Heliogenic Climate Change

What planet is this AP journo living on?

“The European Space Agency is launching a satellite that scientists hope will help them pin down the effects of global warming on the Earth’s ice packs more precisely.

The CryoSat 2 mission, which starts Thursday after years of delays, will be able to pinpoint details of changes in polar ice so scientists can better understand the alarming picture of the world’s retreating ice caps.  …

For coastal cities and islands, the information may be a question of survival.

If all of the Earth’s polar ice and glaciers were to melt, sea levels could rise up to 230 feet (70 meters), Miller said.

If only Greenland became ice-free, it would mean a 21.33-foot (6.5-meter) rise, he said.”  “EU satellite to check climate change impact on ice“

Meanwhile, on planet Earth, arctic sea ice is at its 30-year average, antarctic sea ice continues to grow, and:

“The extent of sea ice over the Arctic Ocean grew until the last day of March, the latest the annual melting season has begun in 31 years of satellite records, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.”  “Arctic Sea Ice Melting Season Posts Latest Start on Record“

“And just in case further evidence is needed, [a] recent 2009 paper by Turner et al. (on which Comiso was a co-author), concluded that:

Based on a new analysis of passive microwave satellite data, we demonstrate that the annual mean extent of Antarctic sea ice has increased at a statistically significant rate of 0.97% dec^-1 since the late 1970s.

This rate of increase is nearly twice as great as the value given in the [UN IPCC's] AR4 (from its non-peer-reviewed source).

So, the peer reviewed literature, both extant at the time of the AR4 as well as published since the release of the AR4, shows that there has been a significant increase in the extent of sea ice around Antarctica since the time of the first satellite observations observed in the late 1970s. And yet the AR4 somehow “assessed” the evidence and determined not only that the increase was only half the rate established in the peer-reviewed literature, but also that it was statistically insignificant as well. And thus, the increase in sea ice in the Antarctic was downplayed in preference to highlighting the observed decline in sea ice in the Arctic.

It is little wonder why, considering that the AR4 found that “Sea ice is projected to shrink in both the Arctic and Antarctic under all SRES scenarios.””  “Another IPCC error:  antarctic sea ice increase underestimated by 50%“

What do you do when arctic sea ice increases, contrary to AGW dogma?  Why say the ice is “rotten” of course:

In early September 2009, satellite measurements implied that most of the ice in the Beaufort Sea either was thick ice that had been there for multiple years or was thick, first-year ice.

However, in situ observations made in September 2009 by Barber et al. show that much of the ice was in fact “rotten” ice — ice that is thinner, heavily decayed, and structurally weak due to a uniform temperature throughout.

The authors suggest that satellite measurements were confused because both types of ice exhibit similar temperature and salinity profiles near their surfaces and a similar amount of open water between flows. The authors note that while an increase in summer minimum ice extent in the past 2 years could give the impression that Arctic ice is recovering, these new results show that multiyear ice in fact is still declining.  Ice is ‘rotten’ in the Beaufort Sea

““While sea ice melts away and the oceans warm, the Obama administration is frozen in inaction. Instead of protecting penguins and taking meaningful steps to address global warming,” said Shaye Wolf, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, “our government is dragging its feet while penguins are marching toward extinction.“”  “Suit to Be Filed Over Delay in Protection for Penguins Hurt by Climate Change and Industrial Fisheries“

The ice melt across Antarctica during the antarctic summer (October-January) of 2008-2009 was the lowest ever recorded in the satellite history, ice is expanding on the continent, and antarctic sea ice continues its 30-year growth trend. How ignorant can this journo be?

“Hoping to better understand how a melting Antarctica could swamp the planet, a NASA plane outfitted with lasers and ground-penetrating radar made its first flight over the icy continent on Friday.

The DC-8 left Punta Arenas, Chile, on a mission to fly as low as 1,000 feet (300 meters) over Antarctica. Like the NASA satellite that has provided shocking data on how quickly Antarctic ice is disappearing, this plane will measure snow cover and ice thickness. But it also has equipment that will enable scientists to see under the ice shelves, measuring the water below.

The goal is to understand just how warm ocean currents may be pulling the ice sheets seaward, melting their undersides. These ice sheets are rapidly collapsing — as fast as nine meters (27 feet) a year according to a study published in the journal Nature last month. If they disappear, far greater ice masses that lie on Antarctic bedrock could then melt into the sea, submerging coastal communities around the globe.” “NASA flies over Antarctica to measure icemelt“

(The bit of alarmism below is the subject of a Marc Morano editorial here.)

