From Vanderbilt University and the “yes, but if it happened today, it would be blamed on global warming” department.
Wet and stormy weather lashed California coast… 8,200 years ago
First high resolution evidence of California climate response to Holocene 8.2 ka event
The weather report for California 8,200 years ago was exceptionally wet and stormy.
That is the conclusion of a paleoclimate study that analyzed stalagmite records from White Moon Cave in the Santa Cruz Mountains published online Jun. 20 in Scientific Reports.
The Golden State’s 150-year stretch of unusually wet weather appears to have been marked by particularly intense winter storms and coincides with a climate anomaly in Greenland ice cores first detected in 1997. Before this “8.2 ka event” was discovered scientists thought the world’s climate had been unusually stable during the Holocene, the geological epoch that covers the last 11,700 years of Earth’s history.
Since then researchers have associated the distinctive, 3.3-degree Celsius temperature dip in the Greenland ice cores with a catastrophic event: The drainage of two giant glacial lakes (Lake Ojibway and Lake Agassiz) located in northeastern North America caused by the collapse of massive ice sheet that covered much of the continent during the last ice age. In short order, the two lakes dumped enough melt water into the North Atlantic to disrupt the world’s oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns and raise the sea level by somewhere between two to 10 feet. The tremendous freshwater flood has been associated with an extended cold snap in Europe, increased drought in Africa, weakened monsoons in Asia and strengthened monsoons in South America.
“This is the first high-resolution evidence of the response of the coastal California climate to the most distinctive event in the Holocene. Although the effects appear to have been less severe than in other parts of the world, it provides us with new information about the nature of this global climate event,” said Jessica Oster, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University, who directed the study.
Oster is a member of a small community of earth scientists pioneering the use of mineral deposits in caves as proxies for the prehistoric climate. Cave formations, including stalagmites and stalactites, can provide valuable information about the climate for the last 600,000 years. They have a built-in clock: The mineral deposits contain radioactive uranium-234 that decays into thorium-230 at a constant rate so the ratio of the two isotopes is determined by the date the mineral deposit formed. Seasonal variations in water seepage produce layers that can be dated with considerable precision. The ratios of other isotopes in the minerals including oxygen and carbon provide information about the temperature and nature of the vegetation in the region at the time the layers formed. Concentrations of trace elements like magnesium, strontium and phosphorus provide information about how wet the environment was.
“Events like this are particularly difficult to study because they are so brief,” said Oster. “Fast-growing stalagmites are particularly good for this purpose because they have very high temporal resolution.”
With a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation, Oster is analyzing stalagmites from two California caves in order to shed new light on the factors that produced megadroughts in the region during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. During her studies, she discovered a stalagmite that was growing rapidly just before, during and after the 8.2 ka event.
By analyzing the oxygen and carbon isotope ratios and the concentrations of the trace elements phosphorus and magnesium in the mineral layers formed from 6,900 to 8,600 years ago, Oster and her collaborators extracted a considerable amount of information about what was going on in the prehistoric California atmosphere.
According to the paper, “…the new record suggests that the 8.2 ka event was associated with a brief period of wetter conditions, potentially arising from increased storminess, and demonstrates a near synchronous climate response to this event on both sides of the Pacific.”
Climatologists are particularly interested in this prehistoric event because it can provide insight into what would happen if global warming reaches a point where glaciers in Greenland and other parts of the globe melt rapidly enough to dump large amounts of fresh water into the ocean. In 2003, for example, the Office of Net Assessment at the U.S. Department of Defense produced a study of prospective climate change specifically based on this event.
###
It was probably due to an increased consumption of firewood by early humans once they discovered BBQ.
Yep, those barbies were a mammoth undertaking back then.
I always wanted to order a rack of mammoth ribs like the Flintstones.
Nice thing about mammoth rib BBQ is that you can use the bones to build your dwelling after eating the meat and fat off them.
I heard on the news today that California was experiencing “extreme” heat. We used to call that a heat wave. Now, many things we used to call weather is no “extreme” to further the CAGW ideology.
Now “extreme”
Use numbers and you will avoid the possibility of confusion caused by loose terms like heat wave.
Done.
