19 ms·

What is happening in the Arctic is now beyond words, so here are the pictures

• mkempe 9y ago
  I read the weather report (in Danish). [1] The local warming in Greenland has already happened in previous years at that particular weather station. The spike in temperature was caused by a foehn-like wind -- same as a chinook wind in the Colorado or Wyoming Rockies; the temperature in Boulder CO can easily climb 10-20 C over a few hours and rapidly melt the snow, then return to a deep freeze the next night. [1] http://www.dmi.dk/nyheder/arkiv/nyheder-2018/februar/plusgrader-i-nordgroenland/ http://www.dmi.dk/nyheder/arkiv/nyheder-2018/februar/plusgra...
  • davesque 9y ago
    But...the ice levels are well below record lows during the satellite era according to the article. When are we going to stop kidding ourselves?
    • mkempe 9y ago
      I haven't said anything about arctic sea ice levels, have I? I just provided a factual summary based on the original Danish report about the cause of a one-day temperature spike recorded at one weather station in Northern Greenland.
      • arcticfox 9y ago
        Right, but I don't see how anyone could read the article and find that single day a compelling part of the story. It could have easily been left out.
        • mkempe 9y ago
          It was not presented with appropriate context, and was not left out. It undermines the argument and thus should have been left out. That makes it interesting.
  • mkempe 9y ago
    I'm guessing that the downvoters don't know what chinook winds can do nor what causes them. [1] The temperature swings can easily be double what I mentioned above, i.e. 40 C from -20C to +20C and back. Or it's a heresy to point out that a particular weather event is neither uncommon nor a sign of doom. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_wind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_wind
    • throwaway2048 9y ago
      that requires a very specific topographic configuration (nearby tall mountains with warm moist air flowing over them from one side, and the other side in their rain shadow). It is by no means a widespread phenomena, and absolutely does not explain events in the arctic.
      • mkempe 9y ago
        The Danish meteorological report I linked to explicitly states that the temperature spike was caused by a foehn-like wind, and that the same phenomenon has already been recorded at the same weather station in past years.
  • bigbugbag 9y ago
    you've been seconded: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461676#16463992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461676#16463992
• kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  Almost as bad as web devs forgetting how to use the HTML <image> tag.
  • rezz 9y ago
    HTML doesn't have an <image> tag.
    • lwansbrough 9y ago
      Actually, it does. Try it. (To be clear, it was implemented because of the frequency in which developers mistakenly use <image> instead of <img>)
      • zeusk 9y ago
        Apparently not in HTML5, although major browsers retained it for the purpose you mentioned and back-compat. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11928566/img-vs-image-tag-in-html https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11928566/img-vs-image-ta...
        • userbinator 9y ago
          Interesting comment there: I discovered, the hard way, that the Android Gmail client, using naked HTML (with a default naked DTD specification), does exhibit this problem. It only responds to <img /> [i.e., not <image />]. gmail.com is fine with <image />, but not the Android gmail client. Looks like a fingerprinting opportunity to me.
        • nostrademons 9y ago
          It's in HTML5 as well, but is converted at tokenization time to <img> and a parse error is recorded. https://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-html5-20110113/tokenization.html#tokenization https://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-html5-20110113/tokenization.ht... (Search for "image")
          • deleted 9y ago
• wnevets 9y ago
  at least we've created lots of shareholder value
  • snakeboy 9y ago
    That's one of my favorites: https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
  • ataturk 9y ago
    The Soviet Union and East Germany were no paragons of environmental protection. They just dumped toxic waste and burned shit however they wanted to because anybody who complained was simply disappeared. Same thing today in China.
  • yorby 9y ago
    you are better put that value out of stocks while you can ;)
  • dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
    Your comment is very sad and true at the same time. Reminded me once again the actions of each of us matter.
• codecamper 9y ago
  next the tundra melts and releases an insane amount of methane. we are so screwed.
  • username223 9y ago
    It seems like we keep discovering new positive feedback loops for global warming. Less ice means less reflection. Warmer arctic means more methane from permafrost. Desertification means less carbon capture. There was a recent article in Scientific American about likely changes in cloud formation from AGW. Some clouds reflect sun (cooling), while others trap heat (warming). Guess which are likely to increase? I doubt humans will go extinct, but yeah... we're screwed.
    • TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
      Humans might not. Human culture and civilisation might.
    • ataturk 9y ago
      I hope they only keep the smart people and murder just the dumb ones.
    • tachyoff 9y ago
      Don’t forget oceanic dead zones and acidification! All it takes is the death of an important part of the food chain to really hurt a lot of people.
