Wikipedia : Traditional Santa Claus
Arctic ice extent continues downwards on the trend line started at the end of March, having lost a little over 1,000,000 km2 during April. If that linear rate continues, the Arctic will be ice free around January 1, 2011. That would be a complete disaster for Santa Claus and the billions of people who depend on him.
During the past month, Arctic sea ice has straddled between the NSIDC 1979-2000 average (wide black line) and the NSIDC 1979-2009 average (wide turquoise line.) The composite image below shows all four commonly used extent graphs – NSIDC/NORSEX/DMI/JAXA . The thin turquoise line is NSIDC 2009. Note that the melt season is about three weeks behind the 2007 extent (dashed) line.
During the last few days, ice has begun to disappear from the Barents Sea. The modified NSIDC map below shows loss of ice from one week ago, marked in red. I wonder if any soot from Iceland is dirtying the ice? Hansen says that soot may be responsible for 25% of all global warming.
The UIUC graph below provides a more detailed blow by blow of what is happening to ice area in the Barents Sea.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.6.html
The modified NSIDC map below shows loss of ice since the first week in April, marked in red.
The modified NSIDC map below shows changes in ice since May 2, 2007. Green areas have more ice, and red areas have less ice.
The modified NSIDC map below shows areas of above “normal” (green) and below “normal” (red) ice. The western Arctic is above average, and the eastern Arctic is below average. Perhaps all the hot air from Copenhagen in December thinned the ice?
During the past few summers, the low anomalies have been on the western side of the Arctic. Note in the SST map below, that ocean temperatures are abnormally cold on the western side, which is likely to slow melt this summer.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
The Arctic Oscillation is forecast to go negative again, which should inhibit melt in the Arctic and growth in my garden.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.sprd2.gif
We are still about eight weeks away from the beginning of the really interesting melt season. Stay tuned. The Antarctic remains boring, staying average to slightly above. No meltdowns or collapsing ice sheets to report this week.
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Smokey, science is not driven by money. Post-docs stand to make only 40K after 10 years of college. Scientists do not go into this field because they stand to make a lot of $. Most do it because they are fascinated by how things work and want to understand them further.
You say models don’t do what I say they do. Well, there was a paper by Stroeve et al., 2007 that looked at the IPCC models versus the observations in regards to the Arctic sea ice cover. It was only when the models were forced with the observed record of GHGs that the models showed a decline over the period of sea ice observations. When you use pre-industrial levels, NONE of the model show any decline. So despite the fact that each model could be in its own phase of natural variability and could be showing an increase or a decrease, the fact that they all show a decrease implicates GHGs as playing a role in the current decline.
And by the way, the Antarctic ice cover is responding exactly the way climate models have predicted it would respond. There is not discrepancy there. Note that Antarctica is surrounded by the ocean, and the ocean’s thermal intertia and ability to mix delay any temperature signal from the ongoing absorption of heat. Circumpolar currents around Antarctica act as a buffer, preventing warm water from the tropic from transporting heat to the South Pole, a buffer that doesn’t exist in the North. The fact that the Arctic and Antarctic are currently showing different responses to warming temperatures makes complete sense from a physical standpoint.
Exam question: If Arctic ice finally disappears by New Year’s Day, calculate how long it will be at the current rate of warming until Arctic Sea comes to the boil. (Show all working)
Wilfred, Smokey said CAGW is driven by money as opposed to science, which I agree is driven by the fascination of searcing for the truth.
Can you give references to papers reporting computer models predicting Antartic ice increasing?
wildred says:
“Smokey, science is not driven by money.”
What? In the USA alone ≈$2 billion a year is funneled into the pockets of CAGW promoters. It may be that post docs don’t get the big bucks, but those higher up the food chain, including their employers, certainly do.
And that immense annual flow of grant money into the pockets of selected scientists and their employers does not include the constant, targeted grants from pro-CAGW entities like the Joyce Foundation, George Soros, the Grantham Foundation, the Heinz Foundation, and numerous others that pay universities and individual scientists to arrive at scary CAGW conclusions. Climate science has been corrupted by big money. The result is unscientific propaganda, parroted by a complicit news media.
He who pays the piper calls the tune, and the tune is catastrophic AGW caused by human CO2 emissions. The government and these foundations get exactly what they are paying for: Catastrophic AGW propaganda.
