Rising Seas

As we have long since acknowledged, this past decade has been a warm decade in the run of things. The prior two decades showed a warming trend while this present decade saw that trend fully developed and a flattening out at its high. The past two years has seen precipitous decline suggesting that the warm decade may be over. This could be a response to the accelerated warming of 2007 or the commencement of a decadal downtrend and my bet is presently on the latter.

In the meantime, according to these reported numbers, we have added one inch or so to ocean over that period. That is too big to be a mistake so it gives us a magnitude for global response to a rise in temperature. According to this it has mostly come from the Greenland sheet which fits observations. It seems a bit rich, but is obviously not.

And yes, if this were to continue at this present temperature range it is plausible to anticipate an inch of rise per decade until the Greenland sheet is eliminated. Of course, Mother Nature is already signaling the opposite.

It seems though that two cold winters notwithstanding that the sea ice retreat is as quick as the past two years, suggesting that it takes a bit more than a simple drop in average temperatures. We also understand a bit better, reports of access during the Viking era. Once the bulk of the sea ice is reduced, the lower level remains quite stable in the face of colder weather.

That suggests that a simple repeat of 2007 every decade or so will progressively reduce the ice pack. It also suggests that historic conditions were a direct and unusual result of the little ice age itself and are not to be considered the natural default. So unless the little ice age comes back we can expect Greenland to get back in the dairy business and the Northwest Passage will continue to open every summer.

I suggest that we are living through the restoration of normal climatic conditions that will be similar to the medieval optimum and this will last until perhaps something goes bang in Alaska.

As an aside, the language of this item is intemperate at best and the numbers and claimed facts are been exaggerated right across the board. However 3.1 mm per year over a decade is a believable number since it is easy to construct accurate enough tidal gauges and the like in enough places to be so assured.

Oceans Rising Faster Than UN Forecast, Scientists Say (Update2)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=afmw1nT6inhA

By Alex Morales

June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Polar ice caps are melting faster and oceans are rising more than the United Nations projected just two years ago, 10 universities said in a report suggesting that climate change has been underestimated.

Global sea levels will climb a meter (39 inches) by 2100, 69 percent more than the most dire forecast made in 2007 by the UN’s climate panel, according to the study released today in Brussels. The forecast was based on new findings, including that Greenland’s ice sheet is losing 179 billion tons of ice a year.

“We have to act immediately and we have to act strongly,” Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told reporters in the Belgian capital. “Time is clearly running out.”

In six months, negotiators from 192 nations will meet in Copenhagen to broker a new treaty to fight global warming by limiting the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and clearing forests.
“A lukewarm agreement” in the Danish capital “is not only inexcusable, it would be reckless,” Schellnhuber said.

Fossil-fuel combustion in the world’s power plants, vehicles and heaters alone released 31.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, 1.8 percent more than in 2007, according to calculations from BP Plc data.

‘Rapid and Drastic’

The scientists today portrayed a more ominous scenario than outlined in 2007 by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which likewise blamed humans for global warming. “Rapid and drastic” cuts in the output of heat-trapping gases are needed to avert “serious climate impacts,” the report said.

The report called for coordinated, “rapid and sustained” global efforts to contain rising temperatures. Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, also in Brussels, told reporters that nations have to reverse the rising trend in emissions of heat-trapping gases.

“We need targets,” Rasmussen said. “All of us are moving toward the same ambitious goals.”

Scientists from institutions including Yale University, the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge compiled the 39-page report from research carried out since 2005, the cutoff date for consideration by the IPCC for its forecasts published in November 2007.

Sea Levels

Ocean levels have been rising by 3.1 millimeters a year since 2000, a rate that’s predicted to grow, according to the study. The projections of sea levels rising by a meter this century compare with the 18 to 59 centimeters (7 to 23 inches) forecast by the IPCC.

