October 4, 2021

"Amid a record hot summer in large parts of the Northern Hemisphere, beset by devastating fires, floods and hurricanes, Antarctica was mired in a deep, deep freeze...."

"The average temperature at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station between April and September, a frigid minus-78 degrees (minus-61 Celsius), was the coldest on record, dating back to 1957. This was 4.5 degrees lower than the most recent 30-year average at this remote station.... The extreme cold over Antarctica helped push sea ice levels surrounding the continent to their fifth-highest level on record in August.... Matthew Lazzara, an expert on the meteorology of Antarctica and scientist at the University of Wisconsin, monitored the South Pole temperatures in recent months from his office in Madison with awe. In an interview, he said it was around minus-100 degrees on numerous occasions.... Scientists stressed that the record cold over the South Pole in no way refutes or lessens the seriousness of global warming. Antarctica is notorious for its wild swings in weather and climate, which can run counter to global trends." 

61 comments:

Michael K said...

Tucson AZ had a mild summer with record rainfall.

gilbar said...

was the coldest on record, dating back to 1957. This was 4.5 degrees lower than the most recent 30-year average at this remote station..

Want PROOF of Global Warming? There's Your PROOF!
IF there Wasn't Global Warming, WHY would there be record cold temperatures ?
{wait a minute, let me rephrase that...}

Jim Howard said...

Austin Texas had a very hard winter folllowed by a very damp and mild summer.

Mid-Life Lawyer said...

"This was 4.5 degrees lower than the most recent 30-year average at this remote station....' This is the scariest way they could present it to those who have chosen the willing suspension of disbelief when it comes to partisan political issues. The rest of us understand how averages work.

Paul Zrimsek said...

"Antarctica is notorious for its wild swings in weather and climate, which can run counter to global trends." That's what sets it apart from the rest of the world, where wild swings in weather and climate are absolutely unknown.

tim maguire said...

Scientists stressed that the record cold over the South Pole in no way refutes or lessens the seriousness of global warming.

Of course, circle the wagons, defend the theory. Because that's how science works these days.

PB said...

Calculating planetwide average temperature is hard...

Critter said...

Notice the rhetorical device: If the weather runs counter to narrative of the global warming alarmists, then it is because of wide natural swings in weather. If the weather runs in the direction they want, then weather is proof of global warming.

It's the old heads I win, tails you lose gambit repurposed. Very untrustworthy people, these global warming alarmists.

rehajm said...

In an interview, he said it was around minus-100 degrees on numerous occasions.... Scientists stressed that the record cold over the South Pole in no way refutes or lessens the seriousness of global warming

No. Of course not. Of. Course. Not.

DarkHelmet said...

"Scientists stressed that the record cold over the South Pole in no way refutes or lessens the seriousness of global warming."

What a surprise. I have complete faith that the media will always be able to find 'scientists' who will say that nothing can ever refute global warming. It is an article of religion for the media and a large section of the scientific community, and therefore it CANNOT be questioned. Ever.

Thought experiment:

Science is science because it makes testable predictions using evidence-based theories. If a theory is not falsifiable by experimental data, it is not science. It is simply belief. What test would the 'scientific community' consider acceptable to challenge the proposition that global warming is real, man-made and a bad thing on net for humanity?

Dan from Madison said...

I hate it when they print "minus -100 degrees".

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

This is one reason an “average global temperature” is an elusive and disappointing metric. New hottest and coldest records are set all the time. I’m pleasantly surprised this made it into print.

rosebud said...

And yet, if Antarctica had shown higher than normal temperatures, we can be pretty sure that the whole "Antarctica has crazy swings, it doesn't mean anything" approach would be dropped like a globally warmed potato.

Rob C said...

"Amid a record hot summer..." which does reinforce the narrative for climate change while also stating "Scientists stressed that the record cold over the South Pole in no way refutes or lessens the seriousness of global warming." It's always nice that you can emphasize the things that support your hypothesis and dismiss the negative data.

The fact that these people were surprised by this particular development should again give everyone pause about how accurate their models can be while missing something this large.

rhhardin said...

CO2 would affect most definitively the clear air winter night temperatures, because those temperatures are lowered by radiation from the earth not reflected back by the atmosphere. You can't generate cold without radiative access to the universe, which CO2 supposedly cuts off.

