Cold Spring Linked To Dramatic Sea Ice Loss 422
hrvatska writes "An article at Weather Underground reports that researchers have linked large snowstorms and cold spring weather across Britain and large parts of Europe and North America to the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice. It is thought that the Arctic ice loss adds heat to the ocean and atmosphere, which shifts the position of the jet stream, allowing cold air from the Arctic to plunge much further south. Researchers expect that a warming Arctic ocean will drive more extreme weather in North America and Europe (abstract)."
Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? (Score:3, Informative)
Ummm... you can walk from Brooklyn to Queens in the summertime without too much trouble...
Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? (Score:3, Informative)
not over the water you can't
Re:Global warming (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Global warming (Score:5, Informative)
Let's see, here [osti.gov]'s an academic paper mentioning cooler winters as an artifact of global warming, dated from before I was born. And I'm more than old enough to be having this debate with you. What exactly wasn't predicted?
Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, I'm not saying that Global warming isn't happening, but you're just so off base I've got to correct you.
1. Everything absorbs heat (well almost everything)
2. There is no carbon in the atmosphere. It's Carbon dioxide, a GAS. One's an element, the others not. Christ. CO2 absorbs radiation from the sun and then re-radiates it in all directions. So heat that was at one time moving linearly, is now diffuse and goes in all directions. Radiation that traveled down to the earths surface and was then reflected back my ice, snow, water, or whatever, would normally have an unimpeded path back to space. But when it hits the atmosphere, the atmosphere again diffuses the radiation. Some gasses can absorb more than others. The majority of our atmosphere is made up of mostly Nitrogen followed by oxygen. They do not absorb a lot of radiation. By far, the fast majority of greenhouse effect is generated by water vapor (70% or more) followed by CO2. CO2 accounts for less than 0.04% of the atmosphere.
3. Combustion engines do produce carbon, it's deposited on valves, cylinders, exhaust pipes... lucky for us ITS NOT A GAS.
4. They don't, so lets pretend for a second you know what CO2 is, and understand that burning fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide and not carbon. That's fine... but the fact of the matter is burning fossil fuels doesn't significantly increase CO2 in the atmosphere. Even diehard global warming supporting scientists wouldn't say that. They'd argue that the modest increase our activity is creating is dangerous. But futhermore, CO2 isn't the biggest problem. Water vapor is. The soot from Coal burning power plants, factories and poorly maintained car exhausts are an even bigger problem. Soot gets into the atmosphere and gives water droplets something to cling to... they increase water vapor in the atmosphere. But scientists don't want the issue to get swept under the rug, after all, CO2 is still a problem if not quite as bad. So lets get of all fossil fuels they say.
5. God damn it learn what carbon is!
6. If there was a God, he'd have stuck you dead by now.
7. What in your entire previous six points had anything to do with logic? You don't even know what CARBON is, how the greenhouse effect works, and you're trying to school someone on their stupidity in regards to both?
Great to stay credible. Where's my maple sugar? (Score:4, Informative)
Last month the cold weather was because warm air from the south rose over the arctic cold air, thus forcing the colder arctic air down to the southern latitudes. So now it is because last summer there was less ice that froze over long before spring ever came. So how again did the ice covering all the arctic now has caused a colder spring? Did anyone tell these guys that the arctic is still frozen over as we speak? It's not open water. So why is the jet stream being affected? I'm just not clear on all this.
I do know one thing. It's still cold outside and the sow is still on the ground. How is this different from any other Canadian winter or spring for that matter? I'm just lucky enough to remember the weather before all this global warming came along. So how is it different again? How is getting snow in the winter anything unusual? How is snow on the ground in March different? How is maple sugar season changed?
Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? (Score:5, Informative)
not over the water you can't
Exactly. There is no water between Brooklyn and Queens (they are both on Long Island). I LOLed.
Re:Global warming (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't get it either. And it isn't just ignorance, it's outright stupidity. If you've been informed, and still don't understand, that's stupidity. And it's been explained over and over and over again.
Weather is not climate and global warming is not climate change.
One more time:
1) Radiation in and out are the only methods of changing the average temperature of the earth.
2) The sun emits radiation from the near-infrared range up through UV.
