MEDICARE FOR ALL NOW! EL NINO EXPLODING TEMPS WILDFIRES FLOODING TYPHOON POWER MILLIONS UNDER EXTREME HEAT RISK! ICE FREE ARCTIC UNLEASHES "HOT STUFF" THE BEGINNING OF "THE FIREY WAVES OF DEATH!" PREPARE YOUR SOULS! FOR "THANK GOD!" "It Is THE END!"

Smoke from Canadian fires is pouring into the US and could linger for days
By Melissa Alonso, CNN
Updated 3:57 PM EDT, Sun May 21, 2023

CNN — Smoke from wildfires in Canada is moving into parts of the central US and could linger in the days ahead, health and weather officials warned Thursday.

Air quality alerts have been posted as of early Friday across several states, including Nebraska, Washington, Montana and Wisconsin, with a special weather statement about air quality in Wyoming.

How wildfires in Alberta lead to poor air quality in the Midwest

The heaviest smoke concentrations should shift further east into the Midwest later in the day, affecting major metro areas including Chicago, Indianapolis and St. Louis.

Canada has had an especially active start to the fire season. Last week, devastating wildfires in Alberta had burned more than 150 times more area in that province than in the last five years combined by the same point in the year, CNN has reported. AND IT IS ONLY MAY! BIGGEST FIRES AUG-OCT!

"ICE FREE ARCTIC" BY 2023-25 WILL UNLEASH "THE SIBERIAN METHANE MONSTER!" . . "HOT STUFF" . . THAT WILL CAUSE . . "THE FIREY WAVES OF DEATH!" BY 2025-27!

PLEASE SEE THE PRIOR POST: 2025-7 "THE FIREY WAVES OF DEATH!" "WET BULB" TEMPS DRIVEN BY "HOT STUFF" INSURES 3-4 BILLION DEATHS 2 YEARS FROM "ICE FREE ARCTIC!" THE POOR DIE QUICKLY! THE REST EXIT PEACEFULLY OR NOT! RICH & WHORES FRY IN HELL! SATAN'S ANTI-CHRISTIANS! EVIL NOT GOD!

In Nebraska, “Canadian wildfire smoke is going to move through the area today through tomorrow morning, resulting in potentially dangerous air quality and poor visibility across eastern Nebraska and Iowa. Limit outdoor activities if possible when the air quality is poor!” the National Weather Service in Omaha tweeted Thursday.

More than a third of the area charred by wildfires in Western North America can be traced back to fossil fuels, scientists find.

Wildfire smoke “is beginning to move into the Lincoln and Omaha metro areas,” the service’s Omaha office said Thursday afternoon. “Visibility should drop to 1-2 miles within the next couple of hours and air quality will go into the unhealthy range for sensitive groups.”

In eastern Nebraska’s Douglas County – which includes Omaha – the health department warned smoke could remain through Saturday.

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality Index indicated parts of the Rockies, the Great Plains and the Midwest, including the Nebraska Panhandle and northeast corner of the state, had “very unhealthy” air quality early Friday.

SUNDAY, MAY 7, 2023 
SAM CARANA . . MUST FOLLOW . . ARCTIC-NEWS.BLOGSPOT.COM

​Will there be Arctic sea ice left in September 2023?

The above image is from a recent analysis by Karina von Schuckmann et al. and shows that the Earth is heating up, as outgoing radiation is suppressed. More and more extra heat is kept captive on Earth and gets stored mainly in oceans (89%), with smaller proportions getting stored on land (6-5%), in the cryosphere (4%) and in the atmosphere (1-2%). The image also shows another change: 1% more heat gets stored in the atmosphere while 1% less gets stored on land for the period going back to 1971, compared to the period going back to 2006. 

What could cause that change? Most heat on land is stored in the ground (90 %), with inland water bodies accounting for 0.7 % and permafrost thawing accounting for 9 %. This raises fears that water that was previously present in the ground, is increasingly moving into the atmosphere, as a warming atmosphere holds more water vapor (7% more water vapor for every 1°C warming). 

An atmosphere that sucks up more water vapor increases the atmospheric vapor pressure deficit (VPD). A 2019 study warns that increased VPD reduces global vegetation growth: "VPD greatly limits land evapotranspiration in many biomes by altering the behavior of plant stomata. Increased VPD may trigger stomatal closure to avoid excess water loss due to the high evaporative demand of the air. In addition, reduced soil water supply coupled with high evaporative demand causes xylem conduits and the rhizosphere to cavitate (become air-filled), stopping the flow of water, desiccating plant tissues, and leading to plant death. Previous studies reported that increased VPD explained 82% of the warm season drought stress in the southwestern United States, which correlated to changes of forest productivity and mortality. In addition, enhanced VPD limits tree growth even before soil moisture begins to be limiting." 
​
More water vapor in the atmosphere further amplifies the temperature rise, since water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas and it also constitutes a tipping point, the Land Evaporation Tipping Point, that gets crossed when water will no longer be available locally for further evapotranspiration from the soil and vegetation, with the rise in land surface temperatures accelerating accordingly.

