Millennial-Scale Oscillation of Climate Seen in History of Patagonian Glaciers

CO2 Science Magazine ^ | November 3, 2004 | Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso

[PeaceBeWithYou]

Volume 7, Number 44: 3 November 2004

In our many reviews of recently-published studies that reveal the existence of a widespread millennial-scale oscillation of climate, we routinely draw attention to evidence for the worldwide occurrence of the Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period, Dark Ages Cold Period, Roman Warm Period, etc. We here continue in this vein in reviewing a study that identifies all of the above climatic intervals -- plus others -- in the Patagonian ice fields of South America.

Glasser et al. (2004) describe a large body of evidence related to glacier fluctuations in the two major ice fields of Patagonia: the Hielo Patagonico Norte (47°00'S, 73°39'W) and the Hielo Patagonico Sur (between 48°50'S and 51°30'S). This evidence indicates that the most recent glacial advances in Patagonia occurred during the Little Ice Age, out of which serious cold spell the earth has been gradually emerging for the past two centuries, causing many glaciers to retreat. Prior to the Little Ice Age, however, there was an interval of higher temperatures known as the Medieval Warm Period, when glaciers also decreased in size and extent; and this warm interlude was in turn preceded by a still earlier era of pronounced glacial activity that is designated the Dark Ages Cold Period, which was also preceded by a period of higher temperatures and retreating glaciers that is denoted the Roman Warm Period.

Prior to the Roman Warm Period, Glasser et al.'s presentation of the pertinent evidence suggests there was another period of significant glacial advance that also lasted several hundred years, which was preceded by a several-century interval when glaciers once again lost ground, which was preceded by yet another multi-century period of glacial advance, which was preceded by yet another long interval of glacier retrenchment, which was preceded by still another full cycle of such temperature-related glacial activity, which at this point brings us all the way back to sometime between 6000 and 5000 (¹⁴C) years before the present (BP).

Glasser et al. additionally cite the works of a number of other scientists that reveal a similar pattern of cyclical glacial activity over the preceding millennia in several other locations. Immediately to the east of the Hielo Patagonico Sur in the Rio Guanaco region of the Precordillera, for example, they report that Wenzens (1999) detected five distinct periods of glacial advancement: "4500-4200, 3600-3300, 2300-2000, 1300-1000 (¹⁴C) years BP and AD 1600-1850." With respect to the glacial advancements that occurred during the cold interval that preceded the Roman Warm Period, they say they are "part of a body of evidence for global climatic change around this time (e.g., Grosjean et al., 1998; Wasson and Claussen, 2002), which coincides with an abrupt decrease in solar activity," adding that this observation "led van Geel et al. (2000) to suggest that variations in solar irradiance are more important as a driving force in variations in climate than previously believed." Finally, with respect to the most recent recession of Hielo Patogonico Norte outlet glaciers from their late historic moraine limits at the end of the 19th century, Glasser et al. say that "a similar pattern can be observed in other parts of southern Chile (e.g., Kuylenstierna et al., 1996; Koch and Kilian, 2001)." Likewise, they note that "in areas peripheral to the North Atlantic and in central Asia the available evidence shows that glaciers underwent significant recession at this time (cf. Grove, 1988; Savoskul, 1997)," which again suggests the operation of a globally-distributed forcing factor such as cyclically-variable solar activity.

In concluding their study, Glasser et al. consider a number of "possible explanations for the patterns of observed glacier fluctuations." Since so many factors come into play in this regard, however, and since a good percentage of glaciers refuse to respond as their neighbors do, it is difficult to provide a "one size fits all" explanation for their behavior. Nevertheless, in as close as one can come to framing a general conclusion on this point, Glasser et al. state that "proxy climate data indicate that many of these broad regional trends can be explained by changes in precipitation and atmospheric temperature rather than systematic changes related to the internal characteristics of the ice fields."

In light of this body of evidence, and Glasser et al.'s analysis of it, it would appear that the history of glacial activity they describe does indeed suggest the existence of a millennial-scale oscillation of climate that operates on a broad scale … perhaps, in fact, over all the earth. Viewed in this light, the current recession of many of earth's glaciers is seen to be but the most recent phase of a naturally-recurring phenomenon that has been "doing its thing," over and over, without any help from variable greenhouse gas concentrations, throughout the entire last half of the Holocene.

So what's new?

Nothing.

Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso

References:

Glasser, N.F., Harrison, S., Winchester, V. and Aniya, M. 2004. Late Pleistocene and Holocene palaeoclimate and glacier fluctuations in Patagonia. Global and Planetary Change 43: 79-101.

Grosjean, M., Geyh, M.A., Messerli, B., Schreier, H. and Veit, H. 1998. A late-Holocene (‹2600 BP) glacial advance in the south-central Andes (29°S), northern Chile. The Holocene 8: 473-479.

Grove, J.M. 1988. The Little Ice Age. Routledge, London, UK.

Koch, J. and Kilian, R. 2001. Dendroglaciological evidence of Little Ice Age glacier fluctuations at the Gran Campo Nevado, southernmost Chile. In: Kaennel Dobbertin, M. and Braker, O.U. (Eds.), International Conference on Tree Rings and People. Davos, Switzerland, p. 12.

Kuylenstierna, J.L., Rosqvist, G.C. and Holmlund, P. 1996. Late-Holocene glacier variations in the Cordillera Darwin, Tierra del Fuego, Chile. The Holocene 6: 353-358.

Savoskul, O.S. 1997. Modern and Little Ice Age glaciers in "humid" and "arid" areas of the Tien Shan, Central Asia: two different patterns of fluctuation. Annals of Glaciology 24: 142-147.

van Geel, B., Heusser, C.J., Renssen, H. and Schuurmans, C.J.E. 2000. Climatic change in Chile at around 2700 B.P. and global evidence for solar forcing: a hypothesis. The Holocene 10: 659-664.

Wasson, R.J. and Claussen, M. 2002. Earth systems models: a test using the mid-Holocene in the Southern Hemisphere. Quaternary Science Reviews 21: 819-824.

Wenzens, G. 1999. Fluctuations of outlet and valley glaciers in the southern Andes (Argentina) during the past 13,000 years. Quaternary Research 51: 238-247.

[PeaceBeWithYou]

The record seems to indicate that our sun is a variable star, sometimes quite variable, and is the main controller of our climate.

Lots of good reading at the URL, all free, or you can donate if you so choose. Enjoy.

[2ndreconmarine]

A nice post. Thank you.

I will bookmark for reference, since I like to follow this issue.

I have discussed it before with this post:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1254450/posts?page=15#15

[SouthTexas]

South Cascade Glacier, one of the USGS "benchmark glaciers", shows a GAIN of .55 meters between 1953 and 2002. (No data since)

http://ak.water.usgs.gov/glaciology/all_bmg/3glacier_balance.htm

[megatherium]

Color me skeptical here. The jury is probably still out on anthropogenic climate change, but this organization appears to be a creature of the petroleum industry. They've received grants from Exxon, and currently they are funded by parties which they decline to identify.

http://www.co2science.org/subject/questions/1999/morefunding.htm

[piasa]

Well, at least they aren't a creature of the Federal government, the UN, or the Sierra Club...

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[Coyoteman]

The most recent episode of global warming started some 12,000 or more years ago. That's why the whole northern part of the U.S. is now, and has been for thousands of years, free of glaciers.

Are you attributing this to Clovis Man, Folsom Man, etc.?

Bad Folsom! Bad Clovis! Those nasty campfires will kill us all!

[PeaceBeWithYou]

Color me skeptical here. The jury is probably still out on anthropogenic climate change, but this organization appears to be a creature of the petroleum industry. They've received grants from Exxon, and currently they are funded by parties which they decline to identify.

So, you think the jury is still out? Oh, I see that you're new here. We can change that if you have a logical thinking brain.

As for funding for the Center, here is their position.

As a 501(c)(3) public charity, the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change accepts corporate, foundation and individual donations to fund its educational activities. All donations are kept confidential. Please consider supporting the Center so access to CO2 Science Magazine can remain free to everyone.

Where does GreenPeace get it's funding? Club Sierra? WWF? PBS? NPR? PeTA? Will any of them tell you where the bulk of their funding comes from? Didn't think so. Do you really want to know?

[Carry_Okie]

Pong

[ancient_geezer]

but this organization appears to be a creature of the petroleum industry. They've received grants from Exxon, and currently they are funded by parties which they decline to identify.

Who would you expect to fund their research? The UN, Sierra Club, the government. I don't think so.

Opposing viewpoints are always funded by opposing interests. That does not however lead to the conclusion that the research or conclusion is invalid. Merit of the argument and data only, can make that determination.

