We all know how much NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze has been touting the idea of the “Arctic death spiral“, and we’ve had predictions of ice free summers in 2008, 2013, 2015, 2020, 2030, 2040, 2050, 2060, 2070, and 2100 to name a few. Other forecasts don’t give specific dates but say things like within 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 100 years, decades, and sooner than expected. Such “all over the road forecast certainty” doesn’t really build any confidence that any of these climate soothsayers have any idea when or even if the Arctic will be “ice free” in the summer in the next 100 years.
Now, inconveniently, we have this new paper via ScienceDirect New insights on Arctic Quaternary climate variability from palaeo-records and numerical modelling which says that their studies show that the early Holocene might very well have had ice free summers. This is interesting, because as this generally well accepted graph shows, temperature was higher then. But there’s more.
From the description for this graphic: The main figure shows eight records of local temperature variability on multi-centennial scales throughout the course of the Holocene, and an average of these (thick dark line). (to 10000 BC-2000CE (from 0 — 12000 BP)) The records are plotted with respect to the mid 20th century average temperature, and the global average temperature in 2004 is indicated. An inset plot compares the most recent two millennia of the average to other recent reconstructions. At the far right of this plot it is possible to observe the emergence of climate from the last glacial period of the current ice age. During the Holocene itself, there is general scientific agreement that temperatures on the average have been quite stable compared to fluctuations during the preceding glacial period. The above average curve supports this belief. However, there is a slightly warmer period in the middle which might be identified with the proposed Holocene climatic optimum. The magnitude and nature of this warm event is disputed, and it may have been largely limited to high northern latitudes.
But, the other rub of the early Holocene is CO2 in the atmosphere. We know from ice core records that CO2 concentration has varied with ice ages. Coming out of the last ice age into the Holocene, we know that atmospheric CO2 concentrations rose as CO2 came out of the oceans as they warmed. This graph from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) shows that the early Holocene (~10,000 years before present), had a rise coming out of the ice age and then had CO2 concentrations stabilize lower than that of today, about 260-270 ppm:
Figure 1. Top: One sigma-calibrated age ranges for the 14C control points 1, 2 and 6 as an indicator of the possible age range of the CO2 record reconstructed from stomatal frequency. The labels are the same as in Wagner et al. (1). Center and Bottom: Atmospheric CO2 concentration reconstructed from stomatal index (
) (1) and direct measurements of CO2 concentration of air enclosed in bubbles in the ice cores from Taylor Dome (
) (3, 4) and Vostok (
) (7, 8).
This new paper in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews throws a formidable monkey wrench into the the theory that CO2 induced warming is the cause of current Arctic ice loss. Because if we had ice free summers ten thousand years ago at ~ 260 ppm CO2, and we had warmer temperatures than today, we can’t then conclude that an additional 100 ppm of CO2 since then would be the cause of an ice free summer in the Arctic today. And ice free summer at lower CO2 and higher temperature is an incongruity with today’s theory of the “Arctic Death Spiral”.
