Arctic temperatures set a new record high in 2011, beating the record set just the previous year in 2010.

Surface temperature anomaly for the region extending from 64oN to 90oN, from 1880 through 2011, in degrees Centigrade above or below the temperature during the 1951-1980 base period.  

The annual mean surface temperature (land and air) for the region north of 64oN (the Arctic Circle is at 66° 33′N) in 2011 was 2.28° C above the 1951-1980 base period, beating 2010′s record of 2.11° C.  Temperatures in the region have been rising rapidly since the late 1970s and have not dropped below the long-term mean since 1992 — nearly 20 years.

Even with the cooling effects of a strong La Niña influence and low solar activity for the past several years, 2011 was one of the 10 warmest years on record – and the warming is especially concentrated in the Arctic.

Annual global surface temperature anomalies, 2011.  The largest and most extensive
warming (indicated in shades of red) was concentrated in the Arctic.
Source: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

NASA’s James Hansen expects record-breaking global average temperatures in the next two to three years because solar activity is on the upswing and the next El Niño will increase tropical Pacific temperatures. The warmest years on record so far were 2005 and 2010, in a virtual tie.

The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was about 285 parts per million in 1880, when the GISS global temperature record begins. By 1960, the average concentration had risen to about 315 parts per million. Today it exceeds 390 parts per million and continues to rise at an accelerating pace.

Rising temperatures are being accompanied by a decline in Arctic ice volume.

Ice volume for December 2011 was 12,230 km³ , 47% lower than the maximum in 1979, 37% below the mean and 1.6 standard deviations from trend. PIOMAS  ice volume for September 2011 was 380 km³ lower than the previous record of 2010, but this difference is within the estimated uncertainty of PIOMAS. The same appears to be true for December 2011 as well – ice volume is lower but within the range of uncertainty – as the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center reports 2011 volume is lower than the previous record of 2010.

A Russian research team surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia reports dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean.

The Independent interviewed Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed:

Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we’ve found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It’s amazing. I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them.

In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed. We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal.

Scientists have calculated there is about 1.7 trillion tons of carbon in soils of the northern regions, about two and a half times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Much of that carbon leaks out in the form of methane rather than carbon dioxide. Methane is 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 100 year time horizon – but 72 times as potent over 20 years.

Here’s a dramatic video of methane burning from a frozen lake in Alaska.

Some extinction events in Earth’s past have been linked to warming causing methane to be released, leading to even more warming and more methane release in a deadly feedback loop. Once the carbon locked in the permafrost begins to thaw and be released, the process could be impossible to stop.

With the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change. Semiletov’s research confirms the Siberian permafrost is already melting.

Semiletov released his findings for the first time last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Are humans really stupid enough to cause their own extinction? Sadly, I’d know where I’d place my bet.

The World Meteorological Organization recently reported global greenhouse gas emissions rose at a record pace in 2010. Now another new analysis by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists, comes to the same conclusion: emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, the largest amount on record. The combustion of coal represented more than half of the growth in emissions.

The brief pause in the growth of emissions during the recession is over, at least for now. Emissions grew at a rate of ~3% yearly during the last decade. The growth rate in the 1990s was ~1% per year.

The analysis showed developing countries, including China and India, have surpassed the wealthy countries in greenhouse emissions. In 2010, developing countries were responsible for 57% of global emissions. But don’t think that rich countries are off the hook. The fast rise in developing countries has been caused to a large extent by the outsourcing of energy-intensive manufacturing industries. The rich countries have exported some of their emissions while continuing to consume the imported goods.

Meanwhile, the climate talks in Durban are going nowhere. The latest “earth-shaking” news is that China may agree to legally binding emissions reductions – but no earlier than 2020, and only if Kyoto is extended, and only if rich nations kick in $100 billion annually to a nonexistent mitigation fund. The U.S. is saying it isn’t interested, preferring “bilateral agreements”.

The clock is ticking. If the rise in greenhouse gas emissions is not reversed quickly and substantially, by 2020 it will be game over for saving Earth’s human-friendly climate.

Global temperatures in 2011 have likely been warmer than any previous strong La Niña year, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Despite a relatively cool, La Niña influenced 2011, the 10-year running average for the period 2002-2011 ties 2001-2010 as the warmest 10-year period on record.

Even before the climate talks in Durban began on Monday, participating nations were conceding that the chances of reaching any meaningful agreement were zilch. Expectations are low: the best to be hoped for is an agreement to begin negotiations on a global deal that can be implemented by 2020, along with making “some progress” on establishing “financing mechanisms” to help developing nations deal with the impacts of global warming. With western economies in the process of imploding, any agreement on money transfers – no matter how modest – may now be out of reach.

