By Jim Steele
Attempting to reinforce the climate crisis narrative, a recent high temperature record in Antarctica has been misleadingly ballyhooed as an example of global warming by the world’s largest media outlets – New York Times, BBC, the Guardian, etc. Although the NY Times tries to sell their paper with the slogan “The Truth is Worth It”, their misleading articles suggest you should spend your money elsewhere. These media giants seem more intent on scaring the public and manufacturing a false climate crisis, than educating the public about the real physics that cause weather changes causing Antarctica’s temperature record!
The NY Times wrote, “Antarctica, the coldest, windiest and driest continent on Earth, set a record high temperature on Thursday, underscoring global warming” But the fact that Antarctica is the coldest place on earth, has nothing to do with a temperature record at a single weather station, Esperanza. Esperanza is located at the warmest, most northerly part of the mountainous Antarctica peninsula. Esperanza is most sensitive to El Nino warming. It most sensitive to the southward flow of warm moist subtropical winds. And Esperanza’s topography always amplifies temperatures when winds from the northwest cause foehn wind events. What happened at Esperanza has nothing to do with Antarctica’s overall climate trends, never mind any global warming trend.
The Guardian wrote, Antarctica “is one of the fastest warming places on earth, heating by almost 3°C [5.4°F] over the past 50 years”. However, the Guardian hides the fact they are using zombie data. Recent research shows a cooling trend since the year 2000 and that contradicts any CO2 driven global warming theory.
In the 2016 peer-reviewed paper “Absence of 21st century Warming on Antarctic Peninsula consistent with Natural Variability”, Antarctic climate experts documented that from 1979–1997, Antarctic had indeed experienced the globe’s fastest warming temperatures, increasing by 3.2 °C [5.8 °F] per century. In contrast, from 1999–2014, temperatures then decreased at a rate 4.7 °C [8.5 °F} per century. This strong cooling trend is rarely reported or referred to by media alarmists. Dishonestly, the Guardian ignores the recent cooling trends to suggest a recent one day Esperanza temperature record is “a sign that warming in Antarctica is happening much faster than global average” and “is the foreshadowing of what is to come.” Likewise the NY Times dishonestly claims, “The high temperature is in keeping with the earth’s overall warming trend, which is in large part caused by emissions of greenhouse gases.
The Guardian’s author Graham Readfearn engages in his typical alarmist distortions to write, “Previous research from 2012 found the current rate of warming in the region was almost unprecedented over the past 2000 years.” Really? Almost unprecedented? The paper he refers to actually stated, “Although warming of the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula began around 600 years ago, the high rate of warming over the past century is unusual (but not unprecedented) in the context of natural climate variability over the past two millennia.
The BBC gets the prize for going completely off the rails stating, “Scientists warn that global warming is causing so much melting at the South Pole, it will eventually disintegrate – causing the global sea level to rise by at least three metres (10ft) over centuries.” But there has been no warming trend at the south pole nor in east Antarctica as exemplified by the Dumont D’Urville weather station.
For those readers who only trust peer reviewed papers, I suggest reading, “Foehn Event Triggered by an Atmospheric River Underlies Record-Setting Temperature Along Continental Antarctica” which thoroughly investigated the causes of the previous 2015 record-setting temperature at Esperanza.
What is a foehn event? Foehn events cause rapid extreme temperature jumps simply due to changes in the air pressure as winds descend from a mountain top. During the 2015 foehn event, Esperanza’s daily temperature jumped from 0°C [32°F] 2 days before, to a record setting 17.5°C [63.5°F]. Elsewhere, Antarctic foehn winds are common and have been extensively studied, often raising maximum temperatures by 10+°C [18+°F] above normal.
As seen in figure “c” below, weather systems in 2015 had driven a warm and humid subtropical air flow from the northwest onto the northern Antarctic Peninsula. That warm air flow raised the western peninsula’s temperatures above normal. Then those winds rose up and over the peninsula’s mountain range amplifying temperatures even further on the east side of the peninsula. As the air rose, its water vapor condensed, both releasing precipitation and releasing latent heat that had further warmed the air. As that warmer and drier air passed over the mountain crest and descended onto Esperanza, temperatures warmed further as air pressure increased temperatures at a rate of over 5°F for every 1000-foot drop in altitude. A typical foehn event.
