Here’s a bit of research that you don’t normally see in the MSM stories about glacier melt. It is backed up by a second and very interesting article (below) from 1947 in Geographical Review which says “Most of the worlds glaciers have been shrinking in recent decades.” Yet, news reports of the last decade would have you believe that glacier recession is an unprecedented phenomenon.
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From ETH Zurich: The most recent studies by researchers at ETH Zurich show that in the 1940s Swiss glaciers were melting at an even-faster pace than at present. This is despite the fact that the temperatures in the 20th century were lower than in this century. Researchers see the main reason for this as the lower level of aerosol pollution in the atmosphere.
In Switzerland, the increase in snow in wintertime and the glacier melt in summertime have been measured at measurement points at around 3,000 metres above sea level – on the Clariden Firn, the Great Aletsch glacier and the Silvretta glacier – without interruption for almost 100 years. As part of his doctoral work, Matthias Huss used this unique range of measurements to examine how climate change in the last century affected the glaciers. The work was carried out under the supervision of Martin Funk, professor and head of the Department for Glaciology at the Laboratory for Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology (‘VAW’) at ETH Zurich, who is also co-author of the study.
Solar radiation as the decisive factor
In its work, the research team took into account the solar radiation measured on the Earth’s surface in Davos since 1934. Studies over the past two decades have shown that solar radiation varies substantially due to aerosols and clouds, and this is assumed to influence climate fluctuations. Recent years have seen the emergence of the terms ‘global dimming’ and ‘global brightening’ to describe these phenomena of reduced and increased solar radiation respectively. These two effects are currently the subject of more and more scientific research, in particular by ETH Zurich, as experts feel that they should be taken into account in the climate models (see ETH Life dated July 9, 2009)
The new study, published in the journal ‘Geophysical Research Letters’, confirms this requirement. This is because, taking into account the data recorded for the level of solar radiation, the scientists made a surprising discovery: in the 1940s and in the summer of 1947 especially, the glaciers lost the most ice since measurements commenced in 1914. This is in spite of the fact that temperatures were lower than in the past two decades. “The surprising thing is that this paradox can be explained relatively easily with radiation”, says Huss, who was recently appointed to the post of senior lecturer at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.
On the basis of their calculations, the researchers have concluded that the high level of short-wave radiation in the summer months is responsible for the fast pace of glacier melt. In the 1940s, the level was 8% higher than the long-term average and 18 Watts per square metres above the levels of the past ten years. Calculated over the entire decade of the 1940s, this resulted in 4% more snow and ice melt compared with the past ten years.
Furthermore, the below-average melt rates at the measurement points during periods in which the glacier snouts were even advancing correlate with a phase of global dimming, between the 1950s and the 1980s.
Less snow fall and longer melt periods
The researchers arrived at their findings by calculating the daily melt rates with the aid of climate data and a temperature index model, based on the half-yearly measurements on the glaciers since 1914. These results were then compared with the long-term measurements of solar radiation in Davos.
Huss points out that the strong glacier melt in the 1940s puts into question the assumption that the rate of glacier decline in recent years “has never been seen before”. “Nevertheless”, says the glaciologist, “this should not lead people to conclude that the current period of global warming is not really as big of a problem for the glaciers as previously assumed”. This is because it is not only the pace at which the Alpine glaciers are currently melting that is unusual, but the fact that this sharp decline has been unabated for 25 years now. Another aspect to consider – and this is evidenced by the researchers’ findings – is that temperature-based opposing mechanisms came into play around 30 years ago. These have led to a 12% decrease in the amount of precipitation that falls as snow as a percentage of total precipitation, accompanied by an increase of around one month in the length of the melt period ever since this time. Scientists warn that these effects could soon be matched by the lower level of solar radiation we have today compared with the 1940s.
Reference
Huss M, Funk M & Ohmura A: Strong Alpine glacier melt in the 1940s due to enhanced solar radiation. Geophysical Research Letters (2009), 36, L23501, doi:10.1029/2009GL040789
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Here’s the supporting article in Geographical Review, available here:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/211127
h/t to WUWT reader “Jimbo”
“A glaciologist on the way to work on the Silvretta glacier ….”
These Swiss!!!
Fancy getting chilblains going out in that ice & snow just to take measurements!
