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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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.
Wiill Small said:
It doesn’t, any more than retreating glaciers means global warming.
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.
The glacier on Mt. Shasta has been growing the past several years. They blame it on a ‘localized’ moisture pattern which has put a lot more snow on it.
If that’s what it takes to grow glaciers, the retreat of most others is simply saying that the rate of moisture dumping on the glaciers has gone down.
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?
Will Small: Go to green-agenda.com and read what Maurice Strong and others want to befall most of humanity. Then ask yourself if you would want your children to ask you how you could shill for such mega-death murderous monsters.
Will Small (18:11:29) :
Wow, you’re exactly the the target audience Politco was looking for. You read everything between the lines exactly as they wanted you to.
Climatology used to be about collecting weather statistics and publishing data about the average weather. Most of the people who are doing the most to advance the many aspects of climate science are not pure climatologists. James Hansen, for example, has a MS in Astronomy and a PhD in Physics. Some of the scientists who do the best job at keeping climatologists grounded are geologists, their longterm view of the world is something that most other scientists do not share.
In general, I’ve concluded that people who leap to criticize people’s degrees do not understand education. In my case, I have an electrical engineering degree, but my career and skills are in software engineering. The skills I learned in EE courses are quite relevant in other engineering fields too. BTW, don’t hire me as in electrical engineer, you’ll be disappointed.
Politco only mentioned D’Aleo’s Old Farmers Almanac article. My guess is that their staff climatologists (their reporters do have climatology degrees, right?) missed Joe’s many scientific papers to focus on what’s probably his most read and accessible article. The OFA schedule makes it a bit dated, but it’s still good, see http://www.almanac.com/timeline/ .
Joe, by the way, is one of the folks responsible for me being here. We both live in New Hampshire, and our paths have crossed various times. He’s kept the faith in pushing the “there’s more to it that CO2” point of view for a long time including the warming periods before 1998, and I really respect his dedication. I gave up on the field waiting for the current solar minimum or a change to the cool phase of the PDO or AMO.
His work showing there is a better corellation between those circulation patterns and temperature than there is between CO2 and temperature pretty much convinced me that while CO2 may be the biggest thing we have influence on, it’s not big enough to warrant extreme measures like CO2 sequestration at power plants.
Please read http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/25/warming-trend-pdo-and-solar-correlate-better-than-co2/ for more about that subject.
Because over the long term, colder weather corellates with glacier growth. People who point to Mt Shasta’s glacier growth as being due to warming bringing moist air and hence increase precipitation may be right in the short term, but in the long term, the elevation of glacial termina is more likely to be controlled by temperature.
Page 2 of http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~stocker/papers/joerin08qsr.pdf has an equation used to determine the “Equilibrium Line Altitude.” It has a temperature-squared term which means winter precip has to increase a lot to balance the summer melting.
It also helps explain why the Juneau Icefield growth this year was so dramatic, they had a cold summer.
As we get further into the cold PDO phase we can expect to see more effects and more clear effects.
I can prove that it is impossible for humans to cause global warming in one sentence.
If it were possible, the AGW crowd would be hastily doing it to make global temperatures fit their failed models.
Ron H (21:13:49) :
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?
Yes, see my previous post. The cool PDO that we entered in 2007 should have more La Nina periods than during the warm PDO. (And we should have fewer El Ninos.) The warm PDO may have reached a saturation point eventually where it couldn’t bring more warmth to the planet, but it seems to flip before the planet reaches that point.
If you try to adjust out the effects of the PDO phases, then you may still have a warming trend that reaches back well before CO2 levels increased dramatically. That may just be the continuing recovery from the Little Ice Age. Alternatively, you get something like Bill Illis’s http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/25/adjusting-temperatures-for-the-enso-and-the-amo which shows an increase due to CO2.
Here is a climbing report for Mt Shuksan, which is a glaciated peak in Mount Baker national park. Report here.
Condition reports come from climbing and wilderness rangers, the voluntary climbing register, and other climbers.
Several of the climbers reported open and obvious crevasses. All of them reported snow cover throughout the summer.
Glacier crevasses are a symptom of growth. As the ice slides over large rocks rocks it cracks.
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….
Pierre Gosselin (11:15:24) :
Thank you for that link. An excellent 9+ minutes of explanation of why the Greenlanders died out.
Regards,
Perry
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.
Please allow me to modify my statement:
“Glaciers have much more to do with precipitation and less with temperatures.”
Let me just say that precipitation is of equal importance. The Alps have shown that glaciers from the past were at times far more retreated than today, and indeed correspond with temperature trends, as alludes.
…as Ric Werme alludes.
That should read.
Will Small,
I know science has nothing to do with PR, but unfortunately climate science is all about PR. This PR battle, my friend, you appear to be losing.
http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/story.html?id=f0a1687c-decd-4c72-9d0e-7e6dd92d4ebe
Please note that citizens have yet to be really asked to make sacrifices. So just imagine the backlash and opinion swing that would occur should the government enact laws to force the people to make sacrifices.
Where is this doubt coming from? From a few bloggers?
Will, it only takes one inconvenient fact to bring down an entire science. One little pin prick is enough to pop the biggest of balloons.
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.
All we need is a really cold winter in the west, maybe the Thames to freeze again; in conjunction with economic realities it will be enough for the balloon to burst.
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.
I would like to recommend Peter Taylor’s submission about climate change found here: http://ethos-uk.com/downloads/climate/ECSRSummary.pdf as a succinct and well-written treatise on the whole debate. Lucy Skywalker (feel the force!), if you haven’t already put this in your sceptic primer, it deserves a place. No spelling mistakes either! It does surprise me that so many of the publications on both sides of the debate have not only not been properly peer-reviewed, but are not even checked for basic English. Norm’s excellent paper, for example, mixes rational with rationale. The traditional principal / principle problem is scattered ubiquitously. I am available for free spell-checking if that helps any would-be publishers! (Contact via Anthony or mods presumably).
// rant over
PS Ethos pdf is really good.
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.
Pierre Gosselin (02:23:07) :
Well the story may be promising, but that article, dated Nov 27, has an inset
of snowmaking and a caption that reads “A file photo showd [sic] snow cannons blasting artificial snow on a slope in Kitzbuehel, Austria. Due to the uncommonly warm weather many European alpine ski resorts have no snow. (Roland Schlager/Getty Images)”
However, a November 26th article, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/winter_sports/article5238245.ece says
Today, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article5254462.ece
Wow, technical stuff. And an obligatory chant from the Met.
And also http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5254459.ece
Yah just gotta watch out for those unforeseen impacts.
Time for another southern ice discussion?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/29/antarctic.ice.shelf.collapse/index.html
JimB
“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”
Can anyone find any RECENT data on extent of the glaciers in Glacier National Park? The only data I can find are several years old. I can’t find anything at all from the most recent two years. Oh, and GNP is quick to point out that the park isn’t named for the glaciers themselves, but for the landscaping done there by glaciers in the last glaciation.
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.