2007 Sea Ice Post Mortem

Haha – maybe we can argue about the meaning of “everyone”!

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.

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]

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?

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.

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.

Nightvid Cole
Are you suggesting that CO2 affects solar radiation at the pole?

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.

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.

@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!

@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?

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.

When it comes to the Arctic nothing now surprises me about the paranoia. I just wrote this piece about a stunning factual error made by a guest writer on the BBC website:
http://blackswhitewash.com/2010/06/10/bbc-polar-diary-its-nothing-to-do-with-penguins/

Sea Ice Extent. 2009 melt start 5 March at 13.97 million sq/km. 2010 melt start 31 March at 14.41 million sq/km. Head start for 2009 413,000 million sq/km.
At 31 March 2010 had made up the difference both now at 14.41 million sq/km.
MELTING; in 2010 the first million sq/km melt took 26 days (2009 35 days) Second million sq/km took 13 days (2009 17 days) Third million sq/km took 15 days (2009 19 days) Fourth million sq/km took 15 days (2009 18 days) It took 69 days in 2010 to melt 4 million sq/km and it took 89 days, 20 days more, in 2009. Multi-year ice in 1980 between 80 and 90 %. Multi-year ice now just 18%, the dying remains jammed against Canada and north Greenland. Arctic sea ice recovered? Definition of recovered please. Ice volume increasing? The arguments are highly unconvincing and improbable; wishfull thinking if you like.

stevengoddard says:
June 10, 2010 at 4:11 am
Tom P
The concentration of ice is the Arctic Basin is pretty close to 100% this year. If you are concerned that PIPS does not consider concentration when calculating the average thickness of a grid cell, then multiply all of my 2010 numbers by 1.0 . For example, if I report an average thickness of 2.55 metres, then multiply that number by 1.0, and you will get a corrected number of 2.55 metres.
Hello, 2.55 x 1.0 equalls 2.55 Have I learned something today?

CO2
Hopefully you have “learned” how to identify sarcasm.

I think we are obsessing over small amounts of noise in the signal. To my physicist eyes, using the last graph Steve’s article, I see a slight downward trend from 1979-1997, then a more pronounced downward trend from 1997-2006, and then level from 2006 to present.
Also the noise level seems to be around + – 0.5 million sq km, so the above trends do not appear to be significantly outside the noise level of the signal. Another 10 years of data and something more signifcant could maybe be said. Otherwise, I don’t see how much more could inferred from the data.

Tom P.,
Why do you persist with the uncertainty related to concentration?
The thickess ice is in the area with the highest concentrations.
The thinner ice is in the areas with the relatively lower concentrations.
If you multiply each local pixel by the concentration value, you increase the weighting of hte thick ice and decrease the weighting of the thin ice. Hence, the result is an average thickness that is GREATER THAN the average derived without such a correction.
The uncertainty in Steve’s calculation is small and has a conservative bias. Since the analysis is of TRENDS, so long as he uses the same method throughout, for all data points, the error to the trend is very small.

David L. says:
June 10, 2010 at 5:02 am
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound? If the North Pole warms up and no one is there to measure it, does it melt ice?”
Not if they were deaf. As for melting, no it doesn’t, being there to measure is a melting law of nature. Good night, I’ll sleep peacefully.

* An ice free pole could not occur without dramatic summer warming.

So you “win the game” by setting the goal to the worst case possible, complete and total loss of all ice. Anything short of everything means you were right and “they” were wrong. And by implication, the fact that the amount of ice has progressively decreased for decades, and will eventually result in an ice free summer pole, is meaningless simply because a complete and total melt hasn’t happened yet.
It’s like saying you are going to live forever, because you haven’t died yet.

* There has been almost no summer warming in the high Arctic over the last 70 years.

A convenient cherry pick. There has been dramatic warming in the spring and fall, but summer warming is pretty much capped by the fact that there’s just no way to get more than 24 hours of sunlight out of a summer Arctic day, and any GHG (or any other) effect is of course dwarfed by that volume of non-stop sunlight.

