UPDATED – see below
From your “Day after Tomorrow” department (where a slowing Gulf Stream turned NYC into an icebox) comes this claim from the bowels of Mannian Science. Unfortunately, it looks to be of the caliber of Mann’s Hockey Schtick science.
As WUWT reported on a peer reviewed paper last year, H. Thomas Rossby says: URI oceanographer refutes claims that climate change is slowing pace of Gulf Stream saying in a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters:
“The ADCP measures currents at very high accuracy, and so through the repeat measurements we take year after year, we have a very powerful tool by which to monitor the strength of the current,” said Rossby. “There are variations of the current over time that are natural — and yes, we need to understand these better — but we find absolutely no evidence that suggests that the Gulf Stream is slowing down.”
Of course, Rahmstorf and Mann don’t list Rossby’s study in their references, nor seem to use the “highly accurate” ADCP data. Instead they use a model along with [proxies, reconstructions, and] the highly interpolated GISS data to come to the conclusions they want. So, it isn’t surprising they are chasing phantoms in their study. They claim (in Figure 1 from their paper) that this cold spot south of Greenland is caused by meltwater from Greenland and it is evidence of a slowed circulation:
I find it interesting that they note “…that the second cooling patch in central Africa is in a region of poor data coverage and may be an artefact of data inhomogeneities.” Yet somehow that cooling patch south of Greenland is free of such problems in the same GISS dataset. Go figure.
And then there’s this other problem; Greenland’s ice mass seems to be on the increase so far this year and above the 1990-2011 mean:
Source: http://www.dmi.dk/uploads/tx_dmidatastore/webservice/b/m/s/d/e/accumulatedsmb.png
Accessed from http://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
Maybe this is the new Mannian science, wherein global warming causes cooling, and melting causes more ice accumulation. (h/t to Tom McClellan)
Of course, given that Stephan Rahmstorf thinks the “Day After Tomorrow” was just peachy, one wonders if this study isn’t just a embellishment of his movie review:
(Via Wikipedia) However, Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, expert for thermohaline ocean circulation and its effects on climate, was impressed how the script writer Jeffrey Nachmanoff was well informed about the science and politics of global climate change after the talk with him at the preview of the film in Berlin. He stated: “Clearly this is a disaster movie and not a scientific documentary, the film makers have taken a lot of artistic license. But the film presents an opportunity to explain that some of the basic background is right: humans are indeed increasingly changing the climate and this is quite a dangerous experiment, including some risk of abrupt and unforeseen changes. After all – our knowledge of the climate system is still rather limited, and we will probably see some surprises as our experiment with the atmosphere unfolds. Luckily it is extremely unlikely that we will see major ocean circulation changes in the next couple of decades (I’d be just as surprised as Jack Hall if they did occur); at least most scientists think this will only become a more serious risk towards the end of the century. And the consequences would certainly not be as dramatic as the ‘super-storm’ depicted in the movie. Nevertheless, a major change in ocean circulation is a risk with serious and partly unpredictable consequences, which we should avoid. And even without events like ocean circulation changes, climate change is serious enough to demand decisive action. I think it would be a mistake and not do the film justice if scientists simply dismiss it as nonsense. For what it is, a blockbuster movie that has to earn back 120 M$ production cost, it is probably as good as you can get. For this type of movie for a very broad audience it is actually quite subversive and manages to slip in many thought-provoking things. I’m sure people will not confuse the film with reality, they are not stupid – they will know it is a work of fiction. But I hope that it will stir their interest for the subject, and that they might take more notice when real climate change and climate policy will be discussed in future.” Source: http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/tdat_review.html
But…
In 2008, Yahoo! Movies listed The Day After Tomorrow as one of Top 10 Scientifically Inaccurate Movies. The film was criticized for depicting several different meteorological phenomena occurring over the course of hours, instead of the possible time frame of several decades or centuries.
UPDATE: I’ve added figures 5 and 6 from the Mann and Rahmstorf paper below.
When actual Gulf Stream measurement data (the ADCP data cited by Rossby 2014) is available, why would Mann and Rahmstorf use proxies? And why try to say that temperature is the indicator, when you have actual speed data? The obtuseness boggles the mind.
