Arctic Ice Melt Due in Part to Natural Changes
A team of NASA and university scientists has detected an ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decade-long time scales. The results suggest not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming.
This jives with the point I’ve made here several times. The more we examine the global climate, the more we discover. Many of our discoveries actually undermine the assumptions we made in the past and all of them demonstrate that what is really needed in the global climate change debate is not more politics or dogma. It’s more science.
The article continues with another bit that’s worth more consideration.
Morison said data gathered by Grace and the bottom pressure gauges since publication of the paper earlier this year highlight how short-lived the ocean circulation changes can be. The newer data indicate the bottom pressure has increased back toward its 2002 level. “The winter of 2006-2007 was another high Arctic Oscillation year and summer sea ice extent reached a new minimum,” he said. “It is too early to say, but it looks as though the Arctic Ocean is ready to start swinging back to the counterclockwise circulation pattern of the 1990s again.”
Morison cautioned that while the recent decadal-scale changes in the circulation of the Arctic Ocean may not appear to be directly tied to global warming, most climate models predict the Arctic Oscillation will become even more strongly counterclockwise in the future. “The events of the 1990s may well be a preview of how the Arctic will respond over longer periods of time in a warming world,” he said.
We’re going to need to observe the Arctic Oscillation for a few more years just to find if there is a regularly-occurring change or, if it is not, what causes it. The phenomenon we see here today is an erratic change that can last for only a few years or a couple decades. What other cyclical phenomenon exist that take centuries or millenniums to manifest in a way we can observe?
And, to bring this to the political part of the debate, is there a compelling reason to believe that diverting the entire economies of nations to attempt to stem global warming will actually stop it? It seems to me that trying to stand in the way of a climate cycle that has been happening on a global scale for millions of years is like throwing a gnat in front of a freight train in the hopes of derailing it. I think our time and money is far better spent on looking at the changes we’re making to our local climates (microclimates vs macroclimates) and to devising and implementing mitigation strategies so that we don’t simply survive the climate change but actually thrive in our changed environments.
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Category: Oh the Climate, It is A-Changin'
