This is a paleoclimatology finding, with current spin added. I guess they haven’t seen the latest on the NAO and AO.
USGS Press Release: Arctic Could Face Warmer and Ice-Free Conditions
Released: 12/29/2009 6:20:34 AM
There is increased evidence that the Arctic could face seasonally ice-free conditions and much warmer temperatures in the future.
Scientists documented evidence that the Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas were too warm to support summer sea ice during the mid-Pliocene warm period (3.3 to 3 million years ago). This period is characterized by warm temperatures similar to those projected for the end of this century, and is used as an analog to understand future conditions.
The U.S. Geological Survey found that summer sea-surface temperatures in the Arctic were between 10 to 18°C (50 to 64°F) during the mid-Pliocene, while current temperatures are around or below 0°C (32°F).
Examining past climate conditions allows for a true understanding of how Earth’s climate system really functions. USGS research on the mid-Pliocene is the most comprehensive global reconstruction for any warm period. This will help refine climate models, which currently underestimate the rate of sea ice loss in the Arctic.
Loss of sea ice could have varied and extensive consequences, such as contributions to continued Arctic warming, accelerated coastal erosion due to increased wave activity, impacts to large predators (polar bears and seals) that depend on sea ice cover, intensified mid-latitude storm tracks and increased winter precipitation in western and southern Europe, and less rainfall in the American west.
“In looking back 3 million years, we see a very different pattern of heat distribution than today with much warmer waters in the high latitudes,” said USGS scientist Marci Robinson. “The lack of summer sea ice during the mid-Pliocene suggests that the record-setting melting of Arctic sea ice over the past few years could be an early warning of more significant changes to come.”
Global average surface temperatures during the mid-Pliocene were about 3°C (5.5°F) greater than today and within the range projected for the 21st century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Read the full article at http://micropress.org/stratigraphy/.
[ PDF is here http://micropress.org/stratigraphy/papers/Stratigraphy_6_4_265-275.pdf – Anthony ]
Scientists studied conditions during the mid-Pliocene by analyzing fossils dated back to this time period. The USGS led this research through the Pliocene Research, Interpretation and Synoptic Mapping group. The primary collaborators in PRISM are Columbia University, Brown University, University of Leeds, University of Bristol, the British Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey. Learn more about PRISM research.
USGS provides science for a changing world. For more information, visit www.usgs.gov.
Bob Watson is Director of Strategy at the UK Tyndall centre based at the University of East Anglia and was Environment Director or similar at the World Bank. He is also Chief Scientific Adviser to Defra, and is a member of the Natural Environment Research Council, which decides the funding for Tyndall et al.
Prior to joining the World Bank, Dr. Watson was Associate Director for Environment in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President in the White House. Prior to joining the Clinton White House, Dr. Watson was Director of the Science Division and Chief Scientist for the Office of Mission to Planet Earth at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/06/climatechange.scienceofclimatechange The UK should take active steps to prepare for dangerous climate change of perhaps 4C according to one of the government’s chief scientific advisers. In policy areas such as flood protection, agriculture and coastal erosion Professor Bob Watson said the country should plan for the effects of a 4C global average rise on pre-industrial levels. The EU is committed to limiting emissions globally so that temperatures do not rise more than 2C.
When asked in 1997 at Kyoto, as the new IPCC Chairman, about the growing number of climate scientists who challenged the conclusions of the UN that man-induced global warming was real and promised cataclysmic consequences, Watson responded by denigrating all dissenting scientists as pawns of the fossil fuel industry. “The science is settled” he said, and “we’re not going to reopen it here.”
http://sovereignty.net/p/clim/kyotorpt.htm
Gore/Watson Mutual Admiration Society (dead link)
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/10/13/news/local/news02.txt
“We need an advocate such as Al Gore to help present the work of scientists across the world,” said Bob Watson, former chairman of the IPCC and a top federal climate science adviser to the Clinton-Gore Administration.
Watson’s World Bank leaving party:
http://info.worldbank.org/etools/BSPAN/PresentationView.asp?PID=2129&EID=963
Jack Gibbons, Watson’s former boss at the White House, read aloud a letter written to Watson by Al Gore. In this letter, Gore calls Watson his “hero of the planet,” commends him on his incredible career and contributions, and congratulates him on his new jobs. Gibbons also spoke about the challenges facing scientists whose scientific evidence is often viewed not as strict science but as efforts to steer policy.
