Scandinavian nation reverses trend, mirrors results in Alaska, elsewhere.
After years of decline, glaciers in Norway are again growing, reports the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE). The actual magnitude of the growth, which appears to have begun over the last two years, has not yet been quantified, says NVE Senior Engineer Hallgeir Elvehøy.
The flow rate of many glaciers has also declined. Glacier flow ultimately acts to reduce accumulation, as the ice moves to lower, warmer elevations.
The original trend had been fairly rapid decline since the year 2000.
The developments were originally reported by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK).
DailyTech has previously reported on the growth in Alaskan glaciers, reversing a 250-year trend of loss. Some glaciers in Canada, California, and New Zealand are also growing, as the result of both colder temperatures and increased snowfall.
Ed Josberger, a glaciologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, says the growth is “a bit of an anomaly”, but not to be unexpected.
Despite the recent growth, most glaciers in the nation are still smaller than they were in 1982. However, Elvehøy says that the glaciers were even smaller during the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ of the Viking Era, prior to around the year 1350.
Not all Norwegian glaciers appear to be affected, most notably those in the Jotenheimen region of Southern Norway.
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Can someone remind me? Just how think was the ice over central Europe 20,000 years ago? I’ll bet the Wurm glacial started with a little more snow and a slow advance of glaciers. On a balance of probabilities, the present Interglacial has to end some time. Why not now?
Perry
No matter. Glaciers both growing and shrinking are proof of global warming. Not forgetting that glaciers in a state of equilibrium are also proof of global warming.
Me? I’m stocking up on Ugg boots and thermal underwear.
“Good” news for the truth – bad news for people having to live up here in North…
Hmm, this would disprove global warming, given normal logic. However, in AGW logic anything contrary to their “evidence” is just natural variation. And all of the sudden glaciers extents are controlled by a number of variables, where temperature is only one of them. Shrinking glaciers are of course only due to warmer temperatures. To say anything to the contrary would be denialist to say the least. After all thooousands of scientists say so…
Anyway, AGW religion took a huge hit some time ago when some fellows from the BBC(none the less) decided to drive a car to the North-Pole to disprove global warming. And considering that the kayak expedition ended just north of Svalbard with frostbites all over their @ur momisugly$$es. This should be damning evidence to say the least.
http://watchtopgear.co.uk/index.php?view=article&catid=59%3Aspecials&id=154%3Apolar-special&option=com_content&Itemid=74
And solar activity is quiet as a mouse.
Let’s see how many spotless days we can rack up this time.
Are there any that are growing in the Pacific Northwest? I would love to point that out to the local Seattle AGWs.
I’m itching to ask an unrelated question about CO2. If I built two greenhouses with no plants or anything in them, both with same humidity. One with 385ppm of C02 and one with say 450ppm. What would the temperature difference be? What if I manipulated the CO2. The following article at ICECAP got me thinking about this.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HANSENMARSCHALLENGE.pdf
What if I modified the experiment and put a pond that covered 70% of the area inside the greenhouse. Based on some of the AGW, I should get a runaway greenhouse effect, perhaps, due to positive feedback? Now, I know this is simplistic and as usual I am a very hasty person, with simple ideas. But there should be predictions that says what would happen that could be tested?
Any references on such an experiment?
Either way, I might just go down to the store, get some dry ice, drag out a couple of plastic jugs, stick my handy remote temp sensors and see for myself…. I just won’t know what the CO2ppm would be… Probably 50,000ppm. The jug should melt on a rainy day in Seattle….
One day this might be the science experiment that all students use to debunk AGW?
“says the growth is “a bit of an anomaly”, but not to be unexpected.”
Oh its one of those expected anomalies then!
The glaciers in Norway had a major increase in the 1990’s, it’s quite obvious that the Norwegian glaciers might be “disturbed” by the 10 year ocean cycle (NAO). Mass balance observations of maritime glaciers in southern Norway also show an overall increase over the last 50 years. Engabreen, a part of the Svartisen glacier in northern Norway also have an increase over the last 50 years. The source of these observations is the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE). Therefore, I find the 1982 comparing a bit odd. This “information” has been published in several Norwegian newspapers over the last few days. The first observation of mass balance of glaciers started in 1949, and since 1963 we have observations of 5 major glaciers. Why not use 1963?
If we take a look at the glaciers front position, there are observations even longer back. For example had Briksdalsbreen, an arm of the Jostedalsbreen glacier, a decrease of 800m from 1934 to 1951. That’s a huge change. The last decades decrease has been approx 500m, and the speed has surprised the scientists. Well, it doesn’t surprise me. That scientists are surprised or that the glaciers had such a decrease.
And here in the U.S. the glaciers in Glacier National Park are retreating so rapidly that they’ll be gone in approximately a dozen years, at least according to a “news” piece on ABC News. They compared current photos to those from around the 1880’s. Of course they neglected to mention that the older photos were taken near the end of the Little Ice Age. Should the climate cool over the next few years {or decades} and precipitation patterns dump more snow on the glaciers and they expand it’ll probably also be dismissed as an anomaly. And the beat goes on…
Glacier advance and retreat is a function of precipitation, and has nothing to do with a variation in global temperatures of a fraction of a degree C, when the ambient temperature is well below 0 degrees C.
On a related subject: click
D Quist; you’ll find a nifty greenhouse experiment over at David Stockwell’s blog, Niche Modelling, under the threads, ‘Model of Global Warming’ and ‘Greenhouse Quiz’;
http://landshape.org/enm
The sky is burning, the world is on fire….do do todo dum
This recent reversal doesn’t surprise me – and whenever any AGW protagonists talk of accelerated melting and trends over the last ten or twenty years, get them to look at the last 5 years for the turnaround – whether glaciers, sea-ice cover, or sea-level – take a look for example at
Hanna, E. and J. Cappelen (2003), Recent cooling in coastal southern Greenland and relation with the North Atlantic Oscillation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, 1132, doi:10.1029/2002GL015797.
