NSIDC seems to be saying: It’s slightly less worse than we thought. For another view, see Dr. Tony Berry’s sea ice analysis on WUWT yesterday.
From a University of Colorado Press Release
Arctic sea ice recovers slightly in 2009, remains on downward trend, says U. of Colorado report
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  IMAGE: This graphics show multi-year Arctic sea ice changes.
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Despite a slight recovery in summer Arctic sea ice in 2009 from record-setting low years in 2007 and 2008, the sea ice extent remains significantly below previous years and remains on a trend leading toward ice-free Arctic summers, according to the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center.
According to the CU-Boulder center, the 2009 minimum sea ice extent was the third lowest since satellite record-keeping began in 1979. The past five years have seen the five lowest Arctic sea ice extents ever recorded.
“It’s nice to see a little recovery over the past couple of years, but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,” said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze, also a professor in CU-Boulder’s geography department. “We still expect to see ice-free summers sometime in the next few decades.”
The average ice extent during September, a standard measurement for climate studies, was 2.07 million square miles (5.36 million square kilometers). This was 409,000 square miles (1.06 million square kilometers) greater than the record low for the month in 2007, and 266,000 square miles (690,000 square kilometers) greater than the second-lowest extent recorded in September 2008.
The 2009 Arctic sea ice extent was still 649,000 square miles (1.68 square kilometers) below the 1979-2000 September average, according to the report. Arctic sea ice in September is now declining at a rate of 11.2 percent per decade and in the winter months by about 3 percent per decade. The consensus of scientists is that the shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases being pumped into Earth’s atmosphere, as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Sea surface temperatures in the Arctic this season remained higher than normal, but slightly lower than the past two years, according to data from University of Washington Senior Oceanographer Mike Steele. The cooler conditions, which resulted largely from cloudy skies during late summer, slowed ice loss compared to the past two years. In addition, atmospheric patterns in August and September helped to spread out the ice pack, keeping extent higher.
The September 2009 ice cover remained thin, leaving it vulnerable to melt in coming summers, according to the CU-Boulder report. At the end of the summer, younger, thinner ice less than one year in age accounted for 49 percent of the ice cover. Second- year ice made up 32 percent of the ice cover, compared to 21 percent in 2007 and 9 percent in 2008.
Only 19 percent of the ice cover was over two years old — the least ever recorded in the satellite record and far below the 1981-2000 summer average of 48 percent, according to the CU-Boulder report. Measurements of sea ice thickness by satellites are used to determine the age of the ice.
Earlier this summer, NASA researcher Ron Kwok and colleagues from the University of Washington in Seattle published satellite data showing that ice thickness declined by 2.2 feet between 2004 and 2008.
“We’ve preserved a fair amount of first-year ice and second-year ice after this summer compared to the past couple of years,” said NSIDC scientist Walt Meier of CU-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. “If this ice remains in the Arctic thorough the winter, it will thicken, which gives some hope of stabilizing the ice cover over the next few years. However, the ice is still much younger and thinner than it was in the 1980s, leaving it vulnerable to melt during the summer.”
Arctic sea ice follows an annual cycle of melting through the warm summer months and refreezing in the winter. Sea ice reflects sunlight, keeping the Arctic region cool and moderating global climate temperatures.
While Arctic sea ice extent varies from year to year because of changing atmospheric conditions, ice extent has shown a dramatic overall decline over the past 30 years.
“A lot of people are going to look at the graph of ice extent and think that we’ve turned the corner on climate change,” said NSIDC Lead Scientist Ted Scambos of CU-Boulder’s CIRES. “But the underlying conditions are still very worrisome.”
NSIDC is part of CIRES and is funded primarily by NASA.
Next summer all that one year old ice will be two years old, right?
So this summers one year old ice will be less likely to melt next summer.
Am I missing a point here?
what’s this mean for the Polar Bears?
Note the reference to increased cloud cover being responsible for slower melt rates. Given the sun’s actvity it sounds positively Svensmarkian.
“It’s nice to see a little recovery over the past couple of years, but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,” said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze”
How about the 60s?
50s?
1850’s?
What’s “normal”?
Why is this bad?
“…since satellite record-keeping began in 1979.
…there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,”
With just one year in the 1970’s recorded, just what does he base this on? We’ve had several threads on nearly ice-free conditions in years past.
Photos of submarines, history from the 30’s, etc.
Doesn’t sound like scientific objectivity to me.
“The consensus of scientists is that the shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases being pumped into Earth’s atmosphere, as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
Unless the effect can be quantified, this is an utterly meaningless statement. Also. how exactly can sea ice extent “remain on a trend towards an ice free summer” if the last two years have each shown an increase in sea ice extent over the previous year. There must be some special definition of “remain” and “trend” that I am not aware of.
“The September 2009 ice cover remained thin, leaving it vulnerable to melt in coming summers, according to the CU-Boulder report.”
If this is so, then why were the scientists that actually measured the ice thickness (Polar 5 flyover) surprised by the “thicker than expected” ice they found? (I can’t find the link to the original Polar 5 Wegener Institute article… Anyone?) Don’t tell me CU-Boulder used the data from the Catlin Expedition!
NSIDC appears to be stuck on spin.
“A lot of people are going to look at the graph of ice extent and think that we’ve turned the corner on climate change,” said NSIDC Lead Scientist Ted Scambos of CU-Boulder’s CIRES. “But the underlying conditions are still very worrisome.”
Indeed – turning the corner would be the obvious conclusion. The other question would be why did we turn the corner if continual annual increases in atmospjheric CO2 are supposed to be forcing things in an ever accelerating manner towards ice-free?
Mmmmh!
Ted, please admit that you are stumped and that you and your ilk have snookered yourselves through past alarmist statements that claim to be based on what your ilk call “settled science”. Now you are doomed to repeat your hollow mantra – “still very worrisome”…a hollow echo that will ring for many years while the natural climate variations continue to occur (as they always have) until eventually you and your “cry wolf” ilk are long forgotten.
Next year perhaps you can use “still concerning” and then the year after drop the “still” and just say “concerning” and finally in a few more years you may thankfully retire and slip into anonymity and hope that everyone forgets about all these embarassing grandstanding “ice-free” diabolical predictions…
Is this another way of saying that the glass is half empty?
In climate, bear markets can go on for decades. Everyone knows this. Those guys should tell us something we don’t already know rather than continue to hyperventilate about 30 years worth of data, which is barely a sneezle’s worth.
“…but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,” said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze
“since satellite record-keeping began in 1979”
Does he know what is he talking about?
cheers Bill W
“Despite a slight recovery in summer Arctic sea ice in 2009 from record-setting low years in 2007 and 2008, the sea ice extent remains significantly below previous years and remains on a trend leading toward ice-free Arctic summers, according to the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center.”
It’s nonsense, of course. This is like saying a car heading west out of Albuquerque is headed for New York because it was once in Minneapolis. The current “trend,” insofar as there is one, is clearly and strongly upward.
Thirty years is hardly a significant time frame for assessing Arctic ice, either. Relatively speaking, it’s a tick of the clock.
Any of these NSIDC guys called Caleb? Thought not.
Given his history of extreme bias, should we expect Serreze to say anything more profound than what he already has…and continues to say?
It is unfortunate, thought, that a taxpayer-funded “public servant” can continue to get away with such balderdash, but hell, they ALL do it.
Astonishingly bad.
QUESTION: Has there ever been data that supports something to the effect….that increasing CO2…
…causes brain damage and frontal-lobe judgement impairment??
Maybe that would explain it. 😉
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
“Joe Black (11:49:21) :
“It’s nice to see a little recovery over the past couple of years, but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,” said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze”
How about the 60s?
50s?
1850’s?
What’s “normal”?
Why is this bad?”
They are talking about IN ALL RECORDED HISTORY man! stop living in the past.
however, ted scambodid a remarkable comment:
“A lot of people are going to look at the graph of ice extent and think that we’ve turned the corner on climate change,” said NSIDC Lead Scientist Ted Scambos of CU-Boulder’s CIRES. “But the underlying conditions are still very worrisome.”
“It’s nice to see a little recovery over the past couple of years, but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,” said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze”
And there’s no reason to think that we’re not.
I guess 2007 wasn’t the tipping point?
We can watch the polar bears evolve and blacken their coats. Will bears become ‘speckled” like the moths were before they adapt with a solid black coloration?
Meant to say “unfortunate, though.”
Brain damage I guess. 🙂
At least, through my CO2-induced brain damage, I corrected my mistake.
Serreze never does.
Science (and ego) at its worst!!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
See, it’s a trend until 30 years pass. Sort of like a win or lose streak in baseball, except completely different. By the way they calculate trends, you can lose 20 games in a row but if your win/lose record is above .500, then you’re still on a winning trend.
Is this another way of saying that the glass is half empty?
More like that the glass may be filling up, but things still look bleak.
I am still waiting for a coherent hypothesis that is testable. If X occurs, AGW is true, if X does not occur, AGW is false. I seem to recall these types of statements in my old science texts. All the hypotheses I have read states something to the effect of ‘if Warming actually occurs, X Y and Z terrible things will follow.’ It seems to me that the hypotheses keep changing for AGW and they keep trying to fit the data into their idea. So that even when cooling occurs, the oceans actually lower, the arctic grows; all these things still point to AGW.
“The consensus of scientists is that the shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases being pumped into Earth’s atmosphere, as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
Okay….
