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  Heatwaves and Jet Stream Changes Heatwaves are increasingly hitting higher latitudes, as illustrated by the forecasts below. The background behind this is that the temperature rise caused by people's emissions is also causing changes to the jet streams.  [ click on images to enlarge ] These changes to the Jet Stream are increasingly creating conditions for heatwaves to strike at very high latitudes, as also illustrated by the images on the right. The first image on the right shows that surface temperatures as high as 48°C or 118.3°F are forecast in the State of Washington for June 30, 2021, at 01:00 UTC, at a latitude of 46.25°N. At the same time, even higher temperatures are forecast nearby at 1000 hPa level (temperatures as high as 119.4°C or 48.6°C ).  The next two images on the right show what happened to the jet stream. One image shows instantaneous wind power density at 250 hPa, i.e. at an altitude where the jet stream circumnavigates the globe, on June 26, 2021 a...

Amplifying feedbacks leading to accelerated planetary temperatures by Andrew Glikson “The paleoclimate record shouts to us that, far from being self-stabilizing, the Earth's climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts even to small nudges” (Wally Broecker) Many climate change models, including by the IPCC , appear to minimize or even neglect the amplifying feedbacks of global warming, which are pushing temperatures upward in a runaway chain reaction-like process, as projected by Wally Broecker and other : Lateral and vertical ice melt, including formation of water films on ice;  Reduced CO2 intake by the warming oceans due to warming. Currently the oceans absorb between 35-42 percent of all CO2 emitted into the atmosphere and around 90 percent of the excess heat from the rise in greenhouse gases; Warming, desiccation, deforestation and fires over land areas ; Release of methane from permafrost and polar sediments; These feedbacks drive a chain reaction of events, accel...

Orbital changes are responsible for  Milankovitch cycles that make Earth move in and out of periods of glaciation, or Ice Ages. Summer insolation on the Northern Hemisphere reached a peak some 10,500 years ago, in line with the Milankovitch cycles, and insolation has since gradually decreased. Summer insolation on the Northern Hemisphere in red and in langleys per day (left axis, adapted from Walker, 2008 ). One langley is 1 cal/cm² ( thermochemical calorie  per square centimeter), or 41840 J/m² ( joules per square meter), or about 11.622 Wh/m² (watt-hours per square meter).  In blue is the mean annual sea surface temperature, given as the difference from the temperature over the last 1000 years (right axis, from Bova, 2021 ). Snow and ice cover acting as a buffer While temperatures rose rapidly, especially before the insolation peak was reached, the speed at which temperatures rose was moderated by the snow and ice cover, in a number of ways: snow and ice cause sunlight...

At the Paris Agreement in 2015, politicians pledged to limit the global temperature rise from pre-industrial levels to 1.5°C and promised to stop rises in greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and to make rapid reductions in accordance with best available science, to achieve a balance between people's emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.  Yet, greenhouse gas levels keep rising and the rise appears to be accelerating.  Carbon Dioxide The annual mean global growth rate of carbon dioxide (CO₂) has been increasing over the years (see above image). The February 2021 global CO₂ level was 2.96 ppm higher than the February 2020 global CO₂ level (image left). The March 2021 global CO₂ level was 2.89 ppm higher than the March 2020 global CO₂ level (image left), again much higher than the average annual growth rate over the past decade.  No discernible signal in the data was caused by restrictions associ...