Temperature Trend Analysis

Climate Models Cover Up

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Making Climate Models Look Good

Clive Best dove into climate models temperature projections and discovered how the data can be manipulated to make model projections look closer to measurements than they really are. His first post was A comparison of CMIP5 Climate Models with HadCRUT4.6 January 21, 2019. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Overview: Figure 1. shows a comparison of the latest HadCRUT4.6 temperatures with CMIP5 models for Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). The temperature data lies significantly below all RCPs, which themselves only diverge after ~2025.

Modern Climate models originate from Global Circulation models which are used for weather forecasting. These simulate the 3D hydrodynamic flow of the atmosphere and ocean on earth as it rotates daily on its tilted axis, and while orbiting the sun annually. The meridional flow of energy from the tropics to the poles generates convective cells, prevailing winds, ocean currents and weather systems. Energy must be balanced at the top of the atmosphere between incoming solar energy and out going infra-red energy. This depends on changes in the solar heating, water vapour, clouds , CO2, Ozone etc. This energy balance determines the surface temperature.

Weather forecasting models use live data assimilation to fix the state of the atmosphere in time and then extrapolate forward one or more days up to a maximum of a week or so. Climate models however run autonomously from some initial state, stepping far into the future assuming that they correctly simulate a changing climate due to CO2 levels, incident solar energy, aerosols, volcanoes etc. These models predict past and future surface temperatures, regional climates, rainfall, ice cover etc. So how well are they doing?

Fig 2. Global Surface temperatures from 12 different CMIP5 models run with RCP8.5

The disagreement on the global average surface temperature is huge – a spread of 4C. This implies that there must still be a problem relating to achieving overall energy balance at the TOA. Wikipedia tells us that the average temperature should be about 288K or 15C. Despite this discrepancy in reproducing net surface temperature the model trends in warming for RCP8.5 are similar.

Likewise weather station measurements of temperature have changed with time and place, so they too do not yield a consistent absolute temperature average. The ‘solution’ to this problem is to use temperature ‘anomalies’ instead, relative to some fixed normal monthly period (baseline). I always use the same baseline as CRU 1961-1990. Global warming is then measured by the change in such global average temperature anomalies. The implicit assumption of this is that nearby weather station and/or ocean measurements warm or cool coherently, such that the changes in temperature relative to the baseline can all be spatially averaged together. The usual example of this is that two nearby stations with different altitudes will have different temperatures but produce the similar ‘anomalies’. A similar procedure is used on the model results to produce temperature anomalies. So how do they compare to the data?

Fig 4. Model comparisons to data 1950-2050

Figure 4 shows a close up detail from 1950-2050. This shows how there is a large spread in model trends even within each RCP ensemble. The data falls below the bulk of model runs after 2005 except briefly during the recent el Nino peak in 2016.  Figure 4. shows that the data are now lower than the mean of every RCP, furthermore we won’t be able to distinguish between RCPs until after ~2030.

Zeke Hausfather’s Tricks to Make the Models Look Good

Clive’s second post is Zeke’s Wonder Plot January 25,2019. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Zeke Hausfather who works for Carbon Brief and Berkeley Earth has produced a plot which shows almost perfect agreement between CMIP5 model projections and global temperature data. This is based on RCP4.5 models and a baseline of 1981-2010. First here is his original plot.

I have reproduced his plot and  essentially agree that it is correct. However, I also found some interesting quirks.

The apples to apples comparison (model SSTs blended with model land 2m temperatures) reduces the model mean by about 0.06C. Zeke has also smoothed out the temperature data by using a 12 month running average. This has the effect of exaggerating peak values as compared to using the annual averages.

Effect of changing normalisation period. Cowtan & Way uses kriging to interpolate Hadcrut4.6 coverage into the Arctic and elsewhere.

Shown above is the result for a normalisation from 1961-1990. Firstly look how the lowest 2 model projections now drop further down while the data seemingly now lies below both the blended (thick black) and the original CMIP average (thin black). HadCRUT4 2016 is now below the blended value.

This improved model agreement has nothing to do with the data itself but instead is due to a reduction in warming predicted by the models. So what exactly is meant by ‘blending’?

Measurements of global average temperature anomalies use weather stations on land and sea surface temperatures (SST) over oceans. The land measurements are “surface air temperatures”(SAT) defined as the temperature 2m above ground level. The CMIP5 simulations however used SAT everywhere. The blended model projections use simulated SAT over land and TOS (temperature at surface) over oceans. This reduces all model predictions slightly, thereby marginally improving agreement with data. See also Climate-lab-book

The detailed blending calculations were done by Kevin Cowtan using a land mask and ice mask to define where TOS and SAT should be used in forming the global average. I downloaded his python scripts and checked all the algorithm, and they look good to me. His results are based on the RCP8.5 ensemble. 

The solid blue curve is the CMIP5 RCP4.6 ensemble average after blending. The dashed curve is the original. Click to expand.

Again the models mostly lie above the data after 1999.

This post is intended to demonstrate just how careful you must be when interpreting plots that seemingly demonstrate either full agreement of climate models with data, or else total disagreement.

In summary, Zeke Hausfather writing for Carbon Brief 1) used a clever choice of baseline, 2) of RCP for blended models and 3) by using a 12 month running average, was able to show an almost perfect agreement between data and models. His plot is 100% correct. However exactly the same data plotted with a different baseline and using annual values (exactly like those in the models), instead of 12 monthly running averages shows instead that the models are still lying consistently above the data. I know which one I think best represents reality.

