Antarctica warming? An evolution of viewpoint

Any guess given on why Antarctica is such a good Christian? ( the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing).

By the time this is shot down they will have the headlines they wanted. Bit like “the hottest October ever”. Matty, Perth, Western Australia

Unfortunately the satellite data only covers the recent warming period. Many trends during a warming period (like the PDO for example) are radically different than trends during a cooling mode. In my part of the US it actually gets warmer (relative to the rest of the country) during a cooling PDO. Using warming mode data to work out cooling mode data is probably about as stupid as using arctic ice extents to predict antarctic ice extents. On the surface it sounds like it would work but we know from experience that it can often give radically different (and wrong) results.

“The study found that warming in West Antarctica exceeded one-tenth of a degree Celsius per decade for the last 50 years and more than offset the cooling in East Antarctica.”
Wow, scary hot! One tenth of a degree per decade. How can they ‘measure’ to this degree of accuracy I have to wonder, especially with interpolation, albeit “careful interpolation”. So its gone from really really really cold to only really really really cold (same number of reallys there due to the uncertainty bands!).

Scientists involved in this field have to toe the line for the sake of their careers. An article in the http://www.cato.org web site (Vol.15, No.2, Spring 1992) notes that one scientist lost funding from the National Science Foundation (who also funded the study above) because of:
*quote*
“…data analyses that were failing to show net warming over the past century. Reviewers suggested that his results were dangerous to humanity.”
*end quote*

I’ll have to read their paper before giving serious comment, but, before I read it, my guess is that the inconvenient trend over the past three decades or so in Antarctica (which is the opposite of the trend observed elsewhere, perhaps due to cloudiness-albedo issues, or perhaps due to the fact that it’s the only terrestrial area on Earth without urban heat island issues) gave them cause to go out and prove that the continent was actually warming. The period with the highest and most rapidly rising CO2 concentrations was showing some cooling, so it made sense to go back and find a cold starting point. Then they could turn around and say that the long-term trend is upward. This, of course, is true, but belittles the fact that this has not been the case since the 1970’s. Next, they will tell us that the reason for the increase in sea ice in the area around the Antarctic is because of the added melting caused by warming and increased precipitation, and the resultant increase in freshwater, which is more stable and has a higher melting point. Never mind the more likely possibility that it has something to do with the slight cooling during the past three decades (though I’ll bet this is conveniently no longer apparent in their paper). Anyway, enough with my diatribe. I’ll pick it up on the weekend and actually read it before I comment further. Maybe they’ll convince me.

From NASA: Satellites Confirm Half-Century of West Antarctic Warming — global-warming hype of the day?

One of the main arguments in this thread is one ad hominem against one of the authors of the paper in Nature ( “Anytime Michael Mann gets involved …” ). This sounds poor.
The other argument is, volcanoes. I’m missing the quantification of this point – how can spots of volcanism be relevant for the warming of one half of the continent?
Somehow, not much justice is done to the paper. It corroborates results of several other papers and it uses widely applied methods. Using satellite data to fill gaps in coverage is used in many fields including weather forecast, and the verification proves that it works.
With this work we now have a broader picture of global warming in work in general, the dynamics of the lower stratosphere and the ozone layer influencing continental Antarctica and even cooling it in the last two or three decades, and regional winds and sea ice influencing the pattern of temperature change over the continent. It gives us hints, where coupled models need improvement, because we understand better, why they fail in some points. This is, how science works.

So they have combined satellite data with conventional weather station data to show the Antarctic is warming.
Does this mean that the satellite data is now considered to be a valid measurement of global temperature trends or is it only valid in Antartica?

Almost exactly a year ago on 22/01/08 there was an article “Suprise! There’s an active volcano under Antarctic ice”, And the same pictures were used, perhaps on 22/01/09 there might be an article about one of those volcanoes blasting a hole in the ice sheet!

I cant wait to see Steve McIntyre’s take on this paper

How boringly predictable, every summer we have the same alarmist “all the ice is melting” BS. Every September in the North and January/February in the south.
However this year is different. This year they are deducing the data. So the raw data is NOT showing any meaningful or significant rise in temps? Could that be why there is MORE ice there than last year?
Mind you, the AGW alarmists have never let what is actually happening get in the way of their alarmism, have they?

Real Climate have an article from co-authors of the report, gives some extra details.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/state-of-antarctica-red-or-blue/
I find this bit interesting,
“In our own published work to date (Schneider and Steig, PNAS), we find that the 1940s [edit for clarity: the 1935-1945 decade] were the warmest decade of the 20th century in West Antarctica, due to an exceptionally large warming of the tropical Pacific at that time.”
So if west antartica was warmer 60/70 years ago how would the trend look if we started it 70 years ago and not 50 years ago?
“Our results do not contradict earlier studies suggesting that some regions of Antarctica have cooled. Why? Because those studies were based on shorter records (20-30 years, not 50 years) and because the cooling is limited to the East Antarctic. Our results show this too, as is readily apparent by comparing our results for the full 50 years (1957-2006) with those for 1969-2000 (the dates used in various previous studies), below.”
So if there has been less warming or even cooling for the last 20-30 years, but is this not the time when CO2 concentratons were higher?
It all sounds like weather to me.
The BBC are all over this story http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7843186.stm
Hows this for drama:”A BAS team currently on site is reporting that the Wilkins shelf, about 15,000 sq km in area, is probably about to break free.
“It really could go at any minute, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the final cracks started to appear very soon,” said BAS’s David Vaughan.”

Kath (23:27:30) quotes in part: “Reviewers suggested that his results were dangerous to humanity.”
This beggars belief. Have we really sunk so low that science may be corrupted at will by thought control wild-eyers?
“…data analyses that were failing to show net warming over the past century.”
Was his data analyses correct or incorrect? Who cares? That’s not the point. He was apparently propping up the sky…
Slash (and burn).
What a sad time we are living in.

Anthony: I’m going to try to post on the Antarctic TLT sometime today or tomorrow as part of the series I was doing on the effects of ENSO and volcanic eruptions on TLT. Here are a few preview graphs of Antarctic temperatures from that future post.
************
The following are graphs of Antarctic and Southern Ocean TLT [AHU MSU] created from data available through the KNMI Climate Explorer Website. Keep in mind that the MSU satellite data does not reach the entire Antarctic, which is something I found curious about the use of satellite data for the University of Washington study. (They must be supplementing the sparse surface measurements with it.) In fact, RSS only lists data as far South as 70S. AHU extrapolates, smoothes, estimates, whatever, to provide data for the rest of the Antarctic. Regardless, here are additional graphs of the AHU TLT data for the Antarctic to add to the ones I put up yesterday for those discussing the Antarctic off-topic on the previous thread.
Here are the East and West TLT anomalies from 90S to 60S with linear trends. The trend in the west is flat, and the trend in the east is toward cooling:
http://i39.tinypic.com/9hqeeh.jpg
The Southern Ocean would influence that data so I reduced the longitudes in the following to 90S to 70S. Again, this is apparently data that’s estimated by AHU because it’s outside the reach of the MSU satellite as far as I know. Finally, a dataset with a warming trend:
http://i42.tinypic.com/b69i6e.jpg
You’d have to segment the data looking hard for an area that’s warming differently that the rest of the continent in order to come up with one that’s more significant.
There’s a phenomenon that effects Antarctic sea ice called the Antarctic sea ice dipole, which has ENSO as one of its primary influences, so I decided to take a look at the Antarctic TLT dipole, which I calculated as Western TLT MINUS Eastern TLT for 90S to 70S and compared it to scaled NINO3.4 SST anomalies. There’s some very apparent ENSO influence and at times it’s hard to tell what drives what. Curious.
http://i41.tinypic.com/2lunv5.jpg

“People were calculating with their heads instead of actually doing the math,”
A claim I find extremely unlikely…..

