Joe Bastardi's 2011 Arctic Sea Ice Prediction

I have a feeling we can take his prediction to the bank

“The real problem would be is if there is no corresponding drop in the southern hemisphere sea ice. Like the 70s, cries of ice age will start again. So my forecast for next years melt is for 5.5.”
God forbid we fall for cries of an ice age again, although I wouldn’t be surprised. You don’t know an ice age has occurred until you are 100 years into it. Just like you don’t know an economic bubble has occurred until it has popped. Well, not an exact analogy.
People and nations should look forward to adaptation to changing conditions of the colder variety and adapt however. If the solar minimum doesn’t abate soon, much colder conditions should be anticipated.

I think Joe is more or less right on and I suspect the Antarctic will not shrink much if any and it to may grow. This of course comes at a time when I am working on a couple of resource development studies in the mid arctic region.

Darn! Melt the ice caps! Tropics from pole to pole!
Much more pleasant.

Deja vu?
2010 Redux?
My guess, at this time, is 5,499,999 km^2, if it goes below 5.5E6, I’ve bested Joe B.

I love this guy. He is a Weatherman. lol. Fearless. Makes money on being right, not on being an alarmist.
Anthony, you got your first prediction. Bank it.

I guess that would make us RUSA.

“The real problem would be is if there is no corresponding drop in the southern hemisphere sea ice. ”
Yes, that most certainly would be a problem. A rather big problem.
Mankind has been griping about the weather since the dawn of time.
Only recently have some begun to panic over the weather.
There will be genuine cause for concern should the Antarctic Circulation get diverted or impeded.

As I drove to work this morning at minus 36 degrees c , I was confronted by the shear absurdity of the whole conversation. ( central Alberta, Canada) Please maintain the battle for common sense.

We still have solar minimum conditions: http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/50
DNS value for today is 629.
Oceans continue to cool including the Med.
At the end of this month most of Western Europe, including parts of Portugal, Spain, and Italy, the US, Russia and Asia will be covered by snow. This is before the start of winter.
In the US it’s raining snow and cold records.
Also have a look at the SH where all the land masses show neutral-negative temp anomalies http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp7.html and have a look at the Antarctic Ice Extend which shows a record extend.
We clearly witness a change shift here to a colder weather regime.
In the mean time the UN IPCC comes out with the most alarmist report ever:
SEVERE CLIMATE WARNING
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/11/severe-climate-warning.html
I really hope it is their last.

1DandyTroll says:
November 23, 2010 at 11:37 pm
Pillock. Money doesn’t give the right answers. Honest research by the scientific method does. jeez

Ice extent is not a robust metric, as the amount of thicker multi-year ice also signals the amount of warming or cooling. Hence, ice mass balance should be the measurement tracked;
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-379

Since the start of the satellite record in 1979, scientists have observed the continued disappearance of older “multiyear” sea ice that survives more than one summer melt season. Some scientists suspected that this loss was due entirely to wind pushing the ice out of the Arctic Basin — a process that scientists refer to as “export.” In this study, Ron Kwok and Glenn Cunningham at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used a suite of satellite data to clarify the relative role of export versus melt within the Arctic Ocean.
Kwok and Cunningham show that between 1993 and 2009, a significant amount of multiyear ice — 1,400 cubic kilometers (336 cubic miles) — was lost due to melt, not export.

Joe Bastardi
in Final 2010 Arctic Sea Ice Summary – Sea Ice News #30
[November 23, 2010 at 3:45 am] says:
“My forecast for next year is for sea ice to melt only to levels we saw back in 2005, or 06. If I had to put a number on it, I think it would be around 5.5 at its lowest.
The ice is coming back, will do so in forward and back steps, with forward defeating the back steps. I am on record as saying we will be back to 1977 levels by 2030. The real problem would be is if there is no corresponding drop in the southern hemisphere sea ice. Like the 70s, cries of ice age will start again. So my forecast for next years melt is for 5.5.”

My gut feeling given official voice by Joe Bastardi, I’m with you brother, 5.5 it is.
Ironically like its evil relatives Communism/Marxism/Fascism/Socialism/Liberalism, the miserable relentless cold advances on: 2 steps forward – 1 step back. If this really is a generational length repetitious long cycle, one might compare us now to exiting the Eisenhower fifties about to enter the 60’s and 70’s. Yup, that was fun. This time it had better shut up the ecophobic warmie cult!
P.S. Planning to return to hit this thread next September. As I type this: 29 Responses so far (I wonder how many comments there will be in 10 months 😎

In response to Will, lets think globally. First of all, you can not have read anything I have said over the years, or watch what I do with the sea ice report, because everyone that has knows I have given time to the co2 argument, acknowledging the chance it may be right. However all I ask for is the 20-30 years to prove that it is not, not the shut down, nor the portraying as ignorant, those of us that
have a different opinion. The easy way out for me, and probably the much more profitable, is to simply side with the side that the money is on. However to me, all this is is a big forecast.. a grand one, 30 years long. And if I am right, who are people going to turn too when they want someone that can help them in long term planning. More important than that…it is a MATTER OF RIGHT AND WRONG on an idea. So I will try here to sum this up for those that think I dont even look at computers, or make willy nilly statements. So here we go: The southern hemisphere sea ice has COME UP the past 30 years almost as much as the northern hemisphere has come down. It really is intuitive as to what is going on. The warm PDO and AMO tandem warms the continents, of which most land mass is in the northern hemisphere. This means that the arctic ice cap, essentially land locked, has to shrink in response, because it is warming up around it for one, and for two, the AMO
has a direct way, with warm water, to attack the cap where it is more open. The simple test, without billions of dollars of research money, is to simply allow the cold pdo ( just started in 2007 ) and the coming cold amo ( should start around 2020) have their chance . Its easy and intuitive and of course very threatening to the multi trillion dollar industry and political and religious movement that this has become. I understand that. Now lets go to the southern hemisphere, mainly water. How is it that the sea ice has INCREASED, while the N hemisphere has decreased? The answer I propose, and again at the risk of blowing all the grant money out of the water, is that if we could accurately measure
the energy budget of the earth, we would find it is NOT CHANGING. That all that has happened is a northward distortion of where its warm, in response to a natural cyclical occurrence. So if you want to say the trend is down in the north, I have proposed a simple, and over the next 30 years, testable hypothesis. And I dont need
billions of dollars of grant money or computer modeling to prove it. All I need , and others of good will out there, is to objectively and rationally watch what happens when the mechanism(s)
that I believe have caused this, reverse, and are MEASURED WITHOUT ANY READJUSTMENT in a constant fashion by an objective method, which we did not have before, when the PDO was cold, we only started when it turned warm. The theory is simple… A warm PDO, then AMO, results in the appearance of global warming because of the response on the land masses, when in reality it is a distortion north of the warmth. And warming dry air over land takes much less energy than forcing an oceanic response. A look at the PDO, AMO values over the past 60 years reveals nearly any changes in those figures overall, and the problem
may indeed be that the current distortion of warming may be masking a cooling that is going on, that would put us in far worse shape than if there is warming. But we will know all this by 2030. In fact I think you should see it now. I made a forecast
for global temps returning to normal or a bit below by March of 2011. I made this back when the earths temp was in the el nino spike. One can simply watch the antics
of the global temps in response to the smaller scale enso movements and then
understand why the large multi-decadal movements should lead to this. The threat
here is that if correct, then the whole thing would be as Bill Gray has been saying for years, a hoax and a scam. But here is all I ask. lets let it play out. After all if the models are right, then we should quickly see a jump in temp back to their forecast
from 20 years ago. The little known fact is while this decade has been warm, it has
essentially flattened out from the rise that would have been a natural response to the phenomena I have pointed out. If there was a co2 induced tipping point, rather than a “governor” on the earths thermostat caused by the theory the total energy
IS NOT CHANGING and temperature is a measure of energy, then temps would have responded to the higher levels that the IPCC forecast had them.
My point is this: It was high tide, but the tide is going out. I am not afraid of the answer, and simple logic and respect for nature and what has done, and can do, will
prove that once again mans folly in thinking he can control what he did not create.
And for those that scream and holler at all this, let me ask you..who are you going to believe, someone else, or your own “lying eyes” IT IS BEFUDDLING TO ME that we now have an OBJECTIVE WAY of measuring all this… NO READJUSTING temps,
no proxy this or that… we have the satellite measurements at the end of the last cold PDO, 1978 and beyond. If you are right, you have nothing to fear, the temps will
continue up. But you at least have the way to watch. Lets give the cold PDO and AMO ( heck I didnt even bring up solar cycles, volcanoes, etc) their chance. The fact is that the true DENIERS out there simply want to deny the chance for a level playing field objective test. And the reasons, I believe, are not about getting the right answer, but force feeding a predetermined answer.
If you are right, then you will carry the day anyway. Look at this as a bowl game
it will prove that you should have the title.
as always.. cheers to all

Apparently, ESF_Junior has discovered the “Gas-station-localization-principle! 🙂
As this prediction exercise likely will have oodles of contenders in the end, I’ll skip the GSLP”method” and follow my “gut feeling”. I can go on record for a 2001 september minimum of 5.3Mill km2.
@MattN.
It is definitely interesting to watch the current AMSU development, but I think we should follow the situation for a while before putting too much emphasis on short time data.
I have however also looked AMSU for a while, and find the tendency of relative cooling of the troposphere/lower atmosphere and simultaneous relative “warming” of the stratosphere to be very interesting.
A couple of aspects (and I would appreciate corrections if I have misunderstood, and of course supplements).
1) The “heating” of the stratosphere means that the usual causal principle of GHG blocking IR back-radiation, has either been reduced (does BTW not fit with the CO2-trend”) or been offset by internal (unknown?) processes, or external forcings (external radiation?), or a combination of these.
2) A “hotter” stratosphere could possibly also signify a stronger back-radiation from earth AND the atmosphere, implicatinog that the earth’s radiative imbalance have been reduced, and may even reverse. (Anyone with model or real-world numbers for this?).
Cassanders
In Cod we trust

