The Arctic Climate Paradox: recent snowy, cold winters are a result of a warming Arctic
USA Today, ran a story (USA Today Feb 6, 2014) indicating that the snowy, frigid weather of January and the tens of thousands of delayed or cancelled flights cost US airline companies some $150 million dollars. Economists estimate that that was chicken feed to the 30 million-strong flying business public who lost an estimated $2.5 billion dollars in decreased productivity, missed meals, foregone opportunities, lost contracts and lapsed hotel bookings, etc. A similar piece appeared in Bloomberg News, where the author focused on the economic impact of the unusually cold and snowy weather as a factor of these cancelled flights. Neither story mentioned anything about the probable underlying cause---global warming. In fact, the media generally present our recent spate of cold and snowy winters as a mild refutation of the “pointy headed” scientists and their unfounded” support for anthrogenic global warming. (Only a few days earlier, the NYT ran a piece on the State department Environmental Review of the Keystone XL Pipeline project which will carry environmentally disastrous tar sand product (liquified bitumen) south to Texas and other ports for processing in Texas and transport elsewhere. This will be burned as cheap dirty oil somewhere and the users will dump the considerable carbon wastes into the atmosphere and only dramatically increase global warming. Thus here we see how one group of businessmen are hit with the costly effects of global warming while another group like the Koch brothers and others exacerbate the problem and pocket the profits.)
It is a paradox difficult to accept that cold winters may be the result of arctic warming. It’s colder not warmer this year...does that not refute the concept of global warming in progress? But the difficult to understand inconvruity of this cooler-than-average winter season (for the USA) is as strong an argument--nay better-- than our recent waves of summer heat data in support of global warming.
First let us review some uncontested facts. The earth, as a whole, is warming---there is no question. According to our own government’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data, during the 130 year period from 1880 to 2010 the average earth temperature has RISEN just short of 1 degree Celsius (or more precisely about 0.85 degrees C which is just about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit).
One of the most dramatic effects of global warming has been the easily seen and documented loss of ice cover in the Arctic where the extent and thickness of the Arctic ice sheet has dramatically decreased. The North Pole is covered by an ocean, the Arctic Ocean, which in area is only slightly larger than the continental USA. That ocean has been in the past almost completely covered by thick, reflective sea ice. But in recent decades sea ice has been slowly thinning and melting away as the effects of global warming take effect.
Friday, February 7, 2014
PARADOX : GLOBAL WARMING CAUSES COLD WINTERS
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (See nsidc.org, downloaded 2/6/14) both the area of ice cover of the Arctic Sea, as well as the actual volume of Arctic Sea ice are less than their long-term averages calculated during the period from 1981 to 2010. Sea ice is without doubt melting away. So it is clear that it is warmer up there! (Warmth is relative of course. Arctic January temperatures average around -29 deg Fahrenheit, while summer temperatures hover around the freezing point of ice at 32 deg F.)
Both the area of cover of arctic sea ice and the actual volume of Arctic sea ice are considerably less than their long-term averages calculated from 1981 to 2010
In January of 2013 ice cover in the Arctic dropped to well below long term average (though it was not the lowest level reached). These January 2013 readings fall to a level just within two standard deviations (σ) from the long term mean. That means that the present low levels of ice cover are far away from the normal fluctuation around the average. The recent data ARE “abnormal”. On average, the “normal” area covered by ice is about 5.6 million square miles. In January of 2013 ice covered only 5.3 million square miles or about 300,000 square miles LESS than the the long-term average. The lost ice-cover in the Arctic Ocean is approximately equal to the combined areas of Texas (our largest State with 261,000 square miles) and Louisiana. Where has that ice equal to the area of Texas and Louisiana gone? Melted away as a result of warmer global temperatures to evaporate and enter the global ocean. That image is difficult to pass off as a fluke of nature and is difficult to deny. Just look at the aerial photographs.l
Not only has the area covered by ice decreased by the an area similar to that of Texas and Louisiana together, but new technology has permitted satellites to probe the THICKNESS of the ice as well. These data have clearly indicated that ice thickness is also decreasing.
So who cares about the loss of arctic sea ice? What effects could it have on us? The direct cause of rising sea level, altered climes, altered rain patterns,AND cancelled air flights and the indirect costs to businesses are probable effects. WARMER arctic can cause severe COLD weather in the contiguous USA and have a global impact on business too.
There is a POSITIVE FEED BACK mechanism in the Arctic ocean-atmosphere-lithosphere system or a vicious cycle at work there. The more Arctic ocean water that is exposed during the summer season to the sun’s rays as a result of retreating ice--the warmer the Arctic Ocean water gets. (Since solar radiation is absorbed better by sea water than by reflective ice and snow.) When ice-free sea water absorbs more heat in summer, it forms less ice cover in winter--the more sea water exposed--the more solar radiation penetrates its depths, the warner the Arctic sea water gets, the less ice it generates. etcetera, etcetera. (This can not happen in the Antarctic where a solid rocky continent underlies the ice sheet. There small changes in ice sheet thicknesses due to global warming may go undetected and do not have such dramatic effects.)
