UK friends & others in northerly latitudes: I highly recommend going somewhere dark tonight.
This is the strongest solar storm in 20 years.
There are clear skies for most of the UK.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see #aurora for many.
[1/6] Want to know more... Read on This animation shows *SIX* coronal mass ejections from the sun. All of which on a trajectory for Earth. The sun (the white circle in the centre) is blocked out to protect the sensor. The two bright spots are Jupiter (left) & Venus (right).
[2/5]

Spring is always beautiful... especially in infrared!
This photo was taken with a camera I converted to be sensitive to IR wavelengths of light that plants reflect in abundance when they're healthy. We see green, but that's a small fraction of the light reflected by plants.
[1/x] The sensors on digital cameras are made of materials that are sensitive to visible light that an unimpaired human eye can see, but also infrared wavelengths beyond that sensitivity. Camera manufacturers install a filter to block that unwanted light, but you can remove it.
[2/x]

I've said it before and I'll say it again:
"This is a *huge* amount of extra energy being transferred to the atmosphere. Expect extreme temperatures and storm records (again). Just the top few metres of our oceans store as much energy as the entirety of our atmosphere."
[1/3] This really is urgent. Action is needed *NOW* & it needs to be of Manhattan Project/Landing on the Moon speed & scale.

[2/3]uk.news.yahoo.com/viral-climate-…

Earth's energy balance is out of kilter:
During 2020-23, Earth accumulated ~68 zettajoules (ZJ) of energy.
During 2007-10, Earth accumulated ~28 ZJ.
The extra energy gained by Earth in the past three years is similar to the amount gained between 1970 & 1985.
[1/5]



Why is the energy imbalance growing?
- emissions from fossil fuels lead to an enhanced greenhouse effect, reducing how efficiently Earth loses heat to space
- at the same time we're improving air quality, which reduces the cooling effect of aerosols that reflect sunlight
[2/5]

How did historic climate events inspire vampire mythology, Shelley's Frankenstein, Turner's famous sunsets, & even Stradivari's violin craftmanship?
Here's a short thread on these climate-artistic connections that span literature, paintings, and music.
[1/n]





Before the dominance of fossil fuel greenhouse gases as the main driver of climate change in the past century, noticeable decadal-scale change was generally a function of volcanic activity (episodic cooling) & solar activity (inactive periods linked to regional cooling).
[2/n]

- Domestic solid fuel burning is now the largest source of UK particulate pollution, overtaking traffic
- Government monitoring networks are not designed for static suburban pollution sources
- Citizen science is filling the gaps

[1/4]theguardian.com/environment/20… Low-cost and reliable sensors are enabling communities to set up their own monitoring networks to raise awareness of pollution hotspots that are missed by national or local authority air quality monitoring:

@Chorley_Air @mwt2008
[2/4]map.purpleair.com/1/l/mAQI/a1440…

So I spent yesterday evening having a quiet night in. At around 11 pm I began to smell smoke *inside my flat*.
I went out to investigate…

This is a somewhat angry (but evidence-based) wood-burning thread.
*trigger warning* for urban wood-burners!

#WoodBurning 🔥💨🧵 [1/n]





I live in inner-London (@LBHF). My flat is offset from a road by a building & car park, & gardens on the other side. All my windows & doors were closed. Below an air vent in my bedroom, I measured 34 µg/m3 of PM2.5 (close to unhealthy).
So I left my flat to investigate...
[2/n]

It's not as ridiculous as it sounds. We don't really know how the jet stream will change, but it will! We can't rely on the past to inform our preparedness for the future. Risk scenarios need to tackle the known unknowns, not only the known knowns. Here's my thread below:

https://twitter.com/implausibleblog/status/1716872063867367473

This thread was put together on Friday 20th October, before the worst of the weather arrived. The emphasis was on why extreme wind & rain from the east (#StormBabet) is not on the UK's risk radar:

https://twitter.com/DrTELS/status/1715198363363102820

Smoke knows no borders. Our atmosphere is a global commons.
Experimenting with AI to highlight the farce of the denial culture around responsibility for haze (smoke pollution).
[1/5] Which do you prefer?
[2/5]

The world's worst air pollution crisis is happening right now across Kalimantan & Sumatra, Indonesia 🇮🇩
According to our monitoring network, PM2.5 is at a 24-hr average of around 300 µg/m^3 (hazardous AQI of 350), 1-hr averages peaking at 750 (above the AQI max)
A thread 🧵 [1/n]





Persistent fires in Kalimantan, particularly in Central & South provinces, are sending a thick plume of smoke that by today has enfulged pretty much the whole of Indonesian Borneo (~500,000 km²). Millions of people have been exposed to hazardous air pollution for weeks now.
[2/n]

