Part 4 How Natural Oscillations Affect Arctic Climate & Predict Future Climate Change

 Watch this important video examining how natural oscillations affect climate, Arctic temperatures and Arctic sea ice

Part 4 How Natural Oscillations Affect Arctic Climate & Predict Future Climate Change

https://youtu.be/8vnfeI-uYY8

The transcript to video is below:

 Welcome everyone. 

This is part four, that's examining the natural dynamics that have driven changes in Arctic ice and Arctic temperatures.  Before scientists can blame rising CO2 for observed Arctic changes, the degree that natural quasi-cycles, or oscillations,  generate those changes must be determined.  Partly due to their more recent characterizations, several oscillations are inadequately represented in the climate models, despite their c

ENSO or the  El Nino Southern Oscillation causes warm waters to slosh eastward across the Pacific,  every three to seven years. It was recognized by renowned climate scientist, Jacob Bjeerknes, who is deemed the father of modern weather forecasting,  in the 1960s, when he pointed out that as El Ninos and La Ninas  re-organize ocean surface temperatures, that same dynamic in turn reorganizes pressure systems in atmospheric circulation.

ENSO causes periodic droughts in California and Peru ,while simultaneously, floods in Indonesia and then switches, causing floods in California and drought in Indonesia. More recently, it has been determined that ENSO affects the jet streams and pressure systems, affecting weather and climate around the world.

The reorganization of ocean temperatures by ENSO has a long-term effect resulting in a 20 to 30 year Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or the PDO, that reorganizes ocean atmospheric circulations, as well as fish populations. It was just named in 1997. Johnstone and Mantua in their 2014 paper revealed how the PDO totally explains the 20th centuries climate changes in western North America. 

The Madden Julian oscillation, first described in 1971, annually relocates the regions of strongest convection as it moves across the warm equatorial Indian and Pacific oceans. That alters the jet streams and global pressure systems and can have an impact on the two major oscillations in the Atlantic Ocean. And those oscillations drive the changes in Arctic ocean sea ice and temperatures.

First, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO ,causes north Atlantic surface waters to warm and the Southern Atlantic to cool and then, vice versa over a period of 20 to 60 years while superimposed on long-term warming trends.

The AMO correlates with changes in the north Atlantic fisheries, as well as Greenland air temperatures, Greenland's ice caps, and the warming in the Arctic and the loss of the sea ice as seen in recent decades and in the 1920s and thirties, that was documented by the Danish sea ice records. Contrary to CO2 driven climate crisis narratives that the most rapid climate change is happening now. Studies showed that the rate of Greenland's warming was 50% greater in the 1920s than the recent warming starting in the 1990s 

And contrary to predictions from CO2 warming models, the AMO cycled to its cold phase in the 70s and 80s causing Greenland's temperatures to cool and its ice cap to increase, as well as the fish that had once migrated north during the warming decades, to now retreat southward. The AMO warm phase peaked about a decade ago, and once again, it is now headed to its cold face.

The AMOs alternation between warm and cold phases appears to be driven by changes in heat transport by the Gulf Stream, as demonstrated by the 2018 peer reviewed paper. There is currently a debate whether or not the Gulf stream is now slowing down, but the sub polar waters have definitely been cooling, in what some have called the cold blob. 

Studies such as Frajka-Williams 2017 study suggests that the Atlantic cooling will continue, as expected as the AMO enters the cool phase. 

New studies, such as the 2020 research by Morenao and Chamarro, find that the AMO, also called the Atlantic Multi-decadal Variability is linked to decadal changes in the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITC Z, as we discussed in the video part three, just as the ITCZ has affected climate for thousands of years.  When the ITCZ is located more northward, there is more warm tropical waters crossing the equator to feed the Gulf stream. The subtropical high pressure system also moves northward and produces winds that help drive the Gulf stream towards the Arctic 

During the colder periods like the last ice age and more recent Little Ice Age,  associated with colder Northern temperatures the ITCz shifted southwards and less warm waters crossed the equator. The subtropical high pressure system also shifts southward, causing more warm water to be circulated back towards the equator and reduce the warm waters flowing into the Arctic. 

This alternation between pumping warm water into the Arctic versus re-cycling warm water back towards the equator,  is a key dynamic driving warming and cooling in the Arctic. And thus the global average temperature. Scandinavian scientists in the Barrents Sea Ice Edge project also reported in 2020, an alternation between pumping water into the Arctic versus circulating warm water back towards the equator, as a key dynamic driving warming and cooling in the Arctic, They suggested changes in the Earth's rotation and other natural dynamics were affecting the ocean heat transport. 

Other researchers suggest the most likely candidate is the North Atlantic Oscillation. The North Atlantic Oscillation or the NAO, is an atmospheric oscillation caused by changing strengths and locations of the Icelandic Low and Azore High pressure systems. And they alter the strength and direction of the warm winds and the resulting flows of warm water into the Arctic. 

