PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet TERRA 14/2003 - 26 March 2003
-----------------------------------
"Reliable information for the public about changes in the
Arctic's climate is hard to come by. Different newspaper and
media reports, even when quoting the same scientific studies, can
tell different stories. Worse, reports about the state of the
Arctic give contradictory pictures of what has actually happened
to the Arctic's sea ice, ocean, air pressure and
temperature."
--Willie Soon, Tech Central Station, 24 March 2003
(1) IS THE ARCTIC MELTING?
Tech Central Station, 24 March 2003
(2) RECORD MINIMUM ARCTIC SEA ICE IN 2002
CO2 Science Magazine, 23 March 2003
(3) LAKE TEMPERATURES, WATER LEVELS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
CO2 Science Magazine, 26 March 2003
(4) EARTH'S TEMPERATURE RESPONSE TO VARIATIONS IN SOLAR
IRRADIANCE
CO2 Science Magazine, 26 March 2003
(5) GEOCRYOLOGY IMPORTANT TOOL IN CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(6) RESPONSE TO SONJA BOEHMER-CHRISTIANSEN: NATURAL DETERMINISM
VERSUS HUMAN "FREE WILL"
Andrew Glikson <geospec@webone.com.au>
(7) WHY IS IT GETTING COLDER DURING GLOBAL WARMING?
James Marusek <tunga@custom.net>
===========
(1) IS THE ARCTIC MELTING?
>From Tech Central Station, 24 March 2003
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/envirowrapper.jsp?PID=1051-450&CID=1051-032403B
By Willie Soon
Reliable information for the public about changes in the Arctic's
climate is hard to come by. Different newspaper and media
reports, even when quoting the same scientific studies, can tell
different stories. Worse, reports about the state of the Arctic
give contradictory pictures of what has actually happened to the
Arctic's sea ice, ocean, air pressure and temperature.
Such reporting - including the claim that the positive swing of
the normal Arctic atmospheric oscillation may have intensified
during the 1990s - creates the notion that something fundamental
has changed, when there is little evidence to that effect.
The Arctic has often been used by advocates of the hypothesis of
anthropogenic - man-made - climate change as a poster child for
human-induced global warming. So, an accurate assessment on the
state of the Arctic climate variation is important.
The aim of this article is to eliminate some of the confusion
about such news media sensations by doing three things:
* Provide the most up-to-date and reliable information about
Arctic climate, such as air temperature, for the past 125 years
as a benchmark in this Tech Central Station CHARTiFACT forum.
* Describe the actual observed changes in temperature and explain
some common pitfalls in drawing sweeping conclusions based on
either short or specific regional records.
* Discuss the implications of the observed temperature trends in
terms of the often imprecisely argued claim that carbon dioxide-
(CO2 -) induced global warming is amplifying warming in the polar
region.
The Basic Data
Figure 1: http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/envirowrapper.jsp?PID=1051-450&CID=1051-032403B
Arctic-wide temperature anomalies (in °C) from 1875-2001
relative to the mean of 1961-1990 interval, with the number of
stations producing the temperature set in each decade. (Courtesy
of Igor Polyakov of IARC at the University of Alaska)
Figure 1 shows the annual time series of the Arctic surface air
temperature from 1875 to 2001 as it was recently reconstructed by
Igor Polyakov and colleagues at the International Arctic Research
Center (IARC) in Fairbanks, Alaska and the Arctic and Antarctic
Research Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The sources of this new temperature record include measurements
from land stations, floating buoys on the ocean and even drifting
stations on sea ice. Detailed documentations of the methodology
and spatial sampling strategy had been published in papers that
appear in Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate and
the American Geophysical Union's EOS.
Figure 2: http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/envirowrapper.jsp?PID=1051-450&CID=1051-032403B
Distribution of surface air temperature stations on land, ocean
or sea-ice for the composite Arctic-wide temperature record in
Figure 1. (Courtesy of Igor Polyakov of IARC at the University of
Alaska)
Figure 2 shows you all the locations poleward of about 62°N
(with the Arctic circle defined as the zonal ring around 66°N)
where the air temperatures are sampled to produce the Arctic-wide
temperature history shown in Figure 1.
What's Happening?
