A report on the State of the Climate in 2016 which is based exclusively on observations rather than climate models was published yesterday by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). Video and full report follows.
Compiled by Dr Ole Humlum, Professor of Physical Geography at the University Centre in Svalbard (Norway), the new climate survey is in sharp contrast to the habitual alarmism of other reports that are mainly based on computer modelling and climate predictions.
Compiled by Dr Ole Humlum, Professor of Physical Geography at the University Centre in Svalbard (Norway), the new climate survey is in sharp contrast to the habitual alarmism of other reports that are mainly based on computer modelling and climate predictions.
Among the key findings of the survey are:
- While 2016 was one of the warmest years on record, global temperatures dropped back at the end of the year to levels prior to the strong 2015/16 El Niño. This fact suggests that much of the global 2015–16 temperature peak was caused by a one of the strongest El Niños on record.
- Since 2003, the global temperature estimate based on surface station measurements has consistently drifted away from the satellite-based estimate in a warm direction, and is now about 0.1◦C higher.
- Much of the heat given off during the 2015–16 El Niño appears to have been transported to the polar regions, especially to the Arctic, causing severe weather phenomena and unseasonably high air temperatures.
- Data from tide gauges all over the world suggest an average global sea-level rise of 1–1.5 mm/year, while the satellite-derived record suggests a rise of more than 3 mm/yr. This noticeable difference between the two data sets still has no broadly accepted explanation.
- Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice extents since 1979 have developed in opposite directions, decreasing and increasing, respectively. In the Arctic, a 5.3-year periodic variation is important, while for the Antarctic a cycle of about 4.5 years duration is important. Both these variations reached their minima simultaneously in 2016, which explains the recent minimum in global sea-ice extent.
Prof Humlum said: “There is little doubt that we are living in a warm period. However, there is also little doubt that current climate change is not abnormal and not outside the range of natural variations that might be expected.”
Full report — The State of the Climate in 2016 (PDF)
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Great main post
Point three – which has been evident, but raises some interesting questions.
This transport of heat relocation has been evident for some time. For sure it dampens the CAGW claim to CO2 being the cause of warming, but yes the average temperature has increased,
However the net heat content of earths systems has not increased, The heat has been released from a sink below the ocean surface into the atmosphere, and distributed to other locations. One of the primary relocation points is into an area (Arctic and lesser to Antarctic) where it is more likely to dissapate away from earth.
So are we seeing the transport of heat out of earths non atmosphere systems, giving the short term illusion of global warming, when in fact it might be signalling a reduction of the total heat content, and the start of a cooling phase as some are predicting.
Please correct me if my assumptions are incorrect…
Further,
If this is the case, we are in effect not measuring heat increase, but heat loss from the global system over the past 35 years. We will not know for sure what the heat adsorbsion has been until further down the track.
Perhaps its being looked at from the wrong perspective. Or I might need a new straight jacket.
Tom
I will reconsider this late Friday afternoon theory, but at this point not reject it completely. And thanks for the politeness.
ozonebust, you asked to be corrected. Total energy (“heat”) content of oceans, land, ice, air has increased dramatically: https://skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=46
Thanks
Of course the net heat has increased…
Or there’d be an obvious dramatic cooling of the ocean from which the heat was released to the atmosphere…
But did Prof Humlum say we’re doomed?
No, but I think CAGW is doomed.
If not this year, then sometime soon there will be another record low arctic sea ice extent. If not this year then sometime soon there will be open water at the North Pole. all the way from th epole to the Russian coast.
sometime soon there will be an effectively ‘ice free’ arctic.
what will you say then?
I wait for it. It would be a good thing.
Nope! You are on record for making a statement that this September will be a record low, lower than 2016. Not next year of some time soon, this September.
“what will you say then?”
GREAT!
I just noticed this Prof is from Svalbard…
does he never go outside?
Svalbard had a record warm year last year, with above freezing temps at points where it should have been well below zero… there were landslides caused by unseasonal late Autumn rain and the sea ice did not form around it till well over a month late…
Winter of 2016 in Melbourne lasted for around 8 months instead of 3. Ask Nick Stokes about it.
Here’s a midlatitude cyclone bringing a winter weather pattern to south-east Australia just a few days after the longest day of the year–in summer:
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/loop.asp?data_folder=loop_of_the_day/himawari/20161228000000&number_of_images_to_display=100&loop_speed_ms=100
But unusually cold weather is another sign of global warming, according to the high priests of your unfalsifiable, pseudo-scientific cult.
► Why Global Warming Can Mean Harsher Winter Weather – Scientific American
► Brace yourself for a bitterly cold winter, as climate change shifts the polar vortex – Think Progress
► Extreme cold winters fuelled by jet stream and climate change – Physorg
► Cold winters have been caused by global warming: new research – Telegraph UK
So what difference would it make if Svalbard was frozen or baked?
