Latest / Saving the World From Bad Ideas / Bad Idea #6 "We can still save the arctic" with Julienne Stroeve

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Bad Idea #6 "We can still save the arctic" with Julienne Stroeve · Saving the World From Bad Ideas

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Parts of this world are going to become uninhabitable at that
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level of warming. Tipping points really are about
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reversing on a human time scale. Sometimes models get the answers
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right, but not necessary for the right reasons.
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And I think there's still improvements that are needed
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there. I don't know how much confidence
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we have on our weather patterns will change and that is I think,
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what impacts society quite a bit.
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Welcome to saving the world from bad ideas.
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I'm Mark Linus, and I've had a few bad ideas in my time.
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I used to go out in the night time to destroy GMO crops, and I
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also posed nuclear power. But then when I looked at the
0:31
science, I found I got it wrong. Oops.
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I've learned the hard way that none of us are right all the
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time. So now I'm here to challenge the
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assumptions that we all too often take for granted because
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the future depends on us getting it right.
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Hi there, Julianne. Do I pronounce it Struva?
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I was talking on your YouTube just trying to figure out how to
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say your name. Well, that's actually really
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quite good. Most people don't say it
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correctly, so it's Dutch and I don't think people understand
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the OE sound. It's kind of like an umlaut for
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the Germans. Right.
1:01
There's a place in Holland. I mean, our producer Rob's an
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expert on how to make strange pronunciations from the Benelix
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countries. But there's a place called Moden
1:11
in Holland, which I I love the O sound, so I wonder if your
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name's a bit like that. Yeah, they say it properly.
1:16
Well, in Holland you would say Strufa.
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Strufa, OK. Yeah, but Struva is what I say
1:22
in the US. And so you're a polar climate
1:25
scientist. Are you currently with the
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University of Manitoba? You seem to have a lot of
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academic affiliations and I wasn't sure if I'm looking on
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the web which is the current one.
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I I've collected a few too many. Yeah.
1:36
So I when I was a professor at University of College London, I
1:40
was offered a research chair position at the University of
1:43
Manitoba, which is a fixed 7 year contract where the Canadian
1:48
government was trying to bring international researchers to
1:51
Canada. So it was a nice offer and I
1:56
have another. Technically it would end this
1:59
August, but we are looking at a one year no cost extension so
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then at least it might go through August of 26.
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Also, we've just found out we're both mountains people.
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You're talking to me from Chamonix, you've been at Mont
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Blanc maybe more than once, I don't know, but and I moved to
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to the Welsh borders to be near the Black Mountains from Oxford,
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which was just too flat. I also in two weeks going to do
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my only piece of original scientific research, which is to
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go up to the Snowdonian Mountains.
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The highest part of that the Canada and also Snowden itself
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to do a my annual snow patch survey which we published in
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Weather magazine alongside the Scottish snow patches.
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So seeing the late like the latest date of of snow
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disappearances is one of those, you know, minor climate records,
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which I think is is useful and important to keep going.
2:46
Not doesn't quite doesn't quite compare with your work in the
2:48
entire Arctic polar polar ocean, but still it's my a little bit.
2:52
No, but that's interesting. And I, well I have been up
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Snowden and I also went up Ben Nevis and I think it was in June
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1 year and there was still quite a bit of snow.
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I don't remember what year that was, but I was surprised that
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the amount of snow on Ben Nevis when I did it.
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Yeah, on The North Face and some of those gullies there's snow
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which can last all year. There's a snow patch on Berriac
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and the Cairngorms which often survives the summer.
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But I think the last couple of years there's not been any snow
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at all surviving against Scotland.
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So it's a very, very marginal. And I mean, of course it's very
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weather related because it depends on like, you know,
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what's what's fallen out of the sky as much as what the
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temperatures are. So it's a inaccurate climate,
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you know, metric. But then so are all of them.
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So if you, I guess you put them all together, then you, you come
3:37
up with something more useful. But there's, there's definitely
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been a decline in snow surviving throughout the whole year in the
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Scottish mountains. And I guess that'll eventually
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decline to 0, but yeah. You raise a good point there
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because it's really the long term changes you care about,
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right? It's not the year to year
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variability because of weather systems.
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One year might have more or less snow or longer snow cover, but
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it's it's whether it's that longer term trend that you
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really care about, not those bumps and wiggles along the way.
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Yeah, and I mean, let's get into some of some of your work.
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And the format for this show has always been saving the world
4:14
from bad ideas. And so you kind of you're going
4:17
to help us address a misconception.
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But I was trying to figure out what normally we prepare this in
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advance, but I couldn't figure out what would, what would work
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for you best? Because, you know, the bad idea
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might be that we, there's still time to save the Arctic if
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you're pessimistic, or you might think if you're optimistic that
4:32
there is still time to save the Arctic.
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So like, well, what? What's the sort of the worst?
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What's the misconception out there that you think you could
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correct? Oh, a misconception.
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Well, it depends on what country I'm in.
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I would say if I was in the US or There's still so much
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misconception that there's even anthropogenic warming happening
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and that it's leading to drastic climate change.
4:54
But yeah, I mean, I think the Arctic has always been sort of
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our bellwether for climate change because it's closer to
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the freezing point than like, the Antarctic, which is
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significantly colder because you have this big continent at the
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pole, whereas in the Arctic, you have ocean at the pole.
5:10
So, you know, if you started to warm up the planet and you
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started to melt back the snow and ice in that region, then
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you're exposing the ocean or the land to the sun's energy and it
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melts more snow and ice, and you start getting this positive
5:22
feedback. And so we always knew that if
5:25
we're going to see the imprints of climate change, places like
5:28
the Arctic would see at 1st and sea ice in many ways became our
5:32
poster child for climate change because it really started to
5:35
take a turn kind of in the early 2000s.
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And then sort of continued on from that and started to see
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these really significant ice losses in the summer that were
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about half of what the ice cover was, say 30 years before that.
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And so that was that was alarming people.
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And it was alarming also because when you would compare the
5:55
observations of what was happening in the summer in the
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Arctic Ocean, those changes were much faster than kind of our
6:02
worst case climate models were forecasting.
6:05
And so it was sort of giving this idea that, oh, wow, it's
6:09
worse than we thought perhaps, and that this transformation
6:12
from an ocean that once had sea ice year round to one that's ice
6:16
free in summers is now more likely in our lifetimes.
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And I think that is pretty clear.
6:22
I don't think there's any scientists that I know that
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dispute that we're on that trajectory.
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But it's, you know, you also have slowing down.
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So we've had sort of the last decade or so where you don't
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have another kind of impactful record low sea ice condition.
6:41
And at the moment in the Arctic Ocean, but it's not cover
6:45
covering to anything we saw, you know, 40-50 years ago.
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It's staying, it's staying low. And I think that tells us a
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couple things that maybe right now the ice is still thick
6:55
enough that some of it survives the summer melt.
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So we're not kind of tipping over into this ice free summer
7:00
state yet, but that, you know, it's still keeps thinning and
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then an unusual weather event might be enough to knock it out.
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So we don't know that yet, but a lot of the modelling studies
7:15
suggest it should happen before the middle of the century.
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And yeah. That's well.
7:22
Does that still depend on the emission scenarios or is that
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more or less baked in already? No, that's baked in.
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It doesn't really water. Now I.
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Mean, I don't know if it's not too flippant.
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I was wondering whether we could at least take bets on what we
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think the the year might be of no uptick summer sea ice and I
7:40
think I thought I'd put my money on 2032.
7:43
Can you can you improve on that? I don't know if I could improve
7:47
on it. You know, the key thing is, is
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whether or not the ice gets thin enough that it doesn't matter
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what happens in the summer. So, you know, when you had 2012
7:55
happen where we had the least amount of sea ice in the Arctic
7:58
Ocean yet, that was really due to this large cyclone that came
8:03
in at the end of August. Huge storm.
8:05
It was this biggest summer storm that we've had in the ocean at
8:09
that time of year and is. That itself a climate impact.
8:12
I mean, is that also to do with changing weather patterns that
8:15
you could get a storm that big that far north?
8:19
I, I guess I wouldn't be able to answer that in any convincing
8:23
way at the moment because I haven't really researched that
8:25
to be honest. We haven't had a similarly large
8:29
cyclone. I mean, 2016 also had a pretty
8:31
big one, not as big as 2012, but that cyclone was big enough to
8:37
like take, you know, push, break up the ice because, you know,
8:40
the high winds would break it up.
8:42
But also it was causing enough wave action that you had heat
8:47
coming from depth under the ocean that also then melted the
8:50
rest of the ice. So it had a big impact on the
8:52
ice cover for sure. I visited the North Slope of
8:57
Alaska and also Gnome and parts of, you know, the the Alaskan
9:02
Arctic when I was doing my first book.
9:03
This was way back in 2000, like 1/4 of a century ago.
9:07
And even then they were seeing, you know, impacts in terms of
9:10
increased coastal erosion from not just not having the ice
9:14
locked to the coast for as much of the year.
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So you'd get more wave action. And, you know, they were losing,
9:19
losing their houses. You know, there was houses
9:21
basically tipping into the tipping into the, the ocean
9:24
right there, which was really extraordinary to see.
9:27
Have you got a kind of, you know, you've obviously been in
9:29
these areas much more recently. What?
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What are you seeing? I mean, definitely coastal
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erosion is a big concern all along North America coast, as
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well as probably the Siberian coast.
9:40
I know a lot more about what's going on in the North American
9:42
coast, but entire villages are going to have to be moved
9:45
because you're right, they're not protected anymore from waves
9:48
because the ice is gone. But on top of that, you have
9:51
permafrost thaw. So those two things are acting
9:53
together to create really intense coastal erosion, such
9:57
that entire townships have to be moved now.
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But that's a bigger problem too, because all the infrastructure
10:03
in those coastal communities was built on permafrost.
10:06
And, you know, as the Arctic Ocean loses its summer ice
10:10
cover, then the ocean is heating up and releases a lot of that
10:13
heat back to the atmosphere before the ice can reform in
10:16
winter. And so you have this outsized
10:18
warming that's happening in the Arctic about four times faster
10:21
than the global average. And that, of course, is also
10:24
going to imprint on permafrost thaw and the number of days that
10:27
it can be thawing as well because you're extending the the
10:30
freeze up season. Well, the I should say that melt
10:33
season is being extended and the freezing season is being
10:36
shortened because of this. Yeah, I mean, I also went around
10:40
Fairbanks in the centre of Alaska and with some of the
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academics from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
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We went to look at permafrost store impacts and you got all
10:50
these forests which are like tipping over.
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They call them drunken forests because terminal frost is
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melting and the trees are basically just tipping over.
10:56
There's new lakes and there's in places where the sidewalks like
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literally like doing this. I mean, you're presumably saying
11:03
this in the whole circum polar Arctic now in all the land
11:06
areas, right? You are.
11:08
And I think there's also a lot of concern too, because there's
11:10
a lot of contaminants that are also in a lot of these areas and
11:14
especially on the Eurasian side. And so as a permafrost thaws, it
11:18
starts to release a lot of these contaminants into the water
11:20
systems. So there's there's a lot of
11:23
concerns I think about a lot of these sites that have not had
11:27
the best environmental practices and the industrialization of
11:31
those regions. And while it was frozen ground,
11:34
it's no longer so frozen. Well, the good news is we'll be
11:37
able to get more oil and gas out of the Arctic Ocean.
11:41
Yay. Yay, yeah.
11:44
Have you, I mean, do you get approached by oil and gas
11:47
companies saying when's the ice going to go?
11:48
When are we going to be able to get in there and drill baby?
11:51
Yeah, a few years ago I did a study for Statoil Hydro because
11:57
they were looking at different regions of the Arctic where they
11:59
wanted to be drilling. And so we assess sort of the
12:03
persistence of the ice in those regions or how much time it
12:06
might be ice free. So they could do resource
12:08
extraction. I think, you know, one of the
12:11
issues of course is it's still quite expensive to do anything
12:14
in those regions because the winter ice will still come back.
12:17
So you can have to develop your your structures to handle the
12:20
winter ice. Of course, places like off the
12:23
coast of Norway and the Barents Sea, the winter ice is
12:26
retreating quite a bit in that region.
12:28
So they keep pushing their oil leases further north because the
12:31
winter ice has been going away. But you know, again, you're
12:34
always dealing with year to year variability.
12:37
So you still have to, you know, develop your infrastructure to
12:40
handle icy conditions because just because it's going down as
12:44
a whole, there could be a year where you have unusually heavy
12:46
ice. So it's still quite expensive, I
12:49
think, to to try to develop these oil reserves.
12:52
But yeah, no, oil companies are of course looking at that.
12:56
And just trying to get a sense of your work.
13:00
I mean your expertise is in remote sensing, which is
13:03
satellites, I guess. Do you spend all your time
13:07
behind the desk or do you actually get out there in the
13:08
field then? I spend a lot of time behind the
13:11
desk, but I do get out in the field.
13:14
We just did a field experiment up in Churchill and Canada
13:18
because they have this new ice growth lab facility where
13:22
they're pumping in water from Hudson Bay into these big pools.
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And then you can grow ice and you can let the snow accumulate
13:28
on it. And we can test different
13:30
instrumentations that are used in satellites to try to see like
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how accurate we can derive certain things like ice
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thickness or the snow depth on the sea ice.
13:40
And we're going to resolute in about two weeks with an
13:45
altimeter instrument that I developed that was on the Mosaic
13:49
expedition as well and just. Tell me what the Mosaic
13:52
expedition was. Oh, that was the year long
13:54
expedition that the Germans LED where they froze Polar Stern
13:57
into the ice for a full year. So they froze a ship into the
14:00
sea ice and it drifted with the ice.
14:02
And they were doing presumably all sorts of experiments
14:05
measuring, well, what were they measuring?
14:07
Well, pretty. I mean, it was a very
14:09
comprehensive program. So you had atmospheric
14:11
scientists, you had oceanographers, you had
14:13
biologists, you had the bio geochemistry people, you had the
14:17
remote sensing people, pure sea ice physics people.
14:20
And so we're all collecting. Yeah, all collecting data for,
14:25
you know, different purposes. But all the data is openly
14:28
shared between everybody. And because you couldn't really
14:33
expect one scientist to stay on the ship for a full year, we
14:36
would come in for shorter periods of time, but then other
14:40
scientists would make our measurements when we weren't
14:42
there. So it was very collaborative
14:44
that way. And you, you were, you were on
14:46
the ship, were you? I was, I was on the ship from
14:50
well. We left Tromso in end of
14:53
November, got to the polar stern ship by mid-december and then we
14:58
left the polar stern ship in early March and then got back to
15:05
Tromso at the end of, well, beginning of April.
15:08
Well that's like 5 months away it.
15:10
Was a long, Yeah, it was a long campaign.
15:11
And. You say, doesn't that I haven't,
15:13
I mean, without getting too personal, that must be difficult
15:15
for family life. I mean, being away, that's,
15:17
that's quite a long time. It is a long time.
15:20
I think, you know, month long expeditions are, are pretty
15:23
manageable, but when it's longer than that, you sort of almost
15:26
forget your other life because you have this new community that
15:30
you form on a boat or any expedition where it's just the
15:33
people you're with. It's, it's a very different
15:35
thing. And, and it was also happening
15:38
during the time COVID was unfolding.
15:40
And so we were on the boat before COVID, well was known.
15:45
And then by the time we came back, it was full on and
15:49
everything was locked down. So it was a very strange time
15:52
because normally when you come off of an expedition, all the
15:55
things you look forward to doing, you can't do anymore
15:58
because everything was locked down.
16:00
What what's it like, though, living with that sort of
16:02
isolated community? Do you get a sense of
16:05
camaraderie? Do you all fall out?
