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Cold Spring Linked To Dramatic Sea Ice Loss
hrvatska writes "An article at Weather Underground reports that researchers have linked large snowstorms and cold spring weather across Britain and large parts of Europe and North America to the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice. It is thought that the Arctic ice loss adds heat to the ocean and atmosphere, which shifts the position of the jet stream, allowing cold air from the Arctic to plunge much further south. Researchers expect that a warming Arctic ocean will drive more extreme weather in North America and Europe (abstract)."
Yep. Global warming is freezing our asses off...
Ummm... you can walk from Brooklyn to Queens in the summertime without too much trouble...
not over the water you can't
There's a reason most scientists use the more accurate term climate change.
Shifting weather patterns make perfect sense. Us being 6 billion people strong and contributing to it makes sense. What these scientist are saying on a month to month basis doesn't... I believe it's called junk science.
Fundamentally, a stable climate is an illusion of the "short now". We think there's such a thing as "normal" temps because we just don't live very long, compared to a planet.
Even on a larger scale, the past 10,000 years have been an amazing anomaly, with a relatively stable climate not seen anywhere else in the data (and it's probably no coincidence that mankind happened to emerge technologically during this rare stable-ish window).
The simple truth about all this Climate Change debate? You don't have an informed opinion either way until you've really looked at the Vostok ice core data. Study the raw data for the past several 100k years yourself - you're intuition is no guide at all for how the climate normally behaves over time.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Where I live, it's cold right now. That means that annual global average temperature must be colder than it was last year.
(Of course, this is silly "logic", but that's what most Americans in particular tend to be thinking)
I am officially gone from
Consistent deviations from long established and statistically significant patterns are an indicator to people with a modest amount of rational scientific understanding that the climate system is increasingly getting out of whack. What's so hard to comprehend about that?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
So, do you think 1. Carbon doesn't absorb heat 2. Carbon in the atmosphere can't, for some reason, insulate the earth, trapping more heat 3. Combustion engines do not put out carbon 4. Burning of fossil fuels aren't significantly increasing carbon levels in the atmosphere 5. The carbon is getting taken out of the atmosphere at an increased level that corresponds to our increase in emissions or 6. That God or some higher power won't let the world change or 7. That using logic is a waste of time?
Honestly, I can't see many alternative hypotheses here that aren't ignoring reality. All arguments against it seem to be centered around "Nuh UH! It's NOT warming!" but I haven't really heard much talk about how that could not be the case. Carbon absorbs more heat and we're increasing the carbon doesn't seem to be under dispute. Being skeptical is good, but you don't get to reject hypotheses if you have no other way to explain the data.
Science has an amazing way of reinforcing crazy stupid by presenting contradicting, independently verifiable facts
I suppose you mean seemingly contradictory, when viewed on a superficial level without real understanding of the matter?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
There's a skew factor set that's not a part of the recent rather nicely oscillating glacial cycle or that wasn't a part of the past weather extremes. I'd say normal weathers are those which happen in an environment without the excessive human energy input. The whole planet is affected whether you were or weren't part of it. When the input ceases and the planet response fluctuations ease that's the new normal. Although the coming down period if it happens will probably create a new balance seeking process.
Out of whack? Sounds like a self-correcting feedback loop to me. Too little sea ice -> colder temperatures -> more sea ice -> warmer temperatures. Or am I missing something else?
Of course, large-scale climactic changes over tens or hundreds of thousands of years are a red herring when evaluating the impact of hundred-year rapid timescale changes on human societies that need much longer to adapt without horrific violence and misery. We live in very different places/cities from where we did 10,000 or 100,000 years ago --- but pretty much in the same cities we had 100 years ago. Expecting the populations of entire nations and continents to just up-and-move over a few decades because habitable ranges have shifted (collapsing food and water supplies in once-fertile regions) doesn't play out so well in current geopolitics. As soon as you're ready to welcome a billion refugee immigrants, dislocated by famine, war, and poverty, into your own country, we can get complacent about compressing multi-thousand-year climactic cycles into human-scale time intervals.
