The United States oil and gas rig count jumped by 15 this week, to its highest level since September 25, 2015, according to Baker Hughes’ latest report on domestic drilling activity. The number of oil and gas rigs currently active in the United States now sits at 824, which is an increase of 374 year over year.
The steady and sizeable jump in rigs signals an indifference by American shale producers towards warnings issued by the Saudi Arabian leadership against increased production. The KSA, which serves as the de facto leader of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), entered into an agreement with its fellow bloc members and 11 NOPEC nations to cut production by 1.8 million barrels. But cheap shale output from the United States is now threatening the effectiveness of the OPEC agreement, diminishing the likelihood of ending the supply glut.
Most of this week’s increases were to the number of active oil rigs, which increased by 10 to 662, compared to 362 a year ago. The number of gas rigs also increased by 5 to 160, up from 155 last week and 88 a year ago.
The increasing rate of the global mean surface temperature was reduced from 1998 to 2013, known as the global warming hiatus, or pause. Researchers have devoted much effort to the understanding of the cause.
The proposed mechanisms include the internal variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system, ocean heat uptake and redistribution, and many others. However, scientists also want to understand the atmospheric footprint of the recent warming hiatus as the dynamical and physical processes remain unclear.
In a recent paper published in Scientific Reports, LIU Bo and ZHOU Tianjun from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have investigated anomalous atmospheric features during the global warming hiatus period from 1998 to 2013. They show evidence that the global mean tropospheric temperature also experienced a hiatus or pause.
To understand the physical processes that dominate the warming hiatus, they decomposed the total temperature trends into components due to processes related to surface albedo, water vapor, cloud, surface turbulent fluxes and atmospheric dynamics.
The results demonstrated that the hiatus of near-surface temperature warming trend is dominated by the decreasing surface latent heat flux compared with the preceding warming period, while the hiatus of upper tropospheric temperature is dominated by the cloud-related processes. Further analysis indicated that atmospheric dynamics are coupled with surface turbulent heat fluxes over lower troposphere and coupled with cloud processes over upper troposphere.
As to why the surface latent heat flux, atmospheric dynamics and cloud-related processes showed such large differences between 1983-1998 and 1998-2013, LIU, first author of the paper, explained, “They are dominated by the Hadley Circulation and Walker Circulation changes associated with the phase transition of Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO).”
According to LIU, the IPO is a robust, recurring pattern of sea surface temperature anomalies at decadal time scale. During a positive phase of IPO, the west Pacific and the mid-latitude North Pacific becomes cooler and the tropical eastern ocean warms, while during a negative phase, the opposite pattern occurs. The IPO has shifted from the positive phase to negative phase since 1998/1999, and this transition has led to the weakening of both Hadley Circulation and Walker Circulation, which served as a hub linking the three processes mentioned above.
“Though the heat capacity of the atmosphere is nearly negligible compared with the ocean”, said ZHOU, corresponding author of the paper, “understanding the atmospheric footprint is essential to gain a full picture of how internal climate variability such as IPO affects the global climate from the surface to the troposphere. The new findings also provide useful observational metrics for gauging climate model experiments that are designed to understand the mechanism of global warming hiatus.”
The Te Moeka o Tuawe (REF 1) is a southern-hemisphere glacier in New Zealand that is unusual among glaciers in that its terminus is very close to sea level in a temperate zone. Although relatively long – about 13 km – the glacier has been receding since about 2009 because of anthropogenic climate change, which scientists say is caused by fossil-fuel carbon emissions.
From Wikipedia’s description of the Fox glacier in New Zealand:
Fed by four alpine glaciers, Fox Glacier falls 2,600 m (8,500 ft) on its 13 km journey from the Southern Alps down to the coast, with it having the distinction of being one of the few glaciers to end among lush rainforest only 300 metres (980 ft) above sea level. Although retreating throughout most of the last 100 years, it was advancing between 1985 and 2009. In 2006 the average rate of advance was about a metre a week. In January 2009, the terminal face of the glacier was still advancing and had vertical or overhanging faces which were continually collapsing. Since then there has been a significant retreat, with the 2009 high level clearly visible as vegetation line on the southern slope above what is left of the lower glacier today.
