If only there were less Arctic sea ice this time of year (although there's little sunlight up there to warm the waters...)! Might mitigate this AO effect and moderate the cold. Cold KILLS and is expensive. Perhaps scientists could come up with a way of altering the atmosphere so winters would be milder. Just a thought.

Also, I can't keep my eyes off Dennis' cool graphs. So why do the '30s look so unremarkable in the GISS data? Wasn't that the Dust Bowl era and wasn't 1934 the warmest on record in the U.S. -- warmer even than 1998? I realize the cool graph is for global temps, but those '30s look SO unremarkable. Kind of like the Medieval Warm Period disappearing when measured GLOBALLY... Anyway, if someone could direct us to a graph of the RAW DATA for global temps, that would be great! Somehow, I just don't trust Hanson, Mann, Gore, Holdren, Alinsky, Che, Mao, & Co. at 1600 Pa. Ave....

Why doesn't anyone say anything about the subtropical cyclone hitting Greenland right now? My tunnels prevent this from occuring as SSTs would be a few degrees cooler with them now.

Dr. Science: "Also, I can't keep my eyes off Dennis' cool graphs. So why do the '30s look so unremarkable in the GISS data? Wasn't that the Dust Bowl era and wasn't 1934 the warmest on record in the U.S. -- warmer even than 1998?"

One quick answer to your question is that the U.S. is just one region of the world and the dust bowl era did not occur everywhere in the world. The graphs of global temperatures represent the average temperature over ALL regions of the world and not just the heavily populated areas that you are directly associated or familiar with.

Just because the currently abnormally cold winter weather is happening in the U.S. and in Asia, it does not mean that the whole globe is experiencing these same abnormally cold conditions. Look at what is happening over Greenland and the northern latitudes in Brett's NH temperature plot for Dec 2009.

Notice how much warmer the oceans in the southern hemisphere are relative to normal this past month:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/gsstanim.shtml

So despite the fact that we have abnormal cold here in the heavily populated U.S. as well as the less populated northern Asia area, it will be counterbalanced by the well above normal temperature over the far northern latitudes and in the southern hemisphere.

The UAH and GSS satellite data will give us a more objective picture of the actual global temperature pattern and not the subjective populated weighted fact that we here in the U.S. are experiencing much colder temperatures.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU BRETT. I was hoping this issue would come up. Mr.Bastardi won't stop talking about his theory that the world is cooling. It seems like Bastardi has weather confused with climate in every single one of his posts the last 2 weeks. I've been observing the temps in the arctic, especially the last year & didn't NUNAVUT come off it's warmest summer on record? Bastardi never speaks about the long periods of above normal temps in the north.
Cold/snowy in Europe & the lower 48 for a couple of months doesn't equate to global cooling. Someone better tell Bastardi that it's the global avg. temps over long periods of time that tell the real story of whether or not the globe is warming or cooling.
Does anybody know what happened to the sea ice in the St.Lawrence & off the coast of Labrador? Oh I forgot it hasn't formed yet.
Bastardi=perversion of the truth.
Thanks to Brett for a very specific & informative post. The best one ever.

For all of you who think this is part of some world-wide global conspiracy (It's obvious Dr. Science has been watching Glen Beck) please read After the Ice: Life, Death, and Geopolitics in the New Arctic by Alun Anderson.

The decline of Arctic sea ice is unprecedented. Nothing like this has every happened in so short a time.

There are hundreds of thousands of people whose lives depend on the sea ice. The ecosystem has been disrupted. It is not just polar bears but dozens of marine mammals that are threatened.

GettingWarm:

"For all of you who think this is part of some world-wide global conspiracy (It's obvious Dr. Science has been watching Glen Beck) "

How do you know Dr. Science has been watching Glen Beck?? So you must watch Glen Beck also, otherwise how would you know?

Well, it looks like people will have to stop depending on sea ice, and do what man has done since homosapiens started populating the Earth, adapt or die.

The polar bears will just become grizzly bears again. Mammals come and go, it is the nature of evolution.

Do you know that the cradle of civilization started in deserts, where it was all warm and toasty?

'Just because the currently abnormally cold winter weather is happening in the U.S. and in Asia, it does not mean that the whole globe is experiencing these same abnormally cold conditions.'

This cold is also effecting all of Europe, including the UK, most the USA, Asia, need I go on. In the UK last night a low of minus 17.6C were recorded. With a low down to minus 20C tonight. Very near the record of minus 23.4C for the UK. In Poland alone 124 people have died of the cold.If that many died in one country because of a heatwave I can imagine it would be major news for weeks. As for sea ice, that has caught up with last year, and there is now very nearly an ice bridge between Greenland and Iceland. What is happening is because of a change in global patterns, the AO for instance is perfect to shunt arctic temperatures south.
The present cold is NOT a local pattern. It is pretty much the whole northern hemisphere. I bet though these cold temperatures are massaged out of the statistics come the end of 2010 and this year is prounounced as being a very warm year. But you can't fool all of the people all of the time....

Getting Warm, You wrote, "The decline of Arctic sea ice is unprecedented. Nothing like this has every happened in so short a time."

Ever? Prove it.

Oh, wait, you can't. I get it...you're just exercising your AGW right to either hysteria or hyperbole. Not sure which one. There's almost nothing in heaven and earth that's unprecedented.

The only thing that you can prove conclusively is that summer 2007 was the lowest level since accurate satellite-based measurements began in the 1970s. Of course in the two summers since 2007, summer ice has increased from that low.

GettingWarm | January 7, 2010 1:20 PM:

"CLANG CLANG went the bell"

Neither unprecedented nor catastrophic. What numbers have you so alarmed??

Is it the fact global total sea ice is fairly constant?

1980 Total = 24.8 million sq km
2007 Total = 25.1 million sq km
2008 Total = 24.7 million sq km
2009 Total = 23.9 million sq km
1979-2000 Total mean = 24.5 million sq km

Or is it the fact that Arctic sea ice is measured somewhat below "normal" (920,000 sq/km), but recovering (200,000 sq. km. in the last 4 years.)

2006 Northern Hemisphere = 12.3 million sq km
2007 Northern Hemisphere = 12.4 million sq km
2008 Northern Hemisphere = 12.5 million sq km
2009 Northern Hemisphere = 12.5 million sq km

Other than the usual frostbite treatments, the Arctic seems to have no increase in emergencies.

Will someone please turn off that damn bell!!?? GK

Glenn Beck talks about this stuff? I'll have to tune in -- thanks for the tip!

Dennis: I recognize the 1934 record as for only the U.S., etc. After all, I do have a Master's Degree... in... Science! This whole notion of "there was no Medieval Warm Period" as espoused by the beady-eyed PSU guy has me a little suspicious about the 1930s warm period. Have these data been massaged downward by Hanson, et al.? Do you like rhetorical questions?

So why can't we see graphs of raw data? I've seen data for individual sites where the trend goes from negative to positive AFTER "homogenization," DESPITE increasing urbanization at the site. This seems bass-ackward (ie. counterintuitive). It would be fun to see what the aggregate raw data looks like, and how much the data is massaged before it makes it to the cool GISS graphs...

woow this is amazing in my zone the could dont very high but today is the -2 in monterrey, nuevo leon,Mexico, down in texas

Derek Cummings: The present cold is NOT a local pattern. It is pretty much the whole northern hemisphere."

Derek,

Explain to me how the NH equals the whole globe? Are you trying to say the other half of the world south of the equator doesn't exist or is not important enough?

I never said the cold wave here in the U.S. was a local pattern. I said that it was not happening everywhere across the world or for that matter even the entire NH. You comment falls in line with Joe Bastardi's biased anti-AGW rhetoric and his population-weighted spin argument about this cold wave affecting a large area of the U.S. The fact that this cold wave is happening in the most populated areas of this part of the NH means it does affect more people and makes the nightly news programs, but it does not mean that the whole world is being affected by the same cold wave and it does not mean the globe is cooling just because more people concentrated in a particular region of the world are in a very cold weather pattern.

I again refer you to actually look at the NH plot that Brett has in this post showing a +6 over Alaska and 8+ temperature anomalies in the Greenland and northern latitude area. I don't think the people living in those regions of the NH would agree with your comment.

I saw a report from 1922 on concerning the incredible lack of sea ice in the arctic. I saw a video from 1950 of a submarine surfacing at the north pole in WATER. The arctic sea ice comes and goes and does not affect ocean levels since there is no land there anyway. The antarctic ice, has had a slow but steady increase according to the graph. Not likely to cause a sea level rise.

Also, people need to remember that a temperature anomaly at the poles only requires 1/16 of the energy to produce the same amouunt of anomaly in the tropics with the mid latitudes in between. Also, since the world is a sphere, the actual surface area of the polar regions is really pretty small in comparison to the mid latitudes, and especially the tropics. To average the temperatures between different regions really is meaningless.

