A story in today’s HUFFPO “Warming Ocean Could Melt Ice Faster Than Thought” Jianjun Yin of the University of Arizona and colleagues report the warming water could mean polar ice melting faster than had been expected. Their report was published Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience. Co-author Jonathan T. “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period” Overpeck, co-director of the University of Arizona’s Institute of the Environment, said: “This paper adds to the evidence that we could have sea level rise by the end of this century of around 1 meter and a good deal more in succeeding centuries.” Reading the comments show how much in the dark the AGW proponents are. Such a sad state of affairs. They are so dismissive and downright ignorant of the topic they so boldy comment on. They believe we are solely focused on Al Gore and have no scientific basis for skepticism. I wish we could tie them down into a seat and make them hear the truth...someday.

If you don’t think to these people AGW is a religious see the later post about the end times.

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If anyone finds the notion that warm water would melt ice faster than cold water startling please write me. This is not news. It has been suggested in posts and peer review papers for many years, warmer water’s intrusions into the arctic cause ice to diminish in predictable cycles, cycles that have precious little to do with carbon dioxide.

On October 21st the Associated Press hit the wires with a story entitled ”Sea Ice Melting as Arctic Temperatures Rise.”

The temperatures in the arctic have indeed risen in recent years and ice has declined, bottoming out in 2007 but it is not unprecedented nor unexpected. The arctic temperatures and arctic ice extent varies in a very predictable 60-70 year cycle that relates to ocean cycles which are likely driven by solar changes. 

In 2007, NASA scientists reported that after years of research, their team had assembled data showing that normal, decade-long changes in Arctic Ocean currents driven by a circulation known as the Arctic Oscillation was largely responsible for the major Arctic climate shifts observed over the past several years.  These periodic reversals in the ocean currents move warmer and cooler water around to new places, greatly affecting the climate. The AO was at a record low level last winter explaining the record cold and snow in middle latitudes. A strongly negative AO pushes the coldest air well south while temperatures in the polar regions are warmer than normal under blocking high pressure. See post here.

We agree. And indeed both oceans play a role. In the record-setting (since satellite monitoring began in 1979) summer melt season of 2007, NSIDC noted the importance of both oceans in the arctic ice.

“One prominent researcher, Igor Polyakov at the University of Fairbanks, Alaska, points out that pulses of unusually warm water have been entering the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic, which several years later are seen in the ocean north of Siberia. These pulses of water are helping to heat the upper Arctic Ocean, contributing to summer ice melt and helping to reduce winter ice growth.

Another scientist, Koji Shimada of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, reports evidence of changes in ocean circulation in the Pacific side of the Arctic Ocean. Through a complex interaction with declining sea ice, warm water entering the Arctic Ocean through Bering Strait in summer is being shunted from the Alaskan coast into the Arctic Ocean, where it fosters further ice loss. Many questions still remain to be answered, but these changes in ocean circulation may be important keys for understanding the observed loss of Arctic sea ice.”

Enlarged here.

The Pacific warm mode favors more El Ninos and warmer water in the far northern Pacific including the Bering Straits. The PDO flipped into its warm mode in 1978 and the arctic temperatures began to warm and ice began to melt.


Enlarged here.

Enlarged here.

Notice how the temperatures in Alaska go through step changes tied to the PDO (Keen).

Enlarged here.

The Atlantic also cycles on a 60-70 year period. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation or AMO returned to the positive warm mode in 1995.

Enlarged here.

Frances et al. (GRL 2007) showed how the warming in the arctic and the melting ice was related to warm water (+3C) in the Barents Sea moving slowly into the Siberian arctic and melting the ice. She also noted the positive feedback of changed “albedo” due to open water then further enhances the warming. 

The International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks showed how arctic temperatures have cycled with intrusions of Atlantic water - cold and warm.


Enlarged here.

The correlation was also confirmed by Juraj Vanovcan.

Enlarged here.

See how quickly the arctic ice reacts to warming of the Atlantic sea surface temperatures in 1995 (source Cryosphere Today). This marked a second leg down. We have seen large swings after the big dip in 2007 following a peak in Atlantic warmth in 2004-2005.


Enlarged here.

Although the PDO and AMO are measured differently, both reflect a tri-pole of ocean temperatures. Both have warm north and tropics and cool relative to normal in between in the positive phase and cold north and tropics and warm in between in the negative phase. By normalizing the two data sets and then adding the two, you get a measure of net warmth or cooling potential for both global and arctic temperatures. See how well the sum tracks with the arctic temperatures. Though we don’t have measurements of ice extent, there are many stories and anecdotal evidence that arctic ice was in a major decline from the 1920s to 1940s.


Enlarged here.

At the edge of the arctic Greenland behaves in the same way - with warming and cooling tied to the AMO.


Enlarged here.

Dr. Willie Soon has shown how the arctic temperatures match the solar Total Solar Irradiance (Hoyt/Schatten/Willson) well. Correlation is poor with CO2.

Enlarged here.

We see here how the annual TSI and annual PDO+AMO track together with arctic temperatures.

Enlarged here.

Though the current spike in the Atlantic temperatures and more high latitude blocking may cause another spike of melting in the next few winters as warm water from the AMO pop the last year works its way into the arctic, longer term you can expect arctic temperatures to decline and ice to rebound as the Pacific stays cold and the Atlantic cools and the sun stays in its 213 year Eddy minimum.

That doesn’t preclude some very cold and snowy winters short term. In 2008 glaciologist Bruce Molnia reported a bitterly cold Alaskan summer of 2008 following a La Nina winter with extreme cold and heavy snows resulted in area glaciers to expand, rather than shrink for the FIRST TIME IN RECORDED HISTORY. Summer temperatures, which were some 3 degrees below average, allowed record levels of winter snow to remain much longer, leading to the increase in glacial mass for the first time in at least 250 years.

See PDF here. See Verity Jones recent post on the arctic data here. See more on glaciers and icecaps here.

See post by Arnd Bernaerts on Verity Jones’ Digging in the Clay here with much more on the arctic. See also here how the decade is almost up for the arctic ice disappearing here. See this post by Steve Goddard on Greenland glaciers and sea level. 

This story from London’s Daily Mail is so bad, the reporter won’t even put his or her name on it.

In the story, we learn the Joplin tornado was caused by global warming.  We learn that Katrina was caused by global warming. We learn that droughts are caused by global warming. Floods are caused by global warming. Apparently, every storm or unusual weather phenomena is caused by global warming.

So, lets play ‘climate scientist’ (why not, apparently you don’t have to have any credentials to be one) and take a look at the arguments made in the article.

We’ll start with Hurricane Katrina. Remember how, in the wake of Katrina, we were told that hurricanes were going to be more frequent and more intense? Take, for example, this claim:

The work of hurricane expert Dr. Kerry Emanuel indicates that Global Warming provided the extra margin of energy that gave Hurricane Katrina enough power to break the levees in New Orleans. This is the conclusion of scientists, Global Warming observers along the Gulf Coast and others.

Hurricanes get their strength directly from the heat in the oceans they travel over, so it has long been expected that Global Warming would have an effect on the frequency and/or the intensity of tropical cyclones, which are called hurricanes in the United States. Observations have confirmed a sharp increase in intensity. The result is that the number of dangerous Category 3, 4, and 5 storms has increased. Dr. Emanuel’s innovation, the “power dissipation index,” helps track this intensification over time.

So, what actually happened from 2006 to 2010? The opposite of what was predicted! The five years since Katrina have seen record low hurricane activity—both intensity and numbers! The proof is right here (scroll down from top). The pro-GW crowd got it exactly wrong, again. One would think they would learn some humility, but that never seems to occur.

Second, here is their list of weather events tied to global warming (click to enlarge):

Considering the list encompasses the entire world for 11 years, there isn’t very much here.  Nearly half of the years (2001, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2008) don’t have a single occurrence.  Considering the warmest year was 1998 (see below) and that temperatures have cooled some since then the list proves northing. As I have stated before, if tornadoes were tied to global temperatures there would have been record tornadoes in 1998. They did not occur.

