The Antarctic

[sigurdur]

As it stands, the models that portray AGW are seriously flawed. Anyone with a lick of intelligence knows this.

The reason I used 50 years is that according to AGW models now, the warming should accelerate very very fast. IF it doesn't......it is another nail in the coffin of AGW.

All those who have posted about how Antarctica was suppose to warm up are correct. This is exposing another area that current climate models are not correctly predicting. When honest scientists indicate that the realiability of models "may" be 60%, they are not kidding.

It is the agenda driven dishonest scientists who take a future predicted by a model full of holes and project it as fact.......(snicker......snicker)

[FineWino]

Sept 30, 2012 2:27:31 GMT thermostat said:

Jumping into the discussion, just a few comments.

First, the increase in maximum Antarctic Sea Extent is small in contrast with the observed decrease in minimum Arctic Sea Ice Extent.

Also, keep in mind that the physics in the southern hemisphere is quite different than the physics in the north.

Then, various alternative lines of evidence show warming/melting in Antarctica.

In addition, it does not appear that the Antarctic Sea Ice Minimum Extent is changing; just the Maximum Extent.

The interesting question is 'what physical processes are producing this effect?'

Pray tell thermostat, how do the physics of the NH differ from those of the SH. And how would those differ from the physics of the moon? or Saturn? or our sun? or Andromeda?

Comments like these display your ignorance for all to see. I do not understand why anyone even responds to your posts. This one was just to far out to let it go.

[Andrew]

Oct 1, 2012 2:44:42 GMT FineWino said:

Sept 30, 2012 2:27:31 GMT thermostat said:

Jumping into the discussion, just a few comments.

First, the increase in maximum Antarctic Sea Extent is small in contrast with the observed decrease in minimum Arctic Sea Ice Extent.

Also, keep in mind that the physics in the southern hemisphere is quite different than the physics in the north.

Then, various alternative lines of evidence show warming/melting in Antarctica.

In addition, it does not appear that the Antarctic Sea Ice Minimum Extent is changing; just the Maximum Extent.

The interesting question is 'what physical processes are producing this effect?'

Pray tell thermostat, how do the physics of the NH differ from those of the SH. And how would those differ from the physics of the moon? or Saturn? or our sun? or Andromeda?

Comments like these display your ignorance for all to see. I do not understand why anyone even responds to your posts. This one was just to far out to let it go.

The basic physics is the same but their geography is very different and therefore the way the physical processes unfold are also very different

The NH sea ice is in a "land locked basin" fed by some very large rivers. The ice here persists all year, even though it is being warmed by a strong Atlantic current.

The SH sea ice surrounds a frozen island in the middle of a normal fully salt water ocean. This ice tends to almost completely melt in summer.

[nonentropic]

Interesting, though intuitively I thought it would thaw at the Antarctic when it got warmer and the models also seemed to predict this but we are possibly both wrong or it did not get warmer?

A interesting paradox of the arctic is that if it for some reason or other and it may be warming, we're to have less ice the unfrozen water will look considerably warmer to satellites. This is due to the surface of the water being kept warmer by convection from beneath. the ice stops this.
The result is a fooling effect on the record. It's not impossible for a storm to break up a large chunk of the arctic which we know will cool the region but it will appear in the records as a warm patch. I think this year had a bit of that about it.

[graywolf]

No -one seems very concerned about the 500k drop in sea ice area around Antarctica over the past few days? If we are to focus on Arctic storms shouldn't we also take a peep at the number of systems currently prowling around the Southern continent and the damage they do to the thin F.Y. ice there?

2 years ago one such storm took a cool million off extent over a week (just as ice levels reached above average?) and again there only seemed to be me with any interest?

With such an unsettled start to the southern spring I'd expect more rapid losses as the month rolls on.

[icefisher]

A interesting paradox of the arctic is that if it for some reason or other and it may be warming, we're to have less ice the unfrozen water will look considerably warmer to satellites. This is due to the surface of the water being kept warmer by convection from beneath. the ice stops this.
The result is a fooling effect on the record. It's not impossible for a storm to break up a large chunk of the arctic which we know will cool the region but it will appear in the records as a warm patch. I think this year had a bit of that about it.

Thats a key observation I think.

Warming is trumped up in the arctic because of the methods used. I am convinced there is an unquantified error introduced by the methods used. Total heat content is a far better approach.

We should expect virtually all the antarctic sea ice to melt each year as the size of the continent is 4 times larger than this years minimum arctic ice extent. Add to that the fact that antarctic is far less susceptible to natural variation from changes in the availability of fresh water which has a higher freezing point. Fresh water gets trapped in the arctic ocean in ways it is not trapped in seas surrounding antarctica.

