Using radiocarbon dating, new research in Geophysical Research Letters has calculated the age of relic moss samples that have been exposed by modern Arctic warming. Results claim that temperatures in the Arctic are warmer than during any sustained period since the mosses were originally buried. Video follows.
Geophysical Research Letters Press Release:
Arctic Warmth Unprecedented in 44,000 Years, Reveals Samples of Ancient Moss
When the temperature rises on Baffin Island, in the Canadian high Arctic, ancient Polytrichum mosses, trapped beneath the ice for thousands of years, are exposed. Using radiocarbon dating, new research in Geophysical Research Letters has calculated the age of relic moss samples that have been exposed by modern Arctic warming. Since the moss samples would have been destroyed by erosion had they been previously exposed, the authors suggest that the temperatures in the Arctic now must be warmer than during any sustained period since the mosses were originally buried.
The authors collected 365 samples of recently exposed biological material from 110 different locations, cutting a 1000 kilometer long transect across Baffin Island, with samples representing a range of altitudes. From their samples the authors obtained 145 viable measurements through radiocarbon dating. They found that most of their samples date from the past 5000 years, when a period of strong cooling overtook the Arctic. However, the authors also found even older samples which were buried from 24,000 to 44,000 years ago.
The records suggest that in general, the eastern Canadian Arctic is warmer now than in any century in the past 5000 years, and in some places, modern temperatures are unprecedented in at least the past 44,000 years. The observations, the authors suggest, show that modern Arctic warming far exceeds the bounds of historical natural variability.
“The great time these plants have been entombed in ice, and their current exposure, is the first direct evidence that present summer warmth in the Eastern Canadian Arctic now exceeds the peak warmth there in the Early Holocene era”, said Gifford Miller, from the University of Colorado. “Our findings add additional evidence to the growing consensus that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases have now resulted in unprecedented recent summer warmth that is well outside the range of that attributable to natural climate variability.”
Video: Disappearing Ice Caps – Giff Miller on Baffin Island
“Since the moss samples would have been destroyed by erosion had they been previously exposed” – there is the assumption that needs proving, mosses are not easily eroded and can build up over many many generations.
Moss
I actually wonder if they are assuming that this is the only time in 44,000 years that these mosses have been uncovered, and if, in reality, that these areas may have been uncovered and recovered many many times over that 44,000 years.
How do they know that these mosses have never been uncovered before? I mean even 80 years ago and then recovered by ice?
If modern warming exceeds the bounds of natural variability then how did the moss grow there in the first place?
I have hear this claim before. This so-called scientist makes so many assumptions about the situation as to make the whole study worthless. I guess this guy had a time lapse camera on the darn moss making sure it was under ice the whole 44,000 years?
Besides, I wonder why an arctic where moss grows again would not be a good thing. Who gets to decide what is the “right” amount of cold up north anyway.
Aren’t someone forgetting the ice age? The last Ice age started 110.000 years ago, ended for 10.000 years ago. During that period mosses should have been covered. So why mention 44.000 years at all?
Then I guess the LIA never reached the Arctic – which is news in an of itself. Moreover, how this guy comes to the conclusion this is the result of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases is a leap of faith beyond any reputable science. The fact is this guy had his mind made up and anthropogenic would be blamed no matter what he claims to have found.
Maybe link to this article on WUWT
Also, look for “Helluland”; which may be what is now known asBaffin Island, discovered by Leif Erikson about 1000 years ago. It wasn’t setled because it was too stony/rocky. Later research indicates that Baffin Island was occupied by Dorset-culture (Inuit) people until the 14th century.
This story was thoroughly debunked (by Steve McIntyre among others) when it was published back in October, so why rake it over again, just because someone has seen fit to issue another overhyped press-release?
Boulder is the weed capital of Colorado draw your own conclusions as to where this theory is coming from.
I think the Vikings who first started farming on Greenland would probably dispute this claim.
Refer to:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/02/miller-et-al-s-unprecedented-recent-summer-warmth-in-arctic-canada-bad-assumptions-poor-logic-and-contrary-to-other-evidence-of-arctic-temperatures/?relatedposts_exclude=101913
http://climateaudit.org/2013/10/26/18501/
for details
Shouldn’t it be? We’ve been warming up since the mini-ice age. Once they throw man-made global warming in the dumpster, This will all make since. We are probably in another Medieval Global warming period with more to come.
Nice record and proof to be added to the pile that sunspots are our friends and the lack there of is catastrophic.
