Quick Note on Sandy

We weathered the storm well here in the old school house, for once we didn't lose power.  Of course that was after storing a ton of water segregated for drinking/cooking, cleaning and toilet flushing.  Better safe than sorry. I'll have more thoughts on this latest extreme weather event and climate change later, but I have to agree with NY guv Andrew Cuomo:

"There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement, that is a factual statement," Cuomo said. "Anyone who says there is not a dramatic change in weather patterns is denying reality."

Meanwhile, NY Times dot green blogger Andrew Revkin contorted himself into some sort of pretzel creature in his efforts to deny any linkage between this unprecedented hybrid storm and climate change. 

Disturbing Arctic Sea Ice News

Before my concentration on Penn. Marcellus news and the summer blogging doldrums, I was frequently posting on climate change and suggesting is it should be a big issue in the election - "It's the climate stupid."  During my slowdown, weather and climate have become big news with the record heat and drought.  Jeff Master's Weather Underground blog has become a drumbeat of a destabilized climate. Here are just a few entries from July:
   Record warmth at the top of the Greenland Ice Sheet
   Historic 2012 U.S. drought continues to expand and intensify
   June 2012: Earth's 4th warmest June; heavy rains in Beijing kill 37
   Greenland experiences melting over 97% of its area in mid-July
   Oil industry-funded "BEST" study finds global warming is real, manmade
   July 2012: hottest month in U.S. history
You get the picture. Now one thing I used to post quite regularly were Arctic sea ice coverage images from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.  We've seen some high amounts of melting this year, but I found the data posted yesterday unsettling. First, look at the trend and see how the rate of melting had recently increased:

Then look at the ice coverage, notice the the big break-up near the Bering Sea along the Siberian coast:

The reason I find this image disturbing is because it reminds me of ice on a frozen puddle just before it completely melts, when it's soft, fragile, thin and full of holes.

The accelerated melting and break-up is due in part to an unusually strong summer storm in the Arctic. In and of itself this is not earth-shattering. Though uncommon, strong summer storms are not unknown, but this one comes as part of a package deal with more heat and moisture in the Arctic and more melting.  Recent data suggests that the sea ice is melting faster than expected, maybe as much as 50% more, and the volume is decreasing as well. The volume is a crucial element here.  The Arctic will continue to freeze over in the winter, but much of that will now melt in the summer. Thus the we will see more and more thin (low-volume) single-year ice instead of thicker multi-year ice. This ice is more susceptible to melting, which leads to more melting in the summer, less high-albedo ice to reflect sunlight, more exposed water to absorb and retain heat, delayed onset of winter freezing and thinner ice. Rinse and repeat.

The rapid decrease in Arctic sea ice is what caused me to change my thinking that climate change was a long-term problem that would incrementally affect us to a short-term unpredictable crisis. A change in the Arctic climate affects storm generation and jet-stream patterns, more convoluted jet stream paths means greater and more unpredictable shifts in weather at lower latitudes and we could see wide swings in winter from intense snow and rain storms to record warmth, maybe in a single season.

Hottest Month Ever at Great Blue Hill

This is an  update of sorts to the August 6 post on a simple way to see warming.
The Blue Hill Observatory reports that July '10 was the hottest month in their 125 years of record keeping. Keep in mid that one hot summer or colder winter in one location alone proves nothing about global climate, but it is one local story consistent with the long term trends and  warmer global average T this year.  However,  some even use this story to support their denials. Yeah Tim, lets dismiss the longterm trends and global averages by picking a few cooler spots and claim to be rational and scientific. That's like saying, "OK I see the surgeon general's stats on smoking and lung cancer, but I'm still smoking my Camels and I feel fine. So I refuse to believe there's a connection."

Old and new climate

Chris Rowan and Anne Jefferson over at Highly Allocthonous have a nice summary of climate and paleoclimate news, check it out.

Over at the Old Gray Lady there is an interesting piece on whether the current weather extremes relate directly or indirectly to warming.

A simple way to see warming

Anyone who's spent a day on the beach has noticed the water level changing minute by minute as waves swash in and out. But spend enough of the day there and you'll see that the water level inevitably trends higher or lower depending on which way the tide is flowing:

Tide time-lapse from Protar on Vimeo.

No one would be foolish enough to say the water level was rising or falling based on one or two individual waves.

Now look at this plot of temperature data from the Blue Hills Observatory, located on Great Blue Hill south of Boston. This station has been collecting weather data for over a century. The individual data points (blue diamonds) are the averaged temperature at BHO for every year between 1895 and 2009:

Click for a larger image.

The black line is a moving 10 year average and the red line is the linear trend for the whole set of data. Just like the waves and the incoming tide, the average temperature goes up and down from year to year, but over a century the trend is inexorably upward. No one would be foolish enough to say the climate at BHO is warming or cooling on a year to year variation, right? It only makes sense to look at the long-term.

Tide's comin' in folks.

Aurora tonight?

Bit of activity on the sun on Sunday that may cause activity today here on Earth, though it was not a particularly large solar storm. Might be too cloudy to see anything in my neck of the woods.

The sun is expected to hit max activity (Solar Max) in 2013. In addtition to aurora and possible disruptions to satellites and power grids, expect to see Solar Max used to "prove"
- a 2012 Apocalypse
- any upticks and volcanic/seismic activity
-that global warming is natural and due to sunspots.

I'm sure the HAARP conspiracy loons will somehow jump onboard as well.

Icy hot

Since moving to Penn -Delmarva region, I've noticed the paucity of snow most winters. This past winter, of course, we were wracked by multiple storms, prompting many to proclaim that this short-term regional weather disproved long-term global warming. At the same time however, the Arctic sea region was warmer than the long-term average:

Come April, things started cooking 'round here, with a few brief cooler periods.We can see how things started warm more than average at temperate as well as polar latitudes during the March through May period:

As I noted a few weeks ago, it was the hottest June on record for Philadephia and today it was reported by the National Climatic Data Center that the 2010 Jan-Jun period was the warmest on record. The last few weeks it has been very warm and dry, but the past few days why have doused with many heavy showers - during a short walk yesterday I was soaked by a warm torrential downpour.
What does this all mean? Well climate is what ya expect, weather is what ya get. There has been an El Nino  event over the past year and a negative Arctic Oscillation, which tend to cause changes in precipitation and temperature patterns. But if this pattern becomes the expected, then we have a shift in climate.  We see the long-term T increase and could see gradual changes in precipitation, temperature variation and storm tracks. But again if the pattern present now becomes the new normal, then we could be witnessing some abrupt changes. Or if we no longer see consistent patterns year to year, then maybe we have climate instability. We can only wait and see what happens.
Back to the Arctic. In the midst of Snowmeggdon in February, a rapid sea ice melt was forecast and now seems to be a reality.  And this as well.

Things could get "interesting". If abrupt change is underway or begins, how long before the public at large get it?