Scientists link frozen spring to dramatic Arctic sea ice loss

Novaman

Hi Folks, I thought that I would post this especially due to the current cold weather for this time of year. Any body any thoughts? I wonder is there something to it?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/25/frozen-spring-arctic-sea-ice-loss?CMP=twt_gu

NM

Sea ice area is similar to previous years but due to increased melting in the summer , the ice is much thinner.



I would say that the ice on its own is not the cause of the cold weather, it's more likely that the weak solar cycle is having an affect, historical records show that when there are periods of weak solar activity we have colder winters in this part of the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Minimum

The Dalton Minimum was a period of low solar activity, named after the English meteorologist John Dalton, lasting from about 1790 to 1830.[1] Like the Maunder Minimum and Spörer Minimum, the Dalton Minimum coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures. During that period, there was a variation of temperature of about 1°C.[2]

The precise cause of the lower-than-average temperatures during this period is not well understood. Recent papers have suggested that a rise in volcanism was largely responsible for the cooling trend.[3]

While The Year Without a Summer, in 1816, occurred during the Dalton Minimum, the prime reason for that year's cool temperatures was the highly explosive eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which was one of the two largest eruptions in the past 2000 years.

It is increasing looking more and more like we're facing into a repeat of a Dalton or even a Maunder minimum event.

Grimreaper666

Well apparently global warming stopped 16 years ago according to a report quietly released by the Met Office reported in the papers today. I've always had my doubts about the whole thing for a long time now anyway.

Grimreaper666

Grimreaper666 wrote: »

Well apparently global warming stopped 16 years ago according to a report quietly released by the Met Office reported in the papers today. I've always had my doubts about the whole thing for a long time now anyway.

Linky?

As it is, there are many inputs that affect the climate, put simply, extra CO2 just increases the "thermal blanket" around the planet, a bit like increasing the thickness of your duvet.
All the soot from those new coal power stations around the planet is acting like sunscreen, reducing the amount of solar energy that is reaching the ground making it cooler. Changes in solar activity also affecting the energy input as well.

Changing the dynamics changes the climate!

The human element to the climate change is too large to be ignored, but it is only one of several factors that influence the weather(climate).

M.T. Cranium

I think it's a grasping at straws by the AGW lobby to try to keep people worried about global climate. The cause and effect here is unproven (low ice coverage in autumn 2012, cold spring 2013) and in any case a much different pattern emerged in the previous low-ice-cover event 2007-08. That time, the cold spring and heavy snowfall signature was in a completely different place (eastern North America).

I'm not saying there is nothing to the proposed link, but I don't think it rises to the level of proven science, it's really just something thrown out there to deflect attention away from the fact that the AGW lobby used to say that western Europe would never see winter again (remember? we have screenshots).

OldRio

Do not worry about global warming, sorry, now called climate change.
The Government are putting a carbon tax on coal at the end of the month.
That will save the planet. Old people might take a bit of a hit but hey lets hug them trees.

shanered

I just hope we get some more sun tbh, I'll put up with the extra cold once we get paid in full with sunshine, but the weather drives a hard bargain....

Nabber

It's becoming poor form at this stage. Very lazy reports coming out.

My in-laws were describing the floods in Mauritius. 12 people dead. Their neighbours on Reunion had advanced warning. But the Mauritian authorities didn't. Now they are blaming global warming.

Ant extreme weather is touted out as being AGW.

Weather science for me is losing it's appeal.
I can't watch nature programmes anymore, every animal is on the brink of extinction, thanks to my 1.4 petrol engine and my love of a warm home.

The AGW theory has lost alot of credibility, it's a shame it lost it for becoming populist propaganda that was forced on the planet. The likes of which have never been seen before.

/my two cents

fits

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

I think it's a grasping at straws by the AGW lobby to try to keep people worried about global climate. The cause and effect here is unproven (low ice coverage in autumn 2012, cold spring 2013) and in any case a much different pattern emerged in the previous low-ice-cover event 2007-08. That time, the cold spring and heavy snowfall signature was in a completely different place (eastern North America).

I'm not saying there is nothing to the proposed link, but I don't think it rises to the level of proven science, it's really just something thrown out there to deflect attention away from the fact that the AGW lobby used to say that western Europe would never see winter again (remember? we have screenshots).

"AGW lobby?/" really MT, you are not doing yourself any credit here.
And such a 'lobby' does not need to grasp at straws.. The evidence is there and is quite overwhelming already. The further north you live the less you can see it though.

