By Steven Goddard
The American Thinker ran an article by Randall Hoven that asked “Was the Arctic Ice Cap ‘Adjusted’? The conclusion is based on the chosen value of concentration of ice in the “pole hole” where the satellite can’t measure due to inclination. See the image below from Cryosphere Today for an example:
The statement from the article below is correct, but slightly misleading because March ice concentration near the pole is always close to 100%
If we add the “pole hole” back to the measured “area,” we would get a downward trend in area due to the change in pole hole size in 1987. If we assume that the pole hole is 100% ice, then the downward trend in March would be 2.2% per decade. But if we assume that the pole hole is only 15% ice (the low end of what is assumed), then the downward trend is only 0.1% per decade, which is not statistically significant. (The corresponding downward trend for “extent” was 2.6% per decade.) It is true that whatever downward trend there is for March is due only to these adjustments (assumed pole hole size and concentration). And whether that trend is statistically significant depends on ice concentration in the “pole hole,” an assumed value.
If you look at essentially any available March concentration maps, you see concentrations near the pole close to 100%. 15% is not a reasonable number to work with, or even 80%.
If we adjust the March area for 100% concentration at the pole hole (below) the area and extent trends agree with each other just as expected.
The title of the article is “Was the Arctic Ice Cap ‘Adjusted’?” I believe the answer is yes. The extent/area data is adjusted – but correctly. Comparing this to “CRUgate shenanigans” doesn’t seem appropriate.
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Response to Anus comment:
A fellow is breaking into my home. I don’t take the time to identify him, I shoot – it is my wife. That is Anus position.
Sure, let’s proceed on a drastic course without any facts. That is my point [sarcasm]. Let’s go, embracing the new faith and killing a billion or so people with Draconian measures. The odds now are clearly on the side of the skeptic, BTW. What if we had accepted the 1976 conclusion (“scientific” consensus, even!) that we were entering an impending ice age and we should spread soot on the north pole to soak up more rays??
Anus fulmination is an absurd point, one that reeks of the foul smell of the belief system promulgated by the Algorian sect. Let’s kill people to save the polar bears, which, BTW, have reached unprecedented numbers, displaying another invalid reasoning of the Algorians. It is just a blast of fetid air from the warmists.
Anus outburst also reminds me of the birdman sect that led to the demise of the Easter Island civilization. Instead of finding more ways to produce and find food, they sacrificed people and made stone monuments to gods that that were to protect them in the future. Sort of like cap-and-tax & carbon credit trading, no?
So, no politically-inspired murder?
Bud Moon (07:02:46) :
You don’t suppose that the 3 Icekateers have all thier oars in the water, do you?
While they are looking for ‘likely’ effects of increasing C02 in the Arctic, they themselves are just as likely to disappear due to Arctic effects.
Steve Goddard (17:25:04) :
I’ve been following the sea ice articles with great interest. The premise, as I understand it, the Arctic is very sensitive to climate change and will be the first to record observable impacts.
The interesting aspect of what I’ve seen so far is, recorded temperature anomalies during the period from 1979 to the present are occurring below zero degrees C.
Warm air near the ground is lighter than the overlying air it displaces which results in unstable conditions and storms. Polar oceans are salinity-stratified, the salinity is slightly lower on top in the Arctic and fresh water flowing into the Arctic will stay on the surface and slowly mix because its lighter.
Since the warmer air temperature anomalies are occurring below the freezing point, it seems logical to conclude an increased instance of storms which would add snow and ice but would also effect sea ice extent due to fractured ice at the edges of the forming polar cap.
Ocean water with a typical salinity of 35 parts per thousand freezes only at about −1.8°C (28.9°F) but the action is interesting. Apparently, the colder surface layer becomes heavier and sinks. This action continues until an ocean column cools to approximately -1.8C allowing the surface to form ice.
As sea water freezes, salt is excluded but the faster it freezes the greater the salt content in the formed ice. The greater the salt content, the faster it will melt when the temperature rises.
Clearly, the temperature of Arctic currents, the salt concentration of the ice, the amount of fresh water entering the cycle, and the effect of surface winds all play a role in ice formation and extent.
I read a comment in one of the earlier sea ice articles that pointed out — Russia has build dams that capture fresh water from the Arctic but I can’t tell if this will increase or decrease available fresh water run-off into the Arctic ice cycle.
Another interesting point is that if the Greenland ice sheet is melting into the Greenland currents, wouldn’t this add to sea ice formation?
