6 ms·

Alaskan North Slope climate change just outran one of our tools to measure it

183 points by based2 9y ago

aaronbrethorst 9y ago
Interestingly, Barry Myers, the guy that Trump has nominated to run NOAA, believes that climate change is primarily caused by humans. That's quite different from, as far as I know, everyone else in the administration. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/11/29/barry-myers-trumps-pick-to-run-noaa-declares-humans-are-main-cause-of-climate-change/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/...
- StavrosK 9y ago
  .
  - reallydude 9y ago
    Not constructive.
danielvf 9y ago
Slightly misleading headline. The November 2017 temperature readings from Utqiaġvik (Barrow), Alaska were 2.5 degrees higher than November 1998. The NCEI's ingest code for their monthly report flagged this station as a probable sensor setup change and ignored the data. Crucially the code for choosing which data to ignore looks for "agreement" with nearby sensors. Utqiaġvik (Barrow) is one of the most remote sites, with the nearest other site being many smaller European countries away. The other "nearest" sites did not show similar warming, therefore the NCEI's code discarded Barrow. If there had been other, closer stations, showing similar data, their code would not have discarded it. A classic case of a programmer making an assumption that is almost, but not quite, universaly true. "There will always be many nearby stations who's average temperature will behave roughly similarly," works for most of the US, but not here. They are now updating their data ingest code to relax the agreement requirements for isolated, far north stations. - [Update: ye gads, how is this downvote fodder? My points are going up and down like a yo-yo! If I'm wrong about anything, here, let me know!]
- ricardobeat 9y ago
  Where is that temperature data from? The linked NOAA website only has data up to October 2017: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=BRW&program=met&type=temp https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=BRW&pro... It also sounds like you are downplaying the effects of climate change, in contradiction with the data displayed in the article, which is bound to get downvotes.
  - danielvf 9y ago
    Thanks. I'm getting the temperature number from the graphs in the article. Here's one, showing Barrow temperature vs sea ice: https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/barrow-temp-vs-nearby-seaice-820.png https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/barrow-temp-vs-n...
    - acqq 9y ago
      But the graph shows at least 25 degrees differece, whereas you claim only 2.5 degrees in your parent post!
      - danielvf 9y ago
        1998 was the previous high average in the last 20 years. Look in the bottom right side of the graph I linked to.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        acqq 9y ago
        I see, I've been looking at 1988, isn't it more interesting, looking for the biggest difference, not for the smallest one? Why do you believe is the small difference supposed to trigger anything? Can you quote something relevant?
        9y ago
jfnixon 9y ago
If only this were reflected in the US Climate Reference Data, with the gold standard stations, carefully sited, equipped with the most accurate sensors, properly calibrated. There are 29 of these stations in Alaska, one at Barrow, in fact. Somehow I missed seeing the comparison of the older site's data with the nearby modern site. You can see the data for the USCRN station at Barrow here: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/station.htm?stationId=1007 https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/station.htm?stationId=1007
kossTKR 9y ago
This is on a tangent but lately i have begun to consider the possibility that short term climate change will cause a rapid and complete global collapse. This is from talking to actual climate scientists and seeing them making very real short term practical investments and decisions regarding geographical location, frugality and not having kids. Examples of that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIy0t5P0CUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIy0t5P0CUQ And this is not fringe science anymore. The latest predictions from the largest meta reviews are all, -even though still conservative-, blasting through the ceilings of the worst scenarios. Latest a 4 degree celcius average shift in 80 years. https://www.eceee.org/all-news/news/news-2017/worst-case-global-warming-predictions-are-the-most-accurate-say-climate-experts/ https://www.eceee.org/all-news/news/news-2017/worst-case-glo... While 4 degrees sounds manageable, it would actually cause a severe die-off off most off the human population because of a complete break down of the stable regional weather systems which the whole global ecology has adapted to over thousands of years of evolution. There is simply no time for an agricultural adaptation, and not enough time for migration or biological transformation. The previous changes in global climate has taken orders of magnitudes longer than the current one, this is one of the many misconceptions floating in around in the collective consciousness, in part pushed by the army of lawyers, PR-employees and astroturfers employed by the energy sector. The internet and the media landscape in general is rife with them as far as i have observed. Also 4 degrees is extremely optimistic. Look at this article about an increase in degrees ( Not very old and already its focusing on 2 degrees, half of the new consensus ): http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/2degrees/ http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/2degrees/ The goalposts keep getting pushed and the modeling from the Paris Agreement is based of scenarios where deus ex machina like geo-engineering will suddenly become available and save us all. Pure magical thinking at least from a scientific