Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I don’t know what to make of this one. I was wandering the web when I came across a Reuters article about a scientific study called “Global Floating Ice In “Constant Retreat”: Study“.
The Reuters article opens with this arresting text (emphasis mine):
LONDON
Wed Apr 28, 2010 1:38pm EDT
(Reuters) – The world’s floating ice is in “constant retreat,” showing an instability which will increase global sea levels, according to a report published in Geophysical Research Letters on Wednesday.
Floating ice had disappeared at a steady rate over the past 10 years, according to the first measurement of its kind.
“Hello,” sez I, “how can the sea ice be in constant retreat?” I knew from my previous research that the global ice was not in any kind of retreat at all.
I was also suspicious because of the next part of the quote:
“It’s a large number,” said Professor Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds, lead author of the paper, estimating the net loss of floating sea ice and ice shelves in the last decade at 7,420 cubic kilometers.
I went out to find a graphic to explain how that kind of huge ice loss might have happened, and the best explanation I could find was this one:
Figure 1. Oooops. How the floating ice shelves cracked off and lost 7,420 cubic kilometres.
Next, I went off to find the actual paper, and discovered a curious thing.
So what did I discover … and why is their quote suspicious?
Let me start with why their quote is suspicious. It is their claim that the earth has lost 7,420 cubic kilometres of ice. As I have mentioned elsewhere, when I see numbers I automatically do an “order of magnitude” calculation in my head to see if they are reasonable or not.
I knew from my previous research that there is about twenty million square kilometres (km^2) of floating ice on the planet. I also knew that much of it out towards the edges is only a metre or two thick.
So if the ice averaged say 1.5 metres thick out at the edges where the loss happens, a seven thousand cubic kilometer loss would mean a total loss of ice area of about five million km^2, or a quarter of the area of the world’s floating ice. I think someone would have noticed that before now …
Of course, that made me wonder if the problem was in the study, or in the Reuters quote. However, that same number (7,420 cubic kilometres lost) appeared in no less than 81 other online publications. So I went haring off to find the article.
One of publications reporting the story, NewScientist, 5 May, 2010, gave the “doi:” for the article. The DOI is the “Digital Object Identifier”, and it should link directly to the article, which was supposed to have been published by Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) on Wednesday, April 28th … but the curious thing I discovered was that the DOI didn’t work.
Someone had commented on that, saying “The DOI doesn’t work.” This was replied to by someone called Marshall, from newscientist.com, who said:
Hi Eric, it’s because the article hasn’t been published on GRL’s website yet. The DOI is taken directly from our press copy of the paper, so once the article is published it should work.
OK, fair enough … although the original Reuters article was allegedly published on April 28, and today is May 28, and the DOI still isn’t working. So I went to the GRL web site to see what I could find.
I first did a search for any articles by “Shepherd” in “GRL” for “2010”, and I got this:
Figure 2. Ooooops …
Thinking it might have been misfiled, I searched through all of the May articles for anything by Shepherd. Nil. I looked through the May articles for anything regarding “ice”. Nada. I repeated both searches for April. Once again, zip. Niente. Nothing.
I thought “Well, maybe it appeared in another journal”. So I took a look on Google, but I found nothing. Google did find 32,500 instances of “ice in constant retreat”, of which 7,550 also contained “GRL”.
Google also revealed that the report of the study has been picked up by ABC News, NewsDaily, Yahoo News, New Scientist, Arab News, and ScienceDaily. It was featured on Joe Romm’s global warming blog “ClimateProgress”. It has been referred to in blogs and news reports from India, Australia, Russia, and China. It shows up on TweetMeme, Huffington Post, and Facebook. Even Scientific American has an article on it.
So at this point, it has gone round and round the world. It has been illustrated with all kinds of pictures of melting ice, and of global ice extent, and (inevitably) of polar bears. It has been discussed and debated and dissected around the web.
And with all of that publicity, with all those news reports, with all that discussion and debate … as near as I can determine, despite Reuters saying it was published a month ago, the study has never been published anywhere.
Not only that, but nobody seems to have noticed that the study has never been published.
Well, that’s not entirely true. Scientific American must have noticed, because they quietly removed the page where they had published the report … but it is still in Google’s cache.
One last thing. In all of that, in the frenzy to get out tomorrow’s news today, in the rush to report the latest scientific rumour, people seem to have forgotten to ask … how is the global sea ice actually doing?
Glad you asked. Here’s today’s information, from Cryosphere Today:
Figure 3. Daily global sea ice anomaly (red line) compared to 1979-2008 average. Link contains full sized image.
As you can see, as of today, the global sea ice is exactly on the line representing the 1979-2008 average. So over the last ten years, instead of a loss of 7,420 cubic kilometres, the loss has been … somewhere around zero. Go figure.
