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Ned at 21:12 PM on 13 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
The emphasis of this article is that the half million year data showed carbon following temperature. You still seem to be not reading (or not grasping) the point. In the ice core record changes in CO2 may not be starting the warming/cooling swings, but changes in CO2 are most definitely amplifying the warming/cooling swings. In other words, adding CO2 to the Pleistocene atmosphere did produce more warming, and removing it from the atmosphere did produce more cooling. Now, can you explain some reason why CO2 would act as a greenhouse gas in the laboratory, and in numerical models, and in the ice core records, and in many other times during Earth's long history, and on Venus ... but would mysteriously stop being a greenhouse gas once Homo sapiens began constructing coal-fired power plants? -
thingadonta at 20:14 PM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
You should add these to the list of positives to come from global warming: florists. -
JMurphy at 19:50 PM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Argus, your 'arguments' are countered on this very site (apart from the strawman about catastrophe-anxiety) : Climate's changed before It's just a natural cycle C02 has been higher in the past Animals and plants can adapt to global warming It's a climate regime shift -
Argus at 18:52 PM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
-watchingthedeniers, doug_bostrom etc: Climatologists and their followers seem to be an extremely anxious species. They have absolutely no faith in the ability of the biosphere to adapt to changes. As soon as the temperature goes up or a glacier goes down by even the smallest amount, they seem to think a catastrophe is waiting around the corner. Yet the history of the earth shows repeatedly that changes happen all the time, for various reasons, and that everything else adapts to the changes. As for flowering and pollination, ever heard of epigenetics in plants and animals, for instance? -
NCunningham at 18:43 PM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Why the grouping in 25 year lots? -
Peter Hogarth at 18:23 PM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
Wingding at 08:37 AM on 13 April, 2010 This is actually an interesting question. Though ice chart data from Russian waters does show some correlations (see Mahoney 2008), and it would be interesting to track where the sparse temperature data is from, we can agree (hopefully) that temperature is a major part of the story. The chart you have referred to is air temperature. As a fair proportion of the ice melt is basal melt caused by warmer waters we also have to factor this in, (as well as energy transport by currents and atmospheric variations). Unfortunately there is little Ocean temperature profile data from before the 1950s, but we do have a proxy, and that is Sea level rise. HumanityRules at 16:04 PM on 13 April, 2010 I think you missed the references to significant trends in lengthening melt season in the post? The somewhat misleading animation in your comment becomes a little clearer when plotted in full for the length of the record. I have plotted the NCEP data and the Danish Meteorological Institute data from 1958 (where the DMI series starts). I’ve added a simple trend line. I'll get a larger version available.
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quokka at 17:54 PM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
#8 watchingthedeniers: There is a study of Australian butterflies reported on ScienceDaily. I don't know if it is published yet. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100318132510.htmResponse: It looks like the paper (Kearney 2010) is being published this Saturday, March 17. Thanks for the link, I'm adding it to the evidence for global warming and list of peer-review papers. -
RSVP at 17:51 PM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
I am not aware of a single life form that doesnt depend on mobility for survival. Fish swim, birds fly, and even plants exhibit mobility by diffusing their seed and pollen in so many ways. This ability to move, migrate, etc., is proof that the environment has always been continually in flux. The ability for flowers to bloom earlier or later is a manifestation of this same reality. -
Doug Bostrom at 17:50 PM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
HumanityRules pardon me, it's late here, but using your conclusion about nature's resiliency I can apply the same logic to conclude that I can toss a brick through my living room window and simply call a glazier in the morning and have it fixed, no harm done. That observation begs the question: If I have the brick in my hand should I throw it, or set it aside? Put another way, am I a witless catastrophe, or a mindful human? Time for bed... -
HumanityRules at 16:04 PM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
#18 wingding My guess is there isn't a great deal of confidence in the early part of the long term record extent shown here. As john might put it the meme of low ice in the 1930s and 1940s is pushed by skeptics. #17.Albatross You seem to have it the wrong way around. Alarmists made the most of the aberrant 2007 sea ice extent to push the worst case scenario's. Recovery from that aberration has left them back peddling. It's not unexpected that skeptics would make the most of that. You should be most critical of the extreme alarmists, they do more to undermine the science. Short termism on both sides of the argument are unhelpful. If this article is only about whether there is a recovery in arctic ice wouldn't it be simple enough to state one aberrant month (March 2010) is insignificant compared to several decades of loss. I wouldn't dispute the downward trend for several decades or that the past two years can be considered a recovery. My objection continues to be the assumption that this is down to temperature when other factors are obviously important, if not dominant. This article contains many sentances where the temperature/ice extent relationship is assumed. For much of the highest latitudes the melt season has remained unchanged for the past 6 decades. What is driving ice loss in this region?
