Thursday, March 13, 2008

Arctic Heat Discharge

As mentioned briefly yesterday, our thoughts on heat transport into the Arctic must be completely retooled to allow for a vastly larger seasonal amplitude. All our prior observations had shown us a largely steady movement of heat that varied little over the decades. Unmeasurable variation meant that a modest heat increase in the northern hemisphere was able to accumulate and provide a measurable warming signal. The abrupt and apparently unusual shift in winds has now dissipated that surplus.

Yes, I know that we are looking at a mere one year piece of the record, bur it was an unprecedented climate event with no prior comparable. My initial difficulty was linking the causation event of a warm summer arctic with the present effect of a very chilled Northern hemisphere. Confirmation of the extent of winter chill proved that the surplus heat had suddenly disappeared and we all came to appreciate the global cooling system much better.

This very likely completely delinks the apparent association of CO2 content with apparent global temperatures that have possibly now gone their own way. The climate may be back to below average temperatures for a couple of decades, which is a bit of a disappointment.

If this explanation is correct, then unless these winds are maintained for some reason which seems unlikely, the Arctic will now rebuild its supply of perennial sea ice until we need another atmospheric heat discharge. This tells us that a true runaway global warming as predicted by a few is utterly impossible. It is nice to know that mother nature can easily handle this. I note that even an incredible amount of heat could be handled by this mechanism, just as the tropical ocean discharges a build up in ocean temperatures be spawning hurricanes.

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