Sincerely,
Paul Pierett
The claim “Arctic warmth unprecedented in 44,000 years” is false. It may be that Baffin Island was warmer than ever before, it;s not true for Arctic Siberia, hence not for the whole Arctic See Hubberten et al 2004.
http://epic.awi.de/9052/1/Hub2004a.pdf
See fig 6 at page 1339 (7) column b, also do a search with the term “warmer” to find:
That definitely indicates lower summer temperatures than in the Middle Weichselian,
but still warmer temperatures than today are indicated by the occurrence of some thermophilic plant species (Kienast, 2002).
I hope he did not travel up there on a Russia boat.
They’re evidently giving away too many PhDs these days.
You do not even need a warming trend to melt ice – this is primary school science. All the result show is that the accumulated effect (the integral of all the energy accrued during that period) has led to net melting. Melting is a continuous process not a discrete one.
For example, if I have a bucket of ice and leave it in a room where the temperature increase from -10(degrees C) to 40 (degrees C) for a few hours some of the ice will melt. If the temperature then decreases again to say 20 (degrees C) for the rest of the period the rest of the ice STILL melts. That does not mean that the maximum temperature during that period is 20 degrees. I mean really, is this guy really that stupid.
My apologies. Since should be sense. My BlackBerry almost reads my mind.
Logical falsehood; suppose after burial there have been a series of meltbacks, and finally the covering ice vanished in the latest warming, which happens to be much more limited than all the previous ones.
Helge Andersson on January 22, 2014 at 1:20 am
Yes, true! You are also pointing at a period that might be part of the lowest LFO in a full climate cycle. This plus interglacial time to complete a full cycle. Ie. the shortest period to consider in climate.
Short periods like “30” years is statistical noise and periods like “5000” and “44000” can prove anything … (Basic knowledge of statistics)
The glaciers here in Iceland were much smaller 1000 years ago and almost non-existent 2500 years ago.
See the two maps on this page (the text is in Icelandic):
http://agbjarn.blog.is/blog/agbjarn/entry/811115/
Cart before the horse. Fix the basic physics first and then try to sell us.
“Since the moss samples would have been destroyed by erosion had they been previously exposed”
So a plant, that relies on sunlight and air is destroyed when exposed? Are these people idiots?
Are we talking about stuff buried under a glacier? Don’t glaciers move over time? Doesn’t the tail end of a glacier melt while it is replenished at the top? Sheesh.
Oh God……It’s worse….
How can they lay claim to ‘unprecedented for 44K years” from only a handful of their samples? It could just as well be natural occurring changes in local patterns that altered the landscape.
I hope he is correct, but I doubt it.
N. Hemisphere is on a threshold of significant cooling, so higher the starting temperatures in the Arctic area at the onset of the anticipated cooling, the better for the millions who are even now suffering the ‘fuel poverty’.
Admad
He’s more fundamentally wrong than that. When something melts it gives you no temperature record of the conditions under which it melted. The melting of glaciers is a continuous process acting over 100s or even thousands of years. The dates they are quoting would suggest at best that the last time there was no glacier was 44,000 years ago – that it is not a temperature record. The temperature may have changed up and down after the glacier reached its maximum thickness. In short, the temperature could have been higher in the past but it didn’t last long enough to melt all the ice, what ice was left continued to melt as long as the temperature stayed above 0 more often than it didn’t. You cannot say whether it wasn’t warmer in the past based on this “evidence”. The guy is a moron if he doesn’t get that. The reviewers are morons.
Isn’t this the same study that was thoroughly discredited in October?
One Paleoclimatologist, Jim Bouldin was utterly scathing, noting:
We have four sites clustered together at one end of the 1000km sampling transect that give very anomalous results relative to the 135 samples collected all along that transect. So why in the world are they focusing on those four sites, to the exclusion of the much more geographically extensive 135? How can the authors just blow past this fact without discussing why in any way? Reviewers, HELLO??
and concludes:
The authors conclude with this statement, which really pretty much gives away their bias:
“These findings add additional evidence to the growing consensus that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases have now resulted in unprecedented recent summer warmth that is well outside the range of that attributable to natural climate variability.”
No it does not thank you very much. The study doesn’t even address natural variability. And I thought the consensus was supposedly already pretty much full grown…that’s what I’ve been hearing anyway. And lastly, an area of a few square miles on Baffin Island upon which the thesis rests, does not deserve the general phrase “Arctic Canada” used in the title.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/new-arctic-study-ignores-inconvenient-facts-3/
44,000 years….isn’t that smack in the middle of a full glacial period?