What difference would it make to your faith?
Faith I reserve for church…
Climate is a matter of science.
Yes, it is climate change… in a warming world you can get cold events caused by shifts in arctic air circulation/jet stream.
It doesn’t ‘matter’ if Svalbard gets baked (except for the inhabitants affected by landslides and the polar bears, I suppose)
It is just a screamingly obvious example of a changing arctic climate. right outside the Prof’s door.
the local conditions should show him what he wrote is bunkum
If warming means warming, and cooling means warming, just wtf would have to happen to show you cooling is coming? What did cause ALL those other earlier cool events? Hell, what caused ALL those other warming events, before the baton got handed over to CO2 that is?
“Climate is a matter of science.”
Skanky, given that your ideas of science come from the Grauniad, the Puffington Host, the Grauniad and Wikipedia, you wouldn’t recognise science if it scuttled under your bridge and bit you on the snout.
Now go and apologise to Dr, Crockford for maliciously lying about her on behalf of your spiv paymasters.
Catweazle, every article I reference has a link right to the actual science in it.
why don’t I post articles with links to the actual science from less ‘lefty’ publications?
Because for some strange reason they don’t even mention that stuff.
and hey: I also reference Scientific american, New Scientist, National Geographic, the NSIDC website.
apparently all those are just some sort of leftist propaganda ?
You can’t seriously think that Svalbard is indicative to conditions everywhere on the globe…maybe the good Professor knows it’s not.
“Climate is a matter of science.”
Dear Lord (or whomever you reserve for Church)…climate is a matter of NATURE, not science. SCIENCE is the observation, study, and attempts to understand NATURE.
“Yes, it is climate change… in a warming world you can get cold events caused by shifts in arctic air circulation/jet stream.” So then conversely you can get warming events in a cooling world too. The CLIMATE CHANGES. Always has, and based upon the evidence, I suspect it always will. YOU seem to think otherwise.
“It doesn’t ‘matter’ if Svalbard gets baked (except for the inhabitants affected by landslides and the polar bears, I suppose)” The planet and it’s climate couldn’t care less.
“It is just a screamingly obvious example of a changing arctic climate. right outside the Prof’s door.”
Odd…he never said the climate WAS NOT changing. DID HE?
“the local conditions should show him what he wrote is bunkum”
Please cite, verbatim, exactly what he wrote that is bunkum??? I cannot wait to see you “quote the science” for me.
“You can’t seriously think that Svalbard is indicative to conditions everywhere on the globe”
Skanky believes that one treemometer on the Yamal peninsula is indicative of conditions everywhere on the globe over a timespan of many centuries because Michael Mann said so.
It is indicative of a warming arctic…
It has had massively warm anomalies in temps over recent years, especially last year.
The changing pattern of sea ice formation around it in the last decade shows a step change in the arctic sea ice.
Here’s some Arctic warming for you from the Max Plank Institute-
https://www.mpg.de/research/mechanisms-of-sea-floor-generation
And National Geographic
0625_030625_gakkelridge.html
Ooohhhh lookie, submarine volcanic activity punches hole in Arctic Ice Sheet
http://climatechangedispatch.com/heat-from-deep-ocean-fault-punches-hole-in-arctic-ice-sheet/
NOT theory. Not models. OBSERVATIONS. How shall we humans prevent this???
Griff,
OMG….that very professor taught a course ON mudslides last year! It’s like, he’s studied the Arctic his whole life or something.
https://m.facebook.com/UNIS.Svalbard/
“MUD and debris slides in Arctic Mountains”
Open to the public. Especially
Wow. Well he would have had a few right outside the office last November.
@David Middleton
You said, “In most sciences, +/- 2 standard deviations is considered to be natural variability. That’s why NSIDC includes +/- 2 standard deviations band on their annual ice extent plots. Real anomalies exceed +/- 2 standard deviations.”
Who said, “natural variability” has to be (μ ± 2σ) std dev? Citation please. Using (μ ± 2σ) std dev is a way of getting their hypothesis passed at a lower bar. Medicine is one area where they use the (μ ± 2σ) std dev and still they have trouble passing at this level. So using (μ ± 3σ) std dev, would be a better bar level. Physics uses (μ ± 5σ).
Regards
Climate Heretic
Did David even insinuate that it “had to be two standard deviations”? Nope. He said it’s considered to be, because wild outliers in measurements of naturally occurring things are so rare, they get ignored as freak occurrences.
There’s really no hypothesis to be passed when simply demonstrating the mean of a data set. It’s a mathematical formula and the standard deviations are calculated based on that.
There is nothing abnormal about the climate in the past year.
There is nothing unpleasant about the climate in the past year.
With no real-time measurements of 99.999% of Earth’s history, we have only a very tiny amount of data for comparison (150 years), and the data are very rough, especially in the 1800s.
I don’t get those conclusions from reading this article.
That makes it a bad article.