Here’s the paper abstract:
New insights on Arctic Quaternary climate variability from palaeo-records and numerical modelling
Abstract
Terrestrial and marine geological archives in the Arctic contain information on environmental change through Quaternary interglacial–glacial cycles. The Arctic Palaeoclimate and its Extremes (APEX) scientific network aims to better understand the magnitude and frequency of past Arctic climate variability, with focus on the “extreme” versus the “normal” conditions of the climate system. One important motivation for studying the amplitude of past natural environmental changes in the Arctic is to better understand the role of this region in a global perspective and provide base-line conditions against which to explore potential future changes in Arctic climate under scenarios of global warming. In this review we identify several areas that are distinct to the present programme and highlight some recent advances presented in this special issue concerning Arctic palaeo-records and natural variability, including spatial and temporal variability of the Greenland Ice Sheet, Arctic Ocean sediment stratigraphy, past ice shelves and marginal marine ice sheets, and the Cenozoic history of Arctic Ocean sea ice in general and Holocene oscillations in sea ice concentrations in particular. The combined sea ice data suggest that the seasonal Arctic sea ice cover was strongly reduced during most of the early Holocene and there appear to have been periods of ice free summers in the central Arctic Ocean. This has important consequences for our understanding of the recent trend of declining sea ice, and calls for further research on causal links between Arctic climate and sea ice.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fig. 1. Map showing the locations of some of the studies included in the papers presented in this special issue. Numbers refer to Table 1, which contains the references to the respective study. Some of the papers on the Arctic Ocean involve sediment cores from a large spatial area; these are only plotted with boxes enclosing the areas of the studied cores. Furthermore, Cronin et al. (2010) analyzed sediment cores from virtually the entire central Arctic Ocean and, therefore, there is no number representing that study on the map. The maximum extensions of the Eurasian Ice Sheet during the late Quaternary compiled by the QUEEN project (Svendsen et al., 2004) are shown. LS: Late Saalian (>140 ka), EW: Early Weichselian (100–80 ka), MW: Middle Weichselian (60–50 ka), LGM: Late Weichselian (25–15 ka). The speculative extent of an MIS 6 ice shelf inferred by Jakobsson et al. (2010) is shown by the hatched area enclosed by a gray stippled line. The approximate spatial minimum cover of sea ice during 2007 is shown with a white shaded area enclosed by a black stippled line as a comparison to the median extension for the period 1979–2005 shown by a blue stippled line (Data is from National Snow and Ice Data Center). MJR: Morris Jesup Rise; YP: Yermak Plateau. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
================================
h/t to WUWT reader “josh”
Addendum: Some follow up graphic from comments, in my response to Richard Telford:
Here’s an interesting plot of solar insolation at 65 degrees north over time. To give readers an idea of this line, here is a map:
(Map from WikiMedia) Fairbanks, AK is at 64.5° N
The plot below shows how insolation varied with the Milankovitch cycles at 65° N. I’ve added the deltas comparing 10KYA to present.
The “Fermi Paradox” blogger who originally made the graph I annotated wrote: The graph shows the insolation in W/m^2 at 65 degrees norther latitude from 20ky before present to 10 ky in the future, calculated with the program insola from J. Laskar et al. The four plots are for the two months after the summer solstice and the two months before. It can be seen that the change in insolation over time is quite significant. Note though that this only applies at high latitudes – the global mean barely changes at all.
Note the magnitude of the change in insolation from 10K years ago to present, from 15 to 40 Watts/m2
Now look at this image from NOAA’ s Environmental Research Laboratory (ESRL):
CO2 accounts for 1.4 Watts/m2 of forcing in the last 150 years, so compared to the forcings of the Milankovitch cycles (at least at 65N) it is an order of magnitude lower. My point is that given the small impact of CO2 in forcings, it is not likely to be the driver of Arctic ice melt in the present, just like it wasn’t much of a significant factor 10K years ago.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Thanks verity jones for the pointer 🙂
Now we all know what our dead corpses will turn into…as good and conscious skeptics we will contribute to future methane powered big SUV´s!!
Buy more popcorn!
The mission of climate scientists is now clear. They have to get rid of the early Holocene, too.
If that was true, it doesn’t mean that CO2 (if it causes lots of warming) won’t cause ice free Arctics in Summer, it does invalidate the assertion that CO2 is the primary driver of temperature and that it would be a “death spiral.”
Clearly, I would like to see more supporting evidence of this idea before I accept it just like all of the “science” supporting CAGW. Everything needs to be corroborated now.
