Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

Cape Royds, Ross Island, Antarctica (Dan's Photo-ask before using please)

Yes, they are most definitely related.

I have been very busy reading lately. Books and papers. A presentation on the science underway in Antarctica is half finished, but I keep finding new things I just have to read right away. (I’m presenting at the AMS broadcast conference  in Miami in three weeks.)

There are some very interesting graphs and images I have stumbled onto and since the desktop folder (thankfully it’s a MAC desk top) is full, it is time to write a post and show them to someone besides science geeks.

Image from Nat. Snow Ice Data Center (NOAA) click for the large pretty version in colour.

Most of them are on the melting of ice. Arctic sea ice, Greenland ice and Antarctica ice.

Let’s start with the Arctic sea ice. The melt in late summer 2007 brought the lowest amounts ever seen in the High Arctic. How is 2010 shaping up? As the graph from NSIDC shows, we may very well be on track to break that record.

The areal extent is only a small part of the picture. There have been some recent publications that indicate that the real story is in the VOLUME of the Arctic sea ice.

A model has been developed that can estimate the Arctic sea ice volume. It’s called PIOMAS and was developed at the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

So, take a look at what it’s showing:

From Polar Science Center Univ. of Washington (U- Dub).

Unlike some people, I don’t just make this stuff up!

See citation in image. click for the HD version in living colour.

Oh, but wait, there’s more. That folder is full remember…

GRACE stands for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. A major paper published in NATURE GEOSCIENCE late in 2009 shows that the PIOMAS models melting ice is not alone. GRACE data from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets speak for themselves.

It truly is amazing what we can do with satellites now. Remote sensing in Earth science is doing incredible things. If I wasn’t 50 years old, I’d go back and get a PhD in some field of Earth science and attempt to develop a new way of measuring our planet. I’m so jealous of the young people just entering grad. school in these fields.

Still more!

I just stumbled across this graphic on John Cook’s SKEPTICAL SCIENCE blog. It has updated GRACE data through 2009 into this year. If you do not have John’s iphone/iPad app you should get it. Then the  next time someone gives you one of those silly arguments from a junk science web site about why climate change is a hoax, you can quickly show them why there idea is full of bunk.

Is he done yet you ask? Is this the power point from hell?

No on both questions I hope.

You probably know that Dr. James Hansen is the head of NASA’s Goddard Inst. for Space Studies. He is also the nation’s premier climate expert. He just published a paper on the NASA GISS temperature  record. You can read the paper here.

DO read it!

From Hansen et. al. link to the paper in this post or click image to read it.

Here is the gist:

We conclude that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade, despite large year- to-year fluctuations associated with the El Nino-La Nina cycle of tropical ocean temperature. Record high global temperature during the period with instrumental data was reached in 2010. (Physicist Joe Romm points out that this comes at a time the sun has just passed a period of low irradiance)

Hansen’s papers are so matter of fact and easy to read, that they are always fascinating. He never tries to impress with fancy language. Just the science. This paper shows pretty conclusively that all the worry about cities “contaminating” the temperature record is pretty much history now.

Oh and one last graphic.

The satellite temperatures from U. A. Huntsville. Just a few miles from where I type this.

From John Christy, Roy Spencer's data at U. A. Huntsville.

The satellite derived lower troposphere temps. are currently at record levels too. This record of course, is much shorter than the surface temp. record compiled by NASA or the others compiled by NCDC or the Hadley Centre in the UK.

You might call all of these graphs the REAL COST OF OIL. Then again the birds on the Gulf Coast might beg to differ…

Dan

Note Sat June 5 2010:
Just came across a new paper published on Arctic sea ice. The authors are a “whos who” of paleo-climate experts. They conclude that Arctic ice is now at lowest levels in “several thousand years”. The abstract and citation are posted by me in the comments of this post.

Global Temperatures since 1880. Click image to read the Paper by Hansen,Lo,Sato,Ruedy.

I spent the weekend reading a new paper that is about to be published by 4 of NASA’s top climate researchers. If you follow climate research closely, then it is no surprise.

The planet continues to warm and no, it has not stopped.   Hansen et.al point out that this recent warming occurs at a time when the sun has been very quiet and in a phase that should be causing us to cool some. The Daily Climate has a great summary of the paper for those that do not want to read all 34 pages. I’m constantly amazed at how different the real science is from what I see on cable news channels and online.

Click image to visit the new NOAA site on Arctic sea ice.

I also want to give equal time to another of  America’s respected science institutions, NOAA.

They have placed online a great site on the changes in Arctic sea ice. A tip of the cricket bat to Andy Revkin at the NYT who spotted it.

It’s a great place to get real science on the trends in Arctic sea ice.

Later,
Dan

Two very notable publications in the clmate science world as we head into the first weekend of meteorological spring here in the Northern Hemisphere. One is a surprise to just about every climate researcher and not in a good way. The other may surprise some in the public but is not at all surprising to those who follow the real science closely.

The big surprise first.

Methane is being released in huge quantities from the rapidly warming Arctic Ocean off of Siberia. Click image to read the NSF press release.

A major finding is being announced in Science regarding methane and permafrost. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that has more than doubled since pre-industrial times. It is approximately 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Researchers have long worried that as the Earth heats up, permafrost holding methane will melt and methane will be released in great quantities. Until now, the main source of worry was wetlands in the High Arctic. Some recent research has even indicated that the possibilities of deep ocean “methane hydrates” becoming a major source of sudden methane were not that likely.

