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The Snowfall Feedback Loop

Posted on 2023/11/262023/11/26 by admin

by Daniel Brouse
November 26, 2023

Global warming is causing warmer and shorter winters. Not only are White Christmases less frequent, so are icebergs, sea ice, and glaciers. An analysis and maps from NOAA found snowfall is declining globally as temperatures warm due to anthropological climate change.

As the atmosphere’s heat and humidity increase, precipitation is more likely to fall as violent rain or hail than snow. “Eventually the laws of thermodynamics mean that as you keep warming you’re just going to transition more and more of that snow over to rain. You can get away with things for a little bit, and it can hide some trends, but overall the laws of thermodynamics will win out,” said Brian Brettschneider, a climate scientist with the National Weather Service in Alaska.

Justin Mankin, a climate scientist and associate professor of geography at Dartmouth College, said with rising temperatures snowfall will not decline linearly (at a 1-to-1 rate.) Rather, there is a tipping point. Once a certain temperature threshold is reached, “we should expect the losses to accelerate. It means we can expect a lot of the places that haven’t exhibited massive snowfall declines to maybe start to exhibit them with just a little bit more warming.”

Albedo is the reflective nature of snow and measures how much light is reflected without being absorbed when hitting an object (e.g. the fraction of incoming solar radiation that gets reflected back into space). Snow has a very high albedo that reflects most of the light and absorbs very little heat. The snow-albedo feedback loop occurs when the atmosphere gets warmer due to human induced climate change resulting in less snowfall. The less snow reflecting heat back into space, the warmer the earth becomes. The warmer the earth, the less snowfall. The less snowfall, the warmer the earth.

Feedback loops and tipping points are parts of an equation that determine the rate of acceleration in climate change.

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

Climate Change: 2023 the Year in Review

Posted on 2023/11/232023/11/24 by admin

by Sidd Mukherjee and Daniel Brouse

Sidd said, “Do you remember back in the early 2000’s when we thought we wouldn’t live to see the extreme changes due to global warming?”

Daniel replied, “I think 2023 is the most significant year so far. We saw confirmation of tipping points being crossed for Mountain Glacier Loss, Greenland Ice Sheet Collapse, Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse, and potentially the Collapse of AMOC.”

Sidd continued, “We already knew that. It was Canada catching on fire that I could not believe. I never
thought I’d live to see the day.”

Daniel asked, “Do you think the permafrost and peatlands will have zombie fires and cause the permafrost tipping point?”

Sidd responded, “Yes. They are gone, too. We already know from the permafrost peatland fires in Siberia.”

NASA reported: Wildland fire experts have described Canadaâ€™s 2023 fire season as record-breaking and shocking. Over the course of a fire season that started early and ended late, blazes have burned an estimated 18.4 million hectares. Hundreds of fires exceeded 10,000 hectares (39 square miles), large enough to be considered “megafires.” These megafires were also unusually widespread this season, charring forests from British Columbia and Alberta in the west to Quebec and the Atlantic provinces in the east to the Northwest Territories and the Yukon in the north.

Forest fires cause a carbon feedback loop. The carbon emissions of Canada’s fires outweighed the combined emissions from its oil and gas, transport and agriculture sectors. The fires also cause the melting of the permafrost and zombie fires to burn in the permafrost. The permafrost collapse is a self-sustaining feedback loop/tipping point. As the permafrost melts, the peatlands emit CO2 and methane. The increase in CO2 and methane results in more warming that results in more peatland emissions.

The study Wildfire as a major driver of recent permafrost thaw in boreal peatlands published in the Journal Nature Communications found wildfires have caused a quarter of permafrost thaw (2,000 square kilometres) in Western Canada’s boreal peatlands over the past 30 years. “Historically, permafrost in this area underwent a natural cycle of thawing and reforming, but given current climate conditions and projections for the future, this fire-induced thaw appears to be irreversible,” said Carolyn Gibson, who conducted the research.

Toppled Tipping Points: The Domino Effect Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

Sea-level Rise: Greenland and the Collapse of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet Mukherjee and Brouse (2022 and 2023)

Sea Level Rise: Then and Now Mukherjee and Brouse (2023)

The Age of Loss and Damage Brouse (2023)

Climate Change: How Long Is “Ever”? Brouse (2023)

Climate Change: The End of Times Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

The Reign of Violent Rain Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

Climate Change: Rate of Acceleration Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

State of the Cryosphere 2023

Posted on 2023/11/212023/11/21 by admin

Dr. Sidd Mukherjee said, “Latest frightening news” — State of the Cryosphere Report-2023.

