Guest post by Steven Goddard
In spite of the excess global sea ice area and the freezing Catlin crew, AGW proponents have recently ramped up the rhetoric about “melting ice caps.” This has been based on a couple of points.
1. In the southern hemisphere, cracks appeared in a 200 metre thick ice shelf, as seen below.
http://www.ogleearth.com/wissm.jpg
The ice cracked, not melted – but that minor detail didn’t stop nearly every major news outlet in the world from hinting at the fiery and imminent end to the planet.
2. At the other pole, NSIDC released an interesting statistic that Arctic ice “older than two years” reached a record low this winter.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20090406_Figure5.png
So what happened to the three year old ice in 2009? The answer is simple. During the summer of 2007, almost all of the 1st year ice melted. Because of this, there was very little 2nd year ice in 2008, and 3rd year ice in 2009. The amount of second year ice in 2008 had to be less than or equal to the amount of first year ice at the end of the 2007 summer. Even if we had entered an ice age in 2008, there would not be much third year ice in 2009.
However, note in the NSIDC graph above that the amount of 2nd year ice (orange) approximately tripled in 2009 relative to 2008, from about 3% to 10%. The implication being that (barring a radical change in Arctic conditions) the amount of 3rd year ice will likely expand significantly in extent in 2010. Perhaps even triple in extent. Simply because the “terrible two” year old ice will be one year older. The red-brown portion of the graph should increase in height next year, as the 2nd year ice becomes more than 2 years old. The top of the orange should also move up significantly, as the red-brown region below it pushes it up.
No wonder people are pushing so hard for “climate legislation” in 2009. Graphs like the one below don’t look very scary, with global sea ice area 683,000 km2 above normal, and Catlin reporting wicked cold – day after day.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.anomaly.global.png
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If you download the map of the Wilkins Ice shelf and look at it yourself it’a tiny sliver out on the Antarctic peninsula which calves ice all the time. It’s not from the main continent. Cherry picked for a reason-AGW alarmism.
Also fi you ask Svend Hendriksen nicely, he can send you a nice picture that shows an equally large or larger piece of the Wilkins ice shelf that broke up about 50 years ago, and is regrowing now. It is clearly visible since it is surrounded by a cliff off the last 50year’s precipitation growth of the main shelf.
The wilkins Ice shelf is about -70 S and sticks out into the southern ocean which comes surging through there twise a day to buckle that ice.
George
Steven,
Thanks for the article.
The time frame for the Obama Administration to push for CO2 mitigation legislation indeed is closing.
Four factors play a role:
1. A growing number of people refute the concept of Global Warming.
2. Political opposition is growing, especially since the GOP and twelve democrats stated that future cap&trade was not aloud to increase the costs of energy.
3. Industry is involved in Lawsuits against EPA plans.
4. The current cooling trend that has brought us harsh winters.
Also see: http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/04/lines-will-soon-cross-if-he-keeps.html
On a political level it will be a hot summer but not at the Arctic.
Besides that it will be September before we know it.
It’s both amusing and grim the extent to which the alarmists are now reaching for their rhetoric. It is becoming increasingly clear, though, what the answer is to a question I’ve been tormenting myself with for years. No longer is the alarmist campaign the honest result of genuine belief; it is turning out to be an increasingly corrupt endeavour. [snip – leave the brimstone out please] They are certainly damaging the edifice of science, and they are certainly damaging all of us personally, but the poorest of this earth the most. When are the suits for damages to commence, and how can the most egregious be assessed criminal penalties? This is a wrong which must be righted.
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Today the operations chief of the Catlin Survey said: “The overall focus is the science, so reaching the Pole is largely irrelevant to this expedition . . . . . . Of course reaching the Pole would be nice. After all the public perception is generally that all Arctic journeys should end there. But for us, it’s all about the science and gathering at the expense of everything else.”
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/headline.aspx?postId=160
Riiiggghhht. All about the ‘science’.
Baloney. It’s ALL about public perception. What kind of fools do they take us for?
I mean helllooooowww! What was with the faked biometrics masquerading as science?
It’s ALL about public perception and they know they’re running out of time as information such as Steven Godddard’s post comes to light.
