No mention of missing “M’s” here in this press release from University of Melbourne
Melting sea ice has been shown to be a major cause of warming in the Arctic according to a University of Melbourne study.
Findings published in Nature today reveal the rapid melting of sea ice has dramatically increased the levels of warming in the region in the last two decades.
Lead author Dr James Screen of the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne says the increased Arctic warming was due to a positive feedback between sea ice melting and atmospheric warming.
“The sea ice acts like a shiny lid on the Arctic Ocean. When it is heated, it reflects most of the incoming sunlight back into space. When the sea ice melts, more heat is absorbed by the water. The warmer water then heats the atmosphere above it.”
“What we found is this feedback system has warmed the atmosphere at a faster rate than it would otherwise,” he says.
Using the latest observational data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting, Dr Screen was able to uncover a distinctive pattern of warming, highly consistent with the loss of sea ice.
“In the study, we investigated at what level in the atmosphere the warming was occurring. What stood out was how highly concentrated the warming was in the lower atmosphere than anywhere else. I was then able to make the link between the warming pattern and the melting of the sea ice.”
The findings question previous thought that warmer air transported from lower latitudes toward the pole, or changes in cloud cover, are the primary causes of enhanced Arctic warming.
Dr Screen says prior to this latest data set being available there was a lot of contrasting information and inconclusive data.
“This current data has provided a fuller picture of what is happening in the region,” he says.
Over the past 20 years the Arctic has experienced the fastest warming of any region on the planet. Researchers around the globe have been trying to find out why.
Researchers say warming has been partly caused by increasing human greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, the Arctic sea ice has been declining dramatically. In summer 2007 the Arctic had the lowest sea ice cover on record. Since then levels have recovered a little but the long-term trend is still one of decreasing ice.
Professor Ian Simmonds, of the University’s School of Earth Sciences and coauthor on the paper says the findings are significant.
“It was previously thought that loss of sea ice could cause further warming. Now we have confirmation this is already happening.”
OT but I see that WUWT has changed to big baby letters. Has Anthony bought a new full HD monitor perhaps? Anyone running Firefox will probably find everything too small at 1902 x 1080 or higher. You can change the overall magnification of everything in Firefox including all web sites, the menu bar and the icons on the bookmarks toolbar. Do the following:
1. Enter about:config in the address bar
2. Ignore the ‘Here be Dragons warning. Just click on the ‘I’ll be careful, I promise!’ button
3. Scroll down to the line layout.css.devPixelsPerPx (the names are in alphabetical order.)
4. Double click the line and change the value to something like 1.3. The bigger the number, the more the magnification.
It’s magic. Promise!
“..Over the past 20 years the Arctic has experienced the fastest warming of any region on the planet. Researchers around the globe have been trying to find out why.”
Fixing that for you….
“Over the past 20 years the Arctic has experienced the fastest warming of any region on the planet. Researchers around the globe have been mounting extensive expeditions burning tons of fuel oil and installing scientific camps with heated acomodation across the region, as well as local airfields with a steady stream of turbo-prop aircraft movements, in an effort to find out why.
So far the cause has eluded them, but they all agree that it must be Global Warming…”
Most people forget that winds play an important role in Ice formations as well. Precipitation as well in the type of Ice being formed. Currents and different depths is a factor as well. Many a snowmobile Driver has found this out the HARD way.
Observationally speaking of course.
As has been noted here before, it seems they don’t know much about phase transitions, melting points and latent heat. That slight oversight has been done before by other climate scientists. Did they skip that class?
mark.r says:
April 29, 2010 at 10:59 pm
“but the long-term trend is still one of decreasing ice” HOW DO THY KNOW THIS?.
It’s all in how you define long term. For current Arctic studies this means 30 years. So please ignore any little ice ages and warm periods of the past….
Oh, so the melting causes warming! And I always thought it was the other way round. God, I’m thick!
