UQ study – Global change takes thousands of years
Story submitted by Eric Worrall
A University of Queensland study into New Zealand glaciers has discovered a huge disparity between Southern and Northern Hemisphere climates, during the natural warming which occurred at the end of the last Ice Age. The new study overturns the previous consensus that glacial retreat occurred globally at the same time – the study shows that glacial retreat in New Zealand was delayed by thousands of years.
According to Professor Jamie Shulmeister, head of the UQ School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management;
“This study reverses previous findings which suggested that New Zealand’s glaciers disappeared at the same time as ice in the Northern Hemisphere,” he said.
“We showed that when the Northern Hemisphere started to warm at the end of the last ice age, New Zealand glaciers were unaffected. “These glaciers began to retreat several thousand years later, when changes in the Southern Ocean led to increased carbon dioxide emissions and warming.
”This indicates that future climate change may impact differently in the two hemispheres and that changes in the Southern Ocean are likely to be critical for Australia and New Zealand.”
The study described in the press release, in my opinion, has interesting implications for modern climate change. Even if alarmists are right about climate sensitivity to CO2, if the Pacific Ocean has the capacity to retard major climate shifts, for thousands of years, then we have thousands of years to solve any problems we might be causing – which kind of takes the urgency out of the issue.
The last glacial maximum in New Zealand produced glaciers that were not very extensive. See:
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/map/8388/shoreline-during-the-last-glaciation
In my view, it is a bit of a stretch to conclude anything about the state of the Southern hemisphere based on the activity of a few small glaciers situated on a tiny dot in a huge ocean. Thingadonta makes a good point above. Variations in NZ glaciers are greatly enhanced by rain falling from moist westerly winds.
The one sacred truth I hold to is the climate is more complex and less understood than the “warmists” assert.
My second sacred truth is the science isn’t settled.
Billy Liar says:
>> In my view, it is a bit of a stretch to conclude anything about
>> the state of the Southern hemisphere based on the activity of
>> a few small glaciers situated on a tiny dot in a huge ocean.
A tiny dot ? That’s odd … when I look at a map of the Southern
Hemisphere I can see New Zealand quite clearly. Not surprising
really, given that its land area is about 70% of that of Japan.
Rex says:
August 4, 2014 at 10:50 am
New Zealand = 0.15% of the surface area of the Southern hemisphere.
This strikes me as a continutation of the ongoing debate over a “polar see-saw” effect – a process which seems to logically explain out-of-phase pulsations in the ice of both poles. Other than the fact that warmists can’t directly attribute those phase-changes to CO2, I don’t see how they pick a fight over the (likely) effects of the various Milankovitch cycles.
Rod Chilton says: I am not so sure that Glaciers are a very good indicator of climate changes. Glaciers respond to not only temperatures, but to precipitation as well as a reaction to combinations of both temperature and precipitation (whether snow or rain is also vital). And too, there are even some glaciers that react to internal mechanisms such as basal warming between the ice mass and the underlying substrate. New Zealand and its proxy (primarily glaciers) have always shown climate changes out of phase with areas further north precisely for this reason. The Younger Dryas is a case in point. Some but not all proxy (again primarily glaciers) display a mixed signal in New Zealand. Whereas, most studies in southermost South America are in phase with changes further to the north and throughout the Northern Hemisphere. As is one study I am aware of in southern Australia. There is even one study in Antarctica near the coast that shows in phase changes in the Younger Dryas. Though admittedly other lower resolution Antarctica ice core results display the out of Phase “polar seesaw.” So in effect, the study presented here as new results, is not! . Thank-you Rod Chilton, climatologist http//www//bcclimate.com.
Phewww….
He managed to get a mention of CO2 in there somewhere, to secure his funding.
/sarc
The hydrological cycle and the bi-polar climate see-saw
Publication in Nature Geoscience of recent research results
http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/about-the-department/news/news-archive-2010/february-2010/the-hydrological-cycle-and-the-bi-polar-climate-see-saw
Darn, us here in Michigan were hoping that we would see some of Al Gore’s promises of hotter summers and disappearing winters. Now the ocean can delay that thousands of years?
Billy Liar says:
>> New Zealand = 0.15% of the surface area of the Southern hemisphere.
So what. It’s not “a tiny dot” … I can see it plain as
day on any world map.
If you flip New Zealand across the equator, and put it in the Northern Hemisphere; and park it off the California coast, then Stuart Island would be way up in the Gulf of Alaska, and North Cape would be below the Mexican border, and Auckland, will be right off San Francisco.
So much for dots between your eyes.
Also. the Kiwi doesn’t have a tail; so it doesn’t “back up” (can’t). So we sometimes sit on our notail, and think on it.
Both Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers essentially come down to sea level, near nice beaches with sun and surf. So it is not like train buff, Pachauri’s Himalaya glaciers, that come down to 18,000 feet.
And both advance and retreat now and then.
They were both still there in 2006 when I went there, and it was Christmas (summer time).
So there !
In the past half century, Southern Hemisphere westerly winds (the ‘Roaring Forties’) have quickened 10 to 15 per cent and moved 2 to 5 degrees closer to the South Pole – meaning fewer storms are reaching as far north as Australia.
This is why glaciers on the western side of the South Island of New Zealand are advancing or are stable and those on the eastern side are retreating. It would be very interesting to determine whether the same effect applies along the Andes – particularly in Terra del Fuego and Patagonia….
