File this under short term trends matter when we say they matter.
From The Montreal Gazette
BY RANDY BOSWELL, CANWEST NEWS SERVICE
Arctic Ocean ice cover retreated faster last month than in any previous May since satellite monitoring began more than 30 years ago, the latest sign that the polar region could be headed for another record-setting meltdown by summerās end.
The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center had already warned earlier this spring that low ice volume ā the result of repeated losses of thick, multi-year ice over the past decade ā meant this past winterās ice-extent recovery was superficial, due mainly to a fragile fringe of new ice that would be vulnerable to rapid deterioration once warmer temperatures set in.
And, driven by unusually hot weather in recent weeks above the Arctic Circle, the polar ice is disappearing at an unprecedented rate, reducing overall ice extent to less than that recorded in May 2007 ā the year when a record-setting retreat by mid-September alarmed climatologists and northern governments.
The centre reported that across much of the Arctic, temperatures were two to five degrees Celsius above average last month.
āIn May, Arctic air temperatures remained above average, and sea ice extent declined at a rapid pace,ā the Colorado-based centre said in its June 8 report.
The centre pegged the retreat at an average of 68,000 square kilometres a day, noting that āthis rate of loss is the highest for the month of May during the satellite record.ā
Ice loss was greatest in the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, āindicating that the ice in these areas was thin and susceptible to melt,ā the centre added.
āMany polynyas, areas of open water in the ice pack, opened up in the regions north of Alaska, in the Canadian Arctic Islands, and in the Kara and Barents and Laptev seas.ā
Read the rest of the story here
“And, driven by unusually hot weather in recent weeks above the Arctic Circle, the polar ice is disappearing at an unprecedented rate”
Where do they get this stuff? I can’t believe they can just make up the news like that.
The claims that the current rate of ice loss is historically unprecendented an unmatched in the last
several millenia (at least), and that such changes could not possibly be attributable to natural causes are all completely bogus claims (of course), and yet many people will fall for them anyway.
Short term trends in February and March were much more significant.
From the article…
“This ice loss appears to be unmatched over at least the last few thousand years and (is) unexplainable by any of the known natural variabilities.”
So the time span is a bit more than 30 years.
Ah yes, hyperbole. You can’t write a global warming story without it.
Well it was nice of them to “warn” us. I mean, Arctic sea ice is SO important to everyone’s day to day life. And hey, since we were warned I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. I guess we’ll all stop driving now and turn down the heat in winter. I’ll get right on that “carbon footprint” thing.
I also enjoyed the use of the word “HOT” when describing Arctic temperatures. Note that by this benchmark my freezer must actually be BURNING the food inside that gets “freezer burn”.
I also note the use of the word “unprecedented”, especially useful when your goal is to spread alarm rather than to inform. In fact, this article even uses the word “alarmed”.
OMG, the poor Polar Bears! I just remembered those cute, fuzzy little guys, up there struggling with icky water instead of cool, refreshing ice. Why, just looking at how pathetic and pointy those little icebergs look makes me want to send food to the starving bears.
Dmi shows temps now to be a bit below normal I with Jaxa showing a leveling off.
Bastardi predicted this. July will be not so ah, hot. Personally maybe below 2008,
but 2007 won’t be broken. All that cold appears to south-at least in NE Oregon..
*yawn*
All in keeping with the maxim ā “If it bleeds, it leads.”
Come September, unless it matches or exceeds the 2007 “melt”, the stories will still fall back on the 2007 event as though it still matters. If it comes close to the higher level of 2006, it will be treated as an exception ā a fluke ā and the “melt” of 2007 is still a warning of pending catastrophe.
And if, in a couple years, the September ice extent reaches record high levels the spin will be that we’ve gotten a temporary reprieve from the “death spiral.”
Just some more of this science by press release.
How can they get away with bold faced lies like this?
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
April ice was the highest on record. DOH.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
āIn May, Arctic air temperatures remained above average”
Must be nice to just make stuff completely up and not worry if anyone will call you on it…
It might be instructive to look at previous articles by Andy Boswell.
http://labs.daylife.com/journalist/randy_boswell
I think he produces a lot of this stuff. I have no idea where he gets his information. Maybe it is the same as the authors here — he just interprets a little more liberally perhaps.
stevengoddard says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:45 am
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
April ice was the highest on record. DOH.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Huh? You mean, for the last few years? I’m darn sure that graph does not contain the entire “record” DOH, indeed…
These guys are too funny.
“”This ice loss appears to be unmatched over at least the last few thousand years and (is) unexplainable by any of the known natural variabilities.””
They say it’s unexplainable by any known natural variabilities, right after they have explained it as weather, not climate:
“āIt is too soon,ā it stated, āto say whether Arctic ice extent will reach another record low this summer ā that will depend on the weather and wind conditions over the next few months.ā”
They get their numbers from Hansen. See article below āāāāāā
Steve —
Your source only shows that April was the highest since 2005. Don’t these records go back 30 years?
Of course, this chart also shows that late May and June so far were running the lowest since 2005. This makes the 2 month loss the highest in the last 5 years, but partly only because that change starts from a relatively high value.
Do we have a northwest passage open for shipping yet? Anyone? Anyone? Bueler?
This is what happens when Maple syrup is replaced by Kool-Aid.
I am just an armchair spectator but I can take my favorite websites related to weather factors and oceanic SST parameters, and without looking at the sea ice graphs (I always and only look at the individual sea ice graphs, not the single graph of the entire thing), I can predict the general outline of ice with more than passing accuracy. In other words, contrary to the expert’s opinion, I can say that in my opinion, natural conditions explains it quite well.
Well when I look at the JAXA graph on the side icon; that Red line looks rather dramatically low compared to 2007. Can’t say I fully understand just exactly what they are measuring. And the DMI icon says that the Temperature is back to zero.
I’m just watching now; because I certainly don’t have any idea what is going on; and certainly wouldn’t guess where we will be in September.
Surely it must be time for NSIDC to dust off their 14 expert predictors and ask them for their summer minimum extent predictions. Let’s get ’em on the record!
How do they believe anyone will take them seriously when dmi shows its been slightly cooler than average for the past month or so. In fact the average temperature in the arctic has never varied from the mean by more than 2 degrees for more than 2 weeks during the melt season since they started keeping records.The arctic is a very boring place in the summer, temperature wise anyway!
Hu McCulloch
Good point. NSIDC shows April as 18 out of 32
And, driven by unusually hot weather in recent weeks above the Arctic Circle
“Unusually hot” was 2-5 degrees above average for a few weeks.
We read a record amount of hype.
What is their excuse for global ice being above “normal”? This is data cherry picking at it’s finest.
Mods you can snip this if you feel it’ll hijack the thread.
Seeing as we’re on a topic which at least indirectly touches on the subject of open water in the Arctic Ocean I’m hoping someone can she some light on something which has been bothering me for a number of months now.
Casting my mind back 40 years I seem to remember that the critical angle for a water-air or air-water interface is about 48 degrees. At angles of incidence less than this you’ll get total internal (external in this case?) reflection. Hence why on still days you get perfect reflections of mountains on lakes etc.
In the Arctic Circle I suspect that the sun doesn’t get much above that elevation even at mid-summer. So most energy from the sun will be reflected off the surface of the water. I know that an agitated sea surface will complicate things as will different refractive indexes for different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation and a myriad (phase change on reflection?) of other things I haven’t thought about.
So my question is just how much of the energy from the sun makes it into the Arctic Ocean?
See Critical Angle, Snell’s Law and total internal reflection here
http://www.bing.com/reference/semhtml/?title=Total_internal_reflection&src=abop&qpvt=total+internal+reflection&fwd=1&q=total+internal+reflection
Perhaps Mr. Boswell does not learn from his own articles. In this one, he states that arctic melt in 2009 is greater than average. Of course, that came in a nearly a million sq km ahead of 2007.
http://www.canada.com/technology/Arctic%20meltdown%20greater%20than%20average%20again%20this%20year/1976227/story.html
The northern hemisphere has been heating up since March. At this rate of heating, we’ll hit 10,000 degrees in 400 years. Degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius? It doesn’t matter…humans won’t survive.
You realize that if, some skeptic, had made the claims in the article I posted that Tamino would be all over it like a fat kid on an ice cream cone.
Hey steve, which month in the past record showed the fastest rate of increase!
Joe Bastardi at Accuweather predicted a large ice melt this summer followed by three very cold winters when sea ice would begin to get back to levels in the 1960s. Its all to do with the warm surface ocean water dissipating around the globe with the Arctic and North Atlantic its last refuge
Now, if only we had a way of controlling the climate so that we could make just the right amount of polar ice…..let’s see, 100 km2 by 100,000 polar bears ….. well we still have enough for them it seems so we won’t have to start reducing water vapor emissions to control the greenhouse effect.
What about damming the Bering strait to keep out all of that nasty warm pacific ocean water.
There is also the gulf stream, while we are at it. I realize that trying to replace it with oil was a bad idea but perhaps we can use the booms from the GoM and make a line of defense from Iceland to Spitzbergen against that warm water.
Then there is the wind. We could set up wind turbines on the coast and blow the warm air back south where it belongs.
I’ll have to stop now as the strait-jacket is starting to chafe…
“Unusually hotā was 2-5 degrees above average for a few weeks. ”
And below freezing at that. So are they saying that temperatures of -10C melts more ice than temperatures of -13C?
I don’t doubt that a lot of thin ice ablated quickly this spring but I also believe their arm waiving will change when the ablation rate goes well below the normal rate in a few weeks time.
Remember, that the PIOMAS “mean” curve has an arbitrary standard deviation, fixed at a constant value for every month, whether the ice is shrinking, growing, or stable, which is probabilistically impossible and statistically unethical to use the fixed error method. So almost every measurement during melt times exceeds a standard deviation to the low side (because of the heteroskedastic nature of the distribution), sometimes 2 sigmas, because as the rate of change at any high melt month has large swings, it will swamp the fixed error for the entire record (that is averaged for shrinking, growing, and stable periods inclusive, not just melt times) almost every time.
Therefore, it will frequently appear as if a low value is “significant” when it is not.
This is how they get away with making pronouncements of what is “normal” values, and that we are frequently “below normal”.
Add to that the trick of starting with a periodically high ice value for their “rolling averages”, and the warm-earthers “win” the statistics shell game every time.
Some of the oldest tricks in the book.
PJB says:
June 15, 2010 at 11:22 am
Loved your ideas! How about if we used a satellite mounted laser that would drill a hole in the ice every few centimeters to measure the depth accurately!
Reduce your carbon footprint!
Fly smaller jets!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cessna_525_citationjet_g-sfcj_arp.jpg
š
HA! For some reason I thought that said some pollyannas…
“Hot” May weather in the Arctic means -6C instead of -8C. I hope it didn’t ruin the cherry crop in Barrow.
Western Arctic Ice coverage as at June 7, 2010
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS56CT/20100607180000_WIS56CT_0005022638.gif
Who gives a rats ass about the summer melting ice in the Arctic? Not me. It happens every year. Year in and year out. Decade in and decade out. Century in and century out. Millennium in and millennium out. I mean really. Enough with the scare tactics already. I just thank God every day for the extended solar minimum and the increased thousands of deaths that will occur around the northern hemisphere this coming winter because of it. People won’t understand until there are massive die offs this coming winter due to excessive cold because of the solar minimum.
Adrian Smits says:
“In fact the average temperature in the arctic has never varied from the mean by more than 2 degrees for more than 2 weeks during the melt season since they started keeping records.The arctic is a very boring place in the summer, temperature wise anyway!”
It’s simple, just think in terms of anomalies. If the range is 2 deg (Ā±1 deg around an average), then a 1 deg from the average, would be a 100% warming, with obvious promise of more. Remember, they love to scare people with tipping points. Once the temperature gets anything over 1 deg (notice that they never talk about it getting >1 deg cooler and then tipping), they assume some kind of release mechanism that lets warming run wild, supposedly, because they want it to.
And its all about ice area and the thickness of the ice around the edges. Little mention of overall thickness.
Henry Waxman says the Ice cap holds down the tundra.
“The reality of the North pole is beginning to evaporate. If too much evaporates……the tipping point.”
Waxman needs to follow this blog for a bit. Our gubment education let him down. Ice doesn’t evaporate much.
“Joe Bastardi at Accuweather predicted a large ice melt this summer followed by three very cold winters when sea ice would begin to get back to levels in the 1960s.”
Carol,
He made his initial predictions, I might add, last winter. So far, his projections for ENSO and the AO are very good. Like he said, enjoy the warm weather while you can.
To clarify my ice forecast….We will be back to the levels we had in the late 70s by 2030. The forecast for ice, made back in April, was taking issue with people who did not understand that though we were back to “normal” ice wise, a crash was coming that I thought would take us to levels lower than 2009, but not as low as 07. Rapid cooling will be setting in for the fall, and the earths temps should fall to a 13 month running mean not seen since the 90s. Ice recovery should mean the summer of 2011 has more ice than 2009, and 2012 should be greater. Its all a moot point since when the northern hemisphere comes back, you will see the southern hemisphere go down. Total GLOBAL sea ice has not gone much of anywhere, nor will it. The hysteria, if ( when) I am proven correct, will simply shift to the southern hemisphere, were the warmist refuse to look now. Be of good cheer. JB
Ice thickness surprises, from May 2009;
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/05/04/lawrence-solomon-deep-arctic-ice-surprises-scientific-expedition.aspx#ixzz0qmnHzcd9
Michael says:{June 15, 2010 at 12:29 pm}
“Who gives a rats ass about the summer melting ice in the Arctic? Not me. It happens every year. Year in and year out. Decade in and decade out. Century in and century out. Millennium in and millennium out. I mean really.”
Absolutely agree. If it is ever proven that Arctic ice area or volume or whatever is the true indicator of how the entire globe is acting, then, and only then, will I give a damn about it. And it is going to have to be more than just a higher anomaly based on the random 1979-2000 period.
jakers says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:58 am
stevengoddard says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:45 am
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
April ice was the highest on record. DOH.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Huh? You mean, for the last few years? Iām darn sure that graph does not contain the entire ārecordā DOH, indeedā¦
The record does indeed contain the entire record. The fact it’s only 30 years is actually the “joke”/”punchline” behind it. There have been press releases of the “it’s the worst since records began – we’re all going to die!” variety when the records began less than a decade before.
It’s difficult to satire something like that, when the satire is indistinguishable from the target. The usual way of flagging satire by over-exaggerating the importance of minor details (“eight out of ten mass murderers had eaten bread in the previous 24 hours!”) don’t work when the original uses the “we’re all going to die!” idea to begin with.
This article highlights the really alarming thinning of the Canadian press. As WillR mentions, Randy Boswell is available as pre-sliced, pre-packaged, ready to read, off the shelf news-like product from Daylife : http://labs.daylife.com/journalist/randy_boswell.
The package ingredients analysis shows that Randy is very objective, with a “low” level of “opinion markers” and unbiased “neutral sentiment”. Must be good healthy reading.
Daylife’s many clients.. “seamlessly integrate whole pages, sections, and destinations of fresh content, targeted promotions, and new categories of advertising inventory, all with little or no staffing.”
“Daylife gathers content from thousands of high-quality news and information sources, then runs scores of analyses so we understand a huge range of particulate information about that data to create intelligent, malleable content clusters. Publishers can then use our platform tools to mold that data into new pages, features, and entire destinations of targeted content and inventory, all with full editorial control.”