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watchingthedeniers at 16:03 PM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Have just read the paper: two things interest me. Firstly, this is a very robust piece of research, and again confirms the reality of AGW. Secondly, it provides a model for monitoring the impact of climate change ecological systems are global/regional and national levels. Is there anything in Australia and/or NZ that attempts to record data for a similar analysis(granted our historical records won't have the depth of the UK)? To me, that would be an additional line of evidence and an interesting compare and contrast. -
HumanityRules at 15:36 PM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
What is the significance in this case of the present 25 years being the earliest springs? Is there any significance to the mid 1800’s showing the latest springs in 250 years? The data shows that nature can cope with a great deal of variation without apparent catastrophes.Response: My next post somewhat addresses this - looks at how nature has coped with dramatic climate change in the past. This goes much further back than the last few centuries which have been fairly mild compared to some of the changes in the deep past. Should hopefully finish it tomorrow. -
scaddenp at 14:48 PM on 13 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
Ned, there is enough uncertainty on PETM to make me very hesitant to suggest the hypothesis as fact - but at least it is consistent. nhthinker - aerosols lead to cooling but only for brief periods of time because aerosols dont remain in the atmosphere. CO2 does. "The point of the new climate models is to show CO2 as a forcing function." Huh???? This would be news the modellers. CO2 IS a forcing. We can measure its forcing (3-4 W/m2) more or less directly even. See Evans 2006 The point of models is to see what happens with this forcing. Perhaps some careful reading of the science in its not us -
Doug Bostrom at 14:43 PM on 13 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
Well, nhthinker, we're making history every day, so time will tell. Maybe it tells us already? How about looking at this from a slightly different perspective. What do you see happening now-- in the history of the past few years that is to say-- that controverts the underpinnings of our understanding of how C02 behaves as a component of our climate? -
nhthinker at 14:10 PM on 13 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
Ned, The emphasis of this article is that the half million year data showed carbon following temperature. The point of the new climate models is to show CO2 as a forcing function. Your reference to the preceding years 300 Kyrs data is only useful if it also shows a forcing function of CO2. I would be much more interested in analysis of periods of history that show substantial emissions of CO2- but I'm afraid that these CO2 emissions are also correlated with major emissions of soot and other particulates from volcanoes. My minimal understanding of these events is that they quickly lead to a deep cooling periods as opposed to long warming periods. I think climate scientists need to search out and highlight these historic events that are most like today rather than just saying today is different and is producing different results that can be predicted just based on computer models, laboratory experiments and short term regional analysis. -
chris1204 at 13:53 PM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
1930 - 1978 seems to have rather late flowerings compared to 1900 - 1930 (as best as I can make out from eyeballing the graph (I find it hard to make out the start and finish of intervals on the x-axis) while 1753 - 1783 has very early flowerings despite its correspondence with the so-called 'Little Ice Age.' These figures seem counterintuitive when compared against what we know of climate in a time when reasonable instrumental records were available. I note too the extraordinarily high uncertainties in early data compared with the narrow uncertainties of the recent record, which makes me wonder about the validity of the splicing of the data. -
Ned at 12:59 PM on 13 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
because there is a lack of natural causes that can suddenly release CO2 as a forcing not a feedback In recent years, perhaps. But some mass-extinction events involved sudden increases in CO2 (PETM, various flood basalt episodes). -
scaddenp at 12:51 PM on 13 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
