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A viewer emailed me some amazing pictures today. They appear to show floating layers of snow surrounding trees. Pretty cool, no??

So what caused this?

Dr. von Tiesenhausen has an explanation that is very thoughtful. I will let him explain it in his email:

“As best as I can tell, what happened was that the water level had been up, since Huntsville is used as a watershed by the TVA.  Then we had a big freeze, and the area on the photo was iced in. Then the TVA dams must have dropped the water level by about a foot or so, breaking off the ice that had formed around the trees, but leaving ice rings.  Then it snowed, covering the ice rings but not the water, and then everything froze again, leaving the black ice below, with the snowed up rings around the trees above, creating a surreal image in the woods.”

Occam’s razor is at work here. In case you are not familiar with it, it can be stated as “The simplest and most likely explanation is probably the correct one.” It seems to me that Dr. von Tiesenhausen has come up with just that.

You can read a much more detailed discussion of Occam’s razor here.

Excellent scientific reasoning Georg!

Thanks!

Note: Dr. von Tiesenhausen is a well known educator in Huntsville, as well as my daughter’s high school English teacher.

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

From Asia Society- GRIP (1921 by G. Mallory)

The Glacier Research Imaging Project (GRIP) has released some stunning images of Everest taken from the same spot In 1921 by George Mallory and in 2007.

Go to the Asia Society web site and see the changes for yourself.

Click the pic to go to the site.

Compare that with Michael Mann’s famous graph.

More threads: Reconstructions of the Earth's temperature. Most by Dr. Micheal Mann Penn State. Image from Gavin Schmidt NASA/Real Climate.

The reason scientist come to have faith in a theory is NEVER based on one single line of evidence. A strong theory is made up of a rope of intermingled threads of independent evidence. This is why those who search in vain for that one study that will prove climate science is a big hoax are destined to always be grasping at threads that break.

The thick rope of AGW theory just added another thread in the form of two pictures. This thread is not a biggy. It doesn’t prove anything  other  than the fact that there is much less ice at Everest in 2007 than in 1921. Not much in itself, but when you add it to thousands of other interwoven threads, a thick rope forms.

There are lots of these ropes in science. Copernicus and Galileo started one that is as thick as my thigh now. So did Charles Darwin and that rope is just as thick. Alfred Wegener started one in the early 1900′s. He  did not live to see the strong rope of plate tectonic theory that holds modern Geology together.

I’m about to leave the map for two weeks.  I head to Northern Greenland on Sunday. While on the icecap at NEEM there will be no internet, TV and not much of a phone! I may be able to get a brief post out of Kangerlussuaq but no promises.

Alfred Wegener died on the Greenland Ice Cap in 1930. I will be thinking about him while looking at the midnight sun.

Dan

NASA MODIS Satellite pass over the Iceland Volcano today. Huge ash cloud visible but it is not being blown toward Europe (as of now at least). Click image for much higher resolution.

The upper level winds are not blowing the ash toward the UK today and that is very good news. If they were, there would be widespread cancellations of flights. The cloud is especially thick.

One way to see the ash is to use a little trick. By looking at the brightness (temp.) difference between two channels on the image, the ash shows up very well. This is an animated gif, and will take awhile to load.

The good news is that late today the eruption has become much quieter and the ash is not as high as earlier.

Geological experts in Iceland are reporting that there are no signs the eruption will end anytime soon.

Sensors on most of the weather satellites are not really designed to see the ash. There has been a lot of work recently to use the available sensors to see as much as possible. The best way to see it is to use LIDAR. This is a form of radar using lasers. The UK Met office has had considerable luck using this from the ground to look at the ash cloud over the UK.

This event and the oil slick in the Gulf highlight the incredible usefulness of using remote sensing instruments in orbit. They pay for themselves many times over. The USA and Europe have fallen behind in putting these sensors on orbital platforms.

The technology is there, we just need to use it.

Here below is the latest view of the oil slick in the Gulf. Keep in mind you are only seeing the heaviest patch of oil. It is much more widespread than it appears.

True colour image from NASA's Aqua satellite. The thickest oil shows up well. It now appears the oil slick has moved west of the mouth of the Mississippi. Click image for much bigger view.

The movement of both the ash and the oil are very dependent on the atmospheric winds. The winds may start blowing the ash back toward Europe next week. The oil is much more difficult to predict…

Dan

Ash cloud approaching 30,000 feet over Iceland. Courtesy Iceland Met Office.

The UK has now grounded aircraft through 1AM GMT Sunday. The ash cloud has gotten worse and there is a new plume headed toward Europe as the image above indicates. Meteorologists from the Iceland Met Office flew o Friday near the volcano to check the height of the ash cloud and reported it is nearly 30,000 feet (10,000 meters).

The upper level winds at this level will steer the ash toward NW and Central Europe. The conditions may very well worsen over the weekend.

Why?

Look at the winds forecasted for Sunday at 34,000 feet from the UK Met Office numerical weather prediction model:

Winds at flight level 34,000 feet from UKMet Model. Image courtesy UK Met Office and 21st Weather Squadron USAF

A “Eureka Alert from SCIENCE late Friday has some interesting and alarming news:

Public release date: 16-Apr-2010
[ Print | E-mail |  Share ] [ Close Window ]

Contact: Jay Miller
miller@iodp.tamu.edu
979-845-5740
Texas A&M University

Icelandic volcanoes can be unpredictable and dangerous, say Texas A&M prof

If history is any indication, the erupting volcano in Iceland and its immense ash plume could intensify, says a Texas A&M University researcher who has explored Icelandic volcanoes for the past 25 years.

Jay Miller, a research scientist in the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program who has made numerous trips to the region and studied there under a Fulbright grant, says the ash produced from Icelandic volcanoes can be a real killer, which is why hundreds of flights from Europe have been cancelled for fear of engine trouble.

“What happens is that the magma from the volcano is around 1,200 degrees and it hits the water there, which is near freezing,” he explains. “What is produced is a fine ash that actually has small pieces of glass in it, and it can very easily clog up a jet engine. If you were to inhale that ash, it would literally tear up your lungs.”

Miller says most volcanoes in Iceland erupt only about every five years on average and are relatively mild, but history is repeating itself. Extremely large eruptions occurred there in 934 A.D. and again in 1783 that covered Europe with ash much like today.

“Ben Franklin was ambassador to France in 1783 and he personally witnessed the large ash clouds over Europe, and he later wrote that it was a year in which there was no summer,” Miller adds. “The big question now is, what happens next? It’s very possible this eruption could last for quite some time, but no one knows for sure. Volcanoes in that part of the world are very hard to predict.”

—–

Here below is the latest ash coverage forecast from the UK Met Office:

Ash cloud from UK Met Office

More soon,

Dan