So what do we see in Figure 1?
First note that the maximum annual Arctic-wide temperature
anomaly - the difference from the mean temperature for 1961-90 as
plotted by the blue dash line - reached a maximum of 1.7°Celsius
in 1938. That compares with a maximum of 1.5°C in 2000.
Next, notice the blue solid curvy line. It gives a 6-year running
average of the annual temperature anomalies plotted as a dotted
blue line. This line helps focus on the climatic changes of
longer time-scales, instead of year-to-year weather
"noise" in the dash-line.
Now, for a more interesting part: Just for the sake of
discussion, contrast two views of the record. Compare the red
curve that was drawn by a straight line from 1875 to 2001 versus
the four green lines drawn over four intervals in Figure 1.
The red curve describes the longest-term temperature variation
resolvable in this Arctic record, and it shows a change over the
period of about 1°C per century.
What does the trend mean? Some people take it and argue,
"See, the Arctic climate is warming; it's warmer today than
125 years ago. As CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels has
increased during that period, that likely has contributed to that
warming."
But there's another way to look at the record than a relatively
straight line. That is to consider multi-decadal shifts of the
temperature, as seen in the four green lines, from a cooler
condition in 1875-1920, to a warmer condition in the period
1921-1955, then returning to a cooler condition for the years
1956-1985 and finally a warmer phase from the mid-to-late 1980s
onward.
This latter view is considered more natural. More than that, it
is also considered more consistent with our current understanding
of how the sea ice, ocean temperature, salinity and circulation,
air circulation and temperature, as well as many important land
processes, including river runoff and snow, interact and produce
the responses of the Arctic climate system.
>From this perspective, one finds an Arctic climate that has a
preferred tendency to produce variability that oscillates in
decadal and multi-decadal periods. Several careful analyses of
the sea ice changes over the Arctic also point to the dominant
role played by atmospheric circulation. That component affecting
the climate appears to be locked in a 50-80 year cycle - a
natural see-saw - that is both large in amplitude and persistent
in its timing. During these 50-80 years cycle, certain regions in
the Eastern Arctic will warm a lot (as in the 1990s), while parts
in the Western Arctic will cool, and vice-versa with the
alternating phases of the oscillation.
Yet what should we make of the 100-plus years' warming trend
marked by the red dash line in Figure 1? Is this really
indicative of effects from the global warming caused by
increasing CO2 in the atmosphere? To examine that question more
precisely, we need some additional information.
Claiming Climate 'Trends'
Figure 3: Sensitivity of the temperature trend values (in °C per
year) for Arctic (green) and Northern-Hemisphere (red) records on
the length of fitting intervals starting from 17 years
(1985-2001; rightmost) to 126 years (1875-2001; leftmost).
(Courtesy of Igor Polyakov of IARC at the University of Alaska)
The green solid line in Figure 3 shows how one can get different
answers for the trend in the Arctic temperature record depending
upon the starting and end points for deriving that trend. The
same is true for the Northern Hemisphere-wide temperature record,
in the red solid line. Depending on how you plot the trend, it is
either alarming or not, even looking at the same data.
The chart clearly shows an alarming warming rate for the Arctic -
as large as 4 to 6°C per century (or 0.04 to 0.06°C per year) -
seems to have occurred in the last 20 to 30 years. And, in fact,
an example of such an alarming conclusion, drawn from very short
climatic records, can be found in a Nov. 27, 2002, NASA/State
Department-related press release detecting a change at the very
alarming rate of 1.2°C per decade (or 12°C per century) for
sea-ice temperature over the Arctic. This large rate of warming
was implicated for the rapidly declining perennial sea-ice cover.
But there's a problem with drawing such conclusions. The
temperature trend - and the perennial sea-ice trend - is very
unreliable. The reason: It was based only upon the climate record
from 1981-2000. That is a mere 19 years. If the temperature trend
was taken for 60 to 80 years back, we would see that the trend
for Arctic temperatures was actually negative. It is only a
modestly positive change annually over the last 120 years.
Figure 3, in this light, becomes an important reminder of the
danger of drawing a climatic trend line based on short records.
And it also provides a cautionary tale for those who would
attribute Arctic climate change in recent decades to the burning
of fossil fuels.
