Arctic Temperatures – What Hockey Stick?

Such a pity that this is a ”EYES ONLY TOP SECRET” document, now if only it was deregulated those politicians that read, might do so.

RR Kampen asks: “Is that really why all graphs end at or before the year 2003?”
No, it’s because they’ve stopped collecting data! At least GISS has, just look up different areas of the arctic here, and see how few stations that have reported anything at all in 2009: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
I don’t understand how they dare make any claims about recent arctic temperatures at all with a data set that sparse.
Another way to view the poor quality of the data, is to look at the GISS temperature anomaly chart, but with a 250km radius instead of their usual 1200km radius. You’ll see that both the arctic and Antarctica has vast uncovered areas (ah, and Africa and South America, too…):
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2009&month_last=07&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=07&year1=2009&year2=2009&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=reg
Thanks a lot to Lucy Skywalker for presenting this. I’ve recently browsed station data at GISS and other sources (Canadian met. pages) and while this not exactly being a scientific approach, my impression so far is that wherever there are long and good data series, it seems that (1) there’s no clear trend, and that (2) the 1940s might have been warmer than recent years. Not to mention the MWP, the Vikings weren’t lunatics when they established farms in Greeland…

What if climatologists and environmentalists aren’t actually bothered by the lack of solid evidence?
There’s the argument that we only have one Earth so we can’t experiment in a normal scientific way.
To them, all the criticisms about the data may simply be a case of, “yeah, we know, but so what?”
Anyone familiar with Post-Normal Science?
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Post-Normal_Science

It’s good to see John Daly remembered. It was “Still Waiting for Greenhouse” that first got me interested in global warming.

Nice summary.
Hard to believe that such scattered surface sources could be used to create an Arctic temperature average accurate enough to guide trillion dollar policies.

Nick Stokes (01:55:48) :
When there’s a trend, you can always cherry-pick locations that show it to a lesser extent. But the zonal average tells a more representative story. The Arctic is warming. There’s a plot and link to data here.
I note that the graph you link to appears to be of a single column of data from a set described as having eliminated outliers and a homogeneity adjustment. I’m sure it’s mere synchronicity that though none of the raw data shows much of a trend when the proper adjustments are made an uptrend suddenly and magically appears.

The GISS data for the Angmassalik station is very useful – it goes back to the 19th century almost without interruptions: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431043600000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
It does look like the 30s and 40s were slightly warmer than the 2000s, doesn’t it?
I downloaded the data, and then computed 10-year trailing moving averages for the yearly temperature (last column). The years with the highest 10-year moving average temperatures were:
1935 -0.036
1936 -0.107
1934 -0.119
1948 -0.137
2008 -0.139
2007 -0.187
1937 -0.188
1947 -0.216
1933 -0.27
1941 -0.284

The invaluable work of John Daly is enhanced if a clear distinction is made between the summer and winter temperatures in the Arctic, as can be found at: http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/, where it is shown that the most pronounced Arctic warming since the end of the Little Ice Age from 1919 to 1939 was ocean related, respectively caused by the West Spitsbergen current.

Another good example of how applying statistics to the right bits of data from a dynamic chaotic system can indicate whatever you want.
Physical evidence from satellite photo’s shows that both Arctic and Antarctic ice are in good shape, so where’s the panic?
Until we have accurate data with sufficient granularity for all climate metrics and a thourough understanding of how the different mechanisms interact the science of Climatology (and med/long range weather forecasts) will be no better than Astrology.

Scott Mandia: The vikings did thrive on Greenland during the MWP. No mannomatic misuse of statistic methods applied to sparse (and partly misused) proxy data sets can erase that simple historic fact.
So the facts are: During the Eemian perid, the Arctic was much warmer than now – and Greenland didn’t melt. 1100 – 700 years ago, at least one part of the arctic was significantly warmer than now. 65 – 80 years ago, the arctic was at least as warm as now. In the meantime, the Arctic was pretty cold in the eighties and nineties. “Arctic warming” = natural variation!

Nick and Scott
Anyone who has researched the arctic will be astonished at the regular melting and refreezing of ice. There is much observed and scientifcally derived evidence to demonstrate that the current warming event is nothing out of the ordinary
To put Lucy’s map into perspective and help with overall orientation of the region, this link leads to a brilliant interactive arctic map (click on the dots) showing current temperatures.
http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm
There are numerous historic records of which the following is but one example-they are the British Board of Trade records for the region dating back 200 years
http://www2.swgc.mun.ca/nfld_history/CO194/index.htm
I ploughed through each of these for weather and ice references and it is one of the numerous sources cited in my thread
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice/#more-8688
I had to discard many more records than I could include for space reasons.
I am currently writing an article on the substantial 1920’s to 1940’s arctic warming and the even more remarkable periods that encompass the Vikings and Ipatuk-an arctic civilisation that predates the Romans.
I think some of us we have a romantic vision of a permanently frozen arctic that is derived from Victorian chroniclers-the same ones who invariably depicted Charles Dicklens age as permanently frozen when in reality it includes some of our warmest winters ( he wrote ‘ A Christmas Carol’ in a heatwave).
This vision extended to our notions of Hanibal struggling over ice filled Mountain passes to attack the Romans, when it appears he had a rather easier time than this as glaciers then were higher than today, and the Romans utilsed these high level passes to attack their enemies.
Luc’ys thread usefully gives a visual context to the debate using long temperature records.
tonyb

There is one proxy which drives the big blade on the hockey stick in this Kaufman Arctic study – Series 22 – which rises to a huge +6.97C in the most recent decades.
That is Briffa’s Yamal Pennisula tree ring reconstruction (This is the same one that Steve McIntyre has been trying to get the data and methods for but has not been successful.)
Briffa took a very detailed 4,000 long year tree-ring reconstruction (which shows very little temperature change at all) and adjusted it by using some obscure tree-ring density measures from a near-by tree-ring reconstruction.
It is still not clear what was done but it is very clear that temperatures in the Yamal Pennisula have not increased by +6.97C in the last two decades (up to 1.0C perhaps).
Here is the original Yamal tree-ring reconstruction data versus Kaufmann and Briffa’s numbers.
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/6644/yamaltreerings.png
This is what the chart looks like if one puts the proper Yamal data in (and reverses the sign on the upside down Tijander lake sediment study).
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/6282/fixedkaufman.png
Interesting that the Little Ice Age, the recent warming, the downturn in 1975, the Medieval Warm period, the Roman Warm Period etc. now all show up.
Yamal study.
http://www.nosams.whoi.edu/PDFs/papers/Holocene_v12a.pdf
Yamal data.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/asia/russia/yamal_2002.txt
An Excel spreadsheet of Kaufman’s data is here.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/reconstructions/arctic/kaufman2009arctic.xls

Thanks Lucy for you excellent work. 22 charts and no hockey stick!. But there is one the big nose, Pinochio-like, the big one of the IPCC.
It would be just funny, but it leaves everybody wondering why lying about climate everyday and everywhere. Why all that daily propaganda through all media, millions and millions spent everyday.
Which are those big interests behind?. After all these big, big “investments”, bigger profits are evidently expected, which all of us without exception will have to pay.
We are in need, now, not only of identifying, if “hockey sticks” are false, but of identifying those who have carefully planned this, because it is a big, big, the biggest “swindle” ever conceived.

Nick Stokes (01:55:48) :
Hi Nick – could you describe in detail how GISS does their zonal averaging and homogenization for the Arctic? Have you plotted their raw data?
Thanks.

Nick Stokes:
First a comment about the Norwegian data – I’m Norwegian, and other Norwegians should correct me if I’m wrong, but I *think* the Gardermoen station may be close to Oslo Gardermoen Airport – Norway’s largest international Airport. If I’m right, no data from Gardermoen since 1998 can be trusted. Regardless of the runways themselves, the whole area was changed tremendously with the airport, it used to have much smaller airport and a military airport.
Next, Greenland over 30 years doesn’t say much, as it was pretty much at the bottom of a long downwards trend around 1980. As I have shown above, temperatures were higher in the thirties than they are now.

Scott,
(This totally OT, but I just can’t resist)
I have visited your excellent site. It is clear that you have taken a great deal of work to put it together and it seems that you understand the underlying science behind.
I can’t help but wonder, do you really believe it?
In particular, on the page http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/modern_day_climate_change.html, you say: (I am quoting you)
– Only a complete shut-off of CO2 emissions would result in a long-term stabilization at a constant level.
– Cutting CO2 emissions by 50% today will only stabilize the levels for the next 10 years.
So, Scott, I think we have a problem here, don’t we?
You seem to be an inteligent person, and as such, I am sure you agree that cutting emissions by half is absolutely impossible. Just mentioning shutting-off emissions completely is plainly stupid (I am sorry about the word, but it really is stupid).
Therefore, Scott. What is the deal? What do you exactly propose here?
Don’t you understand that if what you tell on your site were true, we are doomed?
I am the kind of person that will bet 1,000,000 to 1 that the world is not going to end tomorrow. You know why? Because if I lose, I won’t have to pay and if I win, I win twice (even though I am not going to make a lot of money).
And you know what? Taking my bet is stupid (I am sorry again, but that is what it is).
You say that we have a great problem because CO2 is going to cause a hell of a problem to Earth.
Yet, you know that we are not going to reduce the CO2 emissions for the foreseable future. Even if we, the stupid developped countries (again the word), decide to commit an economical suicide, total emissions are still going up because the developing countries are more smart.
Rather than betting that the end of the world is coming, why don’t you take a sensible approach and try to figure out how to solve the problem in a feasible way?
I don’t think that CO2 is causing any problem, so I can sleep very well.

