Support the Arctic Sea Ice Forum and Blog

Author Topic: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper  (Read 15198 times)

idunno

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 194
  • wonders are many
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 7
  • Likes Given: 0
Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« on: October 12, 2013, 12:30:15 PM »
This seems to have generated enough comment on the latest blog thread, here...

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/10/freezing-season-20132014-open-thread-1.html

...to suggest that it may be worth a forum thread.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-10-stadium-lull-global.html#jCp

The full paper is linked at Curry's website...

http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/10/the-stadium-wave/

...where those of you prepared to scroll past a lot of squabbling between the inmates of the comments section will find some interesting elucidation fron Wyatt, to whom I think the main credit for it accrues. She's been working on it for 7 years, JC for 6 months or so.

"I fear the Greeks, even bearing gifts," but even so I think this is a very interesting paper; it posits that the AMO drives an ebb and flow of the ice edge in the Kara, Laptev and East Siberian seas. This, in turn, triggers changes throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

As Dr Jennifer Francis has commented, about the same phenomenon, in another context "How could it not?"

It does seem to relate quite well to the specialist interests of us ice junkies, so fire away...


Susan Anderson

  • Grease ice
  • Posts: 527
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 40
  • Likes Given: 279
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #1 on: October 12, 2013, 05:23:39 PM »
While I agree with those who have experienced trying to make sense of Dr. Curry as largely a waste of time, interested people new to the subject might like to take a look at some of the work that was done on this.  In addition, they might like to see the original display of evasion and fudging that appeared on RealClimate, was extended at Kloor's Collide-a-Scape (link appears to have aged out), and ended up with the formation of Curry's blog with its huge phony skeptic fanbase.

Her road to Damascus moment seems to have been reading one Montford, and from the sound of him I'd say give that one is also a lot of contrarian hot air, not well based in reality.

This is one specific response by Gavin Schmidt, but a look through the whole comment section, searching for Judith Curry, and paying particular attention to the inline responses, will show the line of country.  First she insists on her point, then when asked for proper scientific backing, she repeats herself and makes more vague claims, then after a while she claims persecution.  At no point has she provided a genuine scientific reply to the issues.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/04/second-cru-inquiry-reports/comment-page-8/#comment-171284

Again, I think this goes nowhere fast, and her CV and former standing in climate science make it hard to show her lack of credible scientific basis for her assertions to those who are predisposed to believe her.

A number of good people, Tobis, Stoat, Rabett, Tamino, SkepticalScience, and others have tried to find something other than hot air and popular attack, and come up with the same response.

As a layperson, I normally have to accept a certain amount of scientific reasoning, but in her case the evasions and attacks were plain to any straight thinker with experience in spotting a failure to answer substantive and reasonable, as well as courteous (in most cases) questions.



ccgwebmaster

  • Nilas ice
  • Posts: 1085
  • Civilisation collapse - what are you doing?
    • View Profile
    • CCG Website
  • Liked: 2
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #2 on: October 12, 2013, 05:26:25 PM »
While I agree with those who have experienced trying to make sense of Dr. Curry as largely a waste of time

30-60 seconds worth, unless I was too hasty in forming that conclusion on glancing at the linked blog?

werther

  • Grease ice
  • Posts: 747
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 31
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #3 on: October 12, 2013, 09:34:06 PM »
OK Idunno, I've enjoyed the commenting on the Curry/Wyatt paper. I did a critique on what this commenter contributed:

Posted by: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000035525134 | October 12, 2013 at 06:41

"We found that the stadium-wave signal propagates through four different stages of
climate regime evolution.


I sure haven’t read the paper, but I try to imagine what they could mean with a “stadium-wave” as anything physical in the atmosphere to be noticed.
See, I have spent some hard time working on the pattern of ridges/troughs  propagating through the mid-atmosphere last winter. These Rossby-waves are real. But WOE are the ‘stadia’? Something in time? How could they be identified? Like a regime in the atmosphere based on the AMO, the stochastic on and off called PDO or even ENSO? Do the stadia relate to long-range measurements, like on GISS-temp, or mean SLP or anything else?

IMHO there’s no clear, general oscillation to be picked out of natural variance. It is all stochastic chaos within a variance on geological timescales. The only clear trend is our relentless dump of fossil fuel based carbohydrates into the biosphere.

Each stage reflects a particular behavior or a particular set of sub-process interactions.


OK I’m here. It’s not a ‘stadium’, it’s a stage. Not a noticeable period in time showing similar trends, but a particular situation of the physical processes in time and space. Assuming the “stadium-wave signal” scientists ignore our carbon-dump, they fixate on certain combinations of stochastic natural  processes.
 
And at each stage, activity is heightened in a particular geographic region.

