Last year as arctic sea ice melted to record levels, panic set in for many. But then, as the sea ice rebounded and froze again quickly in the 2007/2008 winter, making up for that record loss and reaching heights not seen for several years, many exclaimed that even though the ice areal extent had recovered, this new ice was “thin” and would likely melt again quickly. There were also many news stories about how the Northwest Passage was ice free for the first time “ever”. For example, Backpacker Magazine ran a story saying “The ice is so low that the photos clearly show a viable northwest passage sea route along the coasts of Greenland, Canada, and Alaska.” (Icecap Note: See Dr. Gary Sharp’s view on that here)

Cashing in on the panic that has set in with the help of some climate alarmists, tour operators like Quark Expeditions of Norwalk Connecticut are offering polar expeditions catering to that “see it before it’s gone” travel worry. One of them is in fact a trip though the Northwest Passage on a former Soviet Icebreaker called the Kapitan Khlebnikov which is a massive 24,000 horsepower Polar Class icebreaker capable of carrying 108 passengers in relative luxury through the arctic wilderness.

Walt from Canada, pointed out this story in the Globe and Mail on may 24th in the travel section. It seems the irony of a polar expedition to see such things as record sea ice loss being stopped cold by the very ice that doesn’t exist was not lost on the editors. From the Globe and Mail article:

“I am on the bridge of the massive Russian icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov, and the tension is palpable. We have hit ice - thick ice. The ice master studies the mountains of white packed around the ship while the 24,000-horsepower diesel engines work at full throttle to open a path. The ship rises slowly onto the barrier of ice, crushes it and tosses aside blocks the size of small cars as if they were ice cubes in a glass. It creeps ahead a few metres, then comes to a halt, its bow firmly wedged in the ice. After doing this for two days, the ship can go no farther. The ice master confers with the captain, who makes a call to the engine room. The engines are shut down. He turns to those of us watching the drama unfold, and we are shocked by his words: “Now, only nature can help this ship.” We are doomed to drift. What irony. I am a passenger on one of the most powerful icebreakers in the world, travelling through the Northwest Passage - which is supposed to become almost ice-free in a time of global warming, the next shipping route across the top of the world - and here we are, stuck in the ice, engines shut down, bridge deserted. Only time and tide can free us.” What irony indeed. Read Anthony’s full post here.

In the minds of the general public, the sensitive dependence on initial conditions that many nonlinear systems exhibit is expressed vividly by Ed Lorenz’ description of a butterfly which, merely by flapping its wings, might cause a tornado far away. It is unfortunate that Lorenz’ poetry has been taken too literally, even by scientists. As far as I have been able to determine, Lorenz meant to illustrate error growth caused by data assimilation and initialization errors, not the possible upscale propagation of errors. In my mind, an undetected small-scale disturbance cannot cause an unexpected large-scale event. Even a million Monarch butterflies taking off from their winter roost in Mexico cannot cause a tornado in Kansas. Also, it takes considerable time for small-scale calculation errors to propagate toward the large-scale end of the energy spectrum, especially when, as in all turbulence, the flow is strongly dissipative. Errors that creep in through subtle deficiencies in the codes employed are most effective when they invade the large scales of motion directly. Aliasing between neighboring wave numbers is a good example. Also, the upscale transfer of error “energy” in the subgridscale realm is ruled out by parameterization. Whenever individual eddies are replaced by a parameterized estimate of the subgrid scale motion, the issue of sensitive dependence on small-scale errors in initial conditions is moot. Lorenz’ butterfly deserves a more intelligent treatment.

In view of the manifestly chaotic behavior of the weather, one should be suspicious of claims about the stability of the climate system. The idea that the climate might be well-behaved, even if the weather is not, is not supported by any investigations that I am aware of. The very claim that there exist no processes in the climate system that may exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions, or on misrepresentations of the large-scale environment in which these processes occur, is ludicrous.

