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Drones Over Greenland Give Insight To Pollution's Effects On Melting
merbs writes Thank glaciologist Jason Box for the Arctic bird's-eye view of one of the most serene, alien landscapes on the planet. Box spends much of his time in Greenland, where he uses drones to measure 'dark snow'—snow that has accumulated soot and dust, thanks to human activity—which absorbs more sunlight and melts faster. Drone photography, then, may hold the key to understanding just how fast Greenland is melting.
And you conveniently forgot to mention the 2% dimmer sun, the potential influence of different geography, the fact the Jurassic biodiversity was in fact much, much lower than the recent maximum until we started meddling with it, etc. etc.
Ezekiel 23:20
Makes me wonder if we can try to control the damage by shielding the drainage areas. Covering the whole ice sheet with mylar is obviously planetary engineering, but on a smaller scale, can you cover the lakes and get them to re-freeze? The lake has a lower albedo even than dirty snow, presumably. If you could re-freeze the water before it percolates down through the glacier, what would that do to the whole process?
IGTT 9/10 for "warmunists"
You'd give the "warmunists" an intravenous glucose tolerance test? On 9/10? A bit late for that, isn't it?
Ezekiel 23:20
Looks like they just missed the netting they had set up to catch the plane. You seem to be the only one making a big deal out of it.
I also make a big deal of things like Al Gore stating Hurricanes are caused by global warming, and animal rights groups that only seem to care about cute animals and nothing about people.
You would be smart to ignore most of what Al Gore says, or at least verify it with real scientists. And I'm not sure what cute animals have to do with the topic.
I like to monitor the brown snow in the forest near my house. I have noticed that the deer and rabbit turds tend to collect more sunlight and cause the snow to melt around them. Porcupine turds tend to fall out of trees and usually embed themselves in the snow at a sufficient depth to prevent the sunlight from reaching them. Bird turds are generally whitish in color and do not attract sunlight and are therefore "turd neutral". Basically porcupines are good rabbits are bad and the leading cause of Turd Made Global Warming.If Exon or Bp will give me money I am sure I can prove rabbit turds are the leading cause of global warming not fossil fuels. In fact i am the leading Turd warming scientist in the universe.
And you conveniently forgot to mention that at current solar output and with current geography, we are in one of the coldest periods in the planet's history. Even if we could get CO2 concentrations up to 2000 ppm, we likely wouldn't be warming the planet to anywhere near where it used to be. And it used to be fine even then.
Referring to humanity as if its some sort of blight or disease is pretty sick. If these people hate humans so much why don't they off themselves and prove they are behind their cause.
That would do more the earth than BS climate religion propaganda articles ever would.
And you conveniently forgot to mention that at current solar output and with current geography, we are in one of the coldest periods in the planet's history.
Surely you don't mean it would beat the Proterozoic glaciations? Unfortunately, our species didn't develop during those really hot periods, and I'm not sure I'm adventurous enough to wish for seven billion people to find out how we'd cope with that, even just biologically, much less economically.
Even if we could get CO2 concentrations up to 2000 ppm, we likely wouldn't be warming the planet to anywhere near where it used to be
That may not be necessary, even halfway towards how hot it used to be would be bad enough. No need to have polar temperatures of twenty degrees again - mostly because there'd only be one pole for people to live on, and most of the natural resources we need is still around the equator where few people would venture. (I wonder if there'd still be katabatic winds in Antarctica. That could get really interesting with higher energy levels in the system...)
Ezekiel 23:20
I tried to melt snow and ice by spreading ashes on it and it didn't work. The ashes blocked the sun from melting the ice and snow.
Interesting observation that black snow is 'thanks to human activity', so near to active volcanoes spewing dust, rocks, lava etc. But no, must be us humans.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Or how much of the volcanic activity in the area is miss-labeled as human activity. Seriously, how much of this is volcamic ash?
Sensational story with the facts totally wrong conclusion is what I see. How much is volcanic? No EDX of the material on the snow was even considered. Is ir carbon from forest fires or silicon dioxode volcanic dust?
The truth shall set you free!
If you read the words of the actual scientists, rather than just the journalist headlines, you'll get a more balanced view. The whole point of the black snow project is to figure out how much albedo change there is, and what the different contributions from various causes are. Where is your evidence that volcanic activity plays a major role ? And which active volcano is actually capable of spewing rocks and lava anywhere near Greenland ?
