Climate change impacts on northeast Ohio

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by winter enjoyer

Remember back in the 70s when everyone thought the world was getting colder?

<<At the same time as some scientists were suggesting we might be facing another ice age, a greater number published contradicting studies. Their papers showed that the growing amount of greenhouse gasses that humans were putting into the atmosphere would cause much greater warming – warming that would exert a much greater influence on global temperature than any possible natural or human-caused cooling effects.

By 1980 the predictions about ice ages had ceased, due to the overwhelming evidence contained in an increasing number of reports that warned of global warming. Unfortunately, the small number of predictions of an ice age appeared to be much more interesting than those of global warming, so it was those sensational 'Ice Age' stories in the press that so many people tend to remember.>>

https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age...s-in-1970s.htm

I remember well James Hansen's testimony before Congress in 1988.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen

Until about 2000, I was very skeptical about the man-made climate change arguments, but the empirical evidence became increasingly overwhelming, and I began to notice climate change impacts in northeast Ohio. Man-made climate change was a very important concept for me because I was heavily involved in the energy industry, so I studied it very thoroughly.

When scientists first began noticing ocean acidification about 2000, I realized we were dealing with very serious issues threatening the earth's environment and human civilization. The climate change impacts have since become materially worse (think massive western wildfires, disappearing ocean fisheries, persistent droughts (e.g., Central American "dry corridor"), U.S. tornado alley moving into more heavily populated areas east of the Mississippi River, rapid hurricane intensification, and the nascent beginning of abrupt sea level rise, all just off the top of my head.)

[WRnative]

When this thread was initiated three years ago, Arctic Amplification (the much greater warming of the Arctic region compared to the rest of the planet) was estimated at two times the global average. See post 1, which explained why Arctic Amplification may explain the onslaught of much more wild winters in northeast Ohio.


Recent research released in August 2022 estimated Arctic Amplification at FOUR TIMES the global average since 1979.


<<In recent decades, the warming in the Arctic has been much faster than in the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. Numerous studies report that the Arctic is warming either twice, more than twice, or even three times as fast as the globe on average. Here we show, by using several observational datasets which cover the Arctic region, that during the last 43 years the Arctic has been warming nearly four times faster than the globe, which is a higher ratio than generally reported in literature.>>


https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00498-3


Climate change developments are now much more frequently posted in the following thread, although few of these developments directly relate to the changing climate of northeast Ohio as much as Arctic Amplification.


https://www.city-data.com/forum/ohio...tion-ohio.html

[WRnative]

Climate change deniers, as evidenced in this thread, typically argue that Earth's climate and environment has radically changed in the past, whether over thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, or even millions of years, so there is no need to worry about currently drastic, ongoing changes in the Earth's climate and environment. WRONG!



Although climate scientists have correlated the impact of atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide on these changes, climate change deniers dismiss this basic scientific fact, IF they even are aware of it. They ignore the massive and extreme increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over just a century, an infinitely minuscule period of time in Earth's history, greatly the result of fossil fuel consumption, but also of forest destruction and increased livestock production.


Anybody carefully studying the following charts can draw only one conclusion. The Earth's adjustment to these massively increased levels of carbon dioxide is a process just in its nascent stages, as the Earth's climate and environment does not yet reflect the massively aberrant increase in carbon dioxide levels since the start of mankind's Industrial Age in the 19th century. Global average temperature and sea level are only at levels when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were much, much lower than currently.


https://johnenglander.net/400000-yea...ature-and-co2/


Most frighteningly, natural feedback loops, such as permafrost melting and the warming of deep oceans resulting in the thawing of methane hydrates, all triggered by mankind's burning of fossil fuels and other activities, suggest a frightening future. Earth's rapidly diminishing climate and environment may perhaps be much worse than warned about by climate change scientists, who have repeatedly been too conservative in their warnings. Just consider:


<<Vast amounts of methane hydrate are buried in sediment deposits on the continental slopes. The total global amount of methane carbon bound up in these hydrate deposits is in the order of 1000 to 5000 gigatonnes – i.e. about 100 to 500 times more carbon than is released annually into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas). At low temperatures the methane hydrates on the sea floor are stable, but if the water and the sea floor become warmer, then the hydrates can break down. Because microorganisms then oxidize the resulting methane gas to form the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2), methane hydrates have recently become a topic of intense discussion within the context of climate change. Methane, which itself acts as a strong greenhouse gas, does not escape directly out of the sea as methane because it is transformed into CO2. But the formation and release of carbon dioxide are considerable. An additional problem is that the oxygen in seawater is consumed through the formation of carbon dioxide (Chapter 2).>>


https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-...hane-hydrates/


Methane, a much more impactful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, is directly released into the atmosphere by permafrost melting.


https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...ane-180978381/


<<Methane is also a powerful greenhouse gas. Over a 20-year period, it is 80 times more potent at warming than carbon dioxide.

Methane has accounted for roughly 30 per cent of global warming since pre-industrial times and is proliferating faster than at any other time since record keeping began in the 1980s. In fact, according to data from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, even as carbon dioxide emissions decelerated during the pandemic-related lockdowns of 2020, atmospheric methane shot up.>>


https://www.unep.org/news-and-storie...ow-reduce-them


https://research.noaa.gov/article/Ar...surged-in-2020


Methane levels in the atmosphere are accelerating.


https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/


A much warmer Arctic and northeast Ohio both seem inevitable in coming decades. By 2100, if not much sooner, both snowfalls and maple trees will increasingly be historical memories in northeast Ohio.

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by WRnative

When this thread was initiated three years ago, Arctic Amplification (the much greater warming of the Arctic region compared to the rest of the planet) was estimated at two times the global average. See post 1, which explained why Arctic Amplification may explain the onslaught of much more wild winters in northeast Ohio.


Recent research released in August 2022 estimated Arctic Amplification at FOUR TIMES the global average since 1979.


<<In recent decades, the warming in the Arctic has been much faster than in the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. Numerous studies report that the Arctic is warming either twice, more than twice, or even three times as fast as the globe on average. Here we show, by using several observational datasets which cover the Arctic region, that during the last 43 years the Arctic has been warming nearly four times faster than the globe, which is a higher ratio than generally reported in literature.>>


https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00498-3


Climate change developments are now much more frequently posted in the following thread, although few of these developments directly relate to the changing climate of northeast Ohio as much as Arctic Amplification.


https://www.city-data.com/forum/ohio...tion-ohio.html

Other recent articles on Arctic Amplification:


<<A new study shows that the Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the rest of the world over the past 43 years. This means the Arctic is on average around 3℃ [5.4 degrees F.) warmer than it was in 1980....



When covered with sea ice, the Arctic Ocean acts like a large reflective blanket, reducing the absorption of solar radiation. As the sea ice melts, absorption rates increase, resulting in a positive feedback loop where the rapid pace of ocean warming further amplifies sea ice melt, contributing to even faster ocean warming.


[Arctic] sea ice is covered in a bright layer of snow which reflects around 85 percent of incoming solar radiation back out to space. The opposite occurs in the open ocean. As the darkest natural surface on the planet, the ocean absorbs 90 percent of solar radiation.


This feedback loop is largely responsible for what is known as Arctic amplification, and is the explanation for why the Arctic is warming so much more than the rest of the planet.>>


https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politic...t-of-the-world


The above article suggests that permafrost thawing and the subsequent release of massive amounts of frozen methane and carbon dioxide increasingly contribute to Arctic Amplification. The final sentence of the article notes "what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic," a reality that northeast Ohio residents likely are experiencing first-hand.


https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...n-1-000-years/



https://grist.org/science/last-ice-a...-thaw-science/