Hi, Brett-- There's maybe at least one key upside of the -AO for the Arctic ice, as mentioned in the NSIDC 1/5/10 report: "While a negative AO leads to warmer temperatures over the Arctic, it also tends to reduce the flow of sea ice out of the Arctic by affecting the winds that can export the ice to warmer waters, where it melts. In this way, a negative AO could help retain some the second- and third-year ice through the winter, and potentially rebuild some of the older, multiyear ice that has been lost over the past few years. However, we do not yet know if the strongly negative AO will persist through the winter, or what its net effect will be."
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

There is yet another theory getting ready to come out and its a doozer.....

Pole flip.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Earth_Magnetic_Field_Declination_from_1590_to_1990.gif

Measuring declination is a lot easier than watching B. Anderson tell you that its just getting warmer when all the snows are falling, thousands of temp and snow records are being broken all over the world.

Here is the thought and they arent sure yet because its being hit from a couple of angles. Watch the movie. In conjunction with known volcanic eruptions the earth got either very cold or very hot during certain oscillations of the mag. poles. Several years can come to mind 1776, 1976, 85. You can pull your own. But using the map, plugging in the known rough temps for that period indicated that heating occurred when the poles were on the move and rapidly (not unlike sunspots) and cooling when it was fairly stagnant as is it is right now. The heating periods seemed to be preceded obviously by the lack of movement, but once on the move it became rapid and worked in conjunction with the lines that were near the equator in flux for either the heating or the cooling. So think of it like this... No movement cool, lotta movement hot or warmer.

Might just explain a lot of things. Maybe we are being held in a pseudo Milankovitch cycle where we are just a tad closer or farther, or the tilt is delayed for the seasons for even one more heating or cooling day. I noticed it too during the solstice that some data wasnt lining up right with the end of the days or their starts for the sunrise.

Waiting for the paper.....

Wow. ABC evening news meteorologist Sam Champion just made the claim that the current cold is "unprecedented" because it is so widespread, and therefore must be linked to climate change. This is very frustrating after people like Joe Bastardi took the time to put together a video demonstrating the similarities of the cold between the present time and the winter of 77-78 (A time when Hanson and others believed in an impending ice age), using actual facts and not speculation.

Reply: Hansen was not predicting an ice age back then.

I shouldnt be suprised that the alarmists would be making claims that the current cold is due to warming, but it makes you shake your head and wonder how many cold winters it will take to dispel the global warming myth.

But Brett, nobody lives in the Arctic; thus, according to people like Bastardi, the "population-weighted warmth" is insignificant. The "population-weighted cold" we've seen recently is much more important.

Perhaps Accuweather can patent and copyright Bastardi's "population-weighted" metrics, just like they copyrighted the RealFeel.

Interesting, but keep your eye on the thirty year global trend, hmmm?

Mark B. on unprecedented Arctic sea ice:

Actually it *has* been proven.

Look up scientific study of lake sediment cores in the Arctic.

Or even more compelling perhaps, studies of verbal histories passed down through 1000s of years of history and story telling by the Northern People of the world.

There stories do not relate anything of the sort that is happening now.

" ..From the NSIDC.......
The Arctic Oscillation (AO) is a natural pattern of climate variability. It consists of opposing patterns of atmospheric pressure between the polar regions and middle latitudes. The positive phase of the AO exists when pressures are lower than normal over the Arctic, and higher than normal in middle latitude. In the negative phase, the opposite is true; pressures are higher than normal over the Arctic and lower than normal in middle latitudes. The negative and positive phases of the AO set up opposing temperature patterns. With the AO in its negative phase this season, the Arctic is warmer than average, while parts of the middle latitudes are colder than normal."

Okay so what do it mean from a practical standpoint?

Does this pattern enhance or retard the amount of heat (energy) that is rejected into space?
So the temps in the arctic are above normal, the question is why? What is the driver in the atmosphere that cause the atmosphere to not cool as much as a one would expect? What it the net effect on sea ice extent and concentrations? What does it mean for the following spring and fall?

"You will know them by their deeds." If Global Warming was real and EPA and Washington really cared they'd shut down the Pentagon; until they do we know it's all all about control and a money making SCAM!!!
“By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.

The Pentagon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; its secret operations in Pakistan; its equipment on more than 1,000 U.S. bases around the world; its 6,000 facilities in the U.S.; all NATO operations; its aircraft carriers, jet aircraft, weapons testing, training and sales will not be counted against U.S. greenhouse gas limits or included in any count.