“Global warming will leave the Arctic Ocean ice-free during the summer within 20 years, raising sea levels and harming wildlife such as seals and polar bears, a leading British polar scientist said on Thursday.

Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, said much of the melting will take place within a decade, although the winter ice will stay for hundreds of years.” “Arctic To Be Ice-Free In Summer In 20 Years: Scientist“

“Ice is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap. …

Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth’s ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica [primarily the antarctic peninsula]. …

However, the picture is very different in east Antarctica …

East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report prepared for last week’s meeting of Antarctic Treaty nations in Washington noted the South Pole had shown “significant cooling in recent decades“.

Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica. …

Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia’s Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m.

A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded.” “Revealed: Antarctic ice growing, not shrinking“

“What was learned

Since the early Holocene, according to the findings of the six scientists, sea-ice cover in the eastern Chuckchi Sea appears to have exhibited a general decreasing trend, in contrast to the eastern Arctic, where sea-ice cover was substantially reduced during the early to mid-Holocene and has increased over the last 3000 years. Superimposed on both of these long-term changes, however, are what they describe as “millennial-scale variations that appear to be quasi-cyclic.” And they write that “it is important to note that the amplitude of these millennial-scale changes in sea-surface conditions far exceed [our italics] those observed at the end of the 20th century.”

What it means

Since the change in sea-ice cover observed at the end of the 20th century (which climate alarmists claim to be unnatural) was far exceeded by changes observed multiple times over the past several thousand years of relatively stable atmospheric CO2 concentrations (when values never strayed much below 250 ppm or much above 275 ppm), there is no compelling reason to believe that the increase in the air’s CO2 content that has occurred since the start of the Industrial Revolution has had anything at all to do with the declining sea-ice cover of the recent past …” “Holocene Fluctuations in Arctic Sea-Ice Cover“
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“During the first half of August, Arctic ice extent declined more slowly than during the same period in 2007 and 2008. The slower decline is primarily due to a recent atmospheric circulation pattern, which transported ice toward the Siberian coast and discouraged export of ice out of the Arctic Ocean. It is now unlikely that 2009 will see a record low extent …

Ice motion changes in August

A recent atmospheric circulation pattern, which led to a change in ice motion, caused the ice loss rate to slow down significantly in the first two weeks of August. As discussed in the August 4 post, during much of June and July, a strong Beaufort Sea high-pressure pattern promoted winds that helped push ice out of the Siberian coastal seas, and also brought clear skies and warm temperatures that helped induce melt.

Toward the end of July, the atmospheric pattern changed. Averaged over the past two weeks, a high-pressure system has been centered over the Barents Sea, with low pressure centered over the Laptev Sea. In accordance with Buys Ballot’s Law, this pattern led to winds that redirected the motion of the ice cover, pushing the ice edge outward toward the Siberian coast and discouraging ice from exiting the Arctic Ocean through Fram Strait.

The Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route

So far this year, neither the Northwest Passage nor the Northern Sea Route has opened. The Northern Sea Route appears likely to open soon, but ice still clogs many of the channels in the Northwest Passage.

Whether or not the navigational passages through the Arctic Ocean will open in a given summer depends on atmospheric circulation and ice thickness. For example, although 2007 was a record low extent in the Arctic and the Northwest Passage was nearly completely open, the Northern Sea Route was still choked with ice because of a circulation pattern that pushed a tongue of ice against the Siberian coast. Recent research by Stephen Howell at the University of Waterloo in Canada shows that whether the Northwest Passage clears depends less on how much melt occurs, and more on whether multi-year sea ice is pushed into the channels. Counterintuitively, as the ice cover thins, ice may flow more easily into the channels, preventing the Northwest Passage from regularly opening in coming decades.

Comment on atmospheric circulation patterns

James Overland of the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington has taken a close look at patterns of atmospheric circulation in recent summers. Overland notes that the periods June through August 2007 and June and July 2009 both saw an unusual atmospheric pattern of sea level pressure, with higher pressure on the Alaskan side of the Arctic and lower pressure on the Eurasian side. This pressure difference brought warm air into the central Arctic and transported sea ice towards the Atlantic. Historically, such a pattern is a rare event—before 2007, it only occurred twice in 30 years. Normally there is little difference in pressure across the Arctic during summer, and winds are slack.” “A change in ice motion slows seasonal decline” Prior post here

“The Chinese aerosol, however, can have another effect on the climate. That is, a possible influence of soot on the Arctic ice. It seems to me that Hofmann et al.’s paper, together with other recent findings, gives evidence for this possibility as follows:

