Image Credit: NSIDC
WUWT Regular “Just The Facts”
As you can see from the Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent With Anomaly map above, there are currently two large fingers of anomalous Sea Ice protruding out in the Weddell Sea. This is the same Weddell Sea that in 2012 it was claimed that;
“Warm ocean currents are projected to melt the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in the Weddell Sea area of Antarctica opening instabilities in the West Antarctic Ice sheet (WAIS) which will impact global sea level rise. Climate change is waking up the sleeping giant of Antarctica.
Significant scientific research has been published in recent weeks on the impact of global warming on changing wind patterns and southern ocean currents and the flow-on impact on Antarctic ice shelves and glaciers. The most recent studies reveal the potential instability of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in the Weddell Sea area. But the real questions to be asked concern the long term stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and how rapidly it could collapse raising global sea levels by up to 6 metres.” Climate Citizen
So there are no apparent signs of the “warm ocean currents” that “are projected to melt the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in the Weddell Sea area of Antarctica opening instabilities in the West Antarctic Ice sheet”. If fact those fingers still look reasonably concentrated;
and Antarctic Sea Ice Extent – 15% or Greater has remained above two Standard Deviations of the 1981 – 2010 average for the entire melt season:
Additionally, Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area Anomaly has been above the 1979 – 2008 Average for the last two years:
Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area Anomaly is in the midst of its third large spike since 2007;
and there is a clear trend towards larger Southern Sea Ice Area Minimums:
The result is Global Sea Ice Area had its highest maximum since 2006 and remained stubbornly average for the entirety of 2013:
However, in terms of the large fingers of Sea Ice protruding into the Weddell Sea;
I think they may be a sign from Antarctica telling us that we’ve beat global warming, or at least that the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in the Weddell Sea is safe from collapse for another year… What do you think?
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Weather, not climate.
A pause before the collapse – the ice must have flowed off the land…
Anyone know a climate scientist who wants to take a ship down there to check?
Didn’t Al Gore visit or fly over that part of Antarctica recently ?
Looks like the mouth of a monster called Reality that is about to gobble up michael mann.
I think it’s crocodile jaws waiting for the next unsuspecting ship of fools …
Antarctica could be sending another message aimed at Warmists. In the UK the two fingers does not mean peace or victory. It means F off. 🙂
Mmmm. The Peninsula doesn’t look very exciting so far. I’m sure they’ll find a rocky landing spot somewhere.
Now, why isn’t the media screaming about Antarctic in its summer melt? Why aren’t they screaming about global sea ice? It was on the decline so where are the screams? Sheesh. It was just the weather and not the climate.
You can’t really look at one, without looking at the other….
….and laugh
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticicennowcast.gif
Alfred Wegener Institute is the Weddell Sea now with their research ship Polarstern. Yesterday they reported (in part)
Close pack ice 6/8 to < 7/8 concentration/Predominantly old ice/Ship in ice difficult to penetrate; conditions not changing.
It has improved today
http://www.awi.de/en
Click on Where is Polarstern?
What I have been wondering is how much impact this ice has on the current that circulates around Antarctica. With this much additional surface ice, the winds can not influence about a million square kilometers of ocean surface. I am curious what influence this has not only on the ocean current but also on the mixing of ocean waters that takes place there. With less wind action on the surface, do we see less upwelling of deeper cold water and a slowing down of the various branches of the global thermohaline circulation patterns? If those slow down, do we see more heat transport to the poles being done by the atmosphere with less being done by the oceans (example, if these currents slow down a little, do we see a more meridional flow of the atmospheric jets to move the heat that the ocean currents aren’t?
One thing that has interested me for some time is a bit of research by Woods Hole that seems to suggest that during the Little Ice Age, sea surface temperatures around the Dry Tortugas increased. If during the LIA the transport of heat to the poles reduced, we might see increased temperatures in the tropics. I would also expect to see a migration away from the equator of the ITCZ if the equatorial region warms up due to reduced heat transport out of the area. But mainly the question I have always had is if we see variations in ocean termohaline heat transport and if we also see corresponding changes in jet stream patterns to compensate for that. Does the atmosphere try to pick up the heat transport slack when the ocean slacks off a bit in that respect and what might those ramifications be.
The Wikipedia article on the “West Antarctic Ice Sheet” mostly talks about the significant and possibly catastrophic warming of the WAIS and how that would raise sea level. Most of this was around 2006-2007 but the article also adds:
“In 2012, the temperature records for the ice sheet were reanalyzed with a conclusion that since 1958, the West Antarctic ice sheet had warmed by 2.4°C, almost double the previous estimate. Some scientists now fear that the WAIS could now collapse like the Larsen B Ice Shelf did in 2002.”
The statement references a BBC article here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20804192
Any time I see the word “reanalysis” it usually means reanalyzing data that has been “adjusted” since the original analysis, or reanalyzing model results, with the intent of making things “worse than we thought”.
I wonder of the Western Antarctic EVER really warmed at all, or is it all just made up like so much else in the CAGW worldview.
More likely that the Drake Passage will ice over completely in coming winters, than the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf melting, methinks.
Two protruding ice fingers of sea ice – they are messages for Al Gore and James Hansen – one middle finger for each from Antarctica.
Well, let’s see now … outside the temps are in the mid-20s with winds in the mid-20s, resulting in wind chill temps of ~10°F.