Now how might this warmer arctic lead to colder temperatures in Washington, DC or Peoria, Ohio ? If the air over the Arctic is even slightly warmer it can have an effect on the boundary zone known as the Polar Front. (Remember even at these recent elevated temperatures the Arctic is still on on average perhaps 40 F degrees colder in winter than the air masses over the mid-latitudes, such as New York or Washington, so even warmer polar air would feel very much colder than normal to us. In the past that cold polar air was generally confined to the high latitudes by the large differences in density between the very cold polar air and the much warmer mid latitude air.
There are physical and aerodynamic factors which control the shape of the boundary zone (the Polar Front) between the very cold polar air and warmer mid latitude air masses. These confining forces are weakened when the two air masses are closer in temperature, i.e. when the polar air mass is warmer. The boundary zone (Polar Front) between cold polar air and warmer mid-latitude air becomes more fluid under these circumstances. That fluidity generates more and deeper surges of outbreaks of cold polar air southward into the lower forty-eight. These cold air surges into warmer air initiate sever winter storms along the boundary zone. Thus warmer polar temperatures, lead to less sea ice, expanded areas of sea water exposed to sunlight, and result in higher summer Arctic sea water temperatures, causing decreased winter sea ice cover, and in the arctic summer further sea water exposed to warming sunlight, so the next summer is warmer, and so on in a vicious cycle that warms up the polar region and its air. The warmer (though still relatively cold to us) polar air is less confined by physical forces and then is more likely to “break out” forming large “tongues” of cold air which uncharacteristically penetrate far south into areas they usually do not go.
It is in this way that the unusually cold and snowy weather of our recent winter results from a WARMER Arctic Ocean.
We can only hope that humankind will come to a realization of the danger of global warming and begin to make changes which can help stabilize or reverse its effects. We hope our business leaders realize that global warming will affect profits. Let's goad government leaders, often too much in the grip of financial and business forces with short term bottom line agendas, to begin to realize and help publicize the negative effects our unthinking, irrational behaviors are having on the earth’s atmosphere and initiate corrective changes.
Get the picture?
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
THANK YOU MR KARZAI!
I read yesterday (NYT Feb 4, 2014) that Mr. Karzai of Afghanistan has been having long term and secret peace talks with the Taliban. The Obama Administration is miffed. They were not included in Mr. Karzai's secret talks. As I recall this has been a long term goal of the Afghanistan president.--peace with the Taliban. He has begged Mr. Obama to join in to no avail. That apparently is not on Mr. Obama's agenda. He would rather keep a residue of troops in that mountainous and difficult nation until hell freezes over.
Mr. Obama is stuck with the outdated dangerous idea foisted upon him by his military advisers and business associates ---the dangerous concept of US world hegemony...i.e. control of land and resources by military means so as to exploit these resources or to prevent our competitors to exploit them. Afghanistan is valuable territory based on its central location, corridor for oil and gas, and its own valuable mineral wealth. Imperialism and its modern equivalent may have been valid during the Cold War, but for a nation like the US struggling with unemployment, a fragile economy, crumbling roads and infrastructure, inadequate educational system and massive debts...it's out of reach for us now and not in OUR best interest. Time to put those old ideas to bed and focus on what we can do to improve our situation here at home.
Thank you Mr. Karzai...don't sign that status of forces agreement . You are doing yourself, the Afghanis and the citizens of the USA a great favor. Perhaps we can finally close the bloody books on this unnecessary war, bring our boys home and cut down on our wasteful military adventures abroad and the vast expenses which provide no benefit for the vast majority.
And why not?
Mr. Obama is stuck with the outdated dangerous idea foisted upon him by his military advisers and business associates ---the dangerous concept of US world hegemony...i.e. control of land and resources by military means so as to exploit these resources or to prevent our competitors to exploit them. Afghanistan is valuable territory based on its central location, corridor for oil and gas, and its own valuable mineral wealth. Imperialism and its modern equivalent may have been valid during the Cold War, but for a nation like the US struggling with unemployment, a fragile economy, crumbling roads and infrastructure, inadequate educational system and massive debts...it's out of reach for us now and not in OUR best interest. Time to put those old ideas to bed and focus on what we can do to improve our situation here at home.
Thank you Mr. Karzai...don't sign that status of forces agreement . You are doing yourself, the Afghanis and the citizens of the USA a great favor. Perhaps we can finally close the bloody books on this unnecessary war, bring our boys home and cut down on our wasteful military adventures abroad and the vast expenses which provide no benefit for the vast majority.
And why not?
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