By Kenneth Richard on 1. July 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterA new study reports that during Pleistocene cold stages, when CO2 concentrations dipped below 200 ppm, Arctic Siberia had much more fertile soil and productive vegetation than exists today. Extensive grassland ecosystems could sustain year-round grazers: horses, mammoths, bison. Today this region’s large herbivores must be fed by humans to secure survival due to […]
Posted in Arctic, Paleo-climatology |
By Kenneth Richard on 21. June 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterSea ice has been declining in the Canadian North Atlantic since the 1970s, and yet the harp seal population has been estimated to have risen from a little over 1 million in 1971 to about 7.5 million in 2012 to 2019. But model projections suggest the seal populations will decrease in the future due […]
Posted in Arctic, Sea Ice |
By Kenneth Richard on 20. May 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterA new study asserts that when Greenland naturally warms by multiple degrees per decade, this “abrupt climate variability can result entirely from unforced or noise-induced oscillations of the coupled atmosphere-ice-ocean system.” This means the recent modest climate changes for Greenland may easily fall within the scope of an unforced natural variability pattern. In the […]
Posted in Arctic, Natural Variability |
By Kenneth Richard on 13. May 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterFossilized evidence of temperate rainforests only hundreds of kilometers from Antarctica’s South Pole (82°S) has been uncovered. It suggests the warmest mean month was 18.5°C about 90 million years ago. Today the warmest mean month for this location is about -20°C. Image Source: EarthSky (press release for Klages et al., 2020) Despite rapidly rising […]
Posted in Antarctic, Arctic, CO2 and GHG, Paleo-climatology |
By Kenneth Richard on 3. May 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterA new study (Kullman, 2021) suggests ~9000-year-old tree remains can be found buried in “currently empty snow hollows and glacier cirques” at elevations 600-700 m higher than where trees can grow today, implying a >3°C warmer Early Holocene climate. Treelines were still 75-100 m higher during the Medieval Warm Period…and even during the 15th […]
Posted in Arctic, Medieval Warm Period, Paleo-climatology |
By P Gosselin on 14. April 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterThough it has dropped since its peak in 1979, Arctic sea ice extent in March has remained stable since 2005. There are two months that are of particular interest in the Arctic: September, when sea ice reaches its minimum, and March, when it reaches its maximum. Gains 504,000 sq km. Today we look at […]
Posted in Antarctic, Arctic, Sea Ice |
By Kenneth Richard on 12. April 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterScientists have determined the “optimal thermal conditions” for southwestern Greenland were when summer sea surface temperatures averaged about 12°C from 9,000 to 5,500 years ago, which is substantially warmer than modern summer temperatures (4.0-5.2°C) for this region. A few years ago McFarlin et al. (2018) determined northwestern Greenland was 4-7°C warmer than 1952-2014 during […]
Posted in Arctic, Paleo-climatology
By Kenneth Richard on 29. March 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterA new study (Hanna et al., 2021) affirms a significant warming trend occurred in the late 20th century across Greenland, mirroring the warming that occurred in the early 20th century. Since 2001, the temperature trends across Greenland have stopped rising and begun cooling. A temperature pattern has been emerging in Greenland during the last […]
Posted in Arctic, Cooling/Temperature |
By Kenneth Richard on 18. March 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterScientists (Liu et al., 2021) have assessed the Pacific North American (PNA) pattern, “largely a mode of internal variability,” is “an important driver of western Arctic sea variability and trends”. The heat-redistributing PNA pattern recently shifted from a negative (1980s) to positive (1995-) phase. This internal shift “induced significant increases in poleward heat” transport, […]
Posted in Arctic, Sea Ice |
By P Gosselin on 17. March 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterBy Snowfan Global cool-down. 2m-temperature-deviation in March 2021 cut in half compared to a year earlier. Source: Karsten Haustein. Global “Rahmstorf warming” continues in March 2021. Like January and February,March 2021 has so far been significantly colder than the same month last year. In the NCEP analysis up to 17 March 2021 and in […]
Posted in Antarctic, Arctic, Cooling/Temperature |
By P Gosselin on 10. March 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterThe media and activists, among them a number of “Climate scientists”, have been declaring that Greenland ice melt has been accelerating. Today the German Klimaschau climate news video reports, however, that this has not been the case over the recent years. All the recent talk about accelerating Greenland ice loss over the past years […]
Posted in Arctic, Misc. |
By P Gosselin on 9. March 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterAlfred Wegener Institute: Sea ice development in both polar regions at normal level Arctic On 31 January, 2021, the sea-ice extent in the Arctic was 14.29 million km², roughly the same level as in the previous two years. In terms of the long-term trend for the month, January 2021 comes in at 7th place […]
Posted in Antarctic, Arctic |
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