Image Credit: Cryosphere Today – University of Illinois – Polar Research Group
By WUWT Regular Just The Facts
Per the graph above, Antarctic Sea Ice Extent has remained above the 1981 – 2010 “normal” range for much of the last three months and the current positive Antarctic Sea Ice Extent anomaly appears quite large for a planet supposedly on the verge of Dangerous Warming.
Furthermore, in 2013 we had the third most expansive Southern Sea Ice Area measured to date;
and Southern Sea Ice Area has remained above average for most of the last two years;
At the other pole Arctic Sea Ice Extent has remained within the 1981 – 2010 “normal” range for the entirety of 2013;
and Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area had it’s smallest decline since 2006;
thus Global Sea Ice Area has remained stubbornly average for the entirety of 2013:
According Michael Oppenheimer, Professor Geo-sciences and International Affairs at Princeton University and IPCC Contributor, the reason for The Pause/Hiatus in Earth’s atmospheric temperature, and apparently associated average Global Sea Ice is that;
“heat tends to hide in the oceans sometimes, but when heat hides in the ocean it later comes out and reappears in the atmosphere and then the warming resumes faster than before. We don’t know this for certain, we’ll find out over the next few years, but it is wrong to say that the IPCC didn’t look at it carefully, it certainly did.” PBS
Reassuring to know that IPCC has figured out Earth’s climate system for us, it’s all just like a big game of hide and go seek, clearly…
To see more information on Sea Ice please visit the WUWT Sea Ice Page and WUWT Northern Regional Sea Ice Page.
lsvalgaard says:
October 21, 2013 at 1:13 pm
IMO the null hypothesis requirement is satisfied by the observable fact of quasi-periodical fluctuations, justifying research into what might cause them, if anything. That the period isn’t precisely defined doesn’t bother me much, since it could be & probably is the result of superimposed periods of differing lengths. It could also be that the period itself alters periodically over longer time frames. While this could be an artifact of finer resolution closer to the present, the cycles, or periods, if you will, appear to be shortening.
Rahmstorf hypothesized about both solar & orbital forcings, & argued for only a two percent deviation from his period, while allowing that 20% was possible:
http://pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/rahmstorf_grl_2003.pdf
While this mechanism explains how these events are
triggered and how they evolve, it does not explain what the
cause of the underlying cycle might be. There is some
evidence that this cycle may also be present in the Holocene
but does not trigger DO events then [Bond et al., 1997],
possibly because the Atlantic ocean circulation is not close
to a threshold in a warm climate [Ganopolski and Rahmstorf,
2001]. The so-called ‘‘little ice age’’ of the 16th–18th
century may be the most recent cold phase of this cycle. The
origin of the ‘‘mystery 1,500 year cycle’’ is thus one of the
key issues in climatology that needs to be explained.
[5] Two types of explanations have been advanced: periodic
external forcings (e.g., variations in the luminosity of the
sun) or internal oscillations in the climate system (e.g. in the
ocean circulation [Broecker et al., 1990]). A key to distinguish
hypotheses is the regularity of the oscillation. For
several reasons oscillation modes within the climate system
(such as the Southern Oscillation and the North Atlantic
Oscillation) tend to be highly irregular. These reasons include
the complexity of the climate system, its large number of
degrees of freedom, and the unstable nature of the atmospheric
circulation causing ubiquitous stochastic variability. If
the 1,500-year cycle originated in the Earth system, we would
also expect the period to change as the background climate
moves between full glacial and interglacial conditions. In
contrast, orbital cycles are highly regular…
2. If the deviations are entirely caused by a random
variation in the underlying regular cycle or ‘‘clock’’, then
the best estimate for this ‘‘clock error’’ is less than 7% of the
period (or 99 years). With 95% confidence we can say that
the clock error is smaller than 12% of the period.
[25] 3. The most accurate of the various dating methods
applied to Greenland ice cores, at least in terms of random
errors, is layer-counting. Only layer-counted portions of the
ice cores show the regularity analysed here.
[26] Conclusion (2) is the most remarkable and far-reaching
one. It is rare that such a stringent quantitative measure
can be determined at such a high confidence level in
paleoclimatic data. Given the pessimistic assumptions that
were made to derive an upper limit estimate of the clock
error (in reality, both the core dating error and the triggering
error can be expected to significantly contribute to the total
deviations), it is likely that the clock error is in fact much
smaller still than the estimates given above. The five most
recent events, arguably the best-dated ones, have a standard
deviation of only 32 years (2%). While the earlier estimate
of ±20% [Schulz, 2002] is consistent with a solar cycle (the
11-year sunspot cycle varies in period by ±14%), a much
higher precision would point more to an orbital cycle. The
closest cycle known so far is a lunar cycle of 1,800 years
[De Rop, 1971], which cannot be reconciled with the 1,470-
year pacing found in the Greenland data. The origin of this
regular pacing thus remains a mystery.
milodonharlani says:
October 21, 2013 at 1:40 pm
justifying research into what might cause them, if anything.
sure, that is always a worthy thing to do, and people are doing it. But that is a far cry from postulating that the cycles are established knowledge as is often done in pseudo-explanations of climate variation. So, let me state again how I see it: there are climate variations on millennial time scales. They are not cyclic, and they are not understood, but could well be just chaotic, random fluctuations which as such doesn’t require further explanation.
lsvalgaard says:
October 21, 2013 at 1:49 pm
You’re right that “cycles” might imply more than is warranted by the evidence at this point. I’ll start using “events” for both D/O & Bond fluctuations, as I do for Heinrich Events.
milodonharlani says:
October 21, 2013 at 1:59 pm
You’re right that “cycles” might imply more than is warranted by the evidence at this point.
Meanwhile Rahmsdorf has come up with a new interpretation of ‘his’ 147–yr cycle:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16281042
“Many paleoclimate records from the North Atlantic region show a pattern of rapid climate oscillations, the so-called Dansgaard-Oeschger events, with a quasi-periodicity of approximately 1,470 years for the late glacial period. Various hypotheses have been suggested to explain these rapid temperature shifts, including internal oscillations in the climate system and external forcing, possibly from the Sun. But whereas pronounced solar cycles of approximately 87 and approximately 210 years are well known, a approximately 1,470-year solar cycle has not been detected. Here we show that an intermediate-complexity climate model with glacial climate conditions simulates rapid climate shifts similar to the Dansgaard-Oeschger events with a spacing of 1,470 years when forced by periodic freshwater input into the North Atlantic Ocean in cycles of approximately 87 and approximately 210 years. We attribute the robust 1,470-year response time to the superposition of the two shorter cycles, together with strongly nonlinear dynamics and the long characteristic timescale of the thermohaline circulation. For Holocene conditions, similar events do not occur. We conclude that the glacial 1,470-year climate cycles could have been triggered by solar forcing despite the absence of a 1,470-year solar cycle.”
So a result of the 87- and 210-yr cycles. Cyclomania dies hard.
Meanwhile Rahmsdorf has come up with a new interpretation of ‘his’ 1470–yr cycle
More cyclomania, but still no 1500-yr Bond-cycles:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23564975
lsvalgaard says:
October 21, 2013 at 2:13 pm
“Cyclomania” is just the scientific method in action, seeking explanations for observed phenomena, making hypotheses & testing them. Since the quasi-periodic Pleistocene-Holocene glacial-interglacial cycle indubitably exists & is well explained by orbital mechanics, at least in large part, then why not posit, try to discover & explain the existence of shorter & longer-term cycles?
lsvalgaard says:
October 21, 2013 at 2:18 pm
I like it. Thanks.
Maybe a 1500 +/- 300 year cycle didn’t exist in the Miocene, or at least not detectably. Oceanic circulation, continental arrangements & NH ice, among other possibly relevant parameters, were different then.
milodonharlani says:
October 21, 2013 at 2:25 pm
“Cyclomania” is just the scientific method in action, seeking explanations for observed phenomena, making hypotheses & testing them.
