Back on April 2nd, it looked like Arctic Sea ice extent at NSIDC would cross the “normal” line. See: Arctic Sea Ice Extent Update: still growing
The image then looked like this:
Now before anyone starts trotting out claims of “adjustments”, I’ll point out that the independent JAXA data set, done with a different satellite and the AMSR-E sensor shows the same thing:
Note the area I’ve highlighted inside the box. Here is that area magnified below:
The NSIDC presentation is zoomed to show the current period of interest, whereas the JAXA presentation shows the entire annual cycle. So we notice small changes in NSIDC more often. Also, the NSIDC presentation is a running 5 day average according to Dr. Walt Meier.
Of course whether you are scientist, scholar, layman, casual observer, or zealot, nature never gives a care as to what we might expect it to do.
So worry not, no skullduggery is afoot. Nature is just laughing at all of us.
Slabadang (18:42:24) :
I agree with your list except I think this
The earth is warming…………………………WRONG!
Should have been
The earth is showing Unprecedented warming……WRONG!
Also you missed –
Coral dying from Heat – (actually dying from cold) …..WRONG!
More Animals dying from Heat – (actually dying from cold) …..WRONG!
More Collateral Damage from weather extremes………..WRONG!
US Lakes Drying up…………………………WRONG!
Spring Coming earlier…………………………WRONG!
More Humans dying from Heat – (actually dying from cold) …..WRONG!
Frogs extinct fro AGW – (actually a virus) …..WRONG!
Steve Oregon (23:01:35) :
Amino Acids in Meteorites (20:54:46) :
“Steve Oregon (20:13:28) :
I guess he doesn’t know this about climate models”
I predict Appell will not reply to your post.
Is that a 5 year forecast? Will he still be ‘reply free’ in 5 years? 50? 100? And has that been peer-reviewed?
David Appell (06:36:03) :
The Douglass et al paper was shown to be wrong by Santer
Did he find it in a dark alley?
David Appell (06:36:03) :
Dave, it’s good that you have long comments so we can see how much you know.
David Appell (05:27:14)
The German scientists don’t agree with you. Nor does Dr. Hansen. SeeThe Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/oct/18/bookextracts.books
====================
Now if that is not what those scientists intended, why have they sat silently for over 10 years regarding the 2C tipping point?
A C Osborn (06:44:27) :
The long list of ‘wrong’ won’t phase the believers or those with ulterior motives. Heck, look at Dave Appell; nothing is phasing him.
It was noted in one post that new sea ice in the Bering Sea was 4 to 12 inches, not considered a great thickness, but there, nevertheless. Now, as some of you will know from living in northern climates where you have plenty of snow and ice (though, after this winter, I could almost add Texas to the list), you know of the practice of salting the sidewalk, driveway, even the roads. This is because adding any particulate or object, be it salt, CO2, or the latest cd from Scorpions will “lower” the freezing temperature of the medium, namely water. Actually, what is happening is not that the freezing temp of 32 F has magically been lowered, but the presence of a physical body interferes with the freezing process. But the effect is less than a 2 degree difference. Sea water is salt water, simplistically, though there are many other compounds in their, as well. It is thought that lesser winds in the Bering Sea are allowing the ice to pile up. So, it is wind that is helping to determine the ice cover, as well. But the temps are still cold enough to freeze sea water, which is my point.
Further I would propose that CO2 amounts do not drive the winds, specifically the jet stream. I would also propose that CO2 is incapable of re-emitting it’s absorbed radiation in one direction only, name toward the troposphere. Also, in the process of convection, which is how an air conditioner works, a heated object will not release heat to an object the same temperature or higher than itself but will release to a cooler region or object. This is why a hot air balloon works. The ouput of a burner on a balloon is CO2 and it should be more properly called a hot CO2 balloon. The heated gas causes the balloon to rise until it meets a cooler layer of atmosphere and then it begins to transfer heat, hindered only by the material of the balloon. In fact, you get the balloon to descend by allowing it to cool, with intermittent heating to keep it from cooling too fast.
