1y ago

"North Atlantic sea surface temperature anomalies are going vertical again. And yes, I needed to extend the y-axis."

From Prof. Eliot Jacobson:

Wow! Wow! Wow!

North Atlantic sea surface temperature anomalies are going vertical again. And yes, I needed to extend the y-axis.

Yesterday's temperature of 24.49°C (76.08°F) was 4.2σ above the 1991-2020 mean. The previous high for July 17 was 23.71°C (74.68°F) in 2020.

https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1681321023306874880

108 comments

We are so fucked
- Yep, but for a shining moment in time, humanity created a lot of value for shareholders!
  
  Those are the only important people in the world.
- Foreplay's over.

Line go up!
- Capitalism is working! Line go up!
  
  This isn't the free market we imagined... it's unregulated capitalism, to the point that smaller eco-friendly companies can't compete. At this point the market isn't free anymore.
- Stonks 💪
  
  We need an equivalent word for climate change where the line always goes up.

Honestly how long do we have until we experience massive fishing and crop failures everywhere?
- Enjoy your days before. The working turn of phrase has consistently been, "Faster than expected."
- We already are experiencing that. Crab fishing season was cancelled in 2022 due to a sudden “where are our missing billions of crab?” Other fishing areas are likewise being affected.
  Massive crop failures in China, Russia, Middle East, Africa, south and Central America have been going on for several years. Potable water is disappearing in many regions, forcing massive water migration.
  
  For those looking for a reference like I was:
  https://www.themanual.com/food-and-drink/alaska-snow-crab-season-canceled/
- On a planetary scale, I don't think we're going to have trouble feeding ourselves, it's just that a) meat is going to become thoroughly unaffordable and b) an awful lot of crop production is going to shift towards the poles, creating many a geopolitical clusterfuck along the way.
  Disaster movies are too obvious, and too tidy; it's going to be a century of the average human's life getting just a bit more hellish every year. Acutely hellish for some, barely hellish at all for others, but basically, we're going to slowly roll back most of the improvements in human welfare over the past few centuries until we've got starving serfs all over the place and plagues and famines and natural disasters absolutely flattening entire countries for years at a time.
- Very fucking soon.
  You ever watch disaster movies? They're only 2-2.5hrs average.
  Well, imagine this is a movie. The 100+ years of data we ignored was that "secret file" that was just discovered. The new high temps are the geeky science guy yelling "oh shit!"
  Remember what happens right after that? Very, very quick collapse. Food disaster, heat disaster, weather events and oxygen decrease in our atmosphere.
  We'll either starve, boil, suffocate or kill each other trying to survive.
  I think it's within a couple years. Not decades that is typically reported.
  
  Couple years. We won’t get off that easy. This is sloooowww slide 🛝 with road rash and rug burns. It’ll be bad, then get better, then get worse, then get better, and then…
  
  We're all going to kill each other due to economic collapse and scarcity of resources long before anyone is being boiled alive.
- This year isn't great. Next year should be worse.

In no way, shape, or form is this good!
- Well, it kind of is nice if you like to swim in the ocean and don't like the cold? /s (in case)
  
  Does that warm water get to come up to the northeast? /s

It takes about ~~30 years to see the effects of emissions on the climate. That means the climate crisis we're experiencing right now is only the emissions up to ~1993. Looking at CO~~2~ emissions alone, in 1993 the global total was 22.8 billion tonnes. The latest Data available is from 2021, which shows the global CO₂ emissions at 37.1 billion tonnes. That's in increase of 14.3 billion tonnes of annual CO₂ emissions in the amount of time it takes us to feel the effects, that's a 61% increase in Annual emissions, Not Total emissions. If we stopped all CO₂ emissions today, it would continue to get considerably worse for at least the next quarter-century. We are truly ~~Fucked~~ on the bleeding edge of that climate "tipping point" and major changes are about to start happening very rapidly.
source for CO₂ emissions numbers: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
- Where did you learn that CO2 emissions take 30 years to have an effect on our atmosphere?? I've never heard that.
  
