Ben See Profile picture
16 Jan, 9 tweets, 3 min read
2020: the year media ignored a whole batch of critical scientific papers on the abrupt climate change event currently being experienced by the Arctic which will lead to the disappearance of summer sea ice by 2035 (give or take a decade) with grave, global implications.

1/
1. The sea ice paper that made the Top 10 was about polar bears in 2100, but most species will be affected by the 2030s/40s..

'the Arctic is currently experiencing an abrupt climate change event, and that climate models underestimate this ongoing warming.'nature.com/articles/s4155…
2. "The prospect of loss of sea-ice by 2035 should really be focussing all our minds on achieving a low-carbon world as soon as humanly feasible."

phys.org/news/2020-08-e…
3. '"If we reduce global emissions rapidly and substantially, and thus keep global warming below 2 °C relative to preindustrial levels, Arctic sea ice will nevertheless likely disappear occasionally in summer even before 2050.' eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2…
4. 'the Arctic could be ice-free in the decade 2030–2040, with the year 2034.. the most likely.

The satellite observations suggest that Arctic sea ice depletion is accelerating'

(so 2020s is quite possible though 2023 is here seen as' unrealistic'...). ncei.noaa.gov/news/arctic-ic…
5. '60% chance of an effectively ice-free summer Arctic in the 2030s'.

'...no summer sea ice by 2040, decades sooner than expected'.

"for the rest of the century and onward, it’s hard to think of anything more globally important".penntoday.upenn.edu/news/Arctic-co…

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More from @ClimateBen

18 Jan
The temperature tipping point of the terrestrial biosphere lies not at the end of the century or beyond, but within the next 20 to 30 years

[THREAD]
Given the temperature limits of land carbon uptake presented here, without mitigating warming, we will cross the temperature threshold of the most productive biomes by midcentury, after which the land sink will degrade to only ~50% of current capacity if adaptation does not occur
While biomes will eventually shift spatially in response to warming, this process is unlikely to be a smooth migration, but rather a rapid disturbance-driven loss of present biomes (with additional emissions of carbon to the atmosphere),
Read 11 tweets
17 Jan
Now would be a very good time for newspapers to investigate whether massive agricultural failures look likely by 2027 - 2041 due to a combination of profoundly dangerous climate change including global warming of 1.5-2°C, soil destruction, water crises, and pollinator declines.
Major impacts are already happening.

Threads:
Agriculture is now beginning to shift from 'moderate' risk to 'high' risk as we move towards the 2030s/40s.

Read 6 tweets
7 Jan
So sick of reading how +1.5C of global warming by around 2026-2027 will represent a grave threat to global food security and even risk the liveability of the planet can't journalists focus on something else for a change?
1. The IPCC says agriculture will be at high risk at 2C (likely by 2035-2049), however, risks of simultaneous crop failure 'increase disproportionately between 1.5 and 2°C, so surpassing the 1.5°C threshold will represent a threat to global food security.'sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
2. We're at 1.3/1.4C today using a 1750 baseline, which means 1.5°C by 2023-2027 should be expected.

But even using the more conservative 1850 baseline, we see that 1.5°C by 2026-2032 should be expected.

carbonbrief.org/analysis-when-…
Read 5 tweets
7 Jan
Time to talk about the rapid collapse of Earth's major ecosystems which humans rely on for decent survival.

This terrifying Ecological Catastrophe of climate chaos & extinctions is the biggest news story in human history, but most journalists have been ignoring it for DECADES.
Researchers Warn Arctic Has Entered 'Unprecedented State' That Threatens Global Climate Stability

"Never have so many Arctic indicators been brought together in a single paper." And the findings spell trouble for the entire planet.

commondreams.org/news/2019/04/0…
Ecosystem Collapse should be front page news and the frame for all reporting (and tweeting, especially by journalists).

'More than 90% of world's coral reefs will die by 2050

Earth has already lost half of its 'underwater rainforests' over last 30 years'independent.co.uk/environment/en…
Read 4 tweets
5 Jan
It's 2021 and some very smart people are blithely carrying on as if global warming wasn't accelerating.
"unequivocal indicators that global warming is now with us and accelerating." (2020)phys.org/news/2020-07-h…
The measurement of ocean heat content is considered one of the most effective ways to show how fast Earth is warming, and the world's oceans are 'warming at a rapidly increasing pace'. (2020)

insideclimatenews.org/news/14012020/…
Read 5 tweets
5 Jan
1/ 'At 412 ppm and rising, ...temperature rises of 3-4C are likely now locked in.

"It's like a crazy experiment: 'Let's take that CO2 that took 100 million years to be sequestrated and put it back—instantly, on a geological timescale—in the atmosphere and see what happens"
2/ 'Earth has seen sustained concentrations of carbon dioxide was even higher than 400 ppm, but it took millions of years for those increases to occur.

Manmade greenhouse gas emissions, on the other hand, have boosted CO2 levels by more than 40% in a little over 150 years.'
3/ 'The last time that CO2 hit 400 parts per million (ppm) Greenland was ice free and trees grew at the edge of Antarctica.

..400 ppm was last surpassed 3 million years ago during the Late Pliocene, when temperatures were several degrees Celsius higher'..
Read 9 tweets

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