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Earth is COOKED: Instant frostbite, Aussie heat, glacier holes & more CO2

Bruh February 5, 2019
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Humanity is so peaced. Over the past couple of months, the globe has been hit with some devastating and extraordinary weather events, proving further that the earth is cooked.

North America got hit hard by the annual polar vortex that floats above the land mass in the Arctic, freezing the Midwest. The temperatures dropped so low that the frosty whirlwind claimed at least 13 lives, cracked train tracks, canceled 2,700+ flights, and halted mail delivery service.

In Chicago, a record low temperature of -23°F shocked many and Minnesota temperatures fell hard below zero and bottomed out at -71°F. All 50 states saw temperature records shattered.

In some areas, temperatures recorded were colder than Siberia and Mount Everest’s base camp. No one was safe outside.

Of course, because of the extreme cold weather, the opinion from one of our favorite naysayers of climate change, Donald Trump (aka Cheeto Jesus) surfaced on Twitter. Proving that Trump doesn’t know the difference between “climate” and “weather,” he said,

“In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) immediately clapped back and sonned the shit out of our Moronic Leader. In a tweet, the government agency posted a cartoon showing that the sum of warmer oceans plus more moisture, equals stronger storms.

Attached to the cartoon graphic was also a helpful explainer behind the reason of these sub-zero temperatures. According to the article, “not only are severe snowstorms possible in a warming climate, they may even be more likely.”

Proving this fact even further, the NOAA cited evidence found by Third National Climate Assessment, that noted, there is some evidence that cold season storms in the Northern Hemisphere have become both more frequent and more intense since 1950.

Extremely heavy snowstorms also increased in number during the last century in northern and eastern parts of the United States, although they have been less frequent since 2000

On the other side of the globe, temperatures were quite the opposite. Crushing records week after week, Australia is experiencing an ungodly heatwave.

Thus far, the heat has reached temperatures just short of 122°F. In South Australia, thermometers registered  121°F, but the most relentless heat was in Birdsville, Queensland, which endured 10 consecutive days above 113°F.

Putting this scorching heat into perspective, heat exhaustion hits the human body at 104°F and any temperature exceeding 105°F, the human body starts to shut down. This heat is killer, bruv.

Heatwaves hit every Australian state and territory. In one area, close to one million fish were found belly up in rivers where the spike in algae growth, due to “thermal stratification,” choked the water of oxygen.

Believe that Australia is, in fact, sizzling. According to a monthly report put out by the nation’s Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), the heatwaves were unprecedented in their scale and duration.

After January registered Australia’s warmest month for mean, maximum and minimum temperatures,  Andrew Watkins, a senior climatologist at the BoM told The Guardian,

“There’s been so many records it’s really hard to count.”

In result of the intense heat, multiple fires also broke out in Tasmania as the island state has just faced its driest January, EVER. It’s obvious to see that the intense heatwave is due to the rapid climate change of our planet.

The temperatures will rise, ecological systems will decay, and more fires will spark over the years. In relation to a recent report on Australian climate projections released last month, director of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, who collaborated on the report said,

“Australia is already experiencing climate change now and there are impacts being experienced or felt across many communities and across many sectors.”

https://giphy.com/gifs/vy9M1K3RBg77kESDzg

In more evidence that our earth is cooked, NASA discovered a glacier cavity in Antartica two-thirds the size of Manhattan. The cavity in the Thwaites Glacier measures 1,000 feet, that’s around the same height as the Chrysler Building and “big enough to have contained 14 billion tons of ice.”

Lowkey, the Thwaites Glacier is responsible for approximately four percent of global sea level rise. In a recent release about the study, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory stated it holds enough ice to raise the world ocean a little over two feet.

When it does completely melt the Florida sized glacier could start a chain reaction and cause neighboring glaciers to melt thus raising sea levels an additional eight feet if all the ice were lost.

This is not okay as sea levels are rising the fastest they ever have in 2,800 years. Additionally, NASA discovered that Global sea level rise is accelerating incrementally over time rather than increasing at a steady rate, as previously thought.

Getting you more shook ones, as the planet continues to warm, plants absorbing CO2 could slow down. One would think that it couldn’t get any worse, but it can.

Recent research published in the journal Nature found that under a warming climate, rather than absorbing more greenhouse gas emissions, plants and soil may start absorbing less, accelerating the rate of change.

This is wild as plants and soil absorb roughly a quarter of the greenhouse gases that humans release into the atmosphere. If the scientists are right (which they most likely are) more extreme weather which will cause more intense droughts.

The drier the soil the more stressed out the plant and a stressed out plant can’t absorb as much CO2 as it should be to perform photosynthesis. Although these intense droughts may be followed by years of heavier rainfall, absorption of CO2 by plants in the wetter years is still not enough to compensate for the dry years.

For sure this is a wake-up call to the climatic events due to occur in lieu of intense global warming.

The NYT reached out to Caitlin E. Hicks Pries, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Dartmouth College, who said that this study was “a wake-up call to climate-change scientists like myself to prioritize responses to moisture in our experiments and observations of terrestrial ecosystems.”

We’re so cooked if not even plants can withstand the effects of our carbon emissions. They might’ve been our only hope.

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