Researchers find arctic may have had less ice 6000-7000 years ago

Yeah, but THIS TIME, it’s OUR fault!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
snark – off

An interesting study, including the standard disclaimer:
“Changes that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today,” Astrid Lyså believes.
Even good studies have to protect themselves from charges of going against the prevailing orthodoxy. Sad.

The study suggests that the Arctic Ocean may have been ice free 6,000 years ago, but we know that can’t be true. The Independent wrote this summer “Scientists warn….for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-no-ice-at-the-north-pole-855406.html
The Telegraph wrote The North Pole has become an island for the first time in human history
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/08/31/eaarctic131.xml
And respected scientists corroborated for National Geographic “We’re actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history],” David Barber, of the University of Manitoba
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080620-north-pole.html

Leif,
What is your point about sunspots? The graph you linked to showed very high sunspot activity 7,000 years ago.

Leif, slightly off topic, but I would love to know if you perceive a variation in the earths received solar wind as its orbital inclination drops to zero?

Ahh, I see your point, Leif.
~7000 years ago, sunspot activity was low, but the arctic seems to have been warm, while ~4000 years ago sunspot activity was high, but the arctic was cold.
BTW, nice rifle she is carrying in that photo. I wonder if she kills polar bears should she need to? Maybe she is friends with Palin.

Leif, far be it for me to suggest but it was obviously warmer at the time these sea edges were made. If that means it was earlier than the researchers think or your sunspot data is wrong than that is where logic leads. All you do is dismiss I don’t think you can be so sure.
Can you answer me what differences to world temperature you feel fifty sunspots like a Dalton minimum versus an ‘averagish’ 50000 sunspot cycle would make to the climate? I know this isn’t accurate but it would give us some idea of where your coming from. You seem to feel that this thousand times difference is a pretty minor affair. We can all visualise the difference, so to go alongside that what do you say the temperature difference would be e.g Dalton’s 50 spots down ? degrees. Average 50000 spots up ? degrees. Ed.

Steve M had some rather interesting threads over a year ago, on the Quaternary and particularly Holocene history of the Northern shore of Greenland, and Ellesmere Island. Ice free conditions during the past million or even 10000 years can not be dis proven at this time.

Just an observation: Leif opens his mouth and he gets half a dozen questions in return. Not that this is a bad thing (it isn’t) and not that it doesn’t happen on plenty of other postings (it does), but I was just thinking…
Wouldn’t it be great if more scientists took the time to talk to the general public like Leif does here? I mean, I have learned a ton of stuff from this blog and the presence of various scientists, though particularly Leif since he posts the most I think. It is always important, I think, that the public understand the research and that scientists are able to explain it in a way the man on the street can understand without overdiluting or being untrue to their work. Anyway, totally OT, but I thought I would post it.

How are we measuring sunspots from 5,000 years ago? Is it, pardon the expression, “settled” science?

Did I just read it has a 68% UNcertainty?

I’m not surprised at the article’s conclusion of an ice-free arctic 6kybp.
Rhodes Fairbridge had the same conclusion in the 1970s in his reconstruction of Late Holocene sea levels known as the Fairbridge Curve (sea level more than 2 meters higher than now 6kybp). Even the comment in the article that the Independence I Culture succumbed to cooling at 4000ybp is shown in the Fairbridge Curve. The first optimum of the interglacial lasted until around 2500BC (4500 ybp) according to Fairbridge and reached a maximum cool at 2300BC (4300 ybp). It warmed again by 3900 ybp (1900BC). Another independent paper recently showed similar results in Brazil (2 meters higher sea level around 6kybp).
Reference: Fairbridge, R.W., Science 191 (4225) 359-359 1976
When we get corroboration from several different and independent sources, the foundation for questioning the AGW modelers becomes stronger.

Well, either way about the sunspots, it’s a red herring for this discussion. The point was/is/should be, the poles were very warm before, and without AGW from man-made GHG. Unless we want to blame human intestinal methane production…? 😉

Normally when scientists adopt the wookie defense of “you wouldn’t understand it anyway” that means that they don’t understand it well enough to explain it.
‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’.
Leonardo da Vinci

May I point out to the website http://www.climate4you.com/ of Prof. Humlum, and there to the chapter climate and history, where he gives a Greenland temperature diagram derived from ice core analysis:http://www.climate4you.com/images/SummitAndCulture.gif from a Science paper by Dahl-Jensen el al of 1998.
It was indeed much warmer then. But still, glaciers did exist in Greenland then. So, even the sea level rise must have been moderate.
Does the present research by NGU give any sea level estimates?

“It’s nice to see research into the Holocene Maximum”
Yes, or as I have learned to call it, the Holocene Optimum. It is as if modern climate science wants to hide the existence of this period from people, just as they seem to want to avoid talking about the MWP.

So how did the polar bears survive? Oh i forgot its only man made climate change that kills them, natural changes are good for them.

