Ninth warmest year since 1880

2012 recorded the ninth warmest global temperature since 1880--anyone surprised?

Hot off the press: NASA's annual global temperature measurement analysis finds that 2012 joined the top ten hottest years on record, taking ninth place.

WASHINGTON -- NASA scientists say 2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years in the 132-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record.

A week earlier we heard that North America had exceeded its heat record again, 2012 was the warmest year measured in Yankeedom since measurements began in the 1880's. More importantly, the level of temperature anomaly greatly exceeded any year on record.

Coolest and warmest years since 1895, USA

Sadly, these announcements surprise no one. The personal experience and the expectations of most everyone center on measurable increasing warmth year after year.

It will be BIG news if and when we have a cool year that falls outside the top ten. Don't hold your breath. Get used to the hot air. Before you can mix up a cool drink, the counter-claims of conspiracy and poor science will hit the news cycle, take it over, and overwhelm the science with doubt in a cloud of noxious gas.

Global responses toward ameliorating CO2 inputs and adapting to inexorable warming are held hostage by the burgeoning Chinese economy screaming, It's our turn. Like you, we will fuel growth with cheap coal!

Economic interests in the West need no better excuse to stall cooperation through global agreements.

Adaptations to warmth and to weather extremes will be big business, soon!

Black Hand Sandstone terrains, scenery and refugia

Soft hemlock boughs swathe coarse sandstone walls throughout Black Hand Sandstone terrains in eastern Ohio. The Hocking Hills (Hocking County), the most extensive outcrop area of this sandstone, offers some of the best of this unique scenery.

Contorted hemlocks cling to Black Hand Sandstone walls.

The Black Hand Sandstone forms unique ravine and gorge topography, here and there, wherever it outcrops in central eastern Ohio counties trending north-south from the hills surrounding Mansfield, Ohio and the Mohican Gorge parks region in Richland and Ashland Counties, south to the Hocking Hills region in Hocking County and northern Vinton County. Ohio state parks and natural areas, Mohican State Park, Blackhand Gorge State Nature Preserve, and Hocking Hills State Park, offer rewarding access to beautiful scenery year 'round. Our favorite scenery is formed by the gigantic rock shelter at Ash Cave in Hocking Hills State Park. Nearby Rock House is a blast for kids and parents together.

Winter is a great time to find open vistas. Every winter, giant icicles gleam along seeps and delicate streamside ice crystal formations can be found near ravine heads. Uncommonly cold and wet winters in Ohio produce extraordinary ice formations wherever water flows along or seeps from Black Hand Sandstone formations. Rarely, giant frozen waterfalls connect cliffs to bottoms with giant columns of ice.

Black Hand Sandstone terrains offer much more than great scenery, unique qualities make Black Hand Sandstone terrains important refugia for plants and wildlife including disjunct populations of northern breeding bird species, Canada Warbler is a beautiful example.

All bedrock outcrops offer epilithic (stone surface) niche opportunities for unique living things from bacteria extremeophiles living among sand grains millimeters below the surface of sun-baked southern rock exposures, to abundant clinging lichens adapted to dry and moist rocky surfaces, to ancient liverworts' colonies plastering dripping moist recesses under rock overhangs, to mosses and ferns of ledges including fibrous-rooted spleenworts and cliffbrake ferns found clinging along the tiniest crevices. Beneath shady hemlock groves growing in the acidic sandstone soil of steep slopes or clinging to crags and rocky bluffs in Black Hand Sandstone terrains, moist ravine cliffs and headwalls mingle groundwater with atmosphere, significantly modifying the microclimates of ravines year 'round. Moist sandstone ravines are special places, they are local biodiversity hotspots.

Honeycomb weathering.

Geologists describe this type of sandstone deposit as "massive" due to its tendency to form large uniform blocks of homogeneous sandstone. Narrow bands of pebbly sand called conglomerate, and cross-bedding of sand layers, and absence of marine fossils suggest the deposits originally collected in a sediment-choked braided stream environment.

Quartz sand forms the backbone of the stone, more than 90 percent of grains are composed of sturdy quartz, iron oxide cement holds most of the sand grains together forming the erosion resistant rock of the steep ravine walls and formations.

Geological weathering and erosion produced the scenery and rock features including the fine scale surface patterns of Black Hand Sandstone outcrops. Differential erosion; softer, poorly cemented lower levels of sandstone eroding more deeply than firmly cemented upper levels, caused formation of outcrop features, the overhangs and rock shelters and other large scale features of Black Hand Sandstone terrains. Weathering and grain by grain erosion of high angle surfaces of the sandstone outcrops forms intriguing honeycomb surface patterns. Both the large scale features and the honeycomb surface patterns result from properties inherent in the sandstone bedrock.

The Black Hand Sandstone is porous and permeable, groundwater moves through it: groundwater is key. Groundwater dissolves and moves minerals in solution through the matrix of the permeable bedrock toward lower crevices, seeps, and rock surfaces. Near open water where humidity is high condensation moistens rock surfaces. Abundant moisture from rain, groundwater, and condensation dissolves and carries away the bedrock's mineral cement ions, drop by drop, and where evaporation outpaces flow, it redeposits oxides and sulfides among the sand grains of exposed surfaces.

