MWP - Greenland Today + 700s-900s weather in words

meieval warm period eat your heart out!

http://www.greenland-guide.gl/reg-south.htm
During the summer, South Greenland fully lives up to its Danish name, Green Land, as this is the most fertile part of the country. In fact most of the flora of Greenland grow in this particular region. The winter climate is relatively mild, and summer temperatures reaching 16-18°C are not uncommon. Because of these conditions, the economic life of this area is also very different from the rest of Greenland, with sheep farming and agriculture playing an important part. If you take a boat trip along the fjords you will see isolated sheep farms, some of which have paths and rough roads leading to them, while for others the only contact with the outside world is by boat or radio transmitter.

The sheep are rounded up in September, and some 20,000 lambs are taken on flat-bottomed boats to the slaughterhouse in Narsaq, one of the three sizeable large towns in South Greenland.

Many sheep farmers have built cabins near their farms, in which guests can stay for a day or two before they continue on foot to the next farm.

The abundant fertility of this region was also the reason why Eric the Red chose to live in South Greenland in around 985 AD, after he was outlawed from Iceland.

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Your first encounter with large animals in Greenland usually takes place very soon after arrival. More than 3,000 musk oxen live in the area around Kangerlussuaq Airport and some of them can be seen in the immediate surroundings. A one-hour guided tour of the area will most likely include an encounter with these large, sedate animals.

Reindeer live all over the ice-free parts of Greenland, and you may be lucky to see a herd. Reindeer hide is very insulating, and if you decide to go on a dog-sledge tour you will have the chance to dress in clothes made from reindeer hide.
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wiki

The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) or Medieval Climate Optimum was a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region, that may also have been related to other climate events around the world during that time, including in China [1] New Zealand [2] and other countries [3] [4][5] [6] [7][8] lasting from about AD 950–1250.[9] It was followed by a cooler period in the North Atlantic termed the Little Ice Age.

http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/751_999.htm

759/760 (Winter) A cold winter. (Easton, in CHMW/Lamb) [ Some accounts have this as 761 .. usual dating problems ]. 1
763/64(Winter & later) The winter is noted as being 'severe' .. and was followed by a " long and terrible drought " .. in the spring/summer of 764: suggests abnormally persistent blocking / high pressure situation (at least, 'abnormal' in length of persistence in the same 'phase'), with the primary jet perhaps shunted well to the south. Some sources note 'great snow', with an 'intense' frost. In 'London Weather' entry, .... "one of the severest winters known in history". (Probably affected large areas of continental Europe, again suggesting a 'Scandinavian High' situation.) 1, 8
~770 - ~800 A period of higher frequency of cold winters (note: not necessarily every winter). This leads to the suggestion of blocking of the main Atlantic, westerly flow by often slow-moving, intense anticyclones, or an increased frequency of east or northeast flow with higher pressure to the north of these islands. This would tie in to a certain extent with the idea that Scandinavian exploration / raids were assisted by lack of 'westerly-storminess'. 1
798 (Winter) Ireland: snow - men & animals died. LWH
~800 (December) December 24th (original recorded as the 'Eve of Christmas', so presumably we must regard this as an 'Old Style' dating. Also, the exact year is subject to the same uncertainty as other events so long ago): gale: Great SW or W wind. Cities destroyed (!); Lamb has this comment in ref. 23: " The first recorded one of a series of storm floods .. which reduced the size of the island of Heligoland by more than half by the year 1300." LWH, 23
804 (March) March 17th: Ireland - Tornado(?): thunder, wind & lightning. '1010 men killed'. [ I wouldn't normally detail all 'tornado' events, but the death-toll warrants mention, and I do wonder given that over a thousand died, whether this was in fact a 'storm' event due to a major depression rather than a small-scale tornadic event.] LWH
817 (Winter) December 25th (presumably logged as 'Christmas Day'): Ireland - snow: many rivers & lakes frozen to February 22nd. [ Although only tied to Ireland, given the severity & length of the event, Britain must also have been affected. ] LWH
821/822 (Winter) A severe winter. (Easton, in CHMW/Lamb) 1
827 Possible severe winter. Thames frozen for nine weeks. 8, LWH
844/845 (Winter) A cold winter. (Easton, in CHMW/Lamb) 1
850
855/856 (Winter) A cold winter. (Easton, in CHMW/Lamb); Great ice & frost until Jan. 7th - rivers & lakes froze. 1, LWH
856 Ireland: gale: very great wind; woods felled. LWH
859/60 (Winter) A severe winter in England. 1, 8
873/874 (Winter) A cold winter. (according to Easton, in CHMW/Lamb); Scotland: specifically a cold winter - great frost from November to April; thaw brought floods. 1,LWH
880/881 (Winter) A cold winter. (Easton, in CHMW/Lamb) 1
892(?) (November) 11th November: Ireland - gale, many trees and houses fell. LWH
908 Possible severe winter. Most English rivers frozen for two months. 8,LWH
910 - 930 Extended droughts with regularity: also thought that the summer half-years were warm or very warm more often than not - some notably hot summers. 1
912/913 (Winter) A severe winter. (Easton, in CHMW/Lamb) 1
917(Winter) Ireland: severe winter - Great snow. Lakes frozen. [ As elsewhere, implies a blocked pattern, with occasional 'Atlantic' incursions. Must have affected Britain as well I would have thought.] LWH
923 Possible severe winter. Thames frozen for 13 weeks. Year may be 928 or 929. 8,LWH
927/928 (Winter) A cold winter. (Easton, in CHMW/Lamb) 1
939/940 (Winter) A cold winter. (Easton, in CHMW/Lamb) 1
941(Winter) Ireland: cold - Lakes & rivers froze. [ I wonder if this belongs to the winter noted above? ] LWH
944 Possible severe gale/storm in London; many houses destroyed. 1500 houses "fell" (destroyed?): affected the whole of England. 8,LWH
946 - 948 England: drought - 'no rain for 3 years' (unlikely to have been "no" rain - more likely a marked shortage of rainfall / winter snowfall). LWH
955 (Summer) Wales: Hot summer. [ Must surely have affected other parts of Britain - indeed, the heat may have been 'exceptional', if the summer was notably hot as far west as Wales.] LWH
973 Thames flood in London. 8
974/75 (Winter) Probably a severe winter across Britain .. usual doubts about dates etc. Severe winter over whole of Europe until March 11th (OS). 1, 8, LWH
990's Extended droughts with regularity: also thought that the summer half-years were warm or very warm more often than not - some notably hot summers. 1
992 Ireland: Storm flood - tempest (high wind?) submerged island fort in one hour Wicklow. [ The way this is written up suggests that this was a 'storme surge' event, rather than necessarily due to heavy rain - though the latter may have played a part.] LWH
995(Summer) Summer cold throughout Europe; severe frost & ice (quite remarkable if true in July as given on this site!) LWH
998 Possible severe winter. Thames frozen for five weeks

