Alex DeMarban
Alaska is going rogue on climate change.
Defiant as ever, the state that gave rise to Sarah Palin is bucking the mainstream yet again: While global temperatures surge hotter and the ice-cap crumbles, the nation’s icebox is getting even icier.
That may not be news to Alaskans coping with another round of 50-below during the coldest winter in two decades, or to the mariners locked out of the Bering Sea this spring by record ice growth.
Then again, it might. The 49th state has long been labeled one of the fastest-warming spots on the planet. But that’s so 20th Century.
In the first decade since 2000, the 49th state cooled 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
…
But now comes cooling. Researchers blame the Decadal Oscillation, an ocean phenomenon that brought chillier surface water temperatures toward Alaska. Some contend the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is harming the state’s king salmon runs, too.
Full story here
===============================================================
Bob Tisdale and I have been working on a special report on this since last week, and I expect to publish it this week. – Anthony
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Told you so!
You must have mistakenly published the wrong graph, Anthony. That one shows a clear warming
trend since 1979. The dip from PDO, or any short term trend, doesn’t mean anything. As for heavy Spring ice on the Bering Sea, maybe that ship captain didn’t notice what happened to the Arctic Ice during the summer: it disappeared.
REPLY: No it is the right graph. But a few hot days in summer verify global warming according to you and your laughable friend Joe Romm. Heh. – Anthony
Hmmmmm, did temperature readings go automated in the mid 1970’s?
Interesting. One could restrict observations to only remote stations in North America. No doubt the proximity to ocean temp influence is a factor. On one side of Alaska is Arctic ocean and the other is Pacific ocean. Then there is the general circulation of polar air masses.
Will we southerners in the Lower 48 listen, be informed and take lessons from the Alaskans as they learn to cope with the Modern Minimum?
A roomie at NRTS in Idaho made igloos as part of his bush-pilot training, and taught us. I’ve been wondering about super-insulating my northern Wisconsin cabin home with dry snow igloo-blocks. They certainly made our igloos snug.
Is Alaska the canary in the mine of global cooling ?
Too late to sell it back the Russians, errrm, or someone?
I am sure someone will comment that this is not inconsistent with Anthopogenic Global Warming!
Another thing to forget is the foolish nonsense headlines. My northern experience tells me this is simply business as usual north of 60 and north of 55 too.
BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Yukon and NWT are cooling over the last 15 years as well.
The last 5 years in BC is .79C colder than it was in the previous 5 years/
http://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/bc-5-year-trends-environment-canada-as-of-2012-oct.png
Doug Huffman says:
January 2, 2013 at 7:44 am
“A roomie at NRTS in Idaho made igloos as part of his bush-pilot training, and taught us. I’ve been wondering about super-insulating my northern Wisconsin cabin home with dry snow igloo-blocks. They certainly made our igloos snug.”
Good idea. A friend of mine during extreme cold spells would water the outside walls of his house to create an insulation barrier. The frozen water kept out the wind as well as providing additional insolation… It works well!
Mike Roddy says:
January 2, 2013 at 7:32 am
“As for heavy Spring ice on the Bering Sea, maybe that ship captain didn’t notice what happened to the Arctic Ice during the summer: it disappeared.”
Mike, check the current JAXA arctic ice extent chart. The ice is back! Hooray!
(PS: It was -4 F in my neighborhood this morning. How can this be? I thought the cold and ice had disappeared…[heh])
ENSO just went negative. Just possible that we are headed for a triple-dip La Nina. There is a lot of subsurface cool water along the equatorial Pacific, heightened trades could turn it all up acellerating a La Nina. Happy 2013 everyone!
After the last decade’s results from summer Arctic melts, you would have us believe that Alaska is going through a localized ice age. You might consider with warming conditions, those places which normally get so cold that it stops snowing, more precipitation (in the form of snow) will occur. This is noticed all over the world today. Stop the BS.
– I have noticed this most disturbing of trends, all the cold disappears in the summer!
/sarc
@EW3
>Is Alaska the canary in the mine of global cooling ?
More like the vulture of global cooling, circling high over N America ready to pick clean the frozen carcass of CAGW.
As talk turns to how GHG’s have caused this unprecedented cooling we the more rational should be mindful of the needs of others.
The whole globe is cooling, because of SUN. Cooling takes time, and GISS, CRU etc. makes data adjustment for slowing downtrend. Argo data calibrated from satelites and satelites calibrated from Argo – WELL MEASURED.
Anthony
Didn’t the PDO just recently switch from “warm” to “cold”? These results are indicative of cyclical, natural forcings but do not suggest “Ice Age” yet. if the temps drop below previous lows in the first half of the chart, I’ll concur.
Bill
The ignorant Mike Roddy overlooks even regional variations, such as the ice that hampered gray whales’ ability to get their favoured food a couple of times in the past decade. Even with much less total ice extent in the heat of summer there are clogged areas (actually more because remaining ice is more free to get moved around by winds and currents. Think!
Oh noes! The next little ice age is marked down for next year by Dr. Habibullo Abdusamatov.
/SARC
This good doctor is an Russian astrophysicist, project of the Russian section of the International Space Station, head of Space research laboratory at the Saint Petersburg-based Pulkovo Observatory and Supervisor of the Astrometria. And if anyone screams that he is no climate scientist then neither is the astronomer / physicist Dr. James Hansen of NASA.
Last year there was record sea ice in the Bering sea, and the trend has been strongly up since 2000.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.2.html
Calling this an “ice age” is rather hyperbolic, don’t you think? Regression towards the century mean is not exactly the same thing as plunging below it. Time will tell if the cooling continues or if and where it stabilizes. And Alaska, large as it is, is still a tiny chunk of real estate globally.
Far more interesting is what effect the PDO is likely to have on mean Pacific Ocean temperatures in its “cooling phase”. That’s because the Pacific Ocean is around 1/3 of the surface area of the planet. Alaska could cool 1-2 C and hardly affect global average temperatures (perhaps a few hundreths of a degree max). If the Pacific SSTs cool 0.6 C, it will drop global averages 0.2 C all by itself, and because a lot of continental weather is “inherited” from air masses locked into the Pacific, it would probably amplify this effect to 0.3C or more.
I look forward to Bob Tisdale’s analysis on this, as he is the expert on Pacific SSTs and decadal oscillations. I also look forward to learning what will happen to Arctic temperatures if and when the Atlantic oscillation finally changes phase. It seems plausible that the equator will heat up and both poles will cool when that happens (the Earth cools more efficiently when high and low temperatures are areally concentrated, and cools less efficiently the more the incoming heat is mixed and distributed, so really all that it takes to cool the planet is a tiny bit less tropical mixing, a tiny growth of the Ferrel cells at the expense of the Arctic and Hadley cells. Or, as Bob will likely tell us, changes in ENSO which have much the same effect.
rgb
REPLY: I agree it is a bit hyperbolic, but that’s the newspaper’s headline, not mine. – Anthony
Patrick says:
“Too late to sell it back the Russians, errrm, or someone?”
—————————
Why would we want to do that? Plenty of oil and mineral weath up there. And an important Air Force base as well.
Not only Alaska, but Eureka, California, is headed for an ice age in only 67 years.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/eureka-ca-headed-for-ice-age-in-67.html?m=0
The graph would be consistent with a general change that happened around 1976 and the recent cooling would be consistent with the fact that these cycles tend to last roughly 60 years in period with roughly 30 warm and 30 cool. I don’t see anything surprising in that graph and people in Alaska should prepare for 30-ish years of cooler weather. To what extent the recent weak solar cycle will add any additional change remains to be seen.