In connection with James Hansen’s explanation of why his GISS temperature record diverges from that of HadCRUT, I decided to check on the legitimacy of what GISS was doing. Dr. Hansen’s article is
here at RealClimate. This is the specific chart of interest:
So it seems that the North American side of the Arctic changed little, or even got cooler between 98 and 05, the Russian side warmed considerably. Why is that? I think that this ice cover map gives us the answer. As is immediately apparent, the coastal ice cleared out far earlier in 2005 in northern Russia than it did in 1998. This is even though the rest of the globe was slightly warmer in 1998 than in 2005. When dealing with coastal stations, removing the ice and exposing the water is like taking the hatch off a heating source for the coastal thermometers.
we need to ask if the GISS extrapolations of land based stations, particularly coastal stations, to the poles is appropriate.
The answer would seem to be that it is not
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