El Hilo del Clima y el Cambio Climático

[traspotin]

http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2012/07/25/actualidad/1343201911_594692.html

Groenlandia se derrite
Casi toda la capa de hielo que cubre la isla se fundió en cuatro días por una cresta de calor
Se trata de un fenómeno del que no hay precedentes registrados
Un iceberg gigante se desprende del glaciar Petermann
La ola provocada por la rotura del glaciar casi arrolla a un barco


A la izquierda, Groenlandia el 8 de julio. A la derecha, cuatro días después. / NASA

Cada verano, cerca de la mitad de la superficie de la capa de hielo que cubre Groenlandia suele derretirse. Por eso, cuando el pasado 12 de julio los satélites enviaron sus datos sobre el proceso, los científicos de la NASA no daban crédito: el 97% de la cubierta se había fundido en solo cuatro días. El fenómeno es tan extraordinario —no constan precedentes desde que se registran los datos—, que de hecho pensaron que se trataba de un error.

El deshielo se produjo rápidamente. Mapas derivados de tres satélites independientes mostraron que el 8 de julio solo el 40% de la superficie de la capa de hielo se había derretido. Cuatro días después, casi toda la cubierta, desde las zonas más finas en las costas hasta los dos kilómetros de profundidad en el interior, había experimentado algún grado de fusión en su superficie.

Los investigadores aún no han determinado si el fenómeno afectará el volumen global de pérdida de hielo este verano y contribuirá a la elevación del nivel del mar. En las zonas altas, la mayor parte del agua de deshielo vuelve a congelarse rápidamente en el mismo lugar. Pero cerca de la costa, la mayoría se pierde en el océano.

Se trata del segundo fenómeno inusual que se produce en la isla este verano. La semana pasada, un iceberg gigante que duplicaba en tamaño a la isla de Manhattan se desprendió del glaciar Petermann y quedó a la deriva en el mar. Un hecho que los investigadores no consideraron preocupante por sí solo, pero que, unido al excepcional deshielo, puede ser síntoma de un proceso de cambio. "Las observaciones por satélite están ayudando a entender cómo este tipo de eventos pueden relacionarse unos con otros, así como con su conexión con el sistema climático global", asegura Tom Wagner, director del programa de criosfera de la NASA en Washington.

Los científicos creen que el deshielo extremo se ha debido a una cresta inusualmente fuerte de aire caliente, o cúpula de calor, sobre Groenlandia, que ha sucedido a otras más leves que han dominado el clima de la zona desde fines de mayo. La cúpula comenzó a moverse sobre la isla el 8 de julio y luego se estacionó sobre la capa de hielo unos tres días más tarde. Hacia el 16 de julio había comenzado a disiparse.

La cresta provocó incluso el deshielo de un área en el centro de Groenlandia que no se había derretido desde 1889, según se desprende del análisis de los núcleos de hielo. "Los núcleos de hielo muestran que los eventos de fusión de este tipo ocurren aproximadamente una vez cada 150 años en promedio. Si se tiene en cuenta que el último fue 1889, este acontecimiento se ha producido justo a tiempo", opina Lora Koenig, un glaciólogo del centro Goddard y miembro del equipo de análisis de los datos obtenidos por satélite. "Pero si seguimos observando deshielos de este tipo en los próximos años, tendremos que empezar a preocuparnos".

Igual ha sido la polución, los desechos o Fukushima...o puede que simplemente sea lo que se lleva tiempo advirtiendo. Starkiller creo que te vas a quedar sin hielo para los cubatas mucho antes de lo que pensábamos   

Esta tarde pondré un par de noticias más que ahora no tengo tiempo.

[Currobena]

Efectos del cambio climático sobre el consumo de energía:

Effect of Global Warming on U.S. Energy Consumptionhttp://econintersect.com/wordpress?p=24576July 25, 2012 <blockquote>by Elliott Morss</blockquote> Introduction
Global warming is causing temperatures to rise. That will mean a greater demand for air conditioning and less for heating. Will the demand for more air conditioning be greater or less than the drop-off in heating demands? And what will the overall effect be on energy use? These are important questions because 32% of US energy consumption goes to the heating, cooling, and lighting of residential and commercial buildings[1].
US Energy Data
The International Energy Agency (IEA) collects data on energy supplies and uses for countries and regions. Table 1 is the 2009 information for the US. The data are standardized as million ton oil equivalents (MTOEs).
The Table is divided into two sections: Supply and Consumption.  Under Supply, a negative figure means that energy went to a particular use. For example, 427,255 MTOEs of Coal/Peat went to Electricity Plants. A positive figure under Supply means that energy was added to. For example, Electricity Plants generated 331,867 MTOEs of electricity and CHP Plants generated 12,430 MTOEs of usable Heat.
The Consumption section shows how the energy “products” were used. For example, Industry consumed 68,720 MTOEs of the Electricity produced. And Transport consumed 18% (258,912/1,462,524 MTOEs) of the US total.

Source: IEA
The table shows several interesting things:
 

• Coal, Crude Oil, and Nuclear are primarily inputs into other energy forms – see their very small Consumption figures.
• Crude Oil is refined into Oil Products used primarily in Transport – see the negative figure on its Supply line and the positive figure on the Transport Consumption line for Oil Products.
• Coal and Nuclear are used to make Electricity – see the negative Supply numbers for each on the Electricity Plants line.
• From the consumption data, it appears that Residential buildings use about 18% of the energy supplied while Commercial buildings account for 14% of energy use.

