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NEWS ... GLOBAL NEWS ... His story reads like a book. Looking at a ARCTIC SEA ICE RE-FREEZING ANTARCTIC ICE LEVEL GROWS series of differential equations for the AT RECORD PACE TO NEW HEIGHTS greenhouse effect, he noticed that the Tx record melting of Arctic sea ice lhe southern hemisphere (Antarctica) has solution—originally arrived at in 1922 by observed this last [northern] summer and quietly set a new record for most ice Arthur Milne, but still used by climate __ fall led to a record-setting pace of re-freezing _ extent since 1979. researchers today—ignored boundary in November, according to the NASA Earth The southern hemispheric areal coverage conditions by assuming an "infinitely thick". Observatory. Some 58,000 square miles of _ is the highest in the satellite record, just atmosphere. ice formed per day for 10 days in late beating out 1995, 2001, 2005 and 2006. Similar assumptions are common when —_ October and early November—a new record. Since 1979, the trend has been up for the solving differential equations: they simplify The record melting of Arctic sea ice this _ total Antarctic ice extent. the calculations and often end in a result that last summer was widely viewed as a While the Antarctic Peninsula area has still very closely matches reality. But not harbinger of global warming, though warmed in recent years and ice near it always. unusual wind patterns played arole and diminished during the southern hemisphere So Miskolczi re-derived the solution, this many factors affecting fluctuations in summer, the interior of Antarctica has been time using the proper boundary conditions Arctic ice are poorly understood by colder and ice elsewhere has been more for an atmosphere that is not infinite. His scientists. extensive and longer lasting, which result included a new term, which acts as a Here's how NASA explains the record __ explains the increase in total extent. negative feedback to counter the positive re-growth of ice over that 10-day period in Indeed, according to NASA GISS data, forcing. At low levels, the new term means October and November. "Record sea ice the South Pole winter (June/July/August) a small difference—but as greenhouse _ growth rates after a record low may sound _ has cooled about one degree Fahrenheit gases rise, the negative feedback surprising at first, but it is not completely since 1957, and the coldest year was 2004. predominates, forcing values back down. unexpected. The more ice that survives the This winter has been an especially harsh But NASA refuses to release the results. summer melt, the less open water there is _ one in the southern hemisphere, with cold Miskolczi believes its motivation is simple. for new ice to grow. When summertime and snow records set in Australia, South "Money," he tells DailyTech. ice extent hits a record low, on the other America and Africa. Research that contradicts the view of an hand, large areas of open water provide In January, a paper appeared in impending crisis jeopardises funding, not room for the ice to grow. While summer Geophysical Research Letters entitled "A only for his own atmosphere-monitoring warming of the upper ocean surface can doubling in snow accumulation in the project but for all climate change research. cause wintertime sea ice regrowth to lag western Antarctic Peninsula since 1850". Currently, funding for climate research _ initially, as the fall season progresses and The article is by scientists with the British tops US$5 billion per year. sunlight weakens, the rate of energy loss _ Antarctic Survey and the Desert Research Miskolczi resigned in protest, stating in from the ocean increases. That heat loss, Institute in Reno, Nevada, USA. his resignation letter: "Unfortunately my coupled with a large area of open water, (Sources: ICECAP, International Climate working relationship with my NASA creates ideal conditions for sea ice to form and Environmental Change Assessment supervisors eroded to a level that I am not _ rapidly over large areas." Project, 12 September 2007, http://tinyurl. able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of (Source: The Daily Green, 12 December — com/29e5lb; Geophysical Research Letters, science cannot coexist with the recent 2007, http://tinyurl.com/2839cb) vol. 35, 12 January 2008) NASA practice of handling new climate change-related scientific results." His theory was eventually published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal in his home country of Hungary. His conclusions are supported by research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research last year by Steven Schwartz of Brookhaven National Labs, who gave statistical evidence that the Earth's response to carbon dioxide was grossly overstated. His equations also answer thorny problems raised by the current theory which doesn't explain why "runaway" greenhouse warming hasn't happened in the Earth's past. The new theory predicts that greenhouse gas increases should result in small, but very rapid temperature spikes followed by much longer, slower periods of cooling—exactly what the palaeoclimatic record demonstrates. “Mike, can you find the changer for me._.that (Source: DailyTech.com, 6 March 2008, n hatp-Jtinyurl.com/2foo2k) blue and green planet seems fo be running down. C Semero fie fower wi Fife. “Mike, can you find the changer for me._.that blue and green planet seems to be running down.” APRIL — MAY 2008 NEXUS = 11 www.nexusmagazine.com