Sea Ice News #18

Great article, please keep pushing on the disparities between different sea ice measurements. How can they differ so much? Also, the data that is most striking is the sea ice thickness in the Arctic in 2007, when supposedly we had little ice. As you have stated previously, the thickness makes up for the lack in extent, even in 2007.
Amazingly bad science by the national labs here, only eclipsed by Mann and possibly the idiots using proxies for sunspot number/solar output.

Can you explain why pips shows latitude circles so clearly? I mean, I’ve heard it’s a model and not data. I might think that it shows thickness increasing because of date not fact. Also, there is only the arctic basin ice remaining and not many isolated melting areas. But the less ice border there is, the less thin ice there is, of course, which means average thickness increasing. But you say:
“PIPS shows average ice thickness increasing, due to the compression of the ice.”
Couldn’t you say a bit more about this? How are the pips thickness numbers construed? Further, wasn’t it deviced long ago by the same people who have now studied the phenomena 20 more years and are now at the NSIDC claiming thinning of the ice?

5.5 million?
The Arctic would have to set a record low melt for the period August 14 to September 15. Slim chance, but can’t be excluded of course. I think we’ll get closer to 5 million.

Any thoughts on what this portend for the continental US this coming winter? I’m think early…

I don’t see any indication of significant melt occurring. It is compaction, not melt, we are seeing.

Mind experiment:
The map Frederick linked to shows that during the period when “average” was calculated, ice generally invaded Fram Strait and showed up as ice extent, even though it was likely on its way leaving for warmer waters. The Arctic Oscillation and weather systems likely set up a wind pattern that forced ice South in order to accomplish this. This tells me that during the period when “average” was calculated, it would be instructive to see how often the wind blew ice south compared to when the wind blew ice north.
So it stands to reason that if there is a multi-decadel pattern to this wind shift, and the wind begins to generally blow ice north year to year during the Summer, the Arctic will gain ice during the Winter. Lots and lots of ice. Now, during the winter when melting is not a concern, if Arctic cold air invades the lower latitudes, WE will gain ice. Lots and lots of ice. Rivers could begin to freeze from the bottom up and Lakes from the top down. This type of thing causes ice jams and frozen flooding, and is cold enough to freeze sewer systems. All of these things are indeed cause for regional-wide crisis management, and usually all winter long, not just during a “cold spell”.
One of the tenets of ice buildup (some call it recovery) says that lack of summer melt is the best indicator of an eventual return to abundant Arctic ice. I don’t know why they call it a “recovery” because under the above circumstances, the Earth’s flora and fauna struggle to recover from ice buildup, and some do not.

The melt ponds are have frozen solid in front of the NOAA pole cam and if they have frozen then its certain that all the other melt ponds are also frozen or freezing.
So much for the positive feedback theory as dictated by our esteemed colleague R Gates in which melt ponds would absorb the suns energy and melt the surrounding ice. So the melting is not coming from below which was always the fall back position and its not coming from above so expect lots more fire’N’floods and no sea ice news.
I would have thought that the early freezing of the ice would make compaction less certain though a close inspection of a polar ice image would sort that out.
There will of course be an MSM blackout of the events in the Arctic unless it can be claimed that the ice is experiencing a death spiral. The evidence is showing an end to the melt season and it will be very interesting to see how the MSM and NOAA spin it.

Casper says:
August 15, 2010 at 6:59 am
Something must have happened in the atmosphere or sea currents have been changed. Otherwise I find no explanations for it.
One guess – the AMO is starting its sinusoidal downturn from the top. Barents sea temps match the sinusoidal AMO quite closely. This could reduce Atlantic drift warm water input to the Arctic.
See:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/08/new-paper-barents-sea-temperature-correlated-to-the-amo-as-much-as-4%C2%B0c/
BTW in a thread this spring when arctic air temps were high, many pro-AGW posters were arguing that air temps determine thickness. It makes sense that air temps influence thickness. Air temps right now would indicate thickening of the ice.

Here is another break up of Sea-Ice:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Joekelbugt/20100809AQUA.jpg
650 KM2 according to DMI

I’m assuming the overlaid anomalies are area? You would think that some researcher somewhere would be all over this. As I understand it, the argument has always been that the arctic and antarctic would behave differently because you have water surrounded by landmasses in the north and a landmass surrounded by water in the south. I could see the antarctic responding to AGW at a slower rate than arctic just due to thermal mass of the ocean but for the poles to respond in different directions would seem to imply another mechanism at work.
With the temps below freezing in the arctic, if the winds continue to compact the ice (if they’re not blowing things out of the basin or too strong) then we should see an increased divergence between the area and extent. So we might see the area increase while the extent is still decreasing.
The next question is how far south is the freeze line extending and what’s the rate of change.

Also, the article that says Mark Serreze forecast this year would break 2007’s record is not a direct quote and is incorrect. Mark is not a forecaster, so he didn’t forecast anything. Second, I’ve never heard him say that we would break the record; he may have said “we could break the record”, which was a possibility.
walt