Jeff Id at the Air Vent has been doing some interesting work lately. Before the NSIDC Arctic Sea Ice anomaly plot went kaput due to failure of the satellite sensor channel they have been using, they had created a vast archive of single day gridded data packages for Arctic sea ice extent. Jeff plotted images from the data as viewed from directly over the North Pole. It took him over 15 hours of computational time. An example image is below.
Jeff gathered up all the resultant plotted images and turned them into a movie, but placed them on the website “tinypic” where the movie won’t get much airplay.
I offered Jeff the opportunity to have it hosted on YouTube and posted here, where it would get far greater exposure and I completed the conversion this afternoon.
What I find most interesting is watch the “respiration” of Arctic Sea Ice, plus the buffeting of the sea ice escaping the Arctic and heading down the east coast of Greenland where it melts in warmer waters.
Jeff writes:
I find the Arctic sea ice to be amazingly dynamic. Honestly, I used to think of it as something static and stationary, the same region meltinig and re-freezing for dozens or even hundreds of years ā not that I put much thought into it either way. Shows you what I know.
This post is another set of Arctic ice plots and an amazing high speed video. The NSIDC NasaTeam data is presented in gridded binary matrices in downloadable form HERE.
The data is about 1.3Gb in size so it takes hours to download, I put it directly on my harddrive and worked from there. The code for extraction took a while to work out but was pretty simple in the end. This code ignores leap years. Formatting removed courtesy of WordPress.
filenames=list.files(path=āC:/agw/sea ice/north sea ice/nasateam daily/ā, pattern = NULL, all.files = TRUE, full.names = FALSE, recursive = TRUE)
trend=array(0,dim=length(filenames)-1)
date=array(0,dim=length(filenames)-1)
masktrend=array(0,dim=length(filenames)-1)
for(i in 1:(length(filenames)-1))
{
fn=paste(āC:/agw/sea ice/north sea ice/nasateam daily/ā,filenames[i],sep=ā”) #folder containing sea ice files
a=file(fn,ārbā)
header= readBin(a,n=102,what=integer(),size=1,endian=ālittleā,signed=FALSE)
year=readChar(a,n=6)
print(year)
day=readChar(a,n=6)
print(day)
header=readChar(a,n=300-114)
data=readBin(a,n=304*448,what=integer(),size=1,endian=ālittleā,signed=FALSE)
close(a)
if(as.integer(year)+1900<=2500)
{
date[i]=1900+as.integer(year)+as.integer(day)/365
}else
{
date[i]=as.integer(year)+as.integer(day)/365
}
if(i==1)
{
holemask= !(data==251)
}
datamask=data<251 & data>37 ## 15% of lower values masked out to match NSIDC
trend[i]=sum(data[(datamask*holemask)==1])/250*625
}
###mask out satellite F15
satname=substring(filenames,18,20)
satmask= satname==āf15ā³
newtrend=trend[!satmask]
newdate=date[!satmask]
After that there is some minor filtering done on 7 day windows to dampen some of the noise in the near real time data.
filtrend=array(0,dim=length(newtrend))
for(i in 1:(length(newtrend)))
{
sumdat=0
for(j in -3:3)
{
k=i+j
if(k<1)k=1
if(k>length(newtrend)-1)k=length(newtrend)-1
sumdat=sumdat+newtrend[k]
}
filtrend[i]=sumdat/7
}
So here is a plot of the filtered data:
Here is the current anomaly.
This compares well with the NSIDC and cryosphere plots. This anomaly is slightly different from some of my previous plots because it rejects data less than 15% sea-ice concentration. Cryosphere rejects data less than 10%. In either case the difference is very slight but since weāve just learned that the satellites have died and are about 500,000km too low, my previous graph may be more correct. I hope the NSIDC getās something working soon.
All of that is pretty exciting but the reason for this post is to show the COMPLETE history of the NSIDC arctic sea ice in a video. I used tinypic as a service for this 27mb file so donāt worry, you should be able to see it quite well on a high speed connection. It took my dual processor laptop computer more than 15 hours to calculate this movie, I hope itās worth it. Brown is land, black is shoreline, blue is water except for the large blue dot in the center of the plot. The movie plays double speed at the beginning because the early satellite collected data every other day. Youāll see the large blue circle change in size flashing back and forth between the older and newer sat data just as the video slows down.
After staring at the graphs above you think you understand what is happening as ice gradually shrinks away. Well the high speed video shows a much more turbulent world with changing weather patterns in 2007 and 2008 summer blasting away at the south west corner of the ice. Iāve watched it 20 times at least, noticing cloud patterns (causing lower ice levels), winds, water currents and all kinds of different things. Iām not so sure anymore that weāre seeing a consistent decline to polarbear doom, with this kind of variance it might just be everyday noise.
Maybe Iām nuts, let me know what you see.
No Jeff you aren’t nuts. Here is the YouTube Video, suitable for sharing:
Here is another video I posted on You Tube last month which shows the flow of sea ice down the east coast of Greenland. Clearly there is more at work here than simple melting, there is a whole flow dynamic going on.
Great video! Two things that stand out when you play the whole thing is that wintertime ice used to get thick off of Newfoundland in the winter, but in the last decade, not so thick. The other thing is that you can visually see that 2008, although there was more ice than in 2007, was still pretty low, historically. But let’s see what this coming year brings in the summer…..
Beautifully done. Certainly gives some needed perspective.
(Here’s some irony: there’s an add beneath this post advertising carbon offsets)
What would be really instructive is to superimpose jet stream archive data (they have it back to 1996 for the Arctic area) on this video.
Al Gore debunked!, whenever somebody says artic will melt in 5 years just show the video.
Not really historically. Historically would be 1000, 2000, or more years, even than is a snapshot in geological time. 20 or 30 years is pretty meaningless.
Congratulations on another terrific piece of work. It’s amazing how this seemingly simple change in presentation greatly enhances the ability to comprehend what’s really occurring in the Arctic ice cycle.
I would suggest that the reason the wind and waves can move the ice more in recent years is because it is now thinner.
The next step is to measure the angular momentum of the ice pack over time. I can see a lot of rotation in the later years.
Well done, that’s fantastic!
Hmm. Not much plot, but still way better than watching “Ishtar.” Definitely two thumbs up.
Nathan,
it is thinner because the wind and waves were moving it while it was thicker. In the last few hundred years it apparently has never been thick enough for a permanent ice cap to form.
NASA reported that the Arctic was losing ice at about 193,000km2/year up till 2000. From 2000 till 2007 it was about double that. Without the 20 years of thinning the higher loss after 2000 would not have been as large.
Of course, the loss has, at least temporarily reversed. Willing to bet your future on a short, incomplete, data set and study??
Fascinating. On my first view I noticed a prong of ice (in some years) growing eastward from Greenland at about 70 degrees N. or so. At least once either ice or clouds seem to break away from this. Others may have a comment about this. It is just my first look and observation. If you are watching other areas, say Hudson Bay filling with ice, you will miss this. I have some other things to do before dark so Iāll have to look again later.
Nathan (18:44:20) :
I would suggest that the reason the wind and waves can move the ice more in recent years is because it is now thinner.
I would suggest that thickness has very little to do with it. The thickness relative to mass and depth of water under it is miniscule. My experience with freshwater lakes and rivers suggest to me that if the forces are there to move it, it will move.
OT – Tomorrow I’m driving to Washington and will be attending the Third Int’l Conference on Climate Change Tuesday. – Cool!
Glenn @ NoFreeWind
I’m no expert but to my addled brain the little film-thingy showed ice reducing in extent in summer and expanding in extent in winter with virtually no difference from year to year.
What was also obvious was that the pattern of ice always depicted the face of Susan Boyle, but it is YouTube so I suppose that’s compulsory.
And now this is announced…
http://www.uticaod.com/archive/x1175994993/May-to-go-out-under-a-freeze-watch
Interesting. There’s not a single winter where the ring centered on the North Pole formed by Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Franz Joseph land, and Siberia isn’t packed solid with ice. All the variation is due to ice in the Atlantic and Pacific.
Thank you JeffID!!
I’ll be watching until mid September to see what happens to 2009 melt. Here’s JAXA today :
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
I’ve got my popcorn ready!
Nathan (18:44:20) :
I would suggest that the reason the wind and waves can move the ice more in recent years is because it is now thinner.
This is one of the many reasons why any recovery in the arctic sea ice should be noteworthy. The whole thing is just FULL of positive feedback effects. Low sea ice should lead to lower sea ice without any change in temperature. Furthermore, simply holding at a warmer temperature than was normal say, 30 years ago should lead to steady melting, year after year after year. Temperature should drive the first derivative of sea ice (in a simple minded model anyway).
Any reversal would be completely counter to all AGW theories. If anything the Arctic Sea ice loss should be ACCELERATING. That’s why Gore made his confident prediction about an ice-free north pole. From his point of view, it’s a sure bet.
If it doesn’t come through something HAS TO BE hugely amiss with his point of view.
Golly.
Try these truly amazing timelapses seaice pictures The Big files are realy worth Downloading
http://polynya.gsfc.nasa.gov/animations/amsr
Then for the southern hemisphere try the 480 MB file to watch icebergs on the move:
http://polynya.gsfc.nasa.gov/animations/amsr_south/
Nice work JeffId at Air Vent
For animations on the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps for last 21 days ~1mb AVI
For period Jan 2003 to date (not quite – to date) ~ 20mb AVI
Every day map updates on sea ice cover for the Arctic and Antarctic
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/amsre.html
Also more detailed area maps around both the North and South poles (see the route of the Russian floating weather station NP-36, which you can also Google for real time position and weather data). If there is grey streaks on the area your interested in, come back later, as it updates to fill in those areas.
Don’t forget that there is webcams in eg Antarctica – USAP McMurdo base (night time at present) :http://www.usap.gov/videoClipsAndMaps/mcmwebcam.cfm
And in areas such as Svalbard (Spitzbergen), Greenland, Moscow and northern areas of the US
me too tx Jeff
Just a nice piece of work. Thank you.
Nice video. So, even if the ice totally melts up there one summer, it only takes a few extra cold years to bring it back.
Great work, but audio is noticeably absent.
Recommend Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice” or Rainbow’s “Stone Cold.”
Whats with the odd effects on the Great Lakes (between Canada and the US near the bottom right of the map)? Lot of noise in the signal from what I can tell. Doesn’t match up well with http://ice.ec.gc.ca/App/WsvPageDsp.cfm?ID=11890&Lang=eng
So how does one go about saving the first animation to disk?
Well, I must say I couldn’t see a huge difference over that period between extremes that would suggest significant change that would bother me. How does one know this has not been the case for 000’s of years.
People seem to forget the big increase in sea ice that occurred 100,000 ya that spread to over land. Then the massive global warming that occurred 12,000 ya! without the CO2!
Like it.
What I observed was that the winter recovery is always to about the same point where open sea and currents can deliver enough “warmer” water to prevent ice stability. With a heck of a lot of extra cold, you could get a stable larger ice cover, but it would take a lot of cold and some changes to the major currents (like the Gulf Stream). Leaves me wondering just how hard it really is to have an ice age (and leaves me thinking that it is mostly on land and not so much ice cap extension over the ocean.
On the summer side, it just looks like you get a lot of melt, then a rapid recovery. Some years more than others but not a lot of trend. My impression was that even if you melted the whole thing in summer, one month later it’s icing up again and 3 to 4 months later the whole thing is frozen again. Big deal…
In both cases, I don’t see the opportunity for a whole lot of time x albedo change. The minimal ice is not for long, and the maximum ice is not much more maximum. The bounds are fairly similar on a 2 or 3 year average (i.e. an extreme seems to be a “one off” in any given year) and the bulk of the time is spent in the transition phase so you’re talking more like a week or two early / late. So you could model this as “normal” plus a week or two at the low end when “melting a lot” or as “normal” plus a week or two at the high ice end when “frozen a lot”. Somehow a week or so net variance just doesn’t get me exited. 2% of a year? I’d expect it to be lost in the noise, and it looks like it is…
Over all, it looks to me like an oscillator that saturates at each end. It’s going to keep right on oscillating even if you push it a bit one way or the other and dampen back to stability.
Jeff and Anthony,
Thanks for sharing this work it really does add some perspective. I think it is pretty clear that the noise is large. Perhaps someone a bit closer to statistical process control (SPC) could do a formal analysis as well. I am thinking that fitting a sinusoid to the average max min locations should suffice for a mean that is if we didnt just use the mean straightway. Then taking delta from that sinusoid would serve as the overall error. Plus minus two sigma or thereabouts should tell us significance of any single point positive or negative (of course we are limited by sample size but at least we would have some idea as to the significance of this whole ice extent thing). I guess if we were picky we could use chauvenets criterion as well. I may take a stab at it after I do some review please forgive me if someone has already done something similar. If anyone knows of similar work please let me know it has been a while since I did SPC. Just like in manufacturing there is no point in solving a problem that doesn’t exist. The burden of proof should be on the AGWers but it seems like all they can come up with are bird migration dates (which also seem to be in the noise band).
APE
PS @AEGeneral 1 vote for foreigner “cold as ice”
sorry just apply SPC on anomaly only as that is what anomaly is… my bad
APE
Nice work.
I agree with Nathan (18:44:20) the thickness of an ice flow has little to do with what happens to it. A current will move a 16″ deep raft as easily as a 6″ deep raft.
Currents around the N Pole are moving ice SE at about 2.5 miles/per day. The ice is not one big thing but a bunch of flows … some hundreds of acres in size … but the larger they are the more likely stress from conflicting currents will break them up. The sub Skate was able to surface at the N Pole in March 1959 by locating a “lead” (crack in an ice flow which was refrozen but with much thinner ice) … these will always appear within a few days given the ice is in flows (with leads separating them) and on the move.
That video does a great job in showing yearly fluctuations. A similar time lapse on ice flows (showing how they formed, broke up, and moved) would clear up a lot more.
Comparison between 1989 and 2009:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3314/3580973564_c2a4d7ba66_o.jpg
(I sent this to the Accuweather blog in a post that compares Arctic ice the last 10 years, but the comment wasn’t published now.)
Interesting story of the Resolute.
Abandoned in the Northern Route of the NW Passage it floated out all by itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Resolute_(1850)
I also just saw that NSIDC has 2 sigma area bands off thier 79-00 data Ill check a bit further before commenting next time. although it seems like for SPC one should use your current average rather than cherry picking data sets
APE
So where do I find this video; I just have an empty white space.
George
Great job. Great movie. Interesting factoid: over the duration of the movie the polar bear population increased 300 to 400%.
Note to E.M. Smith: the Laurentide and Cordilleran Ice Sheets both originated in mountains, the former in the highlands of Baffin and Ellesmere Islands (~10,000 ft elevation) and the latter in the Coast Range of British Columbia (also 10,000+ ft). The ice sheets travelled huge distances from points of origin, rather than developing all over Canada simultaneously.
“People seem to forget the big increase in sea ice that occurred 100,000 ya that spread to over land. Then the massive global warming that occurred 12,000 ya! without the CO2!”
Actually from 20,000 years ago until the European Industrial Revolution there was a steady rise in CO2 from 180ppm to 270ppm. This is often ignored by Alarmists/global Marxists who want the West to take the blame for everything (especially George Bush – blame him for galactic collisions billions of light years away too)
As Asian and African politicians via the UN want the West to pay for the sins of industrialisation that resulted in CO2 levels going from 270ppm to 380ppm, the West should first insist that the East should pay for the initial rise in CO2 (which of course HAS to be manmade!) that was a result of the agricultural and industrial revolutions that began in Asia thousands of years ago. Fair is fair, right?
Clarification: over the 30 year period condensed into the 4 minute time-lapse movie, the polar bear population increased 300 to 400%. That’s more correcter grammatically.
Pamela Gray
I was thinking of your interest in jet streams last night as I watched an excellent BBC programme called ‘The Jet stream and Us.’
I didnt know that it was only first known about in 1945 when American bombers were sent to bomb Japan. They failed, due to what they described as a very strong wind which made their bombs deviate miles from the target when trying to carry out bombing at very high altitudes. Their superiors denied this and called them idiots, and all scientific opinion said it was impossible (sound familiar yet?)
Of course they eventually started to realise what the high wind was and began to trace it.
Ironically the Japanese themselves knew of it twenty years earlier and a non English speaking researcher published a paper about it in Esperanto which no one was aware of (perhaps another lesson that research in a language other than English may be throwing up interesting things on AGW)
The point is that the only civilians killed in mainland US by enemy action were as a result of the Japanese military attaching bombs to high level balloons and sent into the Jet stream, thousands of which reached the US. One of them exploded in Oregon killing five children.
Catch the programme if you can, which unfortunately degenerated into a global warming scenario at the end claiming the position of the Jet stream could alter which would make us here in the UK much warmer. Or altenatively if it shifted elsewhere much colder….
I totally agree with you about superimposing jet streams over the arctic to see if there is any correlation.
The UK has had two coolish wet summers over the last two years because the jet stream was in the wrong place. Lamb believed it fundamentally affected our past climate. I suspect its full impact is still unrecognised even though the science is so settled.
Tonyb
I had no idea the Arctic sea ice was so dynamic. Thanks to Jeff Id for all that hard work slaving over a hot keyboard. They say you learn something new every day. One of the reasons I love reading this blog. š
Jeff
Good work, great video and I agree with your comments.
I started to look at the Arctic only around two years ago having believed -like you-that it was this great mass of permanently frozen ice. Then I started to examine the historic records, of which many survive, which demonstrate that the Vikings are only one example of life in the Arctic region.
This is a rewrite of an earklier item I posted here, so my apologies, but it is important to get over to those who claim this melt period is ‘unprecedented’ that this is by no means so if we look at history;
1 The following link describes the ancient cultures of the warmer arctic 5000 to 1000 years ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lithoderm/Inuit_culture
2 This relates to an Arctic culture thriving in warmer times 2000 years ago
From the Eskimo Times Monday, Mar. 17, 1941
The corner of Alaska nearest Siberia was probably manās first threshold to the Western Hemisphere. So for years archeologists have dug there for a clue to Americaās prehistoric past. Until last year, all the finds were obviously Eskimo. Then Anthropologists Froelich G. Rainey of the University of Alaska and two collaborators struck the remains of a town, of inciedible size and mysterious culture. Last week in Natural History Professor Rainey, still somewhat amazed, described this lost Arctic city.
“It lies at Ipiutak on Point Hope, a bleak sandspit in the Arctic Ocean, where no trees and little grass survive endless gales at 30Ā° below zero. But where houses lay more than 2,000 years ago, underlying refuse makes grass and moss grow greener. The scientists could easily discern traces of long avenues and hundreds of dwelling sites. A mile long, a quarter-mile wide, this ruined city was perhaps as big as any in Alaska today (biggest: Juneau, pop. 5,700).
On the Arctic coast today an Eskimo village of even 250 folk can catch scarcely enough seals, whales, caribou to live on. What these ancient Alaskans ate is all the more puzzling because they seem to have lacked such Arctic weapons as the Eskimo harpoon.
Yet they had enough leisure to make many purely artistic objects, some of no recognizable use. Their carvings are vaguely akin to Eskimo work but so sophisticated and elaborate as to indicate a relation with some centre of advanced culture ā perhaps Japan or southern Siberia ācertainly older than the Aztec or Mayan.”
3 This link leads to the Academy of science report of the same year regarding the Ipiutak culture described above
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1078291
4 This refers to the Vikings living in a warmer arctic culture 1000 years ago
People might be interested in reading a very interesting book about the Vikings called āThe Viking worldā. It is a very scholarly and highly referenced book running to some 700 pages and deals with all aspects of the Vikings. It is good because it does not have an axe to grind, but deals matter of factly with all aspects of Viking culture and exploration.
There is a large section on their initial exploration of Greenland, the subsequent establishment of their farms there, everyday life, how they gradually lost access to the outside world as the sea lanes closed through ice, a record of the last wedding held In Greenland and how trade dried up. It also deals with Vinland/Newfoundland and it seems that it was wild grapes that helped give the area its name, it being somewhat warmer than today.
This is one of a number of similar books that record our warmer and cooler past throughout the Northern Hermisphere. Al Gore wrote a good book in 1992 called āEarth in the Balanceā in which he explored the changing climate.
The book āThe Viking Worldā is Edited by Stefan Brink with Neil Price Published by Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 33315-3
5 This refers to a warmer arctic 75 years ago recorded on Pathe newsreel by Bob Bartlett on the Morrisey during his journeys there in the 1920ās and 1930ās and reported in all the media.
http://boothbayharborshipyard.blogspot.com/2008/08/arctic-explorer-on-ways.html
Wednesday, 10th August 1932
The ship rolled heavily all night and continues to do soā¦.
The glacier continues its disturbances. No real bergs break off but great sheets of ice slide down into the water and cause heavy seas. About noon, the entire face of the glacier, almost a mile in length and six or eight feet deep slid off with a roar and a rumble that must have been heard at some distance. We were on deck at the time for a preliminary report like a pistol shot had warned us what was coming. The Morrissey rolled until her boats at the davits almost scooped up the water and everything on board that was not firmly anchored in place crashed loose. But this was nothing to the pandemonium on shore. I watched it all through the glasses. The water receded leaving yards of beach bare and then returned with a terrific rush, bringing great chunks of ice with it. Up the beach it raced further and further, with the Eskimos fleeing before it. It covered all the carefully cherished piles of walrus meat, flowed across two of the tents with their contents, put out the fire over which the noonday meal for the sled drivers was being prepared, and stopped a matter of inches before it reached the pile of cement waiting to be taken up the mountain. Fortunately, in spite of heavy sea, which was running, the Captain had managed to be set shore this morning so he was there with them to help straighten out things and calm them down.ā
As well as the events detailed under we have reports from the 1790’s onwards of massive ice melt which eventually prompted an expedition by the Royal Society, by which time it had frozen sold again. We also have the records of the Hudson Bay co which clearly show the fragile nature of the Arctic.
It appears the region has periodically warmed to amounts as much as, or greater than today. Whether it is as cyclical as is being claimed-60/70 years-is difficult to determine as there are large gaps in our knowledge from the end of the Viking period as the LIA made the area even more inhospitable.
A reduction in ice extent since 1979 is of little consequence if you look at the historical record of this region.
It would be really interesting to see a properly researched article on the Arctic through the ages so we can put current events into a better perspective.
Tonyb
A fascinating presentation which opens up many observations.
Would love to see a similar one on the Antarctic.
I still cannot fully understand why there is a SH/NH difference if there is true global warming whether it be solar or CO2 induced. Gut feeling is that there has to be some other factor such as more aerosol pollutants in the NH creating some albedo effect.
Without looking at it another dozen times and I know it is only a snapshot, but to my layman’s mind I would have thought that the winter outer extremities should have been also reducing. This does not appear to be the case.
King of Cool (01:17:45) : From my post above
Southern Hemisphere: Browse the AVIs etc in this directory but it is worth trying the 480 MB file to watch icebergs on the move:
http://polynya.gsfc.nasa.gov/animations/amsr_south/
Whoever also has difficulties with shock wave format videos,
just paste the following urls into h ttp://keepvid.com
and save them as .flv or .mp4 onto your hard drive
To Alexander:
I have deleted the video and request for comments on “Climate Change Denial Crock of the Week” from this forum.
I’m happy to comment on questions that are professionally and respectfully submitted, but when the title is so insulting to one’s intelligence, I choose not to have it here. It is akin to asking a person to leave your home that loudly insults you and your family to your face in quiet company.
If the video is available that has an alternate title and is not personally and professionally insulting, I’ll reconsider it.
Nobody here “denies” the climate has changed, we only question the attribution of cause as being 100% human. – Anthony
Fantastic work. The things that stands out for me watching the maximum and the minimums pulsate back and forth is not so much that it wont won’t entirely melt one northern summer – but that when it does it won’t look strange at all in the context of such a strong and variable cycle. If I was presented with such a visual representation for any other phenomenon I would feel reasonably confident that every now and then (say, over hundreds of cycles) there would be bound to be some near or even actual nils in the summer. It just comes across as that variable. That’s the layman’s high level interpretation anyway.
OT but try this:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2VlZDY1ZWIwODM5OTYzMWFkOGJkYmJjMWIwZTYyMjA=-
But a 300% to 400% decline in polar bear populations sounds so much more IPCC’ish. ..:)
I’m not sure, but if you run it thro’ slow motion, squint, fan your fingers in front of my eyes for a strobe effect, I think I can see three walkers with sleds, two canoes, and a sailing boat, all with Union Jacks on. Oh & an ice breaker stuck in the ice. Then again I probably just imagined it! Shucks.
AtB
To help better understand the phenomena now clearly visible in that magnificent video, Iāve extracted some relevant segments from my Journal of Energy and Environment paper (VOLUME 20 No. 1 2009)
The lunar nodal cycle and climate
The 18.6 year lunar nodal cycle (LNC) tidal periodicity has a pervasive role in climate change. It is the period of a full rotation of the Moonās orbital plane around the ecliptic, the geometric plane of the Earthās orbit around the Sun. It is the clearest tidal signal in the thousands of time series analysed.
The LNC encodes information about the Moon, Earth, Sun geometry that relates to tidal extremes, at least at high latitudes. It defines how the angle of the Moonās orbit to the Earthās equatorial plane combines with, or partially cancels out, the tilt in the Earthās axis. From the perspective of an observer on the Earth, during the LNC the Moon moves along a northern latitude about ten degrees from a position about 18.5 degrees north of the equator to one that is 28.5 degrees, which it reaches after 18.6 years.
The regular sequence of eclipses is a result of the regular, highly predictable rotation of the plane of the Moonās orbit round the Earth. It has been known since ancient times that eclipses occurred in regular predictable cycles of a little more than 18 years. This period is known as the Saros cycle.
Mazzarella and Palumba (1994) point out that bistable modes of oscillation with respect to time are well known in physical and engineering systems and have been extensively studied. This research from Physics and Engineering demonstrates that a sinusoidal force applied to any dynamic system induces sinusoidal periodicities in the system. Accordingly, the LNC induces bistable sinusoidal periodicities in the atmosphere (pressure, temperature and rainfall) and the ocean (temperature and sea level). The sinusoidal, highly stable 18.6 year LNC has a distinctive and significant effect on the Earthās climate dynamics.