Very clearly precipitation is the big X factor for variation of ice in the arctic. Physically that almost has to be the explanation for the disparity between the Arctic and Antarctic.

The null hypothesis seems to be the world is cooling as indicated by the oceans and antarctic, while the arctic is full on in natural variability feedback mode screwing up a pretty screwy system of measuring global warming.

So last night I set out on a quest to see what was available on precipitation changes in the arctic.

Wow! One can find plenty of scientific proclamation statements acknowledging precipitation being a big factor. NSIDC has such statements, but I have been unable to find anything useful datawise.

The most useful stuff is a lot of excuses about how hard it is gauge precipitation due to wind eddies causing problems in getting accurate measurements for both rain and snow, but especially snow.

Hmmmm, it appears precipitation has been pushed to the back shelf. I found an interesting PDF at Illinois Arctic Research Center.

igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/Seasonality.paper.altered.JGR.pdf (caution this is about 24mb)

Not sure what the "altered" business is all about but it appears the altered text is in red and contains a lot the more controversial conclusions about CAGW. I am not sure I didn't accidentally link into a State of Fear gaming site as this is exactly the scenario painted by Michael Crichton! The University of Illinois might have been chosen for a name because its the closest to the University of Illusion.

Here is the abstract. The red corresponds apparently to the alterations in the document (the document has the red in red).

The seasonality of recent reanalysis-derived trends of surface air temperature, sea
level pressure and precipitation is compared with the seasonality of the changes in five
global model simulations forced by the B2 scenario of greenhouse forcing. The
seasonality of the post-1950 changes of Arctic surface air temperature and sea level
pressure shows some correspondence with the greenhouse projections. However, even
the largest (70-90°N) correlations of the annual cycles of change are only 0.45-0.53.
Moreover, the correlations decrease to negligible values as the domain is enlarged to
include the middle latitudes. The seasonalities of the precipitation trends show no
correspondence at any latitudes. The results for temperature and pressure suggest that the Arctic may be a temporally leading indicator of greenhouse-driven changes despite its large natural variability.

So here we have the inferior temperature metric here being artificially elevated overriding the logically most important factor which fails to correlate in any way with the models. We just watched the blow by blow effects on temperature this past spring from changes in moisture availability!

So what we have here is pretty sad. I would wager that this document might have been what set Dr Akasofu off. So we are going to conclude the region with the worst natural variability will be a fantastic "temporally leading indicator of greenhouse drive changes" flying into the face of the fact that the models completely fail to reproduce the most important element of that natural variability!

One wants to scream morons! but these are not morons.

In the body they put this in, highlighed in red, like it was an after thought:

In view of model projections of a
polar-amplified warming and the recent indications of Arctic warming, a central question
arises: Are recent Arctic climate variations driven by the well-established increase of
greenhouse gas concentrations? In the present paper, we attempt to address this issue by
capitalizing on the fact that there is a strong seasonality in recent multidecadal trends and
also in model-derived projections of greenhouse-driven change in the Arctic.

Golly they found the key indicator did not correlate to the models so they patched in temperature and pressure instead and conclude their work is evidence the models are correct!!!!! Makes you want to scream!!!

Updates on ARGO seem to have been back shelved and we have a lot of arm waving about the missing heat. Meanwhile those super cold ARGO reading discarded by the various science groups as "assumed" leaky buoys seem to be surfacing on the top of the ocean in the form of more and purple anomalies driving La Ninas and killing year after year Hansen's long predicted super El Nino.

It seems to me ARGO should have put to rest the CAGW issue and all that we are witnessing now is a diversion of government dollars into programs run by vested interests. If this were private enterprise pink slips would be all over the place at the highest levels.

Private enterprise does not do this because the people are stupid they do it because they understand that corporate performance is now going to be stymied by the natural tendency of people seeking personal redemption. Like Hansen's semi-permanent quest to find ways of extrapolating temperatures to coincide with climate models and pressure on the ARGO projects to do the same. The back shelving of precipitation variability in the arctic is yet another example.

Your observation above clearly detects an inconsistency in arriving at reliable metrics for accurate trend analysis.

We have had the top shelf people in CAGW acknowledge that absolute average temperature is not used because it might be off by a couple of degrees C, but they use anomalies instead because they are better able to show trends being based on static measurement platforms that might not be representative but over time may be a fairly accurate indicator of trends.

Its a nice solid logic! Its far from perfect! But it may well be the best we have! But when thats the case special consideration needs to be given to avoid changing the scope of monitoring and acknowledge that what is being observed in the arctic may in fact be fully natural variability and if any consideration should be given it should be to going back in the record and eliminating stations such as these that might be polluted by poorly understood unusually active natural variability.

Of course nobody will do that as there is no better way to change no warming to cooling and that falls into the territory of "unacceptable" bias.

[graywolf]

Can we try and keep the Arctic to the Arctic thread and observations from Antarctica here please?

As I pointed out further up the thread the recent ice losses around the southern continent do not seem to be being as keenly monitored as those temporary gains?

[icefisher]

Oct 1, 2012 14:21:41 GMT graywolf said:

No -one seems very concerned about the 500k drop in sea ice area around Antarctica over the past few days? If we are to focus on Arctic storms shouldn't we also take a peep at the number of systems currently prowling around the Southern continent and the damage they do to the thin F.Y. ice there?

2 years ago one such storm took a cool million off extent over a week (just as ice levels reached above average?) and again there only seemed to be me with any interest?

With such an unsettled start to the southern spring I'd expect more rapid losses as the month rolls on.

Why should anybody be concerned. Its now austral spring, the ice is supposed to start melting. I would be concerned if it weren't. . . .a lot more than I have ever been concerned about CAGW!

And you in almost one breath said the recent storm melted almost half of what a storm melted 2 years ago as you declared the start of this spring "unsettled". Do you ever even think about what you are about to say? 2 years ago news of a loss of a million kmsq of ice might have been interesting news. Today the loss of a 1/2million is pretty darned ho hum.

Undoubtedly the timing of storms is absolutely critical to extremes in extent. A big storm early in the melt season does not portend an extreme minimum because it has limited effect on what the ice edge is going to be in 5 months. But a storm a couple of weeks or so before minimum can have a huge effect as the edge is always fragile compared to what isn't being exposed to the elements deep in the pack.

[thermostat]

A bit off thread, but the ongoing fixation on criticising 'models' is quite fascinating as it applies to this, and other discussions of geophysics.

Establishing 'models' is a routine and longstanding approach in science. Are forum members saying that they have a fundamental objection to the scientific approach of establishing 'models' as hypothetical scenarios to describe complicated natural phenomena and then testing those hypotheses? Or, are they saying that they specifically oppose applying this traditional intellectual approach with geophysics? or what?

[icefisher]

Oct 2, 2012 6:27:54 GMT thermostat said:

A bit off thread, but the ongoing fixation on criticising 'models' is quite fascinating as it applies to this, and other discussions of geophysics.

Establishing 'models' is a routine and longstanding approach in science. Are forum members saying that they have a fundamental objection to the scientific approach of establishing 'models' as hypothetical scenarios to describe complicated natural phenomena and then testing those hypotheses? Or, are they saying that they specifically oppose applying this traditional intellectual approach with geophysics?

None of the above.

or what?

the most efficient use of modeling time would be to do it over and over again until you can hindcast accurately. Then and only then do you try predicting climate.

The reason its so superior to use the hindcasting approach is you don't need to wait 30 years to see if your model is working correctly.

I suppose such nuances doesn't occur to the products of modern education however. It does though for your bosses or else there would have been no hiding of the decline.

[thermostat]

Oct 2, 2012 7:35:00 GMT icefisher said:

Oct 2, 2012 6:27:54 GMT thermostat said:

A bit off thread, but the ongoing fixation on criticising 'models' is quite fascinating as it applies to this, and other discussions of geophysics.

Establishing 'models' is a routine and longstanding approach in science. Are forum members saying that they have a fundamental objection to the scientific approach of establishing 'models' as hypothetical scenarios to describe complicated natural phenomena and then testing those hypotheses? Or, are they saying that they specifically oppose applying this traditional intellectual approach with geophysics?

None of the above.

or what?

the most efficient use of modeling time would be to do it over and over again until you can hindcast accurately. Then and only then do you try predicting climate.

The reason its so superior to use the hindcasting approach is you don't need to wait 30 years to see if your model is working correctly.

I suppose such nuances doesn't occur to the products of modern education however. It does though for your bosses or else there would have been no hiding of the decline.

icefisher,

Not quite sure what your point might be, but fyi, nice start. You did well in establishing the disconnect.

[sigurdur]

Oct 2, 2012 6:27:54 GMT thermostat said:

A bit off thread, but the ongoing fixation on criticising 'models' is quite fascinating as it applies to this, and other discussions of geophysics.

Establishing 'models' is a routine and longstanding approach in science. Are forum members saying that they have a fundamental objection to the scientific approach of establishing 'models' as hypothetical scenarios to describe complicated natural phenomena and then testing those hypotheses? Or, are they saying that they specifically oppose applying this traditional intellectual approach with geophysics? or what?

Thermostat:
I am sure we have no problem with anyone attempting to model climate. Where the disconnect occurs is when some folks use the models as reality.

It is well documented that models of climate and reality are still far apart.