Dr. Lief:
wrote David Vermette (19:01:46) :
Anybody know how accurate that chart of historical sunspots numbers is likely to be? This is all I could find on it:
11,000 Year Sunspot Number Reconstruction
From the link:
DESCRIPTION:
The series of reconstructed 10-yr averaged sunspot numbers with their 68% uncertainty.
Years are given BP (before present), i.e. the calendar AD year, Yad, is related to the BP year, Ybp, as Yc=1950-Ybp.
Does this mean that 30,000 suspots could be anywhere between say 15,000 and 45,000, and that 50,000 sunspots could be as low as say 25,000?
Does it say that 1000 ybp might be 1500 ybp, or perhaps 6,000 ybp could be 9,000??

Just a small correction to Leif Svalgaard’s comment concerning estimation of the cosmic ray flux.
The primary production mechanism for carbon-14 (the radio isotope of carbon used in carbon dating) is not the transformation of carbon-12 to carbon-14. Rather it is the interaction between slow cosmic ray induced neutrons and nitrogen-14 to produce carbon-14 and a proton.
However, Leif is absolutely right that measurement of carbon-14 in tree rings that have been independently dated using dendrochronology allows us to calculate the production rate of carbon-14 and therefore estimate the cosmic ray flux.

Warmer back then? No way! That can’t possibly be!
The models and climate prophets say it isn’t possible. I think the proxy data is wrong, and thus needs to be adjusted.

Patrick Henry:) How old was that tree Anthony Watts reported on in a recent post a few months ago? It was in one of the Scandanavian countries, I thought it was definitely around 1,000 yo? Can’t remember to be honest.
Generally:- Stonehenge may have been demoted by 1,000 years by recent analysis. However, there is ALWAYS a possibility that they have got it wrong somehow, it does happen you know. It is & always has been a fact of life that present generations seem to think that everyone before was as thick as two short planks! Yet, deeper & more careful scrutiny often reveals that our forefathers may have just been on to something! At 50 yoa I now see what my late father was on about when he used to laugh at some “modern” pronouncements! As a practicing (I will one day perfect the art) structural engineer I am astonished how even in this profession, fashion & attitude & thinking seem to change as knowledge increases, new practices are developed, systems & ways of doing things are changed over time, only to end up going back to something tried & tested years ago that worked but delivered as something new! I am sure it’s the same in science & climatology too!
Shame about the qualification in the article but one can understand their position & as someone noted the need to “CMA”!
Love this site. It’s so refreshing.

Leif
says: “If the correlations support one’s pet theory then clearly the data is good. If not, then clearly the data is bad.”
So how do you feel about the data showing that CO2 levels measured directly in the atmosphere around 1940´ies was higher than CO2 levels today?
Nobody i have seen can argue that the data is wrong. But the data does not fit into the so far normal view of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
And then data are just thrown away. Yes, Becks data.
How do you feel about that?
The article of the present thread shows evidence that it was warmer 6-7000 years ago. In order to discrediet the solar role, do you then accept the fact that earth was warmer 6-7000 years ago?
Finaly, you say that these findings from Greenland could not be 2000 years wrong, and/or that the solar readings canot be 2000 years wrong.
Maybe so. But if you examine study after study of temperature graphs in the last many thousand years, you will se that the datings are in fact differing quite markedly. So they cant all be right. There must be quite some unsecurities in the datings.
Here is a very nice collection of temperature/time studies:
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php

Sorry Im off topic..
http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/geomag/nmp/long_mvt_nmp2_e.php
Does anyone know of any more recent magnetic north sites? This ones interesting : stating “Changes in the magnetic field characterized by an abrupt change in the secular variation have been named “(geo)magnetic jerks” or “geomagnetic impulses”. Six jerks of global extent have occurred during the past century: in 1901, 1913, 1925, 1969, 1978 and 1992. ”
I wanted to do a little research into more current research:) I found another slightly more current nasa site but I would appreciate any credible sites additionally.. again, sorry for off topic.

Another recent paper that shows a prolonged warm (+1-2K) period some 6000-7000 years ago as well as MWP and LIA based upon borehole data.
http://www.geo.lsa.umich.edu/~shaopeng/2008GL034187.pdf
Huang, S. P., H. N. Pollack, and P.-Y. Shen (2008)
A late Quaternary climate reconstruction based on borehole heat flux data, borehole temperature data, and the instrumental record
We present a suite of new 20,000 year reconstructions that integrate three types of geothermal information: a global database of terrestrial heat flux measurements,
another database of temperature versus depth observations, and the 20th century instrumental record of temperature, all referenced to the 1961–1990 mean of the
instrumental record. These reconstructions show the warming from the last glacial maximum, the occurrence of a mid-Holocene warm episode, a Medieval Warm Period (MWP), a Little Ice Age (LIA), and the rapid warming of the 20th century. The reconstructions show the temperatures of the mid-Holocene warm episode some 1–2 K above the reference level, the maximum of the MWP at or slightly below the reference level, the minimum of the LIA about 1 K below the reference level, and end-of-20th century temperatures about 0.5 K above the reference level.