Don´t forget M.Vukcevic temperature´s relation with GMF. Nature, as common sense shows, does not have water thight compartments between electromagnetic frequencies, it continuously change from one to the other. It is unexplainable to think exlusively in LWR(IR)-Temperatures, as our daily experience, beginning early in the morning, when preparing our breakfast we make use of power to obtain heat.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AT-GMF.gif
Thus, also, only a soup of letters, a concoction of holy names and tags make us think there are water tight compartments among supposed different areas of physics (physis=nature):
Thus, the Max Planck equation united all fields as the current Power equation it is also a unified field equation, though with changed “characters” and “sacred units”:Joules in the first case, watts in the second. This way nobody knows they are speaking the Same Language= The Babylon confusion, where everyone tries to weight up their prefered “angel”.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/42482741/Unified-Field-Explained-9

Blade says:
“Ironically like its evil relatives Communism/Marxism/Fascism/Socialism/Liberalism, the miserable relentless cold advances on: 2 steps forward – 1 step back.”
Liberalsim? Are you sure? I would imagine Nick Clegg would be rather unhappy at being classed in the same group as the others. I would imagine that if the LibDems are in there, more radical political parties such as the Tea party and Republicans should also be included. I suspect though that politics in the USA will always be a mystery to the moderate voters of Europe.
Snowing here in the UK, snow on Snowdonia much earlier than usual. Personally I blame David Cameron. The weather was much better and warmer under labour.

So Will, what was the ice doing before 1978 then?
The only thing you get from cherry picking is enough cherries to bake a pie.
Cold snap here in the UK, how I miss that global warming!
The big question is, will the ice recover quickly enough over the next few years (as it will) to stop government bodies wasting even more tax dollars on AGW? I fear it won’t, but I’m still wondering how all the ‘experts’ are going to squirm out of it! My idea is that the climate modellers (mathematicians) will get hung out to dry by all the other departments. It’s going to be an academic bloodbath of blame at some universities. Can’t wait to see it start at mine, I’ve booked front row seats.

More details on the UK ‘s early and cold winter.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11827592

Owen says:
November 24, 2010 at 5:23 am
The sea ice, I believe, will prove to be the decider of this great climate battle.
If he’s right [Joe Bastardi], more power to him and good news for the world.
====================================
This is not a “great climate battle”.
It is a stupid, multi-trillion dollar, politically motivated, pseudo-scientific waste of time and taxpayer money,
a loathesome scam that may result in the deaths of millions of people in third world nations,
an international breach of trust between the public and what the scientific method should represent to the world,
a mass disease of bureaucratic groupthink which has infected even the smartest of the ranks,
and a complete waste of time for important scientific discovery that could be used to protect our species from the coming cool-down.
And if Joe Bastardi is right, it is not “good news”.
It is very bad news and even worse news because the idiots in charge have been barking up the wrong tree….so our species is in no way prepared.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Will Stewart raises an important issue. I presume what he is suggesting is that there is an auxiliary hypothesis relating to melt versus export ice that if true supports the principal hypothesis that global warming is still occurring (whatever the cause) and that Arctic sea ice (of the right sort) is disappearing. The problem with this from the point of view of a relatively neutral bystander is that the continual appeal to ad-hoc hypotheses to protect some underlying theory from refutation is the surest way to ensure that theory’s destruction. What I would like to see is a clear prediction (or indeed retro-diction) derived from the AGW research programme that demonstrates unequivocally the link between emissions and climate change. Einstein’s Relativity was not accepted for a decade until Eddington’s observation of the effect of the sun’s gravitational lens provided powerful confirmation of a theory that many still disputed.
A theory that explains everything, explains nothing. A theory that successfully predicts something is quite likely to predict another.

Joe Bastardi has been right. Whatever factors he has been using for study has been working pretty well.
The global warming predictions of a death spiral are not working out. Whatever factors they are using for study are nor working well.
If your hypothesis is wrong you have to junk it. That’s all.

Happy Thanksgiving, Joe!
And thanks for the article, this is an experiment that will be done no matter what.

vukcevic says:
November 24, 2010 at 6:47 am
It would be much more “a la mode”, nicer and perhaps more “intelligent”/”progressive” to say it is forced by “pesky” and “ugly” CO2 (Is it “black”, isn’t it?)

It is currently -23 degrees at Meacham, Oregon. And sunny. The air is bone dry.

