Study: Arctic Waters Were 4°C Warmer And Sea Ice-Free ~ 2100 BC
Today, the region north of Svalbard is encrusted with sea ice for all but a few weeks per year, and summer sea surface temperatures (SSTs) hover near 0°C.
Scientists (Brice et al., 2020) have determined this same region had sea ice-free conditions last about 10 months per year while SSTs reached 4°C just ~4,100 years ago.
In early September 2019, Arctic explorers once again needed to be rescued from the “disappearing” sea ice that had captured their ship in central Svalbard.
This region is presently free of sea ice for only a few weeks per year (late August).
Observational measurements (Rösel et al., 2018) of the sea ice north of Svalbard indicate the ice has actually been significantly thicker in recent years (1.56 to 1.65 meters in 2015, 2017) than it was in 1955 (0.94 of a meter).
Image Source: Rösel et al., 2018
A study site northeast of Svalbard (Brice et al., 2020) reveals today’s sea surface temperatures of “<0°C” are at least 4°C colder than they were just a few thousand years ago when the Arctic was sea ice-free for all but “a couple of months” every year.
Notice the graphics that show today’s sea ice monthly duration (~11 months per year) and summer sea surface temperatures (zero degrees Celsius) are among the highest and lowest (respectively) of the Holocene.
Image Source: Brice et al., 2020
Per Brice et al. (2020), the much warmer Arctic climate and absence of sea ice reached an “optimum” during “the interval around 3000-2000 cal yr BP” such that late Stone Age human settlements north of Svalbard were “feasible”.
“Although our core was collected offshore, far from human settlement, the data compiled here and the reconstruction we propose provide some clues on the regional climate and marine environmental history. Hence, our study yields some information about the fact that the interval around 3000–2000 cal yr BP was probably the most favorable time window of the Holocene for human occupation in the area of northern Svalbard. Such a finding does not support directly the hypothesis of Stone Age settlements in Svalbard proposed by Christiansson and Simonsen (1970) but provides a climatological and oceanographical framework that would make it feasible.”
Read more at No Tricks Zone
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Please DONATE TODAY To Help Our Non-Profit Mission To Defend The Scientific Method.
Trackback from your site.
Tom O
| #
And another study based on “proxy analysis,” not on actual data since there is no true data for this study. I have no problem with the study, understand, I have a problem with the study presenting its analysis as anything other than speculation.
The core can suggest what they interpret, but it should not be stated this way – “A study site northeast of Svalbard (Brice et al., 2020) reveals today’s sea surface temperatures of “<0°C” are at least 4°C colder than they were just a few thousand years ago when the Arctic was sea ice-free for all but “a couple of months” every year.
It is their interpretation that suggests, it does not reveal.
Reply
Zoe Phin
| #
Radiometric dating is also questionable, but in the abscence of anything else, we call it science. Better to make up stories then not have anything to say?
Reply
jerry krause
| #
Hi Tom O,
You wrote: “And another study based on “proxy analysis,” not on actual data since there is no true data for this study.”
I read the first two articles cited and there is very true and significant in situ data cited. So I commend Kenneth Richard for bringing these empirical studies to our attentions.
I have lived in Eastern South Dakota where the wind (most winters) keep the ice of the lakes snow free. So I was amazed to see (https://follow.mosaic-expedition.org/) that the ice sheets of the Arctic Oceans were clearly covered by snow. I have lived in northern Minnesota in the northern forests where the snow pushes the ice down so that the ice because flooded with water which form slush beneath the snow. And one of the two articles clearly focuses upon this observed fact on the Arctic ice sheet.
So thank you Kenneth for the articles of actual observations and clearly identifying that Tom O clearly is not a scientist. And I certainly recommend that anyone wanting to learn about real science read these first to articles. Unfortunately, the articles are excessively wordy and use terminology familiarly only to scientists who themselves study this ‘narrow’ science. .
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Tom AO
| #
Tell me Jerry, exactly how do you get cores from the ocean floors that you can say is in situ data? You are interpreting something, and no, Jerry, that is not data. Pretend all you want. And you are correct, I am not a scientist, and as best I can figure, people that believe proxy is data aren’t either. I am sure, however, you pretend to be one since you have a degree, right, and that somehow translates into – nothing but hot air.
