Archives par mot-clé : Arctic

climate-debate

Less Ice In Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 Years Ago

by Geological Survey of Norway, October 20, 2008 in ScienceDaily

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).

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energy and fields

U.S. Arctic Oil & Gas Exploration: A Sense of Urgency

by D. Middleton, April 3, 2019 in WUWT

I ran across a very lucid and informative article on Real Clear Energy today. The author is Robert Dillon, “a senior adviser on energy security at the American Council for Capital Formation and the former communications director of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.” The article includes numerous links to supporting information, particularly the National Petroleum Council’s (NPC) 2015 report on U.S. Arctic oil & gas resource potential.

The key findings of the 2015 NPC report were:

  1. Arctic oil and gas resources are large and can contribute significantly to meeting future U.S. and global energy needs.
  2. The arctic environment poses some different challenges relative to other oil and gas production areas, but is generally well understood.
  3. The oil and gas industry has a long history of successful operations in arctic conditions enabled by continuing technology and operational advances.
  4. Most of the U.S. Arctic offshore conventional oil and gas potential can be developed using existing field-proven technology.
  5. The economic viability of U.S. Arctic development is challenged by operating conditions and the need for updated regulations that reflect arctic conditions.
  6. Realizing the promise of Arctic oil and gas requires securing public confidence.
  7. There have been substantial recent technology and regulatory advancements to reduce the potential for and consequences of a spill.

Figure 1-1. Arctic exploration wells by country and time period. (NPC)

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climate-debate

Arctic Sea Ice Extent Same As In 2005

by P. Homewood, March 5, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

You may wonder why you have not heard much about Arctic sea ice death spirals and Greenland heatwaves this winter.

Hardly surprising, because the Arctic stubbornly refuses to follow the agenda.

Average sea ice extent last month was the highest since 2013, and stands as high as it did in 2005.

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover_30y.uk.php

climate-debate

STATE OF THE POLAR BEAR REPORT 2018

by Susan Crockford, February 2019, in GWPF

Inuit paying the price of rising bear populations

The 2018 State of the Polar Bear report, published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, confirms that polar bears are continuing to thrive, despite recent reductions in sea ice levels. This finding contradicts claims by environmentalists and some scientists that falls in sea ice would wipe out bear populations.

The report’s author, zoologist Dr Susan Crockford, says that there is now very little evidence to support the idea that the polar bear is threatened with extinction by climate change.

Foreword

From 1972 until 2010,1 the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) published comprehensive status reports every four years or so, as proceedings of their official meetings, making them available in electronic format. Until 2018 – a full eight years after its last report – the PBSG had disseminated information only on its website, updated (without announcement) at its discretion. In April 2018, the PBSG finally produced a standalone proceedings document from its 2016 meeting, although most people would have been unaware that this document existed unless they visited the PBSG website.

This State of the Polar Bear Report is intended to provide a yearly update of the kind of content available in those occasional PBSG meeting reports, albeit with more critical com- mentary regarding some of the inconsistencies and sources of bias present in the corpus of reports and papers. It is a summary of the state of polar bears in the Arctic since 2014, rela- tive to historical records, based on a review of the recent and historical scientific literature. It is intended for a wide audience, including scientists, teachers, students, decision-makers and the general public interested in polar bears and Arctic ecology.

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climate-debate

Strong Arctic sea-ice growth this year

by Andy May / Javier, February 24, 2019 in WUWT

February is not over, and Arctic sea-ice extent is already over half a million square kilometers higher than last year at this day.

The growing season has not ended, and 2019 Arctic sea-ice extent is already higher than the previous four years and six out of the last 14 years.

Figure 1. Arctic sea-ice extent. Note the left edge of the graph is February 1, not January 1.  http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

Arctic sea-ice has stubbornly resisted the very warm years between 2015-2017 caused by the big El Niño. Are we going to see an increase in Arctic sea-ice over the next few years? Only time will tell, but the idea cannot be discarded.

climate-debate

Climate change might not slow ocean circulation as much as thought

by Carolyn Grambling, January 31, 2019 in ScienceNews

New findings from an international ocean observing network are calling into question the long-standing idea that global warming might slow down a big chunk of the ocean’s “conveyor belt.” The first 21 months of data from sensors moored across much of the North Atlantic are giving new insight into what controls the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a system of currents that redistributes heat around much of the Western Hemisphere.

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climate-debate

Veteran Swiss Meteorologist Slams Media For “Making It Up”…NOAA: Polar Vortex Term “Nothing New…Appeared In 1853”

by P. Gosselin, February 10, 2019 in NoTricksZone

Charismatic Swiss meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann posted a comment at Twitterwhere he wondered what flagship German ZDF television was thinking when its evening news announced the polar vortex was some sort of new phenomenon arising from global warming.

Recently in the media we’ve been hearing a lot about the junk science that a warmer Arctic is somehow miraculously producing extreme cold over vast neighboring continents.

