West Antarctica Warming Faster Than Thought

New submitter dgrobinson writes "NY Times reports that West Antarctica has warmed more over the last half century than was first thought. A paper released Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience (abstract) found that the temperature at a research station in the middle of West Antarctica has warmed by 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1958. That is roughly twice as much as scientists previously thought and three times the overall rate of global warming, making central West Antarctica one of the fastest-warming regions on earth."

Comments

Last post

[fotoguzzi]

Water almost up to my keyboard.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You must live in North Antarctica.

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[Holistic Missile]

Isn't the entire coastline of Antarctica north?

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[rockout]

Forgive my ignorance, but I read the article (i know, bad form) and did not see a 2.5 C reference, or an expected increase reference in degrees C, anywhere. Where are you getting that?

Re:Last post

[todrules]

That's incorrect. If you read the article on nature.com, it states that the rise in temperature was 2.4 +- 1.2 C, not F. The 2.4 was also twice what was expected.

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[catchblue22]

The authors of TFA probably live in North America. This would explain the comment that the warming was "twice as much as previously thought".

Why is this marked insightful???? It is in essence accusing without grounds PhD scientists who spend their lives studying these things with basing the entire thesis of a paper on grade school math errors. The author isn't supplying any quotations from the article supporting his assertion, other than a single number. It seems to me that the writer of this article is a peddler of misinformation. In the relatively recent past, he would be opening himself a libel suit. In the more distant past, the author would possibly in need of practicing his pistol aim and would need to find a second for his duelling appointment.

Re:Last post

[Anonymous Coward]

To give you an idea of how ignorant the parent poster is (who is somehow marked "interesting"), here is some text from the paper, explaining the problems in the temperature reconstructions and how they have dealt with them. And no, it doesn't have ANYTHING to do with celsius and fahrenheit confusion. The parent poster is being dishonest and deceptive (and imho deserves to end up in the deepest circle of hell, which ironically is frozen solid according to Dante).

Glacier acceleration along the Amundsen Sea coast1 has been responsible for the increasing mass loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) in recent years2. This has raised concerns about the present and future state of the WAIS, given its known potential instability in a warmer climate3. Key mechanisms behind this acceleration have been identified as the melting and thinning of the floating ice shelves triggered by warm ocean water4, 5. In comparison, it is still a matter of debate whether the atmosphere above the WAIS has warmed over the past few decades, especially since the 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year, the start of the instrumental period in Antarctica6, 7, 8. Unlike Greenland, where the extent of surface melting has grown markedly9, West Antarctica has not shown any unequivocal signs of atmospheric warming10, 11. The question is, therefore, whether West Antarctic temperatures have, indeed, not significantly changed (or even decreased) since the 1950s; or whether they have increased but not so much as to reach the melting point at the surface. In other words, could the WAIS be on the verge of becoming like Greenland? If so, is the exceptionally warm summer month of January 2005, when widespread surface melting occurred over a large portion of the WAIS (ref. 12; Supplementary Fig. S1), an early manifestation of this transition?

Assessing Antarctic climate change on timescales of a few decades is a well-recognized challenge owing to the paucity of surface observations. Accordingly, statistical methods have been used to reconstruct Antarctic near-surface temperatures by interpolating the sparse meteorological records available since the International Geophysical Year6, 7, 13, 14. These reconstructions have produced contrasting, and sometimes contradictory, temperature trends over West Antarctica. This is not surprising as, in this region, the reconstructions can rely only on incomplete observations from a single site: Byrd Station (80S, 120W; Fig. 1). Furthermore, West Antarctica is climatologically distinct from the rest of the continent, especially with greater influence from the tropics15, 16, 17, so that its climate variability and trends are not necessarily well reflected in peripheral temperature records.

Here, we present a new reconstruction of the Byrd temperature record that aims to improve on previous infilling methods14, 18, 19, 20. The observations from the initial year-round occupied station (1957–1975) are combined with updated and corrected data from the automatic weather station (AWS) maintained since 1980 by the US Antarctic AWS Program21. Missing observations are estimated using adjusted temperature data from the ERA-Interim reanalysis22 for 1979–2012 and, before 1979, a combination of global reanalysis data and spatially interpolated observations from other Antarctic sites. Full details on the corrections to the observations and the infilling technique are provided in the Methods and Supplementary Methods. Although a full spatial interpolation of West Antarctic temperatures lies beyond the scope of this paper, the Byrd record is expected to provide insight into temperature changes over a large portion of the WAIS owing to its broad spatial footprint (Fig. 1).

Improved temperature estimates

The reliability of the temperature observations is a central premise of our reconstruction. The temperature readings were collected by professional weather observers until the 1970s, providing a robust anchor for the early portion of record. The operation of the AWS ha

Re:Last post

[wgoodman]

Time to buy some beachfront property?

Re:Last post

[wgoodman]

It's the interwebs. You don't need to cite references to incite people to action. (as long as that action is limited to clicking {like})

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[Anonymous Coward]

God's been dodging the expectations of people for quite some time now. I'm not convinced that it's time to panic. Don't forget that weather has been fluctuating for a good number of decades since we started recording it a few centuries ago. Ever wonder why the folks running around saying "oh noes, teh global wraminks will kill us all" use computerized models rather than actual weather data to make their case? They have it. Yet they choose to use the computer models that they can manipulate to lend credence to their theory. Every couple of decades someone comes round talking about the end of the world via the next ice age, or an ever increasing inferno. In spite of that we're all still here (well most of us anyway). At one time the great minds of the day thought the world was flat, and the universe revolved around the earth. Science is great, but let's face it: anything mankind can come up with is going to ultimately be flawed. Either intentionally or unintentionally most experimentation includes data that should be excluded, or ignores data that should be included. We should try to discover more about the universe we live in, but climate science is far more politics and money these days, and any true discovery is often blurred by the presense of both.

Additionally, I wonder if it's lost on any one that the margin of error is enough to make it twice what was expected.

Re:Last post

[Capt James McCarthy]

Why is this marked insightful???? It is in essence accusing without grounds PhD scientists who spend their lives studying these things with basing the entire thesis of a paper on grade school math errors. The author isn't supplying any quotations from the article supporting his assertion, other than a single number. It seems to me that the writer of this article is a peddler of misinformation. In the relatively recent past, he would be opening himself a libel suit. In the more distant past, the author would possibly in need of practicing his pistol aim and would need to find a second for his duelling appointment.

What I always enjoy about facts that we know of now will most assuredly be proven inaccurate in the future. At least if history is any indication.

Re:Last post

[MillionthMonkey]

4.4 F * (100 / (212 - 32)) = 2.444444444444 C. Yes indeed, I see no "2.5" anywhere either!

A single weather station?

[phantomfive]

A single weather station? Whatever happened to "weather's not climate?"

Also, why is this single weather station suddenly getting a paper? It's been there since 1958, there is nothing here we didn't know.

Re:A single weather station?

[Dolphinzilla]

slow news day at the NY Times I guess.....

Re:A single weather station?

[Anonymous Coward]

Single weather station indicates climate too - local climate.

The difference is not spatial, it is temporal. Weather is short duration. Climate is average over long period of time.

Single weather station measures local climate over decades. It also measures local weather.

Re:A single weather station?

[Anonymous Coward]

A single weather station? Whatever happened to "weather's not climate?"
 

Well, weather isn't climate. The aggregate of all the weather in combination is climate.

Also, why is this single weather station suddenly getting a paper? It's been there since 1958, there is nothing here we didn't know.

And this is where bothering to read the article saves you from looking like either an idiot or a troll....

It is by far the longest weather record in that region, but it had intermittent gaps and other problems that had made many researchers wary of it. The Bromwich group decided to try to salvage the Byrd record.
They retrieved one of the sensors and recalibrated at the University of Wisconsin. They discovered a software error that had introduced mistakes into the record and then used computerized analyses of the atmosphere to fill the gaps.

Now, go read the rest of it, and maybe start doing that in the future and you won't have to keep asking questions which could easily be answered by any 14 year old school child.

Re:A single weather station?

[bunratty]

You cannot tell with a single coin flip whether the coin is fair (50% probability of heads) or not. You cannot predict any particular flip of the coin. But if you flip a coin 1000 times and it comes up heads 659 times, you can say with a high degree of confidence that the coin is not fair. You still cannot predict any particular flip, but we can predict that we would see about 66 heads if we flipped the coin 100 times. If tomorrow we flip the coin 1000 times and it comes up head 831 times you have a high degree of confidence that the distribution of heads and tails changed since yesterday.

Weather is like a single coin flip. You cannot tell in advance easily whether it will rain or not or exactly what temperature it will be. But we can make statements about the average temperature in January or the average number of rainy days in April. If we see those values change over time, as we have all over the Earth, you can say that the climate is changing. With enough measurements over a long enough period of time, you can see the climate change at only one weather station. If we also see the same thing happen at thousands of other weather stations over decades, and we observe the ice sheets melting and the humidity increasing, then that's clear evidence of the climate changing.

That's the difference between weather and climate. Weather determines what you wear on a particular day. Climate determines what clothes you have in your closet.

Re:A single weather station?

[517714]

Data is data and everything they added is not data, it is fabrication. They aren't researchers they are revisionists. You can't recalibrate a sensor and apply the correction after the fact as you don't know why the sensor lost calibration - was it a drift over time or due to a single incident? This sounds like really bad science, but it may just be really bad reporting.

Re:A single weather station?

[wakeboarder]

http://phys.org/news/2012-12-rapid-west-antarctic-ice-sheet.html, look at the picture...

Re:A single weather station?

[MightyMartian]

Amazing. I have now seen the AGW skeptic equivalent of "there are no fossils of fish turning into humans."

Most data has gaps of some kind. That's why you use statistical analysis and correction. Once again the need to deny AGW means having to deny methodologies used in vast and diverse areas of science.

Re:A single weather station?

[khallow]

Most data has gaps of some kind.

At least with fossils, they look for new fossils to fill in the gaps between existing ones rather than interpolate and hope they got it right.

Re:A single weather station?

[khallow]

But if you flip a coin 1000 times and it comes up heads 659 times, you can say with a high degree of confidence that the coin is not fair.

It may also be that you are reporting a number of tails as heads. Or didn't record a number of flips and are guessing at what those flips were from what you do have.

