Nature Helps With the Arctic Meltdown -- We Could Never Have Done It Alone!
There's more to the recent dramatic and alarming thawing of the Arctic region than can be explained by man-made global warming alone, a new study found.
Nature is pushing the Arctic to the edge, too.
But that energy transfer, which comes with storms that head north because of ocean currents, is not acting alone either, scientists say.
Another upcoming study concludes that the combination of both that natural energy transfer increase and man-made global warming serve as a one-two punch that is pushing the Arctic over the edge.
The Arctic
The Arctic ice melt is very interesting, but we should be honest and tell the whole story.
Winter conditions started earlier than normal this fall as is evidenced by the earlier than normal ice forming in the Mackenzie River which brought a cessation of shipping on the Mackenzie much earlier than normal.
The Arctic ice as evidenced by recent satellite photos, clearly shows that by year end 2007, the Arctic was essentially completely frozen over and much sooner than normal. If the slightly below normal temperatures of from minus 30 to minus 50 deg C continue through the remaining 4 months of winter in the Arctic, the ice thickness will be close to longer term normals. Oh some will credit La Nino but most El Nina /La Nino researchers say that as winter progresses that the Al Nina effects lessen to minimal amounts. What if, this just happens to be a start of a cooling trend many of which have occurred before in the northern hemisphere?
The Big Picture
Lewis, it is entirely possible that the data you cite could indicate a new cooling trend. Why, just the other day, they opened a new Wal-Mart in my town, adding more than a hundred new jobs to the area's economy. This could mean that the world's economy is set to take off in a dramatic spurt of growth.
Then again, it might not. You have to look at the big picture, not just the Mackenzie River or the local Wal-Mart.
It's firewalled
I only got as far as the abstract, which included the statement "A significant proportion of the observed temperature amplification must therefore be explained by mechanisms that induce warming above the lowermost part of the atmosphere." Can someone who has read the entire article tell me whether the authors address the question of whether aspects of AGW might be having an effect on this mechanism or mechanisms? It looks a little like viewing el Nino as an independent factor in certain climatic trends (deflecting the blame from AGW) without questioning whether the frequency of el Nino years is itself a trend influenced by AGW.
If it's a "one -- two punch," maybe we should be addressing the boxer rather than the individual blows?
RealClimate thread
There's a new post on RealClimate.org discussing the paper.
'New rule for high profile papers.'
From the post and comments, the authors don't seem to have addressed your point.
Some key points -
a) Unhappiness that authors say GCMs don't show Arctic temperature anomolies when a quick check would've shown that many do.
b) Circulation changes are expected from AGW but trend is uncertain. Since they're happening, teasing out which are natural variation and which might be due to human GHG emissions needs more work.
see esp. comment #13, a critique given to (AP's) Seth Borenstein.
Though not an answer to your
Though not an answer to your specific question below is a link to a slightly more informative news item on the Nature paper:
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn13134-melting-ice-may-not-explain-warming-arctic.html
Thanks, Pangloss
This article raises another question, relating to Kerry Emmanuel's work in the effects of AGW of hurricanes. If Rune Graversen is tying the increasingly warm upper atmosphere with cyclonic activity delivering warm air from the tropics to the polar zones, he & Emmanuel should be putting their heads together. Any thoughts, Chris Mooney?
I'm still interested in reading the paper, if anyone can arrange a link?