“Livermore’s 106 degrees Sunday bested the previous record of 105 set 99 years ago.” (East Bay Times, 18 June 2017)
Since weather is now climate, let’s see … that’s 1 degree of warming per century. Problem solved!
Steven, you should direct your criticism of the term “heat wave” to the Leftstream Media/CAGW promoters.
Here’s today’s UPI headline:
“Climate scientists predict an increase in deadly heat waves”
Here is yesterday’s AP story on “heat waves”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Killer heat is getting worse, a new study shows.
“Deadly heat waves like the one now broiling the American West are bigger killers than previously thought and they are going to grow more frequent, according to a new comprehensive study of fatal heat conditions.”
Here’s the phys.org headline on heat waves:
https://phys.org/news/2017-06-deadly-heatwaves.html
“Deadly heatwaves will continue to rise, study finds”
Yes, there are a lot of people throwing around loose terms.
My question is: How long does high heat have to remain in one place before it becomes a “heat wave”? A couple of days does not a heat wave make, imo. Weeks and months is the timeframe for heatwaves.
So, in your “mind” extreme heat is less “loose” than heat wave?
Mr Mosher you should be too ashamed to show your face and name to people after the darkening of science you have contributed to.
An interesting study in MSM exaggerations would be to take temperature extremes (say, temps above and below 2 or 3 standard deviations from a region’s mean) and plot them versus some sort of agreed-upon quantification of adjectives’ meaning and frequency of use in the MSM reporting. I suspect the results of such a study would show that heat waves generate the use of more adjectives of extreme meaning by the MSM than cold waves of similar deviation below the mean.
Steve,
Our local CBS affiliate interviewed a physician on the radio this past Saturday with regard to our heat wave and extreme heat. The doctor stated that temperatures above 104F could lead to seizures or convulsions. He is, of course, wrong, as the temperature in Phoenix has been above 110, and it was reported to be 117 in Las Vegas, with no massive incidence of convulsions or seizures. He is, of course, right, as a brain temperature greater than 104 can lead to convulsions or seizures. Forgot to metnion that detail of course.
BTW, hi from Dave Blancett.
Sorry, previous comment was in response to the request to use numbers.
Here’s some more. At 4 PM Saturday, Long Beach was reported to be at 90F, while Laguna Beach, just down the coast, was reported to be at 71F. Now, both have UHI, although Long Beach, substantially larger than Laguna Beach, probably has more UHI than Laguna Beach. I suspect that the Long Beach reporting station is at the airport, several miles from the beach, while Laguna’s is probably at the City Hall, all of three blocks from the beach. Numbers are useful, but one needs to know where they come from.
I’m old enough, and have lived in enough places, to know that we didn’t used to get Heat Advisories or Heat Warnings from the NWS, even when the temperatures were in excess of 100F. Is it just that our parents actually taught us how to handle weather, and today’s young folks haven’t a clue?
…of course, they’re snowflakes; and you know what happens to snowflakes at these temperatures.
Brians356 -That 1 degree per century is Fahrenheit, which is about 0.56 Celsius per century.
Didn’t Martha & the Vandellas sing a song about just such a thing about 50 years ago?
Yes, they did. Like a Heat Wave! Although I think it was a personal heat wave they were referring to. Good song.
Lake Agassiz was predominantly located in the upper Midwest, over North Dakota, Minnesota, Manitoba and Ontario, not the northeastern US.
Yes, the CA alarmists are predicting the first unprecedented extreme heat event since last summer.
I think I’ve found the problem with alarmists: They cannot learn anything because they cannot remember anything.
Amen! Let’s make that be graffiti on the walls of every city hall:
“If people tell the truth they don’t need to remember anything. If people tell lies they have to remember everything.”
This geologic evidence of stormy weather 8,200 years ago proves only one thing: that the Standard Oil Company and my Chevy Blazer were invented much earlier than previously known. Secret suburbanites were bombing around the countryside heedless of the effects on future generations, and look what happened! Paleolithic slobs were probably barbecuing, also, and the first domesticated animals were farting to their hearts’ content — something wild animals never do. Buffalo, birds and beavers hold it in, don’t you know?
