What's Happening to the Climate of the Arctic?

CO2 Science Magazine ^ | 11 December 2002 | Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso

[PeaceBeWithYou]

A long succession of climate models has consistently suggested that CO2-induced global warming should be amplified in earth's polar regions and that the first signs of man's predicted impact on the world's weather should thus be manifest there. Many people have consequently accepted recently-reported high temperatures from various parts of the Arctic as evidence of the validity of contemporary climate model predictions and an indisputable sign that the dreaded climatic effects of mankind's CO2 emissions have in very fact arrived at the world's doorstep. Actual temperature data, however, tell a vastly different story.

Following the recent release of Russian meteorological observations poleward of 62°N, Polyakov et al. (2002) created an Arctic-wide temperature history that runs from 1875 to 2001, based on data obtained from 75 land meteorological stations. Over this 126-year period, their record depicts two major intervals of warming, each of approximately 15 years duration. When annual temperatures are expressed as six-year running means, the first of these warmings starts at about 1922 and the other at about 1985. The initial warming is by far the more dramatic of the two, with temperatures rising by nearly 2°C, while temperatures rise by not quite 1°C in the second. In addition, the most recent six-year mean temperature is 0.2°C less than the peak analogous temperature achieved at the end of the first warming. So what is one to conclude from these observations?

First of all, as we have long claimed for the entire world [see our Editorial of 1 July 2000: There Has Been No Global Warming for the Past 70 Years], the Arctic - which according to essentially all climate models is supposed to be the harbinger of things to come for the rest of the world - is not yet as warm as it was in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In fact, because temperatures were so high for so long back then, the authors report that linear regression trends calculated from the 1920s to the present show a small but statistically significant cooling tendency.

Starting all the way back at beginning of the 20th century, however - at the time when Mann et al. (1999) claim the great "unprecedented" warming of the past millennium began - Polyakov et al.'s Arctic temperature data do produce a subsequent warming. However, for the period 1901 to 1997, they note that the upward temperature trend of the Arctic calculated from their data is "statistically indistinguishable" from the upward temperature trend of the entire Northern Hemisphere calculated from the data of Jones et al. (1999). Hence, as they most appropriately note, this similarity "does not support amplified warming in polar regions predicted by models (IPCC, 2001)," and especially does it not support a polar warming that is amplified by a factor of two to three, as most models predict.

So why have the world's best climate models erred so egregiously in this most common of their predictions? Polyakov et al. suggest that the models' missing of the mark may be due to the insignificance of what their creators ironically suggest is the cause of the supposed polar warming amplification, i.e., strong positive feedback induced by the melting of snow and sea ice. They note, for example, that in addition to analyzing temperature records they examined long-term records of observations of fast-ice thickness and ice extent from the Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi Seas, finding that "long-term trends are small and generally statistically insignificant, while trends for shorter records are not indicative of the long-term tendencies, in agreement with the trends of air temperature."

In concluding their brief review, Polyakov et al. remark that "if long-term trends are accepted as a valid measure of climate change" - and, we wonder, what else could possibly qualify as an alternative? - "then the air temperature and ice data do not support the proposed polar amplification of global warming." They also note there are some other independent indications that "the importance of the ice- and snow-albedo feedbacks may be exaggerated (Robock, 1983), which may explain why the amplification of global warming is not found in the Arctic."

Clearly, as Polyakov et al. suggest in summation, "the Arctic poses severe challenges to generating credible model-based projections of climate change," and until there are models that can pass its reality check, there would appear to be little reason to give them any credence.

Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso

References Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2001. Climate Change 2001, The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), edited by J.T. Houghton, Y. Ding, D.J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P.J. van der Linden, and D. Xiaosu. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Jones, P.D., New, M., Parker, D.E., Martin, S. and Rigor, I.G. 1999. Surface air temperature and its changes over the past 150 years. Reviews of Geophysics 37: 173-199.

Mann, M.E., Bradley, R.S. and Hughes, M.K. 1999. Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: Inferences, uncertainties, and limitations. Geophysical Research Letters 26: 759-762.

