{"id":71077,"date":"2016-03-28T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T11:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=71077"},"modified":"2016-03-27T18:17:16","modified_gmt":"2016-03-27T17:17:16","slug":"we-had-all-better-hope-these-scientists-are-wrong-about-the-planets-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/03\/we-had-all-better-hope-these-scientists-are-wrong-about-the-planets-future\/","title":{"rendered":"We Had All Better Hope These Scientists Are Wrong about the Planet\u2019s Future"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Climatologist<\/a>

Climatologist James Hansen on the Eleuthera coastal ridge on Nov. 22, 2015, in Eleuthera, Bahamas. (Charles Ommanney for The Washington Post)<\/p><\/div>\n

22 Mar 2016 – <\/em>An influential group of scientists led by James Hansen,\u00a0the former NASA scientist often credited with having drawn the first major attention to climate change in 1988 congressional testimony, has published a dire climate study<\/a> that suggests the impact of global warming will be quicker and more catastrophic than generally envisioned.<\/p>\n

The research invokes\u00a0collapsing ice sheets, violent megastorms and even the hurling of boulders by giant waves in its quest to suggest that even 2 degrees Celsius of global warming above pre-industrial levels would be far too much. Hansen has called it the most important work he has ever done.<\/p>\n

The sweeping paper, 52 pages in length and with 19 authors, draws on evidence from ancient climate change or \u201cpaleo-climatology,\u201d as well as climate experiments using computer models and some modern observations. Calling it a \u201cpaper\u201d really isn\u2019t quite right \u2014 it\u2019s actually a synthesis of a wide range of old, and new, evidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think almost everybody who\u2019s really familiar with both paleo and modern is now very concerned that we are approaching, if we have not passed, the points at which we have locked in really big changes for young people and future generations,\u201d Hansen said in an interview.<\/p>\n

The research, appearing Tuesday<\/a> in the open-access journal\u00a0Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics,\u00a0<\/em>has had a long and controversial path to life, having first appeared as a \u201cdiscussion paper\u201d in the same journal, subject to live, online peer review \u2014 a novel but increasingly influential form of scientific publishing. Hansen first told the news media\u00a0about the research last summer, before this process was completed,\u00a0leading to criticism<\/a> from some journalists and fellow scientists that he might be jumping the gun.<\/p>\n

What ensued was a high-profile debate, both because of the dramatic claims and Hansen\u2019s formidable reputation. And his\u00a0numerous\u00a0co-authors, including Greenland and Antarctic ice experts and a leader<\/a> of the United Nations\u2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, were nothing to be sniffed at.<\/p>\n

After\u00a0record downloads<\/a>\u00a0for the study and an\u00a0intense public review process<\/a>, a revised version of the paper has now been accepted, according to both Hansen and Barbara Ferreira, media and communications manager for the European Geosciences Union, which publishes\u00a0Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Indeed, the article is now freely readable<\/a>\u00a0on the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics website.<\/p>\n

The paper, according to Ferreira,\u00a0was subject to \u201cmajor revisions in terms of organisation, title and conclusions.\u201d Those came in response to criticisms that can all be read publicly<\/a> at the journal\u2019s website. The paper also now has two additional authors.<\/p>\n

Most notably, perhaps, the\u00a0editorial process led to the removal of the use of the phrase \u201chighly dangerous,\u201d in the paper\u2019s title, to describe warming the planet by 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.<\/p>\n

The original paper\u2019s title was \u201cIce melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 \u00b0C global warming is highly dangerous.\u201d The final title is \u201cIce melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 \u00b0C global warming could be dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

But nonetheless, James Hansen\u2019s climate catastrophe scenario now takes its place in the official scientific literature relatively intact.\u00a0So let\u2019s rehearse that scenario, again, for the record.<\/p>\n

Hansen and his colleagues think that major melting of Greenland and Antarctica can not only happen quite\u00a0fast \u2014 leading to as much as several meters of sea level rise in the space of a century, depending on how quickly melt rates double \u2014 but that this melting will have dramatic\u00a0climate change <\/em>consequences, beyond merely raising sea levels.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because, they postulate, melting will cause a \u201cstratification\u201d of the polar oceans. What this means is that it will trap a pool of cold, fresh meltwater atop the ocean surface, with a warmer ocean layer beneath. We have actually seen a possible hint of this with the anomalously cold \u201cblob\u201d of ocean water off the southern coast of Greenland, which some have attributed to Greenland\u2019s melting.<\/p>\n

Indeed, shortly before the new paper\u2019s publication, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released new recent data<\/a> on the globe\u2019s temperature that certainly bears a resemblance to what Hansen is talking about. For not only was the globe at a record warmth overall over the last three months, but it also showed anomalous cool patches in regions that Hansen suspects are being caused by ice melt \u2013 below Greenland, and also off the tip of the Antarctic peninsula.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>

(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cMy interpretation is that this is the beginning,\u201d Hansen says of these cool patches in curious parts of the global ocean. \u201cAnd it\u2019s one or two decades sooner than in our model.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, when it comes to both the melt rates for\u00a0Greenland and Antarctica, and also these cool ocean patches, we have a very limited time span of observations. It is far from clear, yet, that Hansen\u2019s interpretation of them will prevail, and the new study also suggests closely observing these areas in coming years.<\/p>\n

Stratification, the key idea in the new paper, means that warm ocean water would potentially reach the base of ice sheets that sit below sea level, melting them from below (and causing more ice melt and thus, stratification). It also means, in Hansen\u2019s paper, a slowdown or even eventual shutdown of the overturning circulation in the Atlantic ocean, due to too much freshening in the North Atlantic off and around Greenland, and also a weakening of another overturning circulation in the Southern Ocean.<\/p>\n

This, in turn, causes cooling in the North Atlantic region, even as global warming creates a warmer equatorial region. This growing north-south temperature differential, in the study, drives more intense mid-latitude cyclones, or storms. The study suggests such storms may kick up gigantic oceanic waves, which may even be capable of feats such as hurling boulders in some locations, not unlike the huge rocks seen on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera, which I visited with Hansen and his co-author<\/a>, geologist Paul Hearty, in November.<\/p>\n

These rocks play a key role in the new paper, just as they did in the original study draft. Indeed, long before the current paper, Hearty had documented, in peer-reviewed publications<\/a>, that Eleuthera\u2019s rocks appear to have come from the ocean and to have been lifted high up onto a coastal ridge. This appears to have happened during a past warm period, the Eemian, some 120,000 years ago, when the planet was only slightly warmer than today but seas were far higher \u2014 but the idea is\u00a0that something like it could happen again.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>

The giant boulders of Eleuthera that have sparked a great debate among scientists about their origin. On the left is \u2018The Bull\u2019 (2,000 tons) and on the right is \u2018The Cow\u2019 (1,000 tons). (Charles Ommanney for The Washington Post)<\/p><\/div>\n

The paper contains many ideas and departures, but the key one is its suggestion of the possibility of greater sea level rise in this century than forecast by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe models that were run for the IPCC report did not include ice melt,\u201d Hansen said at\u00a0a news conference regarding the new paper Monday. \u201cAnd we also conclude that most models, ours included, have excessive small scale mixing, and that tends to limit the effect of this freshwater lens on the ocean surface from melting of Greenland and Antarctica.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a great deal at stake. Hansen has cited<\/a> the paper in court proceedings in a case playing out in Oregon, where a series of young plaintiffs, including his granddaughter Sophie, are suing the United States for violating their constitutional rights by allowing fossil fuel burning. While scientists will have to digest the new version of the paper, when the initial draft paper was released, at the website of\u00a0Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, it prompted both scientific praise and also major skepticism.<\/p>\n

David Archer, a geoscientist at the University of Chicago and a reviewer for the first round of the paper, called it<\/a> \u201canother Hansen masterwork of scholarly synthesis, modeling virtuosity, and insight, with profound implications.\u201d But Peter Thorne, another official reviewer and a climate researcher with the National University of Ireland Maynooth, wrote that<\/a> \u201cit is far from certain that the results contended shall match what will happen in the real-world.\u201d Thorne also expressed his \u201cpersonal discomfort at the paper being openly and actively publicized before the discussion period is complete.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University climate scientist familiar with the original study, said:\u00a0\u201cNear as I can tell, the issues that caused me concern originally still remain in the revised manuscript.\u00a0Namely, the projected amounts of meltwater seem unphysically large, and the ocean component of their\u00a0model doesn\u2019t resolve key wind-driven current systems (e.g. the Gulf Stream) which help transport heat\u00a0poleward. That makes northern hemisphere temperatures in their study too sensitive to changes in the \u00a0Atlantic meridional overturning ocean circulation,\u201d the scientific name for the ocean circulation in the Atlantic that, the study suggests, could shut down.<\/p>\n

However, another Penn State researcher, glaciologist Richard Alley, said by email that \u201cthough this is one paper, it usefully reminds us that large and rapid changes are possible, and it raises important research questions as to what those changes might mean if they were to occur. \u00a0But, the paper does not include enough ice-sheet physics to tell us how much how rapidly is how likely.\u201d<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/p>\n

MORE:<\/em><\/p>\n

The world\u2019s most famous climate scientist just outlined an alarming scenario for our planet\u2019s future<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

What we\u2019re doing to the Earth has no parallel in 66 million years, scientists say<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s heavy: Climate-change warnings include rising seas and wild weather shifts. But giant flying boulders?<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Chris Mooney reports on science and the environment.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 washingtonpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

22 Mar 2016 – An influential group of scientists led by James Hansen, the former NASA scientist often credited with having drawn the first major attention to climate change in 1988 congressional testimony, has published a dire climate study that suggests the impact of global warming will be quicker and more catastrophic than generally envisioned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}