UPDATE: Dr. Walt Meier of NSIDC writes in with some information, seethe end of the article.
I’m getting weary of answering this question in comments, so here it is front page. Note the little bump right about June 1st.
Rick W asks:
Can anyone explain the upward bump in the sea ice extent that seems to occur each June?Ā Apologies if previously covered.
Answer:
This is a seasonal adjustment to compensate for meltwater on top of the ice, which would ordinarily be viewed as “open water”. Right about now, the Arctic sea ice gets melt pools forming on the surface. If these are not compensated for, sea ice extent will read artificially low.
That being said, I wonder why we don’t see the same adjustment at NSIDC:
I don’t know the answer, but it could be in the difference between SSMI and AMSR-E satellite sensors (NSIDC uses SSMI, JAXA uses AMSR-E).
We also don’t see an adjustment at Cryosphere Today, and they also use SSMI:
Nor does NANSEN:
Click for larger images
If anyone knows why JAXA does the adjustment but the others do not, I’m all ears. My theory is that it is sensor related, but we should find out for sure. I’m swamped today, so I’ll leave this puzzle for WUWT readers to solve.
UPDATE
Dr. Walt Meir writes in with this:
Since you mentioned it on your blog, I can fill in at least some info:
You are correct. When the melt season kicks in the surface water changes
the contrast between ice and water. To more accurately measure the
area/extent, you should adjust coefficients to account for this.
This is done for SSM/I. However, because the SSM/I algorithm is
different from the AMSR-E algorithm (and other differences between the
sensors) the adjustment is different. In SSM/I, the adjustment is
smoother and thus there isn’t that “bump”.
You have to remember that AMSR-E is a research sensor and the algorithms
are still being refined. That is one reason we don’t use AMSR-E for the
long-term timeseries (though the more important reason is the
inconsistency between the two sensors and algorithms).
– Walt
with all the sensor issues, are any sea ice numbers considered reliable?
Maybe they just always make the algorithmic adjustment necessary to determine whether it’s a pool of water or open ocean. I personally don’t understand why you’d make an adjustment to recognize that as of June 1, then turn it off as of Dec 1, and then flip it back again. It seems to me that if there is a way of recognizing with high probability water that is pooled versus not, then you should just always adjust for that.
I could be wrong.
The real reason for the bump is the start of the coarse fishing season. All the polar bears start digging holes in the ice.
I don’t know why they do that, but the ‘lead weight’ decline of the ice extent in early June has tapered off a bit and is starting to move back ahead of 2008.
Also it seems there’s evidence that NOAA’s SST maps are somewhat biased on the warm side when compared to the bouy readings at Unisys, compare these
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.6.11.2009.gif
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
NOAA’s maps differ and show the PDO area and North Atlantic somewhat warmer than Unisys. There’s a quite a few areas where the data matches, but a few areas where NOAA’s chart shows light positive anomalies where Unisys shows light negative anomalies.
I no longer trust ANY official data. Especially when the trends are carefully and consistently adjusted to reflect the current dogma of global warming.
Southern Hemisphere winter cold records are being boken.
UK has “Unseasonal snowfall in June”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6458067.ece
The explanation is given on iarc web site http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Here is a copy of the explanation :
“The current version of data processing produces an erroneous blip of sea-ice extent on June 1 and October 15, which is seen in the graph of sea-ice extent as a small peak on these dates. The apparent blip arises due to switching of some parameters in the processing on those dates. The parameter switching is needed because the surface of the Arctic sea ice becomes wet in summer due to the melting of ice, drastically changing the satellite-observed signatures of sea ice. We will soon improve the processing to make the graph much smoother.”
June 9 comparisn of the Arctic ice.
More ice in the Canadian Arctic this year which could make for an interesting trip through the NW Passage.
http://www.zen141854.zen.co.uk/years.jpg
Slightly off topic: the Anchorage newspaper has reported that ash from the several eruptions of Mt. Redoubt has caused local snow and ice to melt faster because when on snow and ice, the darker color absorbs more heat. It is the same effect you get from black carbon falling on Arctic sea ice.
Question: does anyone know if enough ash from Mt. Redoubt’s several eruptions got north enough to fall on Arctic sea ice, and hence, to perhaps help cause what seems to be accelerated sea ice melting in May shown in the graphics above?
If the Caitlin team had hung around up there a bit longer they could have confirmed how much was open water and how much was pooling?
It’s all the snow we have gotten in Wyoming this May and June.
Our crews from the Wyoming DOT truck it up to the Arctic and dump it there.
(But please don’t tell anyone.)
Shawn Whelan:
Where are those images from?
Thanks,
tim
PapyJako has it right, they will be trying to make it smoother as I assume the other sites do.
Of course the main point is that 2009, has now joined the rest of the years as predicted. The slow start to the melting season was nothing to post about as being a sign of anything important.
Regards
Andy
By the way, as this site posted a new comment when the NSIDC graph almost reached the 1979 to 2000 average, are you going to post a new entry showing it has now decreased to the 2007 level ?
It’s an interesting turnabout people will want to know about I am sure you will agree.
Regards
Andy
Adjustments gone wild?
Seems pretty clear to me that the melt water adjustments are resulting in an artifact if the same bump persistently appears every year at this time of year.
One can only begin imagine the effects over zealous or under zealous adjustments have in other areas of climate research.
One thing I’ve been noticing, with the exception of the June tick, and I think is kind of neat, is AMSR always seems to move first. If you see a little tick at the end of the red line in AMSR – up, down, or leveling out – give it a week or so and the others will be moving in that direction. Or is it just me that sees that?
” Shawn Whelan (10:16:28) :
June 9 comparisn of the Arctic ice.
More ice in the Canadian Arctic this year which could make for an interesting trip through the NW Passage.
http://www.zen141854.zen.co.uk/years.jpg
”
Am I seeing that chart right? Lake Michigan has a lot of broken ice still? Anyone in Indiana, Illinois, or Michigan confirm that? If so, that certainly beats the other years.
AMSR-E, used by Jaxa, is a microwave radar which is sensitive to the frequencies of H20 (water vapour, liquid water and frozen water) . There is a very large difference in the data (temperature in essence), between open ocean and sea ice. Hence, it is rather simple matter to develop sea ice extent maps and data.
The differential, however, is not as great for slushy ice and especially for slushy water-filled snow on the surface. Typically, these conditions only exist as atmospheric temperatures in the polar regions start to get to close to Zero.
So, to limit potential errors in the data, they switch algorithms at June 1 which more easily picks ups the differentials between open water in coastal areas, open water in polynias and just slushy snow-covered ice.
Its unfortunate there is difference or bump caused by this switch and perhaps there is a way to smooth the results, start the algorithm earlier or fine-tune it but this process is not developed yet. I’m not sure why they don’t use the sensitive algorithm throughout the year but it is probably less computationally intensive.
NSIDC, Nansen and the Cryosphere Today use the AHVRR sensors which operate in near-infrared and visible spectrums so, in essence, the sea ice extent just becomes a white pixel versus dark pixel counting exercise. Slushy snow-covered surface from June 1 to October 1 are not really a problem for this procedure.
The problem with AHVRR is that clouds can get in the way so one needs to average estimates over several days. AMSR-E provides more immediate results, sees through clouds, has higher resolution and is more computationally automated but suffers from being highly sensitive to water (but that is the purpose of the sensor).
We shouldn’t assume the agencies with smoother graphs are doing a better job. They might just be concealing their ‘adjustments’ with smoothing.
I’m not against researchers earning a living in a research world where deep cuts are constantly being threatened.
However, I am always (initially at least) suspicious when seasonal structure barely varies, particularly after what I found with the CO2 “data”. [For details, see Paul Vaughan (20:48:22) (May 29, 2009) at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/22/a-look-at-human-co2-emissions-vs-ocean-absorption .]
Many investigators (it seems) are blinded by the dominance of annual & diurnal cycles. This can lead to processing that precludes the possibility of properly investigating other timescales.
– –
Re: PapyJako (10:14:09)
Thank you for these important notes.
Hey, what happened to ocean.dmi.dk.? They had a good updating graph too. The whole site seems to be gone.
This “adjustment” is a specific example of a generic issue, IMHO. The “Fudge Factor”.
We have a problem that makes the sensor “guess” how much sea ice there is with a different error in summer due to water on the surface being confused for open sea. I would surmise that this was detected in the initial use of the sensor (as it was checked against facts on the ground) and a “fudge factor” was developed. But not a very elegant one. “Good enough”, but not “right”.
(I use the word “guess” because the sensor reads a property that tracks with sea ice, but is not in fact measuring “ice”; so it is a good guess, but it is not exactly measuring ice… otherwise it would not be confused in June… This is not inherently a bad thing. We measure temperatures with an IR sensor. IR tracks temperatures rather well – modulo a bit of surface emissivity effects, so IR “thermometers” are rather good at “guessing” the actual temperature.)
So somebody put into the “processing code” a Fudge Factor. It could be a simple offset ( IF [ june july august september october ] THEN reportice= sensorice * 1.15 ) or it could be a more complicated formula with an offset that grades up over time ( IF june reportice = sensorice * 1.1 ; IF july reportice = sensorice * 1.2 ; if august reportice = sensorice * 1.4 … etc)
One could even make the gradation as a smooth daily increment. It is all a matter of what code you are willing to write. What the statement PapyJako (10:14:09) quoted says is that they are going to polish their Fudge Factor:
āThe current version of data processing produces an erroneous blip of sea-ice extent on June 1 and October 15, which is seen in the graph of sea-ice extent as a small peak on these dates. The apparent blip arises due to switching of some parameters in the processing on those dates.”
i.e. they have a brute force swap from something like:
reportice = sensorice * 1.0
to something like
reportice = sensorice * 1.15
And that causes a visible step function when the date rolls over.
“The parameter switching is needed because the surface of the Arctic sea ice becomes wet in summer due to the melting of ice, drastically changing the satellite-observed signatures of sea ice. We will soon improve the processing to make the graph much smoother.ā
Which says, to me: We need the Fudge Factor, but didn’t do a good enough job to keep you from seeing it and asking questions, so we’re going to polish it up enough that you won’t see it.
Now that is A Good Thing, in that it will most likely make the Fudge Factor a more accurate representation of the actual ice on the ground (or sea), but it does not make the Fudge Factor go away nor does it mean that the Fudge Factor is right. It also does not mean that the Fudge Factor will properly reflect changes when, for example, it becomes abnormally cold and the puddles don’t form as fast or as large. (That is, the Fudge Factor is not based on water puddles NOW, but on an ESTIMATE from the past, and does not track changes in actual climate or weather over time…)
If I model my Fudge Factor onto a bell curve centered on August with a gradual ramp in and ramp out, instead of a square wave step function in and out, but keep the area under the curve constant; it is now smooth. But if my Fudge Factor in both cases was 1% high on total ice area under that curve, it will still be 1% high. I’ve just moved some of the error into August and out of June. And if this year is 2% water surface instead of 1%, I’m still going to Fudge Factor out only 1%.
Now, you do need this adjustment to make up for an unsolved limitation in the sensor… but NEVER confuse a Fudge Factor with reality. It is the choice of a programmer on how to ARTIFICIALLY adjust for what we THINK is going to happen. And every step of the climate data process is full of Fudge Factors. From initial data collection (as here) all the way through the climate models.
And THAT is one of the major Brokennesses of the whole AGW thesis.
AGW and Climate Models are mostly reporting their cumulative Fudge Factors, and only mildly reporting actual changes on the ground, IMHO. From what I’ve seen in the GIStemp code (and elsewhere) the Fudge Factors are far larger than the variance in the data due to reality.
And that’s why I am happy to decry AGW as broken. Not out of some political agenda or personal desire (heck, I’d make more money betting on AGW with my stock buys if it were true than I can make betting against it when it has political support. I can’t bet on it because it is wrong, but it is very risky to bet against it because the political favor it enjoys makes those bets dodgy. No good play.)
So we have an AGW movement based on changes of “anomalies” fabricated in a series of computer programs and reported as 0.0yy C when the Fudge Factors amount to about 1.5xx C and everyone gets all excited about the yy vs the xx and ignores that 1.5 C of Fudge, because it is buried in The Code as a series of hard to figure out Fudge Factors. (Some very exotic, like the GIStemp ability to re-write all past temperatures lower for a site because in the last decade a thermometer was changed…)
FWIW, GIStemp uses an “anomaly map” to interpolate hypothetical temperatures in the Arctic. This is done based on “estimates of sea ice”. So those changes proposed to the Fudge Factor to clean up the smoothness of the sea ice report will (if this is the estimate used for GIStemp – I haven’t figured out yet exactly who’s sea ice estimate is used.) directly lead to GIStemp reporting, due to lower ice in June post Fudge Factor change, “Higher June Anomaly! More Rapid Heating of ARCTIC!” when in fact, nothing changed.
Then GIStemp will use those “higher temps” to interpolate sea surface temperatures where their are none – thus raising the temperature of the entire ocean for 10 degrees of latitude from the polar edge. More Fudge, but this time ladled on with a Very Large Ladle… and levered off of someone else changing the Fudge Factor a bit.
Yes, the house of cards is that bad. A “reasonable” change to a satellite data processing program that cleans up a reasonable Fudge Factor a little bit can be leveraged into the whole of the Northern Oceans rising in temperatures in future June Anomaly Maps. Part of why I think the Anomaly Map is a broken tool for figuring out what is really going on. I’m sticking with actual data of First Frost and Last Frost, snow on the ground, and frankly, when Ski Resorts open and close for the season. Those have little to no Fudge Factor in them…
Sidebar:
Why I started a “blog” at all, that: “I have to explain this AGAIN” feeling…
So I started taking the same text that I had put together on the fly a half dozen times and added some graphics (in some cases) and polish and put it up as an “article”. Now, every time someone raises one of The Same Old Issues, I can just post a link (and save the moderators and everyone else reading The Same Old Answer in gory detail 100 times…)
Now, after the sea ice bump is fully thrashed out, the answer to the question becomes “See this link: wattsupwiththat.com/.. “. Much better.
If you find yourself typing the same reply a half dozen times, it is very easy to put up a “blog”. I was very pleasantly surprised. It is only slightly harder than typing a comment (AND you can correct your typos and spelling errors after publication š
Just hit the “wordpress.com” link under “meta” at the right of any posting here, or just go to: http://wordpress.com/ and click on the ‘start a blog’ link. Then put your repost in a posting, and put a link here (at least, after the 4th or 5th time you type the same thing… )
Ok I give up, which one is supposed to be accurate? Also where did Shawns image come from? How can we have so many variations of arctic ice? What is the defintion of ice for each of those organisations? How can I ask four questions in a row? Make that five….
Tonyb.
AndyW35,
Can’t argue, the arctic ice today is being reported at about the 2007 level. It’s also about mid-range for the last nine years, which would be another way of saying the level is at the recent average or that nothing really out of the ordinary can be said to be happening. It’s approaching its annual late-June increase in melt rate, so the next couple of months should be interesting.
Personally, I’d like to see it higher, but that’s just for the humor value. I’m a bit concerned with the curvature on the graph for 2009, but the historic data bounces too much to say what that means. Just keep an eye on it and there will certainly be more posts on the topic as the Summer progresses.
Mike
Read this nonsense
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8094000/8094036.stm
Yes, after 11 years of cooling the BBC states that reindeer herds are in rapid decline because of global warming!!!
Just for the record, AndyW35 is a troll who also tries to stir up trouble on ClimateAudit and is not the LEAST bit interested in the truth, except for his version of course.
[Now, now, please be nice. AndyW35 is not currently being overly offensive. ~ Evan]
[Actually Evan, I deleted one of AndyW35’s posts in its entirety about 30 minutes ago. It was…not so nice ~ charles the moderator]
[Oh. Hmmm. Well, we will allow what we can while still maintaining a modicum of decorum. ~ Evan]
Andy,
Even the low extent represented in the latest chart is within 2 SD of the baseline data.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20090603_Figure2.png
How much are we to make of this?
the UK Hadley centre predicts that by 2080, London will be experiencing temps of 120 degrees F., and East Anglia will be an arid desert….this from an organisation that cannot accurately predict weather 14 days ahead.
AndyW35, I am certainly interested why this self-declared science blog, is so silent on the fast ice extent melt-off from late April until today. The ice extent has gone from average to low levels ( one source,NSDIC, shows the ice extent even lower than 2007 for this date). Clearly the daily loss of ice extent over the last 40 days, could be the highest ever recorded for this time period?
Why isn’t Mr. Watts and Mr. Goddard publishing a headline stating “Daily ice loss for May and June (so far) shows highest rate on record!” ??? I guess the self declared independent analysis and conclusions published on this site, aren’t so independent, aren’t really into analysis, and their conclusions seem to be censored pretty heavily…
Check out how many times these ‘self-esteemed ‘ gentlemen have declared Arctic ice is recovering on this site. Now it seems that these statements smell a lot like distractions, over-simplifications, and [snip]
REPLY: It is really quite simple, I’m waiting for Mark Serreze, now director of NSIDC, to declare an “ice free north pole” or some other alarming event in a press release. The time is about right for such silly news stories, they did so last year when we saw a similar situation where the 2008/2007 lines converged. BTW his prediction last year failed, miserably. We’ll see if they’ve learned anything from their mistake this year. – Anthony
It would seem that you have not been keeping up. This blog has been all over ice extent since April–including the severe problems with the satellites. I suggest you review past activity.
I would also be more circumspect regarding accusations of lying.
Also note that in any pro-AGW blog, skeptical posts that offensive would be entirely deleted in a trice. But we try to allow as much freedom of expression as we realistically can.
Aron,
I don’t see any numbers in the reindeer article. Of course, there is also no methodology – the downfall of many Global Warming Wizards of Oz!!
paulK (12:19:37) :
Taking the tape graph from cryosphere I overlaid the 2009 ice season (in red) on top of the seasons of 2006, 2007, and 2008. It thus shows quite an interesting tale…
http://s247.photobucket.com/albums/gg136/BigLee57/?action=view¤t=IceSea1.jpg
There is not ice on planet earth…we are in the hockey stick phase of AGW. Obama has hidden this information from us to keep the panic down. Temps will soar in the future after the next mini ice age is over 30 years from now.
This is where I found that link.
At Sea Ice 2009 comment 395.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5614#comment-337310
Sorry.. that link in my last post may not work for you… this one should.
http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg136/BigLee57/IceSea1.jpg
Jim asked Andy: Even the low extent represented in the latest chart is within 2 SD of the baseline data. How much are we to make of this?
Jim linked to the June 2nd data from NSIDC. If he used the June 10th data showing less than 12 M sq km of ice extent, he would see the current ice extent is less than the two standard deviation band, which places the current data BELOW the 95% confidence band. If the datapoints continue below the 2D band for 7-9 days or so, that is a very STRONG statisitical signal.
So yes, the data is sending a strong statistical signal, and we can make “much of this”.
Andy,
Please explain when Real Climate will post about the current 7 year cooling trend? When will they put up the MSU graph showing this clear trend? When will they stop denying the recent global cooling? The chart in this post speaks for itself. At least they do not hide the data here and pretend it does not exist. You will NEVER see any charts or posts on Real Climate that go against the AGW agenda. Asking Anthony to highlight something like this, when you will never see anything similar ever on your favorite site is just dumb. Head back over there for the pro warming agenda.
paulK (12:19:37),
Evan is right, just go through the past few months’ archives and you will see numerous posts on sea ice.
And you may not be aware of it, but the Arctic is only in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s true! I’ll bet you’re surprised that the Antarctic has ice, too — and that it’s expanding substantially more than the Arctic ice is contracting.
What do you think of that?
Jim, look how two articles on the same day which mention Canada are in conflict with each other
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8094000/8094036.stm
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtUSInvestingNews/idUSTRE55851U20090609
Comedy gold
They are from the university of Bremen.
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/arctic_AMSRE_nic.png
Hi Anthony:
How are things? Wanted to make you aware of this new video the European Union posted on YouTube. It’s called “Electrical Derby” and it uses the sport of roller derby to teach kids about science.
Hereās the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ9G2OL9ERo
I thought you and your readers might get a charge out of it (no pun intended).
Thanks for your attention! Love your blog!
Re:paulK (12:19:37) :
Here’s a real ‘over-simplification’ for you. Based on Arctic ice extent records that have been ‘accurate’ for only 30 years for an area of the planet that’s been frozen for millenia (except when it wasn’t but nobody knew cause Leif Erikson was fresh out of satellites), some people are predicting an ice-free North Pole by 20__ (fill in your own SWAG).
The AMSR-E imager used by JAXA has higher resolution because of the higher frequency microwaves used (89 GHz) than the SSMI used by NSIDC and Nansen(19.35, 22.235, 37.0, and 85.5 GHz). The different frequencies have different interactions with ice, clouds and water and so have different optimized algorithms for monitoring sea-ice. In the case of the AMSR-E it’s necessary to switch between algorithms to account for the effect of melt ponds in the summer months, the switch is done on June 1st and back on Oct 15th.
The SSMI uses the lower frequencies to detect surface emissivity of the ocean surface. Sea-ice has a higher emissivity than water, and therefore the two can be separated. Precautions are taken to avoid false signatures caused by dense clouds and precipitation. One of the frequencies used is the 22 GHz channel which was the one knocked out by the interference from the Navy device mounted on F15. The different polarizations have different signatures also and can be used for filtering the different signals.
More detail can be found at http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/spreen05.pdf
UNI BREMEN archives are here.
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsredata/asi_daygrid_swath/l1a/n6250/2008/jun/
Our dear UN says Cuba is a bastion of human rights activity and reaffirms the myth that Cuba has excellent education and health systems.
http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/0F3CC20F613CA7E9C12575D20029E1D7?opendocument
“Cuba had withstood many tests, and continued to uphold the principles of objectivity, impartiality and independence in pursuance of the realisation of human rights. Cuba was and remained a good example of the respect for human rights, including economic, social and cultural rights. The Universal Periodic Review of Cuba clearly reflected the progress made by Cuba and the Cuban people in the protection and promotion of human rights, and showed the constructive and responsive answer of Cuba to the situation of human rights.”
It also congratulates Saudi Arabia for making tremendous strides on human rights and tolerance. The land where an openly gay or atheist person can be killed and a person with a Bible can have their hands cut off.
That’s the UN for you. Now just put some “faith” in the gods of the UN-IPCC.
paulk – So now that we have an excursion past 2 SD, what predictions for the future do you base upon it? That is, what is the touted “much of this?”
