Guest essay by David Archibald
A visit to the weather station at the airport is the highlight of any trip to Svalbard. Of course that weather station has been the subject of attention on WUWT here.
Above: The Svalbard weather station at the airport
Figure 1 below shows the closest point the public can now get to the Svalbard weather station, the gate at the airport:
Figure 1: David Archibald, Professor Ole Humlum and Professor Jan-Erik Solheim at the closest point the public can get to the Svalbard Airport weather station which is 140 metres southeast of this point.
Professor Humlum was able to provide details of the siting problems particular to Arctic airport weather stations. For example, at one stage one of the airlines had a flight that got into Svalbard from Tromso on the Norwegian mainland in the late afternoon and then returned to Tromso at 5.00 am the following morning. To keep the aircraft warm overnight, the crew would leave the auxiliary power unit (APU) running. If the wind was blowing from the northwest, this would affect the temperature recorded by the weather station. This was an armed meteorological expedition as shown in Figure 2 following:
Figure 2: Professor Humlum carrying the expedition’s Remington rifle
Why an armed expedition? The island of Svalbard is infested with “warmers” (/sarc – the rifle actually for polar bears) . Note that the rifle wasn’t left in the vehicle. Poor visibility from falling snow meant that one may not be aware of a threat until you are directly upon it.
Figure 3 following shows a warmer nesting site encountered by the expedition:
Figure 3: Permafrost carbon dioxide injection project on Svalbard
This facility was founded on the peculiar notion that carbon dioxide could be stored under the permafrost layer. All the signage is in English no doubt because the Norwegian authorities are too embarrassed to have this inane project signposted in Norwegian. There is no source of carbon dioxide on Svalbard and any injected at the site would have to be transported from one thousand kilometres south on the Norwegian mainland.
As well as being an armed expedition, this was a sustainable expedition with provisioning including local produce of seal meat, whale meat and reindeer. Why go to Svalbard in the first place? It is quite apparent now that ground zero in climate change is not the coral reefs of the Maldives, the delta mouth islands of Bangladesh or anywhere else tropical and third world. It is here, hard up against the Arctic Circle. In fact Svalbard is going to get polar amplification really bad, as shown by Figure 4:
Figure 4: Projected average summer, annual and winter temperatures for Svalbard over Solar Cycle 24 (from Solheim, Stordahl and Humlum, 2011, Solar activity and Svalbard temperatures)
As Figure 4 shows, the average winter temperature over Solar Cycle 24 will be 6.0ºC colder than that over Solar Cycle 23. The economic effects of climate change have already been felt on the Norwegian mainland. Figure 5 shows Norwegian wheat imports and Norway’s domestic attempts are growing wheat:
Figure 5: Norwegian wheat imports and domestic production 1960 – 2012
What is apparent from Figure 5 is that domestic wheat production started replacing imports of the grain from the mid-1970s. From 2007, imports doubled as humid weather at harvest causing fungal infections of the crop and precluded most of it from being used for human consumption. Thus the end of the Modern Warm Period is sharply defined by Norwegian wheat statistics. Norway’s weather is driven by the sea temperature to its west, which also peaked in 2006 as shown by Figure 6:
Figure 6: Ocean heat in the Atlantic Ocean (0-60 West, 30-65 North) from Climate4you.com
Figure 6 shows that the fall in temperature of the Atlantic Ocean to the west of Norway from the peak in 2006 has been just as fast as the rise from 1990. When will the cooling stop and at what level?
The airport weather station topic is a constant sore spot for me. The weather instruments at airports have specific aeronautic purposes. In general they are unsuitable for climate research data(low hanging rotten fruit). If ‘climate science’ ever matures into a serious study I would imagine precise widely dispersed suitable instruments will be deployed and data archiving practices will be developed.
@Mike Wryley says:
November 1, 2013 at 8:56 pm
“Bear note to self:
Note gun still in sheath, will take at least 10 seconds for Goretex covered meat snack to shed mittens, unshoulder rifle, unzip cover on rifle and remove same, and finally chamber,,,chomp chomp, growl, disembowel, , my goodness, I can’t eat all three of these in one sitting.”
LOL! Beat me to it. I’d have a revolver chambered in .454 Casull tucked in somewhere with quick access. The rifle is best… but that’s only if you spot the bear before the bear spots you.
” Thus it is far from naive to expect that humans are responsible for the observed increase ”
If you implicitly mean ALL the increase, it is naive. There is a clear dependency on temperature and atmospheric pressure, This will affect the sink rate as is clearly demonstrated in 1998 in your graph.
lgl says:
Greg. Wow, you even beat me in finding correlations which is not there 🙂
So you are saying there is no correlation between 1972 and 2000 between SST and dCO2 ?
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=233
Or from 1994 onwards in AO ? Even the detail from 2002-2007 matches. Hardly coincidence it would seem.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=259
RE: Rob de Vos says:
November 2, 2013 at 2:24 am
That is an interesting link about temperatures at Svalbard.
I am fairly certain the primary reason the harbors in western Svalbard were open in the late 1940’s and again more recently has to do with the warm AMO.
