Reader View from the Solent writes:
Global warming shifts the Earth’s poles. North Pole heads for Greenland
“Global warming is changing the location of Earth’s geographic poles, according to a study in Geophysical Research Letters1.
Researchers at the University of Texas, Austin, report that increased melting of the Greenland ice sheet — and to a lesser extent, ice loss in other parts of the globe — have helped to shift the North Pole several centimetres east each year since 2005.
“There was a big change,” says geophysicist and lead author Jianli Chen. ”
Between 1982 and 2005, the pole drifted southeast towards northern Labrador, Canada, at a rate of about 2 milliarcseconds — or roughly 6 centimetres — per year. But in 2005, the pole changed course and began galloping east towards Greenland at a rate of more than 7 milliarcseconds per year. (which amounts to 21cm or ~8 1/4″- Anthony)
Scientists have long known that the locations of Earth’s geographic poles are not fixed. Over the course of the year, they shift seasonally as Earth’s distributions of snow, rain and humidity change. “Usually [the shift] is circular, with a wobble,” says Chen.
But underlying the seasonal motion is a yearly motion that is thought to be driven in part by continental drift. It was the change in that motion that caught the attention of Chen and his colleagues, who used data collected by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) to determine whether ice loss had shifted and accelerated the yearly polar drift.
GRACE’s twin probes measure changes in Earth’s gravity field, which can be used to track shifts in the distribution of water and ice. Chen’s team used GRACE data to model how melting ice caps affect Earth’s mass distribution. They found that recent accelerated ice loss and associated sea-level rise accounted for more than 90% of the post-2005 polar shift.
More at:
http://www.nature.com/news/polar-wander-linked-to-climate-change-1.12994
==============================================================
With global warming introducing that extra wobble, it is easy to create a model to project what effect global warming will have on the Earth in the future. /sarc – Anthony
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Celestial mechanics need coordinates too. “East” is toward 90°E longitude (the y axis for IERS). And yes, it’s been suspected for some time now that recent true polar motion has been caused by Greenland ice melt–West Antarctica too. Nothing to be worried about. And apparently this motion constitutes short term behavior in a direction roughly opposite to this newly postulated long term movement. Telescopes and satellites are pretty good at figuring out which way is north and what time it is, to the nearest cm or so. –AGF
Vukcevic, In Soviet Union, North Pole goes to you!
Um. I thought that the poles were influenced by the Earth’s magnetic CORE. Silly me. Seems that polar ice (or lack of it) is of far greater importance in magnetic effects. I’ll take my freezer with me next time I go hiking (sarc off now).
I wonder if this just could be a case of confusion (yet again) between causation and correlation of which certain unscientific viewpoints are so enamoured.
The confusion persists. Please distinguish between:
1. Magnetic and axial north.
2. Rotational irreglarities and crust movement (relative to earth mass).
Rotational kinematics include precession, nutation (variable precession), Chandler Wobble (true nutation), none of which are entailed by true polar motion.
Sounds like good science. –AGF
Bugs Man says:
May 15, 2013 at 9:18 am
Too late. Our esteemed Canucklehead doom-screecher Dave Snoozuki has been scaring the bejesus out of kids for years.
Cause or effect?
Matt says:
May 15, 2013 at 9:27 am
You are right to be suspicious; the current method of locating the magnetic North Pole involves a crew in a rowboat funded by a whiskey distillery. I don’t think the inherent error in this procedure has been adequately taken into consideration. More here .
According to Phil jones the warmest two consecutive decades in Greenland were 1930 and 1940 so the pole must have migrated in a similar fashion 70 years ago as the glaciers melted
Tonyb
This paper is a reminder that the AGW ‘research’ bucket is still deep and well filled and there are plenty of snouts wanting to dip into it. One sign of the ‘death ‘ of AGW will be when it becomes the expectation rather then to rule to shore-horn such claims into ‘research’
[becomes the [exception] rather [than the] rule .. ? Mod]
“When mass is lost in one part of a spinning sphere, its spin axis will tilt directly towards the position of the loss, he says — exactly as Chen’s team observed for Greenland.” By this criterion if the Pacific disappeared, and all the earth beneath it, the axis of rotation would move to some place outside the earth. Maybe I’m missing something, or maybe I spoke too soon.
At any rate, any SLR attributable to Greenland ice melt should contribute to LOD at about .1ms/cm, constraining the constraints. Maybe we should look elsewhere for causes for the reversal. –AGF
Alan Watt,
Nit pick: whisky, not whiskey.
