Facts on the Ground:
The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, which lasted until the end of November, saw an unprecedented 30 named storms and 13 hurricanes. Six of this year’s hurricanes reached “major” status (category 3 or higher).
Scientists have found that climate change affects how hurricanes form and strengthen. Rising ocean temperatures linked to global warming can cause storms to weaken more slowly and remain destructive longer. In a recent study, scientists found that 50 years ago a typical storm would lose over 75% of its intensity in the first 24 hours when it might travel several hundred miles inland, but now it loses about 50% of its intensity and stalls in place.
Changes in American western states due to climate change, warmth, drought, dry vegetation, continue to produce more destructive and dangerous wildfires. Similarly, warmer water in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, and increased water vapor in the atmosphere from greater evaporation due to warmer air temperatures, continue to produce more powerful, destructive and dangerous hurricanes in and around the Gulf. This is the new normal for both wildfires and hurricanes and is unlikely to change except for the worse.
This hurricane season broke a record as Iota became the 30th named storm, beating 2005 which had 28 named storms. Global warming has contributed to sea level rise via the expansion of warmer water which in turn adds to the greater destructiveness of the storms due to greater storm surge.
Future hurricane seasons may or may not include more named hurricanes, but they almost certainly will include storms of increasing intensity and lethality. The power of Hurricane Laura, which hit the southwest Louisiana in September with 150 mph winds, was one of the most powerful storms on record (Category 4) to hit the state. Six weeks later, Hurricane Delta (which weakened to a Category 2 when it hit land) caused enormous destruction in areas that were still struggling to recover from Laura. This double-whammy was repeated with Eta and Iota in the US this year. The Philippines also suffered from two immense typhons in succession.
Typhoon (the term for hurricanes in Asia) Vamco produced two weeks of torrential rains in the Philippians. The Cagayan River overflowed, burying entire villages under water and mud. The floods rose so fast that many people lacked time to climb onto their rooftops. One family survived the flash flood but was buried by a landslide. Rapid development and deforestation along flood-prone areas have exacerbated the devastation.
Floodwater spilled over the Magat Dam, a tributary of the Cagayan on the island of Luzon. “This is the first time in 45 years, that I know of, that this has happened,” said Manuel Mamba, Cagayan’s governor.
Vamco’s impact was magnified by the fact that Typhoon Goni had occurred a week earlier. Goni was the world’s strongest storm of the year. Flooding affected eight regions and three million people, according to the UN humanitarian office. About 70 were killed. Goni had sustained winds of up to 135 mph hitting Luzon, the country’s most populous island, killing at least 10 people. In Bicol, nearly 400,000 people were displaced with 350,000 of them in evacuation centers.
Goni is the 18th typhoon of the year for the Philippines, a country prone to storms and home to more than 100 million people. Climate change is exacerbating the Philippines’ exposure to natural disasters, making it one of the most vulnerable countries on the planet, scientists say.
Mass deforestation, including the destruction of coastal mangroves, has torn away natural barriers to wind and water. Deforestation has led to massive amounts of mud/landslides. The Asian Development Bank says that more than 23,000 people in the Philippines died from natural hazards from 1997 to 2016.
Before reaching the US, hurricane Iota killed at least one person on the Colombian island of Providencia making landfall as an unimaginable Category 5 storm with winds in excess of 155mph. President Iván Duque said the island had sustained severe material damage that affected 98% of its infrastructure. “Never in the history of our country have we faced a Category 5 hurricane.”
Iota then made landfall in NE Nicaragua as a Category 4 storm and dropped 35 inches of rain in some areas. The storm surge was so great that hundreds of families fled coastal communities as the storm ripped roofs from homes.
Aid workers struggled to reach communities that were cut off by washed-out bridges, downed trees and flooded roads from Hurricane Eta, which killed at least 140 people and made landfall about 15 miles from where Iota later struck.
Philip Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University, said that Iota was the strongest November hurricane on record to make landfall in Nicaragua.
Even before Iota made landfall, its winds blew the roof off a makeshift hospital in Puerto Cabezas that had been set up to treat people affected by Hurricane Eta. Much of the city was without power for days
The response to Hurricanes Iota and Eta was complicated by the pandemic as people fleeing unsafe conditions made their way into crowded shelters where the disease easily spread. That is happening in Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras, the countries the hardest hit by the storms.
Eta then hit Florida, twice. It initially hit the central part of the Florida Keys and returned three days later near Cedar Key, roughly 130 miles north of Tampa. This is part of the new stalling tactic that hurricanes exhibit.