It's easy. Normal temperatures are called "long term average of the temperature or deviations thereof within the standard deviation".
Simple answer: The weakening of the Gulf stream, long predicted as a direct impact of AGW, which leads to longer and colder winters in Europe.
if you understand the science of climate change
FTFY.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Indeed. "Climate change" is an effective propaganda technique for enabling observation bias. Have any weird weather? It's climate change and all due to the evil humans and their fossil fuel based industrial societies.
As you might have guessed from my sarcasm, I don't buy at all that the phrase, "climate change" is somehow more accurate than anthropogenic global warming. Climate would change even if nothing particular was going on, just due to orbital dynamics of Earth around the Sun, volcanoes, and the subtle effects of continental drift.
Ok, I'm not saying that Global warming isn't happening, but you're just so off base I've got to correct you.
1. Everything absorbs heat (well almost everything)
2. There is no carbon in the atmosphere. It's Carbon dioxide, a GAS. One's an element, the others not. Christ. CO2 absorbs radiation from the sun and then re-radiates it in all directions. So heat that was at one time moving linearly, is now diffuse and goes in all directions. Radiation that traveled down to the earths surface and was then reflected back my ice, snow, water, or whatever, would normally have an unimpeded path back to space. But when it hits the atmosphere, the atmosphere again diffuses the radiation. Some gasses can absorb more than others. The majority of our atmosphere is made up of mostly Nitrogen followed by oxygen. They do not absorb a lot of radiation. By far, the fast majority of greenhouse effect is generated by water vapor (70% or more) followed by CO2. CO2 accounts for less than 0.04% of the atmosphere.
3. Combustion engines do produce carbon, it's deposited on valves, cylinders, exhaust pipes... lucky for us ITS NOT A GAS.
4. They don't, so lets pretend for a second you know what CO2 is, and understand that burning fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide and not carbon. That's fine... but the fact of the matter is burning fossil fuels doesn't significantly increase CO2 in the atmosphere. Even diehard global warming supporting scientists wouldn't say that. They'd argue that the modest increase our activity is creating is dangerous. But futhermore, CO2 isn't the biggest problem. Water vapor is. The soot from Coal burning power plants, factories and poorly maintained car exhausts are an even bigger problem. Soot gets into the atmosphere and gives water droplets something to cling to... they increase water vapor in the atmosphere. But scientists don't want the issue to get swept under the rug, after all, CO2 is still a problem if not quite as bad. So lets get of all fossil fuels they say.
5. God damn it learn what carbon is!
6. If there was a God, he'd have stuck you dead by now.
7. What in your entire previous six points had anything to do with logic? You don't even know what CARBON is, how the greenhouse effect works, and you're trying to school someone on their stupidity in regards to both?
too warm people scream global warming
we get a cool March, which is the opposite of warming...yada yada yada
Logic 101: Global warming doesn't exclude local cooling.
No sig today...
Even on a larger scale, the past 10,000 years have been an amazing anomaly, with a relatively stable climate not seen anywhere else in the data (and it's probably no coincidence that mankind happened to emerge technologically during this rare stable-ish window).
That is why so clearly this anomaly is the result of AGW - Alien Generated Warming. They saw potential in us as a species so they elevated global temperatures for a time, in order for us to reach the point where we are technologically able to continue the warming trend they began - if we can figure out that we need to. That's the test required to enter the IPC (Intergalactic Planetary Coalition).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Last month the cold weather was because warm air from the south rose over the arctic cold air, thus forcing the colder arctic air down to the southern latitudes. So now it is because last summer there was less ice that froze over long before spring ever came. So how again did the ice covering all the arctic now has caused a colder spring? Did anyone tell these guys that the arctic is still frozen over as we speak? It's not open water. So why is the jet stream being affected? I'm just not clear on all this.
I do know one thing. It's still cold outside and the sow is still on the ground. How is this different from any other Canadian winter or spring for that matter? I'm just lucky enough to remember the weather before all this global warming came along. So how is it different again? How is getting snow in the winter anything unusual? How is snow on the ground in March different? How is maple sugar season changed?
