Some refreshers to remind us why we need geoengineering...

[Veli Albert Kallio]

Here is a brief, sussinct summary by Jom Hansen explaining the temporary flat on global temperature 2012:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130115_Temperature2012.pdf
 
 
Another reminder of the Type 2 climate change, the Abrupt Climate Change (as per the Exeter Definitions, Feb. 2005). http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/a/n/SubjGuide_No.2_Climate_Change.pdf 
 
I highlight "abrupt climate change" aspect for Heindrich Minus One (H-1) ice berg calving event risk from Greenland. (The article abstract enclosed as image.) GCMs of North Atlantic H-1 event (Last Dryas cooling [C/K], figs 2,3), a H0-equivalent event, when a major calving occurred from the Hudson Bay as the remainder of the Foxe-Laurentide Ice Dome failed producing large ice islands.
 
The next month (February 2013) a major statement involving the ACP countries will be issued on the sea level rise risk on H-1 event which is currently in preparation. UN Secretary-General Ban ki-moon earlier conveyed this sea level rise risk to the President Barack Obama which Mitt Romney dismissed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbkYBGVVpSc
 
These are suggestions for the loss of the North Pole ice cap as follows: Wieslaw Maslowski (summer 2013) Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7139797.stm This forecast was later revised to summer 2016 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13002706  But this was then reverted back to original estimate of summer 2013 in the US Navy advice sometime prior to 26th June 2012 (Wikileaks). Peter Wadhams suggested at UK Houses of Parliament Environmental Audit Committee http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/protecting-arctic.html  This view also reiterated here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmenvaud/171/171we03.htm  Seymour Laxton gave the final estimate for Cryosat group sea ice to go by 2020 on 29th August 2012: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/es/news/esnews/2012-08-28 
 
These estimates vary from the next summer (8 months) US Navy 26.06.2012, Wadhams (upto 2 years) to Laxton (upto 8 years). But are considerably smaller than 31 May 2012 advise by Professor Sir John Beddington with error bar from 2030 to the end of 21st century (18 to 88 years). I have been drawing internatiotally attention to the pronounced strong contradiction between 31st May 2012 (Beddington estimate on behalf of HM Goverment and Prime Minister Rt. Hon. David Cameron, MP) and 26th June 2012 leaked estimate distributed internally by the US Navy about the Arctic Ocean becoming ice free this summer (a difference of 100 times). Similar dramatic differences in the US/EU nations estimate to ABC/APC countries 2-3 magnitude difference in estimates prevail in February 2013 statement on the fate of the terrestrial ice (the Polar ice caps) and the resulting sea level rise implications.
 
I am enclosing 31st May 2012 response of Professor Sir John Beddington, FRS to Arctic Methane Emergency Crisis (AMEC) group showing the position of the UK modellers suggesting only a slow marine ice cover response to climate forcing in the Arctic region.
 
The above underlines need to maintain research on geoengineering as the nations' views are diverging and consensus breaks down. As a geoengineering group we need to understand that there ought to be SRM and CDR in the toolbox if the "fast track" nations positions prevail and abrupt responses of the cryosphere accelerate post Arctic perennial marine ice cover loss (i.e. permafrost terrain, seabed methane ice, and terrestrial ice - especially rapid Greenland or WAIS failure as per ABC countries advise to UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon. These matters are complicated by the tensions between the UK and Argentina and different schools of thought.
 
Geoengineers should plan for both gradual and abrupt climate change scenarios to cater for the tastes of the world's different nations.
 
The above opinion is my personal one and it does not represent a view of any nation or organisation.
 
Yours sincerely,
 
Veli Albert Kallio, FRGS
 
Vice President, Environmental Affairs:
Sea Research Society, Charleston, SC
 
Operators of 100 ft oceanographic research vessel "Urraca"
acquired from the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.
 
International Guru Nanak Peace Prize Nominee for 2008;
sea level rise risk for global security & economic stability.
 