Electricity Losses
Perhaps the most important point to draw from Table 1 is the energy lost. Of the 2,162,915 MTOEs of energy is supplied, the US gets only 1,462,524 MTOEs of energy consumption. That means 32% of the energy is lost in production. Where is energy lost? Summing the first 6 columns in the Electricity Plants row, it appears it took 836,216 MTOEs going to electricity plants to produce 331,867 MTOEs of electricity. That means 60% of the energy used to produce and transmit electricity is lost. That loss is 23% of total US energy consumption – huge!
How Energy Is Used
Let’s return to global warming. Consider first how energy is used in homes. Table 2 provides US Department of Energy 2009 estimates of residential energy use. There are two columns of data. The w/o losses column does not include the energy losses resulting from generating and transmitting electricity. The “w/losses” column includes the energy losses.

Source: US Department of Energy, EIA
In the “w/o losses” column above, the dominance of energy for room and water heating is striking. In the “w/losses” column, as one would expect, the high electricity uses, e.g. water heating, cooling, etc. increase substantially.
Table 3 provides energy use for commercial buildings. Here, I use only actual energy consumed.

Source: US Department of Energy, EIA
Energy for heating is again the largest energy user.
Consider next which types of energy are used in homes. 46% it comes directly from natural gas, a bit more than the 43% coming from electricity[1]. I say “directly” because 25% of US natural gas is used to generate electricity. Fuel oil, formerly the leading heating fuel (along with coal) now only has a 6% share, just ahead of propane/NGL (5%).

Source: US Energy Information Administration
The heating of rooms and water dominate the uses (58%), with most of the energy supplied via natural gas. All the cooling (7.5%) comes from electricity. The other items in Table 4 are probably not very temperature sensitive.
Direct Evidence
In 2005, John Cymbalsky wrote “Impacts of Temperature Variation on Energy Demand in Buildings” for the Energy Department. In it, he assumed that State-level heating and cooling degree-days would reach the average of the five warmest or coolest levels that have occurred over the past 30 years by 2025. It was also assumed that warmer winters would coincide with warmer summers, and vice versa. Compared with the reference case forecast, heating degree-days are projected to be 11 percent higher in the cooler case and 12 percent lower in the warmer case by 2025, and cooling degree-days are projected to be 17 percent higher in the warmer case and 16 percent lower in the cooler case.
His conclusions are summarized in Table 5. In the warmer case, electric use would increase by 2,108 trillion BTUs, but overall energy use would fall because fossil fuel use would drop by even more – 5,718 BTUs

I quote from the author – note that he includes energy losses in making electricity in his calculations:
 <blockquote>“Given that fossil-fuel-fired space heating is the largest use of energy in the two buildings sectors, it is not surprising that the cumulative change in the two weather cases is greatest for fossil fuels. The cumulative change in fossil fuel consumption in the buildings sector in the warmer case represents 2.4 percent of the cumulative amount of fossil fuels used in the buildings sector from 2006 through 2025. For electricity, the cumulative change is 0.2 percent of the cumulative amount of electricity (including conversion losses) used in the buildings sector over that period.”</blockquote> He concluded that as a result of the population moving to states with warmer climates, population-weighted heating degree-days would decline by 3.2 percent, and population-weighted cooling degree-days would 4.1 percent from 2003 to 2025.
Conclusions
It appears that at least for the US, global warming will reduce the energy consumption of buildings. Air-conditioning demand will grow, but it will be more than offset by a reduction in heating consumption.
Footnote
 [1] Data in this section come from the US Energy Department. The data are slightly different than the IEA data. For example, IEA data have the electricity share slightly higher than the natural gas share. [1] http://www.iea.org/stats/balancetable.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=US

Aparentemente, el calentamiento global será bueno en el sentido en que reducirá el consumo de energía para calefacción en los Estados Unidos, según el estudio.

http://econintersect.com/wordpress/?p=24576

[Currobena]

Más efectos (inesperados, al menos para mí) del calentamiento global y la sequía sobre la producción de energía:

The Damage Has Been Done - 6   

Unusual Greenland early melt

In this series Dredd Blog has focused on the world wide drought.
 
 Today we focus on some of the unintended consequences that are happening in the United States, where the drought is very severe.
 
 But first let's remember that global warming induced climate change, has been brought to us because of fossil fuel addiction.
 
 That anthropogenic warming has been also fingered as the primary cause, the main, ongoing global event that is responsible as the fundamental causation of the current drought in the United States.
 
 That would mean that the fossil fuel industry is responsible for water shortage in more ways than one:
 <blockquote> WE’RE now in the midst of the nation’s most widespread drought in 60 years, stretching across 29 states and threatening farmers, their crops and livestock. But there is another risk as water becomes more scarce. Power plants may be forced to shut down, and oil and gas production may be threatened.
 
 Our energy system depends on water. About half of the nation’s water withdrawals every day are just for cooling power plants. In addition, the oil and gas industries use tens of millions of gallons a day, injecting water into aging oil fields to improve production, and to free natural gas in shale formations through hydraulic fracturing. Those numbers are not large from a national perspective, but they can be significant locally.
 
 All told, we withdraw more water for the energy sector than for agriculture. Unfortunately, this relationship means that water problems become energy problems that are serious enough to warrant high-level attention.
 
 During the 2008 drought in the Southeast, power plants were within days or weeks of shutting down because of limited water supplies.</blockquote> (Will Drought Cause The Next Black Out, emphasis added). Last year the Army Corp of Engineers had to bomb levies along the Mississippi River because it was flooding.
 
 This year the water level of the Mississippi River is so low that barges cannot navigate it fully loaded.
 
 And recently there was a surge in the summer melting of the Greenland ice sheet that surprised those who keep tract of it.
 
 The graphic at the top of this post shows melt that took place in less than one week (see Greenland Ice Melt - Shocking Speed-up).
 
