Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I see that Charles the Moderator has posted up the report of the fears of the loss of the Puncak Jaya glacier here on WUWT. Below is a photo of the current state of the glacier, which is in Irian Jaya on the island of New Guinea, north of Australia.
My first thought upon reading the popular article, of course, was … before we join in mourning the dear departed, just how old is that disappearing tropical glacier?
Took a while to find the original study. I had to go through SciHub since this stuff is always paywalled. The study only mentions the total age once, without further comment of any kind:
The glaciers near Puncak Jaya are remnants of glaciers that have existed for ∼5,000 y (37, 38)
OK, five thousand years. And going to the underlying reference (37) I find
There is no evidence for ice on any of the New Guinea mountains between about 7,000 and 5,000 yr BP, and in fact the tree line of Mt. Wilhelm was as much as 200m above its present position from 8,300 to 5,000 yr BP.
So this paper, which is being pushed as being horrible news that somehow shows that the climate alarmists are right about their fantasized impending Thermageddon™, actually proves that the Pacific tropics are not yet as warm as they were five to seven thousand years ago. Doesn’t seem anywhere near as scary that way, does it?
But wait … there’s more. A related question is, how long has the Puncak Jaya glacier been melting? From the study once again …
Likewise, the glaciers near Puncak Jaya have been retreating since the end of the most recent neoglacial period ∼1850 CE.
So the Puncak Jaya glacier melt and retreat did NOT start with the modern increase in CO2, which has occurred mostly since the early 1900s. Instead, the melting started from a natural fluctuation in temperature around 1850. And guess what?
Scientists don’t have a clue why the “most recent neoglacial period” ended ~ 1850 CE rather than 1750 CE or 1950 CE … but they’re more than happy to tell us what the climate will be like in the year 2100.
Gotta love the hubris, at least …
Best to all on a lovely rainy morning, fire season in California is over, the forest I live in is happy, what’s not to like?
w.
PS—As always I ask that when you comment you quote the exact words you are referring to so we can all understand just what and who you are discussing.
Thanks to all who have commented, and your best wishes are appreciated.
Here’s a question I thought of last night:
Suppose we have a relatively pancake-ish sheet of ice, one that is much wider & longer than it is thick, like a typical glacier.
We place it somewhere that it is at a tightly-controlled temperature that is slightly above freezing. And we observe, naturally, that it starts melting. We measure the thickness of it at regular intervals until it is gone.
My question is, will the thickness of the ice decrease in a steady linear fashion right up to the point where it disappears?
OR, will the speed of the melting increase as it gets thinner so that by the end it is melting quite fast?
I suspect the latter, but I have no evidence for that. I suspect that as the thickness decreases that the earth under the ice will begin to warm. I also suggest that the large-scale structure of the ice will change, with meltholes forming and draining away meltwater. Finally, I would think that the small-scale structure of the ice would change, initially becoming more honeycombed with pockets of air, and then at the end melting rapidly.
However, as I said … no evidence.
I ask because the underlying study says that that increasing rate of melting is what is happening to the Puncak Jaya glacier, and I got to pondering how much of that was actually due to an ongoing continuous change in the surrounding temperature, and how much MIGHT be due to the various phenomena I list above.
Anyone?
w.
Like many chemical processes, you can think of it as following a logistic curve. It’ll start slow, speed up, hit a maximum, then slow, and then finally stop, when no ice is left. As long as further accumulation and ablation can occur, then it won’t stop. It’ll have a long tail.
In maths, this is called a Stefan problem (yes, the S-B chap). Although the ways ice can form drainage channels etc is a complication.
I guess it would be like many “failures” we find happening in this world… It goes quite slowly at first, and then suddenly.
Maybe it depends on how dirty the ice is. As ice with embedded dirt melts, a dark layer forms on top and the albedo drops. Then the sheet absorbs more sunlight and melts even faster. Clean ice wouldn’t have that acceleration.
Glaciers are not static entities–the dynamics of ice flow affects the rate of retreat of a glacier. The rate of retreat of a glacier is determined not only by air temperature but also by the rate at which ice is delivered to the terminus by ice flow and basal sliding. The rate of flow of ice to its terminus is a function of the thickness of the ice (thinner ice moves slower than thick ice). When ice gets thin enough, it stops flowing altogether. So the retreat of a glacier is not linear function of air temperature.
Willis,
I wrote a paragraph about this earlier, but it apparently didn’t get posted. The answer to your question is that glacier melting is NOT a linear function of temperature because of the important role of glacier flow that constantly replenishes melting ice at and near the terminus. As a glacier melts and the ice thins, the rate of flow diminishes and the rate of retreat is accelerated. At some point, the ice thins to point that glacial flow stops altogether and the glacier stagnates.
It’s actually a bit more complicated than that because in the early phases of melting increased meltwater at the base of a glacier may increase the rate of flow, while at the same time enlargement of channels in and under the ice may increase rates of melting.