The association of the observed warming trend of about 1°C over
100-years for the Arctic temperature, as seen in Figure 1, to
CO2-global warming is implausible for two important reasons.
First, 70 to 80 percent of the rise of man-made CO2 in the air to
date came after the 1960s. Yet, Figure 1 clearly shows that a
large part of the 100-year warming trend was contributed by a
pre-1960s increase in temperature. That was at a time when the
air's CO2 content was still low.
Secondly, and this is a somewhat surprising fact for scientists,
when the long-term temperature trend was calculated in Figure 3
using at least the 100-year long record, both the Arctic- and
Northern-Hemisphere-wide warming trends have similar values.
What is so surprising about that? Well, it contradicts all the
known predictions in the amplification of the polar warming.
Those predictions from climate models that consider anthropogenic
greenhouse gases - primarily CO2 from burning fossil fuels - to
be forcing global warming say that the Arctic should warm by 1.5
to 4.5 times the global mean warming. And that is not happening.
And there's no explanation for why it is not. One explanation
typically invoked to argue why there has been less rapid warming
in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere (Asia, Europe and
America) in previous decades is so-called man-made sulfate
aerosols - soot and smog - put out by industry provided a cooling
factor. (Don't ask why or how the greenhouse-warming promoters
are so sure of this aerosol cooling possibility while considering
only one particular kind of aerosols out of many more.) But that
effect is expected to be minimal, and it isn't present in the
remote Arctic, thus offering no explanation to the lack of
warming amplification there.
The complaint the "Arctic is melting" as a result of
fossil fuel use thus has no basis from the climate records of
that region and that for the Northern Hemisphere. So, it is no
wonder that reports purporting to prove that are confusing and
contradictory.
Copyright 2003, Tech Central Station
============
(2) RECORD MINIMUM ARCTIC SEA ICE IN 2002
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 23 March 2003
http://www.co2science.org/journal/2003/v6n13c2.htm
Reference
Serreze, M.C., Maslanik, J.A., Scambos, T.A., Fetterer, F.,
Stroeve, J., Knowles, K., Fowler, C., Drobot, S., Barry, R.G. and
Haran, T.M. 2003. A record minimum arctic sea ice extent and area
in 2002. Geophysical Research Letters 30:
10.1029/2002GL016406
What was done
The authors analyzed the history of satellite passive microwave
sea ice records that first became available in October of 1978 to
derive trends in Arctic sea ice extent and area over the past
quarter-century.
What was learned
They discovered a general downward trend in Arctic sea ice
"during the passive microwave era" that culminated with
record minimums for both sea ice extent and area in 2002.
What it means
The authors correctly report that state-of-the-art climate models
predict Arctic sea ice extent and area will decline as the
climate warms, noting that "simulations of the past 30 years
agree reasonably well with observations in terms of total ice
area, lending some confidence to projections of a ~20% reduction
in annual mean sea ice extent by the year 2050 [our
italics]."
We disagree with the italicized portion of this statement.
Although the first part of the quotation may well be correct, a
longer view of the temperature history of the Arctic reveals that
the warming of the past 30 years, which produced the reduction in
sea ice documented in this paper, was preceded by an equally long
period of cooling from a level of Arctic warmth that was equally
as great as that of today (Polyakov et al., 2002a, 2002b), which
was preceded by an even more dramatic warming than that of the
past 30 years.
The climate of the Arctic is characterized by multi-decadal
fluctuations that provide no support whatsoever for predictions
of continued sea ice reductions over the next half-century.
If anything, the temperature record of the past 125 years
suggests that just the opposite could well occur. It's been
approximately 65 years since the last peak in Arctic temperature,
for example, and if it takes that long for the next peak to
occur, it will likely be cooler than it is now in 2050, and it
will have been cooler for most of the intervening years.
Hence, projecting forward from the peak warmth of the present,
which history suggests will end rather soon, it would be much
more logical to expect an increase in the extent and area of
Arctic sea ice in 2050 than a decrease.
References
Polyakov, I., Akasofu, S-I., Bhatt, U., Colony, R., Ikeda, M.,
Makshtas, A., Swingley, C., Walsh, D. and Walsh, J.
