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Comments 121101 to 121150:

121101. Don Gisselbeck at 10:36 AM on 14 April 2010
        Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
        There has been an increase in snow cover on some NW Montana glaciers since 2007. The Stanton was nearly all bare ice in late Sept 2007 and completely covered with snow (mostly from 2008) the same week of 2009. The Grinnell showed similar improvement in late August. Are these two part of the "90% growing"? The growth is unlikely to continue since we are at 50-60% of normal snow pack this year. (I hope growth continues, it is easier to ski snow than ice.)
121102. HumanityRules at 10:23 AM on 14 April 2010
        Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
        21.Peter Hogarth Peter I think the concluion from your graphic and my graphic are pretty much the same. The seasonal variation in your plot illustrates the point. The trend line you have plotted is essentially the average temperature. What I'd be interested in is a plot for the year high (or summer/melt seson) and for the year low (or winter temp). It'll probably show very little trend in the summer season (there appears no increase in max temp) and the greatest trend in the winter. Interestingly if you do a similar season plot for ice extent you see the lowest trend in winter and highest downward trend in the summer. The opposite to the temperature. 25.Albatross Maybe my wording was poor. I trust the satellite record shows a 30year downward trend. I also don't think the past two years constitutes a recovery. I think we actually agree on that! I take your point that the graphic I show is for the highest latitudes. But yourself (post #17) and others have pointed out the importance of age/thickness of the the ice and much of the oldest and thickest ice is at these higher latitudes. I just came across a paper which maybe resolves our two positions "The authors speculate that decoupling of the ice thickness-volume relationship resulted from two opposing mechanisms with different latitudinal expressions: a recent quasi-decadal shift in atmospheric circulation patterns associated with the AO’s neutral state facilitated ice thickening at high latitudes while anomalously warm thermal forcing thinned and melted the ice cap at its periphery."
121103. Doug Bostrom at 10:18 AM on 14 April 2010
        Are we too stupid?
        Shawnhet, I'm not sure where you're getting your EU emissions data but what I'm looking at shows an essentially flat total GHG emissions graph. Depending on what member state you view, you may find upward or downward emissions, but if by "European" you mean the EU I'd say the collective effort they're making is working sufficiently to arrest increases in emissions and of course this is just the beginning as far as they're concerned. As we know, that effort includes some powerful nudges from regulators. And guess what? The lights are still on in Europe, productivity figures equal or exceed our own, they're not huddled in mud huts. EU emissions data from the European Environment Agency. Now folks who are really serious about this stuff will point out that the EU has "exported" GHG emissions in various forms, mostly by accident, but one can hardly blame the Europeans for being unable to dictate how other parts of the world square up to their own responsibilities. Lord knows, they've tried their best to urge the rest of us to get our act together. Others may say that confounding factors such as collapsing Eastern economies make the EU emissions scene unrealistic, but at the same time we have some outliers (Italy, Spain) that have more than helped offset those events. In any case the absorption of Eastern states has largely receded into the past, those economies have adopted some habits that considered correlated with improving lifestyles, yet we've still got a flat graph to look at out of Europe. So I think the picture you paint is entirely too simple and is contradicted by empirical evidence.
121104. shawnhet at 09:52 AM on 14 April 2010
        Are we too stupid?
        Doug, feel free to propose a tax increase on fossil fuels, if you want, but I feel that this is clearly a type 1 option(it's not going to work now, and it will be increasingly difficult to make it work in the future). European countries have high fuel taxes along with increasing GH emissions, so I don't think that carbon taxes will work. IAC, it is clearly not an either/or proposition, we don't need to tax carbon emissions further to build nuclear power plants or invest in solar power. We can do both right now and both will be much more effective than your proposal IMO. Cheers, :)
121105. CoalGeologist at 09:46 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        In reply to Doug Cannon @#34, yes, we should always be 'just a little skeptical of any conclusions', however, in all cases we are obligated to make a sincere effort to gain an unbiased understanding of what those conclusions are. The reason the authors included the horizontal solid black lines and the horizontal dashed line was to enable us to see the longer term trends, rather than be distracted by short-term deviations. The early blooms ~1780 are indeed strange! I'm sure it was the 'talk of the town' in London at the time, particularly so because it occurred in the midst of the so-called "Little Ice Age"! Mann et al. (1998)asserted that temperatures during the last part of the 20th century were the warmest in the past millennium. This conclusion may have been a bit of a "stretch", but at minimum it was "plausible". In either case, I frankly do not understand the obsession about the "hockey stick". If we allow that climate may have varied more in the past than would appear from the hockey stick diagram (ignoring its large error bars), what would this tell us about the validity of AGW? Nothing. In any case, can we not allow the poor hockey stick to rest in peace? Science has moved on. We should too. The National Research Council Study (2006) concluded that: "It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries." The current study is consistent with that conclusion, and as there is no supportable explanation for 20th Century warming other than AGW, it provides yet more support for the theory, particularly with the accuracy of the surface temperature data under vigorous attack from "skeptics". Remember, Flowers have no political agenda (other than to make baby plants!).
