January 2011 CO2 Concentration: 391.19ppm

January 2011′s CO2 concentration measured at Mauna Loa, Hawai’i was 391.19ppm.

That value is 2.74ppm higher than January 2010.  It is 1.5ppm higher than December 2010.

2011 will be the first year that global CO2 concentrations will be higher than 390ppm for the first time in hundreds of thousands of years.  And concentrations aren’t going down any time soon either.  Despite the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, global emissions in 2010 didn’t increase, but were “merely” flat.  Until global emissions decrease by significant amounts year after year after year, concentrations will continue to rise to dangerous levels, precipitating changes in the globe’s climate system that will be irreversible for tens of thousands of years, at best.

How close are we to “dangerous levels”?  The last collapse of the Greenland ice-sheet was found to occur between 400 and 560ppm.  We’re only 10ppm away from the minimum of that range.  We’ll blow past 400ppm within 5 years, which means dangers are just around the corner.  As we’ve discovered in the past 10 years, global warming effects are not well predicted.  Those effects have been larger, more complex and occurred sooner than anybody thought possible.  There is no reason to assume situations will be different moving forward.

Two Climate Change-Pole Stories

Backup up the science that predicted such things would happen, I read two stories about climate change impacts on the poles.  A New York City-sized chunk of ice has broken off from the Wilkins Ice Shelf, following the break-down of the ice bridge stabilizing the Shelf, as this Independent article states.  Air temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have warmed 3C in the past century, placing strain on the shelves and glaciers.  Additionally, water temperatures surrounding the continent have also warmed, melting the shelves from below.  As the floating shelves melt from both sides and break off the continent, inland glaciers have picked up speed toward the ocean.  It’s those glaciers that would translate to rising sea levels if they melt in the ocean faster than they can grow on land.

The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme study relays profound changes to sea ice and permafrost, among others.  That’s the secondary lede from a Guardian article discussing some of the findings.

In the past four years, air temperatures have increased, sea ice has declined sharply, surface waters in the Arctic ocean have warmed and permafrost is in some areas rapidly thawing.  In addition, plants and trees are growing more vigorously, snow cover is decreasing 1-2% a year and glaciers are shrinking.

In Russia, the tree line has advanced up hills and mountains at 10 metres a year. Nearly all glaciers are decreasing in mass, resulting in rising sea levels as the water drains to the ocean.

The Greenland ice sheet has continued to melt in the past four years with summer temperatures consistently above the long-term average since the mid 1990s. In 2007, the area experiencing melt was 60% greater than in 1998.  Melting lasted 20 days longer than usual at sea level and 53 days longer at 2-3,000m heights.

In 2007, some ice-free areas of the Arctic were as much as 5C warmer than the long-term average.

All these observations have been made by climate forecasters for years now.  The problem is, they’ve occurred faster than predicted in every case.  That presents the exact opposite problem that climate change deniers claim.  The science has predicted effects correctly time and time again.

Climate Change: Core Climate Solutions, Greenland Ice Loss, CO Forest Health

Climate Progress has a Core Climate Solution Primer.  Recommended reading.

The rate at which Greenland’s ice sheets are losing mass has dramatically increased compared to rates in the 20th century, according to a new Geophysical Research Letters article.  From the abstract:

We find that the ice sheet was losing 110 ± 70 Gt/yr in the 1960s, 30 ± 50 Gt/yr or near balance in the 1970s–1980s, and 97 ± 47 Gt/yr in 1996 increasing rapidly to 267 ± 38 Gt/yr in 2007.

The 2007 number is just astounding.  Quantifying it is important for other research.

Gov. Bill Ritter has sent a letter to the Chief of the U.S. Forest Service requesting a larger portion of an upcoming federal allotment of forest health funding.  Citing Colorado’s ongoing drought and recent record fire years coupled with an expected explosion of human-forest interfaces in the next 20 years, Ritter made the argument that the current average of $6 million per year in funding wasn’t sufficient.  From his letter:

Regional Forester Rick Cables estimated the costs of addressing these concerns on national forests to be nearly $40 million dollars in fiscal year 2009 alone – a calculation that does not include any support to address equally critical needs on state and private lands.

More below.