Now, if I were as elegant and flexible on “associative thinking” as many of the AWG crowd are, but I just had a devilish twist, and realized that the Van Allen Belts, and the upper atmosphere ionization MIGHT have in influence on long term WEATHER systems and therefore CLIMATE trends, I might think that this:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.tgo.uit.no/articl/magnorpe.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.tgo.uit.no/articl/roadto.html&h=530&w=633&sz=15&tbnid=wWagcpuvIJLbKM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=107&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dmap%2Bof%2Bhistoric%2Bnorth%2Bpole%2Bmovement%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=map+of+historic+north+pole+movement&usg=__Ejn2HYP_4iAiJepScBJ_HsQrUiE=&docid=QJ1Py-gO6TEPaM&sa=X&ei=OP2TUc2nBIyE8QSB8YDwBg&ved=0CDYQ9QEwAw&dur=4814
Could tell us that certain patterns (mini-ice age anyone?) MIGHT, just MIGHT repeat themselves again. And also, I completely concur that the influence of the TRIVIAL temperature changes of the atmosphere, on events driven by the circulation of the MAGMA below the Earth’s crusts would have NOTHING TO DO with the pole movements or relative speeds.
I call complete bulloney on this one.
There are several agencies tracking everything about Earth’s rotation, pole position, atmospheric drag effects etc down to milli-seconds.
Nothing of the sort is happening.
http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/images/pole.png
http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/
Another one which goes back to 1972. A little difficult to know what it is showing but it certainly shows there is a distinct pattern which has nothing to do with Greenland ice.
http://data.iers.org/plots/FinalsAllIAU1980-XPOL-BULA.png
oldseadog says:
May 15, 2013 at 2:27 pm
From Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition:
You say “potatoe”, I say “vodka”. And if we really want to be picky, it should be uisge beatha from the Gaelic for “water of life”.
But you’re right, the “Row to the Pole” stunt was funded by the “Old Polteney” distillery, which being in Scotland, would naturally call their product “whisky”. However if I put “whisky” in the comment, wordpress flags it as a spelling error, but approves of “whiskey”.
Speaking of which, WUWT and WordPress spell checking? When I first started commenting here it would complain about American spelling for “color”, “rumor”, “center”, etc. Now it complains about British spelling for same.
Bill Illis says:
May 15, 2013 at 2:34 pm
=========================
Baloney, maybe, but not for those reasons. Your graphs are for wander of the axis of rotation, not true polar wander. Imagine when the dry Mediterranean basin filled up 5my, and how that would have moved the earth’s center of mass, hence its axis of rotation. That’s true polar wander. On a small scale the Aral Sea has done the same in recent decades, and ground water depletion is hardly symmetrical. –AGF
Since when did ice exert a magnetic influence? I guess since it was told to by AGW godfathers.
I wonder if these researchers are aware that the earth has an iron core, rotating at a different speed to the rest of the earth – or whether they believe in a spherical earth at all. After all the CO2 backradiation models are all based on a flat circle earth like Discworld or Narnia.
The “AGW Doom” PR machine churns on endlessly, with unflappable vigor. It is mass hysteria on a scale never before seen.
agfosterjr says:
May 15, 2013 at 2:51 pm
Your graphs are for wander of the axis of rotation, not true polar wander.
——
Okay you should explain what is different between the two.
When I was a wide- eyed Boy Scout, there was an 11 degree declination around here between magnetic and true North, which has now changed to only 4 degrees.
I recently bought a box of used US military compasses (Suunto MC-2G) which were all set on 4 degrees. As it turns out, Iraq and Afghanistan are also the same declination as Oklahoma.
Here are just two of the great many things caused by anthropogenic global warming, peer reviewed of course.
Earth’s rotation to slow down
Earth’s rotation to speed up
The trace rise of the magical trace gas Co2 is a sight to behold. It is a magical gas with all kinds of effects. Here’s another:
Winters maybe warmer
Winters maybe colder
What a pile of shite. I have more idiotic nonsense if you like.
Jimbo says:
May 15, 2013 at 5:35 pm
Here are just two of the great many things caused by anthropogenic global warming, peer reviewed of course.
Earth’s rotation to slow down
Earth’s rotation to speed up
========================================
You will note that the steric SLR contribution to LOD is of an order of magnitude lower than the eustatic contribution: “−0.12 ms within 200 years,” That’s 1cm worth of eustatic rise. And it probably ignores rebound which, for all we know is currently increasing total land area.
