Climate Of Destruction, Con't

Florida may have just set an all time global seawater temperature high this week.

 

The water temperature around the tip of Florida has hit triple digits — hot tub levels — two days in a row. Meteorologists say it could be the hottest seawater ever measured, although some questions about the reading remain.

Scientists are already seeing devastating effects from prolonged hot water surrounding Florida — coral bleaching and even the death of some corals in what had been one of the Florida Keys’ most resilient reefs. Climate change has set temperature records across the globe this month.

The warmer water is also fuel for hurricanes.

Scientists were careful to say there is some uncertainty with the reading. But the buoy at Manatee Bay hit 101.1 degrees Fahrenheit (38.4 degrees Celsius) Monday evening, according to National Weather Service meteorologist George Rizzuto. The night before, that buoy showed an online reading of 100.2 F (37.9 C).

“That is a potential record,” Rizzuto said.

“This is a hot tub. I like my hot tub around 100, 101, (37.8, 38.3 C). That’s what was recorded yesterday,” said Yale Climate Connections meteorologist Jeff Masters.

If verified, the Monday reading would be nearly 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than what is regarded as the prior record, set in the waters off Kuwait three summers ago, 99.7 degrees Fahrenheit (37.6 degrees Celsius).

“We’ve never seen a record-breaking event like this before,” Masters said.

The consequences for sea corals are serious. NOAA researcher Andrew Ibarra, who took his kayak out to the area, “found that the entire reef was bleached out. Every single coral colony was exhibiting some form of paling, partial bleaching or full out bleaching.”

Some coral even had died, he said. This comes on top of bleaching seen last week by the University of Miami, when NOAA increased the alert level for coral earlier this month.

 

The lights on the climate dashboard are blinking red, and the machinery of climate is breaking down as we speak.

A vital system of ocean currents could collapse within a few decades if the world continues to pump out planet-heating pollution, scientists are warning – an event that would be catastrophic for global weather and “affect every person on the planet.”

A new study published Tuesday in the journal Nature, found that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current – of which the Gulf Stream is a part – could collapse around the middle of the century, or even as early as 2025.

Scientists uninvolved with this study told CNN the exact tipping point for the critical system is uncertain, and that measurements of the currents have so far showed little trend or change. But they agreed these results are alarming and provide new evidence that the tipping point could occur sooner than previously thought.


The AMOC is a complex tangle of currents that works like a giant global conveyor belt. It transports warm water from the tropics toward the North Atlantic, where the water cools, becomes saltier and sinks deep into the ocean, before spreading southwards.

It plays a crucial role in the climate system, helping regulate global weather patterns. Its collapse would have enormous implications, including much more extreme winters and sea level rises affecting parts of Europe and the US, and a shifting of the monsoon in the tropics. 

 

We're already well into seeing years of evidence of positive feedback loops in climate systems. Now the only question is when we hit those tipping points and break those systems, leading to mass extinction for humans and a lot of other species. Food and water become far more scarce, and the survivors will battle over what's left.

 

The time to fix this was of course 30 years ago with the Kyoto Protocols, when the US Senate refused to ratify the treaty because of "economic damage".

We're about to see what "economic damage" really looks like in the years ahead.