[throttleup]

Oct 2, 2012 6:27:54 GMT thermostat said:

A bit off thread, but the ongoing fixation on criticising 'models' is quite fascinating as it applies to this, and other discussions of geophysics.

Establishing 'models' is a routine and longstanding approach in science. Are forum members saying that they have a fundamental objection to the scientific approach of establishing 'models' as hypothetical scenarios to describe complicated natural phenomena and then testing those hypotheses? Or, are they saying that they specifically oppose applying this traditional intellectual approach with geophysics? or what?

Tstat, I have no problem with the use of models per se, but if they don't project, you must reject!

When NOAA's Climate Prediction Center looks into their crystal ball to predict weather/climate, what’s the FIRST thing they look at?
The size of fish? No.
CO2? Nope. In fact, they don’t look at CO2 at all.

The first thing they look at are ocean temperatures. Their top 5 factors are…

THE MAIN FACTORS WHICH USUALLY INFLUENCE THE SEASONAL CLIMATE OUTLOOK INCLUDE:

1) EL NINO AND LA NINA - WHICH TOGETHER COMPRISE EL NINO/SOUTHERN OSCILLATION
OR ENSO.
(Note: Causes for the ENSO are under investigation.)

2) TRENDS - APPROXIMATED BY THE OCN
[OCN - OPTIMAL CLIMATE NORMALS - A FORECAST BASED ON PERSISTING THE AVERAGE OF THE LAST 10 YEARS FOR TEMPERATURE AND THE LAST 15 YEARS FOR PRECIPITATION.]
TOOL AS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE MOST
RECENT 10-YEAR MEAN OF TEMPERATURE OR 15-YEAR MEAN OF PRECIPITATION FOR A GIVEN
LOCATION AND TIME OF YEAR AND THE 30-YEAR CLIMATOLOGY PERIOD (CURRENTLY
1981-2010).

3) THE TROPICAL 30-60 DAY OSCILLATION - SOMETIMES CALLED MADDEN JULIAN
OSCILLATION (MJO).
(Note: It is generally understood how the MJO evolves, but not why it begins in the first place. As it is short-lived, it is difficult to model accurately.)

4) THE NORTH ATLANTIC OSCILLATION (NAO) AND THE PACIFIC NORTH AMERICAN (PNA)
PATTERNS
(Note: Although the effects of the NAO are generally understood, its underlying causes are not.)

5) THE PACIFIC DECADAL OSCILLATION (PDO)
(Note: Causes for the PDO are not currently known.)

www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/long_range/fxus05.html

Look, I don't understand all this stuff. But I don’t feel bad – climate scientists don’t either!

-----------------

And to keep graywolf happy since this is the Antarctic thread, I will simpy note that the HUGE melt of Antarctic ice is likely due to the HUGE amount of it in the first place!

You can't melt what ain't frozen.
What will melt is SEA ice, so no big deal.
Would you prefer the vast amount of sea ice surrounding Antarctica to remain through the warm season?


"Oh look! I can see ice from Tierra del Feugo!"

[graywolf]

Hi T.up! Guess it's a case of easy come easy go?

As for the melt season it looks like it will prove to be interesting to say the least. With folk focused on Thwaites and Pine island i wonder if we will see the super-Berg calve from Pine? looking at it I'd guess it to be 30 odd miles by 27 miles and so would be about 10 times bigger than the Peterman 2010 calve? (50 Manhattans?) and would really highlight that the splendid isolation of the continent is coming to an end and the warmth , at least of the southern ocean, has penetrated the circumpolar currents defenses?

Our first glimpses do show that the cracks , first spotted last year, have propagated over the Antarctic winter so we will just have to wait and see how long it can hold on for?

[icefisher]

Oct 2, 2012 14:32:04 GMT graywolf said:

Hi T.up! Guess it's a case of easy come easy go?

As for the melt season it looks like it will prove to be interesting to say the least. With folk focused on Thwaites and Pine island i wonder if we will see the super-Berg calve from Pine? looking at it I'd guess it to be 30 odd miles by 27 miles and so would be about 10 times bigger than the Peterman 2010 calve? (50 Manhattans?) and would really highlight that the splendid isolation of the continent is coming to an end and the warmth , at least of the southern ocean, has penetrated the circumpolar currents defenses?

Our first glimpses do show that the cracks , first spotted last year, have propagated over the Antarctic winter so we will just have to wait and see how long it can hold on for?

Calving is what highly active glaciers do Greywhale.

If you go to locations where glaciers have largely melted calving is relatively non-spectacular. You go see the falls at Yosemite during a drought and they are fairly boring, though the scenery never is. If you go in a spring with a big ice pack they are fantastic.

so we get your message its cold in antarctica!