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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So “The Arctic” is generally considered to be the portion of the earth north of +60 degrees, and it contains 6.699 % of the earth suface assuming a spherical earth.
The “Arctic Circle” is at +67.5 degrees, and contains only 3.806% of the total area. So the area between 60 and 67.5 degrees is 2.892%. The land masses of Siberia, and northern Europe, as well as Alaska, Canada, and Greenland extend to at least +72.5 degrees in a band almost completley encircling the globe, and only 2.314% of the total surface remains north of that. But Canada and Greenland reach to +75 degrees where only 1.703% of the surface remains, in fact they both go beyond +80 degrees.
Being generous and placing the northern land cutoof at +72.5 degrees leaves 2.314% remaining surface area; so 4.384% of the earth’s surface is land between +60 and +72.5 degrees
So if you go south instead; virtually the entirety of Antarctica lies inside the Antarctic Circle, so it comprises no more than 3.806% of the earth surface and it is totally surrounded by water amounting to 2.892% of the surface, which is a lot more than the 2.314% of the earth north of +72.5 degrees.
So in fact it IS true that there is more land in the Arctic than in the Antarctic; but it is also true that the Antarctic is mostly land; 56.82%
Just to clear up that factoid.
As far as I can see both ENSO and PDO are in negative territory. I think this
means that cool deep ocean currents are still upwelling at the pacific tropics
and pushing the warm remnants of the last of the strong EL NINO through the
Baring strait. This explains the large melt over Alaskan shores and over north Europe and Siberia.
It appears that the water is now cooling as is makes its way clockwise towards
the Atlantic. I don’t have a time graphic for this but the current SST anomalies
can be found here.
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/color_anomaly_NPS_ophi0.png
RW,
Do you have any numbers before 1972?
I’d like to see the period from 1900 to 1950, especially 1915, if you can produce them.
In 1915, it hit 100 degrees in Alaska.
In addition, there were numerous forest fires in Alaska that year. In fact, the 1930s were the worst in history for fires. That implies a warm, dry summer.
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF3/317.html
“Many references to extensive forest fires in Siberia, Alaska and northern Canada are found in the writings of eighteenth and nineteenth century explorers. Some recognized that lightning was the cause of forest fires, but the explorers frequently attributed the fires to native peoples. Authorities on forest fires, including H. J. Lutz of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, have concluded that early native peoples were, in fact, responsible for many fires.
Some fires were intentionally set to get rid of mosquitos or possibly to increase moose browse. Others were accidental from signal fires or camp fires going out of control.
Indians were not the only starters of fires. In 1915 the “Kennicott fire” was intentionally set by a woodcutter to create fuel wood for use at the Kennicott mine. Sixty-four thousand acres (100 square miles) was burned. In the same year, sparks from a train set a fire that burned 384,000 acres near Chitina.
Prior to 1940, there were a number of large fires in Alaska and Yukon that each burned more than 100,000 acres. Among the biggest were the 1,900,000-acre fire at Lake Iliamna in 1935, the Sheenjak River burn of 312,000 acres in 1937 and the Mosquito Fork Flat fire along the old Valdez-Eagle trail that burned over 900,000 acres in 1922.
In Alaska alone it is estimated that there are about 200 million acres of “burnable” land, of which about half is actually forested. Only about seven percent of the burnable land can be considered commercial forest capable of producing 20 cubic feet per acre (1.4 cubic meters per hectare) or more of wood annually.
Virtually all the northern forest has been burned over during the last 200 years. It is estimated that a million acres each year is burned, on the average.
The worst year of all seems to have been 1940. That year, fires in the Yukon, Tanana and Porcupine watersheds and on the Seward Peninsula burned 4.5 million acres.
Less serious was a 38,000-acre fire near Fairbanks in 1926 created when a group of children set a tree afire to drive out a squirrel. The next year another Fairbanks district resident started a 5,000-acre fire in an attempt to scare away bears that were muddying the water hole used by his horses.
”
We also know that from 1900 to 1950, there were no McFarland events in the US. That tends to imply things were much warmer then.
I wonder if fire history is a proxy as well for weather?
I have a lot of fire history books by Pyne. He talks a lot about the Great Lakes and Northeast burning a lot in the 1800s, too.
Here is a story about the Thule living in the Arctic Ocean from 1200-1600 AD and then abandoning the area probably due to too much summer ice. Sounds to me like the Arctic was warm enough to melt most of the ice 1200-1600 AD.
Hmm.
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF19/1927.html
RW.
The mean might be 1.92 but don’t those figures fluctuate widely from year to year?
So its quite possible if the record went back a further 10 or 20 years the mean would be completely different and so would the trend
Must be hot ice according to NASA.
Federal Report: Arctic Getting Warmer and Warmer
“WASHINGTON — Autumn temperatures in the Arctic are at record levels, the Arctic Ocean is getting warmer and less salty as sea ice melts and reindeer herds appear to be declining, researchers reported Thursday.”
Thursday, October 16, 2008
(Associated Press}
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,439381,00.html
Frank Lansner & Bob W
Re: request for Pinatubo effect on temps
Thanks for the links – I’ll check them out.
