LECTURE ONE: How Abrupt Climate Change is Redrawing the Map // Feb 20, 2019
In my last video I skated on Ottawa’s frozen Rideau Canal and RANTed about abrupt climate change redrawing planetary maps. Now, in the next few video LECTUREs, I show you new peer reviewed scientific papers (free) supporting what I RANTed about.
Tropics are growing by 30 miles (0.5 degrees latitude) per decade; Hadley Cell expansion, but a “tropic squeeze” shrinking is occurring in equatorial regions with heavy rains (Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ). Since 1920, Sahara Desert has grown by 10%, advancing as much as 500 miles northward.
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LECTURE TWO: Abrupt Climate Change Disruption of Your Life // Feb 21, 2019
People used to have to move to experience a new climate. Now, you just have to wait a few years. The North American 100th meridian separating the dry West from the wetter East shifted 140 miles east since 1980.
US Tornado Alley has moved 500 miles east in 30 years. Dorothy, it’s no longer in Kansas. Plant Hardiness Zones migrate Northward 13 miles per decade.
Canada’s Permafrost line has moved 80 miles north in 50 years. Wheat Belts are march poleward up to 160 miles per decade; southern Australia’s is pushing into the sea.
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LECTURE THREE: Your City’s Climate is Shifting Beneath Your Feet // Feb 22, 2019
Thousands of northern lakes no longer freeze up. Amplified warming at high latitudes changed annual ice cover to intermittent or no ice when mean annual surface air temperature exceeds 8.4 C, subject to other factors (lake depth; size, lake elevation; coastline complexity).
A peer-reviewed science paper on “climate analogues” shows how climate in North American cities is shifting south-south-west by an average of 500 miles within a generation. See how fast and far your own cities climate is going.
Ref: Startling Interactive Map Shows What Climate Change Will Do to Your City by 2080. Navigable site, interactive map here: What will climate feel like in 60 years?
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LECTURE FOUR: Four-Fifths of Coldest Arctic Air Volume has GONE // Feb 22, 2019
In this video, I mostly talk on how the coldest Arctic air volumes are gone. In fact 80% of the coldest air masses are no longer there. Not just cold air at the surface, but cold air all the way up.
As the entire Arctic continues warming at rapidly accelerating rates it is only a matter of time when sea-ice no longer forms; Greenland melting will cause rapid sea-level rise. Extreme weather severity, duration, and frequency will also skyrocket, and unprecedented weather events like snow in deserts will occur.
Ref: Indicators and Trends of Polar Cold Airmass: Kanno, Walsh, Abdillah, Yamaguchi and Iwasaki, Published 11 February 2019. Abstract:
‘Trends and variations in the amount of cold air mass in the Arctic and the Northern Hemisphere are evaluated for the 60 year period, 1959–2018. The two indicators are polar cold air mass (PCAM), which is the amount of air below a potential temperature threshold, and negative heat content (NHC), which includes a weighting by coldness. Because the metrics of coldness are based on multiple layers in the atmosphere, they provide a more comprehensive framework for assessment of warming than is provided by surface air temperatures alone‘.
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