Baffin island had trees during the peak of the Eemian (last interglacial). Until we’ve exceeded that metric it’s within natural variability.
Helge asked: “Aren’t someone forgetting the ice age? The last Ice age started 110.000 years ago, ended for 10.000 years ago. During that period mosses should have been covered. So why mention 44.000 years at all?”
The ice ages are still with us. We are enjoying the warmth of an inter-glacial. Not only that we are still enjoying the prosperity of the Modern Warm Period.
100,000-Years and All That
The dominant period of the last million years or so of the Quaternary ice ages has been about 100,000 years or so (obliquity). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation
But the astronomical theory provides for secondary cycles, nominally 40,000 years (variation in axis tilt) and 20,000 years (precession) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
The 44,000 year age of the organic material found corresponds with the last interstadial called the Mid-Wisconsin interstadial a brief “warm” period. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadial
Scott A. Elias stated in 1999, “A Mid-Wisconsin interstadial warming dating from 43.5–39 ka was rapid and intense. At the peak of the warming event, about 42 ka, TMAX values were only 1–2°C lower than modern.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1417(199905)14:3%3C255::AID-JQS443%3E3.0.CO;2-X/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false.
That mosses were exposed from this interstadial is not indicative of much. The maximum temperature was not much below the present. Besides, the interstadial lasted only 4,000 years, not long enough for the Arctic coasts to rebound to their present elevation.
During the last 12,0000-year the north coast of Norway has risen 120 meters (400 feet).
Alternative hypothesis
These mosses were buried by the last advance of the ice sheet coeval with the end of the Mid-Wisconsin Interstadial. The weight of the ice reached its maximum depressing a land surface that remained lower than the present elevation. The fact that the mosses were buried would account for the lack of erosion of these mosses. Isostatic uplift would explain why well preserved mosses are being exposed now.. Mineral and organic material buried under the surface were not subject to erosion.
Summary: About 44,000 years ago the Arctic coast rose a little and was ice-free part of the year and warm enough for the mosses to grow. Then the glacier resumed its advance and covered the mosses and depressed them below the present elevation. Around 5,000 years ago the land was substantially warmer than at present, but the older mosses were still buried because isostatic rebound had some way to go. Now, 5,000 years later isostatic rebound has exposed the older mosses.
Two uncertainties in this hypothesis: 1) Amount of depresson and isostatic rebound in the Arctic
2) Elevations and depths of the specimens and the GPS coordinates of the sites
Conclusion: The timing is critically important to the claims being made.
cd says:
January 22, 2014 at 2:56 am
Thank you for clarifying my over-simplistic view. Appreciated.
So it was naturally this warm both 5000 years and 44000 years ago in the middle of a glacial cycle. So present range is quite natural. Thanks for that…
Paul Homewood says:
January 22, 2014 at 3:09 am
“Isn’t this the same study that was thoroughly discredited in October?
One Paleoclimatologist, Jim Bouldin was utterly scathing, noting:
We have four sites clustered together at one end of the 1000km sampling transect that give very anomalous results relative to the 135 samples collected all along that transect. So why in the world are they focusing on those four sites, to the exclusion of the much more geographically extensive 135? How can the authors just blow past this fact without discussing why in any way? Reviewers, HELLO?? ”
It looks like “moss picking” is a new form of “cherry picking”.
I thought we were in an ice age 10,000 years ago?
Something about this study seems very contrived and manipulative.
So it was precedented in 44,001 years
And the reasons are
1. took a few thousand years to melt glaciation in the neighbourhood
2. AMO positive half cycle
3. Black carbon with 5.0 W/m2 forcing
Wikipedia says forcing on ice 1.0W/m2 and 3 times warming of equivalent forcing of CO2 -> 3.0 W/m2
Add 1.0W/m2 (IPCC) from black soot in the atmosphere times 2, because almost all soot is in the northern hemisphere -> 2.0W/m2
The “climate forcing due to snow/ice albedo change is of the order of 1.0 W/m2 at middle- and high-latitude land areas in the Northern Hemisphere and over the Arctic Ocean.”[73] The “soot effect on snow albedo may be responsible for a quarter of observed global warming.”[74] “Soot deposition increases surface melt on ice masses, and the meltwater spurs multiple radiative and dynamical feedback processes that accelerate ice disintegration,” according to NASA scientists Dr. James Hansen and Dr. Larissa Nazarenko.[75] As a result of this feedback process, “BC on snow warms the planet about three times more than an equal forcing of CO2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_carbon
The above finding is pretty scary and unprecedented. Forty-four thousand years! Wow! How did Baffin Island stay so frozen up during the last 11,000 years. It stayed locked cold during the Holocene Hypsithermal (Note the reference to a “millenium or more” below).
