Cyclonic Activity persists in Arctic

Above image, edited from Naval Research Laboratory, shows that a large area has developed at the center of the Arctic Ocean with very thin ice, at some places down to virtually zero, i.e. open water.

This development is to a large extent caused by persistent cyclonic activity in the Arctic. The Arctic is warming up faster than anywhere else, and this is reducing the temperature difference between the Arctic and lower latitudes. As a result, the polar vortex and jet stream get distorted, resulting in extreme weather. This is graphically illustrated by the animation below, from the California Regional Weather Server.

Note: this animation is a 2.5 MB file that may take some time to fully load.
Credit: California Regional Weather Server

Related

Open Water In Areas Around North Pole - June 22, 2013
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/06/open-water-in-areas-around-north-pole.html

Thin Spots developing in Arctic Sea Ice - June 13, 2013
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/06/thin-spots-developing-in-arctic-sea-ice.html

Polar jet stream appears hugely deformed - December 20, 2012

http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/polar-jet-stream-appears-hugely-deformed.html

Changes to Polar Vortex affect mile-deep ocean circulation patterns - September 24, 2012
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/changes-to-polar-vortex-affect-mile-deep-ocean-circulation-patterns.html

Diagram of Doom - August 28, 2012

http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/08/diagram-of-doom.html

Opening further Doorways to Doom - August 28, 2012

http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/08/opening-further-doorways-to-doom.html

Huge cyclone batters Arctic sea ice - August 11, 2012

http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/08/huge-cyclone-batters-arctic-sea-ice.html

Lies, Damned Lies and Dating

Everyone - by which I mean the internet, the only authority that counts - comes to the same conclusion: that dating is about finding the right person. The inference, rarely drawn overtly, is that the wrong people will be summarily dumped.

In essence that makes dating a process of ditching the unsuitables...with one exception.

If the vision of a slaughterhouse comes to mind, I'm not surprised. The poor optimistic lovelorn creatures line up to have what they think will be a new adventure and BAM! A bolt through the brain. The sweet irony of dating is that we can be both slaughterman and the slaughtered, as accurate a description of modern dating as most.

What to do? Well, not much that I can see. To reiterate: Dating is to figure out if you're a match and the process will take up to two years, at which point you'll know if marriage is right and viable. Two years seems like a long time, and it is. Seven-hundred days is a chunk. But it is essential, because the only way to cut through folks' facade is time. Keeping up the appearance of the person we want to project cannot outlast daily, weekly and monthly ordinariness.

Truth will out. And the sooner the better, because the longer you wait, the more that bolt hurts.



Bottoms Up, Cowpokes.

The Threat of Wildfires in the North

NASA/NOAA image based on Suomi NPP satellite data from April 2012 to April 2013, with grid added

A new map has been issued by NOAA/NASA. The map shows that most vegetation grows in two bands, i.e. the Tropical Band (between latitudes 15°N and 15°S) and the Northern Band in between 45°N and 75°N, i.e. in North America, Europe and Siberia. On above image, the map is roughly overlayed with a grid to indicate latitude and longitude co-ordinates.

Vegetation in the Northern Band extends beyond the Arctic Circle (latitude 66° 33′ 44″ or 66.5622°, in blue on above image from Arcticsystem.no) into the Arctic, covering sparsely-populated areas such in Siberia, Alaska and the northern parts of Canada and Scandinavia. Further into the Arctic, there are huge areas with bush and shrubland that have taken thousands of years to develop, and once burnt, it can take a long time for vegetation to return, due to the short growing season and harsh conditions in the Arctic.

Above map with soil carbon content further shows that the top 100 cm of soil in the northern circumpolar region furthermore contains huge amounts of carbon.

May 16 2013 Drought 90 days Arctic

Global warming increases the risk of wildfires. This is especially applicable to the Arctic, where temperatures have been rising faster than anywhere else on Earth. Anomalies can be very high in specific cases, as illustrated by the temperature map below. High temperatures and drought combine to increase the threat of wildfires (see above image showing drought severity).