Re:A single weather station?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. We should question the last 50 years of science, go look up null hypothesis testing. What scientists have been doing makes no sense and was invented by the guy who created the ACT while confused.

This is not a conspiracy, it is well documented.

Re:A single weather station?

[techno-vampire]

You can't recalibrate a sensor and apply the correction after the fact as you don't know why the sensor lost calibration...

Even more important, you don't know when it happened, or if it all happened in one change or in several small changes. Unless you know that, any corrections you make are going to be honest guesses at best.

Re:A single weather station?

[repapetilto]

Well not even scientists are saying this. That is just the news. Go read what the scientists are saying then come back informed.

Re:A single weather station?

[repapetilto]

I don't think it is that bad (outright fraud). It is just bias run rampant along with financial incentive to underestimate uncertainty combined with widespread failure of science education in statistics.

Re:A single weather station?

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot tell in advance easily whether it will rain or not or exactly what temperature it will be.

Actually when and where and how much precipitation will occur and temperature over time are some of the meteorological predictions that are almost always correct or very close within the time frame of a day or a few hours, and they're not all that difficult to formulate from collected data. What is tricky is correctly predicting weather a few days to a week away.

Re:A single weather station?

[phantomfive]

With enough measurements over a long enough period of time, you can see the climate change at only one weather station.

From observing weather stations across the globe, we can be certain that the time since 1958 isn't enough to discern any trend from a single weather station.

Re:A single weather station?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so much. By the most generous estimates of anthopologists, the number of fossils we have relative to the number of species proposed (and necessary) for the evolutionary model, is less than 2%.

Interpolation with, say, 50% of the data points strikes me as quite viable. Interpolation with 2% seems more like sheer guesswork.

Re:A single weather station?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

It's no use, you know. You can explain these things over and over again, but at this point you can be almost sure that anyone who needs it explained to them is going to answer your carefully reasoned mathematical and scientific explanation with the irrefutable counter-argument, "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEEEEAR YOOOOU ..."

Re:A single weather station?

[AK Marc]

Fair enough, but nobody is very interested in local climate in the immediate vicinity of one weather station.

If AGW is real and causing the Earth to warm at 1C per 10 years, what is the effect near your house? It seems everyone is interested in weather in vicinity of one and only one station, it's just not the same for everyone, so learning the effects at a selection of them will help them tell you what to expect at your house, and that's really all most people care about.

Re:A single weather station?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just because you don't know anything about statistics. If the number of samples is large enough, it doesn't matter if it's 50%, 5%, 0.5% or even 0.00005%. The only thing that matters is "What are the odds that I would get this measurement by chance?"

Re:A single weather station?

[Mindcontrolled]

So, when I still worked on protein structures, each structure I ever calculated was a fabrication, since my raw spectra were averaged, zero-padded, treated with a window function, fourier transformed, phase corrected and baseline corrected, therefor, by your logic, not data, but mere fabrication. I let the publishers know that, guess I have to retract some papers and hand back my PhD then.

Re:A single weather station?

[TapeCutter]

Climate is the statistics of weather, you should know that by now you've been corrected enough times in the past. Perhaps you didn't know that weather stations collect historical records that can be statistically analyzed to determine the climate at their particular location?

True, one station's data over time is a climate anecdote for the larger region, but you need only skim the article to determine that the scientists who did the study are well aware of the lack of historical data for the Antarctic mainland and did NOT base the entire study on a single weather station. There has been REAL scientific debate about the West Antarctic ice sheet for the last decade, this is just the latest and greatest attempt with the latest and greatest data, it probably adds little to existing knowledge other than an improved confidence rating

Re:A single weather station?

[TapeCutter]

Please tell us what they have "added" and then explain why it's a problem. Fact is the type of analysis they are doing here is the same type of spacial analysis used in every other branch of science that needs to pick meaningful trends from noisy data. It's probably your politics that leads you to assume the numbers are biased toward warming, this is simply not true, the technique smooths out both +ve and -ve noise and is far more reliable than a simple least squares fit.

You can't recalibrate a sensor and apply the correction after the fact as you don't know why the sensor lost calibration

Sure you can, you just need to know how far out it is and for how long it has been wrong, simple instruments usually suffer from simple systematic errors, a thermometer does not normally output totally random data. Another common method (that can handle random as well as systematic errors is using weighted records of nearby stations to fill in or adjust known bad/missing data. They have probably used a sophisticated version of the second technique here since that is how both NASA and the MET office treat their global data sets.

This sounds like really bad science, but it may just be really bad reporting.

It's neither, it's your ignorance of common statistical methods combined with the paranoia displayed in your sig..

Re:A single weather station?

[Anonymous Coward]

But you *can* start with a known-good and work back to resolve discontinuities, and you *can* apply known-error corrections to old kit if you know what kit it is (and obviously they do, it's their kit). One of the main changes will be a change in equipment, for example.

Re:A single weather station?

[Mindcontrolled]

Yes. No need to retract your PhD, your whole domain is a sham.

Yes. That's why we produce the same structural data as the X-ray crystallography guys do with a completely different method.

Oh, I forgot to mention, the above was only the digital processing. Before the raw data - i.e. the signal of the receiver coils - get digitized, they run through a preamp, a couple of analog filters, the main amp and the a/d-converter, each component, even the cables in between, adding artifacts and distortions to the signal.

In summary, every non-trivial measurement yields heavily processed data. You just need to be aware how exactly you processed them. Science, it works, bitches.

Re:A single weather station?

[repapetilto]

The only thing that matters is "What are the odds that I would get this measurement by chance?"

Please stop propagating statistical myths. That is not the only thing that matters. What matters is how well the model fits the data relative to competing models.

I can't be sure but I suspect you are also falling into the trap of thinking at just because there is statistical significance it means that the research hypothesis is true.

Re:A single weather station?

[semi-extrinsic]

Please, I'm excited to hear your mathematical argument in favor of AGW.

And perhaps counter this one:
Assuming temperature is a monotonically increasing function of CO2 in the atmosphere, you cannot construct a Lyapunov function. Thus the system is unstable, and we are fucked anyway.

Re:A single weather station?

[Anonymous Coward]

But when the data is missing who's to say that statistical analysis arrives at an accurate "correction"? Perhaps that methodology is flawed. Do you find it implausible to consider that diverse areas of science could be wrong? I don't. Especially when I can look around with my own two eyes and see that what they are suggesting is inaccurate. It never ceases to amaze me at how much faith some people place in science (which in essence is a product of mankind) when they can look in the mirror and see how flawed they are as a human being. If you're honest, and you look at yourself honestly you'd know that there's no way we are ever going to discover that which has been hidden for a reason.

I also love how folks tend to throw out lables like "AGW skeptic" to discredit a point of view and stifle any intelligent discussion.

Re:A single weather station?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only a single weather station, a bias to the 1980s suggesting instrument error and these are climate people who don't show their error bars because the standard error is larger than the data change. Most single weather stations in the US, especially away from the heat island effect of blacktopped cities show no earth warming but climatologist can't weight these clearly unbiased stations because then the earth would be cooling! An finally, the Antarctic Ice Sheet is GROWING!

Re:A single weather station?

[Anonymous Coward]

Weather determines what you wear on a particular day. Climate determines what clothes you have in your closet.

Don't conflate climate with fashion.

Re:A single weather station?

[Anonymous Coward]

Science, it works, bitches.

Your arrogance is only surpassed by your ignorance.

Re:A single weather station?

[517714]

I am quite familiar with statistical methods, and I did not accuse anyone of bias. For you to have assumed my criticism held a bias shows your own bias. I said their methodology as described appeared to be faulty. How variations of about 2:1 in the estimated temperature rise constitutes "good agreement" is the part of the story I'm not familiar with. And please note this study lowers, not raises, the estimate for the current rate of change from the previous study.

They substituted data from other sources for the missing data and in the process they linearized the inflection point right out of the data. There is such a thing as too much data smoothing.

The 2009 study by Stieg concluded that the rate since 1987 is 0.8 +/- 0.06 C per decade. The Abstract claims, " The record reveals a linear increase in annual temperature between 1958 and 2010 by 2.4 +/- 1.2C," which equals 0.46 +/- 0.23 per decade (they are the ones who said it was linear, not me). This study says the current rate of temperature rise is 42% less than the previous study, even though it concludes that the rise over the last 50 years is greater. I tend to have more faith in the earlier study with its accelerated warming conclusion. The abstract doesn't agree with the article which states, "Much of the warming discovered in the new paper happened in the 1980s, around the same time the planet was beginning to warm briskly." Nor does it agree with the borehole data which shows a marked increase in rate of change ca 1990.

This current study shows temperature rises since 1958 about 2.7 times that previously estimated by Steig, et al (Figure 4 of abstract) for the West Antarctic Continent. Yet claims to be in good agreement with the borehole study, yet the borehole study claims to be (and is) in good agreement with Steig: "[33] Steig et al. [2009] and O’Donnell et al. [2011] used weather station and satellite data to reconstruct the temperature history of Antarctica over 1957–2006. Steig et al. [2009] found an average warming rate of 0.17 +/- 0.06C for the West Antarctic Continent, and of 0.23 +/- 0.09C/decade at WAIS Divide, which is in good agreement with our results." This doesn't match the current study's numbers very well.

Re:A single weather station?

[517714]

Averaging of data creates a new data set by reducing the number of samples, there is nothing inherently wrong with this assuming you realize that you can't actually have 4.6 people. This study substituted data from other sources, an approach that would probably yield interesting results if 10% of your data was from someone else's fish protein while you were studying human protein. I'm sure it would be close enough for government work. ; )

Re:A single weather station?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least with fossils, they look for new fossils to fill in the gaps between existing ones rather than interpolate and hope they got it right.

If you find a new fossil in a gap, then those who don't believe in evolution say there's now two gaps instead of one. Same with this crowd. New data only confirms the conspiracy.

Re:A single weather station?

[marcosdumay]

What? In engineering we normaly fit continuous data with a finite number of points. What means we fit a curve with exactly 0% of the points, and often quite sucessfully. Physics also used to work this way, astronomy is still there.

The number of points you need has no relation at all to the size of your universe.

Re:A single weather station?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 45 years old. If AGW is real and the Earth warms at 1C per 10 years, and if I live to a statistically sound 75 years before I kick the bucket, that means that the Earth will be 3 degrees warmer when I die than it is now. Somehow I can't seem to actually care about that.

