I always find it interesting as to why some stories get traction in the mainstream media and why some don’t. In online science discussions, the fate of this years summer sea ice has been the focus of a significant betting pool, a test of expert prediction skills, and a week-by-week (almost) running commentary. However, none of these efforts made it on to the Today program. Instead, a rather casual article in the Independent showed the latest thickness data and that quoted Mark Serreze as saying that the area around the North Pole had 50/50 odds of being completely ice free this summer, has taken off across the media.
The headline on the piece “Exclusive: no ice at the North Pole” got the implied tense wrong, and I’m not sure that you can talk about a forecast as evidence (second heading), but still, the basis of the story is sound (Update: the headline was subsequently changed to the more accurate “Scientists warn that there may be no ice at North Pole this summer”). The key issue is that since last year’s dramatic summer ice anomaly, the winter ice that formed in that newly opened water is relatively thin (around 1 meter), compared to multi-year ice (3 meters or so). This new ice formed quite close to the Pole, and with the prevailing winds and currents (which push ice from Siberia towards Greenland) is now over the Pole itself. Given that only 30% of first year ice survives the summer, the chances that there will be significant open water at the pole itself is high.
The actuality will depend on the winds and the vagaries of Arctic weather – but it certainly bears watching. Ironically, you will be able to see what happens only if it doesn’t happen (from these web cams near the North Pole station).
This is very different from the notoriously over-excited story in the New York Times back in August 2000. In that case, the report was of the presence of some open water at the pole – which as the correction stated, is not that uncommon as ice floes and leads interact. What is being discussed here is large expanses of almost completely ice-free water. That would indeed be unprecedented since we’ve been tracking it.
So why do stories about an geographically special, but climatically unimportant, single point traditionally associated with a christianized pagan gift-giving festival garner more attention than long term statistics concerning ill-defined regions of the planet where very few people live?
I don’t really need to answer that, do I?
Re # 539 David Cooke:
He’s not merely suggesting it, he is stating it as fact – it is fundamental chemistry.
This makes no sense – as atmospheric CO2 partial pressure rises, the CO2 partial pressure in the ocean surface waters also rises, creating more carbonic acid – not less. But, as Chris also explained, that carbonic acid dissociates into H+ and bicarbonate. There is virtually no undissociated carbonic acid in natural waters, never has been, never will be. What has been decreasing with ocean acidification is the concentration of carbonate, as ocean pH shifts away from the pK’ of the HCO3-/CO3= reaction and closer to the dissolved CO2/HCO3- reaction.
Re your post in # 548:
I’m afraid this pretty much sums up your understanding of carbonate chemistry in aqueous solutions. Stop grasping at straws (and strawmen) and learn the basic chemistry before you try to argue that marine chemists, chemical oceanographers, marine microbiologists, et al are missing something fundamental.
Gavin,
Thanks for your response.
It should be pointed out that single lines from newspaper articles are what get remembered by policy makers and journalists.
The claim in The Independent that the North Pole has never been ice free before has propagated all over the Internet and major news sources, and the inconspicuous withdrawal of that text from the article has gone unnoticed. The damage was done and is irreversible.
Similarly, the vast majority of people I talk to believe that both poles are warming and melting at an unprecedented rate. Where did that that impression come from? I suspect that if you took a poll of Congressmen, MPs, journalists or schoolchildren you would get the same response.
Words matter, and it is very important that scientists be careful with their public statements.
Re # 548 David Cooke:
OK, maybe on very localized scales (e.g., at the sediment-water interface in, say, a hypoxic lagoon). But, while organic (e.g., lactic or acetic) and inorganic (e.g., sulfuric) acids may be produced during bacterial decomposition, they are also consumed by other bacteria. You really need to read up on the marine chemistry, paying particular attention to the carbon, sulfur, phosphorus, and nitrogen cycles. There is no reason to postulate unidentified acids as a significant contributor to ocean acidification on a world-wide scale. (Refer to the RC thread, More PR Related Confusion, for a discussion of Occam’s Razor).
The phrase “the Arctic has reached a tipping point” evokes some very strong imagery. Is it justified? I don’t see it.
Capturing particulates from coal fired power plants (as is done in the US) and eliminating Siberian gas flaring would probably make a huge difference in Arctic melt and temperature profiles.
Shorter David Cooke: ‘There has to be some explanation other than increasing CO2, here’s some word salad, please give me references to support my notion something here might suggest a better explanation.’
