Wish you all would have allowed a more detailed discussion from both of the Senior Meterologist. Reply: I will talk to Katie about that. Brett

IIRC, NOAA did say that other natural phenomun were partly the cause of elevated temps and a positive. That is while greenhouse gases were most of it, they were not the entire story.

Atlantic Oscillation is obviously a good canidate as another natural phenomum.

However, the other guy just hung his head and did not say a word.

Did he have an opinion?

Is he ashamed, or did we just catch him in an odd moment?

I was coaching soccer last fall in Colorado, and about half of our games got canceled due to snow and/or cold. Starting in December, Denver came within one day of tying the all-time record for consecutive days of snow on the ground. During the months of January and February, the front range averaged more than 10 degrees below normal. Similarly, the spring soccer season was also hit very hard by cold weather. The first three weeks of April averaged 10-15 degrees below normal and most of our practices and games were in bitter cold and snow.

I'm baffled by why anyone in Colorado would be concerned about warming, or why they would want to prevent it.

PT Barnum must have reincarnated as a GW supporter, probably selling illusory carbon footprint forgiveness as well.
Not surprising that some cities fall prey to the new cult.
Nice job providing some balance by the way.
Of course that means certain individuals will be adding your names to the ranks of heretics.

I'm a DENIER, join the club, it's free and no meetings. You just have to accept that science only works when critical challenges to theories are embraced and not shut down.
Otherwise you get puffed up foolishness, gee just like GW.

I'm baffled by why anyone in Colorado would be concerned about warming, or why they would want to prevent it.

REPLY: Because, Patrick, they have to keep up appearances! They have to prove to the world that they are not of the evil denier/skeptic ilk! Yeah, that's it. Colorado is cold. Let's make it colder because the earth as a whole (the common good) has a fever! In short, it's pure liberal guilt and stupidity.

DENY DENY DENY THE GLOBAL WARMING LIE!!!!!

LOL..that other guy is Joe Bastardi and yes he does have an opinion. I love those two..
I wish we could stop using local conditions as proof one way or the other. Being 10 degrees above or below normal at any point on the globe doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. Local observations are nice..but they do not make a point for or against global warming during one season...or even two for that matter.

"All politics is local"
Tip O'Neill

Too bad Barbara Boxer isn't in Greenland this week making a press release about the "devastation of Global Warming." Her mouth would probably freeze shut in the -38F weather.

In some respect I believe Patrick is correct.

For many people so far so good when it comes to Global Warming.

While the temps may be a few degrees warmer, such differences are lost in the weather of the day. If you have AC for the home and car and do not live in flood prone areas then everything seems fine as nobody but skiers complain about winters being too warm.

However, right now scientists know that there is a lot of momentum in the climate and that even if greenhouse gas emissions were stabilized we are looking at another 20 or so years of changes. Also, there does not appear to be much likelihood of emissions being stabilized anyways, so the Globe is heading full steam ahead into a new era. While models are good there is always a degree of uncertainty of what is going to really happen.

Anyhow, while melting ice in polar regions and sea levels rising an eighth of an inch per year are unlikely to cause any immediate problems, what happens if the great beach weather turns into lousy farming?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9939d268-51b8-11dc-8779-0000779fd2ac.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9939d268-51b8-11dc-8779-0000779fd2ac.html

Andrew,

Please explain a few things for me.

1. How does melting sea ice raise sea level?

2. How does continental ice melt when the temperature is below freezing the entire year? You quoted someone the other day saying that 44% of Greenland sees at least one day a year where it gets above freezing. That means that 56% of Greenland never gets above freezing.

The implication is that at an absolute minimum, 56% of Greenland is net accumulating ice. Radar maps show the actual figure is closer to 70-80%. It is -38F this week, during the warm months of summer. In Antarctica the numbers are similar.

Thx,
Patrick

Andrew:
""Anyhow, while melting ice in polar regions and sea levels rising an eighth of an inch per year""

I believe you meant -sea levels rising 10 to 11 inches per year--
That is consistant with James Hansen's last prediction. And he is after all the worlds leading expert on the topic.

Just trying to help....

Patrick,

1. Melting sea ice does not directly lead to higher sea levels. However, as water warms it expands and thermal expansion leads to rising levels along with melt off from land based ice.

