After a months-long tug-of-war and relative atmospheric balance between El Niño and La Niña, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday that La Niña is the winner, has returned to Hawaii, and is expected to stick around through the winter and into next year.

El Niño and La Niña reflect the two end points of an oscillation cycle in the Pacific Ocean. The cycle is not fully understood, but tends to swing back and forth every 3-7 years, for Hawaii and the world, it’s now La Niña’s turn.

La Niña is defined as cooler than normal sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean that impact global weather patterns. La Niña has the opposite effect of its hotter cousin, El Niño.  The atmosphere cools in response to the cold ocean surface, and less water evaporates. The cooler, dry air is dense. It doesn’t rise or generally form extreme storms. As a result, less rain falls over the eastern Pacific. Ecuador, Peru, and the southeastern United States are correspondingly dry.

During a La Niña cycle, such winter storms tend to be less frequent, and bad news for California and the West in general, now experiencing an extended period of extreme drought conditions producing serious agricultural and economic ramifications extending far the borders of the directly affected states.

Historically, Hawaii could expect more consistent rainfall during a La Niña cycle, but that may changing.

How Hawaii May No longer Benefit from La Nina’s Generous Rainfall

Scientists at UH Mānoa report that during La Niña events rainfall has historically been greater than normal – building up Hawai‘i’s groundwater supplies.

However, recent research by scientists at UH Manoa, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, and NOAA’s Honolulu National Weather Service (NWS) Office determined that the relationship between La Niña and rainfall in Hawai‘i has changed and recent La Niña years have in fact brought less-than-normal rainfall.

Because the La Niña events have traditionally brought excess rainfall to the state, the new information indicates decreased rainfall during La Niña may be the new norm, with significant implications for Hawaii’s agriculture, and the stat’s water resource management priorities.

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Confusion persists in today’s local press, citing…

As reported in the today’s edition of the West Hawaii Today; citing local NOAA officials “…by the time we get into January, the model forecasts are looking at large-scale wetter-than-normal conditions across the Hawaiian Islands area, and that will last into April”.

Today’s report and prediction of a wetter directly contradict previous research reporting on scientists at UH Manoa, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, and NOAA’s Honolulu National Weather Service (NWS) Office who have determined that the relationship between La Niña and rainfall in Hawai‘i has changed and recent La Niña years have in fact brought less-than-normal rainfall.

The scientists also reported a strengthening, broadening and westward shifting of the eastern North Pacific subtropical high-pressure system, coupled to an intensification of the subtropical jet stream – in short: “reducing rainfall during the recent La Niña seasons.”

Additionally, assessing storm-track data revealed that the changes found in the aforementioned circulation features created a less favorable environment for the development of Kona low-pressure systems and fronts in the vicinity of Hawai‘i.  Variability in tropical sea surface temperatures and circulation features in the northern Pacific Ocean have also changed during La Niña wet seasons – further forcing the changes in La Niña-year rainfall.

How La Niña can affect Pacific Ocean Food Webs?

During La Niña, waters off the Pacific Coast are colder and contain more nutrients than usual.

Any change in phytoplankton numbers alters the ocean food chain. … During La Niña conditions as in 1998, the opposite effect occurs as the easterly trade winds pick up and upwelling intensifies bringing nutrients like iron to the surface waters, which increases phytoplankton growth, which is good for the fish and fishing.

La Niña begins with a cooling of waters in the eastern tropical Pacific. The basin alternates between El Niño and La Niña every two to seven years on average. That pocket of cooler ocean water chills the air above it, inducing a broad sinking motion. It’s that subsidence, or down-welling of cool air, that topples the first atmospheric domino.

During La Niña winters, high pressure near the Aleutian chain shoves the polar jet stream north over Alaska, maintaining an active storm track there. The Last Frontier often ends up cooler than average. The confluence of the polar and Pacific jet streams, as shown in the image above, helps drag some of that cold air across the Pacific Northwest and adjacent parts of the northern Plains.

That keeps the northern United States anomalously wet, while the South is left largely warm and dry. This is bad news for California and other parts of the Southwest, which are enduring a historic drought. The persistence of warm, dry conditions would cause the drought to worsen and potentially prolong the fire season.

Winter forecasts improve, as the climate-weather science connect 

There is evidence that the record-shattering cold blast of February that wrought havoc on Texas’s electrical grid was by-product of an impressive atmospheric feature of the La Niña effect which historically has been the formation of a ridge of high pressure over Eastern Canada which acts an immovable barrier to the jet stream, keeping it parked over Eastern Canada for much of the winter. Where that block relocates will potentially be critical to how winter begins and may even set the tone for the winter.

The behavior of the polar vortex, the zone of frigid air surrounding the Arctic, will also play a crucial role.  It’s been showing signs of weakening or becoming more unstable as 21st century Climate Change dynamics take hold.

A weak, unstable vortex is more prone to unleashing frigid air over the Lower 48, compared with one that is strong and stable and that tends to lock up cold over the high latitudes.  “Once the polar vortex weakens, it could be predisposed to further weakening in the coming weeks or months resulting in a more severe (mainland) winter”, according the National Weather Service.

The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on Climate Change, adopted by 196 Countries and ratified at COP 21 in Paris on 12 December 2015.

Fast forward COP 26 (Nov. 2021), and these same participating countries are now returning to the table to do the hard work of determining how individual countries, and groups of countries working together, will fulfill their pledges to cut fossil fuel emissions — in UN speak, Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs. There will be several attendees from Hawaii joining the conference in Glascow, Scotland, including Rep. Nicole Lowen, (State) House Chair, Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection.

COP 26 next month (with the United States now back in the Paris Agreement), will be an especially important event in terms of timing. America’s president and administration has welcomed science back (after a brief dark period in American policy) to have a seat at the table in guiding America’s priorities and further enabling the Paris Agreement climate goals.

In fact, a lot a has changed in the past 6 years since the Paris Agreement. For one, increasing global awareness as to human-induced Climate Change, no longer a legitimate debate topic, as a new climate reality is now demonstrating just how real climate change impacts have become a daily part of our lives — real and significant by any measurement. Even County’s like Russia and Saudi Arabia, regardless of the depth of their economic and political ties to fossil fuels, are not exempt from the social, environmental, and economic damage of a run away climate fueled by unprecedented rises in CO2 emissions and based on an unsustainable and obsolete global dirty energy economy.

BeyondKona is no stranger to Climate reporting, it makes up a core component of our publication.  We believe that recent events and the forthcoming COP26 global summit are sufficient justification for this special October edition dedicated to a Climate Change threat now affecting more than 85% of the world’s population, and most other life on Earth.

In this special Climate edition, we invited you to also visit the following special report attachments:

• • Climate Action – A Frog in Boiling Water
  • A Climate Experiment Gone Wrong
  • No Place to Run, No Place to Hide, No Time to Delay

Fossil fuels received $5.9 trillion worldwide subsidies last year

A 2016 in depth study jointly performed by the World Bank and IMF revealed what many people already suspected, the fossil fuel stakeholders are the most heavily taxpayer subsidized industrial sector in the world, to the turn of $5.4 trillion USD annually.

Not included in the 2016 IMF/World Bank study, but acknowledged, was the study’s omission of externality costs on society (health costs, deaths) and the damage to the global environment from an industry sector whose costs to world begin at extraction, but do not end at the tailpipe and smokestack.

Five years later, the IMF return to the public discussion of fossil fuel subsidies in a 2021 study finding that the public subsidization of the world’s most unsustainable industry, from polluter profits to human, environmental, climate costs was now, in annualized terms, equal to $11,000,000 USD every minute.

Yes, that right, $11 million USD a minute, or to put it another way, $183,333 per second in free money, taxpayer dollars that is, to the world’s most toxic industry.

The following Guardian article, published Oct. 6th, explores the trillions of dollars a year governments are adding to fuel to the fire of a human-induced global climate crisis, while at the same time, chasing solutions to halt a climate crisis so great it now threatens the very future of humankind and livability of planet Earth.

Fossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11m a minute, IMF finds

from The Guardian, published Oct 6th, 2021

The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidized by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were “adding fuel to the fire” of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon emissions were urgently needed.