“There are indications that rates of sea-level rise are higher than projected, and impacts like Arctic melting are more rapid,” Martin Parry, who supervised part of the UN panel’s 2007 study, said in a telephone interview. He wasn’t involved in writing the new report.

Oceans are warming 50 percent faster than the IPCC predicted and Arctic sea ice is disappearing more rapidly in summer -- exposing darker ocean that absorbs more heat, the study said.

The academics produced the study, “Climate Change --Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions,” by compiling research submitted to a conference in Copenhagen in March. They also drew from an October 2006 report into the economics of climate change by Nicholas Stern, then the U.K. government’s chief economist.

Doing-Nothing Cost

Stern’s study, which wasn’t included in the IPCC report, said that the cost of avoiding the worst impacts of climate change can be limited to 1 percent of economic output while doing nothing could lead to damage costing as much as 20 percent of the world’s gross domestic product.

“Greater near-term emissions lock us into greater climate change requiring greater costs from climate impacts and more investment in adaptation,” Stern wrote in today’s study. “Furthermore, they lead to a faster rate of climate change with greater challenges for adaptation.”

By 2050, when the global population will be an estimated 9 billion people, per-capita gas emissions will need to have fallen to about 2 tons a year, compared with levels as high as 20 tons a person currently in the U.S., the report proposed.

The University of Copenhagen coordinated the effort by the 10-school International Alliance of Research Universities. Other members include the University of California at Berkeley, Peking University, the Australian National University, ETH Zurich, the National University of Singapore and the University of Tokyo.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at:

amorales2@bloomberg.net.

Cold Spring Dragging

This list of headlines is a reminder of just how unpredictable weather can be. Our spring has on average been a bit late as compared to amazingly early just two years ago. I still think that what we are experiencing is a return to normalcy from a decade of somewhat warmer weather whose trend line finally reversed just as it all became very noticeable.

I do not think that the heat surplus in the Northern Hemisphere is completely eliminated and that there are still possibilities for the Arctic sea ice based on its unusual thinness. Thus if enough open water exists, enough energy can be absorbed to at least initially slow ice recovery for a while.

The question that is not answered satisfactory as yet is whether or not the gross heat content is increasing, neutral or in actual decline. It was increasing for at least thirty years ending with the winter of 2008 in a completely surprising downswing. When I say increasing, I mean not that it was accelerating but that there was a net gain each and every year that I think pretty well averaged out year after year. It was enough to destroy a lot of sea ice.

I now think that it has at least returned to neutral and could well continue into the negative and we will then see a slowly accelerating increase in the total sea ice again.

We already know that there is an apparent thirty to forty year hurricane cycle that also fits this apparent pattern. What we do not understand is the apparent conservatism in atmospheric heat content. We want to think that incoming matches outgoing in a very quick dance. This is telling us to be not so fast.

A one percent increase in the heat content of the equatorial ocean would be invisible and immeasurable but would nudge the atmosphere in the type of decadal cycles been observed. A modest increase in the heat content of the winds entering the Arctic would be unnoticeable in the lower latitudes, yet deliver a summer’s aggressive melting as we saw in 2007.

One other thing that is poorly understood by most. The Arctic gyre is small compared to the surrounding oceanic gyres that extend to the equator. However it seems consistent enough in the summer to deliver pretty uniform storm free weather. That is it warms up and stays pretty warm for a few brief months if cool might be considered warm. The point that I am making is that the big events are all else where in terms of shifting the climate around and a little surplus heat goes a long way in the Arctic.

So if we have cool spring, the Arctic is unlikely to be contributing much at all. More likely, a late warming for whatever reason is driving the lag in the climate and considering the shifts back and forth, I hate to make any suggestions.