Danno

fits wrote: »

The further north you live the less you can see it though.

:rolleyes:

The arctic is the place heating up the fastest according to the global warming brigade...

zenno

The global-warming/climate-change brigade are just worried about getting their funding from this scam as per usual. What a farce and most people can see it as the farce it is.

sparklyEyes111

Grimreaper666 wrote: »

Well apparently global warming stopped 16 years ago according to a report quietly released by the Met Office reported in the papers today. I've always had my doubts about the whole thing for a long time now anyway.

Have you a link for this? It's new news to me!!

Larbre34

Lets call it the case for 'Human Influenced Climate Change'

An article in the Times at the weekend had me thinking about this, its a serious worry that in the US, climate change sceptics/deniers are lumped into a school of thought by the liberal media with JFK/Roswell/Fake Moon Landings.

Personally, I am a strong sceptic of human influenced climate change - at least on the scale proposed by its loudest proponents in recent years. My own belief is that we owe it to ourselves to conserve natural and fossil resources for economic reasons as, if not, food and energy poverty due to population explosion will define the 21st Century.

However, I feel it is arrogant and misguided to use the reference periods and criteria to say human activity is upsetting climatic balance. The climate isnt balanced, it has changed entirely many times over billions of years, over eras that span far wider than a single civilisation and the truth is we should not be able to prove human influenced climate change from the 19th - 21st centuries until perhaps from the perspective of many centuries hence.

A whole host of massive scale natural phenomena like solar radiation, methane and CO2 variations from natural sources like tectonic and volcanic activity, shifting magnetic fields, have and probably always will produce variations in climate beyond human tolerance or taste. This planet is alive, and it will sometimes bite as well as sustain us.

I look forward to the day when there is a proper, publically digestable debate on the issue, away from vested interest forums like the US Congress.

Quickelles

Larbre34 wrote: »

Lets call it the case for 'Human Influenced Climate Change'

Which is Hicc.

A hiccup would be 'Human Influenced Climate Change Unsupported by Plausibility.

riffmongous

Larbre34 wrote: »

Lets call it the case for 'Human Influenced Climate Change'

An article in the Times at the weekend had me thinking about this, its a serious worry that in the US, climate change sceptics/deniers are lumped into a school of thought by the liberal media with JFK/Roswell/Fake Moon Landings.

Personally, I am a strong sceptic of human influenced climate change - at least on the scale proposed by its loudest proponents in recent years. My own belief is that we owe it to ourselves to conserve natural and fossil resources for economic reasons as, if not, food and energy poverty due to population explosion will define the 21st Century.

However, I feel it is arrogant and misguided to use the reference periods and criteria to say human activity is upsetting climatic balance. The climate isnt balanced, it has changed entirely many times over billions of years, over eras that span far wider than a single civilisation and the truth is we should not be able to prove human influenced climate change from the 19th - 21st centuries until perhaps from the perspective of many centuries hence.

A whole host of massive scale natural phenomena like solar radiation, methane and CO2 variations from natural sources like tectonic and volcanic activity, shifting magnetic fields, have and probably always will produce variations in climate beyond human tolerance or taste. This planet is alive, and it will sometimes bite as well as sustain us.

I look forward to the day when there is a proper, publically digestable debate on the issue, away from vested interest forums like the US Congress.

Well look since you know everything already why don't you go make a presentation, come to a climate change conference and present it to all those scientists that you know better than, it's that easy. Then we can finally put this issue to bed.

Nabber

riffmongous wrote: »

Well look since you know everything already why don't you go make a presentation, come to a climate change conference and present it to all those scientists that you know better than, it's that easy. Then we can finally put this issue to bed.

You got to love that word It's the trump card.
Oddly enough there are 'scientists' who disagree with how much effect we are having on our climate.

I have 3 issues with AGW

1. It is still unproven, but thought of as absolute fact.
2. We are taxed based on these unproven theories.
3. The resistance from AGW theorist to an open debate is just downright scandalous.

I recycle what I can at home, turn off all my lights when not needed. Not to save the planet. I don't want to needlessly pollute the planet.

Larbre34

riffmongous wrote: »

Well look since you know everything already why don't you go make a presentation, come to a climate change conference and present it to all those scientists that you know better than, it's that easy. Then we can finally put this issue to bed.

Or, we could just talk about our own thoughts and perspectives from a layman's reading of the available evidence, like you would in for example, an amateur forum.......