Some posts here tend to be somewhat Northern Hemisphere-centric; to assert that the Northerners and the Chinese ‘invented ships’ is a simplistic and silly statement, as ships and shipping were not ‘invented’ but evolved over a very long period of time around the world. Some cultures evolved faster than others, and in different initial directions. Because some cultures were literate much earlier than others this allowed those early-adopters of literacy to archive their history, as the Norse peoples did of their settlement of Greenland and parts of the coast of Vineland in North America. After Capt James Cook blazed a trail into the Southern Pacific into Melanesia and Polynesia in the 17th century, contact with the native peoples there did not result in Europeans discovering any significant historical record as those Southern cultures transmitted their histories orally and thus were taken little notice of as Westerners believed that writing trumps speech.
There is a solid body of evidence that those Southern Pacific peoples also ‘invented ships’ (large twin-hulled sailing canoes) and ustilised them to colonise or trade with many points around the Pacific Rim during the warmer MWP and the Roman Warm Period, traversing vast tracts of the Pacific Ocean and making deadfall landings at the end of such traverses.
There are many historical oddities and question marks everywhere, such as the great Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific coast of North America discovering a tribe of large and fair-skinned native people with reddish hair, who used what appeared to be Welsh coracles for fishing on their rivers, round boats woven from Willow and covered in hide or felt, the paddles of which were incised with what appeared to be Welsh or Breton inscriptions. That people, according to Lewis and Clark, also followed religious practices that seemed to be a very rough approximation of Christianity.
anna v wrote: “You have taken the wiki page for the first figure, and the data come from
The following data sources were used in constructing the main plot:
[a long list of references]
I have an objection with averaging proxy temperatures coming from different proxies and different locations.
As we see in the plot , there are much larger variations than the average shows. If each curve, because of the methodology is out of phase or its calibration with temperature is not stable over the years ( as with tree rings, other factors at other times might influence the proxy analogue) averaging them is like mixing cold soup with hot soup.
”
Quite right.
“One should look at the individual curves and how they compare with the present .”
Absolutely.
Or, hold one’s nose, and at least provide error bars in both the x and y axes for the average plot [why does climate science, unlike every other field of science, typically not show error bars and/or provide quantitative estimates of uncertainly?]
To Anna V: I agree with you completely. Mixing proxies (which is a key strategy for creating hockey stick handles) is bad science. I can think of several analogies in electrical engineering and I’d be deservably fired for doing any of them.
As someone commented those in the little ice age must have thought that was normal. Global warming advocates think climate should be stable, fixed in time to suit their needs and desires. And they will do almost anything to bring that about.
The problem I see, and others in comments, is global warming advocates have framed the conversation on CO2 directing a lot of the energy in research in a narrow focus. Like tunnel vision missing the big picture. And climate researchers who oppose that focus have been suppressed and ridiculed.
CO2 is a bitch, you can’t live with it and sure as hell can’t live without it. And it is difficult to understand but to put the blame on CO2 for everything is like kicking the dog because some chickens are missing. CO2, like the dog is taking the blame when the problem could be the farmer miscounted the chickens.
The way this will be spun by the AGW alarmists, of course, is that if it got that hot with low CO2 levels, that high CO2 levels on top of this means we’re all going to diiiiieeee!!! The a priori assumption is always that CO2 is proven to drive temperature, of that no doubt will be brooked, so anything that indicates high temps without high CO2 levels will never be examined the way it should be, that is as disproving the idea that CO2 is the one main driver of climate and temperature. It will be read as another factor that’ll add, or multiply, to the “known” CO2 effect, assuring gloom, doom, death, and destruction. It will never force a reexamination of their core beliefs.
Ian H says:
Your comment makes no sense. Run off and evaporation just move water from one part of the planet to another. The planet doesn’t lose water.
Well, I’ll admit to getting to verbose about it, but all I am really saying is that it is credible to believe that the Sun can control climate by causing changes in the hydrological cycle.
Robert in Calgary,
Its comments like yours Robert that just dismiss the work of all of those published climate scientists who have been coming to the same basic conclusions for decades now that give climate change deniers a bad name.
