Hot Times in Antarctica

Now get this .Over the past 50 years the temperature has shot up by almost 6 degrees.How is this possible you may ask.There are no people,no homes ,no roads no car trucks or the awful suv’s that ruin our planet.But here on earth the temperature has hardly changed at all.Yet all we hear is were killing the enviroment it all our fault everything that happens that is bad is due to us.The only conclusion can be that underwater volcanos are causing any temperature change in the Antarctica.

I see the Antarctic sea ice has gone just outside the 2 stnd deviations. http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
And, it looks to be greater than average most places except the peninsula http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_daily_extent_hires.png

“Adélie penguin populations, which need ice and cold weather to survive, have plummeted by 90% in the northern part of the peninsula over the past three decades, says lead author Oscar Schofield, a marine scientist at Rutgers University, while chinstrap penguins, which prefer more temperate climates, have increased. ‘The penguin populations near Palmer Station [the largest U.S. base in that part of the continent] have flipflopped,’ says Schofield. ”
This is dripping with irony. Oscillations anyone? Salmon records (which also demonstrated flipflopping) recorded by fisherman from Alaska to the tip of California revealed a new understanding of oceanic system. What was discovered was the PDO.

Does it mean real estate in antarctica are going to skyrocket?

It’s worse than we thought. Send more money, we need to keep a ship on station 24-7.

Smokey says:
June 18, 2010 at 10:48 am
The WAIS is… warming not because of the climate, but because it is over a geologic hot spot.
Uh, no…

In other penguin related news….penguins are freezing to death in Namibia.

Hey Jakers,
Care to present your evidence that the WAIS is not currently over a geologic hotspot? I know you are a major expert on the subject of the Antarctic and Geological Hotspots, but I personally need a bit more than just “Uhhhh, no” to go on before I believe you. Sorry.

…..Over the past 14 years the annual average air temperatures recorded at Station
Comm Ferraz Brazilian Antarctic showed a declining trend, about -0.6 º C / decade….

Funny, but other populations of superior mammals will emigrate from their usual places of living if mad green policies are applied.

Oh, maybe this one too:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080120160720.htm
Yeah, definitely no geological hotspot around there…

Bah! It’s just as likely that the penguins are being impacted by the huge amount of industrial trawling going on around Antarctica:
http://www.grist.org/article/overfishing-antarctic-krill
The Chinese, Russians, Koreans etc. treat Antarctic krill as if it were a gift that keeps giving, and they are scraping the oceans clean of anything that swims. An inconvenient truth for ya!
However, if it is trendy to blame global warming, well, then, who doesn’t want to be trendy?

The old chestnut comes to mind:-
“I have told you a million times not to exaggerate”

Cherrypicking season has arrived!!! They talk of Antarctic Peninsula I say look at the whole of Antarctica. Global ice hasn’t changed much in donkey’s years either.

No offence to any alums , but what is it with Rutgers anyway ?

I was at the tip of the WAIS in February. We spoke with locals in Port Stanley, Falklands, before heading down to Elephant Island and Paradise Bay. First, the residents of Port Stanley said the penguins there have been doing great, with slight population increases at all the rookeries.
Cruising down through the Gerlache and over the next several days, we saw many chinstraps and gentoos…all happy campers.
As for albedo, there is significant concern, and once again, the law of unintended consequences strikes. After 2011, ships carrying more than 500 passengers will not be allowed to cruise to Antarctica. The ship we were on carried 2200 passengers, and used gas turbines to power the ship at speeds up to 22knots. There were no “shore excursions” as those are allowed on ships carrying more than 900 passengers. So 2011 is the last year the big ships will get down there.
So instead, people will cruise down there on russian ice breakers and other smaller vessels. Our friend is going down in November. The small ice breaker he’ll be on will be making helicopter flights to the “mainland” and is also equipped with several zodiacs for shore excursions as well.
My bet is that the small icebreaker will PROBABLY have more of an impact than our large cruise ship did, and certainly had more impact per person than we did.
JimB

Alternative explanations maybe?
Volcanoes in Antarctica V Temperature trends
Active ‘subglacial’ volcano on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet
Lakes Beneath Antarctic Ice Sheets Found To Initiate And Sustain Flow of Ice To Ocean
Hydrothermal Vents

I still don’t understand what the warming Antarctic peninsula has to do with man-made global warming? They found warm currents affecting temps there, so what? Please someone help me to understand because I must be missing something.

Shub Niggurath says:
June 18, 2010 at 10:55 am
And that means it’ll drag the average up and we can all be alarmed about ever smaller drops when the occur in the future. 🙂
That’s measured against the 1979-2000 average, so no.

Antarctic max and min for last 30 years.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SeaIce/images/antarctic_max_min_extent.gif
vs. Arctic, if interested –
http://chartsgraphs.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/nsidc_sie_trends.png

the Antarctic Peninsula is especially steamy. Over the past 50 years, winter temperatures have shot up by an almost unbelievable 6°C—more than five times the global average,
The Russian station Bellinghausen 62°12’S 58°56’W at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula shows this is not ubiquitous.
In the annual series
http://www.aari.ru/resources/plot/plot.php?slope=0.0021009170636641897&inter=-2.8528652108843557&h=250&w=400&d=bel/ttt.txt&m=12&mt=annual%20period&s=Bellingshausen%20station%20(89050)&p=Surface%20air%20temperature%20(C)
SAT in July
http://www.aari.ru/resources/plot/plot.php?slope=0.015938740782756574&inter=-6.862458471760795&h=250&w=400&d=bel/ttt.txt&m=6&mt=July&s=Bellingshausen%20station%20(89050)&p=Surface%20air%20temperature%20(C)
Or in July SAT max
http://www.aari.ru/resources/plot/plot.php?slope=0.01785916862490896&inter=-4.194684385382064&h=250&w=400&d=bel/tmax.txt&m=6&mt=July&s=Bellingshausen%20station%20(89050)&p=Surface%20maximum%20air%20temperature%20(C)

Slightly OT, but Greenland looks to be a rather interesting tourist destination lately:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/sc-trav-0615-greenland-20100615,0,2048743.story
The upside of global warming??!! More vacation destinations!

Since some months ago when I got the link from this site, I’ve checked individual buoy .
Simply check the record for any buoy showing a -ve record and you will almost inevitably find amongst a string of -ve temps a positive number. I cannot believe water at -ve temperatures can flip flop to the same number but positive temperature in a matter of a few hours. There has to be a malfunction in these buoys, probably the software as much the same happens if you check an automated air temperature record also available from this site.

Remember this event in 2004? To refresh your memory a very large iceberg (more like an ice island really) grounded at the entrance to McMurdo sound inhibiting summer ice breakup. Large numbers of baby penguins starved because TOO MUCH ICE prevented their parents from reaching the sea. Several failed and/or disastrous breeding seasons followed until the iceberg moved on.
The point is that Adele penguin colonies live on the edge in an extremely harsh environment. Natural events cause large fluctuations in their population. It isn’t at all clear that colder is better for penguins. Indeed colder kills them in large numbers a lot of the time. You can’t simply say “Its getting warmer and – Oh Look! – the penguin numbers are down”, which seems to be what the article does.

It’s interesting that the near obsession with the polar regions is about all the Alarmists have left in thier bag of tricks. Very rarely do they ever bring up AGW studies of the tropics and subtropics (whatever happened to the Tropical Hotspot?), the mid latitudes, rainfall distribution, the Hadely or Walker Cells, ENSO, the AMO, etc… For the last 3 years thier sole concentration has been at the poles -namely the Artic. But little data exist there. All NASA can do is extraploate (ie guess). Besides, the Artic climate is mainly dependent upon SSTs. Other than that, most researchers can only model and guess.
And when the resevoir of warmer SSTs are exhausted, they will have to move on to something else, and the Artic begins to cool again they will invent another crisis.