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Then LIA
http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/1650_1699.htm
Many hot summers.

Another pretty video (of no particular use!)- this time arctic sea ice. 2007 minimum has recently been put down to outflow assisted by wind through the Fram strait. Looking at the video for this time does not seem to show much difference.

Nenana Ice Classic

The river usually freezes over during the months of Oct. and Nov. The ice continues to get thicker throughout the winter with the average thickness being 42" on April 1. Depending on the temperature snow cover, wind, ect., the ice may freeze slightly more and then start to melt. The ice melts on the top due to the weather and on the bottom due to the water flow.
River: The tripod is planted two feet into the Tanana River ice between the highway bridge and the railroad bridge at Nenana, just up-river from the Nenana river tributary. It is 300 feet from the shore and connected to a clock that stops as the ice goes out.
Prize: In 1917 railroad engineers bet $800 guessing when the river would break up. Last year, the winners shared the prize money of $303,895. Over $10 million has been paid during the past 92 years. Payoff will be made June 1st, 2009.

This contest surely cannot be accused of fraud. So plotting the breakup time from 1st January you get:



http://nenanaakiceclassic.com/


Not much happens until 1965 when a steady decline begins
Interestingly it shows the early 40s to be warm.

Global SST Video 1 day/frame

Full Globe SSTs at 100days/sec. Worth looking out for antarctic icebergs playing in the warm waters before disappearing.

Now have a simple procedure for generating this from a series of still sequential images so any requests?

Other frame rates are simple.

A few years of sea surface temperature video

Atlantic North - A few years of sea surface temperature video

What creates the cool patches at (pacific side of)

Mexico lat 15.8° long-94.3°
Nicaragua lat 11.1° long -86.0°

Wind? Water upwelling?

Watch out for the cooling of storms rushing across the water
Admire the squiggly warm water up the eat coast of USA
Check-out the Kelvin-Helmholtz Waves (??) below the equator

Data here
http://www.remss.com/sst/sst_data_daily.html?rgn=atlantic_north

PS this was twice the size but uploading compresses it!
click this may download the full file

latest AMSU-A temperatures

AMSU Channel data from satellite data

Data from:
discover web page

Note that all data is used (there seems to be none before 1998 for these channels


near surface is warming at 1.21e-4C/day=4.4C/century
3300ft data (now discontinued) was warming at 12deg/century
sea surface is slightly cooling but only 8 years of data.

