This is what carbon climate feedbacks look like! Atmospheric monitoring shows dramatic 2015 CO2 emissions record unfolding

Welcome to the future. 2015: The hottest year on record. With a likely coral bleaching record. And sadly also the year with a likely extreme CO2 emissions record. Because, using satellites, we can see the very positive carbon climate feedbacks [the ones that can create the feared runaway warming scenario] already in live action – on a globally significant scale, just two months before world leaders meet in Paris to agree on a new international climate treaty, during the COP21 climate summit in December in Paris.

carbon climate feedbacks prompting 2015 CO2 emissions record
Continue reading →

Continuation of Indonesian forest fires could increase global CO2 emissions by 29% – as El Niño and drought intensify over rest of 2015

The year 2015 will be the hottest on record. You’ve probably heard that by now. What does not receive media attention is that 2015 is likely to also bring a dramatic peaking record in global anthropogenic CO2 emissions, if we add ‘land use change’ [a nice phrase for slash & burn] to global fossil fuel emissions [to the atmosphere of course there’s little difference]. Again all this adds to a very dramatic background to the Paris climate negotiations at the end of this year.

Not only a polluting haze, also enormous amounts of CO2 are released by Indonesian forest fires in 2015
Continue reading →

Indonesian wildfires set to continue – IRI forecast paints heavily shaken global climate system during COP21

When world leaders gather in Paris from November 30 to December 12/13 to negotiate a new UN climate treaty the urgency of that matter is very likely to create its own headlines across the globe, if you’d connect the brown and the blue dots on the map below:

COP21 climate forecast: extreme weather events during Paris climate summit!
Continue reading →

Gulf Stream may not collapse, it may gradually come to a halt – these AMOC graphs show

Here at Bitsofscience.org we’ve written quite extensively on why a direct shutdown of the Gulf Stream is unlikely – and that the collapse scenario featured in that one movie we only ever saw the trailer of probably did not even occur during the famous Younger Dryas ice age hick-up and that perhaps the Gulf Stream was just as strong during the ice age cold peak.

But forget about ice ages for as long as you, your grandchildren and their grandchildren will live – if Holocene Mass Extinction even grants us that time. We have a very different planet now, one that is exceedingly breaking all heat records. What we at Bits of Science have thus far largely ignored is that a gradual shutdown is probably equally bad news for anyone anywhere on the planet – and that science says that scenario is perhaps already underway:

AMOC graph: Gulf Stream is already declining in strength
Continue reading →

Breaking: the summer of 2015 (June, July & August) was globally hottest summer ever. August hottest August ever-measured, also third highest deviation for any month

The August 2015 global data of NOAA (full report) are just in. It was another record-hot month – the hottest August ever measured – already the 6th month of 2015 to be higher than any other previously recorded (February, March, May, June, July, and August).

We now know – after also record-hot months of June and July that the entire summer season of 2015 was globally the hottest summer the world has ever seen. 2015 is well on its way to become the hottest year ever measured, as we predicted quite some time ago.

Globally the summer of 2015 -June, July, August- was the hottest summer ever recorded
Continue reading →

Science short: Does climate change increase risk of conflict? Yes – says this metastudy

In 2014 a Stanford University research group reviewed 55 scientific studies to investigate whether climate change significantly increases the risk of intergroup conflict. Their conclusion is that it does:

Climate change significantly increases risk of conflict, Stanford group finds
Continue reading →

North Africa to lose another breadbasket due to climate change – Egypt’s Nile Delta dries out and submerges simultaneously, millions of migrants likely

Million of climate migrants from sea level rise in Nile DeltaClimate change not only causes decreased agricultural production due to droughts and desertification in Mediterranean North Africa and the ‘Fertile Crescent’ of the Middle East – it will also cost the region several thousands square kilometers of its most productive cropland as a direct result of sea level rise in the Nile Delta – and possibly a much larger area at risk of upstream storm surge floods.

From that same Nile Delta millions of people would have to be displaced, when the sea level rises by just 50* centimeter.

Continue reading →

The Syrian drought of 2006-2010 fits in climate trend of lower precipitation and higher temperatures, this graph shows

Over 2006 to 2010 a prolonged drought, unprecedented in modern documented history, caused a farming collapse in Northeastern Syria. Winter rainfall in the otherwise green & productive ‘Fertile Crescent’ decreased by at least a third in Syria (and up to 70 percent in Iraq).

The fertile crescent of Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq is increasingly threatened by climate change
The ancient ‘Fertile Crescent’, the world’s cradle for agriculture, is increasingly threatened by climate change, new research shows

Continue reading →

To shear or not to shear – these 5 images show El Niño’s possible effect on Atlantic hurricanes, and other jet stream stuff

Ten years after Katrina* the world is on the brink of a whole new cluster of climatic disasters, including wide-spread coral bleaching, Pacific atol floods, possibly another devasting Brazil drought and another record-breaking hot year, following from the currently developing Super El Niño.

Another devastating Atlantic hurricane will most likely not be a part of disrupting extreme climate events this year. These five images tell you why:

In 2005 Katrina awoke America to the reality of climate change
Continue reading →