From Vancouver to Asheville N.C., atmospheric rivers smash rain records, homes and lives. North Carolina scientist Dr. Orrin Pilkey: “nobody expected this” in a climate haven. Scientist Dr. Qinghua Ding says atmospheric rivers are changing both Poles. Alex with news beyond election theater in U.S. & UK – the real world is calling. Find out.
When rivers in the sky fall – all at once. Another atmospheric river just blasted the Pacific Northwest. Vancouver Canada was hit by flooding in multiple suburbs and emergency evacuation in nearby Deep Cove. For a city used to rain, this was a crazy record fast downpour that washed away homes and killed at least two people. The surprise super flooding in Appalachia with Hurricane Helene was possible because an atmospheric river accompanied the hurricane. That is a known connection. Another is La Nina and we investigate all this in this program. Less known, atmospheric rivers are moving toward the Poles, invading both the Arctic and Antarctica. That changes the ice world and that changes everything. Later in the show, we talk with author and acknowledged expert Dr. Qinqhua Ding.
Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (57 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)
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STORMS, COASTS AND SURPRISES
ORRIN PILKEY
Let’s spend a quick 14 minutes with the grand old-man of coastal science, North Carolina scientist Dr. Orrin Pilkey. We talk about Appalachia and the safe haven that wasn’t – and the danger we are all in. With unlivable heat, huge storms, floods and wildfires, is it time to get out? Is there any safe place to go? What the heck should we do when governments fail to cut emissions and corporations choose profits over the future?
There is a new book full of climate threats of course – but also new ideas to help you cope. It is called ”Escaping Nature, How to Survive Global Climate Change”. The main author is Dr. Orrin H. Pilkey, Professor Emeritus of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke University. Dr. Pilkey founded much of what we know about coastal science.
Listen to or download this 15 minute interview with Dr. Orrin Pilkey in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
We last talked in 2019 – about the need to start withdrawing from the coastline. Orrin gave us the old saying “If you can see the sea, the sea can see you”. But now with awful death and damage in Appalachia, it seems storms from the hot ocean find places away in the mountains. I did not expect this. Neither did Pilkey and his writing team. In the book they recommended the Appalachians as a cooler place for people in the South to go, thinking that would be a climate haven. So did everyone else, including local television.
HEAT AND HEALTH
This book also covers climate and health. Most medical experts do not expect human breathing problems until carbon dioxide reaches at least one thousand parts per million in the atmosphere. In 2024, we topped out around 426 parts per million. So why does this team say increasing CO2 might even affect our cognitive abilities – indoors? Answer: as outdoor CO2 increases, indoor CO2 is more likely to concentrate, reaching maybe 1400 ppm inside a building. That can lead to cognitive problems.
In warming weather, we have the tropical West Nile Virus popping up in New England. Pilkey’s new book suggests Burmese pythons may spread across the American South. It sounds like a whole new landscape of critters is coming with climate change, and not all of them are friendly.
THE GREAT NUTRIENT COLLAPSE
From “Escaping Nature”:
“But there is another insidious connection between climate change and food security. Globally about two-thirds of human calories come from corn, soybeans, and grains. As carbon dioxide (co2) levels rise, the nutrients in plants decline. More atmospheric co2 makes plants bigger but at the same time increases levels of carbohydrates while depleting levels of protein, vitamins, zinc, iron, calcium, and other nutrients, turning healthy fruits and vegetables into junk food. This was first made known in 2004 through the seminal research of Irakli Loladze, a mathematician with a penchant for biology. In Politico he describes plant nutrient losses from rising co2 levels as “the great nutrient collapse” (Evich 2017).”
SOURCE SCIENCE:
Changes in USDA Food Composition Data for 43 Garden Crops, 1950 to 1999. December 2004 Journal of the American College of Nutrition 23(6):669-82
DOI:10.1080/07315724.2004.10719409
From the book:
“While we wait for technological breakthroughs in climate mitigation and for the slow-turning wheels of bureaucratic governance to lumber toward some kind of clarity, we must fend for ourselves, must rethink how and where to live. To survive global change we must find ways to escape Nature.”
Orrin and his team are not counting on government action. In fact, they say for now people have to “fend for themselves”. They are not just writing about big plans for big governments, but for the reader.
