In case you missed it, the official result for 2011 is in:
The Tanana River officially broke up on May 4, 2011 at 4:24 PM
and here’s the clock
Here’s the context of the date in comparison with all of the others since 1917. (I calculated this to be day 124.683 in 2011, please check)
…and since Willis mentioned it, there is a correlation between the Nenana break-up date and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, although I think the warming recorded since the 1960s (with the trending of the breakup earlier in the year) might correlate with the growth of Fairbanks upstream.
I inverted the Nenana breakup date so that up is earlier in the year (ie warmer). The PDO data was filtered to remove the high frequency noise.
Looks like about half of the dates are earlier, and about half are later.
I think the IPCC would classify that as a 50% increase in global warming.
Well. That says it all. We are facing a runaway green house.
Gotta be a hockey stick in there somewhere….
Lets not forget John Daley who highlighted this event some several years before his death.
I guess I’ll say it. It’s worse than we thought!
Can you add a line of best fit to that Anthony?]
Why is 1998 plotted slightly lower than 1940 when both ice melt events happened on the same day of the year? If anything, the 1940 event should be plotted slightly lower since it happened earlier in the day!
I live on a lake. It’s a 43 acre man-made lake. I’ve been tracking freeze and thaw dates since the place was built in 1995.
Today, May 7, is the first ice-free day this year, and also the FIRST TIME in 16 years that the thaw date was not in April. Not surprisingly, the earliest years were 98, 03, 04, and 09.
Yeah, global warming is a really hard sell around here.
Has anybody studied the soot content of the top (snow) layers and their effect?
For whatever reason, I can’t see any graphs. You seem to refer to one.
Staying normal faster then we predicted.
So 70% of the top ten earlist ice outs have been since the late 80’s.
“jack morrow says:
May 7, 2011 at 5:24 pm
I guess I’ll say it. It’s worse than we thought!”
I wish people would stop saying ” It’s worse than we thought!”
That phrase was less than funny the first few hundred times I heard it!
The words have no meaning arranged in that way, no positive value what so ever!
Ever see the movie Groundhog Day?
The runoff from the hills, blows out the ice on the river.
More runoff, whether from more snow/or a faster melt, is the question when trying to win the contest.
Out of the 47 (roughly half of the total) latest ice out dates, only 5 have been since the late ’80s.
Having grown up in Fairbanks I remember driving to Nenana and helping set up the tripod with my dad way back when. Who knew that a simple winter carnival would turn into a global metric. Strange thing life.
Jim Cook,
I think you have it bass ackwards: its the global metrics that have been turned into the carnival. 😉
Nice analysis, John. The overlay of the PDO on the Nenana dates is very convincing.
Keep up the good work,
w.
Out of 23 ice outs on May 9th or later, only 1 has been since the late ’80s.
David H.,
1998 is slightly lower than 1940 because 1940 was a leap year. Hence there was one extra day (Feb 29) between the beginning of the year and the breakup date.
Pull yourself together: The time for genuine concern is when the Tenana fails to break up.
Ken S says:
May 7, 2011 at 8:11 pm
“jack morrow says:
May 7, 2011 at 5:24 pm
I guess I’ll say it. It’s worse than we thought!”
I wish people would stop saying ” It’s worse than we thought!”
That phrase was less than funny the first few hundred times I heard it!
The words have no meaning arranged in that way, no positive value what so ever!
Ever see the movie Groundhog Day?
Yes saw the film. It was worse than I thought!
“Today, May 7, is the first ice-free day this year, and also the FIRST TIME in 16 years that the thaw date was not in April. Not surprisingly, the earliest years were 98, 03, 04, and 09.”
Unless you have some tree ring data to back up your data, what you have stated is all just conjecture.
Or a fancy new computer model (secret of course)
A computer model-first insert garbage- garbage creates methane- methane warms garbage- cooked garbage out- so simple who would have thunk it
Total PDO proxy.
http://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/Breakup%20Log.html
Here is a chart that is a little more useful. It may not be a perfect representation of a bell curve, but it sure looks like it might fill in like one in another 100 years.
Alaska hasn’t had no significant warming for over 30 years
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/Climate/Location/TimeSeries/index.html
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/graphics/temp_dep49-09_C