A group of orcas is repeatedly and intentionally attacking small boats off the coast of Spain. It sounds terrifying, and I’m sure it is, if you are in one of the boats. But according to this article at least, no humans have been hurt in these incidents. One theory is that the orcas think this is fun, like toddlers playing with bath toys.
There has been plenty of hypothesizing that global warming could cause destabilization of key ocean currents that have determined the character of the world’s regional climates over the last few millennia or so, i.e. human history. This new paper is the first I am aware of (but I am not even close to an expert on this subject or oceanography more generally) to find empirical evidence that the the AMOC current (which I believe includes the Gulf Stream) could be nearing a tipping point.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a major ocean current system transporting warm surface waters toward the northern Atlantic, has been suggested to exhibit two distinct modes of operation. A collapse from the currently attained strong to the weak mode would have severe impacts on the global climate system and further multi-stable Earth system components. Observations and recently suggested fingerprints of AMOC variability indicate a gradual weakening during the last decades, but estimates of the critical transition point remain uncertain. Here, a robust and general early-warning indicator for forthcoming critical transitions is introduced. Significant early-warning signals are found in eight independent AMOC indices, based on observational sea-surface temperature and salinity data from across the Atlantic Ocean basin. These results reveal spatially consistent empirical evidence that, in the course of the last century, the AMOC may have evolved from relatively stable conditions to a point close to a critical transition.
Nature Climate Change
This would seem to have major consequences to (1) where and how much food we can grow in the world, and (2) the location of our actual physical coastlines and the coastal cities that house much of the world’s human population. Adjusting to gradual long-term changes in these things will be a challenge. A sudden, major shift might be something our civilization can’t adjust to. The consequences are unimaginably dire. The risk is unknown but this study suggests it is real. Logic and risk management principles suggest that we need to be cautious here and actually do what we can to avoid this. Let’s hope “a point close to a critical transition” is not really all that close in human terms, and we have time for our civilization, with its flawed geopolitical and economic systems, to come to its senses.
It seems to me that fish might be able to adapt to climate change a little easier than other species, because they can just swim to a new part of the ocean that is now like what their old part of the ocean used to be like.
Projecting shifts in thermal habitat for 686 species on the North American continental shelf
Recent shifts in the geographic distribution of marine species have been linked to shifts in preferred thermal habitats. These shifts in distribution have already posed challenges for living marine resource management, and there is a strong need for projections of how species might be impacted by future changes in ocean temperatures during the 21st century. We modeled thermal habitat for 686 marine species in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans using long-term ecological survey data from the North American continental shelves. These habitat models were coupled to output from sixteen general circulation models that were run under high (RCP 8.5) and low (RCP 2.6) future greenhouse gas emission scenarios over the 21st century to produce 32 possible future outcomes for each species. The models generally agreed on the magnitude and direction of future shifts for some species (448 or 429 under RCP 8.5 and RCP 2.6, respectively), but strongly disagreed for other species (116 or 120 respectively). This allowed us to identify species with more or less robust predictions. Future shifts in species distributions were generally poleward and followed the coastline, but also varied among regions and species. Species from the U.S. and Canadian west coast including the Gulf of Alaska had the highest projected magnitude shifts in distribution, and many species shifted more than 1000 km under the high greenhouse gas emissions scenario. Following a strong mitigation scenario consistent with the Paris Agreement would likely produce substantially smaller shifts and less disruption to marine management efforts. Our projections offer an important tool for identifying species, fisheries, and management efforts that are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts.
I remember predictions a few years ago that coral reefs would be some of the first casualties of climate change. Well, that’s happening.
Eric Holthaus continues his entertaining, slightly sensationalist climate change coverage in Slate:
All this warmth on land is being driven by record-setting heat across large sectionsof the world’s oceans. The NOAA report notes that the warmest 10 months of ocean temperatures on record have occurred in the last 16 months. This is mostly due to a near-record strength El Niño, but the current state of the global oceans has little historical precedent. Since it takes several months for the oceanic warmth of an El Niño to fully reach the atmosphere, 2016 will likely be warmer—perhaps much warmer—than 2015. And that poses grave implications for the world’s ecosystems as well as humans.
We’ve recently entered a new point in the Earth’s climate history. According toreconstructions using tree rings, corals, and ice cores, global temperatures are currently approaching—if not already past—the maximum temperatures commonly observed over the past 11,000 years (i.e., the time period in which humans developed agriculture), and flirting with levels not seen in more than 100,000 years.
But this is the scary part: The current level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any point since humans first evolved millions of years ago. Since carbon dioxide emissions lead to warming, the fact that emissions are increasing means there’s much more warming yet to come. What’s more, carbon dioxide levels are increasing really quickly. The rate of change is faster than at any point in Earth’s entire 4.5 billion year history, likely 10 times faster than during Earth’s worst mass extinction—the “Great Dying”—in which more than 90 percent of ocean species perished. Our planet has simply never undergone the kind of stress we’re currently putting on it. That stunning rate of change is one reason why surprising studies like the recent worse-than-the-worst-case-scenario study on sea level rise don’t seem so far fetched.