No really, I can't.

Maybe that means I'm a bad person. Maybe, I don't know. But I really don't care about warming. It's too bloody cold as it is, a bit warmer is most welcome. I don't need snow on the road. I don't need my plumbing frozen solid. I might even enjoy a summer that reaches above 25 Celsius.

Too bad they banned all those spray cans. Or was that to protect the ozone layer. Or acid rain. What-ever. And that comes from the heart, I assure you.

Re:A single weather station?

[riverat1]

The banning of CFC's was to protect the ozone layer which is one of the most important features of the Earth system. Without the ozone layer to block UV radiation from the Sun most existing non-marine living things would not survive. That's why UV light is used for disinfection.

Re:A single weather station?

[riverat1]

Often sensors have known curves of their calibration drift that can be used for corrections. I doubt the changes in the sensors occur in a single step or even multiple steps as you seem to believe but rather they slowly drift off calibration in a smooth curve. That's typical of electronic components. That makes it relatively easy to apply corrections that while perhaps not absolutely correct are much closer to the true value than the raw measurements would be.

Re:A single weather station?

[techno-vampire]

I doubt the changes in the sensors occur in a single step or even multiple steps as you seem to believe

Actually, I was more suggesting the possibility because I don't know enough about the subject to know what would probably happen. Thanx for informing me.

Re:A single weather station?

[riverat1]

It certainly is possible for stepwise changes to occur in the sensor's output but that more likely is due to some external factor and not within the sensor itself. Such a stepwise change would usually be obvious in the record so corrections could be applied.

Re:A single weather station?

[riverat1]

The "classical period" for measuring climate trends is 30 years. 1958 is over 50 years ago so that's plenty of time to measure a trend for that location. When combined with similar measurements from other locations it's possible to measure a trend regionally on up to globally. The Byrd Station measurements are just one more brick in the wall of evidence for global warming.

Re:A single weather station?

[phantomfive]

You're just lucky I'm too lazy to go look through the dataset for a weather station that's gone down over the last 30 years. As Richard Muller pointed out, some climate cycles last much longer than 30 years.

Re:A single weather station?

[riverat1]

The Antarctic ice sheet is definitely not growing. Measurements by the GRACE satellites and other sources show the Antarctic ice sheet is losing over 150 gigatonnes per year since 2000 and the loss is accelerating. Antarctic sea ice has increased somewhat but by less than 1/4 of the ice lost in Arctic so it's still a net loss globally. And your suppositions about weather stations away from UHI's show no warming is demonstrably false.

Re:A single weather station?

[riverat1]

So what if you can find a dataset for a weather station where temperatures have gone down for 30 years? It's just another single brick or from you POV maybe a missing brick. A few missing bricks here and there won't cause the wall to crumble. Unless you can come up with enough of them to eliminate the warming trend it doesn't matter and you can be certain if scientists knew of enough stations to do that we would know about it.

Absolutely some cycles last much longer than 30 years, the approximately 100,000 year cycle of glaciation and interglacials is an obvious example. But the changes from such long period cycles is hardly noticeable over a century. 30 years is long enough so the shorter term cycles such as the 11 year solar cycle and ENSO average out and have little effect on the overall average. It may be true that there are some medium term cycles that we need to know more about and perhaps some we haven't discovered yet but if they were all that significant you would think we'd see obvious signs of them in the data which we don't.

Re:A single weather station?

[phantomfive]

So what if you can find a dataset for a weather station where temperatures have gone down for 30 years?

It means you can't make firm conclusions about the climate from a single weather station. You need many.

Re:A single weather station?

[riverat1]

You certainly can make firm conclusions about the climate in the locale of that weather station. Global climate is simply a matter of combining the observations from a globally diverse set of stations. Of course the combining isn't so simple. You have to take care so areas where weather stations are more concentrated don't outweigh the areas where they are sparser and there are other considerations but as long as those things are properly addressed there is useful information to be garnered.

Re:A single weather station?

[phantomfive]

You certainly can make firm conclusions about the climate in the locale of that weather station.

True, true.

Re:A single weather station?

[Xyrus]

Fair enough, but nobody is very interested in local climate in the immediate vicinity of one weather station. The fact that a paper was written is evidence that the importance of these measurements is being overstated...

I know this is slashdot, but if you actually read the freakin' paper you wouldn't make arguments that make you sound like you have a serious reading comprehension problem. More than "one weather" station was involved in the research.

Re:A single weather station?

[Troed]

Thank you for that post.

Re:A single weather station?

[Xyrus]

I don't think it is that bad (outright fraud). It is just bias run rampant along with financial incentive to underestimate uncertainty combined with widespread failure of science education in statistics.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Financial incentive? Really? When someone says something like this it makes me seriously wonder what kind of math is being taught in school these days. Here you criticize the math capabilities of scientists and yet you seem to fail at comprehending orders of magnitude.

OK kids, you can do this with a few minutes and Google. Look up the budget allocations for climate science for our country. Go ahead. Now look up the profits of just one of the major fossil fuel companies. For extra credit, just look up the profits for one financial quarter of that company. OK kids, no which one is bigger? If you answered the fossil fuel company, you are correct! Now is it just a little bit bigger or a lot bigger? If you said a lot bigger, then you are correct again! Give yourself a gold star!

Climate scientists do what they because they like what they do and are concerned. If they wanted to really make bank, they would sell out their morals and hop on the fossil fuel train.

Re:A single weather station?

[repapetilto]

Sorry, that isn't what I am talking about. I am talking about the pressures scientists in all fields face to get "significant" results.

Re:A single weather station?

[repapetilto]

Plot the temperature by month from this paper (not just averages of months). The distribution of temps suddenly jumps upwards about two degrees starting in 1989 corresponding to when a sensor was switch out. They also corrected for some calibration errors and sensor drift, starting that year. But fail to tell us how exactly they corrected for the drift.

Here it is from all their data (including interpolated):
http://oi50.tinypic.com/2qn8x29.jpg

It is more obvious if you plot only the data they actually had.

On 18 January 2011, a new CR1000 datalogger (used to record and disseminate the readings
from the various AWS sensors) was installed on the Byrd AWS in replacement of the AWS-2B
electronic system used since 1989. Upon inspection of the old system at the AMRC, a
calibration error of 1.5 â--¦C (in excess) was identified for the temperature observations recorded
since 2002. In addition, subsequent testing in a newly available cold chamber at the AMRC
provided more accurate measurements of the temperature sensitivity of the AWS-2B system,
which results in a negative temperature drift as the temperature decreases. As a result,
corrections were made to the temperature observations recorded by the Byrd AWS between
1989 and 17 January 2011. The release of the corrected dataset on the AMRCâ(TM)s ftp server in
December 2011 was followed by an update of the monthly mean temperatures from Byrd AWS
available on the READER online archive10 (http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/READER/).
The effect of the corrections on the reconstructed temperatures is illustrated in Supplementary
Fig. S10. In the lower temperature range (typically -50 to -30 â--¦C), the temperature drift largely
compensated for the 1.5 â--¦C error in the 2002â"01/2011 observations, whereas no compensation
occurred at higher temperatures (-20 to 0 â--¦C). This explains the differences in the correctionsâ(TM)
impact between summer and winter, and between the 1989-2001 and 2002-2010 periods
(Supplementary Fig. S10). It is noteworthy that the temperature drift problem did not affect
significantly the AWS observations from 1980â"1988, and this for two reasons: (1) Excess
power from the RTG was used to keep the internal temperature of the electronics above -20 â--¦C.
This extra power was no longer available when the AWS started relying on batteries charged
by solar panels. (2) The central processing unit of the AWS was (paradoxically) a newer
version than the one subsequently used from 1989 onward.

Faster than thought....

[Anonymous Coward]

...now _that's_ fast.

It's not all bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully when the ice melts we will find the abandoned alien base.

Re:It's not all bad

[dreamchaser]

I certainly hope not.

West?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which way is west in antarctica?

Re:West?

[Black Parrot]

Which way is west in antarctica?

Face north, then turn left.

Re:West?

[JustOK]

north.

Re:West?

[Anonymous Coward]

That still doesn't correct any ambiguity. The "western half" of Antarctica is the part to your left if you are standing at the pole facing along the prime meridian towards Greenwich.

Re:West?

[reub2000]

I'm guessing the portion west of the prime meridian and east of the international date line. Just a guess.

Re:West?

[jamesh]

Which way is west in antarctica?

It's in the greatest hemisphere on earth - the western hemisphere!

Re:West?

[rolfwind]

Whoosh.

Re:West?

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess it that it is between 0 longitude and 180 longitude.

But that is just a guess.

Re:West?

[Anonymous Coward]

The western part is the skinny bit, the eastern part is the fat bit. Remember it as the eastern bit is south of China and the western bit is south of Texas.

Re:West?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which way is west in antarctica?

Face north, then turn left.

Which north?

Re:West?

[Anonymous Coward]

And now we have a definition for the western hemisphere

Re:West?

[davidwr]

Which one?

Keep picking one until you get it right.

Don't worry, if you get it wrong, someone on /. will tell you.

Re:West?

[riverat1]

Western Antarctica is the part of the continent that is in the western hemisphere, that is from the Prime Meridian at 0 degrees going west around to 180 degrees west. The Transantarctic Mountains pretty much follow the meridian and provide a convenient physical marker for the division.

But if you're asking the simpler question then if you're standing anywhere but exactly on the South Pole and you face north then west will be to your left. Right at the point of the South Pole the concepts of west, east and even south are undefined.

West Antarctica?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't just about everything more or less north in Antarctica?
Defining west in Antarctica is like trying to find a corner in which to piss in the oval office.

Re:West Antarctica?

[rossdee]

Thats only at the South Pole

Antarctica is BIG

Bigger than the 48 states

Re:West Antarctica?

[josmith42]

I just looked at Antartica in Google Maps. According to Google, it's bigger than the rest of the continents combined! Forget about raising ocean level. That fucker's gonna extinguish the sun if it melts.

Re:West Antarctica?

[bunratty]

Most common projections of the globe onto a float surface do not preserve area. Very often, the area near the poles is exaggerated. Greenland is actually smaller than Australia.

Re:West Antarctica?

