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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.
I would hardly refer to some pundit on youtube who talks about "fake news" as a purveyor of "actual facts". "Alternative facts" (lies) perhaps.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
It's well known that Nature has a liberal bias. The journal, too.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
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?
Ah I see you're using the "I don't understand it therefore it's wrong" line of reasoning. I like how you've been modded up for that. Way to go slashdot.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
In my country the temperature varies from -30 C in winter, and +30 C in summer. If the themperatures chang in the future to -29 C in winter, and +31 C in summer. Why should this change the climate so much as it is claimed, when there is already a 60 C change year around?? I call BS on the climatechange.
This lake is almost always covered in ice year round and, from 2007 to 2012 had a mean summer temperatures of -4.9C. The increase in temperature is warming and melting the surrounding permafrost, which drains into the lake, raising both its level and temperature ... This affects the algae and fish in the lake, which affects the people that fish the lake -- as well as everything downstream.
From: Lake Hazen
Although air temperatures in this area often rise above 10C in July and August, Lake Hazen remains ice covered in most years.
From the actual study in Nature The world’s largest High Arctic lake responds rapidly to climate warming. (linked in the TFA):
A decrease in seasonal ice cover resulted in warming of surface waters and, more importantly, allowed planktonic algae to fill a niche which was previously climatically inaccessible, re-organizing the ecology of the lake at the base of the foodweb.
Collectively, rising air temperatures, increasing glacial melt and runoff, decreasing summer lake ice cover, shifts in primary producer communities and declining fish condition demonstrate the coupling between watershed changes and in-lake conditions and processes.
This vast, deep lake, the High Arctic’s largest freshwater ecosystem, has experienced drastic changes in the last decade, despite its volume, thermal inertia and hypothesized resilience to climate change.
Such changes, and their consequences, are certain to increase further as warming of northern latitudes continues into the future, undoubtedly jeopardizing the security of traditional freshwater foods and other ecosystem services for northern Indigenous peoples throughout the Arctic.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Yeah we all know that the climate has changed before. This is not news to anyone. But when people say the temperature has changed before, this is what they mean:
https://xkcd.com/1732/
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This isn't the point in the Milankovitch cycle we should be expecting an increase, though. It had been on an overall cooking trend in the 8000 years up to 1850. The article is also referring to 1C average world temperature increase, but it is greater in the Arctic.
Imagine if the Sun's output is also not static or constant...
So your theory is that changes in the Sun's output are causing the recent rise in temperature?
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?
I think he did daily measurements at Noon and Midnight for quite some time... The Sun was "hot" at Noon and "cold" at Midnight - so not static.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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?
No, there are many variables. The composition of the atmosphere is one, and life has radically altered it in the past. Volcanism is another, such as the Deccan Traps. Ocean and air current changes affect it, and these are affected by changes to the continents. Albedo affects it, and long term continental drift affects it, as does vegetation. The carbon cycle is a factor, part of which is the deposition of calcium carbonate by shellfish. And those are just some of the other mechanisms.
Or, just perhaps, you could actually look at someone who is presenting INFORMATION, then think about it.
I know that is revolutionary, but if you would prefer to live on throwaway one liners in article summaries, then who am I to suggest otherwise.
This guy doesnt TELL you what to think, he is just giving you information, you know, stuff, YOU can think about.
And yes, the information he gives you DOES come from peer reviewed data sources, FWIW, just not the ones the media like to make headlines from.
Yes, we do realize that. It's not the magnitude of change per se that's the problem, it's the rate of change.
Hitting +2C above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century represents warming 10x more rapid than anything we see geological record since the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. You are absolutely correct that local ecological disruptions are constantly wiping out individual populations, but with globally distributed rapid changes we'll see (indeed are seeing) widespread extinctions of entire species and shifts toward weedier species.
Now people adapt more rapidly than plants and animals, so climate change is not anything like an extinction event for our species. But at that rate we're going to see differential effects depending between populations. People whose income comes primarily from financial investments will actually do well out of that level of climate change; all they need to do is rebalance their portfolios annually. People whose livelihood is tied to a specific geographic area will find adaptation difficult or impossible, producing refugees and political crises.
And that's with just a 2C increase, which presumes vigorous action on our part. Without action, a +4C scenario is increasingly plausible. Again, that's not an extinction event for our species, but it won't be nice for most of us.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Oh, I think he means that webcomic that plays so fast and loose with the facts that it includes literature citations...
Which I notice you don't have.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The output of the Sun has been observed for quite a while, including using satellites over the last 50 years and there hasn't been a big change in the output that would have the affects we're seeing. If you have evidence of a large change in the output, please post a link.
It's true that the models of solar induced warming aren't the best, with some saying a degree every 10 million years and some say less, but the basics are pretty simple. The Sun gets hotter as it converts hydrogen into helium and since a helium, atom is 4 times heavier then a hydrogen atom, the Sun gets denser and fusion speeds up and over billions of years there's quite an affect. Not over centuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
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.
You do know that we measure the sun's output, right? And have been doing so for many decades?
We know that the observed warming is not due to changes in the solar output because we measure the solar output.
Coupled systems cannot be magically decoupled.
Which is why climate models account for many things.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The Earth's climate has changed far more radically and far quicker to more extreme states many times in the past and yet here we and all other life are going about living, the silly humans
This XKCD comic makes it quite clear why "silly humans" are right to be concerned about the current warming trend, even if it has "changed far more radically... many times in the past".
https://xkcd.com/1732/
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
There is enough methane in the Arctic to destroy life on Earth many times over.