The elongated tidal bulge necessarily continues to be aligned with the Moon as Figure 2 shows. The bulge moves to the northern (and southern) latitudes as the Moon moves northwards because of the LNC, being the furthest north it can get to at the 18.6 yr point. This last happened on September 16, 2006. Even though the amplitude of the LNC is at most 5 cm, a small tide over a long period has great power. The ocean currents generated by the northward movement of the tidal bulge, in conjunction with the rotation of the Earth through the bulges in the normal manner creating our experience of the tides, brings warmish equatorial water to the Arctic accelerating the warming that had being going on there because of other forms of solar activity as discussed below.
The LNC has maximum effect at higher latitudes, resulting in higher sea levels at these latitudes. It creates tidal currents resulting in diapycnal mixing, bringing the warmer equatorial waters into the Arctic. The LNC is therefore a major determinant of Arctic climate dynamics, influencing long term fluctuations in Arctic ice. As a result, it is a key driver of European climate. Da Silva and Avissar (2005) showed that LNC is unambiguously correlated with the Arctic Oscillation since the 1960s. The authors explain how the LNC tidal forces contribute significantly to the regulation of the Arctic Oscillation, which is a major driver of climate variability in the Northern Hemisphere.
5.3 Complex interaction effects between the lunar nodal cycle other solar variables and climate
The joint effects of the LNC and other solar variables illustrate that solar variables may interact to produce significant climate events, in this case the melting of the ice in the Arctic and higher sea surface temperatures at northern latitudes. In 2006 the LNC jointly with other solar activity during the preceding ten years provide an adequate explanation for the observed recent Arctic warming.
1. Camp and Tung (2007c) established for the first time as statistically significant that the warm ENSO (i.e. El NiƱo) warms the Arctic. Moderate to very strong El NiƱo events occurred in the following years since 1972: 1972/3; 1977/78; 1982/83; 1986/88; 1991/92; 1993/94; 1994/95; 1997/98; 2002/03; and 2004/05. The El NiƱo event which began in early 1997 and continued for about one year was one of the strongest ever recorded, both in terms of sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific and atmospheric circulation anomalies reflected in the Southern Oscillation Index. The last El NiƱo event started in September 2006 and lasted until early 2007, occurring at precisely the same time as the peak of the LNC.
2. Camp and Tung (2007a and 2007b) also revealed the surface pattern of warming caused by the Sun. Amongst other things, polar amplification is shown clearly with the largest warming in the Arctic (treble that of the global mean), followed by that of the Antarctic (double). Surprisingly, the warming over the polar region occurs during late winter and spring.
3. Camp and Tung (2006) found that there is a significant relationship between polar warming and the sunspot cycle.
4. Soon (2005) showed a statistically significant relationship between solar radiance and Arctic-wide surface air temperatures. Solar Cycle 23 peaked during 2000/01, having been preceded by the unusually strong 1997/98 El NiƱo.
5. Shirochkov et al (2000) report that the extent of Arctic sea ice is largely a function of solar variability. The extent of Arctic sea ice varies directly with all measureable indices of variable solar activity. Specifically, solar wind plays a notable role in the variation of the extent of Arctic sea ice.
6. The ice-albedo (i.e. reflectance) effect will amplify the increased melting of the sea ice resulting from the interaction of El NiƱo, solar irradiance and the LNC on the Arctic. The increased expanse of ocean warms further as it absorbs more solar irradiance. This will lead to more warming and more sea ice will melt. So the process would continue unless something intervened. Recent observations show Da Silva and Avissar (2005) showed that the LNC accelerates this warming processes. These processes enable a larger volume of liquid water to respond to the tidal forces. In addition, the changes in ocean stratification that follow improve the mixing efficiency.
Since the Moonās orbit is elliptical, there is a point when the Moon is closest to the Earth (the perigee) and a point where it is furthest (apogee). It is to be noted that the perigee (and therefore the apogee) is not constant. Both vary, largely because of the perturbing effect of the Sun. There is a 40 percent difference between the lunar tidal forces at the perigee and the apogee of the Moonās orbit. The Moon moves faster at the perigee, and slower at the apogee. This means that tidal currents quicken as the Moon approaches the perigee of its orbit. They are slower at apogee. The Arctic Oscillation (AO) is regulated by the solar cycle in a non-linear manner. Heightened and weakened solar activity activates the large Rossby and Kelvin waves. The effects of these waves on atmospheric circulation are intensified by the creation of Ozone during times of increased solar activity. The AO is stronger with more zonal circulation over mid-latitudes, especially in the European-North Atlantic sector, and more variable during the peak of the solar cycle.
The AO is also regulated by the peak 9.3 year and 18.6 year LNC tidal oscillations. The processes by which the effect occurs are different from those of variable solar activity. The tidal oscillation impacts on atmospheric circulation and on the large Rossby and Kelvin waves. It also impacts on the churning of the oceans. Nevertheless, the two solar processes interact amplifying each otherās contribution. The AO has a key role in Northern Hemisphere climate variability and its behaviour is largely the result of the interaction of the solar cycle and the 9.3 and 18.6 year LNC tidal oscillations. Berger (2007) found that solar modulation of the NAO is amplified by tidal cycles. He found that there is non-linear resonance between solar cycles and tidal cycles, especially the LNC and the perigean tidal cycle the effect of which is to amplify solar modulation of the NAO.
References:
Berger, W. H., 2007. Solar modulation of the North Atlantic Oscillation: Assisted by the tides? Quaternary International, 188, 24-30; doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2007.06.028.
Camp, C. D., and Tung, Ka-Kit, 2006. The Influence of the Solar Cycle and QBO on the Late Winter Stratosphereic Polar Vortex. Journal of Atmospheric Sciences in press.
Camp, C. D., and Tung, Ka-Kit, 2007a. Surface warming by the solar cycle as revealed by the composite mean difference projection, Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 34, L14703, doi:10.1029/2007GL030207..
Camp, C. D., and Tung, Ka-Kit, 2007b. Solar Cycle Warming at the Earthās Surface and an
Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity, submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research, and published by the University of Washington on Ka Kit Tungās departmental website,
http://www.amath.washington.edu/research/articles/Tung/journals/solar-jgr.pdf
Camp, C. D., and Tung, Ka-Kit, 2007c. Stratospheric polar warming by ENSO in winter: a statistical study, Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 34, L14809, doi:10.1029/2006GL03028521..
Da Silva, R. R., and Avissar, R., 2006. The impacts of the Luni-Solar Oscillation on the Artic Oscillation. Geophysical Research Letters 32, L22703, doi:10.1029/2005GL023418,2005.
Mazzarela, A. and Palumbo, A., 1994. The Lunar Nodal Induced-Signal in Climatic and Ocean Data over the Western Mediterranean Area and on its Bistable Phasing, Theoretical and Applied Climatology 50, 93-102.
Shirochkov, A. V., Makarova, L .N. and Volobuev, D. M., 2000. The arctic sea ice extent as a function of solar variability, presentation to the first conference of S-RAMP (Solar- Terrestrial Energy Program, 1990-1997 Results, Applications and Modeling Phase; A fiveyear (1998-2002) effort to optimize the analysis of data obtained during the Solar-Terrestrial Energy Program, 1990-1997). The conference was held at Sapporo, Japan, October 2-6, 2000. See http://www.kurasc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/s-ramp/abstract/s18.txt
Figure 2 follows:
(but it wouldn’t copy)
Aron:-)
Where did your figure for 180ppm come from for 20,000ya? Also I thought that @ <200ppm plant life would suffer significantly?
There is research that shows CO2 levels of around 330ppm 9,500 ya over Denmark taken from from lake deposits, so I suspect the level varies globally over all scales!
BTW, I agree with your last comments wholeheartedly!
Below is a link to the historical total accumulated ice coverage for Eastern Canada since 1969.
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/IceGraph/CwtClimChtSrvlt?region=ecoast&nrmlsta=1971&nrmlend=2000&sizex=1230&sizey=780&lang=en&showwarn=false&plotnormal=true&plotmedian=false&plottrend=false&plothilite=false&plotwarn=false&plotscaled=false&cachelife=60&errorpage=/IceGraphDisplay-GraphdesGlacesDisplay.jsf&charttype=stac&ssnsta=1969&ssnend=2009&histdtsta=1126&histdtend=0528&format=csod
First class post! Since we know there has been some warming over the last 20 or so years it’s not surprising there has been a bit of a downward trend.
Doesn’t seem like a reason to do a Chicken Licken, though!
Today’s local temp — 78F; forecast for Friday — 50F. Yikes!
Thanks for the support everyone.
There are several comments about jet streams, when I made the video I got to watch it in full resolution at a variety of speeds. I believe the cloud patterns and flow patterns from the melt are visibly different over the 2007 and 2008 years literally blasting away at the southwest corner of the ice sheet.
I have an idea to do a centroid of the sheet on top of the video. The centroid (center of mass) would show the ice being pushed one way or the other. Since there are two primary drains for the ice at the top of the video a change in ice level could simply be a result of change in direction of the weather patterns.
TonyB (00:46:53) :
I nominate Tony to be the Arctic historian. You seem to have the expertise, if you write it up I bet there would be a lot of interest. tAV would run it :D.
Great stuff Jeff Id.
Was it so hard that the NSIDC couldn’t have done this. I mean they only have dozens of computer-savy professions working 40 hours a week and getting paid for it.
Any chance that the data can be posted up somewhere in a spreadsheet?
Anthony please remove video link wrong link previous message thanks it should be this link here http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
Jeff Id ā You the man !!
Now, how about a similar effort for the Antarctic sea ice…
Anthony – Bravo on that rebuttal. Of course the climate is warmer than during the LIA (Thank God ! Those winters were brutal !). And you were quite precise in that statement that the warming is not 100% attributal to man. Some – yes – maybe at most a third, but most is entirely natural.
In reviewing all the eco-tourist follies, from strolls to the pole, to rescues off the Greenland ice, to stuck icebreakers, there is one bit of good news – none of the looney tunes tourists have ever tried to make nice with a polar bear. That’s one You Tube vid I hope we never have to see
OT, but one of those SC24 sunspot groups has actually become quite respectable…
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html
It is much more respectable, IMHO, than the sunspecs that have been counted as “sunspots” in the past.
“…A mile long, a quarter-mile wide, this ruined city was perhaps as big as any in Alaska today (biggest: Juneau, pop. 5,700).”
??? The population of the municipality of Anchorage as of June, 2008 was
279, 273 according to the Bureau of the Census.
The population of North Star Borough, which includes Fairbanks, is just shy of 100,000. Of course the area of this municipality is approximately the size of the state of New York.
I assume that these figures do not include the moose population.
Alaska is directly divided into municipalities: no counties. Areas within municipalities can be incorporated as autonomous political units.
Great piece of detective work.Things are not as the IPCC want them…
Anthony, I don’t think many here are offended by the word Croc, although I guess if we continue the sentence it would be offensive. I looked those videos up from greenman3610 on youtube and I think they would make and excellent topic.
I watched one on treehugger and it said NOTHING at all. Except that fossil fuel companies are the ones pushing the skeptical argument. What is going to heat my house, what is going to drive my car or power my electricity. I couldn’t imagine that our fossil companies are actually worried about their business going down from these alternative fuel companies. They are a mere pinprick.
Here are the greenman3610 videos.
http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610
“” Jeff Id (05:53:41) :
TonyB (00:46:53) :
I nominate Tony to be the Arctic historian. You seem to have the expertise, if you write it up I bet there would be a lot of interest. tAV would run it :D.””
I for one am interested. Maybe if it was done well enough, who knows, maybe Anthony Watts would give it a guest post? Just my opinion, and hope. š
Thanks for all the work Jeff, and to Anthony for posting it. Thanks toTonyB as well for your historical references. I remember reading about the flourishing population around the arctic circle some 2000 years ago, but it must have been at least 20-30 years since I read that.
Great work; thanks!
The rapid mode of atmospheric circulation entered in the the mid 1970s has consequences as Professor Marcel Leroux wrote to climatesceptics in 2007: “”When sea-ice is concerned, or any other phenomenon, the
(climatological) reflex would be to search a meteorological reason able to explain the melting …
In this case what can explain the summer melting of ice, over the eastern side of Arctic, and over its western side, while the central Arctic, in the prolongation of Greenland, still remains iced ?
Meteorologically speaking, the reply is : an advection of warm air, and of warm water, from South (Atlantic and Pacific).
Since Arctic is not a closed space, explanations of such an intensified advection constrain to examine the whole circulation around the Arctic area. Consequently, it appears unuseful to evoke a “local” warming … or an anomalous radiation which would forget, just, the Central Arctic … because meteorological phenomena are interdependant … in the framework of general circulation …”.
great video, thanks
Ryan O. (Steig et al falsified) has been taken to the woodshed by RC.
Gavin has taken out his ruler and gone pedagogic on him!
From the Front Lines –
The Boy of John
Things are changing in the Artic.
Like the private jet traveling HRH the prince of Wales, the crown princess of Sweden and the two crown princes of Denmark and of Norway are all concerned about global warming.
On the ice sheet of Greenland the 3 airs of the thrones of the Nordic countries all met in order to learn about global warming. The spring has arrived on the Greenland ice sheet. Despite this they got a chilly reception and spent tenting overnight in tents at 20 C below zero degrees temperatures.
http://www.dagbladet.no/2009/06/01/nyheter/miljo/kongefamilen/kongelig/klima/6498016/
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/kongelige/article3100339.ece
You can have the articles translate from Norwegian by going to Googleās translation tools.