3) When molecules absorb radiation, the reemit it in a random direction.
4) Oxygen absorbs and reemits UV radiation, spitting most of it back out into space.
5) Atmospheric gasses are transparent to visible light, so the visible light radiation is absorbed by the surface of the earth.
6) the surface warms, and reemits lower energy thermal radiation (IR).
7) So-called "greenhouses gasses" like CO2, water vapor, and methane which make up only small parts of the atmosphere are opaque to IR radiation. They absorb this radiation, gain energy, and physically collide with the other gasses in the atmosphere, heating them. Nearly all heating of the earth's atmosphere is from this interaction.
8) The GHG's then emit an IR photon in a random direction, where it is reabsorbed by another molecule and reemitted on and on until it happens to ping pong out into space, radiating heat away from the earth.
9) The higher the concentration of these trace gasses in the atmosphere, the longer it takes for a photon to leave earth, and the warmer the atmosphere is, on average.
10) Man burns lots of long chains of carbohydrates which result in a forced higher concentration of CO2. This happens slowly over time.
11) Plants do not gobble it all up, because plants don't live on CO2 alone. Some of it dissolves in the ocean, causing ocean acidification, which is a completely different problem. Regardless, enough of it stays in the atmosphere.
12) The earth slowly warms because of CO2 forcing. Additionally, higher average temperatures result in more water vapor in the air, and water vapor is an even more effective green house gas than CO2. This leads to the "runaway" greenhouse gas effect.
13) This process that produces higher average global temperatures from man-made activities is called anthropogenic global warming.
14) While the global mean temperature is higher, local average temperatures will certainly vary. Some places will become warmer on average, some cooler, some wetter, some drier, on average, than before.
15) These average changes at different points in the year change the overall climate of those places. This is called climate change. It is a product of global warming.
16) A changed climate results in different weather patterns for an area than the weather patterns that existed before climate change.
17) The weather, as influenced by a changing climate as a result of global warming, is not necessarily warmer in every region of at all times. It is simply different than it was.
This should not be complicated for an educated audience to comprehend.
Re:Magic Gulf stream (Score:4, Informative)
Here in NW Europe, we're being told we're kept warm in the winter by the "warm waters of the Gulf Stream". Unfortunately, we don't literally bathe in those waters. Heat is transported by SW winds that blow across them, picking up moisture which is then rained out over us and releasing latent heat.
This unseasonably weather is nothing to do with the Gulf stream weakening, it's simply the winds are blowing in the opposite direction (from the cold, dry land). Why they are prolonged is to do with the jet stream position's much further to the south. The mid-latitude jet's a product of the atmosphere's thermal gradient (and some orographically introduced wobbles) and its odd, prolonged position could quite conceivably be to do with Arctic sea ice loss.
Re:Ask Michael Oppenheimer. (Score:1, Informative)
Here are some of their lies.
March 20, 2000, from The Independent, According to Dr David Viner of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, snowfall in Britain would become “a very rare and exciting event” and “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
June 30, 1989, Associated Press U.N. OFFICIAL PREDICTS DISASTER, SAYS GREENHOUSE EFFECT COULD WIPE SOME NATIONS OFF MAP–entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco-refugees,” threatening political chaos, said Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect.
1990 Michael Oppenheimer, The Environmental Defense Fund, “(By) 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots”(By 1996) The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computersThe Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.”
1988 or 1989, Dr. James Hansen (In an interview with author Rob Reiss. Reiss asked how the greenhouse effect was likely to affect the neighborhood below Hansen’s office in NYC in the next 20 years). Hansen, looking out the window, answered: ”The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.There will be more police cars.[since] you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
1969 Lubos Moti, Czech physicist ”It is now pretty clearly agreed that CO2 content [in the atmosphere] will rise 25% by 2000. This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.
January 2000 Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund commenting (in a NY Times interview) on the mild winters in New York City. ”But it does not take a scientist to size up the effects of snowless winters on the children too young to remember the record-setting blizzards of 1996. For them, the pleasures of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling, and the delight of a snow day off from school is unknown.”
If any other real scientist was as full of shit as a global warming scientist well we wouldn't call them scientists but frauds.