NOAA: “Polar vortex nothing new […] term appeared in 1853”

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The science behind the polar vortex.(NOAA)Download

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biology+acidification, sciences-general

Scientists identify two new species of fungi in retreating Arctic glacier

by Research Organization of Information and Systems, January 15, 2019 in ScienceDaily

Two new species of fungi have made an appearance in a rapidly melting glacier on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic, just west of Greenland. A collaborative team of researchers from Japan’s National Institute of Polar Research, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Tokyo, Japan, and Laval University in Québec, Canada made the discovery.

The scientists published their results on DATE in two separate papers, one for each new species, in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

“The knowledge of fungi inhabiting the Arctic is still fragmentary. We set out to survey the fungal diversity in the Canadian High Arctic,” said Masaharu Tsuji, a project researcher at the National Institute of Polar Research in Japan and first author on both papers. “We found two new fungal species in the same investigation on Ellesmere Island.”

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climate-debate

Arctic Sea Ice Extent Higher Than 2006 Last Month

by P. Homewood, January 9, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Just last March, the Guardian was trying to panic us about record lows in Arctic sea ice during last winter.

Back in the real world, DMI confirm that average Arctic sea ice extent in December was higher last month than in 2006. In reality, there has been very little change at all since 2005.

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http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/txt/IceVol.txt

 

climate-debate

“Terrifying Sea-Level Prediction Now Looks Far Less Likely”… But “marine ice-cliff instability” is “just common sense”

by David Middleton, January 5, 2019 in WUWT

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Marine ice cliff instability (MICI) “has not been observed, not at such a scale,” “might simply be a product of running a computer model of ice physics at a too-low resolution,” ignores post glacial rebound, couldn’t occur before ” until 2250 or 2300″… Yet “the idea is cinematic,” “it’s just common sense that Antarctic glaciers will develop problematic ice cliffs” and something we should plan for…

“Our results support growing evidence that calving glaciers are particularly sensitive to climate change.”  Greenland’s climate is always changing… Always has and always will change… And the climate changes observed over the last few decades are not unprecedented. The Greenland ice sheet is no more disappearing this year than it was last year and it is physically impossible for the ice sheet to “collapse” into the ocean.

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Figure 6. Jakobshavn Isbrae. (Wikipedia and Google Earth)

better to know...?, climate-debate

Ten years ago, @AlGore predicted the North polar ice cap would be gone. Inconveniently, it’s still there

by Antony Watts, December 16, 2018 in WUWT

On December 14, 2008, former presidential candidate Al Gore predicted the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely ice free in five years. As reported on WUWT, Gore made the prediction to a German TV audience at the COP15 Climate Conference:

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climate-debate

Late Summer Arctic Ice Volume Has Been Growing Since 2007…Contradicts Earlier Climate Predictions

by Kirye, December 12, 2018 in NoTricksZone

The media, alarmist scientists and many leading policymakers often tell the public “the Arctic is rapidly melting”. And if a poll were done today, a vast majority of the people in Japan and elsewhere would say this is true. Unfortunately they have become the victims of “fake news”.

Luckily we have some hard data from the Arctic. And if one looks at them, it is true that sea ice has seen a declining trend – if we go back 40 years.

Yet, if we look at the past 12 years, we see that the trend for minimum has stopped, and one could argue even reversed:

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climate-debate

NASA: Global Warming Promotes Arctic Sea Ice Growth

by Eric Worrall, December 11, 2018 in WUWT

According to NASA, the increased rate of thickening of sea ice in the Arctic is due to Global Warming.

Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/wintertime-arctic-sea-ice-growth-slows-long-term-decline-nasa

The abstract of the study:

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Read more: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018GL079223

I guess we should count ourselves lucky the world isn’t currently in a cooling phase, otherwise we might lose the Arctic icepack altogether.

 

climate-debate

GREENLAND ICE SHEET SIXTH HIGHEST ON RECORD

by GWPF, December 7, 2018

The Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) also performs daily simulations of how much ice or water the Ice Sheet loses or accumulates. Based on these simulations, an overall assessment of how the surface mass balance develops across the entire Ice Sheet is obtained (Fig. 4).

At the end of the 2018 season (31 August 2018), the net surface mass balance was 517 Gt, which means that 517 Gt more snow fell than the quantity of snow and ice that melted and ran out into the sea. This number only contains the balance at the surface, and thus not the total balance, which also includes melting of glaciers and calving of icebergs.

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Although the total SMB  (Surface Mass Budget) for the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 seasons are similar, development during the two seasons has been very different. Last year, the season began by gaining a lot of mass during the winter, whilst the development in SMB from the summer onwards reflected the long-term average. During the 2017-2018 season, SMB remained in line with the average from 1981-2010 until the summer, after which the development in SMB was higher than average.

climate-debate

The Arctic: we don’t know as much about environmental change in the far north as we’d like to think

by Charles the moderator, December 5, 2018 in WUWT

From The Conversation

December 4, 2018 9.58am EST

The first International Polar Year, held over 1882–1883, was an important event for science. The year was the brainchild of Austrian explorer Karl Weyprecht who, after a few years on different research missions, realised that scientists were missing the big picture by not sharing information with each other.

