2020 was hottest year on record by narrow margin, Nasa says

Global temperature change from 1850 to 2020. One stripe per year. Data:
@metoffice

 

From The Guardian by Oliver Milman

 
Last year was by a narrow margin the hottest ever on record, according to Nasa, with the climate crisis stamping its mark on 2020 through soaring temperatures, enormous hurricanes and unprecedented wildfires.

Globally, 2020 was the hottest year on record, effectively tying 2016, the previous record.

Overall, Earth’s average temperature has risen more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1880s.

Temperatures are increasing due to human activities, specifically emissions of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane.

NASA SVS

 

The average global land and ocean temperature in 2020 was the highest ever measured, Nasa announced on Thursday, edging out the previous record set in 2016 by less than a tenth of a degree.

Due to slightly different methods used, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) judged 2020 as fractionally cooler than 2016, while the UK Met Office also put 2020 in a close second place.

 

The European Union’s climate observation program puts the two years in a dead heat.

Regardless of these minor differences, all the datasets again underlined the long-term heating up of the planet due to the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and other human activities.

 

The world’s seven hottest years on record have now all occurred since 2014, with the 10 warmest all taking place in the last 15 years.

There have now been 44 consecutive years where global temperatures have been above the 20th-century average.

Scientists said average temperatures will keep edging upwards due to the huge amount of greenhouse gases we are expelling into the atmosphere.

“This isn’t the new normal,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

“This is a precursor of more to come.”

The record, or near-record, heat came despite the moderately cooling influence of La Niña, a periodic climate event. 

“While the current La Niña event will likely end up affecting 2021 temperature more than 2020, it definitely had a cooling effect on the last quarter of the year,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, which found 2020 was narrowly the second hottest year on record.

“It suggests that we’ve added an equivalent of a permanent El Niño event worth of global warming in just the last five years,” Hausfather added, in reference to the counterpart climate event that typically raises temperatures. 

“Records like this further reinforce the need to reduce our emissions sooner rather than later.”

2020 was one of the warmest years on record, with many extreme weather events and #climatechange impacts.

This @NOAA map highlights some of them

The climate crisis is drastically altering environmental processes across the globe, as the scientific analyses of 2020 show.

The annual average sea ice extent in the Arctic was, at 3.93m sq miles, the joint smallest on record, tied with 2016, while oceans were “exceptionally warm”, Noaa said, with just two previous years recording hotter marine temperatures.

Average annual snow cover for the northern hemisphere was the fourth lowest on record.

Rising heat in the atmosphere and water is causing glaciers to melt, rising sea levels, as well as helping fuel larger and more destructive storms.

The US, buffeted by an unprecedented Atlantic hurricane season in 2020, was hit with a record number of major disasters last year, costing tens of billions of dollars and resulting in several hundred deaths.

“Global warming won’t necessarily increase overall tropical storm formation, but when we do get a storm it’s more likely to become stronger,” said Jim Kossin, an atmospheric scientist at Noaa.

“And it’s the strong ones that really matter.”

Wildfires, fueled by vegetation parched by prolonged heat, ravaged huge areas of California and Australia last year, while the Arctic experienced astonishing temperatures well above average.

“This year has been a very striking example of what it’s like to live under some of the most severe effects of climate change that we’ve been predicting,” said Lesley Ott, a research meteorologist at Nasa.

The UK Met Office has already predicted that 2021 will also be among the hottest ever recorded, with the world now “one step closer to the limits stipulated by the Paris agreement”, said Colin Morice, senior scientist at the Met Office.

Governments will meet later this year in Scotland for crucial UN talks aimed at building upon the Paris deal, which committed countries to avoiding a disastrous global temperature rise of 1.5C from pre-industrial levels.

“We are headed for a catastrophic temperature rise of 3-5C this century,” warned António Guterres, secretary general of the UN. 

“Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century. It must be the top priority for everyone, everywhere.”

 

Links :

• NASA : 2020 Tied for Warmest Year on Record / NASA Analysis Shows
• The Guardian : Climate crisis: record ocean heat in 2020 supercharged extreme weather
• Abc : Climate change pushed ocean temperatures to record high in 2020, study finds 

A journey to the bottom of the oceans — all five of them

A lander named Skaff is deployed as part of the Five Deeps Expedition last year.
The team’s three landers carried scientific equipment, sensors and cameras to the ocean floor.
Other submersibles transported crew members to the deepest places on Earth.
(Reeve Jolliffe)

From WP by Lucinda Robb

Tired of being stuck at home? Maybe what you need right now is to escape somewhere that the coronavirus, political polarization and devastating natural disasters are nowhere to be found.
But where on Earth could you find such a place? Simple: at the bottom of the ocean.
Fortunately, Josh Young’s “Expedition Deep Ocean: The First Descent to the Bottom of All Five of the World’s Oceans” is ready to take you there, on a journey that is exciting, suspenseful and ultimately successful.

