csnavywx

The mid-deck from earlier in the day almost crapped out the entire party. We'll have another chance here this week if we can get an MCS to ride the EML instability gradient or this weekend, provided the BL doesn't get mixed out with all the heat.

We're building ourselves a bit of a trap with agricultural climate effects. Summertime temps are kept down by the increase in humidity, offsetting warming. However, this cannot continue indefinitely. Plateauing crop density and water evaporation will lead to eventual temp rises that will begin to put pressure on the crop, eventually causing this effect to fail and warming to snap back pretty quickly in a few decades.

Yep, it's been a thing for several years. You're not the only one: TLDR: A bit of reasoned speculation, but probably due to downstream effects of rapid warming in the North Pacific. Looks like a transient decadal response to me.

I can't comment on that piece specifically, but am familiar with his positions broadly. If I'm going to address something, it'll mostly be on the science side.

Let's hear what your doubts are and what you would have to see to change your mind. If you want engagement here, you need a falsifiable position to begin with.

We're not going to make 2C without it -- though I have my doubts we can even hit that target if EEI merely stays where it's at and aerosols are reduced. Decarbonization isn't fast enough and hasn't been for a while. Energy efficiency doesn't work very well due to demand equilibrium changes. If we need to subsidize and standardize the reactor design, then so be it. It's still way cheaper than CCS/BECCS and seasonal storage -- both of which are necessary en masse to hit 2 or 1.5C. The damage function is non-linear and gets pretty scary after we hit those limits. So will the costs, and those costs are likely to make this little cost-benefit analysis look quaint in comparison. A good article and published paper linked in that thread as well. Long story short -- rate of decarbonization is all that matters and that rate must exceed growth. We will either do this voluntarily or it will happen via painful forced deleveraging and a decline in growth rates as the cost of damage piles up and more energy is thus used for maintenance of the existing capital stock. That's to say absolutely nothing of the geopolitical ramifications of all of this. And that geopol risk is probably not going to be constructive for decarbonization efforts, if recent history is any guide.

Yikes at the new CERES data. +1.5W/m2 imbalance last year. +1.2 W/m2 trend gives about +0.9C of equilibrium warming, if my back of the envelope calculation is correct. We've already probably blown +2C and at this rate of emissions, I wouldn't be shocked to see a sizeable uptick in the rate of warming this decade.

Presence of a deepening MAUL (moist absolutely unstable layer) on these forecast soundings makes me think the wind gust potential will overperform here. Cold advection powerful enough to produce that usually has no issues in transporting momentum to the surface. Also, the frontal slope gradient is so sharp, it's very possible that ptype flips earlier and stays sleet longer than forecast.

It would -- though it's not clear that we're going to get any help from nature now if microbial sources are indeed increasing, especially if it's a result of warming temperatures over tropical wetlands. That could be a tipping point mechanism.

Yep, most of that additional heat will go into the oceanic flywheel for later. Just didn't expect that level of additional forcing so quickly. I expect we'll feel some of that on the next Nino, for instance.

Thanks for that -- that comes out to an additional 0.15-0.25C of warming at equilibrium, if I did my math right. Not insignificant. Doing some additional reading. Other potential causes so far: Reduction in ocean shipping SO2 by 80% due to progressive sulfur fuel content regulations (including new 2020 IMO regulations) regarding bunker fuel. This would reduce cloud cover and dimethylsulfide (DMS) removal by cloud processes, reducing available OH to sink methane emissions. This is a potential issue in its own right even without considering methane effects, with some considerable uncertainty as of now -- ranging from a fairly small effect (0.05W/m2) to a relatively huge one (up to 0.5W/m2), large enough to produce a termination shock on its own, or a coupled one when combined with methane effects. More data and study needed on that one for sure. However, I would note that CERES has detected a large energy imbalance of absorbed solar radiation over the NPAC and NATL over the last few years. CO2 fertilization causing an increase in net primary productivity (NPP), which would also increase microbial methane emissions.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00312-2 Still more research to be done here, but the proportion of light (carbon 13 depleted), biogenic methane seems to be increasing. That's a big regime change from the pre-2005 era, going back to the Industrial Revolution-- where carbon-13 enriched CH4 was on a steady increase. While the research linked in the article wasn't conclusive, it does suggest that most of that increase in the last several years is microbial, and the NH/SH gradient in obs is best replicated when you assume it's coming from equatorial tropical and SH wetlands. That ~85% of this increase is likely microbial since 2005/06 is worrying. It doesn't debunk that it could have come mainly from an increase in FF extraction, but that theory is taking on water now, imo. It's much harder to do anything about wetland emissions -- and if this represents a significant feedback from increasing temp and rainfall, then that represents a world of hurt. Not sure how much higher those emissions can go, since a move of this magnitude wasn't really expected -- even the higher end scenarios I don't think had this kind of response until much later in the century. Gonna be doing a lot more digging on this in the next few days.

If he's tweeting it, it's a sure sign that we're near the top. These folks usually come out of the woodwork right before it tanks. Great contrarian signal if nothing else.

Congrats to everyone on the eastern shore! Big winners on that one -- even higher totals than I thought! The coastal deformation zone merged nicely with the pre-event frontogen band and really delivered. Overperformed expectations here too, ended up slightly above 5", more than expected.