Climate change: Science failed to predict flood and heat intensity

Top climate scientists have admitted they failed to predict the intensity of the German floods and the North American heat dome.

They've correctly warned over decades that a fast-warming climate would bring worse bursts of rain and more damaging heatwaves.

But they say their computers are not powerful enough to accurately project the severity of those extremes.

They want governments to spend big on a shared climate super-computer.

Collection of the recent (past 2 months) climate related news

Floods
Deadly floods hit central China (The Guardian)

Europe Floods Catastrophe - How 'inexplicable' downpours have wreaked destruction across Europe (Sky News) Picture series shows devastation across the 3 countries

Riverside valleys were hit especially gruesome as small streams and rivers became deadly torrents due to heavy downpour having been deflected from mountain flanks downwards into valleys causing flash floods. Huge low-pressure areas were "stuck" several days over Belgium, Netherlands and Germany and caused untypical precipitation.

Dramatic Photos of Germany’s Worst Flooding in Decades Capture Devastation (Bloomberg)

Experts fear Germany’s deadly floods are a glimpse into climate future (National Geographic)

Climate change definitively linked to increases in extreme rain and snow, UCLA research finds (UCLA Newsroom)

Acidification of the oceans and algae blooms
Turkey's 'sea snot' is part of a growing environmental threat (DW)

Greenpeace calls for government action on coral bleaching in Taiwan (Focus Taiwan) Coral die-off due to coral bleaching caused by an acidification due to the development of carbonic acid from CO2 and H2O under heat.

Wildfires
Wildfires rage in Russia, Spain and the US amid high temperatures (Euronews)

Oregon, California Wildfires Grow as Weather, Drought Hinder Containment Efforts (WSJ)

Today’s Wildfires Are Taking Us into Uncharted Territory (Scientific American) The gap between extreme fire years in the U.S. is narrowing as the climate warms.

As Frozen Land Burns, Siberia Fears: ‘If We Don’t Have the Forest, We Don’t Have Life’ (NYT)

Siberia wildfires: Russia army planes and thousands of firefighters battle blazes (The Guardian)

The Artic ice melt
Then and now: Arctic sea-ice feeling the heat (BBC)

Older news
The Arctic is burning like never before — and that’s bad news for climate change (Nature)

Famine through extreme drought
Older news
Food assistance urgently needed as nutrition crisis grips southern Madagascar (MSF - Medecins Sans Frontiers)

Storms/Hurricanes
Atlantic hurricane season is on pause. Don’t expect that to last. (Washington Post)

Researchers revise outlook for above-average hurricane season (Reuters)

Three people dead as Tropical Storm Elsa nears Cuba (The Guardian) Hurricane Elsa is this year's first hurricane of the hurricane season and hit Cuba and Haiti first...

Tropical Storm Elsa Brings Flooding Threat to New York Area (NYT) ... then hit the coast in the larger NY metropolitan area.

Climate change and tornadoes: Any connection? (Yale Climate Connections) Tornado vulnerability is on the rise

Mixed (Wildfire/Flood)
Climate scientists shocked by scale of floods in Germany (The Guardian)
Extract:
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California in Los Angeles, said so many records were being set in the US this summer that they no longer made the news: “The extremes that would have been newsworthy a couple of years ago aren’t, because they pale in comparison to the astonishing rises a few weeks ago.” This was happening in other countries too, he said, though with less media attention. “The US is often in the spotlight, but we have also seen extraordinary heat events in northern Europe and Siberia. This is not a localised freak event, it is definitely part of a coherent global pattern.”

Miscellaneous
DOE Awards $15.6 Million for Atmospheric Research to Improve Climate Modeling

This summer could change our understanding of extreme heat (National Geographic)

Climate modelling
Army Engineers, Microsoft to Analyze Extreme Weather Risk Using Cloud-based Analytics (HPC Wire)

Looking to the Clouds to Improve Climate Models for Earth and Other Planets (NASA)

Predicting Torrential Rain with the Supercomputer Fugaku (HPC Wire)

Wildlife
Over 10,000 species risk extinction in Amazon, says landmark report (Reuters)

Politics
UN sets out Paris-style plan to cut extinction rate by factor of 10 (The Guardian)

Biden says US and Germany are launching climate and energy partnership including joint plans to slash carbon emissions (Business Insider)

FACT SHEET: U.S.-Germany Climate and Energy Partnership (The White House)

Floods Thrust Climate Change to Center of German Campaign as Toll Mounts (NYT)

This from the Guardian is from 2km resolution models run on the Met Office computers and shows floods such as the recent ones in Europe could be 14 times more likely by the end of the century due to global heating.