Couple that with the limited response range for CO2 per density, and there could be no more than a degree or two of warming at its theoretical limits. Most of the calculated warming of CO2 is in the first approx 50 ppm. The calculated load in the atmosphere before the industrial revolution was around 280 ppm, if I remember correctly. Which means that the largest part of the warming is in the natural signal, with or without Man’s output. Any increase is logarithmically smaller and smaller, as in fairly indetectable.
CO2 total load is .038 percent of the total atmosphere. Man’s contribution is, on average, .03 percent of the total carbon load. Which makes Man’s contribution .00113 percent of the total atmosphere. And that .00113 percent is supposed to cause a 10 to 15 F rise?
All a gas does is vary the heat exchange rate until the system reaches equilibrium. This is why a pot of water boils. The water temp is truly controlled by the heat of an external source, such as a stovetop burner. That is analgous to the Sun warming the planet. Or, more accurately, how much other additional radiation reaches the Earth pass the magnetic field provided by the Sun, which varies by the strength of solar flare activity. That is, other sources outside the planet turn the heat up and down, not the gases in our fluid atmosphere.
My bad. I should also add that an air conditioner works by using the Ideal Gas Law. Namely, changing pressure. Gas is pressurized from the compressor and goes to the evaporator coils in the central air handler. Warm air drawn in through the return air plenum is pulled across the cooled evaporator and heat moves from hot to cold. Now, the heated refrigerant gas is pushed along to the outside unit that has condenser coils. The condenser coils are lower in pressure and a gas that goes through a drop in pressure readily gives away its heat as the molecules are now allowed to escape from each other. This heat is transferred to the condenser coils and that blower motor out there (called a condenser motor by HVAC techs) pulls the air that has been heated by the condenser coil giving away its heat away and out to other cooler regions of air. Technically, any air conditioner system is a “heat pump” as all you are ever doing is allowing heat to pass from hot to cold (the law of thermodynamics.)
David Appell (06:36:03) :
Dave,
you did know that Santer is one of the ClimateGate scientists, didn’t you?
David Appell (06:36:03)
Hmmm… on the one hand we have David Appell saying…
“No climate scientist I know has claimed that todays climate models work on regional or local scales indeed, I see this goal as on their To Do list for this coming decade…”
…and on the other we have esteemed climate scientist Heidi Cullen with…
http://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/maps/the_future_of_freezing
???
David Appell, thanks for posting here. The skills needed are really those of a junior high science teacher, since the regulars on this blog do not even know the basics, but you have shown much needed patience and perserverance.
Most won’t listen, since they are mostly older white men, who get their information from Fox, and whose views are set in concrete, but a few will. That makes it worthwhile.
REPLY: Mr Roddy demonstrates the face of environmentalism today, dealing in stereotypes he holds dear and applying it to others he disagrees with. Since he labels WUWT readers as “mostly older white men” I felt it valuable that our readers get a perspective on Mr. Roddy’s claim. Here’s a publicly available photo from another blog of him:
“older white men”, heh.
The blog post that accompanies the photo says:
Climate activist Mike Roddy of Yucca Valley, California, sets sights on powerful global warming movie set in year 2112 A.D.
…
He plans to call the movie “2112”. And he’s very serious and determined.
– Anthony
sustantia8, thanks for the film clip.
Most of the contrarians will be dead or forgotten by the time the everyday evidence of global warming becomes so obvious that it will make their notions sound like comedy pieces. Oops, maybe they already are (google my [snip]). Or, they could be so old that shaving their heads could cause injury. I suggest public dunce caps instead, required to be worn for 30 days.
Anthony, I hope you’ll have a sense of humor about your upcoming appearance in the sequel. I’ll tone down the comeuppances next time.
The graph shows the ice extent right now is well within the normal range for this time of year. But if I want to be a nitpicker I’d have to point out that during the animation the 2010 graph touched the average line somewhere around April 2 to 4, but then pulls away. In other words the ice extent on that data touched the average but a few days later the ice extent on that same day was less by a tiny amount. So they are changing history …again!
Mike (16:21:46) :
Of course the main measure of interest in ice mass.
I’m not 100% sure of that. Clearly it is important but I think another important factor that is often ignored is ice concentration. If the ice is not well concentrated the warmer water can come into contact with more ice surface and lead to increased melting.