You know, when I was a kid I liked stories with morals, you know, like “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched”, that kind of thing.
But what is the moral of this story?
Perhaps the moral is what my Grandma said, which was, “Kids, you can believe half of what you read, a quarter of what you hear … and an eighth of what you say.”
Of course, Grandma didn’t live to see the Internet. If she had, the percentage for believing what you read would have been much, much lower.
Oh, yeah, one final note … did I mention how much I dislike the current practice of “science by press release”? I suppose you gotta do it, it’ a competitive world, but my goodness …
So I guess the moral of this story is, “Never laugh at a climate science press release … you’ll have plenty of opportunity when (and if) the study is published.”
w.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Well, given Shepard’s numbers, and the numbers on this site:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/IceVolume.php
Arctic sea ice volume should be close to zero this September.
[we have it, thanks]
This story was discussed back here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/30/climate-craziness-of-the-week-msm-jumps-on-alarming-headline/#comments
– where I explained that I have done the experiment with pure ice floating in salt water and as expected, the salt water level rises when the ice melts.
Please will people stop arguing about that.
However Shepherd says that if the ice melts that “would add to sea level rise by the width of a few human hairs”. So all of this is unnecessary scaremongering. The ice is going to freeze again each year anyway.
Have a look at Scientific American’s deleted but cached page before it disappears:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DfYyyjflLXAJ:www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm%3Fid%3Dglobal-floating-ice-in-co+%22Geophysical+Research+Letters+on+Wednesday%22+scientific+american
I bet this is the reasoning behind the paper: “We have no idea of how much volume of ice was lost, but from satellites we know the area (well, more or less). This has changed very little, but our newmegafastcomputermodel says that a much bigger area should have been lost. Given that this has not happened, let’s guess that, anyway, the model is overall right, but the problem is that the ice that the model supposed that would be lost at the borders has had a shared disapperarance along all the floating ice surface, making it thinner. Because the model cannot be wrong, can it? Tada!
Willis Eschenbach says:
May 28, 2010 at 10:02 pm
MarcH says:
May 28, 2010 at 9:07 pm
1994-2004……. using data that is way past its use-by date.
Ah hah! It is as I suspected. They selected a questionable time frame.
(I would have said cherry picked as cherry picked would fit, but it seems cherry picked, as a term, is overused, cherry picked can have a hackneyed feel to it, it might be beating a dead horse to say cherry picked, but I just might want to say cherry picked, because it is cherry picking, and I feel a little emotional when I see cherry picked data, so I should go for a walk until the emotion to use the words ‘cherry picked’ subsides, then come back here and not use the words cherry picked to describe this cherry picked set of data, but maybe I already did take care of not using the words cherry picked since I did say ‘selected’, and not cherry picked, but then again, using cherry picked, well, “cherry picked”, global warming adherents may take offense to the words cherry picked, so with being cordial in mind I should find words other than cherry picked, such as, just ‘picked’ instead of cherry picked, or, ‘marked’ instead of cherry picked, or, ‘handpicked’…no wait, that looks like cherry picked too, um, or, ‘chose’ instead of cherry picked, or, ‘cull’ instead of cherry picked, …. but really, we shouldn’t use words like cherry picked since we don’t know the intent of the people that cherry picked they data, maybe they didn’t intend to cherry pick data, maybe cherry picking was not in their mind at all when they cherry picked it, so we shouldn’t assume they cherry picked data, we should view cherry picking as standard practice and put all cases of cherry picking behind us and move on….so to conclude, cherry picking, cherry picking, cherry picking, cherry picking, cherry picking…….did I mention this data is cherry picked?)
Not so much ‘rotten ice’ as ‘rotten reporting’! Let us hope the good Professor corrects the press misrepresentations of the data . I suppose it’s too much to hope that he also bring his 1994/2004 data up to date.
rbateman says:
May 28, 2010 at 10:07 pm
1979
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
I thought it was.
Say, did you see their starting point? Just in case you didn’t it’s 1994.
psssst, don’t tell anyone just yet, let’s just keep the words ‘cherry picked’ between us.
1994 to 2004,
this is fish in a barrel
Willis,
I suppose it’s the humorist in me, but did you use the words “Cherry” (picked) and “Cordial” in the same sentence on purpose?
Why my my Mr. Willis, you could almost imagine a cool refreshing mint julip out on the Veranda, with the shade from a mighty Georgian Peach Tree, eating a Cherry cordial.
Full of love and peace and harmony and a cooling gulf breeze.
Wood for Trees Sea ice index shows a total loss of sea ice coverage of around 1.2 million square kilometers over the last thirty years.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says: “1994 to 2004, this is fish in a barrel”
something certainly stinks.
Ok, just trying to lend a hand.
