date: Wed, 6 Feb 2008 17:10:38 -0000
from: "John Davies" <john.davies@foe.co.uk>
subject: FW: [Carbonequity] New report: Climate code red
to: <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>

Dr Phil Jones,
         You are probably aware of this report
http://www.climatecodered.net/  but just in case I will send it. An
indication of it's contents can be gleaned from the correspondence
(further below) I had with David Spratt.   Prior to that you may wish to
see the reaction of Dr Jeff Ridley to some of this.

All the Best,

John B Davies  personal

Albert,

Your concerns over preserving the Arctic ice are misplaced. There is no
evidence that the summer ice is in imminent danger of collapse.
Feedbacks in the climate system are only marginally positive.

Negative feedbacks are
1. A reduction of sea ice results in increased atmospheric water vapour
and hence more clouds. Cloud albedo is greater than sea ice albedo and
so net short wave forcing is reduced.
2. A reduction of sea ice results in increased evaporation. Evaporation
cools the surface but warms the atmosphere when it condenses. Increased
surface heating will increase the condensation height resulting in more
heat lost from the atmosphere to space. This is called the 'lapse-rate
feedback'
3. A reduction in sea ice results in more short wave absorbed by the
open ocean. Increased short wave radiation and increased melt water
reduces the ocean mixed layer depth. A shallow mixed layer stratifies
the ocean such that the heating is not mixed to the deeper ocean. With
the heat confined in the surface layer it is lost to the atmosphere more
readily and very rapidly once autumn starts.
4. Thinner ice in summer means more heat loss from the ocean in winter,
resulting in stronger ice growth. 
Positive feedbacks are the obvious
1. Reduced sea ice means more open water and lower albedo so more heat
up take and more ice melt.

Thus, a simple calculation including only the positive feedback will
produce an incorrect early loss of the summer ice.

All GCMs show that the inevitable loss of summer Arctic ice does not
influence the global climate system. Warming does not increase
significantly just because the cloud which replaces much of (but not
all) the ice is more reflective. The impact on the North Greenland ice
sheet will hasten the regional melt rate. However, it is evident that
the decline of the Greenland ice cap will take more than 1000 years.
The so called 'speedup' of draining glaciers has been shown to be a
transient feature as most of those 'fast' glaciers, diagnosed in 2003,
have now slowed to their original speeds. Even if tide-water glaciers
were all to speed up, they can only drain 10% of the ice sheet before
they become grounded above sea-level. There is ample evidence that non-
tidewater glaciers have not increased in speed.



>         The purpose is to lay suspension bridge cable between some
>         Arctic Ocean islands in order to prevent sea ice moving south.
>         We plan to construct it such a way that the cable allows ice
>         to move northwards but cuts its passage when sea ice turns
>         moving southwards.  The problem is that ice can melt
>         completely, and in fact this is our expectation before the end
>         of this decade, say by 2009.

This is just nonsense. The forces applied by the ice on such a cable
would easily snap it. The area of ice across which winds and ocean
transfer momentum to the ice, and integrate the force it applies, are
enormous. Given that suspension bridge cables break just holding the
relatively minuscule weight and wind cross section, there is no chance
at all of this working.

Jeff    

-----Original Message-----
From: David Spratt [mailto:dspratt@bigpond.net.au] 
Sent: 04 February 2008 20:39
To: John Davies
Subject: Re: [Carbonequity] New report: Climate code red

Yes, this view is now widespread -- including Hansen, Maslowski,  
etc.  See page 3 of the Climate Code Red:

"When the ice becomes sufficiently thin it will be sensitive to a  
"kick" from natural climate variations such as stronger wind/wave  
surge action that will result in rapid loss of the remaining summer  
ice cover. And the news gets worse. Louis Fortier, scientific  
director of the Canadian research network ArcticNet, says the worst- 
case scenarios about sea-ice loss are comingtrue and the Arctic Ocean  
could be ice-free in summertime as soon as 2010 (Young, 2007).  
Maslowski told the December 2007 conference of the AGU that "our  
projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting  
for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007... So given that fact, you  
can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too  
conservative" (Amos, 2007c). NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally told  
the same conference that after reviewing recent data, he concluded  
that "the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer  
by 2012" (Beck, 2007a), while NASA's Josefino Comiso said: "I think  
the tipping point for perennial sea-ice has already passed... It  
looks like [it] will continue to decline and there's no hope for it  
to recover" (Inman, 2007). NASA satellite data shows the remaining  
Arctic sea-ice is unusually thin, making it more likely to melt in  
future summers. Combining the shrinking sea-ice area with the new  
thinness of the remaining ice, it is calculated that the overall  
volume of ice has fallen by half since 2004 (Borenstein, 2007).

Lovelock talked about in a speech at the Royal Society around  
September last year

hope that helps

david


-----------
David Spratt
dspratt@bigpond.net.au
0417070099

"We are on the precipice of climate system tipping
points beyond which there is no redemption"
- James Hansen, Director, NASA Goddard Institute
for Space Research, New York, December 2005.
www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/


On 05/02/2008, at 2:58 AM, John Davies wrote:

> Dear Dr David Spratt,
>             In the carbon equity report I refer you to the  
> following paragraph in your summary report.
>
> 'The loss in summer of all eight million square kilometres of  
> Arctic sea-ice now seems inevitable, and may occur as early as  
> 2010, a century ahead of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate  
> Change projections. There is already enough carbon dioxide in the  
> Earth's atmosphere to initiate ice sheet disintegration in West  
> Antarctica and Greenland and to ensure that sea levels will rise  
> metres in coming decades.'
>
> As I understand it there is no scientist other than Albert Kallio  
> and possibly John Nissen who think the Arctic sea ice will melt  
> entirely in late summer prior to 2013. Should I be wrong about this  
> will you please let me know who they are.
>
> This is extremely urgent because if it is possible to show that the  
> Arctic sea ice is likely to melt down sooner than 2013 then it may  
> be possible to get almost immediate international action on Global  
> warming. What is James Lovelock's position on this matter?
>
> All the Best,
>
> John B Davies   Personal

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