Shooting At a Rapidly Moving Target
Guest post by Steven Goddard
Arctic ice area has recovered to normal (one standard deviation) levels, so ice area no longer matters. The issue is now thickness, which is measured by a team of explorers (Catlin) with a tape measure, who intentionally seek out flat (first year) ice for their route.
The team systematically seeks out flatter ice because it is easier to travel over and camp on. Typically, the surface of first‐year ice floes is flatter than that of multi‐year ice floes.
Arctic ice area back in the normal range
Antarctic ice extent has been setting record highs, so the AGW team now claims that Antarctica doesn’t matter.
the scientific community has known for some time that that on a warming planet, sea ice in the global North (Arctic) is expected to melt while sea ice in the global South is expected to remain constant or even sightly grow.
Buoy data which shows thickening doesn’t count, because buoys don’t cover a wide enough region. Even though their region is much larger than the Catlin coverage.
Thus, while the buoys provide an excellent measurement of thickness at a point through the seasons, they do not provide good information on the large-scale spatial distribution of ice thickness.
Two year old multi-year ice no longer counts, the ice now has to be three years old to matter.
The Arctic is treading on thinner ice than ever before. Researchers say that as spring begins, more than 90 percent of the sea ice in the Arctic is only 1 or 2 years old. That makes it thinner and more vulnerable than at anytime in the past three decades, according to researchers with NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.
Dr. Hansen’s original prediction that Antarctic ice would diminish symmetrically with Arctic ice no longer matters, because the models have improved since he made that prediction.
A new NASA-funded study finds that predicted increases in precipitation due to warmer air temperatures from greenhouse gas emissions may actually increase sea ice volume in the Antarctic’s Southern Ocean. This adds new evidence of potential asymmetry between the two poles, and may be an indication that climate change processes may have different impact on different areas of the globe. … numerical models have improved considerably over the last two decades”
Apparently the only valid target are the latest computer models, which are constantly backfitted to mask their failures to date. Is this how science is supposed to be done?
I have a question that may have been answered before but I haven’t come across with the answer in this extensive blog.
If an apolar molecule like CO2 can absorb IR light and cause more warming, how come polar molecules like SO2/SO3/H2SO3/H2SO4 can cause less warming, don’t they absorb more IR light since they have dipole moment?
Sorry if it is OT.
But the expansion is minimal, compared to the 9% expansion that happens when it changes state.
And empirically bottles break, believe me, I have done this experiment several times.
Using an AGW type analogy here….
If global warming causes cooling then it must also be true that global cooling causes warming. Therefore, this increase in ice extent must be the cooling signature of the past 30 years of warming.
But more seriously, I have often wondered if the increased southern vortex may be a factor which results in less mixing of the polar air mass with warmer air. This could also explain the warmer peninslar region if the polar air mass gets pulled further south. I have also wondered if the vortex is more related to sunspot activity and less to ozone loss through man made causes. It’s possible that the current solar minimum may shed some light on this. If, in a few years we start seeing a weakening of the vortex back towards it’s 1950’s level.
It’s interesting that the increase in strength of the vortex occurs after 1950 which is when solar activity ramped up.
See attached article …
http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/council/scfpa/water/submissions/SCFPA%20Water%2031%20App%203.pdf
The idea being that an increased temperature differential between the polar and tropical regions is the cause of the vortex increase. Although most media quoted science leans towards the greenhouse related cause, it could be just as likely that reduced GCR resulted in fewer clouds (ie:Svensmark’s theory).
@ur momisugly jae (19:03:43)
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
Jules Verne used that effect in a story where a party had to cross a body of water which one of their members realised it was below freezing and disturbed the surface, causing it to freeze immediately, allowing for passage.
A similar event appears in the New Testament for the Sea of Galilee. Apparently.
Funny article here. I think it must have been written for The Onion, but somehow found its way into the Daily Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/5202877/Global-warming-slowed-by-pollution.html
Just think how cold it would be if we didnt have all this global warming going on at the same time.
They will say ‘yes it is cooling a bit, but just think how warm it will get when this cooling stops”. “this is giving us more time to prepare for the coming warming”, “it might be cool for 20 years but this will just give us more time to prepare for the inevitable warming”. and so on……
NH and SH sea ice added together date sychronously is surely not a good way of determining sea ice health?
