During our last check in, we had a look at northern Canada from the Arctic Circle to the North pole, and found we had quite a ways to go before we see an “ice free arctic” this year as some have speculated.
Today I did a check of the NASA rapidfire site for TERRA/MODIS satellite images and grabbed a view showing northern Greenland all the way to the North Pole.
There’s some bergy bits on the northeastern shore of Greenland, but in the cloud free area extending all the way to the pole, it appears to still be solid ice.
Click for a larger image – Note: image has been rotated 90° clockwise and sat view sector icon and time stamp added, along with “N” for north pole marker.
Link to original source image is here:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?T082121805
With more than half of the summer melt season gone, it looks like an uphill battle for an ice-free arctic this year.
Here is another view from today from the Aqua satellite:
Click for a larger image – Note: image has been rotated 90° counter- clockwise and sat view sector icon and time stamp added, along with “N” for north pole marker.
Source image is here:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?A082121655
This dovetails with a press release and news story about more ice than normal in the Barents Sea
From the Barents Observer:
http://www.barentsobserver.com/?cat=16149&id=4498513
New data from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute shows that there is more ice than normal in the Arctic waters north of the Svalbard archipelago.
In most years, there are open waters in the area north of the archipelago in July month. Studies from this year however show that the area is covered by ice, the Meteorological Institute writes in a press release.
In mid-July, the research vessel Lance and the Swedish ship MV Stockholm got stuck in ice in the area and needed help from the Norwegian Coast Guard to get loose.
The ice findings from the area spurred surprise among the researchers, many of whom expect the very North Pole to be ice-free by September this year.
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No, no, all the ice has melted! From Yahoo news:
“Gary Stern, co-leader of an international research program on sea ice, said it’s the same story all around the Arctic.
Speaking from the Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen in Canada’s north, Stern said He hadn’t seen any ice in weeks. Plans to set up an ice camp last February had to be abandoned when usually dependable ice didn’t form for the second year in a row, he said.”
“no ice in weeks” ? Good grief.
Jeff Alberts (15:09:28) :
Experts may not lie, but they tend to lack humility and perspective.
Yes, and sometimes they just lie.
Look at what the catastrophic, unnatural, and manmade sea ice melt has just done in the past few days: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Is there an negative correlation between global temperatures and Arctic ice extent? The past year has seen a big temperature drop while Arctic ice hit record low levels. The past month or two, as ice melt has slowed down, so has the fall in global temperatures. The only mechanism I can think of is the extra heat required for the solid-to-liquid phase change (i.e. melt).
Does anybody have back-of-the-envelope calculations of the number of terrajoules required to melt a million square km of 1-metre-thick ice? Would it produce a noticable temperature blip?
It looks as though the Arctic sea ice is melting at a slower than average pace now, unless I’m imagining things when I see a slight upward course for the blue line in the past few days:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Retired Engineer,
Sounds like someone is washing the hog again.
From 2007:
“The CCGS Amundsen will leave Quebec City on July 26. During its 469-day voyage, it will explore several sectors of the Canadian Arctic, travelling as far north as 81° N in Kane Basin. It will also have to navigate the most difficult part of the Northwest Passage, Bellot Strait, which marks the northernmost point of the continent.”
http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/media/npress-communique/2007/qr-rq30-eng.htm
Now I don’t know whether this mission is still ongoing or where Cap’n Stern and/or his ship may actually be at the moment, but most every year around this time the Beaufort Sea north of Canada is free of ice for some many miles out. And I doubt the visibility is always such that the Cap’n could see that far if near shore. But if he were around one of the Islands, or the Passage through them, or anywhere near 81N, I’d suggest he got his glasses fixed, or hired on with Exxon haulin oil. Or perhaps he is vacationing in Cancun and can’t see the ice in his drink.
These Ice Shelves on the northern end of Baffin Island are “stranded glaciers”.
They are no longer being fed by land-based glaciers from the centre of the Island as they were about 3,000 years ago.
They will slowly melt and break away until a new ice age builds up a new bigger glacier on Baffin Island.
