2015 - The Year of the Feedback?

[AbruptSLR]

The linked New Scientist article points out that wildfires in Indonesia are particularly harmful to climate change as they largely burn peat that is not reabsorbed when the vegetation grows back:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28441-indonesian-wildfires-are-releasing-gigatonnes-of-carbon-dioxide/


Extract: "Tens of thousands of fires have raged in Indonesia this year, largely on Sumatra, in Papua and in the Kalimantan region of Borneo.

The fires have emitted 1.6 gigatonnes of CO2 so far, says Guido van der Werf of the VU University in the Netherlands, who works on the global fire emissions database. To put that in perspective, it has been estimated that the entire world must emit less than 1000 Gt of CO2 from 2011 onwards if we are to avoid dangerous warming.

CO2 from wildfires is normally taken back up again as plants regrow. But this won’t be the case in Indonesia, because the fires are also burning peat that has accumulated over thousands of years, releasing buried carbon. “You can assume that almost all CO2 emissions [from the fires] will stay in the atmosphere,” says van der Werf."

[Steven]

Guido Van der Werf's webpage has some up-to-date information about the Indonesian fires:
http://www.globalfiredata.org/updates.html

The graph below is from that webpage and shows daily emissions from this year's Indonesian fires:



Fortunately, the situation in Indonesia has improved since October 26, thanks to rain, especially in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo):

The fire season is not over yet but rain has arrived in Kalimantan and the number of active fire detections has dropped substantially since October 26. Fires are still burning in Kalimantan though, as well as in Southern Sumatra and Papua.

Amount of rain in the past 7 days:


http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/Global_Monsoons/Asian_Monsoons/precip_monitoring.shtml


Additional rain is expected for the next several days:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/Global_Monsoons/Asian_Monsoons/gfs_model.shtml


November Outlook for Haze over Indonesia:
http://www.columbia.edu/~rf2426/index_files/Nov2Outlook.pdf

[AbruptSLR]

Per the linked article a smaller-scale version of the recent Indonesian wildfires will return by the third week in February 2016:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/13/us-indonesia-haze-idUSKCN0T20RX20151113#2uP2w6xAK8Z0x73c.97

Extract: "
"In the third week of February, hotspots will emerge again, so indeed there won't be a break," minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar told Reuters on the sidelines of a haze conference. "We are going to put in a better early warning system and improve our contact with private concession holders. Before, it was not really working."
 
Bakar also said the government would increase the number of firefighters and equipment on the ground, but did not elaborate.

Experts have questioned the will and capacity of the government to address the problem after decades of inaction. Indonesia sought foreign help and sent tens of thousands of personnel to fight the fires, but they did little to help."

[GeoffBeacon]

On Monday I attended a joint presentation by the Met Office and the Committee on Climate Change. Julia Slingo, Chief Scientist at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, gave an illuminating presentation, highlighting the fact that we have reached the global temperature which is halfway to “dangerous climate change”.

She mentioned the current wildfires in Indonesia as additional climate feedback that would cut the remaining climate budget. I picked up a Met Office handout which says

“There is also a number of additional Earth system feedbacks that could affect the future budget, including the nitrogen cycle contraints on the carbon cycle, and emissions of greenhouse gasses from permafrost and methane hydrates. These are expected to place further limitations on the total global carbon budget.”

“These are expected to place further limitations on the total global carbon budget.” Is that a polite way of saying  the IPCC have been too optimistic and have overestimated the remaining budget?

A bit more on The Met Office doubts the IPCC.

[AbruptSLR]

“These are expected to place further limitations on the total global carbon budget.” Is that a polite way of saying  the IPCC have been too optimistic and have overestimated the remaining budget?

Very definitely, and they fail to state a lot of other downplayed risks including: (a) potentially higher ECS values than assumed; (b) the positive feedbacks identified by Hansen et al. 2015 associated with melting ice sheets; (c) accelerated degradation of forests, vegetation and plankton; (d) possibly faster reductions the negative forcing associated with aerosols than assumed; etc. etc.

[Sigmetnow]

Fresh Climate Data Confirms 2015 Is Unlike Any Other Year in Human History
By Eric Holthaus
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/11/10/huge_el_nino_pushes_climate_toward_records.html

[AbruptSLR]

Is it just a fluctuation that the NH snow extent is dipping very low in Dec 2015 (see image), or is this another example of a positive feedback accelerating?

[jai mitchell]

looks like natural variability so far.  since this is a snow cover anomaly over the entire northern hemisphere I am sure that there is significant measurement uncertainty.  Long term, we would expect that this value would decline over time with warmer temperature pulses producing melt at mid latitudes.  However, increased water vapor in the atmosphere should produce deeper snowpacks in the further north latitudes.

[Csnavywx]

Is it just a fluctuation that the NH snow extent is dipping very low in Dec 2015 (see image), or is this another example of a positive feedback accelerating?

Strong El-Nino induced pattern is partially causing it. Extreme Ninos induce a regularly recurring strong trough over the Gulf of Alaska and the NE Pac., causing mild Pacific air to flood the source regions for cold air over Canada, shutting down cold air transport to the south. Also, a near-record to record strong stratospheric polar vortex is helping lock what cold air there is in the Arctic. 2011-2012 had a similar "black hole" PV as well.

[AbruptSLR]

Csnavywx,
Of course, I concur with your analysis tying the low NH snow cover to our current Super El Nino and I add the following info.  Furthermore, I note that most people only see El Ninos as parts of the natural ENSO oscillations; whereas I see them triggers that can help to ratchet up other positive feedbacks, not only including NH snow extent, but also positive cloud feedback, positive PDO and increased water vapor in the atmosphere:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-monster-el-nino-idUSKBN0TR2BN20151208#PJl09arZ7J8G7SLc.97

Extract: "In Buffalo, it hasn't snowed yet this year. A Duluth, Minnesota, newspaper reported that the temperature was 40 degrees above zero, not below. And in Miami, beachgoers are staying indoors during what's already the third-wettest December in local history. What's going on with the weather?
It's the phenomenon called El Nino, which is happening now as ocean water temperatures rise above normal across the central and eastern Pacific, near the equator. Its effects will leave the U.S. Northeast warmer than usual, the Midwest drier, and the West and the South wetter."

Best,
ASLR

[Csnavywx]

True. Background warming plus an increasing frequency of big Ninos over time will help ratchet up the effects (and are probably doing so already). Snow has high emissivity -- so removing it raises surface temperature over the source regions for cold air and causes air masses to moderate more quickly. However, removing snow cover also removes its insulating effect, causing frost depth to seasonally increase.

[Csnavywx]

The situation in the Amazon has grown markedly worse in the 10 weeks since the original post. Despite the start of the (normally) rainy season, moisture levels have continued to fall and temperatures are running well above normal.

The chart below shows the vegetation health index. By far the worst condition the forest has been in since STAR started running in '04.

[AbruptSLR]

I think that the attached NOAA/NASA Global Mean Surface Temp nonlinear curves through the end of 2015 strongly supports Csnavywx's proposition that 2015 might be the year of the feedback.  2015 stands out from all the other years, and I note that the current Super El Nino will have a much strong impact on the 2016 temperatures than the 2015 temperature, so one cannot use the ENSO cycle as an excuse not to recognize the importance of 2015 as a possible year for bifurcating climate change trend lines.

Edit: I think that the second attached image (from Gavin Schmidt) also illustrates how the 2015 temperatures are markedly higher than previous years.

[AbruptSLR]

I know that the attached images have been posted elsewhere in this forum; nevertheless, I thought that it would be good to post them here so that it is easier to see the results (through the end of February 2016) of the feedbacks that we all triggered in 2015.

The first image shows the Arctic 925hPa Degree Days of Freezing Anom.; the second images shows the NH Snow Cover; and the third image shows the NH Sea Ice Extent.

These images indicate a strong feedback response only two months into 2016.

[AbruptSLR]

The linked Robert Scribbler article discusses atypically severe March wildfires in Kansas and Oklahoma; which he associates with both climate change and the 2015-16 El Nino event:

http://robertscribbler.com/2016/03/24/hot-winds-fan-massive-unprecedented-march-wildfire-burning-40-mile-swath-through-kansas-and-oklahoma/

Extract: "Hot Winds Fan Massive, Unprecedented March Wildfire Burning 40 Mile Swath Through Kansas and Oklahoma
It’s likely that we’ve never seen a March wildfire like the beast that just ripped through Kansas and Oklahoma over the past day. But in a world that’s now exploring a new peak temperature range near or above 1.5 C warmer than pre-industrial averages, a level of heat not seen in the past 110,000 years, we’d be out of our minds to expect the weather and climate conditions to behave in any kind of manner that could be considered normal."

[AbruptSLR]

The linked article indicates that a Dutch study confirmed that 2015 had the second highest fire related carbon emissions, with 1997 remaining the highest fire related carbon emissions year:

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/southeast-asian-fires-most-carbon-1997-20491