Where Does The Glacial Tipping Point Reside?

[Billy_Bob]

Where Does the Glacial Tipping Point Reside?

This is a question I asked three colleagues today. At what point will the albedo change of the earth and the solar heat reflected create enough thermal imbalance globally to trigger a glacial cycle?

I got some very stunned looks. I then went on to explain that the southern hemisphere has reached ice extents never before seen and recorded by man. This causes massive amounts of reflected solar input to earths climate system to be lost. The potential offset to this is the ice mass, which then thermally protects the oceans under it, slowing the amount of heat loss that an open ocean would have.

Antarctica now covers some 20 million KL Squared in ice. This equates to a tripling of the area we have seen historically. But then the oceans are then slowed in there heat loss by the ice retaining much more of it.

The ice also has the effect of slowing the circumpolar waters which allows greater freezing and thus increased ice cover.

At this point the thermal loss is calculated at 126 W/M^2. That is a significant loss of thermal input. Over half of what the sun places on the area is lost to space almost instantly. Average Temps this winter for the ice covered area is -67 Deg F a full drop of 6 degrees F. (almost -4 degrees C) The Arctic has been running below norm by -4 deg C and the ice melt hit bottom on the 17th of this month and is now gaining ice.

With the Poles cooling rapidly and the albedo changing reflecting more of the incoming solar energy where is the tipping point that earth simply slips into a glacial cycle? OR have we already passed it?

 

[Billy_Bob]

this next week ought to be some interesting talks about this subject..

 

[Billy_Bob]

YES, They recognized the LIA, Dalton and Maunder events as potential outcomes... but they did so begrudgingly...

 

[IanC]

There's clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with....

 

[Crick]

I know this doesn't seem to bother any of your denier cohorts, but I'd like to see a decent reference for your claim that Southern Hemisphere ice cover has reached unprecedented levels. I kinda figure you might be talking about all the way back to the beginning of satellite data in 1979. And I'm wondering how you extrapolate that to being sufficient to bring on a glaciation which hasn't taken place now in 22,000 years.

I bet when you speak at work, you get a lot of stunned looks. It's just I don't think the cause is what you think it is.

[Below] A little dated but I don't see a trend that would produce what you're talking about

 

[Billy_Bob]

I know this doesn't seem to bother any of your denier cohorts, but I'd like to see a decent reference for your claim that Southern Hemisphere ice cover has reached unprecedented levels. I kinda figure you might be talking about all the way back to the beginning of satellite data in 1979. And I'm wondering how you extrapolate that to being sufficient to bring on a glaciation which hasn't taken place now in 22,000 years.

I bet when you speak at work, you get a lot of stunned looks. It's just I don't think the cause is what you think it is.

[Below] A little dated but I don't see a trend that would produce what you're talking about

The poor little troll cant even get this right... Hey McFly you wanna use the whole globe to see what is really happening or your just wanna play with your broken models?

Lets get the real truth... Total sea ice recovery rate is higher globally than we have seen in over 100 years..

Gawd the morons are out in force... Since 2011 we have gained over 2.56 million KL squared ice GLOBALLY...

Two of my colleges tried this same bull shit today and I wiped the floor with them. I asked them just how they rectified the massive increase and in less than 3 years. If the earth is capable of this rapid a rise in sea ice and cooling what would happen if we actually had started the glaciation process?

The Duration is too short at this point to say one way or another but with Ice and permafrost returning to the Arctic as well the planet is now going into a very pronounced cooling cycle. And there isn't a dam thing you alarmists can do about it.

At current rate of increase, if it continues, the horn of South America will be reached in as little as five years. What happens if the cooling trend now apparent in the arctic is the mirror of the Antarctic and a warning of things to come.

That is some serious food for thought...

 

[Billy_Bob]

One point of contention is why can one pole act as if it were in a glacial phase and another act as if it were in a warming phase?

The truth is even the arctic is now cooling rapidly. Historically the antarctic starts global trends. This could be due to the majority of the earth being water in the southern hemisphere or it could simply be the axial tilt of the earth to the sun. Both have been studied to some extent and found to have that potential.

The Arctic follows suit about 2.5 years after the Antarctic trend stabilizes. Given the massive ice increase the Antarctic is now stable and the thermal state of the rest of the planet will follow. which brings us back to the question, Have we reached a glacial phase or are we already in it?

The current trend is far to short for any proclamation one way or the other. IF the Arctic follows the Antarctic at what point do we start changing our behavior and food production areas? Within 5 years much of Canada will no longer be able to produce grains etc. Much of the US bread basket will have significantly shortened growing seasons.

If you apply the current rate of sea ice increase and ice mass to the Northern hemisphere things are not so rosy..

 

[Billy_Bob]

I know there will alarmists who scoff, but look at this summers temperatures in the Arctic..

The air temps in the arctic were 3-5 deg F lower than the average. This reduced melt significantly while allowing areas of permafrost to restore.