Have the highlands of Irian Jaya actually warmed recently?
Or is this another case of ice melt under local non-warming attributed to global warming, as with Kilimanjaro.
Willis writes:
“My first thought upon reading the popular article, of course, was … before we join in mourning the dear departed, just how old is that disappearing tropical glacier?”
BINGO!
That was my first question too, the press release and warmists overblown reactions caused me to look for that paper, which I couldn’t find it published.
In a forum, I asked a warmist the question about there that paper was, he didn’t answer it, but continues to be exited about the misleading fears of vanishing glaciers babble.
Now you exposed their entire newsstory as being misleading and dishonest.
Thank you.
The New Guinea will never be the same again …
Tree line 200-300 meters higher 7000 years ago. Very familiar. In Sweden our tree line also was 200-500 meters higher 7000 years ago. What a coinsidence. We know that the warming wasnt global, right?
In the early 1970’s I hiked along the Appalachian Trail in northwestern New Jersey, along the north shore of a small mountain lake called Sunfish Pond, at about 1200 ft elevation, which was strewn with huge boulders, some larger than trucks, which were supposedly left behind by the edge of an ancient glacier. Sunfish Pond is only about a mile east of the Delaware River, which is about 300 feet above sea level at that latitude.
If those boulders were left behind by a retreating glacier, the glacier must have been about 900 feet thick over the Delaware River, at about 40 degrees north latitude, only about 70 miles from the shore of the Atlantic Ocean.
Although it still snows there in the winter, that area is now ice-free about 8 months out of the year, and except for the boulder field, Sunfish Pond is surrounded by mature oak forests.
All those who are terrified of relatively small glaciers melting in the tropics should consider themselves fortunate that the North American continent is no longer buried under 900 feet of ice year-round, and people can live and grow crops north of 40 degrees latitude with 5 to 7 months of a frost-free growing season. It could be, and actually was, much worse.
And actually, the terminal moraine for the Wisconsin Glacier is considerably further to the southeast, forming the Watchung Mountains in the vicinity of US Hwy 22. I think the ice was considerably thicker than 900 feet at glacial maximum.
Carstensz Pyramid (4,884 m [16,024 ft]) is the highest summit of Mount Jayawijaya or Mount Carstensz.
The ice is a bit lower, but still higher than I intend to be ever again — and that was in a plane.
Air flow that can bring precipitation (snow) to such heights is rare.
Anyway, I’m surprised the ice has remained this long after the LIA.
Thanks, Willis.
Willis, my wife brought up an article, Glaciers in the tropics,but not for long .
Two pictures 2017 Dec and 1998 nov.
satellite images showing the shrinkage.
The most striking feature is a massive mine excavation, the Grassberg mine the size of a moon crater near the glacier which was not present in 1998.
Massive.
Dramatic.
Any chance of the shrinkage being accentuated by that?
Please correct the lede paragraph. Puncak Jaya is not in Papua New Guinea. It is in Indonesia (West Papua)
Thanks, SMcl, fixed. Irian Jaya it is.
w.
Great piece Willis!! Thank you for bringing your keen insight into an otherwise unremarkable finding that the CAGW crowd would have us believe signals the end of times.
Willis,
I was wondering about this place…
I can locate the MT in Paupua but the exact glacial location is elusive. I was hoping to find it in Google Earth so I could do some measurements for distance perspective but all I found was the associated Gold Mine a couple miles west of the peak.
I wonder if the local government is simply waiting for the remainder of the glacier to evaporate (probably not much melting above 15,000′ elevation) and open the remainder of the edifice for further mineral exploration?
Any idea of the distance between the East and West Domes?
In 2002 the Carstensz Glacier was 1.4 kilometers long by .60 km wide.
“…proves that the Pacific tropics are not yet as warm as they were five to seven thousand years ago. Doesn’t seem anywhere near as scary that way, does it?”
No, it does not seem scary at all. In fact, it seems downright normal to me… but what do I know? I simply make observations and then go have cheesecake and hot tea.
“…proves that the Pacific tropics are not yet as warm as they were five to seven thousand years ago. Doesn’t seem anywhere near as scary that way, does it?”
I call such things “Climate Myopia”. Barely looking past one’s nose, geologically speaking, and being afraid that the world is about to end.
Otzi the iceman died in late spring/early summer 3300BC [plus or minus a year or two].
He was almost immediately covered by snow and ice [in summer] and stayed covered until 1991…close to 5300 years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/26/world/europe/bolzano-italy-iceman-south-tyrol-museum-of-archaeology.html
Now that’s a cold snap. Gradual warming in the Tyrol means the climate there now is probably similar to what it was 5301 years ago.
While reading this article I was reminded of a WUWT article on the retreat of Montana’s glaciers from back in 2010.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/12/pilgrimage-to-montana/
My particular interest was the link to a USGS figure showing the retreat of Alaskan glaciers since Captain Cook sailed up the west coast (1760?). Something like 100 kms of retreat prior to 1900 according to the figure.