[…] 7,064,219 square kilometers 10/14/2007 5,487,656 square kilometers (JAW DROPPING – THUD) Arctic sea ice now 28.7% higher than this date last year – still rallying In order to provide some balance I have included an explanation from the well respected AGW […]
way to go ice!
[…] Gore is cursing under his breath right now…"How DARE Mother Nature contradict me!"… Arctic sea ice now 28.7% higher than this date last year – still rallying […]
Dave Andrews – unlikely. There is no statistically significant trend in the figures so no reason to expect them to change drastically pre-1972.
Austin – unfortunately there’s no daily data from before 1972. This claims to be monthly data from 1870-2008, but would take a bit of scripting to get information from. This image suggests that ice coverage was pretty stable until about 1950. Don’t know how reliable those pre-satellite figures are though.
This comment was for the Dr Meir – article, but i had a technical problem, here goes:
Sorry for writing so much 🙂 but i have to answer
Lazlo
too:
YES! you are 100% correct! Time after time you hear some “news” about warming as though it is new data! Its lying and manipulating every normal people who does not check these things out!
More examples:
We had “news” that Glaciers where shrinking, but these “news” where in fact from 2005 and back.
We OFTEN hear that SEA LEVELS are rising. But the truth is, sea levels has not risen one milimeter since 2005 !
See this example, Nasa:
http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/index.cfm#SeaLevel
They specifically write that their graph is updated!
NASA: “Sea Level Last updated 09.16.08”
But they have NOT updated their graph. They stopped updating 2´nd quarter of 2007. Why are they not updating?
Heres the data they could have shown:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/attachments/havstand.jpg
– the truth, Just when temperatures seem to decline, so does sea level.
Ok! You could say that this sea level fall COULD be “random”. But you cannot say that there is not a fine match between temperature decline and sea level decline right now.
[…] Arctic sea ice now 28.7% higher than this date last year – still rallying […]
I am trying to understand the discrepency between Cryosphere Today’s plot of “Current Canadian Archipelage Sea Ice Area” and their own graphic of ice distribution.
The plot shows the that there was more ice one year ago, but the graphic shows much more ice this year. This also goes for the AMSR-E graphic for the Archipelago.
See details here
Tom
RW,
Thanks, thats a good start, but that chart is problematic since we have ample evidence in the years that it shows summer extent at 11 million sqkm, mariners were past 80 deg north and the NW passage was navigated. That implies summer extents < 10 if not < 8 sq km.
I am really busy now but will take some time this fall to cross correlate all the stuff out there.
I think the proxies for Ice coverage will come down to whale (and others) bones found along the arctic. Bones of herbivores in the US are used to determine climate due to proxies in the bones for c3/c4 grasses – this approach should be useful for bones found in the Arctic as well.
Here in the UK, doubtless to accompany the depressing announcement that our glorious leaders have committed us (seemingly) to reduce our CO2 emissions by 80% for mercy’s sake, there came a report that the arctic is blooming this autumn and the whole place is hot as hell. I can’t remember the supposedly august body which generated the report.
Can anyone inform this confused non-scientist (and AGW sceptic) what the relationship is between this and rapidly growing Arctic ice which looks set to catch up with every year back to 2002 at the very least.
Sorry, by “relationship” what I should have written is how can they be reconciled – I’m anxious not to be too readily countermanded when advising others of the sea ice recovery.
CO2 concentrations look to me like they are related to plant growth / photosynthesis—greatest in Spring (in either hemisphere, N or S; esp in agricultural araes and the great forests in Canada and Russia, and not so much over oceans and great deserts (Sahara)
Only one day but it looks as though the ice growth has levelled off – only 20,000 increased
Off topic – Hadcrut3 now out for September 0.376 giving an average for 2008 of 0.296
Hello- enjoy looking at the data and getting another view. So this morning, woke up to this AP story and wonder if you can comment upon the science, and the impact.
Thanks
Mark
———————
AP • New York Times • CBS • MSNBC • USA TODAY • AP Medical • MSNBC Space
Report says Arctic temperatures at record highs
Email this Story
Oct 16, 3:24 PM (ET)
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
WASHINGTON (AP) – Autumn temperatures in the Arctic are at record levels, the Arctic Ocean is getting warmer and less salty as sea ice melts, and reindeer herds appear to be declining, researchers reported Thursday.
“Obviously, the planet is interconnected, so what happens in the Arctic does matter” to the rest of the world, Jackie Richter-Menge of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H., said in releasing the third annual Arctic Report Card.
The report, compiled by 46 scientists from 10 countries, looks at a variety of conditions in the Arctic.
The region has long been expected to be among the first areas to show impacts from global warming, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is largely a result of human activities adding carbon dioxide and other gases to the atmosphere.
“Changes in the Arctic show a domino effect from multiple causes more clearly than in other regions,” said James Overland, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. “It’s a sensitive system and often reflects changes in relatively fast and dramatic ways.”
For example, autumn air temperatures in the Arctic are at a record 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 Celsius) above normal.
The report noted that 2007 was the warmest year on record the Arctic, leading to a record loss of sea ice. This year’s sea ice melt was second only to 2007.
