little ice age ahead

[UV-RAY]

I've never discussed 'catastrophic warming' in my life!

You haven't but I know a poster on here who has Pete.

[knocker]

Something else changed around the the era highlighted above - a rapid decline in solar activity. We need to look what went before the Maunder we are so familiar with.

 

 

 

True but it doesn't always correlate.

 

Historical studies of the climate in the Low Countries in the last thousand years has yielded many new findings in recent decades, Largely thanks to the work of the historical geographer Jan Buisman. The sources used in his research include chronicles, diaries and journals, letters, pamphlets, and weather diaries, Data on grain and fruit harvests, wine vintages, tree rings, glacier movements, and whether rivers were frozen over or not can also be important for reconstructing the weather of the past.

 

The first severe winter of the LIA, the coldest for fifty years, was that of 1564-1565.

 

The Nieuwe Chroniclevan Branandt published in Antwerp in 1565 reported.

 

In this year of 65 it froze so severely for ten weeks on end that people in Antwerp crossed the the Scheldt on foot and horseback from Boxing Day to Twelfth Night and because of the great novelty stalls and tents were erected on the ice, where food and drink and other wares were sold.

 

The years around 1600 were the worst in the LIA, with bitterly cold winters with lots of snow. Two very severe winters 1607-1608 marked the beginning and end of the Twelve Year Truce in the war with Spain.

 

Source: Holland Frozen in Time, Ariane van Suchtelen.

 

There was thread on this in the History section.

 

http://forum.netweather.tv/topic/64475-beginning-of-the-little-ice-age/

 

It is now thought that during the Little Ice Age NAO Index was more persistent in a negative mode. For this reason the regional variability during the Little Ice Age can be understood in terms of changes in atmospheric circulation patterns in the North Atlantic region.

 

 

http://www.eh-resources.org/climate3.html

 

Iceberg by Delfhaven Pier 2nd January 1565

Cornelius Jacobsz van Culemborch

 

Historical Museum Schielandhuis, Rotterdam

 

 

Edited November 14, 2013 by knocker

[stewfox]

"""It is now thought that during the Little Ice Age NAO Index was more persistent in a negative mode. For this reason the regional variability during the Little Ice Age can be understood in terms of changes in atmospheric circulation patterns in the North Atlantic region""

 

For a LIA I would expect to see a cooling in North West Europe and Eastern USA to start with

[4wd]

 

 

Iceberg by Delfhaven Pier 2nd January 1565

Cornelius Jacobsz van Culemborch

 

Historical Museum Schielandhuis, Rotterdam

That illustration is interesting, it looks very like on of those ice-push events you can find on youtube .(rather than anything to do with an iceberg, was that how it was titled?)The artist has quite clearly shown rubble type ice piling up on the shoreline until trees were broken etc.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPH2_flByJM

[VillagePlank]

Not sure if this link has been posted,

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/Real-risk-of-a-Maunder-minimum-Little-Ice-Age-says-leading-scientist

 

So, here it is.

[knocker]

That illustration is interesting, it looks very like on of those ice-push events you can find on youtube .(rather than anything to do with an iceberg, was that how it was titled?)The artist has quite clearly shown rubble type ice piling up on the shoreline until trees were broken etc. 

 

Exactly how it was titled. Not that I'm suggesting it was an iceberg as we know them.

 

It's interesting to mull over the correlation, if any,  between the frequency of harsh winters and the popularity of painted winter landscapes in the Dutch Republic in the 17th century.

 

Two out of three winters brought prolonged periods of freezing weather, snow and ice were normal phenomena, and Dutch landscape painters depicted them as a matter of course.

[Gray-Wolf]

Maybe we need to make a list, that carries broad agreement, of all the events that we see mooted as 'drivers' in that period?

 

From CO2 draw down from the European/Mesoamerican depopulations to Albedo. From Vulcanicity to ocean currents. From low solar to 'natural variability'?

 

As with our global climate today it is difficult to draw out any one factor that 'rules the roost' and so it must be safe to say that it was similar 400yrs ago?

 

Even if we end 'agreeing to disagree' we will end up with a list of 'suspects' to compare with today's conditions so as to better gauge this risks of befalling similar?

