Last year we had the forecast from NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze of an “ice free north pole”. As we know, that didn’t even come close to being true. Summer 2008 had more arctic ice than summer 2007, and summer 2007 was not “ice free” by any measure.
In spite of the spectacular failure of Dr. Serreze’s widely quoted prediction, there were no retractions, no apologies for misleading the public, no admissions of error, and inaccurate stories like the one above are still in place. So what could possibly be worse news from NSIDC?
The very man who made that ridiculous statement of “an ice free north pole in 2008” is set to become the “incoming director” of NSIDC. Apparently alarmism pays, especially if you get press.
Does anybody live in Maryland that can attend this talk? I’d just love to see what sort of “heat” he’s talking about “cranking up”.
Goddard Visitor Center
8800 Greenbelt Road – Code 130
Greenbelt, Md 20771
301.286.3978 – Phone
301.286.1781 – Fax
I wonder what new “forecasts” will be coming in the new Goddard movie “frozen”? Gosh, that spherical screen is really important in getting the science facts across don’t you think?
Interactive Feature: FROZEN – View the trailer, gallery, and more.
Goddard’s New ‘Science On a Sphere’ Movie Opens Nationwide This Spring
In an era when change itself seems to be the subject holding people’s attention, NASA presents a spectacular new movie that depicts the changing Earth. Called “Frozen,” this film introduces the idea of our transitioning home planet in ways that have never been seen before.
“Frozen” brings Earth to life, projecting images of our planet onto completely spherical movie screens hanging in the center of darkened theaters. Turning in space, images on the screen become a portal onto a virtual planet, complete with churning, swirling depictions of huge natural forces moving below. “Frozen” showcases the global cryosphere, those places on Earth where temperatures don’t generally rise above water’s freezing point. As one of the most directly observable climate gauges, the changing cryosphere serves as a proxy for larger themes.
“Frozen” opens around the country and in several locations around the world on March 27, 2009. For a partial list of Science On a Sphere theaters, click here.
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All Points Alert: the naif, dhogaza, is missing from institutional care at ‘The Closed Mind’. His caregiver, the firm, silent and patient Tamino worries that he can’t survive outside the soothing echo chambered feedback of that censored environment. Anyone with any knowledge of his whereabouts, please contact authorities.
Well, the last I heard from him, he was continually (one might say almost obsessively) referring to me in terms that I grew to find positively endearing. In fact, he has enriched my vocabulary, as I had never even heard of some of those words before. I think I was his “project” for the week.
Anyone notice that:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
won’t page load? Nor will the home page.
I’ve been watching it for days to see when their lines cross (79-00 avg and current), and as of today it’s gone off the air.
Puzzling. Lines must of crossed?
John 20:39:50
The main reason I so confidently say we are cooling is because of the PDO. We warmed from around 1910 to around 1940, cooled from around 1940 to around 1970, then warmed ’til just after the turn of the century. If you watch that curve, it peaked about 2003-2005, and has now turned down. Sure there will be ups and downs, but the trend for at least 20 more years will be cooling. Of course, I’m not 100% sure.
==========================================
I chose to grab some data from the NOAA/NCDC sites this week. They have a convenient database (that is of this writing temporarily down…) that you can see, among other things, records of state temperature records going back to ~1895.
I looked at the full record of each state looking at the temperature trends from 1895 thru 2009 and just for the last ten years from 1999 thru 2009 (to date of course). Given that this data is likely not always the fully raw data and that some is certainly affected by UHI effects, it still is a very telling exercise.
In general the temperatures for most states have been warming at a full data record rate of ~0.00 to 0.15 degrees a decade. The most interesting piece of information in the long term record was that the SE states of TX, TN, MS, AL, GA and SC have actually been cooling over the last 113 years at a rate of -0.01 to -0.06 degrees per decade. Odd, but that is what the data says.
But when one looks at the last ten years, there is a dramatic downward trend in most states…especially the Rocky Mountain, Central Plains and Northern Tier locales. In these states the temperatures have been changing (falling) at a rate of ~0.5 to 1.5 degrees per decade…almost ten times the decadal rate of temperature rise of the long term data set. I know the statistics aren’t identical, but the magnitude of the dropping temperatures is striking. CA, the Mid Atlantic and southeast states are the only ones whose temperatures have been moderate or continued to rise in the last ten years. I am WAG’ing that there is a proximity to the high inertia thermal mass of the oceans/wind patterns and the problem of high population density affecting poorly sited temperature gaging stations that could be propping up the temperature data in these areas.
This is an interesting exercise to pursue. A 1.5 degree temperature drop in the last 10 years in the heartland of America has most certainly shortened the recent crop growing season and limited the per acre crop yields. WUWT noted earlier that the temperatures in Central Canada had experienced a 5 degree plus drop in average temperatures over the last couple years, if I remember correctly.
Not predicting here, of course, but if the climate continues to cool even another 0.5 – 1.0 degrees over another ten years the effect will be dramatic to say the least…
Non-sarcastically…in all likelyhood it is a good thing that the CO2 level is up to help counter the reduced biomass effects of the colder weather.
