Bronze Age Climate Restoration

Those who followed my blog last year saw me work at tracking and isolating the various likely factors responsible for the temperature variation experienced throughout the ten thousand year Holocene. A big question mark was the existence of a two thousand year or more Bronze Age optimum that ended with the Hekla event in 1159BCE. We ran down a lot of factors and in fairness none appeared up to the task of explaining that particular optimum.

Since then, the climate has precipitously cooled and then warmed slowly over decades approaching the former optimum but actually coming nowhere close. The Rhine has been frozen several times throughout history and each time local climate took a long time to recover.

Yesterday’s item finally provides a creditable mechanism to operate this engine.

We have a layer of freshened water that is between one to two hundred meters thick lying on top of the underlying ocean waters. The temperature of these underlying waters is about two degrees over the freezing point of fresh water ice. That is a huge supply of available heat that if actually mixed with the overlying ice would eliminate it.

The upper layer is a degree or so below the freezing point. This means that a sustained warm spell and plenty of help from winds could remove this layer. If this layer is removed, it becomes decidedly harder for sea ice to form at all and its breakup the next summer will simply put it back to the way it was.

With surface temperatures a couple of degrees above freezing during the summer, the land will warm up and as happened during the Bronze Age, the permafrost will disappear.

It is pretty obvious that the Hekla event gave twenty years without crops and that means the gain of at least a couple of meters of sea ice each of those years. Over twenty years that likely added up to a beginning round of forty meters. The process likely continued at a slower pace for centuries longer until the sea ice approached a thickness of even a hundred meters or more.

What happens with sea ice is that as it ages the salt is slowly removed and this salt mixes into the surrounding ocean were normal circulation takes it eventually out into the Atlantic.

Thus the post Bronze Age cold spell produced a fresh water layer sitting directly on top of the polar sea. The lack of severe storms failed to produce any mixing since it was way too thick anyway.

The present situation and some fortuitous winds appear to have thinned this layer and have led to the present gross reduction in sea ice thickness. I do not think that the remaining sea ice is any more than part of a two year cycle of ice passing through the gyre and if not that yet, is about to be.

The big question now is whether the winds or normal seasonal warming, sufficient to remove this fresh water cap anytime soon. We are at the point in which it can do a lot of good. Yet I am aware we have been here before for decades even only to have it abruptly end.

And that mechanism is now a little clearer. For some reason we get a summer or two without any melting and suddenly we have a lot of ice. One Alaskan Volcano could do that. It really is that quick. If this mass of left over freshened water from Hekla could be eliminated though, we could return to Bronze Age conditions.

Arctic Salinity Impact Key

This came as a surprise. For the past two years, I had reasonably assumed that the erosion of the arctic ice pack reflected heat input from the atmosphere and was perplexed at the complete lack of related climate behavior even just south of the arctic.

Here it is argued that we are dealing with a reordering of the surface salinity and that this was triggered by a change in the wind system. In short, instead of a major application of atmospheric heat we are having a minor application of winds whose direct effect is vastly in excess of the input energy in terms of output energetics.

This also introduces another prime cooling mechanism in the form of an overturn of salinity that is also able to explain the sudden onset of so called little ice age conditions.

There have been many warm periods in the northern climate. These all appear to have ended abruptly. I have entertained several other mechanisms to attempt to understand this phenomenon. Understand that it is the precipitous decline that gives us difficulties rather than the gentle warming trend.

I am not sure how sound this argument happens to be or how well supported by data. That this is the first I have heard of it surprises because that is evidence of a lack of general distribution or discussion. I need to see more related discussion. However it is a compelling argument and draws us into a much better explanation for the abrupt onset of cold weather in the North.

There had to be some reason that the Rhine froze and allowed the Western Roman Empire to be overrun. It certainly cannot happen under our present understanding.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

CO2 is not melting the Arctic.

http://themigrantmind.blogspot.com/2009/09/co2-is-not-melting-arctic.html

It is modern myth that CO2 is melting the Arctic sea ice. No doubt many people will take immediate offence at the mere title of this post but they would do well to listen to the data before they jump. CO2 is supposed to heat the earth's atmosphere and then would melt the ice from above. The atmosphere can't get past the ice to warm the water below so the only logical conclusion is that a warm atmosphere should melt the ice from above.

But what is happening is the Arctic ice is melting from below due to warm waters that normally are about 100-200 m below the surface. I am going to show that due to a change in the winds, the Arctic ocean became more salty (salinization). The increase in salinity caused the underlying deeper waters to come into contact with the ice above, which melts the Arctic ice from below. Unless one can demonstrate that the wind change is due to global warming, one can't claim that CO2 is melting the Arctic ice.

Let's start by looking at the vertical temperature profile of the Arctic ocean. The surface layer, the layer in which the ice floats, is in general is fresher than the warm Atlantic sea water below.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOK9uFhm8TMdu5yK-L6j-kyD9ID28Z50Lt-QqsuEsBe3o7HaXxaCkcRrwfM77X2592ATvhIiyFzkEQjSxhsm-48MvzVXB1_Ylma15i-BvbMKmyqZ9ao0USQUMQGaJ7usuui5p-M3mkFHoV/s1600-h/weatherArcticTempprofile.jpg

Note that about 200 meters beneath the sea surface, the water temperature is 2 deg C--well above the melting point. If that heat can get up to the surficial layer, past the fresh water, it would melt the ice. Since fresh water is less dense than salt water, the density difference is what keeps the warm water from the ice.

Now, the halocline, the layer of fresh water is about 50-100 meters thick. The ice above is only about 3 meters thick--people think the Arctic sea ice is hundreds of feet thick but it isn't (http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay.wadhams.html). What happened in the Arctic is that the halocline, the freshwater layer has been destroyed, or significantly reduced, and that has allowed heat from below to rise beneath the ice, melting it.

Here is how this happened. Below is a comparison of the wind patterns in the 70s and 80s vs, the late 80s and 90s.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirhPvvmSeWcsl9f8B4D1S0wc2V8iQVffDJvPJYLY3i1SFqHNBLo_BmjyqFvd4JU8OTqYK0BJaTjFcfyIfFcLj5b5uw-WxiahA3Qn1e3j6XDnnGk8HLzLVrEVT9YckQppAhEX3C_X3NwXZe/s1600-h/weatherArcticWinds.jpg

The left picture is 1979-1988; the right is 1989-1997. The big high pressure cell (red) present in the earlier times is gone in the later times. And that has had a big impact on the freshwater flow in the surficial waters of the Arctic ocean.