Two days into the talks, actions by Canada threaten to torpedo what remains of the global climate process. A rumor surfaced that the government of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper plans to formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol on curbing climate change before the end of 2011. Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent, commenting on but refusing to confirm the report, referred to the Kyoto agreement as “in the past” and stated that opting into the treaty was “one of the biggest blunders” made by the previous Liberal government.

The “rumor”—coming so early in the climate negotiations—is likely to render the low-held chances for a treaty breakthrough at the Durban talks even more remote.

Time is fast running out if catastrophic climate change is to be averted. Just recently Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA) and one of the world’s foremost authorities on climate economics, warned:

If we do not have an international agreement whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door to holding temperatures below 2 ° C will be closed forever.

The thinking that a 2 ° C rise would be “safe” is optimistic, as no climate model currently incorporates the amplifying feedback from methane released by a defrosting tundra. A new study published in Nature titled Climate change: High risk of permafrost thaw finds the permafrost can be expected to releases up to 380 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent by 2100:

Arctic temperatures are rising fast, and permafrost is thawing . . . . Our collective estimate is that carbon will be released more quickly than models suggest, and at levels that are cause for serious concern.

We calculate that permafrost thaw will release the same order of magnitude of carbon as deforestation if current rates of deforestation continue. But because these emissions include significant quantities of methane, the overall effect on climate could be 2.5 times larger.

The new study only looked at the land-based permafrost.  A study published last year warned release of even a fraction of the methane stored offshore in the Eastern Siberian ice shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.

The new study finds:

Across all the warming scenarios, we project that most of the released carbon will be in the form of CO₂, with only about 2.7% in the form of CH₄. However, because CH₄ has a higher global-warming potential, almost half the effect of future permafrost-zone carbon emissions on climate forcing is likely to be from CH₄. That is roughly consistent with the tens of billions of tonnes of CH₄ thought to have come from oxygen-limited environments in northern ecosystems after the end of the last glacial period.

Edward Schuur, lead author of the study in Nature, pleads that we must address the source of emissions from humans if we are to have any chance of keeping Arctic carbon frozen in permafrost rather than going into the atmosphere.

Given what’s going on in Durban – where the best outcome that can be expected is for the rich nations to agree to throw a hundred billion dollars or so as a sop to the poorer nations, rather than actually doing anything to slash emissions – the chances of that coming to pass are approaching zero.

The U.N. World Meteorological Organization reports greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached a new high in 2010 – and the rate of increase has accelerated.

The publication WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin: The State of Greenhouse Gases in the Atmosphere Based on Global Observations through 2010 reports there was a 29% increase in radiative forcing from greenhouse gases between 1990 and 2010.

Globally averaged levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) have reached new highs, with CO2 at 389.0 ppm, CH4 at 1808 ppb, and N2O at 323.2 ppb. These values are greater than those in pre-industrial times (before 1750) by 39%, 158% and 20%, respectively.

CO2 is the single most important man-made greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, contributing about 64% of the total increase in climate forcing by greenhouse gases. CO2 emissions result from the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and changes in land-use.

CH4 – contributes about 18% to the overall global increase in radiative forcing. Methane emissions result from human activities such as cattle raising, rice planting, fossil fuel exploitation and landfills. About 40% of methane emissions come from natural sources such as wetlands. After a period of temporary relative stabilization from 1999 to 2006, atmospheric methane has again been rising, likely because of the thawing of the methane-rich northern permafrost and increased emissions from tropical wetlands.

N2O contributes about 6% to the overall global increase in radiative forcing. N2O emissions result from the use of nitrogen-containing fertilizers, including manure, which has profoundly affected the global nitrogen cycle. Over a 100 year period, its impact on climate is 298 times greater than equal emissions of carbon dioxide.

Halocarbons together account for about 12% of the increase in radiative forcing. Some halocarbons such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), previously used as refrigerants, as propellants in spray cans and as solvents, are decreasing slowly as a result of international action to preserve the Earth’s protective ozone layer. However, concentrations of other gases such as HCFCs and HFCs, which have been substituted for CFCs because they are less damaging to the ozone layer, are increasing rapidly. HCFCs and HFCs are very potent greenhouse gases and last much longer in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

While greenhouse gases continue to rise at an increasing rate, the leaders of Earth’s “greatest” nations continue to fiddle. After the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009 ended in a debacle, governments pledged to try to sign a new treaty in 2012, when the current provisions of the Kyoto protocol expire. Fiona Harvey at the U.K. Guardian reports that before critical climate talks even begin next week, most of the world’s leading economies are privately admitting that no new global climate agreement will be reached before 2016 at the earliest – and that even if it were negotiated by then, they would stipulate it could not come into force until 2020.

