Climate Change is Here.
The physics of climate change are simple, and have been known for ages
Global Warming / Climate Change explained:
- Sunlight – the light that we can see – crosses the atmosphere.
- Sunlight is partially reflected (by the ice sheets on the poles, glaciers, snow, clouds).
- Sunlight that reaches the Earth’s surface is absorbed and transformed to heat.
- Heat in the form of infrared waves (energy in form of different wave length compared to visible light) that reflects back to space is absorbed by the so-called “greenhouse gases” (CO2, CH4, HCFs, PCFs, SF6). This process has first been proved experimentally in 1856. The effects of atmospheric concentration of CO2 on the global climate have first been quantified and calculated in 1896.
- The heat that cannot escaped leads to an energy imbalance (we know exactly how much energy is absorbed by each molecule – the energy imbalance can be calculated, and now also measured by satellites)
- The energy imbalance (energy that cannot escape due to the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere) was equivalent to 400’000 Hiroshimas in 2012.
We are now at 800’000 Hiroshimas. Each day. - That energy that cannot escape is leading to warmer oceans, warmer temperature, melting ice-sheets and melting glaciers.
- This in turn leads to excessive heat waves, droughts, and as a consequence, to more wildfires.
- Warm air can carry exponentially more water vapour with every degree of warming. When this hot air segments hit colder air segments, the vapour immediately condenses to water. That is why heat-waves are increasingly ended by torrential rain of biblical proportions.
- We are currently at 1.2 degrees above pre-industrial mean temperatures – and there’s currently a 50% chance that 2023 will be the first year above 1.5 degrees. It seems increasingly likely that we will pass 2 degrees before 2030. The Paris Agreement with a stated goal of net-zero (not real-zero) was supposed to keep us under this treshold.
- The part that barely anybody dares to speak out loud: under these conditions – heat-waves and droughts interrupted by torrential rainfalls and flooding – harvests of food crops are under threat of collapse.
PS –
The Scientific Consensus regarding the causes and effects of Climate Change is: 99.9%
What is currrently happening
The good news: we are still within the boundaries of climate model projections.
The bad news: 2023, and even more so 2024 have seen countless redords and anomalies. We are currently at 1.2. degrees of warming, measured by the running average of the past 20 years. 2023 was 1.54 above the IPCC baseline. As of March 1st 2024, we have been runing at more then 1.7 degrees for 190 days, and counting.
The models did not predict the extremes that we are currently seeing all around the global to allready happen in 2023/2024.
The signs that we are approaching or passing irreversible tipping points are increasing.
The Climate Anomalies
North Atalantic Sea Temperature
Sea surface temperature has been much higher than ever measured before – a whooping 1.45 degrees above the mean temperature, and 0.7 degrees higher than the previous record.
That is 200% of the previous record
Antarctic Sea Ice
The artic ice sheet is smaller than ever before – the area missing is more than the surface of India and Pakistan combined.
The statistical probability of such an event is less then 1 in 7’000’000
Earth Energy Imbalance
Explaining the other two anomalies: the energy that cannot escape Earth (compared to before the industrial climate, in which humanity evolved and is adaped to) is now at almost 2W/m2.
Equivalent to the energy of 800’000 Hiroshima’s. Each day.
What Else?
- Until now, the oceans have absorbed almost 90% of the surplus energy
- The poles have been warming faster than the rest of the globe (and faster than predicted in the climate models)
- The warming of the poles has slowed and destabilised the jet-stream
- The destabilised jet-stream leads to long and stable weather anomalies (e.g. heat domes)
- Warm air can carry much more water vapour. The vapour holding capacity does not grow lineraly, but exponentially with each degree of temperature
- When this warm air rich with water vapour hits colder air segments, the vapour condenses, leading to storms and torrential downpures
We need a Global Climate Tax, NOW.
Heat & Droughts
Fires
Storms & Floodings
The consequences (physical)
- Heatwaves in the oceans and on land
- Record hot temperatures, around the globe,
- More and more wild fires
- June, July, and August 2023 have been the hottest month since measurment started in 1850, and most likely for the past 100’000 years
- Devastating flash-flods and flooding in dimensions that have been unthinkable until now (Lybia, Greece, Spain, India, China, Korea, Brazil, and, and, and…) dstroying infrastructure and food crops
The Future
- Our Earth will keep getting hotter as long as we keep emitting GHGs. It will not get cooler anymore (unless we start to plant billions and billions of trees)
- We will see even more extrem events – heat waves, droughts, wild fires, interrupeted by more frequent and stronger storms and torrential rainfall leading to more frequent and extrem flooding events
- At two degrees warming, large swath of our Planet – including parts of the India, Bangladesh, China, the Middle East, North Africa, Southern Europe, the South-East of the US, and Central America – will become uninhitable in summer month due to “wet bulb” temperature events (at humidity of 100% and temperatures above 35 degrees, we can survice a maximum of 6 hours)
- Above 46.7 degrees, photosynthesis is not possible anymore, and plants will die
- Food production will fall significantely, due to prolonged heat-waves and/or floodings
We need a Global Climate Tax, NOW.
