10/14/2008 7,064,219 square kilometers
10/14/2007 5,487,656 square kilometers
A difference of: 1,576,563 square kilometers, now in fairness, 2008 was a leap year, so to avoid that criticism, the value of 6,857,188 square kilometers can be used which is the 10/13/08 value, for a difference of 1,369,532 sq km. Still not too shabby at 24.9 %. The one day gain between 10/13/08 and 10/14/08 of 3.8% is also quite impressive.
You can download the source data in an Excel file at the IARC-JAXA website, which plots satellite derived sea-ice extent:
Watch the red line as it progresses. So far we are back to above 2005 levels, and 28.7% (or 24.9% depending on how you want to look at it) ahead of last year at this time. That’s quite a jump, basically a 3x gain, since the minimum of 9% over 2007 set on September 16th. Read about that here.
Go nature!
There is no mention of this on the National Snow and Ice Data Center sea ice news webpage, which has been trumpeting every loss and low for the past two years…not a peep. You’d think this would be big news. Perhaps the embarrassment of not having an ice free north pole in 2008, which was sparked by press comments made by Dr. Mark Serreze there and speculation on their own website, has made them unresponsive in this case.
From May 5th, 2008:
“Taken together, an assessment of the available evidence, detailed below, points to another extreme September sea ice minimum. Could the North Pole be ice free this melt season? Given that this region is currently covered with first-year ice, that seems quite possible. “
See the original story here: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/050508.html
What I like about the IARC-JAXA website is that they simply report the data, they don’t try to interpret it, editorialize it, or make press releases on it. They just present the data. Here is their top-down pole view:
Click for a larger image.
h/t to Tom Nelson
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The time-lapsed loop from the satellites is impressive, too.
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/loop/ak-1mo-loop.html
Just a cite from our “favourite” blog (I mean Polar Defense Project):
Arctic sea ice is in rapid decline, with no likelihood of stopping under current conditions. The rate of loss is 30 to 50 years ahead of most predictions and has been seriously underestimated. Many scientists consider that it passed a tipping point 15 to 20 years ago; we are now seeing the results of this.
So we’re over the tipping point! It tells us everything. The rapid decline in the summer months, and now this unprecedented growth rate… It is all due to this so-called tipping point, and of course due to AGW, what else?
Nothing matters.
Cold day today in Alert, Canada: -17 Fahrenheit. That was the temp at high noon. Coldest day of the season that I’ve seen.
http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/WCYLT.html
OT, the record in Ely, Nevada, on Monday morning of 7 degrees Fahrenheit broke the previous morning low record for the date by 8 degrees.
Appears the tail end of the 2008 red line is going straight up. Am I seeing this correctly?
“You forget that more ice is a sign of AGW. /sarcasm”
It is kind of hard to make any argument when everything is a sign of AGW. Coldest winter since 1805;? AGW! Driest summer;? AGW! Most rain;? AGW!
Agh!! I can’t take it.
I notice that Mr Pugh’s (The Arctic Kayaker) blog has ‘comments off’.
I find the tone of this post, with comments like Go nature!, very infantile. What you obviously neglect to mention is that the current ice area is still far below the 1979-2000 mean. From this graph it looks to be about 2 million square kilometres, or about 25 per cent, below the long term average. That would not seem to warrant any enthusiastic proclamations about how great nature is.
You complain that There is no mention of this on the National Snow and Ice Data Center sea ice news webpage. Their last update was on 2 October, 13 days ago. Over the last seven months, as you can see from their archives, they have published an update on average every 15 days. Perhaps you need to be more patient.
How about discussing how thin much of the ice is, even though its areal extent has recovered?
We were probably just helped in part this year by the strong and prolonged La Nina. Yes, much of the younger ice did not melt this year – not as much as would normally be expected, anyway – which helps explain the fast recovery we now see, but there will still be a large proportion of thin, young ice, where decades ago we would have had much thicker, older ice. If we get a strong El Nino, I should not be surprised if we see the 2007 minimum record broken, and by quite a margin, too.
Winter will be starting in the Upper Midwest/N Plains in about 2 weeks. Make sure your Halloween costumes are a few sizes bigger, if you need one :P, for all those warm clothes underneath.
Cold day today in Alert, Canada: -17 Fahrenheit, coldest day of the season I’ve seen. Re-freeze should get a good turbo from temps like that.
Slightly OT, the morning low in Ely, Nevada, on Monday: 7 degrees — beat the previous minimum for the date by 8 degrees.
Whipping up a good batch of cold this year.
A query from my students that I can’t answer related to this topic.
The NSIDC Sea ice extent Anomalies changed significantly between July 2008 and September 2008. For the Arctic in August the July 2008 plot showed that the 1979-2000 baseline mean was 10.1 million sq km. Now the September 2008 version gives the 1979-2000 baseline as 7.0 million sq km. Where did 3.1 million sq km go? Have they removed the polar hole where they have no data?
Meanwhile for Antarctica the baseline mean increased from 16.4 to 18.7 million sq km (no polar hole involved).
A year by year comparison indicates almost every value for the Arctic sea ice extent changed, while the changes for the Antarctic are less apparent.
The methodology on the NSDIC website has been updated this year, but doesn’t explain why these changes to historic data have occurred. Does anyone know?
Thanks
Anthony Isgar: Good point about soot.
“This suggests that soot may contribute to thinning of sea ice (16), melting permafrost, glacier retreat, and accelerating movement of Greenland ice (17).”
http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2003/12/15/2237157100.DC1/7157SuppText.html?ck=nck
“But on snow—even at concentrations below five parts per billion—such dark carbon triggers melting, and may be responsible for as much as 94 percent of Arctic warming.
