(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . One Decade, That Is How Quickly Climate Can Transition [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-07 Burning fossil fuels is altering Earth’s energy balance and forcing climate changes. We know that we are increasing global heat, collapsing glaciers, rising sea levels, redirecting ocean circulation, and intensifying droughts and storms. We don’t know how much or how quickly. Many, including me, ask how long changes will take. Will there be centuries of gradual and smooth transitions to new steady state temperatures, precipitation, ocean currents and sea levels? Or, will the transitions be punctuated by large changes in some years? Research published by Nisbet, et al. in July, 2023 show that past glacial-interglacial transitions were punctuated by large changes occurring within a few decades. They observed that past transitions have been marked by rapid bursts of methane from natural sources, and since 2006, we have been catalyzing methane release from natural stores along with the methane we release in fossil fuel extraction. The rapid growth in the atmospheric methane burden that began in late 2006 is very different from methane's past observational record Recent studies point to strongly increased emissions from wetlands, especially in the tropics This increase is comparable in scale and speed to glacial/interglacial terminations when the global climate system suddenly reorganized Moreover, we are changing conditions more and faster than nature did in previous transitions. the speed of growth in CO 2 and CH 4 burdens is unprecedented, as is global land use change, so what is to come may be warmer than recent interglacials, even the Eemian. Past performance does not ensure future events, but they do provide guides to assessing possibilities. Here, we can reasonably speculate that the intensity of current forcing will produce larger and more intense transitions than is seen in geologic records of past natural transitions. One significant difference from past transitions is that the geological record shows transitions between interglacial and glacial periods, while we are already in an interglacial state and forcing the Earth into a new hotter state. The linked Ecoshock write-up and interview sums it up well. Do we have any evidence to suggest a burst of more heat can develop – fairly quickly – in a world already hot? Does cold to hot look like hot to hotter? If so, we can expect big changes are possible in quickly approaching decades. In the past, this took Earth out of stable ice age climates and into warm inter-glacials. But we are already in a warm interglacial. What comes next is hard to imagine: loss of sea ice in the Arctic in summer, thinning or partial collapse of the ice caps in Greenland and West Antarctica, reorganisation of the Atlantic’s ocean currents and the poleward expansion of tropical weather circulation patterns. The consequences, both for the biosphere in general and food production in south and east Asia and parts of Africa in particular, would be very significant. Returning to the title, how fast can this happen? Again we are in unprecented times, but we know that temperatures on Greenland can rise rapidly in geological time. Nitrogen and argon isotopes in trapped air in Greenland ice show that the Greenland Summit warmed 9 ± 3°C over a period of several decades, beginning 14,672 years ago. What will we do if Greenland warms and releases its ice in a decade or two? Add on to that water from Antarctic ice and intensifying storms. If we continue business as usual, it will not be pretty or fun. Given the scale of our climate forcing through fossil fuel extraction and burning, increasing releases of natural methane, and climate transitions on the scale of decades observed for past transitions, we need to prepare for changing climate over the next decade. It’s not too late to change ourselves to avoid and mitigate as much damage as possible, though it is past time to think that we can make changes to eliminate consequences of burning fossil fuels to date. Research literature indicates that the Earth can experience large scale changes in climate states in decades. The world might be significantly different 10 years from now. We need to prepare for expected changes and do whatever we can to stop forcing more massive changes. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/7/2093205/-One-Decade-That-Is-How-Quickly-Climate-Can-Transition?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/