Gray-Wolf

http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/6/4861/2012/tcd-6-4861-2012.pdf A paper looking at how increased melt of the marine terminating Glaciers in Greenland may be causing a feedback loop drawing in ever more warm Atlantic waters to melt ever more of the glacier.

After watching the Vid from " Chasing Ice" I have to wonder about a collapse that would impact , over 18 months of melt, Global sea levels? My own concern is Ross. This is a 'grounded' ice shelf and , apart from being the size of France, stands 200ft proud of the sea surface (though grounded in the Ross sea bed below). The Calve we saw in the Vid was the collapse of an advancing ice front that had been badly undercut by the warm Atlantic (4C + ) at it's base. Ross also has the weight of the E.A.I.S. at its back and is now being attacked by warm Southern Ocean waters at it's base? To me the pressure from the rear is enough to push the whole shelf into the ocean ( did the B.A.S. not use radar to display a 'ruck' in the ice, probably caused when the ice welded itself to the ocean floor after the last interglacial, many miles across and hundreds of metres in depth?) esp. if we have enhanced weight to the rear from AGW augmented snowfall? As you all know I'm watching a crevasse in the shelf that is longer than the UK and over a hundred Km's deep. If this slice fails in one go then will it be enough lost 'purchase ' on the area bed to allow gravity to 'float off' the rest of the shelf to the paleo shore line? From what I can gage this is over 4" of sea level rise over a 2 year period? (is 2 years reasonable for a massive ice shelf to corrupt and melt in the southern oceans or will it take much longer?). No matter the time period it's a case of "dead man walking the green mile" as we know the ice will melt and we will have an idea of the rises it will bring. For those who are unsure the 'sea level rise' needs multiplying by a factor of around 10 to see how the strand line advances (never mind the storm surge line!!!) so it is a " City Killer" of a rise over a ten year period ( for the pedants among us let's use ten years eh?) so how do you re-locate a city in ten years??? This is the full scale of the 'sudden' changes we will face. We look likely to have to abandon some areas, even though the sea isn't lapping around the door, because of the costs of repeated storm impacted flooding being more than the cost of re-locating. How often will Manhattan spend the repair of the underground before they spend on protection (rather than cure)? This is the issue the insurance comps are on with. How many flooding's before you are un-insureable and be better off spending your money on relocation than repair? We see this today with multiple flood impacted properties in the UK. You either turn floor one into a garage/utility space or bare the cost of repair/replacement yourself!

Have I mis-interpretted what occured to the North of Greenland? Take a look at the above image, blow it up and focus on the 'open water' to the north of Greenland? That is ice below the water is it not? Have the southerlies just flooded the region?

Hi Q4P! I can't remember the chappies name but I believe he was a Norwegian Scientist that did a number of voyages into the Arctic through the 30's and 40's. Some deniers brought him to my attention by claiming his research showed basin wide ice levels similar to today through the 30's and 40's. Apart from showing no such thing the papers did show me just how massive the changes have been over this past 50yrs! Even if the ice edge in some sectors occasionally lined up with todays (I'm sure the North Shore of the Canadian Archipelago has similar ice cover then as now?) the scale and size of the ice back then was wondrous! I think he also followed the massive ice island, that used to be a part of the ice shelf along Ellesmere Island (T3?), as it moved around the basin? (maybe that should have been our first warning of the breakup of the Arctic ice??? makes me wonder about the shelfs now collapsing around Antarctica and the message they are bringing us?). I'm sure if you google "Arctic ice levels the same as in the 1930's" you'll find the chap and then just search out the papers not pay-walled?

Beat me to it!!! 7.6km3 of ice smashed into the sea in 175min calve!!! That's, like the man says in the clip, Manhatten going belly up and rolling around??? Anyone doubt the power of gravity once the ice is compromised just take a look at the Vid. Soon enough this will be sections of the interior if melt rates continue to accelerate.