Lucy, thanks for this post. For those who have never seen the decimation of actual temperature monitoring stations, and therefore the decimation of actual data, see this:
http://i44.tinypic.com/23vjjug.jpg
It makes it hard to believe anyone in charge takes actual temperature measurement seriously, they obviously believe they can just estimate it. And what is the response temperature has to being estimated instead of measured? see here:
http://i27.tinypic.com/14b6tqo.jpg

Anthony Wattas replied:
Hyping scientific papers in the press prior to their publication seems like an act of desperation to me.
This is unfair because you routinely comment on papers you have not actually read because they are “behind the paywall”.
Of course, proxy data is not as high quality as actual measurements but in studies of climate we do not have the luxury of direct measurements for the past. At some point, you have to accept the proxy data with a certain degree of error otherwise we might as well just not study climate change.
My point still stands that camparing plots that are 100 years or fewer and that end in 2002 or earlier, CANNOT be used to debunk a study that shows a 2,000 year trend has changed in the past 100 years and even more so in the previous ten years.
@Manuel (06:47:02) :
I am happy that you visited my site because one must always consider the “other camp’s” position when debating. You need to understand the context of those statements. Those statements show that AGW is serious, that it is going to get worse even if we take steps to reduce AGW, and that we are not going back to pre-AGW climate for quite some time even using the best solutions. We cannot afford a “wait and see” approach.
As I have mentioned before, my goal is to move the debate from Is there AGW? to What are the implications of AGW and what are we going to do about it? These are far from my expertise so, as one can see, I offer no solutions to that question. The problem is that if we still debate the causes of warming we will never move forward to the real debate and the solutions will become even more costly.
REPLY: It is perfectly fair. I choose not to engage in the paywall in most cases because as a US taxpayer, I find it reprehensible that I should have to pay twice for a study. Once to fund it and once to read it. In the rarefied world of academics, you don’t have to worry about such things, because it is paid for you to have access. But I think every journalist and blogger is in the same situation. They don’t subscribe to these journals either and if they asked for a budget, they would not likely get it since to cover all the journals it might be several thousand dollars. People in academics that have all this at their disposal don’t get this resentment from the average working taxpayer of which I am one.
The unfairness is lack of public access to our free press and to the taxpayers that fund this research. It’s flat wrong to put out a press release ahead of a journal publication as Kaufman did. Nobody could check it if they wanted to. I think the authors counted on this. The Kaufman paper is the worst perversion of science I’ve seen recently. Its more Mannian proxy dreck and questionable statistical methods trying to justify it. Many of the proxies have no proven temperature signature/stability. Trees are better proxies for moisture than they are temperature.
As for your goal, you missed a step. “What is the true magnitude and cause of AGW”? – A

Juraj V: The rimfrost.no site that Nick recommended also shows much more moderate trends if you choose the 100 year trend option. And if they had offered a 70-year trend option, we’d see almost zero trend for most station…
NORWAY
CHANGE IN AVERAGE TEMPERATURE
FROM 1909 TO 2008 (UNIT °C)
Trend computation :
SELECTION : ALL STATIONS
COUNTRY/REGION MEAN VALUE : 0.7°C
STATION CHANGE(°C) YEARS METER ASL
NESBYEN – Nes(Busk) : 1.39 (1909 – 2008) 164
NORDØYAN FYR – Vikna(N.Trlag) : 1.2 (1909 – 2008) 15
RØROS – (S.Trlag) : 1.2 (1909 – 2008) 626
ALTA – Elvebakken – Alta(Finm) : 1.05 (1909 – 2008) 3
FÆRDER FYR – Tjøme(V.fold) : 1.04 (1909 – 2008) 6
BERGEN – FLORIDA : 0.92 (1909 – 2008) 12
LISTA – Farsund(V.Agder) : 0.88 (1909 – 2008) 14
KJØREMSGRENDE – Lesja(Oppl) : 0.86 (1909 – 2008) 626
VARDØ – (Finm) : 0.85 (1909 – 2008) 14
BODØ – (Nordl) : 0.77 (1909 – 2008) 11
UTSIRA FYR – Utsira(Rogaland) : 0.74 (1909 – 2008) 55
OKSØY FYR – Kr.sand(V.Agder) : 0.6 (1909 – 2008) 9
ONA – Husøy (M&R) : 0.56 (1909 – 2008) 13
TORUNGEN FYR – Arendal(A.Agder) : 0.56 (1909 – 2008) 12
ANDØYA – Andøy(Nordl) : 0.44 (1909 – 2008) 10
TROMSØ – LANGNES (Troms) : 0.41 (1909 – 2008) 9
OSLO – BLINDERN : 0.36 (1909 – 2008) 94
KARASJOK (Finm) : 0.33 (1909 – 2008) 131
LILLEHAMMER – SÆTERENGEN (HOMOGEN.) : 0.32 (1909 – 2008) 242
KAUTOKEINO (Finm) : 0.2 (1909 – 2008) 307
MANDAL (V.Agder) : 0.07 (1909 – 2008) 138

I have also been watching the individual GISS stations for quite some time and found the same result. Thanks Lucy for bringing it to public attention.
Lots of manipulation going on here I believe….it pays to do your own research.
BTW…the late John Daly was a huge Landscheidt fan 🙂

Sean Ogilvie (02:44:58) :
It’s good to see John Daly remembered. It was “Still Waiting for Greenhouse” that first got me interested in global warming
Same here-got to communicate with John several times,mainly about Tasmania and
Hobart’s similar climate to Coos Bay,Or. Thanks, Lucy….

..but in the meantime, the hysteria reaches new and absurd levels, as EU starts to contaminate its environment with mercury in order to cut CO2 emissions: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/business/energy-environment/01iht-bulb.html?em

For those who inwardly wish the end of the world: Do not worry anymore, today you are 24 hours nearer the end than yesterday, so your life is ending!
Rejoice!

Re: Nogw (07:49:45) :
“For convincing everybody not to use fossil fuels, which they produce and sell?, that would be extremely crazy.”
No, that’s what the Gore-lobby is trying to do. I asked whether oil companies wouldn’t try the same campaign with the opposite message, and I hope to find out if they do and how they do it.

Nice work lucy!
A few years ago I searched for the (raw) data of all circumpolar stations over 66.6N with sufficiently long records. About 70% were warmer to equal warm in the 1935-1950 period than in the current period. 30% are warmer in the current period, mainly in Eastern Siberia and Alaska.
The same for Greenland, I plotted all stations around the inland ice up to 2005 here.
Main conclusion: (summer) temperatures 1935-1950 were higher than in current period, so the ice edge melting then was (probably) higher than today. Despite the far higher CO2 levels these days…

The Greenland temperatures plot didn’t come through, here is the URL:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/greenland_temp.html

Scott,
If they use garbage proxies, which seems to be the Mannian school of science tradition, then the results of those studies are garbage, as well.

wow, thanks, Anthony! hadn’t expected this and I only just found out. Will post again later when I’ve read the comments properly.
Just for now: John Daly died in 2004 which is the chief reason that records are not right up-to-date of course. But the little bit missing since then still does not explain the latest Hockey Stick’s blade which appears to start from before 1900.

oh yes, and I want this “audited”, I promise to deal with every criticism that has some foundation, since I believe this evidence is so plain stunning, so I want it checked.

I keep hearing that it was warmer in the Arctic in the ’30s. While it’s clear that the summer melt is currently typical compared to the last ten years, I keep coming back to this plot at Cryosphere:
Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent
which shows that the summer extent is about 60% of what it was as recently as 1970.
What is the data behind this plot? Is it considered to be bogus?

Scott:

As I have mentioned before, my goal is to move the debate from Is there AGW? to What are the implications of AGW and what are we going to do about it? These are far from my expertise so, as one can see, I offer no solutions to that question. The problem is that if we still debate the causes of warming we will never move forward to the real debate and the solutions will become even more costly.

You can’t move the debate away from “Is there AGW”, because all of the credible evidence says NO. But you choose to ignore that and move on. You can’t skip the most important part of fixing a problem, and that most important part is finding out if there even IS a problem.
I’d hate to have you as my car mechanic, you’d be replacing parts that have nothing wrong with them. I’d REALLY hate to have you on my jury, you’d be the one saying “guilty” even when there are 24 witnesses saying otherwise AND someone else confessed.
You can’t “move the debate”, because you lost step one. You also can’t replay the Superbowl because you lost 44 to 8, and you can’t “proxy” in the touchdowns you “should” have had during the game.
Thanks for bringing this group with you, Lucy, I’ve been very entertained this morning.