I’ve been looking at the AIRS video of rising CO2 and thinking it looked somewhat like the ozone maps I’ve been checking every day, not that they may or may not be closely correlated, but they do have something in common. The Sun’s radiation produces carbon 14, an isotope of carbon that ends up in CO2. During minimums, CO2 with carbon 14 measures rise. During maximums, CO2 with carbon 14 decrease. My observation of ozone is that it also changes with Sun exposure, decreasing during the day, and recovering at night (how I don’t know). It has also been theorized that cosmic ray bombardment destroys ozone. So it is true that cosmic rays, solar wind decreases, magnetic field weakness, etc, can change the chemical makeup of CO2 in the atmosphere. Is it possible that the AIRS map has not differentiated between CO2-14 with CO2-12 or 13 and is actually measuring the Sun’s production of CO2-14 as cycle 23 ramped down and we are in a slumbering minimum?

For some, this ice-free Arctic Ocean phase 6-7,000 years ago isn’t all that unexpected. For people like William Ruddiman the advent of agriculture was the proximate cause of this warming. The hypothesis goes that once humans developed agricultural practices that they engaged in the first of the all-out wars against the environment, clearing the land and burning things down to make way for the hoe and sickle. This released large quantities of CO2 and other greenhouse gases which prevented another ice age. Perhaps the climate sensitivity for CO2 is so high that even the relatively small impact of early farmers caused this ice-free Arctic scenario!
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ruddiman
Its a plausible hypothesis, and I imagine there is some truth to it. But I would almost imagine that impacts from humans would have been higher during a hunter-gatherer period than during the agricultural period. I would say this because a lot of hunter-gatherers seem to have used fire as a major environmental management technique (N. American prairies, Australia perhaps). It also hinges on a very large forcing from a small amount of CO2 and CH4 increase, which may not be plausible at all.

Lief,
“During the summer [i.e. the day] the very top few inches might partly melt to slush, but during the winter [i.e. the night] that layer freezes solid. The slush takes up air bubbles that scatter light, while the ‘night ice’ is clear. In this way annual layers build up that are easily counted. And none go missing, because at night everything is frozen.”
Yes it is now…but what about 6-7k ybp if it was possibly significantly warmer during the summer months?
Also, doesn’t ice flow down toward the coast? (i.e. calving is the result of this). I’m assuming it would flow down from 10,000 feet as well? Could this effect measurements?
I haven’t had a chance to read through this paper, but I think it’s might be relevant
http://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/people/lev/g6jgrpub.pdf

To Leif:
Frank: “There must be quite some unsecurities in the datings.”
Leif: “Yes, but not 2000 years for an age of 6000. Leif:”
Then howcome for example these measurements tell a little differnt story?
1) Humlum, Ice-sheet Greenland / Dahl Jensen 1998:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/SummitAndCulture.gif
2) South Greenland, Kaplan 2002:
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l2_qipisarqo.php
3) Venezuela, 2004:
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_cariacobasin.php
These studies finds on the contrary that the whole period from around 3000 to 7000 years ago is warm. So, i dont understand how you can say without any compromise that there cant be these differences.
And then you mention 3 times to me something about a “pet theory”. I dont know what your point is. If you can come up with something that supports that my opinions are merely “Pet theories”, it would be slightly more acceptable.
Then you point out, that even though it was warmer 6-7000 years, this does not rule out AGW. I definetely agree! But this and the Medieval warm period does indeed show that the condition right now may not be as alarming as IPCC claims. And it shows that we have “come back” from much watmer conditions and thus these “point of no returns-scares” seems unfounded.
This, you might not find interesting, but i do.

Leif, heres an example where results differ quite markedly from the three i showed you before. Just to show that YES, theres a timing problem between your solar irradiance graph and the article about warmth in Greenland – but still these results are quite different:
South Africa:
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_coldaircave.php
Not to mention IPCC that does not think there has been any warmer periods in the last many thousand years.
Therefore it certainly takes more just like that to rule out the sun as the temperature driver.

Comments from Piers Corbyn to Lord Monckton seem appropriate here.
“The problem with the approach of Dr Chameides and others (eg Lockwood) is that even though they know (or should know) that very many weather phenomena – eg world temperatures and many river floods (eg as excellently researched by Will Alexander) – pretty well follow the magnetic (‘Hale’) cycle – 22yr – of the Sun they persist in examining effects related to an 11 year solar cycle of particle and light intensity. So obviously half the time the world temperatures etc and solar activity will move in opposite directions (and note there are many modulations of this including lunar effects). So looking over 3 solar cycles as he does will not indicate much which I suggest is why he chooses to do that rather than have a proper look at more data.
The data is there so lets use it! ‘Conclusions’ of examinations involving single solar cycles or parts of single cycles do not in anyway undermine the massive evidence for solar effects. In fact they reveal either ignorance or a misleading approach on the part of researchers.
1. In terms of smoothed out solar activity (or proxy thereof) over many decades there is very good correlation between solar activity and world temperatures
2. In terms of shorter time scales the correlation between geomagnetic activity and temperatures is EXCELLENT over successive 22yr Hale periods (as a consequence of the magnetic linkage)
3. The reason why 22yr geomagnetic activity beats everything is because that is a measure of particles actually reaching the right places on earth
4. The main world temperature periodicity is the double sunspot 22yr period rather than 11 yrs
So do not fall for solar particles alone as the driver of world temperatures, nor for Cosmic rays which also have to have an 11 year effect which is not observed in long data sets. Magnetic linkage effects are crucial
The upshot of this is essentially that – and this is a simplified look and notwithstanding other modulations (of which CO2 is NOT one):
a) Now we are in a very low particle but relatively good magnetic connectivity phase this still means cooling.
b) When the sun moves into cycle 24 although particles will go up the magnetic connectivity factor will change to ‘poor linkage’ and still cause generally cooling; this trend will generally carry on to 2013
c) Other modulation effects (eg lunar) in fact suggest a more general decline in smoothed temperatures to around 2030* – and there are other suggestions to continue beyond that from some Russians and others. (not withstanding sub-variations) {*stated at WeatherAction Press conference Sept 30th)
Finally of course, as you frequently point out!, the above ideas are not complete but any amount of shortcomings in them do not give any support to the CO2 centred theory. The CO2 theory fails not because other theories might not have all the answers but because the CO2 theory has no answers and there is no evidence for it in the available data.
All best Piers”
I’m just going to add that I’ve looked at Piers stuff closely with his indexes for reading his charts correctly from his monthly forecasts and found that he can predict accurately from the sun and other factors six and twelve months in advance.
Cheers, Ed.

