Glaciers in Norway, Alaska, growing again

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

“Good” news for the truth – bad news for people having to live up here in North…

And solar activity is quiet as a mouse.
Let’s see how many spotless days we can rack up this time.

“says the growth is “a bit of an anomaly”, but not to be unexpected.”
Oh its one of those expected anomalies then!

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…

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!

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?

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?

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.

I pointed this out on another forum and our esteemed “expert” on Climate Change told me that of course the glaciers are increasing in size – more warming = more precipitation = more snow = bigger glacier! I’m afraid it’s impossible to win this argument. You might as well close your blog right now.

Here’s a clip I haven’t seen:
(It’s in English)
http://klimakatastrophe.wordpress.com/2008/11/28/die-sonne-das-klima-unstoppable-solar-cycles/

May I ask? You know how everything is green this, green that and that by being green we will help the planet.
Wouldn’t the ‘green’ in greenhouse gas suggest that we ARE being green?
And the lunacy continues.

One of the most interesting climate related discoveries in recent years is that the Earth’s rotation isn’t slowing down as fast as it should. The only explanation is ice accumulation at the poles. Ice accumulation tends to increase the speed of rotation of the Earth by shifting mass closer to the poles, in the same way an ice skater spins faster when they pull their arms closer to their body.
Guess when this started?
1998
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/The_Ice_Caps_are_Growing.pdf

Speaking of growing ice,
The National Ice Center , http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/index.htm, contains animations of Snow cover and Ice for the Northern Hemisphere.

While a lot of folks get worked up about glacial advance/retreat trends, I think that’s interesting, but what’s the bottom line? – ocean level variations.
Lately, it’s been 1.4 mm/year. Over the next hundred years, that’s 6 inches increase. Yet since the last Ice Age, ocean levels have risen 400 feet (48 inches per century). That sounds like a disproportionate change. And yes, I understand the impact of a graduated elevation of the low-sloped edge-of-the-bathtub influence impact on sea level change (i.e., more water into a bathtub with flat-sloped perimeters yields lower increases in depth per gallon contributed to the tub).
But at some point, when do the predictions of catastrophe end and reality intrudes??

Another article in an Australian Newspaper the Sydney Morning Herald, critical of the Global Warming Religion. What is interesting is firstly that the SMH even published it – they are very pro human AGW, but secondly this Saturday morning in Australia it is the most watched article on SMH. A sign I think that the sceptics are on the rise.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/miranda-devine/beware-the-church-of-climate-alarm/2008/11/26/1227491635989.html

Peter Taylor, when I try to visit your website I get a malware warning from my mac. Have you heard that before? I would like to be able to e-mail you; my address is hambler@Mac.com
Back to the discussion, as more than one person has recently pointed out, it is amazing how little good data there are at present in re ocean heat content and sea levels, among other items on the list. I’m not saying there is, but it’s as though there is a cabal.
There is no other area of wide public interest where the disconnect between the best of the blogs and the MSM is as great as climate. Thanks as always to Anthony.

Hello again,
Just trying to understand how this article adds up to global cooling? I don’t see it and I’m sure the good folks here at WUWT can help as you have on the other threads.
You’ve probably followed the fallout on Politico over Erika Lovley’s article “Scientists urge caution on global warming”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15938.html
Naturally, there’s been a huge backlash over her attempt to push forward the GC theory.
The author relies on the work of Joseph D’Aleo, a meteorologist (meteorology is the study of weather, not climate). D’Aleo’s lack of qualifications in climate science would be less relevant if he had published his work on “global cooling” in peer-reviewed scientific journals rather than the Farmers Almanac.
From the letter to the editor written by Russ Walker and David Roberts of Grist Magazine in response to the original article. Walker and Roberts write:
” While reasonable people may debate the value of cap-and-trade legislation, and it is certainly worth reporting on how its congressional opponents are strategizing to block it, it is simply false to point to a “growing accumulation” of evidence rendering basic climate science “shaky.” There is no such accumulation; there is no such science. If there were, perhaps the author would have cited some of it — it is telling that she did not.”
Politico acknowledges their error in publishing the original article and now recants. The editor writes:
“Giving voice to the losing side of a national debate is often fraught with peril. It requires navigating a terrain littered with grudges, slights, insults and hard feelings.
To do that without becoming ensnared requires extraordinary care. In Politico’s case, we slipped.”
I just don’t get how this glacier post in any way shape or form somehow indicates that GW is slowing rather than accelerating?
Will

Hey Will. What you have described is a major U.S. news organization sounding about as cowed as TASS under Leonyd Brezhnev. I recommend that you enjoy the apex of your side’s power. It will never reach this point again.
And while the billions underpinning AGW may be capable of silencing CNN, they will not silence me.

