What do the following headlines tell us?

[beecee]

https://phys.org/news/2021-08-greece-turkey-fierce-heatwave.html

Greece, Turkey battle fierce fires under crushing heat:

https://phys.org/news/2021-08-california-wildfire-second-worst-state-history.html

California wildfire now second-worst in state history:

https://phys.org/news/2021-08-drought-hit-california-town-ground.html

A drought-hit California town finds itself sinking into the ground:

https://phys.org/news/2021-08-forest-bolivia-consume-vast-area.html

Forest fires in Bolivia consume vast area: official:

https://phys.org/news/2021-08-hundreds-homes-forest-ravage-greek.html

Desperate Greeks flee as fires ravage Evia island:

https://phys.org/news/2021-08-wildfires-endanger-villages-fuel-site.html

Wildfires endanger villages, fuel site, in Russia's Siberia:

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It seems the Northern hemisphere is on fire. Anyone remember the devastating bushfires in Eastern Australia last year?.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_Australian_bushfire_season

Clockwise from top left:
Sydney's George Street blanketed by smoke in December 2019; Orroral Valley fire seen from Tuggeranong; Damaged road sign along Bells Line of Road; Gospers Mountain bushfire; Smoke plume viewed from the ISS; Uncontained bushfire in South West Sydney.

 

 

The 2019–20 Australian bushfire season,[a] colloquially known as Black Summer,[13][16] was a period of unusually intense bushfires in many parts of Australia.

In June 2019, the Queensland Fire and Emergency Service acting director warned of the potential for an early start to the bushfire season which normally starts in August. The warning was based on the Northern Australia bushfire seasonal outlook noting exceptional dry conditions and a lack of soil moisture, combined with early fires in central Queensland.[17] Throughout the summer, hundreds of fires burnt, mainly in the southeast of the country. The major fires peaked during December–January.

As of 9 March 2020, the fires burnt an estimated 18.6 million hectares (46 million acres; 186,000 square kilometres; 72,000 square miles),[2] destroyed over 5,900 buildings (including 2,779 homes)[18] and killed at least 34 people.[19][20][21][22][23] Nearly three billion terrestrial vertebrates alone – the vast majority being reptiles – were affected and some endangered species were believed to be driven to extinction.[24] At its peak, air quality dropped to hazardous levels in all southern and eastern states.[25] The cost of dealing with the bushfires is expected to exceed the A$4.4 billion of the 2009 Black Saturday fires,[26] and tourism sector revenues fell by more than A$1 billion.[27] However, economists estimated that the Australian bushfires may cost over A$103 billion in property damage and economic losses, making the bushfires Australia's costliest natural disaster to date.[1] Nearly 80 percent of Australians were affected either directly or indirectly by the bushfires.[28] By 7 January 2020, the smoke had moved approximately 11,000 kilometres (6,800 mi) across the South Pacific Ocean to Chile and Argentina.[29][30] As of 2 January 2020, NASA estimated that 306 million tonnes (337 million short tons) of CO2 had been emitted.[31][32]

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It won't be too long that we in Australia will be entering  another Summer.  While I live in greater Sydney and in no immediate danger, smoke last year that turned our sunny weathger into misty, smoked filled days, my Mrs suffered greatly with her Asthma. Not sure what is in store for us, let's hope it isn't another 2019/20 repeat. 

 

Here is another dramatic photo from a few....

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2020/01/photos-australia-bushfire-catastrophe/604492/

A pyrocumulonimbus cloud formation is seen from a plane as bushfires continue in New South Wales, Australia, on January 4, 2020.

Edited August 8, 2021 by beecee

[iNow]

Poor Forest management practices, obviously 

Kidding aside, given we can’t even get 50% of the population to take an obviously safe and effective vaccine or even just wear masks during a global pandemic, I’m not sure how we stop this. 

It’s as if in the movie Independence Day 50% if people pretended that aliens were a liberal hoax to take away their liberties 

[beecee]

41 minutes ago, iNow said:

Poor Forest management practices, obviously 

Kidding aside, given we can’t even get 50% of the population to take an obviously safe and effective vaccine or even just wear masks during a global pandemic, I’m not sure how we stop this. 

It’s as if in the movie Independence Day 50% if people pretended that aliens were a liberal hoax to take away their liberties 

Well said! I'm dreading our coming Summer in the Southern hemisphere! 

[John Cuthber]

Climate change; it seems we avoid it like the plague.

[beecee]

https://phys.org/news/2021-08-good-news-key-ipcc-climate.html

No good news here: Key IPCC findings on climate change:

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's first major scientific assessment since 2014, released Monday, shows unequivocally that global warming is unfolding more quickly than feared and that humanity is almost entirely to blame.

