Bond Events, Dansgaard-Oeschger events, Climate Cycles, and stuff

Pretty much everyone agrees that the warming we’ve seen over the last 130 year or so is on the order of .7C. The argument is over what caused it and where it’s going.

So then what would one make of increases, and declines, that are ten times (or more) greater and that happen in 1/10th the time (or less?) (Also see 1500 year cycles.)

WUWT have a nifty post covering some of these events and there’s more good stuff in the comments.

“Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps.”

“The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policy-makers.” (“Abrupt Climate Change – Inevitable Surprises”, Committee on Abrupt Climate Change, National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, 2002, ISBN: 0-309-51284-0, 244 pages, Richard B. Alley, chair.)

The rest: On “Trap-Speed”, ACC and the SNR

Vostok Ice Core, Antarctic: (click to enlarge)

 

At the recent end of the climate cycle there is the Younger Dryas event. The Earth was emerging from the last ice age, things were warming up, and the it rapidly dropped into full=blown ice age conditions for another 1200 years.

Apparently the recovery was pretty rapid, too.

What caused it? No one knows. Some have an impact hypothesis, and there’s an idea that giant glacial lakes flooded the Northern Atlantic with fresh water, cutting off all circulation, leading to the cooling. The problem is that the lake outflow seems to have been blocked by ice. From the comments:

This one has been out there for some time and keeps being repeated, but Thomas V Lowell showed that the St Lawrence River was blocked by ice during the Younger-Dryas. [Revised Deglacial Chronology of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and Implications for Catastrophic Meltwater Discharge as Triggers for Abrupt Climate Change,” Eos Trans AGU 86 (52) Fall Meet. Supple., Abstract (2005): F1234″ — This from “Sudden Cold” by climatologist Rodney Chilton (2009)]

…

A second study that involved a simulation of meltwater originating from the Laurentide Ice Sheet did not produce any appreciable meltwater during the entire 15,000 to 8,000 BP interval. [T.C. Moore (2000)]

…

The northern route at least appears to have suffered the same fate as the St. Lawrence in also being blocked by ice until well after the Younger-Dryas ended. [Thomas V. Lowell, ibid]

Fun stuff.

 

1500 Year warming Cooling Cycles

While reading some stuff on volcanoes and climate change, specifically Toba, I came across this Wiki article on Dansgaard-Oeschger events. D-O events are warming periods that appear in the Greenland ice cores. Temps warmed by as much as 8C over periods of around 40 years, then dropped again over the next couple hundred years.In the current interglacial these are referred to as Bond events.

These cycles don’t appear in the Antarctic ice cores, or if they do then they’re very subtle. This makes sense if the D-O events are caused by northern oceanic changes.

The little ice age of ~400 to 200 years ago has been interpreted by some as the cold part of a D-O cycle, putting us in a period of warming climate (Bond et al.. 1999).

The Snowball Earth Could Make for Permanent Ski Conditions

If you Google (or Bing or Y!) Snowball Earth (or go here) you’ll find something akin to the following idea. Some 700+ million year ago the Earth was covered in ice. That ice extended all the way to the equator. Some say it’s happened at least twice. Around 715 million year back and again at around 600 million years.

WUWT has a post in the subject: “sea ice extended to the equator 716.5 million years ago” Fascinating stuff, i think. It’s also likely that CO2 was far higher in those days, so why did it the world freeze over? There have been a few other ice ages since then, long before the current set, despite higher CO2.The article doesn’t actually say anything about CO2, though the graphic does.

I’ve seen some remarks by Geologists who suggest that land-masses at the poles are necessary for ice ages, along with certain formations of the continents. Circulation is cut off and the world cools. Enough ice forms, albedo increases, the cooling accelerates, and you have an ice age (I’m way over simplifying here.)

Questions…

The article and the commenters raise some questions:

1. Are there any papers which contradict the idea? One commenter said a paper has already debunked it.
2. Are there any other hypotheses that would explain the scientists’ observations? Axial tilt? Weaker sun combined with…? Asteroid hit causing massive planet-wide volcanic activity, combined with the correct placement of the land masses?
3. The article admits that they don’t know the triggering causes for the Earth becoming a snowball, or for leaving that phase, though there is a vast igneous province that suspiciously dates to about the same time. Super volcano?
4. A commenter says that while Geologists generally believe that CAGW is complete bunk, biologists are believers. Why? I have a biology degree (ancient, moldy, but still there.) I’d think that biologists would be the first group to be hollering that more CO2 is a good thing and that life shows remarkable adaptability.
5. Another commenter states that when the current series of ice ages ends (in a few million years) CO2 will bounce back to a more normal 1200ppm to 2500 ppm. Why? Outgassing from the oceans?

1934 Warmer than 1998? Yes, No, Yes, No…

8/26/14: Found this (referenced on G+: ) –  Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate.

Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. Because of the exponential dependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 ° K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.

this is the link. 

8/17/14: Our Climategate buddies told us that they wanted to get rid of the 1940’s temperature blip, without even knowing why it existed. So they did.

5/12/13:

In 1998, Hansen wrote: it is clear that 1998 did not match the record warmth of 1934, which occurred during the Dust Bowl era. Here.

Update 4/29/13:

It’s necessary for NCDC to heavily adjust temps to continue the alarm. The high temps in its published reports are far from what’s shown by their data. The animation below switches between the measured data, and the published temperatures.

And here’s the original page.

Update 4/13: More records set way back when. 

He (James Hansen) wrote this in 1999, before he completely turned to the dark side of fraudulent science.

Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought. The drought of 1999 covered a smaller area than the 1988 drought, when the Mississippi almost dried up. And 1988 was a temporary inconvenience as compared with repeated droughts during the 1930s “Dust Bowl” that caused an exodus from the prairies, as chronicled in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath…..

in the U.S. there has been little temperature change in the past 50 years, the time of rapidly increasing greenhouse gases — in fact, there was a slight cooling throughout much of the country

The US Used To Be Much Hotter

Update 3/25: And still more from Goddard: All GISS US Warming Is Due To Data Tampering

Update 2/4: More from that tireless Goddard fellow. Far more heat records set in the 30s than this last year. Now one could probably quibble about averages vs record setting (ie: a high average might not mean more records) or about this just being US temps. Funny how such scrutiny isn’t given to hysteria supporting the warming meme. 40% Of US All-Time Record Maximums Were Set During The 1930s

Update 1/31: More GISS shenanigans. Using iffy data for Antarctica in order to manufacture warming.

Update 1/25: PDF of a German study of doctored GISS records. It’s all in German, but the conclusion (on the last page) is in English. Here’s the original and here’s the local copy. Some people are having difficulty loading the original file, but the local copy seems to work just fine.

• Modifications obviously in most stations, perhaps in all.
• Modifications yielded mostly a stronger warming
• Some indicate cooling – to pretend homogensization
• Methods vary depending on setting: decreasing data of beginning sections, decreasing data between 1920 and 1950, increasing data of final sections, deleting data of disturbing sections.

Update: 1/11/13: Yes, still more. Here’s Part 2. And what’s this nonsense about 2012 being warmer than 1998? GISS is the only record which comes even close to that. The 30s were the hottest and driest.

Update: 8/8/12: More warm fails and adjustments. Hansen claims there’s something unusual about modern warmth. He’s wrong. More debunking of Hansen.

More Hansen/GISS data tampering, and still more.

Update 7/10/12

NY Times hysteria about melting ice over the last century, WUWT comment.

More headlines, from various sources. Part one of that article is here and discusses the “Global Warming” proposition.

An issue is that pretty much all of the warming observed over the last hundred years or see seems to be the result of adjustments to the historical temperature record. This image tracks some of those adjustments to the NOAA adjustments. Temps were modified to be cooler in earlier years and warmer in later year. The graph shows the magniture of the adjustments.

