Arctic Updates

[Ben D]

Summer has been one of Alaska's coldest

High temperatures this season were 3rd lowest on record

By CRAIG MEDRED
cmedred@adn.com
Published: September 7th, 2008 12:04 AM

Summer is officially over in Alaska, and if you got out in the sun to enjoy both days of it you were lucky.

Those were the two July days the temperature at the offices of the National Weather Service in Anchorage hit 70 degrees or better.

"Those temperatures occurred at the beginning of the month (of July) and were immediately followed by a long stretch of cool and wet weather.

"With only two days above 70 degrees this year, that sets a new record for the fewest days to reach 70,'' the weather-watching agency reported Friday.

Add to the lack of heat and sunshine what the agency calls "an astonishing 77%" of days colder than normal, and you get the picture.

This summer was every bit as bad as you thought it was.

Gardens didn't grow. Salmon returned late. Bees didn't make honey. Swallows didn't breed.

And the sunbathing, well, what sunbathing?

On average, Anchorage sees 16 days that hit 70 or better.

Not this year. Not since 1980 has there been a summer less reflective of global warming than this one. Consider these 2008 benchmarks from the weather service that say this month won't be any better:

Over the course of the past 87 years, September temperatures have reached 70 only 17 times, and two of those 70-degree days came in the same year, according to the weather service.

On average, a 70-degree September day comes along about once every five years, but those days also tend to come in warm years, not years like this one.

Overall, the weather service ranks the summer of 2008 as having the third coolest average high temperatures since record keeping began. Only the summers of 1973 and 1971 were worse. In overall average daily temperatures, 2008 ranked 11th place.

Link

[wintler2]

Melting Arctic sees first vessel through Northwest Passage

The German Institute Alfred Wegener said on Friday that a scientific expedition for the first time was able to navigate the fabled Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans along Arctic waters bordering Russia and North America because they were free of ice
"The scientific research vessel “Polarstern” returned this morning from the Arctic to Bremerhaven (northern Germany). It was the first ship to have crossed the Northwest and Northeast passages" without having to break any ice reported an institute spokesman according to the French news agency AFP...
http://www.mercopress.com/vernoticia.do ... rmato=HTML

..in Anchorage ..

Anchorage isn't in Arctic (Circle), fyi.

[Ben D]

Anchorage isn't in Arctic (Circle), fyi.

So? FYI the headline was "Summer has been one of Alaska's coldest" and the last time I checked, the northern part of Alaska is within the Arctic Circle.

[tazmic]

[url=http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/18/ice-reality-check-scientists-counter-latest-arctic-record-warmth-claims-as-pseudoscience/]Ice Reality Check: Arctic Ice Now 31.3% Over Last Year, plus Scientists Counter Latest Arctic ‘Record’ Warmth Claims as ‘Pseudoscience’
[/url]

Scientists Counter Latest Arctic ‘Record’ Warmth Claims as ‘Pseudoscience’ - Comprehensive Arctic Data Round Up - October 17, 2008

[tazmic]

The German Institute Alfred Wegener said on Friday that a scientific expedition for the first time was able to navigate the fabled Northwest Passage

Does this mean that it was the first scientific expedition to make the route? It reads that way. (Or that it was the first time that expedition had succeeded.)

Melting Arctic sees first vessel through Northwest Passage

But that certainly doesn't.

Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) of Norway was the first person to successfully navigate the fabled Northwest Passage.

I'm confused by all these claims.

[Cosmic Cowbell]

The German Institute Alfred Wegener said on Friday that a scientific expedition for the first time was able to navigate the fabled Northwest Passage

Does this mean that it was the first scientific expedition to make the route? It reads that way. (Or that it was the first time that expedition had succeeded.)

Melting Arctic sees first vessel through Northwest Passage

But that certainly doesn't.

Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) of Norway was the first person to successfully navigate the fabled Northwest Passage.

I'm confused by all these claims.

While it is true that Amundsen is credited with navigating the NW Passage, it is also a fact that it took him 3 years to do it due to the amount of ice constantly present. At no time during his exploration was the passage free of ice. It should also be noted that "Due to water as shallow as 3 feet (0.91 m), a larger ship could never have used the route."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amun ... st_Passage

If you'll note the quotes with accuracy, rather than leaving out the salient "because they were free of ice" and "without having to break any ice", you'll get the point of the statement without the semantics of self induced ignorance.

I see the arguments of denialist such as yourself, BenD and Monster much the same way as those who argue against the UFO phenomenon. They are often selective, twisted and usually border on the ridiculous (swamp gas, Venus, liars etc). Ultimately, if the time is taken (by those so inclined) said denialist can often be reduced to babbling incoherence (see Monsters lack of response earlier in this thread). I'll simply leave you all to wallow in it....

We see what we want to see. And remember, above all else, Al Gore loves you regardless of the color of your lenses.



~C

[tazmic]

If you'll note the quotes with accuracy, rather than leaving out the salient "because they were free of ice" and "without having to break any ice", you'll get the point of the statement

While it is true that Amundsen is credited with navigating the NW Passage

Right. So it's not the First Vessel to do it, it wasn't the first time, despite
the headline, but the reference about ice breaking is the salient point.

I see the arguments of denialist such as yourself...

Why do you think I'm a 'denialist'? What is it you think I'm denying exactly?
What are the arguments of mine that you are referring to?

..denialist can often be reduced to babbling incoherence (see Monsters lack of response earlier in this thread)

What has Monsters' lack of response got to do with 'babbling incoherence'?
Or are you referring to Penguin's 'Blah,blah,blah'?

We see what we want to see.

This is quite clear. As the saying goes: Maybe seeing is believing,
but what if you are better at believing, than you are at seeing?

And remember, above all else, Al Gore loves you regardless of the color of your lenses.

You have a strange sense of humor here.

[Cosmic Cowbell]

Right. So it's not the First Vessel to do it, it wasn't the first time, despite the headline, but the reference about ice breaking is the salient point.

Right. The point is that for the first time in human memory, the NW Passage is free of ice. However, it seems you would rather not acknowledge the fact but rather quote out of context and misdirect into a redundant 'who was first' argument.

Why do you think I'm a 'denialist'? What is it you think I'm denying exactly? What are the arguments of mine that you are referring to?

Climate sensitivity overstated, not supported by data

As well as...

Eco Worriers: “CO2 is a pollutant!”
Gaia: “Tell that to the biosphere.”
Biosphere: “Yumm, burp!”

biosphere-is-booming

"Planet Earth is on a roll! GPP is way up. NPP is way up. To the surprise of those who have been bearish on the planet, the data shows global production has been steadily climbing to record levels, ones not seen since these measurements began.

GPP is Gross Primary Production, a measure of the daily output of the global biosphere –the amount of new plant matter on land. NPP is Net Primary Production, an annual tally of the globe’s production. Biomass is booming. The planet is the greenest it’s been in decades, perhaps in centuries."

There's more if you like. All one has to do is troll through your previous post here to see where your coming from. Then again, maybe your simply "pro-warming". But hey, if you'd like to make a definitive statement here denying your denialism, I'm all eyes....

..denialist can often be reduced to babbling incoherence (see Monsters lack of response earlier in this thread)

What has Monsters' lack of response got to do with 'babbling incoherence'?

You are correct...his lack of response (ownership) has more to do with his intellectual honesty (or lack thereof - a common trait of the denialist) than babbling incoherence. And this thread wasn't the first time he posted that BS. I stand corrected on this particular example....

"We see what we want to see."

This is quite clear. As the saying goes: Maybe seeing is believing,
but what if you are better at believing, than you are at seeing?

Ah..a "what if" statement.


Scientists found this polar bear swimming in Alaska's Chukchi Sea and fear it and eight others will drown in an impossible 400 mile swim back to shore

Why don't you ask the bear "what if" you can't swim 400 miles? Oops, to late. It's dead. Deny that.

"You have a strange sense of humor here."

I know. The enjoyment I get from watching some folks, especially denialist, go all apoplectic at the mere mention of his name (Al Gore - Oscar winner, Nobel prize winner) is something I struggle with...quasi-momentarily.

Did I mention Al Gore...?

[Ben D]

Less ice in the Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 years ago

Innovations-report.com
20.10.2008

Recent mapping of a number of raised beach ridges on the north coast of Greenland suggests that the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean was greatly reduced some 6000-7000 years ago. The Arctic Ocean may have been periodically ice free.

