I'm melting, I'm melting...

[Gerarddm]

... well, Greenland is, anyway: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1698129.html

As the article points out, this may be a cyclical melt that has occurred before, but if it occurs yet again and again in an inter-cycle span, assumptions need to be recalibrated.

[seanz]

I sent my assumptions away to have them recalibrated but they never came back.


I do have questions though......


What happens to warm water if you drop large amounts of ice into it?

[wardd]

what happens to the atlantic conveyor?

[Chip-skiff]

Just heard from some friends who are in Greenland to study the process of melting and measure the meltwater flowing from the icecap. The specialised gear I built for assessing the flow in channels cut into the ice worked beautifully. But the coastal town they use for a staging area was on the verge of being wiped out by epic flooding.

[WX]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18978483

[varadero]

In both those links they use the word "unprecidented" for an event that has been proven to occur every 150 years, the last time in 1889. Alarmist again.

[WX]

In both those links they use the word "unprecidented" for an event that has been proven to occur every 150 years, the last time in 1889. Alarmist again.

Mate I reckon you could be up to your armpits in melt water and still cry alarmist.

[WX]

“Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time,” says Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data. “But if we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming years, it will be worrisome.”

If it happens again next year, will it be an aberration or signify a trend? If we go back another 150 years to 1739 we find there was a mini ice age, so no Greenland ice melt.

• 1595: Gietroz (Switzerland) glacier advances, dammed Dranse River, and caused flooding of Bagne with 70 deaths.
  1600-10: Advances by Chamonix (France) glaciers cause massive floods which destroyed three villages and severely damaged a fourth. One village had stood since the 1200's.
  1670-80's: Maximum historical advances by glaciers in eastern Alps. Noticeable decline of human population by this time in areas close to glaciers, whereas population elsewhere in Europe had risen.
  1695-1709: Iceland glaciers advance dramatically, destroying farms.
  1710-1735: A glacier in Norway was advancing at a rate of 100 m per year for 25 years.
  1748-50: Norwegian glaciers achieved their historical maximum LIA positions.

---

[seanz]

In both those links they use the word "unprecidented" for an event that has been proven to occur every 150 years, the last time in 1889. Alarmist again.

Neither of those links used the word "unprecidented". The BBC said "unprecedented".


It also said that the speed and scale of the melting was extraordinary, maybe we should take note.

But don't panic.

[varadero]

Neither of those links used the word "unprecidented". The BBC said "unprecedented".


It also said that the speed and scale of the melting was extraordinary, maybe we should take note.

But don't panic.

Yup, my spelin int to good at 6.00 am

[varadero]

If it happens again next year, will it be an aberration or signify a trend? If we go back another 150 years to 1739 we find there was a mini ice age, so no Greenland ice melt.

I believe the link says "every 150 years on average" not "also happened 150 years ago"

“Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time,” says Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data.

Now, according to our version of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, “unprecedented” is defined as:

“having no precedent: NOVEL, UNEXAMPLED”

“without previous instance; never before known or experienced; unexampled or unparalleled: an unprecedented event.”
So, while it may be meteorologically interesting that a series of high pressure ridges had passed over Greenland this summer with largest and warmest of these parking over the island for a few days in mid-July and raising the temperature to near the melting point of ice all the way up to the summit of Greenland’s ice cap—it is not a type of event which is unique. Rare perhaps, but not unprecedented.
But, apparently, when it comes to hyping anthropogenic global warming (or at least the inference thereto), redefining English words in order to garner more attention is a perfectly acceptable practice.
Which brings to mind this oldy but goody from the late Stephen Schneider:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

At NASA, apparently being honest is not considered as being the most effective.

[varadero]

Another classic in the weather not climate fail.
I also wonder how much the albedo is affected by the soot from the fires in the US, and the jet stream route parking a stationary, cloud free, high pressure system over Greenland for the past 6-7 weeks. The same jet stream pattern that has given the UK and Holland the wettest June and July in a long long time.

[WX]

Another classic in the weather not climate fail.
I also wonder how much the albedo is affected by the soot from the fires in the US, and the jet stream route parking a stationary, cloud free, high pressure system over Greenland for the past 6-7 weeks. The same jet stream pattern that has given the UK and Holland the wettest June and July in a long long time.

The Atlantic Conveyor might be moving further North. Fish species certainly are.

[varadero]

The Atlantic Conveyor might be moving further North. Fish species certainly are.

Might? Is it, or is it not?
One of the reasons for the lack of ice in the North East Atlantic this past winter is due to the health of the thermohaline.

[peterAustralia]

I think this is a serious issue. It is more about real events that politics which can be biased. My understanding is that if the Greenland Icecap melts, sea levels will ris be 7m. My understanding is that this will take a long time, but once it starts it cant really be stopped. Once the average temperature goes over zero degrees C, it is going to melt. My understanding is that the experts are predicting sea level rises of between 0.5m and 1m by the end of the century.

The economic cost of a 1m sea level rise is huge. How many levee banks need to be built, how many coastal cities need to be relocated? how much arable land will go under water. Huge areas on Bangladesh, Chinese river deltas, Indus delta, Nile delta go under water.

