I haven’t entered my late bet. I’m eyeballing:
Looks like I need to get my “predict based on curve fits to everything” script up and running tomorrow to see how things are going. It is looking like a new record. Remember: Late bets are open.
[sockulator(../musings/wp-content/plugins/BettingScripts/UAHBets5.php?Metric=NSIDC September- average NH Ice Extent?Units=millions km^2?cutOffMonth=8?cutOffDay=23?cutOffYear=2012?DateMetric=Bet Placed in August, 2012?)sockulator]
Cutoff August 22.
(Note: I had a typo and will need to manually change a label in the database when the time comes. It’s perfectly doable but I need to remember to do it before August 22.)
The propensity to speak of “new records” in a time-history that is very short relative to the time-scales of significant natural variability is the hallmark less of sober science than of giddy PR.
Sky, I had to laugh at the recent report of a “record breaking” 17 feet long python caught in the Florida Everglades. People think that’s a real big snake. HA HA !
A BIG snake is the 48-feet long ton-and-half TITAN BOA that terrorized our ancestors 60 million years ago, and if anyone thinks I’m kidding I have pictures:
http://smithsonianscience.org/2012/03/largest-snake-the-world-has-ever-seen-is-being-brought-back-to-life-by-smithsonian-channel/
OK, I don’t really know if there actually were people back then, but if there were, I bet this snake scared the daylights out of them. It could swallow an entire family whole.
sky–
On the one hand, you have a point. To the extent that the record is short(ish) the fact that it’s a low is not necessarily all that meaningful. On the other hand… still a record and the recent history is for declining ice. And declining is is predicted prior to the record being observed. (That said using the “evaluating Jean Dixon rule” you have to discount the number correct predictions relative to all predictions. )
Not to mention that the Antarctic is probably at a “record” for having extra ice
Well, http://nsidc.org/icelights/2011/01/31/arctic-sea-ice-before-satellites/ suggests in addition to being in danger of breaking the record-low Arctic ice extent since 1979, the new record almost definitely would cover since the mid-1950s, and probably for the last several hundred years. But that ice extent was probably lower than present 5500 years ago. Does that add some extra context?
And, while Antarctic ice has been trending upwards since 1979 (though it isn’t clear if there is any chance of breaking the 2007 record this year), go back any further than that and you get a different picture: I can’t find a good graph, but http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=23942 suggests that “there was a dramatic loss of Antarctic sea ice cover from 1973 to 1977, and since then the ice has gradually spread in area.” See also http://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-us/publications/australian-antarctic-magazine/2001-2005/issue-6-autumn-2004/ice-core-evidence-for-20-decline-in-antarctic-sea-ice-extent-since-the-1950s. So even 2007 was very unlikely to have been a record in the 50 year context.
-MMM
I’m new to this, so can someone please clarify:
This bet is for the average September figure, not the minimum or the end month figure?
Cryosphere has it 2.96 Million sq/km today..
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html
I am going to stick with my early bet of 3.99 as it still looks pretty good.
Cyclone– that’s area. Don’t bet those numbers. But it does look like we’ll get a record on area.
LOL! OK! I’ll give you mass too.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2_CY.png?%3C?php%20echo%20time%28%29?
The graph at the top of this page says “Sea Ice Extent”, but the scale is in square km. How can “extent” be in area?
Surely it should be in km, i.e. the mean extent from zero latitude or the maximum extent from zero latitude?
cyclonebuster, your first link shows area and the second shows volume i.e. cubic km, not mass (which would be kg), which AFAIK is not what we are betting on either.
If the IARC-JAXA and Cryosphere Today figures are both in square km, then surely they are equivalent.
All of this seems designed to confuse the uninitiated.
Ray –
from http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
As an example, a region of 10 km^2 with 30% ice concentration, would count 10 km^2 towards extent, and 3 km^2 towards area.
Ray: It turns out that “extent” and “area” are both area measures… but “area” tries to measure the area of the actual ice, whereas “extent” is the area of the sea covered by at least 15 percent ice concentration. Or something like that.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm has more technical definitions of extent and area at the bottom of the page.
HarroldW & MMM, thanks for the explanations.
That makes things clearer – I think!
It is important to know what we are betting on.
LOL! I like area better. Why? I don’t care about the extent and 15% ice concentration because when the Arctic melts out in summertime perhaps in 8 years who is going to care about the 15% anyways?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9744000/9744378.stm
Cyclone, I don’t like area because it isn’t reliably measured.
The problem with all of those squiggly lines you like is none of them have error bars, and some of them like mass, have large unverifiable modeling assumptions. This is part of what I sometimes call the “post-science modern nature of climate research.”
In real science we’re taught that a number without a quantifiable uncertainty has little or no empirical value (hell if you stood up in a conference room and presented results without quantifiable errors, you’d get properly talked down, let alone what happens to your paper if you try and get it peer reviewed).
You strike me as one of those guys who doesn’t care whether the numbers are meaningful, as long as they fit your agenda. It’s going to melt in 15 years from now, instead of this year (last prediction)?
Interesting what you value as “truth”.
Carrick,
8 years from now, not 15!
Of course, the satellites may mistake thousands of floating polar bear carcases for floating ice, so it might never actually reach zero.
SteveF:
Aye, and the the kayaks and carcasses of arctic ice activists too.
“Cyclone, I don’t like area because it isn’t reliably measured.”
I like it because it is measured without the confusion of extent with 15% ice concentration. It is more simplistic that way.. Either way you slice it when it is gone in perhaps 8 years it won’t make a difference because it will be gone…. There will be nothing left to measure. 0 = 0
I just don’t like meaningless numbers. Arctic summertimes could experience an ice free period in as few as 8 years or as long as 80.
Either way it’s hard to come up with a long list of reasons why it matters.
“Carrick (Comment #101779)
August 18th, 2012 at 12:55 pm
I just don’t like meaningless numbers. Arctic summertimes could experience an ice free period in as few as 8 years or as long as 80.
Either way it’s hard to come up with a long list of reasons why it matters.”
Not so long of a list of reasons why it matters the North Arctic is ice free between 8 and 80 years from now? Lets here them if the list isn’t to long…
Carrick (Comment #101779)
I bet my list is much longer than yours. Would you like to compare?
go for it.
Let’s vet your list.
It has to relate jut to the disappearance of summer arctic ice though.
And you get booby points for every item that is entirely speculative.
Cyclone:
And to be completely clear, the list of “what matters” isn’t over North Arctic being completely ice free. For a period of weeks to a few months of each year it might. That’s what the discussion is over, not the apocalyptic notion there won’t be e.g. any winter ice there.
Let’s do it for even one day… You go first since you said your list is small and first mentioned it. Mine is rather large……. Waiting……. Who’s the judge over speculation?
@Carrick (Comment #101779)
August 18th, 2012 at 12:55 pm
There has been a significant change already. This is not just a few freaky years, this has seen the disappearance of any substantial permanent sea ice in the Arctic. Pretty well all that is left is the year to year winter freeze.
As for what significance this has globally, a warming ocean will affect many ecosystems. For example
Bugs,
What do kelp beds near Tasmania have to do with Arctic ocean ice? Whatever influences human activities may be having on Kelp (warming and more likely other factors), the kelp is probably not aware of the volume of Arctic ice, or if that ice is multi-year or single year. That general warming, and a host of other human induce changes, can have impacts on ecosystems is not the issue here. I was more expecting comments about polar bears and walruses.
SteveF (Comment #101794)
August 19th, 2012 at 9:51 am
Bugs,
What do kelp beds near Tasmania have to do with Arctic ocean ice? Whatever influences human activities may be having on Kelp (warming and more likely other factors), the kelp is probably not aware of the volume of Arctic ice, or if that ice is multi-year or single year. That general warming, and a host of other human induce changes, can have impacts on ecosystems is not the issue here. I was more expecting comments about polar bears and walruses.
SteveF , What does food in your freezer or refrigerator have to do with the amount of freon in its cooling loop? Don’t you know the Arctic is Earths refrigerator helping to keep it cool? Polar bears and Walruses next?
cyclone: My list -> “.”
Let’s see what you come up with.
bugs, for “what matters” it’s the relative impact of arctic sea ice loss in the summer time compared to other anthropogenic activity.
That’s a different criterion that “does it change anything?” Things change all the time, both natural and anthtropogenically forced. Th questions is whether, on the greater scheme of things, this is a wart or a more serious condition.
[And yes, it’s a serious question, that deserves better than “what if” fairy dust scenarios.]
cyclone:
What dreck.
Cyclone,
Freon? What is that? Don’t you still have a natural gas fired refrigerator? And please connect my refrigerator to the Arctic in some meaningful way. Last I thought about refrigeration it was pretty clear that my refrigerator warmed the rest of
my house, not helped keep it cool. Perhaps you have a more profound analysis of recrigeration that explains the connection with the Arctic.
SteveF (Comment #101800)
Well if you warm your house you also warm your planet don’t you?
Carrick (Comment #101797)
Here is one for you Carrick… Once the summertime ice is gone,the rate at which Greenland’s ice sheet melt increases. Why you might ask? Answer: Because water now surrounds Greenland instead of ice which is warmer than the ice and that heat will transfer and warm the air more and will spread over Greenland and melt more ice more rapidly..
cyclone here’s another one for you: With open water around Greenland, the inland regions (which remain below freezing during the summer months) will receive more precipitation in the form of snow. Thus more melting near the shores, greater accumulation at higher elevations.
I’m still chuckling at your “refrigerator” example. The north and south hemispheres are so tightly coupled that during the 80s through now we’ve see a mild cooling in the Antarctic at the same time the Arctic has been warming at a dramatically faster rate—but not during the summer months. What the heck Cyclone, I thought you said the presence of the ice was critical in keeping temperatures cool. Wonder why it is it that the period where the greatest ice loss has occurred shows no accelerated rate of warming.
Not only is there a very weak coupling between hemispheres (which is SteveF’s point about Tasmanian kelp I believe), the largest effect of global warming on the arctic occurs when there is ice coverage.
cyclonebuster (Comment #101803),
Reference to a published study?
Greenland is mostly surrounded by water in the late summer as it is.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.thumb.png
Carrick,
Cyclones refrigerator ‘parallel’ to the Earth and the Arctic is the best example of dreck I have seen in a while. It sounds like the drivel you would expect to hear parroted by poorly educated 7th graders; those who’s teachers babble on about science they do not remotely understand.
cyclonebuster says:
Excellent ! Well done Cyclone. Now you just have to take this to its logical conclusion. I have been waiting for you green types to discover entropy. Just think of all of the great arguments you can make:
There is only so much entropy and those evil capitalists are using it all up. What they are doing is neither sustainable nor reversible ! In fact they are deliberately denying the science to move us into a higher entropy state that science says we can’t reverse ! Big industry and agriculture creates significantly more entropy than poor individuals. It’s simply not fair ! I demand equal entropy. Each step gets us closer to the heat death of the universe, the poor and the children will take the brunt of it !