“Little staffing” but “full editorial control”? Sounds like the packaged cake mix you turn into “home made goodness” by just stirring with your own spoon.
Mmmm, delicious “malleable content clusters” anyone?
Joe Bastardi says:
June 15, 2010 at 12:53 pm
Total GLOBAL sea ice has not gone much of anywhere, nor will it. The hysteria, if ( when) I am proven correct, will simply shift to the southern hemisphere, were the warmist refuse to look now. Be of good cheer. JB
But that gives the opportunity to keep asking about the northeast/northwest passages which have opened up for the first time since the dinosaurs. Apparently. If people are going to highlight transient phenomona as “climate” just because they show warmth, there is no reason to not keep bringing them up in future.
Of course the fact they’re going to be all iced up is just more proof of global warming.
speaking of southern ice:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
global:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
As many posts here have shown NH ice concentration appears to be well above previous years so expect the Minimum to be about normal… my view anyway..
Joe Bastardi,
“The hysteria, if ( when) I am proven correct, will simply shift to the southern hemisphere, were the warmist refuse to look now”
Your forecast is based upon the AMO i’m assuming?
Firstly, many “warmists” are already forced to look down south because of thousands of years old ice shelves collapsing (see larsen A, B, Muller ice shelf, wordie ice shelf, prince gustav ice shelf, Wilkins ice shelf… etc…) as well as large land ice losses from the continent as a whole (250 GT/Year and accelerating) (Measured with altimetry, gravimetry, synthetic aperture radar and so on…)…
Secondly, if your “prediction” comes true then we will have a lot more to worry about than sea-ice in the southern hemisphere, we will undoubtedly have even large accelerations of ice losses from continental Antarctica. Particularly when the remaining sea ice is removed from the WAIS and Antarctic peninsula (although much is already gone).
Thirdly, and this is something you should know with your BSC in meteorology.
Why is Antarctic sea ice increasing?
There are several contributing factors. One is the drop in ozone levels over Antarctica. The hole in the ozone layer above the South Pole has caused cooling in the stratosphere (Gillet 2003). This strengthens the cyclonic winds that circle the Antarctic continent (Thompson 2002). The wind pushes sea ice around, creating areas of open water known as polynyas. More polynyas lead to increased sea ice production (Turner 2009).
Another contributor is changes in ocean circulation. The Southern Ocean consists of a layer of cold water near the surface and a layer of warmer water below. Water from the warmer layer rises up to the surface, melting sea ice. However, as air temperatures warm, the amount of rain and snowfall also increases. This freshens the surface waters, leading to a surface layer less dense than the saltier, warmer water below. The layers become more stratified and mix less. Less heat is transported upwards from the deeper, warmer layer. Hence less sea ice is melted (Zhang 2007).
Finally, one note for you. You may be a very public figure, but you should consider reading up on your glaciology before making proclamations that you have no evidence for.
I’ll take Barber’s thoughts over yours thank you very much. He spent a lot longer than 4 years studying arctic climatology…
Hey Joe…thanks for stopping by. Huge fan here.
Can you tell me if the Arctic will be ice-free next year? I plan on taking my motorhome up to Newfoundland for the Targa in Sept, and it’d be spankin’ if I could load onto a freighter and come straight across the passage ;)…save a whole whole bunch of C02 also š
O/T, but speaking of C02, there were a dozen or so people walking around the F1 race in Montreal with big C02 graphic balloons during the qualifying and race laps.
Seriously?…how do you think a race crowd is going react to a C02 balloon?
JimB
Be nice. DMI did report an average +1.33K average anomaly… so it *was* unusually warm in the strictest sense. It’s also not too surprising to anyone that the late season accumulation didn’t last much.
Meta topic rant — Viewing the time lapses of the ice migrating south along the Greenland coast alway makes me want to scream — Arctic Ice melts because it’s no longer *in* the Arctic.
That seems to have everything to due with winds and currents and nothing to do with a 1.3K temperature anomaly.
Hi, I’m new to WUTW.
Great Article I read it all the way through and it seems pretty concerning to me especially the quote “average Arctic ice volume in May was 19,000 cubic kilometres, āthe lowest May volume over the 1979 to 2010 period.ā
But what about your commentary “File this under short term trends matter when we say they matter.” It begs the question , so when is average Arctic ice volume in May going to matter? And who is we ?
Salutations Hengist McStone
“”” sandyinderby says:
June 15, 2010 at 10:40 am
Mods you can snip this if you feel itāll hijack the thread.
Seeing as weāre on a topic which at least indirectly touches on the subject of open water in the Arctic Ocean Iām hoping someone can she some light on something which has been bothering me for a number of months now.
Casting my mind back 40 years I seem to remember that the critical angle for a water-air or air-water interface is about 48 degrees. At angles of incidence less than this youāll get total internal (external in this case?) reflection. Hence why on still days you get perfect reflections of mountains on lakes etc. “””
Well sandyinderby; you clearly haven’t been paying attention; well at least during the last 40 days.
Simply put; Snell’s law says N1.sin(I1) = N2.sin(I2) where N1, N2 are the refractive indices of the two media on each side of the boundary (relative to vacuum) and I1, I2 are the angles of incidence (relative to the normal) on each side of the surface.
Consider the case N2 > N1 . Then I2 must be less than I1 . Assuming that I1 can range from zero to 90 degrees; then I2 necessarily is restricted to lass than 90 degrees. NOTE that this restriction is ONLY in the higher refractive index medium; there is no restriction of incidence angle in the lower index medium.
This is true no matter in which direction the light is travelling. The principle of reversability, says the ray follows the same path in either direction NOTE: this reversibility is true ONLY for the case of geometrical ray optics. It is quite erroneous to say that all light paths are reversible; the Physical paths are not reversible, even in the simplest case if more than one medium is involved.
Simplest stick in the sand proof of this, is a single light beam impinging on a single refracting surface; where it splits into two beams; one refracted into the other medium according to Snell’s law; and the other reflecting back into the incoming medium. This also can be handled by Snell’s law if we simply make the index following reflection be the negative of the index before the reflection.
So we have a single input ray; and we get two output rays; (assuming semi-infinite media on each side of the boundary).
Well what happens if we simply reverse the two output rays, and send them back to the surface. Well they do NOT reconstitute the single original input ray; in fact both of them split; giving us now four rays instead of one.
So “light” is NOT reversible; no matter what the text books tell you; ONLY the paths of geometrical ray optics are reversible; and that of course is NOT a real Physical description of what is going on; it is a MODEL. In physical reality; you get diffraction laws apply; and you do not get what ray optics predicts. Nonetheless 99.99 % of lens design can be done extremely well using only ray optics. But diffraction optics not only gives a different image; but it also is generally not in the same place as the geometry says it should be.
But back to the water surface. Snell’s law does not restrict the passage of light from air into water; for any incidence angle from zero to 90 degrees. But once inside the water; the rays are confined to a cone of half angle equal to the critical angle Arcsin(N1/N2).
The Fresnel laws of reflection/refraction at the interface; will however increase the surface reflectance for incidence angles of the order of the Brewster angle or larger; IB = Arctan (N1/N2).
We have been over this more times than I care to relate.
Tom in Florida,
Have you ever heard of albedo?
The difference between energy reflected by ice towards what would be absorbed by dark open water is quite significant. You should look it up some time.
sandyinderby, you’re ignoring the word “internal”. Total internal reflection occurs only on the side with the higher refractive index. Reflection in a lake may look perfect but it is significantly dimmer than the unreflected image. What’s reflected and what isn’t depends a lot on polarisation.
See left-hand graph at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_equations
Hengist McStone,
Some other sites you should consider visiting are climateaudit, skeptical science and climate progress. There is frequently a back and forth between these sites which is relatively entertaining.
OK! Am I missing something here? Last night I did a side by side comparison of Arctic
ice concentration on Cryosphere Today. It appeared to me that the concentration of ice (%, perhaps not extent ) on 6-13-2010 is greater than any previous year of that date
back to 1979.
Surely this will slow the melting?
Perhaps someone could do an animation of this.
sandyinderby says:
June 15, 2010 at 10:40 am
> So my question is just how much of the energy from the sun makes it into the Arctic Ocean?
Some of that was discussed recently, but I don’t think anyone came up with useful numbers.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/11/visualizing-changes-in-arctic-ice-since-the-2007-record-low/ Search for things like reflect, snell, and George E. Smith.
Pamela Gray says:
June 15, 2010 at 10:10 am
In other words, …, I can say that in my opinion, natural conditions explains it quite well.
Yes, I agree – no need to invoke supernatural conditions to explain the record Arctic sea ice melt.
Re: 1979-2000 average and “anomalies”:
It’s not an average until it includes all data, including 2007. I would accept 1979-2009, but cutting it off at ANY place to exaggerate an anomaly is not Science. Period.
“Joe Bastardi says:
June 15, 2010 at 12:53 pm
The hysteria, if ( when) I am proven correct, will simply shift to the southern hemisphere, were the warmist refuse to look now.”
What really gets me annoyed. Is when we have halfwits going on about the Antarctic melting when it at the height of winter down there. Not sure if it was last winter or the previous one. Incluiding a report from an Australian University. Claiming a large hunk of Ice broke off one of the ice shelfs during that winter. They put it down to global Warming. Yeah right.
The numbers for May are meaningless. Lets look at some other numbers from the JAXA data to show you the range of fluctuation. All number are in sq kilomterers.
May 2009 26,781
June 2009 55,937
May 2010 67,661
June 2010 (14 days) 58,398
June 2010 (7 days) 56,116
Make of it what you will. I personally will wait and see what happens in July before making any predictions.
Ooops those numbers are average daily ice loss.
Robert says:
June 15, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Firstly, many āwarmistsā are already forced to look down south because of thousands of years old ice shelves collapsing (see larsen A, B, Muller ice shelf, wordie ice shelf, prince gustav ice shelf, Wilkins ice shelfā¦ etcā¦)
Do you have fingernails? Have you ever had one snap on you? Was it because it was too long, or too short?
as well as large land ice losses from the continent as a whole (250 GT/Year and accelerating) (Measured with altimetry, gravimetry, synthetic aperture radar and so onā¦)ā¦
I’ve seen this one before, and laughed at it. One gigatone ~ 1 km^3. Antartica will finish melting in about 300,000 years time – or approximately after 3 glacial periods have come and gone. It’s a big place.
Assuming it’s not going to stop melting during a glacial period that is.
That’s not withstanding the elements of error in mass loss. Altimetry doesn’t work all that well when the rock beneath is sagging at an unknown rate. Ditto gravimetry. Always try to keep in mind the errors. Might be too high – might be too low, but they always exist.
Iāll take Barberās thoughts over yours thank you very much. He spent a lot longer than 4 years studying arctic climatologyā¦
Why don’t you take your own thoughts and do your own research? Be sure to look every so often to assess what you’re told actually means. Otherwise, you’re going to end up thinking 300,000 years is an immediate disaster.
The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center had already warned earlier this spring that low ice volume….
And of course they have the PIOMAS graph to prove it.
And, driven by unusually hot weather in recent weeks above the Arctic Circle…
Wait, wait, wait….. did he say unusually hot??
It’s been unusually cold here in Northern, California (until this past weekend) so I better go up there and catch up on my tan. And I’ll find that girl in a bikini that Steven Goddard is always posting here too!
the year when a record-setting retreat by mid-September alarmed climatologists
Of course they’re alarmed. Alarmism is their bread and butter.
The centre reported that across much of the Arctic, temperatures were two to five degrees Celsius above average last month.
Oh my God that is so hot!
jakers says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:17 am
Short term trends in February and March were much more significant.
You really are Joe Bastardi or were you making that up?
Hi Robert, Thanks for the reply . I’m familiar with a couple of those sites but I’m not looking for entertainment.
In a nutshell I’m asking for the reasoning in the statement “…short term trends matter when we say they matter.”
Salutations Hengist McStone
Did they mention anything about shear?
Wait, what am I thinking! Of course they didn’t!
Jason Bair-“How can they get away with bold faced lies like this?”
Disinformation techniques are an essential elective in Canadian journalism programs; without it the chance of landing a CBC position would be nil. However, the Canadian news industry still provides many job opportunities for less competent deceivers and I think a case in point would be Mr. Boswell and his proferred science thriller.
The only thing thinning is the number of reliable stations recording temperature.
Hello, Greetings from England by the way where it is late night and about average temp for the time of year .
Ok anybody, what is the reasoning behind the statement at the top of the page “File this under short term trends matter when we say they matter.”
I’m gonna hazard a guess that it’s dogma.
Salutations Hengist McStone
Arctic sea ice area is also at a record low:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Area.png
I’m glad to see the science doubters taking record melt rates, record extents, record areas, and record volumes in stride – I would have thought a graph like this would make a true “skeptic” stop and wonder if they were completely wrong:
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_n.png
Of course, there is a fine line between confident and oblivious:
http://nsidc.org/monthlyhighlights/august2009.html
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=42456&src=eoa-iotd
I wonder what happened to the Arctic sea ice during these periods and how much natural variablilities affected it as opposed to manmade co2?
MWP , Greenland, unprecedented!, 1817 situation.
They should have said “unprecedented since satellite monitoring began in 1979 for the Arctic.” By the way is if it’s so “hot” in the Arctic why don’t they tell the tour operators and people can arrange their summer holidays there and visit the famished polar bears which have been increasing in number. :o)
Jason Bair says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:40 am
How can they get away with bold faced lies like this?
This would have been kind of funny, if you had spelled “Jayson Blair” correctly.
ā for effort.
John B (TX) says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:07 am
āAnd, driven by unusually hot weather in recent weeks above the Arctic Circle, the polar ice is disappearing at an unprecedented rateā
Where do they get this stuff? I canāt believe they can just make up the news like that.
If you read the article,
http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Arctic+Ocean+retreating+year+record+pace/3149267/story.html#ixzz0quIG37lp
they make it clear where they are “getting this stuff”:
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100608_Figure4.png
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Robert says: “Have you ever heard of albedo? The difference between energy reflected by ice towards what would be absorbed by dark open water is quite significant. You should look it up some time.”
Actually I did look it up, and the difference is insignificant. Zero, in fact, under some conditions, especially at the high zenith angles that pertain at the poles.
George E. Smith says:
June 15, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Ah, you missed one itsy-bitsy thing….planetary rotation.
Here is average daily ice loss for the months of May, June and July from 2003 to 2010 based on JAXA data.
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
May 38,231 35,827 43,145 42,762 40,832 44,153 52,006 65,257
June 53,536 41,995 57,531 59,609 63,328 58,500 55,938 58,025mtd
July 74,708 70,015 83,710 70,025 98,609 81,260 92,127 TBA
August 46,764 64,657 45,000 37,697 57,041 70,121 48,654 TBA
Interesting to see the numbers for 2009 appear higher than for 2008. I’m guessing this is likely due to greater growth during the previous winter giving a greater base of thinner ice for the following summer.
If this holds, despite the high rate of loss during May we could still potentially see a higher September minimum this year. It is clear though that level of loss during the month of July will play an important part.
Hengist McStone,
“short term trends matter when we say they matter”
Refers to the common practice of AGW supporters criticizing skeptics for taking short term trends (such as an anomalously cold year) as being evidence against global warming. AGW proponents often cite long term trends and say that short term trends are more or less climatic noise. The comment that the author was trying to make was that AGW proponents argue with skeptics over short term trends when they provide evidence against GW but when short term trends show evidence for it, they use it as evidence according to the commentator. I would argue that it’s not exactly the same as that but that’s the point up for debate.