This has been a year of climate disasters and ice loss. A glacial lake outburst flood devastated Sikkim in India. Swiss glaciers lost 10% of their remaining ice over just two years. Sea ice around Antarctica hit all-time-low summer and winter records. Unprecedented fires raged across Canadian permafrost. Parts of the Arctic and North Atlantic saw water temperatures 4 – 6°C higher than normal. It rained far inland on Antarctica, and Greenland saw its second-highest surface melt ever.

Our message — the message of the Cryosphere – is that this insanity cannot and must not continue.

The Cryosphere – Earth’s ice sheets, sea ice, permafrost, polar oceans, glaciers and snow – is ground zero for climate change. This is because of the simple physical reality of the melting point of ice; or in the case of our rapidly acidifying polar oceans, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere absorbed and turned to carbonic acid.

The warming impact of CO2, around 80% from fossil fuel use, already has led to steep glacier and ice sheet loss causing global sea-level rise; reduction of water resources from snowpack; growing CO2 and methane emissions from thawing permafrost; dramatic reduction of sea ice, now alarmingly low in both polar oceans; and growing evidence of stress on keystone polar marine species, such as krill, salmon and cod, from polar ocean acidification, warming and freshening. Enough. It is time to carve a line in the snow: because of what we have learned about the Cryosphere since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, 1.5°C is not merely preferable to 2°C. It is the only option.

Otherwise, world leaders are de facto deciding to burden humanity for centuries to millennia by displacing hundreds of millions of people from flooding coastal settlements; depriving societies of life-giving freshwater resources, disrupting delicately-balanced polar ocean and mountain ecosystems; and forcing future generations to offset long-term permafrost emissions.

This continued rise in CO2 is unacceptable.

The melting point of ice pays no attention to rhetoric, only to our actions.

Sea-level Rise: Greenland and the Collapse of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet Mukherjee and Brouse (2022 and 2023)

Sea Level Rise: Then and Now Mukherjee and Brouse (2023)

Climate Change: Rate of Acceleration Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

Toppled Tipping Points: The Domino Effect Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

The Age of Loss and Damage Brouse (2023)

The Age of Loss and Damage

Posted on 2023/11/192023/11/23 by admin

by Daniel Brouse

“For people, for other species, for the ecosystems, for the world we live in, we’ve entered the Age of Loss and Damage, but we’re just at the start. What we are seeing already just makes you want to cry,” said Dr. Christopher Trisos (BBC Interview / MP3 Format) from the University of Cape Town. “We can’t eliminate loss and damage. It is here. That said, there is a lot we can do to limit it.”

The 20th-century surface temperature average for Earth was 13.9℃. In the first weeks of July of 2023, the average temperature was 17℃.
Q: Is it possible for humans to survive at temperatures greater than 3℃?
A: Probably not long. Humans have never done it before.

September 6, 2023: “Climate breakdown has begun,” the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the world after the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported the world endure its hottest Northern Hemisphere summer in human history. “The dog days of summer are not just barking, they are biting,” the UN chief said in a statement after the report’s release.

“What we are observing, are not only new extremes but the persistence of these record-breaking conditions, and the impacts these have on both people and planet, are a clear consequence of the warming of the climate system,” C3S’s Climate Change Service Director Carlo Buontempo said.

Climate Breakdown is the most concerning development. Climate breakdown happens when feedback loops are created and tipping points are crossed. Plants will become extinct and many carbon sinks will vanish. The Earth’s temperature will continue to accelerate at an exponential rate no matter what humans do. Food, fresh water, and breathable air will cease to exist. Humans will likely follow in short order.

In October of 2023, the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Climate Change Service calculated that the average temperature for September was 16.38 degrees Celsius (61.48 degrees Fahrenheit) breaking the previous record set in September 2020 by a half-degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit). This is the largest increase in a monthly record high ever.

“It’s just mind-blowing really,” said Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo. “Never seen anything like that in any month in our records.”

“This is not a fancy weather statistic. It’s a death sentence for people and ecosystems. It destroys assets, infrastructure, harvest,” Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto said.

