Carbon dioxide passes 420 ppm, another greenhouse gas record

I concluded yesterday's NOAA predicts another above average hurricane season for 2022 by telling my readers "I should write about the greenhouse gas levels recorded this spring. Stay tuned." That turned out to be timely, as WFLA News Channel 8 uploaded Carbon Dioxide Levels hit new record high causing climate change the day I wrote that.


I'm recycling the comment I left on this video as a reaction.

I was looking for Jeff Berardelli to deliver this news and here he is at WFLA instead of CBS News. Just seeing him on this channel was enough to get me to subscribe to its YouTube channel. Hi, Jeff, from one of your fans!

I featured Berardelli in last year's version of this post, Carbon dioxide at levels not seen for 3.6 million years despite economic slowdown from pandemic, so I really was hoping I'd see him report on the topic again. I'm glad I found him just when I needed him.

Since WFLA didn't include a video description beyond repeating the title, I'm going to quote The Daily Mail, which is read by the wives of the people who run the U.K. and reported Carbon Dioxide Levels hit new record high causing climate change earlier this month.*

Earth's carbon dioxide levels have hit the highest recorded level in human history, new data shows.

For the first time on record, monthly average carbon dioxide (CO2) levels exceeded 420 parts per million (ppm) in April, their highest peak since accurate measurements began 64 years ago.

They even reached 421.33 ppm on one day last week, as greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar around the world.

The day before yesterday, the CO2 concentration measured by weather balloon over Hawaii reached 421.50 ppm, another record.

421.50 parts per million (ppm) CO2 in air 24-May-2022 https://t.co/kUgI1WsFam

— Keeling_Curve (@Keeling_curve) May 25, 2022

That's not all. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) of the United Nations uploaded The WMO State of the Global Climate in 2021 - English last week.

Four key climate change indicators – greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat and ocean acidification – set new records in 2021. This is yet another clear sign that human activities are causing planetary scale changes on land, in the ocean, [and in the atmosphere.]

Yikes!

That was about the very recent past. The WMO looked to the future in the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update - English - May 2022.

There is a 50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level for at least one of the next five years – and the likelihood is increasing with time, according to a new climate[...]

This scares me, but doesn't surprise me, as I wrote in SciShow summarizes the IPCC roadmap to fix climate change.

While it's theoretically possible that we can follow this plan and Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. federal government are at least shooting to be carbon neutral by 2050, I think it's more likely that the world as a whole will follow China's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That involves greenhouse gas emissions peaking by 2030 and net zero by 2060. That won't keep us below 1.5^oC above the pre-industrial average, but it might just be enough to keep us below 2^oC of warming above that same benchmark. I hope that's good enough. At least it won't be Eocene levels of warming — I hope.

It's bad enough that we're on track for Pliocene temperatures at current rates of warming. Welcome to the 400 ppm world.

*Liberals sometimes call The Daily Mail "The Daily Fail" because of its perceived conservative social, economic, and political stances, but I have found it has decent science reporting, even if it serves the paper's tendencies to scare its readers. At least it's frightening them with something real and factual. Just the same, I may explore the nickname and perception later. Stay tuned.

2019 was the second warmest year and the 2010s was the warmest decade on record

Back in February of last year, I wrote "2019 could be the hottest year ever because of El Nino."  Halfway through the year, that was still a possibility when July 2019 became the hottest month on record.  However, 2019 ended up bearing out another prediction of mine from Carbon dioxide hits another record at 415 ppm that I repeated in Record heat wave in Europe begins summer 2019.

My prediction that 2019 would be a warmer year than 2018, which was the fourth warmest on record, looks like it will come true, although the planet is not on track for it to beat 2016 or 2017.  Instead, 2019 appears to be on track to become the third warmest year ever.  Welcome to the 400 ppm world.

Based on research by Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), 2019 beat not only 2018, but also 2017, as 2019 was the second warmest year and the last five years were the warmest on record.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) announces today that 2019 was the fifth in a series of exceptionally warm years and the second warmest year globally ever recorded. Meanwhile, Europe saw its warmest year on record by a small margin. Together with the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), C3S also reports that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have continued to rise. Their data provide the first complete, global picture of 2019 temperatures and CO2 levels. The results are in line with previous projections from WMO and the Global Carbon Project (GCP) for 2019. The WMO estimated that 2019 was likely to be the 2nd or 3rd warmest year on record, while both WMO and the GCP indicated that atmospheric CO2 concentrations had continued to increase.
...
The temperature dataset provided by C3S shows that the global average surface air temperature was 0.04 °C lower than in 2016, the warmest year on record.