Further to my question, to the left of the plot on the main page there’s a link to the University of Illinois Sea Ice Dataset:
Dataset 1870 – 2008
The last link in the set, “seasonal sea ice extent timeseries”, appears to be
date / annual / season1 / season 2 / season 3 / season 4
The last couple of entries in the plot don’t match the data. Also, they haven’t plotted points since 2006, it seems.

Perhaps its time to take a break from data
and take a look at reality in the form
of some pictures–(pictures seem to be
very alien to agw modeling arguments)–
ice breaker sea ice news–
Real time (sep 7) sea ice pics of real sea ice–
not much open water in these
arctic pics–these pics need MORE
agw modeling–
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cutterhealy/page2/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cutterhealy/page5/
This is lots of new ice–
RECENTLY FORMED–
and SNOW COVERED AND NO SURFACE WATER–
thus indicating very low temperatures for
rapid formation of more and thicker ice–
and notice how the sea ice has rapidly resolidified
immediately after disruption by the icebreakers–
Yes, melting ended quite a while ago–
-massaged data from satellites or ground
stations cannot compete with the reality of real time pics.
The refreeze has begun in earnest and the melt is over–
Right now arctic temperatures
are much lower than anyone is admitting–
contrary to “officially” massaged
satellite and ground station sensory perecptions.
Speculation is rampant that these ice breakers
are searching for lost arks of greenpeas skippers.
AND this is the rest of the story–
SEE IF YOU CAN IDENTIFY ANY OPEN WATER
AT ALL IN THESE HIGH REOLUTION SATELLITE SHOTS OF
SNOW SNOW COVERED SEA ICE IN THE CANADIAN ARCHIPELEGO WHICH IS STILL
SUPPOSEDLY 70 PERCENT ICE FREE.
http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/marfcst.php?fcst=FZAK80PAFC

L (12:31:42) :
It’s not it’s, it’s its.
You wanna make a post complaining about grammar and tpyos, you ought to take extra care to not pwn yourself…

Great graphic Lucy. What John Daly achieved is amazing but not very eye-catching to a casual observer, who would have to click on individual links. Your graphic deserves to be widely disseminated, not least beacuse a quick glance shows the lack of upward trend.

Thanks everyone. I’m making notes but it’s now too late to say all I want to say. So I’ll just talk to Scott Mandia for now.
Scott Mandia (05:03:37) : Lucy, Of course, you and I disagree about AGW and are both passionate. I do applaud you for backing up your arguments with data instead of just “talking trash”. Thanks Scott, and I applaud you for keeping with us for so long, I know it must be hard work. Curiously, you remind me of the time when I was in your shoes, and argued as persistently as you FOR AGW. I visited your website and note you refer folk to Coby Beck and the RC section on answering “contrarians”. You should add Skeptical Science.
It took me a lot of convincing to stop me in my tracks long enough to examine the critical evidence that turned me around. My web page on AGW had a similar feel to yours at that time. What took me time to change round was the work needed to deconstruct every single “answer to skeptics” from these three sites in particular. But I did it. And I’m glad I had to go the hard road, and thankful I had the time to do the job properly.
Here is a plot that shows this phenomena for locations north of 80 degrees: http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/janjul.jpg Ha, interesting – and WHERE is it? I’ve deliberately used records up to 3 times that length. I understand your argument re melting ice, but that does not change the non-HS quality of the data I’ve presented. I’ve now peeked at a few of NASA’s extensions up to 2009 – some show a rise, some do not; the average rise is still not enough to make the dramatic new hockey stick blade.
Scott Mandia (07:11:43) :…My point still stands that camparing plots that are 100 years or fewer and that end in 2002 or earlier, CANNOT be used to debunk a study that shows a 2,000 year trend has changed in the past 100 years and even more so in the previous ten years. No, it doesn’t stand, but you’ll have to wait till tomorrow for exactly why I challenge you on this. Or maybe I’ll find someone else has answered you already, heck, it’s too much for me to read now!

Ferdinand Engelbeen (09:34:41) & Ferdinand Engelbeen (09:13:35)
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/greenland_temp.html

Interesting – a few degrees warming at deep-sub-zero mid-January would not be the same thing physically as even mild mid-summer warming in a system of such insulation & reflection.

Espen, Can you point us to the official Norwegian source of weather/climate records (as I’ve done above for Canada)?
Also, can anyone here do the same for Greenland (Denmark), Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Russia, & Alaska (USA)?
[Clarification: I’m not looking for a link to GISS, Hadley, etc.]
If so: thanks.

Note for Nick Stokes:
As Currie (1996) has cautioned us, spatial averages can be blinding.
Currie, R.G. (1996). Variance contribution of luni-solar (Mn) and solar cycle (Sc) signals to climate data. International Journal of Climatology 16(12), 1343-1364.
All one has to do is move across a sharp local gradient and things go out of phase (i.e. major signal not detected due to destructive interference).
It’s not a matter of “good” or “bad” – it’s a matter of interpretation. Parameter estimates should be investigated across a variety of spatiotemporal scales.

“”” Scott Mandia (05:03:37) :
Lucy,
Of course, you and I disagree about AGW and are both passionate. I do applaud you for backing up your arguments with data instead of just “talking trash”.
I interperate this thread as a response to the recent paper by Kaufman et al. where they show the Arctic has reversed a 2,000 year cooling trend, especially in the last 100 years and the last 10 years. Your data actually supports their claim because all of these plots show warmer temps than those of the previous 2000 years. Of course, you cannot reproduce their hockey stick if you are not using 2000 years of data.
As has been mentioned by others in other blogs, summer data in ice covered areas will skew the annual data because the heat is being used to melt the ice and temps do not move much. This is why Anthony Watts analysis in a previous post was very misleading. His animation did show warming in the cooler season. Here is a plot that shows this phenomena for locations north of 80 degrees:
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/janjul.jpg
I know many of you do not view Tamino’s posts but there may be a few of you interested in another interpretation of what the Arctic is doing. “””
Why don’t you simply issue personalized invitations Scott, if you want to siphon readers from WUWT over to whatever your site is. It’s a good strategy. I listen to the most popular morning talk radio show in the SF Bay area (as measured by the ratings people); it happens to be a politically realist station. Well you wouldn’t know that by listening to the paid station advertising; it is heavily leftist/socialist/Marxist advertising, often by the very interests who were getting blasted by the show hosts five minutes before they ran the ad, such as the CTA for example.
Well it is no mystery; the show has the largest listenership by far, including both ends of the political spectrum, and everything in between. So the wacky advertisers know they are reaching the largest listening audience out there; including all the masochistic lefties and greenies who just can’t bring themsleves to not listen to a message that puts them in their place every day.
But may I suggest, Scott, that the best way to improve your readership, is not to post stuff here on anthony’s open forum; but to clean up your own act over at your site, and make it an open forum.
When people drop coins into an empty well, and never get a return echo, when the coin hits the bottom; they pretty soon get tired of dropping coins in there.
So go back and fix up your place, instead of coming here with shovel ready hay that has already been once through the horse.
George

Forgive me if someone else has pointed this out already, but the comments by Nick and Scott about the Kaufmann paper brought a question to mind. Even if you accept the presentation of the Kaufmann paper as correct, why is a 2000 year period assumed to represent some sort of golden mean? 2000 years is nothing in terms of geological time. There could be any sort of trend over a 2000 year period, and it would mean nothing in terms of predicting the next 2000 years. The complete inability of the AGW proponents to grasp geological time scales never ceases to amaze me. The perfect example of this is the fixation on the 1979-2000 mean of (fill in the blank here) as some meaningful measurement of “normal”. In any geological context, or even the context of biological evolution, it’s laughable to consider an arbitrarily chose 21-year period as a representation of “normal”. There is no “normal”. There is only constant change. That’s why the continents are not where they once were.

I thought we were warming since the LIA. Why was the Artic cooling from then until mid 2000’s according to the Kaufman paper? Isn’t this just as disconcerting as the purported warming for the last 50 years?

Should have said – “all Arctic stations with sufficient time/data”.

Notice how he uses all the sound-byte “power phrases”:
“Conflating”
“Eyeballing”
“Truncating”
“Trend-Analysis”
“Cherry-picking”
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sophistry
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Seems like a large majority of the proxies in Kaufmann aren’t even correlated to temperature. A good percentage seem to be used to cancel the LIA/MWP (inverted from what you’d expect) or add slope . Shouldn’t each proxy be shown to correlate to temperature before being averaged to imply temperature? I mean if they don’t show a LIA or MWP (yes, you can claim I expect to see this, at least in the northern hemisphere) or especially if they show the opposite trend, I would expect them to require validation as having a temperature signal and define polarity of the proxy.
Just try grouping each subset together and see what story they tell…even common proxies don’t tell the same story. What a mess. Seems like there are lags as well in some proxies. I don’t see how you could ever get a temperature signal out of that combination of proxies…
Looks to me that you could pick your specific combination of proxies to achieve the desired trend.
Hmmm…seems like a good career choice.
Ed

RR Kampen (06:09:00) :

Re: Nogw (05:57:56) : do you think certain oil companies like ExxonMobile have no financial interests?

do you think certain AGW proponents like Al Gore have no financial interests?

savethesharks,

The hockey stick is clearly and expressly shown in a century or less….