June 25, 2013 from Wunderground.com - Moscow broke its more than 100-year-old record for the hottest June 27

Zyryanka, Siberia, recently recorded a high of 37.4°C (99.3°F), against normal high temperatures of 20°C to 21°C for this time of year. Heat wave conditions were also recorded in Alaska recently, with temperatures as high as 96°F (36°C).

On June 19, 2013, NASA captured this image of smoke from wildfires burning in western Alaska. The smoke was moving west over Norton Sound. (The center of the image is roughly 163° West and 62° North.) Red outlines indicate hot spots with unusually warm surface temperatures associated with fire. NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response. Caption by Adam Voiland. - also see this post with NASA satellite image of Alaska.

Siberian wildfires June 21, from RobertScribbler 

from methanetracker.org

Wildfires raged in Russia in 2010. Flames ravaged 1.25 million hectares (4,826 mi²) of land including 2,092 hectares of peat moor. Damage from the fires is estimated to be $15 billion, in a report in the Guardian. Cost of fire-fighting efforts and agricultural losses alone are estimated at over $2bn, reports Munich Re, adding that Moscow's inhabitants suffered under a dense cloud of smoke which enveloped the city. In addition to toxic gases, it also contained considerable amounts of particulate matter. Mortality increased significantly: the number of deaths in July and August was 56,000 higher than in the same months in 2009.  [From: Abrupt Local Warming, May 16, 2012]

Wildfires in the North threaten to cause large emissions of greenhouse gases and soot, which can settle on snow and ice in the Arctic and the Himalayan Plateau, with the resulting albedo changes causing a lot more sunlight to be absorbed, instead of reflected as was the case earlier. This in turn adds to the problem. Additionally, rising temperatures in the Arctic threaten to cause release of huge amounts of methane from sediments below the Arctic Ocean. This situation threatens to escalate into runway global warming in a matter of years, as illustrated by the image below.

How much will temperatures rise?

In conclusion, the risk is unacceptable and calls for a comprehensive and effective action plan that executes multiple lines of action in parallel, such as the 3-part Climate Action Plan below. Part 1 calls for a sustainable economy, i.e. dramatic reductions of pollutants on land, in oceans and in the atmosphere. Part 2 calls for heat management. Part 3 calls for methane management and further measures.

The Climate Action Plan set out in above diagram can be initiated immediately in any country, without the need for an international agreement to be reached first. This can avoid delays associated with complicated negotiations and on-going verification of implementation and progress in other nations.

In nations with both federal and state governments, such as the United States of America, the Climate Action Plan could be implemented as follows:

• The President directs federal departments and agencies to reduce their emissions for each type of pollutant annually by a set percentage, say, CO2 and CH4 by 10%, and HFCs, N2O and soot by higher percentages.
• The President demands states to each make the same cuts. 
• The President directs the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to monitor implementation of states and to act step in where a state looks set to fail to miss one or more targets, by imposing (federal) fees on applicable polluting products sold in the respective state, with revenues used for federal benefits.

Such federal benefits could include building interstate High-Speed Rail tracks, adaptation and conservation measures, management of national parks, R&D into batteries, ways to vegetate deserts and other land use measurements, all at the discretion of the EPA. The fees can be roughly calculated as the average of fees that other states impose in successful efforts to meet their targets.

This way, the decision how to reduce targets is largely delegated to state level, while states can similarly delegate decisions to local communities. While feebates, preferably implemented locally, are recommended as the most effective way to reach targets, each state and even each local community can largely decide how to implement things, provided that each of the targets are reached.

Similar targets could be adopted elsewhere in the world, and each nation could similarly delegate responsibilities to local communities. Additionally, it makes sense to agree internationally to impose extra fees on international commercial aviation, with revenues used to develop ways to cool the Arctic.