Jeff Id, thanks for a uniquely memorable understanding of the Arctic. I have lived for two weeks sans computer; upon return not only am I refreshed from vacation, but I experience a youthful “Awesome! Totally Awesome!” due to your efforts. Breathing with the Arctic gives an amazing sense of Earth’s periodicies and oscillations within a short-term relatively steady state. We can depend on Arctic ice for the present — filling and voiding (partly), inspiration and expiration, even with wild winds (jet stream?) and tides influenced by lunar nodual cycle (thanks to Richard Mackey). Anthony, you, your blog, posters and commenters, all are Awesome!
Tony B, I second your nomination as historian of the Arctic.
Bill,
The data is 1.2 Gb – too large for a spreadsheet. If you want pieces of it drop a request at tAV and I’ll try to help.
====================
Dr. Steig has responded to our posts claiming that we are overfitting at RC.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/rc-replies-dr-steig-claims-overfitting/
Extremely educational. I can’t believe that it is only WUWT and collaborators who are able to produce stuff like this!
As an aging civil (hydro) engineer, with an extensive background in climate (it’s a fundamental input), I can’t believe how much I am learning on WUWT.
Thanks, Jeff – you done real good. Onya, mate.
Bill Illis (05:59:58) :
Great stuff Jeff Id.
Was it so hard that the NSIDC couldnāt have done this. I mean they only have dozens of computer-savy professions working 40 hours a week and getting paid for it.
Like this one?
http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_ice_animation.html
Well I couldn’t find the movie at home, but it works at work, which is a wonder because our IT people have youtube blocked.
Very nice Jeff, and well worth the time you put into it. Is there a way to save a copy of this thing to watch, when we want to, and can it be slowed down (if wanted) so we can look at details and timing ?
Geoirge
Phil. (09:13:04) :
I’m a fan of most of what the NSIDC does. The problem with the video you show is that you can’t see the ice flowing out and recovering every year. It gives a no information of the actual cyclic variation while highlighting summer minima and the last two years of decline.
It’s a different story IMHO regarding the future melting of the arctic when I see the strong annual recovery and the large annual variation.
Do you know when NOAA-17 will be on line?
==================
George E. Smith (09:24:32) :
This link has the file in download version. You should be able to find a player somewhere with slow motion capabilities.
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=e7660709e60db32bb94117dade8fc295e04e75f6e8ebb871
Jeff, you’ve made an excellent contribution to the conceptual understanding of the dynamics of the arctic sea ice. Even the thickest sea ice will fail in compression/tension when it has a couple hundred miles of current/wind acting on it. Allow an anecdote?: I watched an evu in Nome some years ago during dead calm. The ice was being pushed from somewhere, but from the perspective of the shore it was like it had a mind of it’s own. An alien invasion complete with the steady crunch-crunch of marching as the ice came ashore.
When the wind or current acts, the ice moves. Shows the Catlin (underwriters extraordinaire) ice transect idea to be really (I mean really) silly.
Arthur Glass (06:25:07)
I think you missed this part of the posting by TonyB (00:46:53)
“2 This relates to an Arctic culture thriving in warmer times 2000 years ago
From the Eskimo Times Monday, Mar. 17, 1941”
I’ve often wondered why the Eskimos stopped and settled on the Arctic coastline instead of continuing to migrate south. A much more tolerable climate at the time of their arrival would certainly be a reason.
Anthony:
OT but have you seen this?
http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/sunday/051709_1.wmv
These people are completely over the top. Talk about moving the goal posts. She mentions the scientist who, when she realize the consequences of her research either went to the toilet and threw up or wanted to.
I wanted to throw up watching this last night on CBC Sunday Report.
Anyone want to comment?
I got here late and don’t have time to read every prior post–if I’m repeating someone else’s idea I apologize in advance.
The climate alarmists crow about the ice melting not so much because of the ice itself, but because of secondary effects–drowning polar bears, coastal flooding, etc. Watching the video it struck me that the rising sea level argument seems ineffective at best when one has the visual experience of the arctic sea ice waxing and waning with the seasons.
Get this video out there to the masses.
Tim
Phil. (09:13:04) :
I’ve used AMSRE for this aniiimation wait for the 100 frmes to load and it will run quicker!:
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/9735/seaice09.gif
The trouble with your referenced animation is it does no show the ice flowing away from the pole to melt. This is essential for most on here.
In the same way they will not like the 2009 AMSRE animation beacuse this year it’s melting before moving!
Jeff Id (10:10:05) :
Phil. (09:13:04) :
Iām a fan of most of what the NSIDC does. The problem with the video you show is that you canāt see the ice flowing out and recovering every year. It gives a no information of the actual cyclic variation while highlighting summer minima and the last two years of decline.
Agreed, I was really addressing the criticism by Bill Illis of NSIDC, whereas in fact they have provided an animation tool and even animations on Google Earth. http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/archives/image_select.html
http://nsidc.org/data/virtual_globes/
With that tool you can see the month by month pulsing of the ice (don’t select fixed month animation). So NSIDC does do a good job of providing animations (probably where they let themselves down is in the design of their website which isn’t easy to navigate).
The daily resolution is better as it does really show the outflow through the Fram (the animation by JAXA a couple of years ago was really impressive).
You can view a slideshow of the AMSR-E images (0.5 sec interval works well) at http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi?lang=e
There are also some good animations at
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/App/WsvPageDsp.cfm?Lang=eng&lnid=43&ScndLvl=no&ID=11892
Itās a different story IMHO regarding the future melting of the arctic when I see the strong annual recovery and the large annual variation.
Do you know when NOAA-17 will be on line?
I’ve yet to see a recent strong annual recovery.
With reference to an earlier post, the Russian NP-36 has been drifting at an average of ~8.8km/day
Jeff Id (10:10:05) :
Phil. (09:13:04) :
“…..it gives a no information of the actual cyclic variation while highlighting summer minima and the last two years of decline. ”
It’s almost as if they were “pushing an agenda”. Gee, they wouldn’t do that would they?
Wouldn’t it be a shock if we got the data, the whole data, and nothing but the data? No slanting, no censorship by omission, no highlighting of data for political reasons?
Phil. (11:52:29) :
The NSIDC does an excellent job maintaining and making available data to the public. I’ve also found them responsive to questions, I take it NOAA 17 is an unknown.
—-
The Arctic ice set the record for recovery rate in the summer of 2007 according to my NSIDC data.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/arctic-sea-ice-increases-at-record-rate/
Now we can discuss thickness and other issues but the recovery rate was a 30 year record.
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/Icefilm_Arctic.avi
for Bremen as well.
Regards
Andy
>John Boy (07:49:49) :
>Ryan O. (Steig et al falsified) has been taken to the woodshed by RC.
They know what they’re talking about at RealClimate. The Mann Graph was solid work. š
(sarc off)
Jeff
Thank you! I liked it! Wonderful work! You were underpaid to do it! š
I have a suggestion, no criticizm whatsoever, no complaiant whatsoever, just a suggestion — you could make a second version (if you have the time) that runs a little slower, with music, and has 2 dates per year superimposed, i.e., perhaps , March 15 1979, September 15 1979, March 15 1980, September 15 1980, etc, etc, i.e. the dates near the maximum and minimum each year, whatever that best date is.
Thank you again for the video!!
This truly is the BEST SCIENCE BLOG!!!!!!
Tim F says:
Sea levels don’t rise because of declining sea ice. By Archimedes Principle, if ice is floating on water and it melts, it does not cause the sea level to rise. The concern for sea levels comes from the melting of ice sheets and glaciers (in addition to the simple fact that warming of the oceans causes sea level rise because of thermal expansion).
Sea ice is important in terms of the polar bears but another reason is that there is a positive feedback involving it…I.e., as the sea ice extent in summer decreases, less of the solar radiation is reflected back out into space and hence further warming of the arctic results.
What changes in winds or currents or (?) are sending the ice to disappear around Greenland? And, is there anything else, besides increasing Arctic temperatures, that might be causing those changes?
For there’s less and less thick perennial sea ice, because its disappearing around Greenland.
It was weather conditions in 2007 that led to the severe ice loss. This hadn’t happened before, in years with similar weather conditions, because there was then more perennial ice.
The summer feedback consequences extend beyond just the greater heat absorption by open water. Solar radiation will be reflected more from perennial ice. And less solar radiation will be transmitted through it.
2008 was the year of the lowest Arctic sea ice volume.
My awe is suitably inspired. Thank you.
Steve Hempell (11:15:37) : “Anyone want to comment?”
After consuming this confection my opinion of the new science has not changed. You want money? Influence? Toe the line.
Apart from the featured scientist having a book to sell and the media needing to feed an addled and addicted society ever more verminous effusion, “The powers that be” are gleefully rubbing it in.
Their confidence level is at a point where they could care less that some of their subjects can see that they have lied and that most of the world fully believes that lie. They may now openly reveal what they have achieved, proving that we are almost powerless to respond to the systems which control even the minutia of our lives.
Rebellion is no longer the solution to this egregious dislocation.
Spots on the sun today! Call Obama and Pelosi! Cap and Tax, the ice is melting, oh no!
While were focused on visuals, here is the live webcam at Arapaho Basin Ski area, (which is still open for skiing) with the summit in a snowstorm on June 1
http://arapahoebasin.com/ABasin/snow-conditions/web-cams.aspx
The video seems to have difficulty deciding whether the Great Lakes freeze over or not.
Steve Hempell
The guy was a very credulous interviewer wasn’t he? It would have been good if he had asked a few searching questions instead of not realising his guest had a book to sell.
I forecast last year that ocean acidification would become the new battleground as the Co2 hypotheses was not validated by temperatures rising in step with increasing c02 concentrations and other factors contributing to natural climate change became better understood (Clouds, ocean currents, solar variation, jet stream etc).
I think another article on ocean acidification on WUWT would be very timely-it should actually be termed as slightly less alkaline, but that does not have the same ring about it.
Tonyb
Tom in Co (15:06:57) :
While were focused on visuals, here is the live webcam at Arapaho Basin Ski area, (which is still open for skiing) with the summit in a snowstorm on June 1
Pike’s Peak got pounded last weekend, too, and is probably getting snow right now. My brother chose last Tuesday as the day to take the Cog Railway up to the top. Bad choice. Besides the snowstorm they railed into, the altitude sickness nearly too him and his family out for a few days (they are otherwise sea level residents).
The mountain is pretty cool looking right now… well, if it weren’t covered in clouds from yet another storm moving through.
Mark
Anybody know if the polar bears know about the effects of the Arctic Gyre? I’ll wager they do. They might, though, just be following seals which are looking for current driven ice motion to create breathing holes. Seems to me that aimless prospecting on the open ice by the bears would be a poor way to keep fed. Sure doesn’t work on elk in the Montana forests. Or for the Catlin expedition. Get some seals and bears in this movie. Kidding.
Look at this pretty interesting. Any one investigated this yet?
http://tech-know.eu/uploads/SUN_heats_EARTH.pdf
Joel Shore (14:38:27) :
“Sea ice is important in terms of the polar bears but another reason is that there is a positive feedback involving itā¦I.e., as the sea ice extent in summer decreases, less of the solar radiation is reflected back out into space and hence further warming of the arctic results.”
(1) Sea ice and Polar bears… Both Ursus maritimus and preferred diet share the same sea-ice thus, if computer-models have it right and sea-ice diminishes, would this not tend to favour a scenario that advantages the predator over the predated? Less places to hide and hunt may give rise to a new genus- Ursus Adipose- and an extinction of Seal!
(2) Positive feedback from decreased albedo resulting in an enhanced insolation that drives Arctic Warming to flood the planet with glacial and thermically-expansionist sea-level risings? Get real Joel, let us ignore the science ( easier for you than me – sorry mate but true) and look at the present.
We’re still around. It hasn’t happened before and, when it happens,it’ll have nowt to do with us. I reckon that you’re thinking – let me keep it polite – that it’s the sheer suddeness of man’s assault on Nature that will drag us into Climate hell. Mate, we are fleas on the back of a giant, and, however much it pleasures us to fantasize about self-importance, the worst we can do is to ourselves!
Tom in Co (15:06:57) :
The Chu Effect
Mr Watts: You are an excellent teacher. I hate to say this but you might be irreplaceable. Please, don’t ride in one of those little tin-can cars that save on pollution and risk your life.
(I am writing you from Santa Cruz, California, one of the religious centers of green superstition.)
“”” RoyFOMR (15:55:23) :
Joel Shore (14:38:27) :
āSea ice is important in terms of the polar bears but another reason is that there is a positive feedback involving itā¦I.e., as the sea ice extent in summer decreases, less of the solar radiation is reflected back out into space and hence further warming of the arctic results.ā
(1) Sea ice and Polar bearsā¦ Both Ursus maritimus and preferred diet share the same sea-ice thus, if computer-models have it right and sea-ice diminishes, would this not tend to favour a scenario that advantages the predator over the predated? Less places to hide and hunt may give rise to a new genus- Ursus Adipose- and an extinction of Seal!
