From Ohio State, alarming news about ice, sediments, proxy algae, and other worrisome stuff. It has a familiar ring to it, plus some luck.
ARCTIC ICE AT LOW POINT COMPARED TO RECENT GEOLOGIC HISTORY
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Less ice covers the Arctic today than at any time in recent geologic history.
That’s the conclusion of an international group of researchers, who have compiled the first comprehensive history of Arctic ice.
For decades, scientists have strived to collect sediment cores from the difficult-to-access Arctic Ocean floor, to discover what the Arctic was like in the past. Their most recent goal: to bring a long-term perspective to the ice loss we see today.
Now, in an upcoming issue of Quarternary Science Reviews, a team led by Ohio State University has re-examined the data from past and ongoing studies — nearly 300 in all — and combined them to form a big-picture view of the pole’s climate history stretching back millions of years.
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Leonid Polyak
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“The ice loss that we see today — the ice loss that started in the early 20th Century and sped up during the last 30 years — appears to be unmatched over at least the last few thousand years,” said Leonid Polyak, a research scientist at Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University. Polyak is lead author of the paper and a preceding report that he and his coauthors prepared for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.
Satellites can provide detailed measures of how much ice is covering the pole right now, but sediment cores are like fossils of the ocean’s history, he explained.
“Sediment cores are essentially a record of sediments that settled at the sea floor, layer by layer, and they record the conditions of the ocean system during the time they settled. When we look carefully at various chemical and biological components of the sediment, and how the sediment is distributed — then, with certain skills and luck, we can reconstruct the conditions at the time the sediment was deposited.”
For example, scientists can search for a biochemical marker that is tied to certain species of algae that live only in ice. If that marker is present in the sediment, then that location was likely covered in ice at the time. Scientists call such markers “proxies” for the thing they actually want to measure — in this case, the geographic extent of the ice in the past.
While knowing the loss of surface area of the ice is important, Polyak says that this work can’t yet reveal an even more important fact: how the total volume of ice — thickness as well as surface area — has changed over time.
“When we look carefully at various chemical and biological components of the seafloor sediment, and how the sediment is distributed — then, with certain skills and luck, we can reconstruct the conditions at the time the sediment was deposited.”
“Underneath the surface, the ice can be thick or thin. The newest satellite techniques and field observations allow us to see that the volume of ice is shrinking much faster than its area today. The picture is very troubling. We are losing ice very fast,” he said.
“Maybe sometime down the road we’ll develop proxies for the ice thickness. Right now, just looking at ice extent is very difficult.”
To review and combine the data from hundreds of studies, he and his cohorts had to combine information on many different proxies as well as modern observations. They searched for patterns in the proxy data that fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
Their conclusion: the current extent of Arctic ice is at its lowest point for at least the last few thousand years.
As scientists pull more sediment cores from the Arctic, Polyak and his collaborators want to understand more details of the past ice extent and to push this knowledge further back in time.
During the summer of 2011, they hope to draw cores from beneath the Chukchi Sea, just north of the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia. The currents emanating from the northern Pacific Ocean bring heat that may play an important role in melting the ice across the Arctic, so Polyak expects that the history of this location will prove very important. He hopes to drill cores that date back thousands of years at the Chukchi Sea margin, providing a detailed history of interaction between oceanic currents and ice.
“Later on in this cruise, when we venture into the more central Arctic Ocean, we will aim at harvesting cores that go back even farther,” he said. “If we could go as far back as a million years, that would be perfect.”
Polyak’s coauthors on the report hailed from Penn State University, University of Colorado, University of Massachusetts, the U.S. Geological Survey, Old Dominion University, the Geological Survey of Canada, University of Copenhagen, the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Stockholm University, McGill University, James Madison University, and the British Antarctic Survey.
This research was funded by the US Geological Survey and the National Science Foundation.
#
Contact: Leonid Polyak, (614) 292-2602; Polyak.1@osu.edu
Written by Pam Frost Gorder, (614) 292-9475; Gorder.1@osu.edu
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“The newest satellite techniques and field observations allow us to see that the volume of ice is shrinking much faster than”… we thought! Run for the hills!
geronimo says:
June 3, 2010 at 12:13 am
I have never been wooed by the intrinsic brilliance of people who go into science for a living,
Well, not every scientist wants to marry a muddle headed skeptic. But I’m sure you found someone nice.
but now I am ashamed to say that I’m astonished at the level of stupidity of some of these guys doing climate science.
Well, if you’re not a woman, that would explain why most of “these guys” never wooed you. No need to call them stupid.
Ashamed, astonished – you’re certainly emotional… forget about those climate science guys. Move on.
You would think wouldn’t you that they would ask themselves why the sea ice is less today than when the Danes were able to farm in Greenland.
Or, I would wonder if the Danes were once again farming on Greenland.
Yes, they are:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,434356,00.html
I would also think that Vikings escaping murder convictions were more likely to locate in marginal farmland (Greenland) than modern Danes, who have quite a few options for making a living these days:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_of_Denmark
Anu says:
June 3, 2010 at 11:29 pm
Or, I would wonder if the Danes were once again farming on Greenland.
Yes, they are:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,434356,00.html
Yeah, and they’re farming the permafrost areas of the last settlements too, right?
Right?
About 3 out of the 14 Arctic ice areas are greater than -.1 million sq km from average (eye balling graphs is not easy and you have to watch the scale, they are not the same for each area). Without knowing the SD bars, this seems positively….boringly normal for a positive -and natural- Atlantic warm current melt season.
Pamela Gray says:
June 4, 2010 at 6:03 am
About 3 out of the 14 Arctic ice areas are greater than -.1 million sq km from average (eye balling graphs is not easy and you have to watch the scale, they are not the same for each area). Without knowing the SD bars, this seems positively….boringly normal for a positive -and natural- Atlantic warm current melt season.
And 3 others have less than 0.1Mm^2 remaining.
899 says:
June 4, 2010 at 1:27 am
Yeah, and they’re farming the permafrost areas of the last settlements too, right?
Right?
They are farming now in both the old Western Settlement and Eastern Settlement, yes.
http://www.archaeology.org/image.php?page=online/features/greenland/jpegs/map.jpeg
Qaqortoq (the town in my last citation) is right in the middle of the old “Eastern Settlement” – I’m sure the Vikings never grew potatoes, radish and broccoli like the current farmers do. Or the potato farmers of Nuuk – located in the old Western Settlement:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1001/p01s02-wogn.html
Looks like it’s warmer than when Erik the Red started farming there, and it’s getting warmer.
The Viking settlements were based on grazing sheep, goats and cattle, not farming wheat… The Western and Eastern Settlements, even if directly on permafrost, could use the 2 ft to 13 ft active layer above the permafrost to graze their livestock during the thawed months, and grow some marginal crops.
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/
Trading with Norway, under whose rule they eventually came, the Greenlanders exchanged live falcons, polar bear skins, narwahl tusks, and walrus ivory and hides for timber, iron, tools, and other essentials, as well luxuries such as raisins, nuts, and wine.
It’s not like they were big wheat farmers. Nor were the “Skraelings” (Inuit), who also managed to survive in Greenland before, during and after the Vikings lived there. The Viking economy was supported mainly by grazing and trading, not farming.
As the Greenlanders’ isolation from Europe grew, they found themselves victims of a steadily deteriorating environment. Their farmland, exploited to the full, had lost fertility. Erosion followed severe reductions in ground cover. The cutting of dwarf willows and alders for fuel and for the production of charcoal to use in the smelting of bog iron, which yielded soft, inferior metal, deprived the soil of its anchor of roots. Pollen analysis shows a dramatic decline in these species during the Viking years. In addition, livestock probably consumed any regenerating scrub. Overgrazing, trampling, and scuffing by the Norsemen’s sheep, goats and cattle, the core of the island’s livelihood, left the land debased.
“Skeptics” like to make fun of tree ring temperature proxies, but somehow think that Vikings grazing sheep 1000 years ago on some marginal coastland that they quickly degraded proves there is no global warming.
Wishful thinking is a powerful force.
Pamela Gray says:
June 4, 2010 at 6:03 am
this seems positively….boringly normal for a positive -and natural- Atlantic warm current melt season.
How does “boringly normal” melting explain the lengthening melt seasons ?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=42456&src=eoa-iotd
Even when the climate is changing “quickly”, every day, week, month and year still looks like “weather”.
Anu says:
You really need to quit deliberately misrepresenting scientific skepticism. Skeptics don’t say ‘there is no global warming.’
Skeptics are the only honest kind of scientists. Climate alarmists are not skeptics. Since there is no empirical, testable evidence showing that human activity causes any measurable global warming, then skepticism of the computer models that climate alarmists rely on is the proper response. It is alarmists who are engaging in wishful thinking and make-believe.
The default hypothesis is natural climate variability — which fully and completely explains the current climate, including the entirely natural global warming from the LIA.
And drop the quotation marks around the word skeptic. It’s just more dishonesty.
stevengoddard said (June 2, 2010 at 10:01 pm): “It is ridiculous, sheer, utter nonsense to claim that they can detect the September minimum from ancient sediments. Junk science reigns supreme in the Arctic.”