I’ll say it again: there is an abundance of evidence that the arctic was warmer in the mid-holocene than it is today
Tom

This study is interesting, but by no means sensational. It is already known that most of the Greenland coast and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago was ice-free in the mid Holocene, i. a. from subfossil finds of Bowhead Whales and Walrus (which need open water). However there does not seem to be any beach ridges or subfossils on the north coast of Ellesmere land, northern Axel Heiberg land and some of the northernmost islands to the west, so a small area of summer ice may have survived there. As for the Greenland Ice, there is evidence that it retreated some tens of kilometers at this time.
There is an intersting parallell to the paleoeskimos that died out about 4000 years ago. About a thousand years ago the Thule culture (direct ancestors of the Inuits) arrived in northwestern Greenland from the west. They subsequently spread and settled all around the northern and eastern coasts of Greenland during the MWP, but became extinct during the LIA. A few were still around in 1823 according to a british whaler, but when the next european expeditions reached eastern Greenland in the 1870’s they were gone. The inuits living at Scoresbysound now have re-immigrated during the (warm) 20th century.
crosspatch:
Polar Bears are older than the last interglacial. There is last interglacial fossil record from Svalbard and an early last glacial record from the Lower Thames.
As for their surviving the last (much warmer) interglacial when the Arctic Ocean was very likely ice-free in summer, why not? Somehow it seems to be overlooked that Polar Bears do perfectly well around Hudson Bay and Baffins Bay which are always ice-free for several months in summer and autumn. What they do need is winter ice so they can hunt ringed seal. As a matter of fact they avoid areas of very thich multi-year ice, since this is to thick for the seals to make breathing holes, and is therefore a desert for a polar bear.
Suzanne Morstad:
Yes it is indeed well-known to anyone familiar with Quaternary paleoclimate that, generally speaking, deserts expand during cold periods and shrink during warm periods (it is not quite true, always and everywhere). To some extent this effect is probably reinforced by the fact that plants need more water when CO2 is low. However it is not considered politically correct to mention such things in public.

Rather than taking a firm stand on solar impact on climate, a wise person or a true scientist might be willing to wait and make observations for the current “unprecedented” 😉 period of low solar activity.
Watch the CO2 concentration curve diverge from the temperature curve and find reasons for the discrepancies from revered climate models of Hansen et al.
Climate proxies are pathetic. Even the proxies that Leif uses should probably receive less deference than he appears to give them.

Dr. Lief, thanks again!
Anyway you look at it… isn’t it exciting? I hope that we all live long lives and we all know how this thing turns out. If I had it to do all over again, I think I would go into some branch of earth science.
Just for the record, I hope that we turn to various forms of solar and wind for our energy needs regardless of the status of the AGW debate. There are lots of other great reasons to do it.

Leif said, “The average sunspot covers 0.00001 of the Sun’s disk, so having 3.5 times as many doesn’t change the radiance of the Sun all that much.”
Yes but as Piers Corbyn shows on slide 18 of 30 of his powerpoint lecture http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1CHMG_en-GBGB291&q=hale+cycle+corbyn&btnG=Search&meta= (see second one down in the search list) “World temperatures and solar particles move together astoundingly well when averaged over the double sunspot cycle” this factors in the Hale cycle.
He goes on to say “When the IPCC include ‘solar variations’ they do not mean changes in particle and magnetic effect, they only mean light- which changes by 0.1% (cycle). The relative change in solar particle and magnetic effect in one solar cycle is 50,000 times larger”.
Now its likely you will find other ‘evidence’ Leif but it would cost you too much to admit you were making it up? I mean you should know about this being a solar physicist. Come on. Ed.

