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?
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Smokey and others who have questions about signal/noise in climate attribution studies, there are two papers by Santer et al. https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2008/NR-08-10-05-article.pdf and http://muenchow.cms.udel.edu/classes/MAST811/Santer2011.pdf provide an in depth discussion about the issue in regards to the satellite temperature record.
Sorry Smokey, I don’t know how to put in hotlinks here, which is why I give you references instead. A quick google search on the papers I mentioned earlier will allow you to find them easily. And I have read your null-hypothesis arguments in the past.
Julienne,
If you don’t know how to hotlink, then you’ve done it by accident. Just copy & paste the URL address into the comment box with a space before and after. That’s quite basic. I’m surprised an academic wouldn’t know how to do it. But then there’s Phil Jones and Excel…
Now that you’ve read the explanation of how the null hypothesis works, I trust that you understand how central it is to the AGW debate. If you’re still unsure, read the links and comments I provided above. It will take a couple of hours of your time, but without a good understanding you will go on believing in the “carbon”-caused runaway global warming nonsense.
The fact is that there is no discernible difference between the rising global temperature trend line of pre-industrial CO2 levels since the LIA, and post-industrial CO2 levels. Do you understand? There is no difference in the trend. That’s where the null hypothesis comes in: if there is no measurable difference in the rising temperature trend line, then CO2=CAGW is an evidence-free conjecture. What is being proclaimed as “AGW” is simply the planet’s steady emergence from the LIA — one of the coldest episodes of the Holocene. Rising CO2 has caused no accelerated warming — another widely-cited prediction that has been shown to be wrong.
Next, regarding the “signal to noise’ tap dancing in your linked papers by Santer, those model-based conjectures are just Santer’s backing and filling, because they have been decisively falsified by McKitrick et al.’s 2010 paper here:
http://climateresearchnews.com/2010/08/new-paper-by-mckitrick-et-al-on-tropical-troposphere-trends
Note that verifiable empirical data was used by McKitrick, whereas computer models runs were used by Santer et al. Observational data shows conclusively that the widely predicted “fingerprint of global warming”, the tropospheric hotspot, is missing.
When such major predictions are proven wrong by real world, testable data, honest scientists must question their AGW premise. Why is that not happening within the alarmist subset of climate activist scientists?
Interesting how the article does not mention this article from National Geographic:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/08/100816-global-warming-antarctica-sea-ice-paradox-science-environment/
Smokey, I know how to copy and paste a URL, you don’t need to be insulting as it really does you no good in an exchange of ideas. What I don’t know how to do, is to add a link to a word as you do in your postings via comment posting, and it’s not something I’m going to spend time figuring out. Note that your link on McKitrick’s paper directly points to a figure that shows models versus observations, so you are incorrect that McKitrick’s paper deals with observations and that Santer’s doesn’t. They are both comparing modeled trends to the observed trends. Further note that Santer et al. 2008 showed how Douglass needed to account for autocorrelation in computing the error of the trend as well as the test statistic used to decide whether or not the model trends were statistically different from the observations. McKitrick’s paper argues that using a more up-to-date time-series than used in the Santer et al. (2008) paper shows the models to have different temperature trends than the observations. Yet Santer’s 2011 paper does use data through 2010. I get the feeling you have not read any of Santer’s papers, nor the McKitrick paper. Here’s McKitrick’s paper so that you can read it: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asl.290/pdf
Julienne,
Apologies, I read your post as saying you didn’t know how to hotlink a source, as you can see from my opening sentences.
My point — which I thought everyone would understand — is that the models are wrong. They can’t predict their way out of a wet paper bag. Any claim that a particular model is accurate is based on the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy: shoot a hole in a barn door, paint a bulleye around it, and claim perfect accuracy. But no model is accurate for any extended time period.
McKitrick shows the models were off by as much as 400%. That is a major fail. There is no tropospheric hotspot as was widely predicted.
The fact that the warming trend line since the LIA remains unchanged [there is no accelerated warming as was universally predicted by the alarmist crowd, as shown by the green trend line] is solid evidence that CO2 does not have the predicted effect. The long term trend line since the LIA is unchanged, and remains within specific parameters. If Co2 had the claimed effect on temperature, we would certainly see it reflected in the [natural] warming trend from the LIA. But it is not there.
So again I ask:
When such major predictions are proven wrong by real world, testable data, honest scientists must question their AGW premise. Why is that not happening within the alarmist subset of activist climate scientists?
Heh.
http://dailybayonet.com/2012/03/global-warming-hoax-weekly-round-up-mar-8th-2012/
Apparently Malte Humpert has launched a DCMA complaint (for using his photo from his Arctic Institute staff page, clearly fair use) against The Daily Bayonet while at the same time changing the URL’s to break links in any stories referencing him.
For example:
The URL from when this started…
http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/p/staff.html
Gone, new page:
http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/p/staff_10.html
And his statement/apology originally at this link:
http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/2012/03/message-from-founder-of-arctic.html
dead now, replaced with:
http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/2012/03/message-from-founder-of-arctic_05.html
Looks like he’s doing everything possible to prevent people from seeing him,
or something.
I smell the Streisand effect coming. Malte, you are making yourself into a news item, just fess up and admit you sock-puppeted here and you are running the Arctic Institute out of your apartment. The more you keep trying to obfuscate, the more people will see you as a shyster.
Anthony, as usual, a totally hilarious accounting. Thanks, that’s definitely my morning laugh …
w.
Julienne Stroeve says:
March 6, 2012 at 5:21 pm
First, thanks for your comments, which have been edifying. In this case, however, I must disagree.
Studies have indeed shown than CO2 absorbs thermal infrared radiation.
However, the whole dispute is about whether that absorption in turn “causes warming”, or whether it is immediately offset by one of the many thermostatic mechanisms operating in the climate system.
What “studies” are you claiming to have shown that the absorption “causes warming” of the global surface?
You should know that on this website the bare-faced claim that “studies have shown”, without a link to said studies, just increases our skepticism, and rightly so.
w.
REP says:
March 5, 2012 at 9:28 pm
“The moderation staff…..unearthed quite a bit of material that Anthony has discreetly not made public.”
If I was the Miscreant in question, I might have reason to fear that the “Material” Anthony is treating with “discretion” is related to Tax Law, and Tax Exempt / Non-profit er, ‘protocols’. Or I might not. I would not want to be vulnerable along those lines.
Smokey says:
March 7, 2012 at 4:52 pm
“When such major predictions are proven wrong by real world, testable data, honest scientists must question their AGW premise. Why is that not happening within the alarmist subset of climate activist scientists?”
Why is that not happening? “The Sow must go on”! (Cue the Music, Sing it Ethel(?)!) “There’s No business like Show Business, like no business I know , Everything about it is appealing,
Everything the traffic will allow . . . . .”
Lotsa Suckers needing to be “Taken care of”
A definite candidate for the most Felicitous Typo Evah!!
LOL