Moral to the Story:
There are lots of ways to make computer models look good.Try not to be distracted.

Update Jan.22: Hot Ocean False Alarm

Posted on by Ron Clutz

What is Argo? Argo is a global array of 3,800 free-drifting profiling floats that measures thetemperature and salinity of the upper 2000 m of the ocean. This allows, for the first time, continuous monitoring of the temperature, salinity, and velocity of the upper ocean, with all data being relayed and made publicly available within hours after collection. Positions of the floats that have delivered data within the last 30 days :

Scientists deploy an Argo float. For over a decade, more than 3000 floats have provided near-global data coverage for the upper 2000 m of the ocean.

Update January 22, 2019

In a post at GWPF Nic Lewis critiques the Cheng et al. study and points in detail to the errors and misleading findings.  His short analysis: Is ocean warming accelerating faster than thought? – An analysis of Cheng et al (2019), Science . Excerpt in italics with my bolds.

Contrary to what the paper indicates:
Contemporary estimates of the trend in 0–2000 m depth ocean heat content over 1971–2010 are closely in line with that assessed in the IPCC AR5 report five years ago
Contemporary estimates of the trend in 0–2000 m depth ocean heat content over 2005–2017 are significantly (> 95% probability) smaller than the mean CMIP5 model simulation trend.

lewis fig.1

Figure 1: Updated 0–2000 m OHC linear trend estimates compared with AR5 and the CMIP5 mean. Error bars are 90% confidence intervals; black lines are means. Units relate to the Earth’s entire surface area.

falsealarm02

Previous Post:  Scare of the Day:  Ocean Heat Content (January 11, 2019)

Here is a sample of yesterday’s coordinated reports from CCN- Climate Crisis Network captured by my news aggregator, listed by the most recent first. Note the worldwide scope and editorial poetic license on the titles.

Ocean warming accelerating to record temperatures, scientists warn Engineering and Technology Magazine
Scalding seas? Oceans boil to hottest temp on record USA Today EU
World’s oceans heating up at quickening pace: study Egypt Independent
Ocean warming ‘accelerating’ The London Economic
Oceans warming faster than we thought: Study AniNews.in
Ocean temperatures rising faster than thought in ‘delayed response’ to global warming, scientists say The Japan Times
Oceans warming much faster than previously thought: Study The Hindu Business Line
The Oceans Are Warming Faster Than We Thought, a New Study Says TIME
Oceans Warming Even Faster Than Previously Thought Eurasia Review
The Ocean Is Warming Much Faster Than We Thought, According To A New Study BuzzFeed
Pacific: New research proves ocean warming is accelerating ABC Online – Radio Australia
We’re Boiling the Ocean Faster Than We Thought New York Magazine
Oceans warming faster than expected SBS
Ocean temperatures are rising far faster than previously thought, report says TVNZ
Ocean Temps Rising Faster Than Scientists Thought: Report HuffPost (US)
World’s oceans are heating up at a quickening pace Bangkok Post
The Warming of the World’s Oceans Is Set to Increase Dramatically Over the Next 60 Years Pacific Standard
New Climate Change Report Says Ocean Warming Is Far Worse Than Expected Fortune
Oceans Are Warming Faster Than Expected, Research Says Geek.com
World’s oceans are heating up at a quickening pace: study AFP
Oceans Warming Faster Than Predicted, Scientists Say gCaptain

So the message to the world is very clear: Ocean Heat Content is rising out of control, Be Very Afraid!
The trigger for all of this concern comes from this paper How fast are the oceans warming? by Lijing Cheng, John Abraham, Zeke Hausfather, Kevin E. Trenberth. Science 11 Jan 2019 Excerpts from paper in italics with my bolds.

Climate change from human activities mainly results from the energy imbalance in Earth’s climate system caused by rising concentrations of heat-trapping gases. About 93% of the energy imbalance accumulates in the ocean as increased ocean heat content (OHC). The ocean record of this imbalance is much less affected by internal variability and is thus better suited for detecting and attributing human influences (1) than more commonly used surface temperature records. Recent observation-based estimates show rapid warming of Earth’s oceans over the past few decades (see the figure) (1, 2). This warming has contributed to increases in rainfall intensity, rising sea levels, the destruction of coral reefs, declining ocean oxygen levels, and declines in ice sheets; glaciers; and ice caps in the polar regions (3, 4). Recent estimates of observed warming resemble those seen in models, indicating that models reliably project changes in OHC.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), published in 2013 (4), featured five different time series of historical global OHC for the upper 700 m of the ocean. These time series are based on different choices for data processing (see the supplementary materials). Interpretation of the results is complicated by the fact that there are large differences among the series. Furthermore, the OHC changes that they showed were smaller than those projected by most climate models in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) (5) over the period from 1971 to 2010 (see the figure).

Since then, the research community has made substantial progress in improving long-term OHC records and has identified several sources of uncertainty in prior measurements and analyses (2, 6–8). In AR5, all OHC time series were corrected for biases in expendable bathythermograph (XBT) data that had not been accounted for in the previous report (AR4). But these correction methods relied on very different assumptions of the error sources and led to substantial differences among correction schemes. Since AR5, the main factors influencing the errors have been identified (2), helping to better account for systematic errors in XBT data and their analysis.

