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Post by Ratty on Jan 19, 2009 11:24:11 GMT
[snip] Australia is a HOT DRY DESERT continent. We expect to have hot summers. We are having a merely warm one. So Kiwi, still working for the Australian Tourist Commission I see
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Post by kiwistonewall on Jan 19, 2009 18:58:55 GMT
Nah, the New Zealand Tourist Commission: Come to clean green (damp & mouldy) New Zealand - its COOL!Arctic ice extent back to sideways..
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Post by solartrack on Jan 19, 2009 19:12:46 GMT
These plateaus in ice growth seem to follow a huge arctic air mass export. Then later growth shoots up again. I'm thinking that zero degree air ( F) all the way to the gulf of mexico is going to pay growth dividends from the increased surface reflection of all that snow later.
The warm years had the arctic bottled up around the high 40s of latitude. Those years seem to have longer sideways growth and shallow gains or even negative growth afterwards. I'll have to look at the inflection points to see if there's a trend here after the season peaks.
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Post by Ole Doc Sief on Jan 20, 2009 4:26:51 GMT
Antarctica has more ice than long term mean: arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpgDown under is COLD (relatively speaking!) (my closest station SE Melbourne at Scoresby has Average for January so far: nights(min) 2C lower & day max: 1.1C lower. 3 days >30 so far, 1>35 (8>30 expected for month- unlikely we'll reach that this month, though 6 or 7 likely) (Jan 2008 had 9>30 with 4 >35 - 2.7>35 expected.) Sure we have the odd hot day, but nothing like the last couple of years, and lower than the long term means. I guess if you go out in the middle of the desert, find a hot rock (or maybe an air-con outlet) you'll get something high - But, nearly all of Oz is having colder than normal summer. Australia is a HOT DRY DESERT continent. We expect to have hot summers. We are having a merely warm one. Hmmm, just like Minnesota is a cool, lake covered, liberal paradise, and we are just having a slightly cooler than normal winter (last time this cold in the 1970's). Interesting how the pro-AGW news organizations were only touting brush fires and heat waves while conveniently avoiding stories about Hollands canals freezing for the first time in > 15years, and some climate conference in Poland debunking AGW! The next I expect to hear will be that ice is melting in Antarctica...oooh, scary
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Post by Ole Doc Sief on Jan 20, 2009 4:30:49 GMT
Nah, the New Zealand Tourist Commission: Come to clean green (damp & mouldy) New Zealand - its COOL!Arctic ice extent continues sideways... Yeah, we yanks seem to forget that New Zealand is as far from Australia as the US east coast is to the west. For that matter the North Island is about as different from the South Island as Washington State is from Colorado. Hope to get there once more before I kick the bucket.
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Post by kiwistonewall on Jan 20, 2009 21:44:32 GMT
The PDO, which makes the east Pacific (Alaskan side) cooler, and the west cooler has produced these opposite anomalies: Both the anomalies are tending toward more ice. The only remaining large anomalies are the Barents/Kara Sea(icing over), as the North Atlantic area appears warmer (losing heat?) The true total anomaly is actually much lower than that shown at arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ since they use the Goddard series which compensates backwards for the older lower resolution coastal errors. i.e. there is an error which makes the total anomaly about 500,000 km 2 too high. I make the current total NH anomaly at a little less than 600,000km 2 while the cryosphere anomaly is still about 1,000,000 km 2 .
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Post by Ratty on Jan 21, 2009 21:37:30 GMT
Article from today's Brisbane Courier Mail: www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24946572-5003402,00.html Melting Antarctica spells troubleArticle from: AAP January 22, 2009 04:21am ANTARCTICA is melting - and that spells big trouble for Australia. Scientists used to think Antarctica was bucking the trend on global warming by getting cooler. Now it seems they got it wrong. US researchers have pored over data from satellites and weather stations in the biggest ever study of the frozen continent's climate - and found it's warming after all. Barry Brook, director of the University of Adelaide's Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability, said the finding was alarming. Scientists now estimate the melting of Antarctica's massive ice sheets will cause the world's sea levels to rise by one to two metres by the end of the century. That's bad news if you live near the Australian coast," Prof Brook said. "In some areas where you've currently got housing, you'd probably have to abandon those areas." He said the sea would penetrate up to 1km inland in flat areas like South Australia's lower lakes. Large areas which don't see flooding now would get flooded by king tides. House prices for coastal areas would probably drop, Prof Brook said. Scientists already knew, he said, that the massive ice sheets of western Antarctica were melting, but the study showed they would melt more quickly. The study, contained in today's issue of Nature, was also bad news for climate change in general, Prof Brook said. It had been thought Antarctica's cooling would help restrain global warming by acting as a "cool pack", but this did not appear to be the case. The US study found that eastern Antarctica - which includes the Australian zone - is getting cooler. But this is outweighed by western Antarctica and the Antarctic peninsula, which are warming. On average the continent is warming, the study found. Over the past 50 years much of Antarctica has been warming at a rate comparable to the rest of the world. Study co-author Eric Steig from the University of Washington said the satellite data was revealing. "The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling and that's not the case," he told Nature. Prof Brook said it had been thought Antarctica was cooling partly because of the hole in the ozone layer, which allowed the hot air out.
