In the thread where we have examined the visual discrepancies in sea ice report that concerned a number of people, William Chapman of the University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana joined in the discussion today. Mr. Chapman is the man responsible for maintaining the popular Cryosphere Today website, which shows sea ice extent data and visuals for both the Arctic and Antarctic. I asked him a some questions about the website and he graciously responded within the hour.
I asked about the new color scheme and map that had been recently implemented:
Q: What prompted the color scheme change in recent days?
A: I added three new color schemes about 40 days ago (July 11; is that ‘recent’?). I was hoping for more detail in the images “from the satellite perspective” in the images shown on the main page. The AMSR-E data provide more spatial resolution so I switched data sources and color schemes for those home page images. IMPORTANT: The data used for all other timeseries and comparison graphics have stayed the same (SSMI) obviously, to avoid any issues with data inhomogeneity in time. The AMSR-E data source is only used for the high resolution Northern Hemisphere graphics on the main page. I hope to convert the Southern Hemisphere as well over the next month. The AMSR-E is a relatively new platform, so maybe after it has been around for 10-15 years or so, and has a proven track-record, we can switch the timeseries and other data over entirely to that platform. I have included links to the old SSMI images on the main page for those who prefer them or want to compare current conditions to historic conditions (prior to the AMSR-E launch).
The new maps are graphically better, in my opinion, than the older presentation.
But the real surprise came when I asked him about a comment from Al Gore that had been prominently displayed on the Cryosphere today web page for several months. I’ve seen several comments about this appearing to illustrate a potential bias at CT. It went like this:
You’ve heard Al Gore say “The Earth has a fever”? It may also have major tooth decay.
Here is how Mr. Chapman responded:
Q: Why do you have a quote from a politician (Al Gore) on a web page presenting science? This is a question many people have raised.
A: [ I ] didn’t realize it was a concern for many people. All references to Al Gore have been removed.
Kudos to Mr. Chapman for his willingness to consider the issue, and for acting quickly when it was pointed out. You can read the original comment here
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I’m noticing that reasonable and firm engagement of the various agencies/people that provide information to the public (the media outlets excepted) is beginning to generate responses that move them back to neutral reporting of information. And today I even saw an article that included a statements that a single event (a large crack in the Petermann glacier in Greenland) does not necessarily relate to global warming. Keep up the good work, Anthony.
A report about the increasing sceptics at the International Geological Congress.
http://www.rightsidenews.com/200808191759/energy-and-environment/global-warming-skeptics-prominently-featured-at-international-scientific-meeting.html
Regards,
Steamboat jack
It seems the skeptical scientists are finally coming out of the closet… 😉 It’s about time the AGW warmers feet are held to the fire.
Nice spin, but here are the facts:
The original article calculated that the Arctic sea ice extent had increased over 30% from the sea ice extent from last year’s blowout melt record. In fact, the increase at August 11 was around 10-14%. The author Steven Goddard has since published corrections both on the original article site, and here:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/arctic-ice-extent-discrepancy-nsidc-versus-cryosphere-today/
Mr. Goddard is trying to link his mistaken calculation to incorrect image data on Cryosphere Today, but CT’s Mr. Chapman asserts the key mistake is Mr. Goddard’s attempt to measure ice extent from a two dimensional display image, and incorrect projection corrections.
This is the most important result; the information presented here was inaccurate, and the conclusions drawn from the information were unjustified.
The Arctic sea ice area (better measure than ice extent) could still match last year’s record melt, and if not, come in at a close second. As Mr. Chapman said, “the Earth may have a serious case of tooth decay” when we look at Arctic ice.
Arctic sea ice on Cryosphere today looks like the foot print from a duck! Webbed and whatnot.
Hmm. Me thinks melting is over with…
Paul K,
Only this has happened before, in the 20s & 30s. it appears to be part of a cycle, not an ‘unprecedented event’ as it is being portrayed by many pro-AGW bloggers (Littlejohn v Monkton debate).
I still don’t like how this is presented.
The real measure of the melt is the volume, not the surface area.
Bill Marsh… We don’t have satellite records, or submarine observations from the 20s and 30s, but the best records of Arctic ice levels are likely the submarine records that the US Navy has from over the last 50 years or so.
It really bothers me, that one of the most aggressive forecasts for ice melt, comes from Dr. Maslowski from the US Naval Postgraduate School. I know many of the skeptics perhaps don’t trust government organizations like the US military, but as a scientists, shouldn’t we look at who has the best data? And in terms of ice levels, water temperatures, and ocean currents, the US Navy has the best data.
