Tag: climate change

Mapping Global Sea Level Rise

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

NASA Earth Observatory:

Global sea level rise has been accelerating in recent decades, according to a new study based on 25 years of NASA and European satellite data. This acceleration has been driven mainly by increased ice melting in Greenland and Antarctica, and it has the potential to double the total sea level rise projected by 2100[. …]

The rate of sea level rise has risen from about 2.5 millimeters (0.1 inch) per year in the 1990s to about 3.4 millimeters (0.13 inches) per year today. These increases have been measured by satellite altimeters since 1992, including the TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, Jason-2, and Jason-3 missions, which have been jointly managed by NASA, France’s Centre national d’etudes spatiales (CNES), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The maps on this page depict the changes in sea level observed by those satellites between 1992 and 2014.

New Maps Show Greenland’s Glaciers at Risk

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: “New maps of Greenland’s coastal seafloor and bedrock beneath its massive ice sheet show that two to four times as many coastal glaciers are at risk of accelerated melting as previously thought. Researchers at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), NASA and 30 other institutions have published the most comprehensive, accurate and high-resolution relief maps ever made of Greenland’s bedrock and coastal seafloor. Among the many data sources incorporated into the new maps are data from NASA’s Ocean Melting Greenland (OMG) campaign.”

Mapping Glacial Retreat

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Elevation change of Mount Rainier glaciers, 1970-2016. David Shean/University of Washington.

Using elevation data from stereo satellite observations, David Shean is mapping the retreat of some 1,200 mountain glaciers in the continental United States. “Until recently, glaciers in the United States have been measured in two ways: placing stakes in the snow, as federal scientists have done each year since 1957 at South Cascade Glacier in Washington state; or tracking glacier area using photographs from airplanes and satellites.” Shean’s method, which measures each glacier twice a year and uses automated software to track changes, seems to cover a lot more territory. [GIS and Science]

Extreme Event Attribution

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Whenever a cataclysmic weather event occurs—like Hurricane Harvey right now—there’s usually a heated political argument over whether or not it can be blamed on climate change. It turns out that there’s a field of research dedicated to assessing whether extreme weather can be attributed to climate change: it’s called extreme event attribution. There have been more than 140 peer-reviewed attribution studies of extreme weather events around the globe, which Carbon Brief has mapped here.

Carbon Brief’s analysis suggests 63% of all extreme weather events studied to date were made more likely or more severe by human-caused climate change. Heatwaves account for nearly half of such events (46%), droughts make up 21% and heavy rainfall or floods account for 14%.

[Benjamin Hennig]

FEMA Flood Maps Don’t Account for Future Sea Level Rise

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

NPR last month, reporting on a problem with FEMA’s flood insurance maps: they’re not keeping up with reality. “FEMA’s insurance maps are based on past patterns of flooding. Future sea level rise—which is expected to create new, bigger flood zones—is not factored in. So some communities are doing the mapping themselves. Like Annapolis, the state capital of Maryland.” [Leventhal]

Mapping Arctic Warming

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

At All Over the Map, Betsy Mason posts 11 Ways to See How Climate Change Is Imperilling the Arctic, a collection of maps and infographics depicting several different indicators of global warming, including sea ice extent, atmospheric temperatures, growing season, polar bear populations, as well as projected shipping routes for an ice-free Arctic Ocean.

NASA Earth Observatory

Meanwhile, NASA Earth Observatory points—while it still can—to a study mapping the extent of existing and potential thermokarst (thawed permafrost) landscapes. On the Earth Observatory maps (see North America, above), “[t]he different colors reflect the types of landscapes—wetlands, lakes, hillslopes, etc.—where thermokarst is likely to be found today and where it is most likely to form in the future.”

Previously: Mapping Arctic Sea Ice; Mapping the Thaw.

