Alaska Winter Temperatures Up 8F Since 1960s

Melting Alaska opens floodgate of problems
Expert: State's woes a preview of what rest of world can expect
Seth Borenstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers

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"Alaska and the Arctic are warming rapidly, top international scientist will tellsenior officials from eight Arctic countries at a conference in Iceland next week. They will disclose early, disturbing findings from a massive study of polar climate change.

In Alaska, year-round average temperatures have risen by 5 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1960s, and average winter temperatures soared 8 degrees in that period, according to the federal government. The entire world is expected to warm by 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, predict scientists at the International Panel on Climate Change.

Last year was the hottest in Alaskan history, and this past winter was the second-warmest on record, according to the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, which found that Alaskan temperatures began to rise dramatically in 1976.

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The oil industry builds pipelines and roads on permafrost to support drilling on the North Shore (sic). To minimize damage to Arctic tundra, oil companies explore for oil on Alaska's North Slope only when roads are frozen with a foot of ice and 6 inches of snow. The ice-road season has dropped from 200 days a year in 1970 to 103 days in 2002."

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http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/6423630.htm

I am a total weather freak. I love to talk about it and read about it. So I know quite a bit. While some people may think the earth is warming do to certain issolated events, its really not or at least proven. Some areas in Europe during the past winter were so far below normal that thousands froze to death.

The Eastern United states has been in a period of below normal temps since October of 2002. Where I currently live, we have had 10 consecuative months of below normal temps. In January we average about 29 degrees as a daily high and some days this winter never got about 5.

The reason for the intense storms during April and May were caused by a increased snowfield within the heartland of Canada. The intense winter cold that was produced by a increased depth in snow cover in the heartland of Canada produced many cold fronts that staled out over the middle of the U.S far later into the season then normal. Many attributed the increase in storms to global warming where as most meteorologists knew the real reason.

Another mistaken fact that leads many to global warming would be isolated urban heat islands. While the region within a city is indeed warmed over the past 100 years, its 100% proven that the concrete within the city itself is to blame. The over abundance of concete has lead to a 5% increase in tempatures within city limits over the past 100 years. Many of the tempature stations used for measuring temps happens to fall within these urban heat islands themselves. Thus skewing global warming frenzy.

While I am sure that the burning of fossil fuels has lead to many pollutions that are not exactly good to breathe, it has spared the earths weather and left it generally untouched.

involved in the study of global warming and climate change will take your amateur status into account when evaluating this explanation.

Such air pollution kills tens of thousands per year in the United States. The regulations that would curb burning fossil fuels to decrease GHG emissions would have the wonderful complementary effect of reducing local smog and particulate pollution. This would save many lives and increase our quality of life.

My mother has asthma and serious lung damage. I recall that her health improved markedly when the huge steel mills in my home town closed and they quit emitting gases and particles such as graphite. That is all the data I need to know to know that we must do something about air pollution.

That's interesting, and certainly newsworthy.

Do you have any news links from the past winter to support this statement?

Here are some links, don't get to worried though it kills hundreds in the US also, it's more common for people to die from the cold than the heat.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/932710.stm

http://www.cnn.com/WEATHER/9811/24/europe.cold/

http://heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,5863560%255E1702,00.html

http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9812/11/hypothermia/

you sound a little underinformed. Here are a few links for your reading enjoyment.

http://www.enn.com/indepth/warming/index.asp

http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/climate_change/default.stm

http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/

http://www.megastories.com/warming/index.shtml

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/index.html

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html

http://www4.nas.edu/onpi/webextra.nsf/web/climate?OpenDocument

http://www.ecocycle.org/TimesSpring2002/NewEvidence.cfm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1007042,00.html

on Mars and Pluto also?

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/mars011207.html

http://www.marstoday.com/viewpr.html?pid=5541

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/08/19/pluto.warming/

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/0208/msg00563.html

I can take a joke. However it is a deflection from the real and extreme problems created by burning fossil fuels such as air pollution, resource depletion, global warming, flooding, crop failures, extinctions, and death.

pollution and saving natural resources however I am not convinced that eliminating CO2 emissions would stop global warming. If the current warming trend did continue then of course we would be faced with Flooding, crop failures and extinction but if the warming is caused by a natural phenomenon such as the sun burning hotter which the sun is then really there is little we can do to stop it. Eliminating CO2 emissions would slow the process but it will still be getting warmer.

I hope that is not the kind of world you wish to leave to the little schoolchildren in your Alan Keyes quote in your sig line. I know that that is not what I want!

