Can someone tell me the point of taking pictures of how a process is "supposed" to work? I say "supposed" because the scientists really don't know what is truly typical since the satellite historical record of pictures like this cannot be more than about 30 years and high res pics are likely less than 10 years in the past. Therefore, given that this ice has been doing it's "thing" for a gajillion years, our interpretation is left for our imagination.

What I sense out of the pictures though is that the apparent melt of the white surface, and the poking up of rocky outcrops below, give a sense of impending doom. It is as though a picture of a major change in appearance (though deemed normal and typical as described in the article) drives home the point to the public that the earth is melting.

Makes me think of the great pics of glaciers calving at the coast and that being linked to the meltdown. Impressionable, uninformed minds take that image and create grand schemes of mankind destroying itself. Doesn't really matter that the calving process has occurred for as long as man has existed. The fact they see a pic and a what if statement allows them to decide that this is a new phenomenon. Makes me think of a certain shockumentary with a staid former high ranking US politician.

If reporting at NASA was symmetrical, this article would have been titled "Antarctic breakup six weeks late due to global cooling."

I expect that southern sea ice (which is currently 15% above normal) will remain above normal through the season. Temperatures in Antarctica have been running far below normal through the summer.

Posting this article under global warming is misleading.....just like everything else about global warming.....misleading...maybe you should seek another profession!

Reply: The global Warming part of the title under the blog section of the headlines is always there. I cannot take it out, it is just the header: This is so people will know what blog they are linking to. Nothing more than that. I would also say that your commenter name is a bit misleading. At least I would hope. If you are confused, just click on the link and you will see the title without the header. Read the post and you will see that it says that this melting is NOT due to global warming.

BT,

From the Sea Level Rise thread.

One more time, with feeling. First, the C02 doesn't heat the N2 and O2 (at least through radiation). It heats itself, and radiates IR towards the surface of the earth. This mechanism is different from convection and conduction.

If CO2 does not heat the N2 and O2 via radiation, then it must be conduction, correct? Otherwise how does N2 and O2 get heated to the same temp as CO2? You cannot mean that it heats itself.

The gases absorb a portion of incoming energy, based on its spectrum and the composition of each gas -- they do so by absorbing photons and changing the energy level of the molecule that absorbed the photon. Then, later, that molecule reverts to a less-energetic state and releases the energy in a new photon with a different (lower) energy level. The new photon is emitted in the IR (Infrared) band -- HEAT.

Why so vauge, settled science is not vague? Our atmosphere is quite transparent, and with the concentrations of N2 and 02 as they are now, they are 2,600 times more likely to get struck with radiation as is CO2, no matter the wavelength. This raises the kinetic energy of the gases, which in turn raises the temp.

So the first step in the process is that a portion of the incoming broad-spectrum solar energy (a stream of photons of various energy, and therefore frequency, levels) is absorbed and re-radiated as IR by atmospheric gases, including CO2.

I agree.

Some of that re-radiated IR is directed outwards, where it radiates away and adds to the energy reflected through albedo.

How much energy is reflected via albedo? I'm curious because it seems albedo reflects large quantities of energy that has slipped through all the N2, O2, and CO2, where it was 2,600 times more likely to strike than CO2. This is not a trivial question, if so much energy is reflected by ice, that means it was barely affected by the atmosphere. How can albedo from ice be so strong when there is so much CO2 radiating IR back towards it?

The second step in the process is that atmospheric CO2 has an absorption band in the IR region. This is where atmospheric CO2 differs from N2 and O2. The atmospheric CO2 absorbs incoming IR, including the re-radiated IR that was directed towards the surface in the first step.

What happens to the IR in that same band that strikes N2 and O2? Does it raise the kinetic energy? That same IR photon is 2,600 times more likely to strike N2 and O2 than CO2.

That absorbed IR photon again raises the energy level of whatever CO2 molecule ate it, and therefore warms the gas. Eventually that molecule will again revert to a lower-energy state and re-radiate another IR photon. As in step one, some will go away from the surface and some will go towards the surface.

Are there other ways for CO2 and all other gases to gain temp other than Eating photons? When CO2 re-radiates an IR photon, how many more times likely will it strike N2 or O2 than another CO2 molecule?

In the same way that a tiny amount of base current can cause a large change in collector current -- resulting in the power gain of a transistor -- so also a tiny amount of CO2 can cause a large change in the amount of heat retained in the atmosphere.

What? I'd love to hear more detail on this analogy. Is CO2 retaining all this energy thus raising the temp of the atmosphere?

I asked;
If you used a heat lamp that emitted the two bands of radiation that CO2 absorbs to heat a volume of N2 and O2, would the temp stay the same or would the radiation striking the N2 and O2 raise the kinetic energy of the volume?

You replied;
The temp of the volume would stay the same, ignoring boundary effects from the walls. If the volume were in space and bounded by a vacuum (as the earth is), the temperature of the N2 and O2 would stay the same.

Not true. You say it is relatively transparent, however that IR will strike N2 and O2 molecules. While they will not completely absorb the energy, their kinetic energy rises therefore reducing the energy of the photon (second law of conservation of energy) and the temp rises.

If you used the same source of energy to heat an equal volume and density of dry air and a mixture of just 80% N2 and 20% O2, you will see no difference in temp between the two systems. 380 ppm CO2 is far too little to have any measurable effect.

If you disagree, please don't say the science is settled. To be convincing, give me a volume and density, a precise amount of energy over a period of time, and show that N2 and O2 will not gain energy from an IR source. Leave convection and conduction out.

Regards,

Steve

Cool pics. Aren't related to any GW, just a natural process. Something neat to look at. Reply: That's right.

Take a break from GW for a moment and just admire them.

These photos are of the area that was once occupied by the Larsen B Ice Shelf.

The Larsen B Ice Shelf broke up a few years ago and is long gone; a victim of global warming.

So, for anybody to suggest that the fast ice in this area of antartica "usually breaks up every year" at a particular time is ignoring 12,000 years of history.

For all the skeptics: What this means is that for 12,000 years, ice in this area did not break up at all. The fact that it is breaking up every year is a consequence of the recent global warming.

Just because satellites didn't exist 12,000 years ago, does not mean ice shelves can not be dated.

Brett - I second the cool pics / thanks for the info comment by Brian & just wanted to add that you should ignore the satan's of the world ( and a lot of other folk ).
Keep up the good work, although I count myself in with the skeptics I enjoy your site & will continue to read, learn & think about your posts.

Be good,
Rick.

Hi Andrew,

I hate to rain on your doom and gloom parade, but Antarctica has been cooling over the last 30 years. Look at the trend at the bottom of the UAH table.

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
SoPol Land Ocean
-0.07 -0.08 -0.06

The Larsen Ice shelf was sitting on top of an active geothermal and volcanic region. Warm water tends to melt ice. How does that correlate with "global" warming?

Hi Guys,

Andrew you are the one ignoring 12000 years of history. Temperatures are cooler now than in the Holocene Maximum. With the PDO shifting to the negative (BTW PDO number for this month is -1.56) and the sun being at a low TSI the temperatures are going to follow. This has nothing to do with CO2. CO2 has a very small effect on total climate maybe as much as 10% of the warming and I am being generous.

Does it make any sense at all that an ice shelf that has existed since the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago might one day disappear since the Ice Age is no longer in effect? Does inter-glacial mean anything to AGW advocates?

How about the fact that we are in the warmest period of a cycle that occurs regularly over the last couple million years and that sea levels were higher 125,000 years ago during the last major inter-glacial period without anthropogenic sources of CO2.

Why aren't there ice sheets covering North America today, there were 12,000 years ago? It still amazes me that people who have access to education are so freaked out by such non-events.

Recent global warming? The average temp of the planet has gone up around 14 C in the last 12,000 years and has gone up and down about 1 C every 4 to 5 hundred years for at least the last 2,000 years.

How exactly is a 1 C increase in temps after a 13 C increase in temps out of the ordinary?

Just because Ice Shelves existed 12,000 years ago does not mean that they still should today.

Regards,

Steve

If CO2 does not heat the N2 and O2 via radiation, then it must be conduction, correct? Otherwise how does N2 and O2 get heated to the same temp as CO2? You cannot mean that it heats itself.

Actually, I do mean that (excluding convection and conduction) the C02 molecules heat themselves.

How much energy is reflected via albedo? I'm curious because it seems albedo reflects large quantities of energy that has slipped through all the N2, O2, and CO2, where it was 2,600 times more likely to strike than CO2. This is not a trivial question, if so much energy is reflected by ice, that means it was barely affected by the atmosphere. How can albedo from ice be so strong when there is so much CO2 radiating IR back towards it?

The albedo is for the earth as a whole. See references like this for more specifics. That reference cites the figure of 0.39 (excluding greenhouse effects).

What happens to the IR in that same band that strikes N2 and O2? Does it raise the kinetic energy? That same IR photon is 2,600 times more likely to strike N2 and O2 than CO2.

N2 and O2 are transparent to IR photons. The IR photons do not raise the kinetic energy and are not absorbed.

Not true. You say it is relatively transparent, however that IR will strike N2 and O2 molecules. While they will not completely absorb the energy, their kinetic energy rises therefore reducing the energy of the photon (second law of conservation of energy) and the temp rises.

Sorry, the IR photons do NOT transfer energy to the N2 or 02 molecules. That's what it means to say "N2 and O2 are transparent to IR".

