Image Credit: Cryosphere Today – University of Illinois – Polar Research Group
By WUWT Regular Just The Facts
For those beating the “imminent Arctic ice death spiral” drum, 2013 has not been a good year. Per the graph above, Global Sea Ice Area has been stubbornly average in 2013, Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area Anomaly had its smallest decline since 2006;
and Arctic Sea Ice Extent has remained within the 30 year (1981 – 2010) “normal” range for the entirety of 2013:
Conversely, Southern Sea Ice Area is within striking distance of a record high;
and has remained above average for most of the last two years;
while Antarctic Sea Ice Extent has remained above the “normal” range for much of the last two months:
However, these facts haven’t dissuaded desperate “imminent Arctic ice death spiral” advocates from trying to promote their narrative. Apparently their new angle is Gathering Walruses, i.e.:
“An estimated 10,000 walrus have come ashore on Alaska’s northwest coast, the National Marine Fisheries Service reported, as the sea ice the animals normally rely on to rest continues to melt at alarming rates.” NY Daily News
National Geographic and CBS News add flavor to this gripping tale:
“An estimated ten thousand Pacific walruses have huddled together on a remote island in the Chukchi Sea (map), an unusual phenomenon that’s due to a lack of sea ice, experts say.
The giant marine mammal is known to “haul out”—literally haul its body onto ice or land to rest or warm up—on various places along the Arctic coast.
But with the Arctic warming up and melting much of its floating ice, there are limited areas for the walruses to gather. This forces them to cluster on land in huge aggregations rarely before seen.” National Geographic
“As temperatures warm in summer, the edge of the sea ice recedes north. Females and their young ride the edge of the sea ice into the Chukchi Sea. However, in recent years, sea ice has receded north beyond continental shelf waters and into the Arctic Ocean, where the water is 10,000 feet deep or more — too deep for the walruses to dive to the bottom to feed.
Walruses in large numbers were first spotted on the U.S. side of the Chukchi Sea in 2007. They returned in 2009, and in 2011, scientists estimated 30,000 walruses had come ashore along one kilometer of beach near Point Lay.” CBS News
However, it seems that the “experts” National Geographic cite didn’t have an opportunity to visit the WUWT Northern Regional Sea Ice page. If they had they would have noticed that this year the anomaly in Chukchi Sea Ice Area was the smallest since 2001;
and Chukchi Sea Ice Extent is currently more than 300,000 sq km greater than last year:
It would seem that, rather than “an unusual phenomenon that’s due to a lack of sea ice”, the Walrus Gathering might be due to the increase in Arctic Sea Ice Extent.
For reference, there were also similar increases in Sea Ice Extent in the East Siberian Sea,
Laptev Sea;
Kara Sea;
Beaufort Sea;
and Canadian Archipelago
Also interesting is that, in addition to the Chukchi Sea, a several Northern Polar regions saw their smallest Sea Ice Area anomalies in the last decade including the East Siberian Sea;
Kara Sea;
and the Sea of Okhotsk:
Additionally, the Canadian Archipelago;
and Laptev Sea;
both had their smallest anomalies since 2004, and Arctic Basin Sea Ice saw its smallest anomaly since 2005:
If this is what an “imminent Arctic ice death spiral” looks like we might need to invest in more icebreakers to help keep shipping lanes and drilling rigs ice free, and to make the Arctic more hospitable to those Gathering Walruses…
To see more information on Sea Ice please visit the WUWT Sea Ice Page and WUWT Northern Regional Sea Ice Page.
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Walruses do this annually before heading north. Apparently, this year they heard the news about the death spiral and decided to add their voices to the alarmist cacophony. They do fit the informative profile beautifully and may be the next generation postcritter for the doomsayers.
The Wall Street Journal had a similar “human interest” piece about how a village between Alaska and Russia had a poor walrus hunt and was going to starve
. It was in the third from the last paragraph, after a bunch of hype about “temperatures up 3.4 degrees…” that they finally note (in CYA mode) that it was due to a heavier than normal ice pack so they missed the migration!
“Gambell usually sends its hunters out in small boats
for a month when walruses float by
each May and June.
