During the last ice age (and others before it) temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere would abruptly swing up and down by a hefty 3 – 6°C every 1,500 years or so. A new study using isotopes on the sea floor rather provocatively suggests that the Atlantic ocean circulation was to blame. Apparently it slowed almost to halt, and before the surface water cooled. It seems that when the Atlantic currents slow too far they stop bringing warmer water north from the equator and Southern Hemisphere, and thus the north ices over. During these super-cold periods the ice sheets spread down and cover much of North America, (and real estate in Australia costs a motza). Massive icebergs break off and drift, but apparently things took a lot longer to get cold in the Southern Hemisphere, and the north and south possibly got a bit out of whack cooling and warming in opposite phases. The researcher used the word “bipolar”.
The $64 trillion dollar question is if ocean currents cause climate change, what causes the ocean currents? The researchers don’t know. (Seems kind of important). Things stabilized out in the last 10,000 warm years. It looks like the wild swings don’t occur if there is not enough land ice.
Ocean Circulation Implicated in Past Abrupt Climate Changes
June 30, 2016
Image supplied by Lamont-Doherty Earth observatory
Gene Henry explains his team’s discoveries in this audio interview.
There was a period during the last ice age when temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere went on a rollercoaster ride, plummeting and then rising again every 1,500 years or so. Those abrupt climate changes wreaked havoc on ecosystems, but their cause has been something of a mystery. New evidence published this week in the leading journal Science shows for the first time that the ocean’s overturning circulation slowed during every one of those temperature plunges – at times almost stopping.
“People have long supposed this link between overturning circulation and these abrupt climate events. This evidence implicates the ocean,” said L. Gene Henry, the lead author of the study and a graduate student at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
The impact of changes in the ocean overturning circulation on climate has become a hot topic today as global temperatures rise and melting sea ice and glaciers add freshwater to the North Atlantic. A 2015 study suggested that cooling in the North Atlantic may be due to a reduction in the overturning circulation, while a 2016 study suggested there had not been enough freshwater to have an effect.
The new study explores what happened to ocean circulation when the Earth went through a series of abrupt climate changes in the past, during a time when ice covered part of North America and temperatures were colder than today. It looks at the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which distributes heat as it moves warmer surface water from the tropics toward Greenland and the high northern latitudes and carries colder, deeper water from the North Atlantic southward.
Using chemical tracers in sediment that builds up on the sea floor over time, Henry and his co-authors were able to document the relative speed of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation during each abrupt climate change. The overturning circulation pushes water through the Atlantic Basin, distributing heat as it moves warmer surface water from the tropics toward Greenland and the high northern latitudes and carries colder, deeper water from the North Atlantic southward.
The chemical tracers show that the speed of the ocean overturning circulation changed first and that a change in sea surface temperature followed. That suggests that cooling may start with changes in the ocean circulation, influencing the northern sea surface and atmosphere, said co-author Jerry McManus, a professor at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Evidence from ice cores and deep-sea sediment has shown that the Northern climate also cooled before the Southern climate during these abrupt changes, creating a “bipolar seesaw,” with the North cool while the South was warm, and the South cooling as the North warmed.
The scientists stress that more work is needed to determine whether changes in ocean circulation initiated the abrupt climate changes or were an intermediary effect initially triggered by something else. “Our study supports the view that changes in ocean circulation were at least in part responsible for causing abrupt climate changes. However, what in turn caused those changes in circulation remains a mystery,” Henry said
Also unclear is why these abrupt climate shifts, also seen in previous ice ages, haven’t happened in the past 10,000 years. The instability appears to only occurs in a certain temperature ranges and when there is a large amount of land ice.
“We would all like to understand better how the Earth’s climate operates,” McManus said. “This demonstrates the crucial role that global circulation can play. The dynamics of the deep ocean directly influence the Earth’s climate.”
The series of abrupt climate changes studied here occurred between 60,000 and 25,000 years ago, ending as the last ice age peaked. Each followed a general pattern in the Northern Hemisphere: The cooling happening over hundreds to 1,000 years, then the frigid temperatures persisted for a few hundred years in what is known as a stadial, McManus said. Once warming started, it happened very rapidly, with a rise of 3 to 6 degrees Celsius in average sea surface temperature and larger changes over Greenland within a span of decades.
During major iceberg discharges in the North Atlantic, known as Heinrich events, the ocean overturning circulation slowed to being almost still, the new evidence suggests. Photo: Margie Turrin/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
During every cold northern stadial, the overturning circulation had slowed, so it wasn’t bringing as much heat northward from the tropics and Southern Hemisphere, the study shows. The chemical tracers also show that circulation slowed almost to a halt during certain stadials known as Heinrich events, when massive amounts of icebergs broke off and drifted away from the Laurentide ice sheet, which covered a large part of North America at the time. Icebergs carry freshwater that can affect ocean circulation, and computer models have suggested that adding that much freshwater to the Atlantic could shut down circulation. Exactly what influence the icebergs had during these periods will be the target of future research.
To determine how ocean circulation changed, the scientists measured three types of chemical tracers. By comparing the ratio of protactinium-231 to thorium-230, two daughter isotopes of uranium decay that remain in seawater for relatively short but consistently different periods of time before drifting into the seafloor, they could determine when circulation was strongest. Another isotope, carbon-13, captured in tiny shells, is more common in North Atlantic waters than in Southern waters. When circulation was strong, protactinium was low and carbon 13 was high because more protactinium was carried away by the current and more northern waters formed.
Axel Timmermann, a professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii who studies abrupt climate changes and was not involved in this study, called it a “breakthrough analysis.”
“Large changes in the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation are thought to have played a major role in generating millennial-scale global variability, known as Dansgaard-Oechger events, during the last glacial period. The paper by Henry, McManus and colleagues finally provides supporting evidence for this fundamental scientific hypothesis,” Timmermann said.
