Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
Pierre Gosselin of NoTrickZone reports on a paper that confirms the slowdown in global surface warming has not been occurring at the poles. See Pierre’s post German Experts: New Paper By Gleisner Shows 2013 Cowtan And Way Arctic Data Hole Paper Was A Lemon.
You’ll recall that Cowtan and Way (2013) Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends were able to squeeze a few more drops of global warming trend from the data during the hiatus period by taking HADCRUT4 data and using a statistical method to infill the missing data at the poles, especially in the Arctic where polar amplification is more prevalent.
But a new paper, Geisner et al. (2015) Recent global warming hiatus dominated by low-latitude temperature trends in surface and troposphere data, undermines those Cowtan and Way efforts. The abstract reads (my boldface):
Over the last 15 years, global mean surface temperatures exhibit only weak trends. Recent studies have attempted to attribute this so called temperature hiatus to several causes, amongst them incomplete sampling of the rapidly warming Arctic region. We here examine zonal mean temperature trends in satellite-based tropospheric data sets (based on data from (Advanced) Microwave Sounding Unit and Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation instruments) and in global surface temperatures (HadCRUT4). Omission of successively larger polar regions from the global mean temperature calculations, in both tropospheric and surface data sets, shows that data gaps at high latitudes cannot explain the observed differences between the hiatus and the prehiatus period. Instead, the dominating causes of the global temperature hiatus are found at low latitudes. The combined use of several independent data sets, representing completely different measurement techniques and sampling characteristics, strengthens the conclusions.
There’s nothing surprising about that. We reported the same thing a year ago in the post Cowtan and Way (2013) Adjustments Exaggerate Climate Model Failings at the Poles and Do Little to Explain the Hiatus. The following graph is Figure 2 from that post.
The WattsUpWithThat cross post is here, for those who want to run through the comments.
I ended that post with:
Those who promote the Cowtan and Way (2013) revisions to the HADCRUT4 data don’t understand where the hiatus is taking place and they don’t understand the model failings at simulating polar amplification—or—they are intentionally being misleading.
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This desperate struggle to find droplets of data to support a debunked hypothesis is patently absurd – and very costly farce.
The warmist never learn to understand Theories of Science, thus they missed that a debunked hypothesis is debunked and can’t be “wakened up” again. It only takes one single colored dot on a white paper, no matter what color the paper can’t be said to be all white = without color.
But since they never understood the difference between a political “consensus”, an Axiom and a scientific Paradigm, what could one expect?
If I’m right about the poles being important in stopping the warming going into the interglacial and that further warming is more or less impossible so long as we have polar ice, then this is good news.
A new theory of ice-age cycle
I think I have found the problem as to why global warming has not currently stopped at “the poles”.
Obviously “the poles are not part of this earthly globe, and global warming has only stopped for this earth.
There see how easy that is, you simply exclude parts of the earth that don’t obey.
After all Michael Mann excluded the entire southern hemisphere when he first published his hockey stick graph.
For that earth shattering revelation the graph was labeled “Northern Hemisphere.”
So “global” only applies to certain part of the globe; got that ??
Well done Bob. Ahead of the curve as usuall.
Is the “Not” in the title correct?
Yes, Lance, it’s correct. And it’s confirmed by the graph.
As I understand it, the “hiatus” refers to the recent multi-year period of stable temps revealed in several temperature records. Then the Cowtan and Way paper purported to show temps were still rising in polar regions. This latest paper by Gleisner states the Cowtan and Way paper exaggerated polar amplification, that we actually don’t have the data to say polar regions are warming to the extent the Cowtan and Way paper said they were.
If polar regions are not warming at their previous rate, wouldn’t we say the “hiatus” IS effecting the poles after all, despite the claims of the Cowtan and Way paper?
SR
Bob, if the hiatus is NOT occurring at the poles, that means they are continuing to warm, confirming Cowtan and Way. I think your title is wrong.
This confused me as well. So let me see if I have it straight now. The poles were warming faster than the rest of the globe. However their relative warming has slowed down recently. And that is why Cowtan and Way rank 2014 as only second warmest. Is that correct?
That’s what I thought, too, and stumbled over the “not” in “Pierre Gosselin of NoTrickZone reports on a paper that confirms the slowdown in global surface warming has not been occurring at the poles.”
I guess it means… No, I’m not sure. Could you clarify, Bob? Thanks.
Yes, the headline totally confused me too. Hope they correct this error.
Please fix this – it really is very confusing.
As I understand it, the message is:
1) Cowtan and Way’s contention is that the Earth is still heating, just not in the observable lower latitudes – the distribution of the heat has simply moved poleward
2) This paper says the polar regions do not make any difference – the headline “Hiatus is not Occurring at the Poles” means the “hiatus” or plateau is not an artifact of shifting distribution of heat into unobservable regions
I recommend Ian Schumacher’s excellent comment below. Another commenter on another page at another time mentioned a fine analogy. In the contest between science and religion, we have the God of the Gaps, wherein God only continues to exist within the gaps of our knowledge.
Bitter clingers to the AGW religion have now invented the AGW of the Gaps. The difference, of course, is that religious believers readily admit the role of faith in their belief system, while the AGW flock are in denial that their increasingly desperate fairy tales are ultimately grounded in faith.
Another point: The ‘South Pole’, or Antarctica, rather, has no warming to have a break from. So speaking of a hiatus or no hiatus at the southern pole is meaningless and thus only confusing.
Sure, you can argue that over the specific time segment 1997 to 2012 you can draw a rising trend line across the (continental, not oceanic) Antarctic temperature data, but that is mostly because the 90s were the coldest decade in the region over the last 35 years, so temps jumped up a bit in 2000 and have basically stayed there ever since. The Antarctic temperature anomalies have swung up and down from the late 70s, both interannually (huge swings!) and interdecadally, but the overall trend is for all intents and purposes zero:
So please leave Antarctica out of the ‘hiatus’ discussion.
Where is the missing heat then?
Not at the poles now so we can’t blame the satellites for only picking up the high places and missing the surface (at the poles where they can’t orbit).
Deep oceans (when not getting there before) would imply negligible anthropogenic component of the warming.
The back of my sofa is too full of fluff…
It’s almost as though the effect of additional CO2 is now irrelevant.
… meaning, the poles cannot be used to justify away the “hiatus” on the planet as a whole.
(A wasted posting effort by a banned sockpuppet. Comment DELETED. -mod)
Latitudes are the reason global warming has stopped??
Interesting planet you’re on. What color is the sky there? Here, it’s a nice cerulian blue. You ought to come and visit us some time.
(A wasted posting effort by a banned sockpuppet. Comment DELETED. -mod)
@icouldnthelpit
For certain, for certain.
The absolutely ultimate explanation for it all is that low latitudes are responsible. This is not a hypothesis, such as when the poles were blamed for the “hiatus”. In stark contrast, the statement regarding the role of low latitudes is infallibly true. Not hypothesis, but word-of-god.
Meanwhile, we are forced to discard the poles as the excuse with which to dismiss the “hiatus” on the planet as a whole.
icouldnthelpit,
See, that’s not at all what you wrote @2:57.
The poles are at high latitudes, not low. The equator is at a low latitude.
dbstealey
February 17, 2015 at 3:15 am
Latitudes are the reason global warming has stopped?? …
The implication is pretty interesting despite the terminiological issue. The equatorial zone where this is supposed to be taking place is the portion of the planet that receives the highest energy from the sun per square meter. That makes me wonder about increased equatorial cloudiness. WIllis may weight in on this.
(A wasted posting effort by a banned sockpuppet. Comment DELETED. -mod)
Duster,
I agree. Willis has a unique way of looking at the problem and seeing an answer.
Clouds are the ‘X’ that is consistently disregarded in models. No wonder they always get it wrong.
Also, Dr. Lindzen has written that for more than the past billion years, temperatures at the equator [the lowest latitude] have remained within ±1ºC. Something to think about as a contrast to fluctuations at the Poles.
Global changes in T have the most effect at night, in colder temperatures, and at the higher latitudes. So it’s not surprising that there are bigger changes at the Poles. But clouds at the equator regulate temperatures so effectively that they always remain within 1ºC.
They are so full of BS.
Furthermore at NTZ (15. February 2015) the Arctic appears again. Mann blames the NE US snow on warm water off the coast of Cape Cod. (In the last few years they blamed the snow on a lack of Arctic sea ice.) Joe Bastardi tells us that warm water is 2,000km away and is 5°C above ‘normal’ and not 11.5C. They offer up any damned reason but the cold. Ditto for Antarctic sea ice extent.
And here is Arctic sea ice cover.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png
http://www.climatedepot.com/2011/10/28/No-Trend-In-Antarctic-Temperatures-Since-1979/
And this is why Geisner is full of BS. No trend in Antarctic Temperatures since 1979. Geisner ,isn’t Antarctica one of the poles?
Oh no no no, of course it’s the melting of floating ice rather than continental ice that matters when it comes to sea level rise, everyone knows that, sheesh. 😉 therefore the massive Antarctic is meaninglessness in this equation..are you catching on now?
Wouldn’t we have less [sea] ice if floating ice was melting? Didn’t I just see that sea ice extent was at record high levels? Are these people nuts or just not paying any attention to the real world?
Wondering Aloud
Sea ice around Antarctica IS increasing, and has been increasing at ever-increasing rates since 1992. If current trends continue, it could block sea traffic around Cape Horn in 10 – 14 years. This is unlikely, but it does project current trends just a short time into the future.
Arctic sea ice had been decreasing, but has been near-steady since 2006-2007. Oscillating (going up and down) but not decreasing.
And here is the temperature trend. No trend. This is why they are obsessed with the peninsula.
The IPCC says most models simulated a downward trend in Antarctic sea ice extent. The trend has been up since 1979.
Are we reading the same papers? It would seem that the Geisner paper supports the major claim of the Cowtan and Way paper, that we are missing warming not reported at the poles.
Of course now that we have records _without_ an El Niño, it would seem the pause might start fading into the past.
Your attempt to spin it didn’t work, Pippen Kool.
They said the missing heat was hiding in the oceans, but the Argo buoys couldn’t find it there, so logically the only place it can be hiding is somewhere there are no thermometers. And that (ta-daa) is the two tiny circles at both poles that the satellites can’t reach. (Whaddaya mean the Amunfsen-Scott South Pole station can’t find it there either?)
What is there to spin? Just read the papers. They are based on the same premise. Sheesh.
Wow. Maybe you don’t understand what the words mean.
Geisner: “the dominating causes of the global temperature hiatus are found at low latitudes.”
What it means: latitudes near the equator haven’t warmed much….lately.
C&W: (My words) If we sampled the entire area at the poles, we would measure more warming
What it means: latitudes near the poles have warmed….lately.
I mean, if someone is pushing a train and the other pulling, how are they not doing the same thing?
Pippen Kool,
Unspinning is spinning. 🙂
I must admit I can’t see how the paper refutes Cowtan & Way. It does suggest that the difference between the post-hiatus trend and pre-hiatus trend cannot be explained by missing data but C&W pretty much acknowledge the same thing since their recent trend is lower.
Anyway it’s late and I’m off to bed. I’ll need to have another look at it tomorrow.
John Finn February 16, 2015 at 5:44 pm
I must admit I can’t see how the paper refutes Cowtan & Way
Strange, you and Pippen Kool both. Even if I wanted to, I just can’t come up with a way to read that into it. This sentence in particular seems pretty clear:
Instead, the dominating causes of the global temperature hiatus are found at low latitudes. The combined use of several independent data sets, representing completely different measurement techniques and sampling characteristics, strengthens the conclusions.
How is that not refuting C&W? They find the dominant causes to be from different latitudes, and verify same using different data sets and measuring techniques. One thing I learned a long time ago is that if you can solve the same problem several different ways and get the same answer, you’re probably on the right track. That said, if this doesn’t refute C&W, then you or Pippen Kool or someone are going to have to help me out and quote the exact words that you think say this. Maybe I am dense, but I just cannot find them.
No they don’t.. C&W acknowledge there has been little warming in the lower latitudes but suggest the high latitudes haven’t been properly represented. The Post-2000 Cowtan & Way reconstructed trend shows warming but not at the pre-2000 levels.
The Geisner study finds “the dominating causes of the hiatus are found at low latitudes” .. and … “Omission of successively larger polar regions from the global mean temperature calculations, in both tropospheric and surface data sets, shows that data gaps at high latitudes cannot explain the observed differences between the hiatus and the prehiatus period”
Cowtan & Way haven’t said they can “explain the observed differences between the hiatus and the prehiatus period”. They’ve just suggested there is some warming that is not being measured. Pippen Kool’s follow up post says much the same.
The 2 studies seem to be entirely consistent.
It seems a few other readers now I agree with me,
Well, davidmhoffer, I for one agree with Pippen and Finn. This paper in no way refutes what C&W claimed. I’m sure most of us agree that C&W were more than a little “out there” with their claim. As a ststistician, I would never have used that technique myself (unless I had an axe to gring and other statisticians weren’t watching). But C&W were stretching for a reason to say the hiatus wasn’t happening by saying claiming there teally was no hiatus at the poles, while this paper says the haitus is dominant at the poles. That’s not a contradiction in any way, shape, or form.
Oops, I meant to finish by saying that this paper claimed the hiatus was dominant at low latitudes. Sorry.
“that we are missing warming not reported at the poles”…….
and that it doesn’t make any difference.
shows that data gaps at high latitudes cannot explain the observed differences between the hiatus and the prehiatus period.
yes they do.
no they don’t.
Hang around for a bit Mosh or don’t come here at all.
Mosher, tor comments make the issue more confusing than having no comment. Stop being so cryptic. My initial reading led me to the same conclusion that several readers have made. Then I reversed myself. Now I am more confused than ever. The papers are convoluted. The headlines are convoluted. The explanation of the headline and papers are convoluted and the rebuttals are convoluted.
Then you come in here and just add more confusion. Thanks for nothing.
