Credit: NSIDC
A trifle cynical perhaps, but it shows it’s possible to claim almost anything you want about sea ice observations. Recently NASA was ‘blaming’ the geology for the contrasting polar variations. Now it’s the IPO.
H/T GWPF
The recent trend of increasing Antarctic sea ice extent — seemingly at odds with climate model projections — can largely be explained by a natural climate fluctuation, according to a new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
The study offers evidence that the negative phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), which is characterized by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific, has created favorable conditions for additional Antarctic sea ice growth since 2000.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, may resolve a longstanding mystery: Why is Antarctic sea ice expanding when climate change is causing the world to warm?
The study’s authors also suggest that sea ice may begin to shrink as the IPO switches to a positive phase.
“The climate we experience during any given decade is some combination of naturally occurring variability and the planet’s response to increasing greenhouse gases,” said NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, lead author of the study. “It’s never all one or the other, but the combination, that is important to understand.”
Study co-authors include Julie Arblaster of NCAR and Monash University in Australia, Cecilia Bitz of the University of Washington, Christine Chung of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and NCAR scientist Haiyan Teng. The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and by the National Science Foundation, which sponsors NCAR.
Expanding ice
The sea ice surrounding Antarctica has been slowly increasing in area since the satellite record began in 1979. But the rate of increase rose nearly five fold between 2000 and 2014, following the IPO transition to a negative phase in 1999.
The new study finds that when the IPO changes phase, from positive to negative or vice versa, it touches off a chain reaction of climate impacts that may ultimately affect sea ice formation at the bottom of the world.
When the IPO transitions to a negative phase, the sea surface temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific become somewhat cooler than average when measured over a decade or two. These sea surface temperatures, in turn, change tropical precipitation, which drives large-scale changes to the winds that extend all the way down to Antarctica.
The ultimate impact is a deepening of a low-pressure system off the coast of Antarctica known as the Amundsen Sea Low. Winds generated on the western flank of this system blow sea ice northward, away from Antarctica, helping to enlarge the extent of sea ice coverage.
“Compared to the Arctic, global warming causes only weak Antarctic sea ice loss, which is why the IPO can have such a striking effect in the Antarctic,” said Bitz. “There is no comparable natural variability in the Arctic that competes with global warming.”
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
‘a longstanding mystery: Why is Antarctic sea ice expanding when climate change is causing the world to warm?’
The mystery is why a failed theory is still believed when the evidence says it’s wrong.
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
Within the title of this post exists the entire ethos of the “catastrophic man-made global warming/climate change” theory. Period!
Huh?!
But it is not expanding:
Seems to be following the average lines from 1980s to 200s reasonably closely
“The ultimate impact is a deepening of a low-pressure system off the coast of Antarctica known as the Amundsen Sea Low. Winds generated on the western flank of this system blow sea ice northward, away from Antarctica, helping to enlarge the extent of sea ice coverage.”
So, what happens on the eastern flank of the Amundsen Sea Low?
‘blow sea ice northward, away from Antarctica’
…where it will be encountering ‘warmer’ or ‘warming’ waters according to climate models. But as it doesn’t seem to melt, there’s a problem with said models. Some might call it ‘reality’.
The IPO is one of the least well understood of all climate indices. Its relationship to other indices, such as ENSO and PDO are still unclear. Given its long cycle periods, it may be some time before the IPO is understood to the same level of detail as other indices.
http://climatology.co.uk/interdecadal-pacific-oscillation
Also: During the 20th century, there were positive IPO phases in 1925-1946 and 1978-1998. A negative phase occurred from 1947-1976.
Check those dates against global temperature charts 😎
When was it ‘the pause’ started?
thefordprefect says: ‘it is not expanding’
Better tell NCAR they have been wasting their time and money then. See ‘Expanding ice’ above.
—
IPCC: ‘There is ambiguity about whether inter-decadal Pacific-wide features are independent of global warming. In the longer Folland et al. (1999) analyses since 1911 they appear to be largely independent, but in the Livezey and Smith analysis of more recent SST data they are an integral part of a global warming signal. Using a different method of analysis of data since 1901, Moron et al. (1998) find a global warming signal whose pattern in the Pacific is intermediate between these two analyses.’
