Have you been wondering, why the North Pole's sea ice is looking like this today? http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png
Cryosphere Today has reported a phenomenal North Pole melting: North Pole's Ice Cap currently melts away at a phenomenal weekly rate of: 14.9%. Melting figures of the Arctic Ocean for the last 7 days are: 17.07.2011: ice area 5,456,000 km2 - melting 98,000 km2 18.07.2011: ice area 5,383,000 km2 - melting 73,000 km2 19.07.2011: ice area 5,283,000 km2 - melting 100,000 km2 20.07.2011: ice area 5,083,000 km2 - melting 200,000 km2 - 24 hour ice area reduction: 3.93% 21.07.2011: ice area 4,931,000 km2 - melting 152,000 km2 - 24 hour ice area reduction: 3.08% 22.07.2011: ice area 4,843,000 km2 - melting 88,000 km2 23.07.2011: ice area 4,726,000 km2 - melting 117,000 km2 - 24 hour ice area reduction: 2.48% At the start of the week, 16.07.2011 the ice area was 5,554,000 km2. A daily sea ice melting rate 77,000 km2 could melt all ice from the North Pole by the autumn equinox. The current rate of disappearing sea ice is much higher. This suggests that the open seas are increasing solar energy absorption at higher rates than the shortening of daylight hours are reducing the sunlight supply. A return of cold weather and clouds can break this vicious circle. The fact that the North Pole Sea Ice Cap is able to lose 10.5% of its size in just over the last 4 days is a matter of immense concern to me as our train may have already lost its breaks... WattsUpWithThat.com suggests the sun has entered a more intense phase in its sun-spot cycle and the sea ice is now melts. They now say the sea ice melting intensifies over the next few years until solar activity peaks, after that the sunspots disappear and the Arctic Oceans sea ice cover recovers. The concern over melting sea ice is alarmism as it is all due to a recent change in solar weather, the increasing radiation drives global warming and, therefore, North Pole's sea ice is now melting. However, this contradicts their own sea ice area outlook projection: http://www.arcus.org/files/search/sea-ice-outlook/2011/07/images/pan-arctic/july_panarctic_fig1.png In June WattsUpWithThat.com forecasted the second largest sea ice area in September with ice area recovery to 5,100,000 km2. WattsUpWithThat.com forecasting logic apparently expects the Arctic Ocean to be freezing 374,000 km2 by September. We should change our Googlrgroup's name to: Geoengineering Now! Kind regards, Albert From: [email protected] To: [email protected] CC: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [geo] Jim Hansen : 1 to 2DegC and 20m sea level rise Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 19:05:59 +0000 Dear Ken: I love your sentence about economists. The problem is that they are often consulted by the press as experts whether or not they are, and they don't always caveat their statements to indicate they are not scientists. The best, Bill On Jul 22, 2011, at 11:03 AM, "Ken Caldeira" <[email protected]> wrote: Two points: I am not opposed to scientists making prescriptive statements in their roles as citizens. However, I am opposed to prescriptive statements (statements about what we should do) in peer-reviewed scientific papers. I think science is about establishing objective facts about the world. As citizens, we take these facts and our values and make judgments about what we should do. I am 100% in favor of Jim Hansen making prescriptive statements. I would just prefer that he not do it in the context of a peer-reviewed scientific paper. Science cannot tell us what to do. It can give us information which we can use to make decisions. If the science gets mixed up with politics in peer-reviewed scientific publications, I think it ends up weakening the credibility of the entire scientific publication process (since statements whose truth value cannot be empirically established are obviously getting past reviewers). I should say that the worst in this respect are the economists, who insist that they should be regarded as a science while simultaneously trying to tell us what we should be doing. --- On deployment of some sort of solar reflection system: all of our model results indicate that a high co2 world with deflection of some sunlight would be more similar to a low co2 world than is a high co2 world without deflection of sunlight. So, do I think that direct environmental damage from greenhouse gases could be diminished by deploying such a system? Yes, probably although I am not 100% certain of this. Do I think near-term deployment will reduce overall risk and improve long-term well-being? Of this I am less certain, as it is hard to predict the various sociopolitical, as well as environmental, repercussions that might occur. Ken Caldeira [email protected] +1 650 704 7212 http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab Sent from a limited-typing keyboard On Jul 22, 2011, at 16:38, John Nissen <[email protected]> wrote: Dear Ken, I've already looked at this interesting paper [1], from Jim Hansen and Mikiko Sato - but I'd not read before of his conjecture about rate of ice mass loss doubling per decade, producing many metres of sea level rise this century. But the implication is that the situation can be saved simply by reducing fossil fuel emissions! Is that the prescription that you are complaining about? Wouldn't a well-considered prescription be welcome from somebody as eminent as Prof Hansen? Geoengineering for example! I don't see a way out of our predicament without it. Do you, Ken? Does Hansen accept that 90% sea ice could be gone as soon as at end summer 2016? (BTW, I've another reference to this date we've been arguing about [2].) Hansen seems to dismiss methane as always producing less forcing than CO2: "This sensitivity has the merit that CO2 is the principal GHG forcing and perhaps the only one with good prospects for quantification of its long-term changes." (page 15) However the paper is relevant to the methane issue in several ways. One argument, which I've heard from Jeff Ridley, is that there is no sign of a methane excursion at previous interglacials* such as end-Eemian, when it was hotter, so we don't need to worry about having an excursion now. Hansen shows that it was never hotter than it is now (in Holocene) by more than one degree. Elsewhere Hansen points out that the current rate of global warming is much higher than it has been for millions of years. Andrew Lockley suggests it's higher than even it was at the PETM some 55.8 million years ago, when temperatures rose about 6 C [3]. That rate of change is important, because of methane's short lifetime. The increasing speed of change implied by Hansen's climate sensitivity is thus relevant to methane. A further way that the paper is relevant to methane is because of climate sensitivity to radiative forcing. The paper suggests various alternative values that could be taken - see [1] table 1. If we get over 2 W/m-2 from methane, then that certainly takes us over the danger line of 2 degrees global warming, using his argument. Cheers, John * During the past 800,000 years, methane never rose much above 700 ppb until recently, see [1] figure 2 [1] Full paper http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1105/1105.0968.pdf Abstract here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.0968v3 [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13002706 [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum --- On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 11:07 PM, Emily <[email protected]> wrote: Hi, here is a recent paper from Jim Hansen,including some figures I've read before, which stunned me: "In the early Pliocene global temperature was no more than 1-2°C warmer than today, yet sea level was 15-25 meters (50-80 feet) higher." best wishes, Emily. *Paleoclimate Implications: Accepted Paper and 'Popular Science'* "Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change" has been reviewed, revised in response to the referee's suggestions, and accepted for publication in "Climate Change at the Eve of the Second Decade of the Century: Inferences from Paleoclimate and Regional Aspects: Proceedings of Milutin Milankovitch 130th Anniversary Symposium" (Eds. A. Berger, F. Mesinger and D Šijački), Springer. This final version has also been published in arXiv:1105.0968v3 [physics.ao-ph] <http://columbia.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0ebaeb14fdbf5dc65289113c1&id=fbefcc8464&e=60a7483168> A__'popular science' summary <http://columbia.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0ebaeb14fdbf5dc65289113c1&id=d3b93e0894&e=60a7483168> of the paper, intended for lay audience, is available. Thanks especially to reviewer Dana Royer for helpful comments, foundations and NASA program managers for research support, and a number of people for comments on an early draft of the paper, as delineated in the acknowledgements. Jim Hansen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. 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