Once again our title for today is inspired by the indefatigable “Steven Goddard”. His latest Arctic themed article on his so called “Real Science” blog is entitled “Trouble Looming For Arctic Alarmists“, and he’s following his usual formula of showing an image or two interspersed with unrelated text. Here’s Tony’s textual take on things, interspersed with our graphic retorts:
Arctic sea ice coverage is nearly identical to 20 years ago:
Arctic sea ice is the thickest it has been in a decade.
According to PIOMAS it’s thin in the Beaufort, and most other areas too!
As we summarised matters for “Steve”/Tony’s loyal readership:
The Gish Gallop continues! Just for the record:
Arctic sea ice coverage is currently NOT nearly identical to 20 years ago
Arctic sea ice is currently NOT following almost the exact trajectory of 2006
Arctic sea ice is currently NOT the thickest it has been in a decade in Ron’s beloved Beaufort/Chukchi/East Siberian Seas (BCE for short)
Renowned Arctic sea ice expert “Steve Goddard” predicted last year that.”The minimum this summer will likely be close to the 2006 minimum, which was the highest minimum of the past decade”. That’s not how things eventually turned out!
Yesterday Anthony Watts published a guest post on his “Watts Up With That” blog authored by Matt Manos. It is entitled “Why It’s So Hard to Convince Warmists“.
Being a somewhat lazy realist I reproduce it here in full, although be warned that I have used the search/replace function of my text editor a teensy-weensy bit:
Many of the posters and readers at GWC have expressed frustration at convincing pseudo-skeptics. Using facts and logic seem to fall on deaf ears. There are some interesting social sciences theories on why pseudo-skeptics are unresponsive. I know the social sciences aren’t a favoured science with this group but if you’ll bear with me, you’ll hopefully see how social science can be useful in describing why pseudo-skeptics are unreachable. And possibly, what to do about it.
In their latest speeches on global warming, Obama and the Pope weren’t trying to convince pseudo-skeptics that CAGW is real. Instead, they were sending signals to their supporters on what “all right thinking people” should be saying. This is classic in-group/out-group communication. Obama and the Pope were setting up the talking points for their in-group members to use to determine who can be considered part of the tribe and who should be rejected for being outside of it. This is a process called Othering. Othering turns political foes into non-beings. Others have no value. Others can be discounted and ignored. Others can be mocked.
Booker and Rose are examples of bellwethers; the sheep with the bell that the other sheep follow. Bellwether is not a derogatory term, it’s a descriptive term. The job of a political bellwether is to indicate the position that their followers should take in their everyday conversations. Booker and Rose’s latest articles function as position papers for the delegates of all right thinking people. You meet these people at work, church, school, at the coffee house, etc. The delegates will mirror the words that Booker or Rose used to identify other in-group members, normalize beliefs and mock out-group members. One of the main themes of both speeches was shame. Shame on those who aren’t right thinking people. Shame that they aren’t as intelligent and capable as “us.”
That type of smugness is almost impossible to penetrate. When a realist questions a pseudo-skeptic’s view on global warming/climate change, the pseudo-skeptic hears something vastly different than what the realist is saying. A realist might say, “There’s no evidence for an Arctic Ice Recovery.” What the pseudo-skeptic hears is how stupid warmists are because that’s what Anthony Watts told him he should think. If the pseudo-skeptic doesn’t prove that he thinks realists are stupid then he might be confused for a warmist! And no one wants to be identified with being a warmist because they’re mocked and don’t get invited to the right parties. No amount of science can penetrate the ROI the pseudo-skeptic has internalized in not believing in CAGW.
Many of the pseudo-skeptics are running on pure rational ignorance. Rational ignorance is a belief that the cost/benefit to researching every issue is so low as to be a net negative in time utilization. Thus the ignorance is rational and everyone utilizes this mental process on certain topics. People who are rationally ignorant about global warming look to bellwethers that support their gut stance. Rationally ignorant pseudo-skeptics would look to Australian leaders, mockutainers and denialist scientists for guidance on how to communicate their position on global warming.
Penetrating rational ignorance is tough because the position pseudo-skeptics have taken isn’t based on logic. Their position is actually based on an appeal to authority. To question the rationally ignorant denier is to question the field of science as a whole (to be a science realist) or to question the leadership of their favorite bellwether personalities. This will cause the rationally ignorant denier to become defensive and try to stand up for their favorite bellwether. The rationally ignorant will also point to their favorite bellwethers and say, “Who am I to doubt all these intelligent people?” It’s intellectually offshoring. It’s lazy. It’s human nature.
The scientific method rejects outright in-group/out groups, Othering, bellwethers and rational ignorance. A scientist is supposed to follow the results on an experiment even if the results don’t support his hypothesis. The scientist is clearly not supposed to rig the data to ensure he gets invited to a party with the right people or continued funding. But science has a poor track record on controversial topics. It often takes decades to accept new theories that are clear winners (e.g., continental drift).
Scientists are still social animals. Social animals follow hierarchy and incentives. If you really want to win the debate on global warming, change the opinions of the bellwethers. Change the economic incentives for the global warming scientific paper mill. Otherwise you’re stuck debating only the people who are unable to change their minds because it would cost them personally to do so. Rare is the person intellectually honest enough to bite the hand that feeds or is willing to violate social norms to speak the truth.
Please feel free to comment below should you spot any inadvertent errors that necessitate a bit more searching/replacing on my part. In the meantime you may be interested in watching this recording I made of a presentation by Dr. Darren Schreiber of Exeter University at a “Pint of Science” presentation last week, entitled “Your Brain is Built for Politics“:
Note in particular the part at 8 minutes 15 seconds where Darren says:
In a new study that just came out a couple of months ago they showed a single disgusting image, and one single disgusting image and measuring the brain activity and how the person responded to that was sufficient to allow you to identify if somebody was conservative or liberal. With a single brain image. With 95% accuracy!
Experts say that the Arctic is in a “death spiral” – but for the past two years it has been tracking 2005/2006 – the years with the two highest summer extents of the past decade.
For the past four years, summer melt season temperatures in the Arctic have been well below normal.
No matter how many times experts lie about it, the Arctic is not melting down.
The Arctic, of course, has other ideas and continues to fail to conform to the narrative over at (un)Real Science. Today the NSIDC 5 day average extent Arctic sea ice extent is in actual fact at the lowest level for the time of year since their records began:
In view of “Steve”/Tony’s headline you may find it surprising that so is his much beloved DMI 30% threshold extent extent metric (displayed in full):
and so is the JAXA 15% extent extent:
Holding out by the merest whisker (for the moment) is the Cryosphere Today area metric, which is nonetheless lower than on the same day in both 2005 and 2006:
Quod Erat Demonstrandum?
[Edit – May 23rd 2015]
After being used by a polar bear to inspect its feet, the webcam trained on ice mass balance buoy 2015A is now pointing in the right direction again. It reveals that the Arctic is in fact “melting down” even as “Steve”/Tony maintains that it isn’t:
As if further proof were needed, the DMI 15% threshold extent graph extent is also now clearly lower than previous years at this time:
As we reported back in February, the Jakobshavn Isbræ glacier in Western Greenland has already calved around about 7 km² of ice earlier this year. Now the eagle eyed Espen Olsen reports another large calving via the Arctic Sea Ice Forum:
Jakobshavn Isbræ the calving-machine is up in gear again
Here’s his evidence, an animation created using images from the Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager:
After a bit more graphical processing Espen subsequently posted another animation:
This one reveals the amount of ice that still needs to be lost before the calving face retreats as far as it ultimately did last summer. Espen also comments:
The calving front at Jakobshavn is very different to September 28 2014 (record retreat), not only did the glacier expand since then but the front is much narrower?
Here once again is Jason Box’s Jakobshavn calving summary from February:
Both of the last two years, temperatures stayed below normal for the entire melt season.
The below normal summer temperatures are keeping the ice from melting, and have led to a large expansion in the amount of thick multi-year ice.
However the Arctic is unfortunately failing to cooperate with that narrative. Today we are unhappy to report that Tony Heller‘s favourite Arctic sea ice metric, the Danish Meteorological Institute 30% threshold extent, is at the lowest level ever for the date since their records began:
As if that wasn’t enough to be going on with, some big holes have already appeared in the middle of the supposedly multi-meter thick, multi-year sea ice in the Beaufort Sea, well away from the open water already warming up off the Mackenzie Delta:
NASA Worldview “true-color” image of The Beaufort Sea on May 11th, derived from bands 1, 4 and 3 of the MODIS sensor on the Aqua satellite
Officially, we only started monitoring Arctic sea ice extents by satellite from 1979. We know however that this is not the whole story. For instance, HH Lamb tells us:
Kukla & Kukla (1974) report that the area of snow and ice, integrated over the year across the Northern Hemisphere, was 12% more in 1973 than in 1967, when the first satellite surveys were made.
