Global warming

Tommy Monk wrote:...or just getting back to normal temperatures...!?


And starting to happen again in areas where it really should but has been too unusually cold to do so in recent 100 years or so...

It’s frightening but true: Our planet is now in the midst of its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals — the sixth wave of extinctions in the past half-billion years. We’re currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day [1]. It could be a scary future indeed, with as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century [2].

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:
ONE THING to keep in mind about Oz's Malcolm Turnbull...

HE IS  a corporate-owned pro-development conservative Prime Minister -- much along the same lines as former Canuck PM Stephen Harper and Britain's David Cameron --  and whose lacklustre government is still overly beholden to their big business sponsors (with, in turn, their own climate-denialist/"trickle down" agendas..).

WHERE the latest polls show his L-NP coalition guvm'nt running just behind a combined Labour and Greens opposition.

WITH the next Federal election coming up this July..      
AND a good chance that this election could well deliver a 'hung parliament', with many decisions coming down to crossbench bargaining with minor parties and independents...      

 by Ben_Reilly on Fri May 27, 2016 11:12 pm
If the Great Barrier Reef is lost, I will seriously cry. That would be like razing the Amazon to me.

Greenland witnessed its highest June temperature ever recorded on Thursday
  The Washington Post Jason Samenow, Angela Fritz  6 hrs ago

Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, soared to 75 degrees (24 Celsius) Thursday – marking the warmest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic country during June. Nuuk sits on Greenland’s southwest coast, where the country’s warmest weather typically occurs.

The Danish Meteorological Institute has confirmed on a preliminary basis that the measurement would replace the previous record of 73.8 degrees (23.2 Celsius), which was set in Kangerlussuaq on June 15, in 2014. That temperature was also recorded in southwest Greenland about 200 miles (320 km) north of Nuuk.

John Cappelen, a senior climatologist at the DMI, told The Post that the warm weather was brought on by winds from the east that set up between high pressure over northeast Greenland and low pressure south of Greenland. When winds come from the east over Nuuk, they blow downhill, which leads to an increase in temperature. This is the result of adiabatic warming, where air is compressed from low pressure (at the top of a mountain) to high pressure (at sea level). It’s the same kind of dry warmth that occurs as a result of Santa Ana winds in Southern California.

Thursday’s toasty reading in Nuuk marks the second exceptionally warm temperature recorded in southwest Greenland since April, when the ice melt season began about month prematurely.

On April 11, Kangerlussaq hit a record high of 64.4 degrees (17.8 Celsius). “This was the warmest April temperature on record at that location, and it nearly set an all-time warm temperature record for Greenland as a whole,” reported Mashable’s Andrew Freedman.

At the time, so much ice was melting that scientists at the DMI couldn’t believe what they were seeing. “We had to check that our models were still working properly,” said Peter Langen, a climate scientist

This week, the institute announced that Greenland’s ablation season, the period when its ice sheet loses more mass from melting along its edges than it does from snowfall in its interior, started on June 6. The DMI defines the start of this season when Greenland loses more than one gigaton of ice to the ocean. On the first three days of the month, Greenland lost 1.6, 2.2 and 2.4 gigatons of ice, the institute reports.

“This is the sixth earliest onset of ice loss in our 27-year record, although there isn’t really a large difference from one year to the next in the top-ranking 17 years,” said climate scientist Peter Langen.

Greenland’s exceptional warmth in 2016 piles on to other record-warm milestones established in recent years. In 2012, the temperature in Narsarsuaq, on the southern coast, soared to 76.6 degrees in May — a new monthly record, according to Jeff Masters at Weather Underground.

The next year, on July 30, 2013, the temperature at the observing station in Maniitsoq, on Greenland’s southwest coast,  soared to 78.6 degrees (25.9 Celsius) becoming Greenland’s warmest July temperature and warmest of any month.

(Note that official weather records in Greenland only date back to 1958 and historical records indicate that on June 23, 1915, the temperature may have reached 86 degrees (30.1 C) in Ivigtut.)

The temperatures and early ice melt in Greenland are consistent with a pattern of exceptional warmth in the Arctic. Temperatures have frequently averaged well over 10 degrees above normal on the icy continent, and Arctic sea ice extent has set record lows most months.

