Arctic Defrost Dumping Snow on U.S. and Europe

[WIP]

Whenever there's a major snowstorm somewhere in the vicinity of a FoxNews crew, you can count on some dumbass like Sean Hannity or Steve Ducey telling us that big snowstorm = no global warming. Well, the fact that we may have had some cold weather lately, has to be weighed against the fact that storms in the Arctic are pushing their cold air down on us, and having the end result that the Arctic is becoming warmer than is normal during wintertime: Arctic Defrost Dumping Snow on U.S. and Europe

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 28, 2011 (IPS) - The world's northern freezer is on rapid defrost as large volumes of warm water are pouring into the Arctic Ocean, speeding the melt of sea ice, according to a new study.

Surface temperatures in parts of the Arctic have been 21 degrees C above normal for more than a month in recent weeks.

"Boats were still in the water during the first week of January," said David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, referring to southern Baffin Island, some 2,000 km north of Montreal. This is a region that receives just four or five hours of weak sunlight during the long winter. Temperatures normally range from -25 to -35 degrees C but were above zero on some days in January.

"It's impossible for many people in parts of the eastern Arctic to safely get on the ice to hunt much-needed food for their families - for the second winter in a row," Phillips said in a report.

The warming and melting of the Arctic is happening much faster than expected and new data reveals that huge volumes of warmer water from the North Atlantic are now flowing into and warming up the Arctic Ocean, researchers reported Friday in the journal Science.

"In the past hundred years the waters in the Fram Strait have warmed about two degrees C," says co-author Thomas Marchitto, of Colorado University's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

The Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard (Spitsbergen) is the major connection between the Arctic Ocean and the world ocean. An international team of researchers analysed marine sediments and found that temperatures of the northward inflowing Atlantic water varied by just a few tenths of a degree Celsius during the past 2,000 years. However, in the last hundred years temperatures have shot up by two degrees C.

"What's happening here is very unusual compared to the last 2,000 years," Marchitto told IPS.

The Arctic Ice Cap is half the size today as it was back in the 1950's when nuclear subs and U.N. sponsored scientific research started there. Warmer than normal Arctic winters are likely to have a more devastating effect on sea ice loss than the warmer summers.

[TimG]

Well, the fact that we may have had some cold weather lately, has to be weighed against the fact that storms in the Arctic are pushing their cold air down on us, and having the end result that the Arctic is becoming warmer than is normal during wintertime:

There was a pocket of warm weather around Newfoundland in Dec. That has since moved to Alaska. The most credible explanation is this it is 'just weather' exaggerated by natural ocean cycles.

http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/patterns/arctic_oscillation.html

In the positive phase, higher pressure at midlatitudes drives ocean storms farther north, and changes in the circulation pattern bring wetter weather to Alaska, Scotland and Scandinavia, as well as drier conditions to the western United States and the Mediterranean. In the positive phase, frigid winter air does not extend as far into the middle of North America as it would during the negative phase of the oscillation. This keeps much of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains warmer than normal, but leaves Greenland and Newfoundland colder than usual. Weather patterns in the negative phase are in general "opposite" to those of the positive phase, as illustrated below.

The arctic oscillation has been in extreme negative terroritory.

But keep it up WIP. We can always count on you to take every possible event and blame it on CO2. It provides comedic relief.

Edited January 30, 2011 by TimG

[jbg]

Only trouble is that the spate of mild winters during the 1980's and 1990's, those being1983-4, 1984-5, 1985-6, 1987-8, 1988-9, 1989-90, 1990-1, 1991-2, 1994-5 (the interventing winters' cold attributed to Pinatubo's eruption), 1996-7, 1997-8, 1998-9, 1999-2000, and 2001-2 were taken as evidence of global warming, as well as the current vodka cold winters. Which winters are evidence of global warming, the warm ones or the cold ones?

[WIP]

There was a pocket of warm weather around Newfoundland in Dec. That has since moved to Alaska. The most credible explanation is this it is 'just weather' exaggerated by natural ocean cycles.

And how much have those natural ocean cycles been affected by the decline in sea ice in the Arctic? If the Arctic, which has lost half of its ice since 1950, starts having ice-free summers in five years, what excuses will your experts have for that:

Sea ice has declined dramatically during the short Arctic summers in recent years, with some experts now projecting that the ice cover will be essentially gone in as little as five years. Just a few years ago, no one thought a summer ice-free Arctic could happen before 2060.

The warming Arctic and melting sea ice is a planetary-scale change since the Arctic Ocean covers 14 million sq km, an area almost as big as Russia. The Arctic and Antarctic polar regions are key drivers of Earth's weather and climate. The rapid defrosting of the Arctic has already altered the climate system, researchers now agree.

IPS previously broke the story revealing that the snow and cold in the eastern United States and Europe during the winter of 2009-10 was likely the result of the loss of Arctic sea ice. The same thing has happened this year.

...........

The result: the Arctic stays warm and mid-latitude regions become colder and receive more snow for much of the winter. Last December was the coldest south Florida has experienced in more than a century of record-keeping.

http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/patterns/arctic_oscillation.html

The arctic oscillation has been in extreme negative terroritory.

But keep it up WIP. We can always count on you to take every possible event and blame it on CO2. It provides comedic relief.

How current is your source? It doesn't say on that page when it was written, and it's not up to date if it says that the Arctic has been in a positive Arctic Oscillation during the past three winters -- since the last three winters have seen high pressure systems in the Arctic driving storms at us, not what they are calling a low pressure system, which would keep the cold contained up there.

Edited January 31, 2011 by WIP

[Sir Bandelot]

Only trouble is that the spate of mild winters during the 1980's and 1990's, those being1983-4, 1984-5, 1985-6, 1987-8, 1988-9, 1989-90, 1990-1, 1991-2, 1994-5 (the interventing winters' cold attributed to Pinatubo's eruption), 1996-7, 1997-8, 1998-9, 1999-2000, and 2001-2 were taken as evidence of global warming, as well as the current vodka cold winters. Which winters are evidence of global warming, the warm ones or the cold ones?

Here is an analogy you may understand... when you put some ice cubes in your rocks glass, and pour warm rye on it, the ice melts. And yet, at the same time the rye gets cold. It confounds the imagination. But fret not, after a while the ice is gone, and the rye starts to warm up again (if you can wait that long). Then everything reaches a homogeneous temperature. See? You don't need a university degree or supercomputer to figure that out

[jbg]

How current is your source? It doesn't say on that page when it was written, and it's not up to date if it says that the Arctic has been in a positive Arctic Oscillation during the past three winters -- since the last three winters have seen high pressure systems in the Arctic driving storms at us, not what they are calling a low pressure system, which would keep the cold contained up there.

The overall idea is right except as you point out the 2008-9, 2009-10 and 2010-1 winterst have seen high pressure systems in the Arctic. Those systems don't "drive the storms at us". What they do is hold the cold air in place through the storm, keeping upper air and surface temperatures low. Without this blocking mechanism, the storms tend to push the cold air out of the way, leading to an eventual changeover to rain for the storms that are powerful and have high moisture contents.

The winters of 1957-8, 1959-60, 1962-3, 1963-4, 1966-7, 1967-8, especially 1968-9, 1969-70 (also leading to open Arctic waters), 1977-8 and 1978-9 featured similar Arctic high pressure, or blocking. The winters of 1960-1, 1976-7, 1993-4 and 1995-6 were extremely cold, but for reasons other than blocking. More recent winters have been discussed in earlier posts.

Edited January 31, 2011 by jbg

[GostHacked]

Here is an analogy you may understand... when you put some ice cubes in your rocks glass, and pour warm rye on it, the ice melts. And yet, at the same time the rye gets cold. It confounds the imagination. But fret not, after a while the ice is gone, and the rye starts to warm up again (if you can wait that long). Then everything reaches a homogeneous temperature. See? You don't need a university degree or supercomputer to figure that out

That analogy does not work for me. If you equate the glass as earth the caps as the ice and the water as rye. It is the temp outside of the glass that melts the ice and eventually warms the ice and rye to bring it to the temperature of the room. In this analogy the area outside of the glass is space.

