10/17/2007 5,663,125 square kilometers
10/17/2008 7,436,406 square kilometers
Δice = 1,773,281 sqkm or 31.3% more than last year
Source data here: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv (Excel file)
UPDATE 10/22: The trend has entered the point where last year’s recovery started to get closer to previous years, and the Δice is now about 21%
You’ve probably heard by now how this new story circulating this week claims “record warmth” and that we are in the peak time of melting. Meanwhile, “back at the ranch”, sea ice extent continues a steady upward climb as shown above.
Scientists Counter Latest Arctic ‘Record’ Warmth Claims as ‘Pseudoscience’ – Comprehensive Arctic Data Round Up – October 17, 2008
Claim: Newspaper article claims Arctic Temps Peak in November – Claims Arctic offers ‘early warning signs’ – McClatchy Newspapers – October 16, 2008
Excerpt: Temperatures in the Arctic last fall hit an all-time high – more than 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Centigrade) above normal – and remain almost as high this year, an international team of scientists reported Thursday. “The year 2007 was the warmest year on record in the Arctic,” said Jackie Richter-Menge, a climate expert at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H, and editor of the latest annual Arctic Report Card. “These are dynamic and dramatic times in the Arctic,” she said. “The outlook isn’t good.” Arctic temperatures naturally peak in October and November, after sea ice shrinks during the summer. […] Scientists say these changes in the Arctic are early warning signs of what may be coming for the rest of the world’s climate.
Arctic Reality Check: Why isn’t the cooling Antarctic considered ‘an indicator of what might happen to the rest of the world?’
By Climate Scientist Dr. Ben Herman, past director of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and former Head of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona is a member of both the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth’s Executive Committee and the Committee on Global Change.
Herman Excerpt: First of all, the Arctic sea ice is at its minimum in September, not October or November as the scientists in the McClatchy article states. As Arctic ice experts, they certainly should have known this. Another point is that the Arctic temperatures do not “naturally peak in October or November”. They peak in mid August generally. Also the article states that since the world’s climates are interconnected, what happens in the Arctic may be an indicator of what will happen in the rest of the world. How about what happens in the Antarctic then? Since its ice area has been increasing, is this also an indicator of what might happen in the rest of the world?
See the full article: Vast majority of Antarctica has cooled over the past 50 years and ice coverage has grown to record levels
Reality Check # 2: ‘This is pseudoscience’ – By German scientist Ernst-Georg Beck, a biologist Rebuts Arctic Reports – October 17, 2008
Excerpt: The annual report issued by researchers at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other experts is the latest to paint a dire picture of the impact of climate change in the Arctic. […] The real averaged temperatures of the whole Arctic circle (70-90 N) can be found in the same data base used by NOAA (CRU, Phil Jones): The graph shows a strong Arctic warming during 1918 and 1960, stronger than today with a rise of about + 4°C up to 1938. Referencing only a rise since 1960 we got the illusion of a dramatic rise in modern times. Conclusion: The news item:” Arctic air temperatures climb to record levels” is selective science and wrong because the Arctic Ocean ( covering an area of more than 50% of the Arctic circle) has been left unconsidered. The NOAA study summarizes: „5°C record levels in temperature in autumn”, presents the averaged temperatures only on land stations and discusses melting sea ice as a cause! This is pseudoscience. In contrast the current Arctic warming mimics the 1920s-1940s event, as a recent study from the Ohio State University reveals. The scientists recognized from using weather station records, maps and photos from the past century that temperatures in Greenland had warmed in the 1920s at rates equivalent to the recent past.
See these articles:
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/grnlndice.htm
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/wcmsmimefiles/Arctic_102008e_824.pdf
Get the facts on Arctic ice conditions below:
Latest Arctic Info: Updated October 17, 2008
Update: Arctic sea ice now 28.7% higher than this date last year – still climbing – October 15, 2008
Excerpt: 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. […] 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.
