Warm Air Pulsing into Arctic, Ice Melting

March 1, 2019

Amazing University of Maine animation showing warm air literally pumping into the Arctic, while cold blobs are pushed out into North America.

Temps in the Arctic have been more than 20°C above average creating periodic open water in normally hard-frozen sea ice in the dead of winter: https://t.co/mF6M61bAPz #ClimateChange is here. Let's do something about it#ActOnClimate #climate #energy #climatestrike #GreenNewDeal pic.twitter.com/oKDJDwvYs3

— Mike Hudema (@MikeHudema) March 1, 2019

If you haven’t seen my vid on this, do so now.

Posted by greenman3610
Filed in Crock of the Week

39 Comments »

39 Responses to “Warm Air Pulsing into Arctic, Ice Melting”

Martin Smith Says:

March 4, 2019 at 2:27 am
The animation is showing temperature anomaly. How is it that the air moving into the Arctic suddenly goes from normal to 20C above normal just moving from outside the Arctic to inside the Arctic? The air that moves into the Arctic is clearly much warmer than air in that location should be, but shouldn’t there be a gradient of color change appearing as a “comet” tail trailing behind the air mass as it moves into the Arctic?

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redskylite Says:

March 4, 2019 at 3:54 am
Atmospheric scientists from the University of Albany have recently authored to new studies: Summary from the UoA

Arctic temperatures are warming at a rate more than twice as fast as the overall planet and the trend is not letting up, according to NOAA’s most recent Arctic Report Card. Sea ice in the region is also now declining at an average rate of 12.8 percent per decade, relative to the 1981 to 2010 average.

Though most scientists agree that human-induced global warming is the culprit of the Arctic’s transformation, the cause of its faster warming rates than the rest of the world – known as Arctic Amplification (AA) – is still under great debate.

“The take-home message here is that the melting of Arctic sea ice will not only reduce the habitat for polar bears and open new waterways for ships, but also greatly enhance warming in the region for the coming decades,” Dai said. “This could also impact weather patterns in middle latitudes, causing more frequent intrusions of winter polar vortex into the continental U.S.”

https://www.albany.edu/news/90730.php

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dumboldguy Says:

March 4, 2019 at 8:53 am
“Anomaly” is the key word. The air doesn’t change temperature much at all—it just moves in a mass from where it was “normal” to a place where it’s 20 degrees above what’s “normal” in the new location further north. Also, the scale of the animation is pretty small—any “tails” would be hard to see. Lastly, the frontal boundaries between air masses ARE pretty narrow and well-defined—it always amazes me to see a straight line of clouds followed by cloudless blue sky when a front moves through.

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Sir Charles Says:

March 6, 2019 at 2:17 pm
More than four dozen former military and intelligence officials wrote to President Trump rebuking his administration’s plan to try to deny the government’s own findings that climate change poses a threat to national security, warning that it’s “dangerous to have national security analysis conform to politics.”

=> White House’s plans to counter climate science reports ‘will erode our national security,’ 58 former officials warn

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Keith McClary Says:

March 7, 2019 at 1:29 am
27 Responses to “Warm Air Pulsing into Arctic, Ice Melting”

I only see 3 comments, so I give you this instead:

Climate change comic:
https://www.gocomics.com/looks-good-on-paper/2019/03/07

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- dumboldguy Says:
  
  March 7, 2019 at 8:00 am
  WordPress has gotten fouled up a bit on this post.
  
  Click on “Older Comments” at the bottom left to get back to the missing ones.
  
  Reply
Gingerbaker Says:

March 7, 2019 at 10:36 am
Re methane going up and scientists “don’t know why”. Off the top of my head:

* enormous amounts found leaking from industry pipes

* a termite colony the size of Great Britain found in Australia

* huge expanses of northern territory lakes, bogs, permafrost, sea beds not well-monitored.

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- Sir Charles Says:
  
  March 7, 2019 at 6:25 pm
  Sharp rise in methane levels threatens world climate targets
  
  Very strong atmospheric methane growth in the four years 2014‐2017: Implications for the Paris Agreement
  
  Plain Language Summary
  
  The rise in atmospheric methane (CH4), which began in 2007, accelerated in the past four years. The growth has been worldwide, especially in the tropics and northern mid‐latitudes. With the rise has come a shift in the carbon isotope ratio of the methane. The causes of the rise are not fully understood, and may include increased emissions and perhaps a decline in the destruction of methane in the air. Methane’s increase since 2007 was not expected in future greenhouse gas scenarios compliant with the targets of the Paris Agreement, and if the increase continues at the same rates it may become very difficult to meet the Paris goals. There is now urgent need to reduce methane emissions, especially from the fossil fuel industry.
  
  Reply
- redskylite Says:
  
  March 8, 2019 at 1:43 am
  Shouldn’t be too hard to find all the increasing sources: in the news today and earlier in February is the instances of winter rain in the Arctic, leading to increases in methane release.
  
  Earlier Arctic Rain Is Leading to ‘Methane Emissions Going Bonkers’ : Feb. 18, 2019 10:10AM EST
  
  https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-rain-methane-2629292227.html
  
  It’s Raining on the Greenland Ice. In the Winter.
  
  March 7, 2019
  Changing Weather Is Triggering Melting, Says a New Study
  
  Greenland is not the only place in the far north affected by increasing rain. In recent years, anomalous winter rains have hit the northern Canadian tundra, then refrozen over the surface, sealing in plants that caribou and musk oxen normally forage through the loose snow; in some years, this has decimated herds. And a just-published study from near Fairbanks, Alaska, shows that increasing spring rains are percolating down through the permafrost, thawing it and releasing large amounts of methane, a highly efficient greenhouse gas.
  
  https://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/its-raining-greenland-ice-winter
  
  Reply
  - redskylite Says:
    
    March 8, 2019 at 2:13 am
    The leading greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and halocarbons. These gases are called ‘well mixed’ greenhouse gases because of their long lifetimes of a decade or more, which allows them to disperse evenly around the atmosphere.
    
    Reply
jimbills Says:

March 7, 2019 at 5:22 pm
Author of 1983 EPA Report on Global Warming Explains Why He’s Still Hopeful After 36 Years of Being Ignored
https://earther.gizmodo.com/author-of-1983-epa-report-on-global-warming-explains-wh-1833127786

‘The report predicts a warming of 2 degrees Celsius by the middle of this century, which isn’t so far off from what scientists are predicting today.

In spite of the report’s prescience, looking back on it now is an exercise in frustration. “The shift away from fossil fuels perhaps could be instituted more gradually and therefore less expensively if energy policies were adopted now rather than several decades later,” the authors wrote. This was blasted by Reagan administration officials as being “unnecessarily alarmist”—a reprimand we continue to hear decades later.’

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- dumboldguy Says:
  
  March 7, 2019 at 5:31 pm
  Seidel: “When I used to give talks on climate change, I would describe it as the worst-case public policy issue you can imagine. It is global in nature, it cuts across all sectors of the economy, there are lag times involved, the science is challenging; you couldn’t create a more challenging problem”.
  
  “There are legitimate reasons why this has been so hard to tackle. But I am still optimistic that it will be [tackled]. And I felt we were on a pretty good path up until a recent election”.
  
  After 36 years, he is “still optimistic”? He didn’t really say why that’s so—-IMO, he’s in a state of denial.
  
  Reply
jimbills Says:

March 7, 2019 at 6:05 pm
The Other Kind of Climate Denialism
https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-other-kind-of-climate-denialism

Personally, I have mixed feelings about this one. It’s certainly worth the read, however. The author starts with the title and image byline that suggests climate fatalism equals denial, then leads towards saying fear creates fatalism, then finally finds that her own fear doesn’t lead towards fatalism but towards further motivation.

That’s what I’d suggest – that the public doesn’t truly suffer from too much fear, but a distinct lack of it, and that it’s a bit elitist to think the general public won’t handle fear as well as the scientists and activists on the issue. Eventually, after the initial spate of fear, a dawning realization comes to any halfway level-headed thinker that something has to be done, and that doesn’t require one to be a hyper-educated leftist. It doesn’t necessarily lead to nihilistic apathy, even if it might in a few.

An acceptance of our species’ dire future, a view that has the hallmarks of fatalism, though, can be created by the complete lack of societal action or even concern about climate change, especially after one’s caring deeply about the issue for years. Equating that with denial is irksome, to say the least. I’d love it if humanity started getting its act together.

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redskylite Says:

March 9, 2019 at 3:43 pm
Short and interesting BBC video, featuring an interview with Dark Snow’s Jason Box, on the winter melt by rain. .

Global Warming, now have researchers worried about glaciers, because of rain. It is melting the ice, not just in summer but in winter as well, and if these ice sheets melt enough, the sea levels all around planet Earth will rise several metres. That will swallow many islands, and even other places will will have more erosion with sea levels in places it has never reached before.

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redskylite Says:

March 10, 2019 at 4:40 am
News from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (7 March 2019)

“To many, the Arctic seems like a distant universe — one that could never impact their lives,” said Moon. “But the reality is, changes in the Arctic are increasingly affecting the rest of the world, causing amplified climate change, sea level rise, coastal flooding and more devastating storms.”

https://nsidc.org/news/newsroom/arctic-change-has-widespread-impacts

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