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ARCTIC MELTDOWN STORY ON CBS
Chief WSI/INTELLICAST Meteorologist ^ | August 29, 2002 | by Joe D'Aleo

Posted on 09/01/2002 7:31:02 PM PDT by FireTrack

Perhaps you have seen the first installments of the series on the arctic meltdown that the CBS TV network is doing for sweeps month. In the first piece they discussed how the arctic region has warmed dramatically in recent years and showed how the arctic ice has retreated along the edges and grown thinner. They promise to have scientists report on the possible cause in follow-up stories this week.

They focused on changes near the Arctic Ocean town of Barrow, Alaska. Ice had retreated from the shoreline near Barrow and temperatures have warmed accordingly. They talked about mosquitos being observed, not uncommon in Alaska but usually not seen on the north arctcic shoreline. They also reported that the temperatures have warmed 4 degrees in Barrow in the last 30 years.

When we look at temperatures in Barrow, we indeed see a warm up in the last 20 years with a large spike in the last super El Nino of 1997/98. If you remove that one year outlier, what remains in the temperature is an apparent cyclical wave that shows warming in the 1930s and 1940s and then cooling through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s followed by the recent decadal warming.

Annual Mean temperatures (degrees Celsius) for Barrow, Alaska from NASA GISS.

In a prior story we showed how this cyclical change in temperatures and change in the northern hemispheric polar ice relate to the large-scale circulations in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans (and to the longer term colar cycles). We showed how well temperatures in Fairbanks related to the large-scale oceanic cycles, especially the Pacific cycle called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or PDO.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillationor PDO is a large-scale flip-flop in ocean temperature and atmospheric pressure patterns that tends to occur every few decades. We have apparently returned to the cool phase in the last two years after two decades in the so-called warm phase.

Fairbanks, Alaska showed a very similar wave in the temperature.

Fairbanks annual mean temperatures change dramatically with the phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

The PDO in conjunction with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) also affects the ice thickness through their effects on ocean currents in the arctic. During the warm phases of the oceanic cycles, there is an increased current flow beneath the arctic ice that melts the snow and ice from beneath and moves ice out of the arctic basin more rapidly (unlike the Antarctic which is ice on land, the arctic ice is a floating icecap).

A new NASA Goddard story discusses the importance of a large-scale planetary wave in the atmosphere in relation to the transport of the arctic ice through the Fram Strait The wave they talk about probably relates to the PDO phase as the ice extent shown below changes with changes in the mean phase of the PDO.

Like the polar temperatures, the arctic ice seems to change with the PDO cycle. Arctic ice extent dropped dramatically in the late 1970s and then slowly declined through the middle 1990s. A slow increase may have begun after that. The PDO changed phase in 1977 from cold to warm and then again around 1997 from warm to cold.

It has been around half a century since the last PDO warm phase and it is not surprising that most people do not remember the concerns about the declines in arctic ice and warm temperatures then. More people remember the widespread speculation about the impending ice age during the cold and snowy 1960s and 1970s. Now we are led to believe this current warm spell is just a start of what could be a disastrous climate change.

This too will probably pass. Perhaps a lot sooner than most people could imagine.


TOPICS: Announcements; Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: alaska; artic; environment; globalwarming
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Seems more and more are jumping on the natural cycle bandwagon!
1 posted on 09/01/2002 7:31:02 PM PDT by FireTrack
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To: FireTrack
"The Pacific Decadal Oscillationor"

I use one of those in my Interositor.

Or maybe it's my Eludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.

--Boris

2 posted on 09/01/2002 7:39:14 PM PDT by boris
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To: FireTrack
And I'll bet CBS didn't mention that the Antarctic ice is showing signs of thickening again either. That wouldn't comport with their "it's man-made global warming, we're all gonna die" mantra of the past 15 yrs.
3 posted on 09/01/2002 7:39:37 PM PDT by CARTOUCHE
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To: FireTrack
Remember all the fools who were screaming that the coast line would be submerged if the Arctic ice cap were to melt? The completely ignore the fact that ice is less dense than water and thus takes up more room as a solid than a liquid.
4 posted on 09/01/2002 7:41:17 PM PDT by Blood of Tyrants
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To: FireTrack
Good find, and Bookmarked.
5 posted on 09/01/2002 7:43:31 PM PDT by LurkerNoMore!
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To: boris

"I use one of those in my Interositor.

Or maybe it's my Eludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator."

ROTF!