It’s been a long time since I played hockey, but if I remember correctly the stick has a long handle with a short foot, something like this:
_____________/
The term is attributed to millenial constructions which approximate that shape, as the regulars here well know.
The instrumental record doesn’t look like that, whether global or Arctic. More like rising sine wave with a flat middle. The term ‘hockey stick’ in this context is bewildering (unless it’s an orthognal jab at another topic).
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘power phrases’. The terms you listed are used by people here, including Anthony Watts. Do you contend they are also engaging in sophistry or does a different standard apply?
John Vaughan – thanks for the clarification. I had read that you updated the data, and so wondered why there was nothing more recent than 2003 and many series finished earlier. Even though this is so far a collative work, I still hold that a better reflection of the graphs would be all Y axes that show variabiliy (and trend) more clearly, up-to-date and all stations (as caveated in my previous post) – just for eyeballing purposes. A statistical analysis with as much servicable data as possible would be much better. Has such been done anywhere that you know of (not just summer temps)? Apart from the science institutes that collate the data, I mean.
As the sites posting this information in this way have a clear agenda – nothing wrong with that per se – I hope you can understand that I am deeply skeptical of selective presentations. (Yes, I apply my skepticism equally)
Tamino’s reply to this post is worth checking out.

Paul Vaughan (14:05:22) :
“Espen, I suggest you check your claim.”
Sorry about that, I was too sloppy in making that claim because I wanted to make my point about the rapidly diminishing number of reporting arctic stations.
In another post, you asked for official data from Norway. You can get forecasts and recent data from yr.no (also in english) and history and trends from eklima.met.no (free, but registration required), but I think the data at rimfrost.no should be the same.

Scott,
I couldn’t AGREE with you more!
I doubt it. If you look at my post carefully, I am just saying more or less the opposite of what you seem to believe.
In a nutshell: “AGW is not an issue. Mankind is not facing destruction caused by CO2. Rather, resources that would be used more effectively elsewhere are being wasted. Polititians and environmental groups are not helping us, nor can they by their very nature”.
I suspect you don’t agree with the above. Specially since I believe yourself are one of these resources that are being wasted.
And that is a pity because, although I obviously think you are mistaken, I admire your ability to discuss inteligently without losing your temper. You deserve to be enrolled in a better cause, and not in the one that is bringing a lot of money and power to some smart guys.

savethesharks (21:35:51) “Trend-Analysis”
I also found such calls amusing.
I live in a jurisdiction that has a carbon tax. I’ve seen reports from a “climate institute” (financed by the government here) that would suggest:
a) night-time lows are going to overtake day-time highs.
b) Winter temperatures are going to overtake summer temperatures.
A bright Stat 101 student will easily point out that the model assumptions are not met – (and so trend analysis is garbage in this context).

Oliver Ramsay (07:18:15) : …Several times last winter I tried to alert the people at wunderground to the curious fact that the forecasts for these two locations each day were in the -30C range (just like the rest of the Territory) but the recorded temperatures were consistently in the range of +5C. I received one e-mail in acknowledgement with an assurance that it would be checked out. Nothing changed and I heard no more. Seeing Nick’s citing of warming in Fort Simpson, which is a proximal station, I am wondering again about the smearing of data that Surface Stations has described. It’s my understanding that the source of the Canadian data is Environment Canada, but their own site didn’t seem to list these particular stations. Does anybody know about this?
Looks like there’s room for another whole piece here. I’m more and more sure that the whole AGW can be put to rest on the multiple faulting of the most basic records. Can you dig some more?
Espen (07:19:58) : Juraj V: The rimfrost.no site that Nick recommended also shows much more moderate trends if you choose the 100 year trend option. And if they had offered a 70-year trend option, we’d see almost zero trend for most station…
Hei Espen, takk for alt du har skrivet her. Har du sitt, Jo Novas bok er oversettet på norsk?
Can you write up all this into another piece? I could add it to our website. Vær så god, email meg.
Ferdinand Engelbeen (09:13:35) : Nice work lucy! A few years ago I searched for the (raw) data of all circumpolar stations over 66.6N with sufficiently long records. About 70% were warmer to equal warm in the 1935-1950 period than in the current period. 30% are warmer in the current period, mainly in Eastern Siberia and Alaska. The same for Greenland, I plotted all stations around the inland ice up to 2005 here…
Thanks Ferdinand! Your link is not working however and I’d love to see your work which seems like a backup to this piece…

Espen (00:18:40) “I wanted to make my point about the rapidly diminishing number of reporting arctic stations.”
I agree that this is an unwelcome development.
–
Thank you for the info on accessing Norwegian climate series. My hope is to study them in depth.

One thing which occurs to me after staring at all these graphs and temperature lists from the arctic, is that the period that GISS uses as base period for its anomaly graphs almost coincides with a cold cycle in the Arctic. If they had used an earlier period, or a longer period, the numbers would have looked pretty different. For instance, the 1951-1980 mean annual temperature for Angmassalik, Greenland is -1.27, but the1921 – 1980 mean annual temperature is -0.88. I picked another station with long-running data, Haparanda in Finland, and computed 0.98 for the 1951-1980 period and for 1921-1980 1.29. Or how about 1.6 for the 1921-1950 period?

Scott Mandia said:
I see AGW in the evidence and I do not see any strong arguments for a natural cause.
That is because you see only what you want to see, Scott. You have lost your ability to be objective (if indeed you ever had it), and have become an ideologue, which is sad. Yes, you are “polite”, and have the aura of rationality, but it’s all phony.
Many of us, including Lucy used to believe AGW was true, but, upon investigation began to see more and more problems with it, eventually becoming skeptics or climate realists. This is a journey that rational people take, people who are interested in the truth, and in science. “Conspiracy” talk would, if anything, be a turn-off, and in fact, is primarily used by the AGW Believers as lame straw man argument.
Believe me, It would have been much, much easier to simply stay in the AGW “camp”, believing the hype, and in “the consensus”. Family and friends remain Believers, and it is now a taboo subject due to the rift it causes.

CodeTech (11:57:03) :
You can’t skip the most important part of fixing a problem, and that most important part is finding out if there even IS a problem
I’d hate to have you as my car mechanic, you’d be replacing parts that have nothing wrong with them.
Isn’t this called preventive maintenance.
I would hate to own a car that has been driven well past the recommended cam belt mileage. It may never break but can you afford to take the risk?
You change the cam belt (not cheap) because if it fails you wreck the engine (very expensive)
Very similar to global warming. Accept a large cost now to prevent a humongous cost later.
Waiting is not an option

Scott Mandia:
“I do not recall seeing anything in a peer-reviewed journal that shows (with any confidence and peer support) any natural forcing to be the cause of the modern day global warming.”
DaveE has already posted an explanation of this but I’ll add my two penneth’s worth. The hypothesis that the modern warming is not the result of natural forcing is predicated on the belief that the climate was stable in the past, as symbolised by the now debunked hockey stick. In fact, as soon as you reintroduce the natural cycle variables – Roman warm, dark age cool, MWP, LIA, modern warm then the need to invent an anthropogenic forcing agent dissappears entirely. That is why hockey stick revisionism is so crucial to the AGW debate.
“I see AGW in the evidence and I do not see any strong arguments for a natural cause. ”
What IS this evidence? You AGW people keep telling us about this evidence, but when asked to present it, it invariably leads a reference to the IPCC report. Yet, this report offers no evidence. Why? Because it is still anchored to an implied hockey stick – the myth of a stable climate.
In reality, such a climate has never existed except in the minds of warmists. But in order to believe in such a fantasy, here’s what you have to do. You have to walk past a mountain of archeological, paleological and historical evidence that has been built up over hundreds of years, and pick up instead a crumb that represents Mannian bristlecone proxies.

Smokey (18:21:14) :
Those natural multi-decadal cycles have nothing to do with carbon dioxide. Therefore CO2 should be disregarded as an entity in any explanation of climate change.
There are many met stations in rural UK areas (e.g. Stornaway, Lerwick, Tiree, Yeovilton, Ross-on-Wye and of course CET) that show the claimed rise in temps since 60s (not global I know, but I would trust the data) Globally Hadcrut3v GISS etc show the similar rise.
This temperature rise has not happened between MWP (assuming this is a valid period although where you get data from is tricky since you (AAGWers) do not trust proxies of any description) and the 60s.
The solar output is similar over milennia. There is no other source of heat.
You are looking for a means to store solar output for a few centuries and release it now – can you suggest a storage medium for that?
Another alternative is that the albedo of the earth has changed (reflecting energy back to space) and has been high for the last couple of centuries and was magically low during the MWP and 20th/21st Century
Another alternative is that the insulation surrounding the earth has changed (slowing the release of energy to space). CO2 CH4 H2O O3 could all be culprits.
H2O is transient and needs heat to increase to get it into the atmosphere
CH4 is longer lived but gets broken down to CO2
CO2 is even longer lived in the atmosphere
O3 is short lived but is important in reducing the UV (energy) hitting the earth. High UV = high plant mortality+high genetic damage. Did this happen in the MWP? Is it happening now?
Using your mate Occam, which is most likely to cause the globe to warm.
Assume you suggest heat storage, then please tell me where this storage is that can have such a controlled release.
Or is the simplicity of GHGs the most likely?

