Posts Tagged ‘Little Ice Age’

A year without summer in the Cairngorms and in the highlands of Lapland

August 15, 2015

It is successive cool summers and the persistence of snow and ice from one winter to the next which will cause the next little ice age. Of course the absence of summer in the highlands of Lapland and Scotland in 2015 does not necessarily mean that an ice age is upon us. But in the language of “climate science” (which is no science), it is entirely consistent with the coming of an ice age.

This year we have had a fairly miserable summer in Sweden but in the highlands of Lapland, conditions have gone directly from a “meteorological spring” to “meteorological autumn”. And even in the Scottish Cairngorms snow from last winter is still persisting and creating some impressive sculptures as it melts.

Telegraph: Low summer temperatures mean snow continues to cling to the mountainsides of the Scottish National Park, even in the middle of August. But as the patches begin to melt from below, and water flows downhill, vast caverns – some big enough to walk through – are formed.

These striking pictures were captured by Helen Rennie at Ciste Mhearad in the northern Cairngorms.

Melting snow leaves behind magical frozen caves in Scotland

Helen Rennie at Ciste Mhearad Photo: Helen Rennie

In Lapland, the highlands have officially skipped summer and gone directly from spring to autumn conditions.

Swedish Radio:

There was no summer this year in the Tarfala highlands of northern Lapland. They have gone from meteorologic spring to autumn without going through any summer according to the temperatures says SMHI meteorologist Sandra Andersson. “If the summer has not formally come by 1st August we can go directly to autum instead and so it was for Tarfala” says Sandra Andersson.

How common is it to skip a season? “In the highlands it happens occasionally. Even Falsterbo in Skåne (southern Sweden) have sometimes skipped winter but it is not so common”

Even in Stekenjokk in the southern highlands of Lapland it is is now officially autumn, which means that the average temperature during the day after 1st August did not exceed ten degrees for five days in a row. 

Kebnekaises sydtopp. Foto: Stockholms universitet.

Southern top of Kebnekaise Foto: Stockholms universitet.

 

The ice age cometh – Iceland has coldest summer in over 20 years

August 8, 2015

It is cool summers – not cold winters – which will be the harbingers of the coming of a little ice age. In the north of Iceland it has been the coldest summer in over 30 years (since 1983) and in the south it has been the coolest since 1992.

Iceland

IcelandMonitor:

The first thirteen weeks of summer this year have been the coldest in Reykjavik in over twenty years, reveals Icelandic meteorologist Trausti Jónsson.

The northern city of Akureyri fares even worse – one has to go back around thirty years to find a colder summer. Last year was Akureyri’s warmest summer in 67 years.

Summer in Reykjavik has not been this cold since 1992, although the summer of 1979 was by far the coldest. The warmest summer in Reykjavik in the past 67 years was in 2010.

Summer in Akureyri has not been this cold since 1983.

And meanwhile the UK summer has been pretty miserable as well:

Paul Homewood: As I indicated a couple of weeks ago, July has been another miserably cold affair, despite a couple of hot days at the start of the month.

The UK as a whole has been 0.7C below the 1981-2010 average, with the west and north particularly cool. In Scotland, it was the coldest July since 1998. This is the third cool month on the trot, making the May to July start to the holiday season the coldest since 1996.

Despite a mild winter and early spring, UK temperatures year to date are now running 0.2C below the 1981-2010 average.

One cool summer increased Arctic ice by 30% – another indicator of the coming ice age?

July 22, 2015

A new paper in Nature geoscience confirms that the “cool” summer of 2013 increased Arctic ice volume by a third. It increased again in 2014 by 25%. Two cool summers have increased Arctic ice volume by 1.33 x 1.25 = 1.41 (41%).

The authors claim that this indicates that Arctic sea ice may be more resilient than has been previously considered, but I would  suggest that this also indicates something much more significant. It suggests to me that the conditions needed to trigger a little ice age (lasting 3 – 5 decades) are not so difficult to conceive of. With low solar activity, a few cool summers and a volcanic eruption or two would more than suffice. Even the long term shift from the current interglacial and back to glacial conditions (where interglacials last for 10 -20 millenia and glacial periods last even longer) could also probably be triggered by a few key events occurring together.

