From NASA Goddard/GISS: same-o, same-o
Paleoclimate Record Points Toward Potential Rapid Climate Changes
New research into the Earth’s paleoclimate history by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James E. Hansen suggests the potential for rapid climate changes this century, including multiple meters of sea level rise, if global warming is not abated.
By looking at how the Earth’s climate responded to past natural changes, Hansen sought insight into a fundamental question raised by ongoing human-caused climate change: “What is the dangerous level of global warming?” Some international leaders have suggested a goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times in order to avert catastrophic change. But Hansen said at a press briefing at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco on Tues, Dec. 6, that warming of 2 degrees Celsius would lead to drastic changes, such as significant ice sheet loss in Greenland and Antarctica.
Based on Hansen’s temperature analysis work at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the Earth’s average global surface temperature has already risen .8 degrees Celsius since 1880, and is now warming at a rate of more than .1 degree Celsius every decade. This warming is largely driven by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide, emitted by the burning of fossil fuels at power plants, in cars and in industry. At the current rate of fossil fuel burning, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will have doubled from pre-industrial times by the middle of this century. A doubling of carbon dioxide would cause an eventual warming of several degrees, Hansen said.
In recent research, Hansen and co-author Makiko Sato, also of Goddard Institute for Space Studies, compared the climate of today, the Holocene, with previous similar “interglacial” epochs – periods when polar ice caps existed but the world was not dominated by glaciers. In studying cores drilled from both ice sheets and deep ocean sediments, Hansen found that global mean temperatures during the Eemian period, which began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 15,000 years, were less than 1 degree Celsius warmer than today. If temperatures were to rise 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times, global mean temperature would far exceed that of the Eemian, when sea level was four to six meters higher than today, Hansen said.
“The paleoclimate record reveals a more sensitive climate than thought, even as of a few years ago. Limiting human-caused warming to 2 degrees is not sufficient,” Hansen said. “It would be a prescription for disaster.”
Hansen focused much of his new work on how the polar regions and in particular the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland will react to a warming world.
Two degrees Celsius of warming would make Earth much warmer than during the Eemian, and would move Earth closer to Pliocene-like conditions, when sea level was in the range of 25 meters higher than today, Hansen said. In using Earth’s climate history to learn more about the level of sensitivity that governs our planet’s response to warming today, Hansen said the paleoclimate record suggests that every degree Celsius of global temperature rise will ultimately equate to 20 meters of sea level rise. However, that sea level increase due to ice sheet loss would be expected to occur over centuries, and large uncertainties remain in predicting how that ice loss would unfold.
Hansen notes that ice sheet disintegration will not be a linear process. This non-linear deterioration has already been seen in vulnerable places such as Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica, where the rate of ice mass loss has continued accelerating over the past decade. Data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite is already consistent with a rate of ice sheet mass loss in Greenland and West Antarctica that doubles every ten years. The GRACE record is too short to confirm this with great certainty; however, the trend in the past few years does not rule it out, Hansen said. This continued rate of ice loss could cause multiple meters of sea level rise by 2100, Hansen said.
Ice and ocean sediment cores from the polar regions indicate that temperatures at the poles during previous epochs – when sea level was tens of meters higher – is not too far removed from the temperatures Earth could reach this century on a “business as usual” trajectory.
“We don’t have a substantial cushion between today’s climate and dangerous warming,” Hansen said. “Earth is poised to experience strong amplifying feedbacks in response to moderate additional global warming.”
Detailed considerations of a new warming target and how to get there are beyond the scope of this research, Hansen said. But this research is consistent with Hansen’s earlier findings that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would need to be rolled back from about 390 parts per million in the atmosphere today to 350 parts per million in order to stabilize the climate in the long term. While leaders continue to discuss a framework for reducing emissions, global carbon dioxide emissions have remained stable or increased in recent years.
Hansen and others noted that while the paleoclimate evidence paints a clear picture of what Earth’s earlier climate looked like, but that using it to predict precisely how the climate might change on much smaller timescales in response to human-induced rather than natural climate change remains difficult. But, Hansen noted, the Earth system is already showing signs of responding, even in the cases of “slow feedbacks” such as ice sheet changes.
The human-caused release of increased carbon dioxide into the atmosphere also presents climate scientists with something they’ve never seen in the 65 million year record of carbon dioxide levels – a drastic rate of increase that makes it difficult to predict how rapidly the Earth will respond. In periods when carbon dioxide has increased due to natural causes, the rate of increase averaged about .0001 parts per million per year – in other words, one hundred parts per million every million years. Fossil fuel burning is now causing carbon dioxide concentrations to increase at two parts per million per year.
“Humans have overwhelmed the natural, slow changes that occur on geologic timescales,” Hansen said.
