Here’s a bit of research that you don’t normally see in the MSM stories about glacier melt. It is backed up by a second and very interesting article (below) from 1947 in Geographical Review which says “Most of the worlds glaciers have been shrinking in recent decades.” Yet, news reports of the last decade would have you believe that glacier recession is an unprecedented phenomenon.
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From ETH Zurich: The most recent studies by researchers at ETH Zurich show that in the 1940s Swiss glaciers were melting at an even-faster pace than at present. This is despite the fact that the temperatures in the 20th century were lower than in this century. Researchers see the main reason for this as the lower level of aerosol pollution in the atmosphere.
In Switzerland, the increase in snow in wintertime and the glacier melt in summertime have been measured at measurement points at around 3,000 metres above sea level – on the Clariden Firn, the Great Aletsch glacier and the Silvretta glacier – without interruption for almost 100 years. As part of his doctoral work, Matthias Huss used this unique range of measurements to examine how climate change in the last century affected the glaciers. The work was carried out under the supervision of Martin Funk, professor and head of the Department for Glaciology at the Laboratory for Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology (‘VAW’) at ETH Zurich, who is also co-author of the study.
Solar radiation as the decisive factor
In its work, the research team took into account the solar radiation measured on the Earth’s surface in Davos since 1934. Studies over the past two decades have shown that solar radiation varies substantially due to aerosols and clouds, and this is assumed to influence climate fluctuations. Recent years have seen the emergence of the terms ‘global dimming’ and ‘global brightening’ to describe these phenomena of reduced and increased solar radiation respectively. These two effects are currently the subject of more and more scientific research, in particular by ETH Zurich, as experts feel that they should be taken into account in the climate models (see ETH Life dated July 9, 2009)
The new study, published in the journal ‘Geophysical Research Letters’, confirms this requirement. This is because, taking into account the data recorded for the level of solar radiation, the scientists made a surprising discovery: in the 1940s and in the summer of 1947 especially, the glaciers lost the most ice since measurements commenced in 1914. This is in spite of the fact that temperatures were lower than in the past two decades. “The surprising thing is that this paradox can be explained relatively easily with radiation”, says Huss, who was recently appointed to the post of senior lecturer at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.
On the basis of their calculations, the researchers have concluded that the high level of short-wave radiation in the summer months is responsible for the fast pace of glacier melt. In the 1940s, the level was 8% higher than the long-term average and 18 Watts per square metres above the levels of the past ten years. Calculated over the entire decade of the 1940s, this resulted in 4% more snow and ice melt compared with the past ten years.
Furthermore, the below-average melt rates at the measurement points during periods in which the glacier snouts were even advancing correlate with a phase of global dimming, between the 1950s and the 1980s.
Less snow fall and longer melt periods
The researchers arrived at their findings by calculating the daily melt rates with the aid of climate data and a temperature index model, based on the half-yearly measurements on the glaciers since 1914. These results were then compared with the long-term measurements of solar radiation in Davos.
Huss points out that the strong glacier melt in the 1940s puts into question the assumption that the rate of glacier decline in recent years “has never been seen before”. “Nevertheless”, says the glaciologist, “this should not lead people to conclude that the current period of global warming is not really as big of a problem for the glaciers as previously assumed”. This is because it is not only the pace at which the Alpine glaciers are currently melting that is unusual, but the fact that this sharp decline has been unabated for 25 years now. Another aspect to consider – and this is evidenced by the researchers’ findings – is that temperature-based opposing mechanisms came into play around 30 years ago. These have led to a 12% decrease in the amount of precipitation that falls as snow as a percentage of total precipitation, accompanied by an increase of around one month in the length of the melt period ever since this time. Scientists warn that these effects could soon be matched by the lower level of solar radiation we have today compared with the 1940s.
Reference
Huss M, Funk M & Ohmura A: Strong Alpine glacier melt in the 1940s due to enhanced solar radiation. Geophysical Research Letters (2009), 36, L23501, doi:10.1029/2009GL040789
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Here’s the supporting article in Geographical Review, available here:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/211127
h/t to WUWT reader “Jimbo”
Wasn’t the whole temp history of the forties colored by “bucket adjustments” to sea temp measures and East Anglia emails about smoothing out “warm blips” in the forties? Then it turns out that suddenly, because it was obviously cooler in the 1940s, East Anglia say so, it must have been solar insolation?
This controversy stinks as much as the warmies utterly discredited claims about Greenland in the MWP.
Some addition from the largest and fastest Greenland glacier (marvellous sight: 30 km of icebergs trapped behind a morene). From NASA the breakup line moving up since 1850:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/greenland_glacier.html
The retreat was faster around 1930-1940 than today, but one need to take into account that the breakup point advanced inbetween the two melting periods.
Further, one had no satellites around that time, but pictures taken from that period showed a huge melt of the surface. From
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm05/fm05-sessions/fm05_C41A.html
last paragraph:
To address this issue, we compiled a history of surface elevation changes of Jakobshavn Isbrae since the LIA. We first combined data from historical records, ground surveys, airborne laser altimetry, and field mapping of lateral moraines and trimlines. This record shows two periods of rapid thinning by about 70 meters, in the early 1950s and since 1997. Observed changes in glacier behavior during these two events are markedly different. The recent thinning, which involved several episodes of retreat followed by large thinning, resulted in a rapid retreat of the calving front toward grounding line. Thinning in the 1950s occurred during a period when the calving front was stationary with only minor annual fluctuations. Nevertheless, aerial photographs collected in the 1940s and 50s indicate that thinning extended far inland.
This whole topic may perhaps be explained by catastrophism, i.e. 200-yr events. Every few centuries there may be one extreme-snowfall winter which causes the glaciers to extend hundreds of additional meters. Then they slowly melt back in the intervening time.
I am reminded of seeing some new housing south of Boulder, Colorado on the foothill mesas there. I remarked to my then-wife that those mesas were clearly catastrophic originated — you could see the plain flood marks on their sides — and that I would not buy a house sited on a place with such obvious scour marks. I thought no more of it until a few months ago when a new paper was reported which said essentially the same thing about the same place. Catastrophism is likely to play a big role in our world, so why not glaciers too?
Gary Pearse says:
October 24, 2010 at 3:09 pm
The 1942 mass movements of armored vehicles in the So. Russian Steppe & North Africa kicked up so much dust that sunsets were turned red. The accounts are in the published books of the campaigns of that time. The burning & bombing in the Northern Hemisphere is preceeded by the Dust Bowl years.
Question for the learned out there. It seems to me that Temperature should be tracked as a function of Atmospheric Pressure. Is this type of data set being collected?
1. Soot diminishes the amount of sunlight that makes it through the atmosphere all the way down to the glacier. So that the glacier melts a bit slower.
It also makes the glacier less white (lowers its albedo) so that more of the sunlight is absorbed. So that the glacier melts a bit faster.
Is there a study about the resulting effect? And would that be linear?
2. It’s not only that snow catches soot as it descends through the atmosphere, landing on the glacier less white than it would otherwise have been:
In places where it doesn’t snow in summer, soot contained in melted snow assembles on the surface and the glacier will get less and less white (dirtier and dirtier). The resulting increase in absorbed heat must be substantial.
On glaciers where it snows all year, fresh snow keeps covering the glacier.
Another example of nothing new under the sun in this report from the International Committee on Glaciers, 100 years ago. “A general retreat is dominant in the Swiss Alps”:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/30067996
Global Dimming: “as experts feel that they should be taken into account in the climate models “. Next you’ll be telling me they think: “we should take account of clouds in our models” or even “hey — they’ve just realised the sun don’t shine at night”.
They are just pathetic. They make organisations like the scientology church look scientific.
Of course global dimming has had a direct effect on global temperatures. Likewise, even basic physics tells us that the ozone depletion has also had an effect on ultraviolet light hitting the surface near the poles.
