Risky Feedbacks – Not In Models; Understated Solutions Feedbacks are best understood by example. Austin’s 2023 ice storm that caused massive tree damage and excessive power outages was caused by a feedback. The ice storm stalled in a classic climate change-caused effect, creating a longer ice accumulation time than in our old climate. This additional…
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, September 24, 2019 The Ocean and Cryosphere (the icy part of our planet) in a Changing Climate A Summary of Important Findings Overall of course, climate change is astonishingly worse with every new report. This one is no exception. Polar and mountain ice are melting faster, the…
Arctic Sea Ice – More Than Half Gone With Five Times As Much Warming Just what do all the squiggly lines mean? To start with, the way science is shown to us civilians is a bit misleading generally. What we hear much of the time as the “new record sea ice extents” is based on…
Warm Atlantic water is invading the Arctic Ocean in a novel way. It is “Atlantifying” the Polar Sea. The results are that ice loss in the Arctic to the north of Siberia is likely enhanced. This “invasion” has always been a known thing in the Western Arctic, but now it has shifted 1,000 miles east…
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) report on March 19, 2015 shows Arctic sea ice has reached its lowest winter minimum on record. The record only goes back to 1979, but conclusions can be drawn from the record and global temperature that show global warming at work. This interactive chart is the NSIDC…
First published on Truthout.org This article reports on a National Research Council literature review of why and how warming in the Arctic and arctic amplification is creating what appears to be more extreme winter weather in the U.S. Northeast and Northern Europe.
Predictable, the voices are rising as Arctic sea ice melt season peaks. Gore did not say “2013.” He said as soon as 2013. The scientists he quoted were led by sea ice researcher named Wieslaw Maslowski at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California. Their research is funded by the Department of Energy (DOE),…
It appears that we have truly crossed a threshold. Since 2005, every year Arctic sea ice extents have been below every other year in the record back to 1979. Of course, we can’t tell with absolute statistical certainty. But we have been warned for decades that this would happen. This year’s melt record exceed the…
Arctic sea ice has smashed its last smashed record by a margin nearly as great as the previous smashing. The minimum Arctic sea ice record set in 2007 was widely believed to be a freak, caused by freak weather conditions. It shattered the previous record by 22 percent. This year’s record shattered the 2007 record…
A study from the Academy of Sciences of Germany, Alfred Wegner Institute of Polar and Marine Research and the University of Colorado, Boulder has quotes “We find that early 21st century temperatures of Atlantic Water entering the Arctic Ocean are unprecedented over the past 2,000 years and are presumably linked to the Arctic amplification of…
On a warmer planet, winter weather becomes more volatile. The extremes get more extreme. Read More
Do you realize that ocean primary productivity has declined 40% since 1950? Or that, this year’s coral bleaching was worse than during the super El Nino of ’98? Or that, the Arctic was declared functionally ice free last summer for the first time in 14 million years? Read More — First published on the Rag…
A few out there would have us believe that Arctic sea ice has rebounded since 2007 and that climate change is something other than what it is. In the real world, what little is left of Arctic sea ice is so rotten and weak that it is no functional impediment to shipping – leaving the…
It takes 196,000 pounds of plants to produce a gallon of gasoline. It takes 40 acres of plants, roots, stalks, and leaves, to go 20 miles in the average car. This is how much ancient plant matter had to be buried millions of years ago to produce one gallon of gas. It is just incredible…
We don’t know more about our climate than we do know. I just read a paper about the Arctic in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that says that basically the albedo feedback and an ice free summer in the Arctic could and eventually will lead to an ice free winter too. The…
Only 10% of Arctic Sea ice is is older than two years old. The maximum coverage of sea ice this winter was the fifth lowest ever recorded (The six lowest winter ice coverage totals have all occurred in the last six years.) First year ice, ice that melts every summer, makes up 70% of Arctic…
So much going on… A great paper slipped past in February – It has been 14 million years since the Arctic has been ice free in summer. The National Snow and Ice Data Center has declared the arctic sea ice maximum for the winter. It is the 5th lowest on record, and the lowest 6…
The left image shows Stroeve’s analysis of Arctic sea ice coverage through 2008. (2009 was a bit greater than 2008, but still 20% below average. (The last five years have seen the five lowest average ice extent years on record.) The image on the right is the IPCC 2007 model summary of Arctic sea ice…
Geophysical Research Letters had a busy and scary Halloween edition. As discussed below on October 2, satellite analysis of 2008 Arctic sea ice thickness has revealed the lowest volume of Arctic sea ice ever recorded. Smedsrud, et. al., Recent and future changes of the Arctic sea-ice cover has a new model based on the latest…
Arctic Sea ice had the second lowest recorded extents this season, but alarmingly, volume was the lowest ever recorded. The lowest volume record was set because much of the remaining ice in the Arctic is only first year ice. Normally the majority of ice at the top of the globe is multi-year ice, which is…
