Why Joe Bastardi sees red: A look at Sea Ice and GISTEMP and starting choices

Grrr. Well done again!
I love this quote: “Anomalies are all about the starting choices made by people. Nature doesn’t give a hoot about anomalies.”
YES!
And also Nature tends to correct her wayward children anomaly brats by balancing them out towards equilibrium.
You are on to something: A moving baseline is like a moving set of goalposts.
They are both on the move…and they both do no represent scientific reality.
Imagine if, at Yankee Stadium, after every pitch, home base was randomly picked up and moved to another part of the field. The pitcher would have to aim for the new “target”….but the batter is not there, nor is the catcher, nor are the other positions adjusted….and the umpire is trying to call the shots from where he was.
Total pandemonium.
A moving baseline is no different.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

This seems very weak.
You can complain about colour schemes and so forth but it’s trends that matter and I think you know that.

HumanityRules (22:46:58) :
“Weak” on a scale of logic on what planet and in what universe?
The only thing that is weak is your attempting to broad-brush and gloss over what has been exposed here on this post.
Res ipsa loquiter.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

HumanityRules (22:46:58) : Yes but it depends on where the trend starts and how much of a trend.

HumanityRules (22:46:58)
Pick your trends carefully. Whichever fits your wishes best, eh? Whatever.
To be able to debate this forever it’d be best that we build enough nukes to get us through whatever fluctuations and calamities are in store for us and to get some of us off this very interesting home planet. That way we can cut the chances down of all of us being eliminated at one time.

I need to add this to the comment I made earlier:
“Climatologists define a climatic normal as the arithmetic average of a climate element such as temperature over a prescribed 30-year interval. The 30 year interval was selected by international agreement, based on the recommendations of the International Meteorological Conference in Warsaw in 1933. The 30 year interval is sufficiently long to filter out many of the short-term interannual fluctuations and anomalies, but sufficiently short so as to be used to reflect longer term climatic trends. Currently, the 30-year interval for calculating normals extends from 1971 to 2000.”
http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/normals.html
Also, here: http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/26747.pdf

Censorship at AGU: scientists denied the right of reply

Re: HumanityRules (Mar 23 22:46),

This seems very weak.
You can complain about colour schemes and so forth but it’s trends that matter and I think you know that

And taking a measly 30 years from the current geological time of millions of years and pretending that that means anything usefull is very weak. And taking the last 100 or even 200 years from the same millions is very weak.
And you know that.
(current geological time as in the current geographical positons of the continents)

debreuil (22:46:02)
You are right.
The sea ice was not disappearing only because it was melting, it was mainly due to ocean currents and wind patterns. Of course, some melts in the summer when temps get above normal, but It’s still pretty darn cold in the Arctic, even if temperatures are above normal, and most of the year it is cold enough to freeze (unless the currents bring water thats too warm, or the wind carries the ice to warmer waters/temps).

Note also the shading on those colors. Red goes to a very deep shade, but the purple? …. not so much. Just like the chosen vertical scale on the GMT chart…. It’s all about the presentation.

BTW, -35C + 7C anomaly is still quite chilly. No ice melting there.

But! The Arctic mid-troposphere WAS relatively warm also according to UAH
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itlt_0-360E_66-90N_na.png
SST has a bigger effect on ice formation and it is on the level of 1990
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ihadsst2_0-360E_66-90N_n_1979:2011a.png
However the ice looks healthy and compact and that counts
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=03&fd=23&fy=2007&sm=03&sd=23&sy=2010

Bastardi asks a simple question: how can we have above normal temperatures in the Arctic and the Antarctic and continue to add to the global sea ice trend?
And how can the dmi 80N be running at 1958-2002 baseline average all winter long and GISS be running a hot anomaly up there?
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
GISS has fallen into a crater of imaginary magma.

I fear we have a divergence problem. Best to employ Mike’s Nature Trick to “hide the decline”

I would suspect that if their alleged AGW hypothesis had any validity the data would hold up at different resolution granularities.
It’s an excellent discovery that it falls apart. The questions have to do with why and how come and what the heck were they thinking?
Clearly scaling the data invents data to fill in in-between. While I’m not a statistics expert by any means it’s clear to me as a computer scientist and a systems scientist that you’d get bogus data when scaling. I do a lot of work with video compression and decompression codecs and this data issue a problem that is similar with scaling of images on decompression depending on the compression ratio. The higher the initial compression ratio the more resolution loss, data drops, distorted data, and importantly pixelation of data across vast areas of the imagery, not to mention the most horrific effect, the creation of data that was never there in the first place!
The climate data is similar to the decompression problem when the initial compression is high… the climate data is starting with incomplete data (no initial compression just a sparse set of geographic data spread across vast areas of a map of the Earth) and they are trying to build a complete image. Ha. Not possible. Just try compressing a video from Blue Ray HD1080P Resolution down to the amount of data that the climate folks are getting (in the above images from the article) and you have a major loss of information. Now take that chopped up data with high distortion (low numbers of data points) and attempt to construct the HD1080P image again. Not going to happen as there just isn’t enough data to even get a partial image let alone a 320p or 480p standard tv image let along a HD720p or HD1080p image! So the entire process that the climate scientists supporting the alleged AGW hypothesis is UTTERLY flawed from the get go. They just do not have enough data to construct a global image of climate without INVENTING DATA on the fly with their algorithms.
In layman’s terms, the climate data sucks. They don’t have enough stations to support the wild claims that they allege with their alleged AGW hypothesis. Epic failure on their part. Not only that, but a new angle from computer science image decompression falsifies their conclusions since information science teaches us that what you’ll end up with is INVENTED DATA not data from the original image (which in this case is the original temperatures in the many missing grid places).
In other words, an EPIC FAILURE of the alleged AGW hypothesis.
Thanks for the fantastic article. I hope that this comment gives someone another tool to do further analysis. I’m available to offer computer science or systems science expertise in this.
Now back to writing that high quality advanced video compression algorithm.
Oh, before I go it’s funny that Sharp has a new set of LCD TVs that actually add a yellow pixel to the set of Red, Blue and Green to achieve – they allege – better color. The cameras will also need this extra pixel color. So the computer and entrainment business are well aware of data pixel resolution issues but somehow climate science is still working in the bronze age of data measurements.

