A fellow phoned me yesterday, he had just returned home from a holiday in Greece. He has holidayed there off and on for the last 20 years. It had never been so cold, he told me.
There were one or two days when it was hot, he said. But swimming in the Aegean, it was colder than he ever remembered it.
Then he returned to Australia and was incredulous to see on the television reports of tourists fleeing Greece as it reportedly burnt-up and boiled-over. The news reports, he lamented to me, bore no relationship to what he had just experienced – on holidays in Greece.
I grew up in the remote Northern Territory of Australia where it never snows. I grew up in the tropics under a dark sky jewelled with stars that twinkled so brightly. During the day, down the hill from our home was a billabong. I remembered as a child jumping from the high bank as far into the middle as I could and staying there as long as I could. Seeing the moon pass over head against the very blue sky beyond the veil of bamboo that hung across, shading me from the hot Sun. I can still, all these years later, hear that bamboo creak.
There was no air-conditioning or even fans. The average maximum temperature through October, the hottest month of the year with the build-up to the monsoon, was 37 degrees Celsius that is nearly 100-degree Fahrenheit.
I can’t remember anyone ever complaining about it being hot. It just was.
Meanwhile there has been a lot of complaining about how hot it was in the United Kingdom through June this year. The Met Office has confirmed June 2023 as the hottest on record with an average mean temperature of 15.8C, which for someone from the Northern Territory would be rather cold. On at least one day it apparently reached a maximum of 32C in the UK, which is somewhat cooler than the October mean maximum where I grew up.
And there have also been so many stories of late about all the ice beginning to melt in Antarctica. I am not sure how to reliably check temperatures in Greece or for the entire UK, but the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has measured surface air temperatures at the Mawson weather station in Antarctica since early 1954.
Temperatures down there oscillate within a relatively narrow band, showing no statistically significant long-term warming trend. This is the case whether considering the actual historical measurements, or the temperatures subsequently adjusted by the Bureau before incorporation into other databases. It is also the case if we just consider the June maximum temperature since records began until last month – at Mawson.
The other weather stations in the Australian Antarctic Territory with long records are at Davis and Casey. The temperature series from these locations also move up and down, and in synchrony with the temperatures recorded at Mawson. They show no warming or cooling trends, whether considering the actual measurements or the homogenised/adjusted remodelled official series.
In order to properly assess the equivalence of measurements from the electronic probes versus mercury and alcohol thermometers for Mawson, ideally there would need to be some assessment of values measured at the same time in the same shelter – known as the parallel data. This data is not publicly available.
The available data is all very boring, showing that it continues to be very cold – in Antarctica.
Yet so much has been written this last month in the tabloids, and repeated by the fashionable, about it being very hot through June – even in Antarctica. Surely, they know about the temperatures at Mawson.
To repeat, Mawson is one of the longest continuous surface temperature records for this part of the world. The Russians did not establish the more famous and more isolated Vostok weather station until 1957. The satellite temperature record doesn’t begin until 1979.
There are longer proxy temperature series, based on ice core records, and they show an overall cooling trend, considering the last 1,900 years. Here, again, I am referring to data from published studies, for example, the temperatures of East and West Antarctica were reconstructed by a team lead by Barbara Stenni including scientist from the Australian Antarctic Division, British Antarctic Survey and Russian Antarctic Research Institute. It is only remodelled proxy series that show warming over this same period.
Last month Antarctica was reported as ‘hot’ in some popular publications including Vox.com. Yet the average maximum temperature was minus 12.6 degrees Celsius, which is not quite as cold as the long-term June average for all years since 1954 that is minus 13.5 C. When the June maximum temperatures for Mawson are ranked highest to lowest, June 2023 comes in as the 29th hottest, and 42nd coldest.
Some of these claims about it being so hot everywhere have their origin with University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations. So, they represent a remodelled average.
Indeed, there is not a single place where anyone, can measure the average temperature of the Earth – or Antarctica, or even Greece. Rather, when it is announced that it is the hottest it has ever been, reference is being made to a statistic.
This average temperature is necessarily a number that has been derived from other numbers. There will perhaps have been some measuring done here and there, and then some adjusting, and then some adding up and some adjusting again. This is how it is with the calculation of regional and global average temperatures – whether from satellites, tree rings, ice cores or thermometers. To be sure, every year we are told it is getting hotter, and back in the late 1980s this was achieved for the globally averaged thermometer record by dropping out some of the colder weather stations. This had the effect of increasing the overall average global temperature, at a time when temperatures at many individual sites were dipping somewhat.
