What sudden recent warming? What Hockey Stick? I don’t see any.
By Lucy Skywalker Green World Trust
with thanks to the late John Daly and his timeless, brilliant website page “What the Stations Say” (click on Arctic map above). Click on each thumbnail graph to access Daly’s full size graph with time and temperature scales and other details. The thicker dark horizontal line across some of these thumbnails indicated 0ºC (a few of the graphs are ALL under that line). The Arctic is shown in the condition of summer sea ice (see thumbnail below) and the pale circle is the Arctic Circle. All data comes from NASA GISS or CRU originally.
Paul Vaughan notes at WUWT that he “spent a fair amount of time updating these graphs (& others of Daly’s for other regions)” using http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/ and adds a cautionary note: The time-frame and aspect-ratio of the timeplots can be manipulated to create the illusion of a steep trend in recent years.
The highly variable temperatures and amounts of sea ice in both polar regions is well-known to locals, but cherrypicked extremes have become a media weapon to scare ignorant folk with. Greenlanders today are aware of recent warming; but history, archaeology, and the Norse sagas show that Greenland was warmer than today in the Middle Ages, when crops and trees were grown there. For recent sea ice changes (since 1979) see Cryosphere Today and note that while Northern Hemisphere sea ice (at the top of the CT page) has gone down recently (but is currently going up again), Southern Hemisphere sea ice (at the bottom of the CT page) is going up, so that the overall total is pretty constant although fluctuating between summer and winter.
Finally, Jeff Id’s superb animation of recent Arctic sea ice>>
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When there’s a trend, you can always cherry-pick locations that show it to a lesser extent. But the zonal average tells a more representative story. The Arctic is warming. There’s a plot and link to data here.
Well done Lucy, this was good work. I’ve posted a couple of comments over on your CA thread
Good luck with your talk.
There is hope, I sit on a committee of one of our Govt agencies and am always castigating the AGW figures. Last time I did this in response to a talk by a climate scientist and insisted my comments were recorded in the minutes.
After the talk several senior people of the agency came up to me and said they agreed with what I said privately, but couldnt say so publicly as it was more than their job was worth.
So the green resistance is startIng…
tonyb
Such a pity that this is a ”EYES ONLY TOP SECRET” document, now if only it was deregulated those politicians that read, might do so.
“Paul Vaughan notes at WUWT that he “spent a fair amount of time updating these graphs (& others of Daly’s for other regions)” using http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/ and adds a cautionary note: The time-frame and aspect-ratio of the timeplots can be manipulated to create the illusion of a steep trend in recent years.”
Is that really why all graphs end at or before the year 2003?
Given the fact that after 2004 so much of the Arctic Ocean has become ice free in summer, methinks some station’s data cannot be manipulated to create the illusion of no trend!
RR Kampen asks: “Is that really why all graphs end at or before the year 2003?”
No, it’s because they’ve stopped collecting data! At least GISS has, just look up different areas of the arctic here, and see how few stations that have reported anything at all in 2009: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
I don’t understand how they dare make any claims about recent arctic temperatures at all with a data set that sparse.
Another way to view the poor quality of the data, is to look at the GISS temperature anomaly chart, but with a 250km radius instead of their usual 1200km radius. You’ll see that both the arctic and Antarctica has vast uncovered areas (ah, and Africa and South America, too…):
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2009&month_last=07&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=07&year1=2009&year2=2009&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=reg
Thanks a lot to Lucy Skywalker for presenting this. I’ve recently browsed station data at GISS and other sources (Canadian met. pages) and while this not exactly being a scientific approach, my impression so far is that wherever there are long and good data series, it seems that (1) there’s no clear trend, and that (2) the 1940s might have been warmer than recent years. Not to mention the MWP, the Vikings weren’t lunatics when they established farms in Greeland…
When certain folks start going on about catastropic Arctic warming, I have to remind myself that we’re talking the Land of Frozen.
What difference does it make if it’s 45 below or 48 below?
It’s still not fit for man nor beast.
Every year, a couple of frozen idiots are pulled off of Mt. Rainier or Mt. Hood who had a really stupid idea of climbing up there too late in the season.
Unfortunately, they don’t live to tell other idiots why people don’t live up there.
It’s uninhabitable.
What if climatologists and environmentalists aren’t actually bothered by the lack of solid evidence?
There’s the argument that we only have one Earth so we can’t experiment in a normal scientific way.
To them, all the criticisms about the data may simply be a case of, “yeah, we know, but so what?”
Anyone familiar with Post-Normal Science?
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Post-Normal_Science
RR Kampen (02:14:00) :
See my post on the frozen mountain climbing idiots.
They discover moments before freezing to death why the Norse colonies on Greenland perished.
You still can’t live there, 1000 years later, but you can’t tell them that the day before they take thier last climb.