(2) Positive feedback from decreased albedo resulting in an enhanced insolation that drives Arctic Warming to flood the planet with glacial and thermically-expansionist sea-level risings? Get real Joel, let us ignore the science ( easier for you than me ā sorry mate but true) and look at the present. “””
Please sir; why is there sea ice there in the first place ? There’s no sea ice where I live, but we have plenty of sunshine; yet it doesn’t get unliveable, and I’m sure we don’t have some special high albedo where I live.
I notice that it is also damn cold up there in the arctic; is there a reason for that. I would think that the people and creatures that live up there would want to gather all the sunshine they can muster so it isn’t so cold up there.
I don’t understand how on earth the presence or absence of sea ice could change the insolation; doesn’t that depend on the sun; and how would the sun know whether there is ice or not until the light gets there, in order to adjust the insolation level.
Would the presence of such a huge expanse of open very cold water sans sea-ice result in the removal of more CO2 from the atmosphere thereby resulting in less global warming, and wouldn’t that loss of atmospheric CO2 to the extra open water, also result in water vapor positive feedback that further cools the arctic by removing water vapor from the atmosphere as a result of less CO2 atmospheric warming.
Or does water vapor positive feedback only work in the warming direction?
I notice when it is warmer you get more clouds, and the warmer it gets, the higher the clouds are when they form, and if it is colder, the clouds form lower down, or you don’t get any clouds at all when it is really cold.
Are warmth and clouds associated in any way; it often seems that when it is nice and balmy at night there are high clouds formed in the sky; but when it is chilly cold at night you don’t get any clouds, or if you do they are lower.
Strange don’t you think ?
George
Richard Mackey (04:34:31) :
Thank you for posting this, I wanted to write some notes along this line at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/23/evidence-of-a-lunisolar-influence-on-decadal-and-bidecadal-oscillations-in-globally-averaged-temperature-trends/ but didn’t have time. And you did a much better job anyway.
If you haven’t seen that post, be sure to check it out and its mention of half-LNC cycle effects.
If you have a chance, please post it over there, a few of us to refer to the old posts from time to time.
I take away from this discussion that growth and decline of ice on the Arctic Ocean is way more complicated than I had suspected ā and I didnāt expect it to be simple. Even if the processes are totally figured out the MSM will not be able to convey it in sound bites and video clips. As research continues we need to provide some more āskeptically startlingā and easily disseminated views promoting the failure of the AGW message. The ice dynamic shown by Jeff Id is an excellent example ā compelling and easily internalized.
TonyB (15:29:46) : suggests another post on ocean uptake of CO2
A recent one is:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=alkaline
. . . now with 701 comments. If, as suggested, this becomes the new best thing of the AGW crowd there is a need for (similar to Jeffās ice video) a compelling and easily internalized āthis is not an issueā-moment.
So, Jeff, Anthony, and commenters ā Thanks for a great learning opportunity ā and keeping me from the chores; keep it coming, I really donāt mind. jfh
RoyFOMR says:
Actually, the history shows that sea level has been significantly higher or lower in the past. In particular, during the last interglacial about 100,000 years ago, sea levels were likely several meters higher. We will be hard-pressed not to equal or surpass the temperatures at that time later this century.
smallz79 (15:45:17) :
The sun? Sure people are investigating it. I’ve posted this video maybe 4 times now on it. You must have overlooked it.
George E. Smith:
I have re-read my post (and RoyFOMR’s) and I can’t find a place where either of us talked about a change in insolation. I did explain that less of the solar radiation gets reflected back out into space when there is less ice, but surely you understand the difference between this and less or more solar insolation?
No, it doesn’t work only in one direction but the problem is that you have simply invented something out of whole cloth and not shown any calculation to believe it is true. Even if the open water in place of ice does result in a somewhat increased uptake of CO2, it will not be enough to lower CO2 levels but will merely decrease the rate of rise. And, my guess is that any such effect will be small if it occurs at all. Do you have evidence otherwise?
Yes…There are some associations. In particular, nights tend to be coldest when the skies are clear to allow maximal radiative cooling. As for the level of the clouds, the cause-and-effect relationship that I know of works primarily in the other direction from what you talked about (although it may work partly in the direction that you discuss too). I.e., high clouds tend to cause net warming because they reduce radiational cooling more than they reduce the heating from the incoming solar insolation (although this depends on the optical thickness of the clouds…and it is possible for these clouds to cause net cooling if they are thick enough). Low clouds tend to cause net cooling because they reduce radiational cooling less than they reduce heating from the incoming solar insolation.
If you were correct that the cause-and-effect works the other way too…i.e., that warming tends to increase high clouds and decrease low clouds, then the result would be a significant positive feedback from clouds. Apparently, some of the climate modeling does predict this, but there is far from a consensus on this, which is why the cloud feedback remains the biggest source of uncertainty in the climate modeling.
” We will be hard-pressed not to equal or surpass the temperatures at that time later this century.”
Sounds like today’s temperatures aren’t unprecedented then… For some reason the small rise in temperature over whichever time period you would like to point out, does not me feel hard-pressed at all.
Wonderfull work guys. I think it demonstrates that we live on a dynamic planet and that so called climate change, is really just another way of saying “We wish things would stay as they are.” You’ve clearly demonstrated that change and variability are the norm in arctic ice. Keep up the great work !
Joel Shore sez:
Back up a minute. Back right up to the question of CO2=AGW? Because if you can’t demonize CO2, then the whole anthropogenic global warming conjecture fails.
Speaking of someone inventing something out of whole cloth, along with all the other believers in in the repeatedly falsified CO2=AGW conjecture [downgraded from a hypothesis], here’s the truth: CO2ā AGW.
Only AGW zealots continue to believe in teh evil CO2. [Yes, I wrote ‘teh.’ It was fun!]
Don’t put too much faith in a “calculation”. That’s what got the True Believers into trouble in the first place. Listen to Prof. Freeman Dyson: go with empirical evidence. Calculations that are not based on the real world are for the convenience of computer modelers — and for Catlin’s 3 stooges. [Same-same, IMHO.]
Svensmark and his teams’ work is fascinating but also critically important to understanding climate and our relationship to the solar system and galaxy. Thank god for all the wonderfull people, such as yourself and Svensmark, who are pushing the envelope and risking being an outsider.
Joel Shore (14:38:27) :
Joel,
You sound like a clone.
You speak of positive feedbacks. These only exist in climate models. Here are 2 videos on negative feedback in relation to clouds. And just to satisfy the clone in you—the theory in the videos has been PEER REVIEWED :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpFk0zTW-ik
Joel Shore (14:38:27) :
part 2
Francis (14:40:42) : “Solar radiation will be reflected more from perennial ice.”
Aside from the fact that there is no such thing as “perennial ice,” on what do you base that statement? Why should the albedo of “perennial ice” be any different from “first year” ice? What is that albedo? Is it 100%? 95%?
Just Want Truth… (18:00:07) :
Brilliant video!
Thanks.
RoyFOMR (15:55:23) :
Joel Shore (14:38:27) :
After restrictions were enacted on the hunting of polar bears, especially from airplanes (too much CO2 therein, I think), the total population began a recovery. Studies have also shown that some do have an alternative source of food — eggs.
http://www.amnh.org/science/papers/polar_bears.php
The bears have gone through lesser-ice episodes before. They likely will do so again. Further, if it can be shown that they do need a helping torso or two that likely could be arranged more cheaply than the non-helpful plans coming out of the Greens and the US Government. [In the State of Washington elk are fed each winter at over $100 per each per year as mitigation for fencing off their natural habitat in which we have built roads and houses.]
jorgekafkazar (19:38:09) :
Do you think the crystalline structure of the
snow ice, sitting on top of the sea ice, will
be the most reflective?
JAXA and DMi are different :
DMi
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
JAXA
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Off topic. I need some advice from Anthony or any other temperature measurement experts on constructing a bet on temperature rises.
It’s basically an over-under bet on average temperature for 2019-2021. I’m betting that the anomaly will increase less than .2 deg C compared to 1999-2001. The motivation for the bet is that I believe the total second order forcing for a rise in CO2 is zero while the other party believes they are significantly greater than zero.
I’d like to use a satellite anomaly series and could use some help in precisely wording the specification: e.g., which series, which altitude, which channel, etc.
Thanks in advance. I can be reached at kevin at dick dot org and will also check back here.
D. King (19:42:59) :
If you are interested in Nir Shaviv’s paper :
from his web site :
http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages
abstract :
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TJK-471854M-3&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F2003&_alid=349105989&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=5313&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=03a8c7135f97eb3ca2084cc15a78d8a1
PDF :
http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/articles/long-ice.pdf
Jeff Id (13:19:19) :
Phil. (11:52:29) :
The NSIDC does an excellent job maintaining and making available data to the public. Iāve also found them responsive to questions, I take it NOAA 17 is an unknown.
ā-
Sorry, I forgot to answer that I was in a rush this afternoon. It is unknown to me, but from what has been said I would think it would depend on how bad the quality of the F-13 data is during the cross calibration period.
The Arctic ice set the record for recovery rate in the summer of 2007 according to my NSIDC data.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/arctic-sea-ice-increases-at-record-rate/
Now we can discuss thickness and other issues but the recovery rate was a 30 year record.
Which is not what I understand from ‘strong annual recovery’, also that ‘recovery’ was followed by record remelt.
LonDog (11:53:36) :
Jeff Id (10:10:05) :
Phil. (09:13:04) :
āā¦..it gives a no information of the actual cyclic variation while highlighting summer minima and the last two years of decline. ā
Itās almost as if they were āpushing an agendaā. Gee, they wouldnāt do that would they?
Wouldnāt it be a shock if we got the data, the whole data, and nothing but the data?
I take it the reason you haven’t posted since my subsequent post was that you are shocked that that is exactly what they have done?
No slanting, no censorship by omission, no highlighting of data for political reasons?
The data’s there for anyone to present in the way they want with some tools provided to achieve that.
Thanks for the method for saving youtubes; could not get the first one to work though, any suggestions?
Second worked fine.
Tony B.
I had the opportunity to interview the late Reid Bryson http://ccr.aos.wisc.edu/bryson/bryson.html
He told me a story about his work in the Pacific theater in WWII. He was to forecast high-altitude winds over Japan. All he and his colleagues had were a few temperature observations from Siberia to the Phillipines. They applied the Thermal Wind Equation to the situation and came up with a forecast for the wind–190 knots. When they turned their forecast into their superior officer, he swore at them and ordered them to redo it. They came up with the same number.
The next day the superior came into the weather office and announced “Your forecast was wrong! The wind wasn’t 190 knots. It was 200 knots!
D. King (19:42:59) :
A shortened version :
A link to Henrik Svensmark works :
http://www.space.dtu.dk/Medarbejdere.aspx?lg=showcommon&type=publications&id=38287
E.M.Smith (22:46:28) : “…In both cases, I donāt see the opportunity for a whole lot of time x albedo change. The minimal ice is not for long, and the maximum ice is not much more maximum…Over all, it looks to me like an oscillator that saturates at each end. Itās going to keep right on oscillating, even if you push it a bit one way or the other, and dampen back to stability.”
Correct. The system is self-stabilizing, and via more than one mechanism. What many people ignore is the fact that the solar zenith angle never gets much below 70Ā° at the north pole in the summer. Have you ever driven down to the sea and seen the sun reflecting off the water in the morning or afternoon? As you can see for yourself, at such high zenith angles, the albedo of open water isn’t greatly different from ice.
Also, for much of the year, open water (which has an emissivity of about 0,993) will rapidly cool as it radiates to the black body temperature of the night sky, ~4Ā°K, at a rate roughly proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature. The higher the heat anomaly, the higher the rate of shedding it.
Remember, too, that it’s albedo times ice area that determines heat reflection rate, NOT albedo times ice thickness.
Next time, let’s talk about increased cloud formation over open water and its effect in moderating solar input to the Arctic Ocean…
kevindick (20:20:01) : “Off topic. I need some advice from Anthony or any other temperature measurement experts on constructing a bet on temperature rises. Itās basically an over-under bet on average temperature for 2019-2021…”
2019 to 2021? I’m sorry, that information will only be released to Party members. Please refer to the official IPCC GCM figures for those dates, instead.
OT.
I am watching everyday the creeping of ice area on the AMSRE_sea_ice_extent shown on the right. 2009 is sliding on 2008 and we are nearly on the blip. I am waiting to see if 2009 will blip, or will keep on sliding. They were talking of new corrections and maybe, if there is no blip this year, they have been already applied it only to 2009, and that is why 2009 landed on 2008 a month ago.
It is like watching Pooh sticks.
Kuhnkat
“Of course, the loss has, at least temporarily reversed. Willing to bet your future on a short, incomplete, data set and study??”
Temporarily reveresed? What? Why would think the decline has reveresed? Because 2008 was more than 2007?
Why do I have to bet my future? Sounds like someone is being alarmist.
RoyFOMR (15:55:23)
You’re right, it would probably be the seals going first, and then the polar bears.
But the second part of this story has already been on television, on NOVA. A momma polar bear and cub, without ice, trying to fatten up on shore.
They didn’t know about the salmon run, but they did find the berries. They were both gaunt and dirty when they curled up for the winter.
I myself do not want to watch the pitiful spectacle of the Polar bears competing with the Brown bears, on land. The one population of polar bears that has been increasing; was previously hunted. When the summer ice goes, the hunting seasons should resume.
George E Smith (15:01:31)
Methane is the worry, with Arctic warming. Methane from melting permafrost, that is already happening. And melting of the frozen “hydrates” under the Arctic sea floor.
Methane has about 20 times the greenhouse effect of CO2.
jorgekafkazar (19:38:09)
You got me there. I don’t know the physics of the albedo of ice.
But I’ve seen ice on large frozen lakes…that has partial transparency…part way in. And I’m imagining the solar radiation entering…part way in. So, its not reflecting off the surface.
And, the thick ice I’ve seen…has been a bright white. There’s no transparency, so the light reflects off the surface.
Also, I presume the ice thickness is increasing mostly from snow, from above. There isn’t Antarctica’s more exteme cold, that can add ice underneath an ice shelf.
So, one would expect more of this snow…on the multi-year ice…to be whiter, and more opaque.
just want truth
just look at this for a difference!
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
The question is which is correct? LOL
Whatever happened to the up-to-date data showing global temperatures plummeting?
@Aron (23:57:33) : says,
“Actually from 20,000 years ago until the European Industrial Revolution there was a steady rise in CO2 from 180ppm to 270ppm. This is often ignored by Alarmists/global Marxists who want the West to take the blame for everything (especially George Bush ā blame him for galactic collisions billions of light years away too)”
So Aron, you are postulating that 90 ppm CO2 increase over a bit less than 20,000 years is the same as 120 ppm CO2 over 120 years? I know you have accused the global Marxists of ignoring the above rise, but make sure you are not ignoring the rates. And what exactly is a global Marxists anyway? I mean, how would that be different from a regular Marxists?
@Anthony Watts (02:57:09) :
“Nobody here ādeniesā the climate has changed, we only question the attribution of cause as being 100% human. ā Anthony”
I don’t think anyone on the other side of the discussion attributes it to be 100% human either.
@smallz79 (15:45:17) :
That .pdf you linked (like may things on the internet) is crap.
Here is just one example (of many).
In the .pdf linked, Hans Schreuder states,
“At no stage though does water vapour add warmth to the atmosphere…”
Like all matter, when a phase change occurs there is heat associated with this phase change. When water vapor condenses from a gas to a liquid, heat is released during the phase transition (latent heat of vaporization).
Hans Schreuder (the author of the .pdf) may be a member of Mensa, but he doesn’t know #$%^ about physics.
Ben
@Alan the Brit
From the ice core data
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore.html
Of course plant life was suffering circa 20,000 years ago when CO2 levels were at 180ppm. It was still the ice age.
The data shows that CO2 levels had been rising at a steady rate from 180ppm to 270ppm until the last two centuries when we became more productive. The Alarmist camp would have us believe that CO2 levels were always stable and that the evil western white man and his free thinking culture is destroying utopia. The East is latching on to this and using the UN to force developed nations to pay lots of money to them for our sin of having developed stable productive societies. I look at it quite differently.
It was the East who started industrialisation over 5000 years ago. It was our Asian ancestors who started building cities, creating trade routes, chopping down whole forests, growing crops, going to war, etc. We just followed in their footsteps because they were too busy oppressing and killing each other, especially as their ancient secular cultures gave way to monotheistic dictators who crushed the dream of republics and democracies very early on.
I have always believed that we could have seen the freedoms, technology and prosperity we have around us today a long time ago (over a 1000 years ago) had those ancient cultures kept up their progress and had not succumbed to totalitarian religious rulers, increased superstition, crusades, genocide, oppression, and imperialism. We could have been much further along today, even achieving post-humanism and leaving the planet.
So if the East wants to blame the anyone for the West’s power today then they only have to look at themselves. Countries like the US and UK don’t owe anyone anything for having developed. We contribute massively to the world just by going to work, buying products and inventing technology that lifts people out of poverty.
Now these Marxist Greens want us to live under their centralised regimes in which everyone is constantly monitored for their resource use, taxed heavily, live on carbon rations, buying Indulgences and have to believe in Gaia and global warming. They’re making the exact same mistake humanity made before by turning their backs on science and progress in favour of superstition, guilt and prophetic announcements of doomsday. And the media backs them up just like street preachers who used to spread the dictates of kings and godmen.
this article on cloud cover might be worth a post
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/airborne-bacteria-discredit-climate-modeling-dogma
Karl (20:49:56) : replied to me about the jet stream:
” Tony B.
I had the opportunity to interview the late Reid Bryson http://ccr.aos.wisc.edu/bryson/bryson.html”
The jet stream is fascinating and the idea that it was only ‘re-discovered’ in 1945 illustrates how many things we probably still don’t know.
That was a great link. What a huge range of informed people we have posting here at WUWT.
I hope Pamela saw my initial comment and your reply as I know (and share) her interest in the subject.
Tonyb
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4810266.htm
Just Want Truth
Thanks for Vid I have watched some time ago it is very informative, but think I did not ask the question properly, hence I did not get the desired info. My bad.
After reading the above link ( only to about the half way point) I have come to think that this is talking about carbonizing a material to LOL absorb CO2 from an emmitter or dishcharge of a smoke stack as well as a filter for enclosed environments such as a submarine or space shuttle in an effort to clean the air or rid i of un healthy levels of CO2. They say to initially carbonize the selected materia it would require a high levels of in an oxygen and atmoshperic free chamber. Puzzling I thought by the AGWers talk that carbon is effected any warm temp maybe I miss understood. Second point In order to reuse this filter all that is required is to reheat it at a lesser high Temp for a period of time(15 min). Doing this would release all the absorbed CO2. What is the point of this filter for then??? On top of that it took a long period of 15mins at a higher than atmospher temps to create this whole process. What happen to ability of carbon to absorb and retain heat for long periods of time.
I am not a scientist, but am looking for other ways to prove or disprove the carbon’s ability to absorbe and the duration of time, if any, it retains such heat. Also, I have been doing some reading on the conductivity of carbon mixed with and seperated from the atmosphere. My reading leads me to a slight degree(pun intended), believe that any energy or rays that are reflected from the Earth’s surface (if any, I am still looking for anything related to the idea that the Earths surface heating the atmosphere buy a gradual release of heat and vapour into it) are cunducted, or trasfered from one carbon to another carbon until it reaches the outer most layer of the atmosphere. Let me know where to find any such studies please.
“So Aron, you are postulating that 90 ppm CO2 increase over a bit less than 20,000 years is the same as 120 ppm CO2 over 120 years?”
Benjamin, we don’t know how much CO2 is manmade anyway, but let’s say for the sake of discussion all the rise in CO2 in recent times and also the dates I mentioned is manmade.
You spoke about rate of increase above and asked if I think “90 ppm CO2 increase over a bit less than 20,000 years is the same as 120 ppm CO2 over 120 years”. My answer is the rate is irrelevant so they are the same for one specific reason : CO2 emissions are proportionate to productive industrial output. The greater the freedom humankind has the more his/her creative potentional is unleashed which results in the use of resources.
Now, classical Marxism does not frown upon this at all. Marx didn’t give a damn about the environment (he couldn’t even get being a good husband right) and wanted extremely heavy industrialisation with every human employed as parts of a gigantic human industrial machine.
Modern Marxists are different in that they have adopted the oppressive systems of rations, population control and monitoring as practised in the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, East Germany, Cuba, and Communist Romania as a means to redistribute wealth, create government positions for themselves, control the use of resources so that cultures they detest cannot develop, and control behaviour and beliefs in the name of protecting the planet. It’s thoroughly elitist, imperialist and religious fundamentalist behaviour.
Yes, I demand that someone go to China and stop the pollution now!!!! Remember the olympics? On your next trip, stop by the new USSR, woops, I mean Russia and tell them the same thing. The USSA has new dictator, OBAMA, soon everything will be banned and a new lights out curfew will be enforced to limit breathing activity.
marcia marcia wrote: “I have a suggestion, no criticizm whatsoever, no complaiant whatsoever, just a suggestion ā you could make a second version (if you have the time) that runs a little slower, with music, and has 2 dates per year superimposed”
and add singing polar bears and tap dancing penguins – but don’t go to any extra trouble.
Aron (04:05:55) :
Modern Marxists are different in that they have adopted the oppressive systems of rations, population control and monitoring as practised in the Soviet Union, Maoās China, East Germany, Cuba, and Communist Romania as a means to redistribute wealth, create government positions for themselves, control the use of resources so that cultures they detest cannot develop, and control behaviour and beliefs in the name of protecting the planet. Itās thoroughly elitist, imperialist and religious fundamentalist behaviour.
I can’t seem to recall a single country where “classical Marxist communism”
occurred and/or succeeded. Can you?
Here is another guy who has completely lost it.
‘Cars are weapons of mass destruction, responsible for the melting of the ice caps’ he says.
Please clear him up.
His e-ail address is at the bottom of the article.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=248
Aron:-)
Thanks for the feed. I have never heard that before from any source as the claim had always seemed to be that CO2 was pretty much constant for 650,000 years, or 750,000 years depending upon who says it & what impression they are trying to make. Of course the longer the time scale the more “frightening” it can be made out to be. As I have said before, in either case, it’s another way of saying there is more CO2 in the atmosphere now than there has been for 650,001 years! According to this kind of evidence, we should never have entered any ice-ages. However, I will say that as I understand it, there are losses in extracting ice-core data that can potentially lead to false (low) levels of atmospheric CO2 being measured, (Zbigniew Jaworoski).
Ben, FYI, š
many years ago there was a formal organisation called the “International
Marxists Group” back in the 60’s thro’ to the 80’s. It may even have had its origins in the 50’s. I know because I nearly joined them in my “yoof” when I wanted to rebel against everything & anything as I saw an economic system that was flawed! They all wanted to “empower the people” through Marxism & “set them free” from the “shackles of oppression”, ( I have loads of these statements) apparently. However, I have yet to witness such “empowerment & freedom” by this means. History does teach us some things, as a geologist recently said, ‘if you want to know about the future, look in the past’! I saw the light & didn’t join them but set on a more moderate path in life. They are probably still around & there is always “global” distribution in some form or other, no matter how small. I suppose my point is, that when the Berlin Wall came down, where did all the marxists go, many into the envirnomental movement where they could continue the glorious fight against Capitalism & evil mankind, hence co-founder Patrick Moore’s well known public disenchantment with Greenpeace, it became less & less interested in the environment & more & more interested in controlling mankind. (I also have a problem with the Greenpeace/FoE/WWF claims in the 1980’s that an area of Amazonian rainforest the size of England and Wales (around 58,000sq miles) were being destroyed each year!) Sure the “system” is flawed, what isn’t, but it works & can be patched & fixed! We are just an intelligent ape (frequently forgotten by some) & can sort it out & hopefully stand proud above the multi-millionaire Gore-illas of this world!.
Apologies to moderator for straying;-))
wws
“and add singing polar bears and tap dancing penguins ā but donāt go to any extra trouble.” And if those polar bears were to be playing Pooh sticks how happy Anna could be whilst Ben could theorise on the vagaries of currents and the chaotic effect of the random placement of benthnic stones and the inequality of it all…..
Green Left Policies devastate our planet and our future:
The doctrine is totally wrong.
CO2 is not responsible for warming our planet, polar caps are within normal parameters, temperature is going down.
Despit these facts the Green Left insists causing a Global Mess UP of Human Society and Nature:
This is another disturbing view devastating our future: Capitalism is destroying the earth
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/797/41049
I think the Green Left is destroying the earth:
Burning wood does not require a CO2 permit!
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=ardNIC7rNzQE&refer=uk
This is the only viable answer:
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2009/06/yes-to-energy-freedom-no-to-cap-and.html
Joel Shore: Thank you for reading my post and for your reply. I think you misunderstood my point.
Climate alarmists depend on ill-informed and gullible people to follow their “arguments”. A few shots of polar bear cubs and happy music is followed by a grim dirge, shots of melting ice, and an earnest narrator describing how the polar bear struggles to get from floe to diminishing floe. This is nothing but propanganda–alarmist nightsoil, and everyone that reads this blog knows it, including you.
There are people out there who, if asked, would tell you that they know that CO2 is now the 2nd most common gas in the atmosphere, right after O2. Those are the people who have swallowed, without question, what has been fed to them by the alarmists. What these people think is that the ice cap is shrinking and when it is gone the coastlines will flood. They’ve been taught that the ice cap had been fixed and immanent and is now (for the first time) melting because of the depravities of industrial man.
This video shows a dynamic and largely stable system. Watched with an open mind, it could cause even the dullest to question the alarmist party line.
Tim Clark (05:31:06) : “I canāt seem to recall a single country where ‘classical Marxist communism’ occurred and/or succeeded….ā
Yes, comrade! Ours will have the honor of being the very first! Oh, joy! Let us all now join hands and do the Dance of Universal Poverty…Oops, I mean the dance of Universal Peace. Smiles, everyone!
Just Want Truth… (18:00:07) :
You have posted it four times and every time it has been off topic. Many of us are aware of Svensmark’s theory and it has nothing to do with the iArctic sea ice machinations and it distracts from the hard work of our contributors do.
I am not totally innocent of this folly but I have developed the art of the lurker, Hold your input until the time is right.
WUWT has many new critical minds to accommodate and they of course can be forgiven for transgressions. You and I however have a special responsibility not to cause the moderators unnecessary angst.
D. King (20:13:48) : “jorgekafkazar: Do you think the crystalline structure of the snow ice, sitting on top of the sea ice, will be the most reflective?”
