Guest Post by Jeff Condon
Tamino has his crowd all whipped up about sea ice. He has done two posts now declaring how stupid I, Anthony Watts, and by association, all of you, are. Sorry folks, it was a drive-by incident! For him, I’m not enough of a believer and for others, I’m too much. Is it is a good sign when you get it from all angles? Either way, he has made deliberately erroneous claims in an attempt to discredit this blog, and WUWT, which I suppose means we have struck a nerve.
The first thing I would like to clarify is my opinion on sea ice in general. Like many readers here, I have read a large number of papers on the topic, unlike most, I have also taken the time to download and plot satellite Sea Ice data, replicated the trends and examined sea ice on a regional basis. With help, I have identified evidence of minor trend inducing error and will soon be looking at how the online satellite data is knitted together during transitions. From all of these many hours of time, I’m completely unconvinced that man made global warming is causing very much of the observed sea ice decline. I’m also willing to be wrong but the literature appears to support that a substantial portion of the Northern hemisphere decline is caused by a weather pattern change in the Arctic.
This opinion is reasonably standard in the mainstream although it is often mixed with the claim that warming weakened the ice and allowed it to flow out of the polar region. The possibility that warming or weather are primary causes of the declining sea ice creates a need for disaggregation. Of course the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive so there is a lot of room for some combination of a variety of factors to be the cause. We also know that something the believers often conveniently forget is that not all warming is CO2 based.
So with all of that said, I don’t think that the effect man is having on the globe is detectable in the ice trend. Detectable being statistically differentiable. That is very different from whether a trend can be detected or whether a trend is caused by natural warming. In his recent two posts, Tamino (aka Dr. Grant Foster) mixes everything together in what has been a successful attempt to whip up his followers. Unlike the Air Vent and WUWT, his crowd is comprised primarily of non-technical readers who often jump at any statement they can find with literally zero understanding of why or what they are attacking.
So, if you have a region like the Arctic, where sea ice is often, but not always, multi-year and that ice is being affected by being either pushed out of the region and melting, simply warming and melting or some combination, and you want to understand the trend in ice levels for the globe caused by surface temperature warming, then disambiguation of the effects is necessary. Therefore measuring ice which melts completely and re-forms annually should provide a cleaner temperature signal than a region reacting to something else.
To that end I made the plot below from gigabytes of satellite data which identified 72 degrees North Latitude as the line where multi-year ice is nearly non-existent. Layman Lurker confirmed this latitude independently (and with less effort) before I finished. Now “nearly non-existent” is different from “completely non-existent” but not by much (see how that works!). Engineers and scientists often approximate things but some in Tamino’s crowd show their inexperience and called this as an error despite having no evidence.
So I then added up all of the single year sea ice south of 72 North latitude in the Northern and Southern hemisphere, plotted all of it including the pole-hole part left out, and referred to it as global single year ice. Unfortunately, the global ice didn’t have enough trend for Tamino (wasn’t quite 95% significant) and he completely wigged. (“Wigged”, is a psychiatric term used to describe the reaction of believers when they discover something is unhelpful to the “cause”. ) What he did to “fight back” was misrepresent the work and show a ridiculous annual refreeze plot in the North region implying that somehow that is equivalent. That was Grant Fosters trick on his readers, who were unwilling or unable to point out the deception. Several of them fell for it completely and their acerbic comments went uncorrected by Grant.
The north pole is a trapped region which freezes “nearly” completely every year. As multi-year ice vanishes, there is an increase in available open sea area and single year ice area naturally increases. Therefore if you want to isolate the effect of temperature on sea ice from weather effects on North polar ice, it is counterproductive to include anything from that region.
I have spent about an hour and a half now processing the data to see how well each region correlates to UAH NH temperatures. I took the entire NH temperature and correlated it to Northern hemisphere sea ice South of 72 degrees North latitude and sea ice North of 72 degrees. Of course, since we are using ICE, it is preferable to use only ice and temperatures from months where northern ice is present. I chose Jan – September from the video but it was pretty arbitrary. An estimate again! OMG.
