Politics, Science

Arctic Sea Ice Capades

-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

arctic sea iceA 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.

ArcticEscalator2012_med

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.

350 thoughts on “Arctic Sea Ice Capades”

  1. I feel sorry for you that you’ve got such a weak ethical center that you think propaganda trolling is going to be effective here. That and your bosses threw you to the sharks with this assignment.

    Also, the whole freeze/drought dichotomy shows you really don’t understand the problem AGW actually presents. When you add heat to a system it becomes more unstable. People can see that for themselves.

    http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-07-13/national/35488343_1_climate-change-tax-increases-greenhouse-gases

  2. What they say:
    ‘Most models simulate a small decreasing trend in Antarctic sea ice extent, in contrast to the small increasing trend in observations… There is low confidence in the scientific understanding of the small observed increase in Antarctic sea ice extent.’

    What this means:
    The models said Antarctic ice would decrease. It’s actually increased, and the IPCC doesn’t know why.

  3. What they say:
    ‘Climate models now include more cloud and aerosol processes, but there remains low confidence in the representation and quantification of these processes in models.’

    What this means:
    Its models don’t accurately forecast the impact of fundamental aspects of the atmosphere – clouds, smoke and dust.

  5. What they say:
    ‘There is medium confidence that this difference between models and observations is to a substantial degree caused by unpredictable climate variability, with possible contributions from inadequacies in the solar, volcanic, and aerosol forcings used by the models and, in some models, from too strong a response to increasing greenhouse-gas forcing.’

    What this means:
    The IPCC knows the pause is real, but has no idea what is causing it. It could be natural climate variability, the sun, volcanoes – and crucially, that the computers have been allowed to give too much weight to the effect carbon dioxide emissions (greenhouse gases) have on temperature change.

  6. What they say:
    ‘Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10 – 15 years.’

    What this means:
    The ‘models’ are computer forecasts, which the IPCC admits failed to ‘see… a reduction in the warming trend’. In fact, there has been no statistically significant warming at all for almost 17 years – as first reported by this newspaper last October, when the Met Office tried to deny this ‘pause’ existed.In its 2012 draft, the IPCC didn’t mention it either. Now it not only accepts it is real, it admits that its climate models totally failed to predict it.

  7. What they say: ‘Surface temperature reconstructions show multi-decadal intervals during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (950-1250) that were in some regions as warm as in the late 20th Century.’

    What this means: As recently as October 2012, in an earlier draft of this report, the IPCC was adamant that the world is warmer than at any time for at least 1,300 years. Their new inclusion of the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ – long before the Industrial Revolution and its associated fossil fuel burning – is a concession that its earlier statement is highly questionable.

  8. What they say: ‘The rate of warming since 1951 [has been] 0.12C per decade.’

    What this means: In their last hugely influential report in 2007, the IPCC claimed the world was warming at 0.2C per decade. Here they admit there has been a massive cut in the speed of global warming – although it’s buried in a section on the recent warming ‘pause’. The true figure, it now turns out, is not only just over half what they thought – it’s below their lowest previous estimate.

  10. I feel sad for all the people in the SW and Colorado who were told that they were in a permanent drought.

    Dust Storm Marks Beginning of Southwest’s “Permanent Drought”

    http://theenergycollective.com/josephromm/60839/nbc-dust-storm-swallowed-american-city

    And just like every other idiot who forecast bullshit like Arctic to be Ice Free by 2013

    New York Times Shock News : Colorado Facing “Summer Of Drought”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/in-drought-stricken-heartland-snow-is-no-savior.html?hp&_r=1&

  11. And the truth finally comes out it’s all about population control just as you pointed to the wrong forecast made by Paul Ehrlich

    ************************************************************************************
    Connie Hedegaard’s comments come as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is expected to admit that previous scientific predictions for global warming and the effects of carbon emissions have been proved to be inaccurate.

    “Say that 30 years from now, science came back and said, ‘wow, we were mistaken then now we have some new information so we think it is something else’. In a world with nine billion people, even 10 billion at the middle of this century, where literally billions of global citizens will still have to get out of poverty and enter the consuming middle classes, don’t you think that anyway it makes a lot of sense to get more energy and resource efficient,” she said.

    “Let’s say that science, some decades from now, said ‘we were wrong, it was not about climate’, would it not in any case have been good to do many of things you have to do in order to combat climate change?.”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10313261/EU-policy-on-climate-change-is-right-even-if-science-was-wrong-says-commissioner.html

  12. But . . . it’s still heating. See, in a complex system individual data point predictions can be difficult to make and yet statistical trends can still be valid. The tipping point is still coming. It’s just a matter of when.

    1. ” yet statistical trends can still be valid.”

      Thank you. Good point.

      If I had a nickle for every time JB claimed a single data point, or a single storm, or a single season or a single year refuted global warming I’d buy a new car.

      Climate change is about long term trends. No single storm, season, or year or even a few years can confirm or refute climate change. Some published reports claim that 30 years of data is about the minimum to reveal trends related to human activity and their influence on climate.

      But you won’t hear that from JB.

      JB stands with the likes of renowned scientists Dennis Miller who once claimed that 8 inches of snow in Wichita refuted global warming.

  14. Cause it’s the only thing worth discussing here on this blog. Not interested in how many cops use excessive force or find the kitteth contest.

    We must battle the repeated lies over the last several years with the truth and facts.

  15. Joe B. is just the visible tip of the spear on this blog for the climate change denial industry. Here is a small documentary on the climate change denial industry. That has a nice ring to it, “climate change denial industry.” I like that.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIGrkVoa78o

    The video has a spotlight on a former professor called Tim Ball. Some enterprising folks have looked into his credentials. Here is more on Ball’s “qualification” which don’t appear to pass the smell test.

    http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tim_Ball

  16. Oh and Hurricane Humberto just missed being the record for the latest hurricane to form in the Atlantic since the satellite record by about three hours. 12 hours later it was reduced to a tropical storm.

  17. Dredd if you actually knew what you were talking about you would know we are in the longest period in the written hurricane record to go without a Major Hurricane strike Cat 3 or higher on the U.S. Coast. You also would know that ACE (Accumulative Cyclone Energy) in the Northern Hemisphere is currently 42% of normal for 2013 and there are no increasing trends in worldwide tropical cyclone activity, IN FACT it is decreasing.

    But you go ahead and compare two storms hitting at the same time as proof of nothing for the long term trend. It is almost as absurd as the president claiming Super Storm Sandy. barely a hurricane is a sign of global warming.

    Speaking of the president

    During Grover Cleveland’s first term (1884-1888) 15 hurricanes made landfall in the US. During his second term (1893-1896) eleven hurricanes made landfall, including five major.

    Total two terms in office= 26 Hurricanes 5 of the Cat 3 or above

    Obama 6 years in office=.3 hurricanes all Cat 1

    Note CO2 levels Grover Cleveland below 290PPM Obama 350-400PPM

    1. “Dredd if you actually knew what you were talking about you would know we are in the longest period in the written hurricane record to go without a Major Hurricane strike Cat 3 or higher on the U.S. Coast.”

      Joe Blow,

      If you actually knew what you were talking about you wouldn’t be prostituting yourself working for people like the Koch’s as a propaganda troll. Then again that would assume you had integrity at all, which is simply not believable. The only time you show up at this blog is when we discuss climate change, now why is that?

  18. Dredd:

    the changes in the sun are probably what is causing the ice to melt. It is natural earth cycles.

    If you think socialism is causing the ice to melt, you need your head examined. Although it does cause a great many problems, melting ice isnt one of them.

  19. OS:

    India was a socialist country from the late 40’s until the late 80’s, early 90’s. I am not talking about British rule. It is beside the point.

    If you want to argue about the British, that is another argument.

    You dont think socialism has long term effects on an economy? Infrastructure decay, bad work habits, systemic corruption, etc.

    How long do you think it will take Detroit to right itself? 10 years? And that is just a single city in the US.

    1. “You dont think socialism has long term effects on an economy? Infrastructure decay, bad work habits, systemic corruption, etc.”

      Bron,

      So I suppose a bunch of incompetents with MBA’s bankrupting a country in the name of free enterprise, while making obscene millions in bonuses doesn’t have a disheartening effect either. I would argue that any system that rejects running a society for everyone’s mutual benefit causes bad work habits and systemic corruption. I would also lay the blame for our decaying infrastructure on people like you who think taxation is theft.

  20. Gene H:

    your example of Norway is not very good, if they didnt have oil money they would be on the rocks.

    .

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