Climate science ? Blech ! Now here is a crusade I could get behind.
“Carrick (Comment #101804)
August 19th, 2012 at 3:20 pm
cyclone here’s another one for you: With open water around Greenland, the inland regions (which remain below freezing during the summer months) will receive more precipitation in the form of snow. Thus more melting near the shores, greater accumulation at higher elevations.”
Really? Then why all the rain,fog and drizzle now? Doesn’t rain,fog and drizzle melt snow? Thought so…….
Cities
Place Alerts Temp. Humidity Pressure Conditions Wind Updated
Aasiaat 43 °F 100% 30.18 in Overcast West at 5 mph 8:20 PM WGST Save
Angisoq 38 °F 100% 30.07 in Fog WNW at 25 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Aputiteeq 43 °F 77% 30.01 in Fog NE at 9 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Cape Harald Moltke 28 °F 67% n/a Cloudy West at 22 mph Estimated Save
Cape Tobin 64 °F 30% 29.98 in Partly Cloudy SSE at 6 mph 4:50 PM EGST Save
Carey Island 38 °F 76% 30.28 in Clear East at 4 mph 6:00 PM ADT Save
Daneborg 58 °F 22% 30.11 in Partly Cloudy NNE at 24 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Danmarkshavn 44 °F 50% 30.19 in Clear ENE at 12 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Hall Land 35 °F 67% n/a Rain SSW at 17 mph Estimated Save
Henrik Kroeyer Holme 38 °F 67% 29.96 in Clear SW at 15 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Ikermiit 56 °F 28% 30.00 in Clear SE at 2 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Ikermiuarsuk 46 °F 72% 30.05 in Fog SE at 2 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Illoqqortoormiut 51 °F 46% 30.01 in Mostly Cloudy NW at 7 mph 9:00 PM EGST Save
Ilulissat 37 °F 100% 30.18 in Fog NNW at 4 mph 8:20 PM WGST Save
Kangerlussuaq 48 °F 82% 30.15 in Clear West at 6 mph 8:20 PM WGST Save
Kangilinnguit 47 °F 71% n/a Clear WNW at 8 mph Estimated Save
Kap Morris Jesup 38 °F 71% 29.75 in Rain WSW at 26 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Kitsissorsuit 41 °F 100% 30.18 in Rain North at 5 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Kitsissut 43 °F 93% 30.18 in Overcast East at 5 mph 8:20 PM WGST Save
Kulusuk 48 °F 76% 30.01 in Scattered Clouds SW at 2 mph 7:50 PM WGST Save
Maniitsoq 45 °F 87% 30.18 in Clear West at 13 mph 8:20 PM WGST Save
Mittarfik Nuuk 48 °F 76% 30.18 in Mostly Cloudy North at 8 mph 8:20 PM WGST Save
Narsarsuaq 59 °F 55% 30.06 in Partly Cloudy West at 5 mph 5:50 PM WGST Save
Navy Operated 0 °F 56% n/a Partly Cloudy ENE at 6 mph Estimated Save
Nerlerit Inaat 64 °F 30% 29.98 in Partly Cloudy SSE at 6 mph 4:50 PM EGST Save
Nord 30 °F 66% n/a Clear West at 21 mph Estimated Save
Nord Aws 40 °F 58% 29.91 in Clear West at 17 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Nunarsuit 40 °F 100% 30.14 in Fog WNW at 17 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Nuuk 48 °F 76% 30.18 in Mostly Cloudy North at 8 mph 8:20 PM WGST Save
Nuussuaataa 45 °F 82% 30.19 in Partly Cloudy SE at 10 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Paamiut 43 °F 82% 30.17 in Drizzle NW at 16 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Pituffik 41 °F 61% 30.17 in Clear WNW at 5 mph 6:58 PM ADT Save
Prins Christian Sund 50 °F 73% 30.05 in Clear WSW at 2 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Qaanaaq 17 °F 81% n/a Clear SE at 9 mph Estimated Save
Qaarsut 43 °F 100% 30.17 in Partly Cloudy NW at 14 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Qaqortoq 59 °F 55% 30.06 in Partly Cloudy West at 5 mph 5:50 PM WGST Save
Sioralik 45 °F 87% 30.18 in Clear West at 13 mph 8:20 PM WGST Save
Sisimiut 43 °F 93% 30.18 in Overcast East at 5 mph 8:20 PM WGST Save
Sisimiut Mittarfia 43 °F 93% 30.18 in Overcast East at 5 mph 8:20 PM WGST Save
Summit 2 °F 36% in Partly Cloudy ENE at 4 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Tasiilaq 48 °F 76% 30.01 in Scattered Clouds SW at 2 mph 7:50 PM WGST Save
Ukiivik 45 °F 89% 30.19 in Fog NW at 15 mph 7:00 PM WGST Save
Upernavik 45 °F 93% 30.15 in Fog SW at 10 mph 8:20 PM WGST Save
@SteveF (Comment #101794)
August 19th, 2012 at 9:51 am
This is a global phenomenon, that is aGw. The warming ocean is the environment shared by all ocean species. The tone of Carricks question implied he really doesn’t care if it’s warming in the Arctic, it’s just a few polar bears anyway.
cyclonebuster –
You quoted Carrick suggesting that “inland” “high elevation” sites are likely to accumulate snow. Then you throw out a mess of coastal (or island), low-elevation stations which are above freezing, and think that’s a rebuttal? The only stations in your list which are high elevation are “Navy Operated” and “Summit”, both 10K+ ft. They read 0 & 2 degF respectively on your list. All the other stations are 400 ft elevation or less.
No, that’s not a rebuttal. Try harder.
HaroldW (Comment #101812)
August 19th, 2012 at 9:06 pm
“cyclonebuster –
You quoted Carrick suggesting that “inland†“high elevation†sites are likely to accumulate snow. Then you throw out a mess of coastal (or island), low-elevation stations which are above freezing, and think that’s a rebuttal? The only stations in your list which are high elevation are “Navy Operated†and “Summitâ€, both 10K+ ft. They read 0 & 2 degF respectively on your list. All the other stations are 400 ft elevation or less.
No, that’s not a rebuttal. Try harder.”
Ok how about this? If this is occuring with summertime ice left how bad do you think it will be when the summertime ice is gone? You think it will be better? THINK AGAIN……………
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18978483
cyclone, you just can’t think very clearly can you. Let’s stick to your snafu with elevation, and leave it at that.
Apparently you know so little about the topic you’re arguing about, you aren’t even aware of the mean elevation of the Greenland ice sheet, nor do you know that what I am discussing is actually the consensus position on what happens to the Greenland ice sheet when open water appears in the summertime.
Regarding your url post, what do you think happened to the water a few days after the surface ice melted this summer in Greenland. (Let me give you a big hint, it froze up again. It didn’t magically disappear.)
Also, a series of urls to sensationalist news stories (I know, oxymoron) does not a list of “things that matter” make.
It’s obvious at this point that cyclone doesn’t have any clue about “what matters” that will happen when the Arctic ice fully melts in summer.
bugs:
The “tone” of my question!? Hahahaha. That’s a new one.
Now bugs is hearing tones coming from his computer.
I’d have that looked at, may be a virus.
(Regarding polar bears, they will do fine. bugs can stop crying over their supposed demise anytime.)
“Carrick (Comment #101814)
August 19th, 2012 at 9:40 pm
cyclone, you just can’t think very clearly can you. Let’s stick to your snafu with elevation, and leave it at that.
Apparently you know so little about the topic you’re arguing about, you aren’t even aware of the mean elevation of the Greenland ice sheet, nor do you know that what I am discussing is actually the consensus position on what happens to the Greenland ice sheet when open water appears in the summertime.
Regarding your url post, what do you think happened to the water a few days after the surface ice melted this summer in Greenland. (Let me give you a big hint, it froze up again. It didn’t magically disappear.)”
Better check again it is headed back down again……….How much melt was lost to the sea????
http://vortex.accuweather.com/adc2004/pub/includes/columns/climatechange/2012/590x482_08161432_734px-0-3200m_greenland_ice_sheet_reflectivity_byrd_polar_research_center.png
cyclone:
Most of the melt water went into melt ponds, where it then froze.
Water in the center of Greenland doesn’t magically leap in the the ocean.
I suppose that is a new fact for you. Geography is fun isn’t it?
Maybe you should try the Sesame Street Climate Blog? I have a feeling it’s a bit more on your level.
Bugs prefers his science to be emotional.
“Carrick (Comment #101818)
August 19th, 2012 at 10:12 pm
cyclone:
How much melt was lost to the sea????
Most of the melt water went into melt ponds, where it then froze.
Water in the center of Greenland doesn’t magically leap in the the ocean.
I suppose that is a new fact for you. Geography is fun isn’t it?
Maybe you should try the Sesame Street Climate Blog? I have a feeling it’s a bit more on your level.”
WOW a pond the size of Greenland you sure that isn’t a lake,inland sea or an ocean?
Sure looks like a lot of run off from the glacier which are outflows of the Greenland ice sheet to me how about you? Get a clue yet?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RauzduvIYog&feature=player_detailpage#t=9s
Carrick (Comment #101816)
August 19th, 2012 at 9:49 pm
It’s more your idea that the biological world, being unknown to you, but being based ultimately on physics, will be ok, since everything is made of atoms. The kelp is a good example of how quickly even what seems to be a minor change in temperature in our terms can have a devastating effect on an ecosystem.
bugs –
Five quatloos it’s due to overfishing. We’ve seen many other claims that a particular biological effect is due to climate change, which turned out not to be so. There seems to be a tendency to underestimate resilience of natural systems. Including polar bears.
The Cryoshpere Today has 2012 beating 2007. Thanks fossil fuel GHG’s.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.area.arctic.png
@HaroldW (Comment #101822)
August 20th, 2012 at 5:15 am
I think the scientists on the scene have a better grasp on the issue than you. One hint would be the species that thrive in the warmer waters that are now there.
As for the polar bears, the mega fauna are the most obvious organisms to watch, but as that report shows, there is change happening around the globe,in species that aren’t so obvious.
