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Environment

European climate at mercy of retreating sea ice

By Richard Moss
June 30, 2015
European climate at mercy of retreating sea ice
The "cloud streets" over the Greenland and Iceland seas shown in this satellite image exist as a result of heat and moisture transfer processes that warm the atmosphere and cool the ocean
The "cloud streets" over the Greenland and Iceland seas shown in this satellite image exist as a result of heat and moisture transfer processes that warm the atmosphere and cool the ocean
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The "cloud streets" over the Greenland and Iceland seas shown in this satellite image exist as a result of heat and moisture transfer processes that warm the atmosphere and cool the ocean
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The "cloud streets" over the Greenland and Iceland seas shown in this satellite image exist as a result of heat and moisture transfer processes that warm the atmosphere and cool the ocean

An international team of scientists has found that retreating sea ice between the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans is linked to weakened air-sea heat exchange in the region. This, it warns, could result in a cooler climate in western Europe and an altered or slower Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which would have knock-on effects for the Gulf Stream and consequently for the atmosphere.

While previous studies have investigated retreating sea ice in the region in terms of marine impact and general trends in ice volume, as well as potential implications for the AMOC as a result of changing salinity, this new research focused on air-sea heat exchange.

The researchers looked at winter data from 1958 to 2014 in their analysis. They found that as sea ice has retreated the area of maximum heat exchange between sea and air has moved too, it occurs at the edge of the sea ice. The locations where warm, dense, salty surface waters sink – as part of the AMOC – have not changed, however, so the heat exchange has weakened (by a magnitude of 20 percent since 1979). This, in turn, could weaken oceanic convection in the Greenland and Iceland seas.

"It's like turning the stove down 20 percent," explains study lead author G.W.K. Moore. "We believe the weakening will continue and eventually cause changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning CIrculation and the Gulf Steam, which can impact the climate of Europe."

The research was conducted by an international team from the University of Toronto, University of Bergen, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and University of East Anglia, and is described in a paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Source: University of Toronto

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EnvironmentClimate CrisisUniversity of TorontoOceanUniversity of East AngliaWoods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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mrhuckfin
So they do realize that the earth has not been warming and even slightly cooling for nearly the last 20 years? How cold does this earth have to get before they give this up?
Phillip Noe
Meanwhile the republicans and their sponsors deny we have anything to do with the global meltdown. It's a rejection of reality.
Learn more at.... AAAS Climate Change What We Know
AllenH
This must be the global warming advocate's fallback position: If there is no warming (which there hasn't been), then predict global cooling as the next stage. So no matter what happens they can (try to) claim they were right.
As mrhuckfin said, "How cold does this earth have to get before they give this up?"
Gavin Zubka
mrhuckfin, I am also a skeptic on these huge issues and picking sides but recently I found out about this
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2015/noaa-analysis-journal-science-no-slowdown-in-global-warming-in-recent-years.html
and thought it was interesting I am waiting to see what others say about it though.
Synchro
@mrhuckfin Right, so you would refer to the >360 consecutive months of above average temperatures we have had as 'cooling'? Try reading an actual source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201505 Think it's a cunning US plot? Try another country: http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/gwp/temp/feb_wld.html Where's your data?
Brian M
Global warming or not ? Well Its a sort of hockeystick with a bend in the handle indicating a 'not' trend.
The only thing that can be said for certain is that the climate will eventually change man made or otherwise. the only question is when and how fast.
At the end of the day it doesn't matter, reducing reliance on fossil fuels I not only good environmentally bit its going to be a requirement - fossil fuels are a finite resource.
But even that is not the real problem - its over population that is our biggest enemy!
Don Duncan
Synchro: Forty years ago the overwhelming scientific consensus was we were entering the next ice age. Scientists, like the MSM are bought and sold by TPTB. The truth was extremely hard to come by, until the internet. Giving us "reports/info" from govt. sites is meaningless. They lie for power and profit, reducing their credibility to zero.
The older I get (now 72) the more amazed I am at how controlled people allow themselves to be. Some would rather die or suffer their whole life than admit that the overwhelming evidence points to govt. being the fundamental source of cultural/societal destruction. Doing so means they would have to grow up and be responsible for their own lives, which frightens the hell out of them. The illusion that "big brother" or Uncle Sam is protecting them is clung to by Americans just as firmly as '30s Germans stuck by Hitler, the Soviet people stuck by Stalin, the Chinese worshiped Mao, and most people stick by their masters, self-enslaving but calling themselves "free".
Clarity
Don- I would have thought that in your 72 years you would have noticed how much things can change in '40' years. Science keeps moving, pushing no answer is final (wouldn't that be nice). It keeps getting refined.
And that government you distrust and think everyone else is controlled by (not you of course), in a democracy, that government is you. That government has done, and continues to do, more to help you than any entity you could name. that computer you're looking at huge government R&D, same with internet, cell service, roads, safe(ish) foods, sheesh I could go on and on.
I know, I know the problem with recognizing that somethings wrong, and therefore needs to be fixed, can be very inconvenient.
Catweazle
More alarmism.
Actually, having bottomed out around 2012, Arctic ice area cover and multi-year thickness have recovered to around 2006/7 levels, Antarctic sea ice area is at an all-time high for the satellite measurement era, as is the total Global sea ice coverage.
According to the RSS and UAH satellite databases, there has been no warming for around 18+ years, and a cooling trend for the last decade or so.
More important for the catastrophists, the vital increase in atmospheric water vapour - without which there cannot be any dangerous feedback - has entirely failed to materialise. Two of the three analyses of the NASA NVAP satellite data - by Vumlum and Vonder Haar - show no discernible trend since the late 1980s, and the third by Solomon et al shows a 10% decrease over the decade post-2000, correlating quite well with the pause/slight cooling trend.
As for extreme climate events, total cyclone energy is down globally, and not been a single hurricane has made landfall in the continental YSA for over nine years.
The technique is to take a clearly periodic function, cherry-pick a suitable section from the upward/downward section of the curve - depending what the object of the exercise is - and linear regress it to Armageddon.
Jose Gros-Aymerich
It was announced that by 2010, the Gulf Stream will come to a sudden halt because of the influence on the thermo-haline circulation from the global warming, then, the volcanoes erupted, cooling the atmosphere. It was also shown, from geological records, that entrance of volcanic ashes in the atmosphere is associated in the middle term to an increase in the speed of Sea currents, the problem may be complex, and some warnings too simplistic, but we do already have a Caspian Sea becoming dry, and impending dangers of fast changes in the northern Europe winther temperatures, that early forecats about global warming pointed to an average increase of more than 3º C above lat 45º N, along with a rainfall increase of 10% or even more above lat 65º N (see Roger Revelle). I'd replenish the Caspian Sea, e.g, from Obi river water, at least, the Caviar producing fish will appreciate this. + salut
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