27 December 2008

This site is committed to the early Arctic Warming that suddenly commenced in winter 1918/19 and raised the polar temperature level until 1940 as high as during the last decade.
 „For this purpose , it is necessary to know more about the thermal condition of the branch of the Atlantic Current which passes round Spitsbergen“.
This clear focus is rather difficult to identify on the website for the “2007-2008  International Polar Year“ (IPY)[1], which had been  a demand by the Russian scientist J. Schokalsky presented before the Royal Scottish Geographical Society on the 30th January 1935[2]. Schokalsky was already able to inform the Society that records provide incontestable evidence of a progressive warming of the Arctic Ocean (p.75). Schokalsky furthermore stressed that:
“The branch of the North Atlantic Current which enters it by way of the edge of the continental shelf round Spitsbergen has evidently been increasing in volume, and has introduced a body of warm water so great, that the surface  layer of cold water which was 200 metres thick in Nansen’s time, has now been reduced to less than 100 metres in thickness. (Schokalsky, p.76)”

Although this clear finding together with the explosion of temperatures at Spitsbergen in winter 1918/19  date back to 1935, modern arctic science still assume it as “natural variability” (see Chapter B). But what is ‘natural variability’, and has it any scientific meaning?  The matter becomes even more critical if claimed without sufficient prove, for example:  That the past 100 years are significant for the changeover of a climate system dominated by natural forcing to a climate system dominated by anthropogenic influences, as done recently by S. Brönnimann et al.[3], which had also formulated as question: “Was the 1910–1945 trend a result of “natural variability” and the 1950–2003 trend an “anthropogenic” warming?”[4], although it had been admitted that:
“Given the similarity of response in Arctic temperatures during the early and late 20th century, the question remains: To what extent is Arctic temperature controlled by global warming, by the regional atmospheric circulation, or by lower frequency oceanic processes? Our understanding of the climate mechanisms operating in the Arctic on different timescales is still limited” (Brönnimann, page 3)

It seems that Schokalsky could already offer a better hint on the tigger to the warming of the Arctic, particularly when he emphasized that the Soviet Union had asked the Int. Commission of the Second Polar Year in 1931 that oceanographically research should be added to the programme, as:
 “This proposal was a confession of the belief that, since physical conditions of air and sea are closely related , the most valuable results of this great international effort would undoubtedly be obtained from simultaneous study of the two elements” (Schokalsky, p.78). 

And the IPY 2007-2008? In principle they are saying the same, but putting it in an even much larger context[5], which leaves a lot for interpretation, but does not answers any of the question Schokalsky had raised more than 75 years ago. (see also:  Missing the Point on Arctic Warming ; 18 Aug.2008).
This site is putting the emphasis on the sea, and thus can demonstrate that the early arctic warming had been caused by the North Atlantic Current as already Schokalsky assumed in his lecture to the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in 1935.