Climatic Gut Punches
by Professor Bruce E. Johansen
Since the age of six or so, I have been an avid weather watcher, fascinated by clouds and storms, rain and snow, how weather systems come and go, moving with my siblings and parents halfway around the world (Dad was a senior officer in the U.S. Coast Guard; one might be surprised just how many places that the Coast Guard has bases). The onset of the monsoon in the Philippines with its dark, fat-bellied clouds, was a sight to behold, and not unlike a Puerto Rican tropical storm. The suburbs of Washington, D.C. sometimes received heavy snow and ice storms, as well as awesome thunderstorms. I also love shoveling snow and chipping ice. I relished watching the first cirrus tendrils of a snowstorm or thunderstorm move in from the southwest. I had a special hill with a wonderful view of the incipient inclemency.
Dad negotiated with the bureaucracy and got me on the subscription list for the U.S. Weather Bureau’s daily weather map, which folded out to about three feet by two, the tool that real weather forecasters used. I wanted to be a weather forecaster until I discovered that most of their time was spent indoors, in offices, with clacking teletype machines. Watching the sky from suburban hills had gone out of fashion among the professionals. The Weather Bureau had put me on its mailing list, although I didn’t have a Ph.D., didn’t teach at a university, and didn’t broadcast weather from a TV or radio station. They snuck my name onto the list because I was a little kid who was very interested in the weather.
Dancing Out a Broken Window
Following Ph.D. work at the University of Washington, the time came to find my professorial working location. A major qualification for adult life in Omaha, as I saw it, was real weather: thunderstorms, and the occasional tornado (as long as it wasn’t too close). Nature has kept its promise to me over the last 40 years. Deluges, droughts, snow and ice, bitter cold snaps and stifling heat waves all have captured my sense of wonder, and danger. An F-1 tornado rolled over a house that our family owns a few miles east of Omaha as my stepson Shannon was folding laundry. He watched a load, previously folded, rise and wildly dance, so it seemed, out a broken window.
For anyone who wants to keep an eye on developing climate all over the world, much of it from space photographs, today there is no source better than NASA’s Earth Observatory, which pops into my email inbox once a week. Weather observation has come a long way since the U.S. Weather Bureau’s paper maps.
Nightmares from Space Pictures
Sixty years ago, global warming or climate change was not a term used in meteorologists’ working vocabularies. Extreme weather used to be part of an inviolate cycle pattern that produced a record event now and then, before returning to average. Now, more often than not, NASA hits me with a climatic gut punch. In June of 2022, the Earth Observatory sent me a satellite image of the Central Andes with accompanying text that has world-wide implications.
Melting Andes Glaciers: The New Normal
The central Andes are usually covered with snow and ice year-round for much of the summer. For viewers, the bright blanket of pristine snow is beautiful, as well as a reassurance that what seems like an eternal pattern enduring. The fresh snow also reflects light, contributing to its continuance.
”This year,” read the text, “extreme heat removed those protective blankets from the mountaintops, creating the conditions for rapid melting of glaciers. ‘Bare glaciers melt faster because the lack of snow cover exposes ice that is darker and typically plastered with dirt, dust, and debris that absorbs more heat,’ explained Nichols College glaciologist Mauri Pelto. ‘When glaciers lose their snowpack, they’re much more vulnerable.’”
Under the old “normal,” snow on the mountains, some of which are more than two miles high, receded slowly, with glaciers remaining mostly covered through mid-summer, according to the NASA Dearth Observatory. During the summer of 2022, however, a massive heatwave eroded the snowpack early. Temperatures rose to as high as 40 degrees C. (104 F.), as newly bare darker surface accelerated melting of snow and ice even faster, “Unfortunately for these glaciers, the heatwave came early in the summer,” said Pelto. “The ice was sitting out there without sunscreen for two-and-a-half months until snows arrived again in late March.” Decades of satellite monitoring indicate [that] these glaciers are retreating, said the Earth Observatory. The terminus of the Cortaderal glacier, for instance, has retreated by 1,300 meters (almost a mile) since 2014.
Not a One-time Climatic Freak Show
Now for the gut punch. The super-swift snowmelt in the Andes is not a one-time climatic freak show. As NASA reported, “Extreme summer heatwaves like this are becoming more intense and frequent in South America and other parts of the world as climate changes.
Science Advances (early in 2022), said that: “Western North America experienced a record-breaking heat wave outside the distribution of previously observed temperatures. While it is clear that the event was extreme, it is not obvious whether other areas in the world have also experienced events so far outside their natural variability.”
One other gut-punch that NASA delivered in late June, 2021 was a high temperature of 108 F. in usually misty and cool Seattle, Washington. To indicate just how unusual that was, bear in mind that the average late-June high in Seattle is about 72 degrees. A high of 108 in Seattle was equal to about 124 degrees in Omaha at the same time of year. The most popular weather joke there used to be expression of a fervent hope that summer would come on a Saturday.
“Glaciers are simply not compatible with recurring heatwaves, and the intensity and frequency of these is increasing,” Pelto wrote. “This year, for the 34th consecutive year, alpine glacier volume will decline.”
106 Degrees in Buenos Aires
The heat waves in the Southern Hemisphere were not confined to the Central Andes. In Western Australia, during mid-January 2022, temperatures rose to more than 50°C (122°F) and a town north of Perth tied for the hottest temperature ever measured in the Southern Hemisphere. At about the same time, according to Argentina’s National Meteorological Service (SMN), ground stations in Buenos Aires recorded a temperature of 41.1°C (106°F) on January 11. That’s the city’s second-hottest day on record. Elsewhere in Argentina, temperatures in Córdoba and Punta Indio climbed above 41°C. The same heat wave also extended northward into Paraguay and Uruguay. Crops, in the entire area, such as soybeans and corn already were suffering from extended, scorching drought.
All of this (and more, for anyone who wants to do some research) indicates that “global warming” is clearly (and unfortunately) global.
SOURCES
Heat Waves in the Southern Hemisphere. NASA Earth Observatory. January 11, 2022.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/149331/southern-hemisphere-scorchers
Voiland, Adam. “Losing a Layer of Protection.” NASA Earth Observatory, June, 2022.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/149969/losing-a-layer-of-protection
Dr. Johansen taught journalism, environmentalism, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha from 1982 to 2019, when he retired as emeritus, with 55 books.
Since the age of six or so, I have been an avid weather watcher, fascinated by clouds and storms, rain and snow, how weather systems come and go, moving with my siblings and parents halfway around the world (Dad was a senior officer in the U.S. Coast Guard; one might be surprised just how many places that the Coast Guard has bases). The onset of the monsoon in the Philippines with its dark, fat-bellied clouds, was a sight to behold, and not unlike a Puerto Rican tropical storm. The suburbs of Washington, D.C. sometimes received heavy snow and ice storms, as well as awesome thunderstorms. I also love shoveling snow and chipping ice. I relished watching the first cirrus tendrils of a snowstorm or thunderstorm move in from the southwest. I had a special hill with a wonderful view of the incipient inclemency.
Dad negotiated with the bureaucracy and got me on the subscription list for the U.S. Weather Bureau’s daily weather map, which folded out to about three feet by two, the tool that real weather forecasters used. I wanted to be a weather forecaster until I discovered that most of their time was spent indoors, in offices, with clacking teletype machines. Watching the sky from suburban hills had gone out of fashion among the professionals. The Weather Bureau had put me on its mailing list, although I didn’t have a Ph.D., didn’t teach at a university, and didn’t broadcast weather from a TV or radio station. They snuck my name onto the list because I was a little kid who was very interested in the weather.
Dancing Out a Broken Window
Following Ph.D. work at the University of Washington, the time came to find my professorial working location. A major qualification for adult life in Omaha, as I saw it, was real weather: thunderstorms, and the occasional tornado (as long as it wasn’t too close). Nature has kept its promise to me over the last 40 years. Deluges, droughts, snow and ice, bitter cold snaps and stifling heat waves all have captured my sense of wonder, and danger. An F-1 tornado rolled over a house that our family owns a few miles east of Omaha as my stepson Shannon was folding laundry. He watched a load, previously folded, rise and wildly dance, so it seemed, out a broken window.
For anyone who wants to keep an eye on developing climate all over the world, much of it from space photographs, today there is no source better than NASA’s Earth Observatory, which pops into my email inbox once a week. Weather observation has come a long way since the U.S. Weather Bureau’s paper maps.
