All posts by Jim Hunt

The 11th Key Science Moment of 2016

Area, , , , , , , , ,

A brief history of scientific “churnalism” in the age of social media. The “post-truth” of The Guardian’s 11th Key Science Moment of 2016.

On November 7th 2016 we broke this astonishing news on Twitter:

Nobody noticed! Then on November 16th 2016 Zack Labe did likewise:

The story got some legs. Zack got pushback from some “skeptics” and then the AGU blogged about the story.:

My attention was called to this issue last week thanks to the Twitter feed of Zack Labe, a PhD student in Earth Systems Science at the University of California – Irvine. He makes great graphics showing the latest data on polar climate.

Then he got interviewed by the AGU. The AGU linked back to the graphic graphic in question in the clouds at Google, but there was no mention of our November 6th article or the real source of the story. The Arctic Sea Ice Forum (ASIF for short).

It’s now December 18th, and as far as I’m aware that remains the case in the mainstream media (MSM for short). The Arctic Sea Ice Forum grew out the earlier Arctic Sea Ice Blog (ASIB for short). The proprietor of both the ASIB and ASIF has been revealed by CBC to be one Neven Curlin. They recently interviewed Neven, and even gave him top billing above Sir David Attenborough in the resulting podcast:

‘Like watching a train wreck’: Blogger quits writing about climate change

However the title of the CBC article is inaccurate, as CBC would surely have noticed if they’d read Neven’s article on the ASIB on the topic of his “sabbatical”.

Sabbatical (I hope)

Now comes news that the “astonishingly low level” of global sea ice area that we brought to the waiting world’s attention on November 7th has today been chosen by The Guardian as one of their:

12 key science moments of 2016

The story outlined above and the associated graphic graphic are conspicuous only by their absence, but the Grauniad have thoughtfully provided this pretty stock photo of some sea ice:

Scroll down the Guardian’s article to number 11, pausing to read Tamsin Edwards’ section on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at number 9 on the way down (unlike CO₂ concentrations). There you will discover Professor Andrea Sella’s opinion that:

In October, unprecedented weather patterns drove icy winds across Siberia, pushing Arctic temperatures up to 20C above normal and parts of the Arctic Ocean failed to refreeze; in the Antarctic, sea ice thawed faster than usual. For me the bombshell came from a Dutch blogger in late November: a plot of the Arctic plus Antarctic showed sea ice this autumn to be tracking 4m km2 (the size of western Europe) below the normal average. This is a 7-sigma event – with a chance of about one in a hundred billion of being random. The ice doesn’t lie. If we don’t take this seriously now, our children will ask us why.

The “plot of the Arctic plus Antarctic” Andrea refers to was created by “Wipneus”, who I suppose could reasonably be described as a “Dutch programmer”. Neven could reasonably be described as a blogger, although he is much more than that. Although he was born in The Netherlands he no longer lives there.

Here’s the current state of play:

nsidc_global_area_20161215-400

Are your children asking “Why?” yet?

Should anybody wish to pose that question on Twitter please see:

Expensive ENSO Expertise

Temperature, , , ,

Regular readers will be aware that in a recent article in the Mail on Sunday David Rose quoted Professor Judith Curry as stating that:

The record warm years of 2015 and 2016 were primarily caused by the super El Nino

The article in question also included this graph:

MoS2 Template Master

It looks as though David’s left hand doesn’t know what his right hand is doing. Was the 2015 El Niño “Super” or “Very strong”? And how about the 1997/98 El Niño. Was that one really merely “Strong”?

We sought the professional opinion of an eminent expert in such matters, according to David Rose at least – Professor Judith Curry. Here’s how we got on, firstly at Prof. Curry’s “Climate Etc.” blog:

Us:

Since you mention the subject, I was wondering if Dr. Curry could take a look at the “the authoritative Met Office ‘HADCRUT4’ surface record” mentioned in David Rose’s latest Mail article and explain how it justifies her “The record warm years of 2015 and 2016 were primarily caused by the super El Nino” remark quoted in his previous one:

Post-Truth Global and Arctic Temperatures

 

Them:

“No answer!” was the stern reply! We tried again on a different thread at Prof. Judy’s place.

 

Us:

Bill the Frog has asked me to check the objective criteria Prof. Curry uses for differentiating between “weak”, “strong”, “very strong” and “super” El Niños. Likewise for La Niñas.

Can you assist by any chance Ristvan? Can Judith?

 

Them:

JH, Sure could. But first prove you are just not more loser snark.
Enso is variously but in eqch case precisely defined. I defer to Bob Tisdale comcerning details. And you?

 

Us:

I defer to the BoM in the first instance. How about Judith?

 

A different Them:

Jim Hunt

I expect the answers you are looking for are in this article by Judith back in 2014

https://judithcurry.com/2014/05/07/el-ninos-and-la-ninas-and-global-warming/

 

Us:

Thanks Tony, but that’s not Judith’s expert opinion on “objective criteria” either.

She did respond to my similar request on Twitter, but I’m still none the wiser I’m afraid:

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/809766243486105600
https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/809769266081923072

 

Them:

“No answer!” was the stern reply!

December 2016 Arctic Report Card

Ice Age, , , , , , , , ,

This is the Great White Con version as opposed to the NOAA version published during the Fall AGU conference earlier this week, although there is some overlap.

Hot off the presses, here’s how Arctic sea ice age has progressed over the last year and a bit:

The 4 and 5 year old ice looks to be edging away from the area north of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago towards the Fram Strait. Here’s the current CryoSat-2 Arctic sea ice thickness map:

cryosat_thk_20161212

Almost no ice over 2 meters thick to be found in the Beaufort sector or anywhere on the Siberian side of the Arctic. Here’s the current AMSR2 Arctic sea ice area graph:

uh-arctic-area-2016-12-15

Lowest for the date in the satellite record. Here’s the NSIDC’s long term trend in November sea ice extent:

monthly_ice_11_nh

Act 1 of a 3 act play according to Don Perovich at AGU. Here’s the current PIOMAS Arctic sea ice volume anomaly graph:

piomas-anomaly-201611

Lowest for the date in the satellite record. Here’s NOAA’s Arctic and global surface temperature graph:

arctictemp_map_graph_2015-16_620

Warmest in a record going back to 1900. Here’s the current DMI >80N surface temperature graph:

dmi_meant_20161216

and here’s the current Arctic surface temperature anomaly map:

cci-t2-anomaly-20161217

Finally, for the moment at least, here’s global sea ice area just for good measure:

nsidc_global_area_20161216

 

Need I say more? How about this:

 

Ice has no agenda. It just melts.
Out of the labs and into the streets?

Arctic Sea Ice News from AGU

Expeditions, , , , ,

I just watched the live stream of the fall 2016 AGU press conference about the findings of the “First results from the Norwegian Young Sea ICE Expedition”.

Here’s the associated video of the expedition:

Here are the bullet points:

Initial results suggest that the thinner and younger ice is altogether different from older multiyear ice. It moves faster, breaks up easier, melts faster, and is more vulnerable to storms. This has important consequences for the Arctic as a whole, as our current knowledge is largely based on information from the “old Arctic.”

The Atmosphere

• For the first time, N-ICE2015 researchers directly observed large winter storms over sea ice and saw that they have significant effects on the young, thinner ice. The high winds create a lot of stress on the sea ice by pushing it around and breaking it up.
• One winter storm raised the air temperature from -40 F to +32 F in less than 48 hours, while the moisture in the air increased 10 times. All of these factors significantly warm the surface of the snow, even in mid-winter, and slow the growth of ice.

The Sea Ice and Snow Cover

• Researchers on the drifting ice camps found more snow on top of the ice than expected. This insulated the ice from the atmosphere, slowing its growth in winter and surface melt in summer.
• The sea ice was sometimes flooded by seawater as the large snow load pushed the thinner ice below sea level.
• The thinner sea ice was more dynamic than researchers have seen before. This could mean more ridging but also more cracks and leads between ice floes.

The Ocean

• Winter storms caused the sea ice to drift so fast that it increased mixing of the water beneath the ice. Deeper, warmer water was mixed up closer to the sea ice, causing it to melt from below despite winter air temperatures that were below freezing.
• Researchers saw summer storms stir up deep warm waters and melt as much as 25 cm of ice in a single day.

The Ecosystem

• For the first time, N-ICE2015 researchers observed an algae bloom under snow-covered pack ice. Thinner and more dynamic Arctic sea ice allows more light transmission to the ocean, especially through cracks and leads. This triggers earlier phytoplankton blooms under the snow-covered ice.
• The phytoplankton species that dominated the under-ice bloom does not sink to the deep ocean. Such shifts in phytoplankton species composition, associated with early under-ice phytoplankton blooms, could thus have important implications for the strength of the biological carbon pump in the Arctic.

There was also mention of the “waves in ice” event that the R/V Lance experienced back in June 2015:

lance-waves-2015-1

P.S. A recording of the N-ICE2015 press conference is now available:

Next up on the live stream is was the 2016 “Arctic Report Card“. Here’s the associated video:

No doubt because of the recent controversy concerning the effects of the 2015/16 El Niño the first graphic that caught my eye was this one:

arctictemp_map_graph_2015-16_620

In the question and answer session the obvious question was asked. The answer was that while attribution is difficult the 2015/16 El Niño did have some effect on Arctic sea ice. However currently we’ve only seen “the first act of a 3 act play”. Act 2 will be the maximum extent in March.

In answer to another question, a focus of research over the next 10 years should be the interactions between mid latitudes and the Arctic.

P.S. A recording of the Arctic Report Card press conference is now available:

A variety of cryospheric posters are available via:

https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm16/meetingapp.cgi/Index/EPoster~1/Program/1175

Post-Truth Global and Arctic Temperatures

Temperature, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Post-truth” is the the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year for 2016. The definition reads as follows:

post-truth – an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.

and according to Oxford Dictionaries:

The concept of post-truth has been in existence for the past decade, but Oxford Dictionaries has seen a spike in frequency this year in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States. It has also become associated with a particular noun, in the phrase post-truth politics.

Post-truth has gone from being a peripheral term to being a mainstay in political commentary, now often being used by major publications without the need for clarification or definition in their headlines.

Our old friend David Rose has been remarkably quiet on the topic of Arctic sea ice recently. Presumably the objective facts from the Arctic are impossible to spin to his satisfaction even for a man of David’s talents? However that didn’t stop him from penning an article for The Mail on Sunday at the end of November on the topic of the recent “record highs in global temperatures“:

Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C since the middle of this year – their biggest and steepest fall on record.

The news comes amid mounting evidence that the recent run of world record high temperatures is about to end. The fall, revealed by Nasa satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere, has been caused by the end of El Niño – the warming of surface waters in a vast area of the Pacific west of Central America.

MoS2 Template Master

The Mail article helpfully included this one year old video from the World Meteorological Organization, explaining the basics of the El Niño phenomenon:

According to the commentary:

This phenomenon affects weather conditions across the equatorial Pacific, with potential knock on effects in other parts of the world.

We’ll get on to the “potential knock on effects” in the Arctic eventually, but let’s start with a snippet of Mr. Rose’s “post-truth politics”:

Some scientists, including Dr Gavin Schmidt, head of Nasa’s climate division, have claimed that the recent highs were mainly the result of long-term global warming.

Last year, Dr Schmidt said 2015 would have been a record hot year even without El Nino. ‘The reason why this is such a warm record year is because of the long-term underlying trend, the cumulative effect of the long-term warming trend of our Earth,’ he said. This was ‘mainly caused’ by the emission of greenhouse gases by humans.

Other experts have also disputed Dr Schmidt’s claims. Professor Judith Curry, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and president of the Climate Forecast Applications Network, said yesterday: ‘I disagree with Gavin. The record warm years of 2015 and 2016 were primarily caused by the super El Nino.’ The slowdown in warming was, she added, real, and all the evidence suggested that since 1998, the rate of global warming has been much slower than predicted by computer models – about 1C per century.

David Whitehouse, a scientist who works with Lord Lawson’s sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the massive fall in temperatures following the end of El Nino meant the warming hiatus or slowdown may be coming back. ‘According to the satellites, the late 2016 temperatures are returning to the levels they were at after the 1998 El Nino. The data clearly shows El Nino for what it was – a short-term weather event,’ he said.

In case you’re wondering where the politics is in all of this, you need look no further than here:

The Twitter account of the United States’ House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology quotes a Breitbart article by another old friend of ours, James Delingpole, which quotes David Rose’s article in the Mail on Sunday:

The last three years may eventually come to be seen as the final death rattle of the global warming scare. Thanks [sic] what’s now recognised as an unusually strong El Nino, global temperatures were driven to sufficiently high levels to revive the alarmist narrative – after an unhelpful pause period of nearly 20 years – that the world had got hotter than ever before.

In case you’re also wondering about the objective facts of the matter David Rose quotes with approval “the authoritative Met Office ‘Hadcrut4’ surface record” in his latest article in the Mail on Sunday this very morning:

New official data issued by the Met Office confirms that world average temperatures have plummeted since the middle of the year at a faster and steeper rate than at any time in the recent past.

The huge fall follows a report by this newspaper that temperatures had cooled after a record spike. Our story showed that these record high temperatures were triggered by naturally occurring but freak conditions caused by El Nino – and not, as had been previously suggested, by the cumulative effects of man-made global warming.

The Mail on Sunday’s report was picked up around the world and widely attacked by green propagandists as being ‘cherry-picked’ and based on ‘misinformation’. The report was, in fact, based on Nasa satellite measurements of temperatures in the lower atmosphere over land – which tend to show worldwide changes first, because the sea retains heat for longer.

There were claims – now exploded by the Met Office data shown here – that our report was ‘misleading’ and ‘cherry-picked’.

Yet bizarrely, the fiercest criticism was reserved for claims we never made – that there isn’t a long-term warming trend, mainly caused by human emissions.

This just wasn’t in our report – which presumably, critics hadn’t even read.

We’ve explained all this to David before, yet bizzarely we obviously need to do so again. Here’s the Mail’s version of the latest HADCRUT 4 data from the Met Office:

hadcrut-mail-20161211

and here’s ours:

hadcrut-wft-20161211

Can you spot any “cumulative effects of man-made global warming”?

Messrs Smith, Rose, Delingpole, Whitehouse et al. may well be unaware of the fact that the satellite temperature data they’re so fond of cherry picking doesn’t include data from the lower troposphere between 80 degrees North and the North Pole. Just in case they fancy spinning the latest objective facts from the Arctic in the near future, here’s the long term autumnal temperature trend:

80n-son-20161211

and here’s the long term November Arctic sea ice extent trend:

monthly_ice_11_nh

NASA Researches Storm Frank in the Arctic

Area, , , , , , ,

Regular readers may recall that as 2016 began we pondered how “Storm Frank” might have affected the Arctic. Now NASA have published some research into that very topic, entitled ” The Impact of the Extreme Winter 2015/16 Arctic Cyclone on the Barents–Kara Seas”. The paper itself is paywalled, but according to an associated article on the NASA web site:

A large cyclone that crossed the Arctic in December 2015 brought so much heat and humidity to this otherwise frigid and dry environment that it thinned and shrunk the sea ice cover during a time of the year when the ice should have been growing thicker and stronger.

The cyclone formed on Dec. 28, 2015, in the middle of the North Atlantic, and traveled to the United Kingdom and Iceland before entering the Arctic on Dec. 30, lingering in the area for several days. During the height of the storm, the mean air temperatures in the Kara and Barents seas region, north of Russia and Norway, were 18 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) warmer than what the average had been for this time of the year since 2003.

The extremely warm and humid air mass associated with the cyclone caused an amount of energy equivalent to the power used in one year by half a million American homes to be transferred from the atmosphere to the surface of the sea ice in the Kara-Barents region. As a result, the area’s sea ice thinned by almost 4 inches (10 centimeters) on average.

At the same time, the storm winds pushed the edges of the sea ice north, compacting the ice pack.

