I’ve been given a report on glaciers and sea ice in the Arctic that I want to share with readers. There’s some compelling evidence of glacier melting and open water in the Arctic sea in this report that I haven’t seen before.
There are also worrisome reports of significant temperature increases, with anomalies of several degrees. Also in the report is the mention of ice free open sea of almost 2 million square kilometers, which is termed as “unprecendented in the history of the Arctic”.
It is shocking to read. I urge readers to have a look at some of the excerpts I’ve posted.
First a map. Spitsbergen is part of Svalbard, which is part of Norway.
From the page 471 above, except for the date, this language seems familiar:
Well, we all know what a warm year 1934 was.
Here’s a mention of some strong temperature anomalies, as much as 10 degrees.
Here we see some significant reduction in Arctic sea ice across broad areas:
Wind seems to be a factor in flushing out the Arctic basin.
Signs that the “warming is not terminating”. Oh, that has to be bad.
Here’s the book:
All of these reports about sea ice and melt seems familiar, except the date, which is 1943.
There’s also a fascinating discussion about linkages between sunspots and precipitation on pages starting on page 460.
You can view the entire book here at archive.org
Oh and here’s that mention of “unprecendented in the history of the Arctic” open water from page 470:
The more things change, the more they stay the same. It seems from history that the Arctic ice is always going up or down. We can’t assume that our recent 2007 record sea ice minimum is something unique in the history of the Arctic ice.
And of course we’ve heard historical reports of a melting Arctic before, such as this one:
November 2nd, 1922. Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.
Big hat tip to Richard North of the E.U. Referendum, who alerted me to this book.
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A moment of shock , Anthony, until I read on…. My thoughts on the article:
It is sometimes myopic
To examine a topic
Without studying context.
This may be a pretext
To reach some conclusion
That supports your illusions,
…(or in some cases, delusions.)
As I read, I kept thinking to myself, I said: “Self, when did the copyright on this expire?” Then I started to wonder how many other real scientific articles and books from ages past have been copied word for word and published as original and “new” in the past 20 years? I must confess with some trepidation that I never really thought Fat Albert had the brains to blow his own nose, let alone ‘write’ something referred to in this day and age as a book. I’m sorry if I’ve offended anyone, I’m only human, I think.
I am not at all surprised by this 1943 translation. The Soviet Russians were very much into arctic research during the 1920’s and 30’s. They saw the arctic sea route to Vladivostok as an important strategic asset in defending and supplying their Pacific territories, particularly during the 1930’s when their only land link to Vladivostok was threatened (and often severed) by Japanese expansion into Manchuria through which their rail line traveled.
In fact their development of arctic commerce was such that just before the outbreak of war with Germany, the Russians were escorting German merchant ships to Japan via the NE passage.
All of this post and remarks are great for those who can read and write. How about the other half? How do you get them to understand? They are the ones who vote for idiots.
The NOAA weekly SST departures report is out this morning. The 50 – 200 meter subsurface temperatures charts are very interesting. Notice the change that has taken place between 9 March and 28 April. This should portend cooler surface temperatures across much of the Pacific.
See page 11 of the report.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
pft says:
May 2, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Nice catch. There is a lot of very interesting things in old books from 1940′s and earlier, not just in regard to climate, but would lead people to question much of what they believe to be true today. See how long this one stays archived.
______________________________________________________________________
Someone with the storage space needs to also archive it. I wish I had the computer space and talent
Agent J: Let’s put it on.
Kevin Brown/K: What?
Agent J: The last suit you’ll ever wear… again.
Nothing unusual here–it’s what any glaciologist would expect. Global temperatures during the period from 1880 to about 1915 were quite cool and glaciers, including Greenland and the Arctic, expanded and many North American temperature records were established (this was a cool pulse, one among several that define the Little Ice Age). The warming period from ~1915 to ~1945 peaked in the mid-1930s, so comparing glacier recession during that time with the preceding warm period will show maximum recession–pretty much what this report describes and just what would be expected.
Toby -May 3, 2010 at 1:40 am
WRT retreating glaciers, the highway between Banff and Jasper (Alberta) was built close to the nose of Athabaska Glacier in the early 1900s. Now the glacier begins close to a mile away. It’s been retreating since the mid-1800s, at least.
IanM
Interesting, Anthony, but not surprising. It never ceases to amaze me how the old theorists versus empiricists schism keeps cropping up. It must be human nature. That or the belief in the principle of induction (which only applies to logical systems). Yet there are so many more people who rely on theory rather than the hard ugly facts. AGW in particular is built on a whole concoction of models and extrapolations without measurements. I guess it will self-correct when someone gets the funding to do actual measurements of the basics but I don’t hold my breath. I think it must be that there is a false sense of power in theory rather than the humility of experiment. And people like that feeling of power and pretending to know stuff rather than the sense of having to plod along in the dark finding stuff out painfully. So we get all these grands proclamations and hubris. And it doesn’t change over time.
