By Steven Goddard
No matter what happens with the summer Arctic ice minimum, NSIDC will report that the long-term trend is downwards.
Why? Because of mathematics. In order to reverse the 30 year downwards linear trend, this summer’s minimum would have to be nearly 20,000,000 kmĀ². More ice than has ever been directly measured.
In other words, we could have a “Day After Tomorrow” scenario, and the mathematical trend would still be downwards.
Conclusion: You can count on NSIDC to continue reporting a downwards trend, regardless of what happens over the next few years. For now, it will be fun seeing what happens over the next eight weeks.
Well… that’s because the trend for that period is downwards. Whether the period chosen is suitable for indicating trends (rather than just what we have available, say) is another matter.
Interesting – I hadn’t seen that plot before. Evidently the downtrend didn’t start 30 years ago, rather it started in about 1997! Wasn’t that when global warming stopped?!
And don’t forget, that when the trend starts to bend it can still be dismissed as a “blip”
against long term behaviour for quite a while. After all the fate of mankind is at stake…..:-)
That’s because it’s true. Three years does not a trend make. The system fluctuates. Just eyballing the graph you posted, the current “recovery” could be just like the one from 1990 to 1992.
I was thinking along the same lines just recently. Even if all ice indicators returned to average this year, there would still be a downward Arctic trend. The CAGW argument relies on the idea of knock on effects towards a one way tipping point where the system’s not able to return to the former average. A return to average should atleast call into question this idea.
It would be strange to argue that in a situation of total averageness that things are still on the way down, but I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot of that if indeed it does come to pass.
Trend without the error in the slope is meaningless…
Trends in the Arctic last 30-60 years, the current one has been going on for about 40 years.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
Amount of thermal energy being delivered by the North Atlantic Current is enormous, time is required to be dissipated.
I’m sure I’ve seen a graph like that somewhere before. Both as closely linked to reality as each other š
I wonder what the trend would look like if the data went back to 1940.
Hypnos says:
June 25, 2010 at 2:36 am
Thatās because itās true. Three years does not a trend make. The system fluctuates. Just eyballing the graph you posted, the current ārecoveryā could be just like the one from 1990 to 1992.
More importantly – 30 years does not a baseline make.
Many reports of similar fluctuations in recent human history – but no just look at this small snippet and project and interpolate from that. This is unscientific to a degree that makes it look deliberate.
“For now, it will be fun seeing what happens over the next eight weeks.”
It is ‘fun’ to see what is already happening right now.
tallbloke says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:45 am
I wonder what the trend would look like if the data went back to 1940.
No trend until about 1990. After that a falling trend, with increasing steepness.
Well done, Steven. But how would the trend look like if 2010 got below 2008 and 2009 and close to 2007? And no matter what happens with the summer Arctic ice minimum, some people will always say the volume has gone up (until CryoSat 2 gets operative, of course).
It appears to me from the satellite record there was no downward trend in arctic sea ice from 1979 to 1996 then in 1997 something happened that started a downward trend that lasted for about 10 years then leveled off.
CO2 emissions didn’t skyrocket in 1997 did they?
Hmm… what else can melt some ice? Anyone? Anything? Bueller?
Oh wait! Could this thing described in National Geographic Magazine do that?
How come rocket scientists can’t connect the dots here. No one else seems to have any problem with it.
The $64,000 question isn’t what caused the decline. The big question is what drives these gigantic cyclic ocean surface warming a cooling events. It sure isn’t CO2 as that has been on a very steady upward trend. It sure isn’t the global average atmospheric temperature inching up or down a tenth of a degree or two per decade as the 1997 El Nino made the ocean surface temperature in a huge swath of the Pacific shoot up 5 whole degrees above normal in a matter of months – more extra energy than “a million Hiroshima bombs”!
The answer, my friends, is NOT blowing in the wind. The answer lies deep down in the ocean. This makes abundant sense if and when a person comes to realize that the oceans hold 1000 times more heat than the atmosphere. The tail does not wag the dog.
In any modern āscientificā paper, report or theory relating to human-nature interactions (as if they are separate entities) it appears mandatory to conclude that man is the sole cause of any and all ills. Phrases like āthe single greatest health threatā, “I don’t see any future, except extinctionā, āthe findings spell dangerā, and of course, āmore research is necessaryā and āthe long term trendā are seemingly preset on many scientists MS Word applications. (Perhaps there is a special āgrantā edition provided by MS?) It is also humorous to note that while many scoff at the ācreationistsā and the idea of an external divine entity, the similarity to the Catholic dogma of all man born with original āsinā in need of redemption (through the Church) and their redemption (through regulation) is striking. Like many commentators here believe, this is a religious debate, complete with all the usual suspects.
Not to worry. We will be able to use that space to accommodate all of the, errrr penguins(?) that the increasing ice in Antarctica is pushing our way .
I would be much more concerned about Greenland ice melt and the flow of the thermo-haline conveyor (gulf stream) as far a climate and sea level are concerned. Arctic ice is nice but …
Yes, well this is like saying (and I hate it) that “this year, or last, or next, will be in the top ten of warm years”. Aarrgh! Of course it will! For it not to be would mean that the temperature has plummeted – which is highly unlikely.
You can generate any series of random numbers and fit a line to it. There’s about a 50% chance the line will be negative, but it’s meaningless. First, you have to prove what function is appropriate for your system (linear isn’t almost never the “correct” function), then you have to show the error on the function’s coefficients to determine if there’s enough “signal to noise” or statistical evidence that the coefficients are reliable estimates of the true relationship. Being a scientist I doubt the credibility of randomly fitting lines to snipets of data. For example, loss of sea ice cannot be a linear decrease. It has to be at least exponential…the asymptotic limit is zero amounts of sea ice. There can’t be negative amounts of sea ice (which a line is going to drive towards). If you are measuring the loss of sea ice, that function has to be nonlinear as is approaches the limit of zero sea ice. If it’s an exponential decay then you can approximate the initial drop with a line, the slope being the initial rate of decay, but to fully describe the physical event, the line is not sufficient. And if sea ice follows a cyclic time period as well (which is more than likely) then a sinusoidal function is appropriate as well. Using a simple line tells me the science is far from understood and the scientists are at the infancy stage of understanding.
Mr. Goddard, what is the correlation coefficient of their linear regression?
Steve,
Well, I dunno. Maybe they’re using the last Ice Age ice extent as a reference?
I wouldn’t put it past them …
Not bad enough you were misrepresenting data, now you are making it up completely?
Where is the laughing dog smiley when you need it?
RR Kampen says:
June 25, 2010 at 4:02 am
[–snip–]
No trend until about 1990. After that a falling trend, with increasing steepness.
Oh? And according to whom?
Will you next propose to say that the Earth has gotten so very much warmer too?
Will you?
Bob Tisdale says, that heat of 1998 El Nino had been dissipated poleward and takes its time to disappear.
“The trend is your friend. Until it starts to bend.”
What I do not get is the existence of Royal Navy records that show low ice extent at roughly the beginning of the Dalton. This has happened before. look at the location
of Viking Farms in Greenland. I think we hold ourselves in too high esteem for planetary
destruction…
I note that this post makes Tamino mad. Look for a Romm Bomb next. When you spend most of your time reacting you’ve lost the battle.
With a warm AMO and a previously warm PDO (now swithing cool), a downward trend in Arctic Sea Ice makes sense. The next few years though should be interesting to see the effect of a cooling Pacific. Regardless of this the Arctic is taking a beating this summer, certainly in terms of extent and should be awcknowledged by everyone who posts here. The causes however……………well that is a matter of debate.
Ian W:
Correct me if I’m wrong (the figure doesn’t have a label on the y-axis), but to the best of my knowledge one doesn’t need a baseline to make a linear regression. If you were to calculate anomalies, that would change things. So what do you really mean by your statement?
David L:
Of course one can use a linear trend for an interval of 30-ish years if the variations are sufficiently slow. Being a fellow scientist, you know that. Further, let’s consider an imaginary situation where you have a planet where ice *is actually* melting linearly. Would you still not use a linear regression, since one can not have negative values as time approaches inf.?
Even if there were a long-term downward trend in arctic sea ice extent (and there isn’t), it would be presumptuous and arbitrary to attribute it to man-made CO2 emissions. As the then alarmist Washington Post reported on Nov. 2, 1922, “The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot . . . Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.”
Nature is simply running its course.
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4861&linkbox=true&position=3
Archeopteryx
The data is the same data which NSIDC uses in their graphs.
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/
I’m surprised that anyone would find this post controversial. It is basic math. No matter what happens during the next few years, the “long term linear trend” will still be downwards.
Interesting mathematical study Steve…nothing related to climate of course, but a nice overview of statistical trends. Of course, NSIDC will report that the long term trend remains negative for Arctic Sea ice, as that is both the mathematical fact, and observational and factual truth. Climate is, afterall, a study of the long term trends, and how patterns repeat themselves over the longer term. If 2008 and 2009 had seen a recovery to well above 2007’s low mark, we’d all be having a different discussion right now. But, short of a sudden onset of global cooling, that would have been impossible. All that 2008 and 2009 did was level off from the rapid decline of 2007, but as the experts know, there really was no “recovery”.
I think the long term “tape” of anomalies in Arctic Sea ice is one of the most interesting graphs to study. Most of us here are quite familiar with it:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/sea.ice.anomaly.timeseries.jpg
It is rather like a EEG would be for a human. It’s little ups and downs are rather like the pulse of the Arctic. If you’re a trained physician, you can look at the EEG of your patient and know a great deal about the health of that patient. I think a trained eye, after studying the Arctic’s EEG, can spot the longer term trend. The trend that the NSIDC experts are all very familiar with. And something that few here may realize. We actually had a greater loss of ice in 2008 than 2007 if you look at the total volume loss from the winter peak to the summer minimum. That was remarkable, coming after such a dramatic loss in 2007. 2009 was not quite so large, but it certainly saw now great “recovery” of sea ice, and now here we are in 2010, and so far, as the “tale of the tape” in the link above shows, we’ve already lost the greatest amount of Arctic Sea ice from the March 31, 2010 peak through the end of June. As the tape shows, the drop has been dramatic. And now we approach July & August, the true heart of the melt season. Yes, wind and currents will play a role in the final exact number, but the trend is obvious, and any good “doctor” of the Arctic must look at the tale of the long term tape, and be concerned for the patient, realizing that if the trend continues, there will be some Arctic summer in the next few years or perhaps decades where the tape will flatline.
But is there a chance people will stop whinging about death spirals and “worse than we thought”?
Doubtful.
Quote Watts: “When you spend most of your time reacting youāve lost the battle.”
Of course one could just ignore all the “science” that is promoted in various blogs. But then there is the question of spending the huge grants “”scientists”” receive. The actuall “”research”” isn’t time consuming enough. To make the budgets fit the grants, some time has to be spent by “”researchers”” reacting to “research”.
REPLY: Since you speak of ignoring, actually I think the best thing to do is ignore anonymous bloggers. As I’ve always said, if you don’t put your name to your opinion, it isn’t worth much. – Anthony
I guess it’s a phase shift. Temperatures stopped rising in 1997; instead polar sea ice began a downward trend. We’ll see whether it’s periodic or a one-off.
R. Gates
It is practically similar to an EEG for a human.
There, fixed that for you.
MikeEE
I think there is something very lopsided about looking at the trend of ice in the Arctic Basin. There is an upper limit to what the maximum ice can be since it is landlocked. I don’t know what that number is, but for any mean ice amount that is in the upper half of the area of the Basin, if the average annual negative deviation from the mean is larger than the area between the mean and the maximum possible area, then the trend will always appear negative in short time scales(<centuries?), as the positive deviations can only match the negative ones in small increments over a long time.
“As Iāve always said, if you donāt put your name to your opinion, it isnāt worth much”
So, why not just delete all posts under things that appear to you to be pseudonyms?
How do we know your real name is Anthony Watts?
“As Iāve always said, if you donāt put your name to your opinion, it isnāt worth much. ā Anthony”
You can’t assess how good an analysis is, without knowing who wrote it?
I guess you’d have some trouble with a double-blind review process.
Anthony: If you won’t allow anonymous commenters, you’ll have to moderate about 98% of all your commenters. And Enonym could be my real name. I’m not from a country speaking anything that resembles english.
As for your statement “if you donāt put your name to your opinion, it isnāt worth much”, I have to dissagree, at least when it comes to asking questions.
I’ll stop commenting for now. That’s a promise.
Liers figure and figures lie (sometimes it’s not intentional, it just seems that way). Who knew. Guess the only thing to do when the range of data is sooooo small is to tell yourself that we’re unable to really claim anything trendy about the past few 30, 60, 90, 120, 150, 180, 210, 240, 270, 300, etc., years. We want to know so much so fast we tend to jump to conclusions, usually, almost always, everytime…
Steve,
What is the purpose of this post? Are you trying to expose some kind of hidden agenda on the part of NSIDC in reporting a simple mathamatical fact?? Or are you trying to let your readers down gently about the reality of the Arctic ice melt??
Of course the linear trend in down–it just seems so simple when you tell it like it is without all the smoke and mirrors.
Keep up the good posts, they make for entertaining reading.
MJK
What is the correlation coefficient of fudged data point linear regression shown in this post by you know who? ~ZERO! ROTFLMFAO
Is there any point to calculating a linear trend in a chaotic weather system? In any physical model I have ever seen, one always asks, what happens at time infinity. If the answer blows up to something physically impossible, the model is hopelessly flawed. A linear downward trend in ice will shortly give us, Negative Ice!
A link from Antony lead to a very nice analysis of the physically meaningless global temperature.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/globaltemp/globaltemp.html
One cannot take an average without first computing a sum. So it you have two pots of water, one at 300Ā°K and one at 350Ā°K, do you add them together to get 650Ā°K? This has no meaning. The take away point is the “global temperature” has no physical meaning and only exists within the exact method of calculation. When Hansen refuses to release the codes and raw data, he is putting out numbers that can be anything he wants.
One wag had an excellent answer to someone’s question about how to get water to the moon. Just take Gore’s linear trend of twenty feet per century rise in the oceans and be patient!
Well doy! That’s because there IS a longterm downward trend…
This post is downright embarrassing.
How else can one fit a slope except by mathematics? What alternative is proposed?
Perhaps the slope is not what Steve Goddard wants it to be in June 2010? Well, that’s science for you. A theory undermined by a simple fact.
This blogger, Neven, finds the June daily melt rate has broken all records.
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2010/06/sea-ice-extent-update-7.html
Dave Springer says:
June 25, 2010 at 4:18 am
It appears to me from the satellite record there was no downward trend in arctic sea ice from 1979 to 1996 then in 1997 something happened that started a downward trend that lasted for about 10 years then leveled off.
CO2 emissions didnāt skyrocket in 1997 did they?
Hmmā¦ what else can melt some ice? Anyone? Anything? Bueller?
Oh wait! Could this thing described in National Geographic Magazine do that?
It rose out of the tropical Pacific in late 1997, bearing more energy than a million Hiroshima bombs. By the time it had run its course eight months later, the giant El NiƱo of 1997-98 had deranged weather patterns around the world, killed an estimated 2,100 people, and caused at least 33 billion [U.S.] dollars in property damage.
How come rocket scientists canāt connect the dots here. No one else seems to have any problem with it.
The $64,000 question isnāt what caused the decline. The big question is what drives these gigantic cyclic ocean surface warming a cooling events. It sure isnāt CO2 as that has been on a very steady upward trend. It sure isnāt the global average atmospheric temperature inching up or down a tenth of a degree or two per decade as the 1997 El Nino made the ocean surface temperature in a huge swath of the Pacific shoot up 5 whole degrees above normal in a matter of months ā more extra energy than āa million Hiroshima bombsā!
The answer, my friends, is NOT blowing in the wind. The answer lies deep down in the ocean. This makes abundant sense if and when a person comes to realize that the oceans hold 1000 times more heat than the atmosphere. The tail does not wag the dog.
_____________________________________
The answer my friend, is blowing in the solar wind,
with the synod conjunction of Neptune and Uranus being the 179 year base period to the medium cyclic period of climate natural variability, what we saw was the surge in warming manifesting as an El Nino , as a result of the Synod conjunction of N & U in mid summer, that drove the resultant peak in warming in 1998, now as these outer planets move into the later part of the year (fall this year) we will see surges in warm moist air masses at that time of year.
With the addition of Jupiter this September 22, I expect to see surges in tropical storm production from August 15th through mid October 2010, then a long quiet cold winter until the last week of March, before Saturn’s synod conjunction with Earth (April 3rd 2011) pulls in a warm surge of tornado producing tropical moisture to start the spring / summer off with a bang.
Being a 179 year period, we have very little records from the last cycle so this seems to be unusual, but it is all just a cyclic pattern. I expect the Arctic ice area to respond to the patterns that drive the global weather, and as these outer planets influence presses further into the winter seasons over the next 30 years, the resultant increase in winter precipitation will aid the long term “recovery of the lost ice”, as it cycles, as it does once again, but this time we will be able to watch it.
Since the NSIDC reports the sea ice extent to 7 or 8 significant figures, one thing is 99.999999 % sure, and that is with
the September minimum, is that the trend will change.
Somewhere around the 2009 minimum will be on the trend line, above that the trend will decrease and below that the
trend will increase.
How long will it take the current extent to cross and be above the 2007 line?
A couple weeks, a month, or never?
The current melt rate is cooking along pretty fast and steady.
Conditions have to change for the end of melt season result to not increase the trend, and soon.
At what point are you skeptics going to admit that the AGW proponents made a prediction that came to pass?
Douglas DC says:
June 25, 2010 at 6:05 am
What I do not get is the existence of Royal Navy records that show low ice extent at roughly the beginning of the Dalton. This has happened before. look at the location
of Viking Farms in Greenland. I think we hold ourselves in too high esteem for planetary destructionā¦
Would you care to explain the thrust of your remarks above?