The Feb. 17, 2007, Energy Bulletin detailed the oil consumption just for the Pentagon's aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities that made it the single-largest oil consumer in the world. At the time, the U.S. Navy had 285 combat and support ships and around 4,000 operational aircraft. The U.S. Army had 28,000 armored vehicles, 140,000 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, more than 4,000 combat helicopters, several hundred fixed-wing aircraft and 187,493 fleet vehicles. Except for 80 nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, which spread radioactive pollution, all their other vehicles run on oil.

Even according to rankings in the 2006 CIA World Factbook, only 35 countries (out of 210 in the world) consume more oil per day than the Pentagon.

The U.S. military officially uses 320,000 barrels of oil a day. However, this total does not include fuel consumed by contractors or fuel consumed in leased and privatized facilities. Nor does it include the enormous energy and resources used to produce and maintain their death-dealing equipment or the bombs, grenades or missiles they fire.

Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, reports: "The Iraq war was responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) from March 2003 through December 2007. ... The war emits more than 60 percent of all countries. ... This information is not readily available ... because military emissions abroad are exempt from national reporting requirements under U.S. law and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change." (www.naomiklein.org, Dec. 10) Most scientists blame carbon dioxide emissions for greenhouse gases and climate change.”

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message947294/pg1

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/19/nasa-scientists-predicted-new-ice-age-1971

Oh really? When did his opinion change?

Dr. Science,

Let's use your MS Degree and scientifically analyze what this global ocean SST chart (using ERSST.v2 data) put together by Bob Tisdale on his Jan 2009 blog site tells you(http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of.html):
http://i42.tinypic.com/2ibc87o.jpg

Do you notice anything familiar in the relative pattern of the global SST data during the 1930-1940 period compared to the global SST up until Jan 2009?

Do you happen to see the similarity to the temperature pattern you saw in the combined HADCRUT, GISS, UAH and GSS data plot I referred to? To refresh your memory, here is the plot:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1850/offset:0.39/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1850/offset:0.3/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1970/offset:0.54/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1970/offset:0.54/mean:12

Here is another plot where Bob Tisdale combined the HADISST data set with his NINO3.4 SST anomaly data (http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/06/reemergence-mechanism.html):
http://i42.tinypic.com/iom6ab.jpg

Do you really think the raw GISS or the other much maligned HADCRUT data set will really be all that much different if this other totally different ERSST.v2 SST data set says essentially the same thing as the other two data sets?

If that type of comparison is not enough to convince you or your MS Degree, then let's also look at how much glacial retreat has changed over this same period of time:

http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc%5Ftar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig2-18.htm

http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/pdfs/5.pdf

If you actually read the report in that second glacial retreat report link, you will notice they mention that a strong glacial retreat was observed in the 1920's and 1940's, followed by a stable or advancing condition around the 1970's, followed by a more drastic glacial retreat beginning after the mid 1980's. I think this glacial data is as raw as you can get it and it says the same thing as the land and ocean SST data sets.

Can the raw GISS data really be that much different if even the physical changes of the glaciers tell you the same temperature pattern changes noted in all these different data sets tells you the same story?

Brett,

I just sent a response to Dr. Science that contains multiple web links. Please make sure it goes through OK.

Thanks,
Dennis

RE: Elliott Althouse | January 7, 2010 4:27 PM

Your two examples are hardly proof of anything.

The 1922 reference was about a Norwegian ship that sailed past Spitzbergen to 81 degrees north. While that may have been extraordinary at the time, it's nothing special nowadays; right now you could take a ship into ice-free water at 81 degrees north of Spitzbergen AND IT'S THE DEAD OF WINTER UP THERE. Heck, you could have sailed as far north as 83 degrees back in September. If anything, the whole example only emphasizes the point of how much colder the Arctic was a century ago compared to now.

The 1950s example of a submarine (the USS Skate) surfacing at the North Pole is also nothing spectacular. Again, it's something you could do with no trouble right now if you have a submarine handy. The Arctic ice pack is always in motion, and large gaps constantly open up, often a mile wide and tens of miles long, even when the air temperature is 40 below zero. It was through these cracks (or cracks that had recently refrozen and the ice was only a few feet thick) that the submarine surfaced. It had nothing to do with the North Pole being a warmer place back then.