 Another possible unintended consequence of upset climate patterns is the possibility that pandemics could be increased (see The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)–pandemic Influenza connection: Coincident or causal?).
 

http://blogdredd.blogspot.com.es/2012/07/the-damage-has-been-done-6.html

[traspotin]

Lo prometido es deuda:

Lo leí hace unos días y pensaba ponerlo pero ahora después de la última noticia todo encaja.

http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=514

Hay unas gráficas muy monas del albedo de Groenlandia.

Parece que Groenlandia está emergiendo un par de centímetros debido a esa pérdida de hielo.

Y en Usalandia parece que rompen récords de calor y sequía.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0703/Why-has-2012-been-the-hottest-year-on-record-in-the-US

More than 40,000 daily heat records have been broken around the country so far this year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, compared with last year's 25,000 daily records set by this date.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57467543/drought-reaches-record-56-percent-of-continental-u.s/

Drought reaches record 56 percent of continental U.S.

[Starkiller]

http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2012/07/25/actualidad/1343201911_594692.html

Groenlandia se derrite
Casi toda la capa de hielo que cubre la isla se fundió en cuatro días por una cresta de calor
Se trata de un fenómeno del que no hay precedentes registrados
Un iceberg gigante se desprende del glaciar Petermann
La ola provocada por la rotura del glaciar casi arrolla a un barco


A la izquierda, Groenlandia el 8 de julio. A la derecha, cuatro días después. / NASA

Cada verano, cerca de la mitad de la superficie de la capa de hielo que cubre Groenlandia suele derretirse. Por eso, cuando el pasado 12 de julio los satélites enviaron sus datos sobre el proceso, los científicos de la NASA no daban crédito: el 97% de la cubierta se había fundido en solo cuatro días. El fenómeno es tan extraordinario —no constan precedentes desde que se registran los datos—, que de hecho pensaron que se trataba de un error.

El deshielo se produjo rápidamente. Mapas derivados de tres satélites independientes mostraron que el 8 de julio solo el 40% de la superficie de la capa de hielo se había derretido. Cuatro días después, casi toda la cubierta, desde las zonas más finas en las costas hasta los dos kilómetros de profundidad en el interior, había experimentado algún grado de fusión en su superficie.

Los investigadores aún no han determinado si el fenómeno afectará el volumen global de pérdida de hielo este verano y contribuirá a la elevación del nivel del mar. En las zonas altas, la mayor parte del agua de deshielo vuelve a congelarse rápidamente en el mismo lugar. Pero cerca de la costa, la mayoría se pierde en el océano.

Se trata del segundo fenómeno inusual que se produce en la isla este verano. La semana pasada, un iceberg gigante que duplicaba en tamaño a la isla de Manhattan se desprendió del glaciar Petermann y quedó a la deriva en el mar. Un hecho que los investigadores no consideraron preocupante por sí solo, pero que, unido al excepcional deshielo, puede ser síntoma de un proceso de cambio. "Las observaciones por satélite están ayudando a entender cómo este tipo de eventos pueden relacionarse unos con otros, así como con su conexión con el sistema climático global", asegura Tom Wagner, director del programa de criosfera de la NASA en Washington.

Los científicos creen que el deshielo extremo se ha debido a una cresta inusualmente fuerte de aire caliente, o cúpula de calor, sobre Groenlandia, que ha sucedido a otras más leves que han dominado el clima de la zona desde fines de mayo. La cúpula comenzó a moverse sobre la isla el 8 de julio y luego se estacionó sobre la capa de hielo unos tres días más tarde. Hacia el 16 de julio había comenzado a disiparse.

La cresta provocó incluso el deshielo de un área en el centro de Groenlandia que no se había derretido desde 1889, según se desprende del análisis de los núcleos de hielo. "Los núcleos de hielo muestran que los eventos de fusión de este tipo ocurren aproximadamente una vez cada 150 años en promedio. Si se tiene en cuenta que el último fue 1889, este acontecimiento se ha producido justo a tiempo", opina Lora Koenig, un glaciólogo del centro Goddard y miembro del equipo de análisis de los datos obtenidos por satélite. "Pero si seguimos observando deshielos de este tipo en los próximos años, tendremos que empezar a preocuparnos".

Igual ha sido la polución, los desechos o Fukushima...o puede que simplemente sea lo que se lleva tiempo advirtiendo. Starkiller creo que te vas a quedar sin hielo para los cubatas mucho antes de lo que pensábamos   

Esta tarde pondré un par de noticias más que ahora no tengo tiempo.

Nada que no haya pasado ya:

At the time of the Norse settlement, the inner regions of the long fjords where the settlements were located were very different from today. Excavations show that there were considerable birch woods with birch trees up to 4 to 6 meters high in the area around the inner parts of the Tunuliarfik- and Aniaaq-fjords, the central area of the Eastern settlement, and the hills were grown with grass and willow brushes.[8][9] This was due to the medieval climate optimum. The Norse soon changed the vegetation[citation needed] by cutting down the trees to use as building material and for heating and by extensive sheep and goat grazing during summer and winter. The climate in Greenland was much warmer during the first centuries of settlement but became increasingly colder in the 14th and 15th centuries with the approaching period of colder weather known as the Little Ice Age.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland

Y en esa época, poco calentamiento global podía hacer el hombre...