Brrrrr. Too cold for ice cream! Parts of U.S. forecast to have a 'year without a summer'

Long winter marches into June as unseasonable cold and snow continues

Monday, June 08, 2009 - By Marc Morano – Climate Depot

http://www.climatedepot.com/a/1226/Brrrrr-Too-cold-for-ice-cream-Parts-of-US-forecast-to-have-a-year-without-a-summer

The long winter of 2009 continues with unseasonable cold and snow continuing in many parts of the world. AccuWeather is forecasting parts of the U.S. may have a "year without a summer." Below is a small sampling of articles on the June chill.

Parts of U.S. forecast to have a 'year without a summer'

Record-low temp recorded in International Falls

Cool has pushed growth of Western Canada's wheat and barley crop at least 10 days behind schedule

Unseasonably-cool weather slows ice cream sales

Frost may force Brazil to cut this year's corn output forecast

It's June...so it must be snowing: Great British summer goes from sweltering to shivering in just a week

'Unusually cold spring continues' -- two more cold records set in N. Dakota

Isn't this June? Snow sticking around on Pikes Peak...'7 foot snowdrifts'

North Dakota city sees first June snowfall in 60 years

Nearing mid-June in Wisconsin: No sign of summer in forecast

Schoolchildren rescued from hiking trip as June snow and cold hits California

Finland: Chicks killed by the frost in chilly early summer

Ireland: 'Unseasonably cold weather' kills famous chickens

New Zealand ski resort sees earliest ever opening as heavy snow hits

Botswana: Cold Weather Forecast hit by severe winter

'Devastating freeze': Spring frost in Texas killed '99% of our peach crop this year'

Freezes were noted this morning in parts of Montana

Prediction: Northwest Passage won't clear this year

Wyoming: Unseasonably cool temperatures brought a late spring snowstorm and freeze warnings

New record lows were again established in southern Alberta

Below normal temps bring frost damage to Michigan hayfields

Erie, PA: Temperature dips to record low of 40

Winnipeg likely 'to see a record low maximum temperature'

Parts of Canada forecast to get 4 to 8 inches...'set new record lows'

N. Dakota: 80,000 cattle likely have been lost to the harsh winter=

Ozone Hole Purportedly Modifies Antarctic Winds

I do not think that I will ask this group of scientists to analyze the racing form for me. Here we are stacking a speculative theory on a speculative theory to support a thesis that humanity is now causing the Antarctic to chill in spite of global warming. This is actually embarrassing.

The human cause of the ozone hole was always speculative because it emerged more or less when we started looking properly, so we certainly do not have centuries of data or even centuries of thinly connected proxies to lean on as we actually do have in place to embarrass the CO2 crowd.

We have evidence of nothing except when we got serious enough to look we found a hole. That it may be linked to human activity is speculative, but removing the purported pathway was certainly good business. Linking the ozone hole directly to wind patterns is improbable at best and is a case of picking the least disprovable assertion. The article indicates that this nothing more than a convenient assertion particularly when no attempt is made to explain linkage.

I look forward to been surprised if it is anything more than that.

Increasing Antarctic sea ice extent linked to the ozone hole

April 21st, 2009

Increased growth in Antarctic sea ice during the past 30 years is a result of changing weather patterns caused by the ozone hole according to new research published this week (Thurs 23 April 2009).

Reporting in the journal Geophysical Research Letters scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and NASA say that while there has been a dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice, Antarctic sea ice has increased by a small amount as a result of the ozone hole delaying the impact of greenhouse gas increases on the climate of the continent.

Sea ice plays a key role in the global environment - reflecting heat from the sun and providing a habitat for marine life. At both poles sea ice cover is at its minimum during summer. However, during the winter freeze in Antarctica this ice cover expands to an area roughly twice the size of Europe. Ranging in thickness from less than a metre to several metres, the ice insulates the warm ocean from the frigid atmosphere above. Satellite images show that since the 1970s the extent of Antarctic sea ice has increased at a rate of 100,000 square kilometres a decade.

The new research helps explain why observed changes in the amount of sea-ice cover are so different in both polar regions.