2002a. Trends and variations in Arctic climate
system. EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 83:
547-548.
Polyakov, I.V., Alekseev, G.V., Bekryaev, R.V., Bhatt, U.,
Colony, R.L., Johnson, M.A., Karklin, V., Makshtas, A.P., Walsh,
D. and Yulin, A.V. 2002b. Observationally based
assessment of polar amplification of global warming.
Geophysical Research Letters 29: 10.1029/2001GL011111.
Copyright © 2003. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
===========
(3) LAKE TEMPERATURES, WATER LEVELS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 26 March 2003
http://www.co2science.org/subject/l/summaries/lakes.htm
How have earth's lakes responded to what climate alarmists call
the unprecedented warming of the past century (relative to the
prior 900 years of the past millennium)? In this summary, we
review some of the things that have been learned from historical
and proxy records of lake temperatures and water levels from
different parts of the globe.
Battarbee et al. (2002) report the results of several studies
that employed a variety of palaeolimnological techniques to
reconstruct the temperature histories of seven remote mountain
lakes in Europe over the past 200 years. The lakes were all above
the local timber line, their catchments were not affected by
human disturbances, and most were far from anthropogenic
pollution sources. From their investigation, the authors learned
that the seven sites experienced either general cooling or no
trend in temperature during the nineteenth century. During the
twentieth century, on the other hand, the authors report that
"all sites show a warming trend during the first few decades
of the century," which peaks between 1930 and 1950.
Thereafter, all of the sites again depict cooling, as well as a
steep warming over the last ten to twenty years of the record.
However, for only two of the seven sites does the final warming
lead to warmer temperatures than those of the 1930s and 40s. Of
the remaining five sites, three of them end up being cooler than
they were prior to mid-century, while two of them end up
exhibiting the same temperature.
Similar findings were reported by Agusti-Panareda and Thompson
(2002), who applied multiple regression analysis to twenty
monthly lowland air temperature series for the period 1781-1997
AD and nine monthly upland air temperature series of at least 30
years duration to develop 216-year air temperature histories for
eleven remote mountain lakes in Europe, including the seven lakes
mentioned in the preceding paragraph. What they found was that
"during the period 1801-1900, the western European lakes
show no significant trend whereas annual mean air temperatures at
the eastern European lakes decrease significantly." For the
period 1901-1997, on the other hand, they note there is a warming
trend "at all but the Fennoscandian lakes."
Even more interesting is what one learns when the 20 years from
1781-1801 are included in the analysis. In terms of sliding
decadal averages, four of the lakes depict net increases in air
temperature over the 216-year period, three of them exhibit no
net change, and four of them actually depict net cooling. Hence,
if close to a dozen European alpine and arctic lakes are no
warmer now than they were during a short period of time at the
"beginning of the end" of the Little Ice Age, when
atmospheric CO2 concentrations were 90 ppm less than they are
nowadays, there is little reason to presume that a similar period
of modern warmth need be caused by the CO2 increase we have
experienced in the interim.
In another study of both lakes and rivers in the Baltic region,
Yoo and D'Odorico (2002) looked for evidence of temperature
change among the dates of annual ice break-up at the termination
of the ice season. The results of their analysis demonstrated
that a dramatic change in the dates of ice break-up (towards
earlier thaw) occurred between the end of the 19th century and
the beginning of the 20th century. Describing these changes in
more detail, Yoo and D'Odorico note that "the strongest
long-term climatic changes nowadays observable in the Finnish
cryophenological records started in the second half of the 19th
century," which is also when the temperature record of Esper
et al. (2002) shows the demise of the Little Ice Age to have
begun in earnest. In addition, they report that "the
shift in the ice break-up dates terminated before [our italics]
1950," in harmony with our view of the temperature history
of the globe, i.e., that there has been little net warming since
the 1930s.
With respect to changes in the levels of lakes, Nicholson and Yin
(2001) detected "two starkly contrasting climatic
episodes" in a study of ten major African lakes since the
late 1700s. The first episode, which began sometime prior
to 1800 and was characteristic of Little Ice Age conditions, was
one of "drought and desiccation throughout
Africa." This arid episode, which was most extreme
during the 1820s and 30s, was accompanied by extremely low lake
levels. As the authors describe it, "Lake Naivash was
reduced to a puddle ... Lake Chad was desiccated ... Lake Malawi
was so low that local inhabitants traversed dry land where a deep
lake now resides ... Lake Rukwa [was] completely desiccated ...
