Thursday - February 09, 2012

Please Just Shut Up And Go Away

The Himalayas and nearby peaks have lost no ice in past 10 years, study shows

Meltwater from Asia’s peaks is much less than previously estimated, but lead scientist says the loss of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern

Earth’s Polar Ice Melting Less Than Thought

Ocean levels worldwide are rising about six hundredths of an inch per year

0.06” is a hair thicker than a dime, which is 1.35mm or 0.053”. At that rate it would take the oceans 200 years to rise a foot, and more than 1000 years to rise enough to seriously screw with the world’s coastlines.

The GRACE satellite experiment, however, covered the entire globe and found that all the world’s glaciers and ice caps combined, apart for those in Greenland and Antarctica, had lost about 148 billion tonnes of ice, or about 39 cubic miles, annually between 2003 and 2010. The individual glaciers on the fringes of Greenland and Antarctic contributed an additional 80 billion tons over the same period, the study published in Nature found.

“This is the first time anyone has looked at all of the mass loss from all of the Earth’s glaciers and ice caps with GRACE,” said John Wahr, professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who was part of the research team that analysed the satellite data.

Surface area of all the open water on the planet: 361,132,000km² = 139,433,844 sq mi.

V = H*L*W = H * area, therefore V/area = H. Substituting in the values, 39 cubic miles ÷ 139,433,844 sq mi. = 0.0000002797” , which is a hair more than a quarter of a ten millionth of an inch. Don’t forget that most manual static measuring tools lose precision after 0.0001”; you simply can not measure less than a ten thousandth with any kind of accuracy outside of a laboratory. In a dynamic environment, like the surface of an ocean, it would take untold zillions of measurements over time - oodleplexes of them - to calculate this kind of delta.

So 39 cubic miles sounds like a lot, but the earth is a big place, and if you spread it out over all the existing water surface, it amounts to nothing.

Is the climate changing? Sure. That’s it’s job. It’s always changing. Can we say for sure whether the long term trend is hotter or colder? No. Precision recording thermometers have existed for perhaps a century, and have been in widespread use for perhaps half that time. Actual global climate - not current weather patterns in a semi-local area - runs on a geologic time scale, and 50 years of data barely scratches the surface of that. Assuming of course that the data is accurate, which it often isn’t. Assuming even further that we can trust the published GRACE data, and that is debatable. Climate scientists have lied to us so many times now that I wouldn’t believe them if they cried wolf and there were lupine teeth biting my leg.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/09/2012 at 08:50 AM   
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   Tuesday - February 07, 2012

The Midnight Sun Scenario…

The Coming of the New Ice Age.

I know, those of us who where around in the late ‘70s know that global cooling was the culpritl The point that Zombie at PJ Media makes is that the left’s solution is the same:

The fact that the media and popular culture and academia have veered from one panic-inducing disaster scenario to another one which completely contradicts the first one is funny enough in its own right. But reading The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age opened my eyes to an even more significant aspect of this serial crisis-mongering:

The “solutions” prescribed to solve both Global Warming and the looming Ice Age are exactly the same.

In both cases, proponents of the theory-du-jour say that in order to stave off disaster, we must reverse the march of civilization, stop our profligate use of carbon-based fuels, cede power and money from the First World to the Third World, and wherever possible revert to a Luddite pre-industrial lifestyle.

If you want to voluntarily be a Luddite, fine. I’m actually trying to do the same thing. PERSONALLY. I’m not advocating that anyone follow my example… I just want to have a garden, cook my own fresh breads, and, if there weren’t actual laws against it, have a few chickens in the backyard. That probably screws the Luddite goal because more people baking their own bread, more people using their own ovens, oh dear, we can’t have that!

Oh, wait, do current Luddites like Al Gore follow their own teachings? I doubt Al Gore could cook pancakes from scratch,. Just had to throw that in…

No, I’m just trying to simplify my own life and cut household expenses. What YOU do is your choice. And it certainlhy should not be the government’s business.