Further, note Figure 6, they claim that discharge exceeds gain, which looks like Mann’s proverbial “hockey stick” and this is based on Box and Colgan (2010) data, which is their citation #33. They claim data all the way back to 1850, which is quite some feat since as far as I know, no actual whole Greenland ice data was measured until the International Geophysical year of 1958, such as:
Bauer, A., Baussart, M., Carbonnell, M., Kasser, P., Perroud, P. and Renaud, A. 1968. Missions aériennes de reconnaissance au Groenland 1957-1958. Observations aériennes et terrestres, exploitation des photographies aeriennes, determination des vitesses des glaciers vělant dans Disko Bugt et Umanak Fjord. Meddelser om Grønland 173(3), 116 pp.
And further, previous papers from Jason Box only start with data at 1958:
It turns out Box and Colgan (2010) is a reconstruction, not actual measurement data.
However, even more puzzling, when you look at the Box and Colgan (2010) Figure 5 from their paper (free PDF here) the mass balance loss and accumulation shows no such “hockey stick” shape.
One wonders if Mann didn’t apply his “special Mannomatic math“, as he did to his “hockey stick” to the Box and Colgan (2010) reconstructed data to get the large divergence between accumulation and loss we see in Mann and Rahmstorf’s Figure 6.
More importantly though, the Box and Colgan (2010) data isn’t actual measurement data, it is a reconstruction based on some data, and some guesses:
According to our reconstruction, TMB has been positive for 39% of the 1840–2010 period (see mass balance surplus areas in Fig. 5). The positive decade-scale mass balance phases correspond with periods of low melting and runoff. For example, from 1970 to 1985 a positive mass balance phase corresponds to a period of enhanced sulfate cooling (Wild et al. 2009) pronounced along west Greenland (Rozanov et al. 2002; Box et al. 2009). Mass budget surpluses can also be produced by high accumulation years, even occasionally despite relatively high runoff (e.g., 1996).The reconstructed TMB values are compared 1) with those from the surface mass balance in Part II minus the Rignot et al. (2008, 2011)LM for 20 samples spanning 1958–2009 and 2) with the independent GRACE data spanning 2003–10 after Wahr et al. (2006) (Fig. 6). We find RMS errors of 31Gtyr for dataset 1 and 69Gtyr in comparison with dataset 2 (Table 1).
So, clearly, there’s no actual data prior to 1958. The Mann and Rahmstorf paper misleads the reader by not making this clear.
Duke University physicist Robert G. Brown, in comments noted:
Seriously — they found “good evidence” that such a slowing is occurring, only the actual evidence, consisting of the measured speed of the Gulf Stream itself, shows no such thing?
The cognitive dissonance involved is stupifying.
Indeed. Mann and Rahmstorf eschew reality for models and reconstruction. They live in an incestuous climate world of their own making.
Here’s the press release:
Atlantic Ocean overturning found to slow down already today
The gradual but accelerating melting of the Greenland ice-sheet, caused by man-made global warming, is a possible major contributor to the slowdown. Further weakening could impact marine ecosystems and sea level as well as weather systems in the US and Europe.
“It is conspicuous that one specific area in the North Atlantic has been cooling in the past hundred years while the rest of the world heats up,” says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, lead author of the study to be published in Nature Climate Change. Previous research had already indicated that a slowdown of the so-called Atlantic meridional overturning circulation might be to blame for this. “Now we have detected strong evidence that the global conveyor has indeed been weakening in the past hundred years, particularly since 1970,” says Rahmstorf.
Because long-term direct ocean current measurements are lacking, the scientists mainly used sea-surface and atmospheric temperature data to derive information about the ocean currents, exploiting the fact that ocean currents are the leading cause of temperature variations in the subpolar north Atlantic. From so-called proxy data – gathered from ice-cores, tree-rings, coral, and ocean and lake sediments – temperatures can be reconstructed for more than a millennium back in time. The recent changes found by the team are unprecedented since the year 900 AD, strongly suggesting they are caused by man-made global warming.
“The melting Greenland ice sheet is likely disturbing the circulation”
The Atlantic overturning is driven by differences in the density of the ocean water. From the south, the warm and hence lighter water flows northwards, where the cold and thus heavier water sinks to deeper ocean layers and flows southwards. “Now freshwater coming off the melting Greenland ice sheet is likely disturbing the circulation,” says Jason Box of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. The freshwater is diluting the ocean water. Less saline water is less dense and has therefore less tendency to sink into the deep. “So the human-caused mass loss of the Greenland ice sheet appears to be slowing down the Atlantic overturning – and this effect might increase if temperatures are allowed to rise further,” explains Box.
