Exciting BAS press release...
The first direct evidence linking human activity to the collapse of Antarctic ice shelves is published this week in the Journal of Climate. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, University College London, and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, (Belgium) reveal that stronger westerly winds in the northern Antarctic Peninsula, driven principally by human-induced climate change, are responsible for the marked regional summer warming that led to the retreat and collapse of the northern Larsen Ice Shelf.
Read the rest of it at http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/News_and_Information/Press_Releases/story.php?id=293.
[Update: wouldn't you know it, BAS's webserver is out of action, probably due to a brief power cut (it did odd things to our induction hob, too). What wonderful timing. I presume it will get fixed tomorrow morning -W]
[Uupdate: oh good, its back... -W]
[Uupdate: down again. Sigh. OK, here is some more of the story, in both ways. First, our webserver and stuff: its been pointed out to BAS high up that having a webserver that isn't robust to power outages can give a rather unimpressive view to the outside world. I'm pretty such our technical people would have no problem with creating a hot-swappable replacement but they are busy on other stuff. So we're left with the current situation, sorry. What happened was that power probs last night lead to circuit breakers tripping and other stuff I don't know in detail. By mid today, it was all fixed, but scheduled to be taken down at 4pm today for re-fixing. So it looks like that hasn't gone as well as it might.
As to the contents of the paper... since I haven't actually read it I'm going to have to guess... but variations in the SAM (aka westerly winds) are known (in the obs) to be correlated to Peninsula temperatures especially in the summer, which is the key time for melting ice shelves. The models, like the obs, show increases in the winds. By running natural/anthro/ozone type runs its possible to attribute the increases. Now the interesting bit is, if you simply look for Peninsula warming in these runs, you don't really find it. And we attribute *that* to failure to resolve key processes (waves hands). However, since the wind-temp link is fairly good in the obs, the ability to attribute the winds allows you to do the T's. Or at least I think thats how the argument runs
Seems to have made Reuters and CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/10/17/ice.collapse.reut/ Not to mention the Toronto Sun http://torontosun.com/News/OtherNews/2006/10/17/2048866-sun.html :-) -W]
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Hi William
I can't access your URL. I get:
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /News_and_Information/Press_Releases/story.php on this server.
[We live near BAS and there was a 0.5 sec power cut at about 8... I'm guessing this has taken down BAS's... ahem... high-spec infrastructure :-( -W]
I'm getting 403 Forbidden 'You don't have permission to access foo on this server.' for all cases of foo.
It's not just the press release - it's the whole site.
I've seen right-wing blogs screeching about this article, so perhaps hordes of Republicans have brought down the BAS website! ;-)
server is down again. I don't understand how stronger winds can be directly linked to CO2.
Carl Christensen, links?
This is the #1 US right-winger website which I love to lurk. Among other things they're proud of is "freeping" (yup, named after them) online polls so it looks like the typical American is slightly to the right of G. Gordon Liddy. it's the neocon equivalent of getting your article on slashdot! ;-)
Typical comment -- the BAS are commie left-wing socialists who are wrong because it snowed in Buffalo, New York the other day!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1720435/posts
Global warming and the ozone hole have changed Antarctic weather patterns such that strengthened westerly winds force warm air eastward over the natural barrier created by the Antarctic Peninsula's 2 km-high mountain chain. On days when this happens in summer temperatures in the north-east Peninsula warm by around 5 degrees C, creating the conditions that allowed the drainage of melt-water into crevasses on the Larsen Ice Shelf, a key process that led to its break-up in 2002.
hrmm........ sounds statistical. I really don't know what to say about this.
[It doesn't sound statistical to me, it sounds mechanistic -W]
[It doesn't sound statistical to me, it sounds mechanistic -W]
Maybe I should have clarified. Yes the warm air getting forced over a natural barrier is a mechanism. And yes the drainage of melt-water into crevasses is a mechanism.
What sounds statistical to me is the change in wind patterns. I just don't understand how they can prove that particular wind in that particular area couldn't have behaved that way without global warming. It is that specific part that sounds statistical to me. I have a feeling that by the time I do understand that mechanism I will have earned a Ph.D. in fluid dynamics or meteorology. :-p