OT, but check out the latest blog post at Accuweather AGW blog.
Some big AGW promoters have now shown that CO2 is no longer logarithmic in its impact,and that climate is now linear in its responses to CO2.
And this is being trumpeted as definitive *proof* of AGW.
June bump ?
Pregnant Polar bears ??
paulK (12:49:32) :
Jim asked Andy: Even the low extent represented in the latest chart is within 2 SD of the baseline data. How much are we to make of this?
Jim linked to the June 2nd data from NSIDC. If he used the June 10th data showing less than 12 M sq km of ice extent, he would see the current ice extent is less than the two standard deviation band, which places the current data BELOW the 95% confidence band. If the datapoints continue below the 2D band for 7-9 days or so, that is a very STRONG statisitical signal.
So yes, the data is sending a strong statistical signal, and we can make āmuch of thisā.
-2sd relative to a population of 30 would be borderline for rejection as an outlier by Chauvenet’s criterion so data falling outside that band is indicative of being outside the ‘normal’ range.
My impression is that NANSEN have “coped on” and “are on the ball” and constantly adjusting upwards due to SMII downwards drift unlike CT who don’t, and really don’t care if it goes down,, as long as AGW can be shown… but its bleeding obvious from a direct visual look that NH ice extent is significantly greater now than in 2007 and 2008. That’s why NANSEN has seen the light .. LOL. I think you will soon see a big upwards adjustment by NSIDC as well.
Smokey (12:51:04) :
paulK (12:19:37),
Evan is right, just go through the past few monthsā archives and you will see numerous posts on sea ice.
And you may not be aware of it, but the Arctic is only in the Northern Hemisphere. Itās true! Iāll bet youāre surprised that the Antarctic has ice, too ā and that itās expanding substantially more than the Arctic ice is contracting.
What do you think of that?
Basically that it’s not true, this time of year is when the decline in NH ice starts to exceed the growth of SH ice. At present global sea ice is about its seasonal maximum and a normal season would see a slight drop over the next couple of months, a similar season to the last two years would lead to a drop of about 2Mm^2 over the next few months.
Seems to me the volcanic ash would reduce sea ice by at least 10% over a normal season. Why is there not a discussion of that?
VG-Off topic, but you never answered my question about what book you were talking about by Garth Paltridge. What’s the title again?
What is the resolution on these satellite sensors? Is it feasible to set up earth-based standards to re-cal periodically with areas that are artificially kept at certain thicknesses of sea ice?
It would seem to me that if you could focus your sensing to an area the size of a football field or so, you could literally create a standard to cal from.
PaulK
this self-declared science blog
I think you’ll find the ‘Best Science blog’ award was the result of a vote by others.
IIRC, it was won last year by Climate Audit, which rather suggests that reasonable and courteous blogs are more popular than rants. Perhaps there is hope, after all.
Phil. (14:00:43),
Thank you for your prediction. Time will tell.
Apparently you wish to ignore the Northern Hemisphere sea ice graphic from the University of Bremen posted here by Shawn Whelan: click
And you don’t want to accept the So. Hemisphere sea ice chart: click
Finally, you never answer my repeatedly asked question: is it your belief that an increase in CO2 will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe? Because that’s really what all these posts are about. In fact, that’s what the entire AGW argument is all about.
Time to take a stand on the CO2 = runaway global warming question: Yes or No?
Skeptics say No — and so far, the planet agrees.
Thanks for the graph, very useful.
Letās chill a little here. I go off to do some things and come back and see we are up to our knees in slush, ice, and water again. Maybe the so called troll can explain to me what all the fuss is about. There seems to be some disconnect about the fact that the part of the world near the North Pole, the Arctic, is an ocean. Most of the time some part of it has floating ice, some weeks it is completely covered with ice, and sometimes it has very little and perhaps none ā ice free. If and when the latter happens I wonder how long it might last? A month? Six weeks? Iām curious. Anyway, Mr. Troll, as the comings and goings of the Arctic Ice seems to be quite variable as we have learned from historical documents and more recent measurements Iām still betting on fire to destroy Earth but as R. Frost knew either will do.
John
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
— Robert Frost
davidsnelgrove, norfolk England (12:09:24) :
ā. . .the UK Hadley centre predicts that by 2080, London will be experiencing temps of 120 degrees F.,ā
Say what? Good luck on that.
Someone should tell them London is on a large island surrounded by seas. The vertical sun recently passed over Kingston, Jamaica so one might expect great solar input there the past week. The high temperatures this week are expected to be in the mid-to-high 80s.
A previous post by Jeff Id shows why some of the sea ice measurements claiming a huge ice loss are unreliable: click
Here is one [cherry-picked] graph from the link above: click
The argument over sea ice extent is similar to the argument over ocean acidification, coral bleaching, etc.: they are peripheral questions. The central question is, as always: will an increase in CO2 cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe?
The CO2=catastrophic AGW question can be answered three ways: Yes, No, or Maybe.
If Yes, then the discussion should be about cost/benefit analysis. How many degrees of temperature mitigation [if any] can we expect per trillion dollars expended? And perhaps more importantly: will the entire world community do its part in mitigating the problem? If China continues building two new coal-fired power plants per week, as they are currently doing, should the U.S. and the West shoulder the entire burden? China is becoming rich fast, and can no longer fall back on the argument that they get to continue pouring unrestricted emissions into the atmosphere in order to catch up.
If No, then no more public funds should be spent on studies of
AGW; private universities are perfectly capable of monitoring the situation without rent-seeking tax hounds suckling at the public teat. NASA currently spends over $5 billion a year for various “global warming” studies. If CO2 does not lead to runaway global warming, these $billions should be spent on problems that science can solve, such as sanitation, fighting malaria, immunizing children against disease, etc.
And if the answer is Maybe, then the question is undecided because evidence of AGW caused climate catastrophe is lacking. If the answer is Maybe, then there should be a series of very public debates conducted in neutral venues by credible scientists on both sides of the issue.
The undeniable fact that the AGW side avoids public debates shows that they lack the arguments necessary to justify their feeding frenzy at the public trough.
Jim (12:24:36) :
Aron, I donāt see any numbers in the reindeer article. Of course, there is also no methodology ā the downfall of many Global Warming Wizards of Oz!!
Yep, it’s a real worry. Due to global warming, the reindeer/caribou herds have dwindled down to only about 3 million.
The lower count is probably due to the herds moving around year to year and fooling the census takers, and maybe a little bit due to the increase in wolf populations, which I think is a man-made situation.
.
Dave (13:16:06) : makes a point – we have only 30 years of ice measurements. Everything prior is just guesses from ground level or narrow aircraft flight paths. We have photos of North Pole submarine surfacings in open water in ’59, ’62, and ’87, Amundsen’s northwest passage in 1905, and a couple Canadian passages in the 1940’s. Arctic ice must have been down then, so the late sparsity isn’t unique, especially given that much of it is driven by Siberian winds pushing ice into the transpolar drift and out into the Atlantic.
So much of what constitutes debate between ‘warmists’ and ‘deniers’ comes down to repeated rounds of tug-of-war. ‘My data is bigger and better than yours’
This is tiresome. Forget the numbers for a moment, let us narrow the scope of the argument to that of Arctic Ice coverage and think about this.
If ice extent is diminished, to such a level, that the North West (NW) passage becomes navigable would this be as unprecedented and catastrophic to Man, Ursus yellow-fur and caribou as some claim?
If historical records show that the NW passage has been unbreached then I’d be worried. Aliter, I’d be severely relaxed.
Anyone know?
Henry Larsen travelled from Halifax to Vancouver in 86 days in 1944 through the Northern route of the NW Passage. Likely impossible this year.
Which means after 60 plus years of AGW there is more ice in the Arctic now than in 1944.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/arcticexpedition/larsenexpeditions
Shawn Whelan (16:11:44) :
Henry Larsen travelled from Halifax to Vancouver in 86 days in 1944 through the Northern route of the NW Passage. Likely impossible this year.
Which means after 60 plus years of AGW there is more ice in the Arctic now than in 1944
Thank you Shawn – that’s an inference that can only be countered by over-indulgent, brain-waxed climate-realist-refuseniks!
I’m not vindictive by nature but, sometimes, moments arise when one just has to be brutal to the smurfist-squad when their self-aggrandizing, dogmatism threatens future generations!
Shawn Whelan (16:11:44) :
Which means after 60 plus years of AGW there is more ice in the Arctic now than in 1944.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/arcticexpedition/larsenexpeditions
I was with you for a moment there Shawn but then I read your link. How can you claim that this is evidence that the Arctic had less ice in 1944 than at present. Name one peer-reviewed climatologist mentioned in the link. Show me the IPPC executive summary that backs up your claim – for goodness sake Shawn, you’ll be claiming next that photographic evidence exists showing US submarines at the poles in the fifties! You clearly have no understanding of how many Principal Components are needed to change History!
Nice one mate:)
RoyFOMR (16:29:24) :
Not to mention that Amundsun SAILED the NW passage in either 1903 or 05.
DaveE.
Same sensor, different source, no speed bump.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/Hamburg.jpg
paulK (12:19:37) :
AndyW35, I am certainly interested why this self-declared science blog, is so silent on the fast ice extent melt-off from late April until today. [Blah, blah, blah,…]
I get so tired of comments like this from both sides of the debate. When the Arctic sea ice extent approaches the 2007 level, the alarmists dance a jig; when it approaches the 1979-2000 average, the skeptics do a song and dance. These short term trends have little to do with global warming and much to do with atmospheric circulation patterns. NASA says so. The NSIDC says so. You can see it with your own eyes in the animations Anthony has posted here. This is what the otherwise alarmist NSIDC says at the end of their 6/3/09 report:
“Whether or not Arctic sea ice reaches a new record low this summer will depend on the circulation patterns that set up over the next few months.”
Cryosphere looks to have updated today.
The areas that seem to be contributing to the quick decline are on the Atlantic side. The Barents, Greenland, and Baffin/Newfoundland seem to be where the negative anomalies are greatest. And the Chuckchi on the Pacific side. The main basin areas and Hudson seem to be holding there own much better this year. The Beaufort doesn’t seem to be losing ice nearly as fast this year, as compared to the last couple years.
So its not the overall loss, but where we are losing it. Weather ,and currents a bit different this year, I suppose.
Oh RoyFOMR, you have sold yourself.
Since a NW passage wasn’t possible in 2007 but was in 1944 prior to 60 years of CO2 induced warming then Shawn is stating fact. Your knee-jerk ad hominem shows your inability to fit your faith to the science.
Incidentally as more and more ridicule is poured on alarmists like yourself, primarily by the weather itself š , have you given any thought to how your children will laugh at you?
Reply: Tone it down everyone. And as always, I don’t care who started it. ~ charles the moderator
The University of Hamburg chart still has a speed bump, it is just a little smaller and implemented a little earlier than Jaxa’s.
For those interested, this is what the NH sea ice extent looks like compared to all the years since 1979 (with 2009 and the two highest and two lowest years highlighted).
http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/9079/dailyseijune10.png
Mike Abbott (16:58:39) :
Like you, I get tired of the ping-pong numbers game. To reduce a complex spread of alternatives into a singular metric and then base an entire future upon its magnitude and sign, reeks of an hubristic and fundamentalist, Talibanisation of Science that behoves us badly.
