Sunday 24 June 2012

On the difference between knowing and knowing.

I don't just read about the Arctic. On this blog I've touched upon Hansen's findings about temperature extremes and the connection with drought. Elsewhere I've written posts about the intensification of the hydrological cycle. Yes, I've read quite a few papers by scientists like Dai, Syed and Wild on the issue. But this knowledge has remained intellectual, I've known it, but I haven't really known it.

 

Saturday 9 June 2012

A Prelude and an Intermission.

I've previously discussed a change to the annual cycle of volume loss, that being an increase in the loss of volume during the Spring, and a following loss of thickness during the Summer. Now the May 2012 PIOMAS figures are in and the early indications of May are that we face a repeat of 2010 and 2011. The PIOMAS volume anomaly up to day 151 (31 May) is shown below. As with all the work on this blog, the baseline used to calculate the anomaly is from 1980 to 1999, a 20 year period. The PIOMAS volume series is available here.



Figure 1, PIOMAS volume anomaly.