Living in “Bomb Time” — Ep. 02
It’s Summer in the Northern Hemisphere
Fires, Heatwaves, and Hurricanes the New Normal
Bomb Time — The hyper accelerated rate of warming and climate change that will compress 1,000 years of normal inter-glacial warming into the next 50 years of human time as the thermal pulse from our “climate bomb” hits the planet.
In what has become normal for this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere last week saw extraordinarily bad fire news from across the planet. In the Amazon, fires are burning at a rate not seen for a decade. In Siberia, fires are burning at a rate we’ve never previously seen — and the heating, drying region is on the verge of moving into a new and extreme “fire regime.” In the American West, the seasonal rains have not come, and this year’s fire season has begun in earnest with massive fires in Colorado. In California there have been about 10,849 lightning strikes earlier this week, a “historic lightning siege” that has caused more than 367 new fires.
Like the fires in Australia last year, these fires are in ecosystems that are among the first to be severely impacted by global warming. They are the global “coal mine canaries” and they are dead or dying rapidly. In the decades that are coming the rest of the planet is going to go through the same transitions.
Climate change is affecting every square foot of the planet’s surface. Every ecosystem, everywhere, is going to go through a forced rapid turnover. When an ecosystem changes, all the old plant life that cannot live in the new conditions will die and become debris. Nature’s way of clearing away debris to make way for new growth, is fire. As pretty much every place on earth undergoes ecosystem turnover, most of the landscapes around us are going to vanish as they are turned to ash.
These fires, and the ecosystem transitions they are part of, are one component of the wrenching changes the earth’s climate systems are undergoing. Every decade since 1980 has been warmer than the preceding decade, with the period between 2010 and 2019 the hottest yet since worldwide temperature records began in the 19th century.
The increase in the average global temperature is rapidly accelerating. The two-thousands were, officially, the hottest decade on record, up 0.39 degrees Celsius from the previous decade, which is a huge change in ten years’ time, compared with a 0.07C average increase per decade stretching back to 1880. If this rate holds, we are looking at the “worst case” IPCC scenario of 4.5 degrees Celsius warming by 2100 becoming the new “best case” scenario we can hope for.
What this means, is that we have entered a period of rapid warming and massive climate disequilibrium. The climate patterns of the last century are fading fast and they won’t be replaced by a new pattern for centuries, perhaps millennia. In the meantime, what we can expect are wild swings, unprecedented extremes, and rapid change. The one constant will be an ever-increasing heat.
Hurricanes get attention because they cause obvious physical damage, heat waves, however, have less visible effects, since the primary damage is to human health. If you thought that it seemed hotter than normal this summer, you’re right, it has been. In the decades to come it’s going to get even hotter.
Heat waves kill more people in the United States than any other weather-related disaster (SN: 4/3/18). Data from the National Weather Service show that from 1986 to 2019, there were 4,257 deaths as a result of heat. By comparison, there were fewer deaths by floods (2,907), tornadoes (2,203) or hurricanes (1,405) over the same period.
What’s more, climate change is amplifying the dangers of heat waves by increasing the likelihood of high temperature events worldwide. Heat waves linked to climate change include the powerful event that scorched Europe during June 2019 (SN: 7/2/19) and sweltering heat in Siberia during the first half of 2020 (SN: 7/15/20). Over the next century, climate change will likely make extreme heat conditions much more frequent in nearly every part of the U.S., according to a paper published in the journal Environmental Research Communications. By the end of the century, it says, parts of the Gulf Coast states could experience more than 120 days per year that feel like they top 100°F.
The National Weather Service uses a measure called “maximum heat index“ — which takes into account both air temperature and humidity to calculate how hot it truly feels outside — to warn people of extreme heat. The group typically issues a “heat advisory” when a maximum heat index is expected to hit at least 100°F for two or more days, and an “excessive heat warning” when it will hit at least 105°F for two or more days.