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Post by kiwistonewall on Jan 21, 2009 22:10:52 GMT
Great, I can't wait to buy up some of that cheap coastal property.
And that nut is an Evolutionary Biologist. He has swapped one myth for another. A true believer! A Rabid Climate Fundamentalist. Don't expect any Science from Brook.
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Post by Ratty on Jan 21, 2009 22:15:44 GMT
Coastal Australia is safe from inundation. All those canal & marina developments will accommodate the rise.
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Post by kiwistonewall on Jan 21, 2009 22:22:36 GMT
Actually, its a pity, as Australia could do with a good 100m sea level rise. Would recreate the inland sea & probably add far more good land to agriculture than would be lost.
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Post by Ratty on Jan 21, 2009 22:38:01 GMT
When Melbourne goes under, there will be a spare room for you here in Mango Hill . Condition is you bring your computer gear. Of course, the offer is automatically rescinded should we be wet too.
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Post by poitsplace on Jan 22, 2009 4:47:58 GMT
Except even THEIR results say the antarctic has been cooling for the last 10 years. Since last year saw the highest antarctic sea ice extent...EVER... all that worry is probably somewhat misplaced. Also with respect to ice sheets, (pet peeve here) I really have no idea how any reasonable scientist can be so stupid as to expect that vast sheet of ice extending into the ocean...would EVER be permanent. Ice is hanging off more than half the perimeter of the antarctic (which is what...8000 miles?) so there are potentially the equivalent of fourty, ever lengthening, 100mile wide (to use an arbitrary figure) ice sub-sheets of ice that could break off. Even if they last 1000 years each that means they should be breaking off on average every 25 years. Heh, except 1000 years of ice growth in the antarctic would be quite a lot of extra ice. Obviously it's got to be breaking off more often.
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Post by nautonnier on Jan 22, 2009 14:55:56 GMT
Except even THEIR results say the antarctic has been cooling for the last 10 years. Since last year saw the highest antarctic sea ice extent...EVER... all that worry is probably somewhat misplaced. Also with respect to ice sheets, (pet peeve here) I really have no idea how any reasonable scientist can be so stupid as to expect that vast sheet of ice extending into the ocean...would EVER be permanent. Ice is hanging off more than half the perimeter of the antarctic (which is what...8000 miles?) so there are potentially the equivalent of fourty, ever lengthening, 100mile wide (to use an arbitrary figure) ice sub-sheets of ice that could break off. Even if they last 1000 years each that means they should be breaking off on average every 25 years. Heh, except 1000 years of ice growth in the antarctic would be quite a lot of extra ice. Obviously it's got to be breaking off more often. You miss the point. This is not a scientific debate - this is a battle to win the media (and through them the public) perception of looming disaster. There is a media blitz going on at the moment as the public (apart from those in California) are starting to doubt the creed. This is because the debate has ceased to be scientific - it has been taken up by politicians who need to win the argument whatever the scientific truth is. It is no accident that many politicians these days are ex-lawyers who are also used to arguing to win, whatever the merits of the case.
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Post by dopeydog on Jan 22, 2009 17:41:18 GMT
Article from today's Brisbane Courier Mail: www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24946572-5003402,00.html Melting Antarctica spells troubleArticle from: AAP January 22, 2009 04:21am ANTARCTICA is melting - and that spells big trouble for Australia. Scientists used to think Antarctica was bucking the trend on global warming by getting cooler. Now it seems they got it wrong. This article is so bad that even Kevin Trenberth doubts it's validity. And that means it is pretty bad. According to ICECAP he said about the study: “I remain somewhat skeptical. It is hard to make data where none exist.”
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Post by jimg on Jan 22, 2009 21:01:30 GMT
There's a news report going around about an ice shelf the size of connecticut that's breaking loose from Antartica. Which brought back memories of other news articles: ====================== From March 2008: www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/mar/26/chunk-antarctic-ice-shelf-collapses/?printer=1/Satellite images from the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center reveal a 38-square-mile iceberg fell from the Wilkins Ice Shelf, a Connecticut-sized plate of floating ice on Antarctica's southwest peninsula. ============================ From 2005: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6827930/Huge iceberg to ram glacier 'Clash of the titans' in the Antarctic With an area of 1,200-square miles (3,000-square kilometers), the iceberg B-15A is about the size of Long Island, NY. ============================ From 2006 re. 2002: www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2006/may/16/glacier-scientists-ponder-high-speed-changes/?printer=1/In 2002, the Rhode Island-sized Larsen B ice shelf, on the peninsula's eastern side, collapsed. ============================ This seems to be a trend, every summer, ice shelves crack, and it's all man's fault. And the ice hits the fan.
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