Only problem with this is that the costs are already showing up in peoples insurances.
Ever hear of moral hazard? The US federal government has millions of dollars for disaster relief from floods, but can't find thousands of dollars for disaster prevention. They are effectively paying the world to build in the US's flood-prone areas. Insurance companies won't touch that.
not over the water you can't
Exactly. There is no water between Brooklyn and Queens (they are both on Long Island). I LOLed.
... but it's not unusually cold. This is what the weather is like in the UK. Spring is a fairly unpredictable time of year, in a part of the world where the weather is generally unpredictable.
A couple of years ago we had weeks of -25ÂC weather during the winter, but in the last two it barely got below freezing. This winter, of course, it's going to be back to really cold, or maybe it's going to be back to really warm, or maybe just kind of middling with lots of rain.
Weather Scientists: This is further proof of Global Climate Change.
Fundamentalist Christian: This is not the proof that you're look for...
Weather Scientists: This is not the proof that we're looking for...
Fundamentalist Christian: Move along....
Weather Scientists: You're right this is not enough proof, we'll need to keep on looking...
This is just the latest in a series of published work finding that weakening ocean and land temperature contrasts between high and mid northern latitudes is having a profound effect on the Jet Stream. Search for jet stream and arctic on Google Scholar and they'll pop up. They all show that the poles live and die by the circumpolar winds that 'lock' the cold air in those high latitudes (Antarctica included by the way!). If those circumpolar winds diminish, then the cold can effectively 'escape'. In the Northern Hemisphere, it results in the jet stream becoming extremely contorted, sets up 'blocking' and we get these long periods of abnormal weather (extra cold in late winter/early spring, extra heat in late summer/early fall?) The weather channel has a great rundown of the jet stream *today*. Illustrates it perfectly. http://www.weather.com/video/forecast-for-your-spring-35814 Lets just thank our lucky stars that Antarctica is a continent surrounded by ocean, and not an ocean surrounded by continents, like the Arctic. This fundamental difference means the southern circumpolar winds have a huge contrast to work from with the gigantic ice fields of the continent versus the far away lands of Southern America, Oceania, and Africa. Ironically, the ozone hole actually makes the Antarctic colder and the circumpolar winds stronger... so as it fixes itself as human CFC emissions dimish, those winds will start to weaken and warming will be able to creep in there as well. But at least that buys us time. Were the Arctic and Antarctic equal, global warming would have likely been much more immediate. Though who knows, maybe that would have spurred us to action before today (which is still never?) The world and science that attempts to explain it is wonderful and terrifying all at the same time. Lets hope we can get our acts together and change our course before we cause so much change to our atmosphere and oceans that we are unable to avoid the clear and present dangers now on tap.
How the heck are cities evidence of rapid population movement? The city centers we currently have are typically stable population centers, with firmly rooted local/national identities, for hundreds of years --- they don't move around overnight, across national borders, whenever the "grass is a little greener" on the opposite side. I'm sure "geopolitics will adapt to that reality," but "geopolitical adaptation" in the modern world typically involves a lot of bullets, landmines, cluster-bombs, machete massacres, and rape. The US is building huge, fortified walls to keep people *out* --- and most other countries hold similar attitudes (even if they don't invest such resources in border-control) towards mass-immigration of displaced foreigners. Current conflicts over limited local resources are already bloody messes, which will only be amplified by increasing the volume of struggle.
Global warming and cooling aren't a thing, climate change, however, is. Hot places get hotter, cold places get colder, and the bits in the middle will get considerably worse than both combined with the colliding weather fronts.
And what in the world gives you the idea that this sort of "climate change" is going on? Increases in greenhouse gases lead to some degree of global warming not hot gets hotter, cold gets colder. WE have enough trouble debating this issue without imaginary theories coming in.
Oddly, this is more stable than the North-east of America, that place gets whacked silly with storms, and it will get considerably worse in the next decade, not even century.