More than 30,000 customers were without power from Tampa to Gainesville. Gov. DeSantis of Florida said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had granted his request for “a pre-landfall emergency declaration” to mobilize federal aid. He declared a state of emergency for eight Florida counties, including Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. All Covid-19 testing sites in Miami-Dade County were closed as the storm approached and Coronavirus cases spiked.
Eta continued its sluggish march north dropping huge amounts of rain (some areas in North Carolina received about 10 inches). Eta caused the deaths of at least 7 people in NC and five counties declared a state of emergency.
And in South Africa, a deadly EF-3 tornado and severe hailstorm left 6 people dead in mid-Nov. Hailstones larger than golf balls damaged about 70 homes in the Msunduzi municipality.
At the end of November, Cyclone Nivar, the fourth named storm in the North Indian Ocean this year, struck the east coast of India as a category 1 storm with winds of 75mph, about 90 miles south of the manufacturing hub of Chennai. At least 3 people were killed. Officials evacuated several hundred thousand people from coastal housing sending residents to cyclone shelters and relief camps.
In California, providers of fire insurance were withdrawing coverage to such an extent that the state barred them from denying such insurance for one year. If houses can no longer be covered for fire damage, they become worthless. We’ll see what happens after a year.
The economic damage from hurricanes presents similar threats to the value of homes hit by hurricanes. Even with the federal government paying 75% of the repair costs, many communities, and homeowners, can’t afford the remaining liabilities. Not to mention the added costs of fighting the pandemic.
Wildfires continued to burn in CA, WA, OR and CO through October and into November. In CA, about 90,800 people were ordered to evacuate near Irvine, Orange County, due to the Silverado Fire and the smaller Blue Ridge Fire. Two firefighters were intubated after receiving second- and third-degree burns over most of their bodies in the Silverado Fire.
The Silverado Fire had gusts up to 80 mph. “The winds are horrible,” said Brian Alexander, 43, who evacuated his house with his wife and 5-year-old son. With the wind came particles of ash and dust, creating “by far the worst air quality that we’ve had,” Mr. Alexander said.
About 4,000 firefighters were fighting 22 wildfires across the state according to Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency. More than five million acres have burned across CA, CO, ID, MT, OR and WA. A rare December fire forced the evacuation of 25,000 from Los Angeles.
Warming Oceans, Melting Ice, and Rainforests/Wetlands On Fire
As humanity bats in the bottom of the 9th, I’m afraid we just hit into a triple play. Whether or not we go into extra innings remains to be seen. The triple play concerns the essential indicators of the health and stability of the oceans, polar ice, and Amazonian forests and wetlands. Bad news across the board.
A new study shows that the upper 600 feet of the ocean is warming more than deeper water. This produces a distinct warm upper layer which can intensify tropical storms, disrupt fisheries, interfere with the ocean absorption of carbon and deplete oxygen, according to Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State and co-author of the study. That increasingly distinct warm layer on the surface also stifles seawater circulations and ocean currents critical for regulating climate and sustaining marine life by blocking flows of heat, carbon, oxygen and nutrients within the water column, and between the oceans and atmosphere. Global warming is disrupting numerous biological cycles essential to marine life and ultimately human life.
As noted in the first Climate Change Blog, humanity’s position atop the ecological pyramid is precarious due to the countless cracks in the four essential supporting blocks. This recent report details some of the cracks in the Oceanic Health block (as disruptions to marine life imperils the main source of humanity’s protein), and the Climate Stability block (as disruption of oceanic circulation and currents threatens the weather patterns humanity is dependent upon), and the Political Stability block (as states fail due to lack of resources and crop failures as is happening in parts of Africa and the Middle East). The fourth block, Land-based Resources, is also threatened by the potential disruption to earth’s weather systems which are dependent on oceanic currents and circulation.
Increased layering of the ocean prevents the transport of nutrients from the depths to the surface, which disrupts the ocean food chain, including fisheries that help sustain coastal communities.
Professor Mann said the research suggests that worst-case global warming scenarios are possible. If the ocean surface warms faster and less carbon is carried to the depths, those processes along with other climate feedbacks could lead atmospheric CO2 to triple and the global average temperature could increase 8F by 2100. The future of human civilization is threatened at 7F, it likely will not survive 8F (see the Message I sent on Aug 23, 2020, concerning Mark Lynas’ book, Our Final Warning, and read it, https://communities.nysba.org/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MessageKey=c08fd8ac-f88f-4f20-afbc-84874f2ec544&CommunityKey=1eea1139-bb1c-4d82-9937-cf8d9bfeb634&tab=digestviewer#bmc08fd8ac-f88f-4f20-afbc-84874f2ec544).