Lead author Professor John Turner of BAS says,

"Our results show the complexity of climate change across the Earth. While there is increasing evidence that the loss of sea ice in the Arctic has occurred due to human activity, in the Antarctic human influence through the ozone hole has had the reverse effect and resulted in more ice. Although the ozone hole is in many ways holding back the effects of greenhouse gas increases on the Antarctic, this will not last, as we expect ozone levels to recover by the end of the 21st Century. By then there is likely to be around one third less Antarctic sea ice."

Using satellite images of sea ice and computer models the scientists discovered that the ozone hole has strengthened surface winds around Antarctica and deepened the storms in the South Pacific area of the Southern Ocean that surrounds the continent. This resulted in greater flow of cold air over the Ross Sea (West Antarctica) leading to more ice production in this region.

The satellite data reveal the variation in sea ice cover around the entire Antarctic continent. Whilst there has been a small increase of sea ice during the autumn around the coast of East Antarctica, the largest changes are observed in West Antarctica. Sea ice has been lost to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula - a region that has warmed by almost 3ºC in the past 50 years. Further west sea ice cover over the Ross Sea has increased.

Turner continues, "Understanding how polar sea ice responds to global change - whether human induced or as part of a natural process - is really important if we are to make accurate predictions about the Earth's future climate. This new research helps us solve some of the puzzle of why sea-ice is shrinking is some areas and growing in others."

More information: The paper 'Non-annular atmospheric circulation change induced by stratospheric ozone depletion and its role in the recent increase of Antarctic sea ice extent' by J Turner, JC Comiso, G J Marshall, T A Lachlan-Cope, T Bracegirdle, T Maksym, MP Meredith, Z Wang, and A Orr (2009), is published in Geophysical Research Letters doi:10.1029/2009GL037524, [23 April 2009].

Source: British Antarctic Survey (news : web)

Harold Ambler on Global Warming

This is an excellent article that brings much of what is known out there up to date. New information is the breakdown of climate over the past two thousand years into five to six hundred periods of warm and cold climate. I do not know how real that breakdown is, but if accurate or truly justified in any way, then we surely have another four centuries of warm and pleasant weather. That is the good news. The bad news is that it will not last forever and we better use it to reforest the Sahara and other major deserts to restore Bronze Age conditions.

I do suspect however, that this apparent cyclical pattern is way too fuzzy and coincidental in reality. We simply do not have the comfort in our proxies yet, or to be more accurate, we have not spent enough on data gathering yet to be way more comfortable. Detailed wood ring analysis of every bog throughout Europe and pollen collection could provide an annual climate map for the past several thousands of years. That would be convincing. And how about the bogs in the boreal forests of Russia and Canada?

I do not think for a second that the true believers did anything more than impose their unwanted enthusiasm on a convenient apparent trend line. When I started this blog, I stated specifically that on balance the apparent trend line was within the expected range of variability and signified nothing else. I also stated that the CO2 problem was legitimate but for other reasons entirely.

For the last year, the trend line is in rapid decline and possible still has a way to go before it once again plateaus, although I am hoping we are already there. Perhaps it will not bottom until another politician cranks out the upcoming ice age enthusiasm. It can certainly get a lot colder and I would not be surprised if it did, but it cannot turn into an ice age. As I have pointed out in other posts, we are in the Holocene climate regime which has a variance of at most two degrees because the conditions for a northern ice age were altered permanently.

I am not going to reargue that in this post today, but the conforming data is extensive and ignored. It is possibly just too painful for folks to accept.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-ambler/mr-gore-apology-accepted_b_154982.html

Harold Ambler

Posted January 3, 2009 11:36 AM (EST)

Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted

Read More: Al Gore, Al Gore Global Warming, Alternative Energy, Barack Obama, Climate, Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Flat-Earthers, Global Temperature, Global Warming, Green News

You are probably wondering whether President-elect Obama owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming. The answer is, not yet. There is one person, however, who does. You have probably guessed his name: Al Gore.

Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that "the science is in." Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.

What is wrong with the statement? A brief list:

1. First, the expression "climate change" itself is a redundancy, and contains a lie. Climate has always changed, and always will. There has been no stable period of climate during the Holocene, our own climatic era, which began with the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago. During the Holocene there have been numerous sub-periods with dramatically varied climate, such as the warm Holocene Optimum (7,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C., during which humanity began to flourish, and advance technologically), the warm Roman Optimum (200 B.C. to 400 A.D., a time of abundant crops that promoted the empire), the cold Dark Ages (400 A.D. to 900 A.D., during which the Nile River froze, major cities were abandoned, the Roman Empire fell apart, and pestilence and famine were widespread), the Medieval Warm Period (900 A.D. to 1300 A.D., during which agriculture flourished, wealth increased, and dozens of lavish examples of Gothic architecture were created), the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850, during much of which plague, crop failures, witch burnings, food riots -- and even revolutions, including the French Revolution -- were the rule of thumb), followed by our own time of relative warmth (1850 to present, during which population has increased, technology and medical advances have been astonishing, and agriculture has flourished).

So, no one needs to say the words "climate" and "change" in the same breath -- it is assumed, by anyone with any level of knowledge, that climate changes. That is the redundancy to which I alluded. The lie is the suggestion that climate has ever been stable. Mr. Gore has used a famously inaccurate graph, known as the "Mann Hockey Stick," created by the scientist Michael Mann, showing that the modern rise in temperatures is unprecedented, and that the dramatic changes in climate just described did not take place. They did. One last thought on the expression "climate change": It is a retreat from the earlier expression used by alarmists, "manmade global warming," which was more easily debunked. There are people in Mr. Gore's camp who now use instances of cold temperatures to prove the existence of "climate change," which is absurd, obscene, even.

2. Mr. Gore has gone so far to discourage debate on climate as to refer to those who question his simplistic view of the atmosphere as "flat-Earthers." This, too, is right on target, except for one tiny detail. It is exactly the opposite of the truth.Indeed, it is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers. Mr. Gore states, ad nauseum, that carbon dioxide rules climate in frightening and unpredictable, and new, ways. When he shows the hockey stick graph of temperature and plots it against reconstructed C02 levels in An Inconvenient Truth, he says that the two clearly have an obvious correlation. "Their relationship is actually very complicated," he says, "but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others, and it is this: When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer." The word "complicated" here is among the most significant Mr. Gore has uttered on the subject of climate and is, at best, a deliberate act of obfuscation. Why? Because it turns out that there is an 800-year lag between temperature and carbon dioxide, unlike the sense conveyed by Mr. Gore's graph. You are probably wondering by now -- and if you are not, you should be -- which rises first, carbon dioxide or temperature. The answer? Temperature. In every case, the ice-core data shows that temperature rises precede rises in carbon dioxide by, on average, 800 years. In fact, the relationship is not "complicated." When the ocean-atmosphere system warms, the oceans discharge vast quantities of carbon dioxide in a process known as de-gassing. For this reason, warm and cold years show up on the Mauna Loa C02 measurements even in the short term. For instance, the post-Pinatubo-eruption year of 1993 shows the lowest C02 increase since measurements have been kept. When did the highest C02 increase take place? During the super El Niño year of 1998.

3. What the alarmists now state is that past episodes of warming were not caused by C02 but amplified by it, which is debatable, for many reasons, but, more important, is a far cry from the version of events sold to the public by Mr. Gore.

Meanwhile, the theory that carbon dioxide "drives" climate in any meaningful way is simply wrong and, again, evidence of a "flat-Earth" mentality. Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation. Why not? Because it only absorbs heat along limited bandwidths, and is already absorbing just about everything it can. That is why plotted on a graph, C02's ability to capture heat follows a logarithmic curve. We are already very near the maximum absorption level. Further, the IPCC Fourth Assessment, like all the ones before it, is based on computer models that presume a positive feedback of atmospheric warming via increased water vapor.