As happens in all the earth’s mountainous regions, foehn winds warm the air due to simple physics and well-established gas laws. Warming does not require any added heat from the sun or CO2. During Esperanza’s 2015 record warmth, temperatures had hovered around 0.5°C [32.9°F] the day before. But as winds from the northwest increased air flow over the peninsula’s mountains, those foehn winds increased Esperanza’s temperatures by 17.5 °C [31.5°F]. Those same dynamics were in play during the February 2020 record temperature.
In contrast to several paragraphs trying to implicate global warming, the Guardian did offer one sentence hinting at a foehn wind warming, quoting Dr. Renwick: “higher temperatures in the region tended to coincide with strong northwesterly winds moving down mountain slopes – a feature of the weather patterns around Esperanza in recent days.”
Also a quote from Dr Steve Rintoul, an Antarctic expert at CSIRO, admitted: “This is a record from only a single station, but it is in the context of what’s happening elsewhere and is more evidence that as the planet warms we get more warm records and fewer cold records.”
But Rintoul is not sharing all the facts. The current context for the Antarctica Peninsula is that for over a decade it has experienced cooling temperatures driven by natural variability. In fact, glaciers in Esperanza’s region have also expanded. Esperanza’s record temperature simply happened due to foehn winds despite a cooling trend. Unfortunately, the media would rather scare the public to promote a climate crisis, than honestly educate them about the causes of natural climate variability.
Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism
Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net
To melt the entire Antarctic ice sheet would require 355 x 27.5E+15 = 977.6E+16 MJ heat energy.
(i.e. total energy = 9,776,000,000,000,000,000 MJ)
But, the entire world’s proven energy reserves of oil, gas and coal in total have an energy content of only 2.87E+16 MJ and these reserves will last us for hundreds of years at current consumption rates.
What this means is that it would take 340 times the energy in all the planet’s fossil fuel reserves to melt the Antarctic ice sheet. (Check the data and do the maths yourself – it’s quite a revelation.)
Expressed another way, if we were stupid enough to squander all our energy reserves right away and we focussed all that energy onto the Antarctic ice sheet it would melt only 1/340th portion of it (or 0.3%).
And then we wouldn’t have any energy left to keep warm, or cook, or communicate, or travel, etc.
soldier
Renewables would save us. 🙂
Did you account for the fact that all the ice first has to be warmed up to the melting point, being that it is almost entirely many tens of degrees below freezing?
I am not sure anyone knows exactly how cold the ice is at all depths and locations…but it is a safe bet it is somewhere near the average temperature there recently and in the past, due to thermal lag.
If anyone on WUWT needs cheering up, I suggest having a look at this jaw-droppingly stupid article from our fave newspaper: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/10/overwhelming-and-terrifying-impact-of-climate-crisis-on-mental-health
Jim,
If you go to Wikipedia for “Esperanza base”, you will find the fact of the new record on 6 February of 18.3C ( 64.9F) beating an earlier figure in 2015.
What also appears is that the lowest temperature ever recorded was -38.4C (-37.1F) on 18 July 1994.
Further, the temperature trend since 1948 is 0.035C. per year (0.0567F per year) (annual),+ .0413C per year ( +0.0743F per year) ( winter), and 0.0300C per year ( 0.0540 F per year) ( summer).
Hmm.
Temperature records less than a century old. I wonder what the Max and Min records were in the Little Ice Age.
“Further, the temperature trend since 1948 is 0.035C”
Which is well outside the accuracy of the instruments. So, meaningless.
I look at Mawson Base temps on a daily basis – just for interest. I have not recorded the data, but have not noticed anything warmer than -29C so far this summer.
FACTS HERE: Fifty-year Amundsen–Scott South Pole station surface climatology
DOI: 10.1016/j.atmosres.2012.06.027
No significant change in 54 years to 2012. And m none since if you check the last 8 years, even Nature says its getting rapidly cooler from getting rapidly hotter (Nature editorial speak, which means statistically insignificant fractions of a degree either way in real science. The continental trend is a net cooler regression coefficient.