While the hottest parts of the U.S. already experience plenty of Heat Index 100 (HI-100) days per year, they’re infrequent or virtually non-existent in cooler regions; Heat Index 105 (HI-105) days are even more rare. But according to the study’s projections, that won’t be the case for long.
Even under relatively conservative modeling conditions, the country-wide number of HI-100 days could double, and the number of HI-105 days could triple, by the middle of this century. While the Southeast and Southern Plains regions look likely to bear the brunt of this heat, only high-altitude areas in the Western U.S. would dodge these heat waves completely
Heat waves will be a near-constant part of life in many parts of the country throughout the 21st century. HI-100 days could quadruple nationwide, and HI-105 days could increase eight-fold.
That means parts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida could experience up to 120 HI-100 days per year, and southern parts of Texas and Florida could deal with up to 150 HI-105 days per year. Even states in the Pacific Northwest and Northern New England could see up to 10 HI-105 days per year.
Lastly, this has been a crazy year for hurricanes. Hurricane Isaias made landfall in the Carolinas on August 4th, its 75 mile-an-hour winds driving a storm surge as great as five feet. Isaias makes nine named storms in the Atlantic so far this year, something that has never before happened this early in the hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. Forecasters had predicted an active season, given warm ocean waters and other conditions, but 2020 is on track to be one of the busiest ever. It follows three years of devastating hurricanes, starting with Hurricane Harvey, Irma and Maria in 2017, then Florence and Michael in 2018 and Dorian in 2019.
“Climate change is tough for people to grasp, but attribution studies continue to find its DNA in today’s tropical systems, heat waves, droughts and rainstorms,” said Marshall Shepherd, a professor of atmospheric sciences and geography at the University of Georgia and director of its atmospheric sciences program. For hurricanes, warmer oceans provide more energy, making them stronger. And warmer air holds more moisture, so the storms bring more rain.
“Climate change shifts us into an era of sustained elevated risk from extreme weather and climate events,” Dr. Shepherd said.
Right now, for the first time since the Great Depression, it’s possible that two tropical systems could make landfall in the mainland United States at virtually the same time.
Tropical Depression Thirteen could affect the Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands as a tropical storm with rain and gusty winds by this weekend. This system may then head toward Florida and the Gulf of Mexico early next week, possibly as a hurricane.
Tropical Depression Fourteen has formed in the Caribbean Sea and is expected to first impact parts of Central America and Mexico as a tropical storm before emerging into the western Gulf of Mexico. This system faces an uncertain future in the western Gulf of Mexico, but it could affect parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast next week.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has updated it’s projection to say that 2020 is likely to be one of the most active hurricane seasons in the 22 years they have been producing hurricane forecasts. NOAA estimates we’ll get 19–25 named storms, 7–11 of which will be hurricanes and 3–6 of which will be major hurricanes, meaning Category 3 or higher. Which means that this hurricane season is barely half over.
Understand though, it’s going to get worse.
A recent study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that major hurricanes have been increasing since the late 1970s. Climate scientists have suspected that this supercharging effect might be happening. Surface ocean temperatures have climbed in recent decades — a change that theoretically would lead to greater storms, due to the warmer water providing more energy for swirling winds.
The researchers found that the chance of a tropical storm becoming a major hurricane increased by eight percent every decade starting in 1979. This means that across the life of a given storm, it’s now more likely than before to develop into a major storm. Scientists can say, more definitely, that major hurricanes are becoming more likely and that the large and potentially destructive storms like those forecast for this year are becoming the norm.
The implications of this are obvious, in the decades to come the Gulf Coast and the Eastern Seaboard of the US are going to be pounded regularly by massive storms. This year we are looking at 19–25 named storms, in a decade it’s probably going to be 29–35 annually. By the decade after that, the number will probably be in the 40’s. Our cities, our suburbs, the infrastructure of the East Coast of America is going to collapse under the onslaught unless we start upgrading it right now. Because in Bomb Time if you wait to start taking action, it’s probably going to be too late.