Those who have followed the politics of measuring temperatures may also remember the infamous line in the Climategate emails, whereby the globally averaged temperature record based on tree rings, which also showed decline after 1980, is ‘corrected’ by substituting the globally average temperature from thermometer records – never mind that the dip in this record was ‘corrected’ by removing data from many high latitude Canadian and Russian weather stations.
Drawing from this sordid history of calculating global and regional temperatures, I can think of a large number of ways that the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer could possibly generate a higher-than-average temperature for Antarctica and especially the Earth. Indeed, the larger the geographic area covered, the more opportunity for creative accounting, for which corporates using similar techniques would go to jail, while climate scientists are more usually promoted.
The solution is to perhaps give up on believing the nonsense news headlines, especially when there is no reference to a specific weather station, like Mawson.
A solution is to perhaps do away with the random selection of weather stations and to focus instead on a simple index based on a good sample of well-sited weather stations with long histories, like Mawson.
Such a concept could be based on the Dow Jones Averages or the S&P 500. No one ever tries establishing an impossible-to-define ‘average stock price’ — including many stocks of doubtful provenance — and nobody cares.
Rather the solution is to perhaps have a pre-selected index of certain representative weather stations, that are then followed over a long-time span and with temperatures reliably measured, which will require some modification to current methods and of course, no subsequent adjusting.
The only problem is, the tabloids and the fashionable, might then have nothing to talk about. At least not when it comes to weather as a measure of climate, for which the lack of reliable measures, and the great number of potentially creative solutions, is currently being exploited over and over to justify rather large expenditures on all manner of things.
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A shorter version of this article was published in The Spectator magazine and online at The Spectator here: https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/warming-in-antarctica/
The IPA has made available for download the chapter by Jaco Vlok all about Mawson that I edited in the great book Climate Change the Facts 2020. That chapter can be downloaded here:
https://climatechangethefacts.org.au/2023/07/17/no-evidence-of-warming-at-mawson-antarctica/
The feature image shows the inside of the Stevenson Screen at Davis, Antarctica, following a 165km/h blizzard just last year as photographed by Hana Glencross: https://www.antarctica.gov.au/news/stations/davis/2022/this-week-at-davis-12-august-2022/#group-1
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The BoM breathlessly tell us of ‘approaching ‘record’ heat’ around the planet – and listing strangely, the active volcanic island of La Palma off Spain; The islands of Sardinia and Cyprus, also in an active submarine volcanic zone – and Death Valley, below sea level in California’s Mojave Desert, where it is regularly above 120 degrees F, where it was ‘approaching’ a record of over 130 degrees F.
Apparently it was 134 degrees in 1913 – but I suppose ‘approaching’ is good enough for the BoM….
Mean August maximum temperatures, 1954-2022 at Mawson, Antarctica show a warming trend from -16.3 to -14.0.
Thanks Jen, for another great article.
Weather, whether hotter or colder, does not mean climate change:
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/07/25/hot-weather-does-mean-climate-change/
Funny how the BBC and MSM aren’t going on about how cool July has been here in the UK and that the daily rain has put a stop to the “climate change” caused hosepipe ban hysteria.
Hubby and I are thinking this might be another year without a Summer; the last one was 11 years ago and was pretty identical to this year, hmm there’s that 11 year cycle again, funny that!
Keeping everything crossed that August brings us some decent sunshine for the kids to enjoy.
The whole climate racket predates covid in the techniques being used to con a global population. Similarly, the few people who question it tend to be old fashioned maths & science devotees or retired professionals with nothing to lose. Jo Nova & Jennifer Marohasy are notable exceptions.
Some of the ‘amateurs’ have impeccable credentials. One of my favourites is John Dee. He did a brilliant analysis of antarctic data recently & has since moved on to the northern hemisphere. Unlike the BBC & other burblers of bollox, he shows his workings & everything. See here . . .
https://jdeeclimate.substack.com/p/antarctic-sea-ice-index-part-1
https://jdeeclimate.substack.com/p/hot-hotter-hottest
On 20th July 2023 a parliamentary by-election in Uxbridge and Ruislip (west London) was won by a Conservative Candidate who was anti the Net Zero Policies of all the left-wing party candidates. The win against all expectations of the mainstream media and metropolitan elites and has fired up a wide political debate about the merits of the implementation of net zero policies. Australian voters should take note that they can also crush the left-wing net-zero money grab from the poorest by voting out any candidate who supports the net-zero excesses.
Hi Jennifer,
I worked sporadically throughout Greece doing geological field work for about 15 years from 1987 to 2002 and my experience of their forest areas (highly inflammable pines) is they suffer the same fire issues as we do. National parks and government controlled forest areas are not burnt off using low intensity burning of undergrowth during the winter months because their governments are beholden to the northern European Greens. So come summer and they have a conflagration. Stupidity reigned just like in Oz.
