From Boston University
Amplified greenhouse effect shaping North into South
BU-led international team shows significant reduction in temperature and vegetation seasonality over northern latitudes
BOSTON—An international team of 21 authors from 17 institutions in seven countries has just published a study in the journal Natural Climate Change showing that, as the cover of snow and ice in the northern latitudes has diminished in recent years, the temperature over the northern land mass has increased at different rates during the four seasons, causing a reduction in temperature and vegetation seasonality in this area. In other words, the temperature and vegetation at northern latitudes increasingly resembles those found several degrees of latitude farther south as recently as 30 years ago. The study, titled “Temperature and vegetation seasonality diminishment over northern lands” (DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1836), can be downloaded here: http://dx.doi.org/.
The NASA-funded study, based on newly improved ground and satellite data sets, examines critically the relationship between changes in temperature and vegetation productivity in northern latitudes.
On the amplified greenhouse effect, Prof. Ranga Myneni, Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University and lead co-author says “A greenhouse effect initiated by increased atmospheric concentration of heat-trapping gasses—such as water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane—causes the Earth’s surface and nearby air to warm. The warming reduces the extent of polar sea ice and snow cover on the large land mass that surrounds the Arctic ocean, thereby increasing the amount of solar energy absorbed by the no longer energy-reflecting surface. This sets in motion a cycle of positive reinforcement between warming and loss of sea ice and snow cover, thus amplifying the base greenhouse effect.”
“The amplified warming in the circumpolar area roughly above the Canada-USA border is reducing temperature seasonality over time because the colder seasons are warming more rapidly than the summer,” says Liang Xu, a Boston University doctoral student and lead co-author of the study.
“As a result of the enhanced warming over a longer ground-thaw season, the total amount of heat available for plant growth in these northern latitudes is increasing. This created during the past 30 years large patches of vigorously productive vegetation, totaling more than a third of the northern landscape—over 9 million km2, which is roughly about the area of the USA— resembling the vegetation that occurs further to the south,” says Dr. Compton Tucker, Senior Scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.
The authors measured seasonality changes using latitude as a yardstick. They first defined reference latitudinal profiles for the quantities being observed and then quantified changes in them over time as shifts along these profiles.
“Arctic plant growth during the early-1980s reference period equaled that of lands north of 64 degrees north. Today, just 30 years later, it equals that of lands above 57 degrees north—a reduction in vegetation seasonality of about seven degrees south in latitude,” says co-author Prof. Terry Chapin, Professor Emeritus, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “This manner of analyses suggested a decline in temperature and vegetation seasonality of about four to seven degrees of latitude during the past 30 years,” says co-author Eugenie Euskirchen, Research Professor, University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
“The reduction of vegetation seasonality, resulting in increased greenness in the Arctic, is visible on the ground as an increasing abundance of tall shrubs and tree incursions in several locations all over the circumpolar Arctic,” says co-author Terry Callaghan, Professor, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the University of Sheffield, UK. He notes that the greening in the adjacent Boreal areas is much less conspicuous in North America than in Eurasia.
A key finding of this study is an accelerating greening rate in the Arctic and a decelerating rate in the boreal region, despite a nearly constant rate of temperature seasonality diminishment in these regions over the past 30 years. “This may portend a decoupling between growing season warmth and vegetation productivity in some parts of the North as the ramifications of amplified greenhouse effect—including permafrost thawing, frequent forest fires, outbreak of pest infestations, and summertime droughts—come in to play,” says co-author Hans Tømmervik, Senior Researcher, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Tromsø, Norway.
According to the authors, the future does indeed look troubling: Based on analysis of 17 state-of-the-art climate model simulations, diminishment of temperature seasonality in these regions could be more than 20 degrees in latitude by the end of this century relative to the 1951-1980 reference period. The projected temperature seasonality decline by these models for the 2001-2010 decade is actually less than the observed decline. “Since we don’t know the actual trajectory of atmospheric concentration of various agents capable of forcing a change in climate, long-term projections should be interpreted cautiously,” says co-author Bruce Anderson, Professor of Earth and Environment at Boston University.