Lucy
I’ve only checked one station using raw and homogenised GISS temperatures from Fairbanks – the homogenised version actually lowers modern and raises historic temps – but the results do not look much like those in your graphic. Do you know the source of the data used in your graphs? Is it wise to use annually averaged data?
The plot I created averages monthly data a month at a time over the usual 1961 to 1990 period then creates a monthly anomaly for plotting. Doing a yearly plot looses too much data in my view.
Before using the graphic it would be worthwhile updataing the temperature plots to current data and state where the data has been derived from.

bill (06:13:49)
“Or is the simplicity of GHGs the most likely?”
Bill – to clarify: Is your starting position that without industrial activity the earth would experience an invariant climate at all points on the globe such that by reference to the day number of the year one would know the weather conditions?

bill (06:13:49)
Oceans retain heat. Air doesn’r retain much heat. The sun works 24 hours a day

incidentally, when oceans heat and evaporate, causing clouds and precipitation when it hits cold air, it also releases a lot of heat and carbon dioxide. Oceans are net emitters of c02 during warming phases. You therefore have the later scenario of a cooling period with elevates levels of c02 and decreasing temperatures

“Scott Mandia (17:44:49)
@Smokey (07:51:30) :
“Natural climate variability explains the climate, with no need for an extra variable like carbon dioxide.”
Which would that be? I do not recall seeing anything in a peer-reviewed journal that shows (with any confidence and peer support) any natural forcing to be the cause of the modern day global warming. The first person to do so wins the Nobel and their name hangs on the wall with the Galielos, Darwins and Einsteins. So there is certainly an incentive.”
Reply:
If there is indeed an incentive to get climate analysis right
then do please explain why there is no peer reviewed material noting the periodic multidecadal ocean phase shifts AND linking them with the subsequent and obvious latitudinal shifts in the global air circulation systems.
It must be apparent to all that such a latitudinal shift represents a real world physical process and it should be obvious to all that the process must involve an adjustment in the rate of energy transfer from surface to space.
Nowhere in the peer reviewed material have I ever seen an investigation of the potential implications. Instead it has been said that the latitudinal shift was the fault of mankind and permanent. When the shift started reversing from 2000 not a word was said.
Those two processes in oceans and air when combined have the power to explain all the regional climate changes ever observed subject only to a solar induced background trend on century time scales.
Why was the link ignored ?
Why is it still being ignored ?

Scott Mandia (03:33:24) :

I agree that the most difficult part of studying something is removing confirmation bias. I am sure that I am not able to be 100% objective nor can anyone else without using a double-blind study.
I see AGW in the evidence and I do not see any strong arguments for a natural cause.

Scott Mandia,
You are “believing” and defending a hockey stick graph (non is produced by any temperature record in the real world) that denies the existence, for example, of the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, the Maunder and the Dalton Minimum, this despite the fact that all these events have been confirmed in different peer reviewed scientific reports.
You defend your point of view by referring to the elimination of confirmation bias and a double blind study necessary to confirm any results, at the same time claiming that you are not 100% objective!
Would you therefore please explain why you see AGW in the evidence and why you think that the Medieval Warm Period (with temperatures much higher than today), the Little Ice Age, the Maunder and Dalton Minimum, much colder than today are not a strong confirmation of a climate driven by natural cycles?

Another dumb layman’s thought from yours truly ….
If the only way that it is possible to produce a figure for the global temperature (or the arctic or any other part of the planet) is by this process of ‘homogenization’ then the whole idea of trying to establish a globally averaged temperature makes no sense.
I live less than a mile from an amateur meteorologist who recorded the max temperature in his backyard one day in July as 93.2F and duly posted it on his website as a local record. My recorded max for that day was 78.2F though I could have moved the thermometer a couple of feet and probably got another six or seven degrees.
The whole exercise is meaningless if you are (in effect) always cherry-picking and if, as we know, a large number of the sites are producing rubbish reading anyway …
Scott:
“I also see that the folks who support the AGW theory are able to articulate their arguments much better than those that are anti-AGW.”
You are, of course, joking! I haven’t heard any argument from the supporters of AGW theory, except for the few that come on here and are infected by our natural good manners. They don’t argue; they assert. They don’t articulate; they insult. You agree with every word they say or you are a “denier” (with all that that implies) or in the pay of Big Oil (apparently forgetting that Big Oil has realised that AGW is a potential bandwagon) or whatever insult they can fling at you as occasion demands.
Sheesh!

Ferdinand Engelbeen (09:00:01) : There is no south pacific warm pool whatsoever, even NOAA’s once flaming red inkjet maps (now pale orange and yellow) are reflecting this reality, so the ocean heat piggy bank is exhausted, not to mention the imaginary Hansen’s tropical atmosphere heat piggy bank, the sun’s gear is in parking mode, low cloud cover increased, and the only heat to find is in the feverish imagination of global warmer’s empty skulls.

Ferdinand Engelbeen (09:00:01) :
Bill, there is no heat in the “pipeline”, … The warming of the largest heat reservoir on earth, the oceans halted about 4 years ago. Thus the increase of GHGs since 1998 has currently less effect than the natural variation (El Niño, PDO, AMO,…) which cools everything down and even has reduced the potential heat effect of the warmed oceans to near zero.

But you have not explained where the heat was cominging from to heat the ocean 4 y ago and where it is now going. The TSI is pretty much constant. i.e. the energy reaching the top of the atmosphere is constant. Something is modulating the temperatures over centuries. Many here claim the MWP and LIA are global so if the heat arriving at the atmosphere is constant something has increase the heat in the MWP and decreased it in the LIA then disappeared for a few hundred years to emerging as heat again in the 60s. If the input is constant where has the current heat come from. If as you say el nino etc have cooled things down then this can only happen if the heat is stored or additional heat radiated away.
Storage over centuries is not feasible in my books. so what has over the last few years changed to cause the heat to radiate to allow the cooling earth cycle to begin?
By adding many frequencieswith differing phases and amplitudes together then adding a trend it is possible to replicate the last 150 years of variations reasonably accurately:
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/6135/synthesisedtemperature.jpg
and by continuing the time scale to the future “predict” the next few years:
http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/3739/synthtemp19882021.jpg
(yes I know you can generate any shapes with a fourier series – it was just an exercise!)
Looking at this one can see the last few years at static temperature followed by a dip over the last couple of years. On can also see similar dips and peaks into the future. So cyclical events can predict the humpy bits of temperature. BUT the slow rise is more difficult (impossible) to generate cyclically without getting massive over/under swings. In these plots a simple trend has been used to get the current temperature rise.
Thus there is no reason for a need for a natural huge heat reservoir to explain the RWP, the MWP and the current warm period, it is all a matter of natural cycles, whatever the main mechanism behind it, driven by the ultimate source, the sun.
The MWP was 700 years ago (approx!) what changed for this heat to dissipate and where has the current heat come from when the sun’s output has not changed significantly. the heat has not been stored in the oceans as you admit but over the last 60 years the globe has warmed. How!
One possible strong source of the variation is clouds
why over the last 60 years have these caused less heat to be radiated/reflected?
Why has it taken 700 years for this event to suddenly reappear?

bill
The sun is sufficiently variable on century time scales.
Even the IPCC considers that the warming of the first part of the 20th Century was most likely solar induced.
There is no need for the oceans to store anything in the usual sense of the word. All they need to do is accelerate or decelerate the transmission of solar energy through the Earth system thus altering the balance between solar shortwave arriving and radiative longwave departing. The air circulations respond rapidly to maintain stability.
The globe has warmed slightly over the past 60 years because of several solar cycles of increased solar shortwave entering the oceans and, despite a run of powerful EL Nino events during a positive oceanic phase, the solar input was still high enough to prevent a reduction in ocean heat content.
Now the balance of input and output has changed due to a less active sun and a negative oceanic phase so we first saw a plateau and now a fall.
You must also bear in mind that the air warms as the oceans cool due to the transfer of energy from one to the other. Thus the air cools as the ocean warms.
In both situations the trump card is whether the solar input remains high enough to replace whatever the oceans release. That ultimately determines whether the background trend is warming or cooling. During a strong La Nina a weak solar input can still prevent an increase in ocean heat content and during a strong El Nino a strong solar input can still prevent a decrease in ocean heat content.
It is a constant dance round a point of equilibrium but that equilibrium is set primarily by sun and oceans with the air providing a minor component only and the human contribution truly miniscule.

Just for completeness, I pasted the above “NEWS” headline from five minutes ago off the CBSNEWS website; the Neanderthal Times of live, as it happened eons ago “news”. Maybe the Catlin survey just gave them their up to the minute download.