Really Mosher. Where is the warming in the SH oceans and polar regions? The polar data is already distorted by homogenization. https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/gistemp-who-needs-antarctic-data-or-temps-near-ice/
Bob T has posted about this before also.
The last two years Arctic circle summer T has been near record low.
Indeed, the claim that record SH sea ice is due to extreme polar CO2 amplification is ludicrous.
Yes they don’t.
Or if you prefer no they don’t.
Or alternatively yes and no comments are a waste of time.
which of the dozens of published explanations do you prefer??
“Of course now that we have records _without_ an El Niño, it would seem the pause might start fading into the past.”
There is no trend in global temperatures anywhere close to what was projected. No matter how you spin it, that indicates a model failure.
We are still within the 2 sigma limits of the model median, not bad for governmrnt work. So failure not.
A) it blew past 2-sigma awhile ago
B) That’s lousy even for gubmint work
Out and now back in. But it was out and in back in ’98 too only on the high side. About what you would expect. The models take the long view.
I can’t deal with religious faith on that scale.
Pippen,
Now, I’m not saying these standard deviation calculations you’re referring to are meaningful in any way, but where is it said that the 1998 warm year was above 2std?
Which means in additional to the low latitudes causing the temperature hiatus in your opinion you now have to add Antarctica . How do you explain that?
The problem with trying to get accurate temperature information near the poles is satellite coverage is poor so surface measurements predominate.
For the North pole there is no good way to do long term surface measures anywhere near the pole. I could imagine an Argo-like, air dropped network of stations although I can’t really see anyone making a serious multi-decade effort to do so.
For the South pole the measurements have historically been made close to warm human habitats.
So your stuck with some pretty unreliable, noisy data. Treat any conclusions generated from that data appropriately.
Not a problem a bit of data ‘adjustments ‘ and a bit of smearing of temperature measurements form anywhere , even hundreds of miles away , and yo have your ‘proof’ Remember this is climate ‘science’ accuracy is no where near has important has ‘faith ‘ in your results.
Totally agree. I see this trend everywhere in climate science. Don’t get the answer from existing easily measured data? Then move to areas with no historical data and with much larger measurement uncertainty. You can even use models to give you the missing data and then show how this data matches to that predicted by models.
The predicted global warming upper troposphere hot spot not there? Then move away from direct temperature measurements by satellites and weather balloons to wind proxy data with measurement uncertainty from floor to ceiling. Problem solved. That and generally forget about the whole hotspot thing (try doing a search on google for global warming hotspot and see if you can find a non-sceptic site that even mentions it).
Ice extent not cooperating? Move to the much harder to measure ice volume with measurement uncertainty from floor to ceiling and absolutely no historical data. Problem solved.
Warming slowed down in areas with good temperature measurement coverage? Stop focusing in those areas and instead focus on the temperatures at the poles where there is almost no data (historical or current) what-so-ever. Problem solved.
I’ll just leave this list of characteristics of pathological science here for no particular reason 😉
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_science]
– The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
– The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
– There are claims of great accuracy.
– Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested.
– Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses.
– The ratio of supporters to critics rises and then falls gradually to oblivion.
+1e20
Richard Feynman would likely approve of your analyses. RIP Richard.
You forgot to mention the oceans.
Move away from SST and the top 700m (or so) where there are measurements to the deep oceans where there are no (or extremely few measurements), and claim that the ‘missing’ heat found its way to a place where there is no data; problem solved.
+100
Ian Schumacher, you sir are getting too close to the bone. Well done! This is indeed one of the best observations of Climastrology I have ever read. It rings so true.
richard verney,
Agreed. I only thought of the oceans later after I hit post. The search for heat in the oceans matches this pattern perfectly. The desired answer always lies in the places where we have little to no data.
It’s a simple test of faith, and a fine measure of it, too. Oh, to imagine, and then to believe.
===============
“Treat any conclusions generated from that data appropriately”
###
The trash can is the appropriate place.
Did you ever see that article about weather observations on the DEW Line? Charged with taking observations every 3 hours, the soldiers would fabricate the night-time readings because of the fear of polar bear attack.
Didn’t a paper last year find evidence of significant geothermal activities in the West Antarctica Peninsula? Of course it had the obligatory genuflect to AGW at the end but it is interesting that loss of ice and geothermal activities just happen to occur at the same place.
Comment meant for Mosher below.
here is a skeptical paper that took a similar approach at the south pole.
