Guest Post by Steven Goddard
From time to time we hear that various places on earth have been “warming much faster than the rest of the planet – as predicted by “the models.” One of the places commonly mentioned in that list is the Arctic, based largely on 30 years of satellite data. Fortunately though, we are not limited by 30 years of satellite data, as the Danish Meteorological Institute has records going back to 1958 and GISSTEMP has even longer records.
Below is a visual comparison of DMI 1958 Arctic temperatures vs. 2009, showing that temperatures have hardly changed since the start of their record.
2009 Daily Mean Temperatures North of 80 degrees
Below is an overlay directly showing that 2009 temperatures (green) are similar to 1958 (red) and close to the mean. Blue is mean temperature for the 41 year record.
So if the Arctic has warmed since 1979, how can it be the about same as 1958? The answer can be seen in the GISSTEMP graph below of Godthab, Greenland.
Temperatures have warmed since the start of the satellite record, but they cooled even more between 1940 and 1980.
Everyone (including NSIDC) quietly acknowledges that most of the Arctic was warmer in the 1940s than now – so they shift the warming argument to the Alaska side. However, that argument also has problems. Alaska temperatures rose at the positive PDO shift in 1977, and have cooled again with the recent negative PDO shift – as seen below. 2008 was notable in that Alaska glaciers started to increase in size.
If you look at only one leg of a cycle, you will come to the wrong conclusion about the shape of the graph. Thus I would argue that Dr. Spencer’s fourth order curves are much more meaningful than the nearly meaningless linear fits being used by most prominent climate scientists. Climate is primarily cyclical, as every good climate scientist should know.
Vostok Ice Core Temperature Records
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
There are some excellent references at the Alaska Climate Research Centre, although they have been virtually hidden from view as younger staff have arrived on the scene. The first one is on the same page as Steve Goddard’s post and the commentary is virtually identical to 2004. The graphic presentation has changed to a Hadley style chart. The other references are no longer visible on the site.
“The period 1949 to 1975 was substantially colder than the period from 1977 to 2008, however since 1977 little additional warming has occurred in Alaska with the exception of Barrow and a few other locations. The stepwise shift appearing in the temperature data in 1976 corresponds to a phase shift of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from a negative phase to a positive phase. Synoptic conditions with the positive phase tend to consist of increased southerly flow and warm air advection into Alaska during the winter, resulting in positive temperature anomalies. ” Alaska Climate Research Centre: http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/TempChange.html
Understanding Alaska’s Climate Variation:
“The last two complete phases of the PDO were 1947-1976 (–ve PDO) and 1977-1996 (+ve PDO). Temperatures are cooler than normal during –ve PDO and warmer than normal during +ve PDO. These anomalies are not for the most part large, but considering they are for periods of 30 and 20 years respectively, they are significant”. John Papineau PhD, National Weather Service: http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/climvar/climate-paper.html
The FANB (Fairbanks, Anchorage, Nome, Barrow) temperature record:
“the mean annual temperature from 1977 through 1998 never dropped as low as the average from 1954 through 1976, even in the Pinatubo year, and only one year prior to 1977 was as warm as the average since the 1976-77 winter. The actual change seems to have occurred late in 1976. Although 1999 was below the 1954-76 average, the FANB average rebounded in 2000 in spite of a cool fall. http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/Bowling/FANB.html
Problems with the Use of Climatological Data to Detect Climatic Change at High Latitudes. Sue Ann Bowling Ph.D:
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/Bowling/AKchange.html
“This paper deals with three examples of local variations or apparent “climate changes” probably due to urban effects, plus one possible real variation in Alaskan climate.
The Fairbanks area is subject to strong urban heat island effects (measured to be as much as 13 °C) when skies are clear in winter (Bowling and Benson, 1978). Summer heat islands have hardly been looked at, but they now appear likely to have more effect on recorded climate than do the large winter ones, which are masked by large year-to-year variability in winter and seem to be more confined to the city core.”
“Why doesn’t Anchorage show a similar effect? The most probable culprit is the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964. The earthquake leveled the Control Tower, which required that the instruments be relocated. The max/min thermometers were at Point Campbell, farther from pavement and nearer the waters of Cook Inlet, by 1971, but there is apparently no published record of their location during the intervening period.”
The Misplaced Move and the Encroaching City:
“Recorded station moves are not necessarily consistent among different sources, nor are the dates always accurate. Take the case of the downhill move at the University Experiment Station. The station list in Climatological Data, Alaska shows an elevation change from 500 feet to 475 feet in the summer of 1947. Was it real, or the result of re-surveying the area? With known current winter inversion strengths in the University area, such a move could have produced a decrease of a few degrees in recorded winter temperatures. Comparison of the University record for December and January with the Fairbanks record from Weeks Field (near where the Borough Library is now located) did indeed show either a decrease in University temperature or an increase in the Weeks Field temperature, but suggested a change in the summer of 1946 rather than 1947. The actual station history for the University Experiment Station confirms that the move was real, but it took place in 1933, 15 years before it was finally brought up to date in Climatological Data.”
The 1976 temperature step: a real change?
The 1976-77 winter in Alaska was astonishingly warm. At Fairbanks, pussy willows bloomed in November (author’s observation) and daily average temperatures never reached -30°F. Subsequent winters followed the same trend to a lesser degree, with degree days below -40°F showing a reduction quite noticable to long-term residents. An average of four Alaskan stations with good, continuous records, Anchorage, Barrow, Fairbanks, and Nome, show what appears to be a change in mean annual temperatures at around this time
A similar step change occurred in the UK CET record in 1988/9. In 1987 CET was 9.05 deg C, in 1989 it was 10.5 and in 1990 it was 10.63, a temperature which has been exceeded only once since, in 2006. (In 1949 it was 10.62). In the 22 year period from 1987 to 2008, M. Loa CO2 increased by almost 36 ppmv.
Great warming effect…..
Flanagan:
What is the actual source of your chart?
Cold Englishman: Well, I certainly hope to be around in 2020, but I think we will prevail much sooner. The Arctic heat-wave of 1920-1940 is of course well-known to real Arctic climate scientists. I reviewed 32 temperature data sets for Arctic stations to 2004 some with very long records – In 2006 I could find only one with higher temperatures in 2004 than in the late 1930s or early 1940s – that was on the eastern coast of Greenland. Since then I have reviewed dozens of papers on surface air temperature, sea surface temperatures, ice-mass, glacier speeds and sea-ice, and all show a clear CYCLIC pattern of roughly 70 years. Some Greenland and Alaskan temperatures peaked in 2006-2008, but the pattern looks set to repeat.
The latest Arctic heat wave is not identical to the last – firstly it is higher, by maybe 20% in some places, and secondly, the hot-spots are different. But one thing is clear – it is driven by two distinctive factors – a 14% increase in clouds over the North Pole and Beaufort Sea between 1980-2000, and the incursion of warm Atlantic water under the ice and into the Beaufort Gyre. The rapid summer ice loss is due to melting from above (infra red from the clouds) and below (warm Atlantic water).
The strength of the Beaufort Gyre determines how far Atlantic water penetrates the Arctic – when the PDO is warm and Alaskan Shelf winds are low, the gyre weakens and may reverse flow; when cold (since late 2006), the Alaskan interior cools, the winds strengthen and the gyre strengthens accordingly – there is a lag of a few years.
Thus, this domino effect from the Pacific will eventually reach the area between Greenland and Norway and summer sea-ice ought to return to the long-term norm (unless there really IS a strong greenhouse element – which I can’t see it greater than the difference between this warm period and the last – ie about 20%) and unless there is an even steeper decline in global temperatures due to the quiet sun effect.
On the latter – there is a body of evidence that during quiet solar periods, the jetstream is shifted along with Arctic pressure systems that lead to blocking high pressure over Iceland – sending the jetstream further south and cooling western Europe. The eastern seaboard of the USA gets a little warmer, but the mid-West suffers late springs, dry summers, and bitter winters – not good for the breadbasket of the world!
We should get to see this play out over the next five years.
This is true – I made similar statements one year ago, on a global basis.
“No Global Warming Since 1940”
http://www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=3774
Excerpts:
The best data shows no significant warming since ~1940. The lack of significant warming is evident in UAH Lower Troposphere temperature data from ~1980 to end April 2008, and Hadcrut3 Surface Temperature data from ~1940 to ~1980.
Furthermore, it is clear that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales, from ice core data spanning thousands of years to sub-decadal trends – the latter as stated in my paper**, and previously by Kuo (1990) and Keeling (1995) .
Finally, humanmade CO2 emissions have increased almost 800% since 1940.
CO2 data from CDIAC: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2004.ems
This data consistently suggests that the sensitivity of global temperature to increased atmospheric CO2 is near-zero, and thus there is no humanmade catastrophic global warming crisis.
_____________________________________
Hi Steven, Hello from France
Thanks for this update. By the way, the link (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/STATIONS//tmp.431042500000.1.1/station.gif) given for “Godthab Nuuk” station does not work. Here is a link that works:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431042500000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Flanagan, I’ll give you 1-100 odds that the Artic will not be ice free in five years and I’ll give you 1-50 odds that the North Pole will not be ice free in five years.
Steven Goddard: It’s difficult to see year-to-year variations of a few tenths of a deg k when the scale on the graph is 45 deg K. So…
Here are three time-series graphs of ERA40 Surface Temperature (and anomaly) data for the same Arctic area (80N-90N). The ERA40 data should be the same dataset used by the Danish Meteorological Institute for your daily mean temperature graphs above. I downloaded the data through the KNMI Climate Explorer website. The anomaly data has been smoothed with a 12-month running-average filter. Unfortunately, the KNMI data hasn’t been updated since 2002, but, if you’re interested in investigating the ERA40 data further, you could send Geert Jan at KNMI an email and ask him to update it.
Here’s the Arctic (80N-90N) Surface Temperature graph in deg K. The peaks and valleys are suppressed in this presentation because the data is monthly mean, where the DMI graphs are daily mean temps. As you can see, it’s tough to really visualize what’s going on from year to year:
http://i43.tinypic.com/66vgw4.jpg
And here’s the same data in deg C:
http://i42.tinypic.com/n316iv.jpg
And the anomaly data:
http://i44.tinypic.com/jr7mns.jpg
Steven Goddard
I live close to Pen Haddow in Devon. This is the headline story in todays Western Morning News. that covers our region
‘POLAR ICE CAP AT CRITICAL POINT’
http://www.thisiswesternmorningnews.co.uk/news/POLAR-ICE-CAP-CRITICAL-POINT/article-991466-detail/article.html
Despite mind numbing temperatures, the fact that ice melts in summer, that they mistakenly set off across first year ice, that they didnt make their objective because of severe weather, this is being portrayed as a huge success and proof that the ice could melt this summer. Sheer propaganda.
It is about time we were more proactive as a collective organisation of sceptics, instead of making our individual complaints within forums that agree with our own view point.
Can we develop the mechaniosm (without the right wing or BIg Oil connotations) whereby we despatch our own press releases- based on facts and science- and sent them to the thirty or so key media (many of the rest pick it up from these sources)
We are currently being marginalised by the media who believe what they are being told and rarely know the real facts.
Tonyb
More bilge as a result of the 3 Stooges ‘adventure’.
http://www.examiner.com/x-5266-Seattle-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m5d13-Catlin-Arctic-Survey-disappearing-Arctic-ice-news-is-dire-for-coastal-cities
@Lucy
The book you are looking for came extremely highly recommended by Professor Bob Carter the other day, who said if there’s only one book you read this year it should be Ian Wishart’s new book Air Con. I don’t think he was dissing anyone else, it’s just that Air Con is so comprehensive but so easy to read.
