Laughable Claim: Antarctic snowfall accumulation won't save us from sea level rise because weather patterns were different 10,000 years ago

From the UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON comes this desperate piece from Eric Steig of RealClimate and the “Antarctica is warming but now busted” department.

antarctic-snowfall
In the more recent part of the record, at the top, the Antarctic air temperature (orange) and annual snow accumulation (purple) follow similar paths. But in the earlier part of the record, at the bottom, shifts in temperature and snowfall are often unrelated. CREDIT T.J. Fudge/University of Washington

Via Eurekalert:

Will more snow over Antarctica offset rising seas? Don’t count on it 

Many factors related to warming will conspire to raise the planet’s oceans over coming decades — thermal expansion of the world’s oceans, melting of snow and ice worldwide, and the collapse of massive ice sheets.

But there are a few potential brakes. One was supposed to be heavier snowfall over the vast continent of Antarctica. Warmer air will hold more moisture and thus generate more snow to fall inland and slightly rebuild the glacier, according to climate model projections.

Not so fast, says a University of Washington study published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. The authors looked at evidence from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide ice core to get a first clear look at how the continent’s snowfall has varied over 31,000 years.

“It’s allowed us to look at the snow accumulation back in time in much more detail than we’ve been able to do with any other deep ice core in Antarctica,” said lead author T.J. Fudge, a UW postdoctoral researcher in Earth and space sciences. “We show that warmer temperatures and snowfall sometimes go together, but often they don’t.”

For example, the record includes periods before 8,000 years ago, as Earth was coming out of its last ice age, when the air temperature went up by several degrees without any boost in the amount of snowfall.

“Our results make it clear that we cannot have confidence in projections of future snowfall over Antarctica under global warming,” said co-author Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences.

The plateau of East Antarctica, the site of most previous ice cores, is relatively high and dry. About 80 percent of the continent’s precipitation falls on the lower, stormier edges, like where this core was drilled in 2006-2011. (To prepare scientists for conditions during a West Antarctic snowstorm, Fudge notes, researchers had to practice navigating outside with a bucket over their heads.) The 2.1-mile, or 3.5-kilometer, ice core preserves climate history in enough detail to show individual snow years.

Many climate models predict that warming temperatures will mean more snow in Antarctica in the future. When more snow falls inland at the upper edge of the flowing ice sheet, it counteracts mass lost to melting or calving at the edges. This extra snowfall would reverse 2 to 4 centimeters, or about 1 inch, of global sea-level rise by 2100, researchers said.

“It’s not a huge component,” Fudge acknowledges, “but if you live close to sea level, centimeters certainly matter.”

The new study, however, shows that temperature is an unreliable predictor of Antarctic snowfall.

“Depending on what part of the record you look at, you can draw different conclusions,” Fudge said. “During some of the more abrupt climate changes, from when we had ice sheets to our current climate state, there’s actually no relationship between temperature and snowfall.”

The large variation seen in the historical record probably reflects shifts in atmospheric patterns and how storm tracks reach Antarctica, Fudge said. Research is increasingly showing that winds play a big role in Antarctic temperature, sea ice and weather patterns, especially on shorter timescales, and that the gale-force winds that whip around the continent are connected to weather patterns in the tropics.

“For sea-level rise, we’re not really interested in what happens over thousands of years,” Fudge said. “We’re interested in what happens over the next few hundred years. At that shorter timescale, the variability in how the storms reach the continent matters much more than a few degrees of warming.”

The snowfall record may help to understand how winds affect Antarctic weather, and how atmospheric connections with the tropics influence the amount of relatively warm ocean water that laps at the frozen continent’s edge.

“By getting models to better capture the variability in our snowfall record, we actually will get a better idea of how the warm ocean is going to interact with the ice sheets at the edge, and those will have an even bigger impact on sea level, eventually,” Fudge said.

###

The study, published online April 28, 2016 was funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA. Other co-authors are UW doctoral student Bradley Markle; UW faculty members Edwin Waddington, Howard Conway and Michelle Koutnik; Kurt Cuffrey at the University of California, Berkeley; Christo Buizert at Oregon State University; and Kendrick Taylor at Nevada’s Desert Research Institute.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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May 20, 2016 10:21 am

What happened to the “rivers of atmospheric moisture” dumping insane amounts of snow? They publish a report, then promptly deny it if it doesn’t fit the agenda. Related posts… yet another study shows Antarctica gaining ice mass…

Greg
Reply to  rishrac
May 20, 2016 3:26 pm

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL068356/full
Anthony may like to add a link to the paper ….

Reply to  Greg
May 21, 2016 1:23 am

I got the “treat with caution” part.

Rick
May 20, 2016 10:21 am

Let me fix that for you…
“Our results make it clear that we cannot have confidence in projections” said co-author Eric Steig

george e. smith
Reply to  Rick
May 20, 2016 10:47 am

Well Eric, I have supreme confidence in your ability to make projections, in which I can be confident, that I can’t have any confidence in those projections.
Thank you for making that clear to me.
G

John McClure
Reply to  george e. smith
May 20, 2016 12:19 pm

Projections ?
I enjoyed the Sonic Sea Insight last night and your NOTIONs are pitiful!
The Snow and sea level rise are pitiful and superpicial examples of nonsense as 70% is Ocean and 90% human failure!
Wake up!

Greg
Reply to  Rick
May 20, 2016 12:19 pm

Wow! So we can’t count on climate models being correct about future climate. In fact they can be totally wrong. That’s going to come as a bit of a shock. What if we were to recast the whole of the world economy based on climate models and …. hey, hand on !
“We show that warmer temperatures and snowfall sometimes go together, but often they don’t.”
So sometimes models are right and sometimes they are wrong. Sounds like a bit of coin flip.
BTW the way what a great name for a climatologist: Fudge, he’ll go far.

Reply to  Greg
May 21, 2016 1:48 am

“BTW the way what a great name for a climatologist: Fudge, he’ll go far.”
brilliant 😀

Reply to  Greg
May 21, 2016 4:31 am

Yes, it reminded me so much of numerous fictional characters (eg in Goldfinger –> Pussy Galore) that I Goggled Fudge, and yes, he does appear to be real.
BTW, Fudge says, “Depending on what part of the record you look at, you can draw different conclusions,” Fudge said. “During some of the more abrupt climate changes, from when we had ice sheets to our current climate state, there’s actually no relationship between temperature and snowfall.”
I wonder if Fudge realizes that sublimation of ice sheets is a much slower process than evaporation from oceans. And that the oceans which were exposed and evaporating were hundreds of miles farther away from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide than today.

May 20, 2016 10:24 am

Hmmm…Now why would you split one graph of something into two separate sections and change the scales of what you are plotting so the overlay is different in the two parts?

Reply to  ThinkingScientist
May 20, 2016 12:36 pm

Whoever drew the graph had a bucket over his head?

John Harmsworth
Reply to  lectrikdog
May 20, 2016 6:26 pm

Nobody told them they could take the bucket off after training!

Greg
Reply to  ThinkingScientist
May 20, 2016 12:46 pm

I think that they are trying to make the point that one half seems to roughly correlate while the other does not.
What they have demonstrated here is that accumulation rate vs temp does not work the same during a glaciation as it does in an inter-glacial.
If climate models don’t manage to capture that, it’s worse than we thought.

AndyG55
Reply to  ThinkingScientist
May 20, 2016 1:34 pm

Just for fun, I’ve redrawn the graphs (very roughly)
Here is the accumulation graph.
http://s19.postimg.org/k1joamw8j/snow_acc.jpg

AndyG55
Reply to  ThinkingScientist
May 20, 2016 1:35 pm

And here is the temperature graph..
which show that we are very much at the COLD end of the Holocene.
http://s19.postimg.org/6w464j2cz/temperatures.jpg
Global warming.. we could certainly do with some ! 😉

PA
Reply to  AndyG55
May 20, 2016 2:00 pm

It looks like the warmer it gets the more it snows.
How is a growing Antarctic ice sheet supposed to raise the sea level?