We now have proof that Steve Goddard is not a an open minded skeptic. He has a dogmatic belief that is immune to new evidence. An open minded person would look forward to seeing the published version of the article. Not Steve. His mind is set. Scientists aren’t prefect, but the science establishment, with its many checks and balances, such peer review and review panels, is a far better place to get advise on science policy than a blogger with no relevant training.
Kudos to Anthony for posting this. I don’t know if all the bloggers here are equally closed minded. I hope some of then will show enough humility to admit when they are wrong and move on to helping find solutions for the problems posed by AGW.
Anu says:
June 4, 2010 at 9:32 am
….“Skeptics” like to make fun of tree ring temperature proxies, but somehow think that Vikings grazing sheep 1000 years ago on some marginal coastland that they quickly degraded proves there is no global warming.
Wishful thinking is a powerful force.
__________________________________________________________________________
Well you should know, me I prefer science.
Soils of Some Norse Settlements in Southwestern Greenland
G.K. RUTHERFORD1
CONCLUSIONS
“With respect to soil erosion as a cause of settlement abandonment, the Danish workers (Jacobsen and Jakobsen, 1986) on experience in the Vatnaverfi area, postulated that aggravated soil erosion was the major cause of general settlement abandonment. This author did not investigate soils in that area, but in the areas examined there was very little pedological evidence such as buried A and Bf horizons to indicate widespread soil degradation or deposition. Further, the chemical and physical evidence confirms the presence of monoperiodic soil formation. At the same time sedimentation in the tarn near Brattahlid appears to have greatly increased during Norse occupation. This deposition could have resulted from normal human activities together with those of hard-hoofed animals rather than from widespread vegetation loss. From the chemical and mineralogical evidence presented, there is no reason to suspect that the soils could not have provided adequate nutrients for the subsistence grade of agriculture practised by the Norse settlers.” http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/arctic48-4-324.pdf
Actually “grazing sheep” and horses is a very good way to BUILD the soil. THAT is based on buying a worn out leased tobacco farm and building it from no topsoil (analyse showed 98% to 99% pure mineral – clay) to four inches of black top soil in 15 years. It is vegetable farming that is bad for the soil because it leaves the soil open to erosion and wears it out.
AGW types want to say the Norse left Greenland because they wore out the soil. This allows them to divert attention from the real reason:
“New research reveals just how bad an idea it was to colonize Greenland and Iceland more than a millennium ago: average temperatures in Iceland plummeted nearly 6 degrees Celsius in the century that followed the island’s Norse settlement in about A.D. 870, a climate record gleaned from mollusk shells shows….
….The shells show a large amount of variation both within years and from year to year. For instance, the researchers say, winter temperature variability increased between 990 and 1120, a time when written records suggest that crops occasionally failed. By 1250, things heated up again and summer temperatures reached 10 degrees Celsius, possibly the highest in three centuries. Within decades, though, temperatures began to plunge again.
While Iceland remained settled through the modern day, Norse settlements in Greenland were abandoned by the early 15th century. Many researchers believe that climate changes played at least a minor role.” http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/norse-vikings-iceland-greenland.html
That agrees with the Greenland Ice cores. http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
How about we go further back?
“Recent mapping of a number of raised beach ridges on the north coast of Greenland suggests that the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean was greatly reduced some 6000-7000 years ago. The Arctic Ocean may have been periodically ice free...” http://www.ngu.no/en-gb/Aktuelt/2008/Less-ice-in-the-Arctic-Ocean-6000-7000-years-ago/
How about more recently?
Old DEW Line radars in Greenland, once elevated 20 feet, nearly buried in snow now:
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2008/12/old-dew-line-radars-in-greenland-once.html
Glacier Girl is a Lockheed P-38F-1-LO Lightning World War II fighter plane, that was recently restored to operable condition after being buried beneath ice on the remote Greenland Ice Sheet for nearly fifty years. On 15 July 1942, Glacier Girl, along with five other P-38 fighters and two B-17 bombers, was eventually buried beneath 270 feet of ice. Fifty years later, in 1992, the plane was brought to the surface after years of excavation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier_Girl
Gail Combs says:
June 4, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Your soil paper does not address the issue of having felled all the little trees available. The same thing happened on Easter Island – once humans kill all the available trees, there goes the firewood, even if the soil is fine ( http://tinyurl.com/34qfyof ). The Vikings were not that adaptable – they refused to eat seafood like the Inuit – they were determined to force their European lifestyle on a new land. When European trading patterns changed (e.g. elephant ivory replacing walrus ivory), it was harder and harder to trade for timber and food.
Actually “grazing sheep” and horses is a very good way to BUILD the soil.
Maybe that’s why the farmers in Qassiarsuk, Greenland are growing tall grass – food for thousands of sheep:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1001/p01s02-wogn.html
They could use that new soil to expand their potato, radish and broccoli farms that have recently become possible because of global warming.
New research reveals just how bad an idea it was to colonize Greenland and Iceland more than a millennium ago: average temperatures in Iceland plummeted nearly 6 degrees Celsius in the century that followed the island’s Norse settlement in about A.D. 870, a climate record gleaned from mollusk shells shows….
As I said, murder and exile was a big motivation for Europeans settling these marginal lands. Erik the Red arrived at Greenland in about 986 AD:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_the_Red
Notice that the Inuit survived fine – before, during, and after the Norsemen tried to live their European lifestyles there.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
You realize that your temperature chart ends in 1898, right ?
Because the Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2) drilled that ice core in 1993:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/document/gispinfo.htm
and the most recent data in that core was 0.095 thousand years ago:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
Greenland is now about 2.5° C warmer – hence the new farms.
899 says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Phil. says:
June 3, 2010 at 6:46 pm
“No, that includes the red line! Which by the way was part of the original Alley data.”
My gawd! Your arrogance has overtaken your condescension!!
So it’s condescending to point out an error?
And YOU are STILL incorrect!
Nope, nor arrogant but I have read the paper and know the data which apparently you haven’t. David Lappi’s graph uses all the data from Alley’s paper up to 95 years before present (-31.59ºC), unfortunately Lappi makes the error of assuming that this referred to before 2000 whereas it actually refers to the conventional ‘before 1950’. Therefore the last data-point on that graph is for 1855.
So Gail was mistaken when he said: “Here are the Greenland temperatures from Ice Core data. The temperature at that time was 2C warmer than today.” But the graph was rather misleading with a lack of proper annotation on the time axis.
Anu says:
June 4, 2010 at 9:32 am
*
*
In virtually NONE of the references you posted does it say that the PERMAFROST is being farmed.
NONE.
So do tell: How is it that you say it is, and they don’t say so?
Oh, and DO TAKE NOTE: The second reference mentions the “Little Ice Age,” a thing which you AGW/CAGW/CC propagandists declare ~never~ existed, right along with the prior warming spell.
So tell us: Exactly how is permafrost being farmed?
You’ll tell tell us all about that, won’t you?
Anu says:
June 4, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Gail Combs says:
June 4, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Your soil paper does not address the issue of having felled all the little trees available. The same thing happened on Easter Island – once humans kill all the available trees, there goes the firewood, even if the soil is fine ( http://tinyurl.com/34qfyof ). The Vikings were not that adaptable – they refused to eat seafood like the Inuit – they were determined to force their European lifestyle on a new land. When European trading patterns changed (e.g. elephant ivory replacing walrus ivory), it was harder and harder to trade for timber and food.
Good Lord! You’re ignorance is becoming legend!
The Norse DID INDEED eat fish. The fact that no bones are found is simple: The way they cooked their fish softened the bones to make them edible, just as the do today.
Oh, and another thing: The landscape on Greenland is a close approximation for that which exists in many places Norway.
And finally, in NO PLACE of the Greenlander’s kept records did they mention trees, for the simple reason that there were none when they arrived. But their recored DO INDEED mention the importation of lumber for buildings.
Come on back when you might get your act together.
Phil. says:
June 4, 2010 at 8:24 pm
[–snip utter nonsense–]
And YOU are STILL incorrect! Too bad you can’t read a graph properly.
It must have to do with all that AGW/CAGW/CC propaganda koolaid you’ve imbibed.
Anu says:
June 4, 2010 at 9:32 am
“Skeptics” like to make fun of tree ring temperature proxies, but somehow think that Vikings grazing sheep 1000 years ago on some marginal coastland that they quickly degraded proves there is no global warming.
Wishful thinking is a powerful force.
“Skeptics,” you say?
Doesn’t that then make you out to be a crass propagandist?
You keep trying to shove your cheap religion down everyone else’s throats because you realize that’s the only way you can get them to swallow your line of hogwash.
Mike says:
June 4, 2010 at 11:38 am
stevengoddard said (June 2, 2010 at 10:01 pm): “It is ridiculous, sheer, utter nonsense to claim that they can detect the September minimum from ancient sediments. Junk science reigns supreme in the Arctic.”
We now have proof that Steve Goddard is not a an open minded skeptic.
And of course you’ll now proceed to suggest that we might use tea leaves in the bottom of a cup to forecast the next big weather event, right?