Zombie goes on to cite an old 1961 Twilight Zone episode, The Midnight Sun:

The scenario we’re in reminds me of the classic Twilight Zone episode called “The Midnight Sun”: At first we see the characters sweltering in increasingly unbearable heat as the Earth, knocked out of its orbit, slowly plummets into the sun. Just as they are all about to burn to death, in typical Twilight Zone fashion, the lead character wakes up — she had in fact merely been having a fever dream about the world getting hotter; in reality, the Earth had been knocked away from the sun, and they’re all going to freeze to death. Ha ha — gotcha!

Just for fun, I found that 1/2-hour episode and I’m posting it in full.

Posted by Christopher     on 02/07/2012 at 04:04 AM   
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   Monday - February 06, 2012

doggy eye candy and some great pix.  have fun.

I’d call it eye candy of sorts. But, if you will please click on this adorable image, you will get an eyeful.
Enjoy.

Posted by peiper     on 02/06/2012 at 03:24 AM   
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   Saturday - January 21, 2012

There’s No Business Like Snow Business

Eeek, winter! Looks like almost half a foot already, and it’s still coming down hard. And it’s cold! We had March for all of December and 2/3 of January; I got spoiled.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/21/2012 at 10:39 AM   
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   Wednesday - January 11, 2012

I think I could be in love

An entire news article that explains the oddly warm winter most of the USA has been having so far this season, that goes into a fair level of climate science, and does NOT mention AGW or Climate Change even once. Be still, my heart.

It felt more like March than January in many places last week, as more than 1,000 temperature records fell across the country during a winter that has been unusually warm and dry in many places
...
Whether you are rejoicing the lack of cold or lamenting the lack of snow, you may be wondering: What’s behind the weirdly warm weather?

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/11/this-winters-weirdly-warm-weather-explained/?test=faces#ixzz1jBn01pve
...
Several forces are at work, experts say. To begin with, La Niña conditions have pushed warm water toward Australia in the western Pacific, leaving ocean waters off the American West coast about 5 degrees F colder than usual. As a result, moisture levels are currently low in the atmosphere from California to Washington State.

As for what’s ultimately beneath the weather rut we’re in, climate change is a tempting target but global warming is not necessarily to blame. In fact, a warmer world would cause warmer oceans

... and so on, blah blah blah. And not a single peep from the lunatic fringe.

It’s like actual reporting. Awesome.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/11/2012 at 04:51 PM   
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   Tuesday - January 03, 2012

More Than Just Another Fish Story

“This is evolution in action.” [Somebody call Ann Coulter, quick.]

World-first hybrid shark found off Australia

Scientists said on Tuesday that they had discovered the world’s first hybrid sharks in Australian waters, a potential sign the predators were adapting to cope with climate change.

The mating of the local Australian black-tip shark with its global counterpart, the common black-tip, was an unprecedented discovery with implications for the entire shark world, said lead researcher Jess Morgan.

“It’s very surprising because no one’s ever seen shark hybrids before, this is not a common occurrence by any stretch of the imagination,” Morgan, from the University of Queensland, told AFP.

“This is evolution in action.”

Colin Simpfendorfer, a partner in Morgan’s research from James Cook University, said initial studies suggested the hybrid species was relatively robust, with a number of generations discovered across 57 specimens.

The find was made during cataloguing work off Australia’s east coast when Morgan said genetic testing showed certain sharks to be one species when physically they looked to be another.

The Australian black-tip is slightly smaller than its common cousin and can only live in tropical waters, but its hybrid offspring have been found 2,000 kilometres down the coast, in cooler seas.

It means the Australian black-tip could be adapting to ensure its survival as sea temperatures change because of global warming.

Let’s see ... sharks have been around for how long? Oh right. Sharks have been around for HALF A BILLION YEARS, and the ones we see today have been in their current form for about 100 million years, give or take a millenium. And in all that time the oceans must have never warmed up or cooled down even a degree, how many ice ages be damned, because now, when one bunch of dorks in dinghies finds the results of an aquatic redneck family get-together, suddenly it’s emergency evolution driven by one and only one possible reason.    