In Celsius, the difference between 2016 and 2019 doesn't even round up to one-tenth of a degree.  In Fahrenheit, it converts to 0.72 degrees, which barely rounds up to one-tenth.  So not even one-tenth of a degree separated 2019 from 2016, the warmest year on record.

Back to the press release.

The data also show that:

• The five warmest years on record have all occurred in the last 5 years, with 2019 coming in as the second warmest and 2010-2019 being the warmest decade on record
• 2019 was almost 0.6 °C warmer than the 1981-2010 average
• The average temperature of the last 5 years was between 1.1 and 1.2 °C higher than the pre-industrial level defined by the IPCC
• Europe saw its warmest calendar year on record, marginally ahead of 2014, 2015 and 2018

Furthermore, according to satellite measurements of global atmospheric CO2 concentrations:

• CO2 continued to rise in 2019, increasing by 2.3 ± 0.8 ppm

The most pronounced warming compared to the 1981-2010 average occurred in Alaska and over other large parts of the Arctic. Most land areas were warmer than average, especially eastern and southern Europe, southern Africa and Australia. In contrast, central and south-eastern Canada experienced below average annual temperatures.

In Europe all seasons were warmer than usual, with the summer and autumn being the fourth warmest on record. None of the seasons was record-breaking in terms of average temperature, but Europe nevertheless saw its warmest calendar year on record, marginally ahead of 2014, 2015 and 2018. A more detailed analysis of the climate in Europe will be presented by Copernicus in its European State of the Climate 2019, which is set to be released in April.

Here's a graph showing the average temperature for the past 150+ years.

Running 60-month averages of global air temperature at a height of two metres (left-hand axis) and estimated change since the pre-industrial period (right-hand axis) according to different datasets: ERA5 (ECMWF Copernicus Climate Change Service, C3S); GISTEMPv4 (NASA); HadCRUT4 (Met Office Hadley Centre); NOAAGlobalTempv5 (NOAA), JRA-55 (JMA); and Berkeley Earth.

I close out my quoting of the press release with a pair of perceptive quotes.

“2019 has been another exceptionally warm year, in fact the second warmest globally in our dataset, with many of the individual months breaking records”, says Carlo Buontempo, Head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). “The C3S temperature dataset for 2019 is the first complete set to be published including annual anomalies and globally averaged fields. This is possible because we are an operational programme, processing millions of land, marine, airborne and satellite observations daily. A state-of-the-art computer model is used to bring all these observations together, in a similar way to how weather forecasting is carried out.”

Jean-Noël Thépaut, Director of ECMWF Copernicus comments: “The past five years have been the five warmest on record; the last decade has been the warmest on record: These are unquestionably alarming signs. Seeing one or more months much warmer than the recent reference period can be disconcerting but does not as such represent a climate trend, as monthly temperature deviations vary, and some regions may show below average conditions for a while. We produce data with full global coverage of temperature every day and publish monthly and annual summaries based on this dataset that currently goes back to 1979. For determining possible long-term trends related to climate change, observations dating long into the past are invaluable. Therefore, we also compare our data with climate data dating back to the pre-industrial era to ascertain these long-term climate trends.”

Even The Daily Mail recognized that the 2010s were the hottest decade on record a month ago, when they created the following preview image for an article on the subject.


I'm going to a good environmentalist and close this entry out by recycling what I wrote in August.

First, welcome to the 400 ppm world.  Second, are you scared enough by climate change?  My readers should be.

Solar Impulse 2 lands in Phoenix

I teased "I might do this again next week for the Indiana primary, in which case I'll feature the Indiana and Purdue University marching bands in addition to the Star United minicorps" at the conclusion of Drum corps for the Pennsylvania and Connecticut primaries.  I'm not feeling it today.*

Instead, I'm following up on Solar Impulse 2 lands in California with the next leg of the trip.  Euronews has the video in Bye bye San Francisco, destination Phoenix for Solar Impulse 2.

The plane Solar Impulse 2 took off from San Francisco early on Monday heading for Phoenix, Arizona - the latest leg of its trip around the world to promote clean energy.

The Arizona Republic has the rest of the story in Solar plane lands in Phoenix area as global trek continues.

Solar Impulse 2, a solar-powered airplane making its way around the world, made its long-awaited stop in the Phoenix area Monday, touching down to cheers and applause, but otherwise nearly silently, at Phoenix Goodyear Airport at 8:55 p.m.

The Swiss-made plane had taken off from Mountain View, Calif., for Arizona shortly after 5 a.m. Monday to continue its global journey using only energy from the sun.

Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg was at the helm of the plane that began circumnavigating the earth more than a year ago.

"It was a beautiful flight from California to Arizona," Borschberg, 63, told a large crowd that had gathered at the airport shortly after disembarking. He hardly looked like someone who had just spent 16 hours by himself in a single-seater plane.

The timing of the flight was fortuitous, coinciding with a debate over the future of solar power in Arizona.

When asked if their timing was meant to coincide with an ongoing debate in Arizona over solar-energy subsidies, Piccard said it was not.

"We did not plan to come during the debate," he said. "But if it helps, we'll be happy."

The Solar Impulse project has always been about delivering a message, Piccard said, more than delivering passengers. The plane is meant to spark a conversation about renewable and efficient energy.

"There are reliable, profitable solutions to have clean energy and to save energy." Piccard said. "When you see an airplane like Solar Impulse, it's not science fiction. It is the present."

That's part of the message in the AFP video about Solar Impulse 2.

Solar Impulse 2, an experimental aircraft flying around the world to draw attention to clean energy technologies, is to take flight again on Monday, organizers said.VIDEOGRAPHIC

As for the plane's next stop, The Daily Mail reported "The solar-powered plane, which stores energy in batteries for when the sun is not shining, will make several stops across the United States, although the team is still examining potential destinations."  In other words, they don't know yet.  Stay tuned.

*I might do it for the Oregon Primary.  At least there is an active competitive drum corps on the field there, the Oregon Crusaders.

Obi-Wan Kenobi for President and Darth Vader beats Trump but not Clinton

Continuing on in the spirit of Darth Trump, I present the following from Ipsos-Reuters: Ipsos Calls 2016 Election for Obi Wan Kenobi.

New Poll Indicates that Star Wars Heroes and Villains Poll Closely to Actual Candidates
Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Washington, DC – In a new poll pitting characters from the Star Wars franchise against actual presidential candidates, Ipsos finds that the American public would prefer to elect the iconic Jedi Obi Wan Kenobi than any other challenger. Outside of the political realm, the Ipsos poll established that America’s favorite Star Wars character is Luke Skywalker, who captured 21% of respondents, followed closely by Han Solo, Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi. The remainder of the poll pitted main Star Wars characters in hypothetical matchups with the frontrunners in the actual Presidential race, yielding some surprising results.

"Whether it's because of this week's release of Episode 7, or general disdain among Americans with their political system, this data suggests that the Jedi Order is vastly more popular than either the Republican or Democratic Party,” said Chris Jackson, Vice President at Ipsos Public Affairs. “As we have seen in much of the political data this year, our Republic is more fractured than in recent history. However, it seems that the force could ‘surround us and bind the universe together’.”

Other key highlights from the data:

• In a head-to-head matchup among Millennials: Darth Vader (27%) would beat Donald Trump (18%)
• In a head-to-head matchup among Millennials: Yoda (50%) would beat Hillary Clinton (26%) handily. Even among the general public, the margin is 41% for the candidate from Dagobah and 25% for Clinton
• Minorities would prefer to elect the Sith Lord Darth Vader (26%) before Trump who captured only 13% of the minority vote
• Clinton would fare better against Vader, winning this hypothetical matchup by 32% to 16% to the individual formerly known as Anakin Skywalker
• Among the general public, Jedi Master Yoda would soundly beat the actual human Trump 42% to 24%
• The well-quaffed Chewbacca would fall into a statistical dead heat with his hirsute counterpart Trump
• Awareness of the force is quite strong with the US public given that 70% identified a favorite character. The remaining 30% of the population had no awareness or opinion

Luckily for the Presidential hopefuls, Star Wars took place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away and none of the characters meet the Constitutional requirement of being born in the United States of America, potentially highlighting a weakness in the “birther” argument.

