By Steve Goddard
“In everyone’s life, there is a summer of ’42 + 65”
By now, we have all been bludgeoned senseless with talk of how Arctic Ice dramatically declined in 2007 – “much faster than the models.” We were told by the experts that this rapid decline would lead to an ice-free Arctic in 2008, 2013, 2030, etc. – not to mention 1969 and 1922. I don’t buy it. The idea of an ice-free Arctic seems implausible to me without a dramatic change in climate.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
Let’s start by looking at what really happened in 2007. The graph below (calculated from PIPS maps) shows the average ice thickness in the Arctic Basin for 2006 – 2008. Note that the average thickness of the ice in 2007 was fairly constant through the spring and summer. In fact, 2007 had the largest average summer thickness. This is solid evidence that the low extent in 2007 was primarily due to horizontal melt and compaction of the ice, rather than vertical thinning.
Given that there was no change in average thickness, in order for the ice to disappear it would have to melt horizontally. As you can see in the graph below, the volume loss came to a hard stop in early September. The sun is too low by September for significant melt to proceed. There just isn’t enough time in the Arctic summer for all the ice to melt.
2006 was highest in the DMI record and had 30% greater summer extent than 2007 – but the 2007 late summer ice was almost 20% thicker. 2007 was never in any danger of a complete meltdown.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
The video below shows the thickening of the ice in 2007 as it compressed horizontally from the wind.
The next problem with an “ice-free Arctic” is that summer temperatures north of 80N have not changed over the last 50 years. You can see that in the DMI graphs. If anything, recent years have had colder summers near the pole. High Arctic warming has occurred in other seasons, but not during the summer. The melt season is very short at the pole, and some summers have no melt.
GISS doesn’t have much data north of 75N, but the few data points they do have show little or no summer warming.
In 2008, the North Pole started with first year ice. Mark Serreze bet that this would lead to an ice-free pole. It didn’t happen, in spite of relatively warm temperatures at the pole.
In summary:
- An ice free pole could not occur without dramatic summer warming.
- There has been almost no summer warming in the high Arctic over the last 70 years.
- The melt season is too short to have an ice free Arctic. Roger Pielke Sr. did a study which shows that the length of the melt season has not changed significantly.
- 2008 started with first year ice at the pole. It was a warm summer at the pole, and the ice did not disappear. There will never be a summer which starts with younger ice than 2008.
- Linear projections of an ice-free pole are incorrect. It is much more likely that the slope will tail off asymptotically.
- I propose that 2008 ice volume was close to the theoretical minimum, until Arctic summer temperatures increase dramatically.
- Dress appropriately the high Arctic. It is too cold for a bikini.
(Everyone agrees that PIPS2 is the best available data source of historical ice thickness. Please don’t start another conversation about that topic.)
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Haha – maybe we can argue about the meaning of “everyone”!
The next problem with an “ice-free Arctic” is that summer temperatures north of 80N have not changed over the last 50 years.
Ya, but just wait for 50 years from now! 😉
A bit off topic, but if you look at this Antarctic Sea Ice Extent chart;
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
you’ll note that Antarctic Sea Ice Extent has increased very rapidly in the last few months and now appears to exceed 2 standard deviations (an admittedly misleadingly narrow normal range due to NSIDC’s choice to exclude 2001 – 2010 in order to make their Arctic chart look scarier/abnormal).
Can we call this rapid increase in Antarctic Sea Ice Extent a Death Pile and start scaremongering about a pending ice age? Kidding of course, but WUWT?
There was also only a very modest Arctic summer warming from 1919 to 1939, while the winter warming was dramatic over the same period (particularly from winter 1918/19 to winter 1939/40), which the Norwegian scientist B.J. Birkeland called in 1930 the possible greatest sudden temperature rise ever observed. It seems that applies even today. More in Chapter 3 at: http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/
After a two day exchange at the Holy Grail Arctic Ice thread I see it seems the reason some won’t say there has been a recovery in Arctic ice since 2007 is because they are believing global warming could be happening so in the long term that warming will cause a continued downturn, the infamous ‘death spiral’, to occur and the increase since 2007 is just an aberration.
But that was not predicted by those who say Arctic (North Pole) is could be gone by 2013. If you look at the graphs and satellite images you can see that there has been an increase in Arctic ice since 2007. That ‘ice free’ prediction is doing very poorly. Ice is increasing not decreasing.
A close look at Arctic ice 2007: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_ArcticIce_2007.htm
I think it comes down to whether you think the glass is half full or half empty.
Or you could just go with the data and say the glass has fluid to the median point. I can’t see good or bad from what I see in Arctic ice data. It just is in the range of what is expected from it. So we don’t understand everything. 2007 was just another year. And so is this year. This is the way the world is.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8QQwNevED8]
This stuff of guessing about Arctic ice annoys me because I have already explained that Arctic warming has nothing to do with any greenhouse effect and is caused by warm currents entering the Arctic. If you read “What Warming?” you will learn that it started with a rearrangement of the North Atlantic current system at the turn of the twentieth century which set the Gulf Stream unto its present northerly course. The Gulf Stream today enters the Arctic in a broad front between Iceland and the Scandinavian peninsula and keeps the Russian Arctic ice free in the summer. It has eaten away approximately a third of the sea ice that would otherwise exist in its absence. In addition to the Gulf Stream a smaller amount of warm water also enters the Arctic through the Bering Strait. Usually it is enough to keep the Chukchi Sea, just north of the strait, ice free, but thanks to winds more than the usual amount came through in 2007 and cleared a large bubble of open water just north of the strait. The Gulf Stream side of the ocean at the same time changed only a little. Check out my Figure 14 to see the path of these warm currents entering the Arctic. They are sufficient to explain all present and past Arctic warming, no carbon dioxide or a magical “arctic amplification” required.
