Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal

The Atlantic portions of Arctic remain warmer than normal in January. Image from NSIDC NOAA.

It’s been a cold and very snowy winter in the Eastern USA and in Western Europe. Very likely the worst in 30 years. All that snow and cold has resulted in a very common question to every meteorologist I know and that certainly includes me. Same for every person involved in climate change research too.

WHAT HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING??

First of all most people in the climate and weather forecasting field prefer climate change instead of global warming. It’s more accurate. Secondly, if I have learned one thing over the past 30 years as a forecaster, it’s that weather is extremely local to people.

If I forecast a 10% of the area to get rain and it turns out to be a perfect forecast, I guarantee you that every person who got rain thinks I blew the forecast. It doesn’t matter if the next block over is sunny. People only care about the weather where they are.

So when we have cold and snow, people immediately chant what happened to global warming. The answer to this in short is nothing. If the whole planet was getting snow then things would be different. Climate is made up of a lot of weather. Even in a warmer world that is most certainly coming, we will still have blizzards and record lows. Just not nearly as many of them.

One of the multitude of other signs the planet is warming besides thermometers is the number of record highs is steadily increasing compared to the record lows.

The cold air, in the East of America and the West of Europe, has come from the Arctic and it has actually left the Arctic quite warm. Sea ice for January is running way below the long term average. Sea ice in December was too and if you look at December alone, then the decrease is now running at 3.3% per decade.

Below is an exc. video featuring my friend Stu Ostro, Meteorologist at the Weather Channel, along with one of the top climate experts at the Nat. Center for Atmospheric Research, that explains the answer to this months question very well. Not only that, it’s based on science instead of political opinion.

So check out Peter Sinclair’s Global Warming Crock of the Week! (gotta love that name)

Note: The images in this post are not related to it. They are from a new update on Climate Science published jointly by a large group of climate experts. It’s based on the most recent published papers and is an unofficial, but peer reviewed update of the last IPCC report. I think they match well with the subject of this post. Hopefully they will make the point I’m trying to make.

****

I’ve had a bunch of emails and calls this week over the stolen emails from the U. of East Anglia. A thief hacked into a server at the University of East Anglia in the UK. They grabbed a bunch of private and personal emails from some of the climate experts and released carefully selected (cherry picked) bits online. The selections were made to fit the agenda of those who subscribe to the belief that climate science is all an international conspiracy. They also tried to hack into a blog site run by some NASA scientists here in the U.S.

Let me make it clear that I do not deal in stolen material and none of that will be published here. I doubt very many reputable news organisations will either. The thieves will be caught, and I strongly suspect the way it will happen is by tracing back who had what snippet when.

Thousands of papers, by thousands of scientists have led to every major scientific society on the planet endorsing the IPCC reports. So you can believe them, or a gaggle of thieves releasing cherry picked snippets of stolen property.

Yes I used the word thieves not thief. Ask any cop. They will tell you that knowingly dealing in stolen merchandise makes you a thief.

Does it really matter?

No.

What matters is the science.

The science in the journals. Not the fake science written by those with a political cause. Having trouble telling which is which. See Where NOT to get your science.

The AMS put out a statement on this as well Friday. Update: James Hansen the top NASA Climate expert has weighed in with what I think are very sane words.

I’m an optimist and believe most people have a fundamental ability to make logical choices. While the junk science may confuse them initially, when it comes down to it, the choice is simple. To believe the same very small set of shrill voices, or the thousands of peer reviewed papers that have led to every major scientific society on the planet endorsing the IPCC reports.

That’s the choice.

Yes, some will side with the  gaggle of thieves releasing cherry picked snippets of stolen property. Some people distrust anything to do with science and they will side with those who are always looking for a government conspiracy to expose.

Most, however, will make the logical choice.  A few will email me asking for places to get reliable science info without the politics. That I can do, and if I can’t I have a bunch of friends who are much brighter than me, who can.

Just writing this post is not something I planned to do, but I have come across a couple of very well written posts, that are  telling about those using  shrill claims of hoax and global conspiracy.

The first is a post on Real Climate by Dr. Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS. He is one of the World’s top experts on Climate Physics. It’s well worth reading: (I’ve inserted a few line breaks for formatting)

“…let’s examine what is actually happening in the public sphere. There are undeniably people who fervently do not wish for results of the science to be true. This can be motivated many things – vested interest, inclination, background etc. Regardless of why that exists, it undoubtedly does.

However, among the scientific community no-one doubts that humans are causing CO2 (and other GHGs) to rise, no-one is confused about the fact that there is a greenhouse effect and that we are enhancing it, and no-one is in denial of the fact that the temperatures (as predicted) are in fact warming. This information, and the vast amount of ancillary data, theory and modelling that exists has led the science community to warn that continued emissions of GHGs risk changing the climate substantially. Given the first group of people’s inclination to not want this to be true, there have been (and continue to be) determined efforts to undermine the scientific conclusions.

One of the most effective tactics is to continually claim that data is being hidden and that the process is not open and transparent. This is successful, not because anything is actually being hidden, but because regardless of what data is available you can always ask for more.

Five years ago it was a demand than Mann make his code and data available – it was, and nothing changed. A couple of years ago the demand was for the GISTEMP data and code – that was made available… and nothing changed. The requests then moved to CRU, who because of their agreements with the Met Centers, can’t release everything in the public domain. This fact has been greatly exploited by people who conveniently ignore it when making ever more harassing demands for ‘the data’.

Whether they get it or not, nothing will change. The target will simply be moved. Meanwhile, the real need for openness and transparency is set back because the vast majority of demands are very clearly partisan and insincere.

