Arctic temperatures the warmest in 2,000 years; 2009 Arctic sea ice loss 3rd highest (Junk science)

Weather Underground ^ | 9/4/2009 | Dr. Jeff Masters

[PreciousLiberty]

It's time to take a bit of a break from coverage of the Atlantic hurricane season of 2009, and report on some important climate news. The past decade was the warmest decade in the Arctic for the past 2,000 years, according to a study called "Recent Warming Reverses Long-Term Arctic Cooling" published today in the journal Science. Furthermore, four of the five warmest decades in the past 2,000 years occurred between 1950 - 2000, despite the fact that summertime solar radiation in the Arctic has been steadily declining for the past 2,000 years. Previous efforts to reconstruct past climate in the Arctic extended back only 400 years, so the new study--which used lake sediments, glacier ice cores, and tree rings to look at past climate back to the time of Christ, decade by decade-- is a major new milestone in our understanding of the Arctic climate. The researchers found that Arctic temperatures steadily declined between 1 A.D. and 1900 A.D., as would be expected due to a 26,000-year cycle in Earth's orbit that brought less summer sunshine to the North Pole. Earth is now about 620,000 miles (1 million km) farther from the Sun in the Arctic summer than it was 2000 years ago. However, temperatures in the Arctic began to rise around the year 1900, and are now 1.4°C (2.5°F) warmer than they should be, based on the amount of sunlight that is currently falling in the Arctic in summer. "If it hadn't been for the increase in human-produced greenhouse gases, summer temperatures in the Arctic should have cooled gradually over the last century," Bette Otto-Bliesner, a co-author from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in a statement.

[PreciousLiberty]

This article, beginning with the title, is full of breathless acceptance of some very questionable work. A few issues:

1) The title implies the Arctic sea ice loss is the highest in 2,000 years. In fact, we have accurate records only from 1979.

2) This study doesn't take into account solar variability, which is poorly known before 1900.

3) It does not reflect the concept that the climate itself has long-term cycles driven by the chaotic and complex systems that make up the Earth's environment. For instance, even the best computer models fail to simulate El Nino, La Nina, or the various (multi) decadal ocean temperature cycles. Nor are such things as volcanism properly modeled.

4) In light of (3) above, the author actually admits that chaotic climactic patterns are causing arctic ice to increase over the last three years, flying the face of the overall claims here.

5) If you look at global sea ice extent, linked below, you'll note that the last few years have actually seen some of the highest levels for some time. That's because, as is conveniently completely ignored in this article, that Antarctic sea ice levels are very healthy. That certainly doesn't argue for "global" warming caused by greenhouse gasses.

Ah, those pesky facts. If the inconvenient facts don't fit the pet theory, eject the facts!

Dr. Masters is a respected meteorologist with a background of flying on Hurricane Hunter aircraft. I enjoy and respect his commentary on tropical weather. However, his slavish devotion to the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is unbalanced, and far less than objective.

Link to global sea ice extent. It was too large of a graphic to embed.

Note the trend on Arctic sea ice from 2007-present...time for maximum alarmism before it recovers too much! Also this article is out right at the Arctic ice minimum for this summer. lol:

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore ! Graphic from Testimony of Lord Christopher Monckton before the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support of the House Ways & Means on Carbon Emissions, 3/12/09.

[PeteB570]

We are only a few days short of the end of the Arctic ice melt season.

There is more ice up there this year than last year and more ice from last year than there was in 2007.

http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20090818_Figure2.png

[PreciousLiberty]

One other thing I neglected to point out is that according to the paper the Arctic warming trend kicked in around 1900. This is of course far too early for the human contribution to have been significant.

[Westbrook]

Before we get to the Arctic Ice, you gotta tell me what happened to the hole in the Ozone Layer?

Why do these anomalies always appear in the Arctic regions?

[chainsaw]

Where may I find the weather records for the years 09 to 2009 AD?

I would like to verify the data.

[ALPAPilot]

I personally don’t deem it worth my time to investigate, but here are other questions I would raise in the study.

Did they use satellite data for temps in the more recent decades? How did they correlate them with ice core, tree ring, sediment etc.

Did they include error analysis with the data? What is the uncertainty of the temperature data 100, 1000, 1500 years ago? How precise is the measuring technique used?

[MNJohnnie]

Hmm obviously it is NOT weather related since the northern hemisphere is having it’s 3rd coolest summer since they started tracking temperatures. Must be a tides thing like El Nino or something that they have not yet discovered.

[repubpub]

I like this part “Arctic began to rise around the year 1900, and are now 1.4°C (2.5°F) warmer than they should be...”. So they know exactly what the temp should be. They are good.

[ETL]

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From BBC News [yr: 2004]:
"A new [2004] analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years. Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past. They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer."..."In particular, it has been noted that between about 1645 and 1715, few sunspots were seen on the Sun's surface.

