Tipping points are real: Gradual changes in CO2 levels can induce abrupt climate changes

During the last glacial period, within only a few decades the influence of atmospheric CO2 on the North Atlantic circulation resulted in temperature increases of up to 10 degrees Celsius in Greenland - as indicated by new climate calculations from researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute and the University of Cardiff. Their study is the first to confirm that there have been situations in our planet's history in which gradually rising CO2 concentrations have set off abrupt changes in ocean circulation and climate at "tipping points." These sudden changes, referred to as Dansgaard-Oeschger events, have been observed in ice cores collected in Greenland. The results of the study have just been released in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Ice core sample taken from drill. Photo by Lonnie Thompson, Byrd Polar Research Center, Ohio State University. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Previous glacial periods were characterised by several abrupt climate changes in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. However, the cause of these past phenomena remains unclear. In an attempt to better grasp the role of CO2 in this context, scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) recently conducted a series of experiments using a coupled atmosphere-ocean-sea ice model.

First author Xu Zhang explains: "With this study, we've managed to show for the first time how gradual increases of CO2 triggered rapid warming." This temperature rise is the result of interactions between ocean currents and the atmosphere, which the scientists used the climate model to explore. According to their findings, the increased CO2 intensifies the trade winds over Central America, as the eastern Pacific is warmed more than the western Atlantic. This is turn produces increased moisture transport from the Atlantic, and with it, an increase in the salinity and density of the surface water. Finally, these changes lead to an abrupt amplification of the large-scale overturning circulation in the Atlantic. "Our simulations indicate that even small changes in the CO2 concentration suffice to change the circulation pattern, which can end in sudden temperature increases," says Zhang.

Further, the study's authors reveal that rising CO2 levels are the dominant cause of changed ocean currents during the transitions between glacial and interglacial periods. As climate researcher Gerrit Lohmann explains, "We can't say for certain whether rising CO2 levels will produce similar effects in the future, because the framework conditions today differ from those in a glacial period. That being said, we've now confirmed that there have definitely been abrupt climate changes in the Earth's past that were the result of continually rising CO2 concentrations."

For more information visit:-

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170623100414.htm

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=gastube-carbon-dioxide-hr-05-20&Id=11735

How the Antarctic Ice Sheet is affecting climate change

Scientists have known for decades that small changes in climate can have significant impacts on the massive Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Now a new study suggests the opposite also is true. An international team of researchers has concluded that the Antarctic Ice Sheet actually plays a major role in regional and global climate variability - a discovery that may also help explain why sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere has been increasing despite the warming of the rest of the Earth.

Results of the study are being published this week in the journal Nature.

View of the Riiser-Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica. By Ben Holt  (NASA), via Wikimedia Commons

Global climate models that look at the last several thousand years have failed to account for the amount of climate variability captured in the paleoclimate record, according to lead author Pepijn Bakker, a former post-doctoral researcher at Oregon State University now with the MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Studies at the University of Bremen in Germany.

The research team's hypothesis was that climate modelers were overlooking one crucial element in the overall climate system - an aspect of the ocean, atmosphere, biosphere or ice sheets - that might affect all parts of the system.

"One thing we determined right off the bat was that virtually all of the climate models had the Antarctic Ice Sheet as a constant entity," Bakker said. "It was a static blob of ice, just sitting there. What we discovered, however, is that the ice sheet has undergone numerous pulses of variability that have had a cascading effect on the entire climate system."

The Antarctic Ice Sheet, in fact, has demonstrated dynamic behavior over the past 8,000 years, according to Andreas Schmittner, a climate scientist in Oregon State's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and co-author on the study.

"There is a natural variability in the deeper part of the ocean adjacent to the Antarctic Ice Sheet - similar to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or El Niño/La Niña but on a time scale of centuries - that causes small but significant changes in temperatures," Schmittner said. "When the ocean temperatures warm, it causes more direct melting of the ice sheet below the surface, and it increases the number of icebergs that calve off the ice sheet."