If you used the same source of energy to heat an equal volume and density of dry air and a mixture of just 80% N2 and 20% O2, you will see no difference in temp between the two systems. 380 ppm CO2 is far too little to have any measurable effect.

Excluding convective and conductive effects, the IR energy not change the temperature of the N2 and O2, regardless of any CO2 concentration.

N2 and O2 are transparent to IR. No radiative IR energy transfer.

If you disagree, please don't say the science is settled. To be convincing, give me a volume and density, a precise amount of energy over a period of time, and show that N2 and O2 will not gain energy from an IR source. Leave convection and conduction out.

Choose any volume and density you like (within reason). Exclude convection and conduction. The N2 and O2 will not change in temperature.

This aspect of the science is most definitely settled.

The quantum nature of this phenomena may perhaps be the stumbling block for Steve. His questions seem to indicate a mental model of collisions between particles -- something like balls on a pool table. A better analogy is, perhaps, flocks of birds flying through each other. Each molecule is a flock, and each photon is another flock.

At IR energy levels, the effective size of a photon is so small that its "flock" passes through the "flock" that is the N2 molecule with essentially no interaction. Imagine a small flock of starlings flying through a larger and more widely spread flock of crows. The two simply fly through each other. No "collision", no energy transfer.

Transparent!

The southern sea ice is currently 15% above normal, PH? I don't think so. This must come as a shock to you.

Brett, even while the southern ice isn't doing anything unusual just now, it turns out the northern ice is. See this page for an animation and an article in which a scientist describes the ice as behaving like "styrofoam in a bathtub" (text pasted below since I can't find the link -- IIRC it's from a newspaper in Manitoba called The Prairie). It should be an interesting summer.

Also, I don't recall that you've blogged on the issue of Tibetan-region glacier melt/water supply loss: "Two billion face water famine as Himalayan glaciers melt"

--------------------

'Giant fractures have been cracking open the ice in the Beaufort Sea in recent weeks creating extraordinary stretches of open water and giving researchers from around the world a first-hand look at the Arctic meltdown. "It's shocking to see," says David Barber, a climate specialist at the University of Manitoba. He is heading an international project, involving more than 200 researchers from 15 countries, on the Amundsen, a Canadian Coast Guard ship over-wintering in the Beaufort. "The fractures are huge," says Barber, who recently returned from the Amundsen and says some cracks are more than 100 kilometres across. "We drove our ship down of one of them and you couldn't see the sides of it." The Canadian Ice Service has posted a satellite image of one "massive fracture" on its website, along with an animation showing huge fissures opening and giant slabs of ice peeling away west and north of Banks Island over the last five weeks. Stretches of open water, known as leads, normally form in the Beaufort in winter as thick, old ice grinds past much thinner first-year ice. Barber says he has never such large fractures and so much open water in December and January. He says the phenomenon is tied to the loss of Arctic ice last summer, that "stunned" scientists as the ice retreated 40 per cent below normal, to the lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1979.

'There is now so little thick, multi-year ice left, that it is being blown around the Beaufort "like Styrofoam in a bathtub," says Barber. As the thick older ice moves it pulls away from the thin new ice creating fractures and large areas of open water. The $40-million research initiative on the Amundsen is part of the International Polar Year. Barber says the researchers could not have picked a more interesting winter to spend in the Beaufort, but says the changes they are documenting are "disturbing." Not only is the ice fracturing, but he says storm tracks are changing as weather systems are drawn in over the open water and fed by heat being released by the seawater. And thick multi-year ice, which the researchers are tracking with beacons, is moving at up to 30 nautical miles a day, much faster than normal. If the trend continues, he and other scientists predict the Arctic could be ice free in the summer months by 2020, plus or minus 10 years. That means Arctic summer ice, which has capped the planet for more than a million years, might be gone by 2010, says Barber.

'The implications extend far beyond the Arctic, and the possibility of shipping routes opening in the North. Weather across the Northern Hemisphere is impacted by what happens in the Arctic and the northern ice plays a critical role in controlling Earth's thermostat. Arctic ice reflects close to the 95 per cent of solar radiation that hits it. Once the ice melts away, seawater absorbs the heat instead, later releasing it back to the atmosphere, a process that will speed global warming. The phenomenon is already at play in the Beaufort. Barber saysthe extra heat absorbed by the sea water last summer delayed the formation of new ice last fall by many weeks. And the heat is still being released as storms churn up open water, creating unusually balmy winter weather, he says, noting the temperatures off Banks Island hit -9 C when he was on the Amundsen in December.'

Bloom,

Very interesting animation!! Looks like some currents, both wind and water are stirring things up a bit up there.

How does this compare to the ice conditions in the same area back in the 20s and 30s?

