Forget Global Warming, Remember Arctic Warming

First, I would like to refer to an article on BIN called, Forget Global Warming – It’s Cycle 25 We Need To Worry About:      /story/1690/110/NL/ 

Near the end of the article, it was stated: ‘Nature is about to carry out a very interesting experiment,’ Pal Brekke, senior adviser at the Norwegian Space Centre said. ‘Ten or 15 years from now, we will be able to determine much better whether the warming of the late 20th Century really was caused by man-made CO2, or by natural variability.’  

Then, it will be too late to change anything in the behavior of humankind. The scientific bickering goes on and on. Do you not see how flimsy the base of science is? The scientists are equally fallible, as we all are. However, we are expected to trust our lives in the slippery hands of the scientists. When the subject in question is great enough then always, there are two parties. One of them says yes and the other one says no, without any final agreement. Do you trust in the science? I don’t.  

As always, there are unanswered points. So it is now also. I will try to handle some questions that came into my mind.  

Firstly, what exactly is the weight of the fluctuation of the sun energy? At Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation, I found out that, ‘Total solar output is now measured to vary (over the last three 11-year sunspot cycles) by approximately 0.1% or about 1.3 Watts per square meter (W/m²) peak-to-trough during the 11-year sunspot cycle.’  

Considering the mean value, the total sun output varies +/- 0.05% or +/- 0.65 W/ square meter from the total mean output, which is 1366 w/ square meter. It does not look like much and it is not much. However, there are also some other factors that are not mentioned either.  

It is stated in the article, as well as elsewhere, that during the Maunder minimum, there were hardly any sunspots, but something is missing. We can conclude that there were less or hardly any coronal mass ejections (cme) during that time, which means less electric particles coming to the atmosphere of the Earth. In turn, that fact means less rain and snow falls, especially in the polar areas and around them, because those particles follow the magnetic field of the Earth and concentrate in the polar areas. The less clouds and other moisture in the air, the clearer the sky and the cooler or colder the air above the ground during the night time is, which is crucial in keeping the heat from radiating into the space.  

Every frost-fearing farmer knows this.  Even now, as I write this at one edge of the Arctic, it is -30 C outside because the sky is clear and there is no wind. The sun does not rise past the horizon very much and there is very little moisture in the air; the heat of which radiates into the space. However, I don’t rush to the conclusion that a global cooling is going on. (The last fall in turn was exceptionally warm.) I only say maybe, maybe not, but there are heavier factors.  

From the bearing records in the log books of the ancient ships, it has been concluded that the magnetic field of the Earth was remarkably stronger and more consistent during the Maunder minimum than it is now. Therefore, the jet streams that carry great masses of electric particles also, have kept their established routes and separated the climate zones, the tropics, sub-tropics, temperate, sub-Arctic/sub-Antarctica and Arctic/Antarctica zones, from each other.  

When the magnetic field has weakened (accelerating from 1950′s), the jet streams turn even more from their normal routes, causing drastic climate changes. Cold air masses drift from the Arctic far into the south (recently, there was a snowfall in Sahara) and correspondingly, warm air masses drift far from the south to the Arctic. There are even more strong storms, heavy rains and snow falls, floods and droughts everywhere.   

The notion ‘climate change’ is too vague. What change? It is climate mixing that is happening. The climate may even cool down globally, like one of the bickering parties argue, but the Arctic is still warming and that fact implies a great danger. There is always enough heat in the hot and warm areas to melt much smaller polar areas, including the continental glacier of Greenland, whether there is a global warming or not.  

Carbon dioxide has been taken to center stage in the drama of the possible global warming, but there are other actors also and they have been studied. The methane gas whose molecule includes one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms, is assessed to be 20 to 30 times more effective greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide. The rice cultivation is increasing steadily, due to the population growth of the rice-consuming and exporting countries and it produces more and more methane. The manure handling has changed from aerobic to anaerobic processing in the developed world, producing increasing volumes of methane. It could be a good fuel but mostly, it is not used, except in India. The dumps are growing everywhere, generating methane, of which only a minuscule part is used. The vast northern tundra has largely melted already and is releasing huge volumes of methane, as the shallow areas in the Arctic Ocean from the bottom sediments are also doing. There are huge clathrate deposits deep in the lithosphere and on the bottom of cold seas like the Arctic Ocean, as well as deep lakes such as Baikal, for there not to be enough of methane. A growing stream of methane is rising here and there from those deposits also.  

