Sunrise in Pittsburgh, 18 October 2020 (photo by Kate St. John)
24 October 2020
Last week there was frost in the suburbs on 17 October. This week 23 October was unusually hot at 78-80 degrees F (26C) in Schenley Park. I had to wear summer clothes yesterday but will wear warm clothes tomorrow when it’s 38F. Join me at 8:30am at Bartlett Shelter in Schenley Park. Wear a mask.
Though it felt like July this week I found some beautiful autumn scenes in Pittsburgh.
Above, the sun rose red at 7:34am on 18 October for 11 hours of daylight. Today we’ll have only 10 hours 45 minutes of cloudy light.
Frick Park was golden yellow on 21 October.
Frick Park, 21 October 2020 (photo by Kate St. John)
The Panther Hollow Bridge cast a shadow on Schenley Park’s trees yesterday morning, 23 Oct.
Schenley Park, Panther Hollow Lake, 23 Oct 2020 (photo by Kate St. John)
p.s. You can tell it was a hot week in Schenley by the presence of algae on the water’s surface.
Arctic sea ice melts in the summer reaching it’s lowest extent every year in September. On 21 September 2020, Climate.gov reported that ice coverage reached its minimum on 15 September, the second lowest extent in 40 years of tracking. (The lowest low was in 2012 only 8 years ago.)
We might think this lack of sea ice won’t affect us but in fact ice acts like a thermoregulator, reflecting the sun’s heat so that Earth’s climate stays relatively constant. As the ice disappears we’re subjected to heat waves, droughts, fires, and the cold Polar Vortex.
This 5-minute video from NASA Goddard shows how Arctic sea ice is connected to everything else.
In late August reports started trickling in that high numbers of migratory birds were being found dead in New Mexico. The first report was at White Sands Missile Range on 20 August but as time passed the reports became more frequent, the locations increased, and so did the death toll. By now experts believe that hundreds of thousands of birds have died — perhaps millions — not only in New Mexico (red on map below) but in Colorado, Arizona and western Texas (orange highlight on map).
Austin Fisher took a video of the carnage last Sunday, 13 September 2020 in Velarde, New Mexico.
I just recorded this up in Velarde, N.M. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m told of other dead migratory birds found in Hernandez, Ojo Sarco and El Valle de Arroyo Seco. https://t.co/GpeFZbyuW7pic.twitter.com/XXVM4AZrDu
Science Alert reports that only migratory birds are affected, not the local residents. Most of the dead birds are warblers, swallows and flycatchers and “the affected travelers seem to act strangely before their deaths, spending more time on the ground than perched in trees, and generally appearing dazed, sleepy, and lethargic.”
While birds migrate south through the Rockies this fall they must fly through the ubiquitous wildfire smoke blowing across the US from California, Oregon and Washington. Here’s what it looked like via satellite on August 20, the first day dead birds were reported in New Mexico. Notice that the smoke had reached New Mexico that day.
Unfortunately birds’ respiratory systems are so different from ours and so efficient that they succumb quickly to bad air.
We turn oxygen into CO2 in one breath — in/out. Every exhalation releases the CO2/remains of the air we just breathed in.
When birds breathe, the air that enters their bodies stays inside for two breaths — in/out + in/out. During its 4-step journey, the air molecule travels through the lungs, two sets of air sacs and into the birds’ hollow bones where it waits for the next step. Click on the diagram below to watch the airflow inside a bird.
Sadly, the western fires are damaging much more than we realize. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that wildfire smoke is killing migratory birds a thousand miles away. … Another unexpected outcome of climate change.
UPDATE 31 March 2021: Further research found a strong correlation between the observations of dead birds and wildfires and the toxic gases they produced, but not a correlation with the early winter storms: Study Finds Wildfire Caused Massive Bird Die Off
(images from Wikimedia Commons, NASA and a screenshot from Oxford Learning Link. Click on the captions to see the originals)
Late afternoon sun looks pink in Pittsburgh, 14 Sept 2020 (photo by Jonathan Nadle)
16 September 2020
This week’s spooky sunsets and hazy skies in eastern North America are due to smoke from the massive wildfires in Washington, Oregon and California. The smoke is so intense that it’s dispersing across the continent and across the Atlantic, causing haze in Europe.
Near sunset on Monday 14 September the sun was a strange shade of pink in Pittsburgh, captured above in true color by Jonathan Nadle.
We can’t see the smoke coming but the satellites do, blowing eastward in two paths on Tuesday 15 September: one over the Northern Plains and Great Lakes, the other over Nebraska to Kentucky and Virginia.
#SATELLITE SPOTLIGHT: #Smoke from the #WesternWildfires continued to blow eastward today, as seen here from @NOAA‘s #GOES16??. Although it wasn’t nearly as thick as in the West, the smoke caused #hazy skies in many cities along the East Coast–including Boston, New York, and D.C. pic.twitter.com/AhP4mlYgSX
— NOAA Satellites – Public Affairs (@NOAASatellitePA) September 16, 2020
It’s also blowing west over the Pacific, shown here on Friday 11 September.
— NOAA Satellites – Public Affairs (@NOAASatellitePA) September 12, 2020
The haze is inconvenient for us but truly hazardous on the West Coast. The dark brown colors on the map below are the worst air quality in the world. The air is so bad that people are leaving the area. I know of at least one person who’s fleeing from San Francisco to Pittsburgh.
By now the fires cover 4.5 million acres, an area so large that it’s hard to imagine. To help you visualize it The Guardian has created an interactive map comparing the fire acreage to well known cities and your own hometown — click here or on the tiny screenshot below. NOTE: The comparison below is for New York City. I compared the fire acreage to Pittsburgh and found it would run from approximately I-80 to the PA-West Virginia line!