Does the grid matches with station data?
look at this one near north pole:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431043120000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=2

Oh, while it might be technically correct to call it interpolation, with the amount of “interpolation” they are getting it’s more appropriate to call it fabricating the data. Whether that “fabrication” is fraudulent or not is a subject of a different investigation, as has been going on for some time.
Regardless, they fabricated climate data. They made it up. The proof was shown above.
If the alleged AGW hypothesis and the alleged science it rests upon is what passes as science I’d prefer to believe superman is real.

Joe Joe Joe, you obviously don’t understand the science when you say;
‘If it is darn warm, how come there is so much sea ice?’
Look, its very simple. Very simple indeed. In fact its so simple I don’t know why you don’t understand. In fact it’s far too simple for me to waste my time having to tell you how ice can readily form even in an unprecedented heatwave.
Tell you what, rather than me having to embarass you by having to explain something so simple in public why dont you read AR5? Its all there. Believe every word written as its peer reviewed. Then you will see how simple the explanation is. Now, do you need help with any other problems?
tonyb

Slightly OT, but today’s Times of London carries a story from the National Trust which claims a slightly hotter UK climate will see roses along with the traditional English garden depart forever and used paintings imagining a hot future to demonstrate!
Roses and other ‘traditional’ English flora flourish in many tropical and sub-tropical climes, but this is, of course, ignored by the National Trust which largely exists courstesy of the British taxpayer.

Obviously the satellite measurements were checked. They show distinctive cooling in the Arctic. Don’t they?

OT – Interesting post on the Register about the guy leading the CRU investigation: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/24/climategate_oxburgh_globe/

OT: Predictably depressing UK government response to this petition:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to suspend the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia from preparation of any Government Climate Statistics until the various allegations have been fully investigated by an independent body.”
Government response:
“The Government believes that all these allegations should be investigated transparently.
An independent review is currently examining the scientific conduct of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and is due to report its findings later in the spring. More information on the review can be found at: http://www.cce-review.org/. The University of East Anglia also recently announced that there will be a separate review to examine the CRU’s key scientific publications. The findings of both these reviews will be made public.
The House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology is also investigating the matter. On 1 March the Select Committee heard evidence from a wide range of contributors, including Professor Jones, who has temporarily stepped down from his post as Director of CRU.
CRU’s analysis of temperature records is not funded by, prepared for, or published by the Government. The resulting outputs are not Government statistics.
Our confidence that the Earth is warming is taken from multiple sources of evidence and not only the HadCRUT temperature record, which CRU scientists contribute to. The same warming trend is seen in two independent analyses carried out in the United States, by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Goddard Institute of Space Studies at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). These analyses draw on the same pool of temperature data as HadCRUT, but use different methodologies to produce analyses of temperature change through time. Further evidence of this warming is found in data from instruments on satellites, and in trends of declining arctic sea ice and rising sea levels.
Science is giving us an increasingly clear picture of the risks we face from climate change. With more research, we can better understand those risks, and how to manage them. That is why the Government funds a number of institutions, including the University of East Anglia, to carry out research into climate change science.”
http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page22924

Let’s also not forget that the Mercator projection skews area the further you go to the poles. If we looked at a polar projection, the visual torch basically goes away.

ADE (02:02:58) :
The “climate wars” is like a temperature “see-saw” with warmers and skeptics on each end.[warmers at the left]
Warmers want “their end to fall” to show an upward slope of the see-saw.[r to l]
Skeptics want “their end to fall” to show a downward or flat slope.
The trouble is ,none can really say where the fulcum is,what is earths NORMAL temperature.
Truth is there is a Natural Cycle of the “temperature” determined by Solar,orbit,comet,etc. that can never be influenced by man,or Mann.
A snail crossing the road of time does not know when a roadroller is coming
————————————————
Reply:
And that is exactly why I don’t like the term skeptic/sceptic. Rather, call me a “climate realist” because reality is what I want. It’s what we ALL should want.
The optimist looks at the glass of water and jubilantly says it’s half full. The pessimist looks at the same glass of water and sadly says it’s half empty. The realist looks at the glass of water, considers the situation, and states that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
Now, who can argue with the approach of a realist? There is no axe to grind, no agenda to convey, no control to exert.
Be a realist. Especially when it comes to climate.

