Global Warming

[safety frog]

The Mini Ice Age Starts Here
By David Rose
Last updated at 11:17 AM on 10th January 2010
•
The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists. Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in
summer by 2013.
According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.

The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z0cP89n79e

[SBinRockrimmon]

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z0cP89n79e

Great read!!

This is from the comments section and I think it's spot on.

Global warming? Climate change?
The biggest piece of scaremongering since the Millenium Bug.
Remember how that never happened?

[safety frog]

Bering Strait Study Reveals Climate Complexity in Ice Age
Jan 11, 2010

http://eponline.com/articles/2010/01/11 ... e-age.aspx

As ice sheets expanded, water levels dropped in the narrow Bering Strait (left) and cut off the flow of relatively fresh water from the northern Pacific through the Arctic into the saltier Atlantic. Photo courtesy of Nature, modified by UCAR (click to enlarge).
A National Center for Atmospheric Research-led study shows that water levels in the Bering Strait helped drive global climate patterns during ice age episodes dating back more than 100,000 years.

The international study found that the repeated opening and closing of the narrow strait due to fluctuating sea levels affected currents that transported heat and salinity in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. As a result, summer temperatures in parts of North America and Greenland oscillated between warmer and colder phases, causing ice sheets to alternate between expansion and retreat and affecting sea levels worldwide.



While the findings do not directly bear on current global warming, they highlight the complexity of Earth's climate system and the fact that seemingly insignificant changes can lead to dramatic tipping points for climate patterns, especially in and around the Arctic.

"The global climate is sensitive to impacts that may seem minor," says NCAR scientist Aixue Hu, the lead author. "Even small processes, if they are in the right location, can amplify changes in climate around the world."

The study, "Influence of Bering Strait Flow and North Atlantic Circulation on Glacial Sea-level Changes," is being published this week in Nature Geoscience.

Funded by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, NCAR's sponsor, it used the latest generation of supercomputers to study past climate at a level of detail that would have been impossible just a few years ago.

Hu and his colleagues set out to solve a key mystery of the last glacial period: Why, starting about 116,000 years ago, did northern ice sheets repeatedly advance and retreat for about the next 70,000 years? The enormous ice sheets held so much water that sea levels rose and dropped by as much as about 100 feet (30 meters) during these intervals.

The study team considered that changes in the Bering Strait, the main gateway in the Northern Hemisphere between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, might have affected ocean currents across much of the globe. Although small ─ the strait is currently about 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide between Russia and the westernmost islands of Alaska ─ it allows water to circulate from the relatively fresh north Pacific to the saltier north Atlantic via the Arctic Ocean. This flow is instrumental to regulating the strength of a current known as the meridional overturning circulation, a key driver of heat from the tropics to the poles.

Using the NCAR-based Community Climate System Model, a powerful computer tool for studying worldwide climate, the researchers compared the responses of ice age climate to conditions in the Bering Strait. They ran the model on new supercomputers at NCAR and the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, enabling them to focus on smaller-scale geographic features that, until recently, could not be captured in long-term simulations of global climate.

The simulations accounted for the changes in sea level, revealing a recurring pattern-each time playing out over several thousand years, in which the reopening and closing of the strait had a far-reaching impact on ocean currents and ice sheets:

As the climate cooled because of changes in Earth's orbit, northern ice sheets expanded. This caused sea levels to drop worldwide, forming a land bridge from Asia to North America and nearly closing the Bering Strait.
With the flow of relatively fresh water from the Pacific to the Atlantic choked off, the Atlantic grew more saline. The saltier and heavier water led to an intensification of the Atlantic's meridional overturning circulation, a current of rising and sinking water that, like a conveyor belt, pumps warmer water northward from the tropics.
This circulation warmed Greenland and parts of North America by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius), enough to reverse the advance of ice sheets in those regions and reduce their height by almost 400 feet (112 meters) every thousand years. Although the Pacific cooled by an equivalent amount, it did not have vast ice sheets that could be affected by the change in climate.
Over thousands of years, the Greenland and North American ice sheets melted enough to raise sea levels and reopen the Bering Strait.
The new inflow of fresher water from the Pacific weakened the meridional overturning circulation, allowing North America and Greenland to cool over time. The ice sheets resumed their advance, sea levels dropped, the Bering Strait again mostly closed, and the entire cycle was repeated.
The combination of the ocean circulation and the size of the ice sheets, which exerted a cooling effect by reflecting sunlight back into space, affected climate throughout the world. The computer simulations showed that North America and Eurasia warmed significantly during the times when the Bering Strait was open, with the tropical and subtropical Indian and Pacific Oceans, as well as Antarctica, warming slightly.

