Worsening Weather, Earthquakes, Vortices, Volcanoes, CMEs ... What's Up?

[ArMaP]

Michael's record of successful prognostications continues to improve.   

As I said before, I didn't read it all, but now, looking at that snippet, it looks like statistic probabilities. Indonesia had 43 earthquakes with a magnitude of 4.5 of higher in the last 30 days.

I will wait for something less common.

[zorgon]

Michael's record of successful prognostications continues to improve.   
One might guess that this falls within the '7-day window.'   

I PREDICT!!!

"There will be at LEAST 2 5.0 earthquakes tomorrow...!





Foot note: It doesn't matter which day you read this

15-AUG-2015 07:47:06   -10.90   163.88   6.6   6   SOLOMON ISLANDS     5155608
10-AUG-2015 04:12:14   -9.35   158.06   6.6   15   SOLOMON ISLANDS     5155099
12-AUG-2015 18:49:23   -9.32   157.93   6.4   5   SOLOMON ISLANDS     5155310
01-SEP-2015 15:25:09   31.17   141.60   6.0   7   SOUTH OF HONSHU, JAPAN     5157285
06-AUG-2015 23:59:46   -26.46   -178.25   6.0   269   SOUTH OF FIJI ISLANDS     5154850
02-SEP-2015 01:18:30   4.36   124.72   5.9   310   CELEBES SEA     5157372
10-AUG-2015 04:24:31   -9.30   157.95   5.9   10   SOLOMON ISLANDS     5155100
09-AUG-2015 04:46:20   -27.45   -176.24   5.8   10   KERMADEC ISLANDS REGION     5155020
07-AUG-2015 01:25:02   -2.15   28.89   5.8   11   LAKE TANGANYIKA REGION     5154857
26-AUG-2015 13:51:35   -57.47   -25.91   5.7   32   SOUTH SANDWICH ISLANDS REGION     5156658
24-AUG-2015 09:41:26   -30.88   -178.32   5.7   221   KERMADEC ISLANDS, NEW ZEALAND     5156450
20-AUG-2015 11:00:10   0.51   126.62   5.7   50   NORTHERN MOLUCCA SEA     5156068
17-AUG-2015 14:42:31   21.93   146.64   5.7   3   MARIANA ISLANDS REGION     5155769
10-AUG-2015 10:05:25   36.52   71.20   5.7   224   AFGHANISTAN-TAJIKISTAN BORD REG.     5155110
03-SEP-2015 13:23:59   2.08   126.71   5.6   44   NORTHERN MOLUCCA SEA     5157572
01-SEP-2015 15:24:08   31.29   141.69   5.6   10   SOUTH OF HONSHU, JAPAN     5157276
17-AUG-2015 16:16:59   13.70   51.80   5.6   10   EASTERN GULF OF ADEN     5155773
14-AUG-2015 13:28:00   -27.32   -176.04   5.6   13   KERMADEC ISLANDS REGION     5155543
13-AUG-2015 14:04:58   -3.94   152.91   5.6   137   NEW IRELAND REGION, P.N.G.     5155434
10-AUG-2015 07:43:38   -19.62   -174.81   5.6   57   TONGA ISLANDS     5155107
04-SEP-2015 20:08:30   -7.98   107.24   5.5   34   JAWA, INDONESIA     5157746
04-SEP-2015 04:49:21   29.25   130.55   5.5   10   RYUKYU ISLANDS     5157665
29-AUG-2015 03:53:23   19.15   145.66   5.5   124   MARIANA ISLANDS     5156917
23-AUG-2015 23:10:03   -29.67   -71.43   5.5   34   NEAR COAST OF CENTRAL CHILE     5156415
20-AUG-2015 13:29:09   -8.13   149.54   5.5   52   EASTERN NEW GUINEA REG., P.N.G.     5156094
14-AUG-2015 22:03:34   -6.98   131.50   5.5   53   TANIMBAR ISLANDS REG., INDONESIA     5155570
14-AUG-2015 18:03:04   21.11   -45.85   5.5   19   NORTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE     5155555
13-AUG-2015 10:39:53   -37.03   78.06   5.5   10   MID-INDIAN RIDGE     5155413
12-AUG-2015 00:14:40   -31.70   -71.62   5.5   30   NEAR COAST OF CENTRAL CHILE     5155242
07-AUG-2015 01:28:37   -2.09   28.95   5.5   10   LAKE TANGANYIKA REGION     5154861
04-SEP-2015 04:49:38   40.93   47.51   5.4   14   EASTERN CAUCASUS     5157666
03-SEP-2015 16:51:47   37.21   143.51   5.4   10   OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN     5157588
01-SEP-2015 17:04:15   15.40   -92.65   5.4   111   MEXICO-GUATEMALA BORDER REGION     5157295
01-SEP-2015 15:28:49   -19.68   -69.06   5.4   84   NORTHERN CHILE     5157277
15-AUG-2015 20:16:23   51.76   -175.26   5.4   45   ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS.     5155646
13-AUG-2015 14:07:59   23.96   122.50   5.4   16   TAIWAN REGION     5155436
11-AUG-2015 13:35:49   -27.11   -176.23   5.4   10   KERMADEC ISLANDS REGION     5155193
10-AUG-2015 23:53:10   -5.55   151.82   5.4   8   NEW BRITAIN REGION, P.N.G.     5155149
28-AUG-2015 15:30:59   23.19   142.51   5.3   115   VOLCANO ISLANDS REGION     5156882
27-AUG-2015 19:10:11   45.35   147.20   5.3   132   KURIL ISLANDS     5156794
25-AUG-2015 22:51:36   32.04   131.79   5.3   32   KYUSHU, JAPAN     5156590
16-AUG-2015 21:05:12   -5.77   154.01   5.3   68   SOLOMON ISLANDS     5155729
13-AUG-2015 15:58:31   -32.89   -178.35   5.3   9   SOUTH OF KERMADEC ISLANDS     5155553
13-AUG-2015 15:58:24   -32.89   -177.36   5.3   2   SOUTH OF KERMADEC ISLANDS     5155443
12-AUG-2015 18:19:16   -9.28   157.91   5.3   10   SOLOMON ISLANDS     5155309
07-AUG-2015 18:21:02   -16.77   177.29   5.3   18   FIJI ISLANDS     5154909
07-AUG-2015 14:22:14   -18.07   -174.16   5.3   26   TONGA ISLANDS     5154893
07-AUG-2015 12:18:49   1.08   -85.20   5.3   10   OFF COAST OF ECUADOR     5154885
07-AUG-2015 05:53:57   24.15   -108.56   5.3   10   GULF OF CALIFORNIA     5154868
07-AUG-2015 04:34:59   23.88   -108.94   5.3   10   GULF OF CALIFORNIA     5154865
06-AUG-2015 05:05:49   -9.78   115.94   5.3   35   SOUTH OF BALI, INDONESIA     5154755
27-AUG-2015 15:06:25   -19.69   -176.47   5.2   10   FIJI ISLANDS REGION     5156789
26-AUG-2015 21:56:37   27.02   -44.39   5.2   10   NORTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE     5156701
