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Earth

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)."
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Cold Spring Linked To Dramatic Sea Ice Loss

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  • by alen ( 225700 ) on Wednesday March 27, 2013 @02:56PM (#43294813)

    and earlier times

    if you believe in global warming then the current cold temperatures are a return to normalcy and nothing to be alarmed about. up until the early 1900's when we had "normal" weather and temperatures NYC was so bitter cold that the rivers would freeze enough that people were able to walk from brooklyn to queens

  • Re:Global warming (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lgw ( 121541 ) on Wednesday March 27, 2013 @02:58PM (#43294823) Journal

    Creation "science" has an explanation for all the related scientific data these days, and every time e.g. a geologist discovers something new and interesting, hey, no problem, they can change their story and explain that too.

    Actual science predicts unusual measurements. Junk science says "hey, no problem, our model can explain that too".

  • Re:Global warming (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Spy Handler ( 822350 ) on Wednesday March 27, 2013 @03:00PM (#43294861) Homepage Journal

    Publicly: The reason you're freezing your ass off is that unprecedented Arctic ice melting is shifting the cold air further south, all caused by man-made Climate Change.

    Privately: This cold weather is a travesty.

  • by khallow ( 566160 ) on Wednesday March 27, 2013 @03:50PM (#43295527)

    Only problem with this is that the costs are already showing up in peoples insurances.

    Ever hear of moral hazard? The US federal government has millions of dollars for disaster relief from floods, but can't find thousands of dollars for disaster prevention. They are effectively paying the world to build in the US's flood-prone areas. Insurance companies won't touch that.

  • Re:Bububu.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by i kan reed ( 749298 ) on Wednesday March 27, 2013 @03:51PM (#43295533) Homepage Journal

    Look. Stop. When you're about to post in a climate thread, ask yourself "Does this debate need another flimsy strawman argument?" If you answered "yes", regardless of what you believe, you are part of the problem, and why there is still "debate".

  • by Chris Alemany ( 2877519 ) on Wednesday March 27, 2013 @04:04PM (#43295723)
    This is just the latest in a series of published work finding that weakening ocean and land temperature contrasts between high and mid northern latitudes is having a profound effect on the Jet Stream. Search for jet stream and arctic on Google Scholar and they'll pop up. They all show that the poles live and die by the circumpolar winds that 'lock' the cold air in those high latitudes (Antarctica included by the way!). If those circumpolar winds diminish, then the cold can effectively 'escape'. In the Northern Hemisphere, it results in the jet stream becoming extremely contorted, sets up 'blocking' and we get these long periods of abnormal weather (extra cold in late winter/early spring, extra heat in late summer/early fall?) The weather channel has a great rundown of the jet stream *today*. Illustrates it perfectly. http://www.weather.com/video/forecast-for-your-spring-35814 [weather.com] Lets just thank our lucky stars that Antarctica is a continent surrounded by ocean, and not an ocean surrounded by continents, like the Arctic. This fundamental difference means the southern circumpolar winds have a huge contrast to work from with the gigantic ice fields of the continent versus the far away lands of Southern America, Oceania, and Africa. Ironically, the ozone hole actually makes the Antarctic colder and the circumpolar winds stronger... so as it fixes itself as human CFC emissions dimish, those winds will start to weaken and warming will be able to creep in there as well. But at least that buys us time. Were the Arctic and Antarctic equal, global warming would have likely been much more immediate. Though who knows, maybe that would have spurred us to action before today (which is still never?) The world and science that attempts to explain it is wonderful and terrifying all at the same time. Lets hope we can get our acts together and change our course before we cause so much change to our atmosphere and oceans that we are unable to avoid the clear and present dangers now on tap.
  • by mc6809e ( 214243 ) on Wednesday March 27, 2013 @04:29PM (#43296077)

    According to the most recent SST anomaly map found here [noaa.gov], much of the Gulf Stream is anomalously warmer than expected.

  • Re:Global warming (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KeensMustard ( 655606 ) on Wednesday March 27, 2013 @05:15PM (#43296623)

    So uh... when Europe was having warmer weather during Winter and Spring a few years back, everyone [Citation needed] said that Global Warming was the cause [Citation needed] (and that it would never snow in Europe again, [Citation needed] skiing would be extinct, [Citation needed] etc. etc).

    Fill in the required information.

    So what was happening a few years ago? Global Cooling?

    You tell us. What did your model predict? How did these predictions align with actual outcomes?

    Why is is that no matter what happens, it is always the effects of Global Warming

    You are criticising climate models for being too accurate. What result were you expecting?

  • by khallow ( 566160 ) on Wednesday March 27, 2013 @06:04PM (#43297279)

    Wow, thats about as much intellectual drivel as I would expect out of a political prisoner fresh out of labour-camp.

    I see you fit the profile quite nicely. Let's take a look.

    Climate Change is an acknowledgment that the Earth has many interconnected systems that can be aversely or even positively affected by changes to the environment.

    The word I was criticizing was "accuracy". This bullshit isn't accurate. Anthropogenic global warming is accurate. It describes the key characteristics of the phenomena, namely, that it is man-caused and that it is a global warming.

    Also a tacit acknowledgement that once it occurs its nearly impossible to reverse. It just so happens that it also nullifies any unfortunate and misguided pseudo-intellectualism vaulted or supported by the "Global Warming" meme of the 80s.

    That's an awful lot of pointless verbiage for a supposedly "tacit" acknowledgement. No, there is no such acknowledgement. "Climate change" simply means a change in climate. All the rest of your claim is completely unfounded and not implied by the label.

    the best you can do is question the motives of "scientists" to prove your point

    But of course. There are trillions of dollars riding on convincing the public that AGW is dire enough that we need to spend a lot of money. That's many times what you'd need to completely buy the field of climatology.

  • Re:Global warming (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Wednesday March 27, 2013 @06:12PM (#43297375) Journal

    Except that in the context of climate, one, two, five, and even 10 years out are not exactly the distant future. Climate scientists tell us even a couple degrees makes a big difference, and then have margins of error that big even on very short time scales.

    Quite honestly if they can't do better than that it means the models are two immature to be useful for anything other than the development of improved models. Nothing wrong with...you have to start some place. Still if you expect anyone to make more than the feel good "green" policy decision and actually get popular support for actions that will amount to something they need to find better models.

    I am not denying things are changing. We can all see that. Looking at the facts we do know like the real magnitude in terms of tons of carbon we are pushing forward in the cycle give us good reason to think outcomes will be different than in the past. You can't ask someone to sacrifice their livelihood or given up their on opportunities to stop something you really don't know the effects of; its not right to so; and in practice they won't listen.

  • Re:Global warming (Score:2, Interesting)

    by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Wednesday March 27, 2013 @07:54PM (#43298209)
    To my semi-trained eye, it looks like if you stare at the data long enough, you can convince yourself there's an upward trend in temps, you stare at it a little longer, you can convince yourself that there's some longish timescale periodicity too, all within the error bars. Looks like a bunch of noise to me, and I look for weak signals in noise for a living, so I do know what I'm talking about to a certain extent. That said, I do remember people predicting about 10 years ago that melted ice caps can act as a negative feedback mechanism for high latitude temperatures, and thus, global warming->longer/colder winters at high latitudes.
  • Re:Global warming (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Alioth ( 221270 ) <no@spam> on Thursday March 28, 2013 @06:02AM (#43301067) Journal

    They did. Over ten years ago there were articles on how global warming could result in northern Europe getting colder.

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