First let’s get a look at the current NSIDC graph:
and now the JAXA graph:
There’s an interesting news article from Canada that talks about what is being seen in the northwest passage areas.
Ice pockets choking Northern Passage: officials
By Randy Boswell, Canwest News ServiceAugust 1, 2009
excerpts:
Despite predictions from a top U.S. polar institute that the Arctic Ocean’s overall ice cover is headed for another “extreme” meltdown by mid-September, the Environment Canada agency monitoring our northern waters says an unusual combination of factors is making navigation more difficult in the Northwest Passage this year after two straight summers of virtually clear sailing.
…
“In the southern route,” Canadian Ice Service officials told Canwest News Service, the agency “has observed more ice coverage than normal. This is partly due to the fact that the ice in the Amundsen Gulf consolidated this past winter, which is something it didn’t do in 2007 and 2008.”
The result, the agency said, is that ice conditions “are delaying any potential navigability of the Northwest Passage this year. This is opposite to what Environment Canada observed in the last week of July in 2007 and 2008.”
…
Scientists believe the ongoing retreat is being driven by several factors, including rising global temperatures associated with human-induced climate change, and the associated breakup and loss of thicker, multi-year year ice that is being replaced only seasonally by a thin layer of winter ice that disappears quickly each summer.
============
Read the complete news article here
What they still don’t seem to be mentioning is wind patterns.
For example, watch this superb animation done by Jeff Id of The Air Vent:
Here is another video I posted on You Tube last month which shows the flow of sea ice down the east coast of Greenland. Clearly there is more at work here than simple melting, there is a whole flow dynamic going on.
Then read what NASA research has determined. It could explain a lot of what is observed from the news article published by Canwest.
NASA Sees Arctic Ocean Circulation Do an About-Face
PASADENA, Calif. – A team of NASA and university scientists has detected an ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decade-long time scales. The results suggest not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming.
Click for Larger image
It certainly would be nice to see this reported when stories on summer ice melt occur.
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It looks like the graph has made “the turn” and the slope of the line is beginning to level off. This looks earlier than normal and appears to me that it should track with 2005 and 2006 fairly closely.
In other words: no new record minimum….
Right.
There is no warming of the Actic since 1958 according to an earlier WUWT publication by Steven Goddard, see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/13/arctic-non-warming-since-1958/
See also a listing of peer reviewed scientific studies and analyses about the Arctic:
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/2226/Now-Debuting-Climate-Depot-Arctic-Fact-Sheet–Get-the-latest-peerreviewed-studies-and-analysis
The Southern route of the NW Passage is blocked East of Cambridge Bay. Likely a West wind pushed the ice there and only an East wind, a storm or an icebreaker is going to get the sailboats through there this year. At least three sailboats are stuck in Tuktoyuktuk waiting for the ice to clear.
And if they get through there the Western end is plugged up with old ice. The old ice was blown in there by the wind. Not looking good for an open NW Passage at this point.
Then there is the story of the Resolute, the ship the famous Whitehouse desk is made of. Abandoned in the NW Passage it floated out as a ghost ship the next Summer.
One needs to remember that the current NSIDC director, Mark Serreze, says that Arctic ice is in a “death spiral”. Kinda makes one question the validity of the data since the agency now has a stake in seeing the ice disappear.
We shall see.
I’ll take the Canadians on this one.
Not so surprising as the Dakota-pulling-radar voyage by German Polar Institute showed much thicker ice “than scientists expected”. Catlin freezing their a** off, carbon-free-powered ship crew saved by oil tanker (priceless!) and recent Greenpeace ship freezing into 6m thick ice were also quite amusing events. Imagine all those long faces if the ice hits 2005 bottom: “worse than expected”, “unseasonably thin ice”, “now we all die!”
Those are unfortunate color choices for that bottom picture on changing ice conditions. In the picture yellow is a neutral color but is generally taken as, and used as, a color to indicate warming. Thus the overall perception is one of more warming than is the case.
MikeEE
On Discovery’s “Deadliest Catch” in one of the late episodes of the 2009 season it was mentioned that the Bering Sea ice came farther south than in any of the previous five seasons of the program.
Helen Fields wrote on the Discovery Channel’s web site for Deadliest Catch:
“The Bering Sea, where the boats of Deadliest Catch do their work, is not known for toasty warm weather. But still, some years are colder than others. The last two winters have been particularly chilly — and they’ve been huge years for ice. The last time the ice came this far south was in the early 1970s, when scientists first used satellites to monitor the ice.”
Haven’t seen that report on ABC, CBS, NBC, or the AGW blogs.
Ocean currents pulled a lot of sea ice out of the eastern entry to the NW Passage over the winter. Based on this, one would have expected the Passage to open this year but there is no melt in the central region or ice break-up on the western exit so it is not going to open this year.
Any ships parked off Baffin Island waiting for the go signal should just head home.