Glaciers do not build up on the ocean. They will never be more than a few metres above the sea level. Icebergs only come from land-based glaciers and the push of bigger land-based glaciers in the interior.
These ice shelves have been breaking up and slowly melting away for 3,000 years.
Of course, the ice scientists know this. But they will not say so when interviewed by the media because, in many ways, their livelihood and their organization’s budget depend on the hype.
Retired Engineer (18:22:40) wrote: “Speaking from the Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen in Canada’s north, Stern said He hadn’t seen any ice in weeks. ”
He could be telling a half truth if he’s been staying down in the crew’s quarters too long. This is one way they can lie with a straight face… don’t look at the evidence! Tell him to get topside and take off his blinders!
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
Talk about the blind leading the blind… That’s the blogosphere for you.
I’m a skeptic of the correlation between human-produced CO2 and global warming. But I FULLY trust my friend Derek, a polar scientist, who has been walking the ice shelves, taking samples, measuring cracks, and studying decades-worth of scientific record for the past 10 years.
He has been there, he is humble and possessed of enormous perspective (Mr. Alberts), he has a family about which he cares deeply, and wants nothing more than to alert the rest of the world of the possibility that humans may be pooping in their own dog-dish.
In other words, I trust the person who has been there, reports facts, and does so rationally and without political or economic bias (i.e. he is not getting the least bit rich in the pursuit of facts). I trust him far more than I trust armchair-google-earth-bafflegabbers.
Shame on every blog responder who, like the bully in the schoolyard, flings insults like ‘has-been’, ‘hubris’, and ‘lacks humility’ without knowing who he or she is talking about. And yes, that includes this responder.
M.
P.S. a story briefly quoting Derek’s findings, sourced from Reuters, published in a newspaper notoriously skeptical about global warming: http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/story.html?id=688218
Del (17:56:27) :
Thanks so much for that Onion article! It had me LOLOL!!
Marcusiologist:
Even that part of the AGW scientific establishment that strives to be honest has been largely rendered powerless by the rising tide of fear and propaganda on which the movement floats. Has your friend the scientist informed you that panicked news articles were being written about the end of Arctic ice 70 years ago? Has he informed you that the Northwest Passage has been navigated serially, starting at least 1,000 years ago? If your friend the scientist wants to start a sheep ranch on Greenland, the way the Vikings did 1,000 years ago, you might want to think twice before joining him there. It’s a lot icier and colder on Greenland now than it was when the Vikings built their settlements there. If you do go and try to raise sheep there, you’re going to want your warmest sleeping bag and some good boot and glove warmers!
Walter,
This site has a write up on energy required to melt ice (and discusses the volcanism in the Gakkel range – which isn’t generating enogh energy to melt the ice to any great extent – mostly because it has to heat a few thousand million gal of seawater first).
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/volcanos-in-gakkel-ridge-not-responsible-melting-the-arctic-ice/
marcusiologist,
Your friend may be a true believer in AGW, but because part of an ice shelf breaks off, or the Arctic starts to melt, is not itself evidence of AGW. It is anecdotal, and we are all capable of excercising that type of reasoning at times. And as far as I know the conditions in the Arctic have not been connected to AGW with any hard science as yet, and there exists scientific literature claiming that it does not appear to be directly connected to global warming. If your friend is truly alerting you or the “rest of the world of the possibility that humans may be pooping in their own dog-dish” I suggest you take a step back and consider that he may not be anymore right than a google armchair expert. But as long as he uses such words as “possibility” and “may” then he should be safe from at least harsh criticism. There is a possibility that we all may not really exist except in the mind of an alien child playing with his quantum computer.
Bill Marsh,
I have a hard time understanding how a temperature increase of maybe a degree F could melt the Arctic as well. But I wonder whether if some egghead that took an interest in underwater volcanic action could tie it in some way to Arctic melt, changing currents or seawater chemistry, or just raw temp increases at sensitive points…does it have to be a single location emitting enough temp to heat gadzillions of gallons of seawater? And could it not be a partial factor in the Arctic melt?
It occurs to me that very little is known about what is going on under the ocean in and around the Arctic, or anywhere else for that matter. I find outright dismissals a little premature and unscientific.
Glenn,
I don’t outright dismiss it, I’m skeptical. Even though it generates a lot of heat, there’s a great deal more water than volvcano. That link I cited has a nice analysis of just how much heat and how much ice that heat could melt (if it was near the surface).
Barrow has been running around 6°C below the July average high and 2° below the average July low. July is typically the warmest month and things begin to cool into August 24-hr sun ends and cools very much so in September as days become notably shorter. I don’t think they’ll even get close to an Arctic passage this summer, let along an ice-free arctic this year.
Marcusiologist: Just because a scientist is sincere does not mean he or she does not have human failings such as a limited time perspective. When I read that a scientist such as Derek declare that such and such an event is ” a bit of a wake-up call”, I go “whoa”! I consider this kind of statement a red flag. Just because an unusual event such as an ice shelf breakup occurs in one’s lifetime, it does not logically follow that this event must have some greater meaning in relation to a popular paradigm. It does not necessarily imply human caused global warming. It might be that considering long term changes in many conditions, including a warming phase globally, this kind of event is ripe, whether you have a climate change ideology or not. The jump to the dire warning is par for the course today. Take some knowledge, mix it with the prevailing thought matrix of the end is near, and voila! you have another scientist jumping to a conclusion that the facts do not necessitate (repeat, necessitate). Scientists are humans; they are influenced by others and subject to the herd mentality. Intellect does not innoculate one from these weaknesses — only the will to look at alternative views can hope allay this tendency.
And for an anecdotal weather report here in NE Florida, the meteorologists at channel 4 just reported that they’ve gone back through over 30 years of records and have not yet found another month of July with so few 90-degree days.
Marcus, with all respect to you and your friend, it sounds like he does lack perspective. 10 years is not a long time. If he had perspective he would know that nothing happening now is unprecedented in any way, either in scale or time frame, as far as we know. Unfortunately for him the same type of data he is now gathering isn’t available for, say, 80 years ago (Not saying that’s specifically true, just giving a hypothetical). Which means you can’t just suddenly measure something, and say that because the measurement from a few years ago is different that there is now some sort of emergency. We frankly don’t know enough about these regions to know what’s “normal” outside our extremely small window of knowledge. If you want to talk about what should be happening then you have to call ice ages “normal”, as of the last couple million years. And we certainly don’t want another ice age.
With the sun’s elevation now dropping about 2 degrees per week, and the Arctic Oscillation forecast to be negative through mid-August, there won’t be much more melting in the Arctic this season.
The NSIDC graph shows that melting slowed to almost zero a few days ago, and Arctic ice extent is headed back towards normal.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Re swapie:
I guess that would according to GISS make this the 5 warmest July in NE Florida, ever 😉
Right you are, mbabbitt, about the limited time perspective that 10 years truly is in assessing weather, let alone climate.
Usual alarmist BS from the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7532435.stm
These three sites seem to monitor weather/ (7 day climate?) quite well:
There has been some normal heating in NH for last 2 weeks as expected since 9/10 of land mass mid-summer in NH but now the “real” cold seems to be spreading both NH and SH
http://wxmaps.org/pix/clim.html
click on each continent temperatures
The trend at wxmaps seems to be highly correlated with satellite temperatures if you look closely (you have to follow it probably on a weekly basis.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
900, 600 and 400 mb level.
From this we could expect major cooling in SH and then NH. Another good pointer is this 7 animation of land/sea temp anomalies.
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_01a.fnl.anim.html
So these three measurements seem to monitor day to day and 7 trend data quite well. Comments welcomed
What I find interesting is the cold pools forming (and disappearing intermittingly, of course)in the NH (arctic and Northern Russia, North America and Europe for past 6-7 month as distinct to last year when warm pools predominated there. Also the SH warm pools during SH antarctica are quite interesting. Seems to be a flip-flop from last year. Must be the sun… whether geomagnetic, TSI or some other factor me thinks…., because earths atmosphere hasn’t changed in the meantime has it?
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_01a.fnl.anim.html
re previous Vincent and cloud formation of course (probably anomalous heat of over antarctica)