perspective - even though i really believe in human ingenuity. https://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/documents/GeoEngineering%20Primer%20-%20Special%20Report.pdf https://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/documents/Geo... But things are probably going to get much, much worse.. If we go just a bit out of the hyper optimistic consensus of the "policy making parts" of the academic climate community we soon discover the frightening prospects of the feedback loops that we are not even accounting for; methane release, blue ocean event (reflection), ocean acidity threshold, reversal of ocean currents etc. The first phase begins in about four to five years where we will reach the "blue ocean event". The first year of the arctic being virtually ice free. This will kick in to gear a series of events we are unable to model. http://iwantsomeproof.com/extimg/siv_annual_max_loss_and_ice_remaining.png http://iwantsomeproof.com/extimg/siv_annual_max_loss_and_ice... The ice sheet is already having trouble re-emerging this year in the north, and this could lead to an increase more in the vicinity of 7-8 degrees at the turn of the century. Which also means complete global collapse in 10-20 years. And a heavy die off accelerating thereafter, until who knows what..
bognition 9y ago
That last chart is really interesting, and maybe quite alarming. Most of the conversations around global warming focus on limiting the global temperature increase to a few degrees c over the next few decades. However it looks like the average temperature at this station has already increased from 6°-12° F to what looks like 14°-20° F. This is already an increase of 2° C! So while the global average may only have changed slightly, temperatures in specific regions have already gone slightly off the rails.
- graeme 9y ago
  Yeah, global average increase of 2.0 includes some very large increases in specific regions. Almost everywhere over land will be over 2 degrees, I think. Global average includes the oceans, and they change less. Personally, I think even 2 degrees is too high, but we don't have much choice about that, unless we invent really efficient carbon sucking technology.
- glenra 9y ago
  > That last chart is really interesting, and maybe quite alarming. The general expectation has always been that most future warming will show up where it's coldest today. For the world average to move by 2 degrees doesn't mean it gets 2 degrees warmer everywhere, rather it gets much more than 2 degrees warmer in cold winter nights in high latitudes over land, while the temperature barely moves much in, say, tropical ocean areas. Um, try here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_effects_of_global_warming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_effects_of_global_war...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- sulam 9y ago
  It’s worth being very alarmed. We are putting carbon into the atmosphere at a rate 6X greater than during the worst hyperthermal of the Eocene, which is the regime we are replicating. It’s noteworthy that sea levels (eustatic) were anywhere from 100 to 200 meters higher then, a combination of essentially all surface ice melting and the thermal expansion of water. Even if you’re so optimistic that you think we can drive our own emissions down to less than 1/6th current levels, feedback loops are have started driving non-anthropogenic carbon into the atmosphere that we have zero ability to control. Another supporting data point is that most reef-dwelling species experienced an “anomalous” mass extinction during this period and not coincidentally we are seeing the same effects already in today’s oceans. Some people say climate change scientists are being alarmist. In fact they are being very conservative and the data is scarier than what is reported.
LeifCarrotson 9y ago
> It would be great if we just had 4000+ weather station gnomes whose families are bound to tend a given station’s climate record for generations, who knew every detail of a station’s quirks, and who always write down all the station’s data including margin notes like "moved down the runway, built a shed nearby, and swapped out the sensor" - then hand carry their notebooks to NCEI each month. But instead, data ingest is an automated process, which means the handwritten margin notes sometimes get overlooked. So we need an automated process that flags problems and tells scientists, “hey, check out Barrow, there’s something odd there.” Hand carrying notebooks and notes in the margin are a sign that your automated process is insufficient, not that manual processes would be better. Perhaps each weather station should have a physical button that people can push to insert a flag in the database that says to check the note in the margin? (Also, it would be an ethical travesty to 'bind' generations of sentient beings to slavery like that. But fortunately that was a hypothetical.)
- DonbunEf7 9y ago
  They're gnomes. Tell them the truth: they'll be helping to care for the planet. Throw in some vacation and pay and they'll love it.
3princip 9y ago
Incidentally, I've been using the 5-minute USCRN dataset provided online [1] for load testing, and one of the stations is Barrow (lat/lon: 71.32,-156.61). Data starts in 2006. Out of curiosity I just did some basic SQL queries on the dataset (min, max, average) and the graphs look slightly different from those in the article. The annual average temperature 2006 vs 2016 shows no difference for example. [2] [1] https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/qcdatasets.html https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/qcdatasets.html [2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vScsduBmVJxE-fdTCrsA_j0-rYmQLWrE-DfMbEaDWVNmQDhCS9R9HTcN-CoGQ1eY7rnqcMl4BWIGaqE/pubhtml https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vScsduBmVJxE...
mirimir 9y ago
The same thing happened with satellite data on stratospheric ozone levels.