23-AUG-2015 04:48:49   13.13   -90.23   5.2   49   NEAR COAST OF GUATEMALA     5156336
22-AUG-2015 06:25:38   14.71   147.02   5.2   35   MARIANA ISLANDS REGION     5156267
21-AUG-2015 18:45:40   -22.43   -178.17   5.2   373   SOUTH OF FIJI ISLANDS     5156218
17-AUG-2015 00:45:42   27.14   143.68   5.2   7   BONIN ISLANDS REGION     5155738
15-AUG-2015 17:29:20   -26.98   -176.28   5.2   7   SOUTH OF FIJI ISLANDS     5155641
14-AUG-2015 14:09:17   -26.02   -177.03   5.2   100   SOUTH OF FIJI ISLANDS     5155546
14-AUG-2015 13:43:17   -27.11   -176.14   5.2   43   KERMADEC ISLANDS REGION     5155544
14-AUG-2015 04:43:44   42.64   143.18   5.2   87   HOKKAIDO, JAPAN REGION     5155511
13-AUG-2015 11:28:15   -36.82   78.34   5.2   10   MID-INDIAN RIDGE     5155423
12-AUG-2015 12:50:43   -16.52   -177.25   5.2   403   FIJI ISLANDS REGION     5155283
10-AUG-2015 19:19:33   -27.15   -176.24   5.2   10   KERMADEC ISLANDS REGION     5155133
10-AUG-2015 09:40:09   -29.49   -71.20   5.2   40   NEAR COAST OF CENTRAL CHILE     5155109
08-AUG-2015 04:13:41   -6.68   152.08   5.2   42   NEW BRITAIN REGION, P.N.G.     5154947
07-AUG-2015 06:52:19   24.02   -108.89   5.2   10   GULF OF CALIFORNIA     5154870
06-AUG-2015 10:08:55   1.03   98.93   5.2   78   NORTHERN SUMATERA, INDONESIA     5154776
06-AUG-2015 09:22:28   36.50   140.59   5.2   44   NEAR EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN     5154773
03-SEP-2015 07:32:46   -15.48   -174.67   5.1   221   TONGA ISLANDS     5157546
01-SEP-2015 16:08:26   -29.68   178.69   5.1   566   KERMADEC ISLANDS REGION     5157278
01-SEP-2015 08:57:25   -19.35   167.59   5.1   31   VANUATU ISLANDS REGION     5157244
30-AUG-2015 05:30:59   29.68   130.43   5.1   45   RYUKYU ISLANDS     5157009
29-AUG-2015 20:02:27   -10.79   116.40   5.1   46   SOUTH OF SUMBAWA, INDONESIA     5156974
27-AUG-2015 10:50:57   26.92   -44.25   5.1   10   NORTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE     5156764
25-AUG-2015 03:29:35   4.99   93.31   5.1   32   OFF W COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATERA     5156528
19-AUG-2015 22:15:47   -9.67   28.61   5.1   15   ZAIRE     5156012
18-AUG-2015 11:53:29   -56.14   -26.49   5.1   35   SOUTH SANDWICH ISLANDS REGION     5155858
17-AUG-2015 11:40:34   30.81   131.03   5.1   10   KYUSHU, JAPAN     5155757
14-AUG-2015 22:04:25   -26.33   -177.81   5.1   174   SOUTH OF FIJI ISLANDS     5155571
11-AUG-2015 15:53:08   -7.13   129.19   5.1   143   BANDA SEA     5155198
09-AUG-2015 18:20:48   52.25   -168.72   5.1   35   FOX ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS     5155061
09-AUG-2015 17:51:34   -10.29   165.01   5.1   24   SANTA CRUZ ISLANDS     5155058
09-AUG-2015 02:39:55   -13.97   -14.47   5.1   10   SOUTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE     5155013
07-AUG-2015 17:39:27   -56.42   -25.92   5.1   3   SOUTH SANDWICH ISLANDS REGION     5154911
07-AUG-2015 13:48:35   1.07   -85.33   5.1   31   OFF COAST OF ECUADOR     5154891
06-AUG-2015 13:10:27   -53.49   23.72   5.1   10   SOUTH OF AFRICA     5154817
02-SEP-2015 07:20:30   14.04   53.75   5.0   10   OWEN FRACTURE ZONE REGION     5157407
01-SEP-2015 23:06:28   -19.27   167.63   5.0   26   VANUATU ISLANDS REGION     5157353
01-SEP-2015 13:24:45   23.90   121.52   5.0   21   TAIWAN     5157260
28-AUG-2015 15:08:31   52.13   156.78   5.0   176   KAMCHATKA     5156881
28-AUG-2015 04:11:52   -15.84   -71.83   5.0   16   SOUTHERN PERU     5156824
26-AUG-2015 05:58:53   -0.81   -16.02   5.0   10   NORTH OF ASCENSION ISLAND     5156623
24-AUG-2015 11:51:01   56.18   164.30   5.0   32   KOMANDORSKY ISLANDS REGION     5156453
23-AUG-2015 09:02:09   27.85   86.06   5.0   35   NEPAL     5156350
22-AUG-2015 05:28:14   21.51   143.10   5.0   317   MARIANA ISLANDS REGION     5156262
18-AUG-2015 20:48:23   -7.38   128.57   5.0   162   BANDA SEA     5155903
16-AUG-2015 08:49:03   -62.38   -159.43   5.0   10   PACIFIC-ANTARCTIC RIDGE     5155693
15-AUG-2015 08:19:33   -3.71   101.81   5.0   58   SOUTHERN SUMATERA, INDONESIA     5155617
14-AUG-2015 10:11:05   21.14   -45.80   5.0   10   NORTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE     5155528
13-AUG-2015 20:13:34   37.19   141.43   5.0   43   NEAR EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN     5155466
13-AUG-2015 19:30:15   14.12   -91.37   5.0   65   GUATEMALA     5155461
10-AUG-2015 04:23:26   -9.39   158.06   5.0   10   SOLOMON ISLANDS     5156821
10-AUG-2015 03:27:31   -9.33   158.48   5.0   10   SOLOMON ISLANDS     5155097
09-AUG-2015 15:27:36   -48.26   -9.90   5.0   13   SOUTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE     5155049
09-AUG-2015 08:36:13   5.20   -82.63   5.0   10   SOUTH OF PANAMA     5155035
09-AUG-2015 04:49:50   13.48   120.51   5.0   91   MINDORO, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS     5155021
08-AUG-2015 21:15:32   -13.91   -14.47   5.0   10   SOUTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE     5155009
08-AUG-2015 19:09:34   52.44   -169.62   5.0   41   FOX ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS     5155004
07-AUG-2015 18:25:20   -16.42   -173.07   5.0   10   TONGA ISLANDS     5154908
06-AUG-2015 21:36:58   0.81   -28.54   5.0   10   CENTRAL MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE     5154830

