Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

from Church J.A. and White N.J. "A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise" Geophys. Res. Lett. 2006; 33: L01602

NASA’s top climate scientist James Hansen has put together a new website. It basically updates the graphics in his book “Storms of My Grandchildren“. Definitely worth checking out for the graphics which are from papers published in the peer reviewed literature.

If you have not read the book, I highly recommend it. It’s even available for iPad and Kindle (Which makes me happy since I pretty much read everything on my iPad now).

From NASA GISS

From NASA GISS

NASA released the July global temp data this evening. The last 7 months are the warmest January – July on record. The thermometer record goes back to 1880. Before 1880 there are proxies for temperature. Tree rings and ice cores for example. These proxies  (See Oldest Ice Core Recovered from Greenland) indicate we are very possibly in the warmest period in at least one thousand years.

The temperature anomalies map shows that the higher latitudes are continuing to warm the fastest. This comes on the 30th anniversary of a now famous paper by Wally Broecker back in 1980. Broecker predicted in 1975 that the slight cooling trend of the 1970′s would reverse itself and a significant warming trend would begin due to increasing greenhouse gases. The blog Real Climate (written by several climate experts) has details on this. You can also read the paper for yourself.

July 2010 was the warmest July on the record for the Northern Hemisphere as well.

Amazing satellite image from Monday showing smoke covering much of Western Russia. NASA/Modis image. Click for higher resolution. Fires denoted by red dots.

The death toll from the heat and smoke in Moscow is climbing rapidly. BBC Radio reported today that the death rate in Moscow is running 2-5 times normal.

This is not an ordinary heat wave. It’s actually almost unbelievable meteorologically. It’s not unusual to set a record high. It’s very rare to set an all time high temperature, but it happens from time to time in extreme situations.

What IS nearly unheard of is setting a new all time record high, then tying or breaking it 5 times in the same month! Imagine setting a record high and breaking the old record by 19 degrees F.! That’s what Moscow did on Monday 9 August. The old record was 90 in 2001. Monday Moscow hit 99F and that ties the warmest temp. Ever recorded there.

This has been going on since July as well. This kind of heat in a city where almost no one has or needs air conditioning.

CHOKING FOREST FOREST FIRES

The heat and dry weather has caused the swampy land full of peat bogs around Moscow to dry out and they are now burning. The smoke they are producing has reduced the visibility in Red Square to about 1 km. On Saturday, the Carbon Monoxide levels reached 5 times the unhealthful level.

RELIEF IN SIGHT?

There are some strong indications that a cool front will bring at least some temporary relief to NW Russia in about 5-7 days. Unfortunately, several thousand people will not likely live to see it.

Temperature anomalies in July over Eastern Europe. The heat has gotten worse since then...

SOME OTHER OPINIONS

Meteorologist Jeff Masters has a very good writeup about the heat in Russia here. There are some amazing pics from Russia courtesy of the Boston Globe as well.

CLIMATE CHANGE RELATED

You have to be very careful in blaming any one weather event on climate change. That said, the warming over the last 50 years has been much greater in the higher latitudes. Dr. Michael Tobis at the Univ. of Texas in Austin makes a decent case for calling this event at least VERY suspicious as far as climate is concerned.

Dan

Arctic Sea ice continues to drop in areal coverage AND in thickness. Image from NSIDC.

The Arctic sea ice level dropped to the second lowest July levels on record last month. The data record goes back to about 1978. That’s when reliable satellite based measurements began. The lowest amount on record was on 16 September in 2007.

Arctic sea ice extent compared the the long term average and the record low year of 2007. Click for larger image.

Will we set an all time low record this year. Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado are thinking that we likely will not. It will be very close though. Record low or not, the levels will be well below the average ice levels of 1979-2000.

The bigger part of this story that is sometimes missed is the thinning of the ice. Submarine records from the past and modern methods all indicate the ice is getting much thinner. The Arctic of Cook and Perry does not exist anymore. It is quite possible that large areas of the Arctic may be ice free before 2050 in summer. Scientists are still trying to figure out just what that will mean for the hemisphere and the planet as a whole.

Make no mistake, the Arctic is the Northern Hemisphere’s air conditioner. If the ice starts disappearing in the summer, it will have a significant impact on our climate. These are the kind of questions that scientists hope the ice core drill sites like NEEM will answer.

That's me at NEEM on July 28,2010. The ski equipped C-130 from the New York Air Guard carried science types and ice cores back to the real world.

