We have news from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). They say: The melt is over. And we’ve added 9.4% ice coverage from this time last year. Though it appears NSIDC is attempting to downplay this in their web page announcement today, one can safely say that despite irrational predictions seen earlier this year, we didn’t reach an “ice free north pole” nor a new record low for sea ice extent.
Here is the current sea ice extent graph from NSIDC as of today, notice the upturn, which has been adding ice now for 5 days:
Here is what they have to say about it:
The Arctic sea ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent for the year, the second-lowest extent recorded since the dawn of the satellite era. While above the record minimum set on September 16, 2007, this year further reinforces the strong negative trend in summertime ice extent observed over the past thirty years. With the minimum behind us, we will continue to analyze ice conditions as we head into the crucial period of the ice growth season during the months to come.
Despite overall cooler summer temperatures, the 2008 minimum extent is only 390,000 square kilometers (150,000 square miles), or 9.4%, more than the record-setting 2007 minimum. The 2008 minimum extent is 15.0% less than the next-lowest minimum extent set in 2005 and 33.1% less than the average minimum extent from 1979 to 2000.
Overlay of 2007 and 2008 at September minimum
The spatial pattern of the 2008 minimum extent was different than that of 2007. This year did not have the substantial ice loss in the central Arctic, north of the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas. However, 2008 showed greater loss in the Beaufort, Laptev, and Greenland Seas.
Unlike last year, this year saw the opening of the Northern Sea Route, the passage through the Arctic Ocean along the coast of Siberia. However, while the shallow Amundsen’s Northwest Passage opened in both years, the deeper Parry’s Channel of the Northwest Passage did not quite open in 2008.
A word of caution on calling the minimum
Determining with certainty when the minimum has occurred is difficult until the melt season has decisively ended. For example, in 2005, the time series began to level out in early September, prompting speculation that we had reached the minimum. However, the sea ice contracted later in the season, again reducing sea ice extent and causing a further drop in the absolute minimum.
We mention this now because the natural variability of the climate system has frequently been known to trick human efforts at forecasting the future. It is still possible that ice extent could fall again, slightly, because of either further melting or a contraction in the area of the pack due to the motion of the ice. However, we have now seen five days of gains in extent. Because of the variability of sea ice at this time of year, the National Snow and Ice Data Center determines the minimum using a five-day running mean value.
Ongoing analysis continues
We will continue to post analysis of sea ice conditions throughout the year, with frequency determined by sea ice conditions. Near-real-time images at upper right will continue to be updated every day.
In addition, NSIDC will issue a formal press release at the beginning of October with full analysis of the possible causes behind this year’s low ice conditions, particularly interesting aspects of the melt season, the set-up going into the important winter growth season ahead, and graphics comparing this year to the long-term record. At that time, we will also know what the monthly average September sea ice extent was in 2008—the measure scientists most often rely on for accurate analysis and comparison over the long-term.
It will be interesting to see what they offer in the October press release. Plus we’ll be watching how much ice we add this winter, and what next year’s melt season will look like. Hopefully we won’t have a new crop of idiots like Lewis Gordon Pugh trying to reach the “ice free north pole” next year.
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jonk (12:13:50) :
Sorry Evan. I’ve got to stop reading Mary’s posts – bad for my blood pressure.
jonk
I have been reading Mary’s comments long enough to know that it doesn’t take much for Mary Hinge to become unhinged and go on a commentary binge that makes me want to cringe!
[REPLY – Health first! But bear in Mind that Mary is deep in the heart of what may fairly be described as “enemy territory”. She therefore draws a lot of fire, and, like all of us, gets fed up at times. I can sympathize with that. Furthermore, she’s sharp and smart and I find her to be honest in her beliefs and serious about the debate. If I believed AGW was nearing a tipping point, I know I’d be positively frantic. ~ Evan]
I logged on to this item as a class were going out
It was on the data projector
and I heard several express surprise at the “more ice” headline
Maybe I should do that more often
leave it on such a page and see if they ask anything 🙂
I wrote: “If the natural rise and fall were of the same magnitude then the observed temperature would stay level rather than falling.”
Sorry, got that a bit wrong. The observed temperature would still rise, but at half its previous rate.
Hang the deniers in effigy, burn them at the stake. Belay that! Global Cooling is a slam-dunk. Sounds like a return to the cooling of the ’40s-’70s.
Astronomical Influences Affect Climate More Than CO2, Say Experts
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=35857
Hi folks,
This interesting website was thrown up by a google search I’ve set up. I’ve got no personal opinion on the retreat or advance of the ice, or really on global warming, but I have just suggested the overturning of another scientific orthodoxy.