Once again I know I’m new in this battle against Darth Gore, and Darth Mann, and the forces of the dark side…. but how can you get any scientific correlation or empirical evidence of something that occurred between 6 and 16 years ago? And not use any data from 2004 till now, or pre 1996?
There have been grow-backs in both east and west Antarctica and then some more mild losses in the West, meanwhile the Arctic is seeing some astounding grow-back and extended cold temperatures. How can you make a bold statement that there is evidence of drastic changes in sea ice levels when the study you’re using is at least 6 years old, and is only within a 10 year period.
I can show a bar graph with time during 4 time periods in a 24 hour day where I had activity in the can, but, all other days for 15 years I’ve only got data for 2 time periods within a 24 hour period. If you extrapolate that out over a 15 year period where there is no change in activity, am I going to run to the doctor and tell him that I need a colonoscopy, because I have a spike in bowel movements?
No he’d look at the data for the last 15 years and say this is an anomaly and you haven’t had anything like this ever and unless you see a long trend in the future, there is nothing to worry about, you are fine – go home.
Then he would go into his office and tell his nurses and call his buddies and have the best spasm of laughs he has ever had, at your expense.
Willis,
I read that article that you pointed me to, very informative thank you.
I remember when Al gore used your figure 8 and one a little farther down to tell a National news Anchor during an interview that he and others predicted the heavy rains in Oregon and Washington earlier this year.
Since I live in the Pacific Northwest, and know the typical amounts of rainfall, I promptly screamed at my television and told Gore that this has nothing to do with Global Warming… It rains, rains, and rains and then rains some more in the Pacific Northwest. Apparently my screaming Pacific Northwest weather history at my TV didn’t help the warmists any.
Phil. says:
May 28, 2010 at 7:55 pm
The loss of thickness over the whole Arctic is ~0.6m over the last 5 years (Sea Ice Cover, D. Perovich, R. Kwok, W. Meier, S. Nghiem, J. Richter-Menge). In the summer that would be 1,800 m^3 and in winter 9,000 m^3 which seems to match the figure Willis read. So the value looks right!
1000 m^3 does not equal 1 km^3.
Winter 9,000 cubic meters = 9,000 x meters x meters x meters = 9,000 x (km/1,000) x (km/1,000) x (km/1,000) = 0.000009 km^3
Summer 1,800 cubic meters = 0.0000018 km^3
So summer+winter = 0.0000108 km^3. How does that match 7,420 km^3?
I find it a rather strange anomaly that the 1930’s to 1940’s had some of the highest temperatures on record. My father was born in 1919 and he tells stories and has pictures of driving a Model A over the Columbia River and I’ve seen pictures of others doing it circa 1930-1940.
Now before one says so they drove across a bridge, let me add that my dad drove a Model A (a rather heavy vehicle), across the Columbia River on the river itself, not over it.
You have to think about the astounding fact about the Columbian freezing over so thick that you could drive a Model A over it. Back in the 30’s there weren’t the amount of Dams controlling the flow like we do now, so that means the flow levels were higher and much faster. Yet despite that fact, The Columbian, and Willamette Rivers froze solid at least twice during these two decades.
To bring us back to the future, as it were, today the Portland, Oregon area had a record low today. Oh but that’s regional the warmist’s would say… My they like having their cake and eating it too, don’t they?
Ugh, formatting is off. In response to Phil…
1000 m^3 does not equal 1 km^3.
Winter 9,000 cubic meters = 9,000 x meters x meters x meters = 9,000 x (km/1,000) x (km/1,000) x (km/1,000) = 0.000009 km^3
Summer 1,800 cubic meters = 0.0000018 km^3
So summer+winter = 0.0000108 km^3. How does that match 7,420 km^3?
The oceans of the world will rise a hairs breadth.
Oh my gosh.
call the marines
call the army
call my mother
call my lawyer
nahhh screw the lawyer, let him swim.
Who is going to cough up the money to call Gore and tell him to sell that new $30million mansion he just bought on the coast of Southern California and tell him to move it back a hairs breadth from the beach?
Any takers?
Going once
Going twice….
1personofdifference; just to clarify, glacial flow is restrained by ice shelves, when the shelves collapse glaciers are no longer restrained and flow faster. Since it is landborne ice it does not need to melt first, it’s volume (9tenths of it) immediately displace an equal volume of water, therefor sea level rises.
