More graphics at the link
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/05...and-losing-400-1-cubic-km-ice-cubes-per-year/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/05...and-losing-400-1-cubic-km-ice-cubes-per-year/
Alarmists Gone Wild: Greenland losing 400 cubic km ice cubes per year!!!
by David Middleton
[…]
The thaw is happening far faster than once expected. Over the past three decades the area of sea ice in the Arctic has fallen by more than half and its volume has plummeted by three-quarters (see map). SWIPA estimates that the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer by 2040. Scientists previously suggested this would not occur until 2070. The thickness of ice in the central Arctic ocean declined by 65% between 1975 and 2012; record lows in the maximum extent of Arctic sea ice occurred in March.
[…]
The thaw is happening far faster than once expected. Over the past three decades the area of sea ice in the Arctic has fallen by more than half and its volume has plummeted by three-quarters (see map). SWIPA estimates that the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer by 2040. Scientists previously suggested this would not occur until 2070. The thickness of ice in the central Arctic ocean declined by 65% between 1975 and 2012; record lows in the maximum extent of Arctic sea ice occurred in March.
...//...
The most worrying changes are happening in Greenland, which lost an average of 375bn tonnes of ice per year between 2011 and 2014—almost twice the rate at which it disappeared between 2003 and 2008 (see chart). This is the equivalent of over 400 massive icebergs measuring 1km on each side disappearing each year. The shrinkage is all the more perturbing because its dynamics are not well understood. Working out what is going on in, around and underneath a supposedly frigid ice sheet is crucial to understanding how it will respond to further warming and the implications of its demise for rising global sea levels (see article).
[…]
The Economist
375 billion tonnes per year… Oh my!
400 massive icebergs measuring 1km on each side disappearing each year… Oh no!!!
Wait a second… Those sound like big numbers… But how big are they compared to the Greenland ice sheet?
The USGS says that the volume of the Greenland ice sheet was 2,600,000 km3 at the beginning of the 21st century.
According to the “ice sheet goeth” graph, since 2001, Greenland lost about 3,600 gigatonnes of ice or about 3,840 km3 … That equates to a 16 km x 16 km x 16 km cube of ice (3√ 3,840 = 15.66). That’s YUGE! Right? Not really.
It’s not even a tiny nick when spread out over roughly 1.7 million square kilometers of ice surface. That works out a sheet of ice less about 2 meters thick… Not even a rounding error compared to the average thickness of the Greenland ice sheet.
Isopach map of the Greenland ice sheet. The first contour inside the white area represents an ice thickness of 1,000 meters. Source: Eric Gaba (Wikimedia Commons user Sting) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
The thickness of the Greenland ice sheet is truly apparent on this radar cross section:
Animation courtesy Michael Ronayne. Click for larger, slower speed animation
NASA’s David Hathaway just recently updated his solar cycle prediction and has pushed cycle 24 into the future a little more once again. Though to read his latest update on 10/03/08 at his prediction page here, you wouldn’t know it, because the page is mostly tech speak and reviews of semi relevant papers.
However, there is one graphic, the familar one above, that has been updated and tells the story best. Michael Ronayne was kind enough to provide an animation (above) that shows the march of time as far as solar cycle 24 predictions go. With the latest update (static image here) the startup of solar cycle 24 has been pushed into 2009.
This isn’t the first time NASA has moved the goalpost. Back in March I did a story on NASA moving the goal post then, and since then they’ve moved the cycle ahead twice, once in April and again now in October.
NASA isn’t the only one having to update predictions, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) has also had to make several adjustments to their graphic also.
Animation courtesy Michael Ronayne. Click for larger animation
And there is more change in the current thinking on sunspots. As Michael Ronayne writes:
After ignoring sunspots for two and a half years the New York Times finally ran a story and BLOG posting on the current state of the Sun.
Sunspots Are Fewest Since 1954, but Significance Is Unclear
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/science/space/03sun.html
Climate and the Spotless Sun
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/climate-and-the-spotless-sun/
Details of the recent NASA reports on Ulysses and the Spotless Sun were minimal and the Times failed to mention NASA’s report that the Sun was dimming. The Times reporter speculated on possible connections between solar activity and Earth climate but such speculation was of concern to some Times readers who made their views know in the Dot Earth BLOG. Perhaps the Times should avoid controversial phrases such as “Little Ice Age” in the future. I decided to make a post on the Dot Earth BLOG about some of the graphic records I have been collecting of past SWPC and NASA sunspots predictions. Apparently my input was not fit to print because the moderator did not allow it to be posted to Dot Earth. Attached is the text of my submission to the New York Times. I thought the posting was quite balanced and am not sure what warranted it being rejected.