It depends on the level of contamination. Generally, fresh snow is clean and has good reflectance. Contamination and onset of melt drop the albedo considerably.
jeff Id, you’re OK in my book.
Holmes: And then there was the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.
Watson: But the dog did nothing in the nighttime!
Holmes: That was the curious incident.
“I canāt seem to recall a single country where āclassical Marxist communismā
occurred and/or succeeded. Can you?”
Thankfully no because that would REALLY be bad for our environment. When I referred to classical Marxism I only meant what we read in Marx’s writing.
Hey, the NSIDC arctic sea ice extent maps are working again.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html
By the way something on this post is not standards compliant, as it totally bolluxes up the page formatting in Firefox, but displays normally on windows Internet Exploader.
Larry
Is something amiss at the NOAA pole station buoy? I notice that the webcam stopped updating on 31 May and the temperature data stops on June 1.
@ Aron (04:05:55) :
“My answer is the rate [of CO2 increase] is irrelevant”
Why?
And honestly, my comment about Marxism vs. ‘global’ Marxism was more snarc than anything. I could really care less about folks political rants on here and “green communist agenda” nonsense many here love so much.
I am only interested in understanding the Earth’s climate. And when I read folks bloviating about the politics, I can’t help but think to myself that those folks must have an agenda they are working towards as well. Hello Pot, meet Kettle.
Ben
MartinGAtkins,
Careful there Martin, Apple might come after you for infringing on a trademark, iArctic sounds a little too corporate. Thanks for the chuckle.
“Benjamin P. (09:39:36) :
Aron:āMy answer is the rate [of CO2 increase] is irrelevantā
Why?”
Sorry Benjamin, I realised I had not gone into detail why the rate is irrelevant.
Firstly, regarding the timescales I mentioned, there’s no difference between an increase of 100ppm over 20,000 years and an increase of 100ppm in the last 200 years. In either example both occurred during and after the decline of ice ages (one major and one the LIA) and one would expect the oceans to release CO2 as temperatures climbed.
Then there is the CO2 emissions related to human productivity, organic decay, etc. Whether a rise in CO2 concentrations of 100ppm occurs over 10,000 years or 100 years, the effect is the same (the greenhouse gas related warming is so tiny that it matters little). We are well under the amount of greenhouse gases that would be required for dangerous global warming and there is little chance we’ll see a doubling of CO2 as predicted by James Hansen et al because we have been decarbonising our energy sources for generations (but only in recent times have we been able to afford to popularise low carbon energy).
What does matter is that human development should happen as quickly as possible as it increases the quality of life which reduces birth and death rates. Technology also increases our chances of fighting disease, protecting all living species, feeding all species, managing land better, reduces conflict, and helps us overcome natural or manmade catastrophes.
If we have prolonged, slow development (as the sustainability religion is trying to impose) then there is a chance that we never reach our goals because something somewhere along the way could hamper or prevent forward movement. It has happened before. Dictators, wars, revolutions, natural disasters have turned back the wheel of progress on many occasions in history. So we need to develop as fast as possible before history can repeat itself, which it is doing as we speak. Not only must we keep working hard but we also have to defend our freedoms and prosperity from those who believe we should feel guilty about it.
The Alarmists are saying we have to act quick to save the planet. I say we act quick to save ourselves from the totalitarian gene that is inherent in people with alarmist and radical mindsets. The faster we reach a point of technological, post-humanist no return, the less chance our detractors can turn back the clock and send us back to the trees.
(NB. By post-human I mean our next evolutionary step, which could mean cyborg but can also mean genetically enhanced and colonising new worlds. These are things that will be be opposed by some. If they do, they certainly won’t be able to call themselves progressives)
jnicklin (09:40:03) :
MartinGAtkins,
Careful there Martin, Apple might come after you for infringing on a trademark, iArctic sounds a little too corporate. Thanks for the chuckle.
Please accept my humble apology. My eyes are are blind iI cannot see, I did not have my specs with Me. š
Aron (10:24:56) :
So if I add 1 drop of food coloring to a liter of water per day for a week or 7 drops of food coloring to that liter of water on the first day, I should expect the exact same results over the course of the 7 days?
As for the rest of your post, I will certainly agree that progress, up to this point, has been good for humanity on the whole (although different areas enjoy different amount of progress). As an American, I have grown quite accustomed to my life style (meager as it is compared to some in this country), and very little will persuade me to willingly change it.
One thing you don’t mention at all is the population growth, the rising demand for natural resources and the fact that those resources are finite. Do you not think that there will be consequences as time progresses, population and demand for those resources increase, while the supplies of those resources dwindle?
I don’t buy into all the silly conspiracy crap that some folks post on here (Club of Rome or some other nonsense about “the green agenda is all about population control, etc) But the simple fact of the matter is, we will have some unprecedented issues arise regardless of what we do with our carbon emissions. Things like iron, copper, etc are all finite as is oil and natural gas. The biggest problem we are likely to face is water issues.
Water is rarely mentioned in the media, but it will be paramount in the next half century.
Ben
@Tim F (06:28:35) :
“There are people out there who, if asked, would tell you that they know that CO2 is now the 2nd most common gas in the atmosphere, right after O2.”
There are people out there that, if asked, can not find the pacific ocean on the map. There are people out there who thing drinking clay slurry will clean the toxins from their system, there are people out there who think that taking a pill will make their penis bigger. There are even people who think that intelligent design is science.
“Theyāve been taught that the ice cap had been fixed and immanent and is now (for the first time) melting because of the depravities of industrial man.”
There are many who are ill informed on both sides! You are not making much of an argument. Unless you truly believe that some of the more prominent climate scientists (that you all love to hate on this blog) truly believes that there is no natural variability to earth’s climate. So many here seem to try to make the case that folks on the “AGW” side of the discussion don’t recognize natural variability, and its silly to even say or imply.
“So if I add 1 drop of food coloring to a liter of water per day for a week or 7 drops of food coloring to that liter of water on the first day, I should expect the exact same results over the course of the 7 days?”
Analogies can be make for good conversation but unfortunately we’re talking about greenhouse gases, climate sensitivity, urban heat islands and solar radiation for which I have not been able to see any good analogies. The CO2 debate really stands on its own.
“I donāt buy into all the silly conspiracy crap that some folks post on here”
That’s because it isn’t a conspiracy. Dr Patrick Moore quit Greenpeace because he saw it as a neo-Marxist front with little science driving it. It has never been a secret anyway. Socialist parties simply took over Green language because how do you sell communism to free people? Just make them fear the future and feel guilt. Or drive companies into bankruptcy so that government takes over private industry.
Here’s some photos from a recent climate change rally. The language on the banners is classical Marxism and you need not be surprised to see George Monbiot and George Galloway’s Marxist-Islamist political party Respect involved.
http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/4125/n6856570652057161812271.jpg
http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/5419/n6856570652056715550433.jpg
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/189/n6856570652057166552740.jpg
“Water is rarely mentioned in the media, but it will be paramount in the next half century.”
Rarely, yes. But it is mentioned from time to time;
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazine/21water-t.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/04/24/climate.change.eskimos/
Pete
Benjamin P. (12:20:33) :
No, I do not believe that “prominent climate scientists” think that there is no natural variability in Earth’s climate. I am consistantly disappointed in them, however, when they allow their findings to be distorted and misrepresented by politicians and an agenda driven media.
Ultimately, the point that I had hoped to make was that the video in question is easily digested by the scientifically illiterate viewer. Perhaps that makes me a propandist too.
As I was reading Jeff Idās post on the Arctic Sea Ice time lapse video I had to take some time to reset plastic tarps (as dams) in irrigation ditches. We live very near where the stream issues from the mountains still with much snow. The water is very cold. In our sage-brush-dry valley the water is diverted across thousands of acres of pasture, timothy hay, and corn. A little farther away the variety of crops increases to include apples, cherries, grapes, and many others. Locally most irrigation is done by āfloodingā the fields. One neighbor has a central pivot system. These are more common elsewhere (more below).
I canāt show you this but try to visualize ā as a movie like Jeff did with the ice ā the fields in the Spring as the water is diverted from the rivers into major canals, than splitting into smaller laterals and arriving at the high point of a field. Then it is spread out over the warmed soil, seeps in, and then it can go below the root zone, can be taken up by the plant, or run out into another āwaste-water ditch.ā As it touches the soil, the color of the field darkens. When sufficient water is on one field the operator makes adjustments and the diversion then goes to another. In a few days the soil, ditches, and wasteways are filled with water. For a crop such as wheat the water will be shut off at some point, the soil will dry, the crop will mature, and harvest will begin. For some crops the soil will be replenished with water until Fall.
Along with many things that happen in this agricultural landscape the water warms as it spreads over the fields and much is evaporated or transpired directly to the atmosphere. So any water re-entering the streams will be warmer than when it was diverted and the local atmosphere becomes hazy with the introduction of the water vapor.
The irrigation projects of the western (US) states coincided with the apparent warming of the 20th Century. While the start dates of these projects were in the first half of the period, much of the progress occurred in the second half. This includes the widespread adoption of spraying rather than flooding, especially the central pivot system. A brief historical statement is here:
http://pivotirrigation.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html
For a look at the landscape of flood irrigation of the Naneum (alluvial) Fan use Google Earth and these coordinates [ 47.04 n, 120.475 w ]. Zoom out to about 22 km. Even though the photo is late October the green wedge of the fan is still visible. Yearly precipitation here is about 8 inches (20 cm).
Use Google Earth and these coordinates [ 46.32 n, 120.067 w ] to view the Yakima Valley southeast of the city of Yakima where fruit, grapes, hops and many other crops are grown using water from the river plus a few wells. Zoom out to about 43 km.
Moving still to the southeast, use the scroll function for about one-half of the screen diagonal. Look for where I-82 and Hwy. 395 reach the Columbia River. View at about 80 km. zoom. Lots of āfrench friesā grown here.
Want more? Use these [ 40.463 n, 98.722 w ]. This will take you to south-central Nebraska. Zoom out to about 60 km for a view of the area covered by irrigated fields. This image is July, 2006 ā earlier in the growing season than the Washington views.
These projects cause warming of water that is returned to streams and an increase in atmospheric moisture. A secondary effect is the use of CO2 in the photosynthesis of all the green plants you see in the images.
I can imagine, but canāt produce, a video of the filling of the fields with water each year with side-bar charts or graphs showing the rising and falling of the amounts of such variables as humidity, temperature, biomass, and CO2 uptake.
Iāve also read that the large lakes (reservoirs) and in-soil storage of water that is mostly in the Northern Hemisphere has an effect on Earthās rotation.
Is there a contribution to climate in any of this?
Jeff Id (13:19:19) :
Phil. (11:52:29) :
The NSIDC does an excellent job maintaining and making available data to the public. Iāve also found them responsive to questions, I take it NOAA 17 is an unknown.
Actually they just put it online today, you can see the calibration data at:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
John F Hultquist
The techniquie you describe of flooding the fields for an early crop is one that has been carried out in England since the 12th Centrury.
Some months ago several of us heree had a similar discussion concerning the huge amount of spray irrigation being carried out for crops (in Australia) and the even greater use of the technique for golf courses around the world.
It puts water into the air of which a percentage will evaporate before it reaches the ground.
What effect field flooding or spray irrigation actually had (if any) was debatable but I do remember there was a report from a govt agency about it-which was also inconclusive.
Tonyb
@Aron (13:26:06) :
“Analogies can be make for good conversation but unfortunately weāre talking about greenhouse gases, climate sensitivity, urban heat islands and solar radiation for which I have not been able to see any good analogies. The CO2 debate really stands on its own.”
Well, the analogy was about rates, something you seem to not care much about, although its the most important part of the debate.
@ Aron (13:36:06) :
Got it, some fringe elements in global politics trying to use climate change to kill capitalism. Not a conspiracy at all as evidenced by the young girl in your 2nd photo.
@Pete W (14:26:08) :
Yes, mentioned from time to time…but rarely (as you noted) is the key word. I mean, one of the stories you linked is from 2007. Folks here should read about the ogallala aquifer, because when that is dry, we are in for some tough times.
@ Tim F (14:36:22) :
“Ultimately, the point that I had hoped to make was that the video in question is easily digested by the scientifically illiterate viewer.”
Yes, the videos were fantastic. There is no argument from me there.
@John F. Hultquist (15:04:36) :
I live in Western Washington and have spent some time in the “fruit belt” to the east. I’ve always enjoyed looking at the various types of irrigation the farmers use.
As for this statement,
“Iāve also read that the large lakes (reservoirs) and in-soil storage of water that is mostly in the Northern Hemisphere has an effect on Earthās rotation.”
That I find hard to believe.
At Ric Werme’s request I’ve posted my LNC notes at the other WUWT discussion and added the Abstract of a recently publihed paper,
Yasuda, Ichiro (2009) āThe 18.6-year period moon-tidal cycle in Pacific Decadal Oscillation reconstructed from tree-rings in western North Americaā, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36, L05605, doi:10.1029/2008GL036880, 2009.
But I can’t get my jpg drawings of the LNC to copy
Benjamin P. (17:25:42) : āThat I find hard to believe.ā
http://internationalrivers.org/en/node/490 See third paragraph.