Artifex (Comment #101807)-“I demand equal entropy”
Life imitates the People’s Cube wouldn’t even begin to describe it. 😉
But surely the inequalities of mass and gravity in our Solar System are the greater Kapitalist Injustice Komrade! Occupy Uranus! Demand equality gravity for all planets!
bugs:
Typical bugs, hand-waving and appeal to authority. I bet they don’t, in fact “they have no idea” is probably closest to the truth, except when it comes to knowing how to land funds and engage in attention-whoring with the media.
By the way my comment on polar bears is based on an examination of the science, rather than hand-wringing from activists. The polar bears will do just fine. Bet you have no idea why that is.
cyclone:
So did it magically jump into the ocean, or didn’t it?
As I’ve repeated several times, low elevation regions lose ice, high elevation ones gain it. Nothing you’ve drecked about contradicts that.
Bored with your dim bulb. Have a nice one.
Re: cyclonebuster (Aug 19 23:37),
Wow! How impressive! Such unprecedented water flow in a usually lazy trickle of summer runoff!
http://www.psice.psu.edu/Photos/GreenlandJournal/GreenlandJournal-Pages/Image3.html
And to think that a single exceptional outpouring of water managed to carve a solid slab of granite like that… Amazing!
@Carrick (Comment #101827)
August 20th, 2012 at 8:24 am
No,I think you are trivialising their research because it doesn’t fit your preconceptions. Saying they are just in it for the gold, without any evidence at all, says more about you than them.
I would love to know why you think polar bears will do better with less ice, when it forms their hunting ground. Intuitively they have to do worse.
Here is another bad effect of loss of summer time ice. World ocean heat content will go up faster since there is less ice mass to keep it cooler. This chart will have to be rescaled since it is almost off the chart now… Probably already is since it is 3 years old now…..
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/ocean-heat-content.gif
cyclonebuster 101849,
I am uncertain if this comment was intended to be humorous or not.
.
But is case you are serious, let me point out that while the total current heat accumulation (mostly in the oceans) is on the order of 0.5 watt per square meter, the globally averaged cooling effect from year-on-year arctic ocean ice loss is very much smaller, probably less than 0.008 watt/M^2 averaged globally. It is really not an important factor in Earth’s total heat balance, and if it were gone in late summer, it would make little direct change in the rate of accumulation. There may be important impacts from declining Arctic sea ice, but this is not one of them.
.
Having read several of your comments, I get the feeling that you don’t make a living in science or engineering.
bugs (Comment #101824)
I don’t doubt that. But you seem to have assumed that I was claiming that my knowledge on the subject exceeded theirs. Not so.
.
The article with which you introduced the subject — and which I presumed you’d read — quotes Dr Karen Gowlett-Holmes:
My comment expressed my assessment that, of the two possible causes put forth by scientists on the scene, overfishing is a more plausible cause of the kelp’s plight, than climate change.
.
[Aside: the article also has her saying that “the minimum winter water temperatures off south-eastern Tasmania had risen 20 per cent over the past two decades.” 20% of ~280K would be 56K, right? 😉 ]
cyclonebuster (Comment #101849)
I’m interpreting this to mean that each year, some of the earth’s energy imbalance goes into melting Arctic ice; if no ice is present to melt, then that energy will instead act to heat up the ocean.
.
Plausible, but how significant is this? Ice volume loss is estimated at -2.8*10^3 km^3/decade [Source]. The heat of fusion allows one to convert that into energy: -8.4*10^20 J/decade. The NOAA chart which you cited, considers ocean heat content in units of 10^22 J. [Why they couldn’t use the perfectly good ZJ = 10^21 J is beyond me. But I digress.] Expressed in those units, the energy involved in ice melt is 0.084*10^22 J/decade. The NOAA chart shows a growth in OHC of about 8*10^22 J over the last decade. So ice melt is only about 1% of OHC increase in magnitude.
.
SteveF’s figure of 0.008 W/m2, compared to 0.5 W/m2, is of a similar proportion.
bugs:
Had I actually said that, and just that, yes that would be true. That you lied and said I said that and just that, says even more about you.
Done with you bugs. I am tired of your dishonesty.
SteveF:
That would be the least I would say about him.
That he has absolutely no idea why the Arctic summer ice melting matters might be another. It’s bad, m’kay?
HaroldW:
Did you find the peer reviewed article that this news account was based on?
Carrick:
Nope, I didn’t look beyond the article. Re-reading, I thought it was based on this recent CSIRO “report card”, but that doesn’t mention kelp. Probably no recent publication spurred the news article, just the administrative step of endangerment listing.
.
Google pointed me to this 5-year-old report which also mentions over-fishing of rock lobster as a possible cause of the kelp’s decline. It contains the memorable line:
Thanks HaroldW. In retrospect I’m trying to figure out the link between this article and NH ice that bugs seemed to think was present. I suspect there isn’t one (other than the issue of AGW, which is completely separate from the narrower question–and its significance–of summer ice melts in the high Arctic). I guess I should have tried to track down the report (if there is one) it was based on, before branding the researchers as I did.
Never ascribe to researchers avarice what can be explained by the ignorant of advocates.
Carrick –
I was equally baffled about why bugs thought the kelp story is relevant to a discussion about the significance of Arctic ice melt. The connection seems to be that both are related to ocean temperatures, and (possibly) both are effects of AGW. But that wasn’t really the question, was it?. However, conversations can often go off in unexpected directions.
Re: SteveF (Comment #101855) 

These kinds of comments are always fraught with danger. The last time I recall such a feeling expressed here, you were making them about me. 😉
Best to stick with the arguments posted, IMHO. They yield plenty of material already.
HaroldW:
I admit again being confused… I thought he was saying the researchers were claiming they were connected. As far as I can tell they make no such claim. Saying bugs is confused is a bit obvious oth.
These guys do a lot of wringing of hands… without apparently really knowing why they do it.
I suppose worrying about a future maybe (“what about the polar bears?”) beats addressing the 2,0000,0000,000 living in abject poverty or the millions of children a year who die from preventable diseases, unsustainable water usage or any of the other real pressing issues of our age.
Er no it doesn’t. Some people I guess want something nebulous and unreachable to dump all of their angst into. That somehow absolves them from having to take action on anything tangible. In their own minds anyway.
@Carrick
you said
The old “Only in it for the gold” meme.
Polar bears do just fine in areas (like the Hudson Bay) where the ice disappears entirely in the summer.
http://env.gov.nu.ca/sites/default/files/foxe_basin_polar_bears_2012.pdf
It seems very unlikely to me that polar bears will disappear just because there is no ice in september.
@Carrick
A false dilemma.
Oliver 101883,
“fraught with danger”?
I am not sure what that danger would be.
IIRC, I have never thought you were joking… and I am pretty sure you work in oceanography or a related field.
.
Speaking of the ocean, Nantucket Sound is beautiful this morning.
bugs 101887,
My personal experience is that arranging funding for current and future research is pretty high on the list of priorities for lots of researchers, and not just in climate science. Are they all in it for the gold? Resorting to trumpet blaring press releases does seem more common in climate science, but that is by no means unique to climate science. For a ‘policy relevant’ field, blaring press releases may be more effective than in some other fields.
“HaroldW (Comment #101869)
August 20th, 2012 at 6:24 pm
cyclonebuster (Comment #101849)
World ocean heat content will go up faster since there is less ice mass to keep it cooler.
I’m interpreting this to mean that each year, some of the earth’s energy imbalance goes into melting Arctic ice; if no ice is present to melt, then that energy will instead act to heat up the ocean.”
That would be correct as that heat is no longer allowed to escape to space due to fossil fuel GHG’s and so we are stuck with global heating of the land,sea and air until they are removed.
bugs:
I don’t think it’s a false dilemma. I think people like you (but not necessarily you) use the ‘what about the polar bears?” mantra to avoid having to deal with immediate, uncomfortable issues, like the ones I’ve raised. Some of them even seen AGC remediation (redistribution of wealth) as a means of solving both problems, and have said as much.
I will certainly stand by the comment that people who study kelp have little knowledge about the interrelationship (“telecommunications”) between Arctic sea ice and warming Tasmanian waters (as I don’t think anybody really knows how they are related at this point being the models aren’t that reliable), and considerably more about landing funds.
Of course it turns out that you raised an unrelated issue, they were never trying to link polar ice to kelp, and I had wrongly assumed there was anything coherent in your thinking, an error I shall strive to avoid in the future.
Little vague barbed comments with no thinking behind them is more your forté in any case.
I don’t think they will have any problem getting funds to research an issue as serious as 95% of the kelp forests in question disappearing.
cyclonebuster (Comment #101893) –
But what have you to say about the quantitative amount of such cooling, which above is given as ~1% of the OHC accumulation rate? Why do you consider it significant?
Cyclonebuster 101893,
Wow, HarroldW was trying to clearly restate what you were saying so that he could show you why the effect is insignificant. You managed to both ignore the entire thrust of his comment, AND, restate what HaroldW had tried to clarify as a muddled mess yet again.
bugs (Comment #101895) –
“…an issue as serious as 95% of the kelp forests in question disappearing.”
Read the article more closely: “In some areas off the east coast of Tasmania they have shrunk by more than 95 per cent, according to CSIRO experts.”
.
Not at all the same thing. In fact, strong locality of effects is suggestive of a cause other than the warming of the current.
If I were a rock-lobster fisherman, I’d be happy to blame warming sea currents for sure. Because the alternative is a curtailment of my own rock lobster fishing.
By accident, this is a perfect example of how people misuse science so they can justify continuing “business as usual.”
Re: bugs (Comment #101895)
bugs,
People can be (un?)surprisingly unresponsive to compaigns like “Save the Kelp!”
RE:
HaroldW (Comment #101882)
August 20th, 2012 at 10:18 pm
Carrick –
I was equally baffled about why bugs thought the kelp story is relevant to a discussion about the significance of Arctic ice melt. The connection seems to be that both are related to ocean temperatures, and (possibly) both are effects of AGW. But that wasn’t really the question, was it?. However, conversations can often go off in unexpected directions.
####################################################
I think it is the art of misdirection. If someone is getting to close to genuine understanding, derail the discussion if possible. I see this a lot over on Judith’s site where the loyal alarmist soldiers come out of the woodwork on a particularly interesting topic.
‘HaroldW (Comment #101896)
August 21st, 2012 at 6:54 am
cyclonebuster (Comment #101893) –
But what have you to say about the quantitative amount of such cooling, which above is given as ~1% of the OHC accumulation rate? Why do you consider it significant?”