So by that logic, the above-average trend for sea ice extent in the Antarctic must be tied to cooling tempertures caused by a decrease in human-produced greenhouse gases.
It’s hard to understand how these “scientists” can say these things with a straight face. Isn’t this the person who confidently said that 2008 would be ice free at the pole?? Oops, how’d that work out. Then he said earlier this year that we “may” become ice free at the pole within the next decade. Now he’s saying that it “may” become ice free in the next several decades. Talk about covering all your bases. Sheesh!!
Rule #1: Always make sure your predictions are made confidently and boldly without regard to facts and data
Rule #2: Always make sure that the conclusion/result cannot be measured until well after your death/retirement.
Rule #3: Remember rules #1 and #2
“but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s”
But that’s good, right? I mean, weren’t we headed for an ice age in the 70’s?
Seems like nobody on the AGW side is keeping notes:
* The Caitlin jaunt was hyped as the first-ever bone fide ice depth survey and found ‘thinner than expected ice’
* But it turns out NSICD already has all the data that proves the ice has ‘never been thinner’ anyway
* The bunch from Bremenhaven flew the same patch as Caitlin and found surprisingly think ice (3-4m) but glossed it over as a bleep and promised normal warming service will be resumed imminently – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/08/08/this-year-there-was-an-exceptional-amount-of-ice/
For a bunch that claim to be singing from the same hymn sheet, they sure are out of tune.
“It’s nice to see a little recovery over the past couple of years, but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,”
If we did suddenly jump from 2007 ice levels to 1977 levels there’d be warnings of imminent ice ages. That is just silly
On the other hand Dr Meier seems to say basic sense. I do wonder though how many years of recovery would be needed before they would say the trend was broken
How did 2008 set a record when it was higher than 2007?
First, there was the Ministry of Truth.
Then came the Ministry of Silly Walks.
Now we have the Ministry of Unsubstantiated Ice Sheet Predictions.
It just keeps on getting weirder.
It also odd that Caitlin was a ‘first ever’ jaunt of its type but they already knew that in years previous the ice had been thicker.
Ditto the Bremenhaven crew which found an ‘exceptional amount of ice’. Exceptional compared to what? The thin ice observed at exactly the same time as Caitlin.
What a bunch of amateurs
Once again, if sea ice was supposed to be the stable entity described by Serreze where is the 50 y old sea ice? Probably nowhere because this is the nature of sea ice to never really get old.
The recovery is “slight.”
The downward trend is “significant”
I bet if you actually compared compared the numbers, that [2009minimum]-[2007minimum] would similar to [mean]-[2009minimum].
Of course, why use real numbers, when great adjectives are available to obscure the situation?
“The September 2009 ice cover remained thin, leaving it vulnerable to melt in coming summers, according to the CU-Boulder report.”
That’s exactly what they said last year, that the new ice was thin and wouldn’t survive. I’m sure they’ll say it again about the new ice that will form this coming winter.
Thankfully the ice doesn’t know how it’s supposed to behave, and just keeps doing its thing.
Polyakov et al. looked at Russia and Soviet records in order to examine long term trends in Arctic sea ice (since 1900). They conclude:
“In recent decades, large-scale changes have been observed throughout the Arctic atmosphere-ice-ocean system, sparking discussions as to whether these changes are episodic events, or long-term shifts in the Arctic environment. The lack of long-term observations in the Arctic makes it impossible to reach a definitive conclusion. Long-term records are now available due to recently released Russian ice observations from the Siberian marginal-ice zone.
“Examination of records of fast ice thickness and ice extent from four Arctic marginal seas (Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi) indicates that long-term trends are small and generally statistically insignificant, while trends for shorter records are not indicative of the long-term tendencies due to strong low-frequency variability in these time servies, which places a strong limitation on our ability to resolve long-term trends.”
Long-Term Ice Variability in Arctic Marginal Seas
http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~igor/research/pdf/ice.pdf
They are even dumber than I thought.
I mean, if you haven’t learned from the lesson Mother Nature delivered last winter….
@Keith. (11:45:47) who ask “what’s this mean for the Polar Bears”
It means that now Polar Bears are in trouble. Polar Bears eat seals that they get through holes in the ice. If the ice is too thick, no seal … poor Polar Bears !…
“It’s nice to see a little recovery over the past couple of years, but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,” said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze….
Okay, the press release goes on to say:
That’s about a 40% recovery. I sure wish I could get a “little” raise like that percentage in my salary. I wonder what the climatological definition for “little” is.
Three more years at this rate and the good doctor may need a new word.
…
The September 2009 ice cover remained thin, leaving it vulnerable to melt in coming summers, according to the CU-Boulder report.
Yeah, it sounds a like a perfect set up for only a “little” more recovery next year.
Well gee, two years ago was 2007. And what was the ice extent in 2007? I wonder if it was the least ever recorded in the satellite record. The good doctor seems to be taking a page from TomP’s book and finding correlation right where you’d expect to find correlation!
“A lot of people are going to look at the graph of ice extent and think that we’ve turned the corner on climate change,”
“A lot of people are going to look at the graph of recent ocean temperatures and think that we’ve turned the corner on climate change,”
“A lot of people are going to look at the graph atmospheric temperatures and think that we’ve turned the corner on climate change,”
“A lot of people are going to look at the graph of solar activity and think that we’ve turned the corner on climate change,”
“A lot of people are going to look at the graph of antarctic ice and think that we’ve turned the corner on climate change,”
“A lot of people are going to look at the graph of the PDO and think that we’ve turned the corner on climate change,”
“A lot of people are going to look at the graph of sea levels and think that we’ve turned the corner on climate change,”
A lot of people are looking at a lot of things…and it’s starting to look bad for CO2 as a significant driver of climate.
In the mean time in the New York Times, Walt Meyer contradicts the claim but unfortunately Revkin ends his story with the wrong conclusions. As usual.
Which makes me conclude that Revkin is a dumb ass too.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/spread-of-thicker-arctic-ice-seen-last-summer/?emc=eta1
(via climatedepot.com)
“there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,”
– Mark Serreze-
“Good.”
-Tallbloke-
“The past five years have seen the five lowest Arctic sea ice extents ever recorded.”
Ok… Well the *recording* only started in 1979… But… If there is any significance to, “The past five years have seen the five lowest Arctic sea ice extents ever recorded”… Isn’t is just as significant that the five maximum *Antarctic* sea ice extents have been in Septembers of 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009?
If there’s all this panic about the downtrend of Arctic sea ice extent… Why aren’t the NSIDC just as excited about the record expansion of Antarctic sea ice extent?
Is it a Northern Hemisphere-centric thing? Or does Antarctica only consist of the EAIS?
Who duly deemed the 1979 to 2000 Arctic ice extent to be the norm? Why isn’t the entire period is satellite data used? How can 30 years of data rationally encompass the historical variability of Arctic ice?
30 years of data appears to be barely enough to establish a trend. It strikes me that this entire line of information is at best a crock of b— s—.
Just starting:
Following is an item you may find of interest.
* Extreme Weather and Global Warming in the Southwest U.S.
Media Advisory
Climate Science Briefing for Broadcast Meteorologists:
Extreme Weather and Global Warming in the Southwest U.S.
A teleconference for Southwestern broadcast meteorologists featuring authors of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s latest scientific assessment report, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States,” will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2009. The report, which identifies the consensus climate science conducted by academic researchers, U.S. agencies, and international bodies, is the first of its kind to detail the impacts of global warming on extreme weather by region in the United States.
The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Thomas Karl, president of the American Meteorological Society and co-chair of “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States.” Speakers will focus on the latest authoritative research about how climate change is affecting weather extremes in the Southwestern U.S. — heat waves, wildfires, drought and other water issues — and in turn the impacts on human health and quality of life.
When: Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2009, 1 p.m. PDT/2 p.m. MDT
Teleconference number: 1-800-290-9461, Passcode 23821
Panelists:
Dr. Thomas Karl, Director of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center and President of AMS
Dr. Bradley Udall, director of the Western Water Assessment, a joint effort of the University of Colorado and NOAA
Mike Nelson, Chief Meteorologist at KMGH-TV, Denver; author of “The Colorado Weather Almanac”
“but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s”
“But that’s good, right? I mean, weren’t we headed for an ice age in the 70’s?”
It’s very good if we don’t, but I can’t guarantee it. If we do, there will be major crop failures due to the cold and many people may starve to death.
“but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s”
But there is good reason to think that we might get close :
http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/GlobalTemperature_PDOPhaseTrends.JPG
and that’s not taking solar activity (lack of) into account.
Check out how little ice there was at the north pole in 1954. Joe Bastardi explains.
“Bastardi used this photograph of a U.S. submarine at the North
Pole on March 17, 1954 to illustrate his point that Arctic ice
can be highly variable.”
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-219-Denver-Weather-Examiner~y2009m9d11-AccuWeathers-Joe-Bastardi-presses-case-against-global-warming-theory#letter
I suspect the assessment of “age” of sea ice is badly flawed. I don’t trust the above “data” at all.
