Reader Phil Hutchings writes via email:
This article in Nature Communications caught my eye!
This is a beauty. This week, Nature Communications published an explanation as to why (at least) 58 New Zealand glaciers grew in the twenty-five years to 2008.
The aberrant behaviour by these naughty glaciers was perfectly explicable though – it was caused by “regional cooling”.
Researchers from NZ’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and Victoria University prepared, yes, a model of the Southern Alps. And yes, they found that in their model, lower air and adjacent ocean temperatures (during those 25 years) were correlated with the growing glaciers.
Fair enough.
But where is the support for this claim ?
“While this sequence of climate variability and its effect on New Zealand glaciers is unusual on a global scale, it remains consistent with a climate system that is being modified by humans”
The paper:
Mackintosh, A.N, Anderson, B.M, Lorrey, A.M, Renwick, J.A., Prisco Frei, & Dean, S.M., Regional cooling caused recent New Zealand glacier advances in a period of global warming. Nature Communications, February 2017
nature-communications-feb-2017 (PDF)
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Growing glaciers is something that does not advance the climate change narrative, until it suddenly does? Local cooling is global warming? And war is peace, and . . .
Well, local cooling doesn’t tell us anything of the globe as a whole. If one country dropped to 40C below zero for the whole year and the rest of the planet rose by 20C, the globe as a whole would be much warmer despite the localized arctic weather. The odd statement is simply a sign of the politicization of the entire field. If they hadn’t included the statement professing compliance to standard orthodoxy, I doubt it would have gotten published.
Let’s not read too much into this, it’s just a “I’m not a heretic, please don’t blacklist me” statement.
The glaciers of the Sahara are not advancing, hence proving the contention that the NZ experience is not world wide. Other glaciers of Oceania are generally not advancing.
G
Other glaciers in Oceania?
Yes but didn’t the NZ weather bureau rig the temperature record to make cooling data into warming data and then refuse to explain their adjustments?
Not a single glacier in Australia has advanced over the last 25 years. In fairness, though, none have advanced either!
B…y fingers nor working:
….retreated either!
Ian: Oceania, from “1984”.
All of the glaciers in the Tuamotu Archipelago, are currently on hold; neither advancing, nor retreating.
The locals are all happy about that, since they don’t have any place left to put all that ice.
g
Don’t worry Ben, it’s purely a Southern Hemisphere phenomenon,
just like “global” warming is a purely Northern Hemisphere one.
The New Zealand Franz Josef glacier mirrored global temperature trends fairly going back at least to the LIA.
Strange, I undertood the glaciers here were all retreating. Where did these guys get their data from?
I visited the Franz Joseph in 1972 and in 2008. There was most certainly an overall retreat during that time.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
Difference between Northern and Southern Hemisphere. Antarctic is not warming in contrast with the Arctic.
I live about 2 hours drive from Franz Josef, on the West Coast of the South Island. It is my experience, over more than 50 years, that the climate here and consequently the snowfall in Alpine areas, is quite dynamic. The glaciers in question respond quickly to temperature and precipitation. Currently the terminal faces are retreating rapidly. However, this should reverse over the next few years as the current summer has been very cold with abundant and regular snowfall in the ice accumulation zones. Down at sea level its been one of the wettest summers in recorded history. The last time the glaciers were fed by massive summer snowfall was 1998/99 after the big El Nino. And what have we just had? A super-sized El Nino. So the current summers precipitation pattern is a repeat of that event. Who would have thunk it? After the huge 1998/99 precipitation event the Franz Josef glacier advanced by about 1 km or so, then subsequently melted back. It looks as if this cycle is about to repeat. It will take probably 4 or 5 years before the new advance reaches its maximum extent, so long as the weather during that period is reasonably average.
I think it was in 2001 that my husband and I took a flight over some of the glaciers and to see Mt Cook and Mt Tasman. We flew from the airfield at Franz Josef and the pilot was at considerable pains to point out where the leading edge of the glacier was circa 12000 years ago! It had retreated during that time by quite a distance but where was the industry and motor traffic in those days?!
Strange, I undertood the glaciers here were all retreating.
