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?
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Greg Goodman says:
November 2, 2013 at 3:14 am
Ferdi, the corollary of recognising the effect of temp on sink rate is that without human emissions there would also be out gassing. The equilibrium atm CO2 level would be higher and oceans would out-gas to meet this level.
Agreed, but as the Vostok (and recently Dome C) data show over the past 420 (800) kyears, the new equilibrium will shift with not more than 8 ppmv/K temperature difference.
The increase in pCO2 in the oceans according to Henry’s law is near-linear (an error of 2% over 1 K) for about 16 microatm/K. That gives an increase of outgassing and a decrease in uptake. A similar increase of pCO2 in the atmosphere will bring that again in equilibrium. That the real equilibrium is lower, probably is a matter of vegetation which sink rate in general increases with temperature.
Thus of the 100 ppmv increase in the atmosphere since about 1850 (70 ppmv since Mauna Loa started), maximum 16 ppmv (Henry’s law) or 8 ppmv (Vostok) is from the 1 K temperature increase since the LIA…
Regarding the sheathed rifle, I think you’d be surprised at how fast that can become operational given sufficient motivation. Can’t say I know how fast bears can run on a straightaway, but they aren’t great at cornering.
http://www.rockyhigh66.org/images_new/polarbear.jpg
AMO is not mentioned-Why?
Nice job.
You had lots of equipment, but where was the (more than 4x) zoom lens on the camera?
That Stevenson screen seems to be listing to the port side. WUWT?
The Stevenson screen seems to be ideally suited to give the micro-climate for the runway, which is good and necessary for the pilots to do their calculations, but to give the climate apart from the runway there must be another screen somewhere. No? We may have a problem here.
AMO has a periodic influence of the Atlantic with a minimum at 1978 and in now in a warm period. I am convinced that AMO is behind the high melting of the Arctic in recent Years. Now we will turn into a colder period according to the AMO periodicity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_multidecadal_oscillation
Interesting trivia—according to wiki, the ‘Stevenson screen” is named after Thomas Stevenson, who was the father of Robert Louis Stevenson.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenson_screen
I went back and had another closer look at the “Remington” picture. The cased firearm is not the big deal it first seems. There is 100yds+ visibility on what appears to be flat terrain. Bears are “warm white” in colour (and usually a bit dirty), so they do stand out somewhat on flat terrain in cool light. The case is an end flap design with a single buckle, not a zipper. If its a freezing fog, you want the gun cased unless you need it. Frozen actions and magazines are not what you want in a Hail Mary situation. Change the buckle to, or add velcro to the flap, and leave the buckle undone and your kit is good to go. Personally, I’d carry it butt up over my shooting shoulder for faster access but that’s a personal choice.
As Figure 4 shows, the average winter temperature over Solar Cycle 24 will be 6.0ºC colder than that over Solar Cycle 23.
Please, Fig 4 shows nothing of the sort, if anything it shows a rising trend, the authors have added their guess onto the graph which is 6ºC colder than the present average, that’s all.
In fact when I went to that paper the graph looks different and the extra points aren’t there! How about an actual link to the paper/figure because something’s not right!
Sure, stick a big object between you and the bear, andf the bear will play for a bit,
That’s why you should avoid graduate field work where being “slow afoot and a bit fleshy” is a requirement.
(I thought the purpose of an lined gun case was to deal with condensation freezing on the mechanism due to moving in and out of heated structures. More adsorption then insulation.)
Coming out of heated structure not a problem, going in, problem. A case keeps moist warmer inside air off a cold gun, for a while at least. Outside, if the fog is not an ice fog and temp is below freezing, then you have the possibility of fog freezing on the cold metal parts of the gun. Case keeps the fog moisture away from the cold gun.
A) The OHC graph is interesting.
B) The Svalgard weather station (like so many airport weather stations, including the one at Raleigh-Durham airport near where I live) is poorly sited. Airports in general are probably not the best places to locate a weather station used in the evaluation of GAST, however much they need them right next to the runways for direct, practical purposes, although one can sometimes find a place on airport properties that isn’t too bad.
C) The rest of the article is pretty pointless.
D) Re: the discussion, it is most unlikely that 2007 was “the turning point”, if in fact something has “turned”. There is some reason to think that the climate “turned” with the ENSO event at the end of the 20th century in the sense that it continued into the negative phase of a longstanding, small, climate oscillation with a period of somewhere between 50 and 70 years, but that oscillation is around an even longer term gentle warming trend. Perhaps the numerology of curve fitting without a well-defined causal mechanism has short-run predictive power, but in the long run it almost certainly doesn’t as this oscillation is not obvious or apparent in the longer term records, just as the warming trend of the last 160+ years isn’t obvious or apparent in the longer term records.
Try to understand that just as “warmists” cannot predict, hindcast, or even explain in heuristic terms the large scale climate variability of the last N>500 years (for pretty much any value of N), neither can “deniers”. Asserting that a turning point has or hasn’t occurred, making assertions about what the climate will or won’t do on the basis of an empirically unproven and weakly supported argument, are not useful contributions to the general climate debate. Rather let the data speak for itself as it emerges. There are many ups and downs even in the OHC graph above. We can’t explain any of them in anything like precise detail given past data and any sort of physical argument, so we cannot meaningfully predict the future course of this graph. Perhaps it will keep coming down. Perhaps not.
rgb
@Paul Coppin says:
November 2, 2013 at 5:43 am
“[…] 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.”
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Perhaps you missed what I wrote: “The rifle is best… but that’s only if you spot the bear before the bear spots you.”
The large caliber handgun is second choice when it’s too late to get the rifle. Just be sure you’re not wearing mittens in either case ;o)
Since jeez pointed out early on in this thread that the wheat import/production argument has been long dead, buried, and the last shovel of earth packed down firmly, you might want to check this out.
http://kho.unis.no/doc/Polar_bears_Svalbard.pdf
“Professor Humlum was able to provide details of the siting problems particular to Arctic airport weather stations. …….. 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.”
Evidence? Data? An APU on the type of planes that visit Svalbard are up on the end of the fuselage. This puts them at least twice as high as this weather station, or any weather station, and it is absolutely unlikely that the hot air coming out of these APUs can avoid being dispersed and can be made to cross the many meters of the apron and then come down to hit the weather station! That is absurd to think this is possible. I am repeating what others have said, but there is no problem with the siting of this weather station, as it has to be accurate for the purpose of aircraft performance calculations. It is NOT sited there to collect global climate data.
Out of interest I found this:
http://www.instanes.no/?q=node/31
Svalbard airport runway. Performance during a climate warming scenario.
“ABSTRACT: Svalbard airport runway (N78°14’, E15°30’) is constructed on continuous permafrost near the main settlement in the Svalbard archipelago, Longyearbyen. Since its completion in 1975, the runway has experienced pavement unevenness mainly caused by thaw subsidence (and consequent frost heave) of the ice-rich soil layers in the embankment. A major reconstruction of the runway was carried out in 1989, including insulation of the most affected areas. However, the reconstruction has only been partly successful and the runway is subjected to constant re-pavement with high maintenance costs. A new reconstruction is planned for 2005/2006 to improve the runway. The arctic region is expected to experience a mean annual temperature increase of between +4 °C to +7 °C during the next century and this may have a substantial impact for structures on permafrost. In order to evaluate the thermal performance of the runway under a climate change scenario, a final element model has been used to evaluate the thermal changes in the ground due to climate change.”
It appears quite obvious from this article that the runway tarmac has caused the underlying permafrost to melt and yet seems to completely miss that point and return to the main AGW meme about climate change causing perma frost to melt.
Paul Coppin says:
November 2, 2013 at 5:43 am
“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).”
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Hey Paul. That’s great commentary about guns and bears.
“… shot placement at distance…” No lie. Shot placement is always key, but if that bear’s close enough to get to you before his system shuts down… I’d personally prefer a rifle with a little thicker bullet- like a .338 Winchester- or bigger. The Inuit are likely tuned in enough that they won’t let a bear get too close before they act.
“There is no source of carbon dioxide on Svalbard”
Not true, there is a coal-fired powerplant at Longyearbyen. Of course it is only coal-fired in order to create a market for the last coal-mine in the area.
“The idiocy of your use of total wheat production in Norway as a proxy for climate was recently called out multiple times by multiple commenters in this thread.”
Actually it isn’t. Southern Norway is at the very edge of the area where wheat can be grown. It was hardly grown at all before “the Modern Warm Period” c. 1975 AD, and even a very slight climatic deterioration will put a stop to it.
