From NASA Goddard, October 7, 2014:
![antarctic_seaice_sept19[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/antarctic_seaice_sept191.jpg?resize=720%2C405)
The new Antarctic sea ice record reflects the diversity and complexity of Earth’s environments, said NASA researchers. Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has referred to changes in sea ice coverage as a microcosm of global climate change. Just as the temperatures in some regions of the planet are colder than average, even in our warming world, Antarctic sea ice has been increasing and bucking the overall trend of ice loss.
“The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming. Sea ice as a whole is decreasing as expected, but just like with global warming, not every location with sea ice will have a downward trend in ice extent,” Parkinson said.
Since the late 1970s, the Arctic has lost an average of 20,800 square miles (53,900 square kilometers) of ice a year; the Antarctic has gained an average of 7,300 square miles (18,900 sq km). On Sept. 19 this year, for the first time ever since 1979, Antarctic sea ice extent exceeded 7.72 million square miles (20 million square kilometers), according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The ice extent stayed above this benchmark extent for several days. The average maximum extent between 1981 and 2010 was 7.23 million square miles (18.72 million square kilometers).
The single-day maximum extent this year was reached on Sept. 20, according to NSIDC data, when the sea ice covered 7.78 million square miles (20.14 million square kilometers). This year’s five-day average maximum was reached on Sept. 22, when sea ice covered 7.76 million square miles (20.11 million square kilometers), according to NSIDC.
A warming climate changes weather patterns, said Walt Meier, a research scientist at Goddard. Sometimes those weather patterns will bring cooler air to some areas. And in the Antarctic, where sea ice circles the continent and covers such a large area, it doesn’t take that much additional ice extent to set a new record.
“Part of it is just the geography and geometry. With no northern barrier around the whole perimeter of the ice, the ice can easily expand if conditions are favorable,” he said.
Researchers are investigating a number of other possible explanations as well. One clue, Parkinson said, could be found around the Antarctic Peninsula – a finger of land stretching up toward South America. There, the temperatures are warming, and in the Bellingshausen Sea just to the west of the peninsula the sea ice is shrinking. Beyond the Bellingshausen Sea and past the Amundsen Sea, lies the Ross Sea – where much of the sea ice growth is occurring.
That suggests that a low-pressure system centered in the Amundsen Sea could be intensifying or becoming more frequent in the area, she said – changing the wind patterns and circulating warm air over the peninsula, while sweeping cold air from the Antarctic continent over the Ross Sea. This, and other wind and lower atmospheric pattern changes, could be influenced by the ozone hole higher up in the atmosphere – a possibility that has received scientific attention in the past several years, Parkinson said.“The winds really play a big role,” Meier said. They whip around the continent, constantly pushing the thin ice. And if they change direction or get stronger in a more northward direction, he said, they push the ice further and grow the extent. When researchers measure ice extent, they look for areas of ocean where at least 15 percent is covered by sea ice.
While scientists have observed some stronger-than-normal pressure systems – which increase winds – over the last month or so, that element alone is probably not the reason for this year’s record extent, Meier said. To better understand this year and the overall increase in Antarctic sea ice, scientists are looking at other possibilities as well.
Melting ice on the edges of the Antarctic continent could be leading to more fresh, just-above-freezing water, which makes refreezing into sea ice easier, Parkinson said. Or changes in water circulation patterns, bringing colder waters up to the surface around the landmass, could help grow more ice.
Snowfall could be a factor as well, Meier said. Snow landing on thin ice can actually push the thin ice below the water, which then allows cold ocean water to seep up through the ice and flood the snow – leading to a slushy mixture that freezes in the cold atmosphere and adds to the thickness of the ice. This new, thicker ice would be more resilient to melting.
“There hasn’t been one explanation yet that I’d say has become a consensus, where people say, ‘We’ve nailed it, this is why it’s happening,’” Parkinson said. “Our models are improving, but they’re far from perfect. One by one, scientists are figuring out that particular variables are more important than we thought years ago, and one by one those variables are getting incorporated into the models.”For Antarctica, key variables include the atmospheric and oceanic conditions, as well as the effects of an icy land surface, changing atmospheric chemistry, the ozone hole, months of darkness and more.
“Its really not surprising to people in the climate field that not every location on the face of Earth is acting as expected – it would be amazing if everything did,” Parkinson said. “The Antarctic sea ice is one of those areas where things have not gone entirely as expected. So it’s natural for scientists to ask, ‘OK, this isn’t what we expected, now how can we explain it?’”
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
The Earth is going to keep shoving the Grapefruit of Facts in the faces of climate alarmists until they finally get a clue.
A powerful image is it not. Antarctic sea ice are versus Arctic in September 2014. Spread it around.
http://s29.postimg.org/w1i4kwbzr/Antarctic_sea_ice_vs_Arctic_Sept_14.jpg
Add to the image this comment / observation on solar radiation at the poles from RACookPE1978.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/08/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-new-record-maximum/#comment-1757581
Thought-provoking images. The Arctic ocean looks like the new Tethys sea.
I sorry Phineas, alarmists still don’t have a clue. Even when they are clearly wrong, they are right. This is the fairytale world of Climastrology-voodoo. This is not science.
WE WERE WRONG.
BUT WE WERE ACTUALLY RIGHT.
Co2, is there anything it cannot do?
Even the IPCC has said that most of the models project a decrease in Antarctica’s sea ice extent yet Mr. Williams thinks he can fool all of the people all of the time. Shame on you.
Sadly, that’s too true.
They could just have said; “The Antarctic is adding ice extent and we have no idea why”
or… “The average globe temperature is not increasing and we have no idea why”
“we have no idea why” = new discoveries to be made. Unfortunately, for this to be true then the science cannot be settled.
I like how they used magnitude to confuse.
How about the Antarctic is adding ice because it’s colder, they forgot that one, and also the most likely reason.
That’s not what is expected
and while they were being honest they could have said this long term cooling of Antarctica may be why there has been no detectable acceleration in the rate of sea level rise. In fact, some studies have detected small a deceleration (slowing). Here are some papers which have reported the lack of acceleration in rate of sea level rise (h/t to Alberto Boretti, Robert Dean & Doug Lord):
1.Douglas B (1992). Global Sea Level Acceleration. J. Geophysical Research, Vol. 97, No. C8, pp. 12,699-12,706, 1992. doi:10.1029/92JC01133
2.Douglas B and Peltier W R (2002). The Puzzle of Global Sea-Level Rise. Physics Today 55(3):35-40.
3.Daly J (2003). Tasmanian Sea Levels: The ‘Isle of the Dead’ Revisited. [Internet].
4.Daly J (2004). Testing the Waters: A Report on Sea Levels for the Greening Earth Society. [Internet].
5.Jevrejeva S, et al (2006). Nonlinear trends and multiyear cycles in sea level records. J. Geophysical Research, 111, C09012, 2006. doi:10.1029/2005JC003229. (data)
6.Holgate SJ (2007). On the decadal rates of sea level change during the twentieth century. Geophysical Research Letters. 34, L01602.
7.Wunsch R, Ponte R and Heimbach P (2007). Decadal trends in sea level patterns: 1993-2004. Journal of Climatology. 5889-5911.
over twenty more available on request, some of which show a slowing down of the rate of SL rise.
…or surface temperature have been cooling in the area for decades…http://notrickszone.com/2014/01/01/southern-ocean-cooling-since-1996-global-warming-scientists-deny-logic-that-cold-causes-more-ice/
or they could have said, “Hey, the ice is increasing because it has been cooling down there for decades…
http://notrickszone.com/2014/01/01/southern-ocean-cooling-since-1996-global-warming-scientists-deny-logic-that-cold-causes-more-ice/
…. and the only areas where that have warmed have active volcanism…http://joannenova.com.au/2014/06/surprise-west-antarctic-volcano-melts-ice/
and I was wrong when I said…”The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about a third of the magnitude of the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.” What I should have said was in the last three years the SH ice has grown so much, that for the majority of that time global sea ice has been above average, especially true now that the arctic ice is showing signs of recovery.
They could have sail all of this, but that would require honesty.
If they wanted to clear their conscience they would have said that in 2005 we knew that Antarctica was cooling, but we decided to get out our red crayons and go way outside the lines. We are sorry. http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/09/30/nasa-antarctic-temperature-fraud-2/
Or even, actually, “There is rather a lot we have no idea about what happens – let alone why. Perhaps science will seek to find out these things, so they become settled.”
There is a likelihood that Team Hockey will not, in fact, say such a thing, however.
And politics – well, that drives it all, with the money driving the politics.
Auto
What would be really “amazing” is climate scientists admitting that “the settled science” of man-made global warming is anything but settled. Of course that will never happen.
This really sounds like damage control. Why not just announce the South Pole findings and let it be.
The corruption of our govt is pretty much complete.
Can’t they have the IRS and FBI probe investigate the South Pole?
“and one by one those variables are getting incorporated into the models.”For Antarctica, key variables include the atmospheric and oceanic conditions, as well as the effects of an icy land surface, changing atmospheric chemistry, the ozone hole, months of darkness and more.” ……really, you must be joking, surely not!!
“The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming.”
So SHE expected the pause even though nobody else did I guess.
She must know something nobody else knows… maybe she should t\alk to the people who make models.
Yep, that’s what happens when you put water in the oven, ice cubes.
Pat – I predicted the pause in early 2000′, Mark steyn predicted the pause in circa 2008.
It wasnt hard to predict, the earth has had 3 pauses since circa 1850
The earth has had 4 periods of rapid warming since circa 1850
The the pause wasnt hard to predict. Its like the esteemed and much smarter than even one else climate sciencists didnot know about the amo/pdo. duh.
Either the climate scientists
1) did not know about the AMO/PDO which means they werent very smart or
2) the thought co2 was more powerful than mother nature – which means they werent very smart or
3) they were trying to pull a fast one – which means they are very dishonest.
And your evidence for this claim is………?
I see only three such periods in the instrumental data since the end of the LIA (c. 1850): the slope & magnitude of warming c. 1858 to 1879 & c. 1918 to 1945 are comparable to c. 1977 to 96. When corrupt adjustments are factored out, the early 20th century warming was probably more pronounced than the late 20th century warming.
http://www.climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm
The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about a third of the magnitude of the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.
====
…and when they do compare the two…..they act like they can
it’s apples and oranges………
I’m confused… I could have sworn that the overall global sea ice anomaly had been cycling across zero for roughly two years now…
Yep.
Yep, if anyone knows Claire, could they give her some help on how to work a computer so that she can keep up-to-date and thereby not look like a buffoon in public.
It looks like they refer to ice loss in the summer in the Arctic is greater than the ice loss in the summer in the Antarctic. Now, can they explain the record ice gain during winter? It might be due to a change weather patterns because of global warming. OOPS! Climate change.
Read more below. Total sea ice numbers are worse than useless. They are deliberately misleading and wrong.
In percentage points the Arctic decrease is bigger than the Antarctic increase, because there is less ice in the Arctic. Counted in area (square kilometers) they are about the same: c. 1.5 million sq km.
Consequently the total global sea-ice area has been hovering about “normal” for the last few years.
Sorry to pick nits here, but, you could say: the Global Sea Ice has been hovering about the 35 year average. However, calling it “Normal”, even in quotes, presumes way too much
searching for wiggle words to make the money come in.
Coming of a position is difficult so credit must be given that it is reported at all.
Most of the commentators both scientific and spin, adopt the standard position in the world of propaganda of half truths. No lies just half truths. In my view its a product of the adversarial justice system. Each party presents their polarized position and then you strive to defeat the presentation of the opposing equally polarized position.
Orwell i think pointed out the strength of being the victor or the ruler, the ultimate removal of the opposing position.
Yep. More Antarctic sea ice in a warming world. An intriguing apparent contradiction
Do try to keep up. The world isn’t warming.
So the Great Cooling has begun?
Warm globally, cool locally! Why is it the warmer it gets the colder I feel?
No cooling, just the pause that hurts the cause. We’ll need another grant to find new ways to boost temperatures. Pumping massive amounts of Co2 into the air doesn’t seem to be working.
The Southern Ocean and Antarctica are the canary in the coal mine. But depending on what years base period one chooses to Cherry pick will show which side of the Climate debate one is on.
The early Grace data, pre 2006, is clearly in favor of the alarmists. The more recent post 2012 data and the trend since then is in favor of the “its natural variability at work” camp.
IMO the one thing that is certain is that all that Sea ice remaining well into the Antarctic spring sunshine will be a negative feedback on solar radiation absorption by the Southern Ocean. That higher ice surface area into the springtime warming season, occurring year after year must eventually have an impact on OHC. Not something that the models anticipate or handle.
The models CANNOT handle it because the IPCC models used project a decrease in Antarctica’s sea ice extent. This is one of the reasons the models fail. Bad input, garbage out.
Open water radiates a more heat than water insulated with ice. I think someone made the point on this site that there is not a whole lot of heat being absorbed at the high latitudes even in summer so the insulating properties of ice might be more important than the albedo. They had numbers I just have a vague memory.
Johnny:
Actually ALL losses increase when sea ice is lost under today’s conditions:
Long wave radiation is much higher. Emissivities of sea ice and open water are the same (nearly) but the open water is at 2-4 degrees C. The top of sea ice is much colder at the air temperature – as little as -25 to -30 degrees C. And then multiply the temperature to the 4th power.
Evaporation is non-existent when sea ice covers the ocean, but many watts/sec when it is exposed.
Conduction losses and convection losses are greater when sea ice is missing
All of this spin by the “warmists” would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic… for science.
Actually, sea ice is not really the issue, but the amount of frozen water, in whatever form. I can see that there will be a limit to the amount of sea ice that can fit within the freezing zone area of the Antactic Sea.
I mean, you run out of space for sea ice at some point. The real issue concerns the amount of frozen water. How has the total volume changed? And since warming has been halted all these years, why would anyone expect any overall change in the rate of melting, which has been going on for a very long time, raising sea levels for a very long time, and at quite a raapid rate until fairly recently.
The albedo means something in terms of the energy balance and radiation reflected out into space. You start to get into the nasty non-linear stuff in a hurry.
Thank goodness it is safely in the south. The tipping point into ice age is approached when record levels of ice start to accumulate in the north. As to the nasty non-linear stuff – we don’t need ice for that. The albedo effect of clouds brings us heaps of non-linearity.
There IS a maximum practical limit to the Arctic sea ice at 15 million sq kilometers. It is bounded by the Canadian Arctic shore, the Siberian north shore, and the top of Greenland and the Canadian islands.