So what if Arctic ice has been on a downward trend since 1979?–the Great Pacific Climate Shift from 30 years of global cooling to warmer occurred in 1977 so you would expect to see a downward trend since then. The critical question is what was happening to Arctic ice during the cool period from 1945 to 1977 and what happened during the previous warm period from 1915 to 1945? Greenland had more intense warming and higher temperatures during the 1915 to 1945 warm period and cooler temperatures during the following cool period. I don’t have the numbers but you can bet that Arctic ice increased during the 1880 to 1915 cool period, decreased during the 1915 to 1945 warm period, and increased again during the 1945-1977. Fluctations in Arctic ice is nothing new–it’s been decreasing and increasing with each climate change since 1880 and a decline since 1979 is what you would expect to see!
MikeEE says:
June 25, 2010 at 6:49 am
R. Gates
It is practically similar to an EEG for a human.
There, fixed that for you.
MikeEE
_______________
Thanks, the simile is complete now…and the ghosts of our 5th grade english teachers can now rest in peace.
‘As Iāve always said, if you donāt put your name to your opinion, it isnāt worth much. ā Anthony’
That was rather funny. What’s the opinion worth even when the name is supposedly known? Most opinions that doesn’t confirm ones own opinion is, of course, complete crap, and knowing the name just puts a face on that crap. :p
You might find it interesting to know that from 1979-1998 the September trend is -0.032 +/- 0.017 million sq-km per year and from 1999-2009 it is -0.165 +/- 0.044 million sq-km per year. These trends are statistically different from each other at a 95% confidence level. A smoothed curved trend line computed using Locally Weighted Scatterplot Smoothing (LOWESS) for the entire 1979-2009 time-period further supports an acceleration of the September trend.
It is also interesting to note the increased variability after 1990. For the Arctic Ocean domain (i.e. excluding the E. Greenland Sea and the Canadian Archipelago), the standard deviation in September ice extent from 1979-1990 is 0.34 million sq-km, while from 1990-2009 it is 0.79 million sq-km, more than a factor of two larger. This increase in variability coincides with an early 1990s shift in the spring ice thickness distribution in the Arctic Ocean domain towards a larger fraction of thin, first-year ice (e.g. Maslanik et al. 2007), linked in turn to a period when the Northern Annular Mode (NAM) was in its strongly positive phase (Rigor and Wallace, 2004). An increase in variability of summer ice extent as the spring ice cover thins is a feature of coupled global climate model simulations (e.g. Holland et al., 2008). The reasoning is that as the ice cover thins, large regions become especially vulnerable to melting out during summer under favorable atmospheric conditions. Conversely, even in a warming climate, occasional summers are cool enough for much of the first-year ice to survive. The overall result is increased variability.
R. Gates says:
June 25, 2010 at 6:18 am
It is rather like a EEG …
Good lord! Do you preen in the mirror after each post?
Why I’ll bet that you think so highly of yourself that you verily hoist yourself up on a pedestal daily!
R. Gates at 6:18 am: good wrap-up of the situation.
I would like to add one more observation for that time series. In the last couple of years the graph has a different character, showing much wilder anomaly changes than before, making it get a much more ragged appearance. This is indicative of ‘catastrophe’ (mathematical concept). It happens when some phenomenon is subject to threshold behaviour and is near that threshold.
In the case of Arctic ice, the threshold to watch for is in thickness over large areas when it gets to about twee feet. At this point, the ice breaks up, letting the sun do its job on the bare sea surface and accelerating the melting process vastly. The two dramatic drops of 2007 are exemplaric for this. A comparable thing can happen any moment now in view of the already extremely thin ice over Canadian of the Arctic sea.
The combination of melt and currents this year actually suggests that absolutely all of the multiyear ice, at least the ice older than two years, will disappear by early autumn. A new first for the region.
Nice way to miss the point, Enonym. Anthony didn’t say he wanted to moderate anonymous bloggers, he just intended to ignore them as unimportant. And he’s right – you and carrot eater are nothing but typical net-trolls, unworthy of any serious consideration.
And carrot eater, you make a typically stupid analogy. Even in a double blind process, *someone* in charge of the process always knows who’s doing the reviews, even if the author and the reviewer don’t know who each other are.
Think about it – would you advocate leaving a scientific paper sitting out in a New York subway station, and then take seriously any anonymous comments left scribbled on it by random passersby? That’s what anonymous internet criticism is, and that’s why Anthony is correct to ignore any such scribblings from you. (and from me, if he chooses. But then I’m not pretending to be some mathematical genius like you are)
I think for everybody who is looking at trends, it is enlightening to look at figs 11 and 12 in
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm
We see that the sea levels have been increasing monotonically ever since the little ice age, which means that the ice has been diminishing by inference, because that is where the water is stored.
It shows that the trend has little to do with the hydrocarbon burning, since it starts a century before it takes off. The original references are appended in the review.
In these discussions we get carried away and lose the point. Is CO2 the prime mover? That is the point.
It is interesting to see what the ice is doing more because of the suspicion that we are close to the tipping point to the next little ice age, than trying to pin it on CO2. Data is clear that it is not CO2.
tallbloke says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:45 am
I wonder what the trend would look like if the data went back to 1000.
All of this fun aside, what would be the impact if the polar ice cap should just melt away?
No one has really explained to me why I should be concerned. Let alone what I am supposed to do about it.
I do know this, from history, it was very warm in the Arctic around 1000. This is based on my reading of the founder of CRU, Dr. Lamb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Lamb
See his book Climate, History and the Modern World (ISBN 0-415-12735-1).
At one time, Vikings raised cattle and sheep and grew wheat and barley, where today’s inhabitants must import fodder for their sheep. So it must have been warmer.
What was the status of the ice cap at that time? It must have been smaller, right? Or am I getting something wrong here.
Not only was it much warmer than today, the polar bears and seals somehow managed to get through it all. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be with us today.
Can someone, please, tell me why I should be concerned about any trends in the Arctic ice?
Seriously, anyone who thinks that a straight “trend” line is what applies here doesn’t really understand the physical world. Where’s the curve? Where’s the wave? Who failed to comprehend the concept of “cyclical”?
Tragically, it will require that the entire climate cycle be documented before some people will get it. Even then, maybe they’ll cling to the same artificial range as a “baseline”.
Arctic sea ice volume is of more interest than sea ice extent as a measure of climate change. While the history of sea ice extent before the satellite era (1979-present) is speculative, models such as PIOMASS have been used to hindcast the sea ice volume into the past.
http://www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/121856.pdf
The Polar Ice Center retro page shows a plot of the hindcast sea ice volume vs the NAO index
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/IDAO/retro.html#Satellite_ice
The models show that that the current sea ice volume low is not unusual.
A JGR study reported that there is no trend in arctic sea ice volume over the last century based on hindcasting.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006JC003616.shtml
The NAO is currently slightly negative. If it goes strongly negative like the 1960’s
ice will build fast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Winter-NAO-Index.svg
“Anthony: If you wonāt allow anonymous commenters, youāll have to moderate about 98% of all your commenters.”
I’m guessing Anthony differentiates somewhat between anonymous commenters and anonymous blog “owners” i.e. bloggers… e.g. “Tamino”.
vukcevic says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:31 am
What did that magnetic field change?. Magnetic fields are generated by electric currents. Is it the solar “wind” over there, as the auroras show?
Steven,
Why did you post a Mann graph and label it “September Artic Ice Extent Trend”?
š
R Gates, I beg to differ. Climate has less to do with trends than it does with range. That includes precip range, temp range, clear sky range, etc. Almost the entire planet has successfully been divided up into climate zones. Climate zones have little to do with a straight trend, or even a smoothed running average. Were that the case, many seeders and planters would lose crops every year, basing their selection on such nonsense as “trend” or “average”. One does not plant around the trend or average if one wants to stay in business and feed you. One plants within the range. That is climate in my opinion. The fact that the trend slopes up, down, or the average wriggles around in the middle does not twist up my knickers in the least. Range I worry about, and follow record daytime and nighttime range closely.
To wit, not one climate zone has undergone designation change in the US since this global warming business has moved from intellectual discussion to front seat barn burner political correctness stage. Why? Range has not undergone any kind of drastic movement trend such that climate zone designation must change.
So much for death spirals, no matter which GPS address you are talking about.
Enonym says:
June 25, 2010 at 6:09 am
“David L:
Of course one can use a linear trend for an interval of 30-ish years if the variations are sufficiently slow. Being a fellow scientist, you know that. Further, letās consider an imaginary situation where you have a planet where ice *is actually* melting linearly. Would you still not use a linear regression, since one can not have negative values as time approaches inf.?”
I don’t really like the use of lines because it gives the false sense that the trend will continue ad infinitum. There could be an asymptote lurking at very large non-zero levels, but the linearity focusses the discussion on the continued drop and not the very likely potential that there is a new, stable equilibrium of less ice
matt says:
June 25, 2010 at 7:30 am
Well doy! Thatās because there IS a longterm downward trendā¦
Downward trend from where?
The “purpose of this post” is to point out that nothing which happens over the next few summers will change the 30 year trend.
We could have record high minimums for several years in a row, and the widely vaunted “long term trend” would still be downwards.
bob
You claim to know the current “melt rate.” Please tell us what it is, and how you differentiated melt from compaction.
Richard Holle says:
June 25, 2010 at 7:34 am
Dave Springer says:
June 25, 2010 at 4:18 am
[–snip–]
The answer my friend, is blowing in the solar wind,
If what you say is true, then a mere ‘rewinding’ of history would reveal that matter.
When were the last times such happened in, say, the Medieval āor otherā times?
Dave Springer says:
June 25, 2010 at 4:18 am
It appears to me from the satellite record there was no downward trend in arctic sea ice from 1979 to 1996 then in 1997 something happened that started a downward trend that lasted for about 10 years then leveled off.
CO2 emissions didnāt skyrocket in 1997 did they?
[–snip–]
It sure isnāt the global average atmospheric temperature inching up or down a tenth of a degree or two per decade as the 1997 El Nino made the ocean surface temperature in a huge swath of the Pacific shoot up 5 whole degrees above normal in a matter of months ā more extra energy than āa million Hiroshima bombsā!
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
First of all Dave, there WAS a downward trend in the Arctic sea ice from 1979 to 1996. It was, of most importance, a thinning trend followed by a shrinking trend. This is a clear indication that the ocean is getting warmer. The link immediately below shows the downward trend in ice thickness.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20091005_Figure5.png
No, Carbon Dioxide levels do not have to shoot up immediately. Why should Nature respond instantaneously? CO2 levels have been helping the oceans to absorb more heat throughout time. This would not only affect the Arctic ice cap in its thinning but would also BUILD UP HEAT FOR THE NEXT EL NINO.
For reference to the temperatures throughout 1979-present, the following UAH chart should help put things in context. http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_May_10.gif
What started happening in 1997 was not, however, a single year event whose influence managed to affect a whole decade. What happened in 1997 onward was an approximately .15 degree Centigrade jump in temperatures from the previous two decades that was caused by El Ninos in 1997 AND 2001-2007 as well as that unmentionable factor, GW.
If El Ninos are getting warmer, as the chart above indicates, then what is increasing the heat of the ocean from which they draw their heat from? You cannot assume that the El Ninos, from 1997, and even La Ninas from 1996 onwards are consistently warmer than those from 1976 to 1996/7 out of mere coincidence.
As for1997 temperatures shooting “up 5 whole degrees above normal.” You did not specify whether the temperatures you used were in C or F. You also did not define what “above normal” was. “Normal” in relation to what time period or baseline?
Furthermore, you were referring to the temperature rise in the area immediately above the Pacific Ocean, where El Nino was coming from in 1997, and then comparing it to the “global average atmospheric temperature” for the past decade. That is comparing one apple to 10 oranges. To be consistent you have to compare Global to Global.
The UAH Globally Averaged Satellite-Based Temperature Chart, referenced above, shows that from 1997 onwards, there is an almost a .2 C rise above the average top peaks of 1979-1996. Or, if by “normal” we were to refer to the UAH chart’s baseline then it would be .5 C. That amounts to 3/4 to barely 1 degree Fahrenheit.
RR Kampen says at 7:53 am:
“A new first for the region.”
Aren’t you forgetting 967 A.D., and 1016, an 1124, 1125 and 1126 A.D., when the Arctic was completely ice free?
bob says:
June 25, 2010 at 7:35 am
At what point are you skeptics going to admit that the AGW proponents made a prediction that came to pass?
A ‘prediction,’ you say?
Well, a broken clock is ‘right’ once a day.
So if you’re basing your predictions on broken mechanisms, then I’d have to say that your declaration is āgiven the current down-turn in global tempsā morally broke and mentally bankrupt.
I see the word “melt” being used repeatedly in the comments, and yet it is safe to assume that none of the authors actually know how much ice is melting, and how much is simply compacting.
Extent is a 2-D number. If you shovel your driveway, the mass of snow remains constant- yet the extent gets smaller. A reduction in extent is not necessarily evidence of melt.
Why can Steve Goddard not include a similar graph covering Antarctica for comparison. If warm water is thrust north by El Nino from a fixed ocean heat positon (short term) it is reasonable to expect that Antarctica sea ice is getting a bit of a cool bath and increases sea ice such as is shown here http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png with a current positive anomaly http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
That might perhaps also put a bit of a “damper” on R Gates.
Just off the top of my head…
The gorons predicted that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear within a few years, that the sea level would start to rise fast, and that the ocean is acidifying.
They said toads are going extinct because of global warming, that Tuvalu is being swamped by a fast rising sea level, and that the West Antarctic peninsula will soon be ice free.
They said that GCMs can predict the climate, that the climategate emails are just misunderstood, and that CO2 will trigger runaway global warming.
They said that the Sun causes global warming, that the Sun doesn’t cause global warming, and that CAGW is a Theory.
They said that DDT thins bird egg shells, that global warming is causing hurricanes to increase, and that it causes more tornadoes, too.
They said the MWP didn’t happen, or if it did it was just a local event, and that the LIA didn’t happen, and that the Minoan Optimum didn’t happen.
They said that James Hansen’s predictions were accurate, and that Cap & Trade will reduce CO2, and that corals are bleaching and dying out from CO2.
They said there is a large consensus of scientists who believe in CAGW, and that global warming causes more forest fires, and that it causes malaria to spread, too.
They said that shellfish are losing their calcium due to CO2, and that NOAA’s temperature “adjustments” are A-OK, and that the climate peer review process is legit.
Now they are desperately trying to convince everyone that the Arctic is acting outside of its natural long term parameters because of CO2.
Based on their past record of getting everything else wrong, what are the chances that they’re right about the Arctic?
stevegoddard,
I got the current “melt” rate from
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv
which is 64,637 km2/day for the last month.
Which is on a pace to near the low of 2007, is it not?
Which would increase the trend, no?
Do you have any evidence for more compaction this year than any other year?
No trend until about 1990. After that a falling trend, with increasing steepness.
and
No trend until about 1990. After that a falling trend, with increasing steepness.
Running a trend analysis of September sea ice data with data, instead of just eyeballing the graph, I get:
A downward trend of ~155 000 sq/km per decade from 1979 – end 1988.
Adding one year’s data….
A downward trend of ~280 000/km per decade from 1979 – end 1989
Which should indicate the vagaries of using short-term trends, but to continue…
A steeper downward trend of ~407 000 sq/km per decade 1979 – 1998
An even steeper downward trend of ~770 000 sq/km per decade 1979 – 2008.
Conclusion: Arctic September sea ice has been declining every decade since since 1979, and the decline has been accelerating.
I’ll wager this – if this year’s minimum falls above the trend line, NSIDC will mention it, either directly or by saying that the downward trend has decreased. I’ll take on anyone for $100 even bet. Of course, this is nullified if minimum extent falls below the trend line.
Sorry, the first two comments were quotes from upthread:
The rest of my post disputes those statements.
stevengoddard says:
June 25, 2010 at 9:19 am
The āpurpose of this postā is to point out that nothing which happens over the next few summers will change the 30 year trend.
We could have record high minimums for several years in a row, and the widely vaunted ālong term trendā would still be downwards.
We could even have an ice free Arctic in 2013 and the ālong term trendā would still be downwards.
This post from Steve; which I gather is to make the point; that when you have some sort of long term trend, and things change; even if they have really changed quite drastically, your trend analysis is going to continue to report what was going on before the change happened; by the time you recognize the change (analytically), the change is blatantly obvious to anybody.
A visitor from another Planet; or maybe a parallel Universe, would be quite puzzled at how we humans do Science; you know; the “Science is settled” kind of science. Well as it relates to the science of “Climatology”, at least.
Starting back around 1850 (apparently), someone in Britain measured a Temperature somewhere, and wrote down the number off his thermometer, onto a piece of paper. Aha ! at last some “Scientific datum”. So the next day he repeated the process; and Voilla ! Climate science “data” came to be. Now being a Statistical Mathematics major, our hero now had to “process his data”, so he calculated the average of his two temperature readings, and using the known uncertainty of his thermometer readings, he also calculated a standard deviation for his average, and of course he writes down these new numbers; because; well they are after all “Science”.
So day after day, he continues to read his thermometer, and note the readings, and add to his averaging process, and Standard deviation calculations, which he is now telling his neighbors about since it is “Science”.
By the end of the week, he has enough data to calculate a five day running average, for his Temperatures, so he starts to plot that as well. A neighbor points out that for the first four days, he has no five day running average; so suddenly there is a gap in scientific knowledge. Well he still has perfectly good original temperatures for those four days; but that is not science; that is simply anecdotal observations.
So here we are 160 odd years later, and our hero, has used up quite a few pieces of paper recording his daily tempertaures, and calculating his five day running averages; even monthly running averages, and perhaps even thirteen monthly running averages. The “Science” is now far more sophisticated, than during the first few days. Back then he only had actual real world measured Temperature observations; but he had no science to show for his efforts.