The other co-authors of the paper are Bill Curry of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences; Natalie Roberts and Alex Piotrowski of the University of Cambridge; and Lloyd Keigwin of Woods Hole. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Comer Science and Education Foundation, and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Climate Center.
h/t Science Daily.
__________________
I seem to recall Fred Singer and Dennis Avery wrote a book called Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 years and put the timing down to a solar-driven cycle. Though Bond Events which used to be 1,500 year cycles are now considered to be 1,000 year ones (apparently, according to wikipedia). The Moon-Earth orbit also has a 1200 – 1500 year cycles. (Cheifio drills into those details with his usual no-stone-unturned approach).
Reference:
L. G. Henry, J. F. McManus, W. B. Curry, N. L. Roberts, A. M. Piotrowski, L. D. Keigwin. North Atlantic ocean circulation and abrupt climate change during the last glaciation. Science, 2016; DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf5529
The AMOC has been seen for some time as a climate pacemaker, a key agent within the “stadium wave” pattern of mutually influencing oceanic oscillations.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/climate-pacemaker-the-amoc/
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Perhaps defibrillator’s can by ‘association’ be a possible means of controlling the climate other than by CO2 when the weather is misbehaving. 🙂
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That was in reply to your post Ron C in jest at the use of the word “pacemaker” in your analogy. My comment on this occasion surprisingly to me shows up as a separate comment through my own typo. I am reading the link you provided.
20
I’d say this information does a great job of demonstrating that climate isn’t well understood. The arrogant confidence “leading climate scientists” exhibit, should instead be a humble admission that there is much we don’t know.
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Nah! It’s simple really: human prosperity = climate change.
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So true! And it was ever so, as evidenced by Cain’s murder of Abel. Jealousy seeks to rule, nowhere more than in a prosperous society.
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Green Guilt is real guilt!
Makes you feel so warm inside… 🙂
20
The trials of a chaotic system. Man is famous for finding patterns where there are none. This maybe one of those times…. There is no imperitive that a pattern exists.
30
A bounded random walk springs to mind as a distinct possibility.
30
“A bounded random walk springs to mind as a distinct possibility.”
If you consider both ocean and atmosphere, it seems 65% deterministic. Cycles within cycles each of the other 7 planets + Earth’s moon each doing its own thing within it own time frame, all the way down to the twice per day ocean and atmospheric tides. Deliberately none synchronized with any other! Why is that? Add the Chaos from no starting point. Then the rest of the universe adding own 2 cents opinion of how it should be! Add less than a 6% statistical variance from thermal effects.
Hundreds of self appointed academic Climate “SCIENTISTS”, with no experience, doing statistical computer modeling to arrive at some global average temperature anomaly, as the only work product! How much does such nonsense cost per microsecond?
All the best! -will-
.
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The de Vries 208 year cycle is a bicentenary Gleissberg.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018207005214
‘…it seems 65% deterministic.’
Good news, all we need is a hindcast using all known planetary movements back to the dawn of civilization.
The oscillations are more complex, some appear to be caused by internal dynamics while others (like the NAO) seem to be influenced by our star.
20
“The de Vries 208 year cycle is a bicentenary Gleissberg.”
But what is a “bicentenary”?
(‘…it seems 65% deterministic.’)
My SWAG what is yours? Chaos?
“Good news, all we need is a hindcast using all known planetary movements back to the dawn of civilization.”
No! That will not work either! Consideration of planetary motion may give some clue. We likely will never know! Consider the current ‘know it all’ to 97% approach. How much does such nonsense cost per microsecond?
All the best! -will-
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‘My SWAG what is yours? Chaos?’
Your numbers look good.
20
Yes, throw in some biological inputs, a dynamic lithosphere, heliosphere and a fudge factor for as yet unknowns, unknowables and we’re on a roll to certainty.
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“Deliberately none synchronized with any other! ”
Must say, Will, I would be totally amazed if they did,
…unless one was directly formed from another.
22
(“Deliberately non-synchronized with any other! ”)
“Must say, Will, I would be totally amazed if they did,”
The orbits of even the small satellites seem to be arranged to forbid any planetary resonance. How dey do dat?
The Fourier, Hadamard, Laplace, transforms give not a clue. Lorentz, makes my head asplode! 🙂
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I liked that Will. Cycles on top of cycles etc.
KK
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John Reid’s “A bounded random walk”.
10
“A bounded random walk ”
A bit like my ex-father-in-law on his regular way home from the pub..
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A bit like my ex-father-in-law on his regular way home from the pub..
Many ways to get an ‘ex-father-in-law’; some not path integrals. How did yours go? 🙂
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Or a chaotic pendulum
So simple, cyclic but complex.
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A good graphic Tomo, to illustrate the point.
10
In the unfortunate scramble to lay the climate changes on man’s doorstep, we’ve neglected important studies on the past cycles – which, even if man were more at fault in the current climate changes, would indicate better how. As it is, CO2 is not a driver of change, soot and dust on the ice may be (but is mostly from natural events) causing some ice melt now (as it has in the past per some theories and studies) but that is not causing global warming. Only hype and doctored numbers are warming – not global temps – to a dangerous level.
Glad to see yet another hole in the ragged veneer of “climate science” drilled by a real study based on actual data and measurements.
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No caveat mentioning anthropogenic causes at the end.The paper conforms with the view that the thermohaline movement- and rates therein have an impact on the worlds’ climate.Fascinating planet this one.
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Papers covering this explanation of ‘climate’ we’re beginning to unravel these mysteries well into the 1990s. However the atmosphere as the sole determinater of ‘climate’ in association with the Sancho Panza like effect of carbon dioxide (water vapour taking the role of Don Quixote) became the politically correct and settled ‘science’ of the new millennium.
