blizzard1024

I respect your opinion and appreciate your polite response. The biggest confusion in my mind and others with my viewpoint is how can the Arctic have warm temperatures in the 1930s similar to today's and yet the sea ice does not response and drop. This is counter intuitive. See With falling Arctic temperatures between the 1930s and 1970s, sea ice minimums in the summer time frame are falling. This does not make any sense. Please advise. I am all ears...

I respect your opinion and appreciate your polite response. The biggest confusion in my mind and others with my viewpoint is how can the Arctic have warm temperatures in the 1930s similar to today's and yet the sea ice does not response and drop. This is counter intuitive. See With falling Arctic temperatures between the 1930s and 1970s, sea ice minimums in the summer time frame are falling. This does not make any sense. Please advise. I am all ears...

The AMO has been in the warm phase since the late 1990s so little by little sea ice coverage shrinks. Then this year we had a strong El Nino and hence a low sea ice year. We only have about 40 years worth of reliable sea ice coverage data and the satellite monitoring began during a known cool period in the 20th century when sea ice likely was at a maximum in coverage. So we are seeing the downward trend of a cyclical process. And the Vize, Russia observation is just weather, not climate. There has been tremendous cold in Asia this fall. The average global temperature from the satellites is around +.4C which is not that big of a deal and we are in a cooling trend as the effects of the strong El Nino fade. There is nothing unusual about our current climate. CO2 may be leadling to some of the observed warming but climate scientists, in my opinion, underestimate the natural variability of our climate system.

Arctic sea ice likely has been low and declining because of the warm phase of the AMO which started in the 1990s and is still peaking. Notice from the diagram below that the cold phase of the AMO was in the 1970s when satellites began measuring sea ice accurately Hence waters going into the Arctic Basin from the north Atlantic have been warmer than normal. Thus sea ice is affected and Arctic temperatures are higher, sea ice lower. Once this reverses sea ice will recover in the Arctic Basin and Arctic temperatures will fall off again. This is strong evidence that the sea ice is cyclical and related to the AMO. This years warmth as seen from the reanalysis data and even the more accurate satellite data is related to the very strong El Nino we just had and there is a lag effect. Land temperatures have fallen about 1C since peaking from this El Nino. So its all downhill from here. Also remember that reanalysis data, especially in the Arctic regions is unreliable, and even the satellite data is not as good for the Arctic because of the skewed angle of the satellite at our high latitudes.

That's very interesting. So are global methane levels expected to rise dramatically soon? I saw a talk on climate change recently by Dr. Dressler and he stated that methane levels have risen sharply over the past 100 years or so but have stabilized (for now) and we don't quite understand all the processes that govern its atmospheric concentrations. He did not focus on this much. It was more of a sidebar in his talk.

Maybe I am sticking my head in where it does not belong(yeah...probably) as I am NOT an expert on methane and this subject matter. So I am all ears here. My question is: weren't summers warmer in the Arctic during the Holocene Climatic Optimum 6-8 thousand YBP? This is what was in my climo course in 2008 so if it has been refuted over the past 4-5 years then fine. Please give me the reference. But if it still holds, is there evidence of excessive methane leaks in any kind of paleo data from this time period? That would be interesting because the climate did not warm much more and in fact cooled after this, as orbital parameters began to look more like what we have today. Also it was postulated during this time period that summer sea ice probably melted away and was seasonal. Polar bears still survived. The orbital variations (I believe precessional tilt) were favoring higher summer temperatures in the Arctic and NH 6-8K YBP. My point is that we may be looking at natural variations from a warming climate which are always exaggerated in the NH polar regions. That is a paleoclimatology fact. So any warming trend will be much higher in the NH polar regions and there is some breaking mechanism (unknown) that slow or negates the trend in methane releases. The earth has warmed rapidly in the past and the methane "death spiral" did not occur.

why would you call the passenger pigeon a walmart bird? There were estimated to be so many of them that they would literally darken the sky when they migrated through. Now wouldn't that be awesome if we could see something like that? anyway, this is not a bird forum...sorry I brought that in. It pains me to see majestic eagles mangled by wind farms that's all. and yes it is an emotional thing. so let's stick to methane and climate change and science. facts. and what we perceive as truth.

The automobile when it become popular back in the 1950s and 60s is postulated to have wiped out certain species of birds...and they have stabilized at much lower levels now. Cats too have wiped out a bunch of species and they are now steady at a much lower level of population. Large buildings in cities have wiped out many species and they are steady at much lower levels. Cell towers also the same...and now wind farms. It is just nickeling and diming species downward and downward population wise. I have seen it over the last 30 years and it is one more threat. Birds are doomed in the long run...or at least the biodiversity in birds. we will always have the "walmart" birds... starlings, pigeons, house sparrows, and a few others. sad. let's get back on topic.

