-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
A recent article in the Daily Mail, and picked up by other media, claims an increase in Arctic ice foretells a cooling trend. The article boasts of a 60% increase in sea ice over the minimum that occurred in 2012. While the actual numbers from IARC-JAXA Information System (IJIS) show, as of yesterday, only a 50% increase, this is still a significant expansion.
Professor Judith Curry, climatologist and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, referred to the title as melodramatic and said of the content of the article: “the ‘cooling’ aspect has been overplayed.” Last year, University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins predicted that “there would be MORE Arctic sea-ice in 2013, compared to 2012.”
An important tool used in analyzing random data is the statistical phenomenon known as reversion to the mean, or regression to the mean. The extent of sea ice at the end of the annual melt, mid to late September, set a extreme minimum in 2012. Using reversion to the mean, it is more likely that the the extent in 2013 will be larger. Exactly what happened. The following graph indicates the variability of sea ice extent and the clear downward trend.
Cherry picking short-term results while ignoring long-term trends is a hallmark of misleading climate reporting. Long-term data needs to be analyzed to average out cyclical dependencies. There is a strong natural variability in sea ice extent and separating the natural from the greenhouse gases requires decades long timescales.
Climate science is an undertaking fraught with complex interactions and unknown cycles with unknown effects. It will take time and money to improve our understanding. However, improvement is mandatory if we are to be responsible conservators of our world.
Climate scientists estimate the amount of sea ice loss due to greenhouse gasses is between 50-70%.
H/T: Dana Nuccitelli, Steven Novella, Climate Dialogue, Alexis Sobel Fitts, Phil Plait.
Before any discussion of the sun’s variability gets started, let’s nip that one in the bud. As I pointed out before, the sun varies only a small amount, and those ups and downs coming on a regular eleven year cycle.
Beginning in the late 1800s, we became capable of measuring the sun’s energy output with great precision. Those records are kept by NOAA, and can be easily found in graphic form on their web site. Click the link and scroll down to the “Global Climate Dashboard.” Notice the icons at the bottom, and click the one on the bottom left of the panel that says “Sun’s Energy (W/m2).” The sun’s energy output graph is there.
http://www.climate.gov/
There are a number of interactive charts, including variables introduced by El Niño / La Niña.
Bron,
If you want to try to pass off AGW as solar variance to explain global warming you should know that the IPCC concluded that the amplification of warming caused by anthropogenic sources of green house gases is orders of magnitude higher than the warming effects caused by solar variance.
As for your last sentence, that was argument by non-sequitur gibberish as well as inaccurate. The former Soviet Union, despite the name, was a Communist form with a command economy which is not the same thing as what I advocate which is democratic market socialism (which does indeed allow for free markets except in areas critical to social health and stability).
You simple creature you.
what is inconvenient for warmers is that the earth used to be hotter than today and goes through cycles.
No one I know is denying the earth is warming. The rest of what you wrote is supposition.
I can show, using science, that the earth was hotter in the past than it is now. I can also show the earth was colder than it is now; all occurring prior to the industrial revolution.
Yes, nature does win in the end. Ask the Soviets and many other failed socialist states.
Well Bron, too bad for you the topic is called climate change and not weather change and that changes in local weather add up over time to be changes in climate.
Parts are not the whole, but the whole is the summation of its parts.
Whether or not changes in the whole are a result of changes in the constituent parts is a matter of causality.
And that’s what you deniers are in denial about but that the vast majority of science agrees upon.
The cause of climate change is AGW caused by the use of fossil fuels and the creation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which retain heat and therefor add instability into the system as an increase in heat is an increase in systemic entropy (disorder). That increased entropy manifests in unstable weather which accrues over time to be climate change.
That physics is unforgiving to profit motives is simply inconvenient for people who place profit above all other consideration, but physics always wins in the end.
parts make a whole, exactly. But they are not the whole.
Weather is to climate as a dog’s stomach is to the dog.
Weather Definition
Weather is the day-to-day conditions of a particular place.
For example: It was raining today at school. Yesterday it was sunny at home.
What is Climate?
Climate is often spoken about at the same time as weather, but it is something quite different. The climate is the common, average weather conditions at a particular place over a long period of time (for example, more than 30 years). We learn about different climates around the world. Deserts have a hot and dry climate while the Antarctic has a very cold and dry climate.
http://www.econet.org.uk/weather/whatis.html
Joe Blow 1, September 18, 2013 at 12:45 pm
…
Major Hurricanes are not increasing
F3-F5 Tornadoes are not increasing
Droughts are not increasing
Floods are not increasing
Fires are not increasing
Global warming has paused for the last 15 years
…
Total Global Sea Ice increased by 19,000 Manhattans in 2013
======================
Hogwash on the merits, but to expose your delusion further …
Concerning the globe (not just Muskogee) …
Ice volume always increases (“by 19,000 Manhattans” LOL) in the winter of “2013” from what it was in September of “2012”.
Hurricane / typhoon damage, death, and destruction is spreading whether any particular one is “increasing” or not (Oil-Qaeda operatives don’t care, they think size is all that matters)
Tornado damage and destruction is killing, maiming, and destroying more whether any single one is “increasing” or not (Oil-Qaeda operatives don’t care, they think size is all that matters)
Droughts are doing more damage in more places whether any one drought is “increasing” or not (Oil-Qaeda operatives don’t care, they think size is all that matters)
Floods are doing more damage and death in more places whether flood A is “increased” over the size of flood B or not (Oil-Qaeda operatives don’t care, they think size is all that matters)
Fires are doing more damage in more places whether individual fire size is “increasing” or not (Oil-Qaeda operatives don’t care, they think size is all that matters)
Global temperature average has been trending up for a hundred years or so whether or not it has “increased” at your right-wing denier church in Koch land or not (Oil-Qaeda operatives don’t care, they think size is all that matters)
Total polar ice volume has been decreasing whether or not you have your photo taken alongside a cube of ice from your fridge and mislabel it:
(CryoSat-2). It is not too late to retake your fifth grade science class Joe Blow (How Fifth Graders Calculate Ice Volume).
Joe Blow 1, September 18, 2013 at 11:47 am
So Dredd when NOAA says, “The bar charts below indicates there has been little trend in the frequency of the stronger tornadoes over the past 55 years.”
NOAA is wrong ?
——
Hey Dredd what does this mean in the link below EF3-EF5.png
============================
A “little trend”, then, is daviding the hell out of goliath.
When that “little trend” gets bigger it will take many, many more down.
What it all means Alfie, is that more damage is being done to civilization by the damaged global climate system than was being done “yesterday and the day before that and the day before that” (“Hurricane”, by Bob Dylan –talking about a “damaged police system” in New Jersey).
It is irrelevant whether death and destruction is caused by an EF-1, F-1, EF-5, or F-5.
People’s property and lives are at stake and are therefore the subject here, not your misunderestimation of scientific climate system reality.
In 1750 there were about 51 tornadoes, in 1950 about 206, and in 2011 about 1777.
People are dying because you joined Oil-Qaeda.
Tune in, turn on, and drop out of Oil-Qaeda and join the human race to survive.
“White lightening” (the KKK brew of choice) is not the biggest thrill around here.
No, Bron. Saying climate isn’t weather is like saying a dog isn’t a dog without its stomach. Parts make a whole. Weather is the parts that makes up the whole of climate. The distinction “weather isn’t climate” is semantic and ignorant of what climate is.
Gene H:
Saying weather is climate is like saying a dog’s stomach is a dog.
weather over time is climate.
A snow storm in New England over a period of 4 months is not climate.
The climate of New England is the spring, summer, fall and winter weather.
Weather is localized in time and space.
It can snow in New England, rain in Florida and be hot and dry in Arizona, that is local weather. The climate in the US is made up of the local weather patterns over time.
Dredd,
Argument by analogy is a specialty. 😀
Weather is a description of events taking place in the atmosphere (and by extension, land masses and the sea) over a short period of time, such as hours, a few days, or seasons. Climate is a description of trends in weather patterns over an extended period of time, such as years, centuries and millennia.
For visual reference, see the videos I posted at this link:
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/09/14/arctic-sea-ice-capades/#comment-656067
I’m stating the fact that climate is aggregate weather over time.
I know it’s hard to grasp that anything exists outside of your Koch approved script, but that’s how meteorologists and climatologists also use and understand the word “climate”.
To say “weather is not climate” is a semantic distortion of what climate actually means.
It’s also argument from ignorance.
However, it is simple and repeatable and sounds superficially logical which makes such deliberately misleading statements perfect for the Big Lie tactic.
To be clear, Joe. I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you’re paid to lie. In contrast, Bron is merely willfully ignorant and easily misled by propaganda and its techniques. You represent the hand feeding it and he represents those eating it but what is being fed is distortions, outright lies and in denial about the true nature of AGW and the threats it poses all in the name of energy sector private profits.
Yes tornado’s are only one marker and there are not any trends in the strong ones F3-F5 or as Dredd brings up EF3-EF5 here are some other variables for you to consider.
Major Hurricanes are not increasing
F3-F5 Tornadoes are not increasing
Droughts are not increasing
Floods are not increasing
Fires are not increasing
Global warming has paused for the last 15 years
Longest stretch in recorded hurricane history to go without a major hurricane Cat 3 or higher striking the U.S. Coast Almost 8 years
Total Global Sea Ice increased by 19,000 Manhattans in 2013
The quotes below come from the same NOAA web site that Joe cites in his obsessive focus on tornadoes. Tornadoes are only one marker out of many. Furthermore, tornadoes are not completely understood, which is why millions of dollars are being spent and people are risking their lives to study them. Last year, famed tornado chasers and scientists Tim Samaras, Paul Samaras and Carl Young were killed while trying to deploy sensors. If we knew all we needed to know about tornadoes, people like them would not be risking it all to gather data.
NCDC Releases August 2013 Global Climate Report:
Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
I’m actually confused about this as well
“Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these variables over shorter periods.”
I seem to recall this from Wikipedia but not sure what “Climate can be contrasted to weather” means.
Gene I’m sorry but my little pea brain is not working well this morning
Are you suggesting that weather is climate ?
Repetition of a wrong definition does not make it so although that kind of misinformation is key to the propaganda tactic of the BIg Lie, Joe.
That you don’t know what climate means, Bron, is only par for the course for someone with a known proclivity to make up his own definitions.
OED sez:
“climate /ˈklʌɪmət/
noun
the weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period:our cold, wet climate [mass noun]:agricultural development is constrained by climate
a region with a particular climate:he had grown up in a hot climate
the prevailing trend of public opinion or of another aspect of life:the current economic climate
Origin:
late Middle English: from Old French climat or late Latin clima, climat-, from Greek klima ‘slope, zone’, from klinein ‘to slope’. The term originally denoted a zone of the earth between two lines of latitude, then any region of the earth, and later, a region considered with reference to its atmospheric conditions. Compare with clime”
Wiki sez:
“Climate is the pattern of variation in temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, precipitation, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological variables in a given region over long periods. Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these variables over shorter periods.”
Weather is not climate and yet climate is aggregate weather over time.
A single cell is not complex life and yet a complex multicellular organism composed of them.
Just so, the complex system that is climate is composed of aggregate regional weather over time.
It’s pretty easy to grasp the difference if you don’t have your head up your own internal climate.
Hey Dredd what does this mean in the link below EF3-EF5.png
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/tornado/clim/EF3-EF5.png
What scale do they use Dredd when NOAA cites this below
To better understand the variability and trend in tornado frequency in the U.S., the total number EF1 and stronger, as well as strong to violent tornadoes (EF3 to EF5 category on the Enhanced Fujita scale) can be analyzed. These are the tornadoes that would have likely been reported even during the decades before Doppler radar use became widespread and practices resulted in increasing tornado reports.
“The bar charts below indicates there has been little trend in the frequency of the stronger tornadoes over the past 55 years.”
Gene H;
Joe Blow is right about weather and climate.