    • codecamper 9y ago
      I'm of the opinion that all of life on Earth evolved over a long period of time to match the more or less steady state environment. When you go and disturb that steady state by say releasing a million years worth of carbon sequestration over a century, you destabilize the whole thing. Like a top spinning it all of a sudden collapses. And then humans realize that we were really just along for the ride & do not have a chance to re-stabilize.
      • 9y ago
• elvirs 9y ago
  beach front property owners should worry
  • Matt_Mickiewicz 9y ago
    and anybody owning stock in companies that insure those properties....
    • toomuchtodo 9y ago
      As Americans, we're all on the hook for it. https://www.fema.gov/national-flood-insurance-program https://www.fema.gov/national-flood-insurance-program https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/business/a-broke-and-broken-flood-insurance-program.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/business/a-broke-and-brok... "The government-run National Flood Insurance Program is, for now, virtually the only source of flood insurance for more than five million households in the United States. This hurricane season, as tens of thousands of Americans seek compensation for storm-inflicted water damage, they face a problem: The flood insurance program is broke and broken. The program, administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been in the red since Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans in 2005. It still has more than a thousand disputed claims left over from Sandy. And in October, it exhausted its $30 billion borrowing capacity and had to get a bailout just to keep paying current claims."
      • mobilefriendly 9y ago
        And this is why American coasts are grossly over-developed-- the government undercuts private insurers who would charge a much higher market price.
        • deleted 9y ago
          [deleted]
        • chaz 9y ago
          NPR Planet Money did an episode on this: "The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is $30 billion in debt to the U.S. Treasury. If it were a private company, it would be bankrupt. And instead of preventing risky behavior, the NFIP may be encouraging it. Among the NFIP's many problems are houses that flood again and again and again. Throughout the program's history, one percent of homes have been responsible for more than 25 percent of the claims. The NFIP can't drop these homes." https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/29/554603161/episode-797-flood-money https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/29/554603161/epis...
• orf 9y ago
  But it's a Chinese hoax, right? Invest in coal!
• brandmeyer 9y ago
  The Arctic Sea Ice Blog has been my go-to for cold hard facts about the arctic. The main author of the blog has been quite a bit less active over the last year, but his data aggregation page[2] is still alive and ticking. For example, I can see from the DMI (Danish Met Institute) Daily Arctic mean temperatures north of 80N graph that area-averaged temperatures in the farthest north have been well above average all season. There is also a plot of the total freezing degree-days over the entire winter season, and its anomaly relative to the past several decades. From there, I can see that while this season has been far less cold than average, it was not nearly as warm as last year. Last year's winter season set a new minimax record for arctic sea ice coverage over the winter, but that didn't turn into a minimum coverage record over the summer. It looks like the total arctic sea ice extent is currently setting a minimum-coverage record at this date, but its too early to tell if it will set another minimax record. From the regional graphs page[3], it looks like most of the anomaly is coming from the Bearing Sea. [1]: http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/ http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/ [2]: https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/ https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/ [3]: https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/regional https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/regional
  • optimusclimb 9y ago
    > cold hard facts about the arctic. Forgive the reddit-esque comment, but...Nice.
• blondie9x 9y ago
  The heat spikes in the Arctic now so early on in the year and the jet stream which previously brought cold towards the Arctic now shifts the cold down in cold spikes and record cold fronts to north east and Europe. It seems we will no longer have an Arctic soon and the jet stream will be permanently shifted due to anthropogenic climate change. We had record heat in Southern California in early February and around the same time these graphs show the Arctic temperatures spiking our temperatures began to drop. I'm afraid once the ice is almost wiped out we will expect more record high temperatures and while all the heat builds in the Arctic more record colds as the cold that was in the Arctic is dissipated to other places.
  • kbutler 9y ago
    Where did the jet stream previously get the cold to bring to the Arctic?
    • noiv 9y ago
      There is no sun light for months in Arctic winter. Usually jet streams/polar vortex keep the cold air within the high latitudes. Due to Climate Change or more specific Arctic Amplification the pressure gradient from the Equator to the North Pole flattens and tends to fail to contain the cold air which in turn can 'escape' to lower latitudes in exchange for warmer air moving into the Arctic. The whole northern hemisphere trends towards a less structured more chaotic circulation regime.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  • SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
    Weather isn’t climate - until it’s used as evidence for man made climate change I guess?