What cooling? If there was cooling the ice would be gaining not diminishing in area and or mass. What is significant is the loss off ice.
cyclonebuster 101904,
“What cooling? If there was cooling the ice would be gaining not diminishing in area and or mass. What is significant is the loss off ice.”
WHAT?!? {Smacks forehead in disbelief.} OK so you really do not understand what we are talking about. ’nuff said.
SteveF:
No, he’s lost as a goose.
SteveF (Comment #101905)
“August 21st, 2012 at 10:58 am
cyclonebuster 101904,
“What cooling? If there was cooling the ice would be gaining not diminishing in area and or mass. What is significant is the loss off ice.â€
WHAT?!? {Smacks forehead in disbelief.} OK so you really do not understand what we are talking about. ’nuff said.”
Smacking yourself upside the head is not going to magically cause the ice to reappear. You better find some other formula to restore the ice………
Loss of all Northern summertime Arctic ice will also cause a change in Earths wobble, tilt and rotational velocity….
Carrick (Comment #101906),
In a parallel to Don Rumsfeld’s “unknown unkonwns”, we have in cyclone a perfect example of someone who doesn’t understand enough to understand what he/she doesn’t understand. It seems to happen a lot on extremes of the ‘climate divide’…. places where political passion trumps learning, logic, and rationality.
cyclone… wobble and tilt… now you are joking, unless you are referring to arc-seconds.
SteveF, Nope, he is not joking. With all the former high Steppes or plains converted with farm land, where would glaciers start growing?
Wouldn’t ice mass accumulation change wobble?
cyclone:
No, it just reduces the pain of reading your id*otic nonsense.
You’re entertaining, even if you’re not meaning to be.
Ice floats. Well known science fact. 😉 Melting the ice won’t affect in any measurable way the center of gravity of the water sitting over the Arctic Basin. Whether the ice cap is liquid or solid will have no measurable effect on the Earth’s moment of inertia tensor.
And even if it were a sheet sitting on the ocean floor, like the WAIS, it’s close enough to the pole, the change in the moment of inertia tensor would still be entirely negligible.
dallas:
Sure, if you had an ice sheet over the North American and Eurasian continent. Problem here is we’re talking about an ice shelf (floating mass of ice) not an ice sheet (sheet of ice in contact with the surface of the Earth).
Still back to the question of why would it matter. You could measure the effect in that case (rather than in the case that cyclone and we are talking about, where the effect would be well below the limits where it could be measured), but it wouldn’t influence anything.
Isostatic effects on the other hand would be important (rivers would change their course and stuff like that).
SteveF:
Yep. This of course was the reason I asked him for a list of “why it matters.” There are reasons why it may matter but like most activist oriented types, he is entirely unaware of them. I wasn’t setting a trap by asking the question, I was making a point.
Incorrect most of that weight is land locked in place by and North of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago and a portion of it is above sea level. Remove that which is above sea level and redistribute it as melt water will have an effect on Earths rotational velocity, axial tilt and wobble. It is no different than removing the weight off of you car tire rim and still hope your tire to be correctly balanced….
cyclone:
Still winging it?
We were talking about the Arctic sea ice, not the Greenland ice sheet.
LOL. Go for it, show us the numbers, and then explain why it matters..
LOL, tire analogy to Earth’s rotation. Follows refrigerator for Greenland’s ice sheet???
Just to good to not pass up (plus the wife is late so…)
Here are some zeroth order numbers.
I_polar = 8.034e37 kg-m2
I_equatorial = 8.008e37 kg-m2
so
I_polar – I_equatorial = 2.6e35 kg-m2.
For Greenland’s ice sheet, use V = 2.8e6 km^3.
This corresponds to a mass M = 2.8e6 km^3 * (1000 m/km)^3 * 1000 kg/m^3 = 2.8e18 kg.
For simplicity, we’ll just put all of the mass at the geographic center, which is at roughly 72°N.
This puts the radius of rotation r = R * cos(theta) = 6.4e6 m * cos(72°) = 2e6 m.
Since the moment of inertia of a point mass is I = m r^2, we have for the contribution to the moment of inertia of Greenland,
I_greenland = 2.8e18 kg * (2e6 m)^2 = 1.1e31 kg-m2.
That puts I_greenland/(I_polar–I_equatorial) = 4e-5
and I_greenland/I_polar = 1e-7.
To put this in perspective, let’s use a tire as an example. A typical car tire + axle has a moment of inertia around 2.7 kg-m2 and a radius around 0.3-m.
The mass of an object on the tread of the tire which is 0.00004 of the inertia of the tire+axle is then
2.7 kg-m2 * 1e-7/(0.3m)^2 = 3e-6 kg * 1000 gm/kg = 0.003 gm.
Recount Cyclone:
Heh.
[I updated some numbers after I first posted. Check the numbers, I could be off by orders of magnitudes and it still “won’t matter”.]
For comparison, a spherical rock 3e-6 kg in mass would has a radius:
R = (3e-6 kg/(4/3 * 2700 kg/m3))^(1/3) = 0.0009 m = 0.9 mm.
Or a diameter ~ 2 mm.
So Greenland’s icecap represents a small pebble on a tire wheel.
We’d all be in big trouble if that small pebble significantly changed the rotational mechanics of our tire.
Also, an error I just noticed, I was originally using the ratio between the moment of inertia of Greenland to the asymmetry in the Earth’s inertia (which I would argue is what matters for affecting the wobble in the axis, etc). I later switched to the ratio of Greenland MOI to the polar MOI. So this should read:
Carrick,
Ok. So I am not the only person who does back-of-the-envelope calculations to show a claimed effect is insignificant. 😉
.
Still, I hope all that was partly fueled by ethanol.
More related to him saying “tire” I’m afraid, and a wife who was stuck talking to a colleague about some “drama”.
Once he formed the analogy of a tire, it was to tempting to walk through the numbers from there, as I figured Greenland to the Earth would be about the same as a grain of sand to a tire.
One interesting thing that I noticed is just how tiny the annual mass loss is for Greenland. Current rate of ice loss something like 2e14 kg, which is something like a fraction of 8e-5 of the total mass per year. That would require a lot of acceleration for it to all be gone in say even 500 years.
(And of course, they expect it to stabilize well before it reaches zero due to the effect I was discussing above.)
Cyclonebuster, “axial tilt”?
Cyclone has been reading too many books about the 2012 Doomsday.
Or, more likely, watching programs about it on TV.
Carrick (Comment #101933),
Greenland’s ice is not going to be gone in 500 years, nor in 1,000. The age of carbon will pass and the Earth will start cooling long before most of Greenland melts. I find the lack of perspective appalling within the climate debates. Atmospheric CO2 is almost certainly going to fall below the mythical ‘350.org’ PPM level within 500 years or so. People need to get a grip on reality; yes, warming will have significant effects; no, it will not be like a 100 KM asteroid striking the Earth tomorrow afternoon. OTOH, yes, atmospheric CO2 may (briefly) reach 600+ PPM, and there will be significant warming (how much is not certain), and yes we do need to carefully consider how much warming there will be, for how long, and what the consequences will be (most importantly, sea level rise). But for goodness sakes, keep some perspective. 2 billion in abject poverty seems more pressing, especially since they have ~5 children per woman.
SteveF:
And, possibly ironically, the quicker you get them out of poverty, the better you make life conditions for them, the more rapidly their population growth will slow and the lower the expected cap on atmospheric CO2 will be.
(Unless we decide at that point in our grand experiment that higher CO2 concentration is a Good Thingâ„¢ and decide to keep CO2 levels artificially at higher levels.)
Carrick,
(Unless we decide at that point in our grand experiment that higher CO2 concentration is a Good Thingâ„¢ and decide to keep CO2 levels artificially at higher levels.)
.
Blasphemous devil. Don’t you know that rising GHG’s reresent the end of life on Earth as we know it? Don’t you know that breathing itself is less important than reducing CO2 emissions?
.
But seriously, there is much to do to improve humanty’s lot. And that includes finding less expensive energy sources, not gutting the lowest cost options with endless red tape and regulations. History will look with a cold eye at those who were willing to sacrifice human well being at the alter of ecology.
SteveF (Comment #101891) 

Perhaps so, but as seem to recall, you were against sureness before you were for it. 😉
Anyhow, it was just a remark on the relative unsureness of conjecturing on what someone knows vs. simply refuting what they’ve said.


Nice. Do you have a clear view from where you’re at?
SteveF (Comment #101939)


The counterargument is of course that ecological well-being leads to some amount of human well-being, so it is not merely a clear case of one value over the other.
Oliver:
The counter-counter argument is that if we address world poverty now (and yes there are ways of doing this besides fairy dust and a magic wand) that lessons future impact of CO2 increase and probably decreases total release of CO2.
Via:
1) decrease in peak world peak population (at a given per capita CO2 emission rate this leads inescapably to a lower total emission level).
2) By decreasing poverty, this increases the ability of the poverty-stricken nations to adapt to climate change.
3) More rapid adoption of pollution controls and less CO2 intensive technologies.
Probably others as well. There are also many other heavy ecological impact activities that humans engage in besides CO2 emission, such as overuse of water, unsustainable agriculture, land misuse, etc.
I’ve also argued that overspending on modeling of climate at the expense of weather forecasting has a real cost associated with it, both in economic terms and in terms of human lives (as better weather forecasting leads to improved advanced warning). Of course better weather prediction and better weather monitoring probably leaks over to improved science and data for climate too.
That said this is still very impressive.
@Carrick (Comment #101799)
August 19th, 2012 at 1:49 pm
From what I have read, the poles do act like that in that they act as heatsinks, they get most of their heat from lower latitudes.
bugs (Comment #101942) –
Well, yes. But the context was the effects of losing Arctic summer ice. The Arctic will remain a heat sink with only seasonal ice, or with no ice at all; the sun don’t shine much there. All else being equal, the Stefan-Boltzmann law says that it will radiate away *more* heat as it warms. Saying that we should be concerned about the Arctic because “it’s the Earth’s refrigerator” is only hand-waving, not a substantial argument. Actually, it’s not even hand-waving; what I wrote above about “all else being equal” is hand-waving.
Which returns me to my earlier point, it’s not just the arctic, it’s the globe.
bugs (Comment #101944)
it’s not just the arctic, it’s the globe.
That’s fine if one is discussing all possible effects of AGW. But what started *this* discussion was
Carrick (Comment #101779): “Either way it’s hard to come up with a long list of reasons why it [ice-free Arctic] matters.” The topic is why the Arctic ice area, and when it might go to zero, is of particular importance.