I would love nothing more than to eliminate the use of fossil fuels and CO2 emissions however I am not going to pat myself on the back and start high-fiving everyone once this happens. It is my opinion that we will still be faced with global warming and we need to prepare for it. Like it or not the Earth is not the only planet affected by this which indicates to me humans play only a small percentage of the cause and unless we like the idea of extinction we need to come up with other ways for us to adapt to our changing environment.

We are collecting signatures on letters to our legislators asking them to sponsor a bill requiring efficiency standards for electrical apparatus. Efficiency can go a long way toward eliminating pollution, greenhouse gasses, and the need to build more power plants.

a pleasant subject. Who wants to consider the ugly possibilities of continued warming, especially if it is primarily or even partially our, (modern humans,) fault. Play out the current trends that are being measured by scientists around the world if you dare.

Comparing the warming of atmospheres on other planets to Earth's seems like reaching for a straw of denial to me. There's too much evidence being collected by neutral observers with no political axe to grind. The earth is a closed system, just like a terrarium. We know what is happening. The stakes are so high that we MUST err on the side of caution, (if error it is,) and reduce all greenhouse gasses, not just CO2. Like it or not, Earth is the only planet to bear the burden of trying to rid it's atmosphere of induced and artificial gasses.

http://healthandenergy.com/greenhouse_gasses.htm
http://www.aie.org.au/facts_index.htm
http://www.climatehotmap.org/

Like it or not the Earth is not the only planet affected by this ...

There is no evidence for this.

I suspect you may be referring to a news report from late 2001 that the planet Mars was also experiencing "global warming". Alas, the "science" that that report was based on was not science at all, but an offhand comment from an engineer who helped build a camera for one of the Mars probes. The "evidence" was that some ice ridge in one of Mars' polar caps had moved a few yards from where it was the previous Martian winter.

If that is evidence for Martian global warming, then I will be voting enthusiastically to make GWBush Emporer-For-Life.

:eyes:

--Peter

Let's take these reference you cite one at a time:

* The first article (abcnews.go.com) is by far the most ridiculous. It is really a total embarrassment for the people quoted in it, especially Mr. Caplinger (who fortunately turns out not to be a scientist, because if he were, I would be embarrassed myself)

Here is what they found:

The evidence came by monitoring icy pits, ridges and mounds at Mars' south pole at the start and end of a Martian year. By comparing images in 1998 and 2001, the team noticed a dramatic widening of pits in the frozen mass and a shrinking of the mounds and ridges.

From this evidence, Mr. Caplinger jumps to this:

Michael Caplinger of San Diego's Malin Space Science Systems points out that if the warming were to continue at the same rate (that's a big "if"), Mars could become a nearly inhabitable place for people within 5,000 years or so.

"Rather than wearing a spacesuit, you could get away with wearing just an oxygen mask and a thick parka," said Caplinger, who co-authored a study about the observations in this week's issue of Science. "It would be like standing on top of Everest."

This is a totally ludicrous leap of logic that can hardly be explained away by the 'big if' comment. It is like taking the following data---Chicago, July 1 2000: High of 92 degrees. Chicago, July 1 2001: High of 88 degrees---and then concluding: At this rate of cooling, the entire Earth will be experiencing a new ice age within a couple decades.

:crazy:

* The next article (marstoday) appears much more respectable, but also has absolutely nothing to do with long-term climate change on Mars. Here is what was found:

... within the last month, the global atmospheric temperature of Mars has increased by approximately 50 degrees Fahrenheit, according to data being received by the Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. The cause of this sudden shift is a giant dust storm that has snowballed and now has enveloped almost the entire planet, absorbing a lot of the Sun’s energy in the upper atmosphere.

This is a short-term (essentially seasonal) change brought about by a weather phenomenon that does not exist on Earth (global dust storms). So its relevance to long-term global warming is non-existent.

* The 3rd and 4th articles are both referring to the same study; this time about Pluto. Again, the changes being observed on Pluto are totally seasonal. Pluto takes over 200 years to orbit the Sun, and, unlike Earth, moves significant closer and farther away from it during its orbit. The changes seen took place over a mere 14 years and can only be described as seasonal: like the changes on Earth from Northern Hemisphere winter to Northern Hemisphere spring. There is no evidence here of any long-term climate changes on Pluto. Measuring such changes would require observations of Pluto's weather for many thousands of years in order to account for the seasonal changes that take 200+ years to cycle though.

So that takes care of all your references about supposed 'global warming' on Mars and Pluto.

--Peter