* The melt season is too short to have an ice free Arctic.

This is false, but even if it were true, what if the melt season gets longer, due to rising temperatures (as happened last year)? But at the base of it, you have no foundation for saying the melt season is too short. If spring and fall temperatures are warm enough, that will do it, and if those seasons also stretch to start and end sooner, and if cumulative years reduce ice thickness (yes, yes, keep reading), it’s a done deal.

* 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.

I’m afraid your phrasing is ambiguous. Are you defining the pole as that single point at 180˚ N, or some area around it, or is this just a moniker for the Arctic Sea? Since I know there was ice at the pole throughout 2007, and so 2008 could not have had first year ice there, I will assume you merely mean “the Arctic Sea.”
As such, your first statement is patently false. The only way for the entire pole to have only first year ice would be if it had all melted the previous year. So as soon as a year melts more than 2007, the following year will have more first year ice than 2008, but not “only first year ice.” Your statement equates to “if it didn’t happen in 2008, it will never happen,” which is just silly. You’re back to your “I can’t die, because I haven’t died yet” mantra.

* Linear projections of an ice-free pole are incorrect. It is much more likely that the slope will tail off asymptotically.

I assume this means tail off upward so that it never happens… a series that converges to some value short of zero. Some scientists, who get paid to study this more closely than you (and therefore spend a lot more time thinking about it) say the opposite, that when it happens, it will be shockingly abrupt.
The idea that a process might accelerate, however, is neither counter intuitive nor at all unexpected, and so your statement that a particular outcome is “more likely” is unfounded — unless you’d actually like to prevent reasoning and evidence to support that assertion.
There is no reason in the world to believe that Arctic ice would behave like a falling object (where air resistance increases with velocity) or a decaying element with a half life (where the loss is fractional, so less to lose means less loss), rather than like a nuclear explosion which reaches critical mass (which is a cascading chain reaction, which accelerates because each reaction results in ever more triggers for future reactions).
More specifically, if you think of the simple case where exposed surface area results in more melting, if you have one very large chunk of ice, it will melt more slowly (less exposed perimeter) than a whole lot of small chunks. Eventually, that large chunk will get small enough to be broken by uneven melt, and wind and wave action. So mechanically, there is every reason to believe that this could be an accelerating process, if the ice gets thin enough to reach that point.
And this is pretty much how the Arctic is structured, with a main mass clinging to the north coast of Greenland. It melts inward, from the edges, but it’s anchored by Greenland. If it gets thin enough, though, you could see it quickly and dramatically fracture and melt.

* I propose that 2008 ice volume was close to the theoretical minimum, until Arctic summer temperatures increase dramatically.

Time will tell. And yes, I have bookmarked this page.

* Dress appropriately [for] the high Arctic. It is too cold for a bikini.

Ah, dry humor which plays to people’s naive emotional side, equivalent to saying “look, everyone knows it’s cold up there, so how could anything possibly melt.” When all else fails, try a sarcastic, logic free appeal to emotion and personal experience.
Well, time will tell how good your logic is, Mr. Goddard. And while you can smile for a few days if you turn out to be right, and say “look, I’m smarter than all of those silly scientists,” I want to be sure that you have the courage to make an appropriately humble post if you turn out to be wrong (actually, a whole series of them, given how much time and energy you’ve put into this whole “Arctic Ice isn’t and won’t melt” kick) — and we live to see an event which hasn’t happened in 700,000 years.

Tom P.,
The Posey paper ice volumes are largely for MARCH, not MAY. Your comparisons to the early May effective volume levels are thus erroneous.
The most recent PIOMAS results don’t match the most recent facts that we seen for 2010. The area and extend in April and May of 2010, on average, were greater than the levels for the last several years, noteably 2008 and 2009. We have seen that published measurement data and PIPS calaulated thickness levels for 2010 are greater than the thickness levels in 2008 and 2009. We know that in each of those years the amount of multi-year ice has increased from the prior year, so the trend toward thicker ice in 2009 and 2010 makes sense.
While both the area and thickness inputs to volume have INCREASED, the PIOMAS plot indicates a relative volume decrease. THAT DECREASE, does not fit the data available from other reliable sources. Hence the questions.