Purely as an interested layman I’ve been fascinated by Arctic Sea ice, and its yearly melt and regrowth, for years. One thing that is obvious is the huge change in air temperature that comes about as soon as open water becomes ice-covered water. While I am sure on some occasions it is only a thin surface-layer of air that is warmed or chilled, the warming-effect of water and cooling-effect of ice is quite obvious, if you go to Anthony’s “Sea Ice Page” and compare maps of “ice extent” with maps of “2 meter air temperature.”
Right now you can see this quite clearly off the northwest coast of Svalbard, where the isotherms usually show the open water’s air at minus five while the ice-pack’s air is around minus twenty.
I also notice this during late September and early October along the coast of Siberia, when, for a while, the sea has not yet frozen, but the tundra can be blanketed by early snow and, because the days swiftly get so short and the sun is so low, the tundra starts generating subzero cold as the sea water generates above zero air. For a short while the “sea breeze” off the Arctic Ocean is a (relatively) “warm” wind, but as soon as the sea freezes over that stops.
My layman’s conclusion is that coastal reporting stations in the arctic tend to record very local conditions and their record is highly dependent on whether sea ice is at the coast or not. I imagine they also can vary a lot if a pattern swings from a long period of on-shore winds to a period of off-shore winds. It seems unwise to “homogenize” such temperatures, and to use them to determine the temperature of areas that experience neither sea-breezes nor land-breezes.
Mike Wryley already pointed out that the rifle was not shown as available for immediate use. That’s bad in fog, not a problem otherwise, as the bears are more likely to be spotted at distance. The great whites are stalkers and like to sneak up on their prey than to charge from afar. Native Arctic hunters report that the Polar Bears are a lot like men in their response to being shot. If in the fight already, they are difficult to take down, but if shot from a distance or when they are not expecting a fight, they will enter into a state of shock when shot and cease fighting until they die. I watched a film once with an Eskimo talking about hunting with rimfire .22 rifles and sometimes, they would bring their “really powerful” .250-3000 cal. rifle, which seems awfully light against a half ton of claws and teeth.
Perhaps David Archibald could tell the rifle enthusiasts here on WUWT the caliber and model of that Remington carried by the expedition.
Ferdi, the corollary of recognising the effect of temp on sink rate is that without human emissions there would also be out gassing. (Unless you also assume that SST is eternally constant without human life on earth.) The equilibrium atm CO2 level would be higher and oceans would out-gas to meet this level. What this relationship is has never been properly worked out. It is usually ignored entirely or assumed to be negligible.
Projecting from de-glaciation is not a valid either and that’s about as close anyone ever got to assessing what’s happening now.
Spam filter may have gobbled my last comment.
“WebHubTelescope” had a fairly good attempt a couple of years ago on his ‘Oil conundrum’ but made a mistake in the maths. That should be followed up.
http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.fr/2012/03/co2-outgassing-model.html
RE: jeez says:
November 2, 2013 at 2:07 am
Please don’t take offence. Some of us enjoy David Archibald’s contributions.
Don’t worry about imperfections lowering the quality of Anthony’s site. One wonderful thing about this site is that, if you make a mistake, you can rest assured it will be pointed out.
Furthermore, I think we should be glad when people go out doors, and do the field work of checking up on the siting of thermometers. Personally, I don’t get out of town much, especially to Svalbard, so I can’t check that thermometer myself. Can you?
Weather stations at airports are designed to give you information for flight movements and out of the airports . They were never intended to provide proof for a wider area , that as come about because you might as well us them because they exist . As such the ‘problems ‘ with their sitting never used to matter before the need for ‘settled science’ in this most unsettled of areas , weather prediction.
H.R. says:
November 2, 2013 at 2:53 am
@Mike Wryley says:
November 1, 2013 at 8:56 pm
“Bear note to self:
Note gun still in sheath, will take at least 10 seconds for Goretex covered meat snack to shed mittens, unshoulder rifle, unzip cover on rifle and remove same, and finally chamber,,,chomp chomp, growl, disembowel, , my goodness, I can’t eat all three of these in one sitting.”
LOL! Beat me to it. I’d have a revolver chambered in .454 Casull tucked in somewhere with quick access. The rifle is best… but that’s only if you spot the bear before the bear spots you.
____________________
Old Alaska hands are used to dealing with the Brown bears (Kodiaks and Grizzlies,) which unlike their White cousins, often require the most powerful of rifles to bring down with a margin of safety. Alaskans’ advice for using large caliber pistols against the Browns is to be sure and file off the front sight… it makes it easier on you when the bear shoves it up- well, you know.
H.R. and Mike both make good points… that rifle isn’t going to help unless it’s ready and someone is willing and able to use it. Archibald obviously didn’t get et.
@H.R. Kasools are kool.
“When will the cooling stop and at what level?”
Next glacial maximum? That would be my guess here at the half-precession cycle old Holocene.
Fig 6 If the summer temp change is 0.8°/100 yrs and the winter temp change is -0.1°/100 yrs and the annual temp change is +1.4°/100 yrs, what do spring and fall look like? Certainly >>1.4°/100 yrs or is something else going on here?
