Heat is Online

[msfreeh]

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For Climate Hawks, The Five Stages Of Grief Are Reversed

By Joe Romm on Mar 1, 2013 at 5:00 pm

The five stages of grief describes “a process by which people allegedly deal with grief and tragedy, especially when diagnosed with a terminal illness or catastrophic loss.” As Wikipedia puts it:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

A few years ago, I heard a very brilliant physicist, Saul Griffiths, use this piece of pop psychology to describe climate science activists (a.k.a. climate hawks), and I realized that he had it backwards. This is an updated post.

THE FIVE STAGES IN REVERSE

Climate hawks begin with accepting the science. What else can one do? Science is the reason so many of us survived childbirth and childhood, science has fed the world, science is the reason computers and the blogosphere exist at all. And yes, science gave us our fossil-fueled wealth. I’m a scientist by training, but I just don’t see how anyone can pick and choose what science you’re going to believe and what not. The scientific method may not be always be perfect in single studies — since it is used by imperfect humans — but it is the best thing we have for objectively determining what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen. It is testable and self-correcting, unlike all other approaches.

Once climate hawks accept the science, many quite naturally get depressed. See “Dealing with climate trauma and global warming burnout.” The situation is beyond dire, and we aren’t doing bloody much about it, in large part because of the successful efforts of the deniers and delayers. Climate science offers a very grim prognosis if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path.

After depression comes a serious effort at bargaining. Climate hawks try to figure out what they can do to stop the catastrophe. Taking actions and making bargains at a personal level and a political level — depending on their level of activism.

Then comes anger. Once you’ve been at this for a while, you get very very frustrated by how little is happening — by the status quo media, the many anti-science politicians, and especially the deniers, the professional disinformers.

Finally, you end up in a kind of denial. It just becomes impossible to believe that the human race is going to be so stupid. Indeed, my rational side finds it hard to believe that we’re going to avoid catastrophic global warming, as any regular CP reader knows. But my heart, in denial, is certain that we will — see “How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution (updated).”

The great New Yorker write Elizabeth Kolbert perhaps best summed up this form of denial. Her three-part series, “The Climate of Man,” which became the terrific book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, famously ends:

It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.

It is impossible to believe. I myself can’t believe it.

[msfreeh]

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http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/inde ... orism.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Once the 'Face of Eco-Terrorism,' former Portlander Craig Rosebraugh is now lawyer, filmmaker


March 03, 2013

The man once dubbed "The Face of Eco-Terrorism," who cheered tree-hugging arsonists and thwarted FBI efforts to catch them -- stubbornly taking the Fifth before federal grand juries and an extremely annoyed congressional panel -- is now a red-blooded American lawyer.

Craig Rosebraugh, having spent his late 20s in Portland as the official spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, earned his sheepskin at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University in May 2011.

But instead of taking the bar exam, he has continued his activism by finishing a movie about global warming, set for release this week.

Rosebraugh doesn't see any irony in his dramatic transformation from government antagonist to -- soon, he hopes -- attorney at law.

"I consider it consistent with just my own development as someone that's trying to make a positive difference in the world," he told The Oregonian in one of several recent interviews. "Every single thing I did has been along the lines of trying to fight against the injustices out there, to make the world a better place for all."

Rosebraugh's first feature-length film, a four-year documentary project provocatively titled "Greedy Lying Bastards," is scheduled to open Friday on more than 50 screens from Honolulu to Toronto, including two in Portland.

Directed, co-written and narrated by Rosebraugh, and backed by executive producer (and environmental activist) Daryl Hannah, the movie offers a scorching critique of what Rosebraugh describes as the scoundrels who shill for the petroleum industry by denying the existence of global warming.

[msfreeh]

http://phys.org/news/2013-03-global-aff ... ields.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Monday, 04 March 2013
Global warming affects crop yields, but it's the water not the heat


Global warming affects crop yields, but it's the water not the heat

"In a paper published this week in Nature, Professor Hammer and his colleagues have demonstrated that the anticipated increase in temperature associated with global warming is not directly linked to an expected decline in yield.

Previously it has been accepted wisdom that the yield losses being experienced by maize growers during hot seasons in the American mid-west were attributable to temperature increases.

The modelling study has shown that it is the associated increase in the evaporative demand for water – causing increased plant water use – that will ultimately cause the decline in crop yield.

It is not a direct effect of heat stress on plant organs from the increase in temperature.

"These two factors are often related, but until now we were simply attributing projected yield declines to increases in temperature and heat stress – and it's more complex than that," Professor Hammer said.

"Our computer models are able to separate the mechanisms and explain what is actually going on. "Increasing temperatures mean increasing demand for water and so greater plant water use and ultimately more water stress during the crop life cycle."

[msfreeh]

see link for full story

Tuesday, 05 March 2013 16:33
'Like summer on steroids': Australia’s hottest ever year blamed on climate change, with 'really frightening' temperatures in store


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 19918.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

'Like summer on steroids': Australia’s hottest year blamed on climate change

“A climate “on steroids” was to blame for a summer of record-breaking heatwaves, severe bushfires, cyclones and floods, according to Australia’s leading climate change scientists.

A report by the Climate Commission, an independent body set up by the government, says the extreme weather experienced across the continent was exacerbated by climate change and predicts it will become the norm in years to come. Its author, Will Steffen, warned that some “really frightening” temperatures were in store over the next two decades.

The report, released today, is entitled “Angry Summer” – an apt description of a season during which 123 records were broken. It was Australia’s hottest summer ever, both in terms of nationwide average temperatures and of maximums reached at individual sites. Heatwaves of record intensity and duration fuelled bushfires that raged in every state and territory.”

[msfreeh]

TWO STORIES


1st story

see link for full story
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 145303.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Reconstruction of Earth Climate History Shows Significance of Recent Temperature Rise

Mar. 7, 2013 — Using data from 73 sites around the world, scientists have been able to reconstruct Earth's temperature history back to the end of the last Ice Age, revealing that the planet today is warmer than it has been during 70 to 80 percent of the time over the last 11,300 years.


Of even more concern are projections of global temperature for the year 2100, when virtually every climate model evaluated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that temperatures will exceed the warmest temperatures during that 11,300-year period known as the Holocene -- under all plausible greenhouse gas emission scenarios.

Results of the study, by researchers at Oregon State University and Harvard University, were published this week in the journal Science. It was funded by the National Science Foundation's Paleoclimate Program.

Lead author Shaun Marcott, a post-doctoral researcher in Oregon State's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, noted that previous research on past global temperature change has largely focused on the last 2,000 years. Extending the reconstruction of global temperatures back to the end of the last Ice Age puts today's climate into a larger context.

"We already knew that on a global scale, Earth is warmer today than it was over much of the past 2,000 years," Marcott said. "Now we know that it is warmer than most of the past 11,300 years. This is of particular interest because the Holocene spans the entire period of human civilization."

Peter Clark, an OSU paleoclimatologist and co-author on the Science article, said many previous temperature reconstructions were regional in nature and were not placed in a global context. Marcott led the effort to combine data from 73 sites around the world, providing a much broader perspective.

"When you just look at one part of the world, the temperature history can be affected by regional climate processes like El Niño or monsoon variations," noted Clark. "But when you combine the data from sites all around the world, you can average out those regional anomalies and get a clear sense of the Earth's global temperature history."

What that history shows, the researchers say, is that over the past 5,000 years, Earth on average cooled about 1.3 degrees (Fahrenheit) -- until the past 100 years, when it warmed ̴ 1.3 degrees (F). The largest changes were in the northern hemisphere, where there are more land masses and greater human populations.

Climate models project that global temperature will rise another 2.0 to 11.5 degrees (F) by the end of this century, largely dependent on the magnitude of carbon emissions. "What is most troubling," Clark said, "is that this warming will be significantly greater than at any time during the past 11,300 years."

