View source for SGU Episode 977

=== One Degree <small>(28:52)</small> ===
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|weblink				= https://phys.org/news/2024-03-difference-degree.html#google_vignette
|article_title			= How much difference can one degree of warming make?
|publication			= Northern Arizona University
|redirect_title			=	<!-- optional...use _Redirect_title_(NNN) to prompt a redirect page to be created; hide the redirect title inside this markup text when redirect is created -->
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'''S:''' All right, Jay, tell us how big a difference one degree can make. 

'''J:''' Let me turn that around on you, Steve. Do you think or do any of you guys think that you could detect a one-degree temperature change? 

'''E:''' Yes, I believe I can. Fahrenheit. 

'''J:''' Cara? 

'''C:''' Celsius. 

'''J:''' Doesn't matter. 

'''E:''' Oh, that's a wider range. 

'''C:''' Exactly. 

'''J:''' One degree.

'''C:''' It depends. Are you talking about like in water, with food?

'''J:''' You think if you were in a room in your house.

'''C:''' Oh, in my room in my house, one degree. 

'''J:''' If I turned up the temperature by one degree, do you think you could feel it? 

'''C:''' Probably not. Honestly, probably not. 

'''J:''' Yeah, like I don't. 

'''E:''' I believe I can. 

'''J:''' Well, you're a mutant. Largely it's something that is pretty undetectable, right? Temperature fluctuations happen literally when you walk from room to room in your house. You're not like dramatically like, oh, my God one degree isn't really that much. But it's profound when it comes to our climate. And it's a really concerning situation. because let me jump right into this. Like a recent study by an ecologist named Andrew Richardson said, he's at the Northern Arizona University and he published something in the Journal of Geophysical Research. And he went into detail about the severe consequences of slight temperature increases on snowpack in boreal forests, northern forests, right? So this is a really serious problem, and the research that they did was fantastic. It really, really cut down to the bone here on what's happening. So the forests that span the northern regions of three continents, these play a pivotal role in our planet's ecosystem. Basically, most forests around the world have a very large impact on local ecosystems, if not all of them. I would imagine that they all do because of how many animals and different types of plants that live in those areas. So their research indicated that even a minimal warming like one degree Fahrenheit can lead to a substantial decrease in snowpack. So why should we care about snowpack? Well, snowpack does a lot of different things. 

'''E:''' It reflects that sun away. 

'''J:''' Yeah, like it's very effective from keeping heat out of going down into the ground. It's like an insulator of the cold. And when this happens, when that cycle is broken, when the snowpack lessens or if it disappears, this creates a cycle of warming. So the less snowpack we have, more sunlight and heat are absorbed by the ground. And then that leads to an increase in soil temperature. And then that leads to the air temperatures increasing. And then this speeds up this process of snow melt, right? So even a little breach inside that snowpack cycle that we have can have a profound downriver impact on the way that these forests operate. So the process is happening faster than scientists originally predicted, which is another thing to worry about because most of global warming is happening faster than many of these climatologists predicted going back 20 years ago. And we're not ready for it. That's the problem. If we had more accurate estimates back then, we probably would have – hopefully would have been further down the road of trying to counteract some of it. So there was something called the Spruce Experiment and this was done in northern Minnesota by the US Department of Energy. And that study that they did was the basis for the study that I'm actually reporting on right now. But let me tell you a little bit about the spruce experiment because I thought this was really interesting what they did. So first off, it was an extensive experiment. They used a 30-foot by 20-foot enclosure or multiple 30-foot by 20-foot enclosures. And they equipped these with fans and heaters to mimic future climate conditions. And they did this specifically to observe the effects of temperature changes on particular ecosystems. So they took a time-lapse photography. Every 30 minutes, they take a picture. And what they were able to do was to just see what changes take place. And this helped them monitor the conditions inside each of these different enclosures. And they were able to estimate that snow depth and snow cover allowed the researchers to draw comparisons with historical snow depth and precipitation data. And they clearly saw with minimal temperature change just how much the snowpack could be affected by, just by a minor temperature change. You would think one degree, what would that do? It actually does a lot. One degree is actually profound when it comes to snowpack. So any degree of warming resulted in this dramatic reduction of snow cover, which, again, it affects the plant life, the soil ecosystems, all of the animals that live there, whether they're insects or larger mammals or whatever they are. Even very small temperature changes started this decreasing and steady amount of snow. So the temperature changes that they observed didn't just stress out the ecosystems, but it also increased the mortality rates of the animals that were living there, including the plants. And these new observations are critical in refining current climate models. So they give us a window into what's happening and what the potential future is. And soon, this is going to happen soon, guys. We're living in it right now. So what's happening, this study is really cool because it zooms in on a very specific region. We're talking about snowpack here. We're not talking about the ocean. We're not talking about weather patterns. Just what the changes in snowpack does in these forests that exist in a very small part of the world. 

