I thought it might be time for an update on this.
Earlier this year we had the big news that even though everything else says otherwise, the statistical wizards of Steig et al (with a cameo appearance by stat-stickster Michael Mann) managed to make Antarctica show a warming trend.
At left here’s the headline from the Sydney Morning Herald January 20th 2009, introducing Steig’s results.
Gosh. This new warm picture proves it. Right? Colors don’t lie. They quote Dr. Steig who says:
“The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling. But it’s more complex than that,” Professor Steig said. “Antarctica isn’t warming at the same rate everywhere and, while some areas have been cooling for a long time, the evidence shows the continent as a whole is getting warmer.”
Yes it is more complex than that. A part of that complex story is emerging this month. Right about the time when things should start warming up in Antarctica due to their onset of spring, it seems to be stalled according to one scientist on the ground there who writes ICE STORIES: dispatches from polar scientists (emphasis mine):
MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA– Wednesday, September 16, 2009. It has been a slow, and sometimes frustrating, effort to get our first successful science flight of the project, but we did succeed last night. Before discussing that flight I’d like to write about some of the hurdles we have had to overcome to get to this point.
The first obstacle, and the one least in our control, was the weather. The Aerosonde unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been flown in temperatures as cold as -30 degrees C (-22 deg F), and this was the intended minimum operating temperature for this project.
Prior to coming to Antarctica one of the members of my research group, Shelley Knuth, analyzed 14 years of automatic weather station data from a weather station located at the Pegasus runway that we are using for our UAV flights.
Based on her analysis the temperature at Pegasus is above -30 degrees C for approximately 50% of the time in September, and is below -40 degrees C (which is also -40 degrees F) only 9% of the time in September on average. Of course the weather for any given month rarely follows the average, and this September has been a colder than average September, with most days up until the past few days having temperatures below -30 degrees C at Pegasus, and many days having temperatures below -40 degrees C. This made our attempts to fly the Aerosondes very difficult.
Yes, yes, I know It’s weather, not climate. Hold the caterwauling. But please, also have a look at the NSIDC graph of sea ice for Antarctica. Sea ice forms around the warmer periphery of the continent, not in the cold continental center where Amundsen-Scott base is located. There’s quite the uptick in Antarctic sea ice when the slope should begin heading downward:
While the uptick now is interesting, the real news is the change in extent. Quite a difference from 2008, about 1 million square kilometers more than this time last year, and well above average. The gain in Antarctica extent this year is 2 times that of the gain in the Arctic at 500,000 square kilometers.
Since the wisdom in the press headline is that “Antarctica is melting – sell the beach house”, but we see Antarctic ice increasing, one can only conclude that like Steigs upside down thermometers, we must also have upside down ice sensors, and the ice is actually less than last year. I’m sure somebody can prove that statistically.
Or, the headlines could just be bullpuckey from the press. Which is it? Inquiring minds want to know. If you need a look a how the media spins the melt season in Antarctica, look no further than this CBS News report from Scott Pelley.
Just for fun; a couple of weather forecasts from Weather Underground. Looks like they may finally get the plane launched at McMurdo.
Amundsen-Scott Base at the South Pole:
McMurdo Base:
The press does not create “bullpuckey”. That would require both knowledge and effort. Rather, the press picks up the “bullpuckey” deposited by others and throws it in your direction. The press accepts no responsibility for the “bullpuckey” it hurls around, since it is just the messenger. The press also appears to have allowed all of its vaunted “bullpuckey’ detectors to fall into the same state of disrepair as the US network of surface temperature measurement stations. It is wise to assume that nothing sent in your direction by the press can safely be picked up by its clean end. 🙂
Even when there is more ice we have to remember that changes in the northern ice pack are a product of wind, not temperature.
There’s lies, damn lies and statistics…
I do love it when old m. nature sticks two fingers (well one for all you non UK types) up at the supremely knowledgeable beings that we are :o)
Repeat after me: The science is settled, the science is settled, the science is settled.
Can you get a frostbitten brain I wonder – might help explain that original paper…
Cheers
Mark
Drs. Steig and Mann are right now hard at work “correcting” the faulty temperatures in Antarctica. Their spokesman, Dr. Sooja Caliente of the IPCC Polar Statistical Institute assures readers that the team will have completed their difficult calculations in time for the Copenhagen Climate Conference.
Two things:
1- The sea ice extent in Antarctica is high this year, was low last year (see the graph). It’s fluctuating without any positive or negative trend.
