"This Century" and "Global Dimming"

Fig. 1 NASA S.Florida & Jason-3

I. Start Here

What does "this century" mean, other than being vague enough to be used by Oil-Qaeda funded corporate media as a cover up of the fact that the effects of global warming are happening today?

"This century" ends in 83 years on December 31, 2099.

If 83 years sounds like a science fiction time frame way off in the future, note that 83 years ago ("the past century?") was 1933.

That was not way back into the age of the dinosaurs, no, it was just over a decade after WW I, and it was just short of a decade prior to WW II.

It is the same propaganda technique when the corporate media uses "your grandchildren will be impacted by global warming if we don't do something in the coming years."

There are millions of people alive today who were born back then or some few years after, just as some people born "today" or near today, will have a lifespan that reaches out 83 years from now.

By this 83 years scale the ice sheet of Greenland has been melting for several centuries (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 54, Proof of Concept - 3, 5).

Regular readers of the Dredd Blog System know that this type of event has been happening for a long time, (The Extinction of Chesapeake Bay Islands).

And, it will continue to happen for a science-fiction sounding amount of time into the future.

Remember, the industrial revolution, which was enhanced by burning fossil fuels, began circa 1750.

That would calculate to "3.2 centuries ago" by this 83 year scale [(2016−1750)÷83 = 3.2].

II. Take Sea Level Change As An Example

The photo at the top of the post is a photo of what is already happening in Florida "nowadays."

Consider also the weather forecast for today, further north on the East Coast:

COASTAL FLOOD ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 7 PM THIS EVENING TO 1 AM EDT SUNDAY...

Fig. 2

* LOCATION ... COASTAL AREAS OF NEW JERSEY AND DELAWARE AND AREAS ALONG DELAWARE BAY.

* COASTAL FLOODING ... MINOR FLOODING IS ANTICIPATED AROUND THE TIME OF THIS EVENING'S HIGH TIDE.

* TIMING  ...  HIGH TIDE ON THE NEW JERSEY AND DELAWARE OCEAN FRONT OCCURS BETWEEN 830 PM AND 930 PM THIS EVENING. HIGH TIDE ON THE BACK BAYS, ALONG DELAWARE BAY AND ALONG RARITAN BAY OCCURS LATER THAN THE HIGH TIDE ON THE OCEAN FRONT.

* SURGE ... 0.5 TO 1.0 FOOT ABOVE THE ASTRONOMICAL TIDE.

* WAVES...WAVE HEIGHTS ON THE OCEAN WATERS OFF THE COAST WILL BE 3 TO 4 FEET THIS EVENING. WAVE HEIGHTS ON DELAWARE BAY WILL BE 1 TO 2 FEET.

* IMPACTS ... LOCALIZED ROADWAY FLOODING IS POSSIBLE. SOME ROADS MAY BE CLOSED DUE TO HIGH WATER.

PRECAUTIONARY / PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS ...

Fig. 3

A COASTAL FLOOD ADVISORY MEANS THAT MINOR TIDAL FLOODING IS EXPECTED. MINOR TIDAL FLOODING OFTEN RESULTS IN SOME ROAD CLOSURES. USUALLY, THE MOST VULNERABLE ROADWAYS WILL FLOOD.

DO NOT LEAVE YOUR VEHICLE AT A LOCATION THAT IS PRONE TO TIDAL FLOODING. DO NOT DRIVE YOUR VEHICLE THROUGH FLOOD WATERS. THE WATER MAY BE DEEPER THAN YOU THINK IT IS. YOU WILL BE PUTTING YOURSELF IN DANGER AND YOUR VEHICLE MAY BE DAMAGED, LEADING TO COSTLY REPAIRS.

FOR A LIST OF THE IMPACT OF DIFFERENT TIDE HEIGHTS IN YOUR COUNTY PLEASE GO TO WWW.WEATHER.GOV/PHI/TIDES.

(AccuWeather, CAPS in original). Builds built above the high tide mark in "this century" are now flooding at high tide.

This is happening right now in "this century" at the time we call "today."

"Last month" (April 2016) type impacts are more rarely talked about:

Last month in Greenland, more than a tenth of the ice sheet’s surface was melting in the unseasonably warm spring sun, smashing 2010’s record for a thaw so early in the year. In the Antarctic, warm water licking at the base of the continent’s western ice sheet is, in effect, dissolving the cork that holds back the flow of glaciers into the sea; ice is now seeping like wine from a toppled bottle.

(Yale, Abrupt Sea Level Change). That also is happening in "this century", and in several before it.

It is also difficult to see some of the western versions of "this century" SLR in the U.S.A. according to "this century" watchers:

Sea level signals in turbulent coastal regions, such as the U.S. West Coast, are notoriously difficult to measure from space-based radar, due to the presence of land in the radar returns, sudden changes in the atmospheric water content due to storms, and rapidly changing tidal heights over shallow continental shelves. These and other atmospheric variations combine to throw off satellite readings.