The phases of the NAO vary over periods of just days and weeks. However its annual average also alternates over periods of decades. From the 1970s through the 2000s, the NAO was on average in a more positive phase.  In the positive phase the Icelandic low pressure system intensifies and its location helps draw more storms, warmer air and warmer ocean water temperatures into the Arctic, thus reducing sea ice.

This lengthy positive phase aligned with, and seemingly supported, catastrophic beliefs that rising CO2 was melting the Arctic. 

However for the 30 years before the 70s, the NAO was primarily in the negative phase, causing its cooler conditions. The negative phase drives storms and warm air and moisture westward,  instead of north into the Arctic. But like the AMO it now appears there is a trend back to a more negative phases.

The following series of illustrations are screenshots taken from the videos on the website earth.nullschool.net,  that uses data from the National Weather Service, GPS computer models, and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction. 

I encourage everyone to go to this site. It provides everyone with the same data professional scientists use to forecast weather and climate, and it enables YOU to appreciate the role of Arctic pressure systems or pressure systems elsewhere, and truly follow the science!

Now, if you click on the word earth up pops this menu. You can choose from this menu to have overlays based on temperature, winds, or pressure systems, etc, and choose to view those factors and how they are affecting different levels of the atmosphere, from the surface to higher up.

Using the control buttons, you can choose the date of interest to see how the Arctic's weather factors have affected a given extreme event 

For this illustration, I chose the MSLP button to view the mean sea level pressure that overlays the surface winds. The purple color represents the areas of low pressure. The Icelandic low is centered just south of Greenland. I've added the red arrows to more clearly see how the Low circulates the winds, faintly seen in white. The gray areas represent high pressure regions. And I added the green arrows to clearly see how the High pressure affects air circulation.

On October 21st, these pressure systems were driving the winds towards Scandinavia, but the winds abruptly turned towards great Britain driven by the low pressure system centered over Scandinavia.

A week later by October 28th, the Low pressure systems had merged, with its center now to the east of Greenland while the Azore High shifted southward, changing the winds' directions. My red arrow shows the directions of the winds. So I forecasted that those winds would carry heavy moisture towards southern Great Britain. To evaluate my understanding, I then looked for the BBC weather reports for that date. As expected the weather reports forecasted heavy rains hitting the west coast of Wales. 

On that same date, a high pressure system had settled on the center of Greenland. The high pressure system is pushing moisture away and blocking moisture from entering and adding snow and ice to Greenland, except in Greenland's upper Northwest corner.

To check that conclusion, I went to the Polar Portal website, which I also highly recommend to everyone. Indeed, the only moisture entering gloom Greenland was in the far Northwest, represented by the blue there.

Bottom panel shows how the massive ice and snow accumulates each day during the year. On average, about 2 gigatons are added every day, represented by the thick black line. Greenland only loses surface mass during the months from May to August when there's high solar irradiation. On October 28th, the gain of mass was barely one gigaton, as expected by the pressure patterns affect on moisture carrying winds. 

In contrast three months earlier on May 25th, a large Icelandic Low pressure system was located in the Southwest of Greenland. The circulation pattern suggested strong moisture flows and surface mass gains over the Southeast tip and Western Greenland. Sure enough, the pressure system drove record amounts of moisture onto Greenland, adding 12 gigatons of ice and snow 

CO2 climate change theory argues a warmer planet increases the amount of moisture evaporating from the oceans to the air, suggesting that increased warmth had caused this extreme precipitation, but here aadheerents of such global warming beliefs would be misled.

The moisture was being transported from a cooling region of the ocean, the one known as the cold blob. 

So likewise if you follow these weather events, it becomes clear time after time, that the extreme events are driven by various configurations of pressure systems, not global warming.  In addition to extreme weather events, the shifting of the average position and strength of the Icelandic Low and the Azore High, generates the phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation, which largely determines how much warm water enters the Arctic.                            

That relationship is illustrated by a study by Delworth in 2016, showing the NAO variations since 1950 correlate with the increasing warm inflows and thus less sea ice. The NAO becomes increasingly positive from the 1970s, peaking in the 1990s. Because the NAO is an atmospheric oscillation, there's a little inertia so it can change phases quickly in one year. The volume of warm water moving northward in the Atlantic Multi-decadal Overturning currents, measured at 50 degrees north , increase as the NAO becomes more positive, but with a slight time lag due to the ocean's greater inertia. 

Likewise, the amount of heat transported northward also increases.

And lastly, the amount of heat entering the Barrents Sea to melt more sea ice, likewise had increased. But with much less heat, because heat is ventilated and lost as it move from 50 degrees north and into the Barrents Sea at 70 degrees north. 

This correlation has also been documented in several other peer reviewed studies. And all measures show that since the late 1990s, less warm water intrudes into the Arctic as the natural North Atlantic Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation appeared to be both trending towards their negative phases. And that trend, at least in part, explains the growing cold blog.

