Month: August 2021

The Dream World of Covid Denial

CNN’s unlikely superstar Donie O’Sullivan interviewing members of an Alabama Trump Rally audience.

Massive Surface Melt on Greenland

Tweeted by Josh Willis of NASA:

On the transit to Kangerlussuaq, we flew over set of massive melt ponds and rivers that had begun to refreeze. Our Captain Jim Haffey, who’s flown the ice sheet for 25 years, said it was more melt than he’d ever seen.

Washington Post:

Greenland just experienced another massive melt event this year. But this time, something unusual happened. It also rained at the summit of the ice sheet, nearly two miles above sea level.

Around 6 a.m. Saturday, staff at the National Science Foundation’s Summit Station woke up to raindrops and water beads condensed on the station’s windows. Rain occasionally falls on the ice sheet, but no staff member recalls rain — even a light drizzle — ever occurring at the summit before.

“Basically, the entire day of Saturday, it was raining every hour that [staff] was making weather observations,” said Zoe Courville, a research engineer at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. “And that’s the first time that’s been observed happening at the station.”

Dirk Van As of Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland tweets:

My experience is more limited, but in 6 years of Greenland fieldwork, I never saw anything remotely like this.
My video below from 2016 is typical for comparison.

Continue reading “Massive Surface Melt on Greenland”

Catastrophic Flooding in Tennessee has Climate Fingerprints

Nashville Tennessean:

Between 8 and 15 inches of rain fell across Houston, Humphreys, Dickson and Hickman counties, according to the National Weather Service. In McEwen, located in Humphreys County, 14.5 inches of rain fell over 12 hours, according to the Tennessee Valley Authority. Local totals may approach 17 inches as more reports come in, TVA said. 

Tennessean again:

Between 8 and 15 inches of rain fell across Houston, Humphreys, Dickson and Hickman counties, according to the National Weather Service. In McEwen, located in Humphreys County, 14.5 inches of rain fell over 12 hours, according to the Tennessee Valley Authority. Local totals may approach 17 inches as more reports come in, TVA said. 

Turns Out, Warming, Extremes, Not so Good for Food Crops

The “CO2 will green the earth” crock turns out to be, well, a crock.

CNN:

Devastating heat. Debilitating droughts. Crippling frost. Extreme weather is creating nightmares for farmers around the world — and making food more expensive for Americans.Arabica coffee futures have almost doubled over the past year to seven-year highs as Brazil grapples with frost conditions that have wiped out crops. Retail coffee prices will likely follow suit.

Sugar prices are also on the rise, driven up by the frost in Brazil as well as dry weather in the Dakotas and Red River Valley. Wheat, one of the most common food sources for the average diet, has surged to the highest level in nearly eight years amid soaring temperatures and droughts. 

The food price spikes demonstrate how extreme weather, much of it caused by the climate crisis, is having a real-world impact on Americans. And climate scientists warn the fallout will only intensify from here.

“Climate change is coming right into our dining room tables,” Cynthia Rosenzweig, adjunct senior research scientist at the Columbia University Earth Institute, told CNN Business.

World food prices have soared by 31% over the past year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Supply shortages caused by extreme weather is one of several factors behind this food inflation. “There’s no doubt that changes in weather patterns are impacting our food supply,” said Jennifer Bartashus, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence who covers retail staples and packaged food. Robert Yawger, a 35-year veteran of the commodities industry, is no stranger to price booms in agriculture. But unlike prior booms, this one isn’t being driven by typical factors like emerging market demand or a weak US dollar.

“In the past, it wasn’t that there was a climate catastrophe rallying everything at once,” said Yawger, executive director of energy futures at Mizuho Securities. “I’ve never seen anything like this — where everything is bid to the moon at the same time.”

Morning Ag Clips:

 As temperatures recently reached triple digits, farmer Joe Del Bosque inspected the almonds in his parched orchard in California’s agriculture-rich San Joaquin Valley, where a deepening drought threatens one of the state’s most profitable crops.

Del Bosque doesn’t have enough water to properly irrigate his almond orchards, so he’s practicing “deficit irrigation” — providing less water than the trees need. He left a third of his farmland unplanted to save water for the nuts. And he may pull out 100 of his 600 acres of almond trees after the late summer harvest — years earlier than planned.

“We may have to sacrifice one of them at the end of the year if we feel that we don’t have enough water next year,” said Del Bosque, who also grows melons, cherries and asparagus. “That means that our huge investment that we put in these trees is gone.”

A historic drought across the U.S. West is taking a heavy toll on California’s $6 billion almond industry, which produces roughly 80% of the world’s almonds. More growers are expected to abandon their orchards as water becomes scarce and expensive.

It’s a sharp reversal for the almond’s relentless expansion in California’s agricultural Central Valley, whose dry Mediterranean climate and reliable irrigation system made it the perfect location to grow the increasingly popular nut.

Continue reading “Turns Out, Warming, Extremes, Not so Good for Food Crops”