UPDATE: 3/5 8:30PM PST There’s a hilarious backstory on the sockpuppetry that went on yesterday from the founder of The Arctic Institute – read my comment on it here
It is that time again where attention turns to Arctic Sea Ice because it is approaching maximum extent. There’s really only two periods each year that garner intense interest, and that is the times of maximum and minimum extent. We are fast approaching maximum.
First, let’s start off with a tiff that has developed between Cleveland’s NewsNet5 meteorologist Mark Johnson and an outfit I’ve never heard of called the “Arctic Institute” which called him out a couple of days ago over his report “Ice, ice, baby: Arctic sea ice on the rebound“. They opined on his report:
Only two problems, when I queried him, Johnson stated he was referencing NORSEX SSM/I from the WUWT Sea Ice page, not NSIDC. And, since the Arctic Institute apparently doesn’t know how NSIDC graphs work, they’ve pwned themselves in the process of making their put-down counter claims. Have a look:
The NSIDC 3/3/12 chart looks well within ±2STD and pretty close to the ±1STD boundary to me. Source: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
NORSEX SSM/I extent for 3/4/12 is in fact within ±1STD:
Source: http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
Mark Johnson was right. You’d think an outfit that bills themselves as…
The Arctic Institute seeks to establish itself as an authoritative, interdisciplinary, and independent source for information and in-depth analysis about the developments in the High North. The Institute was founded in 2011 and currently aims to bring together scholars and researchers to build a growing stock of knowledge and expertise on the Arctic region. In contrast to existing platforms for Arctic affairs, The Arctic Institute is not affiliated with or sponsored by any of the Arctic states.
…would know that NSDIC graphs are on a five day average (and thus don’t reflect recent updates right away), and that daily graphs such as the NORSEX SSMI showed that there had been a dramatic surge in the last couple of days. I guess we know now that “authoritative” is just really their own self serving world view, and not based in actual evidence.
By itself, this peak doesn’t mean all that much. We saw a similar jump near the max in 2009 and 2010, and in 2010 the extent hugged the normal center line for several weeks. In the end though, most people are interested in the minimum in September, and since that event is so dependent on the short term vagaries of wind and weather, having a normal extent at maximum doesn’t guarantee a higher or even normal minimum in September.
One other thing I noted about the Arctic Institute is that they really didn’t show the current extent mapped out, so here it is:
I note that folks like the Arctic Institute just don’t like showing picture of reality, especially at maximum, since their entire existence is predicated on the Serreze “arctic death spiral” mentality and picture like this tend to make people wonder why there’s still ice in the Arctic when they have been told repeatedly it is disappearing at “unprecedented rates”.
So as to prevent the on cue wailing and gnashing of teeth from folks of that ilk, here is their favored presentation:
It sure would be nice if University of Illinois could learn to time stamp their images like I finally convinced NSIDC to do. That would be the scientific thing to do.
The offset right now is minus 726,000 square kilometers, an area slightly bigger than the state of Texas (695,621 sqkm). Most of that missing ice extent is in the Barentz and Greenland seas, as noted in this image from NSIDC I have annotated below:
Source: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_bm_extent.png
And according the the Naval Research Lab, the extent loss in those areas appears to be entirely the result of wind patterns compacting the ice northward. There are strong northward drift vectors in the Barentz:
Source: http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticicespddrfnowcast.gif
And the air temperature in the Arctic is well below freezing, so air temperature induced melt is likely not a factor…
…but wind driven warmer sea water incursions into the Barentz sea from more southern latitudes seems to be happening in that area and may be contributing to some edge melt:
In other news.
The Antarctic continues along happy as a clam, above normal, with a positive 30+ year trend.
I await the usual condemnations from the excitable folks that are terrified that the world will lose the ice caps soon.
UPDATE: Now the Arctic Institute has added a caveat:
*** [edit: Even the latest available ice extent chart from the NSIDC released on March 3, 2012, one day after Mr. Johnson’s article was published, shows ice extent well outside the one standard deviation area.]
I wonder what they will say tomorrow when NSIDC updates again?
LOL!
See the sub-headings in this article. The best one has to be …
Well done REP!
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I assume your last link was supposed to land on your 8:17 PM comment. For me, it lands instead on REP’s 9:28 comment. Took me a while to figure out what it was about, but was a very entertaining read, once I did.
Anthony Watts says:
March 5, 2012 at 8:17 pm
Here’s my story on sock puppetry and ethics
==========
This is just too funny! You scorched his panties good!
I have to read all the comments on every thread to be sure not to miss anything.
Well, you know what this means, the Arctic Institute will now retaliate. You have to make sure all of the WUWT office staff, from the well-paid employees to the interns from the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, don’t answer any emails with board member names on gmail accounts requesting the recent board meeting documents, like the budget sheets showing the untraceable cash donations from Big Green, for maintaining a plausible facade of “climate science denial” and the persecuting honest respectable climate scientists that helps greatly with their fundraising efforts. Especially don’t release the ultra-secret Testaments of the High Rabbis of the Carbon Temple, as outsiders such as them will find it entirely too bland and will fake up their own “sexed-up” version anyway.
In real news, or what passes for it, a quick ctrl-u of an Arctic Institute page to show the html code shows their site is actually on Blogger, which is owned by Google.
Their About Us page says:
Thus clearly they have need of a good editor. It doesn’t look like someone’s getting paid by the word, so why not one “international” instead of five?
Although with them being so concerned about “international” It Only Makes Sense their Staff page shows a “UN Liaison”. Why wouldn’t it makes sense to have someone be designated the UN Liaison, since obviously they must do a lot of communicating with the UN, on higher-level matters than, say, an ordinary journalist or run-of-the-mill “advocacy center”, and the UN is always grateful to have an official UN Liaison to correspond with.
Well, they do have an “Arctic Military Strategist” listed, so obviously the UN wants to have an official UN Liaison when requesting their opinion on military matters. The page says he “…is one of a handful of Arctic subject matter experts in uniform today.” As is well known, all military organizations throughout the world are always happy to have active duty personnel give their free and honest (informed) opinions to any non-governmental organization of any sort. I’m certain his information gleaned from the classified material at his disposal has been very helpful.
Yup, great startup organization. They’ll do fine, despite Google being likely to find the Arctic Institute of North America instead, just like with their previously-mentioned “Climate Institute” at their Washington DC address, Google will find The Climate Institute of Washington DC instead… Is “Arctic Climate Institute” available as a name for them?
Yes, the correct link to Anthony’s article is
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/04/sea-ice-news-volume-3-1-the-arctic-institute-pawns-itself/#comment-913834
So the Arctic Institue is a sham? Yet another muppet on the trail of the CAGW swindle, probably vying for some grants from gullible government departments desperately ‘soaking’ up all the support they can?
Pathetic…….glad you outed the bar steward.
just thought I’d look at the staff page of their website – WTF???
How many honours ‘science’ degrees do you see amongst the staff?
How many are BA degrees in political studies or european studies? OMFG!
I want to know when, where, how and why this group exists.
I want to know who funds them and why – I presume it was via some government grants? I see no mention of funding during a brief perusal of their website!
Are they simply a paid advocacy group? a bunch of creamers, skimming off as much of the grant money as possible?
Anthony Watts says:
March 5, 2012 at 8:17 pm
Here’s my story on sock puppetry and ethics
————————————————————————————————————
Perhaps a good title for this story is, “Mr. Humpert gets his Gleick trainer kit.”
I pointed out in a comment that the case of Gleick was important as it was a microcosm of climate science as revealed in the FOIA e-mail release. I did not expect additional examples so soon.
How many more times? Any apology with a qualification is not an apology.
Why you did it, whether for a noble purpose or not, is not an issue. If you are wrong, admit it and apologise wholeheartedly and generously – that’s it.
Anything else is selfserving twaddle.
In my long life, I have on occasion been in a meeting where I have forgotten to do something which I had undertaken to do. On the few occasions when this has happened, I have immediately held up my hand, admitted my error, apologised, and assured the meeting that it would be done immediately after the meeting concluded. I have never ever been chastised or insulted for this approach.
Mr Humpert has learnt nothing from this experience.
