In the late summer and early fall of 2007, there were a number of alarming media reports about the arctic sea ice melting. Additionally, there were predictions that it would not recover to its previous levels.
But, we have this graph charting the rise and fall of arctic sea ice for the last 365 days, notice that the arctic sea ice is right back where it started at in February 2007.
From the University of Illinois Cryosphere Today:
Image above was edited to fit. Click for a full sized image. A long time series is also available.
And here is the satellite sounder derived image showing sea ice extent as of Saturday, Feb 2nd 2008 (right) compared to Feb 2nd, 1980 (left). The color key shows the concentration of sea ice, with deep purple being the most solid ice and reds, yellows. blues showing areas of thinning ice or seawater/ice mix:
Click for a full sized image. Note that the 1980 photo does not show snow cover (in white) as the technology then wasn’t able to resolve it as it does today.
While there has been a slight reduction in sea ice, NASA indicates in a press release in October 2007 that the main component of change is wind driven flow patterns, not air temperature changes.
I’m wondering; are the polar bears out having fun on the new 2008 ice?
And while we are on the subject of melting sea ice, polar bears, and pictures, I’d like to point out that our Nobelic hero, Al Gore, has been caught not only propagandizing, but also using a copyrighted work without permission.
Astute readers may recall seeing a photo flashed around the world earlier this year of polar bears “stranded” on an ice cube at sea. I won’t show it here but rather please follow this link to the original photographer. See the bottom right photo.
A Canadian blogger, Carole Williams, tells the story behind this picture, which was taken in 2004 just off Alaska by a marine biologist on a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute project, Amanda Byrd. As the marine biologist (Byrd) points out, the bears were in no danger so close to the coast (they can swim 30 miles).
She just wanted a photograph more of the “wind-sculpted ice” than of the bears. Byrd writes:
“[You] have to keep in mind that the bears aren’t in danger at all. It was, if you will, their playground for 15 minutes. You know what I mean? This is a perfect picture for climate change, in a way, because you have the impression they are in the middle of the ocean and they are going to die with a coke in their hands. But they were not that far from the coast, and it was possible for them to swim.”
The image was copied from the ships computer (where Byrd had downloaded the camera flash memory stick to) by another member of the shipboard research crew and passed on to Environment Canada. Then it was eagerly adopted by many as an example of the fate that awaits the polar bears – including Al Gore, who used the picture as huge projected backdrop in one of his highly lucrative lectures.
Gore said:
“Their habitat is melting,” “beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet.”
Audience: [gasp!]
Yes, it melts every summer.
Read all the details of the story behind the photo, here and here. It seems that a lawsuit is brewing and Canada has some pretty hefty copyright laws.
In the meantime, there’s a big push in the US to “save the polar bears”. The LA Times writes today:
“The Bush administration is nearing a decision that would officially acknowledge the environmental damage of global warming, and name its first potential victim: the polar bear.”
Sure I want to protect wildlife just as much as the next person, but this is just getting to be all about spin and little about facts. Write your congressman and senator and let them know the true story. Let’s give the folks in Alaska (who should know) some credit for injecting some reason into the issue.
UPDATE – The “spike” has a well written story about the Polar Bear issue, along with some statistics.
Consider our planet a closed system.
The CO2 we emit into the air is the same CO2 that was extracted from the air some time in the past.
To the greenies I say dont panic because we dont have an endless source of CO2 buried in the ground.
The earth thrived at the time when all the coal and oil was still in the athmosphere at the time and creatures were much bigger and healthier then.
Great Work on Showing what the media is trying to hide, its so bad that i am having problems finding video in particular to the return of the Ice that they claimed would never come back but during the video searching i have been doing i have found so much freezing weather video from america and around the world especially this year because of the record cold temperature conditions that have been occuring I mean the proof is all over the place its just sad that Prejudice media trying to hide the Big Story about the ice returning back to normal conditions i use the term Prejudice because its a more accurate discription of mainstream liberal media! Glad to see the Lie of global warming Exposed and liberals giving up the term Global Warming and now retreating to the assessment of Climate Change! LoL “The Truth is Victorious Yet Again, Glory be To God always”
It must be funny to be as stupid as you are.
You are a jerk-off, Andy.
