Global Collapse

They'll need more than Plastics to solve these problems.



Starved for fuel and broiling in the heat, Cuba faces deepening energy crisis

RE

They'll need more than Plastics to solve these problems.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/21/americas/cuba-diesel-shortages-intl-latam/index.html

Starved for fuel and broiling in the heat, Cuba faces deepening energy crisis

RE

Well, they are one of those old school peak oil stories of how to survive it. So 15 years or so later, we're learning how long it takes for the full effects to be seen and what they look like. Unfortunately, and like Sri Lanka, it is more an economic consequence more than a running out consequence.

Quote from: RE on July 23, 2022, 01:26:20 pm

They'll need more than Plastics to solve these problems.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/21/americas/cuba-diesel-shortages-intl-latam/index.html

Starved for fuel and broiling in the heat, Cuba faces deepening energy crisis

RE

Well, they are one of those old school peak oil stories of how to survive it. So 15 years or so later, we're learning how long it takes for the full effects to be seen and what they look like. Unfortunately, and like Sri Lanka, it is more an economic consequence more than a running out consequence.

And they have the t-shirt to prove it.

The article mentions the government did not produce enough crude.  Interesting since Cuba has no crude.

It stinks of anti-Cuban propaganda.

YO! SEMITE! GTFO of there!



Wildfire near Yosemite National Park explodes in size, forces thousands of evacuations

RE

Nothing improving on the climate front.
Must all be a big scam...  A communist conspiracy.. No, its the work of the devil I tells you! End times?
We will deny until the bitter end.

JOW


Link:


Text:
Arctic sea ice July 2022
Blue Ocean Event

A Blue Ocean Event occurs when virtually all sea ice disappears and the surface color changes from white (sea ice) to blue (ocean). According to many, a Blue Ocean Event starts once Arctic sea ice extent falls below 1 million km².

The image on the right shows a trend pointing at zero Arctic sea ice volume by September 2027.

Note that the volume data in the image are averages for the month September ⁠— the minimum for each year is even lower. Furthermore, since zero volume implies zero extent, this indicates that a Blue Ocean Event (extent below 1 million km²) could happen well before 2027.

Sea ice concentration

Another measure than sea ice extent or  volume is sea ice concentration. The image below, adapted from University of Bremen, shows sea ice concentration on July 22, 2022, with concentration in many areas close to the North Pole down to 0%.

Sea ice thickness and NASA Worldview satellite images

The NASA Worldview satellite images below give a good idea of how much sea ice is still present in the Arctic, or how little, especially north of the North Pole.

The Naval Research Laboratory one-month animation below shows Arctic sea ice thickness up to July 16, 2022, with 8 days of forecasts added.

The above animation shows a dramatic fall in sea ice thickness over a large area. This fall in thickness is mostly due to warm water from the Atlantic Ocean that is melting the sea ice hanging underneath the surface. This is where the sea ice constitutes the latent heat buffer, consuming incoming heat in the process of melting.

The University of Bremen combination image below shows the difference in sea ice thickness between June 1, 2022, June 30, 2022, and July 22, 2022. The images at the center and on the right show large areas where sea ice is less than 20 cm thick, indicating that the latent heat buffer had already disappeared in June 2022,  as also discussed further below.

The NASA Worldview combination image below shows the sea ice north of Greenland on July 19, 2022 (top), and on July 22, 2022 (bottom), that even at places where the sea ice once was the thickest, it can melt away rapidly. The mechanism behind this is that, as thick ice breaks off and fragments, it additionally gets heated up from the sides, and this further accelerates the melting as the sea ice breaks up further, into ever smaller pieces.

Ocean heat

On July 19, 2022, the sea surface was as warm as 1.8°C or 35.2°F north of Greenland, as the nullschool.net image below shows.

The above image also shows how cold water (blue) flows down to the east of Greenland, while warm water (green) flows off the west coast of Norway toward to Arctic Ocean, diving under the sea ice north of Svalbard and reaching areas north of Greenland where sea surface temperatures rise above freezing point.

Of the extra heat from Earth's energy imbalance, about 93% ends up in the ocean as increasing ocean heat content (see image below), 3% goes into melting ice, 4% goes into raising temperatures of land and melting permafrost, and less than 1% remains in the atmosphere, as discussed in an earlier post.

[ from earlier post ]

Sea ice has disappeared in the Bering Strait, in part due to warm water from rivers in Alaska, as illustrated by the NOAA image below, which shows sea surface temperatures as high as 18.6°C or 65.48°F.

On July 19, 2022, the sea surface temperature anomaly from 1981-2011 in the Arctic Ocean was as high as 14.0°C or 25.2°F (at green circle), as illustrated by the screenshot below of a nullschool.net image (with text added). In 1981-2011, the sea surface temperature at this spot (at the green circle in the Kara Sea) at this time of year was around freezing point.