Edited January 31, 2011 by GostHacked

[TimG]

Here is an analogy you may understand... when you put some ice cubes in your rocks glass, and pour warm rye on it, the ice melts. And yet, at the same time the rye gets cold. It confounds the imagination.

A really bad analogy. The latent heat absorbed to melt ice is insignificant when compared to the energy in weather systems. If there is an effect it is because the latent heat from within the oceans is now being released into the air because the insulation that the ice was providing is gone.

[TimG]

How current is your source? It doesn't say on that page when it was written, and it's not up to date if it says that the Arctic has been in a positive Arctic Oscillation during the past three winters

The last three winters have seen an extreme negative AO:

http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/arctic-oscillation-1-trends/

The winters can be explained by that effect. AGW is not a significant factor. It is just weather.

[Shady]

Which winters are evidence of global warming, the warm ones or the cold ones?

Great point. Alarmists seem to claim that every climate situation is evidence of global warming. I guess that way they can never be wrong.

[jbg]

Great point. Alarmists seem to claim that every climate situation is evidence of global warming. I guess that way they can never be wrong.

I can't claim authorship of that point. One of my friends, an important speechwriter, came up with it.

[WIP]

Great point. Alarmists seem to claim that every climate situation is evidence of global warming. I guess that way they can never be wrong.

So, warning of ecological disaster is "alarmist" but making up crap like your favourite rightwingers: Beck and Limbaugh do every day is perfectly acceptable -- The Acceptable Insanity of Right Wing Rhetoric

[WIP]

The last three winters have seen an extreme negative AO:

http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/arctic-oscillation-1-trends/

The winters can be explained by that effect. AGW is not a significant factor. It is just weather.

We've already established that there are Arctic oscillations; but those charts do not prove that there is no connection between warming northern oceans, declining sea ice and land-based glaciers, and changing weather....which is what you are asking me to accept with your nonchalant attitude about the rising greenhouse gas levels and the disappearing Arctic environment.

The opening post link mentions the incredibly unusual weather up there in recent years:

Surface temperatures in parts of the Arctic have been 21 degrees C above normal for more than a month in recent weeks.

and that Inuit hunters cannot go out on ice flows because ice is so thin:

"It's impossible for many people in parts of the eastern Arctic to safely get on the ice to hunt much-needed food for their families - for the second winter in a row," Phillips said in a report.

And what's especially crucial is that the changes are accelerating, and happening much quicker than predicted....not failing to materialize:

The warming and melting of the Arctic is happening much faster than expected and new data reveals that huge volumes of warmer water from the North Atlantic are now flowing into and warming up the Arctic Ocean, researchers reported Friday in the journal Science.

Now, if skeptics are really sincere about trying to focus on the science, why are they trying to assume that errors in climate models mean no global warming? Here we are gathering more and more evidence from multiple sources that the IPCC and other organizations have been too conservative with their estimates; likely by failing to factor in the positive feedback effects of melting permafrost, warmer oceans and the dropping albedo of the Arctic. Why are they instead trying to feed the public confusion caused by bad snowstorms, when even this effect can be explained by the data gathered regarding declining Arctic ice:

The result: the Arctic stays warm and mid-latitude regions become colder and receive more snow for much of the winter. Last December was the coldest south Florida has experienced in more than a century of record-keeping.

It's not alarmist to yell FIRE when there is a fire! It's incompetence and criminal negligence to deny clearly present dangers.

[TimG]

We've already established that there are Arctic oscillations; but those charts do not prove that there is no connection between warming northern oceans, declining sea ice and land-based glaciers, and changing weather.

Now you are moving the goalposts. The op is about more *snow* in major centers which you would like to claim is some how connected to melting ice which is somehow connected to CO2. The negative AO explains the snow without the need for any handwaving about ice.

It's not alarmist to yell FIRE when there is a fire! It's incompetence and criminal negligence to deny clearly present dangers.