Lower part of Fox Glacier with glacier mouth, February 2013. Note the clearly visible limit of vegetation on the right (southern) slope, which marks the temporary maximum height of the glacier around 2009.
That Te Moeka o Tuawe is retreating should not be surprising. Currently, nearly all glaciers have a negative mass balance and are retreating to the extent that they are contributing 30% of the current rate of sea-level rise (REF 2). The IPCC stated in 2007 that Himalayan glaciers could be gone by 2035(REF 3). “The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the US government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colorado (REF 4).
Glacial retreat can have unexpected knock-on consequences like reducing the availability of drinking water for downstream communities, as well as increasing local temperatures via decreases in albedo: even old ice has twice the reflectance of bedrock exposed as it retreats.
The unique location of Te Moeka o Tuawe gave cryoengineer Dr. Eric Fox (REF 5 – no relation to the glacier) an idea.
“I thought it would be an ideal place to test a theory I had about glacial dynamics,” he tells me via Skype. “The idea is to supplement the glacier with an ice-mimic, a surrogate substance with similar spectral properties to frozen water but much higher levels of stability.”
The logistics of the glacier slowing experiment are quite difficult – that’s why the low-altitude terminus of Te Moeka o Tuawe is so important. The project involves reinforcing the glacier with 57,000 tonnes of the substitute ice, which would be impossible to transport to a high-altitude terminus.
Fox’s team decided on creating reinforcing ice by combining regular ice with a complex, but easy to manufacture, molecule called (2R,3R,4S,5S,6R)-2-[(2S,3S,4S,5R)-3,4-Dihydroxy-2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)oxolan-2-yl]oxy-6-(hydroxymethyl)oxane-3,4,5-triol (REF 6) for the initial trial. The molecule is based on natural compounds, and is harmless to plants, wildlife, and to humans. In nature, the compound is present in many plant roots, fruits and nectars, and serves to store energy, primarily from photosynthesis.
3D model of (2R,3R,4S,5S,6R)-2-[(2S,3S,4S,5R)-3,4-Dihydroxy-2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)oxolan-2-yl]oxy-6-(hydroxymethyl)oxane-3,4,5-triol
“It is very important that we do no harm to the environment in our attempt to slow the retreat of the glacier. That’s why the team settled on this naturally occurring compound. It was my idea to add a dash of 5-Methyl-2-(propan-2-yl)-cyclohexan-1-ol (REF 7),” Fox notes. My compound has interesting cryo-properties. And it even smells good.”
Fox calls the experimental glacier trial a “Win-win-win” scenario.
“We’ll slow the glacier’s retreat, increase albedo, and because the chemical substitute contains a high proportion of carbon, it effectively locks up Carbon that would otherwise be polluting the atmosphere.”
It is expected that after the application of this compound to the reinforcing ice, retreat of Te Moeka o Tuawe is going to be slowed and eventually the glacier will be as good as new, returning to its maximum volume observed in 2009. The scientists are calling their project “Fox’s Glacier Mint.”
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References
REF 1 Known by Western interlopers as Fox Glacier.
REF 2 Gardner et al. 2013; Science 340 (6134): 852–857.
REF 3 It was apparently a typo.
REF 4 He said it about ten years ago about something else, but it seemed somehow apropos to mention it here.
REF 5 Also, by pure coincidence, the name of the inventor of Fox’s Glacier Mints.
REF 6 (2R,3R,4S,5S,6R)-2-[(2S,3S,4S,5R)-3,4-Dihydroxy-2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)oxolan-2-yl]oxy-6-(hydroxymethyl)oxane-3,4,5-triol is known by the great unwashed as sucrose.
Replacement vessel for AAD icebreaker Aurora Australis not value for money, says audit office. What would you expect – most everything Govt touches turns to crap.
Iowa Climate Science Education 