World temperatures from the UK’s Hadley Center. 

Here is a graph of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations (parts per million) since 1997. It continues to rise.


CO2 levels from the Mauna Loa Observatory

But, temperatures do not rise with it. If, as the IPCC contends, CO2 is the dominant force driving atmospheric temperatures, then temperatures would have (more or less) risen along with CO2. That simply hasn’t occurred either in the atmosphere or in ocean heat content (the more important metric).

Blaming the Joplin tornado on global warming smacks of desperation. They are losing the scientific argument so they call people names and make ridiculous claims like blaming an individual tornado on global warming. They get away with it because most of the media prints this nonsense generally without question. 

Several people have asked whether there seems to be a concerted effort to restart the public’s wise, rapidly dwindly concern about man-made global warming. The answer is a big yes. This behavior was predicted by Leon Festinger in his book about cultism “When Prophecies Fail” back in the 1950s. Expect the level of rhetoric and anger and a stream of garbage reports along with attacks on skeptics to increase. The public should rise up against the co-conspirators in the media, academia and government who attempting to increase their power and control over all our lives through the BIG LIE.

You won’t read stories that challenge the scare story like this. H/T Marc Morano

As further proof of their guilt, see how the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has issued a statement demanding that all attacks on global warming advocates cease. Sorry boys, we are just warming up (no pun intended). Joe Romm was just voted a fellow of the AAAS which should speak volumes.

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Reality denier: Warmist Peter Gleick argues that climate realists are a “diminishing community”; he suggests that while he’s allegedly a “real” scientist, Bob Carter isn’t
Tom Nelson Blogspot

Climate Change Skeptics Unite At Heartland Conference

Heartland Institute communications director Jim Lakely said it’s a “myth” that only skeptics are invited to the conference.

President of the Pacific Institute Peter Gleick, a scientist who supports the findings behind man-induced climate change, said he wouldn’t consider attending.

“I go to many meetings as it is, and the interesting science is being done elsewhere,” he said on a “pre-buttal” conference call hosted by the Center For American Progress. “This is not a science conference, it’s a political conference. It’s a way for a small community—and I would argue a diminishing community—to get together in a self-support kind of way. There is no science that’s going to be discussed there that’s new or that’s interesting ... it’s just not worth a real scientist’s time.”

So Peter then you had no reason not to attend.

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Mistaking Numerology for Math
Posted on June 28, 2011 by Willis Eschenbach on WUWT

I always love seeing what Science magazine thinks is important. In their June 10th edition, in their “BY THE NUMBERS” section, they quote Nature Climate Change magazine, viz:

1,211,287 Square kilometers of ice road-accessible Arctic lands that will be unreachable by 2050, a 14% decrease, according to a report online 29 May in Nature Climate Change.

I busted out laughing. Sometimes the AGW supporters’ attempts to re-inflate the climate alarmism balloon are an absurd burlesque of the scientific method.

Truly, you couldn’t make this stuff up. I love it that they claim to know, to an accuracy of one square kilometre, both a) the current amount of Arctic lands reachable by ice roads around the globe and b) how that amount will change over the next forty years.

People continue to be perplexed that what they like to call the “scientific message of the dangers of climate change” is not reaching the US public. Over and over it is said to be a communications problem … which I suppose could be true, but only if “communications” is shorthand for “trying to get us to swallow yet another incredible claim”.

The idea that a hyper-accurate claim like that would not only get published in a peer-reviewed journal, but would be cited by another peer-reviewed journal, reveals just how low the climate science bar is these days. Mrs. Henniger, my high school science teacher, would have laughed such a claim out of the classroom. “Significant digits!” she would thunder. “What did your books say about significant digits”.

“The output of a mathematical operation can’t have more significant digits than the smallest number of significant digits in any of the inputs,” someone would say, and the class would grind on.

This waving of spurious accuracy is useful in one way, however. When someone does that, it is a valuable reminder to check your wallet - you can be pretty sure that they are trying to sell you something.