It is alarmist if the "fire" turns out to be a match dropped into a metal can. Sure the can could get tipped over and it might burn down the house but all things considered such an outcome it is not very likely. Edited January 31, 2011 by TimG

[WIP]

Now you are moving the goalposts. The op is about more *snow* in major centers which you would like to claim is some how connected to melting ice which is somehow connected to CO2. The negative AO explains the snow without the need for any handwaving about ice.

It has been pointed out for years now, that the increase in global warming means increasingly erratic weather changes, and until all of the snow and ice in the Arctic is gone, that means storms with greater intensity. Extreme cold weather does not usually include big snowfalls. Most snowstorms occur within 10 degrees of the freezing mark.

Further on the weird, warm weather in the Arctic, two proposals to explain the recent regional effects may differ on the exact process, but agree that the ultimate source is the rapid warming of the Arctic: Justin Gillis, reprinted from New York Times

Yet, while people in Atlanta learn to shovel snow, the weather 2,000 miles to the north has been freakishly warm the past two winters. Temperatures in northeastern Canada and Greenland ran as much as 15 or 20 degrees above normal in December. Bays and lakes have been slow to freeze.

Iqaluit, capital of the remote Canadian territory of Nunavut, had to cancel its New Year's snowmobile parade. Deputy Mayor David Ell said people in the region had been looking with envy at snowbound American and European cities. "People are saying, 'That's where all our snow is going!' " he said.

Since satellites began tracking it in 1979, ice on the Arctic Ocean's surface in the bellwether month of September has declined by more than 30 percent. It is the most striking change in the terrain of the planet in recent decades, and a major question is whether it is starting to affect broad weather patterns.

Ice reflects sunlight, and scientists say the loss of ice is causing the Arctic Ocean to absorb more heat in the summer. A handful of scientists note that extra heat is a possible culprit in the recent harsh winters in Europe and the United States.

Their theories involve a fast-moving river of air called the jet stream that circles the Northern Hemisphere. During many winters, a strong pressure difference between the polar region and the middle latitudes channels the jet stream into a tight circle, or vortex, around the North Pole, effectively containing frigid air at the top of the world.

"It's like a fence," said Michelle L'Heureux, a researcher in Camp Springs, Md., with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

When that pressure difference diminishes, however, the jet stream weakens and meanders southward, bringing warm air into the Arctic and cold air into the mid-latitudes — exactly what has happened the past two winters. The effect sometimes is compared with leaving a refrigerator door open, with cold air flooding the kitchen even as warm air enters the refrigerator.

This has happened intermittently for many decades. Still, the polar vortex usually doesn't weaken as much as it has lately. One index related to the vortex hit its lowest wintertime value last winter since record-keeping began in 1865, and it was quite low again in December.

James Overland, a climate scientist with NOAA in Seattle, has proposed that the extra warmth in the Arctic Ocean could be heating the atmosphere enough to make it less dense, causing air pressure over the Arctic to be closer to that of the middle latitudes. "The added heat works against having a strong polar vortex," he said.

But Overland acknowledges his idea needs further research.

Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at a company called Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Lexington, Mass., has spotted what he believes is a link between increasing snow in Siberia and the weakening of the polar vortex. His theory: The extra snow is creating a dense, cold air mass over northern Asia in late fall, setting off a complex chain of cause and effect that ultimately perturbs the vortex.

He is publishing seasonal forecasts based on his work, supported by the National Science Foundation. Those forecasts correctly predicted the recent harsh winters in the mid-latitudes. But Cohen acknowledges, as does Overland, that some of his ideas need further research.

While mainstream researchers are sure that greenhouse gases released by humans are warming Earth, they acknowledge being on shakier ground in trying to predict regional effects of that change. It is entirely possible, they say, that some regions will cool temporarily, because of disruption of the atmospheric and oceanic circulation, even as Earth warms overall.

It is alarmist if the "fire" turns out to be a match dropped into a metal can. Sure the can could get tipped over and it might burn down the house but all things considered such an outcome it is not very likely.

