Sea Ice News #15

Looks like a Northwest Passage traverse is quite possible (by helicopter.)
And by that chap in kayak (carrying it).

It does not mean anything (yet), but Nansen (Arctic ROOS) shows the ice extend the same in 2008, 2009 and 2010. So everybody can still hope (my simpleminded prognosis from November 2009 was 5 Million sq-km because “minimum ice has never increased 3 years in a row”).

“Arctic sea ice shrinks faster than 2007, NSIDC director Serreze says, “I think it’s quite possible” we could “break another record this year.”
Watts and Goddard seem in denial”
In denial of what, Dir. Serreze ? That the world is going under?
Please take a realism test. Look around you. The world is a better place than ever.
And you are denying it.
The logical conclusion is that it is You who are in denial.

Thanks for the polar weather update Steve…you go a great job looking at Arctic weather.
Now, as far as your final conclusion:
” There is no polar meltdown at either pole.”
__________
I take it you’re talking about the weather here and not the climate. Of course, climate can only be seen over the longer term, and it is more than obvious that the Arctic sea ice has been in a long term state of decline for many years. We’ve not seen a positive Arctic sea ice extent anomaly since 2004.
In terms of the rest of the summer, look for all that ice that has spread out over the past few weeks (hence the real reason for the extent to have slowed) to begin to melt rapidly. The waters are warm and that low concentration ice is already showing signs of melting fast. I’ll keep with my 4.5 million sq. km. forecast for now…but then again, we’re talking about the weather, not the climate.

Thanks Steve,
Assuming the information (following links) are accurate, there appear to be research stations within many of the black out areas you listed. If they’re still active, isn’t their data included in global temp etc.?
Arctic Research Stations
http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/major-research-stations-in-the-arctic
ANTARCTICA RESEARCH STATIONS
http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/stations/index.shtml
South Pole
http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/stations/southpole.shtml

Steve, I’m a bit surprised at your comment on the NWP. From the AMSR-E and MODIS imagery, the NWP has significantly less sea ice than it did in any of the 2007-2009 years when it opened. During 2007-2009, it didn’t open until the end of August.
Also, it should be noted that the ice edge is moving past the 4+ year old ice that was advected into the Beaufort and Chukchi seas this winter.
Forecast from the Canadian weather service calls for high pressure over the Canada Basin with low pressure over Eurasia. This will foster more offshore wind from Siberia, so ice loss in the E. Siberian Sea will likely continue to accelerate during the next week.
Finally, there has been persistence of low ice concentrations from AMSR-E in the interior of the icepack, confirmed in MODIS data as open water areas. I suggest linking to the AMSR-E and MODIS imagery more often in your postings since they give a higher resolution on the state of the ice pack than the SSM/I data does.

hey sTv,
That first NSIDC graph. Is that dated 07/26/2010? Or maybe 07/28/2010? Good going, mate! Can you tell me how my investments will be doing next month? Dying to know.
I’m so happy to see that really good science, done by really good scientists, published on really good blogs, avoiding that silly “peer-review” process with all its political innuendo, is what’s keeping the denial machine alive. Good on yer, mate!
It’s also nice to see Dr. Christy, so highly respected, publish in E&E, rather than, say, in Nature or Science. Right bloody on, dude!
We’ll show those alarmists a thing or two about blog science! Shoot, anybody can blog! But can anybody blog science like you guys can? Heck, no! It would take a monumental amount of hypocrisy to be able to pull that off, and quite frankly, Lindzen, Christy, Spencer and you, sTv, just about cornered the market on that one.
Speaking of free market, why hasn’t anybody grasped how well Greece is doing these days? They’re much better off than Argentina is, what with the loans to pay off interest on other loans and such.
Let’s go free market!! Woot!!!
-sTv

“Average ice thickness continues to follow a track below 2006 and above 2009, hinting that my prediction of a 5.5 million km² minimum continues to be correct.” !!!!!

Amino, I thought Trenberth was looking for heat, but in all the wrong places…

Steve,
by comparing with the curves from last years, have you noticed a significant change in their progression? I think it is not due to sun high…

“In most fields of science, data is considered an essential element of historical analysis. But climate science gets a pass, because it involves “saving the planet.”
Filling in data using statistical fabrication – or whatever technique – that wasn’t actually observed is FRAUD. Nasa GISS is guilty of FRAUD and needs to be held accountable.
They are also guilty of a second fraud, not reporting that they’ve used DATA FABRICATION on the actual images produced. The images need to say “CONTAINS FABRICATED DATA, DOES NOT REFLECT REALITY”. Truth in labeling laws must apply to scientific graphs and images.
ALL papers based upon Nasa’s fraudulent and fabricated data are NULL AND VOID! They need to be found and marked as needing to be redone and corrected to reflect the actual observed data rather than made up fraudulent data.
Now if I recall there is a paper by one of the infamous climategate antiheroes that claims that it is ok to fabricate data using statistics. At the moment I’ve not been able to find it (if someone knows which one I’m talking about please post a link to it below – thx). This paper needs to be rescinded as NULL AND VOID and BAD SCIENCE. ALL papers that reference it also need to be rescinded and redone or just tossed into the garbage paper pile where most ideas in science end up.
Clearly a creeping acceptance of fabrication of data by the alleged scientists involved in the alleged scientific field of climate science has played a major role in the corruption of some of the key people involved and a corruption of their work. They might not even know it since it’s a creeping lowering of the standards of what is accepted as valid climate science over a period of a number of decades.
Fraud in science must be stopped when it’s detected. Fabrication of data is unacceptable. Use of statistical games to fabricate data is unacceptable. Scientists need to be held to the highest possible standards to insure the integrity of the scientific work. Extreme claims (and all claims of doomsday are extreme) require extraordinary evidence, not substandard evidence with non-observed fabricated data pretending to be real data. The people that scientists who’s work influence the public deserve better.

WUWT regular Vukcevik is heating the Artic up with his electromagnetics wands 🙂
However while one side heats up the other cools down:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AT-GMF.gif

This issue is too cold for us, in the southern hemisphere….Brrrrrrrrr!

Ian… says:
July 25, 2010 at 1:54 pm
sVt A.K.A. “Ex” Republican on another blog
The “WOOT” gives you away
Was the other blog for the educationally sub normal, since I for one found his post utterly incomprehensible gibberish.

Phil
Read my lips : “Arctic Basin”

Is there a relationship between getting colder earlier in the Arctic and colder winters further south? Like Canada and the continental US?

stevengoddard says:
July 25, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Julienne,
My comment about the NWP was satire about the idea of it as a commercial route. The fact that a few people have managed to slip through (with great difficulty) in recent years during a one week window, doesn’t sound like a commercial opportunity to me.
_______________
It is possible that both the NWP and NEP will open up this year, if even for a week or two. If the trends of the past 10 years continue, there will be plenty of commercial opportunity opening up in the Arctic in the coming years, and this will undoubtedly cause some issues in their own right.

Yes, the NW passage is almost open and should be within a few weeks. Same for NE passage. See This detailed map
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png

Wouldn’t hovercraft type vessels be suitable for traversing both open water and low lying ice? Are there too many jagged and pointy ice structures to make hovercrafting around the Arctic a possibility?