121106. Marcus at 09:30 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Doug Cannon, did you see the margins of error for the data for the 18th & 19th centuries? That alone can explain why the "average" FFI is about as high as in the 1980's. What really matters, in my opinion, is to look at the downward trend in the FFI over the past 70 years, when we know human activity has been changing the composition of the atmosphere. Another point is the supposed resilience of nature to human-induced climate change events. Though its certain that the planet will recover/survive our irrational acts of vandalism-in evolutionary time-its not as certain that it will recover in sufficient time to save the human civilization, which has a much narrower comfort zone for change than the natural world.
121107. Doug Bostrom at 09:23 AM on 14 April 2010
        Are we too stupid?
        Shawnhet, I'd say that if one accepts continued dumping of C02 as a threat and sees #2 and #3 as solutions, they'll not be delivered as long as we continue pretending that fossil fuels are cheaper to use than reality increasingly suggests. Who is going to invest sufficient money in nuclear, wind and photovoltaic systems while the market is setting an unrealistically low price on fossil fuel consumption? To use an analogy that not only is becoming tired but remains disgusting, if I'm allowed to dump my sewage in my neighbor's yard for seemingly for free and am offered the voluntary choice of spending more money to put it in a municipal sewage system, what does human nature tell us will happen? It's not likely I'll do anything, until fecal bacteria begin showing up in my well, that's what. Not enough grownups in the room, that's the problem with C02. See Krugman's recent essay about ways we can begin playing as adults.
121108. shawnhet at 09:08 AM on 14 April 2010
        Are we too stupid?
        Let's say that we assume that unchecked emission of carbon dioxide will be calamitous. It seems that there are three possible approaches. 1.Current conservation approaches a la Kyoto. Negatives: They emphatically do not work and/because they are too expensive. Not only do some countries currently opt out, countries that have signed on don't do much(if any) better over the long term than countries that have opted out. Last I checked, even the countries with the "greenest" economies (like the Europeans) are still *increasing* their fossil fuel emissions. These approaches will only get more expensive as time goes on, as well. One can assume generally that the easiest, cheapest and hence, most effective changes came first. It follows thusly that as time goes on changes that reduce emissions of fossil fuel will become progressively more and more difficult and expensive, per amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere. A strategy that isn't working now and will become more and more difficult to apply in the future strikes me as a very poor one. Cost: very high. 2.As was raised earlier, we do have at least one possible option with current technology -nuclear power. Negatives. Pollution and security. Compared to 1, though, nuclear works and will continue to work as well or better as now in the future. Cost: moderate. 3. Rely on technological change to solve the problem, see below (solar power is specifically discussed at about 5:40 but the whole talk is useful to put this in context). Negatives: We don't know for sure that new technologies will continue to improve in the future as they have in the past(though it seems pretty likely that they will). Cost: Moderate. http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_announces_singularity_university.html Personally, I would submit that it would be "stupid" to use 1 as our primary response to the hypothetical calamity of AGW, yet that is the one that is *overwhelmingly* being advocated, even though it hasn't worked so far and will continue not to work for the foreseeable future. The "smart" response IMO would be to focus on 2 for the short to medium term and rely on investment in research on option 3 to provide for the long solution, relying on #1 as only a small and relatively unimportant part of the global warming solution. However, I personally think that 1 will continue being the popular response to AGW. This may be because people are stupid or more likely IMO that most folks use the AGW issue for other (political) issues. Cheers, :)
121109. Doug Bostrom at 09:00 AM on 14 April 2010
        There's no empirical evidence
        Rogerthesurf, the second part of your post-- the section suggesting robust alternative explanations-- is missing.
121110. Doug Bostrom at 08:57 AM on 14 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        Pdt, not to butt in but your remark will be better served and of better service if delivered on the thread Tom suggested. It's dead on topic for that thread and a rare matter of actual significant uncertainty leading to less redundant fat-chewing. Not so much for this one and thus a missed opportunity for better coherency. Models are unreliable
121111. Rogerthesurf at 08:55 AM on 14 April 2010
        There's no empirical evidence
        This is not empirical evidence of global warming. All you have done is air some empirically unproven theories that may account for the current warming and refused to consider that the same effects may be completely independent of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
121112. pdt at 08:43 AM on 14 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        Tom Dayton: "Instead they (climate models) are physical models that incorporate knowledge of fundamental processes." I just read this history of climate models: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/GCM.htm It seems that at least some effects are still not really based upon a fundamental understanding of underlying physics. The effects of clouds are still apparently used as fitting parameters to climate data. The fits to climate data are then used to predict climate over other periods. I don't really have a problem with this in principle, but it does seem that these are not really fully based on fundamental physics and this type of fitting leaves open the possibility of trying to use the fitted parameters outside the region of validity (extrapolation rather than interpolation). Apparently things like clouds are not really understood in enough detail to truly predict climate from fundamental physics. Of course, this is just the impression I got from one source, perhaps it is not really accurate.
121113. David Horton at 08:33 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Seems to me this is a classic case of ecological complexity being difficult to reconcile with the obvious reality of global warming. Clearly warming temperatures would be expected to lead to earlier flowering times as both germination and development processes were speeded up. Trouble is there are many other factors as well (timing and amount of rainfall, incidence of frosts, cloudiness) which different species will react to in different ways. In addition the British landscape is very much an artificial creation of humans over a long time, and species characteristics have been greatly affected by human activity as well, these are not like, say, native species of flowering plants in an Australian woodland. So all of that would be expected to give considerable variability in species flowering response to global warming, and averaging it all out (with the added modification of an index) would tend to reduce the apparent effects. So I am not surprised that the graph really doesn't show anything clearly. You would be better taking a few species (and the authors do give a couple of examples in hawthorn and blackthorn) which do show a clear response. But of course if you did that the deniers would immediately pretend that these examples weren't significant, "what about the other species?", just as they do with glacier data (which has similar variety of responses depending on geography). But interesting stuff, as more and more data comes in showing that global warming isn't just an ideological game for the right wing shock jocks, and an economic game for oil companies, but has real world consequences which are going to seriously affect a 7 billion strong species dependent on plants for food.
121114. JMurphy at 08:22 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Doug Cannon, a few years here or there do not prove or disprove anything, as the most recent localised cold Winter should already have told you. Look for trends, especially significant ones, and be aware of the uncertainty range - as you mentioned but seem to have immediately dismissed. There could be many reasons why a year or two around 1780 experienced possible early flowering, one of them perhaps to do with the ENSO. Have you already discounted it ?
121115. Doug Bostrom at 08:21 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Doug Cannon, we don't live 260 years ago, we live in the present, where we are the dominant species on the planet to the point that geologists are in the middle of a discussion looking as though it'll lead to the naming of a new unit of geological time, the "anthropocene." If you point your browser to Google Scholar and use the search term "phenological evidence of climate change" you'll produce a list somewhat shy of 21,000 items. You'll find a lot of papers with characteristics broadly resembling this abstract: We evaluated spring phenology changes from 1965 to 2001 in northeastern USA utilizing a unique data set from 72 locations with genetically identical lilac plants (Syringa chinensis, clone ldquoRed Rothomagensisrdquo). We also utilized a previously validated lilac-honeysuckle ldquospring indexrdquo model to reconstruct a more complete record of first leaf date (FLD) and first flower date (FFD) for the region from historical weather data. In addition, we examined mid-bloom dates for apple (Malus domestica) and grape (Vitis vinifera) collected at several sites in the region during approximately the same time period. Almost all lilac sites with significant linear trends for FLD or FFD versus year had negative slopes (advanced development). Regression analysis of pooled data for the 72 sites indicated an advance of –0.092 day/year for FFD (P=0.003). The slope for FLD was also negative (–0.048 day/year), but not significant (P=0.234). The simulated data from the ldquospring indexrdquo model, which relies on local daily temperature records, indicated highly significant (P<0.001) negative slopes of –0.210 and –0.123 day/year for FLD and FFD, respectively. Data collected for apple and grape also indicated advance spring development, with slopes for mid-bloom date versus year of –0.20 day/year (P=0.01) and –0.146 (P=0.14), respectively. Collectively, these results indicate an advance in spring phenology ranging from 2 to 8 days for these woody perennials in northeastern USA for the period 1965 to 2001, qualitatively consistent with a warming trend, and consistent with phenology shifts reported for other mid- and high-latitude regions. Climate change and shifts in spring phenology of three horticultural woody perennials in northeastern USA This is happening now, and it's congruent with numerous other predictions regarding anthropogenic climate change. This is another case where we may tease doubt out of a single study in a single field or even many studies in the same field, but once again it turns out be another part of large puzzle, a piece that fits according to prediction and helps to complete the picture we believe will emerge when all parts are present.
121116. CoalGeologist at 08:11 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Although we are 'stuck with' the term "Global Warming", climate researchers don't particularly like this term, and for good reason. While there has clearly (i.e. "unequivocally"!) been an increase in globally averaged temperatures over the past century, the absolute magnitude of the change is small, albeit significant in its impact. Long-term warming trends are overprinted locally on annual and decadal scale by weather patterns, ocean circulation, solar variability, changes in stratosperic ozone, and other controls. For this reason, not all geographic locations show the same magnitude of warming at all times. This is why larger scale regional trends over longer time periods are needed to demonstrate the impact of AGW, which is what this study has done. If one becomes too focused on shorter term weather events or local anomalies, it becomes difficult to 'see the orchard for the trees'. In this regard, Argus should take full advantage of his many eyes to consider the scientific evidence, as noted by JMurphy here and here. Moreover, at #30, Geo Guy asked, "Now IF higher levels of atmospheric CO2 was the main driving force of climate change, and since the CO2 content quote is for the entire atmosphere, we should expect to observe similar data from two maritime environments such as the UK and Atlantic Canada, but we don't. To me that suggests there is more at play wrt climate change than simply higher levels of CO2." The answers are: 1) No, we would NOT necessarily expect to observe similar climatic trends at such geographically disparate locations. Therefore, the reported trends in Nova Scotia (assuming they've been accurately recorded and interpreted) neither prove nor disprove AGW, but DO provide an example the risks I mentioned above. and 2) Yes, there is a great deal more at play w.r.t. climate change than simply higher levels of CO2. Anyone wishing to understand the nature of climate change MUST understand the magnitudes of the contributions made by other climate drivers and feedbacks in addition to AGHGs. This represents the very foundation of the theory of AGW. And finally, I note once again that dire warnings about "climate alarmism" are themselves a form of alarmism. "Climate alarmism" may exist, but is in scant evidence in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
121117. CM at 07:48 AM on 14 April 2010
        This just in - the sun affects climate
        Hi John - not sure whether you've seen this or not... "Scientists find errors in hypothesis linking solar flares to global temperature" http://www.physorg.com/news189845962.html "The theory of anthropogenic global warming consists of a set of logically interconnected and consistent hypotheses,” Martin Rypdal said. “This means that if a cornerstone hypothesis is proven to be false, the entire theory fails. 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. However, the only scientifically valid strategy to confront these new hypotheses is to shoot down every new missile as they come in, using the most advanced weapons at hand. We believe that this operation was successfully accomplished with respect to the complexity linking hypothesis, but there will be many more battles to be fought until the issue of the contribution of solar variability to recent global warming is settled.”
121118. Tom Dayton at 07:39 AM on 14 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        scaddenp, I suggested to nhthinker that this discussion move to the thread Models are Unreliable.
121119. scaddenp at 07:10 AM on 14 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        nhthinker, please read the links given to you because you would appear to woefully uninformed as to the nature of the models and there outputs - and I think you will find that the commentators here are extremely well informed about integration. What "embarrassing predictions?" Cites to these embarrassing papers please. Climate model predict 30 year trends as surely you are aware. What climate science certainly does believe is that climate is a physical phenomenon governed by physical laws. Change requires forcing. If you are claiming some natural change, then lets see that natural forcing. Paleoclimate has countless riddles but perhaps you would like to consider how difficult it is to measure global solar, albedo, aerosol, and atmospheric composition from the geological record.
121120. Doug Cannon at 06:10 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        What was it about the period around 1780 that caused flowers to bloom earlier than in the period around 1980 when the IPPC (and Mann) tells us it was much warmer than anytime in the past several hundred years? Could there be some other blooming reason? How can anyone conclude that this is a "very robust piece of research, and again confirms the reality of AGW." Especially when the authors acknowledge the chance for such a large error in the early data. Shouldn't we be just a little skeptical about any conclusions.
121121. phinniethewoo at 05:34 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        fig1: I can see a unit root there in that plot, with the naked eye
121122. Tom Dayton at 05:16 AM on 14 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        nhthinker, your topic of the predictive ability of climate models is relevant to the thread Models are unreliable.
121123. nhthinker at 04:50 AM on 14 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        As to "committing embarrassing blunders", useful science requires predictive ability: What significant prediction of current or past climate science with CO2 as a forcing function have you not been embarrassed by? How far into the future was that prediction that came true? How long do we have to wait to know if your outstanding predictions are accurate? As far as science goes, you guys are still very much in your infancy at predicting global climate changes or even trends. What bets have you made on your predictions? What odds are you willing to give? There are so many basic unanswered questions about climate that get papered over by climate scientists... Why are the climate patterns of the last 500 Kyrs significantly different from the 1500 Kyrs prior to it? Climate tends to have cyclic patterns to it but also gets major non-cyclic perturbations to it. What will be the next perturbations that will impact climate trends? I mean besides the unpredicted changes in solar emissions of the last few years.