See also: Climate Plan                  

Related

- Fires are raging again across Russia - June 22, 2012
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/06/fires-are-raging-again-across-russia.html

- Russia: 74 million acres burned through August 2012 - September 14, 2012
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/russia-74-million-acres-burned-through-august-2012.html

- How to avoid mass-scale death, destruction and extinction - December 31, 2012
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/how-to-avoid-mass-scale-death-destruction-and-extinction.html

- Turning forest waste into biochar - January 2, 2013
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/01/turning-forest-waste-into-biochar.html

- Climate Plan

http://climateplan.blogspot.com

The Secret of the Ancient Underpants

Men have quirks when it comes to wardrobe. I submit that the average man has:

+ 2 favourite shirts

+ 1 favourite pair jeans

+ 9 favourite pair sox

+ 1, perhaps 2 favourite pair shoes

and most importantly,

+ 3 favourite pair underpants.

Man's relationship with his smalls exasperates many women when they discover that these three pairs of beloved underduds are in less than pristine condition. Indeed, it's possible that they're weeks, months, or - in extremis - years past euthanasia. Clearly, there's something going on here.

My explanation for men keeping their boxers, briefs and/or tighty whities beyond their use-by date is simple, if unusual. Ready? Underpants have a soul. I don't mean soul in the southern fried way; I mean that each individual item has a spirit that differentiates it from all others. Open a three-pack of underoos and you find three different personalities. One will be okay, nothing special, one might perhaps be too tight, biting in the wrong places, and one might be the perfect combo of comfort and utility.

The process is the same as meeting three new people. After two or three social occasions (or, in underwear-speak, two or three wearings) we pick the company we like. We connect with some people (undertrou) more than others. Men value loyalty, so it follows that we want to stay with our friends (fave undies) until the bitter end.

That's why we have a drawer full of jockey acquaintances, but only a handful of daggy, saggy, holey, faded but hugely loved underpants. They're our friends.



Bottoms Up, Men Who Rock the Bikini.

Think Pink!

This month's challenge for the Creative Cooking Crew was to create a dish with just one color.  It sounded easy at first...  so many foods, so many colors!  Days went by when all I could do was group foods by color, a cohesive dish remained elusive.

Finally inspiration hit as I stood in a field of strawberries.  Most were ear-marked for jam, but I managed to save a few to make this PINK dish!  I started with a brown sugar-rubbed steak, cooked medium-rare to retain its pink center.  As a play on the mashed potatoes and blue cheese that normally accompany a steak, I used a cauliflower-goat cheese mash that was tinted with a little bit of chopped roasted beets.  The dish was topped off with a salsa made from freshly picked strawberries and mint, and made for a pretty great meal!  Especially when paired with a Blueberry wine ;)

Brown Sugar Rub
slightly adapted from food52
enough for 3/4lb steak

1 1/2T dark brown sugar
1/8t kosher salt
1/8t ground cinnamon
1/4t garlic powder
1/16-1/8t chili powder
1/16t ground dry mustard
1/16t smoked paprika

Combine in a small bowl and stir until well combined.  Use this to rub into both sides of your steak.

Strawberry Mint Salsa
slightly adapted from We Are Not Martha
yield ~1c

1c chopped fresh strawberries
1/4c chopped scallions/spring onions
2T chopped mint
dash of salt and freshly ground black pepper

Add ingredients to a small bowl and stir well to combine.  Set aside until ready to serve.

Cauliflower Mash

1 head of cauliflower, cut into florets
1/2T butter
2oz goat cheese
1T chopped roasted beets (optional)
sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Steam cauliflower until fork tender.

Transfer cooked florets to a large bowl (could also use a food processor) and add butter, goat cheese and beets.  Mash well, taste and season with salt and pepper.

Thanks again to Laz and Joan for hosting, be sure to check out more monochromatic inspiration here on Friday!

Boats are for Bonking

Any horny young swab would do well to buy or otherwise get his hands on a boat.

This boat must be large and comfortable enough for at least an overnight stay, and preferably good for up to five nights. Thirty feet of length is a practical minimum. If you're up for it, a sailing yacht is best for a reason I'll explain shortly. However, a motor yacht will work equally well, and provide fewer hassles. (Which any boater will recognize as an obvious falsehood, because boats are constitutionally incompatible with perfectly operating equipment. There's always something that doesn't work, for oftentimes unfathomable reasons.)

