From World Climate Report:
There is a bit of press covering a just-published paper that concludes that the current climate and ecological conditions in a remote lake along the north shore of Canada’s Baffin Island are unique within the past 200,000 years—and anthropogenic global warming is the root cause. Which of course, spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e.
Somehow, that temperatures there were several degrees higher than present for a good third of the past 10,000 years and that there has been virtually no temperature trend in the area during past 50 years—the time usually associated with the greatest amount of human-caused “global warming”—was conveniently downplayed or ignored.
Go figure.
The research team led by the University of Colorado’s Yarrow Axford, reconstructed the environmental conditions in and around the Baffin Island lake by tracking the behavior of various environmental proxies that they recovered from a long core sample extracted from the lake bottom.
Here is what they concluded that has managed to capture the attention of the press corps (a release from University of Colorado playing up this finding no doubt helped as well):
Paleoecological and geochemical data indicate that the past three interglacial periods were characterized by similar trajectories in temperature, lake biology, and lakewater pH, all of which tracked orbitally-driven solar insolation. In recent decades, however, the study site has deviated from this recurring natural pattern and has entered an environmental regime that is unique within the past 200 millennia. [emphasis added]
Interesting.
Figure 1 shows the summer (June, July August) average temperature from the weather station located at Clyde, Northwest Territory, which is located on Baffin Island very near the site of the lake. There is no trend here from 1943 to 2008, the period of available data. The most remarkable events are a couple of very cold summers and one very warm summer—all in the 1970s. Summers in the most recent decade are little different than summers in the 1950s—hardly a sign that human-caused “global warming” has made environmental conditions there particularly unique.
Figure 1. Summer (JJA) average temperature from Clyde, N.W.T. from 1953-2008 (data source: NASA GISS)
Well, perhaps the temperatures during the past 50 years or so are themselves unique in the past 200 millennia?
Nope.
Figure 2 is a temperature history of the lake as derived by the authors themselves. We’ve added the horizontal red line which shows the authors’ determination of current lake water temperatures, as well as the two red circles which encompass periods during the past 200,000 years in which the lake’s water temperature was higher than current. The most recent one stretched from about 6,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago. The existence of this extended warm period during the early Holocene in this region is supported by other paleo-studies (e.g. Miller et al., 2005), so this result is nothing new.
Figure 2. Summer water temperature in the Baffin Island Lake inferred by the authors based on midge (mosquito-like insects)-assemblages. We’ve added the horizontal red line to indicate modern water temperatures, and the red circles to show periods during which the water temperatures were higher than modern values (adapted from Axford et al., 2009).
Given the history of temperatures in the region, both in the recent past and in the more distant past, is it hard to figure why any of this is particularly interesting.
However, here is what should have made the findings newsworthy:
The 20th century is the only period for which all proxies show trends consistent with warming despite declining orbital forcing, which, under natural conditions, would cause climatic cooling. The timing of this shift coincides with widespread Arctic change, including warming attributed to a combination of anthropogenic forcings that are unprecedented in the Arctic system. Thus, it appears that the human footprint is beginning to overpower long-standing natural processes even at this remote site. [emphasis added]
In other words, apparently, the human warming influence on the climate has managed to overcome the natural cooling trend which is trying to take us down into the next ice age and climate conditions which simply would not support a population of 6.5 billion (and growing) homo sapiens.
So, for those concerned about the human condition (which should seem to include most of us) this should come welcome and celebrated news.
Too bad the press isn’t interested in good news.
References:
Axford, Y., et al., 2009. recent changes in a remote Arctic lake are unique within the past 200,000 years. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, www.pnas.org_cgi_doi_10.1073_pnas.0907094106.
Miller G. H., et al., 2005. Holocene glaciation and climate evolution of Baffin Island, Arctic Canada. Quaternary Science Reviews, 24, 1703-1721.
Forget fractions of degrees and global averages and think real world diurnal and seasonal range. In reality, the sort of average annual temperature variation we are looking at is trivial in everyday range terms. We are crazed with this average global temperature myopia. There is only one killer temperature for the vast majority of cold blooded species, unless adapted for overwintering by secreted glycerol and suchlike in dormant cocoon mode, and that is 0degC. Talk to any experienced micropalaeontologist unsucked by this AGW hornswoggle and the whole geo column is always feast or famine in numerical abundance. Lets face it, everything has evolved through huge extremes of temperature and tolerates it every 24 hours, but food supply and predators dictate survival, bottom ph reduction/oxidation dictates preservation.
