{"id":29750,"date":"2018-01-15T14:24:58","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T19:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29750"},"modified":"2018-01-15T14:24:58","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T19:24:58","slug":"what-we-learned-about-the-climate-system-in-2017-that-should-send-shivers-down-the-spines-of-policy-makers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29750","title":{"rendered":"What we learned about the climate system in 2017 that should send shivers down the spines of policy makers\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

What we learned about the climate system in 2017 that should send shivers down the spines of policy makers\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n
\n
<\/a><\/div>\n

Much of what happened in 2017 was predictable: news of climate extremes became, how can I put it \u2026 almost the norm. There was record-breaking heat on several continents, California\u2019s biggest wildfire (extraordinarily in the middle of winter), an ex-tropical cyclone hitting Ireland (yes, Ireland) in October, and the unprecedented Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria that swept through the Atlantic in August. The US government agency, the NOAA, reported<\/a> that there were 16 catastrophic billion-dollar weather\/climate events in the USA during 2017.<\/p>\n

And 2017 \u201cmarks the first time some of the (scientific) papers concluded that an event could not have occurred \u2014 like, at all \u2014 in a world where global warming did not exist. The studies suggested that the record-breaking global temperatures in 2016, an extreme heat wave in Asia and a patch of unusually warm water in the Alaskan Gulf were only possible because of human-caused climate change\u201d, Reuters reported.<\/a><\/div>\n

\nAt both poles, the news continues to be not good. At the COP23 in Bonn, Pam Pearson, Founder and Director of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, warned <\/a>that the cryoshere is becoming \u201can irreversible driver of climate change\u201d. She said that most cryosphere thresholds are determined by peak temperature, and the length of time spent at that peak, warning that \u201clater, decreasing temperatures after the peak are largely irrelevant, especially with higher temperatures and longer duration peaks\u201d. Thus \u201covershoot scenarios\u201d, which are now becoming the norm in policy-making circles (including all 1.5\u00b0C scenarios) hold much greater risks.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
As well, Pearson said that\u00a0 2100 is a misleading and minimising measure of cryosphere response: \u201cWhen setting goals, it is important to look to new irreversible impacts and the steady state circumstances.<\/div>\n
\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What we learned about the climate system in 2017 that should send shivers down the spines of policy makers\u00a0 Much of what happened in 2017 was predictable: news of climate extremes became, how can I put it \u2026 almost the norm. There was record-breaking heat on several continents, California\u2019s biggest wildfire (extraordinarily in the middle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7439,17946,17943,17947,17945,1737,8479,17944,4849],"class_list":["post-29750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-code-red","tag-climate-extremes","tag-climate-system","tag-cyclones","tag-david-spratt","tag-extreme-heat","tag-hurricanes","tag-policy-makers","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29751,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29750\/revisions\/29751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}