An earlier post discussed the Terrestrial Biosphere Temperature Tipping Point, coined in a recent study that finds that at higher temperatures, respiration rates continue to rise in contrast to sharply declining rates of photosynthesis, which under business-as-usual emissions would nearly halve the land sink strength by as early as 2040.

Loss of ice could cause several other tipping points to be crossed soon. About a quarter of the 4% heat consumed by the cryosphere goes into melting glaciers. Disappearance of glaciers could be coined the Glaciers Tipping Point, since from that point heat can no longer go into melting the glacier and will instead go elsewhere. 

Similarly, about a quarter of the 4% heat consumed by the cryosphere goes into melting Arctic sea ice. Loss of Arctic sea ice thus could cause several tipping points to get crossed, i.e. the latent heat tipping point (heat that now goes into converting ice into water) and the albedo feedback (sunlight that was previously reflected back into space), and all further incoming heat will from that point on instead go into heating up the Arctic. 

So, will there be Arctic sea ice left in September 2023? Current conditions make that the outlook is grim, as sea surface temperatures and greenhouse gas levels are even higher than in previous years. 

Surface temperatures

The image below, from an earlier post, illustrates the threat that the temperature rise may exceed 3°C. The blue trend, based on January 1880 to March 2023 data, shows how 3°C could be crossed in 2036. The magenta trend, based on January 2010 to March 2023 data, better reflects relatively short-term variables such as El Niño and illustrates how 3°C could be crossed as early as in 2025.

The above image uses monthly NASA Land+Ocean temperature anomalies versus 1886-1915 that are further adjusted by 0.99°C to reflect ocean air temperatures, higher polar anomalies and a pre-industral base, as also discussed in the earlier post. The highest peaks (2016 and 2020) occurred during El Niño events and a new El Niño is now emerging.

The image on the right shows high temperature anomalies on May 16, 2023, over the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Such high anomalies occur with increasing frequency and intensity as the Jet Stream gets more and more distorted, as a result of the narrowing temperature difference between the North Pole and the Equator. This is just one out of numerous feedbacks that contribute to accelerate the temperature rise in the Arctic. 

Feedback #1: albedo loss as sea ice melts away and as it gets covered by soot, dust, algae, meltpools and rainwater pools;

Feedback #19: distortion of the Jet Stream as the temperature difference narrows between the Arctic and the Tropics, in turn causing further feedbacks to kick in stronger, such as hot air  moving into the Arctic and cold air moving out, and more extreme weatherevents bringing heavier rain and more intense heatwaves, droughts and forest fires that cause black carbon to settle on the sea ice.
The image on the right is adapted from NASA and shows anomalies versus 1951-1980 of up to 4.79°C. The image also shows that the Arctic is heating up much faster than the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as accelerated Arctic temperature rise.

The next image on the right illustrates how two of these feedbacks contribute to the accelerated Arctic temperature rise:

The above image shows the Jet Stream, deformed and stretched out from the North Pole to the South Pole, while crossing the Equator over the Pacific at several places on May 20, 2023. 

The above image shows the Jet Stream, stretched out from the North Pole to the South Pole, crossing the Equator at several places on May 23, 2023, while the sea surface was as much as 13.2°C or 23.7°F hotter than during 1981-2022, more specifically, north of Russia, where the Jet Stream goes circular. 

The image on the right shows that maximum temperatures were high in Russia up onto the Arctic on May, 24, 2023. This causes the water of rivers to heat up, resulting in high sea surface temperature anomalies in the Barents Sea. This hot river water contains less salt than ocean water, so the outflow from rivers tends to spread out over the surface of the Arctic Ocean. 

The image on the right shows a forecast for May 26, 2023. Very high temperature anomalies show up over North Russia, while heat extends over much of the Arctic Ocean. 
​
Heatwaves threaten to cause rapid thawing of permafrost and the heat can extend from land to far over the Arctic Ocean, threatening to cause melting of Arctic sea ice from above. 

Heatwaves also cause hot water from rivers to flow into the Arctic Ocean, threatening to cause melting of Arctic sea ice from the side. 

Meanwhile, vast amounts of ocean heat are pushed by strong wind from the North Pacific and the North Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean, threatening to cause melting of Arctic sea ice from below. 