The observed cooling in the North Atlantic, just south of Greenland, is stronger than what most computer simulations of the climate have predicted so far. “Common climate models are underestimating the change we’re facing, either because the Atlantic overturning is too stable in the models or because they don’t properly account for Greenland ice sheet melt, or both,” says Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University in the US. “That is another example where observations suggest that climate model predictions are in some respects still overly conservative when it comes to the pace at which certain aspects of climate change are proceeding.”
No new ice-age – but major negative effects are possible
The cooling above the Northern Atlantic would only slightly reduce the continued warming of the continents. The scientists certainly do not expect a new ice age, thus the imagery of the ten-year-old Hollywood blockbuster ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ is far from reality. However, it is well established that a large, even gradual change in Atlantic ocean circulation could have major negative effects.
“If the slowdown of the Atlantic overturning continues, the impacts might be substantial,” says Rahmstorf. “Disturbing the circulation will likely have a negative effect on the ocean ecosystem, and thereby fisheries and the associated livelihoods of many people in coastal areas. A slowdown also adds to the regional sea-level rise affecting cities like New York and Boston. Finally, temperature changes in that region can also influence weather systems on both sides of the Atlantic, in North America as well as Europe.”
If the circulation weakens too much it can even break down completely – the Atlantic overturning has for long been considered a possible tipping element in the Earth System. This would mean a relatively rapid and hard-to-reverse change. The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates there to be an up to one-in-ten chance that this could happen as early as within this century. However, expert surveys indicate that many researchers assess the risk to be higher. The study now published by the international team of researchers around Rahmstorf provides information on which to base a new and better risk assessment.
###
Article: Rahmstorf, S., Box, J., Feulner, G., Mann, M., Robinson, A., Rutherford, S., Schaffernicht, E. (2015): Evidence for an exceptional 20th-Century slowdown in Atlantic Ocean overturning. Nature Climate Change (online) [DOI:10.1038/nclimate2554]
Weblink to the article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2554
Abstract
Possible changes in Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) provide a key source of uncertainty regarding future climate change. Maps of temperature trends over the twentieth century show a conspicuous region of cooling in the northern Atlantic. Here we present multiple lines of evidence suggesting that this cooling may be due to a reduction in the AMOC over the twentieth century and particularly after 1970. Since 1990 the AMOC seems to have partly recovered. This time evolution is consistently suggested by an AMOC index based on sea surface temperatures, by the hemispheric temperature difference, by coral-based proxies and by oceanic measurements. We discuss a possible contribution of the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet to the slowdown. Using a multi-proxy temperature reconstruction for the AMOC index suggests that the AMOC weakness after 1975 is an unprecedented event in the past millennium (p > 0.99). Further melting of Greenland in the coming decades could contribute to further weakening of the AMOC.
Further information:
NASA animation “The Great Ocean Conveyor Belt” (downloadable video that shows the current system that now is found to slow down in the North Atlantic):
Weblink to a study on possible impacts of a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-009-9561-y
Weblink to the expert assessment of an AMOC tipping: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/03/13/0809117106.abstract
When is Penn State University going to disown this unscientific propagandist? Or are they going to change their charter from an institution of higher learning to an institution of shoddy work and unsupported assertions?
Where is the internal peer review on the quality of his work and accuracy of his conclusions? Very sad.
You mean ‘Sandusky U.’
(It’s a verb now.)
FTOP
Excellent point. This peer review stuff might have worked in the middle ages when just a few guys in town could actually read tour stuff.
Now days the academic community has out grown this gentle “self management” approach, because, among other things (according to climate gate email), reviewers first allegiance is to “the team”, not the science.
From the above post I found the following quote from Stefan Rahmstorf discussing the movie, “The Hooey After Tomorrow” (oops, I meant day after tomorrow), really rather interesting.
‘For this type of movie for a very broad audience it is actually quite subversive and manages to slip in many thought-provoking things.’
