Antarctica warming? An evolution of viewpoint

21 01 2009
mt-erebus.jpg
Above: Mt Erebus, Antarctica
picture by Sean Brocklesby

A press release today by the University of Washington makes a claim that Antarctica is warming and has been for the last 50 years:

“The study found that warming in West Antarctica exceeded one-tenth of a degree Celsius per decade for the last 50 years and more than offset the cooling in East Antarctica.”
…
“The researchers devised a statistical technique that uses data from satellites and from Antarctic weather stations to make a new estimate of temperature trends.”
…
“People were calculating with their heads instead of actually doing the math,” Steig said. “What we did is interpolate carefully instead of just using the back of an envelope. While other interpolations had been done previously, no one had really taken advantage of the satellite data, which provide crucial information about spatial patterns of temperature change.”

Satellites calculate the surface temperature by measuring the intensity of infrared light radiated by the snowpack, and they have the advantage of covering the entire continent. However, they have only been in operation for 25 years. On the other hand, a number of Antarctic weather stations have been in place since 1957, the International Geophysical Year, but virtually all of them are within a short distance of the coast and so provide no direct information about conditions in the continent’s interior.

The scientists found temperature measurements from weather stations corresponded closely with satellite data for overlapping time periods. That allowed them to use the satellite data as a guide to deduce temperatures in areas of the continent without weather stations.

…
Co-authors of the paper are David Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., a former student of Steig’s; Scott Rutherford of Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I.; Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University; Josefino Comiso of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; and Drew Shindell of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. The work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation.

Anytime Michael Mann gets involved in a paper and something is “deduced” it makes me wary of the veracity of the methodology. Why?  Mann can’t even correct simple faults like latitude-longitude errors in data used in previous papers he’s written.

But that’s not the focus of the moment. In that press release they cite NASA satellite imagery. Let’s take a look at how the imagery has changed in 5 years.

NASA’s viewpoint – 2004

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NASA’s Viewpoint 2007 (added 1/22)

NASA’s viewpoint – 2009

antarctic_warming_2009

Click for larger image

Earth’s viewpoint – map of Antarctic volcanoes

Click for larger image

From the UW paper again:

“West Antarctica is a very different place than East Antarctica, and there is a physical barrier, the Transantarctic Mountains, that separates the two,” said Steig, lead author of a paper documenting the warming published in the Jan. 22 edition of Nature.

But no, it just couldn’t possibly have anything at all to do with the fact that the entire western side of the Antarctic continent and peninsula is dotted with volcanoes. Recent discovery of new volcanic activity isn’t mentioned in the paper at all.

From January 2008, the first evidence of a volcanic eruption from beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet has been discovered by members of the British Antarctic Survey. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 419 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, earth, sea ice, weather_stations

Meet “deep black” the Met Office supercarbon footprint climate computer

21 01 2009

The original press release from the Met Office that started this story is here. There’s no mention of a carbon footprint in it, but they did manage to provide a photo of it with a green halo, shown below. When such a machine is powered up, does it make a “giant sucking sound’?  In other news, Obama inauguration sets new record for private jet use. – Anthony

From the Times online, UK

Met Office forecasts a supercomputer embarrassment

A new £33m machine purchased to calculate how climate change will affect Britain, has a giant carbon footprint of its own

For the Met Office the forecast is considerable embarrassment. It has spent £33m on a new supercomputer to calculate how climate change will affect Britain – only to find the new machine has a giant carbon footprint of its own.

“The new supercomputer, which will become operational later this year, will emit 14,400 tonnes of CO2 a year,” said Dave Britton, the Met Office’s chief press officer. This is equivalent to the CO2 emitted by 2,400 homes – generating an average of six tonnes each a year. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 140 Comments »

Categories : Carbon dioxide, climate_change, politics, ridiculae

SurfaceStations.org: A tour of Italy

21 01 2009

Guest post by Paolo Mezzasalma – meteorologist


Anthony Watts’ surface station survey project inspired my attempt for a similar task devoted to the Italian network. Weather observations in Italy are carried out by essentially three institutions, each with different purposes.

A national synoptic network was established in its current fashion after the second world war by the Italian Air Force (Aeronautica Militare – thereafter AM), devoted to aeronautic assistance and routine meteorological measurements. Many of these stations are located in airports but some are scattered through the Italian territory, even on remote mount tops. At the end of the Eighties the national agency for flight assistance (Ente Nazionale Assistenza al Volo – ENAV) took the duty for weather observations at the main civil airports. Currently 81 stations are managed by AM and 24 by ENAV.

Another widely scattered network of stations was established in the first decades of the 20th century by Ufficio Idrografico, whose main goal was the precipitation measurement and the river monitoring. These stations (a few thousands) were sited mainly in cities and villages and not in unpopulated areas; some of them were also provided with temperature sensors. This network is currently in charge of the 20 regional administrations in which the Italian territory is divided. Stations were upgraded and integrated with the local networks.

A third and historical network for weather readings was developed in the 18th and 19th century by many astronomical observatories in the main cities (about three dozen).

For this first report, the web provided me most of the close satellite imagery imagery (Google Earth, Pagine Gialle), 3D vision pictures (Microsoft Live Maps) and photographs (Google Earth, several sites) of almost all the stations of the synoptic network, without a real need to go and take personally a photo. Furthermore, AM has been reporting very informative description of a few of its observatories at its own Internet site http://www.meteoam.it/modules.php?name=rivistaPrecedenti . Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 36 Comments »

Categories : weather_stations