Alert: National Ice Center says satellites interpreting Arctic ice as open water! – By Andrew Revkin – NY Times Dot Earth Blog – September 6, 2008
Excerpt: And one of the groups focusing most closely on possible Arctic shipping lanes, the National Ice Center operated by the Navy and Commerce Department, says flatly that the satellites are misreading conditions in many spots and that there is too much ice in a critical spot along the Russian coast (highlighted in the smaller image above) to allow anything but ice-hardened ships to get through. In an e-mail message Wednesday, Sean R. Helfrich, a scientist at the ice center, said that ponds of meltwater pooling on sea ice could fool certain satellite-borne instruments into interpreting ice as open water, “suggesting areas that have substantial ice cover as being sea-ice free.” The highlighted area is probably still impassible ice, including large amounts of thick old floes, he said. I sent the note to an array of sea-ice experts, and many, including Mark Serreze at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, concurred.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/confirmation-of-open-water-circling-north-pole/
National Weather Service: SEA ICE ADVISORY FOR ARCTIC WATERS AS WATER TEMPS DROP 8° IN 2008 – September 22, 2008
Excerpt: SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES ALONG THE ALASKA CHUKCHI AND BEAUFORT SEA COASTS ARE 2 TO 8 DEGREES CELSIUS COLDER THIS YEAR THAN AT THE SAME TIME LAST YEAR. […] SIGNIFICANT ICE WILL BEGIN DEVELOPING ALONG THE ALASKA COAST NORTH OF 70N WITHIN THE NEXT 10 TO 14 DAYS.
http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/marfcst.php?fcst=FZAK80PAFC
rick werme
Thanks for the hint about computer programmes and actually I nearly joined the Flat Earth society once 🙂
And for all … As I’m not a US citizen the obsession about criticising Al Gore and his film is not relavent . I try to get my info from a range of sources like scientific organisations, public lectures at universities. environmental groups , climate change researchers, books , internet, and so on . I really hope no one just listens to one film and doesn’t check anything further .
evanjones
I realise there is a difference between weather and climate , .. but I can suggest that it is possible to grow plants in many parts of the northern hemisphere (including my garden) that are indicators of a warming climate trend . Of course it maybe plants have rapidly changed 10+ years but it’s simpler to think this as consistent behaviour of a warming world .
Sea level rises … as someone who lives in a low lying coastal city I can point out the local city engineers are concerned that they now have to cope with higher sea level increase than they expected.. so maybe the IPCC has underestimated the sea level rise .
I still don’t see why some folks are happy to change the composition of the atmosphere . It’s not a good idea to add unncessary factors a non-linear chaotic system . Are you sure ‘cycles’ will remain if you change the CO2 concentrations of the atmosphere ?
Finally .. I don’t understand the relavence of your reference to Kyoto protocols and Stern . I seem to remember reading an article about the objection to introducing public sewage systems on the basis that this was would destroy the economy and make everyone poorer. Nowadays we think this is an essential service (or in the developing world a desirable aim)
“PeteM (12:54:55) :
It’s amazing to find that so many people want to hear the global warming is not happening… ”
I believe that global warming has been happening.
I DON’T believe that the warming is in any way catastrophic.
I believe that the proposed measures to counter warming WILL be catastrophic.
Mike Bryant
Nick O, PeteM: I just wanted to post this for your reading pleasure. You can read
all about your favorite environmental organizations and all the good things they do to make our lives better.
http://personals.galaxyinternet.net/tunga/LEM.htm
“Nick O. (12:55:05) :
Likewise, just because we can’t predict exactly how the ice is going to melt, or exactly how and where the extra retained heat from increased CO2 is going to be made manifest in the world, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.”
Just because there is no evidence of retained heat doesn’t mean it isn’t hiding somewhere.
Mike Bryant
PeteM: I do not dispute that the earth has warmed from 1979-1998. But not for the last decade. And the climate has followed the multidecadal oceanic-atmoshpheric cycles a lott better than the CO2 curve.
It was warmer that today in the MWP (1000 ya), and warmer still during the RWP (2000ya).
In 1840 the LIA ended. Since around 1700, there has been a slow, steady warming of c. 1°F per century since. With the falsification of CO2 feedback theory there is no reason to believe that the rate will increase. Temperatures may even decline if, as seems likely, the current Grand Optimum is at an end.
Killing the economy is not going to help. In fact, if there turns out there is a real problem, after all, it is only a strong economy that will provide us with the technology and wherewithal to counteract it.
PeteM,
You wrote “Why play with this sleeping monster by deliberately destabilising the composition of the atmosphere .”
Interesting comment. I thought that the industrial revolution was about lifting people out of poverty and squalor, but now you have enlightened me about their true intent. Ben Franklin discovered electricity in order to enable Thomas Edison’s evil scheme to destabilize the atmosphere.
Want to try an interesting experiment? Try not building any power plants for the next twenty years and watch the US and western Europe descend into poverty as third world countries.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/19/renewable-energy-greenhouse-carbon-emissions
I have noticed that in all of my childhood pictures the sun was always shining and the sky was always blue. This proves your assertion that the atmosphere used to be stable. In fact we never even used to have night, much less weather or seasons.
Cognitive Dissonance will ensure that the Alamists become even more defensive as the evidence of cooling mounts.
evanjones
Interesting point .. but regarding the thought on post-1998 warming ( and again I am aware of the difference between local weather and climate) , in my local region it is possible to grow plants that would have died of cold 10 years ago . There has been some local warming in the past decade – and I see this pattern from anecdoctal conversations with many of my colleagues in all parts of Western Europe .
Curiosuly at the same time we see record ices lows for Arctic ( 2007 ) , glaciers retreating ( in the past decade) , more extreme rainfall patterns (in the past decade) , melting tundra ( in the past decade) … humph is the world really cooling ?
If (big if) in 5 years time it is cooler (including in my garden) – your thoughts will be correct . But if it’s warmer then what …
Iceman – none of these are my favorite enviromental organisations and sorry – I don’t wear sandals . A few years ago I saw an article suggesting ‘conservatives’ are natural environmentalists but they just don’t know it …:-) .
Mike Bryan – Fair enough – it may not be catastrophic. I really hope you’re right but I don’t see this in the information I’ve looked at . I’m not going to put a bet on it .
Pete – I think I agree with your idea that many folks are concerned about energy security , diversefication and poverty which skews the responses about global warming and CO2 and ….
I also care about these points but in addition I separate AGW. If the predictions are correct we’re rerunning an Easter Island scenario on a planetary scale . Looking at the information accumulated over several decades including Artic Ice levels , my view is that there will not be a good outcome unless we change our addiction to burning fossil fuels.
That’s your characterisation. Mine would be that he meant to indicate his words were not to be interpreted as a firm prediction.
Now my question remains: why did the hoax about them retracting their predictions include Al Gore and the IPCC? After all they didn’t make such a prediction. The usual Al Gore/IPCC bashing?
Patrick Henry
You said … ‘ Interesting comment. I thought that the industrial revolution was about lifting people out of poverty and squalor’
> There were a lot of people put into poverty and squalor during the industrial revolution. Not that I’m suggesting life was a bed of roses before hand ….
Your point about not building any power plants is based on the assumption that there isn’t a better way to do anything . Err … How did humans manage to put a man on the Moon without destroying the economy ?
SwampMan was commenting this afternoon that he doesn’t remember an October day in Florida feeling so chill for 30 years. I informed him that there was a reason for that…..
Once I believed that Cognitive Dissonance was a, purely, man-made pollutant. Recently, however, my belief in ACD has wavered and died. The Science is just not stacking up and I’m currently hovering between heretical and sceptical!
Much is made of the relationship with the solar-clock-cycle to climatic conditions on earth: Yes, there does seem to be a certain degree of causality with the solar clock-tick and climate. Solar-Ticks do appear to matter but IMHO they are secondary!