Thanks for exposing this gaslighting, even the Greek weather bureau seems to be in on it. I am heading to Europe, so i will pack some warm clothes.
Mawson max averaged -8.38C in 1955-1988 and -8.15C in 1989-2022, warming 0.23C.
Mawson min averaged -14.18C in 1955-1988 and -14.25C in 1989-2022, cooling 0.07C.
Mawson mean averaged -11..28C in 1955-1988 and -11.20C in 1989-2022, warming 0.08C.
Mawson max averaged -8.31C in 1955-1964 and -7.92C in 2013-2022, warming 0.39C.
Mawson min averaged -13.88C in 1955-1964 and -14.12C in 2013-2022, cooling 0.24C.
Mawson mean averaged -11.09C in 1955-1964 and -11.02C in 2013-2022, warming 0.07C.
The hottest average June minimum was -14.6C in 1957 and the hottest average June maximum was -9.3C also in 1957.
I think it’ll be a while before Antarctica melts.
Jen, Great work.
Another great source for sea ice trends is https://osisaf-hl.met.no/v2p1-sea-ice-index. A consortium of European met agencies.
It does show an out of trend decrease in Antarctic ice in Jun and Jul (well covered in the boiling press)….but it also show an out of trend INCEASE in Arctic sea ice….guess what…not covered.
Re European heatwaves I understand that this was misreporting of European Space agency data- which was indicating GROUND temps (which my definition of hotter) rather than AIR temps as measured in Stevenson screens. But ESA was representing ground temps as air temps https://twitter.com/robinmonotti/status/1682684530518286336
The mean August maximum over the past decade is -13.6. prior to 2012 it was -15.5.
https://osisaf-hl.met.no/v2p1-sea-ice-index shows Arctic sea ice extent has been trending down at about 50,000 square kilometers per year since 1980.
@blep. Yes but you can’t have it both ways. Antarctic trend is increasing. Actic decreasing as you say. Due to sub sea volcanic activity as there is a tectonic ridge underneath Arctic?? gakkel ridge?
Hysterical headlines are though that antarctic ice is decreasing over post few months. In the same period Arctic has been increasing (not reported)
Not according to NASA Climate.
“Since 2002, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have lost about 425 billion metric tons (BMT) of ice per year combined, with human-caused global warming contributing significantly.”
https://twitter.com/NASAClimate/status/1688934626130092032
@blep- check out https://osisaf-hl.met.no/v2p1-sea-ice-index Strong credentials- consortium of European met offices- measure sea ice daily for almost 40 years.
Antarctic 40 year trend is increasing, Arctic decreasing. Recent observations is that Antarctic has decreased over past few months outside of trend and arctic has increased outside of trend (but not commented on).
So has “human-caused global warming contributing significantly.” contributed to Antarctic increase over 40 years and also recent increases in Arctic?? Sounds such a wishy washy unscientific, typically subjective statement- sooooo many factors at play. Scientists do not even know what is causing this recent Antarctic decrease with many scientific sources indicating multitude of hypotheses.
Re Arctic decline…interestingly I have been reading “Wanderlust: : An Eccentric Explorer, An Epic Journey, A Lost Age” on the life of Danish explorer Peter Freuchen. It appears that the Arctic has been warming since at least 30s so happening anyway as we exit Little Ice Age?
I quote ” Humans’ impact on previously untouched parts of the environment was becoming more noticeable [in the 1930s] … a small handful of Russian scientists had recently noticed that average temperatures had been rising lately, but they were happy about the change, not concerned. They speculated that melting ice would open northern waterway passages across the Arctic, allowing cheaper extraction of Siberia’s natural resources.” or ” to a larger pattern of problems contributing to what would later come to be called climate change. Much of the world was still oblivious to the issue, but everyone in Thule knew that, thirty years before, a dog’s breath made a denser cloud than now, a sign that temperatures back then had been lower during the winter. They also noticed that the ice in March had once been thicker and steadier. Then there were the waves, which had been more powerful in previous decades, meaning that the strong winds blowing off the glaciers to the southeast were also stronger, whereas the winds now blew in from the sea (coming from the southwest) and were weaker. All these changes were subtle, yes, but getting worse. Where were they headed?