The knife edge balance of salt concentration and ocean temperature drive the overturning of the North Atlantic currents. This is one part of the heat pump ‘engine’ that drives ocean circulation. The other end of the loop is driven by the Antarctic circulation current, which commenced about 30 million years ago when it separated sufficiently from South America for it to begin. Evidence of this is the decline of the apparent earth temperature over the next 25 million or so years until reaching the current period typified by cyclic glacial maxima/minima cycles since.
You would have to suspect Coriolis forces as being behind this part of the ‘engine’.
Given that the oceans contain about 100 times the energy of the atmosphere you can imagine the Earth a bit like an inside out fridge with ocean currents shifting and exchanging heat from and with the atmosphere just as your fridge does.
Some areas under study in the 1990s that have been omitted since include the effect of the Nile flood in forcing the highly saline waters from the shallow Medideranean basin nearest the Gibralter Straits into the Atlantic Ocean north bound current. This is warm and very salty water heading north into the Arctic region. The Nile is now dammed and the Nile delta turned over the irrigated agriculture. The other area since forgotten are the huge rivers feeding freshwater from snow melt from Russia into the Arctic Ocean. These rivers are also controlled and have hydro schemes taking the energy out and regulating the flow of fresh water onto the surface of the Arctic Ocean. This water freezes to form Arctic sea ice which has been in decline of late.
As said earlier the Oceanic Current in the North Atlantic is driven by changes in the concentration of salt versus fresh water and small changes in ocean surface temperature.
With this in mind the North Atlantic surface temperature is currently falling rlapidly. You would suspect that we are therefore moving towards a much colder phase of the ‘climate’ rollercoaster.
‘Climate’ remains in brackets as anyone who considers 30 years an adequate definition of the term should perhaps consider taking a longer view. Known weather cycles have longer periods than 30 years.
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Bewich,
The time scales you use are interesting.
I have really only focussed on the nominal 100,000 year cycles because they involved something that could be linked to the last great ice age and the corresponding sea level falls that were in excess of 130 metres.
It is good to be reminded of the impact of various time scales because it highlights the flaws in the CO2 global warming scam.
KK
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You would have to suspect Coriolis forces as being behind this part of the ‘engine’
Yes.
Interestingly (at least to a geologist), I have read several papers archived at the International Journal for Geology that use tectonic and magnetic evidence to suggest that tectonic movements of land masses occasionally cause “imbalance” or “top-heavy” situations, resulting in much increased speed in tectonic movements until some sort of equilibrium is restored.
These movements alter ocean circulation with great effect.
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As a non scientist, claiming only to have a better than average comprehension of numbers, I can’t see the anthropogenic items you raise as more than infinitesimal when combined with the influence of the moon and the sun.
It looks to me like another example of man greatly overestimating the power of man.
How much has the damming of the Nile raised the salinity of the Mediterranean?
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The Ancient Greeks had a word for it: hubris, which is something mankind en masse is very good at.
Without the sun, this planet wouldn’t have a climate to control. But even the sun and the moon are poor controllers compared with other things.
It constantly amuses me how man continues to look down. I learnt many years ago, as a child, that it was far easier to hide by going up. Most people don’t look up and that goes for klimate scientists too. They look down and inward so they miss what is literally over their heads (as well as in another sense), I think because they are convinced it’s all mankind’s fault and they are determined to prove it. But “up” is where it’s all coming from. The larger climate control knob is Galactic Cosmic Rays as Nir Shaviv of Jerusalem Unversity thinks in the two papers I’ve linked to.
If you’re interested in reading them, just read around the maths. The gist is the important thing.
Once you appreciate the power of the GCRs then Svensmark’s more recent research into their effects becomes wholly understandable. (Again, read round the maths.)
The poor Greens. We’re completely outgunned and totally outclassed by what’s out there. We’re a bunch of monkeys hunting through the pebbles for the pretty ones, which is another way of saying that with an ambient temperature of about 278 degrees K, we’re getting all excited by variations of around +/- about 0.7 degrees K or +/- 0.25% (approx.), in temperature, and trying to find trends in the statistical and measurement noise.
I hope you enjoy the papers. They put it all into perspective.
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ambient temperatire of about 278 degrees K should read an ambient temperature of about 278 degrees K on a warm day
I found a pretty pebble and got a bit excited.
00
I think a 0 is missing.
I came a cross a 60 year old paper that stated the convention
Weather patterns that repeat several times a century are referred to as secular
Changes are referred to as climatic when they involve centuries or millenia.
Its geological change when referring to glacial and interglacial
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0469%281949%29006%3C0034:LPFOTG%3E2.0.CO%3B2
I can’t see secular weather change catching on.
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Ron is absolutely correct, AMOC is the climate pacemaker
but… the oceans are hundreds of feet higher now than during
the ice-age. The 1472 year Bond cycle was dominant then
because the circulation dynamic was completely different.
Somehow we’ve managed to come out of the last eight ice-ages.
A global electric circuit is probably the best explanation
for this.
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“AMOC is the climate pacemaker….”
Which is why the NH shows a 60-65 year cyclic temperature. as seen clearly in un-adjusted Reykjavik temperature. (shown here matched against the AMO.) and the SH… not so much of a cycle.
https://s19.postimg.org/5vfcwbc8j/amoreyk.jpg
The last broadish AMO maximum was in 1930-1950, and the last minimum was in 1979,
(exactly the year that all Arctic Sea Ice worriers like to start, for some reason) 😉
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Maybe some relevant links of interest …
Super-slow circulation allowed world’s oceans to store huge amounts of carbon during last Ice Age
“The way the ocean transported heat, nutrients and carbon dioxide at the peak of the last ice age, about 20,000 years ago, is significantly different than what has previously
been suggested, according to two new studies.
