Comments by "Old Scientist" (@OldScientist) on "Svalbard: How an Arctic archipelago is moving towards clean energy | BBC Click" video.

  1. The Arctic is not warming faster than the rate of anything. Going back to the source data for Svalbard in the high Arctic, the Norwegian Meteorological Office (Seklima), gets to the bottom of this. I suggest everyone check out their data. The Ny-ålesund site data for maximum annual temperatures shows no trend since records began in 1969. It has not got hotter. However, the minimum annual temperatures has increased, so the winters have become milder (but still extremely cold). The increase in the annual minimum temperature occurred over 20 years, but this trend stopped around 2006. To find a longer term view on Svalbard you need to look up other weather stations, for example Longyearbyen + Svalbard Lufthavn. Looking at say 1950 to the present shows no trend in the maximum temperatures. The minima dropped quite considerably from the later 50s. The 60s and 70s had an intensely cold trend of minima. It then warmed in the 80s/90s and from 2005 levelled off. So overall the swings in temperature on Svalbard during the year have become less extreme. Very roughly, it hasn't got hotter, but the winters, which got very much colder, became less cold, now they have stopped getting less cold since about 2005. Svalbard's climate became milder, less extreme than compared to the 60s and 70s, but not hotter. That process of amelioration has stopped. These changes are uncorrelated to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.
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