It was also the warmest winter on record across the Arctic, says the National Snow and Ice Data Center, who reported that large areas recorded their “warmest conditions in 67 years of weather model data, including the northern half of the Greenland ice sheet.”
http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/greenland-witnessed-its-highest-june-temperature-ever-recorded-on-thursday/ar-AAgTJdx?ocid=ansmsnweather11

Tommy Monk wrote:Why...?
Again... Warmest ON RECORD... SINCE RECORDS BEGAN!!!
HOW LONG AGO DID RECORDS BEGIN!?
You do know that when water freezes, it expands...?
If you get a bowl of water and put a load of ice cubes in it so the level reaches right to the top... once the ice has all melted... the water level is lowered!!!

Study: Ozone hole over Antarctica beginning to heal

Doyle Rice, USA TODAY 5:30 p.m. EDT June 30, 2016



The ozone hole reached its largest size of the year on Oct. 2, 2015.(Photo: NASA)

Decades after the fog from hairspray and deodorant cans dissipated in a worldwide ban, the results are finally paying off for the Earth's protective layer: The ozone hole over the Antarctic is beginning to heal, a new study finds.
Located in the stratosphere, the ozone layer blocks potentially harmful ultraviolet energy from reaching our planet's surface. Without it, humans and animals could experience increased rates of skin cancer and other ailments.
Researchers found the hole shrunk by more than 1.5 million square miles — about half the area of the contiguous United States — since 2000, when ozone depletion was at its peak.
“It’s a big surprise,” said Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lead author of the study published Thursday in the journal Science. “I didn’t think it (the healing) would be this early.”
The discovery shows global attempts to improve Earth's environment can work, providing a template for how humanity could tackle the exponentially larger issue of climate change, Solomon said.​
The hole won't completely close for at least 30 years at the earliest but is opening up just a little bit less almost every year, Solomon said.
Scientists first discovered the gaping dramatic thinning in Earth's protective sheet in the late 1950s and determined the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used in refrigerators and aerosol sprays, caused the anomaly. In the late 1980s, 196 countries signed the Montreal Protocol, a treaty that limited production of CFCs around the world.
The hole fluctuates in size from year to year and tends to be its largest after winter, which runs June to August in the Southern Hemisphere, and smallest after summer, December to February. The hole usually extends to its largest diameter in September or October. Scientists in this study said the best time to measure it is in September, when it's most influenced by the CFCs.
Scientists also discovered that last year's record large ozone hole in October was a fluke mainly caused by a volcanic eruption in Chile six months earlier that temporarily disrupted the atmosphere's chemistry to such a degree that the hole extra-enlarged.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2016/06/30/ozone-hole-healing-antarctic/86552814/

Clouds Could Be Saying Something About Climate Change
 
by Brooke James
First Posted: Jul 12, 2016 06:29 AM
Clouds may look like cotton candy in the sky, but their changing patterns may actually have more impact than we thought: a new study suggested that cloud patterns have been shifting in the past 20 years, and could have been responding to rising greenhouse levels. 
They may look like simple puffs in the sky, but to study them correctly, scientists have to understand them, forcing to track behavior of tiny water droplets and even masses of clouds that could span hundreds of miles wide.
The study, according to Inside Climate News, provided a record spanning nearly three decades, bringing researchers that much closer to the cloud-climate relationship. Most models have projected that global warming would cause the tops of clouds to move higher in the atmosphere, triggering a decrease of cloudiness and expanding the dry zone. These models predicted that these patterns will trigger more warming, creating a feedback loop.
Joel Norris, a climate researcher at Scripps and lead author of the study said, "What this paper brings to the table is the first credible demonstration that the cloud changes we expect from climate models and theory are currently happening."
Science Daily noted that authors were also able to assess the causes of the observed trends using a variety of model simulations with and without human influence, volcanoes, and other external factors. The new findings said that there has been more evidence showing clouds as exacerbating factors on climate change instead of mitigating ones. 
Still, despite the study being able to identify general changes in cloud patterns, it did not attempt to measure and quantify the changes, which makes it difficult to predict changing cloud patterns and how they could impact regional weather phenomena, among other things.
http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/43625/20160712/clouds-saying-something-climate-change.htm

Tommy Monk wrote:
So what was the ozone layer/hole looking like 20 years ago...?
50 years ago...?
100 years ago...?
200 years ago...?
500 years ago...?
1000...?
2000...?
5000?

