Climate change Issues-- What's Going On With The Weather, & How Are Governments Reacting?

[Judee]

2012-07-28 0332 - Flood - Greenland


EDIS Code: FL-20120728-35957-GRL
Date&Time: 2012-07-
Continent: Atlantic Ocean - North
Country: Greenland
State/Prov.: Municipality of Qeqqata,
Location: Watson River,
City: Kangerlussuaq

Melting ice in Greenland has swelled the island's rivers with water. A NASA satellite snapped a photo of meltwater overflowing the banks of the Watson River near Kangerlussuaq, a key air transportation hub, on July 12. Two weeks later, however, river levels have receded somewhat, according to a release from the NASA Earth Observatory. "Water rises every year, but I've never before observed it at this level of discharge," said Richard Forster, a University of Utah researcher who has done extensive fieldwork in Greenland, in a statement. "It was also about two weeks prior to the normal seasonal peak." The town, known as Kanger, hosts one of the island's busiest commercial airports and is a frequent departure point for scientific research flights. It lies about 74 miles (125 kilometers) from the sea. The water most likely came from melting of the ice sheet - rather than an ice-dammed lake bursting or glacial lake drainage - as the high discharge was main tained for so long, Forster said. The flooding follows reports that 97 percent of Greenland's ice sheets thawed on the surface, according to satellite measurements. Only four days before, just 40 percent of the surface ice layer was thawing.rnrnThis year's ice melt is well above average: About half of Greenland's surface ice tends to melt every summer, with the meltwater at higher elevations quickly refreezing in place and the coastal meltwater either pooling on top of the ice or draining into the sea. The massive melt may have been caused by a ridge or dome of warm air hovering over Greenland. Signs of ice melt were even found around Summit Station in central Greenland, which at 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) above sea level is near to the highest point on the ice sheet. The melting characteristics of such a huge ice sheet - spanning 656,000 square miles (1.7 million square kilometers) - is important for various reasons, particularly its potential effect on sea levels. If melted complet ely, the Greenland ice sheet could contribute 23 feet (7 meters) to global sea-level rise, according to a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international body charged with assessing climate change. Whether or not this recent massive melt will affect the overall ice loss this summer, and as such bump up sea level, is still an open question. In other Greenland-melting news, a massive iceberg that recently broke away from one of Greenland's largest glaciers is making its way downstream and toward the open ocean, as shown by a new satellite photo. The drifting island of ice split from the Petermann Glacier's ice shelf - the front end of a glacier, which hangs off the land and floats on the ocean. Thenewly birthed berg is estimated to be about 46 square miles (120 square kilometers), and finally broke away from the floating tongue of ice on Monday, July 16.

[Judee]

Chronic 2000-2004 drought, worst in 800 years, may be the 'new normal': study
July 29th, 2012


Pinyon pine forests near Los Alamos, N.M., had already begun to turn brown from drought stress in the image at left, in 2002, and another photo taken in 2004 from the same vantage point, at right, show them largely grey and dead. (Photo by Craig Allen, U.S. Geological Survey)

The chronic drought that hit western North America from 2000 to 2004 left dying forests and depleted river basins in its wake and was the strongest in 800 years, scientists have concluded, but they say those conditions will become the "new normal" for most of the coming century.

Such climatic extremes have increased as a result of global warming, a group of 10 researchers reported today in Nature Geoscience. And as bad as conditions were during the 2000-04 drought, they may eventually be seen as the good old days.

Climate models and precipitation projections indicate this period will actually be closer to the "wet end" of a drier hydroclimate during the last half of the 21st century, scientists said.

Aside from its impact on forests, crops, rivers and water tables, the drought also cut carbon sequestration by an average of 51 percent in a massive region of the western United States, Canada and Mexico, although some areas were hit much harder than others. As vegetation withered, this released more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, with the effect of amplifying global warming.

"Climatic extremes such as this will cause more large-scale droughts and forest mortality, and the ability of vegetation to sequester carbon is going to decline," said Beverly Law, a co-author of the study, professor of global change biology and terrestrial systems science at Oregon State University, and former science director of AmeriFlux, an ecosystem observation network.

"During this drought, carbon sequestration from this region was reduced by half," Law said. "That's a huge drop. And if global carbon emissions don't come down, the future will be even worse."