After Freuchen heard about these changes from his friends, he tried to steer public attention toward the issue. In an interview with the Associated Press, he sounded an alarm. “[Greenland’s] climate is getting warmer,” the article reported. “This isn’t a century-by-century change but something that’s going on almost before your eyes. The temperature of the sea water is up several degrees, Freuchen said. The seal are retreating, and codfish and mosquitoes are advancing. This is helping cause a revolution in the lives of the native Eskimo.”*
@blepy Also for longer term glacier melt- this time in Iceland- and I quote the Icelandic PM, David Gunnlaugsson: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/iceland-s-melting-glaciers-are-nothing-to-panic-about/
“Troubling as a calving glacier might seem, such a phenomenon is by no means out of the ordinary. In fact, this process defines a glacier: they move. Glaciers shed ice at their edges as ice builds up closer to the centre. It is a spectacle we have witnessed in Iceland since the first settlers arrived in the ninth century.
What about the Ok glacier, the demise of which was publicly mourned over the summer? Ok was a relatively small mountain–top glacier that had been receding for decades. It was primarily known for its un-usual name and noticed for that reason by plenty of schoolchildren during geography lessons.
I first saw it as a boy on a school trip, and when I returned to the highlands as a young man I was worried to discover that the glacier I remembered from childhood was hardly visible. In only a decade or two, it seemed to have reduced in size considerably. But then I learned that this was nothing new; for much of the 20th century, the glacier had been receding. In 1901, it measured 38 sq km in size; in 1978, it was just three sq km. So the glacier that had its last rites read in August had, in fact, more or less disappeared half a century ago.
That might still seem to be a sad fate for a glacier that had only reached the age of 700. ”
Bizarrely and inconveniently several glaciers in the glacier national park US have been increasing. Inconveniently as signs were put up saying the glaciers would all be gone by 2020…the signs were subsequently taken down with presumably embarrassment over the hubris
Yes BC https://osisaf-hl.met.no/v2p1-sea-ice-index do have strong credentials.
The website you directed me to bizarrely and inconveniently has the following information:
Debunking false claims about sea ice
Social media is regularly used to propagate false claims misinterpreting scientific data and implying that there is evidence against human-caused climate change. Polar regions are closely monitored and the satellite data that are used to monitor them are often subject to misinterpretations to question climate-change.
Misinterpretation of satellite data
Climate data records documenting changes in the polar regions are regularly targeted by skeptics in attempts to divert the public opinion and propagate false conclusions. A recurrent claim is that sea ice concentration in the Arctic is increasing while on the contrary the long-term trend of shrinking ice is well-documented.
Earlier this year, Thomas Lavergne, OSI SAF Sea Ice expert at Norwegian Meteorological institute was called by the international press agency AFP fact checking service to comment. In an other article, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) Director, Mark Serreze told AFP the data shown in post is correct, but was taken out of context. Let’s have a closer at Sea Ice data used in publications shared on social media.
Cherry-picking years
In the Arctic, the sea-ice cover (area and extent) is declining in all months. This reduction in sea ice extent and area does however not happen at a constant speed, there are year-to-year variations: some years will have more sea ice than expected from the trend, some years will have less.
A common misleading presentation of sea ice data record comes from cherry-picking years to manipulate the trend.
OSI SAF climate data records show a decline in Arctic sea ice
May 1989, for example, saw less Arctic ice than average, and May 2022 had more than average for those periods. To measure the impact of global warming on sea ice, we calculate the percentage change in its extent and volume compared to the average for a reference period of 30 years — in this case, 1981 to 2010. Cherry-picking two years gives a wrong interpretation of the trend measured in the climate data record of OSI SAF sea-ice data.
The trend over the last 40 years is clear : May trend : -2.5%/decade, September trend: -11,5%/decade. The decline is more pronounced in summer (September) than in winter (March) as shown by several satellite products that cover the last 40 years.
@Blepy. Think we are on the same page. Arctic trend decreasing, Antarctic increasing. Over that ~40 yrs it fluctuates above and below that trend line by definition.
Recent headlines seem to be highlighting the trend blow for Antarctic and extrapolating forward as major doom (See “Cherry-picking two years gives a wrong interpretation of the trend measured in the climate data record of OSI SAF sea-ice data.”), but at the same time headlines increasing fluctuations for Arctic. ie neither objective nor accurate reporting, but advocacy reporting… not good
@BC, are you saying that OSI SAF are misunderstanding their own data?
https://osi-saf.eumetsat.int/sites/osi-saf.eumetsat.int/files/styles/950_609/public/images/paragraphes/galerie-image/image/20221019_SeaIceExtent_950x610.PNG
I am looking at the long term trendlines for Arctic and Antactic Sep & Feb/March:
https://osisaf-hl.met.no/archive/osisaf/sea-ice-index/v2p1/nh/en/osisaf_nh_sie_monthly-all.png
https://osisaf-hl.met.no/archive/osisaf/sea-ice-index/v2p1/sh/en/osisaf_sh_sie_monthly-all.png
And the 23 July and 22 August mthly trends below that
Sure, Antarctic has been decreases outside normal bound- does that a long term trend make, esp. as we only see a 40 year history? Has it done this in the past from time to time? Will it rebound? What factors are at play that have caused this: volcanic, magmatic, sun activity, water temp, etc?