Is it just me (yup- almost certain) or has no one else noticed just how little attention has been placed on the alarming non-appearance of Lunar Activities recently?
The Lunar-clock-tick level (for the non-scientific- the annual rate of lunar flares) has diminished to its lowest level since 1998!
May I throw out a challenge Anthony? Can anyone here disprove my Hypothesis that Global warming and ACD is directly attributable to Lunar-Ticks?
[…] Ice Reality Check: Arctic Ice Now 31.3% Over Last Year, plus Scientists Counter Latest Arctic ̵… 10/17/2007 5,663,125 square kilometers 10/17/2008 7,436,406 square kilometers Δice = 1,773,281 sqkm or 31.3% more […] […]
How did humans manage to put a man on the Moon without destroying the economy ?
Which one is more complex, sending a dozen men to the moon – or changing the entire energy and transportation infrastructure for 300 million people spead out over 5 million square miles using not yet existent technology and undiscovered natural resources?
Gordon Brown commited the UK to unrealistic carbon goals last week, and already even the stalwart Guardian is in panic mode – recoginizing that it can’t be done. Someone at The Guardian actually tried doing some analysis, rather than relying on the “audactiy of hope” (aka “the hatred of Bush”) A new concept for the fuzzy headed leftists taking over the world.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/18/ice-reality-check-scientists-counter-latest-arctic-record-warmth-claims-as-pseudoscience/#comments
PeteM (15:18:16) :
“…glaciers retreating ( in the past decade)”
The glaciers have been retreating for alot longer than the last decade.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/14/alaska-glaciers-on-the-rebound/
“When the first Russian explorers arrived in Alaska in the 1740s, there was no Glacier Bay. There was simply a wall of ice across the north side of Icy Strait.
That ice retreated to form a bay and what is now known as the Muir Glacier. And from the 1800s until now, the Muir Glacier just kept retreating and retreating and retreating. It is now back 57 miles from the entrance to the bay, said Tom Vandenberg, chief interpretative ranger at Glacier Bay.”
It seems like the recent warming has been good for your garden…
Mike Bryant
PeteM comments: Sea level rises … as someone who lives in a low lying coastal city I can point out the local city engineers are concerned that they now have to cope with higher sea level increase than they expected.. so maybe the IPCC has underestimated the sea level rise.
Perhaps the engineers have been frightened by the alarmists rather than by the rising water. Would you care to point us to some actual measurements rather than this hearsay?
Dangerously rising sea levels is one of the biggest of the AGW bogeymen. Blaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!
evanjones (14:02:43) :
-Etaoin Shrdlu
Isn’t he registered to vote in Ohio? #B^1
Yes, but he lives in NH.
PeteM (14:39:15) :
Ric Werme
When I first heard of them I thought they were a humor society. I made the same mistake with the folks who think NASA faked the Moon landings.
Well, we’ll see. My firming as a skeptic came from “discovering” that the CO2 IR absorption window is saturated. Joe D’Aleo’s correlation studies showing a better link with temperature from the Pacific Decadal Oscillation than from CO2 is pwerful support. Enough anecdotal evidence, some pushing into empirical evidence, has supported all that.
Keep coaxing what you can out of your garden, a few more years of cooling may “restore” your classic garden.
PeteM — “…my view is that there will not be a good outcome unless we change our addiction to burning fossil fuels.”
Well, good for you.
Currently thousands of scientists and engineers are busy working for places trying to do precisely what you ask for. The first one to market with a new working green technology would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice. One has not appeared. It is not because of a lack of motivation. It is not because of a lack of money (funding cash has this amazing tendency to appear when there’s a promise of making a fortune from the investment.) It is not because evil agents of evil oil companies are shooting the developers of 250 mpg car engines or motors that run on seawater. It is because we simply don’t know how to do this.
Although it’s popular to imagine that all you have to do is throw a lot of smart people in a room full of money, bear in mind that the Manhattan Project was about engineering, not discovering fundamental properties. And largely, it’s the latter that we lack. Not the engineering.