The Guardian article is simply a deliberate and deceitful lie anyone but a believer can check as false. global temeratures are measured over a 30 year moving average across the globe. This is unusual weather but not atypical, either way, for this location.
This weather station has almost nothing in Common with most of Antarctica, demographically and geologically, apart from a marginal attachment, much closer to South America than the South Pole.. None of this is made clear, in fact the opposite illusion is promoted by this deliberately deceitfully alarmist piece. But then, it’s the Guardian. They don’t do science.
This needs a correction:
“During Esperanza’s 2015 record warmth, temperatures had hovered around 0.5°C [0.9 °F] the day before.“
Hi Bob,
Indeed I got sloppy when converting actual temperatures and change in temperatures from C to F. Indeed a temperature of 0.5 C should have been converted to an actual temperature of 32.9 F.
I turned the temperature up in the den. The den’s new high is also “in keeping with the earth’s overall warming trend….”!
From the article: “Unfortunately, the media would rather scare the public to promote a climate crisis, than honestly educate them about the causes of natural climate variability.”
Great article, Jim. Thanks for setting the record staight.
All you have to do, when you see some overhyped aspect of CAGW in the media, is come to WUWT were experts on the subject will tell the real story.
This is typical cherry-picking by the global-warming scaremongering media. Calling Esperanza’s one-day warmth as typical of Antarctica is like calling Key West’s weather as typical of the continental United States in winter, since Key West is also at the end of a long peninsula sticking out into a warm ocean.
Of course, they neglect to mention the foehn effect, which is typical on the lee side of a mountain range when strong winds blow over the mountains–air over the mountains (which is usually relatively dry) is compressed and heated when it is blown into lower altitudes (at higher pressure), and dry air has a low specific heat and is easily warmed.
The foehn effect is very well-known in France, particularly along the northern slopes of the Pyrenees and along the Cote d’Azur (French Riviera), although at different times. If a storm is approaching France from the west, southerly winds ahead of the storm are compressed along the northern slopes of the Pyrenees, and cities such as Toulouse or Pau reach near-record highs the day before the storm, only to plunge by 15 to 20 C after the storm’s passage, when winds shift to the west or north.
The opposite is true along the French Riviera, with the Alps to the north and the Mediterranean to the south. If there is a storm over Germany, and high pressure over the Atlantic, strong northerly winds tend to bring cloudy and changeable weather over most of France, and snow over the northern Alps, but to the south of the Alps, the “mistral” winds bring clear and unseasonably warm weather, often reaching over 20 C in mid-winter, when it could be snowing just 100 km to the north.
So unseasonably warm and dry weather comes in with south winds over the Pyrenees, north winds along the Riviera (a few hundred km to the east), and none of this has anything to do with CO2, just the orientation of the wind relative to the mountains.
Strange how it can be readily accepted that descending air in Foehn events can contribute to surface warming whereas almost nobody acknowledges the same effect from descending air within high pressure areas worldwide.
I’ve wondered about that myself. What’s the difference?
With high pressure systems the effect is not the same with descending air because it requires other mechanisms for it occur that are only present within a mountain.
These involve condensation, precipitation and turbulent mixing. Very cold temperatures at the surface in winter from high pressure systems are generally because they don’t have these and the coldest dense layer stays stable.
“In an anticyclone (high pressure) the winds tend to be light and blow in a clockwise direction (in the northern hemisphere). Also, the air is descending, which reduces the formation of cloud and leads to light winds and settled weather conditions.”
Incorrect.
See the Hadley cell as an extreme example.
The rising air near the equator in the Hadley cell provides the condensation, precipitation and turbulent mixing.
“The change of state from vapour to liquid water is accompanied by heating, and the subsequent removal of moisture as precipitation renders this heat gain irreversible, leading to the warming”
This warming is mixed within the noise over thousands of miles, so will have no effect with Hadley cell or Ferrel cell on the descending side. One of the Foehn mechanisms not mentioned requires radiative warming that behaves much different over a body of water compared with land.