NW Passage has opened several times in history. It is nothing noteworthy for it to open now. But I suppose if you want to make it look like the NW Passage opening is something alarming you’ll keep history out of the picture.

The “Experts” have ruined the hunt, again. Polar bears have been GULAGed.
It’s so bad, “They set up a camp that includes an electric fence and is watched over by Inuvialuit wildlife monitors to protect them from roaming polar bears. ”
…-
“Experts seek lost ship that marked end of Arctic passage”
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20100725/lost-arctic-ship-100725/

So much has been staked by both sides on the Arctic ice melt that September could be the STALINGRAD of the AGW controversy. Defeat for the warmists – in the form of continued year-on-year recovery 2007-2008-2009-2010, would establish a firm trend and culminate a long series of failed AGW predictions of Arctic ice death spiral. It will not be the end of the conflict – far from it – the Kursks, Prokhorovkas and Berlins will still lie ahead. But the tide will have turned.

Phil. says: (all of them)
Phil, isn’t temperature what this is all about? You know, the atmosphere is going to be hotter because of atmospheric CO2? Especially in the (sub-average to this date) Arctic and Antarctic? And how does GISS get a nice big red blob out of those temperatures anyway when DMI shows them come in below average pretty much all summer up until now?

Phil
Will you please give proof that it has never been open 4 times in a row before?
And are you certain it has been open 3 times in a row without icebreaker help?

Robert
You must be new to this. The topic has been covered before. Seven Goddard did not bring up something new.

http://ice-map.appspot.com/?map=Arc&sat=ter&lvl=7&lat=75&lon=-99&yir=2010&day=205
Strangely enough the northern route is close to navigable earlier than the southern and weeks earlier than last year. Time to go short with Panama Canal.

I would try to be careful about predicting the Northern Sea Route/ NE passage opening … at this point in 2007 it would’ve been just as tempting to say that, but of course you would’ve been wrong!

phlogiston says:
July 25, 2010 at 3:20 pm
So much has been staked by both sides on the Arctic ice melt that September could be the STALINGRAD of the AGW controversy.
Well said, sir!

“On August 28th, Bear Grylls will set off to navigate the Northwest Passage in an infatable boat to publicise ‘global warming’. Do you think that he’ll make it?”
Great Freudian slip there.
He’ll probably need an infatable boat to provide extra insulation from the cold!

phlogiston says:
July 25, 2010 at 3:20 pm
So much has been staked by both sides on the Arctic ice melt that September could be the STALINGRAD of the AGW controversy. Defeat for the warmists – in the form of continued year-on-year recovery 2007-2008-2009-2010, would establish a firm trend and culminate a long series of failed AGW predictions of Arctic ice death spiral. It will not be the end of the conflict – far from it – the Kursks, Prokhorovkas and Berlins will still lie ahead. But the tide will have turned…
_________
This is very funny. The summer Arctic Sea ice has been melting faster in the past few years then GCM’s projected it would based on AGW, and so if, and this is a huge IF, but if it somehow returns to melting as fast as GCM’s said it should based on AGW (i.e. disappearing by 2070 to 2100), then this somehow disproves the AGW hypothesis. Now, that’s funny stuff…
As it stands, it doesn’t look like it will return to the earlier predicted rate of decline by AGW models, so more likely we’re still looking at an ice free summer Arctic by 2030 at the latest.

Phil. says:
July 25, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
July 25, 2010 at 3:15 pm
NW Passage has opened several times in history. It is nothing noteworthy for it to open now. But I suppose if you want to make it look like the NW Passage opening is something alarming you’ll keep history out of the picture.
Prior to this decade you think it’s ‘opened several times’, off hand I can only think of a couple of times. If as I expect the passage opens again this year that will be 4 years in a row, that’s noteworthy!
===========
The thing about the Northwest Passage, is that it can close just as fast as it opened, depending on the wind.
Very few have tried to navigate it, without a sat-phone.

Steve,
I’d noticed how different the DMI 30% ice extent graph has started to look more and more different from the other 15% graphs. I guess as you have been saying for some time the central arctic ice is looking healthier than in recent years due to this years favourable weather and is withstanding the melt while the pheripery continues to follow the trend seen in recent decades.
Again congrats on getting this years forecasy spot on (so far) and for sticking it up the doom-sayers but I’d still love a convincing argument that says the long term trend isn’t the important thing here.
A quick question on the DMI data. Surely that data set can only use the same (or similar) sparse data records to generate it’s 80N graph? These are the only records humanity has. Why not ctitises DMI for doing pretty much the same as GISS? From my understanding if you we’re to plot DMI data in the form of trends it would show similar to GISS. As you point out the summers are relatively consistent through the arctic, this is because energy is going into melting ice rather than warming the air. The GISS trend is in the non-summer seasons and this would be matched by a similar DMI plot if one existed.

Slightly OT but relevant to the SH:
From the weather is not climate department.
Latin American Herald Tribune:
snip…
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=361111&CategoryId=14095
EDIT: Please do not post the entirety of news stories here, they constitute potential copyright violations. Thnx. – the mods

Rob Vermeulen says:
July 25, 2010 at 2:40 pm
‘Yes, the NW passage is almost open and should be within a few weeks. Same for NE passage. See This detailed map
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png‘
Not very detailed map! I think you need this one:
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS38CT/20100725180000_WIS38CT_0005101570.gif
where you will see that the NWP is far from open; there is a large gray area of fast ice.

“Peru Government Declares Cold Wave Emergency in 16 Regions”
Thanks Arn.
So where is all the noise about this cold like there was noise about heat in the US?

JJB,
This one is just for you. It shows every place GISS missed in May, 2010 – in pink.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDm4_NwRzVU]

John from CA says:
July 25, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Thanks Steve,
Assuming the information (following links) are accurate, there appear to be research stations within many of the black out areas you listed. If they’re still active, isn’t their data included in global temp etc.?….
______________________________________________
You forgot about station drop out. The norther stations and the mountain stations (like in my home state) were dropped.
Graph of temp and station drop out: http://diggingintheclay.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/canadadt.png

R. Gates says:
July 25, 2010 at 4:35 pm
This is very funny. The summer Arctic Sea ice has been melting faster in the past few years then GCM’s projected it would based on AGW
————————————
then this somehow disproves the AGW hypothesis
============================================================
It certainly disproves something.
If the proof of AGW is proved by those computer games, and the computer games don’t get it right, in either direction.
Then the computer games are not accurate and prove nothing.
You would think after 50 years they might be a little closer.