This period is called the Maunder Minimum after the English astronomer who studied it. It coincided with a spell of prolonged cold weather often referred to as the "Little Ice Age". Solar scientists strongly suspect there is a link between the two events - but the exact mechanism remains elusive."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3869753.stm
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NASA graph of sunspot activity over the past 400 years [note the profound lack of sunspot activity during the "Little Ice Age" period (apprx 1650-1720), AND the sharp INCREASE particularly during the past 60 years:

http://science.nasa.gov/ssl/pad/solar/images/ssn_yearly.jpg
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100,000-Year Climate Pattern Linked To Sun's Magnetic Cycles:

ScienceDaily (Jun. 7, 2002) HANOVER, N.H.
Thanks to new calculations by a Dartmouth geochemist, scientists are now looking at the earth's climate history in a new light. Mukul Sharma, Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth, examined existing sets of geophysical data and noticed something remarkable: the sun's magnetic activity is varying in 100,000-year cycles, a much longer time span than previously thought, and this solar activity, in turn, may likely cause the 100,000-year climate cycles on earth. This research helps scientists understand past climate trends and prepare for future ones.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/06/020607073439.htm

[ETL]

THE ACQUITTAL OF CARBON DIOXIDE
by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD

ABSTRACT:

"Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere [historically] is the product of oceanic respiration due to the well-known but under-appreciated solubility pump. Carbon dioxide rises out of warm ocean waters where it is added to the atmosphere. There it is mixed with residual and accidental CO2, and circulated, to be absorbed into the sink of the cold ocean waters. Next the thermohaline circulation carries the CO2-rich sea water deep into the ocean. A millennium later it appears at the surface in warm waters, saturated by lower pressure and higher temperature, to be exhausted back into the atmosphere. Throughout the past 420 millennia, comprising four interglacial periods, the Vostok record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is imprinted with, and fully characterized by, the physics of the solubility of CO2 in water, along with the lag in the deep ocean circulation.

Notwithstanding that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide has neither caused nor amplified global temperature increases. Increased carbon dioxide has been an effect of global warming, not a cause. Technically, carbon dioxide is a lagging proxy for ocean temperatures. When global temperature, and along with it, ocean temperature rises, the physics of solubility causes atmospheric CO2 to increase.

If increases in carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas, could have in turn raised global temperatures, the positive feedback would have been catastrophic. While the conditions for such a catastrophe were present in the Vostok record from natural causes, the runaway event did not occur. Carbon dioxide does not accumulate in the atmosphere."

http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html
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The graph above represents temperature and CO2 levels over the past 400,000 years. It is the same exact data Al Gore and the rest of the man-made global warmers refer to. The blue line is temps, the red, CO2 levels. The deep valleys represent 4 separate glaciation/ice-age periods. Look carefully at this historical relationship between temps and CO2 levels (the present is on the right hand side of the graph) and keep in mind that Gore claims this data is the 'proof' that CO2 has warmed the earth in the past. But does the data indeed show this? Nope. In fact, rising CO2 levels all throughout this 400,000-year period actually *followed* temperature increases -lagging behind by an average of 800 years! So it couldn't have been CO2 that got Earth out of these past glaciations. Yet Gore continually and dishonestly claims otherwise. Furthermore, the subsequent CO2 level increases due to dissolved CO2 being released from warming oceans, never did lead to additional warming, the so-called "run-away greenhouse effect" that Al Gore and his friends keep warning us about. In short, there is little if any evidence that CO2 had ever led to increased warming, at least not when the levels were within 10-15 times of what they are today. -etl
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"The above chart shows the range of global temperature through the last 500 million years. There is no statistical correlation between the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through the last 500 million years and the temperature record in this interval. In fact, one of the highest levels of carbon dioxide concentration occurred during a major ice age that occurred about 450 million years ago [Myr]. Carbon dioxide concentrations at that time were about 15 times higher than at present." [also see 180 million years ago, same thing happened]:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010405M
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So, greenhouse [effect] is all about carbon dioxide, right?

Wrong. The most important players on the greenhouse stage are water vapor and clouds [clouds of course aren't gas, but high level ones do act to trap heat from escaping, while low-lying cumulus clouds tend to reflect sunlight and thereby help cool the planet -etl]. Carbon dioxide has been increased to about 0.038% of the atmosphere (possibly from about 0.028% pre-Industrial Revolution) while water in its various forms ranges from 0% to 4% of the atmosphere and its properties vary by what form it is in and even at what altitude it is found in the atmosphere.

In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total tropospheric greenhouse effect (e.g., Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, 'Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,' Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264).

The remaining portion comes from carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and miscellaneous other 'minor greenhouse gases.' As an example of the relative importance of water it should be noted that changes in the relative humidity on the order of 1.3-4% are equivalent to the effect of doubling CO2.