Explicit subsidies that cut fuel prices accounted for 8% of the total and tax breaks another 6%. The biggest factors were failing to make polluters pay for the deaths and poor health caused by air pollution (42%) and for the heatwaves and other impacts of global heating (29%).

Setting fossil fuel prices that reflect their true cost would cut global CO₂ emissions by over a third, the IMF analysts said. This would be a big step towards meeting the internationally agreed 1.5C target. Keeping this target within reach is a key goal of the UN Cop26 climate summit in November.

Agreeing rules for carbon markets, which enable the proper pricing of pollution, is another Cop26 goal. “Fossil fuel price reform could not be timelier,” the IMF researchers said. The ending of fossil fuel subsidies would also prevent nearly a million deaths a year from dirty air and raise trillions of dollars for governments, they said.

“There would be enormous benefits from reform, so there’s an enormous amount at stake,” said Ian Parry, the lead author of the IMF report. “Some countries are reluctant to raise energy prices because they think it will harm the poor. But holding down fossil fuel prices is a highly inefficient way to help the poor, because most of the benefits accrue to wealthier households. It would be better to target resources towards helping poor and vulnerable people directly.”

With 50 countries committed to net zero emissions by mid-century and more than 60 carbon pricing schemes around the world, there are some encouraging signs, Parry said: “But we’re still just scratching the surface really, and there’s an awful long way to go.”

The G20 agreed in 2009 to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies and in 2016, the G7 set a deadline of 2025, but little progress has been made. In July, a report showed that the G20 countries had subsidised fossil fuels by trillions of dollars since 2015, the year the Paris climate deal was reached.

“To stabilise global temperatures we must urgently move away from fossil fuels instead of adding fuel to the fire,” said Mike Coffin, senior analyst at the thinktank Carbon Tracker. “It’s critical that governments stop propping up an industry that is in decline, and look to accelerate the low-carbon energy transition, and our future, instead.

“As host of Cop26, the UK government could play an important global leadership role by ending all subsidies for fossil fuels, as well as halting new North Sea licensing rounds,” he said. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in May that the development of new oil and gas fields must stop this year to meet climate goals.

The comprehensive IMF report found that prices were at least 50% below their true costs for 99% of coal, 52% of diesel and 47% of natural gas in 2020. Five countries were responsible for two-thirds of the subsidies: China, the US, Russia, India and Japan. Without action, subsidies will rise to $6.4tn in 2025, the IMF said.

Proper pricing for fossil fuels would cut emissions by, for example, encouraging electricity generators to switch from coal to renewable energy and making electric cars an even cheaper option for motorists. International cooperation is important, Parry said, to allay fears that countries could lose competitiveness if their fossil fuel prices were higher.

“The IMF report is a sobering reading, pointing to one of the major defects of the global economy,” said Maria Pastukhova, at the thinktank e3g. “The IEA’s net-zero roadmap projects that $5tn is necessary by 2030 to put the world on the pathway to a climate-safe world. It is maddening to realize the much-needed change could start happening now, if not for governments’ entanglement with the fossil fuels industry in so many major economies.”

“Fossil fuel subsidies have been a major stumbling block in the G20 process for years,” she said. “Now all eyes are on the G20 leaders’ summit in late October.”

Ipek Gençsü, at the Overseas Development Institute, said: “[Subsidy reform] requires support for vulnerable consumers who will be impacted by rising costs, as well for workers in industries which simply have to shut down. It also requires information campaigns, showing how the savings will be redistributed to society in the form of healthcare, education and other social services. Many people oppose subsidy reform because they see it solely as governments taking something away, and not giving back.”

The G20 countries emit almost 80% of global greenhouse gases. More than 600 global companies in the We Mean Business coalition, including Unilever, Ikea, Aviva, Siemens and Volvo Cars, recently urged G20 leaders to end fossil fuel subsidies by 2025.

“If you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will hop right out.

But if you put that frog in a pot of tepid water and slowly warm it, the frog doesn’t figure out what going on until it’s too late. Boiled frog.

Climate change action, a top priority for most of the world; and President Biden.

