North pole to melt this year?

well, the arctic sea ice extent is now right in the middle of the pack (which considerably constricts this time of year in terms of delta between the "top" and the "bottom" years), but the DMI graph for 30% concentration has 2011 taking a sharp downtick in terms of extent:

IJIS 15% Arctic Sea Ice

DMI 30% Arctic Sea Ice extent

i will of course continue to monitor this and keep you posted!
 
so the arctic is still saying on the lower part of the middle of the pack for the past 9 years....nothing dramatic in either direction.
 
Good news....that sun just wont act right
The Link

Scientists predict rare 'hibernation' of sunspots

"But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation."

Solar activity tends to rise and fall every 11 years or so. The solar maximum and solar minimum each mark about half the interval of the magnetic pole reversal on the Sun, which happens every 22 years.

Hill said the current cycle, number 24, "may be the last normal one for some time and the next one, cycle 25, may not happen for some time.

"This is important because the solar cycle causes space weather which affects modern technology and may contribute to climate change," he told reporters.

Experts are now probing whether this period of inactivity could be a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period when hardly any sunspots were observed between 1645-1715, a period known as the "Little Ice Age."

"If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we'll see for a few decades. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth's climate," said Hill.

Solar flares and eruptions can send highly charged particles hurtling toward Earth and interfere with satellite communications, GPS systems and even airline controls.

Geomagnetic forces have been known to occasionally garble the world's modern gadgetry, and warnings were issued as recently as last week when a moderate solar flare sent a coronal mass ejection in the Earth's direction.

The temperature change associated with any reduction in sunspot activity would likely be minimal and may not be enough to offset the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming, according to scientists who have published recent papers on the topic.

"Recent solar 11-year cycles are associated empirically with changes in global surface temperature of 0.1 Celsius," said Judith Lean, a solar physicist with the US Naval Research Laboratory.
 
GT….while we can expect the usual suspects to downplay any possible effect this may have on global temperatures, there are plenty of scientists who are concerned. The truth is we just don't know what this will do to temperatures but do have reason to be concerned when looking back at the history of multi-decades long breaks (or slow-downs) in sunspot activity. having said that, all we really have are correlative observations and so a mechanism must be understood and I recognize that.
 
Paso…your article is about 6 months older (if I am understanding it correctly) than the one i posted so it wouldn't take into consideration the new understanding of TSI that the article i linked to proposes.
 
Wake me when CO2 is no longer a heat-trapping gas.

Otherwise, all other arguments that adding CO2 to the atmosphere doesn't effect warming are full of gas themselves.
 
Texoz....that is a silly, myopic response. it's like saying that breathing in our homes is warming up the houses. While it is true, it is not very helpful because it ignores the fact that most of us have thermostats which cool the house in response to any warming we add. The same is true for the earth except we haven't even begun to understand all of the different ways the earth moderates any warming that might be added.
 
paso, are you purposely being obtuse? the peer review paper i linked to was from May and suggests that we have been mistaken about our understanding of TSI and that it might be 6 times more significant than we have thought in the past. TSI is related to sunspots, so a paper that works of of an old understanding of TSI's impact on earths climate is possibly missing the mark by about 83%.

As for how this drop off in the sun's activity might affect earth's temperatures....read a NASA page from 2003:

sun's brightness
 
We have increased CO2 about 40% from preindustrial levels. It has gone from around 260 ppm to almost 400 ppm. I have no idea what the average depth of the ocean is (10,000 ft?), but this would be like raising sea level 4,000 feet. I would barely be above water and I am at 4,200 feet on the side of a mountain about 400 miles from the nearest ocean which would now be conveniently located just down the hill from me.

Quite frankly, the analogy doesn't really work other than to show that the amount of the CO2 increase is very significant.
 
You guys are reading the analogy this way...

> urine: ocean::volume of pre-industrial CO2: volume of post-industrial CO2

But I think the analogy is more along the following lines...

> urine: ocean::volume of CO2: volume of total atmosphere


And so let's re-consider the analogy, slightly modified. A 60% increase in urine discharge would be much more problematic in a bath tub than in a swimming pool, and in the same way it would be more problematic in a swimming pool than in Lake Michigan, and thus in Lake Michigan than in the Atlantic Ocean.

Mop is saying that our increase in CO2 discharge, when we take into account the entirety of the atmosphere, is akin to pissing into the Atlantic. I think that's overstating it a bit in terms of relative volumes involved (I would guess that the swimming pool would be about right), but the point is well made, and the analogy works.
 
Let's look at this another way.

What was the amount of CFCs released into the atmosphere, and at what point did that release start the degradation process of the ozone layer?

In other words. We already have an example of man releasing chemicals into the atmosphere and having an impact on the atmospheric balance.

If you want to argue that CO2's influence on the atmosphere is infinitesimal because of the shear volume of the atmosphere vs the volume of CO2 you're skating on thin ice. Plus, you're ignoring the basic science of equilibrium in a chemical reaction.

In many reactions you don't need large amounts of material to tip the balance, or initiate the reaction.
 
Texoz….i have no problem agreeing with much of what you wrote. i know that certain types of chemicals could rapidly degrade our environment (and have)….but i still have serious doubts that CO2 fits into that category considering what we know about its radically different distributions over geological history.
 
Coel nailed it, but to expound, I also am very disturbed by the incredible LACK of knowledge we have about so many areas incredibly pertinent to the question of global temperatures. For instance, we know precious little about cloud formation and how an increase or decrease in global cloud coverage affects global termperatures. we also really don't understand how sunspots or total solar irradiance affect global temperatures. in fact, as i have posted on here, in the month of May a new solar study came out that suggested the sun's TSI has had 600% of the affect that we used to think it had.

these sort of discoveries can singlehandedly demolish any notion of CO2 being the primary driver of global temperature rises over the past Century. Considering the climate is an incredibly chaotic and dynamic system, I think we have just begun to delve into all the many variables that influence it.
 
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