I’ve added that link, since Paul neglected to include it. He concludes:
To draw any conclusions about Arctic ice or temperatures, using data that begins at the coldest point of the cycle is utterly worthless and grossly misleading. But this is climate “science” we are talking about.
Since this is Paul Homewood we are talking about I felt compelled to quibble about his grossly misleading assertion:
Us:
Here’s the NSIDC’s chart of Arctic sea ice extent anomalies since 1953:
You will no doubt note that it reveals an overall peak in the late 60s, not the late 70s
Them:
I note they don’t show the 1940’s
Us:
Whereas I note that 1969 is a much juicier looking cherry than 1979. Is 1949 better still?
Them:
They did not have satellite monitoring in 1969.
Even though I had already pointed out the error of his ways to him Paul Homewood decided at this juncture to publish another article, this time entitled “Satellite Monitoring Of Arctic Sea Ice Pre 1979“. It began:
I was pointing out yesterday why it was so inappropriate to deduce trends in Arctic sea ice, using 1979 as the start point. NSIDC, of course, do this supposedly because that is when satellite monitoring began.
Mr Biscuits, however, reminds me that the 1990 IPCC report showed the above graph, with Arctic sea ice extent back to 1972.
Us:
At the risk of repeating myself, what about this remarkable recent narrative?
What the NSIDC actually say regarding their dataset that starts in 1978 is:
“This product is designed to provide a consistent time series of sea ice concentrations (the fraction, or percentage, of ocean area covered by sea ice) spanning the coverage of several passive microwave instruments.”
http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0051
Note that there is no mention of “when satellite monitoring began”. See also their Nimbus Data Rescue project, which has data going back to 1964:
IPSO is also currently considering a complaint I made against another article by David Rose in The Mail on Sunday in September 2014 which wrongly suggested that Arctic sea ice extent has stopped declining. I am not optimistic that my complaint will be upheld, even though the newspaper again breached Section 1(i) of the Editors’ Code of Practice.
IPSO have now published their ruling on that complaint, and conclude that:
17. The complaint was not upheld.
Remedial Action Required: N/A
Date complaint received: 17/09/2014
Date decision Issued: 16/02/2015
By all means read the ruling in full, but here are our edited highlights:
13. The article presented the author’s view that forecasts regarding the melting of Arctic ice had overestimated the rate of decline. The complainant did not dispute that measures showed that the Arctic ice extent had increased over the last two years. The article had made clear that the long-term trend still showed a decline, and the coverage had included commentary from a number of scientists, expressing a variety of views on the matter, including one who had stated that he was “uncomfortable with the idea of people saying the ice had bounced back”, and warned against reading too much into the ice increases. The article had made clear that scientific opinions regarding the significance of the most recent data varied. In this context, the omission of the information that the measure in 2012 had been the lowest on record, and that 2014 had still been the seventh lowest since records began, was not significantly misleading. The article did not suggest that it had been established as fact that the long-term decline in Arctic sea ice had reversed.
I highlight that paragraph in particular because in our coverage of David Rose’s article here at Great White Con we have disputed that “measures showed that the Arctic ice extent had increased over the last two years”. I wonder what IPSO might make of that information?
We have appended the following response from Rose:
“Like anyone who challenges aspects of the so-called ‘consensus’ over climate change, I’ve grown inured to being called a ‘denier’, as some of the commenters ‘below the line’ claim I am here. It is with some weariness that I must point out, as I did in the article that started this fuss, that I accept that the long-term Arctic ice trend is down, that carbon dioxide of human origin is an important cause of this trend, and that, unchecked, it will lead eventually to ice-free Arctic summers – albeit perhaps not for decades.