Crashex,
Thickness and concentration are not well correlated, so any volume calculation needs to use both. I am unsure whether Steve is unwilling or unable to combine the two datasets, but while he persists in using just thickness he is producing erroneous results. The impossible decrease in total volume after the fall equinox in his 2007 plot is just one example of the misleading nature of Steve’s calculations.

Tom P,
Obsess much?
The ice front continued to melt “after the equinox” in 2007 because of unusually warm water and winds in the Beaufort Sea. The only thing that is “impossible” is trying to have a sane conversation about this topic with you.

Tom P.,
Just saw your thickness and volume plots for 2007 and 2008. It looks like fine work.
Please continue your efforts with the 2009 data and the first 5 months of 2010 and overlay all the thickness data on one plot and the volume data on the other. I’m interested to see if the thickness and volume trends since 2008 using your methods.
For some reason all the papers stop at 2008.

Anne van der Bom says:
June 9, 2010 at 11:38 pm
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.
____________
Steve doesn’t consider the PIOMAS model as valid, and would rather base his arguments on the PIPS 2.0 model, which even the NIC doesn’t take seriously, though we see in the latest NIC update for June, PIOMAS is mentioned. You can’t fault Steve’s general train of logic, but his basis (in using PIPS 2.0 data) is suspect at best.
The next few years are going to be very telling. Steve et. al want to base some big recovery on a modest recovery in the summer minimum over the past few years, when as has been pointed out by one of our resident Ph.D. experts, we actually saw more ice lost from March to Sept in 2008 than 2007 because 2008 started from a higher level.
Personally, I think PIOMAS is probably closer to the truth of what’s going on in the Arctic, and we must anxiously await CryoSat 2 to start putting out thickness data to confirm that. While I’ve stated for many months that I think this summer’s minimum will be less than 2008-2009, I’m not sure we’ll see us quite get as low as 2007, but we could if current trends continue! Be that as it may, I do think we’ll see at least one new record low before 2015, and it could be a dramatic one, as we’ll be seeing the solar max arrive in 2013 with increasing solar irradiance and lower GCR’s– all of which on top of the general forcing of GHG, could tip the scale enough for a dramatic summer low before 2015 (like 2.0-2.5 million sq. km). This would of course be very problematic for those who remain skeptical of an ice free summer Arctic Ocean this century.

Introduction;
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.
” told by the experts”, which experts and how many. “would lead to an ice-free Arctic “, isn’t this usually preceeded with the proviso “if this trend continues”. Projections using “if” are not claims.

There is a lot more ice now than two years ago. Why are some of you in such desperate denial?

Over at the new science-based Arctic Sea Ice site, a discussion of Linday and Zhang’s predictions about September sea ice based on PIOMAS:
“And thus Lindsay predicts extent in September to be 4.44 +/- 0.39 million square km. According to Lindsay his colleague Zhang uses ‘quite a different method’ for his prediction, which currently is 4.7 million square km. Mind you, these predictions are updated at the end of each month. For instance, at the end of April Linday’s (very educated) guess was a September sea ice extent of 5.12 +/- 0.42 million sq km.”
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2010/06/predictions-lindsay-and-zhang.html
Note that Linsay and Zhang’s predictions refer to *average* September ice extent, not the transient minimum, which is considered less predictable.

[snip try rephrasing that – mod]

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
June 9, 2010 at 8:15 pm
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.
Perhaps you were still thinking about March and April ?
As of yesterday, the “recovery” in Arctic sea ice extent from 2007 is -425,781km²
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv
06,09,2010,10468438
06,09,2007,10894219
Here, you can see it better graphically:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent_L.png

Some people here are quoting as contrary evidence, the same experts who forecast an ice free Arctic in 2013 – LOL ………….
Maybe an asteroid will strike the Arctic in 2012? Or perhaps the earth’s interior will melt, like in the movie 2012?