If they are, as I expect; then there may well be a good case to be made that the massively important Antarctic Circumpolar Current (which is wind-driven) is ‘automatically spinning up’ in response to globally increased atmospheric CO2.
Some years ago I discovered that the (negative) difference between the global mean CO2 level (or if you like at Mauna Loa) and at all SH CO2 monitoring stations below about 30 S has always been (since measurements commenced) slowly but steadily increasing monotonically – even to as far north as the Southwest Pacific Gyre (e.g. Easter island) and Crozet Island in the Indian Ocean. This suggests that the global band of cyanobacterial productivity influenced by the Current (the biggest on the planet) is very probably also increasing. I also found that that such cyanobacterial productivity behaves differently through an annual cycle in the SH to that in the NH. I published these findingson the excellent Niche Modeling blog of David Stockwell. They appear nowhere in the literature so I claim originality.
Think (maybe) ‘Homeostasis’. Think (maybe) ‘Gaia’. Think (maybe) ‘Thank you Drake Passage’….
Of course; as soon as Stephen Wilde says his ‘theory’ predicts all this stuff too I’m off down to the pub to drown these thoughts!
But..but..Jeff Alberts
Are there not more things of heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies?
Getting my Geology from Peter Jackson? Hang on, mate! I suspect I was wrong about the volcanoes, but surely you agree South Island is mountainous and not fully explored. Anyway, it is beautiful scenery. But is it not true they call it the shaky isles?
“These glaciers began to retreat several thousand years later, when changes in the Southern Ocean led to increased carbon dioxide emissions and warming”.
I thought that the records showed things warmed up first before the CO2 came out to play, but they keep repeating this cart before horse in the hope that it might become true?
James Bull
“but let’s drop the issue as it serves no purpose, the commenter has been notified that the comment was in poor taste -mod”
OK, fair enough, but there is far too much rampant anti-Semitism these days, particularly amongst the Left and the Greenslime. We (and I am not Jewish, and have no overtly Jewish friends at all) do not need to see a resurgence of racial/religious hate that the socialist/fascists perfected in the 1930’s.
Crap is crap, and any right-minded person calls out crap. Failure to do so is detestable cowardice.
You wanna calm down mate, we do science with some politics here, taking up cudgels on behalf of others who ably and patently can take care of themselves, all round – is a waste of breath.
Bill H. says:
August 4, 2014 at 5:02 am
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Bill H doesn’t know the difference between the LIA and the BIA (Big Ice Age). Milankovitch Cycles give extra insolation at temperate latitudes in one hemisphere at a time. Extra summer melting is what ends the ice ages, and this study goes to show that 100W/m^2 TOA plus albedo amplification render 2W of CO2 amplification insignificant. Over recent millennia northern glaciers melted; southern didn’t. Therefore, CO2 feedback neither causes nor prolongs ice ages. It would affect both hemispheres simultaneously on all time scales. And most glaciologists agree: the LIA was global. –AGF
It’s a chaotic system. Large scale and amplitude changes can occur without notice given the right conditions (e.g. sink, source, or confluence). The assumption is that the system is reasonably stable, which precludes sudden and overwhelming changes. This is the basis for all scientific work and life as we know it.
njsnowfan says:
August 4, 2014 at 5:11 am
Richard M says:
August 4, 2014 at 6:14 am
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You both labor under the same misconception. Orbital forcing is independent of TSI. TSI measures the sun’s energy output; orbital forcing describes its distribution over the earth. While global variation is slight at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), it is highly asymmetrical between hemispheres, providing more summer heat alternately to each. Moreover due to a highly asymmetrical distribution of land mass and sea ice each hemisphere responds to variable insolation in a different manner. Albedo/ice cover varies much more in the north than in the south.
Dave. says:
August 4, 2014 at 8:24 am
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Go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles#mediaviewer/File:Vostok_420ky_4curves_insolation.jpg
The graph shows T and GHG response to insolation (Milankovitch Cycles). Going from right to left you can see some pretty steep climbs: T and CO2 etc. rise in tandem. What they are really measuring is albedo, i.e., ice sheet extension. Their correlation indicates cause and effect to be sure, but the cause is ice. And when it melts fast–over just a few thousand years–T climbs, the ocean gasses out CO2, and the melting permafrost leaks methane.
So…sudden, maybe, depending on the scale discussed. –AGF
When one considers what is currently being experienced in Antarctica, one can be forgiven for thinking the southern hemisphere has entered a long term cooling phase.
Titus: you comment that ‘If you visit nz South Island, Franze Joseph and Fox glaciers, you will see markers going back to, if I recal, the late 1700’s. There were large retreats (relatively speaking) in the 1800’s and slowed down up until 1985 when they started to advance. Quite spectacular to see and get up really close.’
A refreshing touch of real world reality here!
I find it interesting that between 2003 and 2010, numerous items of archaeological interest were recovered from melting ice in the Alpine Schnidejoch pass. These date from the Neolithic period, early Bronze Age, the Iron Age, Roman times, and the Middle Ages, spanning a period of 6000 years.
The Schnidejoch has yielded some of the earliest evidence of Neolithic human activity at high altitude in the Alps, and clearly proves access to high-mountain areas as early as the 5th millennium BC, and the chronological distribution of the finds indicates that the Schnidejoch pass was used mainly during periods when glaciers were retreating.