If you read the words of the actual scientists, rather than just the journalist headlines, you'll get a more balanced view. The whole point of the black snow project is to figure out how much albedo change there is, and what the different contributions from various causes are.
Where is your evidence that volcanic activity plays a major role ? And which active volcano is actually capable of spewing rocks and lava anywhere near Greenland ?
That's fascinating
Because oddly enough Greenland's albedo is pretty well measured by satellite
http://www.meltfactor.org/blog...
Are there any real scientists left in climatology ? All I see are policy advocates these days.
So he can have a drone, of course.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
Another Climate Change (TM) article from Slashdot? Wow, you'd almost think Dice owned some sort of Green concern or was owned by Al Gore or something. Give it a rest.
Are there any real scientists left in climatology ? All I see are slashdot editors/submitters these days.
Fixed that for you.
It's long been "GLOBAL WARMING BECAUSE STFU"
It's hard to expect more from the settled science folk.
Interesting observation that black snow is 'thanks to human activity',
There are several potential explanations for what’s going on here. The most likely is that some combination of increasingly infrequent summer snowstorms, wind-blown dust, microbial activity, and forest fire soot led to this year’s exceptionally dark ice. A more ominous possibility is that what we’re seeing is the start of a cascading feedback loop tied to global warming.
This year, Greenland’s ice sheet was the darkest Box (or anyone else) has ever measured. Box gives the stunning stats: 'In 2014 the ice sheet is precisely 5.6 percent darker, producing an additional absorption of energy equivalent with roughly twice the US annual electricity consumption.' Perhaps coincidentally, 2014 will also be the year with the highest number of forest fires ever measured in Arctic.
Box’s findings are in line with recent research that shows the Arctic is in the midst of dramatic change.
A recent study has found that, as the Arctic warms, forests there are turning to flame at rates unprecedented in the last 10,000 years. This year, those fires produced volumes of smoke and soot that Box says drifted over to Greenland.
In total, more than 3.3 million hectares burned in Canada’s Northwest Territories alone this year—nearly 9 times the long term average—resulting in a charred area bigger than the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts combined. That figure includes the massive Birch Creek Complex, which could end up being the biggest wildfire in modern Canadian history. In July, it spread a smoke plume all the way to Portugal. — http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...
FTA:
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I have to love the warmist ability to blame any and everything on global warming.
That's what the science shows: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
Where is your evidence that volcanic activity plays a major role ? And which active volcano is actually capable of spewing rocks and lava anywhere near Greenland ?
The Icelandic volcanoes are in a good position to cause this sort of thing. For example, a series of eruptions in mid 2010 covered a significant portion of Greenland in ash. Coincidentally (or not), "record melting" of Greenland's ice sheet was observed at the end of 2010 with the greatest "melt day anomalies" (as described in the link) observed in southern Greenland which was also the most affected by the volcanic ash released by the eruptions.
The current melting in Greenland follows a even larger eruption (up to perhaps double the size of the 2010 eruptions) this year (which is still ongoing more than two months later). There isn't as much ash generated from what I read, but you don't really need a lot of ash to change albedo of snow.
I like how a "detectable warming effect" as described by the actual research morphs into "dramatic climate change" and a few unsubstantiated superlatives. I guess the science really does show something supporting the grand parent post.
Look at the link you posted to the 2010 eruption. On the graphic it shows that Greenland was mostly spared in the ash cloud. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...
Satellite measurements tell you nothing about the cause of the albedo changes.
For some reason, climate change deniers are not interested in doing any scientific research. The denial is settled.
I was wondering when you'd make your over-generalization here, Itzly. Don't forget to report what you see in your tarot cards here as scientific research too: I'd love to make a comment on that as well.
Pure CO2 causation, the forced feedback in climate models and the machinations on the data that attempt to leverage a 400% CO2 rise into an extremely-slight-yet-lost-in-noise rise or flatline (depending on how you rearrange the noise) average global temperature... it has been like a bad dream that does not end.
Will the world end in ***FIRE*** or ***ICE***? Or will the world fail to end at all, that would be really embarrassing. It's time to put the steep rise in people-generated pure-CO2 and the observed not steep at all global temperature curve in proper perspective. As in, pure-CO2 causation is a non-starter yet worthy of study --- but it's time to focus on other aspects for awhile. Without all that 'climate denier' noise too.
