Arctic temperatures and sea ice…
NSCID pictures:
These images, derived from passive microwave satellite data, depict the most recent daily sea ice conditions. Along with current and median total extent, the daily extent graph also includes the extent during 2007, the year of the record low minimum extent (dashed green line). Note that during the transition across the calendar year, data from 2006 or 2008 is included for continuity of the plot with the 2007 record year. This comparison shows the substantial recent change observed in Northern Hemisphere sea ice.
NSCID press release:
What the researchers found was a scientific story more in line with what people were witnessing on the ground. Weather along the Arctic latitudes was behaving more unpredictably than in other parts of the world. “That’s an incredibly important parameter to care about, incredibly important,” said Weatherhead. “The way I try to describe it to some people, if we get an inch of rain out at my house in the month of July, I don’t need to turn on the sprinklers. But if we get an inch of rain on July 1, and no rain after that, my lawn is dead.”
Interesting article Dan. For those who do not follow this subject and only see the hyperbolic announcements in the MSM, take a look at the Antarctic ice chart below. One hemisphere is growing and the other falling. The overall average is pretty static.
Another thought about ice extent, a measure of grid cells with 15 or 30% ice coverage, is that since they are not solid they are extremely sensitive to wind changes. Wind can easily compress or extend that 15-30% coverage.
Spetember has been an interesting month for Arctic Sea Ice. NSIDC declared the end of the melt season, and claimed it to be the shortest on record. The wind changed, sea ice extent started to compress, even though the temps were low enough for freezing, and they were forced to change the date of the melt ending. It’s been an interesting season.
Of course it is the overall trend line over decades, not any one individual year, that key to these kind of charts. And speaking of increasing oscillation in the waather, we here in the south mid-Atlantic, we have just experienced such an event. After one of the dries summers on record from June through September, we have just had a deluged, with some spots in North Carolina receiving 22 inches of rain in a 72 hour period. Of course the lawn is still half dead, and now the surviving crops are being wiped out by the flooded farm fields. But it all good for BP and the Koch brothers.
Since Dan mentioned temperature, but his graphs did not show it. Below we can see the Danish Met. Inst. (DMI) temp graphs. Why DMI? The are one of the few countries that actually have weather statrion in the 80+ lats. The US is barely represented. Most of the Arctic temps reported by the US climate agencies are projections.
Rick said: “Of course it is the overall trend line over decades,…) The problem with climate is a 30 year period actually long enough to capture the cyclicity of the ice.
The longer glaciation cycles are fairly well known. Shorter cycles are actually just being discovered. One such 60 Yr cycle the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is now just leaving its 30 year warm phase coinciding with the satellite record of Arctic ice. Correlated? Perhaps. It Just may be too early to tell.
Since Dan mentioned temperature, but his graphs did not show it. Below we can see the Danish Met. Inst. (DMI) temp graphs. Why DMI? They are one of the few countries that actually have weather statrion in the 80+ lats. The US is barely represented. Most of the Arctic temps reported by the US climate agencies are projections.
Rick said: “Of course it is the overall trend line over decades,…” The problem with climate is a 30 year period actually long enough to capture the cyclicity of the ice.
The longer glaciation cycles are fairly well known. Shorter cycles are actually just being discovered. One such 60 Yr cycle the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is now just leaving its 30 year warm phase coinciding with the satellite record of Arctic ice. Correlated? Perhaps. It Just may be too early to tell.
Since Dan mentioned temperature, but his graphs did not show it. Below we can see the Danish Met. Inst. (DMI) temp graphs. Why DMI? They are one of the few countries that actually have weather stations in the 80+ lats. The US is barely represented. Most of the Arctic temps reported by the US climate agencies are projections.
