From the University of Colorado at Boulder, comes this study about radiocarbon dating some dead moss clumps exposed from under ice/snow at 4 locations on Baffin Island that somehow proves “unprecedented” warmth for the entire Arctic for the last 120,000 years. See below for my take on it.
CU-Boulder study shows unprecedented warmth in Arctic
The heat is on, at least in the Arctic.
Average summer temperatures in the Eastern Canadian Arctic during the last 100 years are higher now than during any century in the past 44,000 years and perhaps as long ago as 120,000 years, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.
The study is the first direct evidence the present warmth in the Eastern Canadian Arctic exceeds the peak warmth there in the Early Holocene, when the amount of the sun’s energy reaching the Northern Hemisphere in summer was roughly 9 percent greater than today, said CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Gifford Miller, study leader. The Holocene is a geological epoch that began after Earth’s last glacial period ended roughly 11,700 years ago and which continues today.
Miller and his colleagues used dead moss clumps emerging from receding ice caps on Baffin Island as tiny clocks. At four different ice caps, radiocarbon dates show the mosses had not been exposed to the elements since at least 44,000 to 51,000 years ago.
Since radiocarbon dating is only accurate to about 50,000 years and because Earth’s geological record shows it was in a glaciation stage prior to that time, the indications are that Canadian Arctic temperatures today have not been matched or exceeded for roughly 120,000 years, Miller said.
“The key piece here is just how unprecedented the warming of Arctic Canada is,” said Miller, also a fellow at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. “This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability, and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
A paper on the subject appeared online Oct. 21 in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal published by the American Geophysical Union. Co-authors include CU-Boulder Senior Research Associate Scott Lehman, former CU-Boulder doctoral student and now Prescott College Professor Kurt Refsnider, University of California Irvine researcher John Southon and University of Wisconsin, Madison Research Associate Yafang Zhong. The National Science Foundation provided the primary funding for the study.
Miller and his colleagues compiled the age distribution of 145 radiocarbon-dated plants in the highlands of Baffin Island that were exposed by ice recession during the year they were collected by the researchers. All samples collected were within 1 meter of the ice caps, which are generally receding by 2 to 3 meters a year. “The oldest radiocarbon dates were a total shock to me,” said Miller.
Located just east of Greenland, (um, no, to the west – Anthony) the 196,000-square-mile Baffin Island is the fifth largest island in the world. Most of it lies above the Arctic Circle. Many of the ice caps on the highlands of Baffin Island rest on relatively flat terrain, usually frozen to their beds. “Where the ice is cold and thin, it doesn’t flow, so the ancient landscape on which they formed is preserved pretty much intact,” said Miller.
To reconstruct the past climate of Baffin Island beyond the limit of radiocarbon dating, Miller and his team used data from ice cores previously retrieved by international teams from the nearby Greenland Ice Sheet.
The ice cores showed that the youngest time interval from which summer temperatures in the Arctic were plausibly as warm as today is about 120,000 years ago, near the end of the last interglacial period. “We suggest this is the most likely age of these samples,” said Miller.
The new study also showed summer temperatures cooled in the Canadian Arctic by about 5 degrees Fahrenheit from roughly 5,000 years ago to about 100 years ago – a period that included the Little Ice Age from 1275 to about 1900.
“Although the Arctic has been warming since about 1900, the most significant warming in the Baffin Island region didn’t really start until the 1970s,” said Miller. “And it is really in the past 20 years that the warming signal from that region has been just stunning. All of Baffin Island is melting, and we expect all of the ice caps to eventually disappear, even if there is no additional warming.”
Temperatures across the Arctic have been rising substantially in recent decades as a result of the buildup of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere. Studies by CU-Boulder researchers in Greenland indicate temperatures on the ice sheet have climbed 7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1991.
A 2012 study by Miller and colleagues using radiocarbon-dated mosses that emerged from under the Baffin Island ice caps and sediment cores from Iceland suggested that the trigger for the Little Ice Age was likely a combination of exploding tropical volcanoes – which ejected tiny aerosols that reflected sunlight back into space – and a decrease in solar radiation.