  30 years isn't a hard number, but it can still take 2-3 decades. It has to do with how CO₂ changes ocean chemistry, which has broad effects on the rest of the climate. https://info.ecogardens.com/blog/what-is-climate-change-lag-and-why-do-we-care
  Edit: I think this is the first place i saw it years ago https://skepticalscience.com/Climate-Change-The-40-Year-Delay-Between-Cause-and-Effect.html
- It takes about ~30 years to see the effects of emissions on the climate
  This is a long debunked myth.
  Here is an article that goes into some detail.
  https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached/
  So there is some hope, if we can stop emoting CO2 ASAP. If one finds that a realistic path to belive in on the other hand is a matter of opinion.
  
  I think it's a misunderstanding, not a myth.
  CO2 influences the greenhouse effect - keeping more solar energy on Earth.
  Solar energy gets converted into heat, heat gets absorbed. Some of it gets absorbed by oceans. Some of CO2 also gets absorbed by oceans - their pH decreases. The greenhouse effect doesn't require great time, but oceanic warming and acidification does require time. Interaction happens on the surface, but the volume is great.
  Thus, delays in response are inevitable. Response may also depend on circulation - an ocean current slowing or speeding up.
- what about carbon capture?
  
  Imagine a bull in a china shop destroying everything, now there is two options :
  1- you take the bull out of the shop
  2- you decide that it would be to inconvenient to take the bull out but you are sure that in a few decades we will invent a technology that can repair the China faster than the bull is destroying it.
  Carbon capture is the option 2, we continue to break the carbon molecules for energy pretending that we can recapture later. It's not gonna happen, we need to stop emitting NOW and maybe we can think about carbon capture.
  
  Apparently the scale that's required makes it completely impractical, especially given the timelines that are also required.
  
  It's a pipe dream at the scale we need it

This looks like that “tipping point” that climatologists have been warning about
- No, the GP is talking about proportional effects. A tipping point is some completely different thing.
  
  This could easily be the effect of crossing a tipping point.

Thank a conservative. There will be no solution to climate change while conservatives have any power at all. The time for aggressive action to end conservatism is now.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listofcountriesbycarbondioxideemissions#FossilCO2Emissionsbycountry/region
  2x click on 2021, compare to 1990
  
  Why aren't you making your point in plain English instead of this roundabout way?
  If you're implying that we should look at China's emissions – China's cumulative and per capita emissions are lower than the US. China is basically on par with the EU in terms of per capita emissions, so if anyone has some catching up to do it's the US with 2x (twice!) as much emissions per capita.
  If that's not your point, then that's my bad – I see way too many people try to shift blame onto China in these conversations.

Oh good, I was due for my daily dose of terror.

this is a nightmare

Is this going to effect hurricane season in the way I think it will?
- Hurricanes are quite fickle, they need specific conditions, and due to El Niño they are less likely to occur.
  
  Cool thanks for the answer
- It will make storms stronger; it will only marginally help cyclogenesis.
- High wind shear during El Niño prevents hurricane formation. But these ones that do form will have an record-breaking amount of heat to draw from.
  
  Thx

Does this mean we’re gonna have very strong storms?

Please keep Elninio in mind.
Climate change certainly plays a big part, but currently Elninio is likely the most impacting thing
I can't awnser @Skyler
Yes, Climate change, as said, plays a very significant role, but Elninio currently makes it a lot worse, the last Elninios where very weak, this one now relatively strong
- There were multiple El Nino events during the period of 1982-2022 and yet none of them come close to 2023.
- This is also related to the change in fuels for ships. They banned something that emits aerosols which has reduced the masking effect. And this started prior to El Niño starting. It's likely a combination of the above and some other tipping point shenanigans
  
  Oh, didn't know that interesting. Thanks

108 comments