I wasn’t surprised that the link has subsequently died – way too instructive. It is the USGS after all. I hope someone out there still has link to that figure and can reproduce it here somehow.
Cook searched for the western end of the fabled NW Passage from Oregon to Alaska in 1778, before returning to Hawaii, where he and shipmates were killed the next year.
You just jogged me Willis to investigate how far the aboriginals could walk on land around Adelaide before that southern suburbs geological tide gauge showed a SLR of 130M (426.5 feet) between 15000 years ago and 6-7000 years ago and here’s a map of SA with Adelaide on the western side of Gulf St Vincent-
http://ontheworldmap.com/australia/state/south-australia/large-detailed-map-of-south-australia-with-cities-and-towns.jpg
Well all you have to do is check the marine navigation map and look for where the coastline would have been where the depth is now 426 feet-
http://fishing-app.gpsnauticalcharts.com/i-boating-fishing-web-app/fishing-marine-charts-navigation.html?title=Australia+-+South+Australia+-+Gulf+St+Vincent+-+Approaches+to+Port+Adelaide+boating+app#7/-35.137/137.817
Well when you do that and magnifying the sea floor map and following it southward lo and behold you find the original coastline is on the Continental shelf and both Gulfs have disappeared and land has swallowed up Kangaroo Island with coast well south of that. That’s some melting of ice at a possible 16.25mm/yr for 8000 years compared to 0.65mm/yr at Fort Denison near Sydney now and 0.85mm/yr average for over 1.5 centuries to 2000 at Port Arthur in Tasmania (and hold that thought John Daly)
Now back to that map of SA and a while ago we take a short camping sojourn around to Port Lincoln (western bottom of Spencer Gulf) but we camp at Fitzgerald Bay/Point Lowly about 20k north of Whyalla further up toward the top of that Gulf and there’s a very interesting and not too common geological phenomenon there-
https://www.whyalla.com/coast-and-beaches
“Shingle Beach Ridges
The Stranded Shingle Beach Ridges north along the western coastline of Upper Spencer Gulf have been provisionally entered for inclusion as a State Heritage Place in the South Australian Heritage Register. There are only 2 other places in the world registered with similar Shingle Ridges being in Egypt and Scotland.
A geological phenomenon, these stranded shingle beach deposits have been traced over a distance of some 50kms from near the head of Spencer Gulf southwards along its western shore to Stony Point, and provide a distinctive geological feature which is believed to date back to the Pleistocene period.
Consisting of moderately sorted, rounded to sub-angular pebbles and cobbles, the deposits form sinuous, flat topped and well preserved ridges 3-5 metres above present mean sea level.
Most are usually narrow – no more than 10-15 metres wide. In some areas the deposits form cliffs behind the modern beach.
The movement of gravel by present day waves in the northern part of Spencer Gulf is restricted compared with that indicated by the ridges. It appears that the combination of a high sea level (3 metres higher than today), strong easterly winds, and high wave energy dissipation along the shore line, were responsible for the deposits.”
So not only have we experienced 130M rise we’ve subsequently had a 3M drop at some stage and let’s be generous and say it was 1mm/year natural ‘PAUSE/DROP’ that might have occurred over 3 centuries sometime in the last 6-7000 years and now Gaia is rebounding the seas at that rate in reverse or less. Who the Hell knows except some jumped up Gretaheads who take it upon themselves to tell everyone only they know and we’re all doomed as a result. Even if you believe it was all those aboriginal cooking fires and traditional burnoffs to flush out game for 130M you still have to explain that 3M pause/drop in SLR morons. Sound familiar?
Correction: Actually for only 3 centuries drop it would have been 10mm/yr for the 3M whereas 1mm would have taken 3000 years but you can see their pause problem writ large. Geologists like Ian Plimer must have been aghast at their hubris and mendacity as historical SLR is the one temperature proxy to rule them all-
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/what-are-proxy-data
Remember the vision of the Statue of Liberty with it’s torch sticking out of the sea again guys?
So Gondwanaland hadn’t moved around all that time but-
“Because of the waxing and waning of the polar icecaps, the climate in Australia continued to cycle rapidly between icehouse phases (cold, dry conditions) and greenhouse phases (warmer, wetter conditions.)
During icehouse phases sea levels fell, creating land bridges that would then be flooded during greenhouse phases.
Australia’s plants were already well suited to dry conditions, but the pattern of forests, grasslands and deserts was constantly changing.”
as Gaia does creating the current ambience apparently-
https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/australia-over-time/evolving-landscape/the-pleistocene-epoch/
Up 130M and down 3M and nothing to worry about whatsoever folks unless you were a megafauna but now all of a sudden they can pick the anthropogenic signal out of this-
https://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_few_hundred.html
and this-
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.shtml?stnid=680-140
Something does not compute but we all have to respectfully consider that folks like Greta are upset. Perhaps the data could be homogenised and pasteurised with their feelings in mind?