Those two factors combine to provide an influx of fresh water into the Southern Ocean during these warm regimes, according to Peter Clark, a paleoclimatologist in OSU's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and co-author on the study.

"The introduction of that cold, fresh water lessens the salinity and cools the surface temperatures, at the same time, stratifying the layers of water," Clark said. "The cold, fresh water freezes more easily, creating additional sea ice despite warmer temperatures that are down hundreds of meters below the surface."

The discovery may help explain why sea ice has expanded in the Southern Ocean despite global warming, the researchers say. The same phenomenon doesn't occur in the Northern Hemisphere with the Greenland Ice Sheet because it is more landlocked and not subject to the same current shifts that affect the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

"One message that comes out of this study is that the Antarctic Ice Sheet is very sensitive to small changes in ocean temperatures, and humans are making the Earth a lot warmer than it has been," Bakker said.

Sediment cores from the sea floor around Antarctica contain sand grains delivered there by icebergs calving off the ice sheet. The researchers analyzed sediments from the last 8,000 years, which showed evidence that many more icebergs calved off the ice sheet in some centuries than in others. Using sophisticated computer modeling, the researchers traced the variability in iceberg calving to small changes in ocean temperatures.

The Antarctic Ice Sheet covers an area of more than 5 million square miles and is estimated to hold some 60 percent of all the fresh water on Earth. The east part of the ice sheet rests on a major land mass, but in West Antarctica, the ice sheet rests on bedrock that extends into the ocean at depths of more than 2,500 meters, or more than 8,000 feet, making it vulnerable to disintegration.

Scientists estimate that if the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet were to melt, global sea levels would rise some 200 feet.

Other authors on the study include Nicholas Golledge of Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and Michael Weber of the University of Bonn in Germany.

For more information visit:-

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=water-demineralized&Id=58121

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161212115840.htm

A word in your shell like.....

Ever put a sea shell to your ear and listened to the sea?  You've probably done it when you were young but have you ever wondered what it was you were listening to?

There are a number of ideas about what actually makes the 'wave' sound when you put a shell to your ear. One suggestion is that you're hearing the echo of your heart beating and the blood rushing around your body, in particular the blood vessels in your ear. But that's simply not true, because if you ran about a lot before putting the shell to your ear there would be a definite difference in the intensity of the 'waves' you hear. Why? Well, exercise of any sort increases you heart rate hence the waves would be louder, or more frequent, in time with the faster beating of your heart.

Another explanation is that the wave sound is created by air flowing through the shell, and this may have a little to do with it as the sound becomes louder when you lift the shell slightly away from your ear. However, if you put your ear to a shell in a soundproof room (where there is no ambient noise, but air is still cycling around the shell), the wave sound is noticeably missing. So, it must have something to do with outside noise.

When you hold up a shell to your ear, you block out direct noise to your ear. However, the shell captures any atmospheric noise, which then resonates inside the shell. This resonating chamber needs some noise to work with, but otherwise works regardless of whether your surroundings are noisy or not. However, it stands to reason that the louder the environment around you, the louder the sound inside the shell - as more sound waves are 'bouncing', for want of a better term, around the chamber. These frequencies are garbled by the walls of the chamber and become like radio static to us, as our ear is not finely tuned enough to distinguish every nuance. Thus you get that shhhhhh sound, like waves breaking on the sea shore.

The rushing sound that one hears is in fact the noise of the surrounding environment, resonating within the cavity of the shell. The same effect can be produced with any resonant cavity, such as an empty cup or even by simply cupping one's hand over one's ear. The similarity of the noise produced by the resonator to that of the oceans is due to the resemblance between ocean movements and airflow.

Noise from outside the shell also can change the intensity of the sound you hear inside the shell. You can look at the shell as a resonating chamber. When sound from outside enters the shell, it bounces around, thus creating an audible noise. So, the louder the environment you are in, the louder the ocean-like sound will be.

For more information visit:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seashell_resonance
http://h2g2.com/approved_entry/A46714665#conversations