YES – Global Warming IS Still Real and Ongoing! (Never Mind the Cold!)

Satellite image of Arctic at point of maximal Arctic melting. Increasing warmth in the Arctic is influencing the polar vortex causing icy cold to spill southward to North America.

The disconnect between much of the media (and public) and ongoing global warming has never been more evident than the past week or so as we witnessed a Russian ship trapped by ice in the Antarctic and bone -chilling frigid air in the Midwest today.  But as I will show, none of these events - strange as they may seem  (i.e. Chicago being colder than Siberia this morning)  controvert global warming.

SF Chronicle conservo writer Debra Saunders thought she was being facetious when she wrote the following:

"To recap, when the Aussie expedition on the Russian ship got stuck, the Chinese Xue Long tried to icebreak its way to the stranded ship. But there was too much thick ice and the Xue Long could not reach the Shokalskiy. Then the Australian Aurora Australis tried to come to the rescue, but couldn’t get to the Russian ship either. Ditto a French icebreaker. There was too much thick ice to reach the global-warming research team.

More irony: The AAE was supposed to follow in the footsteps of the 1912 Mawson expedition – which is the last trek I would want to recreate.  The idea was to allow modern scientists to collect data to compare with the Mawson data in order to do improve climate models for global warming. But then there was too much ice, and now the party’s over."

Mayhap for the Aussie team, but that doesn't mean global warming is over. Indeed, what happened to the Shokalskiy can actually be said to have reinforced the theory of global warming. That is, it's been found (Nature Geoscience, March 31) that melting ice shelves actually spur the growth of sea ice - the form that trapped the Russian ship. While Arctic sea ice has dwindled, Antarctic sea ice has expanded nearly two percent per decade since 1985.

 

As oceans have warmed over the same period, their currents have carried heat to the deep waters surrounding Antarctica. This deflected warmth melts the base of ice shelves, i.e. sections of the Antarctic ice sheet that float over the ocean.  The melting then floods the ocean with cold fresh water that remains on the surface and easily freezes.  Hence, the trapping of the Shokalskiy.

 

 

Regarding the record breaking bone –chilling cold in the Midwest today, this can also be traced to global warming – as originally proposed in a theory by Gunther Weller, more than 25 years ago. That is,  something called “the polar vortex” is normally stable and circulating around the Arctic, like a massive cyclone. (Weller called it  a stable polar cyclone)   However, with increased warming in the Arctic (especially more than anyplace else on Earth) the circulation in the vortex is weakened and the vortex’s cold spills southward – discharging energy and creating the record breaking cold we’re now seeing in places like Minnesota.

 

As a weather specialist noted this morning (CBS), it is unwise to just cherry pick the frigid cold experienced in some parts today and laugh at global warming – since every place else is seeing a warming trend.  Also, warming begins much earlier than it had incepting natural changes in flora and fauna to respond to it. (For example, the dandelions in my yard now begin flowering in early to mid March as opposed to late April. Meanwhile, the maple syrup in Vermont is being adversely affected by too early warmth which is also now too enduring – into the fall).
 

Worse, the unabated general warming trend, such as here in the Rocky Mountain West, has meant the spread of the Mountain Pine Beetle - now destroying forests  by the hundreds of thousands of acres each year. The beetle basically turns trees into tinder for which the slightest spark  - say from a randomly tossed cigarette- can cause a densely forested area to explode into a wildfire. This is what happened with the Black Forest fire last year, and the Waldo Canyon fire the year before that.

 

Only a dunderhead  or nitwit would in any way use the bone chilling cold, snow or even ice storms to try to deny global warming. But don't worry, many idiots will still try!

 

 

W. Antarctic Ice Sheet Melting at Twice the Rate Previously Thought

Comparison images of Arctic (top) and Antarctic sea ice changes for summer minimum and wniter maximums. (From National Snow and Ice Data Center)



The news that the West Antartic Ice Sheet has nearly doubled its rate of melting has recently been reported in the journal  Nature Geoscience. According to one of the co-authors, Andy Monaghan,  from the National Center for Atmospheric Research:

"If this melt continues, if the summer warming continues, we could begin to see increased runoff from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet later in the century that could enhance its ongoing contribution to sea level rise."

Co-author David Bromwich, a senior research scientist at the Byrd Polar Research Center added:

"Our record suggests that continued summer warming in Antarctica could upset the surface mass balance of the ice sheet, so the region could make an even bigger contribution to sea level rise than it already does."

The Byrd station, originating in 1957, became a year round automated station in 1980, however power outages have complicated data gathering from that single site, as has the extended polar night - making the station's solar panels difficult to re-charge. This led Monaghan and Bromwhich to reconstruct the Antarctic -wide temperature history over the past half-century from station records around the continent.  Now, working with partners at Ohio State and the University Of Wisconsin-Madison, they have completed the data gaps with a computer model of the atmosphere and a numerical analysis method. (Recall that I went into such methods for solar plasma some 7 months ago, i.e. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/05/case-for-plasma-numerical-simulations.html)

According to researcher Monaghan:

"Even if you didn't fill in with the (numerical) simulations, you still get these strong trends. It's really the observations telling us this."


Rising sea levels are a critical concern for climate change researchers given the number of highly populated areas around the globe -many of which have sprung up in coastal areas. In this sense, the east and west coasts of the U.S. are especially vulnerable to sea level increase.

Currently, sea level is rising at the rate of 3 mm each year. Given 1" = 25 mm, this means by the end of the century a rise of 87 (yrs) x  3 mm / yr. = 261 mm or (261 mm/ 25 mm/in) = 10.44 inches - enough to wash away roughly one third of S. Florida and most of the sea level areas of the Atlantic coast.
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