One of the many research stations in Antarctica

Here is some hard to understand (or reconcile) research (on the surface anyway) about the ice sheet covering Antarctica and its potential future melting. Scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research claim that more snowfall on the continent of Antarctica counter-intuitively leads to MORE ice loss at the edges. In fact they say that future ice loss will be 3 times greater because of increased snowfall upon the continent. Doesn’t sound right, does it? Especially since the ice sheet around Antarctica is growing and breaking records for it’s extent into the ocean. It would appear that right now, increased snowfall on Antarctica IS leading to more ice. And, isn’t that how the ice sheets (and glaciers) build up in the first place? With more snowfall? They certainly didn’t get that way by less snowfall and melting.

The key to unravelling this paradox is to think about the near future. If the oceans continue to warm, then the ice could melt faster than the build-up due to snow in the interior of Antarctica. Less ice floating around in the sea around Antarctica would mean the glaciers and ice sheets on the continent would have less resistance flowing into the ocean. The increased snow could exert more pressure on the flowing ice pushing it into a warmer sea, thus causing more melting. The key trend will be whether the increased snowfall (and build-up of ice sheets) will outpace the melting at the edges. Here is some additional reading about the opposite ice trends in the Arctic and Antarctic plus some additional theory as to the mechanism by which the Antarctic ice sheet has grown.

By the way, on the subject of Antarctica, Lake Vostok is a story I have been following for a few years (another good post here) - the Russians apparently DID break through to Lake Vostok earlier this year. So far there are no signs of life, but more investigations are coming. I think it would be neat if some new form of life was discovered, something that has had no contact with the earth’s surface for hundreds of thousands of years. As long as it did not turn into a situation like “The Thing” (which is a good thriller movie – not terribly gory either).

Also, on the subject of ice, have you ever wondered how many molecules of water it takes to form an ice crystal? It is not just two. Due to the shape and forces (intermolecular hydrogen bonds) within water molecules, if you put just 2 water molecules in jar and chilled it down below freezing, the molecules would not come together to form ice. Maybe 10? Surely 10 molecules of water could maneuver into a particular arrangement, stick to each other and form a real ice crystal, right? Not quite. According to this recent research, it takes approximately 275 molecules of water before a legitimate standard ice crystal will form. Now you have some weekend trivia with which to stump your friends.

Have a nice Friday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Arctic climate, snow

Today is the day for giving thanks and the first thing I want give thanks for is freedom – the concept that we own ourselves and the fruits of our labor – that we have natural innate rights. Thanksgiving is the perfect day to recall why individual liberty and property rights are so important – because that is the REAL story of Thanksgiving.

Since this is the weather blog and I often write about technology and its relation to anthropogenic global warming (AGW), I also give thanks that environmental Armageddon has not occurred as forecast. From the beginning 1989 through the 1990s, environmental headlines and research papers were full of dire predictions of enormous warming and biosphere destruction. THANKfully, the global temperature leveled out for the last decade or so. THANKfully, through the years, global climate models (GCMs) have been refined and will hopefully provide us with more accurate guidance through future years. I have often argued that playing to hysteria and fear (always stating the worst case scenario as the true scenario) will only produce irrational decisions on how to navigate the future. Better to assess the range of possibilities and solutions to energy use and pollution than to run scared for years to come.

With that said, here are a few AGW headlines I have seen cross the wire over the last few days:

Polar bears are threatened with extinction. Biologists think that if polar bears are unable to hunt seals, that they will have to compete with grizzly bears for food. Because of a stronger skull structure in Grizzly bears, they would likely win that fight. It is interesting to note that polar bears very recently descended from brown bears and brown bears co-exist with grizzlies so I think there is hope, even if there is less sea ice in the future.

With warmer ocean temps and warmer water temps in general (in many fresh water lakes as well), one might think sea-ice would decline a bit in the future, but that might not be the case. Large land-based ice sheets are not melting as fast as once thought and have built in self-preservation mechanisms. In addition, due to the non-linear nature of climate changes, there could be outbreaks of extreme cold in the future. Just because the headlines say the earth has a temperature, don’t think that we won’t still have cold winters here in Wisconsin.

Of course some other recent research states there will be more heat (and hurricanes, and rain), but that is not the end of the story. The threshold ocean temperature for the formation of hurricanes is rising, so perhaps there will be less hurricanes in the future. Plus, we don’t quite understand how the main circulation patterns in the ocean will be affected by AGW. Altantic ocean circulation could reverse!

Scientists are still not completely sure how the earth got into long periods of extreme glaciation (the “snowball earth”), so I suppose colder temps and more ice are a possibility for the far future as well.

In a bit of good news, after the recent election it appears that cap-n-trade legislation in the U.S. is unlikely to become law. This is good news because cap-n-trade for limiting carbon emissions is probably the worst possible way to go about it – unnecessarily complex and wide open to manipulation. If something like this is going to become law, then a straight up tax is much more efficient and transparent. I think we should be using other liberty-based incentive-type programs to limit pollution, but if politicians are going to pass some new legislation, then at least they should be going with something simple.

In other good news, humans might be off the hook for the extinction of woolly mammoths. The culprit might be – you guessed it – climate change.

Lastly, I turns out we had 1.5 inches of snow in Wausau yesterday, November 24th, and that means we have 5 winners in our first snowfall contest. The winners for the top 4 prizes (R-store gift cards and car wash coupons) will be drawn on Monday on Wake-Up Wisconsin and then revealed on Tuesday.

Have a happy Thanksgiving! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under AGW, Climate Change, Environment, First Snowfall 2010

I am getting a little tired of reading all the doom-and-gloom AGW stories in the media recently. As the Copenhagen Conference draws nearer, it will only get worse, so I will try to focus on more positive things.

Remember, before I left for Europe, I mentioned that I would be gone during the annual sea-ice minimum in the northern hemisphere. This is something that is closely watched and generally generates a media frenzy when it gets quite low. What happened this year? The sea-ice was the third lowest on record. What is interesting is that the sea-ice has been increasing year over year since 2007. After reading so many reports on how positive feedback cycles were going to accelerate the loss of sea-ice, I find it surprising that we seem to be going in the opposite direction. Perhaps there is a mechanism that is pushing things in the opposite direction. If El Nino sticks around through the winter, I wonder if that will affect the arctic sea-ice. I am not aware of a connection between the two, but the last two years we had La Nina during the winter and the sea-ice increased. Anyway, more sea-ice is good news (as long as it is not part of a new ice age…lol).

For those worried about carbon emissions, there is more good news. New methods for burying carbon underground are in development. This particular approach would pressurize power plant effluent into a liquid stream of CO2 and pump it underground. Some people are worried about pumping CO2 underground, but at least there are options.

How about this? Direct drive could make wind turbines cheaper to maintain. GE is pushing to use direct drive in offshore wind turbines.

Floating manmade islands/piers, in rivers could generate electricity for cities and also serve as new green/park space for residents. When it comes to energy, there are a lot of new ideas.

Data centers (for the internet) are using a growing share of the world’s energy resources, however, a new trend in computing called “cloud computing” – where you store your data in a server instead of in your computer at your house, could lead to much more efficient operation. A new data center constructed by Yahoo in New York will use one quarter of the energy that their older data center’s use.

A little side detour in to space news: It is looking increasingly likely that there is water on the moon. Data from several different spacecraft are building the case for water and this is good news for any future potential moon bases.

And now what I would like to call time wasting links. These are some cool photo galleries for those who are interested in science and nature.

A photo gallery of glaciers as they appear from space.

Crazy pictures of the big Australian dust storm.

Some cool impact craters found around the globe.

New visiualization techniques help scientists understand complex and large data sets.

Have a good Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under AGW, Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Viewer pictures

Just a reminder that I will be gone to Europe for 10 days in early September. So don’t think I have left broadcasting biz or gotten laid-off. It will be an exciting trip but I will miss the annual sea-ice minimum in the northern hemisphere (about September 5th). Actually if there is a record low in sea-ice extent, I probably will not be able to escape the news. No doubt there will be a huge outpouring of apocalyptic AGW warnings from most media outlets. Last year many experts predicted a new record low but mother nature did not cooperate. It was the 2nd lowest sea-ice on record and still drew a fair share of warnings. Recent satellite research has shown that even though there is more ice than 2 years ago, it is thinner, so a warm winter might again cause a record low in ice. According to climate reconstructions, the current sea ice is the lowest in 800 years. I suppose that means during the last period of warmer temps (the Medieval Warm Period) it is likely the sea-ice in the northern hemisphere was extremely low as well. Which makes me wonder if there were giant plumes of methane bubbling up from the ocean floor during that time as well. Methane Plumes? You ask. There was a crisis moment in environmental reporting last week when it was reported that a British research team discovered plumes of methane gas bubbling up from the ocean floor. Wild speculation ensued that this methane was a sign of AGW and that it was going to feed a never ending irreversible positive feedback cycle that was going to doom the earth. The problem is, this discovery does not have any historical context. No one has any idea if these plumes have existed for a long time, have increased or decreased recently, or if they will continue much longer in the future.

Perhaps El Nino will be the trigger for a record minimum in sea ice, or maybe the extreme minimum of the solar cycle will keep things a little colder. On that point, here is a recent article that confirms what everyone knows from common sense: The solar cycle affects the earth’s climate. For many years I have kept track of reports regarding the sun and the earth’s climate and I was amazed at a tone which dismissed any involvement of the sun whatsoever. The general theme was that the only reason the earth’s temperature has changed over the last 100 years is because of human activity. There was even one research paper that claimed we could block out 4% of the suns rays for 100 years (through some form of geo-engineering) and it would not affect the surface temperature of the earth. Of course, I was incredulous. I am glad to see people taking a closer look at solar effects. Even if such effects are small, they could play a big role in forecasting the future climate.