Mapping Arctic Sea Ice

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

arctic-warm-reanalyzer

Something’s going on in the Arctic. As the Washington Post reported last month, the Arctic Ocean was far, far warmer than normal—about 20 degrees Celsius higher than average. (Meanwhile, the air over Sibera is at record cold levels.) According to the Post, the higher temperatures are the result of record low amounts of thinning sea ice, as well as warm air being brought north by an increasingly errant jet stream.

https://youtu.be/6ZAuRpK4tkc

NASA has been tracking sea ice levels and thickness by looking at the age of the ice in the sea ice cap. The video above shows “how Arctic sea ice has been growing and shrinking, spinning, melting in place, and drifting out of the Arctic for the past three decades. The age of the ice is represented in shades of blue-gray to white, with the brightest whites representing the oldest ice.”

The ESA reports that their CryoSat satellite “has found that the Arctic has one of the lowest volumes of sea ice of any November, matching record lows in 2011 and 2012.” The animated GIF below shows the change in November sea ice from 2011 to 2016, as observed by CryoSat.

esa-arctic-sea-ice-thickness-nov-2011-16

Migrations in Motion

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

migrations-in-motion

Migrations in Motion models the average directions wildlife will need to move in order to survive the effects of climate change. As Canadian Geographic explains, “As climate change disrupts habitats, researchers believe wildlife will instinctively migrate to higher elevations and latitudes, but for many species, that will mean navigating around, over or through human settlements and infrastructure.” The map, the design of which is modeled on the hint.fm wind map, covers both North and South America and does not purport to model the path of individual species; rather it’s an average based on computer modelling.

Hazard Maps of Yukon Communities

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Old Crow Landscape Hazard Risk Map (detail).
Old Crow Landscape Hazard Risk Map (detail).

Several Yukon communities are built on permafrost. In the context of climate change, that’s something of a problem. CBC News reports on a six-year research project that has produced hazard maps of seven Yukon communities; the maps evaluate the risk to future development from permafrost melting, flooding and ground instability. [CCA]

Oceania: The Truncated Continent

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

offenhuber-oceania

In “Cartographic ethics: Oceania, the truncated continent,” Dietmar Offenhuber complains about world maps of climate change that obscure the region of the world most affected by it: Oceania. It’s an important point both in specific and in general, as he goes on to say:

Oceania is mostly an invisible continent: its islands, islets, and atolls being too small to be printed on most world maps. On the outer fringes of most world maps, its territories are cropped or covered by a legend. With of our example, the world ends just after New Zealand, and the legend covers eastern parts of French Polynesia.

The thoughtless use of Mercator projections in world maps is generally frowned upon, but truncating the lobes of projections such as Mollweide and Robinson is just as bad. But even without such mistakes, all political maps struggle with a conflict of intent: on the one hand, accurate representation of territory, on the other hand, the appropriate representation of populations.

To get a better picture of Oceania, I made a simple map of all named islands and atolls, described in the remainder of this post.

(See map above.) [Boing Boing]

Surface Temperatures Warmest Since 1880

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

According to analyses by NASA and NOAA scientists, 2015 was the warmest year on record, with average surface temperatures the highest they’ve been since 1880. The above video shows the long-term warming trend since 1880 as a five-year rolling average. The baseline average is from 1951 to 1980; orange colours are warmer than that average, blue colours cooler. (Credit: GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio.)

Mapping the Thaw

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Scientists have been tracking seasonal freeze-thaw patterns for 30 years. This map, produced from data collected by NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite, “shows the freeze-thaw status of areas north of 45 degrees latitude on March 5, 2015, as spring approached. Frozen land is blue; thawed land is pink. The measurement is possible because frozen water forms crystalline structures that can be detected by satellites.” NASA Earth Observatory.

A Map of Rising Global Temperatures

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

This animated map from NASA (Flash-only, sorry) illustrates global temperatures since 1880: “reds indicate temperatures higher than the average during a baseline period of 1951-1980, while blues indicate lower temperatures than the baseline average.” News flash: the planet’s getting warmer. More information here.

Previously: Global Temperature Changes by Decade.