It’s good to see John Daly remembered. It was “Still Waiting for Greenhouse” that first got me interested in global warming.
Thanks Lucy – its good to see the overall picture. I also accessed both Daly’s data and GISS – the latter when I realised Daly’s would be too out-of-date to be usable. And there was a real problem getting continuity through the stations, especially to 2009. My conclusion was that the great majority of stations showed records around 1940, but did not feature 2005-2009 data, when according to CRU and IARC compilations of about 19 stations, the Arctic region as a whole showed peaks in 2007/2008, since dropping back. This peak is about 70 years on from the last peak and is around 20% higher. It will be interesting to see how deep the next trough goes!
The Greenland temperatures are perhaps the most important, and these are the key ones showing the latest peak – but there is a difference between east and west Greenland.
I have come to the conclusion from this Arctic data that if greenhouse gases are having an effect (since 1940), then it can’t be more than about 20% – and the same conclusion can be made from satellite data of the increased short-wave flux to the global oceans from 1980-2000 caused by thinning cloud – the net radiation gain is about four times that computed for infra-red ‘radiative forcing’.
As you may be aware, Syun-Ichi Akasofu, formerly head of the International Arctic Research Centre in Fairbanks, thinks the overall trend from 1800 hasn’t changed much as a ‘recovery from the Little Ice Age’ and his report is available from IARC/Akasofu website (you can google the link).
Nice summary.
Hard to believe that such scattered surface sources could be used to create an Arctic temperature average accurate enough to guide trillion dollar policies.
http://climaterealists.com/?id=3995
Nick Stokes (01:55:48) :
When there’s a trend, you can always cherry-pick locations that show it to a lesser extent. But the zonal average tells a more representative story. The Arctic is warming. There’s a plot and link to data here.
I note that the graph you link to appears to be of a single column of data from a set described as having eliminated outliers and a homogeneity adjustment. I’m sure it’s mere synchronicity that though none of the raw data shows much of a trend when the proper adjustments are made an uptrend suddenly and magically appears.
@ur momisugly Stefan
Stefan, thank you for your input and your interesting link
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Post-Normal_Science
I read a little bit and my lunch almost came back from my stomach. I’m deadly serious
Read phrases like:
“The traditional distinction between ‘hard’, objective scientific facts and ‘soft’, subjective value-judgements is now inverted.”
Stuff like this is the end of our Western Civilisation. Are we an empire on its deathbed similar to the Roman Empire?
“There’s the argument that we only have one Earth so we can’t experiment in a normal scientific way”
So then stop emitting Carbon Dioxid. We will not ruin our economy only because there’s a chance of 1:10000000000 that the doom forecasts of someons is correct.
If you think in such a manner, you pray everday to every God that exists, because there is a chance that the Christian or Jewish or whatever God exists
“What if climatologists and environmentalists aren’t actually bothered by the lack of solid evidence?”
Then they are bloody stupid
The GISS data for the Angmassalik station is very useful – it goes back to the 19th century almost without interruptions: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431043600000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
It does look like the 30s and 40s were slightly warmer than the 2000s, doesn’t it?
I downloaded the data, and then computed 10-year trailing moving averages for the yearly temperature (last column). The years with the highest 10-year moving average temperatures were:
1935 -0.036
1936 -0.107
1934 -0.119
1948 -0.137
2008 -0.139
2007 -0.187
1937 -0.188
1947 -0.216
1933 -0.27
1941 -0.284
10 year trailing moving averages for Nuuk are even more obvious:
1936 -0.061
1935 -0.115
1937 -0.159
1932 -0.239
1933 -0.245
1934 -0.318
1948 -0.335
1941 -0.341
1966 -0.388
1942 -0.400
The invaluable work of John Daly is enhanced if a clear distinction is made between the summer and winter temperatures in the Arctic, as can be found at: http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/, where it is shown that the most pronounced Arctic warming since the end of the Little Ice Age from 1919 to 1939 was ocean related, respectively caused by the West Spitsbergen current.
So here it is! Then compare this data with e.g. Siberian cities. You certainly find hockey sticks there:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222286980007&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222298380006&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222295700006&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=211351880010&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222307100009&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
This arctic data as well as data from rural areas don’t show hockey sticks. They only show solar activity signal.
AGW has collapsed. There truly is human induced signal in GISS and HadCRUT datas, but it is caused by UHI. When GISS offers urban/rural option? Hansen, do something!
Dave Wendt
You don’t know that none of the raw data shows trend. This post only presents a cherry-picked set.
And you don’t even know that it is raw. Unlike the GHCN source that I quoted, the original post gives almost no sourcing information.
REPLY: Nick here is a complete list of all GHCN stations that appear at or above the Arctic Circle (66.56°N). Note that many of them have closed, or stopped reporting data. With so few to choose from, it is rather hard to Cherry Pick and still have much usuable stations left.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/ghcn_arctic_circle_stations.pdf
Feel free to pick your own list from this set of stations.
-A
Espen (02:34:54) / RR Kampen (02:14:00)
“Data? We ain’t got no data. We don’t need no data. I don’t have to show you any stinking data.”
Data IS the problem and there really is no short term solution. As has been demonstrated here there is no accurate long term data. GISS claims to go back to 1880 but that is a joke. They have data for two sites in Africa and none at all for South America or Antarctica and that’s not even addressing the quality of the data.
Here is the long term solution. Upgrade the surface stations monitor the quality, compare it to satellite data and proxies where you actually know what the temperature and rainfall was, sit back and wait a hundred or better yet, five hundred years. Then you’ll have data!
The problem with that is:
1. If believers are right, it will be too late.
2. Either way the lack of grant money to the theorists will force them to get a real job.
Or you can simply make up the data.
Let’s look at the quality control of GISS. The worst I’ve seen recently is an anomaly of +19.4967 C (+35.0941 F) near the city of Akzigit Kazakhstan for January 2002.
They are claiming that it was almost 20 degrees above average for an entire month? I couldn’t find weather data for Akzigit but I did find it for Aktau about 160 km away. They average about -10 C in January. That means that it should have averaged about +10 C for the month. In my home town of Stone Mountain, Georgia, USA that would mean a record high every day for an entire month by an average of 9 C (20 F)! Come on. Nobody questions this?
This isn’t just one grid but four adjacent ones plus at least three others that are impacted by this crap. If you let crap like this in what does it say about the integrity of the entire database that is supposed to be accurate within a tenth of an inch?
Another good example of how applying statistics to the right bits of data from a dynamic chaotic system can indicate whatever you want.
Physical evidence from satellite photo’s shows that both Arctic and Antarctic ice are in good shape, so where’s the panic?
Until we have accurate data with sufficient granularity for all climate metrics and a thourough understanding of how the different mechanisms interact the science of Climatology (and med/long range weather forecasts) will be no better than Astrology.
Lucy,
Of course, you and I disagree about AGW and are both passionate. I do applaud you for backing up your arguments with data instead of just “talking trash”.
I interperate this thread as a response to the recent paper by Kaufman et al. where they show the Arctic has reversed a 2,000 year cooling trend, especially in the last 100 years and the last 10 years. Your data actually supports their claim because all of these plots show warmer temps than those of the previous 2000 years. Of course, you cannot reproduce their hockey stick if you are not using 2000 years of data.
As has been mentioned by others in other blogs, summer data in ice covered areas will skew the annual data because the heat is being used to melt the ice and temps do not move much. This is why Anthony Watts analysis in a previous post was very misleading. His animation did show warming in the cooler season. Here is a plot that shows this phenomena for locations north of 80 degrees:
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/janjul.jpg
I know many of you do not view Tamino’s posts but there may be a few of you interested in another interpretation of what the Arctic is doing.
REPLY: To be fair, much of the 2000 years worth of data is based on proxies, not actual measurements. And the proxy data as well as the methodology is suspect. The authors still haven’t fixed leftover junk from Mann, such as the upside down Tiljander series. Further, many of the proxies used have other problems as Steve McIntyre is demonstrating.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6932
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6981
Lucy is reacting to the “reversal in the mid 20th century” statement in the paper. Putting the questionable proxy data aside, the question is: is there a reversal in overall Arctic Temps in the 20th Century?
Jeff ID also has some interesting views on it:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/rewriting-arctic-history/
What is most interesting is that once again, the Hockey Team worked hard to eliminate the MWP. Yet there is plenty of evidence to support its existence. With the MWP gone it makes Mann’s and Kaufman’s work much easier. Hockey GAME ON!
For all you warmists that are worried about Kaufman not being represented fairly, let me point out that it got hundreds of mainstream news articles thanks to the multi-press release media blitz staged by the authors. Those articles reached millions. All this before many had a chance to view the paper since the PR preceded the paper. Hyping scientific papers in the press prior to their publication seems like an act of desperation to me. Or maybe it was designed so nobody could question it before the news machine got geared up and pumped out the PR? Hmmm.
Here we might reach a few thousand eyeballs, and a few gripers are concerned we might be misleading people by looking at actual 20th century measured temperatures instead of proxies.
– A
Scott Mandia: The vikings did thrive on Greenland during the MWP. No mannomatic misuse of statistic methods applied to sparse (and partly misused) proxy data sets can erase that simple historic fact.
