Yeah, I'm pissed but I still... 
like Polar Bear Poontane!
Posted on 11/13/2007 12:09:58 PM PST by dan_s
A team of NASA and university scientists has detected an ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decade-long time scales. The results suggest not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming.
The team, led by James Morison of the University of Washington's Polar Science Center Applied Physics Laboratory, Seattle, used data from an Earth-observing satellite and from deep-sea pressure gauges to monitor Arctic Ocean circulation from 2002 to 2006. They measured changes in the weight of columns of Arctic Ocean water, from the surface to the ocean bottom. That weight is influenced by factors such as the height of the ocean's surface, and its salinity. A saltier ocean is heavier and circulates differently than one with less salt.
The very precise deep-sea gauges were developed with help from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; the satellite is NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace). The team of scientists found a 10-millibar decrease in water pressure at the bottom of the ocean at the North Pole between 2002 and 2006, equal to removing the weight of 10 centimeters (four inches) of water from the ocean. The distribution and size of the decrease suggest that Arctic Ocean circulation changed from the counterclockwise pattern it exhibited in the 1990s to the clockwise pattern that was dominant prior to 1990.
Reporting in Geophysical Research Letters, the authors attribute the reversal to a weakened Arctic Oscillation, a major atmospheric circulation pattern in the northern hemisphere. The weakening reduced the salinity of the upper ocean near the North Pole, decreasing its weight and changing its circulation.
"Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming," said Morison.
"While some 1990s climate trends, such as declines in Arctic sea ice extent, have continued, these results suggest at least for the 'wet' part of the Arctic -- the Arctic Ocean -- circulation reverted to conditions like those prevalent before the 1990s," he added.
The Arctic Oscillation was fairly stable until about 1970, but then varied on more or less decadal time scales, with signs of an underlying upward trend, until the late 1990s, when it again stabilized. During its strong counterclockwise phase in the 1990s, the Arctic environment changed markedly, with the upper Arctic Ocean undergoing major changes that persisted into this century. Many scientists viewed the changes as evidence of an ongoing climate shift, raising concerns about the effects of global warming on the Arctic.
Morison said data gathered by Grace and the bottom pressure gauges since publication of the paper earlier this year highlight how short-lived the ocean circulation changes can be. The newer data indicate the bottom pressure has increased back toward its 2002 level. "The winter of 2006-2007 was another high Arctic Oscillation year and summer sea ice extent reached a new minimum," he said. "It is too early to say, but it looks as though the Arctic Ocean is ready to start swinging back to the counterclockwise circulation pattern of the 1990s again."
Morison cautioned that while the recent decadal-scale changes in the circulation of the Arctic Ocean may not appear to be directly tied to global warming, most climate models predict the Arctic Oscillation will become even more strongly counterclockwise in the future. "The events of the 1990s may well be a preview of how the Arctic will respond over longer periods of time in a warming world," he said.
Grace monitors tiny month-to-month changes in Earth's gravity field caused primarily by the movement of water in Earth's land, ocean, ice and atmosphere reservoirs. As such it can infer changes in the weight of columns of ocean water. In contrast, the pressure gauges installed on the sea floor in 2005-2006 directly measured water pressure at the bottom of the ocean. Gauge data were remotely recovered during the first year of the study.
"The close agreement between the North Pole pressure gauges and Grace data demonstrates Grace's potential for tracking world ocean circulation," said study co-author John Wahr of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
"Satellite altimeters, such as NASA's Jason, are ideal for studying ocean circulation but can't be used at Earth's poles due to ice cover," said study co-author Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Our results show Grace can be a powerful tool for tracking changes in the distribution of mass in the Arctic Ocean, as well as its circulation."
DUUURRRRHHH! More lies from KKKorporations, Bu$h, Rethuglicants, and greedy kkkapitalists!
See, climate lawyers, journalists, Al Gore, Hollywood stars, Osama bin Laden, the Sierra Club, random sociology and liberal arts professors, the DNC and other respected scientific luminaries and communities have thus far awarded zero consensus points to these notions. And the IPCC’s lawyers, media consultants, and editors with degrees in Feminist literature have yet to revise the report line by line to render it solid, consensus, enlightenment-worthy science, so it can be safely disregarded.
(do I really need a tag?)
Yeah, I'm pissed but I still... like Polar Bear Poontane!
No, all it means is that the water will swirl down the toilet the other way...
This is AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH!
Not that I think it'll ever see the light of day in the Mainstream Propaganda Machine.
They will seize on this sentence:
“Many scientists viewed the changes as evidence of an ongoing climate shift, raising concerns about the effects of global warming on the Arctic.”
And this:
“Morison cautioned that while the recent decadal-scale changes in the circulation of the Arctic Ocean may not appear to be directly tied to global warming, most climate models predict the Arctic Oscillation will become even more strongly counterclockwise in the future. “The events of the 1990s may well be a preview of how the Arctic will respond over longer periods of time in a warming world,” he said.”
Calling Al Gore...Please return your Oscar, your Emmy, and any other awards you may have received as a result of your lying, manipulative, fear mongering movie.
Well...very interesting!
Hmmm Global Warming eh?
Wait until the warm waters of the Gulf Stream stop flowing northward. England and most of Northern Europe will fall prey to more arctic conditions, and another Ice Age..... global warming. WhatEVER. :)
They are hedging....can’t afford to lose their Research Grants....
Cool...can we give Al Gore a "swirly"?
shift haPPens..
When my bath water starts draining counter-clockwise then I’ll panic!
this is so good, I hope it’s not one of those phony postings there were a couple weeks ago.
This is the key phrase. To buy into the global warming hysteria cult, you have to believe in the global climate models (GCM). That's how you get all of the various observations, records, and micro studies to coalesce into a prediction of future climate. One big problem here, the GCM did not predict this Arctic current occilation. Why, you ask? Because we don't know diddly squat about ocean current occilations, and even less about Arctic ones.
Most of the ocean current data that we have was collected by Royal Navy and merchant seamen in the Age of Sail when this information was important. After steamships became the fashion, this data was no longer routinely collected. This means that much of the data supporting the alogorithms in the GCM is over 100 years old.
The GCMs have been around for about 30 years. In my early days I helped collect some of the datasets that were used to build them. They were crap back then and are no doubt crap today. This is why the GCM's have failed to predict any climate or weather event since they first started to crank out predictions 30 years ago.
This is the flimsy thread that the whole global warming mania depends upon.
Hey, I’m happy as I will request another 5 million to update my computer model.
Oops!
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