Hold on 4! does water vapour not increase with temp and not CO2? I cannot for the life of me figure how increased CO2 could cause such and effect but warming? yup! I can see that. Seeing as TAR4 was both hamstrung by naysayer nations (India, Australia,Canada and U.S. to name but a few!) and lacking in lots of the science (sea level from ice sheets, natural GHG's from permafrost/hydrate increases etc,etc) how would you expect it to make reasonable future predictions. You moan at climate models being lacking in data points and so unrepresentative then use the TAR4 as if gospel when you know it is an expurgated version of that which went into the assembly for ratification? Global dimming. Both the lack of rapid temp increases and the cloud conundrum can be laid at the door of Particulate pollution leading to reduced TSI at the surface and elevated levels of condensation nuclei in the trop.

Well the past few years it has had to wait for near winters end to begin? If we are seeing ice losses impacting winter ice gain then will the past summers record losses be reflected in this winters re-freeze (in area and thickness?)? The 'counterbalance for Area/extent looks like it will be Bering again as the H.P. allows the ice factory to fire up again. What happens if this occurs and though we see a record amount in Bering the basin still fails to make average? Last summer it made average at winters end and yet still finished 18% below the past record low even though, according to the Arctic Report Card, Arctic temps have been unremarkable for the past 10years. Will we ever find ourselves above the 07' min from here on in? If so would that not be a remarkable feat in itself that an event needing a 'perfect Storm' of melt conditions, just 5 years ago, is now beaten by average summers time after time? It's akin to the Global temp level it took a super nino to take us to now being ever more common place in average nino years? In my way of seeing things Barrentsz and Kara have now spent 10 winters struggling to gain anything like 'average' ice levels. Let us not forget that expeditions in the 30's and 40's marvelled at the Massive Paleocryistic ice that used to reside ,year round, in these areas so we have seen an area that used to be involved in both the making and building of such ice turn into an area with poor ice levels. This conditions has occured over both positive and negative global drivers and has seen solar max's and mins without the trend being impacted. We are now seeing Baffin along the same route with Beaufort now also showing signs of gaint impacts (the beaufort Gyre has gone from a place Full of maturing Paleocryistic ice to one that actively destroys perennial ice over summer). If the open water over Barrentsz and Kara has been seen to impact the atmosphere above them, esp. in autumn/early winter, then what will the addition of these other areas mean for the atmosphere over the Basin (and the teleconnections further south?) as they to exert similar impacts??? If gthe level of Arctic amplification that Barrentsz and Kara produced helped bring the losses to Beaufort and Baffin then how much greater will be that forcing with those areas now also contributing to the pot? Let's wait and see what the winter brings ,both to the basin and to us further south?

Then surely there has to be a worry about how impacted TSI is by Particulate Pollution and if current warming is driven by TSI(mainly) then what happens to global temps when we sort out a good percentage of that pollution??

Careful Pete! J' will be saying you're talking conspiracies! (LOL). When Govt. Ministers have connections to industries are they not honour bound to declare them? As for the impression it gives? It appears that they agree with some posters here and that we cannot think of any other way of maintaining our lifestyles no matter what the costs over the longer term? Sadly the 'Longer term' would have been just that back in the 80's but today it appears that we are beginning to enter this 'longer term' and inherit the costs we built up back then? I'm sure, and fearful, that the climate will eventually dictate a radical new approach to how we fund our living. It would be very sad if we saw the Capitalist dream proving even more costly in lives and misery that it has been to date? Odd that a nation, who on the surface appears so Christian, appears to have no notion of what Christ instructed them on wealth and heaven, on charity and humility?

It's just timing j'. Pour out nonsense prior to the holidays and you can fuel debate and confusion over the period were people gather socially. I've always maintained that folk will cling to good news rather than accept bad news (the first stage of loss is denial?). I thought that the Indian Ocean studies on Global dimming showed that pollution impacted the size of raindrops by super seeding clouds with condensation nuclei and so growing smaller , more numerous, raindrops for greater scattering of the incoming Sunlight? Not only do we need a definitive on high level and low level clouds interaction with incoming solar but how much particulate pollution has now changed this process. Maybe this story is akin to the Floridian Igloo that supposedly showed the death of AGW? Take an aspect of AGW and pretend it is a proof otherwise? Look at recent stats and I'll wager that they show high reflectivity from these super seeded clouds dosed with particulate pollution. Take away the pollution and those clouds become less reflective as raindrops grow back to their normal size and reflect less solar, Unluckily for us we will see this occur as Asia cleans up it's particulate pollution over the coming decade.

I'm afraid I expected a little more of the ice after such a large melt year? Maybe I'm listening to the wrong folk but I thought that high melt years meant that more cold and fresh water at the surface to rapidly freeze come Autumn? As it is we see certain areas still not gaining the ice they historically held over winter? Maybe we are seeing that the impacts of changing synoptics, driven by ice loss, feeding warm air over certain areas of the basin, that used to hold year around ice, whilst fuelling growth of seasonal ice in the lower latitudes? What me all must be wary of are changes that signal that Arctic warming is now self sustaining with positive feedbacks ensuring further ice reduction over summer and allowing higher temps across the region/ For me I believe we passed that point a few years back but you must decide for yourself if there are signs that this has occurred.

God bless America! http://news.yahoo.com/nearly-four-10-u-residents-blame-weather-end-200603898.html 4 out of 10 say the extreme weather is a sign of the 'end Times' , 6 out of 10 say it's climate change...........

We were already seeing the issues involved with losing the Shelf systems that used to hold back the interior ice but the threat of heavy ,wet, snow squashing the ice down and out will just compound those issues. Because of the compression of snow into ice the loss of ice will involve far more water than any plausible increase of snowfall? How is it that though we know we are losing a similar ice mass to Greenland (and at the same rate of increase) we still hear about the 8 weeks of sea ice that pushes some areas into positive anoms? When we get to mid summer none of the sea ice remains but the losses remain? I'd wager that the volume of 'increase' is less than a fifth of the ice lost over the period it sits in the water at winters end? Are these folk truely confused or are they trying to twist things to suit an agenda not based in truth?

This is maybe where we differ J'? I take the science , and my own understanding of it, to say we are heading into a very dark place if we do not throttle back our GHG emmisions whilst we allow the levels currently in the atmosphere to have impact. I think we all accept that we will have impacts as the climate adjust to one comparable with current GHG levels (as we see throughout the planets history). This is the least we should do. If we trust all of the science then we need to be looking at getting GHG's back below 350ppm before their impact is fully felt within the climate system as this would entail additions of the currently dormant potion of our carbon cycle to re-animate and add another wallop of GHG's making reductions more challenging. To see the planet yet again make grand Public promises and then act in an opposite manner leads me to believe that bodies with a 5 year term of power to try and implement their version of 'society' will never spend the billions required to address their promises. It is like a game of Jenga. The Govt. in power when catastrophe strikes will then act but only as a reaction and not to prevent the catastrophe. It is sad but true. To spend before would cost them the next term in Govt. but once dissaster strikes they will be the heroes for investing the money and saving Britain. I just have to hope that the 'signal' that makes them see they have to act will be one that is clear but not too damaging? The start of a massive positive feedback loop and we're all toast even if the initial impacts are in the Arctic/U.S./Asia/Antarctica!

Z1b any day! At least on the Bikes you're always half full! Anyhows? How come J's having a poke at the product when we were all having a go at the company ethics??? We all know the issue with Fossil fuel usage but they are separate from the decisions of the execs on how they see fit to maximise profits......margins must be real slim for those companies to go to the lengths they do with regards to cleaning up after themselves? Did folk see what became of the safety measures they took up to the Arctic? Not pretty!