Original Mike said...

While it may have been record setting in the Northern Hemisphere (though color me skeptical, it was not record setting globally. Not even close.

steve said...

I think this just proves that the climate is extremely complicated. When even supercomputers have problems predicting the weather, does the left really believe they can cool the hemisphere with their crazy schemes. And what if somehow they manage to do it? What if the northern hemisphere cools but the Antarctic region warms and all that ice melts? I say leave well enough alone

Owen said...

Well, this should not come as a surprise. There’s only so much heat on the whole planet, and when you send it up north to start fires and parch crops, there’s dang little left down in the South Pole.
Yes, that’s sarcasm; but in fact it tracks closely both the direction and quality of the explanations the CAGW alarmunists are offering.

Dude1394 said...

Golly gee, you mean the climate is not acting like the climatistas predicted.....EVER..

Howard said...

When it's hotter than normal, it a signal of climate change. When it's colder than han normal, it's just weather.

Why the elites are actually non technical savy English major dipshits still floundering over the Trumperverse skeptical attitude over everything promoted by the Davos Media Complex.

Robert Marshall said...

"Scientists stressed that the record cold over the South Pole in no way refutes or lessens the seriousness of global warming."

Climate change theory is deemed non-falsifiable, so naturally this observation "in no way refutes" it. That also means, of course, that global warming has transcended the bounds of science, and is now a religion, the state religion of leftists. St. Greta of Thunberg is the first of what will be its many saints.

Mike Sylwester said...

An excerpt from the website Watts Up With That?

.... To maintain alarmism, the WaPo likes often cites outlier data that suggest the planet has just seen one of the hottest summers on record. But as ... satellite data ... show, this has clearly not been the case. June 2021 came in 0.01°C below the mean of the 1991-2020 reference period, and July and August came in at +0.20°C and +0.17°C, making the summer mean on average a modest 0.12°C warmer than the 1991-2020 period ....

The Washington Post’s suggestion that Antarctica “continues to warm rapidly” is also contradicted by recent studies showing the entire South Pole continent has in fact cooled since data recording began in the 1950s.

Tom Grey said...

"Record cold" in NO WAY refutes global warming!
Because NOTHING refutes global warming - it's the Truth with a capital T,
which rhymes with Pee, but is the end of bull-shiT.

We're adding CO2 to the atmosphere - so ask climate change fear mongers what was the old percentage of CO2, and what is the new percentage?
Most don't know the facts.

The Earth has been warmer, and colder, with more, and with less, CO2. If climate is changing, we need more heat in cold areas (engineering!), more cool in hot areas, more dry in wet & flooded areas, and more water in dry and fire hazard draught areas. And more reliable power with less CO2 emissions, like from nukes.

If CO2 was a crisis, we would be building more nukes.
We're not building nukes. Therefore, CO2 is not yet a crisis.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

LOL lest you get any unorthodox thoughts in your little heads:

"Scientists stressed that the record cold over the South Pole in no way refutes or lessens the seriousness of global warming. Antarctica is notorious for its wild swings in weather and climate, which can run counter to global trends."

Okay fine. Now cast yourself back to the days when the media mouthpieces were fretting about Global Warming affecting the poles. Were they eager to interject counterarguments lest you get the wrong idea then?

Nope. Not in Is the ice at the South Pole melting?, an article from 2010 with the sub-head "Gravity field satellites observe for the first time the fluctuations of ice mass of the Antarctic ice sheet due to El Nino" and absolutely no mention of Antarctica's contrarian habit of going the opposite of the rest of the planet. Do you think the rest of the planet was cooling in 2010? Maybe it was.

And nope. Not in Antarctica discovery: Atmospheric rivers are PUNCHING holes in Antarctica - study, an article from just last year with the sub-head "INVISIBLE AIR rivers are punching holes in the Antarctic ice in what is another bad sign in the battle against climate change." No. there's no contrarian take on Antarctica even 15 short months ago, how weird. Instead it is all interlinked as of 2020: "Global warming is contributing to a loss of ice cover in the Arctic and Antarctic circles and researchers believe Greenland could be one of the worst affected." You see the global warming severely affects the ice down under, when they want it to.

