Tom Nelson points out these three related items. It seems the “pretty good proxy for climate change” is proxying the wrong message this year.
Overheated Arctic update: Nenana ice was gone by this date in 1940, but still 41 inches thick this year
21-Apr 41.4 Inches
Nenana Ice Classic Breakup dates
20-Apr 1940 1998
The Ice Classic has given them a rare, reliable climate history that has documented to the minute the onset of the annual thaw as it shifted across 91 years. By this measure, spring comes to central Alaska 10 days earlier than in 1960, said geophysicist Martin Jeffries at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks — and that trend is accelerating. “The Nenana Ice Classic is a pretty good proxy for climate change in the 20th century,” Dr. Jeffries said.
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* That great phrase coined by Kate at Small Dead Animals
[UPDATE] I hope Anthony won’t bust me for adding a graph of the Nenana breakup dates over time. The error bar (95%CI) shows the error for the Gaussian average.
You can see the changes due to the PDO in the data.
w.
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Great phrase indeed. Should be the first line in the Abstract of tooooo many ‘published’ papers these days.
Or maybe they need a whole new Journal of Probably Nothing, peer reviewed by experts in that field.
May 9th 10:15 am
I am going to email this to my alarmist sisters, and ask for good warmist evidence in exchange. I will cite the ref you had two days ago that liberals see only the warmist evidence and never see things like this, while we see only things like this and never see the best alarmist evidence. (Actually, I think we do–you cannot escape that evidence. But I needn’t mention that to my sisters).
Shoot! Looks like I won’t be winning this year’s Classic. 🙁
How long does it take for 41.4″ to break up?
If daytime temps are in the 50s, and overnight just barely freezing, are we talking days or weeks?
And I chose a date in mid-May.
What was the point of this posting?
* The ice thickness is about normal for this time of year.
* The ice often breaks up when the thickness is ~ 35-40 inches, so it could go any time.
* 194o was cherry-picked. The other 4 earliest breakups are all 1990+
* The trend is to break up 0.07 days earlier each year, or 7 days earlier now than when the contest started ~100 years ago. That trend seems to be accelerating.
So overall, this seems to confirm that ice is breaking up earlier (ie that Alaska is getting warmer over the last 100 years).
REPLY: Read the tags, it’s humor, of which you have routinely demonstrated to have none. – Anthony
40″ of ice? Must have been a toaster of a winter according to the ‘theory of CAGW’. Look for a big red blotch in Alaska on Hansen’s next maps.
And we’re using 1940 as a baseline because… it’s the earliest recorded break-up date (tied with 1998)? 1941 occurred on May 3…
Last year, the break-up was on 4/29, which is on the early side, yet on 4/19, the ice was… 40.9 inches.
In 2009, the break-up was on May 1st, also on the early side (note that in 1964, the break-up occurred on May 20), and yet the ice thickness on 4/23 was 42.7 inches.
2008 broke a bit later (May 5), and they had 40.5 inches on 4/21.
2007 was quite early (4/27), and there were 46+ inches on 4/11 (the last reported measurement). And so on.
So, two things:
One, the presence of 40+ inches of ice on 4/22 isn’t indicative of a late thaw.
Two, that DenialDepot post about focusing on near term noise, instead of long-term trends, was satire, not an instruction manual!
Bi-modal distribution of the dates. Interesting….
Checking a handful of previous years, the thickness measurements stop several to many days before the ice actually breaks up, presumably for safety reasons.
In 1993, the last ice measurement was 25″ on 9-Apr, but the ice didn’t break up until 23-Apr.
1996’s last reading was 41.5″ on 22-Apr with a break up on 5-May.
Unless the weather interferes, we should see a 5-May break up.
To use this as an indication of spring start is flat out stupid, though. More likely than not, the break up date is more strongly correlated with melt water from upstream, which is mostly an indication of whether the surrounding weather is snow or rain.
Tim Folkerts: “That trend seems to be accelerating.”
Surprise … warmists always assume that an upward trend always continues and when it doesn’t its just an aberration that will be corrected “sooner than we thought”.
Weather goes in cycles.
Interesting that the two most common days for breakup 29-Apr and 30-Apr had these years:
1939,1953,1958,1980,1983,1994,1999,2003,2010
1917,1934,1936,1942,1951,1978,1979,1981,1997
Thats 5 1990+ Tim. Seems pretty well distributed to me.
The closest weather station suggests cooling since 1990.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425702610000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Nenana’s weather station stopped reporting in 1969.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425702600010&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Another good proxy: mounds of snow and temps in the 30s in Michigan. Used to be golfing this time of the year.
I spent a full winter living in Fort McMurray, Canada in Northern Alberta; and the annual break up of the river is a huge event, with betting, and it is a site to see. Everyone visits the river to view the magnificent site of huge chunks of Ice lying around the bridge over the Athabasca river.
I’m sure that there are many other towns that find this event an important part of spring. After a long hard winter of many days at minus 40 degrees it is a welcome sign.
I’m not an expert with only 1 year of observation; but since the ice chunks are massive and thick, I’m not sure that the ice thickness itself determines the date for the breakup. I’m sure that the water flow and runoff/melting from the upstream areas has a huge effect. I wonder how thick the ice typically is at breakup.
Hopefully someone from the cold north country can provide a better insight.
I use Tioga Pass Road (Highway 120) through Yosemite National Park as my bench mark for spring in California.
Normally they open the road about Memorial Day. This year the Sierra high country is sitting on about 170% of normal for snow pack, so the first I will likely be able to drive this route is mid June this year.
This drive just after they open the road to traffic with the mountains in full spring melt is one of the best drive in the world IMO. Yosemite Valley gets the press, but I like this drive better than through the valley, and the valley is spectacular.
“Nenana ice was gone by this date in 1940, but still 41 inches thick this year”
This is obviously not peer reviewed as it is clear to me that if the Nenana ice was gone by this date in 1940 then it could not possibly still be 41 inches thick this year?
After May 12th I shall collect. my winnings! – Tripod or no tripod.
Another proxy, 36 degrees F, 40 MPH winds and snow in the warmer part of WY right now, where I live, and it is usually so nice this time of year. ( I am prevaricating through my clenched teeth.)
Spring has sprung,
No sign of sun,
The snow still flies,
While I tell lies,
So don’t move here,
Too many already so near,
Try Texas if you will,
East and west coast voices are too shrill,
Outsiders tend to vex us,
But our climate does protect us.
Video of the breakup. The ice is quite thin, with open water. Not what I expected to see based on the reported thickness. Perhaps the water was hot from global warming, which melted the ice very fast.
bricro says:
April 22, 2011 at 1:30 pm
“Two, that DenialDepot post about focusing on near term noise, instead of long-term trends, was satire, not an instruction manual!”
So, you say, it’s probably nothing?
“REPLY: Read the tags, it’s humor, of which you have routinely demonstrated to have none. – Anthony”
It’s also tagged “Climate News”
I’ll have to join Tim Folkerts in not getting the joke. I mean it’s not just I’m not personally amused, I literally don’t understand even what the underlying joke is. You picked a particular measure of a particular area by which the current year isn’t doing as bad as other years and then said it shows the Arctic is giving the “wrong message”.
Unless you intended to show how absolutely ridiculous it is do such a thing while ignoring the obvious trend for the whole area this year so far and in previous years then I don’t get it.
Looks like the river flow is picking up, which I assume is a major factor in the break-up.
http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv/?referred_module=sw&site_no=15485500
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_webcam
Barrow Sea Ice Webcam
Web cam overlooking the landfast ice (or coastal ocean during the ice-free period in summer) from atop the ASRC building in downtown Barrow, Alaska. The camera is looking approximately NNW.
breakup date is not a good proxy for climate change … since nobody can define climate change … now if climate change is code for global warming … then, no, its still no a good proxy …
from NASA: “Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere “behaves” over relatively long periods of time.”
so is the atmosphere the main driver of river ice breakup in Alaska ? If not then its not a good proxy …
Bruce Hall says:
April 22, 2011 at 1:49 pm
“Another good proxy: mounds of snow and temps in the 30s in Michigan. Used to be golfing this time of the year.”
Yeah, we’re supposed to get a rain/snow mix tomorrow morning in western New Hampshire (yuck). Well, at least I don’t have to mow the lawn yet…
What UK(US) says is true, (about river flow) but we have had a fairly cold/dry year, which means that the ice is pretty thick and there is not a lot of snow out there to cause the river to rise. I live about 200 miles south of Nenana and most of the snow at lower elevations is all gone, and the water content was not that high anyway… Temperatures are right down the middle of average, and are forecast to continue… On the other hand a really windy day or a warm sunny day could do it… If I was a betting man, I would bet early May rather then late April… 🙂 But I won’t be putting my money where my post is as it were. 🙂