Has it happened before, will it happen again and, if it does, what should we do is a darned sight more pragmatic and useful than any amount of ego-driven pontifications – however backed up by pretensious preeners!
Sandy (17:23:20) :
Didn’t you notice that my tongue was heavily within my cheek while me fingers and toes were crossed? I’m 100% on the same side as you, mate. Some call it irony but in my case it’s just a wicked SOH!
Reply: I didn’t want to explain it to him ~ charles the moderator
Sandy (17:23:20) :
Get your sarcasm detector recalibrated š
DaveE.
“I didnāt want to explain it to him” or her.
RoyFOMR (17:30:44) :
Mike Abbott (16:58:39) :
Like you, I get tired of the ping-pong numbers game. To reduce a complex spread of alternatives into a singular metric and then base an entire future upon its magnitude and sign, reeks of an hubristic and fundamentalist, Talibanisation of Science that behoves us badly.
Furthermore, whenever a “new record” for Arctic sea ice extent is mentioned, it is usually not noted that an official record only exists for the last 31 years – a blip in time. And that official record begins in (I believe) 1979, which was in the middle of an extremely cold period in the northern hemisphere. Weren’t we being warned about “global cooling” then? It’s a coincidence that that is when accurate satellite data became available, but the alarmists couldn’t have cherry-picked a better starting point…
Ok Sandy, you’re on the first round, I’m next and, if Gavin S or JH comes in- then we’ll find another place to sort the world out.
š – Cheers, Charles-Not only will sandy and I feed you the amber beverages we’ll even club together to ensure that you get home safely. WhatzUpWieVat?
Thank you Mike Abbott. You beat me to the punch. I watch the Jet Stream to see if Arctic ice will be shoved anywhere near warmer rays and water. I have no worries, even if all the ice gets blown outa there. It’s the wind folks. Learn it. The slow melt had nothing whatsoever to do with cold weather. The wind wasn’t blowing up and out Arctic skirts. Therefore the melt was slow because it stayed in the frig. But if you get spinning ice and air flow out of the basin, ice melts like there is no tomorrow. This is so simple. I don’t get why there are arguments over this.
Tom in Texas (17:46:45) :
āI didnāt want to explain it to himā or her.
Mmm Tom. Apart from New-World, ex-colonial deviations from acceptable standards and the travesty of ‘Saturday Night Fever’ the name Sandy is 100% bloke.
OT, but it is with great sadness that I report that Jack Eddy passed away yesterday.
According to UAH the world hasn’t yet resumed warming
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
interesting that the SST’s this year bottomed out around Febuary and the temps. hasn’t started following it upward yet, maybe a certain thingy we know as the Sun is helping to depress temps š
Thank you, Pamela for explaining that better than I did. And as I keep saying, you can see it with your own eyes in the animations Anthony posted. I wish I could remember the name of the guy who created it to give him credit.
I assumed that it is a fiscal year thing.
Lots of strange things happen at the end of the fiscal year.
Mike Abbott (17:50:46) :
.. but the alarmists couldnāt have cherry-picked a better starting pointā¦
And that’s why I believe that the ‘unprecedented’ possibility of a NW passage being shown to be a recent and repeated actuality totally TRUMPS the STATISICAL SNARKS of the denio-sphere that is epitomized by Gavins real climate fantasy!
Add a T if you’re a pedant
timetochoseagain: this is the link to the new book the Climate caper by Paltridge
http://www.connorcourt.com/catalog1/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=29&products_id=113
BTW Ian plimers book has reached number 1 bestseller here in Australia. Its now going to the USA.
Jack Eddy passed away yesterday.
Those, whom we have loved and pass on – live on in our minds until we become like them and loved by others as we loved them.
Leif, American scientists were few and far between in his cohort. He will be missed. I wonder. Did you have any conversations with him regarding his theory that certain solar variations are tied to climate?
1878 Adolf Erik Nordenskiƶld travelled the length of the NE Passage.
Then a 150 years of AGW and there is an increase in ice in 2009.
I see a pattern.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Erik_Nordenski%C3%B6ld
Thanks VG.
Off topic, but interesting. “Chilly spring cools crop outlook: Canadian Wheat Board”.
http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2009/06/11/crop-outlook-cwb.html
Off topic, but I have an itch.
O/T but it should be posted somewhere:
Prof. Ian Plimer interview [Part 1 of 3; you can find parts 2 & 3 below, at the end of the first interview].
Well, maybe if there was a ‘interesting finds of the last 72 hours’ page that people could post links and studies for the review of others it would make for less interrupting the threads.
RoyFOMR, my sister’s name is Sandra – guess what her nickname is.
Pamela Gray (18:29:18) :
Leif, American scientists were few and far between in his cohort. He will be missed. I wonder. Did you have any conversations with him regarding his theory that certain solar variations are tied to climate?
Yes, many. We knew each other well. I think his last public talk on this subject was an after-dinner talk at the SORCE 2003 meeting in Sonoma, Calif http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2003ScienceMeeting/Dec03ScienceMeeting.html
Program here: http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2003ScienceMeeting/dec03_meeting_final_science_program.html and picture of Jack Eddy [and other luminaries]: http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/sns/2003/sns_dec_2003.pdf
The theme of the talk was that when he proposed that the Maunder minimum was related to the Little Ice Age, it was believed that variations of TSI [the solar ‘constant’] was as large as 1% which would make sense energetically [result in 0.7 degree global cooling with possible greater effect regionally]. When it turned out to be ten times smaller, Eddy effectively [as every good scientist would do] abandoned that idea. He didn’t find the various claims of ‘feedback’ or ‘amplifications’ credible, because they were invoked after the 0.1% was already established.
He’ll be greatly missed.
Happy is the man who has a scratch for every itch.
Kindest Regards
It seems like today, both Unisys and NOAA shows the PDO cool area gone. I hope that a previous post on this site is right and is one of those temporary reversals that pepper cool phases according to the PDO index graph, otherwise people may start thinking AGW is real after all. š
AndyW35: “Why doesn’t WUWT report sea ice levels are back to 2007?”
The Sea Ice Graphs are on the front page of this website everyday… this article has multiple graphs showing where the sea ice levels are at. Somehow polar bears and mankind survived 2007 sea ice levels. Are we supposed to get some Armageddon article from WUWT on this? Thankfully, the posts on here are so much more interesting than the your suggested content.
Off topic, but I have a scratch.
Leif, sorry to hear about your friend and colleague.
I remember you saying that “the Eddy Minimum” was a good name for the current minimum, should it continue.
Perhaps you could post a tribute here?
Shawn Whelan (18:32:52) :
1878 Adolf Erik Nordenskiƶld travelled the length of the NE Passage.
Then a 150 years of AGW and there is an increase in ice in 2009.
I see a pattern.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Erik_Nordenski%C3%B6ld
I see a pattern too Shawn. I see a pattern that repeatedly demonstrates that the word ‘unprecedented’ when uttered by a climate ‘scientist’ is as ‘meaningful as the numerology of ‘110%’ when claimed by a footballist!
Your references, as I interpret them, follow another pattern. The NW passage has been broached in the past, currently they are impassible. Your argument. AFAIU, predicates that arctic sea-ice, in the historically-verifiable and undisputable,pre-industrial era was at a level that allowed for NW passaging.
Gosh – Gav’ll no be chuffed.
Pamela, flirting as always.
Shawn Whelan (16:11:44) :
Henry Larsen travelled from Halifax to Vancouver in 86 days in 1944 through the Northern route of the NW Passage. Likely impossible this year.
Well that’s an assumption by you Shawn, I think I’ll wait until Aug/Sept to be sure. This year already it’s open from the Atlantic to Resolute with on small tricky patch, and the polynya off Banks is shaping up fairly well.
Which means after 60 plus years of AGW there is more ice in the Arctic now than in 1944.
Even if your prediction held up the logic doesn’t, you’re only focussing on a very small region of the Arctic, for example the St Roche had to struggle past the ice along the Alaskan shore to make the Bering St by Sept 27th 1944. Check out the sea ice last year on Sept 26th, see any of that near-shore ice then?
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsredata/asi_daygrid_swath/l1a/n6250/2008/sep/asi-n6250-20080926-v5_nic.png
As you can see on that image the NW Passage was open and 7 yachts sailed through last year, Berrimilla for example left Nome on 24th July and reached Nuuk, Greenland on 27th August, less than half the time the St Roche took.
Tom in Texas (19:11:14) :
RoyFOMR, my sisterās name is Sandra ā guess what her nickname is.
Tom, If I guessed Sandra’s nickname she wouldn’t be happy – Am I sooo transparent- she may say!!!!
If, I didn’t guess correctly, would I be accused of ‘not understanding her’
Oh dear, I’m gonna get slaughtered – One day, Tom I’ll learn that the first step of Wisdom begins with the knowledge that although stitching one’s mouth up may be painfull, it’z a breeze when compared to the life-equivalent of responding to the question – does my bum look big in this- with a yes!!
How seriously should we view perturbations in this plot when 16 mil sq km of fractured ice could have the same area as 2.4 mil sq km of solid ice? Thatās if I understand the min 15% rule correctly.
DaveE (16:50:31) :
RoyFOMR (16:29:24) :
Not to mention that Amundsun SAILED the NW passage in either 1903 or 05.
Actually both (they didn’t actually sail in 1904 just stayed in Gjoahavn).
It is neither the itch nor the scratch nor even the sashay but the flounce.
As for Arctic ice it cometh and goeth from time to time as it pleases for reasons we wot not of.
As I have said before on this board please wake me up when you find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow at the north pole.
Kindest Regards
Bill Illis (17:25:14) :
I see what you mean. It’s so small it’s invisible and so early it never arrives.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/Hamburg2.jpg
Thanks for the post Anthony. This is the best blog—not just ‘best science’ blog’—on the internet!! I’m readying my finger to click a vote for WUWT for best science blog 2009!
Iām still betting on fire to destroy Earth but as R. Frost knew either will do.
Some say the world will end in Eccentricity
Some say in Obliquity
But many in my generation
Tend to favor Inclination
So we are left to wonder when
Until our earth returns through dust
And will again
As so it must
jeez (18:58:18) :
Off topic, but I have an itch.
Thanks for the news flash. I’m sure Anthony is making a post for it.
I’ll be paying attention to the ice between Barrow, Alaska and the Laptev Sea. How about you?
itch ok
stupid not ok
Gotcha
Reply: I didn’t clean it up. I approved the whole mess. I suspect Anthony ~ charles the moderator
OT … or not OT? That is the question…
More from Ian Plimer. I ask the non-skeptics, global warm-mongers, whatever you want to call yourselves, to watch all of this talk. This is the first of 5 You Tube videos.
Somebody should mention ice thickness…
In 2007 it was anomalous weather that set the low ice extent record. But this had been made possible by previous years of thinning.
“In terms of total sea ice mass, the old and thick perennial (multi-year) ice dominated the younger and thinner seasonal (one-year) ice that melted away in the summer. Most notably, perennial ice is more likely to survive the summer melt season.”
“In view of Arctic sea ice mass balance, the distribution of perennial and seasonal sea ice in March is particularly important. Sea ice distribution in March represents the transitional condition from winter to spring as the solar heat flux starts to increase and the melt process commences and continues into summer. Besides differences in ice thickness, these major ice classes partition solar energy differently, with the perennial ice having a larger albedo and also transmitting less solar radiation to the ocean. The shift from perennial to seasonal ice thus impacts the ice mass balance and the ice-albedo feedback mechanism.” 2007
2008 was the year of the lowest summer Arctic sea ice volume.
