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?
Julienne…
Thank you for providing the information, and especially thank you for taking the high road in the subsequent discussions. 🙂
There are a number of newspaper articles from the 20s that suggest that Ice cover was very low then. Your information only seems to cover the last 50 years, which IMO isn’t nearly long enough. Have there been attempts to reconstruct ice extent in the 20s, using what may be the only info we have from the time…the eyewitness accounts as presented in newspapers?
Models are great scientific tools…but IMO, they’re not science. If the arctic has had less ice in the last 100 years, then the models also need to be able to show that this low ice extent can be shown to be entirely natural, in order to help validate the models…has that been done?
You can tell the Arctic Institute folks were believers in the propaganda about skeptics. They really believed skeptics were a bunch of idiots and they could teach them a thing or two. I’m sure they were surprised to find themselves being kicked soundly in the butt.
It could very well be these kids were well meaning but have been influenced by all the propaganda. They may never have met a skeptic. They obviously haven’t a clue about climate but were off to save the world. Maybe a little reality will help, but I won’t be holding my breath.
Julienne Stroeve says:
March 6, 2012 at 8:13 am
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.
Did I fail to get the memo? When did 100% of the causes of natural variability get discovered?
Well Anthony his non-apology apology should be no surprise and I am sure he won’t lose any sleep over not being able to comment at WUWT. Andrew Breitbart had it right. To paraphrase, if they punch you in the face punch back twice as hard. Letting him off the hook may make you feel like you’re being a nice guy (and I think you probably are a nice guy) but is that the right thing to do?
I know what I would do. I would contact the building management and provide the facts that one of the tenants is operating a business out of their apartment. I would also provide the local code enforcer with the facts concerning Mr. Humpert’s likely violation of zoning laws. Not doing this, in my mind, is a slap in the face to all the people that do follow the rules. Allowing Mr. Humpert off the hook isn’t doing him any favors either. It is only encouraging him to continue down the same self destructive path.
REPLY: From what we can tell in our investigation, he’s not risen to a level of a business yet and hasn’t gotten any funding. It appears to just be some polysci kids and a web page hosted by Google’s free Blogger service. Like I said, the web facade and the reality are far different, so I don’t see any reason to follow your suggestions. If it were some successful outfit raking in the cash from Federal/State Grants or NGO’s, yes you’d have a point. As fish go, this isn’t even a minnow, more like a guppy embryo. -Anthony
Is it me, or has NSIDC lost its grey error bars, so it looks like the ice is still well short of “normal”?
REPLY: still there:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
It will start heading down tomorrow – Anthony
I think her “good” was shorthand for “good-sized,” which is a locution common (or formerly common) in Britain–and maybe Canada too.
Humpert Dumpty sat on the wall,
Humpert Numpty had a great fall,
All the Teams horses and all the Teams men,
Couldn’t put Malte Humpert together again.
RDCII, There have been some reconstructions, such as the sea ice data that forms the Had1SST data set that dates back before 1900. But prior to about 1953, there are gaps in the observations and the time-series has been filled in with climatology during those observational gaps. It’s also difficult to know what the ice is like Arctic-wide based on some regional observations. Just because ice may be low on the Eurasian side for example for a few years, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s also low on the Canadian side and vice versa. Trying to extend the observational record remains an active research topic.
In the CMIP5 models, you do get a period in the 1930s-1940s with larger negative sea ice trends than at other times since 1900, except for the last decade, which shows the largest negative trends. So the models are picking up on less ice cover during the 1920s-1940s. Understanding what caused the warming and less ice cover during this time is indeed very important to our further understanding of the climate system.
Julienne says:
“… for testing the null hypothesis in the sea ice record, I am relying on climate model ensembles…”
Well, there’s the problem right there. The null hypothesis uses empirical evidence; past data against which the current alternative hypothesis is tested. For example, how can a model replace ice core data? The null hypothesis is the statistical hypothesis that states that there are no differences between observed and expected data. Note “observed”. That is the null.
It is evident that you have a somewhat peculiar understanding of the climate null hypothesis. In the first link below Anthony writes: “Currently the null hypothesis for climate change attribution research is that humans have no influence.” <— That is the null. AGW is the alternative hypothesis. Keep in mind that:
a) real world, testable evidence [not models] is necessary to show whether the climate is currently outside of the Holocene’s parameters, and
b) that human emissions are the cause. [Using the scientific method, of course; models are not evidence.]