From the various comments I wonder why no one has mentioned Nigal Calder or Gerald Roe’s papers which have shown the Milankovitch theory, after adjusting, show a very close correspondence. Their adjustments indicate the ice age began about 5,000 years ago.
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/milankovitch-back-to-1974/
Lubos Motl examined Gerold Roe’s paper and asserts “a trivial mistake” was corrected. Changes in amount of “sunshine” do not “immediately change the ice volume,” and as a consequence it is the “rate of change”:
“In this case the basic correct observation is the following: If you suddenly get more sunshine near the Arctic circle, you don’t immediately change the ice volume. Instead, you increase the rate with which the ice volume is decreasing (ice is melting). Isn’t this comment trivial?
Nigal Calder knew that this was the right comparison to be made back in 1974.”
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/07/in-defense-of-milankovitch-by-gerard.html
The lesser cycle of warm periods encompassing a few centuries appear to have been a bit colder each cycle.
Be forewarned,
WilliMc

Pamela Gray says:
November 24, 2010 at 7:06 am
That LICKING A METALLIC SURFACE TEST of yours, should be immediately considered as the International Standard for determining the Freezing Point of Water and enforce it as obligatory for any Global Warming Scientist as a condition for attending current sinful Climate Jamborees.
We all know that HE has said that he puts his “tongue” where he puts his mouth . (Or…was it his money?)
🙂

Joe said,
“My forecast for next year is for sea ice to melt only to levels we saw back in 2005, or 06. If I had to put a number on it, I think it would be around 5.5 at its lowest.”
Joe also said:
“I am on record as saying we will be back to 1977 levels by 2030.”
___
I respect Joe and have begun to follow some of his forecasting, but I believe Joe’s Sea Ice forecast is based on many assumptions related to solar cycles, the PDO, the NAO, AMO, etc. Joe doesn’t seem to be one of those who thinks that the 40% increase in CO2 since the 1700’s can have much of an effect on altering the ocean cycles. Furthermore of course and related to this lack of belief in the longer term effects of CO2 would be Joe’s implicit belief that Trenberth’s “missing heat” has not gone into the ocean at all and most likely isn’t “missing” at all, except in Trenberth’s mind perhaps.
I’ll stand on record as saying the Joe will be proven to be wrong not just about 2011, but about the next 20 years as well. Not only will the Arctic Sea Ice continue with the longer term decline it has been in since even before 1970, but it is very likely we will see a seasonably ice free Arctic by 2030.
This fall so far has shown a continuation of the weaking of the polar low, with large masses of cold air already being forced out of the Arctic because of high pressure over the Arctic areas. This already portends a lower winter sea ice growth (and certainly thinner). This change in the atmospheric pressure regime over the N. Pole has been discussed at length here on WUWT by several Ph.D. experts, but it seems to not have influenced Joe’s thinking for some reason.
The erroneous assumption by many is that the changes to climate caused by CO2 are linear or even logarithmic in nature– they are neither. The climate record shows clearly that the changes come in sudden shifts of regime, as one would except from a system pushed to edge of chaos. The earth has seen 800,000+ years of CO2 at levels 40% less than we have now. To think ocean cycles and other climate inducing natural cycles would not be effected (in a chaotic way) by this geologically speaking sudden rise in CO2 is illogical.

Pamela Gray said:
November 24, 2010 at 7:06 am
According to the “consensus”, there is supposed to be enough CO2 in the air above me to cause it to warm. I dare any “consensus” scientist to stop by my house and put their tongue on any metal surface today. I’ll even let you try the Sun-exposed ones. Hell, even the wood siding is cold enough to cause your tongue to stick to it.
If you respond by saying, “That’s just weather”, you have just proven my point. Weather kicks CO2 in the arse!
*******************************
That sums a lot of posts here which boil down to short term timscales and micro geographical extent.
Neither of which tell us much about the overal picture of what is happening and why.
Andy

Go, Joe, GO!
I hope I can make it another 30 years to see the results. My first 68 have been up and down, hot and cold; a lot like the weather.

Ironic, we may need every GHG we can muster in order to forestall the coming ice age, he he!
Joe, 30 years, are you trying to imply that the sun has something to do with the weather, shessh!

Pamela,
Did you even get to -2° F ?
Ellensburg, WA hit -8° F. Over in MT, it is even colder.
I’ll pass on the tongue on metal test. Thanks.

Joe Bastardi posts:
“I made a forecast
for global temps returning to normal or a bit below by March of 2011. ”
What do you decribe as normal?
zero anomaly by this graph?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2009-time-series/?ts=troposphere
or zero anomaly by this one?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2009-time-series/?ts=land
Not exactly a fair question, but a more specific prediction of what you mean by normal temperature in march of 2011 is what I am asking for.
Short term cooling between now and march 2011 doesn’t mean the end of global warming.
As for the ice extent in the arctic, if the Beaufort gyre does in 2011 what it did last year, the multi-year ice will be essentially gone. Walt Meier’s video of the ice that Antony posted earlier shows the beaufort gyre stripping the multi-year ice from the area north of greenland and baffin islands where it accumulates and transporting it to open water where it melted.
I think that as the total volume of ice shrinks, there will be more ice movement, and a higher chance of ice moving to warmer waters where it can melt. And that is what I base my prediction for a record low next year.

Anyway, we are living in “interesting times’…Now, we said, as the Chinese sage: “Wait at your front door and you’ll see the corpse of your enemy passing by”…….Cancun 🙂

Enneagram says:
November 24, 2010 at 7:30 am
That is absolutely false!!, and I tell it from SA Millions would than God if it would be the contrary, but, unfortunately IT IS NOT!.
Enneagram,
Take a look at the last century of southern hemisphere warming: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3sh/from:1910/plot/hadcrut3sh/from:1910/trend
And this Science Daily report on Worldwide glacial melting: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080317154235.htm
Quote from above article: “Recent studies indicate that most of the South American glaciers from Colombia to Chile and Argentina (up to 25ºS) are drastically reducing their volume at an accelerated rate. Changes in temperature and humidity are the primary cause for the observed glacier retreat during the 2nd half of the 20th century in the tropical Andes. In the next 15 years inter-tropical glaciers are very likely to disappear, affecting water availability and hydropower generation.”
BOTH hemispheres are warming due an enhance greenhouse effect. Heat is accumulating in the ocean, land, and atmosphere causing both sea ice and land ice to melt.

bobbyj0708 says:
November 23, 2010 at 11:23 pm
“Just like you don’t know an economic bubble has occurred until it has popped.”
The only people who don’t know when we’re experiencing an economic bubble work for either the Fed or the executive branch.
_____________________________________________________
Yes this months “Men’s Mag had an article by a “Disappearer” he helps people vanish and place all their money in off shore accounts. He said this year almost all of his customers were financiers.
I wonder if they know something we don’t, rats deserting a sinking ship comes to mind….

Joe Bastardi:
The prediction of an exact amount for the 2011 summer minimum is a matter of luck and not science. There are too many annual variables to make an accurate one-year prediction. Admission of the impracticality of making such a prediction would be welcome and the use of a range of possible numbers would be more appropriate at this point. Hopefully Anthony Watts learned this lesson in predicting a 500,000 km2 rebound in 2010 which saw a new June minimum average and the third lowest September minimum.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/09/prediction-arctic-ice-will-continue-to-recover-this-summer/
The 2006 arctic summer minimum was 5.8 million km2 based on the JAXA information, so a prediction of 5.5 million km2 is certainly within a range of possibility; however, the 2006 minimum was followed by the 1.5 million km2 drop in 2007 to 4.25 million km2 so the significance of a single year measurement does not appear to mean much in assessing arctic ice conditions. This also indicates that predicting the summer minimum a year in advance is subject to considerable uncertainty and should be left to those with a crystal ball rather than those with a science background. Predicting the average ice extent minimum for a period of several years appears to have greater validity since it can average out some of the annual fluctuations.
The 2010 minimum was 4.8 million km2, so your forecast would require an increase in extent of .7 million km2 above the 2010 level. Predicting such a large annual change is certainly bold, but you have not provided a convincing analysis that this will occur and I doubt anyone can. Your analysis of southern Pacific water temperatures (ENSO events) is not convincing since it is Atlantic water temperatures that primarily influence Artic water temperatures. Additionaly, there are several studies indicating that wind patterns are as important as annual temperatures in determining the annual arctic ice extent minimum.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100427111449.htm
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2009/090809.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/10/03/nh-sea-ice-loss-its-the-wind-says-nasa/
There is no indication in the current sea ice extent numbers that the arctic ice is coming back. The November 23rd numbers are approximately 450,000 km2 and 765,000 km2 behind the 2009 and 20o8 levels respectively.
If you compare November 23, 2010 with November 23, 2005 you will see that we are already 643,000 km2 behind the level that produced the 2006 minimum of 5.8 million km2, which is not a very good start. We are 129,000 km2 ahead of the November 23, 2006 level, but since this was followed by the record low in 2007 there does not appear to be much significance that one can attach to these numbers. Again, what experience shows is that making predictions a year in advance has too much uncertainty to believe that anyone can make an accurate prediction.
While it is easy to reject the death spiral contingent and those predicting a nearly ice free summer arctic at some point during the years 20 13 to 2019, it does not follow that the rejection of these folks validates an opposite prediction.
As for the prediction that 2030 will resemble the arctic ice conditions of 1977, this prediction appears suspect in the face of monthly trend lines that consistently show a downward trend for all months during the satellite record and TSI currently at a minimum level. The ice volume and age estimates of arctic ice do not appear to support the contention that “the ice is coming back”. There may be some short term upticks from the current low levels, but there is no indication that we will get back to the pre-2000 average much less the 1977 level. (What are the ice numbers for volume and ice extent for 1977 that you are using?) It will take a great many years to restore the arctic ice to the quality that existed in 2000.
Can you provide the explanation of the specific factors that will cause this to happen? If you are going to rely on a cycle argument, please identify the specific forces that drive the cycle.