Update 11/13/11:

Guess we’ll just have to say “yes” to that question:

NCDC data shows that the contiguous USA has not warmed in the past decade, summers are cooler, winters are getting colder – Scroll down the post to hit the 1934 stuff.

Update 8/1:

More “adjustments” from GISS. Steve points out that “Through the magic of adjustment, GISS has been able to cool the past by two degrees…”

GISS raw data shows Brenham, Texas cooling, then warming.

Elsewhere, Greenland puts on over 250′ of ice since ’42…

Two B-17 bombers and six P-38 Lightning fighters are buried under 265 feet of ice and snow that has accumulated since bad weather and low fuel forced them to abort a flight to England in 1942.

the rest: Team Aims to Dig Up Planes Buried in Icecap;8 Aircraft Worth Millions Crash-Landed in Greenland 47 Years Ago

This is for the wags who whine that the US is only 2% of the Earth’s surface area, so doesn’t really count:  Just 2% Of The Planet. More on the Bad Weather page.

Update 7/22/11:

From Goddard, Steve: – Prior to the year 2000, the two hottest years in the GISS US record were 1934 and 1921 respectively. 1998 was the third hottest year, and more than half a degree cooler than 1934.

After adjustments, 1998 became warmer. Here’s a blink graph, from Steve’s site, comparing the two. Click the image for a slightly bigger (and complete) picture.

Update: another post on the subject, with lots of links in the comments to more interesting stuff.

In 2000, USHCN apparently wasn’t happy with the fact that the 1930s was the warmest decade – so they gave the past a demotion and bumped the 1990s way up….

Here’s the rest: Cooking The Books At USHCN

Recently there’s been some news about some fudging of the numbers in the land based  temperature data used to determine which way the climate is heading. This isn’t the same thing as another manipulation of the temperature record, though it may be related…

The Cricket discusses number fudging

Check out any temperature record going back to the beginning of the 1900s and you will see a bump in the 30s and 40s. 1934 was the hot point of that bump.You’ll even see this in the various (discredited) hockey stick graphs. Of course, pretty much all of those sticks and other graphs show current temps to be significantly warmer than the 30s.

So why is this interesting? Because, depending on a couple of things, it seems that 1934 was actually about as warm as 1998. Which pretty much kills off any hockey stick. (update note: this is for US data, but since the US data has been called the gold standard for temp data I think my remarks still apply since they are regarding manipulation, even though ’34’s warmness may have been regional.)

How did ’34 get so warm (or cool off?)  a few years back 1934 was originally shown to be as warm as 1998, then NASA adjusted the data to show 1998 as warmer. Then Steve McIntyre, of Climate Audit, pointed out some errors and the “official” temperature data was adjusted again to show 1934 as the high point. In fact, only 3 of the top ten dates, from that set of data, are from the current decades.

Naturally the alarmist crowd said that the adjustments (boosting 1934) were insignificant. CA has more discussion on this issue, including this one: Does Hansen’s Error “Matter”?

The temps have been adjusted again, a few times, since then. This is why you generally won’t see graphs showing  ’34 to be close to ’98. In fact,  here’s a graph that shows the competition between 1934 and 1998 as the warmest years. Looks like someone can’t make up their minds…

The Air Vent has more detail on this, noting that ’34 has been as much as .5 C higher than ’98. Doesn’t sound like much until you realize that the entire trend from 1895 to now is about 0.6C

A quick detour:

Ok, there are a LOT of issues with the land based temp records. SurfaceStations.org does a nice job of questioning the quality of these stations. Location quality, station quality, areas covered (and not covered,) recording error, heat island effects, physical moving of the stations, physical changes to the station (paint, screens, gear., etc.,) and probably more.

There are also questions of data manipulation shown in the Climategate mess (including the loss of raw data) and some other emails that show NASA manipulation of data. Currently it looks like the surface temperature record might be called unreliable.

End of detour

Let’s pretend that the surface record is basically good and get back to the adjustments. Note the above linked table, on CA, of the top 10 warm years.