[Currobena]

Un converso:

Ex-sceptic says climate change is down to humans A formerly sceptical climate scientist says human activity is causing the Earth to warm, as a new study confirms earlier results on rising temperatures.
In a US newspaper opinion piece, Prof Richard Muller says: "Call me a converted sceptic."
Muller leads the Berkeley Earth Project, which is using new methods and some new data to investigate the claims made by other climate researchers.
Their latest study confirms the warming trend seen by other groups.
The project received funds from sources that back organisations lobbying against action on climate change.
Their latest study, released early on Monday (GMT), concludes that the average temperature of the Earth's land has risen by 1.5C (2.7F) over the past 250 years.
The team argues that the good correspondence between the new temperature record and historical data on CO2 emissions suggests human activity is "the most straightforward explanation" for the warming.
The paper reiterates the finding that the land surface temperature has risen 0.9C just in the last 50 years.
In a piece authored for the New York Times, Prof Muller, from the University of California, Berkeley, said: "Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming.
"Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause."
When establishing the project, Prof Muller had been concerned by claims that established teams of climate researchers had not been entirely open with their data.
He gathered a team of 10 scientists, mostly physicists, including such luminaries as Saul Perlmutter, winner of this year's Nobel Physics Prize for research showing the Universe's expansion is accelerating.
Funding came from a number of sources, including charitable foundations maintained by the Koch brothers, billionaire US industrialists who have also donated large sums to organisations lobbying against acceptance of man-made global warming.
 On a different page However, one collaborator on the previous tranche of Berkeley Earth project papers, Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, declined to be included as an author on the latest one.
Commenting on the paper, Prof Curry said: "Their latest paper on the 250-year record concludes that the best explanation for the observed warming is greenhouse gas emissions. Their analysis is way oversimplistic and not at all convincing in my opinion."
She also told the New York Times: "I was invited to be a co-author on the new paper.  I declined.  I gave them my review of the paper, which was highly critical.  I don't think this new paper adds anything to our understanding of attribution of the warming."
The Berkeley Earth project studies have not yet been published in peer reviewed scientific journals, but the team has submitted them to the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
Prof Michael Mann, director of the Earth Science System Center at Penn State University, said that there was "a certain ironic satisfaction" in seeing a study funded by the Koch Brothers "demonstrate what scientists have known with some degree of confidence for nearly two decades: that the globe is indeed warming, and that this warming can only be explained by human-caused increases in greenhouse gas concentrations".
Prof Muller, meanwhile, describes his own change in standpoint as "a total turnaround".
He explained: "These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming."
The University of California physics professor added: "I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes.
"Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done."
Sceptical blogger Anthony Watts criticised elements of the team's findings, releasing details of his own analysis which claims to show "spurious doubling" in US temperature trends over recent decades.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19047501

[traspotin]

Nada que no haya pasado ya:

At the time of the Norse settlement, the inner regions of the long fjords where the settlements were located were very different from today. Excavations show that there were considerable birch woods with birch trees up to 4 to 6 meters high in the area around the inner parts of the Tunuliarfik- and Aniaaq-fjords, the central area of the Eastern settlement, and the hills were grown with grass and willow brushes.[8][9] This was due to the medieval climate optimum. The Norse soon changed the vegetation[citation needed] by cutting down the trees to use as building material and for heating and by extensive sheep and goat grazing during summer and winter. The climate in Greenland was much warmer during the first centuries of settlement but became increasingly colder in the 14th and 15th centuries with the approaching period of colder weather known as the Little Ice Age.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland

Y en esa época, poco calentamiento global podía hacer el hombre...

Efectivamente, en esa época, no en la actual, por lo que no contradice para nada al cambio climático actual y sobre todo la velocidad a la que está cambiando todo.

Por otra parte, conocéis a Richard Muller? Pues es un físico de la Universidad de Berkeley que era muy escéptico con ésto del calentamiento global producido por el hombre. El buen hombre fue "subvencionado" con dinero de los hermanos Koch para investigar todo este "timo" que aquí es debatido. El pobre hombre con toda su buena fe hizo un estudio independiente de los datos disponibles e intentó cuantificar los asuntos que los escépticos intentan colar con calzador (efecto isla de calor, es el sol estúpidos!, son ciclos naturales etc...). El resultado de todo ésto es ya conocido en su momento pero ahora el bueno de Richard ha escrito una editorial en el NYT que os traigo a continuación.

The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic
By RICHARD A. MULLER
Published: July 28, 2012
Berkeley, Calif.
Related

Dot Earth Blog: 'Converted' Skeptic: Humans Driving Recent Warming (July 28, 2012)
Related in Opinion

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. In its 2007 report, the I.P.C.C. concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before 1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural.

Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophisticated statistical methods developed largely by our lead scientist, Robert Rohde, which allowed us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions.

The historic temperature pattern we observed has abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions; the particulates from such events reflect sunlight, make for beautiful sunsets and cool the earth’s surface for a few years. There are small, rapid variations attributable to El Niño and other ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream; because of such oscillations, the “flattening” of the recent temperature rise that some people claim is not, in our view, statistically significant. What has caused the gradual but systematic rise of two and a half degrees? We tried fitting the shape to simple math functions (exponentials, polynomials), to solar activity and even to rising functions like world population. By far the best match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice.

Just as important, our record is long enough that we could search for the fingerprint of solar variability, based on the historical record of sunspots. That fingerprint is absent. Although the I.P.C.C. allowed for the possibility that variations in sunlight could have ended the “Little Ice Age,” a period of cooling from the 14th century to about 1850, our data argues strongly that the temperature rise of the past 250 years cannot be attributed to solar changes. This conclusion is, in retrospect, not too surprising; we’ve learned from satellite measurements that solar activity changes the brightness of the sun very little.

How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does. Adding methane, a second greenhouse gas, to our analysis doesn’t change the results. Moreover, our analysis does not depend on large, complex global climate models, the huge computer programs that are notorious for their hidden assumptions and adjustable parameters. Our result is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.