[zorgon]

Hmmm Actually it's been pretty quiet last few months

I bet they are using HAARP earthquake waves to NEUTRALIZE natural waves and keep California quiet all these years when LOGIC say it should have had activity

And yes equal and opposite waves DO cancell each other out   Funny how no one griping about HAARP ever thought about that



EVERY DAY around the Rim of Fire







yet barely a rumble on the West Coast



Prediction tool   Go ahead try some

http://ds.iris.edu/seismon/

[space otter]

ice levels.. very interesting who ever is the cause

[space otter]

interesting..but how to know if it's true..and look at the date...I know it takes awhile for these reports to get out..so how much has it changed since last year..?


http://www.sciencealert.com/antarcticas-lost-so-much-ice-its-changed-earths-gravity

SCIENCEALERT STAFF    2 OCT 2014

Antarctica's lost so much ice it's changed Earth's gravity

A visualisation of satellite data, showing the gravity change over West Antarctica.
Image: European Space Agency

It sounds like something out of a science fiction film, but Antarctica has now lost so much ice it's caused a noticeable shift in Earth's gravity, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced last week.

"The loss of ice from West Antarctica between 2009 and 2012 caused a dip in the gravity field over the region," the ESA wrote in a press release.

But while it sounds extreme, the change in gravity won't affect us much - for example, if you were in Antarctica right now you wouldn't actually feel any more "weightless" than you do anywhere else in the world.

The biggest implication of the discovery, as Eric Holthaus from Slate.com and the climate desk over at Wired report, is that it confirms global warming is significantly changing the Antarctic.

Although we often think of gravity as a constant, the strength of gravitational force actually varies depending where on Earth's surface you stand, and the density of the land (or ice) you're standing on.

Over the past four years the ESA's GOCE satellite measured Earth's gravitational field in unprecedented detail, and revealed that there's been a significant decrease over West Antarctica. The change was confirmed by lower resolution data from a US and German-run satellite called GRACE.

Although it's pretty grim news, it's not exactly surprising - earlier this year, an unrelated team concluded that major West Antarctic glaciers have now begun "unstoppable" collapse, and would lead to unpreventable sea level rise of several metres over the next several hundred years.

The ESA's CryoSat satellite, which measures the altitude of regions on Earth, also recently revealed that the rate at which ice has been lost from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has increased by a factor of three every year since 2009.

The ESA team is now hoping to scale up their investigation and map the change in gravity over the entire Antarctic continent, to better measure the impact climate change is having on the region, and help the world to better predict sea level rise.

Watch a visualisation of the change in gravity:

[rdunk]

Well, I haven't read anything on Antarctica in several months, but it hasn't been very long ago - ( a year), that Antarctica had much more/growing more ice than normal??? Has the situation changed so fast??

Here is a link to one of the places we discussed Antarctica ice here about a year ago -

"Antarctica sets new record for sea ice area"

http://www.thelivingmoon.com/forum/index.php?topic=6961.0

[ArMaP]

"Antarctica sets new record for sea ice area"

If I'm not mistaken, there was a bigger surface covered with ice but it was thin and the rest of the ice was getting thinner, so the volume (and mass) was less than before.

[rdunk]

If I'm not mistaken, there was a bigger surface covered with ice but it was thin and the rest of the ice was getting thinner, so the volume (and mass) was less than before.

Yes, I think that was discussed, but I am not sure that was truly ascertained. From a global temperature standpoint, I would think that surface ice area could have more direct affect on global temperatures than does ice thickness anyway.

[zorgon]

LAKE VOSTOK  ANTARCTICA

A very very cold frozen place  (yet the lake is warm  )

Take a drill  and do some core samples through 2.2 miles of ice, going back 420,000 years..



Collect the data from the annual thickness of the layers of ice. Like tree rings will tell you wet and dry years, the ice cores will tell you warm and cold years



They will also give you CO2 levels (long before man came along but I suppose Dino farts are just as bad as cow farts )



Religious people may ignore this data

[zorgon]

NASA SAYS:

Current State of the Sea Ice Cover

J. C. Comiso, C. L. Parkinson, T. Markus, D. J. Cavalieri and R. Gersten
The sea ice cover is one of the key components of the climate system. It has been a focus of attention in recent years, largely because of a strong decrease in the Arctic sea ice cover and modeling results that indicate that global warming could be amplified in the region by a factor of about 3 to 5 times on account of ice-albedo feedback. This results from the high reflectivity (albedo) of the sea ice compared to ice-free waters. A satellite-based data record starting in late 1978 shows that indeed rapid changes have been occurring in the Arctic, where the perennial ice cover has been declining at the rate of about 13% per decade and the ice cover as a whole has been declining at the lesser rate of about 5% per decade. In the Antarctic, the trend is opposite to that in the Arctic, with the sea ice cover increasing at about 1 to 2 % per decade. This is despite unusual warming in the Antarctic Peninsula region and declines in the sea ice cover in the Amundsen/Bellingshausen Seas of about 6% per decade. In the Arctic, a slight recovery in the sea ice cover has been observed in 2008 and 2009, following a major decline of the ice in 2007, while in the Antarctic, the sea ice cover was more extensive than normal in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Shown below are up-to-date satellite observations of the sea ice covers of both the Arctic and the Antarctic, along with comparisons with the historical satellite record of more than 30 years. The plots and color coded maps are chosen to provide information about the current state of the sea ice cover and how the most current daily data available compare with the record lows and record highs for the same date during the satellite era..

Figure 1: 10-year averages between 1979 and 2008 and yearly averages for 2007, 2012, and 2015 of the daily (a) ice extent and (b) ice area in the Northern Hemisphere and a listing of the extent and area of the current, historical mean, minimum, and maximum values in km2.


Figure 2: Color-coded map of the daily sea ice concentration in the Northern Hemisphere for the indicated recent date along with the contours of the 15% edge during the years with the least extent of ice (in red) and the greatest extent of ice (in yellow) during the period from November 1978 to the present. The extents in km2 for the current and for the years of minimum and maximum extents are provided below the image. The different shades of gray over land indicate the land elevation with the lightest gray being the highest elevation.


Figure 3: 10-year averages between 1979 and 2008 and yearly averages for 2012, 2014, and 2015 of the daily (a) ice extent and (b) ice area in the Southern Hemisphere and a listing of the extent and area of the current, historical mean, minimum, and maximum values in km2.


Figure 4:Color-coded map of the daily sea ice concentration in the Southern Hemisphere for the indicated recent date along with the contours of the 15% edge during the years with the least extent of ice (in red) and the greatest extent of ice (in yellow) during the period from November 1978 to the present. The extents in km2 for the current and for the years of minimum and maximum extents are provided below the image. The different shades of gray over land indicate the land elevation with the lightest gray being the highest elevation.


Figure 5. Seasonal cycle of Northern Hemisphere sea ice extents (a) and areas (b), given as daily averages, for the years 2007 through 2015. The vertical line represents the last data point plotted.