If the study that is the basis of this discussion somehow challenges or disproves the IPCC conclusions, tell me how, don’t just sit back with a smirk on your face telling me that all those published climate scientists are involved in some sort of global conspiracy to distort science so that we can destroy the global economy or something.
As an aside, thanks for the links to the two organizations you support. I have supported a number of small businesses through Kiva micro credit loans and the organizations you support look to be doing great work. I will look into them and perhaps support them as well.
And I agree with Anna V., but even in single proxies like the Vostok core, there appear to be two levels where stability (roughly) occurs. One is during Ice Ages, the other during interglacials. What changes in those periods of stability?
MartinGAtkins
As much use as I make of Wikipedia as a starting point in my research, it isn’t actually a primary source. The article you referenced is written (and probably continuously edited) by lots of people, some of whom probably have an agenda.
Your comment seems to revolve around this statement
“Wild swings of CO2 have always been shown to be the result of and not the cause of climate changes and extinctions.”
While I don’t deny this, I would be interested in some citations but the point of the IPCC science is that human activity is pumping green house gases (primarily CO2) in such volumes as to overwhelm other factors like the Milankovitch Cycles. Human activity has become a factor. We are pushing CO2 into the atmosphere in far greater volumes than natural sources. It can’t been seen as a surprise that doing so will cause the environment to do things it hasn’t done in the past.
So I guess I return to my earlier question, how does this study challenge or disprove the fundamental conclusions of Climate Change?
Which is kind of what you asked as well:
“As the article says CO2 has been lower through the Holocene epoch even when temperatures have been much warmer than now.
Why?”
I guess my first answer would be that things like our place in the Milankovitch cycles are different than they were then. Everything that I have seen says that current and projected levels of CO2 are higher than they are at any point than we can identify in history. And that unnaturally high level of CO2 is currently overwhelming all the natural drivers to the cycles of global climate.
Does this study somehow challenge that understanding?
And yet polar bears, ringed seals and bearded seals survived as species. This does not mean some of them did not die. But we know that animal populations can take quite a hit and still bounce back (e.g. sea otters, northern fur seals, grey whales, elephant seals, etc.).
These animals are adapted to the Arctic, which means they feed heavily in the spring and early summer (when they develop thick layers of fat). This fat allows polar bears to fast during the low-ice summer months (Hudson Bay bears routinely fast for 4 months and do just fine) and seals to fast while they give birth (in the spring) and moult (in the early summer). At the height of the summer ice loss period, none of them really need ice to survive.
I expect “ice-free” really just meant a few weeks in September. By November ice would have been back.
@QA_NJ
Don’t expect to hear much from Mike Mann for a few weeks. He is probably busy inventing new ways, previously unknown to statisticians, to torture data until…voila!…the Holocene has ceased to exist.
I hope Steve McIntyre hasn’t got any immovable long term plans and that Anthony Montford (Bishop Hill) has a good supply of sharpened pencils.
bublhead — So how does this research fundamentally challenge the basic conclusions of Climate Change/Global Warming?
It doesn’t.
I read your blog post, and with all due respect, you’re a narrow minded bigot.
Non-skeptics are focused on “it’s an impending disaster” where “impending” ranges from “it’s too late, we’re already screwed” to 5 years to a century or more. But the “it’s an impending disaster” meme is unyielding: the sky is falling, and the only question is when.
Skeptics have a wider bandwidth, ranging from what you would call lukewarmers “GW is happening, man contributes, but it’s not a disaster” all the way to the “it’s a conspiracy” crowd. You attack the silly 15% minority viewpoint because it’s exceedingly simple to do and then uncreatively (all of your ilk manages the same stupid pet trick) attempt to spin the viewpoint, strawman style, as that representing all skeptics. The scrotal torsion alone from that amount of spin could sterilise an elephant.