The AGW people will just change the date from 1943 to 2043 and claim it was sent back by an eco-time-traveler!
Problem solved!!!
You guys don’t get it…it was the elusive Higgs Boson, travelling back in time from the warm future to the 1930’s, warming up the arctic as a warning to the future, but because that Higgs was able to travel back in time, it means the warning was not listened to… 🙂
Meanwhile, back in reality, arctic sea ice has now fallen below the level for the same date in 2009, heading for a summer low that I project will be about 4.5 million sq. km, just slightly more than the low set in 2007, and tropospheric temps are well above 20 year record level…but of course, as I’ve been told, tropospheric temps mean nothing (despite the fact that the troposphere is exactly where CO2 does its greenhouse magic…
BTW: Earthquake along the fault north of Spitzbergen : M 4.6, Greenland Sea
Date: Sunday, May 2, 2010 09:17:27 UTC
Sunday, May 2, 2010 10:17:27 AM at epicenter
Depth: 10.00 km (6.21 mi)
Does that mena that Disko is dead?
Digging the typography! Two spaces after a period. LOL
The period 1900 to 1920 also encompassed the deepest solar minimums of the century. And 1920 to 1933, when there was 12% less ice than the previous decades, encompassed a solar maximum.
But of course correlation does not imply causation.
TonyB – this is extraordinary. Any other referenence to the Ipiutak people. This is mind-blowing stuff!!
Link 12: We have got this far citing instances of warming and not even mentioned the Vikings 1000 years ago…instead let’s look at another Arctic culture that thrived 1000 years before the Vikings;
From the Eskimo Times Monday, Mar. 17, 1941
David, UK says:
May 3, 2010 at 5:46 am
Come on Toby-baby. You actually believe that scientists all those years ago were wasting time worrying over fluctuations in ice of a few METRES? Use some common sense or go back to your Greenpeace.org site (as per your link) where common sense isn’t a requirement.
Rather than a rude brush-off, you might have looked into the actual facts of the matter, which are interesting. Toby was wrong – it is not meters, it is miles. But it is 2 miles, not 20, which means the Russian/English translator might have gotten other things wrong in this book:
In particular the Jakobshavn glacier receded about 20 m during the period 1880 to 1902.
NASA has information on this Jakobshavn Glacier back to 1850:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/jakobshavn.html
http://www.nasa.gov/101948main_calvingstill_1850_2003.tiff
If you go to maps.google.com and type in Ilulissat, Greenland you will get the little town north of the glacier. The entire ice-covered inlet is barely 30 miles long – the glacier retreat of 1880-1902 as shown on the NASA image is 2 miles.
http://www.archive.org/stream/arcticice00zubo#page/n7/mode/2up
Note that the entire book is translated by a “Morskie vody i l’dy” – huh ?
The Soviets were close US Allies in 1943, so I’m sure any mistakes were unintentional.
Richard North comes up with great stuff so much of the time,maybe because he mistrusts the establishment. I think his blog Eureferendumblogspot.com must reading.
He knows his politics and he knows his science.
Somewhat OT:
Nigel Calder has a nice article on Svensmark’s cloud/climate theory and confirmational evidence.
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/do-clouds-disappear/
This article talks about ice conditions in the eastern Arctic. What about the western Arctic? Does anyone have any data/information about ice conditions there? Also this paper is about winter temperatures. What about the other seasons? How do their observations compare with what is happening today?
This is for the phrase of the week:
Back then the scientists were in touch with reality and logic while the ordinary people were ignorant and superstitious. Today the scientists are ignorant and superstitious while the ordinary people are in touch with reality.
Ulric Lyons says:
May 3, 2010 at 5:02 am
20deg further north
In the figure for Warm Phase, top right of the document you link to the amount is stated as 20 % — not ‘deg’ —
This makes me wonder about what was meant as 20% seems undefined while 20 degrees of latitude is easily understood.
RAE North comes up with the most interesting things.His blog is very worthwhile-he knows his science and his politics ,too.
a dood says:
May 3, 2010 at 7:46 am
Digging the typography! Two spaces after a period. LOL
Standard practise back then. I can still hear the double-thunk of the secretaries in the typing pool double spacing at the end of a sentence even now, over fifteen years after we switched to computer based word processing. Don’t you think it makes the text easier to read? Sentences don’t run into each other, which is a real problem with some less helpful fonts and with dimming eyesight.