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
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Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System

Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many 'facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.

Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC's, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).

Human activities contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small-- perhaps undetectable-- effect on global climate.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
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Water Vapor Confirmed As Major Player In Climate Change

ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2008) — Water vapor is known to be Earth's most abundant greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution to global warming has been debated. Using recent NASA satellite data, researchers have estimated more precisely than ever the heat-trapping effect of water in the air, validating the role of the gas as a critical component of climate change.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081117193013.htm

[SunkenCiv]

The title implies the Arctic sea ice loss is the highest in 2,000 years. In fact, we have accurate records only from 1979.

Late in the 1990s, the New York Times (which was, perhaps still is, a haven for global warming demagogues) published the ridiculous lie that the ice right at the North Pole had melted that summer for the first time in 20 million years. The story ran six or seven times over a week or so, including the final time, a day or so after the de facto retraction appeared, and was discussed every weeknight for five days by David Letterman, who finally noted on Friday that the retraction had appeared.

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[LibWhacker]

The globe is warming in places you can’t go to double check on us. So there.

Lol, how convenient.

[cashion]

Dr. Masters is a respected meteorologist with a background of flying on Hurricane Hunter aircraft. I enjoy and respect his commentary on tropical weather. However, his slavish devotion to the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is unbalanced, and far less than objective.

His problem could be that he simply has too much time on his hands. The National Hurricane Center keeps predicting next year's hurricanes will destroy everything on the coast from Houston to New York, all based on global warming models, and they've had essential duds the last three years, at least based upon their prognostications. Fewer hurricanes leaves him with less time to joyride in Hurricane Hunter aircraft on our dime.

[thinking]

Where is written, that there shall be ice in Arctic...after all Greenland was called Green in the past, for an obvious reason....

[From The Deer Stand]

And here in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota we’ve had the coolest summer for many years - the fewest 90-degree days in many years. I keep thinking about the weather cycles. If there were two or more ice ages what warmed the Earth inbetween? Not too many SUVs driving around back then!

[ETL]

Did you see this posted on spaceweather.com today?

SOLAR MINIMUM VS. GLOBAL WARMING: From 2002 to 2008, decreasing solar irradiance has countered much anthropogenic warming of Earth's surface. That's the conclusion of researchers Judith Lean (NRL) and David Rind (NASA/GISS), who have just published a new analysis of global temperatures in the Geophysical Research Letters. Lean and Rind considered four drivers of climate change: solar activity, volcanic eruptions, ENSO (El Nino), and the accumulation of greenhouse gases. The following plot shows how much each has contributed to the changing temperature of Earth's surface since 1980:

Volcanic aerosols are a source of cooling; ENSO and greenhouse gases cause heating; the solar cycle can go either way. When added together, these factors can account for 76% of the variance in Earth's surface temperature over the past ~30 years, according to the analysis of Lean and Rind.

Several aspects of their model attract attention: "The warmest year on record, 1998, coincides with the 'super-El Nino' of 1997-98," points out Lean. "The ESNO is capable of producing significant spikes in the temperature record." Solar minimum has the opposite effect: "A 0.1% decrease in the sun's irradiance has counteracted some of the warming action of greenhouse gases from 2002 - 2008," she notes. "This is the reason for the well-known 'flat' temperature trend of recent years."

What's next? Ultimately, the authors say, temperatures will begin rising again as greenhouse gases accumulate and solar activity resumes with the coming of the next solar cycle. Of couse, the solar cycle could be out of whack; if solar minimum deepens and persists, no one is certain what will happen. Lean and Rind reveal their predictions for the future here.

Reference: Lean, J. L., and D. H. Rind (2009), How will Earth's surface temperature change in future decades?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L15708

http://www.spaceweather.com/

[facedown]

The warmest year on record, 1998,...

I thought the corrected data showed 1934 to be the warmest?

[ETL]

I don’t know, but the warming in 1998 took place during a major El Nino event.

“The warmest year on record, 1998, coincides with the ‘super-El Nino’ of 1997-98,”

[thinking]

I have a theory on the Arctic ice cap melting....no doubt that warming temperatures could melt the ice cap...but if we remove the temperature factor, we have the accumulation of dust, volcanic ash, and desert sand on the ice surface, this covering adsorbs the suns radiation, and accelerates the melting process...

It can be demonstrated that global winds rise over the Ecuador, and descend over the Arctic regions, hence the global winds are a transport for fine dust particles, that are deposited on the Arctic ice.... Concurrent with the upper wind circulation, are the changes in surface winds, caused by such events as the occurrence of mountain ranges, expansion of deserts, and other physical changes to the earth surface...The surface winds will be deflected by such changes and direct warmer air to the Arctic ice cap...