Archives for October 3, 2007

From Marc Morano:

The Cryosphere Today

UPDATE: Monday, October 1, 2007 – Record SH sea ice maximum and NH sea ice minimum

Just when you thought this season’s cryosphere couldn’t be more strange …. The Southern Hemisphere sea ice area narrowly surpassed the previous historic maximum of 16.03 million sq. km to 16.17 million sq. km. The observed sea ice record in the Southern Hemisphere (1979-present) is not as long as the Northern Hemisphere. Prior to the satellite era, direct observations of the SH sea ice edge were sporadic.

The NH sea ice area reached an historic minimum on September 16, 2007 (2.92 million sq. km), representing a 27% drop in sea ice coverage compared to the previous (2005) record NH ice minimum.

We have updated our high resolution animation of this year’s sea ice retreat (01/01/2007 – 09/23/2007). WARNING – This quicktime animation is very large at 200Mb, but it illustrates nicely the temporal evolution of this year’s sea ice. Animation: 2007 sea ice minimum animation

Follow this link for some background information on historic sea ice minima.

Also note that Antarctic is NOT following climate models.

A February 2007 study reveals Antarctica is not following predicted global warming models. Excerpt: “A new report on climate over the world’s southernmost continent shows that temperatures during the late 20th century did not climb as had been predicted by many global climate models.” The research was led by David Bromwich, professor of professor of atmospheric sciences in the Department of Geography, and researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University. [See: Antarctic temperatures disagree with climate model predictions]

Reply to Lockwood and Fröhlich – The persistent role of the Sun in climate forcing

Svensmark, H. and Friis-Christensen, E.
Danish National Space Center, Copenhagen, Denmark

In a recent paper (ref. [1]) Mike Lockwood and Claus
Frohlich have argued that recent trends in solar climate
forcing have been in the wrong direction to account for
“the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures”.
These authors accept that “there is considerable evidence
for solar in°uence on Earth’s pre-industrial climate and
the Sun may well have been a factor in post-industrial
climate change in the first half of the last century.” But
they argue that this historical link between the Sun and
climate came to an end about 20 years ago. Here we
rebut their argument comprehensively.

pdf here.

By Lockwood and Frohlich’s own data, solar magnetic
activity is still high compared with 100 years ago. As
to when the recent easing of activity began, counts of
cosmic-ray muons at low altitudes were historically low
when the muon record-keeping ended in the early 1990s
(ref. [7]). That implies an increase in relevant solar mag-
netic activity continuing till that time. A scarcity of
muons can be linked to elevated global temperatures by a
reduction in low cloud cover (ref. [8]) and low cloudiness
was indeed at a minimum around 1992-93. By other so-
lar indicators, like those cited by Lockwood and Frohlich,
the minimum muon counts may well be a little higher in
the current solar cycles. That would explain the pause in
global warming evident in our Table as well as in Lock-
wood and Frohlich’s own Fig. 1e.

That would explain the pause in global warming ev-
ident especially in the ocean (Fig. 1) and the tropo-
sphere (Fig. 3). The continuing rapid increase in carbon
dioxide concentrations during the past 10-15 years has
apparently been unable to overrule the flattening of the
temperature trend as a result of the Sun settling at a
high, but no longer increasing, level of magnetic activity.
Contrary to the argument of Lockwood and Frohlich, the
Sun still appears to be the main forcing agent in global
climate change.