Really, you should take off the blinders and see what’s happening in the real world. If it were not for the huge amounts of money corrupting science, the over-hyped and scientifically discredited CAGW conjecture would have been long forgotten by now.
jobnls says:
May 4, 2010 at 10:01 am
My main point is that you don’t see the sea ice to decline in these models unless you put in the observed record of GHGs. Same with the warming. It doesn’t happen in the models if you assume preindustrial levels of GHGs. So you can run climate models with preindustrial levels of GHGs and run them out several hundreds of years. Natural variability should cause ups and downs, right? i.e.warmer temperatures for a while, colder temperatures for a while, more sea ice for a while, less sea ice for a while, etc. And while you see wiggles of this, the steep decline in the Arctic ice cover over the last 50 years is not captured by such simulations. But when you run the models with the observational record of GHGs (i.e. that what has been measured with instruments), you do see the decline in the ice cover. Maybe not as fast as it is currently happening, but you do get a decline that is significant (and not seen in the pre-industrial simulations). So I am asking why this is?
And yes, the sea ice is declining and will continue to do so as temperatures continue to warm.
Smokey says:
May 4, 2010 at 10:43 am
Dang…I must be doing something wrong. I haven’t seen a single scientist getting rich off of this grand scheme you are claiming it to be. Guess it must be the universities getting rich though, except they keep cutting the budgets and not giving out raises.
Dang, I must be doing something wrong. I don’t know of any scientists getting paid the big bucks…I wonder where they are? Perhaps it’s the universities getting rich since they take at least half of science $. But dang…they keep cutting the budget and not giving out raises. I really wonder who is getting rich off of this because I don’t know of any scientists who are.
But hey…Chevron pays big bucks for me to come talk to them. Guess I should spend more time with the oil companies. Yeah…that’s where the $ lies.
Roger Clague says:
May 4, 2010 at 10:28 am
Yes Roger, here are a few that may help.
Turner et al., Antarctic sea ice extent increases as a result of anthropogenic activity, Nature
Zhang, 2007, Increasing Antarctic sea ice under warming atmospheric and oceanic conditions
Lefebvre and Goosse, 2008. An analysis of the atmospheric processes driving the large-scale winter sea ice variability in the Southern Ocean.
Lefebvre et al., 2004. Influence of the Southern Annual Mode on the sea ice-ocean system.
nedhead says:
May 4, 2010 at 8:08 am
Maybe someone else out there can explain why when you run climate models with the observed record of GHGs you are able to simulate the observed warming trend and the trend towards reduced Arctic sea ice cover, but when you don’t put the observed GHGs in and instead leave them fixed at pre-industrial warming, none of the models show any decline in Arctic sea ice whatsoever.
Well, instead of CO2 concentrations, I could probably just as well fill in my personal body weight numbers over this last ~30yr. time period of time and “explain” the Artic sea ice decline. The fact that the CO2AGW models cannot explain any Artic sea ice decline without using CO2 concentrations does not in itself prove that increasing CO2 concentrations are causing any sea ice decline in a physical way.
I showed above [JPeden says: May 3, 2010 at 9:12 pm] that it is up to those who advocate the CO2AGW “hypothesis” to do the work necessary to show that the null hypothesis, involving all the factors involved, cannot explain any Arctic sea ice loss.
In response, you have not admitted this apparently inconvenient fact concerning the use of the Scientific Method. All you have done is repeat the same question, which btw is a known rhetorical tactic of cynical propagandists. Ignore, deny, repeat, repeat, repeat.
The fact is that the pre-postmodern Philosophers such as myself easily see that the way the Warming Models operate in the case of the CO2AGW Postulate is a case of “begging the question”, a logical fallacy in itself but also a fallacious way of approaching reality: its practitioner operates essentially by assuming the validity of that which s/he should instead be trying to prove [the CO2AGW hypothesis] then s/he simply adds and adjusts various “fudge factors” as needed in order to keep the basic Postulate intact/alive, while ingoring any really inconvenient empirical facts.
There’s nothing enlightened about these tactics. Anyone can use them if they are cynically inclined to, for whatever other reasons, or if they are in effect simply in a strong state of psychological denial, or if they are thinking “religiously”.
By this technique, all you have to do is to simply not let your Postulate be disproven, exactly as people do in the case of the kind of Conspiracy Theory which is progressively force-fit by any means necessary to be consistent with any state of affairs whatsoever, but which therefore says exactly nothing new at all about empirical reality.