“But to be attacked for something I didn’t actually write is unfortunate. The fact remains there are large uncertainties and intense debate among scientists on this and other climate change topics, even if, as has been said, 97 per cent agree that the world is warming and that humans are partly to blame. But that doesn’t take us very far, and there are important differences of opinion. Professor Judith Curry isn’t a ‘contrarian’ but a very distinguished scientist and ice expert with a long record of peer-reviewed publications, though she happens to disagree with Mr Nuccitelli.
We feel compelled to point out to David Rose once again that he actually wrote:
The Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession.
and that this is both inaccurate and significantly misleading.
What sort of “very distinguished scientist and ice expert” would continue to proudly proclaim the following inaccurate information after even the Mail on Sunday had retracted it?
Today we’re going to delve into the application of surf science in the Arctic. If you’re not already familiar with the basics of how the best surf is created then perhaps you might first wish to take a detour to the StormSurf “Wave Basics” article:
Wind waves, though rideable, are not the optimal type of wave one likes to ride. Swells are much better. Wind waves are only the raw material that swells are made from. But, the more energy wind waves accumulate while being driven by wind, the greater the likelihood they will transform into a swell. Enough energy and the swell can travel the entire circumference of the globe with only a slow decay in size!
During a typical open ocean winter storm, one could expect to see winds of 45-55 kts blowing over 600-1000 nautical miles for 36 hours. In such a storm, the average highest wind waves (or ‘seas’) commonly reach 30-35 ft towards the center of the fetch area and produce a swell with a period of 17-20 secs.
Regular readers may recall that on August 24th 2014 we revealed this WaveWatch III “surf forecast” for the Beaufort Sea, which lies off the north coast of Alaska and the Canadian Northwest Territories (i.e. top center of the map): and noted that the 2 meter waves depicted:
Have blasted past Point Barrow and are currently heading straight for the Beaufort Sea Marginal Ice Zone.
Here’s a video from the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory which explains that the Marginal Ice Zone is:
The area between declining unbroken sea ice and the expanding area of open water.
The theoretical significance of such swells has been discussed in a number of academic papers recently. Take for example these extracts from “Swell and sea in the emerging Arctic Ocean” by Jim Thomson from the University of Washington and W. Erick Rogers from the US Naval Research Laboratory. Note first of all that the authors distinguish between “wind seas” and “swells” as follows:
Pure wind seas have a wave age less than one, indicating that the wind is driving the waves, and these points cluster largely below the Pierson–Moskowitz limit. Swells have a wave age greater than one, indicating that the waves are outrunning the wind.
They then go on to use some more terms very familiar to the average surfer:
Ocean surface waves (sea and swell) are generated by winds blowing over a distance (fetch) for a duration of time. In the Arctic Ocean, fetch varies seasonally from essentially zero in winter to hundreds of kilometers in recent summers. Using in situ observations of waves in the central Beaufort Sea, combined with a numerical wave model and satellite sea ice observations, we show that wave energy scales with fetch throughout the seasonal ice cycle. Furthermore, we show that the increased open water of 2012 allowed waves to develop beyond pure wind seas and evolve into swells. The swells remain tied to the available fetch, however, because fetch is a proxy for the basin size in which the wave evolution occurs. Thus, both sea and swell depend on the open water fetch in the Arctic, because the swell is regionally driven. This suggests that further reductions in seasonal ice cover in the future will result in larger waves, which in turn provide a mechanism to break up sea ice and accelerate ice retreat.
It is possible that the increased wave activity will be the feedback mechanism which drives the Arctic system toward an ice-free summer. This would be a remarkable departure from historical conditions in the Arctic, with potentially wide-ranging implications for the air-water-ice system and the humans attempting to operate there.
In practice there were several more swells that impacted the Beaufort Sea marginal ice zone over the course of the next couple of weeks. Here’s what the charts looked like, as visualised by MagicSeaweed.com rather than NOAA:
Beaufort Sea on August 27th 2014 – Winds / Wave Height / Wave PeriodBeaufort Sea on September 1st 2014 – Winds / Wave Height / Wave PeriodBeaufort Sea on September 7th 2014 – Winds / Wave Height / Wave Period
Note that on the right of each set of three is a depiction of the period of the waves in question. As StormSurf points out:
Chop tends to have a period ranging from 3-8 seconds. That is, there is anywhere from 3-8 seconds between each wave crest. Wind waves range from 9-12 seconds. Ground swells range from 13-15 seconds, and strong ground swells have a period anywhere from 16-25 or more seconds.
