Posted on 03/02/2009 2:50:43 PM PST by presidio9
For those who have endured this winter's frigid temperatures and today's heavy snowstorm in the Northeast, the concept of global warming may seem, well, almost wishful.
But climate is known to be variable -- a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn't mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.
Earth's climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.
"This is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950," Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. "Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn't have one."
Instead, Swanson and colleague Anastasios Tsonis think a series of climate processes have aligned, conspiring to chill the climate. In 1997 and 1998, the tropical Pacific Ocean warmed rapidly in what Swanson called a "super El Nino event." It sent a shock wave through the oceans and atmosphere, jarring their circulation patterns into unison.
How does this square with temperature records from 2005-2007, by some measurements among the warmest years on record? When added up with the other four years since 2001, Swanson said the overall trend is flat, even though temperatures should have gone up by 0.2 degrees Centigrade (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) during that time.
The discrepancy gets to the heart of one of the toughest problems in climate science -- identifying the difference between natural variability (like the occasional March snowstorm) from human-induced change.
But just what's causing the cooling is a mystery. Sinking water currents in the north Atlantic Ocean could be sucking heat down into the depths. Or an overabundance of tropical clouds may be reflecting more of the sun's energy than usual back out into space.
"It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970s was due to a free variation in climate," Isaac Held of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, New Jersey wrote in an email to Discovery News. "Suggesting that the warming might possibly slow down or even stagnate for a few years before rapid warming commences again."
Swanson thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years. But he warned that it's just a hiccup, and that humans' penchant for spewing greenhouse gases will certainly come back to haunt us.
"When the climate kicks back out of this state, we'll have explosive warming," Swanson said. "Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive."
Uh, the sun hasn't spotted on time the past two years and it will continue to worsen as the sun stays dormant?
Until they admit that God is in control, they will continue to be stumped.
Duh!
Translation of the UW-Milwaukee students comments: We are sticking with out conclusions AND our recommendations, with NO second thoughts, no matter what the facts turn out to be.
These people might be Scient-ologists. Or they could be scientist-like.
It’s an embarrassment to the University of Wisconsin system.
Oh, I guess they aren’t students after all, not clear in the article.
Hmmm, anyone wanna bet, that these 2 guys, or the department they work for, are already applying for future “grants for global climate change research”.
They might have undercut themselves, since they already know that Global Warming is “HIDING FOR 30 YEARS” (?!?!), how can they come to a different conclusion until approx 2040?
Un-freakin-real.
I give up - what's that picture from?
There ain’t no global warming in Connecticut today, that’s for sure! Off to shovel the 9” of snow off my front steps!
My erudite theory is that all the hot air about CO2 in the atmosphere has caused less CO2 to be put into the atmosphere thus this global cooling is man made. We shall never know if my theory is correct, since the satellite that was to measure CO2 around the globe dropped into the ocean near Antarctica. But when did facts ever matter in this debate.
Still, according to a new study, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.
And when you least expect it.. global warming will chase you down a hallway while you scream.
Yeah. Other than a lack of sunspots.
...climate is known to be variable -- a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn't mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades....and if *you* can't *see* the n-rays, well, there's something *wrong* with *you*!!!
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Wow! (pant, pant, pant) pinging faster (pant, pant, pant) than I can download (pant, pant, pant). Keep up the good work.
They call the wind Mariah. Somehow, “sunkenciv” seems beneath you. :-)
Relying on you to keep me on the *wrong* path.
I wonder if they replaced Al Gore’s head with a block of wood, would his *scientist* buddies be able to detect the difference?
They can’t tell the difference between “old timber” and plywood — but when Al’s nose started to grow every time he lied about something...
I wouldn’t get too excited, this boy’s been playing this drum since he got it for Christmas a few years ago:
“Greenland Warming Lags, But Bound to Catch Up
Michael Reilly, Discovery News
Feb. 27, 2009 — One of the world’s most important remaining ice reserves on Earth remains deceptively cold.
As the planet’s poles thaw out, global sea level rise looms as one of the most dangerous side effects of global warming. Any excess chill may seem like good news for the planet. But a new study suggests that Greenland is lagging behind [the] rest of the northern hemisphere’s warming trend and that it’s bound to catch up soon.
Air temperatures have been rising steadily in the northern half of the planet since about 1975, when scientists think the effects of human-induced global warming began to dominate the climate. But Greenland was left behind, perhaps kept cool when dust released from the eruptions of Mount St. Helens, El Chicon and Mt. Pinatubo reduced the amount of sunlight hitting the ice.
Around 1985 the icy island started to thaw, and has continued apace ever since. Climate scientists have been alarmed by the speed of the melting, watching as glaciers recede and meltwater pools in lakes on top of the ice.
Still, in an analysis of temperature records in Greenland from 1840 until 2007, Jason Box of Ohio State University and a team of researchers found that the ice sheet remains between 1.0 and 1.5 degrees Centigrade (1.8 to 2.7 degree Fahrenheit) behind the rest of the northern hemisphere. And it should catch up in the coming decades.”
All we have to do now is to get the 4 expressions to agree with the 2.
I will have been married for 20 years (so I’m told) this summer. In that time, the “climate” around here has seen some really wild fluctuations. Hot periods followed by absolutely frigid conditions. I’m a thinking I really need to get on this study bandwaggin’. I don’t see how I could do any worse than some. And a little notoriety couldn’t hurt. Might even get me one of them there Noble Prizes.
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