UPDATE 1/25: Mr. Hays has has provided a follow up letter, posted at the bottom of this article. – Anthony
This letter below, reprinted with permission, is from Ross Hays. Ross was a CNN meteorologist for many years. He works for NASA at the Columbia Balloon Facility.
In that capacity he has spent much time in Antarctica. He obviously can’t speak for his agency but can have an opinion which he shared with several people. It is printed below in entirety, exactly as he sent it to Eric Steig today, the lead author of the University of Washington paper highlighted in a press release yesterday that claims there is a warming in Antarctica. There were some of the pronouncements made in the media, particularly to the Associated Press by Dr. Michael Mann, that marry that paper with “global warming”, even though no such claim was made in the press release about the scientific paper itself.
I agree with Ross Hays. In my opinion, this press release and subsequent media interviews were done for media attention. The timing is suspicious, with the upcoming Al Gore’s address to congress, he can now say: “We’ve now learned Antarctica is warming”. A Google News search shows about 530 articles on the UW press release in various media.
I ask my readers that share this opinion to consider writing factual letters to the editor (in your own words) or make online comments if any of these media outlets are near you. – Anthony
letter dated 1/22/09
Eric,
Let me first say that this is my own opinion and does not represent the agency I work for. I feel your study is absolutely wrong.
There are very few stations in Antarctica to begin with and only a hand full with 50 years of data. Satellite data is just approaching thirty years of available information. In my experience as a day to day forecaster that has to travel and do field work in Antarctica the summer seasons have been getting colder. In the late 1980s helicopters were used to take our personnel to Williams Field from McMurdo Station due to the annual receding of the Ross Ice Shelf, but in the past few years the thaw has been limited and vehicles can continue to make the transition and drive on the ice. One climate note to pass along is December 2006 was the coldest December ever for McMurdo Station. In a synoptic perspective the cooler sea surface temperatures have kept the maritime storms farther offshore in the summer season and the colder more dense air has rolled from the South Pole to the ice shelf.
There was a paper presented at the AMS Conference in New Orleans last year noting over 70% of the continent was cooling due to the ozone hole. We launch balloons into the stratosphere and the anticyclone that develops over the South Pole has been displaced and slow to establish itself over the past five seasons. The pattern in the troposphere has reflected this trend with more maritime (warmer) air around the Antarctic Peninsula which is also where most of the automated weather stations are located for West Antarctica which will give you the average warmer readings and skew the data for all of West Antarctica.
With statistics you can make numbers go to almost any conclusion you want. It saddens me to see members of the scientific community do this for media coverage.
Sincerely,
Ross Hays
Follow up letter, sent 1/24 and posted on 1/25 with permission:
Anthony,
A prerequisite to going to work for the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility was to pass an Antarctic physical. During the southern summer each year CSBF launches large (up to 40 million cubic feet) scientific balloons that orbit Antarctica for up to 42 days with scientific experiments. Most of the payloads are astrophysics, but scientific balloons discovered the ozone hole over Antarctica.
The meteorologist job is to do daily forecasts for our launch site at Williams Field near McMurodo Station on Ross Island. When campaigns are going on daily briefings are provided to personnel and a written summary is provided for daily situation reports sent to the Balloon Program Office at Goddard Space Center. We also monitor the stratospheric winds while the payloads are being readied to launch and to make sure the winds are in the correct direction and the balloon will stay over the continent. We also forecast payload termination and impact areas.
I have only done two tours on the Ice but have provided forecasts from Palestine, Texas on the years between after the balloon launches we take over forecasts for the payload and handle termination from our command center. I will be returning to the Ice in November.
My main problem with the study is the data sets. I know of only 4 stations for all of Antarctica that have fifty complete years of data. I am trying to find the exact number now. Most stations have been on and off in operation for a few seasons during field experiments. One of our retired meteorologists, Glenn Rosenberger was a US Navy meteorologist that did tours in Antarctica. He helped install the first automated weather stations on the continent: In conjunction with Stanford University, believe it was in 1978-1979 that 4 were put on the ice. One was on Minna Bluff, one on the Plateau, one on the slope of Eribus. They were powered by the RTG (radiological thermoelectric generators) and the I was the Radiological Officer for the command. There is just not enough data to support the results in my opinion.
