 101 is a Mashable series that answers provoking and salient questions about Earth’s warming climate.

The water keeps going down.

Almost the entire Southwest is mired in various stages of drought as of April 21, 2021, resulting in falling water levels at the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. The consequences could be unprecedented. For the first time in Lake Mead’s 85-year existence, water levels may drop below a point this summer that triggers water cuts in Arizona and Nevada. (This would largely mean cuts to farmers and agriculture.)

Geological and climate records show that sustained droughts, lasting decades, come and go in the Southwest. But the current prolonged drying trend, which started some 20 years ago, is exacerbated by a rapidly warming climate. This makes the current drought not just long, but especially intense.

Climate Change Denial Shifts Tactics – 2 articles

ABC News: As extreme weather increases, climate misinformation adapts. As the impact of climate change becomes more apparent, misinformation about it is shifting to focus more and more on extreme weather. “It just isn’t credible to deny climate change or the impacts it’s having. People see it with their own two eyes,” said Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann. “So there’s a shift in tactics. Now it’s softer forms of denial, and efforts to diminish the impacts of climate change.” That evolution is evident online. Media intelligence firm Zignal Labs analyzed millions of social media posts, news stories and other online content and found that overall, conversations about climate change in the past 12 months peaked during high-profile natural disasters, including the Texas storm and the California wildfires. Overall, online mentions of natural disasters and their relationship to climate change also increased by 27%, Zignal found.

EuroNews: Climate Misinformation Shifts Focus From Denial To extreme Weather Events. Despite years of warnings from scientists that a warming planet would result in dangerous weather conditions, researchers say there’s been a shift in climate misinformation from denying climate change to focusing on extreme weather events.

Ars Technica: Missing Arctic ice fueled the “Beast of the East” winter storm. Less ice means more moisture in the air, but connecting it to weather is difficult.

Extreme weather has become the new normal—whether it’s precipitation, drought, wind, heat, or cold. The question of how the ever-shrinking layer of Arctic sea ice has contributed to any of these changes has prompted some lively discussion over the past few years. Researchers have proposed that a weakened jet stream driven by vanishing Arctic sea ice might play a large role in extreme winter events like the descending polar vortex that struck North America earlier this year. But the idea hasn’t held up well in light of more recent evidence.

But now, researchers have identified a direct link between extreme winter weather and sea ice loss. The 2018 “Beast of the East” winter storm hit Europe with record-breaking snowfall and low temperatures. And potentially as much as 88 percent of that snowfall originated from increased evaporation of the Barents Sea.

The working hypothesis is that Arctic sea ice acts as a cap for Arctic waters, limiting evaporation. Less sea ice and warmer Arctic temperatures mean more evaporation, potentially explaining the increased severity of winter storms like the Beast of the East. Until now, it has been tough to measure direct evidence linking sea ice loss to extreme European winters, but recent advances in technology are making this a little less challenging.

Multiyear drought builds in western US with little relief in sight

CNN: Multiyear drought builds in western US with little relief in sight.

While much has been written this year about atmospheric rivers, avalanche warnings and even flash flooding, the western half of the United States is experiencing a crushing drought.

The weather patterns have left parts of the Northwest soggy. Still, 80% of the land in the western states face some official category of drought.

That is nearly half of the entire continental US, or put another way, the size of New York State times 25. The drought is affecting more than 70 million people.

Study: Scientists blow up decades of thinking on why hurricanes are becoming more deadly

The Hill: Scientists blow up decades of thinking on why hurricanes are becoming more deadly. Researchers have used the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation to explain hurricane activity. Now, it may not exist.

Story at a glance

Using preindustrial climate and pollution data, scientists are walking back the idea that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is a real meteorological entity.
Instead, human activity is responsible for fluctuations in hurricane seasons, they argue.

When analyzing and tracking hurricanes and storms that develop in the North Atlantic Ocean, meteorologists and scientists have long looked toward the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) for justification.

Understood as a naturally occurring phenomenon, the AMO is supposed to cycle through warm and cool phases every 20-40 years, which accounts for seasonal hurricane activity.

New research posits that there is no AMO at all, however, and that changes in hurricane activity within the Atlantic are directly related to human-caused climate change.

Published in the journal Science, a team of researchers argue that the AMO is not an entity in and of itself; rather, it is a manifestation of the effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, or fossil fuels emitted into the atmosphere from human activity.

Study: 2 articles – Ocean currents are slowing down – could have a devastating effect on our climate

CNN: The slowing down of ocean currents could have a devastating effect on our climate. Well, new research reveals Earth’s major ocean currents are slowing down, and though the consequences will not be as immediate or dramatic as in the Hollywood fiction, there are real-world impacts for global weather patterns and sea levels. The slowdown of ocean circulation is directly caused by warming global temperatures and has been predicted by climate scientists. “This has been predicted, basically, for decades that this circulation would weaken in response to global warming. And now we have the strongest evidence that this is already happening,” said Stefan Rahmstorf of Potsdam University who contributed to this research.

CNN: Gulf Stream system at its weakest in 1,600 years, study shows. Research recently published in science journal Nature by the University College London (UCL) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has found that the circulation of water in the Atlantic has been declining since the 1800s.

Texas grid crisis exposes environmental justice rifts

E&E News: Texas grid crisis exposes environmental justice rifts.

As temperatures plunged below freezing and much of Texas’ power grid collapsed last week, Ana Parras braved the pitch-black night to check on friends in the southeast Houston neighborhood of Manchester.

The majority-Latino, low-income community sits along the Houston Ship Channel, bordered by a major oil refinery and several petrochemical plants.

“The whole community was in the dark, there were no streetlights. Nothing. It was dangerous,” said Parras, co-executive director of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services. “But the road was lit because of the refinery flaring.”

While the height of Texas’ blackouts left more than 4 million homes and businesses without power, some experts say low-income areas and communities of color bore the brunt of much of the crisis. That is partly because people living in poverty often lack access to expensive backup generators, community groups say, and they tend to live in older, poorly insulated homes, where temperatures drop quickly when the power goes out.