2020 is too late if catastrophic climate change is to be averted. Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA) and one of the world’s foremost authorities on climate economics, warns:

If we do not have an international agreement whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door to holding temperatures below 2 ° C will be closed forever.

While global leaders fiddle, Earth is already beginning to burn (and drown). In an advance draft of the Summary for Policymakers of the upcoming report Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX, the IPCC observes there has been an increase in temperature extremes, extreme precipitation events, and economic losses from extreme weather- and climate-related disasters.

While noting the effects of climate change are already being felt, the IPCC is pulling its punches. Joseph Romm at Climate Progress fumes:

The thing to remember about IPCC reports is that pretty much everyone involved has to sign off on every word, so it is inevitably a least common denominator document. The actual scientific literature from 2011 is far more useful than this report.

Romm in his post discusses and provides links to many recent studies showing the systemic influence of global warming on climate events. Climate change is already here – and will keep getting worse.

Massive die-offs of oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest show ocean acidification from an excess of CO2 emissions has already begun.

In Netarts Bay, from 2006 to 2008, oyster larvae began dying dramatically. Elizabeth Grossman, in an article in Yale Environment 360, quotes Netarts Bay hatchery owner Mark Wiegard:

Historically we’ve had larvae mortalities [usually related to bacteria] . . . My wife sent a few samples in and Hales [Burke Hales, a biogeochemist and ocean ecologist at Oregon State University] said someone had screwed up the samples because the [dissolved CO2 gas] level was so ridiculously high.

Taylor Shellfish Hatchery in Washington, the country’s largest producer of farmed shellfish and one of the largest oyster producers, has also reported dramatic losses.  Hood Canal has some of the Pacific Northwest’s highest levels of ocean acidification. Taylor’s hatchery there experienced the loss of about three-quarters of its oyster larvae, losses which are now being mitigated by buffering the high acidity.

Wild oyster beds in the Pacific Northwest are suffering, too.  Wild oysters in Willapa Bay,  Puget Sound, and off the east coast of Vancouver Island have seen reproductive failure because acidic waters have prevented oyster larvae from forming shells. Acidic water sometimes kills oyster larvae outright, so that they fail to survive past the egg stage. At other times the eggs hatch; but the larvae, stressed as they try to forms their first shells, fail after a week or two.

The water now washing ashore in Oregon and Washington actually absorbed its CO2 30 to 50 years ago. Oceans absorb about 50% of the CO2 released by burning fossil fuels. Since then, emissions have been rising even more dramatically.

Ocean acidity has increased approximately 30% since the Industrial Revolution and is on track to be 150% more acidic by the end of the century than it has been for 20 million years. Ocean acidification depletes seawater of the compounds that organisms need to build shells and skeletons, impairing the ability of corals, crabs, sea stars, sea urchins, plankton and other marine creatures to build the shells they need to survive. Ocean acidification could destroy all of the globe’s coral reefs by 2050 and threatens the entire marine ecosystem.

2011 has seen new record lows established for Arctic average sea ice extent and area; sea ice volume; and for global sea ice area.

Neven at Arctic Sea Ice Blog reports that the 12 month rolling average for Arctic sea ice extent set a new record in October 2011 at 10.66 million km². The previous record of 10.67 million km² had been set in October 2007.

The record for Arctic sea ice area has also been broken. The October 2007 was again the previous record, standing at 8.39 million km². Annual average Sea Ice Area dropped to 8.34 million km² for the 12-month period ending in October 2011.

Sea ice volumes have been decreasing far more quickly. The previous record value from PIOMAS was 15,075 km³, set in the 12-month period ending in January 2008, a record that held for just 29 months. The 12-month period ending in September 2011 set a new record, averaging 13,140 km³.

Global sea ice area (Arctic and Antarctic combined, as calculated at Cryosphere Today) has also reached its lowest maximum on record, as seen in this graph posted here.

It’s hard to see the new record in the graph above, but Neven posts this chart showing the numbers.

Earth’s cryosphere continues to wither under the assault from global warming.

If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re heading.

So begins the Executive Summary of the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2011.