The findings suggest that the colder ocean circulated at a very slow rate, which enabled it to store much more carbon for much longer than the modern ocean.”
. . .
CO2 is NOT the Arctic temperature control knob
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/figures/doi/10.1029/2009GL038777/#figure-viewer-grl26067-fig-0003
. . .
Back when CO2 was at “safe” levels: “a series of massive droughts lasting decades – perhaps over millennia” …
Climate change, not humans, killed off megafauna
“Now, fresh results of a study at a renowned Victorian fossil site in the Macedon Ranges town of Lancefield 73 kilometres north of Melbourne has provided an answer.
Lead author of the research Joe Dortch from the University of Western Australia said climate change appeared to be the culprit in the mass deaths of megafauna living in
the Lancefield region 50,000 years ago.”
. . .
DNA evidence uncovers major upheaval in Europe near end of last Ice Age
DNA evidence lifted from the ancient bones and teeth of people who lived in Europe from the Late Pleistocene to the early Holocene — spanning almost 30,000 years of European prehistory — has offered some surprises, according to researchers. Perhaps most notably, the evidence shows a major shift in the population around 14,500 years ago, during a period of severe climatic instability.
. . .
‘Fourth strand’ of European ancestry originated with hunter-gatherers isolated by Ice Age
The first sequencing of ancient genomes extracted from human remains that date back to the Late Upper Palaeolithic period over 13,000 years ago has revealed a previously unknown “fourth strand” of ancient European ancestry.
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I’m still not convinced megafauna was killed off by climate change, they survived previous ice ages and then were wiped out on every continent by hairy chested humans.
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I’ve just finished reading an archeological book on this.
The author quite convincingly demonstrates that megafauna went extinct everywhere directly (within a few thousand years or so) after homo sapiens arrived.
This also suggests to me that the Aus central deserts were already fairly uninhabitable, even by fauna, as it is hard to imagine how a few hundred thousand hunter-gatherers could have covered the entire continent with their technology of the day.
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In Australia the megafauna would have survived over eons without a predator until humans turned up. They hunted down the young and the species soon became extinct.
20
Yes, but my point is the geographically huge expanse of continental Australia and the comparatively miniscule number of hunter-gatherer sapiens. There had to be vast interior areas that were uninhabitable even to the fauna long prior to the advent of the first human footprint on the continent. In a sense, the fauna were already accessibly herded for the human hunters.
20
The megafauna was well adapted to the arid environment at the time of their extinction 46,000 years ago. The evidence is clear, they perished at the hand of fire stick man.
10
… they perished at the hand of fire stick man
No argument about that.
You’ve misunderstood my point, I suspect.
I’m suggesting that the arid geography of 70% of the continent aided fire stick man in driving the extinctions. The megafauna simply couldn’t live in the Simpson desert and surrounds, essentially being corraled in more habitable environs for ongoing slaughter.
The extinction of the mammoth in northern America had a different geographical dynamic, although the end was the same. I was one of a small group of geos who visited a museum in southern Utah, run by a geologist as a small business. Full of T-rex fossils etc, but what gripped us was a research project he had – a local farmer trying to doze out a bog on his land uncovered a completely preserved mammoth. The beast was too large to be examined in detail at any one location so it had been split up, with one massive foreleg being given to this museum for ongoing analysis. He was picking mud off the leg carefully with tweezers in a humidified room and we were able to see clearly that the leg had been broken at the time of death (trying to get out of the mud was the surmise) – but there were three (3) flint spear heads still stuck in the bone. The local fire stick men there had had a real go at it while it was trapped … they were unsuccesful, as the entire animal was still preserved, but hey! they tried …
21
Ian
Ignore red thumb
00
Interesting story on the preserved mammoth and belatedly I appreciate your point, the megafauna lived in the habitable zone and and would have been easy pickings.
10
Animal populations are not moderated or controlled directly by climate.
They are controlled by their food supply,
When food is plentiful, the population booms.
When food disappears, so does the animal which eats that food, and very quickly.
If food fails in one area, they move to another.
Climate only plays a role if it impacts food supply totally, for example it dumps an ice cap onto what was once grassland.
Having said that, the disappearance of the Dinosaurs from the asteroid impact 65.5 million years ago was a sudden and drastic but very shortlived event, not a longer term climate event. Bolide splashes down, huge cloud of debris thrown skywards. Sun obscured long enough for plant life to die off. Electrical storm ignites dead/dying plants. The earth burns. Food supply gone. First to go, the titanosaurs Argentinosaurus et al. Next to go, T-Rex and cousins all down the food chain, leaving small avians and mammals to inherit the earth. (The thin layer of iridium rich clay which sparked the Cretaceous/Paleocene boundary event enquiry has a very thin layer of carbon on top of it. Before impact, Oxygen content was 30%, after “global bonfire” a lot less and today is only 21%. )
00
HCH’s certainly did the trick for the Moa bird in New Zealand.
00
There must be a sort of racial memory of these events considering how we react so strongly to children “playing” with fire. Whether it was Fire Stick Men who set fire to the Canterbury Plains Totara Forest or itinerant electrical storms is not known. Whatever did it, the forest was destroyed over a relatively short period of time. Most Moa food gone, so most Moa died. HCHs dining on the survivors saw the species off.
00
Jo,
out of Topic above, but may be of interest
Retraction Watch
Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process
Authors retract study that found pollution near fracking sites
Environmental Science and TechnologyThe authors of two environmental papers, including one about the effects of fracking on human health, have retracted them after discovering crucial mistakes.
One of the studies reported an increased level of air pollution near gas extraction sites, and the other suggested that 2010’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico contributed to air contamination.
According to the corresponding author of both papers, Kim Anderson at Oregon State University, the journal plans to publish new versions of both papers in the next few days. In the case of the fracking paper, the conclusions have been reversed — the original paper stated pollution levels exceeded limits set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for lifetime cancer risk, but the corrected data set the risks below EPA levels.