Dr. Pilkey tells us some scientists recommend humans move to 45 degrees North latitude to avoid unlivable climates in a heating world. Where is that? Essentially a line from Portland Oregon to Portland Maine. This advice may not be good for Europe if AMOC collapses though. That would make the UK and Scandinavia too cold and stormy – as we explore in next week’s radio show.
This is a big book, and we didn’t even get to the fascinating photos and it’s long list of helpful resources in print and on screen. The book is ”Escaping Nature, How to Survive Global Climate Change”.
Our previous interview with Orrin Pilkey was in 2019. Find that blog and the audio here.
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NEWS FROM BEYOND ELECTION THEATER
– Alex Smith
Can I just say: other things are going on in the world besides the American election. Important things. The United Nations Environment Program just warned this world is currently heading toward more than 3 degrees Centigrade global warming. Only immediate slashing greenhouse gas emissions, this year, could keep us below 3 degrees. You know three degrees is beyond catastrophe for this civilization and most species, like mammals and eventually a lot of sea life. It is not “dangerous”. It is final. That sounds important.
Also: there are three major international conferences this and next month where the world tries to grapple with disappearing species, climate change, and expanding deserts. Only one nation in the world was not part of the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP16). The United States has never ratified the world treaty to protect the last of wildlife and living systems. These conferences will not stop the fossil fuel Titans or their addicted populations from accelerating climate change. Perhaps they can shape a vision of how we can do better – but is that enough? I look forward to this debate on major networks, instead of the endless soap opera of American elections. Other countries hold elections – from announcement to final results – in just weeks.
In ancient Byzantium, first known as “New Rome”, the citizens were divided into two competitive teams – the Blues and the Greens. These teams were part politics, part sports, and part ranting and violence. History repeats in country after country. We just had an election in British Columbia and more than week later I still don’t know who will be our next government. The vote was almost evenly divided between Left and Right. Europe is going through similar things and America is the famous example. Dictatorship waits in the wings?
This divide among us may be intentional, driven by nations or gangs wanting to weaken their opponents. Or it may be a stage of civilization in decline. Either way, while we battle each other, the natural ground we stand on, the water we drink, temperature, survival, everything, is changing under our feet. Pay attention to news from the real world, from the planet that can live without us.
ATMOSPHERIC RIVER ALERT
As you know, one alert from the natural world is freak extreme rainfall events all over the world. Every day we see new videos of a city somewhere in the world submerged by raging flood waters. Not all of these are associated with atmospheric rivers. Other kinds of fronts and storms can being fast rain floods. This week’s torrential rains in eastern Spain, called storm Dana, were technically an “a high-altitude depression” and not an atmospheric river.
But many historic, mind-boggling extreme rains, like a foot, two, or three feet, up to a meter in 24 hours, arrive with atmospheric rivers that can last for days.
Here is how Wikipedia describes “atmospheric river”:
“The term was originally coined by researchers Reginald Newell and Yong Zhu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1990s to reflect the narrowness of the moisture plumes involved. Atmospheric rivers are typically several thousand kilometers long and only a few hundred kilometers wide, and a single one can carry a greater flux of water than Earth’s largest river, the Amazon River. There are typically 3–5 of these narrow plumes present within a hemisphere at any given time. These have been increasing[ in intensity slightly over the past century.”
According to one source, the American Meteorological Society started using the term “atmospheric river” in 2017. Television weather reporters only recently started reporting them – although the so-called “Pineapple Express” was used to describe wet storms hitting California. Unless you are in college now, you never learned about them in school. The whole large-scale damaging phenomenon is still a new frontier in atmospheric science, but a brutal reality already in many countries.
Not everywhere is vulnerable. The interior of continents and very dry places are generally exempt from atmospheric rivers. ARs do strike anywhere hurricanes can form, but also places that seldom see tropical cyclones. Vancouver Canada, the recent target of an sky river downfall, only experienced one tropical cyclone – or hurricane – since records began: Typhoon Freda in 1962. Atmospheric rivers have been reported in the United States and Canada, New Zealand, the UK, Portugal and Spain, Southeast Asia (like the Philippines and Indonesia), and the coast of Chile. They also hit Antarctica and the Arctic. More about that to come.
Atmospheric rivers can be beneficial, providing up to half the water California requires including agriculture. Some cause major landscape damage including landslides, broken highways, and countless flooded homes and farms. Strangely, the most deadly atmospheric rivers on record happened in California in 1862, and then in British Columbia Canada in November 2021 and this October 2024.
