Polar Albedo Feedback

All of the perennial ice basins are already saturated with ice.
The amount of multi-year ice next summer will be a function of winds and polar drift through this winter, but so far it appears that there will be a significant increase in the amount of multi-year ice in 2009 compared to 2008.

Mary, I was clearly referring to temperature and shorter term trends. Farmers look at temperature trends in relation to how long it will take, and how expensive it will be, to prepare a field to grow something else that can survive and even thrive in an upturn or downturn trend. Farmers have to be flexible and react rapidly since many of the things we grow are very sensitive to small temperature differences. If we don’t have a diverse bag of products and a willingness to adjust to the ups and downs of temperature changes, we rapidly go out of business.
As to your contention that Anthony’s graph was okay with me back then but not now, I can only say that I am willing to learn more about what makes that graph go up and down. And in detail. So I began a study on the Arctic and found out lots of things I didn’t know. I have a curiosity that always drives me to say, “why”. Are you willing to do the same study or do you just want to stick to your one tune?

Here are the geothermal resources of Iceland. Maybe the magma does not discriminate between land and sea.
http://www.energy.rochester.edu/is/reyk/

>The graph has turned back upwards, and is just about where it is supposed to be this time of year.
The current Arctic sea ice extent and volume is not even close to average. This is F.A.C.T.
As for volcano’s, the sea ice near Iceland is near normal… http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent_hires.png .

david,
Arguing with you is pointless. Sea ice extent is just about where it always is this time of year. A few days ago it was at the high end of the very narrow recent range, and today it is near the low end of the range. In a few days it will probably swing back the other way. None have any statistical significance.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
The map you linked shows this quite clearly. Please stop the FUD.

“” E.M.Smith (21:06:09) :
George E. Smith (00:22:03) :
Justin, you have to be a little careful here. See what you excerpted about sunlight being reflected by the ice.
George, did you see the link I posted that showed O3 as being down 40% at the poles and it being a significant part of the GHG profile ( 1/3 ). Have you considered what it would mean to heat loss to have 40% less ozone? 13.3% less total GHG effect ought to do something! How does the absorption spectrum of O3 relate to that of water and CO2? You’re much better at figuring this out than I am…
I’d expect that 13% more heat loss at both poles might have something to do with our present frigid weather coming from the poles… “”
E.M. ;
Without going back and refreshing, I roughly recall you raising the issue.
It seems to me that Ozone (O3) affects warming in tw different ways.
First of all, the single biggest cause of difference between the Air mass zero solar spectrum and the air mass one spectrum, is the absorption due to Ozone.. AM0 is the spectrum outside the atmosphere; AM1 is the equatorial noonday spectrum at ground level as a result of traversing one atmosphere of air.
Now at the poles and particularly over Antarctica, you never get an AM1 spectrum, because the solar path is always oblique, so the short wavelength loss from ozone is even more severe at the poles, or the polar egions in general.
Since short wavelength UV is largely respponsible for the Atomic Oxygen that forms Ozone, then you would expect lack of Ozone production during the winter midnight, and ozone holes.
One can find papers and reports from the 50s and 60s that hint at Ozone holes long before they were actually observed as such.
In the immediate post WW-II ear, the Airforce, and NASA’s forerunner, were quite concerned with radiation hazards of high altitude flying (military); and people such as Thekaekara et al did a lot of high altitude studies of solar spectra and atmosphere for that reason. In 1969 they published what to that time was the most respected value of the solar constant before satellite measurments, at 1351 W/m^2 ( 1969 I believI graduated in 1957, and we used the value 1353 when I was in school.
But what those early papers reveal, is that the color temperature of the sun, was known to have aseasonal variation, and on top of that an eratic variation (unexplained) ; but it was believed that the cause was cseasonal and other changes in the short wavelength end of the ground level solar spectrum. I’m not aware of any specific attribution to Ozone, but in light of modern knowledge one can ifer thaqt the cause was ozone variation, and probably Ozone holes which have always been with us. No I am not going to claim the CFC thesis is bogus; butt I do think it is somewhat argumentative, but there clearly were ozone holes long before their were CFCs (but not necessarily as severe).
I can tell you as a kid growing up in New zealand, I got the worst damn sunburns at the beach or ski slopes, than I have ever experienced in california, of fishing down in Baja, Sea of Cortez.
Now that ozone absorption would lead to upper atmosphere warming by direct absorption of solar energy near the peak (out to maybe 600 nm).
Then Ozone has a well known IR absorption band from about 9-10 microns’ which is pretty near the peak of the BB spectrum,. for 15 deg C, the so-called mean global temperature. The Ozone IR band is much sharper than the CO2 band for several reasons. Ozone is a thin high altitude layer, whereas the effective CO2 is a ground level thick layer, so the4 realm of the ozone is lower density, and lower temperature, so the Doppler, and collision broadening of the intrinsic Ozone absorption line is much smaller than the CO2 band at 14.77 microns, which broadens to about 13.5-16.5 microns.
The ozone band exhibits another explainable phenomenon..
The depth of the CO2 absorption band is not much dependent on the incidence angle oof observation (form outer space), sinnce it is very nearly saturated, and supposedly has a logarithmic absorption versus CO2.
On the other hand, the depth of the Ozone dip is very dependent on angle of obliquity of obsevation, and this can readlily be understood by imagining a thin laminate of ozone in a shell around the earth, and just look geometrically, how the total layer thickness varies significantly with oblique viewing from outer space (up to 80 degrees from normal incidence.
Now with modern polar orbit satellites there is no need to make ozone measurements form oblique angles since the satellite is going to go right overhead sometime. The data I mentioned is from a quite old textbook, “The Infra-Red Handbook” which predates polar orbit satellites by many years. It is largely a military handbook for weapons designers who need to understand optical signal propagation and noise sources, for guided weaponry (side-winders and such). (no I never worked on such things; but that book if you can find it, is a gold mine of infromation valuable for climate discussions, since it has the reflectance curves for darn near any kind of terrain you want to know., and atmsopheric transmission data for any range of wavelenghts of possible military significance. it was basically developed under US Navy sponsorship by a group at U of Michigan (I believe)
But long and short of it is that I would expect Ozone to exhibit lots of effects maybe good and bad related to polar climate, and specially Antarctic. I actually returned to NZ in March of 2004, which is going into their Spring, and while out fishing in Bay of Islands (north end), I once again got a nice sunburn; so it isn’t that I just have gnarled leather skin that California doesn’t bother. Next time I’ll remember the SunBlock.