Dredd Blog: 2018-04-01

Saturday, April 7, 2018

Watching The Arctic Die - 4

Fig. 1 April 5, 2018

This series explains why the Arctic Cold is being moved southward (Fig. 2) as the Arctic's sea ice extent shrinks to new record lows (Fig. 1).

As the unprecedented warm winds from the south invade the Polar Vortex area at and near the North Pole, it diminishes the integrity of the spinning vortex, which causes sections of its very frigid arctic air to spin off and flow southward (Watching The Arctic Die, 2, 3).

Today for example, on April 7, 2018, at 10:00 AM it will be 40 deg. F at Nuuk, Greenland, at Anchorage, Alaska it will be 49 deg. F, but at Fort Worth, Texas will only be 37 deg. F.

Fig. 2 Breaking up

Nuuk, Greenland is up near the Arctic Circle which is some 4,667 km or 2,900 miles to the North (Fig. 3).

Yes, near the Arctic Circle it will be warmer than some southern parts of the United States.

This, as this series has pointed out, is because sections of the Polar Vortex are being separated by warmer air incursions into the Arctic.

This incursion is a disruption which is melting the sea ice cover of the Arctic Ice Cap, but is also breaking pieces of the vortex off.

Those separated bands of cold Arctic air go south to make unseasonably frigid temperatures in Europe and the U.S.

Fig. 3 Warmer in Greenland than in Texas

Whether Europe or America is impacted by the broken off portions of the Polar Vortex depends on where the vortex breaks up.

The spinning causes centripetal force which (when messed with) slings the sections out of the vortex like merry-go-rounds do to giggling kids at play on it; not knowing where in the circle they will end up when thrown off:

Under normal climate conditions, cold air is confined to the Arctic by the polar vortex winds, which circle counter-clockwise around the North Pole. As sea ice coverage decreases, the Arctic warms, high pressure builds, and the polar vortex weakens, sending cold air spilling southward into the mid-latitudes, bringing record cold and fierce snowstorms. At the same time, warm air will flow into the Arctic to replace the cold air spilling south, which drives more sea ice loss.

(Wunderground, emphasis added). Or, as the government climate scientists put it:

‘Polar vortex’ is the new buzzword of 2014 for the millions of Americans learning about its role in producing record cold temperatures across the country. Meteorologists have known for years that the pattern of the polar vortex determines how much cold air escapes from the Arctic and makes its way to the U.S. during the winter.

(Climate dot Gov). This knowledge helps explain that the Earth's climate is not getting colder as some have surmised by misinterpretation:

It’s happening again: In the dead of winter, warm air from the south is surging across the Arctic toward the North Pole.

Today, weather models suggest that temperatures there have indeed soared to above freezing.

Meanwhile, cold polar air has spilled south into Eurasia and western North America. It’s almost as if someone left the Arctic’s refrigerator door open, allowing its frigid air to pour out and warm air to flow in.

[A] recent study shows that they are becoming more frequent and intense. In the study, scientists looked at winter air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean from 1893 to 2017. They found that since 1980, an additional six Arctic winter warming events have been occurring each winter at the North Pole, and they’re lasting about 12 hours longer, on average.

(Discover Magazine). This has been happening for quite a few years, but in recent years there have been increasing numbers of such events.

It is important to remember that this damage to the Arctic began about two decades after the Industrial Revolution began circa 1750.

That fossil fuel burning revolution caused Greenland to begin to melt in the late 1800's as shown by tide gauge records (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 54).

Once the Arctic Polar Vortex is completely destroyed the weather patterns caused by the damaged Global Climate System will be even less normal (The Damaged Global Climate System, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

The next post in this series is here, previous post in this series is here.

The new abnormal ...

Friday, April 6, 2018

Antarctica's Glaciers by Ocean Area and WOD Zone - 3

Fig. 1 Area 'E' WOD Zone 5606

A while back I indicated that I would do a post on the Bellingshausen Sea and WOD Zone 5606 there.

It was to follow the post on the Ross Sea, and WOD Zone 3716 there.

The reason for selecting WOD Zones 3716 and 5606 is because they have more glaciers than any other zones in Antarctica.

For example, Zone 3716 has 106 glaciers and Zone 5606 has 325 glaciers (see the links to individual glaciers at both zones at this link: Antarctica's Glaciers by Ocean Area and WOD Zone - 2.

Fig. 2 Water & Melt Temperatures

So, today I will follow up and we will look at WOD Zone 5606 as well as the rest of the Bellingshausen Sea.

Fig. 1 indicates the location of WOD Zone 5606 in Area 'E'.

The graph at Fig. 2 presents the Conservative Temperature (gsw_CT_from_t) at three depth levels along with the water temperatures after those cold temperatures melt the even colder ice at the frontal face of the glacier.

Some readers may wonder why I use three depth layers, so, take a look at the graphs at Fig. 3a and Fig. 3b.

Fig. 3a Water Temperatures Only (33 depths)

They show WOD Zone 5606 at the 33 depths defined by the WOD Manual ( p. 132 doc, p. 142 PDF).

Even though I have a database of in situ measurements at each one of the 33 levels, I average those CT values into three levels (0m - 700m, >700m - 2000m, and >2000m) to avoid too many lines on a graph.

I also want to discuss some of the dynamics that cause frontal melting because that dynamic is more important than generally realized:

"Frontal melting is a process which has long been neglected by glaciologists,

Fig. 3b Water and Melt Temperatures (33 depths)

but which has been repeatedly shown to be important both from a large-scale mass-balance perspective, and for a process-based understanding of tidewater glacier behaviour. The recent development of a range of models of plume-driven melting, as well as a renewed interest in the measurement of frontal melt rates, have shown how little this process is understood, and have highlighted the need for an approach which synthesizes both data and modelling."

(Frontal processes on tidewater glaciers). Frontal melt is what causes the grounding line to "fall back" (see Fig. 4).

One result of frontal melt is that the grounding line position proceeds in the opposite direction from the glacier's forward direction.

Fig. 4 Tidewater Glacier Melt Factors

For both general and specific detail on the issues, the following paper also helps one to understand some more of the main details: Antarctic Glaciers Lost Stunning Amount of Ground in Recent Years.

One take away is that Antarctica has been a mythical place.

Going back a decade or so, some managers in science venues did not know what was going on either because they did not want to, or were told to not want to:

"I suspect the existence of what I call the `John Mercer effect'. Mercer (1978) suggested that global warming from burning of fossil fuels could lead to disastrous disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet, with a sea level rise of several meters worldwide. This was during the era when global warming was beginning to get attention from the United States Department of Energy and other science agencies. I noticed that scientists who disputed Mercer, suggesting that his paper was alarmist, were treated as being more authoritative.

It was not obvious who was right on the science, but it seemed to me, and I believe to most scientists, that the scientists preaching caution and

Fig. 5 Potential Sea level rise

downplaying the dangers of climate change fared better in receipt of research funding. Drawing attention to the dangers of global warming may or may not have helped increase funding for relevant scientific areas, but it surely did not help individuals like Mercer who stuck their heads out. I could vouch for that from my own experience. After I published a paper (Hansen et al 1981) that described likely climate effects of fossil fuel use, the Department of Energy reversed a decision to fund our research, specifically highlighting and criticizing aspects of that paper at a workshop in Coolfont, West Virginia and in publication (MacCracken 1983).

I believe there is a pressure on scientists to be conservative. Papers are accepted for publication more readily if they do not push too far and are larded with caveats. Caveats are essential to science, being born in skepticism, which is essential to the process of investigation and verification. But there is a question of degree. A tendency for `gradualism' as new evidence comes to light may be ill-suited for communication, when an issue with a short time fuse is concerned."

(On Thermal Expansion & Thermal Contraction - 8, quoting Dr. Hansen). They looked over the fact that Antarctica is the largest desert on Earth, and therefore, by definition, could not receive enough snowfall to offset the ice mass loss taking place.

Adding more deadly cold water to the Southern Ocean means that it too will eventually absorb energy from the warming ocean and then melt even more ice (Hot, Warm, & Cold Thermal Facts: Tidewater-Glaciers, 2, 3, 4).

The tidewater glaciers of Antarctica and Greenland are an existential threat (as shown by Fig. 5), because if only a small percentage, about one and a half percent (~1.5%), of their ice melts it will destroy the sea trade upon which current civilization relies (80.32m * 0.015 = 1.2048m, = 3.95275591 ft).

That four feet of water will take out the sea ports (The Extinction of Robust Sea Ports, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

The previous post in this series is here.

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Antarctica's Glaciers by Ocean Area and WOD Zone - 2

Fig. 1 WOD Zones and Areas A-F

I. Background

This series takes a look at the abundance of glaciers in Antarctica, focusing primarily on the tidewater glaciers there @ the largest desert.

In the first post I listed all of them by six Southern Ocean areas, and by the WOD Zones in each of those six areas.

Those six areas were first listed in a paper I cited in an earlier post and series (Recent high-resolution Antarctic ice velocity maps reveal increased mass loss in Wilkes Land, East Antarctica).

Fig. 2 CT & CT melt temperatures

One thing I want to stress in this series is the number of glaciers in Antarctica that are melting and calving.

Two WOD Zones (3716 @ Ross Sea, and 5606 @ Bellingshausen Sea) have an enormous number of glaciers that are melting.

Today I want to focus on the Ross Sea area, @ WOD Zone 3716.

It has 106 tidewater glaciers as follows:

Adams (Victoria Land), Aeronaut, Aiken, Alberich, Albrecht Penck, Allison (Antarctica), Alvarez, Amos, Amphitheatre, Anderton, Ant Hill, Anu Whakatoro, Argonaut, Arruiz, Astakhov, Astapenko, Astronaut, Atka, Atkinson, Aurora (Antarctica), Aviator, Backstairs Passage, Baker, Ball (Victoria Land), Barber, Barne, Barnett, Baronick, Bartley, Bates, Baxter, Beaman, Blankenship, Borchgrevink, Canada, Clarke (Victoria Land), Co-pilot, Commonwealth, Coulston, Crescent (Antarctica), Crume, Dale, David, Debenham, Decker, Deming, Dennistoun, Ebbe, Emmanuel, Endeavour Piedmont, Erebus, Falkner, Ferrar, Finley, Fitch, Gair, Garwood, Greenwell, Haffner, Helfferich, Icebreaker, Ironside, Irving (Antarctica), Irwin, Kirkby, Koettlitz, Lillie, Lovejoy, Marchant, Marchetti, Marin, Mariner, Meander, Nash, Newall, Northwind, Oakley, O Hara, Pilot, Priddy, Priestley, Pryor, Puanu, Rennick, Robson (Antarctica), Shark Fin, Sharpend, Sheehan, Shell, Shipley, Shoemaker, Simpson, Skelton, Suess, Suter, Taylor, Telemeter, Tucker, Vacchi Piedmont, Vereyken, Wirdnam, Wright Lower, Zenith, Zetland, Zoller, Zykov

(links to each are here). The small (by comparison to all of Antarctica) area where these 106 glaciers calve and melt into the Southern Ocean is shown in Fig. 1 (in the lower left corner of area "C" at the bottom of the graphic).

II. Why The Glaciers Calve & Melt

WOD Zone 3716 ocean temperatures (at 0-700 m and >700 m) are shown in Fig. 2 along with the cold temperatures of the water when the even colder ice first melts after contact with that ocean water.

These graphs are made using TEOS-10 formulas, which are the official formulas for oceanography today (TEOS-10 toolkit; McDougall, T.J. and P.M. Barker, 2011: Getting started with TEOS-10 and the Gibbs Seawater (GSW) Oceanographic Toolbox, 28pp., SCOR/IAPSO WG127, ISBN 978-0-646-55621-5).

III. Conclusion

It is way beyond the time that we should have grasped the magnitude of the predicament that civilization is facing (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Sunday, April 1, 2018

Antarctica's Glaciers by Ocean Area and WOD Zone

Fig. 1 Antarctica's "A" through "F" areas

Sometimes the number of glaciers in Antarctica is not grasped because only the large ones are talked about.

In a previous post I mapped out six areas that were set forth in a recent paper that concerned the speed at which glaciers were moving toward the ocean (see link @ Fig. 1).

The authors of that paper mentioned that they had analyzed satellite photos of a lot of Antarctica's glaciers in order to calculate their movement to the coast.

In today's post I literally link to about five hundred glaciers in those six areas.

Not only that, I also organize them according to the ocean area, and the WOD Zone where they are located.

The recent post linked to in Fig. 1 details the water temperatures (CT) that are melting those glaciers as they come in contact with the tide waters of the Southern Ocean.

The point is that I have to do a lot of scientific work and analysis to present these blog posts to Dredd Blog readers.

If any of them are misplaced let me know.

Enjoy:

Antarctica's Glaciers by Ocean Area and WOD Zone

West Indian Ocean