Eric Holthaus continues his entertaining El Nino coverage in Slate:
El Niño means the tropical Pacific is warmer than normal, which improves the chances that typhoons will form. This week, a series of typhoons on both sides of the equator are helping to reinforce a big burst of westerly winds along the equator. These westerly wind bursts are a hallmark of El Niño, and help push subsurface warm water toward the coast of South America. If enough warm water butts up against Peru, the normal cold water ocean current there can get shut off, exacerbating the pattern.
Exactly how this all gets kicked off is an area of active research, but it’s clear that big El Niños need deviant trade winds to maintain the feedback loop. During especially strong El Niños, like this year’s promises to be, the trade winds can sometimes reverse direction—and this week’s off-the-charts wind surge is at record-strengthfor so early in an El Niño event. Since all this takes place in the tropical Pacific Ocean—the planet’s biggest bathtub—a fully mature El Niño has the power to shift rainfall odds worldwide and boost global temperatures. That’s exactly what’s happening this year.
Don’t worry, says Michelle L’Heureux at NOAA:
xWe are now nearing 1.5 degrees Celsius in the Niño-3.4 index for a 7-day or weekly average. Among the post-college age crowd who can remember it (yes, this officially means you’re old), the level of warmth in sea surface temperatures this time of year harkens back to 1997-98 El Niño, which ended up becoming a record strength event.
Are these weekly numbers impressive? Yes. But when a weekly value hits 1.5°C is El Niño instantly considered strong? I’d argue no. While a short-term (daily or weekly) number might be striking, it shouldn’t be used as an indicator of El Niño strength unless it is carefully placed into a larger context…
Weekly averages bounce around because… you know, weather. It is not unusual to see jumps of several tenths of a degree from week-to-week. This is because there are shorter-term changes in the ocean and atmospheric circulation that can be related to faster, non-ENSO phenomena, such as the Madden Julian Oscillation, which happens to be currently in place and isinfluencing the tropical Pacific. With short-term changes, we cannot be sure they reflect El Niño, which evolves more slowly.
Yekra Player
Yekra is a revolutionary new distribution network for feature films.
Revolution is a feature documentary about opening your eyes, changing the world and fighting for something. A true life adventure following director Rob Stewart in the follow up to his hit Sharkwater, Revolution is an epic adventure into the evolution of life on earth and the revolution to save us.
Discovering that there’s more in jeopardy than sharks, Stewart uncovers a grave secret threatening our own survival as a species, and embarks on a life-threatening adventure through 4 years and 15 countries into the greatest battle ever waged.
Bringing you some of the most incredible wildlife spectacles ever recorded, audiences are brought face to face with sharks and cuddly lemurs, into the microscopic world of the pygmy seahorse, and on the hunt with the deadly flamboyant cuttlefish. From the coral reefs in Papua New Guinea to the rain forests in Madagascar, Stewart reveals that our fate is tied to even the smallest of creatures.
Through it all, Stewart’s journey reveals a massive opportunity, as activists and individuals all over the world are winning the battle to save the ecosystems we depend on for survival. Presenting the most important information on human survival and inspiring people all over the world to fight for life, Revolution is essential viewing for everyone. Startling, beautiful, and provocative, Revolution inspires audiences across the globe to join the biggest movement in history that’s rising to the challenge of saving our world.
Revolution premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and has already gone on to win ten awards, including the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Atlantic Film Festival, Most Popular Environmental Film Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Victoria Film Festival and the Social Justice Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
Negative stories:
Positive stories:
The extinction rate is now 1000 times normal, says Duke University.
Not to worry, say Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, and the University of Florida (and what would they know, those ‘gators with their beady dinosaur eyes), it’s only 114 times normal using “conservative assumptions”.
And according to a surprisingly edgy book review in my favorite special interest publication Civil Engineering (because what could be more special than my own interest), there is a new book out:
You probably don’t subscribe to Civil Engineering, so here is the Amazon description:
A growing number of scientists agree we are headed toward a mass extinction, perhaps in as little as 300 years. Already there have been five mass extinctions in the last 600 million years, including the Cretaceous Extinction, during which an asteroid knocked out the dinosaurs. Though these events were initially destructive, they were also prime movers of evolutionary change in nature. And we can see some of the warning signs of another extinction event coming, as our oceans lose both fish and oxygen. In The Next Species, Michael Tennesen questions what life might be like after it happens.
Tennesen discusses the future of nature and whether humans will make it through the bottleneck of extinction. Without man, could the seas regenerate to what they were before fishing vessels? Could life suddenly get very big as it did before the arrival of humans? And what if man survives the coming catastrophes, but in reduced populations? Would those groups be isolated enough to become distinct species? Could the conquest of Mars lead to another form of human? Could we upload our minds into a computer and live in a virtual reality? Or could genetic engineering create a more intelligent and long-lived creature that might shun the rest of us? And how would we recognize the next humans? Are they with us now?
More El Nino coverage from Slate. It’s going to be the strongest since 1998! or 2010! or ever!
First off, it’s rapidly intensifying. El Niño is about self-reinforcing feedbacks between the ocean and the atmosphere, and from all accounts, this one has its foot on the accelerator pedal.
If it continues, the impacts will be felt around the globe—here’s my detailed rundown of what to expect. Among them: drought in Australia, Southeast Asia, and perhaps India, with flooding in Peru and Southern California.