Five degrees warmer, melting arctic ice, and all without a coal-fired power plant in sight.
“…accelerated coastal erosion due to increased wave activity, impacts to large predators (polar bears and seals) that depend on sea ice cover, intensified mid-latitude storm tracks and increased winter precipitation in western and southern Europe, and less rainfall in the American west.”
What I find particularly irritating about hysterical inferences drawn from models is that almost uniformly only “bad” things happen. If the models are true, how about more arable land in the Canadian provinces, longer growing periods in higher latitudes, higher crop yields in mid-level latitudes, less frost damage, and fewer people dying due to arctic blasts?
Change is change. There will be good things. There will be bad things. It is ludicrous to think that change will only result in bad results. It is ridiculous to contemplate for even one second that the government or the U.N. can protect us from all risk.
CodeTech (17:19:43) :
Pliocene not that different than today :
See paleo-geographic map of the Pliocene:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/namNp3.jpg
Linked from:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/nam.html
which has excellent paleogeographic maps back through the Cambrian
For about 90% of the past 500,000 years, the earth was locked in glacial epochs. We’re just very fortunate to be living in that 10% of the time when earth is relatively warm–called an interglacial. Why are we worried about some condition on earth that existed 6 times farther back than the past half million years?
Overlooking the past half million, one million, even two million years of extreme cold when ice sheets up to 2 miles thick covered most of Canada and came as far south as Long Island, Chicago, and northern Idaho is definitely grasping at straws.
One thing that puzzles me about this report is where, if the arctic oceans were too warm to support permanent ice, did they find the 10 million year old “permanent” ice to core for use as a temperature proxy?
Surprising that NOVA covers the unprecedented warmth that prevailed in the Arctic when it was inhabited by …… dinosaurs?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/arcticdino/program.html
Paul Martin (18:08:45) :
Well, there’s a difference between ocean ice and land ice, don’t you think? It may have been too warm in the ocean but not on land.
CodeTech (17:19:43) :
“Quick question: where were the poles 3 million years ago?
Given that the rotational pole moves, what is currently arctic was NOT arctic in the past… but how long ago was that?”
Along that same line, due to continental drift, the land masses and sea currents were a lot different then. Who’s to say that the reason the “arctic” was ice free was because of warmer water and different air currents?
And, just a quick scan didn’t turn up any references to increased CO2 as a cause for the ice-free condition.
kadaka (17:24:32) :
“At least the remediation of the methane problem, by converting it to a far less potent green house gas, is an easy enough thing to do.
Equip the cows with pilot lights.”
Afterburners, eh? Guess that’d get the cows in the barn a lot quicker at night.
Thank you, Jeff L… that is an extremely informative site.
I knew the poles wandered, but wasn’t sure what the time scale was. So 3 million years ago the current arctic was pretty much already the arctic.
David L. Hagen (15:54:40) :
> Amazing -polar bears survived/thrived despite no ice.
Polar bears only evolved in the last 100-200 thousand years ago. There were none 3,000,000 years ago.
tarpon (16:47:07) :
> Polar bears are just brown bears that moved north about 250,000 years ago and turned white to better hide from seals.
They’re more than just white bears, several other changes have occurred, dentition has changed in only the last few thousand years to better match their pure? primarily? carnivorous diet.
“Leo G (17:12:16) :
We have a primary sewer plant here that has always been run on the methane that it extracts from settling all the poop. Our old landfill is also contributing to our natural gas supply. Actually, collecting of methane makes sense, the technology is there, and at least here, no government subsidies as there is a profit motive.
Not all ideas from the pro side are wrong.”
True. However, when I worked for well known computer company in the 1980’s in Southern England the local authorities agreed to sell methane to the company from the local sewage treatment plant nearby for heating purposes. This was nothing to do with “climate change”, “ideas from the pro side” and/or “saving the planet”. It was purely common and economic sense. There was a resource which, until then, was just burnt off (producing CO2). It was put to good use, and still is, I believe.