"This study was motivated by observations of significant salinification of the upper Eurasian Basin that began around 1989. Observational data and modelling results provide evidence that increased arctic atmospheric cyclonicity in the 1990s resulted in a dramatic increase in the salinity in the Laptev Sea and Eurasian Basin. Two mechanisms account for the Laptev Sea salinization: eastward diversion of Russian rivers, and increased brine formation due to enhanced ice production in numerous leads in the Laptev Sea ice cover. These two mechanisms are approximately the same intensity and are linked to changes in wind patterns. The resulting Laptev Sea salinity anomaly was then advected to the central Eurasian Basin. The strong salinization over the Eurasian Basin altered the formation of cold halocline waters, weakened vertical stratification, and released heat from the cold halocline layer upward. Our analysis suggests that local processes in the Laptev Sea may have a dramatic basin-wide impact on the thermohaline structure and circulation of the Arctic Ocean." Johnson, M. A., and I. V. Polyakov, The Laptev Sea as a source for recent Arctic Ocean salinity changes, Geophys. Res. Lett., 28, 2017-2020, 2001

The impact of that increased salinization is that the ice is no longer protected from the warmer waters below. Johnson and Polyakov state:

"The replacement of fresh surface waters with more saline waters reduced vertical stratification and increased heat flux, releasing heat from cold halocline layer to upper layers of the Eurasian Basin. The corresponding heat flux increase for the 1989-1997 period is as much as 3 W/ m-2 (Figure 4B) in this region, comparable to the change in heat flux over the Lomonosov Ridge and Amundsen Basin computed from SCICEX'95 data and a 1-D mixing model [Steele and Boyd, 1998]." Johnson, M. A., and I. V. Polyakov, The Laptev Sea as a source for recent Arctic Ocean salinity changes, Geophys. Res. Lett., 28, 2017-2020, 2001

Swift et al, say the same thing--that the heat from below is warming the ice above, melting it.

"The halocline is the principal density structure of the Arctic Ocean, separating the cold surface mixed layer from the warm Atlantic layer that lies below about 200 m. The climatic importance of the halocline is well recognized [e.g., Aagaard et al., 1981]. Some observations have suggested that regionally the halocline has thinned dramatically during the past 10-15 years, possibly sufficiently to increase the upward heat flux to the sea surface and its ice cover [Steele and Boyd, 1998]. Other recent work has linked large and rapid changes in the properties of halocline waters to shelf processes, including the melting of sea ice on the Barents shelf [Woodgate et al., 2001] and increased freezing in the Laptev Sea [Johnson and Polyakov, 2001]. There is in any event ample justification to seek evidence of earlier halocline changes similar to those during the 1990s." Swift, J. H., K. Aagaard, L. Timokhov, and E. G. Nikiforov (2005), Long-term variability of Arctic Ocean waters: Evidence from a reanalysis of the EWG data set, J. Geophys. Res., 110, C03012 ftp://odf.ucsd.edu/pub/jswift/2004JC002312.pdf p.8,9

Swift et al looked at records of temperature over the past 50 years looking for previous warming periods. They show a very interesting plot which shows the temperature structure of the Arctic Ocean over time. This picture is from the Nansen Basin.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTMgTZVo4cXZFpTDO9AhJmAO8bx2y27s6Kwwlmoa5U-1U4rA7o0rGZJtzsmErck1Hw5B00QPPxbPwtyFca7rpJc91K2C5cRwhhiAZYMTTmDe_UV0REqBaq98OkjKRWpmPMbBWoYAK1P3U-/s1600-h/weatherArctictempprofhistory.jpg

You can see that there were warm periods in the underlying water three times during the past, the early 1950s, the mid 1960s and the early 1970s.

What is happening in the Arctic is not unprecedented. Shoot, 5000 years ago, all the permafrost around the arctic was melted.

" We find that beginning about 1976, most of the upper Arctic Ocean became significantly saltier, possibly related to thinning of the arctic ice cover. There are also indications that a more local upper ocean salinity increase in the Eurasian Basin about 1989 may not have originated on the shelf, as had been suggested earlier. In addition to the now well-established warming of the Atlantic layer during the early 1990s, there was a similar cyclonically propagating warm event during the 1950s. More remarkable, however, was a pervasive Atlantic layer warming throughout most of the Arctic Ocean from 1964–1969, possibly related to reduced vertical heat loss associated with increased upper ocean stratification. A cold period prevailed during most of the 1970s and 1980s, with several very cold events appearing to originate near the Kara and Laptev shelves. Finally, we find that the silicate maximum in the central Arctic Ocean halocline eroded abruptly in the mid-1980s, demonstrating that the redistribution of Pacific waters and the warming of the Atlantic layer reported from other observations during the 1990s were distinct events separated in time by perhaps 5 years. We have made the entire data set publicly available." Swift, J. H., K. Aagaard, L. Timokhov, and E. G. Nikiforov (2005), Long-term variability of Arctic Ocean waters: Evidence from a reanalysis of the EWG data set, J. Geophys. Res., 110, C03012

Now as long ago as 1998 it has been known that the warm waters beneath the ice was in direct contact with the ice, yet the global warming hysteriacs continue to ignore the scientific data

" Changes are also seen in other halocline types and in the Atlantic Water layer heat content and depth. Since the cold halocline layer insulates the surface layer (and thus the overlying sea ice) from the heat contained in the Atlantic Water layer, this should have profound effects on the surface energy and mass balance of sea ice in this region. Using a simple mixing model, we calculate maximum ice-ocean heat fluxes of 1–3 W m−2 in the Eurasian Basin, where during SCICEX'95 the surface layer lay in direct contact with the underlying Atlantic Water layer." Steele, M., and T. Boyd (1998), Retreat of the cold halocline layer in the Arctic Ocean, J. Geophys. Res., 103(C5), 10,419–10,435

Remember that the warm underlying Atlantic water is in direct contact with the ice above and that this is due to the salinization of the Arctic water. Here is the history of the salinization of the Arctic.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVCcyECVwXbbxhWJ6xqBATRxjTS5EK02q6XYJvbW2G_mX2R8yJdYHrC9ElPxavKbHoqTWRAazGuklFafIP_iFHL9QeHhH4uwe4CHzyRO6SXn1zv6hjbfWxIRjdn9Vy8phakYSf-zz7WuZr/s1600-h/weatherArcticSalinity.jpg

Clearly about the time that the Arctic ice began to melt, the sea became more salty. CO2 is not melting the ice; the underlying warm water coming into contact with the ice from beneath is what is melting the Arctic ice.

Why do the global warming hysteriacs NEVER, EVER tell you this? Is it because they simply are pushing a political agenda rather than real science?

Warmest Sea Surface Temperatures

What makes this so difficult is just the following. Ocean surface temperatures appear to be excellent proxies for global climate. So are other measures. Except that they seem to have a mind of their own and seem to mock any effort to reconcile them. Such ocean heat should support a strong hurricane season. Yet 98 did nothing of the kind that I recall.

Just when you suspect that there is some missing heat it shows up. The atmosphere moves a lot of heat around and picks it up from both the sun and back from the ocean. In fact the ocean is the earth’s heat sink and climate stabilizer.

Anyway, we are back to not knowing squat that is particularly certain.

The sea ice is continuing to erode and the northern land masses may not be as cold as they should be.

And now the ocean is warmer than it should be.

Yet we had a generally cool summer this year. It is as if we are getting selective applications of warmth that may add up to nothing consequential.