Which is why I (and others) were surprised by your mention of the Tasmanian kelp. While it might be germane to the more general topic of AGW effects, it doesn’t seem to be directly related to whether the Arctic is ice-free.
Restore the counter weight or your tire will vibrate off your car……
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.area.arctic.png
I’m pointing out that the idea that he can’t come up with a long list is not a very strong argument. You can have a patch of sea that looks like it’s not very important, yet research reveals a forest is dying. Just because the arctic is made up of atoms, and Carrick knows a lot about atoms, doesn’t mean he knows a lot about biology, or the implications for the rest of the climate. The climate scientists seem to view this as being highly significant.
The list is very loooooooooooooong. Here is another one for you. You really have the time to hear them all? Restoring Summertime Arctic Ice will cause less coral bleaching in the tropics….
cylclone the pwned, your list of blunders grows long indeed.
I see that math, even simple multiplication is above your head as you say quite stupidly “Restore the counter weight or your tire will vibrate off your car……” after it was pointed out to you that the entire Greenland ice sheet (NOT even being discussed) amounted to a small pebble on your tire.
You can’t ignore simple math and not expect to be laughed at. We’re laughing.
bugs:
Stay on thread. We were discussing the question of why Arctic summer ice melting is important.
It’s not an argument of anything other than you guys don’t know why you’re even advocating for what you’re advocating for.
That’s the point. I could come up with a better list that “.”. I just know cyclone doesn’t no squat. He can’t even follow simple analogies that he brings up himself to their logical conclusion.
And you won’t admit when the analogies fail, that they fail. Which isn’t particularly honest on your part (nor is paraphrasing what other people say instead of copy and pasting it so people can see what you are objecting to in their own words).
The tire counter weight is a bad analogy. Chandler wobble is more influenced by energy flow than mass changes. The small changes in wobble are an indication of much bigger circulation changes.
Longer term wobble impact on progression would be a slow process.
Carrick (Comment #101949)
August 22nd, 2012 at 6:47 am
“cylclone the pwned, your list of blunders grows long indeed.
I see that math, even simple multiplication is above your head as you say quite stupidly “Restore the counter weight or your tire will vibrate off your car……†after it was pointed out to you that the entire Greenland ice sheet (NOT even being discussed) amounted to a small pebble on your tire.
You can’t ignore simple math and not expect to be laughed at. We’re laughing.”
Your tripe is trivial.
Oliver 101940,
My cottage is on a bluff 50 feet above mean high water, and about 80 yards from the beach. The view from my front yard is very nice, but not ‘panoramic’, because of trees, bushes, and other houses that block parts of it. We are high enough to have a good view of Monomoy island when it is not foggy.
.
With regard to poverty versus ecology, I think Carrick has it about right. My personal experience is that poor people usually damage the ecology of where they live far more than do richer people; compare the ecology of Germany to that of shanty-towns in South America, and the ecological benefits of wealth become obvious.
cyclone the pwned, I’m afraid we’re still laughing.
When you make egregiously wrong statements then act as if you just did something profound “the list is very loooooooooooooong”…
especially when you never admit your errors, you get laughed at. Pretty simple formula.
Regarding
Gee cyclone, this sounds implausible. Pray do explain to us rubes why having summer ice in the Arctic would reduce coral bleaching.
SteveF you could still give us a shot. 😉
Regarding poverty vs ecology, I believe part of the “redistribution of wealth” aspects of some of the AGW remediation policies proposed is intended to reduce poverty, not just for “social justice” but because of the ecological benefits of doing so.
The problem with that form of wealth distribution is that money will land in the hands of the rich and powerful in those countries, who like things just the way they are (especially when we keep sending them money for being poor, it’s like a reward to a despot for being despotic), and the money of course helps pay that army of foreign mercenaries to keep your own countrymen under control.
The formula for how you address poverty isn’t that complicated (at least in a developing nation, it’s like low hanging fruit), but certainly the first step is to stop rewarding incompetent governance.
dallas:
Yep, if it influenced precession of the axis of rotation, you’d notice it in about 10,000 years, assuming it wasn’t so small, it would never be noticed, which of course is the case here.
Carrick (Comment #101941)
I am not arguing that we should not attempt to address world poverty (although the underlying causes of poverty make this a daunting problem relative to CO2 emissions!) and in fact I agree with most of what you wrote. I was arguing that it is not such a clear choice to either promote human well being at the expense of ecology or “sacrifice human well being at the alter of ecology.”
SteveF (Comment #101953)
Sounds very nice! We don’t really have a view of Nantucket Sound from this side.
Rich people have the luxury of importing goods and services while exporting much, if not most, of the associated ecological and social damages
Bugs, if its “not just the Arctic its the globe” then you will know that the Antarctic ice average area is above normal. Where are cyclones videos of that?
Oliver:
That’s another argument against (if you will) the immorality of allowing, and even enabling, poverty to exist.
If there weren’t impoverished nations, there wouldn’t be a place to export the ecological and social damages to,
Oliver 101957,
Germany is a large net exporter of industrial products, not a net importer. I have many times heard the argument you advance (rich people just displace their polution to poor countries), but everywhere that I have traveled shows just the opposite: the local environment is most degraded where there is little insustry of any kind, and that environmental awareness (and controls on environmental degradation) always increase when the local economy develops via industrialization. Poor people discharge their waste water into rivers and lakes, rich people never do. The correlation of pollution with industrialization is exactly the inverse of what your argument suggests it should be.
Oliver:
Yes, like bugs, I think that is a false dilemma, or it needn’t be a dilemma with wise policy choices.
People can choose paths that sacrifice people in the third world (literally), and they often do so (especially Europe, one of the primary forces responsible for the mess that many third world countries are in). If you choose to spend more money on the welfare of your countrymen and reduce money going to economic development in the third world to balance it, that is a case where this happens.
Carrick,
A shot: http://i49.tinypic.com/2hx9f0l.jpg
Oliver,
You suggested above that addressing poverty is more difficult than addressing increasing atmospheric CO2. I must respectfully disagree. The things needed to rise out of poverty are both simple and well known: uniform rule of law, clear property rights, ‘capitalist’ economic incentives, and most of all, the absence of bad government (communism, corruption, kleptocracy, dictatorship, etc.). These things have already worked; there is no mystery. Controlling the rise in atmospheric CO2, if that turns out to be required, presents daunting economic and technical obstacles. There are currently no inexpensive alternatives to fossil fuels for most energy requirements.
Carrick, yeah, 10,000 years or so for an obvious change, like a full blown glacial period.
http://www.michaelmandeville.com/earthmonitor/polarmotion/plots/chandler_wobble_plots.htm
That may make the smaller Chandler wobble a good indicator of stuff, less wobble, more stable climate. More stable climate, less sensitivity to forcing?
SteveF:
Agreed. And they aren’t really that expensive (except to a small select group of individuals who personally benefit from the status quo), unlike the proposed direct remediation of CO2 emissions, which is enormously expensive and almost certainly won’t work.
Dusk at my home. We get treated to a lot of these sorts of shows in the summer—lots of strong cumulonimbus associated with Mississippi’s hot summers. Large storms, torrential rain is the norm for us (usually followed by periods of drought till the next big wave comes through).
Dallas, thanks, that’s an interesting plot. It’s always fun to see a new phenomenon that you weren’t aware of crop up now and again. The explanation here is pretty good. It appears to be associated with the atmospheric ocean tide, which is in the right direction for changes in mass distribution to have an effect. According to the wiki article the oceans are responsible for about 70% of this wobble.
Of course, the mass of the oceans is very large, 1.4e21 kg or so, and if that leads to a shift in the location of the axis on the surface by distances of the order of 5-10m over a period of roughly 450 days, then certainly the dynamical shift induced by a mass of 3e18kg, 0.2% of the mass of the oceans, would be expected to induce motions on the order of a few centimeters in the position of the axis.
One thing that wasn’t completely obvious to me is that this also implies that the position of an object relative to a fixed astronomical latitude will move over time. How they handle this in geodesy with modern GPS systems I haven’t worked out yet.
By the way Here’s the paper giving the accepted answer for the Chandler wobble in terms of the coupled atmospheric-ocean system.
Back to the original topic: the Arctic is staying above the magic freezing point of sea water (271K) and staying more or less constant and above even the freezing point of pure water itself. Until we get a significant drop in temperature, I think we can expect the plummeting (or pummeling if you were) to continue.
Some records have already broke, the others appear soon to follow.
Today is the last day of betting. So I did update the projection based on Jaxa. I entered a value slightly higher than what I would predict based on the most recent Jaxa value. (I don’t know why a bit high. Just did….. Gotta spread out those bets!)
Regarding the elimination of poverty versus CO2 reduction, I see no evidence that either will be achieved in the foreseeable future. Easy to talk about, even with specifics, but my bet is for more poverty and more CO2, with the latter exacerbating the former.
er, from dallas’s link:
But it’s interesting, stuff about the 1930’s keeps cropping up. Any similarity between the 1930s and the 2000s has to be either 1) entirely imaginary or 2) entirely responsible for global warming.
Owen: “my bet is for more poverty and more CO2”. More CO2, yes, but I don’t see what you base your prediction of more poverty on.
.
In fact the world has seen about a halving of extreme poverty since 1990. http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/2012/02/29/world-bank-sees-progress-against-extreme-poverty-but-flags-vulnerabilities
Why is that Owen?
There are active steps to reduce poverty in place right now, and it has been reducing over the last few decades at a dramatic rate.
There’s still more work to do, is all. (I have plans for how I will help as I move towards retirement.)
I don’t think personally that negative economically significant impacts of CO2 will be felt at any point in the near future, nor do I think there is any credible evidence in favor of that.
If anything, if it is true that future CO2 increases (incidentally mostly caused by the industrialization of these 3rd world nations) will negatively impact these countries, then the argument should be to accelerate the rate at which they are industrializing, not throw our hands in the air and shrug, or to, worse, pull money away that could be used e.g. for schools, infrastructure, etc and spend it on CO2 remediation policies that have no chance of success.
Owen,
Humm.
During my lifetime per capita wealth has just about tripled (in inflation adjusted terms). Life expectancy is higher (a lot). Birth rates have fallen (a lot). Food production per capita is about 50% higher. There has been a rapid fall in abject poverty over many countries. A wide range of technologies (medicine, communications, information technologies, and more) have improved the overall quality of life for billions. I see no evidence that wealth will not continue to increase and poverty continue to fall over the next few decades (or more). Past performance is no guarantee of the future, of course, but the global historical trend in wealth and well-being is overwhelmingly positive.
BillC:
Or a linear combination of partly responsible plus anthropogenic.
That said, the explanation given by Gross’s paper seems to be the currently accepted one. And dallas’s link appears to date to 2001, the same as Gross’s paper, so it’s not clear what this particular author’s opinion of Gross’s work is or would be.
Since he doesn’t show the numbers, I remain a bit hesitant about embracing a linkage between a bimodal phenomenon with periods of 2 and 5 years and a driving with a period of 415-450 days.
I’m glad to hear the optimism. The surges in the economies of China, India, and Southeast Asia are certainly lifting many out of poverty, but but the increased power consumption to do so will most certainly tax the output capacity (ultimately the reserves) and raise the costs of fossil fuels, in turn dampening the economic gains. It is time right now to think about ways to develop the temporarily more expensive alternative energies (and nuclear?) while we still have reserves of reduced carbon.
@Carrick (Comment #101974)
August 22nd, 2012 at 11:57 am
This is still a false dilemma. One reason is that countries that are becoming more wealthy don’t have to go through the same wealth creating path that other countries have before. Technology has moved on in the past century.
bugs:
Er, no. It’s appears to be a necessary consequence of their development.
(And it’s not a “dilemma” since they will grow unless we nuke them back into the stone age… you have a dilemma when there is a choice involved, there is no real choice here with respect to whether they industrialize, only when).
The developing nations represent 80% of the worlds population. If you simply used our more efficient technologies (which they haven’t been… I’m sure you’re aware of China’s current CO2 production levels), that’s a 5-fold increase in CO2 emissions. To just double the current CO2 emission levels from now to when they fully industralize, you’d need a commensurate five-fold decrease in CO2 intensity (ppm CO2 per unit GDP), a technological advancement not likely to occur in the next 40-50 years.
The only way to reduce their CO2 emissions is to reduce the rate at which their population grows, which means more rapid industrialization, because this reduces their peak population level.
The more money that gets diverted away from helping them industrialize, for whatever noble purpose of heart, the larger the long-term burden of the additional CO2 will be, and the more likely we’ll have the sort of catastrophic outcome that Hansen and the rest of his ilk talk about.
Owen:
Not just optimism. Objectively, it’s a fact that poverty is rapidly diminishing in the third world.
No, I think you are reading this wrong. You are making the error that bugs accused me of, namely assuming that technology doesn’t advance.
As you increase the cost of fossil fuels (as a result of increased demand), that will drive innovation and you’ll see two things happen. One is the move to more efficient use of fossil fuel, and the second will be the move to alternative energy sources.
I’d say rather it’s time to spend more money on applied research, trying to improve the efficiency of these not-ready for prime time players so they are reaching maturity when the market is ready for them, and to invest in the infrastructure so we can use them effectively.
That means better battery technology or alternative energy storage alternatives (we are a long way from optimal on this issue for solar), spend more on better wind turbine designs rather than just build more wind turbines, a smart power grid, and so forth.
Carrick,
Don’t forget the energy that pretty soon won’t be needed to melt ice. It just screams nonlinearity!
Em… mistake here on my part. I said:
First of all, if they developed and they are 80% of the world’s population it would be a 6-fold increase in CO2.
To work out by what amount you’d need to decrease CO2 intensity so you “just” double CO2, let C be the current CO2 levels of the industrialized nations, and assume C for these nations is constant at current levels. Assume for sake of argument developing nations currently have zero emissions.
Secondly let alpha represent the factor by which CO2 intensity is reduced upon industrialization.
Let development CO2 emissions be represented by Cd, and we want to assert
Cd == 2C
Putting in the factors,
Cd = 6 alpha C == 2 C
or alpha == 1/3.
This looks challenging but not out of reach. If alpha == 1/5, then
Cd == 6/5 C
which is only 20% more than current emission levels. I would expect this to be out of reach.
If the developing nations e.g. double in size during that intermediate period, it gets progressively more difficult. In this case we have
Cd = 11 alpha C == 2 C
or alpha = 2/11, which is even worse than the (wrong) number I originally suggested.
Finally you can generalize this to a factor “p” by which the developing nations will grow:
Cd = (1 + 5 p) alpha C == 2 C
which gives
alpha == 2/(1 + 5 p)
Because they are such large fraction of the world population there is an inherent high sensitivity in the amount of innovation required the longer it takes them to economically develop.
The other side of the coin is that the longer they take to develop, the more net energy resource they will require, and the harder it will be to economically develop them, which is similar to the point that Owen was making.
BillC:
Actually it will melt every year. It’s only summertime that is expected to be ice free.
But interestingly, there hasn’t been any evidence of a polar amplification during summer months. Most of the polar amplification occurs during winter months (that is, the temperature trend for high latitudes is nearly that of the equator for summer months).
Thanks fossil fuel GHG’s.
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/story/recent-antarctic-peninsula-war/70685
Carrick, the ocean atmosphere coupling with wobble is something I have been looking at for a while. It is interesting. In has me looking harder at land use and black carbon impact shifting NH weather patterns. You know most of the most of the large areas for ice/snow accumulation are either agricultural or desert because of over use.
Compare GISS 1960 to 1970 to a 1950 to 1960 base line. Every season except summer shows warming with spring planting season having the biggest heat blob right on top of Khrushchev’s virgin land project. There would be initial cooling while they worked and irrigated, but once the land was used up, the Aral about dry from irrigation, the heat set in.
Re: cyclonebuster (Aug 22 15:36),
Cut the crap! Don’t you read these things or is it that you don’t have the horses to pull the wagon:
Lucia, where’s the troll spray?
cyclone the pwned, the peninsula warms… while the much larger land mass of the interior of the Antarctic continues to cool. Blame GHGs on that too?
Thanks for playing.
Carrick (Comment #101992)-Not only that but the warming of the Peninsula is sufficiently large and isolated that is unlikely that it is related to large scale changes in forcing. This is not to say that there is no forced component to the change-It just seems unlikely to be the reason why the trend in the Peninsula is so large and so localized.
RomanM:
You don’t like stomping bugs? I mean cyclones?
Dallas the thing that has me worried about your discussion is you have to be careful about 1) restricting the physical size you’re looking at too much (otherwise it inflates the climate noise), 2) reducing the temporal period of measure (same problem) and 3) selecting only one season to look at (same problem).
That said I gave the GISTEMP global map widget a whirl. Here’s what I found, which doesn’t seem to recover your description.
Could you suggest different settings that illustrates it?
Sorry if I’m being dense.
Carrick, the suspected land use shows like this.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2012&month_last=7&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=0303&year1=1960&year2=1970&base1=1950&base2=1960&radius=1200&pol=reg
Digging stuff out of noise is a major PITA. There are so many internal oscillations that are base line sensitive that is more a black art than a science looking down leads. So I have started working backwards from the 2002-2010 period using AQUA as a temperature reference. It is interesting. I don’t know where it will lead though.
Well… the cyclone at least isn’t actually insulting people or calling them names… I think a lot of people are mildly amused.
Thanks Dallas. I agree about the PITA issue with noise.
I have found that “Monte Carlos are my friend” more than once.
I have a problem I’m dealing with now (for work) where I’m getting ready to Monte Carlo the problem to estimate the true uncertainty.
(Unlike the fake world, noise in the real world varies over time in variance and character, for what I do, especially in the lower frequency bands, the noise is very “bursty”.)
Carrick,
For the applications I sometimes work on, ‘bursty’ is a characteristic of 1/f noise at very low f.
Lucia,
“mildly amused”
For me it’s more like incredulous. But you are right that he/she does not resort to insults and name calling. I keep thinking that the really strange stuff is just a put-on designed to get people worked up, but who knows? (aside from cyclone)
SteveF, that’s the exactly the same situation here, except it’s closer to 1/f^2 and the distribution at those frequencies resembles a log-normal rather than normal distribution.
Here is a quick analysis of the betting:
NO. OF BETS 20
MAX 4.820
MIN 3.600
MEAN 3.997
MEDIAN 3.980
STD DEV 0.291
MEAN PLUS 1 SD 4.288
MEAN MINUS 1 SD 16
WITHIN +/- 1 SD (%) 80.000
ABOVE MEAN 11
BELOW MEAN 9
I must admit that being new to this game, I had expected my bet to be outside the overall range, but I find myself within that range, albeit at the lower end, although not as low as Lucia!
Oops, corrected figures:
NO. OF BETS 20
MAX 4.820
MIN 3.600
MEAN 3.997
MEDIAN 3.980
STD DEV 0.291
MEAN PLUS 1 SD 4.288
MEAN MINUS 1 SD 3.705
WITHIN +/- 1 SD 16
WITHIN +/- 1 SD (%) 18.526
ABOVE MEAN 11
BELOW MEAN 9
I didn’t realise that this page was also a betting page. I updated my bet on the other page (NH Ice Bets: Late bets!) but didn’t bet on this page.
Two different pages betting on the same thing with the same closing date… very confusing!
Ray –
Your script needs a little tweaking.
if WITHIN +/-1 SD is 16 of 20 bets, I’d make it 80% (as your first post had it) rather than 18.526%.
.
I bet there’s a significant trend downward over time, later estimates having incorporated the recent sharp drop.
Ray –
Also the “above/below mean” counts are swapped. 11 are below mean, only 9 are above.
Re: cyclonebuster (Aug 22 15:36),
Cut the crap! Don’t you read these things or is it that you don’t have the horses to pull the wagon:
The research team, lead by Dr Robert Mulvaney OBE, from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) showed that a slower, natural warming event began in this region about 600 years ago followed by an accelerated warming over the last 100 years.
Lucia, where’s the troll spray?
Cut the crap? Don’t you know when the Industrial revolution really really started cranking out those fossil fuel GHG’s??
cyclone the pwned:
Heh. “don’t know” and cyclonebuster go together quite well.
cyclone is lecturing climate science, but doesn’t know climate science.
In addition to CO2, humans are responsible for aerosol emissions. Based on climate modeling it is thought that until circa 1970 the radiative forcings associated with GHGs approximately balanced those of anthropogenic forcings.
That sir is why the period 1970-now is regarded at the period of AGW, not say 1850-now.
For example, here are the anthropogenic forcings from GISS Model E.
Figure. The red line is the sum of all anthropogenic forcings.
Comparison of anthropogenic to natural forcings.
By the way, the interior of Antarctica has cooled since the start of AGW. The favored explanation seems to be something along the lines of a magic wand and fairy dust.
Thanks for playing. I’m afraid you win no prizes today. Please return your 3-d glasses at the door.
