While global climate models have done an amazing job of predicting the steady rise of temperatures as a global average, this year’s rash of catastrophic extremes has a lot of people asking if some dreaded “tipping point” has been crossed.
The video above argues “no, but” – the caveat being that climate models, of necessity, paint with a broad brush, and generally have not been able to resolve the much smaller scale at which damaging extremes clobber human infrastructure and agriculture.
Geoscientific Model Development – European Geosciences Union – 18 Nov. 2020:
Many other types of extreme events are by nature small scale, i.e. on the order of a few kilometres to a few hundred kilometres. Such is the case of convective precipitation, flash floods, extratropical wind storms, cyclones, and medicanes. These are poorly resolved at the resolution of global climate models (GCMs) in CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5; Taylor et al., 2012). Increased resolution in GCMs may improve the representation of small-scale processes and features, including orography and coastlines (downscaling effect), but it may also potentially improve the representation of the interaction between small- and large-scale dynamical processes and ultimately improve the large-scale atmospheric flow (upscaling effect)
Important point – in a series of extremes such as we’ve seen in Europe this summer, consecutive events can each set the table for more extreme impacts from the following event.
Example: Heat wave/drought sets up more extreme wildfire, which denudes the landscape, making any extreme rain more impactful with greater runoff, leading to mudslides and avalanches, etc. Communities with fewer resources have difficulty recovering before the next punch lands.
“We have the impression that extreme heat is hitting us sooner and with greater intensity because of our unpreparedness,” he added. “Our perception is also biased by the fact that we are living more often in uncharted territory which gives a sense of acceleration. We now feel climate change that is emerging above usual weather.”
Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, told The Guardian, “I do think we are hitting a tipping point in global consciousness. For years I’ve spoken about the challenge of psychological distance. When people are asked if they are worried about climate change, they say yes, But then when asked if it affects them, they say no. That barrier is falling very quickly as nearly everyone can now point to someone or somewhere they love that is being affected by wildfire smoke, heat extremes, flooding, and more.”
Below, I spoke to experts on the 30th anniversary of Jim Hansen’s 1988 Senate Testimony, on the accuracy of predictions he presented at that time.
Yay! WordPress fixed the on-page comments!
It’s a nonlinear economic multiplier: More of the construction resources are being spent on repairing damage or building more durability and protection in than we have in the past. The air conditioners are running longer. The less prime sources of water cost more to clean up to civil standards. Wealth is disappearing in the form of collapsing property values (and stranded assets).
Happiness and prosperity exist on the margins, and those margins are shrinking:
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”
—Charles Dickens, 1849
Is climate tipping too fast?
Yep.