The Gulf of Mexico provides warmth and moisture which is what you need for exciting storms such as the north east region of the US probably has seen for millions of years.
Katrina was a freak, but that last catastrophe of a storm is just progressive weather change now.
That part of the world sees dozens of such cyclones every year. There was nothing odd about Katrina other than a city happened to be in the way.
There is even a chance of another mini ice-age in the north areas again.
Apparently, glacial periods have been the norm for many millions of years. Unless we do something radical, say like dumping massive quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or greatly widening the Bering Strait, we will see another full-blown glacial advance.
Oh look, someone blowing a gasket because people disagree with him on the internets. This is so unusual.
I find it really bizarre that Slashdot, a website that usually has intelligent discussion, is filled with climate change naysayers.
Is this real life?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record
The 9 warmest years on record happened this century. The Earth is heating up, and rapidly.
Who the fuck are you people?
If you considered this a "flimsy strawman argument" then your sarcasmometer needs a tune-up.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
According to the most recent SST anomaly map found here, much of the Gulf Stream is anomalously warmer than expected.
I think the sarcasm is an inherent part of what makes it a straw man. You're misrepresenting the reasons the anti-science crowd really latch onto for the defense of their opinions. If you're doing it for humor, it's really weak. Acting like a childish version of those you disagree with is itself really childish. It's what children in elementary school do when they disagree, and it's painfully unfunny for much the same reason.
Seriously,
weather = super hot = evidence of global warming
weather = freezing cold = evidence of global warming
weather = no snow = evidence of global warming
weather = record snow = evidence of global warming
Global Warming Skeptic exclaims "weather not correlating to global warming" = Global Warming Advocate "weather isn't an indicator of climate change" Weather hot, no snow, etc. And suddenly, Global Warming Advocates use weather as an indication of global warming. Which is it?
Global Warming Advocacy argues ALL changes in weather point to, and are explained by global warming. The only proof we can possibly have against global warming, would be a decade long period in which zero change in average temp, percipitation, ice, or what not occurred. (And frankly, I'd laugh my butt off if that actually happened and we went through 10 years with zero climate change - I'd also say there'd be proof that there is a God and that he has a warped sense of humor.)
But the reality is, that global warming advocates put forth a non-testable hypothesis that can explain everything. And has zero way of being countered per scientific method. And all of this is over a mere 1/2 to 1 1/2 degree variation in temperature. With questionable records at that. Furthermore, we know it was much warmer 150,000 years ago when much of the arctic ice was gone
Just some comments per Wikipedia
"NASA, found that the “rate of warming in the Arctic over the last 20 years is eight times the rate of warming over the last 100 years"
[Okay, a 120 years geologically speaking is a blink in the record.]
"In September 2012, sea ice reached its smallest size ever."
[Really, history records it as having disappeared completely a number of times. Do we mean smallest in modern history? Cause scientific evidence has shown the ice cap has had significant melts several times over the last 2.8 millions years (which is still a short time span geologically speaking)]
Every day, I'm reminded that all my best arguments will be undermined by the audacity and absurdity of those who agree with me.
I'm a geologist. Yes, looking on that kind of timescale (or vastly longer) gives you a useful perspective. On the big scale of things, is life on Earth going to end because of anthropogenic climate change? No. It's seen much worse. Is the expected change going to be worse in magnitude or rate than any other climate event in Earth history? Heck, no. Or even as long as humans have been around? Again, no. Humans grew up as a species through multiple glacial-interglacial cycles. We're adapted to them, at least during the times we mostly lived in caves. The waxing and waning of continental ice sheets and the realization that (for example) the place I'm at used to be under a couple of km of ice 20000 years ago kind of puts things in perspective.