The NEEM site brought up ice from the warm period before the last ice age. This period is called the Eemian and it was a bit warmer than this warm period that has lasted about 10,000 years now. How much ice was there in Greenland in the Eemian, and how did it affect global temperatures is a question the NEEM ice core may answer.

It will be possible to estimate ocean temperatures as well as greenhouse gas levels with the ice core. Even the amount of volcanic dust in the atmosphere can be measured. It’s really amazing how the past can be such a spotlight on the future climate change we are forcing on ourselves.

More on NEEM with pics and videos soon.

Your's truly looking at the ice core from 2,500 meters beneath the Greenland Ice Cap. The science trench where the drill is located is -20C and is about 10 meters below the surface. Dan's pic.

I’ve just returned today from Greenland and am looking forward to seeing my first “night” in 10 days!

The 14 countries that have supported the NEEM ice core project got their money’s worth this week. The two year project to drill an ice core through 2,500 meters of ice finally reached Greenland rock.

Where Is It

NEEM at Midnight- Dan's Pic.

The NEEM site is at 8,300 feet on top of the ice sheet. I arrived there a week ago Tuesday and was a guest for 8 nights. There were 38 of us in a small camp in the middle of a magnificent desolation of white.

The population of this tiny outpost is an international mix of young and older scientists, researchers and ice core drilling experts. Many like Jim White, the Director of the Stable Isotope Lab at INSTAAR are renowned experts in their fields.

It was a fun and fascinating 9 days with top ice scientists from Denmark, France, USA,Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand.

There was a riot of different accents but everyone had one thing in common.

Scientific curiosity.

Among those in science, that always transcends national borders, languages and cultures.

About NEEM

James White of the University of Colorado and director of INSTAAR.

I was a guest of Paleoclimate expert  Jim White the director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the Uni. of Colorado. Dr. White arranged the support of the National Science Foundation. After Denmark, the NSF was the second biggest funder of NEEM.

So what did the folks at NEEM do in plain language?

They pulled up ice that was once falling as snow in Greenland around 150,000 years ago! Then they analysed and read it like a climate history book. This was the first time that a boat load of science was done on an ice core as it was being obtained.

This was during the ice age that preceded the Eemian. The Eemian is the warm period before our last ice age. This means we now have an ice core that goes all the way back through the Holocene (The warm period after the last ice age in which we now live), the ice age before the Holocene, and then the warm period before the last ice age (The Eemian) and finally into the penultimate ice age before the Eemian!

This is from the Antarctic VOSTOK ice core. Notice how stable the climate has been during the short blip of time called the Holocene. Virtually all of civilisation developed in the Holocene. Notice how unstable the climate was before! NEEM has now obtained a core from Greenland that goes back a similar period to that shown here. (NOAA)

Knowing what the climate of Earth was like in the Eemian is vitally important. The main reason is because there is overwhelming evidence the Earth will be as warm as the Eemian by the end of this century.

It should not be. The best evidence we have is that the Earth should be cooling slightly. It is actually doing just the opposite because of rapidly rising greenhouse gases.

There is no doubt among the scientists that we will continue to warm. Even if we quit burning fossil fuels tonight, the planet will continue to warm at least another degree. That’s because a lot of the warming has been stored in the oceans. If we keep burning coal and oil, the warming will be much more severe.

There is little debate about that in the science community. Almost none actually.

NEEM Camp- Dan's pic (click to make real big)

The Scary Bit Is What Is Not Known.

Could there be a rapid warming?

A significant jump in temperature that happens in a decade?

Sound crazy?

Think again., The ice core at NEEM and the other Greenland cores all show that this has happened many times in the past. Very abrupt warmings are part of our climate. The question is what are the tipping points that cause these. The bigger question is are we about to reach one.

This ice core at NEEM may hold very important clues.

Pictures and Video

I took thousands of pics and made 5 hours of video at NEEM. We will air reports on WHNT for those in North Alabama and there will be an in-depth documentary about NEEM coming as well from Dave Jones at Storm Center Communications. I was part of the three man team that Dave sent.

My colleagues, David Stroud and Robert Freeland, and I had an incredible adventure. I learned more of the latest climate science in 8 days than I could have in a year at home. (I had captive climate experts to ask questions of and I took advantage.)

We were there when NEEM reached bedrock.

Stay tuned here for the pictures and the story. I think you will find it fascinating.

One thing for sure, the phrase “snow on the toilet paper” will have a significant meaning to me for the rest of my life!

More soon after I sleep for awhile!

Dan