It seems he relied on the old saying: On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog…
Cold Englishman says:
Mr Humpert has learnt nothing from this experience.
______________________________
I disagree. He has learned that he cannot sockpuppet at WUWT and get away with it! Other than that, yeah your pretty much right on.
Smokey, first off I’m talking about the sea ice cover, so let’s stick to that topic for now. Second, if you want references, you can start with Kay et al. 2011 (GRL) in regards to natural variability not being enough to explain the current decline in Arctic sea ice cover. There are more references in there. You can also search papers by Kattsov (such as his 2010 paper), papers by Winton (such as his 2011 paper) and more references in those papers on attribution studies.
I am currently comparing the observations to the CMIP5 model output, and there again the null hypothesis is unsupported (working on finishing the paper now). What’s important to remember, any sea ice trend we find in the observations is influenced by both signal and noise components in the time-series. However, since the real world provides only ONE example of internal climate variability, it is not possible to separate out signal from noise in the observational sea ice record. On the other hand, several ensemble members from climate model simulations generate different realizations of internal climate variability, allowing us to separate out the signal (e.g. external forcing) from the noise (internal/natural climate variability). Since the noise is uncorrelated from one simulation to the next, averaging over many ensemble members reduces the noise level and improves estimates of any overall trend.
When I talk about the Arctic ice cover mostly being covered by perennial ice, I’m talking about the last 50 years of hemispheric observations. Just because you may have regional open water 100 years ago, that does not imply there was less ice Arctic-wide then than today. In addition, there are several studies that have given many different dates as to when there was significantly less sea ice in the Arctic Ocean during summers than today, ranging from 100,000s of years to 10,000s of years ago. But that in no way implies that there is not some external forcing responsible for what is happening today.
I think you don’t argue that the Arctic sea ice is in a period of decline, but that you believe it is 100% caused by natural climate variability. I argue that it is caused by a combination of natural and external forcing.
Dear Ms Stroeve,
After seeing Steven Mosher’s excellent dissection of Gleick’s use of language, I found myself unable to avoid looking at your use of language.
Julienne Stroeve says March 5, 2012 at 12:53 pm:
…Given the positive AO throughout most of this winter, there was good export of multiyear ice out of Fram Strait, such that this winter there was a larger amount of 3+ year old ice exported than in the last 4 winters …
Why choose the adjective ‘good’ to describe the export of ice through the Fram Strait?
It can only be ‘good’ if it fits with a desired result. A dispassionate (ie scientific) adjective could have been ‘high’, ‘significant’ or ‘greater’.
Your choice of adjective leads me to believe that you are not a dispassionate observer.
Billy, if that’s all you have to complain about in what I wrote, I figure that’s a good thing. I could have said large amount, above normal amount, etc. in terms of the export, but the main part of the story is that there was more old ice exported out of Fram Strait this winter than the last few.
And as for “good”, I don’t think it’s a good thing if the Arctic loses it’s sea ice cover for many reasons.
Julienne,
I agree with Billy Liar. Words have meaning, and phrases like “separate out” grate. ‘Separate’ is sufficient and correct. Definitions are especially critical in scientific discussions. Too many times I read where people use “theory” when they mean hypothesis, or conjecture. All are a part of the process that is the scientific method. To be a hypothesis someting must be testable. CO2 causing ice loss in one hemisphere is not testable.
Next, you are constantly setting up strawman arguments, then knocking down your strawman and presuming you have won some sort of debate point. Let me corrrect that error with a couple of typical examples.
You wrote: “I think you don’t argue that the Arctic sea ice is in a period of decline, but that you believe it is 100% caused by natural climate variability.”
Wrong. Show me where I ever wrote that Arctic ice is not declining. I stated quite specifically that the Arctic ice decline is not in dispute. Where did you get your misinformation regarding what I wrote?
I also never stated that the decline “is caused 100% by natural climate variability.” That is another of your strawman arguments. What I wrote was: “Natural variability is entirely sufficient to account for all of the current changes in the Arctic. I did not say that there are no other factors at work. But that is conjecture, not verifiable, testable fact.”
When we compare the Arctic with the Antarctic, there appears to be no cause for alarm. There is also no testable, empirical evidence showing that the polar ice variability is caused by human CO2 emissions. That is simply a model based conjecture.