The above image also shows a distorted Jet Stream (at 250 hPa) moving over the Arctic ocean, instead of circumventing the Arctic and thus keeping heat out of the Arctic and keeping cold inside the Arctic, as it used to be. 

The above NOAA image illustrates how the Gulf Stream is pushing warm water toward the Arctic, with sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic reaching as high as 32.6°C or 90.68°F on July 23, 2022.

Latent heat

Latent heat is heat that is (less and less) going into melting the sea ice. The reason this heat is called latent (hidden) heat, is that it doesn't raise the temperature of the water, but instead gets consumed in the process of melting the ice. Latent heat is energy associated with a phase change, such as the energy consumed when solid ice turns into water (i.e. melting). During a phase change, the temperature remains constant. Sea ice acts as a buffer that absorbs heat, while keeping the temperature at zero degrees Celsius. As long as there is sea ice in the water, this sea ice will keep absorbing heat, so the temperature doesn't rise at the sea surface. The amount of energy absorbed by melting ice is as much as it takes to heat an equivalent mass of water from zero to 80°C.

Once most of the sea ice that was hanging underneath the surface is gone, further heat will still keep moving underneath the sea ice from the Atlantic Ocean and - to a lesser extent - from the Atlantic Ocean into the Arctic Ocean. Without the latent heat buffer, this heat must go elsewhere, i.e. it will typically raise the temperature of the water. The atmosphere will also warm up faster. More evaporation will occur once the sea ice is gone, further warming up the atmosphere.

A 2019 analysis concludes that the latent heat tipping point gets crossed when the sea surface temperature anomaly on the Northern Hemisphere gets higher than 1°C above 20th century's temperature and when there is little or no thick sea ice left. As the image below indicates, the temperature anomaly of 1°C above the 20th century average looks set to be crossed in the course of the year 2021.

[ from the post Arctic Ocean invaded by hot, salty water ]

As the Latent Heat Tipping Point gets crossed, there may still be a thin layer of ice at the surface, at least as long as air temperatures are low enough to keep it frozen and as long as strong winds haven't pushed the sea ice out of the Arctic Ocean. This thin layer of ice will still consume some ocean heat below the surface, but at the same time it acts as a seal, preventing heat from the Arctic Ocean to enter the atmosphere. Even if a lot of sea ice remains, the situation is dangerous, if not even more dangerous. The continuing La Niña could cause a lot of thin sea ice to remain at the surface of the Arctic Ocean this year. The more sea ice remains, the less ocean heat can be transferred from the Arctic Ocean to the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean, which means that more heat remains in the Arctic Ocean.

One huge danger is that, as the buffer disappears that until now has consumed huge amounts of ocean heat, more heat will reach methane hydrates at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, causing them to get destabilized and resulting in releases of methane from these hydrates and from free gas underneath that was previously sealed by the hydrates.

As the latent heat buffer of the sea ice underneath the surface disappears, more of this heat could then reach sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, threatening eruptions to occur of seafloor methane (from hydrates and from free gas underneath the hydrates). The methane could similarly push up temperatures dramatically over the Arctic, and globally over the next few years.


[ feedback #14: Latent Heat ]

The above 2014 image, from the feedbacks page, shows three of the numerous feedbacks that are accelerating warming in the Arctic. Feedback #1 is the albedo feedback. Feedback #14 refers to the loss of the Latent Heat Buffer and warming of the Arctic Ocean. Feedback #2 refers to methane releases.

Heatwaves look set to continue on the Northern Hemisphere, extending heat over the Arctic Ocean and thus affecting Arctic sea ice from above, while warm water from rivers will cause more melting at the surface, and while rising ocean heat will continue to cause more melting of the ice underneath the surface. If this continues, we can expect a new record low for sea ice in September 2022 and the joint loss of the latent heat buffer and the loss of albedo could push up temperatures dramatically over the Arctic, while the additional methane could similarly push up temperatures dramatically over the Arctic, and globally over the next few years.


[ The Buffer has gone, feedback #14 on the Feedbacks page ]

Conclusion

In conclusion, temperatures could rise strongly in the Arctic soon, due to sea ice loss in combination with an upcoming El Niño and a peak in sunspots, with the potential to drive humans extinct as early as in 2025, while temperatures would continue to skyrocket in 2026, making it in many respects rather futile to speculate about what will happen beyond 2026. At the same time, the right thing to do now is to help avoid the worst things from happening, through comprehensive and effective action as described in the Climate Plan.



Links

• Blue Ocean Event


• Naval Research Laboratory


• University of Bremen


• NASA Worldview satellite


• NOAA - sea surface temperature
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst/contour/index.html

• nullschool
https://earth.nullschool.net

• Jet Stream
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/jet-stream.html

• Albedo, latent heat, insolation and more
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/albedo.html

• Latent Heat Buffer
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/latent-heat.html

• Feedbacks in the Arctic
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/feedbacks.html

• Sunspots
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/sunspots.html

• Cataclysmic Alignment
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2022/06/cataclysmic-alignment.html

• Human Extinction by 2025?
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2022/07/human-extinction-by-2025.html

• Extinction
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extinction.html

• Climate Plan
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html

Quote from: John of Wallan on July 25, 2022, 02:18:39 pm

Nothing improving on the climate front.