As you review the SWPC and NASA predictions, note that the outer envelope for the onset of Solar Cycle 24 for the SWPC Low Prediction (http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/ssn_predict.gif) is January 2009, while the NASA prediction has been moved out to July 2009. Watch the two animations carefully and note where the changes were made in the NASA predictions.
I am writing a segment on Sunspot Predictions which will be posted in Wikipedia, at the following URL, when it is done:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot
It will be interesting to see when solar minimum actually occurs. I suspect that we will be in for a long wait. I will keep the above animations current as SWPC and NASA post their monthly updates.
Lots of scrambling going on to get in tune with the sun these days.
" data-medium-file="" data-large-file="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3509" src="https://debunkhouse.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/greenland-ice-sheet-graphic.jpg" alt="greenland-ice-sheet-graphic" scale="0" style="-x-ignore: 1">
A really cool radar cross section of the Greenland ice sheet. Source: http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/greenland-ice-sheet-graphic.jpg
From a thickness perspective, 2 meters looks like this:
" data-medium-file="" data-large-file="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3540" src="https://debunkhouse.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/greenland_xsect.png" alt="Greenland_xsect" scale="0" style="-x-ignore: 1">
The top panel is zoomed in on the box in the lower panel. Each square on the graph paper image represents 5 vertical meters.
Using The Economist ratio of 400 km3 to 375 gigatonnes, 2,600,000 km3 works out to 2,437,500 gigatonnes. When some actual perspective is applied, it is obvious that “the ice sheet goeth” nowhere:
The ice sheet goeth nowhere.
Despite all of the warming since the end of Neoglaciation, the Greenland ice sheet still retains more than 99% of its 1900 AD ice mass.
Multiple Choice Quiz
Fill in the blank:
Alarmists are _________ perspective.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/05...and-losing-400-1-cubic-km-ice-cubes-per-year/
by David Middleton
[…]
The thaw is happening far faster than once expected. Over the past three decades the area of sea ice in the Arctic has fallen by more than half and its volume has plummeted by three-quarters (see map). SWIPA estimates that the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer by 2040. Scientists previously suggested this would not occur until 2070. The thickness of ice in the central Arctic ocean declined by 65% between 1975 and 2012; record lows in the maximum extent of Arctic sea ice occurred in March.
[…]
The thaw is happening far faster than once expected. Over the past three decades the area of sea ice in the Arctic has fallen by more than half and its volume has plummeted by three-quarters (see map). SWIPA estimates that the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer by 2040. Scientists previously suggested this would not occur until 2070. The thickness of ice in the central Arctic ocean declined by 65% between 1975 and 2012; record lows in the maximum extent of Arctic sea ice occurred in March.
...//...
The most worrying changes are happening in Greenland, which lost an average of 375bn tonnes of ice per year between 2011 and 2014—almost twice the rate at which it disappeared between 2003 and 2008 (see chart). This is the equivalent of over 400 massive icebergs measuring 1km on each side disappearing each year. The shrinkage is all the more perturbing because its dynamics are not well understood. Working out what is going on in, around and underneath a supposedly frigid ice sheet is crucial to understanding how it will respond to further warming and the implications of its demise for rising global sea levels (see article).
[…]
The Economist
375 billion tonnes per year… Oh my!
400 massive icebergs measuring 1km on each side disappearing each year… Oh no!!!
Wait a second… Those sound like big numbers… But how big are they compared to the Greenland ice sheet?
The USGS says that the volume of the Greenland ice sheet was 2,600,000 km3 at the beginning of the 21st century.
According to the “ice sheet goeth” graph, since 2001, Greenland lost about 3,600 gigatonnes of ice or about 3,840 km3 … That equates to a 16 km x 16 km x 16 km cube of ice (3√ 3,840 = 15.66). That’s YUGE! Right? Not really.
It’s not even a tiny nick when spread out over roughly 1.7 million square kilometers of ice surface. That works out a sheet of ice less about 2 meters thick… Not even a rounding error compared to the average thickness of the Greenland ice sheet.