It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed.

Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren’t dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren’t going to melt by 2035. And it’s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the “Medieval Warm Period” or “Medieval Optimum,” an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to “global” warming is weaker than tenuous.

The careful analysis by our team is laid out in five scientific papers now online at BerkeleyEarth.org. That site also shows our chart of temperature from 1753 to the present, with its clear fingerprint of volcanoes and carbon dioxide, but containing no component that matches solar activity. Four of our papers have undergone extensive scrutiny by the scientific community, and the newest, a paper with the analysis of the human component, is now posted, along with the data and computer programs used. Such transparency is the heart of the scientific method; if you find our conclusions implausible, tell us of any errors of data or analysis.

What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years.

Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted. I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done.


Richard A. Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former MacArthur Foundation fellow, is the author, most recently, of “Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines.”

Que lo disfruten.

PS: Bienvenido de nuevo SK.

Edit: Vaya tenía medio preparada la entrada y cuando he vuelto de comer con un cliente he visto que Currobena ya ha puesto la info.

[Starkiller]

En doscientos años Groenlandia pasó de ser lo bastante cálida para estar habitada, a perder todos sus asentamientos por el frio. No se como lo verá, pero a mi eso me parece una velocidad muy respetable (en su último enlace habla de 250 años) para lo que, como mínimo, debieron ser un par de grados.

[traspotin]

Lo último de PIOMAS

[Starkiller]

Algo que no se esta comentando nada, pero que para mi es obvio: Cojones, que frio hace este puto verano. Esta mañana, paseando hacia el trabajo, hasta hacía algo de rasca. Cosa normal yendo con manga corta cuando hace 15º.

Pero es que llevamos así todo julio, salvando una semana, y lo que va de agosto. Los dias que pasé en galicia, solo podías bañarte en las horas de más calor, porque el resto del tiempo estaba demasiado frio, y la noche que pasé en Sanabria, me tocó dormir con manta.

De artículos, he encontrado solo esto:

http://www.abc.es/blogs/tiempo/public/post/el-verano-y-datos-relevantes-que-jamas-seran-noticia-13113.asp

A finales del mes de junio, la ola de calor que afectaba a buena parte del país acaparaba buena parte de la información en los telediarios. Termómetros callejeros midiendo erróneamente 50 grados eran noticia, y los comentarios gratuitos sobre el calentamiento global cada vez eran más frecuentes.

Poco más de dos semanas después hemos atravesado una primera quincena del mes de julio de temperaturas bastante contenidas, incluso muy frías en algunos puntos de la mitad norte. Voy a hacerme eco de los datos más relevantes, ya que seguramente en ningún otro medio se hablará de que en algunos puntos del país el verano está siendo frío, está prohibido.

En Vigo, en plenas rías bajas, ver el sol se está convirtiendo en una tarea realmente complicada. Como no podía ser de otra forma, este aumento de la nubosidad y los vientos procedentes del atlántico, están provocando que la temperatura media de las máximas, durante estos primeros quince días del mes, sea de tan sólo 20 grados, cuando los registros normales hablan de algo más de 24. Además al contrario de lo que sucedió en buena parte del país, en Vigo el mes de junio también tuvo un carácter frío según indican los resúmenes mensuales que elabora la propia Aemet.

De todas formas, bajo mi punto de vista, el caso más relevante se está viviendo en León, que hasta fecha de hoy  lleva registrada una anomalía negativa superior a los 3 grados en cuanto a temperatura media se refiere. Para hacer estos datos más entendibles, he de deciros que la temperatura mínima media durante esta quincena ha sido de 9 grados, por lo que no debe estar siendo una tarea fácil salir a disfrutar de las terrazas de los bares en estas noches de verano, sin llevar puesto algo de abrigo.

Para enfatizar más la situación, el mes de julio más frío que se ha vivido nunca en León data de 1977 y su temperatura media fue de 16,6ºC. Ahora bien, en estos primeros 15 días de julio de 2012, la media de temperaturas ha sido de 16,5ºC, por lo que si la situación siguiera así, podríamos hablar del julio más frío desde que se tienen datos.

No quiero alargarme más, pero en otras muchas ciudades de la mitad norte la situación está siendo muy similar. Por desgracia, el fuerte episodio de calor que nos visitará los próximos días competirá con la prima de riesgo para abrir las noticias.

[Currobena]

Según este estudio, en el hemisferio norte, este mes de julio ha sido el más frío desde 2008, dentro de una tendencia de calentamiento global desde 1978:

Summary (from section 2):
 

• Global composite temp.: +0.28 C (about 0.50 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for July.
• Northern Hemisphere: +0.44 C (about 0.79 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for July.
• Southern Hemisphere: +0.11 C (about 0.20 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for July.
• Tropics: +0.33 C (about 0.59 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for July.
• Global climate trend since 16 November 1978: +0.14 C per decade.
• Compared to global seasonal norms, July 2012 was the coolest July since 2008.

Contents
 

• Introduction
• Analysis by John Christy (red emphasis added)
• Other perspectives on temperature trends in our warming world
• About this data and analysis
• About the research team
• For more information

(1)  Introduction

.

