10/31 NEWS: See updated graphs here
UPDATED: 10/22/08 The new images below are even closer
Watching arctic sea ice rebound this year has been exciting, more so since a few predictions and expeditions predicated on a record low sea ice this past summer failed miserably. I’ve spent a lot of time this month looking at the graph of sea ice extent from the IARC-JAXA website, which plots satellite derived sea-ice extent. However, there is another website that also plots the same satellite derived data, the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center of Bergen Norway, and they have an added bonus: a standard deviation shaded area. For those that don’t know what standard deviation is, here is a brief explanation from Wiki
…standard deviation remains the most common measure of statistical dispersion, measuring how widely spread the values in a data set are. If many data points are close to the mean, then the standard deviation is small; if many data points are far from the mean, then the standard deviation is large. If all data values are equal, then the standard deviation is zero.
In a nutshell, you could say that any data point that falls within the standard deviation area would be considered “within normal variances” for the data set. That said, current sea ice extent and area data endpoints (red line) are both approaching the edge of the standard deviation (gray shading) for both data sets. Here is sea ice area:
Click for a larger image
And here is sea ice extent:
Click for a larger image
Extent has a bit further to go than area, and of course it is possible that the slope will flatten and it may not reach the SD gray area. It’s also possible it may continue on the current trend line. Only nature knows for certain. A complete presentation from Nansen is on this page which is well worth bookmarking.
What I find particularly interesting is the graph comparing the 2008, 2007, and 2006 sea ice extent. It appears 2008 extent has already bested 2006 extent:
with a hat tip to commenter Patrick Henry
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Leon Brozyna, I wouldn’t take that early map showing ice coverage as anything other than a representation. When they can miss out large islands off Russia I don’t think they can be too hot on where the ice actually was.
Regards
Andy
Julian In Wales
It’s funny how touchy some folks on this forum are about anything that doesn’t agree with their view on global warming . I didn’t notice you reacting to a comment recommending his book as ‘bland’.
I suggest that anyone can ‘well research a topic’ in order to find information supporting their view point . The question is whether starting from a viewpoint that the case about global warming needs to be demolished is the correct approach .
Fridtjof
Oh … as I’m not interested in science I had better cancel my subscriptions to all those science magazines , journals and papers I look at … and err let me return my science degree qualifications …
I think knowledge and truth are different concepts.
The truth is we don’t know enough about the effects of increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere to run a global experiment .
Even if we find there are other explanations for some of the variations in the natural world (like changing ice sheets) this doesn’t change the fact that we are changing the composition of the atmoshpere without real undersanding of the consequences.
I am expecting it will take another five to ten years worth of data before we can have a more confident assesment of whether the Artic is melting early or returning to normal .
A reversion to nearer ‘normal’ during the Arctic winter is not unexpected. The Arctic Ocean is bounded on most sides by land … (see here ) which during the winter means that for most of its area there is effectively an upper bound to how much sea can freeze over, hence in a warming phase we would expect to see the summer extent decline while the winter maximum extent will also decline but much more slowly as the same fixed body of water freezes up – with some variation around the edges that are open to the sea.
This animation of max winter extents makes the point well, see also that at the start of this year the ice was only just below the SD level.
But I bet the ‘ICE BACK TO NORMAL’ post is already written and waiting on the hard drive 😉
From the BBC today.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7682836.stm
“An international team of scientists is hoping to shed light on how clouds over the Pacific Ocean are affecting global climate and weather systems……..”
I am in shock, not a mention of CO2 in the srticle!!! They even admitt
“Hugh Coe, the lead scientist for the British consortium, said the project would help improve the accuracy of climate change models.
“These are some of the largest cloud systems in the world and we know that they must play a very significant role in climate change, yet we know that climate models do not represent them very well,” he explained. ”
I love they way they always say “improve climate models” rather than saying they are rubish so we must fix them.
The Barrow webcam shows ice from shore out to the horizon, I think. Lot of snow near the camera.
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/snowice/sea-lake-ice/barrow_webcam.html
Denis Hopkins (14:38:05) :
“Hope you don’t mind but I am sending the link to this item to the Daily Telegraph UK letters page. They won’t publish and they won’t print anything about this I am sure.”
