On Dec 14, 6:23 pm, "Will Hand" wrote:

I'm not disputing the Arctic has warmed a lot either

I am.

Don't you mean it's got hotter?

The thermo-haline physics of the place will ensure a pretty constant
temperature average until almost all of the ice has gone.

If it doesn't, there is something wrong with the data presented.

In article 985f87a5-d49f-4dae-929f-
,
says...
On Dec 14, 6:23 pm, "Will Hand" wrote:

I'm not disputing the Arctic has warmed a lot either

I am.

Don't you mean it's got hotter?

The thermo-haline physics of the place will ensure a pretty constant
temperature average until almost all of the ice has gone.

If it doesn't, there is something wrong with the data presented.


Or there's something wrong with your understanding of the problem. It's
not a discussion of the ocean temperature, it's the air temperature.
You might be able to make an argument that there's an upper limit on the
average air temperature over the sea ice when ice is present, but the
temperature could be much colder than freezing and could have increased
dramatically without even reaching 0 C.

--
Harold Brooks

On Dec 14, 9:04 pm, Harold Brooks wrote:
In article 985f87a5-d49f-4dae-929f-
,
says...

On Dec 14, 6:23 pm, "Will Hand" wrote:

I'm not disputing the Arctic has warmed a lot either

I am.

Don't you mean it's got hotter?

The thermo-haline physics of the place will ensure a pretty constant
temperature average until almost all of the ice has gone.

If it doesn't, there is something wrong with the data presented.

Or there's something wrong with your understanding of the problem. It's
not a discussion of the ocean temperature, it's the air temperature.
You might be able to make an argument that there's an upper limit on the
average air temperature over the sea ice when ice is present, but the
temperature could be much colder than freezing and could have increased
dramatically without even reaching 0 C.

Quite right.

How was I to understand the reading of air temperatures over the
Arctic?

At what height would the Stephenson screens be set on the drifting
floes and how would you account for data affected by tidal
fluctuations raising and lowering said meteorological stations?

OK. I accept it was all done by Russian and USAn submarines and the
data adjusted to the best of their ability. And carefully collated
over the period of the cold war and then released a few years back and
has, since about 2005-2006, been released to the general public.

I really should have got around to reading it.

Or not, as the case may be.

Weatherlawyer wrote:

On Dec 14, 9:04 pm, Harold Brooks wrote:
In article 985f87a5-d49f-4dae-929f-
,
says...

On Dec 14, 6:23 pm, "Will Hand" wrote:

I'm not disputing the Arctic has warmed a lot either

I am.

Don't you mean it's got hotter?

The thermo-haline physics of the place will ensure a pretty constant
temperature average until almost all of the ice has gone.

If it doesn't, there is something wrong with the data presented.

Or there's something wrong with your understanding of the problem. It's
not a discussion of the ocean temperature, it's the air temperature.
You might be able to make an argument that there's an upper limit on the
average air temperature over the sea ice when ice is present, but the
temperature could be much colder than freezing and could have increased
dramatically without even reaching 0 C.

Quite right.

How was I to understand the reading of air temperatures over the
Arctic?

At what height would the Stephenson screens be set on the drifting
floes and how would you account for data affected by tidal
fluctuations raising and lowering said meteorological stations?

OK. I accept it was all done by Russian and USAn submarines and the
data adjusted to the best of their ability. And carefully collated
over the period of the cold war and then released a few years back and
has, since about 2005-2006, been released to the general public.

I really should have got around to reading it.

Or not, as the case may be.

Stephenson screens - or their equivalent - were erected on drifting floes or
ice islands (tabular bergs) and would have been placed at the standard
height above the ice surface. During the fifties and sixties there were
usually about four scientific bases in operation in the Arctic. The USA ran
two ice islands, Arliss II and T3, which continued circulating in the
Beaufort Gyre for around twenty years.

The USSR bases were usually on large floes rather than ice islands and were
relatively short-lived (two or three years) as they drifted across the
Arctic and were abandoned before they entered the Greenland Sea through the
Fram Strait. As one base was due to be abandoned another was being set up
so that they could keep a couple of stations operating. The Soviet bases
were named SP-nn (SP: Severnaya Poljus - North Pole), and I think had
reached about SP15 when I left the Met Office Ice Unit in 1973. By this
time, the USA ice islands had finally left the Beaufort Gyre and had been
abandoned as they went through the Fram Strait. The USA did not replace
these islands.

One problem with the USA bases is that they went through a period of a few
years when they couldn't make their mind up whether to report in Fahrenheit
or Celsius. Unfortunately, during most of the year, it was almost
impossible to figure out which was being used. This meant that the people
decoding the messages in our office could either have assumed F was C, or
assumed C was F and converted to C, etc.

I lost touch with what went on in the Arctic after '73 so don't know how
long the USSR bases lasted. I think that manned bases have now been
replaced with buoys dropped onto the surface.

