Once again, I’m going to give WUWT readers an opportunity to make a forecast for submission, based on voting. See the poll at the end.
I’ll run this poll each month in the week before the deadline, and we’ll see how we do as the minimum approaches. The value used by ARCUS is the NSIDC value as they say here:
The sea ice monthly extent for September 2010 was 4.9 million square kilometers, based on National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) estimates.
So don’t be using the JAXA graph to forecast minimums, though it it useful for determining short term trends as it is more responsive than the NSDIC graph below, which is averaged.
Here’s the latest JAXA graph: 
JAXA AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent -15% or greater – click to enlarge
On May 30th I submitted the results of the first poll to ARCUS to be included in their June Outlook, as shown below:
Download High Resolution Version of Figure 1.
WUWT is second highest, at 5.5 million sq km. Notably missing this year is “Wilson”, who in the last two years started out with impossibly low values such as 1 million sq km. I’ll repeat the poll next week in preparation for the August Outlook. In the meantime, check the WUWT Sea Ice Page for the latest.
and here is the July results, WUWT is still second highest, but down to 5.1:
Download High Resolution Version of Figure 1.
Here’s the poll for the ARCUS August outlook, it will run until July 31st at midnight PST.
5.8 Mkm squared
Do I win a grant if I am right?
🙂
I’m still going for around the 5.1m mark! (cooling is just around the corner guys!)
I want to predict that WUWT readers will probably adjust their estimate downwards somewhat now that we are getting closer to a result – they give me the impression that they are willing to weigh up the information in a more “realistic” way and not be so much biased by preconceived ideas :-g.
5.2 mil.
I didn’t vote in the previous polls, as I must have missed them as they rolled from a top 5 or so postings. I’ve followed the proceedings though. I think the mean of the WUWT poll has been a bit high, though I doubt it will reach the ’07 minimum. My somewhat self educated WAG is the 4.6 to 4.8 range.
I’ll be somewhat relieved if we stay above the 2007 minimum. Way too much ice is going out the Fram Strait this summer, though the Narez Strait may be plugged. Also, the NSIDC density map shows less solid white than I recall from past Julys.
lol At Global Cooling.
It’s about as likely as Jesus return.
I’m going to say 4.4-4.7
My first prediction was 5.0 MKm2, matching what the Canadian Ice Service predicted. However, watching the recent NSIDC trends, I downgraded that to 4.6-4.8 MKm2.
The Northeast Passage is now essentially open, let’s see when the Northwest Passage opens up. In any event, sea ice age will continue to grow.
I would just like to say that I really like coverage of the ice melt season. So much like a horse race. Is there betting? 🙂
Summoning R Gates…
☺
If all of the Arctic icecap were to melt – that is, all of the 4 – 5 million square kilometers now covered at the minimum point of Sept 15 to 22, what would happen?
Oddly, amid all of the many dozen different college meteorology summaries, class exams, lesson plans and earth science and physics texts I’ve read on-line and on paper, none have ever calculated the actual reason for the recent warming, and none have calculated what would happen if all the ice were gone. Most conventional CAGW paper and lesson plan does discuss the difference in albedo and reflection between ice and water, and a few actually show the calculations. But even those do for a single piece of miraculous square meter of ice: in orbit, directly above the equator on the equinox, during a perfectly “average” day of a perfectly circular earth’s orbit for perfectly flat square meter of perfect substrate at the instant of solar noon. Some continue, like the national ice research center’s website, to wave their hands – so to speak – about albedo feedback and increased melting causing increased heating of the earth. But none have actually shown why a measured 1/4 of one degree warming in the earth’s supposed “average” temperature can actually melt as many tons of ice that they claim.
No calc’s have ever used a real piece of real ocean water (or real Arctic sea ice) with real waves set at the Arctic’s latitude during the entire 24 period of a real day at every relevant part of the year with real values of atmospheric attenuation and real world “rough” ice/air/water albedo and reflectivities and absorption at angles under 15 degrees. So, how can they claim their much-vaunted “positive feedback” for the Arctic sea ice? They have never shown what the feedback is. (Granted, some begin to approach this: I have seen “average” albedo values for ice, pure water, and melted spots. But those albedos are quoted for the equator, when the sun is directly above the surface. For a flat surface -with no waves or wind or ice hummocks and ridges. And even those “average” values for albedo vary all over the map. No reference presents data for the attenuation of sunshine due to clouds for each month of the year in the Arctic. No paper or lesson plan uses actual values for reflection from the ice, the water, or the broken up and irregular pack ice. None list month-to-month values for how much energy is absorbed in the atmosphere before it even reachs the surface to even have a chance of being absorbed by the ice to begin its melting.
If there were a catastrophe could be calculated – and just fear-mongered with exaggerations about future warming and massive feedbacks, you’d think somebody at NSIRD would have published some measured values for the area where the catastrophe were beginning.
Do they somehow claim that increased CO2 levels can heat the Arctic air so high that the sea ice will not re-freeze each November-January-February-March-April when there is no sunshine up for 12 months of the year? Winter average temperature is -25 degrees C. The sea ice will re-freeze each winter. And re-melt each summer.
—…—
Further, if conventional CAGW theory holds that Arctic sea ice melting is a definite symptom of CAGW warming, and is at the same time “proof” of that global warming, why have they never calculated how a mere (and measured) 1/4 degree temperature increase in the air melt that many millions of tons of sea ice? (Yes – sea ice is melted from below, from the relatively warmer waters of the Arctic Ocean melting the bottom of the ice faster than the cold air mass above can freeze more. So, why have we never seen calculations of the time of year, average temperature of water, sea ice, and air, and a real value for the heat exchange coefficients?
Worse – the DMI HAS measured the temperatures at 80 north latitude every day since 1958. And Arctic summer temperatures have consistently gone down since that date. Why does Hansen claim his +4 degree rise?
RACookPE1978 says “the DMI HAS measured the temperatures at 80 north latitude every day since 1958. And Arctic summer temperatures have consistently gone down since that date.“.
Link?
I’m holding on 5-5.1.
By the way, Anthony, did Dr. Walt Meier get back to you about the orange boundaries for “Arctic sea ice extent”? In a previous post, you wrote:
[Update: Dr. Walt Meier of NSIDC in an email agrees that the orange boundaries are “somewhat arbitrary” and has agreed to explore a “what if” question for me. I hope to have a plot from him using Arctic circle as a boundary in a couple of weeks to see if there is any significant difference – Anthony] My Google-fu seems to be failing me, because I can’t find a follow-up post on that.
REPLY: No he did not. – Anthony
I predict the arctic ice mass minimum will be more than enough to make a proper gin and tonic….. but less than the antarctic ice mass (penguin population total mass deducted) +/- 3, naturally!
problems posting on tips & notes, so here goes:
btw nowhere in the 340 pages is “global warming” much less “manmade global warming”, much less CAGW mentioned:
(found on joanne nova)
(340 pages) The Australian Carbon Tax legislation has been released finally: The draft from the Climate Change Department
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/government/submissions/clean-energy-legislative-package/~/media/publications/clean-energy-legislation/exposure-draft-clean-energy-bill-2011-pdf.pdf
“Worse – the DMI HAS measured the temperatures at 80 north latitude every day since 1958.”
