Ending the year on an up note

31 12 2008

I thought about writing a year end recap, but then I saw my traffic count for the month at 00 GMT (4PM PST), and thought that would do just as well at telling the story for this year. After a slight dip in October and November, WUWT has reached a new high at nearly 900,000 page views this month.

wuwt-stats-2008-520

Click for a larger image

Not bad for a 12 month growth. My hit counter, as of this writing, stands at:

6,840,995 hits

In December 2007, I hadn’t even broken 500,000.

Thanks to each and every one of you for visiting, contributing, and commenting. Thanks especially to the moderating team who keeps the temperature of this blog down whilst I think up new topics.

Here were the top 7 most popular posts in 2008, in case you missed them: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 95 Comments »

Categories : Announcements

2008 Ends Spotless and with 266 Spotless Days, the #2 Least Active Year Since 1900, Portends Cooling

31 12 2008

From ICECAP

By Joseph D’Aleo CCM, AMS Fellow

2008 will be coming to a close with yet another spotless days according to the latest solar image.

image

This will bring the total number of sunspotless days this month to 28 and for the year to 266, clearly enough to make 2008, the second least active solar year since 1900.

image
See larger image here.

The total number of spotless days this spolar minimum is now at around 510 days since the last maximum. The earliest the minimum of the sunspot cycles can be is July 2008, which would make the cycle length 12 years 3 months, longest since cycle 9 in 1848. If the sun stays quiet for a few more months we will rival the early 1800s, the Dalton Minimum which fits with the 213 year cycle which begin with the solar minimum in the late 1790s.

image
See larger image here.

Long cycles are cold and short ones like the ones in the 1980s and 1990s are warm as this analysis by Friis-Christensen in 1991 showed clearly. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 250 Comments »

Categories : Science, solar

The Ice in Greenland is Growing

30 12 2008

Old Radar Sites In Greenland Show Icecap Growth Over the Years

(And let’s not forget what we’ve learned about the temperature reporting from the DEW line Radar Stations – Anthony)

By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow

Though the ice may be melting around the edges of the Greenland Icecap in recent years during the warm mode of the AMO much as it did during the last warm phase in the 1930s to 1950s, snow and ice levels continue to rise in most of the interior. Johannessen in 2005 estimated an annual net increase of ice by 2 inches a year.

greenland-ice-growth

(Above: Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland, Ola M. Johannessen, Kirill Khvorostovsky, Martin W. Miles, Leonid P. Bobylev, Science Express on 20 October 2005 Science 11 November 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5750, pp. 1013 � 1016, DOI: 10.1126/science.1115356)

A Canadian Icecap emailer noted during the cold war there were two massive radar sites built on the Greenland icecap now abandoned. They are called Dye-2 and Dye-3. When built they sat high above the snow, recent pictures show how the snow is building up around them, proving the snow build-up in recent times. This demonstrates this snow accumulation over time. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 90 Comments »

Categories : snow, weather

Met Office recycles last years PR: 2009 to be one of the warmest on record

30 12 2008

http://www.all-creatures.org/hope/gw/images/red_Earth_mast.jpg

LONDON (Reuters) – Next year is set to be one of the top-five warmest on record, British climate scientists said on Tuesday.

The average global temperature for 2009 is expected to be more than 0.4 degrees celsius above the long-term average, despite the continued cooling of huge areas of the Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Nina.

That would make it the warmest year since 2005, according to researchers at the Met Office, who say there is also a growing probability of record temperatures after next year.

Currently the warmest year on record is 1998, which saw average temperatures of 14.52 degrees celsius – well above the 1961-1990 long-term average of 14 degrees celsius.

Warm weather that year was strongly influenced by El Nino, an abnormal warming of surface ocean waters in the eastern tropical Pacific.

Theories abound as to what triggers the mechanisms that cause an El Nino or La Nina event but scientists agree that they are playing an increasingly important role in global weather patterns. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 67 Comments »

Categories : Announcements, climate_change

Temperatures could drop to 50 below zero in parts of Alaska

30 12 2008

More anecdotal weather news of a colder and more brutal winter.

50-below-f

From the Juneau Empire, Juneau Alaska

Bitter cold moves in to Interior – Temperatures could drop to 50 below zero in parts of Alaska

Meanwhile, in other news: Roofs collapsing due to record snows in Spokane, WA

FAIRBANKS – Bitterly cold weather slid over from Canada and settled into Interior Alaska with forecasters saying temperatures could continue to slide to nearly 50 degrees below zero in coming days.