16:07
I mean, do you play games and even like how, how do you, how
16:10
do you make it work? Yeah, no, we had a great, I
16:13
thought our our leg of the expedition had a really good
16:17
team. I think everybody got on quite
16:19
well. And because we don't have access
16:22
to Internet, we're not able to go on our phones.
16:25
We're actually having to hang out and talk to each other.
16:27
If we're not working, we're playing games, we're
16:29
socializing. It's was really nice.
16:33
I've been up to Greenland once to see the, I think it's called
16:39
Jacob Chavin Spray that. Yeah, if I said that right.
16:42
But that's one of the huge glasses that comes off the ice
16:45
sheet past this little town called Illusat.
16:49
So one of my fondest memories, I was getting drunk in one of the
16:51
bars with Johan Rokstrom, if you know him.
16:53
Oh, yeah. And it's funny, I remember more
16:56
about that than I do about the about the ice.
16:58
But it's really striking what's happening in Greenland, isn't
17:02
it? You know, Tell us about the
17:04
situation. Well, that's where I did my
17:06
first field work as a PhD student.
17:08
So I went to Ililisat and then we flew onto the Greenland ice
17:12
sheet by helicopter and we were part of what was called Swiss
17:17
Camp. The Swiss camp was installed I
17:21
believe in 1990 or 91 by the Swiss.
17:25
And then my PhD advisor who was Swiss, but he was then at the
17:29
University of Colorado, he was maintaining that camp.
17:33
And so we would go up to Swiss Camp, and in 93 was my first
17:38
time there. And back then you would have the
17:41
helicopter drop you off. Everything was covered in snow.
17:44
You'd be digging for hours to get the tents unburied from the
17:48
snow. And yeah, then you consider
17:51
about to doing your work, but it took hours to get all three
17:54
tents unburied from all the snow that drifted over them.
17:58
And then by the end, I think the station was dismantled two or
18:03
three years ago now, but by then it was in a pool of water.
18:06
And they kept having to, you know, extend the structure going
18:12
down into the ice because basically a lake had formed
18:14
underneath the the ice sheet. And it was originally installed
18:18
at what we call the equilibrium line.
18:20
So between the line where you have accumulation and melting.
18:24
And then over the years it just ended up in the ablation zone
18:28
because obviously the melt is going higher and higher up on
18:30
the ice sheet. So, so how far is the
18:33
equilibrium line altitude? If that's what it's called, how,
18:35
how, how's that changed across all of the Greenland ice sheet?
18:38
Yeah. I mean, back then it was around
18:40
1000 meters. I don't know what it is now
18:44
because I haven't really been so focused on that in my research
18:48
lately, but that's what it used to be.
18:51
I think there's even been rainfall at Summit Camp, which
18:53
is, I don't know, 3000 something meters, which presumably never
18:57
happened to, certainly not in recorded history as far as we
18:59
know. The future projections for
19:01
Greenland do show increased melt and that you'll have increased
19:05
mass loss just because you have more rainfall rather than
19:09
snowfall, right, Yeah. And, and some of this is going
19:12
to sea level rise, which is obviously threatening the
19:15
coastal regions and small island states of the world.
19:17
Do do we have any sense of how much and what the impacts are?
19:20
Greenland is the largest contributor right now to to sea
19:23
level rise. It's larger than what's coming
19:25
from the Antarctica, although the Antarctic is starting to
19:28
show signs of waking up and contributing more to sea level
19:31
rise than we expected. But no, Greenland obviously
19:35
contains enough fresh water that it would raise global sea levels
19:39
by close to 7 meters. The problem has always been the
19:42
time scale over which this will unfold.
19:44
But melt, surface melt is the primary driver right now of sea
19:50
level rise from Greenland. It's outweighing the sea level
19:54
contribution from iceberg calving at the moment.
19:57
And you know, historically those were kind of imbalance, but now
20:00
surface melt seems to be the the primary driver.
20:03
And in climate model simulations, they show that it
20:05
will continue to be the the primary driver.
20:08
I think the. The key thing is, of course,
20:10
like how the Fern will change, because all that liquid water is
20:13
going to percolate down into the Fern.
20:16
Fern. Do you want to explain what Fern
20:17
is? Just for people who don't?
20:18
Yeah. Yeah.
20:19
So I mean you have an ice sheet of course, that is building up
20:23
layers of snow and that snow compresses and gets more dense
20:28
and of course then form forms the ice.
20:29
But you have this Fern layer, which is this granular sort of
20:32
ice layer that has these percolation channels.
20:35
And so the water can kind of go through this as you have snow
20:38
melt from the top and usually it'll be freeze in that layer.
20:43
So then it doesn't necessarily run off the ice sheet.
20:47
But whether or not that's going to continue to to play a big
20:50
role in limiting the amount of run off that you're getting from
20:53
surface malt or not, I think that's a big unknown right now.
20:57
And the questions about how that's going to respond.
21:00
But there are also evidence of underwater channels of water
21:03
that they found with some radar imagery in Greenland where way
21:07
down below, even below the Fern layer, you have actual water
21:11
channels that are not frozen. So presumably some of that could
21:17
also get out. So I mean, I'll put you on the
21:20
spot again. Do you do you think that the
21:22
green and ice sheet is essentially doomed as we talk
21:24
now? You know, I would say the
21:27
science on that is probably a little unclear because some
21:29
people do suggest in their studies that we are now in an
21:33
irreversible state with Greenland and we're committed
21:35
to, to mass loss. Other studies challenge that
21:40
idea. So I think there's still a lot
21:43
we need to understand about how a lot of these glaciers are
21:46
going to respond to continued retreat, an unstoppable sea
21:52
level rise, which is what irreversibility means.
21:54
I, I think maybe there's still some discussion in the in the
21:59
ICE chief community about that. But like, you know, for sea
22:03
level rise, if you're going to plan future of your small island
22:07
nation or you know, whether a city on the coast can survive
22:10
long term, it really matters how long it takes.
22:13
You know, for some, suddenly it takes centuries.
22:15
OK, that's manageable. Probably if it's going to
22:18
decade, maybe much less. So what's, you know, how, how
22:21
long would it take to literally disappear Greenland?
22:24
A lot of the land mass, obviously.
22:26
I'm trying to remember now what we put in our paper.
22:29
I should. I think we had Greenland
22:32
contributing 30 centimeters by the end of the century to global
22:35
sea level rise. This.
22:37
Is this is in a 2.7° scenario? Is it?
22:40
Is it that paper? Yeah, exactly, exactly.
22:43
I think that's what we said, right?
22:46
I was just skimming it before we before we came on but I can't
22:48
remember that bit. I think it's 30 centimeters,
22:51
yeah. But, well, it's not so obviously
22:57
the the main, I think the main worry is what's going to happen
23:00
to the West Antarctic ice sheet, to be honest.
23:03
And there's some sense that this marine ice Cliff instability
23:11
that scientists have talked about is the big concern, but
23:14
they don't know. There's not.
23:15
There's no way to validate the models because you don't have an
23:18
example where you could validate it against yet.
23:22
But what is what is this? Just go back to basics.
23:25
Tell me what, Marie, what what the deal is with W Antarctica
23:27
and why that's such a threat? Well, if you have these, these,
23:31
these, you have these huge floating ice shelves that are
23:35
sitting on the ocean. So of course, at the moment,
23:37
they're not contributing to sea level because even if that
23:40
breaks off, that amount of ice has already been in the ocean,
23:43
but it's holding back a lot of ice behind it.
23:47
And so it's kind of like removing the dam.
23:49
So it's like letting the floodgates go and new
23:54
formulations that are being worked on by people that are ice
23:58
sheet modellers, which is not myself.
24:00
And there was a presentation at the American Geophysical Union
24:04
this fall in December in Washington, DC, and a colleague
24:09
there was talking about this new parameterization that he's been
24:13
doing that he says has been wrong in ice sheet models could
24:17
lead to a sea level rise that is much larger than anything we've
24:22
seen, a much faster. So something on the order of 20
24:25
centimeters a year. If that were the case, I don't
24:29
see how you could adapt quickly enough to that.