Finally, it appears that you still misunderstand the null hypothesis. If and when the parameters of the Holocene, including global temperature, precipitation, ice cover, etc., are exceeded, and if and when it can be shown, per the scientific method, that human activity is the reason those parameters are exceeded, then the null hypothesis will be falsified. But so far, the planet is well within the parameters of the Holocene. Nothing unprecedented is occurring. As Dr. Roy Spencer puts it: “No one has falsified the hypothesis that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability.”
Smokey, you forgot that I said “I think you…” That implies that this is my understanding of what you have said, but not that it is 100% what you believe. When you say that natural variability is entirely sufficient to account for ALL the sea ice changes we are seeing, that to me implies that you think it is 100% caused by natural variability.
Just so that you are clear on what I believe, I believe that the current loss of the sea ice is caused by a combination of natural and forced climate variability.
You do seem to miss the point though that observations alone cannot separate out the signal from the noise.
I am curious how much weight you give to paleoclimate studies, and which paleoclimate data you trust and which you do not.
The “Arctic Institute” now appears to be going the comment censorship route. I posted a comment on their site asking why they referred to NSIDC graph as having a 30 year average when it only covered an average from 1979 to 2000. This comment went through. They had another page with an interactive graph of the last few years of ice area plotted against the average from 1979 to 2000. I submitted a comment asking why they used 1979 to 2000 when the data are available through 2012. This comment has vanished into the ether and both pages are now restricted to comments from “team members”.
I guess restricting comments to “team members” helps ensure that they don’t have to answer embarrassing questions. First time I’ve been kicked off a site, gives me a good old global warming glow.
Julienne
March 6 at 11:46am
Dr. Stroeve, thank you for commenting here. How about doing the guest post at Watts Up With That?
Taras
Smokey, for testing the null hypothesis in the sea ice record, I am relying on climate model ensembles and testing the hypothesis H1 that the trend in any given model ensemble member (m) is consistent with the observed trend o. This is done for all months, as well as for individual months. Following Santer et al. [2008] an effective sample size (neff) is calculated in order to adjust the standard error (s(m) or s(o)) of the trend for the effects of temporal autocorrelation: neff = ntot(1-AR1)/(1-AR1)
where ntot is the number of years over which the trend is being evaluated and AR1 is the lag-1 temporal autocorrelation coefficient after the seasonal cycle is removed. The test statistic based on combining the standard error of both the model and the observation becomes the difference in the trends multiplied by the square root of the combined variances of the model ensemble and the observation.
“Yeah, and I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids'”
This makes my day a little brighter,
Malte’s bio is posted online here if anyone wishes to learn more about his expertise
http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2011/09/11/arctic-sea-ice-extent-reaches-new-historic-minimum/
.
Poor Malte,
He’s taken down his personal page, his linked-in profile, his picassa album, and I’m sure much much more. Good thing I saved PDF’s of everything.
See Malte Run
Run Malte Run
Anthony Watts says:
March 5, 2012 at 8:17 pm
Here’s my story on sock puppetry and ethics
LOVE IT!
“Both the Institute and I were subjected to repeated ridicule in these forums.”
Mommy, they were being mean to me so I had to. Whaaaaa. They’re impacting my self esteem!!! Whaaaa.
Given the Arctic Institutes statement which includes a this extract:
“He demanded that I recant statements made within my post and apologize, and if I did not take these actions before a specified time, he would reveal my address or other personal details online, threatening to put my “personal life at risk”. I continue to stand by the assertions I made in my post, but I do understand that people may disagree with my conclusions.”
—————–
Maybe they deserve a thorough factual right up, less they turn this into ‘sceptics’ threatening them in the media.
Oh gosh this is too funny. Great legwork Anthony and mods. (Had flashes of Lisbeth Salander while reading the detective work. ☺)
Did anyone see any of the A.I. staff at any of the recent “occupy” events? Just wondering. You know, someone holding a placard claiming, Masters degrees in Ancient Asian Philosophy and Classical Sanskri Linguistics … and still can’t find work.
You guys really do rock. Thanks.
Clive