Changing sea level isn’t simply a matter of the sun and sun spots. It is also affected locally by isostasy, for which one reason might be loss of ice loading. Thus, if areas that were previously ice loaded lose their ice, from melting and so on, the land will bounce back up. However, the effect is very slow compared with the duration of melting events. Hence, it will take many years for the land to rebound isostatically to allow for the loss of load. Norway is still uplifting rapidly following the loss of its ice sheet 10 ka or so ago; so is Scotland, although at a lower rate, and there are other examples.
The effect is further complicated by the spatial dependence of what melts first and where, and where the water goes. Sea level change at the last termination was not steady and gradual, but came along in various spurts, caused by melting in different places and times. The advancing oceans also inundated areas in a non-linear way, depending where you were, so that some reconstructed sea level curves suggest generally a rise since the termination, whilst others show rises and gentle reversals, followed by another rise, and so on.
So, what might this imply for the raised beaches found in Greenland, suggesting water where we might not have expected it, and even the possibility of a largely ice free Arctic Ocean at the time? Well, probably not so, actually, although the inference of what it does mean isn’t easy either. For one thing, Greenland is also still rebounding, and the rates of rebound were huge at times after the termination, 110m or so in parts of southern Greenland, not sure what the figures are for elsewhere. Hence, even if the climate was warm 6ka-7ka ago, and there had been a fair bit of melt, it woudn’t take much extra water near a gently shelving coast to make quite a bit of difference to the shoreline; similarly, it wouldn’t take much rebound to move the sea away again. The transgression doesn’t therefore require massive melting of the Arctic ice, let alone an entirely ice free Arctic; likewise, the regression doesn’t require a huge cooling and reforming of ice over the sea.
So, an interesting set of results, but it doesn’t change that much when taken in the context of what’s already known about sea level changes around Greenland and the northern archipelago.

Turn over a new Leif,
1) Here Leif I show you, take an average over the double sunspot cycle. Piers Corbyn shows on slide 18 of 30 of his powerpoint lecture how well this correlates http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1CHMG_en-GBGB291&q=hale+cycle+corbyn&btnG=Search&meta= (see second one down in the search list called ALARM)
2) Leif you also said sunspot number varied (during Dalton’s minimum) “1810 where it was zero to 1816 when it was 50” earlier in this thread he said something quite different “First, a Dalton minimum cycle didn’t have but 50 spots, but more like 15,000”, which is it Leif?
3)Leif said “Another is that a Hale cycle extends from polar field reversal [at solar max] through the following polar field reversal and until the one after that [when the polarity change is the same as at the start of the cycle]” Its this one Piers is talking about. You did say this definition would make sense for linkage. So you sort of agree.
4)The reason geomagnetic activity is an accurate gauge is it shows what’s getting through opposed to your satellite references which are outside the earth where the warming/cooling takes place.
a)Your not talking about the same thing. The “relatively” good connectivity (you dropped that word) is there at the moment hence small changes get through well. You would need to study this a lot to get an understanding of what this means folks.
b) Then linkage will change to poor because of the start of the sunspots this makes the linkage less sensitive so it will mean continued cooling as more sunspots will not be getting through. Its like they won’t be resonating so well. Like a musical instrument through a sound booth.
c) No answer to that one Leif. Look out for the chill. Get yourself a new hat.
Overall I give that 5 stars for me and an imaginary reality plane (not markable) for you with no stars obviously. You don’t believe in them. Ed

Carbon 14 variation is used as a proxie to obtain information concerning sunspots. As carbon 14 is used to date many objects, then is this not now an in-accurate method for dating obects due to sunspot variation?

Thanks Frank,
Whatever Leif says I studied Piers closely and his forecasts work as he says once you factor in his indexes (its not like a normal forecast in that regard (it is an evolving science however). Yes an article on the current situation is to be found here http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=1831 Enjoy! Ed.

Frank et al another article http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=1771 Ed

Leif, He beats the met office all the time six to twelve months in advance. They don’t look up. Perhaps you should to Piers. Ed

Leif you know from John Coleman’s account of other American weather forecasters that you don’t keep your job as a weather forecaster if you start saying anything other than global warming. Check this video its all here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk8SSqc7ekM Own up!. Ed

John Coleman on why there aren’t many weather forecasters saying anything other than AGW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk8SSqc7ekM the BBC don’t say much else. Are you surprised? Ed

Meanwhile back at the farm, I wanted to reiterate my question concerning the AIMS data. Are they measuring overall CO2 or just CO2 12 and 13. If they are measuring overall CO2 they must consider that CO214 will increase during minimum. Leif, chime in if you see something I don’t have right. Anthony, you have emailed AIMS. Maybe you could ask? My hunch is that during the next maximum (assuming that the magnetic field strengthens), this AIMS map will show once again shades of green and tan instead of blooms of red.

