Re: U.N. Forecasters: Global Temperatures to Decrease (algore devastated)

On Fri, 4 Apr 2008 17:41:41 -0700 (PDT), al Guacamole <aet@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Apr 4, 9:04 am, Sordo <So...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
U.N. Forecasters: Global Temperatures to Decrease

Friday , April 04, 2008

Average global temperatures in 2008 are forecast to be lower than in
previous years, thanks to the cooling effect of the ocean current in the
Pacific, U.N. meteorologists say.

The World Meteorological Organisation's secretary-general, Michel
Jarraud, said it was likely that La Nina, an abnormal cooling of sea
surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, would continue into the
summer.

If the forecast holds true, global temperatures will not have risen
since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.

A small number of scientists doubt whether this means global warming has
peaked and the Earth has proved more resilient to greenhouse gases than
predicted, but Jarraud insists this is not the case and notes that 1998
temperatures would still be well above average for the century.

"When you look at climate change you should not look at any particular
year," he told the BBC. "You should look at trends over a pretty long
period and the trend of temperature globally is still very much
indicative of warming."

"La Nina is part of what we call 'variability'. There has always been
and there will always be cooler and warmer years, but what is important
for climate change is that the trend is up."

Experts at the U.K. Met Office's Hadley Centre for forecasting in Exeter
said the world could expect another record temperature within five years
or less, the BBC reports, probably associated with an episode of El
Nino.

Could the temporary cooling have anything to do with the melting of
ice at the polar caps? Taking the ice and the water together, we might
say that there has been and warming?

No, when ice melts it releases heat energy which was stored when it
froze. This heat amounts to 80,000 calories per liter of ice.

Interestingly, we don't seem to be experiencing the first period of
Arctic warming in recent history.

1817:
"A considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us,
must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the
severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in
the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has
been, during the last two years, greatly abated. 2000 square leagues
of ice with which the Greenland Seas between the latitudes of 74° and
80°N have been hitherto covered, has in the last two years, entirely
disappeared. The floods, which have the whole summer inundated all
those parts of Germany where rivers have their sources in snowy
mountains, afford ample proof that new sources of warmth have been
opened." ... Royal Society, London, Nov. 20, 1817. Minutes of
Council, Vol. 8., pp.149-153.

1922:
"The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in
some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a
report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at
Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he
declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and
hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration
expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far
north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters
showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been
replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while
at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few
seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast
shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far
north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds."
.... Washington Post
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977286945
.

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