Oh dear It was warmer on the peninsula 11,000 years ago than today..
It’s worse than we thought.
The pnwed list just keeps getting longer.
Non-paywalled version of the Mulvaney et al. paper on Antarctic warming available here.
Supplementary information available here.
Carrick said, “SteveF, that’s the exactly the same situation here, except it’s closer to 1/f^2 and the distribution at those frequencies resembles a log-normal rather than normal distribution.”
That is like what I call “sweet spots” . I have been playing with sequential regressions to locate better common base lines to reduced log normal look to a bi modal distribution look, since the “sweet spot” is likely complimentary symmetry, like a rogue wave. It can be two different forces summing or the reflection of one force summing with the original.
With the right baseline it would be 1/(2*f) instead of 1/f^2 which should be easier to follow.
I suck at stats though, so that is probably no help 🙁
Carrick: you’re trolling us and/or satirizing Anthony, right? You’re not seriously thinking that an Antarctica slightly warmer than 1960-1990 averages during the Holocene optimum somehow makes the present mess less bad, right?
.
Right?
.
“Hey, over the last 50 years we only warmed by 1/3rd of the difference between a freaking glacial maximum and an interglacial optimum! And it was warmer 11kya than during 1960-1990! Start up the SUVs and idle all night long in celebration!”
The 2 degrees over 50 years does not come from the ice cores, but from a station:
The ice cores show a smaller rise.
For those who like to see numbers, from the spreadsheet in the supplemental information (format massaged for clarity):
period T anom(°C)
2000-2010 0.164
1990-2000 0.763
1980-1990 0.163
1970-1980 0.151
1960-1970 -0.492
1950-1960 -0.268
1940-1950 -0.676
1930-1940 -0.191
1920-1930 -1.105
1910-1920 -0.413
1900-1910 -0.649
It looks like Watts doesn’t trust Antarctica numbers anyway because of UHI (seriously).
toto:
Nah, just picking on people who cherry pick data that confirm their expectations.
That said, why do you think we’re in a particular “mess” right now? Why is the present so “bad”, and what did it look like when it was “good”?
Serious questions.
This is a mess. (Black Blizzard of 1937.)
So was this. (Galveston, 1900)
Climate gets messy. How do you know when there’s a human finger print and when there isn’t? And when there is a human finger print, why do you guys always blame CO2? Aren’t there other suspects you consider first (land usage changes for example)?
We mostly all agree that the warming of the Arctic is largely the consequence of human behavior and largely the result of the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere
The list of reasons that can be substantiated for why that matters seems a bit short.
Do you know why it matters, toto? Or is it an article of faith for you too that “it matters”. (For the record, I think it will change things, I don’t wear rose colored glasses, but nor do I think that change by definition is always just “bad”.)
RB
Hypothetically, there could be UHI near the research stations. It’s true those aren’t big cities, but there are changes and maybe the impact is disproportionately large in such a cold spot. I wouldn’t rule this out as nonesense without more information. (That is: It’s not like the guy who bet -1.5 for the September average NH sea ice extent.)
I would be surprised if there is any or much UHI far from research stations. But a comment of “really” isn’t enough to rebbutt the possibility at thermometers near research stations.
Out of curiosity, where are the thermometers relative to the research stations? Walking distance? 1 hour drive away? Etc. I don’t happen to know– so that sort of information might be required to figure out if I thought UHI might even hypothetically affect the antarctic measurements.
“over the last 50 years we only warmed by 1/3rd of the difference between a freaking glacial maximum and an interglacial optimum”
Um, the difference between glacial maximums and interglacials in the Antarctic has been about ten or more degrees. The global difference is about 5, IIRC. 2/10 =/= 1/3, .4/5 =/=1/3. Exaggerated again…
Dallas:
I’m guessing you’re talking about the bursty nature of the noise.
If you have multiple sensors that are separated enough so that the noise is uncorrelated by the signal is not, then you can use nonlinear processing (e.g., median of the time-aligned response of the sensors) to substantially reduce the low-frequency noise.
Since the noise is bursty, and having it be 1/f^2 instead of 1/f contributes to the burstiness, you usually only one sensor at a time that is “mis-behaving” in any given interval.
Carrick, Cherry picking should be allowed as long as all the cherries get picked 🙂 Climate is obviously base line dependent or picking cherries would not matter.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/Whathappened-1.png
That is an example on my mother of all cherry picking methods, it is a plot of every 180 month trend using a 2002 to 2010 base line for those data sets. The values are monthly so multiply by 120 for decadal trends.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/LandUseversusHADSST2.png
Since I am a “land use done a lot of it” kinda guy, that is land use CO2 flux estimates that I am playing with for a land use impact proxy. There appear to be different land use impacts with delay, imagine that?
Since Siberia/Kazakhstan had their own “dust bowl” with up 6.5 million kilometers squared impacted to different degrees, I am inclined to believe it might have had some impact. So my cherry picking is an attempt to isolate that impact. When the virgin lands campaign started, there appears to be some cooling or less warming initially while the Aral Sea water was diverted for irrigation. Then after they have chewed all the good out of the “virgin” lands, they became desert to a large extent. Now, the land is recovering, producing a nice land use experiment. Where else can you find an apocalyptic environmental disaster to study in the satellite era other than the former Soviet Union?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aralkum
I bet that shot the heck out of what ever lake effect the forth largest fresh water lake in the world used to have.
Following up on Andrew’s comment…
More like 1/10.
We also warmed nearly the same amount between 1910-1950 as we did 1970-now, in fact the two warming periods are not statistically distinguishable either in magnitude or trend, and we still don’t know for a fact that all of the post 1970 warming was anthropogenic. Since nothing magical happened to suddenly turn up the thermometer in 1970, it probably wasn’t…the data are better explained by a superposition of long-term natural variability and a small but probably growing secular anthropogenic trend.
As another reference point, the last interglacial period (based on IPCC) was also 5°warmer at its optimum than current temperature.
What does that tell you about natural variability and how much warming you need before we get out of the band of natural variation?
I don’t have a problem with saying there is a problem with human generated CO2. I have a problem with muddy thinking and muddy arguments. It’s my experience that most of you guys haven’t really thought this stuff through very well, and the more strongly held the belief, the less thinking that’s gone on. [That last sentence applies to people on both sides of the spectrum.]
I haven’t a clue what thread to post this on but I recommend this article from the Economist on a (purportedly) new project to embiggen the science of ecology. Using sensors. And towers. Sounds good to me.
BTW I read some of the back and forth between you guys yesterday about development/poverty/environment. IMO quantifying ecosystem services is an important, though extremely difficult task.
Carrick (Comment #102039),
I’ve made that point previously in another thread, but it’s fallen on deaf ears. Apparently it was possible for natural variation to be responsible for the earlier warming, but it’s somehow not possible for it to be responsible for the latest warming.
They’ve got it in their heads that the concentration of CO2 has risen and therefore it must be that rise in CO2 causing the warming. When you point out that CO2 is still rising but the temperature isn’t rising anymore, all they can come up with some garbage about it not having to be in lockstep.
If CO2 causes temperature rise, then the temperature MUST continue to rise while CO2 levels are rising… if not, then what am I missing here?
lucia (Comment #102029)
It has to do with much more land mass North of the equator as opposed to South of the equator.
Skeptikal:
I never said it wasn’t possible. I was simply relating the IPCC assessment.
CO2 reduces radiative heat losses, which tends to increase temperature, everything else being equal. There is no “must”, and other forcings are involved (as you can see from the plots I linked above), both anthropogenic and natural. In addition there is quasioscillatory behavior.
That’s the main problem with toto presenting things the way he does–he’s vastly oversimplified the picture, and really it undermines the argument he wants to make.
Carrick (Comment #102050)
“CO2 reduces radiative heat losses, which tends to increase temperature, everything else being equal.”
LOL! Tends…….
Here’s the Esperanza station the article used to make the following statement:
Historical observations since 1958 at
Esperanza Station (Fig. 1b) document warming equivalent to 3.5 +/- .8 C per century.
The authors contrast this with 6C peninsular Antarctic warming since the last glacial maximum as below:
Taking into account changes in ocean isotopic values, the isotopic composition of the glacial ice on JRI is equivalent to temperatures that were approximately 6.1+/- 1.0 C cooler than present
While we can’t tell where the weather station is, here we see that it is possibly within walking distance for the operators.
More pictures here .
cyclone:
That’s the right word, dimwit.
People with no advanced training should abstain from trying to comment on scientific issues, especially if the purpose of that commentary is to show their supposed intellectual superiority.
cyclonebuster (Comment #102051) 

Right, cyclonebuster, “Tends.”
Sort of the way a downhill slope Tends to make you go faster, all else being equal. It isn’t really that absurd an idea when you think about it…
It’s easy to see why “tends” is the right word.
Consider the forcing history assumed by GISS Model E.
Figure 1: CO2 Forcings (GISS Model E).
The purple line is CO2. If there were no other nonzero forcings but the monitonically increasing CO2 forcing, and no internal variation in the system, you’d expect a one-to-one relationship between temperature and CO2 level (in general there is an integration time for the response of temperature to CO2, but generally this is true).
An increase in CO2 equals an increase in temperature simple as that.
Now we add aerosol indirect effects. Just consider the sum of CO2 plus aerosols. You get this figure:
Figure 2: CO2 + Aerosol Forcings (GISS Model E).
The sum of the two terms is zero, and even slightly negative from 1950-1970. That is…. you actually have a net negative forcing from CO2 + aerosols in this model even though CO2 is increasing… and a slight net cooling from this combined forcing would be expected (but not required because we haven’t factored in every other factor that influences mean temperature).
Thus increasing CO2 “tends” to increase temperature, not “must” as asserted by Skeptikal:
I’d suggest learning WTH you’re talking about cyclone, unless you just like people poking you in the eye because you keep making yourself look stupid.
Oliver you are so much nicer than I am. 😉
I would say the biggest problem with the Antarctica stations is station maintenance issues (I’m glad to leave that to somebody else).
We have sensors in Antarctica (“we” on the larger sense of our multi-university collaboration), and one thing that happens is the sensors get covered by snow, and have to be periodically dug out, when they get too covered.
I can’t imagine having the sensor too far from the station, otherwise in the winter, it would be impracticable to perform any maintenance. The crew size is very small, and they don’t venture far from their huts in winter. This is at Windless Bight in our case.