Meanwhile, on regular human scales rather than the scale that geologists usually consider, the scale of change expected over the next century is rather frighteningly fast, and it's going to affect temperature, precipitation, all sorts of things. Human societies and agriculture are a lot more fragile than life as a whole is, or humanity as a species is, so saying "It's not so bad when looking at the long view" isn't really much of a consolation. We haven't driven through a significant climate change during industrial times. Human history has shown that these kind of relatively mild changes will likely provoke mass migrations, famine, and often wars over limited resources as the local conditions change for the better or worse. Maybe industrialized society will make us a bit more robust to it, but it's still going to be stressful. You can't solve problems easily if you're (for example) turning parts of the midwest USA back into increasingly arid sand dunes, or drowning significant coastal areas. It can be done, but it's expensive and there are practical limits where it doesn't pay off even if it is technically possible.
So, yeah, do get a longer perspective, but keep in mind that 100k years is freaking long compared to the duration (so far) of modern human society. Even the transition from full-blown glacial maximum to the interglacial we are in now still took several thousand years to complete.
The analogy I've often used is going down a ski slope. Sure, long-term it's a gentle slope going downhill that is quite manageable. But that doesn't mean you can ignore the smaller-scale ski jump or the trees that are right in front of you. You have to pay attention to both. And if you can't deal with the short-term stuff, the longer-term stuff is kind of irrelevant. We'll deal with long-term glacial-interglacial cyclicity eventually, if we make it through the next couple of centuries as an industrial society without killing most of each other off. Otherwise, maybe it's back to subsistence in caves for a small fraction of us that survive. We do know that works long-term. Industrialized society is still early in the game.
You spelled proof wrong consistently.
But at least he's more consistent than the AWG guys!
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
Wow, thats about as much intellectual drivel as I would expect out of a political prisoner fresh out of labour-camp.
I see you fit the profile quite nicely. Let's take a look.
Climate Change is an acknowledgment that the Earth has many interconnected systems that can be aversely or even positively affected by changes to the environment.
The word I was criticizing was "accuracy". This bullshit isn't accurate. Anthropogenic global warming is accurate. It describes the key characteristics of the phenomena, namely, that it is man-caused and that it is a global warming.
Also a tacit acknowledgement that once it occurs its nearly impossible to reverse. It just so happens that it also nullifies any unfortunate and misguided pseudo-intellectualism vaulted or supported by the "Global Warming" meme of the 80s.
That's an awful lot of pointless verbiage for a supposedly "tacit" acknowledgement. No, there is no such acknowledgement. "Climate change" simply means a change in climate. All the rest of your claim is completely unfounded and not implied by the label.
the best you can do is question the motives of "scientists" to prove your point
But of course. There are trillions of dollars riding on convincing the public that AGW is dire enough that we need to spend a lot of money. That's many times what you'd need to completely buy the field of climatology.
Even a storm that kills no one will typically do tens of thousands of dollars in property damage. So, even if we go by the rather sociopathic notion that thousands of dead is no big deal, it would likely still be cheaper to switch to nuclear and renewables ASAP rather delay and keep doing Orleans-level rebuilding at decreasing intervals - especially since we'll have to switch soon anyway, since fossil fuels are running out.
Even if you don't hear about a storm, drought or other climate-related problem, you will still pay for it in your taxes, your utility bills, and your grocery bill.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I believe the change there is due to the precession of the earth's axis.
When you recognize love in another and realize how precious it is, everything else seems so insignificant.
The Gulf stream model was not very much revised. As far as I remember models about Global Warming (at least 20 years back), it was always stated that Global Warming will cause the Gulfstream to weaken or to change course, which in turn means Europe (especially West and North Europe) becoming colder in winter and getting on par with regions on the same geographical latitude in North America and North Asia.
habitable regions haven't shifted anywhere..
the habitable region extends from the tip of northern continents to the tip of the southern continents - just like a hundred years ago. the difference is that now we don't have famines in some of the less hospitable areas.
actually for the past century or so we've been having problems with people moving for various stupid reasons to less habitable regions(middle east etc). those areas didn't have good water supplies to begin with and have been strip farmed for all eternity when they weren't being salted by nasty neighbours on purpose.