If only they had sent the Rockefellers and General Motors execs to prison by 6,000 B.C. — and the Henry Fords of that time (Ford invented the charcoal briquette) — the world would still be a flaw-free paradise with perfect weather all the time, instead of the hellhole we have to put up with nowadays.
A very interesting study. Just one minor point, the lake drainage is said to have raised, “the sea level by somewhere between two to 10 feet”…that’s quite a spread. It’s just that we so often read “scientific” claims about “warming”, “melting”, “rising” where the people that make the claims are really, really sure, but then your read the range of whatever and you’re like “You’re kidding?” But they’re not. For example, the IPCC is still -predicting- oops, I meant “projecting” Global Temperature Change of +1.4 to +5.8° C by 2100. My thought is, if I’m paying for this kind of non-precision you’re fired. Their sea level estimate for 2100 is even more wobbly: 4 inches or 3 feet.
It would be interesting how this correlates with other proxies in the same climate region, if there are any. The one thing that can definitely be stated about proxies for climate is that while they correlate, the correlation is definitely not 1.0.
The 8.2 KA event is extremely well documented by proxies all over the world. It is usually the most conspicuous abrupt climate change during the whole Holocene.
Do YD impact fantasists also imagine another impact at 8.2 Ka?
I saw a breathless newspaper headline yesterday about the heat wave in California: “99-year Record Broken, Climate Change Brings Killer Heat”. Huh. If the previous record was set 99 years long ago, and was broken by only a degree or two today, that alone suggests (to folks with common sense, anyway) there has been no significant warming for 100 years.
“… 99 long years ago … “. You’re right, Mod, time for a hosting platform upgrade. (Yes, I donated $$.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P-N-HA9iS8
Excuse my french but; crottin de cheval! It is pure Alarmist fantasy, based on pseudo-science fiction, a la The Day After Tomorrow.
Here we are at the melting period for Greenland, and the smb is still sitting way up there as compared to any other year in the DMI data set. …http://beta.dmi.dk/uploads/tx_dmidatastore/webservice/b/m/s/d/e/accumulatedsmb.png
It would take an incrediable amount of heat to melt the Greenland glaciers to such a degree as to shift oceanic and atmospheric patterns. If that did occur, there would be few people around to observe it.
The Eemian was hotter than the Holocene and lasted half again as long as our current interglacial so far, yet the Greenland Ice Sheet remained intact. The Northern Dome was hardly affected at all, while the Southern Dome lost perhaps 25% more mass than it has to date in the Holocene.
A sudden influx of cold, fresh water such as at the 8200 YBP event isn’t going to happen.
But it is good to see that the 8.2 Ka event was indeed global, contrary to Mann’s mendacious assertions for the LIA and Medieval Warm Periods.
I’m not sure you’re right there. Recent work has shown Greenland’s ice sheet to be episodic than previously thought:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/greenland-once-lost-nearly-all-its-ice-and-could-again/
Also, I understand tropical biota of eocene age have been found in Greenland. Pretty hard to reconcile that with an intact ice sheet.
The Eemian Interglacial was the last one, from about 132 to 114 Ka. The intervals when southern Greenland was ice free were in even longer and hotter interglacials and when even the north was largely ice free were back before 1.1 Ma, when glacials lasted only 41,000 years.
You’re comparing apples and oranges. Consider only the interglacials after the Mid-Pleistocene Transition from shorter to longer glacials. That’s the relevant interval.
Nobody ever suggested that Greenland was icy during the Eocene, which was the warmest epoch of the Cenozoic. Earth became icy after the Eocene-Oligocene boundary ~34 Ma, when the opening of deep ocean channels caused Antarctic to accumulate ice sheets. Northern Hemisphere glaciation began after formation of the Isthmus of Panama ~3.0 Ma.
So the Eocene is totally irrelevant. The Greenland Ice Sheet didn’t start to form until some 31 million years after the end of the Eocene. There might have been a small ice cap on it in the Pliocene, the epoch before the Pleistocene, which began 2.6 Ma, but that’s controversial and in any case not anything like its Pleistocene and Holocene ice sheet.
The paper that Sci Am article is based on is very shaky. The interpretation the authors favor (many short ice-free periods) happens to be physically impossible since glacial erosion would then have eliminated the cosmogenic isotopes they base their results on.