The pattern was finally broken about 34,000 years ago, the point in Earth's 95,000-year orbital cycle at which the planet was so far from the Sun at certain times of year that the ice sheets continued to grow even when the Bering Strait closed. When the orbital cycle brought Earth closer to the Sun in the northern winter, the ice sheets retreated sufficiently about 10,000 years ago to reopen the strait. This helped lead to a relatively stable climate, nurturing the rise of civilization.

"This kind of study is critical for teasing out the nuances of our climate system," says NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, a co-author of the paper. "If we can improve our understanding of the forces that affected climate in the past, we can better anticipate how our climate may change in the future."

[Rob C]

OMG! 45 degrees today! Proof of global warming !

[SBinRockrimmon]

OMG! 45 degrees today! Proof of global warming !

It's about friggin time. I was getting ready to find some old aerosol cans to spray.

In all seriousness, 30 years ago the "experts" were certain that we were heading for an ice age. As a matter of fact there is a history of incorrect predictions. Now the "experts" are claiming global warming. How can anyone be so certain they are correct this time?

I can't even find a weather forecast that is correct past a day or two (even then it is sometimes wrong) and I'm suppose to believe the weather 30 years from now can be predicted.

[safety frog]

BY CURTIS MORGAN
CMORGAN@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Everywhere he steered his skiff last week, Pete Frezza saw dead fish. From Ponce de Leon Bay on the Southwest Coast down across Florida Bay to Lower Matecumbe in the Florida Keys -- day after day, dead fish. Floating in the marina at Flamingo in Everglades National Park alone he counted more than 400 snook and 400 tarpon.
``I was so shook up, I couldn't sleep,'' said Frezza, an ecologist for Audubon of Florida and an expert flats fisherman. ``Millions and millions of pilchards, threadfin herring, mullet. Ladyfish took it really bad. Whitewater Bay is just a graveyard.''
Fish in every part of the state were hammered by this month's record-setting cold snap. The toll in South Florida, a haven for warm-water species, was particularly extensive, too large to even venture a guess at numbers. And despite the subsequent warm-up, scientists warn that the big bad chill of 2010 will continue to claim victims for weeks..........

Full story
http://www.miamiherald.com/573/story/1432724.html

[safety frog]

THE VINE Bradford Plumer
What's The Deal With The Himalayan Glaciers?

How fast are glaciers in the Himalyas disappearing? This is suddenly a hugely contentious issue. For years, there's been this estimate floating around that glaciers in the region could vanish as early as 2035 if current warming trends continue. Suffice to say, that would be a catastrophe, since the glaciers currently provide water for hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians. Anyway, that 2035 figure snuck into the IPCC's 2007 report. And it's been repeated by a number of journalists—including me.
But it turns out there's no solid basis for saying Himalyas's glaciers will vanish by 2035. They may be melting quickly, but many of those glaciers are hundreds of feet thick and could take centuries to vanish. So where did 2035 come from? As New Scientist's Fred Pearce reports, this number has an iffy origin—namely, Fred Pearce. Back in 1999, he was reporting a story and asked an Indian glaciologist, Syed Hasnain, about the glaciers. Hasnain suggested by e-mail they could disappear by 2035. Later, the World Wildlife Foundation wrote a report about India's glaciers that cited Pearce's article. And then the IPCC ended up citing the WWF report. But the 2035 figure was never published in a peer-reviewed journal. It was just a guess. Even Hasnain agrees the figure should've never been cited.....

For more see http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-vine/whats-the-deal-the-himalayan-glaciers
,

[Rob C]

Looks like January turned out to be a pretty warm month around the globe after all...

Despite cool temperatures, ice extent remains low

Despite cool temperatures over most of the Arctic Ocean in January, Arctic sea ice extent continued to track below normal. By the end of January, ice extent dropped below the extent observed in January 2007. Ice extent was unusually low in the Atlantic sector of the Arctic, the one major area of the Arctic where temperatures remained warmer than normal.

Overview of conditions

Arctic sea ice extent averaged for January 2010 was 13.78 million square kilometers (5.32 million square miles). This was 1.08 million square kilometers (417,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average for January, but 180,000 square kilometers (69,000 square miles) above the record low for the month, which occurred in January 2006.

Ice extent remained below normal over much of the Atlantic sector of the Arctic, including the Barents Sea, part of the East Greenland Sea, and in Davis Strait. The only region with above-average ice extent was on the Pacific side of the Bering Sea.