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, U.S. Department of Energy, and other agencies. The lead author was Christopher Schwalm at Northern Arizona University. Other collaborators were from the University of Colorado, University of California at Berkeley, University of British Columbia, San Diego State University, and other institutions.

It's not clear whether or not the current drought in the Midwest, now being called one of the worst since the Dust Bowl, is related to these same forces, Law said. This study did not address that, and there are some climate mechanisms in western North America that affect that region more than other parts of the country.

But in the West, this multi-year drought was unlike anything seen in many centuries, based on tree ring data. The last two periods with drought events of similar severity were in the Middle Ages, from 977-981 and 1146-1151. The 2000-04 drought affected precipitation, soil moisture, river levels, crops, forests and grasslands.

Ordinarily, Law said, the land sink in North America is able to sequester the equivalent of about 30 percent of the carbon emitted into the atmosphere by the use of fossil fuels in the same region. However, based on projected changes in precipitation and drought severity, scientists said that this carbon sink, at least in western North America, could disappear by the end of the century.

"Areas that are already dry in the West are expected to get drier," Law said. "We expect more extremes. And it's these extreme periods that can really cause ecosystem damage, lead to climate-induced mortality of forests, and may cause some areas to convert from forest into shrublands or grassland."

During the 2000-04 drought, runoff in the upper Colorado River basin was cut in half. Crop productivity in much of the West fell 5 percent. The productivity of forests and grasslands declined, along with snowpacks. Evapotranspiration decreased the most in evergreen needleleaf forests, about 33 percent.

The effects are driven by human-caused increases in temperature, with associated lower soil moisture and decreased runoff in all major water basins of the western U.S., researchers said in the study.

Although regional precipitations patterns are difficult to forecast, researchers in this report said that climate models are underestimating the extent and severity of drought, compared to actual observations. They say the situation will continue to worsen, and that 80 of the 95 years from 2006 to 2100 will have precipitation levels as low as, or lower than, this "turn of the century" drought from 2000-04.

"Towards the latter half of the 21st century the precipitation regime associated with the turn of the century drought will represent an outlier of extreme wetness," the scientists wrote in this study.

These long-term trends are consistent with a 21st century "megadrought," they said.

http://phys.org/news/2012-07-chronic...ears.html#nwlt

[Judee]

Huge carbon-sucking funnels found in Southern Ocean
Monday, 30 July 2012
Agençe France-Presse
Climate change water vortex_COSMOS science magazine


PARIS: Wind, eddies and currents work together to create 1,000 km-wide, carbon-sucking funnels that takes Earth-warming carbon deep into the Southern Ocean to be safely locked away.

The process itself could be threatened by climate change, according to the research team from Britain and Australia that made the discovery, published in Nature Geoscience.

About a quarter of the carbon dioxide on Earth is stored away in its oceans - some 40% of that in the Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica, and this process adds to the toolkit of scientists attempting climate warming predictions.

Carbon locked away for thousands of years

At a depth of about 1,000 metres (3,200 feet), carbon can be locked away for hundreds to thousands of years, yet scientists had never been sure exactly how it gets there after dissolving into surface waters.

They had suspected the wind was the main force at play, pooling up surface water in some areas and forcing it down into the ocean depths.

Using 10 years of data obtained from small, deep-sea robotic probes, the researchers found that in addition to the wind, eddies - big whirlpool-like phenomena about 100km (60 miles) in diameter on average, also played a part.

Five 1,000 km-wide funnels

"You add the effect of these eddies and the effect of the wind and the effect of prominent currents in the Southern Ocean, you add these three effects, it makes ... 1,000 km-wide funnels that bring the carbon from the sea surface to the interior," said study author Jean-Baptiste Sallee.

The team had also used temperature, salinity and pressure data collected from ship-based observations since the 1990s.

"This is a very efficient process to bring carbon from the surface to the interior. We found in the Southern Ocean there are five such funnels," said Sallee.

Climate change could affect the Southern Ocean

The team also found that the eddies counterbalanced a different effect of strong winds - that of releasing stored carbon by violent mixing of the sea.

"This does seem to be good news, but the thing is what will be the impact of climate change on the eddies? Will they stop, will they intensify? We have no idea," said Sallee.

A changing climate could theoretically affect the nature and effect of the Southern Ocean eddies by changing ocean currents, intensifying winds or creating stark temperature spikes.

