Surely a valid reason to be alarmed? But wait what's this -

"Previously scientists were unable to draw any conclusions from the Byrd data as the records were incomplete.
The new work used a computer model of the atmosphere and a numerical analysis method to fill in the missing observations.
The results indicate an increase of 2.4C in average annual temperature between 1958 and 2010."

So missing observations have been fabricated and the fabrications paint an alarmist picture. You couldn't make it up! Except they can and did!

BBC in alarmist nonsense shocker

@shub : I'd say that if the problem turns out twice as bad as expected, then the previous worry-level was insufficient rather than 'wasted' - for those who are prone to worry. Of course back in the real world if you make an estimate which is 100% wrong then (if you had any pride) you'd rightly be quite ashamed of your lack of predictive skill. And maybe find some work that was better suited. I don't detect an air of remorse or sorrow here though..

@Laurie Childs : Its not really science is it?

Have any of you read the paper you condemn?

If I were slagging off a research paper, I would at least take the trouble of reading it.

Dec 24, 2012 at 11:33 PM | BitBucket

I think they were mocking the BBC report of it.

From the paper I find these bits amusing

"Here, we present a complete temperature record for Byrd Station, in which observations have been corrected, and gaps have been filled using global reanalysis data and spatial interpolation."

"A continued rise in summer temperatures could lead to more frequent and extensive episodes of surface melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. These results argue for a robust long-term meteorological observation network in the region."

I especially love the now obligatory tentative grant proposal now stuck at the end of every paper and pointing out how bad the scientists who originally took the observations were.

The reanalysis data is using a model to generate the 'observation data'. ie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCEP/NCAR_Reanalysis

NSIDC seem to have been rather coy about updating this page since 2007. Why?

http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/sea_level.html

Antarctica and Greenland, the world's largest ice sheets, make up the vast majority of the Earth's ice. If these ice sheets melted entirely, sea level would rise by more than 70 meters. However, current estimates indicate that mass balance for the Antarctic ice sheet is in approximate equilibrium and may represent only about 10 percent of the current contribution to sea level rise coming from glaciers. However, some localized areas of the Antarctic have recently shown significant negative balance, e.g., Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers, and glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula. There is still much uncertainty about accumulation rates in Antarctica, especially on the East Antarctic Plateau. The Greenland Ice Sheet may be contributing about 30 percent of all glacier melt to rising sea level.

[...]

In contrast to the polar regions, the network of lower latitude small glaciers and ice caps, although making up only about four percent of the total land ice area or about 760,000 square kilometers, may have provided as much as 60 percent of the total glacier contribution to sea level change since 1990s (Meier et al., 2007).

[,,,]

Meier et al. (2007) conclude that with the current acceleration of glacier contribution to sea level rise, the total contribution from small glaciers and ice caps by the year 2100 is expected to be 240 +/- 128 millimeters, which represents an average annual increase of more than 2.0 millimeters per year.

Woohoo! 2 cm per decade, 20 cm per century.

And of course Steig2009 was thoroughly debunked, even though the clowns over at RealCimate never admitted it.

@BitBucket : In the cold light of day, here we have an incomplete dataset from which it would be inappropriate to draw conclusions. The data set is then tortured and all of a sudden provides 'evidence' strong enough to support policy decisions?

Which ever methods have been used to fabricate data samples, they result in an estimation at best and a blind guess at worst. I'd love to see the sensitivity figures to the model parameters. A small tweak here another small tweak there and hey presto, completely different results! But the paper has been peer reviewed so its safe right?*

* "I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

Dec 24, 2012 at 11:33 PM | BitBucket

BB, There are quite a view good comments on this issue over on WUWT. It looks like Jeff Condon is looking at the paper and going to write something up on it.

Jeff says

"The highest temperature reported in the entire reconstruction was -9.7 Celcius." so it is hard to see where any serious melting is coming from.

Rob Burton, you are being kind. But no, they were mocking the paper, which they hadn't read. It is a bit like those sad people writing book reviews at Amazon for book the haven't read. Embarrassing for them when they are found out. Your cherries are at least from the abstract - did you read the paper?

I have no idea whether the conclusions reached by the paper stand up to examination (I have not read it either and do not have the necessary expertise to judge). But what if they do? If any commenters have a truly 'sceptical' view of AGW, as opposed to just knee-jerk rejection, you might consider that the Byrd temperatures could indeed have risen without it challenging your world view.

Martin, you do have a sense of humour after all!

Thanks Dung! Happy Christmas and new year to all on the Hill.

The paper's methods - what were they then? Give us an explanation of those methods, beyond what we can read in the abstract.

Martin A said:

I did not need to.

Using the same approach as the authors ["Here, we present a complete temperature record for Byrd Station, in which observations have been corrected, and gaps have been filled using global reanalysis data and spatial interpolation." ]
I did the following:

- I corrected the text, as observed, of the abstract presented by Nature Geoscience.

- I filled the gaps between the abstract and the unavailable (to me) full text by use of global reanalysis data* and textual interpolation.

I then carried out a complete and rigorous analysis of the paper, leading to my earlier comment.

__________________________________________________________________________________

* whatever "global reanalysis data" actually means. The fact that I was not sure of the meaning in no way invalidates my results.

LMFAO. Exactly. If you don't have the observational data then you can't do an analysis of observational data. Making up the data points seems a bizarre choice and is certainly problematic in the context of a lack of integrity shown by alarmist scientists as exposed by ClimateGate. Or should we pretend that CG just didn't happen and that alarmists are to be trusted or given the benefit of the doubt?

It is interesting that on the Real Climate site, Steig welcomes this paper with great enthusiasm as an endorsement of his 2009 paper in Nature. Strangely he makes no reference to O'Donnell et al 2010 which, in a disgraceful abuse of the peer review process, he tried to filibuster out of publication because it demolished the S09 findings.

Nic Lewis makes an interesting comment on the WUWT thread.

shub, "Unfortunately for you...", not really. As I said, I have no idea whether the paper is mistaken or not, but like true sceptics, I have no need to jump on such new research just because it does or does not fit my preconceptions. The paper is just an interesting addition to the literature. My world view will not be changed by whether it stands or falls. This contrasts with some here who need to reject that which they have not even read because it challenges their ideas.