This is total drivel
There is no evidence for increased temepratures in the Antarctica:
http://www.physorg.com/news148239677.html
and
http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/soe/display_indicator.cfm?soe_id=1
(scroll down to the graphs)
The AGW hypothesis and modelling predicts warming at high latitudes and very little at the equator, due to the presence of atmospheric water vapour. It was always the failure of the Antarctica to warm, as well as the failure of temperatures to increase in line with atmospheric CO2 over the last 10 years, that left the warming hysterics without any case. They are trying desperatly to manufacture one.

Matty from Perth Summed it up –
By the time this is shot down they will have the headlines they wanted.
In today’s Australian Media Alarmist Professor Barry Brook has been having a field day.

We have done our best to deal with this hysterical alarmism, but its all over the Australian TV News this evening-
See the Agmates post here.

Is the Wilkins Ice Sheet, which is mentioned recently by this Reuters report, in the region that should be affected by the volcanic activity? What about the reports of ice in Antartica growing by 20% in the past story about solar albeido?
http://gmy.news.yahoo.com/v/11649825

But no, it just couldn’t possibly have anything at all to do with the fact that the entire western side of the Antarctic continent and peninsula is dotted with volcanoes. Recent discovery of new volcanic activity isn’t mentioned in the paper at all.
You are hypothesising that surface warming of Antarctica over the last 50 years might be significantly attributed to volcanic activity? That’s an interesting idea. Do you, or does anyone, have any figures to support such a notion?
The recent discovery you refer to was of a sub-ice volcano that erupted 2,000 years ago. Whatever its current level of activity and the extent to which that may continue to effect ice sheet flow, it’s somewhat hard to imagine the extent to which you think that might be affecting surface temperatures.
Does your hypothesis of volcanic activity as a driver of warming apply equivalently to other continents?

OT
I just read that Intel will be closing their wafer production in Santa Clara, Calif. and Williams-Sonoma of San Francisco will be cutting 1400 jobs.
Soon, Hollwood wil be the last industries in California and all the “Stars” will be on the government payroll. I wonder if they could live on $100,000.00 IOU’s per year.

For the known argentinian geologist Miguel Gonzales, in his studies in the “Salinas del bebedero”, a salt lake in Argentina, http://www.springerlink.com/content/m11m129238u61484/ all these weather changes coincide with solar minimums like the Maunder minimum, which produced drought in the argentinian “pampa” (plains), and which it is happening again now. So, in general, we have different weather systems: one west of the andes and the other east of the andes.

Update on scale – the original figure at NASA has it here
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/305938main_Antarctica_temps.jpg
The figure in 2004 shows a cooling of 0.2C per year (2C per decade) in the heart of the Antartic Continent. Now we are to believe a warming of 0.1C per decade in the same place – quite a turnaround in view.
Again, per my comment previously….JUNK

From RealNonsense.org last Feb.:
“Despite the recent announcement that the discharge from some Antarctic glaciers is accelerating, we often hear people remarking that parts of Antarctica are getting colder, and indeed the ice pack in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica has actually been getting bigger. Doesn’t this contradict the calculations that greenhouse gases are warming the globe? Not at all, because a cold Antarctica is just what calculations predict… and have predicted for the past quarter century.”
So, I guess this means they’ll be changing their tune now to “a warming Antarctica is just what calculations predict…. and have predicted for the past quarter century”. AGW Believers hoisted by their own petard. Once again.

When the actual base data used in this study is made available, it will show something completely different.
That is what I have noticed everytime I have looked into the basic data used in all these alarmist studies. The actual data does not support the claims made.
They actually expect noone to look into the data they provide with the study (or they don’t provide it, one or the other.)

Doesn’t this mean that someone 25 years ago had his or her thermometers off by about 5C degrees? Are we really to believe that the folk who put the detectors in place were that incompetent? Also, how does this “warming” tally with the current extent of Antartic sea ice which is the largest in the last 30 years?

Chaiten in Chile became more active last Monday.
http://s147.photobucket.com/albums/r301/numero22/?action=view&current=chai20090119.flv
http://volcanism.wordpress.com/
It’s the Ring o’ Fire wot dun it guv, not us clever apes wiv our internal comestible thingamajigs.

Perhaps this is the beginning of a new front in Climate Science. First, the disappearing artic ice cap, and now the warming artic. Look for GISS to jump on this with both feet, as they add .5 deg to global temps based on findings from this study. The Alarmists will go into over drive just in time for Rep Waxman’s hearings.

The ehadline should have read, to be accurate:
Antarctic cooling since 1980.
The AGW promotion industry only shows how disreputable it is by making untrue and misleading claims, as this report exemplifies.

“Satellites calculate the surface temperature by measuring the intensity of infrared light radiated by the snowpack, and they have the advantage of covering the entire continent. However, they have only been in operation for 25 years”
So why do all the reports of NH warming use the satellite data from 1979 -2000 as gospel?

I see the different color scales in the two “NASA’s Viewpoint” Images, but are there different time periods represented by the two images as well?

Bob Tisdale, they use data from polar orbiting satellites including data from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR). See literature of Steig et al 2009. Thus they have full coverage of Antarctica.

Will’s comment ‘total drivel’ seems appropriate.
In addition to the links he provides, here is a reminder of some of the clear evidence
that Antarctica is cooling, or at least certainly not warming:
(a) Station data. Some stations show no trend (eg McMurdo, Vostok, Amundsen-Scott at the pole), some show definite cooling (eg Halley, Manuela).
(b) Antarctic ice extent is increasing, see for example
http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/
Most entertainingly, the comedians at new scientist, http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14724, admit this and refer to it as ‘an unusual side-effect of global warming’ 🙂
(c) Satellite data – RSS TLT (http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html) shows a trend of about -0.2 C/decade at 70 degrees South.

Heres a few more links to the subject:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/facts-og-falske-data-d14-e725-s120.php#post_9373

Does no-one find it strange that 50 yrs of weather station data shows cooling, while 30 years of satellite data shows cooling, BUT…………………
If one take those two sets of data in 2009, add a single ice boring, shake the whole lot up with a statistical analysis – and hey presto – warming.
Reminds me a bit of Mann-o-statistics.
I e-mailed steig and he answered that his paper when it was published would show cooling in the antartic (unfortunately my computer went down – and I can’t find the back up of E-mails I thought I had: The conspiracy thickens.)

If there’s something weird
with your dataset…..
Who ya gonna call?
Michael Mann!
If your history
don’t match the faith….
Who ya gonnal call?
Michael Mann!
He ain’t fraid of no facts….
He ain’t fraid of no facts…..
If your temperature….
don’t match dogma
who ya gonna call
Michael Mann!!!!

I always find it hard to swallow that while the actual measurements show one thing, crunching the numbers show something else.
There’s a reason Mark Twain is famously quoted about lies, damn lies and statistics. Slice and dice the numbers any way you want until you get the results you want.
Who gets credited with the quote about global warming is created by computers?

And another thing — let’s suppose Antarctica is warming. So what? Does that mean it’s man made? Does that mean it’s caused by too much CO2 in the atmosphere?
We all know the climate is changing and we all should know the climate is supposed to change, that change is natural and expected. The fact the climate in Antarctica may also be changing should come as a surprise to no one.
I am from Missouri, so you’ll have to show me. Anything from the inventor of the “hockey stick” (not the “discoverer”, the “inventor”) needs to be scrutinized with extra care. First, let’s attempt to establish what’s really happening and then why.

“We’ve really filled in a huge gap.”
So very telling.

When I interpolate or “stretch” my photographs, they get fuzzy. Perhaps these guys are a little “fuzzy”.
This seems a little like the early settlers pulling up the the Carolina shores and proclaiming that the entire continent is swamp and forest. You can’t tell what the margarita tastes like by sampling the salt on the rim of the glass.
This sounds like a job for McIntyre, and fortunately, it looks like he’s already on it.

It’s disturbing that the ‘margin of error’ (whatever that actually means) is more than 60% of the claimed average. It seems to me that this makes the claim virtually useless.
Clearly a threat if the temperature in Antarctica goes from -20C to -19C over the next 100 years.

“Steig’s team used mathematical models to establish the relationship between the ground and satellite measurements between 1979 and 2006 and then used the correlation they found to calculate temperatures for the interior going back to 1957.”
Mathematical models are a good substitution for actual measurements. /sarc off
“Using airborne ice-sounding radar, scientists discovered a layer of ash produced by a ’subglacial’ volcano”
How does this affect the albedo of the ice/snow in that area? Isn’t there going to be more meltoff and warmer termperature due to the ash as well as the increase in meltoff from the volcano?

That’s it ! I finally discovered how some “skpetics” do to have those famous petitions of “scientists” agains AGW. They actually… pay them!
I’m not kidding, check this link http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jan/19/1
Scientists who attend the International Conference on Climate Change to be held in New York, 8-10 March 2009 (organized by the Heartland Institute) get a $144 reward if and only if they sign the petition claiming skepticism against AGW.
Ahhh, this is science as we like it, isn’t it? Can we also receive a Macy’s card, please?

The alarmists really are getting desperate now. Their arguments are so frequently contradictory and so utterly unscientific one wonders what sort of insane, twisted world we must live in for them to be taken seriously. All they’ve done here is fudged a few figures to suit their agenda. This isn’t science, it’s politically driven rubbish.
We simply have to hope that nature continues to fly in the face of these idiots. There’s only so many times they can cry ‘wolf’ before even the mainstream media see them for the disgraceful crooks they really are.

Volcanos? Really? Surely with a claim like that, you will shortly be providing us with some evidence that there has been a -trend- in vulcanism in West Antarctica over the past 50 years. The argument that West Antarctica is hotter because there are lots of volcanoes there is completely irrelevant (and rather misguided given the limited effect of volcanoes on local temperatures over the long-term) IF there is no trend in vulcanism. Stieg et al are not arguing that West Antarctica is warmer or colder than East Antarctica, rather that it has warmed faster over the past 50 years.
For those hoping that this paper will be proven wrong, don’t hold your breath. They seem to have crossed their Ts and dotted their Is on the analysis this time around, and others who have produced studies of Antarctic temperature (e.g. Monaghan) concede that they are revising their position on long-term temperature trend in light of the evidence presented.

Last fall, before the Arctic desended on the Midwest, I was fortunate enough to go golfing. Unfortunately I lost my scorecard, and I have no memory of what my score was. I am suposed to enter my scores into the handicap system, in order to play fairly against others who keep a handicap.
I do remember playing the last two holes. I made a birdie on 17 (unusual), and a par on 18 (not unusual).
Now if I use the method employed by the scientist in the above study, do I extrapolate the known data, to the unknown holes and post a -9, for the round? Or do I take my average scores for each missing data point, and then add the two relatively good scores at the end?
Missing data is data which is not known, and therefore no amount of “deductive reasoning” will contain a useful trend to analyze. Too much of it is reduced to an average, and what you care about is the departure from the average.

“Stieg et al are not arguing that West Antarctica is warmer or colder than East Antarctica, rather that it has warmed faster over the past 50 years.”
Warmed faster than what?

“One of the main arguments in this thread is one ad hominem against one of the authors of the paper in Nature ( “Anytime Michael Mann gets involved …” )”
Is it an attack on Mann or a comment on the poor quality of his science? I believe you’ll find it to be the latter and not the former. Criticizing Mann’s work is not an ad hominem argument.

Mark P
“The alarmists really are getting desperate now.”
This is what makes them so dangerous. They’ve become Orwellian, and that tells me they won’t stop at nothing. I see our inconvenient sceptic blogs getting shut down soon. And good bye Talk Radio. You’ll see.
Get ready to be a dissident on the run. I’m glad I live only 6 hours away from the Czech Republic. It might be the only country left that will offer climate asylum! It’s getting serious.

From Nature:
A new reconstruction of Antarctic surface temperature trends for 1957–2006, reported this week by Steig et al., suggests that overall the continent is warming by about 0.1 °C per decade.
The work ends in 2006. sure.
reconstruction,reconstrutcion,reconstruction….
suggests, suggests, suggests, suggests….
Sorry.
With the benefit of the doubt, the work must be repeated. (2007 and 2008)????
Dr Leif, 0.01 ° C / year.( days … weeks .. months .. years … century millennium …) a small question;
is compatible with a range of 1W/m ^ 2?..(TSI)
Leif, independent of your wife. I love your comments.

Overall, now that Obama is Prez,
expect a blizzard of global warming reports to come out.
This will give him the momentum needed to ram
climate policy down our throats.
The big blizzard is coming!

Joerg Zimmermann: Thanks for the suggestion about reading the paper, but I understand the basis. My comments, the two before yours and the one after, were provided to illustrate longer-term datasets and to show the inconsistencies between the study and those records. My third comment also asked two very basic questions.
Did the researchers account for the apparent changes in variability due to volcanic activity?
And how did the researchers account for the apparent ENSO-induced step changes?
The step changes are visible in Cell b of Stieg et al (2009) Figure 2. You just have to look beyond that pesty trend line. I try not to use trend lines for just that reason. They alter the appearance of the graph. (But sometimes I get carried away and throw them on, usually because I want to influence the viewer’s perception of the data.)
I’ve posted the above questions on the Nature website, but they have not been moderated yet.
Regards.

“Most ground-based temperature measurements from Antarctica began in 1957, and the data is largely from coastal areas. Gauging the vast interior by satellite didn’t begin until 1979. Steig’s team used mathematical models to establish the relationship between the ground and satellite measurements between 1979 and 2006 and then used the correlation they found to calculate temperatures for the interior going back to 1957.”
This makes sense if the statistical weather patterms — that is, climate pattern — does not change between the coast and the interior. Then the correlations between the coast and interior can, with some plausibility, be assumed to be constant. However, the correlations were from data taken during decades of a slight warming trend (1979-2000) and then used to estimate data in the interior during decades of a slight cooling trend (1957-1979). This sounds like it may be the hockey stick all over again. You should use correlations established for one climate-change pattern to estimate temperatures during an era of the opposite climate-change pattern only if you’re desperate for some sort of approximate result — or tryiing to baffle people with “science”.

Congratulations are in order for Anthony. This IS the best science blog in my humble opinion for topic quality and the astute postings by those who contribute to the discussion. Thank you again for an enlightening and entertaining site.
Steig et al appears to be another “hockey stick” paper. Just cherry pick the timeframe, use incomplete data, average the incomplete data, interpolate the results, and by using “new” mathematical techniques get the desired result.

I saw a report on BBC teletext early this morning and thought here we go again.
Interestingly it has now been removed, presumably because the likes of Anthony, Steve Mcintyre et al are already on the case.
Alex Jones on Info Wars.com has a piece today about a leading AGW site in big trouble as they know the mantra is falling apart.
He also reckoned that President Obama did’nt mention AGW either…I was out all day Tue so cannot verify this.

Flanagan (07:24:18) :
Yes it’s pretty dreary (a gift of $144 if registrants to the Heartland Institue pretend Climate “Science” meeting sign some petition devised by a tobacco company propagandist nearly 10 years ago). I wonder who they consider might be taken in by that!?
The list of cosponsers (click on the poster with the gallery of rogues on the Intro page of the meeting site) gives a pretty good indication of the purpose of this sort of “meeting” and perhaps helps to understand the dubious thinking that considers that dodgy petitions have anything to do with science…
http://www.heartland.org/events/NewYork09/newyork09.html
It should be a blast!

Several questions: If the warming in the west exceeds the cooling in the east, shouldn’t there be less ice overall? How can Antarctica have more ice?
How do they measure temps? What equipment? surfacestations project has shown some big problems with measurements in this country. Do we believe that everything at the south pole is pristine and properly working?
0.1 degree C per decade? In industry, we wanted better measurement accuracy in our equipment than the thing we needed to measure. 10x was the goal. How in the (blank) can they measure 0.1 degree with equipment that is lucky to measure 1 degree with any confidence?

james griffin,
President Obama did’nt mention AGW probably because it was quite cold out there and thus avoided committing his first blooper.
I’m looking forward to what Mr McIntyre will uncover in this latest hockey stick, let’s-rewrite history report.

Zeke:

The argument that West Antarctica is hotter because there are lots of volcanoes there is completely irrelevant (and rather misguided given the limited effect of volcanoes on local temperatures over the long-term) IF there is no trend in vulcanism.

No trend is needed. If you put a pot of cold water on a hot stove it will warm up gradually. And the larger the pot the more gradually it will warm up. The only way to disprove this would be to have accurate temperature records going back much longer than 50 years.

They seem to have crossed their Ts and dotted their Is on the analysis this time around

Yes, even to the point of quoting an uncertainty of 2-3 degrees on an estimation of 0.1 deg per decade.

[snip – none of that here]

The language of the paper is very confusing and seems to say that temperatures over Antarctic as a whole over 50 years are pretty much as they were 50 years ago. They don’t seem to know whats causing the temperatures to be the same as 50 years ago (or maybe slightly higher, they don’t say by how much). They also seem to suggest that when the ice melts hen sea levels will rise catastophically, as far as I know only the sea ice around the peninsular itself might be thinning, I haven’t seen any evidence presented to say that the land ice is melting at a more rapid rate.
To be honest this adds nothing to our understanding and seems to be a ‘filler’. I am no wiser after reading this arcticle than before just more confused.

The study has major ramifications for sea level rise, said Andrew Weaver at the University of Victoria in Canada. Most major sea level rise projections for the future counted on a cooling — not warming — Antarctica. This will make sea level rise much worse, Weaver said.
Nice, beach front here in Ky!

Well it is interesting to see all the flak this paper produced.
First off, I am NOT going to publish the back and forth I had with Prof Steig. he did not say anything in any alarmist or strident fashion. His answers to my very direct questions were also very direct and to the point. And I am not going to point any ad hominem fingers at any of the co-authors; alkthough I do blink when some of those names come up in reports.
Trenberth of the UN’s IPCC has already said he is “skeptical” of the methodology, and maybe the results. John Christy, (UAH) who has probably read more satellite surface temperatures than just about anybody, questioned the methodology.
I’m not too alarmed by the fact that they even attempted to do this.
I don’t know the age range of the population of Anthony’s club; but to me, the IGY earth lovefest of 1957/58 really marks the beginning of what I consider to be modern climate science. That time frame was specifically chose, because it was predicted to be a sunspot peak; and if you look at the previous sunspot maxima, you can appreciate that there was considerable interest in what the IGY peak would do. Nobody oculd have known that it was going to turn out to be the highest sunspot peak of all recorded history (of sunspots).
Antarctica was just beginning to be considered somewhat habitable. The late Edmund Hillary of NZ, climbed Mt Everest in 1953, and then did his crazy cross Antarctica dash not too long thereafter (I think Sir John Hunt was the leader of that expedition too), so the weather stations set up around the Antarctic Coast in those years are probably cinsidered to be of some importance, and their records, are probably well studied..
What I gather from Steig et al paper, is that they attempted to compare satellite measurements (surface temperature) of those very same weather station locations, with the measured data for the period since 1979 when the first polar orbit satellites went up; and then based on what they consider to be agreement of some sort (maybe after calibration), they applied whatever “transform” they had come up with to the much more extensive satellite data covering the whole of Antarctica, and then they extrapolated that data for the rest of Antarctica back to 1957, based on the coastal station data going back to 1957.
Now to me, that is better than a hipshoot, and a wild guess; they used available data to try and get some handle on what is unavailable; and therefor not data. So yes, that is a bit like skating out from the edge of the lake, on ice that is measured at a foot thick, and then progrssing all the way across the lake, on the basis of some pebbles dropped from a chopper across the lake, that didn’t break any holes in the ice. Maybe cleve, but maybe pretty scary assumptions too.
But back to what Steig et al say. Antarctica is warming at about the same rate as the rest of the world; or words to that effect.
Well that is BIG news. Conventional wisdom suggests that the polar regions are supposed to warm at a FASTER rate than the planet as a whole.
There’s good reason for that. I have asserted many times, that the earth DOES NOT cool from all the ice at the poles. The emittance of the earth surface goes roughly as the fourth poweer of temperature, somewhat following black body radiation laws, so the biggest cooling (loss of energy), actually is happening at the height of the noonday sun, in the hottest tropical deserts of the planet, where surface temperatures get up to +60C and maybe higher. The radiation rate there is over ten times the miserable emittance at the cooler polar regions.
Also the Wien displacement law comes into play, when you consider the CO2 greenhouse effect. At the coldest polar temperatures, the peak of the earth thermal radiation spectrum, is sitting at 15 microns; right on the CO2 14.77 micron absorption band; so the CO2 GH effect is maximised at the poles leading to even lower rates of energy loss.
On the other hand, at the hottest tropical Desert surface temperatures, the wien displacement has moved the peak of the thermal radiation all the way down to about 8.8 microns; which moves the CO2 absorption band even further down on the long wavelength tail of the spectrum, thereby greatly reducing the effect of CO2. Now the CO2 band will be wider due to the doppler broadening at the higher temperature; but the effect of CO2 absorption is lower in the tropics. The spectrum is even shifted below the 9-10 micron OZONE absorption line, which is right on the peak, at the global mean of about +15C. BB radiation theory shows that almost exactly 25% of BB radiation is emitted below the spectral peak, and 75% at wavelenghts longer than the peak. Never forget that earth thermal radiation is only approximately black body, but that is the safest base assumption. The range of temperatures from which near BB radiation is being emitted also complicates the spectral shape.
So bottom line is, if GHG effects based on CO2 are warming the planet, and for other reasons, the polar regions ought to warm FASTER that the rest of the earth. So if Antarctica is only warming at the same rate as the earth as a whole, it is reasonable to conclude that we are doing better than we are supposed to be as regards global warming.
I think Steig et al tried a clever idea at getting some pseudo data where there is none, and far too much is being made of it by the popular media. I have no basis to cast any clouds over Eric Steig.
Have you noticed where Larse A&B are ? Every day, the whole Atlantic ocean and Pacific ocean go sloshing back and forth through that gap between the Antarctic Peninsula and Tierra del Fuego, and when the tide goes Westerly those storm wavs come surging in right on A&B; which icidently are outside the Antarctic circle; so they never get 24 hour night time. so stuff melts there; big deal!
My Greenland Iceman, Svend Hendriksen, also studies antarctic glaciers, sinc ethe satellite comes chugging over his place all the time, and can download his pictures for him; and Svend sent me a photo of the Wilkins ice shelf breakup, and he circled an even larger area immediately adjacent to the broken piece, which stands out like a sore thumb, because it is encirceld by a big cliff that separates it from the main ice sheet. Reaosn for that cliff, is that that even larger piece all broke up around 50 years ago (almost IGY time), and grew back, but is shy of 50 years of accumulated precipitation; hence the ice cliff).
George

Retred Engineer,
Several questions: If the warming in the west exceeds the cooling in the east, shouldn’t there be less ice overall? How can Antarctica have more ice?
It doesn’t have and, yes, the trend has been one of reducing ice mass at an increasing rate (I’d stress that there is uncertainty, but that’s the best judgment).
How do they measure temps? What equipment? surfacestations project has shown some big problems with measurements in this country. Do we believe that everything at the south pole is pristine and properly working?
No, there are clearly issues with surface-based measurements in such conditions. I’m rather puzzled as to why some here did not make the same point when previous analyses have suggested Antarctic cooling? It does seem to me that the accuracy of measurements, whether surface-based or satellite, only comes into question here when they are suggestive of warming.
0.1 degree C per decade? In industry, we wanted better measurement accuracy in our equipment than the thing we needed to measure. 10x was the goal. How in the (blank) can they measure 0.1 degree with equipment that is lucky to measure 1 degree with any confidence?
Hmm, well there’s long history here of people objecting to efforts that have been made to take account of, and adjust for, observational inadequacies, so I won’t attempt a brief answer, beyond saying that trend is of much more importance than the calibration of an instrument in a particular location, IMV.

Anthony,
In response to your reply to my post above: I think your issue is with comments made to the press rather than with the paper itself. I agree with you that those comments suggest the findings are consistent with AGW, and that is an attributive view. However, I maintain my view that it would be unreasonable to expect the paper itself to consider vulcanism.
I am not dismissing the influence of vulcanism on a local scale. What I am simply not aware of is any figures to suggest that it could be significantly warming on a continental scale (or semi-continental, if you like). Antarctica has some current volcanic activity, but it is hardly exceptional. If your notion is that vulcanism may account for Antarctic warming, then I presume that should be considered elsewhere also? In either case, it would need to be shown that vulcanism had increased in correlation with temperature increase. The consideration of localised effect tells us nothing about that.

This site is best science in the world. (I promise to be a quiet week)
Despite what Gavin has claimed …( naturally…)
Mary Hinge: The language of the paper is very confusing … I agree with you.(100%).
As an effective member of the peanut gallery:
I do not accept these results as valid. (and logic)
For a simple reason.
If IPPC 4 is wrong by definition;
Who writes:
As it happens, the average of the 19 models in AR4 is similar to our results.
Conclusion: This is not July 4
Much celebration for anything.

Computer models are not reality, Nature is reality.
—————————————
Will the Real Antarctica Please Stand Up?
http://www.dailytech.com/Will+the+Real+Antarctica+Please+Stand+Up/article14028.htm
“The real story here isn’t Antarctica. It’s the willingness to rationalize model results to fit any and all scenarios. To the modelers, their results are consistent with. . . well, everything. Whether warmer or colder, flood or drought, more storms or less — it’s all proof that global warming is real and happening now.”
“This, of course, isn’t real science. A true theory require something called falsifiability — a set of conditions under which it can be disproven. So far, this is something the modelers have failed to give. It allows them to maintain a facade of unflappable certainty– but it isn’t science.”
“Among researchers who work with actual climate data, skepticism is climbing. The modelers at least remain faithful. But as of now, their predictions are rather like the gypsy fortune teller who tells you, “You will live a long life — unless you die young.”

