This report, issued by NOAA annually since 2006, was a much-anticipated event at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting because the implications matter far beyond the Arctic. 

Grade F: First major “vital sign” shift in its report card

Different factors are at play in terms of whether the Arctic is a net sink or source of carbon. On one hand, warming temperatures increased vegetation in the region with increased uptake of carbon dioxide. However, unprecedented Arctic wildfires combined with soils thawing released even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Methane releases were sustained as well.  

The carbon cycle trend in the Arctic will be a closely watched “vital sign” for Earth’s climate going forward. 

Is this report card for the Arctic, which includes boreal and tundra of northern permafrost regions, a temporary carbon cycle hiccup, or will this be a growing trend as a net carbon source region? 

If the latter, the implications are profound because the Arctic holds an immense store of carbon that, if released, would set off a chain of cascading consequences, including significant global warming.

The implications of these changes are enormous for the Arctic ecosystem, the ways of life of communities living in the region, and for the many unique species that exist there. Moreover, changes in the Arctic have a huge impact on weather patterns north of the equator, including polar vortex disturbances, changes to ocean currents, and extreme heat domes. Shrinking Greenland ice sheet and mountain glaciers also contribute to accelerating sea level rise. 

Meanwhile, the warming climate is leaving Arctic species with little choice but to adapt, but some are finding it harder than others. 

Grade C: Coping or struggling to cope with Arctic change 

A vivid scene reappeared from memory when I learned the findings of the annual Arctic Report Card. It’s from my time in the Arctic aboard the Oden. The Icebreaker suddenly blasted the horn on an unplanned  stop that shuddered the entire ship as the sounds of water pumps that help roll the ship and engines shifting speed reverberated in the ears.   

Biologists had spotted a tiny Arctic cod on top of the ice! We watched as the fish was retrieved for analysis amid plenty of evidence that a seal and a polar bear had been on that spot of sea ice not too long before we had arrived. Given the primary source of polar bear food— ice dependent seals —it likely was their favorite, ringed seal. Now we knew why the fish was on top of the ice and not in the frigid seawater below. These three are species in an Arctic ecosystem that used to be more tightly linked together.  

But the Arctic report card assessed that ringed seals in the Pacific sector of the Arctic have adapted away from their former major food source—Arctic cod — to a new major food source—saffron cod (Quakenbush et al., in Arc2024). This is a cod species shift to warmer seawater from that particular cold seawater with floating sea-ice.  

The surprise is that, despite plummeting sea ice, the ringed seal is currently coping with these changes. It’s a bright sign brought by collaborations among indigenous researchers and other scientists.   

Yet there are more stark signs in the report card overall logging different marine and land species coping with regional changes that differ from the Arctic averages. 

Case in point is the difference between coastal caribou herds that are coping with the wetter and warmer conditions and the inland migratory tundra caribou herds that are struggling to adapt (decreasing 65% over past two to three decades) (Gunn et al., in Arc2024).  Rain on snow that often freezes can shield vital forage away from inland caribou herds.  Roads associated with mines and railroads are also factors.

If these inland herds fail to adapt to these changes, the caribou’s future in these locations is uncertain. And so too are the ways of life of indigenous communities that are adapting given local traditional levels of reliance on the caribou for food and other essentials. 

Grade A: Amplified warming in the Arctic, a dubious distinction

This year logged the eleventh year in a row when the Arctic warmed faster than the global average (Ballinger et al., in Arc2024)—quite a feat given the Earth’s global average temperature is on track to being the hottest on record.  

This greater pace of warming has implications for the character and timing of snow cover. The 2023-2024 Arctic winter snow accumulation was above average over Eurasian and North American sectors with the Central and Eastern Canada region logging the shortest snow season in 26 years (Mudryk et al., in Arc2024).   

Amplified warming in a region that has water locked in the form of ice on land for millennia has global significance for coastal communities worldwide.  Mountain glacier and ice sheet contributions to global sea level rise has been a growing proportion with each passing decade.   

Another bright spot this year amid the bad news was that the massive Greenland Ice Sheet had the lowest annual ice mass loss since 2013 (Poynar et al., in Arc2024).   

No doubt about it. That F grade for failing to remain a region that stored more carbon than it released has got to grab the attention of anyone involved with international negotiations in line with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  The urgency for reducing emissions is a serious Arctic warning. 

Drs. Twila Moon and  Nikoosh Carlo, who conduct research relevant to high northern latitudes, recently exchanged thoughts with Johanna Chao Kreilick and me about a recent article that missed the mark on Greenland and climate change.  We agreed that there is much work to be done in all quarters of the world to meet the international agreements given the narrowing of the time and wiggle room that the Earth Systems could accommodate.  This would necessitate greater cooperation and less competition within the complex and connected system of our activities. 

What sparked our discussion was that three of us were in Greenland in September, when more than a third of the ice sheet surface melting peaked. This scale of surface melt area is unprecedented for September, making it a record-breaking event.

In the far north, the sun barely peeks above the horizon over part of the winter season. The transition to winter can be stark and swift. Yet the seasonal shifts that typically occur in September 2022 were punctuated by several significant melt events on the Greenland ice sheet. Surprising?

Two days later as I looked down on vast areas of dark grey of melting ice from high above the ice sheet, Dr. Moon told me she and many others studying Greenland and the changing conditions over the years were expecting this might occur even during September this year.  These predictions at that moment were proving true and being logged by the huge investment in people, equipment, and archiving of the observations. The unprecedented scale and timing of melt events in turn will be incorporated into updating dynamical ice sheet models and global climate models.

The story of revealing how the Earth is a system with consistent physics

Greenland is just one example of a region on Earth that consistently proves what occurs when H₂O changes phases between solid, liquid, and vapor.  One of the fun tricks is when H₂O can sublimate directly from a solid into a vapor without passing through the liquid state.  Over recent decades there have been many ways the Greenland ice sheet is losing mass due to the basic physics of what is required to remain in the solid form of H₂O.  

Outlet glaciers with each passing decade have been in contact with increasingly warmer seawater that can melt the underside of the glacier ice.  At times weather patterns over Greenland can increase the chances for precipitation falling as rain rather than snow.  Rain falling on ice can accelerate a phase transition from solid ice to liquid water.

The 2021 Arctic Report Card noted the first time rain occurred at the Greenland summit of the ice sheet. Many factors combine to yield trends that Dr. Moon and colleagues warned have tipped from being an ice sheet that was roughly in balance until around 1990 when ‘rapid reconfiguration’ of the ice sheet coastal margins occurred that have accelerated through to today. This has associated consequences in coastal regions in terms of icebergs, mass loss, freshwater discharge, sediments and nutrients delivered to marine ecosystems and so forth.  

The Greenland ice sheet holds the equivalent of around 7 extra meters of global sea level rise were it to disappear completely.  This fact is one among many propelling action by those who work on country contributions to the Paris Agreement to place limits on the level of warming.  

All hands on deck action required to meet international agreements 

Similar to the stark transition to winter in the far north, the stark United Nations Emissions Gap report ahead of the COP27 issued a warning. We need all hands on deck to navigate through this global winter period of early attempts to increase the scale of action to match the pace of the changing Earth systems we have collectively accelerated. Just as there is jubilation when the northern sun first peeks again above the horizon after dark winter “days” and nights, the Paris agreement has catalyzed a growing number of hands on deck to meet this challenge.  

Take for example, Dr. Carlo’s proposal for a Climate Response Fund created by and for indigenous communities. Economist Kate Raworth who found the data did not uphold traditional economic approaches that were ill-fitted for global challenges such as climate change or global pandemics. She introduced donut economics to examine ways to thrive in the 21^st century. Tereneh Idea, founder of Idia’Dega, collaborated with Olorgesailie Maasai Women Artisans of Kenya and Land Art Generator Initiative to create community designed renewable energy.  

And more hands are soon to join those already on the deck.  Just the latest example is the US Inflation Reduction Act starting to inject substantial resources into lowering the carbon intensity of the country that bears the largest historical contribution to climate change to date. Private sector, local public sector and other institutions will relish this opportunity to overhaul transportation, energy and help climate proof communities. 

Yet the emissions gap warned these efforts are not yet at scale. There will need to be many more hands on millions of different decks that can be a refuge in a storm. Navigate stronger winds better with hands pulling on old and new lines together. Intermittently hands will drop anchor, the decks will drift backward and provide time to reflect. Then with renewed energy, hands can pull on the lines anew to explore different directions to avoid delaying action. Hands that pass the lines to younger hands and collectively bring about a multi-generational delay in ice sheet mass loss.

Are we up to the scale of this challenge?  

This summer, also known as danger season, already has seen record heat waves, drought, and floods. It continues a trend of recent summers that saw record flooding, major hurricanes, and severe wildfires unlike what many of us can remember from our lifetimes.

When these types of events happen, they are often couched in terms of an event once-every-x-number-of-years. But what exactly is a 50-year, 100-year, or 1,000-year weather event? And is that kind of description even relevant as the planet heats up and climate change changes everything?

Let us break down what is really meant by those terms and figure out if that language is effective at conveying the rarity and severity of these events. 

What was rare is becoming more common

People have been observing various aspects of weather for an exceptionally long time. Stories about remarkable weather events have been retold through the ages. When we share weather and climate stories through news headlines or via video, we often put these into context and compare them with prior events. 

Consider the case of a seasonal event that happens each year like the spring ice breakup on a river. Riverside communities historically have known and obsessed about the dates of ice breakup because they depend on the river for transportation, hunting, fishing, and commercial needs. That yearly event depends on many weather-related factors in the region.

In Alaskan and Canadian communities near the Arctic Circle, prior experience dictates that it would be extraordinary for river ice to break up in the middle of April when communities expect freezing temperatures. It used to be quite rare to break up around the last days of April and start of May, but possible within the range of observations. But today, in places like Nenana, Alaska and Dawson City, Yukon, river ice breakup often occurs around a week earlier than a century ago. In this case what used to be quite rare (only once in a generation, or once in a lifetime) is now more common. Younger generations are learning to expect the yearly ice breakup sooner, around the turn of the month from April to May.

A similar change is happening with record hot temperatures in places where extreme heat is no longer unheard of (see figure with extra labels added to IPCC AR6 WG1 FAQ 11.3). 

A person who lives in London, as did their great-grandparents, might have heard through intergenerational stories about a rare heatwave that disrupted a summer day. Yet, their great grandparents never experienced summer days with 40 degrees Celsius or hotter as London residents did last month. The first date ever to record 40°C in the UK was July 19, 2022. 

The UK heat wave this summer was not just a rare event, it was an event of a severity that had never been recorded! Scientists were expecting this day would come, although not likely two years after they published their paper.

The UK Met Office scientists back then assessed that summers with hot days like the ones this summer are exceedingly rare (currently 0.3% to 1% chance in any year). Though increasingly possible. Those tiny chances just happened, and a threshold has been crossed for the record books. 

Like young people in the Arctic Circle experiencing hotter temperatures than their elders can remember, London youth will much more often experience what was rare or unheard of for older generations. Thanks to climate change.

Once-every-100 years does not mean what you think it does

It is common for people to think that when they hear once every 50 or once every 100 years that the higher the number of years, the rarer the event is. This makes it sound like we must wait for years to see such a magnitude event. But that is not what it means.

A 100-year flood level means a 1 in 100 or 1% chance of exceeding that water level in any given year. Every year there is a 1% chance of that magnitude flood occurring. It could happen several years in a row, but each one of those years there is only a 1 in 100 chance of it happening. Add climate change and we need to keep track of which decade these flood levels were determined. For example, with expected sea level rise over the next few decades what currently would be extreme coastal floods (50-year floods or a large flood with only a 2% chance in any given year) are likely to occur annually for most coastal U.S. regions.

Hurricane Harvey in Houston is another example of this. It was a major hurricane in 2017 that underwent rapid intensification and stalled between two opposing pressure systems. The result was that Hurricane Harvey rainfall exceeded the 1000-year extreme precipitation for the Houston metro region. Some scientists described this event as Harvey setting up a hose that sucked the water from the surface and dumped it on the metro region over several days. 

How can forecasters and public officials even warn residents about a flood so big there is only a 0.1% chance it happens in any given year, and how do city planners, residents and businesses plan for an infrastructure that can withstand that magnitude of flood more often thanks to climate change? The extreme precipitation Houston saw under Harvey will be less rare in coming decades.

Caveat: record period is key for understanding how rare an event is

Have you seen news like this:

• The period from May 2018 to April 2019, was the wettest 12-months over 124-year record for the contiguous US. 
• Since 1990 Western Mongolia summer temperatures are the warmest (over 1269 – 2004 C.E.). 
• Southwestern North America just logged the driest 22-year period in at least 1,200 years. 