And big nope! Not in Global warming: Antarctic meltdown will be unstoppable, raising global sea levels by 0.5 meters, according to NASA, an article from way back in 2019 with an interesting 'graf that goes, "Immediately after recounting the fact that Antarctica lost four times the area of ​​France in record time there is another worrying report on global warming and climate change linked to the rapid melting of Antarctic ice." Wow, no contrarian action going on there. The south pole is a very conformist participant in the huge global scam.

So not one counterargument in these strongly worded warnings. How weird, huh? I'm sure they have perfectly progressive reasons for keeping readers in the dark until today when we learn the ice is growing thicker because suddenly the Antarctica is republican or something.

Joe Smith said...

This is why it's called 'climate change' and not 'global warming.'

Even really stupid people can see through the scam if, when temperatures plunge, scientists and government types keep screaming about how hot it will get : )

Btw, give me warmer over cooler any time. If it's warm we can adapt and still have food. Cooler...mass starvation on an epic scale.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

This came from today's WaPo article: “Basically, the winds in the polar stratosphere have been stronger than normal, which is associated with shifting the jet stream toward the pole,” Amy Butler, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA, wrote in a message. “This keeps the cold air locked up over much of Antarctica.”

Well how does that square with the peer-reviewed study above that says those same high winds were MELTING the ice but now they are FREEZING the ice? How does that happen? I mean they said that those same winds were laden with moisture as you'd expect from warm winds over the ocean, and that moisture was boring holes into Antarctica. Now they are keeping it cool? Wow nature sure is fickle.

Lars Porsena said...

Record cold in Antarctica is just weather; all the other stuff is climate.

hawkeyedjb said...

"... in no way refutes or lessens the seriousness of global warming"

There is literally no variation in weather that will not be attributed to Climate Change. Hot? Climate change. Cold? Climate change. Stays the same? Climate change, you denier.

David Begley said...

Of course, it doesn’t disrupt the global warming narrative.

Liar.

Gabriel said...

Well, in fairness, global warming is about average temperatures over the whole globe over time. It's true that the media and activists like to hype any all deviations from the norm as evidence the sky is falling, but the actual scientists involved have been consistent. The media finds in convenient to conflate science, activism, and policy, and consequently many misunderstandings have been generated.

gilbar said...

Dan from Madison said...
I hate it when they print "minus -100 degrees".

Wait a minute! minus -100 degrees? in the middle of the Antarctic winter?
Holy Cow!! I think i'd Have To Really Believe in Global Warming, if it got that hot there
we never even made it over minus -95 degrees here in NE iowa, in the summer!

mikee said...

Best summer in my 20 years here in Austin. Lower than average temperatures, frequent rainfall, really nice. Keep it up, AGW, you're doing fine!

PM said...

Blip. Big Lie In Perpetuity

Darkisland said...

How "record hot" was the temperature? How many degrees hotter was it than previous summers? Hundredths of a degree? Tenths of a degree?

What does that even mean?

Average high temps for the US as a whole were higher than any previous?

Average daily temps for the US as a whole were higher than any previous?

John Henry

Larry1984 said...

Now we know how Galileo felt. The holy science cannot be questioned.

Larry1984 said...

Now we know how Galileo felt. The holy science cannot be questioned.

Larry1984 said...

Now we know how Galileo felt. The holy science cannot be questioned.

lys said...

It would be interesting if they showed us which, if any, climate models predicted this weather in Antarctica. If the models we are relying on to predict 1 to 30 years in the future didn't predict this, should we be basing our policies on them?

MikeD said...

I'll wait for Greta's AGW explainer.

Joel Winter said...

My guess is that if you're being surprised by this, you're looking at "weather" when you thought you were looking at climate.

If you're looking at "climate" there are fewer actual surprises (though there are still some) and this is just one more datapoint.

It'd be nice if the popular press would figure this distinction out.

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

If an 18 year old globetrotting Swedish activist can figure this out, what's wrong with all of you?! Believe science. And Greta.

J Melcher said...

This is why it's called 'climate change' and not 'global warming.'