Figure 6. Seasonal cycle of Southern Hemisphere sea ice extents (a) and areas (b), given as daily averages, for the years 2007 through 2015. The vertical line represents the last data point plotted.

http://neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov/csb/index.php?section=234

[ArMaP]

If I'm not mistaken, there was a bigger surface covered with ice but it was thin and the rest of the ice was getting thinner, so the volume (and mass) was less than before.

I was mistaken, the data was for the Arctic and it was a bigger volume, not smaller.

I suppose I couldn't be wronger.

[space otter]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/coral-bleaching-climate-change_561568d9e4b021e856d33d0f
Nick Visser
Reporter, The Huffington Post
Posted: 10/08/2015 11:06 AM EDT | Edited: 2 hours ago

Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild via Getty Images
Bleached corals in West Papua, Indonesia. The world's corals are experiencing a mass bleaching as a result of warmer ocean temperatures and other factors.

Here's Evidence That Something Very Bad Is Happening In Our Oceans

You may never see them, but coral reefs are suffering along with the rest of our planet.

The planet's coral reefs are experiencing a mass global bleaching, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced on Thursday. The bleaching, only the third event of its type in recorded history, is another troubling sign of the damaging effects of climate change on the planet's health.

Bleaching happens when usually vibrantly colored corals lose their hues and turn bright white due to warmer oceans or other environmental factors. The colorful algae that live in and feed coral polyps leave in stressful times, turning the otherwise breathtaking formations into ghostly shells.

Warmer ocean temperatures are wreaking havoc on the undersea biome, causing widespread damage to delicate coral ecosystems that may well get worse due to the potential effects of a strong El Niño tropical weather system.

Reefs cover about 0.1 percent of the ocean floor, but are home to some 25 percent of marine life and have long been one of the main victims of a hotter world. However, Mark Eakin, the coordinator for NOAA's Coral Reef Watch program, said corals are often out of the public eye simply because they're underwater.

"What do you think people would do if, in a matter of months, 60 percent of the redwood forest would die?" he asked. "It's a bit of a problem of being out of sight, out of mind."

Eakin was referring to a smaller-scale bleaching that took place in the Caribbean in 2005 that wiped out 60 percent of corals in that region, but went relatively unnoticed. Now, however, bleaching is taking place on a much larger scale. Mass bleaching has happened just twice before, Eakin said, once in 1998 and again in 2010.

The current global bleaching began in the northern Pacific in the summer of 2014 and has since expanded throughout the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Corals in the U.S. have been among the hardest-hit, and scientists are particularly concerned with formations around Hawaii and the Caribbean.

The chart below shows the probable threat of bleaching around the globe for the next several months, with the dark red areas showing the places that face the greatest risk.

NOAA
NOAA's standard 4-month bleaching outlook showing threat of bleaching continuing in the Caribbean, Hawaii and Kiribati, and perhaps expanding into the Republic of the Marshall Islands, from October 2015 to January 2016.

When algae leave coral during a bleaching, the reef is left sick, hungry and vulnerable. This doesn't necessarily kill the coral, and some certainly recover. But severe or long-term bleaching -- like the current phenomenon -- is often fatal, according to NOAA. As reefs die, a slew of biodiversity is thrown out of whack. Fish lose their homes, crustaceans leave and many other species die as well

"After corals die, reefs quickly degrade and the structures corals build erode," a press release from NOAA reads. "This provides less shoreline protection from storms and fewer habitats for fish and other marine life, including ecologically and economically important species."

However, Eakin was quick to note that while the current bleaching event is severe enough, the ongoing El Niño could amp it up to "frightening" levels in the near future, as illustrated below

NOAA
An extended bleaching outlook showing the threat of bleaching expected in Kiribati, the Galapagos, the South Pacific -- especially east of the dateline and perhaps affecting Polynesia -- and most coral reef regions in the Indian Ocean, from February to May 2016.

The news is the latest in a series of troubling climate-related milestones. Last month, NOAA announced that this year's summer had been the hottest in recorded history. In August, scientists said the world's glaciers had melted to the lowest levels since record-keeping began more than 120 years ago. And in March, researchers said Arctic sea ice had seen the smallest annual growth ever.

NOAA's announcement about the bleaching comes a little less than two months ahead of the highly anticipated Paris climate summit in December. Hundreds of world leaders will attempt to devise a global plan for combating climate change, as time is running out to keep the planet below an agreed-upon warming threshold of 2 degrees Celsius.

Oceans will be a key issue during the summit, and Eakin says there's an "absolutely urgent need" for action. By the end of the current bleaching event, he says, some 4,600 square miles of reefs could be dead.

"One of the most heart-wrenching dives I've made in my life was in 2010 during the second global bleaching event," Eakin said of a dive he took in Thailand. "It was just fields of bleached coral. The fish were swimming around in midwater looking stunned."

[rdunk]

"NOAA's announcement about the bleaching comes a little less than two months ahead of the highly anticipated Paris climate summit in December. Hundreds of world leaders will attempt to devise a global plan for combating climate change, as time is running out to keep the planet below an agreed-upon warming threshold of 2 degrees Celsius".

My my, such "coincidental timing" of this news release with the upcoming meeting!