Correlation of ice area to NH temperature:
South of 72 – 0.692
North of 72 – 0.593
So sea ice south of 72 correlated better to the NH temperature than that North of 72. It appears that the ice I’ve chosen is a better indicator of NH temp than ice north of that point. Of course it covers a lot more land mass than the other ice but it again confirms that the satellite sensors are measuring a real warming and the high correlation (for climate science) indicates that warming is having an impact on ice melt. It also confirms that the disaggregation of the data may not be worthless after all.
Lets see what Tamino’s crowd had to say about our collective stupidity-for daring to plot data:
“What Condon’s essay really illustrates is how fake skeptics fool themselves into thinking they have real evidence.”
“It’s my opinion that people like Jeff Condon are actually enemies of liberty.”
“It’s simple bootstrapping – it’s deliberate misinformation.”
“I cannot read much of Watts and other deniers – because too quickly I realize I am arguing with idiots. “
“Thanks very much for exposing this breathtaking piece of idiocy.”
“Every time I think I’ve finally become cynical enough to no longer be surprised by denier lies, something like this comes along and proves me wrong.”
“Watts’ comment was obvious. After all, he’s paid to say he’s not concerned. “
“This is typical of deniers. You start with the answer you want and then torture the data until you get enough evidence to believe it.”
“There is absolutely nothing justifiable from a scientific perspective in the ways Condon slices and dices the data”
“Cherry picking data to come to a conclusion the you already believed to be true, is the prime example of being a denier and not an honest skeptic.”
“Jeff Condon is anti-innovation, pure and simple.”
“Jeff is a moron.”
“Jeff got as close to the poles as he could without people noticing he was egregiously cheating.”
And that all is from the FIRST post. Tamino, who I believe realized his trick made him look bad, put up another post quickly attacking an older piece where I dared point out that sea ice level reached ‘average’.
oh my……
And around the believers went again.
Related articles
- How Fake Skeptics Fool Themselves (tamino.wordpress.com)
- Tamino Misses The Point And Attempts To Distract His Readers (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Sea Ice News Volume 3 #1 – The “Arctic Institute” pwns itself (wattsupwiththat.com)
- WUWT Sea Ice Page
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For the record, here’s what the sea ice looks like today – Anthony
This guy Tamino really seems to be quite similar to Gleick! Beware…
“if this renewal process was not happening on a regular basis between periods of relative stability -slow mode of circulation-, 50 y or even 100 y old multi year ice would be a common occurence. If it does not melt, it should be there. But that’s not the case.”
Spot on.
Arctic sea ice varies between periods of accumulation and loss.
This shows up in surface obs:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/modelEt/time_series/work/tmp.4_observLOTI_12_1880_2020_1951_1980-0/map.gif
The cold Arctic from 1880 through 1915.
The warm Arctic from 1915 through 1950.
The relatively cold Arctic from 1950 through 1995.
And the warm Arctic from 1995 through the present may well be the result of,
not the cause of sea ice variability.
Isn’t it obvious ? We`ve had a 0.6-0.8 degree warming over the decades, so this will have had a minor impact on sea ice ? What`s the big deal. That`s like saying “heat melts ice”. And that satement makes me a climate scientist !
Luke Warmer says:
March 5, 2012 at 12:50 pm
“There’s very little sunlight during the winter months, so the ice albedo effect will be minimal.”
There is a big albedo difference between sea ice and sea water.
_______________________________________________
Which is a good reason to care about SUMMER ice…
But during the dark arctic winter, why would ice extent and albedo matter?
I’m trying to find a reason to care.
the high correlation (for climate science) indicates that warming is having an impact on ice melt.
Correlation does not imply either causes the other. There may be a common 3rd cause such as clouds.
