There’s also the important feedback effect of ice loss, because it exposes land and sea surfaces that are darker than white ice. This reduction in albedo is a major feedback leading to accelerated warming in the polar regions and potentially to unpredictable and unusual effects in more southerly climate systems.
It’s such a weird field to be interested in. Incredibly complex and fascinating mechanisms to study, but any time you learn something new it’s basically guaranteed to be something bad for our future.
The only bit of unalloyed good news I’ve heard lately is that the immediate component of isostatic rebound is larger and faster than previously expected. Due to this, Greenland is actually rising faster than sea levels are rising to catch up with it (in addition to the previously-known effect of the lack of gravity releasing the water next to it, making it other places problems instead of Greenland’s.) So, despite the fact that a lot of Greenland’s bedrock is very close to sea level, there won’t be a self-reinforcing collapse where a sudden Greenland melt will cause rising sea levels which will in turn cause more melting.
This also has good implications when considering a West Antarctica collapse. Bad news is that the slope slopes downward as you go away from the coast in many West Antarctica places, potentially worsening the problem by exposing deeper and deeper ice walls to melting and gravitational collapse. The good news is that all that collapsing ice still needs to move over the old undersea hill which isn’t going anywhere. And previous to the recent findings about isostatic rebound being stronger in the short term, I feared that this undersea ledge would grow deeper as more Antarctic ice melted, but if the isostatic rebound reaches all the way out to it, then it could get shallower, further limiting the effect of an ice cliff collapse.
Wow. I can’t remember the last time I heard about something even in the neighborhood of positive regarding climate change.
Not that this good, so much as a dampening factor on bad. But I’ll take it.
The physics of the cryosphere in particular continues to induce awe in me.
edit: of course pessimism immediately follows with the thought - if the rebound is that quick, does that mean the potential for seismic and/or volcanic activity increases? 
Very large chunk of land rising “quickly” certainly seems like it might cause some rumbles…
Well, what’s changed about rebound isn’t what’s happening. But rather our understanding of what’s happening.
Which suggests our experience will stay the same as we’re used to. It’s just that our predictions about the future that will now be closer to the eventual outcome.
Sure, but our estimation of what might happen was based on what would now appear to be inaccurate data. What’s going to happen isn’t going to change, but our expectations should based on the updated (and hopefully more correct) data.
Sort of like how we’ve always been on this trajectory that is, for lack of a better word, fucked. We just weren’t as keenly aware of it until more research came in around climate sensitivity, feedback effects, etc.
In other news, checked in on the snow pack. It is still there. Barely.
edit: And I disagree that it would stay the same as we’re used to. This just means we’re not as likely to have amplifying effects on ice sheet loss from sea level rise. That it is because the ground is rising quicker than we thought in no way suggests things will be experientially the same.
All I’m saying is that this revision doesn’t alter the future trajectory of our future experience. Which is what I thought you were saying.
I agree w you that the past is a poor predictor of that future experience.
I guess I misunderstood what you meant by:
Seemed like you were saying that sea level rise being cancelled out by rebound meant things would stay the same as they are currently. Or something to that effect.
Now I understand your point, but I’m still not sure I fully agree. Yes, in this particular instance, knowing more probably doesn’t change anything meaningful. But in the abstract, expectations of what the future holds inform our present actions which then directly impacts the future. If everyone knew how bad this was likely to get in a way that might impact them directly, well, we might have actually done something to avoid it (or at least not continue to sprint headlong towards it).
Agreed. If we had had clairvoyant understanding in e.g. 1820 of what the next 300 years of unbridled carbon release would bring, and the collective wisdom to not go there, things would be very different now.
In terms of realities and predictions, you and I are in general agreement. There is an unprecedented disaster unfolding. One which is only accelerating.
Where you and I might differ is that I have given up all hope humanity will do anything but burn the last molecule of oil while fighting over the last bits of arable land. Resistance to the collective monkey-brains is futile.
We’re in agreement there too unfortunately. It’s something I’ve struggled with a lot in recent years as the true scope of what we’ve done is being revealed. The compulsion to do something balanced against the belief that anything I do is ultimately an empty gesture.
