The Climatological Boy who Cried Wolf!
Timothy Birdnow
The Gang Green, those stalwart trumpeters of doom via global warming, have yet again lathered up over the loss of Arctic ice, trumpeting that this is the lowest ice levels in recorded history (and by recorded history they mean since satellite data became available in 1979).
Georg Heygster, head of the Physical Analysis of Remote Sensing Images unit at the University of Bremen's Institute of Environmental Physics gravely issued the proclamation.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/arctic-ice-level-drops-to-historic-low-20110911-1k3s1.html
"On September 8, the extent of the Arctic sea ice was 4.24 million square kilometres. This is a new historic minimum," said Georg Heygster, head of the Physical Analysis of Remote Sensing Images unit at the University of Bremen's Institute of Environmental Physics.
The new mark is about .5 per cent under his team's measurements of the previous record, which occurred on September 16, 2007, he said.
According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC), the record set on that date was 4.1 million square kilometres. The discrepancy was due to slightly different data sets and algorithms, Heygster said.
"But the results are internally consistent in both cases," he said.
End excerpt.
So, this new record is actually not a record according to the NSIDC. See their analysis here.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
In point of fact, the Germans were out of line with all other reports of Arctic sea ice extent.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/13/sea-ice-news-arctic-sea-ice-may-have-turned-the-corner/
And, if anything, the NSIDC likely over calculated the ice loss. I seem to remember they lost 193,000 miles of ice once. http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/8966
What people do not realize is satellite data does not cover every square inch. Much of the Earth's surface has poor or no visibility to satellites, which move in the same orbit at the same time of day every day. What ends up happening is that the data analysts simply GUESS at what is happening on the ground in the blind spots. They augment their data with ground readings or simply smudge in a straight line where there may not be one. As a result, the satellite data can be flawed. Sometimes they are corrected by new satellites, sometimes by overflights by planes or radiosondes (balloons). Sometimes not.
Of course, the ground based readings are just as bad - especially in the polar regions where temperature stations may be hundreds of miles apart. So much of our knowledge of planetary temperatures is based on educated guesses. And that is true of our knowledge of planetary ice-extent as well.
When there is a concerted effort to tip the fudge factor in the direction of global warming, as has been seen with the CRU e-mail scandal, it becomes difficult to refute. The data is always borderline, although the media confidently reports it as ironclad. And we are talking about statistically insignificant differences, generally.
Now that doesn't mean the Arctic isn't at an ebb in ice; but it does call into question the interpretation of what that means. Any rational person who thinks about it realizes that a fraction of 1* of warming is not enough to melt so much ice; other factors are at work. We are only learning what those factors entail now.
Nice try, but this dog doesn't hunt. And it's becoming stale, these apocalyptic pronouncements. Anyone remember the boy who cried wolf?
The Gang Green, those stalwart trumpeters of doom via global warming, have yet again lathered up over the loss of Arctic ice, trumpeting that this is the lowest ice levels in recorded history (and by recorded history they mean since satellite data became available in 1979).
Georg Heygster, head of the Physical Analysis of Remote Sensing Images unit at the University of Bremen's Institute of Environmental Physics gravely issued the proclamation.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/arctic-ice-level-drops-to-historic-low-20110911-1k3s1.html
"On September 8, the extent of the Arctic sea ice was 4.24 million square kilometres. This is a new historic minimum," said Georg Heygster, head of the Physical Analysis of Remote Sensing Images unit at the University of Bremen's Institute of Environmental Physics.
The new mark is about .5 per cent under his team's measurements of the previous record, which occurred on September 16, 2007, he said.
According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC), the record set on that date was 4.1 million square kilometres. The discrepancy was due to slightly different data sets and algorithms, Heygster said.
"But the results are internally consistent in both cases," he said.
End excerpt.
So, this new record is actually not a record according to the NSIDC. See their analysis here.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
In point of fact, the Germans were out of line with all other reports of Arctic sea ice extent.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/13/sea-ice-news-arctic-sea-ice-may-have-turned-the-corner/
And, if anything, the NSIDC likely over calculated the ice loss. I seem to remember they lost 193,000 miles of ice once. http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/8966
What people do not realize is satellite data does not cover every square inch. Much of the Earth's surface has poor or no visibility to satellites, which move in the same orbit at the same time of day every day. What ends up happening is that the data analysts simply GUESS at what is happening on the ground in the blind spots. They augment their data with ground readings or simply smudge in a straight line where there may not be one. As a result, the satellite data can be flawed. Sometimes they are corrected by new satellites, sometimes by overflights by planes or radiosondes (balloons). Sometimes not.
Of course, the ground based readings are just as bad - especially in the polar regions where temperature stations may be hundreds of miles apart. So much of our knowledge of planetary temperatures is based on educated guesses. And that is true of our knowledge of planetary ice-extent as well.
When there is a concerted effort to tip the fudge factor in the direction of global warming, as has been seen with the CRU e-mail scandal, it becomes difficult to refute. The data is always borderline, although the media confidently reports it as ironclad. And we are talking about statistically insignificant differences, generally.
Now that doesn't mean the Arctic isn't at an ebb in ice; but it does call into question the interpretation of what that means. Any rational person who thinks about it realizes that a fraction of 1* of warming is not enough to melt so much ice; other factors are at work. We are only learning what those factors entail now.
Nice try, but this dog doesn't hunt. And it's becoming stale, these apocalyptic pronouncements. Anyone remember the boy who cried wolf?
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 6:23 AM
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