Because scientific studies have shown that when someone comes up with hyper-accurate numbers for their results, in 94.716% of the reported cases, what they are selling is as bogus as their claimed accuracy.

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UN climate panel to examine extreme events

The chairman of a top U.N. climate panel says it will release a new report in November examining the link between climate change and extreme events like floods and drought that are taking place around the world.

Rajendar Pachauri, chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told reporters Tuesday that the panel has already reported that extreme events are increasing.

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NOAA Defies The Most Fundamental Laws Of Physics
Posted on June 29, 2011 by stevengoddard
(AFP) - 5 hours ago

WASHINGTON - Greenland’s ice sheet melted the most it has in over a half century last year, US government scientists said Tuesday in one of a series of “unmistakable” signs of climate change.

“The world continues to warm,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a briefing paper for reporters.

“Multiple indicators, same bottom-line conclusion: consistent and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the oceans.”

If the ice sheets are melting down, then the melted water has to go into the ocean. Sea level has to rise. Problem is, sea level plummeted during the hottest year ever - 2010.

Enlarged.
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/

Proving once again that you don’t have to know any science to be a climate scientist. In fact, it helps if you don’t.

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Published paper showed that Greenland temperatures were higher in the 1930’s, 1940s and 1700’s and multiple other times than at present

The paper published in the journal Climate of the Past illustrates three different temperature reconstructions of southwest Greenland, which show temperatures were higher than the present in the 1930’s, 1940’s, 1700’s, and multiple other times over the past 700 years when CO2 levels were lower.  Arctic land where current climatic conditions are neither alarming nor linked to a rise in man-made carbon dioxide emissions, according to many of the latest peer-reviewed scientific findings.  Research in 2006 found that Greenland has been warming since the 1880’s, but since 1955, temperature averages at Greenland stations have been colder than the period between 1881-1955.

The 2006 study found Greenland has cooled since the 1930’s and 1940’s, with 1941 being the warmest year on record. Another 2006 study concluded Greenland was as warm or warmer in the 1930’s and 40’s and the rate of warming from 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than the warming from 1995-2005. One 2005 study found Greenland gaining ice in the interior higher elevations and thinning ice at the lower elevations. In addition, the often media promoted fears of Greenland’s ice completely melting and a subsequent catastrophic sea level rise are directly at odds with the latest scientific studies.  These studies suggest that the biggest perceived threat to Greenland’s glaciers may be contained in unproven computer models predicting a future catastrophic melt. 

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NOAA CHIMES IN TRYING TO SAVE THEIR CLIMATE CENTER BUDGET: Global warming continues as greenhouse gas grows

The world’s climate is not only continuing to warm, it’s adding heat-trapping greenhouse gases even faster than in the past, researchers said Tuesday. Indeed, the global temperature has been warmer than the 20th century average every month for more than 25 years, they said at a teleconference. “The indicators show unequivocally that the world continues to warm,” Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said in releasing the annual State of the Climate report for 2010. “There is a clear and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” added Peter Thorne of the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellite.

Roger Pielke Sr. replies to NOAA It is disappointing that the media do not properly question the claims made by Tom Karl and Peter Thorne. They are presenting a biased report on the actual state of the climate system.

Peter Thorne is misrepresenting the actual data when he erroneously reports that (assuming he means ‘unequivocal warming’ “There is a clear and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans”.

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Reply to article: Co founder of. Greenpeace Patrick Moore weighs in against “Highly-venomous jelly fish closer to British waters as global warming causes biggest shift of marine life in two million years”

Posted by Co2sceptic on Jun 29th 2011 views 22 CLICK for source article.

There have been Portuguese Man o’War washing up at my town of Winter Harbour on northern Vancouver Island since I was a kid. They are all over the oceans and no doubt the Gulf Stream brings them north to Europe. I do not recommend being stung by them, it is very painful.

They say “The Northwest Passage, the route through the frigid archipelago from Alaska across northern Canada, has been ice-free from one end to the other only twice in rec orded history, in 1998 and 2007.”