Jim
John (20:39:50) :
Maybe the cold hasn’t reached your latitude yet.
For some of us, it’s already here, and it’s been here 3 years and still continues to cool.
Maybe you are far enough towards the equator that it will never reach you.
He’ll probably be throwing around these types of statistics;
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090406132602.htm
And it indicates that scientists will be watching to see if the 2-year-old ice survives the summer melt or not, as a significant indication of what direction the ice is really going in.
crosspatch (17:14:11) :
It isn’t unusual to have ice-free patches up there. It’s floating.
The only thing is that there aren’t enough of us around who remember those things. I was just a kid at the time, but for me it was right up there with Sputnik, Mercury & Gemini. How could I possibly forget?
The rendezvous at the North Pole in 1962 would make a fantastic billboard.
Anti-buffoonery at it’s simplest.
“”” Stephen Skinner (16:43:00) :
It seems that in 1958 the submarine USS Skate became the first vessel to surface at the Pole. How thin would the ice have to be to allow a submarine to break through? “””
One of my work colleagues is an ex-Navy submariner; as in he actually got to drive the boat. He the went to Scripps,
He says they don’t like to surface if the ice is thicker than one metre. He also said that on average the overallthickness all over is about one metre. It gets thicker as a result of pileups, but he says that’s about the average over area and season. H ealso said it can come and go overnight at the start or end of the growing and melting seasons.
dhogaza (16:10:44) :
It is clear that he was talking of the North Pole itself, not the Arctic Ice Cap in its entirety:
“There is this thin first-year ice even at the North Pole at the moment,” says Serreze. “This raises the spectre – the possibility that you could become ice free at the North Pole this year.”
Despite its news value in the media, the North Pole being ice free is not in itself significant. To scientists, Serreze points out, “this is just another point on the globe”.
That’s funny, since the North Pole is just a point, 0 square feet. If Serreze meant what you claim, it was the ramblings of an alarmist buffoon.
John (20:39:50) :
We haven’t entered a cooling period. At best we are holding steady-ish. 2009 temps have almost universally been above 2008, but nearly parallel the 06/07 temps.
I hope and pray that trend continues, or we resume lowering. But I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say we are “cooling.”
===============================================
Even though you appear in the right camp…wrong conclusions do not help anyone.
If I am not mistaken there has been only 3 months of Temp data for 2009 and January 2008 was in the middle of a major La Nina event that continued for months, with January 2008 being a major anomaly. Are you contending that a fluctuation monthly on a year over year comparison concludes there is no cooling? Seriously?
On Topic: Advancement in Government Sciences is dependent on political affiliation and the party in power rather than achievement. It is very incestuous, all hail the new NSIDC and toss out the links.
Watts, “The fact that he did NOTHING, NOT ONE THING, to mitigate the error he started in the press, speaks volumes”.
This is a salient point.
Another premier example of this problem was when Dr. Jane Lubchenco (new head of NOAA) wrote a report last year that suggested a connection between AGW and ocean dead zones.
In her report, her research group cautioned they could not establish the extent of the link, if any, to climate change.
Her reported suggestion of a link circled the globe and Lubchenco did NOTHING, NOT ONE THING, to mitigate the error she started in the press.
And as the ultimate demonstration of how these “errors” become known facts,
I posted the Lubchenco story to CA last week. One of the regular contributors responded that the link between ocean dead zones and AGW had been established. So there was CA regulars convinced the link had been.
They didn’t read any peer reviewed, published research making the link because there is no such thing.
And the punch line is Gavin let that error ride on his “science” blog CA.
On that same thread there is at least a half a dozen equally in error claims and not one of them did Gavin correct.
In fact I have never seen Gavin correct any baseless claim.
Isn’t it interesting that Gavin only scrutinizes and critiques comments and claims that are from the skeptic’s side while allowing every bizarre claim from warmers?
Pretty darn scientific.
Then to exacerbate the matter, after responses make all those crazy baseless claims he blocks rebuttal.
Over and over again academia send reports into the media
theBuckWheat (20:27.03), I read something similar cobbled together by the Australian ABC http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/04/24/2550891.htm?site=science&topic=enviro
This article seemed so full of inconsistencies that it really needed its own segment on WUWT.
For example 1. “marked reduction in forest fires since 1870 have increased fire loads”- yes ,but wouldn’t new fires just release carbon already stored by this reduction in forest fires?
2.”deforestation fires result in 20% of human caused CO2 emissions”.-are they ALL caused by humans?
3.”smoke plumes inhibit convection”-have you ever seen or flown through Pyrocumulous clouds?…..I have, descending into Canberra from Melbourne at the start of the 2003 bush fires when 500 homes and many lives were lost.
It was a rough descent with ascending smoky cloud peaks to 25k ft.,certainly no lack of convection there.
It just went on and on, it is a shame that articles like this are presented without judgement.