So where is the Catlin Expedition route on this map? Did they avoid the second year ice? Or did their shPRite radar thingie break down just before they got atop it?
Here’s a good link to the “Ice Bridge”. You can see just how big but small when compared to all of Antartica. It didn’t melt it broke off due to ocean movements. Still they conclude that climate change is causing the shelf to calve into the sea. My question for you is then why is the south pole ice sheets expanded yet the authors keep saying the opposite even from their own data? That’s right politics not science. Someone is editing the author’s papers and adding these statements.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=37806&src=nha
Steve
Thanks for the informative article. If you have any data, I would appreciate a comment on the potential relationship between local sea level (around Antarctica) and cracks such as the one now in the Wilkins Ice Shelf.
It seems to me that either rising or falling local sea level (caused perhaps by local winds) would tend to cause cracks between the grounded ice and the floating ice, as one chunk was lifted or lowered relative to the other.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/06/sea-level-graphs-from-uc-and-some-perspectives/
I would guess that a foot or two of MSL rise would be enough force to cause great stress on very thick Ice sheets.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but according to the U. of Colorado Sea Level Change site, sea level near the Wilkins Ice Shelf has dropped (evidence of global cooling)over the past year or so.
Would not all that water disappearing from underneath all that heavy ice be just as likely a cause of the cracking ice bridge as anything else?
Here’s another good paper on these ice sheets or shelves.
http://nsidc.org/sotc/iceshelves.html
I agree Jim. A lowering MSL around the ice would cause tension in the Ice sheet and cause more cracks to appear. Someone with more experience than I chime in here. Ice like concrete doesn’t behave well in tension but is very strong in compression as I remember from my Strength of Materials. Correct my thinking?
I’m getting too far away from the title of this topic. Back to ice age (sorry couldn’t resist). Next year most of the ice will be older than two year ice unless of course the Arctic sees another event that breaks up and subsequently allows for flushing of the pieces to lower latitudes to melt.
My nomination for quote of the week from Kim:
“No longer is the alarmist campaign the honest result of genuine belief; it is turning out to be an increasingly corrupt endeavour.”
[snip – pointless rant]
Will the Catlin expedition become the ultimate Alarmist own goal?
Anthony would love this…I think. A little OT, well not really. It speaks to our limited, in time, continuous, spatial coverage of sea ice measurements.
I saw this plot posted somewhere else:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadisst/charts/sea_ice_extent.png
and it made me a little peeved.
We started measuring SST and sea ice extent by IR satellite and microwave sensor, respectively, in 1979 (I think). Not sure how sea ice was effectively measured before then, if at all (the key word being effectively).
In that plot above, there is a huge step change in the data for sea ice extent for every month when there is usually some open water in the Arctic. Any thoughts as to why? Was sea ice extent successfully measured in the 50s and 60s, but only when the Arctic was fairly solidly ice?
Upon that step change, I immediately thought it looked remarkably similar to a lot of the station data posted by Anthony, especially those from a station that was moved. So I guess the question would be, is there any way at all that these guys are comparing apples to apples and the sudden changes in 1979 are real? Any other geophysical data corroborate that?
In answer to the above question, please do not bother with any time series that is populated by data from exceedingly different platforms (such as by proxy, in situ instrumentation and satellite). More than one of our long-term geophysical data time series undergoes a step-change at 1979 for some reason…
Dear Moderator re kim at 17:31:49. I’m sorry to have put you to the work of snipping. I used to say that the only editor I would accept was Steve McIntyre, but I’m very pleased with the moderating at this site.
I regret my reference to hot nether regions. I am certain that the verdict of history will be unpleasant for those most guilty of illicitly arguing the failing paradigm of CO2=AGW. I just wish the jury would hurry up and bring in the verdict. While they are pondering the evidence, the criminal is still running amok.
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Thanks, Moderator-person. You are good at what you do.
Thank you moderator for your even-handedness (re Kim).
P. Folkens, 18:15:26.
Thanks very much. I’ve worried over this question a lot. I still believe that Gore and Hansen started with the best of intentions, but they’ve not paid enough attention to the road signs along the way and are now leading us to ‘hot nether regions’.