Nightmares from Space Pictures
Sixty years ago, global warming or climate change was not a term used in meteorologists’ working vocabularies. Extreme weather used to be part of an inviolate cycle pattern that produced a record event now and then, before returning to average. Now, more often than not, NASA hits me with a climatic gut punch. In June of 2022, the Earth Observatory sent me a satellite image of the Central Andes with accompanying text that has world-wide implications.
Melting Andes Glaciers: The New Normal
The central Andes are usually covered with snow and ice year-round for much of the summer. For viewers, the bright blanket of pristine snow is beautiful, as well as a reassurance that what seems like an eternal pattern enduring. The fresh snow also reflects light, contributing to its continuance.
”This year,” read the text, “extreme heat removed those protective blankets from the mountaintops, creating the conditions for rapid melting of glaciers. ‘Bare glaciers melt faster because the lack of snow cover exposes ice that is darker and typically plastered with dirt, dust, and debris that absorbs more heat,’ explained Nichols College glaciologist Mauri Pelto. ‘When glaciers lose their snowpack, they’re much more vulnerable.’”
Under the old “normal,” snow on the mountains, some of which are more than two miles high, receded slowly, with glaciers remaining mostly covered through mid-summer, according to the NASA Dearth Observatory. During the summer of 2022, however, a massive heatwave eroded the snowpack early. Temperatures rose to as high as 40 degrees C. (104 F.), as newly bare darker surface accelerated melting of snow and ice even faster, “Unfortunately for these glaciers, the heatwave came early in the summer,” said Pelto. “The ice was sitting out there without sunscreen for two-and-a-half months until snows arrived again in late March.” Decades of satellite monitoring indicate [that] these glaciers are retreating, said the Earth Observatory. The terminus of the Cortaderal glacier, for instance, has retreated by 1,300 meters (almost a mile) since 2014.
Not a One-time Climatic Freak Show
Now for the gut punch. The super-swift snowmelt in the Andes is not a one-time climatic freak show. As NASA reported, “Extreme summer heatwaves like this are becoming more intense and frequent in South America and other parts of the world as climate changes.
Science Advances (early in 2022), said that: “Western North America experienced a record-breaking heat wave outside the distribution of previously observed temperatures. While it is clear that the event was extreme, it is not obvious whether other areas in the world have also experienced events so far outside their natural variability.”
One other gut-punch that NASA delivered in late June, 2021 was a high temperature of 108 F. in usually misty and cool Seattle, Washington. To indicate just how unusual that was, bear in mind that the average late-June high in Seattle is about 72 degrees. A high of 108 in Seattle was equal to about 124 degrees in Omaha at the same time of year. The most popular weather joke there used to be expression of a fervent hope that summer would come on a Saturday.
“Glaciers are simply not compatible with recurring heatwaves, and the intensity and frequency of these is increasing,” Pelto wrote. “This year, for the 34th consecutive year, alpine glacier volume will decline.”
106 Degrees in Buenos Aires
The heat waves in the Southern Hemisphere were not confined to the Central Andes. In Western Australia, during mid-January 2022, temperatures rose to more than 50°C (122°F) and a town north of Perth tied for the hottest temperature ever measured in the Southern Hemisphere. At about the same time, according to Argentina’s National Meteorological Service (SMN), ground stations in Buenos Aires recorded a temperature of 41.1°C (106°F) on January 11. That’s the city’s second-hottest day on record. Elsewhere in Argentina, temperatures in Córdoba and Punta Indio climbed above 41°C. The same heat wave also extended northward into Paraguay and Uruguay. Crops, in the entire area, such as soybeans and corn already were suffering from extended, scorching drought.
All of this (and more, for anyone who wants to do some research) indicates that “global warming” is clearly (and unfortunately) global.
SOURCES
Heat Waves in the Southern Hemisphere. NASA Earth Observatory. January 11, 2022.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/149331/southern-hemisphere-scorchers
Voiland, Adam. “Losing a Layer of Protection.” NASA Earth Observatory, June, 2022.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/149969/losing-a-layer-of-protection
Dr. Johansen taught journalism, environmentalism, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha from 1982 to 2019, when he retired as emeritus, with 55 books.