183 points by based2 9y ago

Interestingly, Barry Myers, the guy that Trump has nominated to run NOAA, believes that climate change is primarily caused by humans. That's quite different from, as far as I know, everyone else in the administration. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/11/29/barry-myers-trumps-pick-to-run-noaa-declares-humans-are-main-cause-of-climate-change/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/...

StavrosK 9y ago
.
- reallydude 9y ago
  Not constructive.

danielvf 9y ago

Slightly misleading headline. The November 2017 temperature readings from Utqiaġvik (Barrow), Alaska were 2.5 degrees higher than November 1998. The NCEI's ingest code for their monthly report flagged this station as a probable sensor setup change and ignored the data. Crucially the code for choosing which data to ignore looks for "agreement" with nearby sensors. Utqiaġvik (Barrow) is one of the most remote sites, with the nearest other site being many smaller European countries away. The other "nearest" sites did not show similar warming, therefore the NCEI's code discarded Barrow. If there had been other, closer stations, showing similar data, their code would not have discarded it. A classic case of a programmer making an assumption that is almost, but not quite, universaly true. "There will always be many nearby stations who's average temperature will behave roughly similarly," works for most of the US, but not here. They are now updating their data ingest code to relax the agreement requirements for isolated, far north stations. - [Update: ye gads, how is this downvote fodder? My points are going up and down like a yo-yo! If I'm wrong about anything, here, let me know!]

ricardobeat 9y ago
Where is that temperature data from? The linked NOAA website only has data up to October 2017: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=BRW&program=met&type=temp https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=BRW&pro... It also sounds like you are downplaying the effects of climate change, in contradiction with the data displayed in the article, which is bound to get downvotes.
- danielvf 9y ago
  Thanks. I'm getting the temperature number from the graphs in the article. Here's one, showing Barrow temperature vs sea ice: https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/barrow-temp-vs-nearby-seaice-820.png https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/barrow-temp-vs-n...
  - acqq 9y ago
    But the graph shows at least 25 degrees differece, whereas you claim only 2.5 degrees in your parent post!
    - danielvf 9y ago
      1998 was the previous high average in the last 20 years. Look in the bottom right side of the graph I linked to.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - acqq 9y ago
        I see, I've been looking at 1988, isn't it more interesting, looking for the biggest difference, not for the smallest one? Why do you believe is the small difference supposed to trigger anything? Can you quote something relevant?
        9y ago

jfnixon 9y ago

If only this were reflected in the US Climate Reference Data, with the gold standard stations, carefully sited, equipped with the most accurate sensors, properly calibrated. There are 29 of these stations in Alaska, one at Barrow, in fact. Somehow I missed seeing the comparison of the older site's data with the nearby modern site. You can see the data for the USCRN station at Barrow here: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/station.htm?stationId=1007 https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/station.htm?stationId=1007

kossTKR 9y ago

This is on a tangent but lately i have begun to consider the possibility that short term climate change will cause a rapid and complete global collapse. This is from talking to actual climate scientists and seeing them making very real short term practical investments and decisions regarding geographical location, frugality and not having kids. Examples of that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIy0t5P0CUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIy0t5P0CUQ And this is not fringe science anymore. The latest predictions from the largest meta reviews are all, -even though still conservative-, blasting through the ceilings of the worst scenarios. Latest a 4 degree celcius average shift in 80 years. https://www.eceee.org/all-news/news/news-2017/worst-case-global-warming-predictions-are-the-most-accurate-say-climate-experts/ https://www.eceee.org/all-news/news/news-2017/worst-case-glo... While 4 degrees sounds manageable, it would actually cause a severe die-off off most off the human population because of a complete break down of the stable regional weather systems which the whole global ecology has adapted to over thousands of years of evolution. There is simply no time for an agricultural adaptation, and not enough time for migration or biological transformation. The previous changes in global climate has taken orders of magnitudes longer than the current one, this is one of the many misconceptions floating in around in the collective consciousness, in part pushed by the army of lawyers, PR-employees and astroturfers employed by the energy sector. The internet and the media landscape in general is rife with them as far as i have observed. Also 4 degrees is extremely optimistic. Look at this article about an increase in degrees ( Not very old and already its focusing on 2 degrees, half of the new consensus ): http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/2degrees/ http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/2degrees/ The goalposts keep getting pushed and the modeling from the Paris Agreement is based of scenarios where deus ex machina like geo-engineering will suddenly become available and save us all. Pure magical thinking at least from a scientific perspective - even though i really believe in human ingenuity. https://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/documents/GeoEngineering%20Primer%20-%20Special%20Report.pdf https://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/documents/Geo... But things are probably going to get much, much worse.. If we go just a bit out of the hyper optimistic consensus of the "policy making parts" of the academic climate community we soon discover the frightening prospects of the feedback loops that we are not even accounting for; methane release, blue ocean event (reflection), ocean acidity threshold, reversal of ocean currents etc. The first phase begins in about four to five years where we will reach the "blue ocean event". The first year of the arctic being virtually ice free. This will kick in to gear a series of events we are unable to model. http://iwantsomeproof.com/extimg/siv_annual_max_loss_and_ice_remaining.png http://iwantsomeproof.com/extimg/siv_annual_max_loss_and_ice... The ice sheet is already having trouble re-emerging this year in the north, and this could lead to an increase more in the vicinity of 7-8 degrees at the turn of the century. Which also means complete global collapse in 10-20 years. And a heavy die off accelerating thereafter, until who knows what..

