From the “I told you Angry Penguins were the new icon” department
The world’s polar regions are warming up faster than the global average, but the western edge of 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, according to a paper just published in Science.
The new study, part of a special report on oceans and climate, focuses on the Antarctic Peninsula not only because it represents an extreme, but because it gives scientists a chance to look at a marine ecosystem under rapid climate change (the other polar hotspots, in Siberia and western North America, are well inland).
Rapidly rising temperatures—mostly driven by warmer ocean currents–have transformed the West Antarctic Peninsula’s landscape. The massive ice shelves that sit just offshore at the peninsula’s southern end have begun collapsing en masse . Overall, say the authors, 87% of the region’s glaciers are in retreat, the ice season has shortened by 90 days and, they write ominously, “These changes are accelerating.”
That being the case, it’s not surprising that the creatures who live here are under enormous stress. 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. “The area will probably be completely devoid of Adélies in five or ten years.”
It must be Trendberths missing heat.
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)
Here’s a link to the abstract for the J. Chappellaz presentation I referenced above
http://www.goldschmidt2010.org/abstracts/finalPDFs/A162.pdf
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!
Is the article a spoof?
Alarmist BS – nothing more, nothing less.
We will see lots more of this type of drivel in the months and years ahead.
The arcticle reads, “Over the past 50 years, winter temperatures have shot up by an almost unbelievable 6°C—more than five times the global average, according to a paper just published in Science,” and “Rapidly rising temperatures—mostly driven by warmer ocean currents–have transformed the West Antarctic Peninsula’s landscape.”
Southern Ocean SST anomalies east and west of the Antarctic Peninsula have not risen 6 deg C at any time of year.
http://i48.tinypic.com/29n822c.jpg
Second problem with the article’s claim: Prior to the satellite era, there was little to no SST data for the area, as is apparent in the graph above.
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.
I seem to remember a picture of the surface station on the peninsula.
It is located among buildings and very near a runway made from dark colored rocks.
UHI anyone ?
Why can’t the measurements be done 1 Km away ? Probably convenience.
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.
B. Stenni and 14 European co-authors in Quaternary Science Reviews 29 (2010) :
New high-resolution ice core data from two sites in eastern Antarctica show temperature proxies more than 4 °C higher during the last interglacial (~130,000 years ago) than the present interglacial.
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.
The warming of the WA peninsula is real BUT has nothing to do with “Global Warming” or CO2. The warming is purely dynamical. In the area that includes WAIS:
1) In the past 50 years, depressions are getting deeper -lower pressures-
2) Frequency of depressions lower than 980 hPa is climbing
3) Depressions trajectories are N-S
4) Temperatures in the depression are higher
Associated to Mobile Polar Highs that are therefore stronger, intrude further north to advect warmer air.
None of these points support AGW.
Anyone who has read “Dynamic Analysis of Weather and Climate” 2ed. by Marcel Leroux knows this already.
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.
Must be those volcanoes…can anyone quantify that effect for me?
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
+6C should mean more penguins, not less. Not much else can live there ergo not much competition.
A warmer ocean means more time between freezes, so more time to feed and grow baby penguins.
But, if the paper is to be believed, during the other even warmer Warm Periods, the penguins must have gone extinct.
This page: Antarctic Summary examines the climate of Antarctica showing station trends, ice extents, currents, as well as King and Adelie penguins.
Here’s a link to streaming vid of Chappellaz’s presentation. I had to sign in to the Goldschmidt website to get to this, so I’m not sure the link will work.
http://160.36.161.128/UTK/Viewer/?peid=329c00c6a0304d27ad3b84f741ac779c
Read the dang paper already;
http://rucool.marine.rutgers.edu/media/downloads/papers/Science_1520_2010.pdf
@PeterB in Indianapolis
Don’t forget this one!!
Surprise! There’s an active volcano under Antarctic ice
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/22/surprise-theres-an-active-volcano-under-antarctic-ice/
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.
Adelie penguin:
‘Threats: none. Population in slight increase (1% a year) almost everywhere, but colonies near bases tend to be stable or decrease.’
‘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 ‘
‘There are tens of thousands of them in the vicinity of Dumont d’Urville, even under the buildings of the station !’
http://www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/Penguins.html
Perhaps these turkeys had been only counting the ones under their building !
WKRP in Cincinnati.
What I see when I look at that cuddly cute little linux dude dancing in that picture: Boogie Nights by Heatwave.