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  • Arctic freezes early

    Oopsie....

    Find all the latest news on the environment and climate change from the Telegraph. Including daily emissions and pollution data.


    Global warming? No, actually we're cooling, claim scientists

    A cold Arctic summer has led to a record increase in the ice cap, leading experts to predict a period of global cooling.

    There has been a 60 per cent increase in the amount of ocean covered with ice compared to this time last year, they equivalent of almost a million square miles.

    In a rebound from 2012's record low an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores, days before the annual re-freeze is even set to begin.

    The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific has remained blocked by pack-ice all year, forcing some ships to change their routes.

    A leaked report to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seen by the Mail on Sunday, has led some scientists to claim that the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century.

    If correct, it would contradict computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming. The news comes several years after the BBC predicted that the arctic would be ice-free by 2013.

    Despite the original forecasts, major climate research centres now accept that there has been a “pause” in global warming since 1997.

    The original predictions led to billions being invested in green measures to combat the effects of climate change.

    The change in the predictions has led to UN's climate change's body holding a crisis meeting, and the the IPCC was due to report on the situation in October. A pre-summit meeting will be held later this month.

    But leaked documents show that governments who fund the IPCC are demanding 1,500 changes to the Fifth Assessment Report - a three-volume study issued every six or seven years – as they claim its current draft does not properly explain the pause.


    The extent to which temperatures will rise with carbon dioxide levels, as well as how much of the warming over the past 150 year, a total of 0.8C, is down to human greenhouse gas emissions are key issues.

    The IPCC says it is “95 per cent confident” that global warming has been caused by humans - up from 90 per cent in 2007 – according to the draft report.

    However, US climate expert Professor Judith Curry has questioned how this can be true as that rather than increasing in confidence, “uncertainty is getting bigger” within the academic community.

    Long-term cycles in ocean temperature, she said, suggest the world may be approaching a period similar to that from 1965 to 1975, when there was a clear cooling trend.

    At the time some scientists forecast an imminent ice age.

    Professor Anastasios Tsonis, of the University of Wisconsin, said: 'We are already in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the next 15 years at least. There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and 1990s has stopped.”

    The IPCC is said to maintain that their climate change models suggest a pause of 15 years can be expected. Other experts agree that natural cycles cannot explain all of the recorded warming.
    Dr. Mordrid
    ----------------------------
    An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

    I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

  • #2
    :-P we still cannot really predict weather since we don't really know all the factors involved, human caused emissions do affect to a certain degree though.
    Life is a bed of roses. Everyone else sees the roses, you are the one being gored by the thorns.

    AMD PhenomII555@B55(Quadcore-3.2GHz) Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5 Kingston 1x2GB Generic 8400GS512MB WD1.5TB LGMulti-Drive Dell2407WFP
    ***Matrox G400DH 32MB still chugging along happily in my other pc***

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    • #3
      Judith Curry is the Daily Mail's go to denier of record.

      Lets talk about it when it comes out in scientific papers and not the Daily Denial.
      Chuck
      秋音的爸爸

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      • #4
        How about this: http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013...nge-continues/

        Reading the Mail on Sunday this weekend, you'd be forgiven for thinking scientists and governments are planning emergency meetings to reconsider the fundamentals of climate science, following claims in the media that Arctic sea ice is rebounding.
        The article in question, by climate skeptic journalist David Rose, was echoed by a similar piece in the Sunday Telegraph. "...It's global COOLING!", the headline declares, before arguing that Arctic sea ice is "rebounding" contrary to predictions.
        Here are five claims the article makes, and why they will leave you with a topsy-turvy view of what's actually going on.
        1. The Arctic ice cap grew "by 60% in a year"
        As we approach the annual minimum point for Arctic sea ice, when the ice cap has melted to its smallest point, it's clear that there's more ice now than there was this time last year.
        Data from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre shows that in August 2013, the average area of ocean covered in sea ice was 2.35 million square miles - 919,000 square milesbigger than the same period last year.
        Scientists believe that Arctic sea ice will effectively disappear in summer at some point this century. So does the fact that there's more ice this year mean they are wrong?
        Context is important. Last year saw the lowest Arctic sea ice levels on record - a result of a warming Arctic, thinned ice and ideal weather conditions for melting.
        Dr Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist from the University of Reading says in the Times:
        "Last year was a very extreme low - the lowest on record in the satellite era. This year the ice bounced back. [But it] is still going to be the sixth or seventh smallest year since 1979. It will be smaller than any year before 2006."
        This time last year, some ice experts were predicting there would be more sea ice this year. Natural fluctuations in the climate mean sea ice cover can jump around from one year to the next while still being in long term decline. Ironically, when ice sheets shrink, climate skeptics are keen to blame natural variations in the climate. When they grow, year-to-year natural variation is ignored.
        Despite the increase on last year, this year's sea ice extent remains well below the long term average. Even in a year when there's more sea ice than last year, the long term decline of sea ice continues.


        Climate blog Skeptical Science has animated the past thirty years of sea ice data - showing how focusing on one year of data to claim a "record return" for sea ice can be misleading:

        2. "The BBC reported global warming would leave the Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013"
        For the Mail, climate alarmism and the BBC go hand in hand. So the paper makes sure to point out that the BBC reported comments made by one scientist in 2007 that the Arctic could be ice free as soon as 2013, or earlier, under the headline "Arctic summers "ice free" by 2013".
        This prediction has turned out to be wrong. Many experts would probably have seen it as unlikely.
        In this case it doesn't demonstrate a deeper problem with scientific understanding of climate change. Although the comments have been widely cited, they didn't become mainstream thinking among scientists.
        As we've noted in the past, predicting when the Arctic will be ice free isn't easy. There are arange of different methods, used in hundreds of different studies, which suggest it could happen anytime between now and the middle of the century. And as the sea ice continues to decline, we will continue to see natural variation from year to year.
        The focus on the BBC seems strange. The BBC was not the only news outlet to report the story back in 2007, when record Arctic sea ice loss caught people by surprise and made the Arctic a big news story. Here, for example, under the headline "Arctic ice 'could melt in five years' as climate change accelerates" is a story from… the Daily Mail.
        etc. etc.
        Chuck
        秋音的爸爸

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        • #5
          I always knew we are going to be returning to another ice age in the next 1000 years.

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          • #6
            Thick Sea ice that has not melted in several thousand years has melted, then it reformed in winter.... the thin less dense/cold sea ice that has reformed is no way equivalent to the ice cover before the melt.
            you be crazy

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