--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman, not newsboy.
"What use is happiness? It can't buy you money." [Chic Murray, 1919-85]

On Dec 15, 7:38 am, Graham P Davis wrote:
Weatherlawyer wrote:
On Dec 14, 9:04 pm, Harold Brooks wrote:
In article 985f87a5-d49f-4dae-929f-
,
says...

On Dec 14, 6:23 pm, "Will Hand" wrote:

I'm not disputing the Arctic has warmed a lot either

I am.

Don't you mean it's got hotter?

The thermo-haline physics of the place will ensure a pretty constant
temperature average until almost all of the ice has gone.

If it doesn't, there is something wrong with the data presented.

Or there's something wrong with your understanding of the problem. It's
not a discussion of the ocean temperature, it's the air temperature.
You might be able to make an argument that there's an upper limit on the
average air temperature over the sea ice when ice is present, but the
temperature could be much colder than freezing and could have increased
dramatically without even reaching 0 C.

Quite right.

How was I to understand the reading of air temperatures over the
Arctic?

At what height would the Stephenson screens be set on the drifting
floes and how would you account for data affected by tidal
fluctuations raising and lowering said meteorological stations?

OK. I accept it was all done by Russian and USAn submarines and the
data adjusted to the best of their ability. And carefully collated
over the period of the cold war and then released a few years back and
has, since about 2005-2006, been released to the general public.

I really should have got around to reading it.

Or not, as the case may be.

Stephenson screens - or their equivalent - were erected on drifting floes or
ice islands (tabular bergs) and would have been placed at the standard
height above the ice surface. During the fifties and sixties there were
usually about four scientific bases in operation in the Arctic. The USA ran
two ice islands, Arliss II and T3, which continued circulating in the
Beaufort Gyre for around twenty years.

The USSR bases were usually on large floes rather than ice islands and were
relatively short-lived (two or three years) as they drifted across the
Arctic and were abandoned before they entered the Greenland Sea through the
Fram Strait. As one base was due to be abandoned another was being set up
so that they could keep a couple of stations operating. The Soviet bases
were named SP-nn (SP: Severnaya Poljus - North Pole), and I think had
reached about SP15 when I left the Met Office Ice Unit in 1973. By this
time, the USA ice islands had finally left the Beaufort Gyre and had been
abandoned as they went through the Fram Strait. The USA did not replace
these islands.

One problem with the USA bases is that they went through a period of a few
years when they couldn't make their mind up whether to report in Fahrenheit
or Celsius. Unfortunately, during most of the year, it was almost
impossible to figure out which was being used. This meant that the people
decoding the messages in our office could either have assumed F was C, or
assumed C was F and converted to C, etc.

I lost touch with what went on in the Arctic after '73 so don't know how
long the USSR bases lasted. I think that manned bases have now been
replaced with buoys dropped onto the surface.

--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman, not newsboy.
"What use is happiness? It can't buy you money." [Chic Murray, 1919-85]

So have I been corrected, or what?

On 15 Dec, 08:54, Weatherlawyer wrote:


So have I been corrected, or what?

No, just put in your place.

Will Hand wrote:


"Graham P Davis" wrote in message
...
Will Hand wrote:


"Graham P Davis" wrote in message
...
Dick Lovett wrote:

On Dec 13, 10:59 pm, Dick Lovett wrote:
On Dec 13, 10:29?pm, Pete L wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7142694.stm

Seems rather an odd article. Looking at the figures printed it
would seem that the warming trend is slowing. Perhaps the CO2
emissions from all the flights to Bali will redress the balance
soon!

If you take the last 7 years, the linear trend shows a slight
cooling.

Disregard this. I just realise I had plotted the anomalies rather
than the actual temperatures. They do though, as Pete mentions, show
a decreasing positive trend.


One point to be born in mind with the Hadley data is that it only uses
areas where there is data. At first glance, that might seem a
reasonable thing to do but it means that the area which is warming the
fastest, the Arctic, is mostly ignored. If interpolation of
temperature anomalies is used to cover such data-sparse areas, 2005
becomes the warmest year with 2007 almost certainly relegating 1998 to
third spot.


If data is sparse how do we know the arctic is warmest fastest?


Well, I could say that it's going as forecast but that could get into a
rather circular argument. How about last summer when there was only half
as much ice as there used to be forty years ago?

Anyway, do you have a problem with the idea of interpolating anomaly data
over the Arctic? It seems a reasonable solution to the problem to me. The
Met Office used a similar system for producing an SST analysis from
sparse data.


Not per se, and I'm not disputing the Arctic has warmed a lot either, it
is the statement that it has warmed the fastest that bothers me, there are
other data sparse areas of the world too, so how do we know they haven't
warmed more if there is no data? Interpolation is an estimate, scientists
often forget that. OK I'm being a purist, but I'm an empiricist too!