In NH maximum extent is in some part land locked and in SH minimum extent is also land limited. (NH can only extend the maximum on 2 quadrants and SH a large proportion of the antarctic continent is ice free in summer so the extent cannot shrink as quickly)
Wouldn’t a better measure be adding the extents mid melt or perhaps a more significant figure would be NH min+ SH max. No idea whether this would indicate increasing or decreasing ice extent
Brute et al;-))
Thought for the day!
IF we are going to decend into another Little-Ice-Age in the coming years, & it is a big if I hasten to add as I don’t like the cold, may I please ask all women out there to abolish all herbal remedies/pulses, or any eccentric behaviour of any kind that could be misconstrude, & conform to whatever norm prevails in their neck of the woods. In the UK at the peak of the last LIA, we were burning women by the dozen as witches such was the mental state of the Rich & Powerful Church, & general “consensus” of the time.
The new Rich & Powerful Church of AGW dogma appears to have a frigteningly similar trend in attitude. When we had the ducking stool, & I have said this before, if the poor girl drowned, she was innocent as the water accepted her she was so pure. Makes sense to me. OTH, if she didn’t drown because she had a good pair of lungs on her, the water refused her becuase she was a witch, the poor girl would then be dragged off kicking & screaming to the stake for a barbecue. Sound science to me!
It was a wonderful Heads I Win Tails You Lose scenario. The result of course being the same, dead woman, god appeased, less sin & wickedness& dancing with the devil about! Hence black is white, up is down, left is right, warm is cold, more ice in Antarctica is AGW, less ice in Antarctica is AGW, etc. It really doesn’t matter because they want metaphoric (I hope) blood & will stop at nothing to get it. I wonder if Al Gore will be the new Witchfinder-General in the USA? His badge of office would surely be AG-W. Be warned girls, although I haven’t yet heard of armies of women going round every village filling in the local pond & hiding the ducking stools!
We really haven’t grown much over the years, have we? Scientific evidence isn’t really falsified or adulterated, “honest my lord, I saw her turn into a black swan before my very eyes & fly three times round the church tower, then change back again into a woman!” Must be true then.
Patrick Kirk (22:19:47) :
From Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain (one of my favorite all time passages):
Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have been made at
Hurricane Island; at island 100; at Napoleon, Arkansas; at Walnut Bend;
and at Council Bend. These shortened the river, in the aggregate,
sixty-seven miles. In my own time a cut-off was made at American Bend,
which shortened the river ten miles or more.
Therefore, the Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve
hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago.
It was eleven hundred and eighty after the cut-off of 1722.
It was one thousand and forty after the American Bend cut-off. It has
lost sixty-seven miles since. Consequently its length is only nine
hundred and seventy-three miles at present.
Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and ‘let on’
to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred
in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future
by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here!
Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from!
Nor ‘development of species,’ either! Glacial epochs are great things,
but they are vague–vague. Please observe:–
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower
Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles.
That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year.
Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic,
can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period,’ just a million
years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards
of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out
over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token
any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now
the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long,
and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together,
and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual
board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science.
One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling
investment of fact.
Replying to…
Flanagan (01:23:04) :
Why, but why didn’t you show the AMSR-E data
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
which are the data WUWT is showing on its frontpage?
The answer, in my sense, is simple: that’s because the ROOS picture conveniently plots the 97-07 average, i.e. it includes the 07 and 08 records.And also because AMSR-E shows the ice is now rapidly declining (as many people pointed out it would do)
Rapidly declining? You mean like it does every spring and summer?
As it declines into summer, it’s still closing on the 1979-2000 mean. NSIDC don’t plot the Std. Dev. on their curve; but it’s a fairly safe bet that the Arctic Sea Ice Extent is pretty close to, if not, within 1 Std. Dev. of the 1979-2000 mean as well.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
IOW…Arctic sea ice is now pretty well right where it has been every April since the recorded history of sea ice extent began.
Aerosols
Interesting to see that Real Climate is starting to talk about aerosols. In my own mind, I predicted some time ago this would happen: that when AGW predictions fail, it will be argued that global warming is being overtaken by global cooling. Thus we are still to blame for climate change and the cause is still fossil fuel burning. This will be a gradual shift – just starting as I say on RC. (Analogy: the shift from ‘removal of WMD’ to ‘regime change’. Thus ‘even if we were wrong in the reason, the actions are still right’).
“Apparently the only valid target are the latest computer models, which are constantly backfitted to mask their failures to date. Is this how science is supposed to be done?”
Yanno, in my business (trading), I see this all the time. Some noob who’s going to get rich trading his system that he’s gotten PERFECT based upon historic data, and which he has tweeked with the most up-to-date data.
He’ll inevitably be quite certain he will be successful.
Right before he zero’s his account out.
In the prediction business, real pros understand back-fitted back-testing is almost assured of being wrong, and in fact, prediction itself is fraught with massive uncertainty.
I’m struck by how the AGW true believers are like the stopped-clock Perma-Bears (or Bulls). The big problem is that the latter lose money, while the AGW’s just keep spending ours…
Flanagan:
And also because AMSR-E shows the ice is now rapidly declining
As it does every year at this time on the AMSR-E graph. From now until at least July, there’s not much point to even looking at this graph. Even so, 2009 has the most ice on record since records began in 2003. Are you ready to call for an ice free arctic this summer based on a day or 2 of melt???
Arctic ice is going to rapidly melt causing fear and panic throughout the world as sea level rises 20m. /sarc off
This morning I clicked on a Yahoo News article that linked to a Space.com article on Black Holes. I noted an advertisement on the side that said
“Catlin Arctic Survey. How Soon Will Global Warming Affect Your Business?”
Again reconfirming what we all know. The “results” of this ‘expedition’ were determined well in advance.
God speed to all. Let’s keep up this fight for truth and sanity.
AndyW,
If you read Hansen’s paper linked above, or any of about another thousand similar publications, you would know that ice area was always considered the key factor. This is because ice area controls the albedo of the Arctic and thus the temperature. Ice thickness has no effect on albedo.
Pamela Gray (18:04:39) :
“Explain global warming again. I don’t get it.”
Well ya see, warmer weather causes snow build up and growth of glaciers in Antarctic. And oh, the hole in the ozone layer causes it to be colder in the antarctic and this causes sea level to um ……. Well in the NH… I’m going to have to get back to you on that.
The spring time area and extent does matter, because it is an indication of temperature, and because the Arctic generally melts from the outside in.
Don’t forget that as late as August 1, 2008 NSIDC was still considering a possible return to normal ice extent. A very large storm that week broke up the ice in the East Siberian Sea, and paved the way for another year of Arctic panic journalism.
Re: urederra (02:57:00) :
If water expands as it is supercooled and ice contracts as it temperature decreases then logically there will be a temperature at which the volume of both ice and supercooled water is the same.That 9% expansion will decrease as the temperature gets lower and there will be a temperature range that the bottle can safely handle any expansion.
I think it a good idea to have a live record of the twists and turns, updated daily and published say biennially. It would be like chronicling the dying out of a species or recording the death of leach with salt shaken on it.
the worm is turning
Just watched the late news here in Australia on Channel 10 (one of the 5 main stations in Aust) and one of the headlines was about how alarmist predictions may be wrong since it looks like Antarctica has been expanding for the last 30 years. They then showed a map showing the whole West Antarctic shelf breaking off and I thought, here we go, but then it showed the East Antarctic expanding in size by about 30% dwarfing that part that broke off West Antarctica. They said it is expanding about 100,000km2 per decade over the last 30 years.
They also interviewed skeptic Prof. Ian Plimer and actually let him get his message across without editing, a first – he said that climate changes naturally and has for millions of years. They then said that scientists said the expansion is caused by the hole in the ozone layer… The Climate Change Minister then made a statement that now is not the time to put your head in the sand and think that global warming is not happening, to listen to the science and reduce carbon dioxide. The androgynous Penny Wong looks stupid at the best of times but she looked like a right goose when the science had just been presented and it directly contradicted her.
What ever happened to the Bird Flue Scare? Remember we were all going to die?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v430/n6995/full/430004b.html
Sound familiar?
Sorry flue is supposed to be flu. But you get the point. Trumped up fear by the media/scientists/activists.
REPLY: “Bird Flue Scare” was a scene from Hitchcock’s movie “the Birds” when they came down the chimney into the living room- Anthony
Spring, Summer, and Fall area and extent are VERY important indicators of ice cap conditions. The lead theory is that ice caps and glacial periods grow because of a lack of or slowing melt during the melt season. Incrementally, when melt is lessened, the ice cap grows during the winter season, as do the glaciers. It likely happens slowly at first, or in jumps and starts, then speeds up to a regular increase a bit later.
Leon:
“Public figures engage in spin; accountants cook the books. What are scientists doing who try to make the data fit the fantasy?”
Those “scientists” are fudging data.