Antarctic sea ice has expanded to record levels for April, increasing by more than 110,000sq km a day last month to nine million square kilometres. The National Snow and Ice Data Centre said the rapid expansion had continued into May and the seasonal cover was now bigger than the record “by a significant margin’’. “This exceeds the past record for the satellite era by about 320,000sq km, which was set in April 2008,’’ the centre said. --Graham Lloyd,
The Australian, 12 May 2014
Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005) –
IPPC WGII Report 2007.
The vast majority of all Himalayan glaciers have been retreating and thinning over the past 30 years, with accelerated losses over the last decade. –
WWF Glacier Facts
Himalayan glaciers - for years one of the poster children of the "man-made global warming is real and we're all doomed" movement - are in no imminent danger whatsoever, a new study has found. Of the 2018 glaciers mapped and monitored for the survey, nearly 87 per cent were found to be stable while only 12 per cent were found to be in retreat. These real-world observations are in marked contrast to the predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear "by 2035." --James Delingpole,
Breitbart London, 12 May 2014
The Himalayan mountain system to the north of the Indian land mass with arcuate strike of NW–SE for about 2400 km holds one of the largest concentration of glaciers outside the polar regions in its high-altitude regions. Two thousand and eighteen glaciers representing climatically diverse terrains in the Himalaya were mapped and monitored [between 2000/01/02 and 2010/11]. Among these, 1752 glaciers (86.8%) were observed having stable fronts (no change in the snout position and area of ablation zone), 248 (12.3%) exhibited retreat and 18 (0.9%) of them exhibited advancement of snout. The results of the present study indicate that most of the glaciers were in a steady state compared to the results of other studies carried out for the period prior to 2001. This period of monitoring almost corresponds to hiatus in global warming in the last decade. --Bahuguna et al.:
Current Science April 2014
Seldom has the sun been as strong as we have seen it over the last 5 decades. Is it just a coincidence that the largest warming of the last 500 years occurred during this phase? What climatic consequences could the decline in solar activity have in coming decades? Just a few years ago the tide changed when the sun ended its hyperactive phase. Few people had anticipated this, and so it was a surprise for many. It is expected that the sun will continue becoming quieter over the coming decades. This has pretty much become the consensus among solar physicists. What climatic consequences could this have? --Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt,
No Tricks Zone, 10 May 2014
The debate over climate change is often a contentious one, and key players in the discussion only rarely switch sides. But late last month, Lennart Bengtsson, the former director of the Hamburg-based Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, one of the world’s leading climate research centers, announced he would join the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, he discusses why he made the shift to the skeptics’ camp. --Axel Bojanowski,
Spiegel Online, 12 May 2014
To aim for a simplistic course of action in an area that is as complex and as incompletely understood as the climate system does not make sense at all in my opinion. I think the best and perhaps only sensible policy for the future is to prepare society for change and be prepared to adjust. In 25 years, we'll have a world with some 9 to 10 billion people that will require twice as much primary energy as today. We must embrace new science and technology in a more positive way than we presently do in Europe. This includes, for example, nuclear energy and genetic food production to provide the world what it urgently needs. --Axel Bojanowski,
Spiegel Online, 12 May 2014
A man from Kiribati, whose home in South Tarawa is threatened by rising sea levels, has lost what is possibly his final bid to live in New Zealand as a refugee.
Ioane Teitiota, 37, lost his Court of Appeal case against a tribunal decision refusing him refugee status in New Zealand. Mr Teitiota has been living in New Zealand with his wife and New Zealand-born children since 2007. He did not want to return home to South Tarawa when his work visa expired in 2010 because of the combined pressures of over-population and rising sea-levels. In its ruling, the court found Mr Teitiota’s case was “fundamentally misconceived”. --
ABC News, 12 May 2014