Reply to  AndyG55
May 21, 2016 1:52 am

Because they “think” the snowfall will only add minimal mass compared to edge melting.
They claim to have yearly accuracy, but nowhere do you hear about any uncertainty in the cores or assessments, surely the “certainty” must be far below 50%. I’d say less than 10% but scientists never like to admit they dont know what they are talking about.
They never like to say that nearly all science is eventually wrong, with the vast minority a success
There has been a scary rise in positive results in the past few decades when scientists really have become inferior to their forefathers. It’s an industry now

TLM
Reply to  AndyG55
May 23, 2016 4:21 am

Mark at 1:52
A “Vast minority”? That would make the majority truly humongous!! I think you meant to say it is a “tiny minority”.

AndyG55
Reply to  ThinkingScientist
May 20, 2016 1:38 pm

Gee, Hope mickey mann doesn’t see that temperature graph 😉

Pauly
Reply to  AndyG55
May 20, 2016 3:41 pm

AndyG55,
The hockey stick is at the wrong end! Can’t you just cherry pick the data to make it more acceptable to him?

AndyG55
Reply to  AndyG55
May 20, 2016 4:25 pm

Here ya go, Pauly.
I channelled Micky Mann, cherry picked and rotated it.
I hope it is more to the liking of the alarmist
http://s19.postimg.org/wqrqzj6ib/tempsmanned.jpg

Reply to  AndyG55
May 21, 2016 1:55 am

The point should should be made is rather than alarmists contradicting themselves, in fact they are hedge betting.
Sks talks about consensus, then claims man made CO2 is causing warming since 1850 based on obscure papers that go against their consensus logic.
But should that be disproven, they still have the IPCC 1960 onward claim to fall back on.
Who’s good at maths, someone derive the “climatic constant of hedge betting” or CCoB constant, please! 😀

Reply to  AndyG55
May 21, 2016 1:56 am

Duh, “CCoHB”

May 20, 2016 10:26 am

Glad to see the lead author is Fudge! And after Steig 2009 I don’t think I am disposed to believe anything published that has Steig as a co-author

Reply to  ThinkingScientist
May 20, 2016 10:46 am

There are no real scientists at RC, just a load of bogus modelers

Greg
Reply to  ThinkingScientist
May 20, 2016 12:48 pm

Fudge; Shakun , Mix !? Are these names real or is someone just having a laugh at our expense ( pun intended ).

mike
Reply to  ThinkingScientist
May 20, 2016 1:32 pm

lead author T.J. Fudge how should the paper be cited ?
Fudge et al 2016 or Fudge it all 2016

David Chappell
Reply to  ThinkingScientist
May 20, 2016 3:01 pm

I’m curious to know what Kendrick Taylor at Nevada’s Desert Research Institute had to contribute to this paper.

billw1984
Reply to  David Chappell
May 21, 2016 6:13 am

Good question 🙂

Marcus
May 20, 2016 10:37 am

They can tell the ice accumulation accurately to within 2 inches (0.05 meters) 8,000 years ago ??

Greg
Reply to  Marcus
May 20, 2016 12:25 pm

Well they say that they can see individual years of accumulation so that may not be too far fetched. There may be considerable uncertainly in the absolute date though.

John Harmsworth
Reply to  Greg
May 20, 2016 6:48 pm

I’m not saying they’re wrong, but; I live in Saskatchewan, Canada, in the heart of the Northern prairie. I will take this opportunity to say a few things about cold, dry, windy places. Dry snow doesn’t stick. It blows! It blows for miles and miles. It fills in low spots and whips over and around obstacles. There is no way on earth to establish snow accumulation in such a place without averaging thousands of corings across hundreds of thousands of square miles. I think these guesstimates are a joke!

Paul
Reply to  Marcus
May 20, 2016 1:14 pm

“They can tell the ice accumulation accurately to within 2 inches (0.05 meters) 8,000 years ago ??”
Well they can tell the temperature to the nearest 100ths, why not insane accuracy for snowfall too? Now if they could only get the weekend forecast close…

Bryan A
May 20, 2016 10:37 am

Very misleading to have the two lines together at -8000ybp in one graph and far apart at the same point in time in the other graph. Then to have the accumulation axis of the graphs with differing ranges at the Top and Bottom limits and the Temperature axis is represented by 1 degree difference in the top graph but 3 deg difference represented by the same distance in the bottom graph. POORLY EXECUTED GRAPHS
Grade = D-
Perhaps University of Washington should reconsider who is Fudging the information

RWturner
Reply to  Bryan A
May 20, 2016 10:43 am

I too am tired of “professional” climate “scientists” demonstrating sub-elementary graph making skills.

PA
Reply to  Bryan A
May 20, 2016 11:03 am

The bigger problem is one graph at 8000 shows the accumulation at less than 1.2 and the other shows it at 1.24 (roughly). Which is it?

Bryan A
Reply to  Bryan A
May 20, 2016 11:06 am
Bryan A
Reply to  Bryan A
May 20, 2016 11:08 am

J
Reply to  Bryan A
May 20, 2016 12:22 pm

Thanks for making the two graphs into one that makes sense.
But these graphs cannot be correct. They show that it was warmer 1500-4000 years ago than now !
So you mean the current warming is not unprecedented !??!?
/sarc

AndyG55
Reply to  Bryan A
May 20, 2016 2:04 pm

I think my two graphs up the page are better 😉 cheers

AndyG55
Reply to  Bryan A
May 20, 2016 2:05 pm

ie.. I hadn’t read down this far when I made them. 🙂

Bryan A
Reply to  Bryan A
May 20, 2016 3:25 pm

It actually indicates a couple of interesting and apparent facts
1) The correlation between Temperature and Accumulation have been pretty steady in Antarctica for the last 10,000 years or so.
2) The increasing temperatures indicated a definite Increase in accumulation
3) There has been a definite cooling trend evident in the data used for a span covering the last 2500 years of between 0.5d C & 1.0d C

Bryan A
Reply to  Bryan A
May 20, 2016 3:29 pm

Andy
you should vertically stretch your top graph and reinsert it over the bottom one or vertically compress the bottom one and reinsert it into the Top one (also note the time axes it 8000 years in the right side and 7000 years in the left side so a slight amount of horizontal stretch is also needed. though I do like your colors better

Rob R
Reply to  Bryan A
May 20, 2016 7:27 pm

Looking ar the two curves there is a reasonably nice correlation back to about 8.5 thousand years. Beyond that it breaks down. Before 8.5 thousand years ago oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns were less stable and there is likely to have been much greater variability in sea-ice cover. So either side of about 8.5 kyr one is not comparing like-with-like.
So logically, unless one proposes that there will be sudden massive changes in circulation patterns in the near future, there is no particular reason to think that the Holocene relationship between temperature and precipitation will change much. The best prediction is a continuation of the recent relationship with a bit of unspectacular random year on year variation. But that does not gain the researchers much attention so they needed to sex-it-up a bit.

AndyG55
Reply to  Bryan A
May 21, 2016 2:30 am

“you should vertically stretch your top graph “‘
ooo.. that sound s painful.
Someone did that further down the thread. 🙂

billw1984
Reply to  Bryan A
May 21, 2016 6:17 am

Clearly, in the past, the snow was leading the temp. changes. When it snowed more, it got warmer and when it snowed less, that caused it to cool.

Reply to  Bryan A
May 20, 2016 11:49 am

Graph also mislabeled as Purple and Orange when it is clearly Purple and Gold…Go Dawgs!
There has been no Global Warming since the University of Washington last won a football National Championship…I know correlation does not always equal causation, however this situation warrants further study. I will need a modest sum of grant money, travel expenses and tickets to select games of my choosing for the next few years,
In return I shall write a very nice paper with cool graphs and charts. Lots of statistical analysis and stuff. Does a reduction in carbon emissions coming from less tailgating on Montlake really have a measurable impact? How will we know unless someone looks into this.
Clearly the science is not settled.

tty
Reply to  Bryan A
May 20, 2016 12:21 pm

Not poorly executed. Carefully misleading. If both diagrams had been to the same scale it would have been obvious that the curves match pretty well all the way back to the end of the ice-age, but that there were some violent swings during the Younger Dryas (Which supposedly did not affect Antarctica).

