Sea Ice South (1): A little geography
Sea Ice South (1): A little geography
My last entry was on the decline of sea ice in the Arctic and how this is forming an entirely new environment in the Arctic. It’s an environment of open water in the summer and a freezing sea in the winter - perhaps, a little like the Great Lakes. Now I am going to start a series on trying to untangle the difficult subject of sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere.
As many know the sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere has been increasing for the past few years. Here is a picture from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Figure 1: Areal extent of April sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere from 1979 – 2011. (figure from National Snow and Ice Data Center)
This figure shows a plot of April monthly averages of the area of the ocean covered by ice. There is a lot of variability from year to year, and if you take an average of all the years, the amount of ocean covered by sea ice has increased in the last three decades. From 2006 to 2011 the variability is high, and it will be interesting to see if the apparent oscillation continues over the next five years.
This increase of sea ice has entered the political discussion in different ways. Most notably, it has been paired with the Arctic sea ice in plots to show that the global sea ice is remaining approximately constant. The political argument goes - hence, there is not trend; hence, the climate alarmists have isolated their attention on the Arctic to carry forward a political argument. This pairing of North and South to conclude that sea ice decrease is inconsequential is a deceptive political argument. It mixes northern summer with southern winter; hence, warm season and cold season in a way that is, from the point of view of the physical scientist, incorrect. It also dismisses the vast impact on ecosystems and regional climate that is occurring in the Arctic. The processes that determine the energy budget of sea ice in the northern and southern hemisphere are quite different. This series is my attempt to break down this complexity well enough that I can understand it.
In both my dynamics class and my climate change class, I constantly remind students of the geography of the Earth. The weather and climate of the Earth is largely determined by the energy received from the Sun, the rotation of the Earth, and the distribution of land, water, ice and air. Of special importance is the height and location of mountain ranges. Here’s an old map I like looking down on the South Pole.
Figure 2: Map of the South Pole and the Southern Ocean from the year 1894. (figure from Perry-Castañeda University of Texas Library Map Collection)
The first thing to note is that the South Pole is in the continent Antarctica, which is land (and ice). Compared with the oceanic North Pole, the ocean cannot carry heat all the way to the pole. The second thing to note is that Antarctica is high and steep. This strongly influences atmospheric storms. These two geographical facts mean that the atmosphere and ocean might carry heat to the edge of Antarctica, but the center of the continent is, perhaps, a bit isolated or protected.
There is another critically important aspect of the geography, which is suggested on the map by the dashed line labeled “average limit of floating ice.†Also note the parts of the ocean labeled “Antarctic Drift.†This section of ocean completely encircles the Earth with no land barrier. It gets narrow at the tip of South America. It is especially notable at, say, the tip of Africa the way the Agulhas Current gets swept away in the Antarctic drift. Remember, this map is from 1894 – I think it makes my points solidly.
We see here in the Southern Hemisphere, atmospheric storms that start in the warm north and propagate southward towards Antarctica. They travel through this open water around the continent, Antarctica. They are steered and broken up by the steep edge of Antarctica. The stress of these storms on the surface of the ocean causes the ocean to “drift†from west to east. This is a far different situation from the Arctic, where there is no land at the pole and a mix of land and ocean around the edge of the Arctic ocean. (see another old map at this old blog )
So this is the set up - the geography makes the northern and southern poles distinctly different places. How, then, do we think about the formation and destruction of sea ice? We have to think about energy, just like in the last blog. The atmosphere and ocean bring and take away heat. There is fresh (light) and salt (heavy) water. There is rain and snow (energy and fresh water). There is ice melting in Antarctica. And there is, in fact, a fundamental difference in the radiative forcing – ozone. In the Southern Hemisphere there is the ozone hole. Often we forget that ozone is, in fact, an important greenhouse gas. With all of this - is there any reason to expect sea ice to behave the same in the northern and southern hemisphere? With all of this - is it at all scientifically honest to mash together sea ice observations from the north and south, summer and winter, and talk about them as one?
