I thought it might be time for an update on this.
Earlier this year we had the big news that even though everything else says otherwise, the statistical wizards of Steig et al (with a cameo appearance by stat-stickster Michael Mann) managed to make Antarctica show a warming trend.
At left here’s the headline from the Sydney Morning Herald January 20th 2009, introducing Steig’s results.
Gosh. This new warm picture proves it. Right? Colors don’t lie. They quote Dr. Steig who says:
“The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling. But it’s more complex than that,” Professor Steig said. “Antarctica isn’t warming at the same rate everywhere and, while some areas have been cooling for a long time, the evidence shows the continent as a whole is getting warmer.”
Yes it is more complex than that. A part of that complex story is emerging this month. Right about the time when things should start warming up in Antarctica due to their onset of spring, it seems to be stalled according to one scientist on the ground there who writes ICE STORIES: dispatches from polar scientists (emphasis mine):
MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA– Wednesday, September 16, 2009. It has been a slow, and sometimes frustrating, effort to get our first successful science flight of the project, but we did succeed last night. Before discussing that flight I’d like to write about some of the hurdles we have had to overcome to get to this point.
The first obstacle, and the one least in our control, was the weather. The Aerosonde unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been flown in temperatures as cold as -30 degrees C (-22 deg F), and this was the intended minimum operating temperature for this project.
Prior to coming to Antarctica one of the members of my research group, Shelley Knuth, analyzed 14 years of automatic weather station data from a weather station located at the Pegasus runway that we are using for our UAV flights.
Based on her analysis the temperature at Pegasus is above -30 degrees C for approximately 50% of the time in September, and is below -40 degrees C (which is also -40 degrees F) only 9% of the time in September on average. Of course the weather for any given month rarely follows the average, and this September has been a colder than average September, with most days up until the past few days having temperatures below -30 degrees C at Pegasus, and many days having temperatures below -40 degrees C. This made our attempts to fly the Aerosondes very difficult.
Yes, yes, I know It’s weather, not climate. Hold the caterwauling. But please, also have a look at the NSIDC graph of sea ice for Antarctica. Sea ice forms around the warmer periphery of the continent, not in the cold continental center where Amundsen-Scott base is located. There’s quite the uptick in Antarctic sea ice when the slope should begin heading downward:
While the uptick now is interesting, the real news is the change in extent. Quite a difference from 2008, about 1 million square kilometers more than this time last year, and well above average. The gain in Antarctica extent this year is 2 times that of the gain in the Arctic at 500,000 square kilometers.
Since the wisdom in the press headline is that “Antarctica is melting – sell the beach house”, but we see Antarctic ice increasing, one can only conclude that like Steigs upside down thermometers, we must also have upside down ice sensors, and the ice is actually less than last year. I’m sure somebody can prove that statistically.
Or, the headlines could just be bullpuckey from the press. Which is it? Inquiring minds want to know. If you need a look a how the media spins the melt season in Antarctica, look no further than this CBS News report from Scott Pelley.
Just for fun; a couple of weather forecasts from Weather Underground. Looks like they may finally get the plane launched at McMurdo.
Amundsen-Scott Base at the South Pole:
McMurdo Base:
metnav (13:45:53) : “I wintered at McMurdo Station this year. We had back to back storms that dumped almost 7 feet of snow on our station. It took weeks to clear out that mess. Late August at Pegasus Airfield (ICAO Identifier: NZPG) is horribly cold. -48 F one day late August this year if I remember correctly.”
Now that’s what I call a serious WHITE OUT!!! When living in Edmonton one year in the mid 1970’s we had a massive dump of about three or four feet over a week or so… quite fun for kids… but seven feet! Wow! Think of all the tunnels and forts you could build in that!
Hey Smokey, thanks for the graphs. What is interesting about the NH graph is that the last year shown, May 2009, peeked (correct spelling) over the median line and almost looks like 1987… heading to a new piling on of ice… oh and the graph is a half year out of date too… so the spike should be higher for today… this seems to be the case even though the red trend line is still headed downwards.
My observation is that Nature doesn’t follow neat happy statistics, she does what she does without our math games. Or put it another way the trend line follows the way she is leading by a gap. We only learn the trend line way after what happened. And we think that we can predict the future with trend lines from past data. That’s quite funny for complex systems that have inherent randomness in them not to mention many factors the best of us evolved great apes don’t understand. We certainly are the planet of the apes.