I was very interested to read the comments about the Franklin Expedition and how the members of it were poisoned by the lead in the tinned food they took with them. The eminent palaeo-pathologist Dr. Owen Beattie autopsied the bodies of three Franklin Expedition members and found them to have very high lead burdens. This was also the case with bone fragments from other Expedition members too. Dr. Beattie and his collaborators concluded that this lead had come from tinned food.
I am an independent British archaeologist who has researched the Franklin Expedition extensively. Every one told me as a fact that the lead poisoning was caused by tinned food. This puzzled me because tinned food only made up about 16% of their provisions, and there simply wasn’t enough on the Expedition to account for the very high levels of lead seen in Expedition members’ remains. Also, tinned food was quite widely used elsewhere by the 1840’s, yet didn’t seem to have caused lead poisoning. So I analysed the contemporary records and found that the ships were fitted with a large scale steam heating and desalination system which, given the materials in use at the time, was almost certain to produce water with a truly massive lead burden. Unlike the tinned food, which was used on lots of other Expeditions, this distilled water and steam heating system was unique to these ships for this voyage only. So for the first time we have evidence of a really massive and UNIQUE source of lead pollution on this Expedition.
I’ve attached a link to this comment to the paper I’ve just published on the Hakluyt Society website and if you’re interested I’d be most keen to hear your views.
The reason I’m posting is that the ‘lead from tins’ thing is almost an urban myth. It’s the ONE THING that everybody knows, or thinks they know, about the Franklin Expedition. But I think my paper shows that, as it turns out, this is actually wrong. Just shows how a scientific orthodoxy can be overturned.
Hope you find this interesting
William
Austin, you wrote, “The retained heat flow into the Arctic this year was about half of 2007 all things being equal.” What’s your source and do you have a link? Appreciate it. Thanks.
[…] Up With That has more, including some graph-y goodness. Interestingly, in spite of all this drastic, distastrous […]
[…] Arctic Sea Ice Melt Season Officially Over; ice up over 9% from last year We have news from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). […]
Overall sea ice has been trending down from 1978 to now. Between 2000 and 2007 this trend looks like it may have accelerated. Using Cryosphere Today’s area chart, 3 of these 8 years from 2000 to 2007 have seen increases in ice compared to the previous year.
Since 1990 there have been 3 other years where area has increased by around half a million or more square kilometres from one year to the next.
The most recent run with 3 consecutive years of increasing sea ice minimum was 2003 to 2005. Other 3 year runs of increasing sea ice happend 82-84 and then 85-87 (84-85 was a big decrease)
I cannot find a run of 4 consecutive years of increasing sea ice between 1979 and 2008.
Sorry to be pessimistic, guys, but ‘9%’ more ice means that it’s still at the lowest level since satellite measurement began.
– it the NH is in a cool phase due to the La Nina, then this means that when the next El Nino comes along it’s get even less, right?
– to predict a that there’s a sign of recover from where we are now, is pure wishful thinking
– the trend is still very much heading in the downward direction.
(I wish we could edit our own posts after ‘posting’ to get rid of the typos that you inevitably only see after you’ve hit the ‘submit button!)
S.o.P wrtoe:
are you people serious? It was only the second largest recorded melt in since recording began so it’s no cause of concern? are none of you capable of looking at a graph and seeing a trend line? How does it feel to go through life being functionally illiterate when it comes to math and science?
As others have noted, what kind of trend line is 30 years when you are talking about global temperatures or the polar ice cap?
Anyone care to comment on the book “Unstoppable Global Warming:Every 1,500 Years” by Singer and Avery?
I just read this about the Vikings experience:
Near the end of the 10th century, the Vikings sailed west from Iceland in their now-iconic longships. They soon bumped into a huge new uninhabited island. Its cool waters held plentiful codfish and seals. Green grass covered its shores. The Vikings named it Greenland.
The Vikings soon settled there. They raised sheep and cattle. Grew vegetables. Traded sealskins and rope made from walrus hide to get timber and other things they needed. The colony thrived. By 1100, more than 3,000 people called Greenland home. They had 12 churches. Even had their own bishop.
The Vikings, though they could not have known it, were beneficiaries of the Medieval Warming. For 400 years, the temperatures in Northern Europe were 2 degrees warmer than before. Unfortunately for the Vikings, the Little Ice Age soon followed this period of warming – and lasted for 500 years.
As the Little Ice Age unfolded, ice formed a crust around Greenland’s shores. Supply ships soon struggled to make their way to Greenland’s coast. Winters grew longer. Summers grew shorter. Storms became more violent. The Vikings could no longer farm as they once did. In desperation, they ate their last milk cows. Inuit people came across the ice from the north. Struggles ensued over a smaller number of seals.
In 1410, the last supply ship broke through the ice. Soon thereafter, the settlers perished. Denmark recolonized Greenland in 1721 – more than 300 years later – after the Little Ice Age loosened its grip on the island.
The Viking experience shows how the temperature of the planet ebbed and flowed over the course of hundreds of years. In addition to the Vikings, we have evidence from other early civilizations. The Romans recorded a warming period between 200 B.C. and A.D. 600. They grew grapes in Great Britain and Northern Europe.
Evidence mounts from many sources. Ice cores give us climate histories going back 900,000 years. Seabed sediments, stalagmites, tree rings, fossilized pollen – all point to a roughly 1,500-year cycle of warming and cooling stretching back nearly a million years.
“The Earth continually warms and cools,” the authors note.
Re: Lloyd Graves (19:13:20)
Lloyd Graves refers to the IARC-JAXA Information System (IJIS) (http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm) as a data source. The IJIS provides satellite daily measurement of Arctic ice extent from June, 2002. Rather than comparing year-over-year measurements, it is interesting to compare the cumulative change in ice extent for the 2002:2008 interval. Coincidentally, I suppose, the IJIS data file actual begins on 06/22/02 which is approximately summer solstice in the NH. If you plot the cumulative change in ice extent, you will notice some interesting features, (I haven’t learned how to incorporate Excel graphs into WordPress!!)
1. The cumulative maximum ice extent occurs around March 10 each year and the cumulative minimum occurs around September 21 each year
2. The cumulative maximum ice extent decreased each year from 2003 until 2006 but increased in 2007 and 2008
3. The cumulative minimum ice extent decreased from 2003 until 2006 but increased in 2006 and decreased again in 2007
4. The changes in slope of the ascending and descending phases of the cumulative curve are quite interesting, e.g., the Jun:Sep 2007 slope is the steepest but the Jan: Mar slope changes too. I suppose this indicates that seasonal shifts are occurring in the Arctic but it appears to me that they are not anthropogenic-related.
It’s ok Phil, you don’t have to apologize, some people are pessimists, some are optimists.
[…] – 9% Increase! September 17, 2008 at 4:33 pm | In Uncategorized | Tags: environment Over at another blog it was posted that we currently have over 9% MORE ice than last year! And I’m just a little […]
Did it melt? Or was it pushed into a pile? I have been monitoring the color-coded thickness throughout the melt season. That purple color (before the web guy changed the colors on us), got bigger and bigger and darker and darker while the outside edge of the ice area crept closer towards the pole and the frozen side of Greenland. It is very plausible to state that the thin ice didn’t melt as much as it was pushed into and up against Greenland. Could it be said thus: It didn’t go away, it just moved.
Pamela, the Norwegian blue has wonderful plumage 🙂 it didn’t go away, it was nailed up against Greenland; lovely plumage.
Sorry, couldn’t resist the ultimate sketch about in-your-face denial.
Bob,
Its my own spot calculation. I determined what the composition and volume of the ice melted in 2007 ( mostly multi-year ice ) and that in 2008 ( almost all was first year ice ). if you grant that the first-year ice is half the thickness of multiyear ice and has the same heat of fusion, then you get about half the heat flow. A good first approximation.
The data is out there to make a fine calculation. Someone needs to do it, but I am too busy until the end of the month.
There should also be satellite data somewhere that captures the heat flow out of the earth caused by water condensation to water and to ice. I imagine these are specific wavelengths? Would this firmly prove the CRF/cloud nucleization argument?
Craig D.,
I have written about this “perverse situation” on before on here. My training is philosophical and theological, with a strong amateur talent for politics, so if nobody else consciously noticed it I did.
There are two camps; this is obvious to everyone. There is the pro-AGW crowd, whom I shall call the Hot Heads. And there is the anti-AGW crowd, whom I shall call the Cooler Heads. This is of course in respect to where each camp believes the actual temperatures are leading the scientific data. This seems pretty straightforwards until politics enters the mix. Then very strange, I like to call it perverse (as in unnatural), things start happening.
The run-away global warmists, the Hot Heads, desire to see a modest global cooling while giving us a constant stream of warnings of how AGW is going to destroy the planet. Meanwhile, the Cooler Heads, desire to see a modest global warming while leaning towards the idea that so far the data shows us we are heading into a period of cooler global climate. So each camp is wanting the opposite of what it believes is happening; yet if each somehow received what it wanted, its reason to exist would disappear. Because of the money involved in “fixing” man-made global warming, there is ample reason not to want to have that reason for existence taken away for the Hot Heads. Not so for the other side. Take a look.
Let’s do some hypotheticals of our own. Imagine the unified scientific consensus was that it was not happening and that we were not significant contributors to it. What would people like Al Gore and James Hansen, companies like Lehman Brothers (the self styled future “primary broker for emissions permits”) and GE (makers of energy efficient bulbs) and action groups like Greenpeace do then? Their interests, their purpose, their monetary fortunes and popularity are all put at substantial risk. Point of fact, a large part of the reason for doing what they do is made void. Depending on the depth of their involvement in AGW, it might be a death sentence.