Unfortunately the real world has a different surprise. A University of Alaska research team has found that the methane beneath the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is being released in huge quantities. Indications are that the amount of methane being released is comparable to what is being released over the entire rest of the World’s oceans.

The second publication confirms something that I have mentioned several times over the past year or so here. Which is simply this: The real science published in peer reviewed journals continues to indicate that the change in Earth’s climate system is worse than the IPCC report of 2007.

In almost every area, the changes are happening faster than predicted. From sea level rise to greenhouse gas levels to the melting of arctic sea ice. A few years ago there was still questions about how Antarctica was reacting compared to the rest of the planet.

No more. The melt is on.

Dr. Peter Stott and colleagues at the UK Met. office have published a review of 110 papers in research journals published since the last IPCC report.

The evidence that humans are affecting earth’s climate is no longer unequivocal. It is OVERWHELMING.

The BBC has a good summary with more info. Click the image to read it.

Some real science from the National Academies. Click to read it. It is a very good summary of what is currently known about climate change.

Compare this with the ridiculous claims of fraud by extremist political blogs. The main claim being over a mistake in the non peer reviewed part of the IPCC report that anyone who knew much about climate science thought was a typo! I can’t write a blog post here without typos let alone 3,000 pages.

It is very telling that the two blogs feeding most of the skeptics are written by people who have NO background in science. One is a political spinner for Senator Laughing Stock (who wants to arrest Dr. Michael Mann). The other is TV weatherman who never bothered to study atmospheric physics.

As the title of this post says: Scientific facts live independent of public opinion. I’m a firm believer that the truth wins out in the end.

It always has.

The Atlantic portions of Arctic remain warmer than normal in January. Image from NSIDC NOAA.

It’s been a cold and very snowy winter in the Eastern USA and in Western Europe. Very likely the worst in 30 years. All that snow and cold has resulted in a very common question to every meteorologist I know and that certainly includes me. Same for every person involved in climate change research too.

WHAT HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING??

First of all most people in the climate and weather forecasting field prefer climate change instead of global warming. It’s more accurate. Secondly, if I have learned one thing over the past 30 years as a forecaster, it’s that weather is extremely local to people.

If I forecast a 10% of the area to get rain and it turns out to be a perfect forecast, I guarantee you that every person who got rain thinks I blew the forecast. It doesn’t matter if the next block over is sunny. People only care about the weather where they are.

So when we have cold and snow, people immediately chant what happened to global warming. The answer to this in short is nothing. If the whole planet was getting snow then things would be different. Climate is made up of a lot of weather. Even in a warmer world that is most certainly coming, we will still have blizzards and record lows. Just not nearly as many of them.

One of the multitude of other signs the planet is warming besides thermometers is the number of record highs is steadily increasing compared to the record lows.

The cold air, in the East of America and the West of Europe, has come from the Arctic and it has actually left the Arctic quite warm. Sea ice for January is running way below the long term average. Sea ice in December was too and if you look at December alone, then the decrease is now running at 3.3% per decade.

Below is an exc. video featuring my friend Stu Ostro, Meteorologist at the Weather Channel, along with one of the top climate experts at the Nat. Center for Atmospheric Research, that explains the answer to this months question very well. Not only that, it’s based on science instead of political opinion.

So check out Peter Sinclair’s Global Warming Crock of the Week! (gotta love that name)

Polar Bear in North Baffin Bay - Dan's Photo Aug 2007

My two favourite animals are inhabitants of opposite poles.

Ursus Maritimas.

Polar Bears. They will eat you if you’re not careful, but they are truly majestic creatures.

When I travelled through the High Arctic in August 2007, I saw three. The best was the second encounter on an ice flow in North Baffin Bay. It was spitting snow and quite cold, but sitting in our Zodiac, we were oblivious to it.

WHY?

Because, in front of us, was a site that few humans have ever seen. A polar bear in his habitat. The experts with us kept us 30 yards away, because the bear could make a leap at us if we were closer.

A shark will eat you thinking you are a seal. A Polar Bear will eat you, thinking you are a tasty human. Something to remember if you’re ever in the Arctic. We always stayed close to someone with a gun that shot tranquilliser darts, stun grenades and as an extreme last resort, real bullets.

The bears live and hunt on the ice. As it disappears in the Arctic, they may vanish as well.

My other favourite animal lives at the bottom of the world instead of the top.

Emperor Penguins in Antarctica. Image from the Nat. Sci. Foundation. They fund much of the science done at the bottom of he world.

Emperor Penguins. Aptenodytes forsteri

Most people do not realise they stand about one meter high! I have never seen one in it’s habitat. They live only in Antarctica. I am working very hard to visit an Emperor Colony at the bottom of the world, and soon!

The Emperor’s truly have to rate among natures most beautiful creatures. The Emperors in particular are incredibly adapted to living in the harshest climate on the planet. The Polar Bears of the Arctic live a positively balmy lifestyle compared to the life in Antarctica.

The South pole is much colder than the North Pole. The warmest temp ever recorded at the South Pole is 7F. The warmest temp. ever recorded in Antarctica is 59F or 10C. That was at the edge of the continent. Normally it rarely reaches much above freezing anywhere.

There is a fabulous video on you tube of some Orca’s chasing a penguin in Antarctica. Just when you think the Penguin has had it. He makes a daring escape! It’s called ONE LUCKY PENGUIN.

You have to see the video!