Today, things are much better; apparently; we seem to be told Phil Jones has actually lost a lot of those pieces of paper on which his great grandfather wrote those first four days without a five day running average; and lost a whole lot more Temperatures also; but that is OK, because all that anecdotal recording of real Temepratures, has been replaced by the “Science” of thirteen month running averages; so it is quite ok that the original “Information”; there’s a new word; has all been lost; because now we have science to use instead.
The problem is that our new graphs of thirteen month running averagers, actually contain no “information” at all. No point on the graph represents any actual real world observation that was ever made; it is all a complete fiction that we made up in our heads. Well that is OK too, because ALL of mathematics is a complete fiction; we made it ALL up out of whole cloth; and absolutely nothing in mathematics, actually exists anywhere in the known Universe; or anywhere else; we simply made it all up.
Now if President Obama wanted to ask Phil Jones; what was the actual Temperature of the thermometer, at noon on July-4th 1850, when our hero, took his first reading; well Phil Jones has lost that piece of paper; but not to worry; we have been doing “Science” since so we will just calculate what the temperature was on that day.
OOoops !! it seems like we have expunged all the “Information” we spent Trillions of dollars gathering; and our “Science” that we replaced it with, is incapable of resurrecting what real information we have thrown away.
Nothing in our thirteen month running average graphical plot is of any consequence or use to any real actual person anywhere, because they can do nothing with it to find out anything real.
You see, we have NOT actually been doing “Science” at all.
Now:- E = m.c^2 = 1/2 .mv^2 = h.(nu) = k. T What about that; maybe THAT is “Science”. We can actually use that to to tell us the results of experiments that nobody ever actually did. How cool is that; to replace a whole museum full of stacks of old yellowing papers with Temperatures scribbled on them; with a few words that anyone can remember in their heads; and use to figure out what they really wanted to know.
So when the IPCC says; and your Government in action tells you, that “The Science is settled.” Why don’t you try asking them WHAT SCIENCE ?
There isn’t any “Climate Science”. Well there is a lot of gathering of anecdotal data on pollens, and ancient microbe species; and isotopic nuclide distributions of trace gases; all manner of interesting information, that fills volumes of encyclopaedic proportions. but so far there is no known method of retracing our steps to find out what that first thermometer reading was; or to determine the outcome of an experiment never yet performed.
Don’t even think of making any predictions; especially about the future; because you might actually need some Science to do that; and so far there is none.
Of course they will report that the trend is down. Because that is the truth and what the data display. To say anything other than a downward trend would be lying.
Did somebody know how was the artic during the LIA?
If that trend continued into the past, then all life on the Earth froze to death, therefore we do not exist.
That contradiction demonstrates how the 30 year trend only speaks of it’s own span, and says little about before and after.
bob says:
June 25, 2010 at 10:25 am
…Do you have any evidence for more compaction this year than any other year?
But what you do not understand is the magic of the arctic.
Ice in this region can be compacted by south winds
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/28/the-great-2007-ice-crunch/
and simultaneously be pushed out of the Fram strait
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/13/watching-the-2007-historic-low-sea-ice-flow-out-of-the-arctic-sea/
and simultaneously pushed out of the Nares strait:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/19/jpl-missing-ice-in-2007-drained-out-the-nares-straight-pushed-south-by-wind-where-it-melted-far-away-from-the-arctic/
An not only a pushmepullyou ice dance but also under watre melting:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/25/surprise-explosive-volcanic-eruption-under-the-arctic-ice-found/
But it is never because the world is warming. Magic!!
Jack Simmons says:
June 25, 2010 at 8:02 am
[–snip–]
Can someone, please, tell me why I should be concerned about any trends in the Arctic ice.
Well, Jack, it’s sort of like this: YOU are supposed to be ‘concerned’ because you’ve been ‘instructed’ to be such, if only that’s what your public school teaching was supposed to have imparted to you.
YOU are NOT supposed to be questioning things. Rather, you’re supposed to simply accept what you’ve been programmed to accept.
Now, I see you’ve dropped your ‘programming,’ and you’re going to have to be ‘re-educated.’
Pity.
Tommy,
Thank you. Steven I believe we have a winner here.
899 says
“So if youāre basing your predictions on broken mechanisms, then Iād have to say that your declaration is āgiven the current down-turn in global tempsā morally broke and mentally bankrupt”
Looking at the following sources for the current down-turn in global temperatures, I find
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
and
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt
the anomaly for the months March, April and May of this year to be the highest ever recorded, although one tied for the highest.
Does that look like recent cooling to you?
But in order to post on topic, didn’t Al Gore predict a 75% chance for an ice free arctic in 2013, and really isn’t the trend in that direction, maybe a few years after 2013, but he didn’t say 100% for sure.
Smokey said:
Arenāt you forgetting 967 A.D., and 1016, an 1124, 1125 and 1126 A.D., when the Arctic was completely ice free?
_________
What about 1959? That year too, right? :))
Mike Ozanne says: “And donāt forget, that when the trend starts to bend it can still be dismissed as a ‘blip’ ”
Or “a cold snap.”
You can pick your nose, you can pick your starting data point … can’t eat you starting data point.
Enneagram says: June 25, 2010 at 10:50 am
Did somebody know how was the artic during the LIA?
I assume there must be some records somewhere.
If correlation as shown in here
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
is indeed real, than it is possible to speculate what the Arcticās LIA temps would have been.
There are geo-magnetic data available, I would hazard to guess that estimate I graphed should be as āreliableā as any other, excluding the ice core data, so if someone knows of a data set I would appreciate a link.
Here we go then, this is my guess what the Arcticās LIA temps were:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC9.htm
On bases of above one could āspeculateā that the Arcticās LIA temps were about 2.5 to 3 degrees C lower than at present, and that is precisely the same anomaly for the CET winters for which there are records.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET1.gif
Dave Springer says:
June 25, 2010 at 4:18 am
It appears to me from the satellite record there was no downward trend in arctic sea ice from 1979 to 1996 then in 1997 something happened that started a downward trend that lasted for about 10 years then leveled off.
CO2 emissions didnāt skyrocket in 1997 did they?
Dave:
Maybe someone has already pointed out that 1997 is an outlier and that regression would find a highly significant trend from 1977-1997.
Steve G points out that the trend would be downward, even if a miraculous and drastic increase in ice extent occurred. That’s true. The more likely scenario is, however, that 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 will show the four lowest minimal ice extents on record.
bob says:
June 25, 2010 at 7:35 am
At what point are you skeptics going to admit that the AGW proponents made a prediction that came to pass?
_____________
They might eventually admit it came to pass, but it will be billed as simply a “coincidence”, or natural variation. The AGW models will be said to just happened to have got it right. But having said that, I hope the skeptics stay right on the heels of the “warmists”, making them prove everything they say. This is a most valuable function in the advancement of true science, and one of the main reasons I’m here on WUWT. Yes, I’m pretty sure AGW theory has pretty much got it right (though all the feedback loops, negative and postive, need much more work), but blessed are the skeptics!
bob says:
June 25, 2010 at 11:18 am
Looking at the following sources for the current down-turn in global temperatures, I find …
Yes, you find that because you unquestioningly believe in a completely discredited source, that you much now resort to cleaning your plexiglass belly button, lest you run into someone and cause your head to be shoved deeper into that cavity where it now resides!
Thank YOU, Bob!
R. Gates says:
June 25, 2010 at 11:56 am
They might eventually admit it came to pass, but it will be billed as simply a ācoincidenceā, or natural variation.
Okay, smartass, WHEN was the last time =ANY= of the models predicted the weather with =ANY= degree of certainty?
Did they predict Washington, D.C.’s snow storm last winter? NO.
Did the predict Jokenhagen’s snow storm last winter? NO.
Did the predict the U.K.’s COMPLETE snow coverage? NO.
Gee, so far that’s batting 1000.
Shall we continue with =>YOUR<= sterling record of 'forecasting?'
Wouldn’t everyone be happier if that nice warm North Atlantic Current were warming Europe instead of a bunch of uninhabitable ice-wasteland?
R. Gates says:
June 25, 2010 at 11:56 am
Eventually the Earth will be much warmer and inhabitable as well as much colder and uninhabitable than it is right now.
Irregardless of how much belief one has, it has happened before and will surely happen again.
Question is: will we be around to witness it, or are we just going to go on and on with Sing Along with Trend Thriller?
There’s always a bunch that either wants to rule the world or lord it over the rest of us.
There needs to be an all out effort to try and extend the baseline back at least 100 years. Of course that would mean dreaded proxies. But something is needed.
Please remember, all arguments you are using against the ”trend going down” will also be used against the ”trend going up”.
Damn… it’s melting year after year, what do you expect the graph to show if it’s melting.
It’s sometimes worthwhile looking back into time to see how precedented the recent ‘melting’ is. :o)
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice-tony-b/
vukcevic says:
June 25, 2010 at 11:49 am
Thanks Vuk!
899, I hate to break this to you –but not all global temperature data sets are discredited by the sceptics. Dr Spencer’s satellite readings, for example, show a rise in global temperature over the last 30 year time frame. Dr Spencer, of course, is a sceptic himself and has an adoring sceptic fan base akin to Sarah Palin’s
Please provide evidence of a global data set showing a decline in global temperature. Go on, enlighten us.
MJK
899 says:
June 25, 2010 at 11:17 am
Jack Simmons says:
June 25, 2010 at 8:02 am
[–snip–]
Can someone, please, tell me why I should be concerned about any trends in the Arctic ice.
[–snip–]
YOU are NOT supposed to be questioning things. Rather, youāre supposed to simply accept what youāve been programmed to accept.
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
Jack Simmons:
Perhaps because the weather will change throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere to our detriment.
899:
Are public schools the only “programmers”? Perhaps you’re accepting some other institution’s “instructions”.
More to the point, regardless of whether you believe in GW or not, do you actually think that an open Arctic Sea will have no impact on the dynamics of weather?
Look
I think we can all see in Europe right now that when Arctic temperatures get warmer, we get colder weather. And when it gets cold in the Arctic, we get milder stuff.
So I don’t think, per se, that Arctic Sea Ice is the sole measurement of armageddon.
It’s a good bit of science and its good to come up with understanding of how it works.
But it’s only one small cog in the climate system.
And people at NSIDC and elsewhere should realise that……….
—–
What prediction was that? Ice free Arctic in summer? Presently that has not yet come to pass. Runaway spiral melting? Still waiting chaps. Even if it did it would be my duty to point out an inconvenient truth:
http://www.ngu.no/en-gb/Aktuelt/2008/Less-ice-in-the-Arctic-Ocean-6000-7000-years-ago/
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice-tony-b/
http://co2science.org/articles/V12/N32/C2.php
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm
Guess what year?
2010? 2007?
Correct answer 1922. Now if this was 2010 September then Co2 gets the finger. If 1922 then it’s natural climate variability.
Source: NOAA
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf
899 says:
June 25, 2010 at 9:25 am
Richard Holle says:
June 25, 2010 at 7:34 am
Dave Springer says:
June 25, 2010 at 4:18 am
[–snip–]
The answer my friend, is blowing in the solar wind,
If what you say is true, then a mere ārewindingā of history would reveal that matter.
When were the last times such happened in, say, the Medieval āor otherā times?
______________________________________
Uranus and Neptune had this last synod conjunction on April 20th, 1993 -179 years would be 1814 -179 = 1635 – 179 = 1456 – 179 = 1277 -179 = 1098 – 179 = 919 etc.
I don’t know what time of year that the Earth passed them then, but I would consider that data important in the actual timing of the peak melt effect.
I just think it is a shame they spend so much time and money looking at CO2, and none in looking at solar/ lunar / planetary interactive effects, because of an unsubstantiated belief that models will forecast better.
899 says:
June 25, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Did they predict Washington, D.C.ās snow storm last winter? NO.
Did the predict Jokenhagenās snow storm last winter? NO.
Did the predict the U.K.ās COMPLETE snow coverage? NO.
Gee, so far thatās batting 1000.
Why are you cherry picking the areas that where colder than average when they amounted to no more than 10-15% of the Earth’s surface? The other 85-90% was warmer than average. The Southern Hemisphere was blazing hot with temperatures of 122F in South Africa and heatwaves in Brazil and Australia.
The Arctic area itself was 10F above average that winter with most of Canada up to 10F warmer?
“Gee”, you need to get out of yard.
In all of this thread, I fail to see even one clearly stated mechanism for exactly how CO2 heats oceans. Warm air, such as you might find with re-radiated longwave infrared will evaporate the top skin off of oceans. Therefore it cannot, I repeat cannot heat the ocean below that evaporative surface.
Tell me how CO2 affects either El Nino’s (frequency or strength) or any other oceanic or atmospheric (such as in the AO) weather pattern variation.
Quote:
Dave Springer says:
June 25, 2010 at 4:18 am
It appears to me from the satellite record there was no downward trend in arctic sea ice from 1979 to 1996 then in 1997 something happened that started a downward trend that lasted for about 10 years then leveled off.
CO2 emissions didnāt skyrocket in 1997 did they?
Hmmā¦ what else can melt some ice? Anyone? Anything? Bueller?
Unquote
Could it have something to do with the chemtrails being sprayed of and on from about 1997 – 1998 around the entine world?
As Jimbo shows in his excellent references, nothing out of the ordinary is happening. What is happening today has happened many times in the pre-SUV past.
villabolo
With about eight or nine weeks of possible melting left, do you see any evidence of an “open Arctic Sea?”
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent.png
Quote: (piece of a very important email)
AN AIRLINE MANAGER’S STATEMENT
Posted by C.E. Carnicom on behalf of the author
May 22 2000
The email from the anonymous mechanic rings true. Airline companies in
America have been participating in something called Project Cloverleaf
for a few years now. The earliest date anyone remembers being briefed
on it is 1998. I was briefed on it in 1999. The few airline employees
who were briefed on Project Cloverleaf were all made to undergo
background checks, and before we were briefed on it we were made to sign
non-disclosure agreements, which basically state that if we tell anyone
what we know we could be imprisoned.
Unquote
Search for project cloverleaf starting at 1998.. I think there could be some link between that and some serious weather issues.. I have many questions around the subject, especialy what it does to our weather and the sky above our heads.. Only if u have your head up your dark place u dont see what is going on above you.. The clouds they make must have an enormous affect on our daily weather… I see airplanes flying at to dam low altitudes to produce the type of clouds they make.. It is just plain bullshit! Sorry for getting a bit angry but i am fed up with this.. All of u, and i mean every single one of you.. U know deep inside that it is just too damn much.. U all see it and accept it becuase your mind is being altered to.. U see chemtrail commercials, cartoons, movies, advertisements and games (nintendo Wii for sure).. They all contribute to accepting that they spray chemicals into the damn air we breath! And everyone just ignores it.. The fact that the chemtrails are there, it must mean something.. they are doing something to our sky. There is a purpose, and i am dying to find out wich one!
Peace..
Please respond..
Global sea ice has achieved a net change of about zero in over 30 years of global warming.
http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/global-daily-ice-area-withtrend1.jpg
Jimbo,
your point that there was less ice cover in the Arctic 6000-7000 years ago is not without merit.
http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=ees_papers
This paper finds that sea levels were 5 meters higher at that time.
I am not at all saying that melting the floating ice will raise sea levels, but what I am saying is
that if the floating ice is melting, then the land locked ice is also likely to melt.
As for the rest, as an ex-submariner who has been under the ice, I always appreciate pictures of submarines that have surfaced through the ice. I was on a 688 class boat with fairwater planes that would be severely damaged surfacing through the ice.
Pamela Gray says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:10 pm
In all of this thread, I fail to see even one clearly stated mechanism for exactly how CO2 heats oceans. Warm air, such as you might find with re-radiated longwave infrared will evaporate the top skin off of oceans. Therefore it cannot, I repeat cannot heat the ocean below that evaporative surface.
Repeat it all you like you’re still wrong.
I, for one, don’t consider the removal of “chemtrail” posts to be censorship… I consider that equal to removing pron and viagra ads…. hint hint…
Smokey says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:13 pm
What is happening today is that every new bit of knowledge is imagined by some as proof of Earth-ending doom.
We didn’t do that 50 years ago.
An interesting statistic: People who panic in times of real crisis are the most likely to perish.
e.g. – running pell-mell in a burning building without taking the slightest pause to reason where not to go: proof of natural selection at work.
To me, linear trend is what we should be looking at. That’s the source of the “worse than we thought” meme. If the linear trend starts to reverse, we are (in my view) fully justified to call that “recovery” (but not “recovered”)..
From what I can see, anything above 5.5M would give us a result above the linear trend for the first time since. . . actually, I’m not sure. I was about to say 2006, but that’s not necessarily so. That this graph shows 2006 above the linear trend is impacted by the 2007-2009 results. At minimum 2006 it may not have been above the linear trend.
Belvedere says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Economics. They burn the cheapest fuel they can get away with in doing the heavy lifting.
Far as I know, Clean Air Standards are not enforced in the Friendly Skies. Just don’t crash & burn.
Rhys Jaggar says:
June 25, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Look
I think we can all see in Europe right now that when Arctic temperatures get warmer, we get colder weather. And when it gets cold in the Arctic, we get milder stuff.
So I donāt think, per se, that Arctic Sea Ice is the sole measurement of armageddon.
[–snip–]
But itās only one small cog in the climate system.
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
I realize that there is more to the climate in general than the mere Arctic. The ice cap, however, is definitely not a small cog. Even if it were a “small” cog, the disruption of a single cog can be catastrophic to the whole system.
When the Arctic Ice Cap goes, the issue will not be whether it’s warmer or colder as you mentioned, the issue will be the OPEN WATERS. The effects of such open waters will lead to a chain reaction of changing weather systems throughout the Northern Hemisphere that will not be to our liking.