PJB says:
July 25, 2010 at 12:54 pm
When I look at http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php , are there “reliable” (non-model generated) data concerning the range of the cycle over the latest inter-glacial period?
(Say 10,000 years so that we don’t use the Younger Dryas to “inflate” the values.)
I would imagine that this decade’s spread is quite small when compared to millennial results….
_______________________________________________
Here is the stuff I have bookmarked on that subject (no order)
Greenland last 10,000 years
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
Barents sea temperatures 1900-2010
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/barents_sea_temp_with_amo.png
http://www.ngu.no/en-gb/Aktuelt/2008/Less-ice-in-the-Arctic-Ocean-6000-7000-years-ago/
The Physical Evidence of Earth’s Unstoppable 1,500-Year Climate Cycle
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st279/
Possible solar origin of the 1,470-year glacial climate cycle demonstrated in a coupled model
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7065/abs/nature04121.html
http://www2.ucar.edu/news/bering-strait-influenced-ice-age-climate-patterns-worldwide
Temperatures from greenland Ice core
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Climate%20Change/alley.png
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/forums/thread-188-post-3123.html#pid3123
Oldest temperature records including St Petersburg Russia
http://i47.tinypic.com/2zgt4ly.jpg
Paleo temp records
http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/8615/allpaleotemp.png
http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?cid=3842&pid=12455&tid=282
2000 years of proxy temperature data (not trees)
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/loehle-temperature-reconstruction/image/image_view_fullscreen
1660-2009 Little Ice age thermometers – one is in the Arctic
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
Hope that helps

R. Gates, you are completely right that Steve is focusing on weather rather than climate. I should have caught on sooner that’s what he’s doing here, and trying to pass it off as climate. Looking at the many open water areas that have developed the last couple of weeks under the central Arctic low sea level pressure, and now the upcoming shift back towards a more dipole pattern, I bet the September 2010 ice extent will drop far below his predicted 5.5 million sq-km.

Summer 2030: Artic ice still there, adjust AGW model, predicts summer 2040.
Summer 2040: Artic ice still there, adjust AGW model, predicts summer 2050.
Summer 2050: Artic ice increases! Nuts!
Retired, time to pass to next public grant recipient with instructions to claim all failures are just “weather”.

JJB, congrats for looking at some weather factors and starting a prediction. Care to give us a guess at a number? R Gates, take note of that analysis. There are both short and long term weather processes at work here, and your linear extrapolation of no ice in 2030 considers none of that, and has no scientific value.

R. Gates says:
July 25, 2010 at 2:33 pm
“It is possible that both the NWP and NEP will open up this year, if even for a week or two. If the trends of the past 10 years continue, there will be plenty of commercial opportunity opening up in the Arctic in the coming years, and this will undoubtedly cause some issues in their own right.”
_______________________________________________________
Good Grief! The Russians have been regularly navigating the North East Passage for close to 100 years. Explorers have been going through for about 450 years. What is new about this? Just Google it, lots of references.

Wayne Delbeke says:
July 25, 2010 at 6:54 pm
R. Gates says:
July 25, 2010 at 2:33 pm
“It is possible that both the NWP and NEP will open up this year, if even for a week or two. If the trends of the past 10 years continue, there will be plenty of commercial opportunity opening up in the Arctic in the coming years, and this will undoubtedly cause some issues in their own right.”
_______________________________________________________
Good Grief! The Russians have been regularly navigating the North East Passage for close to 100 years. Explorers have been going through for about 450 years. What is new about this? Just Google it, lots of references.
_______
Having both the NWP and NEP open in the same year is historically quite rare. In fact, I think it happened for the first time only 2 years ago in 2008…this was my point. The fact that the Russians can break through the remaining thin ice in the summer and get passage through isn’t the point. I’m talking about open water.

Billy Liar says:
July 25, 2010 at 5:09 pm
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS38CT/20100725180000_WIS38CT_0005101570.gif
Hmm, your map is showing areas BELOW where most people consider the NWP;
Billy Liar says:
July 25, 2010 at 5:09 pm
Rob Vermeulen says:
July 25, 2010 at 2:40 pm
‘Yes, the NW passage is almost open and should be within a few weeks. Same for NE passage. See This detailed map
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png‘
Not very detailed map! I think you need this one:
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS38CT/20100725180000_WIS38CT_0005101570.gif
The last fast ice in this section broke up about two weeks ago.
where you will see that the NWP is far from open; there is a large gray area of fast ice.

JJB says:
July 25, 2010 at 5:46 pm
R. Gates, you are completely right that Steve is focusing on weather rather than climate. I should have caught on sooner that’s what he’s doing here, and trying to pass it off as climate. Looking at the many open water areas that have developed the last couple of weeks under the central Arctic low sea level pressure, and now the upcoming shift back towards a more dipole pattern, I bet the September 2010 ice extent will drop far below his predicted 5.5 million sq-km.
__________
I’m not so sure Steve is trying to pass anything off. He’s gives an excellent weekly analysis of the Arctic Sea ice conditions and I credit him for the time he takes to look at every angle, crack, and melt pool. But he’ll be the first to admit that one season does not a climate make. No proof of anything will come out of this season, no matter what happens, as we certainly aren’t seeing any great recovery. I personally am looking at the next few years, between now and 2015 as being watershed years for the Arctic, and am forecasting a new record low by 2015 of around 2.5 million sq. km. We’ve just passed through the longest and deepest solar minimum in a century since the Arctic sea ice record minimum in 2007, and just as with global temps flattening during that period, so too, the Arctic Sea ice only made an essentially sideways move in 2008 and 2009. But the next solar max is out in 2013 and my guess is we’ll have a good El Nino in 2012-2013 as well, and this will cause global temps to hit record highs. The last 12 months have been the warmest globally. It is these longer term natural fluctuations riding on top of the overall upward trend in temperatures in the last 30 years that can begin to hint at the bigger climate picture.
Generally though, the most important graph (that we know the data is valid) to look at Arctic Sea ice is this one:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png

Wayne Delbeke says:
“Good Grief! The Russians have been regularly navigating the North East Passage for close to 100 years. Explorers have been going through for about 450 years. What is new about this? Just Google it, lots of references.:”
I did as you suggested and immediately found this article from Sept 2009:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1924410,00.html
Excerpt: “Shunning conventional shipping routes between Asia and Europe in what appears to be the first commercial navigation via the treacherous Arctic sea-lane, Beluga, the shipping company behind the voyage, said in a statement that “we are all very proud” to have “successfully transited the legendary Northeast Passage.
Plenty have tried. For centuries, sailors have searched for a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the icy waters off Russia’s northern coast.”

R. Gates says:
July 25, 2010 at 7:16 pm
GCM’s cannot possibly predict tipping points as the Arctic system is a chaotic and complex system.
===========================================================
Would you know a tipping point if one slapped you?
The computer games certainly do not.
Tipping points is just another scare tactic meant to scare the feeble minded.
Gates, the computer games have not been right about anything, except to say that temps will go up. That’s a pretty good high school guess, don’t you think?
There’s no hot spot in the tropics, temps have not behaved the way the computer games said they had to, and it’s a travesty.
You said so yourself, those computer games are worthless:
“”R. Gates says:
This is very funny. The summer Arctic Sea ice has been melting faster in the past few years then GCM’s projected it would based on AGW””

R. Gates says:
July 25, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Indeed, and those natural processes include feedback loops, both positive and negative. With continued forcing from CO2, it is possible that tipping points, quite natural and deterministic but unpredictable shifts in Arctic Sea ice behavior, could be reached where the system seeks a new equilibrium point. These are indeed the great unknowns. GCM’s cannot possibly predict tipping points as the Arctic system is a chaotic and complex system.
———————————————————————————
If one can not model the natural processes correctly then how can one say anything about tipping points? The idea of a tipping point based on CO2 and “various and sundry” feedback loops is pure speculation.