"If this article, instead of showing half a million years, actually pointed to data sets from history that shows a substantial burst of CO2 (with similar levels of dust that are being produced today) and show that there was clearly a jump in temperatures that could not be explained by solar variation then I would take notice." Tricky- because there is a lack of natural causes that can suddenly release CO2 as a forcing not a feedback. I'm sorry but to me this like refusing to acknowledge that we could send a rocket to mars because there wasnt a "natural" trip by an object from earth to mars. We can safely predict the course within known uncertainties however because we just use physics. So do climate models. What predictions from climate model do you think are poor? That they cant predict weather? They dont try to. To Ned's list, I would actually add the Hansen 1988 for actual forcings. Sure it has some issues but good effort for such a primitive model! (For more on this and current model/data comparisons see updates-to-model-data-comparisons Climate science has also predicted pretty accurately both the change in OLR from AGW gases and the increased LR energy received at surface from these gases. -
Marcus at 12:50 PM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
There is also the issue of senescence. Warmer temperatures have been shown to make crop plants reach "old age" before maximum biomass can be achieved-thus resulting in reduced biomass overall. So far from being beneficial, earlier flowering & warmer winter, spring & summer temperatures could actually result in very detrimental outcomes for our food supplies. Also, John, I'm interested in the part of the graph for c 1900-1930. Now I realise the flowering times for 1978-2008 is even lower than for the 1900-1930 period, but did the author offer an explanation of why it was so low compared to the rest of the pre-1978 period? I'm guessing it had to do with the warming we got in the first part of the 20th century, but would just like that confirmed. Thanks :). -
watchingthedeniers at 12:35 PM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Great article, and yet another example of a prediction made by climate science. So, how do the deniers try and spin this? Check you WUWT? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/06/global-warming-and-%e2%80%9cthe-early-spring%e2%80%9d-part-ii/ Apparently we don't need to worry, the paper's results are just a "myth". When it contradicts your world view, well deny.Response: Thanks for the WUWT link. I'd completely forgot that there is actually a skeptic argument denying that springs are advancing. I was only highlighting this study as I'd just added it to the evidence for global warming. But as there are some who don't even think springs are advancing, I've added a 106th skeptic rebuttal "Springs aren't advancing". For now, it just includes this UK study but will expand it to cover the rest of the globe shortly.
Also, I set aside some time each day to add peer-reviewed papers to the links directory. I've just added Amano 2010 to the list of peer-reviewed papers on advancing springs. Anyone else who knows of other papers on this topic, please feel free to submit them to the directory. -
Doug Bostrom at 12:34 PM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Robrtl, you'd certainly think so until you discover that complications arise, such as a food supply becoming available and then ending prior to the requirement of organisms depending on that food supply. Did you read John's article? ...a change in timing of plant flowering can disrupt the creatures that pollinate them. Similarly, changes in timing of plant or insect behaviour can affect the birds that use them as food supplies. Google on the topic and you'll see the complications emerge more fully. -
Rob Honeycutt at 12:24 PM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
@robertl... As my mother always said, "Be careful what you wish for." -
watchingthedeniers at 11:56 AM on 13 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
By the way, has anyone seen Jo Nova's article on ABC drum? She is spinning up a storm, comments thread well over 350. She is claiming CRU is a white wash... when is the media going to cotton onto to how the deniers exploit the "fair and balanced" approach? -
robrtl at 11:53 AM on 13 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
hooray....... the earlier the better -
Ned at 11:50 AM on 13 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