The fracking paper received some media attention when it was released, as it tapped into long-standing concerns about the environmental dangers of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), which extracts natural gas from the earth. A press release that accompanied the paper quoted Anderson as warning:
Air pollution from fracking operations may pose an under-recognized health hazard to people living near them.
Both papers, published in Environmental Science and Technology, were retracted on the same day (June 29), both due to mistakes in reported levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), pollutants released from burning oil, gas, and other organic matter.
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Oh …now it’s the ocean currents “driving “the climate on the surface is it ?
Can a current circulation tax be far off ? You know raise money to
alter the planets ocean current flow to adjust the earths temperature within a couple of degrees .
Perhaps a dolphin could be the new mascot relieving the polar bear to focus on swimming lessons .
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“dolphin could be the new mascot relieving the polar bear to focus on swimming lessons”
Have you tried to explain the difference between dolphin and seal to any polar bear? Did you survive? 🙂
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On a cursory reading it appears that Bond Events have been reduced to a statistical artifact, whereas D-O Events show the hallmarks of a de Vries solar cycle.
20
Oceanographers at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory Flip Flop on Ocean Cuurents and Climate Change
This was their view in 2005
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news/2005/04_07_05.htm
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So much of science these days and Climate Science in particular seems to consist of an ounce of discovery and a ton of speculation.
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What a surprise! So the ignored vast oceans have a great influence on climate? Mobile with 340 x the mass and thus 340x the heat content of the ocean, of course oceans are the main controller of everything. Our atmosphere is tiny byproduct of the ocean, an outgassing. There is much more atmosphere in the ocean than in the air. Water is the main distributor of heat as air does not conduct heat.
Rain comes from the ocean, not the air.
The oceans receive 66% of the incident sunlight and heat.
CO2 comes from the oceans, not the land and cycles with a proven half life of 14 years. Only 2% of the CO2 is in the atmosphere and 98% in the oceans.
The monsoons come from the ocean, as does the rain which ends the droughts.
By Henry’s law, oceans release CO2 at the warm equator and absorb it in the cooler latitudes.
In the thirty years the ‘man made’ CO2 theory has been going, it is only recently that people have even started to think the oceans might have an effect on climates. Prof Murry Selby has even shown that CO2 tracks the integral of temperature but is uncorrelated with (air) temperature itself, proving that solar heating controls CO2 levels and not the reverse.
So finally people are looking to the oceans. The problem is that this destroys the man made climate change theory which is already so busted with a total refusal of the planet to heat at all.
I still think the perturbation in CO2 levels with the seasons are a direct measure of the true mechanism controlling CO2 levels, ocean (surface) heating. They are not due to spring and fall. The lack of instantaneous correlation is just the delay in the movement of CO2 across the planet, a speed which can be seen again in the C14 bomb graph.
90
I suppose everyone is very aware of ocean currents in their immediate climate. In every country near the water.
The Gulf Stream is only one of many famous currents on which whole countries are dependent, plus the general circulations, CCW in the Southern Hemisphere and CW in the North. So the Southern Hemisphere West coasts like WA, South Africa, Chile have rich plankton filled cold currents and those on the East have warm tropical water. You can look at a map and really predict the climate from the current directions and the rainfall from mountain ranges, but we are supposed to believe CO2 is the critical factor? Climate is made from two factors, sunlight and rain. Sunlight produces rain from the oceans. Only 2% of the worlds water is in fact fresh, that being largely in Antarctica, the Great Lakes and Lake Baikal. The rest is piffling.
The story put out by the CSIRO is that without our atmosphere and the Greenhouse effect and CO2 in particular, the planet would be much colder? Ergo CO2 controls the climate.
Now this trades on ‘the obvious’ not science itself and is a device used to push all sorts of quackery. In fact 2/3 of the planet is covered by water at an average depth of 4km and which is incidentally filled with gas or fish would drown. It is our birth place too, not the harsh land, but the CSIRO would have you think the part we experience, the air and CO2 in particular is the controller of climate. This is sophistry by scientists to justify their opinions and funding.
No, it is all about the water, the rain, the snow, the ice, the clouds, the humidity and particularly, the freezing point of water at 0C. It is possible CO2 directly plays little part in our lives except that we and all living things are made almost entirely from hydrated CO2. So no CO2 would not mean we froze. It mean we would not exist. What’s the chance that the CO2 level of 1900 was the perfect level required to sustain life on earth? Zero.
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“No, it is all about the water, the rain, the snow, the ice, the clouds, the humidity and particularly, the freezing point of water at 0C. It is possible CO2 directly plays little part in our lives except that we and all living things are made almost entirely from hydrated CO2.”
This makes no sense at all! Just what can possibly be meant by “hydrated CO2”? 🙁
30
Carbohydrates (CO2)m(H2O)n
60
All our energy comes from CO2 capture by Chlorophyll, a long chain hydrocarbon and storing sunlight as chemical energy. We internally combust the sugars to power our brains, heart and muscles and nervous systems. Everything comes from the sun and CO2 and H2O. We are hydrocarbon life forms and our currency is carbohydrates, hydrated CO2.
80
Some of us power our brains this way, others appear to have engaged their ‘power save’ mode, or they now rely on solar or wind power…
30
“We are hydrocarbon life forms and our currency is carbohydrates, hydrated CO2.”
Thank you! Hydrated carbon! The ripping apart of Water to get an H is what a tree leaf does well in Sunlight. The enzyme reduction of CO2 to the needed C is an easy, 24 hr process,as is reduction of CH4. All plants convert waste solar power to latent heat of evaporation of water rather than increase sensible heat and temperature. Very little C is available from the soil!