Here’s a video with commentary by Linette Boisvert, lead author of the paper:

From the commentary:

As a result of this cyclone, the concentration of the sea ice in the Barents and Kara Seas decreased by ten percent, and the sea ice edge moved northward. The loss in sea ice area during this time was equivalent to the size of Florida. Sea ice extent stayed low throughout the month of January with large parts of the Barents and Kara Seas remaining unseasonably ice-free, which probably helped contribute to a record low Arctic sea ice maximum.

Somewhat earlier than last year another strong cyclone has been having a similar effect on the Arctic over the last week. A cyclone entered the Central Arctic via the Fram Strait, reaching a minimum central pressure of 954 hPa on November 14th:

fram-2016-11-14-1800

Here is the Wavewatch III wave height forecast for November 15th 2016:

significant_height_of_combined_w-in-multi_2-glo_30m-20161113_00049

and here is NOAA’s temperature anomaly reanalysis for November 16th 2016:

noaatempanomaly-20161116

As a consequence of the strong winds, huge waves and 20 degrees Celsius temperature anomaly across much of the Arctic, sea ice area has been falling during a period when it is usually increasing rapidly:

uh-arctic-area-2016-11-19

Global Sea Ice At Record Low Levels

Volume, , ,

NSIDC 5 day averaged Antarctic sea ice extent is now at a record low level for the date, since satellite measurements began in 1979:

chantarctic-20161105

NSIDC 5 day averaged Arctic sea ice extent has been at a record low level for the date for quite a while:

charctic-20161105

Combining those two facts means that global sea ice extent is also at a record low level for the date by a considerable margin. The gap with all previous years in the satellite record is even more stark if you look at global sea ice area:

nsidc_global_area_byyear

The October Arctic sea ice volume numbers from PIOMAS have also just been published:

piomas-trnd3-20161031

By October 31st that metric was also “lowest ever” for the date.

Watts Up With The Inconvenient Arctic Hiatus?

Satire, , , ,

Our title for today does of course refer to the inconvenient hiatus caused by the Gremlins currently stealing my comments from under the noses of Anthony Watts’ eagle eyed team of moderators before they can approve them as suitable for public view. Yesterday Mr. Watts published an article under the headline:

“Inconvenient: Record Arctic Sea Ice Growth In September”

Not a lot of people know that Anthony quotes our old friends at the Global Warming Policy Forum quoting our mutual friend Paul Homewood as follows:

Since hitting its earliest minimum extent since 1997, Arctic sea ice has been expanding at a phenomenal rate. Already it is greater than at the same date in 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2015. Put another way, it is the fourth highest extent in the last ten years. Even more remarkably, ice growth since the start of the month is actually the greatest on record, since daily figures started to be kept in 1987.

and GWPF Science Editor, David Whitehouse, as follows:

As I wrote when looking at last year’s data the declining Arctic ice cover has been one of the most powerful images of climate change and that many who follow the debate don’t look too hard at the data. This results in superficial reporting that does not convey any of the complexities of the situation and as such is poor science communication.

With the data for 2016 now in it is time to look again at the claims of an “ice pause.”

In the spirit of improving science communication I commented as follows on Mr. Watts article, when seven previous comments were visible:

Annual average sea ice was all the rage last year:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/11/on-the-pause-in-global-sea-ice-anomalies/

You may well be wondering what a graph of annual average Arctic sea ice extent looks like? Take a look:

taminoannualanomaly-aug-2016

Discuss.

This morning (UTC) there are 197 comments visible under the WUWT article, but mine is not amongst them. Those Gremlins have a lot to answer for!

You may possibly think my comment was somewhat on the terse side? In part that’s because I’d just had a “debate” of sorts with one or more WUWT moderators who happily admitted to [snip]ping large parts of my side of the “conversation”. I certainly didn’t want to offend them by “taking pot shots” or engaging in “self promotion”. After all they had concluded their remarks by informing me that:

It is settled then …you are mendacious

The SIMPLEST solution is to stop attempting to post comments here. We are not required to carry them.

Needless to say my most recent witty riposte was grabbed by the Gremlins:

wuwt-2016-09-26_1647

Just in case you were wondering what a mendacious moderator might mean:

[men-dey-shuh s]

adjective

1. telling lies, especially habitually; dishonest; lying; untruthful:
a mendacious person.

