Above: Mt Erebus, Antarctica
picture by Sean Brocklesby
A press release today by the University of Washington makes a claim that Antarctica is warming and has been for the last 50 years:
“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.”
…
“The researchers devised a statistical technique that uses data from satellites and from Antarctic weather stations to make a new estimate of temperature trends.”
…
“People were calculating with their heads instead of actually doing the math,” Steig said. “What we did is interpolate carefully instead of just using the back of an envelope. While other interpolations had been done previously, no one had really taken advantage of the satellite data, which provide crucial information about spatial patterns of temperature change.”
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. On the other hand, a number of Antarctic weather stations have been in place since 1957, the International Geophysical Year, but virtually all of them are within a short distance of the coast and so provide no direct information about conditions in the continent’s interior.
The scientists found temperature measurements from weather stations corresponded closely with satellite data for overlapping time periods. That allowed them to use the satellite data as a guide to deduce temperatures in areas of the continent without weather stations.
…
Co-authors of the paper are David Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., a former student of Steig’s; Scott Rutherford of Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I.; Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University; Josefino Comiso of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; and Drew Shindell of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. The work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation.
Anytime Michael Mann gets involved in a paper and something is “deduced” it makes me wary of the veracity of the methodology. Why? Mann can’t even correct simple faults like latitude-longitude errors in data used in previous papers he’s written.
But that’s not the focus of the moment. In that press release they cite NASA satellite imagery. Let’s take a look at how the imagery has changed in 5 years.
NASA’s viewpoint – 2004
Click for larger image
NASA’s Viewpoint 2007 (added 1/22)
NASA’s viewpoint – 2009
Earth’s viewpoint – map of Antarctic volcanoes
From the UW paper again:
“West Antarctica is a very different place than East Antarctica, and there is a physical barrier, the Transantarctic Mountains, that separates the two,” said Steig, lead author of a paper documenting the warming published in the Jan. 22 edition of Nature.
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.
From January 2008, the first evidence of a volcanic eruption from beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet has been discovered by members of the British Antarctic Survey.
The volcano on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet began erupting some 2,000 years ago and remains active to this day. Using airborne ice-sounding radar, scientists discovered a layer of ash produced by a ’subglacial’ volcano. It extends across an area larger than Wales. The volcano is located beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet in the Hudson Mountains at latitude 74.6°South, longitude 97°West.
UPDATE 1/22
In response to questions and challenges in comments, I’ve added imagery above and have a desire to further explain why this paper is problematic in my view.
The author of the paper himself (Steig) mentions the subglacial heat source in a response from “tallbloke” in comments. My issue is that they don’t even consider or investigate the possibility. Science is about testing and if possible, excluding all potential candidates that challenge your hypothesis, and given the geographic correlation between their output map and the volcanic map, it seems a reasonable theory to investigate. They didn’t.
But let’s put the volcanoes aside for a moment. Let’s look at the data error band. The UAH trend for Antarctica since 1978 is -0.77 degrees/century.
In a 2007 press release on Antarctica, NASA’s describes their measurement error at 2-3 degrees, making Steig’s conclusion of .25 degrees Celsius over 25 years statistically meaningless.
“Instead, the team checked the satellite records against ground-based weather station data to inter-calibrate them and make the 26-year satellite record. The scientists estimate the level of uncertainty in the measurements is between 2-3 degrees Celsius.”
That is from this 2007 NASA press release, third paragraph.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8239
Also in that PR, NASA shows yet another satellite derived depiction which differs from the ones above. I’ve added it.
Saying you have a .25 deviation over 25 years (based on one-tenth of a degree Celsius per decade per Steig) with a previously established measurement uncertainty of 2-3 degrees means that the “deduced” value Steig obtained is not greater than the error bands previously cited on 2007, which would render it statistically meaningless.
In an AP story Kenneth Trenberth has the quote of the day:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090121/ap_on_sc/sci_antarctica
“This looks like a pretty good analysis, but I have to say I remain somewhat skeptical,” Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in an e-mail. “It is hard to make data where none exist.”
Oh, come on guys. I’m a skeptic, but Flanagan has a point about the discount for signing the petition. It’s hardly fair to charge higher admission to those who have a particular scientific opinion. If the IPCC were doing this, we would all be screaming ‘blue murder.’
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?
Dr. Pielke, Sr. nailed this faux report completely in a set of observations.
The only question left is why the AGW promotion industry keeps pretending to be doing science?
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
This publication is part of a huge scam.
