Disjunctions 1 - The Flood

There is a flooding crisis unfolding across the world in real time. Perhaps many who are reading this article have faced some form of flood related incident in the recent past.

There are a number of outcomes we know that stem from climate change. The melting glaciers of Antarctica, heat waves, forest fires, drought, ocean levels rising and extreme weather events all have a direct correlation to Earth’s rising temperature.

I will focus this article on the potential for excess rainfall and flooding caused by climate change, lay out my analysis of where this phenomenon is headed, and finally, what is the implication for an individual such as yourself as this phenomenon intensifies.?

As early as 2018, climate researcher Clive Best published a report on global average rainfall vs temperature rise in his blog.

Clive Best - Global rainfall and temperature rise

Clive noticed that there is a direct and compelling correlation between daily average rainfall anomaly and global average temperatures. Some of the historical spikes in rainfall volumes coincided interestingly with volcanic eruptions which he mentions in his blog. “Could the observed increased rainfall between 1810 and 1870 perhaps be due to two extremely large volcanic eruptions – Tambora (1815) and Consiguina (1835)?? There is also a smaller rainfall peak immediately following Krakatoa (1883).”

So why would sudden volcanic eruptions cause an equally sudden spike in rainfall?

Massive volcanic eruptions cause the ejection of gigantic amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere that can potentially cause a runaway greenhouse effect over a short period of time or alternatively persist and compound on itself to result in a hellish outcome as has been seen in the planet Venus.?

The Earth is unique due to many factors – the slight tilt of its axis, its magnetic field due to the spinning iron core, and location in the goldilocks zone in the solar system. This gives the Earth its climate and more importantly – seasons. Venus does not have this kind of luck

So when we have a volcanic eruption releasing gigantic amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, it causes a greenhouse effect, thereby raising the temperature of the surface of the Earth. This temperature rise results in the creation of more water vapour in the atmosphere – and thereby more rainfall.

This rainfall cools the Earth down and brings temperatures to a more moderate equilibrium.

I look at rainfall as Earth's natural defense against global warming – a kind of temperature regulator of the climate. And this temperature regulator is showing us just how powerful it is

In July 2021, catastrophic floods ravaged Europe and resulted in the death of 243 people.

This did not happen in a remote, undeveloped part of the planet with overpopulation and poverty. This was continental Europe – Germany, United Kingdom, Belgium among others. Climate scientists analyzing the floods found it unprecedented in scale and quantity.

Parts of Rhineland received 148 liters of rainfall within 48 hours whereas historically this amount of rainfall is received over 4 months.

The Guardian: Scientists shocked by the scale of floods in Germany

More recently, the summer of 2022 saw record heat waves across the entire Northern Hemisphere from the US Midwest to Central and peripheral Europe, with temperatures in some cities in Spain and Portugal reaching an unprecedented 42 degrees Celsius.

Similar heatwave's were observed in Pakistan and India in the Summer of 2022.

In July 2022, Pakistan experienced three times its annual rainfall within the span of 1 week. By the time the deluge ended, 1/3rd of the landmass in Pakistan was under water. 1500 souls lost their lives in this deluge – considered one of the most brutal precipitation episodes this generation.

So anecdotally we can hypothesize that there is a direct correlation between the summer temperatures and subsequent rainfall that the Earth delivers. Intuitively it is not very difficult to imagine that with 70 percent of the Earth’s surface being water, we simply are causing more water vapour in the atmosphere as temperatures rise.

Based on current projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), if global emissions continue to rise at their current rate, the Earth's temperature could rise by 2.7°C above pre industrial levels sometime between the years 2040 and 2060.

This is anywhere within the next two decades –within the lifetimes of most of the current human residents of the Earth. Ironically, our generation is the cause of global warming, and perhaps will face the consequences first hand.

But aren’t we doing enough to reverse global warming? Surely the most powerful leaders in the world are seized of the urgency to tackle of climate change. We are buying more EVs than ever. Solar and wind farms increasingly dot the landscape all over the world. World leaders signed the Paris accords as the silver bullet that could finally attack climate change from its source – CO2 emissions

Is it enough?

The Paris accords targets an average global temperature increase of under 2 degrees Celsius as a best case scenario in terms of temperature rise on the Earth.

This is if every country meets its CO2 emission targets and this is not taking into account recent events such as the record heat waves, widespread forest fires across Europe and western United States and the holocaust we are seeing in the Ukraine Russia war.

If we are not optimistic (and realistically there aren’t many compelling reasons to be optimistic), global warming of 2.7°C above median levels is extremely likely if not certain.