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~rmeast/ArcticClouds1web.pdf
I’m with Kev-in-UK – It’s never sensible to respond to idiots on the level they have descended to.
I am reminded of a rhyming jingle we were taught when we were infants, to help us cope with the nasty people we would inevitably meet who would say bad things about us and to us;
“Sticks and stones may break our bones
But words will never hurt us.”
“
it again confirms that the satellite sensors are measuring a real warming and the high correlation (for climate science) indicates that warming is having an impact on ice melt.
All that number crunching and processing and you come this conclusion? Wow. Real science.
REPLY: Thanks Günther for proving what I wrote over the weekend, with you, it’s all about the derision. – Anthony
Peter Miller says:
For the scientifically challenged, such as a typical CAGW believer, fresh water freezes at lower temperatures than more saline water.
Uh, no.
From the Arctic cloud cover study I linked to above.
Interannual variations of cloud amounts over the Arctic Ocean show significant correlations with surface air temperature, total sea ice extent, and the Arctic Oscillation. Low ice extent in September is generally preceded by a summer with decreased middle and precipitating clouds. Following a low-ice September there is enhanced low cloud cover in autumn. Total cloud
cover appears to be greater throughout the year during low-ice years. Multidecadal trends from surface observations over the Arctic Ocean show increasing cloud cover, which may promote ice loss by longwave radiative forcing. Trends are positive in all seasons, but are most significant
during spring and autumn, when cloud cover is positively correlated with surface air temperature. The coverage of summertime precipitating clouds has been decreasing over the Arctic Ocean, which may promote ice loss.
Strangely the study makes no mention of solar insolation.
It seems obvious to me.
Less clouds in summer > more solar insolation > more ice melt > more clouds in winter
> the literature appears to support that a substantial portion of the Northern hemisphere decline is caused by a weather pattern change in the Arctic… This opinion is reasonably standard in the mainstream
{{cn}}
Tamino has done the obvious – pointed out that sea ice shows a statistically significant decline. We all knew that anyway, so it isn’t ground breaking. He’s also pointed out that your arbitrary choice of 72 N is arbitrary – but we knew that too.
I know that Pamino is a character in Mozart’s The Magic Flute but I wanted to see if I could find where the alias or pen name “Tamino” came from so it was off to google. To my surprise, I found the following: http://tamino.tumblr.com/ Has someone been influenced by that famous soft porn author Rajendra Pachauri?
Erm, I know I are stupid, because I just keep asking questions and real scientists don’t ask questions (sarc), but if a new weather pattern establishes itself for long enough, isn’t that equivalent to a local change in climate?
Second figure title, second line: are = Area
John from CA says:
March 5, 2012 at 12:36 pm
“What difference does it make if the “warming” is below the threshold where sea ice forms? Instead of January to September, shouldn’t it be post-maximum (or the point where sea ice should begin melting) to minimum sea ice area to signal temperatures role?”
It made sense to me that since we are looking at regions without sea ice for part of the year, we shouldn’t correlate to temperatures in that time of the year.
William M. Connolley says:
March 5, 2012 at 2:27 pm
“He’s also pointed out that your arbitrary choice of 72 N is arbitrary – but we knew that too.”
I didn’t see it as arbitrary but rather was at the best point to do the analysis. If I went northward, multi-year ice begins to creep in and that will bias the result more positive as the multi-year ice vanishes.
Oddly enough, despite all the accusations to the contrary, I didn’t attempt to go too far North and tweak the trend.
Thanks Anthony, for carrying the post.
Jeff, stop talking sense, you’ll never get anywhere with that.
Peter Miller says:
March 5, 2012 at 12:48 pm
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I hope you made a typo in your comment. Fresh water has a higher freezing point (temp) than salt water in the example you made.
What are the Alarmists fear-mongering about now? What a waste of resources. Those Alarmists Scientists should be retrained as cancer researchers or something else that would be useful to humanity.