Doing a little more looking at that 6,000-7000 years-ago period, climate change, cultures, and sea levels–I found this journal article on underwater archaeology findings along the Black Sea coast that might tie in as well.
http://www.athenapub.com/12blksea.htm
Here’s a bit of it…
“Archaeological evidence allowing the reconstruction of settlements along the shores of the western Black Sea (and supporting the above premises) can be divided into three groups: submerged settlements; submerged harbor sites and systems, including anchors and anchor material; and remains of cargo and ships, the former including metal objects and amphorae, the latter including only a few smaller vessels in the Bronze Age.
“Submerged Settlements: Surveys along the western Black Sea shoreline have led to the discovery of 10 submerged Eneolithic settlements, and at least 29 sites dating from the Bronze Age (fig.2). Most settlements that began their existence in the Late Eneolithic continued into the Bronze Age.
“The submergence of the settlements probably resulted from variations in sea level caused by the weight of glacier movements deforming the earth’s crust. These variations, in turn, were caused by climatic instability, including warm/cold spells that led to glacial melting and sea level rise, or to ice accumulation and sea level fall.
“During the Early and Middle Holocene, warmer periods led to the gradual submergence of the western Black Sea coast. At the end of the 5th millennium BC, the so-called New Black Sea Transgression caused the water to overflow parts of the mainland. During its second stage (mid-4th millennium BC) a 2-meter drop in sea level occurred.”
Hmmmm…

Leif Svalgaard (06:36:35) :
Nick Yates (01:24:05) :
That’s an interesting graph. I wonder if there is a version that just shows the minimums?
Without trying to be facetious, can you not just put a big blob on each of the minima shown on the graph and just look at the blobs? or maybe I didn’t understand your question…
Leif,
Sorry, I’m really not trying to annoy you (honest)!
I was trying to see if the minimums were a closer match to the temperature record than that graph at first appears. It’s just a bit too dense to see easily. Anyway, thanks for providing us lower lifeforms with your insights, it is appreciated. By the way the Spörer minimum seems to be regarded as a period of lower temperatures from what I can find.

Pamela Gray (18:59:23) :
“Meanwhile back at the farm, I wanted to reiterate my question concerning the AIMS data. Are they measuring overall CO2 or just CO2 12 and 13. If they are measuring overall CO2 they must consider that CO214 will increase during minimum. Leif, chime in if you see something I don’t have right. Anthony, you have emailed AIMS. Maybe you could ask? My hunch is that during the next maximum (assuming that the magnetic field strengthens), this AIMS map will show once again shades of green and tan instead of blooms of red.”
I have also been looking at the breathing of CO2 in the AIRS data, particularly the animations: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003562/.
It is not possible to measure ratios of CA14 to CA12 with the satellites. “What AIRS does is measure the infrared light emitted by carbon dioxide molecules.” Nuclear effects are tiny in the spectra of molecules and not detectable.
The radioactive CA14 is a trace in the total CO2 of the atmosphere, so not to be worried about except for tree rings and such, where measurements are made in laboratories equiped with proper nuclear instrumentation.
From wikipedia : 98.9% 12C is stable with 6 neutrons
13C 1.1% 13C is stable with 7 neutrons
14C trace and produced from Nitrogen
a percentage of a trace is still a trace, even if it increases 100% it will still be a trace.
So as long as the CO2 rises it will get redder.

I have a question that maybe Lief can answer. Is it possible that solar irradiance is “cumulative”? By that I mean, while it varies by 0.1%, does the Earth “store” more heat in the oceans and on land through the strong sunspot cycles, and it could take a few years to see the effect of low sunspots? I’m sure it can’t be that simple when you also consider the effects of PDO and ENSO (and other ocean changes) as well. I know you can find correlation where there really isn’t any, but:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/scale:0.02/compress:12/from:1900/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/from:1900/scale:2/plot/jisao-pdo/compress:12
When PDO is up, and sunspots are high, temperature goes up, when PDO is down and sunspots are low, temperature drops. The sunspot cycles seem to have been pretty strong as well, fitting in to my cumulative hypothesis, but then, CO2 may play a part as well.
It must be tough to be a climate scientist…every theory out there seems to have a flaw somewhere. I suppose the answer will end up somewhere in the middle.

Thank Lief, I need all the help I can get 🙂
The more I know, the more I find out I don’t know much!

Edward Morgan – Eh? You better take a cold shower.

So you don’t know what temperature it will be. I thought you knew everyone else was wrong.
Are you going! March 8-10 2009
“The 2009 International Conference on Climate Change will serve as a platform for scientists and policy analysts from around the world who question the theory of man-made climate change. This year’s theme, “Global Warming Crisis: Cancelled,” calls attention to new research findings that contradict the conclusions of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.”
I’ll be watching for all the stuff I already said to you.

Leif Svalgaard (06:39:57) :
Well, it seems to me that they have been out of alignment the last 20 years or so. Or even more, if one accepts my argument that solar activity in the 1850-70s is no different from 1970-present.
Let me explain where I’m coming from. In the early 1970s the only measurements of the ’solar constant’ was those of Abbot dating back to 1913-1956 [or so]. Abbot claimed a 1-2% solar cycle variation of TSI.
I also agree with you that the TSI is not the best candidate for a driver of climate, but that is not what I was thinking of. I was thinking of the correlation between sunspots and climate/temperatures. I like the idea of the suns magnetic field effecting cosmic rays and cloud formation because it’s simple, and albedo would have a much greater effect than raw TSI. This is why I was interested in the mimumums in the original graph you showed with the holocence. I’m just guessing, but if the cosmic ray influence is important then perhaps the depth of the solar mimumims is more important than the strength of the maximums. I.e. once the suns magnetic field is strong enough to block most or all? of the cosmic rays that influence cloud formation, it does not matter how much stronger it gets. Again back to the original graph, the mimimums in the Holocence were not as low as the earlier or later mimimums. I admit I only had a cursory look at the later part of the graph but that seemed like the mimimums might fit later on as well. Thanks for humouring me!