President Biden has committed to a goal to cut the carbon emissions of the US in half by the end of this decade, an ambitious undertaking that requires greater investments in solar, wind, battery storage, and hydrogen energy solutions.

According to a recent analysis by the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm, the Biden $3.5 trillion dollar  spending bill designed to curb U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by as much as a gigaton — but would probably get the country only halfway to its 2030 goals.

With tax credits extended for firms working in the clean energy sector and incentives put in place for American manufacturers to shift to greener consumption, climate change stocks have soared since the Biden administration announced the plan.

Yet despite a pledge to halve emissions by the end of the decade, congressional Democrats are struggling to pass a pair of bills that would provide hundreds of billions of dollars for renewable energy, electric vehicles and programs that would help communities adapt to a changing climate, as Grand Old Party aka Gas Oil Pollution party stands firmly in the way, a firewall against meaningful and needed timely transformational action which addresses a global climate disaster.

Some of the world’s top emitters, including China and India, have yet to formally commit to a new 2030 emissions reduction target. Activists worry that an emerging energy crisis, which has raised prices and triggered blackouts, could imperil efforts to get developing economies to phase out polluting fuels.

In the United States, climate disasters have already caused more than $100 billion in damage so far this year, according to analyses from The Washington Post and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Keep it in the ground .., meets imbedded political and dirty energy stakeholders

A September study in Nature found that 60 percent of Earth’s oil and fossil methane gas and 90 percent of coal must remain in the ground for the world to have a chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — a threshold that scientists say would spare humanity the most disastrous climate impacts.

A new report by the US Department of Energy has unveiled plans for massive investments in solar that would employ over 1.5 million people and produce enough power to power all US homes by 2035.

The findings come amid a major push to get countries to commit to more ambitious climate goals ahead of a United Nations summit in Glasgow, Scotland, next month. Research shows that existing pledges will put the planet on track to heat up about 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century — a level of warming that would lead to drastic food and water shortages, deadly weather disasters, and catastrophic ecosystem collapse.

This week, a coalition of more than 380 groups filed a legal petition demanding that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stop issuing permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure projects. Two days later, hundreds of scientists submitted an open letter asking Biden to do the same.

“The reality of our situation is now so dire that only a rapid phase-out of fossil fuel extraction and combustion can fend off the worst consequences of the climate crisis,” they wrote.

In response to Monday’s protests, however, American Petroleum Institute spokeswoman Megan Bloomgren said curbing the country’s energy options would harm the economy and national security. “American energy is produced under some of the highest environmental standards in the world,” she said.

Pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without cutting back on fossil fuel extraction, activists say, is like a person promising to lose weight while continuing to consume french fries and doughnuts.

EPA to the Rescue?

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan says he’s willing to wield broad regulatory power to enact President Biden’s climate agenda if Congress fails to pass meaningful climate legislation. 

Regan says his agency will issue a robust greenhouse gas rule for power plants, a stringent methane rule for oil and gas infrastructure, and sweeping emissions standards for new cars, regardless of Congress’s actions.

“EPA is at the center of the president’s ambitious climate agenda,” Regan said. “And in addition to the legislative pieces, EPA is already aggressively using its rulemaking authority to deliver the types of emission reductions that we need to protect people from climate pollution.”

“There is a central role that EPA has to play. At the same time, we’re watching this legislative negotiation play out,” Regan said, adding that “we’re trying to paint the picture that there is a marriage between the legislative discussion and the existing statutory authority that EPA possesses.”

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has just proclaimed “a Code Red for humanity.”

The unequivocal consensus of the world’s top climate scientists—unveiled in a landmark report Monday—is that not only are humans responsible for the catastrophes befalling the atmosphere, the oceans, the ice packs and the forests, but that without drastic moves by the planet’s leaders to eliminate greenhouse gas pollution, things are going to get a lot worse, and quite soon.

The assessment from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the crucial warming threshold of 2°C will be “exceeded during the 21st century” makes the Paris climate accord, its warnings and goals seem like sunny optimism by comparison.

Other findings? The past decade was most likely hotter than any period in the last 125,000 years (when sea levels were up to 10 meters higher) and combustion and deforestation have raised CO2 in the atmosphere higher than it’s been in two million years. “This report,” Guterres warned the world, “must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy our planet.” 