We meteorologists have always had to use interpolation and the SST analysis
is (was?) no exception in that it calculated the anomaly for each of the
observations and then analysed the anomalies to produce values for all
grid-points. This field was then added to the normal to produce the SST
analysis.

As long as the analysis of the air-temperature anomalies is performed in a
similar objective fashion it should give a reasonable assessment of the
global temperature anomaly. I'm not really saying that one is better than
the other, it depends what you want, a best estimate of the global anomaly
or a perhaps more reliable anomaly for part of the globe.

As to the Arctic being affected more by global warming than anywhere else on
the planet then I'm only going on the theory for that. For example, back in
1975, Manabe and Wetherald calculated that, for a doubling of CO2,
temperatures would rise 2-3C between the Equator and 45N but more than 10C
at 80N and beyond.

My personal view is that, given the forecasts of these great temperature
changes in the Arctic, I'd prefer to have a reasonable estimate of what's
happening up there instead of a map that, for that area, says "here be
dragons".


--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman, not newsboy.
"What use is happiness? It can't buy you money." [Chic Murray, 1919-85]

Graham P Davis wrote:


My personal view is that, given the forecasts of these great temperature
changes in the Arctic, I'd prefer to have a reasonable estimate of what's
happening up there instead of a map that, for that area, says "here be
dragons".



Ah, now we know where the heat in the arctic's coming from, we must put
out the flames :-)

--
Keith (Southend)
http://www.southendweather.net
e-mail: kreh at southendweather dot net

Squelching through the mud, at , blathered on thus, and
it became the following missive...

On 15 Dec, 08:54, Weatherlawyer wrote:


So have I been corrected, or what?

No, just put in your place.


Rumour has it, its more commonly known as a dustbin....
--
Rob C. Overfield
Hull

Weatherlawyer wrote:

On Dec 15, 7:38 am, Graham P Davis wrote:
Weatherlawyer wrote:
On Dec 14, 9:04 pm, Harold Brooks wrote:
In article 985f87a5-d49f-4dae-929f-
,
says...

On Dec 14, 6:23 pm, "Will Hand" wrote:

I'm not disputing the Arctic has warmed a lot either

I am.

Don't you mean it's got hotter?

The thermo-haline physics of the place will ensure a pretty constant
temperature average until almost all of the ice has gone.

If it doesn't, there is something wrong with the data presented.

Or there's something wrong with your understanding of the problem.
It's not a discussion of the ocean temperature, it's the air
temperature. You might be able to make an argument that there's an
upper limit on the average air temperature over the sea ice when ice
is present, but the temperature could be much colder than freezing and
could have increased dramatically without even reaching 0 C.

Quite right.

How was I to understand the reading of air temperatures over the
Arctic?

At what height would the Stephenson screens be set on the drifting
floes and how would you account for data affected by tidal
fluctuations raising and lowering said meteorological stations?

OK. I accept it was all done by Russian and USAn submarines and the
data adjusted to the best of their ability. And carefully collated
over the period of the cold war and then released a few years back and
has, since about 2005-2006, been released to the general public.

I really should have got around to reading it.

Or not, as the case may be.

Stephenson screens - or their equivalent - were erected on drifting floes
or ice islands (tabular bergs) and would have been placed at the standard
height above the ice surface. During the fifties and sixties there were
usually about four scientific bases in operation in the Arctic. The USA
ran two ice islands, Arliss II and T3, which continued circulating in the
Beaufort Gyre for around twenty years.

The USSR bases were usually on large floes rather than ice islands and
were relatively short-lived (two or three years) as they drifted across
the Arctic and were abandoned before they entered the Greenland Sea
through the Fram Strait. As one base was due to be abandoned another was
being set up so that they could keep a couple of stations operating. The
Soviet bases were named SP-nn (SP: Severnaya Poljus - North Pole), and I
think had reached about SP15 when I left the Met Office Ice Unit in 1973.
By this time, the USA ice islands had finally left the Beaufort Gyre and
had been abandoned as they went through the Fram Strait. The USA did not
replace these islands.

One problem with the USA bases is that they went through a period of a
few years when they couldn't make their mind up whether to report in
Fahrenheit or Celsius. Unfortunately, during most of the year, it was
almost impossible to figure out which was being used. This meant that the
people decoding the messages in our office could either have assumed F
was C, or assumed C was F and converted to C, etc.

I lost touch with what went on in the Arctic after '73 so don't know how
long the USSR bases lasted. I think that manned bases have now been
replaced with buoys dropped onto the surface.

--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman, not newsboy.
"What use is happiness? It can't buy you money." [Chic Murray, 1919-85]

So have I been corrected, or what?

No, just given you what I thought might add to your knowledge. Nice of you
to say thank-you.

--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman, not newsboy.
"What use is happiness? It can't buy you money." [Chic Murray, 1919-85]