Roald says:
June 10, 2010 at 2:40 am
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
_____________________________________________________________________
“There’s no hint whatsoever that the entire Arctic was going to be ice-free?????”
China prepares for an ice free Arctic
NOAA : Arctic Ice free in 30 years?
2009 National Geographic: Arctic Largely Ice Free in Summer Within Ten Years?
Arctic to be ice-free in summer in 20 years: scientist | Reuters (2009)

Anne van der Bom says: June 9, 2010 at 11:38 pm
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.
You’re late to the party. Do you believe a model or actual observations. Here’s a primer (and 7 more before that).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/06/wuwt-arctic-sea-ice-news-8/#comments

[snip try rephrasing that – mod]

No. Exactly what part of it am I not allowed to say?
[snip ~dbs, mod.] It fits in well at WUWT.
Reply: Since you don’t understand, it’s like this. If you invite somebody into your home, and they call you names, insult your intelligence, demean your family, etc. Would you not do at least one of the following?
1- Ask them to rephrase it?
2- Ask them to apologize?
3- Ask them to leave?
See the policy page here http://wattsupwiththat.com/policy/
According the the comments system, you’ve made 167 comments that have been posted. 1 rephrase request in 167 is not unreasonable.
– mod

For the record, I am taking the PIPS maps and using their data without modification.
Some posters here insist that I should corrupt the PIPS data with inappropriate manipulations, which would actually bump the 2010 numbers upwards relative to all earlier years.
I’d like to have an intelligent conversation with people who want to discuss science, but it appears that a number of people are insistent on drowning out the science.

CO2 says: June 10, 2010 at 7:34 am
” told by the experts”, which experts and how many. “would lead to an ice-free Arctic “, isn’t this usually preceeded with the proviso “if this trend continues”. Projections using “if” are not claims.
How about the words potential, maybe, possibly, probable, etc. How many times are these words, including “if”, used in the 2007 IPCC novel? But you believe that now, don’t you. Hmmmm.

Smokey says: June 10, 2010 at 6:39 am:
As another reader pointed out, in Sphaerica’s blog comments, Susan Anderson says:
Forgot to say, via RealClimate (your #240, which unfortunately did not close the subject) and DotEarth, which is struggling with the usual cloaca of denial. I love the idiot savants … and appreciate your hard work on WUWT.
Trolling on behalf of RealClimate is hard work.
I thought you’d like that!
Us “idiot savants” need to “cloaca” as often as possible ;~D.

stevengoddard says:
June 10, 2010 at 9:28 am
For the record, I am taking the PIPS maps and using their data without modification…
I’d like to have an intelligent conversation with people who want to discuss science, but it appears that a number of people are insistent on drowning out the science.
Most people are immune to facts and rely on authority for all of their beliefs and opinions. The possibility of freedom and responsibility for their own thoughts terrifies them.

stevengoddard says:
June 10, 2010 at 8:43 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/06/wuwt-arctic-sea-ice-news-8/#comment-405109
julienne says:
June 7, 2010 at 9:47 pm
“…. For the record, I am not convinced that the PIOMAS results showing less ice volume today than a couple of years ago are correct. Since there was more survival of first-year ice the last 2 summers it would make sense that the overall thickness (and hence volume) is higher today than in May of 2008 for example. Even so, the Arctic Ocean saw more depletion of the oldest ice types out of the Arctic Basin this past winter (export out of Fram Strait was normal), so it is likely that the ice volume (and hence ice thickness) remain anomalously low.”
———————————————-
The truth is we don’t actually know if PIOMAS volume estimates are correct without doing real comparisons to observations. Yes, the model seemed to perform well for the few years of comparisons they made with ICESat data, so perhaps their results are close to reality.
Unfortunately, we don’t have Arctic-wide ice thickness observations at the moment (radar altimetry measurements don’t cover the entire Arctic) in order to make a longer inter-comparison. I will say however that the PIPS2.0 model estimates of ice thickness are too large when you compare them to actual observations from either radar or laser altimeter ice thickness values. Thus, any volume calculations made from PIPS2.0 will similarly be biased high.
What will be interesting to observe this summer is what will happen to the old ice that was transported into the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas over the winter. If that ice doesn’t survive the summer melt, it will further deplete the Arctic’s store of old, thick ice. A lot of that ice is currently in more southerly locations than it has been in the past several years, which means it is in a warmer location.