The discussion about the warming in West Antarctica is also questionable to me since the majority of stations with several years of data are on the Antarctic Peninsula, which is surround by warmer maritime air, and doesn’t give a good balance over the interior.
I hope this gives you some idea about me.
Sincerely,
Ross Hays
So the only independently verifiable facts given to us by Ross Hays are that December 2006 was the coldest ever at McMurdo, and that McMurdo shows a cooling trend.
Turns out both of these are false.
Does this mean the credibility of the rest of his testimony is higher, or lower?
REPLY: Suggestion: You should exercise better care in citations. Your link will break shortly, it is temporary. And since I can’t tell from the temp file link whether GISS dataset1 or 2 was used, you assertion may be true or false, since none of use have any way of determining from your link if the data is the GISS adjusted or the GHCN data. Not many people here trust GISS anyway due to the adjustment issues. Perhaps a CRU citation would be better? – Anthony
I’m finding more and more pieces / papers that overturn Steig’s conclusions, and have added them to my page. Ole Humlum (2005) has a brilliant picture showing Antarctic temperature changes by location, decade, and season. This is a must. Also the 2008 Climate Models Overheat Antarctica
Here are a few points from a paper by Ellen Mosely-Thompson and Lonnie Thompson, about Antarctic Temperature records in 2003:
ICE CORE PALEOCLIMATE HISTORIES FROM THE ANTARCTIC PENINSULA:
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Ellen Mosley-Thompson, Lonnie G. Thompson, Byrd Polar Research Center
It is essential to determine whether the strong 20th century warming in the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) reflects, in part, a response to anthropogenically driven, globally averaged warming or if it is consistent with past climate variability in the region. The necessary time perspective may be reconstructed from chemical and physical properties preserved in the regional ice cover and ocean sediments. Only three multi-century climate histories derived from ice cores in the AP region have been annually dated with good precision (± 2 years per century). The longest record contains only 1200 years and the three histories do not provide a coherent picture of 20th century climate variability.
Temperature records for Antarctica are sparse and short with few extending prior to the International Geophysical Year (1957-58).
This is particularly true for the continental interior. The longest and most dense network of meteorological records is in the Antarctic Peninsula region where the temperature record at Orcadas (South Orkney Islands) extends to 1903.
King et al. [this volume] review the surface temperature records in the Peninsula that extend to the late 1940s and the upper air measurements that began in 1956. Their analyses demonstrate marked differences between the temperature trends in the AP and the rest of the continent (East and West Antarctica).
Jones et al. [1993] also noted that temperature variations in the AP region are poorly correlated with those on the main part of the continent and concluded that extending the Antarctic temperature record by using the longer temperature histories from the Peninsula would be inappropriate.
“The Plateau Remote (PR) record contains some longer-term (~century scale) oscillations with a brief (~3 decades), but strong cooling in the early 17th century.
Conditions remain at or above the long-term mean from 1660 to 1780 after which a gradual cooling trend persists until 1870 after which conditions warm rapidly, peaking at the turn of the 20th century. Since that time the δ18O record indicates a cooling trend to the present.
The PR δ18O record, like those from South Pole, does not show 20th century 18O enrichment (warming), [Mosley-Thompson, unpublished data]. Similarly, the recently published isotopic record from Berkner Island [Mulvaney et al., 2002] also does not show a 20th century warming.
Domack et al. [this volume] report their cores contain a Medieval Warm Period (1.15 ka to 0.7 ka), a Little Ice Age signal (0.7 ka to ~0.15 ka) and 200-year oscillations in the regional climate/oceanographic conditions.”
The pdf can be downloaded from this link:
http://bprc.osu.edu/Icecore/Abstracts/Publications.html#pubs_2003
Craig Moore-
Agreed. That was why my response was a bit cagey, because i have to hope that the quote was either incomplete or not actually from Dr. Steig. If I knew him to actually have said it, I wouldn’t have been so polite! 🙂
Richard M, Scott Gibson (and the rest of the volcano fans):
The heat released during a 2005 eruption of Mt. Erebus was estimated at 23.5 million watts.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2008/pdf/1896.pdf.