OK – I think that is a reasonable foundation.
r
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They can not possibly be affiliated with NOAA, since it is the Norwegian site for Ice Monitoring. I was pointing out that NOAA's IMS is in agreement with the Norwegian NORSEX.
You are correct that there are more meteorologists at TWC than at WUWT, but that doesn't mean that TWC has "real" meteorologists. The only reason why I sometimes watch The Weather Channel is for Storm Stories, or for their Live Action Radar.
You will see them drop as NSIDC is a daily average and the other two you mention are a three day average.
NSIDC uses a 5 day running mean.
Denmark Preparing to Stake Claim to North Pole
By RICHARD STEED Associated Press
COPENHAGEN, Denmark May 17, 2011 (AP)
Denmark plans to lay claim to the North Pole and other areas in the Arctic, where melting ice is uncovering new shipping routes, fishing grounds and drilling opportunities for oil and gas, a leaked government document showed Tuesday.
The draft document titled "Strategy for the Arctic" said Denmark's Science Ministry has started collecting data to formally submit a claim for those areas to the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf no later than 2014.
Russia, Norway, Canada and the U.S. have their own claims — sometimes competing — in a region believed to hold as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.
The Danish government confirmed the authenticity of the document, which was first obtained by Danish Radio and published online by newspaper Information.
Denmark has for years explored potential claims to areas off Greenland, a semiautonomous territory, but this is the first time the government explicitly states it will make a claim for the North Pole, said Martin Breum, a Danish journalist who has written a book about Denmark's interests in the Arctic.
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AP
FILE - In this July 19, 2007 file photo an... View Full Caption
Foreign Minister Lene Espersen said the strategy is still being reviewed and a final version is expected in June. However, she affirmed in a statement that Denmark expects to "be able to lay claim on an area which includes the seabed of the North Pole."
The race to secure subsurface rights to the Arctic seabed heated up in 2007 when Russia sent two small submarines to plant a tiny national flag under the North Pole. Russia argued that an underwater ridge connected the country directly to the North Pole, a claim disputed by other Arctic nations.
The 34-page Danish document said Denmark wants "to lay claim to the continental shelf in five areas around the Faeroe Islands and Greenland, including the North Pole itself." At least four of those areas are believed to hold oil or gas resources.
Exploiting such resources becomes easier as climate change shrinks Arctic sea ice coverage, which has reached record lows in the past decade.
The document also said Denmark's military will strengthen its focus on the Arctic but stressed that the Scandinavian nation will work for peaceful cooperation between Arctic states.
Last week the eight members of the Arctic Council — Russia, United States, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland — agreed to coordinate Arctic search-and-rescue missions.
The United States has said it wants the cooperation pact to be a template for agreement on more pressing national security issues.
Link
Does China Have an Eye on the Arctic?
Last week, WikiLeaks published a new round of diplomatic cables in concert with an annual meeting of the Arctic Council in Nuuk, Greenland. Written between 2007 and 2010, the cables highlight the lingering sense of global insecurity over who owns what at the rooftop of the world. They don't cover any particularly new ground, but they are interesting because of the candor with which their subject – the competition for potential Arctic resources – is treated, particularly by the U.S. in regards to Greenland. (U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the special trip to Nuuk last week for Arctic Council meeting.)
But perhaps more interesting is that embedded in America's ambition to get a toehold in Greenland before it splits from Denmark and has a major oil find is concern from the U.S. over China's interest in island.
Here's an excerpt from cable no. 129049 from 2007:
“Our international visitor invitations, English teaching programs and joint scientific/environmental projects have reinforced Greenlandic desires for a closer relationship with the United States, just as Greenland assumes ever-greater charge of its international relations and edges closer to full independence. Our intensified outreach to the Greenlanders will encourage them to resist any false choice between the United States and Europe. It will also strengthen our relationship with Greenland vis-a-vis the Chinese, who have shown increasing interest in Greenland's natural resources… While Greenland has long been believed to possess significant hydrocarbon and mineral stocks, only in the last three to four years -- with the rise in world oil prices -- have international investors have begun to seriously explore Greenland's potential. An American Presence Post in Greenland would provide us with the needed diplomatic platform to seek out new opportunities and advance growing USG interests in Greenland.â€
Since that cable was penned, the U.S. has shown more enduring interest in Greenland's hydrocarbon potential. In November, the government of Greenland awarded a license to U.S. energy company ConocoPhillips for an oil and gas exploration in the Baffin Bay area. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated there could be billions of barrels of oil in the region, and Scotland's Cairn energy started exploratory drilling there last summer.