Do tell: Please explain how the sediments in the arctic region could in any way be used as an indicator of either freezing –or not– of that sea, when there are continual oceanic currents flowing all the time?
I can’t wait to read of it!!!
As a corollary, DO TELL where any such other sediments were used to indicate the state of the upper waters in another body of MOVING water?
You’ll be getting back on that, won’t you? Real soon now?
To comments just above…
Sediment proxies are sometimes of rather ambiguous indicative value, although I know very little of those of Arctic floor. For the last project I worked-on (in N. Meixo), mostly from alluvial settings, two entirely contradictory modes of interpretation (but both peer reviewed in good journals) exist. In such cases, it is important to introduce other independent proxies (as was my job). It is important also that scientific workers police themselves, as that review process is subject to the usual biped errors. The emotive basis for this self-examination is curiosity. This should be a stronger pull than self-interest or the political setting of study. However, one gets the sense, from the context of glib press releases etc., that these particular bipeds out of Ohio might not be acting with scientific curiosity as an over-riding motive.
Bruce
899 says:
June 4, 2010 at 11:18 pm
Phil. says:
June 4, 2010 at 8:24 pm
[–snip utter nonsense–]
And YOU are STILL incorrect! Too bad you can’t read a graph properly.
Sure I can, unfortunately David Lappi has problems using Excel and messed up the time axis and misread the data file and added 50 years ( the latter may be due to an ‘improvement’ by Joanne Nova)! You on the other hand have no clue, I suggest you read the datafile:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
Phil. says:
June 5, 2010 at 8:38 am
899 says:
June 4, 2010 at 11:18 pm
Phil. says:
June 4, 2010 at 8:24 pm
[–snip utter nonsense–]
And YOU are STILL incorrect! Too bad you can’t read a graph properly.
Sure I can, unfortunately David Lappi has problems using Excel and messed up the time axis and misread the data file and added 50 years ( the latter may be due to an ‘improvement’ by Joanne Nova)! You on the other hand have no clue, I suggest you read the datafile:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
But now you’re just trying to finesse your argument, ain’t that right, Phil?
899 said {June 4, 2010 at 11:37 pm): “Please explain how the sediments in the arctic region could in any way be used as an indicator of either freezing –or not– of that sea, when there are continual oceanic currents flowing all the time? ”
Sediments reflect conditions above. This has been done in other oceans, seas and lakes for a long time. Google: ocean sediments climate proxies. In the Arctic if there is no light because of ice ocver there will be little plankton. That would be reflected in the sediment. Science really is a candle in the dark! The flow rate of the water is not so great as to distort such markers much. The hard part is getting the samples. See: ARCTIC OCEAN SEDIMENTS: PROCESSES, PROXIES, AND PALEOENVIRONMENT, 2, http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.editor/711754/description .
You might have even read the original post: “When we look carefully at various chemical and biological components of the seafloor sediment, and how the sediment is distributed — then, with certain skills and luck, we can reconstruct the conditions at the time the sediment was deposited.”
If you keep asking such easy questions people are going to think you a mole trying to make skeptics look bad. I for one know better than to lump all skeptics together. Unlike you, some are polite and are even known to read a bit before hitting “Post Comment.”
Mike says:
June 6, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Sediments reflect conditions above. This has been done in other oceans, seas and lakes for a long time.
In a fixed body of water, that is largely the truth.
BUT, in a MOVING body of water –such as ocean– that is NOT the truth.
If the currents in a large body of water experience a change in current direction, or even become static for whatever reason, then your hypothesis flies out the window.
All you’re left with is ‘What’s happening now?’
The Arctic Ocean has so many different currents that any kind of evaluation MUST consider all of the variables, and as soon as you do that, then your theory becomes worthless. You might just as well measure cow farts for content and predicate those on the quality of the grass they consumed, even when you don’t know from which pasture they munched.
Geez!
Phil. says:
June 5, 2010 at 8:38 am
I think you’re right – Column 1: Age (thousand years before present) should be before 1950.
Although the Quaternary Science Reviews tried to push a different nomenclature than “BP (before present)”, used for radiocarbon estimations, I think ice cores in general use BP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
ORIGINAL REFERENCE: Alley, R.B. 2000.
The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland.
Quaternary Science Reviews 19:213-226.
http://tinyurl.com/2czdywm
I was off by 43 years.
Thanks.
( Anu says: June 4, 2010 at 4:40 pm )
——————
899 says:
June 6, 2010 at 12:15 am
And YOU are STILL incorrect! Too bad you can’t read a graph properly.
But now you’re just trying to finesse your argument, ain’t that right, Phil?
You just say the first thing that pops into your head, don’t you – that’s so cute.
In four year olds.