About the Arctic

Posted by: chaamjamal on: July 1, 2019

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THIS POST IS AN EXAMINATION OF ARCTIC OCEAN REGION IN THE CONTEXT OF AGW / CLIMATE CHANGE. IT IS BASED ON THE ARCTIC OCEAN SECTION OF A LECTURE BY JAMES EDWARD KAMIS  [LINK]

A RELATED POST ON THIS SITE PRESENTS FURTHER EVIDENCE THAT THE OBSERVED SEA ICE MELT IN THE ARCTIC CANNOT BE EXPLAINED IN TERMS OF ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA ONLY [LINK] .

 

 

 

[LIST OF POSTS ON THIS SITE]

 

 

1. The Eyjafjallajökull 2010 Eruption: In the image below, the left frame shows the intense phase of of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano’s 2010 eruption which occurred on April 14 of that year. It was a very intensive and extensive eruption that lasted 37 days and emitted 252 gigaliters of sulfuric dust into the atmosphere. It caused changes in air traffic, cancellations across  Europe, caused a lot of health problems, both human and animal, and significantly altered weather conditions in Europe and vicinity. But the most important aspect of this eruption was that it was a dramatic visual confirmation that the Arctic region is geologically active and perhaps more so than generally considered particularly with respect to how Arctic data are interpreted in terms of AGW/Climate Change. The smaller frame on the right shows the initial explosion of this eruption where we can see how it is spreading volcanic ash across the glacier. It also shows how it fractures the glacier and connects down to the bedrock. 
2. Geological Features of the Arctic Region: The image below shows the 6,000 km long Mid Arctic Rift and its associated active volcanoes. The rift is seen along the right side of the left frame of the image as a long and curvy red hashed area. The red triangles mark the positions of known active volcanoes along the rift. Also shown on this slide is the Greenland/Iceland mantle plume. On the left of Greenland is the Baffin Bay Labrador rift system marked as BBLR. In the left upper corner on the slide is a red hashed area where active volcano locations are marked with red triangles. It is the Aleutian Island convergent plate boundary where two giant plates collide and one dives under the other and creates a tremendous amount of geological energy that becomes evident on the surface. 
3. Arctic Sea Ice: The image below depicts extent of Arctic sea ice in October 2017. This sea ice distribution is representative of sea ice extent in the month of October for the decade ending in 2017. In the color grey are shown the adjacent land areas as Greenland, Canada, and Russia. The red hashed areas mark the sea ice extent prior to the recent decade. The graphic shows that loss of sea extent in agreement with climate science claims that AGW is causing a decrease in Arctic sea ice extent. The loss of sea ice is found to have occurred in two specific areas as shown by the red hashed lines. In the lower left is the western edge of sea ice melt and in the upper right is the eastern edge of sea ice melt. Localization of the melting in these areas has been consistent and persistent over a long period of time of at least 50 years. Note that the sea ice extends out to Russia with no melt zone. The geographical pattern in sea ice melt does not suggest a uniform cause of sea ice melt but rather a geographically defined sources of heat that match the melt pattern.
4. Geological Drivers of Arctic Sea Ice Melt: The image below shows the pattern of localized geological sources heat and further that this pattern of geological heat matches the pattern of sea ice melt. In the  image below we see the sea ice extent in white and some red hashed areas. The red hatched areas of the Arctic Sea mark the locations of significant atmospheric methane concentrations above the Arctic Sea in April of 2014 detected by NASA satellites. The black lines in the image mark the center-line of the Mid-Arctic and Baffin Bay rift and associated cross faults. The center line is where lava comes up and spreads out. The observed localized geographical pattern of atmospheric methane concentration began in April 2014 when a moderate earthquake along the Mid-Arctic Rift caused a shifting of deep magma chambers. The shifted magma chambers released heat and hydrothermal methane into deep portions of the rift. The heat and methane moved upwards along he fault plane that had been opened by the earthquake. In the process, the heat encountered methane hydrates in ice beds. The heat released methane from the hydrates. The methane along with hydrothermal methane migrated up through the fault and into the overlying ocean. The heat warmed the ocean and the methane entered the atmosphere and created the sudden localized methane concentration. It was a geographically extensive heat flow event, not atmospheric phenomena  that caused Arctic sea ice melt.  