  • pssst 9y ago
    Are you saying that we should expect larger/stronger cold periods in Europe ? The EU is saying that HDD (Heating Degree Days) is decreasing and it expects to further do so. [1] [1]: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/heating-degree-days/assessment https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/heating-d...
• gunnr15 9y ago
  ‪What industry is contributing to climate change the most? Where is a good place to find data on this?‬
  • brandmeyer 9y ago
    See https://www.carbontracker.org/ https://www.carbontracker.org/ and their 2014 report for some good information. The target audience is the financial sector, but its still readable if you are careful about the infographics. https://www.carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Unburnable-Carbon-Full-rev2-1.pdf https://www.carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Unb...
    • spot 9y ago
      how does that align with the CRBN ETF?
    • timb07 9y ago
      But that report is only looking at fossil fuel reserves, rather than industries that consume those fossil fuels, thereby releasing greenhouse gases and causing climate change. Further, there are other sources of greenhouse gases not related to fossil fuels, principally agriculture/livestock.
  • dsacco 9y ago
    I host over 30TB of excellent climate date here: https://mirrors.sorengard.com/azimuth https://mirrors.sorengard.com/azimuth. These datasets were collected from various government agencies as part of a larger collaboration with John Baez and a couple of other scientists from the Azimuth Climate Data Project: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/azimuth_backup_project/ http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/azimuth_backup_project/ My server has a 1Gbps connection and can support sustained downloads of very large files. Unfortunately, the data isn’t well documented, but I’m working on improving that in the future. It’s organized roughly according to the agency it’s sourced from on a directory basis. The archive includes datasets from NASA, NOAA, EPA, USGS, NCDC, CDC, EIA, FDA, USDA, DOE, and various subdepartments thereof.
• laser 9y ago
  Updated data on the second chart for 2018: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php Such an outlier is not completely unprecedented it looks like from his chart, but only if it immediately and rapidly corrects downwards in the coming days...
  • bmking 9y ago
    Please don't just downplay such an event if you don't know anything about it. This temperature measurement may not be completely unprecedented, but as DMI write about it: Plus degrees are unusual DMI has measurements from Kap Morris Jesup back to 1980, and reveals that in February, above zero degrees are definitely not usual at the world's northernmost land-based measurement station. In fact, DMI has only twice previously measured similar high temperatures. The first time was in 2011. Second time last year; ie in 2017. Both times, "føhn"-winds may have contributed to the high temperatures. (https://www.dmi.dk/nyheder/arkiv/nyheder-2018/februar/plusgrader-i-nordgroenland/ https://www.dmi.dk/nyheder/arkiv/nyheder-2018/februar/plusgr...)
    • laser 9y ago
      I see how that could seem like downplaying, but I just meant that as a hopeful observation that if the temperature rapidly corrects perhaps we're not as screwed as one might get the impression from the partial information. As it happens, the next day the temperature did immediately begin plummeting to our good fortune, and four days later now it is nearly 15 centigrade lower.
• mikeatwork 9y ago
  In OTHER WORDS, we have zero scientific data to prove the hoax that is climate alarmism, so instead we have pictures that prove nothing since there are no pictures around from the medieval warming period or before. We know our thoughtless groupthink millennials eat this stuff up!
• meri_dian 9y ago
  I often see people talk about potential positive feedback loops involved in climate change, but rarely are potential damping mechanisms mentioned. So let's talk about them. I'll share one. Methane consuming bacteria discovered under the West Antarctic ice shelf: https://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=242668 https://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=242668 "The scientists say that if their analysis is correct, it could mean that a large reservoir of methane thought to lie under the vast West Antarctic Ice Sheet -- which encompasses 25.4 million cubic kilometers (6.1 million cubic miles) of ice -- is less likely to be released into the atmosphere."
  • pwarner 9y ago
    Looks like this fern fixed it last time? So no worries then. Might take a while... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event
    • meri_dian 9y ago
      Not that there are no worries, but the worst case scenarios being put forward are almost certainly not accurate. In fact it has been acknowledged that the worst case models submitted to the Paris Climate Accord talks were misleading in their assumptions.
      • mistermann 9y ago
        Anyone have a citation or rebuttal for this?
        • meri_dian 9y ago
          Here is some support, I've been trying to find the original article I read but it was based upon this research team's findings: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/01/17/climate-scientists-say-they-may-be-able-to-rule-out-the-worst-case-scenarios-and-the-best-ones/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20... Apparently the worst case scenarios mentioned here were used as a focus during the Paris accords.
