Somewhere between the arbitrary extremes...

[ecosophia]

I've discussed elsewhere the way that discussions of climate change have been stuck for decades in a dichotomy between two extreme and hopelessly unrealistic political positions -- one that insists that climate change is going to kill us all in five years, and the other which insists that climate change isn't happening at all.

Meanwhile, the atmosphere has its own ideas. The photo to the left was taken in the southern Sahara desert yesterday. Yes, that's water, and no, that's not the way it normally looks. What's happened over the last few days is that for the first time in centuries, the autumn monsoons that keep the middle of Africa green swung north into the desert belt and gave them more rain in a few days than they normally get in years. Dry lakebeds that haven't been filled in recent history are lakes today. If that continues -- and there are plenty of other signs that northern hemisphere climate belts are shifting northwards -- the entire belt of countries in the southern half of the Sahara, at least, will become arable and potentially prosperous.

Let's bring in a little history for reference. 6000 years ago the entire Sahara region, and also the Arabian desert and the deserts of northern India, were lush savanna regions full of wildlife. Elephants, lions, and giraffes lived there, and so did a lot of human beings. Then the global climate cooled and catastrophic droughts turned all those areas into nearly lifeless deserts. As late as Roman times, the areas that are now Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya were the breadbasket of the Empire, producing bumper crops of grain every year.

My theory -- which I've discussed in this journal before -- is that the earth's current climate structure is much less stable than current climate science assumes. The way it currently works is that there are three cells (patterns of air circulation) in the atmosphere between the equator and the north pole: the Hadley cell between the equator and about 30° north, the Ferrel cell between 30° and 60°, and the Polar cell between 60° and the north pole. The Polar and Hadley cells are strong, but the Ferrel cell is weak and unstable.

Right now the north polar area is warming very quickly. If that goes far enough, it will cause the Polar cell to reverse its direction, as warm air rises from the pole. That will cause the Ferrel cell to collapse completely, and the Hadley and reversed Polar cells will divide the space between them. Since the behavior of the cells determines climate belts, the desert belt now around 30° north will shift to 45° north, and the north pole will end up with a climate like that of northern Scotland or the southern coast of Alaska -- not exactly balmy, but not cold enough to support the current Greenland ice cap.

What does that mean in practical terms, if it happens? It means that in the decades ahead, the Sahara, Arabian, Indian, and Sonoran deserts will transform themselves into grasslands kept green by regular seasonal rains. It means that large sections of the United States and southern Europe will enter desert conditions, and existing rain-shadow deserts will become much dryer -- quite possibly too dry to support human life. It means that the Greenland ice cap will melt over the next few centuries, raising sea level 50 feet or so worldwide. That will be a matter of a few inches a year -- we're not talking cataclysm here -- but it will mean that most of the world's seaports and a great deal of its low-lying land (Florida, for example) will gradually go underwater, piling spectacular costs on an already strained global economy.

Do I know for a fact that this is going to happen? No -- but monsoon rainfall in the southern Sahara is one of the crucial signs I've been watching for, and now it's happened. If it happens again at any point in the next ten years, we may well be in for it.

Comments

And looking south ...

[k_a_nitz]

Would I be right in thinking that the equivalent for the Southern Hemisphere would depend upon what happens with warming in the Antartic and/or do the preponderance of oceans and relative lack of wide continents suggest different possibilities?

As an aside, recent variations in climate has already extended the range of a sea snake to include the northern tip of New Zealand, meaning we can no longer truly say we don't have snakes (and officially they qualify as native fauna!).

Re: And looking south ...

[ecosophia]

It's possible to make a case either way for the southern hemisphere on theoretical grounds, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens. Longtime commenter Chris from Australia notes that he's seeing dramatic changes where he lives, so the climate belts may be shifting poleward in both hemispheres -- in which case you can correct "50 feet of sea level rise over the next few centuries" to "300 feet of sea level rise over the next millennium or so."

[(Anonymous)]

And Dubai:
https://apnews.com/article/uae-historic-rain-storm-flooding-dubai-airport-disruption-3e838dbc169e52dcd6d11b64f79bdcb7

And Saudi Arabia:
https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/gulf/2024/08/30/heavy-rain-and-major-flooding-hits-saudi-arabia/

Saudi Arabia allegedly did some cloud seeding:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/saudi-arabia-expand-cloud-seeding-114148147.html

- Cicada Grove

[ecosophia]

Hmm! Thanks for this.

Similar thoughts

[(Anonymous)]

I read that and thought of the lonely middle ground on climate change you (and other readers, including myself) live in.

