Further modeling this year of the impact of warming-driven extreme weather shocks leads Oxfam to conclude corn prices could increase a staggering 500% by 2030.
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Climate Story Of The Year: Extreme Weather From Superstorms To Drought Emerges As Political, Scientific Gamechanger
Friday, December 21, 2012 11:41
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First published on ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which was recently named one of Time magazine’s Top 25 blogs of 2010. Global Warming, Record Arctic Ice Loss Create Deadly ‘New Normal’ With Twenty-Five Billion-Dollar U.S. Weather Disasters In 2 Years
This year brought staggering weather extremes, record loss of Arctic ice and a growing body of scientific analysis linking the two. Those extremes, plus Superstorm Sandy, raised public concern about the immediate threat posed by climate change, providing a palpable debunking of the (mistaken) belief that climate change will impact only future generations or people in faraway lands.
The superstorm — which scientists explained was made far more destructive by manmade climate change – hit the media where it lives and may have been a game changer for many of them, as the Bloomberg Businessweek cover suggests.
Sandy “may have also reset the politics of climate change,” as the UK Guardian noted today (see, for instance, “Michael Bloomberg Endorses Obama, Citing Climate Change As Main Reason“). The official nomination today of climate hawk John Kerry for Secretary of State is a hopeful sign that the president will (finally) raise the salience of this most preventable of existential threats to modern human civilization.
The AP year-end wrap up explained that 2012 should not have been a surprise to anyone who has been listening to climate scientists:
In 2012 many of the warnings scientists have made about global warming went from dry studies in scientific journals to real-life video played before our eyes: Record melting of the ice in the Arctic Ocean. U.S. cities baking at 95 degrees or hotter. Widespread drought. Flooding. Storm surge inundating swaths of New York City.
All of that was predicted years ago by climate scientists and all of that happened in 2012.
Indeed, 2012 showed that the record-smashing weather extremes of 2011 weren’t a fluke, they were a pattern.
America’s heartland lurched from one extreme to the other without stopping at “normal.” Historic flooding in 2011 gave way to devastating drought in 2012.
“The normal has changed, I guess,” said U.S. National Weather Service acting director Laura Furgione. “The normal is extreme.”
Here is how meteorologist and former hurricane hunter Dr. Jeff Masters put it in his 2012 sum up:
It was another year of incredible weather extremes unparalleled in American history during 2012. Eleven billion-dollar weather disasters hit the U.S., a figure exceeded only by the fourteen such disasters during the equally insane weather year of 2011.
Even without including the 2012 disasters, Munich Re, a top reinsurer, found for the first time a “climate-change footprint” in the rapid rise of North American extreme weather catastrophes:
“Climate-driven changes are already evident over the last few decades for severe thunderstorms, for heavy precipitation and flash flooding, for hurricane activity, and for heatwave, drought and wild-fire dynamics in parts of North America.”
Many top climatologists agree with that assessment. Dr. Kevin Trenberth explained in his must-read 2012 paper “How To Relate Climate Extremes to Climate Change“:
The answer to the oft-asked question of whether an event is caused by climate change is that it is the wrong question. All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be….
A growing number of climatologists are warning that we have undergone a “systemic change”:
These are “clearly not freak events,” but “systemic changes,” said climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute in Germany. “With all the extremes that, really, every year in the last 10 years have struck different parts of the globe, more and more people absolutely realize that climate change is here and already hitting us.”
A growing body of scientific research links this systemic change to global warming, in particular to loss of Arctic ice far more rapid than any climate model had predicted:
- NOAA Bombshell: Warming-Driven Arctic Ice Loss Is Boosting Chance of Extreme U.S. Weather
- Arctic Warming Favors Extreme, Prolonged Weather Events “Such As Drought, Flooding, Cold Spells And Heat Waves“
- Must-See Video: Has Global Warming Caused A Quantum Jump In Extreme Weather?
Human activity is utterly reshaping the Arctic as this remarkable figure makes clear:
Arctic sea ice is melting much, much faster than even the best climate models had projected (actual observations in red). The reason is most likely unmodeled amplifying feedbacks. The image (from Climate Crocks via Arctic Sea Ice Blog) comes from a 2007 GRL research paper by Stroeve et al.
And much more change is yet to come, as a dire new report from NOAA warns (see “NOAA: Climate Change Driving Arctic Into A ‘New State’ With Rapid Ice Loss And Record Permafrost Warming“). Two of the most worrisome highlights are:
- Below the tundra, record high permafrost temperatures occurred in northernmost Alaska.
- Duration of melting was the longest observed yet on the Greenland ice sheet, and a rare, nearly ice sheet-wide melt event occurred in July.
If — or apparently when — the Greenland ice sheet disintegrates, sea levels will rise 20 feet. The process is accelerating to a critical “tipping point” (see also “Science Stunner: Greenland Ice Melt Up Nearly Five-Fold Since Mid-1990s”). The tundra is a frozen locker of carbon whose defrosting will further accelerate warming (see “Carbon Feedback From Thawing Permafrost Will Likely Add 0.4°F – 1.5°F To Total Global Warming By 2100).”
More and more cryoscientists are warning of a death spiral, with “Near Ice-Free Arctic In Summer” In A Decade If Volume Trends Continue. Such a dramatic change to the northern hemisphere would inevitably have an even more extreme impact on our weather — and on all of humanity.
Indeed, in 2011, the climate story of the year was “Warming-Driven Drought and Extreme Weather Emerge as Key Threat to Global Food Security.”
Oxfam had warned last year that corn or maize would see a 177% rise in price by 2030 due to climate change and other factors (see Oxfam: Extreme Weather Has Helped Push Tens of Millions into “Hunger and Poverty” in “Grim Foretaste” of Warmed World).
Note: The “additional price increase” percentage is calculated off the original price increase.
So perhaps the climate story of the year is that homo sapiens (aka the slowly boiling brainless frog) let another year go by without serious action to reverse carbon pollution trends, moving us ever closer to irreversible tipping points that would cause widespread harm to hundreds of millions if not billions. When will the madness stop?
Related 2012 Posts:
- Shocking World Bank Climate Report: ‘A 4°C [7°F] World Can, And Must, Be Avoided’ To Avert ‘Devastating’ Impacts
- Study: We’re Headed To 11°F Warming And Even 7°F Requires ‘Nearly Quadrupling The Current Rate Of Decarbonisation’
- NY Times Warns On Climate Change: ‘Fear Death By Water’, Rising Seas Likely To Swallow Up City If We Don’t Act Soon
- Scientific American: ‘Loss of Ice, Melting Of Permafrost And Other Climate Effects Are Occurring At An Alarming Pace’
- New Scientist Special Report: 7 Reasons Climate Change Is ‘Even Worse Than We Thought’
- An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces
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