TO THE POLES
But look beyond our narrow world. These sky rivers are pushing big changes at both Poles. In March 2022, East Antarctica experienced an intense heat wave driven by the most powerful atmospheric river ever recorded over the region. Temperatures soared up to 40°C (104°F) above normal! The heat wave affected an area the size of India and led to significant ice melt. But our guest expert Qinghua Ding cautions we do now know if that was caused by climate change, partly because our records at the South Pole are so short. We might be missing established long-term cycles.
But his science can show atmospheric rivers are going toward the Poles more often. Up to a third of all rainfall reaching the Arctic in a year is delivered in just a few days during the arrival of atmospheric rivers. I find that amazing. Polar rainfall can speed glacial reduction and certainly pushes a further decline in sea ice. We know declining sea ice reflects less solar energy, adding to global warming, which increases the moisture capacity of the atmosphere, leading to more and more powerful atmospheric rivers. That feedback is already in motion.
TWO MORE CONNECTIONS
First, two more important connections for your brain. The development of atmospheric rivers is linked to the state of the ocean cycle called ENSO – known to the public as either La Nina or El Nino. We just came out of a single El Nino year, which discourages formation of AR’s. The arrival of another major AR on the Pacific Northwest coast is another sign of this La Nina year being born.
ENSO is a natural cycle in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Very new science, released October 24th in the Proceedings of the National Academy finds this oscillation of La Nina and El Nino has been going on for at least 250 million years. In previous ages, the two states hit extremes we have not seen. Whether that will be tripped by global warming we do not know. We also know that climate change may change the patterns of La Nina and El Nino. I have seen different results and predictions.
The essential point for now: the ENSO state is a major factor determining when atmospheric rivers form.
The second connection: atmospheric rivers may accompany tropical cyclones, or not. Each can form separately, but there is solid science showing they are “fellow travellers”. An atmospheric river accompanied Hurricane Helene and is the likely cause of the flooding that struck the former “climate haven” of North Carolina and nearby states. Several days of heavy rains saturated the ground before Helene arrived, and continued during the storm’s passing. Atmospheric rivers are part of that deadly tragedy, as much as the hurricane itself.
That is another reason we all need to learn more about them. Meteorologists and media weather reporters are getting on this, are warning the public. You and I, and everyone we know, needs to learn about extreme rainfall events, and how our actions (and inaction) are certain to make these flood events worse and more common. There are limits to how much we can change the atmosphere and survive. Heat is just one limit. The whole water cycle, from ocean to ground to all living things, is another big limit, crying for attention.
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ATMOSPHERIC RIVERS FLOOD THE POLES
QINGHUA DING
Scientists predict the Arctic will get wetter as the planet warms. But this is no gentle change. A short burst of heavy rains in a storm over Greenland raised global sea levels by 1.2 millimeters. New science finds extreme water vapor arrives in the Arctic in by atmospheric rivers. A wetter Arctic changes everything, from ice melt and permafrost thaw through changes to landscape, plants. and animal life.
Qinghua Ding is a climate scientist and Associate Professor at University of California Santa Barbara. Dr. Ding specializes in large-scale prediction of changes – with a focus on the Arctic and Antarctic. He co-authored the June 2024 paper “Role of atmospheric rivers in shaping long term Arctic moisture variability”.
Listen to or download this 22 minute interview with Dr. Qinghua Ding in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
This new study published in Science Advances shows “atmospheric rivers have shifted about 6 to 10 degrees toward the two poles over the past four decades.” And here is a shock: the paper says ninety percent of water vapor coming into the Arctic is brought in short bursts lasting as little as one day in a month.
The increase in AR’s is not evenly distributed across the arctic. From the paper:
“…this increase is not uniform. AR frequency increases significantly over northern Canada extending to western Greenland, eastern Siberia, and small portions of the central Arctic and northern Europe, while the North Atlantic Ocean, western Alaska, and central Siberia witness weak negative trends.”
This paper also illuminates a blind spot in our science, institutions and personal understanding of what to expect as the climate shifts. Almost all the governments and studies examine trends over decades and plan accordingly. You are shown trend lines on a graph, rising steadily. But in reality, short violent bursts are more important agents of change. A Hurricane traveling with an atmospheric river does not appear on climate models. Extreme heat and extreme rain are all averaged out.