Right, now I’m picking up an image. So the natural processes add up their positive/negative feedbacks and hey, they’re being positive right here! Where? Maybe FI over Greenland? The preferred ridging through ’07-’12 leading to strong Fram ice loss and GIS melt?

We’ve no evidence of losses like the ones I mentioned in such a short period for over the last 1400 years. Paleo-climatologic studies haven’t come up with something alike for at least the whole Pleistocene. Oh yeah, the Heinrich – and Dansgaard-Oeschger events? Or the Lake Toba-eruption? Those were temporally sudden events, yes. But I can’t imagine them being triggered by culminating positive feedbacks from cyclic oscillations in the ocean/atmosphere. They are geological catastrophes at the end of clear morphological forcing or plate tectonics.

600 At all stages, seeds of regime reversal are embedded within the collection of sub-processes
regulating the Arctic freshwater balance, thereby subtly and incrementally imposing ‘curbs’ on
the prevailing trend of sea ice coverage, assuring an inevitable regime reversal years in the
future.


Yes, now we assume a whole set of “all” stages. And they propagate into ‘collections’ of ‘sub-processes’. Boy, I think I can hear Rubik laughing. But hear, something concrete is mentioned: the ‘Arctic freshwater balance’. Sure, ice formation is dependant on that balance. Within all subtlety and incrementality, what would be annoyingly interfering? Oh, it’s us… but we’re so small… all of us could easily be buried in the Grand Canyon…How on earth we could be responsible for derailing creation….

These negative feedbacks modify the Arctic freshwater balance through:
i)   sea ice related shifts in the Arctic Front and associated zones of precipitation and continental runoff;


Yeah,  it’s the sea ice itself, that has stochastic oscillations that make the Arctic Front shift. It’s all promoted within natural variance… yes, I see how precipitation is influenced. The Ob, the Yenisej, the Lena… they’re all dumping more fresh water now. OMG maybe the permafrost is melting… shrug… happened before. It’s the freshwater balance! And it is a negative feedback! Pretty soon, you’ll see the Siberian Arctic sector producing much more sea ice and cooling it!

ii)   ice-605 cover associated sea-level-pressure changes that reorganize winds and thereby direction of freshwater and sea ice export between the Arctic Basin and marginal seas;

Oh yeah… it is all balanced out. No worries about ‘incremental’ curbs on trends…it ‘ll pretty soon reverse!

iii)    modified influx of warm, saline water into the marginal seas, particularly in the Atlantic sector;

Sure. Maybe you read the Arthun UniBergen report on Atlantic heat. At least, here we ‘ve got something real. Make sure it’s incremental.

iv)   and Pacific atmospheric circulation anomalies negatively feeding back onto the Atlantic freshwater balance 609 through remote modification of precipitation regimes."

Remote? Like Lake Eyre in Australia filling up in ’12 after decades of drought? You’re flattering Dr. Rupert Sheldrake?

Look here, my knowledge of the physical processes in our biosphere is very limited. There are people much better qualified to make reliable points in this matter. But with what I’ve got, I get a strong sense that we’re being lured into a sort of limitless distraction with properties much like the famous Rubik Cube.
Keep ‘m busy as long as you can. By the time they get themselves together, we, the Very Important People, will have made nice profit and provided ourselves a nice technological shelter that we can sustain against a wasted Mother Nature.

Thanks for staying with me; I love some irony every now and then.

johnm33

  • Guest
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #4 on: October 13, 2013, 01:38:01 AM »
Werther, best read on the topic.

ggelsrinc

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 437
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #5 on: October 13, 2013, 01:41:18 AM »
Stadium cave is more like it. That happens with poor construction and too many people present. Maybe it's just a typo. <joke>

There is nothing wrong with demanding an explanation from someone publishing a conclusion. If it took 7 years, there has to be a story involved. Asking for an explanation to a conclusion, meaning what reasoning was involved and exactly what data was used to draw that conclusion is not asking too much. I find this paper lacking in detail.

idunno

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 194
  • wonders are many
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 7
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #6 on: October 13, 2013, 02:24:40 PM »
Hi all,

I agree that there are reasons to be dubious of Curry; and werther,  I cannot understand, let alone defend most of this paper; and if I could, my opinion would have limited value. I did try to read it, and it became both much more comprehensible and interesting from round about line 600, for the next hundred lines, as this relates more to Arctic Ice, and I already knew where the Kara Sea is, whereas I've just had to look up "schotastically" (sp?), as that's a word I've never even seen before.

Insofar as it posits the sea ice as a major component in NH climate patterns, it relates to the interests of us here. By "stadium wave", they mean a "Mexican wave", as first seen in the 1986? soccer World Cup in Mexico. It's a metaphor. Whether anybody's working on a 'vuvuzuela' paper based on the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, as so often, I dunno.

