Warmists get it wrong again

Prominent Warmist "scientist" Mark Serreze stated: "As the climate warms, the summer melt season lengthens”. BUT:

Summer has come to a premature and frosty end at Santa’s workshop. It has been the coldest summer on record north of 80N, and temperatures have dropped below freezing ahead of the average date. The entire ice covered region is now below freezing.

It also appears that the summer melt season will be the shortest on record. The maximum was reached very late in March, and it appears likely that we are headed for an early minimum.

Mark Serreze at NSIDC has stated: "As the climate warms, the summer melt season lengthens …”. He was also reported as saying: "Mark Serreze of the center forecast the ice decline this year (2010) would even break 2007’s record."

Another interesting fact is that we are almost certain to see a large increase in the amount of multi-year ice (MYI) next year. The reason being that almost all of the 1-2 year old ice (turquoise) in the NSIDC map below will become classified as MYI next spring.

We have seen a remarkably rapid recovery from the 2008 low volume.

PIOMAS continues to report record low volumes of ice, despite all evidence to the contrary. The image below shows in red how far off the mark their August 15 forecast was. Their modeling error will get much worse over the next two weeks – because they model much of the thick multi-year ice in the Beaufort Sea and Arctic Basin as only a few tens of centimetres thick.

With the cold temperatures, ice area loss has almost stopped. However, ice extent continues to drop – because the Arctic Oscillation has turned negative and winds are compacting the ice towards the pole. This bodes well for continued growth of ice in 2011.

PIPS shows average ice thickness increasing, due to the compression of the ice.

There has not been a lot of ice loss during August. The modified NSIDC image below shows in red, areas that have lost ice since August 1. Note that the Greenland Sea appears to have lost ice. This is due to the fact that there has been very little transport out of the Arctic Basin through the Fram Strait, which again bodes well for ice gain in 2011.

The modified NSIDC image below shows ice gain since 2007.

NSIDC maps continue to show more gain (16%) than their graphs (10%.) I have not been able to get a satisfactory explanation from them about the cause of that discrepancy. DMI shows a 25% gain in 30% concentration ice over 2007.

Academic theories about the Northwest Passage becoming a commercial shipping opportunity appear pretty clueless.

“The plans that you make can change completely,” he says. This uncertainty, delay, liability, increased insurance and other costs of using the Northwest Passage are likely to deter commercial shipping here. A ship with a reinforced hull could possibly make it intact through the passage. But if it got stuck, it would cost thousands of dollars for an icebreaker like the Amundsen to come to the rescue. So even if the Northwest Passage is less ice-choked than before, the route may not become a shipping short-cut in the near future, as some have predicted.

The South Pole will almost certainly set a record for most sea ice this season. It is almost there, and there are still several months of growth remaining.

SOURCE (See the original for links and graphics)





Warmist scientist admits he can't prove what he believes

Today, the New York Times takes its turn with extreme weather and global warming. The article has this wonderful quote from Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA and blogger at Real Climate: "If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes. If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no — at least not yet".

This neatly sums up the first of two reasons why I think that the current debate over whether greenhouse gas emissions caused/exacerbated/influenced recent disasters around the world is a fruitless debate. It is not a debate that can be resolved empirically, but rather depends upon hunches, speculation and beliefs. Debates that cannot be resolved empirically necessarily involve extra-scientific factors. There is nothing unusual such "post-normal" situations, as they are common, but like Gavin Schmidt we should be clear about when we are in such a context.

While I have no illusions that the inane debate over causality of specific physical events will continue as long there is weather, there should be no ambiguity in the fact that researchers who have looked for a signal of increasing GHGs in increasing disaster losses (whether measured in dollars or in lives) have yet to see such a signal. It would be scientifically incorrect to claim that GHGs have been shown to account for any portion of the damage or suffering resulting from recent events....

The debate over global warming and extremes has been well characterized as "climate porn." And like porn it is not going away anytime soon.

More HERE





Warmists go Biblical

Russia is on fire, and Pakistan is under water. Scientific studies have not convinced the climate change-deniers to act to save the planet. Perhaps an imaginative game change is what is called for. "Global weirding" is one such imaginative breakthrough, but let's not rule out the fire and flood imagery of Armageddon, especially as apocalyptic imagery can well symbolize the mounting security threat nations face because of the social, political and economic chaos of accelerating climate change.....

While weird weather comes and goes, what's really very weird is that the floods in Pakistan and the Russian fires may even be connected. Meteorologists who are observing the atmosphere above the northern hemisphere are blaming an unusual pattern in the jet stream. The jet stream stalled, allowing weather systems to sit still. "Temperatures rocketed and rainfall reached extremes."

But what might really break through in terms of the popular imagination connecting fire and flood and mounting threat from world-wide chaos is biblical apocalyptic. These events can been seen as signs of a global environmental catastrophe of biblical proportions. Revelation 8: 12 tells of the "woes" to come at the apocalypse; the text sounds like it was taken from the weather report in western Russia where fires are devastating the country's wheat crop. When the first trump sounds, "there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up."

A fifth of Pakistan is under water, and floods are ravaging parts of Asia. Rampaging floods make their appearance in the apocalypse, pouring out death on the hapless inhabitants of the earth. "Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river." Rev. 12: 15

The 'world-ending' imagery of the earth burning up and snakes spewing water over the land is judgment for the sinful acts of humankind. Failure to act decisively to stop, and perhaps even, over time, reverse the worst effects of global weirding is sin, pure and simple. And the earth will exact revenge for this desecration. In fact, already is exacting such revenge.