The concentration of Arctic ice this year seems to indicate a slower then normal freeze (less salt) and thus accounts for the late growth/decreased melt this year?
Isn’t it logical to also conclude less loss in multi-year Arctic ice this year due to the El Nino winding down?
Steve Goddard (13:07:05) :
I guess what I’m trying to say in a round about way, “good science” should fist agree on the Physics prior to applying effect to observed change.
Does the scientific community agree on the Physics related to the “normal” formation of sea ice in the Arctic?
If not, isn’t that the “smoking gun”?
John from CA (13:42:20) :
The slow pace of melt this year has been due to very cold air on the Pacific side of the Arctic, near the Bering Sea and The Sea of Okhotsk.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/ANIM/sfctmpmer_01a.fnl.26.gif
Shifting ice in the arctic
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/News.aspx?newsid=54
“This is just another example of the ‘chaotic’ ice conditions the team has faced since the start of the expedition. But they are determined to continue their journey North, collecting the seawater samples vital to scientists’ understanding of the impact increasing atmospheric CO2 may be having on our oceans.”
Marooned 11/04/2010
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/
“Following their narrow escape from the crack in the sea ice that threatened to swallow up them and the tent, they now find themselves effectively marooned on an island of ice, unable to travel in any direction due to surrounding ice that’s too thin to walk across but too thick to swim through.”
H.R.!!! I taught that song ditty to my kids when they were little. And they still remember it now that they are in the mid to very late 20’s. It was one of our all time favorite songs (we were quite the singing family group of “mom and three kids” plus a measure of neighborhood kids that liked to hang at our farm house inside the city limits).
That little farm house (which was at one time a one room school house) was the coolest little house. It was built with a dirt floor basement so the school room would be up above the flood stage of a creek that used to run right by it (before it was “channel changed” through another part of town). Digging around in the soil and re-discovering the “school desk marked” wood floor was such an adventure.
Isn’t it interesting that scientists pour over pictorial and written documents to get a sense of ancient history and then report it as such and such, but when it comes to our own history, we cannot rely on such oral story and written story elements. Most AGW scientists would never think of asking an old farmer what the dust bowl was like. And it is quite possible that most of these scientists do not have a direct and closely known family member who engaged in weather sensitive work (like farming) since the turn of the last century. So they have a twisted sense of climate history and seek to bland it down to nothing exciting in order for the recent trend to pop out with such alarm.
And so we continue to listen to tree rings and ice cores while ignoring fishing vessel logs, historical farming experiences and practices, and the vast historical data of the last 100 plus years on climate and weather kept by explorers, mountain men, mining companies, and other such sources of recorded and oral near-time history.
One more point, the idea that measuring devices are more accurate than the vagaries of written or oral history falls apart in the presence of adjusted data practices. Which is more accurate? Adjusted memories or adjusted data? The alarming conclusion is that we can’t discern that.
Steve Goddard (16:52:04) :
Thanks for the reply.
Note that the NOAA chart you listed seems to have smoothed the current EL Nino into a normal SST.
http://www.elnino.noaa.gov/
Pamela Gray (08:47:22) :
H.R.!!! I taught that song ditty to my kids when they were little. And they still remember it now that they are in the mid to very late 20’s. […]”
It IS memorable. I heard it performed once when I was 8 years old. “There’s a hole in the pole, dear Liza….” jumped into my head when Anthony posted this. Bonus! I finally got the true meaning of a circular argument ;o)
“[…] That little farm house (which was at one time a one room school house) was the coolest little house. It was built with a dirt floor basement […]”
A two-fer coincidence! We lived in an old converted 2-room brick schoolhouse when I was young. The floor of the basement had been poured in the 50’s but the earth walls in the basement were 3 feet thick to support the foundation of the 18″-thick brick walls. We shot .22 caliber pistols and rifles in the basement at a target in a bullet trap and if we missed… no harm!
Also,
Pamela Gray (09:04:54) :
“[…] One more point, the idea that measuring devices are more accurate than the vagaries of written or oral history falls apart in the presence of adjusted data practices. Which is more accurate? Adjusted memories or adjusted data? The alarming conclusion is that we can’t discern that.”
I’m glad I came back to check on this thread. That is a very good point. Four decimals of precision to a made-up number isn’t much to hang a trillion dollars of spending on.
Would there be any correlation-albeit at a much slower rate-and, maybe, precesion, than that of the precession of the spinning ball described by Pamela Gray while at the Universtiy of Illinois in the 1960’s while doing research for XXXx?