;)

werther

  • Grease ice
  • Posts: 747
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 31
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #7 on: October 13, 2013, 04:55:56 PM »
Hi Idunno,

I liked the suggestion of study on the "vuvuzela-wave". Wonder who'll pick that up?

ChrisReynolds

  • Nilas ice
  • Posts: 1764
    • View Profile
    • Dosbat
  • Liked: 20
  • Likes Given: 9
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #8 on: October 13, 2013, 07:13:21 PM »
Back in the early 2000s researchers like Polyakov were suggesting that as the 1990s ice decline was driven by ice export due to a positive phase of the AO, as the AO reverted to type a sea ice recovery was likely. It was also being asserted that the 1930s warming and 1990s warming, and ice loss on those periods was due to natural cycles (AMO being the main one), and that human influence on ice was questionable. This was quite a fashionable view with support in the literature - not wing nut territory.

This was being done on the basis of two cycles. Which turned out to be one cycle and an anthropogenic caused rise that continued making the cycles argument invalid.

Now we're told, on the basis of two cycles, one peaking in the 1930s and the other in the last few years that.....

I'm sure I don't need to go any further.   ;)

ggelsrinc

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 437
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #9 on: October 13, 2013, 11:08:26 PM »
The stadium wave paper posits rapid changes in ASI extent. Such a record would exist in ocean core samples from areas consistent to their claimed ASI extent fluctuations. Since the chronology is fairly recent, it's logical to just look for and analyze core samples taken in an area that is rapidly accumulating sediment, to confirm or refute the stadium wave paper. They were only talking about a 300 year record, which shouldn't be hard to find. It wouldn't surprise me if such a study hasn't already been done or the samples exist and weren't examined in that manner. With all the recent interest in climate change and resources from an ice free arctic, many ocean core samples have been recently taken. Someone using ocean core samples to estimate the end of the Little Ice Age may have such recent data.   

idunno

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 194
  • wonders are many
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 7
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #10 on: October 14, 2013, 10:26:36 AM »
Here an animated comparison between the 1930s ice retreat and the modern

http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.fr/2013/07/arctic-sea-ice-extent-1920-1939-vs-2012.html

idunno

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 194
  • wonders are many
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 7
  • Likes Given: 0

ggelsrinc

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 437
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #12 on: October 17, 2013, 05:36:02 AM »
Since this is the Arctic Sea Ice Forum, we should know the chronology in ocean sediments have evidence whether the area had sea ice or not. There are always areas in an ocean where there is a large rate of sediment accumulating, because of rivers or erosion as two primary reasons. To refute the stadium wave paper, we only have to prove sea ice extent doesn't fluctuate the way they claim. The chronology of fluctuations can be tested against benchmarks down to the year.

What is needed is someone with knowledge of a data base on ocean core sediment analysis in the Arctic areas mentioned by the authors of stadium wave paper. I'm only aware of a few people taking sediment cores in the Arctic areas, so I'm far from being an expert on the subject. I think it's time we put a capital A back on the word Arctic.

idunno

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 194
  • wonders are many
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 7
  • Likes Given: 0

ggelsrinc

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 437
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #14 on: October 18, 2013, 05:57:13 PM »
A stoat in the henhouse, Part 2...

http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2013/10/17/wyatt-and-curry-part-ii-not-waving-but-drowning/

I posted on WUWT, until they threw me off for saying something like: free speech is a good thing, but it isn't free speech if someone is paying you to say it and I mentioned potential liabilities involved for deceiving the public. I was there for awhile and tried to discuss the subjects without being trolled to death, even with many of my posts being rejected for simply using the word deny. During the time I was there, taking on the Philistines with a jawbone of an ass (everywhere to be found), the crap in that paper was developing more stink than it originally had. I'm sure I discussed the science with at least one person who wrote the paper as the propaganda was developing. The paper is a product of the same crap the Denialistas have been saying and is a product of think tank attempts to mislead and re-direct scientific attention to nonsense, that they can control. Can't you smell that smell?

The Arctic sea ice (and notice the capital A) is a big problem with people claiming global warming isn't happening. Scientists get focused on their research and it's very easy to make up a lie. Scientists, in general, are looking for the truth, but that doesn't mean every scientist is. I believe the Arctic sea ice part of their stadium wave paper claptrap was an attempt to deceive the public saying it will all be well and it's just a phase. It's all part of a natural cycle, because we all know CO2 can't hurt the Earth, right? When multiplied by the factor of how much easier it is to make up a lie than prove the truth, the battlefield is presently in their control.