That said, politics does stifle development of important things. For example, the people I imagine you look up to, the greens, have worked very diligently to divert funds to chimera like windmills and such whilst projects like Dr. Bussard’s fusion system gather dust. Shameful. I expect that you will agree that the first thing that should be done IMMEDIATELY is to drop all funding and effort and so on to that which has proven that it can’t work, and by that I mean rubbish like wind generators, and embrace that which DOES work, like nuclear power. That and disbanding all green orgs would at least be a positive step toward actual progress.
As for automobiles, I think almost everyone agrees with you to a certain extent. I certainly do: oil is too useful as a feedstock for plastics and other cool things to simply burn it. Wasteful! Were every automobile to drop off the face of the earth tomorrow, there would still be an overwhelming demand for oil, so if your argument was somehow predicated on the silly assumption that (evil) oil companies are standing in the way of “progress” you’re sadly mistaken.
I’d like to see automobiles converted to LPG type of fuels and then have the energy companies figure out how to convert Methyl Hydrates to do the job. As I understand it there’s enough of that stuff to power the USA for hundreds of years sitting off of North Carolina.
Now, which one of these initiatives did you have specifically in mind? Or were you making a blanket run of the misanthropic mill type of statement?
We don’t have an energy problem. We have a political problem.
“Those who don’t understand technology are destined to repeat nonsensical platitudes.”
Well, I suppose you guy have noticed (as I said before btw) that the different ice extents tend to come back together by the end of november. The anomaly is strong in the summer, but not very impressive in the winter (see the cryosphere today graphs).
The funny thing is that the sea ice increase seems to have peaked by now and the 2008 curve simply, calmly goes to the 2000-2007 average. this is due to the fact that open water over Siberia/Canada is already almost completely ice again. After that, ice extent increases only slowly due to gains in ice on the grounds and along greenland/northwestern Russia.
[…] Ice Reality Check: Arctic Ice Now 31.3% Over Last Year, plus Scientists Counter Latest Arctic Recor… HOLY F Cow! Parka’s and lots of them. Patagonia is probably a great investment… 31.3% !!!! Hello people! We have a paradigm shift here… maybe we should, um, make it a matter of public discourse. Especially since the morons we put our faith in think it wise that we pretend it isn’t happening. Seriously though, this year is going to be brutal and the forecast is for more to follow. These are underestimates, I guarantee it. __________________ ~Paradox "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken." ~Oliver Cromwell Join The Revolution […]
Pete M
Please spend some time at the web site CO2 science. It may explain more about your garden doing well, warmer or not.
[…] Ice Reality Check: Arctic Ice Now 31.3% Over Last Year, plus Scientists Counter Latest Arctic ‘Rec… […]
Steve Goddard:
Yes, off course the curves will level off when reaching the warmer waters of the atlantic and the pacific, and sure the extrarordinary cooling, freezing of ice this fall is remarkable still! True.
You write:
“A key thing to watch is the polar drift during the winter. That will largely determine how thick the ice is next spring.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/gifs/DriftMap.gif
”
This is interesting. But when looking at the map, first you see quite long drifts but what is normal and what is extraordinar? How do we recognice a drift that is bigger or smaller than normal?
Antother thigng: The early freezing so far obviously gives possibility for thicker ice in the end.
Steve Goddard:
Yes, off course the curves will level off when reaching the warmer waters of the atlantic and the pacific, and sure the extrarordinary cooling, freezing of ice this fall is remarkable still! True.
You write:
“A key thing to watch is the polar drift during the winter. That will largely determine how thick the ice is next spring.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/gifs/DriftMap.gif
”
This is interesting. But when looking at the map, first you see quite long drifts but what is normal and what is extraordinar? How do we recognice a drift that is bigger or smaller than normal?
Antother thigng: The early freezing so far obviously gives possibility for thicker ice in the end.