Strange sun at sunset in Pittsburgh (filtered), 15 September 2020 (photo by Jonathan Nadle)
None of us are immune to this huge effect of climate change. Smoke gets in our eyes.
UPDATE: Janet Campagna, who lives in California, remarked that the days are much cooler because the sun can’t get through the smoke. This reminded me of the volcanic winter which results from smoke in the atmosphere after giant volcanic eruptions such as Krakatoa in 1883 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991.
(photos by Jonathan Nadle, screenshot of AirNow map from airnow.gov, screenshot of article from The Guardian)
Here’s something that’s counter-intuitive: As our climate changes we know that North America stays warmer in the fall yet songbirds that migrate at night — cuckoos, flycatchers, warblers, vireos, thrushes, orioles and sparrows — are leaving earlier on fall migration than they used to.
You can see this play out in their video of annual migration phenology.
The video illustrates another amazing thing: The Central Flyway — the Great Plains and Mississippi Valley — is a much bigger songbird migration corridor than either coast.
Lake Mead at Hoover Dam, 1998 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Lake Mead at Hoover Dam, 2015 (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
It’s hard to remember what we worried about before the coronavirus, but long term water crises provoked by climate change are still chugging along in the U.S. West. The most troubling of these is looming at the Colorado River, the water source for over 40 million people.
Many of the seven western states in the Colorado River watershed are suffering under severe to extreme drought. Of course it affects the river.
Albedo is a reflectivity measure of various surfaces as they reflect sunlight back into space. Snow and ice have high albedo, bare ground and trees have low albedo. Melting snow and ice expose low albedo ground so the temperature rises. As the temperature rises more snow and ice melt. This climate change feedback loop is affecting the Colorado River.
The two photos at top span 22 years on the Colorado River at Lake Mead where Hoover Dam holds back the river. The amount of water in the lake is highly controlled by upstream dams but about 20% of that “bathtub ring” can be attributed to the albedo effect.
In case you missed it: On Saturday 20 June 2020 the temperature hit 100.4 degrees F (38 degrees C) in the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk, north of the Arctic Circle! This is the town that also sets coldest temperature records.
Verkhoyansk holds the record for both the hottest and the coldest temperatures ever recorded above the Arctic circle, with 38.0 °C (100.4 °F) and – 67.8 °C (- 90.0 °F) respectively.
The low in Verkhoyansk last November was -65.2oF. This month’s high of 100.4 is a 165oF swing. Talk about climate change! Check out this tweet.
Temperatures reached +38°C within the Arctic Circle on Saturday, 17°C hotter than normal for 20 June. #GlobalHeating is accelerating, and some parts of the world are heating a lot faster than others.
There’s a rule of thumb from the last century that says “Spring moves north 13 miles a day.” On average this means that if crocuses began blooming in Morgantown, West Virginia a week ago they ought to start blooming in Butler, PA today.
However this year’s spring is so early and so hot that I’m wondering if the rule is still true. The animated map below shows spring leaf out moving north from 1 January through 10 March 2020. Some days spring leaps many miles.
According to the USA National Phenology Network, spring is many weeks ahead of schedule, particularly in the eastern US. It’s “three to four weeks earlier than a long-term average (1981-2010) in some locations. Washington, DC and New York City are 24 days early, Nantucket is 30 days early.” Wow!
Leaf out in Pittsburgh began in early February, tulip leaves emerged in late February and I saw the first crocus bloom last week.
So what do you think? Is spring moving faster than it used to? Or just sooner?
Follow the signs of spring at the USA National Phenology Network and Journey North. Here are some cool maps that track what’s going on:
Honeysuckle buds March 2019 vs Feb 2020 (photos by Kate St. John)
Except for a 10 degree cold snap in the last 24 hours, we’re having an early Spring.
So far this year temperatures in Pittsburgh have been 10-34 degrees above normal a third of the time. January 11 was 34 degrees above normal at 71 degrees F.
Honeysuckle bushes responded by leafing out. Last Monday (10 February 2020) I found open honeysuckle buds in my neighborhood. I took a similar photo last year on 11 March 2019 but it was whole month later and the buds were not as open.
According to the USA National Phenology Network, Spring is three weeks ahead of schedule in the southeastern US:
Spring leaf out has arrived in the Southeast, over three weeks earlier than a long-term average (1981-2010) in some locations. Charlottesville, VA is 24 days early, Knoxville, TN is 20 days early, and Nashville, TN is 18 days early.
If you’re going to walk to the North Pole, February is the month to start. The sea ice is at maximum thickness, the weather is slightly less harsh, and you still have enough time to get there before the spring thaw. Or do you?
The North Pole is all water, covered by the Arctic Ocean which is covered by sea ice. Explorers can get there on foot in about 50 days — unassisted and without re-supplies — if the ice holds. However, climate change is warming the Arctic faster than anywhere else on Earth. The ice doesn’t hold anymore.
The last unsupported trek to the North Pole was completed six years ago.
In 2014, Eric Larsen and his partner, Ryan Waters, skied, walked, and swam 480 nautical miles from Cape Discovery on Canada’s Ellesmere Island to the North Pole, lugging all of their supplies with them on sleds.
Seven weeks later as they approached their goal the ice was breaking up.
When Larsen and Waters were just 33 feet from the North Pole, the ice under their feet was drifting away from the pole faster than they could walk. So they ran. On May 6, 2014, they reached the North Pole, becoming the 46th and 47th people to complete such a trek unsupported.
“It’s hard to describe, but the character and the nature of the sea ice is different. From a scientific perspective, the thickness of the ice is much less, so it’s much thinner, and the overall extent is less. So the icepack has shrunk,” he explains. “It definitely hit this real exponential change from 2010 to 2014.”