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/084.htm
Reblogged this on WeatherAction News.
The good news: They are finally acknowledging that oceans make climate, after decades of obsessing over the atmosphere and its trace gas CO2. But they still don’t draw the obvious implications. For example this quote from the press release:
“The sea ice surrounding Antarctica has been slowly increasing in area since the satellite record began in 1979. But the rate of increase rose nearly five fold between 2000 and 2014, following the IPO transition to a negative phase in 1999.”
So the IPO contributed to the warming during its positive phase prior to 1999; the 20 years of rising temperatures were driven by ocean circulations and the effect from CO2 is uncertain.
And there is also this misstatement: “There is no comparable natural variability in the Arctic that competes with global warming.”
Russian scientists from AARI disagree:
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/12/23/arctic-sea-ice-self-oscillating-system/
So with this melting, I’m moving to Antarctica right away. We can form a new country there, the Republic of Antarctica. Any day now the ice sheets are going to go sliding off into the ocean. Breadfruit and palm trees will grow. It’ll be a virtual pardise.
I calculate the odds as being that one is just as likely as the other.
Isn’t it easier to be a scientist than to be a palm reader?
Claim: “There is no comparable natural variability in the Arctic that competes with global warming”
but…
Bipolar seesaw: ‘when the Arctic warms the Antarctica cools and vice versa’ – research paper
Abstract: ‘Twentieth century bipolar seesaw of the Arctic and Antarctic surface air temperatures’
‘Understanding the phase relationship between climate changes in the Arctic and Antarctic regions is essential for our understanding of the dynamics of the Earth’s climate system. In this paper we show that the 20th century de-trended Arctic and Antarctic temperatures vary in anti-phase seesaw pattern – when the Arctic warms the Antarctica cools and visa [sic] versa. This is the first time that a bi-polar seesaw pattern has been identified in the 20th century Arctic and Antarctic temperature records.’
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL042793/abstract;jsessionid=2DD80ADC5030E4EC48516DE4DC9DA7C0.f01t03
—
To some extent at least, any temperature trends in the Arctic and Antarctica are likely to cancel each other out.
1st sentence of abstract:
“Antarctic sea-ice extent has been slowly increasing in the satellite record that began in 1979. Since the late 1990s, the increase has accelerated, but the average of all climate models shows a decline.”
That’s yet more compelling proof that climate modelers are on the totally & completely wrong track.
OB pointed to this: “The IPO is one of the least well understood of all climate indices. Its relationship to other indices, such as ENSO and PDO are still unclear.” — http://climatology.co.uk/interdecadal-pacific-oscillation That’s not true. PDO is just the northern wing of IPO and IPO is just low-frequency ENSO. These inter-relationships are among the best understood.
They’re partially on the right track noticing the role of IPO (the low frequency component of EOF2), but at centennial timescale they’re missing EOF3.
It’s entirely doable to finish cracking this.
Caution: They’re a little sloppy with their application of regression at NCAR. They don’t take care to do diagnostics on the residuals.
Recommendation: Any time you see a color-correlation map, take the time to plot the residuals for the bright spots, their blend, and their contrast, especially for correlation patterns that bear any resemblance to ENSO. Misinterpretations abound.
Meehl’s a reasonably bright character with good political instincts and I’m sure he could have gone further with his exploratory work had he had a better Stat 101 teacher to hammer home that it’s irresponsible to blindly trust statistical model assumptions. The methods don’t check their own assumptions. That’s a responsibility of the user and it’s not a difficult one, just one that almost all people skip — it’s a cultural problem.
The residuals need to be inspected with care. That’s an easy way to see if the assumptions underlying the regression model hold. It’s the process of elimination and we routinely see treacherously underhanded political activist’s like Svalgaard disregarding systematic patterns in residuals, which clarify (as in crystal clear) false conceptual assumptions. I don’t expect more from dark agents like Svalgaard (trust burned to zero), but I do expect more from Meehl and others at NCAR who consistently fail to check residuals.