It looks like “the last few plotted points are not five day averages” (the two most recent). I imagine some people demanded that the most recent data be displayed (people are impatient), along with the 5-day moving average (leading, non-smooted data). Otherwise, the April 5 graph would not be showing data from April 4:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
it would be showing the last 5-day averaged datapoint for April 2 (while not reporting known data points from April 3 and April 4).
I’m not sure if they explain all that somewhere in here:
http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02135_seaice_index/
http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02135_seaice_index/interpretation.html
I think these graphs have been around for a long time, so I’m sure someone has noticed this before, so maybe it’s in some linked FAQ. They have contact information for NSIDC people, so maybe someone at WUWT is interested in confirming this.
When something in the data doesn’t make sense to me, my first instinct is that I don’t understand it fully, and should dig into this if it is interesting. Not that some scientist is fudging his data to trick the public. There are actually Universities where you can study this stuff full time, for years – you can learn a lot from public websites, but to really put it all together and make sense of it, nothing beats learning from Professors that understand it all. Self-teaching takes a lot of work, digging and discipline, and there are always nagging questions that cannot be resolved without finding someone who knows the answer. Some of the people on this site, non-professionals apparently, have built up an impressive knowledge of climatology and really know their way around public websites. Such a thing would not have been possible even 20 years ago – the Internet is truly a revolutionary tool, perhaps as much as printing was.
“David Appell (06:36:03) :
[…]
project. SO WHAT?” GHGs warm planets. We keep emitting GHGs. And, to no one’s surprise, the planet is warming.”
David, if you boil it down to such a blunt statement, i feel the need to point out that H2O is a far more potent and far more ubiquitious GHG than CO2.
So reducing CO2 emissions will probably not have a measurable effect.
To your “GHGs warm planets”. Well. Mars has an atmosphere made of 95% CO2 but it’s not warm. It has no H2O in the atmosphere.
Obviously, H2O is the thing that’s important here, not CO2.
I know what comes next, the alleged H2O feedback through CO2 enrichment.
This is obvious bunkum. Otherwise H2O itself would lead to H2O feedback as it is the more potent GHG. This is not observed.
The positive feedback “tipping point” mechanism posited by the AGWer’s is therefore obviously false.
Some comments re Arctic ice from Oleg Pokrovsky in his Clivar July 2009 paper about the 60 year-cycle of arctic ice fluctuations.
My mind wonders. Sea ice thickness, when it grows and when it thins, could well be a function of AO oscillations. In its negative phase, ice builds up along the Pacific side. Jammed up ice gets VERY thick and tangled together. In its positive phase, ice does not build up as much and spreads out towards the Atlantic. When melt season comes along, this relatively flat ice breaks away and rides the Fram Strait. But the ice jammed up and intertwined along the Pacific side does not break up as easily. This thick ice, given the right conditions, again gets jammed up along the Pacific side. Eventually the end of the jam edge moves further and further towards the Atlantic side if the AO continues to be neutral/negative. Once it is close enough to be flushed out Fram Strait, it does not easily disentangle and flush.
What we could be seeing is an occasional natural concurrent oscillation that flushes out the Arctic ice pack to near open water conditions during the summer, and then slowly builds up again through this jamming process as the AO returns to neutral/negative territory, which could be its normal phase interspersed by these anomalous positive AO flushes that occur over a 5-8 year period.
Comments?
Anu (08:36:47) :
Mark Serreze is a “Professors that understand it all.” He said that the Arctic is in a death spiral and the North Pole will probably be ice free by the summer of 2008.
Using your criteria, his predictions must be true, and WUWT’s predictions of increasing ice over the last three years must be wrong.
Ron House (06:22:32) :
Anu (00:00:24): Like the article above says, and which is explained here:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/about_images.html
the graph of Arctic sea ice extent is a 5 day moving average.
How does a 5-day moving average change this? If they are putting up data for yesterday, then either the five days must be trailing days, because tomorrow hasn’t happened yet and today isn’t complete, or the last few plotted points are not five day averages.