Climate models must include these eddies

The findings mean that eddies must be taken into account in future climate models, said Sallee. They are not currently.

The study focussed on the part of the Southern Ocean south of 35 degree south latitude.

The team could not say whether the same funnelling process would be at play in other seas, but Sallee said the Southern Ocean was "one of the most energetic places on Earth", and the effect of eddies would likely be larger there than anywhere else.

There is also another carbon capturing process, not covered by this study, of CO2-producing micro organisms that live near the ocean surface sinking to the sea floor and settling there when they die.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/5...southern-ocean

[maryals]

So many changes taking place, and atmospheric....weather and climate changes....are the most complex.
Are HewMons still smart enough to adapt?

Mary and Baby

[Judee]

August 7, 2012 by TomDispatch.com
The Coming Hunger Wars: Heat, Drought, Rising Food Costs, and Global Unrest
by Michael T. Klare

The Great Drought of 2012 has yet to come to an end, but we already know that its consequences will be severe. With more than one-half of America’s counties designated as drought disaster areas, the 2012 harvest of corn, soybeans, and other food staples is guaranteed to fall far short of predictions. This, in turn, will boost food prices domestically and abroad, causing increased misery for farmers and low-income Americans and far greater hardship for poor people in countries that rely on imported U.S. grains.

This, however, is just the beginning of the likely consequences: if history is any guide, rising food prices of this sort will also lead to widespread social unrest and violent conflict.

Food -- affordable food -- is essential to human survival and well-being. Take that away, and people become anxious, desperate, and angry. In the United States, food represents only about 13% of the average household budget, a relatively small share, so a boost in food prices in 2013 will probably not prove overly taxing for most middle- and upper-income families. It could, however, produce considerable hardship for poor and unemployed Americans with limited resources. “You are talking about a real bite out of family budgets,” commented Ernie Gross, an agricultural economist at Omaha’s Creighton University. This could add to the discontent already evident in depressed and high-unemployment areas, perhaps prompting an intensified backlash against incumbent politicians and other forms of dissent and unrest.

It is in the international arena, however, that the Great Drought is likely to have its most devastating effects. Because so many nations depend on grain imports from the U.S. to supplement their own harvests, and because intense drought and floods are damaging crops elsewhere as well, food supplies are expected to shrink and prices to rise across the planet. “What happens to the U.S. supply has immense impact around the world,” says Robert Thompson, a food expert at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. As the crops most affected by the drought, corn and soybeans, disappear from world markets, he noted, the price of all grains, including wheat, is likely to soar, causing immense hardship to those who already have trouble affording enough food to feed their families.

The Hunger Games, 2007-2011

What happens next is, of course, impossible to predict, but if the recent past is any guide, it could turn ugly. In 2007-2008, when rice, corn, and wheat experienced prices hikes of 100% or more, sharply higher prices -- especially for bread -- sparked “food riots” in more than two dozen countries, including Bangladesh, Cameroon, Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia, Senegal, and Yemen. In Haiti, the rioting became so violent and public confidence in the government’s ability to address the problem dropped so precipitously that the Haitian Senate voted to oust the country’s prime minister, Jacques-Édouard Alexis. In other countries, angry protestors clashed with army and police forces, leaving scores dead.

Those price increases of 2007-2008 were largely attributed to the soaring cost of oil, which made food production more expensive. (Oil’s use is widespread in farming operations, irrigation, food delivery, and pesticide manufacture.) At the same time, increasing amounts of cropland worldwide were being diverted from food crops to the cultivation of plants used in making biofuels.

The next price spike in 2010-11 was, however, closely associated with climate change. An intense drought gripped much of eastern Russia during the summer of 2010, reducing the wheat harvest in that breadbasket region by one-fifth and prompting Moscow to ban all wheat exports. Drought also hurt China’s grain harvest, while intense flooding destroyed much of Australia’s wheat crop. Together with other extreme-weather-related effects, these disasters sent wheat prices soaring by more than 50% and the price of most food staples by 32%.