Bill:
“But you have not explained where the heat was cominging from to heat the ocean 4 y ago and where it is now going. The TSI is pretty much constant. i.e. the energy reaching the top of the atmosphere is constant. Something is modulating the temperatures over centuries. Many here claim the MWP and LIA are global so if the heat arriving at the atmosphere is constant something has increase the heat in the MWP and decreased it in the LIA then disappeared for a few hundred years to emerging as heat again in the 60s.”
This is an excellent point, and you have inadvertenly put your finger exactly on the problem than undermines the whole AGW position. It is precisely because the AGW theorists have implicitly or explicitly accepted the premise that since the TSI must have remained constant, then the climate could not have cycled through these warmer and cooler periods.
According to the warmist’s hypothesis, the TSI and insolation remains constant and there was no forcing and the earths radiative balance remained zero, until humans disturbed it. You ask “If the input is constant where has the current heat come from?” And you are quite correct when you imply that the heat could not have come from anywhere if there is no forcing.
IF THERE IS NO FORCING! Notice the premise of your conclusions. There are many scientists such as Roy Spencer who have argued convincingly that the AGW assertion that there has been no forcings before humans is fallacacious. In this alternative postulate, the earths climate is a non linear chaotic system. Like any chaotic system it is NEVER stable, but continually moves towards its great attractors. Once it moves towards one attractor there is necessarily a forcing that moves it to the next. Therefore we don’t have to invent a variable TSI to account for natural cycles, because this behaviour is perfectly explained by chaos theory.
There are plenty of good books on chaos theory and it is quite amazing to see some of the shifting patterns that emerge. I promise, you’ll never look at climate change the same way again.

bill (10:21:51) :
Bill, Stephen Wilde did reply already with several arguments, here some additions:
There is a small variation over the sun cycle of about 1 W/m2 at the top of the atmosphere. Despite that this gives a very small change of direct incoming heat at the surface, the real infuence is beyond that, as the tropical sea surface (upper few hundred meters) temperatures increase with 0.3-0.5 C within a few years. That is mainly by an inverse correlation between solar intensity and (low) cloud cover. Higher solar activity = lower low cloud count, which is a positive feedback for solar (anyway initially). The mechanism (GCR or other) is not proven, but the empirical evidence is clear. See:
http://folk.uio.no/jegill/papers/2002GL015646.pdf Fig. 1
BTW, there is no correlation found between increasing GHGs and clouds (despite what the models say).
The main discussion is not about the 11/22 year solar cycles, but about the long term changes in solar input. The cold period which was the LIA, was the first period where we have observed data about solar activity: a complete lack of sunspots coincidences with the coldest part of the LIA. Similar for the previous century: the warming coincidences with the highest solar activity of the past 8,000 years (measured as proxy by 10Be and 14C levels). That may be less obvious for short periods (less than 30 years), but the long-term picture is there. See e.g.:
http://noorderlicht.vpro.nl/attachment.db/18258097/Solanki.pdf
The main problem for the AGW theory in all this: if we don’t know the exact causes and magnitude of the natural variation how can we determine what the role and magnitude of greenhouse gases is?

Stephen Wilde (10:56:55) :
The sun is sufficiently variable on century time scales.
Show your figures and their source please
because of several solar cycles of increased solar shortwave entering the oceans and, despite a run of powerful EL Nino events during a positive oceanic phase, the solar input was still high enough to prevent a reduction in ocean heat content.
Now the balance of input and output has changed due to a less active sun and a negative oceanic phase so we first saw a plateau and now a fall.

Just how much does the solar input change in your books? In mine the average has gone from min 1365.7 in 1905 to 1366.2 in 1950 to 1365.78? in 2007? and 1365.5 in 1700 Leifs figures – are you suggesting that this is sufficient to cause the change in temperature?
You must also bear in mind that the air warms as the oceans cool due to the transfer of energy from one to the other. Thus the air cools as the ocean warms.
Just how do you propose heating warm air from cold ocean?

bill (06:37:37) : Lucy: I’ve only checked one station using raw and homogenised GISS temperatures from Fairbanks – the homogenised version actually lowers modern and raises historic temps – but the results do not look much like those in your graphic. Do you know the source of the data used in your graphs? Is it wise to use annually averaged data?
The plot I created averages monthly data a month at a time over the usual 1961 to 1990 period then creates a monthly anomaly for plotting. Doing a yearly plot looses too much data in my view.
Before using the graphic it would be worthwhile updataing the temperature plots to current data and state where the data has been derived from.
Bill, what I actually did was to take John Daly’s graphs, crunch them into thumbnail icons sans axes, and repeat what Daly said about his source. I now believe, looking at Paul Vaughan’s NASA URL and clicking on the world map in the Arctic, that this record (or its earlier versions, more likely) was what Daly could have used. IMO we need some spikes but not too many, for visual clarity without sacrificing the record, and Daly’s yearly plots do this for me. Certainly this source could be used for more uptodate graphs. However, this would still raise problems for me: (1) as folk here, especially E M Smith, are aware, the NASA GISS records are (now) highly suspect; they have been heavily doctored; whereas I’m more inclined to trust old maritime Arctic records where lives often depended on accuracy of the records; (2) this doctoring may have happened, or worsened, since Daly used NASA as source material; (3) all NASA records now start at 1880… which cuts off some of the most important early material.
P Wilson (07:22:02) : bill (06:13:49)
Oceans retain heat. Air doesn’r retain much heat. The sun works 24 hours a day
I don’t know if anyone else has seen this, but Ferdinand E’s charts from Greenland show that recent summer temperatures have been lower, yet annual averages have stayed much the same, as in the 1930’s – 1950’s. I thought WHY?? Ha, a flash. What differentiates Arctic winter and summer? The Sun. So now we have a cooler Sun than in the 1930’s (yes – somehow, even if it’s not TSI as currently measured) but a warmer ocean, due to the past warm Sun. Presto! warmer winters (though still cold) and cooler summers. I think we actually have here a significant piece of evidence that it is the Sun – as was always supposed, before modern Science got too clever for itself.

bill (12:41:17)
The IPCC accepts that early 20th century warming was most likely solar induced.
In discussions with Leif he has tended to accept the idea of a varying solar influence on century timescales with amplification on shorter time scales by an unidentified factor internal to the Earth system. It is cycle to cycle variaton that Leif is most averse to and I agree with him on that.
Cold ocean does not heat warm air. As energy is transferred from a warmer ocean to a cooler air the water cools and the air warms as they move towards equilibrium.
If the water is cooler than the air then less energy is transferred to the air which cools to match the water temperature because the energy flow to space becomes faster than the energy flow from water to air. Evaporation ensures a one way flow of energy because it continues to occur when the water is cooler than the air due to the pressure and density differentials.
However one cuts it there can be no significant energy flow from warm air to cooler water.
In view of your apparent comprehension problems please forgive me when I decline to address your comments. I do not want my points to be obscured by purposeless confusion.

bill (10:21:51) :… Storage over centuries is not feasible in my books.
The 800-year lag of CO2 behind temperature in the ice core records is well explained by regarding the oceans as storing some heat, especially since some folk put the time of total ocean circulation around 800 years. However, I am partly in agreement with you… and am looking towards the Sun and towards solar cycles as the primary cause of fluctuating Earth temperatures. Before you jump on me, I’m perfectly aware that TSI appears unable to explain enough of the changes. I say, appears, since there is still correlation. I’m also aware of factions actively trying to discredit solar folk like Svensmark, sometimes stooping to false accusations and preventing replies from being published alongside the critical papers (as is generally, rightly, normal scientific practice). So we have muddied waters in which to look for evidence – which means double-checking all the time. I believe there is a lot of evidence showing at least a correlation between solar activity and global temperatures; what is still missing is a mechanism. And though Svensmark et al may be moving towards proving some of the mechanisms, I still think we have a mystery, I still think there are mechanisms as yet unknown, even by Svensmark, that we need to quantify in order to prove the solar influence. This is still a hotly contentious issue even among skeptics: witness the steam rising every time Leif Svalgaard and Geoff Sharp get into, er, discussion.

Lucy Skywalker (13:24:15): I still think we have a mystery, I still think there are mechanisms as yet unknown, even by Svensmark, that we need to quantify in order to prove the solar influence.
I didn’t know, when I wrote this, that WUWT had just published a piece on just such a hitherto-unknown possible mechanism. That’s a beautiful piece of serendipity.