Multiple lines of evidence from four independent groups thus now suggest a stronger observed OHC warming. Although climate model results (see the supplementary materials) have been criticized during debates about a “hiatus” or “slowdown” of global mean surface temperature, it is increasingly clear that the pause in surface warming was at least in part due to the redistribution of heat within the climate system from Earth surface into the ocean interiors (13). The recent OHC warming estimates (2, 6, 10, 11) are quite similar to the average of CMIP5 models, both for the late 1950s until present and during the 1971–2010 period highlighted in AR5 (see the figure). The ensemble average of the models has a linear ocean warming trend of 0.39 ± 0.07 W m−2 for the upper 2000 m from 1971–2010 compared with recent observations ranging from 0.36 to 0.39 W m−2 (see the figure).

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: “The recent OHC warming estimates are quite similar to the average of CMIP5 models.”

What They are Not Telling You

The Sea Surface Temperature (SST) record is a mature dataset, not without issues from changing measurement technologies, but providing a lengthy set of observations making up 71% of the surface temperature history.  Sussing out temperatures at various depths in the ocean is a whole nother kettle of fish.

The Ocean Heat Content data is sparse, both in time and space.

The Ocean is vast, 360 million square kilometers with an average depth of 3700 meters, and we have 3900 Argo floats operating for 10 years. In addition we have some sensors arrayed at depths in the North Atlantic. As the text above admits, there are lots of holes in the data, and only a short history of the recently available reliable data. Other publications by some of the same authors admit: Large discrepancies are found in the percentage of basinal ocean heating related to the global ocean, with the largest differences in the Pacific and Southern Ocean. Meanwhile, we find a large discrepancy of ocean heat storage in different layers, especially within 300–700 m in the Pacific and Southern Oceans. Source: Consensuses and discrepancies of basin-scale ocean heat content changes in different ocean analyses, Gongjie Wang, Lijing Cheng, John Abraham.

Modelers Make OHC Reconstructions by Adding Guesstimates to Observations

Again climate science alarms are raised after “reanalysis” of the data. No one should be surprised that after computer manipulations and data processing, the “reanalyzed” data has changed and now favors warming and confirms the climate models. The Argo data record by itself is too short to make any such claim. In previous studies, scientists were more circumspect and refrained from “jumping the shark.” Apparently, with the Paris Accord on the ropes in 2019, caution and nuance has been thrown to the wind, as witnessed by the recent SR15 horror show, and now this.

Methodological Problems Bedevil These Reconstructions

One of the studies cited in support of revising OHC upward is the study Quantification of ocean heat uptake from changes in atmospheric O2 and CO2 composition, L. Resplandy et al. Published in Nature 31 October 2018.  From the Media Release:

The world’s oceans have absorbed far more heat than we realized, shortening our timeline to stop the causes of global warming, and foreboding some of the worst case scenarios put forth by climate experts, according to new findings.

A novel study by researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and Princeton University, published on Wednesday in Nature, implies that officials have underestimated the amount of heat retained by Earth’s oceans.

Between 1991 and 2016, oceans warmed an average 60 percent more than estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) originally calculated, the study claims. That amount equalled 13 zettajoules, or eight times the world’s annual energy consumption.

Something didn’t look right to climate statistician Nic Lewis so he deconstructed the study, finding several methodological mistakes along the way. He explained and communicated with the authors in a series of 4 posts at Climate Etc. Nov. 6 through 23, 2018.

Nic Lewis, Nov. 6 (here):

The findings of the Resplandy et al paper were peer reviewed and published in the world’s premier scientific journal and were given wide coverage in the English-speaking media. Despite this, a quick review of the first page of the paper was sufficient to raise doubts as to the accuracy of its results. Just a few hours of analysis and calculations, based only on published information, was sufficient to uncover apparently serious (but surely inadvertent) errors in the underlying calculations.

Moreover, even if the paper’s results had been correct, they would not have justified its findings regarding an increase to 2.0°C in the lower bound of the equilibrium climate sensitivity range and a 25% reduction in the carbon budget for 2°C global warming.

Because of the wide dissemination of the paper’s results, it is extremely important that these errors are acknowledged by the authors without delay and then corrected.

Authors Respond:

On November 14, 2018 this paper’s authors announced key errors to the two week-old study that made claims about the amount of heat that Earth’s oceans have absorbed. The errors stem from “incorrectly treating systematic errors in the O2 measurements and the use of a constant land O2:C exchange ratio of 1.1,” co-author Ralph Keeling said in an update from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which is affiliated with the study. More simply, the team’s findings are too uncertain to conclusively support their statement that Earth’s oceans have absorbed 60 percent more heat than previously thought. Keeling claims the errors “do not invalidate the study’s methodology or the new insights into ocean biogeochemistry on which it is based.”

Subsequent posts by Lewis found other differences between the stated method and the analysis actually applied, adding to the uncertainty of the study and its finding. Lewis is not done yet, and the paper has not been reissued. Unfortunately, it has not been retracted and is still cited in reference to unsupported claims of runaway ocean heat content.

Meanwhile, other measurements, such as those in North Atlantic and Indian Ocean show slight cooling rather than warming, with researchers suspecting natural cyclical activity.

Summary

So anxious are alarmists/activists to cry wolf that they are running the computers flat out to manipulate and extrapolate from precious but incomplete limited data to confirm their suppositions.  All to keep alive a deflating narrative that the public increasingly finds offensive.