JimB says:
June 15, 2010 at 2:19 pm
“….O/T, but speaking of C02, there were a dozen or so people walking around the F1 race in Montreal with big C02 graphic balloons during the qualifying and race laps.
Seriously?ā¦how do you think a race crowd is going react to a C02 balloon?”
_________________________________________________________________
About the same way the rodeo cowboy did when he saw a PETA idiot untying his very expensive cutting horse. Too bad for the idiot that the cowboy was mounted on his roping horse…. The rope burns and road rash must have really hurt.
(I was boarding my horse at a rodeo stable when this occurred so I heard the story several times, from different people.)
It seems that many readers of this site are comfortable dismissing David Barber as just another warmist, less expert about the Arctic than Steve Goddard. In case there are others out there, I think it’s worth repeating the abstract of his article (with 9 coauthors) in Geophysical Research Letters last fall, which described the discovery that actual Beaufort Sea ice was much less substantial than satellite-based estimates had suggested.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL041434.shtml
“‘ Perennial pack ice in the southern Beaufort Sea was not as it appeared in the summer of 2009
In September 2009 we observed a much different sea icescape in the Southern Beaufort Sea than anticipated, based on remotely sensed products. Radarsat derived ice charts predicted 7 to 9 tenths multi-year (MY) or thick first-year (FY) sea ice throughout most of the Southern Beaufort Sea in the deep water of the Canada Basin. In situ observations found heavily decayed, very small remnant MY and FY floes interspersed with new ice between floes, in melt ponds, thaw holes and growing over negative freeboard older ice. This icescape contained approximately 25% open water, predominantly distributed in between floes or in thaw holes connected to the ocean below. Although this rotten ice regime was quite different that the expected MY regime in terms of ice volume and strength, their near-surface physical properties were found to be sufficiently alike that their radiometric and scattering characteristics were almost identical.”
Hi Robert, My criticism of your approach is twofold. How can you be sure you are not looking at the early stages of a long term trend? And how can any reasonable observer of this webpage conclude that the “we” in the statement at the top of the page is a rational responsible and qualified arbiter .
I’m still seeking the reasoning in the statement “File this under short term trends matter when we say they matter.”
I have to bid you good nite its 2a.m. here, will check back tomorrow
Salutations Hengist McStone
Z,
First of all,
Ice shelves off the Antarctic peninsula (with the exception of Wilkins) collapsed because melt pools formed on the surface of the ice shelves and the water penetrated down through the ice shelves causing them to shatter in thin pieces. This is commonly known and you can read Cook and Vaughan’s 2009 paper which summarizes all the information about the different ice shelves on the peninsula. The melt ponds were due to significant warming which has occurred over the last 50 years on the Antarctic Peninsula. I do suggest you educate yourself on this matter before you speak next time.
Secondly,
your 300,000 years value is wrong, but what is important is the acceleration of mass loss which has resulted in drastic changes on individual basins such as in Pine Island Bay (see rignot et al. 2008a and 2008b). An example is Greenland, WUWT said at one point not to worry because it would take 15 000 years to melt at current rates. Well in 2002 it would of taken 22 000 years…so a 7000 year change in just 7 years… Greenland’s ice loss is accelerating at 30 GT per year2… Antarctica’s situation is even more dire with Pine Island glacier being grounded significantly below sea level and poised to contribute significantly to sea level rise over the next century.
Thirdly,
I don’t need to be told about the different uncertainties pertaining to remote sensing of the cryosphere. I know that each method has their own errors but I also know that when 3-4 methods agree very well then its with a high certainty that assumptions can be made. Furthermore, using interferometry and speckle tracking we can see velocity changes almost perfectly which gives even more certainty as to how accelerated ice losses are occurring. Also, for the record, I actually am co-author on a poster at the IPY conference which pertains to using statistical validating techniques to identify overestimation of glacier losses from Silcast DEMs… Therefore, I don’t think your comment about “doing my own research” is necessary. Where is your research in this field? I’m at least doing my masters in glaciology, where are your credentials which give you the right to insult mine…
Why is Steve talking about APRIL ? Where are the Pips Charts?
Here is the reason: Navy Site shows:
A big Area of nearly open water (low concentration) in the CENTRAL Arctic.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/retrievepic.html?filetype=Concentration&year=2010&month=6&day=14
PLUS: I finally figured out why the Pips & now, Cryosphere’s CONCENTRATION Maps show INCREASES …
… in Near-Summer ! !
(PS Melting does not start in Summer = June: Arctic May has as much heat as Arctic June due to Clouds: more clouds form beginning late May as more water is exposed & gets hot by Sunlight = mist. A while back Steve commented there is little Sun after May 20 — which sounded utterly weird until I looked it up: Sun is brightest on June 21 of course, but actual Sun impacting the Arctic surfaces, AFTER subtracting for Clouds, peaks May 20 — though it does NOT END THEN. More than half is later. Melting continues into early September)
Contrast is the Key.
Pips gets Concentration from a Microwave satellite and INCREASES CONTRAST to get Concentration = percentage of Ice, in an area. An Algorithm from 1987 then gives thickness based on time of year, etc. Piomas is different near the Shore &/or Sea lanes because it calibrates the Concentration with measurements from ships.
But CONCENTRATION is from Contrast & SOOT affects that — making “everything gray”. THAT is why Concentration-measures alone, give us INCREASING ICE these Days of Heat
>>Dust from the Unpronoucable Icelandic Volcano)
>> the Asian Brown Cloud
>> the expanding use of sootty Diesels in Europe.
Steve often leads with 2 Charts:
1. A Past-year Chart showing a lot of variance from place to place, &
2. A Recent Chart: a bland blob mostly – – which he interprets as UNIFORMLY THICK ICE.
In fact it is just Gray Soot.
Look at Pips again: http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/retrievepic.html?filetype=Concentration&year=2010&month=6&day=14
Pips makes its charts from the Microwave — that is why it is there
(like a Bible translation has the original on the facing page: because that is the SOURCE).
If the Microwave pic gets blurred, Pips looks THICK.
Remember the ICESAT satellite, & the “Icebridge” Overflights of the Central Arctic, actually MEASURED thickness DIRECTLY (with Lasers). Anything else is using a “proxy” or an “analog” e.g. the “Hockey Stick” and those pine tree Growth rings (which declined in the Medieval temperature maximum because the heat allowed Deer
to roam higher in the mountains & they ate the bark off the Bristlecone Pines — alas, Mann interpreted Low Growth as ALWAYS low temperature when actual it meant High Deer)
This makes PIOMAS unmatched as an Ice Thickness source – – but ONLY SOMETIMES = whenever there were Plane flights but no Satellites, e.g. from May 2008-to-May 2010 — but, oddly: not NOW.
PS: What does the Ice melting matter ? – – Ah, you have to have:
1. ALL the Ice Melt OFF
2. Early enough to get lots of SUN on the Ocean
3. the Pole gets MORE Sun than further South because the Days there are 24 Hours Long
4. The Arctic gets Hotter than the North Atlantic
5. The Gulf Stream reverses
6. After the Equinox the Pole gets 24-hour Nights, temps drop
7. BUT NO ATLANTIC WATER COMES TO WARM THE ARCTIC
8. = 300 moh Winds = NO structures survive.
9. = We all die (save a few million Cannibals). OOps !
.. PSS this must be PERFECT: a melt off over 2 years & no Deal. And we do not know if the Currents are similar enough to when this happened the last time (end of the Younger Dryas), to do the same thing. And: it is the WEATHER … complexities often derail a “sure thing” according to the Abrupt Climate Change Task Force.
I give it 27%
. . . but I’m always hoping for new data to make it Zero.
A key critter is the Salinity: there was a Currents-Stop scare a few years back from Salinity changes alone – – & if Salinity points the other way from the heat values, the currents may still run, even if they weaken. No Perfect Storm, no 6 Billion DEAD.
P.S.#3: Ocean Water does not reflect like a flat surface – – because it has waves.
Gneiss:
That’s exactly what we are referring to. How would you know that rotten ice 15 years ago would not be fooling the satellites in exactly the same way…there is no baseline for comparison.
Or for a different “data point,” there’s a nice animation showing the flow of ice through Nares Strait, between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, over June 7-14, on Neven’s new Arctic Sea Ice site:
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2010/06/nares-strait-animation-part-1.html
Noteworthy in this connection is not just the overall rate of flow, but the appearance of a solid-looking 50km ice floe that looked set to block the strait — but then began breaking apart overnight. From an armchair point of view, that seemed to fit Barber’s observation of ice less substantial than it looked from space.
Mmmmmmm! Do you mean like these? Most look like short-term alarmism to me, but I stand to be corrected. :o)
Gneiss says:
June 15, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Or for a different ādata point,ā thereās a nice animation showing the flow of ice through Nares Strait, between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, over June 7-14, on Nevenās new Arctic Sea Ice site:
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2010/06/nares-strait-animation-part-1.html
Noteworthy in this connection is not just the overall rate of flow, but the appearance of a solid-looking 50km ice floe that looked set to block the strait ā but then began breaking apart overnight. From an armchair point of view, that seemed to fit Barberās observation of ice less substantial than it looked from space.
I’ve been posting about this for several months now, it’s another link with 2007 when the strait also opened early (but not as early as this year). I’d been watching that floe approaching for a few days, it was the only big one in the vicinity, wondering whether it would block the strait and if so for how long. Last night it blocked the strait and almost straight away started to break up. Although this strait doesn’t transport as much multiyear ice to its demise as the Fram but it is some of the oldest and thickest ice from the Arctic, which is now in very short supply.
Hengist McStone says:
June 15, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Hi Robert, My criticism of your approach is twofold. How can you be sure you are not looking at the early stages of a long term trend?
———-
Indeed, that begs the question about the flat to cooling global temps in the past 15 years. How do we know that this is not the start of a cooling phase? Take a look at the following and you might get a feel about how scientists became confused about the weather over the decades and thought they might be seeing a long-term trend which suddenly went the other way!!! There have always been scares so don’t be. :o)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
http://www.almanac.com/sites/new.almanac.com/files/1895_cvr1_0.png
http://newsbusters.org/node/11640
And something more recent about projected cooling before a ramp up in ‘warming’ from a man at the IPCC.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17742-worlds-climate-could-cool-first-warm-later.html
The above and much more are the reasons I’m not worried about a runaway situation because it has obviously never, ever runaway beyond the point of no return. Why did it not runaway after September 2007 when huge areas of the Arctic were exposed to the sun as we have been told endlessly?
OT: Jo Bastardi, just a note I used to love Accuweather until you change the format. It is very unfriendly now to get a satellite animation compared to the previous scheme. Please do something about it. Thanks, Tom.
Robert writes: “First of all,
Ice shelves off the Antarctic peninsula (with the exception of Wilkins) collapsed because melt pools formed on the surface of the ice shelves and the water penetrated down through the ice shelves causing them to shatter in thin pieces. This is commonly known and you can read Cook and Vaughanās 2009 paper which summarizes all the information about the different ice shelves on the peninsula. The melt ponds were due to significant warming which has occurred over the last 50 years on the Antarctic Peninsula. I do suggest you educate yourself on this matter before you speak next time.”
The Peninsula is warming for dynamic meteorological reasons that in fact invalidate your Global Warming pole warming. You should educate yourself too. As for Barber, even Revkin did avoid his rotten ice BS as once again, it is a question of meteorological conditions. Those freaks from Winnipoo love the oil barons when they cough dough for their buildings but promote their AGW agenda on DC, Joe Romm and Desmog…
Oh, I nearly forgot to add:
2007 Arctic ice retreat due mostly to wind, currents
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html
NASA says at least 45% melting since 1976 is most probably due to aerosols (soot)
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_aerosols_prt.htm
Arctic ice thicker than expected In 2009
http://www.awi.de/en/news/press_releases/detail/item/research_aircraft_polar_5_finishes_arctic_expedition_unique_measurement_flights_in_the_central_arc/?cHash=e36036fcb4
jeez wrote,
“How would you know that rotten ice 15 years ago would not be fooling the satellites in exactly the same wayā¦there is no baseline for comparison.”
We have baselines of many kinds, spanning many decades.
But just staying with Barber, he remarked after last fall’s expedition that he had never seen anything like those ice conditions, during his 30 years in the Arctic.
@ stevengoddard:
June 15, 2010 at 10:30 am
Steve, never got an answer from you (if you know), is most of the decrease this year strictly in the Hudson Bay area?
jeez says:
June 15, 2010 at 5:15 pm
Gneiss:
Thatās exactly what we are referring to. How would you know that rotten ice 15 years ago would not be fooling the satellites in exactly the same wayā¦there is no baseline for comparison.
They’ve got the PIOMAS graph now jeez. Didn’t you know? It’s ALL about that PIOMAS graph.
Robert says:
June 15, 2010 at 2:18 pm blah blah blah blah
Robert says:
June 15, 2010 at 5:11 pm blah blah blah ackphhhht
robert
no one believes all these dire prognostications anymore. no matter how long you sit behind a computer manipulating satellite data with statistics to make it fit the warmist agenda, there is just too much real evidence contradicting almost everything you people say.
It’s comical the obsession of the “warmists” with ice. Why do they love ice and cold temperatures so much? Are they not warm blooded mammals? Most folks are looking for warm weather. Do more people move south (Arizona and Florida) or north as they get older? All this nonsense of worrying about the north pole: it’s all natural variation…and even if it isn’t, who cares? So the planet gets warmer and all the ice melts. Big deal.
It seemed like the trolls went missing for a while. But I’ve found them! They’ve set up shop around the PIOMAS graph. š
… and Mars’ northern polar cap is melting… melting… away… aaaahhhhhh…
Now fess up, who bumped up the Solar System’s thermostat?
http://www-mgcm.arc.nasa.gov/MarsToday/marstotal.gif #:-)
wayne says:
June 15, 2010 at 6:13 pm
@ stevengoddard:
June 15, 2010 at 10:30 am
Steve, never got an answer from you (if you know), is most of the decrease this year strictly in the Hudson Bay area?
A straight answer from Steve, dream on!
So far the Hudson has contributed ~0.6Mm^2 out of the total so far of ~5Mm^2.
Robert says:{June 15, 2010 at 2:33 pm}
“Tom in Florida,
Have you ever heard of albedo?
The difference between energy reflected by ice towards what would be absorbed by dark open water is quite significant. You should look it up some time.”
So you fear that less albedo in the arctic will fry the whole Earth?
peterhodges,
“no matter how long you sit behind a computer manipulating satellite data with statistics to make it fit the warmist agenda”
Actually if you sit in front of a raw gravimetry image such as from Grace, you require no statistics, no analysis, no arbitrary decision, in order to see the very clear and dominating ice mass losses from the WAIS and Greenland…but go ahead, pretend scientists are manipulating warmist agendas… That’s why my last poster presentation was attempting to quantify overestimations in glacier ice losses… but hey, ignore when legitimate people analyze the evidence after years of studying and conclude that AGW exists… In fact, I would love for you to explain to me, harries et al. 2001… where satellite measurements are used to effectively MEASURE the increased absorption of infrared radiation since the 1970s by increasing greenhouse gases… Good luck with that one.
jorgekafkazar says:
June 15, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Robert says: āHave you ever heard of albedo? The difference between energy reflected by ice towards what would be absorbed by dark open water is quite significant. You should look it up some time.ā
Actually I did look it up, and the difference is insignificant. Zero, in fact, under some conditions, especially at the high zenith angles that pertain at the poles.
