NASA – August 2022 was the 2nd warmest August recorded. And the summer (JJA) of 2022 tied with the summer of 2019 to be the two warmest summers recorded.
NASA
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Gavin Schmidt - What does it mean for the likely outcome for the 2022 annual mean?
2022 is looking to be the 3rd to 8th warmest year, and the 8th year in a row with an anomaly more than 1ºC (~2ºF) above the late 19th Century. https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/s...79600604057603
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The historic heat waves that roasted the U.S. and Europe over the summer may have subsided. But a record marine heat wave is gripping large expanses of the North Atlantic and northern Pacific oceans.
The big picture: It has implications for marine species and extreme weather events, including hurricanes, as climate change exacerbates the problem. NOAA scientists warn it shows no signs of immediately abating.
Driving the news: "Climate change is making every marine heatwave warmer than the last," according to NOAA research scientist Dillon Amaya, who studies marine heat waves at NOAA's Physical Sciences Laboratory, and spoke with Axios on several occasions by phone and email in the past week.
- "Climate change increases the mean temperature of the ocean (i.e., global warming)," Amaya said.
- "Marine heatwaves ride that upward trend and are becoming warmer as a result," he added. "Almost every marine heatwave is warmer than the last because of this climate change effect."
By the numbers: "The North Atlantic is currently something like four degrees Celsius warmer than normal, or at least parts of it are. And you end up seeing similar numbers for the North Pacific as well, it's for about four degrees Celsius warmer than normal," per Amaya.
State of play: Heat wave conditions in both the North Pacific and the North Atlantic have lasted for some three months. "For these parts of the world, these temperatures are unprecedented," Amaya said.
- Vincent Saba, a fishery biologist at NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center, noted it's "warmed faster in the U.S. Northeast shelf than any other region across the country in the last 15 years."
- Fish biomass was still relatively stable, but scientists had observed changes in marine species in the Northwest Atlantic, said Saba in a phone interview last week.
- In the Pacific Ocean, there's a La Niña climate event for the third year in a row, per the World Meteorological Organization. This can lead to warmer than normal conditions in the Northeast Pacific, Amaya said.
Of note: Warming isn't the only impact of climate change.
- "We're also talking about an increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the water, which makes the waters more acidic," Saba said.
- "That can impact shelf species like lobster, highly valuable sea scallops. We're still unclear on what those impacts are."
Threat level: "With climate change some marine species will fair better than others," Saba said.
- Research suggests warmer water species are staying in the U.S. Northeast for longer, while North Atlantic right whales are foraging in different waters as they follow their plankton prey, which have moved locations — raising concerns about potential ship collisions and entanglement with fishing gear.
- It's unclear whether this was due to climate change or warming waters, Saba noted.
- "We've seen major changes in species distributions," he said. "Warmer water species moving north, and a lot of colder water species moving further north out of the system has kind of been the general trend."
- Research that Saba and his colleagues have conducted found warmer waters were leading to almost all female sea turtles hatching — though projections indicate the biggest long-term threats will be in hatchling mortality as nests and beaches warm up and erosion from sea level rise destroys nests.
Zoom in: Bette Zirkelbach, manager of the Turtle Hospital in the Florida Keys, said along with the hatchlings issue, she's seen an increased prevalence of fibropapillomatosis (FP), a tumor-causing disease that primarily affects green sea turtles.
- In the past 12 months, 70% of about 47 turtles admitted to the hospital with FP were diagnosed with internal tumours and had to be euthanized as there's currently no treatment for internal turmors, Zirkelbach said in a phone interview Tuesday.
- "Warmer waters cause these tumours to grow," she said.
Meanwhile, 20 Kemp's ridley sea turtles were flown to the hospital from New England last year after the critically endangered animals stayed too long in Cape Cod Bay instead of moving out with the Gulf Stream.
- "The cold weather hits and they get trapped," Zirkelbach said.
What to watch: The marine heat wave isn't just a threat to animals. Models project it may exacerbate the deadly Hurricane Fiona if the storm continues to to track northward and enters the Northwest Atlantic later this week.
- If this occurs, it would help Fiona maintain its tropical nature and intensity for longer than if the marine heatwave were not there, Amaya notes. However, "the strong winds and associated upper ocean mixing may help to cool off parts of the ocean that are really warm right now."
The bottom line: To break up the marine heat wave, "the atmospheric wind patterns need to revert back to normal and the ocean would then need time (typically several months) to cool back down without being poked again," Amaya said.
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- US Senate approves climate treaty limiting potent greenhouse gases
The Senate on Wednesday voted to ratify a climate treaty limiting the use of highly potent greenhouse gases called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), although the U.S. has already taken steps to comply with the terms of the accord.