Equip your water-craft with these essentials:

+ high thread-count bedding, layers thereof: comfort is everything.
                     
+ enticing-smelling candles, potpourri, quality sprays: boats can stink.

+ pristine towels: luxury will speak for you.

+ champagne: natch.

+ tasty finger foods: smoked salmon, cream cheese, good crackers etc.

+ prepare at least one substantial hot meal per day: living on water = appetite.

+ wide selection of music: and don't forget something baroque :-)

+ extra pullovers, large shirts, thick socks: so you can keep your friend warm.

 By now you've probably figured out that I'm creating a water-borne girl-trap. Trap isn't fair, because the idea isn't to trick your wife or girlfriend onto the boat; the point is to show them a luxury fun-time and - most importantly -  get them away from the world.

Experience taught me that when a woman is away from her friends and family, she feels immune from the pressures of expectation. No-one will judge her. Consequently, she can be herself, let go, relax. What happens on the boat...only the fish and the waves know about.

And the answer to the question of why sail over steam: the skill of sailing is an excellent way to demonstrate your mastery of nature and machine. Plus the windy silence of a boat under canvas is a sound like no other.

Men, capitalize. The headache of boat ownership is well worth it.




Bottoms Up, Captain Cool.

Open Water In Areas Around North Pole

In some areas around the North Pole, thickness of the sea ice has declined to virtually zero, i.e. open water.

What could have caused this open water? Let's go through some of the background.

North Hemisphere snow cover has been low for some time. Snow cover in May 2013 was the lowest on record for Eurasia. There now is very little snow left, as shown on the image right, adapted from the National Ice Center.

Low snow cover is causing more sunlight to be absorbed, rather than reflected back into space. As can be expected, there now are high surface temperatures in many areas, as illustrated by the NOAA image below. Anomalies can be very high in specific cases. Zyryanka, Siberia, recently recorded a high of 37.4 C, against normal high temperatures of 20 C to 21 C for this time of year. Heat wave conditions were also recorded in Alaska recently (satellite image of Alaska below).

NASA image June 17, 2013, credit: NASA/Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC - from caption by Adam Voiland: "Talkeetna, a town about 100 miles north of Anchorage, saw temperatures reach 96°F (36°C) on June 17. Other towns in southern Alaska set all-time record highs, including Cordova, Valez, and Seward. The high temperatures also helped fuel wildfires and hastened the breakup of sea ice in the Chukchi Sea."

Accordingly, a large amount of relatively warm water from rivers has flowed into the Arctic Ocean, in addition to warm water from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Sea surface temperatures have been anomalously high in many places around the edges of the sea ice, as also shown on the NOAA image below.

Nonetheless, as the above images also make clear, sea surface temperatures closer to the North Pole have until now remained at or below zero degrees Celsius, with sea ice cover appearing to remain in place. The webcam below from the North Pole Environmental Observatory shows that there still is a lot of ice, at least in some parts around the North Pole.

Webcam #2 of the North Pole Environmental Observatory monitoring UPMC's Atmospheric Buoy, June 21, 2013

So, what could have caused the sea ice to experience such a dramatic thickness decline in some areas close to the North Pole?

Firstly, as discussed in earlier posts, there has been strong cyclonic activity over the Arctic Ocean (see also Arctic Sea Ice blog post). This has made the sea ice more prone and vulnerable to the rapid decline that is now taking place in many areas.

Furthermore, Arctic sea ice thickness is very low, as illustrated by the image below.

Arctic sea ice volume/extent ratio, adapted by Sam Carana from an image by Neven (click to enlarge)

Finally, there has been a lot of sunshine at the North Pole. At this time of year, insolation in the Arctic is at its highest. Solstice (June 20 or June 21, 2013, depending on time zone) is the day when the Arctic receives the most hours of sunlight, as Earth reaches its maximum axial tilt toward the sun of 23° 26'. In fact, insolation during the months June and July is higher in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth, as shown on the image below.

