Polar vortex brings despair to most of the continental United States
Technical Article by Randi Pokladnik, Submitted January 1, 2023
Some will use the recent cold weather event to claim climate change is not real and the planet isn’t warming. But, when one looks at the actual science behind these “Arctic bomb cyclones” and the record-breaking Winter Storm Elliott, it is obvious that climate change has played a significant role.
This Christmas 2022, many of us might have felt like we were enacting the 2004 movie “The Day After Tomorrow”. The movie is loosely based on a theory called “abrupt climate change”. The ocean’s thermohaline conveyor normally circulates ocean water around the planet. Cold, salty ocean water sinks and pulls warmer fresh surface water in to replace the sinking water. This sets up a deep-sea current that circulates water round the planet. If the belt shuts down, the northern hemisphere abruptly cools while the southern hemisphere warms.
Paleoclimate records from Greenland ice cores show that the conveyor belt shut down near the end of the last ice age. The ocean circulation stops when higher water temperatures and the addition of more freshwater cause the salinity and density of seawater to drop. A warming planet and melting freshwater could trigger another shut-down of the belt, throwing North America and Europe into frigid cold temperatures for hundreds of years.
While most scientists agree that what happened in the movie (overnight change) will never occur, USA citizens witnessed some dramatic weather changes in matter of hours. Denver, Colorado experienced a temperature drop of 70 degrees in an 18-hour period. Winter Storm Elliott affected over two-thirds of our population and almost every state except the South Western area. There were record setting winds and cold temperatures in our region, blizzard conditions in the plain states and feet of snow in the New England area; even Florida broke some records for cold temperatures. Meteorologists say this storm will be a once in a generation storm.
So what caused Winter Storm Elliott? The northern polar vortex played a major role in the crushing cold that blanketed the North American continent. There are two polar vortices on our planet, one which spins around the North Pole and the other spins around the South Pole. We are dealing with the northern vortex which was first described in an article published in 1853.
Normally, low-pressure cold air circulates counterclockwise and inward towards the North Pole. The polar jet stream (high-altitude high-speed wind currents) helps hold the vortex in place, much like an old-fashioned girdle held our bulges in place. However, a weakened polar jet stream causes tiny breaks in the “girdle” and allows the cold vortex to seep out of its circular orbit dipping southward. It is like someone opening the refrigerator door and the cold air seeps through your house.
It is thought that climate change is causing a destabilization of the polar jet stream. Scientists say that the Arctic region is warming faster than any other area on the globe, on average four times faster in the past forty years. As the polar air warms, the temperature differences between that air and mid-latitude air lessens. This causes a “wobble” in the jet stream, or weakening of the “girdle”, allowing the cold air to advance south.
This year’s 2022 Arctic Report Card, authored by 147 experts from 11 nations, tells the disturbing story of the effects of climate change on the Arctic. Some of the changes include: shrinking sea ice, warming atmospheric temperatures, and shorter periods of snow cover. These could all play a role in more frequent polar air intrusions into our region.
So far at least fifty deaths have been attributed to the storm, with at least twenty-seven in New York State. More than 8,305 flights were cancelled and millions of people spent Christmas day without power. The economic impact “will likely be in the billions.”
Scientists have been warning us that the time frame for mitigating climate change is quickly closing. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in their 2022 report, “The dangers of climate change are mounting so rapidly that they could soon overwhelm the ability of both nature and humanity to adapt, creating a harrowing future in which floods, fires and famine displace millions, species disappear and the planet is irreversibly damaged.”
Winter Storm Elliott proved to be an example of how we humans cannot successfully adapt to abrupt changes in our weather, even though we have access to advance technology. As climate changes occur more often and at a faster rate, we find that adapting to these changes will become that much harder and more expensive. Even more alarming is the fact that many of the species we share the planet with will not be able to adapt but will instead succumb to extinction.
>>> Randi Pokladnik is a Scientist residing at Tappan Lake, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683. She was born and raised in Ohio. She earned an associate degree in Environmental Engineering, a BA in Chemistry, MA and PhD in Environmental Studies. She is certified in hazardous materials regulations and holds a teaching license in science and math.
Point Your RSS Reader to FrackCheckWV.net/feed/
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Climate change is radicalizing young people — here’s what that means and how to combat despair
>>> Sarah Ray, a professor of environmental studies at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, and author of “A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet.”
