University of Exeter [See my update at the end. -w.]
Arctic sea ice cannot “quickly bounce back” if climate change causes it to melt, new research suggests.
A team of scientists led by the University of Exeter used the shells of quahog clams, which can live for hundreds of years, and climate models to discover how Arctic sea ice has changed over the last 1,000 years.
They found sea ice coverage shifts over timescales of decades to centuries – so shrinking ice cannot be expected to return rapidly if climate change is slowed or reversed.
The study examined whether past ice changes north of Iceland were “forced” (caused by events such as volcanic eruptions and variations in the sun’s output) or “unforced” (part of a natural pattern).
At least a third of past variation was found to be “forced” – showing the climate system is “very sensitive” to such driving factors, according to lead author Dr Paul Halloran, of the University of Exeter.
“There is increasing evidence that many aspects of our changing climate aren’t caused by natural variation, but are instead ‘forced’ by certain events,” he said.
“Our study shows the large effect that climate drivers can have on Arctic sea ice, even when those drivers are weak as is the case with volcanic eruptions or solar changes.
“Today, the climate driver isn’t weak volcanic or solar changes – it’s human activity, and we are now massively forcing the system.”
Co-author of the study Professor Ian Hall, from Cardiff University, said: “Our results suggest that climate models are able to correctly reproduce the long-term pattern of sea ice change.
“This gives us increased confidence in what climate models are telling us about current and future sea ice loss.”
When there is lots of sea ice, some of this drifts southwards and, by releasing fresh water, can slow the North Atlantic Ocean circulation, otherwise known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
The AMOC brings warm water from the tropics towards the Arctic, so slowing it down cools this region and allows sea ice to grow further.
So, with less ice the AMOC can bring in more warm water – a so-called “positive feedback” where climate change drives further warming and sea ice loss.
Quahog clams are thought to be the longest-living non-colonial animal on Earth, and their shells produce growth rings which can be examined to measure past environmental changes.
Dr Halloran is part of the Global Systems Institute, which brings together experts from a wide range of fields to find solutions to global challenges.
The new study is part of a project including Cardiff University, the Met Office and an international team working on climate model simulations of the last millennium. The work was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.
###
The paper, published in the journal Scientific Reports, is entitled: “Natural drivers of multidecadal Arctic sea ice variability over the last millennium.”
[UPDATE] I suspect Charles won’t complain if I add today’s situation …
Best to all,
w.
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All very boring. – Arctic sea ice just doesn’t bounce. Never has done. The title is merely a journalist clickbait mechanism and the content says little of value.
Remain clam….. We’ve heard similar claims about the ‘perma-drought’ in California. We heard this about the ‘perma-drought’ in Texas. “AGW and CO2 have caused the climate to change. This is the new normal!” We’ve heard many such extraordinary claims. They have proven to be fevered mind Hog Wash!
The ‘AGW induced perma-droughts’ in Texas and California proved to be exceedingly short lived, with adequate rains returning to these areas naturally, in spite of the false cries of the alarmists. Similarly, whatever happens in the Arctic will be a natural effect, be it ice free or choked with 5 meter thick ice.
Statements by the ‘experts’, such as “Our results suggest that climate models are able to correctly reproduce the long-term pattern of sea ice change.”, are weak and unconvincing. Extraordinary claims of CO2 driven AGW require extraordinary proofs, not in evidence here.
We done programmed our biases into a model and:
What a bunch of fakirs! Delusional through and through.
A puzzling claim. Quahog clams reproduce and rapidly grow to harvestable size. Every one shows many growth lines in their shells.
When researchers claim a growth line is annual, I get suspicious when people claim growth rings are annual, especially when the animals are deep below sunlight’s reach and where the waters show minimal temperature change over the year.
Clams dependent upon sunlight for their growth. It may be that a clam’s growth lines are formed after they’ve fed sufficiently to grow larger, just as reptiles shed their skins when they’ve outgrown their previous skin.
PS “non-colonial animal” means that the animals are not in colonies like coral.
“The study examined whether past ice changes north of Iceland were “forced” (caused by events such as volcanic eruptions and variations in the sun’s output) or “unforced” (part of a natural pattern).”
So volcanoes and Solar output are not “Natural”?
Wow, really, just Wow!
“So volcanoes and Solar output are not “Natural”?”
“Forced” means a change in absorbed solar SW. The energy available to the climate.
