Arctic Ice Watch

[kenneal - lagger]

My MP, who claims to be "on side with the climate message", his words not mine, tells me that his constituents, apart from a dozen or so environmental activists like me, are not interested in sustainability, the environment or climate change. What I have asked him is where is the Churchillian person who is willing to stand up, like Churchill did in the 1930's over the rise of Hitler, and keep this extremely important matter in front of Parliament and the public until they listen and do something.

He is a major landowner who has a massive investment in the future to hand on to his children. What price this investment if GW/CC trashes the environment? What will he, and the rest of us, say to our grandchildren when they ask what we did to combat the climate change that will have trashed their environment. It will not be that they don't know anything different because the change is happening so fast that we can see it. We are all, here anyway, amazed by the amount of rain and the frequency of the events that we are seeing now. We can see it happening and our grandchildren will be able to see so they will know that their environment is changing before their eyes!

Hansen is the only person who has consistently stood up and been counted and he is now being criticised by other scientists for not being conservative enough and by politicians, or ex politicians anyway, for exaggerating! If he has exaggerated a bit more in the past what he had said then would be entirely on track now!

[vtsnowedin]

The point that Hansen made was that scientists have been consistently conservative in their papers and pronouncements and politicians have consistently played down the problems bought up by the scientists. This has been going on for so long now that we are approaching crunch time and politicians are still no giving the matter anything like the prominence and urgency that it deserves.

No! No one is exaggerating anything.

I think that story that implied the North pole was going to thaw on January one due to the "Mega storm" was a clear and deliberate exaggeration.

[kenneal - lagger]

My interpretation of that story was that there was going to be a slight thaw, as in a surface melt, due to above zero temperatures but I don't think anyone thought that all the ice would disappear for a few days!! I don't think that the article gave that impression either so I don't think that it was an exaggeration.

[clv101]

Hansen is the only person who has consistently stood up and been counted and he is now being criticised by other scientists for not being conservative enough ...

No Ken, he's being criticised for abusing the scientific process. Had he said what he's said in a magazine article, in a book etc he'd have received no criticism. The problem is that he whet on a PR blitz before peer review, leading many good folk to believe the science says something it doesn't.

[vtsnowedin]

You don't call this exaggeration?

Freak storm in North Atlantic to lash UK, may push temperatures over 50 degrees above normal at North Pole

The vigorous low pressure system that helped spawn devastating tornadoes in the Dallas area on Saturday is forecast to explode into a monstrous storm over Iceland by Wednesday.

Big Icelandic storms are common in winter, but this one may rank among the strongest and will draw northward an incredible surge of warmth pushing temperatures at the North Pole over 50 degrees above normal. This is mind-boggling.

And the storm will batter the United Kingdom, reeling from recent flooding, with another round of rain and wind.

The storm’s pressure is forecast by the GFS model to plummet more than 50 millibars in 24 hours between Monday night and Tuesday night, easily meeting the criteria of a ‘bomb cyclone’ (a drop in pressure of at least 24 mb in 24 hours),

By Wednesday morning, when the storm reaches Iceland and nears maximum strength, its minimum pressure is forecast to be near 923 mb, which would rank among the great storms of the North Atlantic.

It's not clear yet what the effect of all this will be on Arctic sea ice, but what a way to end the year. I wish everyone the best for 2016, especially the people across the globe who are suffering from all this winter weirdness.

[kenneal - lagger]

Can you point out exactly what is exaggerated, please?

[biffvernon]

You don't call this exaggeration?

Freak storm in North Atlantic to lash UK, may push temperatures over 50 degrees above normal at North Pole

The vigorous low pressure system that helped spawn devastating tornadoes in the Dallas area on Saturday is forecast to explode into a monstrous storm over Iceland by Wednesday.

Big Icelandic storms are common in winter, but this one may rank among the strongest and will draw northward an incredible surge of warmth pushing temperatures at the North Pole over 50 degrees above normal. This is mind-boggling.