Cowtan and Way have just followed a path laid down by mcIntyre, and O’donnell
That is using all the information you have ( satellite and ground station ) to reconstruct the temperature
at the surface
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/01/skeptic-paper-accepted-on-antarctica-rebuts-steig-et-al/
A detailed analysis is presented of a recently published Antarctic temperature reconstruction that combines satellite and ground information using a regularized expectation-maximization algorithm. Though the general reconstruction concept has merit, it is susceptible to spurious results for both temperature trends and patterns. The deficiencies include: (a) improper calibration of satellite data; (b) improper determination of spatial structure during infilling; and (c) suboptimal determination of regularization parameters, particularly with respect to satellite principal component retention. We propose two methods to resolve these issues. One utilizes temporal relationships between the satellite and ground data; the other combines ground data with only the spatial component of the satellite data. Both improved methods yield similar results that disagree with the previous method in several aspects. Rather than finding warming concentrated in West Antarctica, we find warming over the period of 1957-2006 to be concentrated in the Peninsula (≈0.35oC decade-1). We also show average trends for the continent, East Antarctica, and West Antarctica that are half or less than that found using the unimproved method. Notably, though we find warming in West Antarctica to be smaller in magnitude, we find that statistically significant warming extends at least as far as Marie Byrd Land. We also find differences in the seasonal patterns of temperature change, with winter and fall showing the largest differences and spring and summer showing negligible differences outside of the Peninsula.
##################
So using everything you know about the north pole gives you a better picture.
And you can verify Cowtan and Way byy looking at additional sources.
1. Reanalysis
2. Arctic Bouys
3. AIRs surface measurements.
And you can rationalize Cowtan and Way by looking at additional rationalizations.
FIFY. ohnestly, Steven, would you put up with this kind of casuistry if someone were trying to use it to prove the opposite of your desires?
Wait’ll the lag hits the poles. Lead the way to cowtown.
================
Pursuing option 1 Reanalysis – ERA-interim reanalysis vs. Cowtan and Way Krig over 1997-2012, I get ERA hotter in the NH and C&W hotter in the SH. IIRC, ERA had a flatter trend post 2000.
“The problem with trying to get accurate temperature information near the poles is satellite coverage is poor so surface measurements predominate.”
Nowhere else on earth is the satellite coverage better than above the poles, since many satellites have polar orbits in order to get global coverage.
“For the South pole the measurements have historically been made close to warm human habitats.”
Are you suggesting that there is an UHI effect at the south pole?
Here’s something on UHI in the Peninsula.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/antarctic-temperature-trends/
This link is much better in showing the recent temp. trends in Antarctica.
Has anyone read the paper?
Tomcourt is right about the temps taken near urban sites such as McMurdo. Noisy data-might as well used Huntsville Alabama .
You all are knotted in your knickers. There are no good NP measurements since just moving seasonal pack ice. Polar sats are only approx, so miss it too. BUT get close.
SP has had Amundsen Scott since 1957. Which BEST turns from no trend to warming using a flawed regional expectations assumption. Posted many times this past month. Or see last footnote to essay When Data Isnt.
Neither pole is representative of either polar region. There is better and older and fiddled data for the Arctic, since a smallish ocean surrounded by largish continents with outposts. Antarctic is a largish uninhabitable continent surrounded by larger hostile oceans.
Geisner did an interesting simple thing. 1. Most planetary surface isn’t polar. 2. Take poles out since uncertain, the other 90% still shows the pause. That suffices for model falsification.
Rud, that was well explained. Thanks.
It has always struck me as odd that the measurements show Antarctica is static to dropping in temperature for 60 years, yet people talk about polar amplification. Amplification of what? If I take a zero trend and amplify it by say, a factor of 3, I still get a zero trend, just a bigger, fatter zero.
I have a feeling that the O in CO2 is actually a 0.
Infilling missing data? What’s new? What about the oceans? etc? That’s all fine?
so the poles are still heating ? based on what, one thermometer at each pole ?
Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica
(NZSP) 90-00S 00-00E 2835M
Conditions at
2015.02.16 2350 UTC
Wind from the ESE (110 degrees) at 9 MPH (8 KT)
Visibility greater than 7 mile(s)
Sky conditions mostly clear
Temperature -49 F (-45 C)
Windchill -76 F (-60 C)
Pressure (altimeter) 28.66 in. Hg (970 hPa)
ob NZSP 162350Z 11008KT 9999 FEW010 FEW100 M45/ A2866 RMK CLN AIR 10004KT ALL WNDS GRID SDG/HDG
24 Hour Summary
Time
EST (UTC) Temperature
F (C) Dew Point
F (C) Pressure
Inches (hPa) Wind
MPH Weather
Latest 7 PM (0) Feb 16 -49 (-45) 28.66 (970) ESE 9
6 PM (23) No Data
5 PM (22) No Data
4 PM (21) No Data
3 PM (20) No Data
2 PM (19) No Data
1 PM (18) Feb 16 -49 (-45) 28.66 (970) SE 6
Noon (17) No Data
11 AM (16) No Data
10 AM (15) No Data
9 AM (14) No Data
8 AM (13) No Data
7 AM (12) Feb 16 -50 (-46) 28.69 (971) ESE 15
6 AM (11) Feb 16 -50 (-46) 28.7 (971) SE 9 ice crystals
5 AM (10) Feb 16 -50 (-46) 28.7 (971) ESE 8 ice crystals
4 AM (9) Feb 16 -50 (-46) 28.7 (971) E 8
3 AM (8) Feb 16 -50 (-46) 28.71 (972) E 8
2 AM (7) Feb 16 -50 (-46) 28.7 (971) E 10
1 AM (6) Feb 16 -50 (-46) 28.71 (972) E 10 ice crystals
Midnight (5) Feb 16 -52 (-47) 28.7 (971) E 10 ice crystals
11 PM (4) No Data
10 PM (3) No Data
9 PM (2) Feb 15 -50 (-46) 28.7 (971) E 9
Oldest 8 PM (1) Feb 15 -50 (-46) 28.71 (972) E 8 ice crystals
Notice, at an observation post run by the US government, there are no observations for 12 hours of the day.