Climate change and human fishing are some of the potential triggers being investigated by the team, with further genetic mapping also planned to examine whether it was an ancient process just discovered or a more recent phenomenon.

If the hybrid was found to be stronger than its parent species—a literal survival of the fittest—Simpfendorfer said it may eventually outlast its so-called pure-bred predecessors. [Drew: wouldn’t that be a littoral survival of the fittest? Or is that too shallow a jest?]

“We don’t know whether that’s the case here, but certainly we know that they are viable, they reproduce and that there are multiple generations of hybrids now that we can see from the genetic roadmap that we’ve generated from these animals,” he said.

“Certainly it appears that they are fairly fit individuals.”

The hybrids were extraordinarily abundant, accounting for up to 20 percent of black-tip populations in some areas, but Morgan said that didn’t appear to be at the expense of their single-breed parents, adding to the mystery.

In other words, this kind of shark, long considered to be several different species, has always interbred - that would cover the “multiple generations” part and the “extraordinarily abundant” part - but Science (cue Heavenly Trumpets) just never noticed it before. But WTF, let’s not admit that, and instead blame Global Warming. And probably George Bush, by next week.

Dorks in dinghies ... chum, but with pocket protectors.

PS - Simpfendorfer??? Sounds like some kind of 4 1/2 string electric guitar for that special musician in your life. Yeah, my sense of humor is that bass.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/03/2012 at 03:52 PM   
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weather or not

Damn, what happened? I was just starting to get used to this “winter” where it was 45-55° every day. It was like winter in the UK, which is usually pretty mild. Now suddenly it’s coldaz’ell out there! BRRRR!!!

Farg this, I want Peiper’s climate.

Thanks for nothing, Al Gore.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/03/2012 at 03:49 PM   
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   Wednesday - December 14, 2011

Connect The Dots?

Polar bears eating their young, blame Glowball Worming!

BBC Caught Faking Polar Bear Climate Change Photos

Kind of makes me wonder.

Meanwhile, ClimateGate II continues, but I’m so sick of that nonsense I’m not even going to link to it. Ok, I’ll only link it generically, but the whole thing is a crap sandwich with more layers than you can stomach. Canada pulling out of Kyoto, Climate Change blamed for the continued desertification of the Sahel, instead of the goat based economy and the slash ‘n burn practices of the natives AND in direct opposition to the pile of reports over the past 20 years saying the area is getting greener, more data fakery from teh rubber thermometer squad, etc. The only real news from that whole darn genre is the two guys who quit their jobs as hurricane predictors because they realized they had been dead wrong every year for ages, and that the much vaunted models simply don’t work.

I’m sure that Climate Chaos™ will soon be blamed for lions, fish, scorpions, barn cats, sea birds, insects, and all other species who eat their young and always have too. Desperate idiots. Take their keyboards away, they’re a danger to the rest of us.

On the other hand, there may actually be some good news hiding in there somewhere regarding the cannibalism bit, and I think Global Werming should take the blame.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/14/2011 at 10:11 AM   
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   Monday - December 12, 2011

AMERICA - CHINA - INDIA WILL BE FORCED BY NEW AGREEMENT ON CLIMATE CONTROL

I am so tired of this subject but.
Now it’s closer to home (USA) because apparently America is on the Euro-weenie climate bandwagon.  OK I know we always have been. But I just didn’t expect this, this soon.  Not very observant of me perhaps. But considering who is in the White House, and the nest of vipers on the left, I should have expected it even sooner. 

God, how I hate the idea of us co-operating with those zealots. And I think you all must know it’s going to cost us all a lot more as well.
But be careful. You know what happened to people in the past who didn’t follow the prescribed religious line.  And this is definitely the new religion.
Watch out for Torquemada. He wears a suit and tie these days.  His many adherents can be found wearing scruffy jeans and scraggly beards and some wear commie glasses and caps and with their unwashed female friends, can usually be found either occupying some public space with profound slogans on cardboard or else holding hands singing we are the world.
Sorry but these sky is falling climate freaks just annoy me.

see the link below for all the story and the video.

Durban climate change conference: Big three of US, China and India agree to cut carbon emissions

A new deal to “save the planet” will force the world’s three biggest emitters the US, China and India to cut carbon emissions for the first time, although scientists fear it will come too late to stop global warming.

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent, in Durban

More than 190 countries managed to finally agree a new climate change deal amid chaotic scenes in the early hours of Sunday morning in Durban, South Africa.
As the United Nations conference overran into its second day it looked like the talks were on the brink of collapse as the EU and India argued over just two words in the text.
In the end the wording was decided in an extraordinary 10 minute ‘huddle’ between the exhausted ministers to decide the fate of future generations.
The ‘Durban Platform’ will commit all countries to a global deal on cutting carbon emissions by 2015 although it will not come into force until 2020.
The UN marked it as an “historic breakthrough to save the planet”, that makes up for the collapse of the last high profile attempt for a global deal in Copenhagen in 2009.

It was the first time that the ‘Big 3’, the US, India and China, that make up almost half of the world’s emissions, have agreed to cut emissions as part of a legal treaty.
“What we have done today is a great success for European diplomacy. We have managed to put this on the map and take the major emitters – the US, India and China – to a road map that will secure an overarching deal,” he said.
The EU has also agreed to a second commitment of the Kyoto Protocol from 2013 as part of the deal so that the world has a legal treaty to cut emissions in place before 2020.

TELEGRAPH AND VIDEO

Posted by peiper     on 12/12/2011 at 05:43 AM   
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   Monday - November 21, 2011

Another Inconvenient Truth

Mighty caribou herds dwindle, warming blamed

ON THE PORCUPINE RIVER TUNDRA, Yukon Territory — Here on the endlessly rolling and tussocky terrain of northwest Canada, where man has hunted caribou since the Stone Age, the vast antlered herds are fast growing thin. And it’s not just here. Across the tundra 1,500 kilometers (1,000 miles) to the east, Canada’s Beverly herd, numbering more than 200,000 a decade ago, can barely be found today.

Halfway around the world in Siberia, the biggest aggregation of these migratory animals, of the dun-colored herds whose sweep across the Arctic’s white canvas is one of nature’s matchless wonders, has shrunk by hundreds of thousands in a few short years. From wildlife spectacle to wildlife mystery, the decline of the caribou — called reindeer in the Eurasian Arctic — has biologists searching for clues, and finding them.

They believe the insidious impact of climate change, its tipping of natural balances and disruption of feeding habits, is decimating a species that has long numbered in the millions and supported human life in Earth’s most inhuman climate. Many herds have lost more than half their number from the maximums of recent decades, a global survey finds. They “hover on the precipice of a major decline,” it says.

But today:

Canadian elders right all along, ‘lost’ caribou herd had just moved

A vast herd of northern caribou that scientists feared had vanished from the face of the Earth has been found, safe and sound — pretty much where aboriginal elders said it would be all along.

“The Beverly herd has not disappeared,” said John Nagy, lead author of a recently published study that has biologists across the North relieved.

Those scientists were shaken by a 2009 survey on the traditional calving grounds of the Beverly herd, which ranges over a huge swath of tundra from northern Saskatchewan to the Arctic coast. A herd that once numbered 276,000 animals seemed to have completely disappeared, the most dramatic and chilling example of a general decline in barren-ground caribou.

But Nagy’s research — and consultation with the communities that live with the animals — concludes differently. His work springs from recent studies that question the long-held theory that caribou always return to the same calving ground. It holds that different herds use different grounds, and that’s what sets them apart.

“In the past, herds have been defined based on their calving grounds,” said Nagy. “However, it’s been shown that not all herds maintain fidelity to their calving grounds.”

Herds are now defined by which animals hang out together, not by where they give birth.

“It’s actually behaviour that structures these herds, not calving grounds.”

