Guilty on all accounts, AAA.

I just wanted to show you we agree it's happening, though we disagree in the importance of the matter (right?) and, especially, the relevance of the time frame involved.

I put 3. The winter temperatures in the Arctic seem to be higher so far this winter. I imagine ocean currents also play into this but I don't know anything about them.

What makes you think they wern't able to record temperatures back in 1880 with a reasonable degree of precision? If you're suspect, then go ahead and just look at the last 50 years from the graph on The Global map of surface temperature anomalies at GISS. The increase is even more dramatic.

An annual temperature map of Anchorage may tell you something about weather in that area, but what we're talking about here is global climate change.

You would have to define "reasonable degree of precision". Some one sticking a glass mercury thermometer in a bucket of sea water pulled up over the side of a ship would have read the temp to the nearest degree which was all that was required or possible for what they were doing with the data and the equipment available. All these charts and graphs that combine satellite data with older ship, buoy and land station data have had to clean up and adjust the data from these older sources to get a fit. Taking into account that ships stick to the shipping lanes and leave large areas of ocean unsampled and sample rates go down in bad weather etc. has to be done but how well its done is the weak link in these graphs. The researcher will give more weight to data that seems to fit and disregard or diminish data that does not but what they precieve as a fit comes with their own preconcieved bias built in. To then take the data that remains and show a temperature rise of .7deg.C with a confidence factor of +/- .4 degrees is quite a stretch of credibility.
That chart from Anchorage was just a example of a good way to show the data. The fact that it shows Anchorage was just a coincidence. It proves nothing but I didn't say that it did.
This story was interesting. I saw it on Drudge.
http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=13834

Suggesting there is a bias is just another red herring. It's a typical tactic by denialists concluding that when you don't agree with the results that it just must be someone who prejudiced the science. Of course every scientist in the world just went ahead and accepted "the researcher's" data without further analysis.

Denialist blogs on DailyTech are a prime example of the kind of sites that add to all the misdirection and cherry picked outliers. Thin annual sea ice has little to do with the amount of total world wide ice mass loss.



Very interesting... don't you think?

Like I said, if you don't like the data from 1880 we can discuss the last 50 or 30 years.

355.4 square miles off of the total area of Greenland. Whats that amount to? Maybe a line one inch wide around the perimeter of Greenlands coastline? Manhatten is a tiny place in the world scale of things.
Debating the last fifty years has been done often with both side refusing to admit that the other may have a valid point or a working brain. I'd rather watch this years ice season as it develops and see what can be learned from it. Looking for current weather data on the Russian side of the arctic I found this today. I'm not sure of their conclusions about the shrinking ice cap but the weather data seems up to date and all in one place.
http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm

The significance is the rate at which ice melt is happening, more so then the current amount. Which is the same concern about climate change in general; a fact that many oponents of AGW seem to miss.

Once again, nice weather report.

Take a look at This Graphand you will see that Arctic freeze up has slowed to a lower than average rate and as of the start of February it is about 300,000 km^2 lower than last year and 1 Mkm^2 lower than the baseline average. Because of the normal melt in Antarctica and the below normal freeze up in the Arctic the world sea ice level is once again below the long term trend as well.

Ayup its so bad they are going to start the Greenland circumnavigation yacht race any day now. About sun up.
http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/chart0_2008-12-21 ... colour.pdf

Tanda,

A couple of weeks ago the trend-line dropped just as now, though not as far. After a few days they corrected it to back a bit so it showed a bit less loss.

Lets hope that this too gets corrected, although it would make perfect sense to me if it did not - due to Global Dimming.

I presume you watch the Canadian Ice Service as well? I only watch the Eastern Newfoundland waters as that is where my interest is. Anyway, they are due to publish their next 30-day forecast on Feb. 18. Should be interesting.

http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/app/WsvPrdCa ... 1&Lang=eng

wow newfie amazing graphs

look esp. at the eastern and western arctic!!!

Before you get your panties in a bunch you should note that those graphs were for mid October. After that noboby cares about ice conditions in these areas except the polar bears. They are frozen solid now , just like most years.

arctic and antarctica are both below the long term at the moment

Just where is this area of open water in the arctic that is normally iced over this time of year?