Iceberg

Indeed it is quite a bit up from last year currently, that's about 2 weeks worth of melt., still around 1,000,000 down from the average though.

That's only the artic basin though and not at all representive of NH Ice atm. This link gives a better picture. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IM...current.365.jpg Basin ice because it's only the centre doesn't tend to start melting until a good 2 to 3 months after the rest. Sorry it's http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IM...current.365.jpg For my own knowledge I've just looked up where the artic basin is. It's the green bit in the middle

Temps have been holding up well (or holding down well anyway) in the artic (It's quite surprising that levels are quite as low as they are currently). However the next 7-10 days looks to see the start of the Artic Summer, once the cold goes it won't come back until October.

I agree a record breaking season is always going to be a long bet forecast wise, even a warm one All the main components(neutral Enso, more predominant Easterly, the run up to summer, hurricane predictions and recurve etc) are there though and judging by the last 12 months it certainly shouldn't be considered an outside bet. Even the 20% your judging atm is a massive chance giving the statistical likelyhood. I'll to check out the bookies bets when I get home(firewall free).

I support your view that this summer could well rank as the warmest ever (I'd probably estimate at around a 65% chance) My one concern would be the June CET figure, indications are that the warmth will take a little longer to get going but will last longer. Lots of storm activity as well like you say mostly in June. August looks like it will be the hurricane warmth month (probably as well as Sept). Nights could well be very uncomfortable.

"Analysis of climate models suggests that by 2100 the marginal ice zone will warm in winter by upto 0.6C/decade, resulting in a decrease of 25% in sea ice coverl central antarctica will warm at 0.4C/decade in all seasons; precipitation will increase, westerly winds will stengthen over the ocean. Drilling through the Ross sea ice shelf shows that the shelf has come and gone repeatedly over the past few hundred thousand years in response to climate change." I think the next step(hopefully this year), will be to establish what the triggers are for the ice shelf collaspe and how quickly it happens. Lots of other good stuff in here as well. Matt

The worrying thing is that this has been going on for 40 years, and from looking at argo float data etc looks to be gathering pace (at least the anom is increasing more rapidly). Most of the water would surely come from basal flow ?. and it's bad news if this is increasing and has done for so long... Particularly with this being one of the suspected causes of the Larsen breakup. What prey tell is being damed up due to the increase precip and what is not ?. A good call though G Mr P it's a Jpeg taken from the PDF (I can't find a web version of it yet (bloody anoying !).) It's also the same size as the font in the PDF.

I am not a fan of the carrot approach either, as it tends to lead to inefficent solutions or the development of deadend systems. Tax works well, look at cig's for example.

Interesting discussion on the new AR4 release on ocean circulations, I've included this snipet because its good for this thread.

Taxation of supply and demand will work, but it depends on the elasticity of the demand or service and it's supply, which is where alternatives come into play. why do you think the major car companies are all rushing towards bio, it's purely and simply because of the price of oil to the consumer. The market will provide alternatives if none exist. There might be a slight lag, but it's a very simple mechanism. Taxation works. Regardless of the motives employed.

Certainly at work though if the alarm goes off, it orderly and quickly out of the building let those people investigate where it's there job. The loss of revenue from leaving the building for a bit is worthwhile in the long run. That fits perfectly with my AGW beliefs in that we should reduce CO2 now if it's not needed great we lose possibly a bit of revenue as a world. It's a nice loud alarm though, good analogy whoever thought it up though, for both sides

I always find summers are always very difficult to judge as it depends so much on the migration of the High. It's pretty safe to say that summer probably won't have an average CET month, they will all be above average. TBH I can see another warm one on the cards no record breaking heat but a CET 2-3 C above average for the whole summer, some prolonger heat spells etc. I see no reason to why the current conditions will downgrade this upcoming summer, the early migration of HP's in April (which normally leads to cooler conditions, but hasn't this time due to the HP's position) often prepare us for a Euro High or a displaced Azores High.

Just to continue the example if you thought there was a chance, surely you would get everyone out of the house first, at least wake them up and get them to the front door.....? Particularly if it were a big house and by the time you found the smoke it was a blazing inferno.

