http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/j/w/6/h/i/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gjuqb9.png/1443399647551.gif


Quote:

It is an extremely warm year for our planet. Last week we learnt from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that the first eight months of 2015 were the hottest such stretch yet recorded for the globe's surface land and oceans, based on temperature records going to 1880. It's just the latest evidence that we are, indeed, on course for a record-breaking warm year in 2015. Land and ocean temperature percentiles from January to August 2015. Yet, if you look closely, there's one part of the planet that is bucking the trend. In the North Atlantic Ocean, south of Greenland and Iceland, the ocean surface has had very cold temperatures for the past eight months. What's up with that? First of all, it's no error. Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring branch at NOAA's National Centres for Environmental Information, confirmed what the map above suggests - some parts of the North Atlantic Ocean had record cold in the past eight months. As Arndt said in an email: "For the grid boxes in darkest blue, they had their coldest Jan-Aug on record, and in order for a grid box to be 'eligible' for that map, it needs at least 80 years of Jan-Aug values on the record." Those grid boxes encompass the region from "20W to 40W and from 55N to 60N", Arndt said. And there's not much reason to doubt the measurements - the region is very well sampled. "It's pretty densely populated by buoys, and at least parts of that region are really active shipping lanes, so there's quite a lot of observations in the area," Dr Arndt said. "So I think it's pretty robust analysis." So, the record seems to be a meaningful one - and there is a much larger surrounding area that, although not absolutely the coldest it has been on record, is also unusually cold. While there may not yet be any scientific consensus on the matter, at least some scientists suspect that the cooling seen in these maps is no fluke but, rather, part of a process that has long been feared by climate researchers - the slowing of Atlantic Ocean circulation. In March, several top climate scientists, including Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Michael Mann of Penn State, published a paper in Nature Climate Change suggesting that the gigantic ocean current known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, is weakening. It is sometimes confused with the "Gulf Stream" but, in fact, that is just a southern branch of it. The current is driven by differences in the temperature and salinity of ocean water. In essence, cold salty water in the North Atlantic sinks because it is denser, and warmer water from further south moves northward to take its place, carrying tremendous heat energy along the way. But a large injection of cold, fresh water can, theoretically, mess it all up - preventing the sinking that would otherwise occur and, thus, weakening the circulation. In the Nature Climate Change paper, the researchers suggested that this source of fresh water is the melting of Greenland, which is now losing more than a hundred billion tonnes of ice each year. "I was formerly somewhat sceptical about the notion that the ocean 'conveyor belt' circulation pattern could weaken abruptly in response to global warming. Yet this now appears to be under way, as we showed in a recent article, and as we now appear to be witnessing before our very eyes in the form of an anomalous blob of cold water in the subpolar North Atlantic," Mann said via email.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/scientists-worried-about-cold-blob-in-north-atlantic-amid-record-hot-spell-20150925-gjuqb9.html


If the Gulf Stream stops even in part a lot of North and West Europe will freeze—it is on same sort of latitude as Anchorage, Alaska.


Quote:

Rahmstorf also commented via email: "The fact that a record-hot planet Earth coincides with a record-cold northern Atlantic is quite stunning. There is strong evidence - not just from our study - that this is a consequence of the long-term decline of the Gulf Stream System, i.e., the Atlantic ocean's overturning circulation AMOC, in response to global warming."

Re the suggestion the sun entering a quiet phase will trigger an ice age, the suns cycle is 11 years, the last low spot of the sun cycle coincided with record high temperatures.

The weather seems fine to me. Quite nice and cooler actually compared to the last ten years.

Since there has been NO global warming for the past 18 years how many degrees hotter was it supposed to be this year ?

Global warming has been happening all along.

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 28^th, 2015 at 11:04pm:

Global warming has been happening all along.

what do you mean by "all along"?

“the pause” never existed in reality.

Chimp_Logic wrote on Sep 28^th, 2015 at 11:15pm:

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 28th, 2015 at 11:04pm: Global warming has been happening all along. what do you mean by "all along"?

According to the satellite data a the past 18 years hasn't warmed at all. How can it be warming. As far as I knew the global warming catch cry was dropped and we moved on to climate change because that was a safe bet as the climate is always changing.

ordinaryguy wrote on Sep 28^th, 2015 at 11:21pm:

Chimp_Logic wrote on Sep 28th, 2015 at 11:15pm: Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 28th, 2015 at 11:04pm: Global warming has been happening all along. what do you mean by "all along"? According to the satellite data a the past 18 years hasn't warmed at all. How can it be warming. As far as I knew the global warming catch cry was dropped and we moved on to climate change because that was a safe bet as the climate is always changing.

;D

I always call it AGW. Wasn’t it Dubya called it CC to hide what was happening?

What do you think will happen if the Gulf Stream disappears due to Greenland melts?

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 28^th, 2015 at 11:24pm:

I always call it AGW. Wasn’t it Dubya called it CC to hide what was happening? What do you think will happen if the Gulf Stream disappears due to Greenland melts?

Agro Global Warming ?

Quote:

March 5, 2004: Global warming could plunge North America and Western Europe into a deep freeze, possibly within only a few decades ……If the Great Conveyor Belt suddenly stops, the cause might not matter. Europeans will have other things on their minds–like how to grow crops in snow. Now is the time to find out, while it’s merely a chilling possibility…..

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/05mar_arctic/

Much depends on how fast the warming of the Arctic occurs, according to computer simulations by Thomas F. Stocker and Andreas Schmittner of the University of Bern. In their models, a faster warming could shut down the major Atlantic current completely, while a slower warming might only slow the current for a few centuries.
And, inevitably, the discussion turns to people. Does human industry play a major role in warming the Arctic? Could we reverse the trend, if we wanted to? Not all scientists agree. Some argue that the changes occuring in the Arctic are consistent with large, slow natural cycles in ocean behavior that are known to science. Others see a greater human component.
"The sea ice thawing is consistent with the warming we've seen in the last century," notes Spencer, but "we don't know how much of that warming is a natural climate fluctuation and what portion is due to manmade greenhouse gases."

What a load of tosh.

'In contrast to recent claims of a Gulf Stream slowdown, two decades of directly measured velocity across the current show no evidence of a decrease. Using a well-constrained definition of Gulf Stream width, the linear least square fit yields a mean surface layer transport of 1.35 × 105 m2 s−1 with a 0.13% negative trend per year. Assuming geostrophy, this corresponds to a mean cross-stream sea level difference of 1.17 m, with sea level decreasing 0.03 m over the 20 year period. This is not significant at the 95% confidence level, and it is a factor of 2–4 less than that alleged from accelerated sea level rise along the U.S. Coast north of Cape Hatteras.'

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013GL058636/abstract

Drought stress
Forests hold almost half of the carbon found on the Earth's surface, storing it in their woody trunks and branches. Studies show that forests are sensitive to droughts, causing tress stress and limiting how much they can grow and store carbon.

During the European heatwave in 2003, for example, tree and plant growth fell by 30%. That meant the land surface in Europe actually produced more carbon dioxide than it absorbed that year.

The new study, published in Science, suggests that it takes longer for trees to recover after a severe drought than previously thought.

source: http://www.skepticalscience.com/drought-stunts-tree-growth-four-years.html

ordinaryguy wrote on Sep 28^th, 2015 at 10:57pm:

The weather seems fine to me. Quite nice and cooler actually compared to the last ten years. Since there has been NO global warming for the past 18 years how many degrees hotter was it supposed to be this year ?

You aren't a government department charged with keeping track of thirty years worth of rainfall pattern movements.

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 28^th, 2015 at 10:50pm:

http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/j/w/6/h/i/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gjuqb9.png/1443399647551.gif Quote: It is an extremely warm year for our planet. Last week we learnt from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that the first eight months of 2015 were the hottest such stretch yet recorded for the globe's surface land and oceans, based on temperature records going to 1880. It's just the latest evidence that we are, indeed, on course for a record-breaking warm year in 2015. Land and ocean temperature percentiles from January to August 2015. Yet, if you look closely, there's one part of the planet that is bucking the trend. In the North Atlantic Ocean, south of Greenland and Iceland, the ocean surface has had very cold temperatures for the past eight months. What's up with that? First of all, it's no error. Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring branch at NOAA's National Centres for Environmental Information, confirmed what the map above suggests - some parts of the North Atlantic Ocean had record cold in the past eight months. As Arndt said in an email: "For the grid boxes in darkest blue, they had their coldest Jan-Aug on record, and in order for a grid box to be 'eligible' for that map, it needs at least 80 years of Jan-Aug values on the record." Those grid boxes encompass the region from "20W to 40W and from 55N to 60N", Arndt said. And there's not much reason to doubt the measurements - the region is very well sampled. "It's pretty densely populated by buoys, and at least parts of that region are really active shipping lanes, so there's quite a lot of observations in the area," Dr Arndt said. "So I think it's pretty robust analysis." So, the record seems to be a meaningful one - and there is a much larger surrounding area that, although not absolutely the coldest it has been on record, is also unusually cold. While there may not yet be any scientific consensus on the matter, at least some scientists suspect that the cooling seen in these maps is no fluke but, rather, part of a process that has long been feared by climate researchers - the slowing of Atlantic Ocean circulation. In March, several top climate scientists, including Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Michael Mann of Penn State, published a paper in Nature Climate Change suggesting that the gigantic ocean current known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, is weakening. It is sometimes confused with the "Gulf Stream" but, in fact, that is just a southern branch of it. The current is driven by differences in the temperature and salinity of ocean water. In essence, cold salty water in the North Atlantic sinks because it is denser, and warmer water from further south moves northward to take its place, carrying tremendous heat energy along the way. But a large injection of cold, fresh water can, theoretically, mess it all up - preventing the sinking that would otherwise occur and, thus, weakening the circulation. In the Nature Climate Change paper, the researchers suggested that this source of fresh water is the melting of Greenland, which is now losing more than a hundred billion tonnes of ice each year. "I was formerly somewhat sceptical about the notion that the ocean 'conveyor belt' circulation pattern could weaken abruptly in response to global warming. Yet this now appears to be under way, as we showed in a recent article, and as we now appear to be witnessing before our very eyes in the form of an anomalous blob of cold water in the subpolar North Atlantic," Mann said via email. Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/scientists-worried-about-cold-blob-in-north-atlantic-amid-record-hot-spell-20150925-gjuqb9.html If the Gulf Stream stops even in part a lot of North and West Europe will freeze—it is on same sort of latitude as Anchorage, Alaska. [quote]Rahmstorf also commented via email: "The fact that a record-hot planet Earth coincides with a record-cold northern Atlantic is quite stunning. There is strong evidence - not just from our study - that this is a consequence of the long-term decline of the Gulf Stream System, i.e., the Atlantic ocean's overturning circulation AMOC, in response to global warming."

Re the suggestion the sun entering a quiet phase will trigger an ice age, the suns cycle is 11 years, the last low spot of the sun cycle coincided with record high temperatures.[/quote]
The sun does have more cycles than the 11 year cycle...

ordinaryguy wrote on Sep 28^th, 2015 at 11:21pm:

Chimp_Logic wrote on Sep 28th, 2015 at 11:15pm: Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 28th, 2015 at 11:04pm: Global warming has been happening all along. what do you mean by "all along"? According to the satellite data a the past 18 years hasn't warmed at all. How can it be warming. As far as I knew the global warming catch cry was dropped and we moved on to climate change because that was a safe bet as the climate is always changing.

You don't know when the term climate change was first used do you buddy !!  ::)

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 28^th, 2015 at 11:54pm:

March 5, 2004: Global warming could plunge North America and Western Europe into a deep freeze, possibly within only a few decades

;D

ordinaryguy wrote on Sep 28^th, 2015 at 11:21pm:

Chimp_Logic wrote on Sep 28th, 2015 at 11:15pm: Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 28th, 2015 at 11:04pm: Global warming has been happening all along. what do you mean by "all along"? According to the satellite data a the past 18 years hasn't warmed at all. How can it be warming. As far as I knew the global warming catch cry was dropped and we moved on to climate change because that was a safe bet as the climate is always changing.

..also, your statistical analysis skills are not methodical!

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 28^th, 2015 at 11:24pm:

I always call it AGW. Wasn’t it Dubya called it CC to hide what was happening? What do you think will happen if the Gulf Stream disappears due to Greenland melts?