So, yes there is economic cost in reducing greenhouse emmissions, but there is also masive economic cost in not reducing greenhouse emmissions.

The arctic is getting warmer every year, what occurs rarely now, may happen every third year in a few years, then every second year, and then most years.
Anyone read any of those books about exploring the NW passage? Remember how difficult it was meant to be, remember how it took Amundsen 3 years and how he was hailed as a hero, remember Franklin stuck in ice for 3 years, how the ships dodged through ice flows, how most could not get through, took literally hundreds of years of trying. Now it is ice free most years!

I think images like this, show that the issue is not a political one, it is a serious economic one.
Just some costs of climate change
ocean acidification
sea level rising, flooding of coastal areas, cities, loss of arable land
higher temperatures inland, increasing the occurance of drought in africa, australia, the US, south america, china
more wild weather, cylones storms etc
will the monsoon that feeds over a billion people in India and Pakistan still be reliable?

there is a lot of economic cost in climate change, (anyone keen to add up the numbers?)

Maybe Canada, the USSR, Chile and Alaska will do well, but most other countries are looking at big downside
something to think about

[GaryK]

My understanding is that the experts are predicting sea level rises of between 0.5m and 1m by the end of the century.

Not such a big deal, some people have 90 years to move to higher land.
Looks like economic activity to me..

[mikefrommontana]

So, does anybody have sea level readings from the Medieval Warm Period? Is our current warming trend approaching the temperatures of that period?

[ahp]

Where we live even 0.5 meters sea level rise means rebuilding the five miles of bridge and causeway out to our island, where there are more than 10,000 year round residents. Since the coastal slope is very gradual, the beach will move back, way back. Fortunately we are on the back side of Saint Simon's Island. Sea Island where the real estate prices are ten times higher will go first.

[skipper68]

You called? I thought I needed to interviene..;-) but, if we stop the jets in the stratosphere, dumping tons of CO2, might still be a chance to recover. Only 1% oxygen up there. It is dropping into the oceans also, killing the coral reefs, and oceans with the PH balance..I put a link up from '2000 that already concluded these facts. I'm on the other lap top now, (No link)so you can google it or look thru my posts. With the internet, we do NOT need 15,000 jets taking off and landing every hour. IMO.

[GaryK]

Sea Island where the real estate prices are ten times higher will go first.

Eventually people will look at coastal property in terms of how many years they have, like those cliff top houses in England, where owners calculated 30 years and thought the investment was worthwhile. Unlucky they had a few years of bad storms and the houses started sliding into the sea after only 7 or 8 years.. Win some, lose some..

At least Venice (Italy) as evacuated itself quietly, I think only about 1/3 of the population remains in that city. Thats how I see coastal areas around the world to go, quietly move on over the next 100 years..

[johnw]

Another classic in the weather not climate fail.
I also wonder how much the albedo is affected by the soot from the fires in the US, and the jet stream route parking a stationary, cloud free, high pressure system over Greenland for the past 6-7 weeks. The same jet stream pattern that has given the UK and Holland the wettest June and July in a long long time.

Climate is just weather over a longer time span. And those fires in Siberia and the U.S. might have something to do with hot, dry weather.

The question is, how much weird weather do you need before you figure the climate has changed? How long does the trend have to last before you decide it's a trend?

[varadero]

Climate is just weather over a longer time span. And those fires in Siberia and the U.S. might have something to do with hot, dry weather.

The question is, how much weird weather do you need before you figure the climate has changed? How long does the trend have to last before you decide it's a trend?

Local climate is local weather over a period of time. Global climate is Global weather over time. The weather map you quoted from July 22 shows just how hot and local the heat wave and drought in the US really is, the worst since 1950. but the global anomoly is only 0.034 of a degree C. At the same time the US is still way way down on tornado count (I believe a record low for july?), and also having yet another very quiet hurricane season.

A trend has to last a little bit longer than a few days in july of one particular year.

source of image: Greenland Summit Station - the plot is of temperatures at the top of the Greenland icecap for the last 30 days.

The sattellite data we have is only 30 years old and just because we record something not before seen in that 30 year period does not mean it has not happened before. The quote from Stephen Schneider I posted earlier illustrates what has occured in this situation.

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

A more accurate headline might have been, that a that a rare phenomenom with a 150 year cycle was captured by one of our new impressive sattelite sensors.

[LeeG]

Not such a big deal, some people have 90 years to move to higher land.
Looks like economic activity to me..

Will it take energy to move "some people" to higher ground? What form of energy do you think will fuel the economic activity of transportation and construction?

[varadero]

So thats that then, We can all agree this was an alarmist piece of news.

[Chip-skiff]

So thats that then, We can all agree this was an alarmist piece of news.

You can certainly keep agreeing with your own dogma and trying to discount any information that doesn't accord with it.

[varadero]

You can certainly keep agreeing with your own dogma and trying to discount any information that doesn't accord with it.

What part, exactly, do you not agree with? The science, or the spin?