nhthinker writes: You have inappropriately narrowed the interpretation of the scope of his second and third sentences to global warming of today- there is nothing to justify your assertion. No, Barton's second and third sentences aren't about "today", they're about the EPICA and Vostok ice cores, covering the past half-million years prior to the start of the current interglacial. See where Barton refers to a "lag"? That's the data set and time period with the lag. That's what Barton is talking about, and that's what this thread is about. Continuing, nhthinker writes: The CO2 produced after a warming period cannot be the cause of that particular warming period. If the argument is that additional CO2 produced necessary causes a warming period and that variability in solar influences are much less important, then the CO2 warming proponents need a better explanation of the dramatic trend change at the typical start of an interglacial. I discussed this in detail in my comment above. There's not really any problem here, this is pretty well understood. Then, nhthinker writes: But the Earth and life on it, have survived with many times more CO2 than we currently have. Nobody's suggesting that the Earth will not survive, or that life will not survive. The question is what will be the economic and social impacts of rapid climate change, especially things like increased drought in continental interiors (a la 1930s Dust Bowl). Science requires models that are accurate predictors of controlled experiments or future events. What prediction of Global warming science are you most proud of? How many years into the future was that prediction? This is actually a good question, and one that might make an interesting topic for a full post here. There have been a number of good predictions. Since this thread is about the temperature/CO2 lag in Antarctic ice cores, here's a nifty example of a test of the predictive power of climate models. The EPICA Challenge to the Earth System Modeling Community The basic idea is that in June 2004 the EPICA team released the analysis of climate data from 740,000 years of the Dome C ice core, but they only released the greenhouse gas data for the most recent 430,000 years. They invited modeling groups to make predictions about what the unreleased 300,000+ years of CO2 data would look like, as a way of testing the models. The model predictions are compared here: Modeling Past Atmospheric CO2: Results of a Challenge. Most or all of the groups produced pretty accurate predictions (see Figure 4 here for an example of a comparison of one group's predictions vs. the actual ice core CO2 data). So yes, there are lots of predictions, and in fact we can even find some nice examples which are actually on topic for this thread! -
iskepticaluser at 09:04 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
Re #CBDunkerson - “Extent is easy to measure, but not particularly useful.” There’s one way in which extent of sea-ice (and snow cover) is absolutely critical - its impact on albedo. Sea ice reflects around 80 per cent of incoming solar radiation; open water absorbs about 80 per cent, and the effects of the subsequent warming can extend inland over 1000 kms. From a preliminary study by the PEW Environment Group on the CURRENT feedback impact of melting sea-ice and snow (albedo effect) and permafrost (methane release): “In 2010, the loss of Arctic snow, ice and permafrost is projected to cause warming equivalent to 3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, equal to 40 percent of total annual U.S. emissions.” Apparently this study is the first formal attempt to quantify these feedbacks. Its findings, if confirmed, are truly hair-raising. -
wingding at 08:37 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
The "Long term seasonal trends in Arctic Ice extent." graph going back to around 1870. How come this doesn't seem to match up with the temperature reconstructions of the arctic going back that far? In particular those temperature reconstructions show warming in the early 20th century (eg here), which I would have caused quite a bit more sea ice decline than appears in the sea ice reconstruction? -
Albatross at 06:18 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
Thanks to Dr. Hogarth for this interesting post. I would like to echo his and others' comments speaking to the fact that the role of winds on modulating Arctic sea ice has long been known. The role of warmer temperatures conditioning the sea ice to be more sensitive to extreme events such as 2007 has also been established. Also, see figures below to see how the number of melt days has been increasing over the satellite record.
I'm afraid the 2007 event is going to become the sea-ice equivalent of the 1998 spike in global SATs, and will be seized upon by those in denial about AGW to confuse lay people and to muddy the waters.
2010 is going to be an interesting year. How this melt season pans out will be determined, in part, by what the AO does in the next 5 months or so. Perhaps more importantly, there is a lot of young and thin ice over the Arctic basin (about 10% is covered by ice more than two years old, compared to 35% in the early eighties):
Claims that the Arctic sea ice is "recovering" based on just a few data points are irresponsible and premature.