Lucy,
I suspect John Daly’s data would have been downloaded from GIStemp (or equivalent). The current data link is here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
you can either click on the map or enter a station name (if known). They offer three versions of the data for each station – “Raw GHCN data+USCHN corrections”, “after combining sources at the same location” and “after homogeneity adjustment”. The data is available for download at the bottom of each plot.
One of my favourite games at the moment is opening all three versions of the plots for one station in different tabs and “blinking” between them (I’m not techie enough to set up a blink comparison) so I can see what effect GIStemp homogeneity adjustment has on the data. There are some horrors (e.g. Aberystwyth, UK)
As mentioned above by bill (06:37:37) the homogenised version actually lowers modern and raises historic temps – at least this is USUALLY the case. The GIStemp code ‘looks’ for possible Urban Heat Island effects and corrects for them. As an example here is a list of stations in northern Norway.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/findstation.py?datatype=gistemp&data_set=0&name=bodo&world_map.x=391&world_map.y=58
Basically, if the station is labelled rural area there will be no adjustment – even if this is an airport. If there is a population size and there is warming in the last 30-50 years, the programme compares the data with rural stations (possibly up to 1000 km away) and corrects the UHI by warming the older data.
As the final ‘product’ of GIStemp is anomaly data, +/- compared to baseline of 1950-1991, this should not be a problem. However, I’ve found many instances of stations where the warming trend of the homogenised data has been increased by homogenisation. For example – here are the plots of the three types of data for Bodo in Norway:
Bodo (Raw GHCN data+USCHN corrections):
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=634011520000&data_set=0&num_neighbors=1
Bodo (after combining sources at the same location):
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=634011520003&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Bodo (after homogeneity adjustment):
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=634011520003&data_set=2&num_neighbors=1
The older data is made cooler and the trend increases. Note also the subtle shift of scale in the Y axis, which disguises the adjustment. I am not suggesting there is foul play here (in disguising the adjustment), I think it is just an intrinsic flaw in GIStemp. I think this UHI malajustment happens when the rural station cools instead of warms. Another flaw in GIStemp as discussed on E.M. Smith’s blog in several posts is which stations are used in adjustment. There are some very inappropriate choices made by the programme, such as high alpine stations and those North of the Alps contributing to the adjustment of Pisa, well South of the Alps on the Mediterranian coast.
Should we worry about this? Well, in my brief survey of UK data (96 Stations), 22 were noticably changed in some way and of these 13 seemed to have an increased warming trend after homogenisation.

Ellie in Belfast: Do tell us what you find for the UK stations!
After posting my findings about Murmansk, I checked the list of GISS stations actually used, and picked out the stations north of the arctic circle. There were only 91. However, of those 91, only the following 35 have 2009 data:
200460003 GMO IM.E.T. lat,lon (.1deg) 806 581 R A cc=222 0
200690003 OSTROV VIZE lat,lon (.1deg) 795 770 R A cc=222 0
202920005 GMO IM.E.K. F lat,lon (.1deg) 777 1043 R A cc=222 0
206740006 OSTROV DIKSON lat,lon (.1deg) 735 804 R A cc=222 0
207440001 MALYE KARMAKU lat,lon (.1deg) 724 527 R A cc=222 0
208910006 HATANGA lat,lon (.1deg) 720 1025 R A cc=222 12
214320004 OSTROV KOTEL’ lat,lon (.1deg) 760 1379 R A cc=222 0
219460006 COKURDAH lat,lon (.1deg) 706 1479 R B cc=222 0
219820002 OSTROV VRANGE lat,lon (.1deg) 710 -1785 R A cc=222 0
230740000 DUDINKA lat,lon (.1deg) 694 862 S C cc=222 65
232050004 NAR’JAN-MAR lat,lon (.1deg) 676 530 S A cc=222 14
241250005 OLENEK lat,lon (.1deg) 685 1124 R A cc=222 0
241430002 DZARDZAN lat,lon (.1deg) 687 1240 R A cc=222 0
242660006 VERHOJANSK lat,lon (.1deg) 676 1334 R A cc=222 0
243430002 ZHIGANSK lat,lon (.1deg) 668 1234 R A cc=222 7
251730006 MYS SMIDTA lat,lon (.1deg) 689 -1794 R B cc=222 10
252480003 ILIRNEJ lat,lon (.1deg) 673 1680 R A cc=222 0
719170006 EUREKA,N.W.T. lat,lon (.1deg) 800 -859 R A cc=403 0
700260000 BARROW/W. POS lat,lon (.1deg) 713 -1568 R C cc=425 40
701330000 KOTZEBUE, RAL lat,lon (.1deg) 669 -1626 R A cc=425 10
42200001 EGEDESMINDE lat,lon (.1deg) 687 -527 R A cc=431 0
43120000 NORD ADS lat,lon (.1deg) 816 -167 R A cc=431 0
43200000 DANMARKSHAVN lat,lon (.1deg) 768 -187 R A cc=431 0
28360003 SODANKYLA lat,lon (.1deg) 674 267 R A cc=614 0
10010003 JAN MAYEN lat,lon (.1deg) 709 -87 R A cc=634 0
10080002 SVALBARD LUFT lat,lon (.1deg) 783 155 R A cc=634 0
10250000 TROMO/SKATTO NORWAY lat,lon (.1deg) 695 190 S A cc=634 0
10280003 BJORNOYA lat,lon (.1deg) 745 190 R A cc=634 0
10650000 KARASJOK lat,lon (.1deg) 695 255 R B cc=634 18
10980003 VARDO lat,lon (.1deg) 704 311 R B cc=634 9
11520003 BODO VI lat,lon (.1deg) 673 144 S C cc=634 25
221130005 MURMANSK lat,lon (.1deg) 690 331 U C cc=638 107
221650004 KANIN NOS lat,lon (.1deg) 687 433 R A cc=638 0
222170000 KANDALAKSA lat,lon (.1deg) 672 324 S C cc=638 15
20800003 KARESUANDO lat,lon (.1deg) 685 225 R B cc=645 12

Espen (13:14:37) “I first ran a linear regression on the “unhomogenized” data, and got just below zero trend […] then tried the “homogenized” data, and got a positive trend”
This is a tricky issue. You will find that the authorities even publicize such discrepancies – it’s not always hidden – (but sometimes you might have to fire off an e-mail to get the info if it is not on a website). There are legitimate reasons for homogenizing, but the methods I’ve investigated are heavily suspect. In short: It’s a messy issue because the homogenization needs to be done, but there is not always (or even generally) a problem-free way of doing it. Thus, in practice one thing one can do is what you’ve done – i.e. run analyses on both series (homog & not) and report on both — at least that empowers fair judges with awareness.
–
Re: Adam Grey (07:55:41)
Be careful with your ideas about trend analysis.
A bright Stat 101 student will easily point out that the model assumptions are not met – (and so trend analysis is garbage in this context).
I encourage you to develop the foundation you need to apply regression analysis properly. You need to be able to run diagnostics on the residuals. [Note: Most people don’t – and worse: most people don’t even know they should (let alone know how to do so properly) — included in this group: scientists – plenty of them — I can even point to examples who are top in their field (but I won’t – just being polite).]
The preceding notes have nothing to do with climate politics. This is just basic & intermediate-level applied-stats – and it is relevant for any dataset (including ones that spark controversy).
–
Adam Grey (07:55:41) “In what way did Tamino mischaracterise your remarks?”
Let me ask you this: Can you point to the context in which my quoted-words arose using the info Tamino has provided? (Note: If you point to this page, you reinforce my point.)
–
Adam Grey (07:55:41) “[…] can you clarify what you meant by, “The time-frame and aspect-ratio of the timeplots can be manipulated to create the illusion of a steep trend in recent years”?”
Have a look at Tamino’s notes for some insight. He does a fair job handling that (particular) issue. Time-frame & aspect-ratio can be manipulated to distort; Tamino & I agree on this. He makes the same points I have taught Stat 101 students (and I am not responsible for others quoting me out-of-context &/or misunderstanding &/or misrepresenting my words).
–
Adam Grey (07:55:41) “Do you disagree with the mainstream view that the Arctic has been warming over the instrumental record?”
Please review my comments in this thread (without assuming that the majority of people who comment here are represented by the few partisans that also comment here).
–
Re: Lucy Skywalker (13:00:44)
It is important to differentiate between solar irradiance and insolation (the latter of which is influenced by clouds, aerosols, …) [Really, that is all it takes to get the solar-nazis off our backs – they’re just looking for that differentiation – (and few are offering it (…yet)).]
–
Lucy Skywalker (12:07:08) “For the natural variations MUST be subtracted before we can have any reasonable idea of manmade cumulative effects.”
Careful here – be mindful of shared variance and the (possilby untenable, especially in a geophysical setting) assumptions which go into decompositions.

Hmmmm!
Not impressed with the title here.
I have now gone through the GISS data (homogenised) and differenced the monthly figures of each station then averaged over the locations in the above map. It may not be classical hockey stick but its very close:
Over 2 degC difference between 1882 and 2008
A steady rise from 1966 onwards rising to greater than 0.5C higer than 1936 temp
http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/4822/arcticstations.jpg

Can anyone here point me towards sea temperatures in the Arctic area?
I am looking for those at the surface and at varying levels and that were taken both in open water and under the ice.
I wish to compare histrorc readings taken during expeditions 150 years ago with modern readings, but need a like for like basis. I also need location specific readings rather than homogenised ones.
Thanks to anyone who can help
tonyb

savethesharks (22:31:46) :
What the article about Greenland glaciers mention is a comparison of current speeds compared to the “normal” speed of the glaciers. But they fail to ask the scientists what is “normal” in this case, the speed in 1935-1950 (probably as high as today), or the speed of 1970-1990, when ice sheet edge temperatures were lower…

Thanks to everyone, supporters and critics alike – everything that’s been said here has been helpful to me. I shall be working on it all. I’d like to thank Jeff Id, because it’s probably because he published me that WUWT took it up. Jeff’s blog is an excellent science workshop, engineering quality. Do use him for this.
Ellie, I’m going to try and turn your Bodø graphs into a blink comparator. If it works well (I’ll post the link here) then you might like to email me a few more bad’uns you find.

Lucy Skywalker (12:07:08) “Of first importance to me was to give something that could allow folk to stop long enough to look, think, ask questions, and do some research themselves.”
Success.

