Jennifer Marohasy

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Arctic Warming: Radical Changes in Climatic Conditions Observed

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The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers who sail the seas about Spitzbergen and the eastern Arctic, all point to a radical change in climatic conditions, and hitherto unheard of high temperatures in that part of the earth’s surface.

The article pictured below is the source of this information:

changing-artic_monthly_wx_review_intro.png

Thanks to Anthony Watts for locating this.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jan Pompe says

    August 1922 Hmmmm.

    What was the extent of ice free water this past year?

    Interesting. thanks for that Paul.

  2. Ann Novek says

    Today the Marine Research Institute, Bergen, Norway, states that the temperature is increasing in the Barents Sea.

    This is especially observed in the ice cover.

    It has been observed that southern species have been observed in northern areas .

    Sea birds and polar bears have as well increased levels of contaminants.

    The eco system in the Barents Sea and the Spitzbergen is very complex, depending on variations in the physical environment and in variations in biomass.

    The eco system is very rich in species, especially on sea bottom species , but as well in pelagic ones.

  4. Ann Novek says

    ” Would that be PCBs in Polar Bears Ann?” – Paul

    Yes, POPS like PCB and mercury levels are increased in higher organisms , especially sea birds and polar bears , according to IMR.

  6. DHMO says

    In the last northern summer Top Gear drove that’s right drove a Toyota suv to the north pole. According to satellites it was the lowest ice extent since they have been recording. There was enough ice at adventure bay to drive from land 75 degrees north which I guess is magnetic north. Sounds like it was far more than 1922. Above is not complete the original is at http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf
    Bugger the climate does change!

  7. Ian Mott says

    Aaah yes, the perils of extrapolation. And it still hasn’t sunk into the lard-like grey matter of Bimbanthropus climatensis.

  8. Sid Reynolds says

    Thanks Paul, and thanks to Anthony Watts.
    Arctic Warming…Deja Vue, what! You really shouldn’t publish such facts…Just sends the AGW luvvies, who are the Reality Deniers, into denial freefall. They then of course fall back on invoking Maier’s Law,.. which states that..”If the facts don’t conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.”

    Regarding the Polar Bear skull in Scotland, apparently they have been there in more recent times. There are 17th Centuary reports of them coming ashore in numbers on the Orkneys, from ice-flows, during the cold conditions of the LIA.

  10. Mr T says

    Probably because there’s no need. This is a under researched post. Where is your analysis? If you are convinced by a newspaper clipping from 1922 then you need to check your skeptic gland.

  13. Mr T says

    Paul, are you 12 years old?
    Why would you bring this up now? It’s a stupid trap you’re fumbling with.

    Here’s how it works.

    1 Say something stupid, like “in 1922 the arctic was warm, because a newspaper clipping says so”
    The you wait… Remember we are waiting for the prey, you have to be quiet.

    Sadly you had to wait ages.. too long it seems. So you shout out “Hey you lot, I said something really dumb and you haven’t said anything to refute it! Wow, I must be right”

    Then someone sees the trap (because it’s pretty obvious), so they get curious. Come and look… then they say
    “You know that thing you said, it’s dumb. Here, look at this, it’s much more interesting” – they say this knowing they are setting off the ‘clever’ trap, mainly out of a kind of amused curiousity…

    Then the Trapmaster springs into action! “Ha ha! You very dumb person, it is YOU that are wrong, just look at this!” Then is revealed in ALL it’s glory the Wonder Trap ™.

    (pause)

    (hmmmm)

    You know… it’s not much of a trap. Especially considering your ‘skepticism’ of tree ring data…
    Seriously, are you saying that most of the Holocene was hotter than now?

    To be honest it’s disappointing Paul. For a while there I actually thought you were interested in the science.
    How many articles have you read about this? Here’s an easy start… Use Google Scholar, type in Arctic sea ice proxy as keywords… See what you get.

    Heck this one http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/278/5341/1251
    even discusses the 1922 thing.

    And this one
    http://www.springerlink.com/content/h328n0425378u736/
    points out that the rise in CO2 and Methane started about 8000 years ago… Strangely enough coinciding with the beginning of agriculture

    Yawn.

  15. Mr T says

    Again with TrapMaster ™!
    1922 satellite… that’s funny.

    “Although warming, particularly after 1920, was likely caused by increases in atmospheric trace gases, the initiation of the warming in the mid-19th century suggests that increased solar irradiance, decreased volcanic activity, and feedbacks internal to the climate system played roles.”

    That’s from the paper. So apparently other people know about the warming around then, and they attribute it (and the warming in the mid-19th century) to a variety of factors.

    All I am saying is that your newspaper clipping holds no weight. You can’t say anything about the arctic with that clipping.

  16. Paul Biggs says

    Oddly enough, solar scientist Leif Svalgaard mentioned Ruddiman yesterday. No one really picked up Ruddiman’s hypothesis and ran with it. It’s a bit ‘out there.’

    Svalgaard’s work on solar irradiance suggests it varies much less than is currently believed.

    Tsonis et al reckon that they can account for the 1913, 1942, 1978 climate shifts using the collective behavior of known climate cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, and the North Pacific Oscillation. They predict more shifts in 2033 and 2072, and a 0.2 Celsius cooling between 2005 and 2020.

  19. gavin says

    Hey! All future reference to blogs should be outlawed, particularly this one; otherwise we go round and round in circles forever chasing a tale.

    Note too I don’t generally read RC or CA etc unless dragged across by this place. Also I don’t accept odd clippings from a hatchet man.

    My angle would be to interpret the Andree expedition mystery and the White Island discovery. Simply there is much more info over time.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bratvaag_Expedition

  20. Mr T says

    Come on Paul, quoting newspaper articles and your own blog are pretty poor examples of ‘science’ – You need to use published material…

  21. Paul Biggs says

    Anthony Watts is a meteorologist blogger, not a hatchet man.

    The clippings aren’t from a newspaper either, but from the monthly weather review. Since when did the weather have to be peer reviewed?

  22. Tilo Reber says

    “Note too I don’t generally read RC”

    Then why give us Wiki links. William Connolly is the GW editor for Wiki. He is a contributor to RC and an honorary member of the hockey team.

  23. Tilo Reber says

    “Come on Paul, quoting newspaper articles and your own blog are pretty poor examples of ‘science’ ”

    Considering that AGW has little to do with science and very much to do with alarmist social manipulation, I think that the article is appropriate.

  24. Louis Hissink says

    Heavens to Betsy, I don’t read RC at all, and I feel all the better for it :-0

  25. Louis Hissink says

    And of course real scientists and honest debaters don’t hide behind pseudonyms.