“When you see this type of warming, I think it’s alarming”… so what isn’t alarming for alarmists?
“A paper released Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience reports that the temperature at a research station in the middle of West Antarctica has warmed by 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1958. That is roughly twice as much as scientists previously thought and three times the overall rate of global warming, making central West Antarctica one of the fastest-warming regions on earth.” [New York Times]
I agree with benofhouston. Quoting Mr. Watts: “They can’t find any recent warming, so they took a broken sensor with ‘intermittent gaps and other problems,’ ‘recalibrated’ it, ‘used computerized analyses of the atmosphere to fill the gaps’ and ‘discovered’ warming that ‘happened in the 1980s.'”
Is that the part of Antarctica with the near-by underwater active volcano?
Don’t know when you judged science fairs, but about 7 or 8 years ago I was blacklisted for myself and another judge marking down a fourth grader for using the tired old volcano demonstration for science fair. We were NOT allowed to mark kids down except in tenth of points and certainly not to write the experiment was tired and old. Later, judging state science fairs for high school, a girl made it to state studying various brands of orange juice, including Sunny-D (also known as corn syrup, water and orange flavoring), No one ever marked her down for using something that was not orange juice. This is science today.
Detail on said paper
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/29/steig-et-al-falsified/
I wonder about how these people got their doctorates. This is one of a series of studies that i wouldn’t give a passing grade as an elementary school science fair project (actually, this is a good exercise in how to tease out data from a broken instrument, but putting any faith in the results is just stupid)
I believe the good Mr Watts has the proper summary
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/24/scientists-report-faster-warming-in-antarctica/
This was discussed in detail two years ago when some idiot made this same claim and extrapolated it across the continent (I forget the reference, but it was published in Nature if I remember correctly). The small selection of Antarctic stations (mostly in the western peninsula) had a huge building boom in the 80s and 90s, going from a shack with a runway to actual outposts. It’s a clear case of urban heat island effect.
“Temperature reading–adjust.” Problem solved.
Let’s see if I understand this correctly: ONE station showed warming and that station had logistical errors that produced inaccurate temperature readings that the researchers had to “adjust”? We are supposed to care about one data station that is admittedly incapable of accurate recording?
so why is this estimate right and the previous one wrong? I’m going to read that paper…
I’m a bit puzzled about the nature of this “software error”. Assuming that the system hardware is functioning correctly, this doesn’t seem plausible. Let’s assume that the code used a single 8-bit byte to store temperature data and, for the sake of simplicity, the range of temperatures that can be expressed is -128 to +127 degrees Fahrenheit (256 values can be expressed by an 8-bit byte). Then the fixed point error would be, on average over the long haul, about 0.5 degrees. Now, using a single 8-bit byte to record temperature is very crude and ruggedized 16-bit microprocessor were available in the late 1970’s. This is speculation, but I would assume that the equipment deployed would be capable of much more precise temperature measurement, processing and recording. Also, even if the temperature measurements were imprecise, what software error would cause the first derivative of temperature to be off by 2 degrees Fahrenheit over 50 years, even with 8-bit computer hardware?
And here I was, hoping to find the perfect tan…
Unfortunately, international treaties prevent the development of Antarctic beach-front properties.
http://pindanpost.com/2012/12/24/antarctic-climate-changers-are-scaring-themselves-and-the-abc-again/ My take on it, these guys are NUTS
But, there was some nuance! They were not totally sure it was due to human influences. Could be the warm tropical waters pushed southwards they said.
So there. See how neutral they are? /sarc
‘since 1958’
How about that- they forgot to mention the Earth was in a COOLING cycle for the first 20 years of that period.
New research has found, worse than at first thought, experts, alarming, urgent, act now, time is running out, more research(more money) is needed. Enough to make any sane person feel sick.
If I read it correctly, most of that warming occurred in the 1980’s … seems like that station has had a history of corrupted data.
I’m repeating others before me but the measurement methods of temperature trends in the West Antarctic have been compared to basing the long term temperature trends of the entire North American continent on one weather station in . . . Miami, Florida! Southern ice area is still above the 33 year (recent/brief) average.
Let”s hope the temperature keeps on rising and the place might become worth something.