Once again, a surge in food prices resulted in widespread social unrest, this time concentrated in North Africa and the Middle East. The earliest protests arose over the cost of staples in Algeria and then Tunisia, where -- no coincidence -- the precipitating event was a young food vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, setting himself on fire to protest government harassment. Anger over rising food and fuel prices combined with long-simmering resentments about government repression and corruption sparked what became known as the Arab Spring. The rising cost of basic staples, especially a loaf of bread, was also a cause of unrest in Egypt, Jordan, and Sudan. Other factors, notably anger at entrenched autocratic regimes, may have proved more powerful in those places, but as the author of Tropic of Chaos, Christian Parenti, wrote, “The initial trouble was traceable, at least in part, to the price of that loaf of bread.”

As for the current drought, analysts are already warning of instability in Africa, where corn is a major staple, and of increased popular unrest in China, where food prices are expected to rise at a time of growing hardship for that country’s vast pool of low-income, migratory workers and poor peasants. Higher food prices in the U.S. and China could also lead to reduced consumer spending on other goods, further contributing to the slowdown in the global economy and producing yet more worldwide misery, with unpredictable social consequences.

The Hunger Games, 2012-??

If this was just one bad harvest, occurring in only one country, the world would undoubtedly absorb the ensuing hardship and expect to bounce back in the years to come. Unfortunately, it’s becoming evident that the Great Drought of 2012 is not a one-off event in a single heartland nation, but rather an inevitable consequence of global warming which is only going to intensify. As a result, we can expect not just more bad years of extreme heat, but worse years, hotter and more often, and not just in the United States, but globally for the indefinite future.

Until recently, most scientists were reluctant to blame particular storms or droughts on global warming. Now, however, a growing number of scientists believe that such links can be demonstrated in certain cases. In one recent study focused on extreme weather events in 2011, for instance, climate specialists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Great Britain’s National Weather Service concluded that human-induced climate change has made intense heat waves of the kind experienced in Texas in 2011 more likely than ever before. Published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, it reported that global warming had ensured that the incidence of that Texas heat wave was 20 times more likely than it would have been in 1960; similarly, abnormally warm temperatures like those experienced in Britain last November were said to be 62 times as likely because of global warming.

Full Story:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/08/07-2?print

[maryals]

For quite a few years we've been warned. So it's no surprise, yet, no less frightening.
So let's stick together, stay strong, stay hopeful

Mary and Baby

[Judee]

August 8, 2012
NOAA: July Was Hottest Month Ever in US
Drought expands to cover nearly 63% as wildfires consume 2 million acres


July was the hottest month on record in the continental United States, continuing the warmest January-to-July period since modern record-keeping began in 1895, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported Wednesday.

The average temperature for July across the continental US was 77.6 degrees F -- 3.3 degrees F above the 20th century average.

The last four 12-month periods have each successively established new records for the warmest period of that length.

In the 12-month span from August 2011-July 2012, every state observed warmer than average temperatures except Washington state, which was near average.

A record setting drought continues to plague 63 percent of the 48 contiguous states, according to NOAA's Drought Monitor, with near-record drought conditions in the Midwest.

According to Jake Crouch, a scientist at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, drought and heat continue to play off each other, as dry soils in the summer tend to drive up daytime temperatures.

"The hotter it gets, the drier it gets, the hotter it gets," Crouch told Reuters.

A statistical climate change analysis led by NASA's James Hansen, released Monday shows that recent extreme weather events are not anomalies, but rather the result of a systemic climate change patterns fueled by man-made global warming.





http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/08/08-7

[maryals]

Nothing tells the story better than pictures and graphs...thanks Judee

Mary and Baby

[Alpha]

Killer Superstorms Predicted: Ice Age, Famines Ahead

Since the winter of 2010, superstorms have been on the rise. Some experts attribute the appearance of the gigantic storms to global warming, or climate change. Other researchers believe the incredibly huge and violent storms pummeling many of the countries across the world is the work of HAARP: the semi-secret research station first erected in the barren wilds of Alaska, and now spreading around the globe. Yet the origin of the rise of the killer superstorms can be traced back to the sun and its increasingly violent actions. The sun affects everything on Earth from the climate, to life, to geological processes…and the magnetosphere. Little doubt remains that the Earth’s magnetic field is on the move and the changing field concurrent with the electrical interaction of the turbulent sun is setting off violent year-round storms that some fear will only worsen causing thousands to die.


A legacy of violence and death

Monster storms hammer 43 American states; Russia reeling from worst winter ever, Great Britain encased in ice.