Just the facts. UN weather and climate folks couldn’t hit a forecast 6 to 12 hours out let alone a year or more, my self included. Global cooling is well under way, and not only due to La Nina which by the way was a major bust of a forecast by the UN, the Brits and many other so called climate experts. Northern Hemisphere warming peaked in 1998, leveled off, and began cooling in mid August 2005. The southern hemisphere never had any warming but now the entire planet is cooling at a much faster rate. Antarctic sea ice is 25 to 30% greater than the same time last year. Why isn’t that making headlines instead of some tiny piece of ice falling off a huge glacier. Sea Ice in the Bering Sea reached a greater extent and is more persistent than has ever been recorded. Why isn’t this making any headlines? Talk about denial. Finally, the global warming crowd seem to be coming around to the reality of global cooling before they lose all credibility but, I think its too late.
-Dave Percy Meteorologist in the great USA Anchorage, Alaska.
There has been little advertisement in regards to how cool this winter actually was. Many snowfall records were shattered across the Northern U.S. this year, including Maine, Michigan, New York, Montana, Idaho, Washington State, Oregon, and my home town of Spokane, WA.
Spokane ranked as #2 snowiest since 1893. Yes, I know La Nina exists, I check up on it every Monday, when the CPC releases their weekly update on sea surface temperatures.
In addition, temperatures there for the last two months have been remarkably below normal…with temperatures this weekend (4-18/4-19) forecasted to be 20-25* F below normal for mid April. And snow is expected. There has been no year since I’ve been alive (1984), except for 2002, that I remember being so cold.
But it’s not just in the U.S. that winter demanded attention. It was all across the Northern Hemisphere.
What annoys me about people who believe in global warming…is that they have not mentioned the last 10 years. It doesn’t fit in with the idea of “every year hotter.” This is not how things are looking if you check GISS/HadCRUT/etc. graphs of global temperatures.
It’s slight cooling, if anything. Anyone who says otherwise, is just plain wrong. And the graphs at the University of Illinios show that the Northern Hemisphereic sea ice anomaly at practically 0, as of 4-16-2008, and rising amazingly. In addition, Southern Hemispheric sea ice is WAY above normal…and rising.
And global sea ice in general is rising.
It’s a shame that these things are being ignored by the mainstream media. Why? Because everyday I have to sit and hear people talk about ‘oh no the polar ice caps are melting’ and ‘global warming is terrible’ and people talking about ‘carbon credits’.
I have to pull out the all-mighty cold hard facts of GW falicy and current cooling and correct them, because they are too lazy to research themselves, or too stupid to question the media or anything else they’ve been told.
Where’s all the talk of global warming now?! HUH?! And any of my fellow collegues from college will get it if they disagree with me.
–Kenrick Westerman, Meteorologist, Salt Lake City, UT
Regarding the side by side images of the polar ice, it is useful to go to http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ where you can “Compare side-by-side images of Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent for any two dates in the satellite record”. You might note their animation of seasonal ice record data with the comment “The 40Mb animation at the left shows the dramatic loss of multiyear sea ice over the past year. Multiyear sea ice is older and generally thicker ice – sea ice that has survived at least one melt season (shown in brighter white). ” – The Cryosphere Today. This would be from the author’s own source. If this isn’t enough, which is isn’t for myself, you can continue to drill down to their source which they site as “Snow and ice data provided by the National Center for Environmental Prediction/NOAA”. Eventually, I’m going to get to the bottom of this story. Apparently, this isn’t going to happen by stopping at this authors misquoting and out of context reporting.
To the authors comment that “The story is about the fact that the media (and some groups) did exactly what you accuse me of:…” only depletes the authors credibility as a reporter. He’s back peddling. Caught in the act of skewing the facts, he then excuses himself by claiming he’s only doing what the other guy did. As my mother liked to ask me when I was eight, if Johnny jumped off the Golden Gate bridge, would you do it too? Either you report the facts in an unbiased manner or you don’t. What I get is that you admit that you don’t.
I simply don’t buy the arguement that “The story is about the fact that the media (and some groups) did exactly what you accuse me of:…” Here is how an essay is done. You start by making a synopsis or your point in the opening paragraph. Then, you follow this up with details that support your arguement. Finally, you present your conclusion which is basically a restatement of your original point. So how does this author start our his article? With “But, we have this graph charting the rise and fall of arctic sea ice for the last 365 days, notice that the arctic sea ice is right back where it started at in February 2007.” This is not a statement of how the media misrepresents the evidence. That is a statement that the arctic sea ice is back.