Much better software could be developed (for example by someone like me if supplied with serious time, resources, and security at the local university) to streamline diagnostics and make climate exploration much more efficient in general. It’s actually a massive project. It would probably take decades and a good team. Politics could easily derail it too. Still it could happen. It’s not impossible. Things could be made so much better.
If the sea ice were contracting, and models forecast it is to contract more, why have Russia, Norway, Canada, USA, China, and Germany plans to build, or are in the process of building more icebreakers?
Just wondering…
OB & Others:
Please be careful with Chylek’s (2010) polar seesaw.
“Cross-correlation coefficient between individual 5-degree wide latitudinal zones using 11 year (above the diagonal) or 17 year (below the diagonal) averaging of the de-trended temperature data. The dark blue indicates high anti-correlation between the two ends of the polar regions.”
—
Remember (from the conference video) that he was upfront and clear that he’s only equipped to apply crude stats — just enough for an introductory glance (sometimes the most important step).
He gets full credit for pointing eyes at something demanding attention, but at this stage (now that our insights go much deeper) it’s important to realize he has EOFs 23 & 4 mixed:
“Figure 2. (a) De-trended Arctic (blue) and Antarctic (red) temperature time series smoothed by a 11 year running average (thin lines) or 17 year running average (thick lines) […]”
I’ve clarified more insightful variance partitioning countless times.
You may think of it simply:
I’m showing how to take Chylek’s insight to the next level, simply by splitting the insight into 2 simple components (…that just happen to fit together in the shape of de Vries….)
Another caution:
“[…] similar bi-polar seesaw patterns have been observed in Greenland and Antarctic ice core data.” — http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/ees/news/news.shtml
Take due care to distinguish between anti-phased and 1/4-phased relations. Rial clarified 1/4 phase polar relations, NOT anti-phase. It is INCORRECT to say “seesaw” for 1/4-phase relationships, but “differintegral” is accurate.
We should not blur the 2 different phasings, as it’s a BIG spatiotemporal clue.
I hope people will stop repeating the DEAD-WRONG “seesaw” phrasing for the 1/4 cycle relations illustrated by Jose Rial at longer timescales.
At the timescale (multidecadal-centennial) Chylek & I have illustrated, we do have seesaws.
I was very disappointed though to see wuwt recently calling the longer-timescale 1/4-cycle relations “seesaw”, as that’s simply not correct. It’s extremely sloppy to keep repeating that error when Rial illustrated SO clearly:
It’s one of the most beautiful and elegant insights we have. Appreciation and respect IS DUE.
At that timescale, the phasing is 1/4-cycle, NOT seesaw (i.e. not anti-phase).
The different phasings at different timescale are IMPORTANT (conceptually fundamentally important) clues. We need to take due care not to mix this KEY info in sloppily-scrambled political narratives that only worsen the outlook for more sensible climate discourse moving forward.
We’re accumulating quite a backlog of things we need to review to get people thinking more clearly about pole-pole asymmetries and meridional circulations.
The communication gets to be too much of a piece-of-work that’s always blocking time for more exploration. A more efficient division of labor is essential. A way will have to be found to divide up the chores more optimally, as this isn’t working. People are just ignoring what is known and instead going with half-baked conjecture about how they figure it “ought” to work, with a never-mind attitude towards what observations show with clarity.
Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.
The text that goes with the first image in my last comment (Chylek’s Figure 4):
“Cross-correlation coefficient between individual 5-degree wide latitudinal zones using 11 year (above the diagonal) or 17 year (below the diagonal) averaging of the de-trended temperature data. The dark blue indicates high anti-correlation between the two ends of the polar regions.”
[fixed – mod]
=
April 7, 2010
Discovery of a Linked Alternating Pattern in Warming Trends of the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans
[…]
The strong alternating pattern of the multidecadal temperature anomalies in the Arctic and Antarctic regions suggests a common cause. The complete cycle of the 20th century residual de-trended temperature occurred over approximately 70 years. The most likely component of the climate system whose state can persist for decades is the ocean. The researchers conclude that these temperature oscillations are related to the sloshing back and forth of the Atlantic Ocean, which redistributes the heat between the two poles, as measured by the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). The researchers suggest that the growing anthropogenic warming is now in phase with the AMO, and the interaction is exacerbating the Arctic warming in this decade. They believe that the intense Arctic warming since the 1970s arises from an additive combination of the general global warming trend with the warming phase of the multidecadal climate oscillation, while in Antarctica the cooling phase of the multidecadal oscillation opposes the general warming trend. The new observational finding challenges current coupled climate models, which are unable to predict these features. This result underscores the need for modelers and observationalists to work together to improve climate forecasts.