The WU paper is not a lot unlike things such as the Vostok, and other Antarctic ice cores and the “data” that is mined from them.
Ever notice how freely we extrapolate from Vostok to the whole darn planet.
Well we do look at some Greenland ice cores too, and if they give somewhat similar data to the Antarctic cores, we sleep in peace knowing that the whole earth must be like that.
With all the statisticians who visit here and post on trendlines, and standard deviations, and all manner of other statistical paraphernalia; why is it that there seems to be a total lack of understanding of the mathematics of smpled data systems; and specifically the Nyquist Theroem, that governs the whole sicence of sampled data systems. We know the theorem is valid, because the whole of modern digital communications technology depoends on it’s validity. Anyone who ahs ever lookes at analog signals with a sampling oscilloscope, is already aware, that they don’t always show you the truth; and you can get totally false results by misusing them.
On your TV set or at the movies, in your favorite horse opera, the reason why the damsel in distress on the runaway horse and carriage, is screaming her head off, is because clearly the wheels on her chariot are rotating backwards; who wouldn’t be alarmed.
That phenomenon, is a result of “aliassing noise” which corrupts ALL data, that is gathered in blatant violation of the Nyquist Sampling Theorm.
Nyquist was a scientist at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and his theorem is fundamental to data sampling.
Briefly it states, that “Any band limited continuous signal can be completely recovered from discrete samples of its instantaneous values; provided that the signal (a) IS band limited; meaning there are NO signal components at frequencies greater than B and that the continuous signal is sampled at a rate not less than 2B, or more importantly that the samples are spaced no further apart than 1/2B.
So regular spacing of samples is not required, but there must be no greater gap between samples than 1/2B.
If the signal were a simple sinusoid at a frequency (f), you would have to take one sample in each half cycle of the signal. Strictly speaking, a sinusoidal signla of frequency (f) can’t be recovered if the sampling rate is exactly 2f, because you could get every sample taken at a zero point, snd the signal would look like a DC of zero amplitude, or they could be anywhere on the rising and falling edges of alternate half cycles, so you would know there was a signal of frequency (f) but you have no idea what its amplitude is. But that is a degenerate academic case.
The wagon wheel problem results fromt he fact that movies sample the scene at 24 frames per second, and TV signals do it at 30 or 25 in some countries, and since the spoke frequency is much higher than that, you have a Nyquist violation and aliassing noise creeps in and corrupts the reconstruction, which is the movie you are watching.
If you violate Nyquist, by having a signal at a frequency B+b, the reconstructed signal will contain an errant component at a frequency B-b, so the spectrum folds around the Band limit frequency. Now B-b, is a fequency that is INSIDE the signal bandwidth (B), so you can’t get rid of it, without losing real signals too. As a practical matter, if you did have a single known out of band signal, you could put a notch filter at B-b, and jut eliminate that pesky signal.
Now what if the out of band signal is at a frequency 2B. (B+B). Well the aliassed noise signal will now be at (B-B), which is zeroi frequency and is in fact the average value of the continuous function.
So violation of the Nyquist criterion by a factor of 2 means that even the average value of the sampled data signal is now corrupted, and no amount of prestidigitation will get you a correct average for the function that was improperly sampled.
Central limit theroems and other such mathematical trickery cannot buy you a reprieve from crimes against Nyquist.
So global temperatures are a continuous function of both time and space, perhaps three variables, so you could construct some two dimensional map projection of the earth, and take snap shots of it, or at least of a bunch of thermometers spaced all over it in their own little gridded cells, and from that data,you can in principle reconstruct the whole map, and average it over time and space.
Well isn’t that what James Hansen does with his GISStemp owl box stations that Anthony escorted us around.
You see what is really wrong with GISStemp, and also with HADcrut is both of them grossly violate the Nyquist criterion, in both the time and space variables, sometimes by orders of magnitude; so there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell, that their machinations actually measure the real average surface or lower tropospheric temperature of the earth.
GISStemp anomlaies are a graph of GISStemp anomalies; they don’t even have any absolute temperature reference, and they don’t have any real scientific meaning at all, because the global sampling regimen is quite inadequate to determien the true average temperature of the earth surface.
George

I think that everyone is missing the point! Namely that if 58 to present is better than 69 to present then using the authors own words at RC, 35-45 was the warmest period during the century. So even if his stats method was wrong, using his own data:
1935-1945 was the warmest period
1969-2000 was cooling
1958-2006 was warming
so we can infer from that the temperature curve was::
cooling from 45 to 58
warming from 58 to 69
cooled from 69 to 2000
* and this was not mentioned but all studies show cooling from 69 on to present *
ergo:
45 was warmer than 2000
69 was warmer than 2000
58 was cooler than 2000
if 58 – 2006 was better to use because it was a longer time period
then 45 – 2006 is even better since it is even longer
so while the antarctic temp curve fluxs, over all cooling predominated except for a brief warming between 58 and 69.
And on another fun note, anyone notice that the warmest period for the antarctic is the same as the warmest period for the longest rural surface termperature record we have?

Mary Hinge 10.30.22
I always enjoy your posts, although I rarely agree with your views. However if the govt does ever provide a more balanced climate change research programme than at present (see my comment above) I hope people like you are on it to provide an objective and reasoned ‘warmist’ viewpoint who can argue civilly against a different perspective to the one they hold.
It is a great shame that Dr Manns team did not have someone from the ‘opposite’ side to point out his work might be scientifcally clever but flew in the face of our knowledge of history. This has helped create a confrontational atmosphere which does not do science any favours and only helps to obscure the truth.
(Sorry if I’ve destroyed your credibilty!)
TonyB

I ran a linear line trend through the South pole (Sol Pol) data here:-
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
Not surprisingly it showed a -0.2C fall over the entire data set. This is the same as the pre-doctored NASA graphic.
Next I wanted to see what the Eastern surface stations showed using some of the sites with reasonably long unbroken records. Trends are :-
Scott-Base 77.8 S 166.8 E 1957-2008 -0.5
Mcmurdo 77.8 S 166.7 E 1956-2008 -0.5
Vostok 78.5 S106.9 E 1958-2008 -1.5
Mirnyj 66.5 S 93.0 E 1956-2008 -0.3
Davis 68.6 S 78.0 E 1957-2008 -0.25
Amundsen-Scot 90.0 S 0.0 E 1957-2008 -1.25
Data here:-
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

The only trend I see here is the AGW dogma,
1. The Medievel Warm Period was warmer than today? Get rid of the MWP with Manns “Hockey Stick” (which has been debunked)
2. Can’t find a tropical Lower troposphere warming using radiosonde balloon thermometers (required by the GCMs)? Invent a new principle where wind velocity is a component of thermal energy (even though it still will not radiate more long wave Infrared Radiation).
now:
3. Can’t account for GHG system not warming Antarctica? Blame it on the Ozone Hole and mathematically tease the temperature data to show warming.
What is Next?

Corrections: -14.5 °C and -15 °C. I forgot to write the “minus” sign… heh! 😉

Scientists who attend the International Conference on Climate Change to be held in New York, 8-10 March 2009 (organized by the Heartland Institute) get a $144 reward if and only if they sign the petition claiming skepticism against AGW.

Wow! $144!! Sign me up!! Who needs billions in grant money when you can get $144 to sign a petition which states how you feel about AGW?
Are you seriously saying that people were bought, for $144???

ATTN: Everbody!
Go over to “Projects” and read my post. Recent data from the Quatsino (B.C.) weather station confirm that the “global warming” that started in ca 1975, which Don Easterbrook called the “Great Climate Shift”, is over, and the Big Chill is setting in, and it is going get really cold like that from ca 1900 to 1930.
I have a set of data that reveal that the Tmax and Tmin metrics for the March, June and December for the years 2000-08 are the same as that for the years 1900-08.
For September, however, the years 2000-08 were much warmer than that for the years 1900-08. This is the same seasonal warming that A. Masterman found in his study of the CET. Link to his paper is given in my post.
The way to shut down the warmers tauting global warming gobblygook and climate change claptrap is to let rock solid, bullet-proof empirical data do the walkin’ and the talkin’! Go read the late John Daly’s essay “What the Station Say” and check out the many temperature-time plots that he prepared from unbiased data from remote weather stations (i.e., the really squeaky clean ones aka as “cherry”). His work flasified the AGW hypothesis, and I am quite surprised the Kiwis of the NZCC are unware of his work.