Footnote:

Oceanographers know that deep ocean temperatures can vary on centennial up to millennial time scales, so if some heat goes into the depths, it is not at all clear when it would come out.

Beware getting sucked into any model, climate or otherwise.

More at Putting Climate Models in Their Place

What Proof Our Climate is Warming?

Posted on by Ron Clutz

This is a reblog of a post at Manhattan Contrarian How Do You Tell If The Earth’s Climate System “Is Warming”? Excerpts in italics with my bolds

Back in August I had a post by the title of “How Do You Tell If The Earth’s Climate System “Is Warming”? The post took note of the fact that, with a time series (like for temperature) that fluctuates up and down, you can always give a presentation that makes the trend look to be whatever you want it to be, so long as you get to pick the start date. If you want to make it look like the trend is up, you pick a start date where the value of the series is low; and if you want to make it look like the trend is down, you pick a start date where the value of the series is high. Nothing to it! With the earth’s climate system, you have nearly infinite numbers of years that you can go back to get the result you want. Those who want to convince you that the earth’s climate system “is warming” typically pick as their start date either the 1880s or the 1970s, both of which were notable low points in the temperature times series. The trick is so obvious that you would think that nobody could be fooled. But, among others, they seem to have bamboozled Google, which as that August post noted, had taken to including on YouTube videos involving climate skeptics a legend stating “Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.”

“Multiple lines of evidence”? Really Google, is there any “line of evidence” that matters as to whether something “is warming” or “is cooling” other than the temperature time series? They don’t enlighten us as to what that other “line of evidence” might be.

Anyway, enough months have now passed for another year to end, so we now have three full years since the most recent temperature peak, which occurred in January 2016. Here is the latest UAH satellite temperature graph for the lower troposphere, going from the time the satellites were launched (1979) to December 2018:

The 0.25 deg C temperature anomaly of the latest value represents a decline of some 0.61 deg C from the peak anomaly of 0.86 deg C in January 2016. That 0.61 deg C decline is not small in the context of this series. The whole range on this chart from coldest month (-0.51 deg C in 1984) to warmest month (+ 0.86 deg C in 2016) is only 1.37 deg C; and the 0.61 deg C drop represents close to half of that.

According to Dr. Roy Spencer of UAH (publisher of the graph), 2018 came in as the 6th warmest in the 40 years of the satellite time series. That would still put 2018 among the warmer years. But it also means that five previous years were warmer, one of them being 1998 — a full 20 years ago.

A number of questions occur to me, as I’m sure they do to you:

To support the assertion that the earth’s climate system “is warming,” shouldn’t the temperature be higher each year over the preceding year?

CO2 emissions have been increasing year by year, and the amount of cumulative CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing year by year. Isn’t that supposed to be the driving mechanism behind global temperature? How is it possible for temperature to decline, and by a rather significant amount, when CO2 has increased?

Obviously, there must be some force at work sufficient to overcome the increase in CO2. What is that force? How do you know that that force will not continue to overcome the influence of the CO2? Indeed, how do you know that that force, alone or in combination with some other forces known or unknown, will not so completely overcome the influence of CO2 as to bring on the next ice age?

How many years of temperature decline does it take before it is no longer appropriate to assert that the climate system “is warming”? I mean, we’re using the present tense here. Since when do we use the present tense in our language to mean “something that occurred more than three years ago but has not occurred for the last three years”?

You might be interested in the take of our various highly prestigious “scientific societies” on the question of whether the earth’s climate system “is warming.” You can find a compilation of summary statements on that subject at the NASA web site at this link. NASA’s page is titled “Scientific consensus: Earth’s climate is warming.” (Side question: What is a page with that title still doing up two years into the Trump administration?). A few examples:

American Association for the Advancement of Science: “The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society.”

American Medical Association: “Our AMA … supports the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fourth assessment report and concurs with the scientific consensus that the Earth is undergoing adverse global climate change and that anthropogenic contributions are significant.”

American Physical Society: “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.”

OK, these guys are a little more slippery with the wording than just saying (along with Wikipedia, Google and NASA) that “the climate system is warming.” But clearly NASA wants you to think that the phrase “climate change is occurring” is functionally the same thing.

Unfortunately for these societies, the question of whether the earth “is warming” is really not a scientific question, but rather only one of appropriate use of the English language. I don’t know where the temperatures may go from here — and neither do they. But a full three years into an obvious cooling cycle, isn’t it time to recognize that this awkward use of language is no longer appropriate?

See Also:  Man Made Warming from Adjusting Data

December Cooling by Sea, More than by Land

Posted on by Ron Clutz

banner-blog

With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea.  UAH has updated their tlt (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for December.   Previously I have done posts on their reading of ocean air temps as a prelude to updated records from HADSST3. This month I will add a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years.

Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system.  Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy.  Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements.  In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates.  Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST.  He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months.  This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

The December update to HadSST3 will appear later this month, but in the meantime we can look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6 which are already posted for December. The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above.

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI).  The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean temps since January 2015.

uah oceans 201812The anomalies over the entire ocean dropped to the same value, 0.12C  in August (Tropics were 0.13C).  Warming in previous months was erased, and September added very little warming back. In October and November NH and the Tropics rose, joined by SH last month.,  In December 2018 all regions cooled resulting in a global drop of nearly 0.1C.

Taking a longer view, we can look at the record since 1995, that year being an ENSO neutral year and thus a reasonable starting point for considering the past two decades.  On that basis we can see the plateau in ocean temps is persisting. Global ocean temps are the lowest December since 2014.  It also appears that the NH Autumn upward bump is over and temps will likely trend downward.