It turns out that the Beverly herd has simply shifted its calving grounds north from the central barrens near Baker Lake, Nunavut, to the coastal regions around Queen Maud Gulf. Nagy’s analysis of radio-tracking data showed caribou in the region once thought to belong to the Ahiak herd are, in fact, Beverly animals.

Said Campbell: “When the initial alarm bells were ringing about the Beverly herd disappearing, right away we went in to talk to the communities and they said: ‘No, no, no. These caribou have moved north and we’ve been told by our elders that they do that.’”

Thompson heard the same. “Many of the community people reported that elders think this is nothing new. Caribou move.”

Next time, said Campbell, scientists should pay them a little more mind.

What would the stupid locals know? They aren’t PHDs. They’re just stupid Indians. Icebound flyover rednecks. And I’m sure the sciencey dorks figured that with the herds gone, the polar bears (caribou’s natural predator) were drowning themselves in fits of depression.

Stupid alarmist scientists, going off half-cocked.  I think a 9 iron to the nutz is called for, so that in the future they’ll go off completely de-cocked if they can go off at all.

h/t to the Daily Bayonet

Posted by Drew458     on 11/21/2011 at 02:56 PM   
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   Monday - October 31, 2011

the nutty professor on global warming

Drew’s post on things green reminded me of this article I saw but couldn’t post earlier.  Been out and away from pc last couple hours, better late then never I suppose although this won’t come as a surprise to us here.  And the hang wringing left won’t believe it anyway.
Take a look.

Professor Judith Curry, of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in the U.S., said Professor Muller’s comments were a ‘huge mistake’ and that she planned to discuss her future on the project with him.
She said their data actually showed average world temperatures had ‘paused’ since the late 1990s and a graph published on the project’s website depicting temperatures from 1850 to 2006 appeared to ‘hide the decline’.

Scientist who claimed ‘end of scepticism’ on climate change under fire from colleague over ‘huge mistake’·
Professor claims project director has oversold the results of a study in favour of global warming
Expert says average world temperatures have ‘paused’ since the late 1990s

By TAMARA COHEN
Last updated at 9:01 AM on 31st October 2011

One of the authors of a scientific study billed as the ‘end of scepticism’ about climate change yesterday threatened to quit after she said the project leader underplayed the fact there has been no global warming for 13 years.

Professor Judith Curry was one of ten experts attempting to compile definitive temperature data going back more than 200 years.
But she claimed it had been ‘tarnished’ by the project’s director ‘overselling’ the results in favour of global warming.

Funded by a number of donors, including sceptics of climate change, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project concluded global temperatures had risen by around 1c since the 1950s, in line with official estimates from Nasa and the Met Office.

The project’s director, Professor Richard Muller, told the media it showed ‘you should not be a sceptic, at least not any longer’.
He also told the BBC’s Today programme the temperature rise was ongoing, saying: ‘We see no evidence of it [global warming] having slowed down.’

Controversial: Professor Richard Muller, left, and his daughter, Elizabeth Muller, co-founder and executive director of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project

CLIMATE ACCORDING TO

Posted by peiper     on 10/31/2011 at 11:54 AM   
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   Saturday - October 29, 2011

Snow???? No!!!!

N.J. gets its first snowfall of the season

The fall foliage has added a new color to its palette in parts of northern New Jersey today: white.

Inch counts have risen and storm predictions have grown more dire throughout the day as snow began to fall throughout the region this morning. The National Weather Service has dubbed today’s Nor’easter an “historic early season snowstorm” for much of New Jersey, the Lower Hudson Valley and southern Connecticut.

The weather service reports that a low-pressure system off the coast of North Carolina was moving north, causing “a swath of heavy, wet and potentially damaging snow.”

The storm will pull out of the Mid-Atlantic region by evening and continue north to New England where Massachusetts’ Berkshires and the southern Green Mountains of Vermont could see between 10 and 15 inches of snow. Jersey should see its last flakes at around 10 p.m., officials said.

While predicting 2 to 4 inches earlier today, forecasters ratcheted up inch counts to a possible 6 to 10 inches for Morris, Hunterdon, Somerset, Sussex and Essex counties, as temperatures dropped to the lower 30’s and precipitation increased toward the afternoon hours.