-CU-
Contact:
Gifford Miller, 303-492-6962, cell 303-990-2071
===============================================================
I don’t dispute validity of radio-carbon14 dating techniques, but I think there is a logic failure in the claim being made.
The claim is that these plants haven’t been exposed for thousands of years, as dated by the C14 isotope.
At four different ice caps, radiocarbon dates show the mosses had not been exposed to the elements since at least 44,000 to 51,000 years ago.
That might be true, but then again they are long dead, so there wouldn’t be any uptake of new C14 if they were exposed to the open air in the past. There’s no claim that the mosses are now suddenly alive and growing again. So, if they had been “exposed to the elements” since then, they would not have an new C14 in them unless they came back to life and conducted photosynthesis.
Since plant material in the Arctic doesn’t decay like it does elsewhere due to low temperature and low humidity, it could very well remain intact while exposed for quite some time. All I think they can claim is that the plants haven’t been alive for 44,000 to 120,000 years. I don’t think they can’t prove with C14 dating that they have not been exposed then reburied under ice/snow since then. Ice is a funny thing, it can melt due to warmer temperatures or it can sublimate at below freezing temperatures if there’s not enough sustaining precipitation, as we know from Mount Kilimanjaro. What I’d really like to see is what the receding ice edge looks like. Sublimation leaves a signature that is quite different from melting.
Studies by CU-Boulder researchers in Greenland indicate temperatures on the ice sheet have climbed 7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1991.
Greenland is not Baffin island. You can’t just say that a temperature change in one place automatically means a similar temperature change in another place. Similarly, Baffin island isn’t the entire “Arctic”, yet it is portrayed in the press release as if this one proxy indicator of four sampled sites represents the entire Arctic temperature experience back 120,000 years. It’s Yamal all over again.
Recall our series of stories about “midges” used for proxy temperature reconstruction on Baffin island: Baffin Island Midge Study – debunked for a 3rd time – nearby weather station shows no warming.
This weather station on Baffin Island [Clyde Meteorological station] shows no summer temperature increase in the last 50 years. Summer matters most because that’s the melt season.
So what’s going on with the receding ice edge on Baffin island; is it melting or sublimating? Inquiring minds want to know. From the one photo they provided, it is hard to tell:
Of course the uncritical MSM is already trumpeting this story without question, with the usual bent that the posited current warmth is a bad thing.
What really bugs me (besides the fact the press release can’t even bother to mention the title of the study) is that they use of the word “unprecedented” in the title of the press release. Obviously this isn’t true, because it had to be warm enough, long enough, back then to give these mosses a chance to get a foothold and grow. If the warmth today was “unprecedented” they’d find nothing in the way of previous life forms under the receding ice. – Anthony
UPDATE: 10/25/13 11AM PDT
I lamented the lack of photographs to show me what sort of ice loss signature there was. The press release at AGU had such a photo in it which I show below, click for a much larger version.
![Fig.1.Sputnik[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/fig-1-sputnik1.jpg?quality=83)
Note the albedo difference from the ice cap on the left side versus the right side. The right side is almost pure white, and there are no stream channels. The left side has lots of stream channels and is a dirty brown. Notice also that the ice in surrounding depressions is whiter that the ice cap, which is actually a small hill, though I don’t know what height it is above surrounding terrain.
What this looks like to me is that the windward side of the Sputnik icecap hill is on the left and it is picking up all sorts of debris and particulates (such as carbon soot) on the leeward side there is less deposition, and the ice is cleaner.
As we’ve noted before on WUWT, carbon soot is a big problem in the Arctic.
I’d really like to know why the authors have not mentioned what is obvious to the eye as an alternate possibility for the icecap decline.
milodon: “I go along with that distinction. A theory may consist of a body of hypotheses the prediction of which have not yet been found false.”
I don’t care much for the distinctions, mostly as I’m not a Positivist. Lacking that, it all seems a bit strained. Then there’s the other problem, which is ‘theory’ as in ‘large discipline,’ ‘metaphysical principle,’ or untested theorems (logical) that extend from a theory (pick any usage). And this is not helped at all when it is popular to call a hypothesis a theory because… it simply isn’t tested or testable and you want credibility. (AGW, Origin theories/Creation myths, all of Economics…) Which is why I typically stick with ‘theory’ for everything on the Philosophy side and ’empiricism’ for everything on the experiment/engineering side. Makes me happy and understood even if people gripe about heresy should I accidentally state ‘the 2nd theory of thermo…’
“This might be considered an observation, although it was not a valid one.”