Scientist in this debate (and anyone reading the literature) know that the world has been warming during the past 2 centuries. The questions concern the relative weight of the causes, which have varied over time, and forecasts. Especially important is understanding the net effects of accelerating human impacts on Earth’s climate, such as land use changes, and emissions of aerosols and CO2 (which spiked after WWII).
Unfortunately the debate in the news media has become a cacophony of politically motivated misinformation, with both sides increasingly becoming anti-science (ie, with a Soviet-like the only true scientists are those who agree with us; the others are evil). Continuation of these trends — both in our impacts on the biosphere and corruption of public debate — will have ugly effects.
It need not be so. We can run the public debate better. And the climate sciences need both more funding and better supervision. It’s no longer an academic debate, but a major public policy challenge. More like the Manhattan Project than the human genome project.
Here we see one perspective on this complex subject, current global temperatures — allowing comparison with what we read in the news media. In section 3 are links to see other perspectives. The past decade, the past 2 centuries, the past 4 centuries, and beyond.
(2)  Analysis by John Christy (red emphasis added)
Summary
 

• Global composite temp.: +0.28 C (about 0.50 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for July.
• Northern Hemisphere: +0.44 C (about 0.79 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for July.
• Southern Hemisphere: +0.11 C (about 0.20 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for July.
• Tropics: +0.33 C (about 0.59 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for July.
• Global climate trend since 16 November 1978: +0.14 C per decade.
• Compared to global seasonal norms, July 2012 was the coolest July since 2008.

Compared to seasonal norms the coldest spot on the globe in July was the South Pole, where winter temperatures averaged 4.5 C (8.1 degrees F) colder than normal. If it isn’t usually the coldest place on Earth in July, seeing temperatures during the deepest part of the Antarctic winter that much colder than normal might move the South Pole into that spot. By comparison, the “warmest” place on Earth in July was in northeastern Alberta, Canada. Temperatures there averaged 3.43 C (about 6.2 degrees F) warmer than normal for the month.
Here is the trend of the monthly global lower troposphere anomaly (source: the UAH Earth System Science Center):
 Click to enlarge image. Past monthly data can be found at the UAH Earth System Science Center.
This was reposted from the website of Roger Pielke Sr — Senior Research Scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at UC-Boulder and an emeritus professor of the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University (see his bio at Wikipedia).
(3)  Other perspectives on temperature trends in our warming world
(a) Different dataseries over many horizons:   Good news!  Global temperatures have stabilized, at least for now.
(b) The sea surface temperatures back to 1981 (covering 70% of the Earth’s surface, seas are the primary heat sink): the Reynolds OI.v2 data from NOAA National Operational Model Archive & Distribution System (NOMADS).
(c) The Hadley Centre  Central England temperature dataset: started in 1659, it’s the longest instrumental record of temperature in the world.
(d) James Hansen’s (Prof, Columbia – one of the world’s leading climate scientists) website gives a wide range of interesting graphs, including a comparison of the forecasts in his famous 1988 paper with actual CO2 and temperature results. CO2 followed its steady rate of increase, but global temperature has risen less than in any of his 3 scenarios.
(4)  About this data and analysis
In 1989 Dr. Roy W. Spencer and John Christy used data gathered by advanced microwave sounding units on NOAA and NASA satellites to get accurate temperature readings for almost all regions of the Earth beginning in 1979.
The satellite-based instruments measure the temperature of the atmosphere from the surface up to an altitude of about eight kilometers above sea level. This includes remote desert, ocean and rain forest areas where reliable climate data are not otherwise available. Once the monthly temperature data is collected and processed, it is placed in a “public” computer file for immediate access by atmospheric scientists in the U.S. and abroad.
For this achievement, the Spencer-Christy team was awarded NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1991. In 1996, they were selected to receive a Special Award by the American Meteorological Society “for developing a global, precise record of earth’s temperature from operational polar-orbiting satellites, fundamentally advancing our ability to monitor climate.”

http://fabiusmaximus.com/2012/08/08/41678/

[NosTrasladamus]

Un poquito de porfavor....

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/08/us/temperature-record/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/

The average temperature across the Lower 48 was 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.3 degrees above the 20th-century average, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration reported. That edged out the previous high mark, set in 1936, by two-tenths of a degree, NOAA said.

In addition, the seven months of 2012 to date are the warmest of any year on record and were drier than average as well, NOAA said. U.S. forecasters started keeping records in 1895.

[traspotin]

La información de Christy está llena de falacias y errores de bulto al igual que los de Roy Spencer y Anthony Watts que también son citados...ya tenemos a casi toda la tropa junta 

Otra parte importante del calentamiento a la que no se le está dando mucha importancia, la invasión de nuevas especies como por ejemplo...los mosquitos, que no olvidemos son vectores de transmisión de dengue, fiebre amarilla y virus del Nilo entre otros.

En investigación hay un gran principio: se encuentra lo que se busca (aunque muchas veces los genios surgen cuando saben interpretar lo inesperado). Y la entomología no es una excepción. El mapa de mosquitos invasores que ha publicado el Centro Europeo de Control de Enfermedades (ECDC) indica que no hay fronteras para estos insectos, y desde el por desgracia bien conocido mosquito tigre (Aedes albopictus) al más raro Aedes koreicus hasta cinco de estos exóticos animales han volado hasta el continente. Los otros son el aegypti, el japonicus y el atropalpus.

La verdad es que salvo en el caso del albopictus, de momento se trata de presencias reducidas, aunque hay que tener en cuenta que en más de la mitad de Europa no se han tomado datos. Pero, dando por buenos los resultados, se puede decir que hay una invasión en marcha.

La causa es humana –para variar-. Los transportes de mercancías y los viajes en avión facilitan el viaje de los insectos. El calentamiento les ayuda a establecerse.

El mosquito tigre pica en 120 municipios catalanes
La enfermedad de chikungunya sale del Índico y se asienta en Italia
El más exitoso es el mosquito tigre, como pueden acreditar en la zona de la costa catalana. Desde un punto de vista sanitario, aparte de sus doloras picaduras, es transmisor de dengue, fiebre amarilla y el virus del Nilo occidental. De hecho, es el responsable de mantener el foco de esta última enfermedad en Grecia. También fue el encargado de diseminar el virus Chikungunya en Rávena (Italia) en 2007.