There is NO limit at to the maximum Antarctic sea ice. Unless you consider the shores of Tahiti and Guam and India a limit. Now 20 million sq kilometers, next year it could 21. Then 22, 23, 24, 25, ….
I’m not sure I buy this idea… unless the ocean circulation around Antarctica ebbs and flows with the sea ice, it would seem that once the ice reached the edge of the cold water it wouldn’t stand a chance.
I think that the shores of the southern most tip of South America would be a more immediate limit before Tahiti, Guam or India.
IF the ice reaches South America, the bulk of the ocean current’s through Drake’s Passage would not be affected except maybe the warmer water current near the surface of the ocen.
Thank you for reading, but – please! – recognize my sarcasm. 8<)
If today's trends continue, and if the Antarctic sea ice were a true, uniform cap around Antarctica rather than the irregular mass that it is actually, the Straits of Magellan and Cape Horn could be blocked to sea travel in 8-12 years.
So, no matter what, it always is “climate change on a warming world” … which tells me even if we dive into a deep ice age, it will still be CAGW.
I am afraid we keep seeing the SAME rhetoric and our answers are still the same. Once a smart man said that lunacy was seeking different results repeating the same over and over (or something of the sort).
Wonder if there is a way to change our tune and see if it gets through the thick heads
The definition of Insane is doing the same thing multiple times and expecting different results.
Claire Parkinson is mistaken( or she is a liar) when she says that “sea ice as a whole is decreasing”.
She is neither, sea ice as a whole has decreased. Not in the Antarctic but in the Arctic. Taking the two together it has decreased.
False. She (and you) are completely wrong. Deliberately deceitful or simply mistaken by years of propaganda? We do not know yet, so prove your statement. Show me your calculations for energy reflected and energy absorbed in direct sunlight.
Do you not care about total albedo?
Show me how much energy is being reflected TODAY at the edges of BOTH the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice.
Today, right now, the Antarctic sea ice at latitude 59 south has FIVE TIMES the effect on reflected energy than the Arctic does at latitude 80 north.
Indeed total sea-ice has decreased, catastrophically, at the moment it is actually down to as little as… uh…..98% of normal. And it has been hovering between 97 and 103% for the last couple of years.
Harry van Loon:
Best not come to this site and state your case with studied imprecision; you will be sniffed out. Parkinson is quoted “is decreasing” but you attribute to her something else: “has decreased”. The sea ice is not “decreasing” worldwide and I suspect that Claire knows this. I would not be surprised if you did too.
[Jimbo’s Christmas tree removed, to the disappointment of millions. 8<) .mod]
OOOPS! Let me try the blockquoting again.
Let’s play some word games.
In years to come you might even see
I actually liked the pyramid quoting better 🙂
Breaks up the day when I’m not the only one screwing up.
Cheers
I thought he did it on purpose 🙂
Jim, the first one was really effective!……..LOL
This first version was better, IMO. 😀
OK
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.anomaly.global.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Right on Jimbo! Not sure where NASA Goddard is getting their numbers. Statments like:
“The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about a third of the magnitude of the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.”
seam to be a little out of sync with reality!
Thanks, Jimbo. I was to post these when I found you already had.
Jimbo!
I am surprised you – of all the people I respect for their knowledge, care and detailed research – have fallen for their “equal areas of sea ice must mean equal energy is reflected or absorbed” …
From today’s Arctic sea ice extents, losing more sea ice in the Arctic means more heat loss from the ocean 7 months of the year.
From today’s Antarctic sea ice extents, gaining sea around the Antarctic ANY month of the year means more heat loss from the planet EVERY month of the year.
RACookPE1978 ! I agree! Open water in the Arctic from now = heat loss to the atmosphere.
Warmists like to ignore negative feedback. Antarctica should present more sea ice in the SH Spring and Summer.
I read that quote and immediately thought of this chart, and thought ‘Oh really…..”
What data set is he referring to that shows the world is warming? Over what time period? Certainly none of the 5 major ones and not for the last 14-18 years.
It’s not warming now, the past is cooling….. every month, another year falls back into the pack so recent years move to the lead. Once you know the game plan…………
“Melting ice on the edges of the Antarctic continent could be leading to more fresh, just-above-freezing water”
Anybody with elementary school math background would call BS on that, and point out that salinity change due to alleged increased glacier melting is negligible:
Hint#1: “gigatones” of alleged glacier melt are literally drop in the bucket compared to millions of cubic kilometers volume of Southern ocean. Plus, the idea of “accelerated” ice melt is a fantasy not really supported by robust measurements.
Hint#2: Numerous salinity map found on google don’t show much of a difference in salinity in the Antarctic region compared to the rest of the ocean, which means that freezing point of water is hardly affected by small salinity variation
During Antarctica’s winter.
Here are the latest spring temperatures for Antarctica, most from its edge:
http://www.wunderground.com/weather-forecast/Antarctica.html
Only one (Argentine Base Esperanza) of the many had a high today above freezing, & it’s far north (Hope Bay, Trinity Peninsula).
Great to see Walt; I’ve always admired him. He’s a real scientist.
That’s why he so freely admits the mystery of the increase in Antarctic sea ice. It is a scientific mystery and since he’s not a political hack, he’s happy to talk about it.
Real scientists are always looking for good thesis topics.
See here. Quote:
It’s the cold not the ‘error’ or the hidden heat. It’s damned cold in winter in Antarctica, no matter how you swing the cat.
Walt Meir says that global warming has caused the record ice extent, according to the attribution of the article. Is this what you mean when you say that he is a “real scientist” and when you say “he admits the mystery of the increase in Antarctic sea ice”?
Frederick Michael, you do not convince.
mpainter October 8, 2014 at 2:03 pm
Walt Meir says that global warming has caused the record ice extent, according to the attribution of the article.
Where?
Frederick Michael:
“A warming climate changes weather patterns said Walter Meir, a research scientist at Goddard. Sometimes those weather patterns will bring cooler air to some areas.”
No quotation marks but the attribution is clear, as is the implication: global warming made Antarctica more frigid.
Oh, good grief. Walt is a scientist speaking of a hypothetical mechanism. “Some areas” means some areas.
He definitely did not say, and did not mean, “Global warming made Antarctica more frigid.” He also did not say, and did not mean, “Global warming has caused the record ice extent.”
Conversely, in the video he did, explicitly, use the words, “spectacular” and, “mystery” to describe this year’s Antarctic maximum.
He a scientist, not a spin doctor. He meant what he said. He’s genuinely curious about the data and that attitude comes through in the video.
I know it’s hard to believe that anyone could be genuine in this area, but don’t forget that Walt has repeatedly been invited to write guest posts here. That put him in a pretty select group. He is respected by many in the WUWT community.
Anthony posted his video for a reason.
Spin doctor? Funny you should use that term.
The context was the record ice extent of Antarctica. Read other comments. They read it the same way. Let Walt Meier speak for himself if he meant something else.
‘A warming climate changes weather patterns, said Walt Meier,’
By corollary does that mean a cooling climate does not?
I have the opposite opinion of Walt, I find what he is doing despicable. Surely he should know that Arctic ice has shown great variability long before the satellites. That the satellite era began at a peak in the arctic ice extent. He should also compare maximum winter Arctic ice to winter Antarctic ice and not to summer Arctic ice, where the trend is two thirds (2/3) less.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi_range_ice-ext.png
That graphic tells the real story of Arctic ice.
If the maximum extent is declining at -2.574%/decade and the minimum extent is declining at -8.951%/decade. It therefore follows that annual ice formation (extent) is increasing by 6.381%/decade.
The reality is that sea ice formation is increasing at both poles. The difference is that Arctic sea ice is melting at much greater rate especially late in the NH summer.
Warming temperatures cannot cause both increasing sea ice formation and increasing sea ice melt. The reason for the increased Arctic sea melt very likely to be insolation and albedo changes due to aerosols and black carbon. Both effects are of course absent in the NH winter. Thus have no effect on sea ice formation.
They have looked into all the possibilities except it’s bloody getting colder!!!!!
“Study Finds Antarctic Sea Ice Increases When It Gets Colder”
August 17, 2013
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/08/17/study-finds-antarctic-sea-ice-increases-when-it-gets-colder/
There are no air surface temperature measurements over the Arctic Ocean or the Southern Ocean. These studies refer to model extrapolations of land temperatures (and perhaps interpretations of satellite data).
and those show cooling, just like NASA used to..http://notrickszone.com/2014/01/01/southern-ocean-cooling-since-1996-global-warming-scientists-deny-logic-that-cold-causes-more-ice/
and http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/09/30/nasa-antarctic-temperature-fraud-2/
What does the IABP measure?
Here are some more
hockeyschtick – Monday, August 20, 2012
“New paper finds Southern Oceans are losing heat ”
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/08/new-paper-finds-southern-oceans-are.html
Evidence of deep ocean cooling
http://judithcurry.com/2014/10/05/evidence-of-deep-ocean-cooling/
“Since the late 1970s, the Arctic has lost an average of 20,800 square miles (53,900 square kilometers) of ice a year”
I’m struggling to figure out what they mean with these numbers. Anybody any ideas?
They mean to sound scary.
For a long time that’s all CAGW could talk about was how the poles were melting and that was proof of global warming. And now record sea ice extent and it’s still global warming. Where did all that cold air come from? I can see why I wasn’t invited into their club, I’m still puzzled over the Great Lakes freezing over. I know that’s global warming too. I am wondering what kind of story will come out when the Arctic ice extent exceeds older records.
Here’s my guess…. A blocking high pressure system is keeping the Arctic air confined. However this sea or that is unusually warm and creating a polar vortex that is keeping the land areas cold and snowy, further proving CAGW.
Warming = more ice.
Got it…
Except when warming = less ice.
Well, they’re talking about the warming causing more ice in the southern hemisphere, where obviously eveything is the opposite.
Just like the spin of a turd being flushed down the toilet.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2014/10/2014-melt-season-in-review/
Did anyone notice this?
Scroll down to the final paragraph. Regular readers should have some fun with the recommendations!
Kurt in Switzerland
This should make it easier:
“A related note
Last year, a vessel became trapped in ice south of Australia in an incident that highlighted the need for better local ice forecasts. The International Ice Charting Working Group will meet later this month in Punta Arenas, Chile. Members will work on improving the collective capability of ice services to provide ice information in the interests of marine safety.”
…and icebreaker rescue proficiency operations…
If that’s Chris Turney’s boat no increase in ice information services is going to overcome human stupidity.
Hilarious 🙂
“Part of it is just the geography and geometry. With no northern barrier around the whole perimeter of the ice, the ice can easily expand if conditions are favorable”
————
Conditions such as – NO GLOBAL WARMING!!!
If this were an Arctic story on the ice losses, what are the odds that the Antarctic ice gains would have been mentioned in that story?? Seems to even a casual observer that the establishment is slanting most stories these days to fit the perceived need to limit the damage from ‘negative’ news and promote the ‘positive’ news. Strange that ‘negative’ helps humans and ‘positive’ hurts humans. I thought the Alarmists were trying to save us?? Thank goodness this looks nothing like cultism.
” So it’s natural for scientists to ask, ‘OK, this isn’t what we expected, now how can we explain it?’””
It may be natural but making excuses for a falsified hypothesis is not science.
Scientists would say: “Our hypothesis led to a forecast outcome that did NOT occur. Therefore, our hypothesis has been falsified and is wrong. We need to go back to the drawing board and generate a new falsifiable hypothesis as the current one must be discarded.”
Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center,
So, the ONLY reason she can write the headline (that the always-so-much-ignored Antarctic Sea Ice increase is only 1/3 as much as the ever-so-much propagandized Arctic Sea Ice reduction is that she (NASA/GISS/Mieir/NSIDC etc) is comparing a rate of decrease in the Arctic to a rate of increase in the Antarctic.
Then they go on to the usual suspects of greater winds from the continent, meltwater from the continent diluting the 20 million sq kilometers under the Antarctic sea ice, etc. but then go ahead and they do demolish each of these straw men! Surprising, isn’t it?
Regardless of their excuses for the very-threatening Antarctic sea ice increase, look at what they are doing.
The Arctic sea ice reduction is a long linear trend since 1979. The Antarctic sea ice increases have been steadily occurring since 1992. The Antarctic sea ice increases have been very, very fast since 2011. Which “rate” should be used?
NONE of them.
See, until 2007, the Arctic sea ice loss rarely, if ever, was greater than 2 std deviations from the normal.
In other words, since measurements started in 1979, only very recently has Arctic sea ice loss been greater than what should be considered natural variations. And, this entire year, the Arctic sea ice has remained every day right within the 2 standard deviation band. Low in that band, but it has remained within the band. Further, since the very low 2007 and 2012 summers, the Arctic sea ice has refrozen real nicely. Thus proving that there is NO lasting effect from year-to-year of Arctic sea ice areas.
Through the past two years, the Antarctic sea ice area has been steadily ABOVE the two standard deviation band. The rates of increase of one region cannot be compared to the rates in the other.
But, she is also even more fundamentally dead wrong in even attempting to simple comparing Arctic sea ice areas against Antarctic sea ice areas.
Why?
1. The Antarctic sea ice reflects 5 TIMES more solar energy this time of year than the Arctic absorbs! Those losses in the Arctic needs to be FIVE TIMES the gain in the Antarctic just to keep the world’s heat balance even. (In early March, when the Antarctic sea ice is near its yearly minimum (at its highest latitude) and when the Arctic sea ice is at its yearly maximum (at its absolutely lowest latitude) the two “almost” get exposed to the same amount of sunlight.) Every other month between late August and mid-April – the seven months of the year the Antarctic is receiving ever higher and higher amounts of solar energy. Only during a short five month (mid-April to mid-August) is the Arctic receiving more solar energy. And, then, the Arctic sea ice is melting and has a very, very low albedo. There just isn’t much energy difference between sea ice and open Arctic ocean under today’s conditions.
The Antarctic has much, much more sea ice than the Arctic, that sea ice is in different areas and latitudes than the Arctic, and the Antarctic sea ice maximum extents is during a time of the year when the solar radiation is near its maximum. In the Arctic summer, the sun’s light is only 1315/1410 at top-of-atmosphere (93%) as much as it is during the Antarctic summer. Worse, that Arctic sea ice lies between 78 north and 82 north latitude at minimum: The sun in mid-September is only 8-12 degrees above the horizon! The Antarctic sea ice at maximum is at latitude 58 – 59 south. About the latitude of the middle of Hudson Bay.