Did they do test samples for soot around the mosses?
In more northerly Ellesmere Island I find exposed plant life that was last entombed by ice in the Little Ice Age. Some were successfully regenerated.
I’m wondering whether Miller isn’t collecting moss exposed by soot or some other localized mechanism.
Miller was previously covered by WUWT and Judith Curry’s site with plenty of disputin’ and plenty of comments.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/24/claim-last-100-years-may-be-warmest-in-120000-years-in-the-arctic-but-not-so-fast/
http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/29/unprecedented-arctic-warming-part-ii/
Notice that even if this goofball were correct in his main claims, nothing he did or thinks that he found, in any conceivable way shows any connection to AGW claims. And exactly what does he think “normal variability” is and why does he believe that the planet is not simply returning to more warmer temps, as has happened in the past. We have pretty strong evidence that the Earth was significantly warmer than today in the fairly recent past and contradicting that evidence requires a whole lot more ( and more plausible) evidence than he has presented here. He is also way out on a limb with his claim that Arctic temps are proxies for the entire planet. His claims go light years further than what he has actually shown, and are transparently more political than scientific.
Tom in Florida says:
January 22, 2014 at 5:49 am
Paul Homewood says:
January 22, 2014 at 3:09 am
“Isn’t this the same study that was thoroughly discredited in October?
One Paleoclimatologist, Jim Bouldin was utterly scathing, noting:
We have four sites clustered together at one end of the 1000km sampling transect that give very anomalous results relative to the 135 samples collected all along that transect. So why in the world are they focusing on those four sites, to the exclusion of the much more geographically extensive 135? How can the authors just blow past this fact without discussing why in any way? Reviewers, HELLO?? ”
It looks like “moss picking” is a new form of “cherry picking”.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The fact that this is the University of Colorado explains much. The quote of Jim Bouldin explains the rest.
One can only imagine what it was like on Baffin Island during the Medieval time.
Yet Baffin stayed crispy cold.
This tells me that recent Arctic warming has caused widespread melting of 500 year old ice, and in a many places some 1000 and 1,500 year old ice, but in one place in the far southeast, where the ice got really sooty, some 44,000 year old ice melted. Is that about right?
And finally here are some tree lines during the Holocene. Those tree lines are now tundra.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/24/claim-last-100-years-may-be-warmest-in-120000-years-in-the-arctic-but-not-so-fast/#comment-1457628
Go to 6:20
So this guy is following up on his claim and publishing a new ground breaking paper about the mid Wisconsin Glaciation warm period that was warmer than today and mosses grew on Baffin Island?
Helge Andersson says:
January 22, 2014 at 1:20 am
“Aren’t someone forgetting the ice age? The last Ice age started 110.000 years ago, ended for 10.000 years ago. During that period mosses should have been covered. So why mention 44.000 years at all?”
You are correct and it is very telling that Dr. Boulder didn’t say something about this. I believe the reason for his 44k is it is near the limits of usefulness of radiocarbon dating – a real caveman’s remark. I won’t add to the impressive list of logical things wrong that many commenters before here have mentioned regarding temperatures and melting thicknesses of ice – if it was twice as hot as now for a period of 50 years, but the ground was already covered in thick ice, we wouldn’t know about this temperature.
Do Presumptologists actually get paid to imagine stuff and write tall tales?
And call it calculating?
What a limitless arena of hypothetical speculation to consider.
How is real science to avoid being suffocated by the growing blanket of made up stuff?
Has mankind advanced?
Every piece of dirt, drop of water, plant and animal species is being observed with presumptuous eyes producing wild notions just like ancient civilizations did 1000s of years ago.
By “relic moss”, do they mean dead moss? A google search for the term mostly turned up links to this article and no definitions. And if they do mean dead moss, then they must have concluded it’s been dead for 44,000 years (thus the erosion assumption). I’m curious as to their evidence of that.
I notice the press release contains a link to a video, but not to the study.
Wait, so this part of the arctic is as warm as it was in the middle of the last iceage??? Why is this supposed to be alarming??? How in the world could anyone conclude this is outside of normal? Isnt is supposed to be warmer there now? Its an interglacial period afterall…
Id actually think if it WAS this warm in that part of the arctic 44k years ago, this vastly alters what we know about iceages, if random spots so far north are warm enough for moss while it was in the middle of an iceage. LOL
Actually, the much more obvious answer is that this moss was there since the last interglacial if its been there atleast 44k years. You know back when it was several degrees warmer then today, when presumably the moss could actually grow, rather then just barely be exposed.