All the best! -will-
20
So True TdeF
However John Daly had thought a lot about the Oceans and Climate years ago. Scientists and others seeking to understand the influence of the oceans and ocean currents would do well to read his essay;The Deep Blue Sea
http://www.john-daly.com/deepsea.htm
Incidentally Tim Ball has written an essay about John Daly which appeared on the Principia Scientific International web site about a week ago and also on WUWT a few days later.
90
Thanks. Interesting points including the dropping salinity from fresh water inverting the temperature profile through changes in density. Fundamentally our very limited human environment is utterly controlled by the ocean temperatures and circulation, horizontal and vertical. He makes the strong point that you cannot heat the air without heating the water first. Plus the point that warmer water does not sink, so you would see sudden surface water heating immediately and that is not the case.
My other point is that all our big weather events, the ‘extreme’ events, hurricanes, storms, monsoons, deluges are basically ocean phenomena which move inland with all the water and die quickly over land. Then you get the dominant El Nino and La Nina which are ocean temperature phenomena. So it is obviously the water which defines our climates and climate extremes and climate studies where humans live are effect, not cause. We are a water planet. English graduate Tim Flannery then studied ancient dead kangaroos on land. How he came to be Australia’s Climate Commissioner is about extreme left politics, not science.
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TdeF,
For every tonne (1000kg) of water per unit volume (1m3), there is ~ 1kg of air for the same volume (1kg of air to ~1.2m3)
Heat capacity of ocean water 3993 J/kg/K
Heat capacity of air 1005 J/kg/K
So, if there is 340x the mass of the oceans to the atmosphere, and the heat capacity per kilogram is 3993/1005 x 340= approx. 1350x the heat content of the atmosphere according to my calculations.
So it only strengthens what you were saying about oceans controlling the atmosphere not vice versa.
10
It is almost as if the climate is determined by more than just CO2. Maybe a number of factors.
Maybe … many
61
El Gordo,
I’m strictly cycles and celestial mechanics.
What are the actual differences between the Bond
cycle and the Dansgaard Oeschger? If they both
have 1500 year periods, wouldn’t that make
differentiating the two rather difficult?
20
Yes its hard to know for sure. Do you think the LIA was a Bond Event?
By the way this story has been given a run in the MSM, notably Graham Lloyd in the Oz.
http://phys.org/news/2016-07-antarctic-sea-ice-linked-natural.html
20
Really 😉
I vaguely recall making statements such as:-
…
There IS NO CO2 WARMING SIGNATURE in the satellite temperature data
The ONLY warming has come from El Nino and ocean circulation effects.
164
Hi, little red thumb guys. 🙂
Great topic , hey. 😉
74
If we rewind back to the story about that massive rat trap, Bramble Cay – the cays of Torres Strait were created from coral reefs at a higher sea level then the cays formed as sea levels dropped (and smaller ones washed away in between). The different ages of the cays suggest that the sea levels in the area rise and fall with a about a 1500 period with an overall drop since 6000 years ago.
Warraber Is is the oldest and largest at 5800 BP with the other islands showing
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006GL028875/full
50
After living near the coast of California for a long time and remembering my college education, I find it inexplicable how anyone could think that ocean currents can influence the climate. They’re obviously wrong, these experts. Co2 did it don’t cha know? 😉
60
The basis of the earth’s climate is due to it receiving more of the sun’s rays at the equator than the poles, and the rest is due to the distribution of this heat through the ocean currents and weather patterns, isn’t it?
30
No!
11
The results of this study are helpful in settling the ‘chicken & the egg’ debate over ocean currents & climate. But we do need more studies to understand more clearly what is happening.
Geoff W
10
” Do you think the LIA was a Bond Event? ”
Before the oceans can warm, there must first be a solar event.
Ray Tomes developed an ‘Harmonic Theory’ based on increasing
harmonics {2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 16, 18, 24, 36, 48, 72, 144}.
Everything vibrates and the strongest harmonics dominate in our
solar system.
The LIA cycle is an 1008 (144 x 7) year solar cycle and the LIA
periods {O, MWP, W, S, M, D, G} repeat and average out to
~144 years each.
Ray Tomes can be found at Cyclesresearchinstitute.wordpress.com
I was able to extract the 144 year cycle from a simple equation.
If anyone is interested in reviewing my work, it can be found
at Weathercycles.wordpress.com
20
Before the oceans can warm, there must first be a solar event.
“Ray Tomes developed an ‘Harmonic Theory’ based on increasing harmonics {2,3,4,6,8,9,12,16,18,24,36,48,72,144}.”
Every integer multiple of some fundamental frequency is called a harmonic of that fundamental! Do you have a fundamental? Why are your listed multiples any more important than all of the others?
“Everything vibrates and the strongest harmonics dominate in our solar system.”
Really? Where is your evidence?
“The LIA cycle is an 1008 (144 x 7) year solar cycle and the LIA periods {O, MWP, W, S, M, D, G} repeat and average out to ~144 years each.”
So the average of the many non-harmonic cyclics is 144 years. That is truly GRAND!! 🙁
20
I’m stuck on Scafetta.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/scafetta_60-20.png
20
Quoted from the head line post;
Perhaps the correct interpretation might well be;
Sigh!
Here I go again!
This research seems to have been carried out using both models and observation which have been based on ocean floor evidence collected in the Atlantic Ocean north of its narrow neck between Brazil and Sierra Leone.
That narrow neck of the Atlantic Ocean spans some 2848 kms and that is quite distance isn’t it?
BUT to put that huge [ ? ] Atlantic ocean distance at its narrowest neck into perspective.
Straight line distances >
–Tamworth in NSW > Kalgoorlie in WA – 2802.5 kms
–Darwin > Toowoomba Qld.——— 2764 kms
–Brisbane > Perth—————- 3607 Kms
The distance across the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean between say Lisbon in Portugal to New York > 5435 kms .