So the world’s polar regions are warming up faster than the global average. Given some rational Temperature distribution, I would venture that on average, about half of the global regions are warming up faster than the global average; and it is equally likely that about half of the worlds regions are warming up slower than the global average; so on average, it’s about average.
So you don’t have to be a damn rocket scientist to understand that that is perfectly normal.
Ever heard of the Stafan-Boltzmann Law, or the Planck Radiation Law. In lay terms they both say that the total radiation (in or out) varies as the fourth power of the Temperature. That means if you double the Temperature you get 16 times the radiation (in or out); not twice; but SIXTEEN TIMES.
So if you increase the thermal energy input to ANY REGION by say 1% (of its local value); which is TEN times the complete peak to peak cyclic range of the TSI, a region that has a low temperature, is going to experience a Temperature increase which is very much greater, than a region that has a high Temperature; BOTH regions having only a 1% OF THEIR LOCAL ENERGY INPUT RATE; in increased energy input.
Do these idiots think they have discovered some Nobel Physics Prize winning breakthrough in knowledge; any 8th grade high school science student can tell you that cold things warm up more with less energy than warm things do, and even more than hot things do.
So tell us something that we DON’T already know; or better yet, give back the grant money, and get a real job.
And one other thing; I believe that if you compare the relative ocean warming due to the deeply penetrating solar spectrum surface insolation; to the effect of very localised surface (10 microns) warming that results from LWIR radiation returned from a slightly warmer atmosphere; you will find there simply is no comparison; specially when you consider, that the LWIR is most likely to result in prompt surface evaporation of more water vapor into the air; along with a whole flock of Latent heat energy; so the net contribution to ocean warming; is somewhere between zero and damn little. The latter term being more robust; while the former term is perhaps more scientifically pedantic as far as meaning.
Yeah; so I am sure some things are changing on the Antarctic Peninsula and I have as much concern for the Adele penguins as for the chinstraps. Maybe we need an open hunting season for Leopard seals on the west Antarctic Peninsula to help Mother Gaia; with her animal husbandry.

a small success:
17 June: Global warming book withdrawn
By Joe Dejka
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Millard Public Schools will stop using a children’s book about global warming — but only until the district can obtain copies with a factual error corrected.
A review committee, convened after parents complained, concluded that author Laurie David’s book, “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming,” contained “a major factual error” in a graphic about rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels…
Corrected versions will continue to be used in Millard’s sixth-grade language arts curriculum, he wrote.
However, the district will cease to use a companion video about global warming, narrated by actor Leonardo DiCaprio, he wrote.
The committee found the video “without merit” and recommended that it not be used.
Robyn Terry, the congressman’s wife, had described the video as a “political commercial.”…
http://www.omaha.com/article/20100617/NEWS01/100619733

Read the dang paper already;
http://rucool.marine.rutgers.edu/media/downloads/papers/Science_1520_2010.pdf

You know what this means, don’t you? Someone finally realized that penguins are cuter than those scary polar bears.
Remember, “You can’t hug your penguins with SUV arms”.
Or something like that.

whale(snip)

The Antarctic peninsular lines up rather well with Patagonia South America. The similar geologies scream out: tectonics!

Why not declare Antarctica a place of refuge for the important species and build a replica of the United Nations building there with its own eco-power supply system. Then perhaps those members of its many organizations can travel to that wonderful place and take up residences all subsidized by one final contribution by a formerly very rich nation.

Interesting story on ABC Catalyst linking extreme snow increase at Law Dome over the past 30 years, and correlating this to drought over WA
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2929759.htm
It’s atmost certain that the changes in the ocean currents and atmospheric circulation around Antartica caused the Pennisula to warm, along with more snow at Law Dome (and increased ice extent).
What is all the fuss about ?

18 June: ABC Australia: One carbon footprint in the grave
It appears that even death will not release us from the problem of our carbon footprint, with the Sydney Catholic Church opening an environmentally friendly burial ground…
The natural burial park in Sydney’s west will not have headstones, but people can find their family members using GPS technology.
A GPS stick will be buried with the bodies and an electronic organiser is lent to visiting family members who want to find the exact location of the grave…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/18/2931241.htm?section=justin

The Atlantic is on a carbon roll….with dolls this time:
18 June: The Atlantic: Derek Thompson: Why Carbon Pricing Matters
At the current rate, global carbon dioxide emissions will triple by the year 2100. Many scientists project a five-to-six degree increase in temperatures over the next century, which would trigger unknowable shifts in sea levels, air quality and natural resources. If we want to slow global warming, we have to slow carbon emissions…
The Debate
There are basically three arguments against carbon pricing that enclose each other like Russian nesting dolls. The Big Doll objection is that global warming is not real. The Medium Doll objection is that global warming is real, but we’re exaggerating its negative consequences — or we’re not sure emissions are to blame. The Small Doll objection is that global warming is real, and we’re not exaggerating its negative consequences, but we should focus on less ambitious solutions, like targeted subsidies for low-carbon technologies (e.g., cash for wind farms, sun panels, grassy roofs…).
The Big Doll objection is almost certainly wrong. The Medium Doll objection is serious, but at the very least, climate change policy should be considered as social insurance against the likelihood of global climate catastrophe. The Small Doll objection is misguided because it assumes the government knows which technologies to fund…
But an appropriate carbon price can achieve two goals. First, we nudge the private economy toward green tech in anticipation of rabid (sic) worldwide demand for clean energy in the next century. Second, government can use any profits from carbon prices to pay down the deficit and even reduce other taxes on Americans
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/06/why-carbon-pricing-matters/58386/

“he Adelie Penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) is the most common of all penguins in Antarctica. They nest near the shore in groups of 6 to 100s called rookeries. There are tens of thousands of them in the vicinity of Dumont d’Urville, even under the buildings of the station ! They get used to humans pretty quickly.
World population: estimated to 2 million breeding pairs. See here for more info.
Archipelago’s population: 29 182 breeding pairs in 1984, 30 369 in 1990.
Threats: none. Population in slight increase (1% a year) almost everywhere, but colonies near bases tend to be stable or decrease (McMurdo).
“

“Joe Lalonde says:
June 18, 2010 at 4:41 pm
And that 5 degree mystery warmth from -67F to -62F is killing off the peguins?
Please just shoot me now.”
Joe Lalonde says:
June 18, 2010 at 4:41 pm
And that 5 degree mystery warmth from -67F to -62F is killing off the peguins?
Please just shoot me now.

What can be said about these poor penguins? The West Antarctic ice sheet is prone to collapse. It has done so repeatedly since the Pleistocene, most recently 1500 years ago. Its weakness is that it is surrounded by water on three sides which leaves it open to vagaries of warm ocean currents. Near the Amundsen Sea there are land winds that blow away the cold surface water. Deep Antarctic bottom water rises to take its place but it is warmer and starts to melt the ice from below. Anybody here know how to control that wind?

There is concern in the Antarctic Convergence of Russian factory ship catching up tremendous amounts of krill. Do you suppose a decline in the penguins might have more to do with that than any (assumed, but not documented ) warming?

Pamela Gray says:
June 18, 2010 at 10:51 am
“Adélie penguin populations, which need ice and cold weather to survive, have plummeted by 90% in the northern part of the peninsula over the past three decades, says lead author Oscar Schofield, a marine scientist at Rutgers University, while chinstrap penguins, which prefer more temperate climates, have increased. ‘The penguin populations near Palmer Station [the largest U.S. base in that part of the continent] have flipflopped,’ says Schofield. ”
This is dripping with irony. Oscillations anyone? Salmon records (which also demonstrated flipflopping) recorded by fisherman from Alaska to the tip of California revealed a new understanding of oceanic system. What was discovered was the PDO.
Agreed. And here’s another irony: http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_1.htm
Excerpt:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Piri Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica. The northern coastline of Antarctica is perfectly detailed. The most puzzling however is not so much how Piri Reis managed to draw such an accurate map of the Antarctic region 300 years before it was discovered, but that the map shows the coastline under the ice. Geological evidence confirms that the latest date Queen Maud Land could have been charted in an ice-free state is 4000 BC.
The official science has been saying all along that the ice-cap which covers the Antarctic is million years old.
The Piri Reis map shows that the northern part of that continent has been mapped before the ice did cover it. That should make think it has been mapped million years ago, but that’s impossible since mankind did not exist at that time.
Further and more accurate studies have proven that the last period of ice-free condition in the Antarctic ended about 6000 years ago. There are still doubts about the beginning of this ice-free period, which has been put by different researchers everything between year 13000 and 9000 BC.
The question is: Who mapped the Queen Maud Land of Antarctic 6000 years ago? Which unknown civilization had the technology or the need to do that?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aside from the ‘weird’ aspect, what happened to the penguins when it was ice-free?

George E. Smith
Surely you can’t be opposed to the “stimulus” money being used for these worthy projects?
http://libertypundits.net/article/top-ten-stimulus-projects-from-radioactive-rabbit-droppings-to-the-sex-lives-of-female-college-freshmen/
Wouldn’t it be more prudent to have a shovel ready job every week to put Americans back to work?
Week 1) HUD (or create a new dept) would instruct 30 million Americans via PSA on PBS (that would assure a minimum of 1000 would see the PSA vs 200-300 if on NPR), preferably unemployed home owners, to break all windows in their homes. A mass workforce would be required to repair those windows, including injuries resulting from breaking said windows which would stimulate the healthcare industry. Imagine the trickle down effect!
Week 2) Employ the 23% of unemployed construction workers to fill in the Grand Canyon. There are only so many roads and bridges anyway.
Week 3) Require General Motors and Chrysler to hire all remaining displaced workers. After all, aren’t corporations in business to provide jobs? Since the government owns GM & Chrysler, this could become reality if we’d just stop bickering about who’s going to pay for it. As Ed Shultz recently opined, we need a dictator to call the shots.
Week 4) Appoint a green jobs czar (isn’t there one now?) to hire the millions needed for this important booming segment of the economic engine in America.
Week 5) Confiscate all profits from corporations and give to the unemployed and low income (under $250,000). This would only be allowed one week per year, except during national emergencies such as when employment exceeds 8%. The 47% of the working population who don’t pay income taxes would also qualify, means tested of course.
And so on and so forth. Basically, just print more money, grow government and create a nation of dependents. Simple!

