by Norm Buske
Although I am a long-time, casual skeptic of global warming, I agree that evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH) is compelling. The warming of the NTH explains progressive loss of Arctic sea ice.
Meanwhile, the average temperature of the planet surface has evidently stabilized for the last dozen years or so:
[in: http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_Year_2013.pdf ]
(Thick line is simple 3-year running average. Average of 1979-88 decade is set to zero.)
Therefore, global warming has evidently ceased, at least for now, because the Southern Thermal Hemisphere (STH) has entered a cooling phase, compensating for the anthropogenic warming of the NTH.
After an artifactual step change (in December 1991) in the NSIDC satellite record of the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been removed from the data, a recent increase in the extent Antarctic sea ice is evident:
[http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/adj_anom.jpeg]
[in: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/antarctic-sea-ice-increase/]
(Red curve is LOWESS smooth.)
William of Ockham might explain this increase of Antarctic sea ice extent as an effect of the STH having cooled, just as the loss of Arctic sea ice has been explained as an effect of the NTH having warmed.
Anthropogenic sources (of warming) are concentrated in the NTH, with fewer sources in the STH. So there is a prospect that the recent cooling of the STH is not anthropogenic. Or the thermal hemispheres might be coupled such that the warming of the NTH is becoming compensated by cooling of the STH.
–Here is a challenge for proponents of global warming: Show how anthropogenic warming of the NTH leads to cooling of the STH, or else allow that the cooling of the STH is practically independent.
What rubbish! “…compensating for the anthropogenic warming of the NTH.”
Where’s the evidence?
and where’s your DIRECT evidence that the “warming” in the latter part of the 20th and early 21st Century has been caused by by anthropogenic sources? No models please. No inferences, no coulds, shoulds, ifs or buts. Direct evidence.
Interesting article, it would be crazy to suggest that 7 billion people have not had some effect on the climate, but I’d like to suggest a partial reversal of cause and effect for Arctic sea ice:
Some of the 20th century warming in the NH may have been due to loss of Arctic sea ice, leading to increased heat absorption in NH summers.
OK, don’t want to trigger a firestorm here – is the implication from Mr Buske that maybe UHI heat propagation/leaching out into the environment is the cause of the NTH warming? That’s what I infer. Is this even feasible? I wouldn’t have thought that a UHI footprint could be big enough to cause any measurable hemispherical effect.
What do you mean by “anthropogenic warming” Norm? I though CO2 was meant to be a very well mixed gas, so the effect on the Southern Hemisphere and the Northern Hemisphere should be the same. Do you mean another source of anthropogenic warming, such as black carbon soot?
Stop the presses! Dr Trenberth’s missing heat attacks and eats 3m Great White shark!
http://youtu.be/Z_QyGANCUJI
āI agree that evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH) is compelling.ā
Fascinating.
By which physical mechanism do you propose that adding radiative gases to the atmosphere reduces the atmosphere’s radiative cooling ability?
(Note ā a consensus of climastrologists is not a physical mechanism)
Maurice Ewing believed that the Arctic Ocean when frozen over lead to retention of heat in the oceans, conversely when sea ice is at a low during winter the oceans lose heat to the atmosphere and outwards to space through the darkness.
The Arctic ocean is a critical part of the planet’s thermostat. We are merely observing it in action.
āā¦ evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH) is compelling ā¦ā
Long term temperature records for the Arctic show nothing unprecedented happening, the apparent warming in the 30s (HadCRUT4) occurred when anthropogenic forcing was negligible.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/70-90N%20MonthlyAnomaly%20Since1920.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/images/ArcticTemperatures.gif
Streetcred says:
June 6, 2014 at 12:46 am
———————————-
But of course! Warmer waters are causing the frickin lasers on their noses to overheat…
Is anthropogenic global warming the only explanation you have for NH ice loss? If it is, then you have to think harder. NH ice loss is not unprecedent.
That is a hypothesis. Ockham’s razor deals with dilemmas. The best way to deal with this kind of problems is less handwaving and more honest empirical data.
“I agree that evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH) is compelling.”
So the Northern Thermal Hemisphere never warmed before?
What about the warming in 1810’s, 1920’s or 1940’s?
Was that anthropogenic warming as well?
What evidence is there that it is anthropogenic warming this time?
Norm said: The warming of the NTH explains progressive loss of Arctic sea ice.
What happened to the notion that it was not so much “warming” that caused the decline of arctic sea ice but variations in ocean currents and weather patterns. Furthermore that this waxing and waning has happened time and again in the Holocene and even historically witnessed by heroic exploration of the Arctic in the past (see below). Why would it have to be anthropogenic this time? Why is the local NH warming anthropogenic?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/26/ice-at-the-north-pole-in-1958-not-so-thick/
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm
Sorry mate, it doesn’t work for me.
Arctic ice volume increased last year by 60%. We are now seeing Arctic mean temperature swinging below average: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
By 2020, it will be frozen solid.
Streetcred says:June 6, 2014 at 12:46 am
Stop the presses! Dr Trenberthās missing heat attacks and eats 3m Great White shark!
And the Smithsonian commentator said there’s no doubt that the Great White Shark had been eaten by a super predator of the deep.
Can I suggest a simpler explanation? That the tag had fallen off and been swallowed by a whale, and after 8 days had either been vomited up or excreted in the normal course of affairs?
interestingly, my latest results show that both the NH and the SH is currently cooling at the same pace of about -0.014 degree C/ year…
arctic melt is a left-over from the warming period (as the gulf stream retained some heat)
but it will be soon over:
http://oi40.tinypic.com/2ql5zq8.jpg
we are cooling from the top latitudes downward
so.. haha some people just cant handle the fact that the climate actually changed in the past WITHOUT human influence. just amazing!
let me get this logic right, because i have never quite understood it.
right- it is cooling in the SH masking the human cause warming of the globe (co2 being well mixed and all).. BUT when it is in a warm phase in the SH, it has nothing to do with ‘natural’ warming, just human induced warming. conclusion – this world never warmed naturally in the past! now that is some really cool logic.
OR maybe he means that the oceans play a bigger role than land mass, and the larger oceans of the SH are able to cool the atmosphere more which would be an admitting that the NH warming was caused by ‘natural’ forces during the SH warm phase. same thing.
what a load of rubbish.
of course, there is logic that dictates there must be some warming caused by co2, but how much and how much influence it has on the overall system has never been resolved. the empirical evidence shows that in the past, when co2 was MUCH lower, the temperature anomalies were higher than recent times (40s warming v 80s warming). logic dictates that the influence that co2 does have on the overall system is nil or minimal. if it were high, the 20% – 30% increase in co2 should show a marked acceleration in the temperature anomalies. there is NO acceleration.
What is the mechanism to “wall off the
effects” of CO2 from the SH. Until you demonstrate that, the rest is supposition.
Total contradictions in this statement “Althogh I am a long-time, casual skeptic of global warming, I agree that evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH) is compelling.”
How can any type of skeptic believe that there has been “SEVERE largely anthropogenic warming of the (NTH), let alone compelling evidence.
0.7 to 0.8 degrees in a Century is now severe warming whereas a greater amount in the MWP wasn’t, give me strength.
Genuine question, does the Warm phase ENSO transport heat from the Southern Pacific Ocean to the Northern Pacific Ocean and from there to the Northern Thermal Hemisphere whereas the cold phase won’t do the reverse?
“I agree that evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH) is compelling.”
Please demonstrate that the warming is anthrapogenic.
Dudley Horscroft
June 6, 2014 at 1:30 am
You’re wrong. It’s Godzilla.
And seriously, from all I can gather, NDCD actually STARTED the corruption of the global temperature data .
They were the first ones to show a MUCH REDUCED 1940 peak, and then Hansen and Jones took over.
That first graph is, A LOAD OF MALADJUSTED, MANIPULATED BOLLOCKS !!!!!!!
Uh. Did anyone ever consider that this post is total sarcasm?
Please demonstrate that the warming is anthrapogenic.
The President has concluded that the warming is anthraciteogenic. What more do you need to know?
Norm. The first IPCC report showed a satellite arctic ice extent graph. The a multi year mean went back to 1973. The 1973 level was the about the same as 2005’s ice extent. The ice extent increased until 1979 then fell again. Your ‘progressive arctic ice loss’ is just a part of a cycle.
It matters little whether you are talking increases/decreases in the āaverage terrestrial near-surface temperatures verses atmospheric CO2 ppmā ā¦ā¦ or ā¦ā¦.. the āaverage terrestrial near-surface temperatures verses water temperatures (swimming pools, ponds, rivers, lakes or ocean)ā, ā¦ā¦. the latter always lags behind the former ā¦.. with the ālag timeā being highly dependent upon the āvolumeā of water in question.
You offer a lot to ponder. I would ask you to expand this interesting assertion a bit more:
“…that evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH) is compelling.”
1- please define severe. There is good historical evidence that the temperatures we are experiencing are not unique. And certainly it is fair to say that nothing severe is happening, since storm, drought, flood, heat and cold are failing to show any dangerous trends.
2- You introduce a new term”NTH” Northern Thermal Hemisphere. Please offer evidence that this is even a meaningful term.
You further assert that this NTH warming explains arctic ice loss. How does this reconcile with excellent historical records indicating that the current state of Arctic sea ice is not unprecedented,and that in fact Arctic sea ice is highly dynamic and has been like this in the past ā150 years.
Amen to that bro! Please explain this?
Amen to that bro! It also explains this.
The proponents of anthropogenic global warming told us that BOTH POLES should warm fastest, in winter and at night. Bollocks to that.
Here are some abstracts from 2012, 2013, 2014 showing evidence of extreme & increased snowfalls on east Antarctica
National Geographic reported on the 10 December 2013 the “New Record for Coldest Place on Earth, in Antarctica”
We are still to blame no matter what.
But is it mostly co2? If it is mostly co2 and compelling then please provide the evidence with your post.
Although I am a long-time, casual skeptic of global warming, I agree that evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH) is compelling.
I’m far more compelled to suspect that the difference in the land mass to ocean ratio between NH and SH is the primary reason and one so much larger than any human factor that the human factor is trivial and insignificant in comparison. For example, which hemisphere has a higher daytime cloud cover as a negative feedback? Certainly that difference could easily obliterate any difference in CO2 concentration as a forcing differential.
And that raises the obvious question – IS there a significant difference in CO2 concentration between hemispheres in the first place? Without knowing the answer this discussion could be nothing more than “an exercise”. (I ~thought~ that question was already answered as “CO2 is globally well mixed”?)
“Although I am a long-time, casual skeptic of global warming, I agree that evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH) is compelling. The warming of the NTH explains progressive loss of Arctic sea ice.”
And the MWP was caused by? Waiting for your answer Mr. Buske
The temps in the arctic go above freezing for about 45 days in summer but the ice melt goes on from march to september, it is not temp that does it it is the sun wind and currents.
Take your time and look at the dates, starting in 1958.
For a quick look compare 2013 to 1958,1959, 1960, 1961, 1962.
Are you still of the opinion that it is “compelling”?
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Some people like to talk about “compelling”, yet are compelled to NOT provide the peer reviewed evidence of their compulsion. Compelling my arse. Get your act together next time.
CO2 is a well -mixed gas in the atmosphere. Consequently, the CO2 concentration in the southern hemisphere is the same as that in the north. It is not therefore sensible to attribute any Arctic warming to CO2 whilst saying that this does not apply in the Antarctic.
Does the author think that the presence of cities and industry in the north is what causes global warming? This is negligible compared to radiative forcing and, besides, there are no cities or industries in the Arctic. So it is difficult to guess at the authorās reasoning in coming to his strange conclusions. Further explanation would be welcome.
And in related global warming news we have this anomaly in June! It’s ‘unprecedented’ and we must act now. It’s worse than we thought.
More “compelling” evidence of man-made lake warming. Heh, heh.
Who were the NH anthropogenic warming dudes of the period just after the Napoleonic Wars? Who got the Arctic melting post WW1?
Fascinating all the different wrappings and flavourings used to get us to swallow yet another warmie pill. Now it’s warmism as skepticism. And the pill’s a strong one: ‘severe’ warming with ‘compelling’ evidence.
Any adults left out there? Hello? Adults?
When the Arctic Ocean is covered in ice, the air temperature cools the top of the ice (to rather low temperatures!), and with the very low temperature there is reduced heat lost to space.
When the Arctic Ocean is near ice free, the sea surface is comparatively warm (Zero Celsius + ??) and radiates heat fast to space.
So when it is cold enough to freeze over little heat is lost and when it is warm enough to not have much ice plenty of heat is lost (in comparative terms).
Sounds to me rather like a natural negative feedback ensuring that temperatures cannot deviate too much (how much?) from some mean temperature.
The computer models projected a decrease in Antarctic sea ice extent for this century.
William of Ockham might explain this increase of Antarctic sea ice extent as an effect of the STH having cooled, just as the loss of Arctic sea ice has been explained as an effect of the NTH having warmed.
Really? This ain’t the best of presentations, but it does show the direction of trends from 1979 up to 2014:
[long WoodForTrees link]
Northern Hemisphere sea ice goes down, NH land+sea temperatures go up.
Southern Hemisphere sea ice goes up, SH land+sea temperatures go UP, not down. Although the sea ice increase is slight, might not be significant.
Post says average global temp “has evidently stabilized for the last dozen years or so”, otherwise “the pause” is shown elsewhere to be more than 17 years, nearly 18. So shoot for the middle, go from 1998, that’s 15 whole years of data, and going from the Super El Nino:
[also a long WFT link]
About the same. NH sea ice down, NH temp up. SH sea ice up, SH temp up. But the SH temp increase is slight, likely not significant.
I don’t think William of Ockham would like being informed the reported see-saw effect is only an artifact of choosing a duration for “the pause” that’s only 2/3 as long as the reality.
What the heck is a thermal hemisphere? A Google search for |”northern thermal hemisphere”| yielded just 13 hits, most of them references to this post and the rest uninformative. I’ll leave it for future researchers to see if searching for the STH sheds additional light on the term.
In future writings, please define abbreviations and unusual terms in a glossary at the beginning or when the term is first used. And please explain why each hemisphere is not warming but the thermal hemisphere is.
How about the explanation that the Arctic is floating on a near land locked ocean being feed warm water by the Atlantic, and Arctic summer sea ice is more dependent on ocean cycles than changes in atmospheric trace gasses. Also, Antarctica and the Arctic Ice behaviour are significantly buffered by vastly different climate regimes to be expected to have any similarities about short term growth or loss trends. I would be very curious to see what piece of evidence that strengthens your belief that the Arctic Sea Ice loss trends over the last 30+ years are Anthropogenic, and why those loss rates cannot be caused by the well known positive AMO cycle and or three decades of elevated solar activity and a positive PDO cycle for the 80,s,90’s and early 2000’s.
If the anthro part is aerosols it could make sense. It’s still a stretch though. I think solar + ocean cycles is better.
I have no clue as to the mechanism but I think that the current Modern Warm Period is part of the cycle of ~ 1,400 year warm Periods and cool periods. These periods have occurred as far back as we can document.
%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.globalresearch.ca%252Fglobal-cooling-is-here%252F10783%3B914%3B578
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halocene#mediaviewer/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
Have you overlooked that the temperature data has been adjusted? Take away the adjustments and what happens to the ‘warming’? Remember, when you arbitrarily adjust the data, it is no longer science.
Anthony, your standards are slipping, allowing a piece like this. The author needs to dig a little deeper. Almost certainly, polar ice ebbs and flows due to oceanic long cycles – see Weatherbell’s Joe Bastardi’s Saturday Summaries, for example.
http://www.weatherbell.com/saturday-summary-may-31-2014
REPLY: The man wanted to ask a question, I decided to let him. People can learn useful things from basic questions, even those that you might think are too simple to ask, or are below the skill set of others. Some people will probably tell me the next post, the Friday Funny, which is about poetry, should be allowed because poetry isn’t a useful discussion of science.
Note the masthead, and thank you for reading anyway. – Anthony
“Although I am a long-time, casual skeptic of global warming”
Sure you are.
mosomoso June 6, 2014 at 4:48 am nails it.
Richard M says: “If the anthro part is aerosols it could make sense.”
To me a warmer NH serves to minimize significance of aerosols. They are much shorter lived than CO2 and therefore of higher concentration in the NH.
Would not be contrary? When it is warmer, has more CO2 when it is colder less CO2!
It’s hard to make a case these days that even Arctic ice is down. See this comparison from Cryosphere Today:
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=05&fd=26&fy=1995&sm=05&sd=26&sy=2014
[h/t Steve Goddard. Note that snow extent for the two dates is not directly comparable.]
Dudley Horscroft says: June 6, 2014 at 5:07 am “Sounds to me rather like a natural negative feedback ensuring that temperatures cannot deviate too much (how much?) from some mean temperature.”
Yes! Plus, ice also protects the ocean surface from the cold dry Arctic wind further serving to prevent heat loss via evaporation and an otherwise higher thermal coupling it would have to an open ocean.
I think you’re dead on the money. The fact that e.g. HADCRUT4 does not correct its temperature record for UHI in the land surface record (while there is little evidence of equal heating or evidence of much less heating of both the neighboring oceans or the troposphere above) is absolutely an anthropogenic effect on the (predominantly northern) hemisphere temperature computation. The fact that the GISS correction somehow often manages to increase or leave neutral the UHI correction it does compute in the present relative to the past, so that correcting for UHI actually increases global temperatures as the world’s urbanization has proceeded is also absolutely an anthropogenic effect on temperature. The fact that thermometers have, over the greater part of the thermometric record, been used regularly only on the land, in or near urban centers that have monotonically grown, surrounded by an ever-increasing margin of forest turned to farmland, to shopping malls, roads, and parking lots, and even in the present are sited in official weather stations located (say) ten meters or so from a vast complex of treeless concrete runways at airports, in an office building downtown in a major urban center, in between buildings in a government complex surrounded by parking and with buildings acting as a reflector oven during the day — that’s an anthropogenic cause of increase in the computed thermometric record.
It is a simple matter of fact that the southern hemisphere has comparatively few major urban centers and a much smaller population. It has fewer thermometers, and the thermometers it has are much, much less likely to have been read in the same site, regularly, for 164 years back to 1850. In 1850 Antarctica, much of Africa, much of South America, and the bulk of Australia were Terra Incognita, untouched and unvisited by westerners with their fancy scientific instrumentation, unsettled, uncivilized, unknown). Its oceans were visited by whalers and pirates and slavers, not scientific expeditions. Even now, almost 1/3 of the population of the Earth lives in just two countries — India and China, both in the northern hemisphere. Even now, the southern hemisphere has only 800,000,000 people! — that is between 11% and 12% of the total world’s population! It is also important to remember that 80% of the southern hemisphere is ocean and 20% sparsely populated land, where in the northern hemisphere over 40% of the surface area is (comparatively heavily urbanized) land.
Finally, it is a simple matter of fact that computed temperatures — oops, I meant temperature anomalies as we have no idea what the actual global average temperature(s) are even today within one whole degree centigrade either way — are almost never presented to the public with credible error bars. There is a simple reason for that. If they were, the uncertainty of the estimates in the 19th century would be far greater than the total anomaly, and would only gradually shrink to where a warming “signal” could emerge from statistical and measurement “noise” by around the second half of the twentieth century, and would remain commensurate with most of the warming observed in the single burst of conceivably anthropogenic CO_2 driven warming in the entire thermal record, that covers roughly the period between the 1982-1983 El Nino and the 1997-1998 “super” El-Nino that was the last burst of statistically significant (and instrumentally resolvable!) warming we’ve seen in the last 16 years. And yes, southern temperature uncertainties are even today much greater than northern temperature uncertainties because there are far fewer thermometers more erratically measured in a much smaller land surface area, and systematic or not ARGO is damn sparse compared to the incredible number of NH thermometers throughout much of the record.
However, the SH record is, by its nature, much less susceptible to the UHI effect, which is an entirely anthropogenic artifact in the computation of global temperatures, while being even more susceptible to the anthropogenic neglect of a proper treatment or presentation of error.
The very, very interesting thing is that one would expect to first order — in what is admittedly a horrendously nonlinear coupled chaotic system with strong non-Markovian dynamics that I’ve asserted in other posts cannot currently be modelled or predicted in any believable way out to the long (climate, vs weather) term at the granularity of current model computation or any granularity they are likely to achieve in less than decades — is for well-mixed atmospheric CO_2 to have a larger water vapor feedback driven warming of the southern hemisphere than in the northern hemisphere, as the ratio of humid warmed ocean to drier land is 4:1 in the south, 3:2 in the north. Yet we observe the opposite.
A truly cynical skeptic might consider this to be first order evidence supporting two possibilities that either or both could independently be correct. One is that we have the wrong sign for total feedback due to water including all oceanic and atmospheric and albedo-related effects, given the actual dynamic process that govern the ocean and its contributions to local and global temperatures. This is basically consistent with Bob Tisdale’s ENSO-dominant hypothesis (and with Trenberth’s “missing heat” hypothesis that seems to be converging with Tisdale’s). The second is that UHI is important, and computing the land surface record without compensating for it leads to anomalous warming that is not reflected in the oceans or troposphere because it is anthropogenic local warming, not global, but happens to warm the places we are most likely to position our thermometers with a clear time dependent gradient due to monotonically increasing population and land use change.
rgb
Is it just me or are there others tired of seeing the lie that is that temperature graph?
Where’s the mid 20th century drop in temperature that caused the ice age scare?
“Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earthās average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras ā and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.” http://denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm
Many more:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/02/the-1970s-global-cooling-alarmism.html
No Tamino clicks from me.
Don B I think its appropriate for AW to let a warmist post occasionally if it has a factual case anyway.
That shark video might be more appropriate to the stuff this site fights against than you would think at first glance. I have a sneaking suspicion that it is a clip from that Faux Megladon documentary Discovery made last year. The one that claimed they had discovered evidence that Megladon had survived into the modern age, only revealing afterwards that it was purely an speculative entertainment production. Which makes it about as scientific as most of the Global warming documentaries.
From LT on June 6, 2014 at 5:17 am:
There has not been three decades of elevated solar activity. TSI appears to have been higher from about 1935-65. Since the 1979 NH sea ice highs, TSI has been trending down (although all those differences are only about 1/2 W/m2 with 1360 approx. average).
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-Reconstruction-2014.png
The ice loss does track with the PDO:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/jisao-pdo/from:1979/to:2014/mean:13/normalise/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/from:1979/to:2014/mean:13/normalise
But the ice goes the opposite way of the AMO, note the -1 scaling factor:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo/from:1979/to:2014/mean:13/normalise/scale:-1/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/from:1979/to:2014/mean:13/normalise
Got that? No elevated solar activity, NH sea ice trends down while PDO trends down, NH sea ice trends down while AMO trends UP.