Monthly insolation for selected latitudes -  adapted from Pidwirny, M. (2006), in "Earth-Sun Relationships and Insolation",  Fundamentals of Physical Geography, 2nd Edition. 

In conclusion, the current rapid sea ice thickness decline close to the North Pole is mostly due to a combination of earlier cyclonic activity and lots of sunlight, while the sea ice was already very thin to start with. The cyclone broke up the sea ice at the center of the Arctic Ocean, which is turn made it more prone to melting rapidly. The cyclone did more, though, as contributor to the Arctic-news blog Veli Albert Kallio explains:

"The ocean surface freezes if the temperature falls below -2.5C. The reason for the negative melting point is the presence of 4-5% of sea salt. Only in the polar regions does the sea surface cool sufficiently for sea ice to form during winters.

The sea ice cover is currently thinning near the North Pole between 80-90 degrees north. This part of the ocean is very deep. It receives heat of the Gulf Stream from the south: as the warm water vapourises, its salt content to water increases. This densifies the Gulf Stream which then falls onto the sea floor where it dissipates its heat to the overlying water column. The deep basin of the Arctic Ocean is now getting sufficiently warmed for the thin sea ice cover to thin on top of it. The transportation of heat to the icy surface is combined with the winds that push cold surface water down while rising heat to surface."

Indeed, vertical mixing of the water column was enhanced due to cyclonic activity, and this occurred especially in the parts of the Arctic Ocean that also are the deepest, as illustrated by the animation below.

Legend right: Ice thickness in m from Naval Research Laboratory
Legend bottom: Sea depth (blue) and land height (brown/green)
in m from NIBCAO Arctic map at NOAA

The compilation of images below shows how the decline of sea ice has taken place in a matter of weeks.

[ click to enlarge ]

This spells bad news for the future. It confirms earlier analyses (see links below) that the sea ice will disappear altogether within years. It shows that the sea ice is capable of breaking up abruptly, not only at the outer edges, but also at the center of the Arctic Ocean. As the Arctic sea ice keeps declining in thickness, it does indeed look set to break up and disappear abruptly across most of the Arctic Ocean within a few years. Models that are based on sea ice merely shrinking slowly from the outer edges inward should reconsider their projections accordingly.

Related

- Getting the Picture
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/08/getting-the-picture.html

- Supplementary evidence by Prof. Peter Wadhams
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/04/supplementary-evidence-by-prof-peter.html

Extreme weather becomes the norm - what can you do?

. . a sky that has turned red due to greenhouse gases, while the land is flooded. The handful of
people who survived are standing by helplessly on higher grounds, in despair and without hope,
while one figure turns to me in panic and pain, uttering nothing but a silent scream . . .
(comment by Sam Carana, March 8, 2012, on auction of the Scream, by Edvard Munch)

Symptoms

Torrential rains in some regions are causing massive floods while in other locales record droughts are occurring with higher frequency and severity and areal extent around the globe. Global food production is being hit hard, leading to large price increases and political instability. Areas under drought are experiencing numerous massive forest fires of incredible ferocity.

Causes

The statistics of extreme weather events have changed for the worst due to changes in the location, speed, and waviness of the jet streams which guide weather patterns and separate cold and dry northern air from warm and moist southern air. The jet streams have changed since the equator to north-pole temperature difference has decreased due to the huge temperature rise in the Arctic.

The huge temperature rise in the Arctic is due to a collapse in the area of highly reflective snow and ice, which is caused by melting. The melting is from warming from the increase of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning. The Arctic sea ice and spring snow cover will vanish within a few years and the weather extremes will increase at least 10x.

What can you do?

Go talk to you politicians and friends about climate change and the need to slash fossil fuel emissions. Immediately. Cut and paste my comments above and post them on facebook, send them to newspapers, and educate yourself on the science behind all the above linkages. Leave my name on or take it off and plagiarize all you want, just get this knowledge out there...