A simple look at the latest sat image from Antarctica tells you how hysterical the conclusions of the report really are.
Despite the fact that they are left without any scientific leg to stand on (thanks to the deniers and blogs like WUWT) the initiators of the AGW Doctrine initiated by the United Nations and the Club of Rome are almost on target now the World under Obama will surrender to the biggest scam in Human History.
Their tools:
1. Wide application of pseudo science, falsifications and indoctrination.
2. Domination of the Political Establishment, Media, Research Institutes, Governmental Institutions, Universities and Schools.
3. Isolation of the political decision making process (NO SKEPTICS ALOUD).
4. Intimidation of all opponents from scientists to politicians, from Institutions to companies, from Universities to entire Nations.
5. Infiltration of the AGW Doctrine within the educational system and society.
6. The current crises.
This is the start of a socialist coup on a Global Scale and it’s directed against humanity, the industrialized world and the freedom of man.
Although they will loose any scientific debate, they will achieve their political goal.
This will be a tough battle.
Fortunately the climate is on our side.
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/
Anthony:
-50F is approximately -46C. That means that even if temperatures did go up by .25C over 25 years [i.e. 1C per century], Antarctica would still be faced with temperatures of -45.75C. Until further notice, ice does not melt until temperatures reach approximately 0C, so assuming the published purported rate of “warming”, it would take 45 centuries to get there. Has anyone in the Steig, Mann, et. al. team ever sat down and done a “back of the envelope” calculation to “deduce” the calories necessary to get all that ice to melt so that it actually will raise sea levels?
REPLY: Whether the ice melts in Anarctica landmass, on the ice shelves, or as bergs or bergy bits, it would indeed require energy input. To my knowledge, the authors have not done this. But then they wouldn’t, since the paper (at least what we can read of it so far) doesn’t claim any Antarctic melting, only a warming. – Anthony
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?
0.5 °C would take the temperature of Antarctica up to 14.5 °C in Summer because the highest temperature has been 15 °C. The whole thing is just biased and an exaggeration.
Corrections: -14.5 °C and -15 °C. I forgot to write the “minus” sign… heh! 😉
George E. Smith (10:45:01) :
and:
That may be “conventional wisdom” but it’s not what the science has shown! It’s been known for 25 years that the expectation for polar warming in response to an enhanced greenhouse effect due to raised greenhouse gas concentrations, is for a strong warming in the high Northern latitudes with a reduced/delayed warming in the deep Southern latitudes particularly in Antarctica.
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.
e.g.:
Schneider SH, Thompson SI (1981) Atmospheric CO2 and Climate – Importance Of The Transient-Response. J. Geophysical Research-Oceans Atmos. 86, 3135-3147
Bryan K (1988) Interhemispheric Asymmetry In The Transient-Response Of A Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Model To a CO2 Forcing. J.Phys. Oceanography 18, 851 1988
And this became rather more refined in the 1990’s. So, for example, Manabe (1992) predicted (from modelling) a large Arctic Ocean warming in response to greenhouse enhancement, with small surface warming in the deep Southern latitudes, particularly in the Circumpolar regions around the Antarctic peninsula.
Manabe S (1992) Transient Responses Of A Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Model To Gradual Changes Of Atmospheric Co2 .2. Seasonal Response
Journal Of Climate 5, 105-113.
And so on. Whatever “conventional wisdom” may say, the science indicates that the very efficient heat transfer from the equator to the high Northern latitudes, together with albedo feedbacks, should give the largest warming in response to enhanced greenhouse warming, whereas the Southern polar regions with a massive ocean sink and more efficient transfer of surface heat to the deeper oceans should give a delayed and suppressed warming relative to the Arctic…
Regarding the topic of the Heartland Institute
Flanagan gets deducted 10 points for bringing up this off topic issue on this thread. I’m going to answer this here, and there will not be any further discussion on this thread. I will however open a new thread in a day or two where this is relevant to discuss
There is precedence for this however in scientific circles. I’ll point out that the AMS offers discounts to “members” that are not extended to the general public or to scientists that are not members, on books, conferences, and even when it comes to exhibitors at conferences.
So if I don’t agree with the AMS position statement on climate change, and choose not to be a member because of that, I don’t get those discounts.
Other scientific organizations have similar “member discount” setups. Nature for example. general public gets paywalled for the paper from Steig, even though it is financed by public monies. Members of the Nature consortium get it for free.
AAS is the same way. Pay for play.