Land Air Temperatures Plunged in September, then Rose in October

We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly.  The land temperature records at surface stations record air temps at 2 meters above ground.  UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps.  The graph updated for December is below.uah land 201812

The greater volatility of the Land temperatures is evident, and also the dominance of NH, which has twice as much land area as SH.  Note how global peaks mirror NH peaks.  In December air over Tropics fell sharply, SH slightly, while the NH land surfaces rose, pulling up the Global anomaly for the month.  Despite the warming, air temps over land were the lowest December since 2013 both Globally and for the Tropics.  And all regions are cooler than December 2015 when the El Nino was starting in earnest.

Summary

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  It is striking to now see NH and Global land temps dropping rapidly.  TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST3, but are now showing the same pattern.  It seems obvious that despite the three El Ninos, their warming has not persisted, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.

 

Obsessing Over Global Temperatures

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Reification is the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. It is a mental process by which someone comes to believe that an abstraction (idea or concept) is a material, physical object in the real world. Mike Hulme observes that many people are obsessing over global temperatures, not realizing they are abstractions and not things to be feared. He provides calm and sensible views regarding global temperature reporting. The post at his blog is Climatism and the Reification of Global Temperature. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Over the last 40 years global-mean surface air temperature – ‘global temperature’ for short – has gained an extraordinary role in the science, politics and public discourse of climate change. What was once a number crudely calculated through averaging together a few dozen reasonably well-spaced meteorological time series, has become reified as an objective entity that simultaneously measures Earth System behaviour, reveals the future, regulates geopolitical negotiations and disciplines the human imagination. Apart perhaps from GDP rarely can so constructed an abstract entity have gained such power over the human world.

All of this is very nicely illustrated in a new paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, titled ‘Predicted chance that global warming will temporarily exceed 1.5°C’. Doug Smith and 32 colleagues set out to develop a new capability to predict the likelihood that global temperature will exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, for a variety of durations upwards from a month, in the coming five years. The assumed importance of the study is suggested by the author team mobilising climate modelling and analysis capabilities at 17 institutions in 9 different countries.

But why is such an early warning system deemed necessary or useful? What power is being imputed to small increments of global temperature to alert future danger?

Smith and colleagues argue that forewarning of temporary excursions of global temperature above a certain threshold—1.5°C is the normative threshold aspired to in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, even though 2°C is the threshold formally agreed—for periods even a little as a month is relevant for policy-makers. To make such a claim requires an extraordinary degree of abstraction.

Global temperature does not cause anything to happen. It has no material agency. It is an abstract proxy for the aggregated accumulation of heat in the surface boundary layer of the planet. It is far removed from revealing the physical realities of meteorological hazards occurring in particular places. And forecasts of global temperature threshold exceedance are even further removed from actionable early warning information upon which disaster risk management systems can work.

Global temperature offers the ultimate view of the planet—and of meteorological hazard—from nowhere.

I have argued elsewhere about the dangers of climate reductionism, a form of reasoning that lends disproportionate power in political and social discourse to climate model-based descriptions of the future. The adoption of forecasts of global temperature exceedance as an early warning index is a clear case of the related phenomenon of climatism. Similar to explanations of scientism—“the phenomenon whereby authority is implicitly granted to scientific and technical experts to define the meaning, scope and, by extension, [the] solution for public policy concerns”—climatism grants authority to an abstracted global climate, in this case to global temperature, to guide, direct and discipline human actions in the world.

The authors of this new study claim to have developed an operational system with annually updated forecasts of the likelihood of near-term global temperature threshold exceedance. The value of such forecasts is claimed to lie in the general media and public interest they would generate. Issuing such forecasts to the world at large may or may not generate public interest. But they would certainly reinforce the growing ideology of climatism. It is another step toward putting abstract and unsituated descriptions of a globalised climate at the heart of world affairs.

Offering forecasts of global temperature threshold exceedance as an operational proxy for risk and disaster management seems bizarre. Such early warnings would seem to assume that small fluctuations in global temperature contain meaningful and actionable information. But why is it significant to know that the chance of global temperature exceeding 1.5C for two months during the period 2019-2023 is, say, 25% rather than 10%?

Such nuanced differences in the likelihood of a threshold exceedance tell us nothing about the likelihood of real meteorological hazards faced by real people and structures in real places. At the very least the proposed forecasts fail to discriminate between the different causes of global temperature fluctuations—e.g. greenhouse gas accumulation, aerosol loading, ENSO events, solar variability. Each of these causes carry very different implications for the geographical distribution of meteorological hazards, even if global temperature is identical.

Humans are now agents of significant influence in the Earth System and human development trajectories carry a range of profound implications. But offering annual forecasts of near-term global temperature fluctuations as early warnings to (re-)direct these trajectories fails to recognise the situated and differentiated polities, values and visions that shape the world.

GDP has acquired the power to account for the economic health of nations and for the implied well-being of individuals. It has become the hegemonic index which national policies seek to maximise and an index which in turn passes judgement on the performance of governments. In a similar way, the ideology of climatism—aided by the reification of global temperature—narrows actions by the world’s governments to minimise this one index of planetary health.

This new paper by Smith et al. reinforces this reductionist move and discloses the powerful performativity of global temperature in the contemporary world.

Mike Hulme, 24 October 2018

Mike Hulme has been studying climate change for over thirty years and is today one of the most distinctive and recognisable voices speaking internationally about climate change in the academy, in public and in the media. He is currently Professor of Human Geography at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Pembroke College. Previously, Mike Hulme was professor of climate change in the Science, Society and Sustainability (3S) Group in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. He is author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change (2009) and Exploring Climate Change Through Science and In Society (2013). Website: http://www.mikehulme.org.

See also his common sense review of the science attributing extreme weather events to human agency. X-Weather is Back! Kerala edition

See Also Climate Reductionism

November Cooling by Land, or Cooling by Sea?

Posted on by Ron Clutz

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With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea.  UAH has updated their tlt (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for November.   Previously I have done posts on their reading of ocean air temps as a prelude to updated records from HADSST3. This month I will add a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years.

Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system.  Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy.  Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements.  In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates.  Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST.  He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months.  This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

The November update to HadSST3 will appear later this month, but in the meantime we can look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6 which are already posted for November. The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above.

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI).  The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean temps since January 2015.

UAH Oceans 201811

Open image in new tab to enlarge.

The anomalies over the entire ocean dropped to the same value, 0.12C  in August (Tropics were 0.13C).  Warming in previous months was erased, and September added very little warming back. In October and November, NH and the Tropics rose, joined by SH last month, resulting in a warming bump.

As of November 2018, NH ocean air temps are matching all Novembers since 2013.  Global and SH this year are the lowest November since 2015.  OTOH ocean air temps in the Tropics are the highest November since 2015.

Land Air Temperatures Plunged in September, Rose in October, Then Plunged Again

We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly.  The land temperature records at surface stations record air temps at 2 meters above ground.  UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps.  The graph updated for November is below.UAH Land 201811

The greater volatility of the Land temperatures is evident, and also the dominance of NH, which has twice as much land area as SH.  Note how global peaks mirror NH peaks.  In November air over SH and the Tropical land surfaces rose, while NH fell sharply pulling the global anomaly down.  For the moment, UAH shows ocean and land temps moving in opposite directions, though still well below the peaks in 2015 and 2016.

Postscript:  NH Continents Drive  Variability in Temperature Anomalies

Clive Best provides this animation of recent monthly temperature anomalies which demonstrates how most variability in anomalies occur over northern continents.

Summary

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  It is striking to now see NH and Global land temps dropping in a mixed fashion.  TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST3, but are now showing the same pattern.  It seems obvious that despite the three El Ninos, their warming has not persisted, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.

 

October Cooling by Land, or Cooling by Sea?

Posted on by Ron Clutz

banner-blog

With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea.  UAH has updated their tlt (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for October.   Previously I have done posts on their reading of ocean air temps as a prelude to updated records from HADSST3. This month I will add a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years.

Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system.  Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy.  Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements.  In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates.  Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST.  He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months.  This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

The October update to HadSST3 will appear later this month, but in the meantime we can look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6 which are already posted for October. The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above.

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI).  The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean temps since January 2015.

UAH Oceans 201810

Open image in new tab to enlarge.

The anomalies over the entire ocean dropped to the same value, 0.12C  in August (Tropics were 0.13C).  Warming in previous months was erased, and September added very little warming back. In October, NH and the Tropics rose, while SH cooled, resulting in slight warming.

Taking a longer view, we can look at the record since 1995, that year being an ENSO neutral year and thus a reasonable starting point for considering the past two decades.  On that basis we can see the plateau in ocean temps is persisting. Since last October all oceans have cooled, with offsetting bumps up and down.

UAHv6 TLT 
Monthly Ocean
Anomalies		 Average Since 1995 Ocean 10/2018
Global 0.13 0.17
NH 0.16 0.30
SH 0.11 0.08
Tropics 0.12 0.32

As of October 2018, NH ocean air temps as well as the Tropics are twice the long term average, SH is slightly cooler, and the Global anomaly slightly warmer.   In the Tropics and SH, 2018 is the coolest October since 2014. The Global and NH ocean air temps are the coolest October since 2013.

Land Air Temperatures Plunged in September, then Rose in October

We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly.  The land temperature records at surface stations record air temps at 2 meters above ground.  UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps.  The graph updated for October is below.UAH Land 201810

The greater volatility of the Land temperatures is evident, and also the dominance of NH, which has twice as much land area as SH.  Note how global peaks mirror NH peaks.  In October air over NH and the Tropical land surfaces rose, and SH followed suit.  A table for Land temperatures is below, comparable to the one for Oceans.

UAHv6 TLT 
Monthly Land
Anomalies		 Average Since 1995 Land 10/2018
Global 0.21 0.33
NH 0.23 0.33
SH 0.19 0.33
Tropics 0.18 0.39

In September land air temps were below the average since 1995.  As the table shows, in October the land air anomalies jumped up well above average, demonstrating the higher volatility of these measures.  Still last month was much cooler than October 2017 in all regions.

Summary

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  It is striking to now see NH and Global land temps dropping rapidly.  TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST3, but are now showing the same pattern.  It seems obvious that despite the three El Ninos, their warming has not persisted, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.

 

Cooling by Land, or Cooling by Sea?

Posted on by Ron Clutz

banner-blog

With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea.  UAH has updated their tlt (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for September.   Previously I have done posts on their reading of ocean air temps as a prelude to updated records from HADSST3. This month I will add a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years.

Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system.  Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy.  Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements.  In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates.  Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST.  He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months.  This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

The August update to HadSST3 will appear later this month, but in the meantime we can look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6 which are already posted for August. The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above.

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI).  The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean temps since January 2015.

UAH Oceans 201809The anomalies over the entire ocean dropped to the same value, 0.12C  in August (Tropics were 0.13C).  Warming in previous months was erased, and September added very little warming back.

Taking a longer view, we can look at the record since 1995, that year being an ENSO neutral year and thus a reasonable starting point for considering the past two decades.  On that basis we can see the plateau in ocean temps is persisting. Since last October all oceans have cooled, with offsetting bumps up and down.

UAHv6 TLT 
Monthly Ocean
Anomalies		 Average Since 1995 Ocean 9/2018
Global 0.13 0.15
NH 0.16 0.18
SH 0.11 0.13
Tropics 0.12 0.22

As of September 2018, Global ocean air temps as well as SH and SH are nearly the average since 1995.  The Tropics bumped upward last month. Globally,  in NH and the Tropics, 2018 is the coolest September since 2014. The SH ocean air temps are the coolest September since 2013

Land Air Temperatures Plunged in September.

We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly.  The land temperature records at surface stations record air temps at 2 meters above ground.  UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps.  The graph updated for September is below.
UAH Land 201809

The greater volatility of the Land temperatures is evident, and also the dominance of NH, which has twice as much land area as SH.  Note how global peaks mirror NH peaks.  Thus the importance of the recent drops in NH and SH driving global land temps downward.  A table for Land temperatures is below, comparable to the one for Oceans.

UAHv6 TLT 
Monthly Land
Anomalies		 Average Since 1995 Land 9/2018
Global 0.21 0.13
NH 0.23 0.10
SH 0.12 0.14
Tropics 0.14 0.24

In the longer term since 1995, Globally and in NH land temps are well below the average anomalies, while SH is nearly average, and the Tropics above average (though comprising limited surface area).

Summary

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  It is striking to now see NH and Global land temps dropping rapidly.  TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST3, but are now showing the same pattern.  It seems obvious that despite the three El Ninos, their warming has not persisted, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.

 

Ocean Air Temps Drop in August

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system.  Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy.  Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements.  In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates.  Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST.  He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months.  This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

The August update to HadSST3 will appear later this month, but in the meantime we can look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6 which are already posted for August. The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above.

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI).  The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean temps since January 2015.

UAH Oceans 201808

Open image in new tab to enlarge.

Remarkably, the anomalies over the entire ocean dropped to the same value, 0.12C (Tropics are 0.13C).  In previous months both the Tropics and SH rose, while NH rose very slightly, resulting in a small increase in the Global average temp of air over oceans. Now that warming is gone in NH and Globally.

Taking a longer view, we can look at the record since 1995, that year being an ENSO neutral year and thus a reasonable starting point for considering the past two decades.  On that basis we can see the plateau in ocean temps is persisting. Since last October all oceans have cooled, with offsetting bumps up and down.

UAHv6 TLT 
Monthly Ocean
Anomalies		 Average Since 1995 Ocean 8/2018
Global 0.13 0.12
NH 0.16 0.12
SH 0.11 0.12
Tropics 0.12 0.13

As of August 2018, Global ocean air temps as well as SH and Tropics are matching the average since 1995.  NH is now cooler than the average.  Globally,  2018 is the coolest August since 2013. NH, SH and the Tropics are the coolest August since 2014.

The details of UAH ocean temps are provided below.  The monthly data make for a noisy picture, but seasonal fluxes between January and July are important.

The greater volatility of the Tropics is evident, leading the oceans through three major El Nino events during this period.  Note also the flat period between 7/1999 and 7/2009.  The 2010 El Nino was erased by La Nina in 2011 and 2012.  Then the record shows a fairly steady rise peaking in 2016, with strong support from warmer NH anomalies, before returning to the 22-year average.

Summary

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  They started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST3, but are now showing the same pattern.  It seems obvious that despite the three El Ninos, their warming has not persisted, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.

 

Cold Summer in Nunavut

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

A previous post explored the claim that “Nunavut is melting” and is reproduced below.  On September 6 Jane George posted at the Northwest Passage blog declaring the opposite:  As ice and snow return, summer’s over in Nunavut  “It was a cold summer.”  Excerpts below in italics with my bolds.
CanIce 20180908

This map from the Canadian Ice Service shows sea ice conditions in the western part of High Arctic islands on Sept. 8. The dark blue shows a low concentration (less than 10 per cent) of ice, while white shows a high concentration (100 per cent). At this time of the year, the Arctic ice cover is the highest it has been since 2014, the National Snow and Ice Data Center said Sept. 5.

Snow has now fallen across Nunavut’s more northerly communities, from Kugluktuk to Qikiqtarjuaq, after a summer that also brought cool temperatures and heavy ice conditions to some parts of Nunavut.

“if you’re trying to get somewhere, and ice is in the way, it’s been a very bad year,” said Gilles Langis, a senior ice forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service.

It remains unclear if ice played a role in the grounding of the Ioffe Akademik on Aug. 24. The cruise ship was not sailing where it was supposed to be due to ice, according to an account by the journalist and author Ed Struzik, who was on board.

And, earlier this week, operators of the cruise vessel Hanseatic turned around and headed back east through the Northwest Passage, having decided that ice conditions were too bad to continue on to western Nunavut.

