Climate Disaster: Greenland is Melting!—Kevin Trenberth on global warming—Radio Ecoshock 2019-09-04
Channel: Stop Fossil Fuels
Date: 2020-03-26

Is the astounding melt on Greenland this summer due to a natural atmospheric cycle rather than global warming?

Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth specializes in the transport of heat, water and energy in the atmosphere and ocean. He was a pioneer in the study of El Nino and La Nina events, and a lead author for three reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Originally from New Zealand, Dr. Trenberth is a Distinguished Senior Scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Show by Radio Ecoshock, reposted under CC License. Episode details at https://www.ecoshock.org/2019/09/climate-disaster-greenland-is-melting-new-show.html

Stop Fossil Fuels researches and disseminates effective strategies and tactics to halt fossil fuel combustion as fast as possible. Learn more at https://stopfossilfuels.org 


MARINE HEAT WAVES KILL MILLIONS OF FISH, and DAMAGE THE ENTIRE OCEAN FOOD WEB
“Marine heat waves” like the hot blob in the North Pacific in 2015-2016 “led to the loss of over 100 million cod. It had profound effects on the entire food web, from the phytoplankton to the zooplankton, the small fish, large fish, all the things that prey on the fish including the whales, sea otters, and marine animals.”

Trenberth: “The North Atlantic Oscillation is a weakening or a strengthening of the overall Westerlies across the NA. In the positive phase the Westerlies are active further north. The storm track is further north. It’s very warm in Europe and all of the storms that go from Europe into Siberia have a particular track. In the negative phase, the whole pattern tends to shift further south. It’s a lot weaker in the north and you get very cold conditions in that case in Europe.”


OCEAN HEATING, HOT PATCHES & HURRICANES
Heat transfer from a hotter atmosphere to the ocean is “pretty regular, and the best single indicator that the planet is warming. 2018 is the warmest year for the global oceans, 2017 2nd warmest, 2015 3rd warmest and 2016 4th warmest.”

2016 was slightly less warming for the ocean due to the El Nino event that year. During an El Nino, large amounts of heat are released in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, meaning a transfer of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere, rather than the other way around. 2016 was the warmest year for the land surface temperatures, due mainly to the El Nino. But 2018 stands out as the year of the warmest oceans so far.


ROAMING OCEAN HOTSPOTS CAN BIRTH KILLER STORMS
“Where the hot spots occur from one year to the next can vary, partly because of things like El Nino and maybe the North Atlantic Oscillation or the weather more generally. So where the hotter spot occurs can vary, but as a whole the oceans are certainly warming up.”

“Some of the biggest warming is occurring in the southern oceans. But the difference is that there are very strong winds there and a lot of that heat gets carried down to greater depths in the ocean.” Those winds can drive sea ice further offshore, as happened a few years ago, increasing the extent. The sea ice extent in Antarctica is not a good indicator of global warming, compared to Arctic sea ice coverage. Yet in the last few years, we have seen “remarkably low” sea ice in Antarctica.

The oceans have absorbed most of the abnormal heat energy from humans loading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. Up to 90% of the real warming went into the oceans, and water holds heat better than land.

All the record hot years in the seas were in the last four years, with 2018 the hottest ever recorded. This extra heat is not evenly distributed. Hot spots and marine heat waves can pop up anywhere in the world.

The warmest patches in the ocean move around. In 2017 one of the warmest patches of ocean was in the Gulf of Mexico, leading to Harvey, Irma & Maria. In 2018, one of the warmest patches of the ocean was off the Carolinas, adding to the destructive power of Hurricane Florence. Hot patches occurred in the Indian Ocean, leading to two “very unusual” cyclones, Idai & Kenneth, that devastated Mozambique and neighboring countries in March 2019. Trenberth credits ocean hot patches for cyclone Fani that struck India and Pakistan in May 2019. And the waters were hot in the Caribbean as Hurricane Dorian powered up from a Category 2 to Cat 5 storm in just two days.

TV weather experts explain a hotter ocean can add energy to hurricanes, as both added rains to drop and higher wind speeds. But they never connect that to the big picture of warming oceans all over the world.

Our hotter ocean pops up as strong and unusual storms half a world away from countries emitting the most greenhouse gases. This is one of the way our pollution spreads damage to countries with tiny emissions. There's been a lot of talk about rising seas overcoming island nations, but very little about devastating storm damage. Random ocean hot spots sound like a weapon in a climate war against the world, a kind of carbon terrorism.