On November 20, 2023, the UN’s Emission Gap Report found even if countries carried out their current emissions-reduction pledges, the world would likely continuously exceed +3C degrees of warming this century. Later that day, the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative released State of the Cryosphere Report 2023 saying, “Two degrees is too high. Our message — the message of the Cryosphere — is that this insanity cannot and must not continue. The melting point of ice pays no attention to rhetoric, only to our actions.”

New Economics

Human induced climate change is an exponential component of an unordered system (chaos theory).

The Age of Loss and Damage is a new way of thinking about economics by combining economics, climate science, statistics, and physics. Until now, economic models have been unfit to capture the full extent of climate damage. Traditionally, “integrated assessment models” (IAMs) were used to forecast “shock” events. IAMs use “quadratic function” to calculate GDP losses by squaring the temperature change, yet ignore other methods (such as the exponential function) that are better suited for rapid change. “Climate change is fundamentally different to other shocks because once it has hit, it doesn’t go away,” said Thierry Philipponnat, author of a report by Finance Watch, a Brussels-based public interest NGO on financial issues. “And if the fundamental assumption is flawed, all the rest makes little sense — if any.”

Reuters reported, “Critics say this (IAMs) choice is doomed to underplay the likely impact – particularly if the planet hits environmental tipping points in which damage is not only irreversible but happens at an ever-accelerating rate.” Thierry Philipponnat’s report, Finance in a Hot House World, concludes: “Climate risk is growing to disruptive levels throughout the financial system and the guardians of financial stability urgently need to adapt their tools to regain control.” The report calls for economic models that do not mislead, scenario analyses that prepare the market, and a new prudential tool to address the build-up of systemic climate risk.

Traditional economics is based upon the “costs and benefits” to society. Since there are no known long-term benefits of climate change to society, the Age of Loss and Damage economics focuses on the exponential costs of climate change to society.

Health and Wellness
Humans will experience greater loss and damage to life and quality of life from air pollution, decreasing supply of potable water, extreme weather events, and disease. The greatest short term climate change risk to human health is deadly humid heat (wet-bulb temperature).

Real Estate and Infrastructure
A warmer world will present widespread challenges across many aspects of food-energy-water security and economic development. Infrastructure including roads, bridges, sewer and water plants will become unsustainable. Personal property will suffer loss and damage as homeowners and flood insurance become increasingly difficult to obtain.

In October of 2023 climate scientist Sidd Mukherjee said, “Now I am thinking the violent rain will be a bigger problem before we die… still thinking it through. In the long run, yes, sea level rise will hit big. If you look at the history, it is episodic, and in the fast bits it can go up 3 feet every twenty years for five hundred years. But, the rain intensity is increasing faster today, and drainage cannot cope, whether in the city or out, culverts and such put in over the last hundred years cannot handle. So, I am paying a lot of attention to terrain and drainage far inland from the seacoast (like Ohio.) By drainage I don’t mean just human built. I mean that the natural streams and gullies and ravines have not evolved to a state that can handle the water volumes we see and the worse, larger volumes we will see. So expect huger erosion, steeper slopes to waterways, land collapses and such. Build out your drainage.”

In the spring of 2023, the USA suspended their national debt ceiling. Included in the debt ceiling suspension is a provision for unlimited emergency federal spending. The result is the government can continue to ignore the causes of climate change and instead give trillion-dollar subsidies to the fossil fuel industry through emergency disaster relief. Yes, another vicious circle — more fossil fuels subsidies result in more climate catastrophes resulting in more fossil fuel subsidies, etc. The end result will be additional trillions in government borrowing while the standard of living declines.

According to NOAA, in 2023 (as of November 8), there have been 25 confirmed weather/climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each to affect United States. These events included 1 drought event, 2 flooding events, 19 severe storm events, 1 tropical cyclone event, 1 wildfire event, and 1 winter storm event. This is the largest number of climate disasters recorded with a notable increase in extreme precipitation events.

Law Suits
What will create the change needed? Loss and damage litigation against oil companies and governments will change world economics.

The oil industry is going to be like the tobacco industry. The consumers are going to claim they were misled about the dangers of burning fossil fuels and will file lawsuits against the oil companies. You will not be able to buy oil or get insurance at a reasonable price (similar to what happened to cigarette smokers.)