United Nations: Global Climate commitments not on track to meet Paris goals

So we know now that a rise of 2.7°C is possible within our lifetimes. It is probably prudent for us to understand the impact this level of global warming can potentially have on our only habitat in this Universe.

Scattered heat waves? More forests burning down? Sea Levels rising by 1 meter? The optimists say that dams, flood barriers can be built and forests replanted and replenished within 10 years and that we can likely live with climate change.

Other more extreme views speculate that global warming is actually good since the Earth goes through cycles of solar minimums that cause an ice age so global warming protects us from the next ice age.

The truth is stranger than fiction.

The term “unprecedented” is not as relevant in Geology studies. Yes – for the human species and for the period we have existed on this Earth, this level of climate change has never been seen or noted before by our species.?

This is simply not true for the Earth itself.

The Earth has seen this level of rainfall and far more before – that too multiple times. We were just not around to observe and record it in our computers and include it in our data models.

The unfortunate irony is that we seem to believe that the Earth’s climate precedence goes back to human recorded history which is barely 4000 years. 4000 years is not even a fraction of a heartbeat in terms of geological time scales.

The Earth is 4.53 Billion years old. The dinosaurs roamed the Earth for 165 Million years. By comparison, the extent of recorded human history barely covers any Geological changes on the Earth. We simply have not experienced or recorded the changes the Earth goes through on a longer timeframe.

Why is this important?

In its early life the earth was no ordinary metaphorical baby. This was a planet soaked with lava, volcanoes and bursting with noxious gases.

Over billions of years, the planet gradually cooled, millions of icy comets crashed into the earth, bringing water that almost instantly got vaporized by the molten surface, forming clouds that in turn cooled the Earth by the rain that lashed down. This cycle continued for billions of years before a stable and conducive environment for life was achieved.

The Earth’s climate has had a long time to achieve balance – and this pre-dates dinosaurs or the first appearance of a living cell on this planet. Any Geological system that has had 4.53 Billion years to evolve and stabilize has arrived at a normalized current state due to some pretty entrenched geological and ecological forces.

The Earth took a long time to cool down and achieve its balance and therefore will not let this go of this balance easily. It is quite logical to conclude that the Earths self-regulating constant state of balance is far more powerful that we give it credit for.

?We have two outcomes here – does the Earth submit tamely to recently arrived Humans with their machines that are causing its climate to change or would it reject this change and embark on a vicious rebalancing of its hard-won climate balance.? ????

Since we are talking about geological time scales in terms of the quantum of temperature change, its fair to look at the Earth’s history and learn from the outcomes from previous such violent climate change episodes.

250 Million years ago the Earth went through a period called by Geologists as the Carnian Plural Episode or CPE. Massive volcanic eruptions released unprecedented amounts of CO2 into the Earth's atmosphere within a few years. This caused a temperature increase of 3-4 degrees Celsius globally in a relatively short period of time.

Sound familiar?

What was the CPE period? ?The?Carnian pluvial episode, was tentatively considered to be a result of oceanic or volcanic instability related to the early rifting of Pangea - early Earth where the continents we not formed as separate land masses like we see today, but was actually one gigantic continent spanning the entire earth. ?

Geological studies identified a massive injection of CO2 in the atmosphere evidenced by an increased presence of the isotope?Carbon-12?(or a ~4‰ decrease of?δ13C) in plant fossils from across the CPE period.

CPE: Carnian Pluvial Episode Mass Extinction

This was the era of the end Triassic age- a pre-dinosaur, pre-Jurassic history where the earth was dominated by millions of small invertebrate species including species like the ammonoids,?conodonts,?bryozoa, and?crinoids.

The CPE period did not result in desertification of the Earth or the burning of forests as many of us would theorize, but quite the opposite. The CPE is widely acknowledged as a period of extreme rainfall and wet weather.

How wet? Extremely.

The CPE was a massive disjunction of the Earth's climate that lasted for 10 Million Years. This is 30 times the time period of the entire period the Homo Sapiens has been on the planet which is around 300,000 years.

Some geological samples estimate a period of 1 million years of continuous rainfall on every part of the planet during this geological episode. The CPE resulted in a mass extinction event of the then dominant species and ushered in the Jurassic age of the Dinosaurs.

Well why would continuous rain cause a mass extinction event? It is obvious – we are dependent on a delicate balance between rain, sun and weather systems that allow plants to regenerate, reproduce, and our species to thrive.