It will affect the timing and productivity of our crops as well. It will amplify the rain cycle, as the open waters heat up, causing torrential rains. It will be more severe compared to the weather conditions you described.
As for “Armageddon” that silly word is nothing more than a fantasy catastrophe. Fantasy catastrophes don’t preclude the possibility of real ones like the Maya and Easter Island.
Anthony Watts mentions at 6:05 AM WUWT time: “I note that this post makes Tamino mad.”
carrot eater, noted sycophant of Tamino’s frequently dwelling at his site, shows up at 7:03 AM.
Correlation…causation… Correlation…causation…
Oh, and at 7:31 AM toby mentions Neven, a truly charming fellow. Found this sample over at Lucia’s site, May 29, at a post about betting on the June Arctic sea ice:
Charming, like a dog that takes a dump on the floor right after you’ve cleaned up yet another of its “accidents” and immediately comes to you expecting to be petted. Absolutely wonderful, indeed.
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
When the Arctic Ice Cap goes, the issue will not be whether itās warmer or colder as you mentioned, the issue will be the OPEN WATERS. The effects of such open waters will lead to a chain reaction of changing weather systems throughout the Northern Hemisphere that will not be to our liking.
—-
Please respond and explain why speculation of a “chain reaction” failed in the past. Read these links and explain as I can’t seem to match the past with your “chain reaction”.
http://www.ngu.no/en-gb/Aktuelt/2008/Less-ice-in-the-Arctic-Ocean-6000-7000-years-ago/
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice-tony-b/
http://co2science.org/articles/V12/N32/C2.php
kadaka
Interesting posts from Neven. He isn’t actually challenging anything I am posting, rather he “suspects” that I am not doing any research.
Also interesting that my forecast for the minimum is identical to that of Julienne, whom no doubt he holds in very high esteem.
It goes to show how irrational AGW groupies can be.
stevengoddard says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:16 pm
stevengoddard says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:16 pm
villabolo
With about eight or nine weeks of possible melting left, do you see any evidence of an āopen Arctic Sea?ā
VILLABOLO:
Steve, I have never claimed that the Arctic Ice Cap is going to open up this year or even 2013-2015 like Maslowski said. Let me clarify what I am predicting.
1) With the exception of a small stretch of ice north of Canada, where the waters are shallower and colder, I predict the following. Ice free summers in the Arctic Sea area by 2015-2020.
2) This ice free condition will probably start out for a few days or weeks at first. As the waters warm up, it will stretch out to one then two or more months. How long that progression takes I really don’t have a clue.
3) As far as Sea Ice Extent is concerned I make another prediction, which, to me is obvious. The winter and early summer Sea Ice Extent will still hang on for a while. Probably decades for the winter. Silly as it is to mention, I bring up in light of another prediction.
4) Skeptics will still be watching it for signs of any regrowth. And such regrowth will probably happen, temporarily, once or twice. That would be due to either La Ninas and or volcanic eruptions.
5) Weather changes. Those are definitely hard to pinpoint in time or as to whether severe conditions will happen almost immediately, 1-3, years or take several years to progress.
One thing I definitely predict about the weather changes is that THEY WILL HAPPEN as a result of the Arctic Sea opening up.
Thanks again Steve, your last two questions have been challenging.
From: stevengoddard on June 25, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Interesting how he can point to one comment as the obvious inspiration for a post, when we were hashing out PIOMAS absurdities and ice volume estimates for months previous in the comments.
I’ve seen her posts here a few times, and otherwise have no idea who she is. Would you have some info about her, perhaps some links?
He says to the guy who had a running argument with a certain commentator spanning several articles, said commentator insisting that PIPS 2.0 was long dead and mothballed with the US Navy now using PIPS 3.0, for which I consumed a whole lot of time researching and writing and proofreading, basically generating whole articles to conclusively show he was wrong (last one here)… Leading to the grand concession: ‘Alright, maybe 2.0 is still operational, but the Navy sure isn’t using it for anything important, they have better tools available!’
Although in all fairness, would he be only 0.75 (75%) irrational AGW groupie? Would we lose any appreciable level of precision by rounding up to the whole number? š
One thing is certain: when all of us die, Arctic Ice still will be there.
Anthony: Yes, it is brave and glorious to sign your posts by your own name, though it is more dangerous. My website has been attacked after posting here (I didn’t post much anywhere else, too busy), and I am still cleaning up the mess. Threats of physical violence are more of an exception that the rule yet, but the larger is your perceived public caliber, the higher the probability. Become paranoid before it’s too late.
villabolo says:
June 25, 2010 at 4:45 pm
1) With the exception of a small stretch of ice north of Canada, where the waters are shallower and colder, I predict the following. Ice free summers in the Arctic Sea area by 2015-2020.
——
My respect for you has grown. You are prepared to stick your neck out and make a prediction. Now stick with it, just 10 years to go. I’ll stick my neck out and predict the opposite of yours for 2015-2020 with ice in summer on a small stretch of ice north of Canada.
I’m still waiting to the question I posed for you earlier.
The trend is downward because the Arctic is melting. Not because of the greenhouse effect or its magical “Arctic amplification” but because of warm water brought to the Arctic by ocean currents. It all started at the beginning of the twentieth century when a rearrangement of the North Atlantic current system directed the Gulf Stream unto its present northerly course. There was a pause and partial cooling roughly from 1940 to 1960. But the warming resumed after that and by 2003 had reached the level that existed in the twenties and thirties. Today it is beyond that point. Read “What Warming?” available on Amazon.com.
I think most people will be quite pleased with vast tracts of northern tundra becoming arable land and longer growing seasons further south.
Of course it won’t please everyone. Some people are simply afraid of change and desperately cling to the status quo. Others embrace it. Pessimist vs. optimist. Which are you?
stevengoddard wrote,
“The ‘purpose of this post’ is to point out that nothing which happens over the next few summers will change the 30 year trend.
We could have record high minimums for several years in a row, and the widely vaunted ‘long term trend’ would still be downwards.”
Well, there are three things here. One is arithmetic. It’s true that the 2010 minimum would have to magically rise higher than today’s level in order to overcome the previous 31 years and give us a flat trend. Even three consecutive years of minima above 10 million (where the previous high record is 8.36) would not totally wipe out that downward slope. But that’s just arithmetic.
The second thing is scientists. Contrary to the worldview that dominates this site, Arctic scientists are not stupid, they’re not corrupt, and they do know quite a bit about the Arctic. Many of them love the place, and its mysteries. If they *did* see the next three years setting record-high minima, you can bet they’d abandon that downward trend (rather than cling to the arithmetic) and search for better ways to understand what was going on.
But the third thing is reality. We have first-hand reports from the ice, and more distant calculations from the modelers, that confirm what NSIDC, Arctic residents and countless others have been reporting for years — the real downward trend in extent including the sharp jag of 2007 have left us with proportionately less multiyear ice, and the thinner ice that remains is less able to survive adverse treatment from wind, currents or temperature. The record pace of ice loss this month appears quite consistent with that view as well. So we are not actually going to see a record high minimum this year, or anything remotely close to it. That downward trend still looks real. A better question is, will it stay more or less linear?
Gneiss
Nobody made any accusations of scientists being stupid or corrupt, and I simply can not be responsible for other people’s paranoid interpretations.
Gneiss says:
June 25, 2010 at 8:25 pm
A better question is, will it stay more or less linear?
The main relevant question is: does anthropogenic CO2 have anything to do with this trend?
I have given a link above for figures ( 11, 12) that show that there has been a monotonic increase in sea level since the little ice age. This starts 100 years before any substantial hydrocarbons are introduced by man in the earth’s atmosphere. As ice is the main storage of water in the earth cycles one expects a corresponding decrease in ice.
So, there is an increase in temperature since the little ice age, an increase in sea level and a corresponding increase in diminishing ice globally.
Why is it not part of the natural cycle shown so clearly in the ice core records?
The reason I am interested in whether there is going to be a turning point is because , together with the sun minimum, it may be that this is the next part of the story, and we are entering the next little ice age. I hope not.
How does one violate the first and second law of thermodynanics? This orb is not a black body. It’s a rotating planet.
Conduction, convection, vaporation, precipitation (no feedback). There is no “greenhouse effect.”
It’s amazing what cloudiness will do to temperatures. During the summer, when a cloud comes over, it seems to be cooler. Albedo effect.
It’s all about the sun and the oceans.
By the way, I misspelled thermodynamics. I’m usually a good speller.
Someone who is much smarter:
Heinz Thieme
http://realplanet.eu/backrad.htm
The phenomenon of āatmospheric backradiationā is presently advanced as an explanation of thermal conditions on Earth, and as the basis of some statements about climate change. However, scientific evaluation in strict accord with the laws of physics and mathematics suggests that āatmospheric backradiationā is physical nonsense.
An assessment conducted in the light of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the principles of vector algebra of the key greenhouse theory concept of āatmospheric backradiationā suggests that it is simply a mirage. The only āBackradiation Phenomenonā that needs explaining is how this physical nonsense maintains its place in numerous earth sciences textbooks at both school and university level.
I interviewed a few physicists about this, and they seemed to concur:
“Heat-trapping gases,” you hear, and “Radiation goes in but canāt get out.” Well then, what is every explanation of the greenhouse effect pointing at but a radiation valve? Since heat rays are prevented from exiting to space, it is claimed, they have nowhere else to go but back to the earth which, by absorbing them, becomes warmer.
The notion of a radiation valve snaps these concepts into focus: Without such a valve, it is imagined, infrared rays from the earth’s solar-heated surface will pass freely into space. For every unit of sunlight going in, therefore, one unit of infrared goes out. Ergo, 1 – 1 = 0, zero referring to the heat gain. But with a proper valve in place no infrared is lost and the trapped rays are absorbed by the emitting surface, so the process goes thusly:
As you see, if the tenets of this theory are valid there can be no outcome other than a doubling of surface energy (a doubling at minimum, that is, since there’s no reason to suppose that radiation from the now-warmer surface would not continue to be back-radiated, absorbed, and amplified in a “runaway” heating cascade).
Simple as it is, though, no scientist in the world is able to construct a model that exhibits any radiative gain because the theory’s tenets (called “the basic science”) are not valid. On a theoretical basis alone, conservation of energy (the First Law) forbids a model like this from working. You can’t obtain more energy than you put in.
Just like temperature, radiant energy flows do not add. Lumping two 70Ā° balls of clay together doesn’t result in a single ball that’s 140Ā°, nor do 70 watts per square meter beaming back onto a body that’s radiating 70 raise it to 140. Frankly, it is stupid to think otherwise.
ā¢ Back-radiation cannot be absorbed by the emitter or else the conservation of energy law is meaningless. As I’ve noted before, the output of a weak battery can’t be used as an input to recharge it.
This is interesting. I was never sold on Stefan-Boltzmann’s Radiation Law, especially after interviewing Ferenc Mikolczi.
“We learn from this analysis that the 15 C at the Earth surface is not necessarily related to the presence of any socalled greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Similar conclusions have been drawn in The Thermodynamic Atmosphere Effect, by Heinz Thieme.
“Note that scientific evidence (experimental or theoretical) of major effects of greenhouse gases on the Earth surface temperature, seems to be lacking. The evidence put forward consists of differentiating Stefan-Boltzmann’s Radiation Law which connects socalled “radiative forcing” dQ to surface temperature change dT by the simple relation dQ = 4 dT.
“However, this evidence is not convincing, to me at least, because Stefan-Boltzmann’s Radiation Law concerns a simple system (one black-body) and not a coupled system of planet + atmosphere with internal temperature gradient.
“It is surprising to see large parts of the scientific community including academies of sciences embracing a hypothesis of global warming from atmospheric CO2, without any convincing scientific support. It appears that the mere mentioning of Stefan-Boltzmann’s Radiation Law has been enough to annihilate any further demands of scientific evidence.
“This may be a result a 2oth century physics education with both the Radiation Law and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics being based on statistical mechanics not understood by anybody. In any case, the acceptance by the scientific community of CO2 climate are much smarter.”
Alexander Feht (25 June 6:09)
When I went to your site I received this message
So, who is doing the attacking?
Gneiss, you seem to be overwhelmed by data. Mechanism is the key. Either the trend has a mechanism attached to CO2, or it does not. Which is it?
You gotta like the physics guys: They are not “climatologists.”
“In reality, greenhouses merely suppress convective heat-loss, preventing the heated air from dissipating. It is air that’s trapped, not radiation; glass’s response to infrared (IR) has nothing to do with it. Clear plastic bags will do just as well or even panes of polished salt crystals, which don’t absorb IR at all.
“So what does all this mean? Letās put it together. It means that contrary to advertised, water vapor is a major “anti-greenhouse gas” ā a term that has to be put in quotes, because assuming that carbon dioxide is in any way a warming agent is also wrong, as is the whole “science of radiative forcing.”
“Not only will the trace gases need more energy to reach the same temperature as the air that contains them, they will radiate it in all directions instantly and at the speed of light and thus increase the efficiency of the air mass in cooling it, not warming it, in line with the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
“There is also no need to provide a ‘blanket’ to keep earth warm. The vacuum of space acts like the most perfect thermos flask. Space is not cold; it is empty, void of matter, and thus has no temperature.”
Alan Siddons
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Greenhouse_Effect_Poppycock.pdf
Jimbo says:
June 25, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Please respond and explain why speculation of a āchain reactionā failed in the past. Read these links and explain as I canāt seem to match the past with your āchain reactionā.
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
Jimbo, without having to speculate at all, the laws of physics are such that drastic weather changes HAVE TO occur when the Arctic Ice Cap goes from ice covered to open water. The laws of Nature are too simple to interpret otherwise. If this seems contradictory to what you’ve read elsewhere about hypothetical and sometimes questionable reconstructions of the ice cap’s history then ask yourself this. Which is
most likely to be true? Nature or speculation about the past?
I’ll respond to both the issues of inevitable change and why your citations either don’t conform to reality or have been misinterpreted.
_________________________________________________________
INEVITABLE CHANGE IN AN ICE FREE ARCTIC
First, sea ice reflects 80-90% of sunlight depending on how thin it is. Blue ocean water absorbs 80% of sunlight. This results in a rise in temperature in the water.
The disappearance of the ice cap increases evaporation from the ocean in two ways. It is no longer able to keep evaporation down by acting as a physical barrier. Also, the increased heat raises evaporation.
Increased evaporation generates more clouds which in turn rain or snow more intensely. It was previously predicted, in the 1990’s, that Global Warming would increase intense rain storms like the kind that affected Minneapolis, Fargo and Tennessee. This increase would be the result of the Earth’s oceans heating up.
The increased heat coming from the Arctic Sea would also change storm patterns.
__________________________________________________________
ABOUT THE ARCTIC’S HISTORY OF BEING ICE FREE
http://www.ngu.no/en-gb/Aktuelt/2008/Less-ice-in-the-Arctic-Ocean-6000-7000-years-ago/
The first citation you gave is the only one I lend credibility to. It does not however state with certainty that the Arctic Sea was totally open. Instead it says:
“We still donāt know whether the Arctic Ocean was completely ice free, but there was more open water in the area north of Greenland than there is today, . . .”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“However, the scientists are very careful about drawing parallels with the present-day trend in the Arctic Ocean where the cover of sea ice seems to be decreasing.”
āChanges that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today,ā Astrid LysĆ„ believes.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
However, this cannot lead to the conclusion you made that the “chain reaction” failed in the past. How do you not know that what I stated did not occur? You do realize that at that time North America was inhabited by hunter gatherers who were far more flexible to changes in their environment (through underpopulation) than “advanced civilizations” which are very fragile.
You also have to take into consideration that the geological record often times show that such natural transitions took longer to occur than our current situation which is taking place within decades. THE FASTER SOMETHING HAPPENS THE WORSE IT GETS.
For example, a single large hurricane can have the power of a 12,000 megaton nuclear bomb. Yet it obviously does not destroy as much, or even a fraction, as that amount would, in the form of an actual bomb. That is because nuclear bombs release their energy in a fraction of a second. This why a 3 inch circle of sunlight on your skin will do nothing unless you put it through a 3 inch magnifying glass.
With a more rapid shift and continued changes in the weather we will not be able to adapt our agriculture every few years to the demands of a very fickle and nasty climate.
**************************************************************************
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice-tony-b/
It is frustrating to try and verify secondary sources that are already on one side of the issue instead of primary sources. I did not find a link for the Royal Society quote but I’m aware that it concerns William Scoresby’s exploration of Greenland.
My limited knowledge of him is that he explored the east coast of Greenland and was deterred by impenetrable ice from proceeding further. I would also be very wary of anyone, no matter what his reputation that relies on second hand information from whalers. They may either exaggerate or sincerely but erroneously assume that some open stretch of water, as far as the eyes can see, implies an opening through an ocean that stretches for hundreds of miles.
How does any of this prove an open Arctic Sea? At most it indicates a small region, relative to the size of the entire ice cap, open here or there-now and then.
**************************************************************************
http://co2science.org/articles/V12/N32/C2.php
Finally, a quote from a most arrogant and simplistic point of view:
What it means
“Since the change in sea-ice cover observed at the end of the 20th century (which climate alarmists claim to be unnatural) was far exceeded by changes observed multiple times over the past several thousand years of relatively stable atmospheric CO2 concentrations (when values never strayed much below 250 ppm or much above 275 ppm), there is no compelling reason to believe that the increase in the air’s CO2 content that has occurred since the start of the Industrial Revolution has had anything at all to do with the declining sea-ice cover of the recent past; for at a current concentration of 385 ppm, the recent rise in the air’s CO2 content should have led to a decrease in sea-ice cover that far exceeds what has occurred multiple times in the past without any significant change in CO2.”
