http://www.climateoutcome.kiwi.nz/blog.html

West Antarctica melting.

29/6/2015

Looking at the European Space Agency, CryoSat information and was struck by the visual impact of the loss of the Larsen ice shelves from West Antarctica. This illustration from 1986 shows the mountains on the West coast of the peninsular and the ice shelves on the east coast.

This is the same region today after Larsen 'A' has disintegrated and the major part of Larsen 'B' has disintegrated.

The latest developments are that the remaining remnants of Larsen B is about to collapse and Larsen 'C' has a very large crack in it that, when it breaks, will remove a huge area of ice.

Observation from the CryoSat satellite shows that the ice shelf is losing mass and other research shows that they are being melted by warm water rising from below due to increased wind strengths in the Southern Ocean. This thinning will lead to further collapse. Larsen 'C' is much larger than 'A' and 'B' and so will contribute more to sea level rise as, with the shelf gone, the land based glaciers slips to the sea eight to ten times faster.
The peninsular is not alone as the massive Pine Island glacier is thinning and also the Totton glacier.
The IPCC 5th report specifically excluded this type of ice shelf collapse because it was unpredictable and also research was limited because of access.
We now have five years of CryoSat data and this shows a massive thinning of the peninsular ice shelves so we must keep a close watch on developments.

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Depletion of Aquifers.

18/6/2015

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If we have to deplete aquifers way beyond their recovery rate to grow food, are we beyond the carrying capacity of the Earth? With seven billion people on the planet we have reorganise the way we feed our people.

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Oceans hold 90% of worlds biomass

11/6/2015

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A very interesting topic on the Kim Hill radio program interviewing Chris Bowler, marine biologist for the Tara Oceans Science of France.

Two things he mentioned that struck me, the first of which was that the oceans hold 90% to 95% of all biomass on the planet. While I knew that phytoplankton provided 50% of the oxygen I had no idea that marine life made up such a huge proportion of life and was so important to the planet.

The second was that most of this marine life is within the top one hundred metres, where sunlight penetrates, and when you consider that the ocean is ten kilometres deep this represents a very thin membrane across the surface.

I have always believed that the big action with climate change was in the oceans but I was not aware that this applied to life on Earth as well. We need to know more about what is happening there and look after it as our lives depend on it.

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No slowdown in global warming.

6/6/2015

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Recent research in the way that climate change is analysed shows that the recent ‘pause’ in global warming has been exaggerated and is in fact not there.

Measurements of the planets temperature through land based records were always going to be suspect because 70% of the surface of the planet is water and 93% of the heat absorbed by the planet goes into the oceans, 3% is absorbed by the land, 3% is used by melting ice and only 1% is retained in the atmosphere. So although the 1% is of vital importance to us, as land based creatures, it is a very small part of the picture. We are in fact a water planet.

Another big problem has been that we have good records of land temperatures and rainfall for over a hundred years since the thermometer became readily available, around 1870, but we know very little about what goes on in the oceans.
To rectify this the Argo project placed 3500 buoys in the oceans to record temperature, salinity, acidity and flow but these have only been on operation since 2004 which only gives us ten years of data and they only go down 1800 metres. This still leave big areas of the vital Southern Ocean with few records and almost nothing of the ocean deeps.

We have satellites circling the Sun and the Earth so we know exactly how much heat is radiated from the Sun and hits the earth and we know how much heat is being radiated out into space and there is an imbalance which shows that the earth is absorbing heat and retaining it, but where does it go? If its not in the atmosphere it must be in the oceans but the difficulty has been in proving it and also in showing where it actually is.
The warmer deep water is melting the ice shelves from below and going to give us a nasty surprise so what else does the ocean have in store for us?

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Climate Change and Major floods.

5/6/2015

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Does climate change cause damaging floods is the wrong question, as Kevin Trenberth pointed out, Every weather event contains an element of climate change because the atmosphere is 1C warmer and is holding 7% more moisture. These may not look like very large or significant figures but the weather is very sensitive to change and very volatile.
Most of our rain comes from low pressure systems and we are familiar with those on our TV weather reports.This is a typical one approaching the UK.

The centre of the swirl is typically caused by warm water in the ocean and as the heat rises it goes into a swirl, anti-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and the opposite in the South. As it rises it causes a small vacuum or low pressure area, hence its name, and then we get to the important part.

In another quote from Kevin Trenberth “Typical storms reach out a distance of about three to five times the radius of the rain dimension, and gather in the water vapour, to produce precipitation.”
The extra moisture in the atmosphere gets drawn towards the centre and concentrated where the rain falls and this gives an amount of water that would not otherwise be there.
There has been an increase in heavier rain events all round the world but not many go over the top and cause substantial floods and damage but as we head towards a 2C temperature rise and 14% more moisture in the atmosphere we should get used to the idea that one day a major flood will come to where you live.

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Bob Bingham Blog page.

West Antarctica melting.

Depletion of Aquifers.

Oceans hold 90% of worlds biomass

No slowdown in global warming.

Climate Change and Major floods.

Bob Bingham

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