”The climate in the northern regions has never been milder since the last Ice Age than it was about 6000-7000 years ago. We still don’t know whether the Arctic Ocean was completely ice free, but there was more open water in the area north of Greenland than there is today,” says Astrid Lyså, a geologist and researcher at the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU).

Together with her NGU colleague, Eiliv Larsen, she has worked on the north coast of Greenland with a group of scientists from the University of Copenhagen, mapping sea-level changes and studying a number of shore features. She has also collected samples of driftwood that originated from Siberia or Alaska and had these dated, and has collected shells and microfossils from shore sediments.

”The architecture of a sandy shore depends partly on whether wave activity or pack ice has influenced its formation. Beach ridges, which are generally distinct, very long, broad features running parallel to the shoreline, form when there is wave activity and occasional storms. This requires periodically open water,” Astrid Lyså tells me.

Pack-ice ridges which form when drift ice is pressed onto the seashore piling up shore sediments that lie in its path, have a completely different character. They are generally shorter, narrower and more irregular in shape.

Open sea

”The beach ridges which we have had dated to about 6000-7000 years ago were shaped by wave activity,” says Astrid Lyså. They are located at the mouth of Independence Fjord in North Greenland, on an open, flat plain facing directly onto the Arctic Ocean. Today, drift ice forms a continuous cover from the land here. Astrid Lyså says that such old beach formations require that the sea all the way to the North Pole was periodically ice free for a long time.


Link

[wintler2]

Arctic temperatures at record highs

Source: Copyright 2008, Associated Press
Date: October 20, 2008
http://www.oceanconserve.org/shared/rea ... %20warming


Autumn temperatures in the Arctic are at record levels, the Arctic Ocean is getting warmer and less salty as sea ice melts, and reindeer herds appear to be declining, researchers reported.

“Obviously, the planet is interconnected, so what happens in the Arctic does matter” to the rest of the world, Jackie Richter-Menge of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, NH, said in releasing the third annual Arctic Report Card.

The report, compiled by 46 scientists from 10 countries, looks at a variety of conditions in the Arctic. The region has long been expected to be among the first areas to show impacts from global warming, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is largely a result of human activities adding carbon dioxide and other gases to the atmosphere.

“Changes in the Arctic show a domino effect from multiple causes more clearly than in other regions,” said James Overland, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. “It’s a sensitive system and often reflects changes in relatively fast and dramatic ways.”

For example, autumn air temperatures in the Arctic are at a record 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 Celsius) above normal.

The report noted that 2007 was the warmest year on record the Arctic, leading to a record loss of sea ice. This year’s sea ice melt was second only to 2007.

Rising temperatures help melt the ice, which in turn allows more solar heating of the ocean. That warming of the air and ocean affects land and marine life, and reduces the amount of winter sea ice that lasts into the following summer.

The study also noted a warming trend on Arctic land and increase in greenness as shrubs move north into areas that were formerly permafrost. While the warming continues, the rate in this century is less than in the 1990s due to natural variability, the researchers said.

In addition to global warming there are natural cycles of warming and cooling, and a warm cycle in the 1990s added to the temperature rise. Now with a cooler cycles in some areas the rise in temperatures has slowed, but Overland said he expects that it will speed up again when the next natural warming cycle comes around.

Asked if an increase in radiation from the sun was having an effect on the Earth’s climate, Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Center in Columbus, Ohio, said while it’s important, increased solar output only accounts for about 10 percent of global warming.

“You can’t use solar to say that greenhouse gases are not a major factor,” Overland added.

Other findings from the report include:

n The Arctic Ocean continued to warm and freshen due to ice melt. This was accompanied by an ‘unprecedented’ rate of sea level rise of nearly 0.1 inch per year.

n Warming has continued around Greenland in 2007 resulting in a record amount of ice melt. The Greenland ice sheet lost 24 cubic miles of ice, making it the largest single contributor to global sea level rise.

n Reindeer herds that had been increasing since the 1970s are now showing signs of leveling off or beginning to decline.

n Goose populations are increasing as they expand their range within the Arctic.

n Data on marine mammals is limited but they seem to have mixed trends. They are adapted to life in a region that is at least seasonally ice-covered. There is concern about the small numbers of polar bears in some regions, the status of many walrus groups is unknown, some whales are increasing and others declining.

