The arctic seems to be getting warmer

[DesertFox]

“CLIMATE change in the Arctic is a reality now!” So insists Robert Corell, an oceanographer with the American Meteorological Society. Wild-eyed proclamations are all too common when it comes to global warming, but in this case his assertion seems well founded.

Dr Corell heads a team of some 300 scientists who have spent the past four years investigating the matter in a process known as the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA). The group, drawn from the eight countries with territories inside the Arctic Circle, has just issued a report called “Impacts of a Warming Arctic”, a lengthy summary of the principal scientific findings. A second report, which will sketch out recommended policies, is due out in a few weeks. A third, far heftier tome detailing all the scientific findings will not come out for some months yet.

Already, though, the ACIA has made a splash. One reason is the inevitable wrangling over policy recommendations. News reports have suggested that the Bush administration has tried to suppress signs of support in the second, as yet unreleased, report, for the UN's Kyoto protocol or other mandatory policies for the control of greenhouse-gas emissions. But even setting politics aside, this week's scientific report has still created a stir with its bold assessment of polar warming.

At first sight, its conclusions are not so surprising. ... And yet the language of this week's report is still eye-catching: “the Arctic is now experiencing some of the most rapid and severe climate change on Earth.” The last authoritative assessment of the topic was done by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001. That report made headlines by predicting a rise in sea level of between 10cm (four inches) and 90cm, and a temperature rise of between 1.4°C and 5.8°C over this century. However, its authors did not feel confident in predicting either rapid polar warming or the speedy demise of the Greenland ice sheet. Pointing to evidence gathered since the IPCC report, this week's report suggests trouble lies ahead.

The ACIA reckons that in recent decades average temperatures have increased almost twice as fast in the Arctic as they have in the rest of the world. Sceptics argue that there are places, such as the high latitudes of the Greenland ice sheet and some buoys at sea, where temperatures seem to have fallen. On the other hand, there are also places, such as parts of Alaska, where they have risen far faster than average. Robin Bell, a geophysicist at Columbia University who was not involved in the report's compilation, believes that such conflicting local trends point to the value of the international, interdisciplinary approach of this week's report. As he observes, “climate change, like the weather, can be patchy and you can get fooled unless you look at the whole picture.”

And there is other evidence of warming to bolster the ACIA's case. For example, the report documents the widespread melting of glaciers and of sea ice, a trend already making life miserable for the polar bears and seals that depend on that ice. It also notes a shortening of the snow season. The most worrying finding, however, is evidence—still preliminary—that the Greenland ice sheet may be melting faster than previously thought.

... Arctic warming may influence the global climate in several ways. One is that huge amounts of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas, are stored in the permafrost of the tundra. Although a thaw would allow forests to invade the tundra, which would tend to ameliorate any global warming that is going on (since trees capture carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most talked about in the context of climate change), a melting of the permafrost might also lead to a lot of trapped methane being released into the atmosphere, more than offsetting the cooling effects of the new forests.

Entire article (http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3375415)

[freedom-man]

who cares? the earth was warmer during the time of the Vikings

[Goku]

Good news. Maybe we can raise citrus in the midwest now!

[Faithful_Servant]

I'm trying to find the downside to all this Global Warming stuff.
If the ice caps melt and raise the sea level, we lose LA, San Francisco and Seattle.
If it gets warmer, then the growing season is longer allowing us to grow more food and thus reducing hunger.
If it gets warmer, then more land that was previously unihabitable now becomes inhabitable, thus reducing over-crowding.
If the greenhouse gasses become thick enough they will filter out more of the harmful UV radiation that causes skin cancer.

I think that we should be doing all we can to speed up the process.

[Goku]

Keith J always swore that flooding thing would never happen even if all the ice melted. I can't recall what he said. But if you have a glass full of ice and water, and the ice melts, the glass won't overflow because the ice is already displacing its volume.

[PaulRevere]

First report of global warming and the first attempt to combat it:

Tor:
Og, sky warmer
glaciers melt
no need animal skin blankets
no more woolly mammoth
big camp fires blame
must put fire out!

Og:
Tor, no more frozen feet
no need stinky bear skin cape
no need live in stinky cave
woolly mammoth scary, kill hard
more deer now, kill easy
so what problem?

