From the University of Colorado at Boulder comes this press release and accompanying photo. The photo, showing hazy pollution laden air in the Bernese Alps, makes me wonder why they don’t attribute current glacier ice loss issues to soot. Asia in particular, is a leader in soot production, right next to those Himalayan glaciers that the IPCC erroneously told us would be gone by 2035.
![black_carbon_map[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/black_carbon_map1.jpg?quality=83)
Source: UNEP/WMO Integrated Assessment of Black Carbon and Tropospheric Ozone, Summary for Decision Makers
Soot suspect in mid-1800s Alps glacier retreat
Scientists have uncovered strong evidence that soot, or black carbon, sent into the air by a rapidly industrializing Europe, likely caused the abrupt retreat of mountain glaciers in the European Alps.
The research, published Sept. 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may help resolve a longstanding scientific debate about why the Alps glaciers retreated beginning in the 1860s, decades before global temperatures started rising again.
Thomas Painter, a snow and ice scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is lead author of the study, and co-authors include Waleed Abdalati, Director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Glacier records in the central European Alps dating back to the 1500s show that between 1860 and 1930, loosely defined as the end of the Little Ice Age in Europe, large valley glaciers in the Alps abruptly retreated by an average of nearly 0.6 mile (1 kilometer). Yet weather in Europe cooled by nearly 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) during that time. Glaciologists and climatologists have struggled to understand the mismatch between the climate and glacier records.
“Something was missing from the equation,” Painter said.
To investigate, he and his colleagues turned to history. In the decades following the 1850s, Europe was undergoing a powerful economic and atmospheric transformation spurred by industrialization. Residents, transportation, and perhaps most importantly, industry in Western Europe began burning coal in earnest, spewing huge quantities of black carbon and other dark particles into the atmosphere.
When black carbon particles settle on snow, they darken the surface. This melts the snow and exposes the underlying glacier ice to sunlight and relatively warm air earlier in the year, allowing more and faster melt.
To determine how much black carbon was in the atmosphere and the snow when the Alps glaciers began to retreat, the researchers studied ice cores drilled from high up on several European mountain glaciers. By measuring the levels of carbon particles trapped in the ice core layers and taking into consideration modern observations of the distribution of pollutants in the Alps, they could estimate how much black carbon was deposited on glacial surfaces at lower elevations, where levels of black carbon tend to be highest.
The team then ran computer models of glacier behavior, starting with recorded weather conditions and adding the impact of lower-elevation black carbon. By including this impact, the simulated glacier mass loss and timing finally were consistent with the historic record of glacial retreat, despite the cool temperatures of the time.
“This study uncovers some likely human fingerprints on our changing environment,” Abdalati said. “It’s a reminder that the actions we take have far-reaching impacts on the environment in which we live.”
“We must now look closer at other regions on Earth, such as the Himalaya, to study the present-day impacts of black carbon on glaciers,” said Georg Kaser, a study co-author from the University of Innsbruck and lead author of the Working Group I Cryosphere chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s upcoming Fifth Assessment Report.
Other institutions participating in the study include the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the University of California, Davis.
CIRES is a joint institute of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and CU-Boulder.
Presumably black soot would not require sacrificing our economies on the barren altar of carbon strangulation… so no accusations from the AGW movement.
Proximity to the South Asian Brown Cloud strongly influences current glacier retreat, as several studies including this one from 2011 have shown.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n9/full/nclimate1580.html
I’ve been going on about this for years, but it is the solar insolation – surface albedo interaction that matters with glacier and sea ice melt. Maximum melting occurs after a period of high black carbon and aerosol emissions, when aerosol levels are reduced, as this results in increased solar insolation and reduced albedo as embedded black carbon accumulates on the surface.
Oh, come on now.
Glaciers move mountains into the oceans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grosser_Aletschgletscher_3178.JPG
Because it’s inconvenient?
Soot does not affect albedo. Settled science. Just ask the Asian ‘Brown Cloud’ people in the Himalayas. It’s all to do with the deadly hot air which has gone deep sea diving.
wait….I thought the whole idea was to take our money and give it to them……snark
It never dawns on them that the thing ‘missing from the equation’ could possibly have been that it became drier as it cooled. Less snow falling in the firn area = glacier retreat.
These people have a mental block except for aerosols and CO2. In the European Alps there is also a lot of Saharan sand deposited on glaciers by southerly winds – it affects both skiing and the summer melt.
Shrinkage coinciding with cooling… in a PNAS paper, no less.
Seinfeld Effect?
“..between 1860 and 1930, loosely defined as the end of the Little Ice Age in Europe, large valley glaciers in the Alps abruptly retreated by an average of nearly 0.6 mile (1 kilometer). Yet weather in Europe cooled by nearly 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) during that time.”
Not on CET, it didn’t drop 1°C (points 131 to 201), 1865-1872 was a pretty warm period though: http://snag.gy/2q2kT.jpg
and there are known advances during that period, particularly the cold 1880/90’s:
http://courses.washington.edu/cevents/Porter86.pdf
There is a simple way to separate albedo/insolation melt from atmospheric warming melt, which to compare the retreat of nearby south facing to north facing glaciers. This can be done either with glaciers on volcanos, which are conveniently symetrical, with 12 to 14 glaciers going in all directions, or with east-west mountain chains like the Himalayas.
I have inferred this ratio from several studies and estimate that insolation/albedo melt could be anywhere between somewhat less than 50% (Mount Rainier) to greater than 100% (in the Himalayas).
That such a study has never been done, speaks volumes about how climate science research is carefully managed to avoid inconvenient results.
Doesn’t glacial advance and retreat have something to do with snowfall in the source region?
If Mann’s hockeystick reconstruction of the Little Ice Age temperatures is correct, the small drop in global temperature during the LIA was not enough to cause the glaciers to advance. Furthermore the rapid retreat of glaciers in the European Alps began in the 1800’s before global temperatures had sufficiently risen. Several researchers call this the Little Ice Age paradox.
Read Vincent C, et al., (2005) Solving the paradox of the end of the Little Ice Age in the Alps. Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 32, L09706, doi:10.1029/2005GL022552
I would have bet that much of the glacial retreat was due to a dry period similar to why Kilimanjaro glaciers are shrinking, but black soot is a believable explanation. Either way, retreating glaciers often have nothing to do with the global temperature. The real mystery is why they keep blaming CO2.
@Mike McMillan Doesn’t glacial advance and retreat have something to do with snowfall in the source region?
Absolutely. While the western Himalayan glaciers in the Karakoram added mass, the eastern Himalayan glaciers declined. Easter Himalayan glaciers depend on moisture from the summer monsoons, and during the warm phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the more frequent El Ninos divert moisture away from the Himalaya and thus less snowfall.
Likewise the North Atlantic Oscillation diverts moisture and snow northward during the positive phase causing the Norwegian glaciers to increase while the glaciers in the Alps are starved for precipitation and shrink. Kaser is one of the authors of the black soot study and wrote about the European glaciers, “Only Europe showed a mean value close to zero, reflecting the strong mass losses in the Alps being compensated by mass gains in maritime Scandinavia until the end of the 20th century”
ReadKaser, G., et al. (2006) Mass balance of glaciers and ice caps: Consensus estimates for 1961–2004. Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 33, L19501, doi:10.1029/2006GL027511
Kaser also exposed the fact that Kilimanjaro was shrinking due to less moisture eventhough tempeatures always remained below freezing, writing “The near extinction of the plateau ice in modern times is controlled by the absence of sustained regional wet periods rather than changes in local air temperature on the peak of Kilimanjaro”. read Kaser, G., et al. (2012) Is the decline of ice on Kilimanjaro unprecedented in the Holocene?. The Holocene, OnlineFirst, published on July 19, 2010 as doi:10.1177/0959683610369498
Fantasy Island “Science” interpreted from “History” without physics. Smoke and mirrors.
If the firn surface temperature is below -0.5C then a tonne/meter-squared of soot will not increase the temperature. And a 10^-6 tonne/meter-squared will have no effect either.
Fools.
It is just the NSPIRES and delay of NSF Arctic Polar Program grant calls drugs talking.
Of Course the “Painters’ and ‘Abdalati’ of the world will get their ‘buddy grants’ while depleting respectable and physics based research to null.
Perhaps I should invest in a sex change operation and assume a Lebanese sure-name.
Then I will be more ‘Golden’ than Abdalati, by gender a man, in the eyes of the USA Federal Government.
,.|..
“Do you see the bird above!”