So what?
Kindest Regards
Let’s be fair. Volume is not irrelevant.
But let us also consider that volume can be hard to measure, as has been demonstrated by a recent flyover indicating that first-year ice was around twice as thick as calculated.
Furthermore, ice area is more important than ice volume because ice area, not volume, is what determines albedo.
Certainly OT, but there’s no recent post on global temperatures, so: the GISS anomaly for May 2009 is out. 0.55, which is nothing but the highest anomaly this year and the third highest anomaly for May in their database.
This is consistent with the fact that most of the warming in May was observed at the poles – which are not covered by satellites (UAH, RMSS) that accordingly show relatively small positive anomalies.
Lots of interesting comments. So:
DMSP (SSMI) – rude & crude; counts water, the rest is ice {NSIDC/Cryospher/NANSEN}.
Aqua (AMSR-E) – elegant & sophisticated; counts ice and is so sensitive, surface water masks the ice during summer months, so they adjust.
Bottom line:
We’ll see this year’s ranking come the first week in September. Until then, it’s like halftime and that score doesn’t count. My personal and totally unscientific guesstimate is there will be more ice this year than last. And probably more volume.
And in a couple months, when a new reader asks about that funny bump in June, we can all refer him to this posting and all its comments and enlightenment offered.
Francis (21:32:47) :
2008 was the year of the lowest summer Arctic sea ice volume.
————————–
Link to the data please ??
evanmjones (22:34:43) :
When Arctic Ocean ice is least so is the sun angle. Reflection off water is greater and absorption less than when the sun is higher. This is followed by no sun over much of the region for many weeks. Ice acts as an insulator when it is there and when it is not the water more easily gives up energy and freezes again.
Maybe you could collect the information and run the numbers and tell me how this all works out averaged over 30 years. Iāll have another beer while I await your post. Thanks, John
Re: Michael Jennings (12:02:48)
/// Just for the record, AndyW35 is a troll who also tries to stir up trouble on ClimateAudit and is not the LEAST bit interested in the truth, except for his version of course.///
It is quite interesting that you consider that anybody who points out facts is a troll, whereas all the far more puerile comments and those who need to use cherry picked data like ‘eleven years cooling’ on here are not.
evanmjones (22:34:43) :
Furthermore, ice area is more important than ice volume because ice area, not volume, is what determines albedo.
———————-
With respect Evan, it’s ice volume that is important in the debate which was, purportedly, already over. If sea ice area is a proxy for warming at the poles then, as of around today, there has been no warming at the poles combined since 1979. This is one or two clicks away at Cryosphere Today for any intelligent person, moron, politician or AGWer even.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
So, in pseudoscienceland, the pseudoelephant in the pseudoroom is ice volume. No one knows what it is exactly (amazingly, given the importance) but, if it tracked with sea ice area imagine the cognitive dissonance induced by data showing clearly that the poles are not warming to the “poles-are-warming” set.
Catlin crew to the rescue. It’s definitely thinner, robust measurements, fits with IPCC models. Ice volume is lower, poles are warming, debate over.
Zzzzzzzzzzz
I am baffled! After all these years people are still trying
to control the climate by adjusting the data. (?)
Certainly OT, but thereās no recent post on global temperatures, so: the GISS anomaly for May 2009 is out. 0.55, which is nothing but the highest anomaly this year and the third highest anomaly for May in their database.
This is consistent with the fact that most of the warming in May was observed at the poles ā which are not covered by satellites (UAH, RMSS) that accordingly show relatively small positive anomalies.
But surely there is no warming whatever observed at the the North Pole. In fact, nothing at all is observed at the North Pole. GISS guesstimates their North Polar average mostly from the infamous Siberian Thought Criminals, the Abominable Snowmen, compromised by poor siting and serious UHI.
I cannot speak for the South Pole. There is one station there, but most stations are located on the strongly warming peninsula. If they are gridding their results in a manner reminiscent of Steig, however, their results would be in serious question.
And since the poles are around 5% of the earth’s surface, they would have to be roughly 8 to 9C warmer than average to produce an upward bump of from 0.45 to 0.5C. That’s quite a lot, even for polar regions.
I am baffled! After all these years people are still trying
to control the climate by adjusting the data. (?)
Stick with what works.
those who need to use cherry picked data like āeleven years coolingā on here are not.
I do not regard the 11-year view as a cherrypick: One must include both the 1998 El Nino and the 1999-2000 La Nina that immediately followed, or exclude both. 1999, for example, would be a serious cherrypick.
When one is assessing a warming trend, it makes sense to start the assessment when the warming begins to the point where it ends.
Therefore, I do not object to a 1977 – 1998 view (which shows strong warming). But likewise, when one is examining a cooling trend, it is not “unfair” to begin at the point when the cooling begins.
Ph-in-CA: Irony noted.
Phil. (20:25:23) : in reply to
“DaveE (16:50:31) :
RoyFOMR (16:29:24) :
Not to mention that Amundsun SAILED the NW passage in either 1903 or 05.”
Replied as follows
“Actually both (they didnāt actually sail in 1904 just stayed in Gjoahavn).”
I think you may find he didn’t make it through in 1903-that is when he set out on his expedition of 1903-06. He was involved in various tasks including finding the magnetic north and arrived at the Mckenzie river in the late summer of 1905. He eventually became became iced in but went overland to file a report that was carried in this contemporary account in the New York Times of December 1905.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9A03E1DD113AE733A25754C0A9649D946497D6CF
However, he didn’t actually make it through completely in his ship until the following year in order to make it ‘official’, as this account from his own records show;
http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/northwest-passage/amundsen.htm
“At Point Barrow, Amundsen received a letter of invitation from the people of the town of Nome. Using the opportunity to obtain a new gaff, they arrived at Nome on 31 August 1906: the celebration there marked the official end of the first successful Northwest Passage voyage.”
Tonyb
OT – Another from the “It must be climate change, stupid” files:
Listening to BBC Radio 4’s today programme this morning, they had a brief interview with a chap (I forget the name) discussing the observed drop-off in seabird populations around the UK coastline in the last 10 years.
The interviewee started by giving the numbers for the drop-off and continued by stating that food shortages (primarily due to sand-eel fisheries etc.) “could account for some of this”, but then went on to say (guess what’s coming…):
“There is growing evidence that the main cause is a rise in surface sea temperatures, caused by global climate-change, of between .2 and .9 deg C per decade since the 50’s” – basically killing off the wee fishies.
(I swear you could hear the interviewer sigh when the interviewee started down the climate-change road.)
After this obligatory mention of CO2-induced grimreaperness, the interviewee then, as a last, throw away, line mentioned that the birds’ eggs and nesting sites were also often under threat from mink, rats and other ovoid nabbing critters.
So, in summary: birds’ food sources being nicked, birds’ offspring becoming tasty rodent nibbles ergo bird population suffers… Nope, it’s all down to climate-change; course it is, how silly of me.
I subsequently found this link which, I think, is the original source of the interview:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/springwatch/2009/06/the_great_seabird_mystery.html
Interesting to note that the few comments there so far have a reasonable proportion of people effectively saying they don’t buy the climate change reason…
Cheers
Mark
jeez (18:58:18) : Off topic, but I have an itch.
This is a known consequence of Globall Warmning and is fairly easily cured by the application of Cooling Amber Lubricant which is widely available. It is understoood as a necessary and essential consequences of application of this cure that one will suffer from a tendency to loquationsness ant occasonally misssspelet wrords. I sugest New Zealand Steinlager…
Or you could just scratch…
Flanagan (22:35:54) : Certainly OT, but thereās no recent post on global temperatures, so: the GISS anomaly for May 2009 is out. 0.55, which is nothing but the highest anomaly this year and the third highest anomaly for May in their database.
Ah, yes, the wonderful GIStemp data fabrication process with the past inevitably re-written lower and with “data” fictions sprinkled like little red colored candies over the snowy globe to “fill in” where (and when) there are no data. All nicely created so as give the illusion of actual data where there are none.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/so_many_thermometers_so_little_time/
And they find an astounding “anomaly” of a fraction of a degree when all that means is that they have no idea what the real anomaly might be since the raw data are in whole degrees of F and so everything to the right of the decimal point is A FICTION of False Precision:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/mr-mcguire-would-not-approve/
This is consistent with the fact that most of the warming in May was observed at the poles ā which are not covered by satellites (UAH, RMSS) that accordingly show relatively small positive anomalies.
Oh yes, the “warming at the poles” that comes from another data food product that uses estimates and interpolations to make up the input for GIStemp that then smears it over 1500 miles or so of distance…
from:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/hansen-global-surface-air-temps-1995/
This says that they have had uncertainty in global temperatures due to poor spatial sampling. That is, they donāt cover oceans well.. Add in ships and bouys data and it gets better ābut in situ data introduce other errorsā. Then they go on to say satellites provide better total surface coverage, but limited time coverage and āThe satellite data provide high resolution while the in situ data provide bias correction.ā OK, which is it: āintroduce other errorsā or āprovide bias correctionā? Please explain how such an error prone data set can be used to correct a new high tech satellite series? This just smells like a cover up of a āData Food Product Homoginizing Processā coming.
Yup, next paragraph. They talk about āEmpirical Orthogonal Functionsā used to fill in some South Pacific dataā¦ but it uses āOptimal Interpolationsā which sure sounds like they are just cooking each datapoint independentlyā¦ From here on out when they use EOF data they are talking about this synthetic data. It also looks like they use 1982-1993 base years to create the offsets that are used to cook the data for 1950-81. Wonder if any major ocean patterns were different in those two time periods, and just what surface (ship / bouy) readings were used to make the Sea Surface Temp reconstructions? They do say āThe SST field reconstructed from these spatial and temporal modes is confined to 59 deg. N ā 45 deg S because of limited in situ data at higher latitudes.ā OK, got it. You are making up data based on what you hope are decent guesses.
Yeah, I’d be quaking in my booties about how horridly hot it was if it weren’t for all the snow everywhere:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/south-hemisphere-record-early-snow/
Which, link, BTW, also covers a bunch of snow that just won’t go away in the Northern Hemisphere too. I’ve stopped adding “anecdotal” news stories to the article since it’s getting too long to be reasonable… but just note that there is snow in England in Summer … and, horror of horrors, a cold storm has damaged the Hops harvest in Germany! And, btw, there is this tiny little problem of both the Canadian and Argentine wheat crops getting buggered due to weather with excess snow in Canada…
At this rate, when GISS reports a 1+C anomaly we’re gong to have Ice Fairs on the Themes again and be walking from N.Y. to Jersey over the ice…
Posted from Under The Blue Blob in formerly sunny California where all the “anomalous heat” has left my tomatoes waiting for enough time above 50F to set fruit at a time when it ought to be 90 F some days…
(My Siberian is producing, it sets fruit in the 40 F range, but growth is slower than I’d like due to limited “degree-days” to warm it.)
Presently 48F on my patio 8 FEET from my kitchen over flagstone where the sun shines as it sets… so it looks like no tomatoes any time soon… Oh, and 20 feet from the BBQ that has not been used lately due to the cold…
As I’ve said before, and will repeat Every Time GISS anomalies are presented as evidence: GIStemp is useless for telling you anything about what is really happening in the world.