Ian H (00:47:48) :
“The map is using honest data and displays a real effect. ”
That is incorrect as now more than a couple people have pointed out.
The gridding is misleading at best and makes up too much data to be considered valid.
This would never be an acceptable map where I work. (but then we are a bit more ethical than they are).
Oil industry shill. 😉

Can anyone help me with this analysis:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/false-claims-proven-false/
I mean one says so and the other one says so. But what is the truth? I am not a scientist, nor do I have the time and knowledge to calculate. I only have to trust what the scientists say. And thats my problem. Here in Germany people like Rahmstorf and Latif use the graphs above to show that GW is happening. In the UK, USA and other countries prominent scientists claim that we are heading into another ice-age.
Regards
Dirk

TonyB (01:46:33) :
LMAO
E.M.Smith (02:27:51) :
Willis Eschenbach (03:06:44) :
When I was in high school, I checked and recorded the Stevenson
screen thermometers. I took the responsibility very seriously.
My Science Prof. double checked my work, and always sent the
results, in a timely manner……..What a waste!

Ian H
“Surely anyone with a brain knows that above average for the north pole in winter just means it won’t freeze your balls off quite as fast as usual. Only idiots will imagine boiling hot arctic seas because of some red on a map, and who cares what idiots think?”
To me this vid by Bastardi is an example of how the “warmists” sell their AGW crap.
It shows how they misrepresent the truth to the “idiots” that you don’t care about.
These “idiots” that you don’t care about are voters, that vote for the politicians that want carbon taxes and cap-and-trade. [along with more funding].
Glad to see that you are an AGW sceptic. This vid was meant for those “idiots” that you don’t care about. They still have a vote.

With so much lopsided temperature records, you can make whatever you want from the data.
Oh, I have to remove 90% of the temperature data from the US as there are too many stations for balancing the other station recordings or too few in the colder regions so I have to add data to compensate. How many new stations came on line and where to put there temperatures into the data stream?
What trends can be made from what data?
This is far more complex then just recording all the stations and take the average from all the recordings that day.
With three climate cycling systems on this planet, we need three separate data runs for each region. The Northern Hemisphere, the Equatorial Region and the Southern Hemisphere. From 15 degrees from Northern and Southern Hemisphere, the climate runs fairly straight across due to planetary rotation.

Yes, and try computing the minute volumes of the total atmosphere and total hydrosphere being sampled. Try computing the percentage of the Earth’s total thermal energy being sampled.

I stopped referring to GISS temps many moons ago. This very same problem (base periods of baselines) was discussed many years ago at Climate Audit. In that case, it was if I remember correctly NOAA temp anomalies vs GISS and the TOB adjustments.
Concerning Joe B. . I think he is the only mainstream long term forecaster who is predicting a rather drastic fall in global temps once the current El Nino wanes. It does appear that quite a bit of the current warming worldwide is mainly over the oceans (perhaps residuals of the current moderate El Nino?).

Oh, it isn’t the Canadian hockey team colors?

OT,
Today I received a Government response to petition ‘UEACRU’
Read the Government’s response
The Government believes that all these allegations should be investigated transparently.
        
An independent review is currently examining the scientific conduct of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and is due to report its findings later in the spring.  More information on the review can be found at: http://www.cce-review.org/.  The University of East Anglia also recently announced that there will be a separate review to examine the CRU’s key scientific publications.  The findings of both these reviews will be made public.
The House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology is also investigating the matter.  On 1 March the Select Committee heard evidence from a wide range of contributors, including Professor Jones, who has temporarily stepped down from his post as Director of CRU.
CRU’s analysis of temperature records is not funded by, prepared for, or published by the Government. The resulting outputs are not Government statistics.
Our confidence that the Earth is warming is taken from multiple sources of evidence and not only the HadCRUT temperature record, which CRU scientists contribute to.  The same warming trend is seen in two independent analyses carried out in the United States, by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Goddard Institute of Space Studies at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).  These analyses draw on the same pool of temperature data as HadCRUT, but use different methodologies to produce analyses of temperature change through time.  Further evidence of this warming is found in data from instruments on satellites, and in trends of declining arctic sea ice and rising sea levels.
Science is giving us an increasingly clear picture of the risks we face from climate change.  With more research, we can better understand those risks, and how to manage them.  That is why the Government funds a number of institutions, including the University of East Anglia, to carry out research into climate change science.
I would like to draw attention to the two sections which I have italicized.
Finally I conclude that we must never allow Governments to legislate policy based on a flimsy, unprovable hypothesis which can be falsified by a ten year old.

I think anomaly maps should be colour coordinated based on the value of the anomaly to the range annual temperatures for the location. That would put the variation into perspective compared to natural variability.