First of all, it is a common canard to assume that climatologists believe CO2 is the only force in NATURAL Global Warming. Occasionally yes, such as the situation with snowball Earth (650 million years ago). It took huge amounts of CO2 to defrost an entirely frozen Earth that had both a weak sun and white slushy ice, from pole to equator, reflecting whatever weak sunlight there was.
Man made Global Warming is a different situation. It is we who are burning the coal and oil not Nature.
Also, what’s happening today was not far “exceeded” by what has happened in the past. What is happening today is a work in progress that will end up melting all the ice in the Arctic, not merely wide areas here and there, from time to time. Just because Nature does not use their timetable does not mean that they have proven anything.
Furthermore, they’re not taking into account the complexities of the early Holocene where there was extensive variation in temperatures between the warmer Northern and cooler Southern Hemispheres. These differences were due to the Milankovitch Cycles. Thus there is no need to assume that the 270 ppm of CO2 was the only force operating on the Holocene climate. Please check out the following link.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/holocene.html
“In summary, the mid-Holocene, roughly 6,000 years ago, was generally warmer than today, but only in summer and only in the northern hemisphere. More over, we clearly know the cause of this natural warming, and know without doubt that this proven “astronomical” climate forcing mechanism cannot be responsible for the warming over the last 100 years.”
Please cross reference that statement with the link you provided me: http://www.ngu.no/en-gb/Aktuelt/2008/Less-ice-in-the-Arctic-Ocean-6000-7000-years-ago/
Which says: āChanges that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today,ā Astrid LysĆ„ believes.
They also disregard the issue of thermal lag, which is predicted to increase our temperatures by a Global average of 1F (making a total of about 2.5F) within about 30 years if we were to stay at 390 ppm by some magic.
In fact, thermal lag would explain the so called discrepancy in the amounts of current CO2 at 390 ppm and its alleged under performance in melting the ice cap. If we had the 320 ppm that we had in 1960 that have been enough to melt the ice cap. It just would have taken several hundred years instead of the several decades that the current situation indicates.
Since they mock the claims of “climate alarmists” in saying that the current situation is “unnatural”, that is man made, it would be interesting to know, WHAT IS THEIR THEORY? Or are they even in a position to collect data, process it and come out with theories that can be verified independently?
All I have seen so far are descriptions of a partially open ice cap; a muddled attempt to prove a completely open Arctic Sea with historical accounts and a simplistic, arrogant attempt to explain a complex issue.
899 says:
June 25, 2010 at 11:17 am
Come to think of it, I was absent the day they taught us to be concerned about Arctic ice.
villabolo says:
June 25, 2010 at 2:28 pm
You did not answer my questions.
Past minimums of Arctic ice had no long term consequences for man or animal. History demonstrates this simple fact. We still have polar bears, seals, and penguins. When it got colder, the Vikings, who had been making a good living in the parts of Greenland they had settled, were wiped out. Not good.
You said “Perhaps because the weather will change throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere to our detriment.”
Perhaps? Baseless speculation. History teaches an ice free Arctic is to our benefit.
Here are some positive results:
Open shipping through the region. Cruise liners could take people on “Doomsday” cruises. Or perhaps, “Tipping Point” cruises. Alarmists could lecture people on what happens when mankind fails to curb its appetites as the ship passes over the North Pole.
We can drill for oil in the Arctic.
Food production will increase in Russia, Canada, Norway, Greenland, etc.
Greater range of fish stocks. Cod returning to Arctic?
No more Caitlin expeditions. Diminishment of nonsense always a good thing.
Perhaps a warmer Arctic is a good thing?
Again I pose the question, why should I be concerned about all the ice going away from Arctic ocean?
Kirk Myers says:
June 25, 2010 at 10:18 pm
I agree. It looks like a huge misunderstanding to me.
The reason for it to last so long, is that the “non-climatologists” has been busy doing their work elsewhere. In the mean time the Hockey-Team has been busy.
When someone actually tried to give some inputs they where filtered out by the IPCC and the modified Peer Review process.
This is my personal impression of the whole story.
Keith Minto said on June 25, 2010 at 11:04 pm:
Info from the Google advisory (note: URL includes my particular browser, freely ignore):
Sounds like a bad advertisement popped up.
The point I was trying to make was perhaps lost in my convoluted assertion at 6/25 06:45am. It appears to me that the distribution of Arctic ice is not ‘normal’ nor Gaussian, rather has a cut-off at the upper end, rendering comparisons of negative and positive anomalies meaningless for the Arctic. Here is what I think the long term dataset looks like. Ice extent beyond the maximum in the basin is the onset of an ice age, which would render the negative excursions, even ice-free, to an insignificant statistic as the time duration for the interglacial is almost an order of magnitude shorter than the glaciated period.
http://i49.tinypic.com/160ucy0.jpg
CodeTech says:
June 25, 2010 at 8:11 am
Seriously, anyone who thinks that a straight ātrendā line is what applies here doesnāt really understand the physical world. Whereās the curve? Whereās the wave? Who failed to comprehend the concept of ācyclicalā?
A—-MEN!
By the way, with all the talk of extending the baseline, we ought to extend it back 4.5 billion years (zero ice) and see how the trend looks. I bet it’s a positive trend overall.
Anna V wrote,
“The main relevant question is: does anthropogenic CO2 have anything to do with this trend?”
Most scientists who have studied the question think yes, anthropogenic CO2 has much to do with this trend. Not because they haven’t considered alternative hypotheses, which they have. But because their evidence failed to support those alternatives one after another, while it continues to accumulate for CO2.
The WUWT writers and most readers remain certain all those scientists are wrong, I know.
David L says:
June 26, 2010 at 8:22 am
CodeTech says:
June 25, 2010 at 8:11 am
Seriously, anyone who thinks that a straight ātrendā line is what applies here doesnāt really understand the physical world. Whereās the curve? Whereās the wave? Who failed to comprehend the concept of ācyclicalā?
Aā-MEN!
By the way, with all the talk of extending the baseline, we ought to extend it back 4.5 billion years (zero ice) and see how the trend looks. I bet itās a positive trend overall.
—————————————-
David, that makes no sense at all. Why would you try to make a trend using data back that far when the continents were not even in the same positions 4.5 billion years ago as they are today? That is absolute nonsense.
Here is what will happen:
They will keep reporting a negative trend for a few years. Then they will say “well, it is still going down but the going down is slowing, so SEE! OUR MEASURES ARE WORKING… BUT… WE NEED EVEN MORE IF THEM OTHERWISE ARMAGUEDDON WILL BE BACK”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, will be used to justify more of their BS
Dave Springer says:
June 25, 2010 at 7:45 pm
“I think most people will be quite pleased with vast tracts of northern tundra becoming arable land and longer growing seasons further south.”
VILLABOLO RESPONDS (with mirth) :
Yeah, right! “Most people will be quiet pleased” at their native lands being turned to desert. You do realize that when ecozones shift polewards that deserts and arid lands expand as well? And do you realize, that when they do, they replace what you call “south”?
Take a good look at what’s happening to India:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64Q3AI20100527
And other regions “further south”:
Extreme heat wave sets all-time high temperature records in Africa and Middle East
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1516
Last, but certainly not least, what do you think of the huge amounts of Methane that will released by the Tundra? For a most amusing and ironic hint please watch this video. I know it will entertain a small child and make a young adolescent think. I’m not sure about some adults though.
Richard Holle says:
June 25, 2010 at 2:56 pm
899 says:
June 25, 2010 at 9:25 am
If what you say is true, then a mere ārewindingā of history would reveal that matter.
When were the last times such happened in, say, the Medieval āor otherā times?
______________________________________
Uranus and Neptune had this last synod conjunction on April 20th, 1993 -179 years would be 1814 -179 = 1635 ā 179 = 1456 ā 179 = 1277 -179 = 1098 ā 179 = 919 etc.
I donāt know what time of year that the Earth passed them then, but I would consider that data important in the actual timing of the peak melt effect.
I just think it is a shame they spend so much time and money looking at CO2, and none in looking at solar/ lunar / planetary interactive effects, because of an unsubstantiated belief that models will forecast better.
If I recall history correctly, 919 was on the ramp-up of the Medieval climate optimum, 1098 was nearing the peak, 1277 was on to the down side, and 1456 was in the valley.
Now, some people will expect that repetitive events of the same type should tend to āor at leastā produce near identical effects/results.
What I point out above is that two such events ‘appear’ to have led to a warming, whilst two others appear to have had an opposite affect.
Am I missing something there?
villabolo says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:02 pm
899 says:
June 25, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Did they predict Washington, D.C.ās snow storm last winter? NO.
Did the predict Jokenhagenās snow storm last winter? NO.
Did the predict the U.K.ās COMPLETE snow coverage? NO.
Gee, so far thatās batting 1000.
Why are you cherry picking the areas that where colder than average when they amounted to no more than 10-15% of the Earthās surface? The other 85-90% was warmer than average. The Southern Hemisphere was blazing hot with temperatures of 122F in South Africa and heatwaves in Brazil and Australia.
The Arctic area itself was 10F above average that winter with most of Canada up to 10F warmer?
āGeeā, you need to get out of yard.
“Cherry Picking,” you say?
Well, you know? I must reply with a question for yourself: Why are NASA GISS et al., cherry picking which weather stations are used, whilst tossing out well over a 1000 other stations which ~are~ properly sited?
Wouldn’t ~you~ find it interesting that your favorite climate guessers are resorting to using such iffy data as that produced by stations sited in the most questionable fashion as to verily call into question the entirety of the whole of the data sets used?
And do tell: Why is that NASA GISS ‘homogenizes’ data sets such as to produce extremely questionable results? All of that, mind you, whilst using data from the worst sited stations they could find.
How is it that all of the warmer sites are used to pervert the end result such as to make cooler sites appear to be far warmer than they really are?
Oh, then there’s this: All of the dire prognostications about the UK becoming a ‘shrimp on the barbie’ never panned out. In fact, quite the opposite happened! But what they hey: WE, i.e., yourself, don’t want to talk about that!
Yeah, and what the heck, let’s talk about the dire prediction of a COMPLETELY ICE-FREE Arctic … Absolutely ~no~ cherry picking going on there, right?
CodeTech writes (and David L says Aā-MEN!).
“Seriously, anyone who thinks that a straight ‘trend’ line is what applies here doesnāt really understand the physical world. Whereās the curve? Whereās the wave? Who failed to comprehend the concept of ‘cyclical’?”
OK, CodeTech or David, show those physical scientists who don’t really understand the physical world, who failed to comprehend the concept of ‘cyclical’, what you know and they don’t.
Here are the minimum ice extent data (NSIDC) behind the “trend” in question, which in so many graphs has been summarized by a simple linear model. Show where the curve is, where the wave is. Include appropriate significance tests for improvement over the linear model. And of course, state your curvy, wavy model’s predictions for this year.
year,minimum
1979,8.15
1980,8.04
1981,7.86
1982,8.26
1983,8.36
1984,7.87
1985,7.46
1986,8.01
1987,7.69
1988,7.9
1989,7.92
1990,6.82
1991,7.4
1992,7.86
1993,7.29
1994,7.61
1995,6.68
1996,8.17
1997,7.3
1998,7.49
1999,7.38
2000,7.21
2001,7.47
2002,6.53
2003,6.85
2004,6.83
2005,6.3
2006,6.52
2007,5.36
2008,6.06
2009,6.26
Pamela Gray says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:10 pm
In all of this thread, I fail to see even one clearly stated mechanism for exactly how CO2 heats oceans. Warm air, such as you might find with re-radiated longwave infrared will evaporate the top skin off of oceans. Therefore it cannot, I repeat cannot heat the ocean below that evaporative surface.
Tell me how CO2 affects either El Ninoās (frequency or strength) or any other oceanic or atmospheric (such as in the AO) weather pattern variation.
Pamela,
Before you get a logically reasoned and cogent scientific reply from the ones pushing the current theory, it is my considered opinion that we’ll be hearing crickets chirp … for a ~very~ long time!
:o)
Phil. says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Pamela Gray says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:10 pm
In all of this thread, I fail to see even one clearly stated mechanism for exactly how CO2 heats oceans. Warm air, such as you might find with re-radiated longwave infrared will evaporate the top skin off of oceans. Therefore it cannot, I repeat cannot heat the ocean below that evaporative surface.
Repeat it all you like youāre still wrong.
PROVE IT!
Got data?
No? Too bad, eh?
Phil. says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:55 pm
“[…]
Repeat it all you like youāre still wrong.”
Hey, scientific argument that.
villabolo says:
June 26, 2010 at 12:47 pm
“[…]
And other regions āfurther southā:
Extreme heat wave sets all-time high temperature records in Africa and Middle East
”
1.) As soon as a skeptic points to a cold record the warmists will tell him that that’s weather, not climate. Which doesn’t stop the IPCC from using the French heatwave as an example for climate change in IPCC AR4. It’s only wrong when the skeptics do it.
2.) Wasn’t a key prediction by the GCM’s that global warming will affect the poles and the cold regions much more than places that are already hot, like Africa?
3.) Thanks for the brainwashing-kids methane video. I like to stay up to date with the sinister tactics of the warmists.
899 says:
June 26, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Well, you know? I must reply with a question for yourself: Why are NASA GISS et al., cherry picking which weather stations are used, whilst tossing out well over a 1000 other stations which ~are~ properly sited?
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
My apologies for not specifying the source of my information concerning the estimates of the percentages of the Earth that was cooler/warmer than usual as well as Arctic temperatures. It was based on NASA’s Thermal Imaging satellites.
They produce color coded maps of the Earth’s heat. I clearly saw the Arctic in two shades of dark red overlapping each other. Those were the warmest colors on the color chart (10F).
The areas that were colder than usual could be seen as a band (the shape varied throughout the season) going around the Earth just south of the Arctic and most of Canada. In the US it began roughly at the Canadian border and went down to just south of Cuba. Then, going eastward, it continued through Europe, Russia, Siberia, parts of China and then came to the southwest area of Canada.
Everything south to the Equator was Global Warming as usual. In the Southern Hemisphere things were blazing hot
Even without this satellite evidence don’t you realize that there are obvious ways of finding out what the temperature is outside of our solipsistic “backyard. DO YOU SERIOUSLY BELIEVE THAT THE WHOLE EARTH WAS COLDER AND IF SO ON WHAT EVIDENCE? And please don’t answer with circular reasoning such as, It was colder in-cherry picked location of your choice.”
In fact, how do you know the areas that were colder than usual? Through the Media? Just do a Google of “South Africa heatwave”, etc. and you’ll see what I mean.
anna v says:
June 25, 2010 at 9:10 pm
So, there is an increase in temperature since the little ice age, an increase in sea level and a corresponding increase in diminishing ice globally.
Why is it not part of the natural cycle shown so clearly in the ice core records?
The reason I am interested in whether there is going to be a turning point is because , together with the sun minimum, it may be that this is the next part of the story, and we are entering the next little ice age. I hope not.
Well, you see? It’s as this: The conniving thieves whom are pushing ‘cap and trade,’ want to get that enacted just as fast as possible, and THAT for ONLY ONE reason: They know the Earth’s weather system is in a cooling phase, and the faster the Earth cools, the less chance they have at gaming the rest of us.
So, they cajole, condemn, deride, and remonstrate at every turn. You see? Just as soon as they get that hideous legislation enacted, why then they will commence to declare that =as a result of the legislation= the weather has responded to the limits placed upon the carbon output āeven though there were NO limits imposed!
The whole scheme is: Money changing hands.
And of course the sycophants in the ‘green charade parade’ will all thusly declare success, and move on to the next step: Population reduction.
How CO2 heats oceans.
Let me try to explain.
Increased CO2 leads to increased downward longwave (infrared) flux at the surface.
How do you think the ocean responds to this change in a major term in its energy budget?
Even if initially just the skin temperature warms, since it is a sustained forcing, this warming has to mix deeper over time: it can’t just stay at the surface because the ocean is not static.
Let me know if I have to explain anything further.
RE: Trends; Just for Reference
From my personal calculations on the data I have, it appears that the NOAA global ocean surface temperature data can be represented as five linear trend segments:
I have no explanation for these trends. My average rms error for this representation is 0.093 deg C and my peak error is 0.31 deg C.
RE: My Post of June 26, 2010 at 4:02 pm ; Trends
Correction: I see the first segment start should have been be -0.0321 deg C.
DirkH says:
June 26, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Phil. says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:55 pm
ā[…]
Repeat it all you like youāre still wrong.ā
Hey, scientific argument that.
It’s not the first time it’s been posted and been rebutted, Pamela’s style is to ignore such posts and to pretend they didn’t happen and repost the same stuff again and again.
899 says:
June 26, 2010 at 2:00 pm
“Yeah, and what the heck, letās talk about the dire prediction of a COMPLETELY ICE-FREE Arctic ā¦ Absolutely ~no~ cherry picking going on there, right?”
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
It seems like you’re ASSUMING (no a** out of me) that the ice free summers in the Arctic have been predicted by the majority of Climatologists as happening yesterday. I will say two things about that. First, it’s not true. Second, it’s a moot issue as to when EXACTLY. The issue is that will obviously occur sooner or later.
Do you think that the majority of Climatologists have failed in their predictions about the Arctic melting? The exact opposite is true.
At first the IPCC, notorious for its conservatism in its predictions, pointed to the year 2100. Yeah right. Then, as Climatologists started to do some better predictions, 2050 and 2040 were predicted. Their predictions were too conservative as a result of their not being able to incorporate all of the complex feedback factors.
As satellite images began to show the acceleration of the ice cap thinning, 2020-2030 was settled on. One exception, an outlier by the name of Wieslaw Maslowski, predicted 2013.
From the way things are looking it seems that 2010-2020 for an ice free ice cap during summer is right on. Incidentally, this does not necessarily mean that the whole 6 month long summer will instantly become ice free. It will probably start for a few days out of the season progressing to weeks then months.