(NASA, Sea Level). That sea level change is a tricky bugger to watch, especially when one doesn't want to see it (Honolulu, Louisiana).

III. Global Mental Dimming In "This Century"

The scary movie people talk about the "methane monster" like it was "Big-Foot" because of cultural populism:

"People are placing too much emphasis on methane,” says Raymond Pierrehumbert, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford and one of the paper’s authors. “And really, people should prove that we can actually get the CO2 emissions down first, before worrying about whether we are doing enough to get methane emissions down.”

(Why we’re still so incredibly confused about methane’s role). Waiting for something to happen that has been happening is a sign of being unaware.
https://external-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/safe_image.php?d=AQCxAGpqaFe0_-Gf&w=300&h=219&url=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.huffingtonpost.com%2Fasset%2F300_219%2F572b89921300001a01380aec.jpg
Right or wrong, the viewpoint that "global dimming" is a major player in global warming dynamics is fading in one sense (the wrong sense):

The latest updates on solar radiation changes observed since the new millennium show no globally coherent trends anymore (see above and Fig. 2).

While brightening persists to some extent in Europe and the United States, there are indications for a renewed dimming in China associated with the tremendous emission increases there after 2000, as well as unabated dimming in India (Streets et al. 2009; Wild et al. 2009).

We cannot exclude the possibility that we are currently again in a transition phase and may return to a renewed overall dimming for some years to come. On the one hand, air pollution mitigation potential is approaching saturation in many of the industrialized nations (Ruckstuhl et al. 2008; Streets et al. 2009), thus confining further human-induced brightening in these areas, while on the other hand air pollution increase and associated dimming may continue for a while in developing and emerging nations. The recent renewed increase in global sulfur emissions (particularly originating from Asia) (Streets et al. 2009), the evidence for renewed declines in visibility (Wang et al. 2009) and in satellite-derived SSR (Hinkelman et al. 2009; Hatzianastassiou et al. 2011), and the lack of warming in the early 2000s may be interpreted as additional indicators for such a development. However, such renewed dimming and associated impacts would likely have a limited persistence, since emerging nations will be forced to implement air quality measures in face of increasingly pressing health problems.

Thus, with the foreseeable inevitability and undisputable necessity for clean air regulations and aerosol reductions also in emerging nations, potential dampening of global warming by a renewed dimming could only be temporary, and greenhouse gases will ultimately become the sole major anthropogenic forcing factor of climate change.

(Enlightening Global Dimming and Brightening, 2012, p. 34, by Martin Wild, PDF; accord NASA: dimming has diminished). It is difficult to keep up with things in a literary world of "worse than previously thought."

IV. Conclusion

Continue to become more aware, then stay aware.

“Enlightenment [on this planet] is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.” - Adyashanti

Ents & The Entities Become Nomadic - 2

Robot Nomads (see video below)

About six years ago, on June 10, 2010, I posted about nomads of climate change (Ents & The Entities Become Nomadic).

"Trees and other flora can't walk, so they will die in place as climate change takes place" was one response to the first post in this series.

The scientists who uttered that nonsense should know better (Amazonian Trees are Migrating: More Climate Change Troubles).

We have many observations of both flora and fauna moving as a result of climate change:

Shrubs expanding northward into a warming Arctic -- and growing taller as they did -- paved the way for moose to expand their range northward too.

That's the finding of a newly published study by scientists with the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the U.S. Geological Survey.

(As shrubs expanded into a warming Arctic, moose followed). This is also instructuve:

Narsaq’s largest employer, a shrimp factory, closed a few years ago after the crustaceans fled north to cooler water. Where once there were eight commercial fishing vessels, there is now one.

As a result, the population here, one of southern Greenland’s major towns, has been halved to 1,500 in just a decade. Suicides are up.

(Perfect Storm: New Global Ground Zero). The Cod have also either migrated or died out, and jellyfish have moved into their prior habitat (A Paper From Hansen et al. Is Now Open For Discussion - 3).

So, if vegetation in your area begins to change, don't be alarmed, other species may move in:

In a paper published June 7 in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography, researchers present evidence that over the past century, vegetation has been gradually moving toward the poles and up mountain slopes, where temperatures are cooler, as well as toward the equator, where rainfall is greater.

Moreover, an estimated one-tenth to one-half of the land mass on Earth will be highly vulnerable to climate-related vegetation shifts by the end of this century ... according to the study.

The results came from a meta-analysis of hundreds of field studies and a spatial analysis of observed 20th century climate and projected 21st century vegetation.

The meta-analysis identified field studies that examined long-term vegetation shifts in which climate ... was the dominant influence. The researchers found 15 cases of biome shifts since the 18th century that are attributable to changes in temperature and precipitation.

