Arctic 'Warmest In 2,000 Years'

BBC NEWS :

Arctic temperatures are now higher than at any time in the last 2,000 years, research reveals.

Changes to the Earth's orbit drove centuries of cooling, but temperatures rose fast in the last 100 years as human greenhouse gas emissions rose.

Read the whole story: BBC NEWS

Comments

[realpolitic]

Wow, I have just read through all the denier posts on this thread. As usual, you guys show your scientiifc illiteracy and revel in knowing nothing! It is really kind of scary since it is my first contact with the home-schooled crowd.

[realpolitic]

Wow, this thread is a convention of the denying crowd. Do you guys get a memo from Big Brother telling you what and where to post? Your thinking is really uniform!

[Richard2]

This article's headline states the Arctic is the warmest it has been in 2,000 years. Yet today the 2009 Arctic Sea Ice extent increased and overtook the sea ice extent for 2005. It is now the fourth lowest in recent years, ahead of 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Also, the Danish data source for Arctic air temperatures places the current temperatures as marginally below the 50 year average for the region.

If the temperature is below the average for the past 50 years, how can the the Arctic be the warmest it has been in 2,000 years?

[realpolitic]

This post you repeat every day is absolutely meaningless and shows why deniers are scientifically illiterate. If you consider the link showing Arctic sea ice loss, it has always peaked in a certain year. The last was 2007, and before that 2005, and then before that 2002. It then rebounds for a time, but the trend is toward declining ice, especially when you consider not only ice extent, but ice mass, which is at the lowest levels on record.

http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20090603_Figure3.png

http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2009-04/nasa-study-shows-thinning-arctic-sea-ice

[SFTor]

I don't understand how this can be true. Here is the DMI data. It shows nothing of the sort. It seems pretty normal, actually.

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

[realpolitic]

Did you read the front page of your link? Well, no need to answer!

"Since the 1970s the extent of sea ice has been measured from satellites. From these measurements we know that the sea ice extent today is significantly smaller than 30 years ago. During the past 10 years the melting of sea ice has accelerated, and especially during the ice extent minimum in September large changes are observed. The sea ice in the northern hemisphere have never been thinner and more vulnerable­."


http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/index.uk.php

[RomeoMD25]

The National Aeronautic and Space Agency (NASA) has determined Mars, Pluto, Jupiter, and the largest moon of Neptune warmed at the same time the Earth recently warmed.

Two hundred million years ago, when dinosaurs walked the Earth, the average carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was 1800 ppm, five times higher than today.

All four major global temperatur­e-tracking outlets (Hadley UK, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, University of Alabama-Huntsville, and Remote Sensing Systems Santa Rosa) have released updated information showing in 2007 global cooling ranged from 0.65 degrees C to 0.75 degrees C, a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. This occurred in a single year.

NASA satellites measuring global temperatures found 2008 to be the coldest year since 2000 and the 14th coldest of the past 30 years.

The overall polar bear population has increased from about 5,000 in the 1960s
to 25,000 today, and the only two subpopulations in decline are in areas where it has been getting colder over the past 50 years. Polar bears have survived long periods of time when the Arctic was much warmer than today. Yet alarmists say the bears cannot survive this present warming without help from government regulators.

[realpolitic]

So if co2 levels get much higher, the dinosaurs are coming back. We will feed them the deniers first!

[Richard2]

If people are so concerned about Polar Bears not having enough sea ice to live on, then why aren't people protesting the use of Icebreakers to cut open water paths through the Arctic Sea Ice?

[realpolitic]

Just asking a hypothetical? What are your concerns, except denial?

[shockmagog]

The Northeast Passage is now open for business. Icebreakers are no longer necessary:

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1310

[rblackbird]

The Northeast Passage is not open and clear yet. Your source relies on data from the Univ. of Illinois Polar Research Group which gets its data from NOAA, and the National Snow and Ice Data Center which supplies the data to NOAA. NSIDC relies on 30-year-old DOD weather satellites using SSI sensors which are admitted by NSIDC and NOAA to be less accurate than the much newer, alternative system using AMSR-E sensors. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2009/021809.html

The Sea Ice-Monitor website relies on AMSR-E data. At this date the data shows that there still remains some ice between the Russian islands and the edge of the Russian coast. http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi It would seem that an ice breaker may still be needed.