Julienne
If the PIPS data is consistently biased high as you suggest, that shouldn’t make much difference to my relative volume calculations. The volume numbers I am presenting are in units pixel-metres, and as long as the bias is consistent from year to year – the relative position along the Y-Axis should be correct.

Since you don’t understand, it’s like this.

I do not remember anything insulting in my post, especially when compared to what has been written here in the past two days, by other posters, about me, and particularly since what I was doing was replying to an attack on me and my character. You didn’t snip that attack, but you snipped my response.
Please e-mail the original, snipped post to me so I can figure out which part of it I could/should edit and resubmit.
Also please, please apply your rules across the board, not just to those that disagree with your own position.
Reply: It is deleted, there’s no recovery. With all this griping back and forth you could have made three new comments by now. – mod

Tim Clark says:
June 10, 2010 at 8:53 am
Do you believe a model or actual observations.
How did Steve Goddard arrive to his conclusions? By estimating ice volume from the observations. What does the PIOMASS model do? It estimates ice volume from the observations.
Now, since both are essentially doing the same thing, explain to me why Steven Goddard’s work is better than that of the Polar Science Center.

stevengoddard says:
June 10, 2010 at 10:53 am
Julienne
I find your comments about thick ice in southerly locations interesting. The concern has been that the location of the thick ice retreated to the north in recent years. Now you are expressing concern that it has expanded back to the south. That seems a little inconsistent to me.
——————————-
Steve, the thick ice in recent years has been confined to north of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago. Of course this wasn’t the case say back in the 1980s, but it is true the last several years as the % of MYI ice in the Arctic Basin has dwindled.
What happened this winter was that the Beaufort Gyre expanded, leading to transport of some of that old, thick ice in the Canada Basin towards the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas and that lobe of old ice is not turning back northwards to replenish the MYI as would be the case under a typical Beaufort Gyre pattern.
Basically the strong negative AO pattern this winter resulted in old ice transported to southerly locations in the Beaufort and Chukchi (and in fact there hasn’t been old ice in the Chukchi for several years now). If that ice survives summer melt, then some replenishment will occur. If not, then the strong negative AO pattern this past winter will have actually resulted in even more depletion of the Arctic’s store of old, thick ice. We will just have to wait and see…
I just submitted a paper on this topic.

Julienne
So what is your prognosis for summer weather in the Chukchi and southern Beaufort Sea?

Hey Steve!
You seem to have touched a nerve or something! There are more trolls on here than the number of “aid workers” that have to sail slingshots to Gaza.
(O.K. Not that many trolls. I exaggerate. Just to make a point. And to wind ’em up.)
But they are really coming out of the woodwork today.
For myself, I couldn’t care a fiddler’s fart if the Arctic ice melts “soon” or not. It will refreeze anyway. And if it has been “700,000 years” since last it did (someone’s got some pretty brilliant records, obviously. I wouldn’t put any money on it not having melted in the last 150 years) then perhaps it is about time it did again.
Is it really supposed to justify spending Trillions of dollars on “renewable energy” (which incidentally doesn’t work) just because some ice melts?

For those who haven’t read my recent articles, the numbers are calculated by doing a numerical integration of ice thickness across all pixels in PIPS images. There is no “estimation” going on. If the Navy images are correct, then my numbers are correct.