Look at the dates of first and last frost, the open and close dates of ski resorts, and the “snow on the ground” if you really want to know if it’s warmer or colder this year. They all say colder. For some strange reason I feel compelled to use reality over computer fabrications, maybe it’s just me…
Hi E M Smith
I have got that article I wrote about Wilkliam Connelley you were interested in, and also an article I wrote about Global temperatures that would probably slot in to Chiefio. If you can let me have an email address I will send them over.
Tonyb
TonyB (02:51:02) : I have got that article I wrote about Wilkliam Connelley you were interested in, and also an article I wrote about Global temperatures that would probably slot in to Chiefio. If you can let me have an email address I will send them over.
Email is embedded in the “about” tab at the top as pub4all ATSIGN aol DOT com.
BTW, I decided to see if The Big Blue Blob was just local to the coastal areas of California or not, so I decided to look up Red Bluff at wunderground… Red Bluff, for those not familiar with California, is a particularly hot part of the Northern end of the Central Valley of California. For my whole life I’ve been seeing it pop up on the news about this time with the early 99 F and 100+ F reports. It makes the news since it’s usually a degree or three hotter than the stuff in a few hundred mile radius, so the news guys report it to get a “hot spot” to talk about. From:
http://www.wunderground.com/US/CA/Red_Bluff.html
I picked up:
Friday 76Ā° F | 58Ā° F
Chance of Rain 20% chance of precipitation
Saturday 77Ā° F | 58Ā° F
Chance of Rain 30% chance of precipitation
Sunday 76Ā° F | 58Ā° F
Partly Cloudy
Monday 81Ā° F | 59Ā° F
Partly Cloudy
Tuesday 86Ā° F | 63Ā° F
Partly Cloudy
Now for those not familiar with what these numbers “ought” to look like:
Max Temperature: Min Temperature: Normal (KRDD) 90 Ā°F 59 Ā°F Record (KRDD) 102 Ā°F (1987) 50 Ā°F (1992)So where we ought to be having 90 F or so, we’re having 70x F hopefully rising into the mid 80s by the end of the week. While I’m sure folks up there are “loving it”, it is normally much hotter. And rain? Not good. (Bad for peaches – they get brown rot if they are ripe enough… the sulphur dusters will be out … if they can still use sulphur …)
Also, for all of California:
Looks like the whole state is cold… Even in the Mojave desert ( I think Needles is officially in it, it’s normally hot and dry enough) we hit 78 F as the peak? In summer?
Yup, AGW sure is having an impact /sarcoff>
As you can see on that image the NW Passage was open and 7 yachts sailed through last year, Berrimilla for example left Nome on 24th July and reached Nuuk, Greenland on 27th August, less than half the time the St Roche took.
We been through this before Phil, you are distorting the truth.
All those boats went throught the southern route of the NW Passage just as Amundsen easily did in the early 1900’s. The St. Roch and Larsen went through the Northern Route of the NW Passage which never opened fully last year and I expect to be more frozen this year.
And no Amundsen was not stuck in the ice for 3 years. He stayed to finish the scientific work that was required and learn the survival skills of the Inuit and then left at a time of his own choosing.
And after Amundsen went through the NW Passage he later went through the NE passage and completed the circle around the North Pole. And then after that the AGW caused the Arctic to warm for 100 plus years and the ice level appears to have increased or stayed at the same level.
Many more have traversed the length of the Northern Route of the NW Passage. What is called the consensus of science just chooses to ignore the huge amount of historical evidence. And this is done purposefully as there is no other explanation for it.
Forget about GISS it is a joke, here is Sweden we might have the coldest beginning of the summer (1-10:th of June) since the 1950s according to SMHI (That is the Swedish equivalent to NOAA in the US). The strawberrys (very popular during the midsummer weekend later this June) will be small and few due to the bad weather.
The rest of NW Europe is also cold and when both part of Europe and the whole of Canada is cold at the same time what is the chance that GISS is correct? Not much I would say.
BTW I belive that RSS and UAH say the opposite to what Flanagan says, they cover the poles much better than GISS and Hadley.
GISS and satellites give similar multi-year trends so I would be tempted to say they have similar quality. Moreover, GISS is in accordance with the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis http://www.climat-evolution.com/article-32112504.html. I think we might expect these values to join again within a few months…
Dennis Ward 23:17:23
“It is quite interesting that you consider that anybody who points out facts is a troll, whereas all the far more puerile comments and those who need to use cherry picked data like āeleven years coolingā on here are not.”
You mean cherry picked facts like an arbitrary starting and ending point for graphs and temperatures (often adjusted after the fact) often used by Hansen, Gore, and Schneider? As for the “facts”, I guess they depend on ones natural biased induced interpretation of data and statistics no? Most on here give both sides of the debate and Anthony and Charles allow tremendous latitude for the AGW crowd to post here. You will rarely, if ever, see that allowed on the pro AGW sites or are you not honest enough to admit that?
EM Smith-having fought fires in California in the late 80’s though most of the 90’s,
the forecast for Red Bluff is ah,’Sweater Weather’ for the locals.Rain and thunder in NE Oregon too…
Reply: I didnāt clean it up. I approved the whole mess. I suspect Anthony ~ charles the moderator
Thanks for fixing my typo!! It was bone headed.
TonyB (00:43:41) :
Phil. (20:25:23) : in reply to
āDaveE (16:50:31) :
RoyFOMR (16:29:24) :
Not to mention that Amundsun SAILED the NW passage in either 1903 or 05.ā
Replied as follows
āActually both (they didnāt actually sail in 1904 just stayed in Gjoahavn).ā
I think you may find he didnāt make it through in 1903-that is when he set out on his expedition of 1903-06.
I was obviously too cryptic, I meant that the sailing through the passage took place in 03 and 05. In 04 they were frozen in Gjoahavn and carried out exploration of possible routes on foot. As you mentioned, in the autumn of 05 although they’d cleared the passage they were frozen in again and Amundsen hiked overland to send the message to the outside world.
Mark Fawcett (00:52:08) :
I thought the post from marineBlueplanet was well thought out and very sobering. Then he went blew it with this silly but understandable emotional rant.
No longer can we view the commercial fishing industry with the romantic notion of hard working fishermen risking everything to put fish on our plates. It must now be seen for what it is, a ruthless, efficient, hi-tech industry of destruction, that is prepared to wipe out whole species for profit with almost no long-term consideration for the health of the marine environment.
What annoys me is Copenhagen will be a venue for grand standing politicians and morally bankrupted pseudo scientists. There will be the usual bunch of free loaders prophesying the end of earth through ocean acidification and heap of phony studies to push their junk science. They are money grabbing grubs. Ok, I’ve had my rant and feel better for it.
To my mind marineBlueplanet is a real conservationist and I find sad that his like won’t get a word in edgewise on a very important issue.
Morgan T (06:10:23) :
Forget about GISS it is a joke, here is Sweden we might have the coldest beginning of the summer (1-10:th of June) since the 1950s according to SMHI (That is the Swedish equivalent to NOAA in the US). The strawberrys (very popular during the midsummer weekend later this June) will be small and few due to the bad weather.
The rest of NW Europe is also cold and when both part of Europe and the whole of Canada is cold at the same time what is the chance that GISS is correct? Not much I would say.
UAH also shows the NH extratropics as positive, their global result for May was low because they had such a low value for the tropics which meant the extratropics had to be high to compensate.
BTW I belive that RSS and UAH say the opposite to what Flanagan says, they cover the poles much better than GISS and Hadley.
RSS don’t cover the poles at all, they only cover 70S to 82.5N and exclude areas of high ice such as the Andes and Himalayas because of interference from ice signals. UAH go as far as 82.5S I think, but this has been criticized because of the ice interference (I can’t remember who wrote the paper).
MartinGAtkins, could you please tell me what’s so silly about this rant:
No longer can we view the commercial fishing industry with the romantic notion of hard working fishermen risking everything to put fish on our plates. It must now be seen for what it is, a ruthless, efficient, hi-tech industry of destruction, that is prepared to wipe out whole species for profit with almost no long-term consideration for the health of the marine environment.
I’m currently reading The Unnatural History of the Sea by professor Callum Roberts and I can tell you it’s not pretty.
Neven 09 50 38
I think there are two truths here. Your defence of the comment is most certainly correct about one truth. However I come from a UK fishing port and the ‘hard working fishermen risking everything’ is certainly correct also, and the hi-tech industry bit certainly stretching it rather.
Many people have died who work out of the South West fishing ports. However Lyme bay-where I live-has also just banned beam trawlers to protect corals and sponges amongst other marine ecology. This has caused the big boys to cry ‘foul’ whilst seriously inconveniencing and threatening the livelihood of the small scale fishermen.
Like most green things in life nothing is black and white.
Tonyb
Shawn Whelan (05:40:50) :
“As you can see on that image the NW Passage was open and 7 yachts sailed through last year, Berrimilla for example left Nome on 24th July and reached Nuuk, Greenland on 27th August, less than half the time the St Roche took.”
We been through this before Phil, you are distorting the truth.
Not at all, it’s a completely accurate statement.
All those boats went throught the southern route of the NW Passage just as Amundsen easily did in the early 1900ās.
Now this is a distortion, the trip was anything but easy! I have Amundsen’s account of the expedition, the description of the storm that caused him to put into what later became Gjoahavn in Sept. 03 is extremely dramatic. They had to throw cargo overboard to avoid being destroyed on a reef. They entered the bay on Sept. 12th 03 and the ship wasn’t able to leave until summer 05. The eskimos had told them that the summer of 03 was very mild and was unlikely to be repeated in 04 and so it proved with only temporary shore leads opening up to allow short trips in dories and kayaks.
The St. Roch and Larsen went through the Northern Route of the NW Passage which never opened fully last year and I expect to be more frozen this year.
What you expect is hardly relevant. Which route opens up is largely subject to the vagaries of the winds.
And no Amundsen was not stuck in the ice for 3 years. He stayed to finish the scientific work that was required and learn the survival skills of the Inuit and then left at a time of his own choosing.
His own account says otherwise, the Gjoa couldn’t have left the harbor in 04. In any case his subsequent journey depended on the reconnaissance by Hansen which determined the appropriate route.
And after Amundsen went through the NW Passage he later went through the NE passage and completed the circle around the North Pole. And then after that the AGW caused the Arctic to warm for 100 plus years and the ice level appears to have increased or stayed at the same level.
Your time-line seems a little off, it’s only 2009. Also Amundsen had to have his ship rescued from the ice by the alaskan coastguard after his NE passage trip in and area which was open water last year. Also the attempt to claim Wrangel Island by a US/Canadian expedition in 1922 failed because it was cut off for resupply for over a year (all except for one woman died). So your account of greater ice seems not to agree with those events.
Many more have traversed the length of the Northern Route of the NW Passage.
Really who and when?
What is called the consensus of science just chooses to ignore the huge amount of historical evidence. And this is done purposefully as there is no other explanation for it.
A claim made apparently based on your version of history and exaggerations.
E.M.Smith, it’s not hot in your state because it seems the heat normally reserved for Pheonix and the desert areas has been vacationing in Texas and northern Mexico. That heat will soon spread to where we are in the southern half of Kansas with a chance the 100 degree days could come early this year according to Intellicast.