Dear Sirs,
Last autumn I was one of the press spokesmen for a symposium convened by HE Kofi Annan the former UN Secretary-General, and HE Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of European Commission. My co-press spokesmen for the symposium were Professor Robert Correll from Heinz III Centre, the lead Author of the Arctic Impact Report, IPPC and Distinguished Professor Jane Lubachenko the former President of AAAS.
The anthropogenic global warming is serious problem for two reasons: its climatic impact through warmer climate and changing weather patterns. on laboratory the greenhouse (warming) property of carbon dioxide is extremely well established fact and its infrared (heat) radiation absorbing capacity unquestioned. In addition, carbon dioxide like sulphur oxides causes acidification which disrupts biological ecosystems.
It is important to note the issue that the Arctic Ocean contains numerous deposits of methane clathrates. These deposits contain copious amount of methane and also carbon dioxide which are millions of years old. When the sea level had dropped towards the end of the last ice age many of these old deposits discharged into the atmosphere containing only carbon-12 and carbon-13 whereas the phenomenally cold oceans around world had almost insatiable capacity to mop up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This would easily lead into situation of carbon-14 dilution where the proportion of this substance appears less than the other two isotopes because its production due to cosmic rays occurs at relatively stable rates. The largest known carbon-12 and carbon-13 releasing seafloor crater from collapsed methane clathrates measures up to 950 sq km. This is a massive hole on the ground and all this material of fossil carbon had to go up in air rapidly decreasing the proportion of carbon-14 to the amount of carbon-12 and 13.
For the authors of this article it is important to notice that ancient writings can be accurately dated when the characters, words and sentence constructions can be analysed. Most of the remaining ancient texts appear on stone-based materials. However, occasionally some early writings have been preserved in biomaterials. In China there is an example of writing on biomaterial that has been carbon-14 dated at age 8,700 years old, however, when the characters are known to be from period 2,700 BCC, there appears some 4,000 years missing. We believe this is due to carbon-14 dilution from the methane clathrate venting events whilst cold seas remained still good carbon sink and their bioactivity sedimented away all carbon indiscriminately.
There are thousands of craters of variable sizes on the Arctic Ocean seabed as a result of depressurisation of sea bed during the ice age and the global warming that occurred towards the end of period inducing large releases of fully depleted carbon from the sea bed deposits. Therefore, there are factors that I would not account carbon-14 as reliable in the extreme North where these sources of ancient geocarbon were so predominant.
I also would like to draw attention to the possibility of glaciations in Greenland producing significant ice sheet mass balance changes and this lifting up and drowning sea side due to isostatic rebound or land subsidence.
Another important factor to bear in mind is the ice – volcano teleconnections and the possibility that the glaciation in Greenland could have been significantly contributed by fluctuations on volcanic out put on Mid-Atlantic ridge (Iceland – Jan Mayen section in particular). I have been advocating few experiments to check it out for the possibility of Mega-Surtsey event (the 1963 eruption that built new island south of Westmannajar, Iceland).
If ice age(s) were driven by Mega-Surtsey like major outpourings of volcanic rocks there is a possibility that the Icelandic seas could have been very heated and thus contributing enormously to the pile up of snow in Greenland. We are planning a new ice core drilling through Greenland ice dome to its base to check it out whether the ice sheet was geothermally deposited. If so, then the pre-glaciation bio detritus under Greenland ice will show signs of carbon-14, impossibility if the ice were to be deposited over 500 kyr due to slow deposition by astronomic forcing (Milutin Milankovits).
The geothermal heating and mineralisation is more recently come up as Apectodinium fern deposits (a plant that is native to the Amazon) grew in the vicinity of the North Pole. At the same time, the sediment core contains moraine drop stones which were carved out from the rocks by the moving glaciers and when the ice bergs then floated to the area where Apectodinium grew, the ice melted and the moraine drop stones got mixed into Apectodinium which requires constant +25C water temperature to grow. As Apectodinium was dated to Oligocene at 23 million years ago, it is now suggested that instead of Pleiostocene 2-3 million years, Greenland glaciations began further back in time Oligocene.
We suggest that as the tropical athomospheric conditions around North Pole for Apectodinium and presence of ice bergs, the source of heat is geothermal and most likely explanation is Mega-Surtsey eruption around Iceland seas. Volcanic mineralisation of sea water also introduced tens and even hundreds of millions of years old radio minerals from the deep earth and therefore the timings could be totally unreliable. But if we detect any carbon-14 under Greenland ice dome on the pre-glaciation deposits, we have then proven beyond doubt that this carbon-14 got there because ice was piled up due to volcanic eruptions around Iceland – Jan Mayen section.
Thus, the possibility of major ice – volcano teleconnection between the build up of volcanic deposits on the Iceland – Jan Mayen section of the Mid Atlantic Ridge and formation of Greenland’s ice dome needs urgently be checked out for the better understanding on the possible climate changes induced by anthropogenic global warming and its ice-volcano teleconnection.
Yours sincerely,
Veli Albert Kallio, FRGS
Frozen Isthmuses’ Protection Campaign
of the Arctic and North Atlantic Ocean
albert_kallio@hotmail.com