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From Peru at 05:52 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
There seems to be a "recovery" in multiyear ice(older than 3 years) http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100406_Figure6.png If this is really a "recovery" is debatable, as most of this "multiyear ice" is really 3-year ice. Older ice is still at record lows. It will be nice to see an estimation of ice THICKNESS based on those sea ice ages, to see if there is any sign of recovery in ice VOLUME. -
Jesús Rosino at 05:50 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
John, inline comment #10, Thanks, John. My fault, and it's not the first mess due to my quick writing (though I didn't imagine I could affect the whole thread). I'll be more careful. Peter Hogarth #11, Thank you for this post, I'm looking forward to reading the upcoming 2nd part! Let's see if I can find the time to finish the translation of this one before that :) -
Tarcisio José D at 05:41 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
RE #8 OK. I read the article in your Linck. He analyzes the steam only in the vapor state. Do not analyzes the transformations vapor / fog / cloud / vapor or rain dominated the "latent heat". We need to analyze the relationship vapor/fog of water in the atmosphere because water vapor is the thermal "battery" of our planet. It's the "battery" that provides thermal energy to warm the night (no sun) and to soften the harsh winter (low sun). In summer the water and / or fog to pass into the vapor state (potential energy - the latent heat) reducing the temperature of the planet releases this energy in the winter making it less strict. The same can be said of the temperatures of day and night. The greater the difference the winter / summer or day / night the greater the occurrence of extreme events. But these climate modelers did not predict that the ammonium produced by decomposition of organic matter disperse and waterproofs the clay soil. Today, the evaporation of water on the continents is reduced by requiring the oceans to warm up to replenish the moisture in the air. I'm trying to draw attention of the scientific world to this fact. http://www.pnas.org/content/104/39/15248.full.pdf "Because SSM/I moisture retrievals are unavailable over the highly emissive land surface (18), our focus is on the total column water vapor over oceans, Wo, for a near-global domain." Translate this paper (portuguese/Inglish) http://www.scam.com.br/tjdavila/solo/termostato.htm -
Doug Bostrom at 05:39 AM on 13 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
Nhthinker, leaving aside the multitudinous observational evidence confirming the central predictions from bulking up the atmosphere's C02 inventory, our understanding of how additional C02 will affect the primary radiative physics of the atmosphere is well understood. The sort of large scale experimentation you insist is required to understand the phenomenon and make successful first order predictions is actually not necessary. Exactly what knock-on effects will transpire from the changes to the physical behavior of the ocean-atmosphere system we're launching by altering the radiation characteristics of the atmosphere are as yet emergent. But again, the gross effects of the work we're performing on our atmosphere are not actually controversial. If I've not already done so, I suggest you spend some time reading an introduction to the topic of C02's characteristics as they pertain to radiative physics and our atmosphere. You can hardly do better for a primer on this subject than Weart: The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect And pardon me for mentioning policy. My concern is that on the one hand we do have an admirable desire for perfectionism when it comes to creating hermetically airtight science, yet on the other hand pragmatism suggests that at some point we must accept that multiple arrows of hypothesis leading to theory and then conclusion tell us we've got a need to take the conclusions we're reaching and act on them. -
CBDunkerson at 04:32 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
Ultimately, the only statistic which tells us which way Arctic ice is going is the total volume. Extent is easy to measure, but not particularly useful. Consider; A single cube of ice 10' x 10' x 10' in size has a volume of 1000 cubic feet and an extent of 100 square feet. If we then chopped that block up into 1000 1' x 1' x 1' cubes, tossed out 950 of them, and arrayed the remaining 50 in a 'checkerboard' pattern the resulting volume would be just 50 cubic feet but the extent would still be 100 square feet. This is because 'extent' is defined as the area of ocean with at least 15% sea ice... and thus indeed a carefully scattered 15 one foot cubes could STILL cover an 'extent' of 100 square feet. From this example we see that two equal 'extents' can represent VAST differences in ice volume and even the surface area of actual ice (i.e. it only takes 15 square feet of ice surface to create an extent of 100 square feet). Thus, something as simple as a prevailing wind causing ice to bunch up in an area or scatter more widely can have a huge impact on 'extent' without changing actual ice area (and thus albedo) or volume at all. All studies indicate that total Arctic ice volume is still decreasing. Ergo, all the talk about blips in the 'extent' data is meaningless... even if they weren't classic examples of ignoring a pronounced long term trend to focus myopically on minor short term statistical variation.Response: I wouldn't say sea ice extent data is meaningless. Just that extent shows a lot more variability than sea ice volume as extent is also affected by weather, wind, sunlight and year-to-year temperature changes (eg - an unusually cold winter will lead to greater reforming of first year ice). Nevertheless, Arctic sea ice extent is a good proxy for Arctic temperatures when considering long-term trends - you just need to be careful drawing conclusions from short-term fluctuations. -
nhthinker at 04:24 AM on 13 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
Doug, Science, by definition, has to be predictive otherwise it is not science. The middle ages was full of charts that would be constantly updated to seem predictive but never took into account the theory of gravity. These tables that the "scientists" of the middle ages were made to exhibit "self-consistency". Self-consistency is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to determine true science. Prediction while measuring other potential factors is typically necessary to be considered a hard science. Again I ask- what prediction of global warming science are you most proud of? The graph presented with this article covers half a million years. Barton's paragraph referred to even greater time scales. His assertions were correct for the timeframes he covers. Ned claims that previous points in history are not instructive to the present time at the present scale. And that new "science", that does require long term testable data, is not needed: all that is required is ever changing self-consistent models... Just like what we had in the middle ages. If this article, instead of showing half a million years, actually pointed to data sets from history that shows a substantial burst of CO2 (with similar levels of dust that are being produced today) and show that there was clearly a jump in temperatures that could not be explained by solar variation then I would take notice. What is the best unchanged global warming model that is over ten years old? What did it predict correctly? Climate is much more complicated than today's models describe and there is no historical data presented here that CO2 is a forcing function to global climate- The next 50 years will dramatically change our knowledge of climate and how humans can control it to make it more hospitable for any species humans choose. I expect the importance of ionization, solar variability, and magnetic fields will bring the actual models of decadal climate prediction to the level of today's weather prediction. I'll leave my faith in the physicists - they do not seem to be as steeped in political biases. An overemphasis on things that are observable for very long periods of time have fooled scientists in the past and are destined to continue to do so. Your last paragraph was clearly regarding policy and so I will not respond to it as that it has been deemed inappropriate to discuss policy here. -
Riccardo at 04:07 AM on 13 April 2010It's the sun
Another link between the sun and earth climate broken. It's the old Scafetta et al. 2003 hypothesis of a link between solar flares or other sun related fluctuations (e.g. Scafetta et al. 2004 and West et al. 2008) and temperature variability. In a new paper Rypdal et al. found that the claimed "complexity linking" is due to a faulty analysis and that proper tests show that the opposite is true: "These results suggest that the stochastic properties of the global temperature record is governed by the long-memory internal dynamics of the climate system and are not linked to the short-memory intermittent fluctuations which characterize the solar output." In a interview reported by physorg.com Rypdal adds: "A corresponding theory of global warming of solar origin does not exist. What does exist is a set of disconnected, mutually inconsistent, ad hoc hypotheses. If one of these is proven to be false, the typical proponent of solar warming will pull another ad hoc hypothesis out of the hat. This has been the strategy of Scafetta and West over the years, and we have no illusion that our paper will put them to silence" Quite a strong statement, I'd say. -
Ed Davies at 03:54 AM on 13 April 2010Skeptical Science Housekeeping: Preview, translations and icons
Your feed appears to be broken, according to the feed reader I use, RSSOwl. The web site Feed Validator agrees.Response: Fixed, thanks for the heads up. It was due to the YouTube animations in the latest Arctic sea ice post. Embeddable YouTube movies are a wonderful resource but they are also the bane of my WYSIWYG blogging existence! -
Doug Bostrom at 03:36 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
I believe I mentioned it elsewhere here but for those keen on remote sensing as it relates to Arctic ice, good news as CryoSat 2 (link to comprehensive SpaceFlightNow story) was successfully launched a few days ago. This satellite is specifically equipped to monitor draft or thickness of Arctic ice. -
Peter Hogarth at 03:24 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
Jesús Rosino at 02:57 AM on 13 April, 2010 Many thanks, I hadn't found those ones. Here's the link for Kwok 2010 -
Doug Bostrom at 03:16 AM on 13 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
Nhthinker, it seems to me when you repeat yourself by restating obvious and acknowledged facts such as that C02 did not trigger the end of glacial stades, when you ignore that scientists have devoted scrupulous attention to solar forcings, you're shadowboxing, arguing against nobody. Those matters are recognized and integrated into research on climate, and so far the hypotheses explaining how they fit into the big picture are functioning well as small parts of a large mechanism. You go on to say that science is at its best when it is accurately predictive and can be tested to complete satisfaction. True enough, but in this case we do not have a laboratory large enough and with the correct features to run controlled experiments on a global climate. More, there are so many variables at play here that I don't think the sort of controlled experiments you have in mind are even possible. What we can instead look to is how the burgeoning collection of research results we have from multiple disciplines fit together. Do we see observations that appear to be mutually exclusive, that cannot be explained in the presence of other observations? No. The ultimate metric of validity, the requirement for self-consistency, is satisfied despite the vast gulf between many of the avenues of inquiry related to climate change. What we have is a synthesis of multiple lines of inquiry, each yielding predictions and observations that taken together describe the gross features of our climate, features on the scale we're concerned with. For all the criticism leveled at it, that is what the IPCC report is, a synthesis, and the message of that synthesis is robust against the very most stringent criticism. Again, self-consistency-- a key metric of scientific validity-- is satisfied. Now, policy makers also do not have the luxury of being able to run experiments of a global scale in laboratories. They must operate in the day-to-day world of human affairs. Multiple lines of mutually consistent scientific inquiry tell us our human affairs are modifying the climate. Human affairs are going to need some adjustments. At a certain point we need to come to grips with the self-consistent message multiple disciplines have delivered to us and make some changes in our habits. -
Jesús Rosino at 02:57 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
#9 doug_bostrom, Yes, I immediatly wrote John to let him know that I had missed a bold closing tag in the first reference. I hoped he could add this closing tag, but never mind. These were the references for #2 HumanityRules: Minn et al 2008 and Mitchel et al 2009. I haven't read his two references, but I would bet they don't say or imply that the (amplified) temperature trend is not the main driver of the sea ice long-term downward trend.Response: I fixed your original comment and removed Doug's #9 response. Don't forget to use the preview button if you're posting HTML tags in your comment :-) -
Tarcisio José D at 01:56 AM on 13 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
Re #18 "And the best climate models attempt to account for and reproduce the responses of the earth's climate to the varying influences over time, and, IMHO, do a pretty remarkably good job of it." But these climate modelers did not predict that the ammonium produced by decomposition of organic matter disperse and waterproofs the clay soil. Today, the evaporation of water on the continents is reduced and requiring to the oceans to warm up to replenish the moisture in the air. I'm trying to draw attention of the scientific world to this fact. -
Jesús Rosino at 01:50 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
#8 Tarcisio José D'Avila, Water vapour is a feedback, not a forcing (or here) -
Tarcisio José D at 01:42 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
Okay. I accept the assertion that the ice is thawing. But what is the explanation for this phenomenon?? We need to analyze the relationship vapor/fog water in the atmosphere because water vapor is the thermal battery of our planet. It's the "battery" that provides thermal energy to warm the night (no sun) and to soften the harsh winter (low sun). In summer the water and/or fog for to pass into the vapor state (potential energy - the latent heat) reducing the temperature of the planet releases this energy in the winter making it less strict. The same can be said of the temperatures of day and night. The greater the difference the winter/summer or day/night the greater the occurrence of extreme events. Defrost is an extreme event. Translate this paper (portuguise/Inglish) http://www.scam.com.br/tjdavila/solo/termostato.htm -
Jesús Rosino at 01:35 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
#2 HumanityRules, Well, this post is about whether there is a receovery in sea ice. The Arctic has experienced more warming than any other region in the whole world. It is difficult to imagine how this can contribute to a stable trend in sea ice. I have not read the two documents you've linked, but I would bet that none of they say or imply that temperature is not the main driver of the long-term declining trend. Anyway, I would try with these ones: Human influence on Arctic sea ice detectable from early 1990s onwards Min et al 2008 Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L21701, doi:10.1029/2008GL035725 On the Detection and Attribution of Anthropogenic Global Warming Using Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent Mitchell, John F. B. - Garrett, Donald - Robock, Alan - Parkinson, Claire L. - Walsh, John E. - Stouffer, Ronald J. - Vinnikov, Konstantin Y. - Zakharov, Victor F. - Cavalieri, Donald J. - -