How about this, maybe something will push the nation’s hotspot back to the southwestern desert where it belongs and we’ll enjoy a cooler summer (because we don’t have lots of crops that need the extra heat) š
Phil
I have been through Amundsens accounts and understood he stayed in the port during 1904 quite deliberately to carry out scientific work. Can you clarify your comment that his ship was frozen into the ice in 1904 and couldn’t leave even if he wanted to? Thanks
Tonyb
TonyB (12:03:28) :
Phil
I have been through Amundsens accounts and understood he stayed in the port during 1904 quite deliberately to carry out scientific work.
Although he stayed to do the scientific work he does refer to the state of the ice which would have prevented his leaving. He frequently doesn’t give actual dates so it can be difficult to pin down. Late in July he refers to Simpson Strait being closed but hopes it might melt. However, early in August Hansen left to establish a depot at Cape Crozier for the following spring’s reconnaissance trip, Simpson Strait was blocked with ice both on the way out and on their return (7th Sept). Gjoahavn froze completely by 21st Sept.
Summarizing their experience that summer Amundsen writes:
“The summer had been cold and inclement and there had been very little open water for navigation. (using dories and kayaks not the Gjoa: Phil.) We could only hope for better luck next year.”
I know it’s only weather, not climate.
My home-community in SoCal puts up every year since 1979 a fund-raiser event for the local fire department. It used to be every year on the second weekend in june. We kept records of the weather for each event.
June in the SoCal is usually associated with “june-gloom”, low level clouds in the morning, with sunshine the rest of the day. Those low level clouds used to not affect us, as the community is above 2200 ft MSL, above those marine-layer clouds.
Warm weather for that event is important. The fire department sells a lot of beer then, which creates income š .
Historical weather data for the event:
1979 – 2001 reliably sunny, temperatures ranged from low 80s to upper 90s
2002 morning cloudy, afternoon sunny, temps in the high 70s
2003 cloudy, drizzle in the morning, sunny late afternoon, temps in the low 70s
2004 cloudy, rain in the morning, partly cloudy afternoon, temps in the mid to high 60s
2005 rainy all day. temps in the low 60s
2006 rain in the morning, partly cloudy afternoon, temps in the high 60s to low 70s
Since 2007 the event was moved to september, as the june date no longer guaranteed good weather. Evidence of climate change?
This year we have since mid may temperatures in the upper 50s to low 60s , dense overcast, drizzle and rain.
I have the heater in the house running in june!!!
KLA: That’s a fairly interesting cooling trend, and curiously started going down since the peak of the last solar max? Could it be that solar quiet manifests itself first in specific regions like high mountain areas?
Then again it’s not that high up, something must be causing the trend, SST’s didn’t peak till 2003 for starters.
@ Adam from Kansas (14:50:49)
No, it’s not that high up. However, the community is on top of the first mountain range from the ocean. Just about 15 miles due east from the beach. Currently, and in the last years, the lower areas close to the ocean are often sunny, while we are buried in orographic clouds.
Neven (09:50:38) :
In particular this line.
It must now be seen for what it is, a ruthless, efficient, hi-tech industry of destruction,
It parameterises “efficient, hi-tech industry” with “ruthless destruction”. Todays fishing ships indeed efficient and hi-tech as well as very expensive.
Having said that, they are more economic and safer than fleets of small boats fishing over a wide area. Like any business they seek to maximize return on capital outlay. This is not immoral or necessarily bad in a competitive market as it drives innovation and the outcome is a better and more affordable product for the consumer.
This works well where the producers have a stake in the source of the product, by ownership or licence because it is in their interest to protect and enhance the source of their production. I’m not saying the outcome is always perfect because in any human endeavor mistakes will be made, but with diverse ownership of owned or licenced properties, bad outcomes on an individual scale can be reversed.
The problem is that nation states only have resource security over a three hundred mile perimeter of the surrounding ocean. Sometimes these boundaries overlap but more often than not, agreements are reached and a shared interest leads to a comprehensive conservation strategy that includes sustainable harvesting.
The problem is a healthy ocean can’t be achieved by good management of narrow coastal bands. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you why. š
So the problem isn’t so much a “ruthless, efficient, hi-tech industry” but the lack international agreements on steps that can be taken to ensure wide ranging coordinated efforts to enhance fish stocks and there by improve production and profitability for the fishing industries.
This is not what will be discussed by the posers at Copenhagen and perhaps nor should it be. Conservation has been hijacked by ideologically driven environmentalism and their pseudo science.
There should be a separate venue for the international fishing industries to meet and discuss ways of securing fish stocks and improving quality of product. It should have government representation from all states who have an interest in securing good fishery outcomes.
The UN should be starved of funds and broken up. It’s become nothing more than a self perpetuating Marxist bureaucracy.
TonyB
It is quite useless to have a factual argument with Phil on this topic.
He routinely provides fictional accounts with no factual backup.
Phil does not seek to learn the facts but obtusely defends his AGW belief the facts be darned.
Amundsen could have left in 1904. It was not a joy ride and he was there to perform precise scientific experiments. It is an old wives tale that he was stuck in the ice.
http://www.mnc.net/norway/Amundsen.htm
As an example I just recently explained to Phil that his claim that Amundsen was rescued by the Alaska coast guard is false and provided the proof. Amundsen went through the NE Passage left the Maud which turned back and delibaretely froze itself in the ice. Amundsen was no where near the Maud when it was rescued. Now he makes the same false claim. It goes on and on.
As an example check this exchange in the climate audit thread. Phil is now making many of the same false claims again here that I just proved wrong in that thread.
No point in going through it again with Phil. Read here instead of doing the whole discussion again. Starts at comment 227.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5614#comment-337310
Why is it that so many of the AGW scientists are more concerned with holding their position than searching for the truth?
Many more have traversed the length of the Northern Route of the NW Passage.
Really who and when?
Here’s one that sailed the length of the Northern Route of the NW Passage.
What Bernier did in 1911 won’t be possible this year after almost a hundred years of AGW.
On the Arctic’s third expedition in 1910-11, Bernier took the vessel North to patrol the Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, Viscount Melville Sound and McClure Strait. Open water in McClure Strait tempted Bernier to attempt the Northwest Passage, but because this would have exceeded his orders, he resisted. Once again the vessel wintered in the North, but this time it anchored at Admiralty Inlet. Parties on sled were dispatched across the region to explore and conduct scientific surveys.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/arcticexpedition/icebreakers/cgs-arctic
Then many visited Kellet’s Storehouse.
http://pwnhc.learnnet.nt.ca/exhibits/nv/kellet.htm
And you could also check why they call Parry’s Channel, Parry’s Channel.
And here is a link to a map of the Canadian Arctic.
http://www.canada-maps.org/northwest-territories/images/northwest-territories-map.gif
If you carefully compare the AMRS-E data to the modis “real” daily images you will see that they are remarkably accurate. (this is to those that for whatever reason don’t trust the source), unless you believe that NASA has a team of artists who manually makeover each of the modis images as they come on stream in the few hours they have.
The little hump data wise is of no real consequence IMO, whether they smooth it or not is pretty irrelavent and considering the demands on their time is a little down the list of things.
Shawn
I followed the link to the discussion with Phil and as Yogi bear says ‘I had a feeling of deja vu all over again’ It is very similar to last years Baby ice melodrama!
You will remember I started my arctic ice through the ages thread on CA last year in order to provide a high level of proof good enough to satisfy Bender and accumulated much information.
Amundsen intended to stay at Gjoahavn (or whatever suitable anchorage he found) for the following year. He brought sufficient provisions for his crew plus the basic materials to carry out various activities such as building an observatory and huts and the items needed to carry out long term experiments. He wanted to relocate the magnetic north pole and carry out related magnetic readings.
Debt collectors were trying to seize his ship and lets be diplomatic and say that Amundsen had no intention of leaving in 1904 whether or not he would have been able to. I think Phil says over at CA that the 1903 ice was very limited and in 1904 it was greater-which surely tells us something about variability?
I think the slightly depressing thing about all this is that we have numerous documents from the 19th century that make scientific observations of the arctic. They illustrate hugely varying amounts of ice each season-if there was an 19th century equivalent of that CA thread it would sound very similar.
Nearly 200 years ago they knew the strength and direction of the wind and the warmth of the water were the most important elements of ice melt and that these changed monthly and yearly, consequently they recorded them. I wonder if they are discounted in the same manner as Beck’s co2 measurements from the same period?
Tonyb
The iceberg (23:43:37) :
If you carefully compare the AMRS-E data to the modis ārealā daily
I am sorry, but what is “modis”? I find the word only in your post, and you give no link.
The only daily ice updates I know are at http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
and when go to the daily archives, I see that the north hemisphere is stuck on the image of May 7
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/20090507.jpg
…..
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/20090611.jpg
all between are identical.
So, yes, there must be artists, be they computer programs, that produce the daily nice view on cryosphere.
All this was very informative, thanks to you and to Dr. Meier (Anthony, you misspelled his name in the Update) and to everyone who commented.
Another frequently asked question on this blog and others is, “Would that sunspot have been counted 100 years ago?” I’ve seen the answer numerous times within the comments sections of sunspot articles, but it would be nice to do a “They counted that? WUWT?” article as part two of your series.
š I’m hoping its a series.
TonyB
You did the footwork to collect a large volume of past proof of the warming and cooling of the Earth. All this is diregarded by a large part of the scientific community since it provides proof that the AGW theory is likely wrong and the Earth is at the end of a natural warming period and entered a natural cooling period just it has repeatedely done in the past.
I am firmly convinced that these scientists have no desire to find the truth and will stick with the AGW theory untill there is a couple miles of ice on top of Detroit.
Have we been this way before? Help needed
http://www.climateaudit.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=520
Nearly 200 years ago they knew the strength and direction of the wind and the warmth of the water were the most important elements of ice melt and that these changed monthly and yearly, consequently they recorded them.
I would say that the level of Arctic ice has tracked the warming and cooling of the Earth.
TonyB (12:03:28) :
I do not know whether this is up your area of research, but there exists a tenth century
http://www.stoa.org/sol/
The Suda is a massive 10th century Byzantine Greek historical encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, derived from the scholia to critical editions of canonical works and from compilations by yet earlier authors. The purpose of the Suda On Line is to open up this stronghold of information by means of a freely accessible, keyword-searchable, XML-encoded database with translations, annotations, bibliography, and automatically generated links to a number of other important electronic resources.
When I first retired I thought of brushing up my ancient greek and trying my hand at translations, but it required more persistence than I had, I guess. It has grown a lot since then. It might be used to get an idea of the weather of the eastern mediteranean region, though it is probably work for a student.
Anna V
Thanks for this. I have the general climate records of the Byzantine empire but was not aware of this site so will have a look around. It is a fascinating era, all the better for having administrators documenting many things so well.
Tonyb
Shawn Whelan 06 23 69
I think one follows the other although not neccesarily quickly and not always in the same place all the time.
Tonyb
Shawn Whelan (20:51:11) :
TonyB
It is quite useless to have a factual argument with Phil on this topic.
He routinely provides fictional accounts with no factual backup.
The problem is your persistent exaggeration and mis-statements on the subject and refusal to accept verifiable facts in rebuttal.
Phil does not seek to learn the facts but obtusely defends his AGW belief the facts be darned.
What AGW belief? The discussion is about the historical record, and absurd statements, repeatedly made by you, such as ‘Amundsen easily traversed the NW passage’.