It is worth noting that for the last few years, ice cover in the Antarctic has been higher than it is has ever been since records began. The Arctic ice cover reached a very low level in 2012 but has rebounded quite strongly. Arctic ice levels are at the same level as in the 1980s.

By constantly rewriting historical data, the global warming orthodoxy try to show that every year is warmer than the artificially cooled past. Raw data shows no such warming. Satellite records show no such warming. It is only data sets where raw data is recalculated every year by very dodgy algorithms to give a calculated value for “global temperature” that warming shows up.

Global climatic changes must also show up as local weather. And this has been a miserable summer so far. June was colder and wetter – as perceived – than usual and July is proving to be colder and wetter than I have any memory of. My personal empirical observations would suggest that the shift into another little ice age has started.

Increased Arctic sea ice volume after anomalously low melting in 2013

Abstract: ……. Between autumn 2010 and 2012, there was a 14% reduction in Arctic sea ice volume, in keeping with the long-term decline in extent. However, we observe 33% and 25% more ice in autumn 2013 and 2014, respectively, relative to the 2010–2012 seasonal mean, which offset earlier losses. This increase was caused by the retention of thick sea ice northwest of Greenland during 2013 which, in turn, was associated with a 5% drop in the number of days on which melting occurred—conditions more typical of the late 1990s. In contrast, springtime Arctic sea ice volume has remained stable. The sharp increase in sea ice volume after just one cool summer suggests that Arctic sea ice may be more resilient than has been previously considered.

Even the BBC which is religiously fanatic (only exceeded by The Guardian) in its adherence to global warming orthodoxy, has been compelled to report the increase in Arctic ice. But of course they continue to deny that real data in conflict with model expectations can invalidate the models predicting man-made global warming:

BBC:

The volume of Arctic sea ice increased by around a third after an unusually cool summer in 2013. Researchers say the growth continued in 2014 and more than compensated for losses recorded in the three previous years. The scientists involved believe changes in summer temperatures have greater impacts on ice than thought. 

Why do they have to then add pure rubbish?

But they say 2013 was a one-off and that climate change will continue to shrink the ice in the decades ahead.

More snow in Queensland and NSW than for a decade – harbinger of the coming ice age?

July 17, 2015

Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is the highest in modern times and has been increasing for well over a decade. But global temperatures – however that is defined – has shown no sign of warming and a slight decrease in that period. The Sun’s activity is down and reducing to levels similar to that of the Maunder Minimum in this Landscheidt Minimum. A new Little Ice Age is likely by 2030.

The small little signs of weather that are harbingers of the coming Little Ice Age are accumulating – even in the southern hemisphere. Australia is experiencing a “cold” wave (though +12ºC does not seem particularly cold). The cold wave is also giving “unprecedented” (for a decade) levels of snow.

It is inevitable that since the global warming priesthood have been preparing for the icecaps melting that we will now enter a new ice age.

Maybe this time the glaciers are going to spread in the southern hemisphere across Australia and South America?

SMH: Snow creates winter wonderland … in Queensland, as well as NSW

 

The Little Ice Age was real and it was global

November 22, 2014

Global warmists like to pretend sometimes that the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period were not real or that they were just some local phenomena. The usually point to the lack of data from the southern hemisphere to support their claims. They certainly don’t like to admit that global cooling or warming events could have been caused by solar effects which were perhaps connected to the level of solar activity (as indicated by sunspots). New work at the University of Gloucestershire shows that not only was the Little Ice Age real but that it was present in both hemispheres. And that it was probably due to solar effects

AlphaGalileo reports:

UK researchers show Little Ice Age was global, wit.h implications for current Global Warming

Under embargo until 20 November 2014 00:01 GMT

A team of UK researchers has shed new light on the climate of the Little Ice Age, and rekindled debate over the role of the sun in climate change. The new study, which involved detailed scientific examination of a peat bog in southern South America, indicates that the most extreme climate episodes of the Little Ice Age were felt not just in Europe and North America, which is well known, but apparently globally. The research has implications for current concerns over ‘Global Warming’.