However even at that, objective problems with the CO2AGW Postulate still persist, some of which are: the Models cannot model the effect of clouds; they have an abysmal record as to their predictions – some of which actually falsify CO2AGW; Trenberth admits that Climate Science cannot find the heat which should be there according to the Postulate; and the CO2AGW Climate Scientists refuse both to follow or even to support the use of the Scientific Method when doing “Climate Science”.
That’s your problem, nedhead, you do not want to support the use of the Scientifc Method as necessary in doing real Science. You want to instead wage an easily recognized Propaganda Operation as a substitue for doing real Science, something which I’m sorry to say tends to make you a subrational throwback, at best, to the kind of thinking characterizes the pre-Scientific Method ages.
fascinating. Type “the ocean’s thermal intertia and ability to mix delay any temperature signal from the ongoing absorption of heat” into your Google search bar and whaddaya get?
http://www.grist.org/article/antarctic-sea-ice-is-increasing
http://www.care2.com/news/member/255488890/501168
http://pudgyindian2.blogspot.com/2009/12/hey-climate-change-deniers.html
http://www.amazon.com/tag/politics/forum?cdPage=120&cdThread=Tx2EUFV3IDN0T8E
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/05/antarctic-sea-ice-is-increasing.php
Why, you get wildred’s May 4, 2010 at 10:02 am talking points verbatim. I guess this must be one of those cases where truly great minds think alike.
Smokey says:
May 4, 2010 at 9:54 am
Climatologist Roy Spencer says: “No one has falsified the theory that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability.”
Natural climate variability is the null hypothesis. Unlike CAGW, it has never been falsified. The null hypothesis is the skeptical position in climate science.
Unlike Smokey, Dr. Roy Spencer realizes that waving your hands and saying “natural variability” is no explanation at all. Dr. Spencer sets out to explain the recent century plus of global warming by presenting a hypothesis that it has been caused by clouds – the result of chaotic, internal natural cycles that have been creating the right clouds at the right heights at the right places for the last 120 years. And hey, those chaotic, internal natural cycles might flip any moment now, you never know, and the clouds will start to cool the planet – it has nothing to do with CO2.
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Global-Warming-Blunder-Scientists/dp/1594033730
Not a hypothesis with a lot of predictive power, but hey, it’s a start.
At least Dr. Spencer has thrown an explanation in the ring, and it can now be examined and critiqued by real scientists, unlike Smokey, who thinks “natural variability” is the explanation.
[snip] Once again, “denialist” is unacceptable here, even when quoting others. ~dbs, mod.]
Rob Dawg says:
May 3, 2010 at 1:30 pm
The NSIDC 1979-2000 “average” is perhaps the most insidious of statistical measures akin to only tracking sunspots for half a solar cycle.
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Very good analogy, I like it. I have been trying to find a way to get that point across concisely and that does it.
JPeden says:
May 4, 2010 at 11:39 am
Instead of attacking what you think Climatology is, why not see if you can understand a few dozen pages of an actual Climatology textbook ?
http://tinyurl.com/338zuqo
If you can understand all of this free Google textbook (many pages are left out), congratulations – you understand Climatology as well as an undergraduate student. Another 5 or 6 years of study, and you would be qualified to start research in the field. Another 40 years of real world experience, and you would understand the Earth’s climate as well as Dr. Hansen.
Better, in fact, since it would be 2055 by then. Whether the climate was going to be changed in a negative way (for human agriculture) by human CO2 emissions by 2100 should be pretty well understood by then. Perhaps fusion power would be cheap and plentiful by 2055, and the point would be irrelevant, anyway.
RockyRoad says:
May 3, 2010 at 1:38 pm
I’m spacing my garden rows 3 feet apart this year …. If it isn’t better than last year (which saw only 4 days 90 degrees or above and nothing over 93), there’s no use trying to grow veggies. …
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Tell me about. In 2004 we had a mean for April of 85F and 6 days above ninety, since then the mean is around 73 to 76 and a total of five days above ninety for the entire half a decade. On top of that when it finally warmed up this year it quit raining for going on three weeks. GRRRrrr. I hate watching the thunderstorms drench the other side of the county but not us.
Oh I forgot to mention I am in mid North Carolina so we usually see 90 to 95 and above from the first of May on rather frequently.
If you’d like to read more about why humans putting gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year is no problem at all, check out Dr. Spencer’s Marshall Institute:
http://www.marshall.org/board.php
Of course, opinions vary.
Anu might be coming around. He is starting to understand that clouds are natural.
From Anu’s link:
Anu should keep reading WUWT. He will discover that there is no empirical basis in catastrophic AGW claims.
