Climate Craziness of the Week: 'A great flood will punish the disbelievers'

Post 2
The climate “jokers” in the eight post-MPT interglacial climate “deck” are the three that have occurred at an eccentricity minimum. Ours; MIS-1, MIS-11, the Holsteinian interglacial, and MIS-19, which occurred pretty much at or within the Mid Pleistocene Transition.
Remember that 7 of the last 8 interglacials have each lasted about half a precession cycle? Well MIS-11 was that interglacial which was not on the half-precession interglacial clock. Depending upon which paper you review, the range of the estimates of the duration of MIS-11 is somewhere between 22 and 33 thousand years long, Or 1.5 to perhaps 2 full interglacial cycles.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is an anomaly. However MIS-19, the second to last time we were at an eccentricity was not anomalously long. It seems to have lasted about ~9,500 or so years.
In the simplest math, that gives us a 50:50 chance of “going long” with the Holocene.
Here we will delve much deeper than that. Because that is how science works.
Looking at orbital mechanics and model results, Loutre and Berger (2003) in a landmark paper (meaning a widely quoted and cited paper) for the time predicted that the current interglacial, the Holocene, might very well last another 50,000 years, particularly if CO2 were factored in. This would make the Holocene the longest lived interglacial since the onset of the Northern Hemisphere Glaciations some 2.8 million years ago.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818102001868 (paywalled)
Loutre and Berger’s 2003 paper was soon followed by another landmark paper by Lisieki and Raymo (Paleoceanography, 2005), an exhaustive look at 57 globally distributed deep Ocean Drilling Project (and other) cores (Figure 1), which stated:
“Recent research has focused on MIS 11 as a possible analog for the present interglacial [e.g., Loutre and Berger, 2003; EPICA community members, 2004] because both occur during times of low eccentricity. The LR04 age model establishes that MIS 11 spans two precession cycles, with 18O values below 3.6o/oo for 20 kyr, from 398-418 ka. In comparison, stages 9 and 5 remained below 3.6o/oo for 13 and 12 kyr, respectively, and the Holocene interglacial has lasted 11 kyr so far. In the LR04 age model, the average LSR of 29 sites is the same from 398-418 ka as from 250-650 ka; consequently, stage 11 is unlikely to be artificially stretched. However, the June 21 insolation minimum at 65N during MIS 11 is only 489 W/m2, much less pronounced than the present minimum of 474 W/m2. In addition, current insolation values are not predicted to return to the high values of late MIS 11 for another 65 kyr. We propose that this effectively precludes a ‘double precession-cycle’ interglacial [e.g., Raymo, 1997] in the Holocene without human influence.”
http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/Lisiecki_Raymo_2005_Pal.pdf
Muddying the waters more we have Chronis Tzedakis, in an exhaustive look at the MIS-1/MIS-11/MIS-19 conundrum (Tzedakis, 2010, The MIS 11 – MIS 1 analogy, southern European vegetation, atmospheric methane and the “early anthropogenic hypothesis”, Climate of the Past, vol. 6, pp 131-144, European Geosciences Union)
http://www.clim-past.net/6/131/2010/cp-6-131-2010.pdf
considers the matter thusly:
“While the astronomical analogy between MIS 1 and MIS11 has been incorporated in mainstream literature, there is a distinct difference between the two intervals: the Holocene contains one insolation peak so far, while the MIS 11 interval of full interglacial conditions (Substage 11c of the marine isotopic stratigraphy) extends over two insolation peaks. Thus an interesting situation has arisen with regard to the precise alignment of the two intervals.”
“The two schemes lead to very different conclusions about the length of the current interglacial, in the absence of anthropogenic forcing, …
“… the precessional alignment would suggest that the Holocene is nearing its end, “while the obliquity alignment would suggest it has another 12,000 years to run its course.
“In this view, the two Terminations are incommensurate and MIS-1 is analogous only to the second part of MIS-11c.”
Regardless if you choose MIS-11 or MIS-19 as the analog for our precious little Holocene interglacial (so far), MIS-11 seems to have had a very long life even if at a sustained +21M amsl, perhaps a single end extreme interglacial highstand at +21.3M amsl:
Olson and Hearty (2009) in “A sustained +21 m sea-level highstand during MIS 11 (400 ka): direct fossil and sedimentary evidence from Bermuda” (Quaternary Science Reviews 28 (2009) 271–285)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379108003144 (paywalled)
“A small, protected karstic feature exposed in a limestone quarry in Bermuda preserved abundant sedimentary and biogenic materials documenting a transgressive phase, still-stand, and regressive phase of a sea-level in excess of 21.3 m above present during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11 (400 ka) as determined by U/Th dating and amino acid racemization.”
If MIS-11 is any guide, the sea level map of the author might have happened anyway. And not just +21.3M amsl 400,000 years ago, but maybe up to +52M amsl about a hundred thousand years ago.
