The Crisis Report - 73
You REALLY need to think about CLOUDS. Clouds in the present-day climate system cover approximately two-thirds of the globe.
We may have REALLY fucked up.
As you might have guessed, I read a LOT. It’s my ADDICTION.
I will literally “read anything” if I am cut off from my usual feeds. Before the advent of handheld computers I would occasionally find myself reading romance novels, western's, young adult novels, crafting magazines, technical journals, or “whatever”.
Reading isn’t just “fundamental” to me, it’s ESSENTIAL.
I was recently reminded of this while reading through the excellent “Last Week in Collapse” weekly newsletter on SubStack. FYI- If you haven’t signed up to get it each week, you are missing out. It’s FREE on Reddit if you don’t care about the graphics, and it’s a great snapshot of what’s going on around the world each week.
Here/s a sample from last week.
Last Week in Collapse: April 28-May 4, 2024
A study published last week in Earth’s Future determined that tropical hurricanes and cyclones will get wetter, intensify faster, and cause more damage when they make landfall. At a conference of earthquake scientists last week, they discussed the potential for dangerous lake tsunamis triggered by future climate-induced landslides into mountain lakes.
In other mountain regions, like Kashmir, Drought is encroaching as ancient glaciers disappear. In fact, much of India is experiencing terrible Drought and heat.
Manila hit its all-time hottest air temperature ever — 38.8 °C (102 °F). Myanmar and Lao felt their hottest night ever, as did a number of Asian capitals. Japan also ended its warmest April on record. Flooding in Saudi Arabia.
China experienced 35+ cm hail (14+ inches), and part of Hainan saw its hottest day of all time, 42.8 °C (109 °F). Scientists are worried about the upcoming normalization of heat-caused dieoffs in marine environments.
Flooding caused the Collapse of part of a highway in China, killing 48+ people. Tornadoes across Midwest America killed several, laying waste across several states. Some regions of the U.S. are seeing insurers pull out or raise premiums beyond affordable limits, due to a changing risk environment — mostly around wildfires & flooding. Like many nations, Greece is bracing for a record fire season ahead.
Hundreds of thousands of fish, perhaps millions, died off in a Vietnamese reservoir blasted by a heat wave which turned parts of the reservoir into mud. In the ocean, temperature fluctuations are increasingly responsible for mass mortality events.
Farmers in the UK are warning of upcoming food shortages, mostly as a result of the devastating flooding which impacted the Isles. Couple that with the news that about 20% of major UK companies issued a profit warning in the last 12 months, and the nation is facing tough economic waters ahead. Global cocoa prices continue to surge, and the futures market for this tight commodity is growing more volatile.
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Now, as much as I find this newsletter interesting and helpful each week, it covers different material than what I focus on. There’s a lot of overlap, but we aren’t always interested in the same things. Still, I like the idea of a “weekly” update.
For one thing I want to make clear where I am sourcing my information. I know that my interpretation of data points can be extreme or fringe at time. Although I am frequently proven correct in time, I tend towards a “worst case” analysis.
I want it to always be clear that my analysis is based on “open source”, generally “mainstream”, articles and papers. I do not “make stuff up” or cite disreputable/discredited sources. If anything, my tendencies are towards being “too conservative” in my analysis in order to make it “less crazy” to the average reader.
In general, the Climate Crisis is MUCH WORSE than you probably think.
I think the MASS DYING part of the crisis is starting. I think it’s about to start getting REAL.
What I read this week.
May 3rd — May 10th, 2024
I came across this article from 2019.
Extreme CO2 levels could trigger clouds ‘tipping point’ and 8C of global warming.
-CarbonBrief, Zeke Hausfather, February 2019
The article leads to this paper.
Possible climate transitions from breakup of stratocumulus decks under greenhouse warming.
-Nature Geoscience, February 2019.
The abstract alone is terrifying.
Abstract
“Stratocumulus clouds cover 20% of the low-latitude oceans and are especially prevalent in the subtropics. They cool the Earth by shading large portions of its surface from sunlight.”
