Thursday, August 23, 2012

Climate (small) change - Watts Up With That?: "Antarctic peninsula was 1.3 degrees Celsius warmer than today 11,000 years ago."  So it's a cooling trend.

3 comments:

Brrrrr said...

So it's a cooling trend.

Yeah, not so much. From the linked article, past the headline:

The scientists reveal that the rapid warming of this region over the last 100 -years has been unprecedented and came on top of a slower natural climate warming that began around 600 years ago. These centuries of continual warming meant that by the time the unusual recent warming began, the Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves were already poised for the dramatic break-ups observed from the 1990′s onwards.

"Approximately 600 years ago the local temperature started to warm again, followed by a more rapid warming in the last 50-100 years that coincides with present-day disintegration of ice shelves and glacier retreat.”

“The centuries of ongoing warming have meant that marginal ice shelves on the northern Peninsula were poised for the succession of collapses that we have witnessed over the last two decades. And if this rapid warming that we are now seeing continues, we can expect that ice shelves further south along the Peninsula that have been stable for thousands of years will also become vulnerable.”

"Our team wanted to understand how the recent warming and the loss of ice shelves compared to the longer term climate trends in the region.”

Anonymous said...

So the climate has been changing - hotter and cooler - for thousands of years, but THIS time is different.

In other news, Obama said in June that one of his top priorites in a second term would be climate change.

Top priority.

Reading comparamahension said...

Yes, Anon Y. Mous, that's exactly what "unprecedented" means.