Most of the people posting on this blog fall into the “lukewarmer” group attempting to understand and ultimately extricate the usable science from the vapid spinning and screeching of the chicken little crowd (i.e. YOU.) That you are unable to distinguish between those who are coldly and rationally examining evidence and those who are rejecting evidence out of hand is quite telling: in the manner of “birds of a feather” you can only identify the antipodal viewpoint thus indicating that you buy the alarmist party line without critical thought. If you were actually a thinker, you’d be more inclined to grasp the underlying skeptical approach and write thusly. But, you don’t, meaning you can’t.
Have another smurfy day in screechland.
Repeat after me: “stable systems don’t have tipping points”
It appears it has all happened before.
http://climateaudit.org/2009/05/03/is-chu-for-real/
GL Alston
” The scrotal torsion alone from that amount of spin could sterilise an elephant.”
Haha. nice one.
It is my great desire that more an more people learn this simple approach.
Once you say these words the whole debate changes.
” C02 warms the planet, we just don’t know how much”
That changes the debate for the following reasons.
1. Bulbheads dont know how to respond. They are used to their party line.
( skeptics deny the effect of C02, skeptics are anti science, balh blah blah)
2. The argument shifts to the weakest link of their argument where they have
INTERNAL discord.
I don’t know why more “skeptics/denialists” don’t see this.
EVEN IF you believe that C02 has no effect, EVEN IF you believe that, you are FAR BETTER OFF, saying ” C02 warms the planet, we just dont know how much”
Hello Uncle Walt,
I said nothing at all about a “global conspiracy to distort science”. We have a theory that has very little credible science to back it up.
I’m sorry if I’m not providing enough “meat” in my comments. I have found that I can spend large amounts of time putting together posts for folks such as yourself.
I find that AGW fanatics tend to move the goalposts a lot and engage in a lot of “tapdancing”. I don’t want to spend that much time dealing with tapdancers.
Manmade global warming fanatics have had over 20 years to make the case scientifically. You didn’t have the science so you tried to shout down people with “The debate is over!!” and “Scientific concensus!!”
Al Gore is a massive hypocrite, so is David Suzuki. We supposedly have a planetary crisis and these two live the good life while lecturing everyone else.
Over 20 years and you haven’t made the case. Rational folks might say it’s because the science to backup the theory isn’t there.
Ideally, manmade global warming fanatics would come to their senses, admit they really got it wrong, then we could all turn to really helping people and the situations on this planet who need our help.
Not only the proxies should not be added, but if they are based on the Greenland glaciers ( google GRIP project), the latest and the most praised 10Be records, then proxies may be highly suspect!
Here I show direct copy of 10Be data from
A 600-year annual 10Be record from the NGRIP ice core, Greenland
by Berggren et al. from
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36, L11801, doi:10.1029/2009GL038004, 2009
Received 6 March 2009; revised 20 March 2009; accepted 1 April 2009; published 2 June 2009.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET&10Be.htm
The 10Be data is inverted and superimposed with the CETs.
Anyone in contemporary science will tell that can’t be.
Either solar output is directly responsible for the temperature variations (except for miner deviations between Greenland and central England)
or 10Be Greenland glaciers (GRIP project) data are useless.
Perhaps Anthony could ask Dr. Svalgaard to explain the mystery.
One thing that has become clear in recent years is that past weather and climate analogs may give hints of what our weather patterns have done in the past, but they will not yield exact predictions. Here is where anthropogenic effects may come into play. The Great Plains are far different place now than in 1750; large scale destruction of jungles in Indonesia (in order to farm ethanol producing palm trees) and the Amazonin the long run produce different global weather patterns today than in 1350. We simply do not know.
