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
Computing Division
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
If there were any discernible climate change (leave “biggest and fastest” to horror tales for children), then we could talk about probable causes of it. As there’s none, no empty talk required.
Well, well, well! Here’s another example of ratchet reporting, they’re really going for it now. I dare say by Christmas we’ll all be dead! “To Copenhagen & beyond!”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8236797.stm
They get the golden prize in my book for getting the Hockey Stick back into the news, well done Auntie Beeb!
“Michael Hauber: 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.”
According to the British MET, the mean annual temperature-anomalies were:
2005 0.52
2006 0.42
2007 0.40
2008 0.32
Looks like DEcrease to me.
” RR Kampen (02:28:08) :
Still trying for the record low extent of 2007″
Nonsense. The Nansen Institute in Bergen has 1.2 km^2 MORE ice-extend than in 2007, that is about 28 times the size of the (tiny) nations of Netherland or Switzerland.
But you may keep your hope up for maybe another 3 weeks.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
“RR Kampen (02:40:40) :
I would surmise he just sensibly pointed to the most probable cause for the biggest and fastest climate change in thousands of years.”
That is only so if you believe in the Hockey Stick.
Fisheries has been taken over by watermelons and radical greenies. It happened back in the Bush admin.. The purpose of science to them is just to provide a cover for “political action”.
Boudu,
‘Now, if we thrust these results there’s really no other realistic reason than an anthropogenic one for this increase of temperature.’
NOAA in their Arctic Report Card Loudly proclaim Arctic atmospheric temperatures up 5C.
Then leads in with
Atmosphere
Summary
Autumn temperatures are at a record 5º C above normal, due to the major loss of sea ice in recent years which allows more solar heating of the ocean.
But then read the report itself. NOAA doesn’t report any actual atmospheric temperature measurements from the Arctic Ocean The only data they include, because presumably it is the only data they have, is from land stations. The atmospheric temperatures for the entire Arctic Ocean is extrapolation. No data. None at all.
The 5C increase is just more the deceptive rubbish we are so used from the AGW believers.
And Flanagan:
there’s really no other realistic reason than an anthropogenic one
So some combination of soot, particulates, aerosols, anthropogenic water vapour increases, ocean pollution and GHGs including CO2.
You are saying the role of GHGs and CO2 in Arctic melt is unknown. The role of any global warming is unknown.
One of the most annoying things about AGW believers like yourself is they never understand the stuff they post. It’s all mindless parroting of what they have heard.
Flanagan (22:37:03) :
“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”
No NO NO, it’s been warming……..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6131513/Global-warming-has-reversed-2000-years-of-cooling-in-the-Arctic.html
No mention of the 1930’s and 40’s. The 1830’s and the MWP of course, they didn’t happen.
RR Kampen:
the biggest and fastest climate change in thousands of years.
Really? Where did you come up with that nonsense? Still believe in hockey sticks?
Stick around, and you might actually learn something. Or not, since flanagan never seems to. Up to you.
NOAA is seeking Polar Bear sign. To achieve a count on the elusive, and exceedingly scarce animal, they have set up a program for their Arctic Science Lab to determine how many unobserved bears are under the ice, then to Facilitate & Administer Real Time Solutions, herein after referred to as F.A.R.T.S.
Re: RR Kampen (02:40:40)
“I would surmise he just sensibly pointed to the most probable cause for the biggest and fastest climate change in thousands of years.”
I think you mean “the biggest and fastest measured climate change”. All others in previous centuries and millenia are just proxied. And the proxies don’t agree on what the truth is.
Geoff Sherington (21:36:49) :
No, no. You think you’re looking at the north coast on the island, the video was actually take on the south side – the ice was rushing to fill the vaccuum left by the polar melt.
To–
Richard111 (23:20:15)
Apparently one or more arctic cruises
now use converted huge Russian icebreakers–
capable of smashing 3 metre ice–
Here is more ice breaker and sea ice information–
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=globalwarming&thread=346&page=98#28425
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/newdata.htm
Canada considers ice breakers information
a military secret–
especially since now even the cruise ships
are more capable than the canadian ice force(farce?).
How come AGW alarmists never have facts, data or proof. They just say things like they are gods and make decisions out of gut feelings. For example: last comment, RR Kampen states ” would surmise he just sensibly pointed to the most probable cause for the biggest and fastest climate change in thousands of years” but he doesn’t show us proof that it is the fastest in thousands of years, no data, no observations, nothing. So frustrating trying to debate zombies like this.
“the Arctic Ocean continues to warm, and seasonal Arctic ice is retreating at an alarming rate.”
except for the 400,000km2 increase the year before last and the expected 400,000km2 increase this year.
In the world of global warming hysterics, an increase in the Arctic Ice area is a retreat in all cases.
Go figure.
Flanagan
The Arctic growing is very bad news. We best put out as much CO2 as possible in hopes of slowing it down.
What this means is natural forces control climate and climate varies and changes due to these natural forces are at least an order of magnitude larger than AGW is or is likely to be. But somehow that isn’t what you took out of this citation?
Speaking of the Science paper noted by Flanagan (22:37:03):,
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5945/1236
http://www.physorg.com/news171206871.html
The study modeled the changes expected in the Arctic as a result of the changing Axial Tilt and Orbit due to the Milankovitch cycles. The study found that summer temperatures in the Arctic were cooling off by 0.2C per century.
Now look at the DMI polar temperature chart on the right margin. It wouldn’t be very long at that rate (500 years or so) before temperatures never get above 0.0C in the summer. What would happen if that trend had continued? No summer melt of the ice or the snow in Greenland or Ellesmere Island. A few more centuries and there is no summer melt a little farther south as well. I wonder what that would do.
RE: RR Kampen (02:40:40) :
“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?”
Biggest and fastest climate change in thousands of years? Really? Please elaborate. As for “probable cause” in the slight increase in global temperatures over the last decade, poke your head out the window during the day and take a look at that big, bright, yellow thing in the sky known as the sun (from which we receive LIFE sustaining heat energy). For the last decade or so, preceding the slight increase in global temperatures, solar activity increased. Hmmm… Methinks there might be a correlation there, i.e., a straw.
RR Kampen (02:40:40) :
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?
Is it not obvious? We all know that the arctic has been cooling over at least 1000 years since Greenland was farmed in the first millenium but abandoned in the 15th century. So why is this being talked about now?
The answer is that there is no warming – which is a rather inconvenient truth.
The first solution to this problem was to repackage global warming as climate change. Now the problem is that there is no discernable climate change so they are repackaging it as “no climate change but there should be”.
I am fed up with climate scientists and their disciples claiming that we cannot see any other reason for XYZ so it must be anthroprogenic. If they lack the insight and creativity to come up with real hypotheses that are testable they should keep quiet until they do.
Hey! Where is the ubiquitous statement that “NOAA understands yada yada yada…” in the blogpost?
By the way, that video of the ice crawling out of the sea was taken when one of those Catlin crew creatures took a spill into the ice water way off shore. The ice just wasn’t gonna touch that thing and crawled outa the sea to get away. Where is photoshop when you need it!
Jeff L (18:42:14) : All that ice is but imaginary!, it is not in their infallible models!,
clearly you are a part of conservative conspiracy!
Mike Lewis (06:08:34) :
“For the last decade or so, preceding the slight increase in global temperatures, solar activity increased.”
In fact solar activity hasn’t changed for at least a century.
That is, hasn’t changed significantly. Because, in fact, the solar energy hitting the top of the atmophere exhibits a continuous, slow decline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar-cycle-data.png
Or would you rather refer to those hyperesoteric, immeasurable solar influences that only certain people for whom CO2 is taboo seem to know about?
“Biggest and fastest climate change in thousands of years? Really? Please elaborate.” – what is to be elaborated? Methinks it’s clear.
So if the Arctic was opened up we could bypass the Panama Canal… Use less fuel to get to destinations on the Atlantic or Pacific… And this is a bad thing….
The only truly bad thing is that it won’t happen in my life time if ever.
Tired of people freaking out over things that are not worth freaking out over.
Jeff L (18:42:14) :
I have to ask. Did you get any oil?
Looks tough. Even the bearded seals are not sticking around there in June.
Sounds like NOAA is just trying to stake a claim to the territory and set the ground work for more funding. They’ll use the most effective information (valid or invalid, recent or stale) that does the PR job. Jane Lubchenko was a good marine ecologist who did some pioneering work as freshly minted PhD 30 years ago. Nobody, it seems, is completely immune to the lure of policy-making.