Thaw could release Cold War-era U.S. toxic waste buried under Greenland's ice


Reuters 23 hrs ago

Global warming could release radioactive waste stored in an abandoned Cold War-era U.S. military camp deep under Greenland's ice caps if a thaw continues to spread in coming decades, scientists said on Friday.

Camp Century was built in northwest Greenland in 1959 as part of U.S. research into the feasibility of nuclear missile launch sites in the Arctic, the University of Zurich said in a statement.

Staff left gallons of fuel and an unknown amount of low-level radioactive coolant there when the base shut down in 1967 on the assumption it would be entombed forever, according to the university.

It is all currently about 35 meters (114.83 ft) down. But the part of the ice sheet covering the camp could start to melt by the end of the century on current trends, the scientists added.

"Climate change could remobilise the abandoned hazardous waste believed to be buried forever beneath the Greenland ice sheet," the university said of findings published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The study, led by York University in Canada in collaboration with the University of Zurich, estimated that pollutants in the camp included 200,000 liters (44,000 UK gallons) of diesel fuel and the coolant from a nuclear generator used to produce power.

"It's a new breed of political challenge we have to think about," lead author William Colgan, a climate and glacier scientist at York University, said in a statement.

"If the ice melts, the camp's infrastructure, including any remaining biological, chemical, and radioactive wastes, could re-enter the environment and potentially disrupt nearby ecosystems," the University of Zurich said.

The study said it would be extremely costly to try to remove any waste now. It recommended waiting "until the ice sheet has melted down to almost expose the wastes before beginning site remediation."

There was no immediate comment from U.S. authorities. (Reporting By Alister Doyle; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/weather/thaw-could-release-cold-war-era-us-toxic-waste-buried-under-greenlands-ice/ar-BBviHJt?ocid=ansmsnweather11

Well, isn't that just a fine kettle of radioactive wasted fish we've left up there for Iceland do keep watch over   

Wonder how many other little frozen pockets of 'Radioactive Hazardous Material' we've stashed away for future generations to find?

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

THAT IDIOT  Tommy  Monk just won't cease from attempting to derail threads like this,  will he ???

1.   I doubt he even knows what the Ozone layer is.

2.   Even if he had the faintest inkling, he's certainly incapable of understanding it's importance..

3.    Or, the significance of any potential destruction..

4.    Not only does he apparently not recognise the importance of the Ozone Layer over Antarctica, to the survival of all ecosystems in the Southern hemisphere..

5.    But, he is obviously totally ignorant of the interactions of excessive UV radiation over Antarctica, with weather patterns and environmental action in other parts of the planet.

And to think that mouth-breathing oxygen thieves the like of Tommy Monk have even been allowed to breathe and procreate in the first place, let alone vote  !        

Re: Global warming
 by WhoseYourWolfie on Sat Jul 16, 2016 2:03 am

Lord Foul wrote:

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

THAT IDIOT  Tommy  Monk just won't cease from attempting to derail threads like this,  will he ???

1.   I doubt he even knows what the Ozone layer is.

2.   Even if he had the faintest inkling, he's certainly incapable of understanding it's importance..

3.    Or, the significance of any potential destruction..

4.    Not only does he apparently not recognise the importance of the Ozone Layer over Antarctica, to the survival of all ecosystems in the Southern hemisphere..

5.    But, he is obviously totally ignorant of the interactions of excessive UV radiation over Antarctica, with weather patterns and environmental action in other parts of the planet.

And to think that mouth-breathing oxygen thieves the like of Tommy Monk have even been allowed to breathe and procreate in the first place, let alone vote  !        

why dont you attack the points rather than posting drivel about the poster...?

nicko wrote:
you wouldn't say that to his face!!

