Put it in a history book: scientists are sounding like scientists — admitting they don’t understand
Antarctic Sea Ice set records in 2014, but then in 2016 it rapidly declined and hasn’t recovered, indeed right now as the southern winter peaks, it’s at a record low. The long term trend is still rising, but its now only half the rate it was in 2014. On this blog, Mike Jonas recently demonstrated that the Southern Ocean had cooled, not warmed as all the models predicted. But what matters here is that sea ice covers 7% of the world and we don’t know what caused it.
What is also a record is that most scientists and journalists are showing real restraint and are not blaming this as a climate change event.
Even, bowl-me-over, New Scientist, is showing admirable restraint: Antarctic sea ice is declining dramatically and we don’t know why. This is the first time since starting this blog ten years ago that I have been able to say that. Congrats Adam Vaughan.
Decades of expanding sea ice in Antarctica have been wiped out by three years of sudden and dramatic declines, leaving scientist puzzled as to why the region has flipped so abruptly. However, researchers cautioned against pinning the changes on climate change and said it was too early to say if the shrinking is the start of a long-term trend or a blip.
The decline may just be natural variability, driven by shift in wind patterns which influence the extent of Antarctic sea ice, says Mark Serreze, director of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. “To argue that this recent dip is evidence of the start of a longer term decline driven by greenhouse warming is premature.” — New Scientist.
On average across the seasons there is about 13 million square kilometers of sea ice around Antarctica, so even though this is a record low, it’s still only 10% below normal. Right now, because its winter, there is 14 million square km of sea ice , but at this time of year normally there would be 15 million km2.
Antarctic Sea Ice, Graph, June, 2019. Source: NSIDC
The water around Antarctica is no warmer than normal for this time of year:
You might think a warm sea current could be to blame, but it’s not that simple. The black area around the ice below shows the sea surface temperature today has a 0.0C “anomaly”. In other words, spot on average. (Though this is not a trend graph, just a daily situation graph, which can change quickly).
SSTA, Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly, Antarctica | Nullschool.
The Southern Ocean long term trends are what matters. This above, is a pretty picture, symbolic, but just a snapshot.
Scientists admit they have to go back to the drawing board:
Maddie Stone, Gizmodo — January 2019:
“Notably, the November to December 2016 period was considered an extreme excursion of Antarctic sea ice at the time,” the NSDIC wrote.
In short, scientists pinned the last sea ice nosedive on natural variability. But it’s currently unclear what’s behind this year’s ice crash. Notably, University of Washington sea ice researcher Cecilia Bitz told Earther that the Southern Annular Mode is not strongly negative at the moment. Nor are we still nursing the hangover of a monster El Niño, as we were at the end of 2016.
“I think we have to go back to the drawing board a little bit,” Bitz told Earther.
Bitz was reluctant to speculate as to whether the near back-to-back sea ice slumps are part of a new trend associated with climate change. While parts of Antarctica are definitely feeling the heat, until recently, Antarctic sea ice was growing slightly, reaching a record high in 2014. That doesn’t negate the warming trend, it simply speaks to the complexity of sea ice behaviour in an environment impacted by both ocean currents and a giant continent.
Son Ngheim, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Earther that everything from winds driven by Antarctic continental topography to currents controlled by the shape of the Southern Ocean’s seafloor influences Antarctic sea ice. Bitz pointed to ice melting on the edges of the continent as a factor that could, paradoxically, help new sea ice form by preventing warmer deep waters from rising to the surface. Snowfall might also influence year to year variability in ice, according to NASA.
“Another point of low sea ice extent in the Antarctic this year still cannot be considered as a climatic trend,” Ngheim wrote Earther in an email, noting that spates of record lows occurred in the early part of the satellite record, as well.
Mark Kaufman, Mashable, reports that the Antarctic sea ice was volatile in the 1960s
Meier has studied some of the earliest satellite imagery of Antarctica, from the 1960s. Though the old pictures are of lower quality and incomplete compared to modern satellite records, it does paint a picture of a highly variable Antarctic — similar to what Parkinson has recently observed. There were almost certainly giant swings in the Antarctic sea ice some 60 years ago, with a big drop comparable to that occurring in recent years, he noted.
Again, reported with admirable caution:
One thing, however, is more certain. In stark contrast to the Arctic, it’s much too soon to say whether global warming is at fault. “Anyone who speculates conclusively that the new downward trends are related to climate change are far overstating the understanding we have,” noted Campbell.
But look who’s still printing wild hyperbole — USA Today and The Guardian
No matter how little we know, it’s still climate change according to Damien Carrington:
‘Precipitous’ fall in Antarctic sea ice since 2014 revealed:
The Guardian: The plunge in the average annual extent means Antarctica lost as much sea ice in four years as the Arctic lost in 34 years. The cause of the sharp Antarctic losses is as yet unknown and only time will tell whether the ice recovers or continues to decline.
But researchers said it showed ice could disappear much more rapidly than previously thought.
Which is another way of saying “scientists got it wrong”. Sea Ice showed scientists it could grow much faster than previously thought too. Did The Guardian mention that?
Count the excuses — something just flipped and researchers don’t know what it was:
“The Arctic has become a poster child for global warming,” Parkinson said, but the recent sea ice falls in Antarctica have been far worse. She has tracked Antarctic sea ice for more than 40 years. “All of us scientists were thinking eventually global warming is going to catch up in the Antarctic,” she said.
Kaitlin Naughten, a sea ice expert at the British Antarctic Survey, said: “Westerly winds which surround the continent mean that Antarctic sea ice doesn’t respond directly to global warming averaged over the whole planet.”
“Climate change is affecting the winds, but so is the ozone hole and short-term cycles like El Niño. The sea ice is also affected by meltwater running off from the Antarctic ice sheet,” she said. “Until 2014, the total effect of all these factors was for Antarctic sea ice to expand. But in 2014, something flipped, and the sea ice has since declined dramatically. Now scientists are trying to figure out exactly why this happened.”
The only real horror here, is how little we understand the climate.
USA Today mentions man-made climate change, and quotes Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center doing a bit of emotional advertising for the cause. He called the plummeting ice levels “a white-knuckle ride.” ( Jo wonders how much should we panic if Antarctic Sea ice is close to where it was in 1981? Shock, horror. “The Eighties”? )
Here’s the usual graph of Antarctic Sea Ice Extent:
Antarctic Sea Ice Extent, Map, June 2019.
https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_iqr_timeseries.png
The Map, for completeness and perspective.
Antarctic Sea Ice Anomaly. Graph.
Climate4U reminds us that sea ice covers 7% of Earth, and Antarctic sea ice almost disappears each summer because it stretches so far north of the pole:
Sea ice occupies about 7% of the surface area of planet Earth. The sea ice thickness, its spatial extent, and the fraction of open water within the ice pack can vary rapidly and profoundly in response to weather and climate. Sea ice typically covers about 14 to 16 million square kilometres in late winter in the Arctic and 17 to 20 million square kilometres in the Southern Ocean around the Antarctic. The seasonal decrease is much larger around the Antarctic, with only about three to four million square kilometres remaining at summer’s end, compared to approximately seven to nine million square kilometres in the Arctic. The main reason for this difference is that the Arctic Ocean is centred on the Pole, while the Southern Ocean is not.
Finally something that melted is due to natural climate variability
From January this year:
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-antarctica-sea-ice-climate.html
Taken together, the evidence we present supports the idea that the rapid Antarctic sea ice decline in late 2016 was largely due to natural climate variability.
Since then, sea ice has remained mostly well below average in association with warmer upper ocean temperatures around Antarctica.
While scientists are just guessing — is it winds?
We argue these are the product of stronger than normal westerly winds in the previous 15 or so years around Antarctica, driven again from the tropics. These stronger westerlies induced a response in the ocean, with warmer subsurface water moving towards the surface over time.
Could warm tropical waters melt Antarctic sea ice? C’mon guys…
The combination of record tropical sea surface temperatures and weakened westerly winds in 2016 warmed the entire upper 600m of water in most regions of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. These warmer ocean temperatures have maintained the reduced extent of sea ice.
REFERENCE:
Clair, L. Parkinson (2019) A 40-y record reveals gradual Antarctic sea ice increases followed by decreases at rates far exceeding the rates seen in the Arctic, PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1906556116
I have been reading for some years that there is a massive increase in central Antarctica. You can understand why warming alarmists don’t want to discuss this.
Antarctica is already 3.5km high and the size of South America, an ocean above ground. The snow increase can be seen easily from satellite data, but no one seems to want to talk about Antarctica growing, just about seas ice which doesn’t matter. However water comes from somewhere and may contribute to falling sea levels in the Southern ocean.
While I don’t understand the kinematics of a non round planet, there is more to sea levels than a bathtub as the poles are 40km lower than the equator anyway, as are the sea levels measured from the centre of the earth. It is another sign that this idea the planet is a smooth round object with uniform everything and one temperature is just silly. How anyone establishes a represntative temperature for Antarctica and what it actually means is beyond me. Maybe it is just homogenized from Marble Bar to Albany to the South Pole?
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‘While I don’t understand the kinematics of a non round planet …’
It is caused by earth’s rotation. The bulge is the ‘balance between gravitation and centrifugal force.’
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E G ?
Please explain !
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This might help.
http://www.cleonis.nl/physics/phys256/equatorial_bulge.php
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Thank you E G.
Yes it does.
The ice forming around the Antarctic is subject to that force
And cannot cohere as well into ice sheets .
In fact that is a nice informative web site.
I could have used it back in 1965
When I was studying physics at secondary school.
🙂
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The centrifugal force is much weaker round the poles than round the equator.
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Neat.
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I don’t spin like that, but I’m still getting an equatorial bulge. !
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….and I thought I had this worked out!
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The earth is not a perfect sphere. Nor is it constant density. The gravitational pull is the sum of all the individual pulls divided by distance squared. So depending on your direction, the gravity is stronger or weaker. However at the incredible speed of satellites, it changes quickly and probably can be approximated. How they get distances to mm accuracy though is amazing as orbital radii must change with changing gravitational pull and the pull with the earth’s rotation although at any given point the gravity is unchanging, so the height would be constant at that point.
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Does that centre of gravitational attraction move as the satellite’s distance from the centre increases or decreases? Intuition says it would. Is my intuition as good as it used to be?
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Interesting.
Are you suggesting that if a satellite was directly over the equator, there would be different sized pulls from each hemisphere.
And cut her, as the satellite went higher that the difference would be reduced.
KK
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For geostatic satellites, it hardly matters at 36,000 km but above one point. 6 times the radius of the Earth or 6,371km.
Earth observation satellites are much closer and often in a polar orbit so the earth turns under them, but really quite close to the surface at say 100km minimyum where most satellites are between 500km and 1500km. There would be different pulls but how much they differ I do not know.
It may be inconsequential.
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And not just different hemispheres. In every direction. The satellite takes no notice of the earth’s axes or the equator. It just orbits.
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Where are the headlines? Sea levels dropping dramatically! Antarctic growing rapidly upwards. Global cooling started. Scientists alarmed. Penguins threatened. Fish upset.
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G’day TdeF,
The headline I saw was “Barty makes Centre Court”.
Cheers
Dave B
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G’day again TdeF,
A sort of more relevant headline, and from an unlikely source, but rather encouraging:
“Historian challenges climate-change thinking
Professor challenges view climate change is largely the result of human behaviour.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/radical-historian-blainey-challenges-climate-change-orthodoxy-20190704-p524e8.html?
By Tony Wright. In the News section today, Saturday July 6. I’m flabbergasted. The first few pars:
” Australia’s best-known historian, Professor Geoffrey Blainey, has challenged the idea that the current level of climate change is either unique or largely the result of human behaviour.
While agreeing the Earth was experiencing a warming period which had been under way for several decades, he said this in no way compared with much greater climate change in human history.
Professor Blainey, 89, the influential and sometimes controversial author of almost 40 books on Australian and world history, made plain he did not accept the overwhelming view of climate scientists that the changing climate required a unique, modern explanation limited to human behaviour. “
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Good comment. Interesting.
I have Prof Blainey’s excellent books. Thoroughly professional and very entertaining, enlightening. The burnt stick. Amazingly insightful.
He’s only ‘controversial‘ because he has his own opinion based solely on facts and his expertise as a professional historian for his lifetime. He was driven out of Melbourne University by the staff and students. Facts matter far less in history than science. The truth is only by policy or received opinion, never facts.
Expressing your own opinion is already a criminal offence. Ask Andrew Bolt. Soon even having your own opinion will be illegal, especially if it is Christianity. Ask Israel Folau. Experienced professional historians like Kevin Windshuttle are harassed and vilified in the press which is an integral part of the offence taking system. Voltaire would be jailed. It is becoming illegal to even study Voltaire.
I do not see Geoffrey Blaney as controversial. I see him as professional, truthful and insightful and incredibly experienced. The only thing controversial is the truth.
As for racist, races are different or they wouldn’t be races. It wouldn’t be called the Human Race if it wasn’t a competition.
The core belief is not that everyone is the same, but that we are not to discriminate on the basis of race or gender. Unfortunately we are told there is no race and there is no gender and who needs facts in science as long as everyone agrees?
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We are also now told that Australian Ab*rigines did not invade 50,000 years ago with their dingoes and fire, but that they were always here. Again destroying anthropology and archeology, genetics and Dawinian evolution in the name of politics and virtue signalling. And they presumably did not wipe out the Megafauna and destroy the vegetation with fire hunting and halve the rainfall, turning much of Australia into a desert.
Now we are told they are and always have been peaceful caretakers, scientists, farmers, settlers and front page in the Australian today, six ab*rigines are advising the UN committee which oversees the Blue Mountains Heritage area and therefore such things as new dams and flight paths near Sydney. So 2% of the population at best are now in charge and have handed that delegated to a UN committee. At the same time they just banned rock climbing at Mt Arapiles and seek to have more bans in the South West. This is blatant racism, presented as caring awareness and multiculturalism. It is utter nonsense. I hope they walk home from the UN.
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The magnetic poles are on the move. The southern magnetic pole is now not where it was (on the continent) before 2014. It’s heading somewhere else.
Could the change in sea-ice cover and the south Magnetic pole leaving the continent be coincident?
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It seems to be heading in your direction.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-01-25/earths-magnetic-poles-are-moving-but-dont-flip-out/10727276#lightbox-share-10743022
I don’t think it has any impact on sea ice.
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G’wan: clean yer glasses and put them on straight! 🙂
This mercator projection says somewhere between Karratha and Broome.
Nice pics if you use the “Arctic” and “Antarctic” tabs (top RHS).
