Some scientists like Donald Oilman, chief of the National Weather Service's long-range-prediction group, think that the cooling trend may be only temporary. But all agree that vastly more information is needed about the major influences on the earth's climate.
myname
February 20, 2011
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H'mm:
That Monday, Jun. 24, 1974 Time article has some interesting scoops:
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>> However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.
Telltale signs are everywhere — from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.
Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds — the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa's drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest's recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example . . . .
The changing weather is apparently connected with differences in the amount of energy that the earth's surface receives from the sun. Changes in the earth's tilt and distance from the sun could, for instance, significantly increase or decrease the amount of solar radiation falling on either hemisphere—thereby altering the earth's climate . . . .
Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth . . . .
Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years . . . .
The earth's current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries — the U.S., Canada and Australia — global food stores would be sharply reduced. >>
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Sure gives a bit of perspective on the current views and claims!
GEM of TKIkairosfocus
February 20, 2011
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Barry,
actually I have not said anything about what I believe, but I could just read the “Newsweek” article:
Meteorologist disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions.
By the way, here is a link to the Time article “Another Ice Age?”.myname
February 20, 2011
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Pardon, spotted the error on a strike close off just too latekairosfocus
February 18, 2011
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H'mm:
May I excerpt from the Peter Gwynne article, Newsweek, April 28, 1975, p. 64, bottom 1st col onwards:
The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinary mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and the extent of the cooling trend, as well as over the specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will | reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. It the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic . . . .
A survey completed last year by Dr Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971 - 72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3 per cent between 1964 and 1972 . . . .
Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about 7 degrees lower than during its warmest eras--and that the present decline has taken the earth about a sixth of the way towards the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age" that brought bitter winter conditions to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900--years that the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City . . . .
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They proposed that some of the spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot…might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are prepared to take the simple measure of stockpiling food or of introducing the variable of climatic uncertainty into projections of future food supplies. The longer the planers delay the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
So, whose report will we believe?
That of the top-flight reporter on the spot when the trend seemed to be a fact and the projections were seen as pretty certain?
Or, that of the officials of the AMS now concerned to discredit those who have advocated that the establishment may be wrong on trends yest again, and so have dug up the diverse views advocated in journal articles etc in an era when there seemed to have been less pressure to conform than is notorious at present when the trend du jour is catastrophic anthropogenic global warming climate change [or whatever latest variant term]?
Certainly, I remember the media emphasis being on cold winters and on expected famines in climate disaster reports of that time.
GEM of TKIkairosfocus
February 18, 2011
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Stunning, myname, absolutely stunning. You believe self serving revisionism over your own eyes. And I bet you poke fun at those "blind faith" fundamentalist rascals.Barry Arrington
February 18, 2011
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Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They proposed that some of the spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot…might create problems…
Someone has been goofed here.pablo
February 18, 2011
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The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinary mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down.