Update and brief review below by Ryan Maue…
From Reuters Alert Net: Colder winters possible due to climate change-study
* Colder winters possible in northern regions
* Shrinking sea ice causes airstream anomalies
* Finding does not conflict with global warming
BERLIN, Nov 16 (Reuters) – Climate change could lead to colder winters in northern regions, according to a study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research on Tuesday.
Vladimir Petoukhov, lead author of the study, said a shrinking of sea ice in the eastern Arctic causes some regional warming of lower air levels and may lead to anomalies in atmospheric airstreams, triggering an overall cooling of the northern continents.
“These anomalies could triple the probability of cold winter extremes in Europe and northern Asia,” he said. “Recent severe winters like last year’s or the one of 2005/06 do not conflict with the global warming picture but rather supplement it.”
h/t to WUWT readers e.c cowan and Michael P.
Ryan Maue Update: It took me some doing to find this study in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres. The study is fine as constructed, but why is this worthy of a press release?
This study employs a climate model to determine the sensitivity of the atmospheric circulation to sea-ice concentration. The ECHAM5 model is used with T42 spectral resolution (that is 2.8×2.8 degree longitude/latitude spacing !!!) and 19 vertical levels. This is about the model setup of NCEP’s operational weather forecasting models in the 1980s. Six “simulations” (or scenarios) were performed of 100 years duration with differing sea-ice concentration in the Barents-Kara (B-K) sector. Their results are therefore 100-year averages obtained from the simulations.
The conclusions are not conclusive at all but very equivocal in nature. This is contrary to the press release. Since European winter climate is strongly controlled by a host of climate modes such as ENSO, NAO, AO, PDO, etc., their study cannot include the non-linear interplay between the actors and their sea-ice concentration scenarios. This is a very idealized experiment with results that are very preliminary when it comes to relating to the true atmosphere. There is no analysis of the 2005/2006 winters to determine if indeed the sea-ice mechanism was responsible for the cooler winter.
The study’s conclusions with respect to future climate change are very speculative to say the least. This is the case with many of these types of climate scenario experiments. Step one is to find a phenomenon that goes against the AGW consensus: here it is a cold winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Step two is to construct an experiment which explains the phenomena in the context of AGW. Step three is to connect step 2 to step 1 and issue a press release containing facts not in evidence.
Same thoughts here. I suspect this is a preparation paper i.e. in case things get colder in the NH Warmists can argue that “the models predicted this.” Of course they do! Predict everything and your theory can never be falsified.
My question about the study comes from the press release. They say:
“What the researchers did was to feed the computer with data, gradually reducing the sea ice cover in the eastern Arctic from 100 percent to 1 percent in order to analyse the relative sensitivity of wintertime atmospheric circulation.”
This apparently results in colder northern winters.
Can anyone explain to me how you can have 1% eastern Arctic sea ice coverage and colder northern winters at the same time, model or no model…? How can that possibly be sensible??
I’m dead tired, it’s half past midnight here in central european time in the middle of the med sea and I don’t have the time to read all the comments, so, what I will say may already have been said:
Wern’t the warmists telling us that our children would not know what snow is? That winters will be warm and that and the other and……….?
Now they are telling us that our kids, no, all of us, will freeze in winter because of global warming…? So were their old computer models wrong? YES. Are their new models better? Better in ridiculing themselves.
Now I get it: The little ice age was the effect of a little global warming and the great ice age was the result of a great global warming.
Good night and good day to you all and may the warmth be with you.
Bruce says:
November 17, 2010 at 2:39 pm
My question about the study comes from the press release. They say:
“What the researchers did was to feed the computer with data, gradually reducing the sea ice cover in the eastern Arctic from 100 percent to 1 percent in order to analyse the relative sensitivity of wintertime atmospheric circulation.”
This apparently results in colder northern winters.
Can anyone explain to me how you can have 1% eastern Arctic sea ice coverage and colder northern winters at the same time, model or no model…? How can that possibly be sensible??
###
I haven’t had a chance to do more then glance at the gas .. I mean press release, let alone the study itself, but if this is what they did, I’ll be ROTFLMAO. They artificially adjusted a dependent and expect the result to have meaning. No wonder their findings sound imaginary. They are as in sqr( -1)!