Umm…you may want to go back & learn/relearn some basic meteorology. Rising air does not *warm*, rising air cools as it ascends. Dry adiabatic lapse rate is a constant 9.8 °C/km (5.38 °F per 1,000 ft, 3 °C/1,000 ft) rising & falling. Moist adiabatic lapse rate varies strongly with temperature but a typical value is around 5 °C/km, (9 °F/km, 2.7 °F/1,000 ft, 1.5 °C/1,000 ft). So the release of latent heat keeps the cooling rate at around the 5 °C/km instead of the 9.8 °C/km. To say that the release of latent heat “further warmed the air” is factually incorrect.
Jkrob,
The statement is factually correct. Yes as air rises it cools at the adiabatic rate, that is why the water vapor condenses. However when water vapor condenses, it releases latent heat, which warms the air above what it would be if there was no water vapor.
The condensate immediately radiates the formerly latent heat away so that the lapse rate structure is broadly conserved.
That’s funny, I’ve never seen that dynamic shown on any Skew-T diagram or the math that defines it…which has been known about since the early 1900’s.
References please…
Jim,
Nice try…but no. It was cooling at a lesser rate (5 °C/km vs 9.8 °C/km). Your focus in the article of the *warming* is not justification to redefine a slower cooling rate…as “further warming”.
Words mean things. Use them properly.
JKrob,
You are oddly creating a problem when none exists simply via your choice of words. The dry adiabatic rate cools as a function of pressure/altitude. Air parcels experiencing the moist adiabatic rate are not cooled as fast as changes in pressure would dictate because latent heat is released and warms the air. I suggest you read up on the contribution of latent heat to foehn events
JKrob,
Normally I would just correct your mistake, but you went out of your way here to insist that anyone who claims a warming effect from air that climbs up and over a mountain, needs to go study basic meteorology.
Well, before one takes meteorology, one takes physical geography, in order to learn very basic stuff like what happens when air ascends over a mountain, the moisture condenses out of it, latent heat is released, and then the air warms by compression on the lee side of the mountain, such that by the time it returns to the same altitude it started out, what had been cool and moist air has become warm and dry air.
It is literally as basic as it gets JKrob.
If you actually consider yourself educated in this subject and are not just a bag of rude wrong hot air, here is a suggestion: Go study basic meteorology prerequisites…you aint ready for meteorology class yet.
Here in one simple picture are four of the ways that air can be warmed by ascending a mountain:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Foehn-warming-mechanisms-a-Upwind-of-the-mountain-cool-moist-air-can-be-blocked_fig1_277898709
This next one may help…as a child could understand it. It gives sample numbers along with the process of latent heat release and subsequent warming of air:
In your unnecessary and condescending comment, you did not even reference the entirety of the passage you yourself quoted.
The statement was that as air rose UP AND OVER the mountain, latent heat was released and this warmed the air.
That this happens is beyond dispute. These sorts of winds exist all over the planet, wherever there are mountains. The native Americans of the great plains had a name for these winds that in their language means “snow eater” wind…they call it a Chinook.
You may want to go back and relearn some basic manners, and civility…and while you are at it take a refresher in reading comprehension.
Everyone who is not trying to be a #@ur momisugly&%ing @ur momisugly$$&%@ur momisugly# knows exactly what Jim was saying, and those that also know a few things about the atmosphere know that what he described is factually correct.
The foehn effect is very well-known especially in Scotland and England east of mountains. These areas record the highest temperatures during winter in the whole UK when these events occur.
Record temperatures in locations around the world high or low mean absolutely nothing until at least 700 years of data are available. (covering two ~360 sun cycles)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File:Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg
More accurately around 2000 to 4000 years, where activity peaks to peaks over this time period.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Sunspots_11000_years.svg
The BBC, Guardian and Independent (not mentioned on here, but like the other two) are a disgrace. Full of pseudoscience and nonsensical claims on a regular basis like a escalator of lies churning out almost daily.
There so called journalists seem to have a competition to see who is the most dishonest.
‘The BBC ….. stating, “Scientists warn that global warming is causing so much melting at the South Pole, it will eventually disintegrate…”‘
More absolute extreme nonsense.