How can there be disagreement among scientists about warming? Why is JB talking about cooling as
vehemently as the climate lobby talk about warming. Surely the tropical air we recieve in the UK during an average winter is going to find its way on the conveyor belt somewhere into the Arctic and yes it looks like Greenland the rapidly melting ice block that cops a load of barmy Carribean warmth whilst blocking gives us a north easterly chill. So given the AO info the cooling line seems a bit premature doesn,t it? Oh well must put my skis on.
Weathering Heights

The Arctic Mean Temperature Cycle directly correlates with the PDO/AMO Cycles. The PDO/AMO Cycle maxed out in the 1930's-1940's time frame, it then bottomed out in the 1970's, and it once again reached it's peak temperature value right around the turn of the Millennium. The Arctic-wide average temperatures have also done EXACTLY the same thing. Therefore, if one proven natural cycle drives the other, common sense would dictate that the result is itself natural (by default).

A warm current segment also entered the Arctic Oceanic basins a few years back, and its present location (The Canada Basin), places it directly in the region where the greatest ice melt was noted in the SAT observations of the past few seasons. You can draw your own conclusion from such.

"Do you know that the cradle of civilization started in deserts, where it was all warm and toasty?"

That area is mostly desert NOW, but it wasn't back when human civilization was developing there. That's why it's called "The Fertile Crescent" (remember that from grade school?) It was pretty lush and green, but still, topsoils were shallow and the climate was fairly arid. And as human populations exploded with the development of domestic agriculture, the area began to be over-farmed, topsoils were lost, etc. - similar to what happened in North America during the Dustbowl but, obviously, lasting far longer.

"December 2009 was the 4th lowest December extent since 1979."

Wasn't 2007 the year of the low Arctic ice extent? Doesn't this mean that the extent is increasing?

Again, they use 1979, in the depth of global cooling, as the start year for these graphs.

More ridiculous croaking.

Much ado about nothing Brett. What we have is natural variation being used as a way for people to make money. It is obvious from the actual data that there hasn't been catastrophic global warming and while we are (thank your favourite diety) warmer than we were during the Little Ice Age, most of that warming happened before 1940. The US data shows no substantial warming since the 1930s and the global data set is inconclusive because Phil Jones claims to have destroyed the original pre-1980 data because the CRU budget did not allow him to purchase the hard drive or filing cabinets that would be necessary to store it. As such, nobody has been able to replicate the global temperature profile from the original data so we don not know what has really happened.

While the temperature profile we get using the 'adjusted' CRU data seems to be of concern to some people they have obviously missed the way that CRU adjusts it. Here is a view of the process from the code leaked by the whistleblower:

; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0., -0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’

Essentially, CRU has added 2.6F to the temperature readings from 193=70 to 2009 and has lowered the 1930s temperatures by 0.25F. Given the fact that the warming showed by its graphs is about the same as the 'adjustments,' I guess that the claim that it comes from human effects is correct. But it wasn't CO2 emissions but computer programmers that caused it.

If you go to the NIC IMS Ice and Snow page:
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/
you can see satellite based graphics depicting ice and snow coverage. There are links to archived data and these show that current northern hemisphere ice and snow coverage is greater than it has been since at least 2004. Decemeber coverage may have been the 4th lowest, but it has recoved since. The dates of minimum and maximum coverage vary to a great extent year to year. Selecting December for the month because cover happened to be lower than average (November was a warm month) is called "cherry picking" and the cherry picked data respresented here has no more value than any other cherry picked data they are using to try to convince the public (and may themselves) that AGW is a real threat.

Rick F

brett, can i ask why you've stopped posting my comments? I submitted one on this story yesterday and one on the CIA story the day before. they weren't nearly as offensive as other posts i see here.

Reply: I have not stopped posting your comments. Were there links attached? I do not recall deleting anything from you genetic.

Does any of you look at the work of Piers Corbyn, the astrophysicist who runs Weather Action?
He successfully forecast the current "extreme" cold weather in the UK for example, and likewise successfully forecast the weather for last winter and the past three soggy summers, all in marked contrast to the UK Met Office's ridiculous failures. He uses solar influences for his forecasts, pays no attention to CO2 (why should he?) and does not believe at all in AGW.

"Most scientists blame carbon dioxide emissions for greenhouse gases and climate change."

If you consider less than 50% to be most. Of course you guys play with all the other numbers I guess you should play with that one too. The numbers given in this report shows that the ice is increasing yet the story is about how it decreased. No wonder you can't predict whether it will rain or snow tomorrow. When you get the forecast right I'll start thinking about listening to your ideas on global warming.

BOR: This will enhance heat loss into space. Of course, the focus of the Eco-Fascists will be on "anomolies" of high latitude temperatures, while they ignore the widespread cold in mid-latitudes. The movement of heat to the poles is just part of the process of ongoing cooling. Be patient, the UNDENIALBLE cooling is coming, and CO2 will not stop it. Expect the Eco-Fascists to ramp up the "it may cool for XX years, but then global warming is REALLY going to kick in" nonsense as their latest "dog ate my homework" excuse for warming to be non-existent in the face of rising CO2 levels.

Chris Alemany,
I googled the lake sediments as you suggested, and looked at the first dozen or so articles that report on the University of Colorado study of the arctic lake. They do not say that the decline of sea ice is unprecedented. Perhaps it's hidden in the study somewhere but I didn't see it. The reported conclusion of the University of Colorado study is that biological and chemical changes noted at the arctic lake are unprecendented in the past 200k years. There's a difference that I'm sure you can appreciate.

I give credit to historical accounts, but you should be suspect of verbal histories passed down through scores of generations (is the story of Noah's Ark the literal word of God or a generational verbal retelling of a great flood that was eventually inscribed in the Old Testament?). I've not read any transcribed histories of the Eskimos and other native people of the Arctic, so help me out. Do the histories say specifically that the sea ice never declined beyond xxxthousand square kilometers? I suspect not. If there was an ice-free summer at the pole, say, 8000 years ago (a geologic blink of an eye), would there have been any witnesses and would that story have survived the verbal passdown to the current generation. Unlikely. Besides, those types of histories have value, but are anecdotal at best and tend towards mythology. That's certainly the argument used by Warmistas to disregard the a more recent history of the Greenland Vikings and the Medieval Warming Period.

Hello all, i've been talking about that for the past two months - it's quite warm way up north. While there was a snow storm in Washington in december, it was raining on the northern tip of the Labrador and in the Baffin sea.. Ahhh anyway, who cares about the people living there... Well that's the point, you're also (in Florida) living there - on Earth (you know the planet, the globe). So as it is clearly demonstrated here, what happened over there does impact you elsewhere. You have to stop thinking about your own area (your back yard) and think on a larger scale (the global) because sooner or later it does impact you. That's what global climate is all about and why you should take care of it.

To GK, the figures you presented are talking all by themself. But your conclusions are misleading or presented ''to drown the fish''. The usual twisted truth affirmation technique from deniers. You picked the 4 lowest years since 1979 and then you said it was not that bad and recovering. But at the same time you forgot to tell that it was about 1million sq. miles short of the average. Not very intellectually correct.

If i wanted to play the same game of twisted truth i would compare 1996 to 2009 and would say this is a world class disaster event. Because then it would be a drop of more than 1.3 million sq.miles in about a decade. But we're not like that - because we know it's not working that way.

Things like ice cover needs to be regards on long runs - not single year or single event. Sure the current relative warm period is disturbing and needs to be looked at, but we have to double check if it's a trend or a single event (maybe the current 30 years is a single event - time will tell).

If we look at the numbers, there's surely a trend showing a definite decline of the ice cover in the Arctic for the past 30 years. You cannot deny that fact. Unless you want to hide the decline ;-). But again, time will tell if this is a ''hickup'' or a real trend that will last more than 100 years.

As to J. Bastardi. I will say the same thing i said before. He has a good ability to read long term models to identify trends in the weather (i said the weather - not the climate) and make good short to long term (15 days) forecast, and the current cold wave is demonstrating it again. But it stops there. The problem with Joe is that he's taking those short term events to pull conclusion on a much larger scale where numbers contradict clairly his affirmations on the global scale. And this is where he's loosing credibility. If you want to talk about the weather, that's fine. If you want to talk about the climate, that's also fine. But don't mix both in the same conversation.

Sile:
"Except for 80 nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, which spread radioactive pollution"

Please explain exactly how the submarines and aircraft carriers spread radioactive pollution and where they spread it to.

Rick F

AGW is not Science:
BOR: This will enhance heat loss into space. Of course, the focus of the Eco-Fascists will be on "anomolies" of high latitude temperatures, while they ignore the widespread cold in mid-latitudes. The movement of heat to the poles is just part of the process of ongoing cooling. Be patient, the UNDENIALBLE cooling is coming, and CO2 will not stop it. Expect the Eco-Fascists to ramp up the "it may cool for XX years, but then global warming is REALLY going to kick in" nonsense as their latest "dog ate my homework" excuse for warming to be non-existent in the face of rising CO2 levels.

Posted by AGW is not Science | January 8, 2010 10:28 AM

Too late I have already heard that several times in the last couple of years.

Re: Rick Fanning | January 8, 2010 8:12 AM

Again, they use 1979, in the depth of global cooling, as the start year for these graphs.

Yes, shame on them for putting things into perspective by using 31 years of data instead of three.

Why is JB talking about cooling as
vehemently as the climate lobby talk about warming?

REPLY: Oh, no special reason. Only the FACT THAT IT'S FREAKING COLD OUTSIDE!!!!

Regg:

"But at the same time you forgot to tell that it was about 1million sq. miles short of the average."

Actually, I said:

"Or is it the fact that Arctic sea ice is measured somewhat below "normal" (920,000 sq/km), but recovering (200,000 sq. km. in the last 4 years.)"

I furthermore, UNLIKE you, I then proved it by:

2006 Northern Hemisphere = 12.3 million sq km
2007 Northern Hemisphere = 12.4 million sq km
2008 Northern Hemisphere = 12.5 million sq km
2009 Northern Hemisphere = 12.5 million sq km

Not cherry picked at all, as it shows exactly what I claimed.

Then you say:

"If we look at the numbers, there's surely a trend showing a definite decline of the ice cover in the Arctic for the past 30 years."

You will check my report and notice:

1980 Northern Hemisphere = 13.7 million sq km
2009 Northern Hemisphere = 12.5 million sq km

THAT IS the 30 yr trend, so you don't have to guess! Do the calculation... It's all in my report. -1.2 million sq. km. \ 30 yrs = -40,000km /yr. That was the trendline. However, as I said and show; the direction has been up since 2006/7 and is recovering as we speak. Remember, these figures are only for the month of December.

Jan, Feb, Mar, will have their own trends.

If you are not going to read my report and remarks... WHY COMMENT??

Why do I have to take you by the hand, through these numbers?? Can you not read my very simple report?

Btw: 30 yrs. is widely accepted as a climatic period. That is why I reference 1980 and NOT some cherry picked year. 1981 will be 2010's new 30yr reference. I don't pick it, convention does!

You don't have to accept the numbers, just please, someone, turn off that damn bell! GK

Dennis Hlinka: In your January 8, 2010 12:46 AM comment you linked a few of my graphs and referenced my website.

Thanks.

But I have to ask. Do you a really expect to be able to determine the difference between Global temperature anomaly graphs, like GISTEMP and HADISST, which you used as examples above, by linking separate graphs?

If you'd learn to use the KNMI Climate Explorer, you could download the data from two different datasets, plot them on the same graph, or you could subtract one from the other, limiting the time period from 1975 to present for example, and determine the actual difference. Like so (cut and paste to your browser)
i47.tinypic.com/290vrdz.png

There is a significant difference between the two datasets, Dennis, and providing links to two different web pages cannot illustrate them.

Regards

Pretty good post, all-around. The extreme negative AO is cause for the recent Arctic blast in the U.S., and thus evidence that "GW is a hoax" among the denial crowd.

U.S. mean temperature has varied wildly in recent months. It's interesting that the AO was average (around 0) in November, yet the U.S. experienced its top 5 warmest Novembers on record (3rd I think) - probably related to the general warming of the oceans due to el Nino and the long-term anthropogenic signal.

It's still an open question in climate science how much global warming is influencing natural oscillations like ENSO or AO. Is weather variability increasing? This is certainly the case with observed increases in extreme precipitation events. I read the description of a recent study on how the rapid Arctic sea ice melt is influencing ocean mixing. Although I don't think this addresses AO or how it might influence ocean currents, it's something to think about.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/ releases/ 2009/ 12/ 091230183301.htm

As for Bastardi, I think he just likes the press coverage. We live in a society where one is rewarded for pushing irrational notions - from alien abductions to the Moon landing being a hoax. What use would Fox News have for him if he didn't say silly things that the choir loves?

Given that people across the globe are dying due to, in some cases, unprecedented cold, please tell me again why global warming would not be a good thing. If it is truly anthropogenic, then we need to work harder at it. ; )

Rick F:
Who said anything about radioactive pollution? “By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements."
The point is if human made Global Warming were real and these cap n tax hucksters were sincere they'd begin with the biggest user of fossil fuels, The Pentagon. "...the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements." But the EPA wants to tax farmers $125 per farting cow and put them out of business? Makes as much sense as Mann's hockey stick!
The whole process has been full of manipulations and lies pushed by the likes of Maurice Strong, Al Gore, Ken Lay and the con artists at the CFR and Goldman Sachs. At 3 minutes in Gore stumbles as he is asked a Congressional Hearing about Ken Lay. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH0Ryek7rHk&feature=PlayList&p=446A9783B492E454&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=9
Face it the environmental movement was long ago hijacked by the greedy hucksters who have looted everything else. World Wildlife Fund started by big game hunters Prince Phillip and Bernhardt which now are running ads to save the polar bears whose numbers have doubled since the 1960s. You are being manipulated and tweaked as badly as the global warming data.

Buzz | January 10, 2010 9:33 AM --- Because it is wreaking havoc with agriculture.

To whom it may concern-

Toasty weather maintains its hold in California. It has been a very mild, unusually warm winter so far. The negative AO has created a huge block over Greenland, but the storms are now building in the Pacific. It seems El Nino will still have a say in the pattern for the rest of this winter. The US will soon see the effects of a vigorous Southern branch of the jet stream.

Don't count your chickens before they hatch.

Sile asks:

"Who said anything about radioactive pollution? "

Well, Siles, you did. The following is from your original post in this thread:

"Except for 80 nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, which spread radioactive pollution"

So I would say that Rick F's question is valid.

Brett: Seems one or two of my posts from the last few days didn't materilaize; did they end up in your junk folder or something? I don't think I had any links in them. Thanks.

Reply: I will check. BA

Good catch, PeteB. Looks like Sile forgot to actually read the material he copied and pasted.

Picky picky picky.

GK... Good try, but.

Cherry picking is when you pick all the (lowest) last 3 years to show that it is recovering. Nice try.

Read back your own post, you'll see that over the 30 years period we're well below the average (be it 1979, 1980 or whatever). You cannot state that we're recovering in that case. At best, you could say ''the bleeding as stop''.

If you look at the current situation, it rained again last weekend up north. It's been raining overthere since late november/early december.

How can you put up such conclusions when all the data you're showing is saying the opposite.

Try to be intellectualy honest (at least).

Re: Regg | January 11, 2010 2:56 PM

Read back your own post, you'll see that over the 30 years period we're well below the average (be it 1979, 1980 or whatever). You cannot state that we're recovering in that case. At best, you could say ''the bleeding as stop''.

Give the man some credit. I know GK well enough to know he could AT LEAST use proper English in his response, e.g. "The bleeding has stopped."

GK may often let his opinions color his conclusions (with which I frequently disagree), but I would never accuse him of being dishonest.

In reference to the topic at hand, I'll start paying attention to an Arctic sea ice "recovery" once the daily concentration anomaly hits the 30 year mean again...something it has not done in over five years now according to Cryosphere Today's data...and then only barely. I'll REALLY start paying attention when NSIDC shows a monthly extent anomaly that's at or above normal (if you calculate a 1979-2008 base)...something that hasn't happened since Spetember 2001. If you go by NSIDC's 1979-2000 base, then you have to go even farther: May 1999. THAT would catch my eye.

By the way, the NSIDC update that Brett linked to appears to have (accidentally?) exaggerated the lack of precedent for December's extreme negative AO... they write (and Brett copies)

"In December 2009 the AO index value was -3.41, the most negative value since at least 1950, according to data from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center."

If you actually go through the NOAA CPC data, though, it turns out it's the *second* most negative value. [The infamous January of 1977 was even worse, at -3.77.] However, second-most-negative month in the last 60 years (720 months) is still pretty impressive.

Perhaps they simply meant that it's the most AO-negative *December* since 1950, which would still be the case (and by a very wide margin.)

The data is free online at http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.shtml
(look under the "Monthly mean AO index since January 1950" bulletpoint)...

Travis wrote:
GK may often let his opinions color his conclusions (with which I frequently disagree), but I would never accuse him of being dishonest.

I think "dishonest" is the only way to characterize this comment of GK from December 30, 2009 9:48 PM:

Hansen jumped from Global cooling to AGW. Now he seems to be preparing an exit plan C.

Dr. Hansen never advocated "Global cooling". This lie has been refuted innumerable times since it was first promulgated by Marc Morano in 2007, and GK is surely aware of its untruth. GK's response to my repetition of the evidence against his claim was to dig himself deeper.

This set of exchanges is ample evidence to show that GK is, in fact, dishonest in his contributions to this forum.

BrooklineTom | January 13, 2010 10:54 PM

Another naked man, casting bones on the ground muttering booga-booga... Just to be more precise. GK