It is also worth noting that data from other boreholes indicate that the Greenland ice-sheet hasn’t melted for at least 1 million year, and possibly not for 2,5 million years.
“Nobody ever suggested that Greenland was icy during the Eocene”
Actually they have. There is strong evidence that montane glaciers already existed in East Greenland during the mid/late Eocene
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7132/full/nature05591.html
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016EGUGA..1811112T
As for the size of the icecap during the Eemian there is some fairly good data about its size.
All deep ice-cores have contained Eemian ice (Dye-3, GRIP, NGRIP, NEEM, Camp Century and Renland). The only exception is GISP where bottom melting had removed the oldest ice.
Contained air in the Eemian ice shows that the northern ice-dome was at most a few hundred meters thinner than now.
Studies of IRD (Ice-rafted debris) off East Greenland shows that none of Greenland’s three main geological provinces was ever completely ice-free during the Eemian, and that there must have been at least one tidewater glacier in each province (so there was never a continuous ice-free strip along the East Coast)
On the other hand pollen in marine deposits shows that there must have been quite large areas with a fairly rich scrub-tundra vegetation in southwestern Greenland during the Eemian, and sizeable rivers. There was tree birch, but never any coniferous forest. Tree birch also grew as far north as Scoreby Sound on the East Coast.
The smallest ice sheet that is compatible with these constraints is about half the volume of the present one.
Tty,
I should have said “had an ice sheet” rather than “icy”. After peak warmth in the Eocene, the globe did cool heading into the Oligocene.
But in any case, the Greenland ice sheet is a Pleistocene phenomenon.
Thanks for the links.
No surprise Tripati and Darby have to add to their abstract an obsequy to the Great God CACA:
“Intervals of bipolar glacial ice storage in the middle Eocene through early Oligocene coincide with evidence for periods of reduced CO2, associated with carbon cycle perturbations.”
Otherwise glaciers under the high CO2 levels there would upset the pig trough. Same kind of assumed fluctuations used to explain away the Ordovician ice age.
“But in any case, the Greenland ice sheet is a Pleistocene phenomenon.”
If You mean an ice-sheet covering essentially the whole island you are right. The oldest one we know of was during the Praetiglian which almost exactly at the beginning of the Pleistocene 2,6 MA BP, but there is evidence for a large montane ice-sheet in East Greenland at least since the mid-Miocene. During this interval Greenland was probably much lika Alaska today with extensive glaciation in the coastal mountains and tundra or boreal forest inland.
Great work reported here, it’s work like this that furthers our understanding of the volatility of our plante’s climate.
Prefacing such good work with “yes, but if it happened today, it would be blamed on global warming” only demonstrates how determined you are to misunderstand science.
I don’t find yet another study of the 8.2 KA event that exciting. It was a world-wide event and is extremely well documented by now. This one has slightly better time resolutin than most though.
By the way that “3 to 10 feet” rise is pure fantasy. The volume of Lake Agassiz/Ojibway is reasonably well known, and the true figure is about 1 to 4 feet:
http://www.tulane.edu/~tor/documents/Geology2008.pdf
I guess I haven’t paid as much attention as some to what’s known of previous eras. What worries me though, is how so many here confidently state past conditions as fact, apparently relying on scientific research, but go out of their way to refute the possibility that the volatile planetary climate will prove once again to have a vigorous reaction to our massive input of carbon.
There seem to be an attitude that’s not scientific among some posters here.
Jack…the evidence supports climate volatility, but it does not support a significant role of CO2 levels in that volatility. The Earth has experienced higher temperatures with low CO2 levels, and low temperatures with high CO2 levels. The ice cores reveal a correlation between temperature and CO2 but the temperature change appears to cause the CO2 change, not the other way around. For hundreds of thousands of years, cooling begins with relatively high levels of CO2 and warming begins with relatively low levels of CO2. There is just no indication that CO2 levels control, or even have a significant impact on temperature.
