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.
The fact is, as Dendro Ed Cook so eloquently pointed out in the UEA Emails, we know virtually nothing with any certainty of climate variablility >100 years. So there’s no way anyone can say that modern climate is out of the ordinary (and you’d have to define “ordinary” in any case). And the point of Climate Audit’s findings largely shows that the proxies for past temperatures are wildly inconsistent. One has to do some extreme cherry-picking to get what you want.
Slightly OT however, I was fortunate to have a chat with a young man last night while at some friends celebrating Easter who was convinced Arctic/Antarctic ice was melthing and that AGW was as real as his soccer desires. He kept using the word “believe” when talking about “global warming” and “climate change”, which to me implies factless faith, and was all due to C02 emissions etc (We both agreed that “cleaning up” consumption was a good thing). I asked where he was getting his “information”. School was the answer. Just out of interest I then asked him how much CO2 he thought was in the air. He said about 40%, according to his teachers. That worried me a bit, but was not a surprise really. He was quite shocked when I said the actual concentration of CO2 was only 0.0385%, or as we say here in Aus, 9 10ths of bugger all!
This is what is being taught in schools in Aus.
David Appell (18:17:44)
I agree, except those claims about the 2C degrees were made by scientists as their official offering of their professional craft. You correctly state such claims were bogus, however that did not stop those scientists from delivering the expected answer for the politicians. As the article I quoted stated: “To avoid even greater damage to human beings and nature, the scientists warned, the temperature on Earth could not be more than two degrees Celsius higher than it was before the beginning of industrialization.”
That is capturing the essence of a tipping point. Therefore, I cannot accept you original statement (“…the science of tipping points is
not yet that rigorous, and no scientist is making hard claims about them”) being valid.
note to moderators: Is there a way to have a review feature added before posting a comment? I didn’t mean to bold the last paragraph.
[Reply: Fixed. Sorry, but WordPress does not provide a preview function. ~dbs, mod.]
“Back on April 2nd, it looked like Arctic Sea ice would cross the “normal” line.”
Depends which normal you normaly use!
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
Jeff Alberts (19:07:47) :
I agree that station records < 130 years are insufficient to show what is really going on with climate, local, regional or otherwise.
However, there are a fair number of such station records, and they need to be kept up. Also, there are plenty of stations nearing 90 years that need to be looked after, and in some case, put back on line. You don't want to be saying 40 years from now how much we regretted not staying with it.
In the current situation, with stations of record being shut down or moved too far, the institutions are heading in the wrong direction 3/4 through the race.
This is no time for quitting.
David Appell: “I don’t know of anyone who is claiming that ice is being melted directly by infrared radiation, but by warmer air and ocean water.”
This demonstrates a lack of understanding radiation basics. IR transfer by CO2 at LTE does not warm the atmosphere, infact the upper troposphere is cooled by the 15 micron emission reaching a peak at upper tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures. Kirchhoff’s law holds in the troposphere and what is absorbed by Co2 becomes the IR downwell to the surface. Theoretically, it is the downwell that reduces surface cooling and allows the SURFACE to warm. ( although I seriously question the importance of this with the window and the bulk of H20 absorption being at shorter
wavelengths ) The only way the troposphere is warmed is by dry and moist convection from water vapor, as well as conduction from the surface, although that is a minor process.
If Co2 radiation is contributing to arctic melting, then it makes no sense that ice growth as we are seeing would be possible as CO2 continues to increase in the atmosphere.
Why is this Appell guy trotting out all this old nonsense.
“No calculation or model ever proposed by “skeptics” explains them. [Only]Climate models explain them when anthropogenic factors are taken into account.”
The so called “explanation” is nothing but therorizing in an environment of vast unknowns and many errors and does nothing to provided evidence of AGW.
Yet Appell appears thoroughly convinced of all things AGW.
I see he also picks and chooses what to respond to. Leaving the more cogent and debunking responses to his claims unanswered.
Apparently he reads what he wants to read.
His preference for truncating a conversation when it becomes problematic for his case is common practice among the more aggresive and fanatic warmers.
Every time I look at the animated chart above with the frisky blue line, the imagine of nurse Ratched threatening with a cold spoon comes to mind.
David Appell (18:17:44) : “First of all, the 2C target is not based strictly on concerns about tipping points. Nor it is a scientific target. It’s more a target based on a vast assay of the situation…”
More accurately yet, it’s based on a half-vast assay of the situation from Herr Dr. Schnellhubris.
David Appell (15:33:14) : “In any case, your comment is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, which is: is the Arctic ocean warming or not? If you want to measure that via ice, you need to consider the total volume of ice, not just its surface area. It’s very relevant that the yearly ice is getting younger, ie thinner.
No, the discussion at hand is the Arctic ice extent.
“If you want to drive across a lake, do you care only if there is ice on the surface. Or do you also care about how thick it is?”
A false analogy. Nor is the thinner ice established as factual.
