Stronger Winds Explain Puzzling Growth of Sea Ice In Antarctica 236
vinces99 writes "As NOAA announces a new record for the extent of sea ice in Antarctica, a new modeling study to be published in the Journal of Climate shows that stronger polar winds lead to an increase in Antarctic sea ice, even when Earth's overall climate is getting warmer. The study (abstract) by Jinlun Zhang, a University of Washington oceanographer, shows that stronger westerly winds swirling around the South Pole can explain 80 percent of the increase in Antarctic sea ice volume during the past three decades. The polar vortex that swirls around the South Pole is not just stronger than it was when satellite records began in the 1970s, it also shoves the sea ice together to cause ridging. Stronger winds also drive ice faster, which leads to still more deformation and ridging. This creates thicker, longer-lasting ice, while exposing surrounding water and thin ice to the blistering cold winds that cause more ice growth. A computer simulation that includes detailed interactions between wind and sea shows that thick ice — more than 6 feet deep — increased by about 1 percent per year from 1979 to 2010, while the amount of thin ice stayed fairly constant. The end result is a thicker, slightly larger ice pack that lasts longer into the summer."
Wat? (Score:2, Insightful)
I really did believe in global warming, but now even I am beginning to wonder about the way every event that seems to discount climate change predictions is attributed to an outlying event, while everything that seems to prove climate change is attributed to human caused global warming...
Re: OMG! It wasn't puzzling (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bullshit! (Score:3, Insightful)
Look up the meaning of variation. Prediction. Accuracy.
Both the weather and climate are vary and fluctuate greatly. Both are unpredictable. Both have a habit of showing mankind's predictions to always be wrong.
Re:OMG! It wasn't puzzling (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OMG! It wasn't puzzling (Score:2, Insightful)
It looks rather like the "global-warming-is-man-made-sound-the-alarms" people have been cherry picking. First it was the higher temperatures. Then when the temperatures did not support their theories, it was "well global warming causes extreme weather!". When THAT got disproven, it was "look-look-look, all the ice is melting!" Now that THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself, what will the GW people predict next?
Quite a few "inconvienent truths" seem to be getting in the GW peoples' way. Carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant. It is stupid to treat it that way - unless you are a politician, who wants to tax the very air we beathe.
Re:OMG! It wasn't puzzling (Score:2, Insightful)
How was this modded insightful? None of those have been disproved. Look at any of glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere for example. Not 1 of them is even as large as it was 25, 50, 75, or 100+ years ago. Many of them don't even exist anymore. Same in South America and anywhere along the equator. If you are trying to say this Antarctic ice difference makes up the total difference for a net 0 result, then you need to check your facts.
While I agree with you that trying to stop the change is foolish, I don't disputing that global warming exists. I just don't think we can do anything about it (even if Americans change their ways drastically China and India will compensate as their standard of living improves). Adapt or perish. That's how life has always worked on Earth.
Strong winds are blowing bullshit over the artic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All those liberals (Score:4, Insightful)
So the ocean pH is going down, thus in the direction of acidity, but still waaaaaay alkaline?
It isn't whether the ocean is alkaline, but whether it's alkaline enough. Do you really want to see sea life reduced to algae, brittle stars, and squid?
Re:OMG! It wasn't puzzling (Score:2, Insightful)
But this article doesn't discuss what they all are. It shows that with better modelling of wind-sea interactions in the southern ocean, we can get a much better handle on what is happening to the southern sea ice.
I might be hypersensitive to the climate conspiracy theorists on the internet, but I read "therefore cannot accurately predict what will happen in the future", as the common wrong argument that therefore trying to reduce emissions is not justified, and this is why you try to hit this point despite its irrelevance to the article?
Higher uncertainty of the regional effects of global warming is not a good argument for not taking action, unless those regional effects have a very significant effect on global costs of adjustment. The CBR is running at about $10 in benefit for each $1 in emission reduction costs at the moment. With the developing world bearing most of the disbenefit of inaction, and that coupled with the least ability to finance. (You may remember the Stern Review [nationalarchives.gov.uk]
Climatology is not a working science yet (Score:2, Insightful)
The reason for this mess is that some climatologists fail to distinguish between their personal beliefs or gut feeling and what the scientific method really allows them to state with precision. They regularly claim that their observations "prove" their preferred interpretation despite the absence of any validly predictive theories in this area yet. All we have today are piecemeal components for some future theory.