Will continuous rain allow a robust agriculture economy to thrive or survive? Can we manage a deluge across the planet with our technology? Can we mine coal, oil and all the natural resources we depend on if it’s a continuous deluge and perhaps mass flooding of entire continents.

Perhaps time will give us the opportunity to prove our survival ability through this deluge if we continue on the current path we are firmly and inexorably on.?

We have geological proof of many deserts and arid parts of the Earth that were once under water and teeming with life and forests. Some of this evidence has been documented and well understood by Geologists. Saudi Arabia is largely a desert region, however holds among the largest reserves of Oil in the world. Oil was formed by organic matter stored and decomposing over millions of years under the earth. The implication - Saudi Arabia was once teeming with vegetation and life.

Did a million years of rain kickstart the Dinosaur age?

We actually have a reasonably good understanding of 542 Million years of Earth's temperature history. Our geologists have painstakingly drawn out a historical view going back before the age of Dinosaurs through studies of ancient rocks and cores of arctic ice.

In 1989, a paper by?Michael J. Simms?and?Alastair H. Ruffell?was published about the CPE

Carnian Pluvial episode where global average temperatures rose by 3-4 degrees Celsius leading to the extinction ?conodonts,?ammonoids,?bryozoa?and?green algae and led to the emergence of the Dinosaurs.

The Carnian Pluvial episode lasted for 10 Million years with some models predicting 1 Million years of almost continuous rainfall in every part of the Earth. This in turn led to a burst of plant and animal life and particularly the emergence of mass reforestation of the earth that eventually soaked up the CO2, cooled the earth and led into the Triassic age of the Dinosaurs over millions of years.

It is clear that we are heading towards a near 2.7°C global warming event, caused by a massive sudden (by Earth's timeline standards) injection of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere.

At 2.7°C, the Earth will approach distressingly close to the 3-4 °C estimated temperature boundary of the CPE. And studies of the CPE have given us clues of what the Earth might look like at these temperatures.

Leave aside 1 million years of continuous rainfall, a mere 10 years of continuous rainfall might possibly pave the way for the next age and Epoch on the Earth.

Are there already signs that this change is happening? Are we seeing the transformation of Earth’s climate rapidly in real time?

The recent catastrophic weather events might have given us a hint that this change is well underway. After all, the nature of climate cycles is not that hard to figure out.

Perhaps there is a tipping point of temperature change, where the Earth’s Climate just switches automatically to this almost “self-regulating” constant rainfall state to bring the temperature and CO2 within normalized range.

It is clear we are changing the climate of the planet as a species today, however we do not yet possess the power to reverse the changes beyond a point. And the changes are happening…slowly…insidiously creeping forward towards a yet unrevealed future.?

Once this climate cycle of rainfall ignites, it is conceivable that we shall be unable to stop it. This unprecedented level of climate change at a global level cannot be reversed by some machine we build in a lab somewhere. Once we are caught in its wake, the climate cycle will play out in geological time periods which are unfortunately vastly longer and slower than the lifetime of our species.

Generations of humans do not make even a microscopic difference in the timescales that Earth's geology works in.

It is an intriguing question if this switch is a slow motion process of the wheels turning or a sudden ignition that changes the climate in one fell swoop.

The Implication for me as an individual

So what does this mean to me as an individual? Well I for one am paying very close attention to the location of my home or factory within a city or a country. Topographic maps can show the differential elevation between your location and the rest of the city or district.

A Topographic Map to find the relative elevation of your home in the city

When the flooding increases and persists relentlessly, it is the low-lying areas in a city, state or country that will face the greatest danger of permanent water body formation. In other words, these areas will be permanently under water.

Look for areas at higher elevations since these are most likely to last longer than others in an enhanced rainfall and flooding scenario.

I am also now paying careful attention to flood water and drainage systems in my locality or city. How well designed are these? Can they withstand extreme or even moderate flooding? Recent events of widespread landslides in the Northern hills of India laid bare the dangers of deforestation, over construction and lack of drainage systems. It's probably prudent to give these priority than a great view only.

Every individual can make a contribution towards fighting climate change - drive an EV, buy a carbon neutral flight ticket, be supportive of renewable technologies. As a consumer, if we make a conscious decision to give preference to products and services that are carbon neutral, the corporations will follow. The customer is king after all.

We always need to keep the faith and have hope for a better future. We can make it if we do the right things even now. However the window of opportunity is rapidly closing, and we might find it is difficult to reverse the climate quickly.

Noah’s Ark might be mythology but somewhere in our unrecorded history of the past 300,000 years, this might just be a message passed on through generations.

A warning.