Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Arctic has still not received the memo on AGW

Arctic temperatures stable since 1958

From the Copenhagen Centre for Ocean and Ice of the Danish Meteorological Institute, which has maintained daily mean temperatures (untouched by Phil Jones & CRU) for the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel since 1958, the critical summer temperatures (the peak in the middle of the graphs) shows that the summer arctic temperatures were stable to considerably less for the summer of 2009 compared to the summer of 1959 (& 1958 and indeed most years in the record). The temperatures for the summer of 2009 were also stable to considerably less than the ~50 year mean shown in green, and at or below the critical ice melting point of 273.15K (0°C) shown in blue during the first month of the summer. Before anyone accuses me of cherry-picking, go to the DMI website yourself and look at all the graphs from 1958-2009 and you will find absolutely no increasing trend in arctic summer temperature, as is also evident from the mean shown as the green line.

(X axis is the day of the year)

This is in spite of the fact that the effects of AGW (Anthropogenic [man-made] Global Warming) are supposed to be the most pronounced at the poles. As Dr. Richard Lindzen noted in his talk at Fermilab, the winter temperatures at both ends of the graphs show tremendous variability due to turbulent eddies or storms transporting heat from lower latitudes, but there is no overall trend in the arctic winter temperatures either. Temperatures below the blue line indicating freezing temperature obviously aren't going to have any effect on arctic ice melt. Winter arctic sea ice extent has just peaked at the highest levels since the Centre for Ocean and Ice began measurement in 2005. Dr. Lindzen shows examples of the same arctic temperature graphs from the DMI Centre for Ocean and Ice and notes
In other words, if an increased-CO2-greenhouse-forcing was causing global warming as the IPCC models predict, the fingerprint would be most apparent in the summer arctic temperatures (when there is sunlight 24 hours a day to produce a greenhouse effect-there is no sunlight in the arctic during winter). Since CO2 has steadily climbed since 1958, yet arctic summer temperatures have not changed, CO2 is obviously not a major player in arctic temperatures.
Other related slides from Dr. Lindzen's talk:
Temperature data from NASA/GISS longest-running Greenland weather station (and others below):

But here's what NASA/GISS shows on their website for the public as the global temperature anomalies 1881-2009:
with the most pronounced warming obviously in the Arctic, in stark contrast to the DMI data and the NASA/GISS Greenland Godthab weather station (graphs above, which is the only station in operation for Greenland during the entire 1881-2009 period)(the second longest running Antarctic station Angmagssalik also shows no significant change in temperature 1895-2009).

 Related article on the "arctic hole":
The global temperature-monitoring network consists of 517 weather stations. But each reading is only a tiny dot on the big world map, and it has to be extrapolated to the entire region with the help of supercomputers. Besides, there are still many blind spots, the largest being the Arctic, where there are only about 20 measuring stations to cover a vast area. Climatologists refer to the problem as the "Arctic hole."



10 comments:

  1. The whole problem with IPCC and friends is that they never tried to form a theorie about the greenhous. They make no difference between the greenhous it self, the greenhous gasses, the greenhouse effect and the greenhouse change.
    If there is in the polar region hardly anny light then there will be allmostno greenhous effect despise the greenhous gasses.

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  2. Would you say that a thermometer which for years had been in an open grassy field, and was then moved next to hot machinery was showing “global warming” or incompetence on the part of the people who put it in the wrong place? Would you want important decisions to be made based on unreliable data from improperly-located temperature measuring stations? If you support Al Gore and believe in “global warming” / “climate change,” how would you adjust your views if you learned that most, not just a few, of the US temperature-measuring stations have become improperly-located, indicating warming which did not really happen?

    Well, the secret is out. The painstaking study by SurfaceStations.org at http://www.surfacestations.org/ is astonishing. Many of the thermometers are so badly located that you might think the three stooges installed them! The bottom line is that they show temperatures which are too high and warming which did not happen.

    “Climategate” is a story of corruption, and the unreliable temperature data is a story of gross incompetence. Still believe in “global warming?”

    F. Stephen Masek

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  3. As an AGW skeptic, I know cherry-picking when I see it.

    "with the most pronounced warming obviously in the Arctic, in stark contrast to the DMI data and the NASA/GISS Greenland Godthab weather station"

    You should check your statements before publishing.
    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Arctic_circle.svg

    Godthab Nuuk is not north of 80°N.
    Godthab Nuuk is not even in the Arctic circle.
    Angmagssalik is not north of 80°N.
    Angmagssalik is not even in the Arctic circle.

    So firstly, you are detracting from your credibility by claiming non-Arctic sensors disprove predictions made about the Arctic.

    Secondly, you can see from your greenland.jpg that there is a large temperature difference between stations that differ in their latitudes by over 14 degrees, which is also what the orange GISS anomaly chart shows. Neither the DMI web site nor ECMWF offer per-station data download so your claim the DMI record differs from GISS cannot be justified.

    A single year does not prove anything. Without having the actual data, my casual visual estimate of the average decadal temperatures at Nord Ads based on that greenland.jpg graph are: 1955-1965: -16.7°C, and 1995-2005: -15.5°C. That is consistent with about 1 degree of warming shown in the anomolay chart. Further, the DMI graphs show winter temperatures in the northern Arctic to be generally higher in 2005 and 2006 than they were in 1960 and 1961, and by over 5 Kelvin in some months.

    So finally, you're claiming something inconsistent with the same evidence you chose.

    If you want to be a skeptic, you aren't helping.

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  4. OzJuggler:
    1. I never claimed any or all of those Greenland stations fall within the arctic circle. I only thought it was helpful as a source of additional data. The point is that GISS has very few stations within the arctic circle and they extrapolate the arctic temps from stations considerably south of the artic. For more on this see:

    http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/giss-benchmarking-the-baseline/

    http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/temperatures-now-compared-to-maintained-ghcn/

    http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/ghcn-up-north-blame-canada-comrade/

    and this extrapolation may be biasing the GISS arctic anomalies more than the DMI arctic measurements.

    2. Your point about variability in the *winter* was already addressed above and in Lindzen's talk. The point Lindzen makes is that there is essentially no CO2-forced greenhouse effect in the arctic in the winter because there is hardly any sunlight in the arctic winter and that the great variability comes from storms and oscillations bringing heat from lower latitudes. Lindzen also says he found no trend in the DMI winter temps either.

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  5. Also just found this excellent post on arctic temperatures & ice:

    http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Arctic.htm

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  6. another post on GISS extrapolation to arctic:

    http://thevirtuousrepublic.com/?p=5394

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  7. and here:

    http://thevirtuousrepublic.com/?p=5383

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  8. another:
    http://knowledgedrift.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/theory-of-earths-thermostat-it-is-the-poles-in-winter/#more-402

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  9. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/25/gisscapades/#more-17728

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  10. I'd love to see convincing evidence that shows that risk of rising sea levels along the coast is more of a financial burden than the increased costs for everyone in the state.

    ReplyDelete