MIS-19, on the other hand, lasted about half a precession cycle, just like the 7 other post-MPT interglacials. But it suffered not one or two, but three thermal excursions, right at its very end:
From K.Pol et al (2010) we have this:
“During the glacial inception from MIS 19 to MIS 18, the low resolution EPICA Dome C water stable isotope record (Jouzel et al., 2007) has revealed millennial variability principally marked by the occurrence of three consecutive warm events (hereafter called Antarctic Isotope Maxima — AIM, following EPICA-community-members, 2006, and noted A, B, C on Fig. 2).”
(“New MIS 19 EPICA Dome C high resolution deuterium data: Hints for a problematic
preservation of climate variability at sub-millennial scale in the “oldest ice””, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2010.07.030) (Earth and Planetary Science Letters 298, pp. 98-103)
Can it get any worse than that? In fact, it does.
If you have been keeping up, in the most relevant recent past (post-MPT time, or the last 800kyrs or so) sea levels seem to actually have been from perhaps a low of +2.5M above present “for most of the interglacial” during MIS-5e to perhaps as much as +21M above present for most of the only extended interglacial (which eerily almost matches the Holocene) we know of in the most relevant time and eccentricity minima time frame (or at least the last half thereof). That, in conjunction with the 3 thermal pulses at the end of MIS-19 constitutes the natural normal end extreme interglacial climate noise envelope. Within all of this we must distinguish our worst case “anthropogenic signal” of +0.59 meters by 2099.
Good luck with that.
As difficult as that might appear to a late-Holocene sentient being, it actually does get much worse than that.
Run your General Circulation Models (GCMs) forwards or backwards (hindcasts), it might not matter all that much. As it turns out Greenland ice records climate change to not quite back to the beginning of the last interglacial, the Eemian, but in pretty good detail, compared to Antarctic ice (Antarctica is a sort of snow desert, with average annual snowfall measured in inches whereas Greenland is measured in tens of feet. And ice only gets so thick (extra credit research project).
Sole, Turiel and Llebot writing in Physics Letters A (366 [2007] 184–189) identified three classes of D-O oscillations in the Greenland GISP2 ice cores A (brief), B (medium) and C (long), reflecting the speed at which the warming relaxes back to the cold glacial state:
“In this work ice-core CO2 time evolution in the period going from 20 to 60 kyr BP [15] has been qualitatively compared to our temperature cycles, according to the class they belong to. It can be observed in Fig. 6 that class A cycles are completely unrelated to changes in CO2 concentration. We have observed some correlation between B and C cycles and CO2 concentration, but of the opposite sign to the one expected: maxima in atmospheric CO2 concentration tend to correspond to the middle part or the end the cooling period. The role of CO2 in the oscillation phenomena seems to be more related to extend the duration of the cooling phase than to trigger warming. This could explain why cycles not coincident in time with maxima of CO2 (A cycles) rapidly decay back to the cold state. ”
“Nor CO2 concentration either the astronomical cycle change the way in which the warming phase takes place. The coincidence in this phase is strong among all the characterized cycles; also, we have been able to recognize the presence of a similar warming phase in the early stages of the transition from glacial to interglacial age. Our analysis of the warming phase seems to indicate a universal triggering mechanism, what has been related with the possible existence of stochastic resonance [1,13, 21]. It has also been argued that a possible cause for the repetitive sequence of D/O events could be found in the change in the thermohaline Atlantic circulation [2,8,22,25]. However, a cause for this regular arrangement of cycles, together with a justification on the abruptness of the warming phase, is still absent in the scientific literature.”
In discussing the Late Eemian Aridity Pulse (LEAP) at the end-Eemian, Sirocko et al (A late Eemian aridity pulse in central Europe during the last glacial inception, nature, vol. 436, 11 August 2005, doi:10.1038/nature03905, pp 833-836) opine:
“Investigating the processes that led to the end of the last interglacial period is relevant for understanding how our ongoing interglacial will end, which has been a matter of much debate…..”
“The onset of the LEAP occurred within less than two decades, demonstrating the existence of a sharp threshold, which must be near 416 Wm2, which is the 65oN July insolation for 118 kyr BP (ref. 9). This value is only slightly below today’s value of 428 Wm2. Insolation will remain at this level slightly above the inception for the next 4,000 years before it then increases again.”
We are nearing the end of our climate journey. It is all up to each of us. Allow me to sum this up into what occurs to me to be a most seminal question.
We are yet again at an eccentricity minimum. Just like MIS-19, which did not “go long”, and MIS-11, which did. At best, orbitally, we are closer to the last half of MIS-11 than to MIS-19. On the upside “Insolation will remain at this level slightly above the [glacial] inception for the next 4,000 years before it then increases again.”
Remember, it’s all up to you now. You, we, need to make it just 4 millenia to when the Arctic Circle (N65 degrees) summer solstice insolation value ticks up to where we are now. Which is alarmingly close to glacial inception at the end of the last interglacial. If “The role of CO2 in the oscillation phenomena seems to be more related to extend the duration of the cooling phase than to trigger warming” would you:
A. Strip the CO2 “climate security blanket” from the late Holocene atmosphere?
Or
B. Invoke the Precautionary Principle and leave it up there just in case……
C.
The intriguing thing to me is that actually is the choice. Do your best…….
Both posts were deleted within seconds of being posted.

Update. I think I just got blocked over there ??????