"These Canadian ice caps were estimated to melt by 2022" Topic

… — they're already gone

"A paper published back in 2017 estimated that the St. Patrick Bay ice caps in Canada would disappear in 5 years due to climate change. We're barely halfway through that time, and they've already melted…"

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Amicalement
Armand

"When I first visited those ice caps, they seemed like such a permanent fixture of the landscape," says geographer and NSIDC director Mark Serreze. "To watch them die in less than 40 years just blows me away."

In a geologic timeframe, nothing is a permanent fixture. These icecaps have probably formed and melted dozens of times before humans showed up. His conclusion is puzzling.

These were estimates and most estimates turn out to be wrong. If he estimated it would take 2 years but took three what would that have proved? Nothing.

If you look at scientific estimates of glacier and ice cap melting you'll find most of the articles state the ice is melting faster than their estimates. That means only one thing – the estimates were wrong. There has not been enough scientific observation to get better estimates. It's the best they can do.

Glacier National report: rb.gy/un1wfs

History of glaciers in the park: link

I spent some time at Glacier National Park talking with the guides and some geologists that have been there for over 30 years. The earliest records they have goes back to 1850 and the glaciers were already melting and had been for quite a while. As the glaciers get smaller their rate of melt increases as the mass decreases. He pointed to a mountain top 2,000 feet above us and said at one point the glacier was over the top of the mountain, that was thousands of years ago. He said someday Glacier National Park may lose all of its glaciers by 2030, again. They may not come back again until we approach another ice age no matter what humans do.

When the glaciers retreat new plants and trees will take their place. That will have the effect of taking in more carbon dioxide and releasing more oxygen. As the ice cap in Greenland melts they are finding remains of Viking settlements going back to the 1300s. This is nothing new, just sensationalized in the media, and hyped by politicians.

Temperatures tend to warm after an Ice Age. The Little Ice Age lasted from the 1300s to 1850 when the glaciers advanced and then retreated (that's what glaciers do).

If there was no Little Ice Age there would be no glaciers in Glacier National Park.

The Little Ice Age had several causes that could happen at any time in the future which would mean the glaciers returning. There are several causes have been proposed: cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, variations in Earth's orbit and axial tilt (orbital forcing), inherent variability in global climate, and decreases in the human population (for example from the Black Death and the colonization of the Americas).

The NASA Earth Observatory notes three particularly cold intervals: one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, all separated by intervals of slight warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report considered the timing and areas affected by the Little Ice Age suggested largely independent regional climate changes rather than a globally synchronous increased glaciation. At most, there was modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during the period.

What will their Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports show?

There are potentially other factors: fluctuations in the geomagnetic activity of the earth (the poles are in the process of flipping and there is a giant hole in the southern hemisphere), variations in cosmic rays as the solar system moves through the galaxy, fluctuations in the suns activity as we are currently entering a 10-year cooling cycle. Again, there can be many theories and estimates which historically are rarely accurate or almost impossible to accurately predict.

Do humans have an impact on the climate? Of course, all life forms do. What's the solution? That's debatable.

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Wolfhag

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

You have a way of writing things others have tried to state on here but encountered only fanatical resistance.

This is nothing new, just sensationalized in the media, and hyped by politicians.

Except that now we're off the charts compared to the cycles that earth has experienced in the last million years.

They may not come back again until we approach another ice age no matter what humans do.

We've pumped enough CO2 in the atmosphere that we've delayed the next ice age until at least 100ky from now. link

The NASA Earth Observatory notes three particularly cold intervals: one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, all separated by intervals of slight warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report considered the timing and areas affected by the Little Ice Age suggested largely independent regional climate changes rather than a globally synchronous increased glaciation. At most, there was modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during the period.

What will their Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports show?

The fourth report was released in 2007: link

The fifth report was released in 2014: ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1

We are currently waiting onthe 6ths report to be finalized in 2021: link
But that might be delayed by COIVD.
link

Spoke too soon …

Wolfhag,

While the principal focus of your post is on supposed cooling mechanisms, several of those factors are frequently alleged to be significant contributors to global warming. Therefore, I will address these factors both in terms of their ability to increase global temperatures and in terms of global cooling.

Mathematically rigorous quantitative analysis of observational and experimental data is the foundation of science. Quantitative comparison between the factors you have listed and current changes in terrestrial climate show that none of those factors are a cause of the increase in atmospheric temperatures and CO2 and methane concentrations observed in the last 250 years, especially the last 50-65 years.

Orbital forcing and natural climate variability, for example, change climate over time scales of 10,000 to 100,000 years or longer. They thus cannot be responsible for the increase in temperatures and C02 and methane levels taking place over time scales of 50 to 250 years. CO2 and methane levels are increasing at a rate 80-300 times faster than the natural cycle.

And the 11-year solar cycle, both in terms of solar radiation and sunspots, is not correlated with increases in global temperatures at all.

In terms of global cooling, since the factors above either have no correlation with global temperatures at all or would take 10,000 to 100,000 years or longer to cool the planet, those factors are not going to reduce global temperatures over the next few decades or even centuries. And since climate effects are already showing up now in actual observed data, for example, sea levels are now rising, factors that may cool the planet in 10,000 years are not going to be particularly helpful.