Here is a link to Dr. Maslowski’s views:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm
Incidentally, the original submarine surveys of Arctic ice showed numerous ridges of ice that extended 20-30 meters into the ocean: these ridges have essentially disappeared, and the vast majority (about 90%) of the Arctic is currently covered by first year ice, typically only a meter thick.
Can I ask why you don’t accept the US Navy records? Do you have a bias against US military records?
Austin, I agree, the volume of ice is the most important factor. Thus the disappearance of the multiyear ice, is critical, and the data clearly show the disappearance of thick ice across the Arctic.
Without knowing thickness (volume) we really can’t put much on area or extent. Austin is right, the amount of ice is the key issue. Wind and ocean currents can disperse ice far and wide or confine it. How much of “it” is a better indicator.
Paul K-
This is the most important result of your post: 2008 will clearly not match 2007’s low extent, and your conclusions drawn from the information are unjustified.
We have Arctic ice extent records since 1979, people. To assume that the Earth has “tooth decay” because of current low Arctic ice extent is a little bit ridiculous and unfounded.
The combination of strong +PDO and +AMO will naturally result in warmer temperatures and less ice in the Arctic. The AMO went positive in 1995, and what do you know, Arctic ice has been decreasing since then. However, the PDO has recently gone negative and the AMO is expected follow suit at some point…
http://www.intellicast.com/Community/Content.aspx?a=127
Jared, if you read my post, I said the ice AREA could match the 2007 minimum area (about 3.0 million square kilometers), and although unlikely, it might (current sea ice area is about 3.6-3.7 million and it is still dropping about 0.1 million every couple of days).
I have agreed with other posters, that area is better than extent, in terms of ice measurement, but the best measure is the actual volume (area X ice thickness). I pointed out that the US Navy has ice depth information going back 50 years, and clearly the ice thickness across the Arctic has been decimated, with the huge reduction of the thicker multifyear ice, and the desappearance of the underwater ice ridges.
So we have the minimum area setting new records, multiplied by the clearly thinner ice levels = record setting low ice volumes.
Check the lower jaw, as well, before forming your diagnosis…
What would be wrong with putting the ‘new and improved data processing on page two’. To change the presentation now seems a little suspect, especially for those who don’t know or care what the changes were. The changeover to new data processing must be highlighted so the uninitiated does not get taken in by the changes and draw unwarranted conclusions — It’s the least that should be acceptable, highlighting the changes.
I defer to Prof Bob Carter for the wrap-up of climate science. His lecture series(four part) youtube videos give some of the clearest presentation of where we are with climate science and what it means. It’s not like scientists aren’t trying, it is what it is, but we don’t have reliable, accurate data over a long enough period of time to conclude anything. Forget those computer models, they produce what the modelers want them to produce.
To base trillions of dollars on this level of science is just pure folly. It’s like saying ‘pay more in taxes and government will pretend to control the weather’. Who would fall for that hoax.
I just realized that some commenters may not know how sea ice is measured. A quick summary might be helpful. Sea ice extent is the area of the ocean that has at least 15% ice in each of the grid cells (25×25 km2). The ice area is the actual area of the Arctic ocean covered by ice, accounting for the open water between the ice floes.
Last year at this time, the area had almost bottomed at about 3 million km2… and the ice extent was about 4.5 million, so the average ice concentration was about 66%. The remaining ice was pushed together by currents and wind, so the extent dropped to about 4.2 million, with an area just below 3 for an average ice concentration of 71-72% at the end of the melt season.
This year we have a current ice extent of about 5.5 million with an ice area of about 3.7 million, so the average ice concentration is about 66%. But this year the ice area is continuing to fall. Since so much of the ice at the fringes this year is first year ice, instead of multiyear ice, it is more difficult to know how much the thinner ice has rotted out this year, and forecast the final ice area. So we really don’t know yet, where we might end up, but the next couple of weeks will tell the story.
In any case, this year’s melt does not represent any kind of real recovery, contrary to statements made here and elsewhere, since last winter. The winter was unusually cold, and ice extent expanded rapidly, so the starting ice level was much higher in 2008 than 2007, and yet we are within spitting distance of last year’s record low ice area. The amount of ice area that melted off this year, is as large, if not larger, than last year.
Hopefully we get a cold winter, and get some kind of meaningful recovery, but if we get a normal winter, and the same kind of melt next year as we saw in 07 and 08, then a new low record will be set.