“Natural” means the consequence of movements of that solar energy with the climate system.
And how did they manage to pick apart the influence of each using clam shells?
And yet both of those are from a natural physical portions of the universe.
If you or they are are trying to make the Thermodynamic mathematical argument as related to where the plus and minus signs are relative to equal signs for this system ie planet Earth please use mathematical notation. You know planet Earth does not live a vacuum, thermodynamically speaking 😉
Energy flows from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration.
They didn’t need to do fake “research” to come up with such nonsense. What else is it going to do with 6 months of no sun but *freeze*?
And they should have looked at history:
“You can go from no ice one summer to completely landlocked ice where the ice goes from coast to coast in another summer. It’s hard to predict; the Arctic has always been an incredibly variable place.”
Stephanie Pfirman
“Arctic Ghost Ship (2015): HMS Terror and Erebus”
Full PBS NOVA Documentary
To be honest, the idea that re-freezing is slower than melting makes sense. Albedo effects would imply that.
Yes, I know the angles are not optimum for albedo effects to be important, but they are skewed one way.
But the speed isn’t the driving factor. Any melted ice has six months of total darkness to refreeze. The fact that it melted in less than six months doesn’t matter. I take an ice cube out of the freezer and melt it in seconds. I fill the tub up again with water and lo and behold its frozen again in a few hours.
Provided there is enough time to refreeze, it will refreeze, however quickly it melted.
On the other hand, once the ice melts, the heat in the water has easier access to the air, so the water starts to cool rapidly.
Are these the same models that the u.n/ipcc, david Attenborough, or even the vastly educated greta uses?
If so, then clearly we need to act fast and get the 40+ thousand slave children of the congo to mine cobolt faster so we can all drive ev’s 😀. (sarc)
…..total flog. Glad I chose to skin the article.
Get these climate “scientists” way more productive. Get them picking potatoes.
and who among them was a clam expert?
and are the clams large? endangered? and how many did they kill for the study?
enquiring minds etc,lol
who ATE the clams after?
“Today, the climate driver isn’t weak volcanic or solar changes – it’s human activity, and we are now massively forcing the system.”
Only in your wildest dreams. We aren’t forcing the system AT ALL! The sun has never stopped controlling the climate, nor will it. The arctic ice is growing from long-duration low TSI in spite of the warm tropics. What does that tell you?
Who predicted ice growth to continue at AGU Fall 2018, based on TSI? I did.
This nascent itty bitty teeny tiny mini ice age won’t survive the upcoming solar maximum unless Prof. Zharkova is right about impending low solar activity cycles, but human emissions won’t have anything to do with future ice melting once sun-warmed tropical waters inflow again.
They baked the bias into this cake.
I, if, if, if, if, maybe, could, perhaps, er guess, wild guess, even wilder guess, awww just made it all up..
Great post. However, I feel that the general usage of the term “models” and “climate modelling” by both hystericals and sceptics – rather than ‘computer models’ and ‘climate computer modelling’ etc – prevents most of those coming across and reading articles or listening to broadcasts and podcasts and who are not familiar with how computers are at the heart of the new version of climatology, working out how computer models are behind the dodgy foundations behind all this confirmation biased nonsense.
Every winter in the northern hemisphere at the north pole, when there are months long periods of no sun, and the temperatures are well below the freezing point of water, I’m sure that the water will once again freeze into ice, just as it does annually over vast areas of the northern hemisphere, far away from the north pole.
Right, and currently, the area of northern hemisphere land w/snowcover is easily greater than Arctic sea-ice, and much further south (and so reflecting more sunlight). With the modern conditions, this will occur every winter:
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow.gif
—-“There is increasing evidence that many aspects of our changing climate aren’t caused by natural variation, but are instead ‘forced’ by certain events,” he said.—-
The most asinine BS Orwellian 1984 doublespeak attempt at redefining definitions. So, the natural physical universe is not the natural physical universe? Guess this would include the occasional comet or meteor strikes are not natural cosmological variations. Shoemaker-Levy 9, anyone?
They also lost me at their use of models — read we used computational data and numerical analysis to replace actual observational data.
They still seem to “think”( I use this verb understanding their difficulty in this action) planet Earth and humans beings sit outside of the natural physical universe.