I think a couple of things are worthwhile mentioning. Although 2009 had less ice area than 2005, the difference was only about 250,000 sq kms. Since satellite data became available, there have not been three years in a row when ice area at minimum has increased. One wonders what 2010 holds. The dramatic loss of ice in 2007 was not due to any sort of increase in temperature. It was due to very unusual wind conditions which blew a lot of multiyear ice, including 7 year ice, out of the Arctic Ocean and into the Atlantic Ocean where it melted. If Arctic sea ice is, ideed, recovering, then this will, of necessity, be slow. One cannot make 7 year ice in 2 years. It will be interesting to see what ice conditions are like in the Arctic this time next year. I have noted before that future conditions may be hanging over the warmaholics like a Sword of Damacles.
““there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,”
– Mark Serreze-”
Well as someone who lived in the Arctic for a few years in the 70’s that is a good thing because the winters were profoundly brutal.
There are not words to describe the feeling of -60
Anthony you seem to have missed that RSS came in second warmest on record for Sep. UAH will be warmest unless there is a substantial “correction” to the data, and the surface data will also likely be warmest (or nearly) warmest on record. Also look for a sharp step up in global sea level with the next update.
At this time in 98 temperatures were cooling sharply while ATM they are rising. Sadly this means lots of global temperature will likely fall in coming months.
Makes the tiny statistically insignificant recovery in Arctic sea ice seem hardly relevant.
REPLY Actually, you’re wrong, I didn’t miss it. I’m well aware of RSS value, but I want to also show UAH in the same post. UAH had been ahead of RSS announcement wise. Just waiting on an email from Dr. Spencer.
Since most of your commentary here is centered around your view of what I should and should not do, may I suggest you get your own blog where you can control it as you see fit? I’m sure you could figure out a way to make BoM pay for it. -A
So why does all the multiyear ice only stack up against Canada and not Russia?
Perhaps there are more politics at play than we thought.
““there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,”
– Mark Serreze-”
I’m curious, based on the records he’s comparing, ie the satellite record, how does he know what the conditions in the 1970s were like? When last I check one year does not qualify for the plural.
No knock on PhDs, but Thomas Karl is no ‘Dr.’ Neither is Harry van Loon or Freeman Dyson. My objection to Karl is that he is more politician than scientist, and has no credibility after his excusing his work and that of his bureau.
Why do they get this wrong over and over and over?
=================================
NSIDC clearly seems to be pushing an agenda. Here is a selection of their press releases from 2008, a year that average Arctic Sea Ice Extent was increasing:
3 December, 2008 Ice growth slows; Arctic still warmer than usual
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/120308.html
2 October, 2008 Arctic Sea Ice Down to Second-Lowest Extent; Likely Record-Low Volume
http://nsidc.org/news/press/20081002_seaice_pressrelease.html
4 September, 2008 Record ice loss in August
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/090408.html
26 August, 2008 Arctic sea ice dips below second-lowest record
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/082608.html
25 August, 2008 Arctic shortcuts open up; decline pace steady
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/082508.html
11 August, 2008 Sea ice decline accelerates, Amundsen’s Northwest Passage opens
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/081108.html
1 August, 2008 Race between waning sunlight and thin ice
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/080108.html
17 July, 2008 A different pattern of sea ice retreat
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/071708.html
2 July, 2008 Melt onset earlier than normal
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/070208.html
3 June, 2008 Arctic sea ice still on track for extreme melt
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/060308.html
5 May, 2008 Arctic sea ice forecasts point to lower-than-average season ahead
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/050508.html
7 April, 2008 Arctic sea ice extent at maximum below average, thin
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/040708.html
It is also telling and pathetic that NSIDC never mentions Antarctic Sea Ice Extent, which is currently above average and hit a record high this year:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
“But the underlying conditions are still very worrisome.
Uh.. no.. I’d call glacial ice advancing into Canada worrisome.
What about the Antarctic? Any press releases for the fact that the 2009 Ice Area peak was 5th highest since 1978??
No- because it’s “climate change”, not GLOBAL warming anymore 😉
“It’s nice to see a little recovery over the past couple of years, but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,” said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze
Amazing chutzpah to suggest he’s glad that ice cover has increased.
The bad news (if you believe the NSIDC) is that it looks like the polar bears are screwed. The good news is that this could be an opportunity for the Texas “prairie chickens”, if they can learn to swim. T. Boone Pickens may have folded his Texas Panhandle windmill tent prematurely.
Oh, you mean we are not heading back into the era of “Impending Ice Age Will Kill Us All!” ???
Isn’t this a good thing? I’m confused here. Its recovering, but don’t get too excited because it likely will not recover to the point where we are going to scare you to death again with cries of “The Ice Age Is Coming”??
Give me a break… GIGO
If the glaciers spread down to cover half the northern hemisphere, (Like in Day after tomorrow) they’d say
“They would have gone even further had it not been for global warming”
humour.
Ric Werme (12:49:30) said:
No he won’t!
3 more years and we WILL have ice -free summers: Al Gore said so in Berlin, underneath the dinosaur. I seem to remember him holding up 4 fingers and saying something on the lines of : 4 years – 4 – count them!
I wouldn’t get to worked up about this. My feeling is we are setting up to surpass the 1970’s levels of ICE Area. It took what 10 years to prove the Hockey stick to be wrong. I’d like to revisit this conversation in 2018 and see how much ice there is then.
The one thing I do let get to me is these idiots only have what 30 years of records to look at. How can they call the 07 level to lowest?? Yes I know it’s the recorded low. but who’s to say that 1953 wasn’t lower?? You can’t which in my mind proves there is an agenda!!!!!!
Don’t these guys read the papers ?
The atmosphere is going to cool because of the low solar activity. We won’t see an ice-free summer for at least on full solar cycle (11 years)
Dr Jones
I hope you’re not leaving comments on a blog during working hours, on a computer paid for by me, the Australian taxpayer?
Back to work, bludger. Go surf for warm p0rn somewhere else.
I was born in 1937. I don’t put much stock in 30 year trends. Let’s look back at the low ice levels of the pre-WWII, pre-fossil fuel exploitation, pre-CO2- increase period and explain the high temps of the 1930s, compared to the lower temps of the 2000s. A longer perspective sometimes offers a better focus.
Mark Serreze had to write something, but if this is the best he could come up with, it’s just not good enough. Truth or consequences?
http://a.abcnews.com/images/Business/abc_merrill_lehman_080915_mn.jpg
Ice alarmist stories just don’t know when to stop, you’d think they could go back to the drawing board and try a new model if the old one continues to not work properly.
Also, the Solar Flux is back down to 69 according to the side graphic on this site, I thought Leif said it likely wouldn’t go back down to below 70!? The Sun apparently doesn’t want to listen I guess?
no wonder no one in north america believes in agw. This map has roughly looked like this for ONE year now.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp1.html
In contrast asia looks hotter therefore no change etc globally
Meanwhile on the other side of the planet: “Antarctic Ice Melt at Lowest Levels in Satellite Era”
I expect the headlines will be “Antarctic at lowest levels!”
The US warmists are getting desperate. I think this cartoon says it all really…
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_tb0lU7SbvKE/SpLWQrIHtwI/AAAAAAAACb0/Yc_2IuWL2cg/s400/GW+Cartoon.jpg
Brit warmist alarmism is not only growing more desperate, it’s growing exponentially stupid too. Can you believe this story still has legs?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/06/times_thermageddon_r_us/
“It’s nice to see a little recovery over the past couple of years, but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,”
This is bad science, 1970 was very close to entering a solar grand minimum and the PDO had endured many years of negative readings. Give it a little longer and we will have the same results again, but to imply its a normal level is just plain wrong.
DB2 (12:34:40) :
“Examination of records of fast ice thickness and ice extent from four Arctic marginal seas (Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi) indicates that long-term trends are small and generally statistically insignificant, while trends for shorter records are not indicative of the long-term tendencies due to strong low-frequency variability in these time servies, which places a strong limitation on our ability to resolve long-term trends.”
Read that over twice. Maybe three times. At least someone has scientists “with clue”! You see EXACTLY this same behaviour in stock markets where folks will get their panties all in a bunch on a 2 week down dip in a strongly running up (or flat roller) long term trend and sell right at the bottom of the dip when they ought to be buying. You can not use a short cycle event with oscillations to inform you about long term trends. You must use a measure of longer scope than the period of interest or the ‘low-frequency variability’ (i.e. the rolling of shorter period than the very long term trend) will simply drive you ’round the bend’…
Also, BTW, NSIDC is sounding remarkably like the “Perma-bear” stock pundits. Right after a cyclical drop (about every 10 years for about 1.5 to 2 years) they crow how right they were. They then slowly extend their time window for when the “crash” will resume Real Soon Now, sort of soon now, soon I’m sure, any year now, we are not going up for a long time, well it has been a long time but now we must be close to a top and dropping will resume soon! Until 8 years pass, they miss the entire bull run phase, and are at last vindicated because they “called the crash” when it returns on schedule (and more or less in phase with sunspot cycles… modulo a bit of error band and some hand waving 😉
So watch for the ever lengthening prediction window, the “well, but for this unexpected exceptional event it would have continued down – so just a little longer”, and then the final “It has been a counter trend up for a long time, so when it DOES INEVITABLY turn down, it will do so with a great gusto to catch up with where it ought to be!”.
Watching perma-bears (and perma-bulls) go through their cyclical date with failure is great fun… and knowing which one is best for their phase of the market can be helpful. But they pretty much never seem to “get it” that it’s a cyclical wheel of change they have bolted themselves onto and they WILL get dunked in the drink when the cycle turns…
BOTH fields (climate and stocks) suffer from the same basic failure. Too short a time for their measuring tools in a very long cycle system. For stocks, you have to look at the decade or 2 decade length to see the cycles. For climate, 30 years is a bad joke. We have at a minimum the 60 year PDO, the 176-200 year solar, and the 1500 year Bond Event cycles. Unless you de-trend your shorter term data for those longer term cycles, you will simply be discovering the influence of those cyclical events and then attributing the result to an incorrect cause. (In other words, 30 years of warming “must be from CO2” when in reality it was just 1/2 of the PDO cycle.)
FWIW, the “step change” higher in the ’70s with the last flip will, IMHO, happen again with this flip. We ought to see, IMHO, the same “step change” to the cold side. It would be very interesting to see a graph of the PDO state showing the flipping points along with some clean (i.e. non-GIStemp) temperature record. (I would use GHCN adjusted, pre-GIStemp fiddling, and pick the 1000 longest lived thermometers to produce that data product. I’ve published the source code for how to do this, so anyone can do it.)
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/will-the-good-ghcn-stations-please-stand-up/
It is a very short set of programs, written in FORTRAN. If you really want to use this but can’t stand the idea of FORTRAN I can translate them into C fairly quickly. (Or any of a couple of other languages I’ve used over the years, mostly older things like Algol, Pascal, and related, or even BASIC if pushed into it… but I’m not fluent in the new trendy things like C#, C++, Python, or just about any other “object oriented” thing. I have managed projects written in them, and can puzzle my way through reading them, but writing them is not high on my skill set 😉 They seem to make bloated code that is bigger than it needs to be and I’ve never really needed their “features”…)
Alan Bates (13:55:14) :
3 more years and we WILL have ice -free summers: Al Gore said so in Berlin, underneath the dinosaur. I seem to remember him holding up 4 fingers and saying something on the lines of : 4 years – 4 – count them
—————–
It was actually 5. I have it etched into my memory, as my comment at the time became the quote of the week.
It doesn’t really matter though at this point does it ??
Polyakov et al and other papers suggesting the supposed problematic extent decline is within plausable natural variation when the records over the early 20th Century are taken into account, but the papers are pre the 2007. It would be nice to see the same analyse re-done now.
The importance of the Polar ice lose is the claim that we are at a tipping point and the melt water water will stop the famous atlantic conveyor. The conveyor is still running, the sea level is not rising more than it did before man spotted the ice problem, Thames is not frozen. It is not even clear the polar bears are suffering. In short the world has not come to an end. We do not really care if there is a bit more ice at one pole and a bit less at the other?
The truth is there is not agreement as to why the polar ice minimum has declined in recent decades. Few believe air temp alone is a good predictor of summer ice extent. Air temp, wind, and currents may be part, but I have not seen any models with proven skill even a few months in advance. Nothing modelled 2007, and not 2008.
Which means we have little or no handle on the detail of the processes going on. Which in turn means it hard to see if it unprecedented or even unsual, and certainly impossible to see if it is a problem. But as 2009 had more ice than 2008, with more than 2007, we do not appear to have tipped.
>Since most of your commentary here is centered around your view of what I should and should not do, may I suggest you get your own blog where you can control it as you see fit? I’m sure you could figure out a way to make BoM pay for it.
Your repeated tendency to disclose personal information (which is wrong) and attack individuals when someone points out how comprehensively flawed your analysis is speaks volumes.
REPLY: 1. I made no analysis here. 2. You jumped in with an off topic Insta-demand News Bulletin totally unrelated to sea-ice. So then you won’t be getting your own blog? Your tendency is clear also. Read the blog policy page. -A
jorgekafkazar (12:00:02) :
“…
It’s nonsense, of course. This is like saying a car heading west out of Albuquerque is headed for New York because it was once in Minneapolis. The current “trend,” insofar as there is one, is clearly and strongly upward.
…”
Jorge, I do not think you are wrong, however the above statement commits the same error of logic that the original article does. Any “trend” is measured over a given interval. Manipulate the interval aperture width and the direction of any trend can change. This is precisely why AGW theory would like to make the MWP vanish. As it is their “trend” aperture is limited to period between the present and the Little Ice Age. Push back to the MWP and the “trend” reverses.
You can extract an entire series of positive and negative trends in serial fashion pushing back the peak of the last glacial epoch and farther – after all the Paleogene, 50 mya, was far warmer than the present, so obviously we should be worrying about global cooling. What it comes down to what length of trend is important in human terms and in terms of our environment? Changes on that scale will affect us and our children. Worse, silly “policy” decisions based upon mistaken causes for trends could catastrophically alter the conditions of the present civilization.
“All in” time, got to get those hoax taxes passed, STAT.
Well this was surely unexpected that a government funded institution would hang on to the hoax as long as plausible … and then some.
What has science become. Going to be a bad winter for the hoax.
Maybe this has some relevance
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26176180-11949,00.html
The log from HMS Isabella, which set out in 1818 to seek the fabled Northwest Passage, indicates there has been a small but significant decline in the sea ice in Baffin Bay over the past 190 years. Until now, scientists tracking sea ice formation have largely relied upon observations from satellites.
However, some of the logs suggest that there has been little or no change in sea temperatures elsewhere in the Arctic. Climate change sceptics are likely to seize on these records as evidence that man-made greenhouse gases are having less impact than many scientists have claimed.
JimInIndy (14:42:51) :
I was born in 1937. I don’t put much stock in 30 year trends. Let’s look back at the low ice levels of the pre-WWII, pre-fossil fuel exploitation, pre-CO2- increase period and explain the high temps of the 1930s, compared to the lower temps of the 2000s. A longer perspective sometimes offers a better focus.
Truer words were never spoken. This ought to be printed out 10,000 times and sent in paper mail to the jokers looking at arctic ice. Maybe if they had to read it that many times it would sink in, just a little bit…
Take a look at this chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice-core-isotope.png
140,000 years of “temperatures” via proxies.
Here is a close up of the last 40,000 years in ice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Epica-vostok-grip-40kyr.png
Notice for that the entire 10-12,000 years of the Holocene we have been in a general downtrend. Slowly, inexorably, cooling. Notice that it is an incredibly flat stable time when compared to the rest of the 140,000 years. Then ask just exactly how “extreme” our “climate change” has been when it has been ‘steady as a rock’ in comparison to the past…
Now look back to the LAST interglacial. Notice the “pop and start dropping” with not very long at the top? We are incredibly lucky ours has been flatter and we will need to be ever more incredibly lucky if we are to prevent that this time by any means possible.
There is some process that acts as a hard lid on temperatures just a bit above our present temperatures. (If you look at longer duration charts you see all the inter-glacials whack into it and bounce off). There is no such protection to the downside. ALL the risk is to the downside.
The cold has rapid onset, but the ice build up (bottom line) is slower:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
(No, it isn’t an issue any time soon. The ice extends as a wobbly linear trend in a glacial. Take the max extent at last glacial and measure the distance to the Greenland sheet. Divide by 100,000 years. You get the ice advancing at about 800 FEET per year. We could easily already be in the “next” glacial and the LIA might have been the start. We wobble that much, but the max extent of ice in the NEXT LIA ought to be all of “800 feet further south per year since the last LIA” at the bottom of the next one. Not the kind of thing to get excited about in any one human lifetime… Call me in 1000 years and we’ll see if the ice is 800,000 feet or about 160 miles further south than in 1816. You can walk south farther in a few minutes than the ice advances in a year, on average. That’s the “fun” part of the “Ice Age Is Coming!” disaster scenario. You get to have all the disaster and panic talk, but nobody gets hurt for 1000 years 😉
The real question we ought to be asking is “Why has this interglacial been so stable and hospitable to life when prior interglacials were pop-and-drop spikes? And how do we keep this one from dropping off a cliff like the last ones?”
UP IS DOWN
O/T [sorta]
Has anyone come forward and claimed an exact SC23 minimum ‘date’ [that’s stood up to counter-arguments?].
Or is the graph still being ‘estimated’?
Speaking for civil servants (as I am one – in Australia), I think you’ll find the vast majority are happy to go about their jobs reporting information impartially. The problem lies at the top of organisations where the service interacts with politicians to whom they report.
If the Australian experience is anything to go by the civil service has bceome increasingly politicised in the upper echelons, with the party in power usually ensuring the top candidate for a position happens to be aligned with party views. I am sure it is not all that different in the US.
So at the end of the day the politicians get to hear what they want to hear. This is not a problem with 90%+ of the civil servants doing their job, but at the interface with politicians. Frank and fearless advice died decades ago.
Luckily the organisation I work for is far more pragmatically (development) oriented, so this is almost never an issue.
Dr David Jones of Ferny Creek (15:52:30) : “Your repeated tendency to disclose personal information…”
A very quick Google search yields a “Firebreak” PDF near the top:
“Dr. David Jones, head of Climate Analysis at the bureau’s National Climate Center.”
If you really want personal information, I could dig a little deeper.
Until the “ice experts” at NSIDC can, with fifteen arrows, at least bracket the right answer –as they failed to do this summer– they do not deserve any respect for their prognostication skills of the future. Simple as that.
“I’m sure you could figure out a way to make BoM pay for it. -A”
I’m still waiting for the BOM to update the sites below that We had our lowest September maximum on record on the 30th .