Are you determined that ocean pH change must be explainable by something other than increasing CO2, and willing to believe anything but fossil fuel use?
Steven Goddard @ 552:
That claim is true. The North Pole has never been ice free before. There is a huge difference between a lead and open ocean, and nobody in his right mind would describe a pole with a small fraction of open water between massive floes as being “ice free”. If the article created an impression in the public mind that the changes in arctic sea ice are unprecedented and worrying, then that is a good thing. They are.
In other words, what damage?
Why do you continue to grasp at straws after you’ve been shown several times over that you misunderstand the scientists you quote and that their work does not support your claims?
You’re claiming that journalists shouldn’t do their homework? Just copy each other no matter how wrong they might be?
You’re right about yourself, I’m sure, but wrong about policy makers, and wrong about many hard-working, responsible journalists who I’m sure will cringe upon reading your statement (Mark York around?)
Steven, please tell us why dumping hundreds of gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere over a geologically brief time would not alter the climate.
Steven, what about this graph of Arctic sea ice does not say “tipping point” to you?
Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Anomaly
Steven Goddard, let’s take stock:
1)Do you dispute that CO2 is a greenhouse gas?
2)Do you dispute that it’s responsible for about 20-25% of the greenhouse effect?
3)Do you dispute that human activities have been responsible for increasing CO2 from roughly 280 ppmv ot 385 ppmv?
4)Do you dispute that the climate is warming?
Does anybody have a site that shows the current snow depth on the arctic ice. I have seen plenty of maps of snow depth over land, but none over the arctic ice ?
Im not even sure if we have the satelite technology to differentiate snow on ice as we do for snow on ground.
I was wondering if the delay of the rapid melt (as compared to 2007) may have been due to excessive snow cover.
Again reading myths by RC commentator, well , thank goodness for facts.
“There is little or no empirical evidence that the Arctic is behaving any differently than during the last warm period in the 1940s. Temperatures are no higher across most of the Arctic than they were 70 years ago.”
In the past, i.e. about before 10 years ago, achieving a trip through the NW passage was tricky.
Ordinary ships, not the big type icebreakers, were lucky to make it through. Even the famous USS
Manhattan (a tanker ice breaker) needed some help back in the seventies. Now the 40’s
Ummm not so sure about any extensive warm period then. You have a famous unfortunately to Mr. Goddard, only in Canada, little ship, the St-Roch.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/arcticexpedition/larsenexpeditions
Made the NW passage twice in the 40’s, always froth with difficulties, always taking months or years to do so, as with Amundsen back in the early 1900’s. Soon this passage can be made in a week or less, as with last summer, as with 4 or 5 years ago, when an Ice breaker Captain did the passage without seeing “ANY” ice…
The St-Roch made it in the early 40’s, how about the latter 40’s?
Resolute Weather station on Cornwallis Island Canada was created reluctantly as a second choice; it should have been further West; the Winter Harbour weather station, on Melville Island. Resolute was a joint US/Canada project, started with a convoy from Boston USA, in 1947, with Icebreaker escort. Perhaps there was a chap like Goddard then, who thought it was warmer in the Arctic, and there would be no difficulties in reaching Melville Island. However, the ice was so dense past Barrow Strait. the convoy didn’t have a chance. Dumped their entire load in Resolute Bay, and the rest is history.
So for Mr. Goddard. to speak of similarities between now an then, is, hate to say it, pure “shooting in the dark”. Sorry, most people Up North, also know that this recent warming is unprecedented in memory. I think of people like Mr Goddard, as politically motivated fairy tale spinners, is good to have their weaving exposed.
#544
Steven
Photos are great, but as Gavin and I mentioned earlier, glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets are known to get ‘dirty’. This is due, both to the influence of airborne dust and aerosol transported for, sometimes, thousands of miles and also to perfectly natural subglacial and ice marginal erosion processes.
Whilst I accept that conditions in Iceland are slightly different from on the GIS (in that sub-glacial and sub-air volcanic eruptions regularly put vast amounts of ash and tephra underneath, into and onto the glacier surfaces), you would not believe how ‘dirty’ the snouts of that country’s outlet glaciers get in summer.
Which brings us to the fundamental point:
Considering the tonnage of glacial till, continental ‘dust’ and marine aerosol which is *naturally* transported onto these ice masses every year…does your attribution of ‘soot’ as being the principal driver of temperature rise in these areas take full account of whether such inputs are actually producing an EXTRA forcing, ontop of the naturally occurring processes…or are their effects merely being subsumed into the noise??
