By Jim Steele

The Great Famine of the 1870s resulted in 50 million deaths from drought-induced mass starvation across South America, Africa, and Asia. It was an all-natural climate event during colder times with lower CO2 concentrations and those drought-causing climate dynamics are still in play today. To understand if the world could again suffer such a drought, it helps to view climate change from a 10,000-year perspective starting with the African Humid Period. During the Holocene Optimum the Sahara was covered with lakes and rivers and abundant wildlife as depicted by the rock art of the many African societies that thrived in the Sahara (graphics B & C). Then around 6,000 years ago it turned to desert.

In the tropics, rainy and dry seasons alternate depending on the position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ- graphic D). The ITCZ is seen in satellites as a narrow band of clouds where world’s greatest amounts of precipitation fall. The ITCZ is very sensitive to solar heating. During the northern hemisphere’s summer when the sun’s strongest rays move northward, so does the ITCZ. As the sun migrates southward, so does the ITCZ and its band of rains.

A 40,000+ year cycle of the changing tilt of the earth’s axis, referred to as obliquity, also determines how far north and south the suns strongest rays will migrate. Ten thousand years ago the tilt was at a maximum and the ITCZ migrated further north than today, bringing more moisture to the Sahara (graphic F; ITCZ average northern location=yellow dashed line). As the tilt decreases to its minimum, the ITCZ moves southward (graphic G). Thus, as the ITCZ migrated southward, the rains decreased enough over the Humid Sahara to turn it to a desert.  The axis tilt will continue to decline for another 10,000 years. Another orbital cycle, precession, contributed to the ITCZ southward migration by causing the southern hemisphere to slightly warm while the northern hemisphere slightly cooled.

Research has also found that as the ITCZ moved southward over the past 6000 years, El Nino activity has increased. El Nino events caused extreme drought in southeast Asia in 1998, as well as in southern Africa such as was recently experienced in 2023-2024. Likewise, the Great Famine of the 1870s coincided with the strong El Nino of 1877-1878, while the ITCZ was at its most southward location (graphic E).

The Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1900 AD coincided with sunspot minimums. The reduced solar heating caused the ITCZ to contract further towards the equator. That altered atmospheric circulation to bring drought to the tropics and the Great Famine of 1870 as well as colder temperatures to North America and Eurasia. It also brought the northern rain-belts further south, bringing heavy snowfall and growing glaciers. Manchuria suffered famines not from drought but from cold winters. Growing glaciers in the Swiss Alps destroyed farmland and towns.

The last 150 years has witnessed the ITCZ migrating northward as sunspots exhibited a maximum, bringing a warm rebound from the LIA (graphic E). Small changes in solar irradiance are not enough to warm the climate directly. However small changes in solar irradiance affects the ITCZ which then has global impacts that can have bigger warming effects.

Small changes in solar irradiance are not enough to warm the climate directly. However small changes in solar irradiance affects the ITCZ which then has global impacts that can have bigger warming effects. The ITCZ is the driver of the Hadley circulation that drives circulation changes from the equator to the poles (graphic H). A southward migration of the ITCZ causes a weakening of the polar vortex and the polar jet stream. In turn that allows cold air that is normally contained in the Arctic to flow southward and cool North America and Eurasia. A strong polar vortex that constrains cold air transport causes a warming global temperature. The decrease in sunspots during the Little Ice Age, as well as since 1990s coincides with a weaker vortex and winter cooling across sub-polar regions.

The Hadley circulation, driven by the ITCZ strength and location, creates a tropical rain-belt, a mid-latitude dry belt or the desert-latitude belt, and a sub-polar rain-belt. (graphic I; blue more precipitation vs red more evaporation). As the ITCZ moves southward so does the regions of dryness and rainfall. Accordingly, as the ITCZ brought drought to tropical regions, it simultaneously brought heavy snow fall and devastating glaciers to the sub-polar rain-belts.

People must understand, anomalous droughts and floods, anomalous cold and heat, are the natural consequence of the earth’s natural circulation patterns and solar variations. Similar to El Nino effects, weather changes can bring both floods and droughts. Likewise, the ITCZ migration brings warmer tropics and colder sub-polar regions. These natural dynamics do not claim that there is no greenhouse effect. However, those dynamics simply reveal how much natural climate dynamics affect our lives, global temperatures, and weather extremes. Anyone arguing CO2 is driving all the climate changes and all the extreme weather events are either very ignorant of these weather dynamics, or dishonest grifters trying to manipulate your support for their political agenda!  The greatest Climate Injustice of all will happen if the world’s under-served people are denied the inexpensive energy from fossil fuels that best allows them to deal with natural climate extremes!

Roger Caiazza

The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) recently issued its Power Trends which is billed as their “annual analysis of factors influencing New York State’s power grid and wholesale electricity

Markets”. This post highlights the expectation that electricity supplies will “be adequate to meet expected summer demand under baseline conditions, but under more extreme summer weather scenarios, potential reliability concerns have been identified” relative to the heat wave for the Northeast and Midwest predicted for next week.

