That pesky Arctic again


Image source

In recent years, Warmists have had a love-affair with the Arctic.  Overall terrestrial temperatures have been depressingly stable for them but there are lots of changes in the Arctic from year to year.  So just a few years of Arctic ice shrinkage are enough to put lead back in their pencils and enable them to say that there is warming going on SOMEWHERE.

So the massive rebound in ice cover this year has sparked much hilarity among skeptics and a notable lack of press-releases from Warmists.

The best that Warmists can do to preserve their addled theory is to say that the ice this year is just temporary and that the long term trend in the Arctic is towards warming.

So the graph above is interesting.  It shows that, far from this year being anomalous, it is in fact closely tracking the long term  average.  Over the period covered, there has been NO CHANGE in Arctic temperatures to date.

The graph is from the Danish Meteorological Institute’s daily mean temperatures for the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel. They have been measuring that for over 50 years, notably longer than the time period customarily used by Warmists (from 1979 on).

But the whole focus on the Arctic is a silly distraction anyway.  If overall temperatures are stable, what does it mean if just one part of the globe (the Arctic) is warming?  It means that there are local effects going on, not global ones.  Which would surprise only a Warmist.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).