And it’s just a hint of the pending Polar Vortex II (don’t you just love the media hype).
So if for some reason I want to go outside, I need to bundle up and move quickly. Drive some where? Scrape the snow & ice off the car and wait about 10-15 minutes for the car to warm up a bit.
So, who cares about the ice … let it all melt … I’m all for a warmer world. It’s far simpler to cool off than to warm up.
Unfortunately, it ain’t gonna happen, no matter how many times Al Gore warns of gloom and doom.
To be fair, the article referenced stated “…a mechanism which will drive warm ocean water towards the coast in the later decades of this century…”
Lots of wiggle room in their statement.
From the BBC article. My comments in brackets.
The scientists compiled data from records kept at Byrd station, established by the US in the mid-1950s and located towards the centre of the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS).
Previously scientists were unable to draw any conclusions from the Byrd data as the records were incomplete. [Probably meaning the existing data did not show a warming trend. We can fix that by…]
The new work used a computer model of the atmosphere and a numerical analysis method to fill in the missing observations. [And add the missing warming trend.]
The results indicate an increase of 2.4C in average annual temperature between 1958 and 2010.
“What we’re seeing is one of the strongest warming signals on Earth,” says Andrew Monaghan, a co-author and scientist at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research. [Tada! Its worse than we thought!]
Unfortunately the Nature article is behind a paywall. I wouldn’t mind doing a reanalysis of their reanalysis, but I don’t care to spend the $32. Perhaps the raw Byrd data is available elsewhere.
But… but… haven’t our heroic climateers told us that the Eastern Antarctic peninsula is one of the fastest-warming places on Earth nowadays? Surely the blazing heat should be demolishing that pernicious Weddell ice shelf — or at least allow for setting up a manned station on the East side of the peninsula. Oh wait, they’re all still on the West side? Still too cold on the East side, it seems, for our intrepid Antarctic heroes to go there. “Where’s the heat?” could be our motto, sort of like “where’s the beef” from an earlier time.
An additional fact for justthefacts: sea ice extent doesn’t have a simple direct relationship with ocean current temperatures. It is unwise to draw conclusions about the health of an ice shelf based only on the extent of sea ice around it.
See Pine Island glacier for just one example of signs of warm ocean currents impacting the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25729750
The two fingers is clearly a “two-fingered salute” to all those global warming alarmists in the world.
“The new work used a computer model of the atmosphere and a numerical analysis method to fill in the missing observations. ”
As soon as I see that kind of statement I tend to tune out the results of the study.
For our American cousins, two fingers with the palm outward is a ‘V for Victory’ sign, two fingers raised with the palm inward is the precise equivalent of the American gesture known as ‘flipping the bird’ or ‘giving the finger’…
The Wikipedia article on the “West Antarctic Ice Sheet” mostly talks about the significant and possibly catastrophic warming of the WAIS and how that would raise sea level. Most of this was around 2006-2007 but the article also adds:
That’s probably written by lieing B…………d Conneley.
Leo Geiger says:
January 19, 2014 at 11:50 am
Don’t bother showing BBC links it like turkeys showing us where the pork is.
I am stunned to find how many people still do not believe me when I tell them it is globally cooling. All the major global data sets are showing that earth had its maximum heat output around 1998 and that we have made the turn down since then. To be fair, I think that I made the prediction that it had started globally cooling, naturally, even before many others had become aware of it. One of the things I mentioned in my final report on what would happen, as a result, was:
“At the higher latitudes >[40] it will become progressively cooler and/or drier, from now onward, ultimately culminating in a big drought period similar to the Dust bowl drought 1932-1939. ”
So how are my predictions concerning this panning out? Well I have not yet started looking at rainfall patterns. I wish I had time for that. Paradoxically, I have noted that one may even expect to see some warming in the areas where it does get drier. What I have done now is to take a sample of ten weather stations in Alaska and look at the change in the average temperature there, over time. Here are my results:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2ql5zq8&s=5#.UtwyvNL8LIV
Alaska is situated between latitudes 60 and 70 degrees. It has a number of good weather stations with reliable results. Note that 9 out of the 10 weather stations are showing a negative trend, i.e. a cooling trend. I took all the daily data from the stations indicated in the graph from 1998 until 2014, compressed to an average annual temperature. I submit that this sample of weather stations is representative for the whole of Alaska. You can also clearly see that each of the stations’ results correlate sharply with each other in term of rises and falls. I think it would be therefore be fair to take the average of the 10 slopes of the ten linear trends as representative for the whole of Alaska, and indeed, for the whole of earth’s [60-70] latitude (inland only). If we do that, I find that the temperature in Alaska and [60-70] has been dropping at an average rate of 0.55 degrees C per decade, since 1998.
This means that since 1998, average ambient temperatures in Alaska have already dropped by 0.9 degrees C. We are not even halfway through the cooling period which I predict will last until at least 2038 or 2039 (+ 5 years).
Anyone still interested in investing in the Arctic?
Then spend a few minutes finding papers covering the research that is the source of the article.
@crosspatch who said
“With less wind action on the surface, do we see less upwelling of deeper cold water ”
———————————–
In these areas , upwellings bring warmer waters to the surface (+4°C in the deep sea, zéro or less at surface ).due to density / temperature gradient of sea water
So you find a new tipping point : more Wind , more upwelling, more melt of sea ice , more efficiency of Wind , more upwelling etc ….
Don’t tell that to warmistas