But this year, the hunt lasted only about a week. ” (due to ice)
I’d be willing to bet my next paycheck (I’m retired so that’s not much of a gamble 🙂 ) that the walrus, being unaware of the ice extent and having to live hand to mouth for the most part are following the birds which are following the fish. They don’t get that big from being stupid.
This was all over Yahoo last week. People do absolutely zero fact chacking before buying this crap.
Maybe they’re huddled together like penguins because its colder than normal.
Cryosphere Today realized too many people would notice if they portrayed this year (2013) as much below average, when there are articles even in major media like “Arctic sea ice up 60 percent in 2013” complete with satellite pictures, such as http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/09/09/arctic-sea-ice-up-60-percent-in-2013/
But their type is opportunistic.
As a reminder, Cryosphere Today (the source of most of the plots in this article) is the same group which publishes a plot of 20th-century ice history in which the 1900-1950 period is untruthfully made about a flat line, hockey stick style. That plot is in direct, utter, and blatant contradiction to other sources and almost any real knowledge of climate history in general. Actual arctic history, shown about 3/4ths of the way down in http://img176.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=81829_expanded_overview_122_424lo.jpg with references, can be contrasted to the junk at http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg , which makes the probability that Cryosphere Today is dishonest not about 0% but 100%.
Taking partially real data and adjusting it by a moderate percentage, less during some years (when not as effective to do so without many noticing, depending on how well-publicized other data may be) and more during others, is the cornerstone and standard for subtle fudging.
People often have a naive assumption that a source like them should be assumed accurate, but that assumption is really implicitly based on (a) extrapolation from the honesty rates of a general populace, inapplicable as hardcore activists are not a random sample and/or (b) presuming there would be net governmental or academic penalty for fudging, when no historical examples of that ever happening in the case of CAGW-convenient subtle fudging are given, when many of corresponding enviropolitical alignments would jump up to aid them if it even started to happen; Mann, Hanson, and the IPCC were richly rewarded. Gleick got about the most token pretend, brief partial disapproval imaginable (before, of course, reinstatement at his position again and further awards once fewer people were paying attention) and that only because of being unusually careless.
Well, it is that time of the year again.
In NoTricksZoneP, Gosselin wrote in 2010
“It’s September and so it’s the time of the year for ritual bed-wetting here in Europe among the alarmist media and environmental activists, all triggered by the annual arrival of the Arctic sea ice minima.
http://notrickszone.com/2010/09/17/walrus-desparatus-by-medius-doofus-the-latest-media-hoax/
They seem to rehash their stories on a 2 year basis.
From polar bears to walrus and back again, with the occasional penguin story thrown in.
It’s Notional Geographic, now. Slick propaganda; negative scientific value.
“Thousands of walruses on Alaskan beaches was typical before ivory hunters drove them from the shores. Capt Bernard published 2 papers in the 1920s about how wise hunting regulations allowed the walrus to return to the shores of Siberia and lobbied to create preserves to encourage the return of the walrus to Alaskan shore. The sight of 10,000 walrus would make his heart leap with joy. That the return of large numbers has been hijacked as an example of climate catastrophe would mae the good captain turn in his grave, especially in a year when sea ice witnessed a 60% recovery. Read: Bernard (1923) Local Walrus Protection in Northeast Siberia, Journal of Mammalogy, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Nov., 1923), pp. 224-227”
Also read the 1982 publication by the US Fish and wildlife Service titled ECOLOGY AND BIOLOGY OF THE PACIFIC WALRUS, ODOBENUS ROSMARUS DIVERGENS ILLIGER by Francis H. Fay. Fay documents how hunting drove many walruses from traditional land haul outs. He reports how polar bears in the Laptev Sea dig pits and hide behind piles of driftwood waiting for the walruses to come ashore. A high percentage of the male walruses in the Bering Sea do not follow the receding ice northward but migrate southward to Bristol Bay and the Aleutians. Sea ice is not a critical factor. In fact before the 1980s Russian Biologist wrote that sea ice was detrimental because it prevented access to the shallow bottoms needed for foraging. I wrote a whole chapter on the history walrus hunting and their recovery. The larger the population the greater the numbers that come ashore. This is another example of climate change advocates hijacking a conservation success story to create climate fear.
In addition less Arctic ice has been a boom to the whole food web. Dr. Kevin Arrigo from Stanford University wrote “Annual primary production in the Arctic has increased yearly … Should these trends continue, additional loss of ice during Arctic spring could boost productivity >3-fold above 1998–2002 levels” http://landscapesandcycles.net/less-arctic-ice-can-be-beneficial.html
CO2 alarmist are trying to turn a good phenomenon into a climate horror story.
It’s interesting to note in the first graph : global ice that there is a clear 5 year ramp. This matches the pattern I identified here:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/on-identifying-inter-decadal-variation-in-nh-sea-ice/
There seems to be jump up then a slow decline over 5 years. This has happened twice and we’ve just jumped up again. Are we in for another 5 year slide?
That’s modern day journalism for you – we’re too lazy to do any actual fact checking so we’ll just go with what’s in the press release.
I am a walrus. We’ve been doing this for ages. Good beach beats ice flippers down.
So we are now going to be destroyed by giant walrus herds? We are doomed.
Somebody needs to explain climate science to these critters, especially “ice hockey sticks”
Just wait… you’ll start hearing the global warming extremist aphorism:
“Yeah there is more ice but it is ROTTEN ice”
Oh yeah.. get ready for the rotten ice claim.
Paul Westhaver says: October 6, 2013 at 11:58 pm
Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) – HYCOM Consortium for Data-Assimilative Ocean Modeling – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
get ready for the rotten ice claim.
I am not sure how two meter thick ice can be rotten. What I find most interesting this year is the survival of the light blue 2nd Year/Multi-Year Ice:
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="612"]
That 2 meter thick ice will likely thicken by another meter or two over the winter, and thus be very difficult to melt during the brief Arctic Summer. If there is not significant transport of 2nd Year/Multi-Year Ice through the Fram Strait next year, then there should be a significant recovery in Arctic Sea Ice, and no amount of Walrus stories will be able to cover it up…
Completely ordinary Walrus behavior is now being spun as indicative of change, threat, and impending doom, instead of the most likely cause….A Population Increase!!!!! From:
http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=walrusislands.main (my bold
As the article says there certainly is a lot of ice especially on the pacific side of the pole. What is interesting too is that snow cover on the northern hemiphere is up too. Cryosphere today keeps track of snow cover since 2003 and it has never been as high as this year in this period. Winter is one or two weeks in front of other years with the year 2008 coming closest to this year:
http://tinyurl.com/ndbr9u7
On the Atlantic side of the pole it looks different as the incoming Atlantic water has been warmer then usual causing more melt then usual in the Kara sea and wide surroundings. This will repair in time though with the present low temperatures. It could be that snow cover says more about the temperature in the North then ice extend as extend is heavily influenced by oceanic currents.
So how did the walruses manage to adapt since the last ice Age?
Walrus like all wild animals follow the path of least resistance to the best food source, unlike humans that climb mountains because they are there. The green global warming cause are doing themselves no favours by their ignorance of the natural world.
Wasn’t there another story about how it was warming up in the frozen wastes of Canada, evidenced by the ‘fact’ that beavers were moving north now?
Might not the answer have been because beavers were recovering from mass slaughter to feed the European appetite for beaver fur and the market went t**s up and the Hudsons Bay Trading Company folded once they had killed most of them off and the little furry things are repossessing their territory as their populations have increased again?
Check out the NSIDC’s chart on the Southern Hemisphere’s sea ice extent for September.
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Sep/S_09_plot.png
That has got to cause a lot of cognitive dissonance in the warmers.
Next thing you know they will see walruses swimming and eating shellfish.
But seriously, we will not have to worry about this. Soon, changes in air and sea currents (due to fossil fuels in some way or another, but probably CO2) will be causing too much ice and snow and then the poor polar bears and walruses will be starving and drowning and there will be too much ice and we will have to stop using coal immediately as the aerosols from coal burning plus the current changes due to CO2 en-changening are what is responsible.
Arctic sea ice is at its highest since 2006. http://climatechangedebates.com/arctic-sea-ice-stats.php?source=JAXA
dp says:
October 6, 2013 at 6:28 pm
… They [the walruses] don’t get that big from being stupid.
————————-
The IPCC did 😉