The declining trend in intruding waters also explains the stable sea ice since 2007. From the 1980s to the first decade of the 2000s, the warm water and air intrusions into the Barents Sea, correlates with the rapid decline in Arctic sea ice. But the leveling off of summer sea ice extent since 2007 correlates with the reduced warm water intrusions.

And in contrast to doomsday climate crisis narratives, the current levels of reduced sea ice extent, greatly benefits the entire Arctic food web. Less ice allows more photosynthesis, providing more food right up the food chain for fish, seals, and polar bears. And undeniably, polar bear populations have greatly increased 

Misled by the positive North Atlantic Oscillation phase, Al gore jumped on the "crisis meme" bandwagon to position himself as 'the politician' that could best save the world from the approaching warming crisis.In 2009, he told the world that during the summer months, the Arctic would be completely ice-free in five to seven years. But that prediction failed.

But to be fair, he was a victim of the beliefs of alarmist researchers, who also promoted the idea of a climate crisis in 2010. Prominent alarmist climate researchers, like Ken Caldera and Michael Mann, cxccc wrote to the secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar urging him to declare the polar bear endangered from global warming. The letter stated climate change imperils the polar bear and for the current greenhouse gas emission trends, Arctic summer sea ice would disappear by the 2030s or before!

But as CO2 driven predictions continued to fail, the sea ice has stopped decreasing and polar bears are fat and increasing. 

It's still the dire Arctic warnings that serve as mainstream media clickbait. So we still see headlines about experts predicting an ice-free Arctic by 2020 or 2030 or 2050 to echo the dire UN climate reports. 

So what should we expect by 2030?

Should we expect an ice-free Arctic as predicted by CO2 driven climate crisis models?

I will see ice begin to increase as suggested by known natural oscillations based on the science of natural oscillations. I've already placed my bets with a few fellow scientists that Arctic sea ice should start increasing by 2030 up next. Why the department of defense's recent climate analysis jeopardizes our safety. And until then, please embrace renowned scientist.

Thomas Huxley's advice. Skepticism is the highest of duties in blind faith. The one on pardonable sin. And if you appreciate the science clearly presented here, science rarely presented by mainstream media. Then please give it a like share or copy the URL of the video and send it to friends via email, subscribe to my channel and see all the videos or read my book, landscapes and cycles in environmentalist journey to climate skepticism.

Thank you.

How the Sun Controls Arctic Sea Ice and Temperatures

Watch: How the Sun Controls Arctic Sea Ice and Arctic Temperatures 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyBz8OtnWmg

Here is the transcript

Welcome back 

Today in part three on Arctic climate, I examine the connection between how the sun heats the oceans and how the oceans heat the Arctic from decades to millennia. The tropics receive more than twice the solar energy as the Arctic does, heating tropical ocean surface temperatures to about 30 degrees centigrade or 86 Fahrenheit. In contrast polar regions warm only to about negative 2 degrees.Centigrade or 28 Fahrenheit.

Thus, the Tropic serves as a reservoir of heat for the polar regions. Some researchers believe that sunspot cycles have affected climate change, but solar energy emissions during sunspot cycles varies by only about plus or minus 1.3 Watts per meter squared. So most agree,  that small amount of energy is not enough to now warm the earth from the cold depths of the Little Ice Age to it lasted from about 1300 to 1850 AD, leading some scientists to ill-advisedly dismiss the sun's role in climate change. 

Alternatively, the greater amount of energy from increasing greenhouse infrared energy suggested it is rising CO2 that has been warming the earth, but there are also problematic in consistencies with their hypotheses. 

For example, although it is claimed the oceans are absorbing 90% of the CO2 greenhouse energy, unlike solar energy, greenhouse infrared rays penetrate less than the width of a human hair into the ocean surface. So other dynamics affecting the ocean heating must be considered 

As we will see, despite low energy differences, sunspots do affect temperatures by altering critical dynamics governing global heat distribution. 

Furthermore, solar and greenhouse radiative energy are not the only sources heating the earth surface changing sea ice cover either insulates or ventilate, huge amounts of storage solar energy in the ocean. Peer reviewed studies have documented that the Arctic heat released can vary from 10 Watts per meter squared through three meter thick ice to 700 Watts per meter squared through newly formed, thin ice, such heat ventilation easily explains why the Arctic air temperatures have warmed much faster than elsewhere in the world.

All scientists agree that heat is being transported from the tropics to the Arctic. The blue line here shows the average amount of solar heat that's absorbed by tropical oceans is about 300+ Watts per meter square. The red line shows much less of that absorbed heat is radiated away and from the tropics. The difference between incoming and outgoing radiated heat is labeled Surplus indicating that the surplus heat must have been exported out of the tropics by ocean and atmosphere occurrence.

Now, the difference between the solar heat absorbed in the Arctic is a much greater amount of heat than is radiated away from the Arctic, and is labeled the Deficit. It is the inflow of solar heated tropical water. That accounts for that deficit as described in part one, how transport of tropical ocean heat causes an overestimation of the global average temperature I showed via a very simple experiment, how global warming average is greatly biased by this heat transport into the Arctic and its subsequent release to describe the different critical dynamics of heat transport into the Arctic.

The analogy of a residential water system is useful. The  dynamics that affect the surplus heat in the ocean reservoir, I refer to as tropical factors. But like your home's faucets, sub polar factors control how much tropical heat enters the Arctic ocean.  

For this analysis of Arctic climate change, I'll limit the video to changes in the Northern Atlantic. One critical sub polar effect controls how much heated water arriving via the Gulf stream continues into the Arctic versus how much is recycled in the subtropical gyre back towards the equator.

One critical tropical effect controls how much warm Southern hemisphere waters are directed across the equator to the Gulf stream. The sun plays a role in both factors.

The sun and the tilt of the Earth's axis conspire to pump various amounts of warm water into the Arctic between seasons and between cold glacial periods in warm interglacials. 

In recent times, the Earth's axis is tilted 23 and a half degrees. It always points to the north star, but it will point to other stars during a 23,000 year Milankovitch cycle called procession, the earth orbit around the sun also varies from circular to elliptical in another Milankovitch cycle lasting a hundred thousand years. Currently the earth is farthest from the sun during our Northern hemisphere summer. Nonetheless, it is our warmer season due to the tilt of the axis 

Without a tilt, the sun's warmest rays would  strike the equator as happens now, only during each spring and autumn Equinox.

However, due to the tilt, the axis points our Northern hemisphere towards the sun during summer, having caused the warmest solar heating to move northwards to the Tropic of cancer, 23.5 degrees north of the equator. And due to the resulting effects of the winds, moist tropical heat is also drawn towards the Arctic. The tilt also puts Arctic circle in full sunlight, but the Antarctic in full darkness. 

During our winter, the access points away from the sun. So the warmest solar heating happens over the Tropic of Capricorn 23.5 degrees south of the equator, and the flow of the warm ocean water into the Northern hemisphere dwindles. And despite being closer to the sun, we experience winter and the Arctic descends into full darkness with a rapid increase in sea ice.

But the axis tilt also changes with the third Milankovitch Cycle called obliquity. The axis tilt will cycle between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees every 41,000 years with surprisingly major ice age effects. 

The glacial maximum of the last ice age ended as an increasing tilt, also increased the flow of warm Atlantic waters into the Arctic. The warmest period of the interglacial called the Holocene optimum happened during maximum obliquity coinciding with maximum warm Atlantic inflows.

As the axis tilt, then cycled back to a lesser tilt, increasingly less Atlantic water entered the Arctic and accordingly Arctic sea ice gradually increased as temperatures cooled in what scientists call the neoglacial. 

Now scientists have published about a related and relevant scientific conundrum [The Holocene temperature Conundrum; Liu (2014)]. Over the past 6,000 years of a declining tilt, as sea ice increased and reached its greatest extent and thickness during the cold little ice age from 1300 to 1850 AD, you also had during that time, a slight uptick in CO2 concentrations.

So it's odd that some climate scientists, with a more catastrophic view of climate change, believe rising CO2 will prevent further cooling that has been knowingly attributed to declining Obliquity,  a decline that will continue for the next 10,000 years. 

Where the earth is the warmest, the InterTropical Convergence Zone or ITC Z forms.

The warm zone forms a low pressure zone that draws in the winds in the ocean currents from the north and the south. Where winds converge it causes the air to rise. Sailors back in Columbus's day, were stranded in the ITC Z because it was a windlass patch that they called the doldrums. Today, we see the location of the ITCZ from satellite pictures as a narrow band of clouds and circling the earth. However, although the ITCZ shifts northward and southward with the seasons, its location does not strictly adhere to the location of the son's greatest heating during our summer.

The June ITCZ only shifts 9 to 10 degrees north [over the oceans]. And this is partly due to the mixing with cooler waters. During our winter, the January ITCZ barely shifts south of the equator over the oceans, and because the land heats faster than the ocean, the ITCz more closely follows the sun's position southward  over South America. So on average, the ITCZ remains between 2 and 9 degrees north of the equator, drawing warm tropical Southern Hemisphere waters across the equator to amplify warm waters, reaching the Gulf stream. 

Now the shape of South America also affects how much warm water gets pumped towards the Arctic. The Eastern point of Brazil serves as a divider that can direct more warm water north or south. When the ITCZ is north of the equator, as it is today, it also shifts the Tradewinds and the ocean's warm currents northwards above the Brazilian divider, guiding more warm water towards the Gulf stream. This tropical effect factor warms the north Atlantic.

Furthermore, the northern location of the ITCZ has a sub-polar effect, causing the north Atlantic high pressure system to shift northwards, So that its clockwise circulation guides more Gulf stream and North Atlantic Current (NAC) waters into the Arctic.

During cooler periods, like the last ice age, or the recent little ice age, colder Northern temperatures cause the ITCZ to shift southwards. This tropical factor causes more warm currents to be deflected southward by Brazil, cooling the north Atlantic. The high pressure system also shifts southward with a sub-polar effect that re-circulates more warm water back towards the equator. With less warm water intruding the Arctic, the Arctic is cooler.

Now a group of Scandinavian scientists recently formed the Barents Sea Ice project, analyzing the past 400+ years of varying sea ice and inflows of Atlantic water. One of the primary factors affecting the Barents Sea southern ice edge was correlated with sunspot cycles. Despite the insignificant changes in solar heating, the increase in the number of sunspots increases the effect of solar winds on the Earth's magnetic fields. Stronger magnetic fields slow the rotation of the earth, which then affects the eastward momentum of the oceans current.  During low sunspot periods, such as the Dalton minimum in the early 1800s, the Earth's rotation sped up causing a stronger westward momentum for the North Atlantic Current, which reduced warm water inflows into the Arctic (seen as yellow) and redirecting warm waters eastward (seen in more orange) 

During high sunspot years of our 20th century, a stronger magnetic effect, slowed rotation and allowed more warm water to intrude into the Arctic.

During the Maunder Minimum of the late 1600s, less warm water entered the Arctic and simultaneously more warmer water and moisture was diverted towards the Southern Europe. This caused a peak in Swiss glacier growth across the Alps, threatening Swiss mountain villages and even engulfing some in ice, It wasn't colder Swiss temperatures that prompted that glacier growth. It was the greater supply of moisture that also coincided with higher lake levels at lower elevations.

Likewise, other peer reviewed studies have correlated sunspot with changes in intruding Atlantic water and  changes in Barents Sea ice. When sunspot numbers were high, rotation slows and inflows increased and sea ice extent dropped. When sunspot numbers dropped, sea ice grew as inflows were reduced. 

The effects of sunspots on the Earth's rotation also agrees with independent length of day studies.The longer the length of day in the 1970s correlates with a stronger sunspot cycle 21. A shorter length of day and thus faster rotation, correlates with the reduced solar winds of the sunspot cycle 24. 

So why hasn't the Arctic sea ice grown during this decade, if a faster rotation deflects more warmer water from the Arctic? 

So some suggests the failure of sea ice to increase despite falling sunspots should be expected due to the predicted CO2 warming. But CO2 based predictions have also failed. For example, published in the 2012 Guardian, Arctic sea ice expert Dr. Walheim predicted accelerating sea ice loss and the complete loss of summer sea ice by 2016 as CO2 concentration rise. But no such thing has happened .

On the other hand, Dr. Solheim's prediction of an extreme drop in Svalbard's temperatures by 2020, based on sunspot effects and reduced Atlantic water inflows, has also failed to materialize 

Both failed predictions, illustrate why it's dangerous to predict sea ice extent based on only one or two variables. However, the rapid decline in sea ice that once prompted alarmists' dire climate change predictions has now leveled off since 2007, revealing that dynamics stronger than CO2 warming are also in play.

For 30 years, natural climate oscillations in their warm phase have offset predicted sunspot cooling effects and aligned with CO2 warming predictions. But those oscillations are now shifting to colder phases. So the next decade will determine whether or not the current leveling off of ice extent is signaling the beginning of a return to increasing sea ice. 

So up next: part four will be how natural climate oscillations affect the Arctic climate.

And until then embraced renowned scientists. Thomas Huxley's advice that 

"skepticism is the highest of duties and blind faith, the one unpardonable sin."

And if you appreciate the science clearly presented here, science rarely presented by mainstream media. Please give it a like, share it, or copy the URL and email the video, or subscribe to my YouTube channel or read my book, Landscapes and Cycles an Environmentalist Journey to Climate Skepticism.

Thank you.

Pt 2: How Sea Ice Controls Arctic Heat Ventilation and Arctic Air Temperatures

Watch youtube video Pt 2: How Sea Ice Controls Arctic Heat Ventilation and Arctic Air Temperatures

https://youtu.be/bm8UcrOQoso

Below is the transcription of the video

Welcome 

Today, I'm looking at part two,  how sea ice controls the ventilation of heat from the Arctic ocean and the Arctic's air temperatures. 

Now there are three major factors affecting sea ice extent and thus Arctic temperatures. The first, as detailed in part one, the volume of inflowing warm Atlantic water into the Arctic has correlated with sea ice extent for decades and millennia. The warm inflow circulates inside the Arctic for 25 to 30 years and peer reviewed studies such as Polyakov (2017) have determined there is currently enough heat flowing into the Arctic to completely melt all the sea ice.

However, the heat of the inflowing Atlantic water has no effect on air temperature, if sea ice insulates that warmth from the atmosphere. Furthermore, the layers of fresher water, such as the inflowing Pacific water float above the warm Atlantic water, and also insulate the ice and the atmosphere from warmer subsurface temperatures.

The warm inflows create a warm subsurface Atlantic water between about 150 and 900 meters.