I read the Politico article – Scientists: Earth is still heating up
The article would be laughable if the topic wasn’t so serious, because of the enormous amounts of money being spent.
Only 2 pieces of data are presented to ‘prove’ the still warming case. Neither of which show warming has continued over the last 10 years. Neither piece of data shows warming has occured over the last 100 years for that matter.
One is the US surface station record, which this blog documents the numerous problems with.
The other is floods are increasing too. Recorded small floods are increasing, but this is a reporting increase due to better measurement and record keeping. Severe floods have declined over the last 30 years.
The rest of the article is models, predictions and rhetoric.
All they can muster is 2 pieces of know bad data to support their claim of a still warming climate. Beyond laughable.

Jeff Alberts,
Well said.
What do you guys think of this quote
Ed Josberger, a glaciologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, says the growth is “a bit of an anomaly”, but not to be unexpected.
The word that I picked out was anomaly. How bald faced can they be.

A remark I have seen three times this month is:
“The current La Niña event, characterized by a cooling of the sea surface in the central and eastern Equatorial Pacific, is a “climate anomaly” part of natural climate variability. This La Niña started in the third quarter of 2007 and is likely to persist through to the middle of 2008. It has influenced climate patterns during the last six months across many parts of the globe, including in the Equatorial Pacific, across the Indian Ocean, Asia, Africa and the Americas.”
The implication seems to be, yes, it has cooled since 1998, but that is only because el Nino made it warmer then and la Nina is making it cooler now, if those effects weren’t present, there would have been continuing global warming this decade.
Has anyone investigated this slant?

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jq06XaBVeoFDw8ema5tW2JrEl1mg
(There used to be more mentions of this but Winston Smith is catching up fast)
The gist of it:
9000 ft above sea level in a Swiss mountain pass a glacier in retreat has exposed some human artefacts.
300 objects dating as far back as the Neolithic, to the later Bronze and Iron Ages and the Roman and Medieval eras have been found in the site’s former icefields.
So I guess the pass has been open a few times (coincidentally, those exact periods that the infamous “hockey stick” was contrived to refute) and men and women made their way, in shorts and sandals, from one side of the mountains to the other, and back again sans SUV.
What goes around….

Will Small,
You asked the question:
“Just trying to understand how this article adds up to global cooling?”
Answer: It doesn’t. It only means this particular region most likely has gotten more preciptitation over the last years. Glaciers have much more to do with precipitation and less with temperatures. Both sides please take note!
And I agree that hand-picked anecdotes have nothing to do with climate trends. While the warmists say that Region A’s hot spell from LAST month is yet another sign of a warming world, coolists later say that Region A’s unusual cold weather THIS month is a sign of cooling. Both sides are completely full of it.
The reason why I am a sceptic is because of the following:
1. Climate has always changed during history.
2. The current warming started more than 150 years ago.
3. Many changes were far more dramatic than the 1978 -1998 temp 0.6°C rise.
4. Global temps have decreased in the last 10 years.
5. Sea levels have stagnated.
6. CO2 is just one (minor) factor of many.
7. AGW theory assumes that all other factors like sun, oceans etc. have all gone dormant, and all changes can be attributed to CO2 – preposterous.
8. Many AGW “cilmate scientists” have long lost their credibility by resorting to science shenanigans and neurotic alarmism, e.g. AIT, Mann curve, etc..
9. The AGW theory has no consensus. NONE.
10. CO2 has always lagged temp.
These are just to name a few.
No. I’m not going to run with the masses of AGW-spooked in a stampede of panicked madness. The recent (last 10 years) data show that a more rational and calmer reaction is in order, and that the doomsday scenarios were grotesquely and irresponsibly overblown.

…as Ric Werme alludes.
That should read.