Comparing the change in “rates” when those rates changed DRASTICALLY at different year intervals is wrong. Good propaganda. But bad “science”
2. Because at minimum, the Arctic sea ice was less than 3.0 in 2012. It CANNOT ever get lower than 0.0, right? So, even if Arctic sea ice loss was 1.0 million sq kilometers per year, and so ALL arctic sea ice vanished in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 (as predicted!) or 2016, it could NOT get lower. regardless of “rate” since 1979, rate since 1990 (when Antarctic sea ice began continually increasing), or since 2011 (when Antarctic sea ice anomaly began increasing at ever accelerating rates).
But, Antarctic sea ice INCREASE is unlimited. Except by the Australia, South American, South Africa and the Tahiti coastlines. The Antarctic sea ice “excess” alone this summer in June was greater than 2.05 million sq kilometers – practically the SAME AREA as Greenland’s 2.16 Mkm^2 !
And at that “excess” Antarctic sea ice is at the same latitude as Greenland.
Would Parkinson “notice” if the entire ice area of Greenland suddenly doubled in size one year?
But she claims that the Antarctic is meaningless because the Antarctic is only increasing at 1/3 the rate of the Arctic. Meaning: We’re drowning (getting deadly colder!) slower than we are (not) getting warmer.
Worse, for NASA’s salaries and future funding based on CAGW hysteria, the Arctic sea ice from today’s extents CANNOT create any “Arctic feedback” of increased Arctic air temperatures increasing sea ice loss increasing solar absorption into the darker Arctic waters which then creates even higher Arctic temperatures.
Nice, simplified theory. But it is proven wrong by the facts. In those Arctic summer months, the DMI daily temperatures are DECREASING. The “Arctic” annual air temperature land-based averages from 60 to 70 degrees (where the sea ice is NOT located) have gone up recently. Most likely because the entire Arctic tundra and forests are growing faster due to more CO2 in the atmosphere, and thus are darker. BUT! 60 – 70 latitude on land across Canada and Siberia is NOT where the sea ice is.
RACook,
Very good analysis.
Just a few days ago I found and saved a few posts from Paul Homewood on albedo and Antarctica. Here they are. They go more in depth than the headlines suggest.
Do you disagree with Tamino’s calculations (http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/sea-ice-insolation/) which claim that the decline in Arctic sea ice insolation has been greater than the increase in Antarctic sea ice insolation (directly opposite to your point 1)? Although your argument seems plausible, he claims to have done the math and shown otherwise.
Yes. He (Tamino) is wrong. His “calculation” and his assumptions and his “spreading” those wrong values across the whole earth is wrong.
Here is what the IPCC has said recently on Antarctica. My bolding. No particular order.
Low confidence, medium confidence and high confidence. What a load of utter garbage. This is not science. I want my predictions which I can compare to observations. That is what I want and nothing else will do. Projections replaced ‘predictions’ when they knew their ‘predictions’ were crap. See AR1.
Tamino supposedly countered this sea ice reflection comparisons:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/sea-ice-insolation/
His calculation can be easily debunked, however.
http://www.fao.org/3/a-x6541e/X6541E03.htm
At fig 8 witness that 80 degree latitude daily solar radiation maximum in June is perhaps 10% higher that the one at 60 degree, but notice how wider the 60 degree latitude graph is.
I don’t see how the article from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization even applies to Tamino’s calculation, yet alone ‘debunks’ it. Could you please explain? On the contrary, assuming his calculations are correct, Tamino does debunk RACookPE1978 October 8, 2014 at 1:52 pm .
Tamino put up a graph with and claimed it was right with no supporting evidence. Why anyone would accept something like that is beyond me.
Mozman, see this.
I have often been informed that as the Arctic sea ice extent is reduced the ocean absorbs more heat. This means less sea ice in subsequent years. What happened to sea ice extent after 2012? What happened to Arctic ice volume since 2012?
Wrong. Tamino begins by making several incorrect assumptions about Arctic and Antarctic sea ice areas, compounds them by making deadly wrong assumptions and approximations about solar radiation levels at top of atmosphere each day-of-year.
He then “averages” these incorrect solar radiation level assumptions out over the whole earth and the whole year.
He then expands those errors by neglecting air attenuation differences at different seasons of the year and different latitudes.
He continues by making errors in calculating air mass at each of the latitudes that he is assuming is correct, which is also not correct.
He then tries to use annual radiation levels at these approximate (but incorrect) latitudes rather than hour-by-hour reflection and absorption rates.
Further, he uses 1.0 and 0.0 for albedoes of sea ice and open ocean at all solar elevation angles.
Then he plots those incorrect absorption and reflection values in a year-by-year graph since 1979, which is meaningless, even if they were the correct values of anything correct.
Solar radiation levels at top of atmosphere MUST first be accurately predicted for evry day of year. Then the solar radiation penetrating the atmosphere MUST be calculated for each hour of the day, for every day of the year, and at the specific average latitude of the edge of the sea ice in the Antarctic and Arctic for that hour of the day and day of the year.
You MUST then use the actual measured Arctic and Antarctic sea ice albedo as it changes over the year. (See Judith Curry, 2001) . Fortunately, sea ice albedo does not change appreciably with solar elevation angle.
You MUST then use the actual measured open ocean albedo at the SPECIFIC solar elevation angle of the sun at that specific hour of the day at that specific latitude of the edge of of sea ice to compare what happens if that specific square meter of surface is covered by sea ice, or is open ocean at some ocean temperature, air temperature, wind speed (which also affects open ocean albedo!), humidity, air pressure, and cloud cover.
And THAT comparison is the easy one for direct sunlight on a clear day at normal arctic clarity!
So don’t EVEN get me off into the differences made by direct and diffuse solar radiation on albedo. Or the differences in evaporation rates at various wind speeds under different relative humidity conditions. etc.
Have You had a look at Tamino’s “simplified model” for the average latitude of the sea ice? It is grossly inaccurate. Oddly enough in opposite directions for the Arctic and Antarctic.
I disagree with Tanino calculating energy at summer peak only (again in June 80 degree it is only 10% higher than the one at 60 degree). I think we should calculate cumulative over the year. According to
http://www.powerfromthesun.net/Book/chapter02/chapter02.html
“the yearly total solar radiation on a surface maintained normal to the sun’s rays is essentially the same regardless of the latitude”. Next, “the cosine effect reduces solar radiation on a horizontal surface by 39 percent at the equator, whereas the solar radiation is reduced by 52 percent at 40 degrees latitude and by 74 percent at 80 degrees latitude.”
This crude calculation, of course because at the poles the radiation is not 0 (multiple of cos(0)).
So at the peak of summer, poles may receive slightly more sunlight, but effect quickly fades. They receive 0 in spring and autumn, and disregarding 3 seasons out of 4 is wrong.
No. No part of that approximation is correct past the temperate latitudes (between 48 south up to 48 north)…
For example, did you notice that little slip “for a surface held perpendicular to the sun’s rays” ? The ocean’s surface is NOT perpendicular to the sun’s rays at ANY hour of ANY day save local solar noon between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer on two days of the year. (-23.5 to +23.5) … Their correction for a flat surface does not follow basic math and spherical geometry, and fails again to account for the hourly movement of the sun and the yearly swing of the polar axis as the earth rotates around the sun.
Also, their simplified latitude correction fails close to the poles because of the height of the earth’s atmosphere.
They are using the wrong atmospheric transmission coefficient for polar latitudes and its usual humidities and dust/pollen/particulate concentrations.
Etc.
You worry when a so called senior scientist still thinks that a planet that has shown no warming in the warmist fiddled data for nearly 20 years is still warming. It’s like if you put a kettle on the stove and came back 20 years later and it was no warmer – let alone boiling – than when you put it on, would you be impressed? And bar the freak storm derived low of 2012, arctic ice has been slowly increasing at the minimum summer point since 2007 and with 4 of the coldest arctic summers having been in the last 6 years I would suggest that is not a surprise.
“The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming. ”
Laughable. 18 years and no warming at all. Did they expect that?
Don’t forget, the OCEANS are now the true measure of global warming.
The warm water from anthropogenic climate change forms from the warm atmosphere around Antarctica and melts the sea ice into a slush, then the anthropogenically amplified winds and currents push all this slush together where it freezes, this in-turn increases the sea ice extent and traps ice breakers during the summer melt season.
As the anthropogenically induced warming of the atmosphere overpowers and warms the earths oceans and melts the entire continent of Antarctica, melting ice on the edges of the continent will produce more fresh water, just-above-freezing, which in below freezing temperatures the anthropogenically induced warming makes refreezing into sea ice easier.
Besides look at the Arctic, it has melted more than the Antarctic since it’s highest sea ice extent during the coldest period of the late 1970’s, before that it was even colder and there are no records of sea ice before the late 1970’s but extensive research conclusively shows fresh water mixed with salty water forms sea ice which freezes much easier under a warming world causing a runaway freshwater death spiral of ice increase this will make walruses very tired due to the runaway salty water death spiral of sea ice.
Really! you guys need to brush up on your science.
Arctic sea ice grew from early 70’s to late 70’s – IPCC wg1 full report 1995.
Thanks… Missing “/sarc” tag. see comment below.
The following graph is from the IPCC’s First Assessment Report [pdf about 22Mb]
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/screenhunter_170-jun-15-11-10.jpg
Jimbo –
You should post both a) and b) from Fig. 7.20 of the IPCC’s FAR (regarding the NOAA figures from 1970-1990). Sea Ice extent anomalies in the N. and S. Poles are likely to be 180 deg. out of phase with each other.
No. You are wrong.
Really ya think? I know.. I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for you pesky kids.. I forgot the “sarc” but surly it was obvious! “tired walruses” and “runaway freshwater death spiral of ice increase” should have gave it away.
I suppose it shows that these alarmist claims are becoming a parody in of themselves.
Bingo.
Nothing shows the corruption of climate science more than the defensiveness of scientists announcing findings which are contrary to their theory. I mean, contrast that to the faster than light neutrino controversy – the scientists involved knew that they were probably wrong, that their measurements of FTL neutrinos were wrong somehow, but they weren’t defensive, they sent out a call for help from other scientists to help them solve their riddle.
What if the UN existed during the1920s to 1940s Arctic Warm Period? We must act now because it must be our fault. Reams of publications from trees would be produced for nothing.
I’m done and good night. Enjoy the record Antarctica sea ice extent caused by some kind of warming which we can’t find in the deep, the shallows or in the air.
I like that – with a little dressing up it could be made to sound almost Churchillian (From “we will fight them” to “we can’t find it” – in only 7 decades).
Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches New Record Maximum, as further proof of global warming
Arctic Sea Ice Reaches New Record Minimum , as further proof of global warming
Rain of Frogs reported over China , as further proof of global warming
And so on and so for , its long past the time when anything will affect the situation that ‘proof ‘ of global warming can come from anywhere and be anything . Its not science true , but long since this was about science.
I think it’s a good thing for these clowns at NASA GSFC that I’m not the owner/controller of President Obama’s pen and phone (because there would be unemployment involved for many of these liars).
This is a pathetic press release and I’m ashamed that my tax dollars support this tripe (which may be an unnecessarily harsh and insulting comparison for perfectly good tripe).
Claire Parkinson STOP LYING WITH MY TAX DOLLARS!
PS: I work with GSFC personnel, so I have some personal knowledge here.
Boulder skeptic:
Do you actually believe that Parkinson is lying rather than mistaken? I would love to hear what you have on our dear NASA Claire.
“Since the late 1970s, the Arctic has lost an average of 20,800 square miles (53,900 square kilometers) of ice a year”
It is amazing how you see what you want to see;
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi_range_ice-ext.png
If you look at this image you can see a gradual improvement in end of winter ice extent since about 2006/2007 with end of summer melt fluctuating in extent. This improvement is now running to 6/7 years but is rarely mentioned by the general scientific community. I hope my link works- Thanks, Bruce.
How many evidences of global cooling will be required before the Team is forced to accept that not global warming but global cooling causes global cooling? The oceans are cooling, the land surface & lower troposphere are cooling (in unadjusted, ie real, data), sea & lake ice, glaciers & the massive East Antarctic ice sheet are growing.
I suggest that no amount of evidence will prevail against dogma, but only a change in findings rewarded by public funding.
Vote for a REAL change!! …someone has to wake up eventually to this, I would hope.
Ted Cruz, or failing that, Rand Paul.
Otherwise, more of the same hopelessness.
Ditto snow cover.
I’m testing my new time machine — it’s retrieved this NASA press release from 2045:
“The sudden new Ice Age with its 10C temperature drops world-wide reflects the diversity and complexity of Earth’s environments”, said NASA researchers who added “Its really not surprising to people in the climate field that not every location on the face of Earth is acting as expected – it would be amazing if everything did”.
Joe Romm, one of the leading climate change propagandists, has put up an article about this over at his Think Progress blog explaining that there’s more ice because it’s warmer.
I give his column a D+ in truthiness, which is consistent with the rankings of other blog entries at that site.
Thank heavens for Joe Romm. All this time I figured the extra sea ice down there was due to it being colder. Now that I’m set straight that it’s really just all the Antarcticans shoveling their snow off the land in order to bask more comfortably in the tropical heat, I can sleep well now.
The thing about Joe Romm and “Think Progress” is that he doesn’t seem to make a lot of progress at thinking.
From a report in 2006 called “Antarctic Temperature and Sea Ice Trends Over the Last Century”
“Conclusion: Whereas climate models suggest that temperatures in Antarctica should have
been warming in recent decades in response to increases in greenhouse gases, measurements
show otherwise. Although some regions do show increases, the majority of the continent
shows no significant trend or an actual decrease. There is evidence that atmospheric and
ocean circulation patterns have much stronger impacts on Antarctic climate than do
greenhouse gas increases.”
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/antarctica_white_paper_final.pdf
This statement mystifies me. Maybe someone can explain the logical significance:
“And in the Antarctic, where sea ice circles the continent and covers such a large area, it doesn’t take that much additional ice extent to set a new record.”
The statement is nonsense.
It’s fair to say that as Antarctic sea ice extends a lot closer to the equator than Arctic sea ice, then the same equatorward increase in sea ice will result in a greater increase in extent in the Antarctic.
After further consideration of the context of of Meier’s statements as a whole and reassurance by the responses here that I wasn’t missing something, I’m considering the possibility that the statement was not intended to make sense. Perhaps it’s a code, like the hostage in a movie sends over the phone with a gun at their head as a clue they’re under duress, in effect saying, “I have to say these things to save my government career; so don’t take them too seriously” ;).
The Arctic winter ice extent is contained with the space between continents. Its the area occupied by >15% ice so it can become more compacted rather than spread over a larger area. She ignores what ocean currents would do to the Antarctic areas of about 15% sea ice which gets protected by coves in the Arctic.