Biblical floods, deadly drought, hellacious heat, mind-numbing cold…records decimated, destruction rising on an Apocalyptic scale…




Amazing satellite image: Great Britain encased in ice

Warning: the superstorm era has just started. The sun is changing. As the sun’s violence increases so will the violence on Earth as the planet responds to the pulsing waves of exploding electromagnetic plasma. The Earth’s magnetic field continues to warp the solar magnetic flux will continue to increase and so will the fury of the killer storms.




Incredible superstorms slam across America


The incredible superstorms first arose during late 2010. The horrific storms hit with a savagery seldom seen humans. The storms battered northern Europe and pounded the reeling Brits.




And then America was broadsided by a succession of unrelenting superblizzards—a roiling mass of misery stretching across the US and causing havoc in more than two-thirds of the country. Parts of the Midwest and Eastern seaboard’s infrastructure began splintering and failing.




After the cold retreated, the rains came and the flooding. Two superstorms whipped across the back of America leaving massive destruction and death in their wakes.


Even jaded meteorologists were shaken.



April 2011: in a span of just 48-hours a wide swath of the USA was inundated, split asunder, devastated by more than 600 killer tornadoes and winds exceeding 100mph. A mile-wide tornado cut a path of destruction through several states as it traveled 370 miles over the countryside.




Hundreds died, thousands were injured, thousands more homeless.


Climatologists and meteorologists watched the destructive fury with wide-eyed wonder.



Cooling Earth, approaching ice

No one questions the ferocity of the superstorms so far, yet bigger and more powerful ones are coming. Just imagine the past storms lasting not days, but weeks—even months.

The Earth changes are here and the bulk of humanity is unprepared for the climate Armageddon.



The very idea of anthropogenic global warming is dwarfed by the escalating violence of a world under assault by the raging sun. Climate is driven by the sun, as a recent NASA study has confirmed. Now the sun’s about to enter an extended period of cooling, of that the experts have little doubt.


Many now agree the impending worldwide climate change is driving the planet toward a new Ice Age. Whether the impending Ice Age is a relatively benign mini-Ice Age or one that will extend over the next 100,000 years is unknown. Most favor a brief cooling period, perhaps lasting only a century or less.

Yet even a short-term drop in average climate temperatures can spell doom to whole countries and forced migration of some populations that want to stay alive.





Drought, deluges, crop failures and famine


When the sun goes quiet after 2014, it’s expected to stay quiet for at least the next 30 to 50 years. During that time, the sun will shrink, generate less heat and the planets—including Earth—will quickly cool.





John L. Casey, Space and Science Research Center


Scientists—including John L. Casey, the Director of the Space and Science Research Center—are warning that people in the coming decades face food and fuel shortages. Most of the people affected live in the most populated region of the world: the Northern Hemisphere.


Some northern countries will be abandoned as the ice marches down from the Arctic; energy production will be interrupted; and shortened growing periods in the Northern Hemisphere will precipitate mass migrations, famines, food riots, regional conflicts and a loss of human life that could be measured on an apocalyptic scale.



Severe droughts will hit some regions. Other areas will experience massive flooding. It’s already happening. The drought affecting much of the Midwest is drying up the mighty Mississippi River. Seawater from the Gulf of Mexico is flowing backwards inland as experts scramble to save the Delta region.

Casey made this prediction in 2010: “The Earth typically makes adjustments in major temperature spikes within two to three years. In this case as we cool down from El Nino, we are dealing with the combined effects of this planetary thermodynamic normalization and the influence of the more powerful underlying global temperature downturn brought on by the solar hibernation. Both forces will present the first opportunity since the period of Sun-caused global warming period ended to witness obvious harmful agricultural impacts of the new cold climate. Analysis shows that food and crop derived fuel will for the first time, become threatened in the next two and a half years.”



The irony is that a spike in heat precedes the cooling. Paleoclimatologists have documented that. And the cooling will follow as the sun cools. Casey is right…and the crop failures and famines breaking out in underdeveloped countries are happening right on schedule. His paper on the cyclical cooling, “The Theory of Relational Cycles of Solar Activity” is available here.





The solar cooling is now predicted by NASA’s Long Range Solar Forecast through 2022 and as well as the stunning slowdown of sun’s activity.


Weighing in on the idea of an impending Ice Age, on of the world’s top climate experts, George Kukla, a retired professor of paleoclimatology from Columbia University and researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory says the “Earth has experienced an ongoing cycle of ice ages dating back millions of years. Cold, glacial periods affecting the polar to mid-latitudes persist for about 100,000 years, punctuated by briefer, warmer periods called interglacials.” He contends that orbit drives climate. Added to the current cycle of the sun, the picture isn’t comforting.






Paleoclimatology expert, Professor emeritus George Kukla

The co-author of an important section of the book “Natural Climate Variability on Decade to Century Time Scales,” Kukla asserts all Ice Ages start with a period of global warming. They’re the harbingers of new Ice Ages. Actually, he explains, warming is good. Ice Ages are deadly and can kill millions.



Can Mankind stop it? No. Just as humanity cannot affect the long term climate of the planet, neither can it stop an Ice Age from happening. The climate is primarily driven by the sun.



“I feel we’re on pretty solid ground in interpreting orbit around the sun as the primary driving force behind Ice Age glaciation,” he says. “The relationship is just too clear and consistent to allow reasonable doubt. It’s either that, or climate drives orbit, and that just doesn’t make sense.”




Mankind is witnessing—right now—the dawn of Doom: rising food prices and rising doubts about the security of the future.


Doubt people should, as the future is far from secure.







The Iceman cometh riding the great winds

While Casey sees a so-called Little Ice Age lasting about 40 to 50 years, others like Robert Felix believe the data is there supporting a real possibility of a major Ice Age that could last thousands of years.



Felix believes the Earth’s already entered the first stages of the Little Ice Age and a bigger one might be close on its heels. Felix predicts the Iceman Cometh.





The next Ice Age “could begin any day” says Robert Felix


Felix warns: “The next Ice Age could begin any day. Next week, next month, next year…it’s not a question of if, only when. One day you’ll wake up—or you won’t wake up, rather—buried beneath nine stories of snow. It’s all part of a dependable, predictable cycle, a natural cycle that returns like clockwork every 11,500 years.”



The last Ice Age ended about 11,500 years ago.




When the Iceman cometh, crops fail, summer shortens and becomes wetter and cooler. Famines will break out across the great agricultural belts of the world from southern Canada south to the breadbasket of the US Midwest to the normally temperate zones of Europe and the grain belts of the Ukraine and southern Russia. China too will be affected as will most of the Northern Hemisphere to a greater or lesser degree.



Technology and advanced farming techniques may be able to reduce the worst impacts initially, but as the precipitation increases flooding the farmlands and the cooler temperatures result in stunted, dwarf crops, the price of commodities will double and triple and then triple again.



As the food shortages become chronic more governments will collapse.

The early signs of the unrest in the Middle East, Africa, the United Kingdom and parts of Asia are all being driven more by food shortages and prices than the political agendas the media focuses its spotlight on.



Those in the know are urging people to become small farmers and turn backyards or empty city lots into vegetable gardens.



Yet that is, at best, a very short-term solution to a much longer-range problem.

The problems encompass the advancing Earth changes, the magnetic field flux, creeping cooling across the Northern Hemisphere, the dead husks of once robust crops, burgeoning superstorms, nature at war with Mankind, an increasingly erratic sun, and the potential fall of Western civilization.



Skeptics sneer, “Well, other than that everything’s great!”



Yet as surely as the solar system plunges through the galaxy into unknown regions of space, the Earth too is plunging towards a future of instability and looming catastrophes.



But then, as some say, other than that everything’s great.




Article

[Judee]

The irony is that a spike in heat precedes the cooling. Paleoclimatologists have documented that. And the cooling will follow as the sun cools.

The above says it all IMO. Great article Alpha. So many people don't understand that just because we're getting warmer for the moment, it doesn't mean an ice age isn't right around the corner. Scientists already know too, that ice ages happen very quickly. It used to be thought that ice ages took a long time to happen. Not so.

[Judee]

September 7, 2012
'Unprecedented,' 'Amazing,' 'Goliath': Scientists Describe Arctic Sea Ice Melt
Arctic Sea ice levels continue to drop below record set on Aug. 26


The rate of Arctic Sea ice melt has caught scientists by surprise, leaving them to describe the current record low levels as "amazing," "a Goliath" and "unprecedented." While a record low was recorded on Aug. 26, the ice level continues to fall, and the National Snow and Ice Data Center reports that there is still a week left in the melting season.

The speed of the Arctic ice melt is astounding, scientists say. "It is a greater change than we could even imagine 20 years ago, even 10 years ago," Dr. Kim Holmen, international director of the Norwegian Polar Institute told the BBC. "And it has taken us by surprise and we must adjust our understanding of the system and we must adjust our science and we must adjust our feelings for the nature around us."

"This year's melting season is a Goliath," also notes geophysicist Marco Tedesco, director of the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory at City University of New York, the Wall Street Journal reports. "The ice is being lost at a very strong pace."

These scientists' opinions are no anomalies.

Weather Underground co-founder Dr. Jeff Masters writes that "Every major scientific institution that tracks Arctic sea ice agrees that new records for low ice area, extent, and volume have been set. These organizations include the University of Washington Polar Science Center (a new record for low ice volume), the Nansen Environmental & Remote Sensing Center in Norway, and the University of Illinois Cryosphere Today."

The National Snow and Ice Data Center illustrates the melt since 1979 in the graph below, showing a decline in the ice extent at 10.2% per decade:

Masters adds that the Arctic melt level record might go back even further. "Satellite records of sea ice extent date back to 1979, though a 2011 study by Kinnard et al. shows that the Arctic hasn't seen a melt like this for at least 1,450 years," writes Masters.

Another scientist with the Norwegian Polar Institute engaged in Arctic research, Dr. Edmond Hansen, confirms the historic levels of the ice melt, and tells the BBC it is "amazing."

"As a scientist, I know that this is unprecedented in at least as much as 1,500 years. It is truly amazing -- it is a huge dramatic change in the system."

"This is not some short-lived phenomenon -- this is an ongoing trend. You lose more and more ice and it is accelerating -- you can just look at the graphs, the observations, and you can see what's happening," Hansen said.

Masters notes that the ice melt has real impacts on the climate, since the white snow and ice reflect sunlight while the ocean absorbs it. As the ice melts and we have more sea, we create "a recipe for more and faster global warming," writes Masters.

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/07-3

[maryals]

Damn.....

MAry and Baby

[Judee]

Parched soils trigger more storms
by Staff Writers
London, UK (SPX) Sep 17, 2012

The implication is that existing climate models are more likely to go into a vicious circle whereby dry soils decrease rainfall, leading to even drier soil conditions. The paper concludes that fixing this problem is a priority for scientists developing the climate models.

Afternoon storms are more likely to develop when soils are parched, according to a new study published this week in Nature which examined hydrological processes across six continents.

The results have important implications for the future development of global weather and climate models which may currently be simulating an excessive number of droughts.

The research team included scientists from the UK, Holland, Austria and France and was led by Dr Chris Taylor from the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in the UK.

The scientists examined imagery from weather satellites which track the development of storm clouds across the globe. When they matched up where new storms appeared alongside images of how wet the ground was, they were somewhat surprised.

Dr Chris Taylor from NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology said, "We had been looking at storms in Africa and knew that rain clouds there tended to brew up in places where it hadn't rained in the previous few days.

"We were surprised to see a similar pattern occurring in other regions of the world such as the US and continental Europe. In those less extreme climates, with more vegetation cover, we expected the soil wetness effect would be too weak to identify."

The researchers compared their observations with six global weather and climate models used to simulate climate change. They found that the existing models do the wrong thing, triggering rain over wetter soils.

The implication is that existing climate models are more likely to go into a vicious circle whereby dry soils decrease rainfall, leading to even drier soil conditions. The paper concludes that fixing this problem is a priority for scientists developing the climate models.

Dr Taylor added, "Both heat and moisture are critical ingredients for rain clouds to build up during the afternoon. On sunny days the land heats the air, creating thermals which reach several kilometres up into the atmosphere. If the soil is dry, the thermals are stronger, and our new research shows that this makes rain more likely."

Co-author Dr Francoise Guichard from CNRM-GAME (CNRS and Meteo-France) said, "We need to improve climate models so that we get a better idea of what global climate change will mean on smaller regional scales over land."

The research team came from the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in the UK, CNRM-GAME (CNRS and Meteo-France) in France, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and the Vienna University of Technology in Austria.

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Pa...torms_999.html