No doubt a little “infilling” will occur to rectify the problem of the hiatus.
Note also that this summer.
… and a balmy minus 46º C at that. Getting that 9,200 ft elevation summer tan no doubt at A-S sta today.
A little something from my odd notes:
February 25, 2009
The Associated Press released a story today about Antarctic glaciers continuing to speedily march to the sea. The article states: “Antarctic glaciers are melting faster than previously thought, which could lead to an unprecedented rise in sea levels, scientists said Wednesday.”
The article also stated that Antarctica’s average annual temperature has increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1957 and that the temperature remains at -50° BELOW ZERO.
WOW. That’s new. Ice melts at -50° BELOW ZERO?
Sounds like they’re really consistent with those temp readings, lol 😉
Mosh et al all think that ice melts at -46, didn’t you know.?
One day with lost data does not mean South Pole data are generally bad.
Univ of Wisconsin has South Pole meterological data since 1957.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Meteorological_Research_Center
I for one always liked the open honesty of the Cowtan and Way paper. At least they came right out and said they were making up data, filling in data where there was none with what they thought it should be. If more people who make up data had the same honesty science would be much better for it.
We would only be better off for it if people read the actual papers and were able to understand them. Press releases never cover the “honest” parts.
And yet, we continue to use the words “pause” and “hiatus”… both are misleading and incorrect, since they PRESUME that warming will eventually continue.
Still more likely it’s a PEAK.
That really depends on whether we are at an inflection plateau like the 40s or are at the local maximum heading for another little ice age. The slight decline into the 70s wasn’t really that significant when you look at the long march out of the little ice age, and a 20 year plateau wouldn’t be much either. The question is: “Are we still recovering from the last ‘little ice age’ or are we preparing for the next?”
Right now no one in climate science can answer that question, and almost no one is asking it. Without knowing the state of natural variability, NONE of these other questions about how much man may be contributing can even begin to be answered.
Peak Lies
Corner Stone of Climate Change.
Truth chips away at this corner stone and when the corner stone fails it all falls down.
Interesting fact at the hottest time of the Arctic year the surface temperature cannot rise much.
Aug 5th, 2010 @ur momisugly 12:53 pm › Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
“Surface Air Temperatures above the Melting Ice in the Arctic Summer – Most of the area above 80N is (currently) still covered in permanent sea ice. In the Arctic Summer when the surface ice is melting, the air temperature close to the surface is limited by this ice melt temperature to just above zero degrees C”.
2011-10-08
The protagonists.
Kevin Cowtan, from York, UK. I’ve got a PhD in computational physics, and am a long standing post-doc with fellowship-in-the-pipeline working on computational methods development in X-ray crystallography.
maintain
2010-08-15 Robert Way
I am a Masters student at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Eastern Canada. at the University of Ottawa in Geography with a minor in Geomatics and Spatial Analysis.
My primary interests lie in paleoclimatology, remote sensing of techniques for glaciers and ice sheets, and ocean-atmospheric dynamics.
There is the dilemma.
They have an approach to an area previously ignored or poorly done. They put up a method which inherently should work “to give a better estimate than otherwise”.
My reasons for being “dead set on disliking Cowtan & Way” are
-They both belonged to the Skeptical Science crowd before they put out their papers.
-The papers were done at a time of needing to find a reason to remove the pause and the conclusion they drew fitted these aims perfectly.
-Mr Cowtan wrote a piece for Skeptical Science arguing that he could get more value from linking areas far apart than areas close together. [faulty scientific reasoning].
They also excluded 3 ? Soviet island data areas because they were too cold [biased use of data science].
These bases dropped their warming rate 40% if included.
Their results always go up on preexisting data. Lack of some negative results indicates a biased warming algorithm or an imperfect data set.