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I don’t have any idea of the mechanism. But this is an electromagnetic universe, (gravity works too slowly) but I wonder about the sun/earth connection which is electric and magnetic.
Something changes: eg, the south magnetic pole position, and lo: something else changes. It could be coincidence but what if it’s not? What effect on sea ice do the planetary electric currents have? The planetary-solar currents? The solar wind is electric in nature (protons) and where do the incoming electric particles go? To one or the other magnetic pole.
There’s an enormous amount of energy as the aurorae show.
Just thinking …
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But the magnetic field moves because other stuff is moving/changing. The core probably. So if there are big enough changes in the core that cause the magnetic field to move, what else is the movement of the core changing? Undersea volcanism somewhere that is changing deep water currents? Shifting heat from one area of the deep ocean to the opposite side must have an effect surely?
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As the ice over the land gets thicker, the ice formation process over the sea is less likely to occur. Less melting from land ice means less temperature inversion on the surface of the ocean caused by land melt. Ice on water cannot easily form without a temperature inversion (about 4 to 0 neare the surface). This balance can be seen to be quite sudden over very large areas. It becomes visually obvious on a big lake.
The outcome is a deepening of ice/snow on the land and less on surrounding water.
As the sun spot activity is weak, expect more snow on the land in winter (it cools faster than the ocean). Lakes and seas will have less ice even as the land is colder.
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Tell me if I’m asleep, but in Antarctica the ice would form in the air, not in the water or on the ice. So for both land ice and sea ice the relevant factors would be elevation and distance from the source.
BTW. How far away is the source? And in which direction?
As for the advancing or retreating sea ice, could this be due to an uncomplicated physical cycle, not dependent on external factors? Our records don’t go back very far.
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Less sea ice, less solar reflection, warmer sea, less land ice, more land ice melt, cooler suurounding sea surface (fresh & salt water does not easily mix), more sea ice, etc etc.
The magnetic effect is certainly of interest. Low sun spot activity, weak Earth’s magnetic field. The affect on the climate will be significant.
The big Yellow Ball (its white in space) and the Earth’s position and inclination relative to it determine our climate.
Worshipping Gaia is going to get Sol upset!
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The centrifugal force for the bulge, and Coriolis for the circulation.
This article looks like a opps moment, just keep quiet incase. Yes plenty of ice on the continent as TdeF says but the formation processes of the sea ice arent clear. Noone wants to put their foot in it as a warming case.
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One Graph is labelled:
“Antarctic Sea Ice Extent, (Area of Ocean with at least 15% Sea Ice)
The Artic Ocean Ice is described in the same way.
I always thought that the Antarctic Sea Ice has a fairly well defined edge. I got that from descriptions from Captain Cook’s Voyage and later explorers.
Is that actually the case?
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Cook on his first voyage to Antarctica reached 71°10’S, but Weddel may have pushed even further south. Not sure if they knew where the sea ice ended and land began.
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Weddell couldn’t see the land and he travelled 124 miles further south than Cook.
‘In February 1823 he sailed to latitude of 74°15′S (a record 7.69 degrees or 532 statute miles south of the Antarctic Circle) and into a region of the Southern Ocean that later became known as the Weddell Sea.’
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Slow down Jo, so many posts that really need a month each to read and digest.
Here’s a stab at this one.
The obvious point being made by catastrophists is that sea ice is low because things are warming up.
What if the reason for the low sea ice was extreme cold?
Perhaps ice is accumulating but not causing “solid flow” to the land boundary because lower temperatures are reducing the rate of plastic flow which usually occurs.
Vertical mass normally translates to horizontal plastic flow, but if temperatures are much lower than normal then the rate of horizontal flow may be reduced.
What do Prince Harry, Leonardo and the Algorithm have to say about that?
KK
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🙂
So much to say. So little time! Who has answers anyway.
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Hi Peter, 🙂 the main reason for that comments was to highlight the amount of work Jo has put into the posts. The reality requires a confession: mostly I just have a quick scan and then go to the comments.
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Perhaps the lower extent of sea ice is accompanied by an increase in thickness and therefore mass, so greater loss of heat.
The ice is forming faster in the nearer south polar regions, which are cooling, and at the same time releasing heat while it freezes and changes state.
Because of cooling, by some unknown mechanism of natural variance, the heat is dissipated, but the amount of heat is greater than usually emitted on freezing,
because more water than usual is freezing.
However this heat has a geographic cut off point where no more ice may form.
This is represented by a smaller surface area of ice.
Measuring the heat content of the floating ice would determine if the heat loss was being maintained in the Antarctic.
Its thickness by area, ie volume, could be a proxy, but best measure the actual temperature of the ice in different areas and thicknesses.
This would be real data gathering science.
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Hi Lewis, interesting.
This is a bit of a circular argument but perhaps it’s useful to consider that the ice is forming because the energy from the phase change is being removed.
By definition there shouldn’t be a problem with energy accumulation.
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What I am suggesting is that the calorific value of the resultant ice mass in its present volume is less than when it had a bigger surface area.
So therefore, if true, ice area is not the only metric for cooling/warming.
In the Arctic this is a better developed argument as winds blow formed ice away and snowpack and remaining ice thickness is measured and varies.
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It’s just a great illusion
Now you “see” Ice, now you don’t.
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I nominate Polynya as the cause for the decrease in sea ice, it happened in the mid 1970s. Then came the great climate shift of 1976 and the sea ice gradually built up again.
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Its still just within 2 standard deviations of the 20 year mean.
A more realistic view of the last 20 years
https://i.postimg.cc/R01TLWmL/Antartic-sea-ice-Jul3.png
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Everybody PANIC!.
or not. !
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Oh, there it is . . . . that chart of July 3rd Antarctic sea ice (Mkm2) . . . . .
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Am I right in thinking 2 standard deviations. Would be a roller coaster that rose or fell 2m from level over 100m of length?
‘White knuckle’ indeed
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The main reason for this difference is that the Arctic Ocean is centred on the Pole, while the Southern Ocean is not.
Really? Well you could have fooled me.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean[1] or the Austral Ocean,[2][note 4] comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica.[6”
That seems to be centred on the South Pole.
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I noticed that also, and wondered if someone moved the Southern Ocean.
Maybe it is now centered on Adelaide!
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Yes, It’s been cold here in SA
But not that cold
Not yet anyway !
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Wasn’t there an American submarine that surfaced at the North pole?
You can’t do that at the South Pole, there’s a mountain there.
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This site will get you the bit about the sub.
The issue was considered on WUWT.
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm
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IIRC there were 3 at one stage, 1 UK, 2 US
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K K – “You can’t do that at the South Pole, there’s a mountain there”. I’ve saved many maps/images of the underlying bedrock of the Antarctic Archipelago and do you think I can relocate them on the web or find an address in my files? So, apologies for the wiki link but, directly beneath the South Pole it sure looks like… ocean.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/AntarcticaRockSurface.jpg
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very interesting.
would it be grounded ice there? It could be a “mountain of ice” 🙂
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Well, it seems that I should have checked that. Looks like a bunch of islands on that link.
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It seems that this type of representation is misleading?
https://s3.amazonaws.com/jo.nova/graph/polar/antarctic/map-antarctic-sea-ice-extent.june-2019.gif
KK
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Here’s another one – paid for by your very own commonwealth taxes…
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/news/2011/bedrock-map-reveals-ice-free-antarctica
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That’s really opened a can of worms
🙂
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Maybe?