It’s called GobbledyGook. She basically said; If ice increases, instead of decreases, there will be more ice and if there is continually more ice, there will be a record, but so what? She wants say, new record sea ice in the Antarctic is a distraction and should not be viewed as evidence against CAGW. You need to look over here, at the smaller ice mass up at the North pole that got smaller a while ago before it started to recover. That is all the proof of CAGW.
He might mean that the Antarctic sea-ice is less variable between years, so an increase of c. 10 % is enough to set a record. On the other hand such a large increase in something that doesn’t vary much between years is actually quite remarkable.
As a Swedish proverb says: “whichever way you turn, your backside will still be behind you”.
Walt Meier says,”it doesn’t take that much additional ice extent to set a new record.”
What a tool.
No it doesn’t take that much, other than the fact its happening now, with all that evil Co2 continuing to rise,
Makes me want to shove pumpkin sized piece of glacier in his piehole! 😀
No Claire, this is not what you had expected, and no, the globe has not been a warming trend [except in the models] for half of the satellite record. Overall sea ice trend is rising as [and before] you speak, not declining as you are saying.
Once again, Marcel Leroux has explained all this in his books: the increased frequency of deeper depressions associated with more powerful anticyclones, the dynamical warming of the peninsula, etc… Meier is just trying to reconcile these unavoidable weather observations with the increasingly untenable global warming narrative. However the same events make perfect sense in Leroux’s rapid mode of general circulation.
His seminal paper on circulation: http://ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/2/32/25/79/Leroux-Global-and-Planetary-Change-1993.pdf
And his 2010 book Dynamic Analysis of Weather and Climate, Springer-Praxis, 2 English ed.
Reblogged this on Norah4you's Weblog and commented:
I only wish for the Disneylike Goverment now sitting in office in Stockholm Sweden to read and understand the NASA information in this blogg article…..
The fact that Artic and Antartic have different behavior shows that there are probably planetary forces at helm.
They are connected via the THC. If the jet stream speeds up and pushes more warm water to the Arctic then is will cool and sink pushing more water into the lower ocean. This should force more upwelling cold water at the other end of the THC in the Antarctic. I think this is the cause of the additional ice. What exactly drives this THC behavior may be planetary or may not be.
I computed that the 28 year increase in max sea ice area at the Antarctic is 1.3M sq km. The same change at the Arctic is a .88M sq km decrease. I did this averaging 1985, 1986 and 1987 maximums with 2012-2014 maximums at the two ends of the trend line. From this fact, I find this statement in the article to be bogus: “The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about a third of the magnitude of the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.”
1985-2014 is 30 years.
For the article to be true, the Antarctic increase would have to be .88/3 M sq km. How are these NASA experts off by about 400%? And don’t try to tell me that seasonally gained and lost sea ice is 4 times thicker in the Arctic than in the Antarctic.
Yes, they are playing the old trick of lying with numbers. Since the Antarctic increase is based off the maximum and hence a larger number, the % gain is smaller. The Arctic loss based on a minimum is thus a higher % even though the raw numbers are lower. It is half truths like this that demonstrates these people are completely dishonest.
“Its really not surprising to people in the climate field that not every location on the face of Earth is acting as expected – it would be amazing if everything did,” Parkinson said.
All of earth is not acting as you expected. The global temperature stopped warming since 1997.
“The Antarctic sea ice is one of those areas where things have not gone entirely as expected. So it’s natural for scientists to ask, ‘OK, this isn’t what we expected, now how can we explain it?’”
Grade 6 pupils can explain it. The Southern Ocean surface is now coldest since 1979 and all your models are wrong. You guys are still in denial after discovering your religion is fake.
+1
“Its really not surprising to people in the climate field that not every location on the face of Earth is acting as expected.”
This is something that has always bothered me. IF CO2 has increased over the entire globe, and CO2 makes it warmer, and yet not every location is warming, THEN does that not demonstrate that natural factors are dominating the climate? If the extra CO2 above Antartica doesn’t make it warmer also, then what effect does it have at all? Natural cycles are either important or not, at the discretion of one’s whim!
Parkison seems to suggest A causes B but when it doesn’t, Parkinson seems to then say it would be amazing if it did every time! Not science. Not a scientist. I’d be fired in my line of work for this kind of thing.
Believing global warming is causing increased Antarctic sea ice extent is like believing the missing is heat is hiding somewhere.
Both are like believing the bogeyman can’t see you when you close your eyes.
None of which can be proven to be false. 🙂
Go ahead, try.
Antarctic sea ice is a record since the start of records by satellites ~1978. Other coarser records from satellites in 1964 show about the same sea ice amount as 2014. So we are back to where we were 50 years ago. Not true at the Arctic. Land ice loss in the Antarctic is happening at a rate of 1.9 mm per year. Since the average land ice thickness is 2,000,000 mm throughout all of Antarctica, all the ice will be gone in just a little over one million years if the trend remains the same for just a little over one million years. Not too much to ask.
Multi-year ice is up 27% over last year in the Arctic.This is directionally inconsistent with sailing from Finland to Alaska by the short-cut in 2030. There is a 120 degree (of longnitude) pie segment from the S. tip of Greenland westward to The Bering Sea by Russia that has no loss of sea ice for the winter of 2014 compared to any previous record as far as sea ice and land snow/ice cover area is concerned. There are other areas of normal sea ice N. of Siberia in western Russia, and only about 140 degrees out of 360 degrees total is a zone where sea ice is below normal in the Arctic. This may be why N. America had a very cold winter just past and jacket weather in the Ohio River Valley came to stay in September. 3B cubic feet of natural gas was consumed in the US to mostly heat buildings last winter, breaking the 2.3B cu ft previous record and sending natural gas supplies to the lowest level in 11 years in April 2014.
And that concern about ice calving off Greenland had gone dead quiet since December 2012. Not a peep anymore.
It is a good thing all that ice is down at the bottom of the planet instead of at the top.
Otherwise, we might reach a “tipping point” and the planet might tip over.
Maybe the bottom of the planet is really the top.
‘“The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming. Sea ice as a whole is decreasing as expected, but just like with global warming, not every location with sea ice will have a downward trend in ice extent,” Parkinson said.’
**********************
Taking a gander at the chart below, it appears to me that the global ice extent (this is ALL ice) looks to be pretty stable to me. Another needless alarmist claim emanating from NASA.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Oops. I meant global sea ice extent.
“Scientist”: This is not the sea ice you’re looking for.
Public: This isn’t the ice we’re looking for.
That’s their intent.
Dismissing the increase record ice in the Antarctic by saying it doesn’t offset the decrease of the Arctic during its minimum phase. WOW! Talk about a
straw mansnowman!Another assumption: Could it be that natural cooling is in balance with warming for the NH but dominates in the SH. With the solarcycle in a decreasing activity cooling for the entire globe can be expected the coming years.
Parkinson uses a caveat saying that global ice overall is down but that’s not true…..it’s up and there’s Weeks saying that though NASA has shown that heat is not hiding down in the ocean sea level is rising but the natural rate of seal level rise is not increasing.
These buffoons are getting stupid desperate. Laughable and transparent…..pitiful. Embarrassing for all concerned.
The Arctic sea ice extent may be down from last year but the (modelled) Ice volume is increasing:- http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1_CY.png
Its far to early to be able to claim this as a trend, but I notice that virtually all trend lines are linear when they would be much better represented as waves or at least averaged out curves. At the very least there is a good enough reason now to show a flattening of the downward trend. The anomaly in the arctic had flattened out before the record extent loss in 2012 which is why I think lines are so non representtive. Fitting a curve though would require a very deep understanding of a longer string of data. 30 years is a good base for trending 60+years much better, representing trends from data strings that choose their data from short periods, no matter which side of the argument, are only predicting a trend from short term information are therefore barely at the ‘Hypothesis’ stage IMO
On the plus side, I’m glad they’re not towing out the ‘it’s not ice extent, it’s the ice thickness you should be looking at’ BS
reposted from above (wrt sea ice N Pole vs. S Pole):
Jimbo –
You should post both a) and b) from Fig. 7.20 of the IPCC’s FAR (regarding the NOAA figures from 1970-1990). Sea Ice extent anomalies in the N. and S. Poles are likely to be 180 deg. out of phase with each other.
mwh
And then there is the effect on Arctic ice due to recovery from the Little Ice Age.
This is from IPCC, TAR:
Figure 16-3: Time series of April sea-ice extent in Nordic Sea (1864-1998) given by 2-year running mean and second-order polynomial curves. Top: Nordic Sea; middle: eastern area; bottom: western area (after Vinje, 2000).
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg2/images/fig16-3s.gif
From the Vinje study:
Anomalies and Trends of Sea-Ice Extent and Atmospheric Circulation in the Nordic Seas during the Period 1864–1998 by TORGNY VINJE, Norwegian Polar Institute, Oslo, Norway
“The extent of ice in the Nordic Seas measured in April has been subject to a reduction of ~33% over the past 135 yr. Nearly half of this reduction is observed over the period ~1860–1900, prior to the warming of the
Arctic. Decadal variations with an average period of 12–14 yr are observed for the whole period. The observation series indicates that less than 3% of the variance with respect to time can be explained for a series
shorter than 30 yr, less than 18% for a series shorter than 90 yr, and less than 42% for the whole 135-yr long series. While the mean annual reduction of the April ice extent is decelerating by a factor of 3 between 1880 and 1980, the mean annual reduction of the August ice extent
is proceeding linearly.
The August ice extent in the Eastern area has been more than halved over the past 80 yr. A similar meltback has not been observed since the temperature optimum during the eighteenth century. This retrospective
comparison indicates accordingly that the recent reduction of the ice extent in the Eastern area is still within the variation range observed over the past 300 yr.”
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0442(2001)014%3C0255%3AAATOSI%3E2.0.CO%3B2
Seems like an obvious thing to ask:
How far away is this ice from Tierra del Fuego and what would happen if an ice bridge ever formed?
If an ice bridge formed between Cape Horn and the Antarctic Peninsula, it would block shipping for 2-6 weeks each year from the Pacific to the Atlantic for ships too large to pass through the Panama Canal. (Which is being widened now, certainly only a coincidence for the Chinese trade with Europe.
Distance is hard to measure, because the average Antarctic sea ice edge at maximum each September lies between 59 south and 58 south, the Antarctic sea ice is less extensive in the gap between the Cape and Antarctica. Estimates are fun to play with: you can predict a closure date between 12 years to 42 years at today’s rate of increase.
This might be interesting in the context of your concerns about Antarctica:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/1999PA000461/pdf
Gildor and Tzipermann (2000) propose that sea ice is the switch between glacial and interglacial, via albedo, under phase locking of eccentricity (100 kyr). They also propose that the MPR (change from obliquity to eccentricity pacing of glacial cycle about 1 Mya) occurred due to the growth of sea ice associated with long term secular cooling.
“The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming. ”
Indeed the planet is doing what is expected – half a precession cycle into a post-MPR interglacial and at mid downstroke of the obliquity cycle.
Sell.
IIRC, the loss of Arctic sea ice last year or the year before was because of storm winds tearing it up in the surf, not because of warming. that was conveniently not mentioned in this article.
[Clearly, an “Inconvenient Truth” … .mod]
IMO, the two record lows of 2007 & 2012 were both caused by August cyclones out of the Bering Sea driving floes together & piling them upon each other, & perhaps moving more ice into the Atlantic to melt.
http://www.forskningsradet.no/prognett-polarforskning/Nyheter/Winds_from_Siberia_reduce_Arctic_sea_ice_cover/1253955174381?lang=en
My take: the 2007 Arctic minimum was an artifact of a change in measurement technique. Prior to 2007, the polarizer was turned twice a year, on Jan 1 and July 1 — the reason was to prevent interpreting surface ponds and broken ice as open water. But people complained about the “notch” mid-way across the yearly ice extent chart, so in 2007 they did not turn the filter. The result was two-fold: a new record ice minimum in the Arctic and a new record ice maximum in the Antarctic, happening simultaneously. The satellite boys kept their heads down and started tweaking the polarizer after that. The 2012 Arctic minimum was due to storm action spreading the ice over a large area, which mostly did not melt but was thinned to below the 15% threshold for counting. Actually, even that’s not quite right, the thinning was into the range 10%-30%, but only the lower estimate is used for counting, so 20%-40% range gets counted but 10%-30% does not. This is familiar to purveyors of the Bering Sea ice charts. So both 2007 and 2012 minima were substantively measurement artifacts.
There is a remarkable incuriosity, even on this forum, about the 2007 record Antarctic ice maximum that was simultaneous with the record Arctic ice minimum then. Yoo hoo?
That is an interesting point, NZ Willy. However, there were reports of strong southerly winds in the Chuckchi Sea.area at the time. which could have brought warm water north. If you look at the map you will notice that almost all of the extra melting was on rhe Bering side and none on the Russian side which made me blame the winds but now you have another cause in the play.
These guys making announcements about the poles just don’t know their climate science and should not open their mouths. Here is Claire Parkinson from Goddard, Hansen’s old haunt, who sees: “… changes in sea ice coverage as a microcosm of global climate change…Just as the temperatures in some regions of the planet are colder than average, even in our warming world, Antarctic sea ice has been increasing and bucking the overall trend of ice loss…The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming..” And here is her colleague Walt Meyer: “…A warming climate changes weather patterns,..” (Can you really believe this drivel?”)
This is just a pseudo-scientific claim about warming which does not exist. Lets start from the beginning. First of all the only part of the world still warming today is the Arctic. It is not global or greenhouse warming but warming caused by ocean currents carrying warm Gulf Stream water into the Arctic Ocean. I proved that in my 2011 peer reviewed paper [E&E 22(8):1069-1083] but these so-called climate scientists simply don’t read the relevant literature in their own field. It started at the turn of the twentieth century as a result of a rearrangement of the North Atlantic current system, prior to which there was nothing there but two thousand years of slow, linear cooling. The warming paused in mid-century for thirty years, then resumed in 1970 and kept on going. If it wasn’t for that both poles would now be at the same temperature.
I think you’re on the right track in regard to ocean current patterns – this system is in my view the principal driver of climate. 95% of climate heat does not just sit passively in the ocean – it is a dynamic nonlinear system subject to switching between regimes, from internal dynamics and oscillations under possible external weak forcing (entrainment).
“Melting ice on the edges of the Antarctic continent could be leading to more fresh, just-above-freezing water, which makes refreezing into sea ice easier, Parkinson said.”
So, melting and freezing at the same time, – just like magic!
‘The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about a third of the magnitude of the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.’
However, the total global sea ice index is above the long-term average, hence it is clearly within normal ranges……