(Agnotology: The Surge - 4). That is just the way it is sometimes.

Sometimes too much movement is required (Adaptation), and sometimes the amount of movement required is just right (A Savvy Ecocosmological Earth Calendar - 2).

The previous post in this series is here.

---

---

The Gravity of Sea Level Change - 3

Fig. 1 Vast amounts of water held by ice sheet gravity

In this post I want to talk about a new source of sea level change (SLC) that takes place without any additional ice sheet melt.

I want to write about the SLC which takes place as gravity-held water along the coasts of ice sheet covered land masses is released as the ice sheet's force of gravity decreases.

I am talking about the amount of sea water that is already there in the sea when the ice sheet melts or calves.

Fig. 2 Calculating the volume of water in the wedge

I am talking about sea water that is not the same as the water contained in the ice sheet, which will melt later to become additional sea water.

Notice the difference as shown on the right side of Fig. 1, where the ice sheet is the white mass on top of the dark grey land mass, and where the sea water held by gravity is a blue wedge shape touching the dark grey coastline of the dark grey land mass.

In the search for a reason that SLC software underestimates observed values, I want to attempt to calculate the amount of sea level fall (SLF) of water (deep blue color hugging the coast of Antarctica in Fig. 1) which, during SLC, is relocated to a sea level rise (SLR) area of the oceans (shown as the cyan, orange, and red colors in Fig. 1; Greenland SLF / SLC is shown in Fig. 3).

In other words, when water drops in one place, it rises in another place because the volume of sea water is not changed in this scenario, it is just rearranged.

Fig. 3

We can use the formula for the volume of a prism shape, then divide by 2 (halve it) to derive the volume of a wedge-shaped triangle, which is mathematically equal to the volume of water in the wedge.

On the right side of Fig. 2 are some of the actual dimensions: 1) 20 meters as the height of the water (marked "h₁" on Fig. 1 and Fig. 2); 2) next, marked as "h₂" is the length of the prism (the length of the coastline the gravity-held water is pulled up against), and 3) the base marked as "b" is the full length of the prism base, (in today's application it is 2,000 km, which we eventially divide by 2; it is the distance from h₁ to the "hinge line" which is h₂).

The prism volume formula works like this:

V = (1/2 (b h₁)) h₂
where:

b = 4,000 km (4,000,000 m)
h₁ = 20 m (Mitrovica suggest figure in video below)
h₂ = length of relevant coastline

thus:

V = (1/2 (4,000,000 m * 20 m)) h₂
V = (1/2 (80,000,000 m)) h₂
V = (80,000,000 m / 2) h₂
V = 40,000,000 m * h₂
V = 40,000 km * h₂

---

to apply the calculation to Greenland:
Greenland coastline (h₂) = 44,087 km
(link to source of coastline length)

---

thus:
V = 40,000 km * 44,087 km
V = 1,763,480,000 km³

---

to adapt it to the water wedge,
divide by 2 (wedge is 1/2 of prism)

---

thus:
V = 1,763,480,000 km³ / 2
V = 881,740,000 km³ of sea water relocated from Greenland

---

to apply the calculation to Antarctica:
Antarctica coastline (h2) = 17,968 km
V = 40,000 km * 17,968 km
V = 718,720,000 km³ / 2
V = 359,360,000 km³ of sea water relocated from Antarctica

---

to sum both of them:
V = 881,740,000 km³ + 359,360,000 km³
V = 1,241,100,000 km³ total sea water relocated from both

That is the cubic volume of water that will be released and relocated as a result of loss of ice sheet gravity due to ice melt sufficient to cause 1m of global average SLR by each location.

Which is calculated to cause 20 meters of SLF around Greenland and/or Antarctica, then, when relocated will cause 1 meter of SLR globally for each of them, 2m total (The Gravity of Sea Level Change, 2).

I have been wondering if the SLC projection models take this into consideration, seeing as how they have consistently underestimated SLR:

"Why doesn't it add up?

Together, thermal expansion and melting snow and ice contributed 2.8 ± 0.7 mm per year to sea level rise between 1993 and 2003 (Bindoff et al., 2007). However, that total was lower than the actual observed global mean sea level rise for period by about 10%. What is causing the rest of sea level rise? This discrepancy is often referred to as the sea level enigma, and scientists have offered a number of possible explanations." - Weather Underground

"Expect more water to lap at your shores. That’s the take-home message from two studies out this week that look at the latest data on sea level rise due to climate change.

The first shows that current projections for the end of the century may seriously underestimate the rise in global sea levels. The other, on the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, looks at just how much of the water stored up there has been moving into the oceans." Projections of sea level rise are vast underestimates

Gravity is an import factor that should be included in models so as to add some useful and essential figures.

Watch the video below, if you haven't already, to acquire some additional SLC prowess.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

---

A discussion of, among other things, SLC as impacted by ice sheet mass and gravity:

---