24:32
No, I think, I think 20 centimeters a year is is of
24:35
nothing. No one can adapt.
24:36
No, that's. That's.
24:38
That you they used to talk about 20 centimeters a century, so
24:42
wow. This paper hasn't been published
24:44
yet. He's probably submitted it by
24:46
now, so we'll see how that reviews, but it was quite
24:49
striking to see that you could have that kind of pace of sea
24:54
level rise because of instabilities in the and West
24:57
Antarctic ice sheet. Because the West Antarctic ice
24:59
sheets dissipate before at least been significantly reduced
25:02
before in past warm episodes, if we look at the sort of the paleo
25:06
climate, right. So we know it's not been there
25:09
for, well, for millions of years.
25:11
No, I mean, that's that's true. We've had huge interglacial
25:14
cycles, but it also is interesting that maybe also how
25:20
we've been considering past sea level rise and ice sheet
25:23
contributions also needs to kind of get revised.
25:26
Because there's a lot of research now also going into the
25:30
role of the changes in the cross layer and the isostatic rebound
25:35
and how these interactive processes might also have been
25:39
influencing some of that. So that's when.
25:42
You take the weight off the Earth's crust with the melting
25:45
ice, and the Earth's crust then comes leaps up, and then you get
25:48
an obviously reduced rate of sea level rise in that area
25:50
relatively. Yeah, exactly.
25:52
Yeah, Yeah. Which is also why, like if you
25:55
look at, you know, kind of Scandinavia, for example, or
25:58
even up in Canada, I mean, you're not actually going to
26:02
have sea level rise in those regions at the moment because
26:04
they're still coming back up. The land is rebounding.
26:08
So even in Hudson Bay, which is like a region they're
26:11
considering as a deep water marine port, as the ice melts
26:15
and you can have more connectivity that way, that port
26:18
is also the the land is rising underneath that.
26:21
So the water level is going to get more shallow actually, just
26:26
because the land is moving. Right, right.
26:28
What are some of the ecological impacts?
26:30
I mean, you mentioned Hudson Bay, that's in my mind
26:33
associated with polar bears. And of course they've always
26:35
been sort of totemic climate change species, you know, safe
26:41
to polar bear, you know, pictures of memes of polar bears
26:44
on melting ice floes and so on. Like what what see.
26:48
And then of course, there's I think there's been a whole kind
26:50
of group of polar bear denier deniers.
26:53
If you were who, if you like, who say that polar bears are
26:55
fine. And you know, this whole thing
26:57
is all made-up. So like what?
26:59
What's your what's your assessment?
27:01
Well, we did just do a study last year looking at the Hudson
27:04
Bay polar bears and I'm not a biologist, but we were looking
27:08
at the, the changes, the future changes in the ice condition in
27:11
that region. So we, we corrected all the
27:14
models so they would match the observations during the
27:17
observational period and use those in the forecast out the
27:20
number of ice free days for the region.
27:23
And kind of looked at, you know, what one temperature thresholds
27:26
would you get to, to where the bears are fasting for more than
27:29
180 days per year. And, and certainly that is well,
27:34
but well, it's between 1.5 and two degrees typically is when
27:38
that's going to happen where it becomes longer than 180 days,
27:41
depending on kind of what region in Hudson Bay you are.
27:45
And you know, I mean, it's, it's hard to imagine that the bears
27:48
can change their food source quick enough to sustain their
27:51
fat stores because obviously they need the seals because that
27:54
has the right fat content to sustain them.
27:57
If they're trying to switch to eating Caribou or, you know,
28:01
catching birds or fish or whatever, it's just not enough
28:04
fat stores for them. So the the western Hudson Bay
28:09
polar bear population is probably the most well studied
28:11
population and they have certainly seen declines in body
28:14
weight and reproductive rates and just more mortality of the
28:19
bears in that region because of the longer ice free period.
28:25
This year, luckily they had a bit of a boom because the wind
28:28
switched direction and the ice was pushed over towards
28:31
Churchill. And so there was more ice this
28:33
year than there has been for quite some time.
28:36
So the bears got a longer time on the ice this year and they
28:38
were able to feed for longer. But this year the Southern
28:41
Hudson, southern Hudson Bay polar bears didn't have ice at
28:45
all for about 200 days. And so we're still waiting to
28:49
see the assessments on this year's polar bear population in
28:52
that region. So Environment Canada is going
28:55
out and making those assessments, but those bears did
28:57
not have ice already beginning of May and it didn't come back
29:02
until December. I mean, I remember seeing some
29:05
striking pictures of starving polar bear and this was linked
29:09
with lack of sea ice, but that was controversial.
29:12
So I mean, it's really important to get some some rigorous
29:16
science on this, isn't it? Which looks at different
29:18
populations and under different conditions so that, well, you
29:21
know what, what's your, what's your overview of this though?
29:24
I mean, can polar bears survive in an ice free Arctic that we
29:26
seem to be moving into? I mean, I think there might be
29:29
some subpopulations that can survive like especially in the
29:32
Canadian archipelago where the ice should persist hopefully for
29:35
longer, what we call the last ice area where you have the
29:39
thicker ice remaining. But I don't see how the
29:42
populations of bears in Hudson Bay can survive given the
29:46
lengthening of the ice free period in that region.
29:48
I just don't see what I don't they they really can't go
29:51
anywhere either. Because the problem is, is that
29:54
if the bears were going to follow the ice, the ice tends to
29:57
drift southward because that's a prevailing wind direction.
30:00
So typically the ice melts out latest in the southeast of
30:04
Hudson Bay rather than up on the northwest.
30:07
And so then if they they follow the ice and then they end up
30:10
down there, they're not going to be able to come all the way back
30:13
up much further north to find some ice again.
30:16
So I find it a little hard to imagine that that sub population
30:19
can survive. It's going to be interesting to
30:21
see how other populations of bears fare because right now
30:26
the, the the Hudson Bay population of bears has been
30:29
fasting for, you know, a few months every year, whereas other
30:33
parts of the Arctic, they haven't had to do that.
30:35
But now those populations are having to fast a little bit
30:38
longer as well. I think a lot of your starving
30:41
polar bear pictures have come from Svalbard I believe, which
30:45
has also been losing a lot of its winter ice as well.
30:49
OK, When was the Arctic Ocean last completely ice free though?
30:53
Looking at paleoclimate, was it in, you know, hundreds,
30:57
thousands years ago, million years ago?
30:58
I mean like, and what does that tell us about polar bear
31:01
populations and, and, and other things that may or may not have
31:04
been able to survive? Well, I think the polar bears,
31:07
well, OK, so the last time that it was ice free, I mean, a lot
31:11
of the paleo data, there's some there's, there's, there's still
31:15
some diversity on that, but it's typically about 100,000 years
31:18
ago that they think was the last time it was probably ice free.
31:21
But there was also evidence of driftwood in Greenland that must
31:25
have come from Siberia, which might have meant less ice in the
31:30
Arctic Ocean or to, for, to drift there.
31:32
And that was around between 5 and 6000 years ago as well.
31:36
So there might have been times even it might not have been
31:38
completely ice free. There might have also been times
31:41
with a bit more open water about 5 to 6000 years ago.
31:45
The polar bears seem to be, they're not, I guess you can't
31:51
say it's a pure polar bear. There is evidence of brown bear
31:54
within them. So they have cross bred.
31:57
And so the population of polar bears is probably maybe
32:02
partially linked with the brown bear populations.
32:04
And so that's one way perhaps that they've been able to
32:07
survive these periods. But I'm not a biologist, so I'm
32:10
not an expert on that. I, I was told that there was a
32:15
distinct polar bear population somewhere.
32:20
I'm not going to be able to say this correct.
32:22
So I can't remember off the top of my head.