Amundsen could have left in 1904. It was not a joy ride and he was there to perform precise scientific experiments. It is an old wives tale that he was stuck in the ice.
Only if Amundsen himself is the ‘old wife’. As his account in “The North West Passage”, vol 1, which I referred to and quoted from above, makes clear the Gjoa could not have continued in 1904:
” Late in July he refers to Simpson Strait being closed but hopes it might melt. However, early in August Hansen left to establish a depot at Cape Crozier for the following springās reconnaissance trip, Simpson Strait was blocked with ice both on the way out and on their return (7th Sept). Gjoahavn froze completely by 21st Sept.
Summarizing their experience that summer Amundsen writes:
āThe summer had been cold and inclement and there had been very little open water for navigation. (using dories and kayaks not the Gjoa: Phil.) We could only hope for better luck next year.ā”
http://www.mnc.net/norway/Amundsen.htm
As an example I just recently explained to Phil that his claim that Amundsen was rescued by the Alaska coast guard is false and provided the proof. Amundsen went through the NE Passage left the Maud which turned back and delibaretely froze itself in the ice. Amundsen was no where near the Maud when it was rescued. Now he makes the same false claim. It goes on and on.
It was not a false claim, as usual the actual discussion has been changed by Shawn. He stated that “And after Amundsen went through the NW Passage he later went through the NE passage and completed the circle around the North Pole. And then after that the AGW caused the Arctic to warm for 100 plus years and the ice level appears to have increased or stayed at the same level.”
The point of my statement “Also Amundsen had to have his ship rescued from the ice by the alaskan coastguard after his NE passage trip in and area which was open water last year. Also the attempt to claim Wrangel Island by a US/Canadian expedition in 1922 failed because it was cut off for resupply for over a year (all except for one woman died). So your account of greater ice seems not to agree with those events.” was clearly to show that conditions in 1922 were not better than today’s but worse.
According to the Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute in 1922 “Ice conditions in the Arctic off the Northern Alaskan coast are the worst in many years. Captain Cochran, of the Bear (the ship that rescued the Maud: Phil.), guided his vessel for mile through tremendous ice floes, reaching Point Barrow with difficulty.
As an example check this exchange in the climate audit thread. Phil is now making many of the same false claims again here that I just proved wrong in that thread.
You didn’t prove those facts wrong then and you haven’t now.
No point in going through it again with Phil. Read here instead of doing the whole discussion again. Starts at comment 227.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5614#comment-337310
Why is it that so many of the AGW scientists are more concerned with holding their position than searching for the truth?
What does this have to do with AGW, we’re discussing your exaggerations and mis-statements?
Shawn Whelan (21:12:12) :
Many more have traversed the length of the Northern Route of the NW Passage.
“Really who and when?”
Hereās one that sailed the length of the Northern Route of the NW Passage.
What Bernier did in 1911 wonāt be possible this year after almost a hundred years of AGW.
As the account below makes clear he didn’t “sail the length of the Northern Route of the NW Passage”.
On the Arcticās third expedition in 1910-11, Bernier took the vessel North to patrol the Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, Viscount Melville Sound and McClure Strait. Open water in McClure Strait tempted Bernier to attempt the Northwest Passage, but because this would have exceeded his orders, he resisted.
Finding the clear water is not the same thing as actually sailing it and would not guarantee that he would be able to get though past Banks I. Despite your confident assertion that such a journey won’t be possible this year is was possible in 2007 and last year. See for example:
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsredata/asi_daygrid_swath/l1a/n6250/_2007/aug/asi180-n6250-20070830_nic.png
anna v (04:01:49) :
The iceberg (23:43:37) :
“If you carefully compare the AMRS-E data to the modis ārealā daily”
I am sorry, but what is āmodisā? I find the word only in your post, and you give no link.
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/
The only daily ice updates I know are at http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
and when go to the daily archives, I see that the north hemisphere is stuck on the image of May 7
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/20090507.jpg
ā¦..
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/20090611.jpg
all between are identical.
How did you miss the following statement at CT?
“February 25, 2009 – The SSMI images for many days in 2009 were bad enough that we removed them from this comparison display (see note below and the NSIDC website). There is enough interest in these side-by-side comparison images that we will try to replace them with corresponding images from the AMSR-E sensor in the coming weeks.
February 17, 2009 – The SSMI sensor seems to be acting up and dropping data swaths from time to time in recent days. Missing swaths will appear on these images as missing data in the southern latitudes. If this persists for more than a few weeks, we will start to fill in these missing data swaths with the ice concentration from the previous day or switch over to the higher resolution AMSR-E sensor. Note – these missing swaths do not affect the timeseries or any other plots on the Cryosphere Today as they are comprised of moving composites of at least three days.”
So, yes, there must be artists, be they computer programs, that produce the daily nice view on cryosphere.
No it’s the satellite called AMSR-E.
phil 12 14 59
I am not taking sides in your entertaining spats with Shawn š on a variety of issues, I am merely commenting on the Amundsen expedition of 1903-06 when I said;
“Amundsen intended to stay at Gjoahavn (or whatever suitable anchorage he found) for the following year. He brought sufficient provisions for his crew plus the basic materials to carry out various activities such as building an observatory and huts and the items needed to carry out long term experiments. He wanted to relocate the magnetic north pole and carry out related magnetic readings.
… lets be diplomatic and say that Amundsen had no intention of leaving in 1904 whether or not he would have been able to.”
Amundsen wanterd to make continuous recordings of the magnetic elements during at least one full season and needed to be around 100 miles from magnetic north, so gjoa haven self selected itself because it was sheltered. They built an observatory and a living hut and intended to spend 1904 there.
Whether they COULD have got out or not I am not arguing about. I am merely saying they did not intend to move.
I think the most interesting things about this is the variabilty in ice between 1903 and 1904, and the fact that, despite a cold summer in 1904, November 18,21 and 22 1904 remain the warmest days in the record.
I am not making any point of this or saying Amundsen would have attempted to sail at this time of year, but merely that variability season to season and even day to day is the norm.
P.s. Much enjoyed your contribution to the co2 condensation debate although you did get a little heated at times š
TonyB
This is from comments 236 and 237 in the Climate audit thread.
Here is what I wrote at comment 236 in the climate Audit thread
Not true at all. Amundsen went throught the NE Passage and the NW Passage and he did circumnavigate the Arctic.
“After World War I, Amundsen planned to drift from the Bering Strait towards the North Pole in the Maud. Taking the Northeast Passage to the Bering Strait (1918-20), he became the second man (the first was Nils Nordenskjƶld)to sail along the whole northern coast of Europe and Asia.”
http://history.howstuffworks.com/polar-history/roald-amundsen.htm/printable
Nils Nordenskjƶld
“1878-79: The Swedish explorer was the first to complete a voyage through the Northeast Passage along the northern coast of Europe and Asia. Travelling in the steamship Vega, he started in 1878 from Norway and, after spending one winter ice-bound in the Arctic, finally emerged into the Pacific Ocean.”
http://www.athropolis.com/map6.htm
How did they do that before a hundred plus years of global warming warmed the Arctic?
Here is Phils answer at comment 237
By taking several summers for each crossing and when necessary hiking the rest of the way.
Complete and utter nonsense. There is no other way to describe it.
Niether Amundsen or Nordenskjƶld completed their passages by hiking the rest of the way. They both traversed the passages with their boats.
This is what Phil says in this thread at 12:14.
The point of my statement āAlso Amundsen had to have his ship rescued from the ice by the alaskan coastguard after his NE passage trip in and area which was open water last year.
This is what Phil said at comment 235 of the Climate audit thread. He being Amundsen.
He, of course, started that journey in 1918 and finished it on foot two years later, his ship took rather longer being towed out of the ice by a coastguard vessel in 1921 I think.
Not quite the truth Phil. Amundsen never completed the passage by foot. Your distorting the truth and also not being honest about what you said.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5614#comment-337310
Quote Shawn
Hereās one that sailed the length of the Northern Route of the NW Passage.
What Bernier did in 1911 wonāt be possible this year after almost a hundred years of AGW.
Quote Phil
As the account below makes clear he didnāt āsail the length of the Northern Route of the NW Passageā.
Of course he sailed the length of the passage. Here is a map for reference.
http://www.canada-maps.org/northwest-territories/images/northwest-territories-map.gif
Quote Phil at 12:14
“The point of my statement āAlso Amundsen had to have his ship rescued from the ice by the alaskan coastguard after his NE passage trip in and area which was open water last year.”
Quote Phil from the Climate Audit thread comment 235 (“he” meaning Amundsen)
He, of course, started that journey in 1918 and finished it on foot two years later, his ship took rather longer being towed out of the ice by a coastguard vessel in 1921 I think.
Quote Shawn Climate Audit thread 236
Not true at all. Amundsen went throught the NE Passage and the NW Passage and he did circumnavigate the Arctic.
“After World War I, Amundsen planned to drift from the Bering Strait towards the North Pole in the Maud. Taking the Northeast Passage to the Bering Strait (1918-20), he became the second man (the first was Nils Nordenskjƶld)to sail along the whole northern coast of Europe and Asia.”
http://history.howstuffworks.com/polar-history/roald-amundsen.htm/printable
Nils Nordenskjƶld
“1878-79: The Swedish explorer was the first to complete a voyage through the Northeast Passage along the northern coast of Europe and Asia. Travelling in the steamship Vega, he started in 1878 from Norway and, after spending one winter ice-bound in the Arctic, finally emerged into the Pacific Ocean.”
http://www.athropolis.com/map6.htm
How did they do that before a hundred plus years of global warming warmed the Arctic?
Quote Phil from the Climate Audit thread comment 237
By taking several summers for each crossing and when necessary hiking the rest of the way.
Totally untrue neither Amundsen or Nordenskjƶld hiked any part of the way. They both took their boats through the passages.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5614#comment-337310
I rest my case.
Thanks Phil,
Using the link
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?mosaic=Arctic
You can see the real time picture of the arctic which maps the AMRSE data very well if not perfectly.
Next question is why did JAXA stop updating on June 11?
Next question is why is there such a large difference between arctic roos and NSIDC?
http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
The jet stream has been circling the wagons again, keeping the ice in the frig. As long as the jet stream keeps up this dizzying circle, I don’t see much melt happening. My prediction is entirely based on the jet stream. If it continues to circle, the melt rate will slow and move ahead of all the previous JAXA data.
It doesn’t look good for the ice… Temperatures anomaly for May is shown on this map:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2009/may/map-blended-mntp-200905-pg.gif
Notice that Greenland, Alaska, and western Siberia areas are running 4-5 C above the baseline average. Not coincidentally, both coasts of Greenland melted off fast, and open water is already present along much of the coast of Siberia.
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/arctic_AMSRE_nic.png
The colder than normal temperatures this year in central northern Canada, seems to have delayed the ice melt in Hudson’s Bay, but the ice pack at these lower latitudes should melt out fast in the coming weeks, so expect the ice extent to drop faster than normal.
Given the huge loss in thicker multiyear ice the last two years, the ice pack is bad shape. The comments we have been reading about ice pack is back to normal, and the ice pack is recovering, seem to be pretty far off the mark.
I found this fascinating quote today:
This is why I’m creating my own cheap pools; You play a crucial role in this area.
Fusion, cheap above ground swimming pools