Lake Chilwa, at its southern end, was very low and nearby Lake
Chiuta almost dried up." Throughout this harsh period,
"intense droughts were ubiquitous." Some, in
fact, were "long and severe enough to force the migration of
peoples and create warfare among various tribes."
As the Little Ice Age's grip on the world began to loosen in the
mid to latter part of the 1800s, however, things began to change
for the better for most of the African continent as lake levels
began to rise. The authors report that "semi-arid regions of
Mauritania and Mali experienced agricultural prosperity and
abundant harvests; floods of the Niger and Senegal Rivers were
continually high; and wheat was grown in and exported from the
Niger Bend region." Across the east-west extent of the
northern Sahel, in fact, maps and geographical reports described
"forests."
As the nineteenth century came to an end and the twentieth
century began, there was a slight lowering of lake levels, but
nothing like what had occurred a century earlier. Then, in the
latter half of the twentieth century, lake levels again began to
rise, with the levels of some lakes eventually rivaling
high-stands characteristic of the years of transition to the
Modern Warm Period.
With respect to the Great Lakes of North America, Larson and
Schaetzl (2001) present graphs of lake level fluctuations for the
period 1915 to 1998, where it can be seen that the lowest levels
occurred at about 1926 for Lake Superior, 1962 for Lake
Huron-Michigan, 1933 for Lake Erie, and 1934 for Lake Ontario. It
is also noteworthy that the longest sustained period of high lake
levels for all of the Great Lakes occurred over the last 30
years. In addition, lake levels at the end of the record are
essentially the same as those at the beginning of the record.
Hence, over what climate alarmists claim to be the century that
has exhibited the greatest warming of the entire past millennium,
which according to them should result in dire consequences for
just about everything, there has been no net change in the water
level of any of the Great Lakes. In fact, over the past two
decades of what they typically refer to as unprecedented warming,
the four lakes have exhibited their greatest stability.
The above observations demonstrate that earth's lakes have
suffered few ill effects from the warming that has transformed
the Little Ice Age into the Modern Warm Period; and, by
extension, they suggest that a little more warming would likely
not be detrimental to them either.
References
Agusti-Panareda, A. and Thompson, R. 2002.
Reconstructing air temperature at eleven remote alpine and arctic
lakes in Europe from 1781 to 1997 AD. Journal of
Paleolimnology 28: 7-23.
Battarbee, R.W., Grytnes, J.-A., Thompson, R., Appleby, P.G.,
Catalan, J., Korhola, A., Birks, H.J.B., Heegaard, E. and Lami,
A. 2002. Comparing palaeolimnological and
instrumental evidence of climate change for remote mountain lakes
over the last 200 years. Journal of Paleolimnology 28:
161-179.
Esper, J., Cook, E.R. and Schweingruber, F.H. 2002.
Low-frequency signals in long tree-ring chronologies for
reconstructing past temperature variability. Science 295:
2250-2253.
Larson, G. and Schaetzl, R. 2001. Origin and
evolution of the Great Lakes. Journal of Great Lakes
Research 27: 518-546.
Nicholson, S.E. and Yin, X. 2001. Rainfall conditions
in equatorial East Africa during the Nineteenth Century as
inferred from the record of Lake Victoria. Climatic Change
48: 387-398.
Yoo, JC. and D'Odorico, P. 2002. Trends and
fluctuations in the dates of ice break-up of lakes and rivers in
Northern Europe: the effect of the North Atlantic
Oscillation. Journal of Hydrology 268: 100-112.
Copyright © 2003. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
==============
(4) EARTH'S TEMPERATURE RESPONSE TO VARIATIONS IN SOLAR
IRRADIANCE
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 26 March 2003
http://www.co2science.org/journal/2003/v6n13c1.htm
Douglass, D.H. and Clader, B.D. 2002. Climate sensitivity of the
Earth to solar irradiance. Geophysical Research Letters 29:
10.1029/2002GL015345.
What was done
The authors used multiple regression analysis to separate out
surface and atmospheric temperature responses to solar irradiance
variations over the past two and a half solar cycles (1979-2001)
from temperature responses produced by variations in ENSO and
volcanic activity.
What was learned
Based on the satellite-derived lower tropospheric temperature
record, the authors evaluated the sensitivity (k) of temperature
(T) to solar irradiance (I), where temperature sensitivity to
solar irradiance is defined as k = deltaT/deltaI, obtaining the
result of k = 0.11 ± 0.02°C/(W/m2). Similar analyses based on
the radiosonde temperature record of Parker et al. (1997) and the
surface air temperature records of Jones et al. (2001) and Hansen
and Lebedeff (1987, with updates) produced k values of 0.13, 0.09
and 0.11°C/(W/m2), respectively, with the identical standard
error of ± 0.02°C/(W/m2). They also reported that White et al.
(1997) derived a decadal timescale solar sensitivity of 0.10 ±
0.02°C/(W/m2) from a study of upper ocean temperatures over the
period 1955-1994 and that Lean and Rind (1998) derived a value of
0.12 ± 0.02°C/(W/m2) from a paleo-reconstructed temperature
record spanning the period 1610-1800. The authors thus
concluded that "the close agreement of these various
independent values with our value of 0.11 ± 0.02 [°C/(W/m2)]
suggests that the sensitivity k is the same for both decadal and
centennial time scales and for both ocean and lower tropospheric
temperatures."
What it means
The authors suggest that if these values of k hold true for
centennial time scales, which appears to be the case, their
high-end value implies a surface warming of 0.2°C over the last
100 years in response to the 1.5 W/m2 increase in solar
irradiance inferred by Lean (2000) for this period. This
warming represents approximately one-third of the total increase
in global surface air temperature estimated by Parker et al.
(1997), 0.55°C, and Hansen et al. (1999), 0.65°C, for the same
period. It does not, however, include potential indirect effects
of more esoteric solar climate-affecting phenomena that could
also have been operative over this period.
References
Hansen, J. and Lebedeff, S. 1987. Global trends of
measured surface air temperature. Journal of Geophysical
Research 92: 13,345-13,372.
Hansen, J., Ruedy, R., Glascoe, J. and Sato, M. 1999.
GISS analysis of surface temperature change. Journal of
Geophysical Research 104: 30,997-31,022.
Jones, P.D., Parker, D.E., Osborn, T.J. and Briffa, K.R.
2001. Global and hemispheric temperature anomalies -- land
and marine instrumental records. In: Trends: A Compendium
of Data on Global Change, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis
Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy,
Oak Ridge, TN.
Lean, J. 2000. Evolution of the sun's spectral
irradiance since the Maunder Minimum. Geophysical Research
Letters 27: 2425-2428.
Lean, J. and Rind, D. 1998. Climate forcing by
changing solar radiation. Journal of Climate 11: 3069-3094.
Parker, D.E., Gordon, M., Cullum, D.P.N., Sexton, D.M.H.,
Folland, C.K. and Rayner, N. 1997. A new global
gridded radiosonde temperature data base and recent temperature
trends. Geophysical Research Letters 24: 1499-1502.
White, W.B., Lean, J., Cayan, D.R. and Dettinger, M.D.
1997. Response of global upper ocean temperature to
changing solar irradiance. Journal of Geophysical Research
102: 3255-3266.
Copyright © 2003. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
================
(5) GEOCRYOLOGY IMPORTANT TOOL IN CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE
>From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
Office of Public Relations
University of Delaware
Newark, DE
Contact:
Neil Thomas, (302) 831-6408
March 13, 2003
Geocryology important tool in global change science
Geocryology, or the study of permafrost, is an increasingly
important area of study in the larger field of global change
science, Frederick E. Nelson, professor of geography at the
University of Delaware, writes in the March 14 issue of Science
magazine.
Nelson, who has undertaken extensive field studies of permafrost
in the Arctic, notes in an article titled "(Un)frozen in
Time" that geocryology got off to a rocky start in 1838 when
a Russian academician told the Royal Geographical Society of
London that the ground in central
Siberia was frozen to a depth of more than 100 meters. The claim
was met with disbelief.
It was not until the next century, after the Soviet Union had
gained extensive experience with construction on frozen ground,
that geocryology was developed as an integrative discipline with
links to geography, geology, engineering, hydrology and ecology.
Nelson writes that geocryology emerged as an important component
of climate change studies in the 1990s "because the
distribution, thickness, temperature and stability of permafrost
are determined to a large extent by the temperature at Earth's
surface."
He adds that permafrost, which is defined as any subsurface
materials that remain at or below freezing continuously for two
or more years, plays three important roles in climate-change
science. First, because it preserves a record of temperature
changes at Earth's surface, permafrost acts as a data archive.
Precise measurements taken in deep boreholes show that permafrost
temperatures have increased markedly during the latter half of
the 20th century in the northernmost regions of North America and
Eurasia, and Nelson writes, "This trend appears to be
accelerating."
Permafrost's second role is to translate the effects of climate
change by impacting natural ecosystems and human infrastructure.
Changes have been most dramatic in regions where permafrost is
relatively thin and its geographic distribution is
"patchy." Extensive areas in central Alaska have
experienced thaw subsidence over the past two centuries,
converting birch forests to low-lying wetlands. Heated structures
built on ice-rich terrain are subject to thaw-induced settlement
or collapse unless specialized engineering design criteria are
used.
One of the biggest challenges facing geocryologists is separating
out changes induced by climate warming from those caused by
localized human activities, Nelson writes. If climate warming
exceeds design criteria, extensive damage to infrastructure could
result. There have been many reports of thawing ice-rich
permafrost causing damage to structures over the past decade.
More than 300 buildings in the vicinity of Fairbanks, Alaska,
have been affected by thawing permafrost, although most problems
can be traced to inadequate site preparation or design flaws.
Permafrost is an increasingly important consideration for
planners, mortgage lenders and the real estate industry.
The third role of permafrost is to facilitate further climate
change. Substantial amounts of organic carbon are stored in the
upper layers of permafrost. If a widespread increase in the depth
of annual thaw occurred much of this carbon could escape to the
atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane, leading to intensified
climate warming.
Nelson writes that the permafrost regions occupy about
one-quarter of Earth's terrestrial surface, with perennially
frozen ground underlying extensive areas in both polar regions
and at higher elevations in mountains of the middle latitudes.
New research is being conducted on submarine permafrost around
the margins of the Arctic Ocean.
Information obtained by geocryologists could have important
implications beyond Earth. Nelson writes that "knowledge
about landforms created by growth and ablation of ground ice may
help in the quest for exploitable water resources on Mars."
Nelson leads the University of Delaware Permafrost Group (UDPG),
a subunit of the Department of Geography. UDPG hosted the first
workshop of the Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM)
program in November 2002, at the Virden Center on UD's Lewes
campus. Thirty-five scientists from six nations attended the
workshop, which was funded by the National Science Foundation's
Arctic System Science program.
An important event for geocryologists occurs every five years,
when the International Permafrost Association holds a large
scientific meeting. The eighth such conference will be held in
July in Zurich, Switzerland. The role of permafrost in climate
change science will be a central focus of this gathering of
several hundred permafrost scientists from around the world.
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(6) RESPONSE TO SONJA BOEHMER-CHRISTIANSEN: NATURAL DETERMINISM
VERSUS HUMAN "FREE WILL"
>From Andrew Glikson <geospec@webone.com.au>
Dear Benny
I wish to respond to Sonja's comments (CCNet 15.3.03) which refer
to my letter (CCNet 14.1.03). I see the roots of the issue of
human effects on the Earth in terms of two alternative
philosophical paradigms:
1. A deterministic paradigm: Human history is fully a branch and
function of natural evolution/catastrophism, following laws over
which we mortals have little or no influence. In terms of this
approach "free will" is a mere illusion.
2. A "Free Will" paradigm: Humans, as perhaps distinct
from other living organisms, are bestowed with opportunities for
meaningful and fundamental choices.
In terms of the deterministic paradigm, entropy dictates that, as
mega-cities (con-urbations) expand using more resources, the
countryside and much of nature are bound to come under strain,
analogous perhaps to the devastation which the huge termite nests
(virtual cities) in Australia have on the surrounding bush.