Climate sceptics and believers of Global Warming have long argued about whether the Little Ice Age (from c. early 15th to 19th Centuries) was global, its causes, and how much influence the sun has had on global climate, both during the Little Ice Age and in recent decades. This new study helps clarify those debates.

The team of researchers, from the Universities of Gloucestershire, Aberdeen and Plymouth, conducted studies on past climate through detailed laboratory examination of peat from a bog near Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego. They used exactly the same laboratory methods as have been developed for peat bogs in Europe. Two principal techniques were used to reconstruct past climates over the past 3000 years: at close intervals throughout a vertical column of peat, the researchers investigated the degree of peat decomposition, which is directly related to climate, and also examined the peat matrix to reveal the changing amounts of different plants that previously grew on the bog.

The data show that the most extreme cold phases of the Little Ice Age—in the mid-15th and then again in the early 18th centuries—were synchronous in Europe and South America. There is one stark difference: while in continental north-west Europe, bogs became wetter, in Tierra del Fuego, the bog became drier—in both cases probably a result of a dramatic equator-ward shift of moisture-bearing winds.

These extreme times coincide with periods when it is known that the sun was unusually quiet. In the late 17th to mid-18th centuries it had very few sunspots—fewer even than during the run of recent cold winters in Europe, which other UK scientists have linked to a relatively quiet sun.

Professor Frank Chambers, Head of the University of Gloucestershire’s Centre for Environmental Change and Quaternary Research, who led the writing of the Fast-Track Research Report, said:

“Both sceptics and adherents of Global Warming might draw succour from this work. Our study is significant because, while there are various different estimates for the start and end of the Little Ice Age in different regions of the world, our data show that the most extreme phases occurred at the same time in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. These extreme episodes were abrupt global events. They were probably related to sudden, equator-ward shifts of the Westerlies in the Southern Hemisphere, and the Atlantic depression tracks in the Northern Hemisphere. The same shifts seem to have happened abruptly before, such as c. 2800 years ago, when the same synchronous but opposite response is shown in bogs in Northwest Europe compared with southern South America.

“It seems that the sun’s quiescence was responsible for the most extreme phases of the Little Ice Age, implying that solar variability sometimes plays a significant role in climate change. A change in solar activity may also, for example, have contributed to the post Little Ice Age rise in global temperatures in the first half of the 20th Century. However, solar variability alone cannot explain the post-1970 global temperature trends, especially the global temperature rise in the last three decades of the 20th Century, which has been attributed by the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

Professor Chambers concluded: “I must stress that our research findings are only interpretable for the period from 3000 years ago to the end of the Little Ice Age. That is the period upon which our research is focused. However, in light of our substantiation of the effects of ‘grand solar minima’ upon past global climates, it could be speculated that the current pausing of ‘Global Warming’, which is frequently referenced by those sceptical of climate projections by the IPCC, might relate at least in part to a countervailing effect of reduced solar activity, as shown in the recent sunspot cycle.”

Signs of global cooling accumulate while IPCC denies evidence and relies on models

November 2, 2014

Rational argument cannot penetrate faith.

Ask for evidence and you get model results. Ask for proof that the models are valid and you get hindcasts based on adjusted data. Ask for evidence of man-made emissions causing global warming and the answer is that it must be so for there is no other explanation. There isn’t if you don’t want to see it.

The IPCC believes that model results – even where the models are wrong – provide “conclusive” evidence of not just man-made global warming but that it is due to the emissions of carbon dioxide. It is politics not science. And the politics from India and China have ensured that the IPCC accepts fossil fuels till 2100!!!

For there is – in fact – no actual evidence in the form of data or measurements. There are only model results. There are only model forecasts where the track record shows that every IPCC forecast has been wrong. Fossil fuels – especially gas – will be around and will continue for many hundreds of years unless cheap fusion comes earlier.