Interesting that the Northen Hemisphere has the most land mass and less ocean surface compared to the Southern Hemisphere. The temperature swings are also dramatically different from the Northen and Southern Hemispheres.

I know, I know, it’s picking nits, but this is a typo I just can’t stomach: “All of the sudden”. Obviously, it’s suppposed to be “All of a sudden”.
By the by, the reason it has started to bother me so much is that I find myself wanting to copy it! It’s sneaky that way!

Are there not actual temperatures anymore?
SST from Unisys look closer to reality:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html

Oops.
Or liquid.
Only the air is safe.
DaveE.

While Bastardi is a scientist GISS post-normal new age/”let it be” scientists are real “bastardi” (plural of bastard in italian language) ☺

London Science Museum goes climate science neutral
LONDON, March 24 (Reuters Life!) – A new climate gallery at London’s Science Museum, sponsored byRoyal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L), will step back from pushing evidence of man-made climate change to adopt a more neutral position.
…
The new gallery follows an exhibition called “Prove It! All the evidence you need to believe in climate change” … It featured a poll showing a large portion of its visitors disputed the scientific evidence behind man-made climate change.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE62N0ZH20100324?type=marketsNews

HumanityRules (22:46:58) :
This seems very weak.
You can complain about colour schemes and so forth but it’s trends that matter and I think you know that.
But he showed you trends since the end of the last ice age. Yep, just like clockwork it looks like part of the natural cycle to me. Look at that image and ask yourself “would I be happier if we were still in the depths of the Little Ice Age?” I think not!

Hi All
Can I just point out that Danish does not show the warmth for winter 2009-2010 that GISS data does. The Danish datacan be accessed at this site:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
May I suggest that only one of the two data sets, GISS or the the Danish DMI can be accurate.
Which one though.

And on and on and on the debate goes, where it stops nobody knows…. Joe Bastardi is one of my heroes. He seems to be one of the few that is able to extract himself out of the sand, looking at each individual grain, and look at the beach.
So where does “weather” stop and “climate” begin? There seems to be no agreement whatsoever over what defines a climate period (30 years, 60 years, 1000 years, or millenia) other than the seasons of the year. In human existance we experience approximately 60-90 yearly cycles of climate change with which we can identify on a personal scale. But applied against the larger periods of change it has different meanings, or no meaning at all depending where or personal experience begins on the larger cycles. Vostok says “ice age imminent” while any particular Summer forecast can be “beastly hot”.
To argue 1000 year cycles against a 10 year trending is totally useless. The public has a right to be angry over the disagreement. There is no accepted standard to give context to the debate. One would think that establishing basic definitions and rules of debate would get us off this Tower of Babel.

Here’s the thing about being blinded by whatever certainty you have in your mind– you will take the smallest bit of data and try to make it fit your preconception. What is even worse is when the data that you’re trying to analyze has been intentionally or unintentionally selected to give a certainty perception.
What is happening in the arctic and antarctic? Which data do you believe? Each of us has to decide, using all of our best judgements and intuition, and data from multiple sources, including first hand accounts from individuals we trust. Even more importantly, we have to try to not want to see something in the data that is not there, or trust only the sources that give us that data that we want or expect to see.
My belief is that the those who believe that AGWT is likely correct, and those who are skeptical are both so far apart in their philosophical stance, that each will reject the others data simply because to accept it would cause too much cognitive dissonance. To add to that, then not only does the data become suspect, but those who gather and analyze the opposing data become suspect as well. This is true for both sides, though both sides will deny they do it. They have to discredit the other side while maintaining that their side has the “true” perspective and are being the honest side of the issue.
So what is going on in the arctic, or the antarctic? Does a person like me, who doesn’t which to join the “true believers” on either side of the issue simply throw up their hands and say, “oh well, there is no way of knowing because both sides are dishonest and refuse to be objective.” I currently refuse to accept that position. Rather, I try to read and study multiple sources of information, trying to sift out the data that may be corrupted by those who have a particular postiion to advance.
Now, I maintain that most of us who post on sites like WUWT, are abnormalities in the sense that we even care about this topic, as most people, the common person on the street really doesn’t. The average person will believe what their favorite pundit or cable channel spoon feeds them to believe on this issue– because they don’t care enough to spend the time to research it for themselves.
Anthony made an interesting statement yesterday, that got me thinking. He said at one time in the 90’s that he was actually an active believer in the opposite perspective– he actually thought that AGWT was correct. He’s obviously an incredibly intelligent person who has spent many hours looking at this issue. That statement has more credibility with me in terms of making me look at my own perspective on this issue than most other things I’ve read.
Specifically in terms of the issue of what’s happening in the arctic or antarctic, I still maintain that no matter what “goalposts” you want to use, that the arctic at least has been warming over the past few decades, and even if you doubt the temperature data, you can’t doubt the first hand accounts of those who live there and have seen the changes directly. These first hand accounts of permafrost melting, etc. are important corroborating evidence for me. This issue as to whether this is a natural cycle versus a AGW issue is an entirely different matter. Because AGWT clearly models the heating of the polar regions, then certainly the warming in the arctic supports the theory, but does not porve it of course. And here is where I part ways with many AGW skeptics, as they will try to deny that there even is any substantial warming in the arctic, despite the first hand accounts of those native tribes that live there.

