Rumour has it that there is now good cause to believe that ice melt and warming in the Arctic prompts a rapid sink of cooler waters feeding the Atlantic conveyer which ends up dumping a drop in temperature at its southern most point cooling Antarctica by just a few degrees.

It will be just a temporary stage, as we warm up to the coming ice age.

Your summers will be swift and hot but the winters in the northern hemisphere will get wetter colder and more severe. Down here we will get the opposite for a few years and perhaps even over the next few decades.

Global cooling is the next phase of this accelerated global climate failure which will become the next ice age.

I was never happy with the term climate change or its predecessor Global Warming. Global cooling has not really begun yet, other than to mask some of the warming while industry keeps its wheels turning. However Climate Failure seems to have genuine ring about it and maintains its meaning even if the odd season proves to be normal in the near future.

CF should be the chosen term used to describe AGW now that out of the ordinary has become predictable if not commonplace.

In this phase of CF, the NAC or gulf stream stalls which fails to take warm waters north, which inturn leads to cooler wetter NH summers which will precede longer colder NH winters and instead of talking about global warming you NHers will go back to the 1970�s alarmist cries of Ice Age.

I just know you guys are not going to swallow it, but a global warming period is quickly followed by a global plunge in temperatures.

Some people are taking it seriously

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/05/2052408.htm

With global warming in full force.. we should expect the minimum sea ice we had in the arctic. This maximum record in the antarctic shouldn't even be possible any more.

It is difficult to get overly excited by a change of less than 1%. Not only does it fail to meet any type of statistical significance, but it is likely within the uncertainity of measurement.

Consider the following link from the site, where the anomolies are shown.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg

The current record is not even the greatest positive anomoly!

It should also be pointed out that despite the lack of a trend in the SH sea ice, the Antarctic ice sheet is melting.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/02/AR2006030201712.html

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1583134.htm

Obviously, it seems like a contradiction for the SH sea ice to be essentially stable while the ice sheet is in retreat. I believe the reason we are faced with this apparent contradiction is that the Antarctic sea ice is highly seasonal. That is it melts back to a very small area evry summer and it is the summer warmth that decides how much the ice sheet melts or breaks up.

People have also noticed that the seasonality of the NH sea ice has also shifted. That is while the summer minimum has smashed previous records, the winter maximum has been much slower to respond. Yes, winter max in the NH has declinec, but not to the same extent.

Finally, it has been observed that historically, both polar ice caps do not behave in sync with each other due to differing interactions with ocean currents. Not surprisingly, future climate projections consistently show the NH warming first.

Bottom line, SH is much more stable than the NH.

Seems to be som concensus on SH cooling but ever declining concensus on General GHG warming.
See this article:
'Scientific consensus' not represented in the IPCC documents: scientist'

http://www.thehilltimes.ca/html/cover_index.php?display=story&full_path=/2007/august/13/letter4/&c=1

Bret
The southern sea ice record is significant in that it is not getting smaller at a time of 'massive human global warming'. Reply: I said it was "not nearly" as significant. There is some significance to it, just not as much as the northern hemisphere.
The sea ice in the north cannot be easily measured by satelite, I think, but neither case can be deemed really significant over such a short period of observation. It is also worth noting that there are a number of papers/article available which indicate that the Artic ice may vary significantly over very short periods relative to Antartica.(amplication effect in Artic ice cover)

Interesting! In the book "1421 The Year China Discovered America," the author infers that when the Chinese treasure fleets were mapping Australia and New Zealand, the Antartic ice mass extended to the Southern Island of New Zealand. In the northern hemisphere, after mapping the Eastern Seaaboard of America, the Chinese established a smelting colony on Ellesmere Island north of Baffin Island and West of northern Greenland complete with permanent Chinese housing structures which are still present today. The colony eventually left and sailed back to China by going north of Greenland north of Scotland and north of Russia to Kamchatka and then to China arriving in 1423 or so. This is very similar to the situation we have today, where it is warm in the Arctic but quite cold in the Antarctic. So nothing new under the sun, so to speak. The Chinese junks were wind and current powered, rather "green" so to speak, so they probably were not contributing to the warming trend seen in the late middle ages, which finally ended with a mini-ice age and forced the Viking farming communities on Greenland to retreat back to iceland.

I would say this is due to the fact that there is way less land mass in the Southern hemisphere.
There is less land to capture the heat of the sun thus warming the air in that region.

Some interesting Lower troposphere
http://climate.uah.edu/
and surface sea temp data
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.10.4.2007.gif
No comments

"One thing I will say, the maximum sea ice area has ended up higher each year for the past 5 years." This seems fairly "significant" to me. Of course it doesn't fit into Global Warming so it will be down played. The fact is much of Antarctica has been cooling over the past 20 years, not warming. This information is readily available to anyone who does minimal research. Unfortunately, most global warming fanatics don't do any research.