Global warming is a hypothesis offered by astronomers and planetary physicists, using the tools developed for observing and theorizing about other planets in local solar system, as applied to our own planet. There are planetary / global measures of various elemental gasses in the atmosphere, about the amount of solar radiation that falls on the planetary surface, and is reflected, or is retained until re-radiated as heat... Globally, according to those tools, the planet we live on seems to be getting warmer. It's a hypothesis to be tested by on-going measurement. It's falsifiable.

Climate change is a concern of the United Nations -- much like concerns over refugees and stateless persons, the elimination of certain diseases, the resolution of trade disputes. Note that the UN has NEVER actually solved any of the problems they express concern over. What used-to-be-Palestine is still exporting refugees to Lebanon or Jordan or Syria or enclaves in Israel. The peninsula of Korea has still never held comprehensive free elections to form a joint government. Cholera is not only un-cured, UN "peace-keeping" forces bring new variants of cholera into countries, like Haiti, where the disease was previously unknown. Etc. Too many examples to list. The UN-IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) was set up in 1988 under that name -- Climate Change -- to prepare a comprehensive review and recommendations with respect to the state of knowledge of the science of climate change Before the "science was settled" that there was a problem at all, let alone determining whether the problem was man-made or natural, or due to soot or CFCs or CO2 or de-forestation or anything else, the first IPCC's first "accomplishment" (in 1990) was to draft an international treaty that would obligate signatory nations to hand over power to the UN generally and the IPCC specifically. The POLITICS was settled. And it beyond question by taxpayers, voters, or minority political parties in member nations.

And THAT's why we call it "Climate Change".

cassandra lite said...

"Scientists [whose funding depends on research findings that confirm AGW] stressed that the record cold over the South Pole in no way refutes or lessens the seriousness of global warming.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Joe Smith,

Btw, give me warmer over cooler any time. If it's warm we can adapt and still have food. Cooler...mass starvation on an epic scale.

Someone wrote in an Op-Ed someplace recently (has to be the NYT or the WaPo) that the onus on global warming is all on us, meaning the "global North" (though they don't call it that) because most of the people live around the equator. Which does raise the question of why said people are there. I mean, AGW is said to be in place for at most 200 years. But people near the equator have been at much higher temperatures than us in the US (or New Zealand, or Patagonia, or South Africa -- the poles are similarly situated) for, well, forever. Why has not the bulk of the populace moved a long time ago? Why is not Central Asia full of African, Central/South American and Middle Eastern migrants? There's an awful lot of room in the 'stans, but you don't see even Bangladeshis (who, heaven knows, couldn't be in much worse straits) fleeing to there. And Russia proper has even more. Much more.

My own bet is the obvious one: They want to move to places where there's an established civilization, all the 21st c. mod cons, all the high culture, all the variety of food, all the guaranteed subsistence, all the money. Especially the money. So the US and Europe it is.

Chris Lopes said...

"Scientists stressed that the record cold over the South Pole in no way refutes or lessens the seriousness of global warming."

Nothing says "the science is settled" like an unfalsifiable hypothesis.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Joel Winter, "weather vs. climate" doesn't explain why the global warming folks were startled by this mere "weather." If it stuns you (not "you," exactly, but the climate-science community), why were you stunned? We are talking a whole continent, after all. If its average temp has dropped 4.5C, that's a very major change. Imagine the same on any inhabited continent. We'd not be talking about COVID any more, for starters.

I live in Oregon, and we beyond doubt had our hottest summer on record, worse than the one I spent in KS 47 or so years ago, which was in "boil an egg on the sidewalk" territory (114F IIRC). BUT: That was weather, just as last summer was and just as this SA outlier is.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Chris Lopes,

Nothing says "the science is settled" like an unfalsifiable hypothesis.

It is, and that is literally my sole beef with it. Show me something that proves to you that AGW is false, and I will listen to you. But everything only proves the theory. Even temperatures not changing at all proves the theory. Theology is less impervious to intellectual attack than this; theologians have to listen to reason.

chuck said...

record cold over the South Pole in no way refutes or lessens the seriousness of global warming

The only thing that can refute global warming is a change in the political climate.

rsbsail said...

Isn't it amazing! A new record high temperature is touted by news organizations and climate grifters (e.g., environmental organizations) as evidence of global warming. But record cold in Antarctica is just normal weather.

ga6 said...

How does that song go? ahh yes
"and Texas need rain"
about sixty some years ago, nothing has changed.

