http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

They’re also qualifying their statement with suggestions that the ice is so thin that significant melting could still occur. I doubt their objectivity in the way they suggest much melting could still happen since they think there is such a long melt period yet to go. With roughly six weeks to go to peak melt, I don’t see this as a very long time to go to reach peak melt, especially since we’re already 4½ months into the melt season and the melt rate seems to slow throughout August.

But then, I at least implied I was trying to stay out of that game.

My original point was that any hope of an average to large cycle is now lost. I was not deriding any particular model, rather the current obsession with sun spots. Clearly I am not above the tendency but that should reinforce the issue.

The ‘plateau’ shape is a little too constricting. Establishing SDs from the maximum clearly won’t work for regime changes like 23 to 24.

I don’t get the 20-21 example, the min was over 10 leading into a max of 160. The coming max will be more like 50.

Remember 23’s minimum, the 13 month smoothed minimum came in May and the following Sept. the longest spotless period.

So we could call those 4 or 5 months the absolute trough and perhaps the minimum (9503 – 9709) 18 months in length. I don’t have numeric criteria to delimiting a minimum to recommend, but looking at the daily data for ‘96 we can see the sun was at its local ebb in radio flux, sun spots, planetary indicies and flaring during the trough, with significant terminus in spotting at either end of the 18 month period.

Well this time around the decline seems to have been well begun by 3/07 and is yet to bottom. So the minimum, in this non-scientific, woolly thinking sort of way, should extend through all of 2009, i.e., end in being twice as long.

The current low-level is adequate for minimum as was the activity of a year ago. So lets just say the duration of solar activity of sufficient depression for official minimum.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/mean:12/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/trend
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/nsidc-seaice-s/mean:12/plot/nsidc-seaice-s/trend

Note the scales are not the same!

Full monthly data (dominated by annual signal), plus annual rolling mean:

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/mean:12/plot/nsidc-seaice-n
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/nsidc-seaice-s/mean:12/plot/nsidc-seaice-s

Quite often, laboratory calculations (such as provided earlier by another blogger) don’t quite “cut it.”

My take on the above is that if this indeed is the case, who’s to say it doesn’t also impact the undersides of surrounding ice by causing cracks and disintegration?

Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com

I agree that the calcs are just that, calcs. Also we may have to take into account things such as these numbers in the link provided in my post are based on a land volcano. Under deep sea water, we would have to take into account things such as the surrounding water temperature (which could provide significant more cooling than atmosphere), salinity of the water (insulator/conductor?), pressure from the depth (pressure creating heat) etc etc. It would be difficult for us to say for sure if this eruption has any effect.

We also have to remember that this eruption occured in 2001 (within a 300 earthquake swarm). I doubt heated water would have lasted that long unless it was continually venting, for which there is no evidence for from the expeditions. Also, from what I can find, the explosion was equal to Vesuvius, but there is no real information about lava flows or superheated ash (to provide heat). Was this equal to Vesuvius also?

I would have to say McGrats, that cracking and disintegration could be caused by the shockwave of the initial eruption. a blast that large in water could send out a hefty pulse? Just speculating.

This ones not black or white, but a clear shade of grey me thinks! I’m still not to convinced at present, IMO.

Point taken. I’m afraid I get a bit hot under the collar about this issue probably taking it FAR to seriously LOL…. . The Australian Goverment is spending 5 billion dollars on a “warming” world when in fact it appears to be cooling would you blame me??? BTW the statements in my previous posts re qualifications etc are all true.

I take the following graphic to be all the butterflies we have,

http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly.gif

Unfortunately it doesn’t go back very far. The first sunspecks (Anthony’s internet-notable term) of 24, not-quite-spots exhibiting magnetic reversal, of cycle 24 date to 7/06 and first official spot to 1/08.

Against the graphic the new cycle begins to look unusual, and contra Leif’s assertion this minimum is no less active (by the measure of spotting), flaring is already unusual by its paucity (begun 2/07), which means the briefly elevated UV associated with them is missing.

While Leif and Janssens have recently on another thread cautioned against predicting a max on the preceding min, their arguments again appear to rely on spotting comparisons between cycles. Their hope is that March 08 still proves the 13 month minimum.

However, 10 cm radio flux continues to decline, last month establishing a new smoothed minimum following 9/07’s prior low. Spotting is insufficient to maintain the March 13 month minimum.

The Heliophysicists are plainly overplaying the sun spot counts as a proxy for solar activity. Looking at the ongoing graphs of data,

http://www.dxlc.com/solar/

one sees that radio flux, plantetary indicies, and sun spot count are not equivalent, mutually representative effects of the same underlying cause.

The hope of a cycle 24 minimum prior to 12/08 is long gone, and the 3/08 prediction was dead on arrival the day it was issued in 4/07. The length of the minimum is strongly correlated with the strength of the sun spot maximum and therefore 24 will be more like cycles 5 and 6 than any cycle since.

Mene, mene tekel upharsin.