Here is a rundown of some of its key findings from the IPCC Working Group 1 report on physical science:

Goodbye 1.5C, hello overshoot

Earth's average surface temperature is projected to hit 1.5 or 1.6 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels around 2030 in all five of the greenhouse gas emissions scenarios —ranging from highly optimistic to reckless—considered by the report. That's a full decade earlier than the IPCC predicted just three years ago.

By mid-century, the 1.5C threshold will have been breached across the board, by a tenth of a degree along the most ambitious pathway, and by nearly a full degree at the opposite extreme.

There is a silver lining: in the most ambitious if-we-do-everything-right scenario, global temperatures—after "overshooting" the 1.5C target—fall back to 1.4C by 2100.

 

more at link.....

 

Edited August 9, 2021 by beecee

[TheVat]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/19/weather/greenland-summit-rain-climate-change/index.html

Lots of tipping points to teeter on out there.   Apparently,  the albedo of the Greenland sheet drops a bit when it gets rained on.   At least until fresh snow falls.   

[Sensei]

Quote

What do the following headlines tell us?

Some would say: "Judgement Day is close"..

(and people here push me hard to accelerate..)

I am asking them: why do you hate your life? so why are you doing what you are doing to yourself.

Edited August 20, 2021 by Sensei

[dimreepr]

10 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Some would say: "Judgement Day is close"..

(and people here push me hard to accelerate..)

I am asking them: why do you hate your life? so why are you doing what you are doing to yourself..

I'm not sure what you're saying, please elaborate, before I pass "Judgement"... 😉

[Sensei]

On 8/9/2021 at 1:52 AM, iNow said:

Poor Forest management practices, obviously 

Golfers hate forests, sands and ponds..

[dimreepr]

1 hour ago, Sensei said:

Golfers hate forests, sands and ponds..

Yet they build them, into the course...

Go figure...

[beecee]

An article today....

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-reveals-impact-climate-sierra-nevada.html

Study reveals dramatic impact of climate change in the Sierra Nevada:

In California, the impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly obvious. Turn on the news and you will hear about extreme heat waves, droughts and frequent wildfires plaguing the state.

"Climate change is one of the grand challenges facing society," said Michael McGlue, associate professor in the University of Kentucky's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences. "California, our most populous state and one of the largest economies globally, faces major threats from hot, dry conditions. This is manifested in the four major fires burning, largely uncontained, in the state right now."

Climate change will significantly impact the Sierra Nevada mountain range, which runs along the state's eastern border with Nevada. The Sierra Nevada's snowpack serves as the most important water source in state. Under normal conditions, snow falls on the mountains in the winter and remains frozen until spring. It then melts and runs off into major rivers that feed into central and southern California, sustaining vast agricultural fields and urban areas.

 

more at link....................

 

the paper:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.15843

Anthropogenic climate change has altered lake state in the Sierra Nevada (California, USA)

Abstract

Climatic changes threaten freshwater resources and aquatic ecosystem health in the Sierra Nevada (California, USA), which has important consequences for millions of people and the world's fifth largest economy. However, the timing and magnitude of ecological changes driven by hydroclimate oscillations remain poorly understood in California's headwater region. Here, we develop a precisely dated, annually to decadally resolved lake sediment record of ecological change from the eastern Sierra Nevada that spans the last three millennia. Diatom paleoecology reveals a detailed history of abrupt limnologic transitions, best explained by modifications in water column stratification, mixing, and nutrient status in response to changing seasonality. Seasonally stratified conditions were registered during the Late Holocene Dry Period and the Medieval Climate Anomaly, illustrating the sensitivity of fossil diatoms to well-known periods of drought. Yet the most striking feature of the record is the uniqueness of ~1840–2016 CE: a period of singularly strong water column stratification, increased algal diversity, and reduced diatom productivity consistent with unprecedented “hot droughts.” The data demonstrate that hot–dry conditions of the Industrial Era altered lake state to conditions unseen in the past ~3180 years, and suggest that regional trends identified by historical monitoring began far earlier than previously recognized. Our record illustrates the profound influence of anthropogenic climate warming on high-elevation lakes and the ecosystem services they provide in the Sierra Nevada, which hold implications for water quality and availability in California.

[lucy brighton]

Such a supremely worrying global occurrence this is. Apart from the forest fires, the unseasonal rains and the subsequent floods are equally worrying. It is perplexing how nation-states end up spending billions and trillions on infrastructure and defense projects for a supposed "better standard of living and security" but end up discounting a basic issue that threatens the very existence of life in the planet. 

[TheVat]

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/big-companies-are-funding-campaign-kill-climate-bill/620278/

Doubletalk from large corporations on the climate provisions in the major infrastructure  legislation currently being thrashed out in the US Congress.  (This magazine provides three free articles before a PW drops down. )