So the facts are: During the Eemian perid, the Arctic was much warmer than now – and Greenland didn’t melt. 1100 – 700 years ago, at least one part of the arctic was significantly warmer than now. 65 – 80 years ago, the arctic was at least as warm as now. In the meantime, the Arctic was pretty cold in the eighties and nineties. “Arctic warming” = natural variation!
Anthony,
Feel free to pick your own list from this set of stations.
Your list has about 95 stations within the Arctic Circle. This post shows just 15, and even then it’s not clear that they are on the list. So yes, there is ample scope for cherry picking.
You asked for a counter list. The Norwegian site Rimfrost collects a lot of this data. Here is a list of Norwegian sites, with increases over the last 50 years:
CHANGE IN AVERAGE TEMPERATURE
FROM 1959 TO 2008 (UNIT °C)
Trend computation : Linear regression
SELECTION : ALL STATIONS
COUNTRY/REGION MEAN VALUE : 1.45°C
STATION CHANGE(°C) YEARS METER ASL
LONGYEARBY : 3.36 (1959 – 2008) 27
HOPEN -NOR : 3.34 (1959 – 2008) 6
BJØRNØYA – : 2.35 (1959 – 2008) 16
NESBYEN – : 2.25 (1959 – 2008) 164
GARDERMOEN : 2.23 (1959 – 2008) 208
LILLEHAMME : 2.12 (1959 – 2008) 242
JAN-MAYEN : 2.11 (1959 – 2008) 10
KISE – Rin : 2.07 (1959 – 2008) 122
Or Greenland over 30 years:
GREENLAND
CHANGE IN AVERAGE TEMPERATURE
FROM 1979 TO 2008 (UNIT °C)
Trend computation :
SELECTION : ALL STATIONS
COUNTRY/REGION MEAN VALUE : 2.17°C
STATION CHANGE(°C) YEARS METER ASL
EGEDSMINDE : 3.0 (1979 – 2008) 41
ITTOQQORTO : 2.66 (1979 – 2008) 65
UPERNAVIK : 2.62 (1979 – 2008) 122
TASIILAQ : 2.39 (1979 – 2008) 0
ANGMASSALIK : 2.15 (1979 – 2008) 52
ILLULISAT : 2.14 (1979 – 2008) 0
DANMARKS-HAVN : 1.96 (1979 – 2008) 12
NUUK : 1.95 (1979 – 2008) 70
Or Canada over 50 years:
CHANGE IN AVERAGE TEMPERATURE
FROM 1959 TO 2008 (UNIT °C)
Trend computation : Linear regression
STATION CHANGE(°C) YEARS METER ASL
INUVIK (N. : 3.89 (1959 – 2008) 68
FORT_SMITH : 2.87 (1959 – 2008) 203
FORT SIMPS : 2.59 (1959 – 2008) 169
YELLOW_KNI : 2.53 (1959 – 2008) 205
NORMAN_WEL : 2.21 (1959 – 2008) 67
DAWSON (YU : 2.19 (1959 – 2008) 370
REPLY: Thanks very much Nick! I’ll get back to this. There’s an interesting issue here, not the least of which is that you went outside the Arctic circle to find stations not on my original list. Yellowknife for example, 62.45N. Dawson, 64.04N LONGYEARBY is an airport, BTW and is on the list I provided. In fact many are airports. You fell into the same trap many others have. You just choose the data for what it says, but pay no attention to the measurement environment. There’s a lesson here and a future post is coming from it. -A
Nick and Scott
Anyone who has researched the arctic will be astonished at the regular melting and refreezing of ice. There is much observed and scientifcally derived evidence to demonstrate that the current warming event is nothing out of the ordinary
To put Lucy’s map into perspective and help with overall orientation of the region, this link leads to a brilliant interactive arctic map (click on the dots) showing current temperatures.
http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm
There are numerous historic records of which the following is but one example-they are the British Board of Trade records for the region dating back 200 years
http://www2.swgc.mun.ca/nfld_history/CO194/index.htm
I ploughed through each of these for weather and ice references and it is one of the numerous sources cited in my thread
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice/#more-8688
I had to discard many more records than I could include for space reasons.
I am currently writing an article on the substantial 1920’s to 1940’s arctic warming and the even more remarkable periods that encompass the Vikings and Ipatuk-an arctic civilisation that predates the Romans.
I think some of us we have a romantic vision of a permanently frozen arctic that is derived from Victorian chroniclers-the same ones who invariably depicted Charles Dicklens age as permanently frozen when in reality it includes some of our warmest winters ( he wrote ‘ A Christmas Carol’ in a heatwave).
This vision extended to our notions of Hanibal struggling over ice filled Mountain passes to attack the Romans, when it appears he had a rather easier time than this as glaciers then were higher than today, and the Romans utilsed these high level passes to attack their enemies.
Luc’ys thread usefully gives a visual context to the debate using long temperature records.
tonyb