Over the weekend, the mercury at Fairbanks International Airport dropped to 39 degrees below zero. Areas in the Interior outside the city were even colder; 46 below on the Yukon Flats, 41 below in Fort Yukon and 44 below in Central, according to the weather service.

Rick Thoman, lead forecaster at the National Weather Service office in Fairbanks, said temperatures rose a few degrees on Sunday, but that was it.

“The temperature will probably continue to go up and down randomly,” he said. “With no clouds and no wind on the valley floor, temperatures are pretty much probably going to be stuck.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 28 Comments »

Categories : weather

Pielke Sr. takes on the London Times over erroneous climate reporting – says “warming has stopped for at least 4 years”

30 12 2008

http://jeremysarber.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/stop-global-warming-cartoon.gif

From the blog of Roger Pielke Sr. http://climatesci.org/

Erroneous News Article In The Times

Filed under: Climate Science Reporting — Roger Pielke Sr. @ 7:00 am

Thanks to Andrew Forster of Local Transport Today in the UK for alerting us to the erroneous news article from the Times on December 27 2008 titled

The war on carbon – Arguments of 2009: Can Copenhagen save the planet?

An excerpt reads,

“The stakes at Copenhagen could not be much higher. Global surface temperatures have risen by a tolerable three quarters of a degree celsius over the past century, but the rate of increase is accelerating. The Kyoto Protocol has had negligible impact on greenhouse gas emissions, and projections for the mean global temperature rise in the next century range from 1.1 to 6.4 degrees. Whether fast or very fast, the Earth is heating up.

There will be continued argument about the science of climate change over the next 12 months, but not, except on the conspiratorial fringe, about the threat. Climate change is real and worsening, and there is an overwhelming likelihood that much of it is man-made.”

This is a erroneous report on the climate system! The rate of increase is NOT accelerating. There is absolutely no question that global warming has stopped for at least 4 years (using upper ocean data) ; e.g see

Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55.
http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-334.pdf

and over 7 years using lower tropospheric data; e.g. see

Figure 7 TLT in http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 39 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate_change, media

The Worst Climate Predictions of 2008

30 12 2008

And yet to play out, let’s also not forget Al Gore’s 2008 prediction: “Entire north polar ice cap will be gone in 5 years”

-Anthony

By Dennis Avery  in the Canada Free Press

“2008 will be the hottest year in a century:” The Old Farmers’ Almanac, September 11, 2008, Hurricanes, Arctic Ice, Coral, Drinking water, Aspen skiing

We’re now well into the earth’s third straight harsher winter-but in late 2007 it was still hard to forget 22 straight years of global warming from 1976-1998. So the Old Farmer’s Almanac predicted 2008 would be the hottest year in the last 100.

But sunspots had been predicting major cooling since 2000, and global temperatures turned downward in early 2007. The sunspots have had a 79 percent correlation with the earth’s thermometers since 1860. Today’s temperatures are about on a par with 1940. For 2008, the Almanac hired a new climatologist, Joe D’Aleo, who says the declining sunspots and the cool phase of the Pacific Ocean predict 25-30 years of cooler temperatures for the planet.

“You could potentially sail, kayak or even swim to the North Pole by the end of the summer. Climate scientists say that the Arctic ice . . . is currently on track to melt sometime in 2008.” Ted Alvarez, Backpacker Magazine Blogs, June, 2008.

Soon after this prediction, a huge Russian icebreaker got trapped in the thick ice of the Northwest Passage for a full week. The Arctic ice hadn’t melted in 2007, it got blown
into warmer southern waters. Now it’s back. (Reference)

Remember too the Arctic has its own 70-year climate cycle. Polish climatologist Rajmund Przbylak says “the highest temperatures since the beginning of instrumental observation occurred clearly in the 1930s” based on more than 40 Arctic temperature stations.

(This uneducated prediction may have been the catalyst for Lewis Pugh and his absurd kayak stunt that failed miserably – Anthony) Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 168 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, ridiculae

Christy: Satellite data shows Earth’s climate is changing unevenly

29 12 2008

Map from the University of Alabama-Huntsville. Each contour represents 0.2 degree C per decade warming or cooling between Dec. 1979 and Nov. 2008

From the USA Today Weather Blog

This has been in my inbox for a couple of weeks, so on a fairly quiet day for weather, I thought I’d put this out there. John Christy of the University of Alabama-Huntsville reported earlier this month that the Earth’s climate change over the past 30 years has been rather uneven: It’s gotten much warmer in the Arctic and, at the same time, cooler in the Antarctic. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 97 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate_change

Don Easterbrook’s AGU paper on potential global cooling

29 12 2008

Don sent me his AGU paper for publication and discussion here on WUWT, and I’m happy to oblige – Anthony

Abstracts of American Geophysical Union annual meeting, San Francisco  Dec., 2008

Solar Influence on Recurring Global, Decadal, Climate Cycles Recorded by Glacial Fluctuations, Ice Cores, Sea Surface Temperatures, and Historic Measurements Over the Past Millennium

Easterbrook, Don J., Dept. of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225,

Global, cyclic, decadal, climate patterns can be traced over the past millennium in glacier fluctuations, oxygen isotope ratios in ice cores, sea surface temperatures, and historic observations.  The recurring climate cycles clearly show that natural climatic warming and cooling have occurred many times, long before increases in anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 levels.  The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age are well known examples of such climate changes, but in addition, at least 23 periods of climatic warming and cooling have occurred in the past 500 years. Each period of warming or cooling lasted about 25-30 years (average 27 years).  Two cycles of global warming and two of global cooling have occurred during the past century, and the global cooling that has occurred since 1998 is exactly in phase with the long term pattern.  Global cooling occurred from 1880 to ~1915; global warming occurred from ~1915 to ~1945; global cooling occurred from ~1945-1977;, global warming occurred from 1977 to 1998; and global cooling has occurred since 1998.  All of these global climate changes show exceptionally good correlation with solar variation since the Little Ice Age 400 years ago.

The IPCC predicted global warming of 0.6° C (1° F) by 2011 and 1.2° C (2° F) by 2038, whereas Easterbrook (2001) predicted the beginning of global cooling by 2007 (± 3-5 yrs) and cooling of about 0.3-0.5° C until ~2035.  The predicted cooling seems to have already begun. Recent measurements of global temperatures suggest a gradual cooling trend since 1998 and 2007-2008 was a year of sharp global cooling. The cooling trend will likely continue as the sun enters a cycle of lower irradiance and the Pacific Ocean changed from its warm mode to its cool mode. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 140 Comments »

Categories : PDO, Science, climate_change

NASA’s twist on global sea ice loss

28 12 2008

NASA’s updated data appears to suggest the annual rate of global polar ice loss has actually decreased

Greenland’s Riviera – their green southwest. Will another Maunder minimum
grip the region in cages of ice again, or will bells ring in the portside squares,
as they did in the 1300’s before that cooling came, and ships sailed the fiords?
(Source: NASA)
Excerpt:

Washington Post correspondant Juliet Eilperin, in her 12-26-08 report entitled “New climate change estimates more pessimistic,” dutifully surveys the latest bleak findings of the climate change community. Her primary source is a recently released survey comissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program – expanding on the findings of the 2007 4th IPPC Report on Climate Change. Apparently this “new assessment suggests that earlier projections may have underestimated the climatic shifts that could take place by 2100.” One of Eilperin’s primary examples of alarming new data is reported as follows: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 234 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

Blizzard traps thousands in India

27 12 2008

More nasty weather in the northern hemisphere. It seems to be “piling up”.  This event caught many off-guard and unprepared. (h/t to Philip_B)

Rescued tourists wait for government vehicles to take them back to Gangtok. Telegraph picture

Thousands trapped in -15° snowstorm in Sikkim
27 Dec 2008, 0308 hrs IST, Amalendu Kundu, TNN

GANGTOK: A trip to the snow-laden Changu Lake turned into a nightmare for more than 3, 500 tourists including hundreds of children on Friday. They were trapped in snowstorm conditions with the temperature dipping to minus 15 degrees at a killing altitude of 13,300 feet before the army pulled them to safety.

The majority of those trapped were from Bengal. Hundreds fell ill, shivering in the icy cold as their vehicles remained stranded near Changu and Baba Mandir for hours. Clad in just jackets and scarves, the holidayers were hardly prepared, mentally or physically, to encounter a blizzard.
The army rescued them and took them to military camps, where warm soup and loads of blankets helped revive most of them. Many had to be admitted to the army medical units for treatment.

In the morning, there was little indication of what was to come. Tourists flocked to the Changu Lake by the hundreds as they do every day. With winter setting in, there was the added attraction of seeing the lake under glittering snow-covered peaks. The tourists got more than what they had asked for. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 57 Comments »

Categories : weather

Snowfall immobilizes rural communities in eastern, central Turkey

27 12 2008

It appears this winter is rough not only in the USA, but elsewhere,. Significant snowfalls were also seen in 2002 and 2004.  From Today’s Zaman:

Snowfall immobilizes rural communities in eastern, central Turkey
Cold weather and heavy snowfall brought daily life to a standstill in rural parts of Turkey, forcing closures of rural roads and inter-city routes in the country’s eastern and central regions.

Snowfall was responsible for the closure of a highway on Thursday connecting the Hakkari district, located within the province of the same name, to the district of Çukurca. Several vehicles became stuck in the snow. Highway crews used snow plows to move the snow from the highway and free the vehicles.

Blizzards closed down over 1,000 village roads in the country’s eastern regions, and an inter-city route between Erzurum and Bingöl provinces was reopened to traffic after hours of plowing; however, the Iğdır-Ağrı inter-city road is still closed to traffic.


Comments : 69 Comments »

Categories : weather

Spotting NOAA’s USHCN climate stations with Google Street Level View

25 12 2008

When I first started the surfacestations.org project, this Google Street level view tool was just a concept, now I’m actually able to find USHCN stations with it such as this one in Manassa, Colorado:

ge-street-ushcn1

Click image for interactive Google Earth Street level view.

I’ve found quite a few, and there are some real stinkers out there, like this one in Greensburg, KY on a major thoroughfare through town. Note the south facing brick wall and concrete work: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 59 Comments »

Categories : weather_stations

Half of the USA is covered in snow

25 12 2008

This is something you don’t see every day. We recently heard that Canada had a white Christmas EVERYWHERE, the first time in four decades. Here we see that the USA has an increased albedo (surface reflectivity) for about 1/2 of it’s land area.  The increased albedo combined with low sun angle this time of year conspires to keep ice and snow unmelted.

Look for a long and extended winter weather pattern as we head towards the spring equinox, which can’t get here fast enough.

Here is a more colorful view of snow depth on Dec 25th from the National Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 119 Comments »

Categories : weather

The 12 Days of Global Warming

25 12 2008

Courtesy of Minnesotans for Global Warming, this entertaining video for today. Merry Christmas everyone, stay warm!


Comments : 72 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff

NSIDC issues documentation corrections – WUWT guest post a catalyst

24 12 2008

You may recall the guest post from Jeff Id of the Air Vent I carried about a week ago called Global Sea Ice Trend Since 1979 – surprising

In that post, a note of correction was issued because that we were led to believe (by Tamino) that the entire post was “invalidated” due to an error in accounting for ice area very near the pole. Both Jeff and I were roundly criticized for “not reading the documentation”, which was one of the more civil criticisms over there at Tamino’s site.

After further investigation It turns out that the error was in NSIDC’s public documentation, and they have issued a correction to it. Even more importantly the correction now affects NSIDC’s own trend graph, and they are considering how to handle it.

This episode illustrates how citizen science can be useful. Sometimes people too close to the science they publish can make mistakes, (we’ve all been there) which is why peer review of papers is important.  But “web review” in this day and age of instant publication is equally important.  It also illustrates how mistakes, however embarrassing initially, can be useful if you learn from them and study the cause.  There is no shame in mistakes if they are corrected and you learn from them.  But, the blogospheric noise of angry and sometimes juvenile criticism (on both sides) really isn’t useful as it often masks the real issue. The key is to put that aside and find the truth behind the error. Jeff has done that. His update follows below.

Merry Christmas to everyone!  – Anthony

Based on The Air Vent post carried by Watts Up With That, the National Snow Ice Data Center has issued several corrections to the documentation of their sea ice area time series.

Guest post by Jeff ID

Most will remember my earlier post which plotted global sea ice trends. After initially concluding that the global ice level wasn’t decreasing measurably Tamino pointed out a problem in my analysis. After issuing my corrections, thanks and apologies to Tamino and the um…..thousands of readers of Watts Up With That, I went back to work investigating what was really happening to the ice area time series.

It was actually quite lucky that Tamino mentioned the step in the data and criticized me for not reading carefully (something which was mentioned in several comments on the various threads). When I first learned of it, I found the criticism was based on an entirely different set of ice area data with different source documentation. Still, I checked closely and found the tiny step in the time series and was convinced that I had missed something. I had spent a huge amount of time learning the data before I made my post so it was frustrating to say the least. Understand, I used several resources to check my work; not the least of which was the National Snow Ice Data Center (NSIDC) anomaly graph which has the same shape as the one I generated.

The first graph below is from the NSIDC website, the second is my calc. Differences in the noise between the two are explained by the daily resolution used in my graph compared to what my eyes tell me must be monthly data for their plot. They also seem to have an additional year (2007) in their data plot which is not available in the bootstrap time series I used. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 74 Comments »

Categories : sea ice

Scientists warn Christmas lights harm the planet

23 12 2008

From the “bah humbug department”. I have nothing against energy efficiency, I have LED’s myself and I didn’t even put them up this year. But, timing is everything, and people already stress out during holidays. Adding a guilt trip over Christmas lights hardly seems necessary or productive. – Anthony

Find the Christmas lights in this image

Find the Christmas lights in this image

From Australia’s Courier Mail

By Graham Readfearn
December 24, 2008 08:06am

SCIENTISTS have warned that Christmas lights are bad for the planet due to huge electricity waste and urged people to get energy efficient festive bulbs.

CSIRO researchers said householders should know that each bulb turned on in the name of Christmas will increase emissions of greenhouse gases.

Dr Glenn Platt, who leads research on energy demand, said Australia got 80 per cent of its electricity by burning coal which pumps harmful emissions into the atmosphere. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 113 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, energy, ridiculae

NOAA Determines Ribbon Seals Should Not be Listed as Endangered – say ice will continue to form

23 12 2008

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/images/ribbon-seal.jpg

(Note: image above and my emphasis added below. What is unlcear is what climate models the reviewed and whether they accepted or rejected it’s results.  – Anthony)

Contact:          Sheela McLean                                   FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

907-586-7032                                      Dec. 23, 2008

NOAA Determines Ribbon Seals Should Not be Listed as Endangered

NOAA today announced that ribbon seals are not in current danger of extinction or likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future, and should not be listed under the Endangered Species Act.

On Dec. 20, 2007, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned NOAA’s Fisheries Service to list the ribbon seal under the Endangered Species Act. The petition said the seal faced extinction by the end of the century due to rapid melting of sea ice resulting from global warming.  Sea-ice in the Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk, Sea of Japan, Chukchi Sea, and Beaufort Sea is the seal’s primary habitat. Today’s announcement is the result of NOAA’s review of this petition and the condition of the ribbon seal.

“Our scientists have reviewed climate models that project that annual ice, which is critical for ribbon seal reproduction, molting and resting, will continue to form each winter in the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk where the majority of ribbon seals are located,” said Jim Balsiger, NOAA’s acting assistant administrator for fisheries. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 129 Comments »

Categories : sea ice

95,000 Excess U.S. Deaths during the Cold Months Each Year

22 12 2008

Guest post by Indur Goklany

Now that the cold weather is here, we should remember that more Americans die during the cold months than at any other time of year, notwithstanding any global warming.

The figure below, which is based on data from the US National Center for Health Statistics for 2001-2007, shows that on average 7,200 Americans die each day during the months of December, January, February and March, compared to the average 6,400 who die daily during the rest of the year. On this basis, there were 95,000 “excess” deaths during the 121 days in the cold months (December to March, assuming a non-leap year).

So bundle up if you go outside, and keep warm indoors as well.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays.

goklany-excess-us-deaths-due-to-cold

Figure 1: Average daily deaths for each month, United States, 2001-2007. Sources: 2001-2004 data from National Center for Health Statistics, DataWarehouse at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/datawh/statab/unpubd/mortabs/gmwkIV_10.htm, and National Vital Statistics Reports available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/nvsr/nvsr.htm; 2005 data from Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths: Provisional Data for 2006, Volume 55, Number 20. 6 pp. (PHS) 2007-1120; 2006-2007 data from Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths: Provisional Data for 2007.  NVSR Volume 56, Number 21. 6 pp. (PHS) 2008-1120.


Comments : 66 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

My first 1/4 mil week

21 12 2008

Despite my having to cut back on posting and moderation to nights and weekends in order to devote more time to my livelihood during these economic down times, WUWT continues to grow. Today I reached another new milestone, nearly 1/4 million page views (248,116) in a single week. This is counted up to 00 GMT which is 4PM PST. Below is my WordPress traffic graph from about 5:30PM PST today:

wuwt-stats-week-50-2008-small

First I want to thank my moderation team for stepping in to manage the huge flood of comments we get, the regular contributors who offer interesting essays, and of course I thank you, my readers for your continued interest and visits. – Anthony


Comments : 91 Comments »

Categories : Announcements

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