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
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Ryan C (05:45:42) : – please do not refer to me as ‘zombie’. It tempts me to warn you of mirrors.
Your style suggests that if I link you to reliable data and observations you will dismiss them offhand simply because they exhibit my point.
Said data and observations are available online in many different locations, including the IPCC-reports: which you will not use. I’m no fan of this kind of catch 22’s and I will not help you. You can help yourself or continue posting nonsense and insults.
—
L Bowser (05:17:46) :
“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.”
The proxies do lead to the agreement that the recent warming has risen above all margins of uncertainty from the proxy measurements. My statement follows.
No one has commented on “According to the most recent Arctic Report Card, the Arctic Ocean continues to warm, and seasonal Arctic ice is retreating at an alarming rate. ” The comment on warming water should be noted. It could be attributed to water flowing in from the Atlantic and Pacific. Yet the stress continues to be placed only on ice extent and warming AIR. I continue to wonder how much arctic melting is from underneath due to “warm” water rather than to air temperature. More attention should be paid to this and less to the effects of CO2.
IanM
I am sorry to present along post, but it may be worth someone’s effort to read. If one places this ….
Sandy (23:12:13) :
“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?
in context with …
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?
They provide a decent lead-in to what I think people might find an interesting story. In the late 1970s I was in graduate school at the U of Utah. My Ph.D. director was David Chapman, whom I regard quite highly in most ways, but who became a disappointment to me over the global warming hysteria (he was suitably skeptical at one time, but finally succumed to the fever once he had the right postdoc.). Chapman rarely knew what I was up to, which gave me a lot of free time to simply explore ideas without any sort of preconceptions.
I became interested for a time in a means of using subsurface borehole temperature measurements as a way of measuring climate change. Chapman’s Ph.D. director, Henry Pollack at U. of Michigan, had also looked at this in the early 1970s (maybe late 1960s). I quickly came to the conclusion that the method was worthless because there is so little information remaining in temperature after about 100-150 years of diffusion in the subsurface–and we may as well depend on surface air records rather than deal with the expense and trouble of boreholes. All methods of recovering past temperature from boreholes in soil and rock are ill-conditioned, extremely sensitive to noise and errors in the temperature measurements, and capable of providing any conceivable temperature history depending on how one “guides” the inverse procedure. I stopped fooling with the idea in about 1979, long before global warming hysteria.
Chapman, quite unaware of what I had been doing in 1979, got interested in the same idea in the early 1990s. The hysteria was now in full bloom. He had quite a lot of borehole temperature data from around the western U.S. and was, reasonably, looking for some use for it–what better than to study global warming? I visited him in 1992 while on a ski vacation, and he told me at this time he had come to the conclusion that the recent global warming was principally a recovery from colder temperatures prevailing during the Little Ice Age. From what little time-temperature information was available in the borehole data, he concluded that this end to the LIA in western North America occurred after 1840 or so. At the time I thought this was the most reasonable explanation for the data also.
Independently of anyone else Art Lachenbruch of the USGS had been analyzing Arctic borehole records from engineering work in the mid 1970s-1980s, and had come to the conclusion that a sharp warming of the Arctic had begun to occur around 1900 or just after.
Where this story of using subsurface temperatures to recover past surface temperature leads is a tale of its own, and is eve related to the Hockey-stick and some failures of scientific ethics, but let’s take just what the best of the borehole data leads us to conclude so far.
We figure that Europe staggers out of the LIA in the 18th century or so, that western North America staggers out about a century later, and that the Arctic begins to recover in temperature a half century or so after western North America.
After my talk with Chapman in 1992 and after reading Lachenbruch’s work, I concluded that a warming world does not warm up all at one time, but rather that local influences cause one portion to warm, then another, and so forth. One can see how people might be confused by such a pattern. Having found evidence of a natural warming in Europe two centuries ago, people conclude that recovery from LIA must have completed not long afterward, or certainly have completed by the mid 19th century rise in western North America.
These same people observe a late rise in Arctic temperatures and conclude it must be the result of some new factor, and so they jump on the AGW bandwagon.
It stands without saying on this weblog that we don’t really know for certain what current temperature trends truly are. However, it is quite likely, in my opinion, that the temperature rose until year 2000 and that some of this temperature rise results from CO2. But it is entirely reasonable to suppose that most of the temperature rise results from other, natural, factors; and that the Arctic rise, which dominates the news, and may also present an upward bias in the temperature trends of the past half century, is actually the very last of the recovery from LIA.
One part of this story I’d like to know about is how Asia and other locales fit into this tale. Did Asia, apparently, began the rise out of LIA perhaps before Europe did? What about other places? If anyone has information about my questions, I’d like to hear about it.
WUWT has very conveniently put up a little picture on the right side that leads to arctic temperatures as measured by the Danish Meteo-Institute since 1958. So if somebody thinks it has been getting warmer, she or he can very easily show when and how much.
Not doing that and just bloviating is not only lazy, it it disingenuous.
