From ETH Zurich: The stupefying pace of glacier melt in the 1940s
The most recent studies by researchers at ETH Zurich show that in the 1940s Swiss glaciers were melting at an even-faster pace than at present. This is despite the fact that the temperatures in the 20th century were lower than in this century. Researchers see the main reason for this as the lower level of aerosol pollution in the atmosphere.
In Switzerland, the increase in snow in wintertime and the glacier melt in summertime have been measured at measurement points at around 3,000 metres above sea level – on the Clariden Firn, the Great Aletsch glacier and the Silvretta glacier – without interruption for almost 100 years. As part of his doctoral work, Matthias Huss used this unique range of measurements to examine how climate change in the last century affected the glaciers. The work was carried out under the supervision of Martin Funk, professor and head of the Department for Glaciology at the Laboratory for Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology (‘VAW’) at ETH Zurich, who is also co-author of the study.
A glaciologist on the way to work on the Silvretta glacier (Image: Matthias Huss / ETH Zurich) (more pictures)
Solar radiation as the decisive factor
In its work, the research team took into account the solar radiation measured on the Earth’s surface in Davos since 1934. Studies over the past two decades have shown that solar radiation varies substantially due to aerosols and clouds, and this is assumed to influence climate fluctuations. Recent years have seen the emergence of the terms ‘global dimming’ and ‘global brightening’ to describe these phenomena of reduced and increased solar radiation respectively. These two effects are currently the subject of more and more scientific research, in particular by ETH Zurich, as experts feel that they should be taken into account in the climate models (see ETH Life dated July 9, 2009)
The new study, published in the journal ‘Geophysical Research Letters’, confirms this requirement. This is because, taking into account the data recorded for the level of solar radiation, the scientists made a surprising discovery: in the 1940s and in the summer of 1947 especially, the glaciers lost the most ice since measurements commenced in 1914. This is in spite of the fact that temperatures were lower than in the past two decades. “The surprising thing is that this paradox can be explained relatively easily with radiation”, says Huss, who was recently appointed to the post of senior lecturer at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.
On the basis of their calculations, the researchers have concluded that the high level of short-wave radiation in the summer months is responsible for the fast pace of glacier melt. In the 1940s, the level was 8% higher than the long-term average and 18 Watts per square metres above the levels of the past ten years. Calculated over the entire decade of the 1940s, this resulted in 4% more snow and ice melt compared with the past ten years.
Furthermore, the below-average melt rates at the measurement points during periods in which the glacier snouts were even advancing correlate with a phase of global dimming, between the 1950s and the 1980s.
Less snow fall and longer melt periods
The researchers arrived at their findings by calculating the daily melt rates with the aid of climate data and a temperature index model, based on the half-yearly measurements on the glaciers since 1914. These results were then compared with the long-term measurements of solar radiation in Davos.
Huss points out that the strong glacier melt in the 1940s puts into question the assumption that the rate of glacier decline in recent years “has never been seen before”. “Nevertheless”, says the glaciologist, “this should not lead people to conclude that the current period of global warming is not really as big of a problem for the glaciers as previously assumed”. This is because it is not only the pace at which the Alpine glaciers are currently melting that is unusual, but the fact that this sharp decline has been unabated for 25 years now. Another aspect to consider – and this is evidenced by the researchers’ findings – is that temperature-based opposing mechanisms came into play around 30 years ago. These have led to a 12% decrease in the amount of precipitation that falls as snow as a percentage of total precipitation, accompanied by an increase of around one month in the length of the melt period ever since this time. Scientists warn that these effects could soon be matched by the lower level of solar radiation we have today compared with the 1940s.
Reference
Huss M, Funk M & Ohmura A: Strong Alpine glacier melt in the 1940s due to enhanced solar radiation. Geophysical Research Letters (2009), 36, L23501, doi:10.1029/2009GL040789
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Strange:
Sun gone a bit quiet and we’re having cold winters.
CO2 on the other has continued rising since 1998.
AGW is a pile of poo
Well, yes, it’s that very ambivalence which lends the article its weight. Ambiguity is the stuff of research – you find little enough of it in mere doctrine.