And what are the effects?

GASP GASP GASP GASP!!!! Sea Ice??? Record proportions??? NO! Really??? Bu-bu-but Brett, I thought the planet was on fire??? I thought that it was the fault of the tobacco industry, and republicans, and SUVs??? I thought everything was melting into a catastrophic oblivion??? Record ice??? Preposterous! Better check on those radical religious right wing saboteurs and see what they are up to......;-DDDDDDDD!!!!!

Love and kisses,

The radical AMERICAN

Climate Failure? Really? The Atlantic Hurricane Season of 2006 AND NOW 2007 are washouts for the Hurricane Prediction folks. Gee, why is that? Last year it was a surprize El Nino and this year an unexpected La Nina event in the pacific ocean. So I am to believe that Pacific Warming trends and Cooling trends are both surpressing Atlantic Hurricanes? Hmmm, sounds like we are all being snookered. The drought in the Tennessee Valley and surrounds is worthy of note as for some reason, natural, man made or man engineered also has paralells in the past. The natives of these regions during the period when Jamestown was founded had endured a period they called the great thirst...a very severe drought lasting years apparently. This will have been in the 1520's. Sea Ice oscilations happen. Sun radiant oscilations also happen. And, weather modification is a fact. I can see cirrus clouds routinely chemtrailed here in the greater NYC area. I say there is nothing wrong with the climate, Climate Failure would indicate a planetary failure and that is not the case we are here to argue the point!

I would be interested in seeing Antarctic sea ice chemical composition data (if existent). It is entirely possible that the sea ice we're seeing is composed of a mix of refrozen fresh water (from melting Antarctic glaciers) and ocean water. If indeed there is a significant fresh water component, then one would expect to see larger ice fields relative to the ice fields one would expect from "pure" frozen ocean water. This model assumes that there is little mixing of the lighter fresher glacial melt with the denser, saltier sea water...

As I remember, ocean water freezes at 28.4 degrees Fahrenheit as opposed to 32 degrees F for fresh water. Not saying this is a definitive explanation, but in light of the extensive melting occurring on Antarctica itself, it is a possibility that needs some investigating...

Anyone care to punch a few holes in the theory?

If the AGW models were correct, we would see warming at both poles. Increasing sea ice is a sure sign of a longer, colder winter and contradicts the models.

The arguments from AGW advocates to ignore the world's largest repository of sea ice, is indicative of an inadequate scientific process - based on emotion and politics rather than reason.

Even though skeptic and AGW's push their respective agenda's line etc, the fact is, there is no significant change anywhere even the artic min or the antarctic max or world temp in the context of time. We can now see and feel changes due to IT etcHowever if some of us were to be able to live for 200+ years or more we might see some changes....La Nina has arrived and at this moment were are experiencing massive storms in Queensland, Australia, after all the years of El Nino. So what's new. Predict way over "average rainfall" for this summer here anyway. Meteorology = Science, Climate Science=Gold Lotto. Well see...

Andrew, bottom line is growing ice pack in SH proves AGW is a myth.

It is entirely possible that the sea ice we're seeing is composed of a mix of refrozen fresh water (from melting Antarctic glaciers) and ocean water.

Anyone care to punch a few holes in the theory?

Sure, first, you falsely assume that Antarctica's glaciers are melting. What I'd like to know is how the glaciers are supposed to melt when temps in Antarctica never get above freezing (except for that small area of the Antarctic Peninsula)?

Answer that question and we'll continue from there.

Bob

Just because the ice pack is growing in the SH does not mean that AGW is a myth. There could be many plausible explanation for this discrepancy in prediction and observation. We could hypohesize that AGW may temporarily cause minor, short-term cooling around the Antarctic, via some method we haven't thought of previously. Or perhaps the antarctic ice sheet is in the midst of a natural cycle of increase that, as of right now, overwhelms the effect of AGW.

Of course, I just pulled those possible explanations out of thin air. AGW theory is based on a fairly large body of observational data; namely that the earth, on average, haas been getting warmer.

AGW theory is also partly based on computer modeling of effects from increased greenhouse gases. It is true, of course, that if AGW is to continue to be accepted, it MUSt explain the observed lack of warmign around antarctica, because a well-known prediction of AGW theory is that warming should be worst around the poles. The antartcic icepack growth is a major discrepancy between AGW prediction, and actual observation. However, that does not mean you just discard the theory automatically. What you do is to make a hypothesis as tyo why this discrepancy exists, and then test the hypothesis. If, that hypothesis proves incorrect, then you try another hypothesis, and then another, and another. If, after extensive testing, you cannot find a reasonable explanation as to why the observation differs fromthe predictio, then you can safely say that AGW theory is seriously flawed, and maybe even needs to be discarded.

