by Daniel Brouse The permafrost tipping point—and its feedbacks with other tipping points—is the most interesting part to me. Permafrost was kind of the glue holding everything together… until 1.5°C. Then the coupled feedbacks start feeding each other, and the whole system begins to unravel. And the mountains crumble to the sea… see? 😉 The […]
Category Archives: Science
HOW IS CLIMATE ENERGY HITTING YOU? The Backyard Experiments
The Backyard Experiments: Hydroclimatic Whiplash, Soil Degradation, Insect Decline, and Ecosystem Collapse By Daniel Brouse Have You Looked Out Your Back Door for Climate Change? It’s there. I noticed an interesting phenomenon: an increase in dead earthworms and millipedes in the swimming pool. It turns out this is connected to opposite extremes of a coupled […]
How Is Climate Energy Hitting You? Millipedes Get Their Marching Orders
by Daniel Brouse Why are millipedes showing up dead at the bottom of the swimming pool? The answer may seem strange at first: extreme weather is changing the moisture dynamics of the tiny ecosystem around your home. Earlier this summer, I wrote about earthworms turning up dead in the pool. Their appearance followed intense rainfall […]
How Is Climate Energy Hitting You? Fluidization Physics
by Daniel Brouse How Potential Energy Becomes Kinetic Energy—and How a Falling Mass Can Become Fluidized Rocky Rex said, “The ice mass (or composite) came out of a hanging valley that contained a cirque, possibly starting to move as a rotational slump. So there’s a lot of potential energy right at the start of the […]
How Is Climate Energy Hitting You? Like Humans Throwing Stones
by Daniel Brouse The Climate Physics Behind the Nepal-Tibet Collapse “Warming of Nepal’s glaciers has been a continuous process over this timescale and is not something that has only occurred recently due to human activity.” This statement is misleading and, as a description of the modern climate system, demonstrably wrong. Yes, Himalayan glaciers have always […]
How Is Climate Energy Hitting You? A: Like Wet Concrete
by Daniel Brouse How Is Climate Energy Hitting You Nepal-Tibet? A: Like Wet Concrete (Fluidize Physics) Heat melts ice. Meltwater changes friction. Water infiltrates soil. Pore pressure rises. Permafrost thaws. Slopes weaken. Glaciers destabilize. Gravity converts elevation into kinetic energy. Moving water entrains sediment. Sediment increases density. Increasing density increases the potential force of the […]
How Is Climate Energy Hitting You? The Domino Effect
by Daniel Brouse Introduction A glacial collapse is a powerful example of how climate change can turn one tipping point into a cascading chain of failures—the domino effect. The first domino is literal: an enormous mass of ice, rock, snow, and sediment breaks loose and cascades down the mountainside in a massive avalanche or landslide. […]
How Is Climate Energy Hitting You? The Physics of When the Earth Starts Moving
by Daniel Brouse Density. Velocity. Gravity. Friction. Entrainment. Climate change is often described in terms of temperature: another degree of warming, another heat record, another fraction of a degree above a historical baseline. But temperature is only the beginning of the story. The more consequential question is: What happens when warming changes how much energy […]
Glacial Collapse: Tipping Points in Real Time
by Daniel Brouse We’re crossing 1.5°C in a hurry—and tipping points are beginning to topple. This is where tipping points get your attention: you can actually observe them. Climate change is not a smooth, linear progression. As thresholds are crossed, individual tipping elements can begin interacting with one another. Feedbacks can couple across the Earth […]
How Is Climate Energy Hitting You? Seismic Climate Events
by Daniel Brouse and Sidd Mukherjee Seismic Climate Events: When Cryosphere Instability Becomes an Earth-System Hazard I’ve written quite a bit about “Sudden Sea Level Pulses: How ‘Cork Release’ Events Could Rapidly Reshape Coastlines,” which you might find interesting. I expect we will see several feet of sea-level rise for several years in a row […]