2nd story


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http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMa ... rynum=2364" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog

Sprawling Nor'easter still bringing heavy snow, damaging coastal floods
Posted by: Dr. Jeff Masters, 4:15 PM GMT on March 08, 2013 +18
It's not often that a Nor'easter centered more than 600 miles out to sea brings heavy snow and and major coastal flooding to New England, but Winter Storm Saturn is a one-of-a-kind. The massive storm, which was centered about 600 miles east-southeast of New York City at 7 am EST, sprawls out over a huge area of ocean more than 1000 miles across. While the central pressure of 988 mb is not exceptionally low for a Nor'easter, the sheer size of the storm is allowing Saturn to pile up a formidable storm surge, which hammered the coast of Eastern Massachusetts during the Friday morning high tide cycle, causing severe erosion, widespread street flooding, and damage to roads and houses. Snowfall amounts as high as 18" have fallen in Massachusetts (in West Walpole), and a band of moderate snow has set up along an arc from New York City to Boston. The big storm has dumped 6+" of snow on seventeen states this week, from North Dakota to Massachusetts. The deepest snows fell in the Appalachian Mountains of western Virginia and eastern West Virginia, where a number of locations received over twenty inches. The top snow-getter was Franklin, West Virginia, with 24".

[msfreeh]

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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/glob ... ther-15715" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Warming Means Wetter Weather – and Drier Weather

Published: March 10th, 2013


By Tim Radford, Climate News Network

Welcome to the see-saw world of climate change. Rainy seasons will get rainier. Dry seasons will tend to become more parched. Even if the total annual rainfall does not change very much, the seasonal cycles will – with obvious consequences. Floods and droughts will become more frequent, according to Chia Chou of the University of Taipei, and colleagues from Taiwan and California.

Researchers have found evidence that in the last 30 years wet seasons have been becoming wetter and dry ones drier.


Like all pronouncements about the future, this one comes with caveats: the research is based on climate simulations of future warming, and the forecasts are only as good as the data fed into such simulations.

But the authors start with a trend they can already measure: they report in Nature Geoscience that they looked at rainfall data between 1979 and 2010 and found that the wet seasons were already clearly getting wetter, at the rate of almost a millimeter a day per century, while the dry seasons became drier with just over half a millimeter less in rainfall per day per century.
Affecting drought and flood frequency

And the gap between wet and dry seasons was widening at a rate of 1.47 millimeters per day per century. All three trends, they report, “are significant at the 99 percent confidence level.”

In the real world most of us experience, it’s hard to be sure that rainy spells are rainier, and dry seasons are drier: that is because, as the authors concede, global rainfall patterns are “spatially complex.”

But there is general agreement that such changes are taking place, with good physical reasons for doing so: a warmer world means more evaporation, and more precipitation. Furthermore, the authors say, simulations predict such a pattern and observations confirm it.

[BroJones]

Interesting, especially this:

"At the pass we've come to historically, and after 26 years of teaching, I must conclude that one of the only alternatives on the horizon for most families is to teach their own children at home. Small, de- institutionalized schools are another. Some form of free-market system for public schooling is the likeliest place to look for answers. But the near impossibility of these things for the shattered families of the poor, and for too many on the fringes of the economic middle class, foretell that the disaster of Six-Lesson Schools is likely to continue.

After an adult lifetime spent in teaching school I believe the method of schooling is the only real content it has. Don't be fooled into thinking that good curricula or good equipment or good teachers are the critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments with themselves and their families, to learn lessons in self-motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love -- and, of course, lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home life."

[msfreeh]

Interesting, especially this:

"At the pass we've come to historically, and after 26 years of teaching, I must conclude that one of the only alternatives on the horizon for most families is to teach their own children at home. Small, de- institutionalized schools are another. Some form of free-market system for public schooling is the likeliest place to look for answers. But the near impossibility of these things for the shattered families of the poor, and for too many on the fringes of the economic middle class, foretell that the disaster of Six-Lesson Schools is likely to continue.

After an adult lifetime spent in teaching school I believe the method of schooling is the only real content it has. Don't be fooled into thinking that good curricula or good equipment or good teachers are the critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments with themselves and their families, to learn lessons in self-motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love -- and, of course, lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home life."

I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

[msfreeh]

Carbon dioxide's climb speeds up.

CO2emissions

Recent studies have shown that concentrations of CO2 have reached levels not seen for the last 650,000 years. Photo by Ian Britton.

March 11, 2013
see link for full story
http://tdcplone.dailyclimate.org/tdc-ne ... /co2-climb" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


The news last week that there has been a significant increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the last year should have caused a ripple of fear around the world. It didn't.

By Paul Brown
Climate News Network

A few days ago came the news that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from human activities, had reached almost 395 parts per million, close to a significant milestone which shows how far the world is from agreeing resolute measures to tackle climate change.

The news last week that there has been a significant increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) in the last year should have caused a ripple of fear around the world. Instead, a large stride towards the milestone of 400 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 went almost unremarked.

Yet many scientists, environmentalists and journalists who have studied climate change, campaigned to prevent it, or spent years reporting too little action by world leaders to reduce emissions, must have inwardly shuddered.

[msfreeh]

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/larg ... -ice-15728" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Large Fractures Spotted in Vulnerable Arctic Sea Ice
March 13th, 2013


Following more than two decades of Arctic sea ice thinning and melting, an unusual event just weeks before the start of the spring melt season is providing visual proof of how vulnerable the ice pack really is.

Animation of the ice fracture using satellite AVHRR data.
Credit: Arctic Sea Ice blog via NSIDC.

During the end of February and continuing into early March, large fractures in the sea ice were observed off the north coast of Alaska and Canada, from near Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic to Barrow, Ala., the northernmost city in the U.S.

The rapid climate change in the Arctic and sharp decline of sea ice has been attributed to manmade global warming, along with natural climate variability, and projections show the region becoming seasonally sea ice free by midcentury.

[msfreeh]

see link for full story

http://www.weather.com/video/record-sno ... eets-35690" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Record Snow Floods Streets



March 17, 2013 - Record snow fall followed by rising temperatures caused flooding in some parts of Moscow. The city received its heaviest snow in 50 years, with an average month's snow falling in just 24 hours.

[msfreeh]

see link for full story


http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/0 ... eversible/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


The Dangerous Myth That Climate Change Is Reversible

By Joe Romm on Mar 17, 2013 at 12:37 pm

The CMO (Chief Misinformation Officer) of the climate ignorati, Joe Nocera, has a new piece, “A Real Carbon Solution.” The biggest of its many errors comes in this line:

A reduction of carbon emissions from Chinese power plants would do far more to help reverse climate change than — dare I say it? — blocking the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Memo to Nocera: As a NOAA-led paper explained 4 years ago, climate change is “largely irreversible for 1000 years.”

This notion that we can reverse climate change by cutting emissions is one of the most commonly held myths — and one of the most dangerous, as explained in this 2007 MIT study, “Understanding Public Complacency About Climate Change: Adults’ mental models of climate change violate conservation of matter.”

[msfreeh]

The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) will provide an update of knowledge on the scientific, technical and socio-economic aspects of climate change. It will be composed of three working group reports and a Synthesis Report (SYR). The outline and content can be found in the AR5 reference document and SYR Scoping document.

http://www.ipcc.ch/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[msfreeh]

http://www.utahcleanenergy.org/event/ad ... _screening" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[msfreeh]

see link for full story

Tuesday, 19 March 2013 15:00
North Carolina's Backward Climate Legislation Could Hurt The Whole Country
http://www.collapsenet.com/free-resourc ... le-country" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


North Carolina's Backward Climate Legislation Could Hurt The Whole Country

“Okay, legislative dumbassery the first: the legislature would like to ban greenhouse gas laws. Yep – NC Senate Bill 171, filed March 5, prohibits "state agencies and local governments from adopting, implementing, or enforcing a rule or ordinance that regulates greenhouse gas emissions." Which is good because it does more than merely prevent the state’s many sensible communities — Asheville, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Raleigh, and Durham, and many others are all energy-forward-thinking municipalities, offering free electric car charging stations and the like — from implementing strategies overtly addressing one of the greatest challenges of our time, clogging up the channels of science.

No, by outlawing "enforcing" any such legislation it virtually guarantees that any such regulation on the federal level will clog up the courts as backwards-thinking types have a state law giving them an excuse for pernicious legal action that will surely climb to the highest courts.”

[msfreeh]

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[msfreeh]

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http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserv ... ethod=Full" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Scientists foresee a doubling of Katrina-type storms
Warming temperatures could multiply Katrina-like hurricanes: study
Reuters, March 19, 2013

The number of Atlantic storms with magnitude similar to killer Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, could rise sharply this century, environmental researchers reported.

Scientists have long studied the relationship between warmer sea surface temperatures and cyclonic, slowly spinning storms in the Atlantic Ocean, but the new study attempts to project how many of the most damaging hurricanes could result from warming air temperatures as well.

The extreme storms are highly sensitive to temperature changes, and the number of Katrina-magnitude events could double due to the increase in global temperatures that occurred in the 20th century, the researchers reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

If temperatures continue to warm in the 21st century, as many climate scientists project, the number of Katrina-strength hurricanes could at least double, and possibly rise much more, with every 1.8 degree F (1 degree C) rise in global temperatures, the researchers said.

[msfreeh]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/0 ... committee/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Climate Science Denier Leads House Science Subcommittee

By Rebecca Leber on Mar 20, 2013 at 12:29 pm

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee has named a climate science denier congressman as the new chairman of the subcommittee responsible for climate change issues. With Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) as subcommittee chair, House Science has no shortage of climate deniers making science their prime target.

Stewart uses familiar Republican tactics to argue against cutting our greenhouse gas pollution: He told Mother Jones he is unconvinced anthropogenic global warming is “based upon sound science” — despite 97 percent of climate scientists saying otherwise — “before we make any long-lasting policy decisions that could negatively affect our economy.”

Stewart also told The Salt Lake Tribune:

“I’m not as convinced as a lot of people are that man-made climate change is the threat they think it is. I think it is probably not as immediate as some people do.” [...]

“What is the real threat? What are the economic impacts of those threats? And what are the economic impacts of those remedies?” he asked, explaining his approach. “Some of the remedies are more expensive to our economy than the threat may turn out to be.”

For more context of Stewart’s views, just look at where he is directing the subcommittee’s attention. At a hearing Wednesday, Stewart knocked the EPA’s extensive review of rules that protect the air and lamented that industry-funded research play too small a role at the agency. Not surprisingly, oil and gas was a top player in funding Stewart’s election to Congress.

Weeks ago, House Science attempted to hold a hearing stacked with climate deniers as witnesses (only to be foiled by bad weather that same day).

Back in Stewart’s home state, The Salt Lake Tribune has urged Utah leaders to take the opposite action. In a strong editorial, the paper pointed fingers at lawmakers for their ignorance, “blind or willful,” that has “transformed climate change into a political issue rather than the global threat it clearly is proving to be.”

[msfreeh]

see link for full story
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... a-ice-loss" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




Scientists link frozen spring to dramatic Arctic sea ice loss

Melting sea ice, exposing huge parts of the ocean to the atmosphere, explains extreme weather both hot and cold

Monday 25 March 2013

A snow-plough clears the A66 near Bowes, County Durham, where the road was closed for several hours due to heavy snow. Forecasters have warned that another cold snap is on its way - with parts of the country facing more snow and freezing temperatures.
Arctic ice loss adds heat to the ocean and atmosphere which shifts the position of the jet stream, which affects weather in the northern hemisphere. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

Climate scientists have linked the massive snowstorms and bitter spring weather now being experienced across Britain and large parts of Europe and North America to the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice.

Both the extent and the volume of the sea ice that forms and melts each year in the Arctic Ocean fell to an historic low last autumn, and satellite records published on Monday by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, show the ice extent is close to the minimum recorded for this time of year.

"The sea ice is going rapidly. It's 80% less than it was just 30 years ago. There has been a dramatic loss. This is a symptom of global warming and it contributes to enhanced warming of the Arctic," said Jennifer Francis, research professor with the Rutgers Institute of Coastal and Marine Science.

According to Francis and a growing body of other researchers, the Arctic ice loss adds heat to the ocean and atmosphere which shifts the position of the jet stream – the high-altitude river of air that steers storm systems and governs most weather in northern hemisphere.

"This is what is affecting the jet stream and leading to the extreme weather we are seeing in mid-latitudes," she said. "It allows the cold air from the Arctic to plunge much further south. The pattern can be slow to change because the [southern] wave of the jet stream is getting bigger. It's now at a near record position, so whatever weather you have now is going to stick around," she said.

[msfreeh]

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http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... mu9Jy2_8CA" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Indian stars call for dry Holi festival amid drought
March 27, 2013

MUMBAI — Bollywood stars have joined calls for Mumbai to temper celebrations and reduce water wastage during a riotous Hindu festival this week, as millions of Indians face their worst drought in decades.

The Holi festival takes place on Wednesday at a time when central parts of Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, are reeling under a severe water shortage with no rain due until the monsoon in June.

Revellers enjoying the "festival of colours" have been urged to cut down on water usage during the festival, which is normally celebrated with wild "rain dances" and the throwing of buckets of water, water-filled balloons and paint.

"Water shortage in Maharashtra... and it's only March. What will happen in Summer? Save water! Play a dry Holi!!" wrote cinema veteran Amitabh Bachchan to his hordes of followers on Twitter.

Holi, a public holiday, marks the arrival of spring and is especially popular in northern India and other parts of the world with large Hindu communities.

Bollywood is known to throw lavish Holi parties, but celebrations are expected to be toned down this year. Television show producers say they have cut back their depictions of the festival to avoid water wastage.

Actor Riteish Deshmukh tweeted that the "need of the hour is to save water", while popular TV host Mini Mathur wrote: "The mere thought of rain dances in the wake of the water crisis is creepy and tasteless."

[msfreeh]

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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/arct ... arch-15782" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Arctic Ice Hits Annual Max and it’s 6th Lowest on Record

March 26th, 2013
By Andrew Freedman and Michael D. Lemonick

The skin of sea ice that covers the Arctic Ocean has reached its maximum extent for 2013, the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced Monday, and the annual melt season has begun. As of March 15, ice covered 5.84 million square miles of ocean, the sixth-lowest since satellite observations began in the 1970’s, and 283,000 square miles lower than the 1979-2000 average. Reflecting the influence of global warming, the 10 lowest sea ice maximums have all occurred over the past 10 years.


Animation of the ice fracture using satellite AVHRR data.
Credit: Arctic Sea Ice blog via NSIDC.

Last summer’s ice minimum, moreover, was the lowest on record, with 2007 coming in a distant second. Taken together, it’s one more sign that the planet is warming under the influence of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

The Arctic is warming especially quickly, however, thanks to a sort of vicious cycle that operates between ice, ocean and sunlight. When the sea is covered with bright, reflective ice, incoming sunlight bounces back into space. When the darker water underneath is exposed, some of the Sun’s energy is absorbed, heating the seawater. That warms the air in turn, increasing the melting and exposing even more dark seawater to the incoming sunlight, and so on.

This feedback cycle, known as Arctic amplification, triggered by warming temperatures, has been reducing ice cover more or less steadily for the past 40 years, at least. This sea ice decline may be impacting areas well outside the Arctic Circle, by setting in motion a chain of events that lead to altered weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, favoring some types of extreme weather events.

The ice returns every winter — and in fact, this winter’s ice growth has been greater than ice experts have seen. But that’s only because last summer’s meltback was so drastic, leaving more open water to freeze. And unlike the thick, multi-year ice that once covered much of the Arctic, this new, seasonal ice cover is very thin, making it prone to rapid melting as the Sun emerges after the months-long winter night.

[msfreeh]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... s/2024759/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

How climate change threatens the seas

[msfreeh]

see link for full story
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMa ... rynum=2374" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Where is the missing heat going? Into the oceans
The preponderance of La Niña events in recent years has caused a large amount of heat from global warming to be transferred to the deep oceans, according to a journal article published earlier this week by Balmaseda et al., "Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of global ocean heat content". The warming at the surface has slowed down in recent years, but the total amount of heat going in the atmosphere/oceans/surface has continued unabated. The next big El Niño event will be able to liberate some of this stored heat back to the surface, but much of the new deep ocean heat will stay down there for hundreds of years. As far as civilization is concerned, that is a good thing, though the extra heat energy does make ocean waters expand, raising sea levels.

[msfreeh]

see link for story -

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/why- ... cade-15788" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Why the Globe Hasn’t Warmed Much for the Past Decade

Published: March 27th, 2013

[msfreeh]

Recent Warming Is Still Unprecedented In Speed, Scale And Cause: A Marcott Et Al. FAQ

By Joe Romm on Mar 31, 2013 at 3:30 pm

Earlier this month, we reported on a new study by Marcott et al. in Science: Recent Warming Is ‘Amazing And Atypical’ And Poised To Destroy Stable Climate That Enabled Civilization. It was the source of most of the data in this popular, jaw-dropping graph:


http://thinkprogress.org/climate/issue/?mobile=nc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;