If it’s all the same, I’ll just have to put this guy on my list of people to ignore.
[…] interupting your fear mondering and your appeals to pity, but I have some facts to interject from Watts Up With That: In the late summer and early fall of 2007, there were a number of alarming media reports about the […]
Arctic ice levels fell enough in April to give credence to suggestions that we could have a repeat of last year’s level — a record for the satellite age starting in 1979. Early in May, there was not much difference between 2007 levels and 2008 levels, even after considering that 2008 has one more day in it. Nevertheless, the decrease has slowed down in the last couple of days, and caution should be taken on assuming a long term trend from 3-4 weeks of data. Also, it seems plausible that the estimation system has a few “burps” associated with it.
[…] Arctic Sea Ice Back to its Previous Level […]
[…] pressures. The status of several populations is not well documented. 2. The Arctic sea ice has recovered from recent losses. 3. Polar bears (and penguins and seals) survived the Holocene Maximum 8000 […]
[…] By the way I have to wonder if any of these computer models predicted the fact that the Arctic ice pack has returned to its previous levels. […]
Excellent article!
In a number of official accounts of returning sea ice in the arctic this past winter, I noted that the new ice was typically characterized as “thin.” I don’t know how the thinness of the ice was determined. What sorts of tests are done to ascertain just how thin or thick the ice is? But the following suggests that it may all be wishful thinking:
On May 24th 2008, in the Travel Section of the Globe and Mail Newspaper an article appeared about being icebound in the northwest passage. It relates a trip on the Russian icebreaker, Kapitan Khlebnikov, from northeast Russia across the Bering Sea destined for Canada’s Resolute Bay.
This massive icebreaker encountered some of this “thin ice,” which was so thick that it became icebound for a week, before finally being able to continue its trip.
The writer observed that ” What irony. I am a passenger on one of the most powerful icebreakers in the world, travelling through the Northwest Passage-which is supposed to become almost ice-free in a time of global warming, the next shipping route across the top of the world – and here we are, stuck in the ice, engines shut down, bridge deserted. Only time and tide can set us free.”
This piece was buried in the travel section. In view of the earlier hype about vanishing sea ice, I think this should have been front page news!
REPLY: Thanks for sharing that, I’ll put it on the front page in a couple of days.
It is hardly surprising that the Arctic ice pack is back to full extent in February of 2008. The ocean surface should be expected to freeze every winter unless winter temperatures get much higher. The real question is, how thick is that ice and what will it look like in September of 2008? We will get the answer to that soon enough.
DaveE
9/11 denied by some
evolution denied by some
age of the earth denied by some
global climate change denied by some
Soon all of these groups will march together with their banners gloriously waving in the breeze
If the ice breaker HAD been able to make that Northwest Passage it would have set a record for earliest of the year, most waut until July1st or later
And if polar bears could fly we’d all need better hats. What’s your point?
Here’s an article you guys might find interesting:
http://www.nosocialism.com/2008/06/global-warming-make-that-cooling.html
[…] Arctic sea ice back to its previous level, bears safe; film at 11 […]
I just want to know if the polar bears are drowning
The area of “sea ice” (a thin layer when compared to the mass of an “ice sheet”) varies wildly. But the tremendous mass of the WAIS (25.4 million km3)
is steadily & measurably decreasing.
TOTAL DISINFORMATION !
The pictures comparing Feb 1980 to Feb 2008 don’t make any sense :
1- In 1980 the continent is green then in 2008 it is white. It was green in Feb 1980, I was skiing at Mont Ste-Anne and it was an excellent snowy winter. This lie is so obvious that it deserves a denunciation. I can only think that the University of Illinois is corrupted…
2- The 2008 picture white covering the continent looks like a normal snow cover because it goes back to green in the southern regions. They want people to believe there was an increase since 1980 to associate it with the main subject lie : sept 2007 minimum was a glitch and ice is coming back.
3- “Sea ice concentration” units are not explained. Why ? Because the only way these “picture” could be almost identical is about the percentage of coverage by ice, any thickness. It a distorted “concentration” of surface “pixels” of ice.