Here are Trump's head-to-head numbers in graphic form, courtesy of The Daily Mail.


At least Hillary Clinton can beat the Dark Lord of the Sith, even if she can't best the remaining members of the Jedi Order.


May The Force be with you.

Asian air pollution and other global pollution stories

Two weeks ago, the Daily Mail reported China starts televising the sunrise on giant TV screens because Beijing is so clouded in smog.

The smog has become so thick in Beijing that the city's natural light-starved masses have begun flocking to huge digital commercial television screens across the city to observe virtual sunrises.

The futuristic screens installed in the Chinese capital usually advertize tourist destinations, but as the season's first wave of extremely dangerous smog hit - residents donned air masks and left their homes to watch the only place where the sun would hail over the horizon that morning.

The article then goes on to describe the terrible smog and the horrible health problems that result from it.  All of that is true, but the hook is baloney, as Quartz pointed out in Westerners are so convinced China is a dystopian hellscape they’ll share anything that confirms it.

When it comes to China stories, people will believe almost anything. Take, for instance, the reports about pollution being so severe in Beijing that residents now watch radiant sunrises broadcast on a huge screen in Tiananmen Square.

So, that never happened. As Tech in Asia flags, the sunrise is a clip from a tourism ad for Shandong province, in China’s northeast; it’s on screen for maybe 10 seconds or so per loop.

But that didn’t prevent a slew of prominent media outlets—including Time, CBS News and the Huffington Post—from running the story, which originated in the UK-based Daily Mail, each taking their own liberties with the truth. The “glorious sunrise was broadcast as part of a patriotic video loop,” explained Time.

How do stories like this happen? One reason is shabby journalism, something for which the Daily Mail is renowned.

That's why The Daily Mail is called The Daily Fail.  Still, it's a striking image, one that I will use when I next lecture on air pollution.  I already have a photo of air pollution in Beijing.  For balance, I'll also tell my students the full story as a cautionary tale about journalism that appeals to their prejudices.

That written, the air pollution from Asia is real and it's affecting the rest of the planet, as Texas A&M explains in Asian Air Pollution Affecting World’s Weather.

Extreme air pollution in Asia is affecting the world’s weather and climate patterns, according to a study by Texas A&M University and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers.

Yuan Wang, a former doctoral student at Texas A&M, along with Texas A&M atmospheric sciences professors Renyi Zhang and R. Saravanan, have had their findings published in the current issue of Nature Communications.
Satellite photo shows huge air pollution clouds at far left. Japan is on the right.

Using climate models and data collected about aerosols and meteorology over the past 30 years, the researchers found that air pollution over Asia – much of it coming from China – is impacting global air circulations.

“The models clearly show that pollution originating from Asia has an impact on the upper atmosphere and it appears to make such storms or cyclones even stronger,” Zhang explains.

“This pollution affects cloud formations, precipitation, storm intensity and other factors and eventually impacts climate.  Most likely, pollution from Asia can have important consequences on the weather pattern here over North America.”

There is much more at the link, including the following image.


Let that be a lesson in "Everything is connected to everything else," "There is no away," and "There is no such thing as a free lunch."

Follow over the jump for more stories that illustrate Commoner's Laws as pollution from one place ends up going somewhere else, as well as other stories about what people are doing about pollution elsewhere on the planet, all of them originally included in Overnight News Digest on Daily Kos.

Eclipse and asteroid DOOM

One of the big astronomical news items tonight, at least according to number of searches, is tonight's lunar eclipse.  However, the article in the Washington Post on the event--Hunter’s Full Moon, and a penumbral lunar eclipse this evening--mentions that it is likely to be a dud.

The sky presents two lunar spectacles for the price of one tonight. The full “Hunter” moon rises, while at the same time, sections of it are darkened by the outer part of the Earth’s shadow, an event known as a penumbral eclipse.
...
EarthSky emphasizes the subtle aspect of the eclipse because, coinciding with evening twilight in the U.S., the sky will not yet be that dark.

“You may not notice any shading at all on the moon’s surface if you see the eclipse from the Americas,” Earth Sky writes. “Even as the eclipse is happening, you’ll be seeing the moon low in the sky, peering at it through more atmosphere than when the moon is overhead. This is a very, very subtle kind of eclipse. Will it be noticeable? Maybe to photographers! We’ll hope for some good photos.”