“These changes will affect local residents through changes in provisioning ecosystem services such as timber and traditional foods,” says Research Professor Bruce Forbes, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland. They will also impact the global community through changes in regulatory ecosystem services relating to emissions of greenhouse gases. “The soils in the northern land mass potentially can release significant amounts of greenhouse gases which are currently locked up in the permanently frozen ground. Any large-scale deep-thawing of these soils has the potential to further amplify the greenhouse effect,” says co-author Philippe Ciais, Associate Director, Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Science, Paris, France.
“The way of life of many organisms on Earth is tightly linked to seasonal changes in temperature and availability of food, and all food on land comes first from plants,” says Dr. Scott Goetz, Deputy Director and Senior Scientist, Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, USA. “Think of migration of birds to the Arctic in the summer and hibernation of bears in the winter: Any significant alterations to temperature and vegetation seasonality are likely to impact life not only in the north but elsewhere in ways that we do not yet know.”
This note was included in the press release:
For graphics and additional information about this study, visit: http://cliveg.bu.edu/greeningearth/ssnltydim/ssnlty-dim.html
After visiting there, it almost looks like a grade school science site to me. On that site, they talk a lot about “The Greening North.” as if this were a bad thing. If they poll some of the people who live in those areas, they might find the change is welcome.
What sort of English is this ?
“The temperature over the northern land mass has increased at different rates during the four seasons, causing a reduction in temperature and vegetation seasonality in this area.”
I mean seriously ?
“BU-led international team shows significant reduction in temperature and vegetation seasonality over northern latitudes”
Does that mean its getting colder in the northern latitudes not warmer as per the AWG theory ?
*confused*
Another promotion of the supposed greening can be found here :
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/growth-shift.html:
So in fact it is better than we thought?
How you can get increased growth from higher temperatures when actual data shows little to zero warming. Increased atmospheric CO2 will increase the efficiency of photosynthesis in this steady temperature situation.
Also how can you amplify a non existent GH effect. The amplification will still be non existent.
“Based on analysis of 17 state-of-the-art climate model simulations, diminishment of temperature seasonality in these regions could be more than 20 degrees in latitude by the end of this century relative to the 1951-1980 reference period. The projected temperature seasonality decline by these models for the 2001-2010 decade is actually less than the observed decline.
Models? The reverence is not unlike that attending consultation of an oracle of the ancients. Make a good movie theme. This last very cold winter in the arctic – still going on strong- should correct the 2001 -2010 overshoot somewhat. Although using an awkward metric, it is the same old stuff that we have been hearing for decades (they didn’t use the word tipping point with the reduced albedo but they used everything else). This is clearly another one of these recent drive-by publishing blitzes to effect reversal of the damage done with the unauthorized release of the draft IPCC report – they mentioned they will be considering “new” stuff publlshed before May 13th 2013. Watch for bundles of this stuff before then. You have to hand it to them! Sceptics are keeping up in the publishing department.
I can’t see into the future but I can look into the past. And what I see is a resilient Earth and survivalist creatures, like polar bears, from the north.
A quick skim through the first paragraph caught my eye:
“the temperature over the northern land mass has increased at different rates during the four seasons, causing a reduction in temperature “
There you have it folks, an increase in temperature causes a decrease in temperature. Falsify that theory about Global Warming!
‘ The warming reduces the extent of polar sea ice and snow cover on the large land mass that surrounds the Arctic ocean, thereby increasing the amount of solar energy absorbed by the no longer energy-reflecting surface.’
Hasn’t it been claimed recently that missing polar ice leads to more evaporation and therefore more snowfall on the area surrounding the Arctic ocean?
It might even be true. Climate variation has always seemed obvious to me, the anthropogenic portion not so obvious.