The earth is tired & fed-up with Arctic ice. Too long has the top of the earth’s head suffered from life-hostile frozen conditions. The earth & caring people say — down with Arctic ice! Melt now!
The tree ring history of Glacier Bay Alaska shows that six times in the last 10,000 years trees grew for 2 to 4 hundred years. The current receding glaciers have not been gone long enough for that to happen currently so those who say it hotter now are lying to us big time or just dumb or uneducated. You have to use a Google search to find the report.
I recall the fearmakers saying CO2 would slow down AMOC, now they’re suggesting it will speed up. Which one is it?
Both.
And at the same time; are you not up to speed on mainstream climatology?
Is that anything like how our parents had to walk to school up hill both ways?
[QUOTE FROM ARTICLE] “When there is lots of sea ice, some of this drifts southwards and, by releasing fresh water, can slow the North Atlantic Ocean circulation, otherwise known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
The AMOC brings warm water from the tropics towards the Arctic, so slowing it down cools this region and allows sea ice to grow further.
So, with less ice the AMOC can bring in more warm water – a so-called “positive feedback” where climate change drives further warming and sea ice loss.”
This seems to be a contradiction–if melting sea ice injects fresh water into the AMOC (Gulf Stream) and makes it cooler, wouldn’t that tend to promote the re-growth of sea ice, and represent a negative feedback?
Also, sea ice in the Arctic expands every autumn and winter (reaching a maximum in March), then recedes every spring and summer (reaching a minimum in September). Sea ice in the southern parts of the ice cap (Hudson Bay, the Bering Sea, Baffin Bay, and the Arctic coast of Russia) melts every spring, while sea ice near the North Pole remains solid all year. Sea ice that melts in Baffin Bay in spring generates fresh water that is carried southward by the Labrador Current, and eventually mixes with the Gulf Stream, thereby weakening its warming effect in spring and early summer. When Baffin Bay re-freezes in autumn, that fresh cold water is taken out of circulation, and the Gulf Stream regains its warming effect on the west coasts of Europe and Scandinavia.
There may be other causes of Arctic sea ice loss that have nothing to do with CO2 emissions. Undersea exploration by submarines has found hydrothermal vents (hot springs) under the Arctic Ocean along the Gakkel Ridge, which extends from north of Greenland across the Arctic toward western Russia (see link below, which is one of many). Hot springs would tend to melt sea ice from below, gradually making it thinner, possibly to the point of the sea ice over that area disappearing in the future. However, this could not be attributed to man-made CO2 emissions, and humans have no way of reducing or stopping the flow of hot water from the sea floor.
https://www.mpg.de/research/mechanisms-of-sea-floor-generation
Um…why do I care if sea returns EVER? There used to be dinosaurs up near the arctic, so I would suggest that sea ice is NOT the optimal state for life on Earth.
To refreeze Arctic region a lot more winter snow is required, and for that currently the low and mid latitudes N. Atlantic is not warm enough, not enough evaporation to provide required volume of snow.
Here you can see up to date snow storms east of Labrador and Greenland.
http://images.intellicast.com/WxImages/SatelliteLoop/hinpole_None_anim.gif
The N. Atlantic’s AMO is about to turn negative, so it looks no re-freezing until the next AMO’s max (combined with the 400yr Arctic-Southern Ocean sub-global conveyor belt) will peak somewhere around 0.4C above the current NH’s temperatures (link, i.e. warm enough to provide couple of decades of excessive Arctic winter precipitations, with subsequent 200 years of cooling completing the job of generating the 22nd and 23rd centuries ‘LIA’.
Arctic sea ice will never bounce back if we continue to use ice breakers to cut and keep shipping lanes open…
There are no longer any climate skeptics. There are only science deniers. You sit there typing on a computer which you have no understanding of how it works communicating with a website using IP packets that you will never ever understand and deny that scientist cannot understand global warming? LOL.
I’ve added the following update to the head post showing today’s situation …
w.
================
SOURCE
Thanks Willis.
Natural cycles continue. Can’t “deny” it.
You should post the Arctic sea ice extent graph from the site instead of the global sea ice extent graph. That one shows today’s extent exceeding that of all the 9 years listed.
Arctic sea ice cannot “quickly bounce back”
Sounds like old King Canute planting his throne one the beach and proclaiming that the tide “cannot quickly bounce back”.
https://images.app.goo.gl/xSmjnjNbPLFmshYe8