I can see the headline now ” Arctic ice continues freeze in late October…NEARING NORMAL LEVELS!!”
This is the fourth post on a story that is not news and not ‘puzzling’. Surely one post was enough on this subject.
“Move along now….nothing to see here….”
Another point worth noting is that while the Arctic ice is approaching more “normal values”, the Antarctic ice simultaneously have rebounced from a below1979-2000 average to above average level.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html
The latter is less remarcable than the former, as the Antarctic oceans have been below average values at -40 – -60 lat. for quite a bit.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.10.20.2008.gif
I have been puzzeled by the rapid recovery of the Arctic ice, as considerable amounts of stored heat has been visible in the Arctic SST the last year. (Op cit).
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
In today’s Daily Telegraph, page 15, an article by Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent, titled ” Arctic ice caps are spreading”, in which she states:
[quote]In recent days, satellite maps showing the extent of the thaw have been beamed around the world.[/quote]
I kid you not! I searched the website but could not find this article! I have the paper next to my computer as I type!!!
Anyway, just for laughs, do a search on “Arctic ice” for some really lurid headlines about the doom we are all facing.
This graph does give a better idea, but what is ‘normal ice cover’? We actually only jave 30 years of definitive data and this is too short a time to make any assumptions about ‘normality’ New data comes in every day that shoots assumptions out of the water so perhaps we should widen the standard deviation curve.
We know that the Medieval Warm Period had farmers on Greenland where there is now ice cover. We have just seen, through new research, that there were beaches 6000 years ago on the north Greenland coast, indicating that there was a lack of ice where now we seem to have permanant ice.
This report of ice increase faster than recently seen has been decried by the envoronmentalists by saying that this ice is only thin, as if it formed at its spring thickness. They refuse to comment, or ignore, the record ice down south in good old Antarctica, and insist that the world is still warming! They are being overtaken by events I am glad to say.
This graph does give a better idea, but what is ‘normal ice cover’? We actually only have 30 years of definitive data and this is too short a time to make any assumptions about ‘normality’ New data comes in every day that shoots assumptions out of the water so perhaps we should widen the standard deviation curve.
We know that the Medieval Warm Period had farmers on Greenland where there is now ice cover. We have just seen, through new research, that there were beaches 6000 years ago on the north Greenland coast, indicating that there was a lack of ice where now we seem to have permanant ice.
This report of ice increase faster than recently seen has been decried by the envoronmentalists by saying that this ice is only thin, as if it formed at its spring thickness. They refuse to comment, or ignore, the record ice down south in good old Antarctica, and insist that the world is still warming! They are being overtaken by events I am glad to say.
Pete M – Chris Booker’s and Richard North’s books are not bland, they are very well researched and shine light from a new angle on received wisdom, recomending them is therefore not bland, your comments are because they add nothing to the discussion other than you know best because you have read some (unspecified) science papers. That’s simply boring information.
@Denis Hopkins
Denis,
I’m a long-time Telegraph reader and, like you, I’m very disappointed by their one-sided coverage of climate change. Fortunately the Sunday Telegraph has far more balanced coverage (articles by Monckton, Gore and Bob Carter), and may even be slightly anti-AGW. Take a look at the item right here (a few items down) which is about the DT article. As I reported there, I emailed the deputy editor, raising the possibility of lodging a complaint with the Press Complaints Commission. I had been in contact with him a year ago (they printed a nonsensical report about a Pacific island about to be drowned by rising sea levels – the caption stated the island could vanish in a few decades but in fact the island is surrounded by cliffs and most of the terrain is 50 or more meters high).
He informed me that the images come from the Philips Atlas of the World, and implied that therefore it was nothing to do with them. However, I have found that the image, although crudely air-brushed to show the extra ice in 1979, is more or less accurate in terms of the painted-in ice. Of course, much of the rest of the image is identical to the other which means it shows the world as it was in 2007, and not 1979 as the heading claims.
Unfortunately, when making false statements about climate, they are always careful to in effect enclose everything in quotation marks. The general reader will probably miss this, and assume the Telegraph is stating direct facts – but of course, if it comes to a complaint at the PCC all they have to do is state that they are merely quoting a third party, and that probably makes them untouchable.
Anyway, I’ll keep the clipping. The headline says: “Arctic to melt in five years as warming speeds up’. If, as seems very likely, in five years there is an awful lot of Arctic ice and the world is significantly colder, I will take great pleasure in rubbing their noses in it!
There is hope. In today’s Telegraph there is a report about the rebounding Arctic ice. The heading is: “Arctic ice caps are spreading”.
Who knows, maybe the criticism of their ridiculous news report has had an effect…
By the way, unlike the previous heading I quoted, this one does not have quotation marks. This would suggest a rule of thumb about DT climate change headlines: If it’s enclosed by quotation marks it’s probably false. If it’s not enclosed by quotation marks then it’s probably true.
One final bit of irony. Just below the LH image it states: “the WWF claims that global change predictions are now out of date”. I would think most people here would agree with that. But possibly not for the reasons that the WWF would give.
Chris
Patrick Henry (22:28:30) :
Let’s see if I keep my kneejerk response at bay. It would be quite a bit harsher than your comments.
While the primary goal of a _species_ is to continue the species, I decided back in college that my primary goal in life would be, near the end of my life, to look back and be satisfied that I left the world a better place.
At the time I was deep into “digital narcosis” happily teaching computers to do things never before done, like sending Email within the computer science department and later through the ARPAnet and implementing protocols like telnet and FTP which are still in use today. Colleagues were doing things like writing sheet music editing programs, developing new computer languages and compilers, and extending the state-of-the-art in computer graphics.
We didn’t realize that we were in the heart of the Golden Era of computing, we were too busy creating stuff that never existed before. Today it’s just faster, smaller, cheaper, and evolutionary. More far-reaching, but our stone age wheels were more important than today’s wheel-on-a-chip.
Later I was a cofounder of a company that produced the first piano teaching program back in Apple ][ and Commodore 64 days, which did bring the product to market, but the market never developed.
Later I did marry and have two daughters who are now in college, we’ll see how they turn out. I confess I’m a bit disappointed they aren’t interested in genetic engineering, because I don’t have time to change to that career path.
A lot of people, some whose names you might recognize have been childless. Some probably by choice, some probably by infertility. Some have made great contribution to children around the world.
http://www.childfreebychoice.com/history.htm
http://www.childfreebychoice.com/history2.htm
Several studies in non-human animals have identified species-extending activities where childless individuals assist other family members in raising young. One involving bird families comes to mind where siblings help forage for others chicks, and of course ant and bee colonies take it to an extreme.
I like to say that having a baby is the most polluting act most individuals can do. That doesn’t mean I’m opposed to having children, just that a family of five can pollute about 2.5 times better over their lifetime than the parents alone.I guess these days I should say a baby’s carbon footprint is bigger than each of its parent’s.
Perhaps most people who are childless die without leaving their mark on the world, but there’s no guarantee that having children leads to a better fate.
Please excuse the rant….
This article just appeared in CNN.COM today : http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/10/20/wwf.climate.report/index.html
How do they come up with this stuff in the face of actual data?
Anthony,
DeWitt Payne over at CA has some interesting graphs about the way CT compares to other reporting agencies. There have been some huge recent discrepancies. Maybe he would do a guest post.
Delete this if you wish.
Mike Bryant
PH,
We also do not plan on having children – not in this ever increasing, messed up world we live in. The times, they are changing. Sorry to be even harsher, but most will die alone and most will be forgotten in this world. Do you have alot of memories of your great grandparents?
Anthony, there must be something wrong with those graphs? After a ‘whopping’ 40% increase in atmospheric CO2, the ‘delicate’ ice in the ‘fragile’ arctic should be nearly gone by now.
Unless of course, an increase of 0.01% CO2 is too small a forcing to create any substantial negative impact on the planet.
But no, according to Barack Hussein Obama, a trace amount of CO2 is a DANGEROUS pollutant.
“Nothing in the world is more DANGEROUS than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
See PH, this is what I am talking about. How long before ‘population control’ goes into effect anyway? And what will the democrats push that will “appear” to be the wrong decision at first, according to Joe Biden?
We are being surrounded by blind sheep. There is nothing we can do. The times… they are changing. Welcome to the new millenium!
Julian in Wales
If I include a comma at the correct place in my comment , then this will correct any impression that I was using the word bland to describe the book .