That is an ad hominiem attack. Rush Limbaugh is a right wing wacko who is a big reason why our middle class is buying into the BS that lowering taxes on wealthy will solve our problems. He is disgusting. Just because I view things differently than the mainstream climate folks...and still yet believe in GHG climate change... still invites such attacks. By the way, I am an operational meteorologist for 21 years published many papers on weather...have a MS in meteorology too and have taken many climate courses including one recently at the graduate level just to learn... not for any degree. And oh yeah...I got an A and was the top student in the class. I have been monitoring our climate since the 80s. So don't write me off as a non climate scientist. I understand to a very high degree how the atmosphere and climate system works including radiative tranfer. My GPA for my BS was 3.92 and for my MS was 3.95 while working a full time job and raising kids and I went to PSU a very tough program!!! I also authored a landmark paper on forecasting heavy snowstorms that still gets referenced today. So don't write me off as just a meteorologist that knows squat about climate. That is condescending. I remember when all the meteorologist who couldn't hack the hard core math changed majors and became climatology majors back in the 80s! It is a lot different now and there are very very smart people working in climo studies. So I take nothing away from their intelligence now...it is totally different. Some of the best and brightest students go into climate studies and there is heavy duty math now.... Also I am an avid bird watcher and it kills me to see all these wind farms ruining habitat and killing many many birds. There are very inefficient and not able to sustain themselves without government subsidies. Yes I don't agree with the mining practice either and that pisses me off too. But coal, oil and natural gas is the way to go for now until a better cost effective alternative is available unless we want too go back to the 1800s....many many people would suffer and die. I know some of the radical left would like to see the earth's population crash...humans are the scourge or cancer of the Earth according to them. So let climate change happen and kills billions.... Man is this f'ed up.... you people have no clue what cutting back CO2 emissions would do to the world's economy and our standard of living. I want my kids to enjoy a middle class existence not excessive just what they need. anyway...this is a feudal argument.

So what do you propose we do? Cut down CO2 emissions and throw the world's economy back to the stone age? There are 7 billion of us on the planet and most are extremely poor and destitute. They need energy and many third world countries have coal, natural gas and oil but are being forced to use clean energy alternatives that are not efficient. Hundreds of millions or more are living shortened life spans because they use charcoal for heating and cooking. They abuse their local environment by cutting down all their trees for charcoal and their average life span because of the smoke in their homes is in the 40s!! We have got to let these third world nations develop a power grids. "Green" energy just is not efficient enough at this time. Pure and simple. So basically we should continue to emit to keep the world's economy from imploding (God knows we are close to this anyway) and let science work on making more efficient carbon neutral energy sources...solar panels....geothermal....waves...and maybe wind. I hate wind energy because it destroys the beautiful mountain tops where I live and is a bird and bat shredder. I see wind as a mean form of green. We will have to learn to adapt to the changes in climate...however severe. But climate change seem to be slow right now...what? around .2C/decade. I think this is the lesser of two evils. World anarchy or a warmer climate? Winners and losers, that is what it will be. If you look at history...there are always winners and losers as centuries go by for whatever reason. So this climate change issue will introduce another factor that mankind will somehow adapt to. But please don't wipe out the world's economies!!!! It's bad enough already....

So you are saying that this ESAS source of methane is going to spiral out of control and forever change our climate. I am sorry.... prior to the Holocene, there were very rapid fluctuations both warming and cooling of our climate and somehow melting/freezing permafrost and CH4 releases/uptakes did not spiral the planet's climate out of control. We are talking trace gases here...ppm and ppb for CH4! I believe the Earth is warming due to GHG (don't say I am an Anthony Watts worshiper)...but 3C warming I don't believe over a 100-200 years will be that bad. I think the climate models are warming us up too quickly and there is a lot of warming in the pipeline as Hansen has said. But we will adapt. It is even possible that the water vapor feedback is overstated and we see only 1-2C additional warming. Generally warmer climates are good for mankind. If it was the other way around...then people would be scared. I am of the camp that the oceans provide a huge dampening effect on the climate. So forcings led to slow responses. Very slow. That I believe is fundamentally how life survived all the chaos that volcanoes, asteroids etc have wrecked on the planet in the past. Releases of methane from a source in the Arctic somehow is going to wreck the Earth's climate...COME ON MAN!

I have to agree that this is BS scare mongering. 8000 years ago during the Holocene climatic optimum the Arctic was 2-4C warmer than today. There is postulated to have been a complete melt of the Arctic sea ice in summer and the climate rapidly warmed. Why was there not a huge release of methane that spun the climate out of control with that warm period? The climate is a self regulating machine with a lot of feedbacks and "states". Yes is could warm...but it would stabilize at a new equilibrium level. Otherwise, anytime it warms, or cools for that matter, the climate would spin out of control. We are here now and life abounds on earth BECAUSE our climate stabilizes. This article and "research" is pure stupidity. Shameful.