Is it even remotely possible that "hundreds of world leaders" have even a vague notion of what the reality of climate and climate change is all about? Isn't it a ludicrous suggestion that this "summit" might achieve anything other than completing another tax-payer paid boondoggle to Paris in the month December? Oh, the religion of climate change!!! Wonder when they will want a Climate Change mosque @ ground zero in New York city?? 

A global plan to stop climate change:

1. Turn off the Sun. Uh oh, that turns off the Moon too!
2. If we cannot turnoff the Sun, then completely cover the earth with clouds (or with other light dimming subject material) during normal daylight hours around the globe.
3. Bring the Moon closer to the Earth, until its shadow from the Sun completely covers the Sun-side of the Earth's surface.
4. Plug all volcanos, on the surface, and under water, to stop the heat ejections.
5. Bring in enough "dark matter", and position it in a constant position between the Earth and the Sun, to block just the right amount of sunlight, so that the Earth continues to have days and nights, but with much less "global warming" light.
6. Learn to totally control the weather, so that rain producing/snow/ice clouds can always be positioned to the right places to preclude excessing overheating by the Sun!
7. Move everyone to Mars, as it appears as if global warming may have already happened there!!

8. etc etc

And then - - HOW TO  REVERSE all of THE ABOVE (except #7) "defeat global warming stuff" when the "ice age" actually begins to start!!!!! Because, we can live with it hot, but we will freeze solid in the ice age, as did the Hairy Mammoths during the last one!!! 

[space otter]

weather you believe that WE DID IT or it is just the earth evolving really doesn't matter anymore
it's past the half way mark now

http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic/
By Sara Jerving, Katie Jennings, Masako Melissa Hirsch and Susanne Rust

Oct. 9, 2015

What Exxon knew about the Earth's melting Arctic

About this story: Over the last year, the Energy and Environmental Reporting Project at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, with the Los Angeles Times, has been researching the gap between Exxon Mobil's public position and its internal planning on the issue of climate change. As part of that effort, reporters reviewed hundreds of documents housed in archives in Calgary's Glenbow Museum and at the University of Texas. They also reviewed scientific journals and interviewed dozens of experts, including former Exxon Mobil employees. This is the first in a series of occasional articles.

Additional credits: Digital producer: Evan Wagstaff. Lead photo caption: Ice in the Chukchi Sea breaks up in open water season, making oil exploration cheaper and easier.

Back in 1990, as the debate over climate change was heating up, a dissident shareholder petitioned the board of Exxon, one of the world's largest oil companies, imploring it to develop a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from its production plants and facilities.

The board's response: Exxon had studied the science of global warming and concluded it was too murky to warrant action. The company's "examination of the issue supports the conclusions that the facts today and the projection of future effects are very unclear."

Yet in the far northern regions of Canada's Arctic frontier, researchers and engineers at Exxon and Imperial Oil were quietly incorporating climate change projections into the company's planning and closely studying how to adapt the company's Arctic operations to a warming planet.

Ken Croasdale, senior ice researcher for Exxon's Canadian subsidiary, was leading a Calgary-based team of researchers and engineers that was trying to determine how global warming could affect Exxon's Arctic operations and its bottom line.

 
Top, the loss of sea ice due to climate change has taken a toll on wildlife. (Mike Lockhart / U.S. Geological Survey, Associated Press) Bottom, rapidly thawing permafrost is changing the landscape in Canada's Northwest Territories. (Scott Zolkos / The Canadian Press)

"Certainly any major development with a life span of say 30-40 years will need to assess the impacts of potential global warming," Croasdale told an engineering conference in 1991. "This is particularly true of Arctic and offshore projects in Canada, where warming will clearly affect sea ice, icebergs, permafrost and sea levels."

Between 1986 and 1992, Croasdale's team looked at both the positive and negative effects that a warming Arctic would have on oil operations, reporting its findings to Exxon headquarters in Houston and New Jersey.

The good news for Exxon, he told an audience of academics and government researchers in 1992, was that "potential global warming can only help lower exploration and development costs" in the Beaufort Sea.



Top, the loss of sea ice due to climate change has taken a toll on wildlife. (Mike Lockhart / U.S. Geological Survey, Associated Press) Bottom, rapidly thawing permafrost is changing the landscape in Canada's Northwest Territories. (Scott Zolkos / The Canadian Press)

But, he added, it also posed hazards, including higher sea levels and bigger waves, which could damage the company's existing and future coastal and offshore infrastructure, including drilling platforms, artificial islands, processing plants and pump stations. And a thawing earth could be troublesome for those facilities as well as pipelines.

As Croasdale's team was closely studying the impact of climate change on the company's operations, Exxon and its worldwide affiliates were crafting a public policy position that sought to downplay the certainty of global warming.

The gulf between Exxon's internal and external approach to climate change from the 1980s through the early 2000s was evident in a review of hundreds of internal documents, decades of peer-reviewed published material and dozens of interviews conducted by Columbia University's Energy & Environmental Reporting Project and the Los Angeles Times.

Documents were obtained from the Imperial Oil collection at Calgary's Glenbow Museum and the Exxon Mobil Historical Collection at the University of Texas at Austin's Briscoe Center for American History.