Tor:
Well, uh, liberal speak, I listen...
I forget, now
Oh, he say, no need kill animals
eat nuts and berries

Og:
You go club liberal for me

Tor:
Okay

[Timberwolf]

Keith J always swore that flooding thing would never happen even if all the ice melted. I can't recall what he said. But if you have a glass full of ice and water, and the ice melts, the glass won't overflow because the ice is already displacing its volume.Exactly...the ocean levels already account for the ice in the Arctic...if the Arctic ice cap were to melt, the ocean levels would fall. The concern of this happening is that the colder water would affect oceanic currents and thus alter our climate (ala el niño/la niña, altering the paths of the different currents, etc...this could drastically change weather patterns worldwide). But, to think that the Earth would warm to the point that any significant melt would occur is a stretch, at best.

[Ptarmigan]

I live in the Arctic. It is really cold as usual. I think it is getting colder for me. Sometimes I ask myself why I live there, even though I am a ptarmigan. :D :cool:

[DoctorDoom]

But if you have a glass full of ice and water, and the ice melts, the glass won't overflow because the ice is already displacing its volume.With arctic ice, this is true, since the great majority of it is floating. OTOH, the antarctic ice is for the most part on land, and it might raise the sea level a bit.

Estimates of the ice down under is from six to seven million miles³. If we use the high figure, and factor in that the density of ice is about .92 of water, the ice would melt to 6,440,000 miles³. The oceans as a whole are about 328,000,000 miles³. Ergo, if it all melted, it would increase the volume of the oceans by about 2%. I'll leave it to others to calculate how much the sea level would rise because of it. I'm not that ambitious.

The idea of sight-seeing NYC, LA, San Fagcisco et al with a glass-bottomed boat has a certain deliciously perverse appeal. :D

[Keith J]

But in order for Antartic ice to melt, the temperatures must rise a minimum of 60 degrees. Not going to happen.


Glaciers move from weight, not melting. Less snow means slower moving glaciers that appear to be melting but are just starved.

[Wyatt_Junker]

Both of you forgot to factor in the lukewarm penguin piss.

[Faithful_Servant]

Both of you forgot to factor in the lukewarm penguin piss.OMG!! It's the penguins that are causing all of this? Do the seals have as much impact? They're bigger and should be peeing more, so I think that they're a big part of the problem. It's time to stop this madness at its source. Let's all meet at Puerto Williams, Argentina and organize a seal and penguin clubbing expedition and save the world. I'll bring the bats. :D

[DesertFox]

All I know is, I been in Montana long enough to develop a thorough dislike of cold.

Bring on the global <strike>warming</strike> hotting.

[uncommon1]

Personally, I would hate it if LA and San Francisco were inundated with water, as it means that we'd have to start defending our northern, western, and eastern borders against socialists. It's bad enough that we don't defend them against the illiterate, disease bearing, drug toting, poverty carrying criminal wetback aliens.

[DesertFox]

Agreed, uncommon. The illiterate, disease bearing, drug toting, poverty carrying criminal wetback aliens, rotten and undesirable though they be, are preferable to liberals.

[nene]

All I know is, I been in Montana long enough to develop a thorough dislike of cold.

Bring on the global <STRIKE>warming</STRIKE> hotting.
Is El Zorro del Desierto an American of Puerto Rican descent? If so, no se como puedes aguantar ese frio, hermano.

[DesertFox]

No soy puertorriqueño, 'mano, pero tampoco aguanto bien el frío. Salimos de aquí en dos semanas y jamás vamos a regresar.

[nene]

Que Dios te bendiga. :cool:

[Keith J]

borders, LANGUAGE and culture!

Speak English, please

[nene]

Mind your business.

[Timberwolf]

All I know is, I been in Montana long enough to develop a thorough dislike of cold.

Bring on the global <STRIKE>warming</STRIKE> hotting.Ditto that for us next door to ya in North Dakota!!!

[sunsettommy]

http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm#Canadian%20Arctic

This is a large section.

The title is WHAT THE STATIONS SAY.

Go ahead and look up the many weather reporting stations in many parts of the world.Yes even a number in the artic regions.

[The_Sonarman]

Excellent website sunsettommy.

I went through dozens of those records.... some dating as far back as 1920 and earlier. I repeatedly see nothing but "normal" in all those reports. There is no "up" trend and there is no "down" trend, and that's over 80 years of modern data. This is data collected during the time the Evil USA supposedly brought Global Warming down on the Innocent World's head.

That's what I like about recorded scientific data. Figures don't lie, but liars can figure. "IF" Global Warming had been happening, it certainly would have been reflected in an "up" trend of temperature in these charts. It is not. Annual and Seasonal Mean Temperature has remained basically constant over the past many decades.