Thanks Smokey for getting a link to that colorado uni graph – that was the one I had in mind – must get to know how to put links in here!
harold ambler – I will check out the malware thing – not had that before – my email is peter.taylor@ethos-uk.com
on ocean heat content – i have been reviewing that area recently – there seems to be a few teams in the USA – reviewing the ocean instrumental data – Lyman, Gouretski, Willis and Warren White at Scripps has some good stuff on links to solar cycles – and a team at Hadley (Matthew Palmer) – one data set and maybe five teams looking at it! I’m not at my desk right now, but can get you all the references if you mail me.
what is important is not just the oft-reported ‘no net warming’ since 2000 (once the ‘cooling’ error was corrected) – but that two teams have now confirmed that there was a long term instrumental bias in addition and that means past warming was 200% over-estimated. The crucial thing is that the ability to hindcast the past warming was taken by the modelling fraternity as a ‘validation’ of the models they then use to predict the future warming! The really sad thing is that the oceanographers reporting this revision state in mealy-mouthed words – that their findings ‘underly the importance of ocean heat content studies for attribution studies of global warming’ or some such designed not to cause too much of a stir.
A similar revision of the atmsopheric models – hitherto validated by their ability to hindcast ‘global dimming’ due to AG sulphur – held until recently to be the cause of the 1945-1978 ‘dip’ in temp – now known NOT to be caused by AG sulphur but the PDO cycle – means the models need a major overhaul!
pierre gosselin – I agree on the proxy record – I suspect that instrumental records will show higher short term peaks – like the 1998 ENSO – and that any such past peaks will show less in the tree-ring, stalagmite or whatever the proxy being used is.
on future cooling – the AMO index suggests the Atlantic has another decade or so of warm phase before it turns and joins the PDO – which leaves Landscheidt’s prediction of LIA for 2030 looking about right!
The Little Ice Age WAS global bar Antarctica and Tasmania – which tend to do the opposite to the Northern Hemisphere – but some regions – like West Africa saw 2-3 degree C changes between warm and colder conditions, due to major ocean current changes.

It is not simply weather events that prove the lie of AGW.
It is the behavior of the promoters.
The leaders of AGW- Hansen, Schmidt, Gore, the IPCC leadership, etc., have never honestly described the alleged risk. They have never ethically debated it. They have for years sought to demean, silence, intimidate and otherwise suppress those who have asked the tough questions about AGW. Many of the AGW community leadership have called for criminal actions to be taken against those who have disagreed.
This is not how legitimate people act.
Add to that the obvious data manipulation of people like Mann- misusing stats and using corrupt data- and the suppression of people like Spencer or Pielke, and it is clear that something very different from scientific debate or exploration is occuring.

Spencer says:
I summarise the interesting range of opinions wrt AGW.
1. James Lovelock. Its too late -we are all doomed
2. Al Gore. We are all doomed in ten years time
3. IPCC. We are not all doomed but it might be unpleasant in 100 years time.
4. Projecting historical performance – its about to get a lot colder and unpleasant.
5. Predicting climate change is not possible at the moment but the world’s population is likely to grow by 3 billion in the next 40 years – now that is something to worry about.

Time for another southern ice discussion?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/29/antarctic.ice.shelf.collapse/index.html
JimB

By the way, I read a paper from 2006 but the most recent data in that paper was from 2004. I have found nothing more modern and can not find even any recent pictures from the Park Service showing glacier extent in modern years. All the pictures on various web sites seem to be from the early 2000’s.

Can somebody comment on the following?
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2008/11/28/nwest-vessel.html
The Canadian Coast Guard has confirmed that in a major first, a commercial ship travelled through the Northwest Passage this fall to deliver supplies to communities in western Nunavut.
The MV Camilla Desgagnés, owned by Desgagnés Transarctik Inc., transported cargo from Montreal to the hamlets of Cambridge Bay, Kugluktuk, Gjoa Haven and Taloyoak in September.
“We did have a commercial cargo vessel that did the first scheduled run from Montreal, up through the eastern Arctic, through the Northwest Passage to deliver cargo to communities in the west,” Brian LeBlanc of the Canadian Coast Guard told CBC News.
“That was the first — that I’m aware of anyway — commercial cargo delivery from the east through the Northwest Passage.”….
Rayes, who was on the vessel during its trip through the Northwest Passage, said the company informed the coast guard, which put an icebreaker on standby.
“They were ready to be there for us if we called them, but I didn’t see one cube of ice,” he said.