Hanna E., P. Huybrechts, I. Janssens, J. Cappelen, K. Steffen, and A. Stephens (2005), Runoff and mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet: 1958-2003, J. Geophys. Res., 110, D13108, doi:10.1029/2004JD005641.
Hanna, E., J. McConnell, S. Das, J. Cappelen, and A. Stephens (2006), Observed and modeled Greenland ice sheet snow accumulation, 1958-2003, and links with regional climate forcing, J. Clim., 19, 344-358.
There are signs in Greenland, according to Hanna, of the glacier speeds returning to ‘normal’ and the ice-mass balance to positive. I expect the trends for the 15% of Antarctica that shows a small warming signal, will also have shifted but I haven’t looked yet in detail.
Just tried copying in a graph which didn’t transfer – but if one googles Univ of Colorado sea-level data (TOPEX and JASON) – you can see the shift for global sea level at 2006 – where it levels off after long rise.
I am currently learning a lot from studying the global satellite links that Anthony has – and watching the way clouds and storm tracks follow the standing waves of the jetstream – which has shifted since 2006 (when the sun went quiet) – you can see quite clearly where heat (and moisture) is extracted from and where it is precipitated – currently from northern Pacific in the American NW including Alaska, from western Atlantic into Iceland and Norway, then an uploop from Arabia takes heat into central Siberia – which is why the ducks, geese and swans can’t be bothered to move west. In the summer of 2007 and 2008 the jetstream shifted south and the wave moved eastward, with Britain getting the uploop instead of the downloop and we got torrential rain and floods (and Norway dried out in sunshine!).
People may already know this – so forgive me, but Drew Shindell at NASA published papers on how he suspected the jetstream had shifted similarly during the Maunder MInimum and linked it to a cascade of solar UV effects on the polar vortex – I think this could be the key mechanism for linking solar changes (Leif – I am still not convinced the solar magnetics didn’t change – what about the UV during the spotless cycle?) to climate shifts.
Shindell D.T., et al., (2001) Solar forcing of regional climate change during
the Maunder Minimum. Science, 294(5549), 2149–2152.
happy hunting!
This would normally be great news, but they have already said that growing glaciers are a sure sign of global warming…
“Global cooling proof of global warming”:
This problem was adressed by the team at the UK Tyndall Centre back in 2004: Working Paper 58 – The Social Simulation of the Public Perception of Weather Events and their Effect upon the Development of Belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change
To endorse policy change people must ‘believe’ that global warming will become a reality some time in the future.
· Only the experience of positive temperature anomalies will be registered as indication of change if the issue is framed as global warming.
· Both positive and negative temperature anomalies will be registered in experience as indication of change if the issue is framed as climate change.
· We propose that in those countries where climate change has become the predominant popular term for the phenomenon, unseasonably cold temperatures, for example, are also interpreted to reflect climate change/global warming.
I guess it worked…..
Freezing Finn (00:14:29) :
“Good” news for the truth – bad news for people having to live up here in North…
After visiting one of your “neighborhood” spas while on my Chevy Chase European Family Vacation two or was it three years ago, I’m having difficulty feeling sorry for you!! Be thankful you don’t live in Barcelona, where I was “furloughed” for three days while the local ground crew went on strike (riot?). According to Spanish Air, my wife’s lost luggage in Spain is considered an act of God.
Glaciers advance when the climate cools–surprise, surprise! Now that we have entered the 30-yr cool cycle in the PDO, we can expect to see the same kind of glacier advances that occurred from 1880 to 1915 and from 1945 to 1977. It’s all part of the natural 30-yr warm/cool cycle that we’ve seen for the past 500 years.
Leon Brozyna (02:31:23) :
They also fail to mention that the vast majority of the glacial retreat in GNP occurred before the 1950s.
Peter Taylor:
Is this the graph you’re looking for?
[sarcasm on] No, no people. Remember the “correct” newspeak term is Climate Change! Any ecosystem change is caused by humans! [sarcasm off]
Your experiment sans plants and people idea reminds me of these: If a tree falls in the forest, does it still make a sound? And this: If a bear takes a dump in the forest, does it smell just as bad? If there were no people around to wring their hands of climate change, would the animals start blaming each other?
re.: S.M (02:23:09),
do you have links to data sources?
Would like to have them?
Thanks ahead.
OT: I have seen at least one paper indicating corruption of ice core air bubbles by liquid water, allowing C02 to dissolve, and thus undermining the claim that the Holocene has never seen C02 levels in the current range.
Taking as a given, just for the sake of argument, that there is nothing new under the Sun and that most, if not all, of the pronouncements about historic firsts, including high C02 in the last 12,000 years, are suspect, does anyone know anything about previous coral die-offs, during the Holocene or before, caused by acidification/C02?
Yet, I keep hearing from some institutes, e.g. Potsdam PIK, that climate change is occuring faster than even what the models predicted.
Don Easterbrook,
Could you elaborate on what you expect from this PDO cycle? Do you expect it to be somewhat benign. or rather severe? What data should we be looking at to get a clue? Sunspot activity is still awfully quiet and some are predicting some sort of Minimum to occur over the next couple of decades.
Also the latest NOAA SST chart shows a cooling equatorial east Pacific, especially when compared to charts from a couple months ago.