If you have a counterpoint, make it, but give up the smartarsery, its given too much latitude on Boards as it is.

sharper

Nabber wrote: »

1. It is still unproven, but thought of as absolute fact.

Not by the scientific community it isn't, the consensus position by scientists is that it's highly likely that about 50% of 20th century warming is attributable to human activity not that it's a proven fact. Outside of the scientific community many theories are treated factually such as the theory that disease is caused by microorganisms, the theory that the diversity of life is produced by genetic mutation and countless others from well established fields of study.

2. We are taxed based on these unproven theories.

Well aside from the fact that scientific theories are never proven carbon taxes are not based entirely on the premise of climate change. Fossil fuels are limited and increasingly expensive, for a number of countries they also represent an external dependency that beholds them to other countries. There are lots of reasons for carbon taxes, of which the risk that they will change the climate is one.

3. The resistance from AGW theorist to an open debate is just downright scandalous.

What you call open debate usually consists of "Those scientists are all incompetent and/or fraudulent". The scientific community welcomes open debate but you first have to know what you're talking about and debate takes the form of alternative explanations and/or new data not "Oh that's just not good enough".

The problem for the climate change skeptic community is they have no coherent set of explanations which rival AGW. If you ask one skeptic they'll say it's ocean cycles, another will say it's caused by the sun, another will say there's no warming at all the datasets are faked and a fourth will argue the preceding arguments simultaneously regardless of their conflicts with each other.

sharper

Larbre34 wrote: »

If you have a counterpoint, make it, but give up the smartarsery, its given too much latitude on Boards as it is.

What's the counterpoint to "Lots of things could be changing the climate, we just don't know"?

Unless that person is an established authority (i.e. you can be confident that person is sufficiently knowledgeable to be able to make statements about what science does or does not know) then the argument amounts to "I don't know what changes the climate, therefore nobody does".

There's little in the way of response to make to that except to point out that people that devote decades of study and research to the topic do know a little something about it and if you're going to say they're wrong about it you need a really strong case, not hand waving.

Larbre34

sharper wrote: »

What's the counterpoint to "Lots of things could be changing the climate, we just don't know"?

Unless that person is an established authority (i.e. you can be confident that person is sufficiently knowledgeable to be able to make statements about what science does or does not know) then the argument amounts to "I don't know what changes the climate, therefore nobody does".

There's little in the way of response to make to that except to point out that people that devote decades of study and research to the topic do know a little something about it and if you're going to say they're wrong about it you need a really strong case, not hand waving.

I have read the theories of the people who have similarly devoted decades of study and research, the outcome of which offers a contrary argument, and I agree with them instead. Nobody waving hands here.

odyboody

A lot of people and "scientists" have devoted decades to the study of ghosts and the paranormal. Do we therefore accept that they are real as well:rolleyes:

Elmer Blooker

Reasons for the unusually cold spring:

1. Loss of Arctic sea ice
2. The quiet sun/lack of sunspots
3. The result of stratospheric warming

I'm sure there are other theories but take yer pick.
Personally I hope its number 2 I think a Maunder/Dalton minimum type period and decent winters would be exciting.

odyboody

Elmer Blooker wrote: »

Reasons for the unusually cold spring:

1. Loss of Arctic sea ice
2. The quiet sun/lack of sunspots
3. The result of stratospheric warming

I'm sure there are other theories but take yer pick.
Personally I hope its number 2 I think a Maunder/Dalton minimum type period and decent winters would be exciting.

Don't hope for anything like that or some in here would have you personally responsible for everything for high fuel prices to the death of all grannies from the cold.

Calibos

Elmer Blooker wrote: »

Reasons for the unusually cold spring:

1. Loss of Arctic sea ice
2. The quiet sun/lack of sunspots
3. The result of stratospheric warming

I'm sure there are other theories but take yer pick.
Personally I hope its number 2 I think a Maunder/Dalton minimum type period and decent winters would be exciting.

Also, if it pushed the Pause button on Global warming for a few decades then everyone wins. Regardless of the cause of global warming we shouldn't be wasteful of energy or beholden to certain states/regions. If a Maunder/Dalton minimum put the brakes on GW for 50-100 years then population will have leveled at 10 billion, we're bound to have fusion power by then, Hydrogen infrastructure, better batteries/storage, working super efficient renewables.

ie. sidestepping the issue of massive economic disruption to make the changes in a decade or two to halt GW which we all know is not going to happen.

