Science Snippets: Expect Extreme Weather Events

Draft script:

From Scientific American on 27 March 2024 comes this headline: Global Warming Is Slowing the Earth’s Rotation. Here’s the subtitle: “Drastic polar ice melt is slowing Earth’s rotation, counteracting a speedup from the planet’s liquid outer core. The upshot is that we might need to subtract a leap second for the first time ever within the decade.”

Oh, really? That’s the upshot? Not that anthropogenic global warming underlies the ongoing Mass Extinction Event. Not that anthropogenic global warming is destroying habitat for all life on Earth. Onto the important topic: “we might need to subtract a leap second for the time ever within the decade.”

A Harvard University geophysicist provides the bottom line of this article: “Do we continue … adding or subtracting seconds from our definition of a day, or do we accept this irregular difference as normal and give up the bother of continuously correcting?”

Onward, then, to issues of minimal importance relative to the article in Scientific American, at least according to the Scientific American author. I’ll start with an article at earth.com. Titled Strongest ocean current on Earth is speeding up and causing problems, this article was published on 31 March 2024.

Here’s the lede: “The Antarctic Circumpolar Current … is the most powerful current on Earth, encircling Antarctica and influencing the global climate.” The relevant question asked by the article comes from the two ensuing paragraphs: “Over the last few decades, observations show that it has been speeding up. Experts were uncertain whether this was a result of human-caused warming or a natural pattern.

However, scientists have discovered that this oceanic powerhouse is getting even stronger. What does this mean for our planet’s future?”

The article at earth.com refers to a peer-reviewed, open-access paper published in Frontiers in Marine Science published on 22 February 2024. It is titled Revisiting the multidecadal variability of North Atlantic Ocean circulation and climate.

The Abstract of the paper in Frontiers in Marine Science includes this information: “It is shown that although the entire North Atlantic is systematically warming, the climate trajectories in different sub-regions of the North Atlantic reveal radically different characteristics of regional decadal variability. There is also a slowdown of the thermohaline geostrophic circulation everywhere in the North Atlantic during the most recent decade. The warming trends in the subpolar North Atlantic lag behind the subtropical gyre and Nordic Seas warming by at least a decade. The climate and circulation in the North Atlantic remained robust from 1955-1994, with the last two decades (1995-2017) marked by a noticeable reduction in AMOC strength, which may be closely linked to changes in the geometry and strength of the Gulf Stream system.”

The bottom line for this article comes in the final paragraph of the Discussion and conclusions: “There is another aspect of the state of resilience of the Gulf Stream system. The last decade witnessed an ‘abnormal’ behavior of the Gulf Stream, which did not occur during the previous 50 years. It manifested in accelerated warming of the Slope Water over the past decade (Seidov et al., 2021). Based on our analysis of the AMOC fingerprints—temperature, salinity, and density of the upper 1500 m—we cannot yet be sure that the North Atlantic Ocean climate will remain resilient if it drifts towards a warmer and lighter upper ocean state. It is also unclear if a slower upper arm of the AMOC state will ignite less resilient and more fragile modes of the North Atlantic Ocean climate. We also cannot be sure that the trends of sea surface temperature and density continue toward much warmer and lighter surface ocean water for the foreseeable future. Whether they do or not, the AMOC’s fate remains unclear. However, our analysis implies that the current North Atlantic Ocean circulation and climate remain relatively stable amid observed surface warming and possibly related recent AMOC slowing.”

From Alaska Public Media comes a story published 11 March 2024. Titled Trees are expanding north in Alaska’s Arctic as a result of sea ice loss, here’s the lede: “Trees are gaining ground in the Arctic as a result of climate change.” The first paragraph goes on: “A group of scientists studying tree cover in Alaska’s Brooks Range found that trees are expanding north and at higher elevations, in part due to the loss of Arctic sea ice, which is disappearing because of human-caused global warming.”

The story published by Alaska Public Media indicates that melting sea ice leads to open water. Evaporation from the open water occurs rapidly relative to the sublimation and evaporation of water from ice.

The trees in this region are dark green conifers. The lack of albedo from these trees will undoubtedly contribute to local warming as the trees soak up the sun.

It’s not just the trees responding to ever-declining sea ice. Large animals are moving north. Salmon are increasing locally.

Oh, it’s way worse than that. Let’s turn our attention to the other end of the thermometer.

Here’s the headline from the Arizona Republic, the Phoenix metropolitan area’s largest daily newspaper: Extreme weather can kill Arizona’s saguaro cactuses and desert plants. Here are tips. The article quotes the Chief Science Officer at the renowned Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix: “This summer was, at the very least, a double whammy because it was so exceedingly hot for an extended period of time and we essentially got no rain. When you put these two factors together, what ends up happening is their physiology starts to fail and they become stressed, and their way of survival becomes less efficient. Under extreme temperatures and drought, saguaros can be more susceptible to infections or illnesses, and in some cases, they are not able to recover from regular dehydration that happens during the dry season. And we’re seeing the effects of that at unprecedented levels right now.”

The article in the Arizona Republic concludes with those tips mentioned in the headline. The tips are restricted to taking care of plants during drought and high temperatures. There is no mention of tips that might enhance human survival.