Does anyone have an expectation otherwise?

Quote from: John of Wallan

Must all be a big scam...  A communist conspiracy.. No, its the work of the devil I tells you! End times?
We will deny until the bitter end.

JOW

Does anyone argue that things are getting better? I just realized that deniers are more like, "no, summers are always warm, heatwaves happen in the summer and kill people all the time, we've always had tornadoes and bad weather", and they can just keep saying and believing that right up to the instant they are killed by drowning in a flood or freezing to death on a mountain top where they retreated for cooler weather, all the usual ways people die I suppose. Deniers could just be regular people not paying attention? Or do you think active denial is required?

Look a little harder at his text. JOW makes even God Greta whose name he thinks I took in vain, not just a sceptic but denier.

Everyone is dead two years from now, again.  The guy writing that doesnt believe it and can hardly believe anyone else does, but theres still a market for it. This is no different than claiming a date for the rapture and followers doubling down on faith every time it passes. The only end times believer is JOW.

He doesn't allow that you can believe in Jesus and point out how the church can be hijacked for purposes of power and control. Rome made Christianity the official religion of empire to further empires ends. That was just the start.

What I wrote yesterday had nothing to do with climate change.

"The atmosphere will also warm up faster. More evaporation will occur once the sea ice is gone, further warming up the atmosphere." - JOW

As I understand it, one of the major reasons for the inaccuracy of some climate predictions has been the difficulty in modelling the formation of clouds.  The increased evaporation due to an open Arctic ocean will result in more clouds being formed.  That apparently is generally agreed upon.  After that views diverge.  The IPCC does not have the super-computer capacity available (amazing) to account for all of the zillions of factors that go into cloud formation.  If the cloud formation in the Arctic was substantial enough it would probably replace some of the albedo lost resulting from diminished ice.  A dramatically increased cloud cover would probably also add to more big violent weather further south... but nobody knows for sure.

This from the IPCC:
, “In spite of these
improvements, there has been no apparent narrowing of the
uncertainty range associated with cloud feedbacks in current
climate change simulations.”
Handling the physics and/or the parametrization of clouds in
climate models remains a central difficulty. There is a need for
increased observations. J. Mitchell highlighted the challenge in a
recent paper at the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)
Workshop on Cloud Properties and Cloud Feedbacks in Largescale Models where he stated that “Reducing the uncertainty in
cloud-climate feedbacks is one of the toughest challenges facing
atmospheric physicists” (Mitchell, 2000)


"Cloud modelling is a particularly challenging scientific
problem because it involves processes covering a very wide range
of space- and time-scales. For example, cloud systems extending
over thousands of kilometres to cloud droplets and aerosols of
microscopic size are all important components of the climate
system. The time-scales of interest can range from hundreds of
years (e.g., future equilibrium climates) to fractions of a second
(e.g., droplet collisions)."

Quote

but nobody knows for sure.

I have never seen a bear **** in the woods.  But I am pretty sure they do.

Cloud formation will pay no attention to human models.  Or to our desires.

The nobody knows argument is a smokescreen.  In this case it is  smoke on the water.

 

*you know,


Smoke on the water, a fire in the sky
Smoke on the water

I don't know about you, but I deal with the ragged edge of climate change every day.  I just came in from the heat where I've been trying to figure out how to drop 100 year old larch trees that are near the house and are  dying from last year's heat.  I've  also been setting up pumps, a 6,000 gallon reservoir and a lot of hose in case we get a fire. If that happens we are the end of a dead end road with no good escape route for a fire crew - so we will be on our own.  I used to fight fire, it's done its best to kill me, and I know of what I speak.

My fruit trees are stressed (Especially the small ones planted this year) as are the cool and moisture loving shrubs like black currant and elderberry.  I have to put down an older ram that is just too stressed from the heat.  That's today.  As I've said here before, all of the native tree species here are very stressed with 1 species winked out, another now dying out, and the others in very tough shape.  We have a tiny percentage of the wild birds that were here just a decade ago and we are even missing some types of insects.

I'm certainly not denying climate change or how devastating it can be - and we're just getting started.  I sure ain't sayin' things are getting better.

My point was that forecasts I saw ten years ago said we would all be dead by now.  Perfectly serious people who know a few things got it wrong.  Some are still getting it wrong. I tried to show one possible reason why this happened.   Or, to put it another way, we ain't dead yet.  Other factors that are not being considered in the IPCC forecast are the thinning magnetic field and shifting magnetic poles.  More gamma rays are making through the field and they play a part in cloud formation. (That is science not speculation)

By the way, I have seen a bear shitt in the woods and I've had a grizzly shitt on my track in the snow - a big steamy pile.  It tends to focus the mind.