Likewise although arctic has been on a steady decrease for 40 years (and much longer if there is credence in those two articles I posted), there has been a recent increase.
Again we should not cherry pick, but if we are going to flag Antarctic ice decrease as a apocalyptic trend then at least post the Arctic July increases. Interesting to see August/Sep data .
I’ll stop posting on this
@BC, if you are not going to cherry-pick, then… don’t cherry-pick.
NASA was directed by Trump to get out of promoting AGW hysteria and get back to their ‘core business’ of space exploration. NASA Climate appears to be a rebirth of their blatant, fund-seeking charlatanism.
Fluctuating Ice volumes in both the Arctic and Antarctic, depend on intermittent raised temperatures caused by Orbiting Solar-induced Dry Cycles – and submarine volcanic activity, especially around the Pacific ‘Rim of Fire’. The Dry Cycle ‘chains’ of 2.25 years and 6.75 years, repeat every 81 years. At the present time, these Dry Cycles start to the West of Australia, affecting both hemispheres – and moving East to West at 15 degrees of Longitude per 30 Day/Night Interval Month. (12 x 30 =360 degrees)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TFFDXyhe5b0ZfLCiFt23W4PbubQaQfQo/view?usp=sharing
@Don Gaddes, will you acknowledge that a recent survey of 10,000 active climate scientists found that 98% affirmed the existence of anthropogenic climate change?
@Don Gaddes, will you acknowledge the existence of a recently released report of the International Panel on Climate Change, an agency with 195 member countries, which concludes with 95% confidence that the climate is changing, due to human activity?
I acknowledge that 98 percent of 10,000 ‘active climate scientists’ are on the AGW/IPCC ‘gravy train’.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TFFDXyhe5b0ZfLCiFt23W4PbubQaQfQo/view?usp=sharing
@Don Gaddes, I downloaded and read much of,
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TFFDXyhe5b0ZfLCiFt23W4PbubQaQfQo
and decided that 98 percent of the 270 pages were drivel.
I’m not surprised…..
You will (no doubt) also fail to recognise, that when CO2 reaches ‘saturation point’ in the atmosphere, it is taken up by the oceans,(Carbon Sink) – and without CO2, there would be no life on Earth….
I acknowledge that you are on the petrochemical industry ‘gravy train’.
No CO2 = No Plants.
No Plants = No Animals.
No Animals = No Humans.
No Humans = No Blep….
@Don Gaddes, will you acknowledge that the ocean has absorbed 29 percent of Co2 emissions? That the oceans are now 30 percent more acidic that they were at the start of the industrial era? That ocean acidification is increasing at a faster rate than any time over the past ~100 million years?
“This July was not just warmer than any previous July – it was the warmest month in our record, which goes back to 1880,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt. “The science is clear this isn’t normal. Alarming warming around the world is driven primarily by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. And that rise in average temperatures is fueling dangerous extreme heat that people are experiencing here at home and worldwide.”
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/
29 percent of CO2 emissions from what base? There is always CO2 naturally occurring in the atmosphere, up to a saturation point. (Rankama and Sahama – Chicago Press,1950.)
The planet is covered by 70 percent ‘ocean’, therefore, the default atmospheric state is ‘Wet/Normal’, interspersed with the ‘chains’ of Solar-induced Orbital Dry Cycles.
Overall, the planet is cooling and drying, due to increased ‘albedo’ (e.g. Ice, wind-blown dust and volcanism. CO2 is not the problem, however, you do have a point about the ‘ocean acidification’. How much of this is caused by volcanism,(submarine included?)
If you trust NASA so implicitly, you should book your seat on their ‘holy grail’ manned Mars flight….good luck. They will continue pushing their fake AGW agenda to justify an even larger funding grab for pie-in-the-sky sci-fi projects, like finding a new ‘habitable’ host planet, after their ‘go forth and multiply’, Religious ‘Right’ masters have finished ‘consuming’ this one.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TFFDXyhe5b0ZfLCiFt23W4PbubQaQfQo/view?usp=sharing
I know someone who lives in Grants Pass, Oregon. It was 112 F yesterday.