And if we find that through it's economic might the oil industry has bought up , and mothballed, competing technologies that would have impacted their sales? J' pointed out how impotent she felt in the whole capitalist system. It is as though along with advertising we are fed propoganda to keep us on side and moot. We know that in the electronics industry (another area with rude profit margins) certain 'new lines' will be held back until current model stocks are exhausted. By the time the 'Latest' inovations are on the shop floor the replacents are already in final testing. When a product is capable of the kind of damage fossil fuels now appear capable of is this type of economics/marketing morally sound? J' focuses on the car. Why do we still use the wasteful motion of the current engine format (losing energy at the top and bottom of each stroke) when rotary engines were available even before the advances in heat tollerant materials? Do you remember the racing Norton with the rotary and the to do about how it should be 'measured' as to it's racing class? You could see on the straights the type of HP it had at its disposal (even if the handling was pants...and had no engine braking) some estimates of cc were over 2 litres! yet it raced in the super bike class. In a time of energy conservation why are we still stuck in the engine stoneage? Could it be it suits someone for us to use more fuel to get the job done?

You appear very keen on having a reasonable amount of time to allow trends to show in areas of the planet exhibiting rapid climate shift yet hold up a stunted time series as some kind of evidence now? I would say that the trends , over a larger timescale , from other studies show increases well outside 'natural' variation and so feel that I must imagine that this time series , when complete, will show exactly the same? Everyone is out to measure the same thing and though warming may show regional bias the whole planet is warming at an alarming rate with no signs that this trend will abate? EDIT: The other thing to be mindful of here is the '80n effect'. Year on year we have folk over on the Arctic thread telling us that things are quite normal in the Basin on the back of the DMI 80N temp plot. Whilst over winter, spring and Autumn the plot show massive warm departures from the verage the summer hovers around freezing. We constantly reminf them where those temperatures are taken (over the ice) and remind them of the energy required to melt ice. Obviously once the ice there has gone we would expect to see massive positive temp spikes over the summer to. As such we should not just look at temperatures, which the 2012 Arctic report card tells us have been 'unremarkable' for the past decade but also to see if we can see impacts of extra energy in the basin. If we were to see permafrost thaw over wide areas or sea ice volume loss or mass loss from Greenland or ealier summer snow loss or even extreme summer snow loss we might have to think that we are seeing more energy available to enable such changes. So what do we see beyond 60N? We see the record reduction in snow over summer in Eurasia, we sea sea ice volumes plummeting, we see record mass losses from Greenland, we see permafrost melting up to 20m down etc,etc So? what do we think will occur when the energy that is being spent on thawing out the cryosphere has finished that Job

Maybe modern human beings are becoming complacent in that all they need to 'now' is just a click away? We no longer need to know how we get to that understanding ? When we get to climate change some folk decide on how they 'feel' about it and not how we understand it and the way it is evolving. The number of time we come across near cut and paste 'reasons' why climate change is not made by humanity a matter of days after denialist blogs print them up. Those folk have not questioned the data merely read what they took to be 'evidence' from a resource that suits their 'feelings' on the matter. Surely the depth and sheer width of the consensus, from across all areas of climate research , that climate change is human driven must count for something? Even the length of time that folk have had to review the science and to find errors or alternative views as plausible must mean that science is on the right tracks. We live in such amazing times and the portion of humanity that go on to write the history of these times will surely be amazed at how little we appeared to care about it all?

The science is telling us that the damage of using Fossil fuels is already done and will be costly to mitigate against or to repair. Some of the damage ,like the level of extinctions we currently see occurring will never be repaired? Whilst we know this you still insist that we will use up all our fossil fuel reserves? We will already be undergoing rapid climate damage by the time we come close to using up current reserves ,never mind the ones yet to be uncovered in the Arctic and Antarctica, do you seriously believe that the public will still be clamoring to use those reserves? You claim to be 'undecided' on climate change by human hands but again you seem fairly positive in your views that we will not chose to ditch fossil fuels? Somehow this makes you feel very pro the feeling that there is nothing to worry about Fossil fuel ,past, present or even future? You either see the problems of GHG's, and their lifetime influencing the climate, or you do not believe them an issue? You either believe in the impact of Global dimming during the 20th century, and now in the early 21st century, or you do not accept it as a problem. From the first time we discussed these issues how far has the consensus on climate change evolved? How much more evidence of the impacts do we now hold? How does the minimum ice level in the Arctic compare to the minimum back then? How many more GT's of ice melt from Greenland each year now compared with back then? How many positive temperature records have been broken , compared to cold records, over that time period? How much has extreme weather cost us compared to the years prior to our first conversations. You claim to have remained unaltered in your 'don't know' status but this is moving backward towards denial the more confirmations we receive. For my part I have seen my worse fears bested by evidence on the ground and predictions from ever more competent Models become ever more frightening and immediate.

Again I had a little worry that my plot had finally left the building. So you believe the fossil fuel industry does not keep itself appraised of the threat that it's product may become undesirable due to the pollution it causes J'? You fully believe that they would not seek to promote any science which showed the current consensus as flawed science? You also appear to find it quite natural that Govt. will attend conferences and make promises about controlling GHG emissions whilst subsidising the industry that is the main contributor to those emissions? Conspiracy or purposeful naivety?

Thanks for that BFTV, I thought I might have finally flipped and not given my undying appreciation to the great God petrochemical there for a moment? Why should an appreciation of what we have now be used as an instruction for keeping the staus quo esp. when we have discovered how myopic such a view is? This is not Piaget now is it? are we really suggesting we sacrifice quantity of life for quality? Logans Run anyone? When you discover something is bad for you you do not hark back to all the pleasure it has brought you through your time using it you simply seek to stop using it? To me it is as simple as that but it appears to be far from that simple with the producers of that comodity appearing to be hand in hand with Govt.s to ensure it's continued usage. It's like Govt. drugs. There are so many no toxic substances for personal relaxation why does Govt. only allow us access to one of the most dangerous? Is it really to keep us tanked to the point of not questioning?

If we used the sea level rise from Greenland alone as quoted in Knockers link (2006-2012 0.8mm/year) and apply the 4 year doubling of mass loss we appear to be seeing we get; year 1 0.8mm, first doubling 1.6mm, second doubling, 3.2mm, 3rd doubling 6.4mm, 4th doubling 12.8mm, 5th doubling 25.6mm, 6th doubling 51.2mm and 7th doubling 102.4mm. This is less than the 30yr period that some folk feel it is prudent to wait whilst we collect data to asses the trend? I think by the time we are seeing 3" a year folk would have been calling for action for many years!!! The above would also have contibutions from Antarctica to be added and I'd say that the losses from there would dwarf Greenlands efforts? They say the 8" over the past century made the Sandy disaster inevitable (75 billion$ of damage!!!) so what happens when we see 3" a decade???

That's a little disingenuous isn't it J'? Have you seen the West African Oil fields? That mess is not an occasional accident but the way they do things there (as no legislation exists to stop them). Have you seen the smogs in China around their coal industrialised areas? Is that accidental? I'm sure that there are folk better placed than me to outline the damage that the fossil fuel industry has purported through it's years of industry?

I might just be paranoid but I imagine that both the fossil fuel industry and our social elite have access to the latest understanding on where current climate change is leading us? From our perspective ,from the news and papers we are privy to, things look very dire? If Fossil fuel had 'good news' from their own investigations on the subject they'd be singing it from the rooftops and the abscence of this confirms to me that there is no 'Good News'. further to that the Fossil fuels funding of the procrastinators makes me think that , further on down the line, we will be recieving very bad news. Knowing this you think we'd be seeing far more investment outside 'Fossil Fuel' to take the companies through the downturn in the current major moneyspinner? As it is they continue to invest and exploit as if sure that this money will continue to bring returns. How can thery be so sure if they do not have assurances that they are set to continue , B.A.U. for some time yet?

This is the annoying thing for me Knocker. We are never going to get less power out of the technology as time moves on , only more? The size and storage capacity is beginning to act like computer memory in the way it doubles over a short time period and advances in the known technologies (we are losing half of the wind turbines at one of the local wind-farms when they upgrade to slightly taller towers with the capacity, even with the reduction of generators, to double current output!) appear to be just as rapid with the use of new materials and techniques. There is something very sinister about the way fossil fuel appears to be constantly favoured over the development and implementation of renewables?