by Les W Kuzyk
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As she walked into the meeting room, the lively chatter of mates fell off. She shook hands with Vince, the Canadian engineer, Brad the American and Jeri the climate model analyst also American. A North American crew, peculiar, those in Mauritania and Mali had been all Asian and more difficult to read. Jeri had hard lines on her face, late in her forties, but she appeared to be taking care of herself.
They showed her a chair and settled in at the table.
Tami asked first for the model run results, listening as Jeri briefed her on the Preliminary. The engineers then told of their balloon release—the designated three tons of sulphur dioxide up into the stratosphere. She paid careful attention, noticing something creative in their approach to this field test. “You designed that balloon process.” She looked at Brad. “Sorta,” he said, shrugging. She nodded and asked. “And what would either of you give for a Phase 1 launch time estimate?” Vince stared at her for a second, eyes shifting. But he fell into a meticulous answer, citing container tank readiness from sources in Nigeria based on expected delivery times. She watched his face as he spoke, sensing a certain distain for details. “And what percentage of Phase II could we have in the stratosphere in three weeks time?” She spoke quickly. Vince fell silent and Brad took on the question, citing inventory of balloon launch capacity and time frames necessary to scale the project up. All synchronized with the sulphur supply, he nodded at Vince. These two seemed a team.
“Okay.” Tamanna folded her screen down. “Those Phase I and II scenarios will become our new focus.”
Vince and Brad glanced at each other, neither saying a word. They fell with Jeri to listening.
“You will be required to calculate phase estimates,” Tamanna said. “The client wants a Niger regional test—that’s our first focus, Phase I—and from that an estimate of how close we could come to a Phase II. That’s our Niger national target. As you may be aware, there are local political reasons for this national target.” She pursed her lips, sighing. “Although, as one might deduce, the laws of climate physics do not tend to recognize political boundaries.” Tamanna spoke carefully. “What our client refers to as Phase III will be the Sahel regional. And then Phase IV, the abstract idea of a global scenario. We determine these simply for theoretical comparison of course.” She looked to Jeri. “And to help calibrate our climate model.”
She noticed Vince’s face brighten as she spoke.
Tami went on to overview the standard global numbers as she had for each national team. The carbon outlook went by the budget approach. “We have room for 1 trillion tons of carbon in our global atmosphere to keep under two degrees. We are near three quarters of the way there and not deescalating anywhere close to fast enough. To be more precise, we will have emitted 745 gigatonnes by the end of this year. At least forty percent of carbon remains in the atmosphere a thousand years later, that is a given. For the purposes of this project, we consider other greenhouse gases to be offset by reflective particulates, a variable expected to decrease as people clean up visible pollution, but nevertheless an offset at this time. Current projections predict we hit our CO2 budget maximum in less than nine years. Our client is significantly concerned.”
Tami took a breath, pausing a moment. She looked into each face in her audience. She felt comfortable with this numbers based dialogue, these were engineers and analysts. She studied each face as she went on, keeping her ear and intuition open to any inner signals.
History was boring, she said. She told of the NASA climatologist testifying before Congress way back in 1988 citing scientific evidence that climate change was happening. Her audience attention faded only slightly, so she tried out her light bulb analogy. The Canadian’s eyes lit up as the numbers became a decorated Christmas tree. “Other color for the 8.5’s,” he said. Empirical fast-feedback climate sensitivity had been mathematically defined by several sources—including that NASA fellow’s research. “Fast-feedback processes can be water vapour, clouds and sea ice. The math is fairly simple. Our Phase I project tests how much fast-feedback climate forcing we can offset with a sulphur dioxide release. We know dispersal will have a major impact, so we need precise timing to measure a short term impact.” She paused, watching. “We also have the cryosphere, all parts of the planet covered by ice and snow and frozen permafrost ground. We calculate the cryosphere as a forcing and translate into degrees.”
“So what about slow-feedback processes?” Vince asked. He looked directly at Tami.
She returned his penetrating glance, probing deep into those brown Canadian eyes for an instance. “Right, I am so glad you ask.” This type of question was atypical, that was a given. She grew with the moment as it turned into a little lecture on climate science, with an attentive audience.
Of course when fast-feedback was isolated, slow-feedback sensitivity remained, she explained. Slow-feedback would be a process like modification of major land based ice sheets. Like Greenland or Antarctica. And then changes in forest cover, where forests transitioned to grasslands. For these, climate sensitivity actually increased. Slow-feedback processes guaranteed extra warming in the pipeline, so to speak—she smiled when Vince did. The climate record showed ice sheets collapsing in the past and planetary sensitivity to climate change to be defined allowing accurate judgement of what to expect now. “These processes played out over the long term, centuries, and though we will be aware of these, we focus on the immediate future, the next decade. Our primary presumption holds that the carbon cycle is now distinctly out of balance due to human activity.”
“I can forward you more if you are interested.” She caught Vince’s eye as he looked up from keying in to his jPad. The hint of a smile crept across his face.
Tami tried out another analogy on sea level rise. The northeastern portion of the United States had been identified as a hotspot where sea level was rising higher than global mean. She described the reasons. First, how the sea level was neither flat nor uniformly distributed over the surface of the planet. Ocean bottom mountains, deep-ocean ridges and even ice sheets threw off the planet’s gravity field, giving the ocean surface its own valleys and high places. Wind and ocean currents further influenced the outline of the sea. “Kind of like global politics,” she said dryly. Only politics varied even more around the planet than the ocean, not adhering to an overriding law of gravity.
She noticed Vince nodding, his lips twitching as his fingers flew at his keyboard.
Sea level has the most impact on members of the HICCC. This explained at least partially their extra interest in membership. By end of century optimistic predictions caste the whole world as a version of the Netherlands, expensive but manageable. “But not just sea level, severe ocean weather events will become the new normal. Conservative media alludes to more intense hurricanes, but reliable sources speculate on super storms as yet undefined.”
“So who exactly is the HICCC?” Vince asked. “Say politically?”
“Right. I’m only just finding that out myself,” Tamanna said. “Basically, the HICCC wants to negotiate a climate change mitigation agreement with the OECD. Negotiations are ongoing, but let me see, I will be returning in three weeks to see how our regional test turns out. The High Impact/Economically Cooperating, the HI/EC conference will take place another three weeks after. I can forward you an Infogram with a list of countries involved.” She looked at him and he nodded.
Tamanna rose as she spoke, signalling a close to the meeting. She had a good read on this team face-to-face. She could write up her Niger personnel report for the Minister on her flight that afternoon to N’Djamena in Chad, one hop further along the Sahel. She nodded a goodbye and quickly found her way back to her room to organize herself and schedule a taxi to the airport.