So old fashioned! Haven’t they realised that there are some great Computer Model Games you can play in your academic ivory tower which will PROVE cAGW in a matter of minutes! All you need to do is a bit of cherry picking and “homogenisation”, run it through the Meltdown Mann statistics application, get the results “reviewed” by your pals and you’ll be showered with grants and glory!
The fact that glaciers have been melting since the 19th century is relatively well known. But, it’s worthwhile pointing it out again given Willis’ recent posts on his problems with IPCC temperature projections.
The reason I says that is that several commenters started raising the issue of “lag” on the effect of CO2 on climate in response to Willis. Yet, when I’ve seen the issue of 19th century glacial melt brought up in the past, lots of “mainstream believers” start saying “but that’s when man’s influence from fossil fuels started!”.
Steve McIntyre says “keep your eye on the pea” for a reason.
It is a shame that so much work is done myopically, assuming that only one factor, their pet factor MUST be overly important. Here, they assume that the global temperature record is correct and work within this false assumption. Since rural monitoring site raw temperature data show that our recent warm decade was not as warm as in the first half of the 20th century, it is not surprising that glacier melt was greater then.
Why it was warmer then is more more likely due to more than one factor and ocean cycles HAVE to be included as they create the observed 60-70 year cycle of warming and cooling, the 1930s and 1940s being the peak of that particular cycle.
People studying the cycles often also buy into the assumption that, if we are warming out of a mini-ice age, then the latest warm time must, acceptably so, be warmer than the 1930-40s. Fine.
However, assuming that nature does anything constantly over time is a big mistake. In this case, it is clear from the raw rural data that our recent warmth was a decline from the 1930-40s peak. [They forget that you cannot have a mini-ice age without at some point having a decline in temperatures from relative warm times.] Big mistake – again making assumptions and trusting others.
The unscientific treatment of the temperature data by the data keepers and its persistence in the scientific world is all about taking advantage of other people’s trust. They are banking on this myopic thinking of others to make false data appear true. “Others are using it. How could it be false?”
So we really, really are hotter now than the ’40s, but it’s a special non ice melting heat !!
“Oi, Mike, need your Nature Trick here!”
The same author published another paper in GRL in 2010 linking the swiss glacial melt to the AMO.
This time using data going back to 1765.
http://doc.rero.ch/lm.php?url=1000,43,2,20100803105325-QF/hus_msc.pdf
I am astonished that in all this discussion of warming and radiative heat transfer that no one really discusses the precise values of solar insolation at the surface. We base all our studies on temperature, probably, because that is the only “global” data that we have. Unfortunately those sites are mostly located in the 1.5% of the earth’s surface that are tagged as “urban”.
Values of surface insolation vary radically depending on atmospheric moisture content, cloud type, and even briefly with jet contrails. Volcanic and industrial processes play a significant role too. And there is a good way to measure these values. In the early 1980s when I was operating a solar furnace at White Sands Missile Range in NM we monitored solar surface insolation with an Eppley Normal Incident Pyroheliometer (NIP) and would get seasonal variations at solar noon of up to 150 watts/m^2. Summer readings here in the desert SW with lots of moisture in the air often peaked at only 950 w/m^2 while fall readings with a drier atmosphere might peak at 1100 w/m^2. Surface temperatures in the summer could be 100+ deg F while fall temperatures might be in the 70s at noon. When volcanic eruptions from El Chicon occurred (1982?), peak readings at solar noon slowly dropped to finally reach almost 100 w/m^2 less than those original values noted above. These gradual decreases in insolation took almost a year to go away(by gradually increasing back to “normal”). These dramatic insolation fluctuations caused by moisture (also clouds) and particulates (and gas) in the atmosphere are found over vast regions as well as over most of the planet in the case of El Chicon. Clouds could drop the NIP peak value (solar noon 950 to 1100) to anywhere from 600 w/m^2 to almost nothing. These effects are huge when compared to a few w/m^2 when discussing CO2. As far as I can tell, globally only Japan has a nationwide net of NIP instruments. NOAA from what I can tell has only 4 regional NIPs in the continental US (in the NW NE SW and SE). In my opinion, along with getting our temperature network into shape we should be developing a widely spread NIP network. NIPs near the glaciers would probably have immediately indicated what was happening even during a cooling period. It seems to me that rapid changes in the atmosphere due to the “other” greenhouse gas or greenhouse particulate effects should be of greater interest to us than well mixed CO2 effects.