> If I went northward, multi-year ice begins to creep in and that will bias the result more positive as the multi-year ice vanishes.
I’m rather puzzled as to what theory you’re testing. You’re accepting as obvious (and indeed it clearly is) that there is a significant downward trend in the multi-year ice. This trend is, in your view, obviously anthropogenic so there is no point in looking at it? And so you look at “first-year ice”? – but you use a very odd, at not clearly good, definition of FYI. You could read the literature – you claim proudly to have done a lot of that – and you’d find lots of papers about identifying FYI. They use a far more sophisticated criterion that “S of 72 N”.
Take a look at, e.g. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/arctic_thinice.html (the second pic) which shows first, second and multi-year ice. You can immeadiately see that simple latitude is a very poor criterion.
You also repeatedly assert that the Antarctic doesn’t need masking for multi-year ice because it nearly all melts. That isn’t really true – see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sea-ice.area.nh.sh.png – and at the very least would need to be tested.
RealOldOne2 says:
“Also, since this Grant Foster publishes peer-reviewed papers, it makes me wonder what quality of science you could expect from someone who behaves that.”
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He published a paper recently that argued that if you adjusted out all the parts of the climate system that contributed to cooling, such that you were left only with the elements of the climate system that caused warming, this proved that warming occurred unabated.
I’ve seen similar “logic” posted up in blogs many times before and always used to laugh at how absurd the blogger’s argument was. You can’t just ignore the data that happens to refute the argument you’re making. The climate system is the climate system. But the wider issue is, what does that say about the quality of this particular branch of research?
@William Howard M. Connolley says:
You’re accepting as obvious (and indeed it clearly is) that there is a significant downward trend in the multi-year ice.
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You can see all things of apparently great significance if you shine a microscope on tea leaves. 😉
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NSIDC%20GlobalArcticAntarctic%20SeaIceArea.gif
Peter Miller says:
March 5, 2012 at 12:48 pm
“For the scientifically challenged, such as a typical CAGW believer, fresh water freezes at lower temperatures than more saline water.”
Says so much, really.
“For the scientifically challenged, such as a typical CAGW believer, fresh water freezes at lower temperatures than more saline water.”
I now know what a “climate scientist” feels like making stupid obvious mistakes – arrgh!
Obviously fresh water temperature freezes at higher temperatures than saline water.
72N (or let’s say 75N) is actually the most important latitude on the planet.
Why? Because this is where the snow and ice either melts in the Summer or it doesn’t. It will always melt out at 70N or 65N because the Sun is always strong enough in the Summer to melt out all the snow and ice. Even in the deepest downturns of the Milankovitch Cycles, the Summer Sun should always be strong enough at these latitudes to completely melt out the snow.
But in the deepest downturns of the Milankovitch Cycles, the Summer Sun is no longer strong enough to melt out all the ice and snow at 75N. The ice ages and the ice albedo feedback starts at 75N.
So it is not an accident that 72N shows up in Jeff’s analysis as an important latitude. This is where the ice ages start or the interglacials continue. The Earth’s axial tilt only needs to decline by another 0.75 degree or so to kick us into an Ice Age (good thing it is not forecast to).
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The recent uptick in Arctic sea ice is particularly unusual. Have we seen anything like it in the past 20 years? No. The Arctic Oscillation switched back to positive about 2 weeks ago (removing the unusual warming in the eastern Arctic) which is probably responsible for the strong uptick. Of course, it has been extremely cold in the northern Pacific and western Arctic all winter and this has resulted in well-above average sea ice conditions in the Bering Sea etc.
What if it goes above average in the next few weeks? The only “global warming canary in the coal mine” that we can actually point to, will no longer be dead like Franco but singing like a canary in a coal mine.
Correction: “Obviously fresh water freezes at higher temperatures than saline water.”
I really need to start taking my medication, so many typos.
All of this ice talk made my nipples hard. Something that wasn’t ever supposed to happen again after 1998.