Billy Liar
Reply to  tty
May 20, 2016 1:08 pm

The authors looked at evidence from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide ice core to get a first clear look at how the continent’s snowfall has varied over 31,000 years.
They also have the smallest statistical sample size in the world. They are using one core and extrapolating the result to the entire, and massive, continent.
Now where have I seen that before, was it Steig et al 2009?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/29/steig-et-al-falsified/

Billy Liar
Reply to  tty
May 20, 2016 1:10 pm

Italicising failure! Italics were supposed to go off after …31,000 years.

Rob R
Reply to  tty
May 20, 2016 4:27 pm

Have a look at the time scale for the Antarctic events and compare it to the timescale for Greenland events. You will quickly see that there is no Younger Dryas in Antarctica. What is known as the “Antarctic Cold Reversal” commenced well before the Younger Dryas. Events in Antarctica are not a carbon copy of those in the Northern Hemisphere. They are offset to such an extent that they are almost anti-correlated. This is one of a host of reasons why it is difficult to predict the response of Antarctic climate to events occurring in other regions on this planet.

hunter
May 20, 2016 10:37 am

This is a “Heads We Win, Tails You Lose” study.

RWturner
May 20, 2016 10:42 am

“Depending on what part of the record you look at, you can draw different conclusions,” Fudge said. “During some of the more abrupt climate changes, from when we had ice sheets to our current climate state, there’s actually no relationship between temperature and snowfall.”
We currently have ice sheets on Earth chief, wtf are you talking about?

May 20, 2016 10:45 am

Desperate junk science, lets see the usual suspects come and defend this crap, this should be interesting.
This stinks of desperation, literally.
So more snow wont offset sea rises meant to be caused by melting ice that is not actually melting in Antarctica bar the actual geology under the ice there that we can do nothing about.
Complete junk science “Antarctic to melt and raise seas in 100s of years” “Antarctica to melt and raise seas in 100 years” “Antarctica to melt and raise seas in 50 years”
On it goes, and clearly we can see what is actually happening here, they have a paper for all eventualities up to several centuries ahead or as near as 50 years or 70 or 100 years.
Joke science, and no matter which outcome, they had a paper saying that, as when when the 40 50 year mark is up, they point to the 100 year paper.
Scientific fraud should carry legal consequences

Reply to  Mark - Helsinki
May 20, 2016 5:45 pm

“Scientific fraud should carry legal consequences”
I’ve been saying for a while that advocacy science should be a serious criminal offence. Doctors, engineers etc. are all held liable for improper performance of their jobs. The job of a scientist is to attempt to discover the truth. Research with a predetermined conclusion, omitting negative results, etc., are just as serious a betrayal of the essence of the scientific profession as is a doctor ignoring obvious symptoms.

May 20, 2016 10:47 am

Does thus dude suggest that melting and accumulation definitions was different THEN than now?
I

Reply to  Sunsettommy
May 21, 2016 2:04 am

They are saying that “our models cannot explain the climate 15k years ago” so it must have been different.
Except their models cannot model current climate, making a model match observations.. doesn’t mean the models are actually replicating climate. How could it, they cannot model the primary components.
Without fudges, there would be no models

Dan Daly
May 20, 2016 10:48 am

Interesting that the spike in Antarctic temperature about 4-5k years ago coincides with the great flood mythology and when Noah and others were said to set sail. So, I’m thinking that if Noah and his pets can survive, we can too.

Reply to  Dan Daly
May 20, 2016 11:20 am

The great flood was probably more like an ice barrier holding back a lot of ocean water eventually broke

James at 48
Reply to  Mark - Helsinki
May 20, 2016 11:34 am

It’s more like a really bad riparian flood during a King Tide in the part of Iraq that now has Swamp Arabs.

Reply to  Mark - Helsinki
May 21, 2016 2:05 am

Maybe, your guess is as good as mine. Tide flooding would explain the fact that they knew a flood was coming, but so could stories a crumbling ice wall.

MarkW
Reply to  Mark - Helsinki
May 23, 2016 10:10 am

There’s evidence that the area that is now the black sea was a freshwater lake several hundred feet below sea level during the last ice age. Around 5K years ago, it flooded as the rising sea waters flowed over the land bridge at what are now the Bosporus straights.
Models suggest that the area could have completely flooded in a mater of months.

Hugs
Reply to  Dan Daly
May 20, 2016 12:45 pm

You mean Utnapishtim?
“Utnapishtim, or Utanapishtim, is a character in the epic of Gilgamesh who is tasked by Enki (Ea) to abandon his worldly possessions and create a giant ship to be called The Preserver of Life. He was also tasked with bringing his wife, family, and relatives along with the craftsmen of his village, baby animals and grains.[1] The oncoming flood would wipe out all animals and humans that were not on the ship, a concept that was mirrored by the biblical story of Noah’s Ark.”

John Harmsworth
Reply to  Hugs
May 20, 2016 6:57 pm

I think that was NoahOrleans after Katrina

MarkW
Reply to  Hugs
May 23, 2016 10:12 am

A number of Bible scholars believe that the story of Noah was added to the Hebrew Bible during or shortly after the exile to Babylon.

Eugene WR Gallun
Reply to  Dan Daly
May 20, 2016 6:52 pm

To whom it may concern
I translated the story of Noah’s ark. One tall mountain surrounded by three lesser mountains? Island of Crete. Only place in the then known world that it fits. The mistake is to assume the mountain Noah lands on is the tallest mountain in the world. (Hey, how are you going to get the elephants down?)
The Cretans were sea oriented. It is one of their old stories. Noah was a native of Crete originally and his ark was built there and he wound up where he started. Then that story was adopted by others.
By the way a lunar month consists of 29 1/2 solar days. The half day was counted as a whole day so every lunar month had 30 “counted” days. The half days were at the end of one month and the beginning of the next month. (Yuppers, that how a lunar calendar was used. People actually got paid twice on that dual day.) Knowing that it is easy to figure out that the Ark was afloat for exactly 365 Solar days, what we call a year.
Note: The lunar calendar went — 29 1/2 — 1/2 29 — 291/2 — 1/2 29 — 291/2 — 1/2 29 — 291/2 — 1/2 29 and so on..Every two months unit had a shared day. I hope that is clear I think I have mentioned all this before..
Eugene WR Gallun
.

May 20, 2016 10:48 am

If I remember correctly the Antarctic prehistoric temperature record is based on ice cores of compressed snow so how can it be that correlation fails?

Latitude
May 20, 2016 10:48 am

You gotta love climate science…
…we don’t understand it at all….but we can design a computer game that will

Reply to  Latitude
May 20, 2016 11:21 am

oh but they have 95% certainly within the confines of that computer game, so all is well

Jason Calley
Reply to  Latitude
May 20, 2016 11:42 am

“Climate science” is just like the tired old joke about the Holy Roman Empire. “It wasn’t Holy, it wasn’t Roman and it wasn’t an Empire.”

GTL
May 20, 2016 10:50 am

Ice ages being rare in geological terms melting glaciers would be a return to normal climate for earth. Adapting to normal climate seems more reasonable than attempts to control it with CO2 reductions which is a fools errand.

Reply to  GTL
May 20, 2016 4:47 pm

Not sure what is “normal” — I thought planet Earth became entirely engulfed by ice nearly a mile thick for millions of years more than once. An encore “Snowball Earth” is by no means beyond a reasonable probability, and I for one am comfortable with the assertion that mankind may be responsible for warming the Earth by a few degrees (although I doubt the existence of CAGW).

Reply to  David Weir
May 20, 2016 4:58 pm

The earth was never completely covered in ice. Over the past ≈billion years, the equator has remained at the same temperature, within ±1ºC.

Reply to  David Weir
May 20, 2016 5:07 pm

LMAO at David who has been measuring the temperature of the equator for the past 1 billion years. Another baseless assertion by Smokey.

John Harmsworth
Reply to  David Weir
May 20, 2016 7:05 pm

A single ice core at the equator shows zero ice accumulation at depths consistent with 1 billion yrs. bp. What’s wrong with the science?

Reply to  David Weir
May 20, 2016 8:37 pm

“There is ample evidence that the Earth’s temperature as measured at the equator has remained within +/- 1°C for more than the past billion years. Those temperatures have not changed over the past century.”
~ Prof. Richard Lindzen

So much for Keating’s false claim of a “baseless assertion”.