Peter Hogarth at 01:22 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
HumanityRules at 00:07 AM on 13 April, 2010 My apologies, your first reference is actually Ogi 2009, here is a link to Ogi 2010 to which I was referring. -
cynicus at 01:21 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
#2 HumanityRules, this article covers the latest blog noise about a claimed recovering arctic sea ice extent, it's not about exploring the cause of the decline (or claimed recovery). Therefore, complaining about a missing explanation to link the decline to temperature increase seems a red herring to me. This site has explored the cause before in Arctic-sea-ice-melt-natural-or-man-made. And I assume that this article could have linked to the papers you mention, but do those papers add something important that was not already covered in the article (see below) or in any of the other linked papers whether sea ice extent is decreasing or increasing? The amount of Arctic sea ice can almost be regarded as a self calibrating proxy for regional temperature, but there are several inter-related dynamic factors driving the high latitude weather patterns, air and oceanic temperatures, currents, and thus ice area and thickness. -
Peter Hogarth at 01:05 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
chriscanaris at 23:18 PM on 12 April, 2010 Estimates of older ice, and overall average thickness and volume continued to decrease through 2007, 2008 and 2009. I don't exclude any future possibilities!, but it is sobering to look at previous "recoveries" with an eye on the trend. -
Peter Hogarth at 00:58 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
HumanityRules at 00:07 AM on 13 April, 2010 I am familiar with the references. Ogi 2010: The Fram strait and winter ice export is mentioned only once in passing, in the context of a paper by Shimada. From the summary of Ogi: “In addition, the polar atmosphere has displayed rapid warming. These changes probably caused the rapid sea ice loss after 1996, but the direct influence of atmospheric trend to sea ice needs to be studied”. Kwok 2010, from the conclusion: “If there is a decreased likelihood of arch formation as the ice cover becomes thinner and weaker due to warming, there is the potential for the Nares Strait to shift to a higher flow state”. You were saying? -
HumanityRules at 00:07 AM on 13 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
You can make the observation of a decline in arctic sea ice without it necessarily being linked to temperature change. Your article shows many depictions of the decline but doesn’t show that this is linked to temperature. In fact you could have mentioned two recent papers both of which describe mechanisms for ice loss from the arctic and neither of which rely on temperature increase. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 37, L07701, doi:10.1029/2009GL042356, 2010 Ogi et al - Influence of winter and summer surface wind anomalies on summer Arctic sea ice extent Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, 3, doi:10.1029/2009GL041872, 2010 Kwok et al - Large sea ice outflow into the Nares Strait in 2007 The first describes the influence of wind for ice export in the Fram Strait and the second discusses the formation of ice arches that block the flow of thick multiyear ice out to the Greenland sea. -
nhthinker at 23:51 PM on 12 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
Ned, You said yourself that you thought Barton's "first and last sentence are about something else entirely". If you assume for a moment that Barton is not irrational and actually was capable of making a rational paragraph, then it needs to start with a reach if the sentences of a paragraph can be logically related and he is not just spewing random sentences. You have inappropriately narrowed the interpretation of the scope of his second and third sentences to global warming of today- there is nothing to justify your assertion. The CO2 produced after a warming period cannot be the cause of that particular warming period. If the argument is that additional CO2 produced necessary causes a warming period and that variability in solar influences are much less important, then the CO2 warming proponents need a better explanation of the dramatic trend change at the typical start of an interglacial. Clearly, the CO2 levels 130 Kyrs ago were not high enough to prevent the dramatic temperature trend shift at the start of the preceding interglacial. I fully understand that CO2 levels are higher today and are trending higher than they have been in millions of years. But the Earth and life on it, have survived with many times more CO2 than we currently have. Science requires models that are accurate predictors of controlled experiments or future events. What prediction of Global warming science are you most proud of? How many years into the future was that prediction? CO2 scientists tend to very much underestimate the importance of solar emission variability changes to the Earth orbit. If CO2 were a warming forcing function, then the model should predict a plateau at the start of an interglacial instead of the typical sharp peaks. Is there any literature that demonstrates how the formulas from today's global warming computer models can be applied to the previous 3 interglacials? Thanks.
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