steveW says:
July 25, 2010 at 7:49 pm
R. Gates says:
July 25, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Indeed, and those natural processes include feedback loops, both positive and negative. With continued forcing from CO2, it is possible that tipping points, quite natural and deterministic but unpredictable shifts in Arctic Sea ice behavior, could be reached where the system seeks a new equilibrium point. These are indeed the great unknowns. GCM’s cannot possibly predict tipping points as the Arctic system is a chaotic and complex system.
———————————————————————————
If one can not model the natural processes correctly then how can one say anything about tipping points? The idea of a tipping point based on CO2 and “various and sundry” feedback loops is pure speculation.
________
In regards to chaotic systems, try this experiment. Put a pot of cold water on a hot burner and turn the heat to high. Immediately when the water is cold write down where you think the first bubble will form before boiling starts. Good luck with that. Yet you can predict that the water will boil eventually, and if you knew the exact temperature of the burner, the exact temp of he water when you started, the exact purity of the water, the exact atmospheric pressure, and the exact thermodynamic properties of the pan, etc. you could predict reasonably well when the water would start to boil. The formation of any single bubble is chaotic yet deterministic (as all chaotic but non-random systems are) and this is akin to predicting the weather. The knowledge that the pot will eventually boil is akin to knowing the climate. We still don’t know all the variables and feedbacks that would be similar to the thermodynamic properties of the pot or the purity of the water, but I think the GCM’s have enough in them to know enough to know the general direction, if not the exact point where the water starts to boil. But indeed, there may be chaotic “bubbles” that form in unpredictable places along the way.

JJB
You must be looking for talk about a “death spiral” or “ice free North Pole.”
No, you won’t find that here.

Meanwhile, the Jaxa data for 26th July is out and the ice extent at 7.23 million sq km is now ahead of 2009 which was 7.18 million sq km at 26th July.
It will be interesting to see how the remainder of the melt season progresses. The rate of loss during July has been well below that of any other season that JAXA has measured. Although we’ve seen an increase over the past week it has been interlaced with days of less ice loss.
2006 saw the lowest rate of ice loss from late July onwards for previous seasons. It would not surprise me to see 2010 come in even lower which should put the September minimum in the 5.6-6.0 million sq km range. I would be very surprised to see a result over 6 million though.

2010 passes 2009. Indeed the ice melt of today was less then 60k sq km So 2010 now has more ice than 2009. Of all the talk of death spirals, 2010 now needs a greater melt then 2009 had from this point forward to go lower.

Gail Combs says:
July 25, 2010 at 5:42 pm
http://www.ngu.no/en-gb/Aktuelt/2008/Less-ice-in-the-Arctic-Ocean-6000-7000-years-ago/
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Warmer on earth 6000 years ago, during the time of “The Wet Sahara”

JJB says:
July 25, 2010 at 5:46 pm
I bet the September 2010 ice extent will drop far below his predicted 5.5 million sq-km.
Hey, it’s your lucky day! There is a place taking bets!!!!
But if you are wrong will you come back to this blog and say so?

Caleb says:
July 25, 2010 at 8:42 pm
=========================
Caleb, you are an extremely smart, evolved individual.
Always appreciate your posts…and your words here…are definitely no exception.
I repeat these words…all worth repeating:
=======================
Caleb’s words:
“Fortunately, it won’t be teenagers who risk death. Instead it will be a bunch of old men of my age who wish they were teenagers. Unlike me, and teenagers, they have millions of dollars and can afford pleasure craft. However their lives are so empty and devoid of meaning, despite all their hard-earned wealth, that they attempt an absurd stunt and mouth inane platitudes about Global Warming, seeking the meaning they remember they had as teenagers, but have lost.”
“After all, if you had several million dollars, and really did care for “humanity,” would you spend your millions on a “pleasure craft” and sail the Northwest Passage? Or would you spend it on people with very real needs, in your own home town?”

R. Gates says:
July 25, 2010 at 8:20 pm
“You would do well to pick up a book on chaos theory.”
=========================================
And you would do most well to just pick up a few books of meteorology and physics, not to mention a book or two on logical fallacies, and just basically NOT set forth your opinion….for a very VERY long while.
Sort of like a monk taking a vow of silence.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Arctic ice is not supposed to be an important topic. Sooooo, why do these Arctic ice posts get so much attention?
Just askin……

David W says: …7.23 and 7.18
That is REALLY: 7.323 and 7.318.
Yet JAXA still shows 2009 passing 2010 (but by a tenth as much)
Comparing _______2007___ to___ 2010_______&______2009
Ahead June 28______ no________ 679,531 Sq.Km______ no
Ahead July 25____542,500_________no______________5,312
Daily: ___________2007_________2010__
July23-24 ______ – 115,906 _____- 93,906
July24-25 ______ – 76,875 _____ – 56,875preliminary
Remaining Melts (K= 1,000km2) ___2 Days @ 93 K __3d@ 87 K __ 5d@ 55
__4d@ 107__4d@ 80__12d@ 50__ 4d@ 33__ 5d@ 55__24Days @ 14.5 K
However, The La Nina High Pressure Systems are Creeping Closer: now moving North a bit Out of the Pacific near Juneau Alaska: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/mslp_01.fnl.html
… We could start quarter-million Melts in a week … or a Month.
I think Wayne Davidson’s “Big Blue” is coming … Blue Skies, anyway.
Tell you what Steve: I’ll cut my estimate for a Melt severe enough to cause Ocean Current Shutdown … by 0.1 percent per day, if
Under 150K, .2 if under 100K and .4 if under 50K … but above 150 K each 50K Doubles also e.g 500K/day = 2E7 = + 12.8%. Well, actually, I’ve BEEN doing that, and what I once said was a Likelihood of 1/4 to 1/8th, is now about 1/10 th..
Call it 10%, less 0.2 for today = 9.8 %.

Phil. says:
July 25, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Air in the close vicinity of melting sea ice would be expected to stay close to 0ºC.
Regarding temperature, according to Spencer’s AQUA Ch 5 every day in July as been as hot or hotter than any other days since 1979 (to within the width of the line). So it would be surprising if July 2010 doesn’t turn out to be the hottest month of the satellite record.
What about the difference between DMI and GISS? Why is one well below normal, and the other the ‘hottest (insert) in (insert)’? Why is there such a profound difference in the Arctic? One is ~1C below normal (the color blue on a map)! Yet, I get the big red splotch treatment from GISS-filled maps. WUWT?
“Qualitative support for the greater Arctic anomaly of the GISS analysis is provided by Arctic temperature anomaly patterns in the GISS analysis: regions warmer or cooler than average when the mean anomaly is adjusted to zero are realistic-looking meteorological patterns.”
Oh, because it looks real! How scientific.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/paper/gistemp2010_draft0601.pdf