If the ice is less than half of what it was 50 years ago, and has declined by 30% since 1979 as noted above, it's not handwaving! It's ludicrous to say that rising water temperatures and collapsing icesheets has no effect on the weather elsewhere. What happens when the ice is gone? We hear often from deniers that there have been times in the past when there were no icecaps...millions of years ago...but the periods of prolonged Arctic warming are accompanied by a shutdown of the ocean conveyor system, which results in anoxic oceans, declining oxygen levels in the atmosphere, incinerated plant and animal life in the equatorial regions, and what's left of land-life clinging for survival near the poles....but, for some reason, I'm supposed to believe that human civilization will just keep humming along with 7 billion people in tow!

[wyly]

If the ice is less than half of what it was 50 years ago, and has declined by 30% since 1979 as noted above, it's not handwaving! It's ludicrous to say that rising water temperatures and collapsing icesheets has no effect on the weather elsewhere. What happens when the ice is gone? We hear often from deniers that there have been times in the past when there were no icecaps...millions of years ago...but the periods of prolonged Arctic warming are accompanied by a shutdown of the ocean conveyor system, which results in anoxic oceans, declining oxygen levels in the atmosphere, incinerated plant and animal life in the equatorial regions, and what's left of land-life clinging for survival near the poles....but, for some reason, I'm supposed to believe that human civilization will just keep humming along with 7 billion people in tow!

deniers have a poor grasp of the BIG picture, the entire planet is one huge interconnected ecosystem each piece is connected to all the others like a chain of dominos, knock one over and that can start a chain reaction that can't be stopped...but in denier world we can simple adapt and continue on, we humans are supermen we don't need the bees or the seas, technology will save us...

Edited February 1, 2011 by wyly

[Bonam]

deniers have a poor grasp of the BIG picture, the entire planet is one huge interconnected ecosystem each piece is connected to all the others like a chain of dominos, knock one over and that can start a chain reaction that can't be stopped...but in denier world we can simple adapt and continue on, we humans are supermen we don't need the bees or the seas, technology will save us...

On the contrary, the Earth is closer to a system with a slowly moving equilibrium. Perturbations are damped out. For example, look at simple predator-prey systems. If the predators decrease in number for whatever reason, the prey will get eaten less, their numbers will increase, which will make it easier for the predators to find food and survive; they will again increase in number as a result and prevent the prey population from growing unbounded, restoring equilibrium. This kind of relationship holds for virtually all the interrelated systems on Earth. How do I know? Simple, because we're still here. If small perturbations led to unstable "chain reactions", then events like volcanoes and meteor/comet strikes would be certain to trigger such chain reactions leading to the demise of all life. Instead, however, the Earth always returns to an equilibrium after such events, usually not far from the equilibrium in which it existed prior to the event.

So yes, the planet is interconnected, and all its systems affect one another, but perturbing these systems will only lead to stable changes which will self-correct over time, rather than leading to unstable changes which grow over time.

That is, unless the perturbation is large enough in magnitude to throw the system out of the region of stability. For example, if global average temperatures increased to the point where the oceans literally boiled away. Obviously, we would need much larger perturbations than those presented in even the direst predictions of global warming to do that.

Edited February 2, 2011 by Bonam

[jbg]

deniers have a poor grasp of the BIG picture, the entire planet is one huge interconnected ecosystem each piece is connected to all the others like a chain of dominos, knock one over and that can start a chain reaction that can't be stopped...but in denier world we can simple adapt and continue on, we humans are supermen we don't need the bees or the seas, technology will save us...

I defy you to show me temperature records of any one station which has tracked the alarmists' famous charts and graphs. I do not believe these hodgepodge/amalgams for a minute.

[waldo]

So yes, the planet is interconnected, and all its systems affect one another, but perturbing these systems will only lead to stable changes which will self-correct over time, rather than leading to unstable changes which grow over time.

That is, unless the perturbation is large enough in magnitude to throw the system out of the region of stability. For example, if global average temperatures increased to the point where the oceans literally boiled away. Obviously, we would need much larger perturbations than those presented in even the direst predictions of global warming to do that.

within degrees of qualification... "self-correcting" doesn't mean much to lost species affected by loss of habitat due to climate change. I sense wyly is speaking to the more, as you say, "perturbing" events... the so-called tipping points more globally serious than others... like... for example, the total melting of the Greenland ice-sheets. I'm not quite sure what the "correction" would be for that one; just how the ice-sheets would grow back in a warmer climate... or perhaps you're speaking to a kind of "correction" that presumes on adaptation to submerged coastal cities with all that entails (like mass population migrations, for instance).