 

For my part I can see that volcanic impacts on a planet showing a drop in GHG's could lead to Albedo reinforcements that , under low solar , could lead to changes in global circulation patterns ( sending us around again ) with only the 'soot' of the infant Industrial revolution breaking the chain of events by breaking european Albedo exacerbation? This followed by heightened GHG forcings over the next period ( and no major eruptions?) enabled us to set forth on the current interlinked voyage into a warming world?

 

Should a 'spread of influences' have played a part in the conditions reported I find it difficult to see how similar could spring forth from this 'start point' of near double CO2 levels and global temps ( ocean and air ) well above those 400yrs ago? Even a major eruption impact ,being only a short lived negative driver, would soon find it's influence  overcome by our oceanic storage heaters?

 

We would all , I believe, wish to see our planet veer away from the direction it appears headed in and it may be very true that the only 'realistic' chance we have to see this is in the hands of nature and not the commitment of mankind to drive such a change....... I just think it a very long shot ( at best).

[stewfox]

 

Should a 'spread of influences' have played a part in the conditions reported I find it difficult to see how similar could spring forth from this 'start point' of near double CO2 levels and global temps ( ocean and air ) well above those 400yrs ago? Even a major eruption impact ,being only a short lived negative driver, would soon find it's influence  overcome by our oceanic storage heaters?

 

We would all , I believe, wish to see our planet veer away from the direction it appears headed in and it may be very true that the only 'realistic' chance we have to see this is in the hands of nature and not the commitment of mankind to drive such a change....... I just think it a very long shot ( at best).

 

Perhaps made man made drivers in the next year 50/100 years will override any LIA being established we don’t know.

 

However I think people are confusing an LIA with having miles of ice at our door step ?

 

There are of course theories around the cause of  LIA and how wide its impact spread (ie Local or Global)  but we are talking about temp abnormalities between -0.4c to -0.8c off the long term 'norm' rather then -6c to -7c off the long term 'norm' as occurred during the last full ice age.

 

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

 

-0.95c was the temperature abnormality for first 6 months of this year and would have fitted nicely within a LIA period

 

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html

 

Could man made climate change make it more likely to have some short lived LIA events of 10yrs ?

 

(Summer Artic ice goes implications etc ? ?)

Edited November 14, 2013 by stewfox

[VillagePlank]

North Atlantic circulation implicated in amplifying the effects of the warm medieval period and the cold of the little ice age.

 

http://www.bangor.ac.uk/oceansciences/staff/pdf/Wanamaker_etal_2012_Nature.pdf

Edited November 14, 2013 by Sparkicle

[VillagePlank]

Trenberth 2007 suggests a 230 year lag for oceanic effects to be felt.

 

http://www.oco.noaa.gov/resources/Documents/OceanObs_Intro_Trenberth_FY09.pdf

 

EDIT: if rapidly mixed, which most of the ocean isn't. Whoops Surface temperature response is somewhere between 10-100 years.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Sparkicle

[Gray-Wolf]

Hi stew!

 

Yeah, we hear a bit about the possible impacts in our neck of the woods from any future warming and impacts of both a melting Arctic and Greenland on ocean currents? I think I can cope with colder Winters if it doesn't have to be paired with cool ,damp summers!!!!

 

I like your qualifiers b.t.w. I think some of the posters are thinking more in the terms of 'full blown Glaciation' as opposed to the 1c 'shave off' that you outlined?

 

Some folk even go as far as suggesting that the lessening of the negative impacts from our fossil fuel pollution ( global dimming and cloud top brightening) could be holding those sort of global increases in temp effectively cancelling out any cooling as the developing nation clean up their energy production?

 

I think that maybe some folk are skewing their view by using current rates of increase as a 'norm' in our warming rates and not where the figure would be without the current ensemble of cool drivers?

 

All in all I feel that a L.I.A. might be something that we 'need' to keep away from seeing more frequent weather extremes that will mess with the global economy?

[stewfox]

 

Hi stew!

 

All in all I feel that a L.I.A. might be something that we 'need' to keep away from seeing more frequent weather extremes that will mess with the global economy?

 

I don’t follow the logic ?

