Once Again: The Current "Super Freeze" Doesn't Mean Global Warming Is A Hoax

Once again, almost like clock work, the  "dummy brigade"  has emerged (mainly on FOX, Limbaugh) to dismiss the bitter sub-zero temperatures sending the mid-western U.S. into a deep freeze  as  part of a "natural cycle".  Thereby arguing there's really no global warming, no climate change and hey,just bundle up more for the polar vortex.  It's all a "hoax"according to these nitwits.  

A recent example of the latter was a  letter in the local press (COS Indy, Jan. 2-8, p. 4 ) by a  Mark Rozman who claimed:

“Climate change is a natural, ongoing process as evidenced by tree ring data”   etc.

But there is more than tree ring data to be factored in here.   While tree ring data is a useful proxy indicator, it still doesn’t come close to ice core analysis in ascertaining the increasing concentration of CO2 and its effect on climate. In ice core analysis the air trapped in  cylindrical ice cores (extracted from deep within the Earth)  is chemically assayed .  The gases are analyzed to quantify the  CO2  concentration, then related to the climate at the time.

One of the most prolific ice core researchers - who originally discovered (ca. 1986) that the Arctic was warming much more than the continental U.S.  -  was Prof. Gunther Weller of the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska- Fairbanks :

Prof.  Gunther Weller (1987)

 His work and that of others has disclosed that over the past 800,000 years the CO2 concentration of  300 ppm was never crossed until after the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the burning of fossil fuels.  Further, it has been found that no Ice ages have occurred whenever the CO2 concentration exceeded 200 ppm.  This means that climate change cannot be a “natural ongoing process.´ How can it when the greatest spike in CO2 concentration (now approaching 410 ppm) occurred after the human-instigated Industrial Revolution? 

In terms of tree rings, the relevant indicator is the ratio of the C14 isotope to the C12 isotope, as disclosed by solar physicist John Eddy.    

Eddy showed (‘The New Solar Physics’; p. 17, 1978) that an anthropogenic effect could be deduced from a graph of C14:C 12 deviations over a long enough period, i.e. 2,000 years.  

Specifically, “the sharp upward spike at the modern end of the curve is  attributed to anthropogenic causes and is the mark of increased population and the industrial age.” (Op. cit.)

Eddy’s work  in concert with many others, shows clearly humans are the primary agents driving climate change. Remove the human influence from the past 250 years or so and we are not approaching 410 ppm of CO2 concentration. Not even close!

Now what about the polar vortex? What is its role in climate change- global warming?

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

Data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed that January was, for the entire  globe, was an extraordinary month. In particular the data showed the Arctic took the brunt of heating (see graphic) with a temperature increase more than 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 1951 to 1980 average in this region. (This data constitutes a "zonal mean" temperature map, which shows how the temperature departures from average change based on one's latitude location on Earth.)

The finding dovetailed  with Prof. Gunther 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".  In papers and seminars delivered at the GI over 1985-1990 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.  In one seminar he described it "almost like moving the Arctic to the continental U.S."

Unpacking it further: there is generally an immense cold mass of air that sits over the Arctic.  Because of global warming, climate change the Arctic has experienced diminished sea ice, E.G.


As the sea ice mass melts there is less reflection of radiation into space and hence more rapid warming of the surface.  This diminished sea ice then results in more heat dispatched into the atmosphere. This in turn destabilizes the polar vortex - a low pressure area normally residing over the north pole. This instability then allows polar air to plunge southward into the continental U.S. .

The details leading to what we've seen the past several days (with temperatures in some locations even rivaling those in Antarctica) occurred on January 2nd.  NOAA monitors showed that part of the stratosphere had a rapid rise of 50 degrees F in just a few days.    The event split the unstable polar vortex, so that part broke off. Afterward, pockets of Arctic air migrated south causing the current deep freeze.

Let's also process that the warming onslaught is 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.

The takeaway is that these sub-zero super freezes we're seeing with polar vortex 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, to play into the agnotology narrative.  See e.g.

Brane Space: The Pseudo-Science Agnotologists Strike Again!

brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/as-i-noted-in-earlier-blog-httpbrane.html

I Don't Need TIME Magazine To Tell Me The Alps Are Melting

Me - negotiating a climb near Grindelwald, Switzerland - in August, 1978. You won't see any snow or ice in that area now - at that time of year.


The four-page article appearing recently in TIME was headed 'The Big Melt: Climate Change In The Alps (December 11, p. 53) and ought to have gotten the attention of anyone who's visited the area  especially in the past and compared it to what one sees now. The main takeaway? Very troubling.  In July, 1978, Janice and I hiked 15 kilometers at high altitude in the Grindelwald area, which included negotiating icy rocks and deep snow.  When we returned to the region in  2014. on visiting Jungfraujoch, the scene was virtually unrecognizable to what we'd beheld in 1978.