Last year I howled when Gore announced a $300,000,000 alarmist ad campaign, financed by ‘anonymous and internet donors’. I’m perfectly aware of the desire for anonymity among many of the most eleemosynary among us, but something stinks about that one. You would think that if his donors were motivated by saving the earth they would like to advertise their virtue. Instead, I suspect they wish to conceal their venality. So it isn’t just corrupt scientists eager for the generous research bucks and unending grants. It’s also thieves, attempting to steal our money and our living by appealing to energy use guilt, the precious conceit of a Western elite.
On topic: It seems obvious that the summer after the smallest minimum Arctic Sea Ice extent would have the thinnest ice and least ice volume. Last year at this time, betting that the winds of 2007 would not be replicated and betting that Arctic Sea Ice Extent does somewhat serve as a proxy of global cooling, I predicted that there would be less melt in the summer of 2008 than the year before. What I find interesting is that the Arctic continued to melt until 2007, while ocean and atmospheric temperatures peaked around 2005. But then, the lag can be explained by the fact that there is net energy intake in the tropics and export at the poles. It apparently takes a couple of years for the earth to pump that heat north and south and back out.
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My question for you is then why is the south pole ice sheets expanded yet the authors keep saying the opposite even from their own data?
There is no reason why Antarctic icesheets cannot gain ice mass while at the same time experience retreat at their terminus, such as the break up of the Wilkins icesheet.
Gaining ice mass reflects a cooler current/recent climate, while melting at the terminus is more reflective of overall climate over a longer period and ocean currents. In the case of the Antarctic Peninsula icesheets, probably since the Holocene optimum, 8,000 or so years ago.
Of interest, is this paper from the wildly pro-AGW British Antarctica Survey, which concludes the largest Antarctic Peninsula icesheet didn’t exist at the Holocene Optimum (called LGM in the paper) and therefore the entire icesheet has grown in the last 8,000 years.
Also note the weasily wording in the last paragraph to hide this embarassing (for the AGW mob) fact.
http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/des/antarctica_4.html
BTW, there are quite a number of papers which show more or less the same thing for the Antarctic Peninsula icesheets.
kim:
Every time I hear about MASSIVE fundraising efforts “through the Internet”, I know someone’s cheating. There is no way to track that money, and I suspect much of the, er, current “leader”‘s funding came from outside interests as well. Who benefits from having the least desirable individuals in charge of the US? Who benefits from decimating the US economy? Who benefits from pushing the AGW fiction and enforcing “cap and trade” or whatever ridiculous schemes they come up with?
It’s always been about following the money, but making the flow invisible covers up a lot of tracks. Nobody needs to fight a war anymore… just destroy your enemy’s economy, then walk in and buy them.
Would not all that water disappearing from underneath all that heavy ice be just as likely a cause of the cracking ice bridge as anything else?
No. The ice floats on the water and any stresses from lower average sea level would be miniscule.
Ice sheets break up near their terminus irrespective of whether the climate is warming or cooling.
There is a data gap between recent observations which only go back a few decades at most, and the geological proxies which have a resolution of a couple of centuries at best.
So don’t really know if the current ice sheet break up is any way unusual for the period since the LIA. Although as I pointed out above we do know these icesheets have grown dramatically over the last few thousand years, and in all likelyhood we are seeing a short term, small scale retreat within a longer and much larger ice advance.
CodeTech (19:05:41) :
…
It’s always been about following the money, but making the flow invisible covers up a lot of tracks. Nobody needs to fight a war anymore… just destroy your enemy’s economy, then walk in and buy them.
(Sorry for the OT)
CodeTech – The establishment of the international banking system that allows for the rapid movement of capital has enabled the mechanics of economic warfare.
The practice of economic warfare is however a tricky affair. One must be careful not to cut off ones nose to spite ones face.
For example, China currently holds a lot of US Government Bonds and is more or less funding the current bailouts. Should it stop buying or seek to redeem the bonds, the US runs out of Credit and the US Economy crashes, or the US Govt starts printing money big time and the economy still crashes – but a little bit later. However the US constitutes 30% of the Chinese export market and to lose 30% of it’s export market could well kill Chinese growth and unleash internal social unrest that would threaten the Communist party hegemony.
It’s all a bit like the MAD doctrine from the cold war.