… As for the peer-reviewed literature, bad papers (such as are described in the emails) sometimes make it through the process due to various events. Note that the papers in question are just bad – they come to unjustified conclusions based on faulty reasoning, bad analysis, and (often) a desire to get the ‘right’ result. This is not unique to papers that go counter to the mainstream (there are many bad papers on the other side too), but these are the ones that get picked up by the denial-o-sphere and are loudly touted in Senate hearings as if they undermined a century of work.

Improving the functioning of the peer-review system so that this happens less often is a good idea – because it will lessen the chance of bad papers of any stripe wasting everyone’s time. Note that peer-review is simply an (imperfect) filter that allows scientists to focus on work that has passed a least a basic screening (usually). When we have to respond to obviously flawed, but highly publicised, papers it takes us away from doing real research and focusing on issues about which there is genuine (as opposed to manufactured) uncertainty.

… If people want genuine public debate over issues that matter, the way is clear: Stop fuelling fake witchhunts looking for evidence that GW is a hoax, stop continually going back to long debunked talking points, and instead engage with scientists, here and elsewhere, on real questions.

You will actually find scientists of all stripes remarkably keen to talk about their research and it’s implications once you get past the ‘when did you stop hiding your data’ type accusations. Not everyone has unlimited patience in dealing with constant attacks on their integrity that comes with being in the public eye on these issues, and so many choose not to be involved in that public debate at all. That is a shame, but it’s not a mystery.”

There is another rather long piece you really should read as well. Written by Dr. Jeff Masters the co-founder of Weather Underground. It’s a real eye opener.

Read it here.

OK, that’s it.

Back to the science.

It’s really a lot more interesting.

Dan

The folks at the National Snow and Ice Data Center have released some new data on the polar ice as we head into late autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. The ice pack is retreating at a rate of about 11.2% per decade, and Dr. Mark Serezze, the director of the NSIDC says that we are just a few decades away from a mostly ice free August in the Arctic Ocean.

This summer’s ice was the third lowest on record, but the ice is growing very slowly as we head into Winter. The lowest amount of sea ice was recorded in Sept. 2007. The sudden drop two years ago was stunning, and the data today shows we are very close to the same level of ice now as in late October of 2007.

It’s worth remembering that greenhouse gases are the long term control of the sea ice, but it varies each year with weather patterns and ocean currents. El Nino years and La Nina years also have their effects.

NASA has produced a really good video on why the dropping sea ice is so worrisome. To say that there is an intense amount of science being done on the ice pack at the top of the world, would be a gross understatement.

It’s quite likely that the diminishing ice is already changing weather patterns over North America. My friend Stu Ostro at the Weather Channel has been working hard to document this in a statistical way. He makes a powerful argument that the strange storm tracks that meteorologists have noticed over the last few years, are not just the normal variety of weather.

Check out the NASA video. It’s an excellent resource for teachers. You can click on the video and go to the HD version.

Polar Bear in North Baffin Bay - Dan's Photo Aug 2007

My two favourite animals are inhabitants of opposite poles.

Ursus Maritimas.

Polar Bears. They will eat you if you’re not careful, but they are truly majestic creatures.

When I travelled through the High Arctic in August 2007, I saw three. The best was the second encounter on an ice flow in North Baffin Bay. It was spitting snow and quite cold, but sitting in our Zodiac, we were oblivious to it.

WHY?

Because, in front of us, was a site that few humans have ever seen. A polar bear in his habitat. The experts with us kept us 30 yards away, because the bear could make a leap at us if we were closer.

A shark will eat you thinking you are a seal. A Polar Bear will eat you, thinking you are a tasty human. Something to remember if you’re ever in the Arctic. We always stayed close to someone with a gun that shot tranquilliser darts, stun grenades and as an extreme last resort, real bullets.

The bears live and hunt on the ice. As it disappears in the Arctic, they may vanish as well.

My other favourite animal lives at the bottom of the world instead of the top.

Emperor Penguins in Antarctica. Image from the Nat. Sci. Foundation. They fund much of the science done at the bottom of he world.

Emperor Penguins. Aptenodytes forsteri

Most people do not realise they stand about one meter high! I have never seen one in it’s habitat. They live only in Antarctica. I am working very hard to visit an Emperor Colony at the bottom of the world, and soon!

The Emperor’s truly have to rate among natures most beautiful creatures. The Emperors in particular are incredibly adapted to living in the harshest climate on the planet. The Polar Bears of the Arctic live a positively balmy lifestyle compared to the life in Antarctica.

The South pole is much colder than the North Pole. The warmest temp ever recorded at the South Pole is 7F. The warmest temp. ever recorded in Antarctica is 59F or 10C. That was at the edge of the continent. Normally it rarely reaches much above freezing anywhere.

There is a fabulous video on you tube of some Orca’s chasing a penguin in Antarctica. Just when you think the Penguin has had it. He makes a daring escape! It’s called ONE LUCKY PENGUIN.

You have to see the video!

Notice the stripe of heat across the Arctic. Right in line with climate models. The ice albedo feedback is responsible.

The global temperatures for September are out today from the National Climate Data Center in Ashville NC. The trend of very warm temps. world wide continues. The Summer of 2009 will go down as one of the warmest on the instrument record and on the proxy record going back over a thousand years.

The sea ice trend in the Arctic continues down as well. More on this soon.

With the growing El Nino adding more heat to that being trapped by the record high levels of CO2 (for the past 10,000 years at least!) it is very possible we will set new planetary temperature records in this year or next. This El Nino is not likely to be as strong as the one in 1998, so we may fall just short.

If you are wondering about the Troposphere as a whole, the news is no better. Both the UAH and RSS satellite temperature data is indicating that Sep. was the second warmest on their records as well. The average upward trend on the satellite data is around .15C/decade for the this past summer.

Later,

Dan