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Seismic-Activity-And-El-Nino-Temperature-Correlation-Viterito-2017.jpg
If there is heightened seismic activity in the region, maybe its enough to affect the sea ice down there.
We know there are thermal pools that are warm enough to bathe in.
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All of a sudden I see El Nino in a whole new light.
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The Temperature (UAH) lags the seismic activity by about 2 years.
Interesting correlation, but difficult to prove any causality.
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The Polynya theory appears to show a possible mechanism and we are back in the Weddell Sea.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/climate-change-felt-deep-waters-antarctica-180949939/
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A recent example of the phenomenon and they reckon it was caused by cyclonic winds. Still clutching at straws.
https://www.sciencealert.com/that-mysterious-hole-that-opened-up-in-antarctic-will-probably-be-back-scientists-say
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Seems to be a lot of activity on the edges of the Scotia Plate
http://www.crs.inogs.it/asain/
If this is releasing heat, and the waters are circulating the Antarctic, it might explain things.
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Problem is that they are only just starting to measure this activity,
I cannot find any longer term records of the region.
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‘ … it might explain things.’
Good catch, that explains the general decrease.
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Such rapid variations either way indicate thermal heating from below.Or we can blame the Russki’s.
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Humm… Maybe the undersea volcanoes dotted around the antarctic land mass just might have something to do with it. Problem is the fake climate scientists won’t look at anything like that because it might make their heads explode.
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In particular Big Ben.
http://www.plateclimatology.com/volcanic-heat-fueling-mysterious-antarctic-melt-hole
Mystery Solved.
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That was interesting and some great photo’s too in a further link.
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E G I suspect that the climate scientists assume that the Antarctic is ‘frozen’
By all the ice on top of it.
And therefore not geologically active.
In fact whenever climate meets Geology
Geology wins !
PS : Good link !
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So the Southern Ocean is unusually warm and sea ice is just not forming … 🙂
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Speaking of heating from below, this from the other end of the world in Greenland.
Geothermal heat flux can foment upper mantle temperature anomalies of 800–1000 °C, and these extreme heat intensities have been found to stretch across 500 km of central-east Greenland. This could result in “a significant contribution of ice melt to the ice-drainage system of Greenland”
https://notrickszone.com/2019/07/05/scientist-spots-high-geothermal-heat-flux-in-east-greenland-dramatic-consequences-for-ice-basal-melting/
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A couple of images to go with Beowulf’s comment
https://i.postimg.cc/9M0QrBq6/Geothermal-Heat-Flux-Melts-Greenland-Ice-2005-2015-Rysgaard-2018.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/tCY3G8NP/greenland-heat-crust-geothermal-ngeo2689-f1.gif
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Not that any of that rising heat from Earth’s interior is making any difference up top: Greenland’s summit, under the midnight sun July 6, is -19˚C with a -28˚C wind chill. So where are all those cute endangered polar bears – chilling-out under the palm trees sipping on their piña coladas maybe?
http://www.summitcamp.org/status/webcam/
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This subject has an outing in The Australian over the weekend. Quite a few of the (GetUp?) crew confused about the differences between sea and land ice. Also one genius who strongly stated a number of times that the number of volcanoes, either land or undersea, didn’t exceed two.
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lol, West Antarctic Peninsula is riddled with volcanoes
https://wryheat.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/west-antarctica-rift.jpg
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Ok. so he’s got one for each hand. Lucky him.
10
Jo writes: “This above [image of Antarctica and southern hemi SST] is a very pretty picture“. Indeed, never truer words were typed. This perspective of home, ie. planet Earth, from ‘underneath’ looking up, is one of my favourites. It clearly shows the one ocean, the one sea, endlessly rolling around and around, circling that great central archipelago – presently buried under an ice age’s worth of frozen H₂O despite the volcanoes and faultlines and penguin scientists – and washing the shores of the mighty A-fours: America South, Africa Southern, Australia, Aotearoa/NZ.
She’s a watery planet out there and we’re fortunate enough to be living on the few dry bits sticking up – completely opposite to the north where there’s masses of land (and people) interspersed with small oceans and smaller seas and even smaller lakes… and a bloody big deep hole under the Arctic North Pole. Down South is the piston, the engine room, the pulse… the never-ending storm systems (not moving forward but) ceaselessly going round and round. So the sea ice fluctuates: I’d expect nothing less. Not so long ago there were trees growing upon that fair southern archipelago.
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Let me know when the floating ice shrinks back to where it was when Mawson was able to anchor his ship just off-shore in 1911.
These climate (often unqualified) “scientists” have imbibed one two many peanut butter smoothies.
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It seems pretty clear that
We’s just don’t know what the f#%k is going on in the Antarctic sea ice.
Maybe we need to know.
maybe we don’t.
Is it really that important ?
I don’t know.
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True.
It’s something that hasn’t been monitored very long.
Again, the time scale has to show us what’s normal or average before we start getting worried about anything.
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‘Is it really that important ?’
Yes, very important.
In your travels you may come across the word ‘teleconnections’, they are trying to work out how this chaotic system operates.
So bit by bit we’ll draw the dots and be able to roughly forecast weather 18 months ahead. The solar minimum in the early 1950s produced the Maitland flood with back to back La Nina, the first one was strong and the second more moderate.
This is precisely what we should expect in the early 2020s.
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And if we knew
Could we do anything about it ?
00
Volcanos?
60
Even the Guardian agrees with you:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/12/scientists-discover-91-volcanos-antarctica
So it must be right.
Climate “scientists” have no blinky idea.
110
Probably an accident Sam.
Occasionally the Guardian gets something right by pure flukey accident
80
The BBC is staying firm.
‘Researchers thought shifts in wind and pressure patterns had caused sea ice to steadily increase, however now the ice is decreasing, scientists are scratching their heads as to whether it has happened naturally or because of a long-term global warming problem.’
50
This is what comes from wasting lots of money studying models.
When I was a child I played and studied model trains
But even then I knew that such models were nothing like
The real ones I went to school on each day.
Time to stop funding all model climate research
After all it’s only a fit subject for children
Not adult scientists !
😉
20
Heck! The Grauniad is actually catching up.
They’re at least 5 years late. We were talking about that volcanic field about 5 (or more) years ago. And they’ve finally woken up to it. Unbelievable.
20
OT. ICYMI…
HMRC takes action to stop renewable energy carousel VAT fraud
https://www.accountancydaily.co/hmrc-takes-action-stop-renewable-energy-carousel-vat-fraud
The government is cracking down on abuse of renewable energy certificates where fraudsters get involved in complex reselling to steal VAT payments and deprive the Exchequer of revenue
This is an anti-fraud measure which came into force on 14 June without consultation due to HMRC concerns that this type of VAT fraud was becoming prevalent.
It removes the opportunity for fraudsters to charge VAT and then go missing before paying it over to the Exchequer in Missing Trader Intra-Community (MTIC) VAT fraud.
The measure will introduce a reverse charge for supplies of renewable energy certificates. These certificates are issued to gas and electricity generators when they produce energy from renewable means.
They are commonly called Guarantees of Origin (GoOs) and are also known as renewable energy certificates (RECS), renewable obligation certificates (ROCS), renewable energy guarantee of origin (REGO) and international renewable energy certificates (I-RECS).
70
🙂 good one.
No doubt there are many criminals around the world making hay while the Sun don’t shine on the Antarctic.
40
Come on, plenty of people know why. They’re just not the climate equivalent of Sandy Hook truthers. The echo chamber in this blog is surreal.
Some of you could really benefit from this piece, but only if you break your own mold first:
http://energyskeptic.com/2016/republicans-wired-to-deny-science-and-reality/
“…likens someone with a strongly held opinion that’s being challenged to experiencing a physical attack when hearing an opposing opinion, because his beliefs are physically embedded in the brain. That means you can’t expect to come up with undeniable, irrefutable facts and suddenly change his mind, since a strongly held belief is literally wired in their brain, and conservative brains are especially likely to believe even more strongly in a false belief afterwards…”
I’m sure the beautiful Ms. Nova is busy rationalizing this news away, also:
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/sweltering-heat-wave-produces-all-time-record-high-in-anchorage-on-independence-day/70008741
116
Dear Mr/Mrs False, you are entertaining. You seriously call the “energyskeptic” page a scientific argument?
Actual research shows Conservatives are less likely to be fooled by “extreme weather” stories in the media but liberals suffer through imaginary droughts:
Benjamin A. Lyons, Ariel Hasell, Natalie Jomini Stroud. (2018) Enduring Extremes? Polar Vortex, Drought, and Climate Change Beliefs. Environmental Communication; 12 (7): 876 DOI: 10.1080/17524032.2018.1520735
But keep rationalizing away while you project your own failures onto me….
260
Jo, you’ve been on the outside slinging cherry picked mud for years.
When will you actually publish some peer reviewed arguments of your own ?, if you are right, surely you’d make more progress from within the scientific community.
121
I think “gang reviewed” is the more accurate term, since observation yielded to politics and PhDs fall out of cornflake boxes. Publish or Perish was bad enough. Now we have Publish then Perish.
190
Cherry picked mud? Now that’s a new low in commentary.
150
I also love this concept that a wrong idea, peer reviewed is somehow right? And conversely that a right idea, rejected by others is wrong. Galileo, Darwin, Einstein, Da Vinci would agree.
A few years ago the IPCC proudly announced that their peer reviewed science had concluded that the Hindu Kush glaciers would melt and 400 million people die of thirst by 2035. After outrage by the Indian government and checks on every glacier, the IPCC had to admit they had no evidence for this whatsoever. The blamed it on a typo. Where was the peer review?
It was Einstein who said that one experiment could prove him wrong. Here Jo is presenting hard evidence that the sea is going down dramatically when the conjecture of man made Global Warming says the opposite. That’s not cherry picking. That’s ‘the Science’ of Global Warming in crash and burn.
170
Tdef,
If Jo has the ‘hard evidence’ then why hide it here ?. She would be the next Galileo if she only engaged, or is she too shy ?.
03
New low ?, go look at young Andy, the birther and catholic basher.
You guys hate the global conspiracy driven peer review so much because you cant get your stuff to float !
09
So, little mickey EMPTY-SPACE has the mind of 12 year old.
Or have I overestimated.
50
Only person confused about where o-bummer was born is himself. ! 😉
60
Off you toddle and worship at AOC’s feet, little petal.
60
“and catholic basher.”
Sorry, I didn’t realise you were a catholic.
Does it still hurt . 😉
40
Yeah those soupa-doopa predictive “climate” sciency models are waaaaaay compelling, with peer-reviewed papers galore showing that garbage-in really does in fact equal garbage-out.
120
[SNIP Chill Andy!]
80
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_262
00
Mickey, you have never made a single worthwhile post since you have been here.
[SNIP he’s not worth it. OK]
60
`Cherry-picked mud’? You sound jealous.
Why should she publish `peer reviewed arguments?’
She’s got an ideal division of work in her life.
Her husband, Dr. David Evans, takes care of the research, and she drives the blog.
C’mon, get up to speed … if that’s possible.
50
Soph
David’s work also goes nowhere.
02
Poor Mickey, your comments are still a vapid, empty, waste of space.
You are gross ignorance personified. !
20
I live on the midcoast of NSW. On the last day of May this year we reached our “all-time” low temp for autumn and our second lowest temp overall. The only colder measurement was in winter (August) of last year. Our “all-time” high was achieved only a couple of years ago (after a move to tarmac!) but our hottest year by max remains 1915 (also second driest), our coldest 1929. (Our heaviest dump of rain occurred in 1963, driest year was 1902 and wettest was 1950. Worst flood was 1949, worst fires 1895.)
From all this I conclude very little. Certainly, a dribble of sea level rise since the 1700s and some warming are apparent, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that all changed soon. Always has.
But I’m wondering how the gorgeous Mr False Progress would rationalize our new record lows away. No doubt like all of those who simply ignore centuries of research on Quaternary and Holocene climate, he’ll find a statistical fiddle and some patronising comment by a smirking Brian Cox or a sniggering DeGrasse-Tyson. It’s how the media-soaked brain works.
60
@Fake Progress
You state ” Come on, plenty of people know why” at the start of of your comment.
Well the current question is ‘Why has the sea ice around Antarctica decreased ? ”
However you fail to name any names of people who know why.
Instead you make a series of wild insulting accusatory generalisations
Of Jo herself & those of us who contribute here.
Such rude, unthinking and frankly unscientific behaviour
Deserves to go into moderation never to be released.
Unless Jo needs an example of such deep ‘thinking’
To illustrate a post on how not to write a comment.
60
Bill:
I left it a similar response in the ‘Click Bait …’ post on 30th June (last weekend). I guess it hasn’t bothered to read it. Its arrogance shows the depth of its ignorance and feeds its lack of good manners.
At this rate it might just replace pFitzroy as my pet Cretinous Coprocephalic.
00
A meandering jet stream is a global cooling signal.
10
Poor little FP. STILL EVIDENCE-FREE
You STILL can’t put forward any empirical evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2, can you.
INEPT, PATHETIC, BRAIN-WASHED and GULLIBLE.. are all great words to describe your comments.
40
“you can’t expect to come up with undeniable, irrefutable facts “
We are STILL waiting to you to come up with something to support even the most basic of non-science faux-facts of the AGW cult religion
As you say. We don’t expect you to, either.
40
“Sandy Hook truthers”
If that’s the level of scientific argument you bring to this blog it says a lot.
To use the Connecticut state event in such a way is bizarre. Ugliness piled on top of ugliness.
KK
50
The guy is obviously an America-hating, social-justice-warrior, gender-confused Democrat.
Sucked in by every one of the green-left marxist lies,
and left without a single rational or coherent thought of his own.
20
The only thing that I disagree with President Trump on is the gun issue.
But then I don’t live in the U.S.
But to use this sad event to reinforce a point in science is very suspect.
10
“https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019-07-05125056-down.png”
Alaska 1934 100C.
Oops Falsie telling falsies.. yet again.
Mind you, the fact that the current Anchorage site is at the airport between the run-ways probably wouldn’t affect the current warm temperature at all, would it !!
40
Sounds like a job for Chris Turney and the ship of fools …
In a nutshell, you really only need to know two things:
The first is that Chris’s expedition was sailing to a region which he already knew had more sea ice than before.
He wanted to verify why.
The second point, and this plays directly to the first, is that climate change has caused some dramatic changes to currents and winds in and around Antarctica.
One major effect is that warm water is undercutting vast glaciers.
That’s making them melt faster than ever, and releasing fresh water into the ocean.
Guess what?
Fresh water freezes quicker than sea water. Result: more sea ice (and less land ice).
https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/08/01/mocked-and-belittled-for-getting-stuck-in-ice_a_23057266/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS5hdS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAIuqA0N3Kd_MSf-Gw_qAYxneEpj-57fhmAeo8BOfpl-6eYyOQ2BMafhIusJvgi9Uzt1cPIk-h2MW6RfQuPe-G4BQVtevp_4uVK5yzmfkbFX2IWLqG8QuQB5K3Pl9MMtaHATVLVjhk_57B48-e0eocxpDBoET4ltOzpWLcTFDTgjr
41
It’s 2012, and Al Gore, joined by more than 100 other travellers including scientists, ministers and celebrities, set off from Argentina last week, crossing the legendary Drake Passage en-route to the Antarctic.
Gore has been joined by James Hansen from NASA, Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, along with Bangledesh’s minister of environment Hasan Mahmud, the President of Iceland Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, British billionaire Richard Branson and UNFCCC Chief Christiana Figueres.
Tweeting from the trip Figueres wrote from amongst pictures of penguins, icebergs and seals she lamented their future prospects: “Greetings from a chinstrap penguin colony.
Populations decreasing due to decreasing sea ice.”
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2012/02/02/messages-from-antarctica/
Whoa! Wait. What?
2019: Chinstrap penguins are an abundant penguin species in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions.
Conservation status: least concern
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/wildlife/animals/penguins/chinstrap-penguins
60
The connection between seismic activity in the South pacific and El Nino (which Andy mentioned earlier) appears to be a major player.
‘The East Pacific Rise is the seismically active zone that reaches from the Gulf of California to Easter Island and beyond. Eruptions along the rise manufacture new sea floor as the latter moves away from either side of the rise.
‘Over 285 months ending in September 1987, Dr. Walker found a striking coincidence between the extent of strain release by earthquakes along the East Pacific Rise and the recurrence of El Ninos every five to seven years.’
NY Times 1988
50
Much easier to heat water from below, than above 😉
90
True and there is a rhythm in the system, we know its not the moon so it must be the sun.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0012821X67900714
Even PF acknowledges that ENSO is a major temperature player, so we have to join the dots between low Antarctic sea ice, ENSO and Sol.
20
.. and maybe ocean-bed thermal. (maybe affected by Sol’s magnetic field etc)
There is so much we just don’t know about what is going on down there.
50
ENSO is officially neutral, so we have a blank canvas and the weekend to look at all the options.
20
And not a whole lot has changed:
http://www.bom.gov.au/archive/oceanography/ocean_anals/IDYOC007/IDYOC007.201907.gif
Except the East-Pac surface coldness spread a bit:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-135.20,0.20,300
And the intertropical convergence dried out in the central equatorial Pacific. Frankly, anyone who thought that was a nascent central-pac El-Nino has been kidding themselves a bit.
20
The mind boggles as to why that one went into moderation.
10
In the section titled
“But the water around Antarctica is no warmer than normal for this time of year:”
We see SSTs around basically “normal”, but if you look at the outline of the sea ice, it only has quite small deviations from the median.
Let’s not forget that the outer edge of the sea ice is the “balance” point between ice and no ice, and it doesn’t take much change in SST to alter that balance point. If even slightly warmer waters are flowing below because of some heat source, it would easily account for this “balance” edge being altered slightly.
And as that graph I posted above at #5 shows.. It is only slight,
.. it just represents a biggish area because it on the circumference of a very large radius circle..
60
Why would it lead to any more global heating? We are talking about a miniscule part of the earth’s surface area and biosphere. These scientific shysters are scaremongering once again and clutching at straws. There is a town in Siberia where it is sometimes colder than on Mars. Doesn’t sound like much Antarctic heating (sarc) is making its way to where it’s needed:).
But, dontcha know, there’s a climate EMERGENCY going on! The media says so!
30
New Deli has reached record highs, Europe is also experiencing very warm weather, new mexico had a tornados are devastating villages in China. I’d say something odd is going on
215
Yesterday I had a phone call from an Indian Lady purporting to be from Telstra.
I asked her in an Indian accent how was the weather like in New Delhi.
110
Peter the focus of all our attention should be on climate change and not weather temperatures.
‘The notch-delay hypothesis predicts sustained and significant global cooling starting sometime from 2017 to 2022, of ~0.3 °C but perhaps milder.’ David Evans
My forecast for a strong La Nina in 2020-21 will drive temperatures down below the Spencer line and stay there for a considerable time. Long enough to discredit AGW theory.
70
None of you have considered the effects of the planet’s weakening and changing magnetic field. It’s no longer constant.
Its lost about 7% of so of it’s strength since 2010. and overall loss of strength is now over 15% — which is starting to be significant.
The two magnetic poles are moving quite rapidly, with the northern magnetic pole having moved past the geological North Pole as it heads for Siberia and the southern magnetic pole has left Antarctica. The South American Anomaly has enlarged and sometime soon, it may try to turn into another magnetic pole. The planet’s magnetic field is quite interesting, and is becoming more irregular. The van Allen Belts will be changing and shifting too. The weaker and more confused the planetary field becomes, the lower the Belts come. It’s one reason, GCR readings are now the highest they’ve ever been since the start of the space age — and rising. And what do they affect? Why cloud cover — through the Svensmark effect. So they have a known effect on terrestrial weather.
This all allows the Solar Wind to get further into the Ionosphere than it used to and mix up more weather (through downward pressure and gravity waves) than it has until the recent past, and that’s what we’re starting to see.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better. That’s another way of saying that the effects are not yet particularly strong, but they are becoming noticeable. Terrestrial weather is becoming more sensitive to Space Weather.
Solar Cycle 25 hasn’t started yet, but when it does, we’ll have Solar Flares and CMEs to cope with. SC25 predictions range from higher than SC24 (now almost completely over) to less than SC24. Whatever, it will still have some sun spots, and some of those will have Beta Gamma Delta fields so there will be Solar Flares and CMEs. Our planetary magnetic field will weaken a little more and as SC25 ramps up it will be more sensitive to these solar phenomena,
We’ll know it’s fully under way when we see the first hurricane in the Atlantic and the first typhoons in the northern Pacific and Tropical Cyclones in the South Pacific all picking up in quantity and quality. They’ll be more damaging than they might have been in `normal’ times.
Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
50
And all because of CO2 and human use of coal.
AMAZING what such a tiny amount of this most vicious of molecules can do. 🙂
30
Heh! You wish … 🙂
It’s all “that vicious molecule” free!
Found this [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiheGigtnwson%5D the van Allen Belts for all those interested — I know you’re not — and this popped out in the MSM. It’s more evidence of the Laschamp Reversal. Apparently the tree was there and saw everything, but wasn’t involved!
It’s expected to “tell all” The Laschamp reversal is the most studied one so far, so I doubt it has a lot to add. .
10
And Snowflake_Greens, Sophocles, do they have any notion of shoring up agin the cold, enuff supplies in the root cellar, vitamin c as added food security when CO2 drops below, well yu know, 200ppm and plants stop thrivin,’ supply of flints etceterah, (yr renewables tend ter git iced up in little ice ages,) wind proof garmints thx ter Western Technology, don’t want ter go shootin those critters fer their fur coats, (unless fer food when the ice man cometh,) Whisky’n sich against the cold and appalling catastrophe, fer man and beast, of yer cosmic ray bombard-iness and cloud-iness year(s) without a Summer? Oh my!