Instead of real data showing support for the models, the evidence is accumulating that not only are the models wrong, but also that there are more indications that a global cooling is underway rather than global warming. Real measurements and real data show:

  1. that global temperatures have been stagnant for 18 years while carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 70% and carbon dioxide concentration has increased just under 15%,
  2. that therefore carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has had no significant effect on global temperature,
  3. that the emissions and absorption of carbon dioxide from “natural” causes has an uncertainty of around 10%
  4. that man made carbon dioxide emissions make up less than 5% of all carbon dioxide emissions and their contribution to carbon dioxide concentration is of the order of 40% (assuming that there is no lag between accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and absorption mechanisms from the atmosphere),
  5. that global temperatures actually show a small downward trend over the last 10 years,
  6. that global temperatures of the past have been corrupted by being adjusted or otherwise homogenised with the intent (conscious or unconscious) to cool the past,
  7. that man-made carbon dioxide emissions have been overestimated and in reality are much lower as a proportion of natural emission sources,
  8. that natural carbon dioxide absorption processes are larger than assumed,
  9. that Antarctic ice cover is at the highest levels ever recorded,
  10. that Arctic ice cover has returned to be within 1 SD of the long term 1980-2010 average,
  11. that the rate of sea-level rise is still at the same rate as the long-term recovery from the last glacial,
  12. that snow cover in the northern hemisphere is increasing
  13. that ice cover on the Great Lakes is increasing,
  14. that there is more forest cover now than when the alarmism began, and
  15. that polar bear numbers are healthy and increasing,

Add to this that a VEI5+ volcano eruption has not occurred since 1991 and is long overdue. It will most likely show up along the Pacific Ring of Fire or in Indonesia. Consider also that the Bárðarbunga  volcano in Iceland has been producing sulphur dioxide at a rate which in 9 weeks has pumped twice as much SO2 into the atmosphere than all of Europe does in a year. Bárðarbunga  volcano is far from VEI5+ levels and the eruption could continue for months. The SO2 emissions are not all reaching the stratosphere but will surely lead to increased cloud formation around sulphur aerosols and cloud levels will probably be high through at least next year. It becomes increasingly clear that further cooling effects are already in the “natural” pipeline of events. Some new glacier formation has been observed in the Scottish highlands. Some Alpine and Himalayan glaciers have started to increase and while others still decrease, the observation of increase where there has been none before is highly significant. The Great lakes have seen unprecedentedly high ice cover levels. Snow cover in the northern hemisphere is high and is lasting longer into spring than for some time.

But the models and the presuppositions and the misconceptions of the religious high priests cannot be easily denied by the faithful and have an inertia of their own. The IPCC  remains delusional and in denial about reality. It continues to play its global warming fiddle but it is badly out of tune and its alarmist cacophony is being overtaken by real events.

It may not be a glacial age that is starting but another Little Ice Age looks like it is on its way.

Little Ice Age was due to low solar irradiance

March 10, 2014

The Sun is the only real source of energy available at the surface of the earth (and any heat from nuclear reactions at the earth’s core is extremely small if not completely negligible). That the oceans have a much higher heat capacity than the atmosphere at the surface of the earth is obvious. It seems also fairly clear to me that it is the dynamics of ocean – atmosphere interactions which control climate and weather. And it is the oceans and long time scales which dominate climate while it is the atmospheric variations and short time scales which determine weather.

But the driver is always the Sun.

A new paper in Nature GeoScience “used seafloor sediments taken from south of Iceland to study changes in the warm surface ocean current. This was done by analysing the chemical composition of fossilised microorganisms that had once lived in the surface of the ocean. These measurements were then used to reconstruct the seawater temperature and the salinity of this key ocean current over the past 1000 years.”

The researchers found that ” low solar irradiance promotes the development of frequent and persistent atmospheric blocking events, in which a quasi-stationary high-pressure system in the eastern North Atlantic modifies the flow of the westerly winds. We conclude that this process could have contributed to the consecutive cold winters documented in Europe during the Little Ice Age.”

