Abrupt Climate Changes

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Abrupt climate changes

Dec. 15, 2000 | 10:17 a.m.

By TODD HARTMAN

Scripps Howard News Service

Scripps Howard News Service

An abrupt and dramatic rise in temperature hit Antarctica 19,000 years ago, suggesting that modern-day global warming may not be gradual but fast and furious.

James White, University of Colorado associate professor, was part of a team of researchers who discovered the Antarctic warming spike. He said the 18-degree rise in temperature over a few decades amounts to the most dramatic warming ever documented in the Southern Hemisphere.

The finding ``gives us a road map to the way big climate changes occur,'' said White, a fellow at Colorado University's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

The most important lesson of the research, White said, is that climate change may not simply be a gradual phenomenon, in which a certain amount of greenhouse gases means a proportional rise in global warming.

Instead, humans' relentless combustion of fossil fuels could show little impact. Then, suddenly, temperatures could soar.

In explaining this, White drew an analogy with the way his little brother behaved as a child.

``I used to just pester him and pester him and he wouldn't react,'' White said. ``And then I'd poke him (again), and boom, he'd react.

``That's what we're doing to the climate system, we're teasing it,'' White said. ``When it turns around and snaps at us, we have to be ready to adapt to a large change, rather than a slowly but surely gradual change.''

At the same time, the prehistoric warming spike is further evidence that significant climate change, while quite possibly exacerbated by the burning of fossil fuels, is also a phenomenon that happened long before people dominated the planet.

``Dramatic climate changes are natural,'' White said. ``There's no doubt about that.''

This summer, White and his colleagues analyzed chemical isotopes in kilometer-deep ice cores drilled over the past two years in an area of coastal West Antarctica known as Siple Dome. White called the findings significant, partly because scientists didn't expect them.

``The magnitude of these changes seem to rival the magnitude of abrupt climate changes that have been documented for the last decade in the Northern Hemisphere,'' White said. ``We had not thought that would be the case.''

The Southern Hemisphere, with far more water, is a more uniform environment. Therefore, scientists believed, it should have a more stable climate, less susceptible to major swings and prone instead to changes taking thousands of years.

The 18-degree rise in temperature is so significant, White said, that researchers could speculate it might have been a trigger area for the waning of the last Ice Age.

Scientists believe the end of the most recent ice age dates to 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. Before that, great sheets of ice covered much of Europe and North America.

If New York and Chicago had existed then, their grand buildings would have been crushed to rubble by massive glaciers that, at the time, buried the landscape in ice.

What caused the glacial retreat remains a subject of debate among scientists. White said the Antarctic warming might be linked to a drop in humidity over the ocean surface and an increase in water vapor higher in the atmosphere, boosting the greenhouse effect.

Indeed, the warming appears to be aligned with other temperature increases albeit less dramatic ones found in other Antarctic ice-core samples, as well as pre- historic sea-level increases documented by researchers in Australia.

``There are some of my colleagues who say this was to be expected,'' White said. ``That once we start to really study more and more areas of Antarctica, we're going to find (more evidence of) abrupt climate changes.''

(Contact Todd Hartman of the Denver Rocky Mountain News at http://www.denver-rmn.com.)

AP-NY-12-15-00 1111EST

-- Cave Man (Caves@are.us), December 15, 2000

Answers

http://www.postnet.com/postnet/N ews/wires.nsf/National/D1EAEF7E805BA846862569B60058FFF1?OpenDocument

-- Cave Man (
caves@are.us), December 15, 2000.

Abrubt climate changes??

How about a high of 80 yesterday to a low of 40 for tomorrow morning? From tropical to arctic just like that!!

And I wonder why my sinuses are running.......

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), December 15, 2000.


No wonder your sinuses are running? Shit I'm STILL tryin to catch mine. sorry couldnt resist. :------------------

-- sumer (shh@aol.con), December 15, 2000.

Sumer

That's the nature of the beast down here in 'wintertime'. 3 days of cold'n'wet followed by 5 days of tropical'n'balmy.

But then all that's followed by 9 months of summer!!!

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), December 15, 2000.


Rub it in there Deano....

Mess with me, I'm on the duty of bartendess tonite :-0

-- (shh@aol.consumer), December 15, 2000.



40 degrees............you lucky sunbather you. If it reached 40F here I'd be ecstatic!

Let's see.........this morning I got up to go to work and it was Minus 22 with a wind chill of Minus 45C. Converted to Fahrenheit that's about Minus 10 with a windchill of minus 49.

I walked to the pub last night. Only about 5 blocks away. I enjoyed the first half-block. By the end of two blocks my jogging slowed down to a brisk walk. My gloves came off so I could rub my face and ears. After 3 blocks I was walking backwards so the wind didn't freeze my face permanently. 4 block and I just wanted to curl up in the snow and die. 4 1/2 blocks and I had made up 10 new swear words.