5. The Jan Mayen Trend: The Jan Mayen Trend (JMT) is a 1500-km portion of the mid-Arctic rift that is volcanically active. The right frame of the image below shows the location of the JMT. It runs from just north of Iceland up to the Svalbard Islands. Research by Dr. Rolf Pederson of the University of Bergen reported an amazing discovery about the JMT. He writes, “1,200C magma pouring into the sea from hundreds of submarine volcanoes and we wonder why the seas are warming?”  He went on to say “We have found volcanoes at such a shallow level that they could break through to the surface at any moment and form new island groups. I have been writing about underwater volcanoes for years. In fact there is an entire chapter in my new book “Not by fire but by Ice” that discusses the importance of underwater volcanoes and how they are heating the seas”. The JMP ends at the Svalbard Islands. Research for this region shows an extreme amount of underwater heat flow and methane emissions in an around the Svalbard Islands. Also some of the glaciers on the islands are melting and retreating while others are growing. 
6. Greenland Heat Flows: The left frame in the image below is from a NASA 2018 research paper. It documents the geological time frame for the movement of Greenland across the Greenland-Iceland mantle plume. The black dashed line shows the path of the movement of Greenland across the mantle plume. The color shadings are NASA’s interpretation of the present day heat flow of the rocks in Greenland. It shows that the heat flow map matches the course of the mantle plume. This heat flow is relic heat flow in the sense that it is heat that is captured but occasionally pulses out of the bedrock beneath the glaciers in Greenland. The right frame of the image below shows a specific example of how this relic heat flow has affected the bedrock and associated overlying individual glaciers. Research at Aarhus University in Denmark found in the Young’s Sound glacier (seen in the right frame) as it is pouring into the Greenland Sea, that its upward catchment basin on the bedrock was extremely hot. They decided that this heat was the reason that this glacier was moving so quickly and receding so quickly. They rejected atmospheric warming as a cause of these events. 
7. Bering Sea Volcanoes and Ocean Currents: The sea ice decline on the Western edge of the Arctic is controlled by the Bering Sea. The Bering Sea is a closed basin. The image below shows the Aleutian Islands and their 90 or so active volcanoes. On the upper left portion of the image below is the Kamchatka Peninsula and its 70 or so very active volcanoes. The ocean currents move from the Kamchatka Peninsula south and then north through the center portion of the Bering Sea and empty into the Western portion of the Arctic Ocean. Another current on the South-side of the Aleutian Islands takes a turn, goes through a gap along the Eastern side of the Bering Sea and empties into the Western side of the Arctic Ocean. The Bering Sea is very warm & it empties into the Arctic Ocean and melts the ice on the western side. 
8. The Major Event of 2010:  In the image below, the left frame shows the ocean current flows of Gulf Stream on May 26, 2010. It shows that the Gulf Stream current, (in red) as it moves along the Eastern seaboard of the USA is suddenly blocked in 2010 by a large Warm Blob. A warm blob is a large section of ocean water with a higher temperature than the surrounding ocean). The warm blob had formed rapidly. It extended from the surface of the ocean down to the ocean floor. This was a very large and powerful warm blob. In the right frame, the lower slide shows the warm blob in red in its early stages of development. The graphic makes clear that the warm blob is associated with heat flow. The warm blob itself is shown in red. Iceland, a net source of heat in the blob’s heat flow dynamic, is located just to the right of the southernmost portion of Greenland. In black lines are marked the Mid Arctic Rift and the Labrador Rift and their spreading center lines converge in the warm blob area. This arrangement suggests that the warm blob is the creation of a pulse of heat flow from these rifts. The upper slide of the right frame in an image of the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. It should be noted that the Gulf Stream shutdown is coincident with the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, both occurring in April 2010. Although it cannot be said that this eruption itself created the warm blob, it is noted that the eruption is the evidence of accumulated heat flows along the rift that was active in the area over a long period of time. The eruption was simply the orgasmic end of the pulse of heat flow. In the same way these heat flows also resulted in the sudden creation of the warm blob coincident with the eruption. In other words the 2010 eruption and the 2010 warm blob are related not as cause and effect but as effects of a common cause. 
9. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS: In summary, the Arctic Ocean, specifically the sea floor of the Arctic Ocean is not a static bedrock platform. A 3D image of the Arctic sea floor in the image below shows the elevated sea floor of one of the rifts. The circular cone shaped features are deep ocean volcanoes. The uplifted mountains are very active faults. The dynamics of sea ice melt and the temperature and chemical changes in sea water in the Arctic as well as animal migration patterns are best understood in terms of the geological phenomena in this geologically active zone and not exclusively in terms of atmospheric forcings as assumed in climate science. A statistical test of sea ice melt data presented in a related post [LINK]  supports these conclusions.