Patrick Henry;
After reading you blog, the word symmetrical stuck out for me. I looked at the 2 photos again and noticed that they were taken at two different angles. The first seems right over the antarctic and the second is about 15 degrees difference, at a slant. And when you take pictures to avoid noise,this is how you should do it. At a slant the picture will avoid the light scattering from the sun,and reduce the suns ability to reflect back, right into your lens. Another words,you could be right, because these two angles, these two photographs are not accurate comparisons.
Kipp

Today's ice map of the region east of the Antarctic Peninsula (where the photographs were taken) shows no shortage of very dense ice.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/antarctic.jpg

Hi Guy,

UAH is out and the survey says.....Delta T -.588 compared to RSS at -.629 and PDO -1.56.

Thanks for the stories, Steve. And, how does all of this relate to human produced CO2? I say the most pragmatic thing to do, and perhaps the only option is for us to adapt to any of these changes.

BT,

Actually, I do mean that (excluding convection and conduction) the C02 molecules heat themselves.

Wow. That is an incredibe statement, can you elaborate?

Also, can you please explain how N2 and O2 are heated to the same temp as the CO2?

Use any or all of the three methods for transfer of energy.

The albedo is for the earth as a whole. See references like this for more specifics. That reference cites the figure of 0.39 (excluding greenhouse effects).

Thanks for the link. No offense, but you are horrible at answering questions, are avoiding answering, or have no clue that you are not answering the questions posed to you.

How is it that albedo plays such a large role in radiative forcing?

My meaning is, that in order to play such a large role, most of the energy coming through the atmosphere must reach the surface and is then reflected, mostly unimpeded back to space.

This infers that CO2 is doing very little to change albeto, therefor very little "trapping".

N2 and O2 are transparent to IR photons. The IR photons do not raise the kinetic energy and are not absorbed.

BS. Please provide something, heck anything, to show how and or why. Really, a heat lamp that emits IR in the same wavelengths that CO2 absorbs will not raise the kinetic energy of a volume of N2 and O2? Assume a vaccum surrounding the volume if you like.

Sorry, the IR photons do NOT transfer energy to the N2 or 02 molecules. That's what it means to say "N2 and O2 are transparent to IR".

Outrageous :) Would you like to provide me with a link or care to explain yourself? Actually a link on this one would be better, the fact that you reitterated it with such conviction shows that an equally preposterous statement is sure to follow.

N2 and O2 are transparent to IR. No radiative IR energy transfer.

See above :)

The quantum nature of this phenomena may perhaps be the stumbling block for Steve. His questions seem to indicate a mental model of collisions between particles -- something like balls on a pool table. A better analogy is, perhaps, flocks of birds flying through each other. Each molecule is a flock, and each photon is another flock.

What? You have no clue what you mean by that do you? This reminds of your terrible use of Plank's Law :)

Okay, I'll bite, which quantum nature is my stumbling block?

You say that I "seem" to make an analogy and then make a "better analogy" on what you suppose? Your better analogy of the one you dreamt up for me is no better!

How are balls on a pool table any different from a flock of birds?

How are the IR birds hitting hitting the CO2 birds and not the N2 birds? This goes back to the transparency issue above.

At IR energy levels, the effective size of a photon is so small that its "flock" passes through the "flock" that is the N2 molecule with essentially no interaction. Imagine a small flock of starlings flying through a larger and more widely spread flock of crows. The two simply fly through each other. No "collision", no energy transfer.

What do you mean by effective size? Are some photons smaller than others?

How does CO2 fit in your model above?

Transparent!

BS!

Regards,

Steve

Hi Steve Bloom,

The southern sea ice is currently 15% above normal, PH? I don't think so

I'm going to take you through some tricky third grade math here. Please try to follow closely.

From Brett's post-
the current southern hemispheric sea-ice area is at 2.9 million sq/km, which is about 400,000 sq/km greater than the normal level

normal = 2.5 = 2.9 - 0.4
0.4 / 2.5 = 16% (above normal.)

As far as the Arctic goes, sea ice extent is almost exactly normal. (The uiuc graphs are four days behind the maps.) According to UAH and RSS, January was below normal temps in the northern hemisphere. It has been exceptionally cold near the Bering Strait, which means that the ice is getting very thick there. That is the key bottleneck to preventing a repeat of last year.

i.e. you are in for a big disappointment this summer.

i.e. you are in for a big disappointment this summer.

PH, if that turns out to be the case, it also means that the antiAGW theory you put forth is vindicated, because your prediction (that happens to be verifiable in a timely basis and not after the current college students are dead) is correct. So, not only will you be correct, the AGWers will be proved wrong. Of course, they will "adjust" their theory so the facts now fit it.

Amusing how they got on those OT ad hom attacks about how religious beliefs hamper science. Classic accusing the other side of what their side's actions cause.