2- The Antarctic is loosing 200 Gt of ice each year…
E. Rignot, J. Bamber, M. van den Broeke, C. Davis, Y. Li, W. van de Berg, E. van Meijgaard (2008) Recent mass loss of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from dynamic thinning, Nature Geoscience
So how exactly is this compatible with the above assertion that “ice is not melting” in Antarctica?
REPLY: Well Flanagan, look around. Some areas are losing mass, some are gaining:
http://www.physorg.com/news4180.html
or this one, contrasting what was thought to be losses
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/295/5554/476
The whole mass loss “Yes it is! No it isn’t!” schoolyard fight over Antarctic ice mass balance isn’t very convincing. You quote a loss of 200 GT out of the whole mass of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Hmmm what I found most interesting is that in all of the studies I researched, none seem to give the figure in relation to the total mass for the Antarctic Ice sheet. For example this one from NASA:
http://www.csr.utexas.edu/GRACE/publications/press/012308_jpl.pdf
“The team found that the net loss of ice mass from Antarctica increased from 112 (plus or minus 91)
gigatonnes a year in 1996 to 196 (plus or minus 92) gigatonnes a year in 2006.”
Wow such accuracy in measurement. At least they have the honesty to show error bands.
A commenter Ed Ring at Eco World, sums it up nicely (emphasis mine):
Even the Eco World blog operator doesn’t believe there’s a problem:
Not to worry Flanagan. Your view is simply suffering from the annual “ice shelf cracks off a berg everybody freaks out kabuki MSM theater”. Will we get to see a frantic repeat of this photo again this year?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/26/media-addicted-to-melt-when-it-it-should-be-crack/
Spin from Reuters: Over 500,000 square kilometers gained is just “a bit”; while 55 square kilometers broken away was “huge”
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2009/09/spin-from-reuters-over-500000-square.html
As for your statement, ” It’s fluctuating without any positive or negative trend.” Wrong again Flanagan.
There is a positive trend in SH sea ice anomaly:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg
or this view with a trend line if you like
http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/south-ice-anomaly1.jpg
But don’t take my word for it (since I never take yours) read what others have to say:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/27/why-the-greenland-and-antarctic-ice-sheets-are-not-collapsing/
and the paper
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/OllierPaine-NoIceSheetCollapse-AIGNewsAug.2009.pdf
So yes Flanagan, your argument relies on media hype coupled with measurements that are not convincing and have large error bands, plus are miniscule in comparison to total mass.
To paraphrase Ed Ring using your 200 GT number: “A net loss of 200 gigatons against a mass of 20.5 million gigatons is nothing.
Not alarming. Go work for SMH or CBS News writing headines, you’d be good at it.
– Anthony
Once again, we confuse facts with reality.
Facts: Antarctic temps aren’t increasing, ice is setting records for maximum, modeled projections aren’t occurring.
Reality: “They” create the perception that the poles are melting, therefore they must be melting and we must “do something.”
And politicians everywhere respond to perception, not facts.
So it looks like a massive 2,500,000 square kilometers of new ice. As Darth Vader said to Luke in the “Empire Strikes Back”, “impressive, most impressive”.
I guess it’s a WHITE OUT this year in the antarctic!!! Ha ha… great film too!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteout_%282009_film%29
So where does that put 2009 in terms of the last few years when arctic and antarctic ice totals are added up? Graphs please.
Don’t forget this link from a year ago about the other pole;
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080620-north-pole.html
Funny how we hear so little about the South pole these days. I wonder why? The North will be thrown under the bus soon as well, as the ice is increasing there too.
It is my sad duty to inform you, that after a long illness, journalism is now dead….. Please send flowers.
deadwood (10:33:09)
…but, not in time for anyone else to check their numbers, assuming they are even willing to release them.
🙂
You can’t tell if a gigantic continent is warming the last 50 years with so little weather stations.
antonny, please korrekt this:
Quite a difference from 2008, about 2 million square kilometers more than this time last year, and well above average. The gain in Antarctica extent this year is 4 times that of the gain in the Arctic at 500,000 square kilometers
ist about 1 million (look at the graph) and then 2 times more…
greetings from austria, we have some positive mass balances in alps glaciers this year…
mark
REPLY: Thanks, I fixed that typo. – Anthony
Would it be possible/fruitful to produce an analysis of sea ice extent limited to the regions that Steig et al claim are warming?
