From the Australian National University and the department of “claim anything” comes this reversal over what was said two years ago about Antarctica:
“If this rapid warming that we are now seeing continues, we can expect that ice shelves further south along the peninsula that have been stable for thousands of years will also become vulnerable,” said Nerilie Abram, of the Australian National University.
So which is it? Rapid warming, or not warming as much because the winds are “strengthened by carbon dioxide”? I’d love to see proof of that mechanism, and no, models aren’t proof. From Eurekalert:
Ocean winds keep Antarctica cold, Australia dry
Why Antarctica isn’t warming as much as other continents
New Australian National University-led research has explained why Antarctica is not warming as much as other continents, and why southern Australia is recording more droughts.
Researchers have found rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are strengthening the stormy Southern Ocean winds which deliver rain to southern Australia, but pushing them further south towards Antarctica.
Lead researcher Nerilie Abram, from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences, said the findings explained the mystery over why Antarctica was not warming as much as the Arctic, and why Australia faces more droughts.
VIDEO: Dr. Nerlie Abram, from the Australian National University, explains why ocean winds have stopped Antarctica from warming as much as other continents. Her research also explains droughts in Southern Australia.
“With greenhouse warming, Antarctica is actually stealing more of Australia’s rainfall. It’s not good news – as greenhouse gases continue to rise we’ll get fewer storms chased up into Australia,” Dr Abram said.
“As the westerly winds are getting tighter they’re actually trapping more of the cold air over Antarctica,” Abram said. “This is why Antarctica has bucked the trend. Every other continent is warming, and the Arctic is warming fastest of anywhere on earth.”
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  IMAGE: Clouds over Australia are shown.Click here for more information. |
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While most of Antarctica is remaining cold, rapid increases in summer ice melt, glacier retreat and ice shelf collapses are being observed in Antarctic Peninsula, where the stronger winds passing through Drake Passage are making the climate warm exceptionally quickly.
Until this study, published in Nature Climate Change, Antarctic climate observations were available only from the middle of last century.
By analysing ice cores from Antarctica, along with data from tree rings and lakes in South America, Dr Abram and her colleagues were able to extend the history of the westerly winds back over the last millennium.
“The Southern Ocean winds are now stronger than at any other time in the past 1,000 years,” Abram said.
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 IMAGE: Dr. Nerilie Abram is shown working on an ice core.Click here for more information. |
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“The strengthening of these winds has been particularly prominent over the past 70 years, and by combining our observations with climate models we can clearly link this to rising greenhouse gas levels.”
Study co-authors Dr Robert Mulvaney and Professor Matthew England said the study answered key questions about climate change in Antarctica.
“Strengthening of these westerly winds helps us to explain why large parts of the Antarctic continent are not yet showing evidence of climate warming,” said Dr Mulvaney, from the British Antarctic Survey.
“This new research suggests that climate models do a good job of capturing how the westerly winds respond to increasing greenhouse gases,” added Professor England, from the Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW.
“This isn’t good news for farmers reliant on winter rainfall over the southern part of Australia.”
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Does anyone know what caused the “variations in sea surface temperature in the eastern South Pacific Ocean”?
Here is a Spring observation. It’s Ozone!
‘By analysing ice cores from Antarctica, along with data from tree rings and lakes in South America, Dr Abram and her colleagues were able to extend the history of the westerly winds back over the last millennium.’ eh?
So what was the wind speed and direction for 1760 in the area ?
Of course they can do such thing , guess work and models all the way with more calls for funding , in reality it’s the authors homage to ‘the cause’ and letting others know there on side. Sooner of later if you doing real science you have to admit your basic claim was wrong when all the evidenced goes against you. Its only little children that stick to ‘because I said so ‘ and think up new crazy ideas to explain reality away.
But to be fair their not doing real science , their doing that very special climate ‘science’
“The Southern Ocean winds are now stronger than at any other time in the past 1,000 years,”
So just who was measuring this, or is there a paleo-proxy for wind? So obviously “no” to both of those options, which just leaves a dodgy model, which nobody can prove right or wrong. I doubt even His Manniness would claim there was a proxy for the wind.
So in typical climate science fashion, even if a statement is obviously complete BS, but cannot be proven to be wrong, it therefore is right.
Sigh………………………….
Co2 causes warming in the Peninsula and cooling everywhere else. The IPCC models predicted more snow on Antarctica towards the end of this century. The only problem is that it’s happening now. Blame co2. The models predicted reduced sea ice extent in Antarctica. It is on an increasing trend since 1979 and near record high anomalies. Blame co2.
It’s amazing, CO2 and Global Warming appear to be universal cause of all the World’s problems, if only we could find an antidote then we’d all be living in Nirvana.
Meanwhile, Australia has been getting wetter in recent years and decades.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/05/11/australias-droughts-decreasing-contrary-to-warmists-claims/
But climate scientists these days don’t seem to be interested in facts!
And of course, droughts have NEVER happened in Australia before.. Never-ever !!!
http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/droughthistory.html
Do they really, actually, truly believe that they can know what winds have been like over the past 1,000 years?
Seriously?