Let's just talk about actual particulates and albedo. Stratospheric sulfur aerosols reflect more sunlight. In the Arctic, nearby soot may be a larger forcing than CO2. One effect would cause net cooling at the surface and the other a net warming as near-perfect blackbody particles settle on ice crystals. The photograph of a melt water canal with concentrated black carbon particles lining the bottom of the pool begs the question, does this melt channel owe its very existence to the presence of the carbon, or was it caused by other factors? I guestimate that the area of black is about 1/10 the size of the surrounding melt pit... so we are definitely seeing 'grey snow' in the Arctic here.
It has taken five years for the failed 'Glory' satellite mission to be re-launched as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. It is my hope that OCO2 will help to answer these questions by showing where pollution plumes originate and how they move, so that we know where to take samples and what to look for.
Politics demands simplified models and pure-CO2 causation so they can tax everybody without pissing off the coal industry. F*ck politics. It is my view that pure-science demands a balanced approach that will reveal the true impact of coal, among other manmade and natural causes.
And the folks in California would really appreciate a green-tax refund for the 29% of their pollution that is actually from Asia.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Whenever someone posts "did they think of [fill in some random thing] eh?" you're seeing the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The fun thing about the "Global warming isn't happening because Al Gore is fat" argument is that it's the best argument the denialists can come up wth.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Whether one Canadian territory losing an area bigger than the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts combined in one year can be described as 'dramatic' is a personal judgement, and not something that you would find in a scientific paper.
And look at the two links I provided. The area that you see being covered by ash (which incidentally doesn't mean that the rest of Greenland didn't receive volcanic ash) also has a more pronounced melting than the parts that weren't so well covered.
Whether one Canadian territory losing an area bigger than the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts combined in one year can be described as 'dramatic' is a personal judgement
You do realize that Canadian territories are big? And doubling the average acreage of wildfires by 2100 is a pretty insignificant trend.
Maybe. The effect it is having on the Arctic climate - maybe not.
"Maybe"? Sounds like we're not talking science any more, but rather personal opinion.
There's no such thing as climate change deniers...
We're called realists and we're very much aware that the climate is changing and has been changing since this planet first formed. Unlike alarmists, like yourself, who believe the words of bogus reports written by politicians and are convinced that the climate is not supposed to change.
I bet you even believe that the world is 5000 years old and that we used to ride on the backs of dinosaurs?
I love how all of those who stand on the side of AGW deliberately ignore certain factors that are greatly contributing to the depletion of the ice.
Such as subglacial volcanoes:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/131118-antarctica-volcano-earthquakes-erupt-sea-level-rise-science/
And the little fact that the ozone is nearly depleted in that region for reasons unknown:
https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/nsf0050/arctic/ozonehole.htm
Errrrr.... yeah. 'Dramatic' is not quantifiable and will not be found in the literature. So what? Whose opinion would you want anyway if not a professional?
I would want evidence instead. Opinions are remarkably overvalued in climatology.
Then you are looking in the wrong place. This article is the appropriate place to include the opinions of the researchers. So what are you complaining about??? And what does this have to do with the GP post anyway? AC was upset that the dark snow was being pinned on global warming. I showed that this is supported by the science. None of your contributions have suggested otherwise.
That's what the science shows
And now you write:
This article is the appropriate place to include the opinions of the researchers.
When one looks at your links, they see that your claims aren't supported. I already noted this such as quoting what the research actually said versus your exaggerated claims of what the research said.
I'm really tired of people who just assert things, take scientific research way out of context, and then claim it's science. Then when they called out, they claim that they're just expressing opinions. This is far from the first time this game has been played.
Sure, I'll agree with that last bit. You're expressing an opinion. But when that opinion isn't founded in reason or science, then so what? There's no point to paying any attention to it.
You should have written something else other than: That's what the science shows.
AC was upset that the increase in forest fires was being linked to global warming. The science shows that the increase in forest fires is linked to global warming. That's what the science shows.
Then you took us off on a tangent by getting upset that a researcher expressed his opinion in an interview. Many people find professional opinions valuable because they are backed by years of research. No idea why that would upset you or how that is related to what I wrote or what opinion you think I expressed that you are objecting to. This is getting tiresome.
Well, at least you are making sounder claims than originally. That is progress.
No idea what claim you are objecting to. Everything I've said is sound.