And where is it we are heading?

We cannot afford to delay further action to tackle climate change if the long-term target of limiting the global average temperature increase to 2°C, as analysed in the 450 Scenario, is to be achieved at reasonable cost. In the New Policies Scenario, the world is on a trajectory that results in a level of emissions consistent with a long-term average temperature increase of more than 3.5°C. Without these new policies, we are on an even more dangerous track, for a temperature increase of 6°C or more.

Four-fifths of the total energy-related CO2 emissions permissible by 2035 in the 450 Scenario are already “locked-in” by our existing capital stock (power plants, buildings, factories, etc.). If stringent new action is not forthcoming by 2017, the energy-related infrastructure then in place will generate all the CO2 emissions allowed in the 450 Scenario up to 2035, leaving no room for additional power plants, factories and other infrastructure unless they are zero-carbon, which would be extremely costly.

Unfortunately, we’ve come to learn 450 ppm CO2 is much too high to avoid catastrophic climate consequences.

The conclusion that limiting CO2-equivalent to 450 ppm will succeed in limiting temperature increase to 2°C is based on the assumption that no feedback loops will kick in, an assumption that is already proving unfounded – for example, Arctic amplification is already kicking in and thawing permafrost will further accelerate global warming.

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced from its current ~390 ppm to at most 350 ppm. To be safe, we’ll likely have to get back to pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm, and rather quickly.

And how are we doing? The European Environment Agency keeps track.

Even under the most optimistic (more accurately, unrealistic) scenarios, it’s looking like the IEA’s outlook is unjustifiably rosy. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now about 390 ppm, however, the concentration of CO2e has already hit 450 ppm.

A 2011 paper by Dr. Minqi Li of the University of Utah lays out the horrible and inexorable consequences of continuing to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere:

It is now widely understood that human economic activities have led to emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels consumption, which contribute to long-term global warming and threaten to bring about global ecological catastrophes.

In 2010, the global average land and ocean surface temperature was 14.6°C, which was 0.9°C higher than in 1880 and 0.3°C higher than in 2000 (NASA 2011).

If global warming rises above 2°C (relative to the pre-industrial time), dangerous climate feedbacks may be triggered, leading to the release of more greenhouse gases from soil and ocean. For this reason, 2°C warming is generally considered by scientists as the “safe limit” beyond which global warming may be out of human control.

A 3°C warming would destroy the Amazon rainforest, leading to a further warming of 1.5°C. Southern Africa, Australia, Mediterranean Europe, and Western US would turn into deserts. Sea level could rise by 25 meters and billions of people could become environmental refugees.

With a 4°C warming, the melting of the Arctic permafrost could release massive amount of carbon dioxide and methane. Algae, the main carbon sinker in the ocean, would die out. The world is set for runaway global warming that could lead to additional temperature rises by several degrees.

If global warming rises to 5°C and above, much of the world would cease to be inhabitable and global human population could suffer a catastrophic decline. Table 4 summarizes the potential consequences of various degrees of global warming. It is not exaggerating to say that the very survival of the human civilization for centuries to come is at stake.

* * *

Without any further increase in greenhouse gases, the current level of greenhouse gases already implies a long-term warming of 2-4°C.

Note that Dr. Li, an economist, does not hesitate to point the finger at human economic activity as the cause of climate change.

Naomi Klein emphasizes this same point – that capitalism is the culprit – at The Nation: lowering global emissions as drastically and as rapidly as climate science demands can be done only by radically reordering our economic and political systems in ways antithetical to the “free market” belief system. Climate change is a consequence of unrestrained greed.

The fact that the earth’s atmosphere cannot safely absorb the amount of carbon we are pumping into it is a symptom of a much larger crisis, one born of the central fiction on which our economic model is based: that nature is limitless, that we will always be able to find more of what we need, and that if something runs out it can be seamlessly replaced by another resource that we can endlessly extract. But it is not just the atmosphere that we have exploited beyond its capacity to recover—we are doing the same to the oceans, to freshwater, to topsoil and to biodiversity. The expansionist, extractive mindset, which has so long governed our relationship to nature, is what the climate crisis calls into question so fundamentally. The abundance of scientific research showing we have pushed nature beyond its limits does not just demand green products and market-based solutions; it demands a new civilizational paradigm, one grounded not in dominance over nature but in respect for natural cycles of renewal—and acutely sensitive to natural limits, including the limits of human intelligence.