It's the nature of human beings to focus on the major crisis immediately facing them and then go on to the next crisis in their lives. If people have time after dealing with their present crisis, they will look around wisely to deal with any threat to their wellbeing, because they want their moment of peace on Earth to continue. The concept that people are the problem has to be removed from the equation of global warming/climate change and the concept that people are the solution entered in. There are solutions and it isn't hopeless. There are alternative ways to produce energy, like Thorium MSRs. The present designs of our commercial nuclear reactors developed from an attempt of the United States and the USSR governments to put off the costs of producing the materials needed to make fusion/hydrogen bombs. They weren't interested in producing electricity, but wanted materials to make weapons during the Cold War. The discoveries of science during WWII lead to a whole industry behaving in ways which is against logic; I call it having a war mentality. Why should we continue to suffer such stains of the past and not live in peace with each other in the present? We have a huge problem with our pollution today, so let's solve it and say: next!




idunno

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 194
  • wonders are many
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 7
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #15 on: October 19, 2013, 12:03:49 AM »
Vicious attack were-bunny joins in stoat blood-fest!

'What, bunnies ask, do zombies wanting to eat your brains have to do with the Stadium Wave?'

http://rabett.blogspot.fr/

Post dated Oct 18.

ggelsrinc

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 437
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #16 on: October 19, 2013, 03:35:09 AM »
Vicious attack were-bunny joins in stoat blood-fest!

'What, bunnies ask, do zombies wanting to eat your brains have to do with the Stadium Wave?'

http://rabett.blogspot.fr/

Post dated Oct 18.

I posted a long discussion to your post, but it ended up in cyberspace, because I have a satellite link to the internet and forgot to save it. To be brief, stadium wave paper is a hoax and not science. It's designed to waste time for real scientists and paid for by the same people funding the authors of WUWT. That crap was a work in the making. I know so because I was there, during the making.

I realize being brief doesn't paint the whole picture and I don't claim what I said is absolute fact. Only cyberspace knows why I came to that analysis, so let cyberspace have it, because all of it belongs in a sewer.

I do know the evidence to confirm or deny their findings is in sedimentary ocean cores and the fossil fuel industry has more samples and information than I do. Those samples can be dated to the year, because it starts in the present when samples were taken and can be calibrated using information about atomic bomb tests in the past, like ice core analysis, down to the year, but who analyzes the recent past to refute nonsense. Sediment cores are taken and analyzed for a purpose and it isn't to refute dumb sh!t.

My apologies Neven for going too far explaining how I feel about what I consider utter nonsense. This is a toned down version of what cyberspace heard.

Susan Anderson

  • Grease ice
  • Posts: 527
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 40
  • Likes Given: 279
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #17 on: October 24, 2013, 03:41:57 AM »
so let cyberspace have it, because all of it belongs in a sewer.

indeed.  That was interesting ...

ggelsrinc

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 437
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Wyatt (and Curry's) stadium wave paper
« Reply #18 on: October 24, 2013, 07:04:16 AM »
so let cyberspace have it, because all of it belongs in a sewer.

indeed.  That was interesting ...

... and what is your opinion on the stadium wave paper? I believe I have a love for mumbo-jumbo as much as the next person, but it's only a belief and not something I consider a scientific fact. I don't even consider being around the creation of this mumbo-jumbo a scientific fact. Can it be scientifically proven I was there, just because I say so and even if the data of my presence on WUWT still exists, how is that proof of anything?

I prefer using my creativity to create my own mumbo-jumbo hoping that the authors of the stadium wave paper will look into their souls and fess up, but even if they did that, it isn't a scientific proof. The person holding the hand of cards full of mumbo-jumbo can bid confidently, make that bid and win, with very little skill, or attention being involved.

I think it's logical to conclude there are interests in our world wanting to maintain BAU, but I haven't examined their hearts to know that with certainty. Anything is possible, but everything isn't probable without infinite time. It only takes one moment of contact with mumbo-jumbo to teach us that!

I think the "logic" behind the mumbo-jumbo of the stadium wave paper developed like this. Let's say I wanted to dismiss global warming, so AMO is the Denialista favorite. They hate ENSO and other climate patterns, but love AMO and AMOC as much as they love MWP and LIA. They argue that our scientific evidence is wrong and adding greenhouse gases can't increase global temperatures. The increase in global temperatures is only a product of natural variability, they argue. Since ASI is also a problem for them, claiming the world isn't warming, they add it to their mumbo-jumbo and try to present cherry picked data, filtered to support their position. It's all a think tank, BAU, fossil fuel industry interest design and someone who didn't keep their distance from that mumbo-jumbo would see it in a heart beat.

I have to give them credit for their design. Peer review is a concept beating those TARDs (TARD is similar to the old word retard, but actually means TARD = Total Asswholes Republican Dumb) on their heads for years, so they were creative enough to write a scientific paper, which by it's nature requires peer review. stadium wave paper is in my opinion a true work of art designed to keep their monkeys in their cages, stopping them from evolving and it rests on a future with it's uncertainties. It's the perfect mumbo-jumbo designed for BAU.

That's my mumbo-jumbo on the subject or you can be generous and call it my opinion. It's science related, but not science.