While this article is encouraging when looking at the title, they are still pushing that “ice-free summer” meme.
A late-winter expansion of Arctic sea ice is a good example of ice-forming dynamics that could keep the Arctic from hitting a “tipping point” in the near future.
Some scientists have predicted that rising temperatures could create a runaway feedback loop in the Arctic. Sunlight-reflecting ice sheets would give way to sunlight-absorbing water, driving up temperatures and melting even more ice. The Arctic climate would change so dramatically that winter ice couldn’t form again, producing planet-wide ripples in weather patterns.
But some research suggests that other, previously underappreciated forces may stabilize the melt before it’s complete. The Arctic will soon be ice-free in summer, and winter ice will decline, but it won’t suddenly become permanently ice-free.
“Everyone thought there would be a tipping point,” said Dirk Notz, a Max Planck Institute climate scientist. “But that’s too simple.”
…
Tipping-point evidence is stronger for western Antarctica than Greenland, said Notz. But even the absence of a tipping point wouldn’t necessarily be reassuring. “It doesn’t mean Greenland won’t melt away,” he said. “It just means it will happen gradually.”
Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/polar-ice-review/
Polar Sea Ice
Dwindling Arctic sea ice and crumbling Antarctic ice sheets are now a common sight. Whether they signal an impending tip, with rapid melts causing Earth’s seas to inundate heavily-populated coastal plains, is debated.
The process appears to accelerate itself: Warming ice melts, which exposes darker areas, causing local temperatures to rise further. But in the Arctic, another feedback may stabilize the ice, wrote Max Planck Institute meteorologist Dirk Notz in PNAS. Though most of the ice “will disappear during summer,” much of it will re-freeze in the winter. Arctic sea ice loss “is likely to be reversible if the climate were to become cooler again.”
But Notz is less optimistic about Antarctic sea ice, its undersides heated by eddying Southern Ocean currents. And the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have shrunk suddenly at least twice in the last several million years, a behavior that’s backed up by climate models. It’s “well possible that a tipping point exists for a possible collapse” for those sheets, wrote Notz. It could “render the loss of ice sheets and the accompanying sea-level rise unstoppable beyond a certain amount of warming.”
Climate ‘Tipping Points’ May Arrive Without Warning, Says Top Forecaster
From a UC Davis press release
Though, my favorite environmental tipping sign is this one :
There’s no GOOD NEWS in the world of AGW promoters. They won’t be happy till the Earth freezes over!
A form of cognitive dissonance. If the world starts cooling in earnest there will be thousands of “climate scientists” wandering around disoriented.
Which scientist(s) predicted the Arctic would “suddenly become permanently ice-free.”
“Gosh. What would be reassurring, continental glaciation?”
LOL
The picture is intriguing. What time of year was it taken? Is the ice actually flowing south? I’d greatly appreciate the whole back-story.
The tipping point for green mania has already past. The future is blue.
Sigh. Will there some day be a tipping point of alleged tipping points?
Gosh, this clever man from the institute smashed the everybody clever-folk consensus by his peer review article, while dumb folk like me got our stupid ideas that its not so simple by gawking at newsreel ofancient pre-historical subs surfacing at zero lat.
“Runaway feedback loop”
*roll eyes*
Have any observations in any area of earth science at any time, past or present, shown a “runaway feedback loop” and “tipping point” (aka point of no return) ??
Nope.
Well that settles that assumption/speculation, doesn’t it ?
“When claims do not coincide with observation, it’s best to toss out the claim and start again…”
These guys are reading from tarot cards.
Let’s talk about cognitive dissonance.
Time Magazine has a article about Pepsico’s Tropicana retooling their orange groves to reduce greenhouse gasses .
“PepsiCo will use the two alternative fertilizers for a multiyear pilot study at SMR Farms to see whether the switch could cut Tropicana’s carbon footprint without losing crop yield, which would raise overall costs.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1971379,00.html#ixzz0kpIGe9Ld
They manage to do that without mentioning the oranges that froze back just 3 months ago.
http://www.newser.com/story/77955/florida-oranges-freeze-solid.html
“Florida Oranges Freeze Solid
Cold wave inflicts significant damage on citrus crop
By Nick McMaster| Posted Jan 11, 10 4:36 PM CST| G
(Newser) – Florida citrus growers stayed up last night spraying their crop with water, and taking other measures to prevent freezing, as arctic air threatened to inflict significant damage on the orange crop. Losses to the citrus crop may hit 10% as the state sees its worst freeze since 1989. “There’ll be reduced juice yield on some of this frozen fruit, no doubt,” a rep for the state’s main citrus growers group told Reuters. “I would say there was considerable fruit, twig and leaf damage.”
I couldn’t leave it alone. The Pepsico/Tropicana farms fertilizer trials are taking place a SMR Farms.