10
Heh, they have lots of “notions” but actually preparing to survive a reversal?
Would they know just what it is they’re trying to survive? (Somehow I don’t think so!)
Have you seen any of them trying? I haven’t … I haven’t seen any gathering of `firestones.’
I have a suspicion that if any of them try growing their own food, they’re going to be stunned and amazed at just how difficult that’s going prove.
Ben Davidson mentioned in one of his videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cewBPYvN9Gs) that removing the magnetic field for a bunch of rats to simulate complete loss of planetary field, turned them into cannibals. Whoa! Everything living and moving was seen as FOOD! Wonder what that would do to humans? Zombies?
Be prepared for a high animal-protein diet: it’s the best means of surviving extreme cold.
10
…. and that part of China is known as tornado alley, so its not uncommon. Great quality footage going the rounds, it looks like a disaster movie.
30
Peter I gather from your comment t
That you are an expert on the weather & climate in
Europe,
Mexico,
China,
And India !
Well frankly I don’t believe you.
I fact I think that’s bull Peter
From all I have read of your comments here
You don’t even rate as even an expert
On coastal NSW weather.
40
Get under the covers Peter, the wolf cometh!
21
“I’d say something odd is going on”
Yes, your brain continues to function at basically a zero to non-existent level. !
Tornados happen, they are NOT increasing
Warm weather happens, Cold weather happens
What is it that you wilfully and totally INCAPABLE of comprehending about the effect of a meandering jet stream?
Your comments are still designed purely as a waste of space, aren’t they, PF !
80
New Delhi… well there’s no Urban Heat Island affect there, hey, PF. ! 😉
70
“New Deli has reached record highs”
I hope their fridges were still working,
… or are we talking about food quality ?
30
Peter Fitzroy: there’s certainly nothing unusual going on England. Here, it’s a typical summer, not particularly hot, with a good dose of rain. The English climate hasn’t changed over the years, despite all the press hysteria – I’m 70 years old, and can only look on with amazement at all the garbage in the media about the supposed dangerous climate change that’s all our fault.
Lest you think I’m imagining it, and all those scientists must be right (!) here’s some data to have a look at and check for yourself:
The Central England Temperature record (CET) is as you probably know the oldest existing temperature record.
In December 2010, we had the lowest temperature for that month in 120 years. It was -0.7C, and -0.8C way back in 1890.
The years 1975 and 1976 were regarded as having good summers over here – that is to say, hot and dry as opposed to cold, windy and miserable.
Let’s have a look at 1976 compared with 2018, another hot summer by British standards.
To keep things tidy, I’m simply going to list the temperatures in degrees Celsius sequentially from January through to July.
For 1976: 5.9 4.5 4.8 8.1 12.1 17.0 18.7
For 2018: 5.3 2.9 4.9 9.8 13.2 16.1 19.1
I’ve been trawling through the record to see which year had the hottest of each month.
Jan of 1916 shows 7.5C, February of 1779 7.9C, March of 2017 8.7C, April of 1865 10.6C, May of 1833 15.1C, June of 1846 18.2C, July of 2006 19.7C.
Going on from July for completeness, we see August of 1997 at 18.9C, September of 1729 16.6C, October of 2001 13.3C, November of 1818 and 2015 tie at 9.5C, and finally we have December of 2015 with 9.7C.
Here’s a link to the CET:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat
What is striking is the frequency of yearly averages above 10C around since around the mid 1990s.
Is this a real finding, or due to say, a change in instrumentation? This seems very odd – yet you’ll see temperatures of 10C elsewhere in the record; this is not news.
Nothing in the media is to be trusted. Dig deeper into all their claims, and look at historical records if they’re available.
10
There is nothing odd about variable weather, or climate. The odd thing would be if it didn’t change or vary.
100
It has been noted at various times that the behaviour of the sun causes earthquakes and volcanoes. The sun itself misbehaves because of the alignments of the big planets. The LIA was not just a downturn in the suns activity but the odd volcano that blocked out the heat.
50
Large volcanic eruptions usually only impact the atmosphere for a couple of years and it depends very much on where you are situated.
Its true to say the planets influence the sun’s behaviour on a regular basis, Venus, Earth, Jupiter and sun are in alignment every 11 years, the solar cycle.
To see what is coming you need to analyse the weather at the end of the Roman Warm Period and Medieval Warm Period.
40
elG.. “Large SURFACE volcanic eruptions…… ”
We really don’t have a lot of information on the effect of large subterranean eruptions.
60
No, its a rarity, subterranean slow leakage is far more common.
NASA says we are heading into a Dalton Minimum, hopefully this time we can measure the effect without a dusty Tambora.
10
have been watching live streaming re the California earthquakes. Trona, population aroud 1,500, is not far from Ridgecrest. this is the only example I’ve seen of structural damage:
5 Jul: LA Times: Earthquake batters Trona: Rockslides cut off town; water is scarce
By Anita Chabria and Alejandra Reyes-Velarde
The small town of Trona, Calif., suffered more damage from Friday night’s 7.1 magnitude earthquake and was inaccessible because of rockslides, residents said.
Trona resident Ivan Amerson said there was “significant damage,” with some houses knocked off their foundations.
The Ridgecrest police said Trona is in need of water and urged people to make donations at the police station…
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-trona-earthquake-batters-rockslides-ridgecrest-20190705-story.html
China Lake is close to the area effected. can’t find any update re the 7.1 quake today:
5 Jul: Stars&Stripes: Navy’s China Lake base closed, assessing damage after 6.4 magnitude earthquake
By ROSE L.THAYER
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/navy-s-china-lake-base-closed-assessing-damage-after-6-4-magnitude-earthquake-1.589148
Wikipedia: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake
Occupying three counties – Kern, San Bernardino and Inyo – the installation’s closest neighbors are the cities of Ridgecrest, Inyokern, Trona and Darwin…
China Lake is the United States Navy’s largest single landholding, representing 85% of the Navy’s land for weapons and armaments research, development, acquisition, testing and evaluation (RDAT&E) use and 38% of the Navy’s land holdings worldwide. In total, its two ranges and main site cover more than 1,100,000 acres (4,500 km2), an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. As of 2010, at least 95% of that land has been left undeveloped. The roughly $3 billion infrastructure of the installation consists of 2,132 buildings and facilities, 329 miles (529 km) of paved roads, and 1,801 miles (2,898 km) of unpaved roads.
The 19,600 square miles (51,000 km2) of restricted and controlled airspace at China Lake makes up 12% of California’s total airspace…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Weapons_Station_China_Lake
not much in the way of blackouts.
10
Re Californian earthquakes – link at
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/07/06/saturday-july-6th-open-thread/#comment-7164749
Might not be over yet
20
via State Radio today:
Friday’s 7.1 quake at China Lake’s Naval Air Weapons Station was the most powerful to hit Southern California since another 7.1 temblor struck the Mojave Desert near the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base in 1999.
20
OT …but…
Hmmmm….there was a musing that up to 50% of medical research could be ineligible due to errors :
http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2960696-1.pdf
“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.”
OK…so what do we file the Lancets commentary on “climate change” then?
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32594-7/fulltext
Or this publication?
https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2018/209/11/mja-lancet-countdown-health-and-climate-change-australian-policy-inaction
All featured here….
https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2019-07-06/health-impacts-of-climate-change/11282926?pfmredir=ms
“Last November, planetary health professor Tony Capon co-authored the first national report to track Australia’s progress on climate change and human health.