In times past, and even here and there in these days, there was and still is a method to ward off a frost that could destroy the harvest. Straw, hay and loose brushwood are burned in the field to be protected. When the smoke drifts over the field, it prevents the heat of the ground from radiating into space, at least in an amount to keep the plants from freezing. Nowadays, there are countless chimneys and exhaust pipes, as well as cooking fireplaces, campfires and wild fires globally, so that the old frost-warding method has in fact, become overall and global.  

The smoke is always dimming the sky (ask the astronomers) and while staying near the ground, it prevents heat from radiating into space, even at nighttime. What else can it cause, except to raise the average temperature, although it may only compensate some of the cooling of the sun?  The carbon dioxide is in a side role in this method, but it has to be stated that the carbon dioxide is necessary to the plants that use it in their photosynthesis, and an extra amount of it increases the latter.  

There are then several kinds of dust-like materials floating in the air. The ever-increasing traffic is obviously the greatest producer of the dust, but not the only one. Plowing and other tilling of dry soil causes dust to rise and drift in the air near and far. The mounting strong winds blow dust from the bare and dry soil, creating ‘dust bowls’ in large areas. Many industrial factories generate great amounts of dust, like the cement factories, as well as open mines. The smoke also includes a certain amount of fly-ash that is easily carried by winds. This all is to be added to the natural dust generated by nature in dry deserts. Like smoke, the dust near the ground prevents heat from radiating into the space. Have you ever heard that there was a frost during a sand storm? Rather, the sandstorms are hot.

Some volcano eruptions may change the entire warming-cooling debate, depending on what they produce and how much. If they hurl great amounts of light-reflecting sulfur-dioxide high into the atmosphere, they may cause the global climate to cool down for a certain temperature difference, much like the volcano Pinatubo did in 1991. However, if they release large volumes of carbon dioxide, methane and dark smoke that drift near the ground, they may cause the atmosphere to warm at the altitudes where we live. We live on the ground, not high in the sky. This factor, the altitude, has to be weighted enough also.   

The Arctic is warming anyway, whether the global warming is true or not and there is nothing in sight that indicates that the warming is changing to cooling. According to my experience, the severe frosts annually are about 10° C milder than they used to be in my youth and the frost intervals are remarkably shorter. The growing season has lengthened by weeks and new species are inching into the Arctic from the south. Nature is flourishing and all in the environment seems to be going in a good direction. There is less travailing with the frost and snow. Only the ever-increasing traffic is annoying. Then, what is there to complain about?   

It is an Arctic phenomenon named ice-shedding that worries me, not one in its normal, annual scale, but one in a gigantic scale, which I call an “ice-shedding of ages”. It was in April 2005, when I pondered the same matters, just like now. I had looked at and listened to some news and documents about the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004. The reports were fresh in my mind and somehow, they blended in with my Arctic meditation. Suddenly, a terrifying insight, a vision came into my mind. It was as if I ‘saw’ the glacier of Greenland starting to shed its age-old ice cover. Since I was acquainted with the phenomenon of ice-shedding, it didn’t seem impossible that an entire continental glacier could discharge. I began to study the subject. The more I have studied it, the more possible it has become in my mind.  

Ice-shedding is an annual process in the Arctic rivers. Every spring, when the ice cover on a river begins to warm and weaken, there is a moment when the ice-shedding starts.  Ice-shedding requires not only ice but the water that the river offers, as well as a certain height differential. It has to start somewhere (maybe in a couple of other places also), and afterwards, it continues as one short process until the river is free from ice. In the same way, as the rim of the Greenland glacier warms, there comes a moment in the process when the rim zone that has frozen deep into the base rock before, does not hold anymore, but gives in. Under the glacier, which is more than three kilometers thick in the middle, there is such horrific pressure that the ice becomes a fluid. After the burst has begun in one place, the enormous pressure and severe tremors cause the discharge to enlarge, until the entire vast glacier starts to roll into the Arctic Ocean.  

An inevitable global disaster follows. The glacier of Greenland has a potential energy that corresponds to 900,000 times the energy that the Indian Ocean tsunami was said have discharged into the ocean. That energy will cause tsunami waves that are several kilometers high to rush over the entire Arctic Ocean, and then beyond to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Inexperienced earthquakes would spread over the globe, triggering countless other earthquakes, all of which would converge upon the Antarctic. At least, the rim glaciers of the Antarctic will discharge also. The calamity is repeated from south to north.

Really, we will see.  

Kauko Loukas

http://sites.google.com/site/glacierburst/