Tim Clark says:
June 10, 2010 at 11:15 am
Ahh, I sure notice the old bait and switch. First you use this site to debate;
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv
Then switch to this site to make an unrelated point;
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
without commenting on the data provided.

Ahh, did I neglect to comment on the obvious for your benefit ?
Both IARC-JAXA and NSIDC show the most recent Arctic sea ice extent substantially below the value for the same date in 2007. And both IARC-JAXA and NSIDC data are widely quoted on WUWT.
That would make the Norwegian Nansen site the odd man out. Perhaps you could find some other site which confirms that 2010 is higher than both 2007 and 2008 for this date – kind of like I just did, confirming that 2010 was less than 2007.
Good luck with that.
Try not to get “alarmed” by what you find.

Z says:
June 10, 2010 at 12:58 pm
sphaerica says:
June 10, 2010 at 6:26 am

“but summer warming is pretty much capped by the fact that there’s just no way to get more than 24 hours of sunlight out of a summer Arctic day, and any GHG (or any other) effect is of course dwarfed by that volume of non-stop sunlight.”
I’m interested in that statement – would you expand on it?

Because of the tilt of the earth, the Arctic Circle gets sunlight 24/7 for a while around the summer solstice. Obviously, under such circumstances, the strength of the sun’s rays are locally a more powerful radiative force than greenhouse gases. If we suddenly had two suns, one on each side of the planet, giving 24/7 sunlight, then it’s clear that the planet would warm immensely. In such a scenario, I suspect GHGs would be relatively inconsequential.
In the case of the Arctic, this is what it experiences every summer, 24 hours of daylight. The point I was making is that it will be a long, long time before you see the Arctic get much warmer in the summer, no matter how many GHGs you add, because the radiative strength of 24 hours of sunlight is far beyond what even a tripling of CO2 would provide.
Winter, spring and fall are another matter, however, and at those times the effects of GHGs are quite noticeable, as can be seen by following the link in the OP to the seasonal graphs of Arctic temperatures. These increases in temperatures as a result of GHGs will, when temperatures get above freezing, increase the pace of ice melt, and could help to make the melt season longer.
The effects of GHGs are always most important at night (when the sun is gone) and in winter (when the days are short), and so the direct effects of the sun are then at their minimum… just like you put on a jacket or heavier coat at night, versus the daytime. Greenhouse gases are, after all, just like a coat or blanket, trapping heat that would otherwise escape into space.
Without a blanket, you get cold at night. With a blanket, you stay warm. In the daytime, you don’t really notice the difference because of the sun.

Z says:
June 10, 2010 at 12:58 pm

sphaerica says:
June 10, 2010 at 6:26 am
“but summer warming is pretty much capped by the fact that there’s just no way to get more than 24 hours of sunlight out of a summer Arctic day, and any GHG (or any other) effect is of course dwarfed by that volume of non-stop sunlight.”
I’m interested in that statement – would you expand on it?

Because of the tilt of the earth, the Arctic Circle gets sunlight 24/7 for a while around the summer solstice, just as it gets no sun during the winter solstice, which causes arctic ice to form. Obviously, with 24 hours of daylight, the strength of the sun’s rays are locally a more powerful radiative force than greenhouse gases. If we suddenly had two suns, one on each side of the planet, giving 24/7 sunlight, then it’s clear that the planet would warm immensely. In such a scenario, I suspect GHGs would be relatively inconsequential.
In the case of the Arctic, this is what it experiences every summer, 24 hours of daylight. The point I was making is that it will be a long, long time before you see the Arctic get much warmer in the summer, no matter how many GHGs you add, because the radiative strength of 24 hours of sunlight is far beyond what even a tripling of CO2 would provide.
Winter, spring and fall are another matter, however, and at those times the effects of GHGs are quite noticeable, as can be seen by following the link in the OP to the seasonal graphs of Arctic temperatures. These increases in temperatures as a result of GHGs will, when temperatures get above freezing, increase the pace of ice melt, and could help to make the melt season longer.
The effects of GHGs are always most important at night (when the sun is gone) and so in winter (when the days are short and nights are longer), when the direct effects of the sun are then at their minimum… just like you put on a jacket or heavier coat at night, versus the daytime. Greenhouse gases are, after all, just like a coat or blanket, trapping heat that would otherwise escape into space.
Without a blanket, you get cold at night. With a blanket, you stay warm. In the daytime, you don’t really notice the difference because of the sun.

Z says:
June 10, 2010 at 12:58 pm

sphaerica says:
June 10, 2010 at 6:26 am
“but summer warming is pretty much capped by the fact that there’s just no way to get more than 24 hours of sunlight out of a summer Arctic day, and any GHG (or any other) effect is of course dwarfed by that volume of non-stop sunlight.”
I’m interested in that statement – would you expand on it?

Because of the tilt of the earth, the Arctic Circle gets sunlight 24/7 for a while around the summer solstice, just as it gets no sun during the winter solstice, which causes arctic ice to form. Obviously, with 24 hours of daylight, the strength of the sun’s rays are locally a more powerful radiative force than greenhouse gases.
The point I was making is that it will be a long, long time before you see the Arctic get much warmer in the summer, no matter how many GHGs you add, because the radiative strength of 24 hours of sunlight is far beyond what even a tripling of CO2 would provide.
Winter, spring and fall are another matter. At those times the effects of GHGs are quite noticeable, as can be seen by following the link in the OP to the seasonal graphs of Arctic temperatures. These increases in temperatures will increase the pace of ice melt and could help to make the melt season longer.
The effects of GHGs are always most important at night (when the sun is gone) and so in winter (when nights are longer), when the direct effects of the sun are then at their minimum… just like you put on a jacket or heavier coat at night, versus the daytime. Greenhouse gases are, after all, just like a coat or blanket, trapping heat that would otherwise escape into space.
Without a blanket, you get cold at night. With a blanket, you stay warm. In the daytime, you don’t really notice the difference because of the sun.

Gneiss
The Posey data you presented is described as “Central Arctic.” I suspect that he is measuring in a smaller area than me, so you can’t do an apples to apples comparison with my data. He is looking at a smaller region.
Considering the entire Arctic, there was clearly a lot more ice in May, 2006 than May 2007 which disagrees with his numbers. The numbers I am presenting here are accurate representations of the maps. You obviously can’t expect to get the same numbers when measuring different regions.

Tim Clark says:
June 10, 2010 at 9:37 am
CO2 says: June 10, 2010 at 7:34 am
” told by the experts”, which experts and how many. “would lead to an ice-free Arctic “, isn’t this usually preceeded with the proviso “if this trend continues”. Projections using “if” are not claims.
“How about the words potential, maybe, possibly, probable, etc. How many times are these words, including “if”, used in the 2007 IPCC novel? But you believe that now, don’t you. Hmmmm.”
What’s your purpose of belittling the 2007 IPCC Report? As Roger Whittacker sang, “No I don’t believe in if any more, it’s an illusion” Use the word “if” anytime you like, but don’t drop it when used by someone in order to deceive, by suggesting it is a claim. ( As in “the Arctic will be ice free in 2013 “IF”…)I see the use of “if” for what it is, a qualifier that is qualified. All the words you cited are valid, provided they are not taken out of context.

Tim Clark says:
June 10, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Anne van der Bom says:
June 10, 2010 at 11:19 am
[…]
Who knows? We shall see.
Read here how the model works. Seems to me that it is just a little bit more sophisticated then counting pixels what Steven Goddard is essentially doing.

R. Gates says:
June 10, 2010 at 11:21 am
stevengoddard says:
June 10, 2010 at 10:53 am
Julienne
———————-
Interesting, I had just calculated what the September minimum may be, using June 10 as a starting date and assuming that the remaining melt period (taken as 95 days) would follow 2009. Over that period in 2009 the ice loss, starting at 10.98 million sq kilometres was 60,276 msk per day average, leading to a low of 5.25 msk, a loss of 5.73 msk. Based on my assumption, if I add the 2009 melt to 2010 as of June 10, the result is 4.68 msk. Eerily close to the PIOMAS prediction of 4.7 msk.

Jean Meeus wrote,
“What IS the inconvenience of an ice-free arctic ocran?”
That’s an important topic of research these days, because just about all of the actual Arctic scientists think we’re headed there. Changing such a large white, heat-reflecting surface into a dark, heat-absorbing one will alter thermal properties of the planet. One obvious effect is that Arctic sea ice provides thermal protection to the Greenland Ice Sheet, where mass loss, already accelerating, can be expected to speed further. That will impact coastal cities worldwide and probably ocean circulation such as the Gulf Stream. Similarly, a less icy ocean will accelerate permafrost thawing on land, and clathrate release undersea, both irreversible (on civilization time scales) positive feedbacks to further greenhouse warming.
Expect mid-latitude shifts in temperature and precipitation to follow, with effects on agriculture and infrastructure. For example (hat tip to Gareth at Hot Topic, http://hot-topic.co.nz/dont-watch-that-watch-this/#more-5091 ), Jim Overland at the IPY conference in Oslo this week notes the connection between Arctic warming and more severe winters in the Eastern U.S. For more about Overland’s research, see
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/future/impacts.html
“Teleconnections impact mid-latitudes
Higher pressure surfaces above the North Pole, due to the warmer temperatures associated with greatly reduced sea ice, are thought to impact large scale wind patterns over the Northern Hemisphere. Climate models show these connections with cold air moving south, producing low pressure areas and unusually cold winters in the eastern U.S. and eastern Asia, and cooler than usual weather in late winter from Europe to the Far East1,2,3,4 (Figure 1, below). This would be only one factor among many influencing U.S. and Eurasian weather. How do we think we know this?”

@ R. Gates – June 10, 2010 at 7:16 am …
That’s what I like … predictions that are verifiable within the average man’s life expectancy … not only in economics and stocks, but also in the so called science of climatology …
The reason why I had so much fun poking to do at, among others, the Himalaya Gletsjers and 2035 … untill it was “a typo”, and became 2350 … and will become 20350 in 2350 … that is no fun at all for me, since, everything staying normal with medicine and gen therapeutics, I will not be around then …
I do think we’ll see at least one new record low before 2015, and it could be a dramatic one
and of course, the d word, “dramatic”, is compulsary … 🙂
I can’t wait to get on a cruise to the North Pole … probably only a few years later … pondering that I was partly responsible, albeit on a small scale, for driving my car to work instead of going there by train …

Roger Knights says:
June 11, 2010 at 1:29 pm
The page you pointed to was based on two reports, one of which was: http://www.clepair.net/windefficiency.html. A tale-telling quote from that report: “Does an efficiency loss of this magnitude actually occur? We were unable to find data on this effect.” The whole article is full of ‘we don’t know’ and ‘we assume’ and ‘we have no data’. And they are guessing there way to their conclusion.
Modern combined cycle gas turbines (the units that power companies usually employ as load followers) have excellent partial load efficiency. When it runs at 50% capacity, CO2 emissions are 46% less than at full capacity. See here for example: http://www.power-technology.com/projects/isleofgrain/isleofgrain8.html. With google you can find many more sources that confirm this.

In the interest of ‘a picture says more than a thousand words’, let me suggest to take a look at the real time energy generation in Spain. There you can see how they deal with the variability of wind by adjusting CCGT and especially hydro. There is an accompanying page showing only the real time wind power.
I think the variability of wind power is overblown. If you look to a single turbine, that might be justified. But you can not simply multiply that by the 1000’s of turbines in a country. Spread out over a larger area, much of the fluctuations cancel each other out and what remains is a large scale variability that looks much like the daily fluctuation in demand, something the energy companies have dealt with as long as they exist.