If the data averages five days ending on the day plotted (trailing), then future data can not change the plotted point for a past day, and the graphs shown are fudged. If the last few points are not five day averages, then their description which you quote is incorrect. Either way there’s something amiss.
Yes describing their smoothing algorithm as a 5-day moving average is clearly an oversimplification. However, if you watch their plot “evolve” for a long time you’ll see that this algorithm works the same as always. I can’t say what it is but here’s my guess.
It’s a 5 day moving average for all days more than 3 days old but for yesterday and the day before they just use that day’s number. That’s close — but only a guess. Things do get revised retroactively but after one revision, they’re fixed.
It is unfortunate that people think this is fishy. The NSIDC does a wonderful job of producing raw data. Raw data is always messy and the NSIDC data is MUCH better than most. (You should see what military logistics data looks like!) They may be the ultimate source of the data that kills CAGW once and for all. They have earned my trust over the years.
From Holland (02:45:10) :
The comment on the standard deviation in above reply, AGAIN show many people do not understnad statistics. Let me EXPLAIN:
the standard deviation is the variability of the population of data points, i.e. it shows the variability of the measurement sequence, which is from 1979 to 2000 . A mere 20 year period!
The thus established shown standard deviation does say nothing, but absolutely NOTHING about the varibaility in ice extent over 100 or even 1000’s of years, hence it is meaninless when used in variability type claims.
NB What’s happend with school levels in the US.. Damn some of you’re guys are stupid.
——
REPLY: I’m a doctorate epidemiologist who specializes in biostatistics, Hans. Standard deviation applies to either the population data set, or the sample taken from the population data setc.
I stand by my assertion that, as graphically represented and reported, the line for 2009-2010 is so close to the mean that, considering all the variability in the calculations, data collection etc., the fact that the two lines haven’t actually intersected it meaningless.
If NSDIC would provide more data, we could analyze this further. I like how AGW types twist their statistics, tag regressors onto regression curves and do other things that guys like MacIntyre can disassemble!
Pamela Gray (08:53:15),
Comments?
As I stated earlier I think you are on to something. This also agrees with the paper (lost the reference) tying Arctic sea ice to the AO.
This summer should be a good test.
Average CO2 in the atmosphere is currently at 390 ppm, whereas H2O concentrations average around 10,000 ppm (~1%). Even if they had equal impact, the ratio of the two gasses is 25.6:1 in favor of H20. Or put another way, CO2 is just 0.039 (3.9%) as prevalent as water vapor; hence water vapor far outweighs CO2 as a greenhouse gas. When water vapor’s superior characteristics compared to CO2 are considered, the impact of water vapor is even higher. Yet even with water vapor’s greater concentration and superior thermal characteristics, it isn’t considered properly in equations that quantify thermal characteristics of the atmosphere by the AGW crowd. No wonder there’s such a divergence between thermal characteristics of the globe and the steady increase in CO2.
Some AGW proponents say the short residence time of water in the atmosphere offsets any influence compared to CO2 which has a much longer residence time, but that is complete bunk–what matters is the instantaneous concentration of the two gasses, since neither has a memory.
R. Gates: “Global Sea ice has spent more time since 2004 in the negative anomaly range than the positve, and this longer term perspective is all that matters.”
R. Gates, since you are courteous in your postings, I hesitate to add a comment that might appear to be “piling on.” However, it would be good for you to know that anomalies here are derived from a base for years which may contain abnormally large extent and area. To compare anomalies to such a base is quite unscientific — although it is tempting to do so given those are the years for which we have some sort of scientific measurements. Even so, there is little justification for stopping the base in 2000, and not all scientists do.
Re: CRS, Dr.P.H. (Apr 5 09:09)
“…If NSDIC would provide more data, we could analyze this further. I like how AGW types twist their statistics, tag regressors onto regression curves and do other things that guys like MacIntyre can disassemble!”
I’m surprised that NSDIC don’t provide a link to the raw data and methodology used to adjust it for graphing as a matter of course. Good science depends on transparency and repeatability, attributes which NSDIC apparently feel have little or no importance?
Clarity of information would have prevented any doubts about NSDIC’s motives, which have been expressed on this thread. Perhaps little wonder that many sceptics have little trust in climate scientists?