NYISO Power Trends

NYISO recently released their power assessment: Power Trends Resources is the landing page for documentation, Power Trends 2024 is the report itself and there is a Power Trends Fact Sheet.  If you are interested in a review of key developments and emerging issues in a jurisdiction trying to implement a net-zero transition then I recommend you look at this documentation.  For this post I will only highlight the Key Messages listed:

• Public policies continue to drive rapid change in the electric system in the state, impacting how electricity is produced, transmitted, and consumed.
• Electrification programs and economic development initiatives are driving projected demand higher. Generator deactivations are outpacing new supply additions. Together, these forces are narrowing reliability margins across New York.
• The potential for delays in construction of new supply and transmission, higher than forecasted demand, and extreme weather are threatening reliability and resilience to the grid
• Electricity supplies are adequate to meet expected summer demand under normal conditions, but extreme weather and other factors pose reliability risks.
• The New York statewide grid is projected to become a winter-peaking system in the 2030s, primarily driven by electrification of space heating and transportation.
• On the coldest days, the availability of natural gas for power generation may be limited and significant interruptions to natural gas supply can disrupt reliable operations.
• NYISO’s interconnection processes continue to evolve to balance developer flexibility with the need to manage the process to more stringent timeframes. Efforts are underway to make this process more efficient while protecting grid reliability.
• To achieve the mandates of the CLCPA, new emission-free supply capable of providing the necessary reliability services are needed to replace the capabilities of today’s generation. Such new supply is not yet available on a commercial scale.
• The wholesale electricity markets administered by the NYISO exist as an important tool to attract necessary investments to facilitate the transition of the grid in the coming decades.

There is a lot of information in this report that probably could provide fodder for another article.  Suffice to say the conclusion would be that I characterize it as using careful wordsmanship to suggest that there are issues that must be addressed but not coming out and saying the current energy direction of New York is bat guano crazy.  What will it take to wake New York up?

For this post I only want to address the Summer 2024 Reliability Outlook. I have highlighted the particular concern for next week in the quotation of this section:

NYISO grid operations and planning teams collaborate with utilities, suppliers, and stakeholders to prepare for expected summer weather conditions. The NYISO forecasts conditions based upon normal, or baseline, expected weather conditions as well as extreme weather conditions. New York recorded a record peak of 33,956 megawatts (MW) in July 2013. For summer 2024, the NYISO expects electricity supplies to be adequate to meet expected summer demand under baseline conditions, but under more extreme summer weather scenarios, potential reliability concerns have been identified.

For summer 2024, the NYISO expects 34,913 MW of resources available to meet 31,541 MW of forecasted demand under normal conditions. Under extreme summer weather conditions, however, forecasted reliability margins could potentially be deficient without reliance on emergency operating procedures. For example, if the state experiences a heatwave with an average daily temperature of 95 degrees lasting three or more days, demand is forecasted to rise to 33,301 MW, while predicted supply levels are reduced to 34,502 MW. When accounting for the required 2,620 MW of operating reserves that must be maintained, this scenario results in a forecasted reliability margin of -1,419 MW. That reliability margin declines further to -3,093 MW under an extreme heatwave with an average daily temperature of 98 degrees. Under these more extreme summer weather conditions, the NYISO forecasts an available supply of 34,317 MW to meet the required 2,620 MW of operating reserve requirements, plus a forecasted demand of 34,790 MW.

To maintain reliability, NYISO operators can dispatch up to 3,275 MW of incremental capability through emergency operating procedures. These emergency operating procedures are not reflected in the forecasted reliability margins described above. To mitigate risks to reliability, NYISO operators conduct weekly outreach to suppliers to address risks to resource availability and coordinate with both generation and transmission owners to reduce the impacts of outages during hot weather periods. In addition, NYISO operators coordinate with neighboring regions to support regional grid reliability.

Forecast

New York has a very imbalanced load profile with New York City and downstate having the highest load.  NYISO might weigh the temperature by population and load, and I am not sure how they calculate the statewide average temperature.  For this projection I used the National Weather Service Extended Forecast (seven days) for Albany, Buffalo, New York City and Syracuse.  Table 1 lists the high and low temperature forecasts for those cities.  I calculated the average daily statewide temperature as the average of the high and low values for all four cities.

As shown in Table 1 the threshold of concern for an average daily temperature of 95 degrees does not appear likely.  Nonetheless, the forecast discussions all mention that there is uncertainty with these forecasts so it will be worth watching to see what happens.

Discussion

The Power Trends figure that lists generation deactivations and additions demonstrates the inherent stupidity of New York’s current energy policy.  Since 2019 the politicians have forced the premature shutdown of over 2,000 MW of nuclear generation just north of New York City.  To respond to ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard non-attainment issues, the State was required to shutdown or add controls at old peaking power plants in New York City.  Political pressure halted proposals to replace those units with modern much cleaner units that we know could provide sufficient reliability resources.   . 

The Power Trends report highlights risks coming to New York.  The NYISO figure indicates that over 5,000 MW of dispatchable generation that provided the New York State with reliability services for decades has been shut down.  In its place are wind and solar projects that check all the environmental goals of the State but may not provide power when needed most.  Although the State is not completely dependent upon wind and solar yet, the state policies that have shut down and precluded development of conventional generating resources means that the toolbox of choices used to maintain reliability has lost options.  The risks of blackouts are increasing so watch what happens during the first stress test of the year.

I will post an update on what happened next week.

Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York.  This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.