The image on the right, adapted from NOAA, shows ocean heat moving toward the Arctic along the path of the Gulf Stream on May 15, 2023, with sea surface temperatures as high as 32°C.

As discussed in a recent post, the world sea surface temperature (between 60°South and 60°North) has been at 21°C or higher for as many as 38 days. Such temperatures are unprecedented in the NOAA record that goes back to 1981.

The image below shows that, on May 23, 2023, the temperature of the World sea surface (between 60°S and 60°N) was 20.9°C, much higher than it was in 2022 on that day (2022: orange, 2023: black).

The sea surface temperature on the North Atlantic (SST NA) is critical in regard to melting of the Arctic sea ice, which typically reaches its minimum annual extent in September. As the image below shows, SST NA was 21.5°C on May 17, 2023 (black line), half a degree Celsius higher than the 21°C reached on May 17, 2022 (orange). The outlook for Arctic sea ice is grim, as SST NA reached a record high of 24.9°C in early September 2022, when temperatures were suppressed by a La Niño. This time, an El Niño is on the way. 

On May 11, 2023, the sea surface off the North American coast was as much as 10.7°C or 19.2°F (green circle) hotter than 1981-2011, as illustrated by the above image. A distorted Jet Stream is stretched out from pole to pole (wind at 250 hPa). The blue colors reflect melting of sea ice and runoff from land, as well as strong wind in the path of the Jet Stream. The high temperatures of the North Atlantic make the outlook for Arctic sea ice grim and the blue colors on the map could soon be overwhelmed by ocean heat.

Forcing by elevated well-mixed GHG levels has virtually certainly caused the multiyear persistent 2019–2021 marine heatwave. The warming pool is marked by concurrent and pronounced increase in annual mean, and variance of SSTs (Figure below left) and decrease in cold-season low-cloud’s cooling effect. EUMETSAT satellite data shows a 5% decade⁻¹ decreasing trend in cold-season cloud cover during 1995–2018 (Figure below right). Low-cloud cover reduction is the major contribution to the observed decline in total cloud fraction, resulting in decreases of winter-time low-cloud’s cooling effect.

Greenhouse gases levels

A carbon dioxide level as high as around 427 ppm was recorded recently at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, i.e. an increase of over 100 ppm since flask records started in 1969. Politicians have forfeited the chance to influence the process and must from now on be kept as much as possible out of the climate picture. We, the people, must now support a Climate Emergency Declaration and support communities seeking effective climate action. 

Hourly carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels as high as around 430 ppm were recorded at Mauna Loa recently, as illustrated by the image below. 

CO₂ typically reaches its annual high in May or June, so even higher levels could be reached in 2023.

Even more crucially, methane emissions should be cut rapidly and dramatically, as discussed in an earlier post. If a trend such as the one in the above image continues, the Clouds Tipping Point could be crossed as early as in 2027 due to forcing caused by the rise in methane alone, while this could happen even earlier than in 2027 when further forcing other than just the forcing from methane is taken into account. Crossing the Clouds Tipping Point, at 1200 ppm CO₂e, could on its own cause a further rise of 8°C.

NOAA's 1924.99 ppb for the December 2022 global methane mean translates into 385 ppm CO₂e when using a 1-year GWP of 200 for methane.

So, adding this 385 ppm CO₂e to the above 427 ppm CO₂ would leave just 388 ppm CO₂e for further forcing, before the Clouds Tipping Point would get crossed, as the image on the right illustrates.

Methane at higher altitude can reach even higher levels than NOAA's global marine surface data. As illustrated by an image in an earlier post, monthly methane recently rose to above 1950 ppb at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

Further changes such as caused by sea ice loss and changes in aerosols can further speed up the temperature rise, and thus further raise the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere and thus further raise CO₂e levels.

Arctic sea ice

Rising temperatures in the Arctic threaten to trigger massive loss of Arctic sea ice.

While Arctic sea ice is still extensive, sea ice concentration is already getting lower in many places and there is open water in parts of the Beaufort Sea and Baffin Bay, as illustrated by the Uni of Bremen image on the right.

The satellite image below, adapted from NASA Worldview, shows that the sea ice has many cracks and there is open water in the Beaufort Sea. ​

The satellite image on the right shows many cracks in the sea ice just north of the northern tip of Greenland, further evidence that the sea ice is very vulnerable. Over the years, multi-year sea ice has fallen dramatically, raising the question whether there will be Arctic sea ice left in September 2023.  

El Niño and further variables

Ominously, November 2023 temperature anomalies are forecast to be at the top end of the scale for a large part of the Arctic Ocean, as illustrated by the tropicaltidbits.com image below.