121124. Alexandre at 04:31 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Geo Guy #30 Parmesan 2003 is a very comprehensive study about biological responses to global warming, analysing phenomena in every continent, including migration patterns, blooming, species distribution, among others.
121125. Gordon1368 at 04:31 AM on 14 April 2010
        Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
        Peter, thank you for putting the Arctic ice information together so well with so many good references. I also added Polar Science Center to Bookmarks. Even before I saw this article and that graph though, it was apparent to me from the NSIDC site that Arctic ice volume has not recovered, so I have no idea why anyone says Arctic ice has recovered, and i do not consider attempts to explain that simple fact to people as 'backpedaling' in any way.
121126. Doug Bostrom at 04:01 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Geo Guy, not to get into dueling cites but clearly the picture is not quite as muddy as first impressions from a single article may suggest. Here's the general state of things as they stood in 2008, from an article I selected in honor of Skeptical Science based as it is in Australia: Numerous (mostly Northern Hemisphere) studies have collated information on global changes in phenological events in response to recent climate change (Hughes 2000; Walther, Post et al. 2002; Hughes 2003; Parmesan and Yohe 2003; Root, Price et al. 2003; Chambers 2006; Parmesan 2007; Miller-Rushing and Primack 2008; Rosenzweig, Karoly et al. 2008). A recent study of 28 880 records of (mostly phenological) changes in biological systems throughout the world in the past 30 years has shown that 90% of the changes are consistent with changes in temperature (Rosenzweig, Karoly et al. 2008). Climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions over the past 50 years is more likely to have caused these changes rather than natural climatic variability (Rosenzweig, Karoly et al. 2008). Potential Biological Indicators of Climate Change: Evidence From Phenology Records of Plants Along the Victorian Coast
121127. Albatross at 03:48 AM on 14 April 2010
        Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
        Peter @24, That graph says it all. Thanks unrecovered.
121128. Albatross at 03:38 AM on 14 April 2010
        Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
        Humanity @20, "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." Yes, some people were perhaps overly concerned that the 2007 event was the beginning of the end, ands some rather silly dates were thrown around. But 20 years form now we may agree with them that 2007 was a paradigm shift, only time will tell. Regardless, the NSIDC et al. are not "back pedalling" as you are trying to suggest. Overall, the scientists have been level-headed on this. As noted by Dr. Hogarth above "an imminent dramatic change in this trend or “tipping point” is unlikely, at least in the Arctic (Notz 2009, Eisenmann and Wettlaufer 2009)," Some scientists (Dr. V. Pope I think) suggested that the demise of the Arctic ice sheet may occur in steps. Humanity, the old argument that "they (the alarmist) did it so the fact we did is OK" does not cut it. A agree with your observation that "Short termism on both sides of the argument are unhelpful." Humanity "I wouldn't dispute the downward trend for several decades or that the past two years can be considered a recovery." This statement is internally inconsistent, and is also inconsistent with the your statement that "short termism on both sides of the argument are unhelpful." The long-term trend is statistically significant, the short term trend is not, there is no way of getting away from that fact. Also, you do not quantify by what you mean by a "recovery" (recovery of what exactly, to what extent/volume, transient or long-term?). It seems that you are setting a very low bar for "recovery" and a very high bar for "downward trend". The animation from DMI that you show is, IMO, misleading. First, the data are for 80 N and we all know that the Arctic starts at 66.5 N, with most of the sea ice north of about 72 N. Second, the scale makes it really difficult to discern small changes. Third, your statement seems to assume that the ocean, air and ice north of 80 N are isolated from their surroundings, which is not true. Fourth, the satellite data showing changes in the melt season in my original post do not extend north of 82.5 N (?), but they do show an increase in the summer melt right up to the edge of the data void (i.e., north of 80 N). Fifth, the seasonal warming over the Arctic in the summer has been documented using ERA data by Graversen et al. (2008, Nature). See their Fig. 1. While most of the warming (between 1979-2001) north of 70 N was observed in the boreal winter and spring (surface trends >0.8 C per decade), surface warming was also observed in the summer (0.1 to 0.2 per decade; 0.4 C per decade near 70 N). And in the fall, the warming was >0.5 C per decade North of 70 N and >0.7 C per decade north of 80 N. Also see their Fig. 4 which shows thew warming trend between April and October north of 80 N to be at least 0.4 C per decade. By comparison, global temperatures are increasing at about 0.15-0.17 C per decade. In a response to Graversen et al. (2008), Grant et al. (2008) convincingly demonstrate using both sounding and ERA data that the near surface warming between April and October over the Arctic (incl. north of 80N) is significant (see their Fig. 1). They did find issues with the warming near 700 hPa found in the ER-40 analyses which did not seem to be supported by in-situ radiosonde data. That all said (phew), we have to keep in mind when looking at the ERA-40 data north of 82.5 N is that the data are no longer constrained by radiosonde observations, but rather sub-par satellite data (Thorne, 2008 Nature; critique of Graversen et al. 2008). The trends in surface data in ERA-40 north of 72 N do appear to be reliable and those data are showing a distinct warming trend between April and October (and also for the summer months) which is not easily teased out of the DMI animation. Interestingly, WUWT is fond of using that DMI graphic. I think that we all know why that is.
