Paper Does Not Show 20th Century Arctic Warmth Exceeded Current Warmth

[donsutherland1]

A just-published paper (http://www.clim-past.net/9/2379/2013/cp-9-2379-2013.pdf) focused on temperatures in the east Arctic region during the AD 900-AD 1998 period. The paper found that there were two temperature maximums early in the 20^th century (1921/22 and 1937/38).

 

The paper did not seek to address ongoing climate change in the Arctic nor make any arguments that AGW has not led to warmth that has surpassed the earlier temperature maximums.

 

Nevertheless, some are spinning the paper as evidence that the Arctic today is not as warm as it was early last century.

 

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/19/new-paper-arctic-temperatures-peaked-before-1950-declining-since/

 

Virtually all of the warmest years in the Arctic region occurred beginning in 2005. The relevant column is 64N-90N:

 

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/ZonAnn.Ts+dSST.txt

 

1995 beat the warmth of early in the 20^th century for the Arctic as a whole, but that does not mean that all parts of the Arctic set records that year. With the warmth beginning in 2005 far exceeding the 20^th century maximum readings, it is probably unlikely that the region studied in the paper did not experience warmth that exceeded the 20^th century figures.

 

Indeed, the NCEP reanalysis data show that the 2011 temperatures surpassed those of the 1938 peak (which exceeded the 1922 one) in the studied region:

 

[donsutherland1]

With respect to stations, from the paper:

 

The longest continuous time series of surface air temperature (SAT) in the Eurasian Arctic (Vardø, Northern Norway) dates back to 1840. In the Russian subarctic the SAT time series of Arkhangelsk started in 1814 (with an interruption of two years in 1832/1833)...

 

For station time series a striking similarity and the highest correlation to our AN 18O record was found for Vardø in Northern Norway (1840–1998, Figs. 1 and 5). Annual mean SAT values (5 yrm) are strongly correlated with r5yrm = 0.55 (Table 1). The correlation to the Arkhangelsk (northeastern Russia, Fig. 1) annual mean SAT record (1814–1998) is only slightly lower (r5yrm = 0.51, Table 1, Fig. 5).

 

(pp.2379 and 2382 of the paper).