No problem there then!



4.3deg C/century



4.41degC/century

Amazing coincidence.

Jones v McIntyre

http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2009/08/
Why does McIntyre want the data?
...But McIntyre insists hat he’s not interested in challenging the science of climate change, or in nit-picking; rather he is simply asking that the “data be made available”.

...He’s especially aggrieved by the fact that hurricane expert Peter Webster at Georgia Tech University was recently provided with data that had been refused to him. McIntyre’s point here is that he should be treated as a legitimate academic given his background and publication record

But Webster points out that he was allowed access because of the nature of his request, which was very specific and will result in a joint publication with Phil Jones. “Reasonable requests should be fulfilled because making data available advances science”, says Webster, “but it has to be an authentic request because otherwise you’d be swamped".

Once the data become publicly available, Jones wants McIntyre to produce a global temperature record. “Science advances that way. He might then realize how robust the global temperature record is”, says Jones. Asked if he would take on the challenge, McIntyre said that it’s not a priority for him, but added “if someone wanted to hire me, I’d do it”.

====================

So McIntyre does not want the data he just wants others unamed to have the data.
Webster got the data because it will result in a joint Jones Webster publication.
seems different conditions to me

How "much" data must UEA retain - about 4 cu metres! and 3 tonnes

Assumptions:
Most early records would have been on paper. Perhaps one sheet/month?
1000 stations (out of perhaps 5000)for 50 years to 1980s (i.e. the first record produced in the 1930s on average)
Making no allowance for dividers for filing or shelves etc. Just the paper:

50 years
12 months/y
1 A4 sheet/month
1000 Stations
5 cm/ream (measured)
500 sheets/ream
21 width A4
29.5 height A4

sheets total 600000
reams 1200
height 60 metres
volume 3.717 cu metres

Taking this a step further
using 80 gsm paper
total area 37170.00 sq metres
total weight 2.97 tonnes

I do rather wonder where McIntyre would have kept all that paper!

So to preserve raw data would take a storage space of a lot more than 4cu metres.
These sheets would have been transcribed into computer format, possibly with errors added and errors corrected so the first computer record is NOT the raw data.
If you had to move office and you thought that you would never go back to your 4 metres^3 of raw data because your computer data was correct. And you had admin complaining that there was not room for your tatty bits of paper,. And it needed sorting and indexing to be useful. I think binning it would be a sensible option.

And if you wanted raw data the NMCs (National Meteorological Centres) would still have a copy so nothing is lost

Now if someone comes along and demands that you provide the raw data. What do you give them - your modified computer data, or the raw data?
Well they asked for the raw so how much will that cost:
£1800 @ £1.5 per ream.
+time+photocopy cost

and how long will that take:

600000 sheets of perhaps dog-eared paper (would require manual feeding)
5 seconds per sheet
6.5 working hours per day
is about 128 days photocopying

Probably manageable but would the recipients be happy with your 4 cu metres and 3 tonnes of data???????????

It is also interesting that with all these £1000000s being paid to UEA for climate research that they JUST purchased a new scanner in 2008 for a project and they were going to use it to ILLEGALLY(?) scan a document to satisfy McIntyre:

. This email came to CRU last night.
From: Steve McIntyre [[1] mailto:stephen.mcintyre@utoronto.ca]
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 5:09 PM
To: [2]alan.xxxxxx@uea.ac.uk
Subject: Farmer et al 1989
Dear Sir, Can you please send me a pdf of the Farmer et al 1989, cited in Folland
andPArker 1995, which, in turn is cited in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. Thanks,
Steve McIntyre...
CRU has just the one copy of this! We've just got a new scanner for a project, so someone here is going to try this out - and scan the ~150pp. I'm doing this as this is one of the project reports that I wished I'd written up. It's got all the bucket equations,

-----------------------------
A reply!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jeff Alberts
Posted Mar 14, 2010 at 9:25 PM | Permalink | Reply
Something a few grad students could knock out. What’s the big deal?