No, the term "Climate Change" goes back a bit further than that!

ordinaryguy wrote on Sep 29^th, 2015 at 12:23am:

Much depends on how fast the warming of the Arctic occurs, according to computer simulations by Thomas F. Stocker and Andreas Schmittner of the University of Bern. In their models, a faster warming could shut down the major Atlantic current completely, while a slower warming might only slow the current for a few centuries. And, inevitably, the discussion turns to people. Does human industry play a major role in warming the Arctic? Could we reverse the trend, if we wanted to? Not all scientists agree. Some argue that the changes occuring in the Arctic are consistent with large, slow natural cycles in ocean behavior that are known to science. Others see a greater human component. "The sea ice thawing is consistent with the warming we've seen in the last century," notes Spencer, but "we don't know how much of that warming is a natural climate fluctuation and what portion is due to manmade greenhouse gases."

Are you afraid to give your sources away??

Baronvonrort wrote on Sep 29^th, 2015 at 12:06pm:

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 28th, 2015 at 11:54pm: March 5, 2004: Global warming could plunge North America and Western Europe into a deep freeze, possibly within only a few decades ;D

It certainly is controversial as to whether the ocean conveyor stops but if it does it's very bad news for some!

lee wrote on Sep 29^th, 2015 at 11:30am:

What a load of tosh. 'In contrast to recent claims of a Gulf Stream slowdown, two decades of directly measured velocity across the current show no evidence of a decrease. Using a well-constrained definition of Gulf Stream width, the linear least square fit yields a mean surface layer transport of 1.35 × 105 m2 s−1 with a 0.13% negative trend per year. Assuming geostrophy, this corresponds to a mean cross-stream sea level difference of 1.17 m, with sea level decreasing 0.03 m over the 20 year period. This is not significant at the 95% confidence level, and it is a factor of 2–4 less than that alleged from accelerated sea level rise along the U.S. Coast north of Cape Hatteras.' http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013GL058636/abstract

I suggest you reread my OP. Then try to explain why there is a record cold spot at that location. Sealevel rise is an observed phenomenon, not something alleged.

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 28^th, 2015 at 10:50pm:

In March, several top climate scientists, including Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Michael Mann of Penn State, published a paper in Nature Climate Change suggesting that the gigantic ocean current known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, is weakening. It is sometimes confused with the "Gulf Stream" but, in fact, that is just a southern branch of it.

You do know that study used climate models, don't you? The one I quoted used 2 decades (twenty years) of empirical data. Which to believe data or climate models?


Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 29^th, 2015 at 12:20pm:

Then try to explain why there is a record cold spot at that location. Sealevel rise is an observed phenomenon, not something alleged.

So there is a record cold spot, please point me to some form of proof that it is Greenland melting.

Meanwhile, -

'Greenland's ice sheet appears to be growing faster this winter than in recent years, according to new data from the Danish Meteorological Institute.



This increased rate of ice accumulation follows a virtual standstill in the loss of mass from the huge ice sheet last year that was reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the US.'

http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/greenlands-ice-sheet-winter-growth-above-average.html

Sea level rise has been going on since the last Ice Age as ice has melted.


http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/images/gehrels_donnelly.jpg

Notice the rate of change in sea level rise at the beginning of the Vidarholmi graph?

Very similar to the last few years.

Or perhaps you prefer NOOA.

'The graphs compare the 95% confidence intervals of relative mean sea level trends for CO-OPS and global stations. Trends with the narrowest confidence intervals are based on the longest data sets. Trends with the widest confidence intervals are based on only 30-40 years of data. The graphs can provide an overarching indication of the differing rates of regional vertical land motion, given that the absolute global sea level rise is believed to be 1.7-1.8 millimeters/year. '

http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/globalregional.htm

not really scary is it? About 1/16".

Baronvonrort wrote on Sep 29^th, 2015 at 12:06pm:

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 28th, 2015 at 11:54pm: March 5, 2004: Global warming could plunge North America and Western Europe into a deep freeze, possibly within only a few decades ;D

Baron von Rot, you do know about the Gulfstream I take it? Fourth year HS science.

Here is a little project for you: look up the latitude of Anchorage, Alaska then look up the latitude of Edingburgh, London and Berlin. Then think, if you can.