Then you’ve been misinformed. 85 – 90% of glaciers have retreated since the 1950s. The World Glacier Monitoring Service shows that most regions have a few glaciers that are growing, most retreating. Specifically mentions New Zealand as an area where there has been some glacier retreat on decadal scales.
http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/pdfs/5.pdf
Correction: Specifically mentions New Zealand as an area where there has been some glacier advance on decadal scales.
Living in New Zealand I can say that we seem to be getting colder. In 2012 in Wellington we had snow down to sea level that lasted for 3 days, which I don’t recall anything like that since the 1970s. This year the summer is exceptionally poor, and looking at the handy global images here on WUWT it is easy to see that we are surrounded by unusually cold water – so I’d expect we may get snow down to sea level this year too. Perhaps this is just ‘weather’ or just the La Nina, but it seems to be gradually getting just a little colder.
Nothing dramatic nor alarming, but it seems colder than the 1980s and 1990s. Which is what you’d expect if Svensmark and Shaviv’s theory about the integrated effect of Solar magnetic activity (which changes cloud cover and the heat stored in the oceans) was a good description of the recent natural climate variability.
So, I’m nothing more than an anecdotal datapoint, but I am onsite 🙂
maybe they are advancing to the rear. or is is retreating to the front?
Google Earth historical imagery show a 630 metre retreat from March 2006 to February 2013.
@Fred berple
They are leading from behind
100 years into the future, people will be reading papers that say something like, The past fifty years of whole-degree global temperature declines has raised concerns that Earth might have transitioned from a warming to a marked cooling phase, but we should not judge this trend to hastily, since anthropogenic CO2 levels continue to rise at a moderate rate, contributing a delayed warming effect that models predict will soon be realized.
R.K. Scientifically phrased Sir.
“too hastily”, … NOT “to hastily”
These glaciers are obviously in denial, and unaware of AGW.
Reminds me of this from The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: “..and then he went on to prove that black is white and got himself killed in the next zebra crossing.”
It’s also consistent with a climate system that is not being modified by humans.
It’s standard scientific double-speak, like this…
Better my couplet were here,
Close but never so near.
================
It’s those nasty hunamzees that are monkeying with the system that’s cousing all of Gaia’s problems.
If we just elinminate the Humanzees, Gaia will be preserved
Mother Gaia has no problems.
Everything is exactly the way she wants it, and she likes it that way.
G
Anything is consistent with a climate system that is being modified by humans. Stop looking for an inconsistency, nitpickers!
Anything is consistent with a climate system that is not being modified by humans or naasty humanzes or hobbits for that matter.
I’m confused. I would like to see a list of possible observations that are inconsistent with a climate system not being modified by humans. With the present model, ice skating on Lake Tanganyika would be consistent and so would water skiing on Frobisher Bay.
Swimming in the Todd River.
Malcom,
The list is infinite.
1. Every possible observation is inconsistent with a climate not being modified by humans.
2. There are no possible observations that are consistent with a climate not being modified by humans.
3. All possible observations are consistent with a climate being modified by humans.
Three hard and fast laws of “Climate Science”, I’m afraid.
Wh at about Mt.kilimanjaro almost on the equator,height 19,341ft,its climate ranges from farmland up through rain forest ,heath ,alpine desert to arctic on the summit .ice present all year round ..almost a complete climate picture !
this [growth in NZ glaciers ] is perfectly in line what I expected from my results
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/13/claim-0-7c-century-is-exceptional/comment-page-1/#comment-2425406
……
can I get an answer to that question?
HenryP
Is your question about the temperature, or the that the NH sea ice is variable reducing while the SH ice is increasing ?ice
Both
Actually
Ozonebust
SH ice is increasing
It’s not. It is the lowest ever measured right now.
“tony mcleod February 15, 2017 at 5:15 pm
It’s not. It is the lowest ever measured right now.”
Measured? No, estimates based on satellite readings.
Strange. In 1998 I visited both Fox and Franz Josef glaciers. Both had retreated so much that a new and quite long extra pathway had been made from the originally constructed viewing site.
this is when the CO2 nonsense had started
an extra pathway is easy to make
one way or another.
Pictures of glacier growth or decline is what counts.
Nobody is disputing that the north pole is meting somewhat and that alp glaciers have been retreating.
Could it be because the magnetic north pole has considerably shifted north east?
Maybe this is where the Arctic ice went to: http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0003488331
HenryP
The likelyhood of it being affected by magnetic factors is unlikely but also unknown.
Currently, at the Atlantic pathway into the Arctic region two opposing ice related events are occuring at the same time. Atmosphere is being displaced into the Arctic region at the Atlantic entry. There has been a change in atmospheric circulation (simplistic). The atmosphere is taking in both heat and moisture. The moisture is increasing the ice accumulation on Greenland, the wind carries on and is influencing the sea ice. Check where the ice is missing on the NSIDC site. When sea ice varies considerably on a day to day basis, its not the ocean temp as the primary driver.
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/pub/DATASETS/nsidc0081_nrt_nasateam_seaice/browse/north/nt_20170212_f18_nrt_n.png
This wind also carries temperature increases into the Arctic. Effectively the temperature is being recorded in place A on day one then the wind takes it to place B. Simply because of a slight change in atmospheric dynamics. I researched the two Russian locations noted as the highest individual global monthly increase for January and February 2016, noted in the UAH reports. The wind direction had changed. That was the primary reason. Heat was being transported in. Remember that the Arctic is adjacent to the largest heat sink (land) and the NH ocean variances.
In the Antarctic, it is the Pacific corridor that is the influence. Wind is travelling into the Antarctic region mainly down that corridore. Again look at the NSIDC image of ice anomaly. In New Zealand we are experiencing a change in wind patterns, there are more westerlies than historical at this time of year. This wind travels across New Zealand, across into the Pacific and down into the Antarctic. In the winter the wind creates and desroys sea ice, as intensity and direction change.
What has been entirely overlooked, is that since the temperature anomaly increases starting about 1980, so too has the tropopause atmospheric volume, primarily in the NH. This alters circulation patters most notably in the July to November period. Tropopause movements are one of the primary movers of atmosphere, especially in a downward direction most notably between July and November in the NH. I rarely see any reference to the tropopause on any matter, let alone atmospheric circulation, but in my opinion it is the most power influence in the troposphere. The downward movements are not smooth, and create atmospheric movement, pressure and velocity pulses. You can see the effects of these pulses in the contours of the NH sea ice leading up to and after the minimum. The same applies to the Antarctic. Variance on a day to day basis.
I will provide charts etc. at a later date. A work in progress.
Regards
I visited both end of 2006, and ice was falling off both, and both were along way up from where they were 100 years ago.
So they come and go; ho hum.
G
“Fox and Franz Josef glaciers. Both had retreated so much “
Yes. From the paper, here is the graph. The period of advance was a “pause”
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/2017/02/nz.png
Nick
Was there also a record of precipitation, snow fall over the same period ?
The graph is out of context. Prior to 1900 all these glaciers were at an unusually extended length and thickness following the Little Ice age. In other words they were at the maximum size for the last 7000 years or so. These glaciers have still got a long way to melt back before they even get close to the Holocene minimum size. Nevertheless, there is no way of knowing what the future trend in glacier length is going to be. It is not clear whether glacial retreat is paused, continuing, or turning around.
Shades of Arctic sea ice in 1979, at or near its 20th century high when the dedicated satellite record began.
“The graph is out of context”
No, it’s providing context which was lacking in this post on “advancing glaciers”. And the plot covers the period when people wrote down their observations.
So you’ve got 4 of the 58+ covered. Great. Advancing…err, pausing…during warmest years and decades evah. https://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/nz-temp-record/seven-station-series-temperature-data
In fact the photograph of the news article was taken from the end of the road at the old viewing site.
Same old, same old.
“Riddle of the Glaciers
1939-
The steady retreat of the glaciers in New Zealand he said had been observed during
the last 70 years. Photographs taken in 1896 and 1935 showed that several glaciers had
retreated distances varying from 100 yards to half a mile in 40 years”
The phenomenon, however, was world-wide. Equally impressive records were obtainable from Switzerland, Scandinavia, Iceland and the United States. Attempts had been made to reconcile these observations with the Brucknercycle of climate change every 16 years. Professor Speight said, but so many discrepancies occurred that in his opinion precise synchronisation with that period could not be accepted.