These journalist obviously think ice melts at -37c, feels like -50c in wind chill and the forecast to turn colder later in week.
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/antarctica/south-pole/ext
Meanwhile in Canada—the national Global News newsreader Dawna Friesen reported this Antarctic temperature as part of her daily “the sky is falling!” portion of the news. She added that this high temperature was a degree over the previous high temp. She added for emphasis that this signified warming of a full degree Celsius in a mere 5 years!
Thank you, Jim, for writing a great piece and calling out the mainstream media climate hucksters…When news first broke about the record-setting temps in Antarctica, I thought there was something rotten in Denmark..This was further reinforced by the plethora of alarmist articles immediately following the setting of the “record”. Sadly the unwashed masses will never get to read your piece and will continue to march along believing Antarctica is days away from melting into oblivion..
People are posting this on facebook all scaredy like only it’s from NPR. I don’t even know what to say to them other than “sounds like a nice day.”
“…temperatures had hovered around 0.5°C [0.9 °F]” [32.9 F]
Brian,
You are right and that correction was addressed in the comments above. The moderator has been asked to make the correction.
really, if you are disputing the measurements behind the news, you should provide measurements from your satellite and weather stations.
as the saying goes: talk is cheap
Chris you miss the point of the article. The temperature is not being disputed. The causes and implications are. There is absolutely no reason to attribute any fraction of that warming to human climate change the media implies. The media ignored peer-reviewed papers showing the peninsula has cooled for 2 decades. Before you get snarky about “talk is cheap” your snarky self should read those papers.
Furthermore, the media totally fails to address that actual physics of the very short-lived warming event. Instead of educating people about common foehn wind effects, they misleadingly push global warming.
Indeed the media’s BS is an example of how cheap that dishonest talk can be.
Talk is cheap, you got that part right Chris.
And none of it is cheaper than the 100% worthless drivel spewed and strewn by the alarmists and doomsday catastrophe crowd in academia and the MSM.
It literally has no value whatsoever.
Every word they speak makes the entire planet dumber.
Of cause it can be a warm day at the peninsula. It is placed like Iceland is, just at the opposite half of the Earth.
Few peoble know how far north the peninsula stretches, and therefor it is used to scare peoble with warming.
There is more silence about the rest of Antarctica, because it is not warming.
And the Antarctica propaganda continues, this time with a tabular iceberg calving, courtesy of the WaPo Andrew Freedman
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/iceberg-thats-twice-the-size-of-washington-cleaves-off-pine-island-glacier-in-antarctica-in-a-sign-of-warming/ar-BBZQUwK?ocid=ientp
“Iceberg that’s twice the size of Washington cleaves off Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, in a sign of warming”
As usual this kind of propagandist obfuscates the fact that the largest observed tabular iceberg calved from Antarctica’ s Scott Island, was measured by the USS Glacier 335 x 97 km for a 31,000 km2 area in 1956!
Big iceberg means big ice. Little iceberg, little ice
OT, I think. Has anyone noticed the large move on the ENSO meter over the last day or so?
Or maybe I should say, who else has noticed, and what does it mean?
Don’t Don’t forget the drowning Polar Bears around Antarctica as a result of this warm record. https://youtu.be/tgbLrW1Lwic
They had better hope that a record cold in never recorded anywhere because that will be proof of global cooling
“During Esperanza’s 2015 record warmth, temperatures had hovered around 0.5°C [0.9 °F] the day before.”
They are the same at negative 40.
0.5 C is about freezing. 0.9 F is well below that.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/13/antarctic-temperature-rises-above-20c-first-time-record
Same region, same weather dynamics, same fear mongering by the Guardian
On the British news and newspapers; Up to half a million mussels have been ‘cooked to death’ in the unusually hot sea off the coast of New Zealand. Marine experts believe the mass deaths were caused by climate change.
The molluscs were washed up at Maunganul Bluff Beach on the North Island. Prof Chris Battershill of Waikato Uni said there has been similar losses of cockles and clams after too much sunlight in calm seas.
Is the sea temperature around North Island so hot they are can have this effect? My immediate thought was it must have been related to deep sea volcanic ‘rumblings’, heating the sea around this area.