The big question, for me, is: what happens when external conditions (i.e. solar conditions) reverse? I suspect a dramatic climate reversal, which will, for these people, be as unexpected and frightening as the initial warming …
And they have considered the effect from CO2 fertilization and the effect from a positive AMO.
I think not!
Sigh…”According to the authors, the future does indeed look troubling: Based on analysis of 17 state-of-the-art climate model simulations, diminishment of temperature seasonality in these regions could be”
I think the Essenbach principle of the number of authors being inversely proportional to the quality of the science applies.
Global temperature is increasing, especially over northern lands DMI does not show this. The graphs from the paper are too small to read in the abstract link above, sounds like crap* to me.
*crap, term for extrapolated assumptions
They really struggled to avoid mentioning that the net impacts are truly wonderful for the high latitude biosphere! Hypocrites! This is yet another example of how government money has corrupted science. Government money generally goes to science that can solve a problem for government. No problem? No funding!
They also left no doubt that the change was entirely due to greenhouse gases, despite that fact that the signatures of greenhouse warming are generally absent from the atmosphere. There is no tropical warm spot in the upper troposphere. There is no increase in global water vapor. There is no warming at the other pole, and so on. The far more scientific explanation is that the majority of what they have observed is part of a natural cycle largely driven by ocean circulations. But that does not generate a problem that governments can fix. Again…no problem, no funding.
The whole world of science is tainted by government funding.
Global temperature is increasing That is a quote leading into the abstract. After looking at the abstract, I decided not to take the time to read the above, and commented. I then saw the link to the BU site and confirmed it’s models and new improved temperature data, ie crap.
So potentially , Greenland is going to benefit by having more useful land?
The vikings would be pleased to know their ancient settlements, that have been buried under ice for so many centuries ,will see the light of day again.
Wasn’t a sudy just released recently that said relative humidy /Wator vapor is not rising? So now, studies filled with false information and conjecture pass as real science?
Wonder how much this cost the US taxpayer?
“If they poll some of the people who live in those areas, they might find the change is welcome.”
The Inuit living in those areas were among the first to notice the changes caused by warming and express concerns. If people living in the south listened instead of speculating ignorantly, they might find the change is unwelcome.
If you want to see what effects warming will have, you can look back to the MWP. Oh, I forgot.
You eraced it. /sarc
On planet earth we have warm spells and we have cold spells. Vegetation changes in some places when we go from cold to warm. Lord only knows how much money was wasted for this “international team of 21 authors from 17 institutions in seven countries” to tell us a long version of that.
This really is a racket.
How do they separate “greenhouse” warming from otherwise natural warming?
If real world data conflicts with the theory then the theory is wrong. Its a double edged sword.
Of course the greening might well be because of increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere as plant life responds very favourably to increases in CO2. Plants also tend to be green rather than white like snow so they don’t reflect radiation back out into space quite so well. A positive feedback loop is then entirely plausible as the greener surface becomes a warmer surface further increasing the possibilities for further greening hence further warming.
It may well be that such a mechanism is the Real Greenhouse Effect. CO2 warms the far NH via enhanced plant growth. I guess this is a good thing.
I also understand this research was carried out during the late 20th Century solar maximum. As cloud cover in the far NH would be reduced because of the heliosphere shielding the Earth from cosmic rays we would expect a further enhancement to the Real Greenhouse Effect (RGE). This of course is about to reverse and possibly quite seriously so. I would expect some dieback over the coming decades but the RGE might go some way towards limiting the destruction of Canadian grain production as the developing solar minimum begins to bite.
That is fine while the warming is on, but when cooling start in the forthcoming decades it is the high latitudes that are going to suffer the most.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AGT.htm
btw ( today here in the UK we know what a mid-March felt in the LIA).
In 2012 I played golf several time in March in Minnesota. We’ve received about 20″ of snow so far this March and it isn’t even half over. Looks to me like this research is typical of climate science. Look at the 30 years where warming took place and ignore the cyclic nature of weather.