“Colder winters possible due to climate change-study”
then it would follow that for global warming to happen summers will be even hotter
The article can be found here:
http://eprints.ifm-geomar.de/8738/1/2009JD013568-pip.pdf
Here there is a review of Arctic ice impact on atmospheric circulation which presents a much sober picture with high uncertainty:
Role of Arctic sea ice in global atmospheric circulation: A review
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/future/docs/ArcticAND_Globe.pdf
It would be interesting to check Wu, B., Ronghui, H., Dengyi, G., 1999. Effects of variation of winter sea- ice area in Kara and Barents seas on East Asia winter monsoon. Acta Meteorological Sinica 13, 141–153. (which is not quoted in the Postdam paper)
Another article ,
Sorteberg, Asgeir, Børge Kvingedal, 2006: Atmospheric Forcing on the Barents Sea Winter Ice Extent. J. Climate, 19, 4772–4784.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI3885.1
indicates that it is the atmospheric circulation which forces the sea ice extent rather than the opposite.
The Postdam paper refers Sorteberg and Kvingedal (2006) briefly:
Based on the observational data (e.g., [Sorteberg and Kvingedal, 2006]) the background lower-troposphere flow – the latter we attribute to the case of 100% SIC with 0~F and V_T~0 – is supposed to possess a close-to-zero vorticity.
However, this is what the observational data of Sorteberg and Kvingedal, 2006 says:
During sparse sea ice winters, the picture is reversed,
and a stronger east–west gradient in the MSLP
anomalies (Fig. 3) favors southerly geostrophic wind
anomalies over the southern Nordic Seas. This may
contribute to the increased inflow of warm, saline Atlantic
water into the Nordic Seas. Over the Barents Sea,
advection of warm and humid air, which disfavors
freezing, will contribute to a reduced sea ice extent by
dynamically pushing the sea ice northward and keeping
the thick ice (and therefore freshwater) confined to the
area north of Greenland.
But who are the observational data to question the word of the models…
(Anyway, we still need data for Siberia and Northern Europe to question Postdam, if anyone has access to the Wu paper it would be interesting to know)
Reply
R. de Haan says:
November 17, 2010 at 4:23 am
Yes van Kampen, the heat is unbearable:
It is actually, for me who loves skating. A perfect blocking is settling in over Europe and we should get freezing weather as of middle of next week. Oh, no. We’re not getting it. Up northeast it was warm to fat record warm again and that unbearable heat keeps stuff sweaty here. Another skating chance down the drain.
When there was still some Arctic sea ice cover, like in November 1993, the circulation would have been goed for two weeks of ice, like then. Not now.
This is pretty simple – excellent example of paradigm paralysis …
Wikipedia:
Paradigm paralysis
Perhaps the greatest barrier to a paradigm shift, in some cases, is the reality of paradigm paralysis: the inability or refusal to see beyond the current models of thinking . This is similar to what psychologists term Confirmation bias.
Examples include rejection of Galileo’s theory of a heliocentric universe, the discovery of electrostatic photography, xerography and the quartz clock.
And only damned noisy revolt can move paradigm …
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
November 17, 2010 at 5:47 pm
““Colder winters possible due to climate change-study”
then it would follow that for global warming to happen summers will be even hotter”
It would not follow. There are a number of possibilities. This is not a world wide phenomenon but applies to northern land areas. Other parts of the world may end up being warmer than normal in the same winter. The northern sea temperatures are in fact warmer than normal at the same time, and this is the cause of the air circulation pattern that makes the Northern Continents colder.
In fact the total northern hemisphere temperatures for the winter of 2005-2006 was quite warm, with anomalies of .96, .78 and 1.11 C using the GISS data set.
I’m going to bet on the Al Gore effect, and predict unprecedented cold weather in Cancun Nov 29 to Dec 10…
Bwahahahaha!
I think the Al Gore Effect in Cancun would reflect in a remarkable absence of cat. 5 hurricanes making landfall 🙂
As G&T observed, video games do not qualify as models, much less as science. Policy decisions based on them are simply accepting the “projections” and “scenarios” of the image-makers as though they were more than computerized opinions.
Ok guys,
its such simple in electronics: red is black and plus is minus.