- 2,600,000 km3 / 1,700,000 km2 = 1.53 km
Isopach map of the Greenland ice sheet. The first contour inside the white area represents an ice thickness of 1,000 meters. Source: Eric Gaba (Wikimedia Commons user Sting) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
The thickness of the Greenland ice sheet is truly apparent on this radar cross section:
Animation courtesy Michael Ronayne. Click for larger, slower speed animation
NASA’s David Hathaway just recently updated his solar cycle prediction and has pushed cycle 24 into the future a little more once again. Though to read his latest update on 10/03/08 at his prediction page here, you wouldn’t know it, because the page is mostly tech speak and reviews of semi relevant papers.
However, there is one graphic, the familar one above, that has been updated and tells the story best. Michael Ronayne was kind enough to provide an animation (above) that shows the march of time as far as solar cycle 24 predictions go. With the latest update (static image here) the startup of solar cycle 24 has been pushed into 2009.
This isn’t the first time NASA has moved the goalpost. Back in March I did a story on NASA moving the goal post then, and since then they’ve moved the cycle ahead twice, once in April and again now in October.
NASA isn’t the only one having to update predictions, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) has also had to make several adjustments to their graphic also.
Animation courtesy Michael Ronayne. Click for larger animation
And there is more change in the current thinking on sunspots. As Michael Ronayne writes:
After ignoring sunspots for two and a half years the New York Times finally ran a story and BLOG posting on the current state of the Sun.
Sunspots Are Fewest Since 1954, but Significance Is Unclear
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/science/space/03sun.html
Climate and the Spotless Sun
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/climate-and-the-spotless-sun/
Details of the recent NASA reports on Ulysses and the Spotless Sun were minimal and the Times failed to mention NASA’s report that the Sun was dimming. The Times reporter speculated on possible connections between solar activity and Earth climate but such speculation was of concern to some Times readers who made their views know in the Dot Earth BLOG. Perhaps the Times should avoid controversial phrases such as “Little Ice Age” in the future. I decided to make a post on the Dot Earth BLOG about some of the graphic records I have been collecting of past SWPC and NASA sunspots predictions. Apparently my input was not fit to print because the moderator did not allow it to be posted to Dot Earth. Attached is the text of my submission to the New York Times. I thought the posting was quite balanced and am not sure what warranted it being rejected.
As you review the SWPC and NASA predictions, note that the outer envelope for the onset of Solar Cycle 24 for the SWPC Low Prediction (http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/ssn_predict.gif) is January 2009, while the NASA prediction has been moved out to July 2009. Watch the two animations carefully and note where the changes were made in the NASA predictions.
I am writing a segment on Sunspot Predictions which will be posted in Wikipedia, at the following URL, when it is done:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot
It will be interesting to see when solar minimum actually occurs. I suspect that we will be in for a long wait. I will keep the above animations current as SWPC and NASA post their monthly updates.
Lots of scrambling going on to get in tune with the sun these days.
" data-medium-file="" data-large-file="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3509" src="https://debunkhouse.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/greenland-ice-sheet-graphic.jpg" alt="greenland-ice-sheet-graphic" scale="0" style="-x-ignore: 1">
A really cool radar cross section of the Greenland ice sheet. Source: http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/greenland-ice-sheet-graphic.jpg
From a thickness perspective, 2 meters looks like this:
" data-medium-file="" data-large-file="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3540" src="https://debunkhouse.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/greenland_xsect.png" alt="Greenland_xsect" scale="0" style="-x-ignore: 1">
The top panel is zoomed in on the box in the lower panel. Each square on the graph paper image represents 5 vertical meters.
Using The Economist ratio of 400 km3 to 375 gigatonnes, 2,600,000 km3 works out to 2,437,500 gigatonnes. When some actual perspective is applied, it is obvious that “the ice sheet goeth” nowhere:
The ice sheet goeth nowhere.
Despite all of the warming since the end of Neoglaciation, the Greenland ice sheet still retains more than 99% of its 1900 AD ice mass.
Multiple Choice Quiz
Fill in the blank:
Alarmists are _________ perspective.
- a) allergic to
- b) ignorant of
- c) willfully ignoring
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/05...and-losing-400-1-cubic-km-ice-cubes-per-year/
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