However if you drive from Cairns in Qld to Bunbury in the south west of WA, the driving distance > 5498 kms
Ref; Australian Driving Distance Calculator
And these are the distances on the smallest continent.
What I am trying to say once again is that an enormous amount of the supposed factors that are claimed by climate scientists to drive the global climate once again are centred almost solely on the northern Atlantic Ocean basin that is located so very conveniently between the scientific flesh pots of the western European nations science establishments and the American east coast science establishments.
Meanwhile there are vast ocean areas which could be argued are just as influential in global climate affairs and outcomes are to all intents and purposes barely researched let alone researched in details as to currents, sink areas , deep abyssal water currents and outflows and inflow, items such as the relatively little known deep water Kerguelen Plateau which is located 3000 kms SW of Perth in the southern Indian ocean and is about the same size as 4 Britains and was not so long ago, geologically speaking , was covered in trees and has coal deposits according to drill cores.
The disruption to the Antarctic Circumpolar current flow and the effects on the global climate by the large scale turbulent current flows around the Kerguelen Plateau is almost unknown from the placement of this Igneous [ Volcanic ] plateau which is just one more instance of North Atlantic based scientific institutes and their inmates jumping to all sorts of quite probably wrong and unfounded in reality conclusions due to their ignorance of the rest of the world and its oceans on the innumerable, interacting, interlocking factors that drive the global climate and all its innumerable variations.
In fact the entire Atlantic Ocean both north and south of its narrow neck is slightly less in area than half the area of the Pacific ocean and despite all the climate science attention lavished on the Atlantic ocean, it is only 12% larger in area than that almost completely ignored by climate science, that pond called the Indian Ocean which sits off of Perth’s beaches and abuts against the fifth largest and by far the coldest and most climatically extreme continent on this planet, the Antarctic continent.
.
Not only does the Indian Ocean abut against the Antarctic continent but it also washes ashore on the African continent, the South Asian continent and the Australian continent which is the same number of major continents as the Atlantic; ie Europe, Africa, North and South America.
And for other those other immense ocean currents that are far removed from the North Atlantic centres of selfie centred climate research, the Australian Antarctic Divisions;
.
The Southern Ocean’s global reach
More>>>
101
“Evidence might also indicate that the Southern Climate —warmed— before the Northern climate etc;”
Evidence so far is that the northern hemisphere claim-something is much different than the southern hemisphere claim-something! Every latitudinal clim/claim-something is unique and a specific function of both day of year, and time of day!
It is these details/differences that hold ‘ALL’ the information of how this Earth, may possibly work!
It is the intentional SCAM of some Global average something anomaly, that must be destroyed, stomped into the earth, then paved over, for evermore!
All the best! -will-
31
” if ocean currents cause climate change, what causes the ocean currents?” Jeez Jo what is your problem, the science on this is already settled, it’s Carbon Dioxide! Either that or Tony Abbott
80
These “Dansgaard-Oeschger events are clearly explained in
http://www.knowledgeminer.eu/climate/papers.html, in particular the
paper: “Climate forcing mechanisms governs 20,000 years of climate change”,
also see the paper´s first page sine wave drawing…….
………….. concerning the text of above sea circulation paper: Mind,
the presented picture moves the RED COLOR warmth to the North and the text also moves the warmth to the North…..but they talk but do NOT show, how the warmth is MOVING SOUTH, which is an essential to have a so-called alternating “see-saw” of hot – cold North-South ocean circulation.
Furthermore: The circulation is not a cause but an effect, if you circulate from A to B on the globe, the entire globe does not get warmer, and we have
the Interglacial and the Glacial simultaneously in the Northern and in the Southern Hemisphere..implicated or not implicated?
There is a new study out on simultaneous temperatures in the MWP for all over the globe, a mapping project by S. Luening “www.Medical Warm Period – Google”.
Cheers JS.
10
It was so easy when “the science was settled” and we were just arguing about nothing else except the role of CO2 and mankind in changing the entirety of the whole planet’s climate and for the seriously worse at that, so we were repeatedly told by the warmists and associated climate science troughers and pimps.
Now they have the absolute gall to suggest that there maybe all sorts of other potential influences that may not be man made as having an effect, or Horrors, a major non human impact upon the global climate.
CO2 yesterday.
Ocean currents today.
Next they will be blaming the Sun for all those terrible climate catastrophes we are apparently having somewhere.
Can’t those damn climate change catastrophists make up their minds and decide just what they might believe or are they becoming so mindlessly addled, not that we could detect the difference from their normal state, that they don’t know what to believe or what they are supposed to be trying to enforce on the populace any more other than somebody should do something to “Save the Planet”.
[ /sarc ]
70
Who knew?
‘A Swedish scientist told us that the IPCC must certainly have known the importance of the ocean cycles in the early phase of his ministry. One of the IPCC’s co-founder, who died in 2007, Bert Bolin said to have spoken at a meeting in the establishment phase of the IPCC in the 1980s openly about the 60-year cycle of the ocean cycles.’
The Hockey Schtick
30
A letter from Carl Wunsch, Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology” in “Nature” 428, 601, April 8, 2004):
“Gulf Stream safe if wind blows and Earth turns”
“Sir – Your News story “Gulf Stream probed for early warnings of system failure” (Nature 427, 769 (2004)) discusses what the climate in the south of England would be like “without the Gulf Stream.” Sadly, this phrase has been seen far too often, usually in newspapers concerned with the unlikely possibility of a new ice age in Britain triggered by the loss of the Gulf Stream.
European readers should be reassured that the Gulf Stream’s existence is a consequence of the large-scale wind system over the North Atlantic Ocean, and of the nature of fluid motion on a rotating planet. The only way to produce an ocean circulation without a Gulf Stream is either to turn off the wind system, or to stop the Earth’s rotation, or both.