I almost felt sorry for Peiper, coming home to a “cold and damp home”, except that it’s 24 degrees warmer where he is compared to here. Here in St. Clouds Hunterdon County, we’re having winter. Before Halloween.

WTF people, WTF. Sloppy white stuff started coming down here by 9am. By 11:30 we had about 3 inches on the ground, causing really bad driving conditions. Naturally I was out in it; my customer called with a “The front door won’t close and we need sidewalk salt really bad!” message. So I went down there, foolishly taking the back roads, which were white knuckle treacherous. Made it in only double the usual time. And wasn’t it just too much freakin’ fun coming down that steep hill into town, slipping sideways, with the anti-lock brakes going off constantly and making all sorts of strange noises? Thankfully that hill isn’t too long, with only one reverse camber curve above a deep drainage ditch, so I was able to get all the way down on what seemed like just one breath.

The customer had a whole 25lb bag of calcium salt under the sink in the bathroom. Bastige. So I shoveled the walkways and salted. Then I fixed the door, which is a metal frame bit of junk in a cinderblock wall, so it always needs to be raised up in the fall when it contracts, and then lowered in the spring so that the bugs don’t crawl in underneath when it expands. And I’m out doing that in the rainy snowy mix, with great clumps of the mess falling down from the roof all around me. It’s only a 15 minute job, but it’s still a P.I.T.A., made worse by today’s weather. We took the main road home after waiting 20 minutes to get some gas. People just shift into turbo-stupid mode when the weather hits, and the gas station was a frickin’ zoo. Assmunch 2 cars up the line filled his truck, then it’s auxiliary tank, then half a dozen 5 gallon jerry cans full. Yeah, like he’s not going to be able to get gas for a week. Hoser. OTOH, he might be right. Power is failing all across the state as the sloppy mess builds up on trees that still have their leaves and brings them down across the wires. We’ve even lost power here in Clinton a couple times, and all our lines are underground. Not enough to reset the clocks, but just enough to cause the PC to reboot. Gak, one of these days I am going to break down and get another UPS. I have one, but right now it’s connected to the TV and DVR downstairs.

We tried to take the main road back home, but it was a total jam, bumper to bumper. Nothing was moving other than the police and fire vehicles, as they responded to traffic accident after traffic accident. Bad weather to be out driving in! So we ducked into the local Longhorne for an extended lunch, and hung out there eating and chatting with the wait staff for nearly 2 hours. That gave the county a chance to get out the plows and the salt trucks and fix the roads at least somewhat. So the rest of the drive home wasn’t easy, but it was smooth sailing compared to going down there.

At this point I’m poking around in the fridge looking for a beer, but not finding one I’ll settle for a coffee. Then a nap sounds good.

We’ve had at least 4 inches of slop at this point, but it’s so wet it compacts pretty fast so it’s hard to tell. Every couple of minutes we hear another swoosh, thump! as another mini-avalanche lets go from the roof. And it’s still coming down pretty hard.

And I’ve got an outside window job lined up for tomorrow morning. Oy vey.

Give yourself a 2 point bonus if you recognized the “Here in St. Clouds” reference straight off. Eh Homer? Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England!

Posted by Drew458     on 10/29/2011 at 02:35 PM   
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   Friday - October 07, 2011

Happy To Be Dry

I feel like celebrating. Today is the 4th day in a row that it has not rained*. That makes this the longest “drought” period here since mid-July. The monthly report is out from our state climatologist, and he confirms what I’ve posted here: it has hardly done a thing but rain since July 24th.

Don’t be mislead by the above chart. This only shows departure from average, it does not show total precipitation. (We had record breaking amounts of snow in January, but that barely made a blip on this graph.) It is also a state-wide average, balancing the wetter areas against the drier ones. Where I live, definitely a wetter area, in the northern part of Hunterdon County, we have had more than half a year’s average rainfall in the past two months. Probably closer to two thirds of a years worth than a half.

July:
Two weeks of no significant rain and really hot weather in the middle of the month allowed the rivers and streams still swollen from the spring runoff to finally get down to their median levels.

Almost daily storms roamed parts of the state during the final week, with the 24th bringing Sea Isle City (Cape May) 2.45” and Woodbine 1.95”. The northwest was wettest on the 25th, with Stockton (Hunterdon) coming in with 1.80”, Bethlehem Township (Hunterdon) at 1.76” and Greenwich Township (Warren) with 1.74”.

August:
17.72” of rain measured in Lambertville (southern Hunterdon County).
There were thirteen events in August that deposited at least 0.99” at one or more locations. [ days with less than an inch of rain not reported, but there were plenty of them too ]

September:
The beat goes on. September brought much of New Jersey a very wet month; this on the heels of record-shattering August rainfall. So too were temperatures well above normal; thus continuing an almost unbroken string of warmer-than-average months extending back to spring 2010. With three months remaining in 2011, the Garden State is knocking on the door of both the wettest (1996) and warmest (1998) years on record since statewide averages began to be compiled in 1895.

Returning back to this past September, the wettest portion of NJ was in the northwest where the Mt. Olive (Morris County) CoCoRaHS station saw the most rain, an impressive 16.88”. With just a few drops less, Blairstown (Warren) received 16.87”, with Oxford Township (Warren) coming in with 16.28”.  It should be noted that none of these totals include rain that fell after approximately 7AM on the 30th ... as those totals will be included with rain falling before 7AM on October 1 as part of October’s totals.

The three wettest stations above also lead the way with remarkable August-September totals that include 34.43” in Mt. Olive, 34.31” in Blairstown, and 32.59” at Oxford. Some stations in Sussex, Passaic, and Hunterdon counties also had at least 30.00”.

Only eight September days failed to see measurable rain fall at one or more NJ stations (1st-4th, 13th, 18th, 19th and 26th). The first and largest event of the month was associated with a moist tropical feed of moisture that included the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee. Between the 5th and 8th, centered on a very wet 6th, as much as 9.48” fell in Blairstown, 9.45” in Liberty Township (Warren), and 9.18” in Oxford Township.

Oxford is just a few miles north of here, over the line into Warren County. Weather-wise it’s pretty much the same as us. We don’t seem to have enough data gathering stations here in Hunterdon, so I’m going to have to infer a bit, but it looks pretty sure that we had 30-34” of rain since August, and you can add in another 4” for the last week in July, and perhaps another 2” for the start of October.

Currently our local water table is at less than 13.5 feet, which means that the ground beneath us is saturated at a level barely deeper than the foundations of the houses in the area. Oops. That’s twice as high as it normally is, and conditions are similar across most of the state.

Bottom line: It’s a pretty good bet that my corner of NJ has received as much as 40” of rain since the 25th of July, and there have only been about 10 days in that 75 day period when it hasn’t rained at least a little. I sure wish we could install a run-off pipeline that came out in Texas. If it doesn’t rain until winter sets in, that’s fine with me. We need a chance to dry off.

* = actually, I’m wrong. According to the data it rained here the first 5 days of the month. Which would explain the damp parking lots and the wet siding on the houses in the mornings. But that hasn’t been “real” rain, just heavy dew or some light night drippings. If I were to use that methods, then it has rained here 83 days since the beginning of May - 160 days. Hmmmph, actually that seems about right. Please no more rain. Please.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/07/2011 at 03:47 PM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather •  
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   Saturday - October 01, 2011

I’m Melting, Melting, Meeeelting

Old ice is much better than new ice apparently, so when a bit of the old goes away it becomes news. We see this story, or one very much like it, every fall, because that’s when the summer melt in the Arctic is at it’s greatest. In another 5 or 6 weeks things will freeze solid once again.

Canadian Arctic nearly loses entire ice shelf

Two ice shelves that existed before Canada was settled by Europeans diminished significantly this summer, one nearly disappearing altogether, Canadian scientists say in new research.
...
Luke Copland is an associate professor in the geography department at the University of Ottawa who co-authored the research. He said the Serson Ice Shelf shrank from 79.15 square miles (205 square kilometers) to two remnant sections three years ago, and was further diminished this past summer.