Of course we could question the assumption that the ’40’s where substantially cooler than current times. The current 20C temperature record from the GISS is inconsistant with the “Global Cooling” alarmism. Look at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/23/gistemp-movie-matinees/.
Before adjustment, there was a -2.5C decline in the annual means, after adjustment it becomes -1.5C decline. That -.55C/decade vs -.33C/decade. Which of those is consistant with a “Global Cooling” meme? Memes are living organisms, they need a mental pH range to live. When new “data” revisions create an invalid agar for the memes current at the time, that’s a big red WUWT prompt.
Martin Brumby says:
October 24, 2010 at 7:33 am
Martin,
there are still a few oldfashioned guys left over here, still ignoring the modern ways.
John M “but that’s when man’s influence from fossil fuels started!”.
Put a certain amount of whine in that and you get a reply from a
greenie co-worker I know- my usual reply is “but that is when the
Little Ice Age ended!”
‘Scientists warn that these effects could soon be matched by the lower level of solar radiation we have today compared with the 1940s.’
This is one of several references made in the article to the supposedly higher insolation in the 1940s. I remember Leif Svalgaard producing a useful chart illustrating this fallacy.
As I recall it shows TSI reconstructions after Wang, Svalgaard, Kriv, Preminger and Lean. All are in good agreement except Lean’s curve which is low pre-1940.
BUT the real outlier is the one attributed to Hoyt (I think Hoyt and Schatten 1993). This reconstruction has TSI rising from about 1890 to a peak around 1945.
IPCC TAR and to a lesser extent AR4 still point to TSI as the major forcing responsible for the 1910 – 1940 warming, but my understanding is that this is incorrect. The older TSI reconstructions are now believed to exhibit too much variation – especially Hoyt and Schatten.
If this is the case, then why does the above study claim that higher insolation was the cause of accelerated glacial melt?
Apologies to Dr Svalgaard if I have misunderstood/mis-remembered this.
“A new religion has been invented to fulfil this need:extreme environmentalism. It is an urban atheistic religion disconnected from the environment. The rise in environmentalism parallels in time the decline of Christianity and socialism and incorporates many of the characteristics of Christianity and socialism”
Ian Plimer, “Heaven and Earth”, pp.463.
From its beginning, in the 1960¨s, this has been a sub-culture born out from pot smoking and LSD “flights”. Its supreme hymn: Beatles´”Imagine”:
Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too …
This Liberal dream, was the product NOT OF HARD WORKING AND HEALTHY people, but an excretion of a corrupted youth, daughters and sons of daddy and mommy, who, remember?, rejected to serve their country….
Now, while many starve in the world, their ideological and most trascendental worries are, among other really weird and which make any healthy human being shudder, go from “save the whales” to the human rights of child molesters; from “global warming” to distributing the “day after pill” among girls below 14 years old at schools (this was made by a former SA female president, who is about to be nominated for the UN secretary).
This is the same people who proclaim there are no laws whatsoever governing our cosmos, who preach that everything is “chaotic”, and who have managed to invent a kind of devilish “philosophy”called the “post-normal science”.
Let us remember: Back in the 1960´s they were really qualified as they really are:
They were the “misfits”, the “feeble minded ones”, the “subterraneans”, the “hippies”, “beatnicks”etc.,etc.
What has really happened is, that because of their high ranked social origin have had the opportunity to reach governmental positions all over the world, menacing with their sick natures the future of mankind as a whole.
EthicallyCivil says:
October 24, 2010 at 8:17 am [snip]
It sounds like you’re trying to make a point worth making. But you’re being too obtuse for me to understand. Could you make it a bit more explicit?
“Nevertheless”, says the glaciologist, “this should not lead people to conclude that the current period of global warming is not really as big of a problem…”
They always have to throw in that “nevertheless” caveat to keep the funding flowing.
Bernie McCune says on October 24, 2010 at 8:13 am
I am confused. I thought that TSI was about 1366watts/m^2, but that figure is the average across the whole surface of the Earth. In which case, the instantaneous figure should be much higher than that at noon in summer at a location New Mexico.
What have I misunderstood?
OK, now I understand:
http://science.jrank.org/pages/6875/Total-Solar-Irradiance.html
I think the story is interesting. I am not a strong proponent of dimming though as I think in all cases we overstate our ability to impact the Earth’s climate. The ice cores show there has always been strong natural variation.