RE: Alan Robertson says:
November 2, 2013 at 3:12 am
I’ve read the same thing: Polar bears are stealth hunters, and by the time you see the bear it is darn close and perhaps too late. However the one advantage humans have is that we don’t flop around on ice like seals and, while we can’t outrun a bear, we are rather nimble and can change direction faster than a bear can (providing we have good traction on our boots.) There is a great film somewhere of a man, not all that young or athletic, frustrating a bear by running around and around his jeep, first one way and then the other.
I think the scientists who work out on the ice deserve a bit of respect. The greatest danger most of us face is a heavy rush-hour. Few of us face the prospect of being eaten, in our daily life.
In the following link there are a couple of neat header pictures, regarding the placement of buoys and the “North Pole Camera.” One shows a mother bear with two cubs sniffing a buoy. Another shows two scientists dragging a sled holding a buoy, guarded by a third man who has a rifle and whose sole purpose for being there is to watch for bears.
There is also a fourth man. He is the lifeguard, wearing a heavy, arctic-wet-suit. His sole purpose is to pluck scientists from the sub-zero salt water, if they fall in.
At my age, I prefer watching from afar. Anyway, here’s the link:
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/
Caleb says:
November 2, 2013 at 3:48 am
I think the scientists who work out on the ice deserve a bit of respect. The greatest danger most of us face is a heavy rush-hour. Few of us face the prospect of being eaten, in our daily life.
In the following link there are a couple of neat header pictures, regarding the placement of buoys and the “North Pole Camera.” One shows a mother bear with two cubs sniffing a buoy. Another shows two scientists dragging a sled holding a buoy, guarded by a third man who has a rifle and whose sole purpose for being there is to watch for bears.
There is also a fourth man. He is the lifeguard, wearing a heavy, arctic-wet-suit. His sole purpose is to pluck scientists from the sub-zero salt water, if they fall in.
At my age, I prefer watching from afar. Anyway, here’s the link:
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/
________________________
How very interesting, thanks for the link. I wonder about the lifeguard’s real usefulness, he may be there for moral support, above all. Unless that sled is carrying gear to quickly add a lot of heat to a freezing body, then a slip into that cold water could prove fatal.
Ironically, it looks like they are planning to revive the old “risk to food supplies” saw: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/02/science/earth/science-panel-warns-of-risks-to-food-supply-from-climate-change.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131102&_r=0
Due to “manmade climate change”, they are predicting up to 2% reduction per decade in food supplies. Of course, this is from a leaked draft of a report not due to be released until March, so they have time yet to consider how dumb their claims really are.
Caleb says:November 2, 2013 at 2:32 am
I remember it as St. Augustine’s Fire, a book, describing rye ergot and its effects on Medieval villages. It has lysergic acid, and was used by Hoffman for the first LSD synthesis.
RE: Steve Keohane says:
November 2, 2013 at 4:30 am
That would explain the hallucinations. Poor peasants. They likely didn’t know what hit them. And they likely had a choice between using moldy flour, or starving.
Steinar
“how do you know that a reduction was not a decision?”
jeez
“A drop in wheat in a given year is often just a choice to grow something else.”
Yes it is a decision/choise. When the farmers find frozen ground in april they know wheat is not the thing that year.
Greg
“So you are saying there is no correlation between 1972 and 2000 between SST and dCO2 ?”
No, I’m saying d/dt(CO2) does not correlate with AO (like your graph confirms, 1993 to 2007 is not enough). d/dt(CO2) correlates with ENSO (except after large volcanic eruptions perhaps).
Steinar says:
…their dream is to inject the CO2 produced by the local power plant (making it) CO2 neutral. The energy is made from local coal. Incredibly expensive, of course.
Coal swamps in the Arctic Circle. Now that’s climate change!
Several good comments about the value of the cased firearm for “bear management” (ie, none). All bears are stalkers if the terrain dictates it (in fact, most all predatory omnivores are stalkers at some point in the hunt). People regularly underestimate the ability of big ol’ bears to be short term sprinters. If the bear is within 20 yards and you haven’t seen him (entirely possible), your odds are very slim of getting a loaded gun shouldered and on him accurately in a feeding charge. In fog, you’d be lucky to even be able to get a swat at him with the cased gun. And the idea of being able to run circles around the bear “because you are more agile” is laughable. Sure, stick a big object between you and the bear, andf the bear will play for a bit, then decide the energy cost is not worth it and go off to try something else, or just back a few dozen yards away and wait for you. You can be within feet of a bear and not know it. Trying to run circles around the bear would be short and ugly. Paw and claw meet leg, dinner is served.
Calibre is not as important as shot placement at a distance – that’s why the Inuit can do well out on the ice and tundra with small caliber (high velocity).
The cased gun, I suspect, has more to do with either local ordinances or “not getting my gun wet” is more important than defence.
The purpose of a large calibre handgun in bear defence is to put yourself out of misery quickly, rather than the bear… /not really sarc.