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Global Warming Has Made Arctic Summers Hottest for 2,000 Years
The Arctic has warmed as a result of climate change, despite the Earth being farther from the sun during summer months
Warming as a result of increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has overwhelmed a millennia-long cycle of natural cooling in the Arctic, raising temperatures in the region to their highest for at least 2,000 years, according to a report.
A map of the Arctic showing shrinking sea ice and places visited by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Ban has urged world leaders to act now to halt global warming, as he saw first-hand its effects in the Arctic ahead of a key climate change summit in December. (AFP/Graphic/Laurence Saubadu) The Arctic began to cool several thousand years ago as changes in the planet's orbit increased the distance between the sun and the Earth and reduced the amount of sunlight reaching high northern latitudes during the summer.
But despite the Earth being farther from the sun during the northern hemisphere's summer solstice, the Arctic summer is now 1.2C warmer than it was in 1900.
Writing in the US journal Science, an international team of researchers describe how thousands of years of natural cooling in the Arctic were followed by a rise in temperatures from 1900 which accelerated briskly after 1950.
The warming of the Arctic is more alarming in view of the natural cooling cycle, which by itself would have seen temperatures 1.4C cooler than they are today, scientists said.
"The accumulation of greenhouse gases is interrupting the natural cycle towards overall cooling," said Professor Darrell Kaufman, a climate scientist at Northern Arizona University and lead author of the study.
"There's no doubt it will lead to melting glacier ice, which will impact on coastal regions around the world. Warming in the region will also cause more permafrost thawing, which will release methane gas into the atmosphere," he added.
Scientists fear that warming could release billions of tonnes of methane from frozen soils in the Arctic, driving global temperatures even higher.
On a tour of the Arctic this week, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon urged nations to support a comprehensive accord to limit greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the organisation's climate summit in Copenhagen in December. The accord has been drawn up as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
The latest study comes months after scientists at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned that within the next 30 years Arctic sea ice is likely to vanish completely during the summer for the first time.
Kaufman and his colleagues reconstructed a decade-by-decade record of the Arctic climate over the past 2,000 years by analysing lake sediments, ice cores and tree rings. Computer simulations of changes in seasonal sunlight levels caused by the Earth's elliptical orbit and the shifting tilt of its axis verified the long-term cooling trend.
The scientists showed that summer temperatures in the Arctic fell by an average of 0.2C every thousand years, but that this cooling was swamped by human-induced warming in the 20th century.
"This study provides a clear example of how increased greenhouse gases are now changing our climate, ending at least 2,000 years of Arctic cooling," said Caspar Ammann, a climate scientist and co-author of the report at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
The Arctic began cooling around 8,000 years ago as natural variations in the Earth's orbit and angle of tilt reduced the amount of sunlight reaching high latitudes. Today, the planet is one million kilometres farther away from the sun during the northern hemisphere's summer solstice than it was in 1BC. This natural cooling effect will continue for 4,000 more years.
Previous research has shown that temperatures over the past century rose nearly three times as fast in the Arctic as elsewhere in the northern hemisphere. This is due to an effect called Arctic amplification, whereby highly reflective sea ice and snow melt to reveal darker land and sea water, which absorb sunlight and warm up more quickly.
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35 Comments so far
Show AllThe insanity of this is that several countries and oil companies cant wait to get at the possible new sources of oil that may become available as the arctic ice melts because of the burning of fossil fuels. As a species we are simply nuts.
'as a species we are simply nuts'..........
no, it's the oil companies/countries ceo's and politicians who are nuts......
the rest of us are brainwashed by company/government propaganda...............
Further to NC-Tom I can see a horrific scenario whereby the fossil fuel extractors will increase resistance to curbs in global heating (I don't think its just 'warming'any more) in order to increase their potential sources of revenue from increased access to more pools of fossil fuels, to produce more carbon dioxide thus increasing the rate at which the polar caps melt increasing access to more......well we all get the idea.
Um, perhaps this has something to do with the decrease in arctic ice:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826625.800-arctic-ocean-volcano-blew-its-top--even-under-
pressure.html
This type of reporting adds fuel to the hysteria that man alone is responsible for climate change. I agree mankind needs to pay more attention to climate change, but please tell the complete story.
Dude, the logic is irrefutable: Humanity burns fossil fuels for energy, which releases previously buried CO2, and scientists later measure increased amounts of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, which increase over time as hmanity continues to pour CO2 into the atmosphere. This exacerbates the Greenhouse Effect, which is a proven scientific FACT, and thus causes an overall increase in global temperatures, which are most noticible at higher latitudes.
The only things a denialist proves when denying the fact of climate change is the amount of willful illiteracy when it comes to science and the ease with which it can be used as a tool against its own interest.
Dude,
Logic based on incomplete facts is certainly refutable. I assume you didn't actually read the article, hence your kneejerk response. Science 101 says that when hot lava hits ice, the ice turns into water and steam. Could this possibly be one of the reasons the arctic ice is shrinking? One volcano can also eject a lot of C02. Could this be a significant source of the CO2 measured in the atmosphere?
Before you mention "willful illiteracy" I suggest you look in the mirror.
Has that underwater volcanoe been erupting every day, every summer, every year ???
There are underwater "volcanoes" erupting constantly--24/7/365--at what are known as Spreading Centers, like the Trans-Atlantic Ridge, which is visible where it breaks the surface at Iceland. The process is ongoing and has now lasted for at least 4 Billion years. It is totally seperate from the stimuli causing Climate Change. That the dude is ignorant of plate tectonics further solidifies my case that the troll is scientifically illiterate.
It must be a secret NeoCon volcano with no location and too deep to investigate; it only erupts every time more evidence comes in that man made burning causes pole melting.....
It must be a:
Rush-the-druggie-Volcano!
Meaning: hot flatulence containing bad-smelling Methane is boiling out of a mindless right wing skull surrounded by Republican reality blubber.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
A single underwater volcano doesn't put CO2 in the atmosphere does it? Liquid absorbs Carbon, that's how the oceans made all the limestone cliffs in the world. By liquid CO2 turning to Carbonate and then being deposited on the bottom of the ocean into limestone. How does this Red-Herring, Secret-Arctic-Volcano square with ice shelves collapsing on the other side of the world in Antarctica?
It doesn't. Since this underwater volcano didn't break the surface it couldn't have contributed to the increased CO2 in the atmosphere. Trust me, if it had broached the surface of the Arctic Ocean and made a heat signature like India Volcanoes had, NORAD would have seen it, as they did thirty years ago, taking us to DEFCON 4 and launching nuke B-52's for counter strike.
CO2 increases rise perfectly with the amount of known industrial activity by man. It's not a coincidence.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
The absorbtion of underwater eruptions by the oceans is an ongoing part of the well over 4 billion-year-old carbon cycle, which as you note produces the carbonate types of rock that form the foundation of continental crust, which is lighter and thus "floats" atop the basaltic oceanic crust. This is all Geology 101 stuff. When one understands Gaia Theory, now called Earth Systems Theory, one can see how the planet and the fundamental life forms it brought forth allow it a degree of self-regulation, as Lovelock proved with his Daisy World model. This is far beyond the ken of denialists and biblethumpers who are myopic by choice and mostly incapable of grasping such concepts that totally undermine their indoctrination.
A book you should enjoy is Microcosmos by Lynn Margulis, and another is What is Life, co-written with her son Dorian Sagan.
A volcano is a one time event. Unless hundreds of volcanoes have been popping off under the ice over the last century the argument that one volcano is responsible for the melting of the ice is suspect at best. Moreover, when major volcanoes erupt the earth sees not a warming in its climate, but a cooling. That's explained because the dust the volcano pumps out into the upper atmosphere cuts down on the sunlight reaching the earth, cutting food production and causing more severe winters.
In fact the effects of global warming have been muted by a phenomenon known as global dimming; that is the pollution pumped out at the coal plants and other industries have a similar effect as a volcano has. The dust from our industry has cooled the planet, just a bit, but enough that the planet isn't as hot as it should be with all of the co2 in the atmosphere.
You might think that that's a good thing, after all if the pollution by man is cooling the globe than global warming isn't going to be much of a problem is it? However, the dust does fall out of the atmosphere, and it does cause health problems for the people who live near those coal plants and other factories. The final problem is that the cooling effect is not enough to totally counter the effect of the warming caused by the gases that are released at the same time as the dust and other pollutants. In the end, mankind has been pumping out more co2 than the volcanoes have been.
I read the article. The authors of the article made no indication that this activity was melting any arctic ice. The article seems to describe a one time event in 1999. So even if it had melted any ice the ice cap has had 10 years to recover.
The article seems to indicate that these explosions were beyond 3 kilometers down. That much water should prevent any magma from reaching the surface. The water would cool it and it would fall back to the ocean bottom as rock. The CO2 would have risen to the surface and could have cracked the ice, but again it would have had 10 years to recover.
The link below is to a chart showing the rise of CO2 over the last 50 years. The red zig zag line shows the seasonal change in CO2. The black line shows the very steady rise in CO2 over that same time period. There is a very slight upward blip above the average rise around 1998-1999 but then it continues on it's steady rise after that. I don't know if it is possible that eruption was the cause of that slight rise or not.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.html
Sometime a picture (or chart) is worth a thousand words. This one indicates a steady, slightly accelerating rise in CO2 of roughly 1.2 PPM / year over the last 50 years. You can see it with your own two eyes. If you don't want to believe your eyes, no problem.
When I get a chance I am always willing to try and convince people that global climate change is real and is caused by people. I do this for not for myself but for future generations. I'm in my early 50s so I should be long dead and buried when the the global climate change crap REALLY hits the fan.
So because of my age, on a personal level, I could care less if people want to believe me or not about this subject. It won't be any sweat off of MY brow if they don't.
Bud, in order to produce as much CO2 as humans do, we would need more than ten Pinatubas a year. Don't go blaming volcanoes. There just aren't anywhere near enough of them.
This problem is so complex that really not one person fully grasps the impact of it. Oh yes we have experts on this and that but really not one who can answer or even ask the right questions. Untied Nations ( my term for what was United Nations ) fails to bring all nations under one roof and settle this. The most powerful gluttons of nations still rules.
Also please note the differences starting around 1950 and when we had big time testing of A-Bomba N-Bombs and what ever else is being " tested ".
Ummmm. Maybe you haven't heard of the UN Commission on Climate Change reports on global warming? They won the Nobel Prize for them last year. Perhaps one person can't grasp the whole picture, but their conclusions after reviewing literally thousands of research papers were simple enough:
1. Global warming is real.
2. It has been getting more severe over the last few decades.
3. The increase in temperature is caused in large part by release of greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, etc) from human activities.
4. If we don't start doing something about it NOW, we'll be in big trouble in a very few years, maybe even twenty or thirty.
Nuclear weapon testing may have had some small effect, but that was a long time ago, and warming has been getting worse, not better.
It's amazing to me that many people I talk to have no real concept of where we are at with this issue. Many think that it is being addressed because they hear some actions, some news about going green etc. One woman I spoke to did not even know that electric plants burn coal. She thought all plants used water like Niagra Falls.
Education
Education
Education
I went to "The Coolest Small Town in America" last night, not far from me, and passed out a bunch of CD and Democracy Now articles. I walked the streets and passed out articles on climate change, the negatives of nuclear energy, and yes, helath care-pro single payer. Every single person or couple was interested and thanked me.... I was amazed.
Got your gardens growing? Up to speed on food preservation, seed saving, organic pest and disease control? Climate change will virtually garuntee food shortages coming to a "developed" nation near you, probably sooner than you think. As all the other indicators seem to be outpacing the projections, hunger will become the change we can believe in.
As GMO's are promoted as mankind's saviour, they disguise the awful truth that such technology is both unsustainable and unhealthy. Se we are talking about creating a source of real, whole foods at a local level and taking resposibility for our own well being in the face of this crisis. Or do you have faith that the "government" will come to our rescue, we being the entitled ones and all....?
Exxon-paid boiler-room bloggers are claiming that climate change is caused by giant imaginary volcanoes that only they can see. Wow! Let's move on.
"Scientists fear that warming could release billions of tonnes of methane from frozen soils in the Arctic..." Actually, you can go up and see the bubbles, smell the methane, and light it off with a Zippo lighter. No use fearing something that is happening now, except if we can inhibit it next year or in a decade.
We can inhibit a runaway methane release. My method would be to take the strong cold of an arctic winter in order to create more pack ice on the Arctic Ocean, which would then last all summer. A large number of local cold-transfer devices would need to be built and deployed from ships in September. My price tag would be about $10 Billion per decade, costing maybe one day of the war per year.
Your job is to whisper this opportunity into the ears of bored, skilled or wealthy people, so that we can build a research coalition and prototype the invention. Wouldn't doing one positive step to inhibit global warming feel better than waiting around helplessly for the big cook-off?
oh, if only climate changes were our sole concern...hot or cold, chemical toxicity is the real worry...a living organism might have a chance against climatological fluctuations, but not against the bizarre, unnatural alterations we make every day in the molecular structure of the natural world...industry must cease...porperty ownership must go...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...agrarian, acoustic living...shared housing...let's get those gardens growing!
I agree with the chemical toxicity, but your solution would probably condemn a couple of billion people to death due to the elimination of the industry needed to sustain the current population.
You just answered your own question about the naturalness of humans.
touché
But back to the original question, who gets the job of deciding the fate of a couple of billion people?
It would seem that the richest humans have taken on that job, you don't think they'd really want the unwashed masses to have a say in their own future do you?
I would say their/our fate is already decided. The reason is the finite planet will not allow unlimited growth. The "deciding" occured long ago by the wholesale refusal of Corporadoes and their allies to heed the warnings published in Limits to Growth and similar ones made by president Carter. Thus, there is no "job" to fill as the decision has already been made.
So fatalistic a prediction. I tend to have a more optimistic view. Tell you what. I bet we figure it out, without having to sacrifice a couple of Billion people (the planet can take care of itself) and we all hang around for a few more thousand years (Or until the Rum runs out whichever comes first). And if you like Rum, I'll share some Cavalier with you.
Smile everybody (I really mean it)
Well, I didn't start out as a "doomer," but I now agree with Dr Lovelock's assesment that humanity will survive on a limited scale at the very high latitudes. What will transpire after several millenia, after the ice caps have melted and started to reform, is certainly unknown. Probably another Ice Age, whose massive sheets will erase what remains of human artifacts above say 45 degrees latitude. I wonder if you've watched the film On The Beach; if so, you should be able to understand my perspective. Oh, I still smile and laugh as we only have one opportunity to enjoy our life. And sure, I'll take a shot or two.
Same here.
One of my favorite movies is "The Day after Tomorrow" where the the climate researchers are freezing to death huddled around their generator in Northern Scottland. The professor's assistant says "I'm afraid that's the last of the petro gents; but I wonder if the genny would run on this?" and he holds up a bottle of booze. The professor says "Are You MAD? That's a twelve year old bottle of Scotch!" and he grabs three glasses and the three of them drink their only hope of being rescued in time.
Cheers Mates,
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Fair enough. I'll have to watch the film.
But to you and Thomas Jefferson a virtual cheers!
(If you ever visit Antigua, pick up a bottle of Cavalier Rum. Great local stuff!)
OK, if these are the hottest summers for two hundred years, what caused them to be so hot before then? Please.
two thousand years... If you want to know about the earlier history of the far north, look up the research in scientific journals, but the short answer is it was caused by natural events. Unlike the warming that is now being caused by human activity.
"Unlike the warming that is now being caused by human activity."
Aren't Humans a naturally occurring phenomenon?
Within the realm of geologic time, humans are a very recent natural phenomenon and remained so until they started to alter natural processes, like the water and carbon cycles and plant and animal genomes, which turned them into parasites. Eventually, the planet will purge itself of these unnatural parasites. Those humans able to live 1,000 years from now will have become natural again, in that they will have learned to live within the bounds of the planet's natural cycles and no longer seek to alter them.
That's two thousand years!
And back then it was due to orbital positions more favorable to warming (southern ocean pointed more directly at the sun).
Read the article, or use the Google for "Milankovitch cycles".
I'm glad you fat cats have billions instead of millions.
"You are welcome"--- from we the poor, we without health care, we starving on minimum wage, we in prison, we dying in the sand for your profits.
And lest I forget, I know externalizing is corporate policy and that corporations have the rights but not the responsibilities of real people, so thanks for trashing the planet to the point that even you representatives of corporations will die hot, dry, and desolate for a favorable bottom line.