This is not clear. A very few scientists have suggested that there's enough methane in clathrates to cause much larger temperature excursions than we've yet seen, but this is by no means well established. And I have never heard a suggestion that there's enough "to destroy life on Earth many times over."
In other words: stick to the real facts, they're scary enough.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I *think* the clathrates are actually pretty well established.
OTOH, the deeper ones when they release slowly tend to get eaten by bacteria and get converted to CO2 on their way to the surface.
The problem is the buried organic waste in the permafrost, which I don't believe there's any good measure of. Some of that has already been converted into methane while the permafrost was frozen, and much of the rest will "quickly" be converted into methane as the permafrost thaws.
Now methane in the air has a half-life of around 20 years, and it's a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, which is what it is converted into when eaten. So if the release is slow enough then what we're talking about is largely an increase in CO2, but if it's rapid then we get a spike because of the much stronger greenhouse gas, methane.
OTOH, it wasn't methane or warming that killed off everything the end-Permian extinction, it was the release of H2S into the atmosphere at the same time. It's not clear that a simple warming would do that.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Then you're listening to the wrong people. The problems from climate change aren't an all-or-nothing deal. The more we do today, the fewer and/or smaller problems we'll have in the future. We just gotta stop listening to shills from the fossil fuel industry, get off our butts, and do what is in our individual power today. Some people can afford EVs. Some people can afford solar panels. Some can only practice conservation at this point. Any of those options are good if it's the most you can do and if they make sense for your situation.
Actually, probably the most important thing is to vote for politicians who want to leave as healthy a planet as possible for our children.
(Note, for those considering an EV: If you don't like the models available today, the Kia Kona may be out in the next year.)
"Ecology... Nature is only model we have that has survived climate change with sheer, total, utter neglect..."
"The planet is fine, the people are fucked" ~ George Carlin.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
What part is science denial?
"a decade of missing temp rises".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The model that shows you that the temperature of the sun is more or less constant ... and very very slowly dimming?
It's actually very very slowly brightening, with an increase of about 1% of solar flux per ninety million years. Now of course that's meaningless on human time scale, but main sequence stars get brighter - not dimmer - over time.
Ezekiel 23:20
Why would you compare the 2.5TW change in solar output with our energy production, which is a totally unrelated variable ?
You should compare it to the average solar output, which is about 1360 W/m^2. So we're talking about 0.7% variation.
Now compare your solar graph to the global temperature graph, and you'll see they don't match. Especially after about 1980, when solar output starts to go back down, and global temperature goes through fastest rise.
Energy into the system. If we go with CO2 as a greenhouse gas, then energy into the system would be the driver of heat in the system; CO2 may keep it trapped longer, but it's the energy in that causes the build-up of heat. The sun's variability alone equals 13% of the total energy generation/power of the current world (and much more versus even just 10 years ago). If we have CO2 output - and no energy output - would we heat as much? In other words - if your blanket is thicker but you have no additional heat in your bed, does your bed get warmer, or just get colder, slower?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The GP said nothing that suggested creation of matter by the sun.
The energy in the system comes from the Sun. There's about 170000 TW of solar energy hitting the atmosphere. The 20 TW of human-generated energy is nothing compared to that.
If there was indeed a smaller CO2 output then, one of the possibilities is that climate sensitivity is on the upper end of the range, and the flattening of temperature rise from 1940-70 was due to sulphur compound emissions associated with a move to lower quality coal. It's not exactly good news.
"Every dollar we spend today on preventing climate change is a dollar we aren't spending on innovation and economic growth." - errr... why can't the innovation and growth be part of the "prevention of climate change" e.g. power storage systems, solar power, wind, etc etc Seems like the only growth industries are renewables at the moment
"Residential and personal energy usage in the US and Western Europe are meaningless contributors to climate change." possibly but its encouraging change with power generation at the grid too.
"The "fossil fuel industry" doesn't care much; they have already hedged their bets" - they didn't care at all but now a lot of the big companies like Shell are beginning to invest in renewables as they see the writing on the wall
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Climate model projections compare well with observations. Here's the latest comparisons:
Climate model projections compared to observations
The sun has been monitored pretty well for about 400 years. Recently it's been monitored rigorously since the 1950s and continuously from satellites since 1979. In all that time it's never shown enough variation to account for the current warming. You may want it to be the sun but the evidence shows that it isn't.
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.
This is a very good point. Climate models are really nothing more than projections that assume "all else being equal". That's something that folks generally don't appreciate when comparing actual temperature rise to model projections.
The fact of the matter is that solar output has not been static. It's been falling for the last several decades. That's been driving global temperatures lower than they would otherwise be. It won't stay down forever though, so we should realize that warming in the next several decades. At which point global temperatures rise will further accelerate.
You seem to be confusing science (demonstrating the causes of climate change) with politics...
You may be confusing cause with effect. People claiming to know the cause with certainty are not politically motivated?
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
Huh? Some people studying the sun have some models for it but I'm guessing you're talking about climate models. Since the sun doesn't vary that much it's not necessary to try and put that in climate models. The effects of varying the sun have been tested in climate models but since the variation of the suns output is less than 1% during the 11 year cycle it doesn't have a significant effect in the long run. Even if the sun went into a prolonged Maunder minimum type situation it would only delay the effects of anthropogenic global warming by 5 or 10 years and only as long as the MM period lasted.