My apologies to CoRev. I really don’t want to be mean to him
but anyone inclined to take his authoritative sounding comments as actually meaning anything is well advised to keep reading. There is real science and there is special interest science, and anyone who doesn’t have a pretty good grounding in at least high school science is going to have a hard time telling the real from the specious.
a clue for you might be the seriousness with whcih governemnts and some industries take the global warming problem. of course CoRev would say this is all a conspiracy to enslave us. I wish he’d concentrate on the conspiracy and leave the science alone, which i have reason to believe he knows nothing about.
CoRev is as usual dishonest about this. Just ask NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html
Using radar information collected between 1992 and 1996, oceanographer Eric Rignot, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), found that the Pine Island Glacier’s “grounding line” — the line between the glacier’s floating section and the part of the glacier that rests on the sea floor — had retreated rapidly towards the land. That meant that the glacier was losing mass.
A major review published in 2009 found that Rignot’s Pine Island Glacier finding hadn’t been a fluke 7: a large majority of the marine glaciers of the Antarctic Peninsula were retreating, and their retreat was speeding up. This summer, a British group revisited the Pine Island Glacier finding and found that its rate of retreat had quadrupled between 1995 and 2006
Meanwhile, measurements from the Grace satellites confirm that Antarctica is losing mass
You believe AGW because the platform on which your Ideology rests on, requires that you believe, or your entire perspective may collapse. You are emotionally tied to a faith no different than the Religous Zealots.
Some of us “Free” thinkers need to compile hard facts and evidence to decide the appropriate course of action, which the people attempting to force a course of action cannot provide.
And your claiiming Corev is the one that does not have an approach with an eye on the science……Bunk!
Bear said: “CoRev is as usual dishonest about this.” then provides cites from NASA that talks about Antarctic glaciers.
Just to remind folks, Antarctica is a frozen Continent. When we compare Arctic and Antarctic ice we are comparing the totality of ice at each loaction. We are not comparing a teeny tiny portion, a couple of glaciers. Also to remind folks glaciers do one thing consistently, when they begin to float. They calve. That means they break off, some times in very large chunks, as we have just seen in Greenland and several times in the past few years in the Antarctic.
Regardless, Bear is talking about a fraction of a percentage when he compares Antarctic glaciers to the total.
Sigh.
I am talking about the same thing all the scientists are. Global warming. It’s happening.
Your job seems to be to obfuscate the truth. Everybody and I mean everybody is acknowledging the disappearing glaciers etc.
http://www2.ucar.edu/news/record-high-temperatures-far-outpace-record-lows-across-us
Bury the truth CoRev.. If you can.
Good thing jimi put quotes around “Free” when he claimed to be a “Free” thinker. Otherwise, I’d have thought he was acting crazy.
I’ve made this point before, buy what the heck, here goes. When you can easily guess the general nature of a guy’s position (that’s “guy” in the sense of “person”, not “male person”) even before the guy tells you what it is, you probably aren’t hearing from somebody who actually thinks things through and follows the facts. Partisans and propogandists end up saying the same things, over and over. Otherwise, as Lord Keynes said “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
Rely on it – when climate data are the issue, CoRev is going to show up before the conversation gets underway, and try to make sure the conversation is all about doubting climate science. Every. Stinking. Time. CoRev is not here to see where the facts lead.
What is missing is any rationale for just adding up ice, as CoRev suggests. Not to mention the kind of slick way CoRev mentions that Antarctica is icy, but avoids whether its ice mass is increasing or decreasing, which is the point Bear makes (along with NASA). Do we know that adding up ice tells us anything about oh, say, trends in global climate, the extent of human impact on climate change or the risks inherent in the human-induced component of climate change? Because if we don’t know those things, then it’s not clear that CoRev has done anything by try to mislead us.
Really, folks, you should hit Bear’s link.
Maybe my memory is failing me, but I could swear that it was not too long ago when everybody agreed that global warming is happening and the primary point of disagreement was humanity’s responsibility for it.
The explosion of outright deniers is a fascinating political event and a testament to the efficacy of well-funded propaganda.