Young people are not coping well with climate anxiety.
Sarah Ray, a professor of environmental studies at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, has had a front row seat to the way climate change has landed on young people and most notably, how the weight of that anxiety has changed over the decade-plus years she’s been a professor.
Ray wrote a book on what she’s learned: “A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet,” which came out in 2020.
CNBC is publishing a series of accounts of how climate watchers, leaders and others are facing the emotional toll of climate change and finding a way through their anxiety, and this is a piece in that series.
The following are excerpts of Ray’s comments in a telephone interview with CNBC. They have been edited for brevity and clarity.
‘This new generation is radically different’
The existential weight that my students were bringing to me personally and into the classrooms to each other was something I had no tools to deal with.
I was seeing a great impatience with doing the work of classes: “Why am I wasting my time in college when this stuff is happening out there?” Very much like what we hear from Greta Thunberg and the youth climate movement. This sense of impatience with the types of activities we do in classes, a real desire for action, a real desire for getting out there, rolling your sleeves up and doing something and fixing these problems. The urgency has totally sunk in. There was a fetishizing of action over thinking or talking or reading.
Economics, politics, law, engineering, science used to be the places where students would go into if they wanted to get into environmental stuff. And they were predominantly white, and they often came in with a nostalgia about wanting to get things back to nature the way it was before “bad stuff happened to it.” And that was the modus operandi of the field.
PHOTO: Sarah Ray, a professor of environmental studies at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, with her two kids, ages 10 and seven.
There is a real awareness of the social justice dimensions and the sort of systems change thinking around climate change. The new generation doesn’t think of this as just something that we need to go into science to fix or technology to fix or engineering to fix or even politics or law. There’s a sense of this being a systemic thing that we need all hands on deck to address.
We need all the talents, we need all the skills we from the artists, to the creative types, to the imagination people, to the children’s book writers, to the teachers to the parents — in addition to all of the usual suspects that used to be in sort of thinking about the major leverage points of affecting climate change.
It used to be that climate change was sort of imperceptible, abstract, hard to get your head around hard to deal with. It was a communication conundrum. It evaded all of the risk perception, tick boxes that need to be checked to create a good villain, for people to perceive something as a problem — especially for young people for whom the future feels really far away.
No longer is it abstract, or in the future. It is now, and it’s perceivable. And that has been a huge achievement, because by definition, climate change is the least narratable villain in a story.
The younger generations are thinking, “In my lifetime, I’m going to be the one who’s going to be beset with the worst of this.” And they know from the IPCC reports, and all the successful science communication that’s come out, that the next 10 years is the most important. So they see themselves coming of age, coming onto the political and professional scene of their lives, coming into adulthood, when the most important effects can happen, the most responsibility the most urgency is on them.
They won’t be flying as much. They will refuse things that my generation takes for granted, like plastic and single-use containers. They will slowly, hopefully, successfully change how infrastructure works, how their transportation works, how they build their families, how they build their homes, how they live on this planet and walk on this Earth. Their lifestyles won’t accept what my generation has accepted as normal.
There’s going to be a real reckoning around reproductive refusal. What’s fascinating about that is environmentalists have long chosen not to have children as a way to reduce their impact on the planet, but this generation is choosing not to have children because they don’t think their children will have a livable future. That’s a very, very, very different reason to do it.
Environmentalists have long chosen not to have children as a way to reduce their impact on the planet, but this generation is choosing not to have children because they don’t think their children will have a livable future.
The climate movement forever has thought, “We’re never going change capitalism, this is never going to happen.” This real sense of futility of the whole endeavor, and that futility is less, I feel like that is diminished.
The younger generations are saying, “No, actually Covid-19 has shown us that we can change a lot of stuff.” They feel more politically powerful than previous any previous generation before them, except for maybe in the ’60s. In the last 50 years, this is the most powerful feeling generation, and they have good reason to feel that way.
Necessity is the mother invention. Desperation is the mother of action. These two things absolutely go together. You can’t have such a politically organized generation and group without such clear and present danger.
For a sustainable future: Focus on what’s working
The story is not already prewritten. The dominant narrative is about inevitability. And that is an excuse for inaction. And I am utterly early against that. My favorite book on this is the newest book by Elin Kelsey, “Hope Matters.”