Now, flip it around. If AGW is true, what do people like Anthony, like you and I, or even like Lord Monckton lose? We were wrong about the phenomena, but that’s it. Whether we could then actually do anything to affect global temperature in the opposing direction (i.e., cool the Earth) is a whole other argument. But even if we could you and I still lose relatively little. Sure we might wonder how we were so dead wrong, and yes it might cost us a lot economically, but we’d have the certainty that this was the right step for us and our childeren and grandchildren, etc., to have a future here on the Earth. And that is something that the AGWers will never have in the same sense. Regular folks who have been fooled to buying into it will have that, sure, but the committed, the faithful, they will never have that sense of a future back if they are wrong. They have staked too much on it.
Why do you think Al Gore no longer allows the press into his AGW stump speech meetings? It is because he wants to peddle the same old broken down so-called science without criticism of his efforts. He has a movie, a book, and numerous economic ventures as well as personal reputation riding on this. He has put himself so far into this that he cannot afford to be wrong. Nobody would ever listen to him and most would not want to even associate with him. He might live but in a very real sense he would be destroyed, if AGW were scientifically debunked.
A lot of companies, similar to Lehman Brothers, are in the sway of the Hot Head leadership, such as James Hansen and Al Gore. They are betting future economic enterprises such as carbon emissions certificates markets set up by cap-and-trade government mandated policies (which BOTH presidential candidates endorse by the way – betcha didn’t know that! See the link at the bottom). They stand to make a pile of money with very little risk to their investments. Energy companies will feel the pinch, particulary electricity generators, as they are forced to “clean up or shut down” their power plants, which will raise consumer prices of course. Other companies whose CO2 footprint is smaller, according to proposed guidelines, can sell their leftover certificates at enormous profits. Imagine, you get paid to do literally nothing, and you make a huge PURE profit. Sign me up for that!
Only the trick to this scheme separates the interests of business, which are supposed to be focused on the customer, from the customers interests. The customers’ interests are, of course, receiving said service at the best price available. When your “carbon footprint” increases the cost of business because you may have to buy ECs (emissions certificates), you just pass that on to the customer. If customers leave you because of your pricing, you can shut down your places of business (factories, stores, etc) and make profit off of selling your unneeded ECs because of your now smaller footprint. Again, pure profit for doing nothing.
Now you see why I call this perverse. This is the opposite of what businesses should want. Customer interests and loyalty are supposed to reward shareholders. Not with cap-and-trade. You can make more money by actually working less. The European economy is actually largely based on cap-and-trade policies which have made some companies billions of dollars by selling them to companies in need of them. Allocation of the ECs is determined by the government contingent on what industry you are in. But if you need more you need more. A company will get fined for going over its allotment without buying more ECs.
So now maybe you can see why so much of the establishment, so many otherwise seemingly normal people, are so invested in AGW being true. And why debate must be stifled! And the really perverse thing is that it will all be legal, so rewards and punishments will be backed up by the law. And guess what? It’s already happening. We already have government mandates to “green” up our fuel by adding ethanol and other biomass-derived fuels. So this is not without precedent in our nation.
It is the politics of AGW that make AGW so dangerous, and it is the psuedo-science that gives credibility to it. And that more than anything is why it must be stopped. Let us hope and pray Cooler Heads prevail.
Oops! I forgot the cite for the presidential candiates. sorry!
Here it is.
http://sharp.sefora.org/innovation2008/compare/race/president/2008
“How does it feel to go through life being functionally illiterate when it comes to math and science?”
I’ve got used to it, but will struggle on regardless.
Wondering Aloud (10:04:08) : But Mark… the Antarctic is less than last year but wasn’t last year a “all time” high in the antarctic? And doesn’t a loss of 1million square km barely bring that back into the normal range
What you say is correct; the Antarctic anomaly is very close to zero. The slightly “scary” graph is the overall (Arctic+Antarctic) ice anomaly. At least during the (NH) winter, the Arctic negative anomaly was more or less canceled by the Antarctic positive anomaly, but there is no cancellation at the moment.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
it the NH is in a cool phase due to the La Nina, then this means that when the next El Nino comes along it’s get even less, right?
Not necessarily. It’s not always the temperatures.
Bear in mind that last year’s melt was largely due to errant winds blowing the ice into currents which carried it out of the arctic into warmer water where it melted. This is according to NASA which is definitely pro-AGW theory.
The trend may continue down, but that also may be because of “dirty snow”, which is anthropogenic, but not a CO2-warming effect (also according to NASA). When China and India become sufficiently affluent and clean up their air (MUCH cheaper than getting rid of CO2), this problem will abate without extreme Kyoto-like measures. (Give it two or three decades.)
Think plate tectonics. There can be compression and extension. There may be times dominated by each regime. Phase changes are only one aspect of this.
Good point, Steve! Nice conception.