Due to the effects of saltiness, the melting point of Arctic water is a negative 1.8 degrees centigrade or 28.8 Fahrenheit. But peer reviewed study such as Shu (2019) has determined the warm water entering Arctic via the Fram Strait is much higher, about three degrees centigrade or 37.4 Fahrenheit, easily melting sea ice.

As the Atlantic water circulates around the Arctic heat ventilates from the open water and the thinner ice, and warms the air while it is cooling to about 0.4 degrees centigrade; still warm enough to have melt sea ice. However, regions with thick multi-year sea ice will insulate Atlantic water heat from radiating back to the atmosphere. Now the 3 degrees of inflowing heat through the Fram Strait thins the sea ice along its Eurasian coast pathway. But as the heat ventilates into the atmosphere, the inflowing water cools to 0.4 degrees centigrade. So sea ice in the Central and Western Arctic tends to be thicker than in the Eastern Arctic. 

But before that 3 degrees centigrade Atlantic water reaches the Fram strait,  water entering the Arctic circle (designated by this red line) is much warmer and has been keeping most of the Greenland, Norwegian and Barents eSeas free of winter ice. Now, the effects of thicker sea icce explains the results of a peer reviewed paper published in 1993 in the esteemed scientific journal Nature. Researchers measuring air temperatures over Western and central Arctic ice, found no warming over a period of 40 years and even a slight cooling.

So they reported no evidence of any greenhouse warming.

The effect of sea ice on Arctic temperature is more dramatically exhibited by the  Dansgaard-Oeschger events.                                                                                    

Between our current warm interglacial and the previous warm inter-glacial, there is the cold 100,000+ year glacial period. A closer look at that glacial period reveals over 20 rapid warming Dansgaard-Oeschger events, during which air temperature rose by an incredible 5 to 15 degrees centigrade or 9 to 27 Fahrenheit in just a few decades.

And despite a heavily glaciated Northern hemisphere, temperatures were almost as warm as the final warm event that led to the present warm into glacial.

Now there are several hypotheses, all of which may be in play explaining why se ice suddenly released ocean heat to produce those warm Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Some hypothesize that these warm events were caused by an increase in warm water inflows. 

Other suggests because thicker ice was preventing heat from ventilating as their temperatures cooled, sub surface temperatures increased to the point it melted the ice. 

And also as the glaciers grew covering the land from Chicago to Boston, with ice a half a mile thick,  sea level fell creating the Bering Strait land bridge that allowed humans to migrate from Asia to north America, but it also lowered sea level and blocked the inflow of fresher Pacific water.

And without the insulating layer of Pacific water, the warm Atlantic water had a greater direct contact with sea ice, which was then melted more readily.

In our present interglacial, sea ice grows each winter and then it melts each summer.

But typically only the thin first year sea ice represented by the purple color is lost, allowing heat to ventilate. The following winter, summer's open water is covered again by the new ice.  

Thick multi-year sea ice only grows where slabs of ice pile on top of one another, especially where ice slabs are pushed against the Northern Greenland coast or the Canadian Islands as represented by non purple colors. That is where the thickest four-year-old and older ice is maintained. And the bulk of that multi-year ice large is largely unaffected between winter and summer temperatures. However, the amount of thick ice can be greatly altered by the winds of the natural Arctic oscillation, which varies on timescales from weeks to decades to millennia

Peer reviewed science by Ignatius Rigor determined that in 1989, the positive phase of the Arctic oscillation became more dominant and removed thick multi-year ice from the Arctic allowing more heat to ventilate from the subsurface causing the recent rapid Arctic warming.

Now previously in the 1970s and eighties, when the negative phase dominated winds, trapped sea ice inside the Beaufort Gyre, seen in the lower yellow curve, increasing the amount of colliding and overlapping ice.

Along the Eurasian coast, the cold Siberian winds guided the Transpolar Drift (TPD) the upper yellow curve, which primarily carried just thin first-year ice out of the Arctic through the Fram straight to melt in the Atlantic 

The 1989 switch to the positive phase caused a Transpolar Drift to dive deep into the center of the Arctic. Following the path of the red curve seen here and then drove increasing amounts of thick multi-year sea ice out of the Arctic into the Atlantic, through the Fram Strait.

Ocean and atmospheric circulation are clearly the critical climate dynamics, controlling sea ice, heat ventilation, and Arctic warming. But those dynamics are the elephants in the room, rarely addressed by a mainstream media bent on pushing clickbait, driven by climate crisis headlines.

So to summarize 

Presently warm Atlantic inflows mediate sea ice extent and maintain the warm subsurface Atlantic water layer. 

The release of heat from the surface is largely mediated by sea ice thickness. The varying winds driven by the Arctic oscillation can either trap and grow thick ice or remove thick ice 

Combined, those two dynamics have reduced sea ice extent in recent decades, allowing more subsurface heat to ventilate. The ventilating heat cools the ocean while warming the Arctic air.  Higher temperatures caused by a cooling ocean should NEVER be added to a global average temperature that's intended to measure increasing stored heat. 

And although it's true, more ventilation made available more heat available to be recycled via the greenhouse effect, that dynamic is relatively insignificant. Rising CO2 attribution is the media's way of having the tail wag the elephant.

Ocean and atmospheric circulation are by far the most significant drivers of sea ice changes and Arctic warming.

I emphasize again,  ocean and atmospheric circulation are the most significant drivers of the so-called Arctic amplification. 

Up next In part three, I'll examine how the sun affects the amount of warm tropical waters flowing into the Arctic. 

And until then embrace Thomas Huxley's advice "That skepticism is the highest of duties and blind faith, the one unpardonable sin."

 And if you appreciate the science clearly presented here, science rarely presented by mainstream media.

Then please give it a, like, give it a share or copy the URL of the video and email it to friends, subscribe to my channel or read my book, landscapes and cycles and environmentalist journey to climate skepticism.

 Thank you.

HOW TRANSPORT OF TROPICAL OCEAN HEAT CAUSES AN OVER-ESTIMATION OF THE GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE

Watch my youtube video HOW TRANSPORT OF TROPICAL OCEAN HEAT CAUSES AN OVER-ESTIMATION OF THE GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE  PART 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNT7oB53pRY

 

Below is a transcript of THEE video 

 Welcome back everybody, 

 Today I'll examine how the transport of tropical ocean heat raises both the Arctic's air temperature and biases the global average temperature. Now the Arctic has warmed dramatically, but why? A few researchers simplistically suggest it's polar amplification of greenhouse warming, but that explanation fails to explain why at the Southern pole, most of Antarctica has never warmed. This video explains how extensive transport of tropical ocean heat uniquely warms the Arctic. It also demonstrates why it's an abuse of statistics to average extreme warming temperatures in the Arctic with temperatures elsewhere, such as the cooling in north America. 

Averaging two temperatures caused by vastly different dynamics is meaningless and useless for understanding climate change. It’s as useless as averaging apples and oranges just because they're both fruits. So here in part one, I'll examine how transported tropical ocean water affects the Arctic sea ice.   Part 2 examines how the natural Arctic oscillation affects the presence or absence of thick sea ice and how sea ice controls the release of stored heat and affects Arctic temperatures. And in part 3, we'll examine the climate dynamics that control the changes in the ocean heat transport.

First, we need an overview of how the world's ocean temperatures vary. The oceans are warmest in the tropics (seen in red) Due to the sun's most intense heating of the surface, temperatures are averaging 20 degrees centigrade or 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Ocean temperatures decrease towards the higher latitudes as the Earth's curve and the axis tilt decrease solar heating. Between 50 and 60 degrees south latitude, we see temperatures are much lower, averaging between five and zero degrees centigrade. And due to the Antarctic circumpolar current, the warmer subtropical waters, averaging about 10 plus degrees centigrade seen in green, can't intrude further south preventing any warming of Antarctica. As discussed in a previous video “The Antarctic Refrigeration Effect”,  in contrast between 50 and 60 degrees north, warm subtropical waters intrude deep into the Arctic. 

Now talking with fellow scientists and lay people about Arctic warming, I am constantly amazed that typically, they're totally unaware of how ocean circulation affects the Arctic. 

Here I'll focus on the Northern hemisphere’s circular pattern of ocean circulation, creating what's called subtropical gyres. A similar pattern also occurs in the Southern hemisphere. 

Now due to intense solar heating, the tropical waters are warmest and that heating also generates the trade winds blowing water from the east to the west. When reaching the ocean’s western boundary, those heated waters are guided towards the poles, via the Gulf stream in the Atlantic, and the Kuroshio current in the Pacific. 

 Upon reaching the mid-latitudes, the westerly winds then guide the warm waters back towards the east. Upon reaching the continents’ west coast, the now cooler waters are pumped back towards the equator to complete the subtropical gyre’s circulation. 

Of importance to humanity, the currents moving back towards the equator also create the four upwelling regions that support humanity's richest fisheries. 

 We also observe again in the Southern hemisphere, that the gyre’s warm tropical waters don't penetrate past the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, keeping Antartica cooler than average. 

In contrast, there's a slight leakage of warm water from the Pacific through the Bering Strait and into the Arctic. And more importantly, it's the large volume of warm water transported via the Gulf stream into the north Atlantic that enters the Arctic, melting sea ice and warming the region. 

To understand how the transport of ocean heat biases temperature statistics, there's a simple experiment you can do at home and it is easily understood by children. 

All you need is an infrared temperature gun (they cost less than 20 bucks) and a pot of heated water. I used the temperature gun to show students in environmental studies classes, how surface temperatures dramatically changed between open sunlit areas and shaded areas, or between different vegetation types, or moist versus dry ground. 

So first heat up a pot of water, then turn off the heat, so no further energy is being added. Now measure the surface of the heated water and nine random spots on your kitchen floor. Add up those temperatures and divide by 10 to get the kitchen's average surface temperature. 

Next, scoop out half of the water and throw it on the kitchen floor, and again, take the same 10 measurements. The pot of water lost the heat due to water removal, but the remaining water still keeps the same temperature. Now, however, the average temperature will be much higher, not because there was any energy added to the kitchen, but simply because the redistribution of heat raised the average statistic. 

So to understand climate change, we must accurately separate temperature changes due solely to the redistribution of heat from changes due to added energy. And to date, I know of no researchers making this distinction when they are generating the global average temperature. 

Now this illustration shows the general pathways of intruding warm Atlantic waters being re-distributed from the subtropics into the Arctic. The water changes color from the initial red to the lighter pink as it loses heat to the air and the surrounding waters as it circulates. 

The small squiggly pink arrows represented here, show where most of the intruding warm water heat escapes to the air, primarily where there is no insulating ice. 

Also because the warm inflows make the ocean warmer than the land, the Arctic winter winds blow towards the ocean and push ice away from the coast. This creates open-water winter polynyas. 

Those open waters have allowed a subspecies of walrus that normally would migrate south each winter in search of open waters to feed, to instead remain all winter in the Laptev Sea 

To estimate changes in temperature and volume of inflowing Atlantic water, scientists have placed moorings along the major pathways, such as the Fram straight and elsewhere (represented here by the yellow lines) to monitor the inflows. 

But it is extremely difficult to measure exactly the amount of redistributed heat, partly because inflowing waters follow very complex pathways while ventilating heat and mixing with cooler Arctic ocean waters. 

Furthermore, an increase in the volume of inflows will raise temperatures even without any change in the inflows temperature. 

Conversely, less inflow volume can still warm the Arctic, if the source waters of the inflows are warmer. 

Estimating temperature changes in the source of the inflowing waters is also difficult because temperatures of the north Atlantic waters vary due to dynamics such as the natural Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation. So according to Ruiz-Barradas in his 2018 peer-reviewed study, between the 1980s and the 1990s, the north Atlantic warmed, but it has been cooling since then. 

Now some researchers use the recent changes in sea ice to estimate changes in inflowing water. In Antarctica, there has been no long-term declining trend in sea ice, and that's because the Antarctic Circumpolar Current blocks warm inflows. In the photo on the right, the white circle here represents the Antarctic Circle. And because sea ice growth is unimpeded by continents, sea ice expands past the circle symmetrically, each winter until it reaches the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. 

In contrast as seen in photo on the left, Arctic sea ice is confined by surrounding continents and stays inside the Arctic circle, (in black here). Yet as in Antarctica, winter temperatures are cold enough to form sea ice outside the circles, as seen in the Hudson Bay that freezes over completely each winter. More importantly, unlike Antarctica, due to the inflows of warm Atlantic water, sea ice is melted deep inside the Arctic circle, keeping ocean water ice free during the winter over most of the Barents Sea. 

On a larger timescale, Moffit-Sanchez’s 2017 paper examines the relationship between changing inflows and sea ice cover over the past 3000 years. Unfortunately, there are two illustrations shown here, with reversed the timelines.

The panel on the left shows that  during the Roman Warm Period around 2000 years ago, there were strong Atlantic inflows and accordingly sea ice extent was very small. Then sea ice began to grow with the reduced inflows during the following Dark Ages Cold Period. 

During the Medieval Warm Period about 1000 years ago, warm inflows increased again and sea ice again declined, but not to the same extent as in the Roman Warm Period. Then during the following Little Ice Age starting around 700 years ago, inflows became persistently low and Arctic sea ice reached its greatest extent in over 5,000 years. 

When the Little Ice Age ended around the 1850s, inflows increased up through the present times and sea ice declined, but not to the low extent of the Roman or Medieval Warm Periods. 

Researchers also compared the warmer Atlantic inflows during three recent warm periods to the intervening cold periods. Their results also found a strong relationship between increasing warm inflows and decreasing sea ice. During the cold periods inflows decreased and sea ice increased. 

Similar studies found the warmth of the Holocene Optimum about 9,000 years ago, coincided with strong Atlantic water inflows that raised sub-polar ocean temperatures to four degrees Celsius above the temperatures observed today. 

Similarly, during the most recent 5,000 years, known as the Neo-glacial, the gradual decrease in Atlantic inflows have coincided with increasing sea ice, culminating in the Little Ice Age’s greatest sea ice extent. 

Clearly, both short-term and long-term studies find the extent of Arctic sea ice is regulated by changes in the warm Atlantic inflows. 

Up next, part-two examines how shifting winds due to the natural Arctic Oscillation controls where sea ice is present or absent and how much thick multi-year ice survives and thus, how sea ice contributes to the control of Arctic temperatures. 

And until then embrace the renowned scientist, Thomas Huxley's advice that 

“skepticism is a highest of duties and blind faith, the one unpardonable sin.” 

 And if you appreciate the science clearly presented here, science rarely presented by the mainstream media, then please give it a like, give it a share or copy the video's URL and share it with friends through the email, subscribe to my video channel or read my book: Landscapes and Cycles an Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism. 

 Thank you.