Let me conclude. I adhere to the Lorenz paradigm because I do not want to forget for a moment that small mistakes of whatever kind on occasion have large consequences. As far as I am concerned, the climate of our planet continuously balances on the verge of chaos. In my opinion, optimistic pronouncements about the stability of the climate system are unwarranted and unprofessional. I prefer modesty. Read full weblog here.

The temperatures over the last century correlated positively with carbon dioxide in the early 20th century but that warming was acknowledged even by the IPCC to be largely natural and minimally anthropogenic.

A negative correlation existed from the early 1930s to the late 1970s as temperatures cooled. This included three decades of the post war economic boom. A very strong positive correlation resumed after the Great Pacific Climate shift in the late 1970s.  Data here is the USHCN Version 2.

See full size image here

After 1998, temperatures stopped rising and since 2002 have been falling now into the 7th year. Meanwhile CO2 has continued to rise (9.69 ppm or 2.6%) although the Mauna Loa surface data has actually paused this year with the La Nina inspired cooling. The monthly global data is plotted here for Hadley and UAH MSU along the monthly seasonally adjusted CO2 from NOAA ESRL for Mauna Loa. There is no smoothing here of the monthly data. The correlation (Pearson coefficient, r) for the Hadley and CO2 is now a negative (minus 0.4) and for the MSU UAH (minus 0.21). As we have noted, this MAY mark the start of another cooling interlude as predicted by the 60-70 year cycles of the PDO and AMO, and diminished solar.

See full size image here

The on again, off again nature of this correlation suggests that carbon dioxide is not the driving factor in our climate. See pdf here.

More than 31,000 scientists across the U.S. - including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s in fields such as atmospheric science, climatology, Earth science, environment and dozens of other specialties - have signed a petition rejecting “global warming,” the assumption that the human production of greenhouse gases is damaging Earth’s climate.

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate,” the petition states. “Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

“Mr. Gore’s movie, asserting a ‘consensus’ and ‘settled science’ in agreement about human-caused global warming, conveyed the claims about human-caused global warming to ordinary movie goers and to public school children, to whom the film was widely distributed. Unfortunately, Mr. Gore’s movie contains many very serious incorrect claims which no informed, honest scientist could endorse,” said project spokesman and founder Art Robinson. WND submitted a request to Gore’s office for comment but did not get a response.

Robinson said the dire warnings about “global warming” have gone far beyond semantics or scientific discussion now to the point they are actually endangering people. “The campaign to severely ration hydrocarbon energy technology has now been markedly expanded,” he said. “In the course of this campaign, many scientifically invalid claims about impending climate emergencies are being made.

Simultaneously, proposed political actions to severely reduce hydrocarbon use now threaten the prosperity of Americans and the very existence of hundreds of millions of people in poorer countries,” he said. Read more here.

In recent weeks we have posted stories about the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and ENSO and their effects on temperatures and Greenland and Arctic ice.

In this story, we look at how these same ocean cyclical oscillations influence the relative frequency of tropical storms, the number of strong storms and the most likely storm tracks and areas affected.

In recent months we have seen two prominent scientists (MIT’s Kerry Emanuel and NOAA’s Tom Knutson of the fluid dynamics lab at Princeton) who had earlier published papers linking global warming with increased Atlantic hurricane frequency and strength change their position on the basis of new data or models. We applaud these scientists for being willing to change their opinion when presented with conflicting data.

We believe these varying cycles of activity and tracks relate mainly to natural cyclical changes in the oceans. Dr. Bill Gray has shown how the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes and major hurricanes increase dramatically during the warm AMO phase (the case since 1995). We can see that surface pressure during hurricane season tends to be lower in the western Atlantic and Gulf when the Atlantic is in its warm mode (positive AMO).

See full size here

In the cool PDO, there are more La Ninas and La Ninas favor more hurricanes due to less shear and storms threaten not only the Gulf as we find in El Ninos but are much more common along the East Coast from Florida to the Carolinas to New England.

See full size here

If La Nina holds on and the AMO, which has weakened, rebounds (as it did in the La Nina summer of 1955), both the Gulf and the East Coast need to be wary this summer and fall more than in most years. See why here.


See Hurricane Hugo full size here