Study: June's heatwave was part of a bigger trend

Several interesting research efforts have provided findings about our atmosphere and its content. Here are two that I found to be noteworthy and wanted to share them here. Just last month the Journal of Climate published the work of five climate scientists. Their work addressed historic Northern Hemisphere large concurrent heatwaves driven by changing atmospheric circulations. Remember the heatwave we witnessed in June 2021? Our new all-time high temperature for that month is now at 112˚F. Up north in British Columbia, a new all-time high for the whole of Canada was set in June at 121˚F.

From the researchers’ study abstract: “While anthropogenic [originating in human activity] climate change is increasing heatwave risks across most regions, the interactions between warming and circulation changes that yield concurrent heatwaves remain understudied. Here, we quantify historical (1979-2019) trends in concurrent heatwaves during the warm-season (May-September) across the Northern Hemisphere mid- to high-latitudes. We find a significant increase of ~46% in the mean spatial extent of concurrent heatwaves, ~17% increase in their maximum intensity, and ~6-fold increase in their frequency.”

The abstract continues to explain the methodology of their research and the implications to natural and societal systems, global food chains and emergency response systems. Two of the researchers involved in this work are with Washington State University.

In another area of research, recently a group of scientists have been working with data collected from an instrument called Tropomi (TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument). The Tropomi is an instrument on the European Sentinel 5P Satellite which is part of the Earth-Observing Constellation Copernicus.

These scientists are detecting methane emissions on Earth from space. Methane is one of the greenhouse gases along with carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. They are found naturally in low concentrations in our atmosphere. What is troubling is the proportions of methane are increasing significantly. This increase started over a century ago and corresponds with the industrialization of societies.

The scientists working with data from Tropomi have found methane gases oozing from a number of sources across the globe. Methane is leaking from gas pipelines, oil wells, fossil fuel processing sites and landfills. Of concern is these leaks are not accounted for in mandatory greenhouse inventories.

“We measure methane concentrations in the total column from the top of the atmosphere down to the surface. What we are looking for is the little bit of extra signal that suggests something is being released on the ground.” According to Dr. Ilse Aben of the Netherlands Institute for Space Research. The resolution of the sources provided by Tropomi is rather large. So, the scientists collaborate with the Canadian company called GHGSat. According to the company, it’s a global leader in high-resolution remote sensing of greenhouse gas from space. GHGSat currently flies three methane-detecting satellites. These satellites have a resolution much finer. The data received from Tropomi with location of methane emissions is shared with GHGSat to find an exact location of the source leaking those emissions. Though the industry experiencing methane leaks say the percentage is small, the research and satellite data show the percentage is much higher.

Let’s look at the weather data for the month of November. All data are gathered from my home weather station. The high temperature for month was 64.8˚F on the 14th, the low was 22.2 on the 17th. The mean for the month was 40.9. The all-time high was 69 back in 1989. The all-time low was -10 in 1985. The all-time mean temperature for November is 37.5. We had our first snowfall for the winter of 2021-22. I measured 2.0 inches on the 19th. Our total precipitation for the month of November was 1.85 inches and 0.56 inches of that total was Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) from that snowfall.

We will have a full moon Dec. 18th called the Cold Moon. It’s also called Long Nights Moon and Moon before Yule.