2. false or untrue:
a mendacious report.

Is the Northwest Passage Freezing or Melting?

Extent, , , , , , ,

A reader writes to ask us to explain the answer to the above question in more detail. Are you sitting comfortably once again? Then let us begin.

There has been a lot of unusual “weather” in the Arctic over the last twelve months. First of all there was an anomalously warm winter:

NCEP-Arctic-T2-DJF

Then came what we dubbed the Great Arctic Anticyclone of 2016 in April. Take a look at what happened to the sea ice north of Alaska and Canada during the Spring and early Summer:

The ice was put through the mincer for the first time. Then during August there were a series of strong cyclones, collectively the Great Arctic Cyclone of 2016. The ice was put through the mincer once again, but in an anti-clockwise direction this time. Watch what happens in the Northwest Passage as summer turns to Autumn:

Some of the oldest, thickest ice in the Arctic has been chopped into small pieces which then easily flow through the channels of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and into the Northwest Passage. Hence when the yacht Northabout (amongst others) was racing to reach Baffin Bay it wasn’t to avoid “the refreeze” as claimed in certain quarters. It was in fact to try and avoid the worst of the chopped up chunks of old sea ice being carried swiftly in their direction by winds and currents. Here’s what some of them looked like in close up:

The next question then becomes, if the Northwest Passage wasn’t refreezing then, is it freezing now? The answer is not yet. In fact the favourite talking point of the cryodenialista, McClure Strait at the western end of the “main” route through the Passage has recently become navigable:

NASA Worldview “true-color” image of Banks Island on September 24th 2016, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite
NASA Worldview “true-color” image of Banks Island on September 24th 2016, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite

which is confirmed by the latest Canadian Ice Service chart of the area:

mcclure-201609261800

The “pretty pink” area towards the top left of the chart reveals “new ice”. The Northwest Passage will have started to refreeze when some of that shows up on a “stage of development” chart of the Passage itself, but that hasn’t happened yet. Here’s yesterday evening’s chart of the “Approaches to Resolute“:

resolute-devel-201609261800

Lots of old ice! It was raining in Resolute yesterday, and the old ice there was still melting:

resolute-oldice-rain-20160925

 

[Edit – September 27th]

No sooner said than done! This evening’s ice charts from the CIS do now show some “pretty pink” new ice in the Northwest Passage:

resolute-devel-201609271800

The wispy areas of new ice are also visible on this “false-color” image of the Parry Channel:

NASA Worldview “false-color” image of the Parry Channel on September 27th 2016, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite
NASA Worldview “false-color” image of the Parry Channel on September 27th 2016, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite

However even if Northabout were still in Prince Regent Inlet she wouldn’t be “trapped in ice”. There is still a way back to Bristol via Fury and Hecla Strait:

foxe-201609271800

That route has been remarkably busy this year!

 

[Edit – September 30th]

A clear view of McClure Strait from the Terra satellite in “false colour”:

NASA Worldview “false-color” image of the McClure Strait on September 30th 2016, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite
NASA Worldview “false-color” image of the McClure Strait on September 30th 2016, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite

The inclusion of some infra red reveals the thicker old ice on the right noticeably paler than the new ice to its left. Compare also with the CIS ice chart, which has been rotated to match the orientation of the satellite image:

mcclure-201609291800

 

[Edit – October 2nd]

Pretty patterns in the new sea ice forming at the western entrance to McClure Strait:

NASA Worldview “true-color” image of the McClure Strait on October 1st 2016, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Aqua satellite
NASA Worldview “true-color” image of the McClure Strait on October 1st 2016, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Aqua satellite

The freshly frozen new ice in the Northwest Passage has been spotted by the AMSR2 instrument aboard the Japanese “Shizuku” satellite:

uh-caa-area-2016-10-01

On the latest CIS “stage of development” chart the brown “old ice” has turned to deep red “multi-year ice”, and there’s lots more pretty pink out in the Beaufort Sea:

mcclure-devel-201610011800