People send me stuff. Sometimes it is stuff I’m not expected to see. It seems NOAA is getting hot and bothered about the Arctic.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke recently approved a plan to prohibit the expansion of commercial fishing in U.S. Arctic waters to enable researchers time to gather the ecosystem data essential to managing a sustainable fishery.
The area involved — roughly 200,000 square miles of ocean north of the Bering Strait — has no commercial fisheries yet, but it could if the seasonal Arctic ice pack continues to melt.
Climate change is happening faster in the Arctic than any other place on Earth — and with wide-ranging global consequences. I saw this firsthand when I participated in a recent “listening and learning” expedition to the northern corners of Alaska’s Arctic region with Adm. Thad Allen, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard; Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality; and other members of President Obama’s Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force. We witnessed an area abundant with natural resources, diverse wildlife, proud local and native peoples — and a most uncertain future.
According to the most recent Arctic Report Card, the Arctic Ocean continues to warm, and seasonal Arctic ice is retreating at an alarming rate.
Why is this so significant? A diminished sea ice cover has the potential to open up impassable parts of the Arctic to what could amount to unchecked “booms” in various national and international enterprises: commercial fishing, transportation, mining and energy exploration. A warming Arctic also disturbs worldwide weather patterns, endangers fish and wildlife, and, ultimately, threatens our national security.
Although the Arctic is arguably the world’s fastest changing ocean, it remains largely a scientific mystery. Before we enact plans to protect and zone the Arctic Ocean for specific uses, we must learn more about its marine ecosystems, ocean circulation patterns and changing chemistry.
An aggressive scientific research program must be conducted collaboratively among Arctic nations, government agencies, research institutions and others with a stake in the region. NOAA is heavily involved in a number of joint initiatives, including:
- The Russian-American Long-Term Census of the Arctic (RUSALCA) – NOAA, the National Science Foundation and the Russian Academy of Sciences recently launched a 40-day research expedition from Nome, Alaska, to observe physical and biological environmental changes in the Northern Bering Sea and Chukchi Sea.
- Extended Continental Shelf Mapping – A joint, 41-day U.S.-Canada expedition is under way to map the entire continental shelf using the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy and the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Louis S. St-Laurent. NOAA and the Joint Hydrographic Center will lead the effort to collect bathymetric data used to measure ocean depths and map the sea floor.
- Climate Monitoring – NOAA’s Barrow Observatory, in conjunction with the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Monitoring facility nearby, provides a model for an international network of atmospheric climate observatories. NOAA satellites track the extent of ice and snow cover, and provide a nearly 30-year record of Arctic atmospheric conditions.
NOAA provides those living and working in the Arctic with critical information products such as weather warnings, ice cover analysis, hydrographic maps, and search and rescue satellite-aided tracking. As efforts to explore and understand the Arctic region expand, NOAA will be called upon by a growing number of stakeholders — from the U.S. military to tour operators to commercial shippers — to provide an even greater suite of services to help ensure these activities are conducted safely and efficiently.
To learn more about the full complement of NOAA activities under way in the Arctic, please visit NOAA’s Arctic Science Laboratory, Arctic Research Office and Arctic Theme Page Web sites.
Sincerely,
Dr. Jane Lubchenco
Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator
______________________________________________________________
This message was generated for the Under Secretary of Commerce
for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator by the NOAA
Information Technology Center/Financial and Administrative
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To see people like Lubchenko and Karl at the helm of governmental weather and climate agencies is extremely frustrating and a bit depressing. There will also be climate alarmism coming from them, which will be dutifully reported by the compliant mainstream media as the “official” and final word.
Arctic sea ice has increased in the last 2 years. Is this enough time to determine a real trend in sea ice, and that the arctic sea ice will continue to recover in the next few years? Or is it weather noise?
If so consider that global temperature have also increased in the last 2 years. This warming rate is 3-4 times as high as predicted by models. Is this enough time determine that there is a real trend in warming temperatures, and that the global temperature will continue to warm further in the next few years? Or is it weather noise?
Talking about the Arctic
There’s a paper in Science this week suggesting that the Arctic has actually been cooling and growing for the last 2000 years (with a 10 year resolution). Yes, even during the medieval warm period! (that’s bad news for skeptics of course)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5945/1236
They seemingly could relate this to a declining solar input due to a slow drift in the earth rotation axis. The decrease of the solar input continued in the 20th century, but the temperatures started increasing since approx 1900, with an accelerating trend. They arrive to the conclusion that the last decade was the hottest one in 200 years.
Now, if we thrust these results there’s really no other realistic reason than an anthropogenic one for this increase of temperature. Unless a 100-long underground volcanic eruption took place? Bah…
Russians never bought “The Arctic Hysteria” thing. See this excellent article by Sergey Rodionov explaining the behavior of arctic seas:
http://www.climatelogic.com/trends/north-atlantic/nao-and-barents-sea-climate.html
Lots of other good stuff on that site too.
Re: Flanagan (22:37:03)
Have a look at the works of Russian scientist Yu.V. Barkin.
“There’s a paper in Science this week suggesting that the Arctic has actually been cooling and growing for the last 2000 years (with a 10 year resolution). Yes, even during the medieval warm period! (that’s bad news for skeptics of course)”
Hmm, Caspar Ammann in there as an author. Wasn’t he the guy who rushed out some ‘peer-reviewed’ stuff to support Mann’s Hokey Stick?
Steve MacIntyre buried him, or rather he buried himself by refusing to admit his data had a near-zero correlation with his model.
One can safely assume that these priests of climatology will demand we accept their conclusions without making available their data and reasoning.
Thank you Flanagan for gathering the non-science under your name. It will be so much easier to trace down the culpable when this abuse of science is exposed.
If it were only true that the Arctic were opening up then we could have all these commercial ventures in it. Alas, it is the same ole’ Arctic as we have had in recorded history and we shall not have the boon that would come from it opening up.
Gosh! Just how many ice breakers are there currently charging around the Arctic Ocean?
Why does greenpeace need an ice breaker to monitor the melting glaciers on Greenland? It’s melting isn’t it? They are not going to get frozen in are they?
Flanagan (22:37:03)
So how does this paper explain all the times that the northwest passage has been open, documented over the centuries, or that greenland was habitable in the 10th century?
I suggest this paper is not very well researched, bad news for you.
Arctic warmed a bit since 1990 and now it is on cooling trend again:
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUNPol.html
Exactly as happened in the fist half of 20th century
http://climate4you.com/images/MAAT%2070-90N%20HadCRUT3%20Since1900.gif
Maybe we should send Bear Grylls up there to see if he can survive the Arctic summer!
Maybe there’s a 5 year programme renewal coming up and they need to prepare the political ground for their proposals?
Technique: drop in a few semi-alarming statements which have been true in the past few years and may or may not be true in the next few. Imply a key need to understand the issues more deeply. Reaffirm the decency of the organisation’s mission.
That should do the job, shouldn’t it?
Still trying for the record low extent of 2007 (the record low volume is from 2008):
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsredata/asi_daygrid_swath/l1a/n6250/2009/sep/asi-n6250-20090902-v5_nic.png
The fractured sea ice on the East-Siberian side of the pole is set to disappear.
Both the Northwest- and Northeast-passage have just opened up.
Flannagan:
‘Now, if we thrust these results there’s really no other realistic reason than an anthropogenic one for this increase of temperature.’
You really are clutching at straws here aren’t you.
Re: Boudu (02:32:01) :
“You really are clutching at straws here aren’t you.”
I would surmise he just sensibly pointed to the most probable cause for the biggest and fastest climate change in thousands of years. What straws do you have?
The BBC site is running a similar article
Arctic temperatures are now higher than at any time in the last 2,000 years, research reveals.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8236797.stm
It’s means no worried about melting ice
Ack (20:28:18) :
Going to need to appoint a Czar to oversee the movement of all the polar bears to more suitable lands.
And they will be called:
The FreezCzar
They obviously believe their own propaganda and ignore their own data.
“I would surmise he just sensibly pointed to the most probable cause for the biggest and fastest climate change in thousands of years. What straws do you have?”
Whence this desperate need for Mea Culpa, why this need to elevate Man to geo-engineers, especially when we haven’t finished the Tower of Babel yet?
I think Nietzsche was right, this is God’s rotting corpse manifesting as an unassuaged guilt complex as people in a secular world haven’t the confidence to face their own insignificance.
This from this morning’s Daily Telegraph …
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6131513/Global-warming-has-reversed-2000-years-of-cooling-in-the-Arctic.html
It is difficult to know where to start with this. While I am not enough of a scientist to dispute the facts (if facts they be) it is the assertions and conclusions that this must be linked to AGW without any attempt by the journalist concerned to test these conclusions that are increasingly frustrating and certainly only serve to reinforce my skepticism of the whole business and (I suspect) others’ as well.
Sandy: when someone immediately counter-attacks a peer-reviewed paper by an ad hominem it is simply a sign that there’s no scientific argument to counter the above mentioned paper.
PaulS: do you have any scientific publication documenting “all the time” the NW passage was open? To my knowledge, the first successful attempts at going through it goes back to Admunsen, who did it in a few years. And what about Greenland? It’s still habitable and has been for centuries now. What is your point exactly?
Boudu: do you have another explanation to propose?
“I would surmise he just sensibly pointed to the most probable cause for the biggest and fastest climate change in thousands of years.”
Not in thousands , actually in millions years . Unprecedented .
Whole 0.8°C per century what means 80°C in only 10 000 years .!
Oceans will boil and we will all die !
The whole planet will be desintegrated and transformed in a fiery hell .
The worst and most horrible apocalypse in the last 4.5 billions years is upon us and you only talk about “pointing” and a “probable” cause ?
t has become fashionable to take cruise ships into Antarctic waters
At least 2 have hit icebergs, where no icebergs are supposed to be, likely due to the high sea ice extent in recent years.
I expect these ships are full of AGW believers. I wonder if they have doubts when their ships hit icebergs that are too far north, at least according to the AGW dogma..
biggest and fastest climate change in thousands of years…
can only have been written by someone ignorant of the facts…it isn’t even wrong, it’s just stupid on so many levels