Climate Change Acceleration Breaking the Scales - Part II

[Clare]

https://phys.org/news/2025-08-reveals...

"The Mediterranean Sea is particularly susceptible to marine heat waves—such as the record-breaking 2022 heat wave, which was characterized by anomalously high sea surface temperatures—due to the interplay of air-sea heat fluxes and local oceanographic processes, leading to significant impacts on marine ecosystems and coastal communities.

A new study, led by CMCC, brings the scientific community one step closer to identifying the driving forces behind these events.

Analyzing over hundreds of marine heat wave events identified through advanced satellite data and clustering analysis, the study, appearing in Nature Geoscience, shows that persistent subtropical ridges—intrusions of warm air from over the African continent into Europe, often informally referred to as African anticyclones—do far more than simply raise air temperatures.

While subtropical ridges occur frequently in summer, roughly every two days, their persistence is what creates the critical conditions for marine heat wave formation. During marine heat wave onset, ridge occurrence becomes persistent—the high-pressure system associated with the ridge becomes stationary, disrupting the normal eastward movement of weather systems.

When these ridges settle over the Mediterranean basin for five consecutive days or more, they cause the prevailing winds to still, which then leads the sea to stop shedding heat and surface waters warm rapidly."

More information: Mediterranean summer marine heatwaves triggered by weaker winds under subtropical ridges, Nature Geoscience (2025).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s4156...
Journal information: Nature Geoscience

Provided by Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change

[Clare]

https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2025/08...

""Erin's already large size and intensity are acting like a giant plunger on the sea surface," AccuWeather senior meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said in a report.

Mr Sosnowski said Erin was among the fastest-strengthening storms on record after it intensified from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane, the highest level of the Saffir-Simpson scale, in just over 27 hours.

It makes 2025 the fourth straight Atlantic season with at least one Category 5 storm.

The US National Hurricane Center said Erin, now a Category 4 storm, was likely to maintain its force as a dangerous major hurricane through the middle of the week, but avoid contact with Bermuda or the US coast."

[Brian]

Candidly, geoengineering to mitigate climate change impacts makes me squeamish... feels like a high-risk experiment using our biosphere as the test subject. But this potential approach — seeding the oceans to stimulate phytoplankton growth and atmospheric carbon draw-down — certainly sounds intriguing.

The tiny ocean organisms that could help the climate in a big way — https://grist.org/climate/the-tiny-oc...

As humanity lags far behind where it should be in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, researchers are turning to phytoplankton for help. They’re exploring how to fertilize the oceans like farmers fertilize crops, helping more of these microscopic organisms grow and eventually sink into the depths, taking carbon with them. But scientists are still exploring the many unknowns swirling around this sort of ocean fertilization, like where best to apply nutrients and in what forms, amounts, and proportions. And then they have to consider what unintended side effects might ripple through ecosystems.

[Robert]

The ocean is already being fertilized by artificial means on a global scale. Several avenues in fact, the Sahara dust that ends up over wide areas in the ocean has minerals in it, and the air has excess nitrogen.

The world's largest rivers, and small rivers, dump commercial fertilizer carried off by runoff, natural and manufactured nutrients, phosphorous, nitrogen, and anything else in the water.

It does seem to have its downsides. We are fertilizing the sargassum which people really need to harvest the enormous crops of seaweed because it lands on the beaches, physically clogging up coastal waters and the the shoreline and then rotting in big piles.

https://www.epa.gov/habs/origin-and-d...

[Brian]

Very interesting and informative video from PBS Terra explaining new economic modeling that resolves the major disparities between climate scientists vs. economists with regard to the future cost of climate change:

Economists and Scientists DEEPLY DISAGREE About the Cost of Climate Change — https://youtu.be/GMf32qo7CHk?si=grVnZ...

[Robert]

Interesting charts that show a lot. There are a lot of economists who think climate change is going to have a big negative effect on the economy. Figuring the exact cost has the same pitfalls that modelling the climate does.

While it is possible that the overall global economy could suffer less of an impact, the cost to the global population would be enormous. There would still be plenty of stuff, but only a minority would truly benefit from it. The rest of the population would be paying more for less. A millionaire wouldn't care if the price of a gallon of gas went to $50 a gallon, they could still afford it.

We're all on a titanic voyage and the course can be changed anytime to avoid the iceberg that everyone knows is out there. But the addiction to short term gains is too addictive to change the course early on. Ironically the ship is big enough now to run aground and still remain upright. This also prevents the course being changed early on.

One solution is food made from chemicals. This would require a lot of artificially produced energy to replace the natural sources of energy like water and sunlight and the natural ability to grow naturally that would be lost. Because of the energy cost, the cost would be more, which could be reduced by making less energy available in other forms that are freely available now. This could keep the level of business at current levels, there would just be less available. Food can be made in vats biologically or chemically or a mixture of both but it is a lot more expensive.

Private ownership of a dwelling could be come a lot more expensive because a more robust structure would be needed to withstand the weather. The solution to that is massive apartment buildings that are built to withstand the new weather patterns.

[Clare]

Robert wrote: "Interesting charts that show a lot. There are a lot of economists who think climate change is going to have a big negative effect on the economy. Figuring the exact cost has the same pitfalls that ..."

"One solution is food made from chemicals."


"The solution to that is massive apartment buildings"

[Robert]

I was thinking chemical food made in vats and bioreactors. Possibly from oil and natural gas. That could eliminate greenhouse emissions from the use of hydrocarbons as a fuel.

Garbage would be the next source of carbon as a means of turning a bad situation into a better one.

With a population of 8 billion and growing, the situation of what to do after people pass on is a very complex subject.

Plants could be used to provide bulk matter as well as harvested products. The weather might determine what gets grown and where and how it gets grown.

Food from chemicals would require a lot of energy to start with. As processes evolve it could become more efficient.

The oceans are changing and many products we use are growing short in supply. But there might still be products that will be growing in abundance, such as sea weed.

Big apartment complexes were usually present in P K Dick's stories. This was because he believed evolving society was heading in an oppressive and authoritarian direction and the massive housing structures were a means of controlling people.

He recognized early on that progress was going to change people's lives in ways that people weren't thinking about. He wrote a lot about how the evolving job market was not going to make life easier for most people.

The weather is changing the way power can be distributed, stored, and generated. Regardless of the short sighted and ignorant policies of some countries, some parts of the energy sector are progressing in a positive manner. The energy market can be another place where there could be a lot of growth and jobs.

It would be an economy based in a negative climate situation where the weather would have a controlling factor, but not in a beneficial way. The job market would be in a state of change for a long time, the same way the weather is undergoing a path of changes that will take a lot of time to stabilize.

In the past it was unpredictable weather that caused problems. We are now in a situation where we know what the weather is bringing, but that information isn't very helpful. At the same time, the extremely rapid escalations into disastrous situations happens so fast that even with all the advanced technology at our disposal we still can't avoid the consequences.