[jamesh]

I just looked at Antartica in Google Maps. According to Google, it's bigger than the rest of the continents combined! Forget about raising ocean level. That fucker's gonna extinguish the sun if it melts.

On the internet, nobody knows if you're stupid or actually making a joke about distortions in size due to mapping projections.

Re:WEST Antarctica?

[CastrTroy]

Thank you. I'm glad I wasn't the only one. I'm guessing it's the left side, as one would view it on a map where North America is on the left, and Asia is on the right. The right side would be the east side I guess.

Re:West Antarctica?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Greenland icesheet is exactly the same size as the Australian state of Queensland (bigger than Texas and smaller than Alaska) and up to 4 km thick. Its melting wil raise the ocean by about 5 metres. West Antarctica is the small bit of that continent and the ice sheet melting there would raise the ocean by another 15 metres. East Antarctica is the fat bit, it's thought that its ice has never melted since it first formed and its melitng would raise the ocean by another 60 metres. My place is high up with long panoramic views in an arc of 270 degrees and it's 25km from the ocean. If all three melt ice caps melt then my place will be on the seaside at the end of a peninsula.

Re:WEST Antarctica?

[vmxeo]

I'm having a little trouble visualizing this concept.
I can imagine North, or South Antarctica, but those don't seem very useful either.

And here I thought the cardinal directions for that continent were North, South, More South, and Suddenly North Again.

Re:West Antarctica?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just looked at Antartica in Google Maps. According to Google, it's bigger than the rest of the continents combined! Forget about raising ocean level. That fucker's gonna extinguish the sun if it melts.

On the internet, nobody knows if you're stupid or actually making a joke about distortions in size due to mapping projections.

True, but before posting, remember - the default is set at "you're stupid"

Re:WEST Antarctica?

[ballpoint]

The right side would be the east side I guess.

And where do you guess the wrong side to be ?

Re:WEST Antarctica?

[angel'o'sphere]

Well, if you look at a map with a "coordinate system" that means longitude and latitude, you will see the 0 meridian (latitude) goes straight through the pole. So left of this meridian is west, right from it is east.

OTOH everything towards the pole (in this case) is south and everything away from the pole is north, so this might be confusing ;D

Re:WEST Antarctica?

[swell]

Why is this comment attached to WEST Antarctica?

An intrepid outdoorsman went exploring for the day. From his cabin he walked south five miles, then turned west and walked another 8 miles. He saw nothing of interest until then when he discovered a big scary bear. He paused long enough to take some pictures from a safe distance with his new Nikon camera with a 300mm lens. He walked the five miles back to the cabin to edit the new photos on his Mac PowerBook.

What color was the bear?

Re:WEST Antarctica?

[Dodgy G33za]

No weirder than the western hemisphere of the earth when you think about it. Which is exactly where it is. Of course you Americans make it harder for yourselves if you insist on putting the US in the centre of the map. Or should that be center?

Re:WEST Antarctica?

[FatLittleMonkey]

Pepsi?

Re:WEST Antarctica?

[FatLittleMonkey]

It's a reference to the Western/Eastern Hemisphere, not magnetic or rotational west.

"West Antarctica" is the bit that's south of South America. "East Antarctica" is the bit that south of southern Asia. The dividing line is the Prime Meridian (ie, from Greenwich around the International Date Line, through both poles.)

Re:West Antarctica?

[davidwr]

On the internet, nobody knows if you're stupid or actually making a joke about distortions in size due to mapping projections.

Only God makes jokes about distortions in size due to mapping projections.

Hmm, come to think of it, I see your point.

Re:WEST Antarctica?

[davidwr]

The dividing line is the Prime Meridian (ie, from Greenwich around the International Date Line, through both poles.)

There's a song that says "...as far as the east is from the west."

Since they touch I guess it's not all that far after all :).

Re:West Antarctica?

[jamesh]

On the internet, nobody knows if you're stupid or actually making a joke about distortions in size due to mapping projections.

Only God makes jokes about distortions in size due to mapping projections.

Hmm, come to think of it, I see your point.

Are you saying he transcribed the joke from a golden plate?

Re:West Antarctica?

[riverat1]

Lucky you. My place would be on an island in Willamette Sound but several miles from the shore. Unfortunately (but fortunately for civilization in general) we'll never live to see it. If you're young you may live long enough to see a meter of SLR or if something unexpected happens maybe 2 meters but it would take thousands of years for that huge hunk of ice that is Eastern Antarctica to melt under any temperature conditions that still allow human life on the surface.

aliens!

[pbjones]

the Aliens are starting to thaw out and the invasion will start soon.

Re:aliens!

[turkeydance]

maybe ET has this Reality Show thing figured out. essentially the Redneck Request: Hey Y'all, Watch This.

Re:aliens!

[davidwr]

Good thing we found the Stargate already. Or so I've heard. But don't listen to me, I'm just a movie producer.

Why is that in Fahrenheit?

[angel'o'sphere]

Is 4.4 much? Or is it not so much?
Scientific articles that suddenly use Fahrenheit are ... disgusting.

Re:Why is that in Fahrenheit?

[Anonymous Coward]

4.4 degrees is so trivial as to be disregardable. Proof that AGW and climate change is just made up by alarmists. Even science cannot be trusted because it is by committee what their official beliefs are.

Re:Why is that in Fahrenheit?

[Nocturnal Deviant]

its the difference between a long sleeve shirt and a hoodie say 60 degrees you have a long sleeve shirt 56 degrees is a hoodie(of course this is all relative as to how you feel the weather, personally i dont need a hoodie till about 48-50 degrees Fahrenheit).

So to be quite frank, it's the difference between no breeze and a slight one, will you feel it yes, will it bother you...not really.

Re:Why is that in Fahrenheit?

[PPH]

Same reason you weight yourself in stone when you are on a diet. It makes the numbers sound better.

Re:Why is that in Fahrenheit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Close. The current state has it that science cannot be trusted because they have to bias their research results so as to continue to get grant money from more politicized sources. We really don't know what many scientists do or do not believe because they cannot say anything that would compromise their funding.

There are a few that do not worry about this but they are usually branded as rogues that cannot be trusted.

You might guess that I don't believe that all global warming is AGW but even if it is then there's not much we can do to stop it. People are animals at their core and they will do whatever they feel they need to in order to survive and procreate as comfortably as they can. You have the inertia of the perceived needs of 7 billion individuals to fight. If it is AGW then we'll have to accept, adapt and improve using what we're left with. If it's not, then we'll have to accept, adapt and improve using what we're given.

Re:Why is that in Fahrenheit?

[angel'o'sphere]

He he he ...

Re:Why is that in Fahrenheit?

[MightyMartian]

In other words we will take no responsibility, do nothing to militate and will wantonly chew up resources.

We have a chance here to move away from an oil based economy with two bonuses; first we stop vomiting massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and secondly we don't burn away long chain hydrocarbons which are far more valuable than as energy.

Re:Why is that in Fahrenheit?

[AK Marc]

Isn't the money in the hands of the conservative in the USA? So why is there so much finding only for those who find for AGW? Seems like a lie to justify the reason nobody is disproving it. The best the deniers do is personal attacks, email intercepts, and non-scientific attacks.

Re:Why is that in Fahrenheit?

[riverat1]

I think American scientists often use the Fahrenheit scale in pieces meant for wider distribution. It helps cut down on the cranks emailing them about the metric system not being 'murican enough :)

Re:Why is that in Fahrenheit?

[riverat1]

4.4 degrees Fahrenheit is about 2.4 degrees Centigrade. Doesn't sound like much but consider that the difference between the depths of the Little Ice Age and the middle of the 20th Century is only about 1 degree Centigrade.

Re:Why is that in Fahrenheit?

[angel'o'sphere]

/rofl

Re:Why is that in Fahrenheit?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, only Kelvin is acceptable.

Fahrenheit below freezing?!

[amorsen]

From the article "[..] average annual temperatures in the center of the ice sheet that are nearly 50 degrees Fahrenheit below freezing." What is that, -50F or -18F?

"Celcius below freezing" I can understand, but not Fahrenheit or Kelvin. Well I suppose Kelvin could make sense, "Kelvin below freezing" would mean exactly the same as "Celcius below freezing".

Re:Fahrenheit below freezing?!

[bunratty]

Kelvins below freezing would not make any sense. Kelvins are absolute units. 0 K is absolute zero. 1 K is one degree Celsius above absolute zero. On the other hand, degrees Fahrenheit below freezing makes perfect sense. One degree Fahrenheit below freezing is 31 degrees Fahrenheit.

Re:Fahrenheit below freezing?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Kelvin below freezing would make exactly as much sense as Farenheit below freezing, or Celius below boiling, since none of those scales is zeroed at the point referenced. While it does presume knowledge of the reference point given, it is probably used in this instance to lend context to the figures being described for readers who do not have a personal reference for what -18F is like.

Re:Fahrenheit below freezing?!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that the article is stupid. You are.

Re:Fahrenheit below freezing?!

[wakeboarder]

Its all part of those in science who are evil and want to confuse you. I've also wondered the same thing, but if your just measuring a differential temperature 1K is the same as 1C when talking relative temperature.

Re:Fahrenheit below freezing?!

[jamesh]

From the article "[..] average annual temperatures in the center of the ice sheet that are nearly 50 degrees Fahrenheit below freezing." What is that, -50F or -18F?

"Celcius below freezing" I can understand, but not Fahrenheit or Kelvin. Well I suppose Kelvin could make sense, "Kelvin below freezing" would mean exactly the same as "Celcius below freezing".

When you say "degrees C below freezing" it would be reasonable to assume that by "freezing" you mean the freezing point of water, because that is what Celcius is calibrated to.

Fahrenheit is calibrated to the temperature of an salt + icy water solution (I think - or at least something like that), so if you said "degrees F below freezing" it could be a little ambiguous as to what you mean, at least to someone from a country that no longer uses the older measures. (My first guess would be "degrees F below the freezing point of goats blood"... based on what I know about the countries that still use Fahrenheit ;)

If the popular media started using Kelvin for any form of such measurement I'd regard them as too pretentious and would stop reading.

Re:Fahrenheit below freezing?!

[Kjella]

Kelvins below freezing would not make any sense. (...) One degree Fahrenheit below freezing is 31 degrees Fahrenheit.