Skippy Tisdale said...

""Amid a record hot summer in large parts of the Northern Hemisphere, beset by devastating fires, floods and hurricanes, Antarctica was mired in a deep, deep freeze...."""

Better headline/sub-headline:

We Still Don't Know Shit About Fuck
But we sure think we do

MadisonMan said...

I've also read that the record cold helped the Southern Hemisphere Ozone Hole this year to become very big again. Isolating all that cold air at the South Pole -- as must have happened given the extreme cold at the surface -- will prevent mixing of relatively ozone-rich air from lower latitudes.
However, long-term prospects of ozone recovery from the Ozone Hole of the late 20th century remain good.

Roger Sweeny said...

"Climate Science" is definitely politicized but as far as I know satellite temperature measurements aren't. They show a definite warming trend over the last 43 years.

That is, of course, a big average. This summer in Austin was cooler than normal. In the northeast, it was warmer than normal.

Amadeus 48 said...

Don't look now, but ice coverage in the ARCTIC Ocean is up 40% from last year. Most folks mistake their local weather for the climate. Once again, the climate is what you expect; the weather is what you get. Ever since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850, it has been getting a little warmer--one degree centigrade in 170 years.

Also, about 20,000 to 25,000 years ago there was ice a mile high where I am sitting. Now, I look out my breakfast room and see a great big lake. That's what is left of those glaciers. It got really warm for a long time to melt all that ice.

Those mastodons must have been driving the hell out of their SUVs.

Leora said...

I don't know about sweltering. This is my first Florida summer moved here in 2013) where I had to keep the pool heater running to maintain 80 degrees water temperature.

Mea Sententia said...

When I read the New Testament, I smile at its apocalyptic worldview, so quaint and curious. But now whenever I read the news there is an apocalyptic worldview. Fires, floods, hurricanes! Repent, for the end is near! I love science, but there is much more at work here than science.

Original Mike said...

"satellite temperature measurements … show a definite warming trend over the last 43 years."

Temperature fluctuates naturally. The pertinent questions are is this warming historically remarkable (my understanding is that the Medieval Warming Period suggests it is not) and is it due to CO2, etc (my understanding here is that the models predict significantly higher warming than is observed).

Going forward, we should continue to ask these questions.

chuck said...

definite warming trend over the last 43 years.

Yes, the Akasofu model is a warming trend from the end of the Little Ice Age with added cyclic effect from the PDO, and it works better than the complicated climate models, which are essentially curve fits with too many parameters, i.e., they are over fitted. When you don't understand a system well enough to model it correctly and are reduced to curve fitting, the fewer parameters the better. Complicated models do not extrapolate well. Akasofu is an esteemed atmospheric physicist who was essentially sidelined on account of his inconvenient views.

Note that none of the models can explain the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period and other such things. The Mann solution to that problem was to claim that they were local phenomena and could be ignored. Unfortunately, the data doesn't agree with that easy fix.

LA_Bob said...

Last year Southern California had a very hot summer. Numerous 100+ degree days bookended by 95 or so degree days punctuated by a few days of mid-80's for variety's sake. This went on from mid-August into the Fall. There were fewer 100 degree days, but even in November and December temperatures were above normal.

And we even participated in the National COVID Surge, despite the warm Autumn weather. You know, the weather that's supposed to reduce respiratory virus infections.

This year was very different, only one or two 100 degree days where I live near LA.

Northern Cal, Oregon, Washington, Idaho...those folks all became baked potatoes this year.

gilbar said...

Amadeus 48 said...
Ever since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850, it has been getting a little warmer--one degree centigrade in 170 years.

And we Need to Thank GOD for that! "Thank You GOD; for ending the Little Ice Age!"

Would you want to live in a Wisconsin, that, in the Summer:
A) Regularly gets over a hundred degrees, with hot humid winds...
or
B) has an Ice Sheet, A MILE THICK!
pick one

gilbar said...

For the last 35 years or so... Each and EVERY year; has been THE WARMEST EVER RECORDED!
It Just Keeps getting Hotter, and Hotter
which raises a Serious Question: Why is it, that it's not any hotter now, than 1985?
You'd think, that 35 years of increasing temperatures would be noticeable

Remember 1985? i do