=
http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/ees/news/news.shtml
They’re mixing signals.
Recommendation: Review the EOF maps.
I’ll keep volunteering strategic commentary to help people try to get their data interpretations sorted out more sensibly, but there may be lots of delay before I have time to go back and reorganize presentation for efficient ingestion.
Hmmm…. on second thought I may leave people to fend for themselves on the ingestion front because I have exploration to do (as always)….
[ :
There’s a fun reference to Cylek here:
=
[…] sea ice that forms in the Arctic is not as mobile as sea ice in the Antarctic. Although sea ice moves around the Arctic basin, it tends to stay in the cold Arctic waters.
The Antarctic is almost a geographic opposite of the Arctic […] The open ocean allows the forming sea ice to move more freely, resulting in higher drift speeds.
[…]
So for the second time in a row the Arctic record low happened at the same time as the Antarctic record high. Is this a coincidence or is there some magical teleconnection operating between our poles?
Before we get back to that question, first some facts about the (media) attention that both the Arctic and the Antarctic are getting. Let’s do some simple ‘google’ and ‘google news’ searches for “Arctic sea ice” and “Antarctic sea ice”:
Arctic sea ice
Google: 4,220,000
Google news: 3970
Antarctic sea ice
Google: 967,000
Google news: 370
Apparently the Arctic sea ice is more interesting than the Antarctic sea ice, especially for the media. We all knew that: good news isn’t news, bad news is news.
=
http://www.staatvanhetklimaat.nl/2012/10/05/is-the-arctic-really-so-much-more-interesting-than-the-antarctic/
That’s an order-of-magnitude attention-differential.
That’s CLEAR signal — very telling.
1 consequence of abusive distortion of reality: Brexit
Here’s a link to Chylek’s (2010) bipolar seesaw paper:
Click to access AMO_Seasaw.pdf
Now I’ll give a new tip:
BDO scrambles interhemispheric sun-climate frequency OUTSIDE OF:
a) The NORTH Atlantic Sub-POLAR Gyre
b) The SOUTH Atlantic Sub-TROPICAL Gyre
…which BOTH rotate IN THE SAME DIRECTION (counter-clockwise).
(TO BE CONTINUED….)
Anyone independently working ahead-of-schedule:
Review the ERSSTv3b2 EOF maps with an eye for gyre.
According to one theory (from the paper):
‘In an alternate picture of ocean circulation [Toggweiler
and Russell, 2008], the upwelling is dominated by wind stress
along the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). It has been
estimated [Wunsch, 1998] that about 70% of the wind energy
transferred globally to the ocean takes place within the ACC.
The deep and intermediate waters are drawn to the surface by
the wind stress and are subsequently heated by the sun and
contact with the atmosphere. Then the Atlantic surface current
transports the warm waters away from the Antarctic
region, northward towards the equator, with additional
warming, and then further north towards the Arctic. In this
way heat that would otherwise be available to the Southern
Ocean and Antarctica is being exported to the northern
hemisphere and northward to the Arctic. The more efficient
this transport, the greater is the warming in the Arctic at the
expense of the Antarctic.’
—
Re ‘The more efficient this transport’ – is such efficiency wind-related?
[…] Source: When sea ice expands it’s due to nature, when it melts it’s due to humans | Tallbloke’s … […]
thefordprefect says: “But it is not expanding:”
NCAR says it is. Do you know better than they do?