Being a member of a skeptical group of scientists should be no different than being a member of these other scientific organizations that are pro AGW.
Also, I’m busy at work at the moment, so I will not be answering any further comments until tonight.
Note to Moderators- please manage this thread.
John Galt (10:57:12) :
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…
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???
Faster than when, exactly? They can’t say, period, because they don’t know. They have nothing to compare any current warming to. It’s a complete non-statement.
I would like to see before and after GISSification graphs of the temperatures from the stations used in this study. Under the Italy thread, the Pisa before and after is just awful. I ‘eyeball’ about 1.75 C of added rise in it totally from GISS processing. Did they do the same here?
Dear me, so much vitriol! I do wonder why the same commentators didn’t get their tails up about the analyses of Antarctic cooling in more recent decades? Is the idea here just to attack any warming analysis whilst avoiding expression of any reservations about cooling arguments? It certainly does seem so. Is this what some of you think ‘scepticism’ means?
Let’s deal with the now much-repeated assertion that the AGW-ers have changed their tune over recent cooling being explicable in terms of modeled response to ozone depletion, etc. Read the paper. It does not contradict this view at all. The more recent cooling in East Antarctica is there to be seen. Ozone depletion did not occur substantially until the late 1970s. The general warming that the paper’s analysis identifies is for the whole period 1957-2006. There is no contradiction, however much Tech Central linking to papers discussing more recent cooling might like to pretend that there is.
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.
Not different than science by proclamation from other organizations.
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.
leftymartin (06:31:57) :
If your history
don’t match the faith….
Who ya gonnal call?
Michael Mann!
Now that was totaly uncalled for! giggle. Stop it right now. snicker.
It’s just completely unacceptable and you better not do it again. hehehehe.
Oh please, just ONE more?!?
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.
foinavon,
Then, since the article claiming Antarctic warming actually shows cooling since 1986, that would leave AGW as, yet again, falsified.
Brooklyn Red Leg (06:56:25) :
Hmm…could someone please point to any respectable definition of ‘Interpolate’ that does not mean ‘we made it up’? Furthermore, whenh was Interpolation accepted as a legitemate scientific method?
I was taught to use interpolation to fill in a missing data item value between two well established ones for the purpose of smoothing a curve. I don’t remember any other legitimate use, but it’s been a while.
My guess and that’s all it is: Given Mann’s prior work of gluing together disjoint datasets, along with interpolation, and stirring in some GISS with Sats data: I would expect the ‘cheat’ to be that when sat data are cooler than GISS they are ignored (we have ‘good’ land data) and when sat data are available near gaps in GISS they are ‘adjusted via interpolation’ to fit between the two adjacent GISS data points. This tosses the low sat data and lets you add more adjusted upward data points to the GISS series.
While that may not be exactly right, that is the kind of thing I would start with in doing a forensic review. If GISS is biased by manipulation (which I’m fairly certain it is) this lets you pollute the satellite data with the same ‘lift’ without it being too obvious.
No, I’m not paranoid, I just did computer security work for a fair while and sometimes there are bad guys out to get you…
George E. Smith (11:37:59) :
Your Nyquist theorem exposition is rather dubious. The Nyquist theorem relates to the ability to extract the individual frequency components and their amplitudes from analogue signals composed of superimposed sinusoidal signals. In spectroscopy this might be achieved by digitizing a signal and Fourier transforming this. The Nyquist theorem relates to the sampling requirements of the signal (inadequately sampled signals will be alaised and appear at the wrong frequency).
But if one considers ice core data, one needs to be very specific about what one is trying to achieve. If one is trying to extract variations resulting from true cyclic phenomena then it’s pretty clear that ice core data is rather well sampled. A very good example is the extraction of the major elements of the Milankovitch cycles from the ice core record. So if one Fourier transforms the ice core delta temp. or delta 18O records from the Vostock or Dome Fuji cores the Milankovitch cycles are rather well extracted, since their signatures are clear in the cores and the cores are adequately sampled. A good example is:
Kawamura et al (2007) “Northern hemisphere forcing of climate cycles in Antarctica overt he past 360,000 years” Nature 448, 912-919.
See Figure 2, where the ~100,000 (eccentricity), the 41,000 (obliquity) and the 23,000 (precession) year Milankovitch cycles are stronly defined in the power spectrum.
In general one needs to be very specific about the nature of the signal you are trying to extract. Clearly the Milankovitch cycles are well-sampled in cores. What specifically do you consider to be inadequately sampled?