“However, as their dynamical scales are too small to be resolvable in global climate models, predictions of their response to greenhouse warming have remained uncertain. Here we report how stratocumulus decks respond to greenhouse warming in large-eddy simulations that explicitly resolve cloud dynamics in a representative subtropical region.”
In the simulations, stratocumulus decks become unstable and break up into scattered clouds when CO2 levels rise above 1,200 ppm.
“In addition to the warming from rising CO2 levels, this instability triggers a surface warming of about +8Cglobally and +10C in the subtropics.”
Once the stratocumulus decks have broken up, they only re-form once CO2 concentrations drop substantially below the level at which the instability first occurred.
“Climate transitions that arise from this instability may have contributed importantly to hothouse climates and abrupt climate changes in the geological past. Such transitions to a much warmer climate may also occur in the future if CO2 levels continue to rise”.
That sounds pretty FUCKING DIRE if it happens, right?
SO, how worried should we be about this.
What did Zeke Hausfather have to say about this paper in 2019?
“If atmospheric CO2 levels exceed 1,200 parts per million (ppm), it could push the Earth’s climate over a “tipping point”, finds a new study. This would see clouds that shade large part of the oceans start to break up.”
“According to the new paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, this could trigger a massive 8C rise in global average temperatures – in addition to the warming from increased CO2.”
Part of what led me to this study was this 1,200ppm number as the “cloud tipping point”. I’ve been seeing that number pop up recently as a “red line” level of CO2 emissions that MUST NOT be crossed.
“The only similar example of rapid warming at this magnitude in the Earth’s recent history is the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55m years ago, when global temperatures increased by 5-8C and drove widespread extinction of species on both the oceans and land.”
A really important point is that the “rapid warming” of the PETM, happened over a 10,000 to 20,000 year timeframe. So, is ZH implying that this warming would also take thousands of years? A “massive 8C rise in global average temperatures” over the next 5,000 years is bad. That same rise over the next 500 years is a Planetary Catastrophe on par with being hit by an asteroid.
“However, scientists not involved in the research caution that the results are still speculative and that other complicating factors could influence if or when a tipping point is reached. The threshold identified by the researchers – a 1,200ppm concentration of atmospheric CO2 – is three times current CO2 concentrations.”
The standard Climate Moderate response to research they view as “Alarmist”. Agree that it’s bad, emphasize that lots of other scientists think it’s “still speculative”, emphasize that it’s “complicated”, and end on a reassuring “it’s NEVER going to get that bad note.
“If fossil fuel use continues to rapidly expand over the remainder of the century, it is possible levels could get that high. The Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 scenario (RCP8.5), a very high emissions scenario examined by climate scientists, has the Earth’s atmosphere reaching around 1,100ppm by the year 2100. But this would require the world to massively expand coal use and eschew any climate mitigation over the rest of this century”.
Zeke is a Climate Moderate, but he’s an “honest” Moderate. He is willing to include forecasts that say this tipping point could be reached by 2100. However, he then rushes to point out how unlikely this outcome is, because it, “would require the world to massively expand coal use and eschew any climate mitigation over the rest of this century”. Something he clearly feels is not going to happen.
“Stratocumulus clouds are widespread low-lying clouds, typically present within 2,000 metres of the Earth’s surface. They form large cloud “decks” that typically cover around 20% of the Earth’s tropical ocean regions. They cool the Earth by shading its surface from incoming sunlight, reflecting much of it back to space before it reaches the surface.”
“Clouds have long been one of the main areas of uncertainty in global climate models. Clouds form and dissipate over scales that are smaller than can be resolved in current global climate models, which makes it difficult to predict how they will respond to future changes driven by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.”
The Earth’s albedo has been declining during the last 20 years. Earth’s Albedo 1998–2017 as Measured From Earthshine pub. Aug 2021 AND Observational evidence that cloud feedback amplifies global warming.