Now, the real reason that this adjustment stuff is interesting is this: If it can be shown that the 30s were as warm as the 90’s then:

• the Catastrophic Warming idea is dead.
• The world may well be warming, generally, but Man’s part in it is tiny and any warming, long or short term, is due to natural causes and there has been no increase in warming since the 30s peak.
• Al Gore (all other hysterics) and the UN IPCC are selling pure fantasy.
• With there being no there there, grant monies for AGW research will fall precipitously.
• Not to mention that all of the CO2 power and money grabs, real and planned, are reduced to nothing more than power and greed.

There’s a major vested interest, by many parties, in maintaining the idea that the last few years were definitely warmer than the 30s. Sales of Al Gores’ books and movies, for example.

Are current times warmer? That’s very hard to say. The satellite records just don’t go back that far. They only go back to a time when the news media was pumping “the coming ice age.” Satellites can’t say a thing about 1934. The surface records, which should be able to say something about ’34, are iffy, at best.

So if you believe in AGW, and/or that the keepers of the data are 100% honest and that they are doing the best they can with an iffy product, then ’98 was warmer the ’34 peak and the modern warming took us to a higher level than that reached in the 30s and 40s. That doesn’t say that people were responsible for that warming, but it opens up the possibility.

If you believe that the data has been fudged and that 1934 was about as warm as the ’98 peak then the more recent warming is just a rebound from the 50 & 60s dip, not an increase from ’34. This means that there is no longer term warming and Mr. Gore should get a new job.

Update:

Another comparison of the 30s/40s to modern times. Also explains why there was a “concern” about the coming ice age in the 70s. BTW – everytime I see that second graph the 40s hump is a bit smaller and the modern hump is bigger. Now imagine the earlier hump being the larger one. That’s what the data looked like before the various “adjustments.”

Update:

another page that makes a similar point:

NASA’s James Hansen is the United States’ leading scientific alarmist about global warming. He believes global warming is accelerating. Apparently it’s his revisions of the data that are causing the acceleration.

This document examines the historical revision in the global temperature change as defined by Hansen over the decades. Hansen’s global temperature graphs are examined from 1981 to 2007.

from a comparison of Hansen’s own charts

http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/temperature-corrections-of-the-northern-hemisphere-144.php

Nothing to See Here, Move Along

The Reference Frame did a calculation of temps for central England, from 1659. As you have probably guessed there is no unusual modern warming recorded.

Because the Hadley Center has released the final temperatures in Central England for 2009, I decided to calculate a few things. Although I have also played with the monthly data, this text will be purely about the 1659-2009 annual data. It’s 351 years in total.

The average of the 351 numbers is 9.217 °C. The Pythagorean average of the deviation of the annual data from this average is 0.659 °C. The global warming advocates like to emphasize the warming trend in the last 30 years. How does the warming trend in the last 30 years – and in all other 30-year periods since 1659 – look like in Central England?

Here’s the rest: Warming trends in England from 1659

Lindzen on Climate Hysteria

This is from an article by Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations.

Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well.

Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now.

More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat.

(paragraphs and emphasis are mine.)

The rest of the article is here: Resisting climate hysteria

Long Term Climate History of Earth

In the beginning, it was warm…

Then it cooled (and there was an ice age)…

Then it was warm again…

Then it cooled, again…

And then it was warm again…

After which it cooled, but not quite as much…

Of course, after that it warmed again…

And then the most recent series of ice ages started and the Earth cooled…

Except for a few short interglacials, when it warmed again, and we are in one of those interglacials.

The late Ordovician period (about 450 million years ago) was an ice age with CO2 levels 10-12 times higher than today’s levels.

This page shows a history of the Earth over the last 600 million years. Even with the uncertainty of measurement, it’s still fascinating. Among other things, it notes that the Earth has been cooling over the last 30 million years. It also offers a geological hypothesis for ice ages.

Check it out: Climate and the Carboniferous Period