Children have filed lawsuits worldwide against their governments over their basic human rights. A district court judge ruled in Held v. Montana that Montana’s Environmental Policy Act, which prohibits the state from considering the climate impact of proposed energy projects, violates the “right to a clean and healthful environment” promised by the state’s constitution.

Also see: Climate Change: How Long Is “Ever”? / Brouse (2023)

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

The Domino Effect / Snowball Effect

Posted on 2023/11/19 by admin

by Brouse and Mukherjee

Tipping points are Critical Milestones that directly impact the rate of acceleration in climate change by multiplying the number and intensity of feedback loops.

Push a glass toward the edge of a table and eventually it will fall off on its own. No matter how slowly or meticulously you push… no matter how you weight or fill the glass, it will reach a tipping point and fall off before being pushed completely off the table. No matter whether you believe the glass is half-empty or half-full, when the tipping point is reached it will plummet out-of-control to its end. This is science not fate, faith, nor belief. Human induced climate change has resulted in environmental tipping points being breached.

Tipping points, when crossed, trigger self-sustaining feedback loops that are no longer dependent on human activity. Similar to when a domino topples over hitting two more dominoes that in turn fall hitting more dominoes. Thus, the name The Domino Effect. It can also be visualized as The Snowball Effect. A tipping point is like a snowball rolling down a hill growing in mass and velocity (momentum). When a tipping point is crossed, it results in cumulative and reinforced global warming.

A look at five (5) of the multiple tipping points that show the proverbial snowball is already rolling. The first dominoes have fallen and will continue to knock down more tiles with each escalating step.

Mountain Glacier Loss
Greenland Ice Sheet Collapse
Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse
Collapse of AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation)
Amazon Rainforest Dieback

Crossing even a single tipping point is alarming. For instance, crossing the tipping point for ‘mountain glacier loss‘ has immediate consequences: millions of people in Europe will be impacted by the lack of fresh water. Billions of people that live along coasts will be impacted by the saline infiltration and eventually by the submerging of their property. In September of 2022, UNESCO reported accelerated melting of glaciers in World Heritage sites, with glaciers in a third of sites set to disappear by 2050. In September of 2023, the GLAMOS glacier monitoring center found 10% of Swiss glaciers had disappeared in the last 2 years. They do not expect any Swiss glaciers will be left by 2050 no matter what actions are taken. If extreme measures are taken, they anticipate we may be able to save some polar glaciers.

This in and of itself should be alarming; however, it gets worse. Tipping points are parts of feedback loop systems. The ice-albedo feedback loop is an expression of the ability of surfaces to reflect sunlight (heat from the sun). Any loss of ice over a darker surface means the surface will absorb more heat and reflect less heat. This process makes the Earth warmer causing more loss of ice, which in turn causes more warming of the Earth. So, yes, the mountain ice tipping point is quite alarming for both its immediate impact as well as its self-sustaining growth to global warming; but wait, it gets more alarming. The increasing temperatures due to crossing a tipping point cause other tipping points to be toppled (The Domino Effect).

By the Autumn of 2023, it had become evident the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets will completely melt. The process is irreversible and inevitable. The cool water from the melting ice at the poles is being drawn toward the center of the Earth and getting warmed to record high temperatures. The warm, moist air is circulating and moving over land. These changes in climate systems will cause other areas to experience unprecedented drought. We expect sea level rise will total about 270 feet over the next several millennia. It is episodic, and in the fast bits it can go up 3 feet every twenty years for five hundred years. The melting Arctic and Antarctic have multiple feedback loops including: enhanced oceanic heating and ice-albedo, Planck feedback, lapse-rate feedback, and cloud feedback.

The tipping point for the collapse of AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) was thought to be centuries away, at the earliest. In July of 2023, the study Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation was published in the journal Nature Communications. “Here we provide statistical significance and data-driven estimators for the time of tipping. We estimate a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century (2025-2095) under the current scenario of future emissions.” The collapse is likely to cause faster sea level rise on the east coast of the US, more severe storms in Europe, and increasing drought in the Sahel in Africa. “From the study of past climate, we know changes in the AMOC have been some of the most abrupt and impactful events in the history of climate,” said Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and world leading oceanographer. During the last Ice Age, winter temperatures changed by up to 10C within three years in some places. “We are dealing with a system that in some aspects is highly non-linear, so fiddling with it is very dangerous, because you may well trigger some surprises,” he said. “I wish I knew where this critical tipping point is, but that is unfortunately just what we don’t know. We should avoid disrupting the AMOC at all costs. It is one more reason why we should stop global warming as soon as possible.” A feedback loop created by the AMOC tipping point would cause a disruption of weather systems and circulation. The result would be the loss of naturally occurring carbon sinks. One scenario is desertification of the Amazon rainforest. In 2023, the Amazon River and the Rio Negro set record low levels.

The tipping point / feedback loop problem is very complex (chaos theory) and exponentially alarming. Yet another tipping point appears to have been triggered before 2024 — Amazon Rainforest Dieback. The Amazon is often referred to as ‘the lungs of our planet.’ Not only does the Amazon suck in huge quantities of CO2 and breath out O2, but the Amazon soils also store huge amounts of CO2. The desertification of the Amazon would result in a release of the carbon as the soils disappeared.

1) part of July was spent at record temperatures +3C
2) the collapse of the Amazon rainforest is likely to happen between +2 – 4C. The collapse of the Amazon is expected to occur because of changing weather patterns and circulation that result in drought.
3) Brazil set up a task force for “unprecedented drought in the Amazon”

Low river levels and hotter waters have killed masses of fish seen floating on river surfaces, contaminating the drinking water, Environment Minister Marina Silva said. “We have a very worrying situation. This record drought has disrupted river transport routes (dropping 30 cm / day) threatening food and water shortages, and a large fish mortality is already beginning.” This was the effect of a periodic El Nino mixing with changes in weather patterns brought by global warming. “We are seeing a collision of two phenomena, one natural which is El Nino and the other a phenomenon produced by humans, which is the change in the Earth’s temperature.” Worsened by climate change, this combination has caused drought not seen before in the Amazon and “is incomparably stronger and could happen more frequently.”

The average temperature for Brazil had been above the historical average from July through October of 2023. Rio de Janeiro recorded 42.5C on November 12, 2023 (a record for November) and high humidity on the 14th meant that it felt like 58.5C, municipal authorities said. Deadly humid heat is the greatest short term climate change risk to human health. On November 17, “a young Brazilian fan of US singer Taylor Swift died in Rio de Janeiro after falling ill inside the sweltering stadium where the superstar’s concert was held, amid a record-breaking heatwave across large swathes of Brazil,” as reported by ABC. “The show took place on the same day that Rio recorded its highest-ever heat index reading, which combines temperature and humidity, at 59.3 degrees Celsius (139 degrees Fahrenheit).”

Conclusion
Feedback loops and tipping points are parts of an equation that determine the rate of acceleration in climate change. Triggering these tipping points results in the CO2 stored in nature to be released without the assistance of humans. Though we do not know how much carbon is stored in nature, it would be reasonable to assume that the temperature could be pushed from 3 degrees to 6 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Humans cannot thrive above a rise of 1.5 degrees. Much of the Earth will be uninhabitable if the temperature rises an additional 6 degrees Celsius. If humans also add 3 degrees Celsius, the temperature and humidity will approach a wet-bulb temperature that will not sustain human life.

For the first time in human history, global warming is going to continue no matter what humans do. Even if humans stopped their greenhouse gas emissions today, humans have invoked nature’s greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, the sooner humans stop their emissions, the better. In addition, humans must adapt their habitat to remove, reduce, and hinder nature’s greenhouse gas emissions.

What Can I Do?
There are plenty of things you can do to help save the planet. Stop using fossil fuels. Consume less. Love more. Here is a list of additional actions you can take.

October 2023 Record Heat

Posted on 2023/11/18 by admin

November 2023

The planet added another record-breaking month to 2023, with October ranking as the warmest October in the 174-year global climate record.

Last month was also 2023’s fifth month in a row of record-warm global temperatures, according to scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

The average global temperature for October was 2.41°F (1.34°C) above the 20th-century average of 57.1°F (14.0°C), ranking as the world’s warmest October on record. This was 0.43 of a degree F (0.24 of a degree C) above the previous record from October 2015. For the seventh-consecutive month, global ocean surface temperature also set a record high.