Not exactly news, rather a great resource to further explore the topic.
Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet Clicking on the dark grey banner at the bottom of the page leads to great dashboards offering visual insights into the various climate-related measurements.

The Climate Time Machine provides an impressive picture time series for

• Sea Ice
  
• Sea Level
  
• Carbon Dioxide
  
• Global Temperature
  

My favourite tool however is a section called Images of Change that offers a before vs. after satellite picture related to various climate change related events such as floods, droughts, wild fires, hurricanes etc.

Our soil models of how carbon is sequestrated may be completely wrong.

India Ditches Key Climate Meeting After Disrupting G-20 (Bloomberg) that was supposed to lay groundwork for a successful COP26 in only 3 months' time. (You got 3 free articles a month)

Several news I read this week

Critical measures of global heating reaching tipping point, study finds (The Guardian): Carbon emissions, ocean acidification, Amazon clearing all hurtling toward new records

‘Climate change has become real’: extreme weather sinks prime US tourism site (The Guardian): At Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border, the water line has dropped to a historic low, taking a heavy toll on the local industry

Toxic algae bloom on Florida's coast ravages marine life: "This is an absolute nightmare" (CBS News): Red tides do naturally occur off the coast of Florida — but scientists say they're now happening more frequently and humans are making them worse

Warming Planet Means 83 Million Face Death From Heat This Century (Bloomberg): New study puts a cost on the mortality caused by climate change, which could lead to an increase in the price of carbon pollution

Wildfire smoke blowing across the U.S. is more toxic than we thought (Bloomberg): Wildfires are threatening homes on the West Coast and in Canada, but their smoke is polluting air as far away as New York

Climate change continues to be evident across UK (MET Office): The UK’s climate has continued to warm, with 2020 the first year to have temperature, rain and sunshine rankings all in the top 10

Ignoring climate change will yield 'untold suffering,' panel of 14,000 scientists warns (LiefeScience): A few big climate policies could change everything — but we have to act fast. The new paper, published July 28 in the journal BioScience and led by researchers from Oregon State University, is an update of a 2019 paper that declared a global "climate emergency" and evaluated Earth's vital signs based on 31 variables

Earth Overshoot Day moves forward by nearly a month (DW): The COVID effect didn't last. Earth Overshoot Day, the day humanity exceeds its yearly allotment of the planet's biological assets, is nearly back to its record high. What can be done to ease the burden?

Is Russia Finally Ready to Tackle Climate Change? (The Moscow Times): Although Russia has the largest potential capacity to generate wind and solar power in the world, those energy sources accounted for just 0.32% of its power grid in 2020. Even if the most ambitious of the current plans are implemented, the proportion of renewable energy (excluding hydroelectric energy) used in generating electricity in Russia will only reach 2–2.5% by 2035.

Maybe some promising signs
More Money Than Ever Is Flowing Into Climate Tech (Bloomberg): On Tuesday, two alternative asset managers—TPG and Brookfield—closed a combined $12.4 billion in climate investment funds. That’s more committed in one day than used to be raised in years. The question now is, where and how is that going to pay off?

A disused power station in North America has been converted from coal fired to gas fired purely to mine Bitcoin!

Contrast:

A US company has turned a former coal plant into a gas-fired Bitcoin mine

Bitcoin mining machines steamrolled by Malaysia police

Turkish fires sweeping through tourist areas are the hottest on record (The Guardian): Thousands of holidaymakers evacuated from Aegean Sea resorts as country fights more than 50 blazes

Devastating, unprecedented wildfires in southern Europe could reignite, experts warn (The Independent): Italy, Greece and Spain have been fighting a catastrophic wildfire in the past few days

Southeast Europe heat wave set to be among worst in decades (AP News)

Climate Change Is Coming for the Great Barrier Reef (Bloomberg): If Australia continues to choose its coal industry over its coastline, dire consequences will become inevitable. The Great Barrier Reef—actually a mass of reefs that stretches 3,000 kilometers along the northeastern Queensland coastline—is important to Australia. Much-cited figures from a 2017 report by consulting firm Deloitte put the reef’s value at A$56 billion ($41.4 billion), supporting 64,000 jobs and adding A$6.4 billion to the economy each year.