[waldo]

I defy you to show me temperature records of any one station which has tracked the alarmists' famous charts and graphs. I do not believe these hodgepodge/amalgams for a minute.

you need to get your head out of your ass-holey localized regional mindset - hey?

[Bonam]

within degrees of qualification... "self-correcting" doesn't mean much to lost species affected by loss of habitat due to climate change. I sense wyly is speaking to the more, as you say, "perturbing" events... the so-called tipping points more globally serious than others... like... for example, the total melting of the Greenland ice-sheets. I'm not quite sure what the "correction" would be for that one; just how the ice-sheets would grow back in a warmer climate... or perhaps you're speaking to a kind of "correction" that presumes on adaptation to submerged coastal cities with all that entails (like mass population migrations, for instance).

I don't know if this is what would happen necessarily, but, for example:

ice sheets melt -> this disturbs the ocean current system that keeps northern europe warm -> new ice sheets form there cause that area is much colder now -> earth's average albedo is raised -> temperatures decrease -> ocean current system starts back up again

and we're back where we started. Obviously I haven't done any calculations or anything to show if that particular scenario is likely, but that or some other type of self-correction is ubiquitous in the Earth system.

[waldo]

I don't know if this is what would happen necessarily, but, for example:

ice sheets melt -> this disturbs the ocean current system that keeps northern europe warm -> new ice sheets form there cause that area is much colder now -> earth's average albedo is raised -> temperatures decrease -> ocean current system starts back up again

and we're back where we started. Obviously I haven't done any calculations or anything to show if that particular scenario is likely, but that or some other type of self-correction is ubiquitous in the Earth system.

... or... "we" could just agree to reduce CO2 emissions and avoid the... need for your calculations.

[Bonam]

... or... "we" could just agree to reduce CO2 emissions and avoid the... need for your calculations.

I was simply providing an example of the kind of self-correction that you were "not quite sure" about.

As for reducing CO2 emissions, certainly, that is something that many countries are working on and will continue to work on, but it is far from something that can be done "simply", nor should we try so hard as to seriously hamper economic growth as a result. The development of new technology that comes most quickly as a result of a prospering economy will be of greater value in both countering and adapting to any warming that may happen than slightly deeper cuts in CO2 emissions now ever could.

Edited February 2, 2011 by Bonam

[Sir Bandelot]

I was simply providing an example of the kind of self-correction that you were "not quite sure" about.

As for reducing CO2 emissions, certainly, that is something that many countries are working on and will continue to work on, but it is far from something that can be done "simply", nor should we try so hard as to seriously hamper economic growth as a result. The development of new technology that comes most quickly as a result of a prospering economy will be of greater value in both countering and adapting to any warming that may happen than slightly deeper cuts in CO2 emissions now ever could.

Grow trees.

[waldo]

I was simply providing an example of the kind of self-correction that you were "not quite sure" about.

of course... and my flippant reply was in proportion to your 'back of the napkin' musings.

As for reducing CO2 emissions, certainly, that is something that many countries are working on and will continue to work on, but it is far from something that can be done "simply", nor should we try so hard as to seriously hamper economic growth as a result. The development of new technology that comes most quickly as a result of a prospering economy will be of greater value in both countering and adapting to any warming that may happen than slightly deeper cuts in CO2 emissions now ever could.

which is your solution oriented engineering background speaking with a confidence that uncertain "new technologies... perhaps, uncertain geo-engineering", will prevail, in a timely manner, in the face of uncertain anthropogenic climate change. And that "timely manner" presupposes to offset the, for example, aforementioned total melting of the Greenland ice-sheets... or the disastrous effects of ocean acidification... or the overturning circulation in the North Atlantic... or the loss of Arctic sea ice... or... etc., etc., etc.