The YTD average global surface temperature ranked as the warmest such period on record at 2.03 degrees F (1.13°C) above the 20th-century average.

According to NCEI’s Global Annual Temperature Outlook, there is a greater than 99% chance that 2023 will rank as the warmest year on record for the world. ‘
NOVEMBER 16, 2023

from The planet just had its warmest October on record
by John Bateman, NOAA Headquarters

What you can do today. How to save the planet.

Climate Change: How Long Is “Ever”?

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

The Lightning Feedback Loop

Posted on 2023/11/11 by admin

by Daniel Brouse
November 11, 2023

Feedback is the process in which changing one quantity changes a second quantity, and the change in the second quantity in turn changes the first. Positive feedback loops amplify the change in the first quantity.

Studies have found lightning and forest fires are creating a feedback loop. More lightning sparks a vicious cycle, as trees and soil set ablaze release warming CO2 creating more storms and more lightning.

The study Forests at Risk Due to Lightning Fires found a sensitivity of extratropical intact forests to potential increases in lightning fires, which would have far-reaching consequences for terrestrial carbon storage and biodiversity. The results show that, on a global scale, lightning is the primary ignition source of fires in temperate and boreal forests.

“What many people may not be aware of is that lightning is the most common ignition source for fires in remote temperate and boreal forests,” says Thomas Janssen, research associate at VU Amsterdam. These forests store large amounts of carbon, which is released in the form of greenhouse gases during the fire. The research reveals that 77 % of the burned area in intact forest regions outside the tropics is due to lightning fires, and the number of strikes is expected to increase by 11 to 31 % per degree warming with ongoing climate change.

“When a thunderstorm passes through this landscape, there are thousands of lightning strikes, and some hundreds of them start little fires,” said Prof Sander Veraverbeke from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, one of the authors on the research paper. “And these can grow together into mega-fire complexes that become the size of small countries. Once these fires are so big, it becomes very difficult to do anything about them.”

Toppled Tipping Points: The Domino Effect / Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

Rio Negro Climate Change Case Study

Posted on 2023/11/112023/11/12 by admin

by Daniel Brouse
November 11, 2023

What do you know about the Rio Negro as it relates to climate change and carbon sinks? The Rio Negro gets its name from its color. The black water is caused by highly acidic and carbon rich water. One scientist that lives on the river called it similar to Coca-cola. In 2023, the Rio Negro recorded record low levels.

Most of the carbon discharged into the water helps the carbon to eventually sink in the ocean as a literal carbon sink. The lack of rain and drought conditions result in more vegetation dying and contribute to a feedback loop — more plants die from less rain… and there is less rain to wash the excess carbon to the bottom of the ocean… resulting in more global warming… resulting in more dead vegetation.

A study of Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) in South American rivers found, “Small and steep catchments hosting organic rich forest soils and peatlands were the most sensitive and showed the highest and fastest DOC release if evaluated on a per unit area basis. Here, rain events caused a rapid exponential increase in DOC release….”

The study Effects of natural light and depth on rates of photo-oxidation of dissolved organic carbon in a major black-water river, the Rio Negro, Brazil found under natural sunlight during the dry seasons rates of complete photo-oxidation and changes in absorbance indices decayed exponentially. The deeper the water the less CO2 created.

The Amazon river was also at record lows during 2023. The drought conditions in the Amazon rain forest are unusual. We are watching the Rio Negro and Amazon Rivers as a case study for the slowing and/or collapse of the AMOC. The tipping point for the collapse of AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) was thought to be centuries away, at the earliest. In July of 2023, the study Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation was published in the journal Nature Communications. “Here we provide statistical significance and data-driven estimators for the time of tipping. We estimate a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century (2025-2095) under the current scenario of future emissions.” The collapse is likely to cause faster sea level rise on the east coast of the US, more severe storms in Europe, and increasing drought in the Sahel in Africa. “From the study of past climate, we know changes in the AMOC have been some of the most abrupt and impactful events in the history of climate,” said Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and world leading oceanographer. During the last Ice Age, winter temperatures changed by up to 10C within three years in some places. “We are dealing with a system that in some aspects is highly non-linear, so fiddling with it is very dangerous, because you may well trigger some surprises,” he said. “I wish I knew where this critical tipping point is, but that is unfortunately just what we don’t know. We should avoid disrupting the AMOC at all costs. It is one more reason why we should stop global warming as soon as possible.” A feedback loop created by the AMOC tipping point would cause a disruption of weather systems and circulation. The result would be the loss of naturally occurring carbon sinks.