Tommy Monk wrote:

So what was the ozone layer/hole looking like 20 years ago...?


50 years ago...?


100 years ago...?


200 years ago...?


500 years ago...?


1000...?


2000...?


5000?

4EVER2 wrote:

Re: Global warming
 by WhoseYourWolfie on Sat Jul 16, 2016 2:03 am

HOOTY - HOOT ...that was only 3 weeks old; almost had grown moldy!

Lord Foul wrote:

4EVER2 wrote:
HOOTY - HOOT ...that was only 3 weeks old; almost had grown moldy!

and your brainless point....?????  Awww poor liitle dude can't even laugh at his own F-Up
mere stirring of the pot eh...something you EXCEL at, you are indeed a master ...... Yipper, took me a while to catch onto all the low bar standards around here ...but now I'm quite familiar with the GAME PLAN
but you see ...i have this little button here........   

Handy Andy wrote:The National Geographic  - a well respected scientific  journal thinks it real.

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-real/

I am sure Tom will find  counter argument in his favourite  science journal, Wankers Weekly.

Tommy Monk wrote:

Handy Andy wrote:The National Geographic  - a well respected scientific  journal thinks it real.

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-real/

I am sure Tom will find  counter argument in his favourite  science journal, Wankers Weekly.

I have bumped some threads for you to read some real facts...

News  | August 22, 2016
NASA monitors the 'new normal' of sea ice
By Maria-José Viñas and Kate Ramsayer,
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said, “A decade ago, this year’s sea ice extent would have set a new record low and by a fair amount. Now, we’re kind of used to these low levels of sea ice – it’s the new normal.”

This year’s melt season in the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas started with a bang, with a record low maximum extent in March and relatively rapid ice loss through May. The melt slowed down in June, however, making it highly unlikely that this year’s summertime sea ice minimum extent will set a new record.
“Even when it’s likely that we won’t have a record low, the sea ice is not showing any kind of recovery. It’s still in a continued decline over the long term,” said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s just not going to be as extreme as other years because the weather conditions in the Arctic were not as extreme as in other years.”
“A decade ago, this year’s sea ice extent would have set a new record low and by a fair amount. Now, we’re kind of used to these low levels of sea ice – it’s the new normal.”

In this animation, the daily Arctic sea ice and seasonal land cover change progress through time, from the prior sea ice maximum March 24, 2016, through Aug. 13, 2016. The Arctic sea ice cover likely won’t reach its yearly minimum extent until mid-to-late September. Credit: NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio/Cindy Starr. Download this video in HD at NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio.
This year’s sea ice cover of the Barents and Kara seas north of Russia opened up early, in April, exposing the surface ocean waters to the energy from the sun weeks ahead of schedule. By May 31, the extent of the Arctic sea ice cover was comparable to end-of-June average levels. But the Arctic weather changed in June and slowed the sea ice loss. A persistent area of low atmospheric pressure, accompanied by cloudiness, winds that dispersed ice and lower-than-average temperatures, didn’t favor melt.
The rate of ice loss picked up again during the first two weeks of August, and is now greater than average for this time of the year. A strong cyclone is moving through the Arctic, similar to one that occurred in early August 2012. Four years ago, the storm caused an accelerated loss of ice during a period when the decline in sea ice is normally slowing because the sun is setting in the Arctic. However, the current storm doesn’t appear to be as strong as the 2012 cyclone and ice conditions are less vulnerable than four years ago, Meier said.
“This year is a great case study in showing how important the weather conditions are during the summer, especially in June and July, when you have 24 hours of sunlight and the sun is high in the sky in the Arctic,” Meier said. “If you get the right atmospheric conditions during those two months, they can really accelerate the ice loss. If you don’t, they can slow down any melting momentum you had. So our predictive ability in May of the September minimum is limited, because the sea ice cover is so sensitive to the early-to-mid-summer atmospheric conditions, and you can’t foresee summer weather.”
Arctic sea ice has varied terrain in the summer months, as ridges and melt ponds form and floes break apart. A new NASA satellite called ICESat-2, launching in 2018, will measure the height of sea ice year-round. Credit: NASA/Kate Ramsayer.
As scientists are keeping an eye on the Arctic sea ice cover, NASA is also preparing for a new method to measure the thickness of sea ice – a difficult but key characteristic to track from orbit.
"We have a good handle on the sea ice area change," said Thorsten Markus, Goddard’s cryosphere lab chief. "We have very limited knowledge how thick it is."
Research vessels or submarines can measure ice thickness directly, and some airborne instruments have taken readings that can be used to calculate thickness. But satellites haven’t been able to provide a complete look at sea ice thickness in particular during melting conditions, Markus said. The radar instruments that penetrate the snow during winter to measure thickness don’t work once you add in the salty water of the melting sea ice, since the salinity interferes with the radar.
Visualization of Arctic sea ice extent on Aug. 13, 2016. Credit: NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio.
The Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2, will use lasers to try to get more complete answers of sea ice thickness. The satellite, slated to launch by 2018, will use a laser altimeter to measure the heights of Earth’s surface.
In the Arctic, it will measure the elevation of the ice floes, compared to the water level. However, only about one-tenth of sea ice is above the water surface; the other nine-tenths lie below.
To estimate the entire thickness of the ice floe, researchers will need to go beyond the above-water height measurements, and perform calculations to account for factors like the snow on top of the ice and the densities of the frozen layers. Scientists are eager to see the measurements turned into data on sea ice thickness, Markus said.
"If we want to estimate mass changes of sea ice, or increased melting, we need the sea ice thickness," he said. "It’s critically important to understanding the changes in the Arctic."
http://climate.nasa.gov/news/2480/nasa-monitors-the-new-normal-of-sea-ice/