Observations are fine, as are rule-of-thumb. But to state that ‘The continents don’t move’ as a hypothesis, requires that we can prove it, or prove it’s contradictory, either one, if we are to state ‘this is True, damnit’. Every valid test of a hypothesis simultaneously tests its contradictory. And until it is properly tested it is a big ol’ belief system. No more and no less, and of no greater worth or import than an infomercial.
———
Zeke: “If you don’t like it complain about Kuhn and his “paradigm shifts.”
Popper had the right of it (mostly) by the lights of reason. Kuhn had it spot on by the lights of man. But Kuhn is not responsible for man being.
Zeke said @ur momisugly October 25, 2013 at 3:47 pm
I’m not sure what you are suggesting here. That scientists should prefer a worse theory, or no theory at all? According to Popper, no theory is true. Theories are only an approximation to truth and subject to rejection when a better theory comes along.
Another very critical commentary, using some different arguments, by Jim Bouldin:
http://ecologicallyoriented.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/bad-study-on/
Jquip says:
October 25, 2013 at 4:12 pm
Popper was a philosopher and Kuhn a sociologist. One prescribed and the other described. ‘Nuff said…
The Pompous Git says:
October 25, 2013 at 4:09 pm
IMO plate tectonics has fewer & less severe problems than an expanding earth, although I’d be glad to hear what you consider those of tectonics to be. Had an expanding earth been a more compelling explanation, geologists might have abandoned immobile continents before the discovery of seafloor spreading & the dating of oceanic crust.
Same was true of inheritance of acquired traits to explain what was in the early 19th century called “development” (the accepted observation that life forms have changed over time) through “transmutation of species” or “transformism”, an hypothesis anathema to the establishment. Natural & sexual selection offered scientific explanatory mechanisms more compelling than Lamarckism or the concept of continuous supernatural creation favored by prestigious, older naturalists.
Jquip says:
October 25, 2013 at 4:12 pm
I agree that immobile continents was part of a belief system unsupported by evidence, yet clung to by presumably rational scientists. Now their movements can be measured directly rather than simply inferred from observations.
Same was true of scientists who were sure that the earth doesn’t move or that species don’t evolve.
It appears no one read Steve McIntyre’s comment or the abstract he provided. Everyone went off in a dozen different directions but not the one pointed out by Steve. The dating technique used in this study has problems that are not accounted for.
Steve McIntyre says:
October 24, 2013 at 10:09 pm
Here http://www.geochronometria.pl/pdf/geo_32/Geo32_02.pdf is an article entitled “TOO OLD AMS RADIOCARBON DATES OBTAINED FROM MOSS REMAINS FROM LAKE KWIECKO BOTTOM SEDIMENTS (N POLAND)”. It cites other work finding similar problems.
The Pompous Git says:
October 25, 2013 at 4:21 pm
I’m not a fan of Kuhn’s, but in his defense would note that he was a physicist before becoming an historian & philosopher of science. During the war, between his undergrad & grad degrees in physics from Harvard, he worked on radar.
You’re right that his work did get picked up by sociologists, & arguably misused & abused by them, as is their wont.
Keith W says:
October 25, 2013 at 4:34 pm
McIntyre has previously found Miller’s work useful:
http://climateaudit.org/2012/02/11/gifford-miller-vs-ar5-reconstructions/
I’d rather not speculate upon why Miller submitted such CACA this time.
milodon: “Now their movements can be measured directly rather than simply inferred from observations.”