The last sentence in the .pdf paper:
Finally, these new data imply a major mid-Piacenzian reduction in sea ice similar to what has been observed in recent summers, strengthening the idea that the anomalous sea ice melting we have observed in the Arctic Ocean in recent years may be an early warning for significant global warming.
The manuscript was accepted in June, so they didn’t have the 2009 low Arctic sea ice level, but they did have the 2008 datum. There is this reference that may be the source: BOE, J., HALL, A. and QU, X., 2009. September sea-ice cover in the Arctic Ocean projected to vanish by 2100. Nature Geoscience, 2:341-343.
That’s at http://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/~jclub/journalclub_files/Boe.sea_ice.Nature_Geo.2009.pdf and has the even worse closing line:
“All models are wrong, some are useful” said the famous statistician George Box. We would add that many models – each wrong in a different way – can collectively be as useful as a nearly perfect one, as long as observations exist to guide interpretations of their predictions.
So any species that evolved more than 3 million years ago is not at risk from “global warming” since they have already survived it. OK. Someone needs to make a list of species newer than 3 million years and put some epithelials in a freezer…
lmg (16:35:50) : (More seriously, I wonder if that could have aided the spread of Homo out of Africa?)
Don’t know if it was a “help”, but there is the “Sahara Pump” theory. It says that periodic cyclical changes come to the Sahara. As it turns to green and lush, species move north into it. As it turns back to desert, the abandon it for the north (it now being a bad idea to head south through the desert…).
It is believed that this explains many species evolution and distribution.
These folks:
http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Sahara-Pump-Theory
think it dates four separate human migrations out of Africa…
The wiki used to have a great write up, but I didn’t even bother checking it this time. It would just get erased if I linked to it as evidence of natural long duration climate cycles…
H.R. (18:51:39) :
kadaka (17:24:32) : “Equip the cows with pilot lights.”
Afterburners, eh? Guess that’d get the cows in the barn a lot quicker at night.
OMG… brings back bad memories of watching another person demonstrate such an “afterburner” with “burrito vapor”… he walked funny for a couple of days and did not take well to my suggestions of ‘ice cubes’ 😉 Would have likely been OK but some “hair smolder” made some hot spots…
(Honest – a true story. A good friend, but not the sharpest tool in the shed some times. I’d said fire didn’t belong in some places but he “just had to know if it was true.” It is. Some experiments never ever ought to be repeated. Scientific method or no…)
So if you put pilot lights on cows, remember to put the ‘flame arrestor’ wire screen in place too … to prevent ‘flash back’ causing hair ignition. Otherwise you will get very fast moving very noisy cows that walk funny.
tarpon (16:47:07) :” Polar bears are just brown bears that moved north about 250,000 years ago and turned white to better hide from seals.”
Just to be correct:
“a polar bear’s fur is not white. Each hair shaft is pigment-free and transparent with a hollow core. Polar bears look white because the hollow core scatters and reflects visible light, much like ice and snow does. ”
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/bear-facts/polar-bear-fur/
Polar Bears apparently split off from an isolated population of brown bears (Alexander Archipelago brown bears) about 200,000 to 250,000 years ago, based on DNA and fossil evidence. That’s sounds like a long time ago, but is very young as species go, especially species as radically different from their relatives as polar bears are from brown bears.
Genetically, Alexander Archipelago brown bears are closer to polar bears than they are to other brown bears, but physically and behaviorally they are brown bears. I believe, though I would have to recheck this, that polar bears and brown bears can interbreed when they are in contact. Short answer: No. Polar Bears weren’t around 3 million years ago.
Was the earth’s geography substantially the same 3 million years ago as it is now? That’s kind of iffy. That was right about the time the land bridge formed between North and South America, though the gap had been narrowing for several million years before that, and the exact chronology seems to be a bit wanky, with the land mammal chronology indicating a more recent connection than some other indicators.
My understanding is that the closing of the gap between North and South America was one of the triggers of the set of ice ages that we’ve had in the last couple of million years. It forced ocean circulation toward the poles, which gradually dropped the overall ocean temperature and at some point put the planet into a position where slight variations in the orbital mechanics could put it into an ice age, followed by an interglacial, followed by another ice age.