———————
Jorge, actually the albedo difference between open water and snow/sea ice is quite significant. I would direct you to recent publications and talks by Don Perovich at CRREL. He is a very good speaker, explains concepts thoroughly and in a way that most anyone can understand. Perovich has spent a large part of his life measuring the albedo over sea ice in various stages of evolution, including melt ponds and open water. You can view his publications here: http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/sid/personnel/perovichweb/index1.htm
You can also see a video here: http://www.exploratorium.edu/webcasts/explotv_player.php?id=00000960&type=flv
Phil. says:
June 15, 2010 at 7:31 pm
wayne says:
June 15, 2010 at 6:13 pm
@ stevengoddard:
June 15, 2010 at 10:30 am
Steve, never got an answer from you (if you know), is most of the decrease this year strictly in the Hudson Bay area?
A straight answer from Steve, dream on!
So far the Hudson has contributed ~0.6Mm^2 out of the total so far of ~5Mm^2.
______________________
Wasn’t speaking to you Phil.
What they really don’t want you to know:
The ice in the Antatctic is growing faster than the Arctic.
If this pattern holds, and I see no current reason for it not to, the coming winter for the N. Hemisphere will be cruel.
SuperFasterDisasterTempestImaginationPhobius,
Global Warming Cap & Tax give us your money hoaxus,
SuperFasterGloomyDoomBarbecue&Roastus.
Why do people believe in global warming, and rotting ice, even when the data shows it is not happening?
Maybe for agendas?
“Richard Lindzen, climate change, and excellent vehicle for a variety of agendas”
ya but they forget to mention that the antarctic is as much above normal as the arctic is below normal, and for the rate of increase it matches the rate of decrease in the arctic….interesting correlation if you ask me, this year may be a new record high for ice in the antarctic. as for the arctic i see a year much like the one past.
David L says:
June 15, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Itās comical the obsession of the āwarmistsā with ice.
Yeah. On the other hand, why is WUWT writing post after bloody post on it?
rbateman says:
June 15, 2010 at 8:22 pm
What they really donāt want you to know:
The ice in the Antatctic is growing faster than the Arctic.
Yeah. I did find a graph showing just how far out of the ordinary it is to-
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_s.png
Hengist McStone says:
June 15, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Hi Robert, My criticism of your approach is twofold. How can you be sure you are not looking at the early stages of a long term trend? And how can any reasonable observer of this webpage conclude that the āweā in the statement at the top of the page is a rational responsible and qualified arbiter .
Iām still seeking the reasoning in the statement āFile this under short term trends matter when we say they matter.ā
+++++
It’s tongue in cheek – a little example of the type of levity that you’ll find sprinkled throughout this website.
In this case it’s aimed at the writers of this article, but the statement also serves as a reminder to those who take up the counterargument to not put too much weight on short term observations.
And you are correct: we cannot know that a short term pattern isn’t the first signs of a longer term pattern, but that doesn’t give us license to make assumptions.
Like the picture for this thread. You have to admit, when it comes to free form abstract sculpture, Ma nature is hard to beat.
Some wonder why sea ice is so … fascinating. Well, it changes faster than grass grows. I like to read and talk about sea ice because…it’s like weather. I like reading and talking about that too. Call me a square peg in a round hole. Bookish. Or easily entertained. Don’t care. It’s way better than TV.
Amino Acids in Meteorites,
The thing is, at present the data is suggesting that the ice *is* rotten. The long-term trend for arctic sea ice extent is clearly down. The short-term trend for arctic sea ice extent is clearly down. We have scientists who have studied the ice for decades telling us that the ice is rotten. So, it does not seem much of a stretch – to me, at least – to come to the conclusion that perhaps the ice is indeed rotten.
As to agendas, mine has already failed. It was to prevent AGW from having significant effects on the global and on my local environment. š
FYI: Sometimes you hear someone say some data as: āWe measured the temperatures north of 85Āŗ and found it to beā¦ā and you donāt have the foggy how much area they are really speaking of. So I calculated them for you and myself so we can get a grip on the scale of the matter.
%area between 0Āŗ (Equator) and 23.5Āŗ (Tropic of Cancer) = 30.1%
%area between 23.5Āŗ and 66.5Āŗ (Arctic Circle) = 15.8%
%area between 66.5Āŗ and 90Āŗ (North Pole) = 4.1%
Totals of above = 50%
%area between 70Āŗ and 90Āŗ = 3.0%
%area between 75Āŗ and 90Āŗ = 1.7%
%area between 80Āŗ and 90Āŗ = 0.76% (DMI temps)
%area between 85Āŗ and 90Āŗ = 0.19%
Not as big as your mind imagined is it? And the tropic band is much larger that I thought.
When school finishes in July, so will the Arctic melt. Some of us however will need to go back to school.
I feel so prescient – I predicted this very claim some weeks ago in the very blog. I so wanted to not be right.
Some how everyone needs to agree on the importance of at least two characteristics of arctic ice: mass and area. They are loosely related but there are forces at work that have nothing to do with temperature trends (wind direction and speed, for example).
Area is important when you are advocating albedo while mass is important when you are making claims of ice quality. It seems to me the debaters on both sides play loose with the significance of each over time. My understanding is mass is up, relative to recent years. Since rate of decline is rather consistent year after year but with variations in when the decline reaches a certain area (another important characteristic not well discussed), starting with more will result in the loss of more and no change in climate needed. It’s a quirk of the math.
JK says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:30 pm
The plot is confused. Even at high magnification.
How about this, then which shows anomalies?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
And I think people are fascinated by the ice story, because of all those intrepid explorers of the poles that we grew up reading about, and because it is there.
It is like watching Pooh sticks.
And, it is irrelevant to the anthropogenic or not argument. The earth has been heating since the little ice age. Nobody doubts that. It means that the ice will be retreating….
unless another little ice age lies ahead, which is why we watch it.
I dread that we will start seeing increasing ice year after year. I will be happy if this year it is on the average or a bit below. It cannot be too far below, because the temperatures are still around 0, not conducive to melt. This decrease must be due still to wind patterns pushing the ice and ocean currents.
The only true prophecy can be seen in this compilation
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_hi-def3.gif
and it is that the ice age will be coming sooner or later. I’d much rather have it later.
So I watch the ice, and I watch the sunspots, just in case the correlation of low cycles and the Maunder minimum is not fortuitous.
Whilst I would certainly grant there has been a degree of ice loss in the past 30 years I certainly don’t concede that AGW is the proven driving factor of this loss.
Until scientists can get a good grip on the impact of the different natural climatic cycles on wind and ocean currents and their subsequent impact on ice area and extent over the longer term, I cant see how anyone can claim that the loss of ice is primarily due to AGW.
I’ve seen far too little clarity in the logic put forth on the AGW side to back an “AGW has caused the Arctic ice loss” position.
On a side note I’d be curoius to see whether any studies have been done regarding the impact of shipping, if any, on ice area and extent. Seems to me all these ice breakers ploughing through the ice pack cant be doing it any favours. Is the amount of traffic heavy enough to do any damage and is there any correlation between the amount of heavy shipping in the arctic circle with ice loss?
Well it looks like it’s showing up here . . .
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Winter-strikes-with-a-vengeance-20100615
Robert
With your regard to your comment
“your 300,000 years value is wrong, but what is important is the acceleration of mass loss which has resulted in drastic changes on individual basins such as in Pine Island Bay (see rignot et al. 2008a and 2008b). An example is Greenland, WUWT said at one point not to worry because it would take 15 000 years to melt at current rates. Well in 2002 it would of taken 22 000 yearsā¦so a 7000 year change in just 7 yearsā¦ Greenlandās ice loss is accelerating at 30 GT per year2ā¦ Antarcticaās situation is even more dire with Pine Island glacier being grounded significantly below sea level and poised to contribute significantly to sea level rise over the next century. ”
Can you explain what effect will the thickening of the much larger East Antarctic ice mass will have on your predictions?
What is causing the thickening of this huge ice mass?
David W,
Do you agree that if the world warmed we would likely, all else being equal, see a decrease in arctic sea ice?
The world has warmed. Arctic sea ice has decreased. It is not too big of a leap in logic to suggest that the first might be making some contribution to the latter.
And it should be noted that the claim ‘primarily due to AGW’ is not necessarily one that I would make, at least not for a particular year. GISS says that a fair bit of the amplified warming in the arctic is due to black carbon on snow and ice. I corresponded with NSIDC regarding the 2007 record, and was informed that winds made a major contribution to the decline.
So scientists understand that there are many factors. But temperature increases due to CO2 is a major one, and is the reason why the decline is projected to continue. If it was simply wind variation, there would be little reason to expect a continued decline unless some mechanism can be proposed that would be altering wind patterns … such as, for example, increasing temperatures due to CO2 changing temperature gradients.
CodeTech says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:26 am
“Well it was nice of them to āwarnā us. I mean, Arctic sea ice is SO important to everyoneās day to day life.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Estimates for Arctic Ice Cap shrinkage has been consistently underestimated. First the year 2100 predicted by the IPCC which is notorious for gross underestimating. Then more serious Climatologists started playing the game. 2050, no 2040. How about 2020 through 2030?
They too were underestimating because they could not put in all the factors in their models. I myself am in the the 2020-2030 range though I’m starting to strongly suspect that it may be 8-12 years until ALL the ice goes including the ice north of Canada. It will hang on for a disproportionally long time compared to the rest that will quickly accelerate in its melting. This will be due to shallow colder waters underneath them delaying the inevitable.
BUT WE DON’T HAVE TO WAIT THAT LONG. In half the time range for the total melt to be accomplished most of the ice in the Arctic Ocean will be gone.
Now forgive me for boring you but why is this SOoooooo important in everyone’s day to day life? Because that’s how long we have until the weather starts to transform itself as the Arctic Ocean starts opening up in earnest. When it does, to the detriment of the entire Northern Hemisphere, with crop failures and massive flooding and droughts, perhaps you will be less sarcastic in your overall tone.
—————————————————————————————
Joe Bastardi says:
June 15, 2010 at 12:53 pm
“Total GLOBAL sea ice has not gone much of anywhere, nor will it. The hysteria, if ( when) I am proven correct, will simply shift to the southern hemisphere, were the warmist refuse to look now. Be of good cheer. JB . . .”
“The hysteria, if ( when) I am proven correct, will simply shift to the southern hemisphere, were the warmist refuse to look now.”
Actually, that’s what I always thought the naysayers would do. Migrate south for the extended Arctic summer.
—————————————————————————————
EthicallyCivil says:
June 15, 2010 at 2:20 pm
“Meta topic rant ā Viewing the time lapses of the ice migrating south along the Greenland coast alway makes me want to scream ā Arctic Ice melts because itās no longer *in* the Arctic.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The increase in temperature from Global Warming and its cumulative results leading to the disintegration of the Arctic Ice Cap enhances the effects of forces that never bothered the ice cap until recently. These forces include wind/current, water warming, ponding and other factors.
It is not rational to say that WIND is responsible instead of WARMING when both of them interact. Global Warming in effect enhances the detrimental effects of wind.
The wind and the ocean current that work together have been there for millenia. They’ve been observed for 200 years or so and carefully observed for about 100 years. They have always been flushing a certain amount of ice from the Arctic Ice Cap which would then regrow what it lost. This was before Global Warming started to make an impact on the ice cap.
If the winds alone are responsible for our current loss then we should have had no ice cap at all by now. It would have all been flushed out a long time ago.
The current situation is that the cumulative results of Global Warming have thinned out the ice cap which by being thinner is lighter and therefore easier for the winds to pick up. Being easier to pick up, more ice can be flushed out at one time. And to add insult to injury the ice cap cannot repair itself because of the warmer water, which is what thinned the ice in the first place.
HOW CAN THE WIND HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THINNING THE ICE?
Then there is the warming water itself. At first the ice cap begins to shrink slowly, exposing more and more water at its edges. White ice reflects 80-90% of the sun’s light depending on it’s condition while blue water absorbs 80%. As it warms up out of proportion to the ice it nibbles away at the edges of the ice either around or within open bodies of water and cracks inside the ice cap.
Warm water also slips underneath the ice cap which then attacks the ice from beneath. Hence the ice cap is being attacked from three directions. From above due to warmer air. From the sides and from below by warmer waters.
HOW CAN THE WINDS BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WARMER WATER AS OPPOSED TO . . . AS HE SCRATCHES HIS HEAD . . . AH, I GET IT! AS OPPOSED TO THE WARMER ATMOSPHERE.
Ponding is what happens when the air temperature at summer melts puddles of water on top of the ice. Since the water absorbs more heat from the sun than the ice it starts melting the ice underneath until it bores a hole all the way to the bottom where the seawater is. Other than contributing to melting it aids in the disintegration of the ice which eventually becomes rotten ice.
HOW CAN THE WINDS HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR PONDING WHEN IT’S OBVIOUS THAT EXTRA WARMTH IS CAUSING IT?
Then the rotten ice itself, which is made up of chunks of fragmented ice created in part from ponding and ocean waves. The ice is glued together over the winter by a thin layer of young first year ice. It melts easier than ordinary ice of the same thickness.
The ocean waves have been directly observed by the crew of the icebreaker Amundsen in September of 2009. The icebreaker was sent to investigate the presence of multiyear ice in the southeastern beaufort sea. It went through extensive amounts of 20 inch rotten ice until it found one ten mile ice floe of multiyear ice.
Before the very eyes of the ship’s crew the entire ten mile wide floe disintegrated in five minutes as it was being pounded by ocean waves. The rotten ice, 20 inches thick, that surrounded the ice floe offered no resistance to the waves.
HOW CAN THE WINDS HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ROTTEN ICE?
The ocean waves themselves would never have been a problem in the Arctic Ice Cap area because thirty years ago the area of multiyear ice was so extensive (It actually made up 90% of a very large ice cap) that they would have been suppressed throughout the whole Arctic Sea area.
HOW CAN THE WINDS HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?
http://s0.ilike.com/play#Bonnie+Tyler:Against+the+Wind+(Radio+Mix):5421264:m14977243
Hi,
Thanks to Daniel M for being the closest to the mark with “And you are correct: we cannot know that a short term pattern isnāt the first signs of a longer term pattern, but that doesnāt give us license to make assumptions.”
I asked for the reasoning behind the commentary “File this under short term trends matter when we say they matter.” And the answer I’ve got is it’s levity. It’s a big joke.
I have to suggest WUWT cannot be taken seriously on the question of when does a short term trend become something more than a short term trend. Nor on the observed fact of arctic sea ice depletion.
Salutations Hengist McStone
TomRude writes: “As for Barber, even Revkin did avoid his rotten ice BS as once again, it is a question of meteorological conditions. Those freaks from Winnipoo love the oil barons when they cough dough for their buildings but promote their AGW agenda on DC, Joe Romm and Desmogā¦”
David Barber holds a Canada Research Chair in Arctic System Science and is one of the most respected arctic scientists in the world. He has over 120 publications on the Arctic and has been studying Arctic ice since 1988. On top of that, he is one of the nicest and most genial guys I have ever met. Disagree with him and his data all you wish, but stooping to this level of incivility is truly juvenile and suggests you have nothing substantive to offer in your critique. Might you offer your credentials and the data you rely on in making your assessment, TomRude?