121129. Geo Guy at 03:29 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        The article only touches on the UK. A similar study done in Nova Scotia compared records from 1996 to 1998 and compared the results to those collected between 1892 and 1923 and concluded that the average spring climate in Atlantic Canada has remained cool since 1948, with a warming blip experienced in 1998. "Monitoring of Spring Flower Phenology in Nova Scotia: Comparison Over the Last Century, Litte et al; Northeastern Naturalist, Vol 8, No 4, Pgs 293-402” So here we have two studies with opposite conclusions, something that we always run into when we are trying to determine what is driving climate change. Now IF higher levels of atmospheric CO2 was the main driving force of climate change, and since the CO2 content quote is for the entire atmosphere, we should expect to observe similar data from two maritime environments such as the UK and Atlantic Canada, but we don't. To me that suggests there is more at play wrt climate change than simply higher levels of CO2.
        Response: The key is not to look at just one region (this post about UK trends is the first step to a broader post on global trends) but to see what's happening all over the world. Nevertheless, thanks for the link - what would've really made my day was if you'd added it to the list of Peer-review papers on advancing springs. I've gone and done that just now.
121130. Alexandre at 02:54 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        "I wonder what effect an earlier spring will have on the most common food crops?" Most of the problems with the season shift is when you have loss of environmental syncronism. Something like the bees coming in April missing the flowers that bloomed in March. My amateur guess is that human-made crops won´t suffer much. On the contrary, I usually read something related to a longer growing season. The problem here will be more the temperature itself, and maybe some alterations due to more CO2.
121131. Alexandre at 02:48 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Zephiran #26 Thanks for pointing it out, but my comment was sarcastic. I think I´m not very good at that, since people don´t get it quite often... Of course, the emails don´t disprove anything. I keep reminding people that no scientific paper will appear showing the "hidden decline" - for the obvious reason that that temperature decline does no exist.
121132. Peter Hogarth at 02:32 AM on 14 April 2010
        Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
        Unrecovered at 01:37 AM on 14 April, 2010 Many thanks, this is a great resource, well worth highlighting. Zhang et al, PIOMAS chart from Polar Science Center, Advanced Physics Lab, University of Washington.
121133. Doug Bostrom at 02:26 AM on 14 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        Along the lines of getting caught up on what climate models actually do and how they work, Weart provides a nice, linear narrative covering the evolution of models. First some deep background: Simple Models of Climate Change
        Next, more recent developments leading more or less to the present: General Circulation Models of Climate
        Reading Tom's RC links as well as Weart's more pedagogical work will improve your ability to discuss this topic without committing embarrassing blunders. Elsewhere I've blithely mentioned spending "a few hours" reading Weart but in fact he's produced a synopsis of many decades and many careers of work just covering the effort and dedication devoted to models so in all honesty it does take a little determination to wade through the story. If you're interested in discussing climate models and climate change while staying within the boundaries of established history and uncontroversial facts Weart's narrative is well worth the time.
121134. Chris S. at 02:25 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        With regard to trophic mismatch, the recent paper by Thackeray et al. (2010) "Trophic level asynchrony in rates of phenological change for marine, freshwater and terrestrial environments" to be published in Global Change Biology is worth a look.
121135. Zephiran at 02:04 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Alexandre, you should know by now that those e-mails don´t have any bearing on the scientifical debate. On topic. I wonder what effect an earlier spring will have on the most common food crops?