4. This mechanism has never been shown to exist. Indeed, increased temperature leads to increased evaporation of the oceans, which leads to increased cloud cover (one cooling effect) and increased precipitation (a bigger cooling effect). Within certain bounds, in other words, the ocean-atmosphere system has a very effective self-regulating tendency. By the way, water vapor is far more prevalent, and relevant, in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide -- a trace gas. Water vapor's absorption spectrum also overlays that of carbon dioxide. They cannot both absorb the same energy! The relative might of water vapor and relative weakness of carbon dioxide is exemplified by the extraordinary cooling experienced each night in desert regions, where water in the atmosphere is nearly non-existent.

If not carbon dioxide, what does "drive" climate? I am glad you are wondering about that. In the short term, it is ocean cycles, principally the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the "super cycle" of which cooling La Niñas and warming El Niños are parts. Having been in its warm phase, in which El Niños predominate, for the 30 years ending in late 2006, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its cool phase, in which La Niñas predominate. Since that time, already, a number of interesting things have taken place. One La Niña lowered temperatures around the globe for about half of the year just ended, and another La Niña shows evidence of beginning in the equatorial Pacific waters. During the last twelve months, many interesting cold-weather events happened to occur: record snow in the European Alps, China, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Rockies, the upper Midwest, Las Vegas, Houston, and New Orleans. There was also, for the first time in at least 100 years, snow in Baghdad.

Concurrent with the switchover of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to its cool phase the Sun has entered a period of deep slumber. The number of sunspots for 2008 was the second lowest of any year since 1901. That matters less because of fluctuations in the amount of heat generated by the massive star in our near proximity (although there are some fluctuations that may have some measurable effect on global temperatures) and more because of a process best described by the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark in his complex, but elegant, work The Chilling Stars. In the book, the modern Galileo, for he is nothing less, establishes that cosmic rays from deep space seed clouds over Earth's oceans. Regulating the number of cosmic rays reaching Earth's atmosphere is the solar wind; when it is strong, we get fewer cosmic rays.

When it is weak, we get more. As NASA has corroborated, the number of cosmic rays passing through our atmosphere is at the maximum level since measurements have been taken, and show no signs of diminishing. The result: the seeding of what some have taken to calling "Svensmark clouds," low dense clouds, principally over the oceans, that reflect sunlight back to space before it can have its warming effect on whatever is below.

Svensmark has proven, in the minds of most who have given his work a full hearing, that it is this very process that produced the episodes of cooling (and, inversely, warming) of our own era and past eras. The clearest instance of the process, by far, is that of the Maunder Minimum, which refers to a period from 1650 to 1700, during which the Sun had not a single spot on its face. Temperatures around the globe plummeted, with quite adverse effects: crop failures (remember the witch burnings in Europe and Massachusetts?), famine, and societal stress.

Many solar physicists anticipate that the slumbering Sun of early 2009 is likely to continue for at least two solar cycles, or about the next 25 years. Whether the Grand Solar Minimum, if it comes to pass, is as serious as the Maunder Minimum is not knowable, at present. Major solar minima (and maxima, such as the one during the second half of the 20th century) have also been shown to correlate with significant volcanic eruptions. These are likely the result of solar magnetic flux affecting geomagnetic flux, which affects the distribution of magma in Earth's molten iron core and under its thin mantle. So, let us say, just for the sake of argument, that such an eruption takes place over the course of the next two decades. Like all major eruptions, this one will have a temporary cooling effect on global temperatures, perhaps a large one. The larger the eruption, the greater the effect. History shows that periods of cold are far more stressful to humanity than periods of warm. Would the eruption and consequent cooling be a climate-modifier that exists outside of nature, somehow? Who is the "flat-Earther" now?