“Arctic Ocean ice retreating at 30-year record pace” is the new hype after “Arctic Saw Fastest August Sea Ice Retreat On Record”. That was in September 2008 when sea ice recovered from 2007 low. Instead, “record refreeze” was not a sexy title in November 2007.
June 15. AMSR E sea ice extend shows that we are about 5 days ahead of the melting season of 2006 when sea ice reached a minimum of 5.7 Million km2. This year they estimate 4.7 M, 2nd lowest. So nice to talk about the weather. The title implied CAGW effect instead, as usual.
Robert,
How do you explain the fact that some Antarctic ice shelves are larger now than they were fifty years ago? Compare maps. For example, the Amory Ice Shelf now extends many miles further out to sea.
I don’t think meltwater is as common on Antarctica as you seem to assume. At the very edges of Greenland’s ice there may be rushing streams atop the ice, but Antarctica is colder. I see little sign that meltwater plays much of a part, when huge slabs of ice shelves break off the Antarctic coast. Rather the stress fractures in ice shelves seem to be due to the fact these ice shelves are thrusting miles and miles out into an ocean which sailors know have some of the biggest waves in the world, plus very high winds.
Lastly, the waters off Antarctica are not as stratified as you suggest. The richness of Antarctic waters is due in part to branches of the deep-sea thermohaline circulation which upwell off the coast. These nutrient-rich waters are around 35 degrees, and have taken hundreds of years to migrate south from where they first enter the thermohaline circulation, up by Greenland. If the temperature of this upwelling water varies at all, then it might be a measure of the temperatures up by Greenland several hundred years ago.
Caleb,
Firstly, you should have a look at this paper (its free)
http://www.the-cryosphere.net/4/77/2010/tc-4-77-2010.html
Secondly, stating one ice shelf is growing so that proves other ones collapsing isn’t climate change is a faulty argument. If you look at my statement I was referring to the Ice Shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula. If you did not notice, there have been many ice shelf collapses in this region which is attributed to significant warming in this region over the last 50 years. Mercer (1978) warned that if CO2 warming were real then we would see the break up of ice shelves below the O degree january isotherm such as the prince gustav, wordie ice shelf and wilkins ice shelf. This has occurred…
I also have to point out that whereas most of antarctica is too cold to have melting, the antarctic peninsula is not and the Melt Fracture Theory (Scambos et al., 2000) which I mentioned earlier has now been all but accepted as scientific fact pertaining to the collapse of larsen A and B….
“Rather the stress fractures in ice shelves seem to be due to the fact these ice shelves are thrusting miles and miles out into an ocean which sailors know have some of the biggest waves in the world, plus very high winds.”
Lets see a citation for this commentary because ice shelf collapse on the Antarctic Peninsula has been for the most part attributable to atmospheric warming (although wilkins was the result of some other mechanisms, Braun et al. 2009).
Furthermore, having been to the antarctic peninsula, I can tell you that the waves are worse on the opposite side of where Larsen A and B are because that region is more exposed to open ocean…
Finally, i’m not really so knowledgeable on the waters off of Antarctica, but the citations I provided and the lack of your citations give me the impression they are more stratified.
villabolo says:
after a number of great shouts,
The ocean waves themselves would never have been a problem in the Arctic Ice Cap area because thirty years ago the area of multiyear ice was so extensive (It actually made up 90% of a very large ice cap) that they would have been suppressed throughout the whole Arctic Sea area.
HOW CAN THE WINDS HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?
A bit of physics helps. Have a look at the arctic temperatures on the side panel:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Note that blue line? It is the line where the atmosphere is warm enough for the ice to start melting. Note that it has barely touched the line so any diminution of ice cannot be due to temperature and melt, up to this time. Elementary physics.
What else can it be? Ocean currents and wind currents working in tandem.
Lets look at the current ocean temperatures in the arctic:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst.html
Read the scale, it is from -2C to 0C at present.
So, if the water cannot be melting the ice and the air cannot be melting the ice, it must be the strength of the currents that moves it to lower warmer waters, and the strength of the wind that pushes it like sails to lower warmer waters. You have noticed how a strong wind can push a boat, no? You have seen the ridges that form from compacted by the wind ice floes?
Now as far as history goes, surely when Greenland was a Viking colony temperatures were higher than now, the arctic navigable, and nobody was drowning, so what again is the problem with a bit of warmth?
Beware of the cold and prepare for the coming ice ages. It is sobering to study this compilation :
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_hi-def3.gif
The only true prophecy is that an ice age will come again, sooner or later.
This is to say I’ve done what you said. It’s filed already. (Short term File š
Caleb,
Your assessment is vitally incorrect. There is indeed significant melting which occurs on the Antarctic Peninsula and melt pools were and still are frequent above the 0 degree january isotherm in this region. The melt fracture process is explained in detail in Scambos et al. 2000 and you should consider reading up on it before you make other assumptions as Larsen A and B’s collapse was caused through this melt pond fracturing mechanism.
You also state that some ice shelves grow so that makes it impossible any lose mass because of climate change, this is another incorrect statement. All the ice shelves on the antarctic peninsula above the 0 degree january isotherm are in the process of collapsing or have collapsed which is something that mercer (1978) predicts would occur if CO2 driven warming were real. The Antarctic Peninsula has some of the highest warming rates in the world. Having been there and seen it first hand, I cannot agree with you assessment even in the slightest.
Because of the meteorological conditions in Antarctica, Ice shelves on the EAIS have yet to experience this warming and some have grown, Many ice shelves on the WAIS have however experienced significant warming from oceans and air temperatures and have thus began melting away. These are very well understand processes and perhaps you should consider taking a few glaciology courses prior to opening your mouth on a topic you clearly do not have experience in.
Finally, I provided citations for the stratification of the waters off of Antarctica, you did not provide any which are against that theory therefore it is hard to assess any validity of your argument.
By the way, perhaps if you’d like to read more on ice shelves on the antarctic peninsula, check out http://www.the-cryosphere.net/4/77/2010/tc-4-77-2010.pdf
its a free journal and this paper by Cook and Vaughan 2009, overviews most of the ice shelf changes. Although they miss out on wilkins largest collapse…
Enough comments about Antarctic Sea ice and total sea ice
See below
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Watts-Up-With-That-ignorance-regarding-Antarctic-sea-ice.html
John cook has already refuted these points. Is there a reason to continue with them?
Hengist McStone says:
June 16, 2010 at 12:50 am
I asked for the reasoning behind the commentary āFile this under short term trends matter when we say they matter.ā And the answer Iāve got is itās levity. Itās a big joke.
If you stick around you will see that there are two categories of short term trends.
category a) short term trend agrees with GW
category b) short term trend disagrees with GW
For some devilish reason, whenever it is a) one gets large media coverage and everybody coming out of the woodwork.
For the same devilish reason whenever it is b) there is the silence of the dead in the media and the usual talking heads.
That is why there is a joking category of “short term trends matter when we say they matter” , and we means AGW proponents.
I have to suggest WUWT cannot be taken seriously on the question of when does a short term trend become something more than a short term trend. Nor on the observed fact of arctic sea ice depletion.
Don’t you think your question is an oxymoron? If it is a short term trend how can it be more than short?
Long term trends are a different story.
Caleb,
There is indeed melting on antarctic ice shelves on the peninsula and the melt fracture theory is very well accepted for ice shelf disintegration such as larsen A and B (Scambos et al. 2000). This is something you even learn about in basic glaciology courses so I suggest you educate yourself better next time before speaking on the topic. Secondly, yes amery has grown but its not on the peninsula, the peninsula has undergone significant warming which much of Antarctica has been spared from for reasons given in my last post. The peninsula is the canary in the coalmine for antarctic ice losses and it is clear that the region is responding to warming. Mercer (1978) even warns tha tif the ice shelves at the 0 degree january isotherm melt or collapse that it is a clear sign of atmospheric CO2 induced warming. This has indeed occurred since then. (Prince Gustav, Wordie, Larsen A and B, Wilkins…)
87% of Glaciers on the Peninsula are in significant and sustained retreat (Cook et al. 2005)…. These are very clear signs of warming in this regions.
Regarding your final comment, I provided citations which support my argument. Where are yours?
Robert says:
June 16, 2010 at 5:03 am
I looked at your link. How can I take it seriously when the plot shows warming from -13 to -11.5 and he is wondering If the Southern Ocean is warming, why is sea ice increasing?
Ice becomes water at 0C. Period. It will not pay any attention to this “heating” from-13.0 to -11.5.
climatepatrol says:
June 16, 2010 at 1:31 am
June 15. AMSR E sea ice extend shows that we are about 5 days ahead of the melting season of 2006
how much is from shear now and shear then? then, how much from melt?
Anu says:
If you read the article, they make it clear where they are āgetting this stuffā:
I did read the entire article. I have also been following the temperature in the arctic:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
It was clarified above, though:
“They get their numbers from Hansen”
“In fact the average temperature in the arctic has never varied from the mean by more than 2 degrees for more than 2 weeks during the melt season since they started keeping records.”
“So are they saying that temperatures of -10C melts more ice than temperatures of -13C?”
Since ice will melt just as readily during natural warming as it will during AGW, it is absurd logic to say any melt in the Arctic proves AGW. It doesnt. It may indicate warming but I cant possibly see how it could accurately point to the source of the warming.
In an earlier post I said:
“Until scientists can get a good grip on the impact of the different natural climatic cycles on wind and ocean currents and their subsequent impact on ice area and extent over the longer term… ”
Of course a warmista with tunnel vision would jump all over this assuming I’m saying that ice loss is not in any way connected to warming temperatures which if you read it is not what I’m saying.
I don’t deny that natural cycles over the past 30 years have caused some degree of warming and this combined with the impact of changing wind and ocean currents has caused a degree of ice loss. What I don’t accept is the assertion that this proves anthropogenic global warming nor that Artic Ice is in a “death spiral” due to AGW that is going to cause a global catasprophe.
The period since 1979 has been dominated by el-nino’s and a warm phase PDO. This has put a lot of heat into the system which has caused ice loss and left “younger” ice that is more vulnerable. This ice is starting to recover but I wouldnt expect to see a higher extent year in year out. A full recovery of Arctic icew will take time.
Since we don’t have solid data on what was occurring with Arctic ice during the previous cool phase of the PDO (which had a higher rate of La Nina events) I would prefer to see what the next 30 years hold before drawing a conclusion that is at best based on only a partial understanding of the natural climate cycles in play.
If I was a betting man I’d still be putting money on ice increasing in the next 30 years. Although I still wonder if increased shipping in Arctic waters (primarily icebreakers) isnt causing some damage and making the “younger” ice more vulnerable to break up.
anna V writes,
“Now as far as history goes, surely when Greenland was a Viking colony temperatures were higher than now, the arctic navigable, and nobody was drowning, so what again is the problem with a bit of warmth?”
It’s true the 10th-century Norse expansion benefited from relatively warm and low-ice conditions in the northern Atlantic, and that by the 14th century their Greenland colonies were suffering from less favorable conditions. But were medieval temperatures in Greenland warmer than today? The GISP2 reconstruction suggests they were probably cooler.
There seems to be an urban myth imagining Greenland as an icy place now but a green landscape a thousand years ago. But the ice sheet has been there all along.
The Norse settlements in Greenland were in places not glaciated then, not glaciated now, and not glaciated any time in between. To pastoralists these fjords looked inviting because their vegetation had never been grazed, nor yet cut back for such wood as there was.
Gneiss says:
June 16, 2010 at 6:17 am
The GISP2 reconstruction suggests they were probably cooler.
Link?
anna v
I don’t see any reason why WUWT should pretend it is the arbiter of whether we are looking at a short term trend or the beginning of a longer term trend
You choose to portray it simplistically as evidence for or against AGW, but any long term trend starts off as a short term trend. Your statement “Long term trends are a different story” is simply wrong because you don’t have observations for the future.
Best wishes
Hengist McStone
Robert says:
June 16, 2010 at 5:03 am
Perhaps unintentionally, you have posted one of the funniest posts of the day. Congratulations!
George E. Smith says:
June 15, 2010 at 2:29 pm
thanks George but I hadn’t read it previously.
Robert says: [ … ]
Robert, don’t be silly, the Antarctic is the reason that global ice cover is increasing, and is now above average.
Past two years from cryosphere.
And the past 31 years of steadily increasing Antarctic ice extent.
Who are you gonna believe? “Skeptical” Science? Or your lyin’ eyes?
Hengist says:
June 16, 2010 at 7:20 am
Hengist says:
June 16, 2010 at 7:20 am
anna v
I donāt see any reason why WUWT should pretend it is the arbiter of whether we are looking at a short term trend or the beginning of a longer term trend
You choose to portray it simplistically as evidence for or against AGW, but any long term trend starts off as a short term trend. Your statement āLong term trends are a different storyā is simply wrong because you donāt have observations for the future.
You choose to misinterpret a bit of poking fun at the one sided interpretation of short term effects by the AGW crowd. Short term effects are just that, short term. Neither a proof for or against AGW.
Long term trends are of course not into the future, they can be seen from the past to the present, and usually are at least 30 year long . Because at some point meteorologists decided that averages over 30 years describe climate and not weather , and it has been carried over to the global warming studies.
Gneiss says @ 6:17 am [ … ],
Before you repeat the thoroughly debunked claim that there was no Medieval Warm Period, do a WUWT archive search for “MWP.”
Please, do the search and get yourself up to speed. It is tedious repeatedly teaching noobs the same facts over and over again. Do some reading and get educated.
If only we could stop Arctic sea ice from melting at all in the summer…
Someone remind me again, why is a perpetually frozen planet desireable? In light of the fact that the earth predominantly exists in a glaciated state, I think I’d rather enjoy these brief forays into balmy weather than hasten our return to the next ice age.
Well, the term balmy is relative, since I cannot grow decent wine-making grapes in Northern Alberta as yet.
anna v
I’m not misinterpreting your poking fun, I like a joke. But I figure WUWT cannot be taken seriously on the question of classification of trends and making jokes about it at the same time.
You lose all credibility when you say “Long term trends are of course not into the future,” Daniel M had it on the button last nite (9.38) when he said “we cannot know that a short term pattern isnāt the first signs of a longer term pattern, but that doesnāt give us license to make assumptions.”
āJoe Bastardi says:
June 15, 2010 at 12:53 pm
The hysteria, if ( when) I am proven correct, will simply shift to the southern hemisphere, were the warmist refuse to look now.ā
When they get to looking at the southern ocean they are going to have a ball. They are sure to notice that our polar bears have died out already!
anna v says:
for one that properly leaves out ice). What if salt water freezes well below 0C? What if currents are carrying lots of North Atlantic water up under the sea ice?
June 16, 2010 at 4:49 am
A bit of physics helps. Have a look at the arctic temperatures on the side panel:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Note that blue line? It is the line where the atmosphere is warm enough for the ice to start melting. Note that it has barely touched the line so any diminution of ice cannot be due to temperature and melt, up to this time. Elementary physics.
What else can it be? Ocean currents and wind currents working in tandem.
Lets look at the current ocean temperatures in the arctic:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst.html
Read the scale, it is from -2C to 0C at present.
So, if the water cannot be melting the ice and the air cannot be melting the ice…
What if the DMI temperatures north of 80 Lat. were just an “average” value, calculated from a model?
What if the Unisys SSTs were entirely computer generated in ice-covered areas? (see
Let’s see what did David Barber predict in the past?
āWeāre actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice (2008) for the first time [in history],ā David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker.”
So, we should believe him now for what reason? His past performance? Same holds for piomas … past performance has been poor.
I also see Robert mentions the reduced albedo for lower sea ice extents but never mentions increased radiation from open waters. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pro-AGW person mention this, wonder why?
“”” sandyinderby says:
June 16, 2010 at 8:36 am
George E. Smith says:
June 15, 2010 at 2:29 pm
thanks George but I hadnāt read it previously. “””
Glad you found it useful sandy; if only one person ever finds something useful; or even memory refreshing; I’ll always consider it worth my time to make the effort. After all; others who post here add to my knowledge.
Not sure if you are up on the Brewster angle thing. In general, light reflects and refracts at an optical interface boundary, in a manner that can be largely explained from Maxwell’s equations for the electromagnetic field; but this is all summarized in the Fresnel Formulae for polarized reflection and refraction at such a boundary. Treating the light as two polarized waves; one with the electric vector perpendicular to the plane of incidence (containing the incident, reflected, and refracted rays, plus the surface normal) and the othe with the electric vector in the plane of incidence, the Fresnel formulae show the in plane reflected component goes to zero at Brewster’s angle; Arctan (N1/N2) (Brewster was a Scottish scientist); so the reflected light is plane polarized; and that is why your polarized sunglasses remove that reflection from the water.
At the Brewster angle, the reflected component (perpendicular) is now about twice the amplitude that it had at normal incidence angle; so the total reflected energy is not too different; even absent the missing polarization.
So it is useful to think of the surface reflectance as being almost constant from normal incidence, all the way up to the Brewster Angle which is about 53 degrees (off normal) for water.
Beyond the Brewster angle, both polartization components of the reflected wave increase rapidly up to 100% with increased angle; which is why a black top road surface can reflect significantly at near grazing incidence.
So the sun issue in the polar regions; particularly the Arctic, is NOT that Critical angle excludes sunlight from enetering the water; but that INCREASING SURFACE REFLECTANCE at near grazing incidence; reflects a lot.
That’s the point; the issue is oblique reflectance; not Total Internal Reflectance.
When we design immersion lenses for LED lamps; there are plenty of design tricks for staying away from the critical angle so that light is not trapped by TIR at the lens surface. But what the hell good is that, if you are between the critical angle and the slightly smaller Brewster angle (internally) where you will still have high reflection losses. So a really good lens design would keep the maximum incidence angle less than the Brewster angle; as well as less than the critical angle where TIR would occur.
I actually have a patent on a high efficiency power LED optical design; and we called it the “Brewster Lamp” for that reason; 100% of the internal flux strikes the lens surface at less than the Brewster angle; so that losses to reflection are minimal. I think the 1996 Ford Thunderbird Tail light assembly has those Brewster Lamps in it.
In reply to anna v @ June 16, 2010 at 4:49 am.
A few comments. The DMI temperature is an average of stations north of 80 degrees north. Some areas could be warmer.
Also, the ice cap extends farther south than 80 degrees N.
I am not sure that there is any useful information about ocean temperatures in a map of SSTs when the area covered by ice is estimated at -2 to 0 degrees Celsius.
Finally, you do not need to have temperatures above 0 degrees Celsius to melt ice. Strong sunshine — especially with some soot on the snow & ice — will do just fine.
An Inquirer says:
June 16, 2010 at 12:37 pm
In reply to anna v @ June 16, 2010 at 4:49 am.
A few comments. The DMI temperature is an average of stations north of 80 degrees north.
No, they clearly state that it’s the output of their computer model. –
Calculation of the Arctic Mean Temperature
The daily mean temperature of the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel is estimated from the average of the 00z and 12z analysis for all model grid points inside that area. …from 2002 to 2006 data from the global NWP model T511 is used and from 2006 to present the T799 model data are used.
Richard M says:
June 16, 2010 at 12:24 pm
So, we should believe him now for what reason? His past performance?
Do you plan on applying that evenly- that anyone who says something “may happen”, and it doesn’t, will be rejected from that point on?
George E. Smith says:
June 16, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Thanks once again George, that was a very clear explanation. I’ll have to digest it over a cup of tea and digestive biscuit (what you call a cookie I think).
anna v says:
June 16, 2010 at 4:49 am
villabolo says:
after a number of great shouts,
The ocean waves themselves would never have been a problem in the Arctic Ice Cap area because thirty years ago the area of multiyear ice was so extensive (It actually made up 90% of a very large ice cap) that they would have been suppressed throughout the whole Arctic Sea area.
HOW CAN THE WINDS HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?
**************************************************************************
ANA V SAYS:
“A bit of physics helps. Have a look at the arctic temperatures on the side panel:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php”
“Note that blue line? It is the line where the atmosphere is warm enough for the ice to start melting. Note that it has barely touched the line so any diminution of ice cannot be due to temperature and melt, up to this time. Elementary physics.”
RESPONSE FROM VILLABOLO:
I find it ironic that the home page of DMI/Centre for Ocean and Ice makes the following statement in the very first paragraph:
“Since the 1970s the extent of sea ice has been measured from satellites. From these measurements we know that the sea ice extent today is significantly smaller than 30 years ago. During the past 10 years the melting of sea ice has accelerated, and especially during the ice extent minimum in September large changes are observed. The sea ice in the northern hemisphere have never been thinner and more vulnerable.”
Please note that they refer to “melting” and “thinning”.
**************************************************************************
ANA V SAYS:
“What else can it be? Ocean currents and wind currents working in tandem.
Lets look at the current ocean temperatures in the arctic:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst.html
Read the scale, it is from -2C to 0C at present”
RESPONSE FROM VILLABOLO:
Unfortunately it is not possible to see the actual Arctic Ocean since it is cut off from the map. Nor can one assume that the purple color coding automatically implies that the areas further north are at the same temperature.
First, it is known that the shallow waters off of the Canadian Arctic islands are COLDER than the waters further north. Furthermore please notice how the waters to the West and East of Greenland are in the dark blue color coding (1C=1.8F) right up to the top of the map. Also, off the East coast of Greenland to the immediate left (West) of the blue you find the purple, below zero, side by side with the warmer blue that is above zero.
*************************************************************************
ANA V SAYS:
So, if the water cannot be melting the ice and the air cannot be melting the ice, it must be the strength of the currents that moves it to lower warmer waters, and the strength of the wind that pushes it like sails to lower warmer waters. You have noticed how a strong wind can push a boat, no? You have seen the ridges that form from compacted by the wind ice floes?
**************************************************************************
RESPONSE FROM VILLABOLO:
I already mentioned the winds and currents in their proper context in the real world of the Arctic Ice Cap. They have always been there yet the ice cap was not flushed out. I also stated that the thinning, obviously from melting not wind, would have made it easier for the thinner therefore lighter ice to be picked up by the winds. Furthermore I mentioned in my first post that the ice cap was regrowing what the winds were flushing out like it used to decades ago.
Are you serious in believing that wind and NOTHING but wind is responsible for the shrinking and thinning of the ice cap?
THE AIR CANNOT MELT THE ICE?!?! Take a look at this Air Temperature Chart from the Arctic region as put out in the June 8, 2010 NSIDC’s Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/figures/atmosphere2.png
Immediately above those images you will find the following statement:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/atmosphere.html
“During October through December 2008 SAT anomalies remained above an unprecedented +4Ā° C across the central Arctic (Fig. A2(A)). This is linked to summer sea ice conditions. The summer of 2008 ended with nearly the same extreme minimum sea ice extent as in 2007, characterized by extensive areas of open water (see sea ice section). This condition allows extra heat to be absorbed by the ocean from longwave and solar radiation throughout the summer season, which is then released back to the atmosphere in the following autumn (Serreze et al., 2009). We expect similar warm fall temperatures over the Arctic in 2009, as in 2007 and 2008.”
Now Ana, if you had read or meditated on my many other statements including the one on Ponding you should obviously expect that the air temperatures were above melting. Furthermore, by absorbing more heat due to the darker color of the water,
they melt a hole right through the ice.
You can see the ponding phenomenon when pictures or videos of the ice is taken during summer.
As for your declaration that the water cannot be causing any warming, which I responded to above, let me bring that issue up again from another angle.
The Arctic Ice Cap has been dramatically shrinking for the past 20 years. It does not matter why it’s shrinking just that it’s shrinking. Are you going to tell me that blue water cannot absorb heat (80 absorption) as opposed to ice that reflects it (80-90 absorption)? This means that as the ice cap is shrinking and exposing more ocean, the water has no choice but to absorb heat.
***************************************************************************
ANA V SAYS:
“Now as far as history goes, surely when Greenland was a Viking colony temperatures were higher than now, the arctic navigable, and nobody was drowning, so what again is the problem with a bit of warmth?”
RESPONSE FROM VILLABOLO:
The higher temperatures in Greenland were a regional phenomenon. The problem with what you call “a bit of warmth” is this. first of all, the fact that the warmth we currently have, does not bother the individual human being is irrelevant. This assumes that all other aspects of weather are unchanged. Bad assumption.
When people are ignorant of something they tend to judge it by egocentric means. They assume that whatever happens in their back yard has to be happening throughout the world or that whatever values they have just happens to be shared by everyone.
The rise in temperature of 1.3F worldwide average, goes beyond affecting the temperature comfort of humans. It puts pressure on weather systems worldwide or certain features of the Earth that could affect the weather or the entire climate.
Visualize a globe of the Earth the size of a baseball. Then wrap your fingers around it pointing towards the ball itself, in all directions, which would represent pressure points bearing down on different weather systems (or the Arctic Ice Cap) throughout the Earth. If one of your fingers were to bear down too heavily on one or more sensitive points then it could collapse or distort those weather systems to the point that it creates a chain reaction of weather events that has consequences for either a region or the entire planet.
One example, the oceans are getting warmer and like Global Warming predicted in the 1990’s it is causing the following. Warmer waters means more evaporation which means more clouds which means more intense rains and floods like the ones we’ve been experiencing. Our civilization, fragile and grossly inefficient as it is, cannot withstand too many disasters in a short period of time.
Or take the Arctic Ice Cap itself. When it’s gone during the summertime it will warm up (estimated 6-9F) evaporate more causing more of the intense rains mentioned above as well as intensifying droughts depending on location. This and other drastic weather changes throughout the Northern Hemisphere will not inspire you to say, “. . . so what again is the problem with a bit of warmth?”
As a final point, let me emphasize the fact that, since we continue to burn fossil fuels the CO2 levels are going to keep rising. An increase toward 1,000 parts per million will give us a temperature rise of 10F averaged out throughout the planet. That would be devastating and our civilization would have collapsed even before then. That means, of course, that we will not even get to the point that we will be able to spew that much CO2 in the first place.
But even if we were to stop CO2 emissions TODAY, throughout the world, we would not be able to prevent the Arctic Ice Cap from disappearing along with the Climate consequences I mentioned above. Furthermore, we would have a time delay-I forget the exact figures-two or three decades before we receive the full heat increase, about 1F, from our current levels of 390 ppm. This assumes no further rise in emissions.
What’s more there are stores of biomass in Siberia that are turning into, at this very moment, into Methane. Believe it or not, Methane has 100 times the insulating ability as Carbon Dioxide immediately after its release which then drops to 60-72X after 20 years and then 20-25X after 100 years. This is due to the fact that Methane is degrading throughout time.
For a very amusing an entertaining video that shows what is happening in Siberia with the release of Methane please watch:
You may have noticed the tipping trees even some distance behind the edge of the lake bed. Those trees are used to rooting themselves in permafrost, frozen soil, that is frozen all the way to the top. Since the permafrost is thawing out (I dare you to guess why) The trees lose their balance and eventually fall.
**************************************************************************
Beware of the cold and prepare for the coming ice ages. It is sobering to study this compilation :
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_hi-def3.gif
The only true prophecy is that an ice age will come again, sooner or later.
RESPONSE FROM VILLABOLO:
SUCH DRAMA.
anna v says:
June 16, 2010 at 8:55 am
“Because at some point meteorologists decided that averages over 30 years describe climate and not weather , and it has been carried over to the global warming studies.”
VILLABOLO REPLIES:
I believe they are called Climatologists not Meteorologists.
villabolo says at 2:25 pm [ … ]
If you can’t spell anna’s name correctly, even when it’s been cut and pasted by you, then there’s no reason to think you’re being accurate about more complicated matters.
Smokey says:
June 16, 2010 at 3:00 pm
If you canāt spell annaās name correctly, even when itās been cut and pasted by you, then thereās no reason to think youāre being accurate about more complicated matters.
MY APOLOGIES TO ANNA.
As for you, Smokey, I have never replied in such a manner to people who often times get my name wrong.
Nor did I give Anna the attitude you have given me when I corrected her on her use of the word Meteorologist instead of Climatologist. So if you are consistent in your attitude you should have criticized both Anna and I along with everyone else who makes trivial mistakes. I’m sure when that happens you will get a reputation on this board for being a nitpick.
As for the accuracy of the information I have used I have either given citations or have mentioned well known facts. I have also used basic deductive reasoning in my arguments.
So if you want to question the accuracy of my information or my logic why don’t you simply respond to the issues brought up?
“”” villabolo says:
June 16, 2010 at 2:25 pm
anna v says:
June 16, 2010 at 4:49 am
villabolo says:
after a number of great shouts,
The ocean waves themselves would never have been a problem in the Arctic Ice Cap area because thirty years ago the area of multiyear ice was so extensive (It actually made up 90% of a very large ice cap) that they would have been suppressed throughout the whole Arctic Sea area.
HOW CAN THE WINDS HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?
**************************************************************************
ANA V SAYS:
āA bit of physics helps. Have a look at the arctic temperatures on the side panel:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.phpā “””
I can’t believe that nobody else seems to get the picture; well I know for sure that Phil does.
Take a look at that ice sculpture. Can’t you see how the refractive index of the water, has concentrated the sunlight and focussed it under the surface to melt the ice BELOW THE SURFACE !!
Well; maybe that’s not a good explanation. Is it just possible that the water that burg is floating on is actually above zero deg C, and it is melting the ice from below. Where on earth does the gulf stream go when it gets up poast the British isles, and Scandinavia into the arctic; isn’t it supposed to cool down and then sink to return to the equator along the bottom.
What better way to cool hot tropical surface waters than to etch away the undersides of a big iceberg; whose upper surface is clearly NOT melting, in that picture.
Now barefootgirl told me I was full of it; and everything I said was wrong; but how else does one explain the morphology of THAT piece of ice ?
IT’S THE WATER !!
“”” sandyinderby says:
June 16, 2010 at 1:34 pm
George E. Smith says:
June 16, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Thanks once again George, that was a very clear explanation. Iāll have to digest it over a cup of tea and digestive biscuit (what you call a cookie I think). “””
Sandy; just a few loose end snippets to complete the story. Critical Angle of course arises because the value of sin(x) is bounded by +/- 1. Tan(x) of course has no such restriction, so the Brewster angle situation arises for light going both ways from air to water; or from water to air. Do a little back of envelope drawing; and some elementary trogonometry; and you will immediately see going in either direction; that at the Brewster angle of incidence; the reflected ray and the refracted ray are exactly perpendicular to each other.
Note that although the relfected ray is linearly polarised at the Brewster angle; the refracted ray is only partially polarised; because most of the energy is transmitted but only a few percent id reflected.
The reflection coefficient for normal incidence on the surface, can be calulated from r = ((N1-N2)/(N1+N2))^2 so for glass with index 1.5 in air r =4% while for air=water with index 1.333, r = 2%
Since at near grazing incidence beyond the Brewster angle, the rflectance increases; the total reflectance for diffuse illumination of a flat water surface is about 3% total which is why they talk about 97% emissivity for water emission of thermal radiation.
Deep clean ocean water is a damn fine imitation of a black body absorber, and radiator.
By the way, Biscuit works fine for me; a cookie is what Micro$oft infests Internet Explorer with. I believe “biscuit” is actually French and means simply “twice cooked”.
villabolo,
I see. It’s OK for you to correct anna, but you appear to be very thin-skinned when someone corrects your mis-spelling of her name. BTW, I wasn’t being insulting, simply matter of fact; details matter, and the alarmist crowd inevitably gets critical details wrong. That’s why they’ve been so consistently wrong about their endless scare stories, like runaway global warming caused by CO2 [CO2=CAGW], coral bleaching, sea level rise, methane, frog extinctions, whale poop, and anything else they can wave their arms about. I detect the same scare-mongering in your posts above. As you will learn, that doesn’t fly here. Provide testable facts, not what-ifs.
Since you are so concerned about the harmless and beneficial trace gas CO2, kindly provide empirical [not model], testable, replicable evidence showing the fraction of warming that has occurred, which is specifically attributable to human CO2 emissions. Then it should be easy to show the climate sensitivity to CO2. When you have a solid climate sensitivity number, we can make accurate predictions. Easy, no? …No. You would be in line for a Nobel prize if you could demonstrate a testable and accurate climate sensitivity number.
The problem here is a noob showing up from whatever warmist blog and rehashing old arguments that have been thoroughly debated and settled here. A good example is your incorrect assertion that Greenland’s medieval warmth was regional. Do a search for “MWP,” and you will find an enormous amount of evidence that the MWP was global in extent. Michael Mann was debunked for trying to show the MWP didn’t exist; claiming Greenland’s prior warmth was regional is simply a fallback position to Mann’s debunked Hokey Stick chart.
The recommended course of action is to use the WUWT search feature to access the archives, and get up to speed before posting comments that have already been analyzed, debated and settled. Start with: MWP. That will return plenty of articles showing that Greenland’s former warmth was part of a global phenomenon. You can branch out from there.
30 years ago they weren’t–or anyway the term hadn’t become predominant in the field of climate/weather standard-setting bodies, so there’s a good chance it was “meteorologists” who made the call.
George E. Smith says:
June 16, 2010 at 3:26 pm
“Take a look at that ice sculpture. Canāt you see how the refractive index of the water, has concentrated the sunlight and focussed it under the surface to melt the ice BELOW THE SURFACE !!”
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
You better watch out for the WRATH OF SMOKEY who dissed me on misspelling Anna’s name! Not that I’m a nitpick or care about misspellings at all, but Smokey might breath fire out of your monitor because you misspelled focused (with an extra ‘c’) and berg (with a ‘u’). Oops, I caught another one but I’ll let Smokey fume about it.
On a more serious note you may have a point about the refractive issue (I can’t see the picture you must be referring to since there is no link). However, it does not explain how large ice floes, ten miles wide, like the one the Amundsen icebreaker discovered, would deteriorate into rotten ice which is much more vulnerable to melting from any direction as well as being more easily disintegrated by ocean waves.
The process that starts rotten ice does involve melting from above and I’ve seen it quite often in videos taken over the Arctic Ice Cap as well as on top of glaciers in Greenland. The following link should easily explain the process that initiates rotten ice.
http://media.thestar.topscms.com/acrobat/cc/e5/a80893c24759919867add7104bbe.pdf
Smokey writes,
“Before you repeat the thoroughly debunked claim that there was no Medieval Warm Period, do a WUWT archive search for ‘MWP.'”
But I didn’t yet repeat any claim that there was no Medieval Warm Period, did I? What did I actually say, and what should I read in the WUWT archive to contradict that?
“It is tedious repeatedly teaching noobs the same facts over and over again. Do some reading and get educated.”
Yes, I can see the tedium wears you down. Again, what exactly did I say, to give away that I’m an unread noob compared with you?
Gneiss,
My apologies if you thought I was calling you uneducated, or un-read. I was not, and that’s not what I intended.
New names are easy to spot when they appear, and some of us are sensitive to the stream of folks coming here to re-write history. Recently there was a Mr “S” who came to incessantly argue, and was then lauded on an alarmist blog for doing “yeoman work at WUWT.” Sorry if I misunderstood where you’re coming from. But the Greenland issue has been settled for a long time here. I was sincere in suggesting reading the archives.
You had stated that Greenland was probably cooler than at present. That is contradicted by the GISP Greenland ice core data [from the archives].
Roger Knights says:
June 16, 2010 at 4:03 pm
VILLABOLO REPLIES:
I believe they are called Climatologists not Meteorologists.
“30 years ago they werenātāor anyway the term hadnāt become predominant in the field of climate/weather standard-setting bodies, so thereās a good chance it was āmeteorologistsā who made the call.”
Thank you for the info Roger.
Smokey says:
June 16, 2010 at 4:37 pm
You had stated that Greenland was probably cooler than at present. That is contradicted by the GISP Greenland ice core data [from the archives].
No, that graph ends 145 years ago!
jakers says:
June 16, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Richard M says:
June 16, 2010 at 12:24 pm
So, we should believe him now for what reason? His past performance?
Do you plan on applying that evenly- that anyone who says something āmay happenā, and it doesnāt, will be rejected from that point on?
No, the point was that several obvious AGW believers were using the “appeal to authority” ploy in mentioning Barber’s name as if he were the god of Arctic knowledge. I was just pointing out the facts.
Most warmist scientists suffer from confirmation bias. I suspect Barber is no different, especially since his prediction failed so miserably. Beware of people trying to regain credibility.
VILLABOLO REPLIES:
I believe they are called Climatologists not Meteorologists.
Do you know when the 30 year time period was selected? Look it up.
Smokey wrote,
“You had stated that Greenland was probably cooler than at present. That is contradicted by the GISP Greenland ice core data [from the archives].”
No, it is not. Look more closely at that graph you just cited.
Well, I can see the graph numbers better than Phil. But if you folks are asking for a different graph, look here.
If you want more graphs, just holler.
“”” A Climatologist is just a Meteorologist who has been studying weather for more than 30 years; and if he hasn’t been studying it for 30 years then why does he call himslef a Climatologist.
Well I prefer to call them Climatologers; which is more in keeping with the other soft sciences like Economics and Ancient Astrology.
When they stop computer guessing at what is coming down the pike; they may qualify as Climatologists (after 30 years on the job).
“”” villabolo says:
June 16, 2010 at 4:22 pm
George E. Smith says:
June 16, 2010 at 3:26 pm
āTake a look at that ice sculpture. Canāt you see how the refractive index of the water, has concentrated the sunlight and focussed it under the surface to melt the ice BELOW THE SURFACE !!ā
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
You better watch out for the WRATH OF SMOKEY who dissed me on misspelling Annaās name! Not that Iām a nitpick or care about misspellings at all, but Smokey might breath fire out of your monitor because you misspelled focused (with an extra ācā) and berg (with a āuā). Oops, I caught another one but Iāll let Smokey fume about it.
On a more serious note you may have a point about the refractive issue (I canāt see the picture you must be referring to since there is no link). “””
Well there is only one picture isn’t there; so that must be the one I was referrring to; you know; the one at the top of the page; the one from the Montreal Gazette; that picture of a sculpted ice burg.
And the refractive index thing was a bit of off the cuff comment there; not to be taken seriously; but the picture clearly shows the ice is being scarfed off AKA melted from underneath the water; while it looks pristine and unmelted on the top.
Those surface waterfalls that start at the top of Greenland glaciers; are most likely NOT all that hot; but once they get a bit of a hole in the ice; the gravitational energy they get, just falling down the hole, is enough to keep on carving till they get all the way through.
Some intrepid 8th grader could do the calculations to convert the gravitational energy of falling water into rate of ice melting.
But it’s a neat trick to pass off those perpetual Greenland surface waterfalls, as some kind of global warming phenomenon; well if I was cheeky enough, I would try it myself.
But no; it simply is 1/2 mV^2 —> 80 calories per gram.
Smokey says:
June 16, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Well, I can see the graph numbers better than Phil. But if you folks are asking for a different graph, look here.
If you want more graphs, just holler.
Sorry I made a mistake on the last graph the most recent data was from 1855.
Smokey’s latest graph is based on data that ends at ~450 years ago.
“Since you are so concerned about the harmless and beneficial trace gas CO2, kindly provide empirical [not model], testable, replicable evidence showing the fraction of warming that has occurred, which is specifically attributable to human CO2 emissions. Then it should be easy to show the climate sensitivity to CO2. When you have a solid climate sensitivity number, we can make accurate predictions. Easy, no? ā¦No. You would be in line for a Nobel prize if you could demonstrate a testable and accurate climate sensitivity number.”
Very well put. You can trot out any number of symptoms that might point to warming temperatures but they wont prove whether the global warming of the past 30 years warming was due to natural or anthropogenic causes.
Arguing that declining Arctic Ice, rising sea levels, drought, flood, severe weather etc proves AGW is simply not logical. They may be a sign of warming global temperatures but I don’t see how they speak to the origin of that warming.
Phil, the first graph that Smokey thought proved his point shows Richard Alley’s GISP2 temperature reconstruction, which ends in 1905. That endpoint often gets deceptively labeled “present temperature,” for example in the PowerPoints for talks by Don Easterbrook. Faked-up versions of the graph are bouncing all over the Interwebs.
The graph Smokey cited is accurately labeled, however. The right-hand X value is “95,” as in 95 years before 2000.
Gneiss says:
June 16, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Phil, the first graph that Smokey thought proved his point shows Richard Alleyās GISP2 temperature reconstruction, which ends in 1905. That endpoint often gets deceptively labeled āpresent temperature,ā for example in the PowerPoints for talks by Don Easterbrook. Faked-up versions of the graph are bouncing all over the Interwebs.
Agree apart from the 1905 part.
The graph Smokey cited is accurately labeled, however. The right-hand X value is ā95,ā as in 95 years before 2000.
The right hand X value is indeed 95, but it’s 95 years before present and BP refers to 1950 not 2000 (David Lappi who produced that graph made a mistake).
“BP refers to 1950 not 2000 (David Lappi who produced that graph made a mistake).”
Ah, then it confused me as well! The NOAA paleoclimatology site lists the end date as 2000, and links to data that start at 0.0951409 thousand years before present. So I assumed that meant 1905.
Either way, it makes the MWP look toasty to see it compared with LIA temps standing in for the “present.”
An Inquirer says:
June 16, 2010 at 12:37 pm
I am not sure that there is any useful information about ocean temperatures in a map of SSTs when the area covered by ice is estimated at -2 to 0 degrees Celsius.
Finally, you do not need to have temperatures above 0 degrees Celsius to melt ice. Strong sunshine ā especially with some soot on the snow & ice ā will do just fine.
Physics is funny. If the sun is melting the ice, the air temperature will be over 0C, and would be measured. It is not the air temperature that is melting the ice, it is the melting ice that generates the air temperature : air has very small heat capacity to be able to do much except cool rapidly over colder ice. And my point about winds and ocean currents was for the melt up to now, not from now on, when the plot shows over 0C.
villabolo says:
June 16, 2010 at 2:51 pm
anna v says:
June 16, 2010 at 8:55 am
āBecause at some point meteorologists decided that averages over 30 years describe climate and not weather , and it has been carried over to the global warming studies.ā
VILLABOLO REPLIES:
I believe they are called Climatologists not Meteorologists.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) glossary definition is:
Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the “average weather,” or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate
I supposed that it is meteorologists who belong to the World Meteorological Organization.
I was a barefoot girl sixty years ago in the summers, with calluses like soles on my feet from walking on hot sands and earth. At present I am a seventy year old retired particle physicist.
I can give you this very important insight in physics: it is the energy , and the differing ability of matter to retain and transmit energy that is important. Not the hand waving.
For ice to change phase and become water, energy must be supplied.Temperature is a proxy of energy but does not tell how much there is there. It is the heat capacity of the media that plays the role, and of course the energy from the sun.
Here is the logic.:
Up to a few days ago, not enough energy was radiated down to the arctic because the temperatures were below freezing. Nevertheless the ice area diminished appreciably. The energy must have been supplied somehow. Since the waters next to the ice are also quite cold ( ice has very little salt) the ice must be pushed to warmer ocean waters in order to melt. What is pushing it, if it is not ice breakers? Wind and water currents in tandem.
http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/forecaster_handbooks/Arctic/Forecasters%20Handbook%20for%20the%20Arctic.02.pdf
Breakup in the bay begins in May as puddles and cracks start to form. Strong easterly
winds can move most or all of the ice out of the bay as early as mid-June. Absence of
these winds may result in ice lingering in the bay as late as mid-July
…
In addition to winds, ocean currents have a major influence on the motion of the ice.
Several sources of oceanic currents exist causing the currents to be quite complex at times.
The motion of the water due to tides can also be complex, particularly in shallow andl ong
embayments.
The web is a great educator.
Knock me over with a feather!! š
AnnaV
Physics is funny. If the sun is melting the ice, the air temperature will be over 0C, and would be measured. It is not the air temperature that is melting the ice, it is the melting ice that generates the air temperature : air has very small heat capacity to be able to do much except cool rapidly over colder ice.
Of course ! This is so basic that you would expect everybody knows it .
Even warmers .
But apparently no .
I am sure the guy you answered to seriously believed that melting ice can be surrounded by air below 0Ā°C š
What those people believe being physics is definitely not funny .
Phil wrote,
“Smokeyās latest graph is based on data that ends at ~450 years ago.”
Also, those data are from Antarctica, whereas my statement that Smokey was helping us debunk referred to the GISP2 Greenland core.
TomVonk says:
June 17, 2010 at 3:38 am
AnnaV
Physics is funny. If the sun is melting the ice, the air temperature will be over 0C, and would be measured. It is not the air temperature that is melting the ice, it is the melting ice that generates the air temperature : air has very small heat capacity to be able to do much except cool rapidly over colder ice.
Right, so ‘melting ice generates the air temperature’, but water in contact with ice will be at 0ĀŗC so why would you expect the air temperature to be over 0ĀŗC? That’s assuming that it’s freshwater ice, saltwater ice will melt at a lower temperature.
Of course ! This is so basic that you would expect everybody knows it .
Even warmers .
But apparently no .
I am sure the guy you answered to seriously believed that melting ice can be surrounded by air below 0Ā°C š
What those people believe being physics is definitely not funny .
Indeed Tom.
So does the sun, or the air, or the water melt the ice.
So let’s do an experiment (at night) so there’s no sunshine; and let’s suppose that we have a calving glacier; with an ice temperature of -8 deg C; and the air temperature is also at -8 deg C; so there isn’t anybody to melt the ice.
Well the glacier is hanging out over Glacier Bay or some place off Greenland, developing a shearing stress, since the ice doesn’t go very far below the surface; but let’s say that the glacier face is 250 feet high from the water surface to the top of the cliff. So how much ice is that ?
Well the glacier face is a random curvy line around the end of that thing; and let’s imagine another curvy line; at the shear face; where it is going to break off; maybe a metre wide; maybe a hundred metres; who knows. So the center line (length around the face) between those two lines; times the distance between the lines times 250 feet is the amount of ice above the surface; and it is going to break off. (this is the second Theorem of Pappus; in case anybody is watching).
