Circling the Arctic

What sudden recent warming? What Hockey Stick? I don't see any.
Similar page on Yamal | Responses to WUWT thread | Responses to Tamino

with thanks to the late John Daly and his timeless, brilliant website page "What the Stations Say" (click on Arctic map above). Click on each thumbnail graph to access Daly's full size graph with time and temperature scales and other details. The thicker dark horizontal line across some of these thumbnails indicated 0ºC (a few of the graphs are ALL under that line). The Arctic is shown in the condition of summer sea ice (see thumbnail below) and the pale circle is the Arctic Circle. All data comes from NASA GISS or CRU originally.

Paul Vaughan notes at WUWT that he "spent a fair amount of time updating these graphs (& others of Daly’s for other regions)" using http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/ and adds a cautionary note: The time-frame and aspect-ratio of the timeplots can be manipulated to create the illusion of a steep trend in recent years.

The highly variable temperatures and amounts of sea ice in both polar regions is well-known to locals, but cherrypicked extremes have become a media weapon to scare ignorant folk with. Greenlanders today are aware of recent warming; but history, archaeology, and the Norse sagas show that Greenland was warmer than today in the Middle Ages, when crops and trees were grown there. For recent sea ice changes (since 1979) see Cryosphere Today and note that while Northern Hemisphere sea ice (at the top of the CT page) has gone down recently (but is currently going up again), Southern Hemisphere sea ice (at the bottom of the CT page) is going up, so that the overall total is pretty constant although fluctuating between summer and winter.

 

This represents typical current summer and winter sea ice and snow cover in the Arctic and Antarctic. Permanent icefields are pure white. The difference between summer and winter sea ice is vast, and greatly exceeds the variations between different years. The faint circles are the Arctic and Antarctic Circles. Note how they delineate the Arctic Ocean and the Antarctica continent.   Finally, Jeff Id's superb animation of recent Arctic sea ice>>

 

This article has been referenced at The Air Vent as "Rewriting Arctic History", referenced on the Climate Audit forum as "Breaking the Ice Hockey Stick", and reposted at WUWT entitled "Arctic Temperatures - What Hockey Stick?"; it has been challenged by Tamino here, and here, which I responded to here (updates inline), to which he responded here. My other responses are developing here. My motivating concern was Kaufman's recent paper which claims a twentieth century uptick in temperatures of unprecedented size. I'm perfectly aware there has been some warming overall. Many of Daly's records show that. I'm using records here that extend back to 1840, well beyond the uptick point on the new Hockey Stick - and early enough to show natural patterns, and to confirm or deny any pattern of unnatural uptick supposedly happening in the twentieth century.Very recent temperature rise is another issue again: UHI / other station distortions, 1998 El Nino effects, and loss of stations. Certainly not CO2 suddenly getting its act together, after 100 years of blowing hot and cold.