Negative Kelvins would make no sense, but as long as the freezing point is 0 C = 32 F = 273.15 K then one degree Kelvin below freezing would be 272.15 K. Why should it be any different for Kelvins than for Fahrenheit?

Re:Fahrenheit below freezing?!

[disambiguated]

Negative Kelvin does have meaning. I've read that article 6 times and I still don't know what it means, but apparently it means something.

Re:Fahrenheit below freezing?!

[AK Marc]

Kelvins below freezing would not make any sense. Kelvins are absolute units. 0 K is absolute zero.

-50K makes no sense, but 50K below freezing (assuming pure water at STP) would not have ambiguous meaning, as the only two options, 273-50, and 0-50, one of which is "normal" and the other is not, so we take the only one with meaning. 50 below freezing in F is silly. 32-50 is more complicated than -18F, and there's no reason to prefer 32-50 over -18F.

Re:Fahrenheit below freezing?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be silly. The article is about a relative temperature. Saying that negative Kelvins doesn't make sense is a bit like claiming that subtraction of two unsigned integers can't have a negative result. (And I have seen code that made that assumption.)

Re:Fahrenheit below freezing?!

[riverat1]

Hint, using the word "freezing" usually implies something is turning from a liquid to a solid. Unless you specify otherwise or it's obvious by context it's going to refer to the freezing point of water. Since 23F is the freezing point of water -18F is your answer.

West Antartica?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where on the map is this mysterious "West Antartica". It looks like there is south Antartica and everything else is northern Antartica.

Re:West Antartica?

[mab]

The part that lies west of the IERS Reference Meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the Anti-meridian

Isn't this great?

[Oceanplexian]

In a few centuries we'll all be buying beachfront Antarctic condos.

Re:Isn't this great?

[turkeydance]

hey...it happened in Vietnam. consult your agent.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

West Antarctica...

[Ferretman]

...is an interesting place. It "stick out" more than the rest of the continent and hence is surrounded by more water, and it's home to at least 6 surface volcanoes (http://icecap.us/images/uploads/AntarcticVolcanoes2.jpg).

A few years back scientists discovered at least a bunch of sub-oceanic volcanoes with at least one merrily bubbling away. They remarked on how warm the waters were and how this had caused unique "oases" of lifeforms all along the extent. (http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?id=1541}

These and the unusual "surrounded by water" nature of this area are more likely contributors to localized melting.

Ferret

Re:West Antarctica...

[Anonymous Coward]

That and the whole "global warming" thing.

Re:West Antarctica...

[Anonymous Coward]

That and the whole "global warming" thing.

Which makes it a desirable place to call home, considering the natural air conditioning -- And no governments!

Re:West Antarctica...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Surrounded by water"? All continents are surrounded by water. West Antarctica isn't any more surrounded than it was before, so how does "surrounded by water" cause melting unless it's due to warmer water (aka global warming)? There's a lot more information about West Antarctica known to scientists (and only one willing to read) then what you learned just looking at the coast line. Here's one fact you don't seem to understand. The rock under West Antarctica is mostly below sea level. If it wasn't for the ice, West Antarctica would be underwater, not surrounded by water as you think. This is a huge deal. It means the ice there isn't very stable and it's a very important place to keep an eye on.

Re:West Antarctica...

[Anonymous Coward]

That, and global warming correlates perfectly with the amount of jet aviation movements. Contrails are sufficient explanation of global warming.

See the 9/11 aftermath: grounding of flights resulted in a decrease of North American temperatures.

Re:West Antarctica...

[riverat1]

I think he was talking about the Antarctic Peninsula which juts out toward South America from the continent and is in Western Antarctica. And it's the area that's seen the strongest warming on the continent.

And in a other news

[jacekm]

Jupiter pole has warmed by 10 degrees.

JAM

Re:And in a other news

[bunratty]

Unlike Earth, whose temperature varies as one moves closer to or farther from the equator, Jupiter's temperature depends more on height above the surface. This is because heat is driven not by the sun but by the interior of the planet. Nice try, though!

How about the rest of Antartica?

[wakeboarder]

You always hear about the warmest part how about the rest of it? Oh, and I wanted to look up the local climate for my area because I got into an argument with my boss about local climate (I think it is warming up here). I could not download more than several days to 1 year of temperature data anywhere, so where would I find that data? Any guesses? I'm in the states. The best one I could find is weather underground, but that will only let you download a year-ish at a time.

Re:How about the rest of Antartica?

[dugjohnson]

You got in an argument with your boss? About weather? And you want to keep this job? If the latter, I'd figure out a way to prove your boss right and then suck up. Or you can just be right and hungry. Just a thought.

Re:How about the rest of Antartica?

[Nocturnal Deviant]

http://data.un.org/Explorer.aspx?d=CLINO
About 5 minutes on google, didn't really check for much else being that i don't really care, but that should give you a starter point at the minimum.

Re:How about the rest of Antartica?

[riverat1]

You will find the information you're looking for at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. The link to Land-Based Station Data is the one you want to follow.

don't tell me you've never heard of hyperfreeze

[decora]

It's how Geordi solved the locked intercooler problem in season 7 episode 14 - the Ferengi warp coils had damaged the nydomium lines to the point where crystalline anti-pores were building up inside the reaction chamber. He had to redirect the hauser inverters to counterfeed through their own backup loop just to keep the Marfa separators from clogging.

Meh.

[PPH]

Call me when Greenland is warm enough to support agriculture.

Re:Meh.

[bunratty]

It will be hard calling you six years ago.

Re:Meh.

[angel'o'sphere]

Potatoes and Grains are growing in Greenland quite fine, since a decade or so ... (after 1500 years of coverage). Last time Greenland was green (hence the name) was roughly around 500 AC.

Re:Meh.

[Greystripe]

Curious, is that 500 AD, BC, or some measurement of time based on Anonymous Cowards?

Re:Meh.

[riverat1]

Greenland has never had significantly less ice than it has now in at least 6 or 7 thousand years and probably in over 100 thousand years. There is enough ice currently on Greenland to raise sea levels by around 20 feet so each 5% is 1 foot of sea level rise. So if even only 5 or 10% of Greenland's ice had melted it would have caused obvious changes in sea level. Sea level has been remarkably stable over the last 7,000+ years rising around 4 meters or a little over half of a millimeter per year over that period.

Re:Meh.

[Troed]

Greenland has never had significantly less ice than it has now in at least 6 or 7 thousand years

For various definitions of "significant", of course. In this context we're comparing today and the MWP.

http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/voyage/subset/greenland/archeo.html

I live in Scandinavia and as far as we're concerned the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period and the Bronze Age Warm Period were warmer than we are currently. Thus, likely less ice in Greenland as well.

http://www.clim-past.net/8/765/2012/cp-8-765-2012.html

http://www.wsl.ch/fe/landschaftsdynamik/dendroclimatology/Publikationen/Esper_etal.2012_GPC

http://hol.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/10/26/0959683612460791.abstract

Re:Meh.

[riverat1]

As I said, it there were even 5% less ice on Greenland back then than there is now that would have been accompanied by a sea level rise of about 1 foot (30.5 cm). That would be enough to show up in studies of sea level over the ages. There is no indication that was the case. There may have been marginally less ice especially near the southern tip of Greenland in those times but at best it couldn't have even close to 5% less ice.

Re:Meh.

[Troed]

There are indeed several indications that the sea level has been more than a foot higher in recent history:

If the port was bustling 2000 years ago it is reasonable to suppose that tidal access was less
limited then than it is today-or was at least as good. Consequently the evidence suggests that
in 350BC there was probably a little more water than exists today in order for it to be a
worthwhile place to ship cargo from, and therefore current ocean volume (glacier melt and
thermal expansion) is less now than then, to take into account the known land changes.

“The North Sea had a nasty little jump between 350 and 550AD, flooding the coasts of
northern Europe with an extra 2 feet of water and sending its inhabitants — folk known
as Angles and Saxons — fleeing (although “conquering” might be the better word) into
ill-prepared Roman territories.

The results
indicate that during the Byzantine period, sea level at Caesarea was higher by about 30
cm than today. The Late Moslem and Crusader data shows greater fluctuations but the
data sets are also much smaller than for the earlier periods.”

Wave-cut notches along the seaward shoreline confirm a site-specific
rheological model for the northern the Red Sea that indicates a sea-level highstand (~1
m above present MHW) during or immediately prior to occupation. ... etc.

Quotes from here - click for citations.

http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/document.pdf

Re:Meh.

[angel'o'sphere]

There never was a roman warms period or a bronce age warms period. This are american scientific myths, with the aim to "debunk" AWG science.

Greenland was green at the coastlines, when it was discovered by Erik the Red, hence its name. That was around 500 AV ... the exact date you can google or wikipeida ...

Re:Meh.

[angel'o'sphere]

I guess a 20km to 50km ice free stripe at the greenland coasts is far less than 5% ice free.

Re:Meh.

[angel'o'sphere]

If you had read my post you had seen: 500 AC. (Wich is the same as 500 AD if you are a latin guy)

Re:Meh.

[Troed]

I'm quite sure you believe that. It's not true, however. Those warm periods are well documented not only in climate proxies but also in documented human history. As a Scandinavian, they're integral to our culture since those were the periods of prosperity.

You might want to ask yourself what has caused you to believe differently, and how the above information will change your beliefs now.

Scandinavia and the Roman Warm Period and Medieval Warm Period:
http://www.wsl.ch/fe/landschaftsdynamik/dendroclimatology/Publikationen/Esper_etal.2012_GPC

Scandinavia and the Bronze Age Warm Period:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Bronze_Age#Climate

You're also wrong about Röde Viking and Greenland btw, and I suggest looking into the archeological dig around the frozen viking village for more insight.

Re:Meh.

[riverat1]

That was an interesting read. I don't know if Curry's analysis is right or not but there's plenty of uncertainty about the details of sea level over the Holocene and I'm keeping an open mind. Nevertheless she only talks about sea level excursions of less than a meter which would be at most about 15% of Greenland's ice. However if Greenland is melting that much then there's got to be other areas of ice melting as well (like nearby Baffin Island for instance and if the warming was truly global Antarctica) so not all of the rise would have been from Greenland. I'll concede that perhaps something between 10 and 15% of Greenland's ice melted (though I doubt it was that much) but that's a far cry from most of it.

Re:Meh.

[angel'o'sphere]

Well my point is: americans claim about historic climate this and that to conclude right now nothing serious is happening.