Well actually it doesn’t matter; the amount of ice could be in Pyramid Tons for all I care; we’ll just call it (m) for short.
So if the cliff is 250 feet above the surface; the mean height (H) = 250/2 *0.3048 metres.
So when the ice breaks off that whole mass (m) is going to fall an average distance (H); and in the process develop some kinetic energy; 1/2m* v^2 = m.g.H = mx9.80665xH Joules which also equals m.H x9.80665/4.184 Calories if converted from mechanical energy to heat; and spread it over m total mass of ice.
So we get 250/2*0.3048*9.80665/4.184 = 89.3 Calories.
So our ice was at -8 deg C and the latent heat of freezing is about 80 Calories per gram; so we get enough energy from the gravitational collapse to raise the ice Temperature up to zero; then melt it, and warm the water up to +1.3 deg C.
So you see, there is no need to postulate any source of heat to melt the ice of a glacier. It carries enough gravitational potential energy as it marches slowly down the valley to melt itself; energy that was stored there when the snow was originally laid down up in the high lands.
So next time you go to Glacier Bay; and watch the ice calve off a cliff that is over 250 feet high over the surface; just remember that the collapse alone results in enough heat to melt all of the ice that collapsed; well the part that was under the water; will rebound upwards; and cool a bit so it will survive; but enough heat is released to account for the melt of the collapsed ice.
And some of those glaciers are way higher than 250 feet at the terminus face.
And as I pointed out before those perpetual waterfalls that never stop going down holes in the Greenland glaciers; are simply converting their gravitational energy to ice melting; so no external heat source is required to explain.
And if the sea water wasn’t warm before the collapse; it will certainly warm up as a result of the collapse.
Phil. says:
June 17, 2010 at 8:39 am
Are you just being confrontational? It is all about LW and SW after all, the same as with the ground. SW hits the ice and turns into LW and melts it , (fortunately normal ground does not melt.) While melting is going on there is not enough LW radiated to heat the air above. Look at the DMI plot on the right. The temperature does not go over 2C from melt.
but water in contact with ice will be at 0ĀŗC so why would you expect the air temperature to be over 0ĀŗC?
From left over LW that is not used in melting, since air is a bad conductor? There is a layer of water when melt starts, and that helps in getting some LW radiation to the air.
Any way the question was about the role of winds, at a time when melt had not started, and I think that is answered.
Smokey refers (links) to an Antarctic ice core temperature chart. This chart is from a 2010 peer-reviewed study. The authors state that YBP figure is pre-1950. Not 1905, not 1855, not ~450 years ago. Open the study’s PDF and do a search on 1950 and you’ll find the reference – at least that’s how we interpreted the author’s statement.
Go to this posting, which has additional information on right side of chart:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/06/2010-antarctica-peerreviewed-research-ice-core-data-confirms-medieval-period-warmer-than-present.html
You’ll see why we label data end as “Current” – hint, the Antarctica high elevation polar plateau temps have not changed much since 1950.
And in the Month of April 2010 the IARC-JAXA Sea Ice Extent was larger than the previous 8 years. But that wouldn’t be news, right?
C3 says:
June 17, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Smokey refers (links) to an Antarctic ice core temperature chart. This chart is from a 2010 peer-reviewed study. The authors state that YBP figure is pre-1950. Not 1905, not 1855, not ~450 years ago. Open the studyās PDF and do a search on 1950 and youāll find the reference ā at least thatās how we interpreted the authorās statement.
The most recent data point in the datafile is -390 BP, hence 450 years ago.
Per Phil: “The most recent data point in the datafile is -390 BP, hence 450 years ago.”
Okay, the ice core chart is from this 2010 peer-reviewed research (see this PDF): http://epic.awi.de/Publications/Ste2009a.pdf
Here are the exact words from the research PDF: “(ky BP refers to thousands
of years before 1950 AD)”.
Phil, please provide the link to the actual datafile used by this specific study (Stenni et al. – Quaternary Science Reviews 29 (2010)) that counters their stated ‘pre-1950’ claim in their own published study.
Honestly, are you saying that their ‘pre-1950’ terminology in their PDF really means some 400 years “pre” 1950?
You are referring to the Dome C ice core datafile, not the multiple others that are available, correct?
C3 says:
June 17, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Per Phil: āThe most recent data point in the datafile is -390 BP, hence 450 years ago.ā
Okay, the ice core chart is from this 2010 peer-reviewed research (see this PDF): http://epic.awi.de/Publications/Ste2009a.pdf
Here are the exact words from the research PDF: ā(ky BP refers to thousands
of years before 1950 AD)ā.
Phil, please provide the link to the actual datafile used by this specific study (Stenni et al. ā Quaternary Science Reviews 29 (2010)) that counters their stated āpre-1950ā² claim in their own published study.
Honestly, are you saying that their āpre-1950ā² terminology in their PDF really means some 400 years āpreā 1950?
You are referring to the Dome C ice core datafile, not the multiple others that are available, correct?
Years BP is standard terminology which refers to āpre-1950ā², it doesn’t mean that the data runs up to 1950. In fact the data file used in that study has been corrected and the most recent datapoint is now 38yBP or 1912.
The datafile is edc3deuttemp2007.txt at the Epica_domec ftp server, here’s the early part of it:
DATA:
EPICA Dome C bag deuterium data
(LSCE, analytical accuracy of 0.5 per mille)
Temperature estimated after correction for sea-water
isotopic composition (Bintanja et al, 2005)
and for ice sheet elevation (Parrenin et al, 2007)
on EDC3 age scale (Parrenin et al, 2007)
Column 1: Bag number (55 cm sample)
Column 2: Top depth (m)
Column 3: EDC3 age scale (years before year 1950)
Column 4: dD data (per mille with respect to SMOW)
Column 5: Temperature estimate (temperature difference from the average of the last 1000 years)
Bag ztop Age Deuterium Temperature
1 0 -50.00000
2 0.55 -43.54769
3 1.1 -37.41829
4 1.65 -31.61153
5 2.2 -24.51395
6 2.75 -17.73776
7 3.3 -10.95945
8 3.85 -3.20879
9 4.4 5.48176
10 4.95 13.52038
11 5.5 22.21633
12 6.05 30.60813
13 6.6 38.37379 -390.9 0.88
14 7.15 46.81203 -385.1 1.84
15 7.7 55.05624 -377.8 3.04
Charles S. Opalek, PE says:
June 17, 2010 at 3:20 pm
And in the Month of April 2010 the IARC-JAXA Sea Ice Extent was larger than the previous 8 years. But that wouldnāt be news, right?
Wasn’t it news? There were a bunch of pieces done on here about it – guess you missed them. Check the archives.
OK, about sea ice, i.e. ice formed on the ocean without snowfall playing a role, here is
what is in wikipedia is as I thought: no salt in the ice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_ice
The sea ice is largely fresh, since the ocean salt is expelled from the forming and consolidating ice by a process called brine rejection. The resulting highly saline (and hence dense) water is an important influence on the ocean overturning circulation.
So melt of this ice, no matter the lower temperature of saline water it needed to start freezing, is still 0C.
anna v says:
June 18, 2010 at 3:53 am
OK, about sea ice, i.e. ice formed on the ocean without snowfall playing a role, here is
what is in wikipedia is as I thought: no salt in the ice.
On these matters I find NSIDC to be more authoritative:
“New ice is usually very salty because it contains concentrated droplets called brine that are trapped in pockets between the ice crystals, and so it would not make good drinking water. As ice ages, the brine eventually drains through the ice, and by the time it becomes multiyear ice, nearly all of the brine is gone. Most multiyear ice is fresh enough that someone could drink its melted water. In fact, multiyear ice often supplies the fresh water needed for polar expeditions. See Salinity and Brine in the Characteristics section for more information.”
As we are frequently told much of the melting of sea ice occurs at the water/ice interface. Here’s an example of melting first year ice, note the temperature at the melting surface is less than 0ĀŗC. In this case the upper surface being formed from snow will be fresh water ice.
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_sealevel/brw2010/BRW_MBS10_currTprof.png
Per Phil (June 17, 2010 at 8:52 pm): “In fact the data file used in that study has been corrected and the most recent datapoint is now 38yBP or 1912.”
Phil, thanks for the file location. I checked it out. Based on my reading of the information attached to the file, the first data point is actually year 2000 (Bag #1). The first temperature data occurs in Bag#13, which corresponds to 1912. My mistake (ignorance) I was off 38 years, not the approximate 400 years as implied in previous comments.
Now that we concur of year data (me wrong 38 years; you wrong ~400 years), the real question comes down to how much the polar plateau on East Antarctica, at 10k meter elevation, warmed/cooled since 1912. My impression is that specific part of the globe has not seen much temperature change over the last 98 years.
Thanks again for the data source.
“”” Phil. says:
June 18, 2010 at 6:29 am
As we are frequently told much of the melting of sea ice occurs at the water/ice interface. Hereās an example of melting first year ice, note the temperature at the melting surface is less than 0ĀŗC. In this case the upper surface being formed from snow will be fresh water ice.
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_sealevel/brw2010/BRW_MBS10_currTprof.png “””
Say Phil,
Presumably the black line with dots is the actual Temperature data. What is that tan/brown area around the black line; some sort of uncertainty band or what is it.
Presumably the underwater/ice melting interface at minus 0.5 deg C or so, simply reflects that zero degree C is only the melting point at an ice/fresh water interface; and the melting Temperature is shifted for an ice/salty water interface.
My Infra-Red Handbook, in the section on Properties of Terrestrial materials, shows snow reflectances that are above 80% and sometimes 90% for the visibly range out to 800 nm; but then a roughly linear decline down to near zero at 1.50 microns; with a plateau in the 20-40% range at 1.2-1.4 microns; with the value very dependent on snow age. For one small angle reflectance for that 1.2-1.4 micron plateau, R goes from nearly 60% for 14 hour old snow down to 20% for 70 hour old snow. At longer than 1.5 microns snow is between zero and 20% reflectance in a bunch of wavy cycles.
The point being that snow can be quite absorptive in the region from 1.0 to 2.5 microns; where the solar spectrum still has a respectable remnant of energy.
The aging phenomenon I suspect is the result of micro melting; that renders the surface much more like an optical interface; permitting transmission of sunlight into the snow; where TIR trapping can retain it; thereby enhancing the absorption.
The handbook data, references as the source H.W. O’Broen, et al US Army Cold rEgion REsearch and Engineering Laboratory, Hanover NH, CREEL (AD-A007732), 1975 “Red and Near Infrared Spectral Reflectance of Snow”.
Data are plotted for a selection of source-detector angle siuations; and a variety of snow ages; from 0.6 out to 2.5 microns.
I would say that snow is not the ruthless rejector of solar energy that it is cracked up to be.
Ooops !
That is O’Brien; not O’Broen. Can you be a good chap and fix that for me Chasmod ?
George, here’s the text from the Barrow web site:
“This is the temperature profile through air, snow, ice, and water. The grayed area indicates the position of the ice (bottom may be off by 0.1 m). The bounds of the red funnel are the highest and lowest temperatures recorded during the past 24 hours. The black line with data points (spaced 0.1 m, 4 inches) is the latest temperature profile. Air, snow, ice, and water can often be discriminated easily in winter and early spring: daily temperature swings are more pronounced in the air than in the snow; the temperature profile in the ice is usually linear and steeper than in the snow; the temperature in the water is approximately independent of depth. Towards summer the ice acts as a heat sink with the coldest temperature registered inside the ice rather than in the air.
Temperature measurements are accurate to approx. Ā±0.2 Ā°C. Further, measurements in summer may be affected by solar heating of the probe.”
File this under short term trends matter when we say they matter.
I read the article. That’s not what it says. Rather, a scientist quoted in the article separates weather and climate.
Other parts of the article discuss the rapid decline in ice cover over May, but it doesn’t link that to a climate determination. The snark at the head of the top post is unwarranted.
The problem with the Barrow ice, is that it’s a bunch of grounded pressure ridges and stuff, so very little circulation underneath I would imagine.
As of June 18, the Arctic ROOS sea ice extent is equal lowest in the record for this time of year. As this source was heralded as evidence the sea ice had ‘recovered’ a few months ago when extent was near normal, how about an update?
And maybe a comparison with other sea ice extent products that show current extent below the lowest on record for this time of year?
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_n.png
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent_L.png
With no more polar ice does that mean no more Polar bears?
So I goofed; seems I made a misteak. Happened once before; in 1971; I thought I had miscalculated a problem ; but I hadn’t; so I was wrong.
But this one is real; I totally blew it.
Nobody seems to have checked my calculation that proved that calving glaciers can melt just by their own collapse.
It’s a simple problem; a mass of ice (m) falling from a height (H), gains an energy m.g.H from gravity, and this energy will essentially all be converted into heat.
The latent heat of melting ice is about 80 calories per gram, at 4.184 Joules per calorie and I used that number to figure out the required collapse height, instead of the 80,000 calories per kg used in the gravitational energy calculation.
So we should have m x 80,000 x 4.184 = m x g x H and g is 9.80665 ms^-2
So H = 80,000 x 4.184 / 9.80665 = 34.13 km and not the 34 metres I said above. So when I said that a 250 foot high calving ice cliff at -8 deg C could melt itself, that was not a very robust theory.
But I was only off by 1000 x
Well I did learn something; now we know why snow falls and doesn’t melt before it hits the ground; well unless it falls from 34 km up.
But no use trying to hide the incline and I am sure Phil would have found it eventually.
It was a good theory; that melting snow is correlated with falling under gravity; but then correlation does not prove causation.
That might be a weakness in the cosmic ray theory too. There ought ot be an effect on cloud formation; but is it enough cosmic ray flux to explain much of cloud cover change. I believe that Leif has raised this caution before, about the sufficiency of cosmic ray flux variations to do much.
But this one is a no brainer; you can’t just brush off a factor of 1000 error. Well much bigger factors have been passed over in the past.
I seem to recall that Jeans brushed off a large factor as being approximately 1, in order to simplify an expression. the factor he threw out was Avogadro’s number; 6E23 or thereabouts.
Well the expression that this annoying quantity was a factor of happened to be factorial of Avogagro’s number; so it was still probably ok. The calculation was in the low temperature specific heats of solids as I recall or something like that.
I guess I should join the 20th century and stop using 80 calories per gram for the latent heat of water.
As soon as I can find an updated value I’ll convert it to Joules per kgram and try to remember that number instead..
So don’t anybody go submitting a paper on the gravitational melting of calving glaciers.
Sorry about that little snafu.
George E. Smith says:
June 20, 2010 at 9:58 am
So I goofed; seems I made a misteak. Happened once before; in 1971; I thought I had miscalculated a problem ; but I hadnāt; so I was wrong.
But this one is real; I totally blew it.
Nobody seems to have checked my calculation that proved that calving glaciers can melt just by their own collapse.
Itās a simple problem; a mass of ice (m) falling from a height (H), gains an energy m.g.H from gravity, and this energy will essentially all be converted into heat.
Hi George, it did seem a little odd but I recalled reading that melt water falling through ice doesn’t refreeze on contact because of the gain in kinetic energy so I didn’t think any more about it. One of the assumptions you make is a bit dodgy too: “this energy will essentially all be converted into heat”, since when you see one of these fall into the ocean a lot of energy is transferred to the KE of the water.
This video is particularly impressive.
I recall the TV program that this clip is from, I’d not want to watch calving from sealevel after seeing this!