From an unmuzzled climate scientist...
Paul Beckwith, B.Eng, M.Sc. (Physics),
Ph.D. student (Climatology) and Part-time Professor,
University of Ottawa

originally posted as a comment under the CBCnews post:
Calgary braces for flooding, orders communities evacuated 

Related

- The Tornado Connection to Climate Change
- President Obama, here's a climate plan!
- Diagram of Doom
- Polar jet stream appears hugely deformed

- Ten Dangers of Global Warming (originally posted March 8, 2007)

Thursday Night is Fantasy Night

Honey, do you have any plans for our next game night?

Hmmm. Not really. Got something in mind?

Well, how about 'door-to-door salesman and lonely housewife'?

What are you selling?

Wouldn't you like to know...


If I were to write an outsider's guide to keeping marriages strong, I'd make scheduling a top priority. Not only the day-to-day household stuff, but setting aside regular chunks of time to nurture the idea of being together and to explore each other a little. Date nights, Finance Nights, Future Nights...making a plan to spend time communicating avoids the drift and misunderstandings of less organized unions.

However, being fidgety and easily bored humans, there's not much value in "Thursday, 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm: Together Time." That'll result in the television being switched on; precisely what you want to avoid. Structure and aim is important. Yes, just like your high-school science experiments, but with more adult content, whether it be planning your savings and investments or dressing up for a date.

I'd include a Game Night in the rotation. You might prefer to call it Role-Play or Sexy Night or something, but the intent is the same - to move away from the...ummm, rut of your regular sex life, and play a little. Fantasy is a good thing, and sharing secrets with your partner is a loving way of getting closer. We mask many secrets in the name of avoiding embarrassment, but if you can't tell your spouse what turns you on in your imagination, who can you tell?

 The wonderful thing about play-acting is that it is acting - you can slip the bonds of your everyday way of thinking and take on a new persona, if only for a while. It's liberating. Especially being with someone you trust, who wants to indulge your more outré likings...because she wants you to indulge hers.

That's what I call win-win.



Bottoms Up, Lonely Housewives.

Tuna Tartar Swims into Summer at MoMA's The Modern in NYC

Earlier in the year I had a great meal. Change that. A really great meal. Working on an article for Bespoke Magazine about multi-course upscale dining, I interviewed Chef Gabriel Kreuther at MoMA's The Modern.

We talked on the phone for half an hour during which time he told me about his culinary background ("Alsatian"), his opinion about double-digit multi-course dining like Thomas Keller's 24 course-meals ("afterwards, aren't there maybe 2 or 3 dishes that were memorable? why not just have those next time.") and why he loved cooking in a museum ("the art inspires me in the kitchen").

At the end of the conversation he offered, "Next time you're in New York, I want you to come to the restaurant and taste my food." Happily I was flying into the city the next day so I could accept the invitation.

His multi-course meal took ten dishes, four deserts and 6 wine pairings before we folded up our napkins. I had a combination of dishes with meat, seafood and vegetables. My wife was served pescetarian dishes. All the dishes were beautifully plated. The flavors exquisitely structured. The wines, many from Alsace, were crisp, light and delicious.

Sitting at a table along the window, we had a good view of the sculpture garden where a cocktail party was in progress. Waiters passed around appetizers and wine. The sun set. The garden was reduced to shapes with over head lights picking out a detail here and there. Inside the feeling was muted elegance. A very different feeling from the large and boisterous Cafe on the other side of the thick paneled wall.

Chef Kreuther was kind enough to let me write about one of his recipes, One, which can be made in a home kitchen without the roomful of sous chefs who help him create the dishes for the restaurant. The tartar recipe is simple although it has half a dozen components, half of which go to creating the exquisite design on the plate.

For a dinner party or special occasion, a dish like the tartar is a lot of fun and it will be one of the dishes everyone remembers.

For Zester Daily: Next to MoMA's Sculpture Garden, Tuna Is A Work Of Art