However, you mentioned a “…positive PDO cycle for the 80,s,90ā²s and early 2000ā²s.” But my eyeball is not seeing about a 10 year lag (PDO to early 2000’s to continuing ice loss to early 2010’s). Without another hundred years or so of sea ice data, as it looks like either a quarter or a half of a sine wave is showing for both, offhand they seem to track within a year or two.
I disagree that evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH) is compelling. Arctic air temperatures were cooling up until the winds changed and removed sea ice and ventilated heat. Temperatures rose because ice was removed. not vice versa. The inflow of warm waters due t oscillatins are the major reason for continued lack of summer ice but that is reversing. Read Why Antarctic Sea Ice Is the Better Climate Change Indicator http://landscapesandcycles.net/antarctic-sea-ice–climate-change-indicator.html
the Polar See-Saw is a well documented natural phenomenon, largely ignored by those with a political agenda (eg the IPCC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_see-saw
“Therefore, global warming has evidently ceased, at least for now, because the Southern Thermal Hemisphere (STH) has entered a cooling phase, compensating for the anthropogenic warming of the NTH.”
Here is a plot of NH and SH temperature. That proposition isn’t obvious. The trend has tapered about equally in both hemospheres. It’s true that the NH was warming faster earlier.
Re previous post, excuse me, that was 1361 W/m2 TSI approx average, not 1360.
While CO2 is an unlikely contributor to northern hemisphere warming, carbon soot from the burning of coal since the dawn of the industrial revolution is very likely a causative factor. Look at the photos of the air quality in major cities in China today and you can see that while coal is burned cleanly in the USA (thus no longer producing the soot) the soot from Chinese coal burning is probably continuing to contribute to soot over the arctic.
http://imgur.com/BKaEalG
Compelling, as long as you can explain all these other temperature excursions throughout the Holocene please. What, no use of “unprecedented”, “accelerating”, etc…………?
The post’s author does not present an adequate argument for further investigation. Science proceeds from curiosity to observation to experimentation to results to conclusions to further curiosity. He needs to present not only that ice has increased but where and under what specific conditions. In other words, he fails to present adequate observation of this phenomenon. Ice expands and retracts under several co-presenting conditions unique and directly related to the central observation. What are these co-presenting conditions directly related to Antarctic ice expansion?
Grade: Fail
I quote: “The warming of the NTH explains progressive loss of Arctic sea ice.”
Rubbish. Arctic warming has nothing to do with NTH. And the NCDC temperature graph you show is also false because it shows warming in the eighties and nineties before 1998 that did not exist. You of course are making the same mistake about the Artctic as the warmists are making when they choose to ignore my work. Let’s begin at the beginning that you should have gotten from my paper in E&E 22(8):1069-1083 (2011). First of all, the Arctic warming we have now started suddenly at the turn of the twentieth century. Prior to that there was nothing in the Arctic except for two thousand years of slow, linear cooling. The early part of the warming was interrupted in mid-century by thirty years of cooling, then resumed in 1970 and is still active. The sudden start of the warming rules out the greenhouse effect as its cause because radiation laws pf physics do not allow this. The most likely cause of warming that can start suddenly on a broad front is a rearrangement of the North Atlantic current system at the turn of the century that started bringing warm Gulf Stream water into the Arctic Ocean. The thirty year cooling in mid-century would then be the result of a temporary return of the former flow pattern of currents. It is quite impossible for greenhouse warming to switch back and forth between warming and cooling. As to the actual water temperature, direct measurements of Arctic Ocean water temperature near Svalbard indicted that it was higher than at any time during the last 2000 years. Whatever happens to Arctic ice now is controlled by the currents that bring warm water to the Arctic, not some imaginary NTH or non-existent AGW.
Mr. Buske, It is my hope you are seeking a dialog on your interesting speculation and assertions.
If that is what you are after, then I offer a repost of my comments and questions to your post, hoping for a meaningful response from you:
“hunter says:
June 6, 2014 at 3:17 am
You offer a lot to ponder. I would ask you to expand this interesting assertion a bit more:
āā¦that evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH) is compelling.ā
1- please define severe. There is good historical evidence that the temperatures we are experiencing are not unique. And certainly it is fair to say that nothing severe is happening, since storm, drought, flood, heat and cold are failing to show any dangerous trends.
2- You introduce a new termāNTHā Northern Thermal Hemisphere. Please offer evidence that this is even a meaningful term.
You further assert that this NTH warming explains arctic ice loss. How does this reconcile with excellent historical records indicating that the current state of Arctic sea ice is not unprecedented,and that in fact Arctic sea ice is highly dynamic and has been like this in the past ā150 years.
Looking forward to your reply,
Respectfully,
hunter
That would be nice, if it were physically meaningful.
jmrsudbury says:
June 6, 2014 at 3:03 am
Norm. The first IPCC report showed a satellite arctic ice extent graph. The a multi year mean went back to 1973. The 1973 level was the about the same as 2005ā²s ice extent. The ice extent increased until 1979 then fell again. Your āprogressive arctic ice lossā is just a part of a cycle.
Your memory appears to be faulty:
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/fig2-14.htm
The climate4you graph appears to have been created using the “adjusted” or, as Steven Goddard repeatedly demonstrates, “TAMPERED” data from the guberment databases, which makes the 30 yr cooling period beginning in the 1940’s look like another flat pause instead of the actual cooling that occurred.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/
Norm Buske said:
“… I agree that evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH) is compelling. ”
What evidence? We would all be interested in hearing a compelling argument that the 20th century warming shown in your Climate4you chart above is
1) anomalous warming, not explained by natural variation over the past centuries. I.e. not unprecedented, (cf. previous Medieval, Roman warm periods etc). Yes, there is an active debate on this topic. So let’s see your “compelling” evidence that “settles” the debate.
2) and caused “largely” (as you say) by man-made activities.
I guessing that your argument goes something like this: A) Temperatures rose in the 20th century. B) CO2 levels rose in the 20th century due to human activities. Therefore (applying the Holmes-Doyle lemma) man-made event B certainly caused event A. What else could it be!
I’m willing to concede that the increase in CO2 levels in Proposition B is likely due to human activity. But you can’t apply that causation transitively to Proposition A, without further compelling proof. And that proof can be ‘compelling’ if and only if you can prove that you’ve eliminated all other possibilities.
As they say in the Army, “It’s time to sh*t, or get off the pot!” Show us your compelling evidence! (And we’ll know it is compelling if it causes Anth*ny to change his belief)
richard brown says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/06/antarctic-sea-ice-increase-and-global-warming/#comment-1655622
henry@richard
clearly you don’t have a clue what you are talking about, because you never actually took the trouble yourself of comparing weather stations in the NH and the SH and analysing the results.
My latest results of 27 stations on the NH show that it is cooling at an average rate of -0.014K/yr and a further 27 stations on the SH show it is cooling there at a rate of -0.015K/yr (both taken from 2000-2014).
The difference between both hemispheres is so small that we can safely assume that the whole earth is now cooling (from the top down) at a rate of about -0.014K per annum. Note that this cooling speed is still accelerating further down, though.
The author seems completely ignorant of the main reason for the accelerated warming of the Northern hemisphere during the period of 1980 to 1998 – the Clean Air Act and accompanying (amongst other things) switchover of automobiles from carbureters to electroncally controlled fuel injection, resulting in massive reductions of cooling aerosols, which allowed previously hidden warming to appear. It’s rather implausible to expect a relatively constant increase in CO2 levels year after year to suddenly result in massive warming period, followed by a period every bit as long of little or no warming. These events have a large impact on the perception of CO2 as a potent and controlling factor on Earthly temperatures. There are also other factors at work, such as BC (black carbon) mostly the result of forest fires in the northern hemisphere, which typically don’t pay any attention to the Clean Air Act. There is also El Nino and its known effects on the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere, which some believe is the main driver of warming in that area. The northern hemisphere experience differs for a lot of reasons, which can easily be seen and understood, from the southen hemisphere.