–AGF
Bill Illis says:
May 15, 2013 at 3:10 pm
agfosterjr says:
May 15, 2013 at 2:51 pm
Your graphs are for wander of the axis of rotation, not true polar wander.
——
Okay you should explain what is different between the two.
======================================================
Let’s start with the simplest part, which you probably know already, precession: every 26ky the north star makes a circle in the sky with no change in the axis relative to solid earth. This is caused mainly by the moon, which doesn’t maintain a constant angle relative to the equator–its 18 year cycle in the precession of its orbit causes variation in the earth’s precession which is called nutation, but is not analogous to nutation of a spinning top. The nutation of basic physics is called Chandler Wobble in its terrestrial manifestation. All these are variation in the earth’s axis relative to its orbit around the sun or to the stars–not relative to the earth’s crust.
The ice of the last glacial maximum moved the center of mass of the earth northward by tens of meters, and lowered sea level in the southern hemisphere by similar amounts. To the extent that this mass transfer doesn’t run parallel to the polar axis, there will be angular polar shift. As Pleistocene lakes dried up they will also contributed to lateral and angular alteration of the axis. There is probably some asymetric movement of the earth’s core and in the mantel adding further to polar wander. All these processes result in movement of the earth’s center of mass, and to the extent that such movement runs non-longitudinally along the axis, the axis of rotation shifts relative to the solid earth.
The two types of motion are not necessarily separated in observation, in which case axis wander must be modeled out, leaving true polar wander as a residual effect, just as tidal effects have to be modeled out of LOD measurement. Am I making sense? –AGF
Well, a shift in the geographic pole around 2005 couldn’t possible have anything to do with the massive tectonic shifts that happened in the Indian Ocean tsunami / earthquake, since that occurred a full five days before 2005…
https://www.google.com/search?q=tsunami+2004&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari#itp=open0
This is surreal.
We and the media are discussing the idiotic warmists’ papers, that are written by activists who have no understanding of the basic physical mechanisms. What is the point? Ask your dog to explain what causes the glacial/interglacial cycle.
Hint:
There needs to be an explanation as to what is causing this temperature change graph. Imagine Canada, the Northern US states, and Northern Europe covered with a 2 mile thick ice sheet. That has happened repeatedly, cyclically. The physical cause of the glacial/interglacial cycle is not insolation at 65N in June and July.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Five_Myr_Climate_Change.svg
We are going to experience either the cooling phase of a Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle or a Heinrich event, due to the abrupt change to solar magnetic cycle. (Geomagnetic excursions correlate with the Heinrich events. The Heinrich events are very, very, strong Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles and are capable of terminating interglacials. Look at the temperature graph of the last 5 million years.) The sudden abrupt change to the geomagnetic field has happened before. Ice sheet melting does not cause abrupt changes to the geomagnetic field.
Hint: What is causing the current observed South Atlantic geomagnetic field anomaly? There is no ice sheet melting in that region of the planet. The geomagnetic field intensity has been reduced by more than 30% in that region. The South Atlantic geomagnetic field anomaly is the same region where there are anomalously cold ocean surface temperatures.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2013/anomnight.5.13.2013.gif
This graph shows the cyclic warming and cooling, the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles.
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/
At the above site, the following graph, a comparison of the past solar cycles 21, 22, and 23 to the new cycle 24 is provided. That graph is update every six months or so.
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
There is correlation of planetary temperature change with abrupt changes to the geomagnetic field. The geomagnetic field is the cause of the abrupt climate change.
The sun is causing the abrupt change to the geomagnetic field. There are dozens of anomalies that are caused by and explained by the fundamental mechanism. (The solar models are fundamentally incorrect.) This is the explanation for the Uranus/Neptune’s magnetic field anomalies, the spiral galaxy rotational anomaly, and the anomalous tightly controlled spiral galaxy evolution.
Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. This is the most important scientific discovery in terms of impact on the biosphere and to other fields of science in the last 100 years.