Anyone have links to the latest daily up to date NH, SH and NH+SH ice extents? Also Ice Mass estimates would be nice to see in a graph. Graphs that are kept up to date daily would be the best. If they are on the side of the site I can’t find them.
Oh, and these graphs show the extent above 1979 by a million or so sq km, so what’s the fuss about? Nada. Oh wait, the shape of the outline has changed! Oh noooooooo…. the shape has changed… http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/e107_images/newspost_images/11_1979-2008_antarctic_ice_concentration_extent.jpg
I do have to say that this fuzzy graph, http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/antarctic.seaice.bandw.000.png, sure looks cool.
I wonder if anyone is mapping the ICE extents onto the GRACE gravity maps of the Earth and taking into account the effects of the irregular gravity forces in the ICE flows and formations? Are these variations in gravity enough to put a noticeable force onto the ice caps and their surrounding water areas and water flows? Could these changes in the local gravity fields impact the NH ice cap, or the ice around the land mass of the antarctic? Or are the differences too small to be concerned with?
Oh wait I guess my question is a very good one considering one search with The Google on the Intertubes turned up this link at Nasa doing this research: http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/gallery/gravity/ . Interesting stuff, he says scratching his head wondering what it means…
http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/gallery/gravity/GRCprOceanCirc_Full.jpg
“Unless otherwise noted, images are provided by University of Texas Center for Space Research and NASA. Image credit: Courtesy of Steve Jayne at Woods Hole Institute of Oceanography and Victor Zlotnicki, JPL. The figure shows three datasets, whose arrows show ocean currents off the East coast of the U.S, 1000m beneath the surface. The top panel is obtained from the GRACE geoid, satellite altimetry, and ship measurements of temperature and salt. The bottom panel only differs from the top one in the fact that the best geoid prior to GRACE launch is used there. The middle panel shows direct measurement of those currents by floats deployed from ships. This region of the N. Atlantic, showing the Gulf Stream, is one of the best studied in the World’s Oceans, and where the amount and quality of data from shipborne instruments is highest. In data poor regions, the new information provided by GRACE together with satellite altimetry will increase our knowledge of ocean circulation. Colors: grey: land, white: lack of data; others: the height of the sea surface above the geoid. Currents flow around these highs and lows, much as wind flows around highs and lows of atmospheric pressure. ”
Yes, Al Gore does seem like he’s suffering from the pandemic of obesity in the NH although he might have to tighten his belt after the carbon markets crashed… oh wait he has a fortune in income from his science fiction slide show… which supposedly raked in USD$49,756,507! That should keep him in the fat for a long time. Wow… PT Barnum would be proud of Gore.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=inconvenienttruth.htm
Robert E. Phelan (11:51:59) :
Sorry Robert, I am not willing to cut Drs. Steig or Mann (especially) any slack for the BS they have dressed up as climate science.
The flaws in the Mannian statistical approach and the team’s judicious use of cherry picked data sets were widely known and they still chose to use them.
And the team continues to disseminate more of the same with the Kaufman et al. paper on the Arctic in Science this month.
No sir, I emphatically do not think they deserve anything other than scorn and ridicule
Still relevant today 100%
The Greenhouse Conspiracy
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5949034802461518010#
“We think that we can predict the future with trend lines from past data. That’s quite funny for complex systems that have inherent randomness in them not to mention many factors the best of us evolved great apes don’t understand. We certainly are the planet of the apes.” – pwl
The only difference it seems from one of us great apes and the other species of apes around today is that when one of us great apes grunts it’s an erudite soothsayer’s paper is spit out rather than an audible grunt.
Of course all soothsayers, grunters or erudites alike, face one fundamental flaw with their science, ahem, art of prediction, er, religion of prediction, er magic act which is that Nature has something else in mind (so to speak) than what we think with our stones, entrails, satellites, scanners, dice, or computerized climate models… it’s impossible to predict something that has inherent randomness in it as Stephen Wolfram has proven in A New Kind of Science not to mention the others who have made discoveries on this point.
This article on the Earth Geoid is very interesting too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoid. In particular the Earth is packing two of them here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Geoids_sm.jpg. Ice and water are of course themselves sources of a serious amount of gravity.