Reply to  David Weir
May 21, 2016 2:09 am

“There is ample evidence that the Earth’s temperature as measured at the equator has remained within +/- 1°C for more than the past billion years. Those temperatures have not changed over the past century.”
~ Prof. Richard Lindzen”
There is much uncertainty in dating back that far

Reply to  David Weir
May 21, 2016 8:44 am

Mark says:
There is much uncertainty in dating back that far
Of course there is. There is always uncertainty (error bars).
But Keating said it was a “baseless assertion”. He was wrong, as usual.
No one is better qualified to answer that question than Prof. Lindzen. Keating was just winging it, and he fell flat on his face.
Also, Keating is the same person who posted this impossible ‘challenge’:
I will award $30,000 of my own money to anyone that can prove, via the scientific method, that man-made global climate change is not occurring.
Naturally, Keating never paid up. His ‘challenge’ would force skeptics to prove a negative; an impossible task. So it was a bogus offer from the get-go.
The comments under these articles show the duplicity:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/25/taking-keatings-30000-skeptic-challenge-seriously-part-1
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/26/taking-keating-seriously-part-2-the-ipccs-human-attribution-claim-is-prima-facie-unscientific

MarkW
Reply to  David Weir
May 23, 2016 10:15 am

The sun has been gradually getting warmer over the last few billion years. This makes a return to snowball earth, if it ever actually happened, more difficult.

MarkW
Reply to  David Weir
May 23, 2016 10:16 am

dbstealey: How does it feel to have your own personal troll?
I must say, yours is marginally classier than mine.

Resourceguy
May 20, 2016 10:54 am

Volume-based publishing merit is on display.

Walter Sobchak
May 20, 2016 10:57 am

So what? Who cares. Men have feet, and can move to higher ground. Men have hands, and can build sea walls and other works. Most of the Netherlands is less than one meter above sea level, yet it is densely populated and produces copious quantities of agricultural goods. It is possible to adapt to rising sea levels. And, it will happen if they occur. It is not a reason to abandon technological civilization. Hysteria is completely unwarranted.

Chris
Reply to  Walter Sobchak
May 21, 2016 2:53 am

The length of the Netherlands dikes is less than 100km. In just Western Australia alone, which represents a small fraction of the world’s land mass and population, a 1.1m sea level rise would inundate the following: between 20,000 and 30,000 residential buildings, with a current value of between $5 billion and $8 billion; up to 9000 kilometres of WA’s roads, up to 114 kilometres of WA’s railways and up to 2100 commercial buildings. These assets have an estimated value of up to $11.3 billion, $500 million and $17 billion respectively.
The coastline of WA is 12,500 km. So how exactly is WA going to cost effectively prevent flooding of their coastline and the low lying coastal cities?

RACookPE1978
Editor
Reply to  Chris
May 21, 2016 3:46 am

Chris:
And just how is that 1.1 meter of sea level rise going to happen? At 1.5 mm rise, how long is that mythical sea level rise going to require? We have either a very quick drop in global average temperatures coming (since we are at the peak of the 2000-2010 short-term 66 year cycle of the Modern Warm Period, or we have one more 66 year cycle yet to come before the Modern Ice Age begins to cool the waters between 2080 and 2400 AD.
So, why do you believe the waters will continue to rise to 1100 mm?
Oh. By the way, there are NO BUILDINGS (nor anything else) built now between sea level and .5 meter above sea level.

Reply to  Chris
May 21, 2016 5:06 pm

Before the sea ever rises 3 feet anywhere, storm tides will flood everything within 3 feet of sea level on every coastline in the world.
And what always happens after such floods, which occur every day somewhere or another, and occur over large areas in every place with long coastlines when looked at on decadal timescales or greater?
Why, when structures or roads or just about anything else is damaged in a flood, it is promptly rebuilt, usually in place.
All that will be necessary to prevent rising seas, if and when they threaten any coastlines, from causing any additional damage than already caused by storms is to move everything to higher ground when destroyed by flooding.
Hell, this is a good idea anyway, even if sea level was falling everywhere rather than rising.
But it does not happen, and stuff is always getting wrecked by storms and unusually high tides even though everyone knows such events are inevitable.
Same goes for river flooding…nothing is more inevitable, and yet every year some unfortunate folks get flooded out because they live near rivers.

MarkW
Reply to  Chris
May 23, 2016 10:18 am

You don’t need to prevent such flooding. Since we have 300 to 400 years to prepare, we just wait till those building wear out on their own, then rebuild them a few feet inland.

Robert
Reply to  Chris
May 24, 2016 1:22 am

Really Chris? This is the best you can come up with? With a discount rate of 7%, after 84 years, the depreciated value of these assets will be 0.007% of the current annual GDP of Australia or about 35 seconds. Spread out over say 35 years, Australians could devote, oh, let’s say, 1, second per year to help their fellow citizens bail out of the low lying areas.
With any hope, and continued use of cheap energy (which by the way will recharge the earth’s atmosphere with needed CO2), the economy will be bigger by then. By the way, how many people still live in ancient Carthage? (And pssst, sea level will actually rise by ~15 to 25 cm in that time, not 1.1 m).

May 20, 2016 10:58 am

If those charts are from the paper then something is seriously wrong. In the bottom panel, yellow and purple are widely separated at 8000. Miraculously, they start together at 8000 in the top panel. Hell of a sudden weather change. How could such a basic obvious mistake slip through peer review and editorial? Answer, because good science and consistent data don’t matter much to warmunists.
BTW, the new EAIS Totten Glacier alarm paper (much in MSM past few days) pulls the same trick as Rignot did for Pine Island on the Amundsen embayment. Totten might or might not erode from underneath from warmer deep water (that was the Thwaites Glacier on the Amundsen Embayment model alarm in the companion paper to Rignot). Grounded below sealevel Totton occupies about 5% of the catchment. The SI provides the maps. The catcment goes 1100km inland, and averages 750 km across. The alarming projected 3.5meter sea level rise assumed the entire catchment lost all ice. nonesense. Same way Rignot got ~1.5 meters from PIG, when his own maps showed the upper half of the Amundsen Embayment was gaining ice, and barely creeping at all coastward. Essay Tipping Points uses Rignot’s own figues to call out the absurd calculation.

Glacierman
Reply to  ristvan
May 20, 2016 11:19 am

Because it is Pal review……especially in the case of Steig. Hell he might have been one of the reviewers.

Reply to  Glacierman
May 21, 2016 2:11 am

Well we had Mann protecting a Jones paper, and Jones soliciting grounds from warmist colleagues to reject a paper because it disagreed with a colleagues of his, he openly said this in email, “confidentially”.
Phil Jones and his nepotism over science eh.

1sky1
Reply to  ristvan
May 20, 2016 12:31 pm

There’s a scale change in the temperature graphs between the upper and lower panels, which accounts for the “miraculous” change in position relative to the unchanged snow accumulation graph..

Reply to  1sky1
May 20, 2016 1:42 pm

Thanks. That is helpful, and basically disproves the paper’s thesis for the whole Holocene.

AndyG55
Reply to  ristvan
May 20, 2016 2:08 pm

ristvan,
see my revised graphs further up the page. 🙂

Reply to  AndyG55
May 20, 2016 4:41 pm

I agree with those who assert that it is far more likely that the changing scales on the two parts of the graphs is deliberate deception rather than an ignorant mistake.
Properly scaled and shown as a single timeline, the ice core appears to show that temp and ice accumulation is highly correlated.
But perhaps more telling is that this core appears to be consistent with the Greenland ice core, in that we are in a period of punctuated cooling over the past several thousand years.
Which makes mincemeat of the warmista claims that the Greenland core is not representative of the rest of the planet. If it is cooling at both poles for thousands of years, with the warmest temps being very clearly in the dim distant past, it seems hard to claim that the world is warmer than evah before.
Just for giggles, let’s take a look at corrected versions of the WAIS core next to a version GISP ice core reconstruction:
http://s189.photobucket.com/user/BMAONE23/media/true%20graph_zpsz3rsdwfy.jpg.html
http://s19.postimg.org/6w464j2cz/temperatures.jpg
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/Gisp-ice-10000-r..png
Maybe someone with the proper skill can make a graph showing the two curves on the same scale for a better comparison?