Luckily, though set in stone, an algorithm based on finding increased Arctic warming with small increments in Arctic temperatures has a fatal flaw. When the temps do decrease by any significant amount C and W will go through the floor.
It is happening now and will only get a lot worse if there is one more increase in sea ice left in the Arctic in this current rise of 6 out of the last 7 years.
Of course there will be a review of their algorithm to readjust it.
+1
So we see it time and again that the SKS types cannot do science without fudging, doctoring, fabricating data. And for the AGW crowd, nothing matters but the conclusions.
And that is why we see it time and again.
As I have noted before they use the same philosophical approach as Mcintyre and ODonnell.
Use ground stations and satellite data to get a better estimate. Odonnel and Mcintyre did their work on the south Pole.
The real test of Cowtan and Way is how well they verify against other data NOT USED in their reconstruction
1. Bouys
2. Reanalysis
3. AIRS
Bottom line, they do better than Hadcru.
Real question… are they too low.
There is nothing wrong with the philosophy, but possibly with the integrity.
Too low, Steven? Why would you ask that?
Berkeley Earth–of which you are part, if memory serves–provides two global land+ocean products. One extrapolates land surface air temperature data out over sea ice and is comparable to Cowtan and Way, while the other extrapolates sea surface temperature data out over sea ice. The dataset that uses land surface temperature data of course has a higher warming rate than the dataset that uses sea surface temperature data. That Berkeley Earth exercise suggests that the correct answer lies somewhere between the two, not warmer than the land surface/sea ice answer.
Both methods fail to consider that sea ice has a different albedo than the ocean surface and a different albedo than land surface air temperature station locations when snow melts and exposes land surfaces.
Mosh, isn’t it funny you are here discussing science with a bunch of anti science nut jobs -your terminology for wuwt readers?
cowtan recently argued that most arctic stations needed to be adjusted downwards. That doesn’t fit with the synthesized cowtan and way higher temps. They already fail your test, by their own words.
We sent Gleisner et al (2015) a discussion of their paper in January for their comment.
Here is our discussion which was just posted:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/gleisner_response.html
Bob Tisdale,
“Too low, Steven? Why would you ask that?”
Well because satellite datasets are expected to show less Arctic warming because Arctic amplification is supposed to be intensified in the near-surface layer rather than in the troposphere as a result of ice feedbacks. This is a fairly fundamental point – in the discussion I linked to above you can learn a little bit more about it such as from Simmons and Poli (2014).
Shub,
“cowtan recently argued that most arctic stations needed to be adjusted downwards. That doesn’t fit with the synthesized cowtan and way higher temps. They already fail your test, by their own words.”
Actually one of the things we noted was that some Arctic stations had been systematically adjusted downwards (wrongly) due to the rapid regional warming in the Arctic which contrasted with the boreal cooling over eurasia.
That discussion is located here:
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~kdc3/papers/coverage2013/update.140404.pdf
Robert Way,
Thanks for commenting here.
May I ask if you would consider it proper procedure to graft your Arctic temperature reconstructions for this century onto GRIP ice core data ending in AD 2000, as commenter Brandon Gates has done?
Thanks.
Real answer … more like too high.
No adjustments for urban warming in CRUTEM and despite PHA and night-light brightness adjustments, still large urban biases in GISS and NOAA global temps.
urban heat Japan
and in China
and North Africa
and South America
BEST is more ‘democratic’, urban warming is regionally expected.
“Robert Way,
Thanks for commenting here.
May I ask if you would consider it proper procedure to graft your Arctic temperature reconstructions for this century onto GRIP ice core data ending in AD 2000, as commenter Brandon Gates has done?
Thanks.”
In my view the Kobashi et al approach seems most appropriate:
see this study and the more recent ones
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL049444.pdf
Robert Way,
Thanks!
I´ve visited Leif´s valuable site a lot but never saw that paper.
Much appreciated.
“In the Arctic Summer when the surface ice is melting, the air temperature close to the surface is limited by this ice melt temperature to just above zero degrees C”.”
We get 60F temps here in Michigan when there is still lots of snow on the ground. That’s 15C over the ice temperature.
What does Michigan have to do with 80 degrees N latitude? Read it carefully.
Read his logic. It has to do with snow on the surface.
Could there be a few trees, lakes, houses, road surfaces parking lots etc in your area holding latent heat compared to the arctic by chance?
Actually trafamadore is (partly) correct. When the weather is bright and sunny it can get quite warm in summer even in the Arctic. I’ve been sunbathing on the deck of a ship making its way through the pack at 80 degrees north. However weather is rarely bright and sunny in the Arctic in summer. Normally it is cloudy and/or foggy, and then temperatures are indeed close to zero.-
tty
About 20 – 25% of the high Arctic days are sunny, and about 75 – 80% of the summer days are cloudy – either fully overcast or partially covered. Problem is, if the sun is shining through the “partial” clouds, then it is shining very brightly (you see a very very sharp spike in measured solar radiation!) for a few moments or a half-hour, then the sun goes back behind a cloud and the sunlight goes down by 50% to 60%.
On overcast days, it just does not ever get distinctly bright, and the only sunlight down on the surface is diffuse radiation. 70% of the top-of-atmosphere energy reflects off of the top of clouds, half to 2/3 of the remainder gets absorbed by the clouds while going through the atmosphere, and only 10 – 15% gets down to the ice or water or melt pond surface.
The difference between direct sunlight albedo’s and diffuse sunlight albedo’s from sea ice and from open water is staggering. The difference in heat energy absorbed and heat energy reflected is even more important.
In both Arctic and Antarctic, clouds are more common over the open water (the sea around the sea ice) in both summer and winter conditions; and clouds are less common (more bright sunny days) over the sea ice. Gets confusing, doesn’t it?
Polyana (open water in the middle of sea ice) are NOT melt ponds (shallow standing water sitting on top of sea ice), and are usually smaller (10 meters to 100 meters across and anywhere from 100 meters to 1000 – 5000 meters long) than open water areas “visible” by the satellite sensors. Since the poly’s are smaller than the “open ocean” around the sea ice, few observers report “clouds” over the poly’s; but ALL report water vapor and low-hanging “fog” and “mists” over the open water in poly’s. (It’s not much of a difference in water temperature between melt ponds and open water leads, but the old explorers – obviously needing to avoid open water so they could keep going north (or south) with their dog sleds, but whop could go through melt ponds only a 1/2 meter deep – would look ahead for those fog banks as clues. )
Tty, the ice has albedo. You don’t.
That is the difference and that is why Roy Spencer is correct, assuming 80° N latitude to be ice.
Regarding Michigan, what is the albedo, all ground, buildings, trees, etc., taken into account? Warm fronts, also. Different climate, different factors.
So, look at all yearly plots since 1959 from the DMI for daily temperatures at 870 north latitude.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
The mid-summer air temperature remains rock-steady at 1.5 degrees C every year. Dr Spencer is proved right: Arctic summer air temperatures are locked at today’s temperature of 1.5 degrees and will not change.
Actually, I think you find that 2013 and 2014 have had pretty much the shortest periods above 0C in the whole record.
Its getting COLD up there in summer !!
RA
Thanks for your comments. I have been following the DMI Arctic temperatures by day and noticed going all the way back to 1959, the annual temperature graph showed almost no variability in summer but sometimes huge variations on the shoulders of the graph. It didn’t make sense to me. Now it does.
If you look at the arctic temps from the sea ice page, you can see that the trend is declining over the past 10 years. The linear up trend given is not very good at ‘hiding the decline’.
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/graphics/tlt/plots/rss_ts_channel_tlt_northern%20polar_land_and_sea_v03_3.png
I’ve pointed this out a few times. Of course we also know what is happening in Antarctica.
Where can I get the /data/ that are plotted in this reference. I can make my own plots, and do a lot more too.
Looks like a straight line there is no trend unless you want one. RSS tries the same trick
“the slowdown in global surface warming has not been occurring at the poles” …….
Where warming is defined as temperature anomaly. How would it look if it was plotted as specific enthalpy change?
Now, what do you want to go and bring thermodynamics into this…don’t you know climate scientist don’t care about HEAT they only care about HEAT (/sarc)
The warmists’ study data was 1997 to 2012. The cooling of both poles started 2012.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.anomaly.global.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
There was in the past roughly an 11 year delay in high latitude cooling, from the initial start of the very weak solar magnetic cycle.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2015/anomnight.2.16.2015.gif
The tropics and mid-latitudes are the heat accumulators and storage buffers. Ocean circulation moves the heat to the poles. The poles warm as they ventilate an excess heat to space.
It is ludicrous to expect such a large, complex multi feedback system to ever be at equilibrium given solar cycles and nonlinear feedbacks. The heat at the midlatitudes and tropics from a decade or more ago is now being ventilated and has been for 5 years or so, at the Arctic Ocean. The Southern Ocean, being more directly connected. to the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, finish its heat dump 4 years ago, and is leading the Arctic in global climate response to a coming cool phase
And maybe not so much the poles as the Arctic and Antarctic fronts. Those are intersubarctic convergence zones. While we don’ t see the monster tropical CuNim, the troposphere is shallower there, and the weather is active year round. In any case the convergence must be shooting heat up into space.
Agree. The GC models fail at convective heat transfer, and fail badly, in the tropics.
Thanks, Bob.
Given the history of this climate wars, I’d say intentionally being misleading is the correct answer.