32:23
It was none of the scientists told me this, but it was
32:26
somewhere up in the Bering Sea and they found a very different
32:29
subpopulation of bears in that region that was eating a very
32:34
different diet as well. So, but I don't know enough to
32:38
really, I guess, comment on that with any confidence at the
32:41
moment. I'd have to read the paper,
32:42
which I haven't done. Yeah, to go back to your paper
32:46
in I think it was in science looking at the impacts of 2.7
32:49
and 1.5. I mean, 1.5 of course is the
32:53
Paris limit agreed in 2015 as the sort of collective ambition
32:58
of the world to try to stop global warming at that level.
33:03
And yet here we are. It was, according to the EU's
33:06
Copernicus climate study, it's we're at 1.6 last year, so we're
33:11
already a 10th of a degree above that.
33:13
I mean, I know it's meant to be a long term average or
33:15
something, but I mean when are we going to stop pretending that
33:18
1.5 is even possible? Well, I, I, it's funny, I, I
33:24
think it is absolutely impossible.
33:26
I don't believe it is still possible at this point, but I
33:30
guess that probably doesn't work from an effective sort of policy
33:33
perspective. If you're really trying to get
33:35
nations to do something, you have to try to give them hope
33:38
that you can reach it. But I don't think, I think we've
33:40
already overshot it. And I think that was the point
33:43
of my paper as well, was that, you know, if we just take what
33:47
current countries have committed to in terms of reducing their
33:51
fossil fuel contributions to the atmosphere, you're still getting
33:55
to a warming of 2.7. So, you know, we talked about
33:58
01.5 or two degrees. And it's like, well, but that's
34:02
not that's not our reality that we're facing at the moment,
34:06
unless you really get every country to get on board and
34:09
start making the changes now. And it has to happen all at
34:12
once. And I don't see that happening.
34:14
And you have changes in administrations that are going
34:18
to go backwards, like the United States at the moment is going to
34:20
remove all their environmental protections and, you know, goals
34:24
to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
34:25
So I, I just don't see how we get there at this point.
34:30
I, I think we have technologies that are going to help and we
34:32
certainly can change the way we do our energy production.
34:37
We can change the way we do agricultural production.
34:39
We can change, you know, how we do cement production
34:43
infrastructure, All of this stuff can change.
34:45
But I I guess I haven't really seen real leadership on any of
34:53
this to be completely honest. Yeah, I, I vacillate about
34:58
whether it's political leadership or techno
35:00
technological change or some combination of the two.
35:02
But it does feel like things are moving backwards at the moment.
35:05
I mean, I, I don't know about you, but I've been in the kind
35:08
of climate space for 25 years. And it did feel like if we
35:13
shouted more and did more protests and got more
35:14
politicians on side and kind of cultivated more political will,
35:18
then we could really move the clean energy transition faster.
35:21
And I'm not really so sure anymore.
35:23
I think it's going to be very slow and it's going to take well
35:25
into the second-half of the century and we're going to be
35:28
well over 2°. I mean, two point sevens are the
35:30
reasonable guess, actually. So what, what, what are the
35:35
impacts? I mean of of 2.7 is that is that
35:39
you know, is this is this beginning to look catastrophic
35:41
by that level? I think it does, to be honest.
35:47
I, I just think that parts of this world are going to become
35:49
uninhabitable at that level of warming.
35:51
And of course, I'm not focusing on what are the temperatures
35:54
going to be in the Middle East. But I cannot imagine if global
35:57
warming hits 2.7, then those regions are not going to be
36:01
inhabitable. So are habitable.
36:03
Sorry. So, and you know, we already
36:08
know that nobody wants to take in migrants, right?
36:10
So I don't know where all these people are going to end up First
36:14
off. So the huge humanitarian crisis,
36:17
you know, with the Arctic and it's in itself, I mean, I just
36:20
don't see how the Arctic is going to look like anything
36:22
we've known it to be. I mean, if you have 2.7° of
36:25
global warming, and of course that means in the Arctic, the
36:28
winter warming is going to be around 10 to 12°, which is much
36:31
higher. It's like, you know, you're,
36:35
you're not going to have ice in the ocean for several months of
36:38
the year. You know, the area of permafrost
36:41
thaw is going to just expand massively.
36:43
And so all the infrastructure in that region is going to collapse
36:47
because it's built on currently on frozen ground.
36:52
The whole place is going to look different.
36:55
And, and everybody that's depended on, you know, ice being
36:59
there and whether it's species, whether it's people, I mean, the
37:04
whole ways of lives are going to change.
37:05
And I think it's happening at such a fast pace that I don't
37:08
think species can adapt quick enough.
37:10
And even human systems are going to have to adapt really quickly,
37:13
and I don't even know how easy that will be either.
37:16
Yeah. I mean, I, I spent years looking
37:18
at global warming impacts and a degree by degree sort of
37:22
timetable for my 6° book. And this is squarely in my 3°
37:27
scenario 2.7. And one of the things that
37:29
really struck me in doing that research was the issue of
37:33
tipping points. And I don't know how much you
37:36
addressed this in the paper, but there's a couple of really
37:38
serious issues of concern here, aren't there?
37:41
1 is the changing albedo, so the changing reflectivity.
37:45
If you've got the Arctic Ocean ice free, then it makes it much
37:49
darker and that absorbs more solar radiation.
37:51
And the second, I think is permafrost.
37:53
So you've got a lot of methane, potentially carbon dioxide
37:56
coming out of melting permafrost.
37:58
Can you give me a sense of how significant you think the
38:00
tipping points issue is at that level of warming?
38:04
Yeah. So I mean, definitely for
38:05
Greenland, I think it's there's pretty much consensus that the
38:08
Greenland will have tipped at that sort of temperature
38:11
increase. You know, for Arctic sea ice,
38:13
it's a bit different because I would say that you can still, at
38:17
least in climate model simulations, when you cool
38:19
things back down, you can still regrow the summer ice.
38:21
I think if you lose the winter ice, that's a whole different
38:25
system because then you completely change the whole
38:27
ocean structure and the temperature profiles within the
38:31
ocean. So right now you always have had
38:33
a very strong halocline and you have this cold water sitting on
38:37
top of warmer water below. And you know, we've talked a bit
38:41
in the science community about Atlantification of the Arctic
38:43
Ocean where you get this warm Atlantic water that's all the
38:46
set at depth, but it's now coming up to the surface.
38:50
And so when you have this warm water at surface and you can't
38:52
form the ice, and that has been, you know, one of the factors
38:56
behind less sea ice, especially around Slobard and also within
38:59
the Barents Sea. Some of that warm waters also
39:02
demonstrated to come up over on the Siberian shelf, for example.
39:07
So the keep spreading of this and changing the water column
39:10
would mean you couldn't form ice again.
39:12
So that would be a tipping point.
39:14
And then that would take a long time to reverse.
39:16
And I guess tipping points really are about reversing on a
39:19
human time scale, right? So we're not going to be
39:23
reversing anything on any sort of human time scales once we
39:27
tip. So Greenland for sure will
39:28
probably tip at those temperatures.
39:31
Summer sea ice. I don't really look at it as a
39:34
tipping point, although it is a, it's a new change of state.
39:37
You know, it's not the same change of state with permafrost
39:41
thaw. I mean, obviously the, the
39:43
amount of carbon stored in permafrost is about twice what's
39:46
in the atmosphere. So it's a huge feedback and
39:52
early climate models really weren't taking account that
39:54
carbon feedback from the permafrost thaw.
39:56
There's more models trying to incorporate that, but because of
40:00
the carbon contribution that's coming from permafrost that
40:03
actually eats up the remaining carbon that we actually could
40:06
emit to reach these sort of temperature targets, right?
40:09
Because the permafrost is adding a lot more.
40:12
And I think there was a new study that came out couple
40:16
months ago that was really showing that the permafrost
40:19
areas have become net sources of carbon now, partly because also
40:23
of fires. And so the northern regions have
40:27
suffered a lot from fires and. That's changing the vegetation.