“Recorded history” is since 1979 when the first satellite photos of sea ice extent were begun. There is no “recorded history of the extent of ice before 1979.

I saw another story from this Project Clamer today about the first Gray whale sighting in the Atlantic, actually the Med near Israel, since they were hunted to extinction in the Atlantic in the 1700s. It must have swum from the Pacific side through the Northwest Passage, or over the top of Russia. This was portrayed as an omen of doom rather than something to celebrate. Amundsen traveled through the Northwest Passage in 1904 or so, and the St, Rock in 1944 twice, so if a wooden boat could get through so could a Gray whale. But no, this is a sure sign that catastrophic climate change is at hand: here

They are basically blaming every change they see on global warming, even the return of a species that was native to the Atlantic for millions of years.

Regards

Patrick Moore

Professor Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California in San Diego, claims to be a science historian.  One can readily demonstrate that she is neither a credible scientist nor a credible historian; the best evidence is right there in her recent book, “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming,” coauthored with Eric Conway.  Her science is faulty; her historical procedures are thoroughly unprofessional.  She is, however, an accomplished polemicist, who has found time for world lecture tours, promoting her book and her ideological views, while being paid by the citizens of California.  Her book tries to smear four senior physicists—of whom I am the only surviving one.  I view it as my obligation to defend the reputations of my late colleagues and good friends against her libelous charges.

Oreskes is well-known from her 2004 article in Science that claimed a complete scientific consensus about manmade global warming; it launched her career as a polemicist.  Her claim was based on examining the abstracts of some 900 published papers.  Unfortunately, she missed more than 11,000 papers through an incorrect Internet search.  She published a discreet “Correction”; yet she has never retracted her ideologically based claim about consensus.  Al Gore still quotes her result, which has been contradicted by several, more competent studies (by Peiser, Schulte, Bray and von Storch; Lemonick in SciAm, etc).

Turning first to the her science, her book discusses acidification, as measured by the pH coefficient.  She states that a pH of 6.0 denotes neutrality (page 67, MoD).  Let’s be charitable and chalk this off to sloppy proofreading.

Elsewhere in the book (page 29), she claims that beryllium is a “heavy metal” and tries to back this up with references.  I wonder if she knows that the atomic weight of beryllium is only 9, compared to, say, uranium, which is mostly 238.  A comparison of these two numbers should tell anyone which one is the heavy metal.

Her understanding of the Greenhouse Effect is plain comical; she posits that CO2 is “trapped” in the troposphere—and that’s why the stratosphere is cooling.  Equally wrong is her understanding of what climate models are capable of; she actually believes that they can predict forest fires in Russia, floods in Pakistan and China—nothing but calamities everywhere—and tells climate scientists in a recent lecture: If the predictions of climate models have come true, then why don’t people believe them [see this]?  Perhaps because people are not gullible.

But the most amazing science blunder in her book is her hypothesis about how cigarette-smoking causes cancer (page 28).  She blames it on oxygen-15, a radioactive isotope of the common oxygen-16.  I wonder if she knows that the half-life of O-15 is only 122 seconds.  Of course, she does not spell out how O-15 gets into cigarette smoke, whether it is in the paper or in the tobacco itself.  If the latter, does she believe that the O-15 is created by the burning of tobacco?  If so, this would be a fantastic discovery, worthy of an alchemist.  Perhaps someone should make her aware of the difference between radioactive and “reactive” oxygen; the two words do sound similar.

I am sure one would find more examples of scientific ignorance in a careful reading of the rest of the book.  But why bother?

Having demonstrated her scientific “expertise,” let’s turn to her historical expertise.  Any careful historian would use primary sources and would at least try to interview the scientists she proceeds to smear.  There is no trace of that in Oreskes’ book.  She has never taken the trouble to interview Dr. Robert Jastrow, founder of the NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and later Director of the Mt. Wilson Astronomical Observatory and founding president of the renowned George C Marshall Institute in Washington, DC.  I can find no evidence that she ever interviewed Dr. William Nierenberg, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who actually lived in San Diego and was readily accessible.  And I doubt if she ever even met Dr. Frederick Seitz, the main target of her venom.