People purporting to do climatology who use such short periods of measurement and then generalize about it, all the while divorced from meaningful information about past fluctuations in the system, ought to be ashamed. And instead they are lionized. That is the age we live in.
wait, somebody tell the plants that the warming is all due to bogus adjustments.
“Since we don’t know the actual trajectory of atmospheric concentration of various agents capable of forcing a change in climate, long-term projections should be interpreted cautiously,”
kind of says it all !
Like Greenland during the Viking colonization era…
And in 30 years they will say the opposite.
Thiry years- aka one half PDO cycle. It will be interesting to see in 2043 (if I am still around) if it looks like 1983 again in those areas
Amplified (Where does the EXTRA energy come from?) GHE, as well as models, in the same article? Bollox, sorry, but thats just bollox!
“According to the authors, the future does indeed look troubling: Based on analysis of 17 state-of-the-art climate model simulations, diminishment of temperature seasonality in these regions could be more than 20 degrees in latitude by the end of this century relative to the 1951-1980 reference period. The projected temperature seasonality decline by these models for the 2001-2010 decade is actually less than the observed decline.”
Well, the models are wrong for 2001-2010. All we have to do is wait ’til the end of the century to find out they are wrong yet again. On the bright side, the Y2100 models should be great, assuming anyone still has money to fund modeling at the end of the century.
BTW, I thought water vapor was decreasing, but one of the authors said it was increasing. It is hard to tell who didn’t get the memo; the water vapor uppers or the or the water vapor downers?
I’m still trying to understand the alleged threat of melting tundra and release of the heat trapping gases in some sort of runaway unknown. Here is some more evidence for what is ‘known’.
* The Taimyr Peninsula is the northernmost extension of the Eurasian landmass, in north-central Siberia. Today it is covered by tundra.
No mention of soot.
Replying to my own comment on the Real Greenhouse Effect it suddenly occurred to me that the Wilson Cloud Chamber (water variant) is cooled to enhance saturation of water vapour and get better water droplet trails when ionising particles traverse the chamber. This provokes the obvious question:
Is cloud formation enhanced in the far NH during periods when the atmosphere cools? I haven’t thought this through by any means but perhaps the Sevensmark effect is stronger at the poles so that cloud formation is more strongly driven in the arctic by variations in the sun’s magnetic field. If so this would seriously enhance the RGE during the last Grand Maximum.
Just a thought. Is this covered anywhere?
“If they poll some of the people who live in those areas, they might find the change is welcome.”
As a resident of 42N7W I vote: “Excellent!”
correction “71W”
They can’t seem to recognize a good thing.
“based on 17 state of the art models”
marketing words shouldn’t be required in a research paper. Refering to them as state of the art rather than mere computer models is very telling! Perhaps the GIGO flaws of various papers are starting to sink in.
btw I work at high lattitudes through the boreal to the barrens…these guys need to quit playing video games and walk the earth more!
Yet another reply to my own post.
I don’t know if there is anyone out there who has the kit but there is some interesting data collection and processing that might be performed wrt to the “Enhanced Sevensmark Effect”.
It occurs to me that should this wild speculation have any basis in fact that it might be well worth looking at cloud formation over the far North Atlantic over the past few years and into the future. I guess we are talking satellite images and pixel counting. We chose this geographical area of interest because the gulf stream is continually feeding warm water and thus warm moisture laden air into the Arctic which progressively cools it. We might expect therefore to see increasing cloud cover occurring in this region as the solar magnetic field strength has declined (Livingston and Penn) and in consequence the cosmic ray flux has increased. This should perhaps be compared to another area of the globe at the same latitude where the warm moist air feed is lacking as well as each areas satellite record history.
1951 to 1980, well that covers the most recent cold cycle – as their baseline. Not withstanding their 17 “state-of-the-art” computer models (phew!) and their apparent cut off just before the most recent cooling and wammo snow falls, not to worry, nature is about to fix that seasonality issue for you.