I hope, for mankind’s sake, and the sake of our planet, that the skeptics are right, and the Arctic ice quickly mends this winter and next year. Our future depends on the skeptics being right, and my analysis indicates they don’t have such a good record at being correct.
Paul K: I normally avoid discussions along these lines, but your statements on the original thread prompted me to change personal policy. You wrote of Al Gore’s being “active in advancing scientific efforts for over 30 years. Why isn’t his view on scientific developments appropriate, especially in view of his Nobel prize?”
Al Gore did not win a Nobel Prize for the purported science contained within his movies or his speeches. His monocular view of climate change has little basis in science; it is, however, ripe with contrived environmental alarmism.
While in office, Al Gore’s activism had not been focused on “advancing scientific efforts,” but on advancing agenda-driven policy. As Vice President, he fired William Happer, director of energy research at the U.S. Department of Energy. Why? Because the testimony Happer gave before the House Energy and Water Development Subcommittee on Appropriations disagreed with Gore’s environmentally fueled view of ozone depletion and of climate change. Happer was quoted then, “I was told that science was not going to intrude on policy.”
Since leaving office, Al Gore’s activism has not been focused on “advancing scientific efforts;” his focus has been on increasing Al Gore’s net worth.
Fellow readers: there have been a lot of posts about the sea ice recovering this year, on this site. Check this post out:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/arctic-sea-ice-back-to-its-previous-level-bears-safe-film-at-11/
That post was safely written last winter, but now that ice is gone, and the bears are in trouble. How about a headline for this story?
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/multiple-polar-bears-discovered-swimming/story.aspx?guid=%7B9D938E1B-7204-4D4E-8ACF-9EC53B685635%7D&dist=hppr.
Quote from story:
Professor Richard Steiner of the University of Alaska’s Marine Advisory Program said, “While these bears are swimming around in an ice-free coastal Arctic Ocean, the only thing the State of Alaska is doing is suing the federal government trying to overturn the listing of polar bears. The bottom line here is that polar bears need sea ice, sea ice is decaying, and the bears are in very serious trouble. For any people who are still non-believers in global warming and the impacts it is having in the Arctic, this should answer their doubts once and for all.”
The ice starts freezing back in 3-4 weeks like it always has.
On September 21, twenty-four hours of darkness sets in and it starts to get really cold in the Arctic Circle. The average annual temperature at the North Pole is -24.5C.
All this scare-mongering about a little ice melting for a few weeks in the summer is rather ridiculous. There will always be ice at the North Pole for 11 months of the year and it has always melted for a month or two in the summer.
Thanks to the tilted spherical planet we live on, there has always been six months of darkness at the North Pole during the entire 4.45 billion year history of the planet (or at least since the event which created the moon and tilted the planet occurred).
It has always been very cold in the Arctic during the winter and it is likely there has always been ice there in the winter. And this has always been followed by lots of melting in the 24 hours of sunshine which happens in the summer every year for the entire 4.45 billion years the Earth has been here.
Global warming will not make the world flat, it will stay as tilted sphere and the ice will freeze back for another 11 months, just like it always has. None of the warmers have ever taken a geology or a geography class.
Paul K,
We don’t have satellite records, or submarine observations from the 20s and 30s, but the best records of Arctic ice levels are likely the submarine records that the US Navy has from over the last 50 years
But there are many earlier mariners/ explorers records of attempts to navigate the Arctic. Who knows what the real extent of Arctic ice was at that time? Just because we now have better, ie submarine and satellite, measurements doesn’t mean that before these were available the ice extent was always stable.
In fact the earlier records seem to indicate that there were considerable changes over time, its just that we, today like those at the time, are unable to determine how great those changes were.
Paul K,
I’ll try to explain this to you one more time……
Bill Chapman’s comments about map distortion are completely accurate, and the same thing I have been saying. Pixels at lower latitudes are underrepresented in that projection. Thus, lower latitude pixels need to be adjusted upwards.
Because of this, 2008 which has more pixels at lower latitudes than 2007, gets adjusted upwards more. Adjustment increases the discrepancy – making the problem worse. There is something more serious wrong with the maps from August, 2007. I sent Anthony an image from August 15, 2007 earlier showing the large discrepancy between NSIDC and UIUC, and hopefully he can post it here?
I have been working with Dr. Meier at NSIDC on resolving the source of the error. He of course is interested in making sure that Arctic information is consistent. Dr. Meier also told me that NSIDC teaches their students pixel counting as a way to estimate Arctic ice.
Bill Illis, could I ask some questions on your statements?
