All material shown or referred to is based on the same text, but may have been individually changed, whereby the PDF-Text below is the most updated version. 


Home / Chapters
C 1 C 2 C 3
C 4 C 5 C 6
C 7 C 8 C 9
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The Book in PDF

Black & White Edition in U.S.A
Arctic Heats Up.
Spitsbergen 1919 to 1939

Colored Edition in Europe
How Spitsbergen Heats the World
The Arctic Warming 1919-1939
ISBN: 978-1-4401-4087-7 ISBN 978-3-8370-9524-1
Ca.116 pages and 100 b/w figures. More details in right column. Ca. 116 pages and 100 color figures. Details see column.
 
 

All material shown or referred to is based on the same text, but may have been individually changed, whereby the PDF-Text below is the most updated version. 


Home / Chapters
C 1 C 2 C 3
C 4 C 5 C 6
C 7 C 8 C 9
Bibliography

The Book in PDF

Black & White Edition in U.S.A
Arctic Heats Up.
Spitsbergen 1919 to 1939

Colored Edition in Europe
How Spitsbergen Heats the World
The Arctic Warming 1919-1939
ISBN: 978-1-4401-4087-7 ISBN 978-3-8370-9524-1
Ca.116 pages and 100 b/w figures. More details in right column. Ca. 116 pages and 100 color figures. Details see column.
 

How Spitsbergen Heats the World
The Arctic Warming 1919-1939
Published 2009

"ABOUT US"
Reason, Scope & Content.

The background for all the material and reasoning provided by the following links is quickly explained: the sea, the law, and the climate, and exactly in this order. This order is an immediate reflection of the site organizer and authors professional career, as he started as a trained seaman and served as ship master before becoming a jurist, lawyer and an international consultant in the 1980s.

The climatic issue became a matter for elaboration since the late 1980s, resulting in a number of papers and presentations during the 1990s. The frist website went online in 2004 (www.seaclimate.com), and the corresponding book pubished in 2005. The story why it came this way will explain a lot of the rational behind all efforts. During the first assignment as consultant abroad in the 1980s it was felt that the understanding of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982, proved to be a considerable challenge for lay persons and professional alike. The idea to provide a Guide to the Convention was borne and undertaken. The book (see: Books & Links) was published in the United Kingdom in 1988, at the very time when the NASA expert James Hansen had been claiming at a USA Senate Hearing that global warming by the emission of carbon dioxide is real. The debate on anthropogenic climate change was from now on lively and increasingly a very political issue.

The commencing debate on global warming was difficult to accept for someone who grew up on an North Sea island for some years, who had been sailing the seas for many years, and whose duty as ship mate had been to draw hundreds of weather charts when crossing the North Atlantic or sailing elsewhere. Such experience led to the conclusion that climate best be regarded as an appendixes of the ocean and seas. Several decades later this understanding became suddenly seriously challenged by the way the climate change issue was debated. Furthermore, due to the work with the Law of the Sea Convention, this legal instrument was regarded as the perfect master plan for a better understanding of the mechanism and risks of climate change. But the world did not discussed the climate issue in this way, which had been initially regarded as 'misunderstanding', but while trying to find out why there was such a big gap in understanding what climate need for being protected from men made forcing, the author's involvement was sealed.

From 1992 to 1997 a considerable number of climate related papers and articles were published and are accessible -inter alias- at:
In English: http://www.oceanclimate.de/
In German & English: http://www.ozeanklima.de/

The presented material is based on the opinion that climate should be defined as the continuation of the oceans by other means. The definition was first published in 1992, and shall indicate that the oceans are the overriding force that makes the climate and runs the climate whether on a time span of seconds or thousands of years due to the importance of water in two ways, namely:

  • By far the most of atmospheric water vapour is supplied by the oceans and permanently, as it is completely exchanged in less than two weeks, respectively 30 times during one year.
  • The global air temperature is highly reliant on the input from the oceans, as they are an excellent storage of the heat received from the sun. However, only the most upper sea surface layer is warm, while the actual mean temperature of the oceans is about three degrees Celsius.
With such an understanding of Climate it was almost inevitable to get in high alert when reviewing climatic changes during the last century. There were actually only two major shifts in a steadily global temperature rise since the mid 1880s, namely a sharp rise of winter temperatures in the Arctic at the end of the First World War for two decades, which abruptly ended with the start of the Second World War in autumn 1939, with three extreme cold winters in Northern Europe. The subsequent cooling lasted for a period of three decades, before it resumed a rising trend again since about the early 1970s. If it would be understood what made the world warming since 1919 and cooling since 1940, one would also know it had been caused by the seas and ocean, and that it is time to organize the protection of the oceans by implementing committed the UN Convention on he Law of the Sea. For further information please consult the explanation given with each link.
January 2009/Arnd Bernaerts

 

Book details

U.S.A. Edition in B/W


Europe Edition in Color

Access to previous Material Access to related sites
Recent papers since 2007

20th PACON Conf. 2007
"CAN THE "BIG WARMING" AT SPITSBERGEN
FROM 1918 to 1940 BE EXPLAINED?"
CD-ROM. Pages: 325-337.
DOC PDF

Conf. Paper with Figures
In English
» DOC » PDF
In French
» PDF » HTML
In Russian
» PDF » HTML
In Polish
» PDF » HTML
In German
» PDF » HTML

General Material

Annex B I - Colored Sea Ice 1910-1919
Annex F - Air Temp.(Jan - Feb) 1912-1930; North Atlantic Region.
Annex G - Annual MeanTemp. from ca. 1880 to 1945 at various stations.

 

Book details

U.S.A. Edition in B/W


Europe Edition in Color

Access to previous Material

Access to related sites

Recent papers since 2007

20th PACON Conf. 2007
"CAN THE "BIG WARMING" AT SPITSBERGEN
FROM 1918 to 1940 BE EXPLAINED?"

CD-ROM. Pages: 325-337.
DOC PDF

Conf. Paper with Figures
In English
» DOC » PDF
In French
» PDF » HTML
In Russian
» PDF » HTML
In Polish
» PDF » HTML
In German
» PDF » HTML

General Material

Annex B I - Colored Sea Ice 1910-1919
Annex F - Air Temp.(Jan - Feb) 1912-1930; North Atlantic Region.
Annex G - Annual Mean Temperatures from app. 1880-1947 in the Northern Atlantic Region.