Patrick Lynch
NASA’s Earth Science News Team
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Back in August 2009, just before Copenhagen I wrote a letter to the Times of London about the Pine island glacier: which for a wonder they published if somewhat edited.
The old editor had been open to solid reasoned argument but the new editor was resolutely green, and has succeeded so well as to turn a once great newspaper into a comic: and behind a paywall too even if you buy the dead tree version. Unless of course you buy by subscription from them. Nobody does.
Frankly if I want a comic I would rather have the Daily Mail which does it much better, indeed sometimes remarkably so.
But then the new Greenie editor of the Economist has also turned it into a propaganda leaflet and am I going to pay for that balderdash?
Forgive me I digress.
Anyway I wrote to the London Times, something I used to do quite often but never bother nowadays, and for a wonder they published my letter albeit heavily edited but without changing the sense too much.
That supposed newspaper had then been recently full of the imagined melting of glaciers in the Antarctic peninsula even with a leader [editorial] about this saying it showed global warming.
The point I made was the Antarctic peninsula is an active volcanic region and the Pine Island glacier, so beloved of Hansen et al, sits directly above a currently erupting volcano. There is little to say about this other than ice, however thick, above such a major source of geothermal heat will tend to melt: and from underneath too so producing the observed flow of water beneath it.
The behaviour of it and its adjacent glaciers have little or nothing to do with supposed global warming and everything to do with sitting atop a chain of volcanoes.
Since we know so little about volcanic activity in the peninsula, and perhaps further inland, there is no way of predicting what might happen.
Which does not stop Hansen et al trying to do so without apparently even understanding the underlying forces involved.
Kindest Regards
The GRACE record is too short to confirm this with great certainty; however, the trend in the past few years does not rule it out, Hansen said.
Well, that’s me sold. Meanwhile in other news, my own scientifically baseless projections show me to become an eccentric multi-millionaire by the year 2020. My past salary record is too piss poor to confirm this with great certainty; however, the trend in the sales of Penny Farthings in the past few years doesn’t rule it out.
janama says:
December 9, 2011 at 2:35 am
can some one over there take this man to dinner and fix his head?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Perhaps we could get Charlie the Tuna to take him out to dinner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_El2_enNFaI
Consider for just a moment the number of known factors of planet-wide “climate” .
Consider the unknown ones-thats much harder as theyre “unknowns”.
Then consider that these climate soothsayers tell us they can predict the climate based on a limited number of known factors.
Then finally, consider the arrogance, the sheer hubris of these carbon cowboys as they claim they can “fix” it all just by paying attention to one aspect of the climates insurmountably complex and unpredicatable “dna”.
All without any due consideration to factors that as of yet that remain unknown.
Fixing it without knowing why its broke, how its broke, In actual fact, fixing it until it IS broke!
They might as well blame it all on the fairies.
In the uk, they have a comedian/magician called Paul Daniels, whose tagline was:
“Now thats magic”.
For these lot, climate dynamics, function and operation might just as well be like one of Mr Daniels parlour tricks, because the solution totally eludes them.
@jim Karlack. “Could you please provide actual, empirical, evidence that Man’s CO2 is the cause of your observed climate changes?”
EXACTLY! In ’07 I saw that Gore & the ipcc had been mistruthing about the ice cores & the non-existent CO2 temp causal relationship. Even the bs artists had to concede on the 800 year CO2 / temp lag. Subsequently, the hogwash specialists have asserted that CO2 causes “amplification” of the non-CO2 initiated warming. This is fully without foundation (evidence!) — as far as I can tell. We need to call them on that! Further, though even skeptics like Lindzen talk of a theoretical basis for the trace gas CO2 warming the atmosphere, we need ACTUAL EVIDENCE that CO2 changes climate temps. I feel like I’m crazy — but in fact I have heard of no evidence. Nada. I say: there are two key agw debunking points: 1. temps are not unusual, and 2. trace gas CO2 is not shown to be a cause (just a result) of warming.
Hey, if any “deniers” here know of evidence that CO2 causes climate scale warming, put it forward please. Cuz I don’t want to go down this road if wrong.
Jeff Alberts said on December 9, 2011 at 7:52 am:
No no, Anthony has it right for the writing style. Rhymes with and evokes “lame-o, lame-o” which is a fitting description of Hansen’s latest opus. 😉
Ian W says:
December 9, 2011 at 9:12 am
“Anthony- would it be possible to produce a map that is not based on a Mercator projection a small globe or conic projection to that the actual area of ‘claimed’ warmer than normal is shown to be as small as it is?”
Even more important is showing how it looks like without Hansen’s infamous 1200 km smoothing to show how huge the gaps are.
