People who have been watching the extreme weather in the Northern hemisphere might be wondering about the cause and if it might repeat itself. Drought in California, ice in Texas and floods in the UK, all at the same time and all record setting extremes . The cause is the loss of sea ice in the Arctic which is having an affect on the jet stream. A shortened explanation is here http://www.climateoutcome.kiwi.nz/ice-melt.html For a much more detailed explanation watch Jennifer Francis give her presentation. We are down to around four million square kilometres of ice compared with the original eleven million but if we get down to two million we will be in real trouble.
4 Comments
Bob Bristow
22/2/2014 12:11:16 pm
As well as Prof Francis of Rutgers, Potsdam have a paper published on this possible threshold event and are doing further work now.
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Bob Bingham
26/2/2014 12:59:00 am
After the continuing bad weather and the media talking about the Polar Vortex more scientists have been commenting about Jennifer Francis's theory. Mostly they say that the time is too short to draw proper conclusions but if she is right then the loss of Arctic ice is the fastest acting result of climate change.
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David Smith
26/5/2016 11:51:24 am
None of these "extreme events" are really genuinely extreme.
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Bob Bingham
26/5/2016 06:53:28 pm
The big difference with the past is that we have 400 ppm of CO2 and a temperature 1 C warmer. The dry areas will get drier and the wet areas wether. That's what climate change is all about.
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