It’s funny how people give themselves away, most of the time without even knowing it. Notice the use of the word ‘subversive.’ To insure I understood the meaning of the word I looked it up using our ever trusty Wikipedia. The definition is copied below:
‘Subversion refers to an attempt to transform the established social order… Subversion (Latin subvertere: overthrow) refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place, are contradicted or reversed. More specifically, subversion can be described as an attack on the public morale… Subversion is used as a tool to achieve political goals because it generally carries less risk, cost, and difficulty as opposed to open belligerency. Furthermore, it is a relatively cheap form of warfare that does not require large amounts of training. A subversive is something or someone carrying the potential for some degree of subversion.’
Yep, I’d say Rahmstorf has just given the whole CAGW game away with just one word.
Gulf stream “slowing” would result in a quick cool-down of NW Europe & increased sea-ice. When that happens, wake us up. Just more fear-mongering.
If the Gulf Stream was slower, would it not linger in the tropics longer, and thus be hotter as it moved northward and, being hotter and moving slower, would this not allow more time and greater thermal gradient to transfer this heat to the overlying air, and thus be a net wash?
Dr. Mann’s contribution to the paper seems to have been his proxy data and related statistical manipulations.
As usual, the accuracy of statistical techniques is presumed to increase the accuracy of his proxy analysis.
The mind boggles.
Opluso: I get the feeling that a certain Canadian statistician is going to have field day on this. I do hope so.
How does one scare the public without technically committing fraud?
Weasel words, that’s how.
“could impact marine ecosystems”
“could have major negative effects”
“could happen as early as within this century”
“could contribute to further weakening ”
“If the circulation weakens”
“If the slowdown of the Atlantic overturning continues”
“if temperatures are allowed to rise ”
“overturning circulation might be to blame”
“this effect might increase”
“impacts might be substantial”
“possible contribution of the melting”
“Possible changes in Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC)”
“possible tipping element in the Earth System”
“global warming, is a possible major contributor”
Faint / elusive evidence of existence of potential is not any evidence of existence of outcome.
Stop it Dan, my head is starting to hurt.
BUT one thing’s for sure, this AGW now “Climate Change” topic is going to be a huge factor in the coming elections both here in the USA, Canada (Nov. ’15), Brittain etc. The schreeching from the left is going to be louder than ever seeing that more and more people are seeing through it and it is also far down on the list of worries but the problem is that it makes for great Video on TV in Political ads and TV ( Storms , big waves , torn houses, breaking trees etc) compared to people dying from shit,y healthcare or the lack of jobs, falling down bridges and breaking up of road decks etc
Sadly we will see this type of hype increase everywhere and the attacks on viable candidates increase day by day!.
Come on, if they left out shoulda, woulda, and coulda…how would they be able to talk?
When Climate Liars can’t think up new sciency-sounding nonsense, they dig up old, long-debunked nonsense, shiny it up, put lipstick on it, and hope it will fly. Or at least crawl.
Actually they hope the media will have a field day, promoting it for a week, while ignoring the critics, and then their propaganda will be considered successful, and they will get more funding. (sadly it appears to work)
So if the Gulf stream is slowing down shouldn’t we be seeing more sea ice in the Barents Sea, not less?
From the abstract:
Raises the question, what proxies? (I’m not paying to find out), and, how is that the ‘AMOC weakness after 1975’ has only just reared its head? If it’s so ‘unprecedented…in the past millennium’?
Analyzing climate model data is right up there now with reading tea leaves.
Actually I’ve heard, anecdotal of course, that reading tea leaves produces far more reliable results.
From the Abstract:
“Using a multi-proxy temperature reconstruction for the AMOC index suggests that the AMOC weakness after 1975 is an unprecedented event in the past millennium”
Given that low AMOC events are inextricably linked to negative North Atlantic Oscillation episodes, and that increased GHG’s should increase positive NAO, they have shot themselves in the foot.
Looking at the Gulf Stream where is shoots through between Florida and Cuba, sediment studies have shown that the Gulf Stream speeds up with warming and slows down with cooling, based on water viscosity. The assumption that melt water from Greenland would stop the flow begs the question of where the freshwater goes. It would follow the typical clockwise flow and head toward Europe and then south. As this state would be with warming, the northward Gulf Stream waters would be evaporating and becoming denser faster and likely need to sink long before it runs into the fresh water melt.
I just sailed across the Gulf Stream twice. It was such a tremendous push I was shocked.