Global sea ice stable for 38 years
According to NSIDC sea ice trend data, from 1979 to 2006, the sea ice losses for the Arctic (purple trend line in graph below) were effectively counterbalanced by the sea ice gains in the Antarctic (green trend line), producing a conspicuously flat trend line in global sea ice.
http://notrickszone.com/2016/07/04/amazing-climate-unchange-global-sea-ice-over-past-38-years-remains-virtually-level/
[see link for graphs]
OB asked:
“is such efficiency wind-related?”
Wind drives the circulation (including thermohaline geometry) …so yes.
Anomaly-think has corrupted conceptualization.
Wind’s roots: sun-driven absolute temperature differentials.
EOF23 = 96 contrasts the North Atlantic with the Southern Ocean whereas EOF4 contrasts the North Atlantic Sub-Polar Gyre with the South Atlantic Sub-Tropical Gyre. The latter is a simple function of solar cycle length and consequent variation in wind-driven meridional ice export while the former is scrambled by BDO, which shares long-run geometry with ENSO. MOC (meridional overturning circulation) is bimodal. It’s NOT the unimodal beast most seem to assume it to be. The Atlantic’s counter-clockwise gyres are communicating…
Climate in the Absence of Ocean Heat Transport
Thursday, 17 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Brian E J Rose, SUNY at Albany, Albany, NY, United States
Abstract:
The energy transported by the oceans to mid- and high latitudes is small compared to the atmosphere, yet exerts an outsized influence on the climate. A key reason is the strong interaction between ocean heat transport (OHT) and sea ice extent. I quantify this by comparing a realistic control climate simulation with a slab ocean simulation in which OHT is disabled. Using the state-of-the-art CESM with a realistic present-day continental configuration, I show that the absence of OHT leads to a 23 K global cooling and massive expansion of sea ice to near 30º latitude in both hemisphere. The ice expansion is asymmetric, with greatest extent in the South Pacific and South Indian ocean basins. I discuss implications of this enormous and asymmetric climate change for atmospheric circulation, heat transport, and tropical precipitation. Parameter sensitivity studies show that the simulated climate is far more sensitive to small changes in ice surface albedo in the absence of OHT, with some perturbations sufficient to cause a runaway Snowball Earth glaciation. I conclude that the oceans are responsible for an enormous global warming by mitigating an otherwise very potent sea ice albedo feedback, but that the magnitude of this effect is still rather uncertain. I will also present some ideas on adapting the simple energy balance model to account for the enhanced sensitivity of sea ice to heating from the ocean. [bold added]
http://agu.confex.com/agu/fm15/webprogram/Paper68383.html
[graphic from the link]
‘The sea ice surrounding Antarctica has been slowly increasing in area since the satellite record began in 1979. But the rate of increase rose nearly five fold between 2000 and 2014, following the IPO transition to a negative phase in 1999.’
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-07-antarctic-sea-ice-linked-natural.html
Therefore the sea ice was already expanding long before the IPO turned negative.
Therefore the IPO is not a fundamental cause of Antarctic sea ice expansion (but can assist it when negative).
Why are “Climate Scientists” so Ignorant of thermodynamics?
An increase in Southern Sea Ice demonstrates a reduction in total energy contained in the southern oceans. The Vast oceans contained far more energy then the Atmosphere contains and the Southern Ocean is much larger then the Northern Ocean.
There is more Ice on the worlds oceans. That means that the oceans are cooling. That means that the Earth’s surface is cooling. Any warming on the northern continents surface has no effect on this cooling of the worlds oceans and that energy quickly escapes to space…pg
Let me try again, dumbing it right down…
Mainstreamers say AMOC has 1 belt and one pair of wheels.
Observations suggest otherwise:
AMOC has 2 belts connecting 2 pairs of wheels:
1. 1 belt connects counter-clockwise rotating North Atlantic Sub-Polar Gyre with counter-clockwise rotating South Atlantic Sub-Tropical Gyre.
2. Another belt connects clockwise rotating North Atlantic Sub-Tropical Gyre with clockwise rotating Antarctic Circumpolar Current.
The wheels connecting a belt have to be rotating in the same direction.
Mainstreamers overlook 6 observed puzzle pieces.