UN rapporteur of the First Nations etc motion on polar response

[Andrew Lockley]

To place Veli's post in context, here's a discussion of recent SLR research. I think the commentator's conclusion is quite balanced. Graphs and links in online version. Sorry but Hansen's paper can't be retrieved at present.  :

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-01-03/hansen-still-argues-5m-21st-c-sea-level-rise-possible

Hansen still argues 5m 21st C sea level rise possible

by Stuart Staniford

This is interesting - here is the latest paper from James Hansen and coauthor Miki Sato Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change.  If you are up to reading climate science papers it's highly recommended (I'm a little slow in getting to it - the press release was Dec 8th 2011 but I just got to reading it yesterday and today).A little background is in order - one of the serious scientific debates in the climate science community over the last decade has been the implications of the unexpectedly large acceleration of glacier discharge in Greenland and Antarctica and in particular a discovery by Zwally et al in 2002 that surface melt water can get down the base of a glacier and lubricate its motion.  Prior to the early 2000s it was assumed that ice sheets would decay mainly by melting on the surface and climate models all assumed that they would decay only very slowly in a warmer world - it was a surprise to realize that the most important breakdown mode was actually basal lubrication and sliding down into the ocean.Hansen in particular became the leading spokesman for the view that the ice sheets on Greenland and parts of Antarctica would prove quite unstable under Anthropocene conditions and might break down in a rapid non-linear manner and cause very large levels of twenty-first century sea level rise.  See for example this essay from 2005 in which he says:Consider the situation during past ice sheet disintegrations. In melt-water pulse 1A, about 14,000 years ago, sea level rose about 20 m in approximately 400 years (Kienast et al., 2003). That is an average of 1 m of sea level rise every 20 years. The nature of glacier disintegration required for delivery of that much water from the ice sheets to the ocean would be spectacular (5 cm of sea level, the mean annual change, is about 15,000 cubic kilometers of water). “Explosively” would be an apt description, if future ice sheet disintegration were to occur at a substantial fraction of the melt-water pulse 1A rate.Are we on a slippery slope now? Can human-made global warming cause ice sheet melting measured in meters of sea level rise, not centimeters, and can this occur in centuries, not millennia? Can the very inertia of the ice sheets, which protects us from rapid sea level change now, become our bete noire as portions of the ice sheet begin to accelerate, making it practically impossible to avoid disaster for coastal regions?This kind of nigh-apocalyptic rhetoric from a very senior and respected climate scientist provoked a flurry of papers in response seeking to analyze the situation.  Most of these suggested various reasons why 21st century sea level rise, while likely worse than previously projected (for example in the 3rd IPCC report in 2001), would not be as bad as the worst fears of Hansen.  Hansen and Sato's own description of this new literature seems fair to me:Rahmstorf (2007) made an important contribution to the sea level discussion by pointingout that even a linear relation between global temperature and the rate of sea level rise, calibrated with 20th century data, implies a 21st sea level rise of about a meter, given expected global warming for BAU greenhouse gas emissions.  Vermeer and Rahmstorf (2009) extended Rahmstorf's semi-empirical approach by adding a rapid response term, projecting sea level rise by 2100 of 0.75-1.9 m for the full range of IPCC climate scenarios. Grinsted et al. (2010) fit a 4-parameter linear response equation to temperature and sea level data for the past 2000 years, projecting a sea level rise of 0.9-1.3 m by 2100 for a middle IPCC scenario (A1B).  These projections are typically a factor of 3-4 larger than the IPCC (2007) estimates, and thus they altered perceptions about the potential magnitude of human-caused sea level change.Alley (2010) reviewed projections of sea level rise by 2100, showing several clustered around 1 m and one outlier at 5 m, all of these approximated as linear in his graph.  The 5 m estimate is what Hansen (2007) suggested was possible under IPCC's BAU climate forcing.  Such a graph is comforting – not only does the 5-meter sea level rise disagree with all other projections, but its half-meter sea level rise this decade is clearly preposterous.However, the fundamental issue is linearity versus non-linearity.  Hansen (2005, 2007) argues that amplifying feedbacks make ice sheet disintegration necessarily highly non-linear, and that IPCC's BAU forcing is so huge that it is difficult to see how ice shelves would survive.  As warming increases, the number of ice streams contributing to mass loss will increase, contributing to a nonlinear response that should be approximated better by an exponential than by a linear fit.  