Once Again, "Super Freeze" Doesn't Mean No Global Warming

Scene of melting permafrost near Fairbanks, AK as reported on Univ. of Alaska website.

Once again, almost like clock work, the dummy brigade has emerged to point to the bitter sub-zero temperatures in the north eastern U.S. and arguing there's really no global warming, no climate change. Even Dummy Dotard mockingly tweeted yesterday "we could use some of that global warming they keep talking about".  You wish, Dotard.

In fact, there is no contradiction at all. The Arctic dip or vortex in the east doesn't affect record breaking high temperatures here in Colorado (up to 60 degrees today), or 25 degrees higher than expected.  And, as I've noted before,  Arctic waves intruding into the U.S. or the "polar vortex" are actually signs of Arctic atmospheric instability tied to extraordinary heating in that region.

To the denier contingent, of course, there are no such things as any climate change records, because they are convinced it's all some grand, convoluted conspiracy by government and climate scientists. To these mostly brainwashed fools climate change is just an elaborate hoax. Never mind that, as I noted in my Dec. 18th post, human algorithms for monitoring temperature changes in certain locations of the Arctic are already out of date since they cannot encompass actual data outliers - such as Barrow, Alaska. 

In the 17 years since 2000, the average October temperature in Barrow has climbed 7.8 degrees. The November temperature was up 6.9 degrees. The December average has warmed 4.7 degrees The Arctic is warming faster than any other place on Earth, and Barrow is in the thick of it. With less and less sea ice to reflect sunlight, the temperature around the North Pole is spiking upward.

Scene of mostly barren landscape near Barrow, AK last month. More dark surface area means lower albedo (less reflectivity), and more infrared radiation absorbed.

According to the NOAA Report issued earlier this month, which ought to awaken even the most comatose climate change denier zombies:

“The current observed rate of sea ice decline and warming temperatures are higher than at any other time in the last 1,500 years, and likely longer than that,”

This Arctic heat emphasis, for example exposed in the January , 2016 zonal temperature map :


dovetails with Prof. Gunter Weller's predictions (from the mid -1980s) - based on his ice core analyses- that future warming would be greatest in the Arctic.  This is  a phenomenon known as "Arctic amplification".  He pointed out that a much warmer Arctic also means a much more unstable polar region with more frequent intrusions ("waves")  of the polar vortex,  leading to frigid temperatures in parts of the U.S. such as we've seen the past few years.

The warming onslaught is now exacerbated by the rapid melting of permafrost. Vast expanses of former  Arctic permafrost have been reduced to mud, and also in the process of warming released methane - perhaps the Greenhouse gas which is most potent.  See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/03/more-rapid-permafrost-melting-triggers.html


As reported by the University of Alaska -Fairbanks Arctic Research site:

In 2016, the latest year of complete records, the majority of Arctic observation sites reported the highest permafrost temperatures on record.

This comports with the NOAA report of anomalous heating at Barrow, for example.

The takeaway is that these sub-zero super freezes we're seeing with Arctic air intrusions are likely to become more frequent in the future, not less. The deniers and climate dummies would do well to learn more about this phenomenon and why they should be fearful, not wise ass snarky.