What DID happen to the ice during the Arctic Storm?

The daily rate of change is plotted below:

During the storm period 3 days show increased loss. Over the 2007 loss this is 292812 sq km

WUWT claim that this loss exposed more ice to later attack but only 2 other periods show gross changes:
During the period 15th August to 17th August (additional loss over 2007 is 178438 sq km)
During the period 22nd August to 23rd August (additional loss over 2007 is 174687 sq km)

So the Absolute maximum loss that could possibly be attributed to the "Great Arctic Storm" of 2012 is 645937 sq km.

The difference between the 2007 and 2012 minimum is 765468sq km

So even if you subtract the largest possible storm induced loss you would still have a 119531 sq km additional loss in 2012 when compared to 2007.

Sky Temperature and Thermal Imaging

Sky, High and Low cloud temperatures  as measured on a thermal imaging camera.

These images show the cloud and sky temperatures as measured by a camera with a 2µ to 13µ pass band.

From a previous test done at night the clear sky temperature is less than -40°C (the camera lower limit).

These pictures show that this clear sky value is maintained as expected during daylight (about -43°C).

Cloud temperatures range from -20°C for high light cloud to +1.1°C for low heavy cloud.

The pictures were taken on 21^st December 2012 at approx. 14:00pm  (sunset @ 16:00)
All area temperatures are maximum for that area.
 

 

 

 

These temperatures of course represent what the camera "sees" through its Germanium lense. And as can be seen from the previous thermal camera stuff the camera struggles to measure temperature of gasses - they just do not give black body radiation.

 

Previous posts:

http://climateandstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/water-vapour-and-thermal-imaging.html

http://climateandstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/thermal-imaging-how-not-to-measure.html

http://climateandstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/cool-body-can-transfer-measurable-heat.html

 

 



 

Water Vapour and Thermal imaging

More stuff about thermal imaging.

Looking at the sensitivity spectrum for a FLIR thermal camera much of the CO2 and H2O emission spectra are included but it is not a black body spectrum as the camera expects.

So does this mean that CO2 and water vapour should be less visible to the camera?

For the camera this is important since taking a photo through air which is emitting photons visible to its sensor would make its use limited – you would see the air not the object behind the air.

So a simple test using water vapour was done to see if this was the case

Some videos of a hot plate with 2 wells filled with water, The water is boiling but no hot vapour visible (vapour bubbles show approximately the expected temperature but the only vapour visible is less than 40°C.

If you now place a sheet of paper in the vapour the actual temperature of the vapour as it hits the paper can be seen (greater than 70°C)

Steam shows up at 28C

Shows paper being heated to 75.5C by steam invisible in gap between boiling water amd paper.

Heated plate showing 2 wells with boiling water

These videos show differen views of the hotplate - steam - paper system.

  

Steam visible + paper

Top view of plate, boiling water and paper

side view of plate boiling water and paper

Above videos seem to have problems  so a youtube version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=l3t9XeTIA1w

Conclusion: H2O vapour behaves as expected - despite the temperature being near boiling (100C) it does not appear so to the camera.

WUWT - cherry picking again

Water Vapour
The Watts nail in the coffin of AGW headline:

Another IPCC AR5 reviewer speaks out: no trend in global water vapor

Posted on December 14, 2012by Guest Blogger

New global water vapor findings contradict second draft of IPCC Assessment Report 5 (AR5)

Well, the paper this blogger / expert reviewer is behind a paywall so we have to assume that what he quotes is correct. But a quick search pulls up this paper

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-86-2-245

This from the abstract TPW=total precipitable water:
...Further, we found out that the TPW anomalies are driven by the global surface temperature anomalies, but with a lag.

and from the text:

Time series plots of monthly and annual anomalies of TPW for the two datasets are shown in Figs. 8a and 8b, respectively. Also included in Fig. 8 is the global surface temperature anomaly, computed based on NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) global surface temperature data (Hansen et al. 1999).

