UK Glaciations – Source: Western Washington University
Just prior to Copenhagen, there was a flurry of news stories about Greenland melt accelerating and sea level rising up to seven meters, like this one from Spiegel.
11/13/2009
A Warming Arctic
Greenland’s Ice Sheet Melting Faster than Ever
By Christoph Seidler
Everyone knows that the ice sheet on Greenland is melting. But new research shows it is disappearing much faster than previously thought. The findings could mean that ocean levels are also rising more quickly.
As a corollary, some climatologists have speculated (as recently as this week) that cold water pouring into the North Atlantic from Greenland melt will cause the Gulf Stream to collapse and an ice age to set in across Europe.
‘Glaciers on Snowdon’ warning by climate expert
Jan 12 2010 by Rhodri Clark, Western Mail
THIS winter’s prolonged cold spell could be a taste of things to come for Wales – with glaciers a possibility within 40 years. That’s the chilly message from a leading Welsh climate expert who has warned that global warming could paradoxically trigger a collapse in temperatures in western Europe.
It is simple enough to show how unlikely these claims are. If the Greenland ice sheet was melting at an accelerated rate and pouring cold water into the North Atlantic, we would necessarily see two side effects:
- Increased rate of sea level rise
- Cold water around Greenland
In fact, we see neither of these things happening. Over the last four years sea level rise has slowed, and over the last fifteen years sea level has been rising at an average of only 32cm per century. This is an order of magnitude less than the predictions of alarmists.
Source: University of Colorado Sea Level Lab
The Spiegel article further claims:
In the period between 2000 and 2008, the dwindling glaciers have been responsible for the sea level rising by an average of about half a millimeter per year. However, during the last three years of observation, the value rose to 0.75 millimeters per year. According to the researchers, these results could indicate that the sheet of ice is melting at an accelerated rate.
These claims are not supported by the University of Colorado data. Since 1900, sea level has been rising at about 20cm per century, and hasn’t changed much recently – as seen in the graph below.
Is there evidence of cold water around Greenland pouring into the North Atlantic? No, quite the opposite. Sea Surface Temperatures around Greenland have running consistently above normal. Below are SST maps for the end of July (peak melt season) for 2007-2009. Maps from Unisys.
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-070729.gif
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-080727.gif
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-090726.gif
How about winter? Same story – warmer than normal temperatures around Greenland at the end of December 2007-2009.
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-071230.gif
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-081228.gif
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-091227.gif
Even if all this speculation was true and the Gulf Stream did slow down and colder weather started to set in – Greenland would stop melting, causing the whole process to reverse. In other words, don’t book any glacier climbing vacations in Wales quite yet.
h/t to Steve Goddard
Sorry pressed the send button before I had finished!
I was going to say: I don’t normally use wikipedia but if you search for Maritime climate they have a very good map of areas of Maritime climate.
Mark (04:23:22) :
My question about this is that if both the West and East Greenland currents are cold currents then why is the Eastern side of Greenland showing warmer temperatures. I know that the Irminger Current (Warm offshoot of the Gulf Stream) flows around the Western side of Iceland and thus modifies the weather there, but it doesn’t appear to have any influence on the Eastern side of the Greenland. The reason I’m wondering is because I’m wondering how this might affect the credibility of this product.
Now, the Southern Tip of Greenland is showing colder temperatures which I’m guessing is from the convergence of both the East and West Greenland Currents.
The E & W Greenland currents don’t converge, the W current flows S through the Fram Strait along the E Greenland coast then turns N and flows along the W Greenland coast to form the W Greenland Current.
sHx
One reason St Petersburg freezes where Murmansk does not is that the salinity of the Gulf of Finland on which St. Petersburg sits, is one quarter as saline as coastal water in the Barents Sea on which Murmansk is situated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Sea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barents_Sea
“Alan Cheetham (13:49:57) :
“Andrew P. (12:43:46)
ChrisM is correct (13:19:01)
I live in Seattle where we have been having a mild January while most of the continent has been freezing – this is the “warm” ocean effect (the east side of the ocean) – we don’t have a Gulf Stream.”
I am a native of Puget Sound. We do have a “Gulf Stream” and its name is the Japan Current. But Puget Sound weather may be moderated by the heat released over the Olympic Peninsula by over 100 inches/year rainfall (mostly in winter) and over the Cascades by ~ 50 inches/year rainfall (also mostly in winter).
Roman Sea levels
I seem to recall a study on the excavation of the Roman port at either Porto Vecchio or Aleria in Corsica dating from about 200BC showing sea level at this time being approximately 40 feet above current sea level. No volcanic eruptions here?
GeneDoc (06:30:11) :
Historians report usage of Pompeii’s harbor by a succession of conqueors and their naval fleets, with a naval fleet stationed in Pompeii’s harbor at one time. Pompeii’s industry is often described as being based upon the maritime trade flowing through its port, with Marc Monnier writing in his 1877 book The Wonders of Pompeii:
“All that can be positively stated is that the city was the entrepôt of
the trade of Nola, Nocera, and Atella. Its port was large enough to
receive a naval armament, for it sheltered the fleet of P. Cornelius. […] it is now conceded that Pompeii, like many other seaside places, had its harbor at a distance.”
Archaeologists are only recently exploring outside the Porto Marina (Sea Gate) in search of the buried harbor. Some recent news stories noted the discovery of earlier Samnite ruins while the arcaeologists were searching for the port and its rich community. Finding the port could result in even more enlighteneing discoveries given its diverse nature, presence of ancient ships and boats, warehouses, and more. Hints of what may someday be discovered can be seen in the ~1st Century AD fresco depicting Pompeii’s harbor. See the USA Today article:
Digging deeper: Archaeologists race to show Pompeii daily life
A fresco circa 1st century A.D., “View of a Harbor Town,” shows Pompeii.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2009-07-15-pompeii_N.htm
Pliny the Younger described an alarming receding of the sea as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius was underway in his Letters about the death of his uncle, Pliny the Elder. Informaton about the geological uplift in recent millenia is from:
Marturano, A. et al. Evidence for Holocenic uplift at Somma-Vesuvius. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research; 184(2009). http://hdl.handle.net/2122/5370; DOI: 10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2009.05.020.
To make a long story short, the story of Corsica’s changes and non-changes in elevation gets complex. Some areas of Corsica have not undergone much uplift during the Holocene, while other parts of Corsica have experienced some significant changes. To get some idea of these complexities, see an example of one research point of view (not the only one).
Lambeck, Kurt; Bard, Edouard. Sea-level change along the French Mediterranean coast for the past 30 000 years. CEREGE, Universite¨ d’Aix-Marseille III, CNRS UMR-6635, Europole de l’Arbois, BP80, 13545 Aix-en-Provence Cedex 4, France. Received 18 August 1999; accepted 15 November 1999.
D Patterson: Thanks! I’ve learned a lot from your patient teaching. Visiting Pompei today, it’s hard to imagine it as a port, but clearly it was, which helps to explain its wealth.
The sea rose at the rate of 16 mm per century during the twentieth century according to tide Gage empirical measurement in Australia and the recent year’s sea level rise was nil according to a nearby tide gage on the south coast of Australia. Australia is a very stable land with very little vertical movement and so is a reasonable place for sea level measurements.
The sea level measurements quoted by alarmists are the output of models and not empirical observations. The ICE-3G model was in favor some years ago and it or a subsequent model is likely in use to produce these doggy figures. The ICE-3G model includes corrections for post glacial rebound (PGR), that is the earth’s resilient mantel rebounding from the weight of the immense weight of ice which was removed when the ice melted at the end of the last ice age. This applies in the North Atlantic basin, norther Europe and Russia, to some extent, but not elsewhere on earth. However, the model is applied across the globe, most of which it is inappropriate to do so. This produces an apparent sea rise where one does not exist. Australia’s empirical data demonstrates less than one tenth of the sea rise that the IPCC claims for the twentieths century.
These empirical observations are from the National Tidal Facility at Flinders University in Adelaide Australia, a very reliable source.
Empirical data run through a model equals modeled result, not empirical observations.
DirkH (11:56:23) :
“Max Hugoson (11:00:37) :
A marvelous computer scientist at my church, clued me into his observation that the DOCKS at Pompei are located about 3/4 mile INLAND from the current Medditeranian shore. The elevation difference is about 50′.”
They have a volcano there. Well in fact lots of them if you look around: Vesuv, Aetna, Stromboli. I would guess that there is a strong likelihood that the land has risen due to a refilling magma chamber. Sea level will also have changed but it would take scientific studies (no, not that science, *real* science…) to examine what influenced it.
REPLY:
This correlates with Roman seaports found inland in England, Libya and Ephesus (Turkey)
HMMMmmm, Google no longer shows the references, imagine that.
The post glacial rising sea levels drowned and landlocked a number formerly used in Roman Britain. The old Roman seaport near Lympne and the Saxon Shore became landlocked when the rising seas and resultant tides washed away the north shore and broadened the estuary along the south shore until the alluvial deposits silted the bay until the old seaport was quite landlocked kilometers from the new seashore.
Meanwhile, the rising sea level drowned other seaports in Roman Britain such as the old Roman seaport at Hastinsgs.
Tectonic uplift in Ephesus (Turkey) caused the mouth of a river to move farther away from the old seaport and silted in the old harbor and waterways until the new seashore extended miles away from the old seaport and city.