We need to focus on extreme events more than trends. Somehow, perhaps with artificial intelligence help, models and predictions need to become fine grained enough to show and include the impacts of two month’s rain in 24 hours, or deadly heat over four days. We don’t have that yet. Averages and ten year trends distort and underestimate true risks.
We also learn from this research that “Strong moisture intrusion events, known as atmospheric rivers, are responsible for most of the winter heat extremes over the High Arctic”.
But not all of this AR activity in the Arctic can be nailed down to climate change, Dr. Ding tells us. There may be other ow-frequency, large-scale circulation changes in the Arctic to discover.
See also: “Decadal Predictability of the Arctic Earth system: Countdown to an Ice-Free Arctic”. Dr. Ding begins his presentation at 26:59.
And follow up further with this fact sheet from NOAA.
Studies have shown that these powerful storm systems are increasingly reaching the Arctic in winter, contributing significantly to the decline of sea ice during this season.
More Frequent Atmospheric Rivers Are Hindering the Recovery of Arctic Sea Ice
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ATMOSPHERIC RIVERS HIT UK
But it’s not just the Poles getting water shock treatment. In February 2020, worrying floods accompanied Storm Dennis causing record-breaking rainfall across parts of the UK, particularly in South Wales. Some areas saw more than a month’s worth of rain in just 48 hours – and that’s in rainy Britain. An article in New Scientist finds, quote: “atmospheric rivers that wind their way through the skies have been linked to the 10 largest winter floods in the UK since the 1970s.”
In 2024, it’s already to the point where some crops are ruined in the UK by persistent heavy rains. Fields are flooded, tractors bogged down. As warming powers more intense rains, hopes for the UK to feed itself dwindle. Atmospheric rivers have become a new threat to UK food security. I’ll chat about that with a UK think tank expert in next week’s show. High water flows from ARs already overwhelm storm sewer systems built a hundred years ago – for a climate that no longer exists. Costs for adaptation are enormous, as are insurance bills and government emergency spending.
After the 2020 storms, the UK Government announced over 5 billion pounds to better protect 336,000 properties in England against flooding – all to be done by 2027. That is probably a minor amount to refitting older infrastructure for this new wet climate – where extreme events become the norm.
The historic fast floods in Spain in late October are just another example of how climate change amplifies extreme rainfall.
MORE FROM RADIO ECOSHOCK
To find out more about the damaging connection between atmospheric rivers and arctic ice, check out my interview with Dr. Pengfei Zhang, posted March 1st, 2023 at ecoshock.org.
In astounding science, Dr. Pengfei Zhang and colleagues find those airborne torrents are reaching all the way to the Arctic Sea. They weaken Arctic ice in the winter, and that changes weather all over the Northern Hemisphere.
EPISODES OF EXTREME WEATHER
This paper by Zhang and colleagues also points again to possibilities of abrupt climate change. As co-author L. Ruby Leung said in a press release:
“We often think that Arctic sea ice decline is a gradual process due to gradual forcings like global warming. This study is important in that it finds sea ice decline is due to episodic extreme weather events — atmospheric rivers…”
Look for the paper “More frequent atmospheric rivers slow the seasonal recovery of Arctic sea ice” published in Nature Climate Change February 6, 2023.
ALSO COVERED BY PAUL BECKWITH
Paul’s video is called: “The Global Reach of Atmospheric Rivers: From the Arctic to Antarctica to the Equator and In-Between” posted on February 12, 2023.
COMING UP
Next week we tackle one of the largest scariest changes looming in a warming world. Serious scientists are talking loudly over many channels – warning the North Atlantic Overturning Circulation could stop. Called AMOC, this great current is already weakening, as shown in scientific studies and observation. The impacts are almost too big to imagine. The UK would lose it’s warming current, dropping up to ten degrees C, falling to the climate of mid-Northern Canada. Ireland gets a cold punch in the face. Scotland and most of Scandinavia would return to near-glacial conditions if the AMOC stops. North Europe becomes uncomfortably cold – even while Sahara-like heat plagues southern countries like Italy and Spain, due to ongoing warming.
Join us next week for a journey into what it all means. I’m Alex Smith. This is Radio Ecoshock. Thank you for listening, and caring about what happens to this world.
We close the one hour program with a quote from Canadian scientist Paul Beckwith on the real “big one” for California – the ARKstorm atmospheric river. From YouTube, and check out Paul’s web site at www.paulbeckwith.net