in geopolitics as always we'll cross that road once we get there, but for example if the entire northern europe just moved to india we would be just a blip in the overall population over there(this story is about how we're having a cold spring here.. and it's not remarkably cold really). I wouldn't mind too much if we moved entire Finland into Amazon - at least we'd get off from the fucking winters(which have been about as crappy for the past century and further...). we'd save a lot on food too - farming in Finland is now pretty much a completely subsidized operation in other words farming here is like throwing money into the well - literally.
what's remarkable globally about the past half-century - and even the whole century - is how good we have gotten at not fighting massive wars and fending off famine(percentually). it's been a long while since USA had it's war with mexico over lebensraum. so why do you see signs of the opposite? we live in the same places as we did after the last ice age, from Finland to Australia. how the fuck did people live around here 10 000 years ago? not well I can tell you! point being that there's no such concept as a habitable region when it comes to humans as long as we're talking about living on earth, the reasons for immigration have been 100% sociological and 0% about how habitable a region or another is - we're not mere animals in that sense.
so somehow I have hard time believing in another wave of mongol invasions. for practical reasons which make it obvious for even pretty dimwitted that living like an invasion horde is pretty impractical - there's not even any adventure left in invading far away lands from which your cousin sent you a postcard while he was working there as a janitor.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Here in NW Europe, we're being told we're kept warm in the winter by the "warm waters of the Gulf Stream". Unfortunately, we don't literally bathe in those waters. Heat is transported by SW winds that blow across them, picking up moisture which is then rained out over us and releasing latent heat.
This unseasonably weather is nothing to do with the Gulf stream weakening, it's simply the winds are blowing in the opposite direction (from the cold, dry land). Why they are prolonged is to do with the jet stream position's much further to the south. The mid-latitude jet's a product of the atmosphere's thermal gradient (and some orographically introduced wobbles) and its odd, prolonged position could quite conceivably be to do with Arctic sea ice loss.
OK, let's look at immigration into the US from 1780 on.
For the first major chunk of your post-1780 period, immigration largely fueled continued Westward expansion --- with the associated continued internment and extermination of natives, squeezed into ever less hospitable reservations with endless promises of "this is the last time we'll break the treaty and make you move elsewhere".
Initial and later immigration waves were also welcomed to provide disposable labor for the mills and mines, under horrific conditions (which certainly count as violence against humanity). As with potential climate refugees, refugees arriving for a short, miserable life of hard labor might have been a bit better off than starving in various famines back home --- but they arrived to exploitation and contempt, rather than welcome as fellow human brothers and sisters (hardly a model for a nice way to treat people forced from their homes by our Hummers).
As the population stabilized to fill Capital's need for labor, the immigration influx was cut off. The Immigration Act of 1924 made sure that "undesirable" Eastern Europeans (including Jews fleeing shortly before and during the rise of fascism) would be under strict quotas. While nationality quotas were officially eliminated in 1965, the free flow of anyone-who-wants-to-come immigration remains severely curtailed through the present day. Entry through official or unofficial channels is difficult, expensive, and/or dangerous. Immigration policies set a steady, controlled rate of influx to serve the needs of corporate masters (whether tomato-pickers or high-tech H1-B workers), rather than to fulfill the desires of everyone who would rather be here.
So, does America provide a model for how to relocate huge swathes of refugees? Not at all --- we're already letting in only a small trickle of applicants, and will gun down people at the border for circumventing the quota. Past cases of more liberal immigration policy depended on historical specifics that no longer exist: land to grab from natives, or a deep shortage of the unemployed for bottom-rung manual labor. We sure won't be taking in whole populations from African countries, and nor will any of the other developed countries (if anyone was willing, they'd have immigrants pouring in already), beyond the usual trickle of just enough to maintain a cheap labor pool.
"I believe based on your statement that is the Global Warming group. So your group makes a claim of Global Warming." The facts say that global warming is real. Hence it's YOUR burden to find evidence to the contrary. Since global warming is actually happening, the models have predicted what we've been seeing in the real world, and the measurements back up the models, it's on the deniers to prove that they're not completely full of it. Since the deniers can't do that, one must conclude that they're full of it.
I've done the math. Maybe you ought to give it a try sometime? That is of course assuming that you can handle even basic arithmetic...