I'm extremely tempted to buy a few bags of charcoal or black soil and take them to a small hill off the side of one of our major intersections. And I want to write just 4 little words in big bold letters in the snow.........words that can be read from a hundred yards away at least.

My four words?

GLOBAL WARMING MY ASS!!

-- Craig (nealweb@telusplanet.net), December 15, 2000.


>> GLOBAL WARMING MY ASS!! <<

Craig, I think you misunderstand what global warming is supposed to look like. The fact that it is very cold where you are doesn't contradict global warming, because the warming is global and you are talking about local conditions.

A better indicator of global warming is to look for weather phenomena that are increasingly energetic - more severe storms, higher winds, longer droughts, record temperatures at both ends of the scale, bigger floods, colder cold fronts and warmer warm fronts clashing against one another.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@Ims.com), December 16, 2000.


Craig's complete lack of understanding of the true nature of global warming is unfortunately representative of the ignorance of a majority of Americans. They think that when they have periods of very cold weather this means that global warming is not possible, when in fact it is evidence of exactly the opposite... global warming is indeed causing extreme changes within our biosphere. Deadly changes.

-- (goodbye@blue.sky), December 16, 2000.

Whatever. Just send some of that high pressure to the Great Lakes. I really don't want to be snowed in for my aunt's birthday tomorrow.

-- (raven@never.more), December 16, 2000.

Brian and Goodbye,

I believe that Craig does understand what is meant by Global Warming, and that it is both of you who are looking for eveidence of something that just isn't there.

Have a look at the atmospheric temperatures as recorded by satelite and displayed here. The movement in global temperature follows the El-Nino/La-Nina index almost exactly. This was predicted by Dr Theodor Landscheidt and shown graphically on this chart.

Global Warming is as you say "Global", and therefore the land tempearture records cannot be used to determine what is happening globally. However, even if we do consider the data that is available from land based temerature stations that are removed from any Heat Island Effect then it becomes obvious that there is no warming.

Please feel free to discuss this further at Global Warming. I enjoy a good argument.

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), December 17, 2000.



All of you are wrong. The trend is to global cooling, not global warming. Our best chance is to crank up emissions to ward-off a 100,000 year ice age. Another idea is to alter the earth's trajectory so that we will orbit closer to the sun. Others think that earthlings should colonize the planet Venus. Send money now!

Will the world end in fire or ice?

Global Cooling

DrStrangelove@NOAA.org), December 17, 2000.


Whole Earth Quarterly had an article a few years ago that explained the effect of the ocean current that causes warm water to flow north from the equator, cool and sink, and sort of act like a conveyor belt with vast effects on our present climate. The article claimed that the current could be interrupted and cause another ice age within about 20 years or so -- sort of like flipping a giant switch. I could dig around and try to find the name and date of the article, if you want it.

-- helen (b@c.k), December 17, 2000.

Malcolm,

You are either high or a shill for the corporate establishment.

The average global temperature has been increasing since as long as we have been recording it. This is data that is taken every day from locations all over the planet and averaged together. It shows that the AVERAGE temperature of the ENTIRE planet has been gradually increasing for many decades, and even more rapidly since the 1940's and 50's, when the use of automobiles and industrialization greatly increased.

This is called GLOBAL WARMING. Learn it, like it, and get used to living with it. If you refuse to accept it now, you will soon enough. You won't have a choice in the matter.

Your source shows that El-Nino produces warmer temperatures. DUUUUUH, we've only known that for hundreds of years.

Of course El-Nino events produced warmer temperatures, THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE!! Just because some dimwit shows that correlation on a chart does not change the fact that the baseline global temperature is still increasing, INDEPENDENTLY of El-Nino.

El-Nino events have been increasing in FREQUENCY, INTENSITY, and DURATION as a DIRECT result of accelerating global warming.

-- (goodbye@blue.sky), December 17, 2000.


Helen, is this what you are talking about?

Switch

-- (DrStrangelove@NOAA.org), December 17, 2000.


Dr. Strangelove,

Yes, that's what I was talking about. I believe I may have read the original 1987 article, but this article in Nature was easier to understand. Shorter words, you know. :)

-- helen (b@c.k), December 18, 2000.



It's 27 this morning. That has got to be considered 'cold' in all 50 states.......right??

Yall happy now?? ;-)

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), December 18, 2000.


Malcolm: >> I believe that Craig does understand what is meant by Global Warming [...] <<

Go back and read what Craig wrote.

Craig may indeed understand global warming, and what he wrote may have been a concious joke. But what he wrote did not in any way reflect a good understanding. And if you think the fact that it was cold for a couple of days in December where Craig lives is an adequate refutation of global warming then you are wrong.

>> both of you [...] are looking for eveidence of something that just isn't there. <<

Now go back and read what I said.

I purposely made no claims or assertions about the existance or non-existance of global warming. Rather, I stated what would constitute evidence of global warming, if you are merely examining local weather phenonmena - as Craig was.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), December 18, 2000.


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