The solar magnetic cycle change is causing false readings from the GRACE satellite. The same phenomenon/physical mechanism is also causing the abrupt change to the North geomagnetic pole drift velocity. Hint: The solar magnetic cycle change is causing the abrupt change to the geomagnetic field. This (abrupt changes to the geomagnetic field which in turn cause abrupt changes to climate) has happened cyclically.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003GL017115.shtml
Timing of abrupt climate change: A precise clock by Stefan Rahmstorf
Many paleoclimatic data reveal a approx. 1,500 year cyclicity of unknown origin. A crucial question is how stable and regular this cycle is. An analysis of the GISP2 ice core record from Greenland reveals that abrupt climate events appear to be paced by a 1,470-year cycle with a period that is probably stable to within a few percent; with 95% confidence the period is maintained to better than 12% over at least 23 cycles. This highly precise clock points to an origin outside the Earth system; oscillatory modes within the Earth system can be expected to be far more irregular in period.
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0612145v1
The Antarctic climate anomaly and galactic cosmic rays
Borehole temperatures in the ice sheets spanning the past 6000 years show Antarctica repeatedly warming when Greenland cooled, and vice versa (Fig. 1) [13, 14]. North-south oscillations of greater amplitude associated with Dansgaard-Oeschger events are evident in oxygenisotope data from the Wurm-Wisconsin glaciation[15]. The phenomenon has been called the polar see-saw[15, 16], but that implies a north-south symmetry that is absent. Greenland is better coupled to global temperatures than Antarctica is, and the fulcrum of the temperature swings is near the Antarctic Circle. A more apt term for the effect is the Antarctic climate anomaly.
This geomagnetic excursion occurs at the same time as the Younger Dryas, Heinrich event, at which time the earth at the peak of insolation at 65N went from interglacial warm to glacial cold, with 70% of the cooling occurring in less than a decade. The planet remained in the Younger Dryas glacial cold for a thousand years.
This paper is a good review of the data concerning the Younger Dryas. It is interesting to look at the development of the different hypotheses and mechanisms from a scientific historical standpoint as well as pure science. The authors postulated TSI variance mechanism is not correct. The solar magnetic cycle was interrupted. When the solar magnetic cycle re-started there was an abrupt change to the geomagnetic field, a geomagnetic excursion. The geomagnetic excursion caused the abrupt cooling event. Due to the orbital configuration at the time restart the solar strikes ultimately caused the geomagnetic field strength to increase.
The current orbital configuration will cause the geomagnetic field intensity to decrease and not recover.
There is an abrupt change to C14 that correlates with the timing of the abrupt cooling of the Younger Dryas. The next paper is written by geomagnetic specialists how have determined a geomagnetic excursion occurred at the same time as the Younger Dryas.
Reduced solar activity as a trigger for the start of the Younger Dryas?
http://cio.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/root/2000/QuatIntRenssen/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/003358947790031X
The Gothenburg Magnetic Excursion
Abstract
The Gothenburg Magnetic Excursion in a broad sense ranges from 13,750 to 12,350 years BP and ends with the Gothenburg Magnetic Flip at 12,400−12,350 years BP (= the Fjärås Stadial in southern Scandinavia) with an equatorial VGP position in the central Pacific. The Gothenburg Magnetic Flip is recorded in five closely dated and mutually correlated cores in Sweden. In all five cores, the inclination is completely reversed in the layer representing the Fjärås Stadial dated at 12,400−12,350 years BP. The cores were taken 160 km apart and represent both marine and lacustrine environments. The Gothenburg Magnetic Flip represents the shortest excursion and the most rapid polar change known at present. It is also hitherto the far best-dated paleomagnetic event. The Gothenburg Magnetic Excursion and Flip are proposed as a standard magnetostatigraphic unit.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/BardPapers/responseCourtillotEPSL07.pdf
Response to Comment on “Are there connections between Earth’s magnetic field and climate?, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 253, 328–339, 2007” by Bard, E., and Delaygue, M., Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., in press, 2007
Also, we wish to recall that evidence of a correlation between archeomagnetic jerks and cooling events (in a region extending from the eastern North Atlantic to the Middle East) now covers a period of 5 millenia and involves 10 events (see f.i. Figure 1 of Gallet and Genevey, 2007). The climatic record uses a combination of results from Bond et al (2001), history of Swiss glaciers (Holzhauser et al, 2005) and historical accounts reviewed by Le Roy Ladurie (2004). Recent high-resolution paleomagnetic records (e.g. Snowball and Sandgren, 2004; St-Onge et al., 2003) and global geomagnetic field modeling (Korte and Constable, 2006) support the idea that part of the centennial-scale fluctuations in 14C production may have been influenced by previously unmodeled rapid dipole field variations. In any case, the relationship between climate, the Sun and the geomagnetic field could be more complex than previously imagined. And the previous points allow the possibility for some connection between the geomagnetic field and climate over these time scales.