Written by fatih al-farahat in


The Met's Dr. Richard Betts gets it completely wrong wrt declining sea ice in the Arctic -- retraction and correct data are required now!!!

The U.K. Met's Dr. Richard Betts gets it completely and totally wrong!!!  

(And, he is the director of the Met's climate impacts office, no less!!!  How on Earth did that happen???)


Look at his disastrously inaccurate assessment of the falling levels of Arctic sea ice, below.


Does he really believe that we all live in a two-dimensional world, or is it just his brain that operates that way?


In any case, he should immediately issue a retraction and explain that extent is not volume and that Arctic sea iced volume has decreased in such an extreme manner that it has gobsmacked most all climate scientists.

There is virtually (after the 2009) no multi-year ice left!  What is left is flowing out into the North Atlantic as fast as it can.  See graphic below that doesn't even include the dramatic loss of multi-year (read "thick") ice that occurred in 2009:





Just look at Betts' quote, sure to be picked up by the denialosphere:

"One classic example is the dramatic decline in Arctic sea ice in 2007, which was then partly reversed in 2008 and 2009. Although there is still definitely a declining trend in Arctic sea ice (2009 and 2008 were still the second and third lowest sea ice extents, after 2007) there was a lot of hype surrounding the 2007 minimum even though that was partly just natural variability in the Arctic climate." [emphasis mine!]


Clearly, Betts should issue a retraction and explanation and have it published as soon as possible in the Dot Earth blog of The New York Times (http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/a-call-to-rein-in-climate-hype-cold-or-hot/).