 

[flacaltenn]

Seriously Billy Bob -- you missed a vital teaching moment.
One of my beefs is making climate research all about GLOBAL numbers.
This reduction to the absurd obscures the actual mechanisms behind the Earth's climate and is glaringly juvenile when arguing about ONE fucking Climate Sensitivity for the entire globe.

The earth doesn't have just ONE climate. And it's obvious that various zones react to forcings based on completely different mechanisms. We all accept that the poles have a more sensitivity because of the world of ice, water and limited periodic solar exposure. So it's completely rational to expect to see reactions from SOME FORCINGS there magnified by the non-linear response to temperature that ice and water surfaces have.

We'd be much farther along if immense of amounts of money and energy went into the understanding the mechanics of the different zones and quit trying to simplify all this for the Sesame Street crowd of policy adopters and the press with the silly GLOBAL number reductions.

Call it a canary in a coal mine or a supersensitive alarm for detecting forcing changes, but changes at the poles ARE an important tell for future climate directions..

 

[Billy_Bob]

Seriously Billy Bob -- you missed a vital teaching moment.
One of my beefs is making climate research all about GLOBAL numbers.
This reduction to the absurd obscures the actual mechanisms behind the Earth's climate and is glaringly juvenile when arguing about ONE fucking Climate Sensitivity for the entire globe.

The earth doesn't have just ONE climate. And it's obvious that various zones react to forcings based on completely different mechanisms. We all accept that the poles have a more sensitivity because of the world of ice, water and limited periodic solar exposure. So it's completely rational to expect to see reactions from SOME FORCINGS there magnified by the non-linear response to temperature that ice and water surfaces have.

We'd be much farther along if immense of amounts of money and energy went into the understanding the mechanics of the different zones and quit trying to simplify all this for the Sesame Street crowd of policy adopters and the press with the silly GLOBAL number reductions.

Call it a canary in a coal mine or a supersensitive alarm for detecting forcing changes, but changes at the poles ARE an important tell for future climate directions..

You are absolutely correct and I missed it.

Temperate zones always follow those ocean circulations and other flows touching the area. They are initially affected by the close proximity flows. This is precisely why the circum polar flows slowing, due to coverage by ice, is so important. This slowing can affect major oceanic circulations as well which impact other significant changes to the earths long term systems. This is the point of my post in general. Watching the thermal imbalance is key to understanding earths systems.

Just as CO2 is not well mixed in our atmosphere the single sensitivity for the earth is totally incapable of reproducing past climate. There are indeed several other factors which affect and predict with much greater accuracy.

Thank you for a frank assessment.

 

[Old Rocks]

Nice anti-intellectual circle jeck, fellows. And completely lacking in reality, as usual.

 

[Billy_Bob]

Nice anti-intellectual circle jeck, fellows. And completely lacking in reality, as usual.

No facts?
No intelligent discussion?
No purpose except to deride and call names..

 

[flacaltenn]

Seriously Billy Bob -- you missed a vital teaching moment.
One of my beefs is making climate research all about GLOBAL numbers.
This reduction to the absurd obscures the actual mechanisms behind the Earth's climate and is glaringly juvenile when arguing about ONE fucking Climate Sensitivity for the entire globe.

The earth doesn't have just ONE climate. And it's obvious that various zones react to forcings based on completely different mechanisms. We all accept that the poles have a more sensitivity because of the world of ice, water and limited periodic solar exposure. So it's completely rational to expect to see reactions from SOME FORCINGS there magnified by the non-linear response to temperature that ice and water surfaces have.

We'd be much farther along if immense of amounts of money and energy went into the understanding the mechanics of the different zones and quit trying to simplify all this for the Sesame Street crowd of policy adopters and the press with the silly GLOBAL number reductions.

Call it a canary in a coal mine or a supersensitive alarm for detecting forcing changes, but changes at the poles ARE an important tell for future climate directions..

You are absolutely correct and I missed it.

Temperate zones always follow those ocean circulations and other flows touching the area. They are initially affected by the close proximity flows. This is precisely why the circum polar flows slowing, due to coverage by ice, is so important. This slowing can affect major oceanic circulations as well which impact other significant changes to the earths long term systems. This is the point of my post in general. Watching the thermal imbalance is key to understanding earths systems.

Just as CO2 is not well mixed in our atmosphere the single sensitivity for the earth is totally incapable of reproducing past climate. There are indeed several other factors which affect and predict with much greater accuracy.

Thank you for a frank assessment.

Judith Curry has a multi-disciplinary team to work the harder problems of the thermal couplings between these different zones. The thermal flows indeed largely depend on ice coverages. And there are choke points in the Arctic Ocean communication points with the Pac. and Atlantic that could represent valves in a control system analysis. The "stadium wave" papers go into that in detail.. LOTS of delays, and storage not understood well at this point. Wish we could fund the more difficult work of actually understanding the key parts of the Climate System NOT concerned with GHGases..

 

[Old Rocks]

The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect

Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia

Rapid changes in Greenland climate last 5 000 years study finds

http://bio.fsu.edu/binouye/labpage/papers/climate_PNAS00.pdf

Yes, we need more study on all aspects of climate change. However, that is no reason not to seek rapid reduction in the emission of GHGs.