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/200909/html/IDCJDW6083.200909.shtml
This beats the previous by 1.7C at both locations.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_007045_All.shtml
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_007046_All.shtml
IMO, This is just another “not in the last 50+ years” anomaly’s that have just kept happening around the world since the sun has gone quiet.
One of the returning threats contributing to “the melting” is soot, preferably soot from Anthropogenic activities.
They never mention the soot and dust which have a natural origin like volcanic emissions, wild fires and dust storms.
Here is a picture from a dust storm over Washington.
If you look at the incredible frequency and the scale of these events, human activity
is entirely insignificant:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=40590&src=eorss-iotd
Dr David Jones of Ferny Creek (15:52:30) :
Your repeated tendency to disclose personal information (which is wrong) and attack individuals when someone points out how comprehensively flawed your analysis is speaks volumes.
Dear Sir or Madam: To think that you can be ‘anonymous’ in the age of 24 x 7 video cameras, GPS tracked cars and cell phones, tens of thousands of video cameras in London alone, international interlinked police and military databases, google earth, satellites that show MY care in MY driveway, and a google drive by with plenty of license plates in the image (and much much more) is simply silly. We won’t even get into millimeter wave visualization tools that let you see through clothing.. (It can be fun to take out the IR filter from video cameras and see just what clothing they see through with their “IR and a bit less” capability… the mil spec stuff easily lets you see guns through clothing and without X-rays to set off countermeasures detectors.)
If you attend ANY event ANYWHERE you ARE on video. (I went to a country farm with friends and about 100 ish attended a solstice party. Yup, found myself on video…)
While I try, for various reasons, to limit the degree to which “privacy erosion” hits me personally, it simply is not possible to be private in a public place; and that includes the internet.
If you don’t think the internet infrastructure is instrumented to track origin of IP addresses and log who talks to whom, well… I can show you how to set this up with either: Cisco router commands, or on any Unix / Linux box. I take great pains to mutate my IP address, yet Google knows what city I am in. Though I’ve kept them from knowing my street address with some diligence).
FWIW, I have done and I have taught computer forensics. If you ever put anything in email, realize that in the USA it must be kept for years. (The exact number varies by the type of company doing the email service, up to 7 years for some, 5 or so for most). This is so that lawyers can do “discovery” and don’t have to hire folks like me to dig it out of the garbage can… This is part of why I am reluctant to do much of anything via email.
So not only is your assertion that “disclosing personal information is wrong” terribly naive, it is an attitude completely obsoleted both by the technology of our day and the laws that have pushed it onto us.
To quote someone or other “Good luck with that…”
Finally, I have been reading this blog for a long time now. (2 years?) In that time I’ve not seen Anthony “attack” anyone. He will point out folly. He will point to the blog ‘rules’. He will suggest that folks who are a PITA please find some other A to be a Pain in… And he will suggest, and sometimes tell, folks who insist on “instructing him how to run HIS blog to make THEM happy” that maybe they ought to go be king of their own hill…
If you don’t like that, might I suggest you go away to where you will be less aggravated by things you can not control? I’m sure you would be happier with less negativity in your life. (Then again, if the negativity follows you from place to place, consider that it just might be you…)
I think a lot of alarmists think they can get away with making apocalyptical predictions because they feel that they cannot be disproven in their lifetimes and are safe from ridicule or worse.
Well I am not so sure they can feel so safe.
The last ‘prediction’ I saw in the UK was that it was ‘likely’ that global temps would rise by 4C by 2060 as ‘things are worse than we thought’.
So how long do we have to wait before we have a 90% confidence level that this prediction is false.
Now to get to those temps it is obvious that numerous record high temp years will have to be set along the way.
The current record year is 1998. So running from that year and assuming man made CO2 emmissions remain constant and either assuming a linear warming response or more accurately a logarithmic response to the rising CO2, what is the probability of any year subsequent to 1998, taken in date order, being a record year, assuming all other forcing and feedback factors even out over these years?
Further then work out the probability of any subsequent year not being a record year. Then work out how many years, subsequent to 1998, that does not contain a record year, have to pass before we have a 90% confidence level that the statement, ‘temps will be 4C higher in 2060’, is false.
Can any maths and probability experts out there confirm the exact date?
Alan
“3 more years and we WILL have ice -free summers: Al Gore said so in Berlin, underneath the dinosaur. I seem to remember him holding up 4 fingers and saying something on the lines of : 4 years – 4 – count them!”
Is Al Gore and his cronies going to hire a bunch of students over the summer to go up to the Arctic with blow torches so the ice is going to melt on que? I think that’s what we be needed if the trend of recovering Arctic sea-ice continues over the next few years.
I don’t believe a word the NSIDC says. I don’t believe it is conducting science. I believe it is conducting a political campaign. Observations of thinner ice or lower extent are good observations that can readily be explained by natural climate variables and cycles. Furthermore I don’t believe 30 years of data should be used to draw conclusions about anything to do with a climate system that has existed for billions of years. We have an out-of-control government-science complex hell bent on controlling and taxing energy with a supine mainstream media that recycles climate alarmist talking points relentlessly.
Off topic, but interesting that NOAA’s arctic camera at
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/latest/noaa1.jpg
stopped updating as of Sept 25th.
Did it get blown over by an early fall gust?
In the mean time at the other side of the world:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/10/06/antarctic-ice-melt-at-lowest-levels-in-satellite-era/
This whole concept of ice disappearing is ridiculous. Here is my latest post done last week on sea ice calculated right from the gridded satellite data – code provided.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/5590/
Look at the last couple of plots which offset global sea ice anomaly by the average global sea ice.
Let’s just say, it aint too friggin’ close and this kind of insanity has got to stop.
If it’s not science, what is it?!
QUoting:
“slight recovery”
Commenting:
If a million square kilometers (at the nadir of annual ice extent) or 25% is “slight” then please send me a “slight” portion of your annual income, OK?
Ron de Haan (16:50:57) : One of the returning threats contributing to “the melting” is soot, preferably soot from Anthropogenic activities. They never mention the soot and dust which have a natural origin like volcanic emissions, wild fires and dust storms.
Nice picture! BTW, take a look at this graph of historic dust levels over the prior glacial cycles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
Notice that lower dust line? Dust goes “way high” by an order of magnitude or so toward the (dry) end of a frozen glacial… By comparison, we are practically devoid of all dust right now.
Rising dust levels is an indicator of more cold, not more warmth. And any idea that rising dust is going to make things warmer need to look at the constant increase in ice levels as the dust increases during glacial episodes.
Plants are very highly CO2 stressed at 200 ppm. I would speculate that between the CO2 stress (that reduces the ability to handle water stress) and the increasingly frozen (and therefor dry) environment, ice age glacials end in a frozen desert with death of plants widespread ending in a dust “blow off” from that desertification.
Warm is Wet.
Warm is Good.
Warm is growth.
Warm is not dusty.
Cold is not good for plants and other living things.
I guess its safe to say “global cooling” is over since global temperature anomalies have risen rapidly since September 2007. No, wait… Doh! We’re only supposed to apply that logic to Arctic sea ice anomalies.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2007.67/plot/rss/from:2007.67/trend
I would be interested to know how things compare with the extent of coverage during World War II? I am sure that the RN kept abreast of the extent of coverage whilst running the Russian convoys.
“We still expect to see ice-free summers sometime in the next few decades.”
The North Pole–home of Santa, his elves…and 6 C increases in world temps! Sorry kids, Christmas is cancelled (and we are going to have to reduce your standard of living to 1850).
“It’s nice to see a little recovery over the past couple of years, but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,” said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze, also a professor in CU-Boulder’s geography department.
And there’s no reason not to think that either Mr. Serreze
Come on, you know you are being disingenuous.
” INGSOC (11:53:08) :
“The September 2009 ice cover remained thin, leaving it vulnerable to melt in coming summers, according to the CU-Boulder report.”
If this is so, then why were the scientists that actually measured the ice thickness (Polar 5 flyover) surprised by the “thicker than expected” ice they found? (I can’t find the link to the original Polar 5 Wegener Institute article… Anyone?) Don’t tell me CU-Boulder used the data from the Catlin Expedition!”
http://www.awi.de/de/aktuelles_und_presse/pressemitteilungen/detail/item/research_aircraft_polar_5_finishes_arctic_expedition_unique_measurement_flights_in_the_central_arc/?cHash=086f3b9dd6
There was a article by Radio Bremen that was a bit more plain.
I suppose we will have to wait until after Kopenhagen to see the results (if ever). But maybe the university of Alberta will let us know.
Anthony and Charles: A well deserved snip. But didn’t you think it was funny?
REPLY: No doubt. -A
I keep wondering why all these scare stories about the loss of Arctic Ice. We know that the planet has been in a non ice age several time. A non ice age means there is no ice at either pole. Yet the planet is still here, animal and plant life is still here. What is the worry. I doubt if we will get out of this ice age yet it was warmer in the Medieval warm period and the Arctic then was wide open, but not ice free. The polar bears are still here, the planet is still here, we are still here. It was even warmer in the Roman warm period and… What is this worry about declining ice about? Not that it is declining. The inhabitants of the Arctic would like it if it was declining. There are times I think this is only about change. People were born into a certain climate period and they want it to stay the same. Hey, both my parents were born in the 20’s and they would like it to stay as warm as it was then.
At it’s current rate of growth, Arctic ice will stretch all the way to D.C. by the end of the century….