I don’t know…do you?
Re # 540 Rod B:
Yes, “dissolved CO2” concentration usually refers to the sum of the dissolved gas and carbonic acid, the latter being so minimal as to safely ignore it in most calculations, e.g., when using Henry’s Law to calculate dissolved CO2 concentration based on the CO2 partial pressure and CO2 solubility coefficient. In over 30 years of reading about CO2 in water, I’ve never encountered a case (i.e., in a research paper or textbook) in which the actual concentration of undissociated carbonic acid was considered to be important.
Re #552
Steven Goddard
How true your statement is:
Scientists go to a lot of trouble to be clear and careful about the meaning of their words. Of course in an interview one doesn’t have the luxury of careful editing and so one needs to accord a certain latitude to the things that scientists say in interviews. However, if there is any confusion or misunderstanding, or clarification is required, then it is straightforward to seek this from the scientist. After all we should be interested in what scientists mean rather than what we might hope we can insinuate their words to mean…
The problem lies with rather more blatant misrepresentation of their words and their work. However carefully a scientist might formulate his/her thoughts into text, he/she is helpless in the face of mendacious or fradulent false precis.
So I find that your fine sentiments that “words matter” rather contradicted by your misuse of Hansen’s and Nazarenko’s words in their 2004 Proc. Ntl. Acad. Sci. paper (see your post #432 and my post #499). After all I’m sure that Hansen and Nazarenko considered their text carefully so as clearly to express their meaning…”words matter”….
…so one wonders whether you consider that “words matter” at all!
Anyway, for a reminder about the way that scientists words can be misrepresented, here’s what you asserted that Hansen and Nazarenko said:
Steven Goddard (post #432):
…and here’s what Hansen and Nazarenko actually stated (putting back the parts of the sentences you omitted, with your “selection” in italic):
James Hansen and Larissa Nazarenko (2004) “Soot climate forcing via snow and ice albedos” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101, 423-428
words matter??
(Sigh!)
dhogaza, Barton, Ray, et al, with apologies to Gavin, I’ll be terse.
1) Of course being an established and accepted science doesn’t mean it has discovered all there is to find. (Though that was the view of long established and accepted Physics around the turn of the century.)
2) Of course you do not need a massive number of people in the field for it to be l-e&a. Centuries back culture was too short on money to support such. But a goodly percentage of those in the field at a time need to be aware and supportive. This was virtually nil with the outlying GHG effort of the 19th century plus.
3) Just because the outliers later prove to be maybe correct does not per se make it a l-e&a science at the time. This is the argument most of you guys are counting on, but it just ain’t so. (Though Barton does say, “…the existence of the greenhouse effect has been accepted [my emphasis] since the early 19th century…” which has zero historical evidence to back it up. Most/all of the potential acceptors thought it was crazy.) You might check out http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
4) I really no longer care (or like everyone else, getting tired… ;-) ) ….except that the guys whose science I respect and learn from are looking off the wagon in this case.
ps to BPL (547) I thought I was echoing your insult, but turned out I was wrong and misreading the post. Sorry.
[Response: This conversation is over. – gavin]
Chuck (551) this is a real Sandbox-1 question, but, a clarification ….of maybe a nit:
Isn’t carbonic acid dissociated H2CO3? If it is carbonic acid before dissociation, as your post says, why do they call it “acid”?
552 Steven Goddard:
“The claim in The Independent that the North Pole has never been ice free before has propagated all over the Internet and major news sources, and the inconspicuous withdrawal of that text from the article has gone unnoticed. The damage was done and is irreversible.”
On the contrary. The meme infecting the Internet is that the North Pole has been ice-free in the past. The favorite supporting argument for this (besides silly stories about people reaching a point over 500 miles distant from the Pole before being thwarted by ice) is a photograph of submarines near the Pole. I’d suggest that this sort of false conclusion helps build what I call “cultural dementia”, hallucinations on a mass scale.
In the manner he ascribes to Dr. Hansen, Steven implies we’ve already seen an “ice free” North Pole, way back when. In one of Steven’s articles he shows a photograph of 3 submarines, at the North Pole, circa 1987.
What’s truly amazing about this “evidence” is how it demonstrates the susceptibility of the gullible to simple suggestion. Read the words, let your eyes lie to you.