So far, the null hypothesis has withstood every attempt to falsify it, but of course you should certainly try [no models, please, verifiable past and current data only]. Here are a few links to help you understand the null hypothesis:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/03/trenberth-null-and-void
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/willis_trenberth_wuwt_essay.pdf
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/26/trenberth-at-ams-defends-himself-against-deniers
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/13/congenital-climate-abnormalities
You say “observations alone cannot separate
outthe signal from the noise.” But you still have not shown a testable, reproducible, verifiable AGW “signal”. If you could, we would know just what the climate sensitivity number is. Rather, you provide models. But models are not evidence. There are no empirically discernable differences between today’s climate that are outside the parameters of the Holocene.Finally, per your question: I give weight to empirical evidence such as ice core data, and long term raw temperature data such as the CET record. The following links may help you understand that today’s global temperatures are well within the parameters of the Holocene:
click1
click2
click3
As we can see, we are currently in an ideal “Goldilocks” climate. There is nothing unusual or unprecedented happening now or on the horizon. Further, routine and abrupt temperature changes have happened naturally without regard to CO2 levels, which follow ΔT.
To claim that the planet has warmed from 288K to 288.8K is due to human activity over the past century and a half is fine, so long as you understand that it is simply a conjecture, not a testable hypothesis. The same applies to the natural variability in polar ice cover, which as I’ve shown has many natural precedents.
Smokey, there is more than one way to evaluate whether the trends we are seeing in the observations can be explained in part by external forcing. You are only looking at one point of view, that of the fact that in the past the climate has been warmer than today, so therefore you conclude that there is no way that today’s climate is being influenced by an external component. That in no way falsifies that external forcing is contributing to today’s warming. There are many factors that explain past climate variability, first and foremost the Earth’s position relative to the sun. I don’t fully understand why you don’t grasp that observations are only one realization of our climate system and they contain trend and noise and thus you cannot separate out the trend from the noise in such a short observational record (speaking of the last 100 years of modern data collection). There are so many papers coming out right now on updated paleoclimate evidence of Holocene climate variations, causes behind those, etc. that it’s not easy to keep up. A recent paper you may find interesting is the Menviel and Joos 2012 paper, that discusses CO2 variations during the Holocene and factors responsible for the variations.
Studies have shown that CO2 absorbs thermal infrared radiation and causes warming. We have more CO2 in the atmosphere today than at any other time during the Holocene. In fact that is true during the last 40,000 years based on ice core data from Antarctica (see the Ahn et al. 2004 paper).
We will disagree on the usefulness of climate models to characterize natural climate variability, which is fine. But I would encourage you to read some of the papers I pointed you to.
Humpert, the latest in a long line of cranks scribbling notes in green ink from his bedroom….
Julienne,
You keep telling me to read certain papers you reference, but you don’t provide hotlinks. That would be helpful.
And you could not possibly have had the time to read the articles and comments explaining the null hypothesis that I linked for you, between the time you read my comment and composed your response. So it appears that your mind is made up.
That’s a shame, because understanding the null hypothesis is central to the AGW debate. Since it has never been falsified, that means there is no testable evidence proving that AGW is any kind of a problem, if it exists at all. AGW is still a conjecture — the first step in the scientific method, to be sure, but inadequate for drawing conclusions that would greatly impact civilization.
As I’ve stated many times here and elsewhere, my own view is that 2xCO2 will result in ≈1°C warming, ± ≈0.5°C. But I could well be estimating too high. Dr. Miskolczi gives the climate sensitivity number of 0.0°C for 2xCO2, and he knows more about the subject than I do. The three Drs. Idso estimate less than 0.5°C, as do Dr. Spencer and others. Based on the current lack of testable evidence, any of these could be correct. But it is becoming increasingly clear that the presumed positive feedbacks are, for all intents and purposes, non-existent. That is what the planet is telling us. And there is no empirical evidence supporting the IPCC’s fantastically high guesstimates of 3°C or more.
Someone upthread suggested that you write an article for WUWT. I concur. You would receive a lot of exposure for your ideas, and most importantly it would be worthwhile to see if the CO2 = declining Arctic sea ice conjecture is any more than an opinion, or if it would be falsified. Or maybe expire due to lack of any real supporting evidence, which appears to be its current fate.