The analysis is juvenile at best. Someone is looking at pixels and making statements based on a flat computer screen. The Arctic area is complex and is rightly divided into at least 14 areas, and so reported. In addition, floating summer ice is affected mostly by wind in a purely mechanical sense. Blown one way, it melts, blown the other way and it piles up. But on a flat screen, the extent looks like it has receded. When overlayed by wind patterns and thought of in 3-dimensions, one begins to understand how new first year ice can thicken to multi-year thickness in one season.
This is what I see when I think of this complex system in 3 dimensions. The wind vortex has shifted (likely a result of a changing PDO/AMO) to prevent ice escape from Fram Strait after the 2007 melt year. If this wind pattern continues (moving summer ice mainly inward towards the Arctic pole) over a period of years, ice thickness will rebound rapidly, which will result in an eventual increase in extent and area. When the wind pattern returns to its summer direction out of Fram Strait, we will once again here Chicken Little calling out a warning of thinning ice, no ice, the Arctic is burning, and the bears are dying. And in some cases of over-abundant weed consumption, the penguins are dying.
Gawdamighty, all of these ivory tower groups need a runofthemill weather guy/gal to knock some sense into their heads.
By the way, anybody notice that at least in Oregon, low temp and snow fall records are falling all over the place?
I just love the mathematical trickery/dishonesty in the story. They say “Only 19 percent of the ice cover was over two years old — the least ever recorded in the satellite record and far below the 1981-2000 summer average of 48 percent, according to the CU-Boulder report”
Uh…yeah! If 2007 was the nadir, this is 2009 and we’ve had a SIGNIFICANT increase in ice, then that will obviously make the percentage of ice over 2 years old very low. Sounds scary the way they say it though, doesn’t it?? LOL!!!
Jeff Id (17:30:11) :
“Look at the last couple of plots which offset global sea ice anomaly by the average global sea ice.
Let’s just say, it aint too friggin’ close and this kind of insanity has got to stop.
If it’s not science, what is it?!”
Its “Consensusscience”, Jeff. Group-think at its worst.
Keep exposing the truth for what it is. I read your posts and check out your site.
Hooyah!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
By the way, anybody notice that at least in Oregon, low temp and snow fall records are falling all over the place?
My brother snapped a pic of his little daughter out in the in the 6″ plus they had in Bend on Sunday. Wish I was there.
“… we will once again here Chicken Little calling out a warning of thinning ice, no ice, the Arctic is burning, and the bears are dying.”
Har har har. Maybe change his name to Mark “Seabreaze”.
And maybe he is a blond…that would explain things a bit.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
“Second- year ice made up 32 percent of the ice cover, compared to 21 percent in 2007 and 9 percent in 2008.”
2007 21% second year ice, 1.580 million square miles ice
2008 9% second year ice, 1.804 square miles ice
2009 32%, second year ice, 2.070 million square miles ice
2007 second year ice, 332,000 square miles
2008 second year ice, 162,000 square miles
2009 second year ice, 662,000 square miles
A huge increase in second year ice in my opinion. And when it comes to the albedo, thin ice is about the same as thick ice.
It is fun to watch experts stand by their research rather then admit that they may have jumped the gun a little to early in predicting an ice free arctic… Not that I don’t think such a thing would not be a great boon to mankind, just think of the cost savings in bypassing the Panama canal for north american shipping companies… This is what happens when you take anomalies and make predictions. Now it is not to say it may not happen still but… I would guess that the arctic still has some cold left in it.
We’re doomed, we can’t win. If CO2 goes up and temperatures go up it’s AGW, If CO2 goes up and temperatures go down it’s just a slight pause in AGW and it will come back much worse than we thought. That pause can be anywhere from 10-50 years but we still need to bring CO2 down to the stone age.
What’s really going to happen? In 2 years, if enough price increases have occurred will the sheeple vote for another party? If they do, can that new controlling party break any of the commitments that Obama is about to grant?
E.M.Smith (16:22:05) :
Thnx for the H/T.
Educated ignorance drives me nuts.
20,000 years ago, North America was glacial packed a mile thick to a line a bit lower than Springfield, IL; Bloomington, IN; Columbus, OH. Warming started for unknown reasons and the ice pack retreated to Canada.
My questions to the AGW advocates: Why did it warm? When did the post-glacial warming stop? Why? How long was your presumed post-glacial cooling? When did the most recent warming start? (Did that include the 1940-1979 cooling?)
If you cannot answer those questions with certainty, please do not try to predict my decadal climate changes.
I too have seen soot given as an ice melter, but soot in the air is a cooler. Not clear which would be the dominante effect. I have not seen a soot/ice time series.
Pamela said “By the way, anybody notice that at least in Oregon, low temp and snow fall records are falling all over the place?”
I did not notice, however I go to SIO (Scripps Institute of Oceanography) almost daily. And today while looking out over the ocean from the bluff we saw about twenty gray whales migrating south. I have never seen them this early. Usually December to February is when to expect them. What that means I have no idea, just kind of curious.
One time more to the other side of the world:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/10/antarctic-ice-most-resilient-in.html
and:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL039186.shtml
An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high-latitude and tropical climate variability
Marco Tedesco
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, City College of New York, New York, New York, USA
Andrew J. Monaghan
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA
A 30-year minimum Antarctic snowmelt record occurred during austral summer 2008–2009 according to spaceborne microwave observations for 1980–2009. Strong positive phases of both the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) were recorded during the months leading up to and including the 2008–2009 melt season. The 30-year record confirms that significant negative correlations exist at regional and continental scales between austral summer melting and both the ENSO and SAM indices for October–January. In particular, the strongest negative melting anomalies (such as those in 2008 and 2009) are related to amplified large-scale atmospheric forcing when both the SAM and ENSO are in positive phases. Our results suggest that enhanced snowmelt is likely to occur if recent positive summer SAM trends subside in conjunction with the projected recovery of stratospheric ozone levels, with subsequent impacts on ice sheet mass balance and sea level trends.
Received 13 May 2009; accepted 12 August 2009; published 24 September 2009.
Citation: Tedesco, M., and A. J. Monaghan (2009), An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high-latitude and tropical climate variability, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L18502, doi:10.1029/2009GL039186.
Met office at it again http://news.uk.msn.com/world/article.aspx?cp-documentid=150086045
Well, I guess it still slightly too soon to make a confident prediction on next summer’s minimum arctic ice extent, primarily as this years refreeze is taking slightly longer to kick into top gear than 2008 or 2006.
If it starts taking off in the next 5 days, I’d be confident making a bet of a slight increase again.
But if for some reason it is delayed 2 – 3 weeks, then it might be prudent to plan for a ‘no change’ or slight decrease bet.
My bet will be laid come end of October.
Dr David Jones of Ferny Creek (15:52:30) :
“Your repeated tendency to disclose personal information (which is wrong) and attack individuals when someone points out how comprehensively flawed your analysis is speaks volumes.”
Mr Jones, when you advertise your identity so openly by your blog name, you shouldn’t complain about disclosure. Googling your name is sufficient to know who you are and what you believe. I came across this jewel in a letter you wrote to The Age newspaper in 2004:
“Contrary to ill-informed opinions, climate models are in fact objective mathematical simulations of the atmosphere. These models have reached a level of sophistication that can accurately simulate the large-scale climate variability and change both in the present and in the past.”
Mr Jones, you have disqualified yourself as a credible climate scientist.
Boulder was hit with a snowstorm on the last day of summer.
Schadenfreude.
This does seem to be a worrisome trend. It’s worse than I thought. There could be a strong positive feedback at work: as the ice expands, it will reflect more sunlight, leading to local cooling and even more ice next year. If this trend continues, we could see ice at the equator in the next few decades. We may even have already passed the tipping point, or perhaps that can still be averted if we all do something.
This http://www.climatedepot.com/a/3212/Inconvenient-Questions-Stanford-U-Bans-Climate-Film-from-Airing-Interview-with-Cooling-turned-Warming-Prof-Stephen-Schneider–You-are-prohibited could do with some airing on WUWT. Amazing stuff! Of course, he would have been best advised to let them use the footage. Now he’s going to regret banning it!
Re: Clark (12:33:26) :
The recovery is “slight.”
The downward trend is “significant”
Absolutely, As another poster noted on another thread (and as may have been noted in this thread, but I haven’t read down that far yet, apologies if I am repeating anybody). That there use of adjectives is very telling. The increase in ice each of the past two years has been over 10% over the previous years minimum. Of the that trend was reversed the alarmists would be very vocal about it and NOT calling it “slight”
In terms of the amount of ice increase in total kilometres then it is over 1.4 million square kilometres and yet that is “slight”?
How come when something like a 405 square kilometres ice sheet breaks away from the Antarctic, then that is described as vast and potentially disastrous?
@ Ingsoc:
this is the original link of the AWI for Polar 5 flight results,
and this is the English translation of the report on a further website.
How to engineer a cooler earth.
If we wanted a cooler earth, could mankind use the Arctic to achieve this? Say a nuclear powered ice breaker sailed to the North Pole, or nearby, in winter. The ship’s crew could drill a hole in the ice, and use their ‘unlimited’ nuclear power to pump sea water out of the hole and out over the top of the sea ice. Now that the water isn’t insulated by the white ice, it will rapidly freeze, radiating its latent heat of fusion away into space. There will be no extra heat captured from the sun while the water darkens the surface, as in the winter up there, there is no sun. Once the water has frozen, it will go white like the rest of the ice cap. Indeed, some engineer would design a special nozzle to make the water freeze into special whiter ice, I expect. 😉 The energy required to pump the water isn’t a lot, as the surface of the ice is only a few metres at most above the nominal sea level.