Well, according to IJIS/JAXA data. 2010 is now the lowest Arctic Sea Ice in the past 8 years for this date, May 28:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Now, I expect this to bounce a bit, perhaps revised, and may not officially be lower until May 29, and it may not stay the lowest, but it certainly had the steepest April-May decline in this time period, and next month, the real melt begins. Also, it is most important to point out that the first four months of 2010 have been the warmest on record:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100517_globalstats.html
http://www.climate.gov/#climateWatch
And note, regions in the Arctic has seen above average temps for some time:
http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/maproom/.Global/.Atm_Temp/Persistence.html
And our old friend PIOMAS tells us the story of Sea Ice volume:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/images/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrent.png
Now I know, a whole plethera of reasons have been given not to trust nearly every data source that I’ve just posted, but it’s really hard for me to be too skeptical of AGWT (at least more than 25% ) 🙂 with such a stream of cross-confirming data that are consistently saying the same thing. Warm temps, quick ice decline (yes, some was shearing, no doubt), lower volume, etc. And despite the amazingly good efforts of skeptics to shoot it all down, my instinct still tells me that AGW is essentially correct. note however, I never put a “C” in front of the AGW, for that is an entirely different matter…
Amino Acids, you know you are making us all hungry, so let’s get our minds off of it.
Wild Cherry Pie Recipe
Pick cherries
Add sweeteners, homogenizers, emulsifiers, powdered data, cherry flavored ice, cherry colored graph dyes, cherry sodium laureth sulfates for undesirable non-cherry results, Heinz-Kerry brandied cherries, dehydrated miserable global warmed cherries, tiny expensive organic cherries with some wormholes for an extra charge, unripe cherries that did not mature because of extreme climate change cold snaps, cherries which blossomed 3 days too soon due to AGW, Fair Trade grown in the shade cherries, and finally, ultracarbonated cherries taken from tree YAD061, with a twist of offset paperwork credits to taste.
7000km3 looks right to me Willis, see the PIOMASS ice volume graph in the WUWT post http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/28/does-piomass-verify/
look a bit more like ~9000km3 over the last decade, but that’s for the northern hemisphere, don’t know about the southern hemisphere though, but your approximation of converting ice volume to extent seem a bit simplistic to me, not sure you can infer 3D ice loss volume from 2D ice loss extent…
How journalists make it all up
“You can’t make this stuff up.”
Well, somebody did.
I can’t believe the level of idiocy these days in the journalism profession. Have they not noticed that this year’s Arctic ice is greater than last year’s; or that last year’s is greater than the year before?
What total fools. I will tell you how this stuff gets reported like this. I will share a secret. What happens is that the reporter receives a “press package” with the story already written for them. It is done by a professional PR agency, often an agency that specializes on “progressive” causes like Fenton Communications in the US.
They might be given a list of individuals who would be available for interview or if there is an event or “protest”, they are given a press liaison contact. If they attend the event and make contact with the liaison, they will be given a “press packet” there that gives the “correct” background information. They will be briefed and explained to them what the importance of various things are and guided to the best locations for photographs and possibly be directed to key individuals for comments.
It is the difference between a photograph and a painting. Journalist means you write things down. It is different than being a reporter and digging for facts. The truth is many “journalists” are lazy and more interested in hanging out with the “cool people” so they can count themselves among them.
In laying out what “scientists will warn of” next week, he had to have been given access to the press packet. He is likely re-stating what was dropped on his desk.
“Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something”. A fine piece of emotionalizing there. Earth is a rock. A really big rock. If rocks are taking to you, maybe you need to up your dosage.
I am sick of this nonsense.
====================================
Rupert Murdoch (and the late Kerry Packer) are the architects of their own demise.
Between them they raided a fair proportion of the news media in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States (in alphabetical order). They employed a manufacturing model to centralize the “production” of the news in “hubs”, thus getting rid of a large number of specialized journalists, and practically all journalists working at the grassroots level for small-town newspapers.
There is no time for investigative journalism any more – journalists now rely on Press Releases, delivered by “spokespersons” to give them “leads” for their news items.
The print media is now is all about advertising revenue – hence the increase in sensationalism and the decrease in impartial analysis. This trend has since been extended to New Scientist, Scientific American, National Geographic, et al.
The blogosphere (and private sector intelligence organizations) are now following the laws of biology, by moving into an environmental niche that has been vacated by its previous occupants.
If you want an in-depth analysis, see “Flat Earth News”, by Nick Davis, published by Vintage Books, and endorsed by the Financial Times.
The chosen 1994 to 2004 is an interesting time period. It scared the xxxx out of polar bear researchers cause it looked like the end was near for Hudson Bay Polar Bears as the ice pretty much disappeared from Hudson Bay at the end of June, 1998 and did the same for several years following including 2007 …. but then recovered. But of course Hudson Bay melts off most years. Then it completely refreezes. 1,230,000 square kilometres that thaws and refreezes every year in closed bay, affected by the AO, winds, river run off, high and low pressure systems. Until one reads the actual study, we have no idea what a 742 km^3 ice loss per year means other than it seems a rather small amount.
Did you ever actually try that? One Summer during a period of teenage idleness, my buddies and I caught some trout, put them in a barrel, and had at them with our 22’s. Ran out of bullets without touching a single one. After Mom finished berating us, Dad told us about drag and terminal velocity. ☺
/dr.bill