John H (22:25:31) :
Uh…. John, Dr. Schmidt runs RC (Real Climate), not CA (Climate Audit). The Good Doctor wouldn’t be caught dead in THAT sort of establishment. So, did you post your comment at CA or RC? If the CA crowd let the error get by then we are all doomed…
hereticfringe (20:14:33) :
Yes, now that you mention it, I’ve been trying all day to access the site and couldn’t. I thought maybe I was just incompetent. Oddly enough you can access the CIRES pages just fine, but when you click on the NSIDC links, you can’t get there from there. Or anywhere. Earlier I was finding I could not get into NASA or JPL links cited on another, archived, WUWT thread. WUWT? Maybe some of our readers might want to check out NASA, NOAA or JPL threads from some old threads and see if they are still active.
I for one am getting tired of the word games. Melting at the pole, define pole. Define melting. Define ice free… Oh that not what he meant. GEEEEEEEZEEE!!!!! Is it me or whenever an argument fails due to lack of evidence the supporters of said argument fall into the define the word game.
Well guess what. The time for that has come and gone. No more shades of grey crap. Like Ive told all my state reps and the stinkin governor too. You are either on the right side, or you are against us. If you’re against us. Don’t expect reelection. Even non action is a choice. Its about time to hold peoples political feet to the fire. If you want this Co2 crap to stop, make your representives stop it. They may be too gullible to understand the science but they certainly understand job security.
Re the article in the Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-missing-sunspots-is-this-the-big-chill-1674630.html Did Hathaway really say this
“This is the quietest Sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” says NASA solar scientist David Hathaway. But this is not just a scientific curiosity. It could affect everyone on Earth and force what for many is the unthinkable: a reappraisal of the science behind recent global warming.
Our Sun is the primary force of the Earth’s climate system, driving atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. It lies behind every aspect of the Earth’s climate and is, of course, a key component of the greenhouse effect. But there is another factor to be considered. When the Sun has gone quiet like this before, it coincided with the earth cooling slightly and there is speculation that a similar thing could happen now. If so, it could alter all our predictions of climate change, and show that our understanding of climate change might not be anywhere near as good as we thought.
Edit – just realised that
Hathaway only said the first sentence not the remainder
A retraction about what, exactly? About stating that north pole COULD be ice free? I really don’t see the problem here.
carlbrannen (18:41:58) : The worst example of this was when substantial percentages of the German population blamed the banks busted in the Great Depression, the starvation blockade after the end of WW1, the threat of societal collapse due to Communism, the hyperinflation of the 1920s, and the unemployment of the 1930s, all on the Jews.
This is the real danger behind. Hope this time the same good people is not chosen in the end to be blamed, because all this nonsense is reaching fantastic levels.
Meanwhile Catlin crew have had to delay today’s resupply due to adverse weather. Too many sunbathers prevent landing?
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/
Crosspatch – re, pre-Colombian fire events in North America:
I believe that fire would have been common, but I think that extremely large fires (ie, covering hundreds of miles) would have been extremely rare.
Reason: without modern fire control efforts, every fire that started would have used up whatever fuel was available to burn, thus constantly depleting that available fuel. The land would *never* be in a condition where decades of dry fuel had built up on the ground, which has been the case in most of the great western fires in recent decades. If the available fuel is minimal (not living trees, but dead) then the burn from each individual fire will be quite limited – dying out as soon as it ran into a nearby burn scar.
There would have been far, far more small fires – in fact, during dry months they would be an almost constant occurence – but no great, hundred mile long fires.
I find it telling that no one mentions that winds caused the massive ice loss in 2007. Since then it has been slow recovery which is exactly what one would expect. Why is it that these guys now *conveniently* forget to mention these facts?
BTW, now that the IPCC reports have been falsified by their own choice of words isn’t it time for them to admit their failure? They claimed that no natural cause could be identified that could impact the rise in temps so it must be CO2. However, now we’ve 7-8 years of flat to lowering temps. This is proof by example that there DOES EXIST natural climate forces just as strong as CO2 and hence, their premise has been falsified.
Oldjim, yes, the article is written by Dr David Whitehouse, a skeptic. what is remarkable is that the Independent (normally on the extreme hysteria end of the climate spectrum) chose to publish it.
By the way it wasnt just Serreze who said the arctic would be ice-free in 2008. Somewhere on Andy Revkin’s blog he talked about a team of “experts” who predicted this would happen.
I guess Serreze is busy cranking up the heat at the NSIDC web presence.
Still not available:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html
Flanagan (05:19:03) :
“A retraction about what, exactly? About stating that north pole COULD be ice free? I really don’t see the problem here.”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004065899_webarctic11.html
Published December 11, 2007
‘The Arctic is screaming’ — summer sea ice could be gone in five years
“The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.
—
This, my friends, is the scientific tone adopted by the incoming *** director *** of the NSIDC (and currently one of Al Gore’s top climate advisors)! What more can I or anyone say? This statement (and the rhetoric surrounding it, as established in the linked article) speaks for itself.
We can thus be assured that the materials and data products provided by NSIDC will not be influenced by anyone’s political or personal views on AGW…