40:30
So now things are quite much more of a carbon source than
40:34
they are a sink. And so tipping that balance and
40:37
letting all that carbon out, I think is going to create much
40:42
larger warming than this 2.7 most likely.
40:45
Right. And that's the the point.
40:46
I mean, if you speak to people who are really doomy about
40:49
climate, they'll often point to this not just as a tipping
40:52
point, but as a feedback. So the, the, all of the
40:57
greenhouse gases that come out of the melting permafrost then
41:00
presumably cause more warming and that melts more permafrost.
41:02
And so it's that kind of there's a, is there a point where it
41:06
becomes unstoppable and out of outside human control and you
41:09
get a global warming which which accelerates, you know, beyond
41:13
our potential to do anything about it with emissions cuts
41:16
because of the Arctic permafrost.
41:17
I mean. Yeah, that is a good question.
41:20
I think having a permafrost expert talk to that would be
41:24
key. I mean, a, a big part of it is
41:26
also how is that carbon being emitted?
41:28
Is it being emitted as methane or SCO 2, right.
41:31
So different depending on the plant responses, you're going to
41:34
get a different outcome. Obviously methane is more potent
41:39
and it warms things much faster, but it's short lived.
41:42
So whereas if it's coming out of CO2, then it's so much longer
41:45
lived greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, which won't be as
41:49
intense, but it will be, it'll be you're more committed for
41:52
longer term. I think it's also about the time
41:55
scale I think as well, you know, if, if these feedbacks operate
42:00
over years or decades, then I think that that really is a a
42:04
major concern. If it's centuries, then maybe
42:06
less so. So, you know, can you give us a
42:09
sense of how urgent that might be?
42:14
I would say that for the permafrost, I mean it's kind of
42:19
falling at a time scale between what's going on in the ocean and
42:22
what's going on in Greenland in some extent in terms of
42:25
Greenland's contribution to sea level rise, it's definitely
42:29
responding. Of course, you have seasonal
42:31
responses with the seasonal active layer thaw depths.
42:34
But I would say that it's closely tied though what's going
42:38
on to the sea ice cover. And so the region of the
42:41
permafrost warming, once you get to this threshold, which I think
42:45
we're getting close to anyways, you're going to have thaw coming
42:48
all the time for much larger regions.
42:50
So I think it's actually on the time scale of decades to century
42:55
for the permafrost law. OK, decades saying, well that's,
42:59
that's pretty much irreversible and unstoppable and in any
43:03
meaningful sense, in which case if 2.7 is baked in with all of
43:08
the well, not baked in, but it's certainly what's all of the
43:11
collective commitments and the NDC's, you know, the, the
43:13
commitments under the Paris accord add up to by the end of
43:17
the century. And we don't think that the
43:19
clean energy transition is going to get us much below that.
43:23
Do we need to talk about geoengineering?
43:27
Yeah. Well, I mean, obviously there's
43:29
a lot of, there's a lot of effort towards that at the
43:32
moment and especially in the UK there's a lot of projects being
43:35
funded to investigate this. I am not a a fan of this idea
43:41
because I just feel like you're creating a whole new problem
43:44
most likely. And I think we know what the
43:47
problem is. So I'd rather us work on
43:49
solutions either to well, obviously we have to reduce our
43:52
emissions, but also to to remove the carbon from the atmosphere
43:55
would be my preferred manipulation if we were going to
43:58
do something rather than trying to pump sea water on top of the
44:03
ice, for example, to make the sea ice grow thicker.
44:06
Or there was a new thing talking about some sort of wood chips,
44:11
some kind of highly reflective wood sports that they'll put on
44:14
the Arctic Ocean to reflect sun's energy.
44:16
And also, I guess as it decomposes, it would also
44:19
provide carbon into the the ocean column.
44:24
Yeah, I think, I think these ideas are a little far fetched
44:27
only because too, if you're looking at the scale of the
44:30
amount of the Arctic Ocean you'd have to cover to grow ice and to
44:35
make it anything meaningful, I think that's.
44:38
The scale I think that that all all these seem in terms of the
44:41
scalability seem completely bonkers to me.
44:44
I've even seen proposals to somehow make an underwater
44:48
curtain that somehow keeps the warmer waters from going
44:51
underneath the West Antarctica issue.
44:52
I mean, you think the the physical and plausibility of an
44:55
engineering project of that scale?
44:57
I mean, you'd be easier to solve climate change with emissions
44:59
reductions, I'd have thought. I would think so.
45:02
I think the, the one that, well, I actually have a PhD student
45:06
that has been looking at this in climate models is the solar
45:09
geoengineering work, right? So putting aerosols up into the
45:13
stratosphere to try to, to block the sun.
45:14
But of course there are impacts on that as well.
45:17
So you actually impact the polar vortex by doing that.
45:21
You wouldn't really reduce the warming in the winter, for
45:25
example, because of the impacts on the polar vortex, You might
45:28
be able to cool the summer a little bit.
45:30
So there's all these other feedbacks and it impacts the
45:32
hydrological cycle. Are they?
45:34
Looking at global solar geoengineering or are they
45:37
looking at just putting sort of stratospheric aerosols above the
45:40
Arctic? Both both the model simulations
45:44
that are being done are doing both sort of scenarios and
45:47
looking at the difference and how it would impact sea ice, for
45:49
example. Yeah, I guess rationally you
45:52
have to figure out which is worse, like unstoppable
45:55
permafrost melt and the total dispense of the sea ice or some
45:58
level of solar geoengineering with these these impacts which
46:02
you could you're beginning to get a sense of through models.
46:04
But there will be things that you just simply can't predict as
46:06
well and like and who get and who gets to decide which.
46:09
Exactly who gets to decide? And some places will end up
46:12
getting reduced rainfall, for example, it affects the Indian
46:15
monsoon when you do these sort of at least in the models.
46:19
And then I guess you have to assume, OK, the models are
46:21
accurate enough to be able to tell us the hydrological
46:23
response that would happen if we do put all these stratospheric
46:26
aerosols up there. So yeah, I think, I just think
46:31
it's dangerous. And I, I mean, if you're going
46:33
to really try to focus on some sort of geoengineering, for me
46:36
it'd be taking the carbon out of the atmosphere rather than
46:39
trying to increase the reflectivity of the Arctic Ocean
46:42
or build curtains or more stuff in our atmosphere.
46:46
Yeah, I've just not seen any scalable proposals for that
46:49
either at any kind of reasonable cost.
46:50
I mean the the physics of of that is also pretty daunting.
46:54
So I'm not, I'm, I actually, I actually think that the solar
46:57
geoengineering is the most feasible.
47:00
It may not be the most desirable.
47:01
It's probably the most feasible in terms of, in terms of rapid
47:04
cooling. And if you wanted to take the
47:05
top off 2°, let's say, and allow some time for, for overshoot,
47:09
that's probably the thing that's worth, that's worth talking
47:12
about. Unlike, because the, the problem
47:14
with geoengineering is there's all these bonkers proposals and
47:17
you know, and, and the whole thing gets lumped together as
47:19
if, as if these are all the same, which of course they're
47:21
not, that they're totally different.
47:23
But the, the thing about the Arctic though, is like what?
47:26
It's not like Las Vegas. What happens in the Arctic
47:28
doesn't stay in the Arctic. It can affect the rest of the
47:31
world's weather patterns in quite dramatic ways.
47:33
I mean, what, what, what's, what do you think the impact might be
47:37
on the rest of the world with this very dramatic warming in
47:39
the Arctic? Well, so one of the things I
47:42
always thought was kind of interesting about these, like
47:44
Arctic specific, like let's try to grow the sea ice while
47:48
climate warming is still happening.
47:50
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
47:52
So obviously the the temperature difference between the equator
47:55
and the poles drives a lot of our large scale weather patterns
47:58
and our ocean circulation patterns.
48:00
And so one of the things that's been happening is because that
48:03
temperature difference has been going down because the Arctic is
48:06
warming so much faster than the rest of the planet is, You've
48:09
seen a slowing down of the zonal wind speeds based on the thermal
48:12
wind law, you would get that slowing down.