Your source also states that with a major ice melt in 2005 the Northeast Passage was open "for the first time in recorded history." This is wrong, too. According to a Russian geographer's study, the first ever traverse of the Northeastern Passage occurred in 1914-15, about 90 years earlier than your source pegs it. http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/HistoryCulture/russianexplor.html

[realpolitic]

So NOAA is lying about the Northeast passage even though a recent article showed a couple boats passing through there. Was it NOAA who faked the moon landing?

[lightningbolt]

Regardless of this fact, right wing nuts will continue to say climate change is a hoax.

[rblackbird]

I do not know if any right-wing nuts refer to the following site, http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi. But If you go there, you will find that Arctic sea-ice extent for September 4, 2007 was 4,528,125 sq. kilometers. On the same date in 2008, the extent was 4,868,906 sq. k. Yesterday, September 4, 2009 the ice extent was 5,379,844 sq. k., about 850,000 sq. k. MORE ice than two years ago. 2007 was the low point in this decade so far. As the site shows, even in that year 4.5 million sq. k. did not melt and after the end of the summer, the ice substantially grew back.

[fumes]

and left wing nuts want to believe they change the climate!

[realpolitic]

Turn in your picture of Obama!

[realpolitic]

Man, they are gone and repeat the same two or three talking points all day and night. They do so with such excitement, like they haven't said the same thing 10,000 times before.

[martinfrosa]

You know, I didn't even realize that someone had been up in the Artic with thermometers measuring temperatures for the last 2000 years. LOL.

[fumes]

has anyone seen nasa's ''2009 tour of the cryosphere''?

i think it's supposed to scare the viewer but i was comforted by the ice left vs the ice gone..

[realpolitic]

Good, now I can sleep soundly tonight!

[watchTVgetSTUPID]

Michigan just went through an extremely unusually cold winter, spring and summer with lake ice reaching 4 feet thick. If we get any more of this kind of "Global Warming" then we will use up all the energy just heating houses.

[regularmess]

Editor says: make it sounds worse than a luau.

Read this. Moving story as we approach 9/11 anniversary: http://thehappeningstory.blogspot.com/

[Kruddler]

Notice how only the "scary" news makes it to print? News on this paper suggesting that sea level rise will be less than recent predictions seems to have fallen through the cracks:

Siddall, M., Stocker, T. F. & Clark, P. U. Constraints on future sea-level rise from past sea-level change. Nature Geoscience (advance online publication, 26 July 2009).

[shockmagog]

Just like you never heard about all the pro-health care town hall meetings. No shouts, no gu.ns., no coverage.

[realpolitic]

Kruddler, at least you have some credibility, man. Most of these deniers are just whacky!

[Kruddler]

Polyakov, I.V., et al., 2003. Variability and Trends of Air Temperature and Pressure in the Maritime Arctic, 1875-2000. Journal of Climate, 16, 2067-2077.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P3-358438141.html

and

Long-Term Ice Variability in Arctic Marginal Seas
IGOR V. POLYAKOV,* GENRIKH V. ALEKSEEV,?? ROMAN V. BEKRYAEV,*?? UMA S. BHATT,* ROGER COLONY,*
MARK A. JOHNSON,# VALERII P. KARKLIN,?? DAVID WALSH,* AND ALEXANDER V. YULIN?

www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~igor/research/pdf/ice.pdf

Both show that artic temperatures in the 1940s were as high (or higher) than now.

[realpolitic]

They measure past temperatures not be ice extent, but by the amount of co2 in ice cores, regarding the first paper.

[Kruddler]

Ughh!! Proxy bias and data splicing strike again.

[realpolitic]

For example?