“No sir, I emphatically do not think they [Dr. Mann et. al.] deserve anything other than scorn and ridicule” – deadwood
How about a public spanking with a paddle broadcast on global television for scientific fraud? Oh wait, Dr. Mann was chastised by the NSA… too bad they didn’t break out the paddle.
Thanks Michael… awesome documentary…
TomP said;
“But the satellites of GRACE are determining to above a 95% confidence level that the Antarctic is losing ice.”
That is a far greater confidence level than the Met office believe, who are supposed to be the world authority on the subject.
This is a job advert carried on their web site recently;
****
Polar ice-sheet modelling scientist
Salary: £25,500 + competitive benefits, including Civil Service Pension
Generic Role: Senior Scientist
Profession: Science
Permanent post at the Met Office, Exeter
Closing date for applications: 11 June 2009
Background information
A significant uncertainty in future projections of sea level is associated with dynamical changes in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets and a key aspect of this uncertainty is the role of ice shelves, how they might respond to climate change, and the effect this could have on the ice sheets. The goal of the post is to contribute to improved scenarios of sea-level rise, which is an important aspect of climate change, with large coastal impacts.
Specific job purpose
Incorporate a model of ice shelves into the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model to develop a capability to make projections of rapid changes in ice sheets, thereby leading to improved scenarios of future sea-level rise.
Specific job responsibilities
Evaluate existing ice-shelf models and their appropriateness for coupling to a global climate model, considering the ocean and atmosphere boundary conditions required.
Implement a suitable ice-shelf model into the Hadley Centre Earth System model. The resulting coupled model will be used to study the behaviour of the ice shelf under climate change conditions.
Work on additional improvements to the land-ice component of the Earth System model, which will then be used to produce new projections of the ice-sheet contribution to future sea level.
Collaborate with colleagues at the University of Bristol and elsewhere to ensure smooth delivery of ice-stream model components, and manage the links that directly relate to this project.
Qualifications, skills and abilities required
Essential
A 2.1 degree or above (exceptionally a 2.2 may be considered if evidence of proven capability in relevant research) in physics, mathematics, oceanography, meteorology or a related subject with significant mathematics or physics content.
A PhD or equivalent experience in a physical or mathematical science.
Significant experience of either oceanography or glaciology models, and ability to acquire expertise in glaciology or oceanography, as required.
Demonstrable experience in computer modelling.
***
tonyb
Sometimes one must just sit back a think. The AGWer’s go to bed at night hoping for hurricanes, floods, droughts, and a warm winter to prove that their beliefs areright. The skeptics hope for the opposite to prove that their beliefs are right. It’s kind of like watching/predicting American Football games (yes, I spent today observing those things). Sometimes you pick a team to win because you deep down want them to win. Sometimes you just pick a team to win because you have looked at all available information and made your choice base on that information.
But when all is said and done. The game still has to be played and the winner is dictated by the score. And for all of the pre game talk, the final score is all that matters. And to those that sell you their own predictions; ask them why they aren’t living in a castle on their own island since they should have been able to wager their way there on their own predictions.
In other words, intangibles in science or sports are just that; Intangible. And I still can’t comprehend the obsession that governments are putting on climate unless there really is a conspiracy to usurp the peoples freedom or to just use it as a source of income (taxes).
Anyway, I’ll let you all get back to the discussion on whether ice melts or water freezes.
Smokey,
I’m sure people can form their own conclusions concerning your character from the posts about the bet you first offered.
Nevertheless, I’ll make sure that each month as the UAH measurements come out we’ll see if you hadn’t reneged what would have been the outcome.
I’m not interested in the money, but to see you squirm on a hook of your own making does provide compensation that money can’t buy
REPLY: The whole question is moot anyway, I don’t allow bets on WUWT. So nobody sends me anything. I wouldn’t take Smokey’s or your money anyway. You want betting action both of you meet up in Vegas. – Anthony
Anthony, would you be so kind to inform me when you are finished with Flanagan so I can make a posting?
REPLY: Be my guest, I’ve said all I need to say. – Anthony
Bryan,
if you paid attention to NASA press releases on wind and current changes in the Arctic you would know that virtually all the ice loss there was due to the ice being blown south where it COULD melt.
You would also be aware that the last three years wind and current changes have moved back to earlier regimes where the ice was NOT being blown out of the arctic.
