Is the house on fire? Indications of climate change - 2012

I'm not an alarmist, but there are times to be alarmed - like when your house is on fire, or when you see the headlong approach of unswerving headlights.

When it comes to global climate, is the house on fire?

Record-settting number of high temperature records

The most recent data I could find on daily temperature records in the USA was from July 2012.  According to the National Climate Data Center, there were 23,283 new record high temperatures set across the United States from Jan-July 2012.

There are also some other troubling data and scenarios out there.

In mid-July a compelling article on climate change and current weather and climate patterns by Bill McKibben appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine.  You can read it in its entirety by clicking the link below.  

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719

Building on data presented in that article we are now entering the 329th consecutive month with average temperatures above the 20th century average.  Yes, you read that right...329th month...that's nearly 27.5 years where EVERY month's average was above the 1900-1999 average temperature.  Now it is expected that any set of data from a natural system would include variability - year to year rainfall totals, temperature fluctuations, your heart rate, your annual body mass fluctuations, etc.  But when we see over 27 years of monthly average temperature data above the average of that for an entire century of temperature readings, we should probably sit up and think about what's going on.

If temperature fluctuations were behaving completely randomly, with no long-term temperature increase or decrease, we would predict that a given month's average temperature has a 50% chance (probability = 0.5) of being above average.  The chances of two consecutive months being above average would be 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.25 (= a 25% chance of happening by random chance alone).  So, what are the odds of observing 329 consecutive months with average temperatures above the 1900-1999 average temperature by random chance alone?  to get the answer to this question you need to multiply 0.5 by itself 329 times.  The answer is, according to the Rolling Stone article 3.7 x 10^-99.  That means that there is a 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000037% chance of that happening by random chance alone.  That's such a small likelihood of happening that it's time to look for things that could be driving that other than random chance.

The prime suspect?  A trend of global climate change, i.e., global warming.

The total global average temperature hasn't increased all that much so far in the past 100 years or so...only 0.8oC.  And if we are seeing significant changes with only this small change in global temperature, what could happen when we reach 2oC?  - the projected limit that we could reach without incurring MAJOR global environmental and ecological effects?

BTW, climate models suggest that the atmosphere-ocean-earth system may be able to accommodate the emission of another 595 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere before we reach the 2oC mark.  But guess what?  The cumulative proven reserves of fossil fuels currently controlled by energy companies and countries with nationalized mining and extraction = 2,795 gigatons of fossil fuel.  That's just the fossil fuel that we know about.  That's 5x the total we can emit before hitting the 2oC mark.

Are there other indicators are there that climate is shifting?  Check out some of my other postings.

Summer of the Smokey Haze

When you look outside and see air quality like this you might think, yeah, that's pretty typical...for Mexico City, or Los Angeles, or sometimes even Salt Lake City, but this summer terrible air quality and low visibility have been common in the Upper Snake River Valley, Idaho.  It's been what I call "The Summer of the Smokey Haze."

These shots were taken during the early evening on 17 September 2012, from the SE corner of the BYU-Idaho campus, Rexburg, Idaho looking toward the north, northwest, and west. As you can see, the entire valley is filled with smoke. 

Normally the Upper Snake River Valley has excellent air quality anywhere from 20-50 miles of visibility.  We can usually see the mountains to the north and west of town with great clarity.  This summer though, it's been a rare day when we've been able to see them.

Fortunately we haven't had much in the way of wildfires in our area - aside from one west of Salmon, ID, but because of the topography of Idaho, wind sweeps toward our part of the state from the southwest as wind blows along the lower Snake River Plain, hits hills and mountains to the east of Pocatello and Idaho Falls, and channels the wind our way.  This year there have been large and persistent wild fires throughout much of the mountain west.  This smoke reportedly is making its way to us all the way from fires in Nevada!

Only occasionally can you actually smell the smoke in the air, but the visibility and air quality has been especially poor, all summer long.

We have had some windy days, and even a little rain, and we keep hoping that it will either blow the smoke out of here or drop it to the ground (in the case of rain).  But so far all wind does is bring more smoke.  I guess the only relief we are likely to see anytime soon is going to be connected to seasonal changes.  Maybe once temperatures start to drop and the fires south of us get under control things will get better.

Here's hoping!

Toilet 2.0 - Huh!? Oh!

If you live in an economically developed country you probably use a flush toilet, and the only notable changes I've seen in that technology during the past several decades is the low-flow toilet. You know, one that uses less water than its predecessors. What else could you do to improve it?

As it turns out, a toilet is something that people living in economically developed countries take largely for granted, but about 1/4 of the world's population does not have access to a sanitary toilet, and that translates into a big, big public health problem. It's such a big problem that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has established a program promoting the development of toilet technologies that can be deployed anywhere that can not only provide access to sanitary toilet facilities, but also provide added benefits like energy, fertilizer, and even drinkable freshwater.
I was flipping through the 10 August 2012 issue of the journal "Science" when I came across an article that made me double-take.  The article's title is "Finding a New Way to Go".  The article summary states that "The flush toilet was a transformative invention, but experts say its time may be past..."

Huh!?

I try my best to stay generally aware of what's going on in the world of science, but "Toilet Science" has never really been on my radar...well, except when I need one.  :-)

Anyway, I was intrigued so I dug into the article, so to speak.

Just in case you don't know, "Science" is the most prestigious science journal published in the United States, and is published by the AAAS - The American Association for the Advancement of Science" the most prestigious scientific community in the country, and perhaps in the world, though I'm sure the Royal Society in Great Britain would certainly take issue with that claim, but that's fodder for another posting.

So here's the most prestigious scientific publication in the world including work from the field of, um "toilet science(?)" in it's main portal to the world.  Curious?  OK...I'll go on.  This is a video posted in the "Science" magazine article I referred to above.  It addresses the problem:

Science - Video Portal

If you live in If you live in an economically developed country you probably use a flush toilet, and the only notable changes I've seen in that technology during the past several decades is the low-flow toilet.  You know, one that uses less water than its predecessors.  What else could you do to improve it?

As it turns out, a toilet is something that people living in economically developed countries take largely for granted, but about 1/5 of the world's population does not have access to a sanitary toilet, and that translates into a big, big public health problem.  It's such a big problem that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has established a program promoting the development of toilet technologies that can be deployed anywhere that can not only provide access to sanitary toilet facilities, but also provide added benefits like energy, fertilizer, and even drinkable freshwater.

Here's a video from their site.

Yep, The Gates Foundation and scientists around the world are on a quest to discover Toilet 2.0.  A toilet that will do much more than just flush our, um, you know, away.

If you want to learn more about this effort you can visit the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation "Reinventing the Toilet" page by following this link:

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/watersanitationhygiene/Pages/home.aspx

Keep your eyes open, there's no telling what science will do its best to do for you next!

The flowers are still growing like mad - odd for this time of year in Rexburg, Idaho

I walked through the Ricks Gardens at BYU-Idaho in my way to work this morning, and as I walked through I thought to myself...is it just me, or are the flowers looking especially good for this time of year?  During my lunch break I took another stroll through the gardens, and this is what I saw - flowers in full bloom and still blooming all over the place!

As I walked along I ran into one of our horticulture faculty and our greenhouse manager, so I asked them if it's just me, or are the flowers in particularly good shape for this time of year.  In response they said, "The magic ingredient is heat."  Flowers love the heat. 

Frankly, it's not that unusual any more for our first hard fall frost to hold of now until sometime in October, and we have flirted with the low 30soF only once or twice so far this fall.  As you can see, the flowers are doing great! They are growing, are in full flower, and some are even still putting out new buds.  

I asked if this was unusual, and they both confirmed that even without a hard frost, the flowers don't usually look anywhere near this good most years.

The secret ingredient?  "Heat."  

While it's difficult to link any weather event, like a warmer than average late summer, to global warming, it is fair to say that the current trend in global climate change makes it more likely for summer-like conditions to extend longer than historically normal.  

The gardens look more like mid-July to me than mid- September...

Now I'm wondering...how long the warm days will last.  I guess the only thing to do is to enjoy it while we have it.  

Record sea ice melt season reduces sea ice extent to only about 50% of its historical average

It's nearly the middle of September, the traditional end of the sea ice melt season in the Arctic Ocean.  The rate of sea ice melt has slowed over the past few days, perhaps signaling the beginning of the end of the Arctic Ocean sea ice melt season for 2012, but it's not completely done yet, and it's been a crazy summer in the Arctic!

Do you see what I see?  The extent of sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean is WAY smaller now than the 1979-2000 average (orange lines) with only ~51% of the 1979-2000 average sea ice cover remaining today.

Consider this...

The average sea ice cover (extent) in the Arctic from 1979-2000 was about 6.7 million square kilometers.  Right now there is only about 3.45 million square kilometers of sea ice in the Arctic (as shown above).  The area of ice that is MISSING is shown on the map below.  Sea ice extent has NEVER been this low.

How does this compare to the previous sea ice melt record?  The previous sea ice melt record was in 2007.  The dark gray line on the graph below shows the 1979-2000 average sea ice cover.  The dashed green line shows the sea ice cover during 2007, and the blue line shows sea ice cover during 2012.  The 2012 ice melt smashed the 2007 record, with over 750,000 km2 more sea ice melting than in 2007.

Interestingly, the high amount of sea ice melt in 2007 was largely the result of an unusual Arctic weather year.  It had huge high pressure regions over large areas of the polar north, and lots and lots of sunshine, which meant lots of sea ice melting.  In 2012 however weather conditions did not appear to be set up to produce lots of sea ice melt.  There was a major cyclonic low pressure system that produced lots of cloud cover.  And that combined with associated winds normally slows sea ice melt.  But not this year.  It has just apparently gotten too warm overall in the Arctic for that kind of weather system to slow sea ice melt as much as it used to.

Maybe the sea ice melt in 2007 and 2012 were just statistical outliers.  I would have considered that as a possibility...until I saw the data for sea ice in the Arctic for the years between 2007 and 2012.

The graph below shows the sea ice cover data for the years 2007-2012 plus the 1979-2000 average.  An outlier is an observation that falls well outside of the observed long term trend.  What we see when we look at the data is that every year since 2007, and others not shown here, all fall well outside the 1979-2000 average.  But because there are getting to be so many years outside that average they collectively no longer can really be considered outliers.  Instead, they are possibly representing a new trend.

I just read an extremely interesting paper on what is and has been going on in the Arctic with respect to sea ice.  I recommend it highly if you are seriously interested in this topic.

• Stroeve, J. C., et al. 2012. The Arctic's rapidly shrinking sea ice cover: a research synthesis. Climate Change 110:1005-1027 DOI 10:1007/s10585-011-0101-1

Here is a link to a PDF file containing that paper: 

https://arcus.org/files/projects/supplemental/674/stroeve_etal_seaice_synthesis_2011.pdf

One of the things I found most compelling in Stroeve's article was the analysis of sea ice extent over the last 30+ years.  The conclusion is that the rate of sea ice loss is no longer linear.  Annual sea ice extents are dropping faster over the past decade than during previous decades.  The upper graph shows the rate of sea ice loss 1979-1998 in blue, and the rate of sea ice loss 1999-2010 in red.  The significant difference in these rates of sea ice loss is worth noting.  Stroeve's paper refers to models that suggest that the Arctic could become ice free in the summer as soon as 30 years from now.    

On the heels of this year's record sea ice melt, however, some climatologists are starting to suggest the possibility of a summer free of ice in the Arctic as soon as 10 years from now.  Yow!

Great Blue Heron - Now THAT'S fishing!

My dissertation advisor at UC Santa Cruz was Todd Newberry.  He is a marine biologist, and he is  also an avid birder.  He enjoys leading bird walks and loves it when people have what he calls "Audubon Moments".  This is when someone takes the time to be still and observe nature.

Last week I had a fantastic Audubon moment, well, actually nearly an hour, of watching and photographing a great blue heron as it worked its way along a river bank, fishing as it went.

Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodius) are among the largest birds in North America, often standing over four feet tall.  They are wading birds that eat fish, frogs, or whatever else can fit down their craw.

Anyway, my wife, daughter, and I went to Warm River, ID - one of our favorite day outings.  As we sat and relaxed, snacked and read at the Warm River Campground, I noticed a blue heron among the vegetation and rocks on the other side of the river.  It was slowly picking its way along the river's edge, standing, looking, fishing, and moving on.

Luckily (OK, it wasn't luck), I had my camera in hand and was able to grab some great shots of it fishing.

Here we go...as it came around the back side of a boulder it stopped and looked...Whep!?  Is that a fish?

I better take a second look.  Yep, fish!  I'm going for it!