This works because the pump makes the difference in temperature between the surface, now at 0°C in mid-winter instead of -30°C because of the pumped water, and outer space, 4K or something, larger than it was before. This means more heat energy gets transferred, as the rate of transfer depends on the temperature difference. Net result is we’ve pumped a bunch of heat into outer space, which, apparently, is what some people want.
NSIDC and polar bears get more ice. What could possibly go wrong?
Do I win £5? Or bindun?
In light of the comments from a late Spring story in WUWT that relates to the people in Boulder,
“University of Colorado-Boulder geography professor Mark Williams said Monday that the resorts should be in fairly good shape the next 25 years, but after that there will be less snowpack – or no snow at all – at the base areas”
Please see the new story about Loveland Ski Area is announcing its earliest opening day in 40 years. Apparently they have an 18″ base.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20091006/ap_tr_ge/us_travel_brief_ski_area_opens_3
I believe mark Serreze can be seen making his Arctic predictions on one of the History channels scare-a-thon shows. Don’t remember which one right now (and, no, he is not blond ;)). Naturally, since he has made this so public, he will defend that prediction forever.
The four satellite pictures show the extent of the sea ice at the end of the summer melt periods. Presumably all the ice that is going to melt each year melts during those periods. The 2009 picture shows that, while the cover is greater than in 2008, much of the “old ice” has been replaced by one to two year old ice. Where has the older ice gone? Has it melted into the sea below (where it is not covering land), has it been infiltrated by the newer layers (and if so how) or is it lurking below the one to two year old layer? Would someone please explain. .
This press release by Mark “the arctic is screaming” Serreze and his gang should be seen for what it is – a cry for more funding for the NSIDC. It is quite understandable after really botching this year’s ice melt forecast (going as far as suggesting that we would have an all time record low ice extent this year back in August!).
I really feel sorry for them that they are reduced to these kinds of misleading press releases in order secure their budgets for 2009 – 2010.
“Contrary to ill-informed opinions, climate models are in fact objective mathematical simulations of the atmosphere. These models have reached a level of sophistication that can accurately simulate the large-scale climate variability and change both in the present and in the past.”
This is hilarious! Dr. Jones actually used the words “objective”, “sophistication”, and “accurately” in connection with numerical climate models…
Old ice is not like old growth forests. Sea ice recycles completely. You won’t be able to get sea ice cores that go back more than a few years (IE 5 to 6 at the most). In addition, sea ice gets jumbled up against itself or land edges. Take a core there and you will get very confused results. The summer melt is a combination of a steeper angle to the Sun and wind. Under the right conditions (primarily a nice strong wind breaking up and directing ice out of the Arctic basin into the Atlantic), the ice melts rapidly as it moves South. It has very little to do with air-born CO2. In a phrase, summer ice melt is not climate-related, it is weather-related. The climate in summer and winter is cold enough for ice to stay. Why doesn’t then? Weather.
Abstract of a study pointing to the weather-related phenomenon of sea ice age variance. The Arctic Oscillation encompasses these weather-related changes.
http://seaice.apl.washington.edu/IceAge&Extent/
philincalifornia (15:42:38) :
Alan Bates (13:55:14) :
3 more years and we WILL have ice -free summers: Al Gore said so in Berlin, underneath the dinosaur. I seem to remember him holding up 4 fingers and saying something on the lines of : 4 years – 4 – count them
—————–
It was actually 5. I have it etched into my memory, as my comment at the time became the quote of the week.
And was what he actually said etched into your memory too? He didn’t say ‘WILL’.
If we think the unthinkable and pretend that Serreze (no, that is really unthinkable; make that Meier) changes his mind. How would he describe what he now regards is a recovery ?
“Considering that there is a lot of thin first year ice the growth is quite encouraging ?”
” Phil. (06:54:16) :
‘philincalifornia (15:42:38) :
Alan Bates (13:55:14) :
3 more years and we WILL have ice -free summers: Al Gore said so in Berlin’
And was what he actually said etched into your memory too? He didn’t say ‘WILL’.”
What he says on that video: “The period of 5 during which IT IS EXPECTED to now disappear.”
Peter Jones:
“Please see the new story about Loveland Ski Area is announcing its earliest opening day in 40 years. Apparently they have an 18″ base.”
Ever heard of artificial snowmaking equipment? I hiked up to 11,700 feet a little southeast of there on Saturday without encountering any snow.
Bill Tuttle:
“Boulder was hit with a snowstorm on the last day of summer.”
Snowstorms in Colorado in September are hardly rare. How much snow did Boulder get?
Alexej Buergin:
“If this is so, then why were the scientists that actually measured the ice thickness (Polar 5 flyover) surprised by the “thicker than expected” ice they found?”
According to the paper referenced in the NSIDC press release (yes, I read the entire article), the average thickness of the arctic sea ice decreased by more than half a meter between 2003 and 2008.
The ice melt is to some degree controlled by the AMO, which has been in its warm phase. If the AMO could be trusted to work like clock-work, (which it doesn’t,) it would be seven to nine years before the AMO’s warm phase shifted back to its cold phase. Therefore we should expect ice extent to remain below average.
My understanding is that it is the water beneath the ice, (and not sunshine or air temperatures,) which melts the ice most efficiently. Once the ice has been reduced to a slush of chunks and bergs, it can be flushed out into the Atlantic, if the winds are from the right direction. The winds did a very good job of this in 2007, but haven’t been as favorable for “flushing,” the past two summers.
Perhaps the most significant line in the above report is, “Sea surface temperatures in the Arctic this season remained higher than normal, but slightly lower than the past two years, according to data from University of Washington Senior Oceanographer Mike Steele.”
I imagine that, once the AMO shifts into its cold phase, the ice extent will not only increase, but the icecap will become more rigid, and therefore less likely to be broken into a slush of chunks and bergs, and far harder to flush out of the arctic.
Until that happens, Alarmists can cross their fingers, and hope the winds blow the right way, which might allow the 2007 levels to be matched. Such an outcome wouldn’t mean anything in the long run, but it would make for great press-releases.
Solomon Green
“The 2009 picture shows that, while the cover is greater than in 2008, much of the “old ice” has been replaced by one to two year old ice. Where has the older ice gone? Has it melted into the sea below (where it is not covering land), has it been infiltrated by the newer layers (and if so how) or is it lurking below the one to two year old layer? Would someone please explain.”
There weren’t enough billions in the budget to have a birthday party for the ice in question, so it has been held back… I hope this helps… 🙂
RE: “And today while looking out over the ocean from the bluff we saw about twenty gray whales migrating south. I have never seen them this early.”
Now this is a portent of doom, but not the type of doom that believers in “Thermageddon” (hat tip to the Register for that one!) have in mind.
I agree that the behaviour of birds, fish, mammals, etc is a good portent of what is coning. The humingbirds left here (Toronto, Canada) Sept 10th. They usually leave at the end of Sept. Plants were still flowering but the hummingbirds left. The Canada geese left on Sept 19th. They usually leave in October. Most of the chipmunks have started their hibernation and they don’t usually go to bed until after the first snow. We have not had snow yet but it got cold early this year. The squirrels have their winter coats on and the resident blue jays are as fat as turkeys. All the migrating birds have left. It makes me wish I could also.
*****NEWS BULLETIN******
“The 2009 melt season ended on Sept. 12th and saw the largest yearly increase in Arctic ice in history! As a matter of fact, the last 2 years rank 1st and 2nd respectively for amount of square kilometers in a single year in Arctic ice increase since records have been kept. 2008 saw a respectable increase of 400,000 KM2 but ranks far behind the record increase of over 600,000 km2 for 2009. Scientists at the Climate Analysis center of the National Climate Center were stunned at the size of the increase and had no explanation for the huge increases despite rising CO2 levels”………………… developing
philincalifornia (15:42:38)
Thank you for the correction!
Pamela Gray (06:35:40) :
Old ice is not like old growth forests. Sea ice recycles completely. You won’t be able to get sea ice cores that go back more than a few years (IE 5 to 6 at the most). In addition, sea ice gets jumbled up against itself or land edges. Take a core there and you will get very confused results. The summer melt is a combination of a steeper angle to the Sun and wind. Under the right conditions (primarily a nice strong wind breaking up and directing ice out of the Arctic basin into the Atlantic), the ice melts rapidly as it moves South. It has very little to do with air-born CO2. In a phrase, summer ice melt is not climate-related, it is weather-related. The climate in summer and winter is cold enough for ice to stay. Why doesn’t then? Weather.
—…—…—…—
Let’s look at this based on “What has happened to actual sea ice extents” rather than the more typical AGW “Let me tell you what will happen based on my simple theory of ‘The world is getting hotter and everything will melt unless we reduce CO2 levels.'”
Following is based on simply looking at the AMSRE Sea Ice extents plot in today’s WUWT, and a “real analysis” needs to create a 2 month daily average of max sea ice extents and a minimum sea extents – since almost every year, the max extent is really a jagged up-and-down peak, with different years crossing each other several times. (Just taking the single max or min number isn’t accurate enough either.)
Max Sea Ice Extent, from largest to smallest maximum area since 2003. (2002 = ?)
