[Vision2020] LA Times 8-13-15 "...potential of being the Godzilla El Niño.” Bill Patzert, NASA climatologist

[Ted Moffett]

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-el-nino-20150813-htmlstory.html
Latest forecast suggests 'Godzilla El Niño' may be coming to California
By Rong-Gong
August 13, 2015

“This definitely has the potential of being the Godzilla El Niño,” said
Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La
Cañada Flintridge.

Patzert said El Niño’s signal in the ocean “right now is stronger than it
was in 1997,” the summer in which the most powerful El Niño on record
developed.

“Everything now is going to the right way for El Niño,” Patzert said. “If
this lives up to its potential, this thing can bring a lot of floods,
mudslides and mayhem.”

“This could be among the strongest El Niños in the historical record dating
back to 1950,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction
Center.
-------------------------------------------------
"Reducing abrupt climate change risk using the Montreal Protocol and other
regulatory actions to complement cuts in CO2 emissions "

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#F1

As noted in this August 2009 paper from the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, intensification of the ENSO cycle (El Nino/La Nina) is
one of the "tipping points" of anthropogenic global warming.

Others are:  Amazon dieback, Arctic summer ice free, Greenland ice sheet
melting, North Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation disruption, and West
Anarctica and Himalayan-Tibetan glaciers melting.

As the paper notes:

"The potential consequences associated with these tipping points may be
largely irreversible and unmanageable (10
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-10>) and include
widespread loss of biodiversity, meters of sea level rise, and famine,
which could lead to political instability (9
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-9>, 11
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-11>). In a worst-case
scenario, climate change could produce runaway feedbacks, such as methane
release from permafrost (12
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-12>)."
---------------------------------------------------------------

"Reducing abrupt climate change risk using the Montreal Protocol and other
regulatory actions to complement cuts in CO2 emissions "

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#F1

Excerpt below from website above:

"There are large uncertainties associated with tipping points, which are
often considered as examples of “surprises.” Ramanathan and Feng (9
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-9>) estimate the
likelihood of reaching the predicted critical temperature threshold that
triggers various tipping elements by considering the probability
distribution for the temperature increase associated with the “committed”
level of warming, which these authors report to be 2.4 °C (1.4–4.3 °C).
This is the estimated average surface temperature increase above
preindustrial values that would take place if the concentrations of GHGs
were held constant at their 2005 values, but without aerosol forcing, land
surface albedo changes, or any other anthropogenic forcing; that is, the
2.4 °C value is based on past emissions and is comprised of 0.76 °C
observed surface warming plus 1.6 °C additional warming lagged in the
oceans and “masked” by cooling aerosols (9
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-9>). Fig. 1
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#F1> presents their results
for various policy-relevant tipping elements (9
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-9>), most of which
Lenton et al. (8 <http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-8>)
include in their analysis; for elimination of Arctic summer sea ice and
melting of the Himalayan-Tibetan glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet, the
probability that the committed warming exceeds the tipping point
temperature is estimated to be larger than 50%, and it is estimated to be
>10% for dieback of the Amazon Rainforest, more persistent and higher
amplitude El Niño conditions, reorganization of the North Atlantic
Thermohaline Circulation, and melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The
transition time scales estimated for these tipping elements vary from as
little as 10 years for loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic to 50 years for
Amazon and other forest die-off, to 300 years, at the low end, for melting
of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and 300 years as the worst-case scenario for
the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (8
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-8>, 9
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-9>). Even if the actual
warming is less severe than estimated by Ramanathan and Feng (9
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-9>), the probability
that threshold temperatures will be reached for several of the identified
tipping points is very significant if emission of GHGs continues along the
current path.

[image: Fig. 1.]
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616/F1.expansion.html>


Fig. 1.

“Probability distribution for the committed warming by GHGs between 1750
and 2005. … Shown are the tipping elements [large-scale components of the
Earth's system] and the temperature threshold range that initiates the
tipping.…” Reproduced from Ramanathan and Feng (2008) (9
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-9>).
The potential consequences associated with these tipping points may be
largely irreversible and unmanageable (10
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-10>) and include
widespread loss of biodiversity, meters of sea level rise, and famine,
which could lead to political instability (9
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-9>, 11
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-11>). In a worst-case
scenario, climate change could produce runaway feedbacks, such as methane
release from permafrost (12
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full#ref-12>). "
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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