That makes the AGW attempts to determine climate sensitivity from swings in temperature so limited. Those always overstate the actual climate sensitivity. My guess is that they have overstated the climate sensitivity by a lot. That by itself takes away the whole concern about CO2 forcing.
I have shown that the Greenhouse Effect is incompatible with the stated climate sensitivity.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2010/10/determining-the-correct-climate-sensitivity/
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic
I looked at annual NM temperatures from a handful of sites that actually went back past the 50s and there were some universal conclusions I could make. These are average annual temperatures from generally smaller NM communities with probably less than 20,000 people in them in the 1930 to 1960 time frame. Northern hemisphere temperatures tend to follow each other on decadal scales.
There were three “warm” years during that time with a dropping trough that had a maximum delta of 4 deg F between the 30s and 50s. From the early 1940s until about 1947 NM was cooler than “normal”. High temperature years were 1935, 1951, and 1955. Of course average annual temperatures are very jagged from year to year with only decadal trends that can be seen.
One additional point to my earlier post is that plant life also has a significant effect on moisture and particulates in the atmosphere that is found near them (and plants of course affect atmospheric CO2 content which in their vicinity is NOT well mixed and at certain times of the day/night can vary by 100s of ppm).
“Sandy says:
October 24, 2010 at 8:01 am
So we really, really are hotter now than the ’40s, but it’s a special non ice melting heat !!
“Oi, Mike, need your Nature Trick here!”
”
It probably is non ice melting heat. Most of the alleged heating is at the poles and at night – probably takes temperatures from -30 to -28 or whatever.
As usual, what I miss is the influence of the albedo – ‘whiteness’ – of the glacier.
The coal based industry of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century created enormous amounts of soot and dust, which diminished the whiteness of glaciers (= lowers the albedo). As a result, the glaciers receive more heat from the sun.
Since the 1970-ies the industry in the Western world has cleaned up enormously, meaning less soot. At the same time, in places like China which is rapidly building coal plants, soot is now a bigger issue.
In my opinion, a discussion of the causes of shrinking or growing glaciers without considering albedo is incomplete.
Wonder if these folks who have tumbled to “recent” glacier melting realize they have been melting for the better part of the last 15,000 years and will continue to do so until the next major advance of the continental ice sheets kicks in.
Which could be any year now . . . we are just about due for the next advance if the cycle of the recent geologic era holds . . . .
Wonder how they’ll link CO2 and hysterical global warming to the 10,000 feet of ice covering Chicago?
18 Watts more than at present but no higher temperatures? It is not impossible, but seems highly unlikely.
That reminds me about the wrong kind of CO2. Natural radiative forcing does not warm (although it melts), while anthropogenic radiative forcing causes catastrophic warming.
The interesting thing is that ONLY homogenized temperatures in the Alps are lower now than then, raw temperature data probably was about the same or may be higher in the 40’s.
The 30s/40s were warm but recently the record now understates their temperatures due to revisionary homogenisation/adjustment. It is therefore no great surprise that there was significant glacier melting in the 40s. This is before manmade emmissions were substantial and whilst CO2 levels were considerably less than today.
Natural variations in solar radiation and the AMO may well have a lot to do with it.
Articles like this need wide circulation and emphasis since they challenge that changes are occuring at unprecedented rates.
I noticed this report some time ago and tried to check the summer temperature claim. Alas, the official Swiss temperature record is something similar to the NIWA one.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/swiss-homogenization/
…temperature-based opposing mechanisms came into play around 30 years ago. These have led to a 12% decrease in the amount of precipitation that falls as snow as a percentage of total precipitation, accompanied by an increase of around one month in the length of the melt period ever since this time. Scientists warn that these effects could soon be matched by the lower level of solar radiation we have today compared with the 1940s.
Since the authors appear to have an overriding need to “save the glaciers”, why are they worried about “the lower level of solar radiation we have today”? Maybe because the official Climate Science “Method” has to try to induce panic somewhere along the line?
I would love to see Anthony or someone follow these articles with a quick review of the unadjusted temperature record in Switzerland and the Alps.
Another thing that makes me curious is the record melt year of 1947. The winter of 1947/48 was a severely cold and “record” one in Britain (according to my mum, who lived through it), and also, I believe, in other parts of Europe. A curious coincidence.
All the best.