If the firn surface temperature is below -0.5C then a tonne/meter-squared of soot will not increase the temperature. And a 10^-6 tonne/meter-squared will have no effect either.
Where does the energy absorbed by the soot go?
Philip Bradley says:
September 4, 2013 at 7:48 pm
Where does the energy absorbed by the soot go?
==============
On a star-lit night at 6000 feet ?
Right out to space ?
And why not soot for the rapid melting of the Arctic ice cap? The new Chinese coal plants are very likely the cause there. It would also explain the difference between the Arctic and Antarctic ice cap loss, especially the sudden loss since the mid 1990s.
There could be some truth in this, but 5.500 years ago, a large volcanic dust eruption, ignited a glacier melt and they found Outzi the iceman. But it was temporary. The dust for some reason enabled the glazier to melt in the Alps between Austria and Italy.
PS. It was not 5,500 years ago the mummy was 5,500 years ago, it was in the 1990s. Sorry bit fog minded today, worrying about the Australian gen.election
This study tends to support those of us who advocate efforts to reduce particulate pollution. The negative impact of particulate pollution on human health has already been established beyond any reasonable doubt. This study suggests that further reductions could lead to some restoration of our glaciers too.
If and when this study receives any attention in the mainstream media, I fear the distinction between “black carbon” and “carbon dioxide” will be comprehensively blurred. In other words, it will be played out as further justification for the silly war on CO2.
In reality, we can make significant improvements to the condition of our planet with modest investments by reducing particulate pollution from man-made sources. Sadly, this doesn’t fit the current political agenda and such sensible alternatives will be summarily ignored.
Part of me wonders just how much the change really is. Anyone see the streets of Chicago from October to April? The piles of snow are brown and black as all get out and become mounds of ice. I can’t imagine anything which should retain heat as much as gravel laden ice.
Only unburnt soot is (presumably) black, the burnt ash component is white.
I am suspicious of the soot story, the precipitation and oceanic oscillation explanation seems much stronger. The only human fingerprint is the relentless eco-revvisionism seeking to deny any cause of climate change other than human input to the atmosphere.
Corky Boyd says:
September 4, 2013 at 8:19 pm
And why not soot for the rapid melting of the Arctic ice cap? The new Chinese coal plants are very likely the cause there.
The cause is the shutdown of Soviet era industries, diesel engines and a few other sources on the Kola Peninsula. Which resulted in reduced Arctic black carbon and aerosols, and hence aerosol seeded clouds. So more solar insolation on sea ice with high levels of embedded black carbon.
There are 3 locations where BC and aerosols (from memory SO2) are measured in the Arctic, Svalbaard, a place in the Canadian Arctic, and Barrow. All 3 show reduced black carbon, and the first two reduced aerosols. Only Barrow showed no significant change in aerosols, likely due to China emissions.
Carbon or black carbon. Never mind!
In the 1990s melt in the ALPs, the dust layer, (soot is black!) did not reflect the heat from the sun, that is thought to cause the melt, but it didn’t last long. Another funny tale.
“The research, published Sept. 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may help resolve a longstanding scientific debate about why the Alps glaciers retreated beginning in the 1860s, decades before global temperatures started rising again.”
That statement isn’t true. Rather, global temperatures were rising long before decades after the 1860s (unless they have an extra-fudged, extra-revisionist temperature source being used, in which case it is untrue by contrast to other data sources including those published prior to the political era). Global temperatures rose since the Little Ice Age.
For instance, a plot within the following shows Andes (South American) glacial retreat throughout the 19th century (aside from a temporary advance near its start when there was the Dalton minimum in solar activity) and how such matches to the pattern in cosmic ray forcing:
http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif
Any effect from soot would be on top of how there would naturally be glacial retreat in the 19th century and beyond (after the LIA ended) anyway.
“Yet weather in Europe cooled by nearly 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) during that time [1860 to 1930].”
No it didn’t. It warmed (not cooled) over that period, in Europe, in the Northern Hemisphere, and in the world. (Even the tree ring reconstruction finding relative cooling compared to the Roman Warm Period 2000 years ago meanwhile found relative warming since the LIA, including over the 1860-1930 period, as seen if looking at the corresponding part of the curved white line: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/09_geo_tree_ring_northern_europe_climate1.jpg ).
What these activists think they can get away with now is amazing; unfortunately they are probably not much underestimating how many people will fall for their claims without the slightest bit of cross-checking.