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

Global warming pause.

26/8/2014

There have been several articles about the pause in global warming and these have been instigated by some new research which shows that the heat is going into the Atlantic. In fact it said that the Pacific Ocean could not absorb the sufficient heat to account for the pause. The researchers looked at the records from the Argo floats and found that the extra heat was going into the Atlantic.

93% of the world’s heat is stored in the oceans so it has an enormous effect on the atmospheric surface temperature anyway and our records of the oceans are abysmal. The Argo floats are doing great stuff but they have only been in operation ten years and only record the top 2000 metres, which is not much to go on.

A quick look at the NASA temperature records since 1880 shows that there have been two previous pauses and the last one lasted thirty years so we have a bit to go yet.

The pauses are caused by heat going into the ocean deeps from the Gulf Stream, Southern ocean and Alaskan current and coming out decades later.
In the meantime the heat and the ocean acidity that travels with it are doing untold damage in our oceans.

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Peak oil and electric transport.

19/8/2014

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We are not going to run out of oil in the near future but all is not well in the oil world. It is decades now since oilmen have found more oil than we are consuming and increasingly difficult exploration has led to very deep ocean wells, Arctic exploration and fracking for tight oil. All are extremely expensive. Fracking has helped the USA to boost its oil production substantially and consumption savings in other parts of the world has offset the rising demand in emerging economies such as China and India.

What has changed is the high cost of exploration and extraction for very meagre returns. The oil companies have been selling assets and taking on more debt to fund their operations and the breakeven price of new oil has moved from $40 dollars a barrel to around $100 a barrel and some at $120 a barrel.

At the moment the price of oil is hovering around $100 but if ever there was a time for countries to be investing in electrical transport it is now. Many countries, including New Zealand have almost no other type of transport power except oil and their economies will be hard hit with a big price rise.
Oil is a diminishing resource with a volatile price and it would be prudent to have alternative transport systems to insure the economy against sudden price hikes.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/11024845/Oil-and-gas-company-debt-soars-to-danger-levels-to-cover-shortfall-in-cash.html

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Fires in the Arctic Boreal forest.

16/8/2014

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The great boreal forests of the northern hemisphere, known as Taiga, are the world's largest and make up 29% of the total world forest cover. (Wikipedia). As the climate changes and the Polar region warms faster than the lower latitudes these forests become susceptible to fire.

Jason Box has been working in Greenland for many years and has become concerned about the deteriorating quality of the snow and the associated speed of melting. He has mounted a Dark Snow project aimed at researching and quantifying how soot from a variety of sources is lying on the snow is making it more absorbent to heat from the sun which increases the melt rate. You can follow his work on http://climatecrocks.com/

Illustration from http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/

This northern summer there are huge fires burning in Canada and Siberia that are carrying soot around the globe and depositing it on the snow. This will be happening all round the permafrost region of the Taiga forests causing the snow to have a darker, less reflective surface. In Siberia a total of 4,929 fires have burnt 834,100 hectares of woodlands since the season begun. (http://en.itar-tass.com/russia/735659) and in Canada 4330 fires on 3,858,947 hectares.
This causes two problems. One is that it speeds up the melt rate of the massive ice store in the Greenland ice sheet which will raise the sea levels, and the second is that the melting snow increases the warmth of the Arctic permafrost, thereby releasing huge quantities of methane from the unfrozen subsoil.
Greenland contains enough ice, which if melted, could raise sea levels seven meters and while nobody is saying that this will happen quickly, just half a meter added to other melts would have extremely serious economic consequences and therefore of considerable concern.
The Tundra region needs to remain frozen because it is estimated that not less than 1,400 Gt of Carbon (Shakhova et al.2008) is presently locked up in the permafrost as methane and as methane is 72 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas over 20 years it can have a powerful effect on the climate.

A lot is happening in remote areas that can affect our lives and much of it goes unreported.

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Two worrying indicators.

5/8/2014

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Two items in the news recently could be a worrying indicator of the future.

The first is the three holes that have suddenly appeared in the Siberian tundra and are reportedly caused by a methane explosion. There have always been worries about the possibility of a warming climate melting the permafrost and releasing methane from the frozen soil. This soil really consists of massive amounts of organic matter, grass and wood which is half rotted and held in suspension by the extreme cold. If the ice melts the organic matter rots and huge quantities of methane are released. As methane is a greenhouse gas that is 72 times as powerful as CO2 over a twenty year period this has the potential to change the world’s climate very rapidly.

The second incident is the sudden algae bloom in Lake Erie which has suddenly erupted and turned the water toxic and unsuitable for drinking. This is caused primarily by phosphates in the water which come from farming activities and it is triggered by warm water temperatures. The worry here is that tens of millions of people rely on water from the Great Lakes and that the climate is forecast to increase the temperature in the region by over three degrees centigrade this century.
Two swallows do not make a summer but these incidents highlight the type of problem that a warming world can bring.

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Bob Bingham Blog page.

Global warming pause.

Peak oil and electric transport.

Fires in the Arctic Boreal forest.

Two worrying indicators.

Bob Bingham

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