Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts

Tuesday, 6 December 2016

Global Warming in the Arctic: A Sensitive Climate Gone Off the Rails

Graphic: Climate Change Institute

It is polar night in the Arctic—a darkness that lasts from early October to early March. Temperatures rarely escape freezing in that darkness, averaging -30° F until the light begins to return in spring. Right now, however, temperatures across much of the Arctic are 36 degrees F above normal. Large areas are well above freezing. And instead of rapidly expanding, sea ice extent is in decline.

Taken together, this is not unusual. It’s unheard of.

The degree to which current Arctic conditions are straying from the norm may prove to be the greatest change yet measured there—the latest signal from the Arctic that all is not well.

And while the frozen top of the world may seem remote and unimportant at the moment, what happens there matters greatly to both our immediate and long-term future.

2016 temperatures (Kelvin) above Latitude 80. The green line shows daily mean historic average temperatures from 1958-2002. The red line shows the daily mean average from 2010 to present. The blue line is 32 degrees F, or freezing. Recent days have seen departures from the long-term average of up to 36 degrees F. At and above this latitude, roughly days 1-45 and days 300-365 are spent in darkness. Source: Danish Meteorological Institute

Breaking down the Arctic breakdown

The Arctic plays an important role in moderating global climate. When heat from the tropics is delivered north to the Arctic by winds and ocean currents, the region exerts a cooling effect on both. Without this distribution of energy, the lower latitudes would overheat. Sea ice and snow- and ice-covered land (known as the “cryosphere”) help the Arctic to stay cool by reflecting most of the incoming solar energy back to space.

But the Arctic, like the rest of the planet, is warming, and unlike the rest of the planet, warming in the Arctic can feed rapidly on itself.

To describe one of the feedbacks: Warmer temperatures drive greater melt of sea ice, which exposes open ocean, and exposed water absorbs heat from sun that was previously reflected. Ocean temperatures rise as a result, and when winter comes, the sea ice has a harder time rebounding amidst warmer air and water temperatures. The following year, the melt season begins with sea ice cover that is thinner and smaller in extent.

There are other feedbacks, and all are complex. For a closer look at these reinforcing cycles, see my colleague’s blog on Why the Arctic Matters. As the National Snow and Ice Data Center puts it:

A small temperature increase at the poles leads to still greater warming over time, making the poles the most sensitive regions to climate change on Earth. According to scientific measurements, both the thickness and extent of summer sea ice in the Arctic have shown a dramatic decline over the past thirty years. […] The loss of sea ice also has the potential to accelerate global warming trends and to change climate patterns.

Okay. With this in mind, let’s look at the state of the Arctic at this time.

Sea ice extent

In the polar night, Arctic sea ice historically rebounds from summer melt as both the water and air cool. In recent decades, the ice has been declining in both extent and volume.

This year, with warm ocean temperatures and continued delivery of warm air from the lower latitudes, the ice is struggling to rebound. October saw new record lows for Arctic sea ice extent.

Global sea ice extent began 2016 (thick red line) at low levels. Just in recent days , the Arctic has lost more than a million square kilometers of sea ice, reaching a new record low and contributing to a steep decline in November’s total global sea ice extent. Antarctic sea ice extent is also at record low levels. Source: Arctic News

In November, Arctic sea ice extent remains well below average for this time of year. In each of the last three days, a time of year when sea ice is normally growing, it has shrunk instead (see figure below). Arctic sea ice is melting up there in the polar darkness.

According to experts following this closely, as of Sunday, November 20, Arctic sea ice is now ~1.1 million square kilometers below the previous record low.

Okay, maybe time to let the #Arctic know what season it is -> another drop in #seaice extent from the last 24-hours (3rd day in a row, JAXA) pic.twitter.com/2Fl1pQUsD4

— Zack Labe (@ZLabe) November 20, 2016

Sea surface temperatures

With larger areas of the Arctic ice-free each year, and for longer periods of time, the Arctic Ocean is absorbing more heat.

This fall, sea surface temperatures are well above average, with anomalous warmth persisting into November as seen in the figure below. Scientists have reported ocean temperatures 25° F above average in some locations.

Sea surface temperatures are unusually high and well above freezing in some areas of the Arctic, contributing to ice melt. Credit: Climate Change Institute

Air temperatures

The chart below looks at this warmth by a different measure: “freezing degree days.” By many available measures, the oncoming Arctic winter is in a nose dive unprecedented in recent record keeping.

Another way of looking at Arctic:
"Freezing degree days" (# of degrees below freezing x # of days) = open water where there's normally ice. pic.twitter.com/hczBWuvun9

— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) November 20, 2016

A weakened polar vortex and wobbly jet stream have been identified as factors in recent anomalous winters, both colder and warmer, and indeed, meandering winds are currently delivering warm air far northward to the Arctic, and a deep, snowy freeze in Eurasia.

The combination of factors driving Arctic air temperatures today has resulted in a stunning temperature anomaly—persistent, vast areas of 36° F above normal, shown in the map below.

The exceptional Arctic temperature anomaly. Source: Climate Change Institute

Wild cards, like the unusual cyclone that struck the Arctic last winter, driving temperatures 50 degrees above normal, may compound and accelerate ice loss, according to a recent NASA study.

It’s as if the Arctic is trying to be heard. It’s hard to imagine stronger signals to send.

Meanwhile, in la-la land

Meanwhile, around Latitude 39, Myron Ebell—one of the world’s most prominent and vocal climate change deniers—has been tasked with overseeing the transition of the nation’s Environmental Protection Agency. The very agency tasked with implementing the nation’s leading plan for curbing global warming pollution—the Clean Power Plan.

And Stephen Bannon—a man who oversaw, as chief of Breitbart News Agency, the disparaging of climate scientists and their overwhelming body of science—has assumed the role of chief strategist for the new administration. A role in which he can advise the new president on whether the US continues to reduce its global warming emissions or reverses course—matters vital to the future of everyone.

And today [November 21], Steven Groves of the Heritage Foundation was named to lead president-elect Trump’s State Department transition. Groves penned, just last week, an article advocating a speedy withdrawal from the the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, to which we’ve been a party since its ratification in 1992. It’s a move that would scrap our commitments under the landmark Paris Climate Agreement—you know, that thing that stands between us and catastrophic warming.

File this under irony. No, madness.

From The Union of Concerned Scientists @ http://blog.ucsusa.org/erika-spanger-siegfried/global-warming-in-the-arctic-a-sensitive-climate-gone-off-the-rails

For more information about climate change see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/climate%20change

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Saturday, 13 August 2016

Ice Age Ahead: Ice Age Precursors Upon Us

Ice Age Ahead

Ice Age Precursors Upon Us - full length feature presentation

How close is the return of the Ice Age?

Ice Age Climate Change vs. Global Warming Carbon Politics

No, the Ice Age isn't coming. It is already here. The Earth has been in an Ice Age Epoch for 2 million years already, with deep glaciation that piles up ice sheets up to 13,000 feet deep that typically cover all of Canada and extend into the northern U.S. States. The cause for the ice age cycles has been poorly understood in the past. Many new discoveries have been made that open up a new perspective of the ice age dynamics and our relationship with it.

During the last million years the long Ice Age deep freeze has been periodically interrupted with nice warm interglacial holiday periods, like the present one that has run its curse. We now face a return to the normal Ice Age climate for the Earth. This poses some big questions:

· Are we prepared for the impending return to the normal Ice Age world that is typically 30 times colder than the Little Ice Age had been?

· Are we prepared to relocate our endangered agriculture that our food-supply depends on, into areas that the Ice Age cooling cannot reach?

· Are we prepared to launch the needed industrial revolution for creating infrastructures to meet the Ice Age Challenge that now confronts us?

· Are we prepared to face reality, with real scientific advances that have been made quietly in the background, rather than to continue dreaming the politically orchestrated dream of global warming that has lulled humanity to sleep for the profits of a few?