There is a great cloud-free satellite pic of the NW Passage (sideways) from MODIS from a few hours ago and one can really see what is going on.
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2009215/crefl1_143.A2009215021500-2009215021959.4km.jpg
From my latest work, my guess is that sea ice will level off and have greater extent than 07 or 08. The weather patterns aren’t the same as the past two years and the remaining ice is thicker.
I have a question, and my apologies if it has been asked before, which I’m sure it has. why is it that the period of 1979 to 2000 is taken as the average for sea ice, and I think for average global temperatures? I can see no significance to the dates apart from coinciding with the year I first got married and the year the divorce was finalised !
Pieter F (07:59:45) :
Now that I think about it, the last map up there, the yellow/red one, does have some circles on it. Is this where Anthony set his pots? 😉
why is it that the period of 1979 to 2000 is taken as the average for sea ice, and I think for average global temperatures?
1979 is the first year of reliable satellite measurement.
Anthony
Whenever I see the video’s of ice movements in the Arctic basin I’m always left with the the impression that movement of water through the Bering Straits into the Arctic basin cause an outward movements of cold water and ice down both sides of Greenland so here is a hypothesis:-
The movement of water through the Bering Straits caused by the PDO into the Arctic basin results, because of the shape of the basin, in cold water being displaced southward past the east coast of Greenland and down the Cabot Strait passed Newfoundland. This displacement of cold water in the melt period pushes the boundary layer between warm and cold water in the North Atlantic southwards – ice builds up near Newfoundland, ice on the east coast of Greenland and ice bergs in the North Atlantic. This influences the jet stream ( boundary layer between cold and warmer air). As a result the jet stream responds by also moving southward causing it to pass across or to the south of the UK. The result is cooler wetter periods in the UK and northern Europe in general.
In summary the variation in the Pacific ocean conditions c
In case someone missed this, history of the Artic exploration.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice/
detailed analysis of Artic ice and temperatures
http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/chapter_1.html
Artic daily mean temperature
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Oops!
Missed the lats scentence.
What I meant to say was:
In summary climate changes in the north pacific couple cause changes in the North Atlantic resulting changes in the weather and climate in the UK and Europe.
Looks to me like NW Passage will be more icy this year but the NE Passage will be clear soon.
Looks to me that 2009 ice may start to track 2005 ice extent, which would imply that the 2007 minimum was just that and that return to less extreme melts may slowly be occurring.
Does the PDO influence ice melt at all? Or are these decadal-scale factors in this article thought to be key in this arena?
However, I saw, yesterday, at Discovery, a program made by the BBC, which said that, for the first time in history, polar bears were drowning because of the lack of ice.
I, too, wonder why the U. of Illinois’ Cryoshphere Today uses a 1979 – 2000 base since nearly a decade has passed since 2000.
If they were to use a base of 1979 to, oh say, 2008, this year’s polar ice extent anomoly would probably show well above normal and…oh, I guess I just answered my own question.
In progress: First attempted circumnavigation of the North Pole in one (summer) season, in a sailboat. From Norway to Greenland.
http://www.seilmagasinet.no/id/31923
Click “Følg ekspedisjonen i kartet” for a GPS-track. We’ll see how far they get…
DMI have arctic ice extent exactly on the 2008 limit http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php and let us not forget that the Antarctic paints a different picture with sea ice extent being above the 1979-2000 average. http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png (and that is NSIDC) so overall there does not seem to be a worrying acceleration of ice smelting here on mother earth. At the current rate of arctic smelting it is doubtful if Messrs Gore and Hansen will be able to visit the north pole in a sailing yacht in 2014 or thereabouts. I also wonder if Steig ever looks at the NSIDC antartic ice extent and pontificates over how this increase can happen considering his recent paper. He must ponder how he can make reality comply with computer modelling.
Question: The AMSR-E graph shows a consistent tick at the beginning of June where the method for measuring the ice extent is changed to take into account melt areas on top of ice. Where is the corresponding blip when the method changes back for the winter?
Climate normals are set by international treaty to be an average over 30 years with the last year ending with a zero. After 2010 there will be updates.
Jim Watson (08:52:57) :
I, too, wonder why the U. of Illinois’ Cryoshphere Today uses a 1979 – 2000 base since nearly a decade has passed since 2000.
If they were to use a base of 1979 to, oh say, 2008, this year’s polar ice extent anomoly would probably show well above normal and…oh, I guess I just answered my own question.
Since CT gives priority to the actual areas rather than anomalies your suggestion is without merit! Since their anomaly plot only shows two periods of lower anomaly than present between 1979 and 2008 it clearly would still not show above normal in any case.
I tend to like this graph better as it puts the current year in context with other recent years.
So we aren’t far off from 2005/2006 ice amounts.
Northwest Passage 2009
by Blake
I realize it’s not a race but Bagan, the Nordhavn 57 that is one of six yachts aiming to transit the Northwest Passage this summer, better get a move on.
http://trawlercrawler.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=103