And maybe CO2 is causing “Wind Stilling” in the northern hemisphere.
http://www.knmi.nl/cms/content/89566/wind_stilling_over_the_continents_of_the_northern_hemisphere_in_the_last_30_years
Or maybe there is a oscillation between the 2 hemispheres tied to PDO and/or AMO or some chaotic resonance of the two. The total angular momentum of earth + atmosphere will vary in relationship to the moon and lesser extent sun and planets…but hey it must be CO2 causing the observations because what else? (;>)
Anybody know the name of this 1000 year old Aboriginie they have been consulting? Are they sure his memory isn’t failing him/her? Did he/she know Skippy’s ancestors, & could they also tell people, “What’s that Skippy? The children are trapped down the old mine shaft & the ground water is rising fast, & the bank robbers hid the loot there too before they switched cars & drove back into town to avoid suspicion?” Clever kangaroo, was Skippy!
This is the thing she is talking about.
Nature Climate Change (2014)
doi: 10.1038/nclimate2235
Evolution of the Southern Annular Mode during the past millennium
+ Supplementary Information
Nerilie J. Abram, Robert Mulvaney, Françoise Vimeux, Steven J. Phipps, John Turner & Matthew H. England
15th century, right.
What is the next scare? Maybe Magnetic Reversals are caused by CO2. Or has that been covered? If not, Geophysicists out there, this is your is the basis for your next grant.
Global warming is keeping Australia dry. Yet the decline in sea level in 10/11 was (by one account) attributed to all the water being stored in the continent of Australia. The only way it could have gotten ON the continent is through precipitation. And yet 10/11 was supposed to be a very hot year.
I think that calls for a jabberwocky alert.
Wasn’t it only a year or two ago that they were fudging the data to show that ALL of Antarctica was warming?
Now that they have had to admit that most of Antarctica isn’t warming, up pops an explanation for how the lack of warming is actually caused by CO2.
It is like a game of Whack-a-Mole. Every time the CAGW crowd has to admit that actual real science and data shows one of their poster children of AGW is a lie, they pop up a new theory that ‘proves’ with magic trees and computer models that it is worse than we thought.
The Southern Annular Mode seems to have gone positive since the mid 1990’s, the same time as the AO/NAO started going negative. It takes a decline on forcing for the AO/NAO to go negative.
The only thing “strengthened by carbon dioxide” is the funding for this nonsense. Another Aussie University looses its credibility. Unbelievable.! I also love the “researchers have found” bit.
“Do they really, actually, truly believe that they can know what winds have been like over the past 1,000 years?
Seriously”?
Of course they do.
They read the tree rings…
They are describing the more zonal jets of the (now past) warming period.
The jets are now more meridional so the paper is already out of date.
The change from zonal to meridional occurred DESPITE increasing CO2 whereas it is not long since they said the more zonal jets were BECAUSE of increasing CO2.
Total confusion in the AGW camp.
There is not much upward trend in AAO since 1979 (+0.08/decade), none in the last 17 years (-0.06/decade).
note: AAO is the same as SAM
“We find that the SAM has undergone a progressive shift towards its positive phase since the fifteenth century, causing cooling of the main Antarctic continent at the same time that the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed.”
That will be the recovery from the LIA as the recovery led to progressively more zonal and poleward jets.
Since the commencement of the apparent shift predates the industrial revolution how can it be caused by our emissions of CO2 ?
I have previously mentioned that a tighter zonal flow around the Antarctic tends to wear away the Antarctic Peninsula.
In contrast the Peninsula tends to grow when the jets are more meridional since the landmass distribution favours outflow of cold air in that direction.
Pfft on you skeptics! Everyone knows that the Aborigines had a network of anemometers set up 1000 years ago
Those who have pointed out that climate obsession thinking is very similar to naive religious thinking are once again proven to be correct.
That is bizarre! As soon as I heard this I said to myself – “I bet CO2 has something to do with this.”
And I was RIGHT!!!!!!!!
What are the odds!?!?
Here is a series on longer-term temperature measurements for Antarctica.
A sample of stations to April 2014, more-or-less the most recognized ones – Amundsen-Scott at the south pole, Vostok the coldest weather station on Earth at -55.2C, Mawson on the coast at 70S, and Faraday on the Antarctic Peninsula which was warming until 1985 or 2000 but is not any longer, just like the Antarctic sea ice.
http://s11.postimg.org/y4hh29cn7/Amund_Scott_April14.png
http://s18.postimg.org/s5lxefai1/Vostok_April14.png
http://s23.postimg.org/edkk79bor/Mawson_April14.png
http://s28.postimg.org/r41s9qt3x/Faraday_April14.png
The continent is flat or cooling, the Peninsula was warming until the last two decades.
Southern Ocean temperatures are also flat, or exhibit some long-term cycles. It has really started cooling down in the last decade. If one matched up the Peninsula temps with the southern ocean temps, one might see that we started putting stations here at the bottom of the cycle which has now started on a down cycle.
Southern Ocean SSTs back to 1854.
http://s28.postimg.org/vxwnmnp3x/iersstv3b_180_180_E_55_70_N_na.png
How about a longer period Here is the high resolution (nearly every year) isotope record from Law Dome (thanks to Steve McIntyre for digging this important ice core record out of the dustbins. They did not want you to see the MWP. It is still an unpublished series although all of the GHG trends from the core are available).
The study is the usual pro-AGW made-up science-fiction again.
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/ld2_1kyr1.png
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/lawdome.gif
“Will this wind…”