Next Ice Age

Hannes Grobe/AWI - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age

The modern Ice Age cycles that started two million years ago are far from over: we may be at the half-way point

The current interglacial period is ending
The condition for glaciation is resuming
Beware of the corresponding loss of agriculture

Interglacial warm periods, like the present, are rare anomalies,
they are short 13,000 year holidays every 100,000 years.

Climate history of the last 420,000 years

Numerous cycles are interacting

The longest cycles are the 150 million year cycles

They have caused four major glaciation periods that are known to have occurred in geologic time, spaced 150 million years apart. These extremely long cycles appears to reflect cyclical variables outside of our galaxy, as all other explanations are seriously flawed to the point that they don't make any sense at all.

see: Geologic Temperature Record

Superimposed are 'shorter' 62-million-year cycles

Some theories have it that the shorter cycles are caused by the solar system bobbing up and down across the galactic plane (ecliptic) as it orbits around the galactic center. No cause for such an effect is known. However, in an electric galaxy such an effect would mirror on the large scale what has been observed within the solar heliosphere in the form of the spiraling nature of the heliospheric current sheet. A similar phenomenon appears to exist on the galactic scale. The 62-million year cycles can be explained as a phenomenon that is caused by electric action as we see it reflected in the wave action of the current sheet that extends across the solar heliosphere on the ecliptic plane. A spinning wave-like pattern has been observed resulting from electromagnetic interaction of the electric current with the 'spinning' solar magnetic field. On the galactic scale such a phenomenon would lift our solar system cyclically above and below the galactic ecliptic, as is currently assumed to be happening.

heliospheric current sheet

On this larger stage the galactic spiral arms are the current sheet. Consequently one would expect to find similar wave actions occurring on the larger stage of the galaxy, affecting the stars and their relative position to the galactic ecliptic plane, resulting in electric current density variations and corresponding cosmic-ray density variations, such as we see secondarily reflected in the 62 million year cycles superimposed in the above graph.

If we look at the last of the 62 million year cycles (above) and compare it with known events, we find the freeze-up of Antarctica (around 30 million years ago), and its subsequent melting, and renewed freeze-up, to fall perfectly within the timeframe of the current 62-million year cycle.

palaeotemperature covering the entire Phenerozoic Eon

We are presently at a low point of the 62 million year cycle, which corresponds with the current Pleistocene Epoch, the most intense Ice Age Epoch of this cycles, which began 2 million years ago and appears to be presently at its mid point, being centered at the low point of both the 150 and 62 million year cycles.

During the last million years of the Pleistocene Epoch (the current Ice Age Epoch), deep glaciation has occurred, interspersed every 100,000 years with warm interglacial periods of an average duration in the 13,000-year range.

Four major 'short-term' cycles are related the 100,000-year glacial/interglacial cyclical patterns. Of these three cycles are related to the orbital characteristics of the Earth. They are generally referred to as the Milankovitch Cycles. And there is a fourth cycle in the 100,000-year timeframe that is superimposed in step with the Milankovitch Cycles are related to. Since this fourth cycle is driving the Ice Age show, that the Milankovitch Cycles stand in the background of, and this cycle is evidently routed in the dynamics of the galaxy itself, precise perditions of the start of the next transition to glaciation is not possible, the moral imperative must therefore be to make the necessary preparations for a new agricultural infrastructure for mankind that won't be affected by the cold of the coming glaciation, regardless of when this may happen.

The Milankovitch (26/41/100,000-year) Cycles
The active climate factor: Cosmic-Ray density
What causes unpredictable short term temperature swings?
How solar variation cause mayor climate variation?
Of critical importance for our climate on Earth.
CO2 and the Ice Ages
No manmade global warming
Mass Protest by the Scientific Community
If we err by not making the preparations
The moral imperative
The coming Ice Age Renaissance

From Ice Age Ahead @ http://www.ice-age-ahead-iaa.ca/01/index.html and http://www.iceagetheatre.ca/research/iceage/index.html

And see The Dimming Sun @ http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-dimming-sun-and-coming-ice-age.html

For more information about ice ages see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/ice%20age