The story that we can build the future we want has to be the central story with young people. I don’t care whether that’s rose tinted. I don’t care if that’s Pollyanna to some people. The science is out there on what happens with young people if they think that their future is already written for them, and that is not good. That is not an option for me.
The future of climate communication, the future of climate psychology has to simply be the “both-and” orientation. It’s just going to have to be, because we’re all going to learn at some point that living in doom and gloom narratives is very ineffective, and it makes us literally want to kill ourselves. This is very scary. We’ve gone from nobody caring enough about climate change to people caring so much that they’re nihilistic. We cranked up the urgency and then we’ve like overshot the mark.
It’s not that urgency is a bad thing. Urgency has a rhetorical situation and purpose and audience that is very effective and needs to happen. And we need to keep using urgency where appropriate. So I am not rejecting urgency outright. But for people who do really care a lot, it is not a productive thing.
We are going to be in this for a while. There is some urgency needed, but we need to focus on those fears that we do have control over, and slow down and do the work in a way that is sustainable for ourselves. And simply put that is the recipe for engaging in this work without burning out, without getting overwhelmed.
We need to be clear-eyed about it. I’m not suggesting that we block out everything that we can’t control. Taking in of all this information through the news, social media, all the ways that we have a 24-7 news stream, in general, that negativity bias of media and negativity bias in our psychologies and in our brains does not equate to reality. And it does equate to serious depression and anxiety.
We can be aware of how bad things are, and also how good things are. We can counterbalance the overwhelming negativity of news and our own biases around negativity by consuming and actively seeking out things that are positive. And that’s not about being in denial or naive. That is about making sure we are consuming, that we’re exposed to reality, which is not all bad.
SOURCE: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/30/how-to-stop-climate-change-despair-according-to-professor.html
NOTES FROM A DEAD PLANET: Please Prove Me Wrong.
By Paul B. Brown, PhD, Kindle Edition (Amazon), 2022
Notes from a Dead Planet has a premise and a challenge.
The premise: Humans, like all living things, have a built-in drive to reproduce and consume resources beyond the ability of nature to support them. Unfortunately, we’ve evolved the ability to override the natural controls that keep other species from destroying their habitats, so that now we’ve caused a global collapse of Earth’s life support system. Corporations own our governments, and they fight all attempts to rein in our consumption. That’s why international efforts to address climate change and mass extinction have failed utterly.
The challenge: Please prove Brown wrong by taking decisive action today, to stop global collapse. If the world makes the necessary commitment to a single-minded effort to rescue the web of life we depend on, we just might survive. Notes from a Dead Planet offers the solutions; it’s up to readers to apply them.
Notes from a Dead Planet is intended to be a living document.
For a preview of the book, newslinks, and additions and revisions, do visit ~ https://www.deadplanet.org.
#####+++++#####+++++#####
Publisher’s Weekly review: NOTES FROM A DEAD PLANET
Brown’s eye-opening and often terrifying survey explores what has happened to Earth regarding overpopulation, mass extinction, and climate change. Aiming to provoke action, Brown painstakingly– and unstintingly– lays out the evidence, drawn from hundreds of articles and studies, of what he calls “planetary death,” detailing the uptick in extreme weather and climate-related catastrophes… and the likely increasingly horrific disasters we can expect in the future. While he never sugarcoats anything, Brown also offers guidance… to mitigate these compounding dangers— if we as a species really want to continue living on the planet we call home.
Brown’s core message— that we have very little time to make massive, life-altering changes in order to save life on the planet as we know it— is delivered alongside copious links covering topics that range from media misinformation to political movements. He never shies away from his fears that we have gone too far as a species to be able to reign in the incredible damage already done.
Brown sounds a resonant alarm about what’s likely to come if immediate action is not taken, and… his writing will spark a fear for the future, but readers will walk away empowered to make personal changes to thwart some of the most dire consequences of resource waste and pollution.
Takeaway: A stark analysis of the threats to our planet, with a provocative call to action.
#####+++++#####+++++#####
Kirkus review: NOTES FROM A DEAD PLANET
A neuroscience professor emeritus with advanced degrees from the University of Chicago and Cornell, Brown… calculates that “life on Earth will come to an end by the end of this century.” Based on an abundance of scientific evidence that is cited in nearly every sentence, this work suggests that the world is plagued by three processes directly tied to human decisions: Overpopulation, Mass extinction, and Global warming.