"The take-home point, here, is that once again we are learning that the uncertainties are not breaking in our favor," said Mann. "If anything, the impacts of climate change are proving to be worse than we predicted."
The climate feedback of the increased stratification of the ocean is that as more heat stays near the surface of the ocean, that warm water sends heat into the atmosphere. And if the warm surface water slows the ocean's absorption of CO2, more heat-trapping CO2 will stay in the atmosphere which warms the earth and the ocean, and the loop plays endlessly.
Oceans absorb about a quarter of the CO2 emissions from human activity, but the warmer seas may not be able to continue at this rate. Mann calls it "a double whammy” since “the ocean becomes less effective as a "carbon sink," and because the oceans now hold less oxygen “that's problematic for sea life that, like us, needs oxygen. It's a threat to the food web, including fish."
The increase in layering reduces the exchange between the surface and deeper oceans which reduces the oxygen supply to deeper water, which harms marine life. Oxygen-depleted dead zones are already spreading in the oceans. Profound effects may be found on zooplankton, fish and mammals.
Increased stratification is also slowing the massive distribution of cold and warm water between the Arctic and the Southern, or Antarctic, Ocean. Scientists are finding that this circulation system has begun to slow down, as was predicted by climate models. This kind of disruption could lead to major global climate shifts with likely impacts on crop yields and political stability.
Finally, warming seas fuel tropical storms. The heat in the top 300 to 400 feet of the ocean fuels these storms which churn up the ocean. Pre-global warming, this churning would bring colder water to the surface which would limit strengthening, or even weaken a storm. But now, even that deeper water is warmer than it used to be, so storms retain their intensity. Hurricanes are bigger and longer lasting and more intense than before.
The five warmest years of ocean temperature since 1955 are: 2019; 2018; 2017; 2015; 2016, in that order.
Burning Amazonian Rainforest and Wetlands
Strike two is the burning of the Amazon and the nearby wetlands to the south, the Pantanal. As astonishing as the concept of a burning rainforest is, it’s even harder to imagine a burning wetland. But both the Amazon forest and the Pantanal, formerly huge carbon sinks, have become major carbon sources.
About a quarter of the vast Pantanal, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, has burned this year due. The effects that models have predicted, a much hotter Pantanal alternating between severe drought and extreme rainfall, are already being felt, scientists say. A study published this year found that climate change poses “a critical threat” to this ecosystem, damaging biodiversity and impairing its ability to help regulate water for the continent and carbon for the world. In less than 20 years, the northern Pantanal may become a savanna or an arid zone.
“We are digging our grave,” said Karl-Ludwig Schuchmann, an ecologist with Brazil’s National Institute of Science and Technology in Wetlands and one of the study’s authors.
To save the Pantanal, scientists offer solutions: Mitigation/drastic reductions in GHG emissions; sustainable agriculture in and around the wetland; pay ranchers to preserve forests and other natural areas on their land and forgo burning for agriculture; increase ecotourism which is lucrative in many places that have preserved their forests, such as Costa Rica; and, do not divert the Pantanal’s waters (as is planned), because its flood pulse is its life.
The wetland is larger than Greece and includes parts of Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. About 90% of the Pantanal is privately owned and for centuries ranchers have used fire to clear fields for new agricultural land. But this year, drought worsened by climate change, made it ripe for wildfires.
“The extent of fires is staggering,” said Douglas C. Morton, who leads the Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA. “When you wipe out a quarter of a biome, you create all kinds of unprecedented circumstances.”
His analysis showed that at least 22% of the Brazilian Pantanal has burned since January, with non-stop fires in August and September. This is the most active fire year on record for the Pantanal with11,000 cumulative fires.
The fires are a threat to the continued existence of the indigenous Guató. Their ancestors have lived in the Pantanal for thousands of years. At least 85% of their territory has burned, according to Instituto Centro de Vida, a nonprofit group that monitors land use. Throughout the Pantanal, almost half of the Indigenous lands burned, an investigative journalism organization called Agência Pública found.
Ms. Guató Silva mourns the loss of nature: “It makes me sick. The birds don’t sing anymore. I no longer hear the song of the Chaco chachalaca bird. Even the jaguar that once scared me is suffering. That hurts me. I suffer from depression because of this. Now there is a hollow silence. I feel as though our freedom has left us, has been taken from us with the nature that we have always protected.”