R. Gates says:
July 25, 2010 at 4:35 pm
phlogiston says:
July 25, 2010 at 3:20 pm
So much has been staked by both sides on the Arctic ice melt that September could be the STALINGRAD of the AGW controversy. Defeat for the warmists – in the form of continued year-on-year recovery 2007-2008-2009-2010, would establish a firm trend and culminate a long series of failed AGW predictions of Arctic ice death spiral. It will not be the end of the conflict – far from it – the Kursks, Prokhorovkas and Berlins will still lie ahead. But the tide will have turned…
_________
This is very funny
Sounding confident as usual. So you think it will all be over by Christmas? (Where did I hear that before?)
R. Gates says:
July 25, 2010 at 8:20 pm
latitude says:
July 25, 2010 at 7:44 pm
You would do well to pick up a book on chaos theory.
What is really funny is AGW proponents such as yourself jumping onto the chaos theory bandwagon. “Chaos theory”, or more precisely, non-linear and non-equilibrium spontaneous pattern formation at the boundary of linearity and chaos, is indeed an important aspect of climate and undermines the simplistic arithmetic basis of AGW based on radiative forcing. It also changes the effect of feedbacks in such a way as to undermine the feedback arguments of CAGW. Tsonis employed non-linear system analysis to propose a natural cyclical basis for the temperature oscillations of the past century which correctly predicted the current reversal of warming to cooling.
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/kravtsov/www/downloads/GRL-Tsonis.pdf
“Chaos theory” is not a friend of AGW.

Rod Everson:
I know that for about a decade from the early 80’s to the early 90’s the maps at Cryosphere systematically shows spurious ice in coastal areas in summer (I can’t check the exact dates since that part of Cryosphere is down). I know the ice is non-existent in the cases of the Baltic and the White Sea, and by comparing with maps before and after the critical period it is clear that the problem extends to most coastal areas around the Arctic.
Whether this ice is counted or not I do not know. The Baltic for some reason is not included in the counted area but other affected areas like the White Sea, the Bering Saa, the Gulf of St Lawrence and the Sea of Okhotsk is. It is possible that they somehow correct for the error, but I doubt it. It would be very difficult to do without an independent data source.

Those first two images look exactly like some shots I once took of disco balls…

For fun let’s check out the temperature in Vostok, Antacrica this morning…
Vostok, Antarctica (Airport)
Clear
-105 °F
—
Sure looks toasty down there…

Bill the Frog
The difference in baseline is much too small to account for the differences between GISS and DMI.
A much simpler explanation is that GISS does not have any data points above 80N, and that they generate imaginary temperatures there.

R. Gates says:
July 25, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Tipping points are real events and among the most important in nature. You would do well to pick up a book on chaos theory. Human life, and all life only exists because of tipping points during our development.
=============================================================
So you agree the computer games are completely worthless.
GCMs can not model tipping points or chaos.
Why do you have so much faith in the GCMs then?

samll boats have been doing the NW Passage with regularity

Dr Chaos says:
July 26, 2010 at 6:03 am
R. Gates says:
July 25, 2010 at 8:09 pm
… The formation of any single bubble is chaotic yet deterministic (as all chaotic but non-random systems are) and this is akin to predicting the weather. The knowledge that the pot will eventually boil is akin to knowing the climate. We still don’t know all the variables and feedbacks that would be similar to the thermodynamic properties of the pot or the purity of the water, but I think the GCM’s have enough in them to know enough to know the general direction, if not the exact point where the water starts to boil. But indeed, there may be chaotic “bubbles” that form in unpredictable places along the way
———-
The physicist Joseph Ford had a phrase “A chaotic system is its own fastest computer”. You cannot make any predictions about a real chaotic system if you don’t know absolutely everything about it to an infinite degree of precision. The Earth’s climate is not merely chaotic, but chaotic with random time-varying inputs!! Chaotic system variables exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions, as do the statistical properties of chaotic systems. Your analogy of boiling water is false because a key definition of chaos is that the system variables remain bounded. If you just turn up the notch until the oceans boil away, that is not chaos. All chaos theory does is draw a line in the sand which kinda says “You Shall Not Pass” (like when Gandalf meets the Balrog, but I digress 🙂 )
________________
I think that the Milankovitch cycles would indicate that we do know the pot will boil (or freeze) in fairly predictable ways…i.e. we know the final destination, but we just don’t know the path to get there because it is a chaotic path, but the general direction is not chaotic. What we currently don’t know (and is the essential issue of AGW) is how sensitive the climate truly is to a 40% increase (and rising) of CO2 over a geologically short time period. Using the sandpile model, at what point does a slight change in CO2 represent that additional grain of sand added to the top of a sandpile to cause the pile to collapse? We know (based on Milankovitch) that we are headed to another ice age in 30,000 years or so…but what will be the nature of the little chaotic bubble that will be created by the additional quick anthropogenic rise in CO2?

R. Gates says:
July 26, 2010 at 7:02 am
I’m no Ph.D., but I can hold my own, thank you very much. I’ll express my viewpoints when I feel the urge as I never thought being a monk would be too interesting a life.
===================================
Might be a good discipline for you.
And help you ponder more…and talk less…out of your austral end. 😉
I like your resolve, R.
Its just that when your agenda, overwhelms your science, the agenda kills the science.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

I’m aware most people here are discussing the North West passage; however this article, from 1915 on the North East passage is definitely apropos:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9902E7DF103FE233A25750C2A9649D946496D6CF

Phil, if you look at the egg code for ice I described as ‘fast ice’ on the chart you linked to you will see that the form of ice (bottom figure in the egg) for area ‘C’ on the chart is ‘8’ – which is fast ice. So it’s fast ice on your chart too.

Modern temperature data IS being collected in the Arctic using ground, ship, and satellite. The “hole”, being represented in this post as a lack of data, is simply the deliberate exclusion of this data from the GISS analysis by a process called an ice mask. Hansen uses this mask to exclude data unduly influenced by sea ice, where as surface temperatures measured on sea ice contrasts sharply with that over exposed sea.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2010/20100127_TemperatureFinal.pdf
Hansen explains his method and the rational behind it. The omission of this data is fully noted and represented in his papers and is not the result of “no data” condition in this region.

@R Gates
I take your point on sandpiles and so on, but you are veering into complexity theory and the work of Per Bak on self-organized criticality, which I don’t know a whole lot about! The way I see it, putting my nonlinear systems hat on, the Earth’s climate is sitting at some point in an n-dimensional space, where each dimension represents some parameter that can be varied, such as CO2 or albedo, or the Sun’s output. A lot of this space represents robust chaos – we know this because the parameters are changing all the time and we are here to tell the tale. No doubt some points in the space represent unstable solutions where the earth boils or freezes. However, if we know that CO2 has been much higher in the past than it is now, then IMHO there is nothing to worry about in increasing CO2 from 280 to 380ppm over a century as this region of the space is historically robust. If the Earth has survived umpteen asteroid strikes and supervolcano eruptions, then I’m sure it’ll survive a gentle ramping in CO2 levels.