"We considered climate change in a number of operational and planning issues," said Brian Flannery, who was Exxon's in-house climate science advisor from 1980 to 2011. In a recent interview, he described the company's internal effort to study the effects of global warming as a competitive necessity: "If you don't do it, and your competitors do, you're at a loss."

The Arctic holds about one-third of the world's untapped natural gas and roughly 13% of the planet's undiscovered oil, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. More than three-quarters of Arctic deposits are offshore.

Imperial Oil, about 70% of which is owned by Exxon Mobil, began drilling in the frigid Arctic waters of the Canadian Beaufort Sea in the early 1970s. By the early 1990s, it had drilled two dozen exploratory wells.

The exploration was expensive, due to bitter temperatures, wicked winds and thick sea ice. And when a worldwide oil slump drove petroleum prices down in the late 1980s, the company began scaling back those efforts.

Before: Arctic ice coverage in 1984. After: Receding coverage in 2013.

But with mounting evidence the planet was warming, company scientists, including Croasdale, wondered whether climate change might alter the economic equation. Could it make Arctic oil exploration and production easier and cheaper?

Seismic lines are used to detect natural gas and other underground deposits on the frozen Beaufort Sea. (Tom Cohen / Associated Press)
"The issue of CO2 emissions was certainly well-known at that time in the late 1980s," Croasdale said in an interview.

Since the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Exxon had been at the forefront of climate change research, funding its own internal science as well as research from outside experts at Columbia University and MIT.

With company support, Croasdale spearheaded the company's efforts to understand climate change's effects on its operations. A company such as Exxon, he said, "should be a little bit ahead of the game trying to figure out what it was all about."

Exxon Mobil describes its efforts in those years as standard operating procedure. "Our researchers considered a wide range of potential scenarios, of which potential climate change impacts such as rising sea levels was just one," said Alan Jeffers, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil.

The Arctic seemed an obvious region to study, Croasdale and other experts said, because it was likely to be most affected by global warming.

That reasoning was backed by models built by Exxon scientists, including Flannery, as well as Marty Hoffert, a New York University physicist. Their work, published in 1984, showed that global warming would be most pronounced near the poles.

Between 1986, when Croasdale took the reins of Imperial's frontier research team, until 1992, when he left the company, his team of engineers and scientists used the global circulation models developed by the Canadian Climate Centre and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies to anticipate how climate change could affect a variety of operations in the Arctic.

These were the same models that — for the next two decades — Exxon's executives publicly dismissed as unreliable and based on uncertain science. As Chief Executive Lee Raymond explained at an annual meeting in 1999, future climate "projections are based on completely unproven climate models, or, more often, on sheer speculation."

One of the first areas the company looked at was how the Beaufort Sea could respond to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which the models predicted would happen by 2050.

Greenhouse gases are rising "due to the burning of fossil fuels," Croasdale told an audience of engineers at a conference in 1991. "Nobody disputes this fact," he said, nor did anyone doubt those levels would double by the middle of the 21st century.

Using the models and data from a climate change report issued by Environment Canada, Canada's environmental agency, the team concluded that the Beaufort Sea's open water season — when drilling and exploration occurred — would lengthen from two months to three and possibly five months.

They were spot on.

In the years following Croasdale's conclusions, the Beaufort Sea has experienced some of the largest losses in sea ice in the Arctic and its open water season has increased significantly, according to Mark Serreze, a senior researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

For instance, in Alaska's Chukchi Sea, west of the Beaufort, the season has been extended by 79 days since 1979, Serreze said.

An extended open water season, Croasdale said in 1992, could potentially reduce exploratory drilling and construction costs by 30% to 50%.


Members of the environmental group Greenpeace work to hang a banner protesting oil drilling at the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.'s Valdez, Alaska terminal, on August 5, 1991. (Carey Anderson / Associated Press)

He did not recommend making investment decisions based on those scenarios, because he believed the science was still uncertain. However, he advised the company to consider and incorporate potential "negative outcomes," including a rise in the sea level, which could threaten onshore infrastructure; bigger waves, which could damage offshore drilling structures; and thawing permafrost, which could make the earth buckle and slide under buildings and pipelines.

Members of the environmental group Greenpeace work to hang a banner protesting oil drilling at the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.'s Valdez, Alaska terminal, on August 5, 1991. (Carey Anderson / Associated Press)

::

The most pressing concerns for the company centered on a 540-mile pipeline that crossed the Northwest Territories into Alberta, its riverside processing facilities in the remote town of Norman Wells, and a proposed natural gas facility and pipeline in the Mackenzie River Delta, on the shores of the Beaufort Sea.

The company hired Stephen Lonergan, a Canadian geographer from McMaster University, to study the effect of climate change there.

Lonergan used several climate models in his analysis, including the NASA model. They all concluded that things would get warmer and wetter and that those effects "cannot be ignored," he said in his report.

As a result, the company should expect "maintenance and repair costs to roads, pipelines and other engineering structures" to be sizable in the future, he wrote.

A warmer Arctic would threaten the stability of permafrost, he noted, potentially damaging the buildings, processing plants and pipelines that were built on the solid, frozen ground.

In addition, the company should expect more flooding along its riverside facilities, an earlier spring breakup of the ice pack, and more-severe summer storms.

But it was the increased variability and unpredictability of the weather that was going to be the company's biggest challenge, he said.

Record-breaking droughts, floods and extreme heat — the worst-case scenarios — were now events that not only were likely to happen, but could occur at any time, making planning for such scenarios difficult, Lonergan warned the company in his report. Extreme temperatures and precipitation "should be of greatest concern," he wrote, "both in terms of future design and ... expected impacts."

The fact that temperatures could rise above freezing on almost any day of the year got his superiors' attention. That "was probably one of the biggest results of the study and that shocked a lot of people," he said in a recent interview.

Lonergan recalled that his report came as somewhat of a disappointment to Imperial's management, which wanted specific advice on what action it should take to protect its operations. After presenting his findings, he remembered, one engineer said: "Look, all I want to know is: Tell me what impact this is going to have on permafrost in Norman Wells and our pipelines."

As it happened, J.F. "Derick" Nixon, a geotechnical engineer on Croasdale's team, was studying that question.

He looked at historical temperature data and concluded Norman Wells could grow about 0.2 degrees warmer every year. How would that, he wondered, affect the frozen ground underneath buildings and pipelines?

"Although future structures may incorporate some consideration of climatic warming in their design," he wrote in a technical paper delivered at a conference in Canada in 1991, "northern structures completed in the recent past do not have any allowance for climatic warming." The result, he said, could be significant settling.

Nixon said the work was done in his spare time and not commissioned by the company. However, Imperial "was certainly aware of my work and the potential effects on their buildings."
::

Exxon Mobil declined to respond to requests for comment on what steps it took as a result of its scientists' warnings. According to Flannery, the company's in-house climate expert, much of the work of shoring up support for the infrastructure was done as routine maintenance.

"You build it into your ongoing system and it becomes a part of what you do," he said.

Today, as Exxon's scientists predicted 25 years ago, Canada's Northwest Territories has experienced some of the most dramatic effects of global warming. While the rest of the planet has seen an average increase of roughly 1.5 degrees in the last 100 years, the northern reaches of the province have warmed by 5.4 degrees and temperatures in central regions have increased by 3.6 degrees.

Since 2012, Exxon Mobil and Imperial have held the rights to more than 1 million acres in the Beaufort Sea, for which they bid $1.7 billion in a joint venture with BP. Although the companies have not begun drilling, they requested a lease extension until 2028 from the Canadian government a few months ago. Exxon Mobil declined to comment on its plans there.

Croasdale, who still consults for Exxon, said the company could be "taking a gamble" the ice will break up soon, finally bringing about the day he predicted so long ago — when the costs would become low enough to make Arctic exploration economical.

Amy Lieberman and Elah Feder contributed to this report.


.....................................................................

hummmmmmmmmmmm

something else going on here, I think




This story has been updated.

In a setback for dreams of Arctic oil riches, Royal Dutch Shell announced early Monday morning it will indefinitely suspend its Arctic drilling off the Alaska coast after finding insufficient oil and gas in one of its exploratory wells to justify costly development.

The move puts an end — for now — to the contentious debate over whether oil and gas exploration should take place in the environmentally sensitive area off Alaska's coast. President Obama has come under intense fire for allowing drilling to proceed, and environmentalists cheered Shell's announcement.

It also highlights the tremendous costs and risks of drilling in the Arctic frontier, which is thought to have vast oil reserves but where little exploration has taken place so far. Daunted by the task, half a dozen companies had already put their Arctic plans on ice; while Exxon Mobil found oil in Russia's Kara Sea, economic sanctions forced it to halt operations there.

In a statement at 1 a.m. Eastern time, Shell said

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/28/royal-dutch-shell-suspends-arctic-drilling-indefinitely/

By Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson September 28

Royal Dutch Shell suspends Arctic drilling indefinitely

[zorgon]

Meanwhile in Antarctica....

Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches New Record Maximum



Sea ice surrounding Antarctica reached a new record high extent this year, covering more of the southern oceans than it has since scientists began a long-term satellite record to map sea ice extent in the late 1970s. The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about a third of the magnitude of the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.

The new Antarctic sea ice record reflects the diversity and complexity of Earth's environments, said NASA researchers. Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, has referred to changes in sea ice coverage as a microcosm of global climate change. Just as the temperatures in some regions of the planet are colder than average, even in our warming world, Antarctic sea ice has been increasing and bucking the overall trend of ice loss.

"The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming. Sea ice as a whole is decreasing as expected, but just like with global warming, not every location with sea ice will have a downward trend in ice extent," Parkinson said.

Since the late 1970s, the Arctic has lost an average of 20,800 square miles (53,900 square kilometers) of ice a year; the Antarctic has gained an average of 7,300 square miles (18,900 sq km). On Sept. 19 this year, for the first time ever since 1979, Antarctic sea ice extent exceeded 7.72 million square miles (20 million square kilometers), according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The ice extent stayed above this benchmark extent for several days. The average maximum extent between 1981 and 2010 was 7.23 million square miles (18.72 million square kilometers).

The single-day maximum extent this year was reached on Sept. 20, according to NSIDC data, when the sea ice covered  7.78 million square miles (20.14 million square kilometers). This year's five-day average maximum was reached on Sept. 22, when sea ice covered 7.76 million square miles (20.11 million square kilometers), according to NSIDC.

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-new-record-maximum