“The new study overcomes this hurdle by using a state-of-the-art, high-resolution “large-eddy simulation” model that is capable of resolving the physical processes that govern clouds. The researchers use this model to estimate how cloud properties might change as the world warms”.
“They found a striking result: in their simulations, stratocumulus cloud decks become unstable and break up into scattered clouds when CO2 levels rise above 1,200ppm. When these clouds break up they no longer shade the surface, triggering global warming of 8C – and as much as 10C in subtropical regions. This is in addition to the 5C or so of global warming above pre-industrial levels associated with 1,200ppm CO2”.
That was 2019. In 2021 this paper came out. It supports the conclusions of the 2019 paper.
Observational evidence that cloud feedback amplifies global warming -PNAS July 2021
Using CERES and Project Earthshine datasets a statistical learning analysis indicates it is 97.5 percent certain that changes in clouds brought about by climate change will amplify warming. We show that global cloud feedback is dominated by the sensitivity of clouds to surface temperature and tropospheric stability. Considering changes in just these two factors, we are able to constrain global cloud feedback to 0.43Wm2 (90% confidence), implying a robustly amplifying effect of clouds on global warming and only a 0.5% chance of ECS (Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity) below +2C.
“Very high levels of CO2 affect stratocumulus clouds by influencing how they absorb and re-emit the heat given off from the Earth’s surface. An atmosphere with lots of CO2 in it is more “opaque” and this causes the re-emission of heat to start at lower levels of the atmosphere. In short, this warms the tops of the stratocumulus clouds – which are typically sustained by cooling at their tops. This also reduces the moisture transported up from the Earth’s surface through convection. Together, these changes make stratocumulus cloud decks more susceptible to breaking up.”
“The figure below, from the paper, shows this process in action.”
“It shows three cases: a present-day 400ppm CO2 world (left portion); a 1,200ppm CO2 world (middle); and 1,300ppm world (right). In present-day conditions, stratocumulus clouds reflect 30-60% of the sunlight that hits them back to space. As the Earth warms over time, these clouds gradually sink – and, once a critical threshold is passed after 1,200ppm, they break apart.”
“The authors find that once the stratocumulus decks have broken up, they only re-form once CO2 concentrations drop substantially, to below 300ppm. They suggest that this would make warming associated with this climate “tipping point” much more difficult to reverse, as CO2 concentrations would have to be drawn down to levels last seen a century ago.”
OK, so this is a REALLY BAD thing. Now, is anyone else bothered by the idea that CO2 levels would have to “below 300ppm” to reverse this effect. How “sure” are we about that 1,200ppm “red line”?
“One of the most concerning aspects of climate change are potential “tipping points” – critical thresholds beyond which rapid climate changes occur that are difficult to reverse. Despite a lot of public attention on tipping points, scientists have found limited evidence of them in climate models, at least over time-frames relevant to humans.”
Climate Moderate dogma is that “tipping points” are “over hyped”. At least “over time-frames relevant to humans.”
“The finding in this paper is important, say scientists, because it represents one of the first firm climate tipping points to come out of modeling exercises. As Prof Andrew Dessler at Texas A&M University, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief:”
“Historically, the models have been frustratingly linear and it’s been hard to get them to ‘tip’. But now people have really been hammering the models and they’ve started discovering weird non-linear behaviour.”
OMG, we literally “bet the farm” on the strength of these guys Climate Models AND NOW they start discovering “weird non-linear behaviour”.
You might remember Dr. Dessler from these statements he made in an NYT interview in Dec. 2023 about the “unprecedented” warming in 2023.
“On its own, one exceptional year would not be enough to suggest something was faulty with the computer models. Your default position has to be, ‘The models are right.’”
And.
“I’m not willing to say that we’ve ‘broken the climate’ or there’s anything weird going on until more evidence comes in.”
“The stratocumulus breakup identified in the study also may help to explain some enduring mysteries about temperatures in the distant past, which current climate models have trouble simulating.’
“For example, the Arctic was ice free about 50m years ago in the early Eocene. Current climate models suggest that it would require atmospheric concentrations of around 4,000ppm CO2 to trigger these conditions, but records suggest that concentrations were a much lower 2,000ppm during the early Eocene.”
FYI- This is the “hole in the heart” of the Moderate Climate Paradigm.
55 million years ago, during the PETM, the High Arctic was a lot like Miami, with an average temperature of 74F degrees. Alligator ancestors and palm trees lived in Alaska on the shores of an Arctic Ocean, that NEVER froze. Even in Winter.
How giant tortoises, alligators thrived in High Arctic 50 million years ago.
— Science News Aug, 2010
During the Early Eocene, Ellesmere Island, which is adjacent to Northern Greenland, probably was similar to swampy cypress forests in the southeastern United States today. Eocene fossil evidence collected there in recent decades by various teams indicate the lush landscape hosted giant tortoises, aquatic turtles, large snakes, alligators, flying lemurs, tapirs, and hippo-like and rhino-like mammals.
There is NO WAY to account for this warming using the theories and models of the Climate Moderates.
“As NASA Goddard Institute for Space Science (GISS) scientist Dr Kate Marvel – who also was not involved in the study – tells Carbon Brief:”
“The most interesting thing to me [in the paper] is the proposed link to climates of the past. As they note, it’s kind of hard to get models warm enough during the early Eocene. If this is because models don’t account for stratocumulus breakup, then this could explain why the Eocene was very warm despite CO2 being around 2,000 ppm (a little less than twice RCP8.5).”
Translation: Our models could be 50% off.
“Don’t freak out”
ZH “literally” uses these words.
“The paper emphasises that large uncertainties remain and the results they find are very much preliminary. Because they are using a high-resolution large-eddy simulation their model lacks many other factors contained in global climate models that operate over larger geographic scales.”
Their results are preliminary. There are “large uncertainties”. Their model lacks “many other factors” that other models, which don’t show this outcome, have.
“Specifically, climate models suggest that large-scale subsidence in the atmosphere – colder air becoming denser and moving towards the ground – weakens as the world warms. This has the effect of lifting up and cooling cloud tops, which counteracts possible stratocumulus breakup. While the paper tries to account for this, the weakening of subsidence that occurs is uncertain and varies across climate models.”
Some models say this won’t happen “at all”. In these models as the world warms the stratocumulus clouds basically stay the same. Nobody knows for sure how this works so these guys could be wrong.
“If subsidence weakens on the faster end of the range found in climate models, it would mean that stratocumulus breakup would not occur until CO2 levels reach a much more improbable 2,200ppm – and reform if levels fall beneath 1,900ppm.”
Which, since CO2 levels have not gone above 2,000ppm in the last 500 million years, means this “cloud apocalypse” could never happen. A “small tweak” in the models gets you a VERY different result.
“Carbon Brief asked Dr. Marvel if there is any reason to worry that a cloud tipping point could occur at lower CO2 concentrations. She says:”
“I can’t really imagine a complicating feedback that would trigger stratocumulus breakup at a lower CO2 level; in fact, as they point out, weakening the large-scale subsidence in the troposphere would counteract this instability.”
Dr. Marvel cautions that while the tipping point found in the new paper is interesting, it “doesn’t merit freaking out”. Existing projections are enough of a concern, she adds: “We already have more than enough reasons to avoid hurling ourselves to an Eocene climate. Let’s try to not get to 1,200ppm.”
Minimize, trivialize, dismiss.
“Dessler similarly cautions that the results are still quite uncertain, telling Carbon Brief that he is “not worried yet”. He suggests that the study’s conclusions should be viewed “as ‘low confidence’ until more work is done on this and other groups/models can reproduce it.”
This is “low confidence” work and you can ignore it for now.
“The tipping point identified in this new paper should be easy to avoid with any sort of concerted efforts to mitigate climate change, even if they fall far short of Paris Agreement current goals of limiting temperature rise to 1.5C or 2C above pre-industrial levels.”
Reassurance from Zeke that this horrible outcome is “easy to avoid” with “any sort of concerted efforts to mitigate climate change, even if they fall far short”. So, “no worries”.
“But the potential presence of massive tipping points that could usher in potentially catastrophic warming should provide a sobering example of the risks of climate inaction in the face of large “unknown unknowns” in the climate system.”
Standard Climate Moderate close. Sober appreciation of the seriousness of Climate Change and the “risks of climate inaction” after the reassurance that horrible outcomes are “easy to avoid”.
-Zeke Hausfather, February 2019.
Now, did you spot the weak spot in this article, the REALLY SCARY assumption Zeke is making in his analysis?
Let me help you out. He states that this potential +8C of “cloud warming” is,
“in addition to the +5C or so of global warming above pre-industrial levels associated with 1,200ppm CO2.”
If you just went OMG and wanted to vomit that’s an appropriate reaction.
In the MODELS of the Climate Moderates 2XCO2e (doubling CO2 levels to 560ppm) produces +2.6C to +3.3C of warming at ECS. In order for that to be true, the Climate Moderate estimates around the sensitivity of the Climate System mean that they think +1,200ppm levels of CO2 will result in +5C to +6C of global warming.
That’s what Zeke Hausfather of Berkeley Earth is telling you the models of the Climate Moderates indicate at CO2 levels of 1,200ppm; +5C or so of global warming. The paleoclimate record compiled by the field of paleontology indicates the Climate Moderates are WRONG.
It indicates that Global Warming of +5C to +6C is reached at CO2 levels of around 560ppm.
The Alarmist climate models, have always indicated +4.5C to +6C of warming at CO2 levels of 560ppm. The Moderates just decided to ignore them, and the paleoclimate data, after 1998. Most people believe that the Alarmists were “proven wrong”. They weren’t, the Moderates just acted like they were.
SO.
If this “cloud tipping point” happens not at CO2 levels of 1,200ppm but at WARMING levels of +5C to +6C.
THEN.
It will start happening as we approach warming levels of +5C.
We are at +2C, right now.
We are warming at an estimated rate of +0.45C per decade. (it might be higher).
James Hansen estimates the current “right now” CO2e level is about 535ppm. (this is CO2 plus CH4 mainly).
And so, when you hear someone mention that the “cloud diminishment” effect won’t happen until CO2 levels get to 1,200ppm. Well, now you know what that really means.
If this starts “strongly” happening then warming is about to really ACCELERATE in a BIG WAY. We could get a warming rate on the order of +1C per decade for the rest of the century.
We could get to Hansen’s +10C of warming in the pipeline by 2110.
NOW, might be a good time to start “FREAKING OUT”.
This is my analysis.
This is what I see.
This is my “Crisis Report”.
— rc 05112024
Personal Notes:
So, I read a ton more stuff this last week. But, once I got started on this it sort of became an article all by itself. Next week I’ll try to have something more “list like”.
Thank you Richard (and also Chris and Ric for your comments)...I have a science background (mostly medical) so with some slow slow reading and rereading I am able to follow your explanations and I really appreciate you putting this all together in one place...It is so affirming, comforting to be in the company of folks that seem to understand... The idea that most of humanity, along with so much of the precious life on Earth, could be gone in maybe a few more years is really really painful, nauseating...But I do not see at this point how it could be otherwise...Again, thank you Richard for all the time and effort you put in to these reports...
As you’re seen prob via comments I’ve made here and when we had some small exchanges on Reddit, I’ve been focused on the exponential rate of acceleration and how that moves. It’s kinda like trading stocks and using math to understand market movement, Fibonacci and such. There are these key points that can trigger massive systemic movement in that world and it’s no different in physics, just different mediums.
If the rate of change itself is changing so significantly so quickly, and that very change is itself causing itself to accelerate even further with each small step-change…that’s a snowball rolling down a mountain and right about now that thing is getting big enough and fast enough to wipe out the entire show.