Steig's Warming Antarctica Massacred (The Easy Version)

[Questioning_Climate]

Steig's Warming Antarctica Massacred.

This links to BishopHill Blog which gives a wonderfully simple and easily understood massacre of the Steig et al paper. It is simply a must read:

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2...acred.html

Graphics available here:
http://climateaudit.org/2011/02/08/coffin-meet-nail/

Quote:So what the Steig method does is to take any warmth in the Peninsula and spread it out over West Antarctica. In other words, Steig's result is an artefact of his methodology and not something that is inherent in his data.

Game, set and match.

[Derek]

Jeff Id is sort of back blogging about this very subject.
There are now at least 5 threads he has recently posted and the number only seems certain to grow.

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/

Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit, Real Climate, and many more besides are involved,
or rather squaring up to each other over this.
It seems about to explode.
Liars and Knucklehead Reviewers
Posted by Jeff Id on February 13, 2011
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/02...reviewers/

I think this sums up neatly why,
Excerpt of
M Simon comment,
February 13, 2011 at 11:30 pm ,

" Steig doesn’t get it. It is his and his friend’s job/prestige vs all of ours.
He is outnumbered and there are bound to be people in the larger group smarter and more knowledgeable than he is.
There is always some one smarter and who knows more.

In the old system before the Internet (BTI) he could have covered it up. Now a days not so much. "


Although the first comment alone probably nails "it"..
Brian H said
February 13, 2011 at 5:07 pm
" At this point, IMO the only interesting question is what’s driving Steig’s (near-?) psychotic break.
Is it infinite confidence in the power of The Team to shield him?
Or is it nightmares about loss of all his laboriously built-up status,
on which his entire ego-structure now rests?

IAC, his thrashings look like they may bring down substantive sections of the IPCC/AGW edifice. "

As the "battleground" appears to be the statistics used, I can not see "the team" (AGW) winning this.
It is simply the same people, the same dodgy (read proven to be wrong) use of statistics.
There is a "history" repeating itself here, and
the Hockey Stick is already being brought back into it, quite rightly in my opinion.

[Derek]

Hi All,
Reading through the comments at Bishop Hill's Questioning Climate linked to above,
ie,
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2...2#comments
the below comment really jumped out at me.

Feb 10, 2011 at 12:26 AM | Unregistered Commenter David Socrates
" An hour or two looking at a map of the weather stations in Antarctica and
at the corresponding temperature data reveals the absurdity of this controversy.
Almost all the stations with reliable long term data are on the shore line all around the continent.
Only one or two are actually in the interior.
I don't think it is any coincidence that the station which shows no warming at all is at the South Pole, right bang in the middle.

I have great sympathy with the bloggers here who are confused by the statistical methods being employed in this debate on either side.
It is important to keep a sense of proportion and to think through logically the topography before
going needlessly for statistical methods of any sophistication.

Surely it stands to reason that if you take the temperature records from a couple of dozen stations all round the coastline plus
just the two available from the interior (South Pole and Vostok) then
the average (however sophisticated the computation) will be closer to the average around the coastline!
Now it happens that almost all these coastline stations are MUCH WARMER THAN THE INTERIOR..
This is easily explained by the fact that they are measuring the air temperature adjacent to the ocean
(typical averages are in the range minus 5 to minus 12degC)
which is much, much warmer than in the vast interior of the continent.
Also sea temperatures have been warming very slightly in the last 30 years or so in line with temperatures all over the world.

In contrast the average temperature at the South Pole is around minus 49.5degC and at Vostok it is around minus 55.5degC.
Neither has increased significantly in the last 50 years.
Therein lies the absurdity of trying to do ANY kind of gridded averaging between the coast and the interior.
Imagine that instead of just 2 stations in the interior you had several hundred.
They would of course mostly reveal temperatures similar to Amundsen-Scott (South Pole) and Vostok, thus
exhibiting that the WHOLE OF THE VAST INTERIOR AWAY FROM THE COASTLINE IS VERY, VERY, VERY COLD and,
being well away from the warming ocean, is not increasing in temperature significantly.

You don't need a degree in statistics to reason all that out.
Just common sense - sorely lacking it would seem in the academic world of climate science. "

Steve McIntyre and Jeff Id have shown the algorithm is mathematically incorrect in this application / use.
Bishop Hill has explained the algorithm problem probably most understandably to date in it's effect upon the final plots / conclusions drawn.
David Socrates describes how using the very small in number coastal and peninsular stations with such "weight" is bound to produce daft results.
(Antarctica is a continent one and a half times larger than the USA)

However, I wonder if something else has been missed in this.
The peninsula in question is well known for it's volcanic activity,
much of which is below sea level and heats the Antarctic waters.
The heated by volcanic activity water is "retained" by the circumpolar oceanic currents,
so presumably the (coastal) Antarctic stations particularly on the peninsula in question are
recording somewhat higher temperatures than would otherwise be the case because of volcanic activity.

Steig's algorithm then "spreads" this peninsula volcanic activity (also "seen" around the coasts of Antarctica) over Western Antarctica (in particular) in way not seen in reality.

In effect, AGW takes what it dismisses as insignificant, ie, volcanic activity, and then
spreads it over a massive area (using incorrect statistical methods) to show man made global warming.

This is (in my opinion) the Hockey Stick "method" repeated,
and will become (already IS) the second "Hockey Stick".

Later addition - In regards of the localized volcanic activity within some parts of Antarctica and it's effect upon global mean temperature.
Steig it appears has taken what is
locally significant, but globally insignificant,
and using "statistics" (incorrectly) has presented this as,
locally insignificant, yet globally significant.

2004
Volcanic activity is plainly significant locally,
but not over the whole continent.



2009 - Steig's algorithm
Localised volcanic activity seems to have all but "vanished",
whilst almost all of Antarctica appears to have warmed..

[Sunsettommy]

What Antarctica look like without any ice cover on it:

SOURCE



Part of the "continent" is actually underwater.The ice cap straddling the continent make it appear much bigger than it really is.

[Derek]

Isostatic rebound springs to mind, depending on time scale.
ie,
http://www.physicalgeography.net/physgeo...depression
Isostatic Depression
Large scale sinking of the crust into the asthenosphere because of an increase in weight on the crustal surface.
Common in areas of continental glaciation where the crust was depressed by the weight of the ice.

I suppose the geology would tell us the "real" extent of the continent.