On the eastern islands, Edgeøya, Barentsøya and Nordaustlandet several large ice caps are found. Due to low air temperatures and low precipitation most glaciers in the dry interior of Spitsbergen move rather sluggish, only 1-2 m per year and therefore are only little crevassed. In the more humid regions along the coasts, however, glacier velocities of more than 10-30 m per year and large crevasses are frequent. A significant number of glaciers in Svalbard from time to time advance with extraordinary high velocity, up to several kilometers during 3-6 years. This surge-behavior is characteristic for at least 30% of all glaciers in Svalbard and possibly up to about 60% of all glaciers displays this kind of behavior from time to time, with a recurrent interval of 50-100 years. A 30 km wide sector of the large ice cap on Nordaustlandet, Austfonna, between 1936 and 1938 experienced at surge advance of more than 20 km into the ocean. This is presumably the longest surge advance ever recorded at any glacier on this planet.
(A Geographical-Historical Outline of Svalbard
by Dr. Ole Humlum, UNIS, Department of Geology, Svalbard, Norway; (www.unis.no))
Out of context perhaps, but does this surge behaviour have any relationship to the behaviour of water drops on a sloping sheet of glass? (surface tension)
The scale is wildly different, but so is the physical state of the H2O.
If so, we may have another factor in glacier behaviour. Whether or not, maybe the surge pattern is more common, and not a function of temperature.
Anthony,
I found this article from January 2. 2010 to be focused, accurate and important. It’s written by Neil Frank¹.
Climategate: You should be steamed
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6795858.html
Kind Regards,
Invariant
¹Neil Frank, who holds a Ph.D. from Florida State University in meteorology, was director of the National Hurricane Center (1974–87) and chief meteorologist at KHOU (Channel 11) until his retirement in 2008.
Piers Corbyn’s newsletter says the Dutch ice skate is ‘a near certainty’.
He’s predicting the whole of January to be bitterly cold, with the second half colder than the first half.
@Bulldust
can’t you translate it with google translate into English? I can’t because I can only translate English to Dutch. I can do it by hand but not all tree articles. So wich one is the one that is most interesting.
OT http://www.sneeuwverwachting.nl/uploads/sneeuwweek0301.gif
animation of comming snowfall in Europe. Note the snow in North Africa in de bottom of the map.
The Cryosphere Today site has changed their presentation of polar sea ice from the most recent year to the past two years. If they had used 3 years, the increased ice coverage since 2007 would have been more obvious.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
tallbloke (02:40:07) :
““temperature-based opposing mechanisms came into play around 30 years ago. These have led to a 12% decrease in the amount of precipitation that falls as snow as a percentage of total precipitation, accompanied by an increase of around one month in the length of the melt period ever since this time. Scientists warn that these effects could soon be matched by the lower level of solar radiation we have today compared with the 1940s.”
A nicely ambivalent final paragraph… :)”
Tallbloke, that is just the obligatory nod to the “Man made CO2 is Evil” gods required to get the paper published and ensure future funding. Note there is no research or data attached to the statement.
It would be interesting to survey the “pro-AGW” papers published since 1990 and figure out how many have that type of meaningless blurb tacked on so the paper would be published. I bet many of the so called “pro-AGW” papers do since I have seen it enough that it has caught my notice.
Thanks for the article. It will be interesting to see other research like this that suggests there was dimming of solar radiation at high latitudes since mid last century. And not surprising to read that despite the dimming, the melting of the glacier is progressing along with the rise in temperatures.
Hope to see more like this here.
OT:
Early last year would you have expected to read the following in one of the UK’s MSM about the Met Office?
Mail on Sunday
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240082/It-gigantic-supercomputer-1-500-staff-170m-year-budget-So-does-Met-Office-wrong.html
Juraj V. (00:51:58) :
Temperatures in 40ties were almost as high as today.
I was just going to add a similar comment. In fact, there are now very many hints from different places (e.g. temperatures in Australia and New Zealand, and the russian Barents sea temperature article here on WUWT) that temperatures around 1940 were similar to today’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if a revised global temperature record would show the same: That the difference between the previous warm period of ~the fourties and the current is very small, and probably statistically unsignificant.
is that temperature-based opposing mechanisms came into play around 30 years ago. These have led to a 12% decrease in the amount of precipitation that falls as snow as a percentage of total precipitation, accompanied by an increase of around one month in the length of the melt period ever since this time. Scientists warn that these effects could soon be matched by the lower level of solar radiation we have today compared with the 1940s.
If the solar radiation is at a lower level, then it stands to reason that the melt season is reduced. I’m having great difficulty figuring out what they are warning about. Is it increased melt or is it a rapid advance? If it’s the latter, this sounds like a job for the Catholic Church.
For people who wonder whether Swiss temperatures have warmed during the past 50 years, one can consult the long term, raw and unhomgenized record of monthly temperatures readings in Lake Zurich.
http://homepages.eawag.ch/~living/downloads/2003/Livingstone%202003.pdf
The original source of these data are the Zurich water supply company. The warming tend is very strong and the author (David Livingstone) points out that the lake warming is mainly associated with less night time cooling (warmer nights), as might be expected if increased CO2 was acting as a green house gas.
Speaking of Cryosphere Today… Will they ever update the NH seasonal sea ice graph? It’s the one on the top right. Someday I just know it will be updated. Of course, it is alot scarier if they just leave it like it is.
Espen and JurajV
There is no need to try to detect hints about the 40’s warming the data is there for all to see
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
Have a browse round my web site starting with Stockhom Sweden-where the uplift in the 30/40’s can be clearly seen -now look to the left hand scale (the 1740’s) and then go to Uppsalla Sweden where the 1720’s warming can be clearly seen. Stockholm didn’t show it as as the records didn’t exist at that time. The Uppsalla long record demonstrates the regular climatic cycles very clearly.
The 1920’s to 1940’s were also a time when the Arctic ice melted substantially ( a much more frequent occurrence than is admitted).
An article on this event and the earlier melting in the 1820’s can be seen by going into ‘articles’ from the home page of the link above.
There is also an article here about the UHI effect in Stockholm putting the recent warming into perspective.
Tonyb
“Studies over the past two decades have shown that solar radiation varies substantially due to aerosols and clouds, and this is assumed to influence climate fluctuations.”
—-
Do these aerosols and clouds happen to include something going on north,east, south and west of there, for most the study period, called WWII? I ask because that might have had something to do with the melting of the glaciers since they’ve ruled out change in temperature as the primary correlation.
Any chance there is some study somewhere that looked at the change in composition of downwind aerosols as a result of cities burning out of control and particulate from stuff being blown to smithereens on daily basis for half a decade?
My experience of going to Switzerland since 1989 is that a significant number of winters had less than normal early season snow. That’s likely the stuff that turns into solid ice as it will consolidate, compact and bond through a few months.
Late snow is more likely to melt the next summer, particularly if temperatures are warmer than normal.
So my take on the past 25 years is: less winter snow, warmer summers = BIG MELT!
The last two or three winters were snowier early in the winter, but the summers were still warm. So maybe a period of reduced retreat may occur. Or maybe not.
But if winter snows stay higher and the summers cool a bit, then the trend might disappear.
I guess the next 25 years will start to tell us who will be right.
again..they manage to Ignore the 1930’s heat issues? the fact that non icebreaking traders did 2!! trips a year round the arctic in 30?( or 1 or 2 havent got the book handy that names and dates them)
a whole lot like removing the MWP?
yesterday I got this
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/757.html
today I find this item above..
.with the below story on the links..
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2008/0710-overseas_pollution_hitting_the_us.htm
gee day 3 of 2010 and they are pushing soooo hard to keep the fear factor and blame high..
hmm? if 10 to 12% of asias crap hits the USA, well what percentage of yours does EU get?
Just a thought.
you know glass and stones etc:-)
Jimbo (04:12:29) :
Mail on Sunday
“Its supercomputer makes 1,000 billion calculations a second – then tells us to expect a mild winter. But what would you expect from a ’scientific’ organisation that for 20 years has been dominated by climate change zealots, and whose current chairman is the former boss of the World Wildlife Fund?”
I did not know that Met Office chairman Robert Napier was a hardcore green (apparently so), and it does explain their emphasis on AGW politics:
http://www.wired-gov.net/wg/wg-news-1.nsf/0/6B977BA56614AE5C802573930047847A?OpenDocument
Biography
Robert Napier is Chairman of the Board of the Met office. He was Chief Executive of WWF-UK, the UK arm of the World Wide Fund for Nature from 1999 to April 2007. Before that he spent 16 years at Redland plc, where he was successively Financial Director, Managing Director and Chief Executive.
Mark Fawcett (01:55:11) :
“You could always burn a few witches, it did not help in the past, but if it makes you feel better”
Actually, it did work for the Little Ice Age!
Pope, Innocent the VII discovered the cause of the problem … witches were causing the bad weather.
About 50,000 witches were burned over the next few 100 years or so … and, the weather finally began to warm!
The Pope’s LRWF simulation models (Long Range Witch Forecasts) were correct … reduction of witches led to warmer weather and improved crops. (ignore the adoption of root crops …. turnips and potatoes. )
Those who opposed the Pope’s theory were labeled “Witchcraft Weather Deniers” and were burned too.
Attribution
Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 18, Number 1—Winter 2004—Pages 215–228
Witchcraft, Weather and Economic Growth in Renaissance Europe
Emily Oster
http://home.uchicago.edu/~eoster/witchec.pdf
In the Papal Bull that opens the Malleus,(1484) Pope Innocent VIII recognizes the power of witches in the destruction of crops, writing:
“It has indeed lately come to Our ears . . . many persons of both sexes . . . have blasted the produce of the earth, the grapes of the vine, the fruits of the trees, . . . vineyards, orchards, meadows, pasture-land, corn, wheat, and all other cereals. . . .”
In addition, the Malleus contains a chapter detailing the powers of witches with regard to the weather, titled
“How they Raise and Stir up Hailstorms and Tempests, and Cause Lightning to Blast both Men and Beasts.”
This chapter ends with a line that leaves no room for doubt about the perceived power of witches:
“Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that, just as easily as they raise hailstorms, so can they cause lightning and storms at sea; and so no doubt at all remains on these points.”
It has long remained a mystery why the witchcraft trials re-emerged in the mid-sixteenth century, and why they did so with such force. The textual evidence shows us why it would be possible in this time to believe that witches controlled the weather. Moreover, the evidence on climate change suggests that important and noticeable weather changes during this period would have severely affected food production.
Temperatures began to drop around the beginning of the fourteenth century (after a 400-year “medieval warm period”), and the world was warming again by the early 1800s. The coldest segments of this “little ice age” period were in the 1590s and between 1680 and 1730 (Fagan, 2000). The temperature over the period was about two degrees Fahrenheit lower than it had been in previous centuries. This decrease was large enough to leave Iceland completely surrounded by ice and to freeze the Thames in England and the canals in Holland routinely—both otherwise unheard-of events.” end quote
Comet reported yesterday (visible for the preceding 24 hours), at 10:23 this morning moved into shielded area of LASCO3 camera. Since it got larger in the last 12 hours it is obvious it is moving rapidly towards the spacecraft.
09:42 http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov//data/REPROCESSING/Completed/2010/c3/20100103/20100103_0942_c3_1024.jpg
10:23 http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov//data/REPROCESSING/Completed/2010/c3/20100103/20100103_1023_c3_1024.jpg
Glaciers are made of WATER. When climate is warm, water evaporates from the oceans and freeze at high altitudes; when climate is cold there is less evaporation and, consequently, less ice is expected.
This is the “water cycle”. Did someone change it?
Nice to have confirmation. I have posted several times over the years that it is obvious to anyone who spends a lot of time in the Swiss Alps that glaciers melt in bright sun when the surface temperature (about 5feet above the ice surface) is below freezing, and remain frozen under overcast when the surface temperature is as much as 2 degrees Celsius above freezing. Also local skiiers are well aware that snowfall in the ’80s and ’90s in the Alps was significantly less than in the ’70s. (I wasn’t there in the ’50s or ’60s). More insolation, less precipitation, glacier meltback. It is not necessarily a product of GW, and not quite rocket science. Murray
To Juraj V and Espen: Your conclusion that the difference between the forties and the current (temperature) is statistically insignificant can be documented by identifying only those stations world-wide whose period of record starts before 1940. Using GISS Station Data I found 422 stations (excluding the US avg which showed no increase)) whose average temperature increase was 0.2 deg C.
The most recent studies by researchers at ETH Zurich show that in the 1940s Swiss glaciers were melting at an even-faster pace than at present. This is despite the fact that the temperatures in the 20th century were lower than in this century. Researchers see the main reason for this as the lower level of aerosol pollution in the atmosphere.
Take all those researches back to 3rd. grade of the elementary school to learn the water cycle and forbid them to watch discovery channel!