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The largest of the great lakes in the United States, Lake Superior
Lake Superior’s ice coverage has greatly surpassed expectations this year.
Earlier in the season, forecasters predicted the lake would reach a little more than 50 percent ice coverage this winter. But as of Friday, Lake Superior was over 85 percent covered, far exceeding the prediction and the lake’s long-term average of 55 percent, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, or GLERL.
This year’s frigid conditions triggered the rapid expansion of the ice that exceeded predictions, said Jia Wang, a research ice climatologist and physical oceanographer at GLERL.
[...] Earlier this week, ice coverage increased about 10 percent within 12 hours, rising from around 75 percent at 2 p.m. Wednesday to nearly 85 percent by 2 a.m. Thursday.
[...] The last time the lake ice reached 100 percent coverage was 1996, which is the only time 100 percent coverage on Lake Superior has been noted since records started in 1973, according to GLERL data.
[Updated to fix title; changed "Exceeds 90 Percent" to be "Exceeds 85 Percent". --martyb]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 07 2019, @07:22PM (3 children)
I don't think that the world's foremost experts have more than a tenuous understanding of what's coming, and when it eventually does come - whatever it is - it will be a minority of experts who accidentally guessed correctly. (Kind of like Wall Street fund managers who "consistently beat the market, year after year," until they don't.
As for the wobble, if it brings significant amounts of "white" significantly further south than "normal" that may be all it takes to start the next ice age. If your warm air shifts toward the poles end up being on the oceans instead of the land, that may just provide more moisture in the air with which to produce more snow...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday March 07 2019, @08:23PM (2 children)
I'll put this another way: Where I am, snow is a normal phenomenon, and has been for at least a century. We've gotten some arctic blasts, which can create some extra snow for a few days. But that's all, a few days, and this is in a region where snow cover used to be normal conditions from approximately November 1 through April 1.
At least locally, your claim that global temperature increases lead to higher reflectivity are simply wrong and don't match anybody else's findings that I've been able to locate. And even if you were right about what happens at lower latitudes, which you aren't, that doesn't counteract the massively reduction in ice in the polar regions going on right now.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 07 2019, @08:42PM (1 child)
I believe I started off with "wouldn't it be interesting if..." by all appearances, yes, the supposition is false, but "wouldn't it be interesting if?"
If, in 1985, I had predicted that 95%+ of the coral reefs in the Florida Keys would be dead and bleached due to global warming, that would have met with similar "well, obviously you are a f-ing alarmist uninformed idiot, all evidence to-date is to the contrary" push back from the locals.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by khallow on Friday March 08 2019, @01:33AM
Wouldn't it be interesting, if ... that were relevant?