Also see:
http://books.google.com/books?id=oqpp4bbQTWcC&pg=PA209&lpg=PA209&dq=reservoir%2B%22earth+rotation%22&source=bl&ots=WXmqFCWYnI&sig=9IXmLzG4vfDookM5DS14u0L-YRg&hl=en&ei=DeAlSuiAEpbmsgPtl4GdBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10
Second and third paragraphs on page 209.
Both links come up when I search for [ reservoir+āearth rotationā ]
I did not say it was important. I said Iād read it.
Okay John F. Hultquist! Yes, following the most basic of laws of physics redistributing mass on the earth will certainly have an effect. But as your source says, its pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
I guess what I found hard to believe was that it would have any meaningful effect.
I had a good view of the sea ice west of Prudhoe Bay today as I flew at about 1200′. It’s barely off the coast now, clearly visible a short distance offshore. Surprisingly, I didn’t see any starving polar bears.
John F. Hultquist (15:04:36) :
Thanks for the interesting and illustrative post on irrigation in your area.
Is there a contribution to climate in any of this?
Lets do a back of the paper napkin estimate and see:
Water vapor is about ten times as effective as CO2 in the “green house” effect, and anthropogenic CO2 is less than 10% of the total CO2.
Now, if irrigation increases moisture by 1% average globally per year, it would be competing with CO2 in climate change (1/ 10*10 ). Of course this happens only on the 25% that is land, but that is where anthropogenic CO2 also happens, so they will still be competing .
Considering that huge areas on all continents are changed from desert type to humid type and that moisture when visibly rising is much more than a 1% increase, I would say that yes, irrigation affects the climate.
anna v (22:33:04)
p.s. to above.
Irrigation will affect at least as much as CO2 and possibly much more.
One would have to have an estimate of human area occupation. Wherever there are humans, houses, cities, farms and fields humidity rises because we are water consumers in general. If it is 10% of the land and we increase humidity by 100% of what it would be, that would be a 10% increase over all land.
Maybe that is why the southern hemisphere, not populated as much, has a stable temperature. One needs a computer model :).
Did you notice the “june bump” occurring in all years of the ice record
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
Any ideas for it’s cause?
Looking at the AMSR Ice Chart linked from here…
Why do all years seem to have a “bump” in their lines at right about now? Including the present year.
Maybe this has been up for discussion before…
Parameters used in the processing of the satellite data are changed on June 1st and October 15th to account for the changes in the surface of the ice (i.e. wetting) which cause differences in the signature. This switch can result in the āblipā you see.
Anna V,
Where are you from?
Maybe that is why the southern hemisphere, not populated as much, has a stable temperature.
I am from Florida, I personally know for a fact that there are a lot people inhabiting it. Northern Florida has Pensacola, Tallahasse, Jacksonville
Central Has Gainsville, Orange County, Daytona, Orlando, Tampa, Clearwater and the southern areas of Florida have Palm Beach, Melbourne, West Palm Beach, Sarrasota, Miami Key West.
Florida in all of it’s history has never had a stable and predictable environment, let alone Temperatures. I remember it snowing in Florida when I was young I thought it was the coolest thing seeing snow for the first time, in the late 1980’s. Every year other year we have freezes, I remember the big freeze we had sometime in the 1990,s that destroyed and ruined 10,000’s of acres of orange groves, and strawberries and various other crops. Then that same summer would be 90’s Degrees F. Florida is in the South and it sees it’s fair share of natural variations of Weather patterns and climate variability.
Just a little birds eye view of 30 years being a Floridian.
Living here you have to pay attention to the weather, or you could lose your house, family, etc…
Although for not less than 27 years our house has been here untouched.
Hi Anthony
hm, I knew you wouldn’t like this video. š
Nevertheless this animation is really impressive, I would like to hear your opinion on this, esp. where the flaws in the argumentation are.
Maybe you can get this animated data from anywhere else (ie the part starting at 1’15) and can bring it here to discussion later?
On the other hand this video (and others from the same series) also could be useful to demonstrate how ignorant some alarmists are, I’m sure Lubos Motl would like it ;-).
Best regards, and go on! You are doing a very good job here!
Alexander
REPLY: I think the source video is from NASA, find that and I’ll be happy to comment on it. – Anthony
Slightly off topic, anyone noticed the new NSIDC daily charts showing that arctic sea ice dropped very rapidly in May 2009 from almost on the long-term average to nearly come down to the 2007 minimum?
Any independent sources (human visuals etc) indicate that this has in fact happened and that there is no anomaly associated with the new sensor?
Hi Anthony,
sorry, I got no idea where to search for.
I ‘ll better ask the guy who made the video š
Alexander
REPLY: goto to YouTube and search on keywords – Anthony
Steve Hempell (11:15:37) :
OT but have you seen this?
http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/sunday/051709_1.wmv
The last gasp of AGW – acidification. One need not dig too deep to get an idea of just who authors such as Alana Mitchell are. A former feature writer for the Globe and Mail, Ms. Mitchell’s previous book “Dancing with the Dead Sea…” is described as a travel piece on global warming. Ms. Mitchell tells us breathlessly that “ocean plankton is the key to all life on earth.” And that the default sinner CO2 is causing the “acidification” of our oceans. Which kills plankton and when they die will kill all terrestrial life (or thereabouts) she adds gleefully.
That the climate change industry has become the cornerstone for pop media should be no surprise. That the CBC story cites no science or scientists is also standard procedure. What might surprise WUWT readers is Ms. Mitchell’s featured address to the Club of Rome in 2004 where she concluded: “Society needs to accept that evolution is on-going and we are not supreme.”
Unfortunately, more CO2 and acidification scares mask real oceanographic problems like reef degradation, pollution, dead zones, and over fishing.
Already got it, had the same idea!
Best regards
Alexander
HI Anthony,
Did you notice this article on the BBC today
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8079767.stm
By looking at ancient climate patterns, scientists have previously estimated that the East Antarctic ice sheet formed around 14 million years ago, burying and preserving the Gamburtsev mountain landscape under ice that is now up to 3km thick.
“You need a mean annual temperature of about 3C for the glaciers to form the way they did,” Dr Siegert told BBC News.
“The mean annual temperature in this region now is -60 C. So we believe that these mountains are relics of [glacial erosion] in Antarctica before the ice sheet was in place.”
He added that the findings provided an insight into the stability of the ice.
Antarctica’s landscape was mountainous before the ice formed
“It is a critical part of our Earth’s system,” said Dr Ferraccioli. “If the whole ice sheet collapsed, sea levels would rise by 60m.”
“There’s been a lot of climate change over the last 14 million years,” Dr Siegert said. “And what we can say about this place in the middle of the Antarctic is that nothing has changed.”
But, he warned, if levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide continued to rise, in around 1,000 years they will approach the same levels that existed “before there was persistent ice sheet in Antarctica”.
“This puts the ice sheet into the context of global climate and what conditions are needed to grow an ice sheet,” explained Dr Siegert. “The worrying thing is that we seem to be going back to carbon dioxide concentrations consistent with there being a lot less ice around.”
NOTE THE WARNING AND THE CATASTROPHIC IMPLICATIONS… “The worrying thing is that we seem to be going back to carbon dioxide concentrations consistent with there being a lot less ice around.”
That carbon dioxide is clearly implied to be the main driver of the ice sheet in Antarctica is an extremely odd comment from any scientist or PHD worth their salt: as everyone knows that the position of Antarctica has changed dramatically in the last 14 million years (and of course much more if you go back even further in time).
For example
http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/antarctica/ideas/gondwana2.html
….it seems kind of obvious, even to a child, that the shift from Glaciation to a huge Ice Sheet might have something more to do with the position of Antarctica than anything else?
Perhaps this woudl make a good main article on WUWT – it certainly illustrates an agenda driven selectivity on either the part of the BBC author or Dr. Siegert.
NSIDC is back up and they released their May Arctic Ice update today:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
@ Jeremy (10:43:37) :
“….an odd comment from any scientist or PHD worth their salt: as everyone knows that the position of Antarctica has changed dramatically in the last 14 million years (and of course much more if you go back even further in time).”
What a qualifier that word dramatically is! You’d think Antarctica moved from the north pole to the south pole in those 14 millions years.
The reality is though, Antarctica has essentially been in the same place for the last 100 million years.
http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/plates/100o.htm
Salt isn’t worth much these days.
Alexander (09:56:23) :
OK, I’ll bite, because I had started commenting on the disappeared one when it disappeared.
1) There are no clear dates on your offered video , as there are on the one in this post, making it difficult to know when one is talking about what.
2)If you stop the video at 2 seconds there is very little red, as little as at the end of the video, in area. The different location does not mean much when we look at the top post videos and see how wind drives ice over the year. So looking at the red I would say we are at a cyclical in years pattern .
3) who measured the red? Catlin like expeditions?
Hi Anna
the data are from NSIDC, as can be read at the lower end. Certainly it are NOT “Catlin” data but satellite measurements.
I am just a reader of this and other blogs, but I’m sure some folks here know how and where to get more information on this.
Best regards
Alexander
Supporting Jeff Id’s excellent work there is a video clip from Environment Canada showing an anomalous ice tongue development in the Cabot straits in March this year.
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/App/WsvPageDsp.cfm?ID=11930&Lang=eng
In addition the Ice berg count ( below 48 degrees north) from the International Ice patrol for the years 1978 to 2002 ( they don’t seem to have any data beyond this) roughly follows the ice development shown by Jeff’s video
Year No of bergs
1978 75
1979 152
1980 20
1981 63
1982 188
1983 1352
1984 2202
1985 1063
1986 204
1987 318
1988 187
1989 301
1990 793
1991 1974
1992 876
1993 1753
1994 1765
1995 1432
1996 611
1997 1011
1998 1380
1999 22
2000 843
2001 89
2002 877
Benjamin P.,
Continental drift is widely regarded and accepted as responsible for the formation of mountains (uplift), rift valleys (depressions), volcanic activity, the relative position of continents and seas etc. The formation or movement of mountains, rift valleys and oceans can influence prevailing winds, precipitation as well as ocean temperatures due to ocean current circulation.
Nobody could possibly be so naive as to think that it is reasonable or even responsible for an educated person to suppose that Antarctic climate change is down to ONLY one main variable alone – Carbon Dioxide – and worse – make statements to the BBC that imply this to be the case. That was my point.
I suggest you look again at the recent movement of Antarctica and with a more open mind to the possibilities of uplift, depression and changing air and ocean current patterns (any of which might have played a significant role – so why mention ONLY Carbon Dioxide).
Benjamin P.,
I would add that most scientists believe that it is the relative equilibrium between warm summer sun and cold winters that also has a heavy influence on glaciation/ice sheet retreat or expansion (obviously also heavily affected by ocean and wind prevailing patterns). If more snow melts in summer than is added in winter then, over the long run, you get accumulation of glaciers and vice versa.
If you think about it – small movements of a continental plate near the south pole will heavily influence the number of days with no sun at all. This is because days of no sun begin to occur inside the Antarctic circle and at the pole you have 6 months without sun. (temperatures drop dramatically at night) I estimate that each degree of latitude of movement towards the pole will increase the number of totally dark cold winter days by roughly one week. Clearly, taking an average over centuries or thousands of years then there is possibly some “tipping” point at which the ice sheet is either accumulating or melting. Another factor is that heavy ice accumulation (3 KM) will raise “ground level” significantly enough to further reduce temperatures (as you go higher in the atmosphere it gets colder)
Anyway, none of this is to say that anything I have said is definitely the cause of what the scientists in the BBC article discovered. My point is that it is just plain silly to omit all these factors and yet mention Carbon Dioxide alone.
Jeremy (08:53:13) and (09:28:26) :
Hi Jeremy, I am not a frequent poster, but I do post from time to time. I am actually a geologist and I know Continental drift (more accurately called Plate Tectonics) fairly well. That’s why when I saw your post, “Moved Dramatically in 14 million years” and knew it was not very dramatic at all. But I will certainly agree with your later posts, that Plate Tectonics has a HUGE effect on climate! No scientist worth their salt denies this.
Where I live, 40 million years ago I would have been sitting on a beach much closer to the equator. We have beautiful palm fronds preserved in our local sandstone which is a testament to our past warmer climate, and the paleo-magnetic data to show us exactly where we were.
The thing is when we think about plate tectonics and climate change, we are talking about processes which operate on timescales of millions of years. I think we tend to reckon ideas of climate based on the thousands of years (natural variability) and hundreds of years (for anthropogenic variability).
“Any day now” the Atlantic ocean will begin to subduct underneath north America. We will have a new orogeny (mountain building event…which reminds me of one of my favorite bumper stickers “Subduction leads to orogeny”) that will have a huge effect on the Northeast’s climate. A new uplift of mountains, a change in the configuration of the Atlantic ocean, a change in the prevailing winds, and a whole host of other variables. This will have a profound effect on climate. Although, any day now when talking about Plate Tectonics is within the next 30-50 Million years.
Another interesting thing about Plate Tectonics is its influence on biology and evolution. When you have a mountain range where there was not one before, sometimes critters on one side of the range take a different evolutionary path than their cousins on the other side. Plate Tectonics is a very powerful theory that plays a huge role not only on climate, but on the biosphere as well.
But again, it all comes down to rates and time scales in the processes we are considering.
Cheers,
Ben
AEGeneral
Great work, but audio is noticeably absent.
In space, no one can hear ice scream.