“Impurities cause the snow to darken and absorb more sunlight,” says Charlie Zender, a climate physicist at the University of California, Irvine. “A surprisingly large temperature response is caused by a surprisingly small amount of impurities in snow in polar regions.””
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=impure-as-the-driven-snow
The trend may not be maintained, as growth is truncated … by the land! So as the ice pack hit’s shore, growth may slow down.
Gary
– on graph for ANTarctic:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/s_plot_daily.html
Crosspatch
– on:Cryosphere Today-problem
(Repost)
It is important to know and understand that the graphs on Cryosphere Today shows Sea Ice “Area” while the other sites, NSIDC and IARC-JAXA, show Sea ICE “Extent”
There IS a difference between those two measures…
Anthony
“to avoid that criticism, the value of 6,857,188 square kilometers can be used which is the 10/13/08 value, for a difference of 1,369,532 sq km. Still not too shabby at 24.9 %.”
IMHO This is the figure that should of been used for the banner headline.
The comment that 2008 was a leap year could have been instructive to the
unwary statistician and the headline and body an example of good journalism.
Thank you for providing excellent commentary on scientific observation.
While poking around for other headlines on this I came up with the following from The Discovery Channel. It is a week old but still interesting for the slant they take.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/07/arctic-sea-ice.html
Is the ice thickness now the new concern?
“Phillip Bratby (10:04:35) :
Anybody taking bets on when the 2008 value exceeds the 1979-2000 average?
Well, not on it crossing the average, but Lucia is holding a contest over on her Blackboard. The person to come closest to the ice level for the first week of November gets brownies she will bake and ship (if in the Continental US). I’ve already got my number in.
Now baby Ice has made almost half the distance to 1979-2000 average.
If we got a severe global cooling starting 2014, as Landscheidt predicted, then others have predicted this:
http://www.goredearth.com/images/24arch.jpg
😉
Dell
“Guess the “canary in the coal mine” that supposedly “proved global warming was happening” now proves that global warming has stopped.”
This is the same kind of sensationalism used by many a news article’s in the 2007 melt year.
Anthony is just mentioning an interesting progression in sea ice and a lack of balance in reporting – it means nothing wrt any long term trend in sea ice or global warming in general.
Ah but not really a peep from this blog about antartica sea ice is there..
REPLY: …and your point is??? Antarctic sea ice has not neen an issue. It was above long term average baselines this past year. It has more ice than usual, and thus has been ignored by alarmists and MSM as a bellwether of climate change. If you have a specific thing that merits attention, I’ll be happy to take a look. – Anthony
RW: Why should the current Arctic ice level be a concern? Current ice loss and elevated Arctic temperatures are not a result anthropogenic greenhouse gases. They are lingering result of El Nino events. Note how Arctic SSTs take off after the 97/98 El Nino.
http://i35.tinypic.com/330e3ae.jpg
Also note how Arctic combined land and sea surface temperature rises after the 97/98 El Nino.
http://i34.tinypic.com/2cxasl3.jpg
The graphs are further explained in my posts at:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/10/ersstv3-version-of-arctic-ocean-sst.html
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/07/polar-amplification-and-arctic-warming.html
What they fail to detail in Climate Alarmism 101 is that elevated high latitude temperatures are “consistent with climate models” of El Nino events.
Last, It’s Anthony’s site. If he wants to root for nature, he can. Go, Anthony.
“Cryosphere Today shows Sea Ice “Area” while the other sites, NSIDC and IARC-JAXA, show Sea ICE “Extent””
It is confusing to me. I thought that area is a measure of the extent. If ice extends to a certain point, then it covers a certain area. I suppose what I fail to see is that if the ice “extent” is today greater than 2005 (measured in km^2), how can the area be less measured in km^2? Sounds to me like they are trying to use semantics to cover something. I can see how they could be different numbers, but their relationship between the different years should remain the same.
By that I mean that a year can have one number measured one way and a different number when measured the other way. Fine, I have no problem with that. But given a different year, if one number is the same, I would think the other number would need to be the same or fairly close to it.
I don’t see how you can have ice at 2005 levels of “extent” with only half the difference in area between 2005 and 2007. How does it extend so far in square kilometers of extent without covering the same amount of area?
I haven’t read all the above posts yet….
However as this 2008 seaice trend matures – expect it to be SPUN big time.
I’m on the look out for MSM reports that state that the sudden ICE re-freeze is just another symptom of AGM, or the focus will shift to other objects.
There has to be a catastrophy somewhere!
RW: I find the tone of this post, with comments like Go nature!, very infantile. What you obviously neglect to mention is that the current ice area is still far below the 1979-2000 mean. From this graph it looks to be about 2 million square kilometres, or about 25 per cent, below the long term average. That would not seem to warrant any enthusiastic proclamations about how great nature is.
Perhaps you are the one needing to tone things down. Of course the ice is still lower than the 1979-2000 mean; it is, after all, recovering from a record low last year. The whole point, which you have conveniently overlooked, is that the ice is, in fact recovering at a very rapid rate. Take your AGW blinders off, and look at the above graph again. Notice the steep slope of the red line. That, plus the fact that ice extent is now 28.7% higher than it was at this time last year is impressive. Nature is truly amazing.
Nick O: It’s unlikely that there will be an El Nino this year, especially with the continued rise in the SOI (which precedes NINO3.4 SST by a few months). It’s looking to be neutral or a minor La Nina.
SOI:
http://i35.tinypic.com/2wbzzgw.jpg
Inverting the SOI illustrates the correlation with NINO3.4 SSTs:
http://i38.tinypic.com/34s34wo.jpg
Data available here:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/soi2.shtml