Conclusion
The carbon sequestration from dissolved organic carbon is only one of the many carbon sinks in the Amazon. It is likely Amazon droughts will become more frequent and intense resulting in decarbonization at an exponential rate. The collapse of the AMOC will hasten the collapse of the Amazon. The collapse of the Amazon will hasten the collapse of the AMOC.

A case study for: Toppled Tipping Points: The Domino Effect Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

Climate Change: How Long Is “Ever”? Brouse (2023)

Climate Change: The End of Times Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

The Reign of Violent Rain Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

Climate Change: Rate of Acceleration Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)

Treasury Auctions and Record Budget Deficits

Posted on 2023/11/092023/12/06 by admin

by Daniel Brouse
November 9, 2023

Attention armchair economists, investors, and homeowners:
the 30-year Treasury auction was “bad” today
… when I say bad, I mean bad for those not investing in Treasuries.

What does it mean? The government went to borrow money today, and people didn’t want to lend them money. The 30-year interest rate spiked higher. This is because the government is borrowing record amounts of money.

A Double Whammy
This has two negative feedback loops.
1) the higher interest rates mean the government has to borrow more money to make the interest payments… resulting in higher budget deficits… resulting in more borrowing… resulting in higher interest rates, etc.
2) the government is borrowing the current trillions of dollars over the next couple years… but they have yet to spend it… spending the trillions will result in inflation… which will result in higher interest rates… causing a larger deficit… requiring more borrowing, etc.

The Greatest Risks to the US Economy

Climate Change
Government Spending / Debt
Lack of Immigration

Human induced climate change is an exponential component of an unordered system (chaos theory).

The Age of Loss and Damage is a new way of thinking about economics by combining economics, climate science, statistics, and physics. Until now, economic models have been unfit to capture the full extent of climate damage. Traditionally, “integrated assessment models” (IAMs) were used to forecast “shock” events. IAMs use “quadratic function” to calculate GDP losses by squaring the temperature change, yet ignore other methods (such as the exponential function) that are better suited for rapid change. “Climate change is fundamentally different to other shocks because once it has hit, it doesn’t go away,” said Thierry Philipponnat, author of a report by Finance Watch, a Brussels-based public interest NGO on financial issues. “And if the fundamental assumption is flawed, all the rest makes little sense — if any.”

Loss and damage litigation against oil companies and governments will change world economics.

In October of 2023 Dr. Sidd Mukherjee said, “Now I am thinking the violent rain will be a bigger problem before we die… still thinking it through. In the long run, yes, sea level rise will hit big. If you look at the history, it is episodic, and in the fast bits it can go up 3 feet every twenty years for five hundred years. But, the rain intensity is increasing faster today, and drainage cannot cope, whether in the city or out, culverts and such put in over the last hundred years cannot handle. So, I am paying a lot of attention to terrain and drainage far inland from the seacoast (like Ohio.) By drainage I don’t mean just human built. I mean that the natural streams and gullies and ravines have not evolved to a state that can handle the water volumes we see and the worse, larger volumes we will see. So expect huger erosion, steeper slopes to waterways, land collapses and such. Build out your drainage.”

Meanwhile, the US politicians also fail to address the declining and aging population. By restricting immigration, the government is forcing the acceleration of AI and robotics technology. Although this is great for “productivity”, neither AI nor robots pay taxes. The US economy is based on population growth. Increased emergency spending and a declining tax base results in insolvency.

Economic Update: Inflation, Interest Rates, AI, Consumer Spending, Climate Change, and Fiscal Policy

Sea Level Rise and Saturation

Posted on 2023/10/282023/10/29 by admin

By Daniel Brouse
October 28, 2023

What causes sea level rise? If the melting ice and snow isn’t going into the sea, where is it going?

NOAA says:
The volume of the ocean is expanding as the water warms. Thermal expansion happens when water gets warmer, which causes the volume of the water to increase. About half of the measured global sea level rise on Earth is from warming waters and thermal expansion.

There is a shift of liquid water from land to ocean due largely to humans depleting ground water.