When you check out the staff page and discover other strange entities like: climatecaucus.net
it just reminds me of the Monty Python skit about the numerous forms of the ‘People’s Liberation Front of Judea’ .
It seems that the climatecaucus.net group is a nearly fictitious group as well!
But you gotta love Malte being a representative to a ‘simulated conference’.
RDCII says:
March 6, 2012 at 2:36 pm
Julienne…
Thank you for providing the information, and especially thank you for taking the high road in the subsequent discussions. 🙂 There are a number of newspaper articles from the 20s that suggest that Ice cover was very low then. Your information only seems to cover the last 50 years, which IMO isn’t nearly long enough. Have there been attempts to reconstruct ice extent in the 20s, using what may be the only info we have from the time…the eyewitness accounts as presented in newspapers?
Yes but as I have pointed out here before the articles cover the Atlantic side, meanwhile on the Pacific side the ice extent was very high. Read those newspaper articles as well!
For example:
“In 1921, Stefansson sent five settlers (the Canadian Allan Crawford, three Americans: Fred Maurer, Lorne Knight and Milton Galle, and Eskimo seamstress and cook Ada Blackjack) to the island in a speculative attempt to claim it for Canada.[21] The explorers were handpicked by Stefansson based upon their previous experience and academic credentials. Stefansson considered those with advanced knowledge in the fields of geography and science for this expedition. At the time, Stefansson claimed that his purpose was to head off a possible Japanese claim.[22] An attempt to relieve this group in 1922 failed when the schooner Teddy Bear under Captain Joe Bernard became stuck in the ice [23]. In 1923, the sole survivor of the Wrangel Island expedition, Ada Blackjack, was rescued by a ship that left another party of 13 (American Charles Wells and 12 Inuit).”
“In 1926, a team of Soviet explorers, equipped with three years of supplies, landed on Wrangel Island. Clear waters that facilitated the 1926 landing were followed by years of continuous heavy ice surrounding the island. Attempts to reach the island by sea failed and it was feared that the team would not survive their fourth winter.[27]
In 1929, the icebreaker Fyodor Litke was chosen for a rescue operation. It sailed from Sevastopol, commanded by captain Konstantin Dublitsky. On July 4, it reached Vladivostok where all Black Sea sailors were replaced by local crew members. Ten days later Litke sailed north; it passed Bering Strait, and tried to pass De Long Strait and approach the island from south. On August 8 a scout plane reported impassable ice in the strait, and Litke turned north, heading to Herald Island. It failed to escape mounting ice; August 12 the captain shut down the engines to save coal and had to wait two weeks until the ice pressure eased. Making a few hundred meters a day, Litke reached the settlement August 28. On September 5, Litke turned back, taking all the ‘islanders’ to safety. This operation earned Litke the order of the Red Banner of Labour (January 20, 1930), as well as commemorative badges for the crew.”
http://www.sitnews.net/JuneAllen/AdaBlackjack/020204_heroine.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Arctic_Expedition_1913-1916
I have a problem keeping a consistent “identity” on the net. It used to be I was papertiger, but then they had an open registration day at Hot Air.
Someone had already taken “papertiger” as their nickname at that domain. No problem, I’ll just be French language “papiertigre” at Hot Air. It’s not as if they care about my consistency.
Somehow, not from my doing, this name change has migrated to WUWT. Although I am a big fan WUWT is chock full of my brand of bs (done better and more frequent than I am able) , so I figure why futz with the name when I don’t need to comment here that much, it might disrupt the other place?
Now we are talking about three identities, the two flavors of “tiger” and my real name, Jimmy D Mayeau.
No skulduggery or intention. It’s just the way things shook out.
Note that she says:
“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 has the cart WAAAYY before the horse. You don’t get to do “consistency” tests on H1 until you have first established the non-consistency of observations with H0. Until then, all Hx are moot.
Anyone who looks at a chart like this, and then claims that at times during the Holocene polar ice cover was not naturally less than curent ice cover has an agenda that has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with keeping the grant gravy train rolling.
I noted in my link upthread a newspaper clipping that reported the observations of an expedition by airborne dirigible, which covered a very large area including the North Pole, reporting expanses of open water throughout its travels. But of course, the alarmist narrative must be kept alive for pecuniary reasons, so a rescue operation in a limited region is described instead, as if that supports the wild-eyed notion that this is the first time the Arctic has lost sea ice.