After dealing this for two years, the only surety apparent is that our modeling is unreliable at best and should all be outright ignored. In fact, no one should be allowed to draw any conclusions that are deemed predictive.

Does anyone think we are going to have a warm (cold) winter?

NOAA: Warmest Global Sea-Surface Temperatures for August and Summer

September 16, 2009

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090916_globalstats.html

The world’s ocean surface temperature was the warmest for any August on record, and the warmest on record averaged for any June-August (Northern Hemisphere summer/Southern Hemisphere winter) season according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. The preliminary analysis is based on records dating back to 1880.

NCDC scientists also reported that the combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for August was second warmest on record, behind 1998. For the June-August 2009 season, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was third warmest on record.

Global Highlights – Summer

The June-August worldwide ocean surface temperature was also the warmest on record at 62.5 degrees F, 1.04 degrees F above the 20th century average of 61.5 degrees F.

The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the June-August season was 61.2 degrees F, which is the third warmest on record and 1.06 degrees F above the 20th century average of 60.1 degrees F.

Global Highlights – August

The worldwide ocean surface temperature of 62.4 degrees F was the warmest on record for any August, and 1.03 degrees F above the 20th century average of 61.4 degrees F.

Separately, the global land surface temperature of 58.2 degrees F was 1.33 degrees F above the 20th century average of 56.9 degrees F, and ranked as the fourth warmest August on record.

Large portions of the world’s land mass observed warmer-than-average temperatures in August. The warmest departures occurred across Australia, Europe, parts of the Middle East, northwestern Africa, and southern South America. Both Australia and New Zealand had their warmest August since their records began.

The Southern Hemisphere average temperatures for land and ocean surface combined were the warmest on record for August.

Other Notable Developments

For the year to date, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature of 58.3 degrees F tied with 2003 for the fifth-warmest January-August period on record. This value is 0.99 degree F above the 20th century average.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Arctic sea ice covered an average of 2.42 million square miles during August. This is 18.4 percent below the 1979-2000 average extent, and is generally consistent with a decline of August sea ice extent since 1979.

NSIDC data indicated Antarctic sea ice extent in August was 2.7 percent above the 1979-2000 average. This is consistent with the trend during recent decades of modest increases in August Antarctic sea ice extent.

Watch NOAA's

visualization of the world’s land and ocean surface temperature.

Watch NOAA's

visualization of the Arctic sea ice extent.

NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the oceans to surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.

Chicken Little

Hi Stephan

I certainly must agree with you that sober voices were been ignored. My only problem with the global warming scenario is the proposed anthropogenic cause. Mother Nature did not need us at all on that one and how they will howl when all the sea ice disappears in a couple of years.

We desperately need global action of several issues, like fisheries management and global pollution standards that is simply been ignored.
How do we start that?

Maybe it is our curse to ignore the obvious until everyone is hurting or until a chicken little rises. They certainly continue to ignore those of us who play Cassandra.

I write a daily column, principally about the ongoing scientific debate over Global Warming and Terraforming the Earth that can be followed at:

http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com or by googling arclein


From: Stephen Klaber <***********>To: Global Warming Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 1:03:47 PMSubject: Re: Global WarmingWhile its easy to poke fun at Mr. Gore's Chicken Little impersonation, the more careful and conservative alarm raisers were getting nowhere. And there is much to be alarmed about, a lot of it anthropogenic to one degree or another. The desertification and water supply problems we have are mostly the ones William Vogt wrote about in 1948. Those listening to more conservative alarmists knew of our current energy crisis and desertification long ago. But the rest of the barnyard didn't want to hear it. It took Chicken Little to wake them up, but more of them are awake now.

Antarctic is Growing

Both stories are short so I am quoting both to get the most information. It really boils down to the fact that the bulk of our land ice is stable and even getting colder. It will take a lot more in terms of real global warming to melt enough ice to ever impact on the sea levels, when this block looks very much as the very last to ever be affected.

Anyway, this is a welcome update in the data that in view of the commotion over the past years is welcome. I had little doubt that the outcome would be exactly as advertised, but it is always nice to see it confirmed.

Now we will wait to see if the Arctic sea ice makes a significant recovery this year. The press is still reacting of the retreat brought on by 2007. This winter was cold and we should get significant regrowth unless open water warming is much more effective than expected.

Western Antarctica and Greenland represent only a small fraction of the available land ice and obviously the only blocks realistically exposed to any melting whatsoever. Thus, whatever the pundits have to say, the chances of a significant rise in seal level is presently remote.

Antarctic ice growing, not shrinking

18 Apr 2009

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Earth/Antarctic-ice-growing/articleshow/4418558.cms


SYDNEY: New analysis has indicated that contrary to the belief that there is large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, ice is actually expanding in a large portion of the continent.

Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica.

The destabilization of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.

However, according to a report in the Australian, the picture is very different in east Antarctica, which includes the territory claimed by Australia. East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling.

The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report noted that the South Pole had shown "significant cooling in recent decades". According to Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison, sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica.

"Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally," Dr Allison said. The melting of sea ice - fast ice and pack ice - does not cause sea levels to rise because the ice is in the water.

Sea levels may rise with losses from freshwater ice sheets on the polar caps. In Antarctica, these losses are in the form of icebergs calved from ice shelves formed by glacial movements on the mainland.

Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. "The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west," he said.

Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m.

A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded.

Revealed: Antarctic ice growing, not shrinking

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25349683-11949,00.html

Greg Roberts April 18, 2009

Article from: The Australian

ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.

The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent's western coast.

Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.

However, the picture is very different in east Antarctica, which includes the territory claimed by Australia.

East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report prepared for last week's meeting of Antarctic Treaty nations in Washington noted the South Pole had shown "significant cooling in recent decades".

Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica.

"Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally," Dr Allison said.

The melting of sea ice -- fast ice and pack ice -- does not cause sea levels to rise because the ice is in the water. Sea levels may rise with losses from freshwater ice sheets on the polar caps. In Antarctica, these losses are in the form of icebergs calved from ice shelves formed by glacial movements on the mainland.

Last week, federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett said experts predicted sea level rises of up to 6m from Antarctic melting by 2100, but the worst case scenario foreshadowed by the SCAR report was a 1.25m rise.

Mr Garrett insisted global warming was causing ice losses throughout Antarctica. "I don't think there's any doubt it is contributing to what we've seen both on the Wilkins shelf and more generally in Antarctica," he said.

Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. "The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west," he said. And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual.

"Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off -- I'm talking 100km or 200km long -- every 10 or 20 or 50 years."

Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m.

A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice

Narwhal Migration

This is a neat item from England and gives us more insight into the life cycle of the Narwhal. This is one of those iconic creatures of the far north like the polar bear that by and large has been fairly unaffected by human encroachment. More likely they have been helped by human hunting of their competition.

What is interesting is their ability to migrate through the ice in the face of the obvious and apparent dangers. They pull it off year after year.

The Arctic is a harsh environment but is a lot less fragile than some let on.

In fact, the waters are teeming with sea life on a scale with the crest of the oceans. The barrenness of the land is that of the desert that it is. I do not have to go to the Arctic to locate such deserts.

Until the globe warms up to the top end of the Holocene temperature range and stabilizes there with only modest variation, the arctic will hang on to its summer ice pack. This does not need to be and will change once we reforest the Sahara back to conditions prevalent during the Bronze Age.
Narwhals filmed for first time on migration

Narwhals, known as ice unicorns for their long tusks, have been filmed for the first time as they make their treacherous migrating along the cracks in the Arctic sea ice.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/4547325/Narwhals-filmed-for-first-time-on-migration.html

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 9:13PM GMT 07 Feb 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01291/narwhales_1291644c.jpg

The treacherous journeys made by narwhals have been witnessed for the first time Photo: PAUL NICKLEN/BBC

These unusual whales are rarely glimpsed in the fleeting moments they break through the ice that covers their underwater world.

But spectacular aerial footage captured by the BBC shows how the gruops of narwhal, with tusks up to eight feet long, crowd their way through narrow gaps between the ice sheets as they attempt a dangerous spring migration in the search for food.

It comes as new research is also revealing how these rare and strange-looking mammals are under threat from changing conditions in the Arctic.

Scientists studying the impact of climate change on the Arctic have concluded that narwhals are even more vulnerable than polar bears, which rely upon the ice to hunt. They claim that without the ice to shelter them, narwhals will become more vulnerable to predators and competition from other whales.

"Narwhal need predictable conditions so they can time their migration right and get to their food sources at the right time," added Dr Kristen Laidre, a polar biologist who is carrying out the research on narwhal at University of Washington. "They are really very specialised animals that have adapted to live amid the ice, so if the ecology of the Arctic changes then it can impact on the whole food chain.

"The areas they are found are extremely remote, so they are difficult to study. We still don't know how they manage to find open water within the ice. Each year the ice breaks up in different ways, but they time their migration at the right moment."

The narwhals, which feature in the first programme of the BBC's latest natural history series Nature's Great Events, were filmed during their annual migration north from the west coast of Greenland to their summer feeding grounds in the fjords and bays beyond Lancaster Sound.

They form the vanguard of animals to migrate north as rising spring temperatures and winds start to break up the vast stretches of sea ice that form in the Arctic Circle during the freezing winter months.

The film captures the thousands of narwhals as they make the annual trip along thin channels in the ice in the ice in groups of 20 or 30, all swimming in perfect unison as they surface for air.

Occasionally channels close up and the narwhals have to swim to find openings in the ice further along their route or they will drown. The animals can also become trapped if the ice sheets close up above them and the narwhals have to break through thin sections of the ice in order to breathe.

To get the footage film crews had to travel 30 miles out on the sea ice while it was starting to break up.

Justin Anderson, producer of the programme that follows the springtime melting of the Arctic ice sheets, said it took three weeks before they found the elusive whales.

He said: "The location is very remote and the ice was breaking up all the time around the film crew.

"When you see them, it is hard to believe they are real – they seem almost mystical as if they have come straight from some kind of fantasy world."

Narwhal tusks are thought to be the inspiration for the legend of unicorns and they can fetch thousands of pounds. Queen Elizabeth I is said to have paid a fortune for a narwhal tusk which she used as a sceptre.

Only male narwhals have tusks and they were originally thought to be used in "fencing" as males competed for mates. Recent research, however, has suggested the tusks could also act as some sort of super-sensory organ that allows them to detect changes in water temperature and salinity.

Nature's Great Events follows six periods of dramatic seasonal change in different parts of the world, including the salmon run in north America, flooding on the Kalahari and shoals of sardines up to 15 miles long migrating off the coast of South Africa.

In one heart-rending scene, a pride of hungry lions in Africa's Kalahari attack and kill a baby elephant in broad daylight. Such behaviour is considered to be extremely rare and it is the first time such an attack has been filmed.

Although lions are known to attack elephants, they usually do it under cover of darkness when the elephants are unable to see. It is thought that some prides are adapting to increasingly difficult conditions in their habitats to hunt bigger and more difficult prey.

Chris Carbone, a carnivore ecologist at the Zoological Society of London, said: "Lions do occasionally hunt really big prey that weigh up to one tonne, but that is pretty unsusual. They usually stick to zebra and wilderbeast that can weigh up to 200kg. With a social species like elephant, the adults will try to protect the young so it is a big risk. But lions are very adaptable and there are lions that specialise in hunting giraffe."

Nature's Great Events will begin on Wednesday 11 February on BBC One at 9pm.

Narwhal Facts

Weight: up to 3,500lbs

Length: up to 15.5 feet

Ivory tusk: Actually a left front tooth that grows to 8ft

Population: up to 80,000

Dive more than 3,000 feet

Feed on arctic cod and squid

Related to other toothed whales such as orca and sperm whales

Arctic Calm

My favorite sea ice maps came up again after a three week absence. The winds have not done what they did last year and the sea ice is more broadly distributed this year. Therefore, it looks like any movement in the Northwest Passage is problematic this year. There is plenty of ice at various points that are usually clear by now. It is not tight packed but it is certainly a navigation hazard. It will take good luck this year to move anything large although small vessels may have no problem.

More interestingly only a negligible amount of the sea ice is showing one hundred percent coverage. That means that all that ice has also warmed up to ambient ranges for ice and little retains the steel like cold of winter that large blocks might be expected to do. I see no evidence that the annual loss of net ice mass has abated at all. The downward spiral is continuing. We unfortunately do not have a reliable proxy for ice mass but breaking the trend line now will need a very dramatic increase in the thickness of winter ice with a cool summer that retains a lot of that ice. In short we need a volcano to blow up.

In the meantime, I see little evidence that the discharge of atmospheric heat that took place between 2005 and 2007 is been replenished very fast if at all. The sunspot crowd would certainly argue against any replenishment whatsoever. In fact it is reported a couple of months back that global temperatures dropped three quarters of a degree. Whatever that meant, it has certainly silenced a lot of the run away global warming crowd.

What is becoming more evident to me is that the Earth’s heat engine is operating on far longer cycles than anyone gives it credit for. The reason for that conjecture is the measurable lag between the heating spell of the nineties and the heat discharge event of 2005 to 2007. Certainly the long warm spell has been followed by a protracted warming of the Arctic. This could be simply the result of a transfer mechanism that is not overly robust except in extremis.

Without question our atmosphere is very good at correcting local heat disturbances through mechanisms such as hurricanes. We should have anticipated a long period of low hurricane activity after the blowout of 2005. That was the historic record. And it all shows us that the resolution of our climate models is still hopeless.

In any event, we did not have a very warm summer. I wonder if the winter will be as surprising as last year’s.

The Arctic has had almost a hundred years free from major volcanic activity. The last such event was Novarupta/Katmai, in 1912 in Alaska. It was during this time that the Peace River area of Alberta was opened up to settlers and I have it on good report that the winters were unusually long and awful. The point is that there has been no forced cooling on the Arctic since. So perhaps it is not surprising that we now have enough surplus heat in the Arctic to maintain pressure on the sea ice every year.

As my readers are aware, I think that there is ample indication that the primary cooling mechanism for the Arctic outside of the normal seasonal cycle is the occasional injection of volcanic gas and dust directly into the polar zone. We certainly have a convincing culprit standing by.


In the meantime this news story is waxing somewhat more enthusiastic than I can justify with the areal maps of the fifteenth. Here is hoping that a nifty algorithm is at work and this is not simply journalistic license. Otherwise it is a good update on current coverage and we have plenty of eyeballs this year.

U.S. scientists sound alarm over Arctic ice as Harper poised for visit

Randy Boswell , Canwest News Service

Published: Monday, August 25, 2008

With an election-primed Stephen Harper poised to touch down Tuesday in Inuvik to begin a three-day visit to northern Canada, scientists tracking the ongoing Arctic meltdown are sounding new warnings about the state of the polar environment in an era of evidently rapid climate change.

The latest satellite analysis of this summer's sea-ice retreat, released Monday by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, showed a decline close to matching last year's record-setting thaw, and experts at the Colorado-based centre noted that key Arctic shipping routes have now opened in both the Canadian Arctic archipelago and in Russia's northern waters.

"Sea ice extent is declining at a fairly brisk and steady pace," the NSIDC said, reporting a total retreat to about 5.5 million square kilometres with up to three weeks of melting left to go.

Sea ice extent is declining at a fairly brisk and steady pace, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center has warned.

Last year's retreat reached an all-time low of about 4.3 million square kilometres by mid-September, a melt that has stoked unprecedented international interest in Arctic shipping, tourism and oil and gas development.

"Amundsen's Northwest Passage is now navigable," the centre said, referring to the southerly route near the Canadian mainland first traversed by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen in 1906. "The wider, deeper Northwest Passage through Parry Channel may also open in a matter of days. The Northern Sea Route along the Eurasian coast is clear."

That news follows a series of reports in recent days highlighting the impact of rising temperatures across the world's northern latitudes - a newly discovered crack threatening a Greenland glacier; eroding shorelines in communities across the Canadian Arctic; and polar bears swimming in dangerously open waters of the Chukchi Sea north of Alaska, far from the safe harbour of any land or ice floe.

"There were some years when some bears may have had to swim as far as 100 miles," Steven Amstrup, the senior polar bear scientist with the United States Geological Survey in Alaska, told the New York Times this week. "Now the ice is much farther offshore, more consistently and for longer. So the possibility of long distances between land and sea ice is much greater."

Meanwhile, a U.S. study published Sunday in the British journal Nature Geoscience suggests thawing permafrost in polar regions will unlock up to 60 per cent more carbon dioxide than previously believed, potentially amplifying the greenhouse effect already widely blamed for the current Arctic warming.

Arctic Sea Ice Surprise

Arctic Sea Ice Surprise

The Arctic sea ice appears to be having a somewhat different year this year as compared to last year’s shocker. We seem to be well on track to match last year’s sea ice low areal coverage. So, in spite of the chilly winter, it appears that little if any of the perennial sea ice will be restored. You may see the current map at this site:

http://www.socc.ca/seaice/seaice_current_e.cfm

What has my attention is an apparent change in the wind patterns, or more likely a shift in the cyclonal center of mass. I have no knowledge of the actual importance of this shift or even if it is unique. The general reduction in overall sea ice mass certainly promises to make it much more important if it repeats.

Early in the spring, I observed two anomalies. Wind and current had driven the sea ice deeply back along the edge of the Russian Arctic along the coast of Novaya Zemlya and also that an open area had emerged early off the coast of the Canadian Arctic between the archipelago and the Alaska border.

Now in the first week of June we have progression. The open sea area in the Canadian Western Arctic has expanded as far north as the mouth of Lancaster Sound. Less noticeably, the swath of sea ice along the northern coast of the Arctic Archipelago is showing the unmistakable signature of been well broken up with perhaps as high as thirty percent open water. This fairway is bounded on the north and west by more tightly packed sea ice from last winter.

This tells us that almost the whole mass of Arctic sea ice is in motion and almost everything is vulnerable to flushing. The ice that last year was packed up against the Arctic Coast is now been blown toward the Russian Coast.

What might this mean? I suggest that we will loose much more perennial sea ice this year than expected paving the way for a mostly single season ice regime. In fact, it appears that this perennial ice is been attacked almost preferentially at the moment. I suspect that my prognosis of a complete clearing of the Arctic seas by as early as 2012 may turn out to be conservative.

On a more practical side, if this can be maintained, it is very likely that the North West Passage will be cleanly opened this year with shipping friendly conditions. The major problem there has always been the western mouth of the Lancaster Sound. Right now you could sail the choke point. Of course either Alaska or the Sound could remain icebound, though that seems very unlikely.

It also acts like a clear passage over the pole could open up. This is very unlikely this year, but if the Arctic wind system is changing as much as I suspect, it may finally happen. The only advice that works anymore is to expect to be surprised. Recall that we do not know what a stable wind regime will look like once the long term pack ice is removed. A prevailing wind system that shoved all pack ice against the Russian coast seems impossible but it is those types of extremes that must now be countenanced.

Of course with the land warming up, the winds can reconfigure quickly and make nonsense out of these speculations.


In the meantime we have a couple of related stories:

GOING, GOING

Sea ice disappeared from the Arctic in May at an average of 8,000 square kilometres a day, on track to rival the record minimum extent of recent Septembers.

This latest satellite information, compiled by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, appears to put paid to claims by climate change skeptics that a colder winter produced thicker new ice that wouldn't melt as quickly as previously.

Springtime Arctic temperatures have been higher than long-term normals. Over the Arctic Ocean, the average hike in surface air temperatures was 1 to 3 C. But over the Baffin Bay region, average temperatures in May were as much as 8 degrees above normal.

Rising temperatures are usually hard on the thin ice that has formed over the past winter (first-year ice), and a declining percentage of that has been surviving to form more resilient multi-year ice.

However, much of the 2008 first-year ice is farther north than usual and therefore in areas that get weaker solar radiation. More might survive through the summer, the Center's scientists speculate.

Baltic Sea ice hits record low

Ice in Baltic Sea at record lows. The ice levels in the Baltic Sea region this winter were at the lowest levels since record-keeping began, according to data recently released by Sweden’s meteorological agency. Only 49,000 square kilometers were covered in ice – a mere quarter of the surface area that is normally expected to be frozen. Thank you, Swedish scientists, for sharing this important and alarming information. May governments and citizens worldwide take action to protect our planet from the perils of global warming.

Arctic Melt

This recent release gives us the current take on pending sea ice behavior. I am not anticipating a major continuation of last season’s abrupt ice removal. In fact, I think that a small accumulation is much more likely.

But I emphasize small approaching unnoticeable. As of a week ago ice coverage remained above normal in the Western Arctic but remember that it is thinner than usual so will soon disappear at least on schedule.

In the Siberian Arctic, ice removal is ahead of schedule, perhaps reflecting strong wind activity. It is early enough and strong enough to make one think that we have a chance this year for a cleared Eastern sea route this year. There is plenty to watch.

Since the Northern Hemisphere had the close equivalent of a normal cold winter this year, it appears unlikely that there is any available excess of heat to dump into the Arctic this year. So we need expect little beyond a clearing out of last winter’s sea ice.

In the mean while, since 1980, the sea ice in the Antarctic has expanded 140 plus percent over 28 years. This again suggests that at least on that the basis of that rough measure alone, that the net global heat equation variation between hemispheres approaches zero.

The challenging question is what switches the poles? I am asking that because of the evidence we have of the little ice age and similar past events of sustained cooling that is best explained by such a switch in the Atlantic.

I am reasonably convinced that left to itself, the Northern Polar region would be a couple degrees warmer matching the apparent temperature regime of the Bronze Age. Perhaps we will find out in a couple of hundred years.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Arctic sea ice, sometimes billed as Earth's air conditioner for its moderating effects on world climate, will probably shrink to a record low level this year, scientists predicted on Wednesday.
In releasing the forecast, climate researcher Sheldon Drobot of the University of Colorado at Boulder called the changes in Arctic sea ice "one of the more compelling and obvious signs of climate change."

If that prediction holds true, it would be the third time in the past five years that Arctic sea ice retreated to record lows, the scientists said in a statement. That retreat is caused by warming temperatures and the spread of younger, thinner, less hardy ice in the region.

Based on satellite data and temperature records, the researchers forecast a 59 percent chance the annual minimum sea ice record would be broken again in 2008.

In the past decade, Arctic sea ice declined by roughly 10 percent, with a record drop in 2007 that left a total minimum ice cover of 1.59 million square miles. That represented a decline of 460,000 square miles from the previous record low in 2005 -- an area the size

Three more chunks like that and there is no sea ice at all!

of Texas and California combined. Scientists measure ice cover at its low ebb at the end of summer.

"The current Arctic ice cover is thinner and younger than at any previous time in our recorded history, and this sets the stage for rapid melt and a new record low," Drobot said.

Overall, 63 percent of the Arctic ice cover is younger than average, and only 2 percent is older than average, he said.

If Arctic sea ice keeps melting, it could hurt local wildlife, including polar bears, walruses and seals, the scientists said.

For humans, however, larger areas and longer periods of open Arctic water could make for cheaper merchant shipping between Europe and North America.

Arctic sea ice helps cool the planet with its usually reliable stores of white, sun-reflecting sea ice.

Sea ice melts and refreezes seasonally, but recent years have shown a smaller area of maximum sea ice in the winter, which suggests it is more difficult to restock the supply of polar ice after a record summer melt like last year's.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

Global Vulnerability

The media has allowed just about everyone who has a message to tie it blindly to the global warming mantra with it seems little critical editing. We could say that the story line is now very mature. In the meantime we are coming out of a very normal long cold winter here in the Northern Hemisphere. Also Australia has had an early cold snap setting the stage for one of their own.

Unless I have missed something, we are going to have a well watered growing season and universally bumper crops this fall. Since every farmer has gone all out this year, it is safe to assume that we are about to make up fully for the past two years of poor crops. Sell your crops forward guys!

In the meantime, the arctic sea ice will bear watching. Spring will not be early this year and the winds will likely stay home. I expect the thin one year ice to breakup and melt at least. It seems unlikely that more will happen.

I wish that our Arctic data was better than it is, but serious work has only gotten under way in the past two decades with the establishment of ample data collection systems and satellite coverage. That is the one compelling reason to wait patiently another twenty years to see the real story unfold. The constant hand wringing misses another critical point. Humanity simply does not have the resources to proactively change a thing.

We have chosen to blame a wobble in the heat content of the Northern Hemisphere on the excess production of CO2.

We could just as easily and with as much rigor have blamed the huge increase in human population over the past century and the related hot air.

We likely could make an equally good argument that a fifty percent drop in CO2 production will lead directly to a fifty percent drop in the population. This certainly would happen if we were in a hurry.

The point is that we are vulnerable to that sort of population collapse, because most of the global population is no longer growing their own food and has no such security. A mega volcano blast or a large comet bombardment would collapse the food supply system quickly with no room for recovery. We even have evidence that this has happened once in the lifespan of humanity.

The survivors would inevitably be those able to protect crop lands from marauders as civilization disintegrated. It takes about two years for the worst of the dust created effects to dissipate and the food reserves simply do not exist to carry over a population. The events described are also highly survivable by all the population. And with our space gear we could even predict the impact targets and evacuate successfully.

In those horrific conditions, the world would experience an orgy of cannibalism and general barbarism. These are unpleasant thoughts but I cannot imagine a concerted remedy to such a risk. Right now we still have not really mapped the contents of the solar system, nor are we likely to for a long time. The Kuiper belt can throw something our way anytime. Hopefully we can protect ourselves long before we ever need to.

Arctic Heat Discharge

As mentioned briefly yesterday, our thoughts on heat transport into the Arctic must be completely retooled to allow for a vastly larger seasonal amplitude. All our prior observations had shown us a largely steady movement of heat that varied little over the decades. Unmeasurable variation meant that a modest heat increase in the northern hemisphere was able to accumulate and provide a measurable warming signal. The abrupt and apparently unusual shift in winds has now dissipated that surplus.

Yes, I know that we are looking at a mere one year piece of the record, bur it was an unprecedented climate event with no prior comparable. My initial difficulty was linking the causation event of a warm summer arctic with the present effect of a very chilled Northern hemisphere. Confirmation of the extent of winter chill proved that the surplus heat had suddenly disappeared and we all came to appreciate the global cooling system much better.

This very likely completely delinks the apparent association of CO2 content with apparent global temperatures that have possibly now gone their own way. The climate may be back to below average temperatures for a couple of decades, which is a bit of a disappointment.

If this explanation is correct, then unless these winds are maintained for some reason which seems unlikely, the Arctic will now rebuild its supply of perennial sea ice until we need another atmospheric heat discharge. This tells us that a true runaway global warming as predicted by a few is utterly impossible. It is nice to know that mother nature can easily handle this. I note that even an incredible amount of heat could be handled by this mechanism, just as the tropical ocean discharges a build up in ocean temperatures be spawning hurricanes.

Pending Climate Change

Without question, the summer of 2007 in the high Arctic has shocked the scientific community. Glibly telling each other that the slow visible erosion of the sea ice had decades to play out, they were presented with a fait accompli of massive loss in just one season. It also lacked any particular warning because the surface climate was much as had already been previously experienced.

Now they have had a chance to re - cook their numbers, they are all realizing that sea ice will be possibly gone from the Arctic in the summer anytime toward the end of the next five years. This means during their watch.

Of course there are a few commentators who grasp at the fact that current winter ice has once again reached its normal fullest extent. As my readers know, this is not meaningful. It is all about the major loss of perennial ice throughout the Arctic and no season by itself can seriously change that.