Let’s go crazy and assume there are one hundred and twenty Mt. Erebus-size volcanoes hiding in West Antarctica; that’s a heat output of about 3,000 million Watts.
Let’s also assume that all the energy is going into heating the atmosphere (and not partially being transferred to latent heat as they melt the overlying ice). Let’s also assume that all these volcanoes suddenly went from inactive to active 50 years ago (at the beginning of the time period covered by Steigs study).
Eyeballing a map of Antarctica, West Antarctica looks to be about 1/5 of the continent, or about 3 million km2.
3,000 million watts/3 million km2 works out to 1,000 Watts/km2, or 0.001 Watts/m2.
Compare that 0.001 Watts/m2 to the forcing from solar, or GHGs, or ozone- it’s 3 orders of magnitude LESS.
Even under my extremely generous assumptions, the heat output from volcanoes is trivial compared to the other forcings.
Chris Vallance-
Thank you for the info. Do you suppose the nearness to and the longevity of the eruption might be relevant? Mount Erebus is a continuing boiling pot of lava from an active source.
Chris V.-
Perhaps I wasn’t completely clear, so I will simplify. A candle puts out very little heat, but if I hold my hand too close to the flame, I will be burned. As I said before, I am not saying volcanoes change climate, but they can certainly throw off measurements. The amount of heat volcanoes produce per square kilometer of Western Antarctica has no bearing in this.
Craig Moore-
Mt Erebus is one of four volcanoes that form Ross Island off of Western Antarctica. McMurdo Station, the largest “city” in Antarctica, is located on this island not far from Mt Erebus. It was located there because it has bare rock, and is a warmer area of Antarctica.
Given these facts, it is highly possible that McMurdo’s temperature record is contaminated with volcanic heat and the heat given off by man’s local activities. I would like to see a surfacestations.org – like audit of this station to see more about its “reliability.”
Incidentally, those who might say that this has no bearing on the paper being discussed, Hayes et al (2009) created the new data from the existing data, so it cannot be more reliable than the existing data.
Craig Moore (19:38:53) :
Has Mt. Erebus become increasingly active over the past 50 years? Are any of the temperature stations used in Steigs study near Mt. Erebus? If yes, do the temperature readings at that station track the volcanic activity at Mt. Erebus?
I would think that in a very cold place like Antarctica the warm air around the volcano would rise up into the atmosphere. How close, and how hot, does a volcano have to be to effect a temperature station a thousand feet, a mile, 10 miles away?
I have no idea whether Steig’s conclusions are right or wrong, but, without some actual evidence, the idea that the temperature readings are being effected by volcanic activity seems rather unrealistic to me.
Richard M says:
Yeah, but you left out the next part of the quote “44% rate climate change as moderately dangerous; and only 13% believe there is relatively little danger.”
So, your “little danger” (or even net positive) point of view would put you in a rather small minority.
Widespread and pervasive geothermal heat is often found in volcanic regions. For example, there have been no volcanic eruptions in the Yellowstone caldera within the last hundred years, yet there are geysers of boiling water scattered in an area of many square kilometers. The thermal activity varies with time and place over this large region.
The island of Hawaii is similar; although Puu O’o is the only volcano that has been erupting continuously for the last 20 or so years, there is a large and variable heat flow over a distance of more than 30 km. In fact, Kilauea Caldera had a recent breakout and may erupt at any time.
Hence, I would would never discount volcanic influence in a volcanic region without referring to a study which quantifies it. If no such study exists, I would say something to the effect of “assuming that volcanic heat flow is constant, my temperature reconstructions indicate that…” somewhere in my paper. Otherwise, the reader would have no idea whether I made an assumption or not, or whether I had considered the possibilty.
Scott Gibson (20:09:31) :
According to the abstract of Steig’s paper, warming is strongest west antarctica in the winter and spring.
The abstract also notes that there is autumn cooling trend in the east antarctic.
The seasonal nature of the changes (winter and spring warming/autumn cooling) does not support volcanic activity being responsible.
John Philip, as has already been pointed out, the survey questions don’t address the issues and many AGW sceptics would give the same answers as AGW enthusiasts.
This website itself has been instrumental in documenting and hilighting the impact of human activity on temperature via the urban heat island effects and land use changes.
Moreover the low response rate (30%) and self-selection of the participants invalidates any claim to strong conclusions from the results.
It seems inexcusable that the journal published this nonsense yet refused to publish Roger Pielke Snr’s investigation of whether scientists quoted by the IPCC report actually agreed with the treatment of their science by that report.
Chris V.-
Agreed, that observation does not support volcanic activity causing temperature variability. However, I distrust that observation because I don’t know if it is a model result or the actual temperature data. Did Steig indicate that anywhere in the paper?
A quick search for Western Antarctic climate data gave me maps showing current temperatures at several stations in Western Antarctica, but requires downloading large amounts of data in numerous files to get historical records. I didn’t see any photos. Since I didn’t find any data summaries, it may take a lot of time to study these results.
What about this?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/world/21volcano.html?_r=2&refer=science
In an article published Sunday on the Web site of the journal Nature Geoscience, Hugh F. J. Corr and David G. Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey report the identification of a layer of volcanic ash and glass shards frozen within an ice sheet in western Antarctica.
For Antarctica, “This is the first time we have seen a volcano beneath the ice sheet punch a hole through the ice sheet,” Dr. Vaughan said.
Heat from a volcano could still be melting ice and contributing to the thinning and speeding up of the Pine Island Glacier, which passes nearby, but Dr. Vaughan doubted that it could be affecting other glaciers in West Antarctica, which have also thinned in recent years. Most glaciologists, including Dr. Vaughan, say that warmer ocean water is the primary cause.
Neil Jones (07:55:54) :
No need to apologize. It was very funny to watch people start arguing about cell phone frequencies and the like.
If anyone believes cell phones are a source of significant heat energy, try this:
Cancel your home heating service.
Gather the family around your cell phone, turn it on, and cuddle.
Soon you will have to start throwing off the extra blankets from overheating you’ll all experience.
As an extra bonus, you can do all your night time reading by the light of the cell phone.
Then ask yourself, why don’t we solve the energy crisis by simply having everyone power the house with their cell phone?
I know he’s a totem of hate, but would anyone like to offer some intelligent comments on Tamino’s post?
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/antarctica-warming/
It hardly puts Hays in a good light. Is he going to submit a rebuttal of Steig’s paper to Nature, or was his letter just bombast?
Thanks for the advice on data citation, however it matters not which dataset is used, I checked against the unadjusted GHCN record for McMurdo and despite his local knowledge Mr Hays is simply wrong, December 2006 is nowhere near the coldest on record, in fact it is only 1C below the average for December.
Alan Wilkinson: I see no point in repeating the EOS survey questions and answers. They are what they are, and to me seem perfectly reasonable. Moreover the low response rate (30%) and self-selection of the participants invalidates any claim to strong conclusions from the results.
It seems inexcusable that the journal published this nonsense yet refused to publish Roger Pielke Snr’s investigation of whether scientists quoted by the IPCC report actually agreed with the treatment of their science by that report.
If you are referring to this survey:- http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d5/jdannan/survey.pdf
the methodology was similar but the response rate there was just 8%, so presumably the conclusions [in brief that most agreed with the IPCC, with significant equally-sized minorities believing they underestimated and overestimated the role of CO2 respectively] have even less authority? 😉
Lucy Skywalker (18:19:27) links to a 2008 study entitled: Climate Models Overheat Antarctica. It is a worthy read as it seems to contradict the modeled projections in the Steig study. Anyone care to reconcile the two “polar” opposites?
Simon Evans (14:09:19) :
…………………….
REPLY: So no computer processing was used at all in the preparation of the paper? no grids constructed, no data matrices? No output rendered onto a 3D dimensional topo map? Be very very careful how you respond Simon. – Anthony
I do realise that they have used computing, Anthony, but their results are not generated from modeling a system. I don’t know what you mean by your last sentence – perhaps we are in dispute as to what computer modeling is?
Neil Crafter (16:11:13) :
Simon Evans (13:40:55) :
“I think you have misunderstood the nature of my statement. I am referring to what the Steig et al study found, therefore my statement is a matter of fact (see my previous post), not a matter of my judgment. You can check this out for yourself by reading the paper.”
No, I have not misunderstood your statement. You are working on the assumption that the Steig paper is correct and uses legitimate methods, and so your statement is a matter of judgement. There are others who think their methodology and findings are dubious. They can therefore just as readily claim “It is true” in response to your “It is not true”.
No, Neil, I am not working on that assumption .I’ve actually stated on the other thread regarding this paper that I think it wise to view these results with caution at this stage, just as one should view any data relating to the Antarctic in particular with caution. It’s a new approach, other scientists will review it, further work will be done which will either extend, refine or refute it. That remains to be seen. I’m finding it pretty amusing that some seem to think MSU satellite data for the Antarctic is rock solid (as if we didn’t know the problems with MSU readings for that region) whilst this paper’s findings can be rejected out of hand even without actually bothering to read it (as some have made clear when expressing their judgments), so I’m not giving much weight to that level of ‘review’. I have stated that, as a matter of fact, the Steig paper finds a warming for Antarctica that actually exceeds the warming for SH land area. That is the truth of the matter, and it remains true even if you or others think that the paper might be hogwash. Whether or not my meaning was clear before, I trust that it is clear now.
John Philip (16:56:30) :
So the only independently verifiable facts given to us by Ross Hays are that December 2006 was the coldest ever at McMurdo, and that McMurdo shows a cooling trend.
Turns out both of these are false.
Does this mean the credibility of the rest of his testimony is higher, or lower?
REPLY: Suggestion: You should exercise better care in citations. Your link will break shortly, it is temporary. And since I can’t tell from the temp file link whether GISS dataset1 or 2 was used, you assertion may be true or false, since none of use have any way of determining from your link if the data is the GISS adjusted or the GHCN data. Not many people here trust GISS anyway due to the adjustment issues. Perhaps a CRU citation would be better? – Anthony
The SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) McMurdo temperature data is here:
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/READER/surface/McMurdo.All.temperature.html
As can be seen, Ross Hays’ statements are not supported by the data.
Scott Gibson (22:25:25) :
I haven’t read the paper, but a post by the author over at Realclimate says the temperatures were determined from surface stations and satellite data.
anna v (03:41:57) :
The volcanic eruption mentioned in the NYT article you linked happened in 325 BC.
If there are still volcanoes erupting under the ice, how much heat are they producing, and how much of that heat actually makes it to the surface?
If you think volcanoes might be heating the atmosphere, you can go back to my calculations a dozen or so posts back to see that the heat potentially produced by volcanoes is trivial, compared to all the other forcings.
If you think volcanoes (under hundreds-thousands of feet of ice!) might be affecting just local temps around the surface stations, you need to provide some heat-flow calculations that show that it is even physically possible!
Undersea volcanoes may indeed be a trivial forcing, perhaps as trivial as CO2.
The temperature taken right at the South Pole shows a definite cooling trend: click1
And the trend gives us nothing to worry about: click2
Since CO2 forcing shows up at the Poles first, and to the greatest extent, the conclusion is inescapable: the CO2/runaway global warming hypothesis has been falsified once again. And the general public is beginning to understand: click
Chris V. (08:01:52) :
Scott Gibson (22:25:25) :
I haven’t read the paper, but a post by the author over at Realclimate says the temperatures were determined from surface stations and satellite data.
Indeed they did, they used passive infrared brightness measurements (TIR) of surface temperature from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer, a satellite of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. MSU isn’t the only satellite and it isn’t appropriate for use over the Antarctic.
A Blast of sanity?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/4332784/Despite-the-hot-air-the-Antarctic-is-not-warming-up.html