Coolwire   16                                 December 2005

BoM map in Australian 17 Dec 2005"Nation bakes in hottest year" shoddy  article on news.com.au and on page 7 of Dec 17-18, issue of The Weekend Australian, our premier national daily newspaper. My letter to the Journalist and Editor and original article on news.com.au. For those many non Antipodean readers, my reference in the letter to "Fine Cotton", refers to a notorious horse racing scandal in Australia many years ago.  The article is based on this map of contoured trends.  Over 90% of the orange area of highest warming are from regions of Australia largely devoid of people and I would suggest devoid of meaningful long term temperature data too.  Note how the orange contour skips around Alice Springs, Giles and the longer term data in SA.
What a disgraceful example of BoM propaganda, a "dodgy brothers" of a map.
What utter balderdash for The Australian to publish.
Note  Coolwire 15   critiqued similar
November 14 BoM claims about 2005 being our hottest year and demonstrate city by city  how NASA GISS data does not agree with the BoM.
For comment on strange goings on and alterations of  2005 gridded data visualizations at the CRU website.

Perth, Western Australia, has cool start to summer
This article from the 11 Dec  "Sunday Times"  (great paper)  quotes BoM people discussing the first 9 days of December and says, "Perth's start to summer is equal to the coolest on record..".   They say Perth records began in 1897.
The ABC News web site has a later item dated  the 11th and only claims,  "The weather bureau [(BoM)]says this year's start to summer in Perth has been the coolest for 40 years."
Coolwire is slightly puzzled by this  slight contradiction and will follow events closely waiting for a BoM media release.
Coolwire would also be thrilled if the BoM would give some background information on the REASONS for this unusual run of cool weather which we note is akin to a reversion to October average daily warmth.
Coolwire suspects it is something to do with the A-N-T-A-R-C-T-I-C , a place the BoM is curiously reluctant  to mention.
More to come.

Was Arctic sea ice extent comparable in the 1890's with today ?
79-2000 median Arctic sea ice extentThe Oldham Skeptic has sent in this  fascinating snippet of Arctic history.
"I have been looking at Nansen's Fram expedition 1893 .  The ship Fram was not designed to cut through pack ice. In September 1893 the Fram  encountered the pack 250 miles NW of where the De Longs ship the Jeannette sank at 77 14'57" N, 154 58'45"E.  When arrived at this position 78 50' N, 133 37' E;  Nansen  anchored the Fram to the ice and allowed it to freeze in."
Satellite maps of Arctic sea ice extent at http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_ice.html  [The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) Supporting Cryospheric Research Since 1976 CIRES, 449 UCB  University of Colorado  Boulder, CO 80309-0449]
include the thumbnail at left for 2004 and the pink line shows the 1979-2000 median September ice edge.
Are there any sailing ship experts out there prepared to offer an opinion as to where Nansen might have hypothetically moored the Fram to pack ice relative to that 1979-2000 median ice edge ?

Has Antarctic sea ice extent changed much in 91 years ?

South polar sea ice extentNinety one years ago Sir Ernest Shackleton left South Georgia in the Endurance with his expedition to cross Antarctica.  After only a few days sailing they encountered sea ice around the South Sandwich Islands (one of these visible just under the S to left of South Georgia) and after battering their way southwards the Endurance was eventually trapped  in the South Weddell Sea about January 18 1915.  The story of the survival of most of Shackleton's party over the next  20 months is one of the truly epic adventures of the 20th century.
 
Our point is that here is another indication that there has been little net "climate change" in this region of the globe on a century timescale.  This also supports the point made elsewhere in these pages that temperatures in many Southern Hemisphere land stations were as warm in the 1890's as in recent decades.  Evidence for this concept can be found in temperature data from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and the far south of South America.
Thanks to the
Oldham Skeptic for the alert.
Satellite image map above from US Navy website;   http://www.fnmoc.navy.mil/
Summary accounts of the Shackleton expedition can be read at;
http://www.south-pole.com/p0000098.htm
and;
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/shackleton/home.html
Will be looking for details of the Endurance log book.
Added 11 Dec,  from the
Oldham Skeptic who points out that, "It seems as Shackleton considered that encountering ice as far north as he did to be unusual since Filchner had taken the same route 2 years earlier
http://www.south-pole.com/p0000103.htm
when the ice was apparently much less."     It gets worse for the claims of the "Global Warmers".
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