Hansen (2007) suggested that a 10-year doubling time was plausible, and pointed out that such a doubling time, from a 1 mm per year ice sheet contribution to sea level in the decade 2005-2015, would lead to a cumulative 5 m sea level rise by 2095.Nonlinear ice sheet disintegration can be slowed by negative feedbacks.  Pfeffer et al.(2008) argue that kinematic constraints make sea level rise of more than 2 m this centuryphysically untenable, and they contend that such a magnitude could occur only if all variables quickly accelerate to extremely high limits.  They conclude that more plausible but still accelerated conditions could lead to sea level rise of 80 cm by 2100I had been following this debate and reading the papers in question and had been somewhat reassuredthat 21st century sea level rise would be not too problematic for civilization at large (though it clearly would be very painful for coastal property owners and jurisdictions).(Before we go on it's worth emphasizing the important aside - hardly any climate scientists doubt that huge quantities of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets would eventually melt and cause tens of meters of sea level rise as a result of human climate modifications - the debate is solely about how much of the consequences of our actions we will experience in the 21st century).However, Hansen is not reassured by these new papers and is doubling down:The kinematic constraint may have relevance to the Greenland ice sheet, although the assumptions of Pfeffer at al. (2008) are questionable even for Greenland. They assume that ice streams this century will disgorge ice no faster than the fastest rate observed in recent decades. That assumption is dubious, given the huge climate change that will occur under BAU scenarios, which have a positive (warming) climate forcing that is increasing at a rate dwarfing any known natural forcing. BAU scenarios lead to CO2 levels higher than any since 32 My ago, when Antarctica glaciated. By mid-century most of Greenland would be experiencing summer melting in a longer melt season. Also some Greenland ice stream outlets are in valleys with bedrock below sea level. As the terminus of an ice stream retreats inland, glacier sidewalls can collapse, creating a wider pathway for disgorging ice.The main flaw with the kinematic constraint concept is the geology of Antarctica, where large portions of the ice sheet are buttressed by ice shelves that are unlikely to survive BAU climate scenarios. West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier (PIG) illustrates nonlinear processes already coming into play. The floating ice shelf at PIG's terminus has been thinning in the past two decades as the ocean around Antarctica warms (Shepherd et al., 2004; Jenkins et al., 2010). Thus the grounding line of the glacier has moved inland by 30 km into deeper water, allowing potentially unstable ice sheet retreat. PIG's rate of mass loss has accelerated almost continuously for the past decade (Wingham et al., 2009) and may account for about half of the mass loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is of the order of 100 km^3 per year (Sasgen et al., 2010).PIG and neighboring glaciers in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica, which are also accelerating, contain enough ice to contribute 1-2 m to sea level. Most of the West Antarctic ice sheet, with at least 5 m of sea level, and about a third of the East Antarctic ice sheet, with another 15-20 m of sea level, are grounded below sea level. This more vulnerable ice may have been the source of the 25 ± 10 m sea level rise of the Pliocene (Dowsett et al., 1990, 1994). If human-made global warming reaches Pliocene levels this century, as expected under BAU scenarios, these greater volumes of ice will surely begin to contribute to sea level change. Indeed, satellite gravity and radar interferometry data reveal that the Totten Glacier of East Antarctica, which fronts a large ice mass grounded below sea level, is already beginning to lose mass (Rignot et al., 2008).However, probably their main point is that the data we have on the Antarctic/Greenland meltdown is relatively short and is consistent with the idea that it's doubling with a relatively short (decade or less) timescale and if you extrapolate that out over the 21st century you get to very large values of sea level rise (a point I made in a blog post back in 2006).  This leads them to include this figure (which I take to be a conceptual sketch rather than an exact forecast):The picture that emerges is a relatively slow manageable sea level rise in the first part of the century followed by increasingly catastrophic levels of change in the latter part of the century as the rapid breakdown of the ice sheets overwhelms everything else.I take Hansen's opinions very seriously.  It's certainly true that there isn't enough data to rule out this scenario yet (though another decade of data should help a lot).  Obviously at this point he hasn't succeeded in persuading most of his colleagues, but neither have they persuaded him.  Only more data is likely to resolve the situation.

