Our regular reader(s) may be wondering at this juncture, but that is not a typo in today’s title. For an in depth discussion of how alleged “renowned amateur naturalist and honorary doctor” Chris Packham sensationally rebranded Toby Young’s self identified “skeptical” web site live on air on the BBC’s “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg” see here. By way of additional background information see also our in depth investigation of the Daily Sceptic’s Arctic porky pie production line over here. To the apparent astonishment of the Septic’s alleged “Environment Editor”, Chris Morrison, Reuters Fact Che ..read more

According to The Spectator magazine “Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator” According to Toby’s article in tomorrow’s edition of The Spectator: On Sunday, the BBC did something unusual. It invited Luke Johnson, a climate contrarian, to join a panel with Laura Kuenssberg to discuss net zero. As followers of this debate will know, the BBC’s editorial policy unit issued guidance to staff in 2018 saying: ‘As climate change is accepted as happening, you do not need a “denier” to balance the debate.’ Although it did allow for exceptions to this rule: ‘There are occasions where contrarian ..read more

Chris Martz, the new kid on the “skeptical block”, proudly proclaimed on XTwitter yesterday that: There’s more sea ice heading into the summer in the Arctic this year than there was in 1989. That is of course a porky pie: As you can see, Chris also invokes the age old canard of the “Mark Serreze Arctic sea ice death spiral”. I discussed that very topic with Mark in 2015: Mark told me that he still stood by his 2030 estimate for the onset of a seasonally ice free Arctic, although: “Most models say more like 2050”. For some strange reason Chris doesn’t link to my in depth interview with Ma ..read more

Starting this month with a look at assorted volume/thickness data, here is the CryoSat-2/SMOS merged Arctic sea ice thickness map for March 31st: Plus the associated volume graph, which still suffers from a gap in the near real time data due to the problem with the SMOS satellite during the first half of March: The PIOMAS gridded thickness data for March 2024 is also available. Here’s the end of month thickness map: Plus the calculated volume graph: Especially for Peter, here too is the DMI’s chart of monthly Arctic sea ice volume for March: There is still no sign of the usual band of thi ..read more

This is a photograph of a Greenland shark: (c) Eric Ste Marie https://www.husseylab.com/ You will no doubt be astonished to learn that shark jumping supremo Tony Heller has just jumped over the entire East Greenland population of this long lived but officially vulnerable species. Without harming a single one! Over on XTwitter “Steve”/Tony was recently shown this video which graphically reveals the declining age of the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean: He responded as follows: According to the “summary for skeptics” of the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate ..read more

It looks as though the 2024 Arctic sea ice melting season has begun. For much greater detail see the 2024 maximum extent thread. However, here’s the latest JAXA Arctic sea ice extent graph: Here too is an animation of sea ice motion on the Atlantic periphery, showing the effect of the passage of several Arctic cyclones through the area over the past 5 weeks or so: Watch this space ..read more

According to Michael Mann he coined the name “Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation”: Two decades ago, in an interview with science journalist Richard Kerr for the journal Science, I coined the term the “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation” (the “AMO” for short) to describe an internal oscillation in the climate system resulting from interactions between North Atlantic ocean currents and wind patterns. These interactions were thought to lead to alternating decades-long intervals of warming and cooling centered in the extratropical North Atlantic that play out on 40-60 year timescale ..read more

As I surmised only yesterday: The so called “skeptics” are probably already salivating over that image! The name may not be familiar on the other side of the Atlantic, but here in the once United Kingdom Mr. Toby Young self identifies as “skeptical”, having named his web site the “Daily Sceptic”. This morning he Xweeted thus: The linked article was written by the Daily Sceptic’s alleged “Environment Editor” Chris Morrison. Mr. Morrison Xweeted thus: You will perhaps have already noted that Chris and Toby both appear to have an irrational fear of what they refer to as “Net Zero”? Next let ..read more

A change is perhaps even better than a rest? Let’s start February with a reminder that following close behind another recent Arctic cyclone, Storm Ingunn caused red weather warnings for high winds and avalanches in Norway two days ago: By yesterday evening another long period, storm driven swell was arriving at the sea ice edge in the Fram Strait, and to a lesser extent in the Barents Sea: By this morning Ingunn had merged with the remnants of the prior cyclone, as revealed in Climate Reanalyzer’s visualisation of the latest GFS model run:: The storms have sucked plenty of anomalously warm ..read more

I was mildly surprised when a somewhat “skeptical” interlocutor of my Arctic alter ego linked to “Climate at a Glance” in the course of our alleged “debate”. I was even more surprised to discover that the far end of the suggested link was not NOAA’s familiar overview of the Arctic temperature trend: but instead a similarly named web site proudly sponsored by the Heartland Institute: The “Climate at a Glance” home page currently features the Arctic at the top, and it probably won’t surprise you to learn that the linked article is full of half truths and untruths about “Snow White’s” favourite ..read more