By Steve Goddard
The Catlin Arctic Survey arrived at the North Pole this week.
Described as three of ‘the world’s toughest’ explorers, Ann Daniels, Charlie Paton and Martin Hartley reached the Geographic North Pole at on 12th May, ending a grueling 60-day trek across the floating sea ice of the Arctic Ocean…They made it with only hours to spare before a Twin Otter plane was scheduled to land on the ice to collect them.
Congratulations to them on completing a difficult journey against the Beaufort Gyre. They can now compare their Oceanic pH data vs. the non-existent database from past years, and predictably conclude that pH might be lower than it used to be – due to CO2.
The spring melt season continues to eat away at the periphery of the ice pack. The animation below (made from Cryosphere Today images) shows the changes since the first of the month.
Figure 2
As you can see, not much has changed during the last two weeks. The image below, made from NSIDC images, shows areas of anomalously high extent in green, and anomalously low extent in red.
Figure 3
As in past weeks there is excess ice in the Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk, and a deficiency in the Barents Sea – which are all always ice free during the summer anyway.
To keep the death spiral in perspective, the image below (made from Cryosphere Today images) compares mid-September 30% concentration ice from the years 2009 and 1990. Red shows areas of ice loss since 1990 and green shows areas of ice gain. I’m guessing that the Arctic will probably not be ice free by 2013, as predicted by researchers at the Naval Post-Graduate School.
Figure 4
The image below shows mid-September ice gain from 2007-2009 in green, and loss in red.
Figure 5
There continues to be a significant divergence in the extent graphs. Norsex in red is close to the 30 year mean, while NSIDC (blue) DMI (stippled) and JAXA (green) are closer to two standard deviations from the mean. The deficiency is almost entirely located in the Barents Sea, as seen above in Figure 3.
Figure 6
The modified NSIDC image below shows ice loss since early April in red.
Figure 7
The modified NSIDC image below compares April 14 2007 and 2010 ice. Areas in green have gained ice since 2007, and areas in red have lost ice since 2007.
Figure 8
It is still too early in the year to see much interesting. Still about six weeks before significant melting begins in the interior of the Arctic. Stay tuned.
Update of the Arctic temperature graph till 2010
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/icrutem3_hadsst2_0-360E_66-90N_na.png
Too bad the Catlin bunch didn’t try this stunt back in 1922. That would have made for a great reference.
At 2010, Arctic temperatures look slightly colder, than what they looked like in 2004.
Another good post Steve.
Watt’s Up? No pic of a lone polar bear (Ursus Bogus) alone on a melting floe? Even the UK Met Office can do better than that! See the following:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/timeline/
If people have great difficulty projecting ice extent even 3 years into the future how accurate are projections 20 years into the future?
2008
Too late to keep Arctic sea ice from vanishing?
“Have we passed the tipping point?” he asked. “It’s hard to see how the system may come back.”
The prospect of a mostly ice-free Arctic could mean a boom in shipping through the Bering Strait, several speakers said, but is bad news for polar bears and other animals.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23134090/
2007
‘Frightening’ projection for Arctic melt
The Arctic Ocean could be free of ice in the summer as soon as 2010 or 2015 – something that hasn’t happened for more than a million years, according to a leading polar researcher
“The frightening models we didn’t even dare to talk about before are now proving to be true,” Fortier told CanWest News Service, referring to computer models that take into account the thinning of the sea ice and the warming from the albedo effect – the Earth is absorbing more energy as the sea ice melts.
According to these models, there will be no sea ice left in the summer in the Arctic Ocean somewhere between 2010 and 2015.
“And it’s probably going to happen even faster than that,” said Fortier, who leads an international team of researchers in the Arctic looking for clues to climate change.”
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=c76d05dd-2864-43b2-a2e3-82e0a8ca05d5&k=53683
Apparently the polar bears can mistake nuclear subs for marine life: http://athropolis.ca/news/submarines.htm. Let’s hope the hair shirted explorers do not have to shoot too many polar bears on the way home.
Fred says on May 16, 2010 at 11:04 am
You have to distinguish between short-term fluctuations and the long-term trend.
Of course, you also have to distinguish between drawing trend lines on the data and the real, underlying processes, which might be cyclical.
Let’s see, according to the Met time line 1958 was the first year a direct measurment of CO2 in the atmosphere was made. Charles Keeling determined that there were 316 ppm. According to the time line in 2008 the CO2 concentration was 384 ppm. An increase of 68 ppm in fifty years. What am I missing here?
Thanks to MostlyHarmless for pointing me to the Metoffice site. Apart from the picture of Ursus Bogus there was an item the interested me.
” 1958 American scientist Charles David Keeling makes the first direct measurement of atmospheric CO2, on Mauna Loa, Hawaii (316 parts per million). The Keeling curve will become a crucial tracker of CO2 rise”.
Does that mean that that all the earlier measurements for atmospheric CO2 are derived from fossils, ice cores, sediments etc.? Have the climatologists used dubious splicing techniques similar to those of the pre-thermometer temperature records ussed on which they base their models? Surely there must be sites other than Hawaii? Do they all have the same readings? Do the parts per million vary with temperature, humidity or altitude?
Is there any simple guide for beginners like myself that might answer my questions?
“Have we passed the tipping point?” he asked. “It’s hard to see how the system may come back.”
The heartbreak of proctocraniosis.