Bruce Cobb (11:30:57) :
These are relevant issues aren’t they? If one wants to understand the stance of the individuals at the Heartland Institute and their “climate” conference, and their attempt to pay people to sign a ludicrous petition, it’s useful to know that the instigator of the petition nearly 10 years ago was a propagandist for the tobacco industry during the period in which they were attempting to pursue an anti-science agenda (Steitz’s role is well-documented and in the public domain following the forced document release by the tobacco industry). Anyone with any interest in finding out the truth on these issues should reject that sort of nonsense.
Likewise it’s helpful to know that the meeting is massively co-sponsored by those sectors who stand to benefit most from muddying the issues on climate science. One doesn’t have to disagree with their stance/agenda….but we’d be silly to ignore the obvious! We don’t have to pretend that we don’t understand why the Competitive Enterprise Institute, or the Science and Environmental Policy Project…or the Frontiers of Freedom…or the Institute of Public Affairs (and another 30-odd of these).
And so on. There are many scientific meetings where climate science can be (and is) presented, discussed, debated, argued over . The idea that certain elements of the corporate sector feel the need to organize a “meeting” to present a contrived interpretation of what should be scientific issues is sad….but not surprising unfortunately.

Professor Barry Brook has just appeared on Australian TV stating that we are in for metres of sea level rise based on this new ‘study’ (performed with a hang-dog expression which is not scientific (or relevant) but IS good TV).
As others have pointed out, it is irrelevant if the study is true or not, the hysteria over its claims will be enough to scare people into further believing the AGW hypothesis.

Here’s a link to R&D magazine’s report on this. You can comment, so please do.. 🙂
http://abrd-media.com/portal/wts/ccmc7iaVq7aqrErqEzixcr8ijCj

This is from Google Earth. It is interesting how they give other logical explanations… other than AGW for the break down of the ice shelves!
“Scientists have observed the ice along the Antarctic Peninsula disappearing in a series of retreats over the past 30 years. The climate in this area is warming at approximately 0.5 degrees Celsius per year following a trend that is believed to have been occurring for at least the past 50 years (NASA, 2006). Generally this retreat has occurred as icebergs break away from the oceanward edge of the ice. More recently a new pattern has been observed.
Scientists have been closely monitoring the Larsen Ice Shelf since 1995 when a large portion of it (Larsen A) dramatically disintegrated. In 2002 another similar event occurred at Larsen B which is captured in this remarkable series of MODIS images. In contrast to the slower pattern of calving – where pieces of ice break away at the edge of the shelf – these two events occurred over a large area and in a relatively short period of time. In the case of Larsen B 3,250 square kilometers of the ice shelf shattered into a plume of 1000s of icebergs in a little over a month. Over the last 5 years approximately 40 per cent of Larsen B has disintegrated – 5,700 square kilometers. Larsen A is believed to have been in place for over 2000 years at the time of its collapse and Larsen B is thought to have been still older (Portland State University, 2002).
Scientists have developed theories to explain Larsen B’s catastrophic collapse, linking it to summertime warming and the pooling of melted water on the surface of the ice (Scambos et al., 2000) as well as differences in the rates of movements of the several glaciers feeding into the ice shelf (Glasser and Scambos, 2008). The pooling water is believed to accelerate the expansion of crevasses and lead to the breakdown of the ice shelves. In addition, the differences in the rates of flow from various glaciers are believed to have created structural weakness in the ice shelf (Glasser and Scambos, 2008). In the case of Larsen B, ponds of melt water can be seen in the remote sensing images taken shortly before the collapse occurs (January 2002 image), lending credence to this theory. Melt water ponds have been seen forming on Larsen C in more recent images, however there appears to be less of the structural weakening from glacier flow on Larsen C and this may make it less vulnerable to catastrophic collapse.”

Old-Growth Forests Dying Off in U.S. West
I saw this in the Washington Post, you guessed it. Global warming is killing them and once they die, even more global warming will happen.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/22/AR2009012202203.html

Gary Plyler (11:49:02) :

1. The Medievel Warm Period was warmer than today? Get rid of the MWP with Manns “Hockey Stick” (which has been debunked)

Really? Since the numerous plaeoproxy temperature analyses of the last 10 years are essentially compatible with Manns 1998 study, one would surely conclude that the original rather tentative study has been reinforced by a very large amount of new analysis in the intervening years:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/recons.html
Mann and coworkers have recently published a very extensive analysis comprising more than 1200 proxy series. Not a huge amount has changed other than that we’re rather more confident that late 20th century and current warming is anomalous in the context of the past 100-plus years.
M. E. Mann et al. (2008) Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 105:13252-13257

2. Can’t find a tropical Lower troposphere warming using radiosonde balloon thermometers (required by the GCMs)? Invent a new principle where wind velocity is a component of thermal energy (even though it still will not radiate more long wave Infrared Radiation).

If the radiosonde data has well characterized spurious artefacts we’d be very silly indeed not to take these into account.
S. C. Sherwood et al. (2005) Radiosonde Daytime Biases and Late-20th Century Warming Science 309, 1556 – 1559.

3. Can’t account for GHG system not warming Antarctica? Blame it on the Ozone Hole and mathematically tease the temperature data to show warming.

We’re not really expecting that much Antarctic warming yet (see my post 11.54.32). The fact that there might be some warming in the (non-peninsular) vast regions of Antarctica is interesting and useful to know.

What is Next?

More science, happily! We certainly want to find out as well as we can what’s occurring in response to extraordinary enhancement of the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

Disclaimer, I have not read the comments above, but I did read this yesterday on Science Daily. Lets be clear “interpolate carefully” means that they made certain assumptions, possibly linear between points or perhaps they assumed some kind of non-linear realtionship. In my business we interpolate crap all the time. You’re a damn fool if you assign it more value than it deserves. Apparently, if you read the fine print, they have assigned statistical probabilities which, lo and behold, still allow that the bulk of the continent might have cooled.
No new data here, it’s just been massaged to get a headline.

Stephen Hill, just wanted to add that Andrew Weaver is a climate modeler and has refused to debate the subject in an open forum.

The MSUlt data is pure fiction over the Antarctic. The surface ice sits far above the peak in the weighting function.

foinavon (12:06:17) :
John Galt (10:57:12) :
Why don’t people like Mann and Hansen attend and debate the issues publicly? I’m sure that since the science is clearly on their side, they’ll have no trouble persuading the deniers to get on board before it’s too late.
Unfortunately that tends to be a particularly fruitless and unsatisfactory activity. Far better for scientists to publish their work in the scientific literature, attend scientific meetings and engage directly with other scientists and policymakers. These requests for “debate” tend to politicise/factionalise what are scientific issues…
I’m not asking them to debate me, but to engage their peers who are skeptical of AGW. Public debate with (or between) laymen might be entertaining but it rarely solves anything. Just look at some of the internet sites where people can post their views. Nobody ever seems to be open-minded enough to really consider the other side’s arguments.
What I would really like all the climate modelers to do is release their input data and their source code for everybody to see. Hansen is a public servant. GISS is support by my tax dollars and short of national security issues, everything should be available to the public.
Do you suppose I could sue under the FOIA to get a full release of all of GISS notes, their inputs, the adjusts and the source code used to create their models?

George E. Smith (13:54:37) :

Well when I said “Conventional wisdom”, I was referring to what the general public have beed told constantly via the lay media..

really? I can’t say I’ve noticed! In any case we shouldn’t be listening to “conventional wisdom”…we should be following the science. And the science has long predicted (for 25 years or more) that the high Northern latitudes should warm earlier and faster than the deep Southern Circumpolar latitudes (see citations to early work on this issue in my post 11:54:32).

