Movie time sort of

There's a movie site that decided that it would be a good idea to interview non-movie people about their tastes in movies.  I kind of liked the idea, since I'm often disagreeing with movie industry folks about movies.  So when I was invited to answer some movie questions, I did so.  You can see the result at
Robert Grumbine – Movies and the Masses.

I'm kind of impressed at the author's skill there -- finding what must be about the only two scientist characters from movies that I look better than.  (My wife would say that the list is much longer, and maybe she's right.  Just in case, I'm still not taking her in to get her eyes checked.)

But the 'masses' bit, and another part of the article bring up an interesting point about science and scientists, or at least about how I think about it, and that is the role of 'smartness'.

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Climate in many languages

Science is so much an international activity, I tend not to think about where exactly people are from. For that matter, many are 'from' parts of the world that they're not working in. Prompted by a recent email, I've added the language that blogs on my blogroll are in, so that you're not surprised to see Swedish when you go to Emretsson.net, for instance. In that vein, please let me know what language Stig's Klimablogg is in.

While I'm thinking about it, let me also invite your suggestions as to good science, particularly climate-connected, blogs outside of English. Please mention the language and what makes it good.

Lake Erie Ice

My friends at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab sent me word of their nice video of ice on Lake Erie. There was an unusually long cloud-free (or at least little cloud) period, so you can actually see some ice and its motion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwW56v1Jt0U for the video.

Something for you to look at while I'm off-net for a few days.

When I'm back on line, I'll be answering some of the questions that are still outstanding. New questions and comments can still come in, just be aware that the moderation delay will be longer than usual. questions here. I'll also be looking in to adding a widget that will let you see the most recent comments. Since the blog is conversational, if a slow conversation, I do take them as an important part of what goes on here. (Or you can subscribe to the comment feed, icon over on the right hand column.)

WUWT trumpets result supporting climate modelling

The recent article at WUWT
NSIDC Reports That Antarctica is Cooling and Sea Ice is Increasing trumpets the observation that Antarctic sea ice is increasing.  This is expected from climate modeling.  Nice to see someone else is picking up on this interesting confirmation of our scientific expectation.

The prediction is old.  In 1992 Manabe and coworkers, in running a changing CO2 experiment, noticed that the Antarctic sea ice cover increased with increasing CO2.  They traced this to increased fresh water on the Antarctic ocean, which derived from increased precipitation -- snow.  They also observed in their model that the Arctic ocean sea ice experienced a marked decline in thickness, and major loss of extent in the summer, but not so large a decrease in the winter.  At the time they wrote, it was still being debated whether there were trends in the Arctic or Antarctic sea ice covers.

The trend in Antarctic ice cover managed to be statistically significant by about 1997, as documented in

D. Cavalieri, P. Gloersen, C. L. Parkinson, J. C. Comiso, H. J. Zwally,
"Observed Hemispheric Asymmetry in Global Sea ice Changes", Science,
278, pp 1104-1106, 1997.  And it was indeed the expected (by Manabe and coworkers) increase.  As well as the expected decrease in the Arctic.

That left the question of the mechanism.  Did Manabe and coworkers identify the correct reason for the sea ice expansion?  Increased snowfall on Antarctic sea ice was documented in 2006 --

Markus, T., and Cavalieri, D. J., "Interannual and regional variability
of Southern Ocean snow on sea ice", Annals of Glaciology, 44, pp 53-57, 2006. (sorry, paywall here).

Since I'm a modeller, I focus on the modelling aspect.  Skeptical science (recently added to blogroll) has a different take about Antarctic sea ice, looking more at atmospheric and ocean temperatures
Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice, with more to come.

How can annual average temperatures be so precise?

The comments on what should be reproducible raise the subject's question -- since a given thermometer reading is only within, say, 0.8 degrees, how can we claim to know the annual average temperature to 0.01 degrees for the globe?

One thing to remember is that the 0.8 is not the size of the error on every single observation.  Some will be extremely close to correct, and some will be 0.4 off -- large, but not the 0.8.  The 0.8 error is the range that we expect to see 95% of the observations be better than.  Still, with errors that large, how can we get a global average that's within 0.01?

I hit on an experimental way to demonstrate this, without requiring you all to set up thousands of meteorological stations around the world and then collect observations for a year.  Namely, get yourself 8 coins.  If you prefer making computers do things, a spread sheet will work as well, or you can write the program from scratch.

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