Biden Seeking Pledge for 40% of Car Sales to Be EV by 2030 (Bloomberg): The White House is negotiating to have automakers pledge that 40% or more of the vehicles they sell in the U.S. will be electric by the end of the decade

The Western Drought Is a Crisis for Migrating Birds, Too (Bloomberg): For years, California rice farmers have aided bird migration by flooding their fields in the off season. But this year, they barely have enough water to grow their crops

Brazil’s Water Crisis Adds to the World’s Supply-Chain Misery (Bloomberg): Drought is making one of Brazil’s most important river systems unnavigable, making it more challenging and costly for the commodities powerhouse to get grains and iron ore out to global markets

What Is 'Rewilding' and How Can It Help Restore Our Planet's Biodiversity? (Global Citizen): Rewilding can help us become more attuned to the planet and the diverse species who call it home

Aggressive tiger mosquitoes are spreading through Europe: How can we protect ourselves? (Euronews): Now mosquitoes are also becoming a mounting health concern in Europe, as the Asian tiger mosquito, an extremely invasive and disease-carrying species, proliferates across the continent. This is particularly worrisome to health authorities across the continent as this type of mosquito can carry serious diseases including dengue fever, Chikungunya, West Nile virus and Zika

Health officials: Climate change threat to Michigan. But few make it priority (Bridge Michigan): Climate change is both an environmental crisis and a public health threat: Experts expect it to cause more heat illness, respiratory diseases, waterborne diseases, vector- borne diseases, and injury and carbon monoxide poisoning

Olympic Athletes Struggle With Tokyo’s Sweltering Heat (Bloomberg): Tokyo Games could rank as the hottest Olympics in history as Japan’s heat is taking a toll on the summer Olympics. Tokyo’s mean temperature has climbed by 2.86 degrees Celsius since 1900, more than three times as fast as the world’s average

When the desert becomes flooded – Climate change in Chad (UN Humanitarian): [...] arid and desertic landscapes are prime candidates for flooding; sand and dry land do not readily absorb water during heavy rains, meaning they quickly become flooded

Sink or swim: Can island states survive the climate crisis? (UN News): The 38 member states and 22 associate members that the UN has designated as Small Island Developing States or SIDS are caught in a cruel paradox: they are collectively responsible for less than one per cent of global carbon emissions, but they are suffering severely from the effects of climate change, to the extent that they could become uninhabitable

SEC Weighs Making Companies Liable for Climate Disclosures (WSJ): Public companies could be required to disclose climate-change related risks to investors in regulatory filings under a proposal being formulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission

Act on Climate Emergency Now to Prevent Millions of Deaths, Study Shows (Scientific American): The human toll of carbon emissions will vastly magnify climate change’s economic costs

Rising heat puts the Kalahari’s ecosystem on the edge of survival (National Geographic): On the parched savanna of southern Africa, searing temperatures and crippling droughts threaten a delicate balance of life

The revolutionary idea behind America’s urban trails (National Geographic): Pioneered more than a century ago by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, greenways are nature-filled city hikes that point to the future

Tree-Planting Pledges Fall Short of Climate Change Goals (Bloomberg): Many pitfalls can dampen the ambitions of those looking to green cities, especially when only a fraction of those trees mature, survive or even make it into the ground

And now a paper is suggesting the AMOC might stop working.

And now a paper is suggesting the AMOC might stop working.

I am hoping OpenIFS can include that, though the end of civilization might be difficult to account for.

As some wild fires are still not under control in Turkey, Greece and Italy, the catastrophe increasingly turns political as the population questions the preparedness of their national emergency services and government. Especially the Erdogan administration is feeling the heat as some raise calls for new climate policies in Turkey (1 of only 6 one of six nations that has not ratified the Paris Agreement)

Meanwhile, everyone is anticipating that the new IPCC report (first of four reports under its latest assessment cycle), due on Monday, will likely paint even grimmer pictures and include stark warnings along the lines "the worst is yet to come" ...