Mo/Dy/Hr     Latitude   Longitude    Temp      Press
07/26/1600Z    86.422°N    2.625°E    -0.4°C    990.3mb
07/26/1500Z    86.424°N    2.567°E    -0.4°C    990.0mb
07/26/1400Z    86.426°N    2.517°E    -0.4°C    989.8mb
07/26/1300Z    86.428°N    2.476°E    -0.4°C    989.8mb
07/26/1200Z    86.431°N    2.444°E    -0.3°C    990.0mb
07/26/1100Z    86.434°N    2.414°E    -0.3°C    989.6mb
07/26/1000Z    86.437°N    2.380°E    -0.4°C    989.2mb
07/26/0900Z    86.441°N    2.338°E    -0.4°C    989.3mb
07/26/0800Z    86.444°N    2.288°E    -0.3°C    989.9mb
07/26/0700Z    86.448°N    2.223°E    -0.3°C    990.5mb
07/26/0600Z    86.451°N    2.146°E    -0.3°C    991.6mb
07/26/0400Z    86.456°N    1.934°E    -0.4°C    992.6mb
07/26/0300Z    86.457°N    1.810°E    -0.4°C    994.0mb
07/26/0200Z    86.458°N    1.684°E    -0.4°C    995.8mb
07/26/0100Z    86.459°N    1.559°E    -0.5°C    997.3mb
07/26/0000Z    86.460°N    1.443°E    -0.4°C    998.8mb
07/25/2300Z    86.462°N    1.322°E    -0.5°C   1000.3mb
07/25/2200Z    86.464°N    1.220°E    -0.6°C   1001.6mb
07/25/2100Z    86.467°N    1.105°E    -0.7°C   1002.6mb
07/25/2000Z    86.470°N    1.008°E    -0.6°C   1003.7mb
07/25/1900Z    86.473°N    0.926°E    -0.5°C   1004.5mb
07/25/1800Z    86.476°N    0.859°E    -0.5°C   1005.2mb
07/25/1700Z    86.479°N    0.795°E    -0.6°C   1006.1mb
07/25/1500Z    86.485°N    0.680°E    -0.6°C   1007.6mb
07/25/1400Z    86.487°N    0.632°E    -0.7°C   1008.3mb
07/25/1300Z    86.490°N    0.586°E    -0.6°C   1008.8mb
07/25/1200Z    86.492°N    0.549°E    -0.6°C   1009.1mb
07/25/1100Z    86.494°N    0.513°E    -0.8°C   1009.4mb
07/25/1000Z    86.495°N    0.485°E    -1.0°C   1009.5mb
07/25/0800Z    86.498°N    0.458°E    -0.9°C   1010.0mb
07/25/0700Z    86.499°N    0.457°E    -1.3°C   1009.7mb
07/25/0600Z    86.500°N    0.462°E    -1.0°C   1010.1mb
07/25/0500Z    86.501°N    0.470°E    -0.6°C   1010.4mb
07/25/0400Z    86.502°N    0.480°E    -0.9°C   1010.6mb
07/25/0300Z    86.503°N    0.493°E    -1.0°C   1010.4mb
07/25/0100Z    86.505°N    0.518°E    -1.0°C   1010.3mb
07/25/0000Z    86.505°N    0.532°E    -1.1°C   1010.4mb
07/24/2300Z    86.506°N    0.548°E    -1.2°C   1010.1mb
07/24/2200Z    86.507°N    0.564°E    -1.0°C   1010.1mb
07/24/2100Z    86.507°N    0.581°E    -0.8°C   1009.8mb
07/24/2000Z    86.508°N    0.598°E    -0.9°C   1009.8mb
07/24/1900Z    86.508°N    0.615°E    -0.8°C   1009.8mb
07/24/1800Z    86.509°N    0.629°E    -0.8°C   1009.7mb
07/24/1700Z    86.509°N    0.641°E    -1.5°C   1009.5mb
07/24/1600Z    86.510°N    0.649°E    -2.4°C   1009.5mb
07/24/1500Z    86.510°N    0.657°E    -1.7°C   1009.8mb
07/24/1400Z    86.511°N    0.661°E    -0.6°C   1011.0mb
07/24/1300Z    86.511°N    0.665°E    -0.4°C   1010.9mb
07/24/1200Z    86.512°N    0.669°E    -0.5°C   1011.4mb
07/24/1100Z    86.513°N    0.670°E    -0.8°C   1009.2mb
07/24/1000Z    86.514°N    0.668°E    -1.1°C   1008.7mb
07/24/0900Z    86.515°N    0.667°E    -1.8°C   1008.8mb
07/24/0800Z    86.515°N    0.666°E    -2.1°C   1009.2mb
07/24/0700Z    86.516°N    0.667°E    -2.2°C   1009.0mb
07/24/0600Z    86.516°N    0.670°E    -2.9°C   1008.8mb
07/24/0500Z    86.517°N    0.674°E    -3.2°C   1008.5mb
07/24/0400Z    86.517°N    0.677°E    -3.4°C   1008.1mb
07/24/0300Z    86.518°N    0.676°E    -3.7°C   1007.8mb
07/24/0200Z    86.519°N    0.668°E    -3.5°C   1007.8mb
07/24/0100Z    86.520°N    0.652°E    -3.3°C   1007.7mb
07/24/0000Z    86.520°N    0.631°E    -3.1°C   1007.4mb
07/23/2300Z    86.521°N    0.605°E    -3.0°C   1006.9mb
07/23/2200Z    86.521°N    0.579°E    -2.8°C   1006.9mb
07/23/2100Z    86.522°N    0.550°E    -2.5°C   1006.8mb
07/23/2000Z    86.522°N    0.524°E    -2.3°C   1006.7mb
07/23/1900Z    86.523°N    0.500°E    -2.1°C   1006.3mb
07/23/1800Z    86.524°N    0.478°E    -2.0°C   1006.4mb
07/23/1700Z    86.525°N    0.457°E    -1.9°C   1006.2mb
07/23/1600Z    86.526°N    0.436°E    -1.8°C   1006.0mb
07/23/1500Z    86.528°N    0.411°E    -1.8°C   1006.2mb
07/23/1400Z    86.529°N    0.388°E    -1.8°C   1006.6mb
07/23/1300Z    86.531°N    0.364°E    -1.8°C   1006.8mb
07/23/1200Z    86.532°N    0.344°E    -1.8°C   1006.9mb
07/23/1100Z    86.534°N    0.326°E    -1.8°C   1006.9mb
07/23/1000Z    86.535°N    0.310°E    -1.9°C   1007.0mb
07/23/0700Z    86.540°N    0.290°E    -2.8°C   1006.8mb
07/23/0600Z    86.542°N    0.292°E    -2.8°C   1006.8mb
07/23/0500Z    86.543°N    0.297°E    -2.8°C   1007.2mb
07/23/0400Z    86.544°N    0.303°E    -3.0°C   1007.6mb
07/23/0300Z    86.545°N    0.307°E    -2.9°C   1007.6mb
07/23/0200Z    86.546°N    0.309°E    -3.1°C   1007.8mb
07/23/0100Z    86.546°N    0.313°E    -3.0°C   1007.3mb
07/22/2300Z    86.547°N    0.328°E    -2.3°C   1007.6mb
07/22/2200Z    86.547°N    0.334°E    -2.4°C   1007.6mb
07/22/2100Z    86.548°N    0.343°E    -2.0°C   1007.6mb
07/22/1900Z    86.549°N    0.357°E    -2.0°C   1007.5mb
07/22/1800Z    86.549°N    0.363°E    -2.1°C   1007.5mb
07/22/1700Z    86.549°N    0.369°E    -2.2°C   1007.7mb
07/22/1500Z    86.549°N    0.383°E    -1.9°C   1007.7mb
07/22/1400Z    86.549°N    0.391°E    -1.7°C   1009.1mb
07/22/1300Z    86.548°N    0.399°E    -1.8°C   1009.4mb
07/22/1200Z    86.548°N    0.405°E    -1.8°C   1009.0mb
07/22/1100Z    86.547°N    0.405°E    -1.9°C   1008.6mb
07/22/1000Z    86.546°N    0.408°E    -2.0°C   1008.2mb
07/22/0900Z    86.545°N    0.410°E    -2.1°C   1008.0mb
07/22/0800Z    86.544°N    0.414°E    -2.2°C   1008.1mb
07/22/0700Z    86.543°N    0.419°E    -2.2°C   1008.1mb
07/22/0600Z    86.542°N    0.425°E    -2.3°C   1008.0mb
07/22/0500Z    86.540°N    0.433°E    -2.4°C   1008.0mb
07/22/0400Z    86.538°N    0.443°E    -2.5°C   1008.1mb
 