I've said, almost to the point where people have physically assaulted me (the enraged angry atheist climate change types), that whilst the climate models have been remarkable accurate to date in predicting warming, they may fail if the Hadley cells merge or move. That usually receives splattering attacks.

In such a situation we only have the paleoclimate history to run on, and yes, the first 6000 years or do after the Younger Dryas may point the way.

And don't even get me started on the inability of basically everyone to accept that:

A) the energy inputs into IPCC models are way wrong and overstated in terms of burnable fossil fuels. Athere's a few decent climate scientists pointing this out now, particularly that the world has moved away from the old RCP8 curve, and is now on the RCP4.5 curve. But it goes so far against the growth narrative it'll never be accepted

B) That the basic EROEI of renewables has not changed and cannot change. All that's happened is that a few efficiency gains in large scale manufacturing have temporarily reduced the cost of solar panels and a few other bits and pieces. In debating this, which I really shouldn't bother engaging in, I found it remarkable that patient explanations of hard physics and thermodynamics were disregarded in favour of articles in the Economist that insist that cancer-like exponential growth curves on renewables will someone get ever steeper forever and save us from ourselves.

I don't expect any end to the nuttiness any time soon.

Re: Similar thoughts

[ecosophia]

Neither do I. Next to nobody wants to admit that both sides have embraced crackpot extremes, and the reality is somewhere in the middle.

[(Anonymous)]

Yemen also seems to have gotten extra rain this year. It might be fascinating to watch from afar, but adapting to different climates (whether it's more or less rain, higher or lower temperature) is a nightmare. Especially if you are not quite sure which way it's going. I am planting all sorts of trees just in case (you are very negative about Europe, but we actually live in an ideal climate belt here, in terms of temeprature and precipitation).
In Italy, Sicily, a primarily agrarian region, is suffering from a terrible prolonged drought, whereas the Northern regions seem to be swinging from long periods of no rain to too much rain. In North Eastern Italy, where I live, it's been raining no stop - and having gone through both, I still prefer too much rain to too little. If you are used to a certain climate, a drastic change feels like an existential threat, down to your bones.

[ecosophia]

Well, it depends a little bit on the nature of the change. Here in New England, we had next to no snow last winter -- that's as extreme a change as rain in the Sahara, in case you were wondering -- but increased rainfall. There's been flooding in low-lying areas, and if it keeps up some of those areas will probably be abandoned, but people are taking it in stride.

As for Europe, it all depends on how far north the desert belt shifts. If it shifts all the way to the 45th parallel, the Alps could end up looking like this...

in which case your climate belt may not be quite so ideal!

Winds

[(Anonymous)]

It is an ill wind that doesn't blow somebody some good. I rejoice to think of the desserts blooming. Of course, other desserts will form. In a few hundred years, I expect there will be far fewer humans and the world might be worth living in again. Just think of the gazelles roaming over grassland in the Empty Quarter pursued by big cats or packs of wild dogs. This gives me hope for the future.
Maxine

Re: Winds

[brenainn]

I might be a bit of an outlier on the issue, but I also find at least some of all this cause for hope. If this shift occurred overnight or over the course of only a few years or decades, then I might be very gloomy about it all. But what appears far more likely is a rough, but not cataclysmic, transition to a new world where climate change has once again altered the Earth's diverse biosphere. Of course, mass migrations, wars, famines and droughts, and extinction of many species are terrible things. But that's the cycle of life on Earth, and I've found acceptance of reality brings greater peace than thinking one can change that reality. It certainly is better than being gloomy, worried, and anxious about that which cannot be stopped.

I look forward to my next several incarnations. The world will be a different place, and I get to see how it turns out.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG, I read the Climate Toboggan article on Ecosophia last year, with some alarm. Until a few years ago I used to travel regularly to southern Portugal for work purposes and even twenty years ago local people were saying the Algarve area would turn into a desert within their lifetimes. Academic opinion at that time - and probably still is - that Britain and NW Europe would transition to a Mediterranean-type savanna climate, albeit at the cooler, wetter end of that category. Your prediction implies that area could instead end up in the Polar cell, though for the western seaboard it would depend on what happens to the AMOC. My understanding is that about 6000 years ago, the UK had a climatic optimum with treelines about 300m higher than present, though that was coming out of the last glaciation so that may be no guide. Without the AMOC in your scenario, northern Europe would basically starve.