In Alaska glaciers had been retreating from 100 to 200 years, the average rate of recession being about 50 feet a year. The Antarctic ice-sheet also showed signs of recent retreat. “In fact,” said Professor Speight, “no case is recorded of a region of the world in which there are present signs of an advance. This is quite apart from the general retreat since the pleistocene age and may be merely a pacing phase. Its precise significance can only be determined by continued observation.”
http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/17557868?searchTerm=NEW%20ZEALAND%20GLACIERS%20melting&searchLimits=
1998, you mean the Super El Nino that year ? As someone who lives in New Zealand, it seems to be getting colder the last few years – consistent with the change in Solar magnetic activity changing the rate of heat transfer to the oceans (via water vapor changes, see Svensmark and Shaviv).
Warrick,
I visited the Fox glacier in 1979 and it had evidently retreated recently because there was no vegetation on the outwash plain or adjacent hillsides. I returned in 1989 and it had retreated dramatically since my previous visit. If it is now advancing, I’d be interested in knowing when the reversal occurred.
They claim “unprecedented global ice loss has occurred
during the last three decades” and “predominantly negative global glacier
mass balance between 1991 and 2010”. I’ve looked briefly to see if this is true, but can’t find anything I’ve any confidence about. Does anyone have the ‘truth’?
While “unprecedented” is unlikely to be supported by any sort of data, glacier mass balance has been predominately negative since the late 1800’s… At least for the fraction of the world’s glaciers with mass balance data.
http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/
The recent decline in mass balance is very similar to the early 20th century decline.
Most alpine/valley/mountain glaciers formed after the Holocene Climatic Optimum and then advanced (Neoglaciation) up until the end of the Little Ice Age, when they reached their maximum Holocene extent. Since glacier mass balance is always increasing or decreasing and it had been increasing from about 3,000 BC up until the 1800’s, it’s a very good thing that glacier mass balance has been predominately negative since the late 1800’s.
thanx DM, that put it into perspective.
Since glacier mass balance is always increasing or decreasing and it had been increasing from about 3,000 BC up until the 1800’s
Do you have a reference for that?
Consistent with and without;
Just why is it I doubt?
============
They’ll make up their mind one day
http://www.franzjosefglacier.com/social/blog/watch-2-years-of-glacier-retreat-in-15-seconds/
There’s certainly comedy value in this claim. But it is actually quite pitiful (a) that the authors made it in the first place, and (b) that the peer reviewers allowed it to stand.
r u saying the results are not true?
Simple truth: You can’t get a grant to study squirrels in New York, but you can get one to study the effect of climate change on squirrels in New York.
Quite possibly the peer reviewers, or the editor, asked for its insertion.
Few years ago T.S. Stocker proposed hypothesis of the ‘bipolar see-saw’ (Antarctica vs Greenland)
“The see-saw is coupled to a heat reservoir of the Southern Ocean or another slowly responding component of the climate system.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003PA000920/full
Didn’t I read recently that properly adjusted weather stations have proven that New Zealand is warming, not cooling as the raw data erroneously indicated.
Yes, it’s ice. But it’s warm ice!
Define “properly adjusted”, please. To my mind, it simply means “adjusted so as to create a warming trend”.
Anything to keep to the narrative.
yes, same thing in Oz. Most of Australia shows cooling in the raw data, until it is “corrected”. Seems the temperature record has bipolar disorder too: it does not know whether it is up or down.
As the globe warms, nature looks for regions where all the cool can trickle into.
From the “everything, including extreme cold and more ice is caused by global warming” playbook:
“A growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a pattern that we can expect to see with increasing frequency as global warming continues,” Holdren asserts. Watch it:”
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/01/john-holdren-video-polar-vortex
The above(January 2014) was just weather and of course we can still have record cold outbreaks with a warming planet………….but to BLAME them on global warming with a special authoritative video from an expert is something completely different……….in this case, damage control to feed the captured minds propaganda, so they don’t get skeptical(or apply too much critical thinking) of the CAGW theme.
With a SSW(Sudden Stratospheric Warming) event last month, the following, extremely comprehensive discussion related to the polar vortex event of Jan 2014 is still relevant. I consider that article to be one of the best at WUWT.
“A Displaced Polar Vortex and Its Causes”
justthefactswuwt / February 1, 2014
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/01/a-displaced-polar-vortex-and-its-causes/
Witness the glacial dance,
recede…. and then advance.
when you have no null hypothesis everything fits. How you call a theory without a null hypothesis “science” is an entirely different question.
reject the null? fail to reject the null?
what nonsense!
thanx DM, that put it into perspective for me.
Yes, this came out in NZ’s leading newspaper. Later, I will publish here the temperature record from a nearby weather station
How sad to find yourself in a field which requires fealty oaths.
Worldwide their is no denying the majority of glaciers are retreating. And… it is no surprise that some will buck the trend, even in a country (NZ) that has shown significant warming over the last 100 years. It is an interesting phenomenon and one well worth researching.
Sorry but that is BS. The data has been checked and is fine. Move on. Ask the NZ Climate Change Coalition how they got in in court challenging the data. That’s if you can find the cowards who ran for the hills when the court ordered them to pay $80k. Wasted tax payers money on that goose chase.
“Simon February 15, 2017 at 10:41
And… it is no surprise that some will buck the trend, even in a country (NZ) that has shown significant warming over the last 100 years.”
Do you have evidence to back up that claim? How many thermometers were in NZ 100 years ago?
Ohh so you think NZ will be different to the rest of the planet. Some sort of wildly warm place 100 years ago. Really…. prove it.
“Simon February 15, 2017 at 5:39 pm”
You made the claim NZ is significantly warmer now than 100 years ago. I do believe that burden of proof lies with you.
I don’t know anything about glaciers or the study of.
The definition of “glacier retreat” is?
a. Less volume in the total mass
b. increase in elevation at the “toe”
c. both a and b
d. no real definition; ‘a’ when convenient, ‘b’ when convenient, or ‘c’ to when convenient to complement a specific storyline.
e. used incorrectly as often as it used correctely
Also, is there a (known/estimated) lag time and relationship between the downhill movement of a glacier vs the rate of accumulation of mass of a glacier? For example could a large accumulation of mass 80 years ago relate to a very fast loss beginning 30 years later, and end up with the “toe” of the glacier looking like it was running back up the hill (appearing to represent a big current loss of mass to those that don’t know what is really happening).
There is far more data for changes in the leading edge than mass balance. The World Glacier Monitoring Service uses both and quantifies the delineation.
Local ice changes probably are the effect of a local climate.
Same goes for the Arctic.
This seems sensible to me.
Can we send some of the additional glacier ice to the Arctic? You know, to make Griff feel better?
Aren’t glaciers in Tierra del Fuego (Patagonia, southern South America) also advancing? If so, the “regional cooling” may include all of the higher latitudes of the southern hemisphere. At what point does the cooling stop being “regional” and start being “circumpolar”.
Larry Barden
Cooling only in SH
It is cooling in the USA as well. Possibly also other parts of North America, Europe and Asia.
This big Patagonian one is growing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perito_Moreno_Glacier
As are those in the Darwin Range of Tierra del Fuego:
http://www.academia.edu/14696096/Little_Ice_Age_and_recent_glacier_advances_in_the_Cordillera_Darwin_Tierra_del_Fuego_Chile
Chile has experienced possibly greater than normal heat and wind this summer, driving forest fires, many of which were set by people. Dunno what the effect has been on Patagonian glaciers.
Glaciers are lying:
https://www.google.ca/search?q=new+zealand+temperature+trends&biw=1920&bih=920&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwir-vKT55LSAhUUXGMKHUKQB1gQsAQIQQ&dpr=1#imgrc=rgsiIwOdTr7ACM:
obviously….
It’s rotten ice.
Which looks consistent with the NATURAL warming started at the end of the Little Ice Age. That is exactly what we’d expect to see if Solar Magnetic Activity was driving the climate.
Bipolar seesaw anyone?
Break out your Woollies!! BREAK OUT YOUR WOOLLIES!! We are all going to FRY – sorry – FREEZE