Well if you measure “warming” solely in terms of temperature; then oyu would favor the northern hemisphere; but if you measure warming in terms of retained energy from the sun, then that would favor the southern hemisphere.

How else does one measure warming? Clearly the parameter of interest to our selves, our agricultural production, the terrestrial biosphere and so on, is the surface temperature. As has been predicted for 25 years or so, enhanced greenhouse warming should result in an earlier and larger surface warming of the high Northern latitudes compared to the deep southern (especially Circumpolar/Antarctic) latitudes (see citations in my post 11:54:32, for example).
As for “retained heat”, yes the expectation is that the greatest amount of thermal energy will be retained in the Southern Oceans. That’s essentially what the papers cited in my post above 11:54:32 state. As I said:

foinavon: So in the 1980’s it was predicted from modelling that the Northern hemisphere should warm faster than the S. hemisphere, and that warming in the Southern Circumpolar regions would be delayed/suppressed relative to the far Northern latitudes due to the large excess area of Southern oceans and the deeper penetration of heat into the oceans.
It’s not sufficient to consider only the absorption of solar thermal energy. The distribution of this “heat” through ocean overturning and air and sea currents is a dominant factor in the distribution of excess thermal energy within the surface regions of the planet. If we are interested in the surface temperature (which we are, of course, since that’s where we live (!), and in any case, that’s what the paper under discussion on this thread is about), then that’s where we measure the temperature, even if we might also want to identify changes in the heat content of the oceans overall (as part of an analysis of the Earth’s “energy budget”),and what the tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures are doing…

Senator Inhofe’s site gathers together a lot of the material debunking this report at http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=fc7db6ad-802a-23ad-43d1-2651eb2297d6&Issue_id=
Of course, the media darlings have swarmed all over this in the hight of a SH Summer – perfect for photo ops of “melting ice”.
Deducing data? Result wiped by the margins of error? – just how will this result be tested? Where’s the science?
Scandalous.

Leon Brozyna (02:58:58) :
So is this the way modern ’science’ works? Come up with a belief, then look for data that supports the belief while ignoring data that doesn’t conform? I think I’ll self-snip myself here before I let loose my frustrations on this latest display…
Leon – The technique described is typically used in “Humanities” departments at any typical University.
Perfect for “Opinions” – falls down if “Facts” are required.

JimB,
“Simon:
(Me)”I’m rather puzzled as to why some here did not make the same point when previous analyses have suggested Antarctic cooling? It does seem to me that the accuracy of measurements, whether surface-based or satellite, only comes into question here when they are suggestive of warming.”
(You)I have a different opinion. I believe that what gets questioned here is poor science, not just accuracy of measurements.
I wish I could agree. I’d find the site more interesting if I thought so. For example, I refer you to any discussion there’s been of Beck’s paper on historic C02 levels. I can’t immediately think of a more obvious example of ‘poor science’, yet AFAIAA it got very gentle treatment here (and indeed has been enthusiastically supported by some) from those who are virulent in their criticism of the likes of Mann and Hansen. This gives a very strong impression of partisan inclination rather than disinterested commentary upon good/poor science, in my view. As for this paper in question, there have been many negative comments made here by those who cheerfully say they’ve not read the paper – is that your notion of questioning poor science? It seems to me to be simply an expression of prejudice, which is hardly much use in science.
(Me) Hmm, well there’s long history here of people objecting to efforts that have been made to take account of, and adjust for, observational inadequacies,…”
(You) Again, I beg to differ. The objection to those efforts have centered on the fact that the adjustors refuse to release the means of the adjustment so that the means/methods can be understood, challenged, authenticated, or tossed.
Certainly you know this…so I don’t understand the swipe? Do you not believe that the work of publicly funded scientists should be released to the public?…or that other scientists should be given the opportunity to analyze methods and attempt to reproduce/recreate results of various experiments as a point of validation?
I didn’t mean it to be a swipe, actually – more a sense of exhaustion! You’ll recognise that I’m posting on a site where the overwhelming proportion of views are contrary to mine, so one can’t cover every point. I really can’t agree that objections here are “centered on the fact that the adjustors refuse to release the means of the adjustment”. Objection to the fact of adjustments at all seems to me to be far more frequently expressed. Naturally, I agree with the general principle of openness, though I’m not at all sure it is as easily achieved as one might think. As a counter example, how open was the UAH processing up to 2005, when Mears et al. finally figured out the error in their calculations? I trust that you would be as concerned about that as about any other matter. I actually think this is changing quickly, as scientists find themselves exposed to more widespread ‘review’ than has traditionally (pre-internet) been the case.
I’m rather surprised that you don’t recognise the central point I was making, which is that commentary here is highly partisan and suggestive of double standards. This is obvious when people object to ‘warming analysis’ when they have not objected to ‘cooling analysis’. You’re not simply saying, I trust, that ‘cooling analysis’ is good science whilst ‘warming analysis’ is poor science?

TonyB (15:00:23) :

Foinavon 13.31.48
You linked to a long list of paleo proxies to support Dr Mann. Did you actually read them?

Well yes of course. But you’ve chosen to highlight a very nice highly localized stalagmite proxy from the Central Alps. The proxy temperature reconstructions of relevance are those that assess global or N. hemispheric averages. There are certainly local proxies (all proxies are local!) that show highish Medieval Warm Period reconstructed temperatures. These are usually in the highish Northern latitudes. There are local proxies that dn’t show MWP warming.The global or N. hemispheric averages based on multipe proxies are pretty much in line with the original Mann et al reconstruction of 1998…
Anyway, I’m glad you like that nice repository of data…

E.M.Smith (14:27:04) :
I have a chart somewhere I can’t find right now that shows a significant ramp up in volcanism lately world wide. I doubt that the Antarctic would be immune
This is not specifically what you are refering to, however;
In the fairly recent past I was looking into volcanic activity. The effect of volcanoes is short term and relative to the size and type of eruption. Part of my question was: is volcanic activity increasing and if it is are submarine volcanoes more active? If so, then would a significant increase in sub-surface volcanoes have an effect on ocean temperatures, thus, the climate.
Since monitoring of submarine volcanoes is limited I decided to focus on large eruptions. Those most likey to be noticed and recorded. Ultimately there was not enough data to work with. However, in the process I needed to know if there had been an increase in large eruptions (VEI 4 or greater) on land. Large eruptions also provide a better record since historic events are more complete.
That led to this graph of VEI 4 or larger eruptions:
http://penoflight.com/climatebuzz/MajorVol1.jpg
If you note…
1850 -1900 = 23 large eruptions
1900 -1950 = 34
1950 -2000 = 35
verses
1650 -1700 = 14

Jeff Alberts (14:44:28)
Well yes, a number of paleoproxy temperature reconstructions done during the past 10 years (including a very comprehensive one just published by Mann et al [see my post (13:31:48)] ) have essentially tightened the confidence in the original rather tentative analysis by Mann et al (1998).
They’re all there in the scientific literature. It seems now to be a rather well-supported conclusion to the extent that one can make reliable conclusions from proxies. I don’t think scientists and policymakers are really that interested in the considerations of a blogger!