When considering how rare events are becoming more common, it is important to take note of how long we have been keeping records. Record length is key to providing context for any extreme weather event that might occur. This helps scientists and non-scientists better understand if this event is just another example of the common catchphrase “weather is always changing” or if the weather event truly is “off the charts?”  

Climate change is increasing severity and consequences of extreme events

Extreme event probability and associated severity is changing. It is now more likely for many communities to experience unprecedented extreme weather events. According to the IPCC, now and in the coming decades, extreme events will occur with various combinations of larger magnitude, increased frequency, new locations, or different timing (IPCC AR6 WG1 FAQ 11.2). 

Now that human-influenced extreme rainfall event is more likely, China and the US have this in common: figuring out what kind of flood risk we can expect in the places where such intense rain falls and preparing for it. A record-breaking rain event in Sichuan Province, China during August 2020 now has double the chance of occurring compared with historical chances. Overall, for the US, outdated 100-year flood zone maps represent around a 40% undercount such that many more homes are in the current 100-year flood zone. 

How communities prepare for the more common severe weather-related events can go a long way to increasing survival and resilience to endure and recover after an unprecedented weather event.

Unfortunately, in too many cases of extreme flooding and heat waves, the trend is not encouraging. 

• Development in Houston, including increased impermeable surface area (e.g. parking lots and concrete lined drainage), further increased peak stream discharge when Hurricane Harvey dumped unprecedented rainfall. 
• Cultural factors, building design, and social isolation proved lethal in Paris during the unprecedented 2003 heat wave.

We can do better. Already, lessons learned from the events above are improving planning decisions, emergency response in those regions and many other parts of the world who know they could be next. We can learn from parts of the world where people have developed resilience to similar events that are common there but previously rare in other areas: in other words, Seattle must learn from Phoenix how to deal with extreme heat, and Phoenix could learn from Abu Dhabi about water supply solutions.

We need innovative words to describe extreme weather events

Sometimes the math and our language fails to convey how absolutely in uncharted territory we are with climate change. 

Researchers from over twenty institutions from around the world assessed a deadly 2021 Pacific Coast heat wave in Canada and the US border region as a one-in-1,000-year event. When asked about the rarity of that heat wave at a scientific society meeting earlier this year, one of the co-authors was temporarily at a loss for words to describe the event. They said it was hard to grasp typical mathematical approaches as was done in their paper. The heat wave was so rare, so severe, so unimaginable, it would be like if the heat wave were a pink elephant with polka dots—that is, never seen or imagined.

The folks in Canada last year or in the UK this year found themselves truly in uncharted territory. What do we do when a heat wave (or other weather event) as rare as a pink elephant with polka dots occurs in a region unprepared for such a strange event? What language can we use to warn people ahead of time? 

The language around our math has to start changing in part because statistics from the past are often insufficient to describe some of the unprecedented events we are experiencing today. Let alone the future world hurtling toward 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees Celsius global average temperature. 

Quiz

1. Which winter Olympics had to rely completely on snow making for alpine skiing?
   a. Sochi 2014
   b. PyeongChang 2018
   c. Beijing 2022
2. In a warming world, what months are we likely to see the winter Olympics being hosted?
   a. January-February
   b. June-October
   c. Both a & b
3. Which former winter Olympics location is most likely to be able to host the winter Olympics by the end of this century under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario?
   a. Innsbruck Austria
   b. Chamonix France
   c. Sapporo Japan

Quiz Answers

1. Many snow sports locations resort to artificial snow production to fill in gaps in available snowfall. The plans for Beijing’s bid for the Winter Olympics included two mountain zones that had minimal annual snowfall. Beijing is the first Winter Olympics to rely completely on artificial snow for the alpine snow sport competitions. Even if one makes snow, the conditions can be too warm to avoid soggy and dangerous conditions for athletes. Or prevent precipitation in the form of rain, ruining snow sport activities. (Answer c)
2. Since the first winter Olympics in 1924, all winter games were held during the months of January and February.  Such northern hemisphere bias for the timing and location of the winter Olympics is likely to become more tenuous in a warming world.  Some years the winter Olympics may be held in the months of June through October as the games require the addition of southern hemisphere snow sports locations to add to the list of regions to consider. (Answer c)
3. Already some northern hemisphere locations are making headlines for not being as likely to host the winter games under a high emissions scenario. If the pace of warming continues, the only former winter Olympics site that will likely be able to host by the end of the century is Sapporo, Japan.  If the world works together to stay within the climate guardrails set by the Paris Agreement, several former winter Olympics locations can still host in the future. (Answer c)

Having to make snow so the 2022 winter Olympic athletes can compete is just one more example of how extra measures and extra costs are required to deal with the current level of climate change.  China has also borne the costs at other times of the year such as the devastating floods last summer. This interactive link highlights recent examples of extreme precipitation from around the world that would not have been as severe were it not for the burning of coal, oil and gas. The way we invest in the energy that powers our future determines where the winter Olympics will occur. It also determines the frequency and severity of many types of extreme events for exposed communities. 

Questions are already being posed to governors, utility companies, and FEMA.  Is this as rare and improbable as it seems, and how does climate change factor in?  How fast can the power be restored? When can heat, supplied via natural gas lines, or water become available?  How much support can FEMA provide? So many more questions will be asked in the days ahead.

Science may be able to provide some clues.

Is this early winter tornado outbreak rare for the US?

If conditions align, it is possible to have a tornado occur somewhere in the continental U.S. any time of the year.  However such severe tornadoes are rare this far north (i.e. Illinois and Kentucky) in early winter.  

The National Weather Service crews are on the ground investigating the damage for official Enhanced Fujita(EF) scale rating based on estimated wind speed and related damage. Early reports suggest an EF-3 or stronger tornado in Edwardsville, Illinois was associated with a warehouse collapse. The National Weather Service indicated an EF-3 or stronger tornado destroyed a candle factory in Mayfield Kentucky.  Families in Dawson Springs, Kentucky likely experienced an EF-3 or stronger tornado. And an EF-3 or stronger rating for Bowling Green, Kentucky tornado damage is likely.  

Preliminary assessment says one may have been the longest track ever recorded for a tornado.  On Friday evening December 10, 2021, an EF-3 or stronger tornado touched down and likely twisted continuously on the ground in Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky.

Is it unusual for there to be so many tornadoes in close succession?

Researcher Michael Tippett and colleagues found a trend toward more tornadoes in the most extreme tornado outbreaks since the 1970s with an associated trend for less tornado activity during periods in between tornado outbreaks.

A tornado outbreak is when six or more EF-1 or stronger tornadoes occur in close succession. Researcher Christopher Furhmann and colleagues point to both the track length of tornadoes and EF scale strength as key factors that determine the level of danger tornado outbreaks present to people. These researchers point out that most tornado outbreaks occur with larger weather patterns that last over a significant chunk of a 24-hour period. That means forecasters have a greater chance to identify tornado risks and issue advanced weather warnings to help communities find safe places earlier. 

Most common region for tornado activity has shifted east

Popular references to tornadoes in film often evoke U.S. states in the Great Plains with twisters depicted churning in the distance. Flat landscape where the sky dominates. So it’s no surprise that Norman, Oklahoma, is a major place of research where government and university collaborators focus on tornadic thunderstorms.  

Scientists who track tornadoes are noting a shift in the epicenter of meteorological conditions that may spawn tornadoes toward places with landscapes that typically obscure many sight lines from the ground where one could potentially see a tornado on the horizon. 

Meteorologist Bob Henson describes the shift from the Great Plains to east of the Mississippi River, south of the Ohio River and west of the Appalachians as the epicenter for EF-1 or stronger tornado frequency.  Accordingly, the season for this early December tornado outbreak seems to confirm this trend.  

Researchers Vittorio Gensini and Harold Brooks found that for the December, January and February season between 1979 and 2017 measures of the characteristics of weather conditions associated with tornado reports decreased in southeast Texas and increased in the epicenter region described above. Gensini and Brooks describe in greater detail how these geographic trends shift as the seasons cycle through the continental US.  

Are these tornadoes linked to climate change?

The potential connections between climate change and tornado activity are relatively challenging when compared with the connections between climate change and other types of extreme weather, such as heat waves or intense precipitation events, primarily because tornadoes are notoriously small-scale events and hard to detect with observations.  

The thunderstorms that spawn tornadoes are more readily observed. Favorable conditions are no guarantee a tornado may form or what the strength would be. In the past, a tornado strength was based on damage surveys. Over time, the situation has improved with evolving satellite sensors and better ground observations. Still, damage assessment reports are part of the final determination. 

Reliable tornado metrics that could be part of climate models are still a challenge for meteorologists and climate researchers.  That’s in part because there are many factors involved in tornado formation. One of those factors—having warm, moist air available despite it being December—is likely to become more frequent in the US with climate change and may have played a role in enabling this most recent tornado outbreak. The early winter conditions have been remarkably mild in the continental U.S. with over three thousand record highs already recorded for December. 

A particular type of thunderstorm that meteorologists refer to as “supercells,” are associated with tornadic thunderstorms. A key ingredient is wind shear, when wind blows from different directions at various heights in the atmosphere. A tornado can form when colder and drier air blows higher up in the atmosphere while warmer and moister air blows in a different direction near the surface. In between the winds can form a rotating horizontal tube of air as the warmer surface air rises while the cooler air sinks. Thunderstorms typically involve warm surface air that rises into the storm. Such an updraft can shift a rotating horizontal tube into a vertical rotating tube of air.  The storm can continue to rotate and become a supercell. In rare cases a supercell can form a funnel cloud that may touch the ground and become a tornado.

Warmer temperatures and higher moisture levels increase the amount of energy available to the storms that can spawn tornadoes. Both temperature and moisture levels are expected to increase with climate change, the latter because a warmer atmosphere can essentially hold more water vapor. However, more research is needed to get a handle on how some of the other conditions necessary for tornado formation—such as wind shear—might change with further climate change.

Tornado Warnings

The NOAA storm prediction center gave notice a day in advance of the storms that hit on Friday and a tornado watch for the afternoon and evening was issued for Kentucky that day. The National Weather Service office in Paducah, Kentucky, gave a tornado warning about 20 minutes in advance for the Mayfield, Kentucky region. This was upgraded to tornado emergency as the powerful tornado passed through.    

It is more than worth it to invest in ways to improve weather forecasts and communication of the risks with such powerful extreme events. Just as important is investing in improving the factors on the ground that reduce exposure and vulnerability, especially for communities that may be exposed to greater risks as tornado activity increases for different areas.   

You can help. See my colleague Alicia Race’s blog post for resources to support the Kentucky recovery effort.

William Shatner’s space view that profoundly changed his perspective 

Watch the New Shepard Mission NS-18 Webcast video as William Shatner describes his experience moments after the hatch door opened. Searching for words to describe his brief experience in space, his attention was focused on a specific aspect: the moment when shooting through the incredible blue of the Earth’s atmosphere ended with the sudden emergence into the blackness of space. No longer an actor who played Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek series, but a human sharing a rare experience. “Everyone in the world needs to see this.” “It’s so thin…” “Suddenly you’re through the blue and you’re into black.” “What you see down there is light and that’s the difference.” “…is the most profound experience I can imagine.”

Astronauts have similarly described over the decades being changed by space flight. Most point to the moments when they look at Earth.  

Senator Joe Manchin’s view from space

What if Senator Manchin were given the opportunity to see his hometown, his state, from space? Toward the east he would see the ridge and valley region with ancient folded sedimentary rocks, trees and leaves bursting with fall colors. Looking in the direction of his hometown he would see the gently westward dipping plateau carved by larger rivers and portions shaped by mining. 

He likely would think about the activities that must be going on while looking down from space: towboat crews driving barges along the river carrying their heavy loads and floating by homes, schools and community gathering places along the river floodplains; vessels parked where transfers of barge loads to and from the river occur; train crews hauling heavy loads along valleys, through mountain tunnels and over trestle bridges; barges and trains transporting valuable WV natural resources to manufacturing facilities along the rivers and train tracks.

Would Senator Manchin have that moment in space where he sees the common shared home for all life on this planet with a thin atmosphere, an atmosphere trapping more and more heat? Bringing warming that increases the risk for West Virginia floods that can disrupt river transport, wash out bridges, and damage roads. Would Senator Manchin gain perspective and evoke the legacy of his current negotiations in Congress? Would he see the future that would benefit his constituents of West Virginia if he voted to keep the climate solution portions of the Build Back Better Act?

Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut who walked on the moon, described what he felt when he saw the Earth: “You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it.  From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that…”

They say all politics is local.  In this case, Senator Manchin’s vote to keep climate solutions in the Build Back Better Act would benefit local and global citizens alike.

United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC) Paris Agreement flag:

Signatories to this legally binding international agreement on climate change have submitted their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), aka country emissions reduction goals, which taken together help track whether the world “achieves the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement.” This includes limiting the global mean surface temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Look for how the AR6 summary for policymakers characterizes the range of the remaining carbon budget for global emissions to not surpass 1.5 °C (which we already know is rapidly dwindling). Those who have seen or heard the headlines of lives lost to horrendous heat waves, record-breaking floods, droughts, wildfires, and warm water coral reefs harmed by ocean heat waves won’t be surprised by this spoiler alert. The stark truth in the AR6 is we don’t have much time left to achieve the long-term goal of the Paris Agreement. Not much wiggle room is left for remaining carbon emissions, and the pace required to get to zero emissions is assuredly far beyond yesterday’s incremental policy incentives.

Global leaders’ statements flag:

What will leaders around the world say about the latest climate assessment? A Kudelka cartoon published soon after the fifth assessment report release captured how many scientists may feel. It depicts an increasingly urgent message being said by someone standing at a podium for each successive climate assessment, 1990, 1995, 2001, 2007, 2013. Then for the next and last image the person taps the microphone and asks, “is this thing on?” Even if many report authors might personally hope for a global response commensurate with the contents of the report, these reports cannot be policy-prescriptive. 

The IPCC process requires international collaboration between governments to share knowledge, combine resources and produce assessments that inform policy. One can think of these as an international report card of results. How have the combined activities of public and private sectors since the last assessment report changed the climate by the time of each report? 

Watch to see if global leaders indicate if they may change their respective nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement in response to this latest clarion call from scientists. In particular, what tangible policies, actions or plans are leaders initiating to meet their NDCs? Look for signals that demonstrate a shift in commitments of resources for communities and countries with fewer resources available to transition to a low carbon economy and adapt to mounting climate risks. Look for plans to shift rapidly away from fossil fuels to clean energy. Taken all together, is the scale of commitments aligned with the scale of the evidence in the report and the international agreement? 

Societies flag:

Many global leaders’ statements reflect the pressures their respective societies are demanding. Are we reaching social tipping points? People have already acted on current harm to their communities, and have gone so far as to put their lives on the line by stopping investment in fossil fuel projects that ignore cultural heritage sites or that would increase carbon emissions if allowed to proceed. Communities, especially communities who have experienced inequitable exposure to toxic pollution over many decades, are demanding that proposed solutions to reduce carbon emissions not further expose people to toxic pollutants. 

Multinational corporations continue to exert influence, resources, or systems to be more aligned while others continue to remain less aligned with the Paris Agreement. Consumers are watching these corporate actions and making their preferences known via social media and sending economic signals. Nonprofit organizations that monitor various economic sectors can shed sunlight on entities they monitor for “greenwashing” (i.e. making any overstatement of scale of commitment compared with metrics). Shareholders can demand corporations invest in infrastructure that is resilient to growing climate risks over the design lifetime of a project.   

Oh yes, scientists are another factor in societies stepping into new roles in the private sector, public sector, and nonprofit sector and grappling with how to bridge understanding across disciplines, experience, and perspectives. Co-creating more options for how to put into practice and choose, tweak, and adjust the solutions smorgasbord to become more resilient and ensure a just transition to a Paris Agreement world.  

Sowing doubt flag:

The importance of these assessments could be measured by the resources and energy spent on sowing doubt about the evidence by front groups supporting misrepresentation of the reports through all forms of media, briefings, and presentations. Watch out for classic tactics called out by UCS in its disinformation playbook: the Diversion, the Screen, the Fake, The Fix, and the Blitz. For example, the Blitz is to harass a scientist who presents evidence inconvenient for special interest groups. This has occurred for scientists who provided evidence or contributed key findings in prior IPCC reports that increased the evidence for climate change impacts attributed to human activities. Many of these tactics deployed by front groups funded by fossil fuel companies over the years have and continue to influence the global leaders and societies mentioned above.  

Science flag:

I am looking forward to sharing new figures, updated numbers, and more intuitive ways for the public and policymakers to interact with the mountain of scientific evidence in the upcoming IPCC report. I have received many questions about the “latest climate science,” as well as the why, the how, and the implications. There are so many gems buried in chapters of the report. While a single peer-reviewed study can push the boundaries of our current scientific knowledge, the AR6 and prior IPCC reports are so valuable because thousands of scientific studies serve as their foundation. Each figure, table, and key message is carefully vetted so that it conveys the most pertinent information to the broadest level of global applications. Regional climate assessments can fill in the gaps locally. However, they all hang off the core principles in this assessment. This goes way beyond a second or third opinion on a medical diagnosis.  

It gives me goosebumps to think about how much initiative, flexibility, and courage the IPCC colleagues, volunteer authors, and reviewers from around the world have as they continue to work through a global pandemic to produce the entire AR6. Those of us who have the privilege to read each other’s publications, and contribute some as well over the years since the last assessment, know what the AR6 contains. What to watch for is: will the public see and feel and be motivated to act on the vast consensus by scientists who participate in sharing the evidence with various forms of media and panels, etc.? Some meetings have been added that are outside the venues we typically participate in, such as a virtual conference in another discipline or a local community gathering.  

It is a clarion call for all scientists—including much needed expertise from social scientists—to draw upon the vast knowledge from their respective fields to help societies better understand how to navigate and be an active part of the changes ahead. Climate change is brought about by human systems, cultures, and societies acting independently, collectively, and sometimes in conflict. We can draw upon lessons from ancient human history and current living knowledge when communities have faced massive extreme changes in the past. What do 20th and 21st century systems and history tell us about what has worked, what no longer is up to this challenge, and where can we improve? We can invest in social dimensions of change through social science, artists, influencers, and leaders in communities at all scales to keep the world closer to one we recognize, such as 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer, while buying more time for adaptation. Or we can continue to resist changing systems and be forced to react, suffer, or adapt to a greater degree to the pace of change that the current path of our systems would bake in—including an unprecedented pace for loss of species regionally or worldwide, much earlier and greater ice sheet volume loss in Antarctica and Greenland, and outdoor activities being severely limited in uninhabitable parts of the world during local summer season. With either extreme path mentioned above or the many scenarios in between, the world through collective action ultimately chooses its fate, and the demand for social science will be immense.  

I look forward to August 9, 2021, when the microphone will be on in Geneva, Switzerland and people around the world will be listening and seeing through their devices the stark findings of the global science community contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. 

In late May, a Dutch court brought new hope to addressing climate change by ruling that Royal Dutch Shell must cut carbon emissions from both its operations and the oil and gas products the company sells. Never before has a fossil fuel company been ordered to reduce its heat-trapping emissions to address climate change. From a legal, scientific and societal perspective, the case against Royal Dutch Shell leaves little doubt that individual companies can be held accountable for driving climate change.

Climate change is a global phenomenon. The scale is enormous, the impacts are severe, and for many the problem feels overwhelming. Thanks to meaningful advances in science, we can better understand climate change at a finer scale, even teasing out how individual fossil fuel companies have contributed to a specific climate event. An ability to isolate the contribution of climate change and connect this with economic data at the census block level is novel and yields remarkable results. A recent study found that the proportion of sea-level rise attributable to human-driven climate change in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut resulted in an additional $8 billion of damage when Sandy raged through the region in 2012. This sum doesn’t capture inequitable distribution of economic damage or account for the lives disrupted or tragically lost.

These costs can be further broken down to make direct connections between actions taken by individual companies and subsequent global climate change impacts. Recent advances in climate attribution studies have connected emissions from the extraction and sale of products from major fossil fuel companies to increased surface temperature, sea level and ocean acidification. A quick assessment of these studies suggests that hundreds of millions of dollars in damage during Sandy from sea-level rise can be attributed to the largest fossil fuel companies. These figures are rough, but with further analysis, scientists can attribute a range of more precise damage amounts from climate change to specific companies.

While these damage amounts from Sandy may seem large, it’s important to remember these calculations are from a single storm, in a specific location, in relation to a singular component of climate change. And these rough estimates don’t take into account the major fossil fuel companies’ past and ongoing role in spreading disinformation about climate science and solutions. Even with these limitations and conservative calculations, the cost is still astonishing. Climate change impacts are costly for people across the globe.

As climate change impacts accelerate, communities are increasingly turning to the courts for assistance and redress. There are currently over two dozen cases seeking to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate damage costs and fraud in the United States alone, with three in our home state of Maryland. This growing trend of resorting to litigation to limit climate harms needs to be informed by communities and actionable science, which should include physical and social science. Investing now in scientists and communities working together can save lives and lessen damage in the future.

The recent Netherlands ruling sparks hope that science and the courts are aligning with the international agreement to limit global temperature increase. After two centuries of research on the negative impacts of burning fossil fuels, it’s frankly surprising that this is the first ruling to address the role and responsibility of the fossil fuel industry in climate change. Advances in science, combined with powerful pressure campaigns and community-led organizing, can inform how we do so: making societal decisions about how to limit climate harms and protect people, as well as holding accountable those responsible for climate-related damage. This is a benchmark moment in the long struggle for climate justice through the courts. Recent weeks prove that scientists can crunch the numbers, courts can assess the evidence, and companies can be compelled to do what is necessary to limit the worst effects of climate change.

Global Decadal Average Temperature

This warmest decade was preceded by the second warmest, which in turn was preceded by the third warmest, which in turn was preceded by the fourth warmest decade, meaning the last 40 years, on average, have been the hottest on record.  The pace of heat-trapping emissions from fossil fuel burning and other human activities has not yet slowed this upward trend. Quite the opposite.

Decadal data by definition looks at long-term trends, so we’ll have to wait another decade before another bar can be added to the temperature chart.  In the meantime, headlines are tracking how 2020 stacked up on the annual ranking.

2020 Global Annual Average Temperature

Independent analyses around the world use slightly different baseline reference periods and approaches to determine the global annual temperature. Given the confidence range for the final number this often yields slightly different rankings between institutions. No matter how you slice it, 2020 was hot!

NASA (USA) and Copernicus (EU) report 2020 as tied with 2016 as the warmest year and NOAA (USA) reported 2020 as the second warmest in their 141-year record. All the more remarkable since an ocean cycle phase in the Pacific Ocean–La Niña–tended to pull down temperatures toward the end of 2020.

Since this number is a combined land and ocean average, it is worth taking a closer look at where the warmth was most notable in 2020.  For this we will report the NOAA Global Climate Report – Annual 2020 rankings which uses the 20th century average for their baseline. 

Breakdown of 2020 land and ocean surface temperature:

 Warmest years:

• The seven warmest years in the 1880–2020 record have all occurred since 2014.
• The 10 warmest years have occurred since 2005.
• 2020 is the 44th consecutive year (since 1977) above the 20th century average.

Hemispheres:

• 2020 Northern Hemisphere was the warmest in the 141-year record.
• 2020 Southern Hemisphere was the fifth warmest on record.

Oh yes, and where most of us live–on the global land surface area–ranked as the warmest on record.  Since the industrial revolution, the United States has contributed the most to the rise in global average temperature. Rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement would be a welcome commitment to reducing emissions.

USGCRP has already saved lives

A few years ago, at a Congressional field hearing, I heard a voice that rang clear from a leader with the DOD, one of the thirteen federal agencies that participate in the USGCRP.  The Vice Admiral and Superintendent of the United States Naval Academy at the time answered a question by describing the extreme sea surface temperatures he’d experienced aboard a navy vessel during military operations. He shared how they enacted mitigation measures to keep sailors safe.  The Vice Admiral reported successful navigation that protected lives and military assets as they ‘thread the needle’ between several North Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes on their return trip to home port: An example of how risks from climate change are among the risks assessed during military operations.

Let’s imagine the USGCRP of the future

It’s 2030.  People are going about their normal activities when suddenly their plans are disrupted by a rapidly-strengthening hurricane heading for their community. A community leader is awakened by an alert from the device on the nightstand. That distills, in easily understandable terms, the relevant information from NASA and DOC (i.e. NOAA).

Mere hours later, community members are following that leader’s vehicle, which has DOT algorithms categorizing various evacuation routes based on models that project hours ahead road congestion points. Meanwhile, DOI and NOAA integrate tropical storm rainfall and river flood potential along the DOT evacuation routes.

