The clouds are finally clearing after last week’s Arctic storm, and now we can see the large regions of supposedly ice free water which opened up.
//ARCTIC.IO/OBSERVATIONS/8/2012-08-15/8-N76.720116-W157.095889
We now have a new category of ice-free water, which would have in past times been described as full of dangerous ice. They desperately need a record minimum, even it means not seeing a few Texas sized regions of ice.
Joe reports the shocking news that it is hot in Arizona – in the summer.
Summer temperatures in Arizona peaked in 1896, and recent summers have been among the coolest on record.
As I mentioned earlier, I was a student at ASU in 1974 – the year they had eighteen days in a row over 110 degrees.
1974 was right at the peak of the global cooling scare. It was also the year of the worst tornado outbreak in US history and some of the worst flooding in Queensland’s history.
More importantly, it was the year that Nixon resigned over something far less serious than Obama’s gun running to Mexico.
http://news.google.com/newspapers/
Climate science is full of geniuses forecasting an ice-free Arctic, based on what has happened at 70 degrees north since the peak ice year of 1980.
However, new research from the 15th century has determined that the Earth is not flat, and that the North Pole receives a lot less sun than 70N during August and September.
The canary in the global warming coal mine barely escaped the cold in Alaska, and was recently spotted in Chicago. The environs there have also become too cold, so it is has moved to Arizona.
Twitter / billmckibben: NYT: Phoenix heat so intense …
Nine Straight Days of 110 or More: That’s Hot, Even for Phoenix
PHOENIX — Hot is a relative term for people used to the scorching summer weather in this city built on land better suited for cactus than lawns. But nine straight days of excessive heat seem to have stretched even the most elastic tolerance levels to their limits.
I was a student at Arizona State University during the 1974 ice age, when Phoenix had eighteen consecutive days over 110 degrees. We had no air conditioning in the frat house and I had soccer practice every day at 3 pm. That was in the days before some men had their cajones removed.
h/t to Tom Nelson
In 1996 the NYT said that severe droughts were common in the past
Anasazi had weathered many severe droughts in the past. Why did the one in the late 13th century cause an entire population to abandon the settlements they had worked so hard to build?
Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
August 20, 1996, Tuesday, Late Edition – Final
Section C; Page 1; Column 3; Science Desk
Yesterday, the New York Times said that severe droughts hardly ever happened in the past
Hundred-Year Forecast: Drought
By CHRISTOPHER R. SCHWALM, CHRISTOPHER A. WILLIAMS and KEVIN SCHAEFER
Published: August 11, 2012BY many measurements, this summer’s drought is one for the record books. But so was last year’s drought in the South Central states. And it has been only a decade since an extreme five-year drought hit the American West. Widespread annual droughts, once a rare calamity, have become more frequent and are set to become the “new normal.
Extreme Weather and Drought Are Here to Stay – NYTimes.com
Melting over the Greenland ice sheet shattered the seasonal record on August 8 – a full four weeks before the close of the melting season, reports Marco Tedesco, assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at The City College of New York.
Greenland melting breaks record four weeks before season’s end
When the sea level data comes out for the summer, is it going to show any correlation to this event? Probably not, because temperatures going slightly above freezing for two hours is a total non-event which happens frequently, and which only a pin-head would care about.
h/t to Marc Morano
In June, the sun set about 8:30 pm. Now it sets much earlier.
At this rate, we will have a sunshine-free Colorado by next summer. Zwally™
JAXA shows that we should have an ice-free Arctic in about the year infinity, which is why experts keep making fools out of themselves predicting dates from 2008 to 2030. Perhaps they have invented a new kind of ice which melts below 0C north of 80N after August 15.
Another possibility would be to declare ice-free to mean the area of Alaska, Texas, California and France combined.
Essentially all of the remaining Arctic ice is either thick or north of 80N, where temperatures are below freezing. Any changes in extent over the next few weeks will depend almost entirely on which way the wind blows.