Published only in digital formas “a living document” that will be updated and revised at his website, deadplanet.org. this format allows for the work’s citation method that offers readers links to studies that provide overwhelming support for the author’s claims. Brown assumes no prior scientific expertise on the part of readers. Thus, while the book will satisfy scientifically minded readers, its jargon-free, accessible prose extends its reach to a general audience.
This effort is complemented by an ample assortment of colorful graphs, charts, and photographs. At just over 100 pages, this is an ideal primer on imminent global catastrophes that most scientists foresee but that have yet to meaningfully impact the decisions of the world’s corporations and governments… A convincing work that predicts environmental devastation in this century.
#####+++++#####+++++######
Paul B. Brown is a retired West Virginia University professor of physiology and neuroscientist, with degrees from MIT and the University of Chicago. He has devoted his time since retirement to writing about human rights, climate change, mass extinction, overpopulation, and the corporate takeover of society. He is the author of the nonfiction Notes from a Dying Planet and Notes from a Dead Planet, and a novel, The Birth of Adam, based on his nonfiction. He is now writing an international cookbook. Brown also curates a free news feed, Dead Planet News, to which readers can subscribe at pbrown4348@gmail.com. He can also be contacted at that email address.
Oxford Study Warns Extreme Heat and Drought to Hit 90% of World Population
From an Article by Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams, January 5, 2023
The frequency of compound drought-heatwave events is “projected to increase by tenfold globally under the highest emissions scenario.”
An aerial picture taken on August 24, 2022 shows the riverbed of the Jialing River, a tributary of the Yangtze River, in China’s southwestern city of Chongqing.
As interlinked extreme heat and drought events grow in intensity and frequency amid the ruling class’ ongoing failure to adequately slash planet-heating fossil fuel pollution, over 90% of the global population is projected to suffer the consequences in the coming decades, according to peer-reviewed research published Thursday in Nature Sustainability.
Compound drought-heatwave (CDHW) events are “one of the worst climatic stressors for global sustainable development,” states the paper, but their “physical mechanisms” and “impacts on socio-ecosystem productivity remain poorly understood.”
“Using simulations from a large climate-hydrology model,” nine scholars—working at universities in China, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan—found that “the frequency of extreme CDHWs is projected to increase by tenfold globally under the highest emissions scenario, along with a disproportionate negative impact on vegetation and socio-economic productivity by the late 21st century.”
According to the study: “Terrestrial water storage and temperature are negatively coupled, probably driven by similar atmospheric conditions (for example, water vapor deficit and energy demand). Limits on water availability are likely to play a more important role in constraining the terrestrial carbon sink than temperature extremes.”
Put plainly, drought and extreme heat are intertwined. Increasingly arid and hot conditions are undermining the capacity of land-based ecosystems to absorb carbon dioxide, with a lack of water considered even more consequential than higher temperatures.
Not only are CDHWs hurting the ability of biodiverse regions to absorb a key greenhouse gas but these increasingly intense and frequent events also threaten to exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities.
The study estimates that even under the lowest emission scenario, “over 90% of the global population and gross domestic product could be exposed to increasing CDHW risks in the future, with more severe impacts in poorer and more rural areas.”
Lead author Jiabo Yin, an associate professor of hydrology at Wuhan University and visiting researcher at Oxford University, explained in a statement that quantifying “the response of ecosystem productivity to heat and water stressors at the global scale” shows that the joint threats of dangerously hot temperatures and drought pose substantially greater risks to society and the environment when assessed together rather than independently.
The effects of rising temperatures and declining terrestrial water storage combine to weaken the capacity of “carbon sinks” to absorb heat-trapping emissions and release oxygen, Yin noted.
Co-author Lousie Slater, associate professor of physical geography at the University of Oxford, said that “understanding compounding hazards in a warming Earth is essential for the implementation of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG13 that aims to combat climate change and its impacts.”
“By combining atmospheric dynamics and hydrology, we explore the role of water and energy budgets in causing these extremes,” said Slater.
The new research, which is aimed at “assessing and mitigating adverse effects of compound hazards on ecosystems and human well-being,” comes in the wake of record-breaking extreme heat and historic droughts around the world in 2022.
The life-threatening impacts of the global climate emergency have only continued to reverberate in 2023, underscoring the need to expedite the clean energy transition, among other necessary transformations.
Source: https://www.commondreams.org/news/extreme-heat-drought