Ice Forecast Update Update

One of the blessings of NSIDC sea ice data is that they update their monthly averages promptly.

How Not to Analyze Tide Gauge Data

There’s another paper about sea level rise in the Journal of Coastal Research by P. J. Watson (2011, Is There Evidence Yet of Acceleration in Mean Sea Level Rise around Mainland Australia?, Journal of Coastal Research, 27, 368–377). According to this powerpoint, Watson is genuinely concerned about sea level rise due to global warming and argues forcefully for addressing the issue. His primary interest seems to be: to help those responsible for protecting Australia’s coastline be as well prepared as possible for the impending sea level rise. That’s a noble motive, and I wish him success. But in spite of the best of intentions, I can’t put much stock in Watson’s published results because it’s clear that he is no data analyst.

Ice Forecast Update

As many of you know, nine months ago I predicted the minimum Arctic sea ice extent for 2011 would be 4.63 +/- 0.9 million km^2. I’ll update that prediction using more recent data from NSIDC.

Trend and Noise

A commenter recently linked to a post by Steve Goddard claiming that “GISS Shows No Warming Over The Last Decade.”

Bob Carter Does his Business

A certain blogger decided to inform us all that Bob Carter does the Business, referring to the this presentation to the Sydney Mining Club. Others have praised Carter’s presentation at the Heartland conference. There’s a lot of similarity between two presentations. And what, you wonder, does Bob Carter have to say about global warming?

Aligning Station Records

As some of you know, I devised a method for aligning temperature data records which I believe is better than the “reference station method” used by NASA GISS. However, the difference is small and it doesn’t change the overall global result when small regions are averaged, then those regional results are area-weight-averaged to produce a global estimate. It’s an interesting, and possibly useful, refinement which doesn’t change the overall final answer.

Skeptics: Real or Fake?

Some of you may have heard about the “ICCC-6” conference, sponsored by the so-called “Heartland Institute,” that will take place this Thursday and part of Friday in Washington D.C. It’s the best-known meeting of those who call themselves “skeptics” about global warming.

I suspect they’re not really skeptics at all. Why do I think that, you wonder? Can we talk?.

Mike Mann Responds

Mike Mann has responded to the Richard Muller interview in Scientific American.

Sea Ice 3-D

Many of us have seen graphs of the dramatic decline of Arctic sea ice over the last 30+ years (since we’ve been monitoring it via satellites), a decline which is unmatched for at least a century and almost certainly for several thousand years. The graph of sea ice extent anomaly (monthly average data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center) shows the change plainly:

Volcanic CO2

From time to time we hear the claim that volcanoes inject more CO2 into the atmosphere than human activity. Its typical form is exemplified by a comment at RealClimate which was (quite appropriately) consigned to the “Borehole.”

When the volcano, Mt Pinatubo, erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in its entire YEARS on earth.

This claim is almost as ubiquitous as it is ridiculous, and seems to be championed by Australian geologist Ian Plimer, author of the execrable book “Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science.” Science seems to be missing from all of Plimer’s musings on global warming.