How about some facts?.
A threesome of subs first visited the North Pole in 1986, even earlier than 1987. Good news, more DenialSpice on the DenialChow, right?
Nope. Here’s are the germane parts of the 1986 story as it happened, as covered in the press and related by Dolphins-wearing personnel on the scene:
“Three attack submarines navigated under the ice to surface at the North Pole last spring in the most ambitious expedition mounted until that time.
The captain of one of the submarines on this year’s voyage, Comdr. Stephen A. Johnson, said in an interview after returning to home port here that his vessel, the 4,600-ton nuclear-powered Ray, cracked through a thin sheet of ice first. Then came her sister craft, the Hawkbill, and finally the Archerfish.
[Thin ice! Hold on a minute…]
…
Over the next 10 hours, sailors clambered out to take pictures as others stood guard with rifles to scare off polar bears.
[The polar bears were either good swimmers, or there was something to walk upon, presumably leading to somewhere else where the main supply of bears comes from.]
… the constantly moving ice is broken by stretches of ice only a couple of feet thick and occasionally by a patch of open water. It is through those ice holes that submarines surface.
[What we knew.]
…
Surfacing through the ice caused the most tension in the crew. First came a search for an ice hold. Sonar was some help in detecting the thickness of the ice, but Commander Johnson said, ”The periscope and a seaman’s eye were the best tools we had for finding friendly ice.”
[Searching for an opening. Not something necessary in “ice-free” conditions.]
With the submarine moving slowly, the captain turned the periscope up to look for cracks and fresh ice, which is white, rather than old ice, which is gray. When he found an ice hold, he positioned the ship. ”Instead of sliding up the way you do in open water,” he explained, ”you come straight up.”
”Once you decide to go,” the captain says, ”you lower the periscope and go blind for a while. It’s a tense moment. Sometimes, when the ice is thin, you crack it and slip right through. At other times, you bump up through thicker ice and then stop, like an elevator stopping. If you don’t go right through, you listen for the ice cracking, like ice cracking in a glass when you pour a drink on it.”
[In “open ocean” the submarine can generally be expected to surface without grind to a halt.]
Clearly, knowing that the submarine might not be able to surface through the ice in an emergency had a pervasive effect. For the captain, the sense of loneliness is even stronger than in the open sea. ”
New York Times, December 16 1985
Clearly not just a routine surfacing in “open water at the North Pole.”
It’s also worth noting that dwell time on the surface was controlled by the need to prevent the submarines from being trapped or crushed by subsequent movement of ice.
Here’s another photo helping to put the typical 1980s submarine scene into perspective, in case the endless vista of ice the most popular photo shows is not enough. From the 1986 visit:
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0866623.jpg
Things were not any better ’87, either.
Here are some photos. What do your eyes tell you?
SSN-676 Billfish sail, protuding from beneath a vast slab of white stuff known as “ice”:
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/tn/0867605.gif
Another perspective of the scene Steven provided. Notice the endless fields of white stuff known as “ice” extending into the distance:
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/tn/0866403.gif
According to Steven’s interpretation, this last photo shows sailors from Billfish chopping liquid water away from the bow of their craft:
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/tn/0867611.gif
Silly sailors. They could just scoop all that open water up in teacups and throw it aside, right?
As they say, a picture tells a thousand words. If you actually look at it and ponder what it shows, as opposed to what you’ve been told it shows, that is.
Ray (561) and Steve, Can I play??
My answers:
1)No, I understand and accept the basic theory of greenhouse gases, and that CO2 is one.
2) I have little doubt that CO2 is responsible for 20-25% of the historical greenhouse effect. I do have doubts that this is accurate for marginal increases. But I am not where I can “dispute” it.
3) I would agree that part, maybe most, of the atmospheric CO2 increase is anthropocentric. I doubt that all is, though again I’m not solid enough to actually dispute it.
4) I don’t necessarily dispute the climate is warming but I’m not comfortable with validity of the measurements to affirm its accuracy.
Re #537
Rod,
I gave two specific examples of the very considerable knowledge about the Earth’s atmosphere and greenhouse effect in the mid-late 19th century. You’re now suggesting that this doesn’t support the (rather obvious) conclusion that climate/earth/atmospheric science has been a rather long-standing endeavour…after all (you say) Tyndall and Arrhenius were “two lonely guys”..