And the storm will batter the United Kingdom, reeling from recent flooding, with another round of rain and wind.

The storm’s pressure is forecast by the GFS model to plummet more than 50 millibars in 24 hours between Monday night and Tuesday night, easily meeting the criteria of a ‘bomb cyclone’ (a drop in pressure of at least 24 mb in 24 hours),

By Wednesday morning, when the storm reaches Iceland and nears maximum strength, its minimum pressure is forecast to be near 923 mb, which would rank among the great storms of the North Atlantic.

It's not clear yet what the effect of all this will be on Arctic sea ice, but what a way to end the year. I wish everyone the best for 2016, especially the people across the globe who are suffering from all this winter weirdness.

Each of those lines turned out to be an accurate forecast.

[PS_RalphW]

Predictably enough, the warm pulse stalled ice extent and area growth in the charts, leading to record low ice extent for the time of year (previously 2010) and increasing ice area anomaly (although this may be partly due to melt ponding!).

The next very warm pulse is entering the western arctic (sending a -15C pulse into Finland).

If this weather continues as it has for the last month, we will be set for record low winter ice , and a good chance of record low summer ice as well.

[vtsnowedin]

You don't call this exaggeration?

Freak storm in North Atlantic to lash UK, may push temperatures over 50 degrees above normal at North Pole

The vigorous low pressure system that helped spawn devastating tornadoes in the Dallas area on Saturday is forecast to explode into a monstrous storm over Iceland by Wednesday.

Big Icelandic storms are common in winter, but this one may rank among the strongest and will draw northward an incredible surge of warmth pushing temperatures at the North Pole over 50 degrees above normal. This is mind-boggling.

And the storm will batter the United Kingdom, reeling from recent flooding, with another round of rain and wind.

The storm’s pressure is forecast by the GFS model to plummet more than 50 millibars in 24 hours between Monday night and Tuesday night, easily meeting the criteria of a ‘bomb cyclone’ (a drop in pressure of at least 24 mb in 24 hours),

By Wednesday morning, when the storm reaches Iceland and nears maximum strength, its minimum pressure is forecast to be near 923 mb, which would rank among the great storms of the North Atlantic.

It's not clear yet what the effect of all this will be on Arctic sea ice, but what a way to end the year. I wish everyone the best for 2016, especially the people across the globe who are suffering from all this winter weirdness.

[PS_RalphW]

Those are all non-scientific relative terms. Any scientist will simply ignore them as padding. We are so used to doing this reading ordinary literature that we do it almost subconsciously.

[johnhemming2]

On a purely factual basis my mind did not boggle.

[kenneal - lagger]

I wouldn't call those terms exaggerations but them that is only my opinion.

[clv101]

Those are all non-scientific relative terms. Any scientist will simply ignore them as padding. We are so used to doing this reading ordinary literature that we do it almost subconsciously.

Absolutely! That isn't exaggeration, it's just fluff. As biffvernon said, each sentence is factually fine.

[johnhemming2]

each sentence is factually fine.

What then was the predicted temperature (I presume 2C) and what is the normal temperature at the North Pole in winter.

http://climatekids.nasa.gov/polar-temperatures/

This says: -40C.

That is a delta of 42C. It is unreasonable to adjust this to the nearest 50C. Hence if we are going to adjust it to the nearest 10C it would be 40C. Not 50C.

50 degrees on that basis is factual exaggeration notwithstanding the non boggling state of my mind.

[biffvernon]

may push temperatures over 50 degrees above normal at North Pole

I don't think this is very important, in the grand scheme of things, but in the alleged exaggeration there are a couple of points to note. "May" is a somewhat indefinite word - the temperature may or may not turn out to have risen that far without affecting the truth of the sentence. "Normal" is not a closely defined quantitative term, and does not necessarily have the same value as the 'average' stated in the Climate Kids web-page.

Anyway, there isn't a weather station at the North Pole, so we'll never know for sure.