Ben Reilly wrote:Do you know the difference between "old ice" and "new ice"?

New ice is formed seasonally during winter at the poles, much of it melting during spring and summer. Old ice is the ice that has been there for thousands of years (or more) and doesn't melt away during the warm seasons.

The presence of new ice, in other words, doesn't mean anything from a long-term perspective. You have to look at the long-term loss of old ice to detect the warming trend.

Also, the gain in Antarctic sea ice is being more than offset by the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/03/18/stop-using-antarctic-sea-ice-to-claim-nothings-wrong-at-the-south-pole/?utm_term=.55f5edae57fb

Ben Reilly wrote:
Do you know the difference between "old ice" and "new ice"?

New ice is formed seasonally during winter at the poles, much of it melting during spring and summer. Old ice is the ice that has been there for thousands of years (or more) and doesn't melt away during the warm seasons.

The presence of new ice, in other words, doesn't mean anything from a long-term perspective. You have to look at the long-term loss of old ice to detect the warming trend.

Also, the gain in Antarctic sea ice is being more than offset by the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/03/18/stop-using-antarctic-sea-ice-to-claim-nothings-wrong-at-the-south-pole/?utm_term=.55f5edae57fb

Tommy Monk wrote:From 4evers article...

"...the Arctic weather changed in June and slowed the sea ice loss. A persistent area of low atmospheric pressure, accompanied by cloudiness, winds that dispersed ice and lower-than-average temperatures..."

Also from 4evers article...

Thorsten Markus, Goddard’s cryosphere lab chief said...

"...If we want to estimate mass changes of sea ice, or increased melting, we need the sea ice thickness," he said. "It’s critically important to understanding the changes in the Arctic... We have very limited knowledge how thick it is."

sea ice has varied terrain in the summer months, as ridges and melt ponds form and floes break apart. A new NASA satellite called ICESat-2, launching in 2018, will measure the height of sea ice year-round. Credit: NASA/Kate Ramsayer.  As scientists are keeping an eye on the Arctic sea ice cover, NASA is also preparing for a new method to measure the thickness of sea ice – a difficult but key characteristic to track from orbit.

Tommy Monk wrote:So what does this satellite tell us now...?   You haven't got your MEMO yet

Since it is not planned to be launched until 2018...!!!???

Tommy Monk wrote:

So what does this satellite tell us now...?


Since it is not planned to be launched until 2018...!!!???

Tommy Monk wrote:

So what does this satellite tell us now...?    You haven't got your MEMO yet

Since it is not planned to be launched until 2018...!!!???