I’m having a hard time making sense of the “interpolation” on the Dec-Jan-Feb 2010 anomaly vs 1951-1980.
Looking at Canada, it looks like central, northern, and western Canada should be in the red (2-4 deg) range at the highest in the 1200km map based on the 250km map. Instead, it’s almost all in the 4-6 deg range.
There are also grids in western Canada and Alaksa which show as 1-2 deg anomalies (or lower) in the 250km map that get over-ridden as 2-4 deg in the 1200km map. Any algorithmic processing that brings that about would seem to be nonsense.

I think the main problem I have with the GISS mapping is the representation of the poles as huge. I think it should be appropriately sized and scaled instead of making the arctic look like it is 4 times the size of North America.

Mia culpa, selected the wrong column in excel, that one was 1951-1980. Here is 1979-1998: http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Picture209.png
They are identical save for the y-axis units, which is the point.
REPLY: Bastardi didn’t focus on trends and neither did I, the issue has to do with the graphic presentation, which I think is visually flawed.
On the issue of why GISS can’t move their baseline forward, I understand where you are coming from, but the fact is that it still affects the outcome of the final public presentation which gets splashed all over the world media. So it is not irrelevant. I think GISS could do a better job and I think the excuse of “we did it before 1990” is a lame excuse, especially since NCDC provides anomaly plots with a baseline of 1901-2000, for example. They have data that goes back prior to 1900 and they are able to present it without cherry picking a 30 year period because “that’s what we started with”.
If GISS really wants to produce an accurate representation to the public, they’ll provide a more balanced visual presentation.
WRT the anomaly graph, does the magnitude of the anomaly (not the whole offset) not depend on the baseline period used to create the anomaly points? So for example, wouldn’t the more recent points be lower if created using a 1979-2009 baseline. The map demonstration I provided certainly seems to indicate it would by the change of the global anomaly value in the upper right. Your correct plot shows a drop in magnitude also. GISS should provide a tool for the public.
I agree the trend is unchanged, but my point (and Joe’s) is about the monthly scare stories that come from the magnitude. and the color presentations of the anomalies. – Anthony

Off topic:
See another conflict of interest.
cheers

Freedman at the Washington Post has ironically come out with an article today touting these very figures.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2010/03/nasa_projects_2010_will_likely.html#more

The reason Dr. Hansen uses the baseline period of 1951 to 1980 is that he started analyzing temperature anomalies in 1981 – hardly a good year to consider a baseline of 1979 to 2009.
———-
Science 28 August 1981:
Vol. 213. no. 4511, pp. 957 – 966
Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
J. Hansen , D. Johnson , A. Lacis , S. Lebedeff , P. Lee , D. Rind , and G. Russell
Atmospheric physicists at the NASA Institute for Space Studies, Goddard Space Flight Center, New York 10025
The global temperature rose by 0.2°C between the middle 1960’s and 1980, yielding a warming of 0.4°C in the past century. This temperature increase is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect due to measured increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Variations of volcanic aerosols and possibly solar luminosity appear to be primary causes of observed fluctuations about the mean trend of increasing temperature. It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century, and there is a high probability of warming in the 1980’s. Potential effects on climate in the 21st century include the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climatic zones, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/213/4511/957

There are two issues I want to make refference to in my comment, as there was one of the quotes in this article that drew my attention: “Anomalies are all about the starting choices made by people. Nature doesn’t give a hoot about anomalies.” So, first of all, I agree that we are definitely on the wrong track regarding mankind, due to the climate changes which can’t be denied anymore, they are a fact, they are affecting everyone of us, our future on this planet. However, while reading on this matter, I actually found out that, according to many scientists, these “anomalies” that we’re currently experimenting are in fact the normal state of the planet, and the true “anomaly” was the period of warm, steady, somewhat peacefull climate.

The other source of exaggeration in polar temperatures on the GISS maps is the chosen map projection, which grossly overstates the polar area, so adds a lot more red. I wrote a post showing this years ago:
http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2008/02/more-on-chartsm.html
The funny part is the tool I found to re-project the map to an equal area projection was on the GISS site!

Willis Eschenbach (03:06:44) :
Well, I got to wondering just what temperature sensors we do have in the Arctic. It seemed to me that reaching out to 250 km, Hansen couldn’t be covering that much above 80°N … and it turns out he’s not.
Figure W1. Coverage of the area north of 80°N, showing 250 km radius areas around ground temperature stations.
Here’s your two miscellaneous factoids for today. A 1200 km radius circle is about the same size as the 80° N circle shown in the figure. It encompasses an area about three times the size of Alaska … and GISS is claiming that one single solitary temperature station is representative of that whole area.
Not.
——————–
Nice graphics !
But you are missing the point that “temperature anomaly” is not the same as “temperature”. Yes, if you wanted weather forecasts for the Arctic, the coverage is pretty sparse. However, temperature anomalies are highly correlated over substantial geographical distances. This is why all the planetary datasets on warming speak of “anomalies” wrt some baseline average, rather than average temperatures. This fact underlies the GISS estimates of polar temperatures:
We analyze surface air temperature data from available meteorological stations with principal focus on the period 1880-1985. The temperature changes at mid- and high latitude stations separated by less than 1000 km are shown to be highly correlated; at low latitudes the correlation falls off more rapidly with distance for nearby stations.
The Journal of Geophysical Research paper describing why this methodology is good enough, in the absence of very expensive additional
observation stations and 90 deg inclination polar orbit satellites, is here.
If you can cite any research showing high resolution measurements in the Arctic (perhaps a few summers of ice breaker temperature measurements) proving this to be in error, please do so. Perhaps the Russians have done such studies.