The first 3 yr (1988–90) and part of 1996 show significant discrepancies between the anomalies of the two TPW datasets. There is, however, a good agreement for most parts of the other years. Linear regressionsbetween the two datasets show a correlation coefficient of 0.66 for the monthly anomalies and 0.74 for the annual anomalies. TPW anomalies are closely correlated to surface temperature anomalies. The correlation with surface temperature is higher for R-2 than for NVAP (Fig. 8d). The maximum cross correlation between TPW and surface temperature is reachedwhen the temperature leads the TPW by 2 months and equals 0.67 for R-2 and0.50 for NVAP. This suggests that precipitable water anomalies are driven by the temperature anomalies.

 

The problem is which cherry to pick?!!!!

 

 

Then of course Watts puts his foot in the wet and smelly with this blog post:

IPCC AR5 draft leaked, contains game-changing admission of enhanced solar forcing – as well as a lack of warming to match model projections, and reversal on ‘extreme weather’

Posted on December 13, 2012by Guest Blogger

So in this headline post we have a total misreading of a document. One of the authors  (and surely he should know) sais so on Australian Radio: .

The leaked IPCC drafts cover a range of subjects from the quality of climate models to measurements of sea level rise and Arctic ice loss.

Professor Steve Sherwood is a director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales.

He is also a lead author of chapter seven of the IPCC report, which happens to be the one the sceptics are claiming for their side.

But Professor Sherwood is scornful of the idea that the chapter he helped write confirms a greater role for solar and other cosmic rays in global warming.

STEVE SHERWOOD: Oh that's completely ridiculous. I'm sure you could go and read those paragraphs yourself and the summary of it and see that we conclude exactly the opposite, that this cosmic ray effect that the paragraph is discussing appears to be negligible.

MARK COLVIN: They're saying that it is the first indication that the IPCC recognises something called solar forcing.

STEVE SHERWOOD: It's not the first time it recognises it. What it shows is that we looked at this. We look at everything. The IPCC has a very comprehensive process where we try to look at all the influences on climate and so we looked at this one.

And there have been a couple of papers suggesting that solar forcing affects climate through cosmic ray/cloud interactions, but most of the literature on this shows that that doesn't actually work.

MARK COLVIN: So you're saying that you've managed to basically eliminate this idea that sunspots or whatever are more responsible for global warming than human activity.

STEVE SHERWOOD: Based on the peer-reviewed literature that's available now, that looks extremely unlikely.

MARK COLVIN: So what have these people done? Is this just a case of cherry-picking a sentence?

STEVE SHERWOOD: Yeah, it's a pretty severe case of that, because even the sentence doesn't say what they say and certainly if you look at the context, we're really saying the opposite.

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3654926.htm

It looks as if IPCC has played a blinder.

They can see where the "skeptics" will find inconsitancies and then clarify before publishing and all for free

They also show that sketics cannot read or comprehend!.

 

Cycle Mania and Hadcrut3

From the fun school of posts here are a couple of plots that reconstruct hadcrut3v from a series of sine waves.
One shows reconstruction from cycles only; this has problems getting a good fit in the 1800s but shows rhat the next few years should be a period of reducing temperatures. The long period controlling the plot is 317 year long
The other is constructed round a smooth increasing trend. A better fit in the 1800s and still shows that despite the trend the temperatures will be flat for a few more years before increasing with a vengance. The underlying trend is defined by this polynomial
y = 2.40389E-07x3 - 1.34093E-03x2 + 2.49320E+00x - 1.545547E+03

Do either have any predictive skills. = NO

The most importasnt thing shown is in the the trending plot where  despite an ever increasing trend there is still a period where temperatures appear not to increase - from 1998 to 2018. this is due to an underlying 60year period being on a down part of the cycle. This is something that the "skeptics" cannot seem to grasp - CO2 is increasing so why is temperature static?.

The all cycle:

317 year and 60.1 year cycles controlling the "trend"

The trend+cycle plot

Trend and 59.75 year cycle controlling trend

So what curve are we "following" - only another 4 or so years will tell!.

Earlier posts:
http://climateandstuff.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/simulation