You know, I think they would have preferred to be alarming us all over an impending ice age, it is so much easier to scare the children, and no doubt they would have blamed the same demons.
Trying to spin this so the locals are ‘worse off’ is just that bit more difficult …“These changes will affect local residents through changes in provisioning ecosystem services such as timber and traditional foods,” (quite a mouthful, eh?)
Now, the locals would really be complaining if they were getting colder….
This study was rather boring and predictable. Instead of finding the most likely cause of the greening planet (they did not even check the tropics, but rather 45N and above)…they decided to blame a marginal warming for the greening of northern latitudes. Its common knowledge that carbon dioxide itself has a fertilizing effect and higher levels of it make plants more drought tolerant and hardier in general. So a greening of the planet is probably more likely due to increased levels of CO2 by itself. Sure, the warming helps, but I am thinking that the scientists ignored the giant elephant in the room and instead focused on the evil and dreaded global warming nonsense. That is why they focused on the area of the world where warming benefits plants instead of looking at the entire planet as a whole and figuring out that possibly the tropics have seen similar plant growth and so on we go with more science by press released which helps our understanding of the planet none.
““Arctic plant growth during the early-1980s reference period equaled that of lands north of 64 degrees north. ”
and
“diminishment of temperature seasonality in these regions could be more than 20 degrees in latitude by the end of this century relative to the 1951-1980 reference period. ”
So the conclusion should be that things are different than the period 1950 – 1980 and nothing more. I suspect some cherry picking here especially since we know that period was a cooler period. What was the vegetation like during the period 1920 – 1950?
” Based on analysis of 17 state-of-the-art climate model simulations”
Must be abstract art they are talking about.
The moon is made of cheese and we have the models to prove it .
Leo Geiger
If people living in the south listened instead of speculating ignorantly, they might find that the badly BS are the claims about Polar Bears from those ion the ground . Of course then we been told they know nothing as there no ‘scientists’ Funny how respect for native wisdom depends on that ‘wisdom’ supporting the climate doom outlook.
So they’re comparing 2011 to 1982? I.e. their period starts very near the bottom of a ~40 year long cooling period in the Arctic…
“A key finding of this study is an accelerating greening rate in the Arctic and a decelerating rate in the boreal region, despite a nearly constant rate of temperature seasonality diminishment in these regions over the past 30 years. “This may portend a decoupling between growing season warmth and vegetation productivity in some parts of the North as the ramifications of amplified greenhouse effect—including permafrost thawing, frequent forest fires, outbreak of pest infestations, and summertime droughts—come in to play,” says co-author Hans Tømmervik, Senior Researcher, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Tromsø, Norway.”
If we assume that once greening reaches a limit, desertification will start and overwhelm the general increasing biological activity and improving ecology making this wonderful finding truly frightening.
johnmarshall says:
March 11, 2013 at 5:06 am
How you can get increased growth from higher temperatures when actual data shows little to zero warming.
——————————————————————-
The way I understand it, sometimes the weather/climate doesn’t co-operate with the models. /sarc
“The temperature over the northern landmass has increased at different rates during the four seasons, causing a reduction in temperature and vegetation seasonality in this area.”
A reduction in seasonality means less difference between summer and winter because low temperatures are rising faster than high temperatures. It doesn’t mean temperatures are “reducing”, ie decreasing or getting colder, since some people seem to be confused by this.
Snow cover in Northern hemisphere has been increasing, so this doesn’t make any sense. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog
Another group finding this change *unwelcome* are the mining companies and northern communities who rely on winter ice roads which are becoming unviable due to the warmer winters.
Wait… longer plant growth periods is a bad thing now?
Leo Geiger says:
March 11, 2013 at 6:24 am
‘“If they poll some of the people who live in those areas, they might find the change is welcome.”
The Inuit living in those areas were among the first to notice the changes caused by warming and express concerns. If people living in the south listened instead of speculating ignorantly, they might find the change is unwelcome.’