Polyakov, I., Akasofu, S-I., Bhatt, U., Colony, R., Ikeda, M., Makshtas, A., Swingley, C., Walsh, D. and Walsh, J. 2002. Trends and variations in Arctic climate system. EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 83: 547-548.

Robock, A. 1983. Ice and snow feedbacks and the latitudinal and seasonal distribution of climate sensitivity. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 40: 986-997.

Volume 5, Number 50: 11 December 2002

[aliquis]

They do, don't they? Thanks. :S

[PzGr43]

>This is potentially the biggest story of the decade.
>The pinheads are all wrong. All the Europeans who
>love to hate America have quiche all over their
>faces. This could change the course of economic
>development world-wide, and the prosperity and
>living standards of the entire world. AND YET
>WHERE IS THE MEDIA? Rush Limbaugh, even?
>

Good work. But I have been calling the bluff of the global warming bandwagon since it was the global cooling bandwagon in the Seventies.

Global warming will be the biggest hoax of the 20thC/21stC, but the problem will be it is no longer anything to do with science because global warming is now a political Act of Faith, like the guilt of capitalists in the propagation of social injustice.

This means that as 'people' realize that global warming cannot be proven (cannot be dis-proven because the science does not extend that far at the moment) then anti-global warming will be categorized as anti-Eco-Marxist propaganda.

Eco-Marxists, methodologically will retreat into conspiracy-theory type proof arrangements "You cannot disprove that Elvis did not murder JFK".

Presently this is overlain with Millenarianism "repent before it is too late". Not proven ? Repent anyway !


Remember to distinguish between

(a) Questions of fact: The temperature of the earth in the past

(b) Hypotheses: Models of the climate

(c) Propaganda - communications whose objective is to reach a political goal, without regard to content or the basis of any statement in fact.


With regard to (a): The climate has always been changing. You can expect more of the same. I regard waking up to find a couple of million tons of ice sheet on my doorstep pretty big change in climate. There have been several of these events before anatomically modern humans arrived so we can safely expect more of them. If there had been Eco-Marxists during on of the ice ages then they would have been bleating about imminent global warming and the need to stop whatever they imagined was propagating social-injustice. Riding mammoths to work or whatever.

(b) 'Models' of climate change. Can't be done at the moment. We are OK at modelling low-noise linear events such as objects hurtling across galaxies but high-noise non-linear events, ie the 95% of just about everything else is guesswork. Modelling monetary flows in economics would be a lot easier and we have trouble doing that and a lot of other things. So when you hear of the latest 'model', ignore it.

The advantage which class (c) propagandists have in capturing the public imagination is a overlay of (a) historical facts and (b) climate models of the future.

The climate may be doing a lot of things. This is business as usual. Figuring out why is a game for any number of players. Do not be shy: Do not be put off by imagining you need qualifications or experience. Make up your own model then shout loudly about it. There is no such thing as peer-review as in regular science, with subsequent exposure as a fraud/buffoon. You can never be exposed as having no better guess than anyone else in a bar-room.



You can follow the shoot-down of every new piece of Eco-Marxist propaganda here:

www.junkscience.com


--

"Predictions, particularly about the future, are not easy" - Niels Bohr

[JZelle]

I was hoping we could grow corn there.

[SunkenCiv]

this topic is from 2002, and the following one is from 2003. Archival interest.

A Danish Galileo
The American Prowler | Friday, January 17, 2003 | By Steven Martinovich
Posted on 01/17/2003 2:16:06 AM PST by JohnHuang2
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/824283/posts

[steelyourfaith]

Thanx !

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[rdl6989]

So why have the world's best climate models erred so egregiously in this most common of their predictions?

Because it's all nonsense maybe? The weatherman said the word snow for the first time tonight. I just pray this winter isn't as bad as last year!

[steelyourfaith]

Because it's all nonsense maybe?

The old GI/GO computer nonsense. Oh, yeah.