I would have thought one large factor of breaking up ice would be wind and swell, my old workshop roof, 30 feet by 200, when a gust of wind hit it from one end it looked like a car was driving down it, the high pressure was depressing it as it went, obvious if you think about it, what would that do to rigid ice? I would expect it to break, leading to ice floes and maybe “rotten”ice, the same for swell (Ive seen 20 foot high swell on the Cornish coast) this would do the same, the use of arctic ice as a “litmus” test for earths warming/cooling is dishonest at least. In some respects I feel it is a shame the poor starving polar bears did not feast on this bogus scientific P/R exhibition, then some good would have come from it.
Hawaii always struck me as a poor choice of location from which to measure atmospheric CO2.
Volcanoes are well know for spewing out vast quantities of the gas.
Sitting on top of one of the world’s largest volcanoes, and particularly one which has been actively erupting for the last 20+ years to make your measurements seems more than a bit silly to me.
“predictably conclude that pH might be lower than it used to be”
I wouldn’t mind too much if that is how they present it, but they won’t will they? They will say that the oceans have ‘acidified’ which the average punter (and MSM journalist) will assume means that it will turn litmus paper red even faster than it used to…
jorgekafkazar – “The heartbreak of proctocraniosis”. Now that’s funny , thanks for the chuckle .
Looking at the warming from 1964 till today and comparing it to the period of 1884 till 1944, I don’t see anything dramatic.
OT
Don’t know if its been mentioned before in earlier posts but, the IPCC are requesting public comments regarding their assessment process:-
“The committee is seeking community input on IPCC procedures and processes. Comments and supporting resources may be published.
Please include an e-mail address and phone number with your submission so we may contact you with follow-up questions.
Thank you for your participation.”
http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/comments.html
From the satellite pictures we know which way the wind is blowing this year!
Re Solomon Green
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html
/OT
El Nino had caused warming in the Alaska/Western Canada area. Now El Nino is over. So that warming is over. Melt in that area will be slower than last year. If La Nina starts that melt will slow even more.
But the question I have is if wind and water currents don’t take away the ice that wind and water currents took away in 2007 how can 2010 surpass the summer ice loss of 2007?
At this very moment many graduates are receiving their degrees at the William Allen White School of journalsim. Almost 95% will not be hired to directly write news. They can blog for the dead tree newspapers. Put spin in the warm arctic stories. Talk up the perils of ocean acidification. Extinction of the poley bears.
Solomon Green asked:
“Does that mean that that all the earlier measurements for atmospheric CO2 are derived from fossils, ice cores, sediments etc.? Have the climatologists used dubious splicing techniques similar to those of the pre-thermometer temperature records ussed on which they base their models? Surely there must be sites other than Hawaii? Do they all have the same readings? Do the parts per million vary with temperature, humidity or altitude?
Is there any simple guide for beginners like myself that might answer my questions?”
It means that the IPCC report relies on proxy data (ice-cores,etc) prior to 1958, as the Met Office site does. Increasingly accurate chemical measurements were made from the middle of the 19th.C onwards, and are still being made. IPCC scientists chose to ignore those measurements, and the only logical reason would seem to be that they tell the “wrong” story, that is that CO2 concentrations were often higher pre-1958 than they have been since. CO2 IS measured at a number of locations worldwide.The fact that these measurements are largely ignored in favour of a site 4000 metres up an active volcano in the middle of a volcanic archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean far away from concentrated industrial activity might invite comment.
See “Measurement of Pre-Industrial CO2 Levels” (PDF)
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FoS%20Pre-industrial%20CO2.pdf
and “50 Years of Continuous Measurement of CO2 on Mauna Loa” whose author says
“Mauna Loa does not represent the typical atmospheric CO on different global locations but is typical only for this volcano at a maritime location in about 4000m altitude at that latitude” :
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/08_Beck-2.pdf
It’s interesting to note that the Mauna Loa data doesn’t appear to show any sign of the two eruptions of that active volcano in 1975 and 1984. Sceptics might draw their own conclusions from that. Also, the data shows little year-to-year fluctuation and range, unlike other measuring sites.
Solomon Green,
For anyone just getting up to speed on the facts regarding “climate change” [which used to be called global warming], there is no better site than that of the late, great John Daly.
Russ hatch 12:05
Probably there was no big grant money then and no cap and trade or other money scams. I think that is what you’re missing.
a Mr. Bloom to go with the caterpillar’s Gardner…
14 May: ABC Australia: Will Ockenden: Carbon dioxide isn’t all good for plants
But research from the University of California has found higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere could lower yields and the quality of food.
The study is published in the journal Science today, and shows plants don’t convert nitrogen into proteins as well as they normally do, when more carbon dioxide is in the air.
Lead author Professor Arnold Bloom says applying more fertilisers could solve the problem, but there’d need to be a more sophisticated management program.
“Today’s CO2 levels are 390 parts per million, and in the future the levels could rise to 550 per million,” he says…
“To the plant, they become nitrogen deprived as they are exposed to levels of CO2, which inhibits utility as a food source to humans and insects.”
“One fear is insect outbreaks will become more extensive, because the insects will have to eat more to meet nutritional needs.”
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201005/s2899607.htm
plus some good news:
13 May: InvestorsBusinessDaily: Escaping The PIIGS
As Europe fashioned a $1 trillion bailout fund and prepared for the worst, Spain did what no one thought a socialist state could ever do: It cut public-sector workers’ salaries 5% and held off their raises for 2011. Pensions were frozen for all but the poorest.
Better still, all the big money-wasting “green” and “alternative energy” projects — which a Spanish university study exposed as job killers — were scrapped. That’s right, all the global warming measures put in place because of the “emergency” were dumped.
Not surprisingly, markets rallied on this amazing show of will, whose message was that Spain is not Greece.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=534022