In 1875, at the annual meeting of German Scientists and Physicians in Graz, Austria, he proposed the setting up of an observational network of research stations to monitor the Arctic climate. It was the beginning of collaborative research in the region. Today, data collected 134 years ago on temperature, air pressure, or wind speed is still freely available.

There have been two more International Polar Year events since that inaugural one, most recently in 2007–2008, along with numerous other collaborative expeditions and research missions aimed at understanding aspects of Arctic biology, ecology, climate or geology.

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climate-debate

Record Cold Hits North America, Arctic Sea Ice Stable As Solar Activity Reaches Near 200-Year Low

by P. Gosselin, November 26, 2018 in NoTricksZone

Winter has arrived much earlier than normal this year, particularly across North America, where cold records have been shattered.

This Thanksgiving is in fact going down as one of the coldest ever on record across the Northeast. The Washington Post here, for example, reports that Thanksgiving and Black Friday 2018 will be remembered for a record-shattering cold snap across the Northeast United States.”

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Arctic sea ice, snow and ice cover rebound

Arctic sea ice volume has rebounded and is near normal levels. The sea ice trend has remained stable over the past decade and thus defy all the climate alarmist predictions of an Arctic meltdown.

 

Chart made by Kirye. Data Source: Danish Meteorological Institute.

 

climate-debate

Arctic sea ice: Simulation versus observation

by U.  of California – Santa Barbara, Nov 13, 2018 in ScienceDaily

As an indicator of the impacts of climate change, Arctic sea ice is hard to beat. Scientists have observed the frozen polar ocean advance and retreat at this most sensitive region of the Earth over decades for insight on the potential ripple effects on assorted natural systems: global ocean circulation, surrounding habitats and ecosystems, food sources, sea levels and more.

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“We’re mostly interested in the period from the early 2000s to the present day, where we see such strong melting,” said graduate student Ian Baxter, who also works with Ding. It’s known, he added, that the effects of changes in the Arctic are no longer confined to the region and in fact spread to the mid-latitudes — often in the form of cold weather outbreaks. The group is interested in how effects in the tropics could spread beyond that region and affect the Arctic.

climate-debate, press and newspapers

Nunavut Draft Plan Says There Are Actually Too Many Polar Bears In Territory

by Bob Weber, November 12,  2018, updated, in HuffingtonPost

There are too many polar bears in parts of Nunavut and climate change hasn’t yet affected any of them, says a draft management plan from the territorial government that contradicts much of conventional scientific thinking.

The proposed plan — which is to go to public hearings in Iqaluit on Tuesday — says that growing bear numbers are increasingly jeopardizing public safety and it’s time Inuit knowledge drove management policy.

“Inuit believe there are now so many bears that public safety has become a major concern,” says the document, the result of four years of study and public consultation.

A male polar bear eats a piece of whale meat as it walks along the shore of Hudson Bay near Churchill, Man., on August 23, 2010. New research suggests an answer to the mystery of how polar bears survived previous eras of low sea ice. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
THE CANADIAN PRESS
A draft plan from the Nunavut government says growing bear numbers are increasingly jeopardizing public safety.
climate-debate

How the Greenland ice sheet fared in 2018

by R. Mottram et al.  (DMI), October 27, 2018 in ScienceNordic

The end of August traditionally marks the end of the melt season for the Greenland ice sheet as it shifts from mostly melting to mostly gaining snow.

As usual, this is the time when the scientists at DMI and our partners in the Polar Portal assess the state of the ice sheet after a year of snowfall and ice melt. Using daily output from a weather forecasting model combined with a model that calculates melt of snow and ice, we calculate the “surface mass budget” (SMB) of the ice sheet.

This budget takes into account the balance between snow that is added to the ice sheet and melting snow and glacier ice that runs off into the ocean. The ice sheet also loses ice by the breaking off, or “calving”, of icebergs from its edge, but that is not included in this type of budget. As a result, the SMB will always be positive – that is, the ice sheet gains more snow than the ice it loses.

For this year, we calculated a total SMB of 517bn tonnes, which is almost 150bn tonnes above the average for 1981-2010, ranking just behind the 2016-17 season as sixth highest on record.

By contrast, the lowest SMB in the record was 2011-2012 with just 38bn tonnes, which shows how variable SMB can be from one year to another.

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Maps show the difference between the annual SMB in 2017 (left) and 2018 (right) compared with the 1981-2010 period (in mm of ice melt). Blue shows more ice gain than average and red shows more ice loss than average. (Credit: DMI Polar Portal)

unclassified

Polar Bears’ Arctic Sea Ice Ecosystem Not In Danger Of Melting Away

by S.J. Crockford, October 31, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch

What’s a good analogy for sea ice as essential polar bear habitat? Biologist Andrew Derocher claims that the soil in a forest is appropriate because without the soil you can’t have the forest ecosystem.

However, that’s a specious comparison because the amount of soil in a forest does not change markedly with the seasons the way that Arctic sea ice does.

A much better analogy is a big pond that dries up a bit every summer. The amount of habitat available to sustain aquatic plants, amphibians and insects is reduced in the dry season but many species have special adaptations for surviving reduced water availability.

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