Umm.. if the ice loss in 2007 was not as bad as thought, doesn’t that mean the “recovery” since then is to that extent illusory?
I note that the current extent is not looking good. Any data yet on the volume?
What was the difference in Co2 level between 2006 and 2007?
Obviously the loss of ice in 2007 when compared to other recent years was due to something else besides Co2.
2007 also had a lot of high pressure in the Arctic, allowing extra sunlight and extra solar heating which contributed to melt. Recent weeks in the Artic have had a lot of high pressure, and we see record low levels of extent.
So why did wind and sun in 2007 contribute to a 30 year record low ice? Is this the first time in 30 years that we have had wind from that direction, and that amount of sun? Or did Co2 help out a little….
And on Arctic temperatures not getting above freezing much, melting ice absorbs as much energy as heating water by 80 degrees. Until the ice is melted temperatures will not be able to rise significantly above freezing. This is why high Arctic temps have been increasing in winter but staying constant in summer.
Temperatures over Arctic sea ice (more than ~100 km from land) rarely go much above 2 degrees C since the surface is constrained to the melting point of (slightly saline) ice. This just means all the available energy melts the ice directly rather than warming the atmosphere. So you don’t really prove anything here without accounting for how anomalous (or not) the solar radiation near the North pole was in 2008 during June and July.
In 2008, the onset of melt progressed more quickly than in previous years, and melt ponds persisted longer and later than usual.
I generally agree with your premise, but I would note that the photos in the above link aren’t really at the Pole. Although the webcam sites are installed close to the Pole, the consistent drift of the installations means that by the time these photos were taken they had moved about halfway to the Fram at around Lat 85-86
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/weather_data/2008/07100_hdr.wx
So, if the Arctic were to see no compaction events (it hasn’t even gotten to above zero Celcius yet in the 80N Arctic), would it then match the Antartic anomaly?
The water from South of the Bering Strait on through it into the Arctic is -1C or below.
It ain’t the water nor is it the air.
I had intended to include links to other webcam data sets but hit submit before I had added them. Here they are.
2009
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/weather_data/2009/07100_hdr.wx
2007
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/weather_data/2007/22206_plot.wx
2005
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/weather_data/2005/22207_plot.wx
2004
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/weather_data/2004/22203_plot.wx
Nightvid Cole
Are you suggesting that CO2 affects solar radiation at the pole?
One other thing worth noting from the North Pole webcam link is that the refreeze of surface melt water begins well before the summer minimum ice extent in most years.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/ice-npole.shtml
Sorry to be so disjointed in my posts, but the warmists have accomplished at least one worthwhile thing, they’ve driven me to drink.
Derek B
Current volume is higher than 2007-2009, and lower than 2006. I will provide more detail in this week’s WUWT sea ice news.
Ten days to the top. The sun’s ready for the downward slide!
If find the reassuring tone of the article at odds with reality. This is an up-to-date chart of sea ice volume anomaly from the Polar Science Center.
As can be clearly seen, the volume loss has sped up since 2007.
Seems fishy to me. I’ve read the article from 1922 and could not find any mention of an ice-free Arctic. And it has been established before that Goddard’s calculations based on PIPS 2.0 can’t be trusted.
@Roald says: June 9, 2010 at 11:49 pm
Seems fishy to me. I’ve read the article from 1922 and could not find any mention of an ice-free Arctic. And it has been established before that Goddard’s calculations based on PIPS 2.0 can’t be trusted.
Really?
It has certainly been established that trolls come on here and post barefaced [snip].
But not to worry. NASA is now on the case.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7814345/Nasa-launches-its-first-ever-global-warming-investigation-to-the-Arctic.html
We learn “Researchers from the space agency hope to provide the most detailed research yet on how global warming is devastating the ocean’s ecosystem.”
Sounds pretty blue-chip, state of the art scientific stuff to me. They are obviously starting off without any preconceptions!
Steve,
Can you confirm that you are now taking into account ice content in these calculations? If so, I presume you will be putting errata on your previous posts as they ignored that critical input and therefore presented incorrect values for ice volumes and thickness.
@Martin Brumby says: June 10, 2010 at 12:31 am
“Really?
It has certainly been established that trolls come on here and post barefaced [snip].”
Yeah, let’s see. The 1922 article gives account of exceptional ice conditions around Spitzbergen and an unusually warm summer in Arctic Norway. There’s also talk about the very warm Gulf Stream that made it probable that the favourable ice conditions were to continue for some time. There’s no hint whatsoever that the entire Arctic was going to be ice-free. And several posters have pointed out on the latest Arctic sea ice news thread that Goddard can’t get his PIPS ice concentrations right.
So who’s the troll now?
Martin Brumby,
The “Researchers from the space agency hope to provide the most detailed research yet on how global warming is devastating the ocean’s ecosystem.” quote is from the Telegraph, not NASA.
Read first, then shoot.
I think that the first place to look for an explanation of arctic warming is as a purely regional factor.
My geography teacher told us about 60 years ago that one man’s north wind is another man’s south wind.
I live in France about fifteen miles from the mediterranean sea; winters are usually mild with the first and last air frosts between mid December and late February normally. However the last three winters have been unusually cold, culminating, in last winter, with an air frost on the sixteenth of October, eight days of snow in early March and a minimum temperature of two degrees centigrade at two o’clock in the afternoon on the second of May!
Needless to say that northerly winds have been much more common over the last six months than is usual.
So if air of polar origin has been leaving the higher latitudes it must have been replaced by warmer air from the south.
Therefore any polar warming can be, a priori, regarded as a regional phenomenon unrelated to global temperature changes.