..that’s silly though…. It’s an argument from ignorance isn’t it?. You can’t think of the long history of this science and therefore from your perspective there ain’t one. No doubt if I provide another 10 names of climate scientists working in the 19th /early 20th century, you’ll assert – “just 10 lonely guys” (the Monty Python “what did the Romans ever do for us” ploy!).
I had a brief look at the contents of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 1776-1876. There is a tidy scattering of studies of atmosphere, greenhouse gas absorption, solar effects on atmospheric and ocean heating, ocean science and so on (I’ve put a tiny selection at the bottom of the post!). As well as the Royal Society in London, there were equivalent learned societies in continental Europe in which scientists were publishing climate-related observations…there was the British Association, the Royal Institution and the Royal Meteorological Society (begun in 1850’s with the aims:
Tyndall and Arrhenius didn’t work either in isolation, nor did their ideas pop perfectly formed from their minds. They debated, corresponded and read the works of previous and contemporary scientists (just like we do!)…Sau-ssure, Fourier, Pouillet, Chamberlin and so on, as well as the dozens of scientists whose climate-related work is sampled in the Phil. Trans. of the Royal Society…they weren’t “two lonely guys”!
And it should be obvious that an interest in climate has been of profound importance in the entire history of mankind… this was formulated into a “modern”-style scientific enterprise with special-ised societies, journals and government funding alread in the 19th century, especially under British, German and French influence. One could cite countless examples. For example the Indian Meteorolological Department was founded under British auspices already in 1875. The importance of understanding the climate in the Indian/Australian/East African and Pacific regions was already recognisied in relation to the monsoon and the requirements for feeding a large Indian population, and one of the first uses of the new telegraph system set up in the 1870’s, for example by Charles Todd in Australia, was to send information about temperatures, rainfall and barometric pressures back to India where they were collated (initially under Henry Blandford and later by Gilbert Walker).
Already in the early 1920’s the “see-saw” nature of atmospheric pressure oscillations were recognised as important drivers of local microclimates. In the early 1920’s Walker had recognised and named the North Atlantic Oscillation, the North Pacific Oscillation and the Southern Oscillation. So one could hardly presume to suggest that the recognition of the central importance of these atmospheric/ocean circulations doesn’t have a long history of study.
…and so on…
It’s a modern conceit to presume that we are uniquely sophisticated and learned in our contemporary knowledge. However a litle bit of exploration invariably yields a rather awe-inspiring insight into the abilities and sophistication of earlier times in relation to scientific endeavour. Going back to poor old “lonely” John Tyndall, and Svante Arrhenius, it’s extraordinary that these scientists and their contemporaries knew that atmospheric CO2 is a greenhouse gas…that the Earth’s temperature responds linearly to logarithmic changes in atmospheric CO2 content, and that they could make a reasonable estimate of the warming effect…
…and yet more than 100 years later, a concerted effort is underway in some quarters to pretend that increased CO2 concentrations don’t actually cause the earth to warm…..go figure!
Here’s a few papers from the 19th century issues of the Philosophical Transactionsof the Royal Society (enjoy!):
On the Constitution of the Atmosphere
Issue Volume 116 – 1826
Author John Dalton
On the Effect of the Pressure of the Atmosphere on the Mean Level of the Ocean
Issue Volume 144 – 1854
Author James Clark Ross
On the Finite Extent of the Atmosphere
Issue Volume 112 – 1822
Author William Hyde Wollaston
The Bakerian Lecture: On the Transparency of the Atmosphere and the Law of Extinction of the Solar Rays in Passing through It
Issue Volume 132 – 1842
Author James D. Forbes
The Winds of Northern India, in Relation to the Temperature and Vapour-Constituent of the Atmosphere
Issue Volume 164 – 1874
Author Henry F. Blanford
On the Composition of Sea-Water in the Different Parts of the Ocean
Issue Volume 155 – 1865
Author Georg Forchhammer
On the Specific Gravity, and Temperature of Sea Waters, in Different Parts of the Ocean, and in Particular Seas; With Some Account of Their Saline Contents
Issue Volume 109 – 1819
Author Alexander Marcet
Experiments on the Mechanical Expansion of Air, Explaining the Cause of the Great Degree of Cold on the Summits of High Mountains, the Sudden Condensation of Aerial Vapour, and of the Perpetual Mutability of Atmospheric Heat. By Erasmus Darwin, M. D. F. R. S.; Communicated by the Right Honourable Charles Greville, F. R. S.
