On Sep 10, 8:32 am, William M Connolley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Sep 2007, Fergus wrote:
> > Things have moved fast since then, in terms of the rate of summer
> > decline. Has the process gone far enough yet for us to say,
> > definitively, that this must be an effect of AGW? Is there a numerical/
> > statistical analysis which places recent losses beyond the possible
> > bounds of natural variability + error?
>
> Quite a few people seem to be pushing "the ice has declined faster than the
> models predict" line. So that would appear to rule out anthropogenic factors
> as
> the cause :-)
>
> More seriously, I don't think "attribution" of ice decline is done in the way
> that T changes are done. It seems to be more of the "look at this and look at
> what we predicted" kind of thing.
I suppose you are referring to the paper which was published in the
GRL just last
Saturday and was given some recent press coverage. Here's the
citation:
Overland, J. E., and M. Wang (2007), Future regional Arctic sea ice
declines,
Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L17705, doi:10.1029/2007GL030808.
Given that this year's sea-ice extent (and also area) is exhibiting a
very strong
decline, it would be easy to conclude that the models appear to be
understating
the problem. Perhaps there is some other mechanism involved with this
year's
decline which may not be included in the various models. If this
year's minimum
is just due to natural variability, we would see a return of more sea-
ice next
year, right? No worries, everything's OK, just keep moving!!
E. S.
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