Seitz was the most distinguished of the group of physicists that are attacked in the book.  He had served as President of the US National Academy of Sciences and of the American Physical Society, and later as President of Rockefeller University.  He had been awarded numerous honorary degrees from universities here and abroad, as well as the prestigious National Medal of Science from the White House.

Instead of seeking firsthand information in the tradition of historical research, Oreskes relies on secondary or tertiary sources, quoting people who agree with her ideology.  A good example of this is her discussion of acid rain and of the White House panel (under Reagan, in 1982) chaired by Bill Nierenberg, on which I also served.  Here she relies on what she was told by Dr. Gene Likens, whose research funding depends on portraying acid rain as a very serious environmental problem.  It most definitely is not—and indeed disappeared from view as soon as Congress passed legislation designed to reduce the effect.

An amazing discovery: I found that Oreskes gives me credit (or blames me) for inventing “cap-and-trade,” the trading of emission rights under a fixed cap of total emissions (see pp. 91-93).  I had never claimed such a priority because I honestly don’t know if this idea had been published anywhere.  It seemed like the natural thing to suggest in order to reduce total cost—once an emission cap had been set.  My example involved smelters that emit SO2 copiously versus electric utilities that burn coal containing some sulfur.  I even constructed what amounts to a “supply curve” in which the bulk of the emission control is borne initially by the lowest-cost units.  Of course, Likens and some others on the panel, antagonistic to coal-burning electric utilities, objected to having my discussion included in the panel report.  Nierenberg solved the problem neatly by putting my contribution into a signed Appendix, thereby satisfying some panel members who did not want be responsible for a proposal that might let some electric utilities off the hook. 

We have established so far that Oreskes is neither a scientist of any sort nor a careful professional historian.  She is, however, a “pop-psychologist.” It seems she has figured out what motivates the four senior physicists she libels in her book; it is “anti-communism.” Really!  This is not only stated explicitly but she also identifies them throughout as “Cold Warriors.”

Well, now we know at least where Oreskes stands in the political spectrum.

Over very long periods of time as ice ages come and go, it has been found that temperature leads atmospheric CO2 content by about 800 years. This seems to contradict the IPCC and other views that CO2 causes change in temperature. But we are looking at very different time scales with present changes, so perhaps things happen differently. I decided to examine this question.

The temperature data used is monthly global land-ocean temperature or GHCN, which is available from NOAA. The atmospheric CO2 data used is from Mauna Loa in Hawaii, the longest continuous record of CO2 also available monthly.

When wanting to find the causation when two series are both increasing over time, it is best to look at the rate of change of the variables as this will show clearly which one precedes the other. This first graph shows the rate of change of these two variables monthly over the period 1958 to 2009.

Rate of change of atmospheric CO2 content and land-ocean temperature

Both monthly series were processed in the same way. The change over a 12 month was calculated, and a 12 month simple moving average of these values was used to avoid all seasonal effects. That data was plotted at the centre of the 23 months values used in the calculation. Because the treatment was the same for both variables, they are directly comparable.

It can be seen that there is generally a good correlation, with nearly all peaks in one variable having similar peaks in the other. When one has a smaller peak such as around 1975, then so does the other. When one has a larger peak around 1973 or 1998, then so does the other. there are one or two minor variations from this.

It is also evident that the red temperature graph generally precedes the black CO2 graph on turning points.  This suggests that temperature drives CO2 and not the other way around. A comparison of the two series at different lags gives this second graph.

Correlation between rate of change of global temperature and rate of change of atmospheric CO2 content
When the two series are coincident the correlation is quite small, r=0.13, whereas when temperature change 6 months earlier is compared to to CO2 change there is a maximum correlation of r=0.42 which is a high correlation for short period changes which have a high noise content. There is no high correlation for any lag when CO2 precedes temperature, the best being r=0.15 at 42 months.

It seems that, contrary to popular wisdom, temperature changes are driving atmospheric CO2 content changes, with a lag time of 6 months.