OOPS! It looks like I wwent and sent my post twice!! Please delete my second attempt.
Thanks,
G.

I second that notion. The time lapse SST color chart that shows warmed waters circulating to the poles is a must see. Bob? Can you link us there?

vukcevic says:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
___________________________________________________________________
Very nice. I am glad you added text for those of us interested but ignorant. Thanks.

WilliMc says:
November 24, 2010 at 7:31 am
From the various comments I wonder why no one has mentioned Nigal Calder or Gerald Roe’s papers which have shown the Milankovitch theory, after adjusting, show a very close correspondence. Their adjustments indicate the ice age began about 5,000 years ago.
_____________________________________
I bring it up occasionally for the newbies/trolls.
Even Joe Romm over at Climate Progress states:
Absent human emissions, we’d probably be in a slow long-term cooling trend due primarily by changes in the Earth’s orbit — see Human-caused Arctic warming overtakes 2,000 years of natural cooling, “seminal” study finds…http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/16/hockey-stick-paper-mcshane-and-wyner-statisticians/#more-31767
And there is this pro-AGW paper:
Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception (2007)
“Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial. Our findings support the Ruddiman hypothesis [Ruddiman, W., 2003. The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era began thousands of years ago. Climate Change 61, 261–293], which proposes that early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started….”
If CO2 is preventing the start of another Ice Age, I think I will buy a coal burning stove to heat my house….

Actually, burning coal and natural gas will likely be our future in an ice age, but only in the beginning. The drawback are where these deposits can be found. In an ice age, much of our resources will eventually be under miles of ice, including our temperate forests. As the population moves South to stay in front of the ice, we will have fewer heat resources. Burning animal dung, brush, and other dry savanna scrub will be our go to source of heat. That wouldn’t bother me much. When we were kids we used to play dodge ball out in the field with dried “chunks”.

Joe Bastardi:
Have you published a peer reviewed paper that supports the conclusion that Arctic ice conditions in 2030 will be similar to conditions seen in 1977 or can you cite a peer reviewed paper that supports this view?
I have found one item, Climate Change in Eurasian Arctic Shelf Seas: Centennial Ice Cover Observations By Ivan E. Frolov, Zalmann M. Gudkovich, Valery P. Karklin, Evgeny G. Kovalev, Vasily M. Smolyanitsky, which suggests that there is a 60-year “natural cycle” that will cause the Arctic ice extent to rebound, but this is not a peer reviewed study and it does not identify what the natural forcing elements are that drive the cycle and the time period used to establish the cycle is only 85 years (too short to establish whether the 60 year cycle is a permanent or temporary cycle or whether the cycle time period is accurate) and the area surveyed does not include the entire Arctic.
I have been looking for an analysis that sets out the specific mechanism for Arctic ice conditions to return to 1977 levels with a chart or a graph showing annual predictions comparable to the multi-year projection by the IPCC below and have not found it, can you provide a link?
The IPCC information compared to actual observations can be found at:
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/ipccvsobsthru2010.png

Citizens,
On the question of ‘returns’ (in this case going backwards in time) of low arctic ice conditions useful data which doesnt often see the light of day is the the UK Met Office Library thanks to the HMNavy/Her Majesty’s Stationary Office (HMSO).
You might be interested in SLIDE 43 of 45 in my Presentation in WANews10No27.pdf – one of redbold items in comments in “World Cooling has….thread:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3307&linkbox=true&position=4
Words (followed by Her Majesty’s Stationary Office graph) read:
Arctic Ice & Polar Bears – More ‘GW propaganda of the 2nd kind’
– The true story of pack-ice off Iceland according to HMSO Official Reports-
All changes in the Arctic & Antarctic follow natural highly variable patterns. They are not new or special and have been recorded for over a thousand years and have been very well known to the British navy for a long time and available in the Met Office library**. The Antarctic has been cooling for decades & the Arctic has started to cool in the last year or two. Ice break-up is a natural process and has been happening for millions of years – before media noticed.
**HMSO 1963 Weather In the Home Fleet waters Vol 1 Northern Seas part 1 table XV page 246 shows the very high variability of ice off Iceland (eg) since 1900 and the
long periods of change of two decades or more. Figures 124 & 125 (page 256) show that historical records indicate there was no pack ice off Iceland for about 180 years
from 1020AD to 1200AD yet there was plenty of pack ice through the rapid expansion of industry since 1900 (Fig 126 page 257). graph)

Pamela Gray says:
November 24, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Made it over the frozen mountain pass. The ranch house is in good working order. No frozen pipes (I worked on prevention measures last week). The temperature is in the single digits at 1:00 PM.
R. Gates, you are just talking out of your hat unless you can provide plausible mechanism for your theory.
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Stay warm, Pamela. Correction, though: He is not talking out of his hat, but out of his ars*.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Hi, Pamela! You’re now almost exactly 400 mi. SE from where I type at the moment. But I’m only at a hundred feet or so altitude, so it’s only about 27°F, not your mountain plateau cold stuff! Much colder and snowier than normal; running about 12°F below average.

salvatore del prete says:
November 24, 2010 at 8:11 am
I say all of these factors govern climate,and futher they are tied into solar activity to one degree to another. I say if solar activity stays quiet,the above will or should tend to phase towards a colder mode in the coming years,resulting in colder global temperatures.
Agree….the driver of all these climate drivers is unique, there is no coincidence going on here.