Copland said the shelf went from a 16-square-mile (42-square-kilometer) floating glacier tongue to 9.65 square miles (25 square kilometers), and the second section from 13.51 square miles (35 square kilometers) to 2 square miles (7 square kilometers), off Ellesmere Island’s northern coastline.

This past summer, Ward Hunt Ice Shelf’s central area disintegrated into drifting ice masses, leaving two separate ice shelves measuring 87.65 and 28.75 square miles (227 and 74 square kilometers) respectively, reduced from 131.7 square miles (340 square kilometers) the previous year.

“It has dramatically broken apart in two separate areas and there’s nothing in between now but water,” said Copland.
...
Ice shelves, which began forming at least 4,500 years ago, are much thicker than sea ice, which is typically less than a few feet (meters) thick and survives up to several years.

Canada has the most extensive ice shelves in the Arctic along the northern coast of Ellesmere Island. These floating ice masses are typically 131 feet (40 meters) thick (equivalent to a 10-story building), but can be as much as 328 feet (100 meters) thick. They thickened over time via snow and sea ice accumulation, along with glacier inflow in certain places.

The northern coast of Ellesmere Island contains the last remaining ice shelves in Canada, with an estimated area of 217 square miles (563 square kilometers), Mueller said.

Between 1906 and 1982, there has been a 90 percent reduction in the areal extent of ice shelves along the entire coastline, according to data published by W.F. Vincent at Quebec’s Laval University. The former extensive “Ellesmere Island Ice Sheet” was reduced to six smaller, separate ice shelves: Serson, Petersen, Milne, Ayles, Ward Hunt and Markham. In 2005, the Ayles Ice Shelf whittled almost completely away, as did the Markham Ice Shelf in 2008 and the Serson this year.

In 2008 satellites saw that the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route were open simultaneously for the first time since satellite measurements began in the 1970s – and now it has happened again. 

While the Northern Sea Route above Russia (also known as the Northeast Passage) has been open to shipping traffic since mid-August, recent satellite data show that the most direct course in the Northwest Passage now appears to be navigable as well.
...
Weather patterns have been different this year, but the early opening of the passages indicates that we could be about to hit a new record low in ice cover.

“The minimum ice extent is still three to four weeks away, and a lot depends on the weather conditions over the Arctic during those weeks,” says Leif Toudal Pedersen, a senior scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute.
...
During the last 30 years, satellites observing the Arctic have witnessed reductions in the minimum ice extent at the end of summer from around 8 million sq km in the early 1980s to the historic minimum of less than 4.24 million sq km in 2007.

Before the advent of satellites, obtaining measurements of sea ice was difficult: the Arctic is both inaccessible and prone to long periods of bad weather and extended darkness.

I’d say it’s time to start working this annual opening into our plans, and maybe hurry up and lay some trenched seabed oil pipelines from Alaska across to the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Meanwhile, the whales are stealing a march on the humans, and happily swimming across the top of the world looking for new flavors of tasty krill and some hot whale nookie action.

For the first time, scientists have documented bowhead whales traveling from opposite sides of the Canadian High Arctic and mingling in the Northwest Passage, a usually ice-clogged route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

There have been other hints that geographically separate populations of these air-breathing mammals traversed the Arctic when the ice cover shrinks, including signs of genetic mixing between populations and 19th-century reports of harpoon heads of Atlantic origin showing up in whales on the western side of the Arctic.
...
“Given recent rates of sea ice loss, climate change may eliminate geographical divisions between stocks of bowhead whales and open new areas that have not been inhabited by bowhead whales for millennia,”

Right, because that thing with the harpoons - a mere 160 years ago - hasn’t happened for millennia - thousands of years. See the above quote about life before satellites: we really have no frickin’ idea how often and how fully these passages have opened up in the past.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/01/2011 at 10:28 AM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather •  
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