48:15
And so basically then things like the jet would move slower.
48:19
That would be basically what would be happening.
48:22
So this is the jet, this is the jet stream on the in the higher
48:25
part of the well troposphere. So like, tell us a bit more
48:29
about the weather dynamics for the non weather geeks on Mighty
48:33
Listening. Right.
48:35
So, yeah, I mean you have sort of, well, it could get really
48:39
complicated. Let me try to think about how to
48:41
simplify this. I mean, you have the, you have
48:47
pressure gradients or temperature gradients that are
48:49
going to make wind want to move from the equator towards the
48:53
pole because you're getting all the heating at the equator, you
48:55
got cooling at the pole. And so you want to move that
48:57
excess heat towards the north, but the Earth is also spinning.
49:01
So that deflects the wind around.
49:05
And so you get this sort of the geostrophic wind flow, which is
49:09
basically higher up in the atmosphere is really moving to
49:12
the right in the northern hemisphere and the left in the
49:16
southern hemisphere. And so that's why our jet stream
49:18
goes from the West to the east and brings the weather systems
49:22
over that way. So it's a high latitude, I mean
49:25
high altitude, not high latitude winds within the atmosphere.
49:30
Now this is strongly affected by that temperature difference
49:34
because that's that you know, you're trying to re you're
49:37
trying the planet wants to re equilibrance equilibrium, the
49:43
equilibrium itself. It wasn't equilibrium itself
49:46
with the excess heat at the poles and bring it up to the, to
49:48
the, I mean the excess heat at the equator and bring it to the
49:50
poles. So we're of course impacting
49:54
that at the moment because the Arctic is warming faster.
49:57
And then the controversy though, in the science community is not
50:01
so much about the fact that these weather systems that are
50:03
going to move more slowly because of this temperature
50:05
change, but that if the jet stream is also getting wavier,
50:10
then it's whatever systems on the other side of it, whether
50:13
it's a high pressure or low pressure system trapped in this
50:16
wave, which is moving more slowly, then you get more
50:18
extreme events, right? So the weather gets trapped for
50:22
longer in one place. And so that's what a lot of the
50:26
science has been talking about in terms of extreme weather
50:28
events being linked to Arctic warming, because that system is
50:33
now moving slower and it's stuck in this WAVY jet stream rather
50:37
than being a really fast zonal flow that's just moving super
50:39
fast from West to east, it's going it's going a lot slower.
50:43
Right. So you get a, you get an
50:44
anticyclone, which sits there for weeks and weeks and causes a
50:47
terrible drought. Or you get low pressure, which
50:49
causes floods. Because they're just not.
50:51
The systems aren't moving fast. Exactly, exactly.
50:54
So a lot of research has been talking about that and also the
50:57
breaking down of the polar vortex has also been 1 of it.
50:59
So you can have connection between the troposphere and the
51:02
stratosphere. So you get anomalies say in
51:04
heating and the troposphere that can sometimes move up into the
51:07
stratosphere, which would disrupt the polar vortex.
51:10
Normally the polar vortex is a very strong circular, you know,
51:14
fast winds up there. But if it starts to break down
51:17
and gets a bit WAVY, that's when you have these cold air
51:20
outbreaks that happen in the lower latitudes, such as when
51:24
you guys had the Beast from the East, when you had the polar
51:26
vortex breakdown in the. UK, that was, yeah, yeah, I
51:29
remember that well. Yeah, or snowfall in Texas in
51:31
the winter. I mean, these things happen when
51:33
the polar vortex breaks down. And so there are studies that
51:36
have linked Arctic warming to destabilization of the polar
51:40
vortex, for example. But, you know, if you're
51:44
thinking about geoengineering and you're just thinking about,
51:46
OK, well, let's just, you know, put the Arctic colder and let
51:52
the rest of the planet warm, that temperature gradient will
51:54
now get really strong instead of weak.
51:56
So again, that's going to affect your weather.
51:58
And so then maybe systems are just going to become a lot more
52:00
zonal and move much faster, which will also change your
52:03
weather. So I just find that it's all a
52:06
bit, yeah. I don't know how much people
52:09
think about all of those different implications.
52:12
Well, a lot hopefully, because those are critical, critical
52:15
issues of it reigns less in the Indian subcontinent where you
52:18
know, about a court of humanity lives, then that's a pretty big
52:23
impact. And you know, we've got to be
52:25
able to well model these things. I mean, how confident are you
52:28
that the models can actually climate models, which are these
52:30
big computer models can actually capture what's going on in the
52:33
real world and, you know, let alone project it forward?
52:36
I mean, I think some things it can do OK with.
52:38
I think the temperature projections are probably, you
52:41
know, they're very robust between the models, for example,
52:46
and you know, the loss of Arctic sea ice is robust within the
52:49
models. They're all showing it should
52:51
decline. None of them are showing it
52:52
should increase. They may have different rates of
52:56
decline, but they won't have any of it growing, for example.
52:59
So they're consistent about some of those things.
53:02
Where they are not consistent is how they expect precipitation to
53:06
change in the future or, you know, how cloud cover is going
53:10
to change in the future, things like that.
53:11
And so that's where I think there's a lot less certainty in
53:16
terms of where the rain is going to fall, where the droughts are
53:18
going to be, changes in extreme weather patterns, for example, I
53:22
mean, some climate models will say you're going to have a
53:25
stronger North Atlantic Oscillation, which is, you know,
53:29
this pressure difference that you have between the Azores and
53:31
Iceland, which drives a lot of our the jet stream position, for
53:35
example, if it's going to go up into England or if it's going to
53:38
be further South, for example, in driving the storms across the
53:41
Atlantic. All of that is variable between
53:45
the models. And so I don't know how much
53:48
confidence we have on our weather patterns will change.
53:50
And that is, I think what impacts society quite a bit.
53:55
I mentioned that the models, the ice sheet models are not very
53:57
advanced in these climate models yet.
54:01
OK. I'm, I'm sure you're helping to,
54:03
I mean, so with all of the real time data that you're gathering
54:07
from remote sensing and also field work, does that then feed
54:10
into the models and help help improve them?
54:13
Yeah. I mean, well, definitely when we
54:15
did our early study where we compared the satellite sea ice
54:18
data record to the models back in 2007, we showed that the
54:23
models were doing quite badly in terms of capturing Arctic sea
54:27
ice changes. And so the modeling groups did
54:32
do things. They, they did fix a lot of
54:34
stuff I think in the model, but and it does a better job.
54:39
And then when the more recent models it does a better job, but
54:42
it's still not for the right reason necessarily.
54:45
So the the sensitivity of how CIS will decline as a function
54:50
of global warming is too weak in the models compared to what's
54:54
observed, for example, so. What do you mean?
54:57
You mean the CIS is dissipating more rapid in the models
54:59
projected as it would? Yeah, yeah.
55:02
I mean that's something we've always seen is it's better than
55:05
it was like in the CMP three models than it than it is for
55:09
example in the CMP 6 models. But the sensitivity is not
55:13
right. So the the amount of CIS loss
55:16
you get per degree of global warming in the models is not the
55:19
same as what we see in the observations.
55:23
And you know what, what it is, is that a lot of these models
55:25
have much thinner ice. So that's probably also why
55:30
they're getting the trend right in terms of losing the ice,
55:33
because they have thinner ice to start with.
55:36
They still struggle in representing exactly where the
55:38
thick ice and the thin ice is in the Arctic Ocean as well.
55:44
So, you know, sometimes models get the answers right, but not
55:46
necessary for the right reasons. And I think there's still
55:48
improvements that are needed there.
55:50
I think a lot of it has to do with this, the spatial
55:52
resolution of these models, right?
55:53
So as as our computational power increases and you can run finer
55:57
resolution models where you can resolve ocean Eddy processes and
56:01
you can resolve individual ice flows and how they interact, I
56:04
think that's how you're going to do a better job because you're
56:07
having to parameterize the scales of processes that are
56:10
happening, a very fine scale over like A50 kilometre grid
56:13
cell, right? And that's not really
56:17
realistically capturing what's going on.