As for changes in ocean circulation that might occur in this century, that's not going to eliminate global warming. A significant weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – the current that transports warmer water north and colder water south –- will simply "redistribute the damage", so to speak. Global temperatures will still substantially increase, but less so in northern latitudes and more so in southern latitudes. But even in northern latitudes there will still be increases in temperature and melting of Arctic ice. Weakening of the AMOC will reduce loss of summertime sea ice concentration by 10% in the center of the Arctic by 2061 – 2080, and by 50% in the wintertime at the edge of the Arctic. But even if the AMOC does weaken throughout the century, and it's not clear it will, 50% to 90% of the loss of Arctic sea ice will still occur.

As for volcanic effects, for a volcanic eruption to produce global cooling, it has to be powerful enough to throw tens of millions of tons of sulfur dioxide (S02) tens of kilometers high into the stratosphere. Such catastrophic volcanic eruptions occur very rarely, most recently in 1991 (Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines) and before that in 1883 (Krakatoa) and before that in 1815, and before that in 1783, and before that in 1600 (earlier such eruptions occurred in 535, 945 or 946, 1257, 1315, and 1452 or 1453). And the effects of the global cooling, while definitely significant, are only temporary, lasting from one to five years. The Mount Pinatubo eruption, for example, reduced global temperatures by 0.4 to 0.6 Celsius degrees but the effect only lasted three years. So a factor that occurs as rarely as these catastrophic volcanic eruptions, and only cools the earth for a few years, is not going to compensate for the continuous hour-by-hour, day-by-day global emission of C02 and methane that's taking place over decades and centuries.

The following is a more detailed discussion of the factors you listed:

(a) ORBITAL FORCING:

Orbital forcing produces effects over periods of ~20,000 to 400,000 years (~41,000 years for the earth's tilt angle, ~19,000 to 24,000 years for the precession (i.e., the wobbling of the Earth's rotational axis, analogous to what one observes in a spinning top), and ~100,000 to 400,000 years for the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit around the Sun.

Thus, the climate changes taking place over the last 50 to 250 years cannot be explained by orbital forcing that has effects on scales of 20,000 to 400,000 years. The climate change effects are occurring at least ~100 to 400 times faster than orbital forcing caused by tilt and precession. If one is talking about eccentricity effects, increases in global temperature are occurring on time scales that are 400 to 8,000 times faster than orbital forcing!

So the climate changes we're currently observing are NOT due to orbital forcing.

For a detailed discussion of the time scales of the three orbital forcing cycles (tilt, precession, and eccentricity – known as the Milankovitch cycles), and the effects of orbital forcing on planetary climate, see Dr. Jόrg Beer's discussion on pp. 313 – 318 in "Heliophysics: Evolving Solar Activity and the Climates of Space and Earth" (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Or, go to:

link

(b) GALACTIC COSMIC RAYS (GCR)

It takes the solar system ~225 million years to orbit the galactic center. Thus over 50 to 250 years the solar system will traverse a mere 1/4,500,000th to 1/1,000,000th of an orbital period. That's 0.00002% to 0.0001% of the period. Over such a tiny fraction of the galactic rotational period, variations in galactic cosmic ray (GCR) flux as the solar system moves through the galaxy will be miniscule over 50 to 250 years.

As for geomagnetic effects, they could only effect climate by changing the GCR flux. And the galactic cosmic ray flux shows no warming or cooling effects. For more details go to:

link

(c) THE SOLAR CYCLE IS NOT CORRELATED WITH GLOBAL WARMING

Fluctuations in the Sun's activity – the 11-year solar cycle – are NOT correlated with increases in the Earth's temperature:

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(if there's a problem getting to the link directly, just Google "What is the sun's role in climate change NASA" and you can get there that way).

(By the way, I was able to see the plot above on my IPhone but not on my MacBook Pro. If you have problems seeing the plot go to:
link )

link
(see the plots of temperature vs. time (black curve) compared to the number of sunspots vs. time (blue curve))

This data is discussed in more analytical detail on this thread in the Miniatures Page: TMP link

(d) INHERENT VARIABILITY IN GLOBAL CLIMATE & WARMING AFTER THE LAST ICE AGE

For at least the last 800,000 years the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and methane have each followed a natural cycle, dropping during Ice Ages and rising during the periods between Ice Ages.

During this natural cycle, after the end of an Ice Age C02 levels rise to 200-280 parts per million (ppm). Current C02 levels are ~415 ppm, beyond and completely inconsistent with the 200-280 ppm levels of the natural CO2 cycle observed over at least 800,000 years.

Current methane levels are ~1800 parts per billion (ppb), far beyond and completely inconsistent with the 600-800 ppb levels of the natural methane cycle.

The rate at which these atmospheric concentrations is increasing are also completely inconsistent with the natural cycle.

The rate at which CO2 is currently increasing is ~200 times FASTER than the rate expected from the natural CO2 cycle.

The rate at which methane is increasing since the industrial revolution is 80-300 times FASTER than the natural rate.

To put it another way: changes in CO2 and methane levels that naturally take place over hundreds of centuries (~10,000 – 20,000 years) are now taking place over 1 or 2 centuries (100 – 250 years), or even less than a century (i.e., 50 -65 years).

Since CO2 and methane are increasing at a rate 80-300 times faster than the natural cycle, and over time scales of 1-2 centuries when the natural time scale is increases over 100-200 centuries, one thing is absolutely clear: this IS NOT the natural cycle!

Here's the CO2 and methane data:

link
link
link (click on Figure 2 to see the methane concentration data).

This data is discussed in more analytical detail on this thread in the Miniatures Page:
TMP link

(e) CHANGE IN OCEAN CIRCULATION

The effects of a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) are discussed in detail here: link

(f) VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS AND CLIMATE

For a discussion of the global effects of volcanic eruptions, go to: link