Surely so. But prior to that point it was a Mighty Maybe. Possibly so, and possbily not. Doesn’t matter either way until you get into the Great Heroics needed to keep Guam from capsizing. After we got some experience with the topic (measurements) we have no worries about Guam tipping over. (Unless you’re a legislator…)
——
Keith W: “It appears no one read Steve McIntyre’s comment or the abstract he provided. ”
Sure, C14 dating is no silver bullet and there are reams of cases where it’s been shown that the calculated age is far less or greater than it should be. Every C14 exercise starts with: Assume nothing cocked up my carbon. Which is about like any other notion: Assume my distribution is Gaussian. But in either case it’s terribly rare in publication to find folks validating either assumption. Which is neither here nor there. Since the problem with the past, is that we weren’t there for it.
@Kevin Lohse October 24, 2013 at 10:41 pm
Thanks for the feedback. When you are done rank it on Amazon.
Another critical commentary, using different arguments:
http://ecologicallyoriented.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/bad-study-on/
milodonharlani said @ur momisugly October 25, 2013 at 4:25 pm
I’m actually pretty much an agnostic in this, but the two main points agin PT are the lack of debris accumulation at the subduction zones, and both the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Oceans appear to be expanding. FWIW there’s a lot of material here:
http://www.expanding-earth.org/
That web page is a lot more “breathless” than what was presented at UTas from what I was told. I never made the expanding Earth lecture due to a prior commitment. I thought it telling that Tunks wanted to expose us to the theory; he’s a practical field geologist rather than an armchair theoretician.
“Phil says:
October 25, 2013 at 12:04 am
However, Table_S1.xlsx in the Supporting Information only shows 135 samples. Furthermore, the “C14 Age” of the samples range from 225 to 4,285 years in the spreadsheet.
What gives??”
That data only shows that Baffin Island was as warm or warmer than today,between 225 and 4,285 years ago.Which disputes Millers own conclusion.
milodonharlani said @ur momisugly October 25, 2013 at 4:35 pm
I was predisposed to dislike his work based on the selected quotes I had read (often enough, required to read). Having recently read the book (not quite to the end yet) I found much food for thought therein.
Expanding on what I wrote above: Popper prescribed what science should be iff we were all really excellent theoretical physicists. (Bench biologists for example need not apply). Kuhn described what he found most scientists were actually doing.
It sounds to me like warming is a LONG term trend. Hey, maybe we can reverse 120,000 years of natural warming with new regulations, higher taxes, and wealth transfers?
Looking at a post at Climate Audit:
Gifford Miller vs AR5 (FOD) Reconstructions
by Steve McIntyre, climateaudit.org
February 11th 2012 3:14 PM
Miller et al (GRL 2012) url has attracted much recent attention for its argument that volcanism can account for the MWP-LIA transition. In my opinion, it is important for another reason, a reason not mentioned and apparently not noticed by the authors themselves. It offers a highly plausible re-interpretation of Arctic varve series, an interpretation that, in effect, stands the temperature interpretation of the important Big Round Lake, Baffin Island varve series on its head. Arctic varve series, including Big Round Lake, have become a mainstay of temperature reconstructions used in AR5 (FOD) and likely to be used in AR5 (e.g. Kaufman et al 2009) and Miller’s interpretation of varve data impacts multiple “new” AR5 studies. CA readers are familiar with climate scientists having trouble with the orientation of varve data e.g. the use of Tiljander’s varve data in Mann et al 2008-2009 (the latter frequently cited in AR5).
On Miller et al (GRL 2012) pdf with url provided by Steve, there is an interesting chart Figure 2. (f) Temperature anomalies over southern Greenland (wrt 1881–1980 AD mean) from the borehole temperature inversion at DYE-3 [Dahl-Jensen et al., 1998].
Gifford Miller Global Cooling Scare on an episode of “In Search of… with Leonard Nimoy”
Also Climate Audit commenter: Klockarman Posted Feb 22, 2012 at 5:09 PM [… ]a much younger Gifford Miller appeared on this (In Search of… ) show, and they filmed his appearance on Baffin Island, and he discusses that evidence on Baffin Island indicates a cooling and drying trend for the last 3,000 years, etc. Here’s the segment (1st of 3) that features Miller (his appearance starts at 5:30 in the video)…
2-23 In Search Of… The Coming Ice Age (Part 1 of 3) – YouTube
http://youtu.be/5ndHwW8psR8
jim Steele said @ur momisugly October 25, 2013 at 5:06 pm
Reminded me I had forgotten to order it. For me in Tasmania it’s somewhat cheaper from the Book Depository in the UK than from Amazon in the US:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=jim+steele&sts=t&tn=landscapes+and+cycles
Nevertheless, I will comment on Amazon after reading it.