The book is similar to Plimer’s in its coverage, but as a journalist Wishart writes on a level that’s easy for anyone to understand but without sacrificing any of the science or the significance.
I’ve read it now, it’s a fantastic book, and I see someone else has given it five stars on Amazon so presumably others share my opinion.
There’s a preview been released which will give you some idea of his writing style:
http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/05/air-con-book-debuts-at-1-on-bestseller-list.html
From memory, Aussie Joanne Nova has also done a little skeptic’s guide booklet that kids could read, so there’s two titles worth exploring.
They use the “it’s warming faster than anyone ever knew” because they are out of time. It’s over for the hoax. Even the OMB knows the science isn’t there. It’s been a carbon TAX and RATION scam from the beginning. Bill Clinton tried a straight carbon tax and was defeated way back in 1992.
Does this mean they won’t TAX carbon anyway, the urge is strong, so who knows.
BUT — This will go down in history as a huge black mark for science in the public’s eyes. The real problem with doing science by government grant. I note Steve is now doing everything in the open, I would encourage others to follow his lead. Software, methods, results, conclusions — make it all open.
The version of the Vostok Ice Core Temperature Record presented here clearly shows CO2 variations trailing the temperature variations, particularly on the upticks. Other versions of the chart, with its 450,000 year scale, do not consistently show this visual effect, with the explanation by skeptics being that the lag was only 800 years (ocean effect) which would not be apparent on such a scale. That leads me to suspect the chart presented here has been tampered with for dramatic effect. Explanation?
Flanagan (00:52:50) :
I just checked all the stations in Greenland with data from the 1920’s up to present and there is a similar picture – therefore it is somewhat disingenuous to say that the data is cherry picked.
TonyB,
That Hadow interview was hilarious and will be remembered – thanks.
flanagan,
This article might help you out of the fog.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/16/nsidcs-dr-walt-meier-answers-reader-questions-on-sea-ice/
Flanagan: You wrote, “This is what one gets when considering the whole arctic anomaly, as compared to the global anomaly.”
And you linked one of my graphs:
http://i37.tinypic.com/2lrxtu.jpg
The graph is Figure 5 from my post “Polar Amplification and Arctic Warming”:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/07/polar-amplification-and-arctic-warming.html
Please list the source of my graphs when you use them. A link would be nice, too.
Thanks.
Bernie: You asked Flanagan for the source of the graph he linked. As noted in my comment to him above, it’s one of mine. Here’s another link to that post:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/07/polar-amplification-and-arctic-warming.html
Regards
Dr. Walt Meier from NSIDC wrote this on WUWT a few months ago.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/21/nsidc-s-dr-walt-meier-answers-10-questions/
This GISSTEMP derived map shows that most of the Arctic was warmer 70 years ago.
http://docs.google.com/File?id=ddw82wws_20d886qwcz_b
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/16/nsidcs-dr-walt-meier-answers-reader-questions-on-sea-ice/
The Hudson Bay company has extensive records of the climate in the Canadian north. Conveniently ignored.
The first long-term studies of climate change took place along the coast of Hudson Bay at places like Churchill and York Factory. They are part of the longest and most comprehensive set of weather observations in North America, if not the world.
As part of daily activities at any Hudson’s Bay Company trading post, weather patterns, rainfall, and casual observations were recorded and eventually archived by the company. In fact during the early 1800s, there were at least three times as many weather stations in Northern Manitoba as there are today. There is even evidence that a weather station was planned for Cape Merry in the mid-1700s.
Weather records for York Factory and Churchill date all the way back to 1714 and 1718, respectively. The Hudson’s Bay Company kept accurate records to assist in their business decisions regarding the fur trade. Their archives contain journals from over two hundred trading posts throughout the Canadian northwest.
snip
We seem to be running in roughly forty year cycles of warming and cooling – within a longer term warm period. This century has been marked by a warming period (1910-1940) followed by a cooler period through to the 1970s. The latest warming trend began in the late 70s, early 80s.
http://www.polarbearalley.com/hudson-bay-post-climate-change.html
Bob Tisdale (04:24:45) : The graphs of this post must be complemented with the graphs in the links you give.