56:18
So for example, if you have a bunch of discrete smaller ice
56:23
floes, which is what you usually get in A50 kilometre grid cell,
56:26
especially at the marginal ice zone, all the ocean and
56:31
atmospheric interactions with that ice flow are quite
56:33
different than if you assume just a continuum of sea ice,
56:37
which is what those climate models do at the moment.
56:39
So you're going to get a different rate of melting just
56:42
because of the difference in the flow size that you're using
56:45
within the model. I mean, we're talking about the
56:49
process of improving science, and science is under huge threat
56:54
at the moment with the Trump administration literally just
56:58
slashing apart the US climate science effort.
57:00
It's really shocking and and really quite appalling to see
57:05
they're even talking about closing down the more the lower
57:08
CO2 monitoring station and goodness knows what the impacts
57:12
are going to be on the whole data gathering.
57:14
And I mean what, what have you seen?
57:17
Have you seen big impact so far with with colleagues and
57:20
research efforts more generally? Yeah, I have.
57:24
I'm also still affiliated with the University of Colorado and I
57:27
was expecting an NSF grant as part of a joint NERK NSF project
57:32
at NERK is funded and so NSF is supposed to fund their part of
57:36
it. We still haven't received the
57:38
money even though the project has gone ahead.
57:43
Part of it to my program manager was fired.
57:45
So now he's rehired again for I don't know how long.
57:50
So we don't know if we'll get the funding.
57:51
And that was going to hire a postdoc to to work on this
57:54
project, which was trying to provide uncertainty estimates of
57:59
the sea ice in Antarctica, for example, to try to improve our
58:02
satellite estimations since Antarctic is an interesting case
58:06
at the moment and how it's responding in the last few
58:09
years. So yeah, we'll see if we get the
58:11
money in the US to do that research.
58:13
But I hadn't heard about Mauna Loa.
58:16
That's interesting. That would be terrible if they
58:18
shut that down. But I know that European
58:22
colleagues have been asking me about the National Snow and Ice
58:27
Data Center holdings because they're wondering if that would
58:30
become unavailable and if they should start mirroring the data
58:33
holdings that NSADC has from all the NASA satellites, for
58:37
example, and NOAA satellites. I think there's nowhere these
58:41
these guys are going to stop. I think if Elon Musk and his
58:43
team of crazy teenagers, they'd literally come and switch off
58:45
the freezers and melt all the ice core samples if they could.
58:48
I mean, it's it's like they are crazy.
58:51
They don't want this science to be gathered.
58:54
They don't want us to know about climate change as as as the
58:57
impacts are accelerating in the real world.
58:59
And that all adds up to this kind of this bizarre anti
59:01
science agenda, which you can see across health and a number
59:04
of other places in the Trump administration.
59:07
I mean, just that. How does that affect your kind
59:11
of feeling about the future as a scientist?
59:13
I think I'm very worried about the future for the US right now.
59:16
And all I can do is hope that this is short lived, that the
59:19
most it will be impacted is 4 years.
59:23
But I don't know. I don't know how much damage
59:25
he's going to be able to achieve in his four years and if if even
59:29
goes for longer, which is really scary prospect.
59:34
But I think it's just I I'm really worried about the
59:37
division in the US at the moment and how that is going to keep
59:41
manifesting. Yeah.
59:44
I mean, I mean, my daughter's trying to do a PhD, but the
59:47
funding for public health of, as you know, is being severely cut
59:50
and she's in epidemiology and climate change related research
59:54
is what she wants to be doing. So it's hard for her now to get
59:58
a funded PhD position given all the cuts to universities.
1:00:03
Yeah, I think it's it's really bad.
1:00:07
And I think it's difficult to know what to do.
1:00:09
I know people in the US are coming together and trying to
1:00:13
come up with a coordinated response, at least for the
1:00:15
science part. And I know the American
1:00:17
Geophysical Union is putting out messaging and.
1:00:20
There's been a bunch of science marches that are happening as
1:00:23
well at the moment. I don't know.
1:00:26
I mean, all, all I can hope at this point is that the federal,
1:00:29
that the judges uphold the Constitution because that's
1:00:33
going to be the real thing because obviously Congress isn't
1:00:36
going to do it. So now it has to be the federal,
1:00:39
I mean the judicial branch that has to uphold the Constitution.
1:00:43
Well, I think it's appropriate to end on the gloomy note.
1:00:47
I can't remember what, what the bad idea that you were going to
1:00:52
oppose was, but maybe. But the bad idea is that we
1:00:55
could, that we could still save the Arctic and anything like how
1:00:58
the Arctic has always been known in human history.
1:01:00
Because it's not going to be, it's not going to stay like
1:01:01
that, is it? I don't think so.
1:01:03
No, not not. If we keep doing what we're
1:01:05
doing, then won't stay so. Well, yeah, well, exactly.
1:01:11
Not only are we keeping doing what we're doing, but we're
1:01:13
making everything worse by having administration which is
1:01:16
at least in the US, determined to re fossilize the entire
1:01:19
economy. So you can add a few more tenths
1:01:21
of A degrees at the minimum to your 2.7 possibly.
1:01:24
Yeah, well, let's hope that Europe takes up the slack, but I
1:01:28
don't know. We'll see.
1:01:29
Europe and China, let's hope so. Well, that's that's a little bit
1:01:32
positive. And anyway, thank you.
1:01:34
Thank you, Julian for joining us on the podcast.
1:01:38
It's been, it's been, it's very kind of you to share your, your,
1:01:40
your expertise and also hear some, something about the, the
1:01:43
work that you've been doing in the field.
1:01:44
It sounds like an amazing, amazing career that you've had.
1:01:47
And I hope, I hope you continue to to do ever greater things and
1:01:51
that some, some hopeful hopefulness can come out of this
1:01:55
as well, because I'm sure that's what we're all we're all
1:01:56
thinking about ultimately. Yeah, I hope so.
1:02:00
I hope so. I I I have been becoming
1:02:03
pessimistic, though. I I used to be hopeful, but I
1:02:06
don't know. I.
1:02:09
Just don't think the world's going to do anything quick
1:02:10
enough. And then then I think we just
1:02:14
have to deal with disasters and then maybe people will then wake
1:02:17
up, I guess. I mean, I think that's the
1:02:20
problem, right, Is that the Arctic is so far or even the
1:02:22
Antarctic, it's so disconnected from everybody in their daily
1:02:25
lives. And so you don't see the
1:02:28
immediate impacts yet. That's the problem.
1:02:31
I mean, you have one extreme weather event and you have
1:02:34
another one, you know, but being able to say, OK, this was
1:02:37
because Arctic was losing at sea, I said you had this extreme
1:02:40
weather event that's a bit more challenging because there's many
1:02:42
things happening in the climate system.
1:02:45
But we know that extremes are increasing every year around the
1:02:50
planet. And I just don't see how we're
1:02:53
going to adapt if this keeps happening.
1:02:56
Well, let's not end on a positive note.
1:02:58
Let's just be in agreement that we're completely screwed on this
1:03:01
issue and that it's too late to do much about it.
1:03:05
No, but then people will just give up and not care.
1:03:07
And you can't do that either. OK, either.
1:03:11
Right, right. Well, we'll, we'll come back to
1:03:14
this. We'd love to love to talk to you
1:03:15
again in, in a few months and find out what you're, what
1:03:17
you've been up to. So I hope you can come back.
1:03:21
OK. Well, we will be going to the
1:03:22
Queen Elizabeth Islands in October, which is the last ice
1:03:27
area. So we'll see.
1:03:29
We'll see how that ice looks. Yeah, yeah.
1:03:31
Come and join us after you've studied the last ice era in the
1:03:33
Arctic. That sounds, that sounds like
1:03:35
fun. Yeah.
1:03:37
All right. All right.
1:03:38
Thanks so much for coming. OK, bye.
1:03:43
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