In terms of the "Free Will" paradigm, humans can make
fundamental choices with long term consequences vis-a-vis the
evolution of and/or catastrophic effects on the Planet: Examples
of constructive versus destructive choices include, in my view:
A. Constructive choices: desalination of sea water using solar
energy; desert drip-water horticulture; re-forestation of
marginal desert regions to stop dune advance; agricultural
terracing of mountains; return of excess organic materials to
agricultural zones/fields; preservation of endangered species in
natural reserves.
B. Destructive choices: continued manufacture and release of
ozone-destroying CFCs; deforestation of large tropical rain
forests and marginal bush (resulting in advanced salination as
has already claimed over 20 percent of previously arable
Australian land); proliferation of nuclear facilities and
weapons, which - given human fallibility - render their eventual
catastrophic use a statistical probability; invention and
development of biological and chemical weapons which, originally
invented and manufactured in advanced technological countries
(Germany, USSR, US) have been proliferated to "Third
World" countries for commercial and "strategic"
gain.
There may well be a sharp distinction in this respect between a
"scientific truth" and a "human truth". A
view from biology may equate Homo Sapiens with unsuccessful
parasitic viruses which, unable to live in equilibrium/symbiosis,
end up destroying their hosts. A "human truth" will
try and ignore such scientific view and pin its hope on
"Free Will". A decision as to which of the above
paradigms is more applicable is inherently an ethical individual
choice.
Andrew Glikson
20.3.03
=============
(7) WHY IS IT GETTING COLDER DURING GLOBAL WARMING?
>From James Marusek <tunga@custom.net>
Dear Benny
So why is it getting colder during Global Warming? The answer may
lie in particle physics.
The current approach used to describe climate change (Global
Warming) has put the cart in front of the horse. The basic
assumption ingrained into the Global Warming Doctrine (doctrine
because it is treated more like an environmentalist manifesto
than a scientific theory) is that humans are predominately
responsible for recent climatic changes. The first step of a
scientific approach to describing climate change would be to
define the natural mechanisms that affect the environment. It
would seem logical that only after the natural model is developed
and refined could the effects of man-made components be
quantified to explain any deviations.
Recently several individuals contributed to establishing a
natural climate change model. These studies have focused on the
Sun's influence on climate change. Pang & Yau (2002) studied
solar irradiance and strongly correlated this data with Northern
Hemisphere temperatures from the years 1620 to 1980. Willson
(2003), using satellite observations of Total Solar Irradiance
(TSI), has observed a 0.05 percent increase per decade in the
Sun's radiant energy since 1970, which can account for some of
the uptick in global temperature rise. These studies provide a
foundation for the development of a natural climate change model.
Another component in the natural climate change model lies in
particle physics. In 1894, Charles Wilson began researching water
droplets that make up clouds. He developed a device called a
cloud chamber, which allowed him to reduce the air pressure of a
humid environment. He discovered that charged particles traveling
through the chamber left a trail of condensed water droplets. He
received a Nobel Prize in 1927 for inventing the bubble chamber.
The Earth's environment functions like a cloud chamber. But the
Earth's magnetic field shields the planet from charged particles,
which are deflected towards the Poles, where the cold
temperatures produce low humidity levels that inhibit cloud
formation. The Earth's magnetic field has been on the decline.
Recently, the decline has become very pronounced. Using the
International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF) data set, the
magnetic field at the equator in open ocean has declined 1.7
percent in intensity since 1980. (Geomag program, IGRF dataset,
latitude 0 degrees, longitude 180 degrees, sea level, years
1980-2005, a decline from 34,824 to 34,246 nanoTesla (nT)).
Whereas the entire decline over the period from 1900 to 1980 was
2.8 percent.
As the Earth's magnetic field weakens, charged particles from
outer space and from the Sun will find it easier to break through
the magnetic shield that protects Earth. These particles then
interact with humid air in tropical, subtropical and mid-latitude
environments to produce tiny water droplets that become basic
building blocks in forming clouds. Increased cloud formation can
result in increased global rainfall and snowfall totals. The
clouds also moderate Earth's temperature by reflecting solar
radiation.
James A. Marusek
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