DMI uses a model to construct the temperatures.
How come people are still betting greater than 6.0 given the current value? That would have to be a massive turnaround with a very poor August followed by a very quick refreeze to give a September figure that high. Stranger things have happened I guess.
The poll seems quite spread out now.
Andy
Oh yeah, Brian, have you visited the Iceland Volcano and Earthquake Blog lately and checked out the Katla news? I’m not saying it’s going to, but also not saying that I won’t see Jesus before I die either.
Good fun.
But come back when sea ice in February is less than 1.0 Million m2 and I’ll start to wonder if the Thermageddonists are at least a little bit right.
Smokey says:
July 27, 2011 at 7:48 pm
Summoning R Gates…
☺
============================
Oh god please no.
Any break therefrom (the “summoning”) is a welcome respite.
What are you trying to be all of the sudden, Smokey, some sort of medium?
Let him/her rest. No need to excite him/her.
Nothing is said anyways other than 75% AGWist versus 25% Skeptic blah blah blah….and something obligatory about the “AGW Models” and some sort of hand-wringing about sea ice.
No need to summon the spirits. Let him/her save THAT for the ScFi channel.
Smokey steer clear of the drama that is about to ensue…because you mentioned his/her name.
LOL
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
4.6 to 4.7 Million km2….. low.
Just to hedge my prognostication ability, It will more likely be lower than 4.6 to 4.7 Million km2 than higher.
Ed Mertin says:
“….Iceland Volcano and Earthquake Blog lately and checked out the Katla news? I’m not saying it’s going to, but also not saying that I won’t see Jesus before I die either.”
It’s gonna be a toss up. My money is on Hekla. I could be wrong, Katla’s last two events in the http://www.volcano.si.edu list show up as “uncertain” and the new ice craters are tantalizing. Something is up. But Hekla.. well, when it goes it gives very little warning. The last event occurred about 15 to 20 minutes after the associated quakes crossed the threshold of being able to feel them if you were standing on top of them.
5.1 to 5.2 & a rapid freeze thereafter, along the line of 2002.
I suspect the minimum will be very low and the recovery relatively fast. This has been the pattern for a bit. The core ice seems dense and solid, allowing for the same. The Warmists have been hiding or ignoring the thermometer readings for some time. The loss of seasonal ice seems more wind and current driven then atmospheric. Just my thinking.
Well, I know nothing! However, I voted fo 5.1-5.2Mkm². Having said that it probably doesn’t really matter what the actual level is at, presuming that it doesn’t exceed 2007. Somebody somewhere will stick a ruler on the trend line & calculate to some umpteenth decimal place that the “rate of melt” was faster than ever recorded before, or some such spurious statistic, just to keep the alarm bells ticking over, or that old chestnutter of “natural forces masking the clear manmade signal”. You see it has to be worse than we thought. Although if these weak & feeble natural forces are so powerful in the first instance one has to ask what is the problem in any case!
Nothing at all. Life would continue uninterrupted and unaffected. Business as usual.
Well one thing would happen, there would be a run on Beer, Wine and Prozac, probably diapers too. The bed-wetters would be a mess, first from panic and then later from withdrawal fatigue due to investing so much into so little.
Any AGW cultists care to offer a different scenario?
AndyW says:
July 27, 2011 at 10:04 pm
How come people are still betting greater than 6.0 given the current value? That would have to be a massive turnaround with a very poor August followed by a very quick refreeze to give a September figure that high. Stranger things have happened I guess.
The poll seems quite spread out now.
Andy
Optimists one end, pessimists the other and the rest in between.
I have reduced my estimate, not least because the observed area is less than my previous estimate. Reality must continue.
There is still time to cross the 2007 line, which it seems to be tryong to do, but there is no worry if it does not only that my latest estimate will be wrong again.
What about ice thickness?
Last day 100000 kilometer disapper on the end of July >>>wow
I’ve bet on 5.3 from the start and I’m sticking to it. 5.3 it will be and I will win all the money. Oh, yes!
The planet appears to be cooling, and in the short term less ice increases the cooling rate and as we all know, sea temperature is not in itself the only (nor at times the most significant) factor determing the extent of ice/ice loss. The weather patterns are currently such that I recogn that for now we will come close to the 2007 level and I would ‘guestimate’ around 4.7 million sqKm +/- 200,000 sq km.
As a number of people have observed, why the fixation with summer minimums? The waters will refreeze we can be certain of that and I for one would be far more concerned if the ice season was gradually increasing and the trensd was for a significant increase in the summer minimum. I shiver at the thought of seeing such a trend, but do not get hot under the collar at seeing a little less summer artic ice. Its no big deal. .
I’m guessin’ 4.5 to 4.6 square klicks but, really, if it’s less, what does it matter?
It’s been less before and we still muddled through.
Personally, I’m looking forward to the first bottles of Yellowknife Caskets wines. It should be a great vintage!
Seems that Trenberth has turned/is turning
“In light of these several observations, Trenberth concludes that “major challenges remain to improve model simulations of the hydrological cycle.” And until such is accomplished and it is proven that the models can at least correctly simulate something as basic as precipitation, it would seem unwise in the extreme to make major global-economy-impacting political decisions on so flimsy a basis as what today’s climate models are currently predicting, not only with respect to the meteorological phenomena that are discussed by Trenberth, but with respect to the many other extreme weather and climatic events that the world’s climate alarmists use to terrorize the public on a never-ending basis via their over-the-top rhetoric about impending catastrophic consequences if anthropogenic CO2 emissions are not drastically reduced.” from Co2 site
Brian says:
July 27, 2011 at 7:00 pm
lol At Global Cooling.
It’s about as likely as Jesus return.
I’m going to say 4.4-4.7
LOL at global warming.
Its as likely as the global Marxist revolution for which all you AGWers hunger and thirst.
Just because a hazardous and speculative theory about indefinite temperature rise linked to CO2 (in the face of contrary evidence from the palaeo record) is made by the elite and their attendant gullible majority, it doesn’t make it any less stupid and improbable.
I went for 5.2.
steven mosher says:
July 27, 2011 at 9:45 pm
“Worse – the DMI HAS measured the temperatures at 80 north latitude every day since 1958.”
DMI uses a model to construct the temperatures.
Both DMI temperatures and PIOMAS are a mixture of measurements and model calculations.
But I’m guessing – just guessing here – that you like PIOMAS and dont like the DMI temps.
There are opposed bumps on the log at each end; 5.4-5.5 vs >4.0<4.5. The former is closer to the true answer, of course, which is 5.2.
🙂
That’s my estimation as well for the same and other reasons such as that thickness has somehow managed to increase in some areas (10N 180) thus pointing maybe to low ocean temperatures in those regions. May 25 versus July 25 How did thickness increase that much in two months when things are supposed to be melting?
Its a shame there are so few NSIDC historical graph records to compare against. So judging from the 2006 graph I’m going to reduce my minimum estimate from 5.5 to 5.2 as I think that the 2006 drop of just over 1 million sq. kilometers from end of July to September is about what we can expect. To be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if see either a very low minimum or even completely unexpected august increases in ice extent. Its glaringly obvious that we do not yet understand all the variables at play, which makes for interesting science.
Adriana Ortiz says: July 28, 2011 at 3:57 am
/////////////////////////////////////////
Is that really an accurate quote from Trenberth? Sounds far too rational. A recognition that the models cannot adequately model a key driver of climate and therefore a cautionary stance should be taken with respect to their ‘predictions’ and economic policy ought not to be based upon model ‘prediction’ how very sensible.
It is not 1st April, is it? .
My prediction:
Not as ice-free as it was in 1911 when Amundsen made the historic journey through the Northwest Passage.
Wake me up when there’s a commercial shipping lane open.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…..
Further to my last post, it appears that Trenberth is merely conceding/recognising that there are problems with the models. It does not appear that he is saying that they should not be relied upon until such time as they can properly model precipitation etc.
I have two methods with my spreadsheet (both combine predictions based off of CT’s area metric and JAXA’s extent metric and then converts that to a monthly NSIDC value). They are 4.495 and 4.675. I’ll average these, so my prediction is 4.585 million km^2. I know they only report to three significant figures…so I’m exactly right whether it’s 4.58 or 4.59 😉 .
-Scott
Wait… I’ve seen a True Believer citing the Arctic ice “melt-off” as “definitive proof” of AGW… now that I see these graphs, I see that four years ago the ice was even “thinner”. So if there’s a trend, it’s swamped by other causes of annual variation, right?
BTW — my prediction is that in 5-10 years, the Arctic sea ice extent will be an “abandoned metric” for the AGW crowd. Like the prediction that the children of Britain will never again see snow, the Arctic will confound their predictions, and they’ll quietly stop citing it as evidence. They will, instead, find something else to wave around as “proof”.
The minimum ice extent will be a record low of all time. This is the beginning of another election year in the USA and the government subsidized scientists will find a way to carve out pot holes and embayments and ignore thin ice to get the number they want.
Did you see in the news the guys that saw the four supposedly drowned polar bears are under investigation and out on administrative leave? Another snow job if you ask me. Cheaters.
http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-arctic-scientist-under-investigation-082217993.html
I know that I tend to be optimistic, so I adjusted down a couple of clicks.
Best guess from an interested observer:
4.7 – 4.8
@Dave Springer: Amundsen in 1911?
You mean 1903-until 1906. Why did it take 3 yeas?
It is ironic to read older Blogs with new graphs like this: look for the sentence
“Ice volume has increased by 25% in the last two years, and those looking for a big melt are likely going to be disappointed.” in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/29/arctic-ice-volume-has-increased-25-since-may-2008/
and then take a look on the current graph just bleow the quote.
Funny, I think.
4.29
Surely if there is a strong correlation between CO2 and Arctic temperature/ice you can predict the amount of ice next month by the predicted amount of CO2 in the atmosphere [which is easier to predict]. Isn’t that what correlations are?
The trend line for September ice extent 1979-2010 declines by about 81,000 square kilometers per year. If you believe in that downward trend, the best guess for September 2011 would be 5.2 million square kilometers. If you believe in 60-year cycles we’re overdue for some cooling and you should guess above 5.2. If you believe extent will continue its decline and at an accelerating rate, guess below 5.2.
About 4.964837, give or take the calving ice floes and the measurement within +/- 5.4682 seconds from mean observation time.
Glenn probably is right but I think 4.8-4.9
Bob, I bid 1 dollar.
Wait, wrong game. Gimme a day or two while I put together my executive decision program, or more commonly known as a dart board.
OT but again
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V14/N30/EDIT.php
Major backflip by Trenberth this might convince the Australian government to give up someone send this story to the Australian please. Hes basically said that none of the models can predict AGW so maybe lets do nothing until we are sure
On the basis of the current trend there is NO WAY its gonna melt even close to 2007
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
So AGW’ers reality check sorry, try next year LOL
There is a need for a more explicit recognition of the role of wind and current driven flows in determining the surface ice extent.
The animation published here some time ago showing the flushing of the sea ice through the Fram Strait made it very clear that temperature was only one factor. Yet the discussion seems to remain fixated on the simplistic ‘reduced ice extent therefore higher temperature’ equation.
A more realistic model, to tease out the relative contributions of temperature, wind, currents and perhaps insolation/cloud cover, would be a real contribution.
.
4.35 million sq km. The current trend of a slowed melting rate is being caused by a short lived move of the AO to a minimal positive state. Once it goes negative again in the next week, the melt will increase again and challenge 2007 for a minimum.
I think around 5.0. And it hovers around the minimum for another 2-7 years. Most of the ice loss is connected to intrusions of Atlantic water melting the Barents and Kara Sea ice in the east. Those influxes take about 14 years to circulate through the Arctic. Also the lack of ice in the Barents will continue to keep a low pressure that draws warm air in a positive feedback that delays ice formation there. However as the NAO goes negative and that trend continues, west Greenland will warm but east Greenland cools and less warm water will be pumped into the Arctic. The cooling of west Greenland may slow the ice export through the Fram. The 2007 melt was more a function of an influx of warm water into the Chukchi, but the inflow of of water through the Bering Strait is cooling, and the PDO going negative, which will continue to decrease the warm Pacific input. However the present lack of ice in the Chukchi allows the winds to mix the water more deeply and broadly(ice prevents that mixing) bring up warmer Pacific waters to the surface which creates another positive feedback of continued mixing that will keep the western arctic with low ice extent until the ventilation of the warm waters is exhausted. As the Arctic Oscillation goes negative if it continues, it slows down the ice export as well as increases multiyear ice formation, but due to convergence and compression of ice that won’t translate into greater ice extent for a few more years. If the trend in oscillations continues we can expect a rather sudden increase in ice within the next few years.
Fram Strait continues to have its doors shut or only partly ajar. Melting is occurring in place at the edges of of the center whirl pool of ice, and air temps as well as SST’s under the ice are spot on the average range this time of year. The AO atmospheric pressure metric is hardly wiggling around the average (I call it the Arctic Oscillation Slumber). So I still say greater than 5.5.
5.2!
You foolish deniers! All real scientists know that the sea ice extent is going to be less than negative 2 million km2. Yes, negative!!! It will be so hot that the ice will become steam as our temperatures rise to +200. You guys can sit around with your smug anti-scientific attitude and melt while lamenting your epic wrongness. I will be laughing at you in my custom built submarine that I have mortgaged my house to make. Suckers!!!
ArCtic, not Artic
This summer saw another 2007-like “perfect storm” of sorts, with ice pushed into a warm area over the Beaufort Sea to meet a rotten, watery demise. This on the heels of the Arctic Oscillation pattern resulting in late freeze-up and low ice coverage in marginal areas like Baffin Bay. But since weather patterns seem to be changing, and since we’re mostly down to thicker multi-year ice now, I’d guess ice area will stabilize somewhere around July’s estimate. I say stick with July’s 5.1 number.
Under 4.5, the same as the first two polls, and it seems like that guess is picking up more votes this time.
The only reason I picked such a low number in the first place is that it looked to me like the freeze-up in places like Hudson’s Bay and other outlying areas lagged significantly during the winter last year. I figured the late freeze would lead to easier thawing. For the past week the extent loss has slowed, but if the winds pick up again it could really accelerate. Meanwhile the edges north of Alaska are thinning fast.
4.7-4.8
With the ice melting so fast there will probably be lots of drowned Polar bears…
…then again, maybe not.
I see Richard Black is at his uncritical best as ever over this subject /sarc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14306781
I wonder if those clever folk have ever thought that things actually grow better the warmer it gets and thus suck up more carbon or are they that blinkered so that they can only see bad things happening. Anyway, they are still confusing weather and climate and still in denial over long term cycles. Boy are these doomsayers going to be feeling left out in the cold (harhar) in a few years time.
Pamela.
wow, still above 5.5
the LACK of melt required to hit that number would be astonishing and unprecedented.
5.5 is my bet.
RACookPE1978 says:
July 27, 2011 at 8:06 pm
“Some continue, like the national ice research center’s website, to wave their hands – so to speak – about albedo feedback and increased melting causing increased heating of the earth.”
Albedo at the pole is essentially insignificant compared to the difference between having sea ice blocking everything except conductive heat loss or not. The sun is too low in the sky most of the time in the Arctic for there to be a great difference in albedo between water and ice. Water albedo increases as the angle of incidence increases.
Ice or no ice is like the difference between having an igloo or not. It’s also why sled dogs bury themselves in snow to keep warm while they sleep. Might be counter-intuitive for some but a house made of ice will keep you warmer than no house at all. Once the ocean surface is exposed to air it can give up heat one helluva lot faster than when it’s covered with ice. So what we have is a negative feedback situation where as Arctic sea ice cover declines the earth’s capacity to vent heat to space rises. Works just like clouds. Fewer clouds allows more energy to reach the ocean which raises the evaporation rate which produces more clouds which then block energy from reaching the ocean surface. Negative feedbacks are way cool. The only positive feedback we need to worry about is snow and ice cover reaching into lower latitudes and persisting longer. That’s a positive feedback situation that’ll lead to a snowball earth if nothing stops it. We’re poised on the brink of an ending to the Holocene interglacial and a return of glaciers a mile thick covering everything north of Washington, D.C. In all probability New York City will be destroyed by ice not by a rising ocean.
steven mosher says:
July 27, 2011 at 9:45 pm
“Worse – the DMI HAS measured the temperatures at 80 north latitude every day since 1958.”
[DMI uses a model to construct the temperatures.]
Not mentioned the DMI model uses daily observed Arctic temperaures to construct it, like models do in meteorology with weather forecasting. Except not trying to predict the future, but estimate current temperatures with limited real observed Arctic data.
Here’s a related story – New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism
ForbesBy James Taylor | Forbes – 20 hrs ago
NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future
global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.
http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-global-warming-alarmism-192334971.html
5.0-5.1 but I’m nervous. Chart looks warmista-like.
Katla Volcano might put a kink in forcasts of ice area.
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2011/07/27icelands-feared-katla-volcano-shows-further-signs-of-eruption.htm
BUT?? cloud actions gave both Iceland and hawaii coincident “karate kicks” at 09.34 to 10.34 UTC on 28th
http://www.intelliweather.net/imagery/intelliweather/sat_worldm_640x320_img.htm
Brian says:
July 27, 2011 at 7:00 pm
lol At Global Cooling.
It’s about as likely as Jesus return.
I’m going to say 4.4-4.7
It would appear that the actual temperatures – in terms of ‘global warming’ are not ‘warmer’ at all. See the Danish temperatures here http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php or on the WUWT Sea Ice page.
What does appear to be the case is that the Rossby waves in the polar vortices are not ‘waving’ as normal. This leads to steady winds in some areas like the Fram straight and in the US a ‘locked in’ summer heat wave in the mid-West while the West has cooler than normal temperatures.
Oh oh. Prominently everywhere:
“New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism
NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.”
http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-global-warming-alarmism-192334971.html
OT but we finally have caught one red handed fraud its on Mainstream now
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hUKv9uOezA2dlICEalRbn4XIp_Dw?docId=9a1016fa5ac94f948dc514ce6ce4abd3
The next are Mann, Jones, Briffa et al.
Dave A
Just looking forward to the yearly shrieking “We’re all doomed – look at the ice it’s all melting – you’re an idiot big oil funded denier” to come to an end .
Between 2010 and 2008 firmly inside the extreme of 2007 and about the size of the maximum extent of the Roman Empire around 117AD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire
5,000,000 km2
If you look at JAXA http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi?lang=e it has been firming up in the last few days
No harm in increasing your vocab. I had no idea what a shill was until until I could see what was unfolding in my Country (UK) in the name of the then named Man Made Global Warming
Yours from the Country that leads the battle against the non-existent
Dave
Hm, 4.9 last year, so I put in a 4.9 – 5.0. A wee bit more, but I don’t expect it to manage too much. Do the people voting for way over 5 know something the rest of us don’t about the arrival of the next ice age? 😉
“5.0 to 5.1 Million km2 17.39% (96 votes)”
The scientific consensus has spoken. It is now written in stone, anyone who disagrees, is a denier. Ask any ‘climate scientist’, this is the new scientific method in twenty-first century America.
4.6 million km2 +/- 1million km2 I mean I like the Grant Foster method of prediction.
It is equivalent to predicting the Boston Red Sox will finish 3rd in the AL East +/- 2 places.
Actual prediction 4.8-4.9
Substantially less than last year and no change from my original estimate of 4.675
Sea ice extent guessing makes for an interesting game, but doesn’t really capture the full picture of what’s happening– sea ice volume is much better for really seeing what’s happening. as extent itself can be so much governed by the weather. But for the record, 2011 should give 2007’s record low a good run for the money, especially if strong dipole anomaly and a negative AO index set up in August as it looks like they could. If these persist for a long period in August, we could see 2011 easily blow away 2007 for the lowest extent come September.
But, FWIW, minimum extent looks to be heading to somewhere around 4.25 million sq. km + or – .25 million sq. km. (so it will be somewhere in the range of 4.0 to 4.5 million sq. km) This range gives the full extent of the weather variability causing divergence and compaction during those last few weeks of melt when the low will be set.
But again, the more important metric is really sea ice volume, as that gives us a better idea of the true health of the sea ice, and of course, the chart and trendline for Arctic sea ice volume looks very negative indeed. 2011 will seasily beat out 2007 for the lowest volume of ice in the Arctic in modern times.
richard verney says:
July 28, 2011 at 3:19 am
The planet appears to be cooling
____
Here we go again…please cite your data and the time frame with beginning and end points. The planet may not be warming as it was in the 1980-2000 time frame, but I don’t see any actual cooling going on from the data either…or when you say “appears to be” are you measuring the thermometer on your back porch between the hours of 6 p.m and midnight?