2003
2008
2009 (March & April 2009 set new records, 2008 was a little higher in Feb.)
2004
2005
2007
2006
Minimum Sea Ice Extent, since 2002, from largest to smallest area
2003
2006
2004
2002
2005
2009
2008
2007
Note that global temperatures have been declining slightly through the period, but have changed very little with respect to each year.
Note that the AGW “crisisologists” have NOT defined any specific relationship between global temperature and sea ice extents (either minimum or maximum) that allows any comparision between any particular global climate (assumed or modelled) temperature and sea ice extents. We have only been told that “Everything will melt.” and that “We will see ice-free Arctic Sea’s in xxx year unless more money is paid to the UN/IPCC/third world dictators.”
(Determining that equation might be a useful test of these predictions.)
—
Looking at this list, we notice that 2003 was at the top of sea ice maximum extent, and the top of the minimum sea ice extents list.
2007 was near the bottom of the maximum sea ice list, and at the bottom of the minimum sea ice extents.
But 2008 and 2009 set the next highest maximum points, and then came down set the next two lowest sea ice extents.
2005 was relatively high for sea ice maximum, and relatively low for sea ice minimum.
2006 set the lowest sea ice maximum point, but then was near the highest of sea ice minimum extents.
Conclusion?
There is NO consistent observed relation between sea minimum extents one year, and the next year’s sea maximum extent.
There is NO consistent observed relation between between a low sea ice minimum point one year, and the subsequent maximum sea ice point six months later.
The long-proclaimed “albedo effect” of open water heatinig up the world to melt even more ice next year is false.
Pamela Gray (18:59:05) :
The analysis is juvenile at best. Someone is looking at pixels and making statements based on a flat computer screen. The Arctic area is complex and is rightly divided into at least 14 areas, and so reported. In addition, floating summer ice is affected mostly by wind in a purely mechanical sense. Blown one way, it melts, blown the other way and it piles up. But on a flat screen, the extent looks like it has receded. When overlayed by wind patterns and thought of in 3-dimensions, one begins to understand how new first year ice can thicken to multi-year thickness in one season.
This is what I see when I think of this complex system in 3 dimensions. The wind vortex has shifted (likely a result of a changing PDO/AMO) to prevent ice escape from Fram Strait after the 2007 melt year. If this wind pattern continues (moving summer ice mainly inward towards the Arctic pole) over a period of years, ice thickness will rebound rapidly, which will result in an eventual increase in extent and area. When the wind pattern returns to its summer direction out of Fram Strait, we will once again here Chicken Little calling out a warning of thinning ice, no ice, the Arctic is burning, and the bears are dying. And in some cases of over-abundant weed consumption, the penguins are dying.
Gawdamighty, all of these ivory tower groups need a runofthemill weather guy/gal to knock some sense into their heads.
Hey Pamela how about you stop pushing this nonsense that you can’t back up. Your notion of the ice not leaving via the Fram Strait and instead piling up at the pole is fiction. Here’s one of many daily records showing the ice sailing out of the Fram earlier this year:
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/Drift.png
Currently this year’s North Pole Environmental Observatory is drifting out the Fram at about 0.4º/day.
Good one Phil. Your drift graphic is Feb to Mar ice drift. Extent was still growing. I would say that not much ice was leaving Fram Strait at that time, since ice extent was BUILDING, not receding. Try again. Find a better drift picture comparing 2007 melt season with 2009 melt season. To be sure, this isn’t an either/or issue. It is a relative issue. Fram Strait doesn’t shut down like a trap door. Most people here would get that. Why you thought I meant that NO ice gets through Fram Strait I don’t know. However, don’t take my word for it. Spend some time reading reports at NSIDC. While they drink the coolaid, there are some very good analysis of wind patterns and subsequent spatial distribution of ice, especially during the melt season.
Phil. (06:54:16) :
philincalifornia (15:42:38) :
Alan Bates (13:55:14) :
And was what he actually said etched into your memory too? He didn’t say ‘WILL’.
_____________________________
It was the 5 years that was etched in my memory (correctly, I might add).
Go on then, what did he say ? “Might”, “It’s plausible”, “possibly”, “I’m not a scientist, but …”, “count these fingers ..”, “I once got a chemistry set for Christmas, so therefore … “
Here is another really good article on weather-related influences on ice flow through Fram Strait.
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020807seaice.html
Pamela Gray (21:00:06) :
Good one Phil. Your drift graphic is Feb to Mar ice drift. Extent was still growing. I would say that not much ice was leaving Fram Strait at that time, since ice extent was BUILDING, not receding. Try again. Find a better drift picture comparing 2007 melt season with 2009 melt season. To be sure, this isn’t an either/or issue. It is a relative issue. Fram Strait doesn’t shut down like a trap door. Most people here would get that. Why you thought I meant that NO ice gets through Fram Strait I don’t know. However, don’t take my word for it. Spend some time reading reports at NSIDC. While they drink the coolaid, there are some very good analysis of wind patterns and subsequent spatial distribution of ice, especially during the melt season.
You really don’t have a clue do you?
Here are some more items showing that winds are important factors in Arctic ice loss.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/10/03/nh-sea-ice-loss-its-the-wind-says-nasa/
Arctic Sea ice loss – “it’s the wind” says NASA
(2007)
“Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic,” said Son Nghiem of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and leader of the study.
http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu:8080/~igor/research/ice/index.php
Long-term ice variability in arctic marginal seas
(2003)
…Polyakov and Johnson (2000) and Holloway and Sou (2002) using coupled ice-ocean models showed that most ice loss in the recent decades was due to wind forced ice export from the central Arctic.
…Previous studies showed that at time scales of up to decades sea-ice conditions are controlled by changes in the atmospheric circulation pattern. Our study extends this result, suggesting that even at interdecadal time scales winds remain the major contributor to ice-extent variation in the Siberian marginal-ice zone. …dynamical factors (wind or surface currents) are at least of the same order of importance as thermodynamical factors in the Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi seas … winds over the Chukchi Sea cannot contribute much to northward advection of ice into the Arctic Ocean … However, northward surface currents fed by Pacific waters entering the Chukchi Sea through Bering Strait provide an effective mechanism of ice transport to the Beaufort Sea.
http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu:8080/~igor/research/50yr/index.php
Arctic decadal and interdecadal variability
(2003(?))
The resemblance between variability of the ice thickness (Figure 3b) and the vortivity index ( Figure 3a) is striking, attesting to a close connection between large-scale atmospheric circulation pattern and arctic ice conditions.
http://www.asp.ucar.edu/colloquium/2000/Lectures/holland.html
Variability in Arctic Sea Ice: Causes and Effects
(2001(?))
The ice motion field is primarily wind-driven and causes the removal of ice from the Siberian coast and the transport of ice from the Arctic to the Greenland Sea via Fram Strait. This results in an average net transport of approximately 2800 km3 per year (Aagaard and Carmack, 1989) into the northern North Atlantic.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/report07/ocean.html
Arctic Report Card 2007 (NOAA)
The circulation of the sea ice cover and ocean surface layer are closely coupled and are primarily wind-driven (Proshutinsky and Johnson, 1997). Data from satellites and drifting buoys indicate that the entire period of 2000-2006 has been characterized by an anticyclonic (clockwise) circulation regime due to a higher sea level atmospheric pressure over the region north of Alaska, relative to the 1948-2005 mean, and the prevalence of anticyclonic winds (Figure O1). Under these conditions, the clockwise circulation pattern in the Beaufort Sea region (the Beaufort Gyre) tends to be relatively strong. Conversely, in the cyclonic regime the clockwise circulation pattern in the Beaufort Sea region weakens, and the flow across the basin, from the Siberian and Russian coasts to Fram Strait (the Transpolar Drift), shifts poleward. The cyclonic pattern dominated during 1989-1996; the anticyclonic pattern has prevailed since 1997. The dominance of the anticyclonic regime during last decade of 1997-2006 is consistent with the Arctic Oscillation (AO) index (Figure A1) which fluctuated about zero indicating a relatively low level of influence from the Atlantic on these Arctic processes (Rigor et al., 2002).
Phil. (22:27:18) :
“You really don’t have a clue do you?”
This is exactly the type of response I’d expect from someone who doesn’t have a clue. Pure projection. Most people, when they actually know something, provide support for their opinions.
Richard M (09:19:19) :
Phil. (22:27:18) :
“You really don’t have a clue do you?”
This is exactly the type of response I’d expect from someone who doesn’t have a clue. Pure projection. Most people, when they actually know something, provide support for their opinions.
I did and the ‘clueless one’ indicated by her response that she didn’t understand it! I have better things to do with my time than lead someone through the data when they clearly don’t want to understand.
I love that pot hole commercial.
“But I’m just a pot hole….ssooooooo…..okay By!”
Phil. (13:49:53) :
I have better things to do with my time than lead someone through the data when they clearly don’t want to understand.
————————————
Highly reminiscent of Tamino’s response to having his snip wiped by Steve McIntyre (along with some other responses on here).
The bad news Pamela is that they’re currently only at stage one. Six more to go:
1. SHOCK & DENIAL-
You will probably react to learning of the loss with numbed disbelief. You may deny the reality of the loss at some level, in order to avoid the pain. Shock provides emotional protection from being overwhelmed all at once. This may last for weeks.
Serreze should stick to charts and graphs. His command of the language is inadequate for prose, as in: “record-setting low years in 2007 and 2008,..” How can one read further?