Yeah, baby!  Got it, but can I hang onto it?

It's a pretty big one...the dang thing could come back on me...I better give it a good shake!

That's enough shaking!  Now I've got shift it around and get this thing headed head-first down the old gullet.

That's better...

Hey, check it out...I really nailed this fish...put my lower bill right through its head!  Now THAT'S fishing!

Now to swallow this slippery thing...now if I can just flip it just the right way around...

Awesome!  First try!  Just like I planned it...

Hack, gnaw, whthreawght...

Check out this pose...and some people out there don't think I'm really a dinosaur!?

Big gulp...man, that's a long way to swallow.

And I'm off...

This was a fantastic time.  I actually saw it catch a couple more fish, and a corn cob!?  Well at least it let the corn cob go.  Good call.  Now if it were a seagull it'd probably still be trying to hack down the corn cob just so another gull couldn't have it.

So there's one of my latest Audubon moments.

Fish kill on the Lower Teton River, Idaho - 2012

This short article appeared in the the Idaho Falls Post Register today (1 Sept 2012)

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IDAHO NEWS BRIEFLY

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Whitefish die-offs puzzle fish experts

POCATELLO (AP) -- State fisheries biologists are reporting an increase in the number of mountain whitefish dying in eastern Idaho streams and rivers.

Idaho Fish and Game experts said the die-off is troubling and they are counting on the public to help figure out why.

The dead fish have turned up in recent weeks on the South Fork of the Snake River and the main stem of the Snake River. Reports of dead whitefish have also come from the Teton and North Fork of the Salmon rivers.

Regional Fisheries Manager Dan Garre said the cause is a mystery. He said it's interesting that the die-off is targeting whitefish typically under 10 inches -- and not trout.

Tissue samples have been sent to a state lab for analysis.
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I read the article, and thought that was sad.  Interestingly I had some time today, and I headed to the lower reaches of the Teton River to do some fly fishing.  This part of the river, just north of the town of Teton, is usually a great destination and usually yields plenty of action, but not today.  I fished for nearly an hour with no luck at all.  I talked to other people also fishing the Teton today and they reported the same thing.

I know there can be slow days fishing, but for no one to have any luck at all is highly unusual.  What was also unusual were all the dead fish in the water along the river banks.  I also saw or heard only three times when fish surfaced.  That was over about a 3-4 hour period when I was fishing and walking the river looking at what I can only call a fish kill.

A fish kill is a situation where some combination of chemical, physical, and/or biological factors push fish beyond their tolerance ranges, killing many.  Well documented fish kills include situations where water temperatures spike or dissolved oxygen levels drop or chemicals are introduced to the water, or a disease hits a population, etc.  No one yet knows what is going on along the Teton, but this is what some spots along the north fork of the Teton River below the diversion dam, north of the town of Teton, Idaho.

There were dead fish all along the north fork of the Teton River between the diversion dam and the bridge of N 2400 E over the Teton River.  There were so many, in fact, that the smell of decaying fish was evident all along that reach of the river.  

That reach of the river is about 0.5 miles long, and I walked, counted, and photographed, all the dead fish I could see there.  Though this was an unscientific survey - just what I could see from the banks of the river - I saw about 100 dead fish.  All but one of these were mountain whitefish, but one was a cutthroat trout.  

The report that the fish kill was affecting only whitefish may have been preliminary, and it's possible that trout are also under environmental stress.  This photo, taken earlier today, shows a dead cutthroat trout near one of the banks of the Teton River - cause of death unknown.

The cause of death of these fishes has not yet been verified, but fish kills are known to have occurred in conjunction with low dissolved oxygen levels, high water temperature, and chemicals that have run off into a river or lake.  

One interesting piece of research (click the URL to see the entire article) on fishes in California reveals that whitefish are more susceptible to warmer water temperatures than trout.  Since this appears to be the case, whitefish may serve well as a "canary in a coal mine" (environmental indicator species) for trout streams and rivers.  I.e., when the whitefish are under stress, the trout may not be far behind.

http://www.montana.edu/mtcfru/Guy/Publication%20pdf/Boyd%20et%20al_2010.pdf

I don't know what caused this fish kill.  All I know is that I've fished this part of the Teton River for years and I've never seen anything like it!  It's worrisome, and I hope the Idaho Fish and Game can figure out what is causing the fish to die.