Global sea ice vs Northern Hemisphere & Southern Hemisphere sea ice: click.
Global sea ice is increasing.
They have to get rid of the “some areas have been cooling for a long time” to make it sound compelling, it goes against the laws of AGW 😛
Seriously, until Amundsen actually gets above the freezing mark enough to melt their snow cover I wouldn’t panic.
RE: MikeC (10:25:45) :
Even when there is more ice we have to remember that changes in the northern ice pack are a product of wind, not temperature.
Wind alone can not melt ocean sheet ice. It takes heat to melt ice, either increasing air temperature or increasing ocean temperature. Heat is required to melt and break-up ice sheets. The wind only allows for the transport of the destabilized, melted, & fractured ice away from the ice sheet fringes. Both heat and wind are required to melt and remove the Arctic Ocean ice sheet.
deadwood (10:33:09) :
I’m all in favor of bashing the press which seems to have lost the ability to think for itself, but Dr. Steig had an interesting idea and the gumption to test it. If the results didn’t stand up to the scrutiny it was given over at the Air Vent, well, that’s science. Those guys took the paper apart piece by piece and may know it even better than Dr. Steig does by now, and they have deliberately refused to suggest any malfeasance was involved. Maybe we should do the same and stick to the science and policy implications.
And if that ice extent doesn’t kick over in a few days into melt mode, maybe we should start questioning their data gathering techniques. If the data is inaccurate, how the heck can we make policy to deal with situations we don’t know the dimensions of? If the ice extent measurements ARE correct…. it’s worse than we thought!
If the temperature is still below freezing even after it rises a bit, how does that melt the ice? There has to be a finite amount of ice that can accumulate over land, so if more builds up, it has to force some out over the ocean. Where it could well break off.
Living 6000 feet above sea level, I’m not really concerned. 🙂 (cheap icon)
Alarmists will cause more grief than the things they alarm about.
Cooling is the new warming….
Flanagan-
You said,
“1- The sea ice extent in Antarctica is high this year, was low last year (see the graph). It’s fluctuating without any positive or negative trend.”
If you accept 2 years as evidence of no trend, then do you also accept that the gains seen in the arctic over the last 2 years is evidence of an upwards trend?
Flanagan (10:33:15) :
comparing two years to find (or fail to find) a trend and throwing big numbers around without context is sloppy (at best!). What did you do, short home heating oil and go long on Carbon Credits?
Anthony, replies like that should be featured on the World Wrestling Federation on one of their Smackdown productions… : )
while Steig*s bad science method showed an increase in temperature over the last 60 years, there was an decrease over the last 50 year.
the latter result – though not published by Steig – is much more important regarding GHG.
Should we panic yet?:
ClickA
ClickB
ClickC
Clicky
The intense low pressures systems that constitute the circumpolar vortex appeared to have strengthened over the last few decades.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/296/5569/895
The circumpolar vortex is due to the intense cold over Antarctica and the atmospheric flows it produces.
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7p.html
A cooling Antarctica would produce a more intense Antarctic polar vortex and draw in more warmer mid-latitude air, which would explain why the Antarctic Peninsula has apparently warmed.
However, it is important to understand that both a cooling Antarctica and a warmer Antarctic Peninsula are both evidence that more heat is being lost to space from Antarctica and hence the SH’s/Earth’s climate is cooling.
The cause may well be the so called ozone hole.
So while declining summer sea ice in the NH is probably due to particulate pollution, increasing winter sea ice in the SH is a sign the climate is cooling.
BTW ozone is a greenhouse gas that has declined over the last 30 years. It would be ironic to say the least if GHG driven climate change turned out to be a cooling climate due to declining levels of ozone.
More on Ozone as a GHG
http://www.ghgonline.org/otherstropozone.htm
Re: Flanagan (10:33:15)
Flip one or the other over for comparison:
1) http://i41.tinypic.com/29zxus7.jpg [credit: Bob Tisdale]
2) Figure 7 here:
Sidorenkov, N.S. (2005). Physics of the Earth’s rotation instabilities. Astronomical and Astrophysical Transactions 24(5), 425-439.
http://images.astronet.ru/pubd/2008/09/28/0001230882/425-439.pdf
Also suggested: Read Yu.V. Barkin.
I get stunned that so few mention the very clear decadal/multi-decadal north-south oscillations. My guess is that many people don’t take into account the high latitude of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) (and erroneously expect that everything should be symmetric about the equator). So many miles to go with this discussion…