Another trend I have been seeing is past climate changes, and we are talking a few thousand years ago, being blamed on human activity. The thought is that slash and burn methods of clearing land used by early civilizations might have caused AGW.  I don’t have all the details of the research but I find it hard to believe that the 10 to 30 million people that lived on the planet that long ago could have affected the climate so much. The author claims that early civilizations cleared more land per capita, but still, 20 million people dispersed around the world burning enough forest to change the climate? Hard to believe.

Going to a high school football game tonight? Check out our newest forecast feature on the WAOW webchannel: http://www.waow.com/Global/category.asp?C=173551&nav=menu1360_4_6 Here you can find a forecast for every high school football field in the area. Take a look before you head out to the gridiron tonight. You might need to bring some rain gear at a few fields.

Lastly, remember that there is a chance of frost on Monday morning of next week. I am forecasting a low of 41 in town. It is in the countryside and traditional cold spots that will experience a touch of frost. Gardeners take heed.

Have a good weekend! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under AGW, Climate Change, Freeze

What is in a headline?  Headlines should be descriptive. They should give you a clue as to the nature of the words you are about to encounter in the body of the article. In popular media a headline is often written to draw attention. Some headlines might be more dramatic in order grab more readers. Scholarly (research articles) are descriptive but rarely “dramatic”. Where the popular media and scientific articles meet is where we sometimes run into trouble. This is particularly the case with anthropogenic global warming (AGW). The popular headlines over the last decade or so have been hyperbolic – and this could be an understatement. The actual climate research (and papers) is mostly couched in terms of percentages and confidence intervals – such as “there is a 90% chance of xxxx happening by 2100″.  I have heard and read some climate scientists mention this fact. They say the popular media takes their research and statements out of context and blows things out of proportion. This is likely the case for most research and researchers, however leading climate scientists are increasingly jumping into the political/activist arena so the media cannot be solely to blame – think James Hanson “we are all toast”, or James Lovelock “it is already to late to save humankind”.

Here is a recent article that captures the problem pretty well. “Sea Level Rise – It’s Worse Than We Thought“. Sounds bad, doesn’t it? Grabs your attention, doesn’t it? Pretty typical of AGW headlines. The headline leaves no margin for error. IT IS WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT. Read the article and you find that things are not so certain. Here are a couple quotes:

“And while we still don’t understand the dynamics of ice sheets and glaciers well enough to make precise predictions, we are narrowing down the possibilities.”

“Findings like these suggest that predicting sea level rise is even trickier than previously thought.”

“and while regional climate models are improving, ice sheet models are still too crude to make accurate predictions.”

Another article here displays a more subtle problem. “New NASA Satellite Survey Reveals Dramatic Arctic Sea Ice Thinning“. Sea ice has thinned in recent years but what should be considered “dramatic”. The writer thinks it is dramatic. Others might label it dangerous, extreme, or worrisome. We know from human records and climate proxies that the north pole was likely ice free at a few different times in the past. What is needed are some historical numbers to put the ice loss into perspective. How do the last 4 years compare to other periods of ice thinning?

When non-scientists cover science topics, there will always be a few poor or exagerated headlines, but that is the nature of media. My job is at the intersection and thus I probably notice it more often. The best we can do is read deeper into the data or article. A headline that says “the world is ending” will usually have caveats or properly framed data within.

Not surprisingly, articles covering alternative energy can sometimes be over-blown. Advocates like myself might feel positive about a new technological breakthrough and want to let everyone know about it. How better than to start with a dramatic headline. Here is one from today “Major Breakthrough With Water Desalination System“. When I saw the headline I was hoping that a new process had been developed that would make desalination much cheaper, or maybe a desalination plant had been built that exclusively used solar power. After all, the world could really use more desalination capability. Unfortunately, the “major breakthrough” was interesting, but hardly major. Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science created a mobile desalination testing plant. The nice thing about being mobile is that it can save a lot of money when planning a new desalination plant. Otherwise a test plant has to be built on the future site of desalination to make sure it is feasible. With the UCLA mobile test plant, they can just haul in the unit, conduct tests, find out if it will work, and then move on to the next site. This saves money, which is good, but I wouldn’t call it a “major breakthrough”. It is good press for UCLA. Maybe they have some connections with Science Daily.

If I had to pen an attention grabbing headline for our current weather in Northcentral Wisconsin I would call it abnormal, strange, or even amazing. Scientifically speaking we will be within 5 degrees of breaking record lows and record cool high temperature marks by Friday of this week. Today and tomorrow will seems scorching as compared to Thursday and Friday – even though high temps will only be around 80. Later this week the mercury will struggle to reach 70. The good news is that temps should warm-up for the weekend. We should experience mid 70s on Saturday and upper 70s to around 80 on Sunday. Most of the week will also be dry. Our one significant chance of rain will be tonight. I am forecasting a 70% chance of rain, but that does not mean it will be heavy. I doubt many areas will have even a half inch.

Have a nice Tuesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under AGW, Alternative Energy, Records, Science