How to avoid mass-scale death, destruction and extinction

The FAO Food Price Index shows that high food prices have been around for the past few years. The FAO, in its recent Cereal Supply and Demand Brief, explains that we can expect prices to rise, as illustrated below.

The Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture mentions, in its Food Price Outlook, 2012-2013, that the “drought has affected prices for corn and soybeans as well as other field crops which should, in turn, drive up retail food prices”.

Global food supply is under stress as extreme weather becomes the new norm. Farmers may be inclined to respond to drought by overusing ground water, or by slashing and burning forest, in efforts to create more farmland. Such practices do not resolve the problems; instead, they tend to exacerbate the problems over time, making things progressively worse.

The diagram below shows that there are many climatological feedbacks (ten of which are pictured) that make climate change worse. At the top, the diagram pictures vicious cycles that are responses by farmers that can add to make the situation even worse. Without effective action, the prospect is that climate change and crop failure combine to cause mass death and destruction, with extinction becoming the fourth development of global warming.

How can we avoid that such a scenario will eventuate? Obviously, once we are in the fourth development, i.e. mass-scale famine and extintion, it will be too late for action. Similarly, if the world moves into the third development, i.e. runaway global warming, it will be hard, if not impossible to reverse such a development. Even if we act now, it will be hard to reverse the second development, i.e. accelerated warming in the Arctic.

The most effective action will target causes rather than symptoms of these developments.

Part 1. Since emissions are the cause of global warming, dramatic cuts in emissions should be included in the first part of the responses. In addition, action is needed to remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and oceans. Storing the carbon in the soil will also improve soil quality, as indicated by the long green arrow on the left.

Part 2. Solar radiation management is needed to cool the Arctic.

Part 3. Methane management and further action is needed, e.g. to avoid that methane levels will rise further in the Arctic, which threatens to trigger further releases and escalate into runaway global warming. Measures to reduce methane can also benefit soil quality worldwide, as indicated by the long green arrow on the right.

Thus, the proposed action tackles the prospect of mass death and extinction by increasing soil fertility, as illustrated by the image below.

As indicated at the bottom of the image, the most effective policies to accomplish the goals set out in both part 1. and part 3. are feebates, preferably implemented locally.

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Storm enters Arctic region

Tropical Storm Leslie hit Newfoundland on September 11, 2012. Leslie was discussed in the earlier post by Paul Beckwith. The NOAA image below gives a 5-day forecast of Leslie’s continued path along the coasts of Greenland and Iceland.

That may keep Leslie just out of the Arctic Circle, but this path does make it enter the Arctic Region, i.e. the area where temperatures in the warmest month used to remain under 10°C, or 50°F, as illustrated by the map below.

The image below shows how Leslie’s impact on air pressure. The image below is part of a series of images showing how Leslie causes a low pressure area (compressed isobars) that then propagates over the Arctic ocean region. See further images at the Polar Meteorology Group at Ohio State University.

This low pressure region can also be tracked in the 9-panel GFSx forecast below, from Unisys Weather.

Storms are important to the Arctic, they can cause high waves and changes in wave direction, as illustrated by the combined images below from OceanWeather Inc. 

Storms can cause decline of Arctic sea ice and bring warm water and air into the Arctic. The Diagram of Doom, discussed in more details in an earlier post, pictures ten feedbacks that can cause warming in the Arctic to accelerate. Storms are a factor in many of these feedbacks. 

As illustrated by the NOAA image below, accelerated warming results in high temperature anomalies, increasing the danger of methane releases from sediments under the water.

Paul Beckwith comments that in this case “Greenland acts as a barrier to the storm entering the Arctic due to its 3 km ice cap (note also that the thickness of the troposphere is only about 7 km high in the Arctic, meaning that Greenland extends up in altitude to cover >40% of the atmosphere in which weather occurs). What this means is that the storm will be diverted from directly crossing Greenland.”

Paul adds a warning: “In this case we are lucky in that the storm passes below and to the right of Greenland and then heads past Iceland on its way to north of Scotland. A worse scenario for the Arctic and the sea ice there would be if the storm stalled of the western coast of Greenland and slowly tracked up north through the Davis Strait and across the Canadian archipelago and then directly into the Arctic to the west of Greenland. Such a storm would have devastating consequences to the Arctic and the sea ice (not to mention Greenland, mostly on the coasts). Lots of heat and moisture would be transferred into the Arctic by such a storm.”

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Opening the Doorways to Doom

Snow and ice protect the Arctic from overheating in summer. Firstly the brightness of the snow and ice cover ensures that most sunlight gets reflected back into space. Secondly, a lot of the sunlight that isn’t reflected will be consumed by the process of turning snow and ice into water, which occurs while temperatures remain at the melting point of 0°C (32°F, 273.15 K). 

The Arctic is further protected from overheating by the polar jet stream, which keeps cold air in the Arctic and keeps warm air out. 

The polar jet stream can travel at speeds greater than 100 mph. Here, the fastest winds are colored red; slower winds are blue. View animated version here. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Accelerated warming in the Arctic can alter the polar jet stream in a number of ways, firstly by slowing its speed and secondly by increasing its waviness. Larger swings in the jet stream allow frigid air from the Arctic to plunge farther south, as well as warm, moist tropical air to penetrate northward, explains Jennifer Francis, research professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University. 

Accelerated warming in the Arctic comes with many feedbacks, and this “open doors feedback” is only one of them. Higher temperatures and more open water in the Arctic can also be expected to increase the danger that storms will batter the sea ice with greater ferocity. 

In many ways, it’s opening the doorways to doom. The biggest danger is that Arctic methane stores will weaken, causing huge amounts of methane to be released, triggering warming that could escalate into runaway global warming.  

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