[Kaa]

The question is, how much weird weather do you need before you figure the climate has changed? How long does the trend have to last before you decide it's a trend?

Well, let's look at a trend...




(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07...limate_change/)

Kaa

[varadero]

Idiot!
Do you not see the hocky stick?

[varadero]

From NEEM (a station with lower elevation than the Summit station)”

“A core from the CO2 firn-air sampling site at NEEM was retrieved in July 2009, and the physical properties of the firn have been analyzed. In the 81m of analyzed firn core, two regions containing ice layers were identified at depths of 29m and 46m. Isotopic analysis provides a depth-age scale that dates these layers to be from 1935 and 1879, respectively. These years were in the two warmest decades of the instrumental temperature record for Greenland.”

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011AGUFM.C33C0661K

[johnw]

Well, let's look at a trend...




(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07...limate_change/)

Kaa

If you're going to go back to Roman times, why not go back even further?



Keep in mind, the Medieval warm period, while it was benign in Europe, made civilizations fall in other parts of the world.

[johnw]

Local climate is local weather over a period of time. Global climate is Global weather over time. The weather map you quoted from July 22 shows just how hot and local the heat wave and drought in the US really is, the worst since 1950. but the global anomoly is only 0.034 of a degree C. At the same time the US is still way way down on tornado count (I believe a record low for july?), and also having yet another very quiet hurricane season.

A trend has to last a little bit longer than a few days in july of one particular year.

source of image: Greenland Summit Station - the plot is of temperatures at the top of the Greenland icecap for the last 30 days.

The sattellite data we have is only 30 years old and just because we record something not before seen in that 30 year period does not mean it has not happened before. The quote from Stephen Schneider I posted earlier illustrates what has occured in this situation.

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

A more accurate headline might have been, that a that a rare phenomenom with a 150 year cycle was captured by one of our new impressive sattelite sensors.

I didn't post on this thread on July 22.

So, how long a period, and how many parts of the world, have to experience temperature increases before it's global climate change?

[Kaa]

If you're going to go back to Roman times, why not go back even further?

Sure :-) So it looks like 8-9,000 years ago it was considerably warmer than it is now. Temperatures rapidly spiked up and then dropped back down.

Kaa

[wardd]

also lately we're having records highs at a greater rate than record lows

[varadero]

also lately we're having records highs at a greater rate than record lows

only in parts of the USA

[Boston]

alright I'll bite, but just for the record, you got the difference between climate and weather all wrong

climate is an average of all weather. Its effected by things like milankovitch cycles
Weather is the uneven distribution of energy in the system, seeking equilibrium. Climate, is that equilibrium.

Change the atmospheric chemistry and you alter the equilibrium between energy in and energy out.

Its pretty simple really.

we added gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere and surprise surprise, things are getting warmer. Were that next equilibrium will be found, in such a complex system. is anybodies guess. But the system had better find it soon, cause given the rate of change over the past 200 years. We're in big trouble.

Oh and nice trick with the graphs, the resolution was so poor that the spike in temps in the last micrometer of that graphs time scale would be hidden under its border, if its creator has even thought to include the pertinent data.

Hint
its all about rate of change.

[varadero]

I didn't post on this thread on July 22.

So, how long a period, and how many parts of the world, have to experience temperature increases before it's global climate change?

John. You reproduced a graphic wich I posted, showing global temp amomolies July 22.

[varadero]

alright I'll bite, but just for the record, you got the difference between climate and weather all wrong

climate is an average of all weather. Its effected by things like milankovitch cycles
Weather is the uneven distribution of energy in the system, seeking equilibrium. Climate, is that equilibrium.

Change the atmospheric chemistry and you alter the equilibrium between energy in and energy out.

Its pretty simple really.

we added gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere and surprise surprise, things are getting warmer. Were that next equilibrium will be found, in such a complex system. is anybodies guess. But the system had better find it soon, cause given the rate of change over the past 200 years. We're in big trouble.

Oh and nice trick with the graphs, the resolution was so poor that the spike in temps in the last micrometer of that graphs time scale would be hidden under its border, if its creator has even thought to include the pertinent data.

Hint
its all about rate of change.

Nice.

[Chip-skiff]

Also, in the region where I was born and have lived most of my years, it's not just a matter of higher average temperatures but also of increasingly large and abrupt variations. We had a killing frost on the eve of the summer solstice. At the end of June, we had to evacuate in the face of a fast-moving wildfire. It was followed by record cloudbursts and floods.

Rather than being a hysterical, website-driven "alarmist," I spent more than a decade collecting field data on things such as the temperature profiles of alpine lakes, glacial recession, detailed precipitation chemistry, and air quality. If you have similar field experience, you've not mentioned it, so I'd guess your knowledge of weather and climate is mostly secondary, and no doubt influenced by the millions (or is it now billions?) spent by Exxon/Mobil and other global corporations on spreading the gospel of "natural variation."

Which is, to be blunt, self-serving crap.

[Boston]

If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven't convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.

Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the "largest temperature departure from average of any season on record." The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet's history.



Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz21mgnoGQQ