Paola Moffa-Sánchez, Andreas Born, Ian R. Hall, David J. R. Thornalley, Stephen Barker. Solar forcing of North Atlantic surface temperature and salinity over the past millenniumNature Geoscience, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2094

AbstractThere were several centennial-scale fluctuations in the climate and oceanography of the North Atlantic region over the past 1,000 years, including a period of relative cooling from about AD 1450 to 1850 known as the Little Ice Age. These variations may be linked to changes in solar irradiance, amplified through feedbacks including the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. Changes in the return limb of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation are reflected in water properties at the base of the mixed layer south of Iceland. Here we reconstruct thermocline temperature and salinity in this region from AD 818 to 1780 using paired δ18O and Mg/Ca ratio measurements of foraminifer shells from a subdecadally resolved marine sediment core. The reconstructed centennial-scale variations in hydrography correlate with variability in total solar irradiance. We find a similar correlation in a simulation of climate over the past 1,000 years. We infer that the hydrographic changes probably reflect variability in the strength of the subpolar gyre associated with changes in atmospheric circulation. Specifically, in the simulation, low solar irradiance promotes the development of frequent and persistent atmospheric blocking events, in which a quasi-stationary high-pressure system in the eastern North Atlantic modifies the flow of the westerly winds. We conclude that this process could have contributed to the consecutive cold winters documented in Europe during the Little Ice Age.

Cardiff University Press Release:

Changes in the sun’s energy output may have led to marked natural climate change in Europe over the last 1000 years, according to researchers at Cardiff University. The study found that changes in the Sun’s activity can have a considerable impact on the ocean-atmospheric dynamics in the North Atlantic, with potential effects on regional climate.

Scientists studied seafloor sediments to determine how the temperature of the North Atlantic and its localised atmospheric circulation had altered. Warm surface waters flowing across the North Atlantic, an extension of the Gulf Stream, and warm westerly winds are responsible for the relatively mild climate of Europe, especially in winter. Slight changes in the transport of heat associated with these systems can lead to regional climate variability, and the study findings matched historic accounts of climate change, including the notoriously severe winters of the 16th and 18th centuries which pre-date global industrialisation.

The study found that changes in the Sun’s activity can have a considerable impact on the ocean-atmospheric dynamics in the North Atlantic, with potential effects on regional climate.

Predictions suggest a prolonged period of low sun activity over the next few decades ……..

Though their study has nothing whatever to do with global warming and any man-made effects they still feel it necessary to add this caveat (presumably because the reviewers, and the Journal, or both, insisted).

Predictions suggest a prolonged period of low sun activity over the next few decades, but any associated natural temperature changes will be much smaller than those created by human carbon dioxide emissions, say researchers.

The sun dances to its own tune with unexpectedly high activity in February

March 4, 2014

There is more we don’t know that we don’t know that we don’t know. (with apologies to Donald Rumsfeld).

While Solar Cycle 24 is still showing the lowest sunspot activity in 100 years, its activity during February was unexpectedly high.  And we don’t really know why.

SC24 Feb 2014 graphic NOAA data from informthpundits

SC24 Feb 2014 graphic NOAA data from informthepundits

The increased activity in February was certainly not expected but SC24 still remains at a very low activity level compared to recent Solar Cycles.

SC21 - SC24 from solen.info

SC21 – SC24 from solen.info

It is a little too early to see if the similarities with Solar Cycles 5 and 6 (during the time of the Dalton Minimum) will hold up and lead us into another Little Ice Age. Or whether this Landscheidt Minimum will just lead to a 30 year cooling period without quite producing a Little Ice Age.

Interesting times.

The Sun will continue to dance to its own tune and we will make believe that we know what it is doing.

But we ignore the Sun at our peril.

China to industrialise desalination of sea-ice

January 16, 2014

During an ice age as water gets trapped in expanding ice, the entire water cycle stabilises at much lower rates of flux than during an inter-glacial period. Evaporation (due to absorption of solar energy) is the primary force which drives the water cycle. During an ice age, rates of evaporation will decrease sharply, precipitation will reduce and the flow of fresh water through rivers and streams back into the seas will reduce as a consequence. Sea levels would drop by up to 150 m from current levels and while currently submerged land will be exposed, desertification of many regions will also take place.

