A few years ago, 10 glaciologists publishing in the journal Nature Geoscience asserted that “large parts of the north-central Greenland ice sheet are melting from below” due to high geothermal heat flux forcing (Rogozhina et al., 2016).
In a new paper published in Scientific Reports, 4 more glaciologists (Rysgaardet al., 2018) report that “hot vents” (or hot springs) of geothermally-heated water underneath the Greenland ice sheet can explain localized rising temperatures and glacial melting.
Earlier observations showed that Arctic ice extents were low in the 1940s, grew thereafter up to a peak in 1977, before declining. That decline was gentle until 1994 which started a decade of multi-year ice loss through the Fram Strait. There was also a major earthquake under the north pole in that period. In any case, the effects and the decline ceased in 2007, 30 years after the previous peak. Now we have a plateau in ice extents, which could be the precursor of a growing phase of the quasi-60 year Arctic ice oscillation.
Rapid expansion of the Arctic sea ice cover is the norm for October as solar input dwindles and the remaining heat in the upper ocean is released upwards, warming the lower atmosphere and escaping to space. Because of late season growth, the seasonal Antarctic maximum we previously reported as occurring on September 15 was exceeded, with a new maximum set on October 11 and 12. This is the second-lowest and second-latest seasonal maximum extent in the satellite record.
by P. Homewood, November 21, 2017 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
A year ago the media was full of fake Arctic heatwave news (…)
And a year later?
Arctic sea ice extent this October was the third highest since 2006, and continues to track recent years. Most of the Arctic basin is full of 2 meter+ thick ice, in stark contrast to 2008.
by Tony Heller, November 9, 2017 in ClimateChangeDispatch
The animation below shows the extent of 5+ foot thick sea ice at present vs. the same date ten years ago. Ice thinner than five feet thick has been masked out.
by Ron Clutz, October 30, 2017 in ClimateChangeDispatch
Extents expanded rapidly during the last 12 days of October through yesterday, especially on the Eurasian side. At the top center the Laptev Sea fills in completely, and to the left East Siberian Sea is also growing solid ice toward East Asia. Kara sea on the right is growing fast ice from the shore outward, while the Barents Sea fills in from the central Arctic.
A year ago I wrote an article at WUWT analyzing the recent upward trend in summer Arctic sea ice extent. Despite challenges of statistical irrelevancy, the trend has continued another year. Arctic ice experts, that have repeatedly predicted the demise of summer ice, don’t have an explanation for a 10-year trend that contradicts their predictions, beyond statistical variability or unexplained natural variability.
The extraordinary sight was witnessed by tourists on an Arctic cruise aboard the Finnish-built MV Akademik Shokalskiy.
A source at Wrangel Island Nature Reserve said: “There were at least 230 polar bears, including single males, single females, mothers with cubs and even two mothers with four cubs each.”
Experts called the sight of so many polar bears together “unique”. The huge number could in fact amount to as much one per cent of the entire world’s population of the creatures.
Overall, initial figures suggest that Greenland may have gained a small amount of ice over the 2016-17 year. If confirmed, this would mark a one-year blip in the long-term trend of year-on-year declines over recent decades.
“It is tempting to say that the record low we are seeing this year is global warming finally catching up with Antarctica,” Meier said. “However, this might just be an extreme case of pushing the envelope of year-to-year variability. We’ll need to have several more years of data to be able to say there has been a significant change in the trend.”
Weather and climate analyst Schneefan here writes of “early frost” in the Arctic and how Greenland snow and ice have grown after being hit by a “snow bomb”. This contradicts the expectations of global warming alarmists.
The polar summer this year appears to have ended prematurely. The mean temperature of the central Arctic above 80°N has remained under the long-term average over the entire summer and even dipped below the freezing point about a week earlier than normal (1958-2002 mean).
by Ron Clutz, August 25, 2017 in ClimateChangeDispatch
The animated image shown after the jump shows ice extents for day 233 from 2007 to 2017. Particularly interesting is the variation in the CAA (Canadian Arctic Archipelago), crucial for the Northwest Passage
Satellite observations indicate that the average Arctic sea ice extent has generally decreased since the start of the satellite records in October 1978. Is this period long enough to assess whether the current sea level trend is unusual, and to what extent the decline is caused by humans?
This change in Arctic climate is often promoted as evidence that humans are causing drastic climate change. For instance, an April 29th 2017 article in the Economist (“Skating on thin ice”, pg 16) implied that the Arctic is melting unusually, dramatically and worryingly (…)
by Kenneth Richard, August 7, 2017 in NoTricksZone reposted Paul Homewood
In recent months, two new papers published in The Cryosphere have provided a condensed summary of the ice-melt and sea-level-rise consequences of global warming for the Arctic region.
1. Between 1900 and 2010, the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) has melted so extensively and so rapidly that the GIS ice-melt contribution to global sea level rise has amounted to 1.5 centimeters for the entire 110-year period. One-and-a-half centimeters. That’s 0.59 of an inch!
2. It gets worse. Between 1993 and 2010, the contribution to global sea level rise has been a disturbing 0.39 of a centimeter. Almost 4/10ths of a centimeter. That’s 0.15 of an inch!
In sharp contrast with previous decades, the past 10 years have seen no change in Northern Hemisphere average sea ice extent, according to MASIE (may-zee, Multi-sensor Analyzed Sea Ice Extent) database from the National Sea & Ice Data Center (NSIDC; see figure 1).
by Tony Heller, July 20, 2017 in ClimateChangeDispatch
The Greenland Ice Sheet is gaining near record amounts of ice this year. Very little melting has occurred this summer, which is about to start winding down. Temperatures on the Greenland Ice Sheet have been extremely cold, and broke the all-time record for Northern Hemisphere July cold on July 4, at -33C.
Dec 14, 2009 : New computer modeling suggests the Arctic Ocean may be nearly ice-free in summer as early as 2014, Al Gore said today at the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen.
The graphic shows the mean September sea ice extent on the northern hemisphere. The plotted values correspond approximately to the sea ice area that ‘survived’ the summer melt in the respective years
The graph illustrates a decreasing trend in sea ice extent since 1978, with annual variations of occationally more than 1 million square kilometres. The 2012 sea ice minimum extented set a new minimum record.
When considering the scale of temperature changes that alarmists anticipate because of Man-made Global Warming and their view of the disastrous effects of additional Man-made Carbon Dioxide emissions in this century, it is useful to look at climate change from a longer term, century by century and even on a millennial perspective.
Globally emitted contaminants accumulate in the Arctic and are stored in the frozen environments of the cryosphere. The microbial potential to degrade anthropogenic contaminants, such as toxic and persistent polychlorinated biphenyls, was found to be spatially variable and not limited to regions close to human activities.
La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse
