Note: This is a follow up post to this one: Claim: Antartica record high sea ice partially an artifact of an algorithm I’d actually planned to write a rebuttal like this, but a wonky T-1 data line took all my time today, so the honor goes to Pat and Chip – Anthony
Molehill of Antarctic Ice Becomes a Mountain
By Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger
In science,…novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation. Initially, only the anticipated and usual are experienced even under circumstances where the anomaly is later to be observed. –Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)
One of global warming’s “novelties” is that satellite measurements show the extent of ice surrounding Antarctica is growing significantly, something not anticipated by our vaunted climate models.
Thomas Kuhn would predict “resistance”, and today we see yet another verification of how stubborn science can be in the face of results don’t comport with the reigning paradigm. The paradigm, in this case, is that our climate models are always right and any counterfactuals are because something is wrong with the data, rather than with the predictions.
“Resistance” means that peer-reviewers aren’t likely to find much wrong with papers that support the paradigm (and that they will find a lot wrong with ones that don’t). Further, the editors of scientific journals will behave the same, curiously avoiding obvious questions.
Perhaps as fine an example as there is of this process appeared June 21 in the journal The Cryosphere, which is published by the European Geosciences Union. It is a paper called “A spurious jump in the satellite record: has Antarctic sea ice expansion been overestimated?”, by Ian Eisenman (Scripps Institution) and two coauthors.
As shown in our figure, the increase in Antarctic ice extent has been quite impressive, especially since approximately 2000.
Antarctic ice extent from Cryosphere Today (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png)Not so fast. Eisenman et al. write that “much of the expansion [of Antarctic ice] may be a spurious artifact of an error in the processing of satellite observations” [emphasis added].
Wow, that would be really something, knocking down one of the glaring anomalies in global climate, and adding credence to the models. Eisenman et al. note
In recent years there has been substantial interest in the trend in Antarctic sea ice extent…primarly due to the observed asymmetry between increasing ice extent in the Antarctic and rapidly diminishing ice extent in the Arctic (e.g. Cavalieri et al., 1997) and the inability of current models to capture this (e.g. Eisenman et al, 2011).
No doubt working from the premise that the observed increase in Antarctic ice just can’t be right, Eisenman et al. would appear to have finally verified that hypothesis.
Until you look at the numbers.
Then you are left questioning the review process—at all levels—relating to this work.
The key finding is that there was a processing error in the data. Microwave sensors that are used to estimate ice extent (and also lower atmospheric temperature) wear out in the harsh environment of space, and new satellites are launched with fresh equipment. But each one doesn’t send data with the exact same statistical properties, so a succeeding sensor is “calibrated” by comparison with an existing one.
Eisenman et al. found that there was a change in the intercalibration between instruments in December, 1991 when the data were reprocessed in 2007. Apparently this wasn’t immediately obvious because there is so much “noise” in the data.
Indeed, Eisenman et al have located the needle in this haystack, showing the step-change between the two data sets:
Please take a look at the y-axis. You will see that the value of the “step” change is about 0.2 times 106 square kilometers, or 200,000 square kilometers.
Wow, that’s a lot! After all, Eisenman et al. tell us that this shift explains “much” of the increase in Antarctic sea ice.
Hopefully readers caught on before going this far. If the reason that the shift was undetected is because the data is so noisy, how important can it be? Now, have a look at the overall ice extent, shown in our first figure.
The y-axis is in millions of square kilometers. The change since the turn of the century is about 1.3 million square kilometers, a mountain of ice The step change is about 200,000, a molehill. That doesn’t sound like “much” to us.
But, hey, if you don’t look too close—and we are sure are greener friends (or the reviewers) won’t (or didn’t)—you might believe that everything is ok with the reigning, model-based paradigm. In fact there’s “much” that is wrong with it.
As Kuhn wrote, “Only the anticipated and usual are experienced even under circumstances where the anomaly is later to be observed.”
Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
So in my simple minded terms, this is saying that we thought that the sea ice anomaly was about equal to two times the the area of California plus Nebraska. But now we found that we were wrong about adding Nebraska.
Very visible ice jump there has been not in 2000 but 2007. During the great solar minimum.
http://oi57.tinypic.com/157okjm.jpg
Do these figures also are false?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
Maybe I am not getting the context of the Knappenberger context properly, but I would disagree, or not fully agree, at least.
A scientific explanation for anything is the best explanation for something at a given time in light of the then available evidence. – so things may change, but for what we take as granted at any point in time, there are usually good reasons. I had to think of the Neutrino controversy immediately when reading this, where for a while many people jumped the gun and already peddled, or at least liked the idea that neutrinos might be faster than light, after all. Now, these things were very well understood when the claim was made, so you would have been justified to book your money on the “novelty” being wrong – and so it was. There is no reason to be light on novelties, they will succeed, if there is meat to them.
I like this post – it has numbers in it. So you can see, and judge order of magnitude of any effect. The previous post “Claim: Antartica record high sea ice partially an artifact of an algorithm” – the press report – is noticeably dovoid of any numbers or indication of scale, apart from the graph, but has terms like “significant effect”. This hand waving non-specific reporting marks the press release as sensationalism and not science.
Jim Clarke says CAGW is built on myths:
Add in the fact that sealevel rise is around 1.6 mm / year according to a compilation of tide guage data, whereas with the GIA adjustment, the satellite number gets moved to 3.2 mm / year.
I like this quote from Steig’s review.
The classic tabloid press trick of stating something you know is false (or unproven) as a question.
“Will eating lettuce give you cancer?”
“Have aliens visited us already?”
“Can we persuade you to be interested in this idle speculation?”
If ever proof were needed that Steig is a pseudoscientist… voila.
Expect activists on “climate change” to say from here on that “the denier meme of increasing Antarctic sea ice has now been “debunked”. ” Sigh…….
We should abandon observations and just use models. Models are so much better and fit into our post modern science world. After all we have those great Nobel Laureates like Michael Mann and Kevin Trenberth to show us the way. What could possibly go wrong!
I think I detect a flaw somewhere.
After noticing that the authors stopped in 2005, why do I feel that phase 2 of this study is just around the corner, that is, explaining away the remaining discrepancy? After all, they state that the 2007 and 2013 IPCC reports can’t both be correct, but the data shows that there was a distinct rise between these two reports. Am I missing something?
JK says:
July 22, 2014 at 8:50 pm
It’s crap and you know it. What purpose does this paper serve other than to open the door to another bunch of tax payer’s hard earned money. What does this contribute in return on investment for the taxpayer? It’s a piece of egregious spinning.
But glad to see to are leaving and taking your models with you.
à dieu JK.
This is a nice post, and nice to see the numbers all here too. I just skimmed the paper. It sounds like they’re talking about the 1979-2005 trend, not the change since 2000. When I fit the first plot in this post visually with a ruler during 1979-2005, I get a trend that’s not that steep. Maybe a few tenths of a tick during 25 years, say maybe 0.3, hard to do by eye. The step change in the second plot is 0.2 over the same time period. So it seems like it actually would have a pretty noticeable influence on the 1979-2005 trend, although not on the 2000-2013 trend. Am I missing something here?
It is true that 0.2 in 1.3 does not constitute “much of”.
Neither do they identify the problem, They present no evidence that it is the current value which is wrong. It is just an attempt to _suggest_ that the inconvenient Antarctic data is not reliable.
One would hope that the newer version of the algo is an improvement ( though I suppose that may be unwarrented in climate science ).
This raise the obvious question of whether a similar error is visible in Arctic data since that uses the same satellites and same algo. Curously they do not report on that. But of course they do not want to suggest Arctic sea ice data is unreliable since that has been a poster of AGW.
They are simply trying to “dis” the Antarctic data because it is inconventient. Unfortunately this makes the Arctic data equally unreliable but they avoid mentioning that.
The other obvious omission is “prevelent” argument. Bootstrap is “prevelent” but the other main algo is “NASTEAM”. They are clearly aware of the alternatives since they note BOOTSTRAP as “prevelent”.
The most obvious cross check would be to see what the NASA algo produced.
. Both of these steps are so obvious, especially in the face of the totally inconclusive result they are publishing, that it amounts to scientific malfasance.
Whilst some Warmists are frantically coming up with reasons why the increasing sea ice extent is happening; melting ice sheet/fresh water run off etc etc…other Warmists are saying ‘it isn’t happening’…..
Boys….we’ve got them on the run!
“By July 15, ice extent had fallen to within 440,000 square kilometers (170,000 square miles) of that seen in 2012 (the modern satellite-era record minimum) on the same date, and was 1.54 million square kilometers (595,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average. However, ice concentration remains high within the central Arctic Ocean, particularly compared to 2012.”
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Since the Antarctic Ice Extent Anomaly hit it’s 35-yr record earlier this month, I’ve noticed many days of where the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) satellite images were really funky.
One day there was a HUGE grey triangular pattern in the North-East quadrant of the NSIDC “Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent with Anomaly” photo (which I interpreted as missing satellite data) but what struck me as strange was that this missing satellite data (which was probably about 500,000 KM^2) seemed to have been subtracted from the NSIDC’s Antarctic Sea Ice Extent Anomaly graph…
Then one day, all the Antarctic Sea Ice disappeared with only the orange Ice Extent mean line showing. Later, the sea ice extent reappeared, but it seemed to have shrunk…
Did anyone else notice this?
Now we get this paper saying that the Antarctic Ice Extent may (or may not) have faulty calibration issues….
CAGW grant grubbers love to adjust the data when it doesn’t fit their hypothesis… We saw this with the “new and improved” HADCRUT4 data and with all the shenanigans NOAA continues to pull with US land temp data (past temps lowered/recent temps increased).
Why is it “flawed” climate data is always “fixed” in a way that supports the CAGW hypothesis? Just given the law of averages, it would seem that at least occasionally, erroneous data would be unfavorable to The Cause… but, alas…
As with much, it wouldn’t mount to a hill of beans, as some of you in the Colonies might say! With our scientifically knowledgeable half-witted (polite) PDRofEU Climate Change Commissar, Ms Connie Heddegard, saying stuff like…..”even if Anthropogenic Climate Change Theory turns out to be wrong, isn’t it better that we use less of everything?”. The writing is on the wall for us, it demonstrates to me at least that it is a scam, a means to an end, an expediency, to justify oppression of the populous & suppression of truth……..something like to accuse Vladimir Putin of peddling from time to time, making them rank hypocrites, imho!
First, i do not consider a discrepancy of 0.2 in 1.3 to be insignificant, or constitute ‘not much off’. Many here would argue that the failure to account properly for UHI leads to a 0.1 to 0.2 degC biasis in the ‘homogonied’ observed temperature anomaly rise of about 0.9degC. There is not an order of magnitude difference between these two .
Second, I consider that the post by JK was fair comment, and was a useful input. On the whole (apart from the point that M Courtney says: at July 23, 2014 at 12:31 am), the reviewers did not do a terrible job.
Third, the issue with the publication of the paper is what Pat Michaels says: at July 22, 2014 at 10:28 pm, but that is something rather different to the position that he took at the outset of the article, namely “Then you are left questioning the review process—at all levels—relating to this work.” So there is at least some merit in the comment made by JK.
Fourth, if there is problem with the data, as long as the original data is kept and available for all, I do not see that it is wrong to ‘correct’ identified ‘errors’ in the data provided that the full reasons for the correction are properly set out ,so that other may check and verify the legitimacy and the correctness of the correction and comment upon its implications.
Fifth, it does appear that the authors of the paper may well have identified a potential error, how that pans out is a different matter, as davidmhoffer says: at July 22, 2014 at 9:51 pm is alluding to.
Sixth, the main problem here is the somewhat misleading title and abstract (for which blame lies on the authors and editor) and the superficial way that the paper has been report in MSM, it being known, by those writing the paper, that it would get the superficial gloss that it has received in the press and thereby a short term PR success achieved.
Seventh, it still remains the case that Antarctic ice is expanding, and this does not fit easily with the AGW (let alone the cAGW) meme. Should, over the coming years, there be an expansion in Arctic ice then AGW will be ‘treading on thin ice’ indeed!
The jet stream to the south dates back to the Tropic.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/250hPa/equirectangular=-122.55,0.00,184
To me the estimated 200k is high. Eyeballing the chart I see 150k max.
It so happens that the jump in the data coincides with a pronounced period of cold, or shall I say it in a way that indicates a continuum – cooling – that continued for more than a year. It was, very unusually, a period of drought in the middle on the Southern African 19 year drought/rain cycle. It should have been very wet at the time this “step change” was wrought.
The implication is that there is nothing wrong with the data, the instruments are calibrated correctly, there was a rise of a miserable 150,000 sq km in sea ice cover in a single summer and it persisted throughout the warming to 1997. Thereafter the extent continued to increase with an acceleration starting at the solar minimum in 2005.
The data is not ‘noisy’ it is ‘data’. The fact that the area of sea ice fluctuates from year to year does not make the data ‘noisy’. I am not convinced they have extracted a ‘signal’ from the ‘noise’. Even if the cause of that bump up is a calibration issue that went uncorrected (but who says the new reading is wrong and the old one right), it is 150,000 in 15,000,000 or 1% of value. That’s definitely in ant fokker territory, which is to say, insignificant.
The general claim is as spurious as the step change: if the popular notion that Antarctic sea ice is expanding is incorrect, show us the data, after correction, to 2013.
Alarmist use all the data that supports their conclusion. And adjust the rest.
I just looked at the red and blue chart again. The Antarctic sea ice area expanded from 1987 to 1997 during which time the global temperature rose. There is no step change at all.
It is presently expanding at a faster rate than before. That is what the data shows. The rest is noise.
Bad eye-sight??
“Please take a look at the y-axis. You will see that the value of the “step” change is about 0.2 times 106 square kilometers, or 200,000 square kilometers.”
It appears to be less than half of that.
Also, a very well-known natural step change happened around then.
Greg Goodman points out some steps around then:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=902
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=955
Was there a change in what the satellite could see (caused by something else)?
Was there a natural step?
Whatever it was, it was less than 0.1.
It looks like 0.075.
(0.2 suggests bad eye-sight — or lack of carefulness.)
These Scientists should just launch a new satellite every year. That way they can explain away the ever increasing ice on the new satellite.
richard verney says;
“First, i do not consider a discrepancy of 0.2 in 1.3 to be insignificant, or constitute ‘not much off’.”
Something nobody seems to have considered yet: Ice area is measured against the average for 1979-2008 (30 years). Weare now told that the figures for 1992-2008, 17 of those 30 years is 200 000 km2 too high. This means that the average is also 17/30 x 200 000 = 110 000 km2 too high. So actually the net discrepancy is only 0.09 out of 1.3, or about 7%.
Perhaps not insignificant, but not much off either.