Reply
Tom O
| #
Please remove this email. I didn’t notice posting a different name.
Reply
Tom O
| #
Tell me Jerry, exactly how do you get cores from the ocean floors that you can say is in situ data? You are interpreting something, and no, Jerry, that is not data. Pretend all you want. And you are correct, I am not a scientist, and as best I can figure, people that believe proxy is data aren’t either. I am sure, however, you pretend to be one since you have a degree, right, and that somehow translates into – nothing but hot air. And I stand by that last sentence in that first post as should you, if you are a scientist.
Reply
Dr Roger Higgs
| #
It’s very odd that Brice et al. 2020 don’t shout much more loudly their important discovery that 1950 (0 years BP) sea-surface temperature and sea-ice cover at their core site were the lowest and highest, respectively, of the last 2,000 years and possibly even 10,000 years (the two graphs above, extracted from their fig. 6), and that their core shows no evidence of the modern average GLOBAL warming (from 1910), which I believe is not an invention (e.g. HadCRUT chart, NASA-GISS chart). Even more strangely they conclude (p. 11): “Hence, almost all data from the Nordic Seas and Scandinavia seem consistent both on land and at sea, showing that the last two millennia have been regionally the coldest of the Holocene … EXCLUDING THE RECENT ANTHROPOGENIC WARMING” (my capitals). How bizarre is that? Not only do they not ‘see’ the warming in their core, but they also ASSUME it is man-made (no citations provided). Again on p. 11: “The trend towards colder conditions that is inferred over the last 2000 yr of the Holocene, prior to the ongoing anthropogenic warming, in the northwestern Barents Sea …”, which their core does not show.
Evidently Brice et al. agree with Greta and Gore that ‘The Science is Settled’ and CO2 is warming our planet. Big mistake …
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341622566_IPCC_three_pillars_of_man-made_global_warming_collapsed
I note that the lead author’s institution, GEOTOP (Canada), has fallen into the same trap of unquestioning faith (sic) that warming is man-made …
https://www.geotop.ca/en/recherche/axes-et-themes/axe3-theme2
Google indicates that GEOTOP receives funding from the Canadian government. If so, Canadian citizens are paying, through taxation, for their own anti-CO2 indoctrination.
Reply
jerry krause
| #
Hi Tom O,
I have no experience but I trust it is a somewhat standard procedure. I suspect that Dr. Higgs could answer this question.
I trust what Brice et. al. report because of their Fig 3 and the high sedimentation rate from -11423 to -10620. That is consistent with Agassiz’s discovery of erratic boulders due to prehistoric glacier’s which covered the northern portions of North American (and our family farm in eastern S.D) Europe, and Asia. The last of which has been proposed to have last occurred in the period of greatest sedimentary rate. And this sedimentary evidence, to me, is unquestionable physical evidence of volcanic activity. And don’t miss the fact that the core is only 3 meters deep.
I am an experimentalist and I must trust the work of other experimentalists. To me that dating of that layer is not the critical issue. The critical issue is that there is this earlier layer which cannot be denied by you.
Have a good day, Jerry.
Reply
Joseph Olson
| #
Global Temperatures, 2500 BC to 2040 AD > chart by
Cliff Harris and Randy Mann > GooGhoul graphics
Minoan Warming Period was from 1500 BC to 500 BC was well documented event worldwide, when Vikings first settled Greenland, building stone dairy barns big enough to hold fifty cattle. I trust 10,000 dead Vikings more than all the climaclownologists
Reply
jerry krause
| #
Hi Tom O,
You wrote: ” And you are correct, I am not a scientist, and as best I can figure, people that believe proxy is data aren’t either. I am sure, however, you pretend to be one since you have a degree, right, and that somehow translates into – nothing but hot air.”
I have pondered this statement. I have a question: How is it that you, a non-scientist, can make this statement about scientists in general and specifically about myself who claims to be a scientist because I observe as a scientist must?
You, as you made your statement, become an authority (having no knowledge of what one can learn by simply observing) like those who threatened Galileo with death if he did not agree that the Earth stood still.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply