Tuesday, December 16, 2008

For Andrew Bolt to ponder

Arctic melt passes the point of no return - Climate Change, Environment - The Independent

Andrew Bolt likes to spend time looking at satellite images of the winter Arctic ice cover lately, all the more to pooh-pooh global warming with.

He doesn't seem to often consider the issue of the depth of renewed winter cover, which common sense would suggest is just as important for the future of the cover as how much area it extends to each winter.

And he ought to read this article which seems consistent with the recent post here about satellite evidence that warmer temperatures are unduly weighted to the North of the planet:

Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before it was predicted to happen.

Climate-change researchers have found that air temperatures in the region are higher than would be normally expected during the autumn because the increased melting of the summer Arctic sea ice is accumulating heat in the ocean. The phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, was not expected to be seen for at least another 10 or 15 years and the findings will further raise concerns that the Arctic has already passed the climatic tipping-point towards ice-free summers, beyond which it may not recover.

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