Mr. Buske:
Please state the evidence you find compelling in support of a largely man-made warming outside of UHIs. I’ve been looking for such evidence since this claim was first made in the 1980s & have yet to find it. None exists in the IPCC reports.
Thanks.
I do believe the purpose of this post is so we can see the other side flounder about. Thank you for the humor. This casual septic agrees with the evidence of severe anthropogenic warming, which is somehow having a cooling effect.
So far, Norm Buske has not responded to any comments. I, too, would like for Norm to present the “compelling” evidence of Anthropogenic warming. I have been looking for this for years and have not fopund this. So if he could enlighten me, I would be greatful.
By the way, do not cite the warming of the Arctic as evidence. This warming is due to warmer SST which is not due to any enhanced “greenhouse effect”. For confirmation, see the laws of radiation physics, with particular attention to the opacity of water to IR.
Robert Brown says:
June 6, 2014 at 5:57 am
Excellent, as usual.
Consider also that Dr. Phil “adjusts” the sea record to accord with the land, thereby in effect extending the UHI induced man-made heating artifact to the other 70% of earth’s surface. When coupled with the fraudulent UHI adjustments which make readings warmer rather than cooler, most if not all of the “observed” warming in the 20th century (lacking so far in this century) can be explained.
DayHay said on June 6, 2014 at 6:51 am:
Okay…
You took this chart:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations_Rev_png
You dropped a straight line over the wriggly average of the 8 reconstructions, from about the end of the initial warm-up to present,
Then added straight lines on nearly all of the leading edges of the squiggles, to show where the temps moved upwards over centuries.
…
What’s to explain? The temperature normally wriggles a few hundredths of a Ā°C over a few hundred years. They have been saying the current increase was much more over a much shorter time, thus not natural.
What you should note is all those proxies showing higher temperatures than today where somehow life survived without air conditioning. Looks like all but one said temps were significantly higher for centuries, with the outlier examining European pollen.
Admad says:
June 6, 2014 at 12:26 am
OK, donāt want to trigger a firestorm here ā is the implication from Mr Buske that maybe UHI heat propagation/leaching out into the environment is the cause of the NTH warming? Thatās what I infer. Is this even feasible? I wouldnāt have thought that a UHI footprint could be big enough to cause any measurable hemispherical effect.
Well not causing hemispherical warming, but warming of the thermometers. I think the majority of the thermometers in the database are influenced by UHI – see Watts et al 2012 – unadjusted thermometers show huge differences between a selected certified group of stations in comparison to the rest.
There is a recent study that confirms everything this guys says with 100% accuracy! To replicate the study at home, place a beverage on a hot plate and turn on the heat. You’ll notice as the bottom warms up, the top cools off until the bottom is boiling and the top is covered with 1-2″ of ice. …and now you understand how this all works. Wild conjecture, rapid hand-waving, wild-eyed crazy looks, followed by “Trust me, I’m Bill Nye the science guy!”
His memory may appear to be faulty but not mine.
Quick view
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/arctic-ice-growth-since-1971/
Sea ice extent anomaly 1970 to 1990, IPCC 1990 – First Assessment Report
[PDF – 29MB]
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
Evidence just in. Soot and warm weather was key to melting Greenland ice in 2012.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/06/study-greenlands-july-2012-insta-melt-was-triggered-by-a-combination-of-warm-weather-and-carbon-soot/#comment-1655729
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/22/7964.figures-only
By severe warming you mean warming so minute that it can only be witnessed on temperature anomaly plots scaled in tenths of a degree?
The elephant in the room that very few want to discuss – impacts of the steep rise of energy flux at / near the surface. Due to everything having to do with electricity, climate controlled structures and enclosures, motors, electro-magnetic transmissions and inadvertent emissions, etc, etc, etc. Yep, 7B people and quite a large fraction of them facilitating all this energy flux. And it is not limited to urban zones. Anywhere there are people and things installed or run by people (or which run themselves due to being programmed by people) this additional energy flux exists.
Jimbo says:
June 6, 2014 at 8:46 am
Phil. says:
June 6, 2014 at 7:54 am
Your memory appears to be faulty:
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/fig2-14.htm
His memory may appear to be faulty but not mine.
Quick view
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/arctic-ice-growth-since-1971/
Seriously, consider the source! Did you ever consider why Goddard produced a map at such low magnification that you can’t read the text? Hint it doesn’t show what he would like you to think it does!
Phil. says:
June 6, 2014 at 9:54 am
Hint…
====
You can click on the map…open it in another window…and magnify it as large as you want
Phil,
You should have looked further down the page I showed you from Goddard. The image is now linked directly. I was saving you from having to download 29MB. I will still try to save you from having to download 29MB – the following image is from the IPCC FAR. It shows a low extent in the early 1970s.
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/screenhunter_170-jun-15-11-10.jpg
Sourced from:
Sea ice extent anomaly 1970 to 1990, IPCC ā First Assessment Report
[PDF – 29MB]
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
Fortunately for this paper the peer review has occurred after it was published in WUWT, otherwise it would have never been published.
We simply do not at present understand
the Global Climate system.
So what happened to the 30 years of data from 1850 to 1880 ??
Eric Sincere says:
June 6, 2014 at 8:39 am
There is a recent study that confirms everything this guys says with 100% accuracy! To replicate the study at home, place a beverage on a hot plate and turn on the heat. Youāll notice as the bottom warms up, the top cools off until the bottom is boiling and the top is covered with 1-2ā³ of ice. ā¦and now you understand how this all works. Wild conjecture, rapid hand-waving, wild-eyed crazy looks, followed by āTrust me, Iām Bill Nye the science guy!ā
____________________
Eric,
I’m a bit disappointed that you didn’t mention that on a global scale, the opposite effect exists. i.e., heat rises, so obviously as heat flows northward, the Arctic warms and Antarctica cools, having lost its heat upwards to the North Pole.
Arctic ice seems to be coming back. It certainly hasn’t worsened in recent years. NOAA’s prediction for this year is for summer minimum Arctic ice to be a positive anomaly. Looking at the 2m+ ice covering about 6 million km^2 at present suggests they should be right. Then the temp doesn’t look so Anthropo in the NH. Most skeptics accept 0.7C per century with Anthropo half or less of this and the rest natural recovery from the LIA. The rest of the anomaly is basically record fiddling of several tenths of C, poor recording and the like.
Once Obama destroys the USA, Man Made Global warming will disappear…. š Get it?
Heat rises hence the top or northern part of the globe warms more.
/sarc
Rob says:
June 6, 2014 at 11:06 am
We simply do not at present understand
the Global Climate system.
________________________
“The debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.”
POTUS, SOTU Address, Jan, 2014
Perhaps his Friday is a bit hectic?
Twice now you’ve linked to the THIRD assessment report. However, the original quote …
… referenced the FIRST assessment report, which (thanks to Jimbo’s link) shows on page 224 (around 272 including the unnumbered pages) that jmrsudbury did NOT have a faulty memory. Either you are deliberately building a straw man, or you’re having trouble counting to three.
The figure in the THIRD report cuts out the inconvenient rise in Arctic sea ice from 1975 to 1980, which makes it a bald -faced lie in and of itself. Does anyone wonder why people are skeptical of a ‘scientific’ claim that is backed up by the need for such obvious manipulations of the data?
Latitude says:
June 6, 2014 at 10:16 am
Phil. says:
June 6, 2014 at 9:54 am
Hintā¦
====
You can click on the mapā¦open it in another windowā¦and magnify it as large as you want
Indeed you can as I did. If you do so you’ll find that what Goddard claimed was sea ice was in fact multiyear ice, a different matter altogether and yet another ‘misleading’ Goddard post!