AndyG55
Reply to  AndyG55
May 21, 2016 2:32 am

nope.. had too much red tonight ! 🙂

james
May 20, 2016 10:59 am

there’s the trick in the graphs…since the top graph shows the vertical scale different that the bottom graph…therefore the separation is amplified in the bottom graph….if you plotted both graph at the same vertical scale the graphs would like much more similar….
tricks of the climate scientists to fool the public…..

1sky1
Reply to  james
May 20, 2016 12:33 pm

Sorry, I didn’t get to read your comment before I posted the same observation.

Phil R
May 20, 2016 11:20 am

The science is settled! 97% of climate scientists agree that “climate change” is real, tipping points are nigh, and will lead to catastrophic warming and sea level rise! Oops, they admit that there is one more thing that the models don’t capture well.

By getting models to better capture the variability in our snowfall record, we actually will get a better idea of how the warm ocean is going to interact with the ice sheets at the edge, and those will have an even bigger impact on sea level, eventually, Fudge said.

David A
Reply to  Phil R
May 20, 2016 9:00 pm

Phil, what a quote; Fudge, (good name for a CAGW enthusiast) wants better models and he somehow already” knows” those will have an even bigger impact on sea level,
Confirmation bias writ large.

ARW
May 20, 2016 11:22 am

That cannot be the graph they published. How that have that would have passed peer review?

ARW
Reply to  ARW
May 20, 2016 1:33 pm

That is “phone speak” for “how on earth did that get past peer review?”

David A
Reply to  ARW
May 20, 2016 9:01 pm

ARW, if you read the climategate emails, you know they “changed the nature of peer review” or words to that affect.

Gary Pearse
May 20, 2016 11:25 am

Another Wack-a-Moley study, the likes of which make up the bulwark of modern climate science. Some group puts out a convincing study that warming could end up reducing sea level or having little effect because of the increased snowfall it would engender at the poles. So naturally, the team writes the conclusions for a new study that they can dress up with ‘data’. Birth of idea: “Let’s see, how can we kill this idea without just ignoring the pretty good logic of more polar snow with warming? Hey, why not say the relation isn’t always reliable? It has only held for 8000 yrs or so.”
A little handwaving and add in insignificant thermal expansion (the whole ocean isn’t going to warm 2C). Another thing which is common in climate science is each scientist is a tenaceous one trick pony. Mann is still going on about a debunked hockey stick temperature record that basically ended the year he wrote the paper in 1998 – temps flattened out for the lifetimes of the present batch of high school graduates. Steig who took a huge hit for his temperature extrapolation of the volcano ridden land and sea region of West Antarctica across the entire continent is still hugging West Antarctica and extrapolating it across the continent!! This horse is dead. Antarctica has been cooling throughout the satellite era. Put down your whip and maybe study bleaching corals or something. Hansen, who predicted in 1988 the West Side Highway would be submerged by now is railing about the seas rising 10s of metres. Egad, let it go, let it go already!! Even the infamous Ehrlich switched from a gripping ice age to worldwide desertification in the heat.

H.R.
Reply to  Gary Pearse
May 20, 2016 1:08 pm

Gary Pearse, you wrote in part,“A little handwaving…” and that little bell went off inside my head. (Okay, maybe it was just tinnitus. Dunno.)
Anyhow, all of the hand-waving going on in ‘Climate Science’ since the 1980s has had a measurable cooling effect. The Pause is a perfectly predictable result of all that hand-waving. Finally! The cause of The Pause has been nailed down. The science is settled. It’s all that hand-waving wot dun-nit!
.
.
.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled ridicule of yet another paper in a never-ending series of What the @$#!?!? papers.
(Do I need to add a winky or is there a chance I’m right?)

WBWilson
Reply to  H.R.
May 20, 2016 2:25 pm

Love it, H.R.
It’s all that hand-waving wot dun-nit!
Like a herd of butterflies in Beijing!

FJ Shepherd
May 20, 2016 11:29 am

Does anyone see anything wrong with the temperature range on those graphs? No? Well, the average annual surface temperature of Antarctica is -47 degrees C. So why are those graphs showing a range from -29.5 C to -33.0 C ? Huh?

tty
Reply to  FJ Shepherd
May 20, 2016 12:23 pm

The temperature in Antarctica is not the same everywhere.

FJ Shepherd
Reply to  tty
May 20, 2016 2:22 pm

“The temperature in Antarctica is not the same everywhere.”
That is irrelevant. If the current annual overall average is -47 degrees C, why do those graphs show a temperature range between -29.5 C to 33.0 C, especially over the time period given. Does this mean that the Antarctic is 15 degrees C colder than it was 15,000 years ago near the height of the coldest part of the last glaciation period? Nonsense!

Reply to  tty
May 20, 2016 3:37 pm

The tropical hot spot is hiding there.

tty
Reply to  tty
May 21, 2016 1:17 am

Because the isotope ratio measures the temperature at the site the ice-core was taken. Which was in West Antarctica which is considerably lower than East Antarctic.
Two examples:
Vostok in East Antarctica, 3400 m a s l, average temp -55 C
Byrd Station, West Antarctica, 1500 m a s l, average temp -29 C
get it?

Rob R
Reply to  FJ Shepherd
May 20, 2016 4:39 pm

Because the study is based on a single ice core at a single defined site. Theses are the temperatures and ice accumulation rates for that specific site, not for the whole of Antarctica. This is as it should be.

FJ Shepherd
Reply to  Rob R
May 20, 2016 7:36 pm

So the oxygen isotopes from the ice core gives an actual temperature reading, Rob R?

tty
Reply to  Rob R
May 21, 2016 1:18 am

Yes

FJ Shepherd
Reply to  Rob R
May 21, 2016 6:05 am

“Yes”
Bullshit!

tty
Reply to  Rob R
May 21, 2016 8:46 am

“Bullshit!”
Would you care to elaborate?

James at 48
May 20, 2016 11:30 am

Beyond all this noise … let’s look at the notion of Antarctic glacial melt. Compare sensible weather during the May – Oct time frame in East Antarctica vs places like Greenland. It barely ever gets above freezing. Seriously? Antarctic “killer” melt? Please!

James at 48
May 20, 2016 11:31 am

My bad, I meant to write, compare sensible weather November – April in Antarctica with May – Oct in Greenland.

otsar
May 20, 2016 11:32 am

The way I understood it, the snow in the center of Antarctica was blown in from the edges.

Editor
May 20, 2016 11:33 am

What’s this?
Antarctic temperatures at their coldest since Ice Age during LIA?
And still colder than most of the last 10000 yrs?
And is that a MWP I see?
Now I wonder why the Antarctic did not melt down during all of those thousands of years when it was much warmer?
HMMMM?

CaligulaJones
Reply to  Paul Homewood
May 20, 2016 12:46 pm

“Now I wonder why the Antarctic did not melt down during all of those thousands of years when it was much warmer?”
Yes, I always ask why the coelacanth didn’t boil during all those thousands of years when it was much warmer.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/after-400-million-years-coelacanth-at-risk-of-extinction/

Reply to  CaligulaJones
May 20, 2016 4:48 pm

To say nothing of the scalding cauldron of fish soup the oceans must have been before the Earth entered the present ice age?

May 20, 2016 11:52 am

Since when as any physical science been settled by models lol

Reply to  Mark - Helsinki
May 21, 2016 3:39 am

Only by models.

Gary
May 20, 2016 12:31 pm

The analog that’s needed is 100kya to 120kya when the earth was going into and ice age, not coming out of one. Temperatures may have been equivalent, but direction of the trend is critical.

MarkW
May 20, 2016 12:41 pm

“Our results make it clear that we cannot have confidence in projections of future snowfall over Antarctica under global warming,”
In other words, the models are wrong.
Does this qualify as a self-goal?

May 20, 2016 12:43 pm

Here is the correct figure:
http://i1039.photobucket.com/albums/a475/Knownuthing/Snowtemp_zps0jhlolay.png
I do not think it supports the authors’ conclusions. There is a very good agreement during the entire Holocene, so unless we fall into a new glacial period there is no basis to expect this relationship to break down.
The resource to break the graphic and change scales is just a cheap shot attempt at manipulating the readers.