Here is a BBC article connecting low solar activity and cold winters. Not joking-the BBC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2010/03/-i-am-indebted-to.shtml

Now with these investigations going on at CRU IPCC and such why don’t the investigators call in some of the more prominent skeptics? Oh stupid me I know why.
I find it interesting as we develope into a more so called educated urban society, we seem to be getting stupider.

esin (09:21:08) :
” If it warms up about four more degrees as forecast by The Met office, we will no doubt have an ice age. ” ~S Goddard
Ahhh, hah, ha haaa… that one got me ; ) Good one~
————-
Reply:
Laugh, my unsuspecting ones. Mother Nature will have the last laugh–the next ice age shows signs of beginning even as we speak. It isn’t “warming” that will do in the earth’s population.

Maybe somebody pointed this out, but folks at NASA ought to know that you cannot accurately represent data on the sphere with a Mercator style flat projection. In astrophysics, the Aitoff Equal Area Projection is used. This distorts the surface of the sphere on to a roughtly ellipsoidal plane — but it maintains equal areas in the distortion and the human eye responds to the area strongly when forming a perception of planar density. And please stop interpolating — interpolation does not create data.

Hypothetically speaking, the temps at those hotspots could be -30 but if baseline was -33, they would still be shown in red?

Joe Bastardi (08:49:25) :
Yes, something is terribly amiss with GISS.
Nothing is quite as bad as GISS. I can use some CRU station data, but GISS is a basket case.

Richard M said (to RR Kampken):
“Are you really claiming that we won’t see a huge increase in “older” ice this summer?”
____
Don’t know what he was saying, but you should define what you mean by “huge” and also, it can only increase to a point in the summer…before it melts…but as a percentage of the total ice, no doubt the older multi-year ice will make a come back this summer, and relative to the very low levels of older ice we saw the past few years, the increase will be “huge”, but relative to the historic levels of multi-year ice, going back more than just a few years, the amount will still be less…and a warm summer in the arctic will melt a lot of it, regardless.

“how can we have above normal temperatures in the Arctic and the Antarctic and continue to add to the global sea ice trend?”
It’s possible if you live in the land behind the looking glass. Anything’s possible, if you just report on it, it makes it true, and if you put it in an IPCC Assessment Report, it gains the truth content of tautology.

Don’t see the problem – just look at the daily-updated JAXA Arctic sea ice graph in the right-hand column – 2010 is EXACTLY in the middle of the 2002-2009 spread.
Do the Japanese do one for the Antarctic, too..?

D’OH.
That color bar is NOT on a linear scale. Talk about misleading!

Smokey,
I misssed Gates post. I thought he summed up pretty well the problems with AGW. I did not realize Gates was trying to defend AGW by projecting AGW community practice on to skeptics.
Fascinating.
Your essay is excellent, by the way.

Anthony,
Odd that you mention the 1901-2000 baseline, since it gives results that are functionally identical to the 1951-1980 baseline: http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Picture210.png
For the anomaly maps, I agree that it matters somewhat to the pattern of anomalies shown (since there could be regional differences in certain baselines and not others). My point was that the distribution of blue vs. red depends both on the scale chosen for red/blue as well as the baseline. The difference between the 1951-1980 and 1979-1998 anomaly maps in the original post isn’t really that noticeable, and changing the range of numbers associated with specific colors has a larger visual impact than changing the colors (e.g. make dark red start at 8 C instead of 4 C and it will look a lot cooler).
I guess my real question is: does any particular baseline pose a compelling case for use? E.g. is there any reason why 1961-1990 is particularly better than 1951-1980? If you accept the argument that anthropogenic forcing first start clearly dominating natural variability post-1975, it makes sense to have a baseline prior to the modern warming period. Or pick 1901-2000 if you want since it covers the whole century, but you will end up with annual anomalies that are almost identical to 1951-1980 (since the 1901-2000 mean is close to the 1951-1980 mean).

To answer Bastardi’s question, anomalies 6.4 C above normal for February are still well below freezing in the arctic, so we wouldn’t expect it to have a huge impact on winter sea ice extent one way or another. Winter sea ice extents are probably more influenced by the magnitude of the prior summer melt than the temperatures during the depths of the current winter, as long as they do not exceed freezing.
Anomalies 6.4 C above normal for August would a much larger impact on sea ice extent.