Nothing has changed! Surprising indeed. (Except…some wallets..and bellies 🙂 )
TonyB (04:36:16) : “It is about time we were more proactive as a collective organisation of sceptics, instead of making our individual complaints within forums that agree with our own view point.
Can we develop the mechanism (without the right wing or BIg Oil connotations) whereby we despatch our own press releases- based on facts and science- and sent them to the thirty or so key media (many of the rest pick it up from these sources) ”
I think this is an important purpose, although any such effort will be maligned. As a non-scientist/engineer/computer-model specialist, I can’t be much help, but whatever I could do….Steven Goddard’s post (and thank you), many of the posts from WUWT, could form a basis for the effort. However, anything like this organized in a competent fashion would be expensive in many ways. Just listen to Anthony about how much this blog alone has “cost” him. Lucy Skywalker’s efforts and Nevelle’s assistance to build a bibliography are very important, too. Ideas from these could be sent to school districts. And so on, and so on. It ain’t easy.
I personally believe big-money from the left — wherever that is located — has bought mass media, many academic institutions, most “scientific” publications and is trying to ensconse itself in government in a permanent fashion. Corporations simply buy onto/into any trend they believe will bring them profits. Cap-and-trade seems to be the chosen vehicle at present. All efforts to the contrary are essential.
Knowledge about both Arctic and Antarctic, if it could be disseminated widely, couldn’t hurt, especially on a blow-by-blow basis; each false report is immediately followed by the truth in similar specificity. And this “organization of skeptics” would need its spokespersons to personalize the science. Steven Goddard, are you ready for the BBC?
Flanagan,
If the Arctic is truly 1C warmer now I imagine the Caitlin crew is extremely thankful. Just imagine if they had to suffer through -41C temps instead of the pleasant -40C temps they encountered.
Al Gore 1984
[snip -video removed – I don’t want this sort of hype on the blog, sorry. – Anthony]
Can Big Brother be green? Absolutely. If carbon dioxide were the planetary poison that global warming alarmists claim, then every aspect of our lives would be fair game for government control: the homes we build, the cars we drive, the light bulbs we use. Even the number of children we have—because lets face it; any reduction in CO2 that we achieve will be more than offset by the households our kids will create when they grow up.
There are already proposals in Congress and federal agencies to vastly increase taxes and regulations in order to address the so-called global warming crisis. But as a growing number of scientists are openly declaring, there is no crisis.
Two things of interest from the graphs, if someone would care to address :
1) Why have the Alaskan glaciers grown this past season, whereas they did not back in 1999 ? Or did they, and it went undocumented or unreported ?
2) From the Vostok Ice Core Graph, it appears that climate and ice ages are predominantly governed by the amount of atmospheric dust. Is it documented whether the dust was volcanic in origin, or surface – from the huge Asian and African deserts, kicked up by atmospheric wind patterns ? Any correlations with significant asteroid impacts ?
steve
Glad you enjoyed the newspaper article.
You responded to a post from Flanagan with a link to:
Dr. Walt Meier from NSIDC wrote this on WUWT a few months ago.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/21/nsidc-s-dr-walt-meier-answers-10-questions/
This shows a map with dots whereby some temperatures are warmer than 70 years ago-some the same.
As a Brit I trend to think of Alaska as cold-with some parts very cold
so I was intrigued to compare this map with
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/13/90-of-the-last-million-years-the-normal-state-of-the-earths-climate-has-been-an-ice-age/
So the warm South West of england seems to shatre something with most of Alaska-it didnt glaciate during the last ice age. In other words some parts of Alaska are historicaly and currently warmer than intuition might indicate.
Have you-or anyone-an explanation for this? Height? Affect from a current? Micro climate?
Thanks
tonyb