Now that we are seeing the onset of the end game, I want to remind readers that this is all about a very slight increase in the available heat in the Northern Hemisphere for the past forty or so years. We are talking about as little as a half of a degree. However that half degree is sufficient to clear the Arctic Ocean of sea ice in the summer.

Once we are past this ice clearing period after perhaps 2012, then we can expect a climate regime similar to the medieval warm period. I am expecting Northern Europe to warm by several degrees with positive effects on the growing season. We may even see the Greenland permafrost disappear and perhaps the return of dairy farming there.

In other words, there are a lot of microclimates that will go through a protracted adjustment. Most of these will actually be beneficial.

Of course the CO2 enthusiasts have a lot to say, but it is mostly about how the ending of CO2 production will actually matter. I remain extremely skeptical on that one, and am more concerned that this particular idea will lead to truly wrongheaded public policies that we will wear for decades. It also promises to consume resources badly.

There is plenty of evidence to hand telling us that we are dealing with a very natural cycle that has not been disturbed for a long time. In fact, a very good question is to ask what will lower global temperatures a couple of degrees as happened to trigger the little ice age. The cooling cause is vastly more important than the warming.

I posit that left undisturbed, the climate of the Northern Hemisphere will be at least as warm as present. We have the exact long periods of both the medieval warm period lasting a couple of hundred years and the Bronze Age lasting at least a thousand years. These periods were remarkably stable from what we can determine. This was certainly because the Arctic did clear every summer, and even the coldest single winter had little impact.

Yet a sudden drop in global temperatures by at least a couple of degrees whose effect lasted for say ten years would reestablish the perennial sea ice that would then take hundreds of years to overcome.

I have also posited several causation ideas for this cooling. But I must admit that the one type of event really able to do the trick so abruptly is a prolonged major volcanic event. We remember the impact of Krakatau in 1883 on the global climate.

I do not think that the time frames properly match up, or maybe we are just wrong, but if the Thera blast ended the Northern European Bronze Age, it did it by dropping the temperature there by several degrees, precipitating a large movement of peoples into the Mediterranean perhaps already adding to related clans already in place. Recall that the geography of the Iliad maps the Baltic, not the Aegean and these sea peoples immediately populated coastal areas throughout the Mediterranean.

That merely leaves one remaining question. What went bang and ended the medieval warm period? I should also mention that it need not have been a single event.

I would like a global mapping of volcanic events for the past 10,000 years against the tree ring record which is also a fair proxy for climate. A lot of information still needs to be collected there.

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.

Sorokhtin Comments on Climate Change

Here is a solid article by Sorokhtin on the factors affecting our climate. I have seen previous intimations that the viewpoint of the Russian science community was radically different from ours and with more justice since their data has been kept much longer than ours.

Without question the earth has been hit with a sustained warming effect for the past forty years that has been eroding the Arctic Sea Ice, as well as causing glacier retreat. I have also pointed out that if this established trend is sustained for just another five years that the sea ice will be cleared fully each summer.

Now over the past eighteen months we have experienced a major whipsaw in northern climate that has been poorly explained. We had a very warm winter and summer that impacted heavily in the Arctic and should have left a large reservoir of residual heat there. That was followed abruptly by a very cold winter season, putting the lie to any ideas that all that heat would slow down the winter chill.

Again, we will be watching this next season with great interest to see if the conditions attained last year repeat at all. Obviously if we are commencing another cooling cycle, then the sea ice will expand quite rapidly over the next few seasons. I will be a little disappointed as I could have used a few more years of hot air in the Arctic.

However, it may turn out that 2007 was the true solar cycle peak for a couple of centuries. It was neat to be there and it would be even neater to see all the ice disappear for at least a while. In the meantime, it strikes me that the polar heat loss system may not be closed at all as we would expect and that heat will be found to escape upward more readily than expected. That seems to be the dominant effect in the Antarctic.

A cold spell soon to replace global warming

13:54 | 03/ 01/ 2008

MOSCOW. (Oleg Sorokhtin for RIA Novosti) - Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.

Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.

The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reason--solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.

Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.

This is my point, which environmentalists hotly dispute as they cling to the hothouse theory. As we know, hothouse gases, in particular, nitrogen peroxide, warm up the atmosphere by keeping heat close to the ground. Advanced in the late 19th century by Svante A. Arrhenius, a Swedish physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner, this theory is taken for granted to this day and has not undergone any serious check.

It determines decisions and instruments of major international organizations--in particular, the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Signed by 150 countries, it exemplifies the impact of scientific delusion on big politics and economics. The authors and enthusiasts of the Kyoto Protocol based their assumptions on an erroneous idea. As a result, developed countries waste huge amounts of money to fight industrial pollution of the atmosphere. What if it is a Don Quixote's duel with the windmill?

Hothouse gases may not be to blame for global warming. At any rate, there is no scientific evidence to their guilt. The classic hothouse effect scenario is too simple to be true. As things really are, much more sophisticated processes are on in the atmosphere, especially in its dense layer. For instance, heat is not so much radiated in space as carried by air currents--an entirely different mechanism, which cannot cause global warming.

The temperature of the troposphere, the lowest and densest portion of the atmosphere, does not depend on the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions--a point proved theoretically and empirically. True, probes of Antarctic ice shield, taken with bore specimens in the vicinity of the Russian research station Vostok, show that there are close links between atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and temperature changes. Here, however, we cannot be quite sure which is the cause and which the effect.

Temperature fluctuations always run somewhat ahead of carbon dioxide concentration changes. This means that warming is primary. The ocean is the greatest carbon dioxide depository, with concentrations 60-90 times larger than in the atmosphere. When the ocean's surface warms up, it produces the "champagne effect." Compare a foamy spurt out of a warm bottle with wine pouring smoothly when served properly cold.

Likewise, warm ocean water exudes greater amounts of carbonic acid, which evaporates to add to industrial pollution--a factor we cannot deny. However, man-caused pollution is negligible here. If industrial pollution with carbon dioxide keeps at its present-day 5-7 billion metric tons a year, it will not change global temperatures up to the year 2100. The change will be too small for humans to feel even if the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions doubles.

Carbon dioxide cannot be bad for the climate. On the contrary, it is food for plants, and so is beneficial to life on Earth. Bearing out this point was the Green Revolution--the phenomenal global increase in farm yields in the mid-20th century. Numerous experiments also prove a direct proportion between harvest and carbon dioxide concentration in the air.

Carbon dioxide has quite a different pernicious influence--not on the climate but on synoptic activity. It absorbs infrared radiation. When tropospheric air is warm enough for complete absorption, radiation energy passes into gas fluctuations. Gas expands and dissolves to send warm air up to the stratosphere, where it clashes with cold currents coming down. With no noticeable temperature changes, synoptic activity skyrockets to whip up cyclones and anticyclones. Hence we get hurricanes, storms, tornados and other natural disasters, whose intensity largely depends on carbon dioxide concentration. In this sense, reducing its concentration in the air will have a positive effect.

Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man's influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.