From the IJIS web site:
“Averaging period and the update timing of daily data
– In general, sea-ice extent is defined as a temporal average of several days (e.g., five days) in order to eliminate calculation errors due to a lack of data (e.g., for traditional microwave sensors such as SMMR and SSM/I). However, we adopt the average of two days to achieve rapid data release. The wider spatial coverage of AMSR-E enables reducing the data-production period.
– Usually the latest value of daily sea-ice extent is fixed and updated at around 1 p.m. (4 a.m.) JST (UT). Before the value is fixed, we also assign a preliminary value of daily sea-ice extent several times (usually three to four times) as an early report, which is determined without the full two-day observation coverage. (The fixed values of sea-ice extent are determined with the full coverage of observation data.)”
That reads to me as saying JAXA uses a two day moving average.

Cryosphere’s comparo tool and archives seem to be broken links today. Could be a technical issue, I suppose. . .but I’m wondering if they don’t appreciate having those as part of the Sea Ice page here, and hosted elsewhere (to create the comparo image, presumably).

Some of this “phase-time-space-chaos-dimension” speak needs a bit of musical background.
To wit: “When the moon is in the 7th house, and jupiter aligns with Mars…”
With that music going on in your head read on: Some of the posts above reminds me of this dead serious quote from a blogger on another website who reads all kinds of things into that song.
“When the Moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, the famous song from the musical ‘Hair’ asks us to believe we will witness the dawning of a new age – the Age of Aquarius. The composers of this song obviously didn’t mean us to take their lyrics too literally however because, as all astrologers know, Jupiter and Mars align so frequently, and the Moon travels through the 7th house once every day, that we would have been through innumerable ‘dawning’s’ since the 1960’s if we were to follow them to the letter.
When, however, we look for the times when Jupiter aligns with Mars in the sign of Aquarius, it becomes an entirely different matter, especially if we are also looking for the Moon to be in the sign of Libra which holds sway over the seventh house, at the same time. Furthermore if we were to be entering a New Age we would hope for some additional, unmistakable cosmic pointers.”
I think I’m getting the hang of this. If I don’t mind the forest, I can pay attention to the trees. Or is it, if I don’t mind the trees, I can pay attention to the forest. Or something like that.
All this is to let R. Gates know:
Ya lost me.

R. Gates says:
July 26, 2010 at 7:29 am
Gates, is that terrible anxiety about CO2 is overwhelming you often? I hope not.
But when it does, there is a trick that may help!
Just think of Smokeys list here;
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5e507c9970c-pi
hehe.

Steve – your list of “North Pole” temperature data appears to be from the JAMSTEC Buoy which is now at 86.405N and 2.791E. The “North Pole” readings that would accompany your web photograph are from the IABP PAWS Buoy at 87.832N and 6.381W. While data for the 26th of July is not available as of this writing, the temperature at the PAWS site has been, on average, above the sea water freezing point for the last week. These temperatures allow the possibility of both open water and hard frozen ice.

Ah, these sea ice posts continue to be entertaining.
They accuse Steve of deception, of cherry picking locations and times, of passing off weather as climate…
Then they point to a possible short 3 to 4 year stretch of the Northwest Passage being something like open for about a week or so a year as if it had some great significance indicating something important relevant to long-term climate trends!
LMAO!

kadaka
I would be much more credible in their eyes if I forecast an ice free Arctic in 2008, or 2013 – like the experts did.

stevengoddard says:
July 26, 2010 at 3:41 pm
GeoFlynx
The surface of the ice is freshwater. The melting point is 0C.
GeoFlynx – Yes, that is true, but “open water” is sea water and that freezes at ~ minus 1.8C, allowing both open water and hard frozen ice in the same location. The temperatures you gave (list form) are not from where the ice photo was taken and incorrectly indicate somewhat cooler temperatures.

Of those that attempted the NW passage last year, as a percentage…
1) How many succeeded?
2) Of those that succeeded, how many followed in the wake of an icebreaker?
DaveE.

RE: R. Gates: (July 26, 2010 at 5:52 pm ) “Each grain of sand added is less as a percentage of the overall mass of the sandpile, yet at some point, one single grain of sand will cause a small landslide on the pile.”
I believe the primary argument against the incipient catastrophe theory is the long record of disastrous events that our planet has already survived. This includes a prolonged series of huge volcanic trap eruptions in Siberia that may have caused vast deposits of ocean-bottom methane to enter the atmosphere. Right now, our weather does appear to be operating well within the bounds of known recent history.

There is a great movie of the “melt water pond” from the North Pole camera at this site. Note the ripples in the wind and what may be more open water in the distance. Whatever your perspective this is an amazing animation.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/np2010/cam2-2010.mov
The movie plays with QuickTime.