121136. Unrecovered at 01:37 AM on 14 April 2010
        Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
        Up to date Ice Volume Anomaly Estimates can be found here: Ice Volume Anomaly
121137. Tom Dayton at 01:26 AM on 14 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        nhthinker, your description of climate models is incorrect, though your misconception is a common one. Climate models are not mere statistical models that are fitted to the observed data. Instead they are physical models that incorporate knowledge of fundamental processes. The predictions (and postdictions) emerge from that knowledge. You mentioned only two of the criteria for evaluating scientific theories--parsimony and predictiveness. You omitted several others, such as explanatory power and fruitfulness. As Einstein said (paraphrasing), make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. When we know about physical mechanims, a good theory must incorporate those mechanisms, no matter how complicated they are. For more information, see the RealClimate post FAQ on Climate Models, Part I and Part II. If you want to argue about that topic, those RealClimate posts would be appropriate places to do so, but unfortunately it looks like commenting is closed on those posts. I can't think of a Skeptical Science post that is appropriate for that topic, and off-topic comments often get deleted.
121138. JMurphy at 01:20 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Argus, 1) Do you contend, then, that the present warming is happening over the same sort of time-scale as it has done in the past, i.e. in a natural and slow fashion ? Do you believe that any past civilizations have collapsed due to climate change, i.e. that they weren't able to adapt in time ? 3) Also countered on this very site : CO2 effect is weak CO2 is not a pollutant CO2 effect is saturated 4) The link also says : "Because current climate change is so rapid, the way species typically adapt (eg - migration) is, in most cases, simply not be possible. Global change is simply too pervasive and occurring too rapidly." And : "The most well known study to date, by a team from the UK, estimated that 18 and 35% of plant and animal species will be committed to extinction by 2050 due to climate change." Still waiting for some examples of this 'catastrophe-anxiety'...
121139. Tom Dayton at 01:03 AM on 14 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        nhthinker, you wrote "Water vapor is a dramatically more important GHG than CO2." But water vapor is a feedback, not a forcing, as explained in this Skeptical Science argument: Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas. If you want to discuss that topic further, that thread is the appropriate place.
121140. Alexandre at 00:28 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        arrgghh... I meant Fox News, of course.
121141. Alexandre at 00:27 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        It´s frustrating to see how flowers let themselves be influenced by media alarmism. Climategate has clearly proved that we´re not warming. Scientists hid the decline... Flowers should watch Fow news more often.
121142. dhogaza at 00:21 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        

        By 'everything adapts' I did not mean that 'all the species that have ever lived are still among us'. I guess I meant that the 'global ecological system of all living beings' always adapts, as a whole.

        Of course. We even see that at the KT boundary. At the time, the dinosaurs might've argued that the fact that the biosphere would eventually adapt to post-catastrophe conditions was of little solace to them. The problem is the pace and magnitude of change, the impacts on today's ecosystems and human populations which are largely dependent on them. The fact that over millenia the boreal forests of canada and siberia might be replaced with ecosystems better adapted to a more temperate climate, and that over a very long period of time soils might be built up that some day, far in the future, might be able to support sustained wheat, corn and soy production, isn't going to provide tomorrow's farmers with much comfort.
121143. Argus at 00:01 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Robert Murphy (#14), By 'everything adapts' I did not mean that 'all the species that have ever lived are still among us'. I guess I meant that the 'global ecological system of all living beings' always adapts, as a whole. I also certainly agree that we should be ''making sure any changes that do happen are as gradual as possible''. It still is a natural thing that species come and go. They have done so long before humans started making fire and growing wheat, but as far as possible we should refrain from cutting down the rainforests, or eating all the dodo birds. Better stay out of the extinction business!
121144. JMurphy at 23:59 PM on 13 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        HumanityRules, can you point to a single person that is now living because of smoking, alcohol, drug or gun restrictions/prohibition ? Meanwhile, why not have a read into how climate change is affecting British species : Lost life: England’s lost and threatened species Also, could you give a few names and referenced examples of any of those people ("who wish to influence policy") who are 'peddling the catastrophe' ?
121145. Argus at 23:30 PM on 13 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        JMurphy (#14), My 'arguments' are partly 'countered', but that does not mean they are wrong. Your points: 1. Climate has changed before. Yes, and it is changing now. No need to worry now, unless you believe that the biosphere is in a state of unstable equilibrium, where any small change starts an avalanche of accelerating changes in all areas. Do you? 2. It's just a natural cycle. - I didn't say that! We are most likely affecting the present change in CO2, but it doesn't have to be bad. 3. CO2 has been higher in the past. - I didn't say anything about that either! CO2 is increasing now, and is higher than it has been for a long period before us, but it is still on a very low level - not even half of a tenth of a percent. Almost all living things need CO2 in the atmosphere. If there is more, more will also be used and absorbed. 4. Animals and plants can adapt... Yes they can and they do. I quote from your link: ''Global warming to date has certainly affected species’ geographical distributional ranges and the timing of breeding, migration, flowering, and so on.'' Even individual plants can adapt to milder or colder (or longer) winters. See epigenetics and paramutation! 5. It's a climate regime shift. - I never denied that the present global warming was caused by humans. I didn't even mention the topic. As for catastrophe-anxiety, it is evident all over the place on this site. It is not a 'strawman' argument.