What governs Artic sea surface temperature variations is simple (prevailing winds and ocean currents). What drives these components is far more difficult to ascertain than our Alarmists will admit. If for some reason the ocean currents that provide warmer tropical and subtropical waters to the poles would be cut-off or diverted, polar sea ice would increase immediately, and strong, deep polar air masses would drive the mid-latitude climate. Hot dry summers and bitterly cold dry winters would dominate. All without the help of changes in greenhouse gases. But consequently, what goes up must come down. In order to maintain a proper balance (or heat budget), teleconnections between the equator and poles would certainly create extreme weather and climate variations on the fringes. This is what occured over Europe during the LIA. The LIA there was known more for its extreme variations in temperature and precipitation patterns . The NAO and AO produced a pattern of wide climate variability no matter what occured in the subtropics. Perhaps an unknown teleconnection existed or was amplified by some unknown parameter. We do know that the changes in the NAO were amplified a very strong belt of mid latitudinal baroclinicity across the North Atlantic. We also know that Greenland, Iceland, Scandanavia and the North Sea cooled. And these conditions persisted for over 500 years.
The main point is to go by what we do know. It is too bad this bit of knowledge is clouded by not only misinformation and revisionism, but also by shodding statistics, poor theory, and the retention of important data for political purposes (see Lonnie Thompson and his ice core data). There is so much we do not know, that one would think there would be a more transparent push to get the truth investigated.
The potential for ice-free summers in the Arctic is not new – Astrid Lysa from the Geological Survey of Norway reported some years back on research into beach-structures on northern Greenland that indicated ice-free conditions and were dated at about 8000 BP.
It doesn’t throw a great deal of light on the debate (other than there was no ‘tipping point’ – which is of course important) because the Holocene Optimum is generally recognised as having been induced by orbital cycles. I am not convinced that the rather rapid rise out of the ice-age at about 11,000BP can also be explained by oribital cycles – the rise seems too abrupt and it also coincides with proxies for geomagnetic and solar magnetic disturbances.
Thus, there has been a natural cooling since then – with roughly 1000yr cycles of warming and each succesive peak being lower. It could be argued that the late 20th century peak in the northern hemisphere would have been lower still without CO2 bumping it up a bit!
bublhead says:
October 31, 2010 at 8:34 am
As much use as I make of Wikipedia as a starting point in my research, it isn’t actually a primary source. The article you referenced is written (and probably continuously edited) by lots of people, some of whom probably have an agenda.
You said “I don’t think that they conclude that it was always the major forcing factor.”
Google “co2 extinctions” and you will find more than enough references to nearly all the extinction events by some “scientists”.
Your comment seems to revolve around this statement
“Wild swings of CO2 have always been shown to be the result of and not the cause of climate changes and extinctions. While I don’t deny this, I would be interested in some citations”
You could start by accepting that the interglacial periods were driven by warming first and CO2 followed by some 800 years. Then do some leg work and show me a period when CO2 led to climate change or mass extinctions.
the IPCC science is that human activity is pumping green house gases (primarily CO2) in such volumes as to overwhelm other factors like the Milankovitch Cycles.
Milankovitch Cycles act over longer or as long as the Holocene epoch. They don’t explain the peaks and troughs of temperature during the last 1100 or so years.
Look at this graph. The last temp peak and trough on the left hand side they are the Middle age warming and the Little ice age. You will see throughout the Holocene, temperatures have fluctuated wildly and cannot be attributed to CO2 or Milankovitch Cycles.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/GISP_to_11Kybp.gif
We are pushing CO2 into the atmosphere in far greater volumes than natural sources. It can’t been seen as a surprise that doing so will cause the environment to do things it hasn’t done in the past.
I’m not just being pedantic but the climate never does exactly what it’s done in the past. We live in a chaotic environment and it has and will always be so.
And that unnaturally high level of CO2 is currently overwhelming all the natural drivers to the cycles of global climate.
Whilst it can’t be said that the extra CO2 has no effect it equally cannot be said that it overwhelms all the other drivers. There is no empirical evidence that it is making any meaningful difference to our climate.
Does this study somehow challenge that understanding?
It challenges the concept that the present low NH ice levels are in anyway unique.
I’ve added an inline response to Richard Telford upstream.