 

Surely a short lived LIA  (assume 10 yrs North America/ Northern Europe) is the last thing we would 'need' ?

 

A consequence of global warming may produce these localised /regional abnormalities but would such abnormalities keep the deniers busy for another 10 years while Australia and other parts of the world continue to bake  ?

 

It surely would promote more ‘inaction’ .

 

Best thing for the global warming lobby is for the ski slopes of the USA to turn to mush ?

 

 

[Gray-Wolf]

I would agree with your sentiments stew but I'm in a 'glass half full' moment where I see Japan reneging on emmisions pledges whilst parts of the Amazon saw a leap in deforestation of 28% and new data handling techniques allowed us to see this period of negative natural forcings having truly minimal impacts on global temps whilst ocean warming skyrocketed over the same period.........all set to the nauseous backdrop of Misleaders trying to downplay one of the horriblest weather disasters of the year so that it would not take centre stage at the Warsaw talks.

 

As such the only way not to suffer is to not have temps regain the 1980's rate of warming (should we find ourself easing back into a set of positive natural drivers over the coming decade) is to have a period of global cooling and not rely on humanity to do a darn thing about it all......as i'm sure they wont!

[gigabite]

I was referring to the longer term.We had Milankovitch driven cooling from 8,000 years ago until shortly after the industrial revolution, just as would be expected as we head into the next glacial period. Then it all reversed in an incredibly dramatic fashion. 

The elongation of the earth's orbit & the diminished solar max as a result of the closest approach of Jupiter ever could have an implication.

[gigabite]

Over the last 30 years negative SOI frequency has trended down. Indicating the El Niño threshold is occurring less often.

Edited November 29, 2014 by gigabite

[knocker]

What exactly is the definition of a little Ice Age? I ask as I'm trying to fit it in to this context.

 

The Pliocene and Pleistocene are a time of establishment of the great northern hemisphere ice sheets. During this time, the ice sheets settled into a rhythm of expansion and retreat - the rhythm of the coming and going of ice ages. The notion of an "ice age" is distinct from that of the "icehouse climate state"  The latter term refers to a span of time (usually several million years) during which there is permanent ice at one or both poles. Within the time embraced by an icehouse climate state, ice volume is not constant, but fluctuates episodically with variations in ice volume that can be on the order of a factor of two (judging from the Pleistocene). Individual episodes of large ice volume within an icehouse climate are referred to as ice ages, with the warmer periods in between referred to as interglacials, though the ice doesn't come close to disappearing completely. In the Pleistocene, the fluctuation in ice volume is dominated by changes in northern hemisphere ice sheets, but as ice ages come and go, the entire globe becomes colder and warmer.

[gigabite]

The little ice age is a left tailed extreme of a global cooling trend.

[4wd]

We are still in an ice age state compared to what is normal for earth.
For the great majority of earth history there was little or no permanent ice at least away from high mountain tops.

The present situation with ice periodically expanding ad contacting is only temporary, and depends on Antarctica remaining resident near the south pole and the continents almost closing off the Arctic Ocean from global currents.
This is a curious and rather brief moment in history.

[Isolated Frost]

I think this is very plausible. The world has been brainwashed into believing this carbon malarkey and have been consequently robbed by governments who have had their "green" bank accounts filled to brim. Of course, according to our leaders there is no possible way that global warming cannot be happening. However, this is not through scientific fact, this is through fear that they will have to endure the public outrage for robbing us blind for the global warming that IS NOT HAPPENING.

 

On the other side, governments like to control everything, even the weather. Therefore, in their opinion, anything that happens to our climate must be man made and somehow the public has to pay for that. They simply cannot accept that if mother nature wants to poke us in the eye with a pooey stick, she will do it perfectly well on here own and nothing human kind can do will stop here. This strikes fear in the hearts of governments around the world so they like to give the impression that they can somehow control mother nature with money.... bless them.

 

What they should be doing is taking note of the natural cycles that earth goes through, and preparing for what is an already over due ice age and coming up with ways to sustain food sources, heat etc.

 

Rant over, just an opinion, don't shoot me!

I've only just looked at this thread and this early reply strikes me as interesting; particularly as multinational corporations, in particular, oil and gas giants often form the anti-AGW lobby; whilst the majority of respected scientists form the AGW lobby.