Of course, this is anathema to the Global Warming Devout.

Sorry, North Dakota, Montana, and other parts close to the Canadian border. It ain't going to warm up (visavie Global Warming).

[sunsettommy]

http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/sst/latest_sst.gif


This link shows the plotted worlds oceans water temperatures.Click on lower right corner to expand the map.Take a good look at the water temps at the polar regions.

[sunsettommy]

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/64N-90N1880-2003.gif

Try this map and see that the Artic has been warming since at least 1880!,the steepest part was between 1918-1938.All the while CO2 levels do NOT reflect the increase well at all.

[sunsettommy]

Don't panic, this is not a new thing. The world has experienced global warming since the ice age. This is good, no? :question:
It IS good!

The Medieval warming(850-1250) was stronger than this one and still clearly overall warmer than this recent warming(1880-2005) period.CO2 back then could not have been a factor around 1000 ad.

We are in a warming REBOUND from the last Ice age,as part of the erratic oscillation of worldwide temperature changes,over eons of time.

So I am glad of it,the warming.

:cool:

[DesertFox]

I always did wanna go swimming off the coast of the Ross Ice Shelf. Need about 70 degree temps for that, please.

[sunsettommy]

Arctic Warming Update

JunkScience.com
January 15, 2005
Supplemented January 26, 2005

Excerpt:


Once again claims are flying thick and fast regarding dramatic, in fact, unprecedented Arctic warming.

Once again, we look at the available data, now updated to the end of 2004. Once again, we find the claims to be dead flat wrong. Click on the following thumbnails to view the full size images in a new browser window.

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Arctic.htm

This should lay to rest the lie that it is a pronounced warming.This link has many easy to read charts in it.Worth reading.

[Peachdiane]

LOL!!! I love the idea of seeing those cities through a glass bottomed boat! :D

[ILikeIke]

"Meteorologist Likens Fear of Global Warming to 'Religious Belief'"
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=%5CCulture%5Carchive%5C200412 %5CCUL20041202a.html

http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen.htm
http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/michaels.shtml

http://www.co2science.org/

I think that the "Global Warming Will Damage Us" rhetoric is bunk.

[Naturalized-Texan]

The South Polar Ice Cap has been THICKENING in the past 30 years after 6,000 years of thinning. It appears that we are heading into another Ice Age. Ice ages occur in 20,000-year cycles and we are nearing 20,000 years since the last Ice Age.

[sunsettommy]

EXCERPTS:

GREENLAND
Greenland glacier advancing 7.2 miles per year! The BBC recently ran a documentary, The Big Chill, saying that we could be on the verge of an ice age. Britain could be heading towards an Alaskan-type climate within a decade, say scientists, because the Gulf Stream is being gradually cut off. The Gulf Stream keeps temperatures unusually high for such a northerly latitude. <?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O /><O:P></O:P>

One of Greenland’s largest glaciers has already doubled its rate of advance, moving forward at the rate of 12 kilometers (7.2 miles) per year. To see a transcript of the documentary, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/bigchilltrans.shtml


http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Glaciers.htm


So is the Antarctic Ice Sheet. According to a report in Science (Jan 2002), new measurements show that the ice in parts of Antarctica is thickening. One week earlier, an article in Nature reported that Antarctica's harsh desert valleys - long considered a bellwether for global climate change - have grown noticeably cooler since the mid-1980s.

(Click here to see construction crane buried in the Antarctic Ice Sheet (http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet.htm)).


To put this in perspective, you must realize that the Antarctic Ice Sheet and Greenland Ice Sheets are almost twice as big as the contiguous United States. They're almost 100 times bigger than all of the rest of the world's glaciers put together. In other words, more than 99 percent of the world's glaciers are growing ... and all we hear about are the few that are melting.


And that's why sea levels are falling. That's where the water comes from to build glaciers; from the seas.

_________________________________________________--

This is a list of EXPANDING Glaciers.

"In other words, more than 99 percent of the world's glaciers are growing ... and all we hear about are the few that are melting."

[The_Sonarman]

Excellent. Now the Eco-Wackos can worry about two things.

Global Warming
Global Cooling

They can tout Global Warming on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and Global Cooling on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Sundays they can spend counting the money they weasel out of the gullible.

[DesertFox]

Tommy, that site is fantastic. Thanks.