Relevant

14 December 2009: We hear about this one regularly, usually referencing some kind of trend, a comparison to an average over some period of time, or a reference to the current year being the xth lowest. The difficulty with on-going predictions of an "ice-free Arctic" is that, in fact, the extent of Arctic sea ice hit a low in 2007. That's two years ago! As of this writing (12/14/09) Arctic sea ice extent is nearly 11.5 million sq km, up more than 100% from the summer low of 5.25 million sq km. There really is no trend in these recent data from year to year. Here are a few considerations to keep in mind...

1. We only have satellite records since about 1979. That's 30 years, not even half the current US life expectancy. So, those comments about any given year's ice extent being among the three or four lowest "ever," might make one think how short "ever" really is. Thirty years isn't even a blip in geological timescales. It's impossible to gauge -- with real accuracy and reliability -- the values for ice extent for the last relatively warm period, the 1930s and 1940s, much less any time prior to the Industrial Revolution. Various satellites and instruments have been used, so we cannot directly compare data from on to another.

2. Satellite measurements tell us nothing about the cause of warming. If warming now is predominately natural, for instance, sea ice would be decreasing anyway, just as it would be if the recent warming were due to some combination of anthropogenic ("man-made") and natural factors. Thus, analysis is very hard and relies on very limited data. It becomes essentially impossible to rule out natural factors for Arctic sea ice extent variations.

3. Averages are statistical constructs from a range of data points. Averages, by their very nature, require that some measurements be above the it, while others are below it.

4. Predictions from limited data must be viewed with caution. Because we have nothing to compare against for other warm periods, regardless of which was warmer, we have only assumptions on which to base predictions. It would be somewhat akin to predicting when and how much rain will fall each week next spring based on yesterday's snowfall, or lack thereof.

5. Like all other parts of the world, the Arctic has seasons. This includes "summer" when ice melts. By mid-September, Arctic sea ice has typically reached its minimum for the year and begins to quickly rebuild to a typical March peak. If, for example, we look at just recent years of AMSR-E satellite data (2003-present), which provides a consistent measurement base, it's easy to see that:

• Arctic ice extent runs an average winter peak of 14.3 million square kilometers (sq km).
• The average summer low is 5.3 million sq km.

Here are the values for Arctic Ice Extent since 2003 (all in million sq km):

Notes:

• Arctic sea ice extent has reached 11.3 million square kilometers and is still GROWING in 2009!
• The winter peaks for 2008 and 2009 were among the HIGHEST in the period since 2003.
• Arctic sea ice has NOT been in a continuous downward trend since even 2003, and since 2007 we've trended up. Statistics show there is little variation in the record.
• Precise sea ice records against which to compare are very limited, and even in that period we have multiple instruments, each measures sea ice a little differently, and overlaps in the records between instruments is also limited. Data from one instrument cannot be directly compared to that from others.

UN Challenged to Provide Sound Evidence for Catastrophic Forecasts

COPENHAGEN, December 8, 2009/CWN

The International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) today released the names of over 140 leading climate experts from 17 countries who are asking the United Nations and other supporters of this month’s Climate Change Conference to produce convincing OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for their claims of dangerous human-caused global warming (AGW) and other changes in climate.

“With revelations that critical temperature data used by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change appear to have been intentionally distorted to increase warming trends, national representatives to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference must demand a thorough re-examination of the scientific evidence supporting proposed mitigation actions”, said Challenge endorser Dr. Tim Patterson, ICSC Chair and Professor of Earth Sciences at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada). “This should not be limited to simple temperature data auditing but must also include a re-evaluation of many of the climate-related assertions uncritically accepted by politicians and media worldwide.”

Please see the Copenhagen website for additional detail, include a log of on-site activities and events.

http://www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org/

8 December 2009: Scientists who have been telling the truth about global warming for years, that there is no evidence it is man-made or will be a crisis, have relea sed new videos. Four of the videos were shot and edited by a KUSI-TV team led by meteorologist John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel and currently the lead meteorologist at KUSI-TV in San Diego.

Each of the videos features a well-known global warming skeptic, all of whom have spoken at the international climate change conferences. (Mr D'Aleo's features some of the best, most easily read graphics.)

Video: John Coleman
John Coleman is founder of the Weather Channel, the original weatherman on Good Morning America, and currently the lead meteorologist at KUSI-TV in San Diego.

Video: Joseph D'Aleo
Joseph D'Aleo is a certified consulting meteorologist, a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, first director of meteorology at the Weather Channel, and currently founder and president of Icecap.us

Video: Richard Lindzen
Richard Lindzen, Ph.D., is an atmospheric physicist and the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Video: Willie Soon
Willie Soon, PhD, is an astrophysicist and chief science advisor for the Science and Public Policy Institute.