According to the data I saw, it was actually stronger than it normally is in February when I crossed between the north side of Cuba and Mexico. Literally, boat stopping strong!
I rarely comment in any article where either of these two jokers is mentioned because they are to Climate Alarmist Pseudocience what the Sky Dragon Slayers are to Climate Skeptic Pseudoscience. Indeed, I would pay good money to put Mann, Rahmstorf, Joe Olson, and maybe John O’Sullivan into an arena wearing lucha libre stretchy pants and broadcast the result on TV. Fully body slams, spinning kicks, neck-locks. Bill Nye can be the referee.
Seriously — they found “good evidence” that such a slowing is occurring, only the actual evidence, consisting of the measured speed of the Gulf Stream itself, shows no such thing?
The cognitive dissonance involved is stupifying. That’s why I rarely comment — it leaves me speechless (no easy task) and disgusted (pretty easy these days:-). And yes, Day After Tomorrow was easily one of the dumbest movies from a scientific point of view that I’ve ever watched a few minutes of before concluding that the plot, the science, the acting, the storyline, the writing, the premise, and the thrilling conclusion were not, actually, worth diverting my questing intelligence from the worthy activity of watching the grass grow or contemplating the pattern of veins and floaters visible when I close my eyes.
The sad thing is that the hypothesis is a reasonable one, and has been around for a long time. It is one of the mechanisms proposed to explain the Younger Dryas — the breaking of an ice dam and draining of Lake Aggasiz:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Agassiz
interrupted thermohaline circulation and raised the sea level by 1 to 3 meters (yes, meters) suddenly, caused a true global cooling event in years circa 8200 BCE (and possibly in a distinct event the Younger Dryas circa 13,000 BCE) and may have been the origin of the flood myth, as a three meter rise in ocean level over decades may have been what flooded the Black Sea through the Bosperus (although the evidence for this is very mixed — the Black Sea was itself a huge freshwater glacial melt lake at around that time with comparatively rapidly varying level anyway).
It is also “undeniably” true that in a chaotic climate, even small changes that have nothing to do with “global warming” can easily cause large natural shifts in things like the self-organization of circulation patterns and “rapidly” shift the climate.
This makes any and all claims non-falsifiable. Hell, it’s worse than that! They might even be true! Chaos theory contains the moral equivalent of the homeopathic hypothesis or “smart water” — small fluctuations are amplified into — anything you want to claim! Hey, it is all possible! No limits! I sneeze, and in ten years the ice age cometh…
rgb
Am I the only person who has NOT watched “The Day After Tomorrow” ? I regarded it’s viewing as a form of self abuse. Was I wrong? I feel the same whenever I read Mann’s writings… when and where it oozes out of its carbuncle here. GK
Don’t feel too self abused. Movie had stupid science but great special effects; enjoy those and forget the rest.
Consider the author of The Day After Tomorrow…..Art Bell. ‘Nuff said.
Yes, the special effects were good enough to use a shot of styrofoam breaking appart CGI’ed into a glacier calving in his “An Incontinent Ruse” (where the BS never stops) but was “stupid science”. Not quite science fiction. More like fantasy.
My wife managed to enjoy it as a story, despite my constantly shouting “Are you kidding me??!!” at the TV throughout.
Yes, and that is precisely why chaos theory is a waste of time. Time? Now we’re getting somewhere. One rail of science since Pythagoras is that truth is universal, necessary, certain and timeless. Time does not exist. A more recent rail: Geological change, evolution (on many levels), and probability. On this rail truth is specific, relative, conditional, and time is of the essence.
We zap between these rails seeking certain and timeless probability in the perhaps vain hope that time can somehow be cancelled in the equation.
Good Lord, I live in the Land of Homeopathy and All That Is Imbecilic. There are times when I feel like there is no escape. From Qigong, to essential oils, to herbs that can do more things than CO2, to accupuncture, to sound therapy, to karma cleansing, to chakras alignment, to naturopathy, to TCM, to wholistic everything, to aroma therapy, … that’s all there is. That’s all people talk about. That and showing Instagram photos of what they ate last.
This IS my world …
LOL one of my favorites been a bit since i watched so of course had to watch again
As often here, people “refute” without looking at the time scales. Rahmstorf’s paper says (abstract):
“Here we present multiple lines of evidence suggesting that this cooling may be due to a reduction in the AMOC over the twentieth century and particularly after 1970. Since 1990 the AMOC seems to have partly recovered.”
So the “refutation” has Rossby saying:
” two decades of directly measured velocity across the current show no evidence of a decrease”
And we are shown the last few years of Greenland ice melt.
There is no dissonance – and no refutation.
Two things:
1) The pause has been eating away at the psychological health of the diehard core (various reports of climate blues). They’re now worried about cooling and this is their crippled way to get ahead of the cooling curve. You get it! If things continue to cool, then Mike and Stephan have some skin in the game. More to come, and the pied piper effect will be infecting the rest of them. Watch for NCAR, NOAA, Potsdam, Max Planck Inst., Wegener Inst., UEA, and the next IPCC report. I’m 95% certain of this. Anthony, open a department for rationalization of the cooling and tick them off as they come. This is number 1.
2) The seriousness of this straw clutch insurance is that M has thrown the handle of his hockey stick under the bus (Steyn take note). He says this hasn’t happened since 900AD … wait for it… the last time Greenland was melting was during the Medieval Warming period!!! This is an Inuit hockey stick with a blade on both ends. Hey and guess what happened when the MWP ended.
As I said yesterday about Jerry Moonbeam Brown: The new hot-buttons of Climate Change will be “extreme cold”, because of the much bigger cold dollar damages to the economy that can be claimed from heavy snows and ice (e.g., in the North East US this winter).
That is catastrophic anthropogenic global yo yo. (When it is cooling it is CA, when it is warming it is CA,
I thought GISS was land stations. They use ERSST for ocean areas. Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST). They don’t use satellite data because it has been found to show lower temperatures. They say it on their site.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/marineocean-data/extended-reconstructed-sea-surface-temperature-ersst-v3b
Okay, this seals the deal that Mann is a serial science fraud with model malpractice as the main tool.
Anomalous snowfall in the Atlantic around Greenland has introduced more cold water into the ocean than any amount of melting can contribute.
I get it. Its going to be published next Wednesday.
Made me laugh!
Medieval Mann or Modern Mann, somewhere in between the program got stuck on stupid.
“Possible / could / may be due to / evidence suggesting / seems to / suggests that /could contribute / uncertainty / might be substantial / could have / observations suggest / is likely / might be to blame/ possible major contributor / this effect might / in some respects …”
Anyhow, apart from that, the science is settled (in some likely, possible respects).
These are words and phrases used in the hypothesis stage. I hope for their own sake that they are not peddling this as settled science. DR;TL
They don’t use satellite data because it has been found to show lower temperatures. They say it on their site.
+++++++
wow. they actually admit that the reason not to use satellites is because they show lower temps??? if so that is one of the most unscientific statements ever made. normally if different sources show different results, you want to incorporate this into your error and uncertainty calculations, not simply ignore one source in favor of the other. WOW!!
Particularly so since Greenland, with a km or so of ice on top of a km or so high plateau, experiences the directly and precisely measured (by satellite) mid-troposphere temperatures, not the corrupt land surface temperatures generated by NASA GISS or Hadley. They had a cow three years ago when Greenland actually experienced day or two where temperatures on the plateau went up TO freezing, which is indeed a rarity because it is damn cold up there.
What I had not realized is until seeing the data above is that Greenland has apparently increased is low-water mark icepack by 250 Gt in only three or four years, if the graph is to be believed. Arctic sea ice doesn’t affect SLR, but icepack accrual on top of an icebound plateau that never gets above freezing is a rather big deal! That almost perfectly balances the assertions of land ice loss in Antarctica, to within maybe 10 Gt/year. Antarctica’s “warming trend” of 0.05C/decade (which is “significant” according to the wikipedia article on this subject) is supposedly responsible for the ice loss there, even though most of the ice loss comes from a single peninsula and there is a strong possibility that the heat source responsible is geothermal and coming up under the ice, not down from above it, as (sorry) surface temperatures have basically not varied in most of the continent and remain colder than a digger of local water service access points derriere, more than cold enough that the only substantial loss mechanism is direct sublimation as it basically never melts at the surface and is very, very, very cold at the surface almost all of the year. As in Minnesota is downright balmy compared to Antarctica on its mile+ high interior plateau with its enormously thick layer of ice.
I sometimes think that people have completely forgotten how to do back of the envelope estimations, but if land ice is diminishing — and I mean the “if” as nobody ever shows error bars in climate science, they just make statements about numbers as if they are true and perfectly known and there is no question at all about the statistics or methodology used to get them — at only 10 Gt/year, it is going to take a long, long time for any significant SLR to occur due to land ice melt. The Arctic could become “ice free” and not affect SLR at all, but as long as the Greenland ice pack increases at 60+ or so Gt/year, we could even see SLR stabilize or drop for the first time in the observational record, although on longer timescales the ocean’s level fluctuates substantially from completely natural causes that are not anthropogenic CO_2.
rgb
(snip)
I sometimes think that people have completely forgotten how to do back of the envelope estimations
Now you need a computer and software, never question the output and assume that the answer is 96.999999% correct.
And I think you will often be correct, rgb. The MSM is usually incapable of performing a smell-test, but we should still expect better from others who anoint themselves with the title of climate-“scientist”.
rbg re ice sheets and SLR:
Some rough data. The thickest part of the Greenland sheet is 3km, and the mean altitude is ~2km. Much of rock below the ice is near or at sea level. For Antarctica, similar mean altitude, thickest ice ~4.5km. Land of West Antarctica below the ice is as much as 2500m below sea-level. So for all the fuss, particularly concerning West Antarctica, a fair proportion of the ice is already displaced in terms of SLR. A second aspect is when you push a continent down into the mantle, the land bulges up around the periphery, already displacing a fair amount of the ice (ice SG ~1, sea crustal rocks ~3). Here is a cross section across Antarctica that illustrates this geometry.
http://cdn.antarcticglaciers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/cross_section_combined.ai_.jpg
There is considerable volcanic activity below the ice of W. Antarctica and offshore and even to the north and north east of East Antarctica where much there is little known. I suspect the volcanics are enhanced and induced by the pressure created by mass of Antarctic ice and similarly in the case of Greenland where there has also been detected hot spots under the ice and sea floor volcanoes in a train southerly from Svalbard that, were apparently recently discovered. This and the volcanics on Iceland are probablay also enhanced by the pressure of on the mantle below Greenland. The volcanics are therefore, in part, likely some of the displacement of the ice mass. If the ice loss is going to be a slow affair taking thousands of years, isostatic rebound will reduce ~1/3 of the SLR.
UAH lower troposphere does not diverge from SST’s. The recent faster warming rates of continental interiors is due to precipitation changes due to the warm AMO mode.
They don’t use satellite data
==============
that is like using a single tree ring series as a proxy for the entire world because it just happens to match thermometer data some of the time, while ignoring all other tree ring series. just because something happens to match doesn’t mean it does so because it is accurate. a stopped clock gets the right time twice a day, while a running clock is rarely if ever exactly right.
Yeah, that one is one that bothers me enormously as well. Especially when I strongly suspect that they don’t even keep all of the tree ring data that matches the supposedly accurate (but really not) thermometric record. I mean thermometric “anomaly” record. Actually, I have no idea what I mean. Nobody does. The other great swindle in all of this is the illusion that given j = 1,2 readings from 100 thermometers at two different times the change in the average temperature at the two times:
,
is less accurate than the average change in the temperature “anomaly” at the two times:
In particular that either one of the deltas is more accurate than either $latex $ itself. I keep going over this argument and I just don’t get it. You’re a stats guy, right? Is there something I missed learning in statistics that suggests that these two statements aren’t pure algebraic rearrangements of each other? The second average just cancels out one of the two terms and recovers the first form, does it not? Maybe I need to sit down with paper because I’m missing something.
rgb
Presumably you meant “Σ ᵢ (T ᵢ₁ -)” for the 2nd term there, rgb. I agree that the two forms are equivalent, but perhaps the latter is a generalized one which is more easily applied to heterogeneous data, e.g., if each thermometer covers different surface areas in the two epochs.
The Gulf Stream today …. is chaotic
See image and animation
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/the-gulf-stream-today/
Or this:
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic=-59.86,38.40,728
“but we find absolutely no evidence that suggests that the Gulf Stream is slowing down”
It doesn’t matter whether the gulf stream is slowing these guys still get paid. The US government will pay for anything that supports their alarmist view, whether is true not doesn’t matter. I’m hoping a new administration will stop paying for this say anything propaganda machine.