These include real-time and forecast information for progress on local, regional, and federal emergency shelters as well as temporary shelter options with private businesses as reservations fill up.  And DOE has enabled people along each independent journey to have access to real-time and forecast information for location and timing of likely temporary power disruptions to vehicle charging stations during the storm.

If there were a public health risk, HHS would have the latest relevant information available and what to do to minimize any risks along each journey far from home.  All of this could occur via anonymous sharing across devices so most people would have equitable access to information during an extreme event.

This kind of coordination and community protection is possible. And in a world where climate change impacts grow more extreme, it’ll be necessary—and we’ll need a strong USGCRP to shepherd it.

Ensuring USGCRP fulfills its potential

Those who have valiantly worked in or contributed to the USGCRP know its tremendous potential. It has the power and experience to coordinate among departments, agencies and institutions. It can bring about the safety protection measures I describe above and much more.

I salute the talented who have and will continue to rotate from the thirteen federal agencies into and out of the USGCRP.  Our needs from this program will only grow, so it’s vital to continue the trend of attracting people with community experience across public and private sectors to this effort. In a warming world, USGCRP can help reduce risks and improve equity, justice, our very lives and livelihoods.

Moments before Greta’s powerful speech to members of Congress on September 18, 2019 in the largest room on Capitol Hill, the Ways and Means Committee room, she was preparing in a small room.  Those of us with her stood a little away so that she might think about the words she was about to share with the world.   Her father, Svante Thunberg, deftly encouraged us to speak in low tones while still engaging in friendly conversation. I remarked to him that I admired his first name because I appreciate that he shares it with the Swedish scientist and Nobel laureate in chemistry, Svante Arrhenius, who made noteworthy contributions in climate science by pointing out how different levels of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere would affect Earth’s climate (the so-called “greenhouse effect”).

Svante Thunberg smiled and replied that he grew up knowing that he was related to, and named after, the Nobel laureate.  However, until recently no one in Greta’s family quite understood exactly what Arrhenius was honored for.  Mr. Thunberg said he himself did not truly appreciate it until Greta started to seriously learn more about climate change.  With a twinkle in his eye and mirthful irony he posited this as a kind of an indicator that even Arrhenius’s own descendants were not sufficiently aware of the climate science—which likely means this applies to most people.  Sure enough, if you look at the Nobel Prize website page, “Svante August Arrhenius was born on February 19, 1859, the son of Svante Gustaf Arrhenius and Carolina Christina Thunberg.”  Greta is distantly related to Svante Arrhenius.

Full circle: we have now received two warnings from Swedish thinkers, one from the 19^th century and one from the 21^st century.  Svante Arrhenius put forth a theory that scientists have been building and expanding ever since, “standing on the shoulders of giants” as the saying goes. Now in this century, Greta Thunberg’s clarion call to leaders in Sweden has grown louder as she continues to speak with leaders around the world. The power of her modern approach ties scientific understanding with the justified urgency of her generation. On Wednesday, Greta testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee and gave what my colleague, Alden Meyer, called the shortest and most powerful testimony he has heard anyone give in Congress during his decades in Washington.

“My name is Greta Thunberg. I have not come to offer any prepared remarks at this hearing.  I’m instead attaching my testimony.  It is the IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the SR 1.5, which was released on October 8^th 2018. I am submitting this report as my testimony because I don’t want you to listen to me, I want you to listen to the scientists, and I want you to unite behind the science.  And then I want you to take real action. Thank you.”

Hours later, I saw her speech to members of Congress and participated in the panel discussion that followed.   It was an honor to sit beside Greta and watch her listen carefully to each question then reply with refreshing honesty, great clarity and power. I have been working in climate science and advocating for climate action for most of my working life. Even so, Greta has inspired me to do more to reduce emissions and share the latest science, with Greta’s words always in mind.

Adults like me are moved to see the inspiring momentum of the thousands of youth like Greta who are challenging “business as usual” and fighting for their future.  Let’s act now. #UniteBehindTheScience

Greta Thunberg and Brenda Ekwurzel during panel discussion after her speech in the Ways and Means Committee room of the U.S. House of Representatives on September 18, 2019. Photo by Alden Meyer

Here are five striking facts about this historic storm to date:

Dorian is now the fifth hurricane to reach category five—the highest level possible on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale—over the past four hurricane seasons in the North Atlantic.

Between 1924 and 2019 there have been only 35 category 5 hurricanes in the North Atlantic. Having five such storms form over just the past four hurricane seasons is way beyond the average occurrence rate.

Even more remarkable is that Dorian broke the record for the strongest storm so far north in the Atlantic east of Florida. Historically, the farther north a hurricane moves in the Atlantic the cooler the sea surface temperatures it encounters, which typically causes the storm to weaken. This time, however, the sea surface temperatures were warm enough to add energy and power to the hurricane. Having sea surface temperatures above what hurricanes need to be fueled, combined with slow-moving speed, can allow a storm to maintain major hurricane status (category 3 or above) for a longer time period.

What’s contributing to these warmer sea surface temperatures? Over the past half century, the ocean has absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess warming caused by burning fossil fuels and overloading the atmosphere with carbon. In keeping with this trend, the globally-averaged ocean temperature for July 2019 was the highest departure from average (+0.84 degrees Celsius; +1.51 degrees Fahrenheit) for July over the entire period of record (1880-2019).

At times, Dorian moved slower than most people walk along its devastating path over the Bahamas.

A nightmare for any person, property, or living creatures and plants along a hurricane path is a slowly churning major category hurricane. The risk of damage increases substantially with sustained major hurricane winds and intense rainfall over many hours.

While over the Bahamas, Dorian not only had sustained winds reaching 185 miles per hour, wind gusts were reported to be over 220 miles per hour. Let’s pause a moment here. Those wind gusts also fall within the highest category for tornadoes on the Enhanced F-Scale for Tornado Damage (over 200 miles per hour for a 3 second gust; note that since 2007 this scale is an update to the original Fujita scale that is based not on direct wind measurements, but rather wind gusts based on damage levels).

After a powerful landfall on Great Abaco Island, Dorian basically stopped over Grand Bahama Island for more than 24 hours, likely breaking records for the most powerful prolonged exposure in Atlantic hurricane history, comparable to Hurricane Mitch of 1998 over Honduras—which did not have a hurricane eye over land for so long as Hurricane Dorian.

Recent research finds that North Atlantic hurricanes have slowed in the speed of translation and are more likely to “stall” near a coast thereby increasing rainfall at those regions.

Dorian went through not just one, but two rapid intensifications (i.e. greater than 35 miles per hour increase in wind speed in less than 24 hours).

Before Dorian, it was unprecedented for rapid intensification to occur from an initial wind intensity greater than or equal to 130 knots (around 150 miles per hour) in the Atlantic. Historically a rare behavior, rapid intensifications of storms have become a dangerous feature of recent Atlantic hurricane seasons. This is why researchers are working hard to increase understanding to better predict rapid intensification and give earlier warning to those along the likely path of the storm. Research links rapid intensification with climate change.

In the last 24 hour, Hurricane #Dorian intensified from 130kt to 160kt … in fact it did this in under 9 hours.

Rapid intensification is an impressive enough feat, but becomes extremely rare from high initial intensities. From 130kt, it is unprecedented in the Atlantic. pic.twitter.com/Fi2e0y7EJo

— Sam Lillo (@splillo) September 1, 2019

Dorian generated massive storm surge in the Bahamas.

The forecasted storm surge for the Bahamas was between 18 and 23 feet. On-the-ground witnesses reported that the Grand Bahama International Airport in Freeport was submerged by Dorian storm surge. The reported elevation of the airport is around 6-8 feet above mean sea level, and the water level was several more feet above ground level. Early satellite imagery suggests around 60 percent submerged land during the catastrophic storm surge for Grand Bahama Island.

More storm surge and intense rainfall are in the forecast as Hurricane Dorian now moves north along Florida toward Georgia and the Carolinas.

Dorian’s forecast is similar to recent major damaging hurricanes Matthew and Florence.

Dorian is eerily similar to Hurricane Matthew (2016), which caused more than $10 billion in damages. Hurricane Dorian is about the same size as Matthew, forecast to be slower moving near Florida, and then moving at a similar speed near the Carolinas.

Dorian is likely to be similar or stronger than Matthew over the Florida to Carolina sections of the path. This spells trouble for the “Space Coast” section of Florida, with water surging over several tidal cycles. It’s also not good news for the Carolinas, which extend further out into the Atlantic and are more likely to intersect with Dorian’s path. The advisory from the National Hurricane Center at 5 PM EDT on September 3 depicts potential landfall in South Carolina on Thursday, September 5.

Hurricane Florence (2018) also underwent rapid intensification to a category 4, then weakened, then grew again to a major category hurricane before ultimately making landfall as a category 1 storm. Florence was the wettest on record for the Carolinas, dropping 20 to 30 inches of rain and causing life-threatening flooding, wind damage, and record-breaking storm surge of 9 to 13 feet.

The climate connection

Why is Hurricane Dorian behaving this way? Some of the key reasons can be found in the recent post, Hurricane Dorian: What Presidential Candidates—and All of Us—Need to Know, by my colleague Kristy Dahl. As she details, scientists expected several of the changes we’re seeing, as warmer oceans help intensify tropical storms, higher sea levels worsen storm surge, and a warmer atmosphere brings greater rainfall intensity.

More disturbing, however, is the fact that scientists are now working hard to better understand some of the more fundamental surprises over recent years: rapid intensifications with recent Atlantic hurricanes  and a tendency toward slow-moving storms than can transfer and absorb more water and energy from the ocean and bring that to land in tragic and devastating ways.

If you are at risk from Hurricane Dorian, local authorities have the latest details for staying safe in the regions where you or your family or friends may be. Be sure to sign up for your community’s warning system; the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather Radio also provide emergency alerts. Please be careful while preparing for Dorian and seek help if necessary. Keep tracking any changes in information with Dorian and, if necessary, prepare earlier rather than later.

Figure 1. Carbon dioxide lingers a long time in the atmosphere.

1. Due to Earth’s carbon cycle, carbon dioxide (CO₂) released by burning coal, oil, and gas today will be trapped in the atmosphere for decades to thousands of years. The more that is released the longer it lingers in the atmosphere (see figure 1).
2. Climate change is largely “baked in” over the next decade and starts to diverge after that (see figure 2). This means that without near-term changes, some of the climate impacts we would see would be irreversible even if we decrease atmospheric carbon dioxide later on in the century.
3. Governments around the world, including the US and the federal agencies that comprise the US Global Change Research Program (including the Department of the Interior, of which the USGS is a part), monitor and report the human activities that overload our atmosphere with carbon, other heat-trapping gases, and aerosols. These climate calculations ensure business leaders; planners; and local, state and national governmental leaders have the most up-to-date tools needed to make informed decisions on behalf of people living in the US.

4. 

   Figure 2. Global carbon emissions and associated global average temperature change.

   Most parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, as stated in goals of the Paris Agreement, have committed to holding Earth’s global average surface temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). We won’t stop working on limiting the rise in global average surface temperature after 2040.

5. Congress, back in the first Bush Administration, recognized the need for examining climate in the long-term. The Global Change Research Act of 1990, which established the US Global Change Research Program, states that the research plan (emphasis added) “shall provide for, but not be limited to the following research elements: (1) Global measurements, establishing worldwide observations necessary to understand the physical, chemical, and biological processes responsible for changes in the Earth system on all relevant spatial and time scales… (4) Predictions, using quantitative models of the Earth system to identify and simulate global environmental processes and trends, and the regional implications of such processes and trends.” Furthermore, the Act requires that the scientific assessment (the National Climate Assessment) “analyz[e] current trends in global change, both human-inducted [sic] and natural, and projects major trends for the subsequent 25 to 100 years.”

In other words, the science allows us (and the law requires us) to look beyond the next 21 years to gauge the coming impacts we may face as the climate crisis mounts. As long as agencies follow the laws of the US, the Department of Defense, NASA, the Department of Commerce (including NOAA), the Department of the Interior, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the other agencies that contributed to the National Climate Assessment should continue to provide the latest evidence and update outlooks up to and continuing past 2040 to ensure the health, safety and economic prosperity of those living in the US.

Hot arctic

Before we jump into the science, let’s take a quick look at the unusual spring weather. This past weekend, Russia was the scene of record-high temperatures. A city above the Arctic circle—Arkhangelsk—recorded a high of 84 degrees Fahrenheit on May 11 at the Talagi Airport weather station. The average high temperature for Arkhangelsk this time of year is around 54 degrees Fahrenheit.

Gloomy weather

Meanwhile in the Northeast US, try having a conversation that doesn’t loop back to the endlessly gloomy, chilly, unseasonable weather. When gloomy weather becomes such a dominant topic of conversation in a region, a form of citizen science is occurring, and it tells you something: it is unusual, it is anomalous, it is downright wacky.

Many locations are not seeing the sun nearly as much as normal memory serves—and science confirms—for this time of year.  The Long Island town of Islip, New York, recorded its longest streak of rainy days on record from April 20 to May 7. It rained for 21 days this April in Boston.

It’s not just in the Northeast: repeated rain events resulted in much of the contiguous US being ranked in the 99th percentile for soil moisture on May 14, including many of the Plain states (South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas) and most states eastward. This is a continuation of a high soil moisture ranking percentile pattern (see Jan – April 2019 in Figure 1). Soil moisture ranking percentile is from the 1948-2000 Climatology

As of this writing, there are headlines with exasperated tones wondering when winter will truly depart, including:

• “Chicago narrowly misses breaking 112-year-old record for late-season snow” – April 28, 2019 Chicago Tribune
• “It MAY snow in the Northeast this week. In MAY” – May 13, 2019 CNN
• “Extreme weather pattern to divide nation next week…”– May 16, 2019 Washington Post

In that third article, Jason Samenow describes the abnormal late May forecast for snow, hail, tornadoes, flooding, and excessive heat to different parts of the contiguous US over upcoming days.

Figure 1. Continental US Monthly Soil Moisture ranking percentile for Jan-April 2019. Repeated rain events resulted in a large portion of the contiguous US being ranked in the 99th percentile for soil moisture on May 14. Source: CPC NCEP NOAA

Damages

Unfortunately, the consequences of these gloomy, chilly, and rainy or snowy conditions are very real in terms of damages, both personal and in the larger economy. People are taking time away from work—lost labor hours—to deal with them. People are pumping water out of basements and throwing away cherished items lost to water damage.

Some of the flooding is from intense storms like the two rare interior US bomb cyclones that caused flooding and prompted governors to spring into action, calling on the National Guard. There is a current backlog of unmet disaster relief requests. Some of the flooding is from water tables rising since relentless repeated rain events don’t allow the soil enough time to dry out.

The natural and human-driven aspects of flooding are critical to tease apart so we can better prepare our communities for the flood risk of today and the changing flood risks of the decades ahead. This is especially important when investing dollars in infrastructure that are anywhere near surface water or groundwater (also known as the water table).

https://twitter.com/anson_ag/status/1128231476691181568

Eurasian October snow cover extent indicator

It may seem counter-intuitive, but the story of the strange weather unfolding this spring in the US is related in part to snow last October in Eurasia. This indicator—the Eurasian October snow cover extent indicator—is proving to be worthy of additional attention by US weather geeks. The good news is that the scientists who were paying attention to the Eurasia snow extent behavior during October, along with a host of other indicators, gave advanced warning of the emerging US winter and spring weather pattern for 2018/2019. Winter sports enthusiasts rejoiced and sought the snow-peaked slopes of Colorado and Utah.

The bad news is it can feel extremely bouncy going through record-breaking cold and record flooding, with temporary relief periods over these past months. It can feel like riding a seesaw. But the lasting memory of the major pattern is what becomes the talk of the region. Terrific winter snowpack, tragic flooding, and gloomy northeast.

You may wonder about the Eurasian snow extent indicator and the broader connections. I encourage those who want to know, to spend some time clicking on the links here or links in earlier blogs that point to even more information (see here, here, here, and here). These describe the details regarding how Arctic sea ice decline, particularly in the Barents-Kara sea ice, north of Scandinavia and Russia, contributes to ocean and atmosphere behavior. Which contributes to Eurasian snow cover extent behavior. And ultimately a wavy jet stream with episodic cold outbreaks over winter and spring in the Northern Hemisphere, including the US.

Here is an example of the science as Judah Cohen explains, “There is a growing consensus that it is Barents-Kara sea ice in the late fall and early winter that has the greatest impact across Eurasia.  Therefore, low Barents-Kara sea ice in November for example, favors a strengthened Siberian high, increased poleward heat flux, a weak stratospheric Polar Vortex and finally a negative Arctic Oscillation. An important point regarding the Siberian high is that it strengthens or expands northwest of the climatological center.  For low snow cover and/or high sea ice the opposite occurs.”  Translation, a weakened polar vortex means more cold outbreaks deep into US territory like this past winter and spring.

We know that burning coal, oil, and gas and the resulting global warming has caused dramatic declines in Arctic summer sea ice extent (minimum occurs in September). It takes longer to cool the warmer than normal Arctic ocean enough to grow new sea ice or thicken remnant ice in the following October and November. Over each successive decade, we are more likely to experience low Barents-Kara sea ice extent over more years, causing weather geeks to keep monitoring jargon indicators: Sea ice extent, Eurasian Snow Cover Extent, Stratospheric Polar Vortex, El Niño Southern Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation, Arctic Oscillation, and more to improve US seasonal outlooks.

This is little consolation to those throwing out their flood-soaked cherished items from Kansas to Maine this spring season.

Here we’ll review five notable patterns from this past cold season.

Cold season pattern #1: damaging ‘bomb cyclones’

The National Weather Service defines the winter season for the US as December through February and the cold season as November through March. The 2018–2019 winter season storm period kicked off with an exceptionally early Thanksgiving blizzard, and even now the storms aren’t quite over as Winter Storm Wesley is likely to break many April snow records.

Like other storms that are given names as they make headlines, Wesley is a rare bomb cyclone, a mid-latitude storm that undergoes a sudden and extreme drop in barometric pressure over 24 hours that leads to rapid intensification. (Note that the exact pressure drop over 24 hours that qualifies is based on the latitude.) As of this writing, Wesley was expected to bring blizzard conditions from Denver to the Minneapolis area, as well as hail to Kansas and eastern Nebraska.

It is rare to have a bomb cyclone within the continental United States, yet two have occurred this season. Along with Wesley, Winter Storm Ulmer (March 12-14) brought blizzard conditions, high winds, sudden melt of ground cover snow and subsequent devastating flooding that destroyed levees. Unfortunately, record-breaking bomb cyclone Ulmer made the US list of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. During Ulmer, Denver set an all-time low pressure record (MSLP) and the strongest non-thunderstorm gust on record (80mph); gusts of 96 mph hit Colorado Springs; high winds derailed a train in New Mexico; and multiple stations logged gusts of more than 100 mph (San Augustin Pass, NM; Cloudcroft, NM; Pine Springs, TX).

Cold season pattern #2: Arctic outbreaks to the Lower 48

Repeated Arctic outbreaks of cold air into the Lower 48 were another feature of this cold season. These are tied to a weakening of the stratospheric polar vortex. Marking an early start to the cold season, Kansas City, Missouri, logged the coldest November temperature on record, with much of the Lower 48 registering below average or much below average minimum November temperatures. Illinois set an all-time record low of -38 degrees Fahrenheit on January 31, 2019.

Imagine what these cold temperature records (as registered on an official thermometer) actually felt like if you were outside and exposed to blowing winds, with increased chances for hypothermia under severe windchill. One Arctic outbreak included a winter storm that brought snow from the northern plains to the Great Lakes and the Northeast; the coldest temperatures in years to the Midwest; and closed schools, cancelled flights, and, tragically, brought an associated weather-related death toll.

Figure 1. Examples of cold outbreaks (Jan 29 and April 11 of 2019). Image source: ClimateReanalyzer.org.

Cold season pattern #3: abundant snowfall

Many winter sports enthusiasts enjoy their favorite activities after a fresh snowfall and this cold season brought abundant snow November through February.  he repeated Arctic cold outbreaks helped because when precipitation occurred, it often fell in the form of snow versus rain, which has been a problem cropping up more frequently in recent seasons.  The ski industry welcomed a much needed boost in visitors and winter gear sales.

Figure 2. Inches of snowfall for November 2018 through February 2019. Image source: NOAA

Cold season pattern #4: intense precipitation and flooding

This winter season also featured an emerging El Niño, a phase of a natural Pacific Ocean cycle that can bring wet conditions to the southern US region during winter. When storm tracks bring moisture from lower latitude ocean regions (such as the Pacific or the Gulf of Mexico) these can dump intense precipitation over the US. Such events were also a feature of this season and brought devastating flooding to many communities in the US.

Unfortunately, this is another pattern emerging over recent years in a warming world and one that was on full display in Louisiana, where the Bonnet Carré Spillway had to be opened for only the thirteenth time since its construction to protect the city of New Orleans from floodwaters of the Mississippi River. We notice (and I have seen it opened myself during a random winter visit to the city) that it has been opened more frequently in recent years, and that this season marks the first time that the spillway was opened in consecutive years for the first time in its 88-year history.

Cold season pattern #5: unseasonably warm Alaska

To top off this look back toward the cold season, we find that Alaska was unseasonably warm.  The records were for record warmth compared to historical cold season trends and were such that traditional dog sled races had to be cancelled. Perhaps no surprise as recent years we have read headlines that remark on the truckloads of snow being brought to Anchorage to allow the start of the Iditarod, Alaska’s most famous dog sled race.

It all adds up to record-breaking extreme weather for the US during this past winter season.  As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report on extreme weather has noted, one of the signatures of climate change is more extreme weather events. Winter 2018-2019 in the US was no exception.

Figure 3. The entire state of Alaska this winter had above or much above average maximum temperature. Source: NOAA

A winter safety infographic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlights some of the risks associated with bitterly cold temperatures.

1. Many US residents will face one of the coldest air masses in decades

Winter storm Jayden was given a name on January 26, 2019, after it met the Weather Channel’s forecast criteria of at least 2 million people residing in areas under a National Weather Service winter storm warning. The snow is forecast to move over the northern Great Plains into the Great Lakes region and then the Northeast, while icy conditions and heavy rain are likely in the South.

Temperatures are predicted to plummet following the wind and snow, as one of the coldest air masses in decades settles into these regions. As the time of writing, blizzard conditions had already shut down interstate 90 in Wyoming and the Governor of Wisconsin declared a state of emergency as deep snow and dangerous wind chill keeps residents hunkered inside.

The Windy City will likely earn its nickname this week as Chicago may have a wind chill of minus-60 degrees Fahrenheit ; if this forecast proves correct, conditions would surpass the record set in 1871.

2.  Climate change weakens the polar vortex, which means near record low temperatures east of the Rockies

Back in 1871, when Chicago’s record was set, major climate change had not yet ramped up. So how can such cold records be broken with climate change? By messing with the polar vortex.

The stratospheric polar vortex is the stream of upper atmosphere air that circles the North Pole during winter. When the polar vortex is strong, temperatures in the Eastern US and Northern Eurasia are generally mild.  But when it’s weak, these areas can experience chillingly cold temperatures like we see today. The loss of Arctic sea ice and general amplified warming in the Arctic region is associated with a weakening polar vortex.

The extreme cold already unfolding aligns with Judah Cohen’s  January 21, 2019 analysis of the polar conditions predicting “over the next two weeks yielding normal to above normal temperatures across western North America including Alaska with cold temperatures across Canada and the United States (US) east of the Rockies.”

January 28, 2019 surface temperature change (degrees Celsius) from historical average (1979-2000). Source: ClimateReanalyzer.org

3. The cold is local to parts of North America—the rest of the globe is quite warm

The featured map above shows the surface temperature change from the historical average for January 28, 2019 and displays the cold outbreak over North America and northern Eurasia. The cold will penetrate further south as the week progresses. But note that Alaska is quite warm as is Greenland, and that for each hemisphere and the world all temperature change is above the historical average for today. Indeed, according to the NOAA global annual temperature ranking outlook, 2018 is expected to rank as the 4^th warmest on record.

Temperature extremes have also occurred in the southern hemisphere. A scorcher in Australia sent large swaths of the country above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), suspended tennis matches at the Australian Open, caused horses to perish near dry watering holes, and led camels to compete with livestock for water.

All of which is to say that the region east of the Rockies can be dangerously cold despite global warming. As Jason Samenow put it: “The polar vortex has fractured, and the eastern US faces a punishing stretch of winter weather.” So zip up and cinch your scarves. Stay safe. And remember that despite this bitter chill, the planet is still heating up.

California wildfires November 2018

Scenes of fiery devastation are heartbreaking to see unfolding in the news and social media.  In this moment, November 15, 2018, there are a dozen active wildfires in California.  Communities have been badly burned, some to the very foundations with scarcely a structure left standing. Thousands have evacuated, more than 60 people have lost their lives, some on foot, some trapped in fleeing cars; there are hundreds of people unaccounted for and family worried sick about them. Camp Fire is now the deadliest in California history.

Thousands of firefighters are battling to contain wildfires in the state. At this writing, the deadly Camp fire, near Chico in northern California, is now 141,000 acres and 40% contained with 9,700 residences and 290 commercial structures destroyed.  In southern California, the Woolsey fire of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, is now 98,362 acres with 62% contained, with 504 destroyed (estimate) and 96 damaged structures.

Wildfires disaster risks

Let us briefly review wildfire disaster risks in general. First, wildfires can be ignited by natural causes such as lighting strikes or by various human activities at the wildland urban interface (WUI), such as when a lit cigarette is tossed or when electricity infrastructure fails.  Power lines may be implicated in the tragic November 2018 Camp Fire. According California data from 2007 to 2016, around 5% of wildfire ignitions were from power lines and were around 11% of the acres burned.

Camp Fire smoke across portions of Northern California. NOAA-20 satellite image November 8, 2018 at 8:40 p.m. Pacific Time. Source: NESDIS/NOAA

Fire suppression, which has cost the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) an estimated average of $554 million per year for the past five years, leaves more vegetation intact. In many places, more vegetation, also referred to as ‘fuel,’ is available to burn for the next fire.

In the western US, vegetation is more flammable than the 1970s with around half of the vegetation drying attributed to human-caused climate change.  Hence, when fires strike in the western US, they are more likely to burn parched vegetation that serve as a tinder box fueling more severe wildfire today compared with the 1970s.

Tragically, when wildfires encounter homes, schools, and businesses it can become a dangerous situation.  Not just the structures at the site of the fire are at risk.  Smoke from wildfires can be lethal locally and a public health hazard when transported far downwind.  Wildfire smoke can disproportionately increase health risks for children or those with heart disease or lung disease.   Among the top 20 deadliest California wildfires from 1933 through November 2018, nearly a third were in 2017 and 2018.  We can and must do better to protect lives from risks posed by dangerous wildfires.

Santa Ana winds

Santa Ana winds in California, sometimes referred to as Diablo winds in the San Francisco Bay area downwind of Mount Diablo, can promote ignition and rapid spread of wildfires by drying vegetation and fanning the flames of fires once they are started. The Santa Ana winds dry out soils, trees and other vegetation much like a clothes dryer does a pair of jeans. Like an efficient dryer, Santa Ana winds increase both airflow and temperature to speed up evaporation of water. But instead of leaving behind freshly fluffed jeans, these winds suck out moisture and prime ecosystems to burn.

Santa Ana influenced fires, which occur between October and April, are different from the warm and dry season fires, that typically occur between June and September. Scientists have found the main reasons why Santa Ana influenced fires contribute the vast majority of cumulative economic losses in California compared to other wildfires that typically occur in the summer.  From 1990-2009, Santa Ana influenced fires spread three times faster, occurred closer to urban areas, and burned into areas with greater housing values. Over the same years, other fires often occurred in higher elevation forests, were more sensitive to how old the vegetation was, lasted for extended periods, and accounted for 70% of total suppression costs.  In other words, other fires burned in remote forests, often with plenty of mature vegetation or ‘fuel’ for long-lasting wildfires. Whereas Santa Ana influenced fires scorched with greater speed through areas that were typically closer to more people.

Factors to watch for to protect communities from fires exacerbated by Santa Ana winds

Santa Ana winds have a name because they are naturally occurring seasonal winds that typically peak during the autumn.  The season bridges the end of the typically hot and dry summer from the typically rainy winter season in California.  California oscillates between wet years and dry years, with the prevalence of dry years outpacing the wet years. Drought years increase the risk of desiccated soils and parched vegetation that form ready fuel for wildfires. When these conditions occur simultaneously with Santa Ana winds, they can influence the severity of wildfires.  Four factors influence the severity of winds during the autumn to winter season in California and are worth monitoring and providing timely and effective warnings for the public at risk.

Factor 1: Pressure difference between western North America high-elevation basins and pressure off the Pacific coast

During the autumn season, a typical weather pattern can set up that is favorable for the occurrence of Santa Ana winds.  A high-pressure pattern predominates over western north America while a low -pressure pattern predominates over the Pacific Ocean.  As a result, the predominant flow of air is from the interior basins, places like Nevada, to the Pacific Ocean.  When this weather pattern sets up, pay close attention to local meteorological reports and fire warnings.  This weather pattern is similar to turning on the clothes dryer.

700-hPascal height anomalies for 25 October 2003, ignition date for Cedar fire, near San Diego CA. Source: Westerling et al., 2004 EOS

Factor 2: Temperature

The air starts out at a cool temperature emanating from the autumn conditions of western US.  The air encounters California mountain ranges and flows through the high elevation mountain passes and heads downslope. The air compresses both due to constriction of the air flowing through the narrow canyon as well as the higher atmospheric pressure at lower elevations (see figure).  The molecules of the air parcel are now closer together, bump into each other, and have “higher kinetic energy.” Therefore as a parcel of air gets compressed, its temperature increases.  This is similar to setting the clothes dryer temperature setting to warm or hot.

Factor 3: How dry the air is

Red columns indicate atmospheric pressure. Higher atmospheric pressure at sea level than on top of a mountain. Source: NASA GISS

Santa Ana winds become drier during their journey downslope. Why does this happen? An air parcel starting at a cool temperature contains a low amount of water vapor.  If that same air parcel warms, such as described above, it can now hold more water vapor and therefore the relative humidity drops. Put another way, for the same amount of water vapor, the relative humidity is higher in cool air compared to warm air.   Hence, the Santa Ana winds become drier and can increase water loss from vegetation that often is already quite dry during drought years or at the end of a summer season.  This is like shifting the auto-dry level from less dry to more dry on a clothes dryer.

Factor 4: Speed of the wind

Another consequence occurs when the air flowing through California coastal ranges is constricted through narrow mountain passes and flows down through the canyons.  This constriction increases the wind speed above the initial wind speed before passing through the narrow mountain topography. Similar to shifting the cycle from “delicate” to “heavy duty” on a clothes dryer.  Santa Ana winds have speeds of 40-60 kilometers/hour (25-37 miles/hour) or in extreme cases over 100 km/hr (62 mi/hr).  It can be extremely difficult to outrun such winds or drive away along canyon roads with neighbors who may be fleeing at the same time. Such winds can help fires grow rapidly, spread quickly and become deadly.

Santa Ana Winds are a natural seasonal occurrence.  Scientists are studying the consequences of climate change and how warmer background conditions interact with the four factors described above.   The findings have the potential to better inform advanced warnings for populations and first responders confronting the risks of Santa Ana wind influenced wildfires.

But, as I and my colleagues have analyzed, this “support” is a PR distraction when these companies are keeping up business-as-usual. They intend to continue producing, marketing and selling fossil fuels at current levels for the foreseeable future, which runs counter to the steep reductions in carbon dioxide and methane emissions needed to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Today UCS released a scorecard,which analyzed what eight major fossil fuel companies are saying they’re doing about climate change, and just how much these companies are doing to drastically lower their emissions.

What did we find? Contrary to media reports and shiny company press releases, most of these major fossil fuel companies continue to mischaracterize climate science.

Why is this important? Any company that makes, markets, and sells a product that is the primary cause of climate change has a responsibility to stay on top of and clearly communicate with the public scientific developments regarding their product. Misrepresenting climate science and underplaying the urgency of action allows companies to justify their business as usual practices all while climate impacts, including increasingly frequent and severe weather events such as Hurricanes Harvey and Florence, get worse and costlier. Releasing inaccurate statements allows companies to “check the box” for voicing belief in climate change, while continuing to funnel tens of tens of millions of dollars to climate-denying politicians, trade associations, and other industry groups that do the dirty work of opposing climate policies.

Major fossil fuel companies fail to accurately represent climate science

We measured whether companies consistently and accurately acknowledged the scientific evidence of climate change in their public platforms. Overall, they didn’t do great.

We found that five of the eight companies we studied had made public statements on climate change that underplayed the need to urgently reduce emissions, emphasized scientific uncertainty, and/or were blatantly incorrect. Only BP amended its statement after UCS and Barnard College called the company out for its deceptive language.

These statements are surprising since these companies have known about climate change for at least four decades now, which would be plenty of time to figure how to make it a priority to accurately convey the latest developments in climate science.   Since 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued climate assessments which companies can rely on. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment (2014) represents the latest* mainstream scientific consensus on climate change and it clearly states that “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” The primaryhuman influence is through the burning of fossil fuels.

*(Earlier this month, this group released a special report detailing the impacts of a global average temperature increase of 1.5C relative to 2C above pre-industrial levels, and pathways to limit temperature increase to that level. See my colleagues’ blog series about what the report means for us and for climate policy).

Let’s see how oil and gas company statements on climate change stacked up.

ExxonMobil

ExxonMobil employs a dedicated climate change team and boasts about leading research around cutting-edge technology, such as carbon capture and storage. Yet the company’s statements on climate change, including the one above, do not consistently reflect the current scientific consensus around the issue.

Contrary to ExxonMobil’s claims, scientific understanding of the likelihood, magnitude and time frame of climate impacts as tied to human-caused climate change has advanced greatly. Research has over the last decade developed to the point where scientists can identify and quantify the part human-caused climate change plays in many types of extreme weather and other climate impacts. For many impacts, the likelihood is high; the magnitude is severe; and the timeframe is now. Scientists have shown, for example, that the likelihood of heat wave similar in magnitude to the one that hit Europe in 2003—during which over 30,000 people died—has doubled. Scientists have also shown that human-caused climate change made the record rainfall that hit Houston during Hurricane Harvey roughly three times more likely and 15 percent more intense.

No matter how much ExxonMobil talks about using oil to lubricate wind turbines, the company knows that most of its oil and gas are being burnt by cars, by energy generation, by human activity—which is the primary cause of climate change.

Chevron

Chevron’s statement misrepresents the IPCC Fifth Assessment’s conclusions, as mentioned earlier, that human activity is “extremely likely” to be the dominant driver of warming since the 1950s, not simply one possible cause of many possible causes, as is implied by Chevron’s phrase “due in part.” Chevron’s seemingly subtle shift in wording is significant because the report shows that the overwhelming majority of the world’s top researchers agree that burning fossil fuels is by far and away the largest contributor to climate change. Injecting any doubt or uncertainty into that conclusion is disingenuous at best, and outright deceiving at worst.

If Chevron is going to quote the IPCC, the company should, at the very least, cut-and-paste from the panel’s report.

ConocoPhillips

ConocoPhillips’s statement on climate science suggests the last decade-worth of climate research, including the most recent IPCC report, simply doesn’t exist.

There are three major issues with the company’s statement: 1) the claim that increasing atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping gases “can lead” rather than “are leading” to climate change, as has been established since at least the IPCC third assessment report, is followed by 2) highlighting uncertainties on the first point, when there are none and 3) proposing that it is sufficient for the company to “manage” global warming emissions rather than reducing them. Alone, each of these statements is problematic and inaccurately represents the mainstream scientific consensus. Together, they subvert the public’s understanding of climate science and supply the company with an alibi for continuing to extract, sell and profit off of fossil fuels.

BP – old and new

When we analyzed BP’s statements from 2018 we found similarly misinforming language. But when we pointed the problematic language out to company representatives (as we did with all eight companies studied), BP promptly made changes that brought its statement back in line with climate science. As you can see in the first attempt, BP emphasizes scientific uncertainty by referring to atmospheric carbon’s “possible” climate impact.  Svante Arrhenius, more than a century ago, published the fundamental scientific principle that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration results in changes to Earth’s temperature.

BP’s new statement, on the other hand, is an excellent example of an accurate copy-and-paste. The company’s new statement mentions the IPCC 5^thAssessment and, unlike Chevron, gets its facts right in stating that human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels, is extremely likely to be the primary driver of climate change.

Shell

Shell’s PR machine has gone into overdrive recently in an effort to paint the company as a climate leader. While Shell falls short in a number of areas, its statements on climate science and the need to reach net-zero emissions are accurate and consistent. There’s no equivocating, no hedging, no backsliding, no prevaricating, and no hiding inaccurate climate statements on less popular pages of its website. Climate change is real, it’s caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, and we need to make changes immediately. Check, check, and check.

Additional studies on the language of climate deception

Several peer-reviewed academic papers have documented how fossil fuel companies have used public communications to mislead the public about the state of climate science and its implications. A University of Reading study published this year showed that up until the mid-2000s, climate change was discussed as a problem with a solution; more recently fossil fuel company language has portrayed climate change as unpredictable and unknowable. Last year, Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes analyzed 187 climate change communications by ExxonMobil and found that while company’s scientists were quietly contributing to climate science and writing reports about it to company executives, the company was paying for advertisements that told a different story.

Watchdogging matters

Whether through outright climate denial, sowing public confusion on climate science, or funding of third-party groups that spread climate disinformation, each of these companies has tried to obscure climate science. But, as we saw with BP, the threat of public exposure and pressure apparently pushed the company to correct its website. As with most companies, major fossil fuel companies want to avoid the reputational risk of being branded climate deniers. This is why public watchdogging really matters.

Fossil fuel companies need to acknowledge scientific evidence that shows 1) the extraction and burning of their product is the main driver of climate change and 2) avoiding the worst climate impacts requires dramatic cuts to carbon emissions immediately.

UCS and members of our science network and supporters will continue to hold these companies accountable for what they (and their trade groups) say and do on climate change.

Figure 1: Note the logarithmic scale on panels b) and c). Original Source: IPCC AR5 WG1 Fig 8-06 and reproduced in USGCRP NCA4 CSSR which can be consulted for full figure explanation here.

Why is the carbon budget so important?

This is largely because carbon in the atmosphere lead to the global temperature increase. The CO2 budget depends also on how much and how fast we reduce the other contributions to temperature rise.  Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, methane (CH4) emissions (which transform into CO₂ in a little over a decade after being emitted to the atmosphere), other well-mixed greenhouse gases and halocarbons from human activities all change the radiative forcing energy (watts per meter squared) which changes the surface temperature of Earth (Figure 1).   Or more precisely:

• The total increase between the average of the 1850–1900 period and the 2003–2012 period is 0.78 [0.72 to 0.85] °C  according to the SPM for the IPCC fifth assessment report (AR5)
• The linear regression change over the entire period from 1901–2016 is 1.8°F (1.0°C). according to the Climate Science Special Report for the US fourth national climate assessment (NCA4)

We already see that climate change influenced impacts are changing at a pace and scale that has surprised many.  Typically, climate change uncertainties tilt in the direction toward larger magnitude impacts due to the tendency to amplify different parts of the ocean, atmosphere, and biosphere system.  The special report will reflect the scientific advances regarding the greater risks that come with another half a degree Celsius temperature increase.   This represents a great advance for small island nations or species that depend on Arctic sea ice to last all year long.  Both are examples of being at risk of crossing perilous thresholds at lower temperatures. More extreme precipitation, dangerous heat waves, and other impacts occur at 1.5 C.  The incentives to stay within the carbon budget grow larger as we gain more evidence on the dangerous thresholds likely crossed with every half a degree additional temperature increase.

What if the carbon budget gives the world a little more time to reduce emissions?

Even if the carbon budget were found to be a bit larger, can we really take a break from our collective efforts to achieve carbon neutral human activities that alleviate poverty?  No.  Imagine a mountaineering expedition preparing to climb the largest mountain in North America – Denali.  Would they really take any less precautions or delay preparations after learning that a new more accurate scientific survey indicated the mountain was slightly shorter?  No. As climber, Nick Parker, put it, “It’s still high, it’s still hard, it’s still cold.”  Just as it is no walk in the park to stay within the carbon budget for remaining below 2 degrees Celsius global temperature increase and especially 1.5 degrees Celsius increase.

Figure 2. Source: IPCC fifth assessment report technical summary figure TFE.8-1

Yet it is possible because we know we still have some carbon budget remaining to work within as we transform our energy systems in equitable, sustainable ways toward net zero carbon emissions.  The scientific community has given the likelihood of achieving a temperature target based on a range of the carbon budget.  According to the IPCC AR5:

‘Limiting the warming caused by anthropogenic CO₂ emissions alone with a probability of >33%, >50%, and >66% to less than 2°C since the period 1861–188022, will require cumulative CO₂ emissions from all anthropogenic sources to stay between 0 and about 1570 GtC (5760 GtCO²), 0 and about 1210 GtC (4440 GtCO₂), and 0 and about 1000 GtC(3670 GtCO₂) since that period, respectively23. These upper amounts are reduced to about 900 GtC (3300 GtCO₂), 820 GtC (3010 GtCO₂), and 790 GtC(2900 GtCO₂), respectively, when accounting for non-CO₂ forcings as in RCP2.6. An amount of 515[445 to 585] GtC (1890 [1630 to 2150] GtCO₂), was already emitted by 2011.’

The carbon budget range is likely an area of great discussion at Incheon, South Korea where everyone is gathered to decide upon the final approved language in the SPM.  To get a sense why, look at the green and yellow stacked bar chart at the bottom of figure 2.  It conveys the range of the carbon budgets that stem from the different models.  Not surprising since these approaches have to assess the natural and human influences on climate as well as the time frame of responses within every part of the system (surface temperature, ocean acidification, biological uptake and releases of carbon, land ice response, etc.).  One check on how well these approaches are doing when taken all together, is to compare the stacked bar chart for the temperature increase Earth already experienced above pre-industrial and compare that with the carbon we already emitted. Spot on. 90 percent of the models agree that Earth would have reached the temperature increase that actually occurred based on the cumulative emissions over the historical period (figure 2).

As soon as the special report is released – expected October 7 at 9 P.M. Eastern US time (October 8 at 10 A.M. local time (KST)) – I plan to tweet the carbon budget numbers for giving a greater than 66 percent probability of less than 1.5 degrees Celsius increase since the pre-industrial period.

Figure 1. Comparison of funding levels in the president’s proposal and the recent U.S. House subcommittee bill for FY 2019 with those enacted in FY 2017. Figure based on data provided by the NOAA 2019 budget summary and the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee report.

House slashes satellite program budget

The House subcommittee bill makes drastic cuts to the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) budget – far deeper than the President’s request and nearly 89 percent lower than FY 2017.  This is no time to reduce funding for NESDIS, as Americans rely on this data and instrumentation to help understand and prepare for extreme precipitation and wind, both of which are becoming more intense due to climate change.  For example, the GOES-R team (a NESDIS research program) is currently addressing issues in the cooling system of the Advanced Baseline Imager instrument, which was recently launched into space on the GOES-17 (also called GOES-West) satellite.  The instrument advances the capabilities for detailed information on rain, cloud and wind.

Also, there are five other instruments on GOES-17 that have been working in space since the March 2018 launch to help researchers and decision-makers understand global climate impacts. These instruments include the cutting-edge lightning mapping capabilities, which enable forecasters to see rapid increases in lightning that often signal a storm may become even more dangerous, identify areas prone to lightning-sparked wildfires, and issue earlier flash flood warnings, enabling people more time to get to safety.  Thank you NESDIS!

Figure 2: Image from satellite GOES-17’s lightning mapper, which detected storms with lightning passing over Kansas and other states in May 2018. Source: NOAA NESDIS

U.S. House scalpel excises climate research program budget, restores other programs

The U.S. House bill keeps in line with the president’s FY 2019 budget request by taking a 38 percent bite out of NOAA’s Climate Research Program, as compared to FY 2017. This includes zeroing out competitive research grants and a 32 percent cut in regional climate data and information. The House FY 2019 bill also, unfortunately, has a 5 percent cut to the National Sea Grant College Program, relative to FY 2017.

On the bright side, the House bill does maintain the President’s request for an increase in funding for laboratories and cooperative institutes by 22 percent. Research funded by the NOAA Climate Program Office includes a study of ways to incorporate near-real time satellite information. One outcome from this study would be to provide the southern Great Plains earlier warnings on seasonal drought onset  that are associated with La Niña phase in the Pacific Ocean.  Farmers, for example, then have a better chance to prepare and minimize losses through improved advanced warning on pending drought conditions.  Other studies funded by the Climate Program Office suggest the Tennessee Valley tends to be drier during the second winter in a row with La Niña conditions .  NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System programs also contribute funding to these cited studies.

Because constituents weighed in with their elected House members, cuts to parts of NOAA’s Office and Atmospheric Research budget were not as severe as in the president’s request. .  And while the president requested a 52 percent cut to the Ocean, Coastal, and Great Lakes Research program, the U.S. House bill just increased their budget by 14 percent.

Senate Markup for FY2019 Budget

We can see there’s still work to be done. America deserves—and can have—the best science and technology to help us understand and prepare for a rapidly changing climate. Now is the time to weigh in with Senators who are grappling with FY 2019 appropriations and share your stories of the many benefits the NOAA satellites programs and climate program office bring to your region.

Here are three reasons why we should pay attention:

1. The NAS scientists signers are the top minds in their fields. Elected by their peers as leaders in their respective field of science, all signers are members of the National Academies of Sciences (NAS).  President Lincoln signed the Act of Incorporation for the NAS in 1863 to provide a service to the nation.  These scientists provide voluntary service–usually at the request of Congress or agencies in the Executive Branch.  These members are used to thinking about the implications of their science and providing advice to the U.S. government. In this case, they got together to provide independent advice on matters of grave concern to the fate of our nation and its people.

2. These leading scientists understand that addressing climate change is urgent. They call on the administration to reverse the decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement. Our intent to withdraw matters since the U.S. is the second largest country emitting carbon dioxide from fuel combustion. The United States originally supported the Paris Agreement and committed to “achieve an economy-wide target of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 per cent below its 2005 level in 2025.” The Trump Administration has reneged on that promise.  As a result, the forecasts for emissions trajectories went up placing in jeopardy the Paris Agreement goal to keep the global average temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial level.  This is a threshold that scientists agree we don’t want to cross if we hope to avoid some of the worst consequence for people and other life on this planet.

3. Considering scientific and technical input is essential for a safe and prosperous nation.  In addition to noting that the U.S. is the only nation to have initiated withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the central core of the statement is a call to restore science-based policy in government. The statement outlines the problem, “The dismissal of scientific evidence in policy formulation has affected wide areas of the social, biological, environmental and physical sciences.”  Evidence abounds.  Clean air protections have been weakened. There likely would be an unequal burden of injustice for those who live closest to sources of hazardous pollutants.  The Centers for Disease Control staff should not have to restrict the words they use to describe important public health matters and should feel free to respond to reasonable public requests for information. Reassignments of experts to positions outside their area of expertise have occurred. The statement also calls “to appoint qualified personnel to positions requiring scientific expertise.” There is an erosion of confidence in leadership at the highest levels of several agencies.  This list is long…

It takes guts to step out and speak up when you see a wrong.  Take note nation, our top scientists are loudly ringing the alarm bells.

Figure 1: The Arctic zone is warming more than twice the global average temperature. Source: NASA GISS

A warmer arctic is part of a trend since 1990 that scientists refer to as “Arctic Amplification.” This refers to the amplified regional response to global warming.  The red colors in the NASA GISS plot for zonal average temperature change over time, indicate that the Arctic zone has warmed more than twice the rate of the global average temperature rise (see Figure 1).  Two new studies add to the mounting evidence regarding correlations with Arctic Amplification and changing severity of weather patterns in North America and Eurasia.  Time to check in on the implications of these studies as we’re witnessing the extraordinary string of Nor’easters pounding New England this winter season.

Warmer Arctic correlated with more frequent cold outbreaks elsewhere in winter

The Arctic used to be so cold during the winter it was as if a fence surrounded it, keeping the coldest air trapped within the North pole region.  A weak spot in the fence could, on rare occasions in the past, lead to cold outbreaks southward into the continental U.S. or Eurasia–these spots are becoming more frequent.  The fence can break the other way, causing the warmer air from the south to also penetrate further north.  Hence the many records mentioned above are being broken across the Arctic this winter while parts of the continental U.S. and Eurasia log colder than expected temperatures. This “fence” in the high atmosphere is called the stratospheric polar vortex.  Unlike a fence that takes time to be repaired and designates a fixed boundary, the stratospheric polar vortex is dynamic.  Therefore, the boundary position changes over time and interacts with other dynamic parts of the atmosphere and ocean.

Science suggests the behavior of the polar vortex is changing with a warming climate, which is starting to tip the scales, but in both directions. During any given winter, parts of mid-latitude North America and Eurasia experience periods of cold and warm weather, but in recent years the differences between them are typically greater – the colds are colder and the warm periods are warmer.

Building upon many studies over recent years, Kretschmer and colleagues correlated when the stratospheric polar vortex was weak (when the fence breaks), northern Eurasia and Canada were colder than normal.  A strong stratospheric polar vortex (when the fence holds) was associated with warmer temperatures in northern Eurasia and the eastern United States and colder temperatures over Alaska and Greenland. Their study published in January advances our understanding of a winter (January through February) pattern observed from 1990 through 2015.  Furthermore, the researchers suggest that seasonal forecasts could be greatly improved by paying attention to the conditions that are observed before a weakened polar vortex event occurs in the winter.