'''S:''' Yeah, unfortunately, the last few years of climate research has been finding that our predictions about maybe it's how much warming we're going to get isn't as bad as we thought, but the effects of the warming we are going to get is going to be worse earlier.

'''J:''' Yeah.

'''S:''' Right? 

'''E:''' Yeah, exactly a consolation. 

'''S:''' We're kind of seeing that now. This is worse than they thought it was going to be at the current level of warming in terms of negative effects. 

'''J:''' At that point, Steve, it's so obvious. This isn't like – we're not back in the 80s where we really weren't seeing it. There wasn't a lot of – there was proof but it wasn't like as tangible it is today. Like it is happening. It's happening everywhere. It's affecting every ecosystem in our world, right? I mean it's having an effect on weather. It's having an effect on forests. It's having an effect on people even having access to drinking water or having way too much water, the flooding that's been going on. This is just the absolute very, very, very, very beginning of things that are going to take place that might largely be unpredictable, but we know that they're going to be severe and we know that things are going to change very quickly. 

'''S:''' Yeah, I think the most unpredictable part of it is the tipping point. It's like when exactly are they going to happen? The amount of warming has been pretty much in between like the two standard deviations that the models have been predicting. It's been actually very accurate. I know a lot of what I would call the climate change deniers argue that the climate models have not been accurate, but that's just not true. It's just factually correct that the models have been very accurate. They are predicting the amount of warming that we have seen over the last 20 years. So we should have a pretty high level of confidence in them, but we don't know what the tipping points are going to be. And by tipping points, we mean like when are the ice sheets going to collapse into the ocean? Things like that. We don't know exactly when those things are going to happen, although we have a range of when that's going to happen. And it's a little bit harder to predict what the feedback loops and the negative climate consequences are going to be. And that's, unfortunately, we're discovering that it's worse than we thought it was going to be. It's going to get worse earlier. 

'''J:''' These studies are rolling in. I'm seeing them all the time now. As the funds were allocated for these different organizations to do deeper research into these issues, we're seeing the information. It's there. It's clear. We're seeing it manifest globally. And I don't understand for the life of me, guys. I don't get it. What the hell is the lack of effort? Why aren't we – 

'''S:''' We shouldn't underestimate the task ahead of us. We have a global technological civilization that is built around fossil fuel. And we shouldn't expect that to change easily. But it is unfortunate that there are some political ends of the spectrum are pushing back against doing anything about it. And that even I think people who want to do the right thing often don't know what the best path is. But the bottom line is we have to invest a ton of money into this in order to accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy. It's happening. We have the technology. We really just need the political will to invest the resources to make it happen as fast as possible. And that is hard to do. It is unfortunately hard to do. So it seems to me that what's been happening and what I think is probably going to happen is is that it's going to happen at its own pace just based on the technology itself. Maybe we can make a tiny little difference on the margins, but I don't think that anything political is going to make a huge difference just because we don't have the political will, unfortunately. 

'''E:''' Yeah, a lot of damage in the meantime. 

'''S:''' Yeah, that's the only variable is how much damage will be done in the meantime. And our kids will know, and our grandkids will know.