What about heat escaping from volcanic vents in the ocean floor? What about the destruction of warming, upper-atmosphere ozone by cosmic rays? I could go on, but space is short. Again, who is the "flat-Earther" here?

The ocean-atmosphere system is not a simple one that can be "ruled" by a trace atmospheric gas. It is a complex, chaotic system, largely modulated by solar effects (both direct and indirect), as shown by the Little Ice Age.

To be told, as I have been, by Mr. Gore, again and again, that carbon dioxide is a grave threat to humankind is not just annoying, by the way, although it is that! To re-tool our economies in an effort to suppress carbon dioxide and its imaginary effect on climate, when other, graver problems exist is, simply put, wrong. Particulate pollution, such as that causing the Asian brown cloud, is a real problem. Two billion people on Earth living without electricity, in darkened huts and hovels polluted by charcoal smoke, is a real problem.

So, let us indeed start a Manhattan Project-like mission to create alternative sources of energy. And, in the meantime, let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering continues unabated, day after day.

Again, Mr. Gore, I accept your apology.

And, Mr. Obama, though I voted for you for a thousand times a thousand reasons, I hope never to need one from you.

P.S. One of the last, desperate canards proposed by climate alarmists is that of the polar ice caps. Look at the "terrible," "unprecedented" melting in the Arctic in the summer of 2007, they say. Well, the ice in the Arctic basin has always melted and refrozen, and always will. Any researcher who wants to find a single molecule of ice that has been there longer than 30 years is going to have a hard job, because the ice has always been melted from above (by the midnight Sun of summer) and below (by relatively warm ocean currents, possibly amplified by volcanic venting) -- and on the sides, again by warm currents. Scientists in the alarmist camp have taken to referring to "old ice," but, again, this is a misrepresentation of what takes place in the Arctic.

More to the point, 2007 happened also to be the time of maximum historic sea ice in Antarctica. (There are many credible sources of this information, such as the following website maintained by the University of Illinois-Urbana: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg). Why, I ask, has Mr. Gore not chosen to mention the record growth of sea ice around Antarctica? If the record melting in the Arctic is significant, then the record sea ice growth around Antarctica is, too, I say. If one is insignificant, then the other one is, too.

For failing to mention the 2007 Antarctic maximum sea ice record a single time, I also accept your apology, Mr. Gore. By the way, your contention that the Arctic basin will be "ice free" in summer within five years (which you said last month in Germany), is one of the most demonstrably false comments you have dared to make. Thank you for that!

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.

Hurricanes and Arctic Phytoplankton

The media tends to lose sight of hurricanes unless they are threatening a densely populated area. This item is a reminder that the coast is exposed each and every year to a predictable number of hurricanes. This is why insurance companies price coverage accordingly. It is only a matter of time.

What I find obscene is that municipalities ever allow building permits in clearly exposed areas. The most minimal urban planning can freeze out vulnerable districts whose foolish development will inevitably bankrupt the town when a storm blows through.

This year we were treated to Galveston once again been destroyed totally at a significant loss of life. It did happen once before and it will happen again.

The city needs to demand full insurance cover and a life cover before anyone is allowed to ever build there again. Does anyone think that this will happen?

Galveston and Katrina were the two most completely predictable events that ever happened and they were.

My next favorite is Miami. It is one giant bulls eye that has no protection from a six to sixteen foot storm surge. You also have difficulty running away from the coast.

All these areas need to have barrier reefs built and grown a mile or so offshore that can frustrate a storm surge and limit damage to wind alone.

"Atlantic Hurricane Season Sets Records"

November 26, 2008

(Source: NHC)

The 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season officially came to a close on Sunday (Nov 30th), marking the end of a season that produced a record number of consecutive storms to strike the United States and ranks as one of the more active seasons in the 64 years since comprehensive records began.

A total of 16 named storms formed this season, based on an operational estimate by NOAA's National Hurricane Center. The storms included eight hurricanes, five of which were major hurricanes at Category 3 strength or higher. These numbers fall within the ranges predicted in NOAA's pre- and mid-season outlooks issued in May and August.

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This short note is a review of how the unusual conditions of 2007 impacted the phytoplankton populations. At least someone was trying to measure the results. Of course we are now likely looking at a steady decline in the amount of open water as normal Arctic conditions fully reassert themselves.

Arctic Sea Ice Decline Shakes Up Ocean Ecosystems

Saturday, November 8, 2008

http://www.sflorg.com/earthnews/en110808_01.html


Uncertain as to how phytoplankton -- microscopic marine plants on which much of ocean life depends -- would respond to Arctic sea ice decline, researchers took advantage of NASA satellite images to show that the microscopic floating plants are teeming in regions of recent ice melt.

The explosion in phytoplankton populations is the result of new open-water habitat and, more significantly, an extended ice-free growing season, biological oceanographer Kevin Arrigo and colleagues from Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., reported last month in the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters.

Since phytoplankton cycle carbon dioxide into organic compounds and also form the base of the marine food web, the researchers believe the booming populations could have complex ecological consequences.
"Arrigo and colleagues have brought together the effects of air-sea interaction, warming water, and decreasing sea ice extent," said Paula Bontempi, a program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "You start to look at all of these interlocking pieces and think: there has got to be an impact on phytoplankton and the ecology of the system."

Phytoplankton, like any plant, require nutrients to survive. However, Arctic Ocean surface waters usually have a limited supply of nutrients, which has led some researchers to assume that new areas of open water would not necessarily promote additional phytoplankton growth.

To find out how phytoplankton respond to diminished sea ice cover, the team calculated changes in the sea ice extent and phytoplankton growth from ten years of chlorophyll measurements -- which are used to estimate phytoplankton abundance -- collected by the Sea-viewing Wide Field of View Sensor (SeaWiFS) instrument on the GeoEye satellite. The team also collected measurements of sea surface temperature and ice extent from other satellite instruments such as NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites.

The researchers were most interested by what happened between 2006 and 2007, when the summertime minimum sea ice extent made its sharpest annual reduction since satellite measurements began in 1979.

By comparing maps of new ice free areas in 2007 with maps of increasing phytoplankton abundance since 2006, the team could deduce how much of that phytoplankton growth was due to newly ice free regions. In a similar way, the team could compare the maps of ice-free regions with maps that show the magnitude of an extended melt season, to deduce how much phytoplankton growth resulted from the longer season.

The team found that 30 percent of the increase in phytoplankton between 2006 and 2007 was due to large new areas of open water exposed by the extensive melting of sea ice. The other 70 percent of the increase could be attributed to a longer growing season, which in some Arctic regions was extended in 2007 by as much as 100 days, compared to 2006.

"We expected a big phytoplankton increase in the areas that were historically covered by sea ice because the plants now have sunlight." Arrigo said. "But the longer growing season is ultimately what allowed most phytoplankton to grow and increase productivity."

Phytoplankton and all plants naturally remove carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere. Newly open water in the Arctic could therefore act as a new "sink" for carbon dioxide if marine plants and their carbon sink out of the surface waters to the deep ocean. Still, the magnitude of such a carbon sink remains to be seen because further growth could eventually be limited by the supply of surface nutrients. Scientists also wonder if the uptake of carbon into the Arctic Ocean will be temporary or long lasting.

Whales, seals, marine birds, zooplankton, and other marine animals all depend either directly or indirectly on phytoplankton for food. Researchers are uncertain what effect a boost in plant growth will have on the ecosystem, particularly migratory species that depend on the timing of sea ice melt and food availability.
"The Arctic is undergoing so many changes already," Arrigo said. "Nobody knows how this will play out."
Source: NASA / Goddard / Kathryn Hansen