Issue Volume 78 – 1788
On the Changes Produced in Atmospheric Air, and Oxygen Gas, by Respiration
Issue Volume 98 – 1808
Authors W Allen and W. H. Pepys
(and some classics!)
Tyndall, John (1861). “On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours…” Philosophical Magazine ser. 4, 22: 169-94, 273-85.
Tyndall, John (1863). “On Radiation through the Earth’s Atmosphere.” Philosophical Magazine ser. 4, 25: 200-206.
Arrhenius, Svante (1896). “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground.” Philosophical Magazine 41: 237-76.
Chuck, Thanks
Re 568 Rod B
No, carbonic acid (acid = proton donor) is the uncharged form H2CO3- it dissociates into H+ and HCO3 (bicarbonate, the base anion). Refer to Chris’ posts on this.
The submarines sent to try surfacing at the North Pole were reinforced specifically for these operations:
http://www.google.com/search?q=submarine+reinforced+sail+%22north+pole%22+break+ice
A shot from the movie “Ice Station Zebra” depicting a submarine attempting to break through.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cb/Ef72.jpg
Re #549:
Summer temperatures in northern Greenland aren’t much lower than in southern Greenland. The difference is less than 1 °C. Substantial melt also takes place in the north.
This year, the south has been colder than the north (but still above normal) and most of the visible melting area in MODIS pictures is located in the north east. It’s not that unusual, but frequency is increasing.
To compare: Temperatures of the southern half (46% of total area) and whole Greenland.
Re #562:
GDAS, GFS and the reanalyses have water equivalent of snow over sea ice. You can make plots here (the variable is named “WEASDsfc”). But that may be just modelled data. Currently, the GDAS/GFS values are zero for most of the Arctic Ocean.
I’ll be darn, Ice once at the North Pole has melted enough to have small areas of open water,
this was new ice, open water will probably appear and disappear again:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/arctic.jpg
Cant see it on Quicksat, but there appears to be huge areas of thinner ice, North of Alaska and Russia
http://manati.orbit.nesdis.noaa.gov/ice_image21/D08192.NHEAVEH.GIF
There seems to be no surprises in store with respect to extent, it should rival 07 soon…
[edit]
[Response: Enough. Repeating yourself ad nauseum and trolling for attention is not interesting. – gavin]
Note from a page about those pictures of submarines surfaced at the North Pole here. He’s now a fiction writer; this is from his notes and photographs page from submarine service.
http://www.oficeandsteel.com/gall01.htm
A brief excerpt follows; see original for full text and pictures.
….
USS RAY SSN 653 at the North Pole. Look at the picture, came pretty close huh? The ice that day was pretty thin, about two feet thick. As you can see the fair water planes are in the “under ice” position. We were the first to surface that day. We were waiting on the USS ARCHERFISH, and USS HAWKBILL to come up near us. Actually this was the fourth time we had surfaced through the ice. Each time was an adventure on its own!
The first thing you do is find a nice thin place in the ice, (at least you hope its thin). … if you go to fast, you will slam the ice and break something, or worse case the boat could roll under the ice, the reactor would scram, and you’d be in a very bad position. If you go too slow the boat will not enough force to punch through, which means you go back down and try again.
….
About an hour after this picture was taken CBS news in a hired plane flew over to get some shots of this historic event. I wonder to this day how they edited out most of the crews names written in yellow snow. …
…
A nice picture of USS ARCHERFISH after she had surfaced near us. In the foreground you get an idea of the thickness of the ice. Five days before ARCHERFISH had a bad experience. She had surfaced near one of the scientific ice camps run by some university. A snowmobile carrying two members of the ice camp were riding to meet the boat, when the ice shifted, and suddenly opened just as the snowmobile passed over. All they heard was a splash and a scream, and the ice closed back over them. There are a million ways to die in the ice….
Re #577
Wayne, I think Quikscat loses some of its discrimination at this time of year with the surface melt water,
ASMR-E agrees with the CT data:
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/arctic_AMSRE_nic.png
The progression of papers on the Arctic soot issue looked to me as if there’s a bit of planning behind it. I checked to see if another paper is out, and sure enough here’s Quinn et al (2008) (abstract pasted below). Interestingly, there’s a note at the end of the paper that says in part; “In January and November of 2007, workshops on the impacts of short-lived pollutants on Arctic climate were convened with sponsorship by NASA, CATF, NILU, IGAC and CPC.”