Still I try to balance the doom with the knowledge that our understanding is never perfect and try to keep an open mind when I hear “good news”. Of course, one must first hear some good news to be open minded about…
Another anecdote, about our current spring weather:
Hail only forms when a thunderstorm is fairly strong/intense, with updrafts that are strong enough to repeatedly blow raindrops/hailstones upwards repeatedly. As the size of a hailstone is determined by how many times it goes through that up-and-down cycle, larger hail only comes from extremely intense storms.
In this area, hail – especially large hail – isn’t common, and nearly only happens during the summertime. During this March, we’ve had three separate storms in the past three weeks (including one last night) which have dropped dime-to-nickel-sized hail in my area; the storm on March 10th, which spawned the EF3 tornado south of us, also dropped baseball-to-softball-sized hail across the area (though, thankfully, south of me), and broke Illinois’s record for largest hailstone.
Historically, this kind of stuff just doesn’t happen at this time of year.
I’ve never experienced more than the pellet sized hail personally. That has got to be anxiety inducing to endure.
The guardian has a nice write up on the event which includes some great before/after photos of the snow pack. March usually sees feet of snow added. Instead, we got a May melt-off.
Update: apparently around half the US is now in drought. According to this map that looks not far fetched if you include regions that are merely “severely dry”.
Also, something amusing in a dark humor way: Colorado snowpack is now 19 percent of median. I’d been looking at the website once a week or so and this time I said to myself “that doesn’t quite look like 19 percent. It’s around 50 percent, which is bad but not horrible.” Turns out that the snowpack is so low that it’s easier to mentally compare it to the all time low than to the median, and it’s around 50 of the previous all time low.
At any rate, going forward it looks like there have been very few historical snow events after this date that would increase the snowpack. So most likely the snow we have (19% of median) is all that’s going to run into the rivers and ground this year.
With ENSO tending towards a strong to very strong El Niño later this summer - that is not likely to resolve any time soon. We should be expecting a hot and dry summer based on historical precedent and the probable forecast.
But as has been pointed out - we’re entering ahistorical territory, so who knows how much of that holds true! We do know that the water situation out west is going to be dire and the potential for wildfires is going to be quite high. Watershed managers are doing what they can to anticipate the issue, but yeah… not looking great.
I’ve noticed the same thing. With all that lovely, terrifying negative space between this year and the previous record low, the eye really wants to compare to it rather than the median.
In addition to the intense storms which have been rolling through just north of us (mostly in Wisconsin and Michigan) the last two days, and the unseasonable warm spell here in Chicago (we’re on day 3 of a five-day stretch that’ll be in the mid 70s to low 80s), what has struck me about this spring is just how consistently windy it’s been.
High winds are always the result of deep/intense weather systems (lows or highs), and we’ve regularly had days with 30-40mph winds since early March.
Guess who got all your rain? I did. And this is not a good thing to brag about. I posted about this in the Pit mini-rants thread where I speculated on the need to build an ark modeled after Noah’s. It’s been persistently raining off and on for nearly a week now, and there’s more coming, along with warnings to avoid any flooded streets you may come across.
This is truly part of what climate change looks like – extreme and unpredictable regional weather that will cause droughts in some areas and potential flooding in others. The weather bureau warns that the ground is already near saturation and his limited ability to absorb more rain. This is the sort of thing that can also create an imbalance in insect populations, among many other unpredictable problems.
As did Wisconsin. In Green Bay, where I grew up, and where my parents still live, they got over 4" over the past 2+ days, and nearly 8" of rain since the beginning of the month. They’ve already shattered the record for April rainfall (which was 6.46"), and the month is only half over. Flooding and washed-out roads are widespread up there right now.
So far this year, the city has gotten 14.5" of rain (including the water from snowfall) so far this year, which is 2.5 times what they received last year.
State of emergency has been declared in parts of Michigan and all of Wisconsin due to the wettest April on record, so definitely not all of the US in in drought. This article includes a video of big hailstones splashing into flooded streets in Ohio.
We currently have two weather warnings – very dense fog this morning, and more rain today.
Hopefully once we get through the spring, things will calm down. But at this point, y’all might need to consider converting housing into hardened bunkers to withstand these new spring “rains”.