"I'm not aware of a similar period when all components of the climate system were in record-breaking or abnormal territory"
This is what I mean by "all components of the climate system"... [🧵1/n]

@GeorginaRannard @BBCNewsbbc.co.uk/news/science-e… We're most familiar with air temperature records. These are being smashed for individual weather stations, regions & countries all over the planet. June in the UK was 0.9°C warmer than any previous June on record. Global assimilations show the same pattern.
[2/n]

What are tipping points?
They are processes whereby a system experiences a shift in state when a threshold in its conditions (caused by forcing) is breached. The shift is relatively rapid & if you reverse the forcing, the system does not return to its earlier state.
[1/n] Examples of systems that exhibit tipping point behaviour:
- Society (often related to critical mass where once a few people have adopted or contracted something, a rapid shift follows, e.g. viruses, tech adoption, fashion)
- Financial markets
- Earth's climate & ecosystems
[2/n]

I *hope* we're not crossing tipping points. We might not know for some time and & we may not know in our lifetimes. But it's very hard to look at these data & not be very worried. The past three days are *likely* to have been the warmest on our planet since records began. [1/3] Daily data are preliminary estimates using models that will be carefully evaluated over the next few weeks. There appear to be few places on the planet cooler than average, with dramatic +20°C anomalies over Antarctica (it's winter there).

[2/3] https://t.co/ZsbDHyUR52climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/

Today, there are ox bow lakes in the sky. A river is driven by gravity. The polar jet stream is driven by the temperature difference between the Arctic and lower latitudes. That difference is getting smaller. And like a river, the jet stream meanders. [1/5]
@cambecc Why does this matter? High pressure systems get stuck in the meanders & can persist for many weeks. In the summer that means heatwaves and prolonged dry spells. Here's the temperature anomaly 3-week forecast for the NH. Check out NW Canada stuck in one of those meanders 🇨🇦
[2/5]

Signs of fire activity in Canada moving further north this week, with multiple fires burning inside the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories and Yukon, driven in part by temperatures ~10°C above average.
🇨🇦🔥🛰️
[1/2]
https://t.co/piH10oFNsgworldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?v=-151.929334…
A persistent 8-14°C heatwave looks set to continue over this northwestern region of Canada for the next 3 weeks. I expect this might be the next big fire story by mid-July.
@TropicalTidbits
[2/2]

Parts of the North Sea are >6°C warmer than usual for this time of the year. It's probably the most anomalously warm body of water on the planet.
There are severe storm warnings in place for much of Western Europe... [1/2] With the rest of western Europe surrounded by a north Atlantic Ocean heatwave, it's perhaps no surprise that there are multiple severe storm warnings today. Large to very large hail, strong wind gusts and heavy rainfall.
@Estofex

"You’ve got the Western colonial powers, the old European powers, and they land in Australia. They cross to California. And they see this landscape and they think, “This is natural, and we need to conserve it.” ... (cont) [1/4]

https://twitter.com/amandakhurley/status/1667183142220832768

... "And they remove all the people from the landscape, as if they’re not part of it. And what we now know is that Indigenous people in Australia and California and Canada played a very important part in managing what we thought of as 'natural' areas."
[2/4]

A complete shutdown of cold water ocean upwelling off the coast of Peru is the sign of a strong impending El Niño... It was along this coast that the phrase was first coined by colonial Spanish fishermen. This is a huge anomaly. But what is weird about this anomaly is that the cooling of the western pacific isn't happening yet... The whole ocean is abnormally warm... so is the Atlantic. What this means for El Niño, & the global weather teleconnections is uncertain to say the least. This isn't good news.

This #wildfire in Cannich is sending a large smoke plume over Loch Ness. This fire has the potential to be one of Scotland's largest (in the satellite era). It's already approaching 3,000 ha and does not appear to be under control with strong winds. @fire_scot This was the same area on 29 May & 26 May, respectively, showing hotspots here for a few days, suggesting today's acceleration is a flare-up/rekindling of a fire from last week/the weekend.

Spending some time with my mum and discovered this! Is it really a good idea to be spraying your house plants with a varnish (contains >30% aliphatic hydrocarbons, with no list of specific contents). Can it be volatised? Will it enhance ozone production? Is it carcinogenic? Not to mention the fire hazard?! @GuillermoRein
The can says highly flammable and also has a solvents warning.

Heatwave & drought in China, not covered widely by western media. Here's a wildfire burning on the outskirts of Chongqing (population: 31 million), with a smoke plume covering half of the city. Wider view (400 km across) shows a comparison with a more typical year. 🇨🇳🔥🛰️ Thanks to one of our second-year @LSEGeography undergraduates who asked me to check out this fire who said "I am so surprised by this wildfire. It suddenly becomes so real when it happens near my friend"