Freak Current Takes Gulf Stream to Greenland

An unprecedented extreme in the northern hemisphere atmospheric circulation has driven a strong direct connecting current between the Gulf Stream and the West Greenland current. The unprecedented negativity of the "Arctic Oscillation" and the strong connection of the Gulf Stream with the Greenland current are exceptional events. More exceptional weather events are predicted with anthropogenic climate change, but this could be a natural variation of weather and currents
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/1/6/822520/-Freak-Current-Takes-Gulf-Stream-to-Greenland

Good Web Pages for climate stuff

Up to date site not seemingly pushing in either direction!
http://www.climate4you.com/

Giss temp code for download replicated in Python.
Latests Blog posts show that removal of some of the stations has NOT produced a warming trend

http://clearclimatecode.org/

Challenge to Watts

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/message-to-anthony-watts

Message to Anthony Watts
March 5, 2010 · 8 Comments
Anthony:

It has now been independenly confirmed, by multiple persons, that my results regarding the impact of station dropout on global temperature are correct. Your claims, in your document with Joe D’Aleo for the SPPI, are just plain wrong.

You’ve avoided answering this criticism, claiming that you can’t replicate my results without my code. Yet several others managed to do just that. It’s not that difficult, and you were irresponsible not to investigate this issue before publishing your claims. The posts by E.M. Smith are so incoherent they resemble the ravings of a lunatic more than the results of a qualified analyst. Your only other response has been to call me a coward for blogging under a pseudonym. That’s nothing but a desperate attempt of a scoundrel to deflect attention from his own misdeeds.

Furthermore, your use of false claims to accuse NOAA scientists of deliberate deception was not just mistaken, it was unethical.

If you have any honor at all, you’ll set the record straight. You owe it to everyone, and especially to NOAA, to admit that you were wrong. And you certainly owe it to NOAA to apologize. You need to make a highly visible, highly public admission of error, and apology, for using falsehoods to accuse others of fraud.

Are you man enough?

Attack on Jones

A dump of a post I made at CA in case it gets deleted

thefordprefect
Posted Mar 5, 2010 at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Reply“I have no pity for him. His situation is his own fault.”

What!!!!!
The noise generated by an email from jones where he quipped about someones (natural) death (“In an odd way this is cheering news !” Jones did not wish him ill) and now you say Jones deserves what he gets.

His research results are comparable to 2 others. How can you suggest it has been falsified? Where’s your evidence? Where’s your justification for wishing him ill?

Do you honestly think that 10s of thousands of scientists are colluding in a gigantic fraud, and not one of them, their co-workers, their secretaries, etc. etc. (perhaps 100,000s people) has seen the light and shown a single statement that confirms this conspiracy to defraud?

Remember, Some of the death threats Jones (and others presumably) get will be from readers of this and watts blog.

It disgusts me that someone who has been researching climate for 30 years should be treated this way. His mental suffering was evident from the hearing video.

How can YOU justify hounding a human being to the point that he contemplates suicide?

Global Warming will not destroy the human race, but the vilification of climate researchers makes me wonder if it is worth saving any way.

A very saddened and disgusted, Mike

“We’re getting a handful of nasty emails coming and requests for comments on other
blog sites. One email has gone to the University Registrar because of the language used.
Keith had one that said he was responsible for millions of deaths! Even one reading far
too much into his off ill message.
Even though I’ve had loads of FOIs and nasty emails, a few in the last 2 days have
been the worst yet. I’m realizing more what those working on animal experiments must
have gone through.
Cheers
Phil”

Makes you proud to be human doesn’t it.
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RomanM
Posted Mar 5, 2010 at 8:36 AM | Permalink | ReplyRemember, Some of the death threats Jones (and others presumably) get will be from readers of this and watts blog.
I see this as a very serious allegation against myself and other regular commentators at this site. I would suggest that you either provide some evidence to support this or withdraw the statement.

Sending threats of causing harm to someone is a vile and despicable act. Making an unfounded accusation that I am part of a group of individuals that will do that is irresponsible at best

--------------
Please note I did not mean contributors here as McIntyre usually reigns comments in. In fact there are probably millions of readers at these sites and only a few contribute. I'm sure you will admit that they will have gaioned information from these blogs and some will consequently have written "strong" messages to AGW researchers.

However:
Why was a whole thread pulled at CA a year(?) ago?

From Watts

Lemon (11:01:28) :
I have no more sympathy for these fools than I had for Siegried & Roy after the lion attacked. Play with fire…
Their death might save trillions of dollars and millions of lives
Chemist (16:48:18) :
I’ll be the one to say it: I hope they die so that their deaths will draw attention to the truth of this issue. If they succeed, then it will be just another propaganda piece. With their deaths, they can bring actual change by allowing the world to industrialize

There are others But these are still on the web site.

-------------
Rachelle Young (20:52:54) :

I would be content to see all three of them freeze to death or be eaten by ‘endangered’ polar bears. That would teach the world something.