If this came to pass and if I wasn't an atheist, I'd be thinking that a higher power was saying to himself, "MEdammit, these feckers aren't hitting the brakes, I'll have to give them some breathing room so they'll be able to make the changes without even trying hard or it costing them a fortune upfront"

sharper

Larbre34 wrote: »

I have read the theories of the people who have similarly devoted decades of study and research, the outcome of which offers a contrary argument, and I agree with them instead. Nobody waving hands here.

Sure there are individual scientists that have differing ideas and that's captured quite well in the literature and the IPCC reports. The "likely" range of warming covers 2 to 4.5 degrees per doubling of C02 which captures the opinion of about 97% of climate scientists. If you want to talk about warming in the range of about 1.1 to degrees then you're down to a handful of individuals, below that and you're outside the range of credible working scientists and into the realm of blog posts and cranks.

"AGW is not happening" either because of warming part or the human contribution part is simply not a credible scientific position. The legitimate debate is around precisely how much warming humans are going to cause and what the regional and global impacts will be.

odyboody wrote: »

A lot of people and "scientists" have devoted decades to the study of ghosts and the paranormal. Do we therefore accept that they are real as well:rolleyes:

At the risk of pointing out the obvious you have scientists in quotes for a reason - the people who study ghosts and the paranormal are not scientists. Or at least those who do so from the perspective that ghosts are spirits of the once living or whatever.

Most people recognise that scientists (when publishing in reputable journals on their area of expertise) are not just another group of people with an opinion on something, the equal of any other group of people with an opinion.

riffmongous

Larbre34 wrote: »

Or, we could just talk about our own thoughts and perspectives from a layman's reading of the available evidence, like you would in for example, an amateur forum.......

If you have a counterpoint, make it, but give up the smartarsery, its given too much latitude on Boards as it is.

This may be an amateur forum but it's still in the science section so I would expect posts to respect scientific principles, if not just move the forum to Recreation.

and the truth is we should not be able to prove human influenced climate change from the 19th - 21st centuries until perhaps from the perspective of many centuries hence.

If you know the truth, then get it published, like every serious scientist has to go through.

I have read the theories of the people who have similarly devoted decades of study and research, the outcome of which offers a contrary argument, and I agree with them instead. Nobody waving hands here.

Please then do tell me their names, I am at the EGU this week so perhaps they are giving a talk here and I can go listen. http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/egu2013/sessionprogramme

If you can find any of their names their point them out for me, but hurry because there are only 2 days left.

Edit: Perhaps too harsh, the point isn't to single you out and have a go, but a lot of my colleagues work in the areas of climate science and people insinuating that they are frauds but unwilling to go prove their own points as rigourously as my colleagues do is pretty annoying.

Trogdor

sharper wrote: »

Sure there are individual scientists that have differing ideas and that's captured quite well in the literature and the IPCC reports. The "likely" range of warming covers 2 to 4.5 degrees per doubling of C02 which captures the opinion of about 97% of climate scientists. If you want to talk about warming in the range of about 1.1 to degrees then you're down to a handful of individuals, below that and you're outside the range of credible working scientists and into the realm of blog posts and cranks.

"AGW is not happening" either because of warming part or the human contribution part is simply not a credible scientific position. The legitimate debate is around precisely how much warming humans are going to cause and what the regional and global impacts will be.



At the risk of pointing out the obvious you have scientists in quotes for a reason - the people who study ghosts and the paranormal are not scientists. Or at least those who do so from the perspective that ghosts are spirits of the once living or whatever.

Most people recognise that scientists (when publishing in reputable journals on their area of expertise) are not just another group of people with an opinion on something, the equal of any other group of people with an opinion.

I don't feel like i know enough about the situation to wade in properly here really, but have the ipcc/climate models not been revised down a few times now when their extreme temperature rise prediction trends failed to appear in the measured data despite massive yearly increases in CO2? This may be false and i don't have any stats to back this up, it was just the impression i got from a vague following of things over the last few years.

Personally I think it's silly to say outright that CO2 levels have no impact on our climate. Obviously as a greenhouse gas component of our atmosphere is it going to have an effect (especially when its levels are altered as drastically as they are being currently) but I think just how much effect is very hard to quantify when there are so many other complex processes which we do not full understand interacting to make up the full variations of the global climate.

sharper

Trogdor wrote: »

I don't feel like i know enough about the situation to wade in properly here really, but have the ipcc/climate models not been revised down a few times now when their extreme temperature rise prediction trends failed to appear in the measured data despite massive yearly increases in CO2? This may be false and i don't have any stats to back this up, it was just the impression i got from a vague following of things over the last few years.

You can see an overview of the various IPCC projections versus observed temperatures here

http://www.skepticalscience.com/lessons-ridley-ipcc-hansen.html



Climate change skeptics tend to seize on any research that suggests temperature response will be lower and ignore the rest, this can easily create the impression of momentum in one direction only. Note the table which summarises the decadal projections of the various reports, they've gone up as well as down.

Overall the IPCC reports are very conservative relative to the scientific literature. Their work tends to get characterised as "extreme" by those that prefer answers which come in at the extreme low end of the projections so they can present themselves as simply taking the reasonable middle ground. In reality the IPCC has already taken the reasonable middle ground.

Larbre34

From the NOAA

For the past 150 years, global average temperature increase is notable, for the past 70 years its remarkable, and it coincides with an unprecedented rise in atmospheric CO2 levels. I couldn't and wouldn't refute that.

However I don't agree that either of those time scales is appropriate in the context of the existence of the planet. That's just my own opinion of the scope of the debate.

sharper

Larbre34 wrote: »

However I don't agree that either of those time scales is appropriate in the context of the existence of the planet. That's just my own opinion of the scope of the debate.

Well the scope is arbitrary depending on what you're interested in. The planet has been cold enough to see glaciers at the tropics and hot enough for the average sea temperature to be about 30 degrees. Sea level as been both lower and higher than it is today.

What's of concern is that the climate of the last 10,000 years has been particularly advantageous to humans and allowed civilisation to develop and flourish. The planet isn't going to much care about a sea level rise of a few feet but a few tens of millions of displaced people will and so will the populations in the places they move to.

Larbre34

sharper wrote: »

Well the scope is arbitrary depending on what you're interested in. The planet has been cold enough to see glaciers at the tropics and hot enough for the average sea temperature to be about 30 degrees. Sea level as been both lower and higher than it is today.

What's of concern is that the climate of the last 10,000 years has been particularly advantageous to humans and allowed civilisation to develop and flourish. The planet isn't going to much care about a sea level rise of a few feet but a few tens of millions of displaced people will and so will the populations in the places they move to.

I completely agree. There is likely to be some terrible human catastrophes in the rest of this century for reasons of water, food or energy disruption caused by extreme weather events / climatic change. Whether human civilisation is or is not causing those changes will likely become incidental to events at hand.

Redsunset

I posted this in the links thread a couple of days ago. Worth a read if you missed it.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=84055232&postcount=9

Larbre34

By an awful coincidence a young climate scientist researcher I saw on TV a few times talking about this topic, Dr Katharine Giles, 35 of University College London was killed on the road in central London today when her bike collided with a truck. She is the second member of her acclaimed team to die tragically in recent times. Dr Giles was a hands on polar explorer as well as being involved in education and noted research. RIP.

hotwhiskey

Antarctic ice sheet melt 'not that unusual'.

If this is legit why was this not done 20 to 30 years ago. I thought we were paying extra taxes to stop this. Now we have a report from scientists saying don't worry its the norm..

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/15/western_antarctic_melting_nothing_unusual/

riffmongous

hotwhiskey wrote: »

Antarctic ice sheet melt 'not that unusual'.

If this is legit why was this not done 20 to 30 years ago. I thought we were paying extra taxes to stop this. Now we have a report from scientists saying don't worry its the norm..

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/15/western_antarctic_melting_nothing_unusual/

That's not exactly what the article the website quotes actually says

The researchers’ results are based on their analysis of a new ice core from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide that goes back 2,000 years, along with a number of other ice core records going back about 200 years. They found that during that time there were several decades that exhibited similar climate patterns as the 1990s.


The most prominent of these in the last 200 years – the 1940s and the 1830s – were also periods of unusual El Niño activity like the 1990s. The implication, Steig said, is that rapid ice loss from Antarctica observed in the last few decades, particularly the ’90s, “may not be all that unusual.”


The same is not true for the Antarctic Peninsula, the part of the continent closer to South America, where rapid ice loss has been even more dramatic and where the changes are almost certainly a result of human-caused warming, Steig said.


But in the area where the new research was focused, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, it is more difficult to detect the evidence of human-caused climate change. While changes in recent decades have been unusual and at the “upper bound of normal,” Steig said, they cannot be considered exceptional.


“The magnitude of unforced natural variability is very big in this area,” Steig said, “and that actually prevents us from answering the questions, ‘Is what we have been observing exceptional? Is this going to continue?’”