What does this mean for the 2018 Nor’easter season?

Figure 2: Strong 2017/2018 winter and spring Nor’easter season for New England (i.e. colder than normal eastern U.S. surface temperatures and warmer than normal ocean waters off the U.S. east coast).

A recent study by Cohen, Pfeiffer and Francis found that the time of Arctic Amplification (1990-2015) correlates with increased occurrence of heavy snowfall in the northeastern US, but decreased occurrence in the western US, compared with the time period before (1950-1989).  Research is ongoing to better understand the physical mechanisms for these observations.  For now, we can examine the wacky weather that helped create ideal conditions for the ‘Nor’easter’ storms happening in rapid succession over New England this season.

Northeastern storms typically occur when there is a seasonal difference between the relatively warmer ocean compared to the adjacent colder land. First condition was met – a warmer than normal ocean temperatures off the U.S. east coast for this winter season (see Figure 2).  The second condition was also met – the eastern U.S. in January 2018 was colder than normal for this time of year.  Not surprising since there was record-breaking sea ice loss this winter coupled with other strong signals of Arctic warming as well as a polar vortex so weak it split in two.

What does this mean for Alaska and other high northern latitude regions?

Recall that when the stratospheric polar vortex is weak, not only can cold outbreaks penetrate further south, but warm air from the south can also penetrate further north than would be typical in the past.  These warm air incursions into the high north is part of why record warmth occurred this winter season in northern Alaska, northern Greenland, and the North Pole (remarkably above freezing).  Alaska had its fourth warmest December through February on record (Figure 3).  My colleague, Tosin Fadeyi, pointed to some grave consequences for Alaskans grappling with warmer than expected conditions.  Alaskans who depend heavily on subsistence-based hunting face severe challenges from lack of ice and mild winter weather. There have been so many holes in the ice highway along the Kuskokwim River this winter, the community ran out of reflective tape to alert of the dangers. At the end of January a family fell into a hole in the Kuskokwim river ice highway; five survived and tragically one perished.  This warm winter season was preceded by unseasonably warm autumn.  The northernmost town of Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow) historically depended on sea ice to protect it from the autumn storms.  Sea ice can dampen the ability of a storm to generate waves.   Little or no ice can expose the coastal community.   Utqiagvik sustained around $10 million in damage from a storm at the end of September.

Figure 3: Alaska is warming up. Alaska Climate Research Center UAF

Families in New England and Alaska Bearing the Costs of this Winter Season

Perhaps the residents confronting a string of Nor’easters have more in common with Alaska residents than at first glance. Some have compared these Arctic cold outbreaks to a freezer door being left open for a period – frigid air escapes and chills the kitchen and simultaneously the warm air from the room fills the freezer.   More than two million in 13 states in the northeast have suffered power loss after just one nor’easter this season; in Massachusetts, three times in two weeks a storm has resulted in hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses being left without power.

Families suffering multiple days without power may have to throw out an entire freezer and refrigerator-load of food and may seek warm shelter.  Alaska residents who don’t want to risk travelling on ice highways with dangerous holes may not reach traditional hunting grounds to feed their families and their communities.  Families in both Alaska and Eastern U.S. regions are now bearing the costs of the disruptions to activities that used to be sufficiently adapted to the seasons of the past.  Now ice highways can have dangerous holes and the infrastructure supplying power to homes may not be up to the task of withstanding a string of intense storms.

More and more communities are taking note, discussion tradeoffs, and finding creative solutions for more resilient communities.  For the sake of our families, friends and neighbors.

[UPDATE 3/30/2018 9:37am: We updated the post to reflect that this year’s maximum sea ice extent is among the lowest measured].

Now the concerning news: Deep cuts to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research capabilities loom in the FY19 proposed budget (Figure 1). Including complete elimination of federal funding for the following in the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) and the National Ocean Service (NOS):

• NOS: Coastal Science Competitive Research
  

  Figure 1. Proposed NOAA FY19 budget cuts to the office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS), National Ocean Service (NOS), and National Weather Service (NWS). Data Source: NOAA blue book 2019.

• NOS: Coastal Management Grants
• NOS: National Estuarine Research Reserve System
• OAR: Climate Competitive Research
• OAR: Joint Technology Transfer Initiative
• OAR: National Sea Grant College Program
• OAR: Research Transition Acceleration Program

Research forms the foundation for advances in NOAA core missions, including weather predictions that ensure public safety, protect economic assets and activities, and support for navigation by military, commercial and private vessels.

NOAA budget in context

Research and development (R&D) underpins NOAA’s core missions and their importance to people living in the U.S. and beyond. It may come as a surprise to many who inspect this illuminating AAAS graph  that the NOAA R&D budget is tiny (~0.01% of U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 1976, declining to <0.01% of 2016 GDP) compared to most other agencies with R&D programs (e.g. NIH, DOD, DOE, NASA). We really get a lot of bang for our buck at NOAA – an economic analysis revealed that NOAA products and services affect more than a third of U.S. GDP. It is therefore striking to see large cuts proposed for FY19 (Figure 1).

NOAA-funded flood research in Houston in advance of Hurricane Harvey: Were lives saved?

Figure 2. Before and After Hurricane Harvey pictures of Houston Texas. Image source: NOAA

Oklahoma and Texas have experienced devastating floods recently. My colleague Nick Mailloux found an OAR research grant initially funded in 2011 that allowed researchers at the University of Oklahoma to develop computer visualization techniques that helps local planners and decision makers understand the ramifications of current and potential future flood hazards in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. The research team’s 2015 report included a project summary that features an image of a flooded Memorial Drive in Houston from May 26, 2015. The researchers credit collaborators in each city for the success of the project.

Did involving local planners and other key stakeholders in this research increase preparedness for the next flood? We may never know if being involved in this study changed how any of the stakeholders made decisions or shared information during the Hurricane Harvey disaster response. It’s hard to judge the societal benefits of just one research grant, but when we consider the number of competitive grants NOAA provides, the benefits can be significant.

We see this by expanding on our Houston example.  The Sectoral Applications Research Program (SARP), within NOAA’s Climate and Societal Interactions (CSI) program, funds similar studies on issues of extreme event preparedness, planning, and adaptation in the water sector and the drought sector.

CSI is one of the major areas of focus for competitive research grants from the OAR Climate Program Office (CPO). Others include ocean observing and monitoring and earth system modeling. For example, the CPO 2018 call for research proposals includes grants that would advance NOAA’s sub-seasonal to seasonal predictions of weather patterns. Cities planning to buy large stores of salt and sand for snow, businesses planning for shipments during times of flooding, and farmers deciding which type of crop seed to buy all benefit from such research informing operational advances in the National Weather Service’s (NWS) seasonal weather predictions.

Here is the kicker.  The President’s FY19 budget proposal cuts more than a third (37%) from the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) program including a request to completely eliminate competitive research grants in NOAA’s Climate Program Office.

NOAA’s Climate Program Office also funds many laboratories and cooperative institutes and regional climate data and information services, which the President’s budget requests a 22% increase and 32% decrease, respectively, with respect to the FY17 spend budget level.  Other budget changes include this jaw dropping request:

 “…terminate Arctic research focused on improvements to sea ice modeling and predictions that support fishermen, commercial shippers, cruise ships, and local communities. NOAA will also terminate modeling of ecosystem and fisheries vulnerabilities.”

Figure 3. John N. Cobb in Glacier Bay, Alaska. Photo source: NOAA

Given the trend toward increasing variability of weather disruptions in the region – the Arctic is warming at more than twice the global rate and sea ice volume and extent are in decline – now is not the time to back away from Arctic research. If anything, we should be funding more Arctic research. The National Academies of Sciences’ Arctic Matters Report notes that Arctic and subarctic waters supply around ten percent of the fish catch worldwide and that half of U.S. fish catch comes from subarctic waters.

Some good news (and some concerning news) for satellites in FY19

NOAA has top tier expertise and capacity incorporating satellite information to support services across the government such as weather forecasts and safe navigation for military, commercial and private vessels. Yet the FY19 budget requests cutting a quarter of the FY17 spend levels for the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) (Figure 1).

This sizable cut includes over $230 million from the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), NOAA’s polar weather satellites program. According to NOAA:

 “The primary purpose of the JPSS series is to provide global meteorological observations to enable short-term (0-3 days), and mid-range (3-7 days) warnings of severe weather events critical for emergency managers and communities to make timely decisions to protect life and property”

At the AAAS 2018 annual meeting, I heard U.S. Navy Commander Lane, who is the director of the U.S. National Ice Center, say that sub-seasonal and seasonal forecasts improve voyage planning for naval operations in regions with ice hazards for navigation. Close coordination between NOAA, Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, and their Canadian counterparts keeps U.S. sailors safe and helps advance plans for commercial shipping on the Great Lakes and other ice-strewn waters near U.S. ports. It would be prudent to take a closer look at this budget cut to ensure that what remains is sufficient for follow-on satellites and research in support of early and accurate warnings of ice-laden waters, which are increasingly variable in when and where they occur.

Figure 4: GOES-East and GOES-West satellite coverage of the western hemisphere. Image source: NOAA

The good news is continuity for the GOES-R satellite program through 2036. These satellites provide greatly enhanced information for weather forecasts that directly affect public safety. Yesterday (March 1) the GOES-S satellite successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Florida. Once operational, it will be known as GOES West, and will complement GOES East satellite, which launched last year. According to many presentations I saw at the American Meteorological Society’s 2018 annual meeting, the GOES East satellite (also called GOES-16) provided greater lead times and more accurate information for planners during the devastating 2017 hurricane season. There is a planned decrease of nearly $335 million for the GOES-R program, but that’s expected after new satellites are launched. Still, it is prudent to make sure operational costs are sufficient and include research that tests and validates sensors on the new operational satellites.

National Ocean Service FY19 budget cuts research supporting coastal communities

The budget request for the National Ocean Service (NOS) is down 20% from FY17 spend levels (Figure 1), more evidence that federal research programs are in the cross-hairs of this administration. The budget proposes to terminate the Coastal Zone Management Grants Program and the Regional Coastal Resilience Grants Program. This is shocking when we consider that rising seas are already presenting hard choices for hundreds of U.S. coastal communities.

Terminating research that aids in local decision making also likely means worsening inequities between coastal communities with varying resources for surviving and thriving in the face of rising seas. Among the many options for coastal resilience is ensuring that natural defenses like estuarine wetlands remain in place or are intentionally expanded. Yet the FY19 budget proposes to ‘terminate Federal funding support to states for the management of the National Estuarine Research Reserve System.’

Let me know if there are consequences in your region from any of these proposed FY19 budget cuts. Even better, tell your members of Congress as they examine the FY19 request.

Climate change vs. global warming

The president: “There is a cooling and there’s a heating. I mean, look, it used to not be climate change. It used to be global warming. Right? That wasn’t working too well because it was getting too cold all over the place.”

My response on CNN: As a scientist, we tend to use the term climate change because there’s all sorts of changes that are happening on the planet, including global average temperatures rising over the long term. And that latter part is called global warming.  It is not getting too cold. The global average temperatures for the earth is going up and that’s a fact.

Evidence: 2017 was one of the hottest years on record. @NASA and @NOAA agree that 17 of the 18 hottest years have occurred since 2001.

Long-term annual global average temperature increase. 17 of the 18 hottest years have occurred since 2001. Image Source: NOAA and NASA

Arctic sea ice

The president: “The ice caps were going to melt, they would have been gone by now. But now, they’re setting records.”

My response on CNN: We’re losing vast tracks of Arctic sea ice in the summer. And just because it’s winter time, doesn’t mean that you can point to sea ice in the winter and say climate change is not happening. That’s just … gobbledygook.

Evidence: The area around the North Pole is expected to have ice in the winter due to the cold temperatures during this time of year. At the same time, records are indeed being set, but not the kind President Trump is implying: January is currently on track to break the all-time record for lowest Arctic sea ice area for this time of year.

Arctic sea ice area was very low for the month of January in 2017 and 2018. Source: National Snow & Ice Data Center

The president of the United States has a responsibility to correctly represent scientific facts and should make full use of the vast array of scientific information and resources available to him.

As the recent letter from the American Meteorological Society to the President says: “There is a wealth of comprehensive and accurate information on climate change available to you and your staff within government agencies, as well as from experts in academic institutions and other organizations.”

He should consult them.