Although this post focuses on the polar extremes, it’s also interesting to note the lack of temperature readings in Africa/Middle East – the only other “red” section on the map. Is it just me, or does that red zone seem to almost “follow” the areas of low measurement sites? It’d be interesting to look at the raw data from some of the few sites in that area, because I’m guessing they get a lot of “weight” in the analysis being isolated, and even just one or two stations having unwarranted warming “adjustments” might lead to a dramatically different looking graph.
What’s also interesting is that Russia (with a strong cooling trend) has a fairly sparse data set, but its coverage is still nearly adequate/complete (see the 250 km plot).
Also, does this data suffer from the Antarctica “cherry picking” problem that was reported on WUWT a few months ago?
-Scott

Anu, you can’t be proposing that a comparison of ice thickness between 2004 and 2008 makes for climate warming?!?!?!? Okay. If you want to call weather pattern variation “climate”, fine. I think you are wrong but you have a right to your opinion. But that means you cannot complain when someone says that it has been cooling for 4 years and then tell them their observation cannot be correlated to climate change.

Here is the Goodes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goode_homolosine_projection

Why not calculate the baseline over the entire domain instead of just a part of it? That would make the anomoly more meaningful as a deviation from the average of the entire period.

Oh, the link to draw your own chart is:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/

The very NH cold weather seems to be correlated to the Arctic Oscillation and Solar Activity: Ahlbeck sez – provided by the BBC no less.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/looknorthyorkslincs/ahlbeck_solar_activity.pdf
Having just returned from a frigid spring in Mongolia I think we can expect more of the same. I thought it was related to the El Nino – maybe not.
Warning: statistics involved.

Geir in Norway (15:10:08) :
No you’re not wrong.
If a humid area cools & then an arid area warms, assuming the energy balance has not changed, the arid area will warm more than the humid area cooled.
Several of us have been pointing this out for some time.
Temperature is a totally useless metric for energy in the atmosphere.
DaveE.

Geir in Norway (15:10:08)
Your comment makes sense at the basic level, and I hadn’t thought of it that way before. However, you’re simply working with air temperature and thermal conductivity. Remember, it’s not just the air temperature that’s changing, it’s also the local surface. Imagine the steady-state (yes, a very simplified example) change in air temperature right about a lake. The total change in energy from -1C to +1C would be enormous and totally dwarf a 5C change elsewhere. Maybe polar cap extents are better measures than temperatures for those regions?
That said, maybe we should just be taking ocean surface temperature measurements worldwide. Because the heat capacity of water is so much higher than most other things, it may not suffer from these effects so badly (notable exception at 0C, of course).
-Scott

Not a scientist just your average garden variety, educated business bloke, that’s me. Some times I can’t make head nor tail out of these conflicting media reports so I fall back on my own observations as a start point.
It seems to me that the warmists are impatient for results to show how correct they are and this in itself is bringing them undone. It must be so frustrating when arctic and antarctic ice won’t follow the plot.
Likewise, in Australia pretty well every month we are told the preceding month has been the hottest on record. But they don’t feel any hotter, and I distinctly remember longer drier spells going back to my childhood. I’m surprised to discover those past temps are now recorded as cooler than reported at the time. As time goes by more and more people are going to see that the reality is widely different from the predictions.
It is 24degrees C in Melbourne today. I wonder in 5 years time what temperature they have recorded for Melbourne 25 March 2010?
Randy

Does anyone know of any research on the relationship, if any, between cosmic ray activity and solar activity. Do cosmic rays trigger more nuclear reactions, or less, or what?

Doesn’t sea ice depend on wind patterns too ?

Benjamin (19:41:42) :
“Doesn’t sea ice depend on wind patterns too ?”
Absolutely. Look a few posts back, mate! 🙂
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/22/the-guardian-sees-the-light-on-wind-driven-arctic-ice-loss/
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