[ecosophia]

I expect the AMOC to shut down as the temperature differential between the equator and the poles decreases. The new Polar cell, though, will not bring arctic temperatures -- it will have the same approximate temperature range as the current Ferrel cell. Thus the academic opinion you mention is still probably correct. The great challenge will be dealing with the big tsunamis you'll get as Greenland melts and isostatic rebound produces one big earthquake after another, destabilizing undersea sediments piled up by the waning glaciers. You might look up the Storegga Slide someday...

Down Under

[(Anonymous)]

Hi John Michael,

Man, the climate bands are shifting south here as well. Winter rains here are usually drizzly and cold, but the past couple of years I've been experiencing thunderstorms and torrential tropical rain, in winter. And it did snow here, briefly this year, but nothing settled on the ground, and blink and the snow was done. I'd read historical accounts suggesting the winter minimums could get to -10'C / 14'F in the mountain range, but the coldest I've seen in the past eighteen years was 28'F. Things are shifting, but as you note, it's a slow process.

In the meantime I'm planting more varieties of citrus trees. Twenty years ago the local consensus was that that was impossible - yet there the trees are and growing, with minimal additional watering.

Cheers

Chris at Fernglade

Re: Down Under

[ecosophia]

Many thanks for this. Remind me which state you're in -- that'll help me place the current climate belts south of the equator.

[(Anonymous)]

That's interesting to hear. That would seem to affect those scenarios some people in Europe are worried about (increased migration), if this results in soil fertility in northern Africa, it may be that people will be migrating away from the new deserts of southern Europe into northern Africa instead!

In a newsletter I get at work, there was a piece about China's weather alteration program (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1843652657606713575.html) that looked to be from some investor wanting to encourage the same thing in the US. I wonder how much effect globally these types of programs are having, because weather is an interconnected system. We don't know the effects these programs could be having on the weather in neighbouring countries. Maybe all this rainfall in northern Africa are side effects, even if there are multiple causes.

[ecosophia]

Oh, it's entirely possible that a century from now African nations will be complaining about illegal immigration from Europe...

[(Anonymous)]

Yay, a new theory that I hadn't heard about. Very interesting.

Also, to the atmosphere, who in the face of our best handwaivers and greatest ideologues, persists on having its own ideas, I declare : "How Dare You?"

~Thibault

[ecosophia]

I've come to think that reading H.P. Lovecraft is good preparation for dealing with ecological reality. The atmosphere, like most of the Lovecraftian Great Old Ones, has never noticed our existence and wouldn't care in the least if it did notice us. It just goes its tentacular way, leaving random carnage and equally random blessings in its wake.

[(Anonymous)]

Here is more evidence it has already started happening. This is a study comparing rainfall patterns in India. The study compares the rainfall level in the decade between 2012-2022 with the previous three decades. The region that has seen the most dramatic change in rainfall is the desert region in the western part of the country.

https://www.ceew.in/publications/decoding-changing-monsoon-rainfall-patterns-due-to-climate-change-in-india

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this! There used to be an additional major river in western India, before the regions around its headwaters turned into desert. I forget its name, but it was celebrated in the Vedas. It'll pick up again in due time.

Hunga Tonga

[prayergardens]

Do you think the Hunga Tonga volcanic explosion has impacted this in any way? It seems we are in an anomaly in terms of all the atmospheric moisture and rain globally and then that settles down back to match your long term analysis? I don't have enough of a scientific background to really understand it but I live in a place that should be getting drier long term but we've had catastrophic amounts of rain in the last two years.

Re: Hunga Tonga

[ecosophia]

Doubtless it's a factor, but not a major one. The most important factor is simply that a warmer atmosphere can evaporate and carry more water. Where are you located, btw? Knowing where the rain's unusually heavy is a useful data point for me.

[(Anonymous)]

But why 'gloomy'?

Many things these days can make one rather gloomy, perhaps even despairing, but not this - for me at least!

[ecosophia]

Oh, I'm not despairing. Human beings are right up there with cockroaches and rats in terms of their capacity for survival -- we're tough, nasty, omnivorous critters who can get by in the most absurd conditions. It's simply that relatively rapid climate change means more wars, more economic turmoil, more mass migrations, and more trouble generally.

Changing Climate

[(Anonymous)]

Greetings Mr. Greer!

Fascinating - many commenters have pointed to the NASA climate history diagram already, showing since 10.000 years we have snowball earth, a state of affairs last time seen before the dinosaurs roamed the earth.

No doubt a warmer planet is welcomed for thriving life. What our crumbling industrial behemoth wants is irrelevant to our Earth.

Here in Austria in can attest, we had a major flood end of September (I wanted to report on Open Post but I was ill that week and could not). They speak of a thousand year flood this time, many saying they haven't seen such before.