As a companion book , I’d recommend reading ‘Fixing Climate’ (Robert Kunzig and Wallace Broecker) .
There is some interesting material on this forum most of which is offering replacement explanations for changing climate other than AGW.
I suggest that this is missing a bigger issue .
Pumping CO2 into the air in quantities that globally changes the atmosphere is an unwise thing to do unless we really really really know the consequences.
Thats all .
Pete M
Glad you like the Green slant in the Telegraph Earth Section. It’s a free world I suppose but it doesn’t change the situation that what is often passed off as a “planetary emergency fact” is nothing of the sort.
I like to read Christopher Booker because I find his pieces to be thought provoking. Isn’t that what journalism is supposed to be, thought provoking ? I don’t have to agree with an article to have a thought provoked. Or maybe I should stop thinking and believe everything, however biased, that’s being pushed at me ?
As for weeping for the the Old Country, who wouldn’t ? Just look at the actions of Milliband only last week. The tears really start to roll when I believe that the Conservatives under Cameron wouldn’t be a lot better.
And yes, besides reading the DT and other new sources I do visit the UK frequently so I do know what its like.
Truth be told I currently fear for my adopted country too, I left the increasingly EU dominated Socialist Paradise of the UK in search of a better life. Having found it I am grateful and appreciative of it and am sincerely hoping that it doesn’t go the same way as life in the UK. Fingers crossed.
I was sort of hoping for a new warm period for my autumn years!
I hope this doesn’t mean I’m not going to get it 🙁
Dave.
Regarding the data-set 1870-2008 found at:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/SEAICE/timeseries.1870-2008
When Amundsen navigated the Northwest Passage he was basically locked in the ice in 1904, but able to sail in 1905, however the data set shows more summer ice in 1905 than in 1904. This makes me curious about how they collected the data.
Two separate yachts battled through the passage last summer, and I followed their adventures by linking to their postings on blogs. They ran into ice which wasn’t apparent, judging from satellite data, although the above data suggests there was roughly 40% less ice than when Amundsen made his passage. (6.20727 versus 10.54270 )
Lastly, ships were actually warned not to take the satellite data literally, last summer, as areas which only icebreakers could traverse appeared to be open water.
Therefore, although considerable work went into compiling the above data sets, I must take the data with a grain of salt.
“As I was saving today’s (Oct. 22) image, I noticed that the caption in the lower right hand corner explaining their pink boundary says:
‘median’ – 1979 to 2000.”
I assume that the noun ‘norm’ and the adjective ‘normal’ have a more precisely denotative use in the science of statistics than they do in ordinary language. The ‘norm’ over a certain time span, e.g. the satellite record, can be easily figured. In ordinary speech, however, the word ‘normal’ has a strongly positive connotation, i.e. as in normal body temperature, and ‘abnormal’ certainly carries a srong negative charge.
It is easy enough to slip from one off these senses to the other, through either inadvertance or design.
My understanding is that 1 standard deviation contains 67% of the data set and 2 standard deviations contains 95% of the data; and that anything within 2 SDs is considered within the range of normal variation. Those graphs are ±1 SD, if you double the shaded area, the ice has already recovered to normal levels.
Seems like the rate of ice growth for about the last month is the same for ’07 and ’08. What I’m interested in is what the final ice area will be for this year.
Those graphs also show that the last two years had a much higher rate of growth from the end of Sep. to around November compared to the average and the 1 stedv spread for the same time period.
“The truth is we don’t know enough about the effects of increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere to run a global experiment .’
But humans have been running many ‘global experiments’ for at least ten thousand years, e.g. changing the lithosphere by clearing forests for agriculture and building cities, and the biosphere by domesticating a breeding plants and animals.
There would seem to be a planted axiom in enviromentalist ideology that human action should have as little effect on the ‘natural’ world as possible. We are, presumably, to pass through the earth like undetectable neutrinos.
But humans are ‘by nature’ transformers, capable of understanding natural processes and applying that understanding to the shaping of a natural surround that is, as received, indifferent to human well-being, or indeed, to any purpose at all.
“There is some interesting material on this forum most of which is offering replacement explanations for changing climate other than AGW.”
Assuming that we could come to an adequate definition of climate, why would it be surprising that it changes? If you don’t like change, you’re on the wrong planet.