In a vote of 69-27, the Senate voted to ratify the Kigali Amendment, which calls for phasing down HFCs. HFCs are frequently used in appliances such as air conditioners and refrigerators and can be thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide in terms of warming the planet.
While the approval of the treaty is a big symbolic step, the country already has laws in place along similar lines.
In 2020, the U.S. passed a bipartisan bill that requires phasing down HFCs by 85 percent over 15 years when compared to a baseline level.
That measure was seen as a rare bipartisan climate win, pushed through by Sens. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.).
One reason such a measure may have been able to gain bipartisan traction is support from industry, which has already been transitioning toward alternatives.
“Ratifying the treaty sends the signal to the rest of the world that we’re on board with this HFC phasedown and it removes a barrier to competition for our domestic manufacturers,” said Chris Jahn, president and CEO of the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical manufacturers.
Wednesday’s action was also bipartisan, with 21 Republicans joining Democrats in supporting it, including GOP Sens. Roy Blunt (Mo.), John Boozman (Ark.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Cindy Hyde-Smith (Miss.), John Kennedy (La.), Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rob Portman (Ohio), Mitt Romney (Utah), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Ben Sasse (Neb.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Roger Wicker (Miss.) and Todd Young (Ind.).
And while the U.S. is already moving toward the treaty’s goals, University of Michigan environmental policy professor Barry Rabe said that Wednesday’s move may give the U.S. more climate credibility on a global stage.
“Just in the initial years of this decade, the U.S. has really begun to move from the position of a global laggard, certainly on HFCs and certainly on methane, into more of a leadership role and I think that would be further cemented or underscored by ratification of Kigali,” Rabe said.
He also said it’s important to maintain credibility for trading partners going forward.
“There is a question of how the world would feel — trade partners would feel — about dealing with the U.S. for its alternatives if it could get them from another country that was producing HFC alternatives,” Rabe said.
The Senate vote doesn’t automatically ratify the treaty, which must also get formal ratification from President Biden, who supports it.
In signing on to the agreement, the U.S. will join nearly 140 other countries in making the pledge to phase down HFCs.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-en...y-phasing-out/
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- Climate change is turning lakes a different color
Blue lakes run the risk of losing their color due to climate change, a new study shows.
A team of researchers from across the country examined 5.14 million satellite images for 85,360 lakes and reservoirs from around the world and taken between 2013 to 2020 to figure out the most common water color.
Researchers chronicled and published their findings in the bi-weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters earlier this week.
The seven study authors found that the Earth’s lakes fell into two primary color groups, blue lakes and green-brown lakes. Blue lakes are far less common than green-brown lakes and make up less than one third of the planet’s lakes, the study found. They are also more likely to be clustered together.
Algae and sediments impact lake color, so study authors characterized lake color by determining the frequent lake color over seven years. Researchers took those findings and used them to create an interactive map where users can explore the most common lake colors.
But researchers also found that air temperature, precipitation, lake depth and elevation also affect lake color.
Researchers found that blue lakes tend to be deeper than their green-brown counterparts and located in cool, high-latitude regions with high precipitation and winter ice cover.
Meanwhile, green-brown lakes are found in drier regions, along coastlines and continental interiors, the study also found.
This influence of climate on lake color led the study authors to believe that if global temperatures continue to change, so will the color of blue lakes.
If climate change persists, the percentage of blue lakes may decrease.
“Warmer water, which produces more algal blooms, will tend to shift lakes towards green colors,” said Catherine O’Reilly, an aquatic ecologist at Illinois State University and co-author of the study. “There are lots of examples of where people have actually seen this happen when they studied one individual lake.”
Americans get their drinking water from lakes, streams and ground water. Study authors noted that one consequence of lake color change could be an increase in water treatment costs since color is a common metric used to determine water quality.
“If you’re using lakes for fisheries or sustenance or drinking water, changes in water quality that are likely happening when lakes become greener are probably going to mean it’s going to be more expensive to treat that water,” said O’Reilly.
“There might be periods where the water isn’t usable, and fish species might no longer be present, so we’re not going to get the same ecosystem services essentially from those lakes when they shift from being blue to being green.”
Changing lake color could also impact cultural or recreational activities, researchers added.
As global temperatures rise, lakes in northern Europe will most likely lose winter ice cover, which could mean less cold-weather activities.
“Nobody wants to go swim in a green lake,” O’Reilly said. “So aesthetically, some of the lakes that we might have always thought of as a refuge or spiritual places, those places might be disappearing as the color changes.”
https://thehill.com/changing-america...fferent-color/