Earth’s melting permafrost threatens to unleash a dangerous climate feedback loopNew permafrost study underscores the critical importance of ambitious climate targets, like the Paris agreement.

By Dr Joe Romm

In this so-called “drunken forest,” in Alaska, the trees tilt because the once-frozen ground (permafrost) is thawing. CREDIT: NSIDC.

Global warming will defrost much more permafrost than we thought, a new study finds. Every 1°C (1.8°F) of additional warming would thaw one-quarter of the earth’s frozen tundra area — releasing staggering amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs).

Those GHGs would in turn warm the planet more, melting more permafrost, releasing more GHGs, and so on. This is perhaps the most dangerous amplifying carbon-cycle feedback humanity faces — considering permafrost contains twice as much carbon as the atmosphere does today.

That’s why it’s so vital the U.S. adheres to its commitments in the 2015 Paris climate agreement — a landmark accord in which the world unanimously committed to…

GR: Here’s your daily dose of bad news for climate change. This study doesn’t consider the effect of the increased permafrost thaw. However, we know that thawed permafrost releases methane and other gasses. Expect new global-warming projections soon. (Link to recent post concerned with extent of permafrost thaw.)

Thawing permafrost has communities like Newtok, Alaska literally losing the ground under their feet. Credit: Getty Images

“More than 40 percent of the world’s permafrost—landscape covered in frozen soil—is at risk of thawing even if the world succeeds in limiting global warming to the international goal of 2 degrees Celsius, according to a new study.

“Currently, permafrost covers about nearly 5.8 million square miles, and scientists found as much as 2.5 million square miles of that could thaw—about twice the area of Alaska, California and Texas combined—in a 2 degree Celsius scenario. Thawing would be more limited if warming can be held…

April 2, 1917, US President Woodrow Wilson asking Congress for a declaration of war before entering World War I on April 6, 1917

Trump’s dangerous theatre of the absurd: He had Russia notified (or notified them) before air strikes against Syria on the 100th anniversity of US entry into World War I: “Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line. U.S. military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield“(See entire DoD Statement at the bottom of this blog post.)

Unlike Trump, Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for permission on April 2nd before entering World War I on April 6th. Trump, on the other hand, waited until the US House went home for Easter to attack Syria!

The US had had its ships sunk without warning many times prior to entry into World War I, including…

Science and Technology:

¶ E.ON is collaborating with Dutch company Ampyx Power to develop the latter’s airborne wind energy system. The agreement aims to further development of the system towards commercial deployment. Ampyx is moving toward building and operating a demonstration site for the airborne wind energy concept in County Mayo in Ireland. [reNews]

Ampyx Power system (image: Ampyx Power)

World:

¶ The BBC has seen evidence that top executives at Shell knew money paid to the Nigerian government for a vast oil field would be passed to a convicted money-launderer and had reason to believe the money would be used to pay political bribes. The deal happened while Shell was operating under a probation order for separate Nigerian corruption. [BBC]

¶ Electricity generated at Barrow’s Walney Wind Farm will help to power one of the UK’s biggest building materials companies. Its owner, Dong Energy, has…

“A robust result, consistent across climate model projections, is that higher precipitation extremes in warmer climates are very likely to occur.” — IPCC

“As the climate has warmed… heat waves are longer and hotter. Heavy rains and flooding are more frequent. In a wide swing between extremes, drought, too, is more intense and more widespread.” — Climate Communications

*****

It’s a tough fact to get one’s head around. But a warming climate means that many regions will both experience more extreme droughts and more extreme floods. The cause for this new weather severity is that a warming planet produces higher rates of evaporation together with more intense atmospheric convection. Warmer air over land means that the moisture gets baked out of terrain, lakes and rivers faster. And this warming effect causes droughts to settle in more rapidly, to become more intense than we are used to, and to often…

CND are actively opposing Nuclear Power.  We hope that as is happening in China,South Korea, Germany,France and elsewhere,  the UK’s NGOs and citizen groups will  join CND and others in the UK’s tenacious Nuclear Resistance.

Report from Cumbria and Lancashire Area Group reproduced with permission:

The Cumbria and Lancashire Area is comprised of just three local CND affiliated groups. The Lancaster and District group sits close to the Heysham nuclear power stations, the North Cumbria group sits close to Sellafield and the East Lancashire group is the nearest group to Springfields Nuclear Factory so we are particularly concerned about developments in the nuclear power industry. Resolution 7 “Nuclear Power” was carried overwhelmingly at CND AGM 2016.

This report has been prepared by Irene Sanderson of North Cumbria CND. I submit it to CND National Council, particularly for the information of those who are taking forward part…

GR: Scientists have used repeated photographs to study glaciers for more than a century (Rogers et al. 1984). Arthur Johnson published the earliest photographic study of glacier change in Glacier National Park in 1980 (U. S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1180, 29 pp.). By 1980, the glaciers had already begun melting and shrinking. The photos in this article show that all the glaciers in Glacier National Park will soon be gone. As pointed out elsewhere, mountain glaciers store winter precipitation and release it during summer months. With more precipitation falling in winter as rain instead of snow, less water is stored in glacial ice, and this leads to shortages during summer.

“As the National Park Service turns 100, we’re looking at how climate change affects our shared heritage and what the agency is doing about it. This is our fourth story in a series.

“National Parks have…