 

In reference to the title, I can't really see it happening whatsoever, we'd need to recover sharply from the near lows we are currently at before we can formulate some coherent response as to where we go next- we're teetering on the abyss no matter what inter-year anomalies suggest. 

[Hocus Pocus]

I've only just looked at this thread and this early reply strikes me as interesting; particularly as multinational corporations, in particular, oil and gas giants often form the anti-AGW lobby; whilst the majority of respected scientists form the AGW lobby.

 

In reference to the title, I can't really see it happening whatsoever, we'd need to recover sharply from the near lows we are currently at before we can formulate some coherent response as to where we go next- we're teetering on the abyss no matter what inter-year anomalies suggest.

As December 2010 showed we can't discount anything however unlikely it may appear.

[gigabite]

Nobody seems to realize that the primary metric humanity uses to measure the global warming is irradiance. It is a 16th century methodology adapted to the 21st century.

Mankind would be bettered served by a gas filled sphere and a thermometer transmitting the temperature from L1.

The smoothing of the data makes look like surface radiation varies only slightly from season to season, and that skews the greenhouse gas equation to the right.

Irradiance fall in to the category of if the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

Life exists on this planet simply because of the range of the orbit, the intensity of the sun & the liquid planet core. In an expanding universe the earth's orbit elongates, the sun dims & the core cools.

Edited December 1, 2014 by gigabite

[knocker]

There is much uniformed twoddle written about Ice Ages so I'm not going to add to it. I suggest reading up on the subject, there are a number of sources, but one that I'm familiar with is Principles of Planetary Climate by Professor Raymond T. Pierrehumbert. Highly recommended. One thing I will say I've no idea why people think one might be iminent unless it is to divert attention away from more pressing matters.

[Hocus Pocus]

There is much uniformed twoddle written about Ice Ages so I'm not going to add to it. I suggest reading up on the subject, there are a number of sources, but one that I'm familiar with is Principles of Planetary Climate by Professor Raymond T. Pierrehumbert. Highly recommended. One thing I will say I've no idea why people think one might be iminent unless it is to divert attention away from more pressing matters.

I though we were discussing the Little Ice Age.

[knocker]

I though we were discussing the Little Ice Age.

 

Well many of the posts seemed to have wandered from that but okay a quote from the above book.

 

 

The Liltfe Ice Age is another Holocene climate fluctuation of considerable interest. This term refers to a period of generally cool northern hemisphere extratropical land temperatures extending from approximately 1500 to 1800. Tree ring estimates suggest the northern hemisphere mean temperature dropped by something over 0.5 oc between the year 1400 and 1600. The cooling is corroborated by records of advances of mountain glaciers, sailors' observations of sea ice, and agricultural records. The Little Ice Age is too short and too recent to have anything to do with the precessional cycle, and while it is possible that fluctuations in the ocean circulation could have produced the cooling, the prime candidate for an explanation of the Little Ice Age is a temporary slight dimming of the Sun. Sunspot observations do indicate a cessation in the normal solar sunspot cycle - called the Maunder Minimum- at about the time of the Little Ice Age. However, most estimates of the associated solar output change are far too small to yield a significant cooling. Various mechanisms are under investigation which could amplify the response to the small solar fluctuation, but in the grand scheme of things the Little Ice Age is a rather subtle event, and accordingly hard to understand, particularly in terms of simple models.

 

 

There is also a recent study identifying volcanic eruptions as the cause.

 

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/ncfa-sma013012.php

 

So be my guest and explain to me why another Little Ice Age is iminent.

Edited December 1, 2014 by knocker

[Hocus Pocus]

Well many of the posts seemed to have wandered from that but okay a quote from the above book.

 

 

There is also a recent study identifying volcanic eruptions as the cause.

 

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/ncfa-sma013012.php

 

So be my guest and explain to me why another Little Ice Age is iminent.

There's plenty of empirical evidence linking the LIA to solar activity so if the current projections of solar output continue then why not as it matters not what the starting point is now as December 2010 showed, the simple answer is that nobody knows what the future holds but there appears to be many who think they do.