The ‘attitude’ here is precisely scientific. It is derived from the available evidence. We do not know the mechanisms that produce the observed natural climate variability, but we do know that changing CO2 levels in the atmosphere are not a significant part of those mechanisms. An example of a very ‘unscientific attitude’, would be the assumption that after 3 billion years, CO2 is suddenly behaving differently. That’s not just an unscientific attitude…it’s pretty nuts!
“… massive input of carbon …”
It is carbon dioxide, not carbon, that worries some people. What CO2 does or does not do in the atmosphere is vigorously debated — and rightly so.
The massive lakes discussed in this study have been investigated for many years. We know the locations, sizes, temperature, and the routes of the water to the ocean. All this is well accepted.
Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is a UN and related NGO attempt to separate western and other rich societies from their well earned wealth. The science, if any, is flimsy.
Correction…Study: California MIGHT HAVE once had APPROXIMATELY 150 straight years of stormy, wet, weather
Anthony Watts:
“if it happened today, it would be blamed on global warming”
Ice lakes emptied into the sea because the globe warmed? Uh, huh.
Oh, I get it, you were being funny. My bad.
I think Anthony was implying AGW when he said global warming. In other words, if it happened today, crisis promoters would blame humanity. At least…that’s how I read it.
JC, thanks for your reply to my earlier post. I’ll respond here since there is no ‘reply’ on your previous post. We’ll have to disagree about the role of CO2 in climate. I think the science is quite straight-forward. It has been known since about 1850 that CO2 is opaque to infrared radiation, and the volumetric calculations of the consequent affect on Earth’s temperature were first published about 1900.
Research does not indicate that CO2 levels trail temperature increases, though feedback of course means the two go hand in hand. Irrespective of that, we know that CO2 and other carbon compounds trap heat, we know we are pumping them into the atmosphere at a phenomenal rate, and we know the planet is heating up (see Elon Musk’s tweet today). We know most of that heat has gone into the oceans.
We should know we face great trouble, but it is human nature to deny it. It is our tragedy that society has supported fundamental science research for centuries to our great benefit, but just when we really could be reaping the biggest benefit of that foresight, we say – nah, that’s crap!
Research may not indicate CO2 trails temperature, but empirical observations do. Look at the Ice cores. Further, our phenomenal rate pumping them into the atmosphere amounts to 3-4% of the CO2 annually. Since CO2 accounts for 2-3% of the greenhouse effect we could be affecting warming by 0.12% of the .7°C so far, or 0.0084°C. Wow, phenomenal!!!
Jack Davis…thanks for your reply. We do indeed disagree about the role of CO2 in climate. There is no argument that increasing CO2, all else being equal, will cause some warming. In fact, that has never been part of the real debate. Very few question the 100+ year old science. I certainly don’t. But that science indicates a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, all else being equal, will result in a warming of approximately 1 degree C. That is not a crisis. That is not even a problem! Coupled with the fertilizing effect of CO2, it is actually quite a blessing! We are already seeing tremendous benefits.
As to your other points:
“Research does not indicate that CO2 levels trail temperature increases…” It certainly does. The ice cores clearly show the change in CO2 FOLLOWING the change in temperature by an average of 800 years, not causing it. If CO2 levels are more dominate than all natural variability, as proposed by the IPCC, this would be impossible. The pause would also be impossible. Either our understanding of the Earth’s past climate is completely wrong, or the AGW theory is wrong. I am going with the physical evidence and rational science.
“…we know we are pumping them into the atmosphere at a phenomenal rate…”
Compared to what? Over 95% of CO2 emissions are natural. Granted, human emissions are extra, but I have trouble with the phrase ‘phenomenal rate’. If our tiny 3.5% is phenomenal, what words do you use to describe natures input? This is more semantics than science, but I could not let it slide by,
“…and we know the planet is heating up (see Elon Musk’s tweet today)”
It’s been ‘heating up for over 200 years…pumping up the biosphere and reducing human suffering. Can I get a ‘ha-ha’? As to Elon’s tweet: “No need to rely on scientists for global warming — just use a thermometer”. Well that just proves that he is an idiot or a propagandist. (I think the latter.) Two days ago, my thermometer was 3 degrees below average. According to Musk, that would mean a new ice age was imminent. But today is supposed to be 3 degrees above average, so I guess man-made global warming is now a crisis! Or MAYBE it is just weather. I mean…really!?! Is he trying to make Trump’s tweets look brilliant by comparison?