I've (maybe unsurpisingly) have gone for the last option. IMO even at current levels we will have to pay too high a price, ulitimately the price might be far more than we can possibly afford. Cheery thoughts for such as sunny sunday evening.

A bit below the belt and it was tongue in cheek.........Hopefully it has proved a point though.

So you won't mind breathing in 10ppm of sarin gas then for the rest of your life.? Actually that's a good idea all sceptics should be encouraged to do just this......

There are times when the climate has warmed almost as rapidly as today, but removing the Rapid climate change factors such as ocean current changes, volcanic activity etc. I have not seen any evidence to suggest that the change has been as consistantly rapid as it has this last century, therefore the wording unprecidented stands IMO. Where ever we do find rapid climate change over a decadal basis we find mass extinctions occuring, you only have to go back to the last age for this and even post. The effects of the scale of climate change that we are talking about with AGW, current and predicted on Mankind has never been truely explored from a real POV. However civilisations in the past have fallen with CC of a lesser magnitude. What level will our current civilisation stand before it falls.?. Surely the best course of action is to then use the precautionary principle, instead of nit picking these unanswerable questions and take action now to limit what might or might not happen in the future....

Quite agree the section on Ice sheets particularly the WAIS has obviously been seriously tempared/toned down by politics. The answer to this though is to get some serious papers out and increase our knowledge, the problem at the amount is that although everything is pointing towards a worse and worse scenario from the current research there is very little published science to back it up so it can easily be watered down by the anti's.

A very conservative paper, based on the latest papers and research. Well worth a read, I'll ignore the poilitics as I don't really think it has a place in this thread. Personally I would like to see it broken down further into the effects on various ecosystems. More comment later... Probably. Cheers Matt

I've heard that the CH4 program altered alot of it's graphs for the repeat, apparently they sourced them incorrectly, had the wrong time scales on ,10000 years instead of 1000 years and were basically so poorly done that they were forced to change them in order to show the repeat. They are also being forced to issue an appology and 5 min show detailing where they made some fundamental factural errors. Not that I expect this to change the sceptics views in anyway......

The peer review process is there to ensure that any science used is correct, occasionally there are mistakes but not very often at all. A contentious paper should be review more rigourously surely ?. Talking to people that do peer review papers I find that they are very fair in what they do. I can't think of many, if any papers that have been peer reviewed which have been wrong, yes some have been proved wrong afterwards when more evidence is uncovered but that's a different matter.

Care to back that comment up with anything, I'll gladly agree with it if you can otherwise my view is that it's plain wrong. What's laughable is that the sceptics are reduced to attacking easy targets that tbh are nothing to do with AGW or the theory in order to try and score points. This mildly peeves me. There is no evidence to suggest that the peer review process is flawed, it's like an 18 year old complaining that he didn't get his A-level because he didn't understand the question. Let's blame the world, the press, westminster, the corrupt scientists, the process and everything else under the sun. Simple because some theories on the sun arn't accepted. If you can't explain your research, back it up and replicate it then why on earth should anyone believe it.

No there is no evidence what so ever, the CH4 program was correct, completely and utterly, all the links we've posted on here are made up and paid for my maggie's private fund to continue discrediting the miners and although I haven't got a clue it must all be natural, for the very sensible reason that it just must be, If somebody tells me something I must automatically disagree with it, (this was a bugger in school believe me). Sorry the cooling of antarctica, down to increased Polar Jet's and osilations I thought.?

You obviously haven't read this thread yet then. !. I can't think of anything in it that hasn't been challenged. I think a good way of looking at it would be to view it as a hot bath outside on a cold winters day. The hot tap is permanently running into the batch at 35C but heat is constantly being lost. At somepoint an equilibrium is reached and the average temp in the bath might be 20C, Increasing the temp coming out of the tap will quickly heat up the water (re solar output), but you can't get continued warmth at some point a new balance has to be struck (more heat = more heat loss.) The staying the system will only apply to a tiny percentage and will mainly be the world's oceans.

I am probably a number 4, but this will go up as we go through the century.