Still, the note of concern didn't come out of nowhere. Despite the fact that it has no Arctic borders, China has been making plenty of noise in the past few years about its own interest in Arctic resources. According to the Foreign Policy Association, it requested observer status on the Arctic Council, which it was denied, and has also asserted that it should naturally play a role in how the arctic is governed by virtue of its large population. Asia Times quoted Admiral Yin Zhin saying last year that “China must play an indispensable role in Arctic exploration as we have one-fifth of the world's population.â€
Oddly enough, China has had a polar research program since 1981. There are three Chinese research stations in Antarctica, and one in Norway. The country has made 23 Antarctic expeditions and has organized three Arctic scientific teams. Most significantly, in 1993, the government bought the world's largest non-nuclear icebreaker from the Ukraine, which it named Snow Dragon, and Beijing has announced plans to build another icebreaker that should be up and running by 2013. When that happens, China will have greater mobility in ice-strewn waters — and greater access to the new shipping lanes and resources in the region — that the U.S. or Canada. Being able to throw large sums of money at pet projects that voters might balk at is a chief advantage to gaining access to arctic resources, Mia Bennet noted last year on the Foreign Policy Association's arctic blog.
It's an advantage that China shares with Russia, the other major player in the region with its enormous Arctic coast, and the other subject of concern in the WikiLeaks cables. A 2010 cable (no. 129049) quotes Dmitriy Rogozin, the Russian Ambassador to NATO: "The twenty-first century will see a fight for resources, and Russia should not be defeated in this fight ... NATO has sensed where the wind comes from. It comes from the North."
Link
Arctic nations step up cooperation on safety, oil
(Reuters) - Arctic nations agreed on Thursday to improve cooperation including on preventing oil spills as a thaw of ice and snow opens access to the remote region's rich mineral and petroleum resources.
The Arctic Council, comprising eight countries that surround the Arctic and representatives of indigenous Arctic peoples, signed a deal to split up search-and-rescue responsibilities as far as the North Pole in case of shipwrecks or plane crashes.
Officials said the pact, the first binding accord since the council was set up in 1996, could be a model for future deals on more contentious issues, including energy exploration in a region estimated to hold as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves.
"Arctic countries need enhanced cooperation on many future challenges in the Arctic, not least prevention, preparedness and response to oil spills," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said after the one-day meeting in Nuuk, Greenland.
Among oil majors eyeing the Arctic are Royal Dutch Shell Plc, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Norway's Statoil and Russia's state-controlled oil group Rosneft.
Environmental groups say Arctic nations should act faster to set up vital safeguards, ranging from shipping to fish stocks, as global warming causes a thaw that is threatening indigenous peoples' livelihoods and creatures such as polar bears.
"The lack of forceful action on oil spill prevention and integrated conservation planning is disheartening," said Lisa Speer, of the National Resources Defense Council in New York.
The ministers, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, pledged to study ways to prevent and handle future oil spills.
OIL EXPLORATION
"At a minimum what we can probably do is to aim at getting to a set of best practices that can be used in oil and gas exploration and production in the Arctic region," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said.
The Arctic Council, which comprises the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Denmark, has often been criticized as toothless. Denmark handles foreign affairs for Greenland.
Ministers said the search and rescue deal was a start.
"The Arctic Council is showing for the first time that it can agree a binding deal," Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told NRK public television. "This is very positive."
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill that followed the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon rig has raised fears for the Arctic, where officials say any similar accident could have catastrophic consequences due to the remote region's brutal climate and lack of preparation.
Clinton said there was no doubt that climate change was occurring and that humankind was to blame.