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/part-1-of-comparison-of-gistemp-and-uah-msu-tlt-anomalies/
I wonder if there is some age at which mandatory retirement will kick in. I believe Hansen is 70 years old already, Surely his ability to lead a dynamic organization such as GISS is taxing him, when he wants to be out in the field (leading protests and the like). I pray the next director doesn’t get named during this election year.
Willis says
These guys can’t even tell a believable lie. It hasn’t warmed a tenth of a degree in the last decade, that’s nonsense.
————-
So Willis I take it that you want people to focus on the short term trend as a predictor of future trends rather than the more robust , (against short term noise) long term trend. Is that a valid interpretation of what you are saying?
“Humans have overwhelmed the natural, slow changes that occur on geologic timescales,” Hansen said.
Why doesn’t Hansen gather together all of his disciples of CAGW and lead them to a lemming like ‘utopia’ ? Would this not be a positive contribution to restore “the natural slow changes” ?
I find the phrases “…has risen by .8 degrees Celsius since 1880…” and “increasing at a rate of about .1 degree Celsius per decade” to be written in bad form. As an engineer, I was taught to always include the leading zero before a decimal point to prevent confusion since many people will overlook this small mark. There is significantly less chance of misreading 0.8 versus .8. Plus, it emphasizes the zero and decimal point, which makes it look far less threatening. (Probably why Hansen and crew left it out in the first place).
Bill Illis says:
December 9, at 4:10 am
“One can show that Hansen is right.
All one has to do is throw out all the historical climate data and then make-up some new ones
that show 4.2C per doubling of CO2. While that might not appear to be appropriate at first glance, it is done in the field all the time and is, thus, acceptable for publication / presentation at conferences.”
* * * T.h.a.n.k. Y.o.u. f.o.r. N.o.T. J.o.k.i.n.G. * * *
People simply can not understand all this heating as described ‘abnormal’ is
u.t.t.e.r,
UTTER,
b.u.n..k.
Another place Hansen et al, @ur momisugly the time, tacked on about .3, was when the Russians’ Soviet Socialist Republic fell.
When the Soviet Union fell, payrolls and means, such as government-paid phone lines, vanished.
There was no ‘back up’ – the ‘back up’ was the good will and means of the people themselves to keep sending information in. Their entire system failed, and their SOVIET UNION, COMPRISING 5,000, OF THE COLDEST SENSOR STATIONS ON EARTH, V.A.N.I.S.H.E.D.
Hansen and other unmentionable FRAUD CO-CONSPIRATORS ADDED .5 to the WORLD’S TEMP THEN, but people screamed so loud they took off .2
At least, that’s as well as I remember; the mileage of the factual truth will be slightly different, but THEY SCAMMED ON .3 THEN as well as I remember.
* * *HAPPY INDICTMENTs and a MERRY INVESTIGATION SEASON* * *
Matt G says:
December 9, 2011 at 10:33 am
Robert Clemenzi says:
December 9, 2011 at 10:12 am
Have no idea where you got that idea from because Greenland ice cores from different regions all go back at least 100,000′s of years. The longest recent ice core went back to around 840,000 years, so these show there was plenty of ice well before the Younger Dryas.
The Greenland Dye 3 ice core clearly shows (plot) that in a 2,035 meter core, the Younger Dryas is located about 1780 meters below the surface. This means that only 241 meters were deposited during the ice age, and 1,780 meters were deposited after the planet warmed. The lowest 14 meters were deposited during the Eemian (the last interglacial).
According to GISP2/GRIP Reconstructed Ages for Disturbed Bottom Sections
The oldest ice in the basal layer of GISP2 and GRIP has an age >=237 ka.
The only 840,000 year core I know of is from Antarctica. Please let me know if there is also one from Greenland.
Okay, let me get this straight. That 0.8 deg C rise of the last 130 years has caused a sea level rise of about 8 inches. But every deg. C from now on, says Hansen, “ultimately equates” to a rise of 20 meters. Uh huh.
So, is he taking the average sea level rise per degree over the whole post-glaciation period (despite the fact that the rate has been decreasing, quite naturally) and applying it to today? If so, somebody should introduce the good Dr. to basic calculus.
Do the idiots who write these articles have perception at all, or are they in on the joke?
here is a “model” to be tested:
if c=level of confidence doing predictions 0>c>1
and vu=number of unknown variables involved 0>vu>∞
and bs=probability the prediction is bs
then bs=c(1-1/(1+vu))
applied to Hansen (conviction: close to or equal 1, number of unknown variables enormous) this would mean he is talking bs – so taking most comments here as proof he talking bs I think this model is valid
how’s that for the simplest of models in climate science? 😉
I think we need a “Digging Index”. The scores would consist of ratings by experts (us) of how hard the cAGW rockstars are each digging their holes deeper. Mann and Hansen could serve as the metric, each getting a ’10’ ranking right about now, and then others as appropriate. Weekly, with graphs.