Here is a 1st quarter grove update from SMR Farms
We began our 2009/2010 harvest season in late November. We started in some areas that experienced extreme freeze damage last year. Initial fruit quality was poor but improved during the harvest.
That was the end of the good news. As most know, the Manatee County area received an extended period of below-freezing temperatures, with many nights into the low 20’s. While we were far enough along in our EM’s to avoid significant losses, our Murcott Tangerines and Valencia Oranges were not so lucky.
Our Murcotts could not be harvested for fresh fruit due to freeze damage. We lost some of that fruit outright, and sent the rest to the juice plant, which will certainly help.
We have had to do salvage work in the Valencias and have experienced loss of pound solids in certain blocks, but appear to be OK in most areas. We’ll see as the rest of the season reveals its secrets.
We are very thankful that damage to the trees was minimal.
http://www.smrfarms.com/citrus/groveupdate.cfm
If we got a whole bunch of people together, sent them all to Greenland, all stood on on side, Greenland might tip over. And then where would we all be, when that ice all melted.
I have often wondered how ice that is 40 below melts if the temperature goes up by a few degrees.
Anna V:
What do you mean they will be. They already are with stories like this one.
I want to get this straight: Out of 30 or 40 (Several million years) glacial/ inter glacial cycles the Arctic had sudden warming at least twice. That would be at least between 5 and 10 percent so by climate standards there is a likely chance there will be a repeat sometime in the future.
Greenland and the West Antarctic Peninsula are both affected by volcanic zones and Greenland was more ice free during the MWP.
The pond in my back garden reached it’s tipping point last month. Once some of the ice turned into sunlight-absorbing water it created a runaway feedback loop and has been completely ice free for some weeks now.
We just have to hope against all the odds that even though the temperature will remain several degrees below freezing continuously for a week or so next winter that the surface still be able to freeze again.
O/T but good news, i think.
Excerpts from a small article in a MAJOR Chicago newspaper, regarding glaciers in Glacier National Park:
“He warned many of the rest of the glaciers may be gone by the end of the decade.”
But, here is the stunning last paragraph of said small article.
“The park’s glaciers have been slowly melting away since about 1850, when the centuries-long Little Ice Age ended. They once numbered as many as 150, and 37 of those glaciers were named.
Seems encouraging ?
I wish that somehow these “top” forecasters would have to put their own money on that which they speak.
Bob (Sceptical Redcoat) (13:02:19) :
There’s no GOOD NEWS in the world of AGW promoters. They won’t be happy till the Earth freezes over!
——
REPLY: Bob, even then, the AGW crowd would claim that the sudden surge of glaciation was but another sign of global warming!
Case in point:
http://www.life.com/image/95638883
Face it, these folks have far too much prestige/money/ego invested in their pet AGW theories to just go into the night without an all-out fight! I expect to see all sorts of bizarre/silly claims made in the coming months & years.
Meanwhile, I’m sure we will all keep an eye on the Arctic this summer! Cheers!
To many Weasel words for a real scientist to use. No quantification of likely hood of events happening –> no value in what he says.
Still plenty of cargo cult climate science around at the moment, but few and few of the public are listening to what they say.
Come to WUWT, if you want a more balanced view!
What did we figure a while ago, 200,000 years for all the ice caps to melt at the current rate? That’s well into the second ice age after the Holocene ends.
And the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have shrunk suddenly at least twice in the last several million years, a behavior that’s backed up by climate models.
Darn climate models are back-casting millions of years, too. Doubtless as accurately as they forecast. A warming climate is good, and even better with enhanced CO2 to make the crops grow.
‘Tipping Points’ – what a wonderful, scary, unprovable, non-demonstrable, concept with which to extract long term research grants from politicians, keen to show their green credentials.
With all the goal post moving going on these climate science types must have great upper body strength.
Bob (Sceptical Redcoat) (13:02:19) :
There’s no GOOD NEWS in the world of AGW promoters. They won’t be happy till the Earth freezes over!
When you start looking at the Holocene and correlate it to historical events, the rise of Homo Sapiens really, it does not look like warming to me.
What I see is the end of the Holocene Interglacial at about 500 AD and a couple pauses in the cooling some would call the Medieval Warm Period and Modern Maximum (which has ended). Other than that we are drifting down to the next Heinrich Event during this GLACIATION (just look at Antarctica!).
So the interval on Heinrich Events is around 7000 years … when did the first one take place in the Wisconsin Glaciation?
“The Arctic climate would change so dramatically that winter ice couldn’t form again, producing planet-wide ripples in weather patterns.”
How do they know? They haven’t given any evidence for countering the reality we see since 2007- the sun has gone quiet, temperatures began to decrease, and many more real life observations, but these wackos still keep pressing the tipping point alarm button.
They’ve got DDS (Debbie Downer Syndrome).
hope this makes it next to arch stanton