It NEVER warmed enough above the arctic circle to melt all the lost ice in-situ. The DMI Polar Temperature link Anthony has so kindly placed on the side bar can quickly erase this idea!!! Click through the history and you will see little change in the temps exceeding Melt Temp which is handily marked on the graphs.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
A new more detailed study of Greenland showed that it might be gaining mass.
Total accumulation minus run-off and melting was +275 billion tons last year. The study didn’t incorporate the estimates for the other negatives such as ice-berg discharge (-238 billion tons) and under-ice-sheet melt (-32 billion tons) but on net, it would result in net increase of +5 billion tons.
The accumulation minus melt and run-off numbers were much higher than the previous less detailed studies.
So, if the same type of detail were applied to Antarctica, we might see different numbers. Accumulation numbers exceeding 2000 billion tons and losses of 2200 billion tons composed of dozens of separate estimates can easily turn on just the assumptions.
https://eng.ucmerced.edu/people/rbales/CV/PubsP/120
[Another issue with the ice mass balance studies is they sometimes leave out a term or two that is required to figure out the total ice loss/gain so one has to look into them a little more rather than just reading the abstract or the media headline. Some Antarctica studies leave out the central plateau. The Greenland study didn’t add in the ice-berg discharge etc. They almost always exclude the total mass of the ice-sheet to start with. An expert on mountain glaciers was asked on RealClimate what the total mass of mountain glaciers was (or just one of them) for a comparison to the net mass loss numbers he was quoting. The answer was they didn’t have any but it was certain they were losing mass].
When I was in grad school I had an opportunity to join a research team to McMurdo Station for the austral summer of ’77-’78. One of the interesting research efforts I was involved with was correlating the changes in the level of nitrates in ice cores with fluctuations in the 11-year solar cycle. Deposition of nitrates onto the ice increased with the solar maxima of the cycle and the cyclic levels of nitrate followed the solar cycle. One of the side issues was the contribution of the nitrate as a fertilizer to the oceans when the fringe of the icecap broke off and melted in the waters surrounding the continent. This is one of the reasons why the water is so fertile and there is such an abundance of plankton and krill, which attracts penguins, seals, and whales. Primary productivity of the oceans has been shown to be directly related to solar cycles and this is partly due to the precipitation of nitrogen, primarily as nitrate.
So Scott Pelley needs to know that the melting of icebergs actually fertilizes the ocean with nitrates which leads to more phytoplankton and krill (food for penguins). Secondly, during this same summer a number of researchers were looking into the devastating effect of Newcastle Disease virus on the penguin population (Newcastle causes extreme gastroenteritis). While I don’t know if this disease is having an effect on the current population the story makes an important point; there can be numerous causes in the decline of any animal population. To imply or actually claim warming due to manmade CO2 emissions as the single factor affecting a decline in penguin population without mentioning any supporting data brings into question the research being performed on the Palmer Peninsula.
That’s a lot of ice surrounding that red hot continent! Must be a scorcher down there! What’s the actual in that deep red area, -20C ?????
Why is the NSIDC still making comparisons with a 1979-2000 average? Twenty one years is a pretty ordinary baseline – why aren’t we seeing a 1979 – 2008 average?
pwl (16:26:04) :
metnav (13:45:53) : “I wintered at McMurdo Station this year. We had back to back storms that dumped almost 7 feet of snow on our station. It took weeks to clear out that mess. Late August at Pegasus Airfield (ICAO Identifier: NZPG) is horribly cold. -48 F one day late August this year if I remember correctly.”
Now that’s what I call a serious WHITE OUT!!! When living in Edmonton one year in the mid 1970’s we had a massive dump of about three or four feet over a week or so… quite fun for kids… but seven feet! Wow! Think of all the tunnels and forts you could build in that!
Hey pwl our weather observer this past winter was from Saskatoon. It was his second winter at McMurdo in addition to a few summer seasons. He’s moved on and will be missed.
a jones,
The latest GRACE mass loss figure is 210 +/- 90 Gtonnes. Why are you confused that this is more than two standard deviations, or at a 95% confidence level, more than zero?
TonyB,
I said:
“It all depends on how the trend works out to see if this is a real problem. I don’t think GRACE is the best tool in the short term for working out these trends to the accuracy required to quantify any threat here.”
The Met Office says:
“A significant uncertainty in future projections of sea level is associated with dynamical changes in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets…”
How did you come to the conclusion there’s a contradiction here?
Bill Illis,
“So, if the same type of detail were applied to Antarctica, we might see different numbers.”
GRACE is a direct determination of mass from gravitational measurements. The Greenland paper you cite is a modelling exercise on the mass flows.
The GRACE determined mass loss will be a constraint on a similar exercise for Antarctic, not an output that might be shifted.
Anthony,
Now you have tackled the Global Ice Extend to a level where even Flanagan can be transferred to a department under a light observation regime, I would like to ask you if you could spend a publication on the latest Pro AGW commercial campaign which is launched this weekend with a commercial to stop climate change in order to save the rain forest, starring a.o Prince Philips and a frog (the frog is the animal with no ears).
And the new pro AGW movie (the follow up of An Inconvenient Truth), “The Age of Stupid”: http://www.ageofstupid.net/the_film
I think it is good to have our comments all over the web asap.
I merely refer you to the website where all the raw data and information on the precision of the instrumentation is available.
And suggest if your require proper statistical analysis thereof you hire a professional such as Mr. Briggs: instead of trying to do it yourself.
Kindest Regards.
PS moderator is it out of order to recommend Mr. Briggs? If so I apologise. please snip. I haven’t told him either but will drop him a line asap.
Regards A.
The Antarctic ice pack is growing, and that’s a fact. Furthermore, it’s growing much faster than the North polar ice cap is declining: click. It’s called natural climate fluctuation. The alarmists haven’t been able to falsify it.
This chart shows more proof of global cooling: click. Cooling climate = more ice: click.
Who are you gonna believe, The Sydney Morning Herald? Or your own eyes and Planet Earth?
a jones,
People link to realclimate and tamino; I see no reason you can’t link to Mr. Briggs.
[At first I thought you meant Brignell, another guy who knows his statistics.]
I do not doubt Mr. Brignell’s expertise, he is really very good indeed, but I find his website not quite to my taste.
But Mr. Briggs is very good too.
In the end all they are telling us what we knew and should know, and how to spot the charlatans who would bemuse us with faulty logic, numbers and pseudo scientific quackery.
Alas it is all too extant and we must do battle with it as best we can.
So call me an old fashioned curmugeon if you wish but I find Mr. Brignell’s clown a little florid for my taste, but i do find his incisive views on epidemiology excellent.
Mr. Briggs is very good too, if rather more classical and political in American terms which I neither understand nor can comment on.
No matter.
It is the electric light that slew the ghost and it is the light that exposes the mountebanks and their quackery, dress it in cod scientific jargon as they will.
Kindest Regards
So that things don’t become too subjective I propose we take a stern, analytical and objective approach to the measurement of the aforementioned “bullpuckey.” It seems to me that the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures should avoid a term as unscientific as “bullpuckey” (clearly an Imperial measure) and adopt the “Gore” as the SI unit.
Proposed Definition
Gore – noun – the SI unit for the erroneous content of the film “An Inconvenient Truth”, staring former vice president Al Gore.
Obviously this is an unwieldy unit at the best of times, so I would suggest that the world adopt the milliGore and microGore as the standard unit for measuring “bullpuckey” for common daily usage.
NOTE: Three nations are clearly exempt from using the “Gore” as they are so scientifically, let us say, eclectic as to not have adopted the SI system. These nations are, of course, Burma, Liberia and the USA.
Looking at the papers you posted in response to Flanagan, I note that the ones showing an increase in Antarctic Ice mass are for only part of the ice sheet – one being the Ross Ice Shelf, and the other being the ‘interior’ exlcuding the edges – and climate models have always predicted an increase in thickness in the interior (increased snowfall in warmer but still below freezing air), and loss around the edges.
It appears the only study to look at the whole Antarctic ice sheet mentioned in this thread (I did skim so perhaps I missed something) measures an overall ice loss.
I admit the result is probably uncertain. And that the current rates aren’t particularly alarming – sea level rise is 3mm a year and most of that is supposed to be thermal expansion not ice sheet loss. However the fact that observations show a loss of ice when models do not predict such loss should be at least enough concern to want to closely monitor and get better information?
And it is certainly a different picture from ‘sea ice is increasing’ therefore by unstated implication all ice in Antarctic is increasing that I think some people may have.