Sea Ice News Volume 6 #1: Antarctic Sea Ice Expands To New Record

I basically agree completely, however it is pretty normal for the human brain to take an interest in patterns, and here we have a (very limited) pattern of contrast between North Pole and South Pole. I have looked at this and mulled what if anything it might mean. Here is my hypothesis. I have next to zero professional credential in this field so I only offer my ideas for consideration by people with greater knowledge and resources.
It seems to me that when considering the global climate system as a heat transfer engine it looks to me as though it actually must sub-divide into North and South hemispheres, as the equatorial winds provide some separation of Northern and Southern air masses. Given that land masses and ice cover areas differ between North and South, It seems to me that the “heat load” must differ between North and South. Which ever hemisphere has the higher heat load will therefore experience greater heat rise. Obviously, this cannot be sustained as the planet is a single mixed system. So, how does this uneven heating manifest and rebalance? The most obvious to me would be that one hemisphere “loads up” with heat until it hits a point at which it is able to dump that heat to the other hemisphere by increased atmospheric activity or ocean water circulation changes or other means. If this is the case, I believe it would explain the somewhat anomalous ice readings; ie. Southern hemisphere has recently, or is in the process of dumping heat to the North. This pattern of heat flow would be exacerbated by the loss of sea ice in the warming hemisphere ( North at present) and the increase in albedo from greater sea ice in the hemisphere which is dumping heat. This will continue until an equilibrium is reached which will no longer allow the heat transfer engine to operate. Sometime after that point, the Northern hemisphere will reach a point relative to the South whereby It can dump heat to the South, or perhaps that heat will merely “leak” back to the South over time.

RACookPE1978,

Why are you even thinking about comparing minium Antarctic sea ice to maximum Antarctic sea ice?

As I wrote in the previous post, comparing that figure to the Arctic is illustrative because it highlights how the two poles are opposites in almost every way imaginable. For the Antarctic, the 1979-2014 mean value is 15%. It’s, oh, call it 38% for the Arctic. Linear trendwise, the Antarctic went from 13% up to 17% over the same interval. The Arctic went from 47% down to 30%.

Further, Arctic sea ice minimum is “only” 3 – 4 Mkm^2. The Arctic sea ice simply cannot get get much smaller – there never was much to lose over the very, very short September minimum …

Nah, it’s got room to go. Lowest extent since 1979 was 22% of maximum in 2012. And then there is average annual extent as a percentage of maximum. The Arctic went from 75% in 1979 to 65% in 2012. For Antarctica, it’s from 60% to 65% over the same interval.

… when the Antarctic sea ice receives FIVE TIMES the solar energy that the Arctic does.

When talking about equilibrium systems, I find it most illustrative to think in terms of percentage of means, mins and maxes for 0th approximations.

The Antarctic EXCESS is already half of that value. Why not compare the ever-increasing Antarctic minimums? Since 1979, they have almost doubled in size, and are now regularly higher than the 1979-1992 record points.

Why not compare mass loss from landed ice in both hemispheres?
For sea ice, I get 117% vs 60%, Arctic vs Antarctic respectively. The calculation is range of the minimums divided by the minimum min.

The Antarctic sea ice maximums are also steadily getting larger, now routinely larger than values never approached before.

When talking albedo feedback effect, the naive assumption would be that wintertime ice extent has the least effect. Radiative heat loss from the surface … different story.

Dead wrong. In broad numbers, the Antarctic is now 25% to 35% HIGHER in high-albedo surface area for the entire year for the past 10 years. Further, that high-albedo Antarctic sea ice is ALL between latitudes 67 south and 58 south – far, far closer to the equator than the Arctic 5 – 7% loss. And the Arctic vastly SMALLER loss of area is all between latitudes 72 north and 80 north.

The complication of latitude and relative area is why I calculated change in albedo for each pole from 65-90 degrees. Note also that I didn’t mask out land areas even though I could have done without much bother. I like comparing apples to apples.

At those latitudes, through most of the year, and not only is there no sunlight at all 8 months of the year, the little that does get through is at such low solar elevation angles that the albedo of sea ice is almost the same as the albedo of open ocean water.

You’re going through a lot of brain damage to do ad hoc calculations which a) aren’t really necessary and b) don’t mean very much in terms of total radiative budget.

The “paper” is simply wrong. For 8 months of the year, lower Arctic sea ice levels mean additional heat loss from the Arctic Ocean..

What paper? I didn’t cite any paper. I used reanalysis data for which most of the heavy lifting has already been done and simply tallied up area-weighted mean anomalies.
Obviously less ice coverage means more heat loss, but getting a meaningful calculation is ridiculously not easy since that quantity is highly sensitive to SST variability due to winds and currents … and as we’re certainly learning from the Antarctic, ice extent is not necessarily a direct function of water temperature below it at depth.
Calculating albedo as the ratio of shortwave up/shortwave down at TOA is low-hanging fruit, extremely difficult to muck up. Very clearly the Arctic at or above 65 N is darkening quite rapidly relative to the same southern latitudes, which as I mentioned previously is pretty much dead flat. Conclusion: Antarctic sea ice extent increase is doing effectively zip in terms of bouncing solar energy out of the system.

The ONLY “analysis” Trenberth can make is a flat-earth average with a constant sunlight. He has never presented any graphic, any heat balance for anything else with spherical earths, elliptical orbits, rotating earths, changing arctic and antarctic sea ice extents, or real-world albedos for ocean and sea ice.

lol. The energy budget cartoon IS what he’s most (in)famous for … well, after his “it’s a travesty” comment … but I rather think a guy who had Lorentz for a PhD adviser knows a bunch more than you’re obviously willing to give him credit for. That, and, you know, I actually read his papers instead of just looking at (and ignorantly mocking) the pretty pictures.

RACookPE1978,

Because that value is meaningless.

It has meaning to me as a gauge of hemispheric sea ice trends. As a metric for estimating radiative budgets … yes, completely useless.

Over the entire 2014-2015 year, the Antarctic sea ice reflected 168% more energy than the Arctic sea ice absorbed, compared to their respective “average” years.

I’m talking long-term trends for the entire polar regions, you’re talking about weather for one year in ocean areas only. What’s wrong with this picture?

Dead wrong. Show your equations. 8-1/2 months of the year, Antarctic sea ice is reflecting more radiation from the system than the Arctic Ocean is absorbing.

I told you already: upwelling solar / downwelling solar measured from TOA, which gives me an effective albedo. Since I’m using zonal means from gridded data, I area-weight using the cosine of latitude. I’m not masking for oceans, and because I’m using TOA I pick up any changes due to cloud coverage, aerosols, etc. That gives me a fairly complete picture of the solar portion of the radiation budget for both poles in percentage terms which are directly comparable. From 1948 through 2014, the albedo changes by linear trend are:
Arctic: -2.3%
Antarctic: +0.9%
World: +0.1%
Or I can give it to you as downwelling solar – upwelling solar:
Arctic: +4.5 W/m^2
Antarctic: -1.8 W/m^2
World: -0.2 W/m^2