And there is plenty of predictive power in natural variability. Only CAGW True Believers fail to see it. [source]
Finally, let’s hear from Dr Spencer himself. Note his use of the term “slightly.”
We now return the alarmists to their default panic mode.
davidmhoffer says:
May 3, 2010 at 2:17 pm
I had no idea this had anything to do with gardening. My gardening cycle being a bit unique,…..
Try TWO eight foot fences (angled at the top) about 20 ft apart. Put a pack of BIG dogs in between the fences. Smile.
jeff brown says:
May 3, 2010 at 7:07 pm
bubbagyro…I completely agree. I think this paper is not an example of good science. I just thought skeptics might like the paper since it says it’s all due natural variability and not at all from human activities….
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Jeff, skeptics dislike bad science. This paper does harm to the null hypothesis or natural variability because it is an example of bad science.
The null hypothesis, simply worded, is “This is natural.”
Anu, nedhead, et al are giving Smokey grief by saying “Oh yeah, well you tell me what is natural!”
Before you can blame CO2 for the warming, first you have to show the warming is un-natural. Before you can show it is un-natural, you have to show what is natural.
Thus until Anu, nedhead, et al can show what is natural and thus what is un-natural, they don’t even have the bare groundwork to establish that rising CO2 emissions are a problem.
Why are Anu, nedhead, et al insisting that Smokey does their work for them? Can’t they figure it out for themselves?
Smokey says:
May 4, 2010 at 12:49 pm
You shouldn’t expect too much from magazines and newspapers for scientific understanding. For example:
That Professor Goddard, with his ” chair ” in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react — to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
— “Topics of the Times.” New York Times. (13 January 1920)
http://physics.info/newton-third/
This was the famous NYT Editorial explaining to Dr. Goddard that rockets could not work outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, so forget about going to the moon…
As for your link:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=032305H
“Even if the popular version of global warming theory is right,”
— Dr. Roy Spencer
Yeah, the world’s top climate scientists might be right…
But, maybe technology will save us. Whatever you do, don’t worry, Dr. Roy has a calming answer for you.
As his book title says:
The Great Global Warming Blunder
How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists
this implies that he realizes he himself is not one of the world’s top climate scientists.
Which is why he, and Smokey, were never fooled. QED.
Smokey says:
May 3, 2010 at 9:35 pm
Anu says:
May 3, 2010 at 9:13 pm:
“Smokey never ‘explains’ what it is in nature that is causing the varying. …
As we can see, Anu still does not understand the scientific method, or scientific skepticism; a failure that is emblematic of the alarmist contingent.
Anu’s fantastic assertions that the minuscule human fraction of a very minor trace gas, comprising only one molecule out of every 2,600 in the atmosphere, is the principal driver of the climate is not only preposterous, but there is zero empirical evidence backing up that ridiculous conjecture. It is rank speculation, nothing more.
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What is worse in my book is they ignore the real catastrophe. If CO2 decreases by as little as 1 molecule of CO2 in ten thousand then plants will stop growing and most will die killing most of the life on earth too. Talk of death spirals. The natural sequestering of CO2 in limestone, coal and oil was heading us for the real catastrophe. Luckily humans liberated life giving CO2 saving the planet and the environment.
Smokey says:
May 4, 2010 at 12:49 pm
Smokey, why do you keep talking about alarmists on this site? Where is Anu, nedhead or anyone else being alarmist? Just because they believe that human activity is leading towards a warmer planet, I don’t take that as being alarmist. No one really knows what the outcome of this experiment will be since we have nothing to compare it with.
But since humans have been here (probably at least 3.2 million years according to the last fossil found), CO2 levels have never been as high as they are today, and our activities are responsible. Seems to me it’s important to understand what impact an increase like that will have on the planet. Why you consider it alarmist to investigate it, is beyond me.
JPeden says:
May 4, 2010 at 11:39 am
It must be frustrating to you that none of your natural variability ideas (e.g. PDO, AMO, AO, solar variability, etc. etc.) can explain the continuing decline of the Arctic sea ice, but when you include GHGs the trend is explained.
Where are the science papers that explain the decline by natural variability? There are plenty that explain it from GHGs. Time to not be so narrow-minded and open up to the possibility that natural variability is no longer cutting it…
Anu,
you seem to think Jim Hansen knows his climate science.
I hope he wont start pushing the idea that CO2 will cause a new ice age.
I dont think anyone will buy it this time;
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2007/09/global_warmer_h.html