Climate change is a message, one that is telling us that many of our culture’s most cherished ideas are dangerous and destructive enough to not only imperil human civilization but to ravage the capacity of Earth to sustain life. Averting catastrophic climate change requires nothing less than a radical overhaul of our economy and society. Averting catastrophic climate change requires that the nations of the world abandon their obsession with economic growth and instead focus, above everything else, on slashing fossil fuel consumption.

Beginning like, now. Not next week, next year, next election, next congress, next climate conference. Now.

Fat chance of that happening.

A draft summary of an international climate report says that freakish weather disasters — like the October snowstorm in the northeast U.S. and the record floods in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries — are already occurring more often and that the frequency of extreme  weather events will to continue to increase, at a huge cost.

Jeff Masters at WunderBlog describes the multi-billion dollar damage from the October snowstorm . . .

It’s time to add another billion-dollar weather disaster to the growing 2011 total of these costly disasters: the extraordinary early-season Northeast U.S. snowstorm of October 29, which dumped up to 32 inches of snow, brought winds gusts of 70 mph to the coast, and killed at least 22 people. Not since the infamous snow hurricane of 1804 have such prodigious amounts of October snow been recorded in New England and, to a lesser extent, in the mid-Atlantic states. Trees that had not yet lost their leaves suffered tremendous damage from the wet, heavy snow. Snapped branches and falling trees brought down numerous power lines, leaving at least 3 million people without electricity. The damage estimate in Connecticut alone is $3 billion, far more than the damage Hurricane Irene did to the state. Hundreds of thousands still remain without power a week after the storm, with full electricity not expected to be restored until Monday.

. . . and reports that 2011 has already set a new record for the number of billion dollar plus events, with nearly two months to go before the end of the year:

The October 29 snow storm brings the 2011 tally of U.S. billion-dollar weather disasters to fourteen, thoroughly smashing the previous record of nine such disasters, set in 2008.

Joseph Romm at Climate Progress charts the increase in billion dollar events over the last thirty years.

The IPCC report, to be issued in a few weeks, predicts costs will rise and some locations will become “increasingly marginal as places to live.”

Global warming isn’t only about subtle changes in daily average temperatures. It’s also about the increasing frequency of severe climate-related events that cause economic damage and kill people.

A new study published in Nature Geoscience by Ian Joughin and Richard B. Alley titled Stability of the West Antarctic ice sheet in a warming world reports recent observations by satellite show substantial mass loss from the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS).

Losses range from 100 to 200 gigatonnes per year, the equivalent to 0.28 to 0.56 mm per year sea-level rise – and the rate is increasing.

This excerpt is from the abstract:

Ice sheets are expected to shrink in size as the world warms, which in turn will raise sea level. The West Antarctic ice sheet is of particular concern, because it was probably much smaller at times during the past million years when temperatures were comparable to levels that might be reached or exceeded within the next few centuries. Much of the grounded ice in West Antarctica lies on a bed that deepens inland and extends well below sea level. Oceanic and atmospheric warming threaten to reduce or eliminate the floating ice shelves that buttress the ice sheet at present. Loss of the ice shelves would accelerate the flow of non-floating ice near the coast. Because of the slope of the sea bed, the consequent thinning could ultimately float much of the ice sheet’s interior. In this scenario, global sea level would rise by more than three metres, at an unknown rate.

The study’s authors suggest loss of the large ice shelves by atmospheric or oceanic forcing would probably lead to collapse of the bulk of the marine ice sheet. Temperature predications for 2100 approach the thresholds of ice-shelf viability in many simulations.

With CO2 emissions increasing by a record amount in 2010, temperatures by the end of the century are likely to be at the top end of or even exceed IPCC predictions. Meeting the 2° target the IPCC warns is necessary to avert dangerous climate change depends on limiting atmospheric CO2 to no more than 450 ppm. We are a little below 400 parts per million now – and heading higher. Recent research has found that the WAIS collapsed and rebuilt multiple times matching the cycle of Northern Hemisphere’s pattern of glaciation and glacier retreat – collapsing much more frequently when atmospheric CO2 hit 400ppm.

Sea level rise is now going up about 3.5 centimeters per decade. A collapse of the marine ice sheet in West Antarctica would raise sea levels by more than three meters over the course of several centuries or less – in the past, sea levels have risen at a speed of up to one meter per 20 years.

It’s bad enough that the Greenland ice sheet is melting: Greenland setting a new melt record in 2010, and Greenland melting in 2011 well above average with near-record mass loss. Now we may be witnessing the start of the destabilization of the WAIS.