Then, according to the logic of these researchers, the last three years of building ice could only be caused by less warming of the atmosphere, which in turn would be caused by less CO2 in the atmosphere.
Hmmmm… Sounds like a false conclusion to me, or they’ve disproven any link between Arctic sea ice and CO2. (Maybe they believe CO2 was being captured by Arctic ice and, being fizzy, it WAS the flavor of the ice after all!)
“Using the latest observational data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting,”
This must be the latest 20 year old data.
OT I know, but how do I get to paste quotes as per Jerome @ur momisugly 11:17 with the indented italic or other format. Is this a WP plug-in I can get somewhere.
“JER0ME says:
April 29, 2010 at 11:17 pm
George Turner says:
April 29, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Could this help explain the repeated observation that the sea ice grows in the winter and shrinks in the summer?”
Cheers and thanks
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/cbc/100429/canada/canada_north_north_pole_rainfall
From the weather is not climate files….extremely strange….freakish event. No mention of whether this event has even the slightest, thinnest relationship on whatever level to the Icelandic volcanic eruption? Maybe, who knows?
As a practical matter open water has a lower albedo than sea ice. So yes, less ice means less radiation reflected back into space. But since the sea ice has been expanding for the last 3 years, the reverse of this will also hold. More sea ice will increase arctic cooling. A fact that these people will find very inconvenient indeed.
I’m generally one to hate these sorts of things, but conceptually I can’t call BS on this one even if poorly phrased. Point out to me where I’ve got it wrong?
1) The ice acts as a partial mirror, reflecting energy back into the atmosphere/space in some ratio. Some gets absorbed into the ice, causing some melt. No energy reaches the water underneath the ice as it’s an insulator.
2) As the ice melts, the mirror shrinks, reducing the quantity of reflected energy. The excess energy hits the ocean waters, warming it (however slightly)
3) Warmer ocean water cools the atmosphere less than the same surface area of ice, leading to the air closer to water being warmer than the air near the ice. (or higher in the atmosphere, further away from the water vertically)
4) Warmer air and water circulates, will brush against the ice, and cause melting in that fashion as well.
Nothing particularly groundbreaking here that I can tell… just “duh”. That said, it doesn’t do anything to talk about the big picture because it looks at an isolated mechanism and attempts to use that to point fingers at an eventuality that that have limited insights into… the system in totality, not just melting ice.
stevengoddard says:
20,000 years ago, Chicago and New York were a mile deep in ice. Then the Neanderthals invented the Hummer, and all that beautiful ice started melting – forming the Great Lakes. This proves that the long-term trend is downwards.
55 million years ago, the Arctic was normally ice free. This proves that the long term trend is upwards.
Both trends can be correctly blamed on ancient soccer moms.
What exactly was the point of this comment? Long-term trends in climate are due to long-term forcings, e.g. the Milankovitch cycles. Now we have introduced anthropogenic forcings and they are causing long-term climate change too. Is there anything controversial about that? People here like to discuss the type and magnitude of anthropogenic changes, which is perfectly valid, but no-one sensible argues that we’re not having any effect at all on climate.
But even in summer the sun in the Arctic is low in the sky so the extra energy entering the water is a fraction of what enters the oceans at the equator.
It is much more likely that the energy flow from the newly exposed water surface to the cool air above is far greater than any increase in water energy content from increased insolation.
I’ve long considered open water at the North Pole to be an efficent energy conduit to the sky at all times of the year.
The Arctic Ocean is maintained as a liquid by warmer water flowing into the Arctic Ocean past Spitzbergen not by solar insolation.
If the Arctic Ocean becomes free of sea ice for longer then the whole process of energy transport from equator to poles to space is accelerated with a negative effect on global temperature.
A bald head on a cold sunny day loses heat faster than the sunshine replaces it.
I think we are now seeing the collapse of the western scientific method as a result of poor teaching of our children at every level.
Shouldn’t an Australian University be studying their OWN icecap? Stick to your own backyard! Ha ha ha!