As for the issue being moot, I previously stated that it would occur sooner or later. So what if it occurs in 2040 instead of 2030? This is not a game where you make precise bets and end up losing if you don’t get everything right. When it does begin to happen people will wish that they had more time to prepare. But then, if they actually had more time in the first place, they wouldn’t be taking the situation seriously.
Bottom line, the ARCTIC HAS BEEN AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE THINNING AND SHRINKING AS A TREND. The inevitable result is obvious.
Gneiss says:
June 26, 2010 at 9:39 am
Anna V wrote,
āThe main relevant question is: does anthropogenic CO2 have anything to do with this trend?ā
Most scientists who have studied the question think yes, anthropogenic CO2 has much to do with this trend. Not because they havenāt considered alternative hypotheses, which they have. But because their evidence failed to support those alternatives one after another, while it continues to accumulate for CO2.
The WUWT writers and most readers remain certain all those scientists are wrong, I know.
You’ve rather dishonestly left out the qualifier: Most scientists who’ve gotten fat research grants …
Funny how it is that ‘money talks,’ don’t you agree?
And no, I’m not being paid anything, by anyone, to express my lone opinion.
All I have to go by is history, what I know to be the truth of matters, and the loud, boisterous clamoring of the funded classes who have it in mind to subjugate the rest of us into serfdom āif not actually the graveā in order to please their masters: The ones pushing ‘cap and trade’ with such a fierce passion that it would easily pass as a religion.
Yes, money does seem to talk quite loudly. The false prophets who will profit handsomely should they succeed, while their ‘degreed flunkies’ will be cast aside like the useful idiots they are.
Gneiss says:
June 26, 2010 at 2:08 pm
[–snip–]Here are the minimum ice extent data (NSIDC) behind the ātrendā in question, which in so many graphs has been summarized by a simple linear model. Show where the curve is, where the wave is. Include appropriate significance tests for improvement over the linear model. And of course, state your curvy, wavy modelās predictions for this year.
Ice extent …
WHAT do you not understand about QUANTITY of ice?
You know: That part of the ice which DOESN’T melt because of its thickness. It melts around the THIN edges.
Is that something which is entirely irrelevant in your world?
villabolo says:
June 26, 2010 at 3:06 pm
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
My apologies for not specifying the source of my information concerning the estimates of the percentages of the Earth that was cooler/warmer than usual as well as Arctic temperatures. It was based on NASAās Thermal Imaging satellites.
I am āand remainā unimpressed by anything NASA has produced of late regarding that matter of ‘climate,’ for the simple reason that the lot of it is predicated upon a political outcome, and NOT at all on science.
You may plead, beg, cajole and remonstrate over matters, but in the end nothing has changed over what has been āand continues to beā normal climate variability.
The whole of your tirades is predicated upon convincing others that you are correct beyond reason when in fact you are not.
If we āthe rest of usā were to take you at your word, then the UK would have been toast last winter. It wasn’t. IT FROZE!!!
The same with Washington, D.C., and the north of Scotland has had record skiing season.
The weather patterns shifted, just as they’ve always.
Once again: It’s referred to as ‘natural climate variability.’ WHAT do =>YOU<= not understand about that?!?!
Good lord! Somebody call the WAAAAAAAAMBULANCE!!!!
Four million years of weather and natural climate variability have proven your contentions to be specious beyond words!
VERY BIG CLUE FOR YOU: The weather didn't start yesterday, and it ain't gonna end tomorrow!!!
Geez!
Jim D says:
June 26, 2010 at 3:58 pm
How CO2 heats oceans.
Let me try to explain.
Increased CO2 leads to increased downward longwave (infrared) flux at the surface.
How do you think the ocean responds to this change in a major term in its energy budget?
Even if initially just the skin temperature warms, since it is a sustained forcing, this warming has to mix deeper over time: it canāt just stay at the surface because the ocean is not static.
Let me know if I have to explain anything further.
That is so hideously wrong as to be hilarious beyond belief!
See here: The Vostok ice core data reveals that as the atmospheric temperature rose, the CO2 followed.
Now, if there were no other sources of CO2, then the only possibility left is that the CO2 vacated the oceans as their temperatures rose.
At some point the atmospheric temperature began to drop, but the CO2 in the atmosphere remained the same.
But later, after the atmospheric temperature continued to drop, the atmospheric CO2 began to drop.
The only logical conclusion is that the CO2 was absorbed back into the cooler oceans.
IF āas you are wont to sayā that CO2 in the water will raise the water’s temperature, then WHY didn’t the oceans RE-RELEASE their CO2 in response to the Sun’s IR striking the oceans?
Instead, the oceans continued to absorb the atmospheric CO2 without incident.
Your theory then, fails to account for what happened in the past.
Ian W says:
June 25, 2010 at 4:00 am
Hypnos says:
June 25, 2010 at 2:36 am
Thatās because itās true. Three years does not a trend make. The system fluctuates. Just eyballing the graph you posted, the current ārecoveryā could be just like the one from 1990 to 1992.
More importantly ā 30 years does not a baseline make.
Many reports of similar fluctuations in recent human history ā but no just look at this small snippet and project and interpolate from that. This is unscientific to a degree that makes it look deliberate.
______________________________________________________________
Given vukcevic’s graph of the Hudson bay area it is deliberate.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
Also if you look at the temperature trend throughout the holecene the general trend is DOWN Since the Bronze age not up and now “We summarize recent findings about periodicities in the solar tachocline and their physical interpretation. These lead us to conclude that solar variability is presently entering into a long Grand Minimum, this being an episode of very low solar activity, not shorter than a century…Based on the above mentioned methodology and by using new data for the geomagnetic aa index we foresee that a Grand Minimum is immanent. Thus, a prolonged period of relative global cooling is forecasted.
To really put our present temperature in perspective: See the Vostok Ice Core Temperature data That is why Geologists generally have problems believing in CAGW.
Since “Climate Scientists” have access to these graphs and data the constantly broadcasted claim that the present warm period is “unprecedented” is an outright fib.
Jim D
Heating of the oceans is controlled by SW radiation, not LW radiation. An extended period of cloudiness cools the oceans, in spite of higher amounts of LW coming down from the clouds.
stevengoddard,
Note that without downward longwave, the surface would cool dramatically (e.g. clear nights have reduced downward longwave). It amounts to hundreds of W/m2, and is comparable to solar especially in polar regions. It is definitely a major part of the budget. Also clouds are temporary, CO2 is permanent.
899, I am not saying anything that contradicts what you would learn in undergrad physics. There should be no surprises. This is about the energy balance, not Ice Ages. Temperature can lead or lag CO2, no problem, easily explained. Also, I was referring to CO2 in the atmosphere. Sorry I wasn’t clearer, but I thought that was the original question.
JimD, LW cannot penetrate much beyond surface tension and wave action plus evaporation removes any heat added by LW anyway. The ONLY way oceans cool or warm has to do with wind and SW infrared. I believe that the AGW camp understands this as well. LW heating of the oceans cannot be modeled because there is no mechanism or mathematical construct for it. The properties of both LW and water surface tension rules out all possibility of LW being responsible for oceanic SST changes.
Jim D says:
June 26, 2010 at 7:35 pm
stevengoddard,
Note that without downward longwave, the surface would cool dramatically (e.g. clear nights have reduced downward longwave). It amounts to hundreds of W/m2, and is comparable to solar especially in polar regions. It is definitely a major part of the budget. Also clouds are temporary, CO2 is permanent.
Oh? Really now?
Clouds are ‘temporary’ but CO2 is permanent …
Well, hey: That’s NOT what the Vostok ice core data tells us!
DO TELL: Which of the two has a GREATER affect on the amount of relative heat?
Does CO2 evaporate here on Earth?
Does CO2 condense and precipitate here on Earth?
Does CO2 form oceans here on Earth?
Which ābetween H2O and CO2ā has the GREATEST effect on weather here in Earth?
Since the concept of backradiation is being discussed, it is time to show again this nice free energy oven:
http://www.vermonttiger.com/content/2008/07/nasa-free-energ.html
As a physicist I find a lot of hand waving obscurities in climate “science”.
One is all this back radiation business, which mixes the quantum mechanical, quantum statistical mechanical, and classical thermodynamic pictures in an ad hoc manner, as if baking a cake. Paradoxes occur when axiomatic system are confused, and thus we get the oven paradox.
Thermodynamics gives us tools to calculate what happens in mixtures of gases. Engineers use it and design with great precision engines and their environments.
If you change the composition of a gas you are changing its heat capacity, that should be enough to calculate what is necessary. The concept of heat capacity does not care in classical thermodynamics which molecule is playing ball with what photon. The total effect of the microscopic quantum activities are to change the heat capacity of the gas, and we live in the macroscopic world.
In the links I provided above it is evident that the contribution of hydrocarbon burning is not the prime mover of the temperature rise since the little ice age, the sea level rise, and hence the diminution of ice in the arctic. You cannot have effect precede the supposed cause by 100 years. http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm , figs 11, 12.
In addition: catastrophic temperature rises due to CO2 doubling are given only by models.
These models have failed to reproduce:
1) the cloud cover. ( see AR4, they are all over the globe wrong)
Considering that a 2 percent change in albedo over compensates for this observed change in temperature since the little ice age, this is an extremely important failure.
2) they fail to reproduce the absolute temperature, that is why they are playing card games with anomalies of temperatures. The failure is larger than the anomalies predicted.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/fact-6a-model-simulations-dont-match-average-surface-temperature-of-the-earth/
The exact same runs that average so nicely on the global anomaly measurements.
3)They predict a tropical hotspot that has not materialized
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/GHGModsvsReality.jpg
4) they predict a rise of sea surface temperatures that have not materialized. Since 2005 the famous CO2 effect cannot change the SSTs, though CO2 is merrily rising still.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
5) the sensitivity of the atmosphere to the water content is the opposite of that given by the models
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/user/My%20Documents/IPCC/www.drroyspencer.com/2010/05/strong-negative-feedback-from-the-latest-ceres-radiation-budget-measurements-over-the-global-oceans/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
One error throws out a hypothesis and sends the true scientist back to the drawing board.
Note, I stress true scientist.
As I said before, there is less ice than there used to be during the Little Ice Age, and we are lucky. Lets hope our luck keeps up. CO2 has little to do with the case.
last post submitted did not come with”waiting for moderation”
Probably in limbo because of too many links?
[REPLY – Yeah. Rescued. If a post is not marked as waiting for moderation, it’s a sure bet it’s stuck in the spam filter. We do go over those, however, and restore them if appropriate. It may a bit longer, but we do review them. ~ Evan]
899, you still keep trying to bring it back to Ice Age time scales. I just came here to talk about the basics of radiative transfer, which people here seemed to be having trouble with. CO2 is much more steady than clouds as a forcing, especially at a given point, but also as a global mean. Do I have to explain this? I don’t say clouds aren’t important. The global mean albedo is as important as the mean CO2.
Pamela Gray,
The LW component of the energy budget is as important as shortwave, sensible and latent heat flux, and mixing into the ocean. Coupled models take this whole budget into account. You have to think of the skin temperature as responding to the net all of these components. Like I said, if you set downward longwave to zero, radiation to space would certainly cool the ocean very noticeably. Increasing downward longwave as CO2 does (even if the atmosphere initially is the same temperature), leads to a warming effect on the budget. This would only lead to increased evaporation after the ocean has warmed up first because evaporation depends on temperature difference.
899 says:
June 26, 2010 at 6:15 pm
“The weather patterns shifted, just as theyāve always.”
“Once again: Itās referred to as ānatural climate variability.ā WHAT do =>YOU<= not understand about that?!?!"
"Good lord! Somebody call the WAAAAAAAAMBULANCE!!!!"
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
At this point there is obviously no sense in further responding to this, what is it that you projected upon me? Ah, yes. "Tirade". I'm just going to clean up a few points and be done with it.
I already mentioned NASA's thermal imaging satellites but you don't want to accept anything these institutions have to say. That is really funny, 899, in view of the fact that the satellite images of ice extent, etc. that are used on this website come from-ahhhhh, I'm trying to remember-oh yes NASA. Where else?
Another thing you mentioned was: "The weather patterns shifted, just as theyāve always."
So please do tell me, as I "tirade" along, why is it not possible for humanity to shift weather patterns? Just as a general concept, is it really impossible for Mankind to do ANYTHING whatsoever that can adversely affect our environment? If it's possible for Mankind to be the major or only factor in this, that or some other environmental disaster then would it not be rational to call that "Anthropogenic Whatever"?
Perhaps you do not believe that CFC's deplete the Ozone layer. Or that continuous exposure to DDT is harmful to animals and Humans. There are people who don't, as you well know. Are these issues part of some demonic attempt to subjugate Humanity under some tyranny? Don't you suspect something irrational about that type of thinking?
Many people did not, and some still do not, believe that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. You do realize that the Tobacco Industry had a massive and orchestrated propaganda campaign to convince people that there was no proof that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer?
The common ground between all these seemingly separate issues was that some people automatically rejected any warning against this, that or the other simply because Government was going to interfere or try to control the substance in question.
In my opinion these people are knee jerk contrarians who will say that the Earth is flat
and square just because Adolf Hitler says that it is round like a ball. Who cares what Hitler, Mother Theresa, Kermit the Frog or anyone has to say on an issue? Are you going to establish credibility, or lack thereof, on the basis of WHO said what instead of WHAT is actually the reality of the situation.? What Government says or does is irrelevant to what Reality/Nature is or does.
"Good lord! Somebody call the WAAAAAAAAMBULANCE!!!!"
And you accuse me of tirades.
Keith Minto:
If you would read that Google warning in its entirety, you would see that it means that somebody has attacked my site, not that the site is doing the attacking. My site was doing just fine until the end of May, when somebody seeded it with viruses, which I and my son are trying to eradicate for mote than a month now. The web hosting company refuses to be responsible for any site protection, so it is me who has to go through all the loops to clean the site, though I had nothing to do with infecting it.
kadaka (KD Knoebel):
If you know how to remove the malicious software infecting my site, I would welcome any suggestions. That Google warning harms my reputation by making people think that my site is an “attack site.”
DirkH says:
June 26, 2010 at 2:58 pm
1.) As soon as a skeptic points to a cold record the warmists will tell him that thatās weather, not climate. Which doesnāt stop the IPCC from using the French heatwave as an example for climate change in IPCC AR4. Itās only wrong when the skeptics do it.
2.) Wasnāt a key prediction by the GCMās that global warming will affect the poles and the cold regions much more than places that are already hot, like Africa?
3.) Thanks for the brainwashing-kids methane video. I like to stay up to date with the sinister tactics of the warmists.
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
CONCERNING DIRKH’s POINT #2:
When I respond, and I’ve done so on this site before, to the “Winter of 2009/2010 was colder therefore that disproves Global Warming” I state the following:
1) According to NASA thermal imaging maps 10-15% of the Earth was colder than usual the other 85-90% was warmer even blazing hot, during that period of time.
2) The Arctic region was 10F warmer, along with most of Canada which was up to 10F warmer.
3) The region of the Earth that was colder than usual could be seen as a band (the shape varied throughout the season) going around the Earth just south of the Arctic and most of Canada. In the US it began roughly at the Canadian border and went down to just south of Cuba. Then, going eastward, it continued through Europe, Russia, Siberia, parts of China and then came to the southwest area of Canada ending up back in the US.
4) There was a connection between the Arctic and the band of colder temperatures to the immediate south of it. A weather pattern known as “Negative Arctic Oscillation” essentially flip flopped the weather between those two areas.
5) The Arctic essentially spilled its frigid guts down south and at the same time sucked in warm temperatures from the areas south of it. This made for the reversal in temperature difference.
[This should be a sufficient response to your point #2. I have a feeling you were not carefully reading my previous posts]
CONCERNING DIRKH’s POINT #1:
By making reference to “Warmists” as a general group you are precluding basic temperature statistics. The UAH Globally Averaged Satellite-Temperature chart lists 2003 as one of the hottest years GLOBALLY. In fact so were most of the years since 1998.
When it is therefore proven that a particular year was hotter than normal then there is nothing wrong with highlighting a particular region. Cherry picking is when you point to one region while ignoring the whole Earth. Face it, DirkH, we have been breaking records Globally and regionally for quiet a while.
CONCERNING DIRK’s POINT #3:
Your reference to the Methane video as “brainwashing” and “propaganda” reveals more about where you’re coming from then the nature of those videos.
Here are some more videos and pay particular attention to the last one which indicate the decaying state of the permafrost throughout Siberia. I’m sure those Ruskies are part of the conspiracy. Strange, last I heard the Russian Government was against Global Warming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU-9JucyCQI
899 says:
June 26, 2010 at 5:35 pm
“Youāve rather dishonestly left out the qualifier: Most scientists whoāve gotten fat research grants ā¦”
“Funny how it is that āmoney talks,ā donāt you agree?”
“And no, Iām not being paid anything, by anyone, to express my lone opinion.”
[–SNIP–]
“Yes, money does seem to talk quite loudly. The false prophets who will profit handsomely should they succeed, while their ādegreed flunkiesā will be cast aside like the useful idiots they are.”
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
Ah yes. The Lord Moncktonian conspiracy theory. Just utter it and it must be true. Why ask for proof? Is it not obvious that:
CLIMATOLOGISTS, who have been working on the Global Warming issue throughout the administrations of Reagan Bush Sr. and Bush the lesser, are obviously part of some mysterious cabal of psychopathic anthropologists who want to destroy civilization and exterminate the Human population down to 500 million so they can recreate Humanity into a race of primitive headhunters.
PHYSICISTS, who calculated the heat insulating capacity of Carbon Dioxide and Methane, are obviously stooges of Greenpeace.
ASTROPHYSICISTS, who have told us that the actual amount the Sun can fluctuate in its radiance is not capable of having caused the last 30 years of Global Warming.
Well, their true intent is to destroy Christianity and to introduce a religion that worships a Trinity of Sun, Earth and Moon.
They are also part of a UFO cult that advocates a One World Government with Obama, who is actually a green colored alien masquerading as a Kenyan, as its Supreme King.
ALL OF THESE PSEUDO SCIENTIFIC PROFESSIONS ARE JUST A PART OF THE ULTIMATE CONSPIRACY! THE CONSPIRACY OF FACTS!! THAT’S RIGHT, I SAID FACTS!!!
IT’S BEEN DECIPHERED BELOW, BY A COMBINATION OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE AND GLENN BECK’S SCHIZO-BOARD WITH ITS PSYCHOTIC FLOWCHARTS. FACTS! WHO CAN STAND THE FACTS!! NO MORE FACTS!!!
FACTS:
Fascists
Anarchists
Communists
Trotskyites
Socialists
“And no, Iām not being paid anything, by anyone, to express my lone opinion.”
No, you’re not being paid. Could it be that you’ve been bought?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil#Funding_of_global_warming_skeptics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries#Political_activity
Yes, money talks indeed.
From the late great John L Daly…….
My apologies for cut n paste, but there is no point in me paraphrasing when John Daly put it so clearly.
The one thing I might add is that although clouds may be temporary, their affect on ocean temperatures outweighs the affect of CO2 radiation by orders of magnitude.
To put it another way, it’s been thousands of years since the last ice age. If the atmosphere was able to heat the oceans to any extent (or depth) it would have done so long ago. But funnily enough, the ocean depths are remarkably uniformly cold, no matter what lattitude.
villabolo says:
June 27, 2010 at 12:53 am
I’m still waiting for an answer to my question, why should I care whether the ice cap melts or not?
For the mathematically inclined, this 1998 working paper outlines the equation models for longwave and shortwave heat transfer at the surface and below for large bodies of water. These equations are likely part of the models used to deal with CO2’s re-radiation potential to heat oceans.
What I question is: do the models in use today deaggregate for natural versus anthropogenic greenhouse gases? Because at issue here is not that greenhouse gases re-radiate longwave, at issue is how much anthropogenic sourced CO2 increases re-radiate enough to change the heat transfer significantly to produce a measurable and significant change in both land and ocean temperatures. I think that is the million dollar question and ought to be answered to the voting public’s satisfaction before policy is made. And just to be clear, simply telling me it does tain’t nuf. Demonstrate it. Document it. Show me the data.
http://www.ce.utexas.edu/prof/hodges/site2006/documents/thermodynamics.pdf
899 wrote,
“Youāve rather dishonestly left out the qualifier: Most scientists whoāve gotten fat research grants ā¦”
Nope, it was true as I wrote it. Most scientists have never seen a dime from research grants that involve climate change. And those who have sure are not getting fat.
899 wrote,
“Ice extent ā¦
WHAT do you not understand about QUANTITY of ice?
You know: That part of the ice which DOESNāT melt because of its thickness. It melts around the THIN edges.
Is that something which is entirely irrelevant in your world?”
You’re very quick with this style of response. But take just a second to scroll back up to the top of the page, where stevegoddard shows two graphs. What are they? He refers to NSIDC. What about NSIDC? He titles his post “The Trend.” What trend is that?
We now have two consecutive days with a change in ice extent over 100,000 square kilometers, and 2010 is over 500,000 square kilometers less than 2007.
I know I am micromanaging the weather report.
Anyone have a prediction for when 2010 will cross and be higher than 2007.
I’ll say July 20, just for a guess.
Thanks
Regarding Baa Humbug’s post.
The question I answered was about how CO2 warms the ocean. This is what I explained. CO2 increases the downward surface longwave, more in the polar regions than in the tropics, so that is where the most direct effect can be found. In the tropics there is too much water vapor for much of the CO2 effect to be seen at the surface. Yes, the warming effect is slow, maybe only a few degrees per century, but it is there, and it is important for climate, especially with the sea-ice loss albedo feedback that amplifies the solar warming, which has obviously taken over now. So CO2 warming is now secondary, but may have been the seed that got sea-ice loss started.
From: Alexander Feht on June 27, 2010 at 12:20 am
As the Google advisory said:
The malicious software is not really on your site, not part of your site’s code, you are not hosting malware. But, the problem looks to be something you let appear on your site, you were an intermediary. The advisory lists the domain the malware was on, said domain having its own advisory which states the site had hosted malware.
Going by the “pills” in that domain name, I think the bad code was in an advertisement, could have been coded in some JavaScript or perhaps even in a Flash animation. Does your site use an ad server, a service that automatically display different ads without you yourself having to manage the ads, as with the (in)famous one near the top of the WUWT pages? Some are more notorious than others for letting through ads that want to do questionable things to your computer without your consent, irritating ones like pop-up windows, to malicious ones like implanting malware.
If you allowed the ad server on your site, contact them and let them know what happened so they can better block those malicious ads in the future. Consider switching to a more responsible ad server, or perhaps getting rid of ads. If you have no say in the ads, like when they are part of free hosting, complain to the technical support staff of the hosting provider, bad ads make their service look bad. If you are one of the few who manage their own site’s ads and approve every one, ouch.
To keep Google happy and perhaps get rid of that warning, you can do as it says at the bottom of the advisory and request a review. If that doesn’t work, well, the advisory keeps using the phrase “past 90 days.” Provided your site stays clean, no more bad ads, your “option” is to wait three months since the last reported infection, then the warning goes away (I think, YMMV).
Are there any skeptics left, or are we now confident that we know what is going to happen?
Being a real skeptic, instead of a believer posing as one, I wouldn’t assume anything about weather effects on Arctic sea ice.
Pamela Gray,
The model you posted parameterizes the radiation too simply for use in a climate model. They make the surface longwave flux only a function of air temperature, which shortcuts the actual mechanism. It actually depends on the temperature profile and the profiles of the radiatively active gases (CO2, H2O, mostly) and clouds (if any), and has to be done through an integration using these profiles, as I am certain GCMs do. Note that there would be no downward longwave flux in clear-sky conditions if it weren’t for CO2 and H2O. In a global average, CO2 accounts for about 10% of the surface longwave, but since there is less than average water vapor and still average CO2 at the poles, it must be larger than 10% as you get to colder regions. From this you can see that doubling CO2 is not an insignificant effect on the polar energy budget.
Jim D says:
June 26, 2010 at 10:53 pm
Pamela Gray,
The LW component of the energy budget is as important as shortwave, sensible and latent heat flux, and mixing into the ocean. Coupled models take this whole budget into account. You have to think of the skin temperature as responding to the net all of these components. Like I said, if you set downward longwave to zero, radiation to space would certainly cool the ocean very noticeably. Increasing downward longwave as CO2 does (even if the atmosphere initially is the same temperature), leads to a warming effect on the budget. This would only lead to increased evaporation after the ocean has warmed up first because evaporation depends on temperature difference.
That doesn’t make sense. First you say the CO2 causes the oceans to warm, but then imply that because of the heating, the oceans will surrender moisture to the atmosphere which will thence cause clouds, themselves surrendering the added heat to space, and reflecting light such as to cause the planet to cool.
The net effect of CO2 in the water then, is planetary cooling.
But again: You’ve neglected to address the phase between planetary heating and the lag of atmospheric CO2, followed by cooling even with a high CO2 content.
In virtually every case of heating and cooling, atmospheric CO2 content lags the thermal signature.
Jim D says:
June 26, 2010 at 10:38 pm
899, you still keep trying to bring it back to Ice Age time scales. I just came here to talk about the basics of radiative transfer, which people here seemed to be having trouble with. CO2 is much more steady than clouds as a forcing, especially at a given point, but also as a global mean. Do I have to explain this? I donāt say clouds arenāt important. The global mean albedo is as important as the mean CO2.
Funny thing, Jim, CO2 hasn’t been shown to affect either heating or cooling to any significant degree.
And by ‘significant’ I mean to imply just this: It is statistically insignificant such as to not be any kind of agent worth worrying over.
For evidence of just that, consider Mars, the prime atmospheric component gas being CO2, and what’s the mean temp. on Mars? Pretty darned cold.
Ergo, the whole CO2 argument is just the worst sort of deception ever foisted upon humanity.
villabolo says:
June 27, 2010 at 12:52 am
[–snip rest–]
So in other words your prime purpose for posting here is essentially nothing other than to put forth CAGW/CC propaganda.
Alexander Feht says:
June 27, 2010 at 12:20 am
kadaka (KD Knoebel):
If you know how to remove the malicious software infecting my site, I would welcome any suggestions. That Google warning harms my reputation by making people think that my site is an āattack site.ā
If you’ve been sufficiently assiduous in making backups of your important information, then merely dumping everything which is there and starting over would be the safest bet.
Several of my friends who operate websites, have copies of their sites on DVDs and do a clean install periodically.
899 writes,
“And by āsignificantā I mean to imply just this: It is statistically insignificant such as to not be any kind of agent worth worrying over.
For evidence of just that, consider Mars, the prime atmospheric component gas being CO2, and whatās the mean temp. on Mars? Pretty darned cold.”
Some people, reasoning differently than 899, might believe that Mars’ temperature results from its thin atmosphere, 1/200th the mass of Earth’s; and the fact that it orbits about 50 million miles farther from the Sun.
899, why do you assume more evaporation leads to more clouds? It doesn’t follow when the air is warmer too.
I also believe in the Milankovitch cycles, which show how warming and cooling are related to the solar forcing changes due to orbital effects. In that situation CO2 is just responding to the temperature changes.
Other climate changes may be due to atmospheric composition changes, such as dust from asteroid impacts or volcanic activity, or CO2 injection by volcanoes or other means.
In the current situation, the atmosphere has more CO2 in it than in the last 15 or so million years. Maybe that will do something? It was certainly a warmer equilibrium 15 million years ago, Greenland had no ice cap, and there were no ice ages. It seems CO2 and temperature go together, and are highly correlated in past climate, but the order can vary.
Gneiss says:
June 27, 2010 at 8:02 am
Youāre very quick with this style of response. But take just a second to scroll back up to the top of the page, where stevegoddard shows two graphs. What are they? He refers to NSIDC. What about NSIDC? He titles his post āThe Trend.ā What trend is that?
The meadow muffin extent?
Gneiss says:
June 27, 2010 at 7:57 am
Nope, it was true as I wrote it. Most scientists have never seen a dime from research grants that involve climate change. And those who have sure are not getting fat.
“Most” you say?
Well then, let us confine our focus to just those individuals who were involved in the ClimateGate affair, and IPCC fiasco, shall we?
Is it your contention that a number of them weren’t paid?
Jack Simmons says:
June 27, 2010 at 4:21 am
villabolo says:
June 27, 2010 at 12:53 am
Iām still waiting for an answer to my question, why should I care whether the ice cap melts or not?
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
My apologies, Jack, for the long delay. I assumed that I had explicitly described the process earlier on this thread but I found only one statement of mine that was kind of general. My complete description must have been posted on another thread so I’ll give you the full run:
I] IMMEDIATE EFFECTS (Starting in about 1-2 decades and increasing in intensity)
1a) White ice REFLECTS 80-90% of solar radiation (depending on condition).
b) Blue ocean ABSORBS 80% of solar radiation.
2) Expansion of open seas in the Arctic Ocean will absorb more sunlight and thus get warmer (estimated 6-9F).
3) Evaporation from the open ocean will occur for two reasons:
a) The ice cap no longer acts as a physical barrier to such evaporation.
b) The increased temperature of the ocean leads to more evaporation.
4) More evaporation amplifies the rain/snow cycle which leads to intensified storms. Global Warming had predicted this situation in the 1990’s for the all the oceans, concluding that we would have the type of intense, “once in 500/1000 year floods that we are experiencing at the present.
5) Rising heat from the Arctic Ocean will disrupt weather patterns that we are accustomed to effecting crop productivity as well as flooding of populated areas.
6) This situation will effect the entire Northern Hemisphere.
II) SECONDARY EFFECTS. THE SIBERIAN PERMAFROST.
1a) Siberia has increased in temperature about 3F in the past several decades leading to a defrosting of the surface of the permafrost. The permafrost is melting throughout extensive areas.
b) This in turn is allowing the decomposition of huge amounts of previously frozen plant material, whose decomposition by a certain class of organism (methanogens) causes the release of enormous amounts of Methane:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6aGma0lWAM
2) Methane is a gas with 100 times the heat insulating ability of Carbon Dioxide immediately after its release, dropping down to 60-72 times 20 years later and 25 times 100 years later (It decomposes throughout time).
3) When the Arctic Ocean opens up extensively, and heats up to about 6-9F, a certain amount of that heat will be transferred to areas surrounding the ocean, including Siberia.
4) This further temperature increase from the Arctic Ocean will accelerate the defrosting of the permafrost and increase the heat of the upper defrosted areas. The increased heat will thus accelerate the metabolism of the organisms releasing the Methane.
5) This will create a feed back cycle which by releasing Methane into the atmosphere will further increase temperatures which increases will lead to more rapid permafrost melt.
CONCLUSION:
We’re f***ed.
899 says:
June 27, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Well then, let us confine our focus to just those individuals who were involved in the ClimateGate affair, and IPCC fiasco, shall we?
Is it your contention that a number of them werenāt paid?
VILLABOLO (with eyes rolling) RESPONDS:
They were paid like anyone at NASA. Therefore, by your logic, the moon landing was a fake.
Jim D says:
June 27, 2010 at 1:33 pm
899, why do you assume more evaporation leads to more clouds? It doesnāt follow when the air is warmer too.
I also believe in the Milankovitch cycles, which show how warming and cooling are related to the solar forcing changes due to orbital effects. In that situation CO2 is just responding to the temperature changes.
Other climate changes may be due to atmospheric composition changes, such as dust from asteroid impacts or volcanic activity, or CO2 injection by volcanoes or other means.
In the current situation, the atmosphere has more CO2 in it than in the last 15 or so million years. Maybe that will do something? It was certainly a warmer equilibrium 15 million years ago, Greenland had no ice cap, and there were no ice ages. It seems CO2 and temperature go together, and are highly correlated in past climate, but the order can vary.
[1] Is it your contention that warm moist air doesn’t rise?
[2] You’ve still not addressed the Vostok Ice Core data, where it is readily shown that atmospheric temperature changes precede any change in CO2 content.
[3] If anything, CO2 is an indicator gas.
[4] What about Mars? It’s atmosphere is chiefly CO2, and it’s darned cold there!
899 writes,
“Well then, let us confine our focus to just those individuals who were involved in the ClimateGate affair, and IPCC fiasco, shall we?
Is it your contention that a number of them werenāt paid?”
If they’re professional scientists, of course they are getting paid. They are not paid to reach any particular conclusion, however. That’s not how the grants work, or the scientists, or the process itself, across scores of different fields now contributing to climate research.
899 says:
June 27, 2010 at 12:50 pm
So in other words your prime purpose for posting here is essentially nothing other than to put forth CAGW/CC propaganda.
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
My prime purpose for being here is curiosity. I started learning about the issue very recently and was aware of the basic talking points that the skeptics had been using. I still did not know how skeptics presented their arguments in person so I began to observe this site and then started posting on it.
Gneiss says:
June 27, 2010 at 1:28 pm
899 writes,
āAnd by āsignificantā I mean to imply just this: It is statistically insignificant such as to not be any kind of agent worth worrying over.
For evidence of just that, consider Mars, the prime atmospheric component gas being CO2, and whatās the mean temp. on Mars? Pretty darned cold.ā
Some people, reasoning differently than 899, might believe that Marsā temperature results from its thin atmosphere, 1/200th the mass of Earthās; and the fact that it orbits about 50 million miles farther from the Sun.
No ‘global warming’ on Mars, eh?
I seem to recall a recent news story, oh, within the last few years where it was reported by NASA no less, that the outer planets were experiencing a degree of ‘global warming’ of their own, which was happening in a consonant fashion with the Earth.
And you’re given to believe that a ‘thin atmosphere’ will result in less an effect?
I wonder: What is the percent of CO2 gas on Mars, and how does that compare to the quantity of that gas on the Earth?
I will think that Mars probably has more CO2 than does the Earth, and if the CO2 on the Earth is said to have as much effect as you are wont to declare, then again: Why isn’t Mars nice and toasty?
villabolo says:
June 27, 2010 at 1:56 pm
899 says:
June 27, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Well then, let us confine our focus to just those individuals who were involved in the ClimateGate affair, and IPCC fiasco, shall we?
Is it your contention that a number of them werenāt paid?
VILLABOLO (with eyes rolling) RESPONDS:
They were paid like anyone at NASA. Therefore, by your logic, the moon landing was a fake.
But you said they weren’t paid.
Are you now backpedalling?
Gneiss says:
June 27, 2010 at 2:07 pm
899 writes,
āWell then, let us confine our focus to just those individuals who were involved in the ClimateGate affair, and IPCC fiasco, shall we?
Is it your contention that a number of them werenāt paid?ā
If theyāre professional scientists, of course they are getting paid. They are not paid to reach any particular conclusion, however. Thatās not how the grants work, or the scientists, or the process itself, across scores of different fields now contributing to climate research.
But the original contention was that they weren’t getting paid.
And then there’s that ‘professional’ bit: Your so-called ‘professionals’ were involved in no less that collusion, conspiracy, fabrication of data, and unethical conduct.
899 keeps trying,
“No āglobal warmingā on Mars, eh?
I seem to recall a recent news story, oh, within the last few years where it was reported by NASA no less, that the outer planets were experiencing a degree of āglobal warmingā of their own, which was happening in a consonant fashion with the Earth.”
Nope, it’s not. Short-term Mars climate variations, for example, apparently result from albedo changes, due to huge dust storms that can darken large parts of the surface. See the article actually written by those NASA scientists (Fenton et al. 2007),
“Global warming and climate forcing by recent albedo changes on Mars”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7136/abs/nature05718.html
A couple of other things worth noting. Longer-term climate variations on Mars likely are dominated by orbital variations much larger than those of Earth. That seems the most likely explanation for regular stratification seen in Mars polar ice layers, for instance. Even in a single Martian year, the distance from the Sun varies by about 27 million miles, compared with 3.5 million miles for our planet (and the layers represent much longer cycles).
But the other thing is — think about this for a minute. The whole premise of this website is that thousands of scientists are mistaken to report that climate is warming on Earth, while we sit here watching the ice melt. If you’re that “skeptical” about the huge amount of evidence we have for Earth’s climate, why instantly believe some half-recalled news report that made a claim about climate change on Mars? Because if seemed to fit with your prejudices?
This feels like arguing with a child, so I’m checking out soon.
“But the original contention was that they werenāt getting paid.”
Nope, that was not my original contention. It’s still there if you want to read it instead of making things up.
“And then thereās that āprofessionalā bit: Your so-called āprofessionalsā were involved in no less that collusion, conspiracy, fabrication of data, and unethical conduct.”
No, they were not.
‘Bye now.
Now we just get 899 arguing with a bunch of people. Anyone else here share 899’s opinions, because 899 is heavily outnumbered. Anyway to answer mine –
[1] yes, warm air rises, but I think you misunderstand convection by linking evaporation rate directly to clouds.
[2] I have said at least three times now, of course temperature can lead CO2. It doesn’t prove or disprove anything.
[3] if anything, there is an equilibrium between temperature and CO2, so unless we remove CO2, the temperature will now rise.
[4] Mars? Turns out it does have more CO2 than earth, but its radiative equilibrium temperature is only 212 K (due to albedo and distance from sun), so this CO2 brings it up to its toasty 227 K surface temp. That’s minus 46 C.
If you are questioning that CO2 even has a radiative insulating effect, there is no hope for you. That’s a far more extreme position than even Lindzen and Spencer who accept that much at least. You should be arguing with them.
Gneiss says:
June 27, 2010 at 3:14 pm
[–snip trash and propaganda–]
But the other thing is ā think about this for a minute. The whole premise of this website is that thousands of scientists are mistaken to report that climate is warming on Earth, while we sit here watching the ice melt. If youāre that āskepticalā about the huge amount of evidence we have for Earthās climate, why instantly believe some half-recalled news report that made a claim about climate change on Mars? Because if seemed to fit with your prejudices?
“Thousands of scientists …”
Thousands of scientists who’ve gone out of their way to dismiss the Roman Warming period, the Medieval Climate Optimum, and the Little Ice Age, in order to propagate an idea so extremely faulted and lacking any degree of scientific validity.
Yeah, those scientists.
The only evidence I need here is that there are monied interests pushing this monster so hard that their grunts issue forth from the MSM daily.
And you never addressed why it was that CLIMATEGATE emails reveal more than just a wee bit of dishonesty on the part of the senders and recipients, what with ‘hiding the decline,’ and that ‘it’s a travesty that the temperature isn’t rising,’ and “Mike’s nature trick.”
And I’m surprised that you didn’t utter those famous last words: ‘The science is settled.’
Now again: What about the Vostok Ice Core data which shows CO2 LAGGING every change in temperature?
Are you saying that there weren’t any changes in the outer planets?
And Why isn’t Mars a hot box what with all that CO2?
Finally you talk about ‘melting ice.’ Would that be the ice in your Koolaid, or the glacier in India that was supposed to be gone in 20 years?
Jim D says:
June 27, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Now we just get 899 arguing with a bunch of people. Anyone else here share 899ā²s opinions, because 899 is heavily outnumbered. Anyway to answer mine –
[1] yes, warm air rises, but I think you misunderstand convection by linking evaporation rate directly to clouds.
[2] I have said at least three times now, of course temperature can lead CO2. It doesnāt prove or disprove anything.
[3] if anything, there is an equilibrium between temperature and CO2, so unless we remove CO2, the temperature will now rise.
[4] Mars? Turns out it does have more CO2 than earth, but its radiative equilibrium temperature is only 212 K (due to albedo and distance from sun), so this CO2 brings it up to its toasty 227 K surface temp. Thatās minus 46 C.
If you are questioning that CO2 even has a radiative insulating effect, there is no hope for you. Thatās a far more extreme position than even Lindzen and Spencer who accept that much at least. You should be arguing with them.
[1] And?
[2] Funny thing: The Vostok Ice Cores don’t say ‘can,’ or ‘could,’ or ‘might.’ The LEAD by temperature is AFFIRMATIVE.
[3] The why isn’t Mars a sweltering hell hole?
[4] That’s all well and fine, but if Mars isn’t having a ‘CAGW’ effect, then neither will Earth. So much for CO2 …
Thank you for playing.
899 says:
June 27, 2010 at 2:26 pm
But you said they werenāt paid.
Are you now backpedalling?
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
WHAAAT? I never said such a thing.
899 says:
June 27, 2010 at 2:12 pm
I wonder: What is the percent of CO2 gas on Mars, and how does that compare to the quantity of that gas on the Earth?
I will think that Mars probably has more CO2 than does the Earth, and if the CO2 on the Earth is said to have as much effect as you are wont to declare, then again: Why isnāt Mars nice and toasty?
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
Could it be because it is much further from the Sun than Earth? A quick Wiki could save some embarrassment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars#Climate
Martian surface temperatures vary from lows of about -87 Ā°C during the polar winters to highs of up to -5 Ā°C in summers.[42] The wide range in temperatures is due to the thin atmosphere which cannot store much solar heat, the low atmospheric pressure, and the low thermal inertia of Martian soil.[101] The planet is also 1.52 times as far from the sun as Earth, resulting in just 43 percent of the amount of sunlight.[102]
[–SNIP–]
Mars also has the largest dust storms in our Solar System. These can vary from a storm over a small area, to gigantic storms that cover the entire planet. They tend to occur when Mars is closest to the Sun, and have been shown to increase the global temperature.[104]
*************************************************************************
SEEMS THAT MAR’S CARBON DIOXIDE ATMOSPHERE IS DOING A DAMN GOOD JOB OF KEEPING IT AS WARM AS POSSIBLE. IN FACT ITS -87C (-124.6F) WINTER POLAR TEMPERATURE IS WARMER.
HERE ON EARTH WE’VE REACHED -129F http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coldest_temperature_recorded_on_Earth
Villabolo says:
“SEEMS THAT MARāS CARBON DIOXIDE ATMOSPHERE IS DOING A DAMN GOOD JOB OF KEEPING IT AS WARM AS POSSIBLE. IN FACT ITS -87C (-124.6F) WINTER POLAR TEMPERATURE IS WARMER.”
Carbon dioxide has little to do with it.
You were on the right track in arguing that the relative distances from the Sun explain the temperature differences between Mars, Earth and Venus.
But then you added an unnecessary and extraneous variable: CO2.
Occam’s Razor says keep it simple. There is no need to add CO2 to the explanation. The temperature differences between Mars, Earth and Venus are fully explained by their distance from the Sun. Mars and Venus have very high CO2 concentrations, and the Earth has almost no CO2 in its atmosphere; less than one part in 2,600. Yet all 3 planets respond to the inverse square law and warm accordingly as a function of their distance from the Sun, whether they have a lot of atmospheric CO2, or practically none.
899,
[1] And look around. There’s a lot of evaporation without clouds.
[2] Yes, agreed. Milankovitch was right. Obviously completely irrelevant for now, as the next ice age wasn’t due for 30k-50k years, and now may not happen at all.
[3] Because you don’t understand Mars or the radiative transfer properties of CO2.
[4] Some people confuse AGW with runaway global warming. I am now assuming you are one of them. They are different. Read up. Science does not support runaway global warming because the CO2 level will stabilize once we stop burning fossil fuels, and once that happens, the temperature will eventually stabilize at a new level.
Hope you learned some of the science here. If not you, others reading this, if anyone is left.
The effects of CO2 on the temperatures of Venus, Mars, and Earth can be summed up thusly:
Mars has a small CO2 greenhouse effect because it has 1/100 th of the atmosphere as earth, thus no pressure broadening of the infared absorption bands, although it has an atmosphere that is 95% CO2.
Earth has a medium effect due to enough atmosphere for a modest pressure broadening of the CO2 absorption bands as well as other gases in the atmosphere to be warmed by CO2 molecules by collisions, as well as other greenhouse gases such as water vapor.
Venus has the highest greenhouse effect due to the large pressure broadening effect of the high pressure CO2 dominated atmosphere.
The actual climate and temperatures on each of the planet is determined by several factors including the distance from the sun, the albedo of each planet, the actual pressure of CO2 in each atmosphere, the presence or lack thereof of other gases, greenhouse and otherwise, in the atmosphere, as well as axial tilt and geometries of their respective orbits.
But don’t take my word for it Skeptics, go study up on it.
Bob,
Thank you for capitalizing ‘Skeptics.’ As I’m sure you know, the only honest scientists are skeptical scientists.
Now, in your analysis above, you can delete the effect of CO2. The results will be the same: Venus will be the hottest because of its close proximity to the Sun, the Earth will have the Goldilocks climate, not too hot, not too cold, but ju-u-u-u-st right; and Mars will be relatively cold.
So try to get off the fixation on harmless, beneficial CO2, which is a non-entity when it comes to affecting planetary heating and/or cooling.
Any effect from CO2 is too small to precisely measure; it is really that insignificant. The other factors you listed all have a much greater effect on temperature; additional CO2 has almost no effect. Once you accept that fact, the pieces will fall into place.
Smokey says:
June 27, 2010 at 5:45 pm
[–SNIP–]
But then you added an unnecessary and extraneous variable: CO2.
Occamās Razor says keep it simple. There is no need to add CO2 to the explanation. The temperature differences between Mars, Earth and Venus are fully explained by their distance from the Sun. Mars and Venus have very high CO2 concentrations, and the Earth has almost no CO2 in its atmosphere; less than one part in 2,600. Yet all 3 planets respond to the inverse square law and warm accordingly as a function of their distance from the Sun, whether they have a lot of atmospheric CO2, or practically none.
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
Really now, Smokey? Let’s take a closer look at those planets. Starting with one you left out:
1) MERCURY. Temperatures: Day 801F; Night -297F.
2) VENUS. Temperature: Day and Night 860F.
2X distance from Sun than Mercury therefore .25 the solar radiance.
3) EARTH. Temperature: Average range 104F>-40F; Extreme range 134.06F>-128.2F
4) MARS. Temperature: DAY 23F (extreme 80.6F, probably in the Southern Hemisphere). Also an extra 54F during Southern Hemisphere summer than the Northern Hemisphere summer.
NIGHT -124.6F (extreme -289 at poles).
1.52X distance from Earth=.43 amount of solar irradiance relative to Earth.
__________________________________________________________
VENUS/MERCURY DISCREPANCY:
PLEASE ANSWER THIS ONE BEFORE YOU EVEN RESPOND TO THE MORE DETAILED MARS ISSUE. THE VENUS ISSUE IS FAR EASIER TO UNDERSTAND. IT SHOULD THEREFORE BE EASIER TO RESPOND TO, RIGHT?
Why is Venus 60F hotter than Mercury when Mercury is much closer to the Sun??? It is half the distance, which means it get’s 1/4 the solar irradiance. 1/4 the energy gets you 60F more temperature!?!?
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THE MARS ISSUE AND MARS/EARTH COMPARISON:
It is obvious from the below quotations that Mars has highly variable temperatures for various reasons such as a thin atmosphere that heats up and cools down quickly. It also has extreme orbital gyrations relative to the Earth’s that can increase the temperatures. Furthermore it has long lasting dust storms that could actually heat up the planet (see the citation and quotation below).
THIS IS WHAT NEEDS TO BE FOCUSED ON. The temperature differences between Mars and Earth are: Mars: -124.6F>23F; Earth: -40>104F.
BEFORE YOU ASSUME ANYTHING ABOUT THE RATIO please keep in mind that both the Fahrenheit and Centigrade scales are arbitrary in their definition. The actual temperature you have to take into account when doing a comparison is ABSOLUTE O. Absolute O is -459.67F. And you must also keep in mind that Mars gets .43 times the solar energy as the Earth.
To conclude the Mars/Earth comparison: When you contrast the temperature ranges of both planets RELATIVE TO ABSOLUTE O at -459.67F with half the Sun’s energy it becomes obvious that the differences DO NOT NEGATE the effect of Carbon Dioxide when you take into account Mars’ thin atmosphere; cooling as well as heating and long lasting dust storms (see Wikipedia citation below); orbital gyrations; and lack of heat retaining oceans.
In fact, if Mercury is REGULARLY -297F in its nighttime compared to Mars REGULAR average of -124.6F and Polar EXTREME of -289F then this implies that whatever Carbon Dioxide is present is actually keeping it from taking a drastic plunge in temperature.
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SMOKEY SAID: “Occamās Razor says keep it simple.”
This misinterpretation of Occam’s razor is common. You are assuming that the simplest theory HAS to win out. What it really says is that you should not multiply explanations beyond what is necessary to PROPERLY answer the question. A simpler explanation, as the below quote shows, could be wrong. It’s “simplicity” does not make it a superior argument. Here is a proper explanation of the principle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
“In science, Occamās razor is used as a heuristic (rule of thumb) to guide scientists in the development of theoretical models rather than as an arbiter between published models.[4][5] In the scientific method, Occam’s razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic, and certainly not a scientific result.[6][7][8][9]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor#Controversial_aspects_of_the_Razor
“Occam’s razor is not an embargo against the positing of any kind of entity, or a recommendation of the simplest theory come what may[34] (note that simplest theory is something like “only I exist” or “nothing exists”).”
“The other things in question are the evidential support for the theory.[35] Therefore, according to the principle, a simpler but less correct theory should not be preferred over a more complex but more correct one. It is this fact which gives the lie to the common misinterpretation of Occam’s Razor that “the simplest” one is usually the correct one.”
“For instance, classical physics is simpler than more recent theories; nonetheless it should not be preferred over them, because it is demonstrably wrong in certain respects.”
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MARS QUOTES & CITATIONS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Mars#Temperature
“In southern spring and summer variance is dominated by dust storms, which increase the value of the night low temperature and decrease the daytime peak temperature,[14] resulting in a small (20C) decrease in average surface temperature, and a moderate (30C) increase in upper atmosphere temperature.[15]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars#Climate
“Mars also has the largest dust storms in our Solar System. These can vary from a storm over a small area, to gigantic storms that cover the entire planet. They tend to occur when Mars is closest to the Sun, and have been shown to increase the global temperature.[104]”
bob says:
June 27, 2010 at 6:59 pm
“The actual climate and temperatures on each of the planet is determined by several factors including the distance from the sun, the albedo of each planet, the actual pressure of CO2 in each atmosphere, the presence or lack thereof of other gases, greenhouse and otherwise, in the atmosphere, as well as axial tilt and geometries of their respective orbits.”
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
Thank you Bob.
Jim D says:
June 27, 2010 at 6:00 pm
899,
[1] And look around. Thereās a lot of evaporation without clouds.
[2] Yes, agreed. Milankovitch was right. Obviously completely irrelevant for now, as the next ice age wasnāt due for 30k-50k years, and now may not happen at all.
[3] Because you donāt understand Mars or the radiative transfer properties of CO2.
[4] Some people confuse AGW with runaway global warming. I am now assuming you are one of them. They are different. Read up. Science does not support runaway global warming because the CO2 level will stabilize once we stop burning fossil fuels, and once that happens, the temperature will eventually stabilize at a new level.
Hope you learned some of the science here. If not you, others reading this, if anyone is left.
[1] Just because you don’t perceive of clouds, it does not for even an instant mean that they aren’t there.
[2] Whatever assumptions on your part do not in any way connote any kind of belief on anyone else’s part.
[3] Because you’ve drunk the AGW Koolaid
[4] There is absolutely NO SUCH THING as ‘runaway global warming.’ It didn’t happen in the past, it isn’t happening in the present, and it won’t happen in the future for the simple reason that what you proclaim to be possible is IMPOSSIBLE in nature.
There is no way to get more energy out of a system than was put into it. Maybe you and Hansen should go patent the idea and see how far it gets at the U.S. Patent office!
899,
Good we agree on a few things. Clouds come and go. Temperature can precede CO2. Runaway global warming can’t happen. My work is done here.
Great, internet shouting by someone referring to themselves in third-person form. Are (C)AGW proponents that desperate to try to make sure their message gets heard, or perhaps just desperate period?
Gee, it’s not like there’s a shortage of sites where they can easily get out their (C)AGW message. Are they now hitting up this one to do their own preaching, in the third person and loud?
No matter what the long term trend of Arctic ice shows, denialists will say it’s recovering.
Enonym says:
June 25, 2010 at 6:09 am
Ian W:
Correct me if Iām wrong (the figure doesnāt have a label on the y-axis), but to the best of my knowledge one doesnāt need a baseline to make a linear regression. If you were to calculate anomalies, that would change things. So what do you really mean by your statement?
Ahh homonyms and synonyms.
What I meant was taking a short period and then claiming a trend – means that you have chosen a period as the ‘average’ or ‘normal’ from which the trend is running.
So imagine a graph that _started_ just after the *beginning* of the last Glacial period and ran to now. What is the overall trend in Arctic ice? Oh – its UP isn’t it. It may even be that the overall trend from the start of the Holocene to now is up also. But choose a suitable high point and it is down. As you get closer to the noise being displayed then the movements about the mean for the Holocene may be stochastic, they may move as in a Levy Flight, with a certain inertia to the changes. Drawing a ‘trend’ line through such noisy stochastic data is meaningless.
Math’s a bitch, aint it? Reality has a decidedly liberal bias.