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.
Can you spot the irony here:
“Damn some of you’re guys are stupid.”
—–
To the more important point on sea ice statistics– it really doesn’t matter whether or not the current arctic sea ice crossed that running mean line or not. More important to the scientific types would be that it came close in March 2010, which would lead the curious to wonder as to the causes. Perhaps more important is what it will continue doing over the next few years. If we don’t see a new arctic summer sea ice minimum set by 2015, my own personal faith in AGWT would be diminished. AGW is about the longer trends, and this little “bump” upward over one month, is really insignificant, as it whether or not that bump crossed or didn’t cross the 30 year line…
mike roddy (08:03:05),
Your post contains the typical science-free juvenile schoolyard taunts regularly seen on realclimate, tamino, climate progress, etc.
That’s why the traffic is so much higher here on WUWT than at the alarmists’ echo chambers, where most of the traffic comes from a handful of runaway global warming true believers like yourself.
Now that Anthony has pointed out your hypocrisy, will you stick around and actually discuss the evidence-free claims of catastrophic AGW? Or will you put your tail between your legs and hide out, showing at least some shame for the fact that you’ve been caught red-handed, spouting a mendacious accusation based on your own psychological projection?
Re: Mr Lynn (Apr 5 05:53),
No idea, mr Lynn. I am a Windows XP user. Maybe you could ask over at CA?Re: <a
Re: Pamela Gray (Apr 5 08:53),
Sounds reasonable.
mike roddy (07:56:55) :
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:
That’s interesting, Mr. Roddy…
First, your accuasation that most who post here get their information from Fox News may have merit–I watch Fox as well as the other stations and the ONLY one that carries substantive information regarding both sides of the argument is Fox; the others have their heads in the sands of AGW.
Second, most of the AGWers will be dead or forgotten by the time the everyday evidence of the next Ice Age becomes so obvious that they will be scorned as the agenda-driven, non-scientists that they were.
You can cast dispersions on people who are not kool-aide drinkers of an agenda that is far more political than scientific, based on such thin evidence that the crimes of fudging and homogenization are obviously transparent now. But far more than public dunce caps, these villains should be stripped of all funds made by distorting and hiding the truth about the climate, and penal sentences of 30 years should be a minimum.
For mine is not a sense of humor to see the poor throughout the world starving because of your demented drive to prevent the use of fossil fuels when additional CO2 in the atmosphere is actually beneficial to mankind. But as the public moves from indoctrination to an educated position, it will be you who will be eating global warming crow.
Comeuppances, indeed!
David Appell:
“. . .today’s climate changes _are_ out of the ordinary, in that the natural factors present in recent decades cannot explain them. No calculation or model ever proposed by “skeptics” explains them. Climate models explain them when anthropogenic factors are taken into account. (This is shown in detail in the IPCC 4AR WG1 Ch 9 FAQ 9.2 Fig 1, p. 703 (bottom three graphs), http://tinyurl.com/27ocvp ).”
Climate models are successful only when they use arbitrary and convenient #s for aerosols. Otherwise, their modeled output would not match historic observations. Moreover, although I understand the attraction of GMT as a bogey for global climate, there are fundamental issues with the concept and the accuracy of its measurement is questionable. If we looked at other climatic phenomena such as glacier extent or sea level, we would find that extrapolation over time works just as well as climate models studied by IPCC. Glaciers expanded and sea levels retreated during the LIA, and we have observed reverse trends ever since. Your claim that skeptics lack models or calculations doesn’t make sense.
ron from Texas wrote:
> 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?
No.
That, plus other emitted GHGs (especially CH4 and N2O), plus land use changes, plus feedback effects, plus economic projections of population and future fossil fuel use, are projected to increase global temperatures by about 2-4 C (4-8 F) by 2100, as well as potentially cause a host of other pejorative effects.
“”” Steve Goddard (10:05:59) :
R. Gates (09:57:13) :
Arctic, Antarctic and global will likely be all positive in a few days. Interesting death spiral. “””
Well you see Steve, the point you are missing, is that in order to get into a death spiral you have to point the nose up more until it stalls, and in that process, it will go a little higher before crashing. We’ll alert you when the crash starts; just in case you miss it.
Rather funny, isn’t it, that “what is normal” is a warning of dire straits ahead; well until we actually hit “what is normal”, and then it is no big deal.
I’ll take the JAXA crossing as sufficient evidence that we hit the jackpot; after all; why would we put more faith in the previous lower values; than we put in the newer cross the line value.
It seems to me Steve, that the promoters of the “we are doomed” prognostications; seem to get uncomfortable; when the evidence seems to say; everything is just normal variability; and no doom in sight.
George
Amino Acids in Meteorites wrote:
> you did know that Santer is one of the ClimateGate scientists, didn’t you?
I know that some of his emails were among those pilfered from CRU. So what?
Santer is a very experienced, highly accomplished scientists who had been doing great science for decades, and has enormous respect from his colleagues.
R. Gates (09:40:15) :
Can you spot the irony here:
“Damn some of you’re guys are stupid.”
—–
To the more important point on sea ice statistics– it really doesn’t matter whether or not the current arctic sea ice crossed that running mean line or not. More important to the scientific types would be that it came close in March 2010, which would lead the curious to wonder as to the causes. Perhaps more important is what it will continue doing over the next few years. If we don’t see a new arctic summer sea ice minimum set by 2015, my own personal faith in AGWT would be diminished. AGW is about the longer trends, and this little “bump” upward over one month, is really insignificant, as it whether or not that bump crossed or didn’t cross the 30 year line…
——-
RG, what is truly significant is public policy and perception, vs. day-by-day analysis of ice extent!