R. Gates (09:38:16) : I love the anthropomorphism…”nature is laughing at us…”
Maybe the formal reference is from Einstein – “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.”
Steve Oregon (20:13:28) :
I guess he doesn’t know this about climate models:
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
On the credibility of climate predictions (peer-reviewed)
Abstract
“Geographically distributed predictions of future climate, obtained through climate models, are widely used in hydrology and many other disciplines, typically without assessing their reliability. Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long (over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible, whereas a common argument that models can perform better at larger spatial scales is unsupported.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4364173/On-the-credibility-of-climate-predictions
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
and I guess he doesn’t know about this:
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions (peer-reviewed)
Abstract
“We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22 Climate of the 20th Century model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs. These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data. Copyright © 2007 Royal Meteorological Society”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/904914/A-comparison-of-tropical-temperature-trends-with-model-predictions
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and, he doesn’t know about this, I guess:
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations (peer-reviewed)
The warm/rainy phase of a composited average of fifteen oscillations is accompanied by a net reduction in radiative input into the ocean-atmosphere system, with longwave heating anomalies transitioning to longwave cooling during the rainy phase. The increase in longwave cooling is traced to decreasing coverage by ice clouds, potentially supporting Lindzen’s ‘‘infrared iris’’ hypothesis of climate stabilization. (i.e., clouds have a negative feedback)
http://blog.acton.org/uploads/Spencer_07GRL.pdf
According to Accuweather, and Eurekalert, Danish scientists claim that algae and plants play a critical role in creating clouds.
“The reason for the lack of clouds back in earth’s childhood can be explained by the process by which clouds form. This process requires chemical substances that are produced by algae and plants, which did not exist at the time.
The Danish scientists were trying to explain why the Earth was not covered by ice around 4 million years ago, when the Sun was 25-30% fainter than it is now. Their explanation is that the lack of algae and plants, prior to the origin of life on Earth, reduced cloud formation and therefore allowed the faint Sunlight to reach the surface and warm the Earth.
Prior to this new theory, scientists had explained the lack of ice as due to CO2 concentrations as high as 30%. New data indicates CO2 was less than 0.1%, only three or four times current levels.
I think this finding is important in the global warming debate. Greater cloud cover has a net cooling effect. Chemical substances released by the Biosphere have a positive effect on the formation of clouds. Therefore, warming of the surface that increased algae and plants would release more of these chemical substances and create more cloud cover, thereby moderating the warming. (The Biosphere effect would be in addition to the increased water vaporization due to warmer surface temperatures which would also increase cloud cover.)
Has the Biosphere has evolved to self-regulate and stabilize surface temperatures by modulating cloud cover? If so, this would explain a rational, science-based “Gaia” effect.
[Reply: Fixed. Sorry, but WordPress does not provide a preview function. ~dbs, mod.]
Then why do other wordpress blogs have it?
Example is JoNova’s blog
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/04/greenpeace-are-coming-we-know-where-you-live/#comments
You can ask her about Steve LeMaster who fixed it up for her.He used to be the owner of the forum I now own.
REPLY: If you operate a blog on your own server, you can add such plugins. WUWT operates on wordpress.com as does climateaudit.org. They don’t allow the preview plugin for some reason. – Anthony
[revised to change “million” to “billion”] According to Accuweather, and Eurekalert, Danish scientists claim that algae and plants play a critical role in creating clouds.
“The reason for the lack of clouds back in earth’s childhood can be explained by the process by which clouds form. This process requires chemical substances that are produced by algae and plants, which did not exist at the time.
The Danish scientists were trying to explain why the Earth was not covered by ice around 4 billion years ago, when the Sun was 25-30% fainter than it is now. Their explanation is that the lack of algae and plants, prior to the origin of life on Earth, reduced cloud formation and therefore allowed the faint Sunlight to reach the surface and warm the Earth.
Prior to this new theory, scientists had explained the lack of ice as due to CO2 concentrations as high as 30%. New data indicates CO2 was less than 0.1%, only three or four times current levels.
I think this finding is important in the global warming debate. Greater cloud cover has a net cooling effect. Chemical substances released by the Biosphere have a positive effect on the formation of clouds. Therefore, warming of the surface that increased algae and plants would release more of these chemical substances and create more cloud cover, thereby moderating the warming. (The Biosphere effect would be in addition to the increased water vaporization due to warmer surface temperatures which would also increase cloud cover.)
Has the Biosphere has evolved to self-regulate and stabilize surface temperatures by modulating cloud cover? If so, this would explain a rational, science-based “Gaia” effect.
R Gates: What exactly, is the “normal” global sea ice average extent?
Or do you think that a 21 year average from 1979-2000 on a planet that is approx. 5.5 billion years old is a large enough sample?
21/5500000000…. Think about it.
In response to many posts:
Sorry if the use of the word “rot” has insulted some, regarding my own lack of caring about the political side of the AGW debate. It simply does not interest me in this particular venue. Trust me, in my work-a-day life, I get plenty of politics, and you’d probably be surprised where I stand on issues. Be that as it my, I come here for the scientific discussions, really want and need to get a break from the politics, and simply was responding to the suggestion that I am a “spammer”.