Fallacy: Guilt By Association:

Also Known as: Bad Company Fallacy, Company that You Keep Fallacy

Guilt by Association is a fallacy in which a person rejects a claim simply because it is pointed out that people she dislikes accept the claim. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:

1. It is pointed out that people person A does not like accept claim P.
2. Therefore P is false

It is clear that sort of "reasoning" is fallacious. For example the following is obviously a case of poor "reasoning": "You think that 1+1=2. But, Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, Joseph Stalin, and Ted Bundy all believed that 1+1=2. So, you shouldn't believe it."

The fallacy draws its power from the fact that people do not like to be associated with people they dislike. Hence, if it is shown that a person shares a belief with people he dislikes he might be influenced into rejecting that belief. In such cases the person will be rejecting the claim based on how he thinks or feels about the people who hold it and because he does not want to be associated with such people.

Of course, the fact that someone does not want to be associated with people she dislikes does not justify the rejection of any claim. For example, most wicked and terrible people accept that the earth revolves around the sun and that lead is heavier than helium. No sane person would reject these claims simply because this would put them in the company of people they dislike (or even hate).

[Carry_Okie]

They've received grants from Exxon, and currently they are funded by parties which they decline to identify.

The NGOs foisting the GLOBAL WARMING chimera are even more creatures of the foundations of petrochemical wealth. The banks founded thereupon are looking to cash in on the carbon credit scam associated with Kyoto.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!!

[megatherium]

So, you think the jury is still out? Oh, I see that you're new here. We can change that if you have a logical thinking brain.

Let me just say that I have more respect for mainstream science that you do, and in mainstream science, the jury is still out. The mainstream scientific consensus is that global warming is real, which the article here appears to affirm, but that it is not yet clear that global warming is human-caused. That is also clear from the article.

It is normal in scientific research to disclose any conflict of interest (such as funding from parties that would benefit from the publication of your work). These people do not disclose to whom they are beholden; I think that's reasonable grounds to be wary of them. I therefore don't think I'm guilty of the logical fallacy of guilt by association.

Where does the Sierra Club et al get its funding? That wasn't under discussion here. The issue here is not the Sierra Club vs. the CO2 Science Institute. It is mainstream science vs. the CO2 Science Institute. Again, I'm hesitant to take the work of what might be the coal and petroleum industry's Tobacco Institute against the hundreds of academic mathematicians, climatologists, geophysicists, astronomers, etc.; who have arrived at a consensus that anthropogenic climate change may be real.

[PeaceBeWithYou]

Hmmm. Mainstream science, concensus of...hundreds of academic mathematicians, climatologists, geophysicists, astronomers, etc.; who have arrived at a consensus that anthropogenic climate change may be real.

So the facts don't matter just a cherry picked group of people that agree on what is the truth?

Global warming (and cooling) is real. It occurs every day, and changes in intensity with the seasons. It's called weather. It ocillates over time in its cycle giving us warmer and cooler years. It is far more complex than any computer model currently in existance, or futrue existance, can handle, and if they continue to ignore the prime mover of the system (the Sun) they will never have a valid model. Garbage in, garbage out.

What isn't real is the irrational fear of the weather that your 'concensus' is pushing to install their global governence scheme on the free world.

I'm sure AG and the others will supply you with lots of factual data as well as information on just who your concensus really is. Suffice it to say, if you believe the jury is still out, you haven't been examining the facts, but listening to the FUD.

Also, do you have a link to something that shows the CO2 Science Institute recieved a grant from Exxon, or anyone else?

Oh, and if you're going to question the funding of anyone, the funding of all is fair game, especially those behind your 'concensus'.(i.e. Club Sierra, et. al.)

[ancient_geezer]

Let me just say that I have more respect for mainstream science that you do, and in mainstream science, the jury is still out. The mainstream scientific consensus is that global warming is real, which the article here appears to affirm, but that it is not yet clear that global warming is human-caused. That is also clear from the article.

If the jury is still out. There is no consensus.

 

Seems as though there is room for substantial doubt as to any negative effect human created CO2, Methane etc. may have on our Climate future.

At least these folks believe so:

Petition Project: http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm

During the past 2 years, more than 17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, have signed the Global Warming Petition.

Specifically declaring:

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

Signers of this petition so far include 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists (select this link for a listing of these individuals) who are especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth's atmosphere and climate.

Signers of this petition also include 5,017 scientists whose fields of specialization in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and other life sciences (select this link for a listing of these individuals) make them especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide upon the Earth's plant and animal life.

Nearly all of the initial 17,100 scientist signers have technical training suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data, and many are trained in related fields.

 

he mainstream scientific consensus is that global warming is real, which the article here appears to affirm

The issue in not whether or not warming can occur. The issue is over whether not mankind is the primary contributor to it.

Science indicates that any globlal warming is due more to natural factors than anything the mankind can do.

 

Human Contribution to Climate Change Remains Questionable
S. Fred Singer
EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Society, Vol 80, page 183-187, April 20, 1999
http://www.sepp.org/scirsrch/EOS1999.html

" There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "

Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,
and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;
in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal

---

Mankind's impact is only 0.28% of Total Greenhouse effect

  Anthropogenic (man-made) Contribution to the "Greenhouse
Effect," expressed as % of Total (water vapor INCLUDED)

Based on concentrations (ppb) adjusted for heat retention characteristics	% of All Greenhouse Gases	% Natural	% Man-made
Water vapor	95.000%	94.999%	0.001%
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)	3.618%	3.502%	0.117%
Methane (CH4)	0.360%	0.294%	0.066%
Nitrous Oxide (N2O)	0.950%	0.903%	0.047%
Misc. gases ( CFC's, etc.)	0.072%	0.025%	0.047%
Total	100.00%	99.72	0.28%

 

 

The reality is a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration over current levels, that the UN/IPCC "story line" pretends, even if were true, could not induce significant temperature change whatever its source.

Climate Catastrophe, A spectroscopic Artifact?

"It is hardly to be expected that for CO2 doubling an increment of IR absorption at the 15 µm edges by 0.17% can cause any significant global warming or even a climate catastrophe.

The radiative forcing for doubling can be calculated by using this figure. If we allocate an absorption of 32 W/m² [14] over 180º steradiant to the total integral (area) of the n3 band as observed from satellite measurements (Hanel et al., 1971) and applied to a standard atmosphere, and take an increment of 0.17%, the absorption is 0.054 W/m² - and not 4.3 W/m².

This is roughly 80 times less than IPCC's radiative forcing.

If we allocate 7.2 degC as greenhouse effect for the present CO2 (as asserted by Kondratjew and Moskalenko in J.T. Houghton's book The Global Climate [14]), the doubling effect should be 0.17% which is 0.012 degC only. If we take 1/80 of the 1.2 degC that result from Stefan-Boltzmann's law with a radiative forcing of 4.3 W/m², we get a similar value of 0.015 degC."

The basis of global warming models:

Ramanthan (Journal of Geophysical Review, vol. 84, pp. 4949-4958) states:

"the direct radiative effects of doubled CO2 can cause a maximum surface warming [at the equator] of about 0.2 K, and hence roughly 90% of the 2.0-2.5 K surface warming obtained by the GCM is caused by atmospheric feedback processes described above."

A Lukewarm Greenhouse
"The average warming predicted by the six methods for a doubling of CO2, is only +0.2 degC."

In otherwords, CHAOS, butterflies create hurricanes but dragonflies can't.

The UN/IPCC models achieve their results by selectively multiplying changes in heat balance for changes in CO2 concentration 10 times and more over that of any other mechanism of thermal variation. Where radiative forcing of CO2 is selectively multiplied by 10, other mechanisms of similar magnitude are not allowed to be enhanced by the same thermally driven "atmospheric feedback processes described".

The atmospheric "feedback processes described" are those implemented into UN/IPCC climate models. They constitute speculative and inadequate mechanisms at best, presumptive at worst, by which the atmosphere might respond to changes in radiative heat balance.

None of the "feedback processes" are based in any measured direct or parametric relationship selectively coupled to CO2 concentrations alone. This selective sensitivity (i.e. instability in the model) is inferred to be a cause of greater change than the initiating power input to the system.

A good read:

The Non-Science
of Global Warming
By Robert E. Stevenson, Ph.D. *
Published in 21 ^st Century Science & Technology magazine
(Winter 1996-97 edition, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 51-59)
http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/INGLES/ocean-1.html

Along with the Douglas V. Hoyt's(Senior Scientist with Raytheon/ITSS) essay on the subject:
http://users.erols.com/dhoyt1/

 

CO2-Temperature Correlations

• "(1) correlation does not prove causation, (2) cause must precede effect, and (3) when attempting to evaluate claims of causal relationships between different parameters, it is important to have as much data as possible in order to weed out spurious correlations.
  