“We know most of that heat has gone into the oceans.”
Meaning what, exactly? The statement, by itself, is true, but it is often used to try and explain the pause in global warming, or the fact that the models are running about 3 times higher than the actual warming trend, and that is nonsense. When a CO2 molecule absorbs some energy that otherwise might have gone into space, it raises the ‘temperature’ of the molecule. That additional heat is then dispersed to the atmosphere, mainly through collisions with other molecules. There is no mechanism that takes that heat directly into the oceans, without warming the atmosphere first. If the atmosphere is not warming, or if it is not warming as fast as expected, then the theory is wrong. The heat is not magically transported into the oceans. Molecules do not have teleporters!
“We should know we face great trouble, but it is human nature to deny it.”
Seriously? Never in the history of mankind have we been safer, more adaptable, more capable, more resilient, with less hardship and ‘trouble’. Yet we walk around in a constant state of fear over an endless series of hobgoblins, almost all of them imaginary (to paraphrase M. L. Mencken). There is nothing in the atmospheric history of this planet that suggests we face great trouble; only a theory (hobgoblin) that has a perfect track record of failure. Most of the ‘great trouble’ we humans have faced throughout our history comes from other humans convincing us that we are in great danger if we don’t do exactly what they say, and that is exactly what is happening with the AGW scare. The death toll from man-made climate change is effectively zero over the last 105 years. The death toll from fear based government policy over the same years is well over 100 million people. I would rather take my chances with climate change than more fear-based government control.
“It is our tragedy that society has supported fundamental science research for centuries to our great benefit, but just when we really could be reaping the biggest benefit of that foresight, we say – nah, that’s crap!”
Strangely, I agree with your statement completely. We are indeed reaping the benefits of an unprecedented advance in science and technology over the last 100 years, largely due to our access to abundant and affordable energy, in an atmosphere of relative freedom. The science, as discussed above, indicates we should proceed with great optimism, but you, like many with some form of blind faith, are telling me that the end is nigh, with nothing more scientifically compelling then the equivalent of reading of entrails! Your solution to the imaginary ‘problem’ of global warming is a forced reduction of the same affordable energy and freedom responsible for our current, wonderful position. And that, my friend, is crap.
ExxonMobil knew damned good and well there was an 8.2ka event, and covered it up. Anonymous sources at the NYT confirm this. Schumer is demanding an investigation.
+10
DK
Not sure of the relevance of your post.
The ‘Event’ seems to be a fact.
Exxon knew.
Right. I expect Exxon knew a lot of things.
They “covered it up” – I see your statement
Help me.
WHY did they cover it up?
HOW did they cover it up?
Surely if it was known, a ‘de-emphasis’ is plausible [WHY??] but a cover up is less so.
Here in the UK, we have Christmas Day (25 December).
Don’t tell anyone, but on [Shhhhhhhhhh] 26 December we have another Bank Holiday – ‘Boxing Day’ . And traditionally, on that day, ‘Boxes’ (Christmas Boxes I think) were given to apprentices . . . .
Yes – Way back. W-a-a-a-y back.
Certainly before I was an apprentice [1972] – a ‘Nav. App.’]
Could I – or Exxon – cover up Boxing Day in the UK?
Certainly does not figure world-wide. A Fact.
Auto – still puzzling over your post.
OT, I have never seen the solar wind density drop to near zero before. Is this a sensor issue, or can the solar wind density drop to such a low point. …https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en
There are two events likely to occur in the near future which, in a manner of speaking, are “unprecedented”, because the last time they occurred we lacked satellites, or even airplanes, to observe them with. The first is the switch from a warm AMO to a cold AMO, which occurred roughly 60 years ago, and the second is the switch from a “noisy” to a “quiet” sun, which last occurred during the Dalton Minimum, which began around 1798. (A third factor may involve both happening at the same time.)
As these events play out there will likely be changes in all sorts of patterns, involving winds, currents, snow levels, and arctic sea-ice. Besides the ordinary wonder I feel just watching clouds, there is a secondary wonder I feel watching Alarmists contrive ways to blame everything that happens on the light bulbs I purchase.