The Canadian Coast Guard also recently rescued two sailors from a smaller vessel that had run into bad ice conditions in the Bellot Strait.

Summing up the summer ice conditions in 2018, Langis said that in many areas it was “very challenging”—in parts of Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, Baffin Bay and at various choke points in the Northwest Passage where the ice pushed in.

Ice conditions are not likely to improve.  And as for the weather, it’s not likely not to be warming up either.

“It was a cold summer,” said Brian Proctor from Environment Canada. As well, northern Canada saw above normal precipitation in many communities because of a low pressure front stalled over the North.

Iqaluit experienced its 13th coldest and 14th wettest year in 73 years, he said.

In Qikiqtarjuaq, where snow also came early, it was the seventh coldest summer in 22 years.

Previous post:  Nunavut is Melting!  Or not.

From Yale Climate Connections we heard last week about Nunavut melting and a theatrical production to spread news and concerns about this dangerous development.

“I come from a place of rugged mountains, imperial glaciers and tender-covered permafrost. But Nunavut, our land, is only as rich as it is cold, and today most of it is melting.”That’s Chantal Bilodeau, reading a passage from “Sila,” a play about the effects of climate change in the Arctic.

The characters in her play include polar bears, an Inuit goddess, scientists, and coast guard officers – all working together to save their land.

No doubt her personal experience and feelings for her Nunavut are sincere and profound. (Originally I thought it was her homeland, but in fact she is a New York playwright and translator, born in Montreal.) And there will be a large audience receptive to her concerns about global warming. (Bilodeau has writen six plays about the Arctic and founded the international network Artists And Climate Change.) But I wonder if scientific measurements support her belief that Nunavut is melting.

After all, we have learned from medical research that individual life experiences (anecdotes) may not be true more generally. That is why drugs are tested on population samples with double-blind studies: neither the patient nor the doctor knows who gets the medicine and who gets the placebo.

So I went looking for weather station records to see what is the warming trend in that region. As curiosity does so often, it led me on a journey of discovery, learning some new things, and relearning old ones with fresh implications.

Where are temperatures measured in Nunavut?

It is by far the Northernmost territory of Canada, just off the coast of Northern Greenland.

According to Environment Canada, weather is reported at 29 places in Nunavut. So I went to look at the record at Iqaluit, the capital of the territory. You get monthly normals for the period 1981 to 2010. Historical data (daily averages) can be accessed only 1 individual month/year at a time, the menu stops at 2004. Even then, some months are filled with “M” for missing. Historical data from which trends can be analyzed is hard to come by.

Disappearing Weather Records

It turns out that Nunavut also suffered from the great purging of weather station records that was noticed by skeptics years ago.

Ave. T vs. No. Stations

Graph showing the correlation between Global Mean Temperature (Average T) and the number of stations included in the global database. Source: Ross McKitrick, U of Guelph

I was aware of this because of a recent study looking at trends at stations around the Arctic circle. Arctic Warming Unalarming.  That study included graphs that showed the dramatic removal of station records in the North.  Though the depletion was not limited to the far North, many Canadian and Russian records disappeared from the global database.

arctic-europe-paper-2015_fig6annual

Fig. 6 Temperature change for annual Arctic averages relative to the temperature during 1961 to 1990 for stations in Europe having more than 150 years of observations. The red curve is the moving 5-year average while the blue curve shows the number of stations reporting in each year. 118 stations contributed to the study. W. A. van Wijngaarden, Theoretical & Applied Climatology (2015)

Eureka, Nunavut, Canada “Last Station above latitude 65N”

Eureka got considerable attention in 2010 due to its surviving the dying out of weather stations. The phrase in quotes above reflects an observation that GISS uses Eureka data to infill across the whole Arctic Circle. That single station record is hugely magnified in its global impact in that temperature reconstruction product. Somewhat like the influence of a single tree in Yamal upon the infamous hockey stick graph.

The first High Arctic Weather Station in history, Eureka was established in April 1947 at 80-degrees north latitude in the vicinity of two rivers, which provided fresh water to the six-man United States Army Air Force team that parachuted in. They erected Jamesway huts to shelter themselves and their equipment until August, when an icebreaker reached Eureka – as it has every year since – and brought permanent buildings and supplies. For decades after that, small, all-male crews would hunker down for entire winters, going a little stir-crazy from the isolation. WUWT 2010

GHCN Records for Nunavut

It turns out that in addition to Eureka, GCHN has data for Alert and Clyde (River), but the latter two histories end in 2004 and 2010, respectively. The adjusted files have a few differences in details, but little change from the unadjusted files. The chart below shows the temperatures measured at Eureka, Nunavut, Canada 79° 98’ N, 85° 93’ W.  The other two stations tell the same story as Eureka, though temperatures at Clyde are warmer in absolute terms due to its more Southerly location.

Eureka temps4

The chart shows Annual, July and January averages along with the lifetime averages of Eureka station from 1948 through 2015.  There is slight variability, and a few years higher than average, but nothing alarming or even enough for people to sense any change.  Note also that annual averages are well below freezing, because only 3 months are above 0° C.  I suppose that someone could play with anomalies and generate a chart that looked scary, but the numbers in the record do not support fears of global warming and melting in Nunavut.

Conclusion

Once again we see media announcements that confuse subjective beliefs with empirical observations of objective reality.  And unfortunately, those observations are less and less available to counter the herd instincts of fearing the future and blaming someone.