I can vouch for this.  I went outside to look and expected to see just a great full moon, as the eclipse should be very subtle.  That's exactly what I saw.  So, I wasn't disappointed.  It is a great full moon.

The other big astronomical new tonight based on web searches is the 2032 asteroid.  Here is what NASA had to say about it, with the their attitude evident in the title and becoming more dismissive in the body: Asteroid 2013 TV135 – A Reality Check.

Newly discovered asteroid 2013 TV135 made a close approach to Earth on Sept. 16, when it came within about 4.2 million miles (6.7 million kilometers). The asteroid is initially estimated to be about 1,300 feet (400 meters) in size and its orbit carries it as far out as about three quarters of the distance to Jupiter's orbit and as close to the sun as Earth's orbit. It was discovered on Oct. 8, 2013, by astronomers working at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Ukraine. As of Oct. 14, asteroid 2013 TV135 is one of 10,332 near-Earth objects that have been discovered.

With only a week of observations for an orbital period that spans almost four years, its future orbital path is still quite uncertain, but this asteroid could be back in Earth’s neighborhood in 2032. However, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office states the probability this asteroid could then impact Earth is only one in 63,000. The object should be easily observable in the coming months and once additional observations are provided to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., the initial orbit calculations will be improved and the most likely result will be a dramatic reduction, or complete elimination, of any risk of Earth impact. 

"To put it another way, that puts the current probability of no impact in 2032 at about 99.998 percent," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This is a relatively new discovery. With more observations, I fully expect we will be able to significantly reduce, or rule out entirely, any impact probability for the foreseeable future."

So, despite the claims of ‘Dangerous’ asteroid headed toward Earth in the New York Post that could collide with Earth in August 26, 2032, it's most likely a false alarm.  Besides, we all know Apophis Day is April 13th and has been postponed until 2068.

That written, Space.com has a video about the close encounter: 1300-Foot-Wide Asteroid 2013 TV135's Near-Earth Flyby | Orbit Animation.

The space rock was discovered on October 8th, 2013 by the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Ukraine. It came within 4.2 million miles and currently has a 1 in 63000 chance of impacting Earth in 2032.

Before I move on from this story, I want to express my relief that the shutdown is over and that NASA is up and running again.

Finally, here is something Elaine Meinel Supkis linked to over at her blog from the Daily Fail Mail: Could life on Earth end on March 16, 2880? Scientists predict giant asteroid will collide with our planet at 38,000 miles per hour.

• Asteroid 1950 DA has a 0.3 per cent chance of hitting Earth in 867 years
• This represents a risk 50% greater than an impact from all other asteroids
• If it were to hit, it would do so with a force of 44,800 megatonnes of TNT

By Ellie Zolfagharifard
PUBLISHED: 05:42 EST, 11 October 2013 | UPDATED: 03:31 EST, 14 October 2013

Doomsday, it seems, has come and gone countless times.

But one particular prediction for the end of the world has been weighing on the mind of astronomers for more than half a century.

Scientists at Nasa have been watching an asteroid, named 1950 DA, which is currently on a path to collide with Earth on March 16, 2880.

2880?  That's on a time scale more in tune with Bruce Walker Ferguson's interests than mine.  I have enough to worry about with what's happening during the 21st Century, let alone the 29th.

A picture of hope and innocence from 40 years ago

A photo flashed across my Facebook page a few days ago.  It turns out that it was taken near Detroit in Mt. Clemens 40 years ago.  WXYZ has the story behind the picture and how it went viral in Old photograph comes back to life.


The Daily Mail quoted the photographer, Joseph Crachiola, who dug up the old picture of the grinning children and posted it on his Facebook account, hoping to bring something positive to the heated debate over race relations.

'For me, it still stands as one of my most meaningful pictures,’ he wrote in his post. ‘It makes me wonder... At what point do we begin to mistrust one another? When do we begin to judge one another based on gender or race? I have always wondered what happened to these children. I wonder if they are still friends.’

I'd much rather have this video as my comment on the Zimmerman trial than “The law is an ass with music by Leonard Cohen.”  I'll save that thought I left at Kunstler's blog for the next time the legal system disappoints me.