Huh? The topic of 102029 is UHI in Antarctica. I asked if people knew the location of temperature sensors in Antarctica. Ending with
It seems highly unlikely that the answer to this question has to do with the relative amount of land mass in the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
As I mentioned Lucia, it’s pretty unlikely they aren’t in walking distance, at least for sensors they intend to keep running during winter months. I don’t think they can expect to drive to the sensors in winter, your mobility is actually pretty limited.
(It’s unfortunate that cyclone’s first attempt at a constructive comment … made no sense.)
Carrick–
I’m not surprised the sensors are near the research stations. So… if that’s established, the next question before figuring out if it’s utterly laughable for UHI to affect temperature locally is to understand precisely why it occurs so we can figure out whether the activities and buildings at a research station in an area where it is -40F might have a disproportionate UHI effect.
As a SWAG, it seems possibly thorny because UHI is affected both by changes in absorptivity and reflectivity of the surface but also potentially by the amount of heat generated locally. NOw, on the one hand, I imagine they have pretty good insulation on the research buildings and they haven’t put the thermometers over airport runways. But on the other hand, they must be heating a lot, clearing surfaces of at least some snow and so on. So…. I can’t begin to guess whether UHI in Antarctica is in the “eyeroll” category or actually possible.
That said: I’m not one of the people who really thinks about UHI a lot. I’m sure Zeke or Mosh could say more.
I think Hu McCullough (apologies for spelling) points out somewhere that many Antarctic weather stations for the peninsula are not actually on the peninsula but on outlying islands. Wil try to find reference.
from WUWT
Hu McCulloch says:
August 23, 2012 at 5:33 am
Most of the “Antarctic Peninsula†stations that the 2dC increase refer to are in fact on King George Is in the So. Shetlands, out in the currents about 100km offshore from the actual Peninsula. John Ross Is is tucked in closer to the Peninsula on the E side, and so is more representative of the actual Peninsula.
Carrick,
Your graphs of GISS forcings are very nice, but do these not ignore the significant contributions of othe man made GHG’s? I mean, historically those other gases contribute almost half as much as rising CO2. The problem I have with the GISS forcing history is that it is too cleaver by half: ALL the man made forcings seem (miraculously!) to cancel each other out until 1970. Which is perfect if you are trying to make the temperature ‘consistent with’ the Model E sensitivity. The problem is best seen in the following: James Hansen now concludes the GISS models have too much heat accumulation in the ocean, and so he says the aerosol offsets must be about 35% higher than what they have been assumed in the past. IOW, the possibility that the diagnosed sensitivity is too high is discounted even in the face of data to the contrary!
the whole exercise remains IMO intellectually corrupt, and utterly incapable of projecting future warming.
SteveF, I admit to a mislabel–it’s all GHGs not CO2. When I get a chance to change it I will.
The purpose of raising the history of forcings assumed by the model was not to argue this particular history of forcings was necessarily correct, but to illustrate the very real problem of assuming increasing CO2 MUST imply increasing temperature.
The strengths or weaknesses of their forcing history we’ve discussed before, and I’m certainly not sold on them being the canonical version we should all adopt.
diogenes:
Many of them are on “islands”. Which is to say islands surrounded by permanent ice, so the distinction isn’t necessarily that important.
HaroldW,
Urgh!
No script to blame, only human error(s).
Did it in too much of a rush.
Something went wrong on the first post and I thought I had corrected it on the second, but I seem to have introduced new errors.
Will attempt to post correct figures later today.
Carrick (Comment #102053)
August 23rd, 2012 at 2:56 pm
“cyclone:
LOL! Tends…….
That’s the right word, dimwit.
People with no advanced training should abstain from trying to comment on scientific issues, especially if the purpose of that commentary is to show their supposed intellectual superiority.”
Negative!! Tends is the wrong word because we see what the results are because of it and NOAA has graphed it for you.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/global-temp-and-co2-1880-2009-300.gif
You should have wrote it like this: “CO2 reduces radiative heat losses, which increases temperature, everything else being equal.â€
The word tends makes you think there is a doubt about the heating we are seeing. That is why NOAA makes such graphs to show the doubters there is no mistaking the Co2 heating relationship. Do you know more than NOAA? That tends to be your biggest mistake.
cyclone:
“tends” is a term of art in science. “tends” allows for natural variability and measurement error in addition to other radiative foricngs that may also “tend” to reduce the apparent amount of warming.
The NOAA graph is misleading and frankly just wrong because it only displays CO2 against temperature. They should know better.
As you can see from GISS Model E, while you might bicker over the numbers, it’s well understood there are other radiative forcings, as well as I mentioned natural variability, which can be quite large.
If you don’t use “tends” you end up with overstated results that get contradicted by short-term periods where cooling happens.
Carrick (Comment #102053),
When the people with the advanced training deliver their expertise with words like… should, could, might, likely, probable, predicted, projected, expected, tends, trends, assumptions, uncertainties, levels of certainty, percentages of confidence, margins of error… it is blindingly obvious that the scientific issues are issues which are far from being resolved by those with the advanced training.
To suggest that someone abstain from commenting solely on the basis that they don’t suffer the short-sightedness associated with advanced training is, quite frankly, appalling.
Carrick, Cyclone could have bickered that you should have left out the last part of your sentence “..everything else being equal”. There is no natural variablity if everything else is equal, is there?
.
If everything is not equal, the CO2 reduction of radiative heat losses to space still TENDS to increase temperature.
.
Even cyklones’ bickering is ridiculous.
Carrick (Comment #102064),
You’re using the “assumptions” of a computer model to show that there is a real problem in using assumptions. That’s priceless!
Carrick (Comment #102071)
“The NOAA graph is misleading and frankly just wrong because it only displays CO2 against temperature. They should know better.”
LOL! NOAA graph misleading and wrong… LOL! They should know better..
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/global-temp-and-co2-1880-2009-300.gif
They do know better better than you!
i feel dumber this morning….
Skeptikal (Comment #102072) 

Skeptical,
If you were to draw up a “short list” of scientific issues which have been resolved to your satisfaction, you’d “likely” find that scientists discuss those issues using most or all of the “bad” terms from your list above.
In other words, the issue of a given scientific issue being well resolved or far from resolved is separate from the issue of the language of the specialists being confusing to a lay audience.
The NOAA graph is disturbing. If we don’t do something to reduce temperatures, CO2 will continue to rise.
George Tobin,
It’s worse than you think. If we don’t do something to speed up the planet’s rotation, temperatures will continue to go up and so will CO2.
BillC,
not as dumb as i do…
Paul_K,
Is that because you actually clicked on my link ;)?
I am actually interested if anyone can explain to me the apparent similarity between the 20th century changes in length of day and the temperature graph. No, I do not think that LOD explains global warming, but the apparent lag-correlation for the past century and beyond is odd. Oh Captain, my Captain…
Maybe it’s inversely correlated with the AMO 🙂
Consensus: We should increase temperatures radically so that plants get much, much more food and fertilizer.
Skeptikal:
You’re right it would be appalling had anybody said that.
OTH, I never said anything about you or anybody else abstaining from commenting, so I do know if you’re just being dishonest in misrepresenting me or simply didn’t parse what I said correctly.
Putting what I said in other terms, if you are a layperson you should really avoid lecturing people on topics you don’t have training on.
That advice not appalling, it’s just common sense.
Oliver:
In fact, I would be appalled if people didn’t discuss concepts like margins of error, or tried to blithely characterize their results in terms of absolute certainty.
cyclone:
The old appeal to authority trick, eh? You and bugs. No matter how stupid the mistake, it’s OK because they are the authority.
Apparently they don’t “know much better”. What they did is simply wrong or misleading. It’s not my problem if you can’t follow why that’s the case.
Niels:
That’s a fair statement.
I’d say it’s always better to write cautiously though.
Even just with CO2 forcing increasing, the trend may not always be increasing over short enough periods of time due to forced variability (e.g., from increased diabatic heating at the equator). Anyway, we can’t anticipate every possible scenario and saying “tends” is just a short hand version of it.
BillC, ” No, I do not think that LOD explains global warming, but the apparent lag-correlation for the past century and beyond is odd. Oh Captain, my Captain…”
This chubby ice skater should extend her arms. How does she do that?
I know how the skater does it but I don’t get the physical reason for the lagged correlation. Suppose there is some sort of causality here, or a common root cause of both effects. Why would the rotational changes lead the temperature changes by 20-30 years, including higher frequency excursions?
I haven’t run across great LOD explanations on the internets. It mostly seems like arm-waving. The wikipedia page for Delta_T (integral of LOD changes from an arbitrary baseline) talks about glacial isostatic rebound changing the earths moment of inertia (like a tire weight LOL). Except that is the reason for a relative screaming speed-up over the last many hundreds of years, which seems to have stopped or been overcome around the turn of the 20th century. I have not come across a good explanation for the 20th century changes. I would think it’s possible that sea level rises overcame isostasy but I don’t see anyone doing the math.
I would think it possible that
AGW causes SLR which caused the LOD trends, and that due to the AMO or something they are somehow out-of-phase, causing the lagged correlation to appear. But f*** if I know.F*** if anybody really knows. These guys, http://www.iag-ggos.org/ monitor 17 different Earth system parameters. Oceans/atmospheric oscillations change a bunch of them. Changes in ocean salinity are even suspected of having an impact on the chandler wobble. A warmer Earth appears to slow things down, then at some point ice mass build up would slow it down again. So like most of the stuff, there is a “sweet spot” that Earth keeps overshooting.
The fun part is that while LOD likely does not drive climate, could should it hits a “sweet spot”, then over a few centuries it may cause another shift, but with so many other factors, it likely never gets the chance.
What is really cool is that all nonergodic systems have the same basic cyclic frequencies so you can never tell exactly what is causing what until you witness it, then it will likely never happen again. Talk about job security, those chaos guys have it made 🙂
Re: Carrick (Comment #102085)
After all, even the Titanic was only “nearly” unsinkable. 😉
Re:BillC (Comment #102082)
August 24th, 2012 at 9:50 am
BillC,
No my comment was not about your link, it was about some of the previous exchanges. Best explanation for LOD change and climate change is that they are rooted in common cause, as yet unknown. Start here maybe:-
http://people.rses.anu.edu.au/lambeck_k/pdf/37.pdf
George Tobin (Comment #102079),
Historically CO2 rise has lagged temperature rise so even if we can reduce temperature, I suspect that CO2 will continue to rise for quite some time.
“Historically CO2 rise has lagged temperature rise so even if we can reduce temperature, I suspect that CO2 will continue to rise for quite some time.”
That’s correct and it is another bad effect of Arctic Ice melting that will exacerbate the situation…….