121146. HumanityRules at 23:11 PM on 13 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        9.doug_bostrom Don't throw the brick. There's nothing witless in seeing a twelve day swing in spring onset in 150years as shown by this paper and suggesting that British wildlife is still doing its thing. It obviously is. Please point me to a single species in the UK that has gone extinct in the last 150 years as a result of this. 14.JMurphy The catastrophe isn't a straw man. That's what's being peddled with this subject and others. Maybe not by these authors or John but certainly by those who wish to influence policy.
121147. Robert Murphy at 22:33 PM on 13 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Argus says (#13): "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." Actually, what Earth history shows is that only a tiny percentage of the species that have ever lived are still around; most by far could not adapt to the changing environment and went extinct. Everything most definitely does *not* adapt to the changes. We have a vested interest in making sure any changes that do happen are as gradual as possible.
121148. nhthinker at 22:25 PM on 13 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        Have you ever studied the concept of integration in calculus? CO2 as a forcing function is incongruent with the concept of sharp peaks at the beginning of interglacials. If you add a forcing function with a time delay to a base cyclic pattern or even a pulse function, it produces a curve that is completely different than what the last 500 Kyrs of data demonstrates. The current climate models are filled with fudge factors that are constantly being updated- And updated at a much faster rate than the planet position charts were prior to the invention of the mathematical model for gravity. I believe in Occam's razor- the complexity of today's climate models are very much analogous to the planet charts of the middle ages. Relatively simplified mathematical models of a reasonable number of variables should be all that is needed to explain the natural record without force fitting very odd shaped forcing functions. That is what hard science strives for. Water vapor is a dramatically more important GHG than CO2 is and it has only seriously been studied extremely recently- CO2 data has been around much longer. Much of what was thought as extensible to environments that have not been monitored will be proven wrong. "ScienceDaily (Apr. 29, 2008) — MIT Professor Dara Entekhabi will lead the science team designing a NASA satellite mission to make global soil moisture and freeze/thaw measurements, data essential to the accuracy of weather forecasts and predictions of global carbon cycle and climate. NASA announced recently that the Soil Moisture Active-Passive mission (SMAP) is scheduled to launch December 2012." Climate scientists are only now starting to get the tools that they need to make real progress. But in some ways, there is too much ego and passion involved in quarters on both sides of this debate. Point me toward a solution that passes the Occam's razor test. I do have an open mind. If you point me to a solution that seems overly complex to explain the data, then I expect it needs to provide accurate prediction to be a useful model. Very complex models that were intentionally force fit to previous data are not very compelling.
121149. CBDunkerson at 21:34 PM on 13 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Time to update the old saying; 'March showers bring April flowers'. Matches what has happened here in the northeast US the past few years perfectly.
121150. CBDunkerson at 21:31 PM on 13 April 2010
        Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
        Re: Hugh #19, actually 'sea ice extent' is NOT "critical" in determining the ice albedo effect. If you refer back to my previous post you will see that I mentioned the albedo effect and explained the difference between ice area (which directly impacts albedo) and ice extent (which can be up to 667% of the ice area). In short, the fact that 'sea ice extent' is a measure of OCEAN area with "at least 15% sea ice" means that a 100 square foot area of ocean completely covered by ice has exactly the same 'extent' as one with only 15 square feet of ice coverage... but the albedo impact is going to be hugely different. In response to the comment attached to my post #13... I wasn't saying that ice extent is in all ways meaningless. Rather that even a ten year trend of increasing sea ice extent would not mean that Arctic sea ice was recovering if the same ten year period showed arctic ice VOLUME decreasing. This is because ice extent is a proxy (with up to a 667% error rate) for ice area... which is in turn a proxy for ice volume (providing two of the three dimensions needed to calculate it). Likewise, since ice extent is heavily impacted by temperature, winds, and currents it could serve as a proxy for any of those. However, due to the huge error bands involved it is only useful for getting a general idea from very long term trends. Hopefully the just launched Cryosat-2 and NASA's forthcoming ice monitoring satellite will finally give us the ability to measure ice volume more precisely and consistently. Ice extent had been the only game in town, but using it for predictions has been a bit like guessing what a cloud will look like three days after you first spot it.

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