So, what do you expect since the clean air acts in the 1970s cleaned up the world atmosphere and the CFC legislation has turned around ozone depletion at the poles: Global warming particularly concentrated at the poles
QED: basic “obvious” science as proven that these were the one and only cause of the “proven” temperature rise … and it has nothing to do with CO2, Urban heating, and the move from manual to automated temperature monitoring.
You can just see it now. If the zealots hadn’t jumped on the CO2 bandwagon, they’d all have jumped on the “global dimming” bandwagon, or the “global heating from ozone depletion”, or whatever vaguely connected environmental measurement just happened to fit their “basic science shows us … we must all follow the zealots”.
BLJ October 24, 2010 at 5:09 pm
They do measure those variables, the problem is that the original data is nowhere to be seen:
http://www.zamg.ac.at/histalp/
Ferdinand Engelbeen
Hi Ferdinand!
Oerlemans: What i dont like is the tiny bits of data he uses to say anything about th4e present temperature develompent.
At least, hes word are used as hard facts in the debate, so even though you say that Oerlemans is a moderat skeptic (nice!) a few of hes conclusions are (mis)used here and there – and this i find important to focus on. Therefore i wrote:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/the-warm-glacier-temperature-reconstruction-of-oerlemans-2005-160.php
K.R Frank
PS: Anthony: ALL the best, hope the last weeks was good in every way!
Frank Lansner says:
October 25, 2010 at 4:03 am
The main problem with many CAWG promotors is that they all focus on the blade of the hockeystick, as if that is most important. But the blade is not that important, it is the shaft: the more natural variability there was in the past, the less room there is for CO2 and other GHGs to influence temperature. Several European scientists agree on that. See:
http://www.wsl.ch/staff/jan.esper/publications/QSR_Esper_2005.pdf
So, what would it mean, if the reconstructions indicate a larger (Esper et al., 2002; Pollack and Smerdon, 2004; Moberget al., 2005) or smaller (Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 1999) temperature amplitude?
We suggest that the former situation, i.e. enhanced variability during pre-industrial times, would result in a redistribution of weight towards the role of natural factors in forcing temperature changes, thereby relatively devaluing the impact of anthropogenic emissions and affecting future predicted scenarios.
This study is a very study of 3 specific glaciers on a swiss mountain over 9,000 feet above sea level (3000 meters).
99% of glaciers are at the polar regions , at or near sea level.
This studies conclusion, as regards to these 3 specific glaciers which are 3000 meters above sea level (ie atmosphere is very thin) concluded, “Solar radiation as the decisive factor” …
This does not say that ALL glaciers in 1940 had a rate of melting faster then now. It does not even claim most or even alot, just 3.
It states nothing about the rate of the majority of the glaciers at sea level, where solar radiation may or may not be the deciding factor (when there is 3000 meters more of atmosphere to shield them)
I was guessing faster 1940s melt might be from soot from coal plants.
No scrubbers back then.
“Ice-borne prehistoric finds in the Swiss Alps reflect Holocene glacier fluctuations”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.1111/abstract
“During the hot summer of 2003, reduction of an ice field in the Swiss Alps (Schnidejoch) uncovered spectacular archaeological hunting gear, fur, leather and woollen clothing and tools from four distinct windows of time: Neolithic Age (4900 to 4450 cal. yr BP), early Bronze Age (4100–3650 cal. yr BP), Roman Age (1st–3rd century AD), and Medieval times (8–9th century AD and 14–15th century AD). Transalpine routes connecting northern Italy with the northern Alps during these slots is consistent with late Holocene maximum glacier retreat. The age cohorts of the artefacts are separated which is indicative of glacier advances when the route was difficult and not used for transit. The preservation of Neolithic leather indicates permanent ice cover at that site from ca. 4900 cal. yr BP until AD 2003, implying that the ice cover was smaller in 2003 than at any time during the last 5000 years. Current glacier retreat is unprecedented since at least that time.
This is highly significant regarding the interpretation of the recent warming and the rapid loss of ice in the Alps. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.”
Nothing new then