On Monday the 7th of October I sat outside in the sorroundings of Vienna, short sleeved at 10pm.

Utmost unconventional. This is a temperate climate zone, and October used to be definitively a month of Autumn, sometimes sunny, often cold and wet.

But the past years have already shown quite surprising (or not) upticks in temperature - last year on 31th October, we had 24 Degrees celsius by Daytime, even in the shade it was warm, and that is most uncommon.

Vienna and Eastern most Austria in the low lands now has an almost mediterrenean climate - figs and peaches thrive where I live. Olives, not yet, but that may come.

Springtime on the other hand has been very wet and cold well into June these past years.

But what is especially noteworthy, we have really huge jumps in temperature now. Climate used to be stable around here, warm and cold seasons transitioning into each other seamlessly.

In September, the outside temperature fell from 33 degrees celsius to 9 degrees celsius in just four days - this is like skipping a season in between.

I have mentioned it before, I learned skiing around Vienna in the early to mid nineties. Literally unthinkable since more than a decade. That shows things changing, but not just a little, and it has not been like this in the lifetimes of my grandmother and father, and great grandparents, not since the 1920s, not before. Not remotely so. Seems the changes have accelerated exponentially since the nineties, though a continuous change towards warmer winters has been seen since world war II already.

regards,
Curt

Re: Changing Climate

[ecosophia]

Many thanks for these data points!

[(Anonymous)]

Then we, like the members of JT in that song, will have to learn how to play different instruments from the ones we've been accustomed to for centuries.
Michaelz

[ecosophia]

Oh, granted. It's just that I get the feeling that the story's too damn real and in the present tense. ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

I for one am a bit surprised at the changes in the southern hemisphere, given that Antarctica is still so dang cold. But can't argue with the reports of weird weather.


But in the Northern Hemisphere we definitely got problems.

When should we see the weather being the "weirdest"?
The Fall.
This is the time of the year when the artic seas are warmer than the continents that surround them. And the heat rises from the artic sea disrupting the normal downward flow air. This effect should continue to get worse as the sea ice disappears in the summer. As the sea ice melts out earlier in the year the sea surface temperatures will skyrocket. (Melting ice take a lot of energy but as long as there is ice the temperature of the water is still ~0. Once the ice is gone that solar energy increases the temp of the water quickly)

This is potentially a big problem as the Fall is harvest time and bad (weird) weather around harvest time can be so heartbreakingly destructive.

[ecosophia]

Watch the Arctic Ocean and the land areas right around it. The smaller the ice coverage of that region in late summer, the more likely the Polar cell is to be disrupted, and the weirder the autumn will be. Once we get even a partial blue water event in the Arctic summer, all bets are off.

Data point

[white_bear_chronicles]

We are at 39N/86W which has been unusually warm by 10 degrees or so. I've been watching the wildlife for decades and note migratory birds passing south are about 3wks late so far. The whitetail deer still have their summer color so I planted a very late garden crop and have greenbeans setting fruit and fruit trees still completely green. I do expect for winter to come very hard in the next month.
Gawain

Re: Data point

[ecosophia]

Thanks for the data points!

[charlieobert]

I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota - the same degree of North Latitude as Ilhan Omar.

Summer weather has been hanging on, right through September, and now October is unusually warm - we hit 80 yesterday Oct 10 and that just doesn't happen here. Mid seventies are predicted for a few days next week.

It is also exceptionally dry this fall, with practically no rain for a month. The Summer was mostly quite dry, punctuated by an occasional severe thunderstorm and torrential downpour - one extreme or the other. Last winter was extremely mild and quite dry, and Farmer's Almanac predicts a dry and mild winter for this year - I suspect they are either right or underestimating the warmth.

Perhaps that will be useful to you.

[ecosophia]

And thanks for these!

new deserts

[(Anonymous)]

Jmg,

Which sections of the United States do you see entering desert conditions? Where might the lines between ecosystems be?

Thanks,

Edward

Re: new deserts

[ecosophia]

There are no lines between ecosystems, there are gradual transitions. If things follow the same pattern as in the post-glacial warm period, the region between the Cascades/Sierra Nevada and the Rockies will be a desert hellscape, and desert conditions will extend east from the Rockies across what are now the Great Plains. (The Nebraska Sandhills were dunes 6000 years ago.) Great Plains-like conditions will extend east into the Appalachians, while the Atlantic coast will have a more or less Southern ecosystem. The Gulf coast may be semitropical or fully tropical, depending on how far the climate bands shift. Portland and Seattle will have the climate of Baja California.

