New paper finds temperatures were as much as 0.5c warmer in the Arctic during the MWP than today.
The Hockeyschtick reports: A paper published yesterday in Global and Planetary Change reconstructs temperatures in Northern Fennoscandia [within the Arctic circle] over the past 1,600 years and finds more non-hockey-sticks clearly demonstrating that the Arctic was warmer than the present during the Medieval Warm Period. The paper adds to over 1,000 peer-reviewed published non-hockey-sticks finding the Medieval Warm Period was global, as warm or warmer than the present, and that there is nothing unusual, unnatural, or unprecedented about the current warm period.
Furthermore, the authors find a natural 70-80 year oscillation of temperatures, similar to the 60-70 year oscillation of the natural Pacific Decadal Oscillation [PDO].
So much for “Arctic amplification.”
All four of these temperature reconstructions show the Medieval Warm Period ~1000 years ago was warmer than the present [year 2000].
Fig. 1. Different estimates of Northern Fennoscandian temperature anomalies between 400-2000 AD. Shown are the present conventional estimate (Ttorn, green) which is rather close to that in Grudd08, the present filtered estimate (Tlong, blue), smoothed temperatures of Esper12 (Tesp, red) and smoothed August SST reconstruction from the Norwegian Sea (black).
Fig. 3. August SST [sea surface temperature] reconstructions from the south of Iceland (above, blue) and the Norwegian Sea (below, blue) (modified from Miettinen et al., 2012). Red solid lines show smoothed values.
The new temperature reconstruction presented by this paper shows the Medieval Warm Period [~1000 years ago] in the Arctic was warmer than the present [year 2000] temperatures.
Fig. 4. The present estimate of the climatic temperature anomalies (red, Tclim = Tesp + Tsea + Tvolc), and Tesp from Fig. 1 (thick blue).
The paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818114000253?np=y
A 70-80 year peridiocity identified from tree ring temperatures AD 550 – 1980 in Northern Scandinavia
Juhani Rinne, Mikko Alestalo, Arto Miettinen
Highlights
• Volcanism and millennial variations
• Decadal (volcanic) variations
• Multidecadal (oceanic) variations
• Climate variations as seen in tree-ring temperatures
• Biases in the Torneträsk paleotemperatures
Abstract
The classical Maximum Density data of 65 Torneträsk trees from years 441-1980 AD are studied in millennial, centennial and volcanic scales. The millennial scale is analyzed applying a specific filtering method. In that scale, the climate is cool after 1200-1400 AD. This more or less steady period is suggested to be due to volcanic episodes, which reduced the northward heat transport in the North Atlantic. The century scale variation, on the other hand, is suggested to be due to [natural] internal oscillations in sea surface temperature (SST) and to be connected to variations in the Arctic sea ice. Specifically, these oscillations have caused an additional warming and cooling trend in Northern Fennoscandian temperatures before and after 1930’s, respectively.
Variations in the temperature estimates are explained by the results for different temporal scales. All of them show local impacts leading to differences when compared with hemispheric estimates. The long-term estimate of the temperature as derived from the present Torneträsk data is found to be biased. The source of that is unknown.
Source: The Hockeyshtick
SAMURAI says:
January 28, 2014 at 7:29 am
“Since there seems to be growing evidence the Sun could be entering another Grand Solar Minimum (GSM) from 2020…”
Yes, and we have still another GSM to go through starting in 2,200 before we get to the next 300 year warm period starting in 2,400. We need to stop freaking about routine climate change.
Gee, only 0.5C warmer? That is a record that will encourage desperate upward adjustments by a shell-shocked CAGW team. We can’t seem to get thermometers this accurate in the climate record. Also look at the swings in north of 80 temps (DMI) on the sea ice page. Anyway, there is abundant data in the form of history and other markers that the arctic has been warmer than today. How about driftwood and sandy beaches formed by wave action on the northernmost coast of Greenland that during our times is never free of ice.
http://www.bitsofscience.org/arctic-sea-ice-holocene-2614/
How is this “so much for arctic amplification”? It was warmer in the MWP and the arctic was warmer still.
1) Is tree ring proxy data in this region reliable?
2) To what level of precision is the proxy known? Where is the error band?
3) The average of the 4 plots make for a pretty broad swath.
There is really nothing new here. Back in the early 1990s Jonathan Overpeck did a study in the same general area over the same period and had the same result. I’ll google it up later. That result made him ponder that the medieval warm period did not need to be global, denouncing it’s existence in the AGU 1997 fall meeting (I seem to remember)..
70-80 years eh?
Cyclomaniacs united got there 4 years ago:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/the-moon-is-linked-to-long-term-atlantic-changes/
Think about what you would argue if the results gave you the opposite answer
1. treemometers are bogus
2. pal review
3. only 65 trees
4. it only goes to 1980, update the proxies
blah, blah blah.
Bottom line. we have some evidence it was warmer in certain regions during the MWP,
some evidence it wasn’t as warm. All in all the uncertainty is high across all types of uncertainty.
real bottom line: MWP says nothing about ow much warming we will see.
Here are some past tree lines.
And one man’s tree rings against another Mann’s.
That’s why I prefer past tree lines, some of which I mention above.
Here is another sign of the Medieval Warm Epoch in Alaska.
This find suggests it was a lot warmer in the Canadian high Arctic 400+ years ago:
“A biologist has discovered 400-year-old moss in Nunavut. The moss was buried under a glacier on Ellesmere Island where it survived under the ice.”
http://www.sci-news.com/biology/article01112-400-year-old-plants-moss.html
NevenA:
3. What has happened to temperatures in Northern Scandinavia after 1980? I believe it is said that global warming proceeds about 4 times as fast as globally at those latitudes. Can HockeySchtick or Anthony Watts please provide a graph?
As this presentation about European Arctic temperatures in the past 100 years (including Greenland and Sodankylä in Finnish Lapland) concluded:
Mann-Kendalls non-parametric test revealed that only a few series (from Iceland and northern Norway) show a statistically significant warming (5% level or better) from 1900 to 2002. Førland et al. (2002) actually concluded that none of the stations in Figure 1 showed a statistically significant warming from 1910-1999.
http://acsys.npolar.no/meetings/final/abstracts/posters/Session_1/poster_s1_009.pdf
You can check Sodankylä which has the longest continuous Lapland record (1908-2008) in Finland from NASA GISS:
GISS Surface Temperature Analysis
Station Data: Sodankyla (67.4 N,26.6 E
As you can see, temperatures today are slightly higher than 1930-1950. Maybe 0.3 C. The reason for big “jump” in global warming is that the coldest period in 100 years was between 1965-1985. You draw a trend line from 1965 to 2010 and it looks like temps went up by 2 degrees C.
Caleb says:
“For the final hundred years it makes no sense. Their economy likely involved some element we don’t know about, (and which they didn’t tell Europe about.) It’s a wonderful mystery still waiting to be solved.”
Viking economy was based for many years upon rape, pillage and looting. Monestaries were prime targets and anywhere there was a port, ocean or river or whatever, they showed up, took the gold and silver and left their genes behind. I have a short dark family tree with one great grandfather who was well over 6 feet tall with blond hair and light eyes and here and there in our family those traits pop up now and then. We have old photos (black and white of course) of him and his family, great-grandmother of Greek extraction, short and dark, great-grandfather tall and fair, small children as he was young in the picture so his hair was not grey or white but blond. Don’t know about the final 100 years as that of which I speak was the Vikings’ economy of 1000 or so years ago. Greenland was one of the few cases I know of where they stayed for very long. Maybe they just went back to their old practices.
NevenA: . What has happened to temperatures in Northern Scandinavia after 1980? I believe it is said that global warming proceeds about 4 times as fast as globally at those latitudes. Can HockeySchtick or Anthony Watts please provide a graph?
Just go to NASA GISS and put in station name or use this address:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/find_station.cgi?dt=1&ds=14&name=Sodankyla
Click Sodankyla and you’ll get the data. It is the same story in European Arctic in the past 100 years: very little warming. 2000-2010 is maybe 0.3 C warmer compared to 1930-1950 period.
But if you cherrypick and choose 1965 as your starting year, very impressive warming in order of 2 degrees C. 1965-1985 was the coldest period during the past 100 years in the European Arctic
Jimbo says:
“Ahhhh those were the days.
“H.H. Lamb – 1965
“The early medieval warm epoch and its sequel… I wonder whether there are any colonies established in the highest north latitude of Greenland today? Coming up next is our tree lines.”
Thanks for that. Yes, the MWP was global and warmer than today. Those facts were completely uncontested prior to the “carbon”/global warming scare.
==========================
Steven Mosher says:
“MWP says nothing about (h)ow much warming we will see.”
I beg to differ. The MWP occurred toward the tail end of the Holocene warming. Each peak was somewhat less warm than the previous peak. Therefore, it tells us that current and future warming cycles will probably be less warm.
For those who haven’t seen it, this animation puts the current *mild* and natural global warming cycle into perspective. There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented in today’s climate. Catastrophic AGW is nothing but a massive head-fake, and AGW itself — if it exists — is only a tiny, insignificant forcing that should be completely disregarded when discussing national and international policy.
@ur momisugly Steve Mosher,
The tree rings may or may not be telling us about the future climate, but taken as a whole, they show us that neither does the consensus view. And especially we should be able to agree that the models tell us about the same.
Different part of the world but is this relevant? http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674nunavut_still_keen_to_protect_axel_heibergs_ancient_fossil_forest/
Actually the tree stumps are mummified, not fossilized. They look & feel like real wood not stone.
dbstealey says:
January 28, 2014 at 7:44 am
“NevenA says:
“Northern Scandinavia gets extrapolated to ‘the Arctic’.”
Nothern Scandinavia is north of the Arctic circle:”
For a definition of the Arctic, please look at the reference page Northern Regional Sea Ice Page at this blogs´masthead. Btw. it´s the Polar circle.
The real bottom line — It was warmer in the past and the world didn’t come to an end. CO2 has also been higher in the past, BTW, and the world didn’t come to an end then, either. And just one more — the high CO2 periods and warm periods don’t always correspond.
But the past tells us nothing about the future. Only models can tell us that.
#heavy sarcasm
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/the-coming-and-going-of-glaciers-a-new-alpine-melt-theory-a-357366.html
Interesting that it coincided with the haydays of the Vikins(Warjagen).
Jim G says:
January 28, 2014 at 9:39 am
‘Viking economy was based for many years upon rape, pillage and looting. Monestaries were prime targets and anywhere there was a port, ocean or river or whatever, they showed up, took the gold and silver and left their genes behind…. Don’t know about the final 100 years as that of which I speak was the Vikings’ economy of 1000 or so years ago. Greenland was one of the few cases I know of where they stayed for very long. Maybe they just went back to their old practices.’
This is not remotely the case. Greenland settlement, like a lot of Scandinavian settlement all over Europe in this period, was fundamentally about getting and holding land, trading, farming, fishing and the exploitation of animal resources (furs, skins etc.), once the initial periods of conflict and raiding were over. These Vikings were ubiquitous traders and travellers all over Europe, modern western Russia, down to the Ukraine, the Byzantine empire and into Muslim lands, as well as fierce opponents to their more civilised neighbours if necessary. Some of them were liberty fans, moving to avoid the authoritarian rule of monarchs – as was the case in the initial settling of Iceland.
The history of the ‘Vikings’ is far more about these factors, especially in relation to Greenland where there were no obvious targets for rape, pillage and worthwhile looting, and certainly no handy rich monasteries to sack. It’s just too far away and a very risky trip to make, either way. Violent neighbour disputes and feuds occurred perhaps (they are certainly common enough in Icelandic history) but not what you describe here.
By the time the Greenlanders gave up they were all Christians anyway and presumably regarded the place as their home, however hard it was. Also, the climatic downturn didn’t just happen overnight and people will hang on if they can, adapting as they can to the changing conditions. It will have taken two or three generations for people to finally realise this wasn’t just a blip in the weather and that a decent life was no longer possible.
Steven Mosher says at January 28, 2014 at 8:39 am
Look at my post near the top (January 28, 2014 at 6:41 am).
I gave you 1 and 3.
Point 4 isn’t important with respect to the MWP; that predates the 1980s.
Why do you suspect point 2?
Bottom line, trees aren’t accurate thermometers?
This is astounding, authors of this study are from FMI, Finnish Meteorological Institute. This is like UK MetOffice would say, Oops, sorry about wiping MWP off the charts, here it is back, stronger than ever, even hotter than today. Mr Mann is going to have a bad hair day.
a Finnish Meteorological Institute, P.O. Box 503, FI – 00101 Helsinki, FINLAND
b Department of Geosciences and Geography, P.O. Box 64, FI – 00014 University of Helsinki FINLAND
Quote “Furthermore, the authors find a natural 70-80 year oscillation of temperatures, similar to the 60-70 year oscillation of the natural PDO”.
My funny thought: You have a 75 year cycle and a 65 yer cycle. How far are the peaks apart after 4 cycles?