Note the high temperature anomalies forecast on the image below for the equatorial Pacific, indicative of an El Niño. ​

​The image on the right, adapted from NOAA, shows a greater than 90% chance of El Niño persisting into the Northern Hemisphere winter. 

Furthermore, sunspots are higher than predicted and the Tonga submarine volcano did add large amounts of water vapor high into the atmosphere. 

Conditions and outlook

In summary, conditions are dire, i.e. emissions are high, greenhouse gases are at record high levels, temperatures are high, and sea surface temperatures are very high. Meanwhile, an El Niño is on the way and, combined with other variables, this could raise temperatures significantly. 

All this could combine to cause massive loss of Arctic sea ice.  Loss of Arctic sea ice comes with loss of the latent heat buffer and loss of albedo that threaten to trigger subsequent eruptions of methane from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, as has been described many times before, such as in this post, in this post and in this post.

In addition, there are further events and developments that could unfold and make things even worse, as described in more detail below. In short, a huge temperature rise threatens to unfold soon.

Climate Tipping Points and further Events and Developments

A 2021 study on oceans finds that, with increased stratification, heat from climate warming less effectively penetrates into the deep ocean, which contributes to further surface warming, while it also reduces the capability of the ocean to store carbon, exacerbating global surface warming. An earlier analysis warns about growth of a layer of fresh water at the surface of the North Atlantic resulting in more ocean heat reaching the Arctic Ocean and the atmosphere over the Arctic, while a 2023 studyfinds that growth of a layer of fresh water decreases its alkalinity and thus its ability to take up CO₂, a feedback referred to as the Ocean Surface Tipping Point.

are high, greenhouse gases are at record high levels, temperatures are high, and sea surface temperatures are very high. Meanwhile, an El Niño is on the way and, combined with other variables, this could raise temperatures significantly. 

All this could combine to cause massive loss of Arctic sea ice.  Loss of Arctic sea ice comes with loss of the latent heat buffer and loss of albedo that threaten to trigger subsequent eruptions of methane from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, as has been described many times before, such as in this post, in this post and in this post.

In addition, there are further events and developments that could unfold and make things even worse, as described in more detail below. In short, a huge temperature rise threatens to unfold soon.

Climate Tipping Points and further Events and Developments
A 2021 study on oceans finds that, with increased stratification, heat from climate warming less effectively penetrates into the deep ocean, which contributes to further surface warming, while it also reduces the capability of the ocean to store carbon, exacerbating global surface warming. An earlier analysis warns about growth of a layer of fresh water at the surface of the North Atlantic resulting in more ocean heat reaching the Arctic Ocean and the atmosphere over the Arctic, while a 2023 studyfinds that growth of a layer of fresh water decreases its alkalinity and thus its ability to take up CO₂, a feedback referred to as the Ocean Surface Tipping Point.

Few people wanted to accept that the temperature could rise by 20°C within decades, when the above image was made back in 2013, now almost a decade ago. To his great credit, Guy McPherson used the graph in several of his presentations (inset). Sadly, little or nothing has been done since to combat the temperature rise, and in hindsight, the speed at which the temperature rise could unfold and the resulting number of deaths may have been too conservative. In the May 2023 video below, Guy McPherson gives his views. 

Links 

• Heat stored in the Earth system 1960–2020: where does the energy go? - by Karina von schuckmann et al. 
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/1675/2023 
Discussion at: 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/arcticnews/posts/10160713282559679  

• UNEP Foresight Brief 025 
https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/36619/FB025.pdf 

• Increased atmospheric vapor pressure deficit reducesglobal vegetation growth - by Wenping Yuan et al. 
https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/sciadv.aax1396
Discussion at: 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/arcticnews/posts/10157565091229679

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

• Tropicaltidbits.com
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com 

• NOAA SST
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst/contour/index.html

NOAA - Global Monitoring Laboratory - Earth System Research Laboratories 
https://gml.noaa.gov/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=MLO&program=ccgg&type=ts

• Keeling Curve 
https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu 

• University of Bremen - sea ice concentration and thickness 
https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/start 

• Climate Reanalyzer - Daily sea surface temperatures
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily 

• NOAA Climate Prediction Center - ENSO
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml

• Nullschool.net
https://earth.nullschool.net

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

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

• The Clouds feedback and the Clouds Tipping Point
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/clouds-feedback.html

• Cold freshwater lid on North Atlantic
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/cold-freshwater-lid-on-north-atlantic.html

• NASA Worldview
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov

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

• Climate Emergency Declaration
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climate-emergency-declaration.html