“This is a very complicated system and we are still working diligently to sort out its mysteries,” said Richter-Menge. In addition to Richter-Menge, Overland and Box, lead authors of the report included Michael Simpkin of NOAA, Silver Spring, Md. and Vladimir E. Romanovsky of the Geophysical Institute, Fairbanks, Alaska.


----



Arctic Warming Becoming Pronounced
NOAA Survey Indicates Global Warming Effects are More Noticeable
Ed Oswald

Oct 17, 2008
Ice Floes in the Arctic, NOAA Arctic Research Office
Among the signs of faster changes as a result of climate change are rising surface temperatures, a near-record loss of summer ice, and surface ice melting in Greenland.

If global warming is indeed a reality, researchers say that the Arctic would be the first to show its devastating effects. This is due to the ecosystem of the region is much more sensitive to changes in climate than elsewhere on the planet.

“It’s a sensitive system and often reflects changes in relatively fast and dramatic ways," oceanographer James Overland said. The Seattle-based researcher works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and is the author of the Arctic Report Card, an annual report on the region's environmental health.
Higher Temperatures Lead to Massive Sea Ice Loss

Possibly the most troubling sign is much above normal autumn temperatures, which prolong the period of typical ice loss. With temperatures running almost nine degrees above normal -- a record -- and it staying warmer later into the season, significantly more ice is melting and it is not refreezing completely in the shorter cold season. ..
http://climate-change.suite101.com/arti ... pronounced

[monster]

Time to earn my Big Oil paycheck

Lorne Gunter: Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof

Link

In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.

Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures -- they're going down, not up.

On the same day (Sept. 5) that areas of southern Brazil were recording one of their latest winter snowfalls ever and entering what turned out to be their coldest September in a century, Brazilian meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart explained that extreme cold or snowfall events in his country have always been tied to "a negative PDO" or Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Positive PDOs -- El Ninos -- produce above-average temperatures in South America while negative ones -- La Ninas -- produce below average ones.

Dr. Hackbart also pointed out that periods of solar inactivity known as "solar minimums" magnify cold spells on his continent. So, given that August was the first month since 1913 in which no sunspot activity was recorded -- none -- and during which solar winds were at a 50-year low, he was not surprised that Brazilians were suffering (for them) a brutal cold snap. "This is no coincidence," he said as he scoffed at the notion that manmade carbon emissions had more impact than the sun and oceans on global climate.

Also in September, American Craig Loehle, a scientist who conducts computer modelling on global climate change, confirmed his earlier findings that the so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP) of about 1,000 years ago did in fact exist and was even warmer than 20th-century temperatures.

Prior to the past decade of climate hysteria and Kyoto hype, the MWP was a given in the scientific community. Several hundred studies of tree rings, lake and ocean floor sediment, ice cores and early written records of weather -- even harvest totals and censuses --confirmed that the period from 800 AD to 1300 AD was unusually warm, particularly in Northern Europe.

But in order to prove the climate scaremongers' claim that 20th-century warming had been dangerous and unprecedented -- a result of human, not natural factors -- the MWP had to be made to disappear. So studies such as Michael Mann's "hockey stick," in which there is no MWP and global temperatures rise gradually until they jump up in the industrial age, have been adopted by the UN as proof that recent climate change necessitates a reordering of human economies and societies.

Dr. Loehle's work helps end this deception.

Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, "It's practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling," as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an "almost exact correlation" between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost "no correlation at all with CO2."

An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, "Man-made global warming is junk science," explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year "equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration ... This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number."

Other international scientists have called the manmade warming theory a "hoax," a "fraud" and simply "not credible."

While not stooping to such name-calling, weather-satellite scientists David Douglass of the University of Rochester and John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville nonetheless dealt the True Believers a devastating blow last month.

For nearly 30 years, Professor Christy has been in charge of NASA's eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily around the globe. In a paper co-written with Dr. Douglass, he concludes that while manmade emissions may be having a slight impact, "variations in global temperatures since 1978 ... cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide."

Moreover, while the chart below was not produced by Douglass and Christy, it was produced using their data and it clearly shows that in the past four years -- the period corresponding to reduced solar activity -- all of the rise in global temperatures since 1979 has disappeared.

It may be that more global warming doubters are surfacing because there just isn't any global warming.

lgunter@shaw.ca

National Post

[wintler2]

'Dramatic evidence' of Arctic melt, experts warn

Report cites signals ranging from Greenland ice sheet to reindeer herds

WASHINGTON - Autumn temperatures in the Arctic are at record highs, the Arctic Ocean is getting warmer and less salty as sea ice melts, and reindeer herds appear to be declining, researchers reported Thursday.

"Obviously, the planet is interconnected, so what happens in the Arctic does matter" to the rest of the world, Jackie Richter-Menge of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H., said in releasing the third annual Arctic Report Card for the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"There continues to be widespread and, in some cases, dramatic evidence of an overall warming of the Arctic system," the experts stated in their report.

Compiled by 46 scientists from 10 countries, the report looks at six areas in the Arctic: atmosphere, sea ice, Greenland, ocean, biology and land. It found a "warming" trend in the first three signals and "mixed" signals in the latter three.

The region has long been expected to be among the first areas to show impacts from global warming, which the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is largely a result of human activities adding carbon dioxide and other gases to the atmosphere.

"Changes in the Arctic show a domino effect from multiple causes more clearly than in other regions," said James Overland, an oceanographer at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. "It's a sensitive system and often reflects changes in relatively fast and dramatic ways."

Air temps 9 degrees above normal
For example, autumn air temperatures in the Arctic are at a record 9 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.

The report noted that 2007 was the warmest year on record the Arctic, leading to a record loss of sea ice. This year's sea ice melt was second only to 2007.


NBC News video
View from Greenland
Nov. 5: TODAY show anchor Matt Lauer reports from Greenland, which many scientists agree is a key indicator of global warming.

Today show
Rising temperatures help melt the ice, which in turn allows more solar heating of the ocean. That warming of the air and ocean affects land and marine life, and reduces the amount of winter sea ice that lasts into the following summer.

The study also noted a warming trend on Arctic land and increase in greenness as shrubs move north into areas that were formerly permafrost.

While the warming continues, the rate in this century is less than in the 1990s due to natural variability, the researchers said.

In addition to global warming there are natural cycles of warming and cooling, and a warm cycle in the 1990s added to the temperature rise. Now with a cooler cycles in some areas the rise in temperatures has slowed, but Overland said he expects that it will speed up again when the next natural warming cycle comes around.

Sun's impact downplayed
Asked if an increase in radiation from the sun was having an effect on the Earth's climate, Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Center in Columbus, Ohio, said while it's important, increased solar output only accounts for about 10 percent of global warming.

"You can't use solar to say that greenhouse gases are not a major factor," Overland added.

Other findings from the report include:

* The Arctic Ocean continued to warm and freshen due to ice melt. This was accompanied by an "unprecedented" rate of sea level rise of nearly 0.1 inch per year.
* Warming has continued around Greenland in 2007 resulting in a record amount of ice melt. The Greenland ice sheet lost 24 cubic miles of ice, making it the largest single contributor to global sea level rise.
* Reindeer herds that had been increasing since the 1970s are now showing signs of leveling off or beginning to decline.
* Goose populations are increasing as they expand their range within the Arctic.
* Data on marine mammals is limited but they seem to have mixed trends. They are adapted to life in a region that is at least seasonally ice-covered. There is concern about the small numbers of polar bears in some regions, the status of many walrus groups is unknown, some whales are increasing and others declining.

"This is a very complicated system, and we are still working diligently to sort out its mysteries," said Richter-Menge.

In addition to Richter-Menge, Overland and Box, lead authors of the report included Michael Simpkin of NOAA, Silver Spring, Md., and Vladimir Romanovsky of the University of Alaska's Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks.

The full report is online at www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27221180/

---

[wintler2]

Time to earn my Big Oil paycheck..

Can you still get paid when offtopic? Sounds like a government contract..


But thanks Monster for bringing Lorne Gunter before us, its good to know the current head of Canada's pre-fascist Civitas Society, which surprise surprise is known to parrot Frank Luntz's pro-polluter lies. Don't you ever do any homework?

Its annual meeting held in Ottawa in early May 2006, was intended to be "private". But journalist Elizabeth Thompson of the Montreal Gazette, covered the meeting from the lobby of the hotel, and reported that one of the guest speakers was American pollster and former Newt Gingrich associate, Frank Luntz, whose speech "Massaging the Coservative Message for Voters" offered Civitas members tips on how to obtain a majority for Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party in the next federal elections in Canada. [4].
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?ti ... as_Society

[Cosmic Cowbell]

Climate change at the poles IS man-made

Scientists refute sceptics by proving that human activity has left its mark on the Arctic and Antarctic

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Friday, 31 October 2008


The Antarctic's Wilkins ice shelf breaking up. Research proves it is due to human activity

AP

Changes to the climate due to human activity can now be detected on every continent, following a study showing that temperature rises in the Antarctic as well as the Arctic are the result of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.

It is the first time scientists have been able to prove the link between the temperature changes in both polar regions are down to human activity and it also undermines climate sceptics who believe the warming trend seen in the Arctic in recent decades is part of the climate's natural variability.

The findings contradict the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said that Antarctica was the only continent where the human impact on the climate had not been observed.

The new study shows that Antarctica has been caught up in the changes to the global climate over the past 60 years and that this warming cannot be attributed to natural variations.

Using four computer models and data from dozens of weather stations sited around both the North and South Poles, the study conclusively shows that humans are responsible for the significant increases in temperatures observed in the Arctic and the Antarctic over the past half century.

"We're able for the first time to directly attribute warming in both the Arctic and the Antarctic to human influences on the climate," said Nathan Gillett of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, who led the study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The analysis has also shown there is a significant change to the Antarctic climate caused by human activity.

Peter Stott of the Met Office Hadley Centre, who took part in the modelling analysis, said: "In both polar regions the observed warming can only be reproduced in our models by including human influences – natural forcings [increases] alone are not enough.

"For a long time, climate scientists have known that Arctic areas would be expected to warm most strongly because of feedback mechanisms, but the results from this work demonstrate the part man has already played in the significant warming that we've observed in both polar regions.

"There was a clear detection in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions of a human influence on the climate. We had shown we had detected the human fingerprint in both regions."

In the Arctic, the most visible effect of warmer temperatures has been the disappearance of the sea ice which floats on the Arctic Ocean. In 2007, the sea ice reached an all-time summer minimum, which was nearly reached again this year.

In the Antarctic, global warming has had the greatest impact on coastal areas and the Antarctic Peninsula, which has seen the greatest increases in average temperatures in the region, leading to the disintegration of ice shelves and the speeding up of the flow of glaciers to the sea.

The picture in the Antarctic has also been obscured by the effect of ozone depletion, which has tended to lower temperatures and so counteract the effect of global warming within the region. However, with the recovery of the ozone layer, scientists are expecting to see even greater increases in Antarctic temperatures in future.

Andrew Monaghan of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said the study clarifies human impact on two regions that are notoriously variable in terms of climate. "The polar regions exhibit the largest climatic variability on Earth, so detecting and attributing climate changes has been more difficult than elsewhere," Dr Monaghan explained. "The study is important because it formally demonstrates the human contribution for the first time."

link

[Ben D]

Arctic sea ice now 28.7% higher than this date last year - still rallying
15/10/2008

10/14/2008 7,064,219 square kilometers

10/14/2007 5,487,656 square kilometers

A difference of: 1,576,563 square kilometers, now in fairness, 2008 was a leap year, so to avoid that criticism, the value of 6,857,188 square kilometers can be used which is the 10/13/08 value, for a difference of 1,369,532 sq km. Still not too shabby at 24.9 %. The one day gain between 10/13/08 and 10/14/08 of 3.8% is also quite impressive.

You can download the source data in an Excel file at the IARC-JAXA website, which plots satellite derived sea-ice extent:


Watch the red line as it progresses. So far we are back to above 2005 levels, and 28.7% (or 24.9% depending on how you want to look at it) ahead of last year at this time. That’s quite a jump, basically a 3x gain, since the minimum of 9% over 2007 set on September 16th. Read about that here.

Go nature!

There is no mention of this on the National Snow and Ice Data Center sea ice news webpage, which has been trumpeting every loss and low for the past two years…not a peep. You’d think this would be big news. Perhaps the embarrassment of not having an ice free north pole in 2008, which was sparked by press comments made by Dr. Mark Serreze there and speculation on their own website, has made them unresponsive in this case.

What I like about the IARC-JAXA website is that they simply report the data, they don’t try to interpret it, editorialize it, or make press releases on it. They just present the data.

Link