Activism Change

Climate change shocker: 1 degree increase in *one* year (arctic), scientists find

Question:

Major Temperature Rise recorded in Arctic this year: German scientists PARIS (AFP) – German scientists probing global warming said they had detected a major temperature rise this year in the Arctic Ocean and linked this to a progressive shrinking of the region’s sea ice. Temperatures recorded this year in the upper 500 metres (1,625 feet) of sea in the Fram Strait — the gap between Greenland and the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen — were up to 0.6 C (1.08 F) higher than in 2003, they said in a press release received here. The rise was detectable to a water depth of 2,000 metres (6,500 feet), "representing an exceptionally strong signal by ocean standards," it said. The experts, from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, have been recording temperatures aboard a specialised vessel, Polarstern (Pole Star), for the past six weeks. The sampling has been taking place in the West Spitsbergen Current, which carries warm water from the Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean. The institute said water in the Fram Strait has been warming steadily since 1990 and over the past three years, satellite images had documented "a clear recession" of sea ice edges, both in the strait and the Barents Sea. The latest data "point towards a further warming tendency," the institute said. [Editor's note: the main news of this story is above; this dramatic huge change in just one year in temperature. Below the article gives recent but not quite as new information, from June, but also quite alarming-ED] In June, a UN organisation announced that American scientists had detected an "alarmingly rapid growth" this year in airborne concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), the fossil-fuel pollutant blamed for global warming. CO2 levels recorded in March 2004 at Hawaii measured 379 parts per million (ppm), an increase of three ppm over the previous year. By comparison, there had been an annual increase of only 1.8 ppm over the past decade. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 before the Industrial Revolution were 280 ppm. The June announcement was made at a conference on renewable energies in Bonn by Joke Waller-Hunter, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — the United Nations (news – web sites)’ paramount environment accord. CO2 is the most important of the six "greenhouse" gases blamed for driving changes to the world’s delicate climate system. These gases hang like an invisible shroud in the atmosphere, trapping the Sun’s heat and inflicting what many scientists predict will be serious changes to icecaps, glaciers and weather patterns. In the Earth’s distant past, climate change has occurred naturally, by emissions of CO2 disgorged by volcanoes and other phenomena. But the overwhelming majority of climate experts say CO2 levels are rising fast today because of the unbridled burning of oil, gas and coal. Opinions differ, though, as to how fast the effects will occur and how bad they will be. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=15 40&ncid=1540&e=2&u=/afp/20040 828/sc_afp/climate_arctic DON’T MOURN, ACT! WEBSITES FOR ACTION: http://www.earthshare.org/get_involved/involved.html http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/climate.asp http://www.greenhousenet.org/ http://www.solarcatalyst.com/ Overview and local actions you can take: http://www.PostCarbon.org = = = = STILL FEELING LIKE THE MAINSTREAM U.S. CORPORATE MEDIA IS GIVING A FULL HONEST PICTURE OF WHAT’S GOING ON? = = = = Daily online radio show, news reporting: www.DemocracyNow.org = = = = Sorry, we cannot read/reply to most usenet posts but welcome email For more information: http://EconomicDemocracy.org/wtc/ (peace) And http://EconomicDemocracy.org/ (general) ** ANTI-SPAM EMAIL NOTE: For email "info" and "map" don’t work. Email to ** m-a-i-l-m-a-i-l (without the dashes) at economicdemocracy.org instead

Response:

   Interesting. Did they bother to check Sun activity? Or strength of Magnetic field in that area? Cosmic Rays Linked To Global Warming. Right now the main (dipole) (Earth magnetic) field is getting weaker at a rate of about 7% per century.  http://istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/earthmag/magnQ&A1.htm#q6 No one knows when the next field reversal will occur: in the past, they have occurred on the average about once in 700,000 years. The change, whenever it occurs, will be gradual and the field will not drop to zero in between–doing so would mean that the magnetic energy of the Earth was somehow converted or dissipated, and all processes we know for this tend to run on scales of thousands of year, if not more. Right now the main (dipole) field is getting weaker at a rate of about 7% per century, and if you draw a straight line through the points you find it reversing between 1000 and 2000 years from now. It might happen, although the trend may well change. The energy of the field, however, has hardly changed. What seems to have happened is that the more complicated parts of the field (equivalent to several magnets in different directions) have got stronger while the main two-pole ("dipole") field lost strength. The complex field is somewhat weaker (it drops off faster with distance from the source, which is the core of the Earth), but we should not expect the field to be ever greatly weakened. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/020731080631.htm Cosmic Rays Linked To Global Warming "Researchers studying global warming have often been confounded by the differences between observed increases in surface-level temperatures and unchanging low-atmosphere temperatures. " "In addition, recent satellite data have revealed a correlation between cosmic ray intensity and the fraction of the Earth covered by low clouds. Yu proposes that the amount and charge of cosmic ray-generated ions can contribute to the formation of dense clouds by stimulating the production rate of low-atmosphere particles that make the clouds more opaque. In addition, natural and man-made differences in atmospheric chemistry, like greenhouse gas concentrations, can also affect the cosmic rays’ influence on clouds, according to Yu. Such height-dependent atmospheric differences can increase the quantity of ambient particles in the lower troposphere and decrease the particles in the upper air, thus affecting the type of cloud cover. " http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20020812/cosmicray.html "Aug. 12

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