…and it just so happens that the beat of the belts equals de Vries. (Look away mainstreamers. Look away. Don’t stress yourselves actually trying to solve the real puzzle. Go back to your fantasy models and shelter your life from knowing what real work feels like…)
Plastic waste thrown into UK seas finds its way into the Arctic Ocean within just TWO YEARS
— UK researchers used an online tool to track ocean currents
— They found plastics are carried from the UK’s coastlines northward
— The waste enters the Barents Sea north of Norway within two years, before being carried into the Arctic Ocean
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3675422/Plastic-waste-thrown-UK-seas-finds-way-Arctic-just-TWO-YEARS.html
OB, you’ve drawn attention to some of Brian Rose’s work above.
I’ve just looked up some of his other work and found this:
“Variability in the ocean’s MOC and associated heat transport is largely a passive response to changes in sea ice extent. Particularly during cooling and ice expansion, the MOC does not drive the climate change in our simulations.” — http://www.atmos.albany.edu/facstaff/brose/resources/Publications/Rose_etal_transitions_JClim2013.pdf
Now that is making far better sense than all this “ocean drives climate” garbage we hear daily.
“Passive response” is how I understand variation in ocean circulation, based on observations.
When I see people ignoring the observations and saying “ocean drives climate”, I just think: someone trying to spin a political narrative …without trying to square the narrative with observations.
more quotes consistent with observations:
“The ocean circulation, and notably the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), does not drive the climate change. The MOC (and associated heat transport) collapses poleward of the advancing ice edge, but this is a purely passive response to cooling and ice expansion. The MOC does, however, play a key role in setting the time scales of the transition and contributes to the asymmetry between warming and cooling.”
“Our simulations are externally driven by slow, imposed solar variations […] the simulated ocean circulation changes are a consequence of, rather than a driver of, the warming/cooling.”
It’s (mildly) refreshing to see modelers moving towards respect for observations (…rather than the usual away).
From Rose’s MIT PhD thesis:
“The main finding is that meridional structure in poleward oceanic energy transport, which is set by the wind forcing, gives rise to preferred latitudes for the sea ice edge”
“The large ice cap is stabilized by wind-driven convergence of OHT at the poleward edge of the subtropical thermocline. The size of the large ice cap is sensitive to the meridional and seasonal distribution of OHT convergence. The ice-free state persists in the absence of high-latitude OHT. Mid-latitude convergence of OHT warms the poles by driving increased atmospheric heat transport to the poles.”
Seems to appreciate and respect sun-driven wind (…and the ocean’s passive response).
That’s somewhat refreshing. We’re so conditioned (based on experience and observation) to never expect anything sensible from modelers.
Here’s help I think folks need visualizing interhemispheric land-ocean geometry & geography:
That’s a meridional reflection translated by 1/2 a rotation.
(…to be continued….)
.
Meanwhile see illustrations to fill in background awareness:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2016/06/30/rj-salvador-predicting-el-nino-predicts-the-climate/#comment-118187 (July 6, 2016 at 8:30 pm)
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/suggestions-19/#comment-117869 (June 27, 2016 at 7:57 am)
…and timescale derivations:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2016/06/30/rj-salvador-predicting-el-nino-predicts-the-climate/#comment-118185 (July 6, 2016 at 7:35 pm)
[…] PS: al blog Tallbloke mi perdoneranno se gli ho rubato il titolo, lo trovate qui. […]
Modeled ice thickness and volume
The plots show maps with sea ice thickness, and seasonal cycles of the calculated total arctic sea ice volume. The mean sea ice volume and standard deviation for the period 2004-2013 are shown with gray. The figures are based on calculations using DMI’s operational ocean and sea ice model HYCOM-CICE.
Again we see the story being repeated without correction:
http://joannenova.com.au/2016/07/new-paper-finds-ocean-circulation-drives-the-climate-on-the-surface/
An otherwise bright mind but…
Note particularly the emphatically italicized “before”. That’s telling. It doesn’t have the implication suggested.
Ignorance of coupling, Rial’s illustrations, and the nature of differintegral spatiotemporal structure more generally isn’t helping.
Disappointing.
[…] PS: al blog Tallbloke mi perdoneranno se gli ho rubato il titolo, lo trovate qui. […]