Polyakov has heaps of interesting stuff on his website.
http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/people/igor
I did a little bit of climate sciencist pestering last year after reading some of his work and asked him about arctic ice variability in an email. He replied saying his estimate for recent trends (since late 1970′s) is 50% natural variability and 50% climate change but a greater role for climate change in the past decade. Not sure if this chimes with the outlook of this multi-author paper.
Separately. I’ve got a question about the paper itself. It seems to have a multitude of ‘names’ in arctic climate science. As if this is the consensus writ large. I’d noticed other similar multi-author papers and reviews on other subjects which seem to be attempts at bringing the big names in a particular field to give a consensus view. Other examples are
Model forcing (this one may just be a technical exercise)
http://www.geosci-model-dev.net/4/33/2011/gmd-4-33-2011.html
Solar/climate (again nominally rivals in the field coming together)
http://scostep.apps01.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Gray_etal_2009RG000282.pdf
I’m not trying to get conspiratorial here but is this normal? I know science is collaborative but it’s also largely adverserial as well. I don’t know that such large groups of rivals get together for love ins like this in other science disiplines. Do you have any thoughts on this issue?