Evaporating water delivers much of the magic. Evaporation of mineral rich ground water, moved through the bedrock matrix by gravity and by capillarity, leaves behind surface precipitated mineral coatings on exposed surface grains. Ions leave solution as surface moisture evaporates and must recrystallize as precipitate between surface sand grains. The push of millions of ions drawn into crystal lattice positions around grains of sand is powerful. Collectively, this pressure of crystallization wedges sand grains outward loosening them from the rock surface, water and wind under gravity carry the dislodged grains away, one by one. Freezing water between sand grains obtains the same result during winter freeze-thaw events, though freeze-thaw processes are far less important at the small scales of sand grains. This grain by grain erosion process deflates stone faces and forms the intriguing honeycomb weathering patterns* common on steep rock surfaces in Black Hand Sandstone terrains. This unique grain by grain erosion process is called granular sapping. Constant sapping, aided by seasonal freeze-thaw loosening rock layers (called spalling) and blocks of stone (slump blocks), under gravity, carves the topography and unique features of Black Hand Sandstone terrains.

The characteristic U-shape, high walls and flat bottoms, of deep ravines of Black Hand Sandstone terrains is a result of differential erosion processes: the downward cutting by ravine streams is outpaced by the sapping and slumping of ravine walls once the ravine bottom becomes choked with sandy sediment. This pattern repeats in numerous ravines, a unique and interesting landscape phenomenon.

Evaporation does much more, evaporation at seeps and along surfaces of steep walls cools air and raises humidity in ravines during summertime. During winter, groundwater warmth ameliorates the chill in ravines. This microclimate influence supports uncommon biological diversity. More on the Black Hand Sandstone refugia in future posts...

More on sandstone terrains in GeoEcology
More on sandstone terrains at our blog Earth InsightCache

*Honeycomb weathering is commonly called tafoni. Tafoni results from weathering processes on steep to vertical surfaces of granular stone where humidity is sustained in splash zones or where surface and groundwater mingle. Tafoni is common in coastal areas where it forms as a result of salt weathering, recrystalization of salt from sea spray on surfaces of granular rock particles. Inland sandstone provinces form tafoni due to recrystalization processes supported by groundwater movement and by humidity-driven mobilization of mineral solutions on granular stone surfaces in microclimates of some outcrops.

Forged by fire, our Promethean origins

Prometheus by Jan Cossiers

Our relationship with fire is ancient and intimate. Early in our hominid prehistory we borrowed useful fire from natural causes. Later, like mythological Prometheus, we stole fire from the gods: We learned to create fire at will.  That essential primitive skill energized a cultural leap and much more. Our relationship with fire became reciprocal: Arguably, fire recreated us. We have been torch bearers, dependent upon fire, shaped by fire, from that early time.

Early humans obtained mastery of fire as they came to depend on fire for warmth, for light, for cooking, for hunting, for landscape management, and for defense. They obtained far reaching impacts through mastery of fire. Early humans manipulated local habitats and broad ecosystems in favor of human utility through broadcast fire, intentionally igniting landscapes of dry fuel for coordinated fire-hunting and to create favorable conditions for attracting and supporting desired game species, and to ease overland travel.

Early humans became hearth-centered. The hearth became the crucible of human evolution, both biological and cultural. Fire was the soul of the family hearth, whether a nuclear family or a clan. Even today, we gather 'round our occasional campfires and stare into flames as they stared long ago. Flickering flames connect us with past and present native peoples across time and space.

Few moderns possess primitive fire knowledge and fire skills. For most, fear of fire has replaced utility fire. Today, we ask our engineers to control fire, indoors and out. Most societies, even native societies, have surrendered their mastery of primitive fire methods in favor of technological dependence. Western societies have transitioned from manual open combustion to mechanical internal combustion. During our lifetimes the last of the ancient societies may give up their traditional skills in trade for purchased fire systems and other modern tools. Like loss of languages, loss of skills sets for primitive living is an ongoing tragedy unfolding today in forgotten corners around the world. For now, at least, we still can travel to remote tribes and see and learn of ancient technologies passed through hundreds of generations for as long as they remember their primitive life-ways and so long as they will allow us a peak.

Our ancient ancestors understood the different functions of tinder, kindling, fuels, portable fire carriers, and much later, fire starters. Today, we purchase fire and all of its functions.

Explore our Promethean origins. We recommend a couple good reads by Stephen Pyne, Fire: A Brief History, 2001 and Fire in America, A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire, 1982 and 1997. We have gained essential insights from these works.

Your blogger met Stephen Pyne at a lonely outpost in Antarctica, Dome C, long ago, where Pyne developed insights and gathered materials for his book, The Ice, A Journey to Antarctica 1986 and I spent my days digging, coring and studying ice dynamics. Our few evening conversations left indelible insights that still enrich my thinking of human impacts on global ecosystems, today.