The most appalling and noteworthy difference? The lines of rope  tied to posts in the foreground,  in the photo taken by Janice in Sept., 2014.  None of those ropes existed when we last came in August, 1978. Unlike when we were there in 1978, the powers-that-be had roped off the entire plateau area and posted signs to warn visitors not to jump over the ropes to go beyond. With no such rope boundaries in '78,  we managed to hike far beyond those confines to the top of a steep slope nearly parallel with the Sphinx Observatory (far right). This time we observed chunks of snow and ice falling and suspected a primary reason was that global warming had rendered the snow-packed slopes more treacherous, and the risk of avalanche much greater. We'd have had to be fools to attempt what we did 36 years earlier, and in JULY at that time.

To put the height of Jungfraujoch into perspective one can refer to this Swiss map of the region which also includes the Eiger:

A view of one of the receding glaciers - seen from our train en route up to Jungfrau is seen below:

On our previous train trip in 1978 (imaged in 35 mm slides, which have faded out over time) the glacier tip extended all the way to the edge of the slope on the lower right.

According to the TIME article:

"The Alpine mountain range first rose an estimated 44 million years ago, when the great African plate began creeping northward, breaking and upthrusting the European plate. The newborn peaks did not stop growing until 9 million years ago, and it would be millions more years before the glaciers and snow that are their signature feature would be in place.

Humans have needed barely a century to make a mess of it all. Green and brown, it appears, are the new white across the southern European peaks as climate change, which historically has done its most noticeable damage closer to sea level, now reaches higher."

An image from the article showing the glaring extent of climate change is shown below (ibid., p. 54):

The caption for the image on the page states: "Here is a manufactured trail that leads to a ski lodge on a denuded mountain."  In other words, the "snow" is actually artificial - it had to be moved in,  that's how bad things have gotten.

The piece adds that "from 1960 to 2017, the Alpine snow season shortened by 38 days - starting an average of 12 days later and ending 26 days earlier than normal. "

The most serious aspect? Climate scientists now predict the melt to reach 10,000 feet altitude by the end of the century.   This means that the scene that captured us below,  at an altitude of about 10, 000 ft. near Engelberg in August, 1985:


Would be totally barren of ice and snow by then. I kidded Janice that, fortunately, we wouldn't be around to see it.

How bad is it really? As the TIME authors put it (ibid.): "Imagine the Caribbean culture and economy without beaches and water; that's the Alpine culture and economy without snow."

At the same time all this is unfolding in the Alps, we've learned about how dramatic climate change has accelerated temperatures in Barrow, Alaska, focusing on the image below showing the NOAA Baseline Atmospheric Observatory with the Arctic Ocean in the background:

Note how eerily similar it is the photograph taken of the barren of snow Swiss Alps earlier.

The point? The temperature in Barrow had been warming so fast this year, the data was automatically flagged as unreal and removed from the climate database. It was done by algorithms that were put in place to ensure that only the best data gets included in NOAA’s reports. They’re handy to keep the data sets clean, but this kind of quality-control algorithm is only good in “average” situations with no outliers.  

In other words, human algorithms for monitoring temperature changes in certain locations are already out of date since they cannot encompass actual data outliers - such as Barrow. In the 17 years since 2000, the average October temperature in Barrow has climbed 7.8 degrees. The November temperature is 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.  We refer to this has the decreased albedo effect.   The nature of a positive albedo feedback mechanism playing a major role in Greenhouse warming is well explicated by the late Carl Sagan in one of his essays, 'Ambush : The Warming of the World', appearing in his book 'Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Beginning of the Millennium':

"Melting of ice caps (already occurring) results in diminished albedo (reflection of solar radiation back into space), and a darker Earth surface - with more infrared radiation absorbed - reinforcing the tendency while enhancing the melting effect, leading to further darkening of the surface, reduced albedo and more melting."

This mode of positive feedback is what we're faced with in the melting of the Arctic. Just this week, scientists reported that the Arctic had its second-warmest year – behind 2016 – with the lowest sea ice ever recorded. The announcement came at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) , and the report is topped with an alarming headline: “Arctic shows no sign of returning to reliably frozen region of recent past decades.”

Changes in the Arctic extend beyond sea ice. Vast expanses of former 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

The other result? Aberrations of the Arctic ecology. Nonnative species of plants, the types that only grow in warmer climates, are spreading into what used to be the tundra. Nowhere is this greening of the Arctic happening faster than the North Slope of Alaska, observable with high-resolution clarity on NOAA satellite imagery. Again, note - this is nothing to be cheered, any more than a three-headed human baby. 

According to the NOAA Report issued, 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,”

The Arctic and the Alps, two of the "canaries" in the coal mine" warning us of the impending monstrous changes to the planet which will affect our progeny and future generations - assuming there is no runaway Greenhouse effect.

As the TIME article ends:

"The loss of the beauty that was once the Alps is a just price for the damage wrought by humans - and might serve as a sufficient spur for us to avoid doing more damage."

Maybe, but that remains to be seen,  both for the Alps, and the Arctic.