2. As some people realize, coastal areas of Greenland are typically above freezing during the summer and have reached highs of over 60F. See the following for all the reporting stations in Greenland. By the way, the sun is getting lower and it is starting to get cool up there, but it was warmer earlier in the summer.

http://www.wunderground.com/global/GL.html

Central Greenland including the summit is very cold for 2 reasons. First, it is high elevation and second it is surrounded by hundreds of miles of ice.

However, as the coastal areas slowly melt back the interior will no longer be surrounded by as much ice and it will warm over time. Also, if for example, all the lower elevations melted completely, then what would be left to support the higher elevations?

What would happen is that the higher elevations will eventually slide down, no longer be at 10000 feet or so and start melting. Of course this will take hundreds of years and Greenhouse gas concentrations could change by then. Antartica is an order of magnitude larger and colder and the central portions may be stable even with expected warming.

Also, keep in mind that snow does not fall uniformly on Greenland or Antartica. So simply looking at the fraction of the surface that melts sometime during the year does not answer the question of whether or not they are losing or gaining ice. Detailed gravity measurements are needed to measure that.

The following is a nicely written report about such research going on in Greenland. Their conclusion is that there is net melting, but it has taken years to reach that conclusion.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Greenland/

I suspect that as the measurement technique is refined, that there may be trending of the extent of Greenland melting similar to what we see for sea ice extent.

Gary,

I have only read an article or 2 by Hansen. Believe he is over stating things. Suspect that that we will never see anything over 3 eights per year on our lifetimes, but could see more next century.

Lets see, if I live to be 120 then..

I do believe that global warming is a present phenomena. Just because 56% of Greenland never sees the freezing point each year and was -38 F doesn't mean much if you consider that these conditions are actually normal for Greenland interior, even in July! Similar conditions exist across Antarctica during the summer months there.Please consider that Greenland is only about 1 percent of the surface area of the planet, and we need to look at what happens at the other 99 percent of the planet's surface.
I trust most of the scientific research information that relates to global warming because it seems to mirror what is anecdotally shown in the news and in everyday life. There is a pattern; many places in the world including where I've lived have witnessed in the past couple decades a shift from nearly balanced warm years and seasons alternating with cold years and seasons to a pattern where the warm seasons and years are longer or more frequent than the cold seasons and years.Also,many places in the world lately are experiencing their hottest days, months or years and it is happening more frequently than ever before, despite many heat records having been made the past couple of decades .Droughts and hurricanes are worse and the severe ones are becoming more common than when I was a kid.

Patrick,
Greenland is such a massive Island you better say exactly where you want Barbara Boxer to stand. Perhaps if you direct her to the highest mount at 4am on the islands most northerly point in a gale.
Seas will rise from ice melt. Land based glaciers slip into the sea as the sea ice melts and breaks up in expanding warming seas which will rise through expansion and the melt water flowing from the island carrying ice that calves from shoreline glaciers.
Gary,
If we had listened to sceptics the global warming events that have already occured would have come as a complete surprise.

oh andy, there you go again with the doom and gloom hysteria...crying wolf and quoting chicken little doesnt hold water when you continue to post comments that defy the laws of physics like the ocean's rising when sea ice melts...i must say its getting old hearing you regurgitate the latest scare tactic headline invented by the could be, might happen, i heard it from my sister's nephew's cousin, some scientists say, scam crowd...may i suggest you chill alittle although i must admit is probably hard to do when you spend most of the day looking into a crystal ball and posting how it might, could, maybe, be warmer tomorrow...try and have a nice sunny warm day, AGW is lie invented to make money...

Another AGW model myth bites the dust

Contrary to expectations, there has been no increase in precipitation over Antarctica in the past half-century...."There were no statistically significant trends in snowfall accumulation over the past five decades, including recent years for which global mean temperatures have been warmest," Monaghan said.....The study also suggest thickening of Antarctica's massive ice sheets...
http://www.livescience.com/environment/060810_antarctic_precip.html

Temperatures in Vostok, Antarctica are forecast to drop below the freezing point of CO2 (-109F) this weekend. It is currently only one degree above that. Imagine it snowing dry ice! Frostbite within 0.5 seconds of exposure. On Monday temperatures are expected to get close to the coldest temperature ever recorded on this planet.
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=-78.44999695,106.87000275

Meanwhile, the hottest temperature record (136F) - set in 1922 - seems quite safe. North America'a hottest temperature (134F) was set in 1913. Europe's hottest temperature (122F) was set in 1881.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001375.html

Apparently the AGW police haven't yet figured out a way to manipulate the max/min temperature records, as they do with the USHCN and GHCN data.

Forgot to mention - the highest temperature in Europe this summer was 109F. Thirteen degrees cooler than the 1881 record.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/YSAR-75FRL8?OpenDocument

London never got over 82F this summer and highs have averaged 69F. Before summer ends, that number will likely drop.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/EGLL/2007/6/21/CustomHistory.html?dayend=1&monthend=9&yearend=2007&req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA

Climate modelers should take a few years off, quit making press releases, and try to figure out why their models don't work.
Sunday April 8, 2007 Britain set to enjoy another sizzling summer after new evidence from the Met Office suggested above average temperatures for the season.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2052500,00.html

Simon;
Not sure what your mean. I was just pointing out an obvious discrepancy. Hanson now predicts a 25 meter sea level rise by the end of the century. Since he is the accepted authority, who are we to question any of his proclamations. 25 meters is now the official standard. I believe him implicitly. Don�t you?

Simon, Andrew,

I suggest checking out the Greenland summit webcam, to get a better understanding of Greenland geography. It is not a mountain peak, but rather a gigantic, nearly-flat plain which goes for hundreds of miles in every direction - sloping very gently towards the ocean.
http://www.summitcamp.org/transport/weatherstation/

There are a few mountain peaks in Greenland poking up above the ice, but they are few and far between. The climate and geography of most of Greenland barely varies from the Summit camp. From a climate perspective, the anomalous locations are the small inhabited areas along the southern coasts which get above freezing for two or three months in the summer. The summit camp is much more typical of Greenland's climate as a whole.

Scenarios where a large percentage of the ice are lost from Greenland before the fossil fuel supply of the earth runs out, just aren't realistic. Even the most provocative pro-AGW measurements barely show any net loss of ice summed over the whole island. I don't think anyone who has researched it doubts that the vast interior is gaining ice depth.

Archaeological studies show that it was warmer in Greenland during the MWB, and that the entire population of the island disappeared during the LIA. 400,000 years ago there were boreal forests along the coast of Greenland (indicative of much warmer weather), but the central mass of ice remained intact.

Paul,

Just found another piece of amazing information. I was looking at Antarctica on Google Earth, with "Geographic Features" turned on. Turns out the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctic ice sheet are part of the same volcanic ring of fire which runs down the spine of the Andes. There are many known active volcanoes in both of those regions. As we have read, there were observations of active volcanism along the Antarctic Peninsula recently, right where the collapsed ice sheet occurred. Amazing that studies of ice loss in West Antarctica have not discussed this as an important influence. 1400F lava can melt a lot of ice really quickly.

Also, this from NASA-
SATELLITES SHOW OVERALL INCREASES IN ANTARCTIC SEA ICE COVER ... satellite records of sea ice around Antarctica reveal an overall increase in the southern hemisphere ice
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020820southseaice.html

Could we please stop using the IPCC as gospel also? And if we insist on doing that can we at least examine its claims point by point? I don't feel comfortable using the IPCC as the be all, end all, until they clear up some questions. First off how did the hockey stick graph stick so long in a peer reviewed atmosphere? How can an error in temperature record go undetected in an advanced science based society like the USA ( no matter how trivial) when BILLIONS of dollars and societal issues wait in the wings? Is it too much to ask for political smoke screens to be removed before the people of the world decide what action to take? Those basic questions are not even the proverbial tip of the iceberg..but before I turn my car keys over to the nearest government official..I would like some questions answered without me being automatically referred to a worldwide governmental agency that is above questioning

4 weeks in a row of new historic sea ice minimums!

The old record was 4.01, last update is 2.99.
In other words, last measure is 75% of previous record.
At this rate, an ice free summer arctic ocean could come within the next decade.

Are we witnessing a climate tipping point?

How will this impact the weather?

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

Thursday, August 9, 2007 - New historic sea ice minimum
The Northern Hemisphere sea ice area broke the record for the lowest ice area in observed history. The new record (3.98 million sq. km) came a full month before the historic summer minimum typically occurs. There is still a month or more of melt likely this year. It is therefore almost certain that the previous 2005 record (4.01 million sq. km) will not just be broken, but annihilated by the final 2007 annual minima closer to the end of this summer.