The ice thickness and surface both diminished, the volume diminished. In science concentration is a quetion of mass or volume, not of surface.
4- Febuary is very close to the annual maximum of sea ice cover (wich is around march as seen from the 2007 graph. So the fact they use data during the maximum to proclaim that 2007 was a false alarm is scientific garbage.
The minimum ice of Sept 2007 was 20% less then the minimum of 2005 it self an all time record.
5- Honest scientifics in Canada are presently saying that we could have, for the first time ever, absolutly no arctic sea ice at all VERY SOON. Some bet even in Sept 2008!
Radio-Canada interviewed scientists from Environment Canada who said it could be in September 2008, more likely in 2009 and certainly not further then 2010.
6- IPCC most pessimists models were predicting not before 2040 or so. Now don’t tell me the IPCC could not be more accurate then that. Simulations are not as complex as they want you to think: they purposefully made GROSS “errors”.
I bet Illinois University had many scientists on the IPCC.
This article is pseudo-scientific propaganda produced by scientific WHORES. The only science here is that of disinformation, mass mind control with tainted data.
Well we have are answer. Here we are in September and the artic ice has melted to the point where it is no longer pack ice but seperate floating ice pieces. These pieces are so thin many will not last the summer. The coast gaurd is scrambling to get a foothold in all the new teritory as unfrozen country bountries become accessable. If people thing the ice is not melting they should do the research and check it out. Friends of mine just sailed the north west passage (not many have done that) they report the melt is massive. Those that think it isn’t melting will probably still be saying that when there is only water left.
Its really interesting to see a website where the status-quo of climate change thinking is refuted.
In reality the earth has been warming since approximately 1976, directly after the unusual long summer of that year. But the effects of this warming had a long time lag, indeed the harsh winters of the 1960’s and early 1970’s abated into the 1980’s, with some harsh winters but a warming trend, into the ridiculously mild winters of the mid 1990’s, which by 2002 had begun to level off, and by 2007 had all but ended.
In reality the scientific evidence is all to sketchy to be completely sure, apart from when it began and when it appears to be leveling off. But to attribute it to Co2 or methane increase from humans is STUPID. For a couple of reasons.
1) Co2 only makes up 0.04% of the earths atmosphere. It is a trace gas! Theres more Argon in the atmosphere than co2. To attribute it all to a trace gas is VERY strange! Take a sealed greenhouse, increase the Co2 level from 0.04 to 0.06%, think you’ll see an temperature increase??? Wait 20yrs, think you’ll see one!!! Makes me laugh.
2) The earths temperature routinely changes across time periods. When the Romans were in Britain it was warmer than today. Vineyards were abundant in London, note the roads still named after them. Note how wide the rivers were as they sailed their galleons up and down them….
3) Its really all about big business. By the late 1980’s the scientific community had latched onto the idea, then the green-left, then everyone who knew next to nothing about climate… RESULT…. Mult-billion pound bullshit industry….
There is only one driver of climate change… Its called the Sun.
Mr Bill Barrett said: …into the ridiculously mild winters of the mid 1990’s, which by 2002 had begun to level off, and by 2007 had all but ended.
Well here in central europe, we had two very warm winters. – 06/07 and 07/08. In fact, January and February were spring months here for two years 🙁
Ashford, Kent… Mid December 2007.
Lake in my neighbourhood…. 60metree wide, 100metres long, 10metres deep…
In what was supposedly one of the warmest winters on record from the dates 15th December 2007 to 24th December…. Frozen solid, from end to end. Ice was a foot deep for a few days as I tested it….
Then on 25th December 2007 weather changed, warmed rapidly, and then un til and of January, very mild…..
Is this unusual…. No…. The winter weather goes up and down like yo-yo.
Last week in Uk has been unusually cold for this time of year, now the Met office predicts temperatures will average around 11degrees C, for Southern Uk, exactly right for this time of year.
By mid December we’ll have nigh frosts every night (not as severe as 1960’s) but they’ll happen) and in between there will be warm winds from the SW and thus midler nights.
Is this global warming!!??? NOOOOOOO.. Its normal and natural and I’m honestly fed up with little green fools waffling on about how we are polluting the planet.
End of my rant!