"The challenges in the region are not just environmental," she said. "We know that the decisions we make now are going to have long lasting ramifications."
Among other steps, the council urged the United Nations to work on a new "polar code" for ship designs in the Arctic and agreed to set up a permanent council secretariat in Tromsoe, Norway.
It also urged new steps to control short-lived pollutants such as soot and methane, which have a particularly strong impact on the Arctic.
Clinton and her Arctic colleagues got a personal view of climate change, taking a boat tour on a pristine Greenlandic fjord dotted with blue icebergs.
Puttering in a small touring boat shadowed by vessels carrying journalists and security, the foreign ministers stopped to view a threatened glacier -- a sign of retreating ice.
"I can see the changes, I don't need to measure them," said boat captain Henrik Hansen, who said rising temperatures were most noticeable in winter but now clear year-round.
Last week, an international study projected world sea levels would rise by between 3 and 5 feet by 2100 -- more than previously thought -- partly because of accelerating melt of Greenland and other Arctic ice.
Link
RMuller, this is absolutely classic from the side of the advocates.
It is wrong because it sucks... hmmm...
Aerosol nucleation induced by a high energy particle beam
National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark
Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen
National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark
Ulrik I. Uggerhøj
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark
Sean M. Paling
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Henrik Svensmark
National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark
We have studied sulfuric acid aerosol nucleation in an atmospheric pressure reaction chamber using a 580 MeV electron beam to ionize the volume of the reaction chamber. We find a clear contribution from ion-induced nucleation and consider this to be the first unambiguous observation of the ion-effect on aerosol nucleation using a particle beam under conditions that resemble the Earth%u2019s atmosphere. By comparison with ionization using a gamma source we further show that the nature of the ionizing particles is not important for the ion-induced component of the nucleation. This implies that inexpensive ionization sources %u2013 as opposed to expensive accelerator beams %u2013 can be used for investigations of ion-induced nucleation.
Received 8 February 2011; accepted 31 March 2011; published 12 May 2011.
Citation: Enghoff, M. B., J. O. P. Pedersen, U. I. Uggerhøj, S. M. Paling, and H. Svensmark (2011), Aerosol nucleation induced by a high energy particle beam, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L09805, doi:10.1029/2011GL047036.
Another thing about the 50 dollar light bulb. I found a neat article about it. As with all new prducts they always charge more money at first. Example. I remember in 1976 I bought a simple pocket calculator from Texas Instruments for about 90 bucks. That same calculator today you can get for less than 5 bucks. The same will happen for these light bulbs but it will be much faster. Read this article about them.
As Government Bans Regular Light Bulbs, LED Replacements Will Cost $50 Each
However, LED prices are coming down quickly. The DoE expects a 60-watt equivalent LED bulb to cost $10 by 2015, putting them within striking range of the price of a compact fluorescent bulb.
Don't be discouraged by what the NAYSAYERS would like for you to believe that these bulbs will stay at the current price.
Link
--Noted denialist and conservative radio host D. R. Tucker admits that warming is happening. "I was defeated by facts," he says.
--Utah Gov. John Huntsman--a staunch Republican--admits that warming is happening. "If 90 percent of the oncological community said something was causing cancer we'd listen to them," he says.
It's nice to know that the revamped efforts by scientists to wade through the smoke and mirrors put up by the denial industry are beginning to work. If nothing else, it tells us we're on the right track.
You might've picked a different person than Evans. First, the news of his "jump" to denialism isn't new, having been announced back in 2007 (and trumpeted since). Second, he's a degreed software engineer, and has never published a single paper about climate science. Third, he was never an alarmist scientist or ardent supporter of AGWT, instead simply working as a programmer in the Australian Greenhouse Office while he consulted with and wrote editorials for right-wing think tanks. But fourth--and most importantly--he moved away from the science, while the two gentlemen I mentioned moved toward it. That last is hugely important to remember, of course.
Morning Nea.
In my view, these articles show that you can not group Republicans into the "denialist" category, since, as seen here, there are some that believe in Man Made Global Warming. However, these are politicians, and serve very little worth in the Climate Debate.
2011
2010
LOL! Now the NAYSAYERS want to hear what climate scientist have to say about climate science! Imagine that.
I also believe that Senator Inhofe (R) used to believe in Global Warming, but is now a skeptic. But his opinion is worthless in the field of climate science, because he's a politician.
Really? PIOMAS shows the mass not just area.
PIOMAS is a model that does not use actual observations. It does not calcuate "mass" as you claim. Instead, it calculates volume, which is what PIPS does... for actual OBS.
The trend since 2007 is evident.
Lets see mass isn't volume? LOL
Yeah... mass isn't volume. A balloon could take up the same amount of volume as a brick, and their masses would be completely different.
Why the anger? I never said either one I mentioned was a climate scientist, and--far more importantly--neither one of them claimed to be. But Evans has claimed to be--which, quite demonstrably, he's not.
Please try to maintain more civil tone here.
I never said he didn't, did I? I merely noted that his switch to "skepticism" isn't new; in fact, he was posting articles for denialist websites back in 1999--a full 12 years ago. I also noted that he was neither a climate scientist nor rocket scientist as he has claimed at times, but does have a PhD in electrical engineering.
Again--and prove me wrong if you think you can--if there's even one degreed meteorologist working at TWC, that's one more than works at WUWT.
But, if there are degreed mets at TWC, they haven't used what they learned in school since, outside of the 2 PhDs I can think of. (But I must admit to not having graced the TV with TWC in at least 6 years).
IIRC, the marketing degrees are being well-used, there, though.
Most Republicans--that is, a majority--supported science until it ran up against their ideology and their desire to kowtow to the extremely rich fossil fuel industry.
At any rate, I disagree that the opinions of guys like Inhofe are worthless. They certainly don't prove or disprove any science theories, for sure. But until and unless science can be heard through the noise being made by the Big Oil-funded denial industry, little progress toward mitigation can or will be made. With that in mind, then, it's vitally important for the future of mankind that more and more people come to accept the science, as the two gentlemen I noted have. As a powerful man, then, Inhofe's opinion matters greatly. Unfortunately.
So is the trend since 1979. Remember: climate is about long-term averages.
I think for Christmas this year I'll send JB a book on climate basics. You know, something with small words and lots of colors. I don't know that he'd read it--science seems to bother him a lot--but we would all appreciate his having a little background in climate before spouting his everpresent nonsense.
Anyway, he's such a character. Temps at 14K are slightly higher than they were on this date in 2009, and higher than they were on this date in 2008. And, of course, the biggest deal is that global average SSTs are higher now than they were on this date in 2009, 2008, 2007, 2004, 2003...
But we are not talking about balloons and bricks here are we? Were we not talking about Arctic Ice and how much mass volume it has?
He cherry-picked by only showing those satellite temperature graphs with a downward trend in the last week, while avoiding showing those--namely the SST one--showing warmer than average temps. You may disagree on the "stupid definition" I used--which came from a dictionary, by the way--but that's exactly what cherry-picking is.
The fact of the matter is, cherry-picking is one of the most oft-used tools in the denialist bag. Can't blame them, really; without it they'd have no case at all...
Today, Dr. Kaku addresses a question posed by Bruce Vang: Are we ever going to develop a machine that can control the weather somewhat?
Let's see if DR. Kaku addresses my idea of using Gulfstream Kinetic Energy to control the weather.
Link
The increase in SH ice can be attributed to ozone depletion due to Galactic Cosmic Rays, but I believe that the reason for this inverse relationship, are the oceanic oscillations (PDO, AMO.)
It was an example to show that you can not compare something's volume to something's mass. They are two totally different things. Mass is measured in "grams."
But it is also about the climatic indicators. 2007 is when the PDO turned negative... and we note an increase in Sea Ice Area since then...
Joe Bastardi from weatherbell.com
I see what you mean. When I was refering to Inhofe's ideas being useless, I was refering for being useless for scientific theories. However, their opinions do matter, I agree, since they are important members of the house.
Or ounces,tons or pounds.
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