[snip – off topic, invalid email address – jove ~mod]
Gates, please define your meaning of the term “modern times”.
“Why does Hansen claim his +4 degree rise?”
This is down to the GISS data in the Arctic shows a 4c rise from the late 1960’s. (64N-83N)
Around 4.6 is my guess, but could go much lower due to the thinness of the ice above Alaska and Siberia. No higher than that and possibly a lot lower. There is still some warm water in the arctic basin continuing to melt the ice that has come in off the Atlantic in recent years. A decent recovery is still several years away-but cold water and more ice off the east coast of Greenland are an indication that the flow of warm water from the Atlantic may be ending, and it will take a few years for this trend to reach the arctic basin itself. However, till then, it could reach an irreversable point where all the ice rapidly goes in one summer despite a cooling-do not believe the ocean would refreeze, due to the fact that the open water would warm the air above it-and storms would ruffle the water up making it very difficult for the large area of open water to refreeze having unforeseen implications on the climate balance of the entire earth.
Must be right, I voted as most people; if it will not be that , measurements must be wrong
We’re tracking towards a 2007 or so repeat. The resulting albedo change resulting from moisture uptake from the now more open Arctic Ocean will spur record Snow Cover Extent numbers (check out the Rutgers SCE reports starting at yearend 2011) first in Eurasia and later in North America. The early fall albedo change will cool the polar regions and then Europe and Northern Hemisphere. Break out the snowshoes, as Gulf and Atlantic moisture sweeping into now (albedo influenced) colder air will fall, more often than not, as snow. As snow lingers on land, Sea Levels will trend downward and the “Toucan Equations” January update will likely reflect the change.
etudiant says:
July 28, 2011 at 7:18 am
There is a need for a more explicit recognition of the role of wind and current driven flows in determining the surface ice extent.
Ditto for meltwater ponds.
The Arctic ice that matters 80N+ has had warm (anomaly positive) temperatures during last Winter and Spring generally, so not much of a suprise to see low ice levels since. This was mainly due to negative AO persisting during the months promoting high pressure. Since especially summer temperatures have remained around normal for the time year. (DMI, link below also supports this)
http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/winfos/synNNWWarctis.gif
While there is little 1st year ice left things should slow down especially with positive AO recently.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.sprd2.gif
The long term forecast is for more of the same with similar AO values hovering around zero. This forecast should then predict less settled weather continuing in the Arctic 80N+ with occasional low pressure systems and troughs. (some will fall as snow, some light rain/drizzle)
http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/winfos/arcisoTTPPWW.gif
Likely melting of ice will slow down for at least the next 2 weeks with little wind, despite small low pressure systems developing. With recent La Nina and cooling of North Atlantic SST’s over recent weeks this should slow down further melting during September.
My forecast is for Arctic ice to recover later in summer and finish a little higher than last year. (5.0-5.1 million km2) Weather conditions in future and temperatures of ocean circulating from the North Atlantic towards the Arctic must be considered to even have a decent guess.
The resolution of the poll is centered on 5.0, with 0.1 bands from 4.5 to 5.5 and 0.5 bands at 5.5-6.0 & 4.0-4.5. The poll results are also centered near 5.0.
I’m curious, on a purely mathematical basis, how the structure of the poll might affect the results. Since we’re currently at about 0.45 below this time last year, a prediction of 0.45 below last year’s minimum would seem a sort-of default prediction (i.e. ~4.4). Since that specific value isn’t even available in the poll, some precision is lost.
It is likely that the blob of 100 degree air, now hovering over the Atlantic, will warm those waters sufficiently to influence the currents taking the now even warmer water, into the Arctic, and providing the final push for the increased IceCap melt. I’m sure most readers here see the implications!!!
BTW Polling or consensus activity does not make science. Hard, unadjusted data has no substitute!!!
Matt G .
Do you accept all the physics in weather models?
Okay kids, we might as well have fun predicting melting ice while we can because we’re gonna reach a tipping point and you know what that means…. it’s all gonna evaporate!
I hope it goes down to between 3 and 4 million km2 for next few decades and opens a reliable sea lane thru the northwest passage every summer. Can you imagine what a boon that would be to shipping. 4.5
Pamela Gray says:
July 28, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Gates, please define your meaning of the term “modern times”.
_____
Post-industrial revolution…approximately 1750 onward. We can be pretty confident that we are seeing the lowest Arctic Sea extents, areas, and volumes in at least the past 800 year, and perhaps longer, based on comprehensive research such as this:
http://bprc.osu.edu/geo/publications/polyak_etal_seaice_QSR_10.pdf
steven mosher says:
July 28, 2011 at 2:13 pm
Matt G .
Do you accept all the physics in weather models?
How could anyone model chaos accurately? More to the point they are not perfect, but usually give a good indication for the same day. (eg+6hr,+12hr, +18hr) The observed temperatures available above 83N+used for near surface and calculating observed 850mb temperatures near there, reflect the Arctic better than GISS infill IMO. Regular observations show large increasing and changing temperatures during the late spring and summer <83N. Above 83N these remain stable due to melting ice and snow/ice over a cold ocean reflecting it's angle from the weak sun's rays. This results in observed temperatures always around 0c to 3c in mid-summer. This does not reflect the trends in temperature <83N in a different environment.
I moved down from 5.1 to 4.9.
Yep, here: https://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=744206
Didn’t vote the last time but I suspect a very close run with 2007 values. I’m going for a cooling off in August though, so around 4.8/4.9.
I’m not clear about the obsession with the minimum either. Shouldn’t we instead look at a “whole summer total average”? By the time the minimum occurs, it’s all irrelevant as summer heat is on the wane anyway. It would perhaps be more relevant to examine summer solstice levels as that is the time when the amount of sea ice/open ocean in the arctic basin is most crucial re heat reflection/absorbtion capacity.
This will be an ignorant question, but I’m going to ask it anyway.
When I look at the comparison picture between 2007 and 2011 provided by Cryosphere on the WUWT Ice page, I see that the pictures are pretty similar…a little bit more here in 2007, a little bit more there in 2011. However, there is what appears to me to be a significantly larger area/extent of ice today in the East Siberian Sea.
The Jaxa, NSIDC and U of B charts all make it appear that there is almost the same area/extent of ice on Jul 26 (the day of the Cryosphere graphics).
Is this a illusion in the way the Cryosphere graphics are done, or a smoothing issue in the charts, or are my eyes out of spec, or is there some other good reason for this difference?
This remains to be the ultimate, authoritative statement on the condition of the icecaps.
No-one feeling inclined to challenge Mr Gates on the sea ice volume issue?
As I understand it, sea ice volume has been notoriously difficult to determine reliably until very recently. Any study predating the vey recent use of satellite sensing to determine ice volume should be as suspect as a temperature recording system that doesn’t move location with changing land use.
RDCII says:
July 28, 2011 at 3:29 pm
I haven’t looked at the specifics of what you mention, but there’s a possibility that it’s due to the CT image having a cutoff of 30% extent while most extent metrics use a cutoff of 15%. So the area you mention for 2011 might be a bit above 30% now but was between 15% and 30% in 2007. Looking at the DMI extent plot (30%) shows that this might be valid.
-Scott
PIOMAS has always been questioned about the sea ice volume. It came under more scrutiny when Cryosat2 came in with thickness values that were much closer to PIPS values than PIOMAS. Cryosat2 data is still preliminary and it likely overestimated the thickness of first year ice on the edges, but the more important center of the ice pack seemed to be pretty good.
A recent paper just came out (Maslanik et al) about the distribution and trends of arctic sea ice age through spring 2011. It specifically did mention the mild rebound we have seen since 2008 in multi-year ice. It makes the graph of PIOMAS’s ever declining volume since that time look more dubious. Their graph shows nearly 3,000 cubic kilometers less ice in spring of 2011 versus spring of 2008 which is pretty interesting considering the significant rebound in multi-year ice since that time.
“I’ll run this poll each month in the week before the deadline…”
I think you’ll have timing issues unless you run it each week in the month before the deadline ;o)
5.35 mil looks about ight to me.
I predict the extent will be within 3 sigma of the mean extent of the last century.
What did I win??
Love your website. Keep up the great work. It is appreciated.
Matt G.
Not even talking about those aspects of the models.
Go read them you’ll find something interesting.
Since this is all just “a bit of good natured fun”, I voted for “5.0 to 5.1 Million km2”, for two fun reasons…
1) I projected in my mind the shape of the now-apparent curve for 2011 in the DMI graph (the years before this appear to follow their respective shapes which begin to become apparent for this time of year, and this year’s curve looks to my probably insane mind like it’s going to flatten out sooner rather than later).
2) Seems to me there was a bit more “older” ice this year than there has been in the previous years – I’m guessing this older thicker ice has survived most of the summer melt and will contribute to my guesstimate.
Nothing more than that. It’ll be fun to see how my guesstimate turns out 😉
Matt G says:
July 28, 2011 at 12:54 pm
(with more detail a bit later)
Matt G says:
July 28, 2011 at 2:45 pm
“Why does Hansen claim his +4 degree rise?”
This is down to the GISS data in the Arctic shows a 4c rise from the late 1960′s. (64N-83N)
Hmmmn.
Just where is Hansen/GISS measuring that 83 north latitude weather data? There’s only the one station in north Greenland that is above 80 north, on one small piece of land receiving winds from inland Greenland that is itself hundreds of kilometers south of the southern edge of the ice floating at sea level … Is he extrapolating data from a 2 degree arc of latitude into a 360 degree circle?
And the minimum sea ice extent is a small ring in the Arctic Ocean many thousand kilometers north of the “land” at 63 north … Or, is Hansen now claiming that he can extrapolate temperatures thousands of kilometers north from the few sites, crossing from mid-continental tundra to open-ocean sea ice? All based on his own 1978 paper claiming a .50 co-relationship of changing temperature rates only 600 km apart?
As you (MattG) pointed out at 2:45, there are many reasons to be skeptical about the GISS claims for a mid-ocean Arctic temperature rise.
—…—
The DMI measured summer decline in temperatures since 1958 is discussed here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/dmi-polar-data-shows-cooler-arctic-temperature-since-1958/
Note some of the statements in the source:
Given those kinds of statements, claims, and underlying works cited, is yet another recapitualted refutation necessary? Note how the paper takes note of a decline in ice extent since 1900, yet beats the drum to sell the notion the so-called greenhouse gasses are responsible for the loss despite their becoming significant a half century later. For anyone who has the time to spare, the paper is a target rich opportunity for criticism. At the present, I have a continent to cross in the next few days. Best of luck to anyone having the time to spare.
Ahhh the rickety gates is now a Doctor of Arctic Ice Hole irritations: “…sea ice volume, that gives us a better idea of the true health of the sea ice, …”
Perhaps the arctic sea ice Body Mass Index would be a better starting gates for determining “the true health of the sea ice”? Dynamic pressure vs resting pressure? Triglycerides? Anemia? Bilirubin?
Listen, everyone, as the Doctor of Arctic Ice Hole irritations enlightens you as to what ‘healthy’ arctic ice really is……….. He knows……
Dave Springer says:
July 28, 2011 at 8:43 am
(trimmed)
Albedo at the pole is essentially insignificant compared to the difference between having sea ice blocking everything except conductive heat loss or not. The sun is too low in the sky most of the time in the Arctic for there to be a great difference in albedo between water and ice. Water albedo increases as the angle of incidence increases.
Ice or no ice is like the difference between having an igloo or not. It’s also why sled dogs bury themselves in snow to keep warm while they sleep. Might be counter-intuitive for some but a house made of ice will keep you warmer than no house at all. Once the ocean surface is exposed to air it can give up heat one helluva lot faster than when it’s covered with ice. So what we have is a negative feedback situation where as Arctic sea ice cover declines the earth’s capacity to vent heat to space rises. Works just like clouds. Fewer clouds allows more energy to reach the ocean which raises the evaporation rate which produces more clouds which then block energy from reaching the ocean surface. Negative feedbacks are way cool. The only positive feedback we need to worry about is snow and ice cover reaching into lower latitudes and persisting longer. That’s a positive feedback situation that’ll lead to a snowball earth if nothing stops it.
Ah, so you have anticipated one of Hansen’s much-feared “tipping points” of climate catastrohope-and-fear” ..
Float a perfectly flat square meter of ice in the ocean on the Equator on any clear day between Mar 22 and Sept 22, and it is easy to calculate how much heat energy is absorbed into the ice, and how much is reflected back up into the sky.
Let the ice melt – which it will quickly do – and try again.
It is obvious that – at the Equator between March 22 and Sept 22 – a perfectly flat and calm square meter of open “pure” ocean water under perfectly clear skies will receive much more heat energy through the day than it radiates into space. Thus, the water will heat up, will expand, will evaporate more as well. It will heat the air above the water, outgoing IR radiation will even warm the CO2 molecules above that square meter of water. There is a very real, very much positive, sea ice albedo temperature feedback.
At the equator. Under clear skies with low, puff-ball clouds and high humidity. There. Only there. At that location near the equator there is a positive sea ice albedo feedback. (No sea ice of course. But a nice large positive albedo feedback from sea ice melting that is easy to calculate.)
Now, let us move that same experiment a little bit north. Repeat the same experiment for one meter of sea water at 80 north.
At what latitude, and at what real-world times of the year will a single square meter of open Arctic sea water receive so little heat energy from the sun that it must freeze? Phrased differently, at what latitude will you find that a nice white blanket of sea ice insulates that meter of sea water from the freezing air, lowers heat radiation into the Arctic night, and traps ocean heat by preventing evaporation such that any open water cools the Arctic air?
Do we not have much to fear from an open Arctic Ocean …. because that open Arctic Ocean will lead to the colder temperatures in the far north?
I previously predicted “the arctic ice mass minimum will be more than enough to make a proper gin and tonic….. “. There was! And the G & T was delicious! I just wanted to warn you all – I’m going back for more ice…. and I’m quite thirsty!
You may want to lower your ‘minimum’ estimates accordingly!
According to Richard Black of the BBC much of the arctic is on FIRE as we speak!
Assuming we go into August at 6.5 then for the last 4 years then the melt in August is
2007 = 1.7m
2008 = 2.5m
2009 = 1.9m
2010 = 1.5m
So taking the biggest would put is at 4.0 going into September and smallest would be 5.0. Now it is the average for September so I would say although there is some further small melt in September there is some increase as well of course, so that could cancel out, or not really effect the range above. For it to be 5.5 we would expect only 1.0m in August. So it would have to be unusual conditions up there, at least compared to my tiny sample of years above.
Andy
Does NSIDC have a link to Sea Ice Extent like JAXA does?
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv
rbateman says: July 28, 2011 at 10:18 pm
Does NSIDC have a link to Sea Ice Extent like JAXA does?
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv
They have it by month here:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/
“Worse – the DMI HAS measured the temperatures at 80 north latitude every day since 1958. And Arctic summer temperatures have consistently gone down since that date. Why does Hansen claim his +4 degree rise?”
A couple problems with this meme have already been pointed out. Let me add some more.
1) Summer temperatures have inconsistently gone down, with a fair amount of variation. An eyeball estimate is that there has been 0.2 – 0.3 C decrease in summer melt season temperatures.
2) Summer air temperatures never vary much anyway. The sea surface is going to remain right around 0 C, and the air is only ~ 1 C above that. Anyone who has looked at the graphs will see that summer temperatures will not change much
3) You are conflating (I will assume accidentally) summer temperatures with annual temperatures. Even the DMI data shows a large increase (~ 2 C) over the past few decades in the annual average temperature, which is surely what Hansen was talking about. To compare Hansen estimates for annual change with DMI estimates for summer change is worse than meaningless.
(And so far this year, the DMI temperatures have once again been way above average.)
See http://www.skepticalscience.com/DMI-cooling-Arctic-advanced.htm for more details, rebutt their science, and THEN decide what claims you want to make.
R. Gates says:
July 28, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Pamela Gray says:
July 28, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Gates, please define your meaning of the term “modern times”.
_____
Post-industrial revolution…approximately 1750 onward. We can be pretty confident that we are seeing the lowest Arctic Sea extents, areas, and volumes in at least the past 800 year, and perhaps longer, based on comprehensive research such as this:
http://bprc.osu.edu/geo/publications/polyak_etal_seaice_QSR_10.pdf
While on the other hand, this “peer-reviewed-study-says-current-arctic-sea-ice-is-more-extensive-than-most-of-the-past-9000-years”:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/23/surprise-peer-reviewed-study-says-current-arctic-sea-ice-is-more-extensive-than-most-of-the-past-9000-years/
Published research is wonderfully varied smorgasbord, pick whichever study suits your needs!
Tim Folkerts says:
July 29, 2011 at 6:27 am
“Worse – the DMI HAS measured the temperatures at 80 north latitude every day since 1958. And Arctic summer temperatures have consistently gone down since that date. Why does Hansen claim his +4 degree rise?”
A couple problems with this meme have already been pointed out. Let me add some more.
1) Summer temperatures have inconsistently gone down, with a fair amount of variation. An eyeball estimate is that there has been 0.2 – 0.3 C decrease in summer melt season temperatures.
You make my point: Summer temperatures at 80 north have been measurably decreasing since 1958. In particular, measured summertime temperatures at 80 North have begun decreasing faster the more that measured sea ice extents have reduced.
Further, during that entire period that summertime high Arctic temperatures have been decreasing, CO2 levels worldwide, and, thus supposedly also in the Arctic, have been measurably increasing.
Yet, the CO2 CAGW effect is (theoretically at least) required to be highest in the summertime Arctic since (1) solar summertime exposure is highest there the greatest number of hours per day, and 2) the low temperatures mean that water vapor pressure is very low. Thus, the effect of CO2 should be maximized … just where it is measured at being not only not at its maximum, but measured temperatures have been decreasing the faster as measured CO2 rises.
2) Summer air temperatures never vary much anyway. The sea surface is going to remain right around 0 C, and the air is only ~ 1 C above that. Anyone who has looked at the graphs will see that summer temperatures will not change much
Measured temperatures have not exhibited much of a decrease to be sure, but the decrease is NOT the +4 degree C increase that Hansen-GISS claims in the NASA red plots across the Mercator projection of the Arctic tundra down in Canada.
3) You are conflating (I will assume accidentally) summer temperatures with annual temperatures. Even the DMI data shows a large increase (~ 2 C) over the past few decades in the annual average temperature, which is surely what Hansen was talking about. To compare Hansen estimates for annual change with DMI estimates for summer change is worse than meaningless.
(And so far this year, the DMI temperatures have once again been way above average.)
Wrong. DMI temperatures this summer have remained within 1/2 degree of the “average” – which is itself weighted by the previous 50 years of “higher” temperatures. That is NOT “way above average”.
We are discussing ONLY summertime temperatures because “summer” in the high Arctic is the only time of year that the sun is visible, and, to keep on the subject of sea ice extents and a supposed positive-melting-sea-ice-albedo-feedback, you need sunlight as a prerequisite.
No sunlight, no albedo feedback, true? Therefore, for this problem, winter temperatures are meaningless. The average of summertime high-latitude Arctic temperatures – the ONLY ones of interest when the sun is shining at latitude 80 north – and winter temperatures extrapolated during the dark for 63 north is meaningless. And Hansen knows this. But he can’t find his feedback, nor his high Arctic temperatures unless he goes thousands of kilometers south across the Canadian tundra and then extrapolates sideways between widely-spaced stations.
Sea Ice Extent in the Greenland Sea is trending above average this year;
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/plots/r07_Greenland_Sea_ts.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.5.html
which may limit ice transport through the Fram Strait as compared to recent years, i.e.:
“perennial sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean decreased by 23 percent during the past two winters as strong winds swept more Arctic ice than usual out Fram Strait near Greenland. The study relied on 50 years of data from the International Arctic Buoy Program, currently directed by Ignatius Rigor of the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory, and eight years of data from NASA’s QuikScat satellite, a review of which was led by Son Nghiem of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.”
“The most important thing about this paper is that it foretells this summer’s record minimum ice extent in the Arctic,” Rigor, a research scientist and co-author on the paper, says. “While the total area of ice cover in recent winters has remained about the same, during the past two years an increased amount of older, thicker perennial sea ice was swept by winds out of the Arctic Ocean into the Greenland Sea. What grew in its place in the winters between 2005 and 2007 was a thin veneer of first-year sea ice, which simply has less mass to survive the summer melt.”
“Perennial ice, sometimes thick enough to defy icebreakers, may be key to predicting Arctic thaw”.
http://uwnews.washington.edu/ni/article.asp?articleID=36894
“Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. “Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic,” he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.
“The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century,” Nghiem said.”
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html
The 2007 paper “Rapid reduction of Arctic perennial sea ice” by Nghiem, Rigor, Perovich, Clemente-Colo, Weatherly and Neumann states that, “Perennial-ice extent loss in March within the DM domain was noticeable after the 1960s, and the loss became more rapid in the 2000s when QSCAT observations were available to verify the model results. QSCAT data also revealed mechanisms contributing to the perennial-ice extent loss: ice compression toward the western Arctic, ice loading into the Transpolar Drift (TD) together with an acceleration of the TD carrying excessive ice out of Fram Strait, and ice export to Baffin Bay.”
http://seaice.apl.washington.edu/Papers/NghiemEtal2007_MYreduction.pdf
Just The Facts says:
July 28, 2011 at 10:53 pm
For today, I found this: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/
then this file: masie_extent_sqkm.csv
yyyyddd, (0) Northern_Hemisphere,
whose last 2 lines (07/28-29/2011) is this:
2011208, 6959039.69,
2011209, 6895118.35,
And that compares to 07,28,2011,6641250 for JAXA
My vote: 5.081556674 million square kilometers
RACookPE,
Thanks for the reply and the discussion.
“Yet, the CO2 CAGW effect is (theoretically at least) required to be highest in the summertime Arctic since (1) solar summertime exposure is highest there the greatest number of hours per day, and 2) the low temperatures mean that water vapor pressure is very low. Thus, the effect of CO2 should be maximized … just where it is measured at being not only not at its maximum, but measured temperatures have been decreasing the faster as measured CO2 rises.
I’m not sure I agree that summer should be when the effect is the strongest — in fact I can a couple reasons why it should not be.
1) As I already stated, the open water (or melt water on top of the ice) will moderate the temperature, making it very difficult for the temperatures to vary.
2) During the winter, the ONLY incoming radiation is from the atmosphere. With no GHG, the surface would be radiating straight to the 3 K background of outer space. The GHG’s provide at least SOME IR radiation to help keep the surface warm.
These are just conjectures. Does anyone have a link to predictions of how much warming would be expected in different seasons in the Arctic based on CO2 changes?
Measured temperatures have not exhibited much of a decrease to be sure, but the decrease is NOT the +4 degree C increase that Hansen-GISS claims in the NASA red plots across the Mercator projection of the Arctic tundra down in Canada.
“The Arctic” is a big area — certainly much bigger than 80-90 degrees north latitude. It is quite possible that 80-90 north has not shown an increase, while other areas (like the arctic tundra in Canada) have warmed by +4 C. The two are not mutually exclusive.
And I am sill not sure Hansen (or others) were discussing +4 C summer temperatures. Do you have a link to the map you mention above?
“Wrong. DMI temperatures this summer have remained within 1/2 degree of the “average” – which is itself weighted by the previous 50 years of “higher” temperatures. That is NOT “way above average”.
Perhaps I was not clear. I was discussing the temperatures so far this year. See http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
“We are discussing ONLY summertime temperatures because “summer” in the high Arctic is the only time of year that the sun is visible, and, to keep on the subject of sea ice extents and a supposed positive-melting-sea-ice-albedo-feedback, you need sunlight as a prerequisite.”
I disagree that only summer is important for a number of reasons.
1) The conditions all the way to the edge of the ice and beyond matter to the melting/freezing of the ice. This is well beyond the arctic circle in the winter, so even in the dead of winter, there are sunlit areas along the edges of the ice. Less extent in the winter will affect the albedo feedback.
2) “Sea ice floats on the surface of bodies of water and ranges from 0 to about 10 m thick with average thicknesses of 3 m in the Arctic and 1.5m around Antarctica. Under the stress of wind and ocean currents, sea ice cracks and moves around. The cracks expose areas of relatively warm ocean water to the cold atmosphere during winter that sets up a large exchange of energy from the ocean to the atmosphere. ” http://earth.rice.edu/mtpe/cryo/cryosphere/cryosphere_what.html
The temperature of the winter air would affect the refreezing rate of these open areas.
No-one listened to me back in May when I said 4.6 because there is a lag between El Nino (early 2010) and low sea ice. So the consensus was 5.5 then. I’m sticking with 4.6, and I think I’m going to be closer than the WUWT consensus, just because I used one fact which may or may not be a fact.
I’ll get my bid in for 2012 early too: 4.9.
Rich.
RACookPE1978 says:
July 28, 2011 at 7:25 pm
You are correct that there are very limited stations above 75N+ and especially 80N+, most of them are between 64N and 75N. The 4c rise is only based on monthly data from the 1960’s and this can be shown with no infilling of areas where there is no data.
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/7617/arctictempstrend.png
I have observed over the years summer temperatures hardly change using available data including ocean buoys. Around this time of year I can say temperatures will be between 0-3c maximum above 80N over the ocean and this will be shown.
http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/winfos/synNNWWarctis.gif
The GISS does not take 80N+ into account considering the large lack of no data (infilling doesn’t count), so this warming is from elsewhere and the area above 83N+ at least during summer is a different environment and therefore behaves different. (observed on a yearly basis)
Is the estimating over here? I vote for 4.63E6; but I’m not sure if I’m past deadline?
mccall
Matt;
“the large lack of no data “. Now, there’s a brain-twisting concept! A shortage of no data? Would it be repaired by supplying more no data? Or just by using no data from somewhere else? What would be sufficient no data?
😉
Sticking with 5.2
The handwriting is on the wall. A repeat of 2007 (40% open Arctic) means an “ocean effect” record snow cover extent for the Arctic shores and Northern Hemisphere again (like in 2008) and albedo induced colder temperatures which will result in snowfall where rain “normally” would fall. But snowy winters will soon be the new “Normal” as a result.
Like Mortgage rates, we’ll be “in the fours” for sea ice!
RACookPE1978.
DMI doesnt have observations. The data is generated by a model. That model relies on radiative physics. I’ll assume you accept that physics
We see a trend on volume:
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20110816_Figure5_thumb.png
Also the surface is back to 2007 level:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
Last year, the melting went longer than previously.
1979-2000 average seems to be the lowest on Sept 7th or 8th.
2007 lowest was aroung sept 17th.
If the high pressure keeps on Artic, we might see a lowest sea ice extent later (sept 20th).
In that case, breaking the 4Mkm is not out of reach.
The current path seems to go toward less than 4.1.
At least the volume is having a consistent trend year after year.
I feel volume is more important that surface.
A flat iceberg will melt faster than a round one.
More contact with water allows more heat treansfert.
Seems obvious with me.
What is up with that?
Do we really need ice in the artic?
Hurricanes do a pretty good job at cooling the atmosphere.
They take cold air from higher altitudes (lower pressure in hte eye) while shipping heat high in the sky.
Now is the real question:
when artic is is gone (already in the system), what will happen when there is not cold water to freshen up the sea?
Can we expect cat 5 hurricanes to hit as far north as Canada in the next decades (10-20 years)?
We are way past denial, we should focus on impacts.