Hmm, so I pull the Kool-Aid from the fridge, and drop in ice cubes to warm it? No, that can’t be right, but it sure sounds like it from the headline.
I suppose they are just hyping reduced albedo. Seems to me they need to go back to freshman physics lab.
Gary Turner says:
Did these “scientists” sleep through their middle school science classes? Melting ice absorbs heat, thus chilling the surrounding water and air.
Ice reflects about 80% of the visible light that falls on it. Water absorbs about 80%. The paper argues that this difference is significant; less ice = more warming.
The technical paper ARCTIC AIR TEMPERATURE CHANGE AMPLIFICATION AND THE ATALANTIC MULTIDECADAL OSCILLATION published by various technical journals including the GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTER outlines the real cause of Arctic warming .
Here is what their abstract said
Understanding Arctic temperature variability is essential for assessing possible future melting of the Greenland ice sheet, Arctic sea ice and Arctic permafrost. Temperature trend reversals in 1940 and 1970 separate two Arctic warming periods (1910–1940 and 1970–2008) by a significant 1940–1970 cooling period. Analyzing temperature records of the Arctic meteorological stations we find that (a) the Arctic amplification (ratio of the Arctic to global temperature trends) is not a constant but varies in time on a multi-decadal time scale, (b) the Arctic warming from 1910–1940 proceeded at a significantly faster rate than the current 1970–2008 warming, and (c) the Arctic temperature changes are highly correlated with the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) suggesting the Atlantic Ocean thermohaline circulation is linked to the Arctic temperature variability on a multi-decadal time scale.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL038777.shtml
Also see
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Arctic.htm
Well, it would appear, that after repeated studies it can be generally realized that Summer is warmer than Winter.
This science stuff is real easy;-)
P.F. says:
I thought it used to be that warmth caused ice to melt. This paper now says melting ice causes warmth.
No, it doesn’t say that. It says that the reduction of ice cover causes warmth, due to lower albedo. Nothing controversial there at all.
So this positive feedback of ice melting causes warming and more ice melting. So exactly why is there more ice now than any time in the past 9 years on this date? Must have missed something in that analysis.
“jim hogg says:
April 30, 2010 at 1:22 am
……..
3) If significant warming has been occurring in the Arctic in the last nine years when global temperatures as a whole have been stable, does that mean that there has actually been global cooling in the non-Arctic area of the globe?”
Actually this is an intersting point. If huge areas of the world have high temperature increases [allegedly] and the ‘average’ is only .5 or so then other areas must have gone down or least stayed the same. I’d be fascinated to look at reports of climate change effects in areas with no change.
cheers David
The only thing I find wrong with the snowball effect is that for it to work in our reality there has to be an effect that reverse it which would also be a snowball effect, what with the million years of ice ages interjected by warm periods without so much ice.
So what climatic or bunch of weather effects reverses this:
“The sea ice acts like a shiny lid on the Arctic Ocean. When it is heated, it reflects most of the incoming sunlight back into space. When the sea ice melts, more heat is absorbed by the water. The warmer water then heats the atmosphere above it.”
mark.r says:
“but the long-term trend is still one of decreasing ice” HOW DO THY KNOW THIS?.
No doubt there is a more mathematical way to answer your question but does it look like there is any change to the long term declining trend, here?
pat says:
April 29, 2010 at 11:42 pm
Thank God the ice cubes in my very light beer do the opposite.
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Ice cubes in light beer??? There is no more point in that than blogging on this topic!
(Light Beer is an oxymoron. Gi’me a pint o’ Guinness or a good IPA any day!)
Full Disclosure:
I’ve started my own politically oriented blog on WordPress and that’s why I have suddenly transformed from “Jon Jewett” into “Precinct 201”. I know Anthony would rather have us use our real name, so I will put it here:
Regards,
Jon Jewett and
Steamboat Jack (His evil twin.)