Real questions exist about conceivable changes in the ocean circulation and its climate consequences. However, such discussions are not helped by hyperbole and alarmism. The occurrence of a climate state without the Gulf Stream anytime soon – within tens of millions of years – has a probability of little more than zero.”
Also:
“The Source of Europe’s Mild Climate” Original at Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 128(586): 2563-2586), 2002. Richard Seager et al
Richard Seager is a senior research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory:
The notion that the Gulf Stream is responsible for keeping Europe anomalously warm turns out to be a myth.
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2006/4/the-source-of-europes-mild-climate
“That the Gulf Stream is responsible for Europe’s mild winters is widely known and accepted, but, as I will show, it is nothing more than the earth-science equivalent of an urban legend.
Countless magazine and newspaper stories have asserted that the flow of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico north and east across the Atlantic accounts for why winters in, say, London, are so much more pleasant than those in Labrador, which lies at the same latitude. Despite what seem to be supporting statements from many oceanographers, it turns out that this description is highly misleading.
In fact, England and France enjoy milder winters than eastern Canada in large part because prevailing winds at these latitudes blow from west to east over the comparatively warm ocean, thus allowing much of Europe to have a mild “maritime” climate. In addition, the Rocky Mountains cause a waviness in the general west-to-east flow that sends air somewhat south when it departs North America and then back north, (after picking up heat from lower latitudes) when it blows over Europe.”
– See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2016/06/26/another-doomsday-climate-prediction-gets-postponed-effect-on-gulf-stream-smaller-than-expected/#comments
30
Does anyone ese think that the ocean circulation Diagram from The Lamont Dohery Earth Observatory (Columbia University) in Jo’s introduction article looks strange?
It shows warm surface currents swerving south in the mid Indian Ocean the passing south of the Cape of Good Hope and traveling up the middle of the South Atlantic and crossing the equator!
I checked on my National Geographic Globe (circa 1980). The currents depicted on the globe look nothing like that. Now I could accept that this might be a speculative scenario dreamed up by the Climate Scientists of the esteemed organistion (Columbia University -New York City) but it seems so far from reality as to require some better explanation.
The reality as depicted on my globe is that the Indian Ocean warm current is driven westward by the equatorial winds until it strikes the coast of Africa then flows south passing both sides of Madagascar and ends at the southern tip of Africa. It does not flow around the Cape.
Rather cold waters from the Southern Ocean flowing west to eat strike the west coast of Africa and are diverted north. That explains the desert of Namibia and the abundant oceanic life found on the coast there.
Also the Lamont Doherty diagram completely neglects the Gulf Stream, the best documented ocean current on Earth.
It seems to me that the Gulf Stream and othe oceanic currents are driven by heat ie the temperature difference between the tropics and the poles. Lamont Doherty do not seem to recognize that. They would rather think that ocean currents detiremine temperature!
20
Ok I surrender.
Everything does not vibrate.
And the weakest harmonics are dominant.
There is no LIA.
The sun is constant.
10
Modeled ice thickness and volume
The plots show maps with sea ice thickness, and seasonal cycles of the calculated total arctic sea ice volume. The mean sea ice volume and standard deviation for the period 2004-2013 are shown with gray. The figures are based on calculations using DMI’s operational ocean and sea ice model HYCOM-CICE.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/images/FullSize_CICE_combine_thick_SM_EN_20160708.png
Daily Mean Temperatures in the Arctic 1958 – 2016
Daily mean temperatures for the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel, plotted with daily climate values calculated from the period 1958-2002.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2016.png
10
What happens to the Gulf Stream?
http://oi64.tinypic.com/i3c6cp.jpg
10
Question: “The $64 trillion dollar question is if ocean currents cause climate change, what causes the ocean currents?”
Answer: Wind (and Coriolis)
Question: What causes Wind?
Answer: Pressure Differences
Question: What causes Pressure Differences?
Answer: Temperature Differences
Question: What causes Temperature Differences?
Answer: [partly] Ocean Currents
Then we are back again. So we must study the whole interplay between pressure differences, wind, ocean currents, temperature differences etc. etc. World wide.
A dynamic sun in combination with orbital changes causes differences in energy delivered to the earth. How it works out we can only find out by getting a complete image of the interplay between factors we can measure. A dynamic whole in which the final climate consequences may be as unpredictable as in other complex processes. Perhaps we can find some patterns, but ‘results from the past don’t give a guarantee for the future’: who predicted ‘the Blob’?
It remains an interesting puzzle. Slowly we will find out more.
30
Ocean currents is highly complex science, not like ‘climate’ which is simply due to co2 LOL,LOL
00
I can prove climate change is real!!!
As I started typing this it was cloudy, very dark clouds.
Now it is raining lightly,…. oh wait it just stopped. Wait……. it appears the wind is picking up a bit…… some rain…..wind increasing….rain stopped…..
10
This report just in… we now have thunder!!! The climate is changing!!OMG!! Who would have thought.
10
It seems to me that as most of the earth is water, we get climate and abundant fish.
If it was the other way around i.e. 70% land, the warm currents would not be able to keep England and much of Europe warm. Monsoons may also be missing and generally rainfall may be insufficient to deliver good farming and droughts may persist
The ‘water planet’ seems perfect for all life
10
‘The scientists stress that more work is needed…”
Well, that’s novel.
10
I was reading an article last night which attributes much of the ‘increasing’ climate change such as wild storms etc on a belief that the northern trade winds have penetrated south of the equator and merged with the southern trade winds to intensify the severity of storms and increasingly wild weather. It also appears that meteorite activity has also increased by some 42% on a monthly basis with much larger fireballs. An example was given of a extra bright one in Africa in late June. Any comments???
00
very interesting 😮
00