The Pompous Git: “Kuhn described what he found most scientists were actually doing.”
Right, thing is Science sells itself on the basis that it does what Popper speaks of. But Science does what Kuhn speaks of. Which is the really astonishing idea that people act like people. The way to eat your cake and have it has always been the same in either case: Replicate.
A “sublime” reply to a hideously poor attempt at propping up the dying CAGW meme with pseudoscience.
Anthony … Baffin Island is in Nunavut not NWT (Northwest Territories)!
Anthony … why do you assume mosses are dead after they have been frozen for long periods??? See this: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/05/28/3768174.htm
The Pompous Git says:
October 25, 2013 at 5:27 pm
“Expanding on what I wrote above: Popper prescribed what science should be iff we were all really excellent theoretical physicists. (Bench biologists for example need not apply). Kuhn described what he found most scientists were actually doing.”
We need some perspective here. Popper and other philosophers of science have described what theories should be when properly formulated. Their goal is to explain standards for criticism of science. Kuhn’s work is sometimes taken as a criticism of this normative view. It is not. To be sympathetic to Kuhn, which I am, what he did was describe the psychology of scientists as they practice. That psychology cannot yield standards for criticism of science. However, it yields a lot of other things that are very interesting.
I am interested in explaining and refining standards for science. I am interested in criticism. I take it our goal here is criticism and explanation of our grounds for criticism.
The Pompous Git says:
October 25, 2013 at 4:14 pm
Zeke said @ur momisugly October 25, 2013 at 3:47 pm
“I think the reason scientific theories are not discarded when there are extraordinary exceptions to the theory is because the scientific experts use the excuse that they do not have a better theory.
I’m not sure what you are suggesting here. That scientists should prefer a worse theory, or no theory at all? According to Popper, no theory is true. Theories are only an approximation to truth and subject to rejection when a better theory comes along.”
No scientific theory can be proved true, once and for all and finally. We must always remain open to experience and recognize that our best theories are subject to change. However, our theory at the time is true until it is falsified.
Here is a link to a pdf of a powerpoint presentation with some of the material in the paper presented as part of the “Arctic Program” at UC Boulder and dated 23 Oct 2012.
At that point, they only had 5 data points that were more than 20,000 years old. The claim that organic matter has been preserved under an ice cap for ca. 120,000 would probably be record-breaking from an archaeological point of view. The oldest fibers, according to an archaeologist in the family, are from about 7-10,000 year ago in the desert SW of the USA. Mammoths have been found that have been frozen tens of thousands of years.
A date of 40,000 years or so is at the limit of detection and indicates that the sample contains virtually no Carbon-14 and could be considerably older than 40,000 years. The article linked by Steve McIntyre concerns samples that contain less C14 than they should or none at all. Aquatic mosses are especially susceptible. I saw this article and others, but Steve had linked it first.
Following is my first impression of the issue, but I claim no expertise in this area. The basic assumption in C14 dating is that the organism is obtaining its carbon from the atmosphere, so the C12/C13/C14 ratios are fairly constant until the organism dies, at which point the ratios change because C14 is radioactive and decays to N14, IIRC. However, if the organism obtains its carbon from a different “reservoir”, then the C14 dating will be incorrect or not-datable. Aquatic mosses growing in bodies of water with limestone sources obtain their carbon from dissolution of the limestone, which essentially contains no C14 (any C14 originally present in the limestone has long since decayed). Similarly, volcanic CO2 is also C14 depleted and organisms near volcanoes are likewise C14 depleted, but they need to be fairly close (hundreds of yards, not miles, IIRC).
The claim that Baffin Island is warmer now than 120,000 years ago must overcome questions raised by others in this thread, such as soot melting glaciers not temperature, etc. Similarly, the preservation of organic matter for 120,000 years is, to my knowledge, unprecedented. I think that these data points should be treated as outliers, pending further evidence that they are not a result of dating problems, contamination, etc.