Rising temperatures help melt the ice, which in turn allows more solar heating of the ocean. That warming of the air and ocean affects land and marine life, and reduces the amount of winter sea ice that lasts into the following summer.
The study also noted a warming trend on Arctic land and increase in greenness as shrubs move north into areas that were formerly permafrost.
While the warming continues, the rate in this century is less than in the 1990s due to natural variability, the researchers said.
In addition to global warming there are natural cycles of warming and cooling, and a warm cycle in the 1990s added to the temperature rise. Now with a cooler cycles in some areas the rise in temperatures has slowed, but Overland said he expects that it will speed up again when the next natural warming cycle comes around.
Asked if an increase in radiation from the sun was having an effect on the Earth’s climate, Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Center in Columbus, Ohio, said while it’s important, increased solar output only accounts for about 10 percent of global warming.
“You can’t use solar to say that greenhouse gases are not a major factor,” Overland added.
Other findings from the report include:
– The Arctic Ocean continued to warm and freshen due to ice melt. This was accompanied by an “unprecedented” rate of sea level rise of nearly 0.1 inch per year.
– Warming has continued around Greenland in 2007 resulting in a record amount of ice melt. The Greenland ice sheet lost 24 cubic miles of ice, making it the largest single contributor to global sea level rise.
– Reindeer herds that had been increasing since the 1970s are now showing signs of leveling off or beginning to decline.
– Goose populations are increasing as they expand their range within the Arctic.
– Data on marine mammals is limited but they seem to have mixed trends. They are adapted to life in a region that is at least seasonally ice-covered. There is concern about the small numbers of polar bears in some regions, the status of many walrus groups is unknown, some whales are increasing and others declining.
“This is a very complicated system and we are still working diligently to sort out its mysteries,” said Richter-Menge.
In addition to Richter-Menge, Overland and Box, lead authors of the report included Michael Simpkin of NOAA, Silver Spring, Md. and Vladimir E. Romanovsky of the Geophysical Institute, Fairbanks, Alaska.
Bob Trueman (11:17:06) :
“Can anyone inform this confused non-scientist (and AGW sceptic) what the relationship is between this and rapidly growing Arctic ice which looks set to catch up with every year back to 2002 at the very least.”
The ice growth rate will slow quite quickly now. It is not at all surprising for the rate to have been so rapid this year. Don’t forget that this summer the summer ice was completely surrounded by clear water for the first time, in previous years there has always been a connection to land. If you think about it the sea ice can not spread into land! This gives the impression of a rapid ice melt due to cooler anomolous temperatures whereas the reason is simple available area to freeze. Check out this for the latest anomolies at the poles http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/ You will see that the ice extent is well below the mean for this time of year.
Lazlo
“Heres the data they could have shown:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/attachments/havstand.jpg
– the truth, Just when temperatures seem to decline, so does sea level.”
If you check a more recent graph of sea level rise you will see that it is still increasing by approx 3.3cm a year. the graph you show only goes up to February 2008, this was heavily influenced by the strong La Nina. Copare that to this graph http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_last_15.html where the graph includes measurements to June and you will see the rate back to where it would be expected to be. The increase in seal level can either be attributed to thermal expansion or glacial melt, both signs of a warming globe.
Bob Trueman (11:17:06) :
You could also look at this graph of sea ice area anomolies, it shows we are very close to the lowest recorded sea ice area anomoly. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
It is fairly easy to get confused AND decieved from reporting on CO2.
Slightly simplified one can say there is a global concentration of CO2 which mainly is driven by the carbon flux from natural sources, and there is an anthropogeic carbon release which mainly comes from buring of fossil fuels.
I havn’t checked recent data, but the anthropogenic contributioin has for some time been in the range of approx. 3% of the natural fluxes. (This does by itself NOT mean that it is insignificant, but the information is important to remember). From Eia page (see below) 7.2 / (119.6 + 90.6=210.2) = 0.033
When referring to global CO2 level, one should remember that the unit is ppm (Parts Per Million), currently some 383 ppm http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
It is also worthwile to observe that the annual CO2 level reflects the annual growth cycle with a maximum level at the season when it is spring at the N hemisphere and fall in the S H.
Due to the large seasonal fluctuations it is adviceable to use a running mean smoothing. Observe (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/) that the increase (until now) has varied, but been in the range from some 0.4 to 2.9 ppm. This means that since the measurements started, the global CO2 has not increased 1% a single year, (which is employed in some of the IPCC scenarios, and e.g. from 2008-2009, 1% corresponds to an annual increase by 3.83 ppm).
This should not be confused with increase in the annual anthropogenic release, which (at least before the economical “collapse” was in the range of 3 % annually)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/greenhouse/Chapter1.htm
The real numbers are therefore an incease of 3% in the 3% that is anthropogenic. 0.03 x 0.03 = 0.0009, approximately one tenth of a per cent.
Again, I do NOT claim that this is insignificant for the climate. As you can seee at the EIA page, the carbon relaease and sequestration are approximately in balance, making the 3% anthropogenic (and correspopndingly the 0.1% increase, a possible influence)
Cassanders
In Cod we trust