One of the technologies that will be necessary at such a time will be for the extraction of fresh water from sea ice.

Bohai Bay China

Bohai Bay China

The Bohai Rim is one of the water-scarce regions in China. But every winter, more than 1 billion m3 of sea ice formed in the sea, about 40% of which distributes within 10 km offshore and is expected to be exploited and utilized as source of freshwater.

They may not be expecting a return to full glacial conditions anytime soon, but perhaps the Chinese are already preparing for another Little Ice Age and the fresh water availability reduction that will undoubtedly cause.

Xinhua reports:

China will soon begin production of large amounts of fresh water through the desalination of sea ice, according university research team and a Chinese company on Tuesday. A research team from Beijing Normal University signed a sea ice desalination technology transfer agreement with Beijing Huahaideyuan Technology Co. Ltd on Tuesday.

The company is expected to be able to produce at least 1 billion cubic meters of fresh water annually by 2023, said Yu Jian, executive president of the company. The salinity of sea ice is between 0.4 percent to 0.8 percent, much lower than that of sea water, which stands at about 2.8 percent to 3.1 percent, said Professor Gu Wei, head of the research team.

The research team has mastered the basic principles and technology of sea ice desalination and developed the equipment to be used in the process, including an ice-breaking platform and an ice-gatherer, he said. The salinity of sea ice water after desalination is 0.1 percent, which meets the national standard. The water can be used in agriculture, by industry and for drinking, he said.

The cost of desalination is expected to fall to 4 yuan per tonne, he said.

China’s sea ice desalination program started in 1996 when Shi Peijun, a professor from Beijing Normal University, realized that low saline ice could ease the water shortage around the Pan-Bohai Bay area in north China, after desalination. The program has received a total of 29.72 million yuan (4.88 million U.S. dollars) from various government departments in the past 18 years.

In winter in high-latitude oceans, there is a great amount of sea ice, which is being recognized as a new resource of fresh water by scientists.

One cold wave is not proof of Global Cooling, but ….

January 9, 2014


One cold wave is not proof of Global Cooling,

Even if polar ice is now steadily increasing,

But a quiescent Sun is in another Minimum,

And AGW theory suffers a diverticulum,

For Climate Change is changing to a Cooling from a Warming.

From CBN News:

Global Cooling: Is an Ice Age Coming?

The fact that Arctic ice is growing may not be the good news that it seems to be. There are signs that the Earth is entering a very unpleasant cooling period. Sunspot activity remains very low.

“The sun has been very unusual for almost 15 years now,” Jens Pedersen, senior scientist at the Denmark’s Technical University, said.

Pedersen said the sun recently reached solar maximum and that there should be a lot of sunspot activity, but there isn’t.

“We have to go back 100 years to find a solar maximum that was as weak as the one we are in right now,” he told CBN News. “And the recent solar minimum…one has to go back 200 years to find one that was as weak.”

The last time the sun was this quiet, North America and Europe suffered through a weather event from the 1600s to the 1800s known as “Little Ice Age,” when the Thames River in London regularly froze solid, and North America saw terrible winters. Crops failed and people starved.

Pedersen said climate scientists know the Earth stopped warming 15 years ago. But the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of which Pedersen is an expert reviewer, suppressed a recent report from its own scientists that the U.N.’s climate model has been proven wrong.

“In particular one of the issues has been why global warming has stopped during the last 15 years, and climate scientists were very frank that the climate models do not match the climate we observe,” Pedersen said.

But politicians removed that embarrassing finding from the final draft.  It’s as if the alleged danger from climate change can’t be wrong because it is now too important.

It has become a political movement, a cash cow for climate scientists and environmental groups, and a way for world leaders to control economies and people.

“It’s a political agenda,” Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture at the Media Research Center, said. “When you look at what the government will be able to do with climate change, it gives them (access) into every aspect of our lives.” ….. 

Related: https://ktwop.wordpress.com/tag/landscheidt-minimum/