United Nations DRR says:
For every degree Celsius in warming, the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere increases by about 7%. Record-high sea temperatures ensure there is more moisture (in the form of water vapour) in the atmosphere, by an estimated 5-15% compared to before the 1970s, when global temperature rise began in earnest.

Water vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas. Since the 1970s, its rise likely increased global heating by an amount comparable to that from rising carbon dioxide. We are now seeing the consequences. In the current climate, for average all-sky conditions, water vapour is estimated to account for 50% of the total greenhouse effect, carbon dioxide 19%, ozone 4% and other gases 3%. Clouds make up about a quarter of the greenhouse effect.

The main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone – don’t condense and precipitate. Water vapour does, which means its lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter, by orders of magnitude, compared to other greenhouse gases. On average, water vapour only lasts nine days,

The most common measure of water vapour in the atmosphere is relative humidity. Deadly humid heat affects billions including the US Midwest this century. “It’s very disturbing,” study co-author Matthew Huber of Purdue University. “It’s going to send a lot of people to emergency medical care.”

The study Greatly enhanced risk to humans as a consequence of empirically determined lower moist heat stress tolerance was conducted by Purdue and George Mason University and published August 15, 2023.

These results indicate that a significant portion of the world’s population will experience — for the first time in human history — prolonged exposures to uncompensable extreme moist heat. Humans will struggle to adapt to these conditions in a warmer world as they will present widespread challenges across many aspects of food-energy-water security, human health, and economic development including in the world’s most populous and most vulnerable regions.

At 3C (5.4F) of yearly average warming, more than 1.5 billion people will suffer. In the summer of 2023,
the Earth experienced about a month of warming at 3C above pre-industrial levels. Both 2022 and 2023 saw a record number of heat related deaths. More than 61,000 Europeans died from extreme heat in the summer of 2022.

Sea Level Rise in the Sky
So how much of the melting ice is going into the sky instead of just dripping into the sea?

NASA says:
Hot air expands, and rises; cooled air contracts – gets denser – and sinks; and the ability of the air to hold water depends on its temperature. A given volume of air at 20°C (68°F) can hold twice the amount of water vapor than at 10°C (50°F). The relationship of how much water a given mass of air actually holds compared to the amount it can hold is its relative humidity.

When air holds as much water vapor as it can for a given temperature (100% relative humidity), it is said to be saturated. If saturated air is warmed, it can hold more water (relative humidity drops), which is why warm air is used to dry objects–it absorbs moisture. On the other hand, cooling saturated air (said to be at its dew point) forces water out (condensation). This is why a container of a cold beverage sweats: it cools the air next to it and moisture from the air condenses on the outside of the can.

Air warmed by ocean currents picks up a lot of moisture. As the heated air rises, it expands, which is measured at the surface as low air pressure. Expanding air cools, which forces it to lose its moisture as rain or snow. The opposite is true for sinking air. Such air compresses and warms. In a zone of high pressure like this, moisture is absorbed by the air from its surroundings.

According to the USGS, the volume of all water on Earth is estimated to be 332.5 million cubic miles. As a result of the hydrologic cycle, Earth’s water is never in one place for too long. It evaporates, turns to vapor, condenses to create clouds and falls back to the surface as precipitation. The cycle then begins again.

“On average, there is about the equivalent of 30 mm [1.2 inches] of rain in the form of vapor available to fall over any point of Earth’s surface,” Frédéric Fabry, the director of the J. Stewart Marshall Radar Observatory and an associate professor of the environment and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at McGill University in Canada said. “That’s around 55 pounds [25 kilograms] of water over every square yard, most of which is in the form of vapor,” he said. Given that the surface area of Earth is about 197 million square miles (510 million square kilometers), there’s around 37.5 million-billion gallons of water in the atmosphere, Fabry said. If all of this mass were to fall at once, it would raise the global ocean level by about 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters), he added.

Climate Change Post reports, “Just a few cm of sea-level rise may double the frequency of coastal flooding.”

A study published in the journal Scientific Reports, if sea levels rise between 2 and 4 inches (5 and 10 cm), it will double the flooding frequency in a host of regions, “particularly in the tropics.”

It looks like the atmosphere currently holds about 1.5 inches of sea level rise…
as the temperature rises will it be able to hold 3 inches?

What happens when the atmosphere can’t hold any more?