Jim,

Sea ice forms at sea level when the ocean freezes. Additionally, any snow that falls on top becomes part of the mass. It has nothing to do with glaciers.

Sea ice forms at the lowest and warmest elevations of Antarctica. Sea ice also freezes at a lower temperature (26F) than snow (32F.) It is therefor nonsensical to understand that sea ice extent is steadily increasing, yet suggest that glaciers (which exist at higher, colder elevations) could be melting.

cbmclean, your last paragraph is spot on. I can only hope that the science will be done instead of disregarding the phenomenon as an "outlier".
Thanks for the does of scientific common sense (which when it comes to AGW discussions, is not too common at all)

Patrick Henry,

Sea ice forms at the lowest and warmest elevations of Antarctica. Sea ice also freezes at a lower temperature (26F) than snow (32F.) It is therefor nonsensical to understand that sea ice extent is steadily increasing, yet suggest that glaciers (which exist at higher, colder elevations) could be melting.

This is only nonsensical if you assume the melting and freezing are occurring simultaniously (which is obviously your assumption). Naturally all of the glacial melting in Antarctica occurrs in the Antarctic summer when most of the sea ice has melted away and temeratures on the outer rim of the continent are above freezing.

I believe what Jim is saying is that the resultant glacial melt is decreasing the salinity of ocean water around Antarctica, therefore raising the freezing temperature of the ocean. Thus when Antarcitic winter comes around again, temperatures don't need to be as low in order for sea ice to form.

I don't buy compeletely into this theory since I'm not sure that enough continental ice is melting to significantly alter the salinity of the surrounding ocean. But considering his argument that fresh melt water wouldn't necessarily mix with the denser salt water, it is a plausible hypothesis as such.

Sea ice forms at sea level when the ocean freezes. Additionally, any snow that falls on top becomes part of the mass. It has nothing to do with glaciers.

Warming temperatures in polar regions cause an increase in snowfall, because the warmer air is able to hold more water. That increased snowfall could, in turn, fall on the sea ice and increase its volume.

As cbmclean has observed, increased SH ice area is at variance with some aspects of AGW theory. I therefore expect the scientific community adjust those aspects to accommodate the new data. We didn't discard Newtonian physics because its predictions conflicted with aspects of the observed behavior of light. We also didn't discard the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Einstein's great opus was the result.

I'm eager to see what emerges as we incorporate these results into existing climate theory and models.

bt,

Warming temperatures in polar regions cause an increase in snowfall, because the warmer air is able to hold more water.

Warming temperatures in the Antarctic? I don't think so. The trend from -70S to -60S over the last 28 years is negative, my dear bt. That means, cooling along the Antarctic coast; which is the opposite of warming.

That increased snowfall could, in turn, fall on the sea ice and increase its volume.

Since it is not warming, that would mean less snowfall on the sea ice meaning less increase in volume, at least due to snowfall. Therefore, the increase must be due to freezing sea water.

I therefore expect the scientific community adjust those aspects to accommodate the new data.

I'm afraid that in the AGW community, many (ie, Dr. Hansen, Dr. Gore, our new Nobel Peace Prize recipient), adjust the data to fit the hypothesis.

There could be many plausible explanation for this discrepancy in prediction and observation. We could hypohesize that AGW may temporarily cause minor, short-term cooling around the Antarctic, via some method we haven't thought of previously. Or perhaps the antarctic ice sheet is in the midst of a natural cycle of increase that, as of right now, overwhelms the effect of AGW.

"Settled" science?

...It is true, of course, that if AGW is to continue to be accepted, it MUSt explain the observed lack of warmign around antarctica, because a well-known prediction of AGW theory is that warming should be worst around the poles. The antartcic icepack growth is a major discrepancy between AGW prediction, and actual observation. However, that does not mean you just discard the theory automatically. What you do is to make a hypothesis as tyo why this discrepancy exists, and then test the hypothesis. If, that hypothesis proves incorrect, then you try another hypothesis, and then another, and another. If, after extensive testing, you cannot find a reasonable explanation as to why the observation differs fromthe predictio, then you can safely say that AGW theory is seriously flawed, and maybe even needs to be discarded.

"Settled" science?

...increased SH ice area is at variance with some aspects of AGW theory. I therefore expect the scientific community adjust those aspects to accommodate the new data.

"Settled" science?

I'm eager to see what emerges as we incorporate these results into existing climate theory and models.

I'll be too, but given the penchant for adjusting data to support an AGW model, I won't hold my breath waiting for anything serious.

Hi, New to the discussion...

If AGW is based on computer models....then garbage in....garbage out.

Regardless of the so-called data....if your theory of the end of the earth is based on a model...t