In 2009 and into 2010, the middle northern latitudes of earth experienced a sudden shift from a warming trend to a cooling trend, while the warming trend remained in place in polar regions. For example, while Mongolia, Europe, Siberia and the United States were having their coldest winters in years, the high arctic was experiencing a comparatively mild period.
This is not consistent with global warming predictions, which anticipate continuous warming, but it is consistent with the climate change expectations that brought this section of Unknowncountry.com into being in the first place.
Climate change of the type we are experiencing now has happened many times on earth over the past three million years. At the beginning of this period, the land bridge that is now Central America rose, cutting of the great transoceanic current that had kept earth's weather stable, with mild seasons and, for the most part, little polar ice, for millions of years.
This event divided the planet's oceans and caused a decline in temperature exchange efficiency, which has resulted in the long-term oscillations we experience as ice ages lasting between one and three hundred thousand years, interrupted by brief interglacials of ten to twenty thousand years.
These interglacials have all ended the same way: with an abrupt spike in temperatures, followed by sudden and dramatic cooling that leads to a series of summers with little snow melt in northern latitudes. The whiteness of the snow causes heat to be reflected into space, and further cooling takes place.
The spike in temperature is caused by the outgassing of gigantic amounts of methane from methane hydrates trapped under arctic seas. They "melt" into their gaseous state as arctic waters warm, which is happening now. This releases methane into the atmosphere causing sudden heating. But methane is a short-lived gas and soon dissipates, causing the warming trend to end very violently and abruptly. In the past, the change has been extremely sudden, taking only three or so months, and resulting in very large and dramatic storms, failed snow melt, and the beginning of a new stage of glaciation.
Unfortunately, the public debate has been about whether or not global warming is real, not about how to plan for climate change, which is an inevitable part of earth's current climate cycle. As a result of this, our real future, which involves more and more abrupt and violent changes such as the ones that have taken place over the winter of 2009-2010, are not being anticipated or planned for in any way.
At present, methane is beginning to be seen outgassing in the Arctic Ocean, but it is not known whether this is a common, ongoing phenomenon or something new. There is no clear evidence that methane levels in the atmosphere are rising at this time.
In addition, it is impossible to tell how the additional carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere will alter the way the current change in cycle unfolds. The longer the climax of the cycle is delayed, the more dramatic the heating event that accompanies the release of arctic methane will be, but it could be that high levels of carbon dioxide will prevent the transition of the planet into another ice age, and lead instead of a new climate of a type that is at present impossible to predict.
The "Quickwatch" index on this website is intended to measure the probability of unusual weather conditions by indexing ice levels, ocean currents and temperature differentials around the world. It is not intended to measure the probability of a massive storm appearing that will initiate a new ice age. In October of 2009, it moved into a "high probability" range, and the winter of 2009-2010 has surprised climate scientists the world over by being, as the Quickwatch predicted, one of the most violent on record.