The ice age/interglacial cycle has repeated a number of times for at least the last million years. The planet spends most of its time in ice ages. The last interglacial was roughly 130,000 years ago if I recall correctly. It was short–10,000 or 15,000 years, but it was considerably warmer than the current interglacial, with sea levels quite a few meters higher than they are now. Polar bears had to have survived warmer temperatures of the last interglacial, but they might not have been as dependent on ice floes back then.
Sorry about the meandering, but the bottom line is that the planet has been a lot colder and a lot warmer than it is now. The current set of animals are the ones lucky enough to have survived all of those fluctuation.
OMG… I bust a gut laughing! Fortunately, I set down my drink before reading this part else I surely would have been disassembling my laptop and cleaning its keyboard in the morning.
In a land far, far away and long, long ago, mankind evolved to a state similar to that which we enjoy today 3.5 million years later.
At that time, though, they took notice of the climate cycles and rather than embracing change, they decided to limit consumption, reduce power usage, simplify their lives. Within a few generations, they lost their civilization, their knowledge and their science. When the climate entered a colder phase, mankind was defenseless and …
So you see, mankind WAS responsible for the Artic warming, long, long ago, and far, far away.
Patrick Davies, exactly. The sewage plant has been there for over 40 years.
My point was the old don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because a pro AGW’r said that collecting methane and using it would be a good start to lowering GHG’s and at the same time may actually show a slight cooling trend, is no reason to dismiss something that has been done already for at least 40 years that I know of. If it has an added benefit, so much the better!
As Greg pointed out earlier there are things that we could be doing ala Lumborg, that are good for the planet and the people of the planet, that are cost effective and make this world better for all.
Off the soapbox now!
E.M.Smith (19:29:56)
So if you put pilot lights on cows, remember to put the ‘flame arrestor’ wire screen in place too … to prevent ‘flash back’ causing hair ignition. Otherwise you will get very fast moving very noisy cows that walk funny.
…or self-basting steaks. Oh yeah…
tarpon (16:47:07) :
Polar bears are just brown bears that moved north about 250,000 years ago and turned white to better hide from seals.
Actually, polar bears are black. Really. Read here.
“Scientists documented evidence that the Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas were too warm to support summer sea ice during the mid-Pliocene warm period (3.3 to 3 million years ago).”
With tongue firmly in cheek:
First Pangaea broke up, then the Beatles broke up, and now CRU and Penn state are trying to avoid being broke up! Then along comes this article. The AGW / GW parascientologists need to fix this, and quick!
Possible solutions:
1. Re-redefine “peer review” to exclude this study, too
2. “The U.S. Geological Survey is not chartered by the UN to perform climate research”
3. “micropress.org is not recognized by the IPCC as a legitimate journal”
4. Declare the Pliocene to be too old to have any impact on current trends
5. Have AP science reporter Seth Borenstein report that PRISM is in Big-Oil’s pocket
6. Have Briffa filter the USGS data, then feed it to “Phil’s not going to like this” Harry_ReadMe model, and viola! a hockey stick emerges!
7. Work behind the scenes with Diane Feinstein and Gordon Brown to withhold government funding from PRISM’s members (Columbia University, Brown University, University of Leeds, University of Bristol, the British Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey) until they retract the study
8. “Deny, Deny, Deny!” [A Guide for the Married Man (1967), Walter Mathau, Robert Morse, …]
9. Repeat loudly: “The science is settled. You can’t take DENIERS seriously.”
I’m sure they will think up more rebuttals than I have.
Newt Love (my real name)
Aerospace Tech Fellow of Modeling,Simulation & Analysis
newtlove.com
Oh sure, after I post I notice “Tom in polar bear free Florida (19:32:38)” posted the same link. Oh well.
@ur momisugly E.M.Smith (19:29:56) : But how do you work in a hinge mechanism for the flash arrestor to allow for “ejection of mass”?
E.M.Smith (19:29:56) :
I do know some people who like steak that rare… 😉
As to the comment from Jeff L (18:03:57), is there a place on the web with maps of that nature from the other side of the Earth?