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Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry on Unprecedented (?) Arctic warming: ‘Simplistic inferences about global warming in the Arctic seem unjustified’

Curry Excerpt: Clearly, there is substantial spatial variability of climate variability in the Arctic, with Opel et al. noting a see-saw between the Eurasian vs North American Arctic and seasonal variations (annual vs summer).  Especially interesting is the absence of MWP and LIA in some of these high latitude data sets.

In any event, extrapolating from one location in the Arctic to inferring Arctic-wide change is clearly not supported.  It further seems that single locations don’t have a very large radius of influence, viz the differences between Baffin and Ellesmere.

The natural internal variability in the Arctic seems to be an exceedingly complex dance between atmospheric circulations, sea ice, ocean circulations and ice sheet dynamics, on a range of timescales.  We have some hints about how all this interacts, but much is unknown.  In light of this, simplistic inferences about global warming in the Arctic seem unjustified.

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