BTW Lief, I really do want to know and I don’t have “beliefs” re climate change, I have suspicions, questions, and tentative conclusions, more like theories, on which I await further data collection. It seems like you are the one with “beliefs”, since you were so quick with a rationalization that really doesn’t make sense.
OK, down to a simple question. Since the climate has fluctuated many times since the glaciations began, why haven’t we seen the spikes in methane predicted by the warm scaremongers in periods warmer than today in the Arctic?

Leif Svalgaard (02:43:02) :
You are no bother at all and it is a pleasure to share what I know [or think I know] with you [and the general readership].
That’s very magnanomous of you.
Take, for instance, the LIA. It began well before 1600, yet solar activity when Galileo [and others] observed the spots during the first three decades of the 1600s was high [possibly as high as today]. During the early 20th century, temperatures peaked well before solar activity did, etc. For each of these mismatches [that reduces the df] an explanation can be cooked up: the temperature data is unreliable, aerosols, volcanoes, etc. But for each ad-hoc extra special pleading you have to add, the significance drops. Careful studies, e.g. by Lean and Rind find that no more that 10% of the climate variability can be correlated with solar activity.
It all goes to show that the climate is a complex thing, but whatever caused the LIA we at least know it was natural. Ultimately, the energy that drives our climate comes from the sun (barring some unknown glactic force). If, as you say, the direct correlation between the solar activity and the LIA is weak, then the question is what other natural variations exists on top of Solar variation that can explain the LIA or the Medieval Warm Period? I don’t expect you to answer that one 🙂
Until that is explained and backed up with good empirical evidence, then I don’t see how anyone can be sure that the late 20th century warming was both unusual and mostly due to C02. Thanks again.

“So, no conspicuous spikes are seen, as the additional methane simply drowns in the background.” -Lief
This makes sense, but what doesn’t make sense is why are we expecting a huge spike that potentially can lead to mass extinction, if we have already experienced far greater warming in the Arctic than today just a few thousand years ago.
“Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia’s northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane – sometimes at up to 100 times background levels – over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf.
In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through “methane chimneys” rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a “lid” to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-the-methane-time-bomb-938932.html
Why wasn’t this methane an issue in the past?

Leif, you re-awakened my latent df knowledge. I completely get why the few correlations there are don’t pass the significance smell test regarding Sun and climate now that you have reminded me of df. Small sample size and few data points taken from those samples = low df. My research was done on a small sample size that compared the effects of a standard signal against a new type of steeply ramped and gated signal set at different narrow frequencies (resulting in the samples being their own control), but we repeated the measures over and over again, giving us pages and pages of data and a high df number.
I would also bet that this low df problem cuts both ways in the climate debate, or it should. If AGW theory is also based on some correlations they found, they have the same problem. Very low df. That doesn’t delete the fact that some things happen (re: methane in the Arctic, CO2 absorbing properties in the lab). It is just that these smaller things and their measurements are buried in the larger and very noisy data.

“The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves..”
This very likely didn’t collect since the glaciers most recently melted, as you claimed upthread in your just so story. Second, the context of the question was this warming that most recently occured in the Arcti 4000 years ago that was far greater than today’s warming. And the methane time bomb didn’t go off.
It seems pretty obvious that, for this “time-bomb” to go off, a carbon sensitivity much higher than that which has been observed so far will be required. Prior to the recent era of glaciation, the Earth was much warmer than today, and the “time-bomb” didn’t go off.
Third, your reply is snark, you caught me out in a bit of careless writing. Good for you. It doesn’t change the basic facts of the matter.

The original question was about 4000 years ago, when the Arctic was warmer than today. Why wasn’t the methane released then?
No answer to this question except one that posited that all of the methane was trapped there during the Holocene since then, which is ridiculous. It is almost as if commenters are making it up as they go along.
It will have to get a LOT warmer for this time bomb to go off and this catastrophic feedback event has to be filed under “extremely unlikely”, along with large comet strikes, Betelguese (yeah, I probably spelled that wrong) going supernova, gamma ray bursts in the celestial neighboryhood, attack by an extraterrestrial civilization, the kind of risks we all have to live with as members of the human race that can’t be assigned a probability of zero.

I didn’t read all the 170 posts up to this point, so someone may have made the observation I am now making:
A raised beach on Greenland could just as well be caused by post glacial rebound of the crust (readjustment from the removal of ice load), which for instance in Stockholm amounts to an uplift of some 10 mm per year at present. I don’t know the rate of uplift in Greenland but it must have been, and probably still is, very significant. At the rate of the Stockholm uplift, 7000 years would cause a Holocene beach deposit to be raised by some 70 meters. On the other hand I cannot imagine that the NGU geologists wouldn’t have accounted for that.