Paul Coppin says:
“All bears are stalkers if the terrain dictates it”
Not polar bears. Actually they hardly hunt at all during the summer season, though they will opportunistically take any food that presents itself and is easy to catch (e. g. garbage cans). If they did hunt on land Svalbard wouldn’t have those peculiar, slow “dachshund reindeer”. Also they are utterly unafraid of humans and will usually approach quite openly. Stalking isn’t really that easy in the very open landscape in Svalbard in any case (no vegetation taller than a centimetre or two, and very little cover of any kind).
Actually You carry a rifle on Svalbard mostly in order to be able to scare off Polar Bears by the bang, As a matter of fact if You use it to kill a bear you had better be able to prove that you had taken all reasonable precautions, and was directly threatened by an attacking bear, or You will be in big trouble with the authorities. If You are a Tourist Guide you might have Your license revoked, since you are not supposed to get yourself into a situation where you have to use the gun.
All the above is based on field experience in Svalbard.
@Alan I’m not disagreeing. In talking about the Inuit, we’re apples and oranges a bit. The Inuit use what they have, and get good with it, because they need to to survive. Financially well off Inuit hunters have nice guns too 🙂 There’s no question the closer the bear on a charge the heavier the shock transfer you need to buy you time.
@H.R. Not disagreeing with you either (well maybe a little bit:) A large calibre handgun is rarely considered an adequate second choice with big bears in a close encounter, but absent a rifle and the time to use it, it’s better than a stick :). After the rifle, then your best second option may be to put distance between you and the bear – up a tree, up a ridge, behind some heavy trees, then bring out the hand cannon. Of course on open tundra, you have fewer options, and given the accuracy of handguns, especially in an adrenalin rush, doesn’t make them an especially comfortable option. Beyond that, there really are only a few handguns up the task – the Casull being one. But it, and similar handarms are big heavy guns to carry around. Certainly, leave the 9mm and .45ACPs at home. With them, all you’ll do is give the bear a reason to finish what he started. 🙂 I guess we should work back to the topic…:)
th Hey Paul. That’s great commentary about guns and bears.
“… shot placement at distance…” No lie. Shot placement is always key, but if that bear’s close enough to get to you before his system shuts down… I’d personally prefer a rifle with a little thicker bullet- like a .338 Winchester- or bigger. The Inuit are likely tuned in enough that they won’t let a bear get too close before they act.
There’s a lovely description in Jim Corbett’s books about hunting man-eating tigers in colonial India of an instance where he was armed with a comparatively light hunting rifle (but still, a real hunting rifle) and by chance found himself directly in the path of the tiger he was hunting as it came, unawares, up a hillside. He positioned himself in prone position and shot the tiger just under an eye as its head emerged over the rim of the ridge in front of him at point blank range. He then sat, frozen, while the tiger proceeded to roar and tear up every bit of the shrubbery around him for some twenty minutes without quite finding him (in plain sight). Corbett found bloody tiger brains and a piece of skull — his bullet passed directly through the tiger’s brain.
Some months later, he finally managed to shoot this particular animal (with a heavier rifle) and discovered that the tiger’s skull was actually healing. A more perfect placement than a point-blank head shot is difficult to imagine, but large animals often have a startling vitality and can sometimes live and move for minutes and run for hundreds of meters after being shot in the heart even with a large caliber bullet. I’ve shot deer perfectly through the heart with a 12 gauge deer slug (some 2-3 times the mass of a typical 30-06 bullet, diameter approximately 3/4 inch) — at comparatively close range, only to watch the deer I just shot run for a quarter mile over a minute before dropping. Large bears — and a polar bear or grizzly bear are very large bears — could close the distance to you and tear you apart three times over before dropping, even if shot through the heart. There are numerous stories out there of people who were treed by grizzly bears and armed with a .45 caliber handgun who shot the bear repeatedly at point blank range as the bear climbed the tree after them to try to tear them apart.
So sure, you can go polar bear hunting with a .22 rifle, and if you are a near-perfect shot, cool under fire, and manage to put enough bullets through the bear’s brain (or just get lucky shooting it elsewhere) you might even survive. Personally, I’d rather go skydiving, bungy-jumping, free-swimming with great white sharks, or work as a crash test dummy — your chances of survival would likely be higher (although you might well SCARE OFF a bear by firing the rifle NEAR the bear and not actually hurting it). If I were to hunt a polar bear, a 30-06 with a 220 grain soft-nosed bullet would be the SMALLEST gun I would consider and I’d take great comfort in using e.g. a 375 H&H magnum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.375_Holland_%26_Holland_Magnum
with a nice, big 300 grain silvertip bullet. This is a rifle that one could actually use for elephant or rhino hunting (NOT as a first choice, still too light) but as the article says:
“African game guides, professional hunters, and dangerous game cullers have repeatedly voted the .375 H&H as their clear preference for an all-round caliber if they could only have one rifle. A similar preference has been expressed by Alaskan game guides for brown bear and polar bear country.”
With a 375, there is a pretty good chance of putting down a charging bear with one shot. You probably won’t have time for a second one. And it won’t do you the slightest bit of good to carry your rifle with you into the field in its case, BTW — it would need to be loaded, shell in the chamber (on safety) and handy enough to be able to bring it to bear (so to speak) within the 10 or 20 seconds you are likely to have if the bear decides you are prey or a threat when you walk up on it unawares. What you do about mittens vs gloves, freezing fingers sticking to subzero triggers, brittleness, I have no idea. My idea of a good time isn’t to shoot bears (or do anything else) under seriously cold, snowy conditions.
rgb
@tty You’ve misinterpreted the quote (and I could have elaborated more). I referred to bears as “predatory omnivores”, because that’s what they are. Bears are not obligate carnivores. It doesn’t mean that stalking is the only way they feed; it simply means that stalking is a technique in their feeding arsenal they will use if they need to and the situation demands it. Being omnivores, they have many feeding alternatives. Because you don’t see it in Svalbard is not relevant in regard to the capability of the bear. It’s also a learned behavior. If there is no particular local need, you’ll rarely see it, and your local bears may not be very good at it. Doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t do it.
Your comments about bear shooting are exactly what was expected. Gun management these days is much more about politics than utility, unfortunately.
@rgb “My idea of a good time isn’t to shoot bears (or do anything else) under seriously cold, snowy conditions”
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The upside is that it’s very much easier to skid the carcass off the terrain on ice and snow then to drag it through the weeds… 🙂 That and the rum toddies post-hunt are particularly nice after a cold day…
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tty says:
November 2, 2013 at 8:23 am
“There is no source of carbon dioxide on Svalbard”
Not true, there is a coal-fired powerplant at Longyearbyen. Of course it is only coal-fired in order to create a market for the last coal-mine in the area.
Don’t forget the cars, boats, snowmobiles and aircraft as sources too!
Paul Coppin says: ovember 2, 2013 at 8:45 am
@Alan I’m not disagreeing. In talking about the Inuit, we’re apples and oranges a bit.
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i don’t see any disagreement at all. Further comment on pistols and bears…
There is a bear hunter/guide (forget where) who advises that those attacked by bears wait until the last instant to shoot the bear. He’s killed quite a number of big Browns with a pistol and teaches the following: An attacking bear will often advance within a few feet and then standing, will start snuffling/sniffing the air with their mouths open to positively I.D. what ‘s for dinner. At that moment, he advises that the hunter with pistol, fire through the roof of the mouth and up into the brain pan. The article showed (his) several bear skulls with a bullet hole through the roof of the mouth. Might make a good last stand method…
Ps A properly loaded .45 Colt will shoot through a mule deer at 100 yards from end- to- end, or clear through a horse- stout bear medicine, but only as backup.
@tty
Tundra would not afford much chance for a sneak attack if you pay attention, but Polar bears aren’t stalkers? Really? I’m glad none of them displayed their known human- stalking behavior while you were there… I suppose out in the open like that, they’ll just walk right up to you. I don’t have any personal experience with the bears and only know what I read.
rgbatduke says:
November 2, 2013 at 8:58 am
“If I were to hunt a polar bear, a 30-06 with a 220 grain soft-nosed bullet would be the SMALLEST gun I would consider…”
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I keep some ’06 ammo loaded with 200 gr Accubonds @2750 fps just in case of bear outbreaks, here in OKC. If it gets real bad, I’ll have my buddy bring over his .458 Lott.
Steinar Midtskogen says:
November 2, 2013 at 12:24 am