5 November 2009: In our first post of the series (below), we quickly introduced the concepts of how temperature histories are created, either by instrument or by “proxy.” We also noted that proxies require certain assumptions and caveats.

The United States started tracking climate data in 1890, the year the U.S. Weather Bureau was formed. Many nations have instrument networks, but the US network has long been considered one of the best in the world; those in other nations have suffered in recent decades. Concerns are mounting that the US station network is not really as good or extensive as the public has been lead to believe. An important concern we will examine in a later post is “urban heat island effect” (UHI).

In the summer of 2007, the SurfaceStations.org project was founded by a 25-year broadcast meteorology veteran. Using volunteers, official weather service guidance (NOAA's Climate Reference Network Site Handbook) was used to assess the US temperature sensing network reliability. Little NOAA documentation was available on the trustworthiness of its own system. As of this writing, the survey project has explored about 90% of the stations in the USHCN (the United States Historical Climate Network), “1,221 high quality stations.” Findings include temperature-monitoring equipment located in the shade, near burn barrels and air conditioners, near large expanses of as phalt (many at airports), and near buildings. Some stations are physically missing (but generating data). To be fair, some stations are actually located in great sites, away from artiicial heat sources and things that could bias the temperature readings, but the results illustrate large-scale problems:

• about 1 site in 10 have an expected error less than a degree Celsius
• 70% (7 in 10) have errors more than 2 degrees
• one in 10 could have readings up to 5 degrees from reality.

The entire record appears unreliable. Put another way, that’s a lot of error when we’re being told that temperatures by the year 2100 could be anywhere up to about 6 degrees warmer than today, and that the 20^th Century saw a rise of less than 1 degree...

For more information, see:

www.surfacestations.org

Summary report on the project: (PDF)

Peer-reviewed papers are being prepared on the project.

5 November 2009: Most people should know that a large part of the “evidence” that supports the anthropogenic global warming (man-made climate change) theory is the historical temperature trend data, in comparison to some historical records of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. How good are those data? In this and future postings, we’ll explore that question and touch on several rec ent controversies. We’ll be relying on self-published reports, not the peer-reviewed literature. That’s not our usual preference, but there have been important developments . In many cases the reports are so new that peer-reviewed papers could not possibly be prepared or published (which make take many months).

For starters, let’s just note that there are several databases of instrument records that only date back to about 1860. (The first mercury thermometer – the “modern thermometer” – was invented in 1715 by Gabriel Fahrenheit.) Naturally the measurement points were very widely spaced in the earlier years. With the advent of satellites in the 1970s, we now also have a relatively short period of data that should provide an independent verification of ground based temperatures.

Before instrument records, scientists rely on assumed relationships between temperature and other things, such as tree ring widths for example. Another example is data gleaned from ice and sediment cores. These are collectively known as “proxies,” and such analyses require that factors other than temperature must be eliminated from consideration. This can be achieved by the initial assumptions, such as the assumption that tree ring widths are primarily driven not by water availability or nutrients, but by temperature.

We’ll look at temperature measuring network considered the “best” in the world in our next post in this series.

September 3, 2009: "Validity of climate change forecasting for public policy decision making", to be published in the International Journal of Forecasting. Authors: Dr. Kesten C. Green of the Business and Economic Forecasting Unit, Monash University, Australia; Professor J. Scott Armstrong, of The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; and Dr. Willie Soon, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA.

The history of global temperatures over periods of about 100 has been remarkably stable, and we should want very accurate forecasts of future temperatures (and precipitation). Given this, the IPCC has bent over backwards to provide object proof that theirs are, in fact, reliable, right? Not so. The models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have never been validated, which is why the IPCC calls their results "projections." Validating such models is complicated by the lack of actual long-term observations (that's real field-gathered data) against which the model results may be compared. In reality, only time will tell if the IPCC projections are on or off target.

But Green, et al., in their paper now in press, compare simple zero-change forecasts to the IPCC projections that are the basis for international calls for major policy measures. "Using the IPCC warming rate for our demonstration, we projected the rate successively over a period [parallel to that contemplated by the IPCC's] scenario of exponential CO2 growth—the years 1851 to 1975. The errors from the [IPCC] projections were more than seven times greater than the errors from the benchmark method [applied by these authors]."

According to this analysis, then, policymakers around the world could assume that temperatures would not change from one year to the next and still likely have a relatively small level of error versus actual temperature at the end of the forecast cycle. (Drs. Green and Armstrong are experts in forecasting, while Dr Soon's training and research are in atmospheric and space physics.)

Read the whole paper.

Visit Armstrong and Green's forecasting site.

Read a press release from New Zealand: "Global warming legislation would fail", that references this paper and includes quotes from the authors.