R. Gates says:
July 26, 2010 at 11:45 am
dr chaos says:
July 26, 2010 at 11:04 am
@R Gates
I would argue that from a geological perspective, it has been anything but a “gentle ramping” in CO2. The 40% rise in the past few hundred years is virtually instant from a historical geological perspective…a sharp spike upward as it were. This “spike” is yet another dimension in the phase space of the climate system…in other words, raise CO2 from 280 to 390 ppm over 2 million years and you get one set of attractors, but raise it virtually instantly, and you get an entirely different set or topograph of phase space.
The religious fervour of your apparent conversion to chaos and non-linearity are striking and at first sight might be welcomed: unfortunately you are talking pure 100% bullshit. You give no evidence in any of your postings of having the slightest idea what conditions are required for non-linear spontaneous pattern formation and confuse this with turbulent chaos which is unrelated. Chaos theory (lets stay with this convenient abbreviation) is not just a naming convention. It is not enough just to rename any measured parameter as an “attractor” and any scenario as a “phase space”. You sometimes toss in the word “bifurcation” to add to the impression that you understand this field. But it is only a trick aimed at giving the impression you understand what you clearly do not.
For instance you earlier suggested that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere could be an attractor. This is impossible, and makes it clear that you are just using these words without any understanding. Having recommended others to read up on the subject, a good starting point for you might be “Deep Simplicity” by John Gribben, Random House, NY. The starting point of bifurcations leading to nonlinear spontaneous pattern formation is a far from equilibrium state. How can the composition of the atmosphere be far from equilibrium? There are multiple sources of CO2 all over the globe, and CO2 is removed from the atmosphere over the whole earth surface. Mixing is thorough due to winds. It is a classic near equilibrium situation. No scenario could be less probably for nonlinear pattern dynamics. As I tried to explain to you earlier, climate energy disequilibrium causes atmosphere composition equilibrium. The sandpile you refer to is a poor analogy to CO2 added to the atmosphere – the sandpile tends to disequilibrium, the atmosphere does not.
You focus on the rate of CO2 addition and claim completely with no evidence that this creates a different “phase space”. Just using the words to sound chaos-macho, the words dont mean a thing. To make a serious proposition you need to draw analogies in other systems exhibiting nonlinear pattern and with credible similarities with what you are suggesting. How do you know that rate of CO2 change has been always slow? Are you just wriggling out of the inconvenient fact of CO2 historic concentrations up to 5000 ppm with no climate catastrophe, with your trademark sidestepping to try to argue that rate of change is more important than the absolute concentration. Again with no evidence.
Another reference to get you started on nonlinear pattern formation is a very helpful PhD thesis:
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B9p_cojT-pflY2Y2MmZmMWQtOWQ0Mi00MzJkLTkyYmQtMWQ5Y2ExOTQ3ZDdm&hl=nl
If your forthcoming thesis is as good as this it would be an achievement. Study the subject before filling up blog space with empty use of chaos jargon and stop wasting everyone’s time.

stevengoddard says:
July 26, 2010 at 6:18 am
Bill the Frog
The difference in baseline is much too small to account for the differences between GISS and DMI.
A much simpler explanation is that GISS does not have any data points above 80N, and that they generate imaginary temperatures there.
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Mr Goddard (Steven), thank you for your speedy response to my query.
I, on the other hand, must now apologise for the delay in following this up. The problem was that I went out for a one hour run yesterday afternoon. Thirty-odd years ago, this had no material effect: these days, I fall asleep on the couch.
As you may remember, I had asked if the differing baseline periods used to calculate mean temperatures could (at least partially) explain how GISS show a positive anomaly in the Arctic, whilst the corresponding DMI figures show up negative.
The mean GISS global temperature anomaly over 1958-2009 works out at about +0.19C, and, as you rightly say, this figure is too small to have more than a second or third order effect on the observed discrepancy between GISS and DMI in the Arctic.
However, and I apologise again for not phrasing this better in my first post, I expected that the Arctic regional (or zonal, or latitudinal – whatever the correct term is) baselines might show a more pronounced variation than the 0.19C global figure.
As you know your way round the various datasets far better than most, I thought that you may have been able to shed some light on this. I attempted yesterday to download the 2 metre dataset from the DMI facility, but a warning popped up indicating that this represented a very large file. As my PC is on its last legs (it’s not the only one) I chickened out of proceeding.
I can certainly relate to your suggestion that the GISS/DMI discrepancy is an artefact of the approach that GISS adopt to “in-fill” grid areas that do not have primary data available. My (very limited) understanding is that this singular approach accounts for the majority of the differences between the GISStemp and HadCRUt anomalies.
You will not be surprised in the least to learn that, whenever I have attempted to explain the GISS “in-fill” technique to people, they have – without exception – thought that it sounded dubious.
I am quite happy to do number crunching myself, but would be obliged if you could point me in the correct direction by suggesting a source file that provides the necessary temperature information over as much of the 50+ year period as possible.
Finally, from a purely personal perspective, I wish you had avoided the use of the word “imaginary” in your response. I thought I had finally managed to get over all those nightmares that began with “Z = X + iY”.
Thanks … BTF

RE: Chaos Theory
A fair number of earlier posts on this thread have made reference to aspects of Chaos Theory. At the risk of sounding rude or patronising, I suspect that most people’s awareness of this topic is limited to a few throwaway lines spoken by Jeff Goldblum in the movie “Jurassic Park”. (WARNING! For those who enjoy working on their own automobile engines, on NO account should you attempt to fit a Sierpinski gasket.)
However, if any readers are remotely interested in learning about rudimentary Chaos Theory, then, for what it is worth, I would fully endorse the reading recommendation made above by Phlogiston.
Several years ago, when I was attempting to bone up on Chaos Theory, my original starting point was a text by James Gleik entitled “CHAOS: Making a New Science”. To say that I struggled with this tome is something of an understatement.
However, I already owned 5 or 6 books by John (and Mary) Gribben, so when I found out that he (they) had penned an introduction to Chaos Theory – “Deep Simplicity” – I wasted no time in purchasing this as well.
As with all their books, it was written in a clear and understandable (even for me)fashion. After reading Deep Simplicity twice, I found myself suitably equipped to successfully tackle the more formidable work by James Gleik.
P.S. If either of the Gribbens happen to read this, and find themselves requiring the services of a proof reader for their next offering…
P.P.S. Regarding the somewhat confusing authorship (John/John & Mary?) of Deep Simplicity, this is explained in the first paragraph of the Acknowledgements. It seems that the editor has a downer on co-authorship. One cannot help wonder if this issue would have arisen had the co-author been another male.

RE: David Gould: (July 26, 2010 at 9:22 pm) “No-one is saying that the earth will be destroyed by global warming. So, no matter how bad it gets, the planet will survive. But many species will not survive. Humans will, because our technology and intelligence enable rapid adaption. But it is going to hurt; and in fact it already is hurting.”
There are those, I recall, who maintain that our current climate is balanced on the knife-edge of an irreversible chaos that would cause the oceans to boil and give this planet a Venus-like atmosphere. However, it appears that we have only made a six percent increase in the secondary effect that CO2 has on global temperatures. Clear-air dissolved water vapor, I believe, is the primary greenhouse gas that controls our atmosphere.
Most of the harm we have done to other animal species, I believe, is by directly interfering with their life-cycles or habitat. I doubt that anyone has documented any harm caused by anthropogenic climate modification.

Eric (skeptic) says:
July 27, 2010 at 2:46 am
Thanks phlogiston for setting R. Gates straight. R. Gates: you said “Indeed, the steep drop off in 2007′s summer sea ice extent may very well be one of those little chaotic landslides.”
I can’t claim knowledge of chaos theory, but please explain how rising CO2 caused the wind patterns seen in 2007 and how that relates to chaos theory.
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The wind patterns of 2007 were part of the Arctic Dipole Anomaly. This wind pattern, though not unheard of before 2000, was relatively rare, and hence the term “anomaly”. The DA has been increasing in frequency over the past 10 years, and was a in place in 2007’s great melt. The increasing frequency of the DA may be a characteristic of polar amplification of AGW as it seems to be at least somewhat related to more expanses of open water in the Arctic.