 

[Billy_Bob]

The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect

Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia

Rapid changes in Greenland climate last 5 000 years study finds

http://bio.fsu.edu/binouye/labpage/papers/climate_PNAS00.pdf

Yes, we need more study on all aspects of climate change. However, that is no reason not to seek rapid reduction in the emission of GHGs.

every thing you post is about evil oil.... no commonsense whatsoever, just left wing talking points..

 

[mamooth]

Billy, do you plan on posting any facts, or are you just going to keep pulling it all out of your ass?

You just make it all up, and then squeal like the little bitch you are when you get called on it. So why do you keep up the charade? Everyone understands by now you're a fraud, an active disinformation agent. It's not like you need to keep proving it.

But then, maybe you're a paid plant from the rational side, out to convince everyone that all deniers are pathological liars. If so, I salute your success there. You've really earned the paycheck you must be getting from Soros.

 

[Billy_Bob]

Billy, do you plan on posting any facts, or are you just going to keep pulling it all out of your ass?

You just make it all up, and then squeal like the little bitch you are when you get called on it. So why do you keep up the charade? Everyone understands by now you're a fraud, an active disinformation agent. It's not like you need to keep proving it.

But then, maybe you're a paid plant from the rational side, out to convince everyone that all deniers are pathological liars. If so, I salute your success there. You've really earned the paycheck you must be getting from Soros.

Pathetic... But Funny... You cat even keep your alarmist fac... misinformation straight..

 

[Billy_Bob]

Today's discussion got down to brass tacks..

IF the ice of the Antarctic slows the polar circumferential flow it would severely limit the Pacific and Atlantic ocean heat transfer. One of my fellow researchers commented that it would be a good way to start an ice age. When he explained the heat transfer mechanism at the south pole, a slow down of that transfer would cause stagnation of huge areas of water near the poles. That stagnation would allow rapid cooling. This gave everyone in the room pause. They are now thinking hard about this.

After using some of Flacaltenn's shared view point the debate got rather interesting. I believe we are making inroads to two very ridged AGW PHD's along with some others. SO we agreed to test my hypothesis of varying sensitivities on an area of the earth.

WE agreed on the Continental US for several reasons. Multiple data sets, close proximity to other data sets to verify findings and the new USCRN sites which are well taken care of and maintained.

I showed these two gentleman the US CRN data set and plots. We compared those plots to the HSS (Historical Surface Stations). WE selected 25 well sited and maintained sites from HSS and found the CRN and HSS comparable in cooling over the last 12 years. We took 25 sites within cities and airports which were marginally located and cared for sites and found a full degree Celsius of warming. All of these were from unadjusted data so that no bias by adjustment was present.

We established that CRN is much more reliable, that only well sited stations would be used, and that we would not adjust data. We found only 35 CO2 monitoring sites that only have 37 years of data at the longest point.

WE then took Anthony Watts list of stations and the NOAA's incomplete list of assessment and compared notes, finding five well sited and cared for stations in each state and downloaded their historical data. We agreed to included only stations which have 100 years of data or more.

So far we have plotted 56 stations of the roughly 480 stations we picked in the western US and there is clear evidence of changes related to the pacific ocean cycles. The 1930's were indeed much hotter than today, by 5 degrees F on average, in Oklahoma and Texas during the dust bowl days. This revelation stunned my colleagues.

It is a new endeavor in its infancy but it has pulled back the AGW scale from over their eyes. The over statement of warming is massive. When we compare plots to the NOAA adjusted plots many stations are 1-3 deg F warmer. That did not sit well with these men. Now they are digging for answers... And that was the whole point of initiating the conversation...

I have given them all a link to this thread. It should be very interesting as one or two might just pop in to discuss..

 

[saveliberty]

I know this doesn't seem to bother any of your denier cohorts, but I'd like to see a decent reference for your claim that Southern Hemisphere ice cover has reached unprecedented levels. I kinda figure you might be talking about all the way back to the beginning of satellite data in 1979. And I'm wondering how you extrapolate that to being sufficient to bring on a glaciation which hasn't taken place now in 22,000 years.

I bet when you speak at work, you get a lot of stunned looks. It's just I don't think the cause is what you think it is.

[Below] A little dated but I don't see a trend that would produce what you're talking about

Nice graphs from 2009 and 2007....

Hate to be all science-like, but it is 2014.

 

[saveliberty]

Billy, do you plan on posting any facts, or are you just going to keep pulling it all out of your ass?

You just make it all up, and then squeal like the little bitch you are when you get called on it. So why do you keep up the charade? Everyone understands by now you're a fraud, an active disinformation agent. It's not like you need to keep proving it.

But then, maybe you're a paid plant from the rational side, out to convince everyone that all deniers are pathological liars. If so, I salute your success there. You've really earned the paycheck you must be getting from Soros.

Your side just tried to mislead through several old graphs.