Since the north pole is on water and the south pole is on land, that’s one starting point to wonder about if looking at surface area has anything to do with volume of ice.
Greenies might say the northern hemisphere makes all the CO2, which is why the north pole shrinks and the south pole gets bigger. But I would wonder if there is a difference in heat storage and convection between being on land vs being in an ocean of currents.
But, like I’ve said before, I’m ignoring the GHW debate because I’m a dummy on the subject and wish to remain so.
Bear you are creating your own strawman argument and then arguing that strawman. I didn’t bring up the glaciers and no one but you and KH have even mentioned global warming.
I made two simple points. 1) Arctic Sea Ice extent, Dan’s chart, is way less than 1/2 the story about total Ice. 2) I, then showed Arctic temperatures which Dan referenced but failed to show.
You on the other hand, after calling me dishonest, brought up a single antarctic glacier and implied that it impacted the total Antarctic Ice extent.
I provided a picture of the Antartic. Please do us all a favor and point out Pine Island on that picture. While you are at it calculate the total loss of the Pine Island glacier compared to the antarctic ice total. Show your work as I for one would be interested in seeing how many zeroes there are after the decimal.
Tao, care to show your information on: “The explosion of outright deniers…”
maybe you are referring to august goups such as the UK Royal Society, which has just toned down its formal climate stance: “http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/30/the-royal-societys-toned-down-climate-stance/
I know of very few serious followers of the climate writings that do not agree (deny) that this planet is warming, and that mankind has some influence. So just where are you finding all these growing deniers?
KH, I doubt if you will return, as your normal MO is a hit and run meaningless attack.
But here goes your rationale. The term is Global Warming; therefore if we are using Arctic Sea ice as an analogy for Global impacts, then we actually should add the Southern hemisphere to get a true global view.
But, perhaps in KH-land where blind belief is paramount, then a global view is not needed to explain global effects. Nrtrhern Hemispheric numbers are just fine, just like projecting Arctic temperatures is also just fine, even though there are actual measured temperatures available.
For Bear and KH, and the other true believer commenting todya, try this artilde:
GRACE’s warts – new peer reviewed paper suggests errors and adjustments may be large
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/20/graces-warts-new-peer-reviewed-paper-suggests-errors-and-adjustments-may-be-large/
I’m not going to copy from it. True believers won’t read them or the article.
Sigh, again.
CoRev attempts to claim that skeptics just question the details. For the best of them, true. But just read the comments section from this post on one of his favorite sites. Sounds like outright deniers to me.
I just love it when folks like Jim make unsubstantiated claims like: “CoRev attempts to claim that skeptics just question the details.” Please point out when I ever made such a claim.
But after Jim completely misunderstands an article on weather, he then makes claims that skeptics are denying … what exactly? Enlighten us please.
BTW, since few here actually follow this subject, Jim’s article referenced a GISS claim that this Summer was one of the top five hottest. But even in the article we have this quote from Hansen:
“Unfortunately, it is common for the public to take the most recent local seasonal temperature anomaly as indicative of long-term climate trends,” Hansen notes. “[We hope] these global temperature anomaly maps may help people understand that the temperature anomaly in one place in one season has limited relevance to global trends.””
What do you think Jim just did?
Ummm….you just said
“I know of very few serious followers of the climate writings that do not agree (deny) that this planet is warming, and that mankind has some influence. So just where are you finding all these growing deniers?”.
That certainly does seem to be saying that neither you or other followers of climate science don’t question warming, only its extent and the level of mankind’s influence. My link was to the article but my comment explicitly pointed out that the comments on one of your favorite sites on the subject most certainly do seem to be attacking a reasonable article on the issue. I think it’s obvious from the comments that those people don’t believe it’s warming, much less that people affect it.