I’m no scientist but when I look at the historical graphs for temperature in the Artic it seems to suggest that how cold it gets or vice versa deon’t seem to be the only reason for more or less ice. I’m aware that wind has been put forward as another reason for less ice too.
It’s obviously far more complicated than anyone seems to understand at the moment and the more/less ice is convient to fit into any given viewpoint of which there have been many.
Anyone with more than a few brain cells and no political requirement to feed knows that AGW is nonsense. CO2 isn’t a culprit since that lunacy grew out of Thatchers desire to remove the dependency on coal for energy generation and stop the miners holding the UK to ransom.
Can all this nonsense end please. It is tedious ot the point of craziness.

Pete M. said:
“Anyone with more than a few brain cells and no political requirement to feed knows that AGW is nonsense…”
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And a staunch warmist could say the exact same thing about the AGW skeptics and so this clearly shows the extreme gap between some warmists and some skeptics, for I have no political agenda at all, have been studying AGW as an educated but non-professional scientist for over 30 years and have come to the exactly opposite conclusion. Perhaps you would argue, I have “less than a few brain cells” then, and that’s fair enough, but I think your assertion that only stupid people or politically motivated people still believe in AGW is somwhat simpleminded in itself and doesn’t speak to the complexity of the issue. There are thousands of dedicated scientists who believe AGW is real based purely on the science, and for you to suggest that they have less than a few brain cells tells me your statement is more emotional than rational.

I wondered how long before the old nugget of ‘if it hasn’t been peer reviewed it can’t be science’ would pop up.
I guess gravity didn’t exist until Newton wrote about it and things didn’t float until Archimedes jumped out of his bath.
As for the IPCC I won’t trust their data as far as I could throw one of the many Polar Bears roaming around that big bit of ice up North that obviously must be a figment of our lurid imaginations.

R Gates says –
“There are thousands of dedicated scientists who believe AGW is real based purely on the science, and for you to suggest that they have less than a few brain cells tells me your statement is more emotional than rational”.
So you have to be a scientist to hold an opinion. Scare stories about theories. Rent seekers. You name it. Of course we also have the NGOs. a common theme runs through the whole lot. Money. The need for money.
If it looks like a scam and it smells like a scam it’s a scam.
Don’t take the high ground Mr Gates. People have opinions. I’m just sick to the back teeth of people who should know better and who don’t have a tiny percentage of supposed knowledge that they think and claim they have feed nonsense to politicians who then pass it on to the population in the form of taxes and higher energy costs.

My forecast for next year is for sea ice to melt only to levels we saw back in 2005, or 06. If I had to put a number on it, I think it would be around 5.5 at its lowest.
Just to be clear: Mr Bastardi, on what data set is your prediction based (IJIS, NSIDC)? Is your minimum extent number for the September average or for the absolute daily minimum?
My opinion: the ice is thin (CryoSat data will probably confirm this soon). We saw that this summer, with an unprecedented spreading out of the ice pack, leading to large swathes of open water in the interior of the pack. It’s just a matter of time before the ideal melting conditions come about (like they did in 2007). If that happens in the summer of 2011 there will be a new record minimum extent. If something like the past summer happens, ie the Beaufort Gyre stalling, increased cloudiness and low temperatures for 6 weeks during the period of peak insolation (when open sea water gets heated up most, determining in large part the last phase of the melting season), extent will probably go below 5 million again.
Unless something spectacular happens this winter and there is no Beaufort Gyre, no positive Arctic Dipole Anomaly and a reduced warm ocean water flux, I don’t think Mr Bastardi’s prediction will come about. But you never know. Everyone can win the lottery.

R. Gates says:
November 24, 2010 at 1:05 pm
I never mentioned “attractors” in my immediately prior post when talking about CO2, as it would seem to obfuscate the issue.
You said: ” The climate record shows clearly that the changes come in sudden shifts of regime, as one would except from a system pushed to edge of chaos.”
“Sudden change of regime in a system at the edge of chaos” – this means a transition between attractors. You didn’t use the word but it couldn’t mean anything else.
You are still and repeatedly using chaos and nonlinear / nonequilbrium pattern as a very vague and nebulous argument without proposing any clear mechanism or analogy. How exactly is a rapid change in a trace atmospheric gas supposed to tip the climate into an attractor – transition? A lot of assumptions underlie this – chiefly that CO2 is driving global temperatures, which is contradicted by the geological record. The geological as well as the evolutionary records and persistence of complex ecosystems for hundreds of millions of years points to climate stability and resistance to forcing – certainly not to a system on the edge, ready to fly off into positive feedbacks at the slightest variation of none of the very many potiential climate drivers. If you are indeed interested in edge of chaos nonlinear dynamics, read up on Lyapunov stability.

Let’s make Mr. Bastardi’s prediction verifiable (he doesn’t specify whether he means JAXA or NSIDC figures, minimum day or September monthly average, extent or area) by way of a bet:
He takes 5.50 million km^2 and above, September 2011 monthly average extent, as computed at NSIDC. If it’s below that, I win. I’ll put up the 50 quatloos I won from William Connolley regarding the 2009 melt season. (I don’t bet cash.)

phlogiston says:
November 26, 2010 at 2:13 am
The geological as well as the evolutionary records and persistence of complex ecosystems for hundreds of millions of years points to climate stability and resistance to forcing…
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? I am wondering what planet you are talking about? Certainly on earth we’ve not had any stable complex ecosystem lasting “hundreds of millions of years”, rather we see constant change and disruptions leading to the extinction of many species on one hand which creates new ecological niches for others. Tell me of an era of “stable complex ecosystem” lasting hundreds of millions of years here on earth please?

Plogiston said:
“It is reasonably arguable that the emergence of H. sapiens and our emission of CO2 by burning fossil fuel – is in fact a positive Gaia response to preserve a life-supporting planet, by restoring higher and more life-friendly CO2 levels (see the recent WUWT thread on Californian redwoods).”
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An interesting thought, but Gaia it seems already has a method to ensure that CO2 levels are maintained at life-sustaining levels, and that would be the weathering of rock through the increase in the hydrological cycle when CO2 levels get too high. An acceleration in the hydrological cycle (increased movement of water from ocean to land and back again) comes with higher temps, and the reverse is true with lower temps. The idea that “Gaia” would rely on a species to ensure that CO2 levels are maintained seem a tad quasi-spiritual but hardly scientific. I don’t think “Gaia” works on the species level at all, but rather larger scales of maintaining a planet that can support life, just as natural selection could care less about individuals but rather the species.

BASTARDI 2011 PREDICTION IN CONTEXT
A 2011 minimum prediction of 5.5 million km2 looks a bit high (assuming he is using NSIDC determined minimum as the reference), but as he stated above, is below the 2006 minimum of 5.7 million km2 and above the 2005 record setting minimum of 5.32 million km2 (the average September 2005 extent was 5.57 million km2).
The 2007 minimum is the current minimum record holder and per NSIDC was 4.13 million km2 with the average September extent 4.3 million km2.
The 2010 minimum per NSIDC was 4.6 million km2 with the average September extent 4.9 million km2. The 2010 average fell below the linear trend line posted by NSIDC at http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20101004_Figure3.png so an uptick in 2011 from the 2010 level is within expectations. However, to reach the minimum of 5.5 million km2 predicted by Mr. Bastardi there would have to be a single year rise of .9 million km2. While this is within the range of the possible, a single year increase this large is not likely based on current ice volume levels and past experience. By reference, the 2009 minimum was 5.1 million km2, thus the 2010 decline was 500,000 km2 from the prior year.
Current ice extent figures do not offer any predictive value. The November ice extent was the second lowest extent and was only 50,000 km2 over the record set in November of 2006. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ Generally, the December 31 sea ice extent per JAXA appears to hover around a “choke point” of 12.2 to 12.4 million km2., regardless of the November 30 level. Such a narrow range does not offer any clues as to the future ice minimum.
Using a range of + or – 500,000 km2 from the 2010 minimum (an arbitrary range), the 2011 minimum would fall between 4.1 million km2 (the 2007 record) and 5.1 million km2 (the 2009 level). Even the high end of this range is 400,000 km2 below Mr. Bastardi’s projection.
The declining linear trend line from the NSIDC chart is not valid as a predictor of future ice extent as the remaining ice at the September minimum consists primarily of ice from the Arctic Basin as defined by Cryosphere Today at http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.1.html . The decline of ice extent (the link at Cryosphere uses area, but is a reasonable approximation of extent) in the Arctic Basin region has not been as fast as the Arctic as a whole, and therefore, I believe the NSIDC trend line overstates the possible future decline of Arctic ice and do not subscribe to the “death spiral” scenario of an ice free Arctic by 2016.
While the prediction by Mr. Bastardi is a bit high and appears unlikely, it is not a prediction that would indicate that the Arctic ice is making a recovery as it is still below the 2006 minimum. The 2006 minimum was followed by the 2007 record low minimum, thus, even if Mr. Bastardi’s prediction for 2011 is correct, it would not be sufficient by itself to indicate that the decline in Arctic ice had stopped.
While Mr. Bastardi predicts that the ice extent will return to 1977 levels by 2030, there is no current indication that the Arctic will return to even the September average ice extent for the period 1979 to 2000 of 7.04 million km2, but it is fun to watch.