Las otras cuatro especies también son vectores de prácticamente las mismas enfermedades. El japonicus está relacionado con un tipo de encefalitis, por ejemplo. Por fortuna que esté el insecto no es suficiente para que haya brotes de esas infecciones. Falta el virus correspondiente. Todavía.

http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2012/08/08/actualidad/1344451241_038843.html

Opinión de James Hansen, pionero del calentamiento global, el el WSP:

Climate change is here — and worse than we thought
   
By James E. Hansen, Published: August 4

James E. Hansen directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 , I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind’s use of fossil fuels.

But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic.


My projections about increasing global temperature have been proved true. But I failed to fully explore how quickly that average rise would drive an increase in extreme weather.

In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.

This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened. Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.

The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year can each be attributed to climate change. And once the data are gathered in a few weeks’ time, it’s likely that the same will be true for the extremely hot summer the United States is suffering through right now.

These weather events are not simply an example of what climate change could bring. They are caused by climate change. The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills.

Twenty-four years ago, I introduced the concept of “climate dice” to help distinguish the long-term trend of climate change from the natural variability of day-to-day weather. Some summers are hot, some cool. Some winters brutal, some mild. That’s natural variability.

But as the climate warms, natural variability is altered, too. In a normal climate without global warming, two sides of the die would represent cooler-than-normal weather, two sides would be normal weather, and two sides would be warmer-than-normal weather. Rolling the die again and again, or season after season, you would get an equal variation of weather over time.

But loading the die with a warming climate changes the odds. You end up with only one side cooler than normal, one side average, and four sides warmer than normal. Even with climate change, you will occasionally see cooler-than-normal summers or a typically cold winter. Don’t let that fool you.

Our new peer-reviewed study, published by the National Academy of Sciences, makes clear that while average global temperature has been steadily rising due to a warming climate (up about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century), the extremes are actually becoming much more frequent and more intense worldwide.

When we plotted the world’s changing temperatures on a bell curve, the extremes of unusually cool and, even more, the extremes of unusually hot are being altered so they are becoming both more common and more severe.

The change is so dramatic that one face of the die must now represent extreme weather to illustrate the greater frequency of extremely hot weather events.

Such events used to be exceedingly rare. Extremely hot temperatures covered about 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of the globe in the base period of our study, from 1951 to 1980. In the last three decades, while the average temperature has slowly risen, the extremes have soared and now cover about 10 percent of the globe.

This is the world we have changed, and now we have to live in it — the world that caused the 2003 heat wave in Europe that killed more than 50,000 people and the 2011 drought in Texas that caused more than $5 billion in damage. Such events, our data show, will become even more frequent and more severe.

There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate, but we are wasting precious time. We can solve the challenge of climate change with a gradually rising fee on carbon collected from fossil-fuel companies, with 100 percent of the money rebated to all legal residents on a per capita basis. This would stimulate innovations and create a robust clean-energy economy with millions of new jobs. It is a simple, honest and effective solution.

The future is now. And it is hot.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/climate-change-is-here--and-worse-than-we-thought/2012/08/03/6ae604c2-dd90-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_story.html

Los últimos datos del ártico:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Donde hay unas gráficas muy esclarecedoras.



Los modelos, a pesar de que se mejoran con el paso del tiempo se siguen quedando cortos. La aceleración de la pérdida de hielo es más rápida de lo que los modelos prevén.

[Currobena]

  Rate of Arctic summer sea ice loss is 50% higher than predicted New satellite images show polar ice coverage dwindling in extent and thickness

• Graphic: shrinking ice caps
   

•   Robin McKie, science editor   
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 11 August 2012 21.52 BST

