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Last week the media, led by the Washington Post, screamed and hollered the North Pole was in meltdown as temperatures there rose some “5 degrees above normal”. In Europe some media outlets did not even bother converting the 50° Fahrenheit figure to (the less impressive sounding) 32°C.

It is true that the temperature right at the North Pole was “estimated” by “weather forecast models” to have supposedly reached the melting point – for a period of a few hours. But what the news media neglected to tell readers is that the North Pole region itself is actually a vast area – and one that is extremely poorly measured – as even the Washington Post admits. The Arctic region as a whole in fact did not warm up anywhere near 32°K (50°F) last week.

Only a fraction of the Arctic saw a large warm spike

The reality is that weather charts showed only a minority fraction of the Arctic saw temperatures near the melting point, while the vast remainder remained stuck at its usual 25 – 40°C below zero range.

According to the Danish Meteorological Institute here, which has been systematically tracking Arctic temperatures north of 80° latitude since 1958, here’s what the 2015 “North Pole meltdown” really looked like (far right) once the whole Arctic region got factored in:

Chart: DMI.

The above DMI figure shows that the temperature in the Arctic above 80°N was estimated to have risen only some 13°K during the event, and not 30°K as the WAPO tried having its readers think. Note how also in early March 2015 the Arctic saw a similar rise.

Just a few hours after the local region near the North Pole saw a burst of warm southern air, almost immediately temperatures there dropped back to -30°C.

Has a 13°K spike happened before?

Is a 13°K temperature spike in the high Arctic something weird and totally unusual that we need to worry about? Going back and looking at the DMI charts over the past 58 years, we find that such temperature spikes in the Arctic for the period early November to late March are nothing new.

For example a look at the year 1959, the chart below shows that a similar temperature spike occurred not just once, but twice! (marked yellow).



Chart: DMI.

And examining all the years since 1958 we see that a temperature spike of some 12°K or more in a matter of a few days (during the November to March deep winter period) occurred more than 70 times! And over 100 times for spikes of 10°K and more.

Clearly we see fluctuations of 10°K (i.e. similar to what just happened) in a matter of days are actually the norm for the North Pole region.

Also taking a look at the wild fluctuations seen in 1964, 1984, or 1990 – back when CO2 was at levels near or below the “safe” 350 ppm – we see they were far more extreme.

What does this tell us about the reporting by the Washington Post, and all the other media outlets who allowed themselves to be duped and irresponsibly played along? It shows that many mainstream journalists are agenda-driven, not interested in digging, and that their sole aim in reporting climate science is to fabricate junk-science-based scare stories that have no journalistic merit.

They’ve degraded themselves to acting as the mouthpieces for a dishonest agenda.

Also read more here.