Jimbo says:
June 6, 2014 at 10:18 am
Phil,
You should have looked further down the page I showed you from Goddard. The image is now linked directly. I was saving you from having to download 29MB. I will still try to save you from having to download 29MB ā the following image is from the IPCC FAR. It shows a low extent in the early 1970s.
Apparently you missed the point about the map?
Also despite saving me loading all those MB it’s worthless without the legend.
This is a satire isn’t it? A parody, or what is known as a Poe http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe's_Law.
Or were we meant to take it seriously?
Phil,
You pointed to the THIRD assessment report and not the 1st report. jmrsudbury memory is not as faulty as you previously claimed.
My link was to draw your attention to the IPCC graph and not the maps. I will ask you to open up the 29MB file below. Do you see the graph? If you need more detail on the graph then click the link below. You will see what you have been avoiding seeing.
Sea ice extent anomaly 1970 to 1990, IPCC ā First Assessment Report
[PDF – 29MB]
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
Think of Norm Buske as Anthony’s guest.
This link, Twentieth century bipolar seesaw of the Arctic and Antarctic surface air temperatures:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL042793/full
One possibility:
āThen the Atlantic surface current transports the warm waters away from the Antarctic region, northward towards the equator, with additional warming, and then further north towards the Arctic. In this way heat that would otherwise be available to the Southern Ocean and Antarctica is being exported to the northern hemisphere and northward to the Arctic.ā
āThe Arctic and Antarctic temperature seesaw pattern has also been observed in paleo ice core recordsā
My guess is the North Pacific Grye:
Transporting more heat North and more cool South. And the South Pacific Gyre not transporting so much heat.
Jimbo says: June 6, 2014 at 2:18 pm
“Phil,
You pointed to the THIRD assessment report and not the 1st report. jmrsudbury memory is not as faulty as you previously claimed.”
Well, there was one mystery in jmrsud’s comment – he spoke of AR1 with a comparison between anomalies of 1973 and 2005. The 2005 figure must be from elsewhere, and with a different anomaly base.
I looked at AR1. The graph is on p224. It shows an upward movement (NH) from 1973 to 1979 of about 0.6 M sq km. That isn’t much. The same graph shows a SH down move of 2.4 M sq km over the same period. SG of course cut that off, which is why the caption is missing.
”Although I am a long-time, casual skeptic of global warming, I agree that evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH) is compelling. The warming of the NTH explains progressive loss of Arctic sea ice.”
I’m sorry, but if you don’t understand what being Sceptical means, you probably shouldn’t claim to be one. Your acceptance that there is evidence of severe, largely anthropogenic warming etc. is the total opposite of being sceptical.
Eamon.
If you assume that half of the world’s current energy consumption is released as direct heat to the surroundings then the atmosphere would warm by 0.5 degC every decade if that heat is not radiated away to space or absorbed by say the oceans. There is less direct heat being added to the atmosphere in the SH than the NH. There is a long term cooling trend that is being masked by anthropogenic warming.
Well, given the realities of energy production, transfer,, loss and eventually environmental equilibrium, why do you think only 1/2 of all energy produced goes to the environment as heat?
Transportation?
Energy is burned (some lost immediately as waste heat),
the rest into:
kinetic energy but is lost later through braking (heat energy),
friction (heat energy),
tire squirm and flexing (heat energy),
air resistance -> air movement (heat energy),
oil heat (heat energy),
water heat (heat energy),
battery and electrical energy -> radio, spark plugs, electrical resistance, lights -> all eventually into air motion or heat energy in resistance (heat energy),
fan and A/C compressors -> air movement and gas compression -> (heat energy),
etc.
Food?
Clothing?
Shelter?
Heating or cooling houses and buildings?
All energy produced ends up as heat energy into the planet. Except what is stored and sent into space.
Now, you will have to work very, very hard to convince me that the human energy production is enough to be detectable at today’s (or tomorrow’s!) rates of usage.
Reading a new science fiction book called OLD MARS. Series of short stories dedicated to Edgar Rice Burroughs. If you have never read Burroughs (1875-1950 — also the creator of Tarzan) this is the Mars of canals filled with water and several Martian races living in fantastic cities. The Mars of swashbuckling swordplay.
Suddenly I understand THE PAUSE. Mars is a dying world growing ever colder. The water in the canals is almost frozen solid. To save their planet the Martians have been stealing earth’s heat —
transmitting it to Mars via Z-rays.
One of earth’s greatest heroes — Super Mandia — has been dispatched to the fourth planet by a ultra secret organization known only as The Team — traveling there in a hot air balloon — daring for the first time the terrible turbulences of the interplanetary atmosphere –. accompanied only by Captain Kelvin Trenberth — earth’s foremost expert on interplanetary heat exchange.
Perhaps I should write this? — telling the full tale?
Eugene WR Gallun.
OK, here’s a totally clueless (probably im-)possible explanation from me. It all depends on the speed of head diffusion in the antarctic ice and snow cover and how it cools off surface air.: If there is a lot of cold reserve in the mass of ice and snow, the polar descending airflow will extend further than the edge of the continent. But when it meet abnormally humid air (from excess evaporation, globally warmed), it might favor precipitation at the edge of the continent (assuming there is not much water vapor to condensate in the center of the continent). Such precipitation might lower surface temperature (because the snow is colder than sea water) and float on top of denser saltwater. The air probably retains enough cooling capacity to freeze the surface. So the ice extent might increase.
CAVEAT: I can shoot many holes in my own mechanism hypothesis, but it’s fun do imagine.
I too am sorry. The “severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH)” is largely because of two factors: 1) most of the thermometers now being on runway tarmac or other thermally-compromised places, and 2) liars and cheats masquerading as scientists who keep shuffling UHI off to the past and to cooler spots. The only way now that these compromised data sources can give us “more heat” is if there actually is global warming. And if we go into “global cooling” they will “hide the decline” for years. Thankfully, we have the satellites, and at least one such system seems to be run by honest, competent people. I may not live to see these criminals go to jail, but if, when the blinders come off and a desire for retribution builds, I will do all in my power to see at least the worst offenders given the works. They are destroying the concept of science; their proposed policies are genocidal; and they should be made exemplars of how not to do it in the future.
Your northern and southern thermal hemispheres are connected by deep ocean water. The response is slow, hundreds of years. The lagged response creates oscillation. What you are seeing is an oscillation. In due time the Antarctic will thaw and the Arctic will freeze. We maybe seeing that already.
Thank you Nick. As you know Antarctic sea ice extent is near record levels in recent years and has been trending UP since 1979. Now here is something else that jmrsudbury said:
Here is a link I provided in this thread:
Maybe it’s just coincidence.
RACookPE1978 says:
June 6, 2014 at 6:00 pm
“All energy produced ends up as heat energy into the planet. Except what is stored and sent into space.”
____________________
True and that amount of energy is so trivial as to not merit consideration in global energy balance calculations.
Re previous post, excuse me, that was 1361 W/m2 TSI approx average, not 1360.
Since it systematically varies by an average of 1 Watt/m^2 every two days (a total variation of 90 W/m^2, up AND down per year) it hardly matters. By the time I’m posting this in response we are 1/4 of the way through your error.
Someday I’m going to make a list of the primary secular variations in energy input to the atmosphere. The list goes something like:
a) Earth’s “mean insolation” 1360-ish W/m^2, depending on how you average it.
b) Earth’s albedo. Horribly variable, both spatially and temporally, it has an average of around 30% but varies from around 3% at dead noon over clear water to around 90% (clouds) to 95% (fresh snowfall) at the surface, plus a substantial amount from the atmosphere. Albedo is an “off the top” removal of solar insolation — it is counts essentially elastic removal of incoming solar energy with no heating at all.
c) Earth’s orbital eccentricity (range 91 W/m^2, the thing that has to be temporally averaged over an elliptical orbit that spends longer further away than it does close up). This is around 15% variation of the TOA mean insolation, 7.5% up, 7.5% down (roughly, actually it’s a bit more down than up if one temporally averages because of equal areas in equal times).
These are all “off the top” variations, independent of atmospheric chemistry per se altogether, although albedo is coupled to aerosol and water vapor content and the particular history of the jet stream and snowfall and ocean currents and El Nino and… so albedo in particular is a major, largely unpredictable, dynamic quantity.
Then there are atmospheric contributions:
d) The greenhouse effect per se — atmospheric absorption of outgoing LWIR radiation and its re-radiation downward, where it functions as (your choice of, lady or the glass) a reduction in the NET rate that the surface loses energy or as an additional gain at ground level (that reduces the total, not net, loss).
e) Air pressure variation. The pressure in the atmosphere varies from a low of ballpark 87 kPa to a high of 108 kPa, a total range of around 21% around the mean of 101 kPa. Air pressure also varies from an average of 101 kPa around “sea level” (which itself is a complex thing to define on a sphere, but skip that) to 30 kPa around the top of Mount Everest — it varies with altitude and temperature both. Atmospheric absorption is primarily (at low altitude) due to homogeneous (pressure) broadening of the individual lines in the greenhouse gas bands in the LWIR part of the spectrum where thermal radiation from local temperatures is peaked. The principle contributor to the width of the lines is the mean free time between collisions, which decreases with increasing temperature and pressure (broadening the lines). Line broadening is a two-sided sword, though — as lines broaden they do increase the net absorptivity of the atmosphere, but since the broadening decreases with altitude the extended “wings” actually absorb and reradiate at wavelengths that the atmosphere above is largly transparent to. The net “warming” effect depends on the details of the vertical pressure profile — on days where the pressure lapse is rapid as one goes up, high surface pressure can actually have a net cooling effect compared to some uncomputable GHG baseline where the pressure variation is more uniform. I do not know exactly what this variation ends up being compared to the baseline downwelling radiation, but at a guess it is a 4-5% effect (given the much larger pressure variation).
And then there is more, but I haven’t really worked it all out and don’t have good estimates for it. Interesting to think about. CO_2 variation is maybe 7th or 8th on the list.
rgb
scarletmacaw says:
June 6, 2014 at 1:22 pm
Phil. says:
June 6, 2014 at 9:54 am
Your memory appears to be faulty:
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/fig2-14.htm
Twice now youāve linked to the THIRD assessment report. However, the original quote ā¦
jmrsudbury says:
June 6, 2014 at 3:03 am
Norm. The first IPCC report
ā¦ referenced the FIRST assessment report, which (thanks to Jimboās link) shows on page 224 (around 272 including the unnumbered pages) that jmrsudbury did NOT have a faulty memory. Either you are deliberately building a straw man, or youāre having trouble counting to three.
You missed the bit out where he said: “The first IPCC report showed a satellite arctic ice extent graph. The a multi year mean went back to 1973.”
However it wasn’t satellite data!
“The charts are constructed by analysts using available in situ, remotely sensed, and model data sources. Data sources and methods of chart construction have evolved since 1972 resulting in inconsistencies in the data record; a characteristic shared with most operational products. However the arctic-wide charts are the product of manual interpretation and data fusion, informed by the analystās expertise and by ancillary products such as climatologies and ice information shared by foreign operational ice services.”
Also:
“First and foremost, users should understand that the charts are operational products. That is, they are created to aid safe navigation and for other operational purposes, using all available data. They are not necessarily consistent over time or space.”
and:
“ā¢ The data set has a suspected discontinuity over 1994-1997. Concentrations prior to 1997 are biased low relative to those after. The primary reason for this is the addition of high resolution active microwave radar (primarily SAR) after 1994 for tactical use.
The figure in the THIRD report cuts out the inconvenient rise in Arctic sea ice from 1975 to 1980, which makes it a bald -faced lie in and of itself. Does anyone wonder why people are skeptical of a āscientificā claim that is backed up by the need for such obvious manipulations of the data?
No it doesn’t, it shows the rise (0.5), it does show a bigger fall after 1980, that doesn’t make it a lie!
You apparently prefer to believe the data which wasn’t what it was said to be and to ignore its own producers’ caveats about its use.
For ‘obvious data manipulations’ continue going to Goddard’s site.
As documented here he pretended that ‘multi-year’ sea ice was the minimum extent and co-plotted it with actual minimum extent from a later year in an attempt to show that sea ice had increased, now that’s a ‘bald-faced’ lie!
Also in using that first IPCC report graph he took care to remove the inconvenient other part of the graph which showed the Antarctic data, because he didn’t want anyone to see the considerably greater, contemporaneous fall in Antarctic sea ice extent.
Perhaps you should be skeptical of someone who makes claims that need such obvious manipulations of the data?
Jimbo says:
June 6, 2014 at 8:46 am
His memory may appear to be faulty but not mine.
Quick view
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/arctic-ice-growth-since-1971/
Jimbo says:
June 6, 2014 at 2:18 pm
My link was to draw your attention to the IPCC graph and not the maps.
Perhaps you should have said so?
But it’s interesting that the first thing that shows up on that link is a faked map which purports to show that arctic sea ice extent increased over the last 42 years!
See above for further comments.
Robert Brown says:
June 6, 2014 at 5:57 am
And āWOWā, you sure said a āmouth-fullā when you said it. And I might add, a āmouth-fullā that needs repeated every time the ānativesā get restless and excited about their āclaims, contentions, estimations and/or calculationsā that are rooted in and/or based on āsurface temperature recordsā. Hopefully, a re-read of your commentary will ātriggerā a reality ācheckā of their thinking/thought processes.
And if I may, I will offer my ādifference of opinionā to your following commentary, to wit:
āIt is a simple matter of fact that the southern hemisphere has comparatively few major urban centers and a much smaller population. It has fewer thermometers, and the thermometers it has are much, much less likely to have been read in the same site, regularly, for 164 years back to 1850. In 1850 Antarctica, much of Africa, much of South America, and the bulk of Australia were Terra Incognita, untouched and unvisited by westerners with their fancy scientific instrumentation, unsettled, uncivilized, unknown). Its oceans were visited by whalers and pirates and slavers, not scientific expeditions.ā
——————–
Wherein you state ā¦. āIn 1850 Antarctica, much of Africa, ā¦ etc., etc. ā, ā¦.. I would have stated ā¦. āIn 1900 ā¦.ā ā¦ and included a major portion of the Northern Hemisphere of actually being āTerra Incognitaā relative to thermometer-based recording āregularityā of surface temperatures.
What’s happening with the earth’s tilt?
The Arctic sea ice is surrounded by what is essentially tundra ā wet, muddy, flat LAND at a rough circle at about latitude 70-72 south. In the arctic summer, the land has no ice on it at all. The Arctic sea ice drops from a March-April high of about 14 Mkm^2 to a September low of 6-7 Mkm^2 supposedly based on the 1970 data, down towards todayās average 4 Mkm^2 sea ice extents. Sea ice extents have twice gone [down to as low as] 3 Mkm^2 in 2007 and 2012.
At the earthās radius, assuming a beanie cap over the pole ā which is almost right.,
1 Mkm^2 of sea ice covers the north pole down to 85 degrees.
2 Mkm^2 of sea ice covers the north pole to 83 degrees.
3 Mkm^2 of sea ice covers the north pole down to 81 degrees.
4 Mkm^2 covers the pole down to 80 north latitude.
Thus, at todayās minimum sea ice extents in mid-September, the NOONDAY sun is only 8 ā 10 degrees above the horizon! It is trying to penetrate an air mass between 34 and 16 atmospheres thick, to hit a piece of ocean whose solar elevation angle has an effective albedo on open water and average wind speeds of only 0.20 to 0.34.
The Antarctic sea ice extents surrounds the 14 Mkm^2 continental land mass + the 3.5 Mkm^2 permanent shelf ice. The minimum Antarctic sea ice extents of 3 ā 4 Mkm62 surrounds that 17.5 Mkm^2, so even at its LOWEST sea ice extents, the MINIMUM effective Antarctic sea ice represents an area not of 3 ā 4 Mkm^2, but 21 to 22 Mkm^2. At its MINIMUM Antarctic sea ice extents in February-March, the edge of the Antarctic sea is is not at 83 or 85 south latitude, but at 70 south latitude! At its sea ice extents maximum ā now setting new records the past few years at 19.5 Mkm^2 ā the total Antarctic ice cap goes fro the south pole all the way up to latitude 59 south.
And it is expanding steadily even further fro the south pole every year, every month. May 8 this year? Just that 1.6 Mkm^2 āexcessā Antarctic sea ice āexcessā was 97% the size of Greenland. Not as thick of course, but even closer to the equator than Greenlandās ice.
Worse, the Arctic sea ice has roughly 50% āold iceā each year, and that dirty old ice has a very low albedo measured by Curry in the SHEBA ice camps as low as 0.38 ā 0.40. Average minimum sea ice albedo in the Arctic i June and July each year is not a pristine 0.93 or 0.90, but only 0.45. That Antarctic sea ice IS however almost all fresh frozen sea ice with very, very little dirt and carbon black on it ever.
Thus, the edge of the Antarctic sea ice is not only cleaner and is reflecting from a solar elevation angle 3 ā 5 time higher than the Arctic sun, it is receiving five times as much net solar radiation at sea level on those same days in late August and mid-September.
Net? the ever-increasing Antarctic sea ice edge receives more sunlight seven months of the year, the much smaller of Arctic sea ice receives more sunlight only 5 months of the year. The Antartic sea ice is always reflecting MORE solar energy off-planet every year because it is much closer tot he equator, and the solar angles are much higher more hours of the day for many more days of the years. That smaller part of Arctic sea ice that is being hit the sun each day is surrounded by ever-greener, ever darker tundra and low trees and bushes that are 125 – 25% GREENER (darker) and absorbing ever-more solar energy each year.
RACookPE1978 says: June 7, 2014 at 9:40 pm
“average wind speeds of only 0.20 to 0.34.”
Units, please! fps, mps, km/h, mph, knots? Wind speed should normally be measured in knots, but any of the above units are feasible – and all are different in magnitude!
No units at all. Those values were for the open ocean albedo at low solar elevation angles under average wind speeds (1-2 meters/sec). As high as 0.34 – 0.38 for solar elevation angles under 5 degrees, 0.20 for SEA between 5 and 10 degrees. If you want the actual equation, let me know. Its complex, but available, and compares well between all of the measured values from oil platforms and at-sea measurements.
0.40 – 0.46 was the “dirty” and melt-water contaminated sea through the mid-summer months in the high Arctic under clear skies. I have a “best-curve-fit” arctic sea ice albedo for each day-of-year from Curry’s SHEBA ice stations measurements as well.
Thanks for that, Mr, Mrs or Miss R A Cook – I misread your text! My apologies.
So now you again change the subject. Typical alarmist, no wonder the general public becomes less and less trusting of cAGW.
But that was not what you originally disagreed with, and still does not explain the link to the THIRD report when the FIRST report was the topic. With regards to the correctness of ‘satellite,’ the FAR says this:
You then defend the difference between the two graphs.
The rise in the TAR graph is about 0.4. In the FAR, it’s 0.55.
Bigger fall? That’s an understatement. The ‘fall’ is completely different in the two graphs. In the FAR, the ice extent crosses the zero line in 1976 and stays close to that level until 1990, no ‘fall’ at all, and the 1973 value is significantly below the final 1990 value (and any other part of the curve). In the TAR, 1980 is 0.7×10^6 km2 below the 1973 value. That a huge difference.
Climastrologists are famous for rewriting history in the direction of more alarmism, but the change in the sea ice graph from FAR to TAR exceeds even Winston Smith’s capabilities.
Blah blah Goddard, blah blah Goddard. Another straw man. Where did I ever mention Goddard?
“progressive loss of Arctic sea ice”
What nonsense! Arctic sea ice has every 60-70 years a low. To about the same extent as now, if you look at the Danish maps.
http://brunnur.vedur.is/pub/trausti/Iskort/Jpg/1930/1930_08.jpg
See also
http://mclean.ch/climate/Arctic_1920_40.htm
scarletmacaw says:
June 8, 2014 at 9:06 am
Phil. says:
June 7, 2014 at 10:10 am
“However it wasnāt satellite data!”
So now you again change the subject. Typical alarmist, no wonder the general public becomes less and less trusting of cAGW.
But that was not what you originally disagreed with,
Really? The poster said:
“Norm. The first IPCC report showed a satellite arctic ice extent graph. The a multi year mean went back to 1973. The 1973 level was the about the same as 2005ā²s ice extent. The ice extent increased until 1979 then fell again. Your āprogressive arctic ice lossā is just a part of a cycle.”
To which I replied; “Your memory appears to be faulty” and provided a graph which was made from satellite observations which was from the TAR.
“and still does not explain the link to the THIRD report when the FIRST report was the topic. With regards to the correctness of āsatellite,ā the FAR says this:
āEspecially importantly, satellite observations have been used to map sea-ice extent routinely since the early 1970sā
Which were included in the TAR graph not the first report graph that Goddard produced and which was linked to by the poster.
You then defend the difference between the two graphs.
“No it doesnāt, it shows the rise (0.5), it does show a bigger fall after 1980, that doesnāt make it a lie!”
The rise in the TAR graph is about 0.4. In the FAR, itās 0.55.
The smoothed curve in the TAR shows a rise from 0.4 to 0.9, 0.5 as I said. Goddard’s version of the FAR graph shows about 0.55. According to you that constitutes “cut(ting) out the inconvenient rise in Arctic sea ice from 1975 to 1980, which makes it a bald-faced lie in and of itself. So clearly you mis-spoke!
Bigger fall? Thatās an understatement. The āfallā is completely different in the two graphs. In the FAR, the ice extent crosses the zero line in 1976 and stays close to that level until 1990, no āfallā at all, and the 1973 value is significantly below the final 1990 value (and any other part of the curve). In the TAR, 1980 is 0.7Ć10^6 km2 below the 1973 value. That a huge difference.
If you were to look at the data from the TAR you’ll see that the monthly data doesn’t show much of drop by 1990, the smoothed curve does because of the drop after 1990, the FAR graph can’t show this because it has no post 1990 data.
You clearly ignored the caveats that I linked to by the originators of the FAR graph:
āFirst and foremost, users should understand that the charts are operational products. That is, they are created to aid safe navigation and for other operational purposes, using all available data. They are not necessarily consistent over time or space.ā
and:
āā¢ The data set has a suspected discontinuity over 1994-1997. Concentrations prior to 1997 are biased low relative to those after. The primary reason for this is the addition of high resolution active microwave radar (primarily SAR) after 1994 for tactical use.”
So the difference is due to improved data quality in the later graph.
Blah blah Goddard, blah blah Goddard. Another straw man. Where did I ever mention Goddard?
The posters to whom I was referring used data from Goddard’s site, that was what was being discussed when you posted. That’s why the FAR graph is such poor quality and lacks a legend, Goddard had to separate the Antarctic graph which showed an inconvenient reduction in sea ice prior to 1979. So you were implicitly referring to Goddard, whether you like it or not.