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One-Degree Rise In Temperature Causes Ripple Effect In World's Largest High Arctic Lake (folio.ca)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from FOLIO Magazine: A 1 C increase in temperature has set off a chain of events disrupting the entire ecology of the world's largest High Arctic lake. "The amount of glacial meltwater going into the lake has dramatically increased," said Martin Sharp, a University of Alberta glaciologist who was part of a team of scientists that documented the rapid changes in Lake Hazen on Ellesmere Island over a series of warm summers in the last decade. "Because it's glacial meltwater, the amount of fine sediment going into the lake has dramatically increased as well. That in turn affects how much light can get into the water column, which may affect biological productivity in the lake." The changes resulted in algal blooms and detrimental changes to the Arctic char fish population, and point to a near certain future of summer ice-free conditions. The findings document an unprecedented shift from the previous three centuries, challenging scientists' expectations of how such a large system could respond so rapidly to a one-degree rise. The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

4 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The world is not a static system by KeensMustard · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1) Is rise in greenhouse gases the cause or effect?

    Your theory requires that increasing concentrations of ghg's from 280ppm to 400pm will have no effect on climate. It's up to you to explain how this can happen and not violate the laws of thermodynamics.

    2) The Earth's climate is mathematically coupled to the output of the Sun. You should be asking for models that accurately predict the output of the Sun.

    Very well. I might do that later. In the meantime, you haven't addressed either of the first 2 questions

    1. What happened to the warming that should have occurred (and was predicted to occur) due to increases in greenhouse gases?

    2. Where is the observational data to evidence your theory?

  2. Re:The world is not a static system by js290 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Probably should not believe and predictive models of climate that doesn't also have an accurate, predictive model of the Sun. Coupled systems cannot be magically decoupled.

    --
    "Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
  3. We measure and model by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If there is only one variable that affects the Earth's climate, it would be the output of the Sun.

    True enough. But we measure the output of the sun, and have been measuring it for many decades. We know that in fact that it is not changing. So we can discard that as a source of the current warming.

    If there was a second variable, it would be the kinematics of the Earth about the Sun.

    Indeed; this is the Milankovitch cycles, which are currently believed to account for ice ages. The main orbital perturbations have a cycle time on the order of 100,000 years. So they are definitely not responsible for changes in temperature on time scales of less than millennia.

    It's worth noting, however, that the effort involved in understanding Milankovitch variations and the feedback mechanisms that cause the cycle of ice ages was a very large part of what brought climate science to its present level.

    Neither one should be considered constant,

    To the contrary, both of them can be considered constant on the time scale of interest here. One because we measure it to be constant, and the second because actually, orbits are well understood.

    and the former is certainly not easily modeled.

    Although the second one certainly can be.

    Alas, there's much more than just two variables that affects the climate.

    And climate scientists have been working for over a century at the effects of these variables. So far, other than greenhouse warming (which is a well substantiated theory), the alternate hypothesis to explain the data is... nothing. There are no alternate hypotheses that fit the known data.

    The goal should not be to predict or control climate, but to adapt to it as Nature does.

    Uh, why shouldn't we understand (you use the word "predict") climate, exactly?

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  4. Re: The world is not a static system by q_e_t · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The GP said nothing that suggested creation of matter by the sun.