One thing I seem to be noticing is an increase in the number of low pressure systems sitting atop the planet on the North Pole. Especially gales, which used to hardly ever happen. Last summer there were two. Now it looks like we are about to see this summer’s first.
https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2017/06/20/arctic-sea-ice-ralphs-back/
It is difficult to know how rare such storms really are, as the ice directly over the Pole tends to be less than five years old, and therefore it is hard to find a good proxy. As recently as 1925 the National Geographic map of the Pole showed the area north of Alaska as blank, and labeled it, “Unexplored.” (Back then they were more honest.)
Usually a gale makes you hold onto your hat due to natural winds. Once Alarmists awake to the increase in storminess over the Pole, we’ll have to hold onto our hats due to a gale of guff.
Around 15 years into the Dalton Minimum the arctic abruptly disgorged a huge amount of ice into the North Atlantic. Whaling ships were finding open seas as far north as 84°, and sailed right over the top of Greenland from east to west. Meanwhile icebergs cluttered the Atlantic as far south as 40° and grounded on the coast of Ireland.
Just imagine the bursting of Alarmist blood vessels if this reoccurred today!
“Whaling ships were finding open seas as far north as 84°, and sailed right over the top of Greenland from east to west.”
Source please.
Blast. I’m bad at keeping my sources, as I’ve killed four computers the past 15 years. The best I can do is link you to this golden oldie post here at WUWT from 2009:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice/
It contains this quote:
“We learn that a vessel is to be fitted out by Government for the purpose of attempting again the north-west passage, the season being considered as peculiarly favourable to such an expedition. Our readers need not be informed that larger masses of ice than ever were before known have this year been seen floating in the Atlantic, and that from their magnitude and solidity, they reached even the fortieth latitude before they were melted into a fluid state. From an examination of the Greenland captains, it has been found that owing to some convulsions of nature , the sea was more open and moiré free from compact ice than in any former voyage they ever made: that several ships actually reached the eighty-fourth degree of latitude, in which no ice whatever was found; that for the first time for 400 years, vessels penetrated to the west coast of Greenland, and that they apprehended no obstacle to their even reaching the pole, if it had consisted with their duty to their employers to make the attempt. This curious and important information has, we learn, induced the Royal Society to apply to ministers to renew the attempt of exploring a north-west passage as well as to give encouragement to fishing vessels to try how far northward they can reach , by dividing the bounty to be given, on the actual discovery, into portions, as a reward for every degree beyond eighty-four that they shall penetrate For the same reason we think it would be advisable for the merchants engaged in the Greenland whale fishery not to postpone the sailing of their ships to the usual season but expedite them at once so as to take advantage of the temporary fresh.”
The quote is apparently from a book published in 1817:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EpwSAAAAYAAJ&dq=illustrations+of+greenland+1817&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=3cjiizphFa&sig=nFNcBtJE-Bv3DDAf9U4lK2Y-JYg&hl=en&ei=1eEySpGRB4iZjAeItuyBCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result#v=onepage&q=illustrations%20of%20greenland%201817&f=false
Best I can do for you, at the moment.
Also interesting stuff in comments here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/08/1815-1816-and-1817-a-polar-puzzle/
It’s frustrating that some posts I want to reply to don’t carry the ‘reply’ facility, so I’ll make the point I want to make with a new start.
Several posters have claimed that the record does not support the belief that CO2 buildup in the atmosphere is a key driver of planetary heating. I’d like to point out that the most reliable evidence is that you see with yor own eyes, unfolding in our own time. Scientists have kept meticulous current records for decades now and the link is undeniable – by pumping carbon into the atmosphere we are heating and perturbing the planet.
CO2 the “key driver of planetary heating”? Try fitting CO2 levels over the instrumental record against the instrumental record for temperature, and it is a very bad fit. There are pauses, and cooling, and warming, all with increasing CO2 levels.
“I’d like to point out that the most reliable evidence is that you see with yor own eyes”
In almost seven decades involving considerable travel, I have seen none whatsoever.
I’ve seen lots and lots of weather – much of it cyclic on a scale of decades – however, but that is not the same as climate.