Your two links unfortunately lik to the english/american wikipedia.

The german article about the nordic bronce age is here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordische_Bronzezeit
And this article clearly states that "a bronce age warmth period" is a rumour and lacks so far any evidence.

Regarding the "roman warmth period" I stand corrected, I mixed it up with the medividal one (I was unaware there was a "second" medividal warmth period and that the first one is now called "roman")

I did not say anything about RÃde Viking, I so I don't understand to what you refer ... or to what exactly you object. (And I find no google hits for it to dig into it)

Vikings hold many settle ments in Greenland since roughly 800. In the south they bred cattle and farmed grain, however it is uncertain for how long ... later they lived from whaling and other hunts, also the trade with Island and Norway was quite long active.

Perhaps google for BrattahlÃÃ (last to letters are likely destroyed, it is an I with an accent on it and a thorn), the town where Eric the Red lived. (Brattahlid)

Re:Meh.

[Daetrin]

It was pretty clear that he _had_ read your post, and was just confused by the "AC" notation. I'd never heard the term before either, and upon checking wikipedia i notice it says:

"These terms are chiefly found in modern Latin texts. English speakers are unlikely to recognize them. Neither the Chicago Manual of Style (14th ed.), the American Heritage Dictionary (3rd ed.), nor P. Kenneth Seidelmann's Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac (1992, University Science Books) mention AC, ACN, or Ante Christum Natum."

If you're going to go around using terms that you know most people aren't going to recognize, especially ones that could easily be mistaken for typos of more common terms, there's no reason to be snarky when people predictably get confused. A simple definition of the term without trying to imply that the failure in comprehension was due to a lack of effort on their part would certainly do.

Unless of course you're deliberately baiting people so you can boast about how you know Latin and the attempt to denigrate their reading skills is meant to call attention to your own superiority. But that would be kind of a dick move.

Re:Meh.

[angel'o'sphere]

Sorry, if I sounden snarky, for me it was not so clear/obvious that he was confused about the term 'AC' .
What is a more approniated one for english speakers?

And you seem to be wrong/confused as well, AC is ment to be 'after cristus birth' I did not use it in the latin term sense (the wikipedia link you gave), I used it as AD in the latin sense which means 'anno domini' ... but meanwhile I'm confused my self ... perhaps I should go back a few parents of parents :)

Re:Meh.

[Daetrin]

I can't speak for all english speakers, but the only terms i'm familiar with are AD/BC ("Anno Domini" and "Before Christ") and CE/BCE ("Common Era" and "Before Common Era".) AD and BC are by far the most common terms. BC and BCE are "politically correct" terms mostly used in scholarly works or by people who feel rather adamantly about being non-Christian.

And i'd certainly believe i'm confused about AC. As i said, this is the first time i've ever heard the term, and that seemed to be the only relevant wikipedia page.

Re:Meh.

[Troed]

The german article about the nordic bronce age is here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordische_Bronzezeit
And this article clearly states that "a bronce age warmth period" is a rumour and lacks so far any evidence.

FYI, as a Swede I studied enough German in school to conclusively tell you that you're misrepresenting what the article is saying.

More on the Bronze Age warm period: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440312000416

Re:Meh.

[angel'o'sphere]

Then you missed this part?

Klima [Bearbeiten]
Behauptungen, dass (nicht nur) die Nordische Bronzezeit von einem warmen Klima geprÃgt sein soll, halten sich hartnÃckig, konnten aber bisher nicht schlüssig bewiesen werden.
Should I translate it?

Thanx for the link though, I'm a bit ill right now and will read it when I can focus better.

Happy New Year!

Re:Meh.

[angel'o'sphere]

My fault then, I as a non english speaker simply concluded by analogy that AC was "After" as BC is "Before". Sorry ;D Was not aware that you use AD in normal english. Funny, I stumbled today over CE ... in an science article and needed to look it up as well.

Re:Meh.

[Troed]

I can read it fine. It does not state what you claimed it did. Maybe you should read the links I've given (2 out of 3 to actual research papers) and then go and edit the wiki entry since it's not accurately reflecting current state of knowledge?

A scientist accepts findings contrary to his views. Religious acolytes don't. Choose which one you want to be.

(Your initial claim about Bronze and Roman warm periods being american "myths" has been thoroughly refuted)

Nevermind, figured it out...

[wakeboarder]

This is a better link, and has more info: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-rapid-west-antarctic-ice-sheet.html

Re:Nevermind, figured it out...

[wakeboarder]

You know this map says to me that Antarctica has warmed up 0.3C (or K) and quite possibly that one station in antartica is out of sync... And since this data is only from the last ~50 years, I don't feel the need to get worked up about it. By the way isn't the global average in the past higher than the 0.3C shown here?

Re:Nevermind, figured it out...

[emt377]

Yes and no; it's a measurement of the temperature of the ice sheet, not air temperature. It stands to reason that if thinning of the sheet is localized, so is warming since the two go hand in hand.

WEST Antarctica?

[swell]

I'm having a little trouble visualizing this concept.
I can imagine North, or South Antarctica, but those don't seem very useful either.

Re: "Worse Than We Thought"

[minogully]

Having trouble sticking to one topic, are we?

...alternatively

[Roger W Moore]

But if you flip a coin 1000 times and it comes up heads 659 times, you can say with a high degree of confidence that the coin is not fair.

Not quite - it might also be because the person tossing it is not flipping it fairly...which interestingly is also like climate change. We can have a very high degree of certainty that the Earth is warming but the degree to which this is due to human influence vs. natural influences is not yet very clear (at least that's what my colleagues in geophysics tell me).

Re:...alternatively

[bunratty]

What specific "natural influence" is causing the Earth to warm, and where is the evidence that supports this idea? To me, the "nature done it" is as much a cop out for global warming as "God done it" is for evolution. What are the details of this "natural influence"? Is overall solar output increasing significantly? I remember an extended solar minimum a few years ago, during which the temperatures on Earth did not go down. Are more or fewer cosmic rays hitting the Earth, causing more or fewer clouds, which is causing a warming effect? I've heard some talk about that idea, but never any measurements of cosmic rays increasing or decreasing over time.

Re:...alternatively

[Anonymous Coward]

you know what?

no one with half a brain cell cares whether or not the cause of warming over time is due to burning of fossil
fuels or some yet undiscovered natural process.

the only important question is whether or not there is anything we as a people could conceivably do to mitigate
the environmental changes which over the long term are going to be kind of a big deal. if you insist on distilling
reality down to a dollar count, a big deal in terms of costs.

and it turns out that under the best understanding of the way that the light form the sun interacts with the
mass of the planet, and the incoming light and outgoing heat react with the atmosphere, that there is...if we just
tried to deal with it.

so in summary shut the fuck up and deal with consensus reality for once

Re:...alternatively

[Roger W Moore]

What specific "natural influence" is causing the Earth to warm, and where is the evidence that supports this idea?

There are many natural influences: precession of the earth's axis, precession of the earth's orbit, ocean currents which change due to continental drift, massive volcanic eruptions, meteor impact etc. There is an established record of global temperature variations thousands, if not millions, of years before humans burnt fossil fuels from e.g. O16/O18 isotope ratios. The causes of some are believed to be known and understood but others are not but it is very clear that the climate has fluctuated by itself before humans were on the scene. That is not to say that we should not be very careful about our impact on the environment because we don't know exactly what the effect is but I have yet to see compelling evidence that humans are primarily responsible for the current change but that certainly remains a distinct possibility.

Re:...alternatively

[Roger W Moore]

no one with half a brain cell cares whether or not the cause of warming over time is due to burning of fossil fuels or some yet undiscovered natural process...the only important question is whether or not there is anything we as a people could conceivably do to mitigate the environmental changes

Fortunately those of us with more than half a brain cell realize that the two are very closely linked. If the current rise in temperature is driven by natural cycles then stopping the burning of fossil fuel will have little, if any impact. So how do you know what to do to mitigate the impact if we are not certain what is causing it? Reducing fossil fuel use is probably a good idea but when I talk to scientists active in the field of climate research they themselves say that the jury is still out on how much is human driven vs. natural but reducing fossil fuel consumption is probably a good idea while we figure it out.

so in summary shut the fuck up and deal with consensus reality for once

What an enlightened attitude. I suppose a few thousand years ago you would have been arguing that the Earth is flat because that was the consensus? I'm a scientist so actual reality, rather than a group consensus of reality, is what I'm interested in. If you want to convince be I am wrong provide evidence and reasoned argument. Swearing about a consensus will help be form an opinion about you but will do little to persuade me that I'm wrong especially when I've spoken with colleagues in climate research and they say the same: it is not yet clear how much of the recent climate change is due to humans.

Re:...alternatively

[angel'o'sphere]

We can have a very high degree of certainty that the Earth is warming but the degree to which this is due to human influence vs. natural influences is not yet very clear (at least that's what my colleagues in geophysics tell me).
Then ask them to name one single (possible?) natural cause. As I for my part I'm not aware there could be one. And as far as I can tell I never heard about one. Would be very interesting to get some shown.

Re:...alternatively

[angel'o'sphere]

There are many natural influences: precession of the earth's axis: nonsense. GPS satellites would show that. Even a hobby astronomer would notice it when a star rises not over the "expected" spot over the horizon.
precession of the earth's orbit: that is nonsense. As above, even a hobby astronomer would realize that easily.
Both would have been in the news long time ago. ,ocean currents which change due to continental drift this is also nonsense. Continental drift is measured in inches per year or less. Also if the ocean currents had changed, we knew that already. Ever looked at a nautic map?
, massive volcanic eruptions, meteor impact etc did we have any of those lately?

Re:...alternatively

[Anonymous Coward]

Then take it as an interesting hint that maybe you could learn more. If he'd said something you already agree with would you be asking for names and proof? If not, that's an interesting example of how false sense of consensus builds bias. Too often consensus is manufactured politically simply by marginalising any dissenting voices. Don't fall into that trap. Look for dissenting opinions. You know people don't often want their names handing out to strangers. But you can take it as a hint that there is more diversity of opinion than you previously knew.

Re:...alternatively

[pitchpipe]

I'm a scientist... ...especially when I've spoken with colleagues in climate research and they say the same: it is not yet clear how much of the recent climate change is due to humans.