Data from AZ

[(Anonymous)]

Some data:

Here in Arizona, we have had a record breaking heat this year. Normally, things start to cool down end of Sept and start getting cold toward the end of October. Just this past week we hit 110 degrees, which is unheard of. Last year, the heat didn't last as long, but it was a record breaking hot in the middle of the summer. And the year before that, it was the coolest and wettest summer I can remember ever having.

The weather in the Sonoran desert is definitely acting atypical to the last few decades.

Re: Data from AZ

[ecosophia]

At least you're getting rain! The biggest question for the southern tier of states is how far the tropical and subtropical belts shift north. I can't predict that with available data...

Pole shift

[(Anonymous)]

I have also been very moderate in my take on climate change. It happens naturally, yes. Humans dumping massive amounts of junk into the atmosphere has very like accelerated the change but the sky is not falling. This may be a VERY silly question so I apologize for wasting your time if you think it's stupid, but does the theory of pole shift have anything to do with the changing atmospheric systems? The doomsayers say the poles are just about to shift (probably not) but they are moving and moving relatively quickly. I'm wondering if there is any correlation between the two phenomenon.

Re: Pole shift

[(Anonymous)]

Take a look at this:

https://theethicalskeptic.com/2024/05/23/master-exothermic-core-mantle-decoupling-dzhanibekov-oscillation-theory/

The Ethical Skeptic also has a presence on Twitter, but the link above contains all the key ideas.

His summary:

Within this summary, we outline a novel theory, the result of 25 years of research on the part of its author, comprising three primary novel hypotheses that link recent climate changes to specific alterations in the Earth’s core and mantle. These changes are proposed to lead to a shift in the rotation of Earth’s mantle and crust, which may result in a recurrence of the cataclysmic inundations mentioned in many cultural mythologies. The three hypotheses are summarized in the articles below.

(It's not a pole shift theory per se, but it's every bit as cataclysmic. )

*Ochre Harebrained Curmudgeon*

[(Anonymous)]

Will the Great Lakes end up like the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf today - where the lakes are entirely surrounded by desert?

[ecosophia]

That wasn't the case in the post-glacial warm period -- the Great Lakes were surrounded by prairie, basically -- but we'll have to see.

[claire_58]

I immediately thought of your previous post on climate change when I saw that picture and read about the flooding in the Sahara a few days ago. Thanks for the link. I reread it and most of the comments last night.
I have long since given up talking to anybody about climate change. I talk about resource depletion instead and that seems to shift the conversation to "anything but" pretty quickly.
Bret Weinstein has suggested a "geo-engineering" strategy to buffer the loss of albedo which can be summarized as "paint everything white." It seems like a good alternative to messing with the atmosphere but then that's a pretty low bar.

[ecosophia]

I still make the effort to bring up climate change now and then, but I know it's probably futile.

[(Anonymous)]

The Ferrel cells collapsing and making Europe and America desert is some intense karmic blowback for Faustian civilization.

[ecosophia]

Well, there's that.

[(Anonymous)]

If this happens, Canada is likely doomed. The majority of our population lives pretty much in the middle of what will become the new desert belt; with our capital located exactly at 45 degrees north....

I wonder if this is why so many people have commented here about getting very strong "Get out now" feelings for a while; if the majority of the populated parts of the country become full blown deserts I don't see how the country survives...

[ecosophia]

You're missing the obvious alternative. If the desert belt shifts to the 45th parallel, the northern two-thirds of Canada will have the kind of climate Ontario has now. The Mackenzie River valley in particular is likely to turn into a lush agricultural region with trade connections across the ice-free Arctic Ocean. Some of the river valleys of northern Quebec and Labrador will also likely do very well in a warmer world.

Rapid climate change in Southern Hemisphere

[(Anonymous)]

It is quite difficult to find evidence of rapid climate change in the southern hemisphere, certain for the past 10,000 years or so. It does seem that given the present layout of the continents, and the height of the mountains, that the climate switches are mostly in the northern hemisphere.

I've scoured journals for decades to find evidence of a Younger Dryas event in NZ, and haven't found one. There's the usual evidence of higher sea levels, raised beaches, some of which is actually higher sea levels, some of which is isotatic rebound from being weighed down with glaciers for a long period.

It may be that unless East Antartica melts significantly, all that ocean buffers things significantly, and we all become warmer Pacific Islands, with summer expeditions and perhaps some settlement of Antartica.

Re: Rapid climate change in Southern Hemisphere

[ecosophia]

That makes sense. It may be a much more gradual process.