So it looks to me as if an eminent climate scientist (maybe… Jim Hansen?) figured out a few years ago that this was important to look at and that various funding agencies and scientists then got involved. It’s beyond ironic and well into bizarre that some people are using these research results to criticize Hansen, but I suppose he’s used to it by now.
——————————
Short-lived pollutants in the Arctic: their climate impact and
possible mitigation strategies
Several short-lived pollutants known to impact
Arctic climate may be contributing to the accelerated rates
of warming observed in this region relative to the global
annually averaged temperature increase. Here, we present
a summary of the short-lived pollutants that impact Arctic
climate including methane, tropospheric ozone, and tropospheric
aerosols. For each pollutant, we provide a description
of the major sources and the mechanism of forcing. We
also provide the first seasonally averaged forcing and corresponding
temperature response estimates focused specifically
on the Arctic. The calculations indicate that the forcings
due to black carbon, methane, and tropospheric ozone
lead to a positive surface temperature response indicating the
need to reduce emissions of these species within and outside
the Arctic. Additional aerosol species may also lead to surface
warming if the aerosol is coincident with thin, low lying
clouds. We suggest strategies for reducing the warming
based on current knowledge and discuss directions for future
research to address the large remaining uncertainties.
A special thanks to Clarence for all those useful links.
#579 Hank Roberts
Interesting description of three submarines above, but not the same subs or year. One of the three subs in the 1987 picture was British, and the adventure you quote was three American subs after Desert Storm in 1991.
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08664.htm [edit- better source]
Open water at the North pole in July 1987
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=07&fd=09&fy=1987&sm=07&sd=11&sy=2008
[Response: The satellites don’t see right at the pole, but there does look to be some kind of polynya near by for a couple of days there. Unfortunately, the data for the week before are missing. – gavin]
Phil,
That’s it then, the flow of ice should change soon, a High pressure is at the right place to make that big spot of loose ice near the Pole, head there.
http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/data/analysis/jac18_100.gif
The winds are right and some buoy drifts are looking a little more “normal”
Rod #570
So what are you arguing about? You don’t agree to the measurements others made, but accept the ones you have. So produce a paper with your measurements and why they are more right.
wayne @ 585: that chart shows an anticyclone, 1031mb, centred at about 155W, 79N. Is this the one you mean? It should generate clockwise winds pushing the Canadian coastal ice down towards the Beaufort Sea, and bringing the Siberian coastal ice towards the pole. Is the the effect you mean? There’s a northerly force 2 on Prince Patrick.
The chart also shows temperatures well above freezing all over the Canadian Arctic. 12 degrees at Resolute and on Prince Patrick Island. 13 degrees on Banks Island and in the far north of Baffin Island. 5 and 7 degrees on Ellesmere. 6 on Ellef Ringnes. Does this agree with what you’re experiencing? Maybe it’s time to adjust my guess over at Rabett Run.
And it shows temperatures of 1-3 degrees over the Arctic Ocean. Not a single temperature below freezing over water. Coastal Greenland has -6 (inland from Nares strait) and -1 (Lincoln Sea). The only real cold on that chart is in central Greenland (-13, -16).
> three subs … 1987 picture
Look up the 1987 pictures –here is one place they are described:
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08676.htm
You can find each one described with a caption. They describe the surroundings as walkable:
” U.S. and British sailors explore the Arctic ice cap while conducting the first U.S./British coordinated surfacing at the North Pole. The ships are, left to right: the nuclear-powered attack submarine Sea Devil (SSN-664), the fleet submarine HMS Superb (S-109), and the nuclear-powered attack submarine Billfish (SSN-676), 18 May 1987.”
Official U.S. Navy Photograph # DN-ST-87-09888
More useful than anecdotes:
http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g01360_upward_looking_sonar/index.html
The inimitable John Daly, whose pages have long outlived him, beat this subject half to death long ago; most of the current denial PR stuff seems copied from his pages.
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm
Rod, it sounds like you’ve almost moved out of the “skeptic” camp and are heading for the climate science camp. Let me be the first to welcome you!
Moderator, I have no problem with you appending what you consider to be a another source, but why remove the link I provided – which was a US Navy photo and confirmed my point?