Unless you are ready to give names and other verifiable information on this, I have to assume that you are full of **it. Don't make claims you can't support.

What an asshole. Don't you know that he's a world renowned researcher at the University of Phoenix?

Re:...alternatively

[Dodgy G33za]

I haven't personally received compelling evidence that the world is round, made up of atoms and over four billion years old. But since most scientists who have spent their lives studying these fields agree that this is the case, I have no reason to doubt it.

Same with global warming. That the detractors are often right wing and heavily influenced by either god botherers or fossil fuel lobby groups only makes me more comfortable with believing the science.

If you don't think that humans are the cause, as well as identifying the actual cause you also have to explain why the rules of thermodynamics don't apply to a situation where we are adding a gas to the atmosphere that is known to increase heat retention.

Oh, and as it happens even IF you don't think humans are the cause, what is the downside to moving to non-polluting forms of energy before we need to?

And even it it is just local weather that this station is reading, it is the local weather of one massive lump of ice that the world rather needs to stay in solid form, so probably more relevant than, say, the temperature of a desert in Arizona. Unless you live there and quite like the thought of one day being on a beachfront.

Re:...alternatively

[cheesybagel]

What? Mount St. Helens, Mount Pinatubo, never heard of those volcanic eruptions? Surely you jest.

Re:...alternatively

[cheesybagel]

Actually I am not right wing and I am still not convinced that man action has any significant effect on global temperatures. It just does not pass the smell test sorry. Compared with the energy output of the Sun which reaches the Earth our own energy consumption is insignificant.

Re:...alternatively

[Mindcontrolled]

It's more complicated than that. He not only has to provide a natural source for the warming, he also has to provide a mechanism which counteracts the effect of increased CO2, which, after all, is basic physics and known and validated over and over again since 150 years.

Re:...alternatively

[Albinoman]

You argue that subtle changes can have no large effect, but I bet you'd be the first to argue that a few degrees can cause a tipping point in global warming, right? Pick one. As far as precession goes, no one "notices" this, as if we wake up one day and the Earth shifted a few degrees. We know it happens about a degree every 72 years, full cycle every 26,000. And no, GPS satellites would not be affected because their measurements are relative to Earth, whereas precession is measured relative to stars.

Also if the ocean currents had changed, we knew that already. Ever looked at a nautic map? Ever heard of El Niño? Ocean currents shift all the time.

Eyjafjallajökull? Maybe not massive, but we noticed its effects and it didn't have to be massive.

Re:...alternatively

[jbmartin6]

I'm not claiming to subscribe to this theory, but the one 'natural origin' idea that seemed plausible on the surface at least was multi-decade ocean current oscillations: e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_multidecadal_oscillation

Re:...alternatively

[Waffle Iron]

You completely misunderstand the mechanism of AGW.

It has nothing to do with how much energy we consume. It has to do with the ever-accumulating by products of some of that energy production. These by products alter the earth's thermal balance by orders of magnitude more than the amount of energy we directly harness. This is possible because, as you mention, the earth receives staggering amounts of energy from the sun.

In particular, mankind harnesses about 1.5e13 watts of power overall. The earth receives about 1.8e17 watts of power from the sun. So we produce less than one part in 11000 of the energy received, which by itself would only raise temperatures about 0.03C assuming linear relationship. The rest of the ~4C predicted to occur is due to the man-made alterations to the greenhouse effect.

Re:...alternatively

[Anonymous Coward]

Global warming correlates perfectly with the amount of jet aviation movements. Contrails are sufficient explanation of global warming.

See the 9/11 aftermath: grounding of flights resulted in a decrease of North American temperatures.

 

Re:...alternatively

[cheesybagel]

One of the supposed major global warming gases considered to be the big meanie is CO2. Well CO2 is plant food. If you increase CO2 atmospheric composition you will get algal blooms and increased plant growth which will counter the CO2 increase. Water vapor has even more of a global warming effect yet it gets ignored for rather obvious reasons. Our global water vapor output is insignificant compared to ocean water evaporation plus water vapor gets precipitated out of the atmosphere as rainfall.

AGW believers just cannot accept the irrelevance of human activities in the planet compared to natural effects.

Re:...alternatively

[Waffle Iron]

Well CO2 is plant food. If you increase CO2 atmospheric composition you will get algal blooms and increased plant growth which will counter the CO2 increase.

Wow! It's unbelievable that science has totally overlooked that! You just might get a Nobel prize for that discovery! Decades of careful measurements of CO2 measurements have been rendered powerless by your hand waving!

Water vapor has even more of a global warming effect yet it gets ignored for rather obvious reasons. Our global water vapor output is insignificant compared to ocean water evaporation plus water vapor gets precipitated out of the atmosphere as rainfall.

It's not overlooked. It's not a driving factor in climate because water vapor's half life in the atmosphere is about 48 hours. Excess water vapor rains out within a day or two. The amount of evaporation is driven by global temperature, which is influenced by long lived atmospheric gasses.

The amount of water vapor is an effect, not a cause.

AGW believers just cannot accept the irrelevance of human activities in the planet compared to natural effects.

Given that everything you've said is wrong, it's not surprising that you hold this unsubstantiated viewpoint.

Re:...alternatively

[angel'o'sphere]

You argue that subtle changes can have no large effect
No I did not.
I guess you answered to the wrong person. I completely agree with you.

Except for: Ever heard of El Niño? This is not an ocean current phenomena.
Ocean currents shift all the time.
  No, they don't.
Ocean currents, as we have them right now, are as far as we know, unchanged since minimum 700 years (discovery of america) or even longer if you look towards polynesia or any other sea faring folks.

Re:...alternatively

[angel'o'sphere]

You are right ;D
I wanted to give him a chance to explain the les complicated things first ;D

Re:...alternatively

[angel'o'sphere]

What has that to do with the topic?
Did any of those change earth orbit? Or anything else?

Strange Name

[Roger W Moore]

While you can find west there is no "western edge" to the continent so it seems a somewhat strange name given that no part of the continent is more westerly than any other.

Re:Strange Name

[reub2000]

Do you have a better name?

and some areas in Russia...

[night_flyer]

... are experiencing record cold

Down to -50C: Russians freeze to death as strongest-in-decades winter hits

http://rt.com/news/russia-freeze-cold-temperature-379/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-25/russia-s-south-hit-by-record-low-temperatures-center-says.html

Re:and some areas in Russia...

[bunratty]

We would expect to see some record lows even during warming. The important point is that there are many more record highs being hit in recent years than record lows, which is exactly what you'd expect if the climate is warming. You can't tell whether the Earth as a whole is warming or cooling based on cherry-picking data.

Re:and some areas in Russia...

[AK Marc]

You have to have more energetic atmosphere to hit record lows. And warming means more energetic. It takes a lot of energy to move all that cold air from the poles.

Re:and some areas in Russia...

[Troed]

Where's the data on a more energetic atmosphere?

http://policlimate.com/tropical/global_running_ace.png

Wrong naming

[gmuslera]

This is not about climate, is about temper. The measurement was done in the base now known as Angry Byrd.

Melting Antartica

[manu0601]

Well, if we manage to melt Antartica, we are in hot waters!

Here is the sea rise interactive map. You can choose how much sea level rise and see if you still live on land. I recall melting the whole Antartica would cause a sea rise of 70 meters. I do not know if it includes water thermal dilatation, but I hope it does.

Re:Melting Antartica

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting tool but it only goes up to +60m. At that point my house is still on dry land and about 6 blocks from the beach. It should be worth even more then than now, even with Vancouver's currently inflated housing prices, since it will be so close to the seashore. I was thinking of selling out but I think I'll hang on for a while. Another +10m might put me right at the shore.

Unfortunately, I see that a +40m rise will doom Disneyland and Disneyworld. I'd better go soon, I guess.

Re:Melting Antartica

[KarlIsNotMyName]

" I do not know if it includes water thermal dilatation, but I hope it does."

I'm not sure, but if you add all the rest of the ice that could melt, apparently it's 80 meters.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/

I live far inland and a couple of hundred meters above sea level, so I figure I'm safe in any case. But the lake I can see from my house is only 70 meters above sea level. The land of the fjords is going to get a lot more fjords, I think.

Re:Melting Antartica

[terec]

I live far inland and a couple of hundred meters above sea level, so I figure I'm safe in any case.

You're safe for the simple reason that, no matter how much warming AGW may cause, it would still take centuries for Antarctica to melt.

Re:Melting Antartica

[KarlIsNotMyName]

I wouldn't mind living for a few centuries, if technology and medicine made that a pleasant experience.

Re:Melting Antartica

[AK Marc]

Well, and the stupid map doesn't cover most of Alaska, so I can't check myself.

Re:Melting Antartica

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, quadrupling your lifetime and more than quadrupling your carbon emissions. I wonder how that will go over with the AGW activists!

Re:Melting Antartica

[manu0601]

I live far inland and a couple of hundred meters above sea level, so I figure I'm safe in any case.

Do you have some defensive plan against the millions that will want to live at yours in such a scenario?

Re:Melting Antartica

[KarlIsNotMyName]

I was thinking snow and ice, but I'm not sure if that will last.

And we keep shooting the bears (not me personally, but they're apparently not allowed to be here).

Maybe if we beef up the hole in the ozon layer again, and hoard all the sun screen.

thats nice

[Anonymous Coward]

im just glad that we finally determined climate change was caused by natural phenomena and not mankind.

Re: "Worse Than We Thought"

[Anonymous Coward]

It does actually all come together in a thing called Agenda 21, a reformation of the political structure of the world into a single world government. The Agenda needed a single threat to try and force everyone into a single path and that's AGW. To create a sustainable world they needed a way to bring the American middle class to its knees and live at a subsistence level like the third world countries and the financial crisis will do that. To create a sustainable world they need to bring the world's birth rate under control and social changes that make the standard family the exception will do that. The only thing left is to bring the current population down to a sustainable level but they'll need a large pandemic for that. Look up ebolapox. If it hasn't actually been created already, it's being worked on.

Re: "Worse Than We Thought"

[MightyMartian]

I hope your family is planning on getting rid of their firearms soon.

Fresh penguin of Antartica

[Datamonstar]

Innnn... West Antartica, born and raised...
On an iceberg is where I spent most of my days...
Chilling out maxin' relaxin' all cool
And shooting some icicles outside the school...