In previous record sea ice minima years, ice area anomalies were confined to certain sectors (N. Atlantic, Beaufort/Bering Sea, etc.). The character of 2007's sea ice melt is unique in that it is dramatic and covers the entire Arctic sector. Atlantic, Pacific and even

UPDATE: Thursday, August 16, 2007 - New historic sea ice minimum
One week after dipping below 4 million square kilometers Northern Hemisphere sea ice area and setting the new historic record NH sea ice minimum, there is currently 3.58 million sq. kilometers sea ice area. This new minimum is almost 11% lower than the previous historic minimum.

UPDATE: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 New historic sea ice minimum
There is currently 3.22 million sq. kilometers sea ice area in the Northern Hemisphere.

UPDATE: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 New historic sea ice minimum
There is currently 2.99 million sq. kilometers sea ice area in the Northern Hemisphere.

Snowmachine:
Couldn�t agree more. The IPCC is the modern day equivalent of the middle ages Vatican.
We don�t need to go down that road again. The UN is a political body with agendas to be serviced. The IPCC is the best tool they have ever had to move them closer to the goal of a new socialist world governance. With all the poorer members now clamoring for their share of the guilt tax (Kyoto carbon transfers) it is hard to believe there would be no pressure on the IPCC to validate the AGW theory at all costs. There is so much to be gained by the UN and its members, it would be silly to think the IPCC are impartial arbiters of science.
Remember Oil for Food? Now we have Carbon for food.
How convenient it is that CO2 is selected out of all the candidate causes of GW. Only CO2 can be use as a guilt trip to attack industrialized societies.
With that situation, it is unlikely they will ever clearly answer any of the obvious questions.
Questions that range from scientific to ideological to practical. For example, if we make the great leap and accept that Hansen has it exactly right and the world is doomed if we don�t cut CO2 emissions by 80% right now.
Why would we demand that the G8 make the cuts and leave India and China to do as they please? The end result is still disaster. Or is it?
Why are we told to buy curly light bulbs and not shut down all coal fired power plants. Light bulbs will not make any difference at all. Or are our attitudes just being conditioned to accept guilt taxes?
Nuclear power will allow our lifestyle to continue with no CO2 emissions. This solution is universally hated by greenies. Is that because it does not satisfy the real agenda?
The IPCC has attempted to rewrite history. The MWP and LIA were just figments of our imagination. CO2 levels in previous ages were really not many times higher than now (as the geologic record shows). Why would they need to push such deceptions if the supporting science for AGW was solid.
Maurice Strong�s famous statement before instigating Kyoto just keeps echoing in my head. "Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?"
I just fundamentally don�t trust the IPCC.
Prove your theories and then lets talk.

Some interesting new NASA sponsored satellite data-

The warming trend of the past decade may be related to increasing amounts of downward solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface
http://www.gewex.org/

According to their observations, the optical thickness of the atmosphere has decreased by about 30% since 1991, allowing for more solar radiation to reach the surface.
http://www.gewex.org/may2007.pdf

Andrew,

Are we witnessing a climate tipping point?

Perhaps we are at a climate tipping point - towards another ice age. ;^) Southern hemisphere ice is rapidly approaching an all time record high. With the cold SST's and exceptionally cold Antarctic weather right now (-112F) , sea ice extent in the world's largest repository of ice may well break the all time record in the next two weeks.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.south.jpg

Your quotes from the UUIC showed pretty clearly how some AGW folks might be having difficulty with objectivity. If you look at their animation it is pretty obvious that arctic sea ice loss is not symmetrical. There is essentially no melting going on around Greenland or north of the Canadian Archipelago. All of the ice loss radiates out from Siberia.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/sea.ice.movie.2007.mov
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.5.html

I did some more research into soot. Turns out that besides the gas flaring, there is a huge problem in Siberia with lumber interests intentionally burning forests.

Fires in the Siberian forests - the largest in the world and vital to the planet's health - have increased tenfold in the last 20 years...They say they have neither the money nor the equipment to control or extinguish the huge forests fires often started illegally and deliberately in the Russian far east by rogue timber firms who plan to sell cheap lumber to China.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1495903,00.html

I'm making a movie which overlays a satellite fire animation with an SST anomaly animation. From this you can see a pretty close geographical correlation between fires and arctic melt. I'll put that out on my blog later.