UPDATE: The publisher of the Atlas has issued a clarification and apology:
The Times Atlas is renowned for its authority and we do our utmost to maintain that reputation. In compiling the content of the atlas, we consult experts in order to depict the world as accurately as possible. For the launch of the latest edition of the atlas (The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, 13th edition), we issued a press release which unfortunately has been misleading with regard to the Greenland statistics. We came to these statistics by comparing the extent of the ice cap between the 10th and 13th editions (1999 vs 2011) of the atlas. The conclusion that was drawn from this, that 15% of Greenland’s once permanent ice cover has had to be erased, was highlighted in the press release not in the Atlas itself. This was done without consulting the scientific community and was incorrect. We apologize for this and will seek the advice of scientists on any future public statements. We stand by the accuracy of the maps in this and all other editions of The Times Atlas
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I’ve pointed out that NSIDC is denying any specific involvement in the errors related to the new Times Atlas of the World.
Makes you wonder though, was this a faulty interpretation of existing NSIDC data by the Times, or was it something else?
Maurizio Morabito has an idea: the source might have been Wikipedia. He writes:
In fact, and intriguingly, and twice embarrassingly, there exists one map that strongly resembles the Times Atlas’ “15%” Greenland (see also the Greenland Physical Map from TourTeam.dk). And the embarrassing bits are: it’s one map used on Wikipedia. Worse, it’s supposed to be only showing ice sheet thickness, not “cover” as claimed (it doesn’t highlight the areas where the ice is less than 10m/30ft thick).
Look for example at the outline of Eastern sides of Kong Christian IX Land and Kong Christian X Land, the nearest to Iceland (brown on the Times Atlas to the left, green on Wikipedia to the right).
Read the rest at Maurizio Morabito’s Omniclimate
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Yes, kong means king in Danish and Norwegian. Danish happens to be the main language of Greenland.
Steve Milloy over at JunkScience.com has picked up on this:
http://climateaudit.org/2011/09/20/the-times-atlas-and-y2k/
“The error has occasioned considerable speculation as to the provenance of the error, which, like Hansen’s Y2K error, looks like it originated in a change of datasets between the 1999 edition and the 2011 edition.”
Greenland – maybe some knowledge would help here. And of course speaking of global warming how about this?
In January 2006 a major scientific report was published by the Government, amid the numerous warnings about greenhouse gases, impending doom and disaster is a mention of the Greenland
ice sheet melting and sea levels rising 25 feet over a 1000 years.
In 1991 two Caribou hunters in Greenland stumbled on a Viking farm that had been buried in the permafrost for 500 years. The interesting question is why is a farm buried in the permafrost? The Middle Ages were warmer than the climate in the 21st Century.
Between the 10th and 14th Century was the “Medieval Warming Period” when global temperatures were higher than they are today. As the Vikings were not industrialised and no one has found a Range Rover with horns on the bonnet buried in the permafrost, the only conclusion is that the planet warms up and cools down periodically due to natural events.
What? Before AGW? How inconvenient is that?
Sondrestrom just above the arctic circle in 1973. Not much sign of ice.
http://www.firebirds.org/menu10/slg_p05.htm
Or a few lighthouses in the 70’s. Where has all the snow gone?
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/lighthouse/grl.htm
Sisimiut in 1973. Really dig the hair!
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/17765606
I think the proper term is “Koenigliche”, and in many older atlases was abbreviated “Kgl”. That would reduce the problems of understanding, especially if the atlas had a listing of terms and abbreviations. I find “Kong” especially grating.
Will there be a corrected reprint and optional factory recall of the erroneous volumes?
Paul Homewood says:
thanks for the links Paul, bookmarked.
Sandy
Anthony, can you help me verify this please? Or anyone here – I need help with this. I’ve been searching all morning and the numbers look real. I know its off topic but the numbers blew me away – scientists estimate there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes on the planet. If anywhere near accurate these numbers are staggering to even contemplate.
Wil, Dr Trenbreth (or however you spell his name) had been saying that there is a lot of heat at the bottom of the ocean … perhaps he just misidentified it’s source.
re:”Wil says:
September 20, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Anthony, can you help me verify this please? Or anyone here – I need help with this. I’ve been searching all morning and the numbers look real. I know its off topic but the numbers blew me away – scientists estimate there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes on the planet. If anywhere near accurate these numbers are staggering to even contemplate.”
Check out this site: or http://www.iceagenow.com/Ocean_Warming.htm
Re – Wil says:
September 20, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Anthony, can you help me verify this please? Or anyone here – I need help with this. I’ve been searching all morning and the numbers look real. I know its off topic but the numbers blew me away – scientists estimate there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes on the planet. If anywhere near accurate these numbers are staggering to even contemplate.