maybe the penguins swamp to the northpole to party with the polar bears. I mean I hear the aliens, Santa and the Mrs., and Yoda throw a mean party at Christmas.
Sigh, I guess the really frustrating thing is my wallet and my nations soverignty is at risk because of these morons and they pat us on the head and tells us we’re too stupid to understand. However most of us in here at least are far more intelligent than the majority of the politicians I’ve been listening to since I’ve been unemployed for the last year and a half.

@899: I’m sceptical about claims made about global warming. I’m extremely sceptical about the claims made about the Piri Reis map.
Global warming at least has some evidence to support it and a halfway rational theory to back it up. There isn’t enough evidence to convince me, but there is enough to make it a plausible conjecture which needs looking into.
The Piri Reis map thing on the other hand is just way out there in lala land with the homeopathists, the Atlantis theorists, and the the new age cosmic wonderdust sniffers. I invite you all to have a look at that thing for yourself.
To me clearly the bit which the crystal gazers claim is Antarctica is nothing but a mislocated and distorted piece of South America drawn in completely the wrong place because the proportions or the rest of the map are so wrong there was nowhere else to put it. As a map of the world it is utterly hopeless. It beats me how anyone can think this map accurately shows the coastline of Antarctica when it doesn’t manage to accurately map anything else!
It beats me how you can think theories about the Piri Reis map will get a warm reception here on a website full of confirmed sceptics.

I like penguins. Just like dolphins, they taste like chicken.
Since when has any animal needed inhospitable icy conditions to survive? None of their food sources are frozen. As the seasons change, so too their environments from ice to rock. I bet polar bears are happier on tundra as seals usually come ashore to bask, and penguin chicks are far less likely to freeze on rocks or ground rather than ice.

MSM buttcovers the “AGW experts”.
…-
“Nunavut’s claim polar bears are fine ignores science, environmentalists say
Government will no longer back attempt to have species listed as threatened”
“Part of the Nunavut government’s position is that polar bears can and have adapted to changes in climate in the past, according to Inuit traditional knowledge and modern science. Some experts say that is not the case.”
“Environmentalists are reacting with dismay to a Nunavut government decision to no longer back attempts to list polar bears as threatened.
Dan Shewchuk, Nunavut’s environment minister, says the territory’s polar bear population is healthy, with the exception of a couple of populations, and action is being taken to help those.
“We live in polar bear country. We understand the polar bears, and we do actually think our polar bear population is very, very healthy,” Shewchuk said in justifying the reversal.”
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Nunavut+claim+polar+bears+fine+ignores+science+environmentalists/3174753/story.html

Sigh
Do these people ever bother to read the relevant literature? It is pure nonsense that the Adelie Penguins can’t change breeding sites when climate changes, they can and they do, all the time. Steve Emslie has researched this very subject extensively, and shown that the changes in breeding sites can actually be used as a proxy for changes in ice conditions (and incidentally he has found that almost all Adelie colonies are rather recent, less than 2000 years old):
http://people.uncw.edu/emslies/research/Emslie%20et%20al%20Geology%202007.pdf
http://people.uncw.edu/emslies/research/Emslie%20and%20Woehler%202005.pdf
And here is a letter to Science (from 2003!) where he points out the fallacies in the catastrophy prophecies about Adelie pengunis:
http://people.uncw.edu/emslies/research/Ainley%20et%20al%20science%20letter%202003.pdf

Every service and any goods we purchase has a hidden, but quite large energy cost included. Not only would a carbon tax increase the taxes we directly pay, but would saubstantially increase the prices we pay for anything at all. It would be a double whammy from an economic standpoint. Governments can improve economies only by having less involvement. More involvement by government always results in a worse economy than before the involvement, and the opposite is true.
If you want less of anything, tax and/or regulate it. If you want more, do the opposite.
Socialism/communism has attempeted to negate the natural basic laws of economics, and has always failed miserably at this impossible task.