6 posted on 09/01/2002 7:45:02 PM PDT by FireTrack
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To: boris
In 1961, I was a young sailor going
to radio school on the Norfolk naval base.
We were learning to receive and transcribe
Morse code at maybe 20wpm at that
phase of the training.

One Saturday, they ran an old Flash Gordon
serial episode at the exchange.  Flash was
using, and I'll never forget it, what he
called a 'skillioscope' (your spelling may vary).
The skillioscope was putting out code at
at about a dit or a dah per second.  But
Flash was reading information out of it
as fast as he could talk.  Naturally, a
movie audience composed of probably
twenty-percent radioman cracked up
long and loud.  It was a hoot.

7 posted on 09/01/2002 7:45:53 PM PDT by gcruse
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To: FireTrack
Junk science at it's finest.
8 posted on 09/01/2002 7:51:44 PM PDT by Amerigomag
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To: CARTOUCHE
"That wouldn't comport with their "it's man-made global warming, we're all gonna die" mantra"

Of course not, then no one would tune in to find out what's gonna get us first!

9 posted on 09/01/2002 7:53:05 PM PDT by FireTrack
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To: FireTrack
I think I was unfortunate enough to see one of the CBS pieces you mention. The word "may" was expansively used; as in "this MAY lead to...", "which MAY mean that...", and that "MAY result in blah blah blah".

All speculation, none of it backed up by evidence, yet paraded to the naive public as fact: THESE POOR POLAR BEARS ARE ON THIN ICE!!
10 posted on 09/01/2002 8:00:52 PM PDT by GnuHere
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To: boris
"The Pacific Decadal Oscillationor"

I use one of those in my Interositor.

Or maybe it's my Eludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.

--Boris


and I use one in my Orgasmatron!
11 posted on 09/01/2002 8:36:13 PM PDT by Jumpmaster
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To: LurkerNoMore!
"Good find, and Bookmarked."

I like Artic studies, reminds me of a few women I've met! :-?

12 posted on 09/01/2002 8:42:35 PM PDT by FireTrack
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To: FireTrack
The planet is always getting warmer or cooler. It never has stayed the same, and somehow this fact cannot be understood by the average American.
13 posted on 09/01/2002 8:47:34 PM PDT by Dog Gone
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To: Dog Gone
somehow this fact cannot be understood by the average American.,/p>

Well it could be understood by more...if the public school system actually taught real science and critical thinking.

14 posted on 09/01/2002 8:52:06 PM PDT by Aracelis
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To: Blood of Tyrants
The completely ignore the fact that ice is less dense than water and thus takes up more room as a solid than a liquid.

Please don't use that argument. Most of the Arctic glaciers are on land.
The real argument is that the glaciers have grown and receded over the years. If you look at their footprints over the time that we have been tracking them (not much more than 100 years) you really can't tell if this is an extraordinary recession.

15 posted on 09/01/2002 9:00:08 PM PDT by speekinout
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To: FireTrack
The folks at CBS should consider hanging themselves, before "something" kills them! Burp!
16 posted on 09/01/2002 9:09:22 PM PDT by Waco
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To: FireTrack
I remember some of the discussion 50 years ago. One theory was that if the Arctic ice sheet melted, that would mean that there would be evaporation from the suface of the Arctic Ocean, which would fall as snow in interior Canada, where it is colder. This increase in snow accumulation would lead to thick layers of snow, which would eventually become ice. As the ice accumulated, it would start sliding south, causing a new Ice Age.

I expect that this theory will soon be coming to a TV set near you, while the alarmists turn on a dime from fears of global warming to fears of a new ice age.

17 posted on 09/01/2002 9:43:29 PM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla
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To: gcruse
I don't have any examples at hand, but lots of the technicians in the movie industry were (and are) hams.

So when the techs were asked to come up with some 'morse code' effects, they could be counted on to embed some hidden message--often a snippet of a QSO with their own call signs.

I know there are some examples in the Disney oeuvre.

Here's a link I found.

-.. . -.- .- -.-- -. .. -. . -.-- --- ..- . -.-- .

18 posted on 09/01/2002 10:35:44 PM PDT by Erasmus
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To: Erasmus
-.-. --- --- .-..  .-.. .. -. -.-
19 posted on 09/01/2002 10:49:12 PM PDT by gcruse
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To: speekinout
Another aspect is that glacier size relates less to ambient temperature than it does to snowfall accumulation at the glacier's head. According to some, "global warming," if it exists, would cause increased snowfall in cold regions, thereby increasing glacier size.
20 posted on 09/02/2002 7:01:01 AM PDT by thucydides
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