• krautt 9y ago
  So it's going to get warmer, sea levels will rise. coastlines will move inland as sea levels rise. Typically colder areas will become more tropical. Other than displacing a large number of people who live on coastlines, what's the big deal? Insult me for my niavety if it makes you feel better, but I honestly don't know the answer.
  • dwaltrip 9y ago
    Widespread and severe agricultural issues, drought, an increase in extreme weather (hurricanes / typhoons / etc), unprecedented heat waves, and others I'm forgetting. This along, with the issues you've mentioned, could result in significant political instability across the world, massive migration issues that could easily dwarf the migration issues of the last decade, perhaps even severe wars, and other disastrous situations. I'm not qualified to give a full description. Some form of the above seems fairly plausible to me if we don't take serious pragmatic action. It's of course incredibly difficult to give meaningful predictions about something this complex. But let's not bet the damn farm on it. It is very well established that there are serious risks. The time has long come for anyone in a relevant position of leadership to accept the responsibility and take effective action.
  • mathgenius 9y ago
    How about the Syrian civil war? "global warming is said to have played a role in sparking the 2011 uprising. Severe drought plagued Syria from 2007-10, causing as many as 1.5 million people to migrate from the countryside into cities, exacerbating poverty and social unrest." http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/3/2/syrias-civil-war-linked-partly-to-drought-global-warming.html http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/3/2/syrias-civil-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Civil_War#Drought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Civil_War#Drought
    • b1daly 9y ago
      A not unreasonable hypothesis. Yet the bulk of the destruction is the result of ghastly military actions, aimed at direct destruction of the society. To worry about the contribution of climate change is not pointless. Close to it though.
• intopieces 9y ago
  Is it true that Russia stands to gain from climate change due to their land thawing and creating farmland?
  • geowwy 9y ago
    I think they would be more interested in the shipping routes and warm water ports it might create.
  • Maakuth 9y ago
    They have no lack of farmland even now. They just have been very inefficient in utilizing it.
• gremlinsinc 9y ago
  Too bad we can't create a dyson sphere that we could partially close to limit sun exposure enough to refreeze parts of the planet as needed and also use the sphere to power everything on earth.
  • g_simonsson 9y ago
    This reminds me of the Sun-Earth-L1 Lagrangian point, where we have deployed several spacecrafts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point#Spaceflight_applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point#Spaceflight_a... An international effort could easily deploy reflective materials here to reduce solar radiation on Earth. Though I wonder how much it would cost to achieve even a 0.01% reduction in radiation, as well as what material would be most cost-effective to deploy.
    • jsilence 9y ago
      Lametta?
    • bigbugbag 9y ago
      This is an old idea and it is very difficult and incredibly expensive to realize while not actually fixing the issue. https://www.livescience.com/22202-space-mirrors-global-warming.html https://www.livescience.com/22202-space-mirrors-global-warmi...
  • jerry40 9y ago
    What if some countries said "don't refreeze us, we're ok"?
  • chr1 9y ago
    There are easier methods to control the climate. E.g solar updraft towers can be used to create cloud cover, and to increase convection in the atmosphere.
• yters 9y ago
  So if the earth heats up, and more water evaporates, and more clouds form to block the sun, will this lead to a global cooling effect? My understanding is this was the old worry, that all our pollutants were going to block out the sun and lead to a new ice age, or at least the Matrix.
  • KnightOfWords 9y ago
    Clouds reflect sunlight but they also trap heat, by absorbing infrared radiation and re-emitting it. (In Winter, notice how much colder it is in the morning when it's been clear all night.)
    • yters 9y ago
      So if I lived in a country that is always cloudy it will be warmer than a country that is never cloudy?
  • bigbugbag 9y ago
    There is a positive feedback loop, more water vapor in the athmosphere double the CO2 greenhouse effect, and factoring in other feedback loops we get over 3 times more greenhouse effect, which warms the earth and increase water vapor in the athmosphere, etc. This process could lead to oceans boiling out (though not on Earth, but it may be the case for Venus).
    • yters 9y ago
      If it could go either way, why are we so sure it is an unstable loop in one particular direction? Our world used to be much warmer than it is now, yet somehow it cooled down a whole lot. There are just not enough lines connecting all the dots here.
      • bigbugbag 9y ago
        I don't know what an unstable loop is. I was referring to the well defined cybernetics concept of feedback loop[1] which is simple: a feedback loop occurs when the output of a system applies to the input of the system. In the discussed case it is a positive feedback loop as outputs adds itself to input [2]. I don't understand what you are trying to say by pointing out earth was warmer and cooled down, but you can read about positive and negative feedback loop during glacial period on wikipedia[3]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback#/media/File:General_Feedback_Loop.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback#/media/File:General_F... [2]: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.energy.25.1.441 https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.energ... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#Positive_and_negative_feedback_in_glacial_periods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#Positive_and_negative_...