Billy Liar
Reply to  Javier
May 20, 2016 1:27 pm

The second big rise in the core temperature exactly matches the timing of the Younger Dryas (12,800 BP to 11,600 BP) and the first big rise corresponds to some estimates of the timing of the Older Dryas.

Greg
Reply to  Billy Liar
May 20, 2016 2:56 pm

Yes Billy. I’m pretty sure that they have calibration problem with their bore hole model. Because of heat diffusion over the millennia, the measured temperature is a progressively changing integral of the original temperatures. You then need to work backwards to guess what the original temps were. This involves a model with several parameters. Get some of the params wrong and the timescale and/or the temp scale comes out wrong.
Back to 6000 BP, it seems to correlate quite well then it slowly starts to drift. Timescale of accumulation should be quite accurate since they are counting annual layers.
I would need a lot of persuasive arguments to convince me that the time scale of temperature model is not drifting off further back. It’s hard to believe that the accumulation shows a very similar profile of the Youger Dryas period but lagged by 800y.
They’ve also clearly got the scaling wrong since temp has more swing than accumulation. This is due to the regression which they are doing with error laden data on the x-axis, leading to regression dilution. This is also exacerbated by decorrelating effect of the spurious lag.
This is the same fundamental error which has lead to over estimation of climate sensitivity.
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/on-inappropriate-use-of-ols/
An illustration of the right and wrong results from Lindzen & Choi.comment image
When these guys learn how to do linear regression we may start to move forwards.
Lindzen addresses the problem and gets a far lower CS than anyone else.

AndyG55
Reply to  Javier
May 20, 2016 2:09 pm

But also note that we are very much at the cold end of the Holocene..
This graph from Eric TOTALLY DESTROYS the CAGW fairy-tale.

Reply to  AndyG55
May 20, 2016 4:50 pm

+ a whole big bunch

David A
Reply to  AndyG55
May 20, 2016 9:11 pm

Does that not depend on the resolution of the graphic? From the climategate gate emails we know they know fxxkall about anything less then 100 years resolution in the paleo studies.

Bryan A
Reply to  AndyG55
May 21, 2016 5:58 pm

Another interesting item of note, the correlation tends to exist at temperatures above -30.5C and only falls out of correlation when temps drop below this point.

tty
May 20, 2016 12:44 pm

When one looks at a sensibly constructed diagram of these data there are two main conclusions:
1. During the present interglacial temperature and snow accumulation correlate quite well
2. During and at the end of the last glaciation each marked warming in the northern hemisphere was followed by a sharp peak and subsequent dropoff in accumulation a few centuries later
“2” fairly screams THERMOHALINE CIRCULATION!

CaligulaJones
May 20, 2016 12:49 pm

Wonder how much better the models would get if the modellers were actually paid per accurate projection.

Toneb
Reply to  CaligulaJones
May 20, 2016 2:14 pm

Yes I also wonder how any profession that is required to forecast the future of any variable, can sleep at night, thinking they are not worth the money. And that they really ought to be only be paid for success.
I mean that pioneers of that profession would really be inspired to take it up eh?
And that may include….
Economists
Meteorologists
Broadcast Analysts
Market Research Analysts
Polsters
IOW: What a brainless comment my friend.

MarkW
Reply to  Toneb
May 20, 2016 2:24 pm

Wow, the trolls get offended whenever someone insults the models and modelers.
Regardless, the modelers in those other fields do get paid based on the accuracy of their forecasts.
It must suck to be you.

WBWilson
Reply to  Toneb
May 20, 2016 2:35 pm

Must be nice to still have a job even if your predictions are only right 50% of the time, Tone.

AndyG55
Reply to  Toneb
May 20, 2016 2:42 pm

Would help if climate modellers could hit the side of a barn !

Alan Robertson
Reply to  Toneb
May 20, 2016 3:28 pm

How many of those various modellers declare their efforts to be the final answer, as in “97% agree that the science is settled”?
Pardon, but your propaganda is showing.

Toneb
Reply to  Toneb
May 20, 2016 3:31 pm

If you say so….
(the only comment you merit – unless it contains pejorative).
And like I said, brainless … reacting on ideological autopilot from a badge-wearing stance of ignorance.
Yes it MUST suck to be you.

Mike the Morlock
Reply to  Toneb
May 20, 2016 3:54 pm

Toneb May 20, 2016 at 3:31 pm
Hi,
Well let see, first you compared Economists
Meteorologists
Broadcast Analysts
Market Research Analysts
Pollsters
to climate modelers in so far as being held accountable for their work. What is the % of climate modelers that have lost their jobs, as compared to the other Fields of employment you listed?
Heck have any climate modelers ever lost their jobs due to their models not preforming as advertised?
Come to think about it a huge class action lawsuit for false advertising is in order.
Well you were the one insinuating brainless comments on the part of others. Next time turn on brain before operating mouth or rather typing on keyboard.
michael

Reply to  Toneb
May 20, 2016 4:56 pm

Being correct in 50% of their panicky-guy predictions would be about a big step up for warmistas, being as how they have almost never been correct in any of their scaremongering alarmist jackassery.
True to form, Toneb picks up the ball for the losing team and runs towards the wrong end zone with it.

pbweather
Reply to  Toneb
May 20, 2016 7:50 pm

As a meteorologist in the private sector, you do get fired if you regularly get forecasts wrong. Also as a meteorologist who once believed the gospel coming out of the AGW ranks, I wonder why it is that you have chose to comment on the jibes against models, but not comment on the way they have presented the graphs of the temp and snowfall data in this paper? Do you think they have done this correctly? Do you think they have deliberately mislead the readers? Do you think this should have got past peer review? I suspect that due to your utter belief in this AGW propaganda you are deliberately letting this slide with no comment. I know this happens on both sides, but you are here now, show some honesty and let’s hear your views on the validity of the paper.

David A
Reply to  Toneb
May 20, 2016 9:15 pm

Pb, excellent comment and questions. Let us see if Tony can step up.

Toneb
Reply to  Toneb
May 20, 2016 11:37 pm

“Well you were the one insinuating brainless comments on the part of others. ”
I did.
And what’s more to those informed on here (the very few who can out up with it).
That was self evidently the case – and nothing more than normal service.
Those who think that said brainless comments constitute constructive and informed criticism of climate science are utterly irrelevant to the *discussion* – even on WUWT.

billw1984
Reply to  Toneb
May 21, 2016 6:25 am

Yep. They do get paid and hired and fired based on how good their projections are. What are you talking about Toneb?

pbweather
Reply to  Toneb
May 21, 2016 7:36 pm

So once again, as predicted, a complete dodge of answering my questions about this paper’s methods. Silence assumes you cant respond for fear of agreeing with people here. The same thing happens everytime.
Another example George Monbiot recently posted on twitter https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/732177104138317824
Where he was ridiculing people who dont believe the evidence of CAGW. I simply stated I am a Met Office trained Meteorologist and asked him to list non computer modelled evidence of CAGW and he responded by attacking my credentials. I provided them and asked him to answer my question repeatedly. No response. This is standard it seems because these guys, especially journalists, only regurgitate model projections without looking at the empirical data. One assumes this is either lazy or because of predetermined beliefs or a mix of both.

Don Easterbrook
May 20, 2016 12:57 pm

In 2009, Steig et al. published a controversial paper “Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year” (their reconstruction made the cover of Nature), contending that all of Antarctica was warming. Steig et al. stated that, the “Antarctic is warming up and is contributing significantly to sea level rise; and that there is strong potential for a greater contribution to sea level rise from Antarctica in the future.” Very limited surface temperature measurements from the huge East Antarctic Ice Sheet exist so Steig et al. projected temperatures from the Antarctic Peninsula and a few short records from coastal east Antarctica over all of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The Steig et al. portrayal showed warming over the entire continent. However, O’Donnell et al. (2011) showed that Steig’s methodology was badly flawed, and using the same data as Steig et al., but with better technology, they produced a map similar to previous versions, i.e., displaying cooling dominating most of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet with warming primarily constrained to the much smaller (8% of ice) Antarctica Peninsula. Thus, the Steig et al. view of warming of all of Antarctica has been totally discredited.
Satellite measurements of temperatures confirm the lack of warming over most of Antarctica. The UAH and RSS satellite records are the most comprehensive because of their extensive coverage of Antarctica. They show the same lack of warming as the limited surface temperature records. Surface temperature measurements at the South Pole and Vostock since 1957 show no warming at all in places that Steig showed as warming.
Apparently Steig didn’t learn anything from his 2009 badly flawed paper and continues to ignore data contrary to his dogmatic opinions.

jvcstone
Reply to  Don Easterbrook
May 20, 2016 4:12 pm

ah–but this time he has a grad student to fudge the data

David A
Reply to  Don Easterbrook
May 20, 2016 9:18 pm

Did Nature place O’Donnell et al. (2011) on the cover?

May 20, 2016 1:00 pm

“But there are a few potential brakes. One was supposed to be heavier snowfall over the vast continent of Antarctica. Warmer air will hold more moisture and thus generate more snow to fall inland and slightly rebuild the glacier, according to climate model projections.”
Garbage
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/antarctica_trends_1979-2019.png

Toneb
Reply to  Mark - Helsinki
May 20, 2016 2:01 pm

“Garbage”
So if models model what you want then they are OK.
And that makes the other models and observation “garbage”?
“A new, high resolution (27 km) surface mass balance (SMB) map of the Antarctic ice sheet is presented, based on output of a regional atmospheric climate model that includes snowdrift physics and is forced by the most recent reanalysis data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), ERA-Interim (1979–2010). The SMB map confirms high accumulation zones in the western Antarctic Peninsula (>1500 mm y^-1) and coastal West Antarctica (>1000 mm y^-1), and shows low SMB values in large parts of the interior ice sheet (<25 mm y^-1). The location and extent of ablation areas are modeled realistically. "
Hypocrisy much.
And how amusing.

Alan Robertson
Reply to  Toneb
May 20, 2016 3:49 pm

On the other hand, your non-stop logical fallacies and “loose” facts are not amusing.
You can do no better with your life than to be a propagandist?

Reply to  Toneb
May 20, 2016 5:21 pm

Seriously Tone!
Do you never tire of being laughably wrong in your every utterance?

tty
Reply to  Toneb
May 21, 2016 1:46 am

“Garbage”
Actual observations (weather stations, GRACE, Icesat) do show a considerable accumulation increase, particularly in Dronning Maud Land, in recent years. I tend to believe more in actual measurements than in climate model, but then i’m not a certified climate scientist.

Reply to  Toneb
May 21, 2016 2:35 am

No Toneb, I ma saying that there is no evidence to base their claims, one model shows what has happened and their models purport to to claim to know the future
That’s why is it garbage, in case you didn’t get it, which you didn’t me auld straw man, is that their models are not based on current best guesses, and of course, concerting temperature, not validated by observations>
Not the chart runs to 2009, where as your favoured models are talking about the next few centuries.
Yes garbage, junk science
You cannot even figure out the different between modeling observation and predicting 200 years into the future.
This is essentially why many of your arguments are as flaccid as a Pron star’s member at the end of a 12 hour shift.

Reply to  Toneb
May 21, 2016 2:45 am

Hypocrisy, it has a definition and you should look it up.
The chart I posted, the data and model can be challenged. Science.
The models of Antarctica 200 years from now are not based on data, and cannot be challenged as a result
You cant fix stupid (not you, the line of thinking you are following)

Toneb
Reply to  Mark - Helsinki
May 21, 2016 12:04 am

“On the other hand, your non-stop logical fallacies and “loose” facts are not amusing.
You can do no better with your life than to be a propagandist?”
Yes actually.
A career in climate science. This I expect draws contempt, but it makes me “relevant” on here and only a “propagandist” only to those who are reflexively derogatory of climate science
That you find them “not amusing” pleases me greatly.
BTW: So you agree that it is indeed hypocrisy to laud model findings when they agree with your views yet constantly criticise models otherwise?

Toneb
Reply to  Toneb
May 21, 2016 12:06 am

“Seriously Tone!
Do you never tire of being laughably wrong in your every utterance?”
Splendid.
I’m so pleased!
That must mean I am right.
Do you really expect me think those on here will agree with what I say/link to.
No my friend.
Just denying ignorance for the odd unfortunate who has strayed here and may yet be open to the views of the experts as available in peer-reviewed papers.

Reply to  Toneb
May 21, 2016 2:39 am

Please dont talk about logical fallacies when you’ve trapped yourself in them frequently, just as you have just above.
You deal in model preference not model validity, model dealing with 200 years from now, not based on modeled observation are anathema to understanding what is going on, in fact it is a means to an end, the end not being anything to do with science.
Sadly, you are not thinking, you are regurgitating what fits your disposition, where’s the honesty in that?

Alan Robertson
Reply to  Toneb
May 21, 2016 5:20 am

Take your Red Herrings elsewhere. I don’t care if you are 7 “climate scientists”. Your logic and reason are flawed and your actions here have caused your motivations to become highly suspect.

Greg
May 20, 2016 1:06 pm

Damned Eureka, never manage to link to the papers they are spouting about. They copy/paste text from other sources and loose the hyper links they contain.
After some Binging around: eureka !
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL068356/abstract

Mike Sexton
May 20, 2016 1:13 pm

Bud that was only 1/2 a Natty Miami claims that year too

Greg
May 20, 2016 1:24 pm

I had noticed that the temp data had a lot less time resolution than the accumulation plot line. So I wondered how they were measuing temperatures , d18O , I guessed.
From the S.I. at the above link:

Calculating the uncertainty due to temperature is more challenging. Because the temperature of
the ice diffuses through time, the borehole temperature profile does not record shorter-period
variations in surface temperature. While the magnitudes of the glacial-interglacial transition
(Cuffey et al., in prep) and the past millennium (Orsi et al., 2012) are well constrained, millennial
scale variations for ages older than the past millennium are not.

Oh man ! Bore hole temps ???
So the 800y offset in their second graph is probably just an error in timing of borehole temperature model. It does not seem that they have analysed the ice core contents AT ALL.

tty
Reply to  Greg
May 21, 2016 1:30 am

I had missed that. I also presumed d18O temperatures. This makes the whole thing extremely shaky.
There is another problem too. The ice sheet in West Antarctica, in contrast to East Antarctica,has thinned quite a bit since glacial maximum, which means that d18O temperatures must be corrected for lapse rate, which is basically impossible since we have practically no idea about the detailed deglaciation history of Antarctica.

Justthinkin
May 20, 2016 1:51 pm

Who do I sue for copyright infringement? That’s the same drawing my 3 year old great-granddaughter did last week!

Mickey Reno
May 20, 2016 1:55 pm

The Rising Seas head coach has called the obligatory time out to “ICE” the kicker of the McMurdo Deposition, and now we’re back from commercial break and ready to return to live action. After a brilliant last minute drive that consumed only 16 seconds, the clock is now down to 1 second, time for 1 last play. Trailing by only 2, the Deposition team is lined up for what could be a winning 52 yard field goal. Here’s the snap, the hold is good, the kick is on the way, it’s got the distance, it looks good…. but wait … CLIMATE SCIENTISTS have run out onto the field and have MOVED THE GOALPOST! OH MY! The kick is NO GOOD! The Rising Seas WIN the game.
But speaking about increased deposition around the coastal edges and on the W. Antarctic ice sheet, it does appear to be happening right now.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL065750/abstract

u.k(us)
May 20, 2016 2:04 pm

“We show that warmer temperatures and snowfall sometimes go together, but often they don’t.”
“Our results make it clear that we cannot have confidence in projections of future snowfall over Antarctica under global warming,” said co-author Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences.
“It’s not a huge component,” Fudge acknowledges, “but if you live close to sea level, centimeters certainly matter.”
“Depending on what part of the record you look at, you can draw different conclusions,” Fudge said.
============
Looks like Eurekalert is in competition with the Onion.
Don’t even want to …go into “lead author T.J. Fudge”.

May 20, 2016 3:06 pm

Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive

Toneb
Reply to  ptolemy2
May 20, 2016 3:38 pm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmion_(poem)
Very good. Erudite even.
I see you know Sir Walter Scott.
But what does this website have to do with him/it?
Oh, yes, I get it – but I think you’re being a bit hard on WUWT (sarc).

Reply to  Toneb
May 20, 2016 11:27 pm

When a scientific community spin Antarctic cooling into Antarctic warming, the poetic analogy becomes rather obvious.

Alan Robertson
May 20, 2016 3:12 pm

Those of us living happily above 1,200 feet might get swamped by coastal Blue Staters?
GAK!

Editor
May 20, 2016 3:15 pm

The authors looked at evidence from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide ice core“.
Talk about stupid. Most of the Antarctic’s ice sheet is in East Antarctica.

Toneb
Reply to  Mike Jonas
May 20, 2016 3:33 pm

Nah, you’ll have to explain that one.

tty
Reply to  Mike Jonas
May 21, 2016 1:35 am

“Talk about stupid”
Not necessarily. Changes in accumulation are much larger in W Antarctica and along coasts of E Antarctica. Very little change near the center.
Now, using borehole temperatures rather than d18O, now that is stupid. Though quick and cheap, which is probably the reason.

Greg
May 20, 2016 3:32 pm

In central West Antarctica, which has experienced pronounced recent warming [Steig et al., 2009; Orsi et al., 2012; Bromwich et al., 2013]


Unbelievable !! They are actually citing Steig’s 2009 junk paper that managed to smear warming in the peninsula right across the continent.

Reply to  Greg
May 20, 2016 11:31 pm

He even calls is “pronounced”
It’s pronounced ” frɔːd “

Bob
May 20, 2016 4:40 pm

Another model? Good grief! When does Steig and company do science?

EricHa
May 20, 2016 4:55 pm

Anthony
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/house-budget-provides-260-million-for-two-life-tracking-europa-missions/
With all the treeeelions spent on the climate this is peanuts! We should have orbiters and landers on as many moons as we can afford!!!!!

TA
May 20, 2016 5:18 pm

From the article: ““Our results make it clear that we cannot have confidence in projections of future snowfall over Antarctica under global warming,” said co-author Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences.”
We can’t have confidence in that, or anything else related to these CAGW projections.

May 20, 2016 5:45 pm

Here’s a piece of logic for the sea level rising worry crowd.
1. During the previous (Eemian) interglacial, the Greenland ice cap melted.
2. The Greenland ice cap hasn’t melted during this current interglacial, all 13,000 years of it, though it did recede a bit during the WMP when the Vikings lived there (and advanced back again after they left)
3. That means that it’s not as warm today as it was in the Eemian
4. The Antarctic ice cap hasn’t melted for at least 600,000 years and probably for the last 15 million years.
5. Therefor we don’t need to worry about the Antarctic ice cap melting any time soon. QED.
I suppose I could have got a grant to write a model to prove it, but it’s so bloody obvious.
Yes, I know, it’s different in the Southern Hemisphere, yeah, yeah, blah blah blah, unprecedented, blah blah blah tell me all about it. There’s probably a consensus or something telling me I’m wrong.

Reply to  Smart Rock
May 20, 2016 6:39 pm

You forgot about the big sign over the door at the entrance to the Warmista Institute of Sciency Hokum (WISH):
“Abandon All Logic, Ye Who Enter”.
You may be a smart rock, but with all that logic clinging to your thoughts, you would make a poor addition to the WISH-fully hoping for climate disaster crowd.

tty
Reply to  Smart Rock
May 21, 2016 1:39 am

“During the previous (Eemian) interglacial, the Greenland ice cap melted.”
No. All deep ice cores from Greenland except one has Eemian ice near the bottom (even the rather short Renland core). The one exception is due to geothermal (volcanic) bottom melting of the ice.

TomRude
May 20, 2016 6:52 pm

The 2.1-mile, or 3.5-kilometer, ice core preserves climate history in enough detail to show individual snow years.

Fudge (!) and Steig are contradicting themselves: if such a long core can indeed record individual snow years, it means the rate of accumulation must be quite significant, otherwise those years will be condensed in a short length and abrasion could make the record incomplete.
Besides, there is no mention of atmospheric circulation and the difference between the Peninsula and Eastern Antarctica. But since they quote Steig 2009…

Michael Jankowski
May 20, 2016 10:19 pm

…This extra snowfall would reverse 2 to 4 centimeters, or about 1 inch, of global sea-level rise by 2100, researchers said.
“It’s not a huge component,” Fudge acknowledges, “but if you live close to sea level, centimeters certainly matter”…
No, if you live close to sea level, 2-4 centimeters sure as hell does NOT matter, especially over almost 85 years. What planet is this guy on?

May 20, 2016 11:40 pm

Fudge said. “We’re interested in what happens over the next few hundred years. …”
We are? Are we? Why?

michael hart
May 21, 2016 1:51 am

“It’s not a huge component,” Fudge acknowledges, “but if you live close to sea level, centimeters certainly matter.”

Well I guess it’s a pity he didn’t tell that to the Department of Oceanography at the University of Washington before they built a new teaching block down by the waterfront at 1503 NE Boat Street.

Steve Fraser
Reply to  michael hart
May 21, 2016 7:31 am

That area is above sea level already. The Ballard locks stabilize the whole Canal in that area, including both Lake Union and Lake Washington.

tty
May 21, 2016 2:24 am

As a matter of fact d18O data, are actually available for the WAIS divide borehole. The dataset is here:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/pub/DATASETS/AGDC/nsidc0629_steig/Steig_WAIS_Divide_Ice_Core_WDC06A_Oxygen_Isotopes.txt
and the curve can be seen here:
http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/42660/BrookEdwardJCEOASOnsetDeglacialWarming.pdf?sequence=1
So why using the less reliable borehole data? I think the answer is here:
http://clim-past.net/11/153/2015/cp-11-153-2015.pdf
A paper on the dating of the WAIS borehole, that uses i. a. accumulation rate and borehole temperature for “wiggle matching” to derive the age of the core. Check the co-authors, they inclyde Steig and Fudge.
So essentially they simply took data from a previous paper they had co-authored, made deliberately misleading diagrams from it and then made a big CAGW song-and-dance number about it. They would seem to be skirting plagiarism rules fairly closely by the way.
Incidentally the diagrams in the paper above (page 156) shows that the correlation between temperatures and accumulation is actually quite remarkably good all the way back to 68,000 years ago, except for a few thousand years at the very end of the glaciation. So the rule that accumulation increases with temperature seems to hold good both during interglacials and glacials, but not during the transition between the two climate states.

Reply to  tty
May 21, 2016 2:51 am

“They would seem to be skirting plagiarism rules fairly closely by the way.”
Too many “scientists” are copycats who dont know what they are doing unfortunately.

TA
Reply to  tty
May 21, 2016 5:59 am

Very interesting, tty.

Greg
Reply to  tty
May 21, 2016 8:00 am

Nice work digging that stuff out tty.
“Incidentally the diagrams in the paper above (page 156) shows that the correlation between temperatures and accumulation is actually quite remarkably good all the way back to 68,000 years ago, except for a few thousand years at the very end of the glaciation. ”
Well it seems from p156 that there is a markedly different ratio between temp and accumulation during the glacial and interglacial periods. There is a notable break from simplistic linear correlation at the end of de-glaciation. None of that should be surprising.
It is well established that the climate shows two quasi-stable states with fairly rapid swings from one to the other.
That climate models do not reproduce this shows fundamental flaws in the construction of the models.
Thanks to Fudge et al for pointing this out, espically to those who actually thought climate models where of any use to start with.

fretslider
May 21, 2016 3:01 am

T.J. Fudge???
Fudge: Present or deal with (something) in a vague or inadequate way, especially so as to conceal the truth or mislead:
Nuff said.

EricHa
Reply to  fretslider
May 21, 2016 6:03 am

Nominative determinism.
Poor guy didn’t have a choice but to work in climate science.

barry
May 22, 2016 7:32 pm

I’m missing the updates on Arctic sea ice this year. Melt season is underway and NSIDC is not the only source for data. No interest?

barry
May 22, 2016 9:40 pm

BTW, here’s the link to the study if anyone cares to read it.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL068356/full