[Vision2020] NASA GISS: March 2012 Global Temp. 17th Warmest: Arctic "Polar Amplification" Warmth Continues

[Ted Moffett]

Despite the US recording the warmest March on record since 1895,
according to the National Climatic Data Center (
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/national/2012/3 ), Goddard
Institute for Space Studies analysis of global average surface
temperature (this includes the entire global surface, about 70%
water and 30% land, combined) indicates March 2012 as the 17th warmest
March since 1880.  Note all 17 warmest March months for global average
temperature have occurred from 1988 through 2012, in this analysis:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

It's easy to exaggerate the importance of local or national weather:
the entire US, including Alaska and Hawaii, is a mere 1.9 percent of
total global surface area, thus a cold or warm US is trivial in the
context of global climate.

Despite the year to year variability in local and global temperatures,
which can in the short term due to natural climate factors (solar,
volcanoes, ENSO, et. al.) somewhat displace the long term warming signal from
anthropogenic climate change (List of scientific studies of climate
sensitivity starting in 1896:
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ClimateSensitivity.html ), the Arctic
continued in March 2012 with anomalous widespread warmth, as is obvious
from the color coded global temperature map for March 2012, offered by
GISTEMP at the following website, that displays an extreme warm
anomaly over North America extending into the US, and over large areas
of the Arctic:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2012&month_last=3&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=03&year1=2012&year2=2012&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg

It's very important to consider that even with "global dimming" from
human sourced atmospheric aerosols. i. e. particulates, importantly
sulfates from
coal fired plants (China!), that reflect solar energy and cool
climate, thus to some extent masking global warming, as quantifed in
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
from July 2011(
"Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998–2008"
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/06/27/1102467108 ),
the Arctic continues a long term warming trend, with ominous
implications for global climate.

It is ironic that though in the long term coal fired plants have the
potential to contribute the most to anthropogenic global warming
(Keystone XL: Game over? "...coal is still the 800-gigatonne gorilla
at the carbon party."
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/11/keystone-xl-game-over/
), if we globally shut down all coal fired plants, the global
dimming impact would dissipate, while the CO2 atmospheric impacts from
coal burning etc. would remain, causing global warming to accelerate
for a period of time.

The continuing warm Arctic anomaly is sometimes referenced as "polar
amplification" from the radiative forcing of increasing atmospheric
CO2 levels from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, that was
predicted by climate scientists at least as early as 1980: Manabe,
Syukuro, and Ronald J
Stouffer, 1980: Sensitivity of a global climate model to an increase
of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Journal of
Geophysical Research, 85(C10), 5529-5554:
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/results.php?author=1070
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/sm8001.pdf?PHPSESSID=141ca3d145efd058508e335b76a564ee

Some researchers indicate Nobel Laureate Arrhenius, who some consider the
father of modern climate science, predicted polar amplification over a
century ago.  Climate science researcher Barton Paul Levenson lists the
climate model verifications of anthropogenic climate warming at this
website, among them "polar amplification" with a reference to "Arrhenius
1896": "Are the Models Untestable?"
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ModelsReliable.html

Arrhenius's 1896 paper on climate sensitivity, the change in global average
surface temperature from a doubling of atmospheric CO2, is here:  "On the
Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground:"
http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf
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The continued anomalous warmth in the Arctic indicates we continue to
approach one of the critical climate change tipping
points, "Arctic summer ice free," mentioned in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ("Reducing abrupt
climate change risk using the Montreal Protocol and other regulatory
actions to complement cuts in CO2 emissions"
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616.full ) frin August 2009

The tipping points mentioned are Amazon die-off, ENSO intensification,
Arctic summer ice free, Greenland destabilization, Himalayan-Tibetan
glacier destabiliation, thermohaline ocean current disruption, West
Antarctica destabilization.

>From  the abstract:

"Current emissions of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) have
already committed the planet to an increase in average surface
temperature by the end of the century that may be above the critical
threshold for tipping elements of the climate system into abrupt
change with potentially irreversible and unmanageable consequences.
This would mean that the climate system is close to entering if not
already within the zone of “dangerous anthropogenic interference”
(DAI). Scientific and policy literature refers to the need for
“early,” “urgent,” “rapid,” and “fast-action” mitigation to help avoid
DAI and abrupt climate changes."

The climate change tipping points mentioned in this paper are
presented in the following graph:
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20616/F1.large.jpg
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett