Image Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center IUP Bremen
From Live Science:
Months before Hurricane Sandy hurled the Atlantic Ocean into houses and cities along the East Coast, another record-breaking cyclone battered North America, helping push this year’s Arctic sea ice to a record low, a new study finds.
Arctic sea ice has been declining for decades, reaching a record low in September 2007 and hitting that record again in 2012.
“The Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012” arose in Siberia on Aug. 2 and crossed the Arctic Ocean to Canada, lasting an unusually long 13 days. The cyclone hit a pressure minimum of 966 millibars on Aug. 6, the lowest ever recorded for an Arctic storm, professors Ian Simmonds and Irina Rudeva of the University of Melbourne in Australia report in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The pressure reading is only 26 mb higher than Hurricane Sandy’s record low of 940 mb. (A typical low-pressure system usually hits around 1,000 mb.)
“This pressure minimum and cyclone longevity are very atypical of Arctic storms, particularly in August,” the authors write in the study. “We conclude that [the storm] was the most extreme August Arctic cyclone.”
In terms of key properties, including pressure and radius, the Arctic cyclone ranks 13 out of all 19,625 Arctic storms on record since 1979, Simmonds and Rudeva report. “This storm truly deserves the title of ‘The Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012’,” they said.
Impact on sea ice
Simmonds and Rudeva report that the storm greatly affected the record low sea ice in the Arctic this September.
“[A]nalyses we have conducted indicate [the storm] caused the dispersion and separation of a significant amount of ice, while its removal left the main pack more exposed to wind and waves associated with [the storm], facilitating the further decay of the main pack,” they write in their report. Read More
Here’s the paper, the abstract follows:
Key Points
– Analysis and diagnosis is performed on the dramatic Arctic storm of August 2012
– Storm’s evolution and longevity tied to baroclinicity and a tropopause vortex
– Storm is the most intense Arctic August system in the record (since 1979)
On 2 August 2012 a dramatic storm formed over Siberia, moved into the Arctic, and died in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago on 14 August. During its lifetime its central pressure dropped to 966 hPa, leading it to be dubbed ‘The Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012’. This cyclone occurred during a period when the sea ice extent was on the way to reaching a new satellite-era low, and its intense behavior was related to baroclinicity and a tropopause polar vortex. The pressure of the storm was the lowest of all Arctic August storms over our record starting in 1979, and the system was also the most extreme when a combination of key cyclone properties was considered. Even though, climatologically, summer is a ‘quiet’ time in the Arctic, when compared with all Arctic storms across the period it came in as the 13th most extreme storm, warranting the attribution of ‘Great’.
Heh, weather, not climate.
=========
Interestingly, powerful Arctic storms are more prevalent when jet stream meridionality increases because flows of warm air can more readily and more persistently approach the poles.
Such meridionality is a feature of a cooling world rather than a warming world and seems to be linked to low levels of solar activity.
Cue screams of ‘not possible’ from our favourite solar expert.
Man-made caused or natural occurrence?
very good that you remember this remarkable moment in the Arctic melt season 2013 ;
on Neven’s Arctic Sea Ice Blog there is a nice movie of this storm and the effects on sea ice
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/08/arctic-storm-part-3-detachment.html
for a general overview see also my page on sea ice:
http://www.zeeburgnieuws.nl/nieuws/mb_arctic_melt.html
regards and best wishes for the New Year
“Arctic sea ice has been declining for decades, reaching a record low in September 2007 and hitting that record again in 2012.”
More lies in place of science. It has not been “declining for decades” because there was a recent period of growth.
http://i49.tinypic.com/xudsy.png
It seems Live Science have a little difficulty with the science part in their name.
It declined from 1997 to 2007 . That is ONE decade not “decades” Before that there were cycles of loss and gain. Since that period there has been a gain and a loss cycle that looks uncannily like the pre 1997 cycles.
Just in case I lost any of the science guys over at Live Science, d/dt means rate of change. When rate of change is bigger than zero it is called a GAIN in Arctic ice.
@Stephen Fisher Wilde:
..Such meridionality is a feature of a cooling world rather than a warming world and seems to be linked to low levels of solar activity…
Proof positive of Climate Change, then? We are now being told that ANY unusual or extreme event is man-made climate change, following the standard argument:
1 – It has never happened before
2 – We don’t know what has caused it
3 – So it must be man-made…….
4 – Profit! (but only for a very few select humans…)
Thanks for your ideas Stephen Wilde. You were the one who educated me wrt the Jet Stream movement, i.e., warm world Jet closer to poles, cold world Jet moves toward equator.
Nice work: “Such meridionality is a feature of a cooling world rather than a warming world and seems to be linked to low levels of solar activity.”
By the way, could it be that the mysterious driver for the El Nino/ La Nina is, wait for it, the SUN.
We are now in a downward spiral: Sun south, low Solar activity, extensive reflectivity due to massive snow cover [I assume that Canada also has extensive snow cover]. It will be very interesting to see the December/January Global Temperature Anomaly.
>> Don says:
December 27, 2012 at 6:09 am
Man-made caused or natural occurrence?<<
It seems to escape a lot of peoples' attention that man IS a natural occurrence.
Nice timing for this topic. Just yesterday I came across something I found interesting.
It’s related to the claim in this statement from above.
“Arctic sea ice has been declining for decades, reaching a record low in September 2007 and hitting that record again in 2012.
Has it been declining for decades?
Using this interactive graph at NSIDC
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
I plotted a spaghetti graph of Arctic sea ice for years 79-98 minus two odd ball years 1990 and 1995.
They pack tightly on the 1979-2000 average staying nearly entirely within the standard deviation, showing no Arctic sea ice decline.
The Arctic sea ice decline only occurred during the latest years 1999-2012.
The same years that no warming occurred.
So the ice loss was a delayed response to warming? Or it has nothing to do with what scientists have measured as global temperature.
Or I am confused and “Arctic sea ice has been declining for decades”.
It just took a timeout from 1979-1998?
I think so. It is the missing heat finding its way back to space.
Dr.Lurz asked:
“By the way, could it be that the mysterious driver for the El Nino/ La Nina is, wait for it, the SUN.?”
I believe so.
When a more active sun draws the climate zones poleward then the subtropical high pressure cells expand and global cloudiness decreases which allows more sunlight into the oceans thereby skewing ENSO in favour of El Ninos rather than La Ninas.
That gives us climate changes on the scale of MWP to LIA and LIA to date.
Note, though, that there is also a Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation of about 60 years which may be internally produced.
Hence the upward stepping in global temperatures from one multidecadal oscillation to the next as noted by Bob Tisdale and others. I think we will have experienced such upward stepping from LIA to date and would have seen downward stepping from MWP to LIA.
The high melt of this year represents the effect of that anomalous storm superimposed on the residual lagged effects of the past 30 years of dominant El Ninos which are still finding their way into the Arctic Ocean past Spitzbergen.
It is possible that without that storm the recovery since 2007 might have continued.
Reports really should read “worst storm in the recorded last 50 (or whatever) years out of the 4.5 billion years the earth has existed.”
In Gleissberg minima the baroclinity is stronger than in maxima. See van Loon et al. in JGR 2012. We are in a minimum now.
P. Solar says:
It is not a lie. They are explaining the general trend that has been occurring. Would it be a lie if I supported evidence of the seasonal cycle in Rochester, NY by saying, “In Rohcester, temperatures have been declining for several months…”? By your logic, this would be a lie since one could in fact find many shorter periods during that time when temperatures have risen, not declined. Does that then negate the general trend?
Where are you getting the data to support this from? The data presented here http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/arctic-sea-ice-death-spiral/ certainly doesn’t show that.
As for the general gist of this post: Of course, in a record low sea ice year, there is likely to be a proximate cause as to why this particular year the sea ice got particularly low. That doesn’t negate the fact that the sea ice decline caused by AGW is also to blame any more than an all-time record high temperature in July in Rochester would negate the importance of the seasonal cycle’s contribution even though one would surely be able to identify a weather pattern that contributed to making that particular day particularly hot.
interesting that some are mentioning that decline of sea ice is happening after 1997 / 1998;
this is the period your Lord Monckton is describing as : 18 annual climate gabfests: 16 years without warming (Dec 1 st on wuwt) ;
is this a paradox, a contradiction or just stupidity (by Monckton)
I seem to remember seeing photo’s, of British and American Sub’s at the north pole with broken ice all around. That would have been 1958 or 59, so low ice is nothing new, in fact the 1960’s and 70’s, were the cooling part of a natural 60 year cycle. We have returned to that cooling cycle.
I’m a bit confused by this statement:
“(A typical low-pressure system usually hits around 1,000 mb.)”
I remember, when bringing a boat from Japan to Fiji in 1994, we had a pressure difference of 108 mb between a high over Siberia and a low in the north Pacific, the effects of which could be felt south of the equator. It was the most miserable of trips I’d ever experienced.
Looking here at our current weather map http://metservice.com/maps-radar/maps/tasman-sea-nz it is quite obvious that a typical low pressure system quite typically has pressures well below 1,000 mb.
Whilst I’m here, all the very best to everyone for the New Year. I look forward to a further diminution of CAGW hysteria for 2013.
@ur momisugly Stephen Wilde
Interestingly, powerful Arctic storms are more prevalent when jet stream meridionality increases because flows of warm air can more readily and more persistently approach the poles.
Such meridionality is a feature of a cooling world rather than a warming world and seems to be linked to low levels of solar activity.
HH Lamb made the same point in the 1960’s. I have been arguing for a while that meridionality does two things:-
1) It introduces cold polar air into mid latitudes, as we have had in the UK for most of this year.
2) At the other side of the kink in the jetstream, it returns warm air into the Arctic.
A warmer Arctic has been blamed by some scientists for this phenomenon, but surely they are (wilfully?) confusing cause and effect.
lets recall again when I came on here and announced that a storm was brewing and that the reccord would get smashed— people here.
1. denied it.
2. claimed the storm was normal
3. argued that the record would not be broken
4. switched to looking at other records of ice decline (IMS)
5 attacked satellite records.
Now that those knee jerk reactions are forgotten and people accept the storm, they also forget the other things noted at the time. This kind of storm is now more likely BECAUSE OF the increase in open water earlier in the year. This kind of storm is also more likely to do more damage to the ice because the ice has thinned over decades. Simply put, the climate effect of thnning ice and more open water over decades creates the conditions where these types of storms are
A) more likely than before.
B) more damaging to the ice than before.
Its never “just” the weather, but a combination of long term trends, long term changes and the weather. Lets face it, if this storm hits ice of the past that was meters thick, its just a big wind
Joel Shore says:
December 27, 2012 at 8:05 am
Of course, in a record low sea ice year, there is likely to be a proximate cause as to why this particular year the sea ice got particularly low. That doesn’t negate the fact that the sea ice decline caused by AGW is also to blame
By which you mean that it doesn’t negate the supposition that AGW is also to blame for the sea ice decline. While some very small portion of the sea ice decline may be due to AGW, like AGW itself, the effect is too small to distinguish from the noise of natural climate change.
But, by all means, keep banging that AGW drum. If nothing else, it provides entertainment value.
We can’t have it both ways. If there were twelve bigger storms in the satellite record then why did this years storm lead to a record low ice cover? Consistency mon cher is the way to win the war of words with the warmists. They might not understand the concept, but we must.
Steven Mosher says:
December 27, 2012 at 9:36 am
Steve, why did the Arctic ice extent achieve a near record maximum last April?
Steven Mosher says:
December 27, 2012 at 9:36 am
Simply put, the climate effect of thnning ice and more open water over decades creates the conditions where these types of storms are
A) more likely than before.
B) more damaging to the ice than before.
A positive feedback loop then? We’re doomed!
@joel Shore
“It is not a lie. They are explaining the general trend that has been occurring.”
I agree with you here. The trend is down.
While I am suspicious of any data these days I think I can trust the data from the “Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center.”
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi_range_ice-ext.png
This data shows a decline with the following note of caution:
1. This data shows a ~30 year record. This is still a short time trend. Anecdotal information tells us that periods of low ice range are not unusual.
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.
(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
Monthly Weather Review for November 1922 – Washington Post (Associated Press) 1922
2. This data only shows a downwards trend starting from between 1990-1995 so the downwards trend is very short. Too short to make any useful and therefor meaningful predictions.
I wouldn’t trust the data from Tamino. Even the title of the page “arctic-sea-ice-death-spiral” shows considerable bias. It sounds scary but it is not based on objective science.
We have now had so many scary and false ‘death spiral’ predictions (Rants) from the usual crowd.
2007: The Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.” (NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally 2007)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071212-AP-arctic-melt.html
2008: The ice is in a “death spiral” and may disappear in the summers within a couple of decades, according to Mark Serreze
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080917-sea-ice.html
2010: “I stand by my previous statements that the Arctic summer sea ice cover is in a death spiral. It’s not going to recover,” — Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the U.S. city of Boulder, Colorado. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52896
Sea Ice in Its “Death Spiral”
by Matthew McDermott
http://biophile.co.za/the-biofiles/sea-ice-in-its-%E2%80%9Cdeath-spiral%E2%80%9D
Arctic Death Spiral: Sea Ice Passes De Facto Tipping Point Thanks to Deniers, Media Blow The Story, Again
By Joe Romm on Aug 9, 2011 at 4:02 pm
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/08/09/291788/arctic-death-spiral-sea-ice-tipping-point/
Arctic ice in ‘death spiral’ means civil resistance is our best hope
Saturday, October 30, 2010
By Simon Butler
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/45871
The following statement is of course fact-free conjecture on your part.
“That doesn’t negate the fact that the sea ice decline caused by AGW is also to blame……”
Stephen Wilde says:
December 27, 2012 at 7:24 a
“When a more active sun draws the climate zones poleward then the subtropical high pressure cells expand and global cloudiness decreases which allows more sunlight into the oceans thereby skewing ENSO in favour of El Ninos rather than La Ninas.”
You keep getting this wrong. El Nino and negative AO/NAO go together.
Dr. Lurtz says:
December 27, 2012 at 6:46 am
“Thanks for your ideas Stephen Wilde.”
There’s a fine chance he got from me:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/24/ipcc-ar5-chapter-11-maintaining-the-spin/#comment-1181429