” RR Kampen (07:29:11) :
The proxies do lead to the agreement that the recent warming has risen above all margins of uncertainty from the proxy measurements.”
Since “agreement” means that everybody shares that belief, this is nonsense. Plimer states the exact contrary. See the beginning of the second chapter.
Sandy (23:12:13) :
This has been posted several times, but once more won’t hurt: click
The title refers to the same Caspar Amman. How can someone as verifiably dishonest as Amman continue to be published by Science?? Can’t they find enough ethical people to write their articles? Does Caspar Amman get a free pass because he trumpets the Party line on AGW?
Diogenes would have the same problem with the editors of Science that he had back in the day.
Moderator-Is there a way to edit these posts after submission? I find typos that are hard tospot in the tiny edit box, but are readily apparent once I can read the full text.
REPLY: unfortunately no, wordpress.com does not offer an edit feature that I can enable – A
Alexej Buergin (08:02:04) :
Since “agreement” means that everybody shares that belief, this is nonsense. Plimer states the exact contrary. See the beginning of the second chapter.
—
I meant ‘agreement’ as correspondence of many models, data and observations. Imo consensus plays no role in the value of scientific theories.
I don’t trust Plimer:
“The next part of Prof Plimer’s research was to examine the sources of carbon dioxide.
He said he found that about 0.1 per cent of the atmospheric carbon dioxide was due to human activity and much of the rest due to little-understood geological phenomena.” (from http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21542331-5003402,00.html ).”
Determining the source of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is the easy part. Isotopes C-13 and C-14 in the air diminish as an increasing portion of the CO2 gets there from burning fossile fuels (this even leads to a measurable, and corresponding, drop in O2-concentration). Calculation, first done in 1961, proves that all the extra CO2 is anthropogenic. A scientist like Plimer dismissing this (and other) evidence and instead averring that 99.9% of the extra derives from “little-understood geological phenomena” amounts to ignorance in a normal person and to outright lying by a ‘top scientist’.
Kevin Kilty (07:47:05) :
You may write long posts anytime you want.
Excellent.
RR Kampen (08:23:26) – Correction: change “99.9%” into ‘the vast majority’ or so…
More-
To–
Richard111 (23:20:15)
http://www.quarkexpeditions.com/our-fleet/kapitan-khlebnikov
For the summer months –
the Russian nuke powered icebreaker “cruise ship”
with it’s Russian crew
gets PAID by tourists to zip around and
map and otherwise
espionage security intense(?) USA and Canada
hallowed territorial arctic waters under
the noses of the USA and Canada arctic “navies”.
I wonder how many times these Russian icebreakers
have actually rescued north american forces?
What a joke our arctic sovereignty has become.
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=globalwarming&thread=346&page=98#28425
August (month end averages) NSIDC (sea ice extent)
30 yrs ago
1980 Southern Hemisphere = 18.1 million sq km
1980 Northern Hemisphere = 8.0 million sq km
Total = 26.1 million sq km
Recorded Arctic min yr.
2007 Southern Hemisphere = 18.0 million sq km
2007 Northern Hemisphere = 5.4 million sq km
Total = 23.4 million sq km
Last yr.
2008 Southern Hemisphere = 17.9 million sq km
2008 Northern Hemisphere = 6.0 million sq km
Total = 23.9 million sq km
This yr.
2009 Southern Hemisphere = 18.6 million sq km
2009 Northern Hemisphere = 6.3 million sq km
Total = 24.9 million sq km
It may be some time before governments have to worry about a commercial fishing industry. Good thing because they haven’t a good track record for fishery management.
“Canada considers ice breakers information
a military secret–
especially since now even the cruise ships
are more capable than the canadian ice force”
I’m Canadian, and what you said is probably true.
🙂
Re: RR Kampen (02:40:40)
Have a look at the works of Russian scientist Yu.V. Barkin.
Jack Simmons (07:28:48) :
I have to ask. Did you get any oil?
Yes we did – that is video from the development island
“After my talk with Chapman in 1992 and after reading Lachenbruch’s work, I concluded that a warming world does not warm up all at one time, but rather that local influences cause one portion to warm, then another, and so forth.”
Fits into this quite well, http://esp.cr.usgs.gov/research/alaska/PDF/KaufmanAger2004QSR.pdf
A few of the proxies from this may even have made the “cut” for the team’s latest Arctic paper, Tiljander did (upside down of course, http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6932).
Pity they did not use them all, I wonder why?
Flanagan (04:09:20) :
To confirm, “all the time” is not what I said. I’m sure your response is just a typo, but lets be clear on this. In response to your request for Scientific Publication on the passage being open during periods historically, I would think that sailors of bygone years ability to navigate the open passages is not scientific in nature. However, it is well documented throughout the ages. I’m sure you don’t require me to host examples, you have been here long enough to have read multiple examples in other posts. Lets not play dumb on this!
Regards Greenland. You are correct that it is still habitable, but hardly hospitable. Greenland in the 10th century was able to be farmed using primitive methods by todays standards, suggesting a warm and hospitable land, certainly compared to today. My point is that this suggests climate is colder today that 1000 years ago, half the time of the 2000 years that the paper you link to suggests. Again, I’m sure you don’t require me to host examples, you have been here long enough to have read multiple examples in other posts.
When I eyeball the recent graph of 2000 years of Arctic temperature on the BBC website :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8236797.stm
and compare it with the IPCC graph of CO2 increase over the last 150 years, it appears to me that the increase in Arctic temperatures leads ahead of the dramatic increase in CO2 ?
“RR Kampen (08:23:26) :
I don’t trust Plimer: etc etc”
I mentioned him as a representative of people whose opinion differ from yours and your consensus. There are many others behind him.
He has written a 500-page-book about climate; it would be surprising if there were no mistakes in it, especially as “climate” consists of so many different sciences. So you select a topic (not the one I was talking about) to attack him ad hominem. That was to be expected, and that part of AGW remindes me a bit of Pawlow’s studies.
OT,
UK daily Mail,
The inconvenient truth about ozone-puncturing Two Jags Prescot
Two Jags is flying to China this week to deliver a lecture on global warming. That’s right, he’s jetting halfway round the world and back to talk about the need to cut carbon emissions.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1211080/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-The-inconvenient-truth-ozone-puncturing-Two-Jags.html#ixzz0Q9stDthN
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1211080/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-The-inconvenient-truth-ozone-puncturing-Two-Jags.html
Yes, Paul, it was a typo.
For the rest, I must differ. A succession of short anecdotes from the past, from which we don’t even have some alternate confirmation, cannot serve as an opposition to long-term trend analyses.
For example: I’m quite sure the medieval warm period had some cold, hard winters in Europe. Just cherry-picking those wouldn’t be a proof that the earth was not warm at this time.
” RR Kampen (08:23:26) :
Determining the source of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is the easy part. Isotopes C-13 and C-14 in the air diminish as an increasing portion of the CO2 gets there from burning fossile fuels (this even leads to a measurable, and corresponding, drop in O2-concentration).”
To be exact: Not C-13 and C-14 diminish, but the proportion to C-12 decreases.
Plimer:
Human activities such as deforestation, coal burning, animal husbandry and cropping add CO2 to the atmosphere. Biological carbon also enters the atmosphere with methane leaks from continental shelf sediments, coal seams and gas leaks and this gives the same isotope signature as CO2 from burning coal and oil. (etc. etc. 18 pages)
And which is the easy part?
It is not that you have not read the book; you do not even own it.
Mitchel44 (09:14:31) :
“After my talk with Chapman in 1992 and after reading Lachenbruch’s work, I concluded that a warming world does not warm up all at one time, but rather that local influences cause one portion to warm, then another, and so forth.”
Fits into this quite well, http://esp.cr.usgs.gov/research/alaska/PDF/KaufmanAger2004QSR.pdf
Thanks for the reference; it looks quite interesting. Maybe I’ll time to read it tonight.
There was a newspaper report yesterday that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, while promoting her contra-carbon jihad, had ridiculed “the myth” that EPA will regulate cows and.. kittens. Well, at least she didn’t ridicule my breathing. Whew!
When I checked it yesterday, the Census Bureau clock showed current US population is about 307,349,376, and world population is a little more than 6.78 billion people. So, each day, humans here in the USA are exhaling over 353,452 tons of CO2, and all the world’s humans, around 7.79 million tons.
But not to worry. EPA has said that human exhalations needn’t be counted because they are part of a closed carbon cycle. Our exhalations are recovered by the plants we will eat next, thereby sequestering all the carbon we exhale. Mmmmm.
How long will it take some enterprising environmentalist lawyers to challenge the EPA’s leaky concept of a closed carbon cycle for carbon-exhaling cows, kittens and people? Can they do this by calculating the millions of tons of mineral fertilizers that are essential in growing the food we eat?
For example, about 5% of global natural gas production is consumed in producing ammonia-based fertilizers — and how many tons of rock phosphate are mined to help feed us using heavy machines that daily gobble tons of fossil-fuels?
Will radical environmental-malthusians let EPA continue to ignore the enormous amounts of CO2 created by farm machinery, produce delivery trucks, food processors and supermarkets? Aren’t these culprits all complicit in my exhalations of carbon dioxide, and everyone else’s, too?
Will EPA’s contra-carbon jihad eventually create the mother of all unintended killer consequences?
Bob, a living, food-consuming carbon-exhaling air-polluter hoping for EPA’s continued pardon and indulgence
RE: RR Kampen (07:22:13) :
“In fact solar activity hasn’t changed for at least a century.”
The proxies disagree – might these be the esoteric, immeasurable influences you speak of?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Activity_Proxies.png
Irradiance data is only available for the past 30 years but correlates well with the proxies shown. Ergo, since those proxies show increased activity for the past 300 HUNDRED years, solar activity has been increasing as well. It’s even happening on Mars.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1720024.ece
Nothing esoteric or immeasurable about that.