Anthony your graph above shows summer temperature for Clyde and it exhibits a very slight warming trend over the period 1945 to present. But the annual temperature graph provided by GISS http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=403710900006&data_set=2&num_neighbors=1
shows a definite downward trend. I replotted the graph myself using their annual data and added a linear regression line. That line has a downward trend of nearly 1 degree C over the same period. So now my question is; are the Midges sensitive to summer temp only or do they respond to annual temps?
If they respond to annual temps then what is the point of plotting the summer temps?
If they respond to summer temp only then they are not a good indicator of annual temps since obviously the annual temp went down while the summer temp went up.
John F. Hultquist – I don’t know John … this is second hand info from a friend who works in construction. It would interesting to see what is (or was) causing it. It would also be interesting to see the other statistics associated with the Average Temp in the graph above (s.d. etc). Also, what are the monthly statistics for this weather station?
Jon
p.s. It feels like it going to be a long cold winter!
“The 20th century is the only period for which all proxies show trends consistent with warming despite declining orbital forcing, which, under natural conditions, would cause climatic cooling.”
This is essentially what I pointed out back when Frank Lansner did his spaghetti proxy article. It demonstrated a long term cooling trend. If the Earth is in a long term cooling mode then AGW, far from being evil, may be exactly what is needed to delay the cooling process. There can be no positive feedbacks since we’re simply keeping the temperature relatively constant.
Too bad they stopped with “consistent with warming”, otherwise they could have made the significant statement about AGW balancing a cooling world and made the obvious connection I did above. Instead of looking like useful idiots, they could have tread new ground.
They would also have provided the perfect excuse for climate scientists. They could claim they got the science right but missed the natural cooling trend it was working within. But, then they would have to tell the politicians … never mind.
I guess everyone here knows that the term “midge” is not politically correct and should henceforward be replaced with the UN approved phrase “little flying insects”.
Sorry for the repeat post . I didn’t get a response, and I’m very curious about this:
The 20th century is the only period for which all proxies show trends consistent with warming despite declining orbital forcing,
I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen this presented anywhere before. How long has this declining orbital forcing been happening? 20? 30? 50? 100 years? Is this something new added to the mix, or did I just miss it?
jmbnf (09:18:18) :
Looks like there is a bit of an anomolous spike in 1975, other then that you might be able to juxtapose a small cooling trend from the beginning of the record to arround 1978 and a slight warming trend after that. More or less in line with global records.
—…—…—
I also disagree with the seemingly simplistic “flat-lined” temperature trend shown in the upper graphs: Temp’s fells from the mid-1940’s into the world-wide low point in the mid-1970’s, then rose again in their usual 70 year mini-cycle between 1975 and 2000, and are now dropping off again. Just like they have every time un-GISS-adjusted data is displayed.
But this leaves the more fundamental question:
Hypothesis: These “researchers” have concluded vehemently that man-released CO2 caused global warming that affected temperatures around Baffin Island that caused midge populations in one Baffin Island lake to plummet over the last half of the 20th century.
Actual Observation: Temperatures around Baffin Island averaged 3.5 degrees for twenty five years until dropping off in the early 1960’s by 1.0 degree; then leveled off and stayed at 2.5 degrees for about twenty five years, then went back up in the 1980 and 1990’s to return to 3.5 degrees.
To support their propaganda (er, conclusion) in this press release they need to show an INCREASING midge population as temperatures decreased, and a steady but LARGER population through the 1960’s, 1970’s, and mid 1980’s, and a substantial DROP in midge population since 1990. Instead their data show that overall populations declined since the early 1950’s.
And this observation is even more inconsistent with their theory that midge population in this lake was affected by temperatures.
Further, these “scientists” – must show
(1) that a 1 degree decrease in temperature (as in 1960-1970) will actually increase midge populations.
(2) they must show that a constant 2.5 degree average temperature over 20 years results in a CONSTANT and LARGE midge populations from 1960 through 1990 (compared to their baselinepopulation);
(3) They must show that a 1 degree rise in temperature will actually reduce midge population.
(4) Certain years in their sample fluctuate significantly from the actual average temperature for the region. Midges are short-lived creatures, surviving the winter only through eggs laid before the ground and lake surface re-freezes each fall. IF their midge-population-to-temperature theory is correct, the “scientists” MUST show year-to-year population changes exactly matching these spikes and drops in temperatures.
(5) If a 4 .0 degree up and down spike in recorded temperatures between 1972 and 1978 did NOT change midge populations in those same years, then a 1/2 degree rise in temperatures over a century’s time did NOT cause midge populations to fall over the latter half of the 20th century.
(6) There are slightly different trends between summer and winter temperatures. To support their theory that any temperature (whether average/summer/winter) affects midge population, the scientists must show which temperature change is controlling the population: colder winters, hotter summers, colder average, hotter average, etc.