@Willis Eschenbach (17:18:05) :
Is Ps2 a constant value of 0.5 ?
Wouldn’t that make the correlation coefficient with Ps1, Ps3, Ps4 and Ps5 undefined ?
But it’s a good idea to look at what the correlations might actually mean. Ps4 and Ps5 look pretty good – if you had no other data for a few decades, it’s a better guess than plugging in the global average temperature anomaly for that grid location, which CRU does. Back in the 80’s, they were trying to adapt existing longterm weather data for new climate concerns. Today, global measurements are getting much better, such as Argo ocean armadas of floats, and multiple satellites measuring various climate data.
Plus, the paper I gave you is from 1987, when satellite data was quite young. GISS now uses such data for ocean coverage, which includes the Arctic Ocean.
So I’m afraid I’m not impressed by Hansen’s logic. He shows annual correlation, and makes an unsubstantiated jump to trends.
Those correlations were based on station pairings that had at least 50 years of data, so correlation over time is exactly what they measured. I’m sure they did similar analyses for monthly correlations too – try Google Scholar if you’re interested, it’s too late for me.
It would be nice to see actual measurements of Arctic temperatures at a high resolution for a few decades, and nail down how the temperature anomalies are related over the months and years. I’m sure someone wouldn’t mind paying tens of $millions to try and show Hansen’s approach is no better than guessing ‘average global warming’ for that month.
http://www.lanl.gov/source/orgs/ees/ees14/pdfs/09Chlylek.pdf
Let’s say the 12 high Arctic ground stations mentioned in this paper had temperature anomaly trends similar to your above Ps1, 3, 4 and 5, with respect to regions out to 1200 km from the station. Let’s say, after the methodology for combining overlapping station coverage given in that paper I cited before, that they guess some monthly Arctic surface temperature anomalies wrong for the old, sparse data years (pre-satellite coverage).
Perhaps this raises or lowers the true baseline temperature anomaly in 1951 to 1980 for these sparse gridpoints by what, 0.1 deg C, 0.5 deg C ?
In the satellite era of measurement, the warming wrt these estimated baselines is real, and the warming in the Arctic shown by this is larger than in other parts of the planet.
Thanks for posting that citation, Anu. I have always been skeptical about using one station to represent the trend for a giant area. But until today, I never realized what was wrong with it, so I couldn’t prove mathematically why it was bogus.
I’m glad you enjoyed the 1987 paper.
Perhaps the Arctic temperature anomalies were not going up and down as much as they thought back in the pre-satellite days. Maybe nobody looked at the agreement of ship-based measurements during these decades with estimates based on far-away land stations. I doubt it, but it’s possible.
Even today, satellite coverage is only up to 82.5 deg N. Perfectly polar orbits are expensive to achieve. Maybe that tiny, sparsely measured bit of Arctic is doing some wild, unexpected temperature changes…
Measurements get better and better, but then you have to relate it to the old data.

Willis:
You might be interested then in looking at the case of Alert Canada. In the GHCN dataset the data only runs up to 1991, however the Environment Canada website has data through 2005. http://www.climate.weatheroffice.gc.ca/climateData/monthlydata_e.html?Prov=XX&timeframe=3&StationID=1731&Month=1&Day=1&Year=2005&cmdB1=Go
you can get the the gridded trends (actual numbers not the guess by color) by Grid cell from the Gridded map page on the GISS map maker maps at the bottom left corner of the page (You can do the same thing for Anomalies as well, and you can get it in both 250Km and 1200Km infill):

Downloads
Download the global map as PDF or Postscript file.
Download the zonal means plot as PDF or Postscript or text file.
Download the gridded data as text, netCDF, or unformatted binary (help) file.

Compare the Trend for the grid Alert is in to the Station data for the period 1951 to 1990 (graph out the GISS adjusted and Environment Canada yearly anomalies for the 51-80 baseline). You will find that the 250Km and 1200Km Trends are the same and they match the Alert Station data trend at -.42°C. When you let GISS infill that Grid cell post 1990 and look at the 1951-2005 trends for 250 Km and 1200Km infill you find a divergence. 250Km gives you -.32°C and 1200km 1.16°C. Then compare those two trends to the Environment Canada data which has a 1951 to 2005 trend of .4°C.
When you do that you find that when GISS had a station in that grid it’s Gridded Cell trend matched the yearly anomaly trend for that station for both 250Km and 1200Km infill. When you don’t have that station after 1990/1 in the GISS data the 250 Km and 1200Km infill diverge, however having that data from Environment Canada lets us see that the GISS interpolation for both 250Km and 1200km do not match the trend of the actual station data.
Because of that unique case of Alert being the only station in that grid cell (According to GISS there is 6 overlapping records for that same location) and having data past when GISS uses data for that Grid you can compare GISS infilling to actual data.

“multiple satellites measuring various climate data.”
Satellites sensors are only accurate to 0.5Celsius, and monitor average temp over a 45km footprint.

@Willis Eschenbach (01:18:11) :
And yet the comparison to a baseline value varies with different baselines:
0.281 million sq km below one baseline, such as in the graph you gave, might be 0.600 million sq km below a different baseline.
Wasn’t somebody just saying that different baselines make the temperature anomalies look more extreme ?
I’m glad you see the value of “up to date” research – I wouldn’t want to fixate on 1987 or 1993 papers, for example…
The chart I gave showed how the average is affected by including the recent, more extreme Arctic melting. This allows more perspective for the other NSIDC charts such as:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
which use the 1979-2000 averages.
But quite right, 30 years and more is the time period of interest in climate studies. Now that they have 2009 data, perhaps future plots will all be made with the 1979-2009 baseline.
Well, you know, that’s why I provide citations to my sources, so you can examine them and answer these kinds of questions rather than read my (perhaps mistaken) interpretation of them, and make your own judgements on them.
Perhaps you intended to give a link to the paper ” Polyakov et al.:”, and gave a link to a textfile of data instead:
http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~igor/research/data/composite_sat_slp
Since Polyakov has published many papers, I don’t know where this particular set of temperatures from 1875 onwards comes from, but you seem to trust the data, so I thought you would mention more about where they were from. I am curious how these old measurements could be better than anything GISS has – perhaps Russia has some data they are not sharing.
I can’t say if the GISS record is “better” if I have no idea where your data came from.
Cheers.