NSIDC’ s Dr. Walt Meier Answers 10 Questions

21 09 2008

Regular readers may recall some of the posts here, here, here, and here, where the sea ice data presented by NSIDC and by Cryosphere today were brought into question. We finally have an end to this year’s arctic melt season, and our regular contributor on sea-ice, Steven Goddard, was able to ask Dr. Walt Meier, who operates the National Snow and Ice Data Center 10 questions, and they are presented here for you. I have had correspondence with Dr. Meier and found him straightforward and amiable. If only other scientists were so gracious with questions from the public. – Anthony

Questions from Steven Goddard:

Dr. Walt Meier from The US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has graciously agreed to answer 10 of my favorite Arctic questions. His much appreciated responses below are complete and unedited.

1. Many GISS stations north of 60 latitude show temperatures 70 years ago being nearly as warm as today. This pattern is seen from Coppermine, Canada (115W) all the way east to Dzardzan, Siberia (124E.) The 30 year satellite record seems to correspond to a period of warming, quite similar to a GISS reported period in the 1920s and 1930s. Is it possible that Arctic temperatures are cyclical rather than on a linear upwards trend?

No. Analysis of the temperatures does not support a cyclic explanation for the recent warming. The warming during the 1920s and 1930s was more regional in nature and focused on the Atlantic side of the Arctic (though there was warming in some other regions as well) and was most pronounced during winter. In contrast, the current warming is observed over almost the entire Arctic and is seen in all seasons. Another thing that is clear is that, the warming during the 1920s and 1930s was limited to the Arctic and lower latitude temperatures were not unusually warm. The recent warming in the Arctic, though amplified there, is part of a global trend where temperatures are rising in most regions of the earth. There are always natural variations in climate but the current warming in the Arctic is not explained by such variations. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Science, sea ice

My first “something” attack

21 09 2008

NOTE: The first title to this post was “my first DOS attack” which is what it appeared to be to me…now WordPress support has weighed in, so we don’t know exactly what it is….see follow up below.

UPDATE3: Looks like it is over, whatever it was. It fell off the radar yesterday 09/22 and has not returned.

Some readers may have noticed that my hit counter has been flying lately. Shortly after posting the 4th million real traffic count, it took off like a rocket. Initially I had attributed the increase to having the NASA “press conference on the state of the sun” story posted on Glenn Reynolds “Instapundit” which is known to make huge traffic increases.

But something odd happened, the post that was getting all the traffic had nothing to do with that story. Also, there was no trackback URL that indicated that the post getting all the attention was linked or referenced at some high traffic site like CNN or Drudge. The post that was getting all the traffic was a story and analysis I did some months ago about the differences in global temperature anomalies tending to be offset different. It turned out that GISS was much higher than UAS, RSS, or HadCRUT due to GISS choice of continuing to use an outdated baseline period instead of a more current one like the other metrics.

Here is the traffic report:

Blog Stats Increase due to DOS “something”

Saturday 09/20     23,486
Sunday   09/21     20,802 25,319
Monday  09/22     1,006

That specific post about the way the four global temperature anomaly metrics are presented differently created some angry rhetoric with some other bloggers, and there was also some bad behaviour from a specific commenter that I won’t go into except to say that person is no longer welcome here.

Since most DOS attacks tend to focus on the main URL, and since this DOS attack focused on the one specific story URL that made a few folks very angry, I’ll have to conclude that there is a connection. This DOS attack may have been aimed at creating a violation of the Terms of Service, so that WP would shut me down for “stuffing my own traffic”. Fortunately that’s been recognized for what it is and won’t happen now.

You know you’ve really “arrived” when you start getting DOS attacks that are content specific, I’ll wear it as a badge of honor, much like when newspaper and TV journalists get their first death threat for doing a story somebody doesn’t like. Some newsrooms order a cake with black frosting and skull and crossbones to celebrate. As a TV meteorologist, I never had a death threat over the weather, but I’ve been present to two in newsrooms that I recall.

For now, I’ve moved the post elsewhere to a new URL, and the attack has stopped. WordPress support is tracking back through cyberspace to nab the culprit. I don’t much care for these juvenile shenanigans, but it’s just a minor annoyance at this point. It’s more amusing than damaging.

But I thought I should let everyone know why I have had the sudden jump in “popularity”. When I do my end of month report, I’ll adjust the numbers accordingly to get an accurate count. It is funny how this worked out, a story showing the biggest baseline different at GISS compared to other metrics has caused me to question and possibly adjust my own numbers.

UPDATE: My first change only briefly stopped the attack, so we’ve gone to “plan b” Sunday numbers have been added to to reflect the moment, up from 18k earlier. Also note that in a large scale DOS attack, the numbers would be much higher. The numbers you see are only what gets through wordpress security to post spam comments and attempts at spam posts.

FOLLOW UP: I got the word from WordPress support on this: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 79 Comments »

Categories : Announcements, ridiculae