The Guardian has this article up today:
The claim was this:
“for the first time, the new edition of the (atlas) has had to erase 15% of Greenland’s once permanent ice cover – turning an area the size of the United Kingdom and Ireland ‘green’ and ice-free.”
…
“This is concrete evidence of how climate change is altering the face of the planet forever – and doing so at an alarming and accelerating rate.”
The Guardian article says this about the recently released atlas:
“But a spokeswoman for Times Atlas defended the 15% figure and the new map. “We are the best there is. We are confident of the data we have used and of the cartography. We use data supplied by the US Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado.”
I wrote to NSIDC to confirm this, my regular contact Dr. Walt Meier was out of the office, but Dr. Julienne Stroeve responded with this statement:
Statement from NSIDC regarding the Times Atlas citing NSIDC as the source of its information on Greenland:
NSIDC has never released a specific number for Greenland ice loss over the
past decade. However, we archive and distribute several Greenland data sets
and imagery. While it is possible that the Times Atlas obtained data from
NSIDC, they may have made their own interpretation of the data, independent
of advice of NSIDC.
While mass loss in Greenland is significant, and accelerating, the loss of
ice from Greenland is far less than the Times Atlas indicates. People
interested in this topic should refer to the peer-reviewed literature for
the latest published studies estimating ice loss in Greenland.
For further information or questions, contact NSIDC at 303-492-1497 or
###
NSIDC joins the reports on WUWT of the Scott Polar Research Institute and the Danish Meteorological Institute in distancing their organizations from the 15% claim.
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As do all uber-Lefties, the Warmistas double-down on their lies when called out on them.
Perhaps copies of the bogus Atlas will become collector’s items, souvenirs of the Global Warming Hoax. “Look children, at how crazy they were back then, just as the Great Cold was ramping up.”
I’m sure it is a simple mis-use of comparing a snow covered max time of year versus a snow min time of year.
/I don’t have a better explanation
“While mass loss in Greenland is significant, and accelerating,”
Is 0.1% over 12 years now “Significant”?
It kind of redefines the normal use of term in our post normal science.
In most cases, a significant loss would be taken to mean 10% or more over a reasonable time period.
Before, the invention of post normal science, a loss of 0.1% over 12 years would simply be regarded as insignificant or just “noise” in the data!
In post normal science, every time a gnat farts we have a significant event!!!!
This is a kind-of subtle programming/propaganda, like the Met Office changing the colour of their map from green to brown. The last time I flew over the UK, it was very definitely green!
Famous 1978 paper “West AntarctIc Ice sheet and CO2 greenhouse effect: a threat of” by Mercer predicting 5K temperature raise in the next 50 years below antarctic circle. It’s in NATURE and had been cited at least 450 times, so how can it be wrong? Temperature graph for the last 55 years at South Pole?
http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/icd/gjma/amundsen-scott.ann.trend.pdf
is
NSDIC do well to put their “safe pair of hands” – Dr. Julienne Stroeve in to bat on this one.
Dr Stroeve has IMHO worked very hard to “tell it as it is” rather than follow the meme that has bordered on invective that some in the arena have resorted to.
It would appear that the Times Atlas is wrong, that the source it references confers that it is wrong. So fix it, print a correction, and then, to retain any confidence find out and report what went wrong.
NSDIC should stay well clear until Times Atlas explain what happened. Unless of course Times Atlas continues to infer that they could not have represented NSDIC supplied data in any other way.
Buy popcorn, this will run.
I would not have been surprized for NSIDC to exclaim, “furthermore, Christopher Moncton, 3rd Viscount of Brenchlely is not a member of the House of Lords.”
How many other publications such as this Times Atlas are out there right now – publishing similar outrageous lies – ready to be included as ‘grey literature’ sources in AR5?
While mass loss in Greenland is significant, and accelerating
Julienne, I’d like to see the evidence for either of these claims… I find it difficult to believe that sea levels are declining at 5mm/year while at the same time Greenland is losing ice mass. I would believe thinning at the edges and increasing at the center, and I suppose it’s possible for Greenland to be losing while someplace else picks up the ice mass, in an extremely large way.
What alpha of significance is used for mass loss and acceleration of same?
Bugger! After the Dessler/Trenberth affair I find myself out of popcorn.
makin paper for the ar5, ubetcha.
more reality adjustment from the climate catamites.
Al Gore will use the Atlas as a source and make the 15% claim in 3…. 2… 1…..
The ice loss in Greenland is even less than 0.1% in 12 years. According to the Danish Meteorological Institute less than 268 billion tons ( corresponds roughly to 295 km3) of ice were lost from 2003-2008 (of course they formulated it as if it was a lot …). The Greenland ice sheet according to wikipedia is approximately 2,850,000 km3. I.e at most about 0.01% of the ice sheet was lost in 5 years.
To make a rough comparison one could assume that 10 million km2 of the Arctic sea every year freezes and melts again. Assuming the average maximal ice thickness is 1m , we have that every year 10.000 km3 of ice comes and goes in the Artic sea. (This is probably a too low estimate)
So they are in full panic and BS mode. When the warmists start turning on each other it is the end game.
JJ Your comment actually raises a very deep issue.
One of the findings of the InterAcademy Council (IAC) Review of IPCC’s processes and procedures (available at
http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/report.html )
was that IPCC had used information from sources which had not been peer-reviewed or critically evaluated. (Reading between the lines, it seems likely that some of this may have been written by IPCC authors themselves! How neat is that? Writ your own reference material!)
Couple this with “biased treatment of genuinely contentious issues” and a lack of any formal criteria for selecting published papers for inclusion in the analysis for AR4 and what you have is
a prime example of CHERRY-PICKING.
For over 20 years I worked in a government regulatory agency and when a company presented a literature review to support its case, the agency routinely expected to see full documentation of the following viz.
what date was the search performed?
which databases were searched?
what time periods were covered by the search?
what search terms were used?
what boolean logic was used?
what was the justification for this search strategy?
how many citations were retrieved at each stage of the search?
what were the final selection criteria for inclusion/exclusion of papers for further analysis?
Such documentation is considered necessary to preclude cherry-picking and ensure that the literature search is comprehensive, objective, robust and repeatable. Did the IPCC do this?
Emphatically NO. Will this be done for AR5? I seriously doubt it.
Let’s see, according to my records, NSIDC reported a maximum Arctic Sea ice extent of 15.4 million square kilometers in March of 1999 and a minimum, so far, of only 5.52 million square kilometers in August of this year, thus one could honestly say that we have lost 9.88 million square kilometers or 64 percent of the arctic ice extent over this exact time period and claim NSIDC as the source of that result. Quite a ‘shocker!’
In re: Jeremy at 3 PM on the 10% factor. When I worked at MIT
Lincoln Lab one of my Group Leaders, Glenn Pippert, used to
say, “In order for a difference to be a difference, it must make
a difference.” Yes, these tiny effects are close to noise.
Last I looked, sea levels were falling. That means water/ice is accumulating somewhere. If not Greenland, then where?
Another “misunderstanding” that the crowds will cheer, more certain with each linesman’s error that the home team is the winning team.
We have the warming bias of UHIE.
We have the warming bias of Hansen’s Arctic computations.
We have the warming bias of not using satellite data in data sparse areas.
We have the warming bias of historical data “adjustments”.
We have the warming bias of Greenpeace opinion in place of no data.
We have the warming bias of the Times Atlas “cartographers”, who, like Mann and Trenberth, prefer pictures insides their computers to observation.
In all of the IPCC Gore story, is there any area where errors tend towards more cool and less worry? Has there ever been a statistic that later proved UNDERestimated?
I am an industrial “scientist”, in that I am paid to produce a science-based image of the world that has to be true enough, often enough, to make money. When what I do appears to be going in the right direction ALL THE TIME, I get very nervous. God is not so generous with His fortunes; not only must you work hard to earn them, you must accept occasional setbacks and disappointments.
How I wish I were in the warmist climate business! Everything they do takes them down the path of glory, even if a few times it is a misstep. You could make a reputation and a house by the sea with that sort of divine help.
Oh, wait. They do.
mike g says:
September 19, 2011 at 4:05 pm
Last I looked, sea levels were falling. That means water/ice is accumulating somewhere. If not Greenland, then where?
———————————————————————————————————————-
It is on child minding duties, looking after Trenberth’s heat, so far no nappy rash, but there have been a significant number of tantrums!
They’ll likely print an obscure correction somewhere and leave the original as is, where it’ll be cited by numerous hucksters for years to come.
Where do you guys get “sea level is falling from”?
I just took a quick look and got this:
http://betternature.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/1992-2010-noaa.png
Certainly doesn’t look like it’s falling in that graph (or plenty of others like it)
Michael, there are many publications about the current rate of mass loss, a quick google search will find several of them.
Between 1961 and 1990, a period in which the Greenland ice sheet was thought to be in relative balance, the annual accumulation on the ice sheet was approximately 700 Gt per year, balanced by roughly 220 Gt per year lost through runoff (Ettema et al., 2009) and another 480 Gt per year through solid ice discharge (Rignot et al., 2008). Since that time, the mass loss has accelerated (see recent paper by Rignot et al., 2001). The increase in mass loss is a result of enhanced surface melting (e.g. Abdalati and Steffen, 2001; Box et al., 2006; Tedesco et al., 2008; Fettweis et al., 2011; Tedesco et al., 2011), dynamic thinning along the ice sheet margins (Krabill et al., 2004; Pritchard et al., 2009) and increased ice discharge rates of outlet glaciers (Rignot and Kanagaratnam, 2006; Luckman et al., 2006; Stearns and Hamilton, 2007; Howat et al., 2008).
Currently, Greenland is losing mass at about a rate of 150 Gt per year, or about one third of a millimetre of sea level rise per year. That means in the 12 year period from 1999 through 2011 that the Times Atlas analysed, meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet has contributed roughly 3 mm to global sea level rise – not one meter.
oops, that recent reference on the mass loss is supposed to be Rignot et al., 2011 (Rignot, E., I. Velicogna, M. R. van den Broeke, A. Monaghan, and J. Lenaerts, 2011: Acceleration of the contribution of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to sea level rise, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L05503, doi:10.1029/2011GL046583.)
Is “rebuke” the right word? Spanking is a rebuke. Saying “Not us” is a refusal. “Not us” is also a “denial” but then NSIDC would be deniers.
REPLY: Changed to “rejects”, not my best today, still taking vicodins for ear infection pain – Anthony