You wrote: “All this scare-mongering about a little ice melting for a few weeks in the summer is rather ridiculous. There will always be ice at the North Pole for 11 months of the year and it has always melted for a month or two in the summer.”
Which years has the ice “melted at the North Pole for a month or two in the summer” ? I would to check the ice records for those years.
You wrote: “Global warming will not make the world flat, it will stay as tilted sphere and the ice will freeze back for another 11 months, just like it always has. None of the warmers have ever taken a geology or a geography class.”
The best known report on AGW is the IPCC report. You say none of the scientists who authored the IPCC report, “have ever taken a geology or geography class”. What is your basis for this statement? Could you give me a dozen names of these uneducated scientists?
I eagerly await your answers.
For the arctic domino theory of AGW models it is not the sea ice volume which counts, it is the surface. Albedo change happens when you change the ice coverage area. It may matter whether the ice is thin or very thin. Only if the polar sea becomes ice free quickly in early summer, significant albedo change may occur (domino stone number 1).
Only then this may be sufficient to warm up the permafrost areas in adjacent northern Sibiria, Canada and Alaska. And to possibly free further greenhouse gases such as methane in great numbers. And by that to warm further (domino stone number 2) so that the Greenland glacier starts to melt significantly which should raise the sea level by meters (domino stone number 3).
If however run-off from the Sibirian rivers increases due to warming, salinity in the polar sea may drop and freezing may occur at higher temperatures, a negative feedback. Sibirian rivers seemed to have had a 10 % increase in run-off during the last, warm decades.
Incidentally, Hudson bay has had ice coverage long into the summer, probably because of the sweeter water there.
Are such feedbacks all included in Dr. Maslowski’s models?
Surely, the ice was thicker in the Nineteen-sixties. Remember, at that time we had predictions of a new ice age coming soon.
Now 30-40 years of warming have occured. Whether this happened by 2/3 due to AGW and by 1/3 due to strong solar cycles – this is the official IPCC statement – or whether it happened by somewhat more of solar cycle effects and somewhat less of AGW, that is the big question under debate.
There are indications of global cooling for the last two or so years and a plateau before. Solar cycle 23 has not been too strong in its waning years, whenever they may end, so a lower bound for the solar impact would be to assume a -1/3 contribution from the sun. AGW should have increased even more, mainly because of the dramatic increase of the Chinese coal consumption from less than 1 bn tons to now 3 bn tons in the last ten years.
This still should lead to net warming of 1/3 of the previous values or more., but not to cooling.
Finally think of the thermal expansion of the oceans which caused the sea level to raise by 3 cm- hard data. Temperature increases are observed down to 1000 m and more. From the distribution of the temperature rises – hard data – you can calculate the additional heat stored. It is ten times the additional heat which is stored in the atmosphere. This is a big buffer when cooling starts. So you wonder a bit why this buffer and the increased AGW have not prevented cooling at all.
In conclusion you may think that this somewhat more of solar contribution is 1/3 or even bigger. Then a 2/3 or bigger total solar contribution to the previous warming may also easily explain why the oceans have been warmed in such big depths. Sun light pentrates down to 100 Meter, while the infrared light of the AGW effect penetrates only 1 Millimeter.
Paul K, you may avoid making vague claims and simply show us where to find the “best records” of Artic sea ice thickness.
The processing of these “best records” (by yet another model) has been made by Rothrock et Al 1999 in GRL and I’m not impressed: data end in 1997 and only one comparison is made between 2 periods: 1958-73 compared to 1993-1997 on… 29 (!) locations.
And Rothrock, whose claim that the Arctic’s thickness has decreased 40% has been circulated worlwide by AGWers, has been contradicted by Winsor* who found that there was no decrease of ice thickness in the 90s or Holloway** who found much smaller decrease or even no decrease if you shift the comparison periods by just 1 year ! (cherrypicking ?).
So please Paul K, be specific and show us these “best data” and tell us what “best” is compared to.
AFAIK, there is no consensus on the usability of those data to determine thickness and trends in thickness and depending on the model to interpolate them, results vary wildly.
* Winsor, P., 2001. Arctic sea ice thickness remained constant during the 1990s, Geophysical Research Letters, 28, 1039–1041.
**Holloway, G., and T. Sou, 2002. Has Arctic Sea Ice Rapidly Thinned? Journal of Climate, 15, 1691–1701.
Paul K,
I do not see in any of your posts where you attribute the ice melt to AGW. I understand your point that one should not be using the lesser ice melt this year as any kind of a sign of global cooling. I am just curious about your position on AGW and GW. Are you a proponent of natural cycles or is it all our fault?