Make no bones about it — this is an old-fashioned adventure story.
Young has written more than 20 books, five of them New York Times bestsellers, and his narrative is wonderfully readable, weaving in scientific, geographic and engineering details effortlessly (a feat much harder to pull off than generally acknowledged).
There’s humor and drama and headaches galore, not to mention celebrity cameos and more than one trip to the Titanic.
Imagine Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” with a happy ending.

(Pegasus Books)

The expedition is conceived, financed and led by Victor Vescovo, who seems like a character Tom Clancy dreamed up on a sugar high.
This overachieving Texan and former Naval Reserve intelligence officer holds degrees from MIT, Harvard and Stanford (Condoleezza Rice was his adviser), flies fixed-wing jets and helicopters, and founded a billion-dollar private-equity firm in Dallas.
In his down time he completed the Explorers Grand Slam, for which you must summit the tallest peaks on all seven continents and ski to both the North and South poles.
Like Alexander the Great, who supposedly wept because there were no more worlds to conquer, Vescovo sets a goal of traveling to the bottom of all five oceans because he needs a new challenge.

Coming up with the idea is the easiest part.
At nearly seven miles below sea level, the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean is the deepest point on Earth, a far greater depth than Mount Everest is tall.
The pressure at that depth is mind boggling — Young compares it to having 290 fully fueled 747 airplanes stacked on top of you.
As recently as 2018, only three human beings had ever made the descent, on two different trips more than 50 years apart.
Not only had no humans been to the bottom of the other four oceans, scientists weren’t exactly sure how far down they went.

Speaking of which, can you name all five oceans? If not, you aren’t alone.
It says something about their widely ignored status that you can probably name more planets millions of miles away than the immense bodies of water that govern our lives in ways we hardly understand.
(By the way, the ocean everybody forgets is the Southern Ocean, nicknamed the “screaming sixties” because of the ferocious storms in those latitudes.)

Assisting Vescovo is an international crew of characters, each with their own expertise and often with their own agendas.
It isn’t just a matter of throwing money at the problem, you have to design, build, outfit and plan the entire expedition.
No one who has ever built a house will be surprised by all the things that go wrong in the course of their journey, but the massive expenses do put home cost overruns into perspective.
At a crucial point in their mission a section of the submersible, a titanium structure shielding its occupants from the colossal pressure, literally breaks off.
Miles from shore they figure a way around it.
(Just in case you were wondering, humans can’t actually walk unprotected on the bottom of the ocean — they would get squashed like a bug long before they could drown.)

Interestingly, it is the little stuff that goes awry.
The amount of ill will generated by who gets to post what on social media could serve as a plot line for Bravo’s “Real Housewives.” The challenges of navigating international permits and the rules of exclusive economic zones mean that despite having maritime law on their side, they frequently tangle with local authorities eager to confiscate something, even if they aren’t sure what.

The scientific goals of the expeditions are always secondary, although splurging for the sonar mapping system turns out to be key in verifying their world-record-holding status.
But it isn’t just about bragging rights.
It is a small miracle to design and build something that can dive miles below the sea’s surface repeatedly and reliably.
As Vescovo says, “It’s opening a door that didn’t exist.”

By the epilogue they are ferrying high-profile figures like Prince Albert of Monaco to the bottom of the Mediterranean with a matter-of-factness that would have seemed highly improbable, if not entirely impossible, just 10 chapters earlier.

While the expedition succeeds in its stated goal, the publicity is something of a bust.
Even back in May 2019, before the coronavirus and the presidential election dominated the news, Vescovo’s singular accomplishments generate far less interest than the fact that they found a plastic bag at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
It’s a long way from Charles Lindbergh’s ticker-tape parade for crossing the Atlantic.

But along the way to reaching all five “deeps,” something interesting happens.
What started out as Indiana Jones on the ocean floor morphs into a story of how progress is made — first in fits and starts, and then in a great rush.
In the end, the same traits that brought Vescovo great wealth in the business world are the ones that allow him to succeed in this daunting venture.
Knowing when to take a calculated risk and when to abort are key, but small details like having really good coffee for your workers matter, too.
Perhaps most important, Vescovo is wise enough to know when to back off and allow his flawed, exhausted but still impressive team members room to breathe and correct their mistakes.