Over the years that I’ve visited AB, I’ve learned that if I just assume whatever CoRev posts is wrong, I’m usually on the right track. So it is in his bafflegab concerning Arctic vs. Antarctic sea ice:
“The paper also helps to dispel a common misconception—that the strong decline in Arctic ice and increase in Antarctic ice causes a net zero effect, Meier said.
“That’s not the case, because the two polar ecosystems are so different, he said. Arctic ice is multiyear, persisting through the seasons, while Antarctic ice forms and melts each year and has always been governed more by wind and ocean circulation than air temperatures, he said.
That’s not to say the melting effects of temperature, as seen in the Arctic, won’t also occur in the Antarctic—they’ll just take longer to show up, he said.”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/08/100816-global-warming-antarctica-sea-ice-paradox-science-environment/
Read the PNAS paper if you want to think critically about the science. Read CoRev if you want uncritical dogma.
The only claim I am making concerns the tone of the comments section, nothing about the article itself. Why in the universe you can’t understand that is beyond me.
And James Hansen has not lost credibility. Not in the minds of anyone who really thinks about these things. He never had any credibility in the minds of the wingnuts. Can’t lose what you don’t have. Among rational people in the debate he still has plenty of credibility.
Joel, would you mind sharing with us that ole PNAS reference???? You see the only one I found was buried in your NG article, but didn’t go to an article.
So if you are going to reference something, reference it directly!
Yup! Many are not impressed by GISS or even NSIDC pronouncements anymore. Do you remember the Arctic Sea Ice was supposed to be gone by 2011, 12, or 13?
Now your referring to the tone of the comments re: weather? We might as well go down to the local market and talk to the farmers. They’ll give us both an earful.
You’ve shown your ignorance over the climate issues, and now are making things up to salvage some small portion of your dignity.
Jim said: “And James Hansen has not lost credibility. Not in the minds of anyone who really thinks about these things.”
And my only answer can be: Uh huh!
May I point out Jim started using terms like skeptics ( a perfectly valid and acceptabe term), and then has moved all the way to name calling, wingnuts.
Jim, Joel and and anyone else still following this thread, the credibility wheels came off the wagon with the release of the climategate emails.
None! Not one of the catasrophic predictions for the impact of AGW has come true, or appears to have any chance of coming true. Those predictions are primarily from the GCMs that are now found to be off by 2 to 4 sigma.
Anyone still believing in the quality of any predictions from this science is either not following the ebb and flow of the various findings, or as I have said several times in this thread is a “true believer” as in a religious fanatic.
Thank you for finally showing your true, complete denier colors. No one but the worst of the deniers, not actual skeptics buy into your argument concerning “climategate”. So far every investigation has disagreed with you and your fellow members of the Fruitcake Squad. Yes, you have proven yourself to be a wingnut. Don’t like it? Tough. Quit being one and proving by your writing that you are one. For one thing you betray yourself as being a denier with this paragraph.
“None! Not one of the catasrophic predictions for the impact of AGW has come true, or appears to have any chance of coming true. Those predictions are primarily from the GCMs that are now found to be off by 2 to 4 sigma.”
Of course your claim that the GISS or NSIDC said that Arctic sea ice would vanish sometime in the next three years is a complete and utter lie. There are some people who have said that in a worst case scenario this might be possible, they did not consider it a likely event. There is, whether you and your fellow fools would ever admit it or not, a big difference. It is in fact you who have discredited yourself and proven that much of what you write here are lies and deception attempting to show yourself as actually giving a damn about the science when in fact the only thing you care about is the conservative ideology that underlies the denialist cause.
Could someone add an ignore function to this blog so I don’t have to see this liar’s posts any more?
For those who might be interested here are the concluding remarks from the Royal Society document CoRev’s link refers to.
Somehow I don’t think it agrees with his denialist friends.
Jim said: “Somehow I don’t think it agrees with his denialist friends.” Yup! Even again. Due to a near mutiny within its rank they have softened their stance on Global Warming, and you are absolutely correct, it does not go far enough for many skeptics.
G’Day to you!