• jnsaff2 9y ago
  As often if you want a deeper and much more nuanced overview Omega Tau has an amazing episode which discusses this and the reasons why this is such a big deal: http://omegataupodcast.net/229-ant-arctic-sea-ice/ http://omegataupodcast.net/229-ant-arctic-sea-ice/
• CalRobert 9y ago
  Things like this make it hard to decide whether to invest in a 401k or defensible northerly land that could be homesteaded in a pinch.
  • thriftwy 9y ago
    My favourite dream megaproject is putting a mile high immersion heater into Pechora sea, making its hundred kilometers of coastland tropical not unlike Thailand. Or any other sea in the proximity. With palm trees and other signs of life success.
• IanSanders 9y ago
  6-7% of people who lived so far are alive today. http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleH...
• a_imho 9y ago
  Assuming we need to worry about climate change in the short term, what are the best mitigations on individual level? What can a person do to prepare for climate change? Move somewhere less affected? Hoard money/resources?
  • fsloth 9y ago
    "What can a person do to prepare for climate change?" If global climate goes haywire, I would guess grain prices are first to go up, leading to instability in the poorest areas (qualitatively, the price of food seems to be related to regional instability). On the short term I would guess the best guess is to have enough money to buy food, and live somewhere where there are strong governments that will mitigate problems to their constituencies on the short term (USA, Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc) If this starts to go badly, that is.
    • ensiferum 9y ago
      You mean when
      • fsloth 9y ago
        No, it's still if. Climate scientists are not seers. It's an if with bloody lot of concerning data points and estimates. If should be good enough to take action. Currently we are running a global empirical experiment on what happens when we increase CO2 in the atmoshpere, and no one has any conclusive answer what will actually happen, given that Earht's weather is a highly complex dynamical system. Will the clathrate gun explode? What happens then? Who knows! Roll the dice, enjoy the show. Yeah, when we get to when it's too late.
  • peteretep 9y ago
    Vote
  • rmetzler 9y ago
    Walk or bike to your workplace instead of taking the car. Use public transportation. Oh, sorry, I misread what you asked about. You don't want to do something against climate change, you just want to mitigate the effects on you. Best thing is to avoid all those people who will migrate because it doesn't rain anymore in their place so they have to starve because of bad harvests.
• rmetzler 9y ago
  I regularly have discussion about climate change with my dad. He doesn't deny that human interference does influence weather and climate, but he says there isn't enough evidence that this is the only reason why the climate is changing. The Greenhouse effect once was something natural and positive - we couldn't live on a planet without the Greenhouse effect. But now the meaning changed and it includes that human race is guilty, because of air pollution. He doesn't deny an effect, but he says other possible explanations like water vapor (which apparently is one of the biggest impacts for the Greenhouse effect) aren't regarded that much in the discussion. He says, the ice around the Antarctic even grows, but almost nobody talks about that. And volcanic activity north of Greenland might also boost the temperature there.
  • draw_down 9y ago
    Ok. Who is your dad?
  • WhitneyLand 9y ago
    I’ve upvoted your comment. It’s flawed logic, but I see it as highly counterproductive to downvote people who seem to be reasoning about a problem or discussing their perceptions in good faith. So many revered scientists have made comments that today would sound jackass silly. I doubt anyone here doesn’t have such comments under their belt. Thinking or asking alone can never be wrong. As long as it’s well intentioned and open to the possibility of accepting counter arguments.
    • ThomPete 9y ago
      I upvoted your comment because we need more people like you who are able to disagree without turning the other person into a villain or idiot just because they disagree. Personally, I have become more skeptical of not climate change or even whether humans have an effect but of whether it's catastrophic and I have shifted my thinking quite a lot to accept that humans will not only have an effect on earths climate, we will conquer it and control it. That and not stopping the world, is the moral thing to do.
      • 9y ago
• mustardo 9y ago
  Fake news! I heard someone in the lift of my soul destroying corporate gig this morning talking about how great the electrolytes in her drink were... I think it's finally happening https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
  • gambiting 9y ago
    Except, as many have pointed out before, Idiocracy was far more reasonable than what some countries are doing right now - even when the world was composed of nothing but idiots, they recognized they had a problem, found the smartest person in the world, and put them in charge of fixing the issue