bognition 9y ago

That last chart is really interesting, and maybe quite alarming. Most of the conversations around global warming focus on limiting the global temperature increase to a few degrees c over the next few decades. However it looks like the average temperature at this station has already increased from 6°-12° F to what looks like 14°-20° F. This is already an increase of 2° C! So while the global average may only have changed slightly, temperatures in specific regions have already gone slightly off the rails.

graeme 9y ago
Yeah, global average increase of 2.0 includes some very large increases in specific regions. Almost everywhere over land will be over 2 degrees, I think. Global average includes the oceans, and they change less. Personally, I think even 2 degrees is too high, but we don't have much choice about that, unless we invent really efficient carbon sucking technology.
glenra 9y ago
> That last chart is really interesting, and maybe quite alarming. The general expectation has always been that most future warming will show up where it's coldest today. For the world average to move by 2 degrees doesn't mean it gets 2 degrees warmer everywhere, rather it gets much more than 2 degrees warmer in cold winter nights in high latitudes over land, while the temperature barely moves much in, say, tropical ocean areas. Um, try here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_effects_of_global_warming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_effects_of_global_war...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sulam 9y ago
It’s worth being very alarmed. We are putting carbon into the atmosphere at a rate 6X greater than during the worst hyperthermal of the Eocene, which is the regime we are replicating. It’s noteworthy that sea levels (eustatic) were anywhere from 100 to 200 meters higher then, a combination of essentially all surface ice melting and the thermal expansion of water. Even if you’re so optimistic that you think we can drive our own emissions down to less than 1/6th current levels, feedback loops are have started driving non-anthropogenic carbon into the atmosphere that we have zero ability to control. Another supporting data point is that most reef-dwelling species experienced an “anomalous” mass extinction during this period and not coincidentally we are seeing the same effects already in today’s oceans. Some people say climate change scientists are being alarmist. In fact they are being very conservative and the data is scarier than what is reported.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago

> It would be great if we just had 4000+ weather station gnomes whose families are bound to tend a given station’s climate record for generations, who knew every detail of a station’s quirks, and who always write down all the station’s data including margin notes like "moved down the runway, built a shed nearby, and swapped out the sensor" - then hand carry their notebooks to NCEI each month. But instead, data ingest is an automated process, which means the handwritten margin notes sometimes get overlooked. So we need an automated process that flags problems and tells scientists, “hey, check out Barrow, there’s something odd there.” Hand carrying notebooks and notes in the margin are a sign that your automated process is insufficient, not that manual processes would be better. Perhaps each weather station should have a physical button that people can push to insert a flag in the database that says to check the note in the margin? (Also, it would be an ethical travesty to 'bind' generations of sentient beings to slavery like that. But fortunately that was a hypothetical.)

DonbunEf7 9y ago
They're gnomes. Tell them the truth: they'll be helping to care for the planet. Throw in some vacation and pay and they'll love it.

3princip 9y ago

Incidentally, I've been using the 5-minute USCRN dataset provided online [1] for load testing, and one of the stations is Barrow (lat/lon: 71.32,-156.61). Data starts in 2006. Out of curiosity I just did some basic SQL queries on the dataset (min, max, average) and the graphs look slightly different from those in the article. The annual average temperature 2006 vs 2016 shows no difference for example. [2] [1] https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/qcdatasets.html https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/qcdatasets.html [2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vScsduBmVJxE-fdTCrsA_j0-rYmQLWrE-DfMbEaDWVNmQDhCS9R9HTcN-CoGQ1eY7rnqcMl4BWIGaqE/pubhtml https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vScsduBmVJxE...

mirimir 9y ago

The same thing happened with satellite data on stratospheric ozone levels.