Classic Winter not News

I find it rather frustrating that overt media bias is preventing the major climate story to not get properly told. When last checked global temperatures had dropped 0.7 degrees and we can assume that we are experiencing an additional drop to be expressed in the next set of numbers.

This was calculated from the same sources that gave us rising temperatures for a decade and flat temperatures for the past decade. That total gain was perhaps the same size. So what is everyone waiting for? It takes two decades to warm the northern hemisphere 0.7 degrees and perhaps six months to reverse it totally. That is not a big story. Are they waiting for confirmation? Try looking outside your window.

What we know of climate change history has always said the same thing. The warming is slow and gradual while the chilling is abrupt. This looks like a chill out and it is likely good for another year or more. The next set of numbers should show even more decline.

The mechanism for all this is becoming a lot clearer. Incoming heat is unevenly distributed between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres through oscillations focused on the Pacific which is half the planet. When surplus heat is pumped into the north across the equator the PDO shifts it north and if necessary discharges the surplus into the Arctic as occurred in 2007. When that occurs the elastic band snaps back and we catch a surge of cold weather. Sound familiar?

The problem of course is that the effects of CO2 are impossible to separate out from this type of decadal cycle. We certainly do not have the centuries of accurate Arctic weather information to compare. Maybe we should be excited because we melted some sea ice this time around. Or more likely, we should be disappointed and get serious about planting trees in the Sahara.

I am trying to say that this snap back of global temperatures is a hell of a story and absolutely no one is picking up on it. What are they thinking? Their only evidence just strode out the door. Isn’t anyone brave enough to stand up and simply say that the party is over?

I want to see a credible climate scientist stand up and say this reversal is a temporary move and that the fundamentals are good for a swift return to global warming. I used to sell stock in gold mines too. Of course they are all hiding, depending on how bravely they supported the CO2 theory.

I suspect that the rest of the crowd, who are too lazy to keep a close eye on the data will keep talking global warming while we continue to have a good old fashioned multi blizzard winter well into March. How do you like it so far?

I know that this is just one winter and that last winter was the actual beginning of a cold cycle, but this really feels like we are back in the fifties for foul weather. I was just a kid then, but that sort of foul abated into the sixties and had almost disappeared running into the nineties and most recently. It was apt that they measured sea ice thickness in 1959 and likely caught the maxima. 2007 gave us a pretty good minimum.

Heat Transport to the Arctic

This last year we saw a warm winter trigger some form of wind oscillation that carried a lot of heat from the lower latitudes into the Arctic, accelerating the melting of the sea ice. With the onset of winter, the clock got fully reset and we have been apparently treated to a cold winter not seen for at least a decade. These are hardly the conditions likely to trigger a movement of warm air into the Arctic this summer. The remaining question is whether or not the melting sea ice this summer will be able to eliminate all the sea ice grown this winter. This is not am exact science, but the wind does matter here in positioning the sea ice for best results and the 2007 season was historically unique in just that.

However. one season is a drop in the bucket against a twenty to forty year reduction in perennial sea ice whose actual history we know nothing. We have only just figured it out that we should have been measuring the changes in the last decade. We may be in for short cycle of ice accumulation lasting until the next solar cycle, upon which we will then get another cycle of major ice reduction.

As I have said yesterday, Solar variation is the major climate driver, small as it is, and it has been operating undisturbed for the last couple of hundred years. And if it were to continue undisturbed, we can expect the Northern climate to optimize around a temperature profile not unlike the middle ages when it was warmer.

Seeing the direct impact of a shift in the wind delivery system at work also reminds me that we have ignored the other great decadal cycle of the hurricane seasons. This weather regime is vastly more energetic than anything which hits the Arctic, yet it too fluctuates significantly over a cycle that may also be linked to solar output. Unfortunately, our data collection will need a whole century or two in order to draw any such conclusions. The necessary satellites went up, I think, in 1969.

In any event last years melt in the Arctic was sharp and dramatic, but as I have posted, does not necessarily mean that much extra heat was applied. As I have pointed out a constant and sufficient imbalance in heat delivery lasting decades will look exactly the same in the last stage of ice destruction. The wind merely shifted it around more than normal.

The question then remains about the source of this imbalance. Is it solar? Or do we have a larger input from the Gulf Stream? This too would be incredibly hard to quantify. Velocity changes have been noted. This was at first interpreted as a reduction of heat flow because the speed had slowed. But that could actually reflect a much larger volume and real heat content.

So the fact that the gulf stream velocity has slowed since 1959, may actually mean an increase in heat transport into the Arctic has occurred. Right now, I don't think we have enough data to trust any conclusions whatsoever. It is just that an apparent change took place over the same time scale as the perennial sea ice was reduced by sixty percent and they really have to be linked.

In any event, the hypothesis that atmospheric heat transport is the primary engine of sea ice removal will get a good test this summer, since we are now running a true cold winter in direct comparison to last year's warm winter and warm summer.