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[David Lewis]

a version of the Hansen paper in question is available here  It contains the quotes Staniford is using verbatim.

[Veli Albert Kallio]

I missed out the attachment of Professor Sir John Beddington, the first .pdf file which suggested all sea ice to go sometime between 2030 and 2100 (the end of 21st century). I did ask Professor Sir John Mitchell, FRS, from the UK Met Office who could not identify how the error bar had been arrived although the advise originated from their office. I also enclose the UK Houses of Parliament Environmental Audit Committee Report, the second .pdf file when we presented Arctic Methane Emergency Crisis group's views why we thought sea ice going by 2015 using PIOMAS derived exponential projection, to which Sir Beddington replied with his letter. Beddington and us were soon beaten by 2013 melting date leaked to media on 26th June 2012.
 

I wasn't initially going to disclose the paper works on sea level rise dispute between the EU/US academia and their led peer reviewed journals and conferences. However, this dispute is becoming full fruition the next month when the APC countries will raise their voice of doubts over the West on the time scales on the terrestrial polar ice cap responses. The Presidents of Argentine and Chile raised their Antarctic base research scientist's concerns to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon several times over the last few years. He then discussed the issue with the US President Barack Obama raising the issue of ice sheet stability. This has been in the rise since rapid collapse of Larsen B and then the North Pole sea ice cap in 2007. 

 

Ultimately, the issue has been around for some 20 years since the first Rio de Janeiro summit in 1992 when some UN member states and indigenous people were raising their differing views about the time it took for the ice age era ice domes to collapse and sea levels to rise. The key issue can be defined briefly as follows: the metamorphosis of cold, dry, stable and moraine-forming ice sheets into warm, wet, dynamic and aggregate forming ice sheets in post-sea ice conditions in the Arctic with Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Shelves feared to be collapsing. Larsen B suggesting the harmful effect of excessive melt water accumulation within ice pack, the build up of water pools and honeycombing (weakening of water-clogged) of ice sheet bases. Heindrich Minus One (H-1) risk of large ice islands being formed by sudden breaking up of ice domes being suggested by large deep ocean floor gouge marks over 2000 metres below surface.

The deep ocean gouge marks are found on the Lomonosov Ridge on the middle of the Arctic Ocean and opposite of the mouth of Hudson Straight (the gap between the southern tip of Baffin Island and the northern tip of Newfoundland) on the sea floor southwest, or west of southern tip of Greenland. There are signs of major bed rock break up (fissurisation) and associated mud and rock falls on the sea bed off Melville Bay coast northwest Greenland that is mildly subsiding and which appears similar, in geological terms, to the mouth of Hudson Straight from where the remainders of the warmed and wet Foxe-Laurentide ice dome once fell off. The co-presenter of the UN General Assembly motion 101292, Professor Oren Lyons, reiterated the 1992 concerns in the Plantagon Message on behalf of the First Nations of Americas on their ancient recollections about the rapid response of the then ice sheets: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OjjPETcz6A

The third .pdf file refers to UN General Assembly September 2007 invitation by His Excellency Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria, the-then-Chilean-President to the United Nations Secretary-general Ban ki-Moon to come and hear their concerned scientists about the risks of sudden break-up possibility of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). This was at the time when I was myself presenting for "Arctic - Mirror of Life" symposium convened by his predecessor His Excellency Kofi Annan in Ilulissat, Greenland where I too suggested similar possibilities largely off the record. One mainline scientist who has discovered and reported past, exceptionally large ice movements and resulting ice berg grounding marks from the large ice islands is Antoon Kuijpers. 

 

The ice fjords represent a normal overflow mechanism that tends to break up ice to much smaller ice bergs, while ice shelves tend to be shallower and hence also unable to reach 1,200 metres or more - this leaving the possibility of large sudden break-ups, or ice sheet land containment failures, during the Heindrich Ice Berg calving events. As melt water sinks into ice on the moulins and crevasses, in post sea ice conditions, the water increasingly ends up staying within ice in Greenland, thus soon forming layers of weak ice and ponds near the ice sheet's base. Until recently the water was forming mainly on the perimeter and being soon drained back into ocean, but in deep interior the build up of water is accumulative year-on-year once sea ice goes.  

 

The fourth .pdf file is on the same issue raised by the Argentineans who also suspect the land containment failure risk as the ice sheet gets warmed, increasingly wet and weak. The Pacific Ocean nations then supporting these as they perceive a great role for volcanic islands during the ice ages, recalling the steam column navigation to pinpoint the new islands from the ocean. The early Pleistocene entry of the Melanesian population has received two considerable boosts: discovery of genetically linked (DNA haplogroup) people from Denisova, Russia that is carbon-14 dated to the middle of the Ice Ages at 40 kyr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisova_hominin  And also discovery of ice age habitats further validating their recall of an early Ice Age entry to the region when the Ice Sheets prevailed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caves_of_Nanumanga It bears to be noted that this was explored after the local history telling validating native recalls.

 

The APC countries are currently preparing a communiqué the next month regarding the risks of rapid sea level rises from the polar ice caps which (due February 2013). The US assessment to the US State Department: "Rising sea levels in the Pacific alert the world to the urgent need to tackle global warming, but there is a little sign of concerted agreement." Source also leaked.

 

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Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2013 03:28:56 -0800
From: jrando...@gmail.com
To: geoengi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [geo] Some refreshers to remind us why we need geoengineering...

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