“It coincided with the release of a global report from leading medical journal The Lancet, which warned climate change is “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”.
“”When we understand the connections between climate change and human health, it makes it clear that this is urgent,” Professor Capon said.
“Since then, calls for climate action from health bodies and medical professionals have grown louder.
“In November, the World Health Organisation director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned the world could no longer “sleepwalk through this health emergency”.
“In April, some of Australia’s leading health bodies published an open letter calling on political parties to recognise “the significant and profound health impacts of climate change to Australian people”.
“And last week, more than 1,000 doctors in the UK and 70 public health bodies in the US called for “radical action”.
Radical?
As in…?
40
But… I thought the science was settled. CO2 dunnit! :).
10
6 Jul: Reuters: Arctic sea route opens for the summer with first Yamal LNG cargo
A liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker carrying a cargo from the Yamal LNG plant has spent this week making its way through Arctic waters north of Russia towards Asia, marking the first voyage of the 2019 summer season across the Northern Sea Route.
The Vladimir Rusanov, an Arc7-classed LNG tanker that can plough through semi-cleared waters, left the Sabetta port on June 29 and is in the Chukchi Sea close to the Bering Strait, Refinitiv Eikon shipping data showed on Friday.
The route is frozen for most of the year but is being increasingly used during the summer as ice clears quicker and for longer as the climate changes. Vessels are now able to cross the route without the use of ice-breakers to clear their path…
For Novatek, the route is attractive because it gives a much more direct access to the world’s largest LNG consumers in Asia. For other shipping companies, the route has the potential to cut the costs and time to access Asian markets..
PetroChina, the international arm of Chinese state energy firm CNPC, is a 20 percent stakeholder as well as customer of Yamal, with French oil major Total holding another 20 percent stake.
Novatek is expected to take a final decision to build Arctic LNG 2, another liquefaction and export facility next to Yamal, very soon after selling stakes to Total, two Chinese and two Japanese companies.
The Northern Sea Route is attracting other shipping firms: Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping company, sent a test vessel along the route last summer while Dubai government-controlled DP World said last month it wanted to run ports along the route.
Climate change activists lament the use of route however, because fear it will spoil pristine environments while encouraging shipping, a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
https://www.reuters.com/article/russia-arctic-lng-idUSL8N246304
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4 Jul: CBC: AP: Arctic mission will trap scientists in ice to study climate change
Researchers from 17 nations will allow the water to freeze around them
Cranes hoist cargo onto the deck, power tools scream and workers bustle through the maze of passageways inside the German icebreaker RV Polarstern, preparing for a yearlong voyage that organizers say is unprecedented in scale and ambition…
Scientists plan to sail the ship into the Arctic Ocean, anchor it to a large piece of sea ice and allow the water to freeze around them, effectively trapping themselves in the vast sheet of white that forms over the North Pole each winter.
As temperatures drop and the days get shorter, they’ll race to build temporary winter research camps on the ice, allowing them to perform tests that wouldn’t be possible at other times of the year or by satellite sensing…
Dozens of scientists from the United States, China, Russia and other countries will be on board the Polarstern at any one time, rotating every two months as other icebreakers bring fresh supplies and a new batch of researchers…
Scientists now believe the cold cap that forms each year is key to regulating weather patterns and temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere…READ ON
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/arctic-ice-mission-science-1.5200127
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Talking about sea-ice extent doesn’t paint much of a picture of Antarctic conditions. Here’s a passage from a book I read (more details later):
Beneath your feet at the South pole lie over 3000 metres (about 9800 feet) of ice, 4000 metres (13,123 feet) in parts, which rests not on the sea but on land. Antarctica is a frozen continent larger than Europe, larger even than the United States and Mexico combined. A massive icecap covers 98 percent of that land, swallowing a continent higher than any on Earth. The length of the polar winter night increases with latitude until at the pole itself, the sun sets just once a year. For a while after it disappears, the setting sun provides aglow above the horizon, and then leaves the polar world in complete darkness for half the year
The warmth the polar regions absorb in the summer is far less than the heat they lose in the winter. Only in November and December, the very height of the Antarctic summer, does the South pole actually gain heat. The Antarctic is much colder than the Arctic. The average winter temperature in the Antarctic is minus 60 degrees Celsius. Even on a good summer’s day it’s minus 30 degrees Celsius, colder than the coldest winter’s night at the North Pole. Antarctica is the highest continent on Earth, three times higher than any other.
There are larger waves, stronger winds, and more powerful currents in the Southern Ocean than anywhere else on the globe. Icebergs are a real threat to shipping. At times they show up on the radar screen as hundreds on tiny white dots, which in reality could be an iceberg which could easily sink the largest vessel. It is absolutely essential to keep a lookout posted around the clock, and many captains prefer to avoid travelling at night whenever there are lots of icebergs about. On land, cold air from the high continental plateau rushes down the gradient to the sea causing katabatic winds. These can reach over 300 kilometres an hour and add terrifying windchill to the already freezing conditions.
If you sail around Antarctica, you will see mainly white ice. Sometimes it towers over you as mighty ice shelves. Elsewhere great glaciers tumble into the ocean, calving off icebergs which make navigation very dangerous.
The above was written by Alistair Fothergill in his book ‘Life in the Freezer’, published in 1993 before the current climate change hysteria.
Fast forward to the present. Greenpeace on its website states that ‘… parts of the Antarctic are warming three times as fast as other parts of our planet. Scientists recently recorded its warmest day ever – a distinctly not-freezing 17.5°C’ and also that ‘Changing ocean temperatures are also important, because they warm the massive Antarctic glaciers from below, making them less stable.’
Quite how changing ocean temperatures are warming the Antarctic glaciers from below given that the Antarctic is a land mass below ten thousand feet or so of ice is not explained – but then, who needs explanations, the scary story is what counts. And where exactly was the claimed temperature of 17.5 degrees measured, and under what circumstances? The British Antarctic survey states; ‘Around the coasts of Antarctica, temperatures are generally close to freezing in the summer (December-February) months, or even slightly positive in the northern part of the Antarctic Peninsula. During winter, monthly mean temperatures at coastal stations are between -10°C and -30°C but temperatures may briefly rise towards freezing when winter storms bring warm air towards the Antarctic coast. Conditions on the high interior plateau are much colder as a result of its higher elevation, higher latitude and greater distance from the ocean. Here, summer temperatures struggle to get above -20°C and monthly means fall below -60°C in winter. Vostok station holds the record for the lowest ever temperature recorded on the surface of the Earth (-89.2°C).
Greenpeace also say that ‘ Glaciers form on the Antarctic landmass as snowfall compresses into ice over time, and they flow under their own weight towards the ocean – like a very slow river. But as these glaciers feel the heat of a warmer ocean underneath them, they speed up their slow march to the coast, causing big chunks of ice to break off into the sea as icebergs at a faster speed. The melting and break down of glaciers into the ocean raises sea levels all around the world. Antarctic glaciers are now losing ice faster than snow is falling to add new ice. The rate at which Antarctic ice sheets melt under increasing temperatures will affect coastal communities globally, whether living in small island states or mega-cities.’
Yet there have clearly always been plenty of icebergs in the Southern Ocean. Greenpeace are yet again telling us fairy stories (to put it politely).
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Well worth the read.
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