The resulting chaos is a huge and potentially catastrophic security threat. It's positively apocalyptic.

More HERE





Oh No! Global warming now wiping out languages

Stephen Pax Leonard will soon swap the lawns, libraries and high tables of Cambridge University for three months of darkness, temperatures as low as -40C and hunting seals for food with a spear. But the academic researcher, who leaves Britain this weekend, has a mission: to take the last chance to document the language and traditions of an entire culture.

"I'm extremely excited but, yes, also apprehensive," Leonard said as he made the final preparations for what is, by anyone's standards, the trip of a lifetime.

Leonard, an anthropological linguist, is to spend a year living with the Inughuit people of north-west Greenland, a tiny community whose members manage to live a similar hunting and gathering life to their ancestors. They speak a language – the dialect is called Inuktun – that has never fully been written down, and they pass down their stories and traditions orally.

"Climate change means they have around 10 or 15 years left," said Leonard. "Then they'll have to move south and in all probability move in to modern flats." If that happens, an entire language and culture is likely to disappear.

There is no Inughuit written literature but a very strong and "distinctive, intangible cultural heritage", according to Leonard. "If their language dies, their heritage and identity will die with it. The aim of this project is to record and describe it and then give it back to the communities themselves in a form that future generations can use and understands."

The Inughuits thought they were the world's only inhabitants until an expedition led by the Scottish explorer John Ross came across them in 1818.

Unlike other Inuit communities they were not significantly influenced by the arrival of Christianity in Greenland – so they retain elements of a much older, shamanic culture – and their life is not very different now to how it always has been. Many of the men spend weeks away from home hunting seals, narwhal, walruses, whales and other mammals. And while they have tents, they still build igloos when conditions get really bad.

Their language is regarded as something of a linguistic "fossil" and one of the oldest and most "pure" Inuit dialects.

SOURCE




NZ sceptics launch legal challenge over climate change data

And big science replies with its usual assertions

SCIENTISTS have hit back at climate change sceptics, with a paper affirming the case that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the main cause of warming. The Australian Academy of Science yesterday went on the front foot to clear up confusion after challenges to warming theories.

It came as New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research faced a legal challenge by sceptics group Climate Science Coalition. The coalition has launched high court action over the institute's climate data.

Academy past president Kurt Lambeck said the scientific statement aimed to boost climate change understanding. The role of CO2 in the atmosphere was well understood and unless greenhouse gas emissions were reduced, an upward trend in global temperatures would continue...

Scientists say it is important to have debate on climate change, but spurious attacks were taking up an increasing amount of time to debunk.

In NZ, the coalition's statement of claim calls for the country's temperature record to be set aside and for NIWA to produce a "full and accurate" temperature record.

NZ Climate Change Research Institute senior researcher Professor Andy Reisinger said NIWA had checked its records, validated long-term trends with thousands of meteorological stations around the world and answered innumerable queries.

"The coalition has not put forward any clear and consistent scientific arguments against this local or global temperature trend; has not published its views in scientific peer-reviewed journals; has not disclosed its own scientific methods by which it claims to show that there has been a cooling rather than warming; and its members have little credibility," Prof Reisinger said.

"The High Court action will cost taxpayer money to defend the obvious against the obscure and ridiculous."

Massey University's Ralph Sims said he had yet to find a recent peer-reviewed paper authored or co-authored on climate science by coalition commentator Bryan Leyland.

SOURCE





British Met office takes a tumble

Beaten by an amateur who gathers his own facts and sticks to them

The Met Office's forecasts were guaranteed to drive Simon Cansick and his neighbours into a deep depression. It seemed the professional weather experts could never get it right.

So 47-year-old Mr Cansick decided to see if he could do better himself. He bought his own weather station, positioned it on the roof and linked it to the internet.

He provides live information - automatically updated every three seconds - 24 hours a day. And it has proved so accurate that farmers in the North Yorkshire village of Duggleby, near Malton, are ignoring the Met Office forecasts in favour of his readings.

'As a country we're obsessed by the weather so we naturally check the forecast every day and plan things round it, only to find out that the forecasters got it wrong,' he said.

'It just ends up spoiling the day. A lot of the information collated by the Met Office for this area is based on what is happening in Scarborough, which is by the sea.

Mr Cansick, an accountant, spent £1,000 on his meteorological equipment. He now provides data for wind speed, gust speed, temperature, rainfall and cloud height. The website, www.dugglenet.org, offers predictions for the next 24 hours, graphs on recent conditions and even historical data.

He also plans to set up a service which measures and records soil temperatures - vital information for arable and horticultural producers. And he hopes to extend his weather predictions from one day to five.

Sadly for the rest of the country, however, he confines his forecasts to within a ten-mile radius.

'Certainly, in terms of the correct weather conditions, our readings are more accurate than the published ones,' said Mr Cansick, who lives with his wife Emma, 34, and their 11-month-old daughter Emily.

'The local farmers used to check the Met Office forecasts every day. 'If it was due to be nice and sunny they'd head down to the fields, get the combine harvester out and then, more often than not, it would pour down with rain. 'As a result their entire day was interrupted and ruined because of a dodgy weather forecast.'

Unsurprisingly, Mr Cansick's efforts received a frosty reception from the Met Office. Forecaster Charles Powell said: 'Every observation we have has a standard location where we can get consistency of accuracy and reliability.

'Putting measuring instruments on your roof isn't technically the best place to have them because they might absorb more sunlight and therefore record a temperature a few degrees hotter than it actually is.'

SOURCE

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