In other news of recent decades, the frost line in central Florida has been moving southward for forty years. That means that the land available for citrus crops such as oranges has been declining. Find the town of Frostproof on the map. It is no longer frost proof. This report is based entirely on reports from the ground by industry professionals.
The moral of the story is that climate changes all the time and changes in ways that have no explanation at this time. All modelers should be required to have at least one assistant who was a farmer but saw his farmland disappear before his eyes. There are plenty of farmers to go around.
I read earlier papers from Prof. Myneni, where the main thesis examined how increased CO2 contributed to planetary greening. I suppose, a different kind of green has made him see the light and join the chorus.
Steven Mosher says:
March 11, 2013 at 6:47 am
Sorry, Steven–we’re not going to let you hijack this thread.
30 years?
To coin John McEnroe, “You can’t be serious!”.
Steven Mosher says: “wait, somebody tell the plants that the warming is all due to bogus adjustments”.
– No one has Steve. But I bet it is a lot more likely that increased CO2 has had a larger role than you and the other “rent-a-quote” Warmists would want to think or, indeed, say.
Theo Goodwin says:
March 11, 2013 at 8:57 am
“In other news of recent decades, the frost line in central Florida has been moving southward for forty years. That means that the land available for citrus crops such as oranges has been declining. Find the town of Frostproof on the map. It is no longer frost proof.”
It never was frost proof. It was just a name taken back in the late 19th century to attract peope to the area.
“The town was originally named Keystone City, but people kept getting it confused with Keystone Heights up in North Central Florida. The town fathers, being good developers, came up with the perfect Florida name: Frostproof. Unfortunately, a couple of years later a severe frost visited the area and destroyed most of the citrus groves in the area. ”
http://www.florida-backroads-travel.com/frostproof-florida.html
People, we need to do something about this. If we don’t stop producing CO2, there is a very good chance that we will end up with even MORE of those disgusting ‘plant’ and ‘tree’ things. Yuk!
“This created during the past 30 years large patches of vigorously productive vegetation, totaling more than a third of the northern landscape”
Vigorous greening, observed everywhere (not only at high latitudes) has more to do with efficient water use & photosynthesis made possible by a 30% higher CO2 level than with a several tenth of a degree warming.
But, of course, an utterly dead, frozen landscape, nice & clean, devoid of any weed would conform to the Green Dream much better.
I was wondering how soon this article would make its appearance here. I almost laughed myself silly when I read the first article because its another case of a southerner telling people of the north that they know what’s good for them.
Common sense tells you that you are going to get more plant growth when your growing season gets longer, that’s just a fact of agriculture. What he doesn’t explain is how you are going to get plant growth north of the Arctic circle (or south of the Antarctic circle) during the winter when the sun doesn’t shine for six months of the year. The absolute length of your growing season is not how warm it is, it is based on the amount of sunlight that the plant can receive. Thus, north of the arctic circle your maximum growing season is the six months when you have sunlight. Your maximum growing season becomes longer the further south you go and the longer the periods of daylight become. With that extra sunlight also comes extra warmth – the extra warmth does not cause the plants to grow except as a result of stopping the plants from freezing and killing them.
When you extrapolate goblygook and interpolate it into english after a full analysis using statistical methods a scientific new age paper results with accolades. Thus new science is born or not.
So, the Earth got warmer last century; it got greener.
More green instead of snow-white is good.
It is cooling that is frightening, not warming.
My first question is what, exactly, do they mean by “newly improved ground and satellite data sets”. If they mean that the data sets are based on more extensive and/or more reliable temperature measurements, that’s probably a good thing. If they mean that the data sets have been scrubbed and “adjusted”, then I am much more skeptical.
Does anyone here know what data sets they used and whether they really are “newly improved”?
“significant reduction in temperature and vegetation SEASONALITY” — hmm, a “reduction” in temperature “seasonality”? The only sense I can make of that is a reduction in the difference between one season and another. Sounds to me like warmer winters + cooler summers, for a net warming of ZERO.