Yours is not your father's climate change

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By Lara Williams / Bloomberg Opinion

I dearly hope to have children of my own some day. What they do with their time on Earth is theirs to choose, but the type of world they’ll inhabit will be determined by me and all of us — now — while they’re still a figment of my imagination. It’s a simple concept, but that doesn’t keep it from becoming increasingly dire.

That seriousness was brought home to me by a graphic in the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis Report. The illustration is one of the first in the document; an update of the warming stripes first concocted by Ed Hawkins, professor of climate science at the University of Reading in England.

The color bars are dramatic, moving from cool blue to deep purple; they portray the changes in global temperature since 1900. The newly tweaked version in the IPCC report version projects several scenarios out to the year 2100 based on what we might do about our global emissions.

The revision that’s stuck in my head is the illustration with human silhouettes at the bottom of the graphic, courtesy of IPCC graphic officer Arlene Birt: It shows the lifespans of people born in 1950, 1980 and 2020 color-coded to their chronological place in the warming of the planet. Each generation has a completely different relationship to the Earth’s crisis.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-yours-is-not-your-fathers-climate-change/

[mnhtnbb]

1. Based on this graphic, parents

should want to have children now in locations with cooler climates, and establish a home there for the children to inherit.

I am surprised to see that I'm now--at 72--considered to be two years past my expiration date.

[NullTuples]

3. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way

The Earth's weather systems have been relatively stable for thousands of years, balancing energy distribution in predictable patterns.

As energy is added however, those systems of moving and balancing energy reach critical thresholds and break down, one by one but faster and faster as each one adds extra imbalance to those around it. When they reach those thresholds, weather becomes more and more chaotic.

What that means is that those "cooler climate" locations could end up being much dryer and hotter in 50 years, while others that currently seem to be getting dryer and hotter may end up being wet. For instance, Southern California may end up being the recipient of storms that once stayed primarily in the tropics. But even that guess assumes patterns will simply move, when the more likely predictions are that we won't be able to predict changes in weather patterns again until they reach a new equilibrium. That may take thousands of years however.

[orthoclad]

4. Hadley cells

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_cell

Air from the heated tropics rises and moves poleward, then sinks as dry air. This tends to create dry zones; most of the world's arid zones and deserts are located where the Hadley cells sink down.

Climate change is projected to move Hadley cells further polewards. In the US, that could mean desertification further North, in areas now noted for farming. Kansas could become Arizona.

My point is that there are no safe zones, and even if you can move to a less hazardous area, things like agriculture will still break down.

Storms are how the atmosphere evens out energy imbalances. Hurricanes move tropcal energy polewards; similarly with winter storms. Change the energy/heat distribution - get more storms.

In the North beyond where Hadley cells might move, the jet stream plus the polar vortex will be disturbed and chaotic. Polar weather could be sandwiched between periods of mild weather. We're seeing that now, for instance in the record cold seen in New England recently.

We can flee the most dangerous areas, like southern Florida, but a better strategy would be to exert ourselves to minimize or slow global heating.

I really want a monolithic dome house with solar panels and a battery. They stood up to Cat 4 hurricanes on the Gulf, and are energy efficient. But more than anything, I feel a moral obligation to reduce the damage to the poorer parts of the world. The people there had very little to do with creating the problem, and they will suffer the most.

[NullTuples]

5. As I understand it, Hadley cells are a feature of a stable global heat transfer system?

...and as the threshold is reached for each current orderly climate mechanism, the entire system becomes more chaotic.

Again, *as I understand it* (so take w/ a grain of salt or, please correct me if I am wrong), Hadley cells are currently already weakening due to greenhouse effects. That's mostly compensated for right now by the oceans absorbing extra heat. But as each of those oceanic-heat-absorbing-abilities thresholds fall, Hadley cells may become a historical novelty. If so, moisture and heat transfer will be dominated by eddies - in other words, for the most part unpredictable at the scale most important to us until each one starts and then dissipates, to be replaced by another.


(mostly gleaned from:
Kim, D., Kim, H., Kang, S.M. et al. Weak Hadley cell intensity changes due to compensating effects of tropical and extratropical radiative forcing. npj Clim Atmos Sci 5, 61 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-022-00287-x

Except for when I needed to learn more and had to search out other sources)

[orthoclad]

6. You could be right, my info

about Hadley cells migrating polewards due to global heating is some 10 years old. I'm thinking with increased heat in the tropics the circulation will travel farther before cooling and sinking. With extreme heat, who knows? I fear that increasingly violent storms would be the replacement energy-transfer mode if the Hadley circulation stops. Scary.

[NullTuples]

7. Most people are unaware of just how terrifying unpredictable weather is for humanity

Specifically farming, which is highly dependent on weather being orderly and predictable if it's going to feed billions of humans.

Also, to prove your point:

Sonoma & Napa county vineyards are moving North. Wine grapes are highly sensitive to weather conditions and over the last ten years it's been no secret here in California's "Wine Country" that most large vineyards have been staking out claims on land in Mendocino County & planting vines. They aren't producing award winning wine yet, but by the time the vines mature it's likely they will be.

For a few years, anyway...

[orthoclad]

8. Vegetable gardening has taught me

the value of consistent, predictable weather - i.e., climate. Risks like late frosts, prolonged droughts, and extreme heat can wipe out months of work. We're so used to buying food from distant sources that we're overconfident about supply. The empty produce shelves I saw in 2020 were a learning experience.

"You don't know what you've got til it's gone" is very true.

[orthoclad]

2. From further down

the opinion piece:
"However, it’s hard to keep hope alive when governments — including ones who claim they are committed to slashing emissions to net zero — are still approving new fossil fuel projects. According to the IPCC, existing carbon-heavy infrastructure already exceeds the remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5C.

Projects such as ConocoPhillips’s Willow oil drilling project in Alaska and the newly approved coal mine in the United Kingdom are baffling — perhaps even criminal — in the face of all that we know about the harm they would inflict on generations yet to be born."