I also find the conclusion bizarre and I can only assume agenda driven. So according to the study, there is exposed moss that is atleast 44k years old, so obviously this means its totally unnatural!!! Except going only by what they said, it was WARMER there when the moss grew, and was well before humans even made major land use changes let alone released co2. So obviously this happened naturally before, plus enough extra warmth for the moss to grow.
How can someone whos own work shows this DID happen before be proof that this happening is un natural??? Its amazing this stands as “science” and questioning it is “anti science”…. What a brave new world.
If you’re interested in seeing what is wrong with this paper see my review posted on Climate Depot at http://www.climatedepot.com/?s=easterbrook
The author’s use of both “unprecedented” and “consensus” in the same climate-related academic publication is pathognomonic for warmist fixation disorder and grant dependency syndrome.
“Our findings add additional evidence to the growing consensus that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases have now resulted in unprecedented recent summer warmth that is well outside the range of that attributable to natural climate variability.”
http://womenofwisdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Woman-Laughing2.jpg
Correction,
Our findings by ignoring species from the MWP that we carefully didn’t use for our samples and various other samples we didn’t use at other times, have contributed to additional awful science, It is well in the range towards the desperate scientific assumptions that AGW emissions have even any known problems at all.
Reviewers don’t care what the science content is as long as includes something stating the religion at the top.
I don’t know about 44 thousand years but I can tell you that water reaching the Arctic Ocean in 2010 was warmer than anything known for the past 2000 years. This came out in 2010. I know this because I had just determined that Arctic warming is caused by currents that carry warm Gulf Stream water into the Arctic Ocean. Warming started suddenly at the turn of the twentieth century and there was no corresponding increase of CO2 which ruled out the greenhouse effect. Temperature measurements I had were all from the early part of the century and when the one I referred to came out it verified my prediction. In case you wonder why the Arctic is still warming while the rest of the world is not, it is because it’s warming does not depend on atmospheric trace gases but is entirely a product of warm water carried north by currents. It was started by a change of North Atlantic current patterns at the turn of the century and should this pattern change again for any reason we can expect the real Arctic cold to return.
They are recycling this ridiculous claim, again?
This is the same article that was under discussion in November 2013. If you follow the press release link to the abstract, it links to the earlier article.
Assuming for a moment that this claim is correct (it’s not), it would mean that 44,000 years ago it was warmer than now.
But 44,000 years ago CO2 was much lower… so much for the “carbon” scare, then.
Since 44,000 years ago was in the middle of the last Ice Age, the real question is how it could have been warm enough up on Baffin Island back then to uncover the ground and grow moss? It suggests tremendous natural variability in the arctic, for there to be such warming period in the middle of an Ice Age.
re: “the moss samples would have been destroyed by erosion had they been previously exposed…”
The moss samples are now exposed. The fact that they have not yet been ‘destroyed by erosion’ (which we know because they were available to be studied) suggests that they could have been exposed before but, by chance or undefined mechanism, also not ‘destroyed by erosion’ prior to being re-covered. I am unpersuaded by their opening premise.
Glaciers move; glaciers grind to dust everything in their way. Damned tough moss.
dbstealey
“Assuming for a moment that this claim is correct (it’s not), it would mean that 44,000 years ago it was warmer than now.
But 44,000 years ago CO2 was much lower… so much for the “carbon” scare, then.”
From memory, when reading the original article, it was stated that carbon dating is only accurate to about this length of time back. So if it is at least 44k old then it is very likely much older than this, and probably grew when things were warmer, which would be before the last ice age. Talked to a scientist near my work who verified this is in fact true…. i.e you can’t carbon date back more than about 50,000 years with any accuracy.
Baffin = Arctic. first mistake.
Also didn’t a Canadian geologist take some of this ancient moss, thaw it out and it started growing? How does that affect carbon dating methods?
2013……… Fourrrrrrrrrrrrrth warrrrrrrrrrrrrmest everrrrrrrrrrrrr!
One region of Baffin Island and… that’s the entire Arctic… Miller needs to take courses in meteo before making such ridiculous claim.
As the alarmists say – how can you project a regional sample over the globe? for all we know, the Inuits were using the area for freeze dry fish and that is why it never melted.