If the oceans have an area of – from memory – about 125 million square miles [320 million square kilometres, I think] then we would have a density of one submarine volcano every ~42 square miles – so one centres on roughly every six mile square [or ten kilometer square].
Very roughly.
I’m not an oceanographer – merely a bumboatie – but that density seems high – very high. Given that much of the ocean floor is comparatively static, that does seem pretty dense even along ocean ridges, or about the ‘Ring of Fire’.
Have I counted them? No.
From the MailOnline Tuesday, Sep 20 2011
A greener Greenland? Times Atlas ‘error’ overstates global warming
I suggest we all chip in to fund a search for the missing heat at the bottom of the oceans provided it it piloted by C’pn. Trenberth.
recent evaluation of Greenland mass balance is the opposite of alarmism.
Captain Dave wrote:
“September 20, 2011 at 11:13 am
“I seem to recall a science fiction story based on the premise that commercial cartographers intentionally include some false information which, when appearing on some other company’s map, proves theft.”
Captain-
I read the same information as fact in an article about the production of road maps given out by gas stations. (Do they still do that???) Not science fiction according to the article.
IanM
Should be “it is piloted” …
I believe Wikipedia has strayed from its original goal where Greenhouse gases are concerned. These pages – with the travesty of the lie that a blackbody about the same distance from the sun would be ~5 C despite lunar temperatures reaching ~123 C as quoted by NASA – are locked and cannot be edited like most pages.
I started a comment thread raising this misinformation and was threatened with the same sort of antidiscussion threat used by Skeptical Science – ie this is not the appropriate place for this – the problem seems to be there isn’t any appropriate place to tell them they are simply wrong – which they are undoubtedly are on this statement. Subjected to the solar constant of ~1368 W/sq m a blackbody in the proximity of Earth would reach ~ 120 C when illuminated and plunge to unbelievable cold on the non illuminated side – just as the moon has been observed to do.
This bias with respect to the “faith” of “climate” science” is clearly either driven with intent to deceive or the individuals involved have been brainwashed into denying observable facts.
Take your pick but the value of Wikipedia is greatly diminished by its adherance to promoting false statements in order to support dubious science.
Captain Dave says (September 20, 2011 at 11:13 am): “I seem to recall a science fiction story based on the premise that commercial cartographers intentionally include some false information which, when appearing on some other company’s map, proves theft.”
As I recall, deliberate disinformation in a reference work figures prominently in one of Frederick Saberhagen’s “Berserker” stories. Can’t remember which one, though. 🙁
PS – with the generally accepted albedo of the moon as ~0.12 the Stefan-Boltzmann equation approximates the moon will hit ~382 K or ~109 C during the lunar day. So something is wrong in Wikipedialand !
There is no way around it, The Times has published a deliberately misleading document with the intention of deceiving the reader. It must recall all copies of the Atlas and pulp them, and then re-issue a corrected version.
Buy an atlas while you can. They will be collecter’s items.
Regarding the UPDATE …
… so the press release was wrong … but the map is still right … right?
Maurizio Morabito says: September 20, 2011 at 9:58 am
For once Wikipedia has no fault.
I disagree. The green edge colouring is the same tactic of “warming by paintwork” as the blood-red colouring on the cover of Nature publishing Steig’s famous paper about Antarctica “warming” – only a few years earlier Antarctica was coloured decent shades of blue, then it went to purple and thence to red.
Moreover, why is East Greenland coloured brown whereas the equivalent “green” area across the top of North Greenland is not? Again, cynicism suggests that it was felt that it would look too obvious if the northernmost part of Greenland, close to the North Pole, looked brown.
Greenland fascinates me. Its ancient ice sheet reaches virtually to the southern tip – yet this is at the same latitude as southern Norway, southern Alaska, and further south than Iceland which has no icecap. Ellesmere Island and Baffin Island have icecaps on the Greenland side but not on the other side. None of the Northwest Passage islands. Ohhh, magnetic field effect
Wil says:
September 20, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Anthony, can you help me verify this please? Or anyone here – I need help with this. I’ve been searching all morning and the numbers look real. I know its off topic but the numbers blew me away – scientists estimate there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes on the planet. If anywhere near accurate these numbers are staggering to even contemplate.
===============================================================
Wil, James has an interesting take on this on his blog.
Scientists map sea floor volcanoes because they make the sea surface higher above them.
We don’t think it’s any coincidence that satellite sea levels and satellite sea temperatures are highest around the ring of fire……
This is the first, there are several follow up posts….
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/discussion-so-far/
Makes one wonder what has gone undetected.