While the Pacific “blob” seems to have died, this new research say they can find blobs lost in time. What is most interesting is that they say Greenland went through temperature shifts of 10-15 degrees C in just 50 years, all without any man-made influence.
New research published in Scientific Reports in February indicates that a warm ocean surface water prevailed during the last ice age, sandwiched between two major ice sheets just south of Greenland.
Extreme climate changes in the past Ice core records show that Greenland went through 25 extreme and abrupt climate changes during the last ice age some 20.000 to 70.000 years ago. In less than 50 years the air temperatures over Greenland could increase by 10 to 15 °C. However the warm periods were short; within a few centuries the frigid temperatures of the ice age returned. That kind of climate change would have been catastrophic for us today. (link)
Ice core records from Antarctica also show climate changes in the same period, but they are more gradual, with less severe temperature swings.
The Nature Scientific Report study shows that an area of the Nordic Seas, just south of Iceland, followed the Antarctic pattern of warming and cooling. Which is strange since it is so close to Greenland.
“We had expected to see sudden climate changes. But sediment core records from the area show that the climate changes here were actually gradual, and quite identical to Antarctic climate changes.” says CAGE professor Tine Rasmussen, the principal author of the paper.
Gulf Stream holds the answers
Then, as now, the circulation of Atlantic Ocean, with currents such as the Gulf Stream, regulated transportation of heat to this area. Simply put, the surface currents transport heat from the southern and tropical Atlantic toward the North Atlantic.
” The Nordic seas between Norway and Greenland play a crucial role for the current patterns of the Atlantic Ocean. They act as a pump. Here the warm and salty surface water cools down during winter. It becomes heavy and is pumped down to the bottom before returning to the Atlantic, where it continues as a deep current all the way to the Antarctic region. ” co-author Erik Thomsen from Aarhus University ( link) points out.
Without this pump, the north-south current system would slow down considerably. Changes in this circulation can have a profound impact on the global climate system.
During the ice ages this circulation was assumed to work as a seesaw in the playground – going up and down in opposite directions with an axis somewhere around the equator. The idea is that when it warmed in the north, it cooled in the south and vice versa. But Rasmussen and colleagues indicate another scenario.
Rewriting the seesaw hypothesis
During the coldest periods of the last ice age the Nordic seas were covered with a permanent layer of sea ice. The pump stopped transporting the heat northward. The heat accumulated in the southern oceans. However, the warming was not restricted to the south.
” Our results show that it continued all the way to Iceland. The warming was slow and gradual, and happened simultaneously in both hemispheres. Little by little the warm Atlantic water penetrated into the Nordic sea underneath the ice cover. It melted the ice from below. Once the ice was gone, the pump started up again, bringing additional warm water into the Nordic seas. And we got a warmer period for 50 years. ” says Rasmussen.
Large ice sheets continued however, to cover the continents around the Nordic seas. In contact with the warm ocean water they started calving. This delivered icebergs and fresh water into the sea and caused a cooling down of the surface water. The seas were again frozen. And the pump slowed down.
The warm ocean blob of the ice ages rewrites the understanding of the ocean circulation systems, and how they affected the extreme climate changes of the past. The seesaw was actually more of a ‘push and pull’ system.
“There are no symmetrical processes in the north and the south – the climate changes were principally governed by simultaneous warming and the constant closing and re-opening of the sink pump in the Nordic seas” says Tine Rasmussen
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You hear little of the convection of crust heat to the oceans, how quantified is this aspect?
Mark, You will never hear much about that, as the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and should be cooling,yet internally it is bubbling with cracks,vents and volcanoes trying to release excess heat. Does not compute with mainstream science.
The “climate scientists” don’t care that it’s not quantified either. Some old study was done where a couple of scientists ESTIMATED how much heat/gas was being released by measuring a handful of active volcanoes on land (not all….and not continually either) and called it negligible. But then ocean scientists began exploring the ocean floor (oceans cover 70% of this planet) and finding ACTIVE volcanoes, vents, cracks. They hypothesized that ocean floor volcanoes at a certain depth COULD NOT violently explode or erupt due to the pressure of the water above them. THEN they found evidence….a LOT of evidence, that not only CAN it happen, it HAS happened, more than once. The ocean floor that we HAVE examined is covered with old debris, more recent debris, smoking vents with LIVING creatures on/near them in super heated water, minerals and gases spewing out of them, and hot water vents, and plate cracks and volcanoes galore.
Think about it….the tectonic plates might be moving so slowly we cannot see it (but we CAN measure it) but the FORCE of their movement is STILL making the Himalayan Mountains GROW upward! Imagine the pressure and force that takes! To push not only a landmass around, but to push against gravity and move it upward at the same time. An ice skater causes enough gravitational force for the ice between their skate blades and the rink ice to MELT…allowing them to slide across the ice. Mega ton glaciers moving against the GROUND cause enough friction to melt the ice between them which allows them to “slide” due to gravity either pulling or shoving them. If friction can melt ice on the surface, what kind of heat must be caused JUST by the friction of two continents shoving against each other? Not to mention the MOLTEN core of this planet which by the laws of nature MUST be relieving internal pressure and heat outward or it would explode?
Yellowstone is a prime example of a whole lot of deep earth heat and pressure actually arriving at the surface on land. Scandinavian countries where geothermally heated water is a power source….is deep earth heat/pressure arriving at the surface. Hot pots. Natural hot springs. All OVER the surface. And land is only 30% of the Earth’s crust exposed.
http://www.mbari.org/mbari-researchers-discover-deepest-known-high-temperature-hydrothermal-vents-in-pacific-ocean/
http://www.stormchaser.ca/caves/naica/naica.html
The Naica Crystal Caves were formed under intense pressure, and are NORMALLY full of incredibly hot water. It was pumped from the caves by miners, and if they STOP pumping it out, the cave would fill again.
You never, ever, hear “climate scientists” talk about, or acknowledge this stuff:
http://www.livescience.com/15084-radioactive-decay-increases-earths-heat.html
The research funded in response to this will have to include quantum mechanical effects of AGW and its alteration of the past before human causes in linear chronology. An official response will come to patch the problem in the green scriptures.
A ‘hot spot’ directly over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, just south of Iceland?
I have to say it again: submarine vulcanism – it is totally ignored by all ‘global circulation models’, unpredictable, a measurable source of heat input to the oceans, and significant enough to affect ocean currents, which affect surface water and air currents and storm tracks.
http://www.livescience.com/15084-radioactive-decay-increases-earths-heat.html
Just posted that above. So much more out there. But in all of the AGW studies, Earth is treated as a “black body” that has no heat of it’s own, which is a complete and utter lie. They are so incredibly stupid, and they assume everyone else is just as stupid as they are.
Aphan
February 22, 2016 at 1:21 pm
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Thanks Aphan a couple more links for this collection.
One of the first discoveries and realization that volcanoes occur under ocean, was up, under the Arctic Ocean on Gakkel Ridge. They estimated it erupted around 1999 and that it was similar in scope to the eruption that took out Pompeii.
So much of this going on under there.
They don’t yet have a decent handle on this.
Much less incorporate the info into some sort of heating and cooling model.