Ice Age - Here Now?

  • Thread starter Dotini
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Dotini
Check out this picture of Earth: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ows-Northern-Hemisphere-covered-snow-ice.html

If a Martian were cruising past he could be forgiven for thinking the Earth might be entering an Ice Age.
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Cool link. I live near Chicago. I can tell you this place is a near disaster zone. Lake Shore Drive should have been closed on Tuesday at about noon. I guess some cars got caught in a traffic jam and ran out of gas and it caused that huge mess of abandoned cars. It looks like something out of a movie.
 
Its the Daily Mail. About as useful as chocolate teapot with regards to weather predictions and all.

Honestly, the Daily Mail isn't something to believe in at all.
 
Dotini
That paragon of popular taste and interests, Time Magazine, is warning of an immediate Ice Age.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914-1,00.html

They say the Earth's mean temperature has dropped 2.7 degrees F since the 1940's, and further warn that Earth's present population is unsustainable pending 3 more years of crop failures.

This report cites how the calculations of the global warming community got its numbers hosed up.
http://www.dailytech.com/Dust+Study...g+Modeling+Work+Done+to+Date/article20516.htm
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Doesn't that contradict what people are saying about global warming?
 
No. Global temperature has increased by a lot. It fell from 1940's to around 1975.

annual.jpg
 
The global warming is due to the normal cycle of nature, and due to the industrialisation. Global warming is good, because many countries have increased their taxes on fuel = more money to the government. US is one of the biggest poluters there is, so US shouldnt say anything according to me. Western countriues ship all theri junk to africa and those countries, pretty fair right?
 
Tiddy
Don't you think it might have been wise to state this in the original post for those who didn't know?
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If I had been wise enough to notice it in the first place, yes. Human error springs eternal.
 
No doubt the core, photosphere, and corona are all integral features of the sun. The solar wind and heliosheath come under similar consideration. Currently it appears certain solar features at several scales are undergoing dynamic changes which look something like weakening.

Ulysses has reported a 50 year low in solar wind pressure, a drop of more than 20%.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/23sep_solarwind/

More recently, IBEX noted a 10%-15% reduction of ENA intensity in the heliosheath.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex/news/solar-boundary.html

Now three new lines of research point toward the sunspot cycle shutting down for a while.
http://www.astromart.com/news/news.asp?news_id=1196
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-181&cid=release_2011-181

I'm not trying to make any kind of point or big deal about any of this, as it's all likely to be cyclical business as usual out there, although solar scientists, commodities traders and climate arguers might perk up at the news.

"Prediction is very hard, especially about the future." --Yogi Berra

Respectfully submitted,
Dotini
 
Get ready for a cold one... or a really hot one (cosmic radiation?)

Interestingly, cosmic radiation has also been linked to some of the mass extinctions of the past...
 
It appears to be emerging - although with great concern for political correctness as the following articles makes clear - that the magnetic field strength of the sun (and earth) have an affect upon cloud cover which in turn affects climate and temperature.

The mechanism for this is cloud nucleation by cosmic ray particles. A strong magnetic field decreases cosmic ray penetration of the atmosphere, thereby reducing cloud nucleation and cloud cover, and increasing temperature of the troposphere.

As it appears that the magnetic field strength of the sun and earth is actually decreasing, it is to be expected that cosmic rays will cause more clouds, and thus the atmosphere will cool.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblo...ders-blackout-of-cosmic-ray-project-news.html

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/38627

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/18/cern_cosmic_ray_gag/

Respectfully submitted,
Steve
 
i dont think we will see an ice age in our life times.
ice ages happen about 100,000-150,000 years apart from eachother and it has happened like that for the past 30 million years.
and seeing how the last one came to a close about 10,000 years ago i think we have time
 
No, an ice age happens roughly every 30,000 years, not 100,000 - 150,000 years. It's called a glaciation.
 
There are also the glacial periods of around 11,000 years. Of which we are due now (last one 11,500 years ago), or experiencing now. It may have begun in the middle ages and reduced from industrial growth perhaps.
 
There was an ice age from the late Middle Ages until the nineteenth century. It was not a severe cold period, but cold enough for it to be common place to skate on the Thames in London in winter.

Little Ice Age
 
I've recently read a book by Svensmark and Calder called "The Chilling Stars". Also looked up the pilot study of cloud formation by cosmic rays by the CERN CLOUD experiment. http://www.atmos-chem-phys.org/10/1635/2010/acp-10-1635-2010.html

It seems that the flux of cosmic rays drives the low level cloud cover on Earth. More cosmic rays means more clouds, because the rays provide charged particles (muons) for nucleation. The more clouds, the cooler is the Earth.

The flux of cosmic rays is modulated in small degree by the Earth's magnetic field, which is weakening, and more so by the Sun's magnetic field, which is also weakening, albeit from a very high strength.

But other factors also come into play. The Sun orbits the Milky Way every 240 million years, wanders in and out of the 4 galactic arms and bobs up and down through the plane of the galactic disc. This affects the count of cosmic rays, and these motions are associated by Svensmark with warming and cooling periods in Earth's history.

The strongest cosmic rays are thought to originate in exploding stars called supernovae. Formations of new stars and exploding old stars vary from time and place in the galaxy. According to Calder and Svensmark, the cosmic conditions right now are such that we might be able to look forward to relatively stable climate for some time, and that a new ice age, while inevitable, is some way off.

Respectfully submitted,
Steve
 
It's nice what climate change awareness does to people. Especially those that can worry.
I worry that we are in an Ice Age, only it's being off-set by pollution. When our oil runs out, we will have very nice clear air, but we will be under 30meters of ice.
..............

Specific regional observation from me, this year was unusually cold temperature for the coastal sea waters (UK). About 1-2 degrees C off average summer time maximum from my observations.
 

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