Here are five key takeaways from the IPCC climate changing report:

Not only that but atmospheric CO₂ is now at a two million-year peak. Consuming fossil fuels has combined with agriculture to push methane and nitrous oxide—also greenhouse gases—to records for at least the last 800,000 years.

All the greenhouse gases have elevated the global average temperature by about 1.1° Celsius above the late 19th century average. In fact, humans have already dumped enough greenhouse gas into the atmosphere to heat up the planet by 1.5°C—one of the goals set by the Paris Agreement—but fine-particle pollution from fossil fuels is masking it by providing a cooling effect — a twisted logic of pollute the planet to save the planet.

For man-made climate change deniers, the scientific findings confirmed what many people already knew, that is that the combined contribution to global warming by so-called natural factors, such as the sun and volcanoes, is now estimated to be close-to-zero in raising the planet’s temperature.

This hasn’t always been the case. A recently as 20 years ago, for instance, it was virtually impossible to attribute any particular storm or temperature spike to the warming world. But the climate science profession has seen entire specialties emerge and mature since the IPCC’s previous mega-report in 2013.

No field is more resonant than the ability to analyze extreme weather events in real-time to determine what role climate change is playing. The deadly heat wave that gripped the western coast of North America in June had detectable evidence of human responsibility—and that determination came quickly. World Weather Attribution, an international research group, needed just days after the heat broke to conclude that the extraordinary temperatures would be “virtually impossible” without climate change.

This one is a milestone in the field of climate sensitivity that’s taken four decades. Drawing from research on ancient climates, as well as advanced satellite technology that monitors clouds and emissions, new models have narrowed the projections of the atmosphere’s likely response to industrial emissions. That allowed the IPCC authors to focus their temperature projections for the rest of the century, giving humanity a clearer picture of what may lie in store if we don’t act quickly to curtail emissions.

The Earth’s response to a theoretical doubling of preindustrial CO₂ levels is now thought to be between 2.5°C to 4°C—a much smaller range than 1.5°C to 4.5°C in previous IPCC reports. These findings rule out the possibility that unrestricted emissions will have only a mild effect on global temperatures, a hope very few observers of events in recent months could cling to. But the narrower range also provides powerful evidence of the world’s best pathway to safety: swiftly ending the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Almost as soon as emissions cease, heating will cease and temperatures will stabilize in a couple of decades. But some effects—such as sea-level rise—will remain irreversible for centuries. It’s a race between the avoidable and unavoidable, and humanity is behind.

Scientists broke new ground in this IPCC report by projecting what happens when our emissions get to zero. As the world reduces its use of fossil fuels, for instance, the cooling effect of aerosols will start to decline. The scientists are confident that one way to counter that decline would be to pursue “strong, rapid and sustained reductions” in methane emissions. Beyond CO₂, methane, and nitrous oxide, there are four other greenhouse gases that also provide opportunities to slow warming.

Sometimes it’s a fight. But unanimous agreement among the nations of the world, who all must affirm that the findings are summarized accurately, is a very powerful tool. It’s what makes the IPCC the most authoritative body on global warming.

The new report begins with a definitive statement:

“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” Tom Evans, climate researcher at the think tank E3G, put the implication succinctly: “No government has any excuse to duck their responsibility to act.”

The IPCC report released today concludes:

“Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5°C or even 2°C (the make or break point of no return for humanity) will be beyond reach.”

The good news is that it is not too late, and if we collectively wake up and take action now.

Yes, it’s tempting to think that the problem is too large for you personally to even try to solve it. But here too, there is good news: in this moment of crisis we find ourselves in, going it alone is not what’s required of us. The key to turning despair into action is to think beyond the individual and seek community support and solutions. something we do well here in Hawaii.

— especially those that put pressure on governments and companies to make the large-scale changes that are necessary to truly curtail emissions. Or as Mary Annaïse Heglar puts it, “the most detrimental thing to climate action is this feeling that we’re all in it alone.”

Federal infrastructure dollars that will help Hawaii fight Climate Change…