The GCMs of climatology are helpful and fun, but they're just extremely rough approximations and full of known kludges (generously called 'shortcuts') to make the extraordinarily complex natural systems computable this side of eternity. The GCMs are certainly not accurate physical simulations of Earth's systems. The unknowns in our models are utterly vast.
It'll require many hundreds of years of further research before we have a deep understanding of how the biosphere and many circulatory systems operate and interact, not to mention the similarly complex effects introduced by humans. We're barely on the first rung of the ladder at the moment.
Right now climatologists are just handwaving, and can't be expected to do more than just handwave. Their observed data is very valuable as input, but any interpretations they might make are totally unsafe in a scientific sense, because the necessary foundation of a predictive Theory of Climatology that combines all the parts of the puzzle in a valid scientific way just doesn't exist yet.
Making conclusions in advance of predictive theory is not how the scientific method works. The honest scientists in the field know that, and they don't pretend otherwise.
Re:Wat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Equilibrium? Extra energy often becoming heat? Ancient swamps thawing? [worldoceanreview.com] Additional atmospheric water vapor helps cooling? [nasa.gov], Apocalyptic heat death in a few decades?
I'm really not trying to be mean to you, because we need to stop poisoning ourselves. But posts like yours do not help. Your post is a "deniers" wet dream. It's makes people who want to be better stewards of the planet look like crazy people.
The temperature trends look like they are going up at an insane rate if you look at the last 500, or 1000 years. But if you look at the last 200K years of half or million years, it's debatable.
The earth is not and hopefully will never be in a state of equilibrium any time soon. Do you know what is in a much closer state of atmospheric equilibrium? The moon is a pretty good place to look. Mars isn't bad either. I don't know about you, but I like our atmosphere. As long as we have it and there are living things on this planet, it will remain that way. Hopefully for a very long time.
I'm not even going to get started on the heat energy thing
I assume the link above is what you are referencing in regards to as "old swamps". At least that's what I'm guessing as I've never heard of the danger of thawing swamps. Plus there's a hell of a lot more methane in those formations than any swamp. It's also unknown if that methane will be released with rising temperature. But like you, I'd rather not find out. I would much prefer it remain an academic debate than see it put to the test.
There is strong evidence for the Albedo effect [wikipedia.org]. However the link regarding atmospheric water vapor also seems to provide compelling evidence that water vapor in the atmosphere is also a strong greenhouse gas.
I understand that trying to make this problem something dire that will affect most of us in our lifetimes seems like a way to make others more motivated. But when it doesn't happen in the ridiculously short time-frames you are using, it makes most people call BS. Spreading this amount of misinformation is really not helping. I apologize for sounding like an ass, but posts like yours make it too easy for those who don't give a shit to keep on not worrying about it.
Re:All those liberals (Score:4, Insightful)
So the stuff that's been predicted for years by climatologists is happening, and yet, for some reason, the core mechanism for it is wrong.
You are one piece of work.
Re:OMG! It wasn't puzzling (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OMG! It wasn't puzzling (Score:0, Insightful)
"Higher uncertainty of the regional effects of global warming is not a good argument for not taking action...blah blah blah"
Probably the clearest admission that Climate Science isn't about science, but about the redistribution of wealth. It is the hijacking of Science in the name of radical leftist agendas with the Scientists playing the unwitting fools.
Re:Bullshit! (Score:2, Insightful)
They aren't correcting anything. They are making up new ones: A causes B. OK, except when it doesn't because C is happening...maybe.
Re:OMG! It wasn't puzzling (Score:2, Insightful)
This was the same "logic" that parent used when they refused to give their kids vaccines. Now their kids are dying of preventable diseases. Do we dare take a chance? FUCK YES! Reducing CO2 emissions is a huge waste of money, and hurts everyone. We absolutely should not make policies based on fear-mongering and bullshit pseudoscience.
Re:Bullshit! (Score:4, Insightful)
So what you are saying is they change the models to fit what happens? But that is science! You've stumbled onto the scientific method.
Re:Bullshit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you actually sat down and talked with an actual scientist in the field?
Instead of only reading laymans interpretations of what they say?
You might be surprised that they can actually answer all of the dumb questions.
Deniers usually attack a simplified view made to explain extremely complex things to layman and then find some holes in the simplificiation and then deny everything based on it.
Re:All those liberals (Score:2, Insightful)
NOTHING they have predicted has come true. The core mechanism IS wrong. And you are still crying about it while our fisheries are dying.
You are the pot calling the porcelain tea set black.