And Smokey, I’m here for the long haul. I won’t go away just because you think I should, and I’ll keep calling AGW a theory in the general sense of the word, and I think the meaning is quite clear. You can give me all the reasons you want for me not using the word, but I think you are splitting hairs and simply don’t like the fact that I’m one of the few AGW “warmists” who won’t go away when challenged with what I consider nonsense.
Ice! Ice! My kingdom for some ice!
For a movement hellbent on change (the progressives), they sure don’t walk the talk when it comes to the Earth. They are so sure of what the Earth’s climate should be (though none will tell us), that it can not “change”. They want to look at a piece of ice and proclaim that if anything happens to that ice, we are all going to perish.
Here is what I say. Find and use all of the energy possible to help make life work for your nation. Allow prosperity and intellect within the society. Have faith that a new energy source will be discovered before society folds. If you worry; do not have children. We (people) have as much right to this planet as Ebola, AIDS, or bubonic have. But stop herding the people. Leave that for cattle and sheep. We are, after all, smarter then they are.
Thanks for bringing this to Anthony’s attention in Tips & Notes, Dave.
It has produced a very interesting thread.
(Tips & Notes. Dave Beal (07:45:06) 🙂
R. Gates – continue to post on on this site ; I find your comments to be an interesting challenge to my beliefs. I do not consider you to be a spammer, but someone who, like the rest of us, is looking for the truth. I may not agree with your views, but I am willing to hear them. cheers.
Climate “averages” are usually based on some 30 year period.
Now that the sea ice data started with satellite observations in 1979 have a 30 year dataset, some sites are starting to use those averages:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
You’re right, in some sense this “average” is arbitrary.
But in another sense, non-cyclic climate trends are significant, especially if they were forecast as the early stages of a dangerous century-scale planetary climate change. Since the average human life expectancy is 67.2 years these days, climate change on time scales of 50,000 years, or 50 million, will not get much attention or worry. But for people with children and grandchildren, or corporations and countries looking ahead to the 22nd century, time scales of 100 years is serious.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20091005_Figure3.png
People can explain a 30 year trend like this differently (part of a 60 year ocean cycle ? An unusual statistical fluke ? Measurement/analysis errors ? Changes in wind patterns because of deforestation ? Who cares ? ), but it was one of the early (1980’s) climatologist predictions as to what would happen because of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. They don’t get $billions in funding to study this stuff because of their good looks.
If the trendline were to reverse, that would be a big surprise to many climatologists. Some say they expect the trendline to nosedive down (nonlinear), because of endgame effects in the Arctic (ice thinning, faster summer heating with low albedo water vs. high albedo ice/snow , methane outgassing from permafrost melting, whatever). That’s the basis for those “ice free in the Arctic summers by 2013” predictions.
Could it drop 3 million sq km of sea ice area lower than summer 2007 that quickly ?
Very few scientists say yes.
I am not convinced that there is no fudging here. On the amplified animated gif, which you see by clicking on the gif, if you put the point of your cursor on the end point on March 31, then on April 1, the line has dropped by one pixel. Okay, let’s assume some kind of rounding error is to blame. But then, on April 2, it drops by yet another pixel. No kind of rounding error can take you from N to N-2. If the graph is done automatically by computer, this just cannot happen (assuming there is a data point each day, which there is). So no, I cannot agree that this has not been fudged, unless someone can explain clearly a mathematical mechanism – any mechanism – that results in rounding skipping an integer.
The same pattern repeats for the pixel appearing on April 1. The April 2 pixel is the maximum point of the graph – on April 2. But on April 3 the point has dropped below March 31, which now becomes the (lower than it was on March 31!) maximum. The curve resembles most a piece of rope being pushed forwards and flopping over, it doesn’t have any hallmarks of a record of fixed historical events at all.
I have prepared a modified graphic showing all four curves for easy comparison:
http://peacelegacy.org/articles/was-data-manipulated
To me this has fraud written all over it. BTW, if anyone thinks WUWT is just a “shill for Big Oil” or some such, Anthony’s reticence to point the finger at this strange sequence of graphics should change their minds.
What we really need is the actual data – no, not as it can be downloaded today, but as it was on the server at the same time each plot was put up. But unless someone has done this, I don’t see how we can trust NSIDC.
R. Gates (09:38:16) :
I love the anthropomorphism…”nature is laughing at us…”
But don’t give up you who are AGW sceptics, it may still cross that barrier. 🙂
REPLY: Actually, the 2009-2010 line is well within one standard deviation of the 1979-2000 average, so for all practical purposes, it has crossed the barrier. 😉
Anthony, considering all the publicity that the NSIDC graphs have had over the past few days, don’t you think they might try to dress up their upcoming report for damage control? The Telegraph story was a killer, and there are tons more online.
We shall see!