The O Globo newspaper reported that firefighting specialists from Brazil's main environmental protection agency were delayed four months by bureaucratic procedures. The Brazilian federal police are supposedly investigating the fires, some of which appear to have been set illegally, but Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, who campaigned on a promise to weaken conservation regulations, and is popular in the region, does not see any urgency.
Trends are troubling in both the Amazon and the Pantanal as forest cover is declining and agriculture is increasing. Between 1985 and 2019, forest cover decreased 11% in the Amazon, and 24% in the Pantanal; Agriculture increased 257% in the Amazon and 257% in the Pantanal.
The rampant deforestation and related fires in the Amazon disrupt the rainforest’s “flying rivers” of precipitation that contribute to rainfall in the Pantanal. Damming for hydroelectric power deflects water away, scientists say, and a proposal to channel the wetland’s main river would make it drain too quickly and add to its drying out and flammability.
Arctic Meltdown
The third strike is the Arctic, which is in a death spiral. At the end of July, 40% of the 4,000-year-old Milne Ice Shelf, located on the NW edge of Ellesmere Island, calved into the sea. Canada’s last fully intact ice shelf was gone. On the other side of the island, the St Patrick’s Bay ice caps completely disappeared.
Scientists wonder if the Greenland Ice Sheet has passed the tipping point. The last time the atmospheric level of carbon exceeded 400 ppm (as it does now), in the Pliocene (2.5 to 5.3 million years ago), Greenland was ice-free. Annual snowfall no longer replenishes the snow and ice lost during summer melting of the territory’s 234 glaciers. Last year, the ice sheet lost a record amount of ice, equivalent to 1 million metric tons every minute.
The Arctic is melting faster than the models predicted. Northern Siberia and the Canadian Arctic are now warming three times faster than the rest of the world. If GHG emissions stay on the current trajectory, the north may warm 4C (7.2F) year-round by 2050.
Starting around August 1980, the Greenland Ice Sheet began losing roughly 51 billion metric tons annually, discharged into the ocean as meltwater and icebergs. Now, the discharge rate is about 525 trillion mt/yr. Even if we stop all GHG emissions tomorrow, Arctic sea ice will continue melting for decades.
A Nature Climate Change study predicts that summer sea ice floating in the Arctic Ocean could disappear by 2035. Until recently, scientists didn’t think we would reach this point until 2050 or later. Reinforcing this finding, Arctic sea ice in October reached its second-lowest extent in the 41-year satellite record.
“The latest models are basically showing that no matter what emissions scenario we follow, we’re going to lose summer [sea] ice cover before the middle of the century,” says Julienne Stroeve, a scientist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. “Even if we keep warming to less than 2C, it’s still enough to lose that summer sea ice in some years.”
Permafrost in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years sooner than predicted. Roads are buckling. Houses are sinking. In Siberia, giant craters pockmark the tundra as temperatures soar, hitting 100F (38C) in the town of Verkhoyansk in July. Thawing permafrost releases two potent GHGs, CO2 and methane, exacerbating planetary warming.
The soaring heat leads to raging wildfires, now common in hotter and drier parts of the Arctic. In recent summers, infernos have burned the tundra in Sweden, Alaska, and Russia, destroying native vegetation which harms reindeer and caribou to the detriment of indigenous people whose culture and livelihoods are interwoven with the plight of these animals.
Between 2013 and 2014, an estimated 61,000 animals died on Russia’s Yamal peninsula due to mass starvation. Overall, the global population of reindeer and caribou has declined by 56% in the last 20 years.
Melting ice has made the region’s abundant mineral deposits and oil and gas reserves more accessible by ship. China is heavily investing in the increasingly ice-free Northern Sea Route over the top of Russia, which promises to cut shipping times between the Far East and Europe by 10 to 15 days.
The Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago could soon provide another shortcut. And in Greenland, vanishing ice is unearthing a wealth of uranium, zinc, gold, iron and rare earth elements which likely will be mined.
Between 2006 and 2016, winter tourism increased by over 600% in the northern regions. The city of Tromsø, Norway, the “Paris of the north”, had 36,000 tourists in the winter of 2008-09. By 2016, it had 194,000. People realize that this might be the last chance to experience the Arctic as it once was.
Good News: Renewable Power Grows During Pandemic.
Consumption of electricity from wind, solar and hydroelectric sources is predicted to grow nearly 7% in 2020, even though overall energy demand will fall by 5%, the steepest drop since World War II, according to the International Energy Agency.
This performance shows that these renewable sources of energy are “immune to Covid,” Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director said.
The IEA attributed the growth of renewable electricity to government policies encouraging such investments as well as strong interest among investors who favor clean energy projects. Such growth may add 4% to global capacity in 2020 to generate electricity from these renewables despite obstacles caused by the pandemic. Growth in 2021 is predicted at 10% as clean energy projects disrupted by the pandemic are resumed, along with efforts by governments in Europe and Asia to kick-start their economies, while also addressing climate change.
Mr. Birol said that a return to the Paris accord on climate change by the US, as President-elect Biden has pledged, could give “very strong momentum” to this drive, leading to a doubling of renewables capacity in the US over five years.
Washington:
The White House has removed Michael Kuperberg, a scientist responsible for the National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s premier contribution to climate knowledge and the foundation for regulations to combat global warming. Critics interpret this as the latest sign that Trump intends to use his remaining months in office to continue impeding climate science and policy. The job is expected to go to a climate-change skeptic, David Legates, a deputy assistant secretary at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who previously worked closely with climate change denial groups.
Dr. Kuperberg, executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which produces the NCA, was told that he would no longer lead that organization. Dr. Kuperberg’s departure is part of a broader effort, following Trump’s electoral defeat, to remove officials in disfavor with the White House. Neil Chatterjee, formerly head of the agency regulating US utility markets, was demoted after he publicly supported proposals that would expand use of renewable energy. He was replaced with James Danly, who has opposed the promotion of renewable power.
The National Climate Assessment is a report from 13 federal agencies and outside scientists that the government is required by law to produce every four years. The most recent report, in 2018, found that climate change poses an imminent and dire threat to the US and its economy.
A biased or diminished NCA has wide-ranging implications. It could be used by fossil fuel companies defending against suits seeking damages related to climate change. It could undercut efforts in congress to reduce GHG emissions. And it could weaken the “endangerment finding,” a 2009 scientific finding by EPA that CO2 and other GHGs pose a threat to human health and therefore are subject to government regulation. That could make it difficult to use the Clean Air Act to fight climate change.
The agency most involved in that report is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the country’s premier climate science agency. In September, the White House installed at NOAA staff who have questioned the science of climate change with the goal of using NOAA’s influence to undercut the NCA.
The incoming Biden administration likely will reverse these decisions, but harm has already been done. The next NCA was supposed to be released by 2022 but has already been delayed to 2023.
President-elect Biden named John Kerry, formerly President Obama’s secretary of state, as his special presidential envoy for climate, a cabinet-level position in the new administration. Mr. Kerry will sit on the National Security Council thereby elevating the issue of climate change to the highest echelon of government. “America will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent national security threat that it is,” said Mr. Kerry. The move marks the first time the NSC will include an official dedicated to climate change.
Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Paris Climate Pact took effect the day after Election Day. Biden promised to rejoin, perhaps in February 2021. Many of the other members have recognized that their pledges to reduce GHG emissions will not keep global warming below 2C.
Britain, the European Union, Japan and South Korea have all upped the ante promising to neutralize their emissions by 2050. Biden made a similar vow. He intends to spend $2 trillion over four years to rapidly move away from coal, oil and gas, and set a goal of eliminating fossil fuel emissions from electricity generation by 2035. China, too, the current leader in GHG emissions, announced its own net-zero ambitions (by 2060).
Lois M. Young, the ambassador of Belize to the UN, is chairwoman of the Alliance of Small Island States, representing some of the countries most vulnerable to sea level rise. She said, “That the country that has contributed the most to climate change is now formally outside of the Paris Agreement … is an appalling thought.”
Currently the US is about halfway to meeting the Paris Agreement goal set by Obama to cut emissions about 28% below 2005 levels by 2025. Biden is expected to develop a new target by the time leaders meet for a UN climate summit in Glasgow in November of 2021 (delayed one year due to the pandemic).
President Obama pledged $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund designed to help poor countries address climate change. The US delivered $1 billion of the promised funding before Trump stopped the payments.
“America is swimming against the current,” said Saber Chowdhury, a member of Parliament in Bangladesh. “There is a growing realization that time is running out.”
The views expressed above are my own.
Carl Howard, Co-chair, Global Climate Change Committee
Environmental & Energy Law Section
Follow me on Twitter @Howard.Carl