I agree with you about longer-term trends, we as planetary citizens must get off of this “there is an immediate global warming crisis that will kill us in 5 years!” nonsense and re-boot the scientific process. Up to now, the climatology community has obfuscated, ignored vast areas of science (astrophysics especially) and committed a mortal sin for scientist = blurred the boundaries between investigator and advocate.
Let the science show what the truth is without manipulation, if we plunge the world’s economy into severe shock for no good reason, we only set back everyone’s agendas. We have time to resolve this, and I’m not even sure mankind should attempt to tamper with climate engineering in any form. Look at the damage we’ve done by “harnessing the power of rivers” with hydroelectric dams.
There is no climate emergency.
RockyRoad wrote:
> 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.
How so?
What equations do they use?
And in what way are they wrong?
DirkH wrote:
> 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.
Of course. Scientists have known this for about 2 centuries, at least, as they were the ones who discovered it. Water vapor is included at the most elementary physics level in all climate calculations and models, and always has been. In fact, as early as 1965 climate models were able to simulate the movement of water vapor through the atmosphere.
See:
“The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart
General Circulation Models of Climate
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/GCM.htm
It’s important to note that water vapor is, overall, a feedback and not a forcing, as its abundance in the atmosphere is a function of temperature (the Clausius-Claperyon equation).
However, water vapor is a very important positive feedback — and climate models take this into account too (and have, for decades).
“”” RockyRoad (09:30:22) :
…….
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…..
Well RockyRoad, didn’t you know that water molecules each have a serial number; so you can look in the atmosphere at any time and see who is playing, and who is sitting on the bench.
They only play five molecules at a time in the NBA or the NCAA; but they have 30 more sitting down just waiting to get sent into the game.
I’m with you; this notion of “residence time” is just another one of the silly tenets of “climate science” that put it in the category of “ancient astrology”; with apologies to ancient astrologers.
Water is a PERMANENT part of the earth’s atmosphere; and for most of the atmosphere most of the time, H2O abundance always exceeds CO2 abundance; even over the most arid desert regions. And for the portion of the atmosphere where CO2 finally exceeds H2O (high altitudes), neither one of them has a great deal of effect on the surface temperatures on earth.
The removal of H2O vapor from the atmosphere by formation of water droplets, or ice crystals, in clouds, also deposits huge amount of latent heat (of evaporation and melting) , something like 660 Calories per gram, into that upper atmosphere, ready for thermal radiation to carry (some of) it off into space.
R. Gates (09:40:15) :
Objects in motion. Trajectory is curved.
Shouldn’t the highest probability lie on the opposite side of the ‘mean’ line from 2007 ??
The Arctic sea ice uncertainty will cause the
Bipolar bears to experience mood swings between euphoria and severe depression.
Have we discovered psychotropical drug antidotes for it?
DirkH wrote:
> 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.
Mars is “warm” in that it’s on the boundary of the ability to support life as we know it.
But the relevant question is: how much warmer is the Martian atmosphere with its CO2 than without it?
For that matter, how much warmer is the Earth’s atmosphere for its mere 280 ppm CO2?
“David Appell (10:18:12) :
[…]
It’s important to note that water vapor is, overall, a feedback and not a forcing,”
When people start talking like that you know you lost them.
mike roddy (07:56:55) :
“Most won’t listen, since they are mostly older white men, who get their information from Fox, and whose views are set in concrete…”
Hey, does anyone know when the next [snip – we won’t discuss that topic here – Anthony]
Great piece of information on the link between AO and sea ice cover cycles available for free here:-
Data Analysis of Recent Warming Pattern in the Arctic
http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/6A/SpecialEdition/1/_pdf
The main conclusions are:
(1) The most dominant trend in observation for 1950-1999 shows an AO pattern (natural variability), while the most dominant trend in the IPCC models shows an ice-albedo feedback pattern (anthropogenic forcing).
(2) In the observations, the AO pattern appears as the EOF-1. However, in the IPCC 10 model mean, the ice-albedo pattern appears as EOF-1 (which is not seen in the observation), and the AO pattern appears as EOF-2.
(3) In the EOF analysis, the ratio of variance for the ice-albedo and AO patterns are 5:2. Since the AO is a realization of a stochastic process, the variance of the AO pattern in the observations dominates the ice-albedo pattern (5:20 in theory).
(4) Multi-decadal trends of surface air temperatures [SAT] indicates that the AO was negative for 1950-1969, the AO was positive for 1969-1989, and the AO was negative for 1989-2008 (2010 is the extreme value). Those are realized as the natural variability superimposed on the general trend of global warming.
D. King (10:53:45) :
[snip – we won’t discuss that topic here – Anthony]
Understood…and sorry. I’m just tired of subtle racist
statements like “Most won’t listen, since they are mostly
older white men..”.
Anthony-
Thanks for the pub! Now, if only someone would buy my script…
I’m selling it cheap.
REPLY: Try Comedy Central, it is perfect for that network – A
David Appell (10:18:12) :
However, water vapor is a very important positive feedback — and climate models take this into account too (and have, for decades).
Positive?
How so?
What equations do they use?
Steve Goddard bets again in 2010 the NSIDC ice extent will hit the 1979 to 2000 average, lets see if it will be true this time compared to 2009 when the bet failed.
Andy
The Crugate files show evidence of bodged global temperature data that is the basis of AGW, vertually all rural temperature measururing stations show little or NO warming, only urban sites show any increase. How the hell can CO2 be blamed for a temperature increase that probably does not exist beyond the bounds of natural variability.
David Appell,
“Santer is a very experienced, highly accomplished scientists who had been doing great science for decades, and has enormous respect from his colleagues.”
Is that the same Ben Santer who was conspiring to commit an act of extreme violence upon the person of mild mannered Pat Michaels? Yes, I see why he would be respected among THAT ilke.