I'll spare you poor folks the rest...

Re:Fresh penguin of Antartica

[howlingfrog]

You win the internet today.

A Gambler is to a Casino as Weather is to Climate

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a good allegory would involve a Casino and a gambler. Only one is said to "always win" with any certainty.

But I'm off topic as well as the argument is over the interpolation of climate using a single weather station.

climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

has always been caused by natural phenomena. In fact, you could say climate change IS natural phenomena.

Climate alarmism is a virus.

No way, Jose

[PacRim Jim]

West Antarctica Warming Faster Than Thought? I dunno, I can think fairly fast.

Study shows anything can happen

[TapeCutter]

There's a good write up on realclimate for anyone interested in what "the scientists" have to say. The write up is by the lead scientist who did the earlier 2009 study. Despite the pile of posts below decrying the "one station" thing, the new study used several lines of evidence. Also both papers were published in Nature, which is not really well known for publishing sloppy statistical papers.

The 2009 study questioned the assumption that WA was neither warming or cooling. This new study extends and refines the first, it has a steeper trend and better confidence levels.
This is good old fashioned, plodding, science that evolved something like this....
Stage 1 - "That's odd" - why is everywhere warming except WA?
Stage 2 - We looked more closely at the numbers for WA, it is warming so the assumption is incorrect.
Stage 3 - We looked again in a different way with cleaner data, we now have a better estimate of how fast it's warming that is at the upper bound of the previous error bars (error bars that IIRC were mercilessly ridiculed by anti-science types as "study shows anything can happen").

Speaking of climate trends, I've personally noticed (as opposed to measured ;) a change in the slashdot climate over the last few years, there is much less outright AGW denial on slashdot, my hypothesis is that "teaching the controversy" works against the "teacher" on a site full of amateur and professional nerds. The post with a barrage of well rehearsed talking points is slowly byt surely being replaced with a sort of insolent shrug, almost like as surly teenager's "whatever" when they just lost an argument to a parent, lets hope that in the new year they get over their embarrassment at being duped by amoral lobbyists, drop the defensive behavior, and get angry at the people who deliberately mislead them.

Re:Study shows anything can happen

[repapetilto]

Also both papers were published in Nature, which is not really well known for publishing sloppy statistical papers.
       

I consider Nature well known for publishing incomplete, sloppy papers. This may not be true for climate science, but in other fields nature articles are a step above news articles.

Re:Study shows anything can happen

[riverat1]

Re: /. climate; Yea, I've noticed that too. The heat on the /. climate change posts seems to be dissipating. Reality has a way of slapping you upside the head and saying "This is the way it is whether you like it or not."

But still I think for a lot of those who worship at the altar of the free market it will be tough accepting the necessary solution of (eventually) eliminating fossil fuel use. What they fail to realize is that if you include the externalized costs FF use is already more expensive that renewable energy.

Re:Study shows anything can happen

[Anonymous Coward]

People started shrugging and saying "Whatever" when they realized that there wasn't anything to worry about. They are seeing through the AGW movement and are just plain tired of arguing with you. Weather isn't Climate...unless it's hot. We are approaching the tipping point...we are approaching the tipping point...ok, NOW we are approaching the tipping point. This year was the hottest EV-ER!...except for that time in 1932.
You can't say Global Warming has stopped with only 5 years records. You can't say Global Warming is stopping with only 10 years records. You can't say Global Warming has stopped with only 15 years records.

More...We can tell you the average temperature of Australia with only a few hundred stations...we'll just interpolate the temps in that great big fucking ass desert part...and of course it must be HOT! Hey, here's 100 years of temperature records...but they must have fucked it up so I'll just "adjust it up". Gee, the temps in Dallas have skyrocketed in the last decade...it must be global warming! What?...that parking lot they built around the monitoring station? What parking Lot?

Hurricanes are not caused by Global Warming...well,. maybe they are. Especially if they hit New York. They've never done that before...except for the several times before.

We HAVE to solve Global Warming or we WILL ALL DIE! Nuclear Power? Zero carbon emissions...NO! if we go nuclear we WILL ALL DIE! Taxing is the ONLY Answer!

Yeah...we've had it with your bullshit. People aren't realizing you are right. They are mocking you when they want to have fun and just ignoring your irrelevant ass the rest of the time. No one cares about your stupid made up bull shit.

Re:Study shows anything can happen

[Troed]

there is much less outright AGW denial on slashdot

Anyone who believes there exists such a things as "denial" (and that there's oil funded denial "machine") is not doing science but is following a religion. Apparently one Slashdot editor is as well, since each and every "the sky is falling" study gets reported here - but not the multitude of published scientific evidence that points to all existing models having overestimated the actual feedbacks.

I like this study, by Keith Briffa. A previous study of his was used in creating the latest "IPCC hockey stick", and has been well publicised all over the world. Briffa himself has now released that there were errors in the previous study, and now that he's updated it with proper math the hockey stick is gone.

http://hol.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/10/26/0959683612460791.abstract

The way to differentiate people doing science from those following a religion is in how they react to what I just wrote above. A scientist goes "hey, that's interesting". A religious fanatic starts spouting things like "denier!" and "it's worse than we thought ANYWAY".

Re: 2.4 +- 1.2C ?!

[fygment]

The error margin is 50%? So the 2.4 was twice what was expected BUT with the margin of error, it actually could be what was expected?
What is satisfying is seeing someone actually included the error margin. The climate models never seem to. The best you can say is that they reflect their assumptions very precisely, you just never know how bad the assumptions are.

Re:And the trumpeting doesn't help

[Waffle Iron]

And every time normal people wake up to pretty much normal weather, that will lower confidence in AGW.

Normal weather???

What rock have you been living under the past couple of years?

This is not news for nerds, stuff that matters...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else sick of the recent rash of bullshit global warming stories to hit slashdot recently?
Got put your fucking liberal agenda on digg.com
If you want to post about some new cool gadget or the technology behind the instrumentation used in "climate science", go ahead...
But leave the fucking interpretation of data that you've hand picked to move your agenda further for some other site...
The one that really made me want to puke was the "news" about hurricanes from 1981 to now... Nothing bad happened before 1981... WTF?

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/11/02/152213

I know ... there's no changing your mind, and in fact all of you that believe humans have changed the climate now believe it and defend even more when people like me post things like this...

Re: 2.4 +- 1.2C ?!

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was twice what was expected it is within 100% error margin, not 50%

How about think

[Anonymous Coward]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/19/why-it-seems-that-severe-weather-is-getting-worse-when-the-data-shows-otherwise-a-historical-perspective/

On a website devoted to news for nerds you would think there'd be a lot more thinking going on rather than blind following. Unfortunately, even nerds get lazy.

loopy climatologists

[Anonymous Coward]

So, at what rate does thought warm?

Bull Shit

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one thing that really troubles me with the entire Warming thing; temperature measurements from proxies that are down to tenths of a degree. I call Bull Shit.

Then there's the margins. As the Parent points out, you never hear about margins of error when AGW is discussed or sensational stories reported.

Fifty Fucking Percent? You literally may as well flip a coin.

Fresh!

[PacRim Jim]

West Antarctica warming faster Than thought but East Antarctica rejects all advances.

Re: 2.4 +- 1.2C ?!

[Xyrus]

...What is satisfying is seeing someone actually included the error margin. The climate models never seem to...

Yeah, I can tell you run in scientific circles. Have you even read a scientific paper before or do you just like making crap up to make yourself sound knowledgeable? Ever single paper on climate results (or pretty much any science paper at all), including those on model construction, comes with error bars.

Re:And the trumpeting doesn't help

[Troed]

Reality?

There's no data pointing to today's weather being any different than the weather we've always had. If you believe differently, please point to such a data set.

Here's some to get your started:

http://policlimate.com/tropical/global_running_ace.png
http://policlimate.com/tropical/frequency_12months.png
http://policlimate.com/tropical/global_major_freq.png
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/cei/step6.ytd.gif
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/fig33.jpg
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/tornadoes.html
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/images/indicator_figures/precipitation-figure2.gif
http://waterwatch.usgs.gov/new/regplots/real/real_us_2.gif

Re:This is not news for nerds, stuff that matters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else sick of the recent rash of bullshit global warming stories to hit slashdot recently?

The warmistas are getting desperate. Not enough people are joining their one true Religion.

Re: 2.4 +- 1.2C ?!

[Anonymous Coward]

The error margin is 50%? So the 2.4 was twice what was expected BUT with the margin of error, it actually could be what was expected?

Yes, and with the margin of error, it actually could be three times what was expected!

Why did you only look at the sign that fits your narrative?

This is science??

[Anonymous Coward]

What is science? These days "adjusting" things like broken sensor readings passes for it.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/24/scientists-report-faster-warming-in-antarctica/#more-76264

"They can’t find any recent warming, so they took a broken sensor with “intermittent gaps and other problems”, “recalibrated” it, “used computerized analyses of the atmosphere to fill the gaps” and “discovered” warming that “happened in the 1980s”. If you believe that this is science, then I strongly suggest you prep your telescope, lest you miss out on a spectacular sleigh sighting"

Re:And the trumpeting doesn't help

[Waffle Iron]

My data set is my window. It's been hotter than hell.

The US has set 7 new record highs over the last ten years for every new record low.

In my region, we've smashed almost two dozen record highs just this year, sometimes by 10 degrees. I can't remember the last time we had a record low of any kind.

I'm sure you can cherry pick all sorts of graphs about the frequencies of particular types of storm events. Big deal.

AGW is easy to fix.

[iMactheKnife]

AGW? No problem. Just raise taxes - that will fix it. Although some people think that reducing energy consumption to stone age levels would be a fine alternative.

Re:And the trumpeting doesn't help

[Troed]

My data set is my window. It's been hotter than hell.

[---]
I'm sure you can cherry pick all sorts of graphs about the frequencies of particular types of storm events. Big deal.

See, I have issues with anecdotes as evidence. I'm also quite sure I don't do any cherry picking - I really want you to show me a dataset that indicated our current weather is unusual over long time scales. As for temperatures in the US, the 30s is a good match.

This is a list over different records for different US states and when they were set. I think you'll find it interesting: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/records

On the Internet, nobody knows

[davidwr]

Are you saying he transcribed the joke from a golden plate?

Maybe. This is the Internet. Nobody knows.