I’m sure it would highlight some fascinating dynamics!
Then he should have said “per decade” instead of “every decade.”
November’s almost in the books and it looks to be a cold one. December ditto. Then we can crow about how the media and establishment warmists had jumped the gun and spun the message of 11th warmist year (or thereabouts) two and a half months earlier. It may turn out to be the 20th warmist.
LazyTeenager says:
December 9, 2011 at 3:46 pm
That is not a valid interpretation of what I said, not in the slightest. I did not say that. I did not imply that. It is entirely your idiosyncratic interpretation.
w.
I reiterate: FIRE HANSEN!!!!!! That should be the mantra of both of the remaining GOP candidates who have a reasonable chance at the nomination. While we’re at it, Lazy Teenager should be fired, too, from his post as a troll. Lol!
It seems his timeframe of 40 years for lots of sea level rise has now gone out to 112 years (1988-2100). So far the changes are insignificant. He’d do everyone a favour if he explained why things are changing very very slowly rather than coming out with an updated timeframe. Even I can say that in 10000 yrs things will be different. He just isn’t adding much.
For those interested in the last interglacial, the Eemian, which Hansen cites, here are the numbers.
Antarctica got to about +5.0C warmer than today (for a short period) and Greenland was about +4.0C warmer than today (but we can only get partway through the Eemian in the Greenland ice cores because the ice at the bottom of the cores is too distorted and cannot be calibrated for age. There was still ice at the bottom so it did not melt out, even in the southern ice cap area, but there was probably much less glacier on Greenland and Antarctica).
CO2, by contrast, hardly changed at all through the Eemian interglacial. It was basically 270 ppm to 280 ppm.
http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/6261/eemianinterglacial.png
So the Eemian was warm, +2.0C to +2.5C globally, but it wasn’t CO2 that made it warm. Most likely, more land ice melted back and sea ice was much less than today so that less of the solar energy was reflected away from the Earth back to space and this additional solar energy got incorporated into global temperatures.
“From NASA Goddard/GISS: same-o, same-o”
Too bad. According to NASA, your future is James Hansen’s mission.
Thank gods, I am not American.
“According to NASA, your future is James Hansen’s mission.”
In case this caused some bamboozlement, the NASA webpage carrying the news statement says “Your future. Our mission” in the banner.
Also, of course, I’d love to be an American, if I were filthy rich.
Robert Clemenzi says:
December 9, 2011 at 4:33 pm
http://mc-computing.com/qs/Global_Warming/Icecore_Data/Greenland-Dye3.html
The bottom layers of the glacier are lost eventually forever via icebergs and extreme pressure at the bottom forming super cooled liquid water. The data does support an increased build-up of ice after the Younger Dryas, but this doesn’t point towards that there was only 200m+ during the major ice age at the time. The current 1000m of ice at the top of the glacier with another 1000m above would have compacted about 5-10 fold. Greenland can only support so much ice because it is limited in land mass and the rest is lost especially via icebergs.
Shows the approx accumulation of ice during around the Younger Dryas
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/alley2000/alley2000.gif
Evidence shows that the most Greenland ice was still there despite only 200m+ found in the ice cores because below shows the approx sea levels at the time.
http://coastalchange.ucsd.edu/images/glacialsnewest2.jpg
If one tenth of the glacier was only around in Greenland before the Younger Dryas then sea levels after would have shown much lower rises in levels then the data shows, in fact should have shown a decline. The sea level would have to lower around 6.3m during the build up of this glacier since.
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/images/fig_hist_1.jpg
The 840,000 year core is the one based at Antarctica and the main reason why these are significantly different in size is mainly due to the limitation of land mass. Added this one to show that there was a lot of ice well before on the planet and at the time older ice would have been lost via carving or super cooled water throughout an 800,000+ year period.
My estimations to lose all old ice via icebergs and super cooled water alone are around 120,000 years for Greenland and about 855,000 years for Antarctica. This period is likely how long it takes to lose this mass taking into account no further snowfall was added and roughly the same pressure changes if there were normal extra snowfalls and temperature remained similar during these long periods.
The GAGW folks are not really concerned about co2 levels. IF they were, they would be shouting to have most of our elec coming from nuclear sources. There is enough nuclear material to substain elec production for approx 1,000 years.
Most of the GAGW folks don’t even realize that they are being duped and used a pawns in a large game of further wealth creation of the present wealthy.
Should we try to reduce co2 emissions? Of course we should. Should this come from government? Of course it shouldn’t. People can and should be responsable for their lives because of their moral fortitude.
Tiz a sad day in the world when so many are so duped by so few.