Thus the final swell on September 7th was actually the best of the bunch, with a small area of waves over 10 feet in height and with a period of over 9 seconds. According to StormSurf those are merely “wind waves” and not yet a full blown “swell”. To give you a feel for such waves here’s what some “wind waves” hitting the beach at Barrow looked like on September 4th 2014:
Next here’s another video that reveals what effect those series of waves had on the sea ice in the Beaufort Sea:
For future reference here also is the same swell described by Thomson and Rogers, but illustrated in an identical “surfer friendly” format to the 2014 swells we’ve been looking at:
Beaufort Sea on September 18th 2012 – Winds / Wave Height / Wave Period
whilst here is the swell produced by the “Great Arctic Cyclone” of early August 2012, also mentioned in passing by Thomson and Rogers:
Beaufort Sea on August 5th 2012 – Winds / Wave Height / Wave Period
As you can see, if you’re a surfer used to tracking swells across the world’s oceans at least, whilst the September 2012 swell was indeed rather more substantial than those we have looked at in 2014, with a height in excess of 20 feet, the period was too short to qualify as a full blown swell and it was in fact directed away from the ice edge rather than towards it. Here’s what that 2012 swell looked like once it reached Barrow:
All of which does rather make one wonder what might happen if a slightly longer period swell directed at the ice edge in the Beaufort Sea were to occur at some point in the not too distant future? Whilst we all wait with bated breath to discover what that future holds for the sea ice in the Arctic, not to mention the beach at Barrow, here’s another video about the 2014 Marginal Ice Zone Program, which summarises the year’s campaign as a whole:
Note that Craig Lee says that:
We had very little wave activity. It was surprisingly calm when we were out there in the Araon, both when we were in the ice and in the open water. There just wasn’t much wind, and so there weren’t very many surface waves.
However at least one of the “robots” he refers to did discover some significant wave activity. Here’s a visualisation of SWIFT 11‘s record of significant wave height as it floated across the Beaufort Sea in the summer of 2014:
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I would describe 4.5 meter waves as “surprisingly calm”, especially in the Arctic!
A week after our first equipment evaluation expedition for our 2015 Arctic Basin Big Wave Surfing Contest the signs were looking good once again, albeit with a southwesterly wind once again. Here’s how our compact format surf forecast looked for noon on March 7th, courtesy of some copying and pasting from Magic Seaweed’s global surf outlook:
The North Atlantic surf forecast for March 7th 2015. Winds / Wave Height / Wave Period
You’ll no doubt note that the swell height out in mid Atlantic was off the top of the truncated scale. That’s because it’s designed for use in the Arctic Basin, where 40 foot waves are very hard to come by! Take a look at the last link below to see what I mean.
Given the wind the shelter of Putsborough was the order of the day when it came to spot selection. Water temperatures hadn’t changed significantly in a week, but the sun was shining on this occasion, which is undoubtedly preferable to the rain we experienced last time:
Donning the same gear as last time even my fingers didn’t feel cold this time around, although my partner for the day (encased in a standard winter wet suit plus separate hood) described conditions as “f…. cold!” even after warming up thoroughly, as you can see here:
Eat your heart out Anastasia Ashley! After the session considerably more energy was expended by the two of us extracting yours truly from his Tiki Prodigy 6/5/4 suit. After that I started chatting to Simon, who happened to be parked next to us in the car park at Putsborough Sands, as dusk started to descend. Here’s what happened next:
Towards the end of our conversation I explained the rationale behind our Arctic Basin big wave surfing contest, and briefly touched on some of the associated Arctic surf science. For the scientifically inclined amongst you, there’s a much longer explanation available in this companion article!
Here are some relevant Arctic sea ice metrics. We will continue to update them as the latest figures arrive throughout the rest of today:
IJIS/JAXA daily extent: 13,648,280 km² – Lowest ever level for the date in records going back to 2003
DMI “30%” daily extent: 10,676,900 km² – Lowest ever level for the date in records going back to 2005
NSIDC daily extent: 14,330,000 km² – Lowest ever level for the date
NSIDC 5 day average extent: 14,280,000 km² – Lowest ever level for the date in records going back to 1979
Cryosphere Today daily area: 12,984,410 km² – Lowest ever level for the date in records going back to 1979
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