Paul Vaughan: Unlike some posters here (e.g. E.M. Smith) I haven’t looked into how the homogenization procedures of GISS really work, but it’s well-known (e.g. from this blog) that they adjust urban stations by values from “nearby” (which can be up to 1000 kms) rural stations. The underlying problem that creates such oddities like the adjustment of Murmansk in the wrong direction is probably that many “rural” stations aren’t really rural – a lot of them are at or very near airports.
Speaking of Canada: Do you have any idea why there is only one single reporting Canadian station left in the GISS data set that is north of the arctic circle? Yesterday I filtered out all 91 “actually used” (see: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/station_list.txt) stations that are north of the arctic circle. I then looked up all these stations and made a note in the list if the last year of reporting wasn’t 2009. Here’s what I got for the Canadian stations – this is the relevant part of the original station list, and I have put a star and a year on the left hand for those stations that haven’t been reporting in 2009. And as you can see, that leaves only Eureka covering all of arctic Canada!
*1990 710510000 SACHS HARBOUR lat,lon (.1deg) 720 -1253 R A cc=403 0
*1997 710720006 MOULD BAY, N. lat,lon (.1deg) 762 -1193 R A cc=403 0
*2008 710810005 HALL BEACH,N. lat,lon (.1deg) 688 -812 R B cc=403 10
*1989 710810010 MACKAR INLET,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 683 -857 R A cc=403 0
*1991 710820000 ALERT,N.W.T. lat,lon (.1deg) 825 -623 R A cc=403 0
*2008 710900006 CLYDE,N.W.T. lat,lon (.1deg) 705 -685 R A cc=403 8
*1989 710910000 LONGSTAFF BLU lat,lon (.1deg) 689 -751 R A cc=403 0
*1989 710920000 DEWAR LAKES,N lat,lon (.1deg) 687 -712 R A cc=403 0
*1989 710930000 CAPE HOOPER, lat,lon (.1deg) 685 -668 R A cc=403 0
*1989 710940030 BROUGHTON ISLAND,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 675 -638 R A cc=403 0
*1960 710950010 POND INLET,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 727 -780 R A cc=403 0
*1976 710950030 ARCTIC BAY,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 730 -851 R A cc=403 0
*1989 719110000 SHEPHERD BAY, lat,lon (.1deg) 688 -934 R A cc=403 0
*1989 719110010 PELLY BAY,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 684 -897 R A cc=403 0
*1989 719110020 GLADMAN POINT A,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 687 -978 R A cc=403 0
719170006 EUREKA,N.W.T. lat,lon (.1deg) 800 -859 R A cc=403 0
*1978 719170010 ISACHSEN,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 788 -1035 R A cc=403 0
*2008 719240005 RESOLUTE,N.W. lat,lon (.1deg) 747 -950 R A cc=403 0
*2008 719250005 CAMBRIDGE BAY lat,lon (.1deg) 691 -1051 R A cc=403 0
*1989 719250010 JENNY LIND ISLAND A,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 687 -1017 R A cc=403 0
*1989 719250020 BYRON BAY A,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 688 -1091 R A cc=403 0
*1989 719370000 LADY FRANKLIN lat,lon (.1deg) 685 -1132 R A cc=403 0
*2008 719380005 COPPERMINE,N. lat,lon (.1deg) 678 -1151 R A cc=403 8
*1989 719380010 CAPE YOUNG A,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 689 -1169 R A cc=403 0
*1989 719480000 CAPE PARRY,N. lat,lon (.1deg) 702 -1247 R A cc=403 0
*1989 719480010 CLINTON POINT,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 696 -1208 R A cc=403 0
*1989 719480020 NICHOLSON PENINSULA,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 699 -1290 R A cc=403 0
*1969 719480030 HOLMAN,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 707 -1178 R A cc=403 0
*2008 719570006 INUVIK,N.W.T. lat,lon (.1deg) 683 -1335 R A cc=403 0
*1977 719570020 FORT MCPHERSON,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 674 -1349 R B cc=403 0
*1989 719570030 AKLAVIK A,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 682 -1350 R B cc=403 0
*1989 719570040 TUKTOYAKTUK,NW lat,lon (.1deg) 695 -1330 R B cc=403 0
*1989 719680000 SHINGLE POINT lat,lon (.1deg) 690 -1372 R A cc=403 0
*1989 719680010 OLD CROW A,YT lat,lon (.1deg) 676 -1398 R A cc=403 9
*1989 719680020 KOMAKUK BEACH A,YT lat,lon (.1deg) 696 -1402 R A cc=403 0

To–
Espen (03:59:55)
Here is a satellite pic of Eureka–
http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap/?lat=79.98000336&lon=-85.93000031&zoom=8&pin=Eureka%2c%20Nunavut&type=hyb&rad=0&wxsn=0&svr=0&cams=0&sat=1&sat.num=1&sat.spd=25&sat.opa=85&sat.gtt1=109&sat.gtt2=108&sat.type=VIS&riv=0&mm=0&hur=0
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=globalwarming&action=display&thread=346&page=98
Appears to be a bit of icebreaker activity in the 30 miles closest to Eureka-but even with that– the
sea ice area is over 90 percent ice.
Try zooming out for perspective–
Also
more sea ice pics (reposted from above for
the convenience of those who do not wish to
“waste” their tme searching this thread or
messing around with this picture stuff}
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2009253/crefl1_143.A2009253000000-2009253000459.250m.jpg
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2009253/crefl1_721.A2009253000000-2009253000459.500m.jpg
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2009253/?multiple&resolutionlist
Every picture
belies claims that current sea ice in
canada archipeligo is only 30 percent
(YOU KNOW–FROM THOSE CUTE
POLAR SEA ICE GRAPHS
ALWAYS BEING BRUTED ABOUT).
NO OPEN WATER
AT ALL IN THESE HIGH RESOLUTION SATELLITE SHOTS OF
SNOW SNOW COVERED SEA ICE IN THE CANADIAN ARCHIPELEGO–the sea ice may be thin and new –but that just shows how cold it is there now–
and that the melt is over–pics refute
GRAPHS and claims that the melt season is not yet finished.
And icebreakers–
Remeber these ships are in almost constant movement and are contstanly
disturbing the surroundingg water and ice–
and they stop for only short periods(minutes or hours)–
icebreakers–sEPT 2009–
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cutterhealy/3897312741/in/photostream/
This particular pic makes obvious the rapid (almost instant)
refreeze of disturbed water-ice near the icebreaker–
notice the really dark shiney smooth water within 20 feet near the ship–
that is calm smooth mirror reflective water–(there is no wind in this pic-
so the ruffled surfaces are all ice)–AND
WATER APPEARS NOWHERE ELSE IN THIS PIC–
and EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE PIC IS ICE–refrozen or otherwise–
the white stuff is snow covered or frost covered ice–
the semiclear greyish mottled(with streaks and curved lines) between the boats is
fresh frozen —
if you never have been on a large area of ice(even a lake) get someone
who has, to interpret it for you–
once you have been on ice it is easy to recall and relate features–
Here are more icebreaker pics SHOWING
the rapidky refreezing and reconsolidating ice–
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cutterhealy/page2/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cutterhealy/page5/
OF COURSE SOME WILL DEMAND ENDLESS REPETITIVE EXPLANATIONS TO
GENERATE AND INFLICT
CONFUSION AND BOREDOM ON OTHER READERS who might be interested
in the ICE pictures.-
NUCLEAR ICEBREAKERS–
http://www.barentsobserver.com/next-generation-nuclear-icebreakers-gets-funding.4582270-116320.html
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Russia_Tests_Nuclear_Icebreaker_On_Open_Sea_999.html
http://www.quarkexpeditions.com/our-fleet/kapitan-khlebnikov
RUSSIA APPARENTLY DOES NOT ANTICIPATE
AN ICE FREE ARCTIC–and obviously
russia intends
to dominate the arctic over the
delusional blabbermouths who can talk a snowflake
to earth but cannot figure out what happens
when lots of snow flakes get together–
———-
by the way–speaking of graphs–
delusional is the only word for anyone that
puts any trust in those things–
for example– here is a comparison
of the most looked at graph in the warming debate–
the same graph archived from a year ago–
compared with todays publication–
http://polardefenseproject.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/nsidc-records.png
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
what a joke–
why would anyone believe that the comparison curves of the
2007 to 2008 curves are any more accurate this year than last??
Last year the curves almost intersected in sept–
this year the the 2007 2008 lines are suddenly
moved more than 400k kilometers apart.
The comparison is very clear(keep looking at it
the difference will become clear)
—
likewise why would you believe that this year’s 2009 sept
ice area graph is any more accurate–
it too could be off by 400k kilometers–and probably will
change by 400 k by next year in order to make next year’s
graph more warmest friendly.
It boggles the mind to try to plumb
the depths of statistical contortions
and outright perjury disgorged by the warmer accolytes.
They are commanding billions of people to
dress in bikinis
when they know that even mukaluks wont be warm enough–
to survive in the looming freeze–
they are sending billions of unprepared and unwarned
victims to certain death–
they are a pack of slimey genocidal sbs.