[Response: The site it came from is full of disinformation and we try not to further confuse the issues. Just trying to be helpful… – gavin]
Oleg, original images from many years including the recent blogosphere favorite are here:
https://www.csds5.navy.mil/asl/Submarines.htm
Note that meltwater on top looks like open water, but the submarines were searching for the thinnest ice they could find to punch up through. From what I read of the descriptions at the cite noted earlier, all three came up through ice; two came up through ice with some meltwater on top.
The root page actually has some wonderful material:
https://www.csds5.navy.mil/asl/
(Firefox flags this as having an invalid security certificate, check carefully to make sure you’re getting a legitimate page)
Submarine Development Squadron FIVE
Detachment ARCTIC SUBMARINE LABORATORY
including: Sample of Under-Ice Video
https://www.csds5.navy.mil/asl/SRVSVideo.htm
[Response: Good find! I was wondering where the original was. – gavin]
Jim Galasyn,
Shhhh!!! You’ll scare him!
Nick #587, that is right, a high pressure like that has powerful influence in many ways, the sunshine is obvious, but now its winds are in league with the Ocean current, the 2 combined move a lot of ice, which is loose right now, decompressing the jam on the Russian side of the Pole will now expose the thin ice there, and create more and more open water in that sector. As expected there is a growing temperature anomaly at about the center of this High Pressure system:
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_01b.rnl.html
The archipelago is equally warm.
#584, Oleg, Niet, that wasn’t there, I studied pictures of that time, 1987 was the last mean cold year for the ice, look at Lancaster Sound, or see how jam pack the NW passage was with rock solid ice.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/19870711.png
This hole looks like a missing piece or picture filled with water, these kind of openings of ice, so large and widespread don’t disappear in a day.
Jim (589), Thanks, but don’t stick your hand out too fast. I’m still solidly in the skeptic group. But I’m a bit more discriminant than maybe other skeptics in that 1) I don’t dispute the basic science; 2) my skepticism falls in just a few specific areas; 3) In the back of my mind I’m aware that I might be all wrong, which I think keeps be out of the ad hominem denier group. For what it’s worth I don’t hide my areas of doubt but neither do I vociferously express them as I feel I need to improve my understanding a bit more before I argue too loudly.
My one little kernel of angst is that by the time I prove myself wrong it might be too late! It’s in part for that reason that I fully agree with some others here that we ought to be moving as fast as we can (but without undue disruption — as some others are willing, even hoping ;-) to have) to downsize our use of fossil fuels. I think we’re behind in planning for the possible gradual demise in the economic availability of fossil fuels. Will it be available to us at an economical viable cost? Will if be available at all? Will the indirect costs mess us (USA) up? (This refers to the import costs, as T. Boone Pickens says, our imports of fossil fuel is by far the greatest continuing transfer of wealth in history.) If solving the fossil fuel availability problem also buys some insurance against global warming, my skepticism aside, that’s fine.
I’m still a skeptic. But thanks anyway.
Ray, I have no fear! I suppose, per Dean Martin, this is why I get beat up a lot :-P
Rod,
Global warming is a worldwide problem, not just something for that may affect the US. Being worldwide it will affect the US, and already is. But it will only be solved if all nations including the US, China and India sign up. Your president Bush has set such a bad example, it is unlikely that Russia, China and India will sign up now. They now ask “Will it be available to us at an economical viable cost? Will if be available at all? Will the indirect costs mess us up?
George W. Bush said ‘Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter’ He could have stopped that. But he cannot stop The ‘world’s worst polluter’ :-(
Cheers, Alastair.
I am curious as to whether it is correct, that the current scientifically accepted Climate Models, can explain and replicate the cooling and CO2 reduction from the geological time when the Earth was much warmer with hugely more CO2 in the atmosphere?
[Response: What are you really asking? If CO2 reduces, it will cool. Why CO2 reduced over geological timescales is a function of plate tectonics, weathering and very long term changes in volcanism – continental drift is not generally included in standard climate models. – gavin]
In re 594:
Since it sounds like you’ve bought my argument, you should be aware that I am 100% in agreement with the science. I just happen to think that long before we manage to get to 2050 or whenever and reach all sorts of “tipping points”, we’ll have long since passed through severe economic hardship and probably a few global wars over food and/or fuel.
FurryCatHerder, I am aware of your position on the science and did not intend to imply otherwise, just because I have some GW science skepticism.
The good news is, it appears that 2008 is falling behind last year’s Arctic ice melt, at least so far. Let’s hope this positive trend continues.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png