Earth is unlikely to ever face a temperature disaster. Of all the planets in the solar system, only Earth has an atmosphere beneficial to life. There are many factors that account for development of life on Earth: Sun is a calm star, Earth is located an optimum distance from it, it has the Moon as a massive satellite, and many others. Earth owes its friendly climate also to dynamic feedback between biotic and atmospheric evolution.

The principal among those diverse links is Earth's reflective power, which regulates its temperature. A warm period, as the present, increases oceanic evaporation to produce a great amount of clouds, which filter solar radiation and so bring heat down. Things take the contrary turn in a cold period.

What can't be cured must be endured. It is wise to accept the natural course of things. We have no reason to panic about allegations that ice in the Arctic Ocean is thawing rapidly and will soon vanish altogether. As it really is, scientists say the Arctic and Antarctic ice shields are growing. Physical and mathematical calculations predict a new Ice Age. It will come in 100,000 years, at the earliest, and will be much worse than the previous. Europe will be ice-bound, with glaciers reaching south of Moscow.

Meanwhile, Europeans can rest assured. The Gulf Stream will change its course only if some evil magic robs it of power to reach the north--but Mother Nature is unlikely to do that.

Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute.

Cold snap reduces Pine Beetle

The interesting question this winter is how cold is it really. It certainly appears to match up to the cold winters experienced a couple of decades ago. For the past decade, all got used to fairly easy climes in the Northern zones. Now they are all a little surprised to get hit with lots of minus thirty as late as now.

In the meantime, we have a report on the temperature impact on the pine beetle in our northern forests. The good news is that the population will certainly be reduced and perhaps knocked out in those areas were they were marginal which is good news. However the population is so huge that it will take several years to bring the problem under control. The biologists still think that the infestation must run its course.

I am more interested in seeing the effect on the Arctic Sea Ice. I also wonder if we have not missed a mechanism for rapid heat loss in the Arctic triggered by open water. The models are always compelling until nature throws a curve ball. We supposedly accumulated a lot of heat in the Arctic this past summer and the onset of new ice may even have been delayed as a consequence.

Regardless the total sea ice was reduced to a major minimum. This makes the next warming season well worth monitoring.


And I think that a lot of new questions will need to be answered.

CNRS enters more data on 2007 Arctic sea ice

This item just out is providing us with a good update on the hard data that is emerging around the rapid ice retreat of last summer. Those who have followed my postings know that I was a very early proponent of an accelerating ice collapse in the Arctic, simply because if we only assume a simple constant small heat imbalance year after year the results on the ground are not actually linear at all and must end with a collapse crisis.

Last year we got a really good look at what a collapse crisis will look like. The remaining question right now is if this last summer was brought on be a combination of several bits of bad luck getting us ahead of the curve or if the unusual collateral effects are merely results.

The reason that I ask this question is that last year the Arctic seemed to get more than its share of lower latitude’s warm air, sped along by a strong shifting of boreal winds. It now seems to be returning the favor by giving us lots of cold polar air this winter. Is this a new climate cycle? In other words, something has happened this past year that was both completely unexpected and not clearly understood.

It almost looks like an emergent heat pumping action that will draw surplus heat into the Arctic at a much stronger rate than in the past. All this suggests that the sea ice will continue to retreat at an even faster rate than in the past. In any event, current results are now strongly supporting a full disappearance of summer sea ice by 2012.

They are also quite right to point out that the summer of 2008 will be critical on every level. It will confirm specific new trends or even give us a sharp reversal. My own analysis really supports the thesis that we have now entered the final collapse phase of the perennial sea ice which is actually been accelerated by the specific onset of Arctic spring like conditions.

In fact my worst case scenario now would be to have a few very cold Arctic winters in which the ice loss is merely zero. However, at some point sooner or later, we will have a warm summer or two and the balance of the sea ice will be eliminated. And honestly, if this cold winter does not reward us with a significant reversal of last year’s decision, then it is really over as far as the long term perennial sea ice is concerned.

Once the summer sea ice properly clears every summer, the Greenland ice cap can now be expected to largely retreat slightly from the shoreline over the following century eventually stabilizing with quite a bit of mass loss. This will have a marginal effect on sea levels.

Arctic ice-cap loss twice the size of France: research

PARIS (AFP) — The Arctic ice cap has shrunk by an area twice the size of France's land mass over the last two years, the Paris-based National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said Wednesday.

"The year 2008 promises to be a critical year on every level," said Jean-Claude Gascard, the body's research director and coordinator of European scientific mission Damocles, which is monitoring the effects of climate change across the Arctic.

September 2007 measurements show ice covering 4.13 million square kilometres (1.6 million square miles), down from 5.3 million square kilometres in 2005.

"Melting could result in the loss of another million in one (2008) summer," he added at a press conference.

"Summer 2007 was marked by a major retreat in the ice-cap, one we were not anticipating," Gascard said. "The rate of decline is also two or three times faster than (observed) beforehand."

International models used to predict retreating ice have some "catching-up" to do, he said.

Over the last 20 years, 40 percent of the ice-cap has melted with the average thickness halved from three to 1.5 metres.

Year-round ice coverage has reduced, with summer melting also lasting longer, the centre reported.

The Damocles' exploration vessel Tara has been able to cross the 5,000-kilometre Arctic Ocean in just over 16 months -- less than half the time taken by a late 19th century Norwegian explorer.

Gascard said the ship had been able to travel at "twice the pace expected by organisers, and three times the speed models suggested".

Disruption to the thermal layers of atmosphere stacked over Earth's far north was cited as the principal cause by Swedish researchers earlier this month, in a study published in the journal Nature.

The Tara team recorded a temperature of 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) at altitudes between 500 and 1,000 metres.

"The reduction in the intensity of cold (temperatures) during winter over these last 20 years corresponds to an accumulation (rise) of 1,000 degrees Celsius," Gascard said.

The team highlighted the role of ocean currents, namely in the northern Pacific, behind warming of waters.

Gascard's research colleague, Gerard Ancellet, also spoke of recently-formed Arctic mist, pollution clouds which "trap" Earth's naturally-emitted infrared rays thereby raising temperatures.

"Internal" Arctic pollution is the source, Ancellet said, highlighting Russian and northern Scandinavian gas and oil exploitation.

Carbon dioxide emissions among the major north American, European and south-east Asian economies was not the only other factor, he added.

Shipping traffic with additional nitrogen oxide emissions is a growing complication, given he estimated that 25 percent of the increase in future maritime transport "will be confined to the Arctic zone".

In summer 2007, the Northwest Passage, historically an ice-jammed potential shortcut between Europe and Asia, was "fully navigable" for the first time since monitoring began in 1978, according to the European Space Agency.

It lasted five weeks, according to Canada's environment ministry, with 100 vessels getting through.

How come we never heard this? I assume that this was all small boats, but it would be nice to see a freighter make it through. Once the long term ice is really gone, the Arctic shipping season should be at least two months. Right now it is still a nasty speculation especially as how strongly this was effected by unusual winds in 2007.