  ***
  
  Consider, for example, the study of Fischer et al. (1999), who examined trends of atmospheric CO2 and air temperature derived from Antarctic ice core data that extended back in time a quarter of a million years.  Over this extended period, the three most dramatic warming events experienced on earth were those associated with the terminations of the last three ice ages; and for each of these climatic transitions, earth's air temperature rose well in advance of any increase in atmospheric CO2.  In fact, the air's CO2 content did not begin to rise until 400 to 1,000 years after the planet began to warm.  Such findings have been corroborated by Mudelsee (2001), who examined the leads/lags of atmospheric CO2 concentration and air temperature over an even longer time period, finding that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration lagged behind variations in air temperature by 1,300 to 5,000 years over the past 420,000 years."

[ see also: Indermuhle et al. (2000), Monnin et al. (2001), Yokoyama et al. (2000), Clark and Mix (2000) ]

• "Other studies periodically demonstrate a complete uncoupling of CO2 and temperature "

[see: Petit et al. (1999), Staufer et al. (1998), Cheddadi et al., (1998), Raymo et al., 1998, Pagani et al. (1999), Pearson and Palmer (1999), Pearson and Palmer, (2000) ]

• "Considered in their entirety, these several results present a truly chaotic picture with respect to any possible effect that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration may have on global temperature.  Clearly, atmospheric CO2 is not the all-important driver of global climate change the climate alarmists make it out to be."

---

 

Global warming and global dioxide emission and concentration:
a Granger causality analysis

http://isi-eh.usc.es/trabajos/122_41_fullpaper.pdf

•  "We find, in opposition to previous studies, that there is no evidence of Granger causality from global carbon dioxide emission to global surface temperature. Further, we could not find robust empirical evidence for the causal nexus from global carbon dioxide concentration to global surface temperature."

---

Here Comes the Sun

"Carbon dioxide, the main culprit in the alleged greenhouse-gas warming, is not a "driver" of climate change at all. Indeed, in earlier research Jan Veizer, of the University of Ottawa and one of the co-authors of the GSA Today article, established that rather than forcing climate change, CO2 levels actually lag behind climatic temperatures, suggesting that global warming may cause carbon dioxide rather than the other way around."

***

"Veizer and Shaviv's greatest contribution is their time scale. They have examined the relationship of cosmic rays, solar activity and CO2, and climate change going back through thousands of major and minor coolings and warmings. They found a strong -- very strong -- correlation between cosmic rays, solar activity and climate change, but almost none between carbon dioxide and global temperature increases."

More on CO2 & Global Temperatures:

 

Global Surface Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time 

Late Carboniferous to Early Permian time (315 mya -- 270 mya) is the only time period in the last 600 million years when both atmospheric CO2 and temperatures were as low as they are today (Quaternary Period ).

Temperature after C.R. Scotese
CO2 after R.A. Berner, 1994

•     There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today. For example, during the Jurassic Period (200 mya), average CO2 concentrations were about 900 ppm or about 2.5 times higher than today. The highest concentrations of CO2 during all of the Paleozoic Era occurred during the Ordovician Period, exceeding 6000 ppm -- more than 16 times higher than today.

•     The Carboniferous Period and the Ordovician Period were the only geological periods during the Paleozoic Era when global temperatures were as low as they are today.
  
  To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age, with CO2 concentrations nearly 15 times higher than today-- 5500 ppm. According to greenhouse theory, Earth should have been exceedingly hot. Instead, global temperatures were no warmer than today. Clearly, other factors besides atmospheric carbon influence earth temperatures and global warming.

[megatherium]

Thank you so much for the interesting batch of links and information. I must say that part of the reason I've taken global warming seriously is that I'm pro-nuclear energy, and nukes are a good way of producing electricity without greenhouse emissions.

And I should probably apologize for my initial posting, it was a little snotty. I get worked up when I think I see people trying to manipulate science for political purposes, on both sides of the equation. (Hence my jibe about the Tobacco Institute. Of course, the Sierra Club and especially Greenpeace certainly have little regard for the truth, they're advocacy organizations pure and simple.)

For curiosities' sake, here's the single link for what is supposed to be the consensus. I don't expect it to carry much weight in these parts, since it's affiliated with the UN (talk about guilt by association!): http://www.ipcc.ch/