It is more than that. It is hanging on to cycles even when they are past their ‘sell-by date’ or seeing cycles where there are none, or explaining cycles that are there by combination of other cycles [that may be there], etc. It is like pornography: hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Of course, some people have a really low bar [for either] and are suitably enticed and addicted.
milodonharlani says:
October 21, 2013 at 2:30 pm
Maybe a 1500 +/- 300 year cycle didn’t exist in the Miocene, or at least not detectably.
Yeah, cycles exist except when they don’t.
lsvalgaard says:
October 21, 2013 at 2:32 pm
True, cycles do sometimes exist, as with Milankovitch, whose hypothesis took decades to be accepted as valid. Other proposed cycles may or may not exist. Time & the scientific method will tell.
2nd lowest melt season accompanied these high peaks in Antarctic
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3617729/
“An important fact is the absence of any 1500-year-cycle (Fig. 7). This is a strong proof, that this periodicity is no solar cycle as suggested by Bond et al. (2001) “
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Did he really just say that the IPCC looked at the heat that nobody can find and so we know it must be there?
We need to wait a few years to find the heat that the IPCC already found?
Why can’t they just admit that they can’t account for the expected heat because their premise was fatally flawed?
milodonharlani says:
October 21, 2013 at 2:42 pm
Time & the scientific method will tell.
Many people already assume the science is settled on that…seeing cycles where are are none.
The North Pole Ice is normal. The South Pole Ice is growing. The IPCC is melting and shrinking.
Thanks for pointing out these inconvenient facts, just the facts.
Look at the far southern ocean sea surface temperatures from today.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2013/anomnight.10.21.2013.gif
Clear enough.
Its next year’s Arctic minimum that will be really interesting. 2013 only could just be a fluctuation, but if 2014 is high too that would start to look like recovery.
Bill Illis
Whoa! It looks like the anomalously warm NH is coming off the boil also – some new cold patches. My guess is for a big La Nina drop early 2014.
The SH Sea Ice Area graph looks scarily flat from 1980 – 2013.
Reblogged this on CACA.
Intelligent Heat (IH)
with apologies to anyone who thinks there might be additional processes involved in evolution.
@lsvalgaard
@milodonharlani
the problem with you guys is that you keep looking at the wrong parameter.
Just stop looking at all those stupid datasets that only look at means/average temps.
Maxima is a good proxy for the amount of energy being let through the atmosphere.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
Anthony Watts says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/20/antarctic-sea-ice-didnt-get-the-memo-that-it-was-supposed-to-melt/#comment-1454642
Henry@Anthony
Hi Anthony, I know this is not my business, but that was a stupid remark. Not least because it might chase commenters away (by looking at their watches to see what time it is)
I always thought that WUWT is a table (like at a meeting in business) where everybody is allowed to state their opinion based on their own observations and/or those observations of the people/scientists that they believe in. Don’t get me wrong. I do not agree with anything Seth said.
But then it got me to thinking. Let us face it: you chased him away. Most likely he will never ever come back. (I did not see any more comments from him here)
What you did is: you returned his ad hominem attcak on justthefactswuwt with an ad hominem attack on him, his person. Essentially, your “justice” was: “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. This is why the Jews and the Arabs cannot make peace with one another. Their specific religions have this point of view (that you also seem to exercise) as their core value. They will always find something to hit back at each other.
This is why Jesus teaches: If someone slaps you on your face, show him you other cheek.
You could have just opened some more of your files and show him where he was wrong?
JMO
Henry,
I agree with Anthony. I resent it when someone uses the ‘Creationist’ label. That is as objectionable as labeling someone a denialist. It is an emotional, personal attack, and it is used because the mud slinger does not have better arguments.
If someone slaps me like that, I am not one to turn the other cheek. If he never comes back it would not concern me.