[safety frog]

from accuweather.com

Snowstorm Cancels Hundreds of Flights, Schools & Threatens Power Outages in the South

A big storm is spreading a heavy, wet snow across the Deep South through tonight. The Carolinas are next up to get hit by the storm, where snow will pile up into early Saturday. There will be enough snow and a wintry mix across the Deep South to make a mess of travel both on the ground, including along the I-10 and I-20 corridors, and in the air. The nature of the heavy, wet snow will bring down trees and cut power in many communities in the South. However, the snow will give kids, who have a snow day, a rare opportunity to go sledding or build a snowman. Full Story

http://www.accuweather.com/news-top-hea ... 2-11_20:00

Must be human caused..global warming.

[safety frog]

OU Student Collecting Pictures of Snow in All 50 States
Posted: Feb 11, 2010 5:55 PM EST
Updated: Feb 12, 2010 9:17 AM EST

Patrick Marsh is a meteorology student at OU who is trying to collect pictures of snow on the ground from all 50 states.
Enlarge this picture


Forecasters said currently there is snow on the ground in some part of every state except Florida, which is expected to get a couple of inches in the panhandle on Friday.By Rusty Surette, NEWS 9

NORMAN, Oklahoma -- A University of Oklahoma student is taking an extra interest in this week's snow storms in the south and northeast and is working to document the events in a very unique way.

Patrick Marsh said it's likely by the end of the week snow will be on the ground in all 50 states.

From Ardmore all the way to Dallas and even in Louisiana, the south is snowed in. For many, it's a winter wonderland in places that rarely see such weather. But none of it comes close to the mess up north where two blizzards have blown through in a week.

Weather like this is why Marsh is studying to be a meteorologist. Even as the snow fell outside the National Weather Center in Norman, inside Marsh was tracking what could be a rare winter weather phenomenon.

Marsh, a student employee at the NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, is currently trying to collect photos of snow on the ground in all 50 states.

"On Friday afternoon, I'm going to begin asking for photos of the snow," Marsh said. "Hopefully I'll get photos from all 50 states, and if I do, I'll put them into a Google Earth map and make a snow snapshot of America."

Marsh said Florida is the only state without snow on the ground at this point, but he said two to four inches of snow is forecasted on Friday in some parts of the state. There is currently even snow on some of the mountain tops in Hawaii.
If you or someone you know in the United States has snow on the ground where they are, tell them to take a pictures and send it to snow@forwarn.org.

[safety frog]

• By Jonathan Petre
• Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
• There has been no global warming since

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.
The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.
Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.
The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0fcAqJtB0

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0fcBLa9kC

[safety frog]

Following a cold snap in the Northeast, Lake Erie's surface is virtually frozen over for the first time in about 14 years.


The ice ranges in thickness between paper thin along the northern shore and several inches along the southern shore, where many people are ice skating.


GoErie.com reports that the lake hasn't completely frozen since the winter of 1995-1996.


Although the ice cover is considered complete, prevailing winds have created some cracks in the ice.


There are also reportedly ice chunks floating off the coast of Dunkirk, N.Y., which is one of the deepest parts of the lake and would naturally be one of the last places to freeze.


Lake Erie, with an average depth of 62 feet, is the most shallow of the five Great Lakes, which is why it is the only one that completely freezes over.


Since lake-effect snow depends on warmer lake temperatures compared to the air, the frozen lake will deter large amounts of snowfall to the lee of the lake.


The current cold snap will keep the lake mostly, if not completely, frozen for at least the rest of the month.


Story by AccuWeather.com's Gina Cherundolo (right wing?)

http://www.accuweather.com/news-story.a ... &article=2

[Rob C]

This record warmth will seem strange to those who have experienced an unusually cold winter. While I have not checked into this, my first guess is that the atmospheric general circulation this winter has become unusually land-locked, allowing cold air masses to intensify over the major Northern Hemispheric land masses more than usual. Note this ALSO means that not as much cold air is flowing over and cooling the ocean surface compared to normal. Nevertheless, we will double check our calculations to make sure we have not make some sort of Y2.01K error (insert smiley). I will also check the AMSR-E sea surface temperatures, which have also been running unusually warm.

[Rob C]

The following graph shows that January, 2010, was indeed warm in the sea surface temperature data:

[Rob C]

The global-average lower tropospheric temperature remained high, at +0.61 deg. C for February, 2010. This is about the same as January, which in our new Version 5.3 of the UAH dataset was +0.63 deg. C. February was second warmest in the 32-year record, behind Feb 1998 which was itself the second warmest of all months. The El Nino is still the dominant temperature signal; many people living in Northern Hemisphere temperate zones were still experiencing colder than average weather.