1) Hofmann et al’s paper shows that stratospheric haze became densest in 2007 and declined a little after that. According to their claim, this is associated with the changes in sulfate emissions from China. This fact reminds me that the ice extent in the Arctic sea was significantly reduced in the 2007 summer and recovered after that. Since the amount soot should be proportional to that of sulfate, also the amount soot transported to the Arctic may have a peak in 2007, and may explain the dramatic reduction of the sea ice extent; the soot deposited onto the ice surfaces absorbs sun light of Arctic summer, gives heat to the ice, and lets it melt. This process should be particularly effective during summer of the Arctic when the sun does not set.

2) About half of the recent temperature increase in the Arctic region is reportedly due to aerosols (combination effects of sulfate and soot) (D. Shindell and G. Faluvegi, Nature Geosci. 2, 294-300 (2009)); this result convinces one that the influence of soot on the Arctic environment does exist.

3) There are other recent papers on soot: e. g., “Atmospheric brown clouds: Hemispherical and regional variations in long-range transport, absorption, and radiative forcing,” V. Ramanathan et al., J. Geophys. Res. vol. 112, D22S21, doi:10.1029/2006JD008124, 2007.

From these results, I suspect that the soot from China is responsible for the recent reduction of sea ice in the Arctic summer. To verify this, detailed chemical analyses, such as carbon allotropes, should be made if the soot can be sampled from the ice (this may be an interesting project).” “Soot And The Arctic Ice – A Win-Win Policy Based On Chinese Coal Fired Power Plants“

The arctic was warmer in the 1930s and 1940s than today, and AGW had nothing to do with it, but that won’t stop NASA from this alarmist story:

“Arctic sea ice thinned dramatically between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with thin seasonal ice replacing thick older ice as the dominant type for the first time on record. The new results, based on data from a NASA Earth-orbiting spacecraft, provide further evidence for the rapid, ongoing transformation of the Arctic’s ice cover.” “New NASA Satellite Survey Reveals Dramatic Arctic Sea Ice Thinning“

They certainly are fascinated with drama all right.
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“Polar bear populations in and around Alaska are declining due to continued melting of sea ice and Russian poaching, according to reports released Thursday by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Fewer polar bears have survived in the southern Beaufort Sea, which extends from northern Alaska to parts of Canada, and in the Chukchi and Bering Seas between northwestern Alaska and Russia, the agency’s draft population assessments show.

Officials say the drop among the Chukchi and Bering bears is likely steeper than for those in the Beaufort, due to a more dramatic melt of sea ice — which the bears need to travel and forage for food — and an illegal Russian hunt believed to be killing 150 to 250 bears a year. …

There was an estimated 0.3 percent annual decline in the polar bear population in the southern Beaufort Sea between 2001 and 2007, with the total numbers likely hovering between 1,397 and 1,526 animals, according to the draft assessments.” “Alaska Polar Bear Numbers Declining: US Agency“

Let’s see, 0.3% of 1500 southern Beaufort Sea bears is 4.5 bears and the uncertainty is 129 bears. In other words, the result is meaningless. And arctic sea ice is not “melting dramatically”, in fact it’s rebounded substantially in the last year and a half. Just another scare story.
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“The above figures show that while the J-F-M ocean temperatures in the global 65-70S band have been on a general cooling trend, the opposite is true for the area of the [Antarctic Peninsula] ice shelves – where the ocean temperatures have been warming where the south Pacific water encounters the peninsula.” “Antarctic Sea Ice – Wilkins Ice Shelf“
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“A comparison of the AMO index and the Arctic sea ice extent reveals that the well-known decline in Arctic sea ice area since the 1980s occurred concurrently with a marked rising trend in Atlantic surface temperatures. However, the recent Atlantic cooling has abruptly ended the warming trend. As the Atlantic has cooled in the past few years, the Arctic ice extent has ceased to fall, and there are suggestions that the ice extent may be starting to rebound. These changes highlight the importance of natural cyclical variability in the ocean-atmosphere system, and may also portend new global trends associated with reduced solar activity.” “Atlantic cooling may presage Arctic ice increase“
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“Increased growth in Antarctic sea ice during the past 30 years is a result of changing weather patterns caused by the ozone hole according to new research published this week (Thurs 23 April 2009). …

Using satellite images of sea ice and computer models the scientists discovered that the ozone hole has strengthened surface winds around Antarctica and deepened the storms in the South Pacific area of the Southern Ocean that surrounds the continent. This resulted in greater flow of cold air over the Ross Sea (West Antarctica) leading to more ice production in this region.” “Increasing Antarctic Sea Ice Extent Linked to the Ozone Hole“

“New research has found that despite climate change concerns, the amount of ice may actually be increasing across much of Antarctica.

Ian Allison, head of the Australian Antarctic Division’s ice, ocean, atmosphere and climate program, says outside of western Antarctica, ice levels are remaining steady or possibly increasing. …

“In east Antarctica there may be a slight increase due to increased snow fall.”" “Ice cover ‘increasing in east Antarctica’“

“Abstract: This Letter reports reliable satellite data in the period of 1980–2007 covering two full 11-yr cosmic ray (CR) cycles, clearly showing the correlation between CRs and ozone depletion, especially the polar ozone loss (hole) over Antarctica. The results provide strong evidence of the physical mechanism that the CRdriven electron-induced reaction of halogenated molecules plays the dominant role in causing the ozone hole. Moreover, this mechanism predicts one of the severest ozone losses in 2008–2009 and probably another large hole around 2019–2020, according to the 11-yr CR cycle.” “Correlation between Cosmic Rays and Ozone Depletion“
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“One of the common misconceptions pushed in the media is that Arctic sea ice simply “melts in place”. …

[But] this NASA JPL study that suggests winds may play a key role in pushing Arctic sea ice into lower latitudes where it melts. The author suggests winds may be the dominant factor in the 2007 record low ice extent:

Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. “Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic,” he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.

Interestingly we can now watch this actually happen thanks to an animation of AMSER-E satellite 89Ghz sounder images … available here as a flash video or here as an AVI file (highest quality 7.3 MB)

What is interesting about this video is that you can watch sea ice being flushed out of the Arctic sea and pushed along Greenland’s east coast [top center], where it then finds its way into warmer waters and melts. Also note how in the lower right, in the Beaufort sea, older multiyear ice gets fractured and broken up as winds and currents stress it.” “Watching the 2007 historic low sea ice flow out of the Arctic Sea“
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“Annual rates of change have been calculated from the raw data and plotted as a time series. Three fits have been applied in order to help visualise the underlying trend. In all three cases the rate of change is towards more positive values, and increasing positive values. This suggests that not only is the sea ice extent increasing, but it’s expanse is accelerating.” “How fast is arctic sea ice declining?“
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“According to the University of Illinois, Antarctic sea ice area is nearly 30% above normal and the anomaly has reached 1,000,000 km2. …

According to NSIDC, over the last 30 years Antarctic sea ice extent has been growing at a rate of nearly 5% per decade, and set a record maximum last year. …

Sadly though, biologists using computer models have forecast that some Penguins are headed for extinction due to loss of Antarctic sea ice. …

The 30% excess of ice has not been widely reported, but there has been lots of talk in the press the last couple of days about ice breaking off the Wilkins Ice Shelf – the broken area being about one pixel in the NSIDC image above. Looking at the Wilkins picture below, I’m having a very tough time seeing any evidence of melting around the fractures, or any evidence of water pooling on the surface. Normally, such fractures are caused by tensile or shear stress, likely due to a change in currents. Ice melts from the edges towards the center, and that ice is very thick – up to 200 metres. Blaming the clean fractures seen below on warming and melting seems highly questionable – at best. I suggest bringing some actual structural and mechanical engineers into the discussion – how’s that for a novel idea in the AGW world?

Meanwhile in the Arctic, sea ice area is about 500,000 km2 below normal, which means that global sea ice area (Arctic + Antarctic) is about 500,000 km2 above normal. … Sounds like a real global meltdown, doesn’t it?” “Polar ice worries — north and south“
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Remember the idiotic decision by EPA to list polar bears as “threatened” even though their population has increased dramatically in recent decades? And enviros’ attempts to use the Endangered Species Act to force CO2 emissions cuts based on danger to polar bears sea-ice habitat? Well now Democrats are doing the enviros’ bidding:

“The Senate has cleared the way for the Obama administration to reverse a rule saying that greenhouse gases cannot be restricted in an effort to protect polar bears from global warming.

The rule was issued in the waning days of George W. Bush’s presidency.

On Thursday, the Senate defeated a move by Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski to require the new administration go through a lengthy process to reverse the Bush-era rules. The vote was 52 to 42.” “Democrats Reverse Polar Bear Global Warming Rule“

Update: Ben Lieberman at the Heritage Foundation writes about the implications of this back door move to ration energy.
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