Fundamentally, “Expedition Deep Ocean” is a book about tackling — and solving — really difficult problems.
You need talented people with different skills, a level-headed leader and patience for initial failures.
It will take a lot of money, and you may never get much credit for your accomplishment.
More than just a fun read, these are lessons that we all could use right now.
Can we send a copy to Washington?

Links :

• ESRI : Illuminating the deep
  
• GeoGarage blog : Victor Vescovo: Adventurer reaches deepest ...  / Inside the daring mission to reach the ... / An explorer took a $48 million submarine on ... / Stories of an extraordinary world : the last of ... / Wall Street trader reaches bottom of Atlantic ... / Mariana Trench: Deepest-ever sub dive ...
  

How to turn your superyacht into a scientific research vessel

From Boat International by Oliver Steeds
 
Want to support ocean conservation and help scientists understand our oceans?
Oliver Steeds, CEO of Nekton, outlines the changes you can make to your boat today to turn it from a superyacht to a marine science research vessel...
“Citizens of the world…. We are running out of excuses to not take action and running out of time… The time to act is now”.

President Danny Faure of Seychelles was hundreds of feet below the ocean’s surface in a two-person research submersible on Nekton’s First Descent mission broadcasting live to the world.
It was the first subsea presidential address and became the biggest news story of the day globally.

Nekton helped President Danny Faure of the Seychelles make a first descent for ocean exploration.
Image courtesy of Nekton.

Whilst this submersible was launched off a research vessel, the same Triton submersibles and larger models are being launched off more and more yachts.
For scientists, conservationists and ocean explorers, yachts – and sometimes these submersibles – are often the gatekeepers of the ocean.
Few have the pass to enter.

The ocean remains the least-explored part of our planet.
It is our last great frontier.
We know the largest waterfall on Earth is underwater along with the largest mountain range and the majority of volcanic activity.

We know there are over 100,000 seamounts, or undersea mountains, greater than 1,000 metres and that only a handful have ever been visited, let alone biologically sampled.
And whilst the average depth of the ocean is over 4,000 metres, the majority of life below 200 metres glows.
Over 90 per cent of biodiversity, 3.7 billion years of our evolutionary heritage, remains to be discovered.

The ocean is our planet’s life support system.
It regulates our climate, provides food security for billions and essential medicines including the first diagnostic tests and treatment for Covid-19.
The ocean produces over half of our oxygen, captures most of our anthropogenic heat and is the largest carbon store on our planet.

But rather than supporting life on Earth, the ocean itself may soon need to be put on life support.
It remains the least-protected part of our planet, and only 2.5 per cent of the ocean is currently highly protected.
Increasingly, scientists, climate change experts and governments are calling for 30 per cent protection by 2030.
There’s much work to be done.

Sadly, too many still have their heads buried in the sand.
But marine scientists are pushing back the boundaries of knowledge, which is crucial because we can’t protect what we don’t know.

Nekton mission director Oliver Steeds.
Image courtesy of Nekton.

“With endurance to operate in coastal or remote locations, diving capability, tenders, small cranes and accommodation, the private yacht fleet can provide access to the sea to enable and empower marine scientists to work on the frontlines of our changing planet,” explains Mike Pownall, Nekton’s head of marine operations and a veteran of planning, implementing and leading complex offshore and subsea operations.

With a bit of deck space, autonomous underwater vehicles, small “suitcase ROVs” (remotely operated vehicles), drop cameras or baited cameras, sensors, hydrophones and buoys, even water collection systems can all be readily deployed and recovered.
Add a slightly larger crane and you can deploy submersibles, and even a larger ROV if the vessel can hold station.

Nekton has used an Omega Seamaster Submersible to 3D map coral habitats.

Image courtesy of Nekton.

Research teams vary in size, from one up to a dozen or more depending on the goal.
Without too much bother, critical research can be undertaken on ocean transits, whilst wildlife and surface observations, coral reef research or a vast range of physical, chemical and biological research activities can all be achieved at most locations visited by yachts.

With more available deck space, a modular or containerised system can be considered to house diving systems, submersible operations or even a laboratory.

The Arksen 85 eco-explorer wll be equipped with solar panels.
Image courtesy of Arksen.

Utilising a larger tender or the main yacht – with a hull mounted or “over the side” pole mount multibeam echosounder – owners can map the uncharted depths and discover new subsea mountains, trenches, ridges and features and even name them in perpetuity.
Yachts can also be the stewards or sentinels of the sea.
With meteorological logging equipment, yachts can provide vital data to inform weather and climate science.

“From the design phase up, yachts often have extraordinary capabilities built in that can have dual use for owners and scientists,” explained Andrew Winch, a leading yacht designer.
“From power systems to isolated air conditioning in specific rooms through to, more obviously, the tenders and diving equipment, if you can be flexible and adaptable, the opportunities are endless.”

At 57m in length, the bold and rugged Heesen XVenture offers research facilities alongside luxury lifestyle features.
Image courtesy of Heesen.

In simple terms, it is all relatively straightforward.
There are thousands of marine scientists who have vital research that needs to be undertaken at sea.
All it takes is the willingness from yacht owners to invite scientists onto their vessels.
Yachts for Science has been set up to be the match-makers – a partnership between the marine research institute Nekton and BOAT International, Arksen and the Ocean Family Foundation.

We can all do our bit.
Will you?
To help, here’s an introductory guide to the yacht requirements for a range of different research activities along with what more can be done with a few additions or discreet tweaks.

Internal workspace

Scientists will need some sort of workspace, the size of which will vary depending on their research activities.
Some simple aspects could be considered:
A dry lab with work surfaces for equipment
Computational infrastructure: networking for laptops, capability to receive GPS and Gyro feeds from the bridge, additional monitors for survey and video analysis
Storage for equipment and, if samples are being collected, then a standard refrigerator (four degrees) and freezer (minus 20 degrees) and a smaller specialist minus-80-degree freezer are all helpful

Designed by Winch, the Heesen XVenture upper saloon offers owners a spot to relax while cruising through icebergs.
Image courtesy of Winch Media.

External workspace

A number of aspects can easily make deck space functional to allow “plug and play” adaptability for scientists, including:
Deck power – multiple ports in operational areas
Fresh and saltwater connections
Deck space (variability determines size of research equipment that can be deployed)
“Wet Lab” – if sample collection is required (could also be an internal area with direct access to the deck)

Diving

For near shore or coastal operations, a yacht or tender can act as a dive-support base with supply from shore of equipment or divers.
Expect scientists to bring their own personal dive gear.
To operate further afield, diving capability could include:
Equipment: Compressor, tanks, repair kits, spare kits, weight, buoys, freshwater basins to rinse equipment, drying/storage area
Safety: Oxygen kits, diving-specific first aid
For technical (TEC) diving, below 30 metres: specialist compressors, Nitrox and Trimix makers, recompression chamber and other equipment will be required.
On the plus side, technical divers usually bring their own equipment

Owners of the Heesen XVenture explorer can choose to keep a Triton submersible on board.
Image courtesy of Heesen.

Submersible operations

Increasing numbers of large yachts have submersibles, and different models from Triton, U-Boat Worx or Seamagine could all be considered.
Cranes and support equipment vary for different types of submersibles and depend on sizes ranging from 2.5 tonnes (two persons, 100 metres), 4 to 5 tonnes (three persons, 500 metres), 8 tonnes+ (three to seven persons+, depths from 300 to 1,000 metres).
Key functionality to support submersible operations include:
Workbench, tools, HP oxygen bottles, storage (spares etc.), high-pressure air compressor, battery charging, tracking and underwater communications systems and a retractable awning to cover the submersible (equipment provided by sub supplier)

For near shore or coastal operations, a yacht or tender can act as a dive-support base with supply from shore of equipment or divers.
Image courtesy of Heesen.

Cranes and winches

For the deployment of oceanographic equipment, deck space, crane and electric winch capability – often in combination with RIBs and tenders – define what is possible and can enable the utilisation of:
Towed nets (hand deployed/recovered)
Baited remote underwater video (BRUV) and/or baited drop cameras
Remotely operated vehicles
AUV’s (autonomous underwater vehicle), ASVs (autonomous surface vehicle), gliders
Small “metocean” (meteorological and physical oceanography) monitoring equipment for short or long-term deployments – such as weather buoys, tide gauges or current monitoring devices
CTD (with hydrographic deck winch) for water chemistry research

The Arksen 85 has been designed to cruise anywhere in the world.
Image courtesy of Arksen.

Increasing specifications

A-Frames, hydrographic winches, hydraulic deck cranes, dynamic positioning, hull mounting of specific equipment, removable sacrificial deck frames and worktops all increase the scale of research operations and activities

 

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Exploring the Arctic circle on board scientific superyacht Yersin / Norwegian billionaire funds deluxe deep ... / More than a holiday: Pegaso, the luxury superyacht that ...

Netherlands (NLHO) layer update in the GeoGarage platform

16 nautical raster charts updated

see GeoGarage news

 

 

Earth's Magnetic North Pole has begun racing towards Siberia

(Credit: Livermore et al. 2020 arXiv)

From Discover

In 1831, the British explorer James Clark Ross determined the position of the magnetic North Pole to within a few miles for the first time.

He found it on the Boothia Peninsula in Nunavut, northern Canada where he and his team camped in the “snow huts of a recently deserted Esquimaux village”.

Even then, the pole was known to move, albeit slowly.

Some 70 years later, the Norwegian Amundsen rediscovered it nearby and over the next ninety years, it migrated slowly northwards at a rate of up to 15 kilometers (just over 9 miles) per year. 

 

Then, in 1990, it suddenly began to accelerate northwards.

In 2017, it passed the geographic North Pole and is now heading south towards Siberia.

Scientists usually update the position of the magnetic pole every five years.

But in 2019, the movement was so fast and unexpected that scientists were forced to issue an extra, irregular update so that navigation devices that rely on it could be corrected.

That raises a significant question.

What is causing the magnetic pole to move so quickly?

And will it ever return to Canada?

 

Magnetic declination 2020

 

Tug-of-War

Now we get an answer thanks to the work of Philip Livermore at the University of Leeds in the U.K., and a couple of colleagues, who say the position of the pole is the result of a tug-of-war between two patches of negative magnetic flux sitting below Canada and Siberia.

In recent years, the Canadian patch has significantly weakened allowing the Siberian patch to pull the pole in its direction.

And they say their model predicts the pole will continue to move towards Siberia by up to 660 kilometers (370 miles) in the next decade.

First, some background. Earth’s magnetic field is generated in the planet’s iron-rich core. Like all magnetics it has a north and south pole.

Their exact position on the Earth’s surface depends on how the field is bent and attenuated by the Earth’s mantle.

On the Earth’s surface, the magnetic pole is defined as the place where the magnetic field is perpendicular to the surface and where a freely swinging magnetic needle would point straight down. Ross and Amundsen determined its position by watching the orientation of such needles.

Since 1990, however, satellites have been monitoring the field continuously and this has led to a much more accurate determination of the position.

Earth scientists have long known that the exact position is related to two patches of relatively strong magnetic fields that sit below Canada and Siberia.

Indeed, these patches are involved in a tug-of-war that pushes and pulls the pole back and forth, says Livermore and co.

In recent years, the balance between these patches has changed.
“Between 1999 and 2019, the Siberian patch showed a slight intensification from, while the Canadian patch decreased significantly in absolute value,” says Livermore and colleagues. 

“Together, these caused the direction of travel of the north magnetic pole to be towards Siberia.”

To work out why this change occurred, the team has simulated the change in magnetic field strength in Canada and Siberia and then used the results to determine what kind of changes in the Earth’s core could have caused them.

They say this happened because of a change in the flow of liquid iron in the Earth’s core in the 1970s and the way the corresponding change in the magnetic field diffused through the mantle to the surface.

Siberia Bound

They go on to say that the pole is likely to continue its journey to Siberia in the short term.
“A range of simple models that capture this process indicate that over the next decade the north magnetic pole will continue on its current trajectory traveling a further 390-660 km towards Siberia,” says the team.

However, the model is unreliable over longer times scales.

Nevertheless, the team says that the past pattern of movement on these timescales may be indicative of future behavior.
“Over the last 7000 years it seems to have chaotically moved around the geographic pole, showing no preferred location,” says Livermore and co.
In other words, wherever it goes, the magnetic north pole is unlikely to stay there for long.

Links :

• Recent North Magnetic Pole Acceleration Towards Siberia Caused by Flux Lobe Elongation arxiv.org/abs/2010.11033
• EOS : Modeling Earth’s Ever-Shifting Magnetism
• NauticaNews : NOAA Seeks Help Predicting New Magnetic North , offering $ 30,000 
• GeoGarage blog : Earth's magnetic North Pole has officially moved / Earth's magnetic field is acting up and ... / Scientists explain magnetic pole's wanderings / ESA scientists celebrate discovery of weird ...