For voluminous and well researched first hand observations of the ebb and flow of sea ice extent, see Tony Brown’s WUWT articles. The current Arctic ice decline is normal and cyclical. It has occurred repeatedly, and as we know, those who claim “this time it’s different” are invariably wrong.
Occam’s Razor warns against adding extraneous variables to any explanation unless they are essential to the explanation; the simplest explanation is almost always the correct explanation. Thus, there is no need to clutter up the simple explanation of natural regional climate cycles with the unnecessary, extraneous conjecture of a harmless and beneficial trace gas being added to the explanation. The primary purpose of that evidence-free claim is to keep the $Billions in annual grant money flowing, not the advancement of scientific truth — which as we’ve seen is in pretty short supply among the climate alarmist crowd.
Julienne= “it is not possible to separate out signal from noise in the observational sea ice record”
You should have just stopped there, I think we can all agree on that statement. The problem is that you seem to think that everything you wrote after that regarding models runs not only means something, but that it means MORE than the (self-admitted!) fact that your theory cannot be proven from observational data.
Julienne Stroeve said @ur momisugly March 6, 2012 at 5:21 pm
“There are many factors that explain past climate variability, first and foremost the Earth’s position relative to the sun. I don’t fully understand why you don’t grasp that observations are only one realization of our climate system and they contain trend and noise and thus you cannot separate out the trend from the noise in such a short observational record”
If there are many factors that explain past climate variability, why cannot they (be used to) model it well enough to get us to where we are today? But only if you have included all the significant factors and know the state of the climate well enough at some point in time.
What you refer to as “noise” are DATA. Noise is that component of the signal that is not related to the quantity being measured. i.e. an error in measuring a quantity. Noise will be part of the data; hopefully a very small component.
A “trend” is purely synthetic. It’s not real. It doesn’t tell you anything and has no predictive value in itself.
Two things in life are sure. If you are going to get it wrong…..Stay away from A.W. and his mods and NEVER chase S,M, on facts. What a great read!
Dear Anthony
Might it be helpful for contextualisation to try to get people generally to describe the ice anomaly in terms of percentage of total ice area, whether for a given Polar region or Globally?
Based on just eyeballing the NSIDC Arctic Extent graph, present Arctic Ice extent is about 15m Sq Km. The 30 year average for this time of the year is about 15.8m Sq Km. In other words present Arctic Ice extent is about 95% of long term average.
Saying that there is a diminution of coverage of 726,000 Sq Km, an area the size of Texas (shock, horror, groans of dismay), is the classic Warmist way of dramatising an essentially insignificant deviation from long term average coverage.
I assume, since it is based in Washington, that the “Climate Institute” is either government funded or funded by lobbyists deeply embedded in government or, from experience both.
Regretably I do not find it in the least surprising to find that supporters of big government ecofascism masquerading as members of the public turn out not only to be false fronts but government funded lying propaganmdists too.
It has repeatedly been demonstrated that the “environmentalists” cannot name a single “scientist” anywhere in the world who supports warming catastrophism who is not ultimately paid to say it by the state. Nor a single prominent activist.
I have recently been asking if there is a single online commenter or newspaper letter writer not si8milarly funded and so far have found none.
Has anyone looked at the Artic Institute staff pages and their photos and used them to search Google Images? Some interesting results but nothing conclusive as I haven’t got time to fully investigate.
http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/p/staff.html
Doesn’t come across like they are really staff at the institute. More like they are some random people’s identities that have been used to make the place look bigger than it really is.
Ahh yes . . The Arctic Institute.
Wonder how much padding it takes to cover the walls of a one bedroom Institute?
Never mind the suckpuppets. The secret Trenberth Ocean Heat Reserve has been conveying heat such that it melts ice in the Arctic and reforms the ice in the Antarctic. I don’t know what it means but it is almost certainly indicative of something very, very bad for the planet — and proves the models right without even being predicted!! That’s how significant it is.
And Arctic ice cover may be within one standard deviation of recent averages but it is still a significant drop. Of course surface temps are trending cool, barely within 1 standard deviation of the IPCC model mean but that is NOT a significant departure from the prediction. I get it!
And this just in! I just received this memo from an unnamed insider: