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.
Bart (01:11:22) :
Actually, that is not what the most recent data show at all. Initial data from Argo showed a distinct cooling. This was ascribed to errors in pressure sensors, and the data were “corrected” to show an increase in ocean heat. But, in recent years, even the corrected measurements show a distinct downward trend.
Like Smokey, you failed to read the link I provided, and thus miss the crucial point.
The famous graph you linked to only shows OHC for the upper 700 meters of the oceans. The Argo floats measure down to 2000m. This is the data that shows the oceans to be warming.
The complicated currents within the ocean slosh the heat around, in 2D, and 3D.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/ocean-heat-2000m.gif
This graph is from:
http://www.euro-argo.eu/content/download/49437/368494/file/VonSchukmann_et_al_2009_inpress.pdf
http://www.mercator.eu.org/documents/lettre/lettre_33_en.pdf#page=3
Such corrections illustrate one of the ways in which confirmation bias plays such a heavy role in AGW research. The data disagreed with their assumptions, so they sought out what they considered to be a plausible mechanism for a cold bias. But, had the data been hot biased, they would not have questioned it at all. Whether the “corrections” are valid or not in this instance, applying the same type of confirmation bias to all incoming data inevitably skews the big picture to the side of the predetermined verdict.
No, the data disagreed with other data. Discrepancies had to eventually be explained:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page1.php
“Even my less able classmates who flunked out and had to go to weaker schools had stronger minds than you.”
And, you believe this nonsense adds to your credibility, do you? Color me unimpressed.
I color you unprepared and unimpressive, so far.
Do some more reading, and maybe you will surpass Smokey in your understanding of ocean heat content.
In fact, just read this:
http://w3.jcommops.org/FTPRoot/Argo/Doc/Argo_new_brochure.pdf
and you’ll surpass Smokey.
Phil. (10:27:19) :
“… sometimes ‘corrections’ really are corrections!
And, when they are not, if they are more likely to go one way than the other, the accumulation of bias can be (indeed, has been) enormous.
Anu (16:52:29) :
“Like Smokey, you failed to read the link I provided, and thus miss the crucial point.”
Trust me, I saw the point quite plainly. The ancients might have had time to contemplate how many angels could dance on your head. I don’t.
“The famous graph you linked to only shows OHC for the upper 700 meters of the oceans. The Argo floats measure down to 2000m. [These are] the data [which show] the oceans to be warming.”
So, you get to pick and choose which data prove your point, and disregard those which do not? Sweet.
“No, the data disagreed with other data. Discrepancies had to eventually be explained:”
Apparently, my point is beyond your capacity. Never mind.
For the benefit of Phil and Anu, let me try to elucidate a bit more what is probably obvious to everyone else. Whether a correction is “right” or not is only a part of the problem with confirmation bias. The nub of the issue is that, once a “correction” has been found which renders the desired verdict, there investigation stops.
There may be, indeed generally likely will be, other, equally valid, “corrections” to be applied which could flip the result back the other way. But, these corrections are never sought to begin with and, once the desired verdict is reached, any slight chance that they would have been discovered is foreclosed for all time.
I will assume all are sufficiently familiar with Richard Feynman’s admonition about fooling oneself that I need not repeat the quote.
One more item: One of these guys might protest,”but, but, [this or that quantity] agrees now with the projection from the models and so offers independent confirmation.” No, it doesn’t, not when the data are massaged to provide the foreordained conclusion. At that point, it just becomes another way of expressing or illustrating the conclusion. But, it is not an independent verification.
Climate Science is rife with this kind of muddled thinking. The practitioners actually believe they are the standard bearers of “Science”, when they are actually its worst enemies.
Bart (21:15:30) :
For the benefit of Phil and Anu, let me try to elucidate a bit more what is probably obvious to everyone else.
This should be amusing.
Whether a correction is “right” or not is only a part of the problem with confirmation bias. The nub of the issue is that, once a “correction” has been found which renders the desired verdict, there investigation stops.
“The desired verdict” – that sounds simplistic.
I see why you like the phrase.
Takmeng Wong and his colleagues at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia had , since the 1980s, studied the most fundamental climate variable of all: the net flux of energy at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere—how much solar energy is coming in minus how much the Earth reflects and radiates as heat.
“Our team has been involved for many years in constructing time series of net flux from satellite data, going back to the 1980s,” says Wong. The observations started with a satellite mission called the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment and today are being made with Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) sensors on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites.
Wong and his teammates’ record of net flux measured by NASA satellites shows that between the mid-1980s and the end of 1990s, the amount of incoming and outgoing energy at the top of the atmosphere crept out of balance. By the end of the period, about 1.4 watts per square meter more energy was entering the Earth system than leaving it.
Stitching the observations from multiple sensors into a coherent long-term record is complicated. Scientists are always looking for ways to check the accuracy of these pieced-together climate records. Since the ocean is the planet’s single biggest reservoir for surplus energy, the energy imbalance Wong and his colleagues detected in net flux observations ought to be detectable in ocean heat content, too. The connection between these two related, but independently measured vital signs of Earth’s climate brought Wong and Willis into collaboration in 2006.
“When Josh Willis published his first global estimates of ocean heat storage, we saw it as a chance to verify the accuracy of our energy balance time series against a completely independent set of measurements. Josh gave us data on ocean heat storage through 2002, and we compared it to our net flux estimates. There was good agreement, and so we published a paper on that together.”
“We continued to update our net flux time series each year, and we concluded that the positive energy imbalance that we detected previously remained the same,” says Wong. So he was surprised, even a little alarmed, when Lyman and Willis’ reached the opposite conclusion in 2006, saying that the ocean had cooled.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page2.php
Measurements did not match.
Nothing to do with climate models, Skippy.
There may be, indeed generally likely will be, other, equally valid, “corrections” to be applied which could flip the result back the other way.
Gee, if only there were scientists looking for these other “flips”. Too bad every single one of them stopped questioning Argo float data as soon as Dr. Willis got what he wanted…
Do you have any idea how Science works ?
But, these corrections are never sought to begin with and, once the desired verdict is reached, any slight chance that they would have been discovered is foreclosed for all time.
Ah yes, back to “the desired verdict”.
If only there were scientists who do not lie and cheat to advance AGW … someone like Dr. Lindzen, or Dr. Svensmark, or Dr. Spencer, or Dr. Christy, or Dr. Pielke, or Dr. Baliunas, or Dr. Soon, or Dr. Choi – anyone – who could look into this Internationally available, totally transparent Argo platform and find those “flips” that would make the upper 2000m of the ocean cool again…
But that slight chance has been foreclosed for all time, because of the mighty Dr. Willis and his unforgiving wrath:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/images/josh_willis.jpg
Where are you getting all your pearls of wisdom from ?
http://tinyurl.com/ybuxw8t
Anu (22:21:14) :
I see you still do not conprehend. Oh, well. This thread is growing stale. Better luck next time.