    The view from a yacht’s mast. Summer pack ice is showing a rate of loss 50% higher than anticipated.  Photograph: Mike Powell/Corbis   Sea ice in the Arctic is disappearing at a far greater rate than previously expected, according to data from the first purpose-built satellite launched to study the thickness of the Earth's polar caps.
Preliminary results from the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 probe indicate that 900 cubic kilometres of summer sea ice has disappeared from the Arctic ocean over the past year.
This rate of loss is 50% higher than most scenarios outlined by polar scientists and suggests that global warming, triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions, is beginning to have a major impact on the region. In a few years the Arctic ocean could be free of ice in summer, triggering a rush to exploit its fish stocks, oil, minerals and sea routes.
Using instruments on earlier satellites, scientists could see that the area covered by summer sea ice in the Arctic has been dwindling rapidly. But the new measurements indicate that this ice has been thinning dramatically at the same time. For example, in regions north of Canada and Greenland, where ice thickness regularly stayed at around five to six metres in summer a decade ago, levels have dropped to one to three metres.
"Preliminary analysis of our data indicates that the rate of loss of sea ice volume in summer in the Arctic may be far larger than we had previously suspected," said Dr Seymour Laxon, of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at University College London (UCL), where CryoSat-2 data is being analysed. "Very soon we may experience the iconic moment when, one day in the summer, we look at satellite images and see no sea ice coverage in the Arctic, just open water."
The consequences of losing the Arctic's ice coverage, even for only part of the year, could be profound. Without the cap's white brilliance to reflect sunlight back into space, the region will heat up even more than at present. As a result, ocean temperatures will rise and methane deposits on the ocean floor could melt, evaporate and bubble into the atmosphere. Scientists have recently reported evidence that methane plumes are now appearing in many areas. Methane is a particularly powerful greenhouse gas and rising levels of it in the atmosphere are only likely to accelerate global warming. And with the disappearance of sea ice around the shores of Greenland, its glaciers could melt faster and raise sea levels even more rapidly than at present.
Professor Chris Rapley of UCL said: "With the temperature gradient between the Arctic and equator dropping, as is happening now, it is also possible that the jet stream in the upper atmosphere could become more unstable. That could mean increasing volatility in weather in lower latitudes, similar to that experienced this year."
CryoSat-2 is the world's first satellite to be built specifically to study sea-ice thickness and was launched on a Dniepr rocket from Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on 8 April, 2010. Previous Earth monitoring satellites had mapped the extent of sea-ice coverage in the Arctic. However, the thickness of that ice proved more difficult to measure.
The US probe ICESat made some important measurements of ice thickness but operated intermittently in only a few regions before it stopped working completely in 2009. CryoSat was designed specifically to tackle the issue of ice thickness, both in the Arctic and the Antarctic. It was fitted with radar that can see through clouds. (ICESat's lasers could not penetrate clouds.) CryoSat's orbit was also designed to give better coverage of the Arctic sea.
"Before CryoSat, we could see summer ice coverage was dropping markedly in the Arctic," said Rapley. "But we only had glimpses of what was happening to ice thickness. Obviously if it was dropping as well, the loss of summer ice was even more significant. We needed to know what was happening – and now CryoSat has given us the answer. It has shown that the Arctic sea cap is not only shrinking in area but is also thinning dramatically."
Sea-ice cover in the Arctic varies considerably throughout the year, reaching a maximum in March. By combining earlier results from ICESat and data from other studies, including measurements made by submarines travelling under the polar ice cap, Laxon said preliminary analysis now gave a clear indication of Arctic sea-ice loss over the past eight years, both in winter and in summer.
In winter 2004, the volume of sea ice in the central Arctic was approximately 17,000 cubic kilometres. This winter it was 14,000, according to CryoSat.
However, the summer figures provide the real shock. In 2004 there was about 13,000 cubic kilometres of sea ice in the Arctic. In 2012, there is 7,000 cubic kilometres, almost half the figure eight years ago. If the current annual loss of around 900 cubic kilometres continues, summer ice coverage could disappear in about a decade in the Arctic.
However, Laxon urged caution, saying: "First, this is based on preliminary studies of CryoSat figures, so we should take care before rushing to conclusions. In addition, the current rate of ice volume decline could change." Nevertheless, experts say computer models indicate rates of ice volume decline are only likely to increase over the next decade.
As to the accuracy of the measurements made by CryoSat, these have been calibrated by comparing them to measurements made on the ice surface by scientists including Laxon; by planes flying beneath the satellite's orbit; and by data supplied by underwater sonar stations that have analysed ice thickness at selected places in the Arctic. "We can now say with confidence that CryoSat's maps of ice thickness are correct to within 10cm," Laxon added.
Laxon also pointed out that the rate of ice loss in winter was much slower than that in summer. "That suggests that, as winter starts, ice is growing more rapidly than it did in the past and that this effect is compensating, partially, for the loss of summer ice." Overall, the trend for ice coverage in Arctic is definitely downwards, particularly in summer, however – a point recently backed by Professor Peter Wadham, who this year used aircraft and submarine surveys of ice sheets to make estimates of ice volume loss. These also suggest major reductions in the volume of summer sea ice, around 70% over the past 30 years.
"The Arctic is particularly vulnerable to the impact of global warming," said Rapley. "Temperatures there are rising far faster than they are at the equator. Hence the shrinking of sea-ice coverage we have observed. It is telling us that something highly significant is happening to Earth. The weather systems of the planet are interconnected so what happens in the high latitudes affects us all."
   

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/11/arctic-sea-ice-vanishing

[traspotin]

La situación actual en el Ártico está resultando dramática. A la bajada en la reflectividad de Groenlandia, la rotura  de un tamaño de tres Manhatan del glaciar Petermann y la fusión sin precedentes del 97% de la superficie de Groenlandia que han provocado récords de deshielo* y de tª**, se le une un ciclón (sí, un ciclón en verano en el Polo Norte) proveniente de Siberia que se posicionó en el centro del Ártico:



La tormenta trajo vientos de 50 mph y presiones por debajo de 965 mb, lo peor que le ha podido pasar a un Ártico ya de por sí debilitado. Agarraos las kalandrakas que este año el deshielo va a romper todos los récord. De hecho ya ha sobrepasado el anterior y aún queda casi un mes de deshielo.



En el Eemiano, hace 125.00 años, la temperatura era de un grado mayor que en la época preindustrial y el nivel del mar era aproximadamente de entre 6 y 9 metros por encima del actual. Actualmente la anomalía de temperatura es de 0.8ºC, casi como en el Eemiano. Haced vuestros propios cálculos de cuando tendremos los 6 metros de más pero como ya advertimos que los actuales modelos climáticos se están quedando cortos en el deshielo.

Claro que también podéis pensar que hubo vikingos en Groenlandia, que no hay de qué preocuparse y que ésto no es más que un ciclo natural.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________


(*)

Kangerlussuaq - River in Greenland sweeping a tractor on July 11th 2012 - wrath of the river.MOV

vídeo donde una pala de 20 Tn es destrozada como si fuera papel por el agua del deshielo en la ciudad de Kangerlussuaq, donde el agua se llevo dos puentes trayendo consigo más de 3,5 millones de litros por segundo, el doble que el anterior registro.

(**) Se observaron temperaturas de 2,2ºC en el campo de summit. Puede parecer una temperatura no muy elevada pero hablamos del centro de Groenlandia a una altitud de 3.200 metros. http://www.summitcamp.org/