Arctic Sea Ice Increases at Record Rate
Guest Post by Jeff Id on February 3, 2009
Something I’ve been interested in for the last several months is sea ice data. What makes it interesting is that as I understand it, models demonstrate the poles should be most sensitive to global warming leading the planet temp, especially in the Arctic. Recently I have been able to process the monthly and daily gridded arctic data as provided by NSIDC. The daily values allow a better analysis of trend than can be provided by the monthly data.
If you’re like me you recall the claims of fastest melt rate ever were made about 2007 , I fully believed them, because the graphs showed a much more negative value than in the previous 30 years as shown in Figure 1 below.
This effort was originally intended to investigate how bad the melt rate was in comparison to the natural variation, I didn’t get that far yet. Accessing and processing the gridded data was critical to the analysis, so I spent the time reading the literature and writing code. Having full access to the NSIDC data allows some interesting analysis, they do an excellent job on their site.
There are two primary algorithms used for processing ice data NasaTeam and Bootstrap. The descriptions of the data state the difference between the two is very small and the sets are interchangeable except that bootstrap is recommended for trend analysis in research publications. Bootstrap is only provided in monthly data format while NasaTeam is provided in both monthly and daily provided you’re willing to download over 1G of data, write code to process it, refit the land and missing data mask and sum the results. I am. Also, NasaTeam provides a near real time version of the polar ice data which has a different land mask and hasn’t been processed for missing data. This data isn’t as clean but I wanted to use it. I applied the same land mask as the rest of the series to insure that there was a consistent baseline for trend analysis. The missing data from Jan 2008 onward created noise in the series which I simply filtered out using a 7 day sliding window filter.
The mask looks like this Figure 2
The brown is land, black edges on land are coastline and light blue is the satellite data not measured. This mask is applied consistently through the entire data series. There was some question about masking on one of my other posts at WUWT where visually the land area seemed to change size, in the case of the NSIDC data they apply masks consistently except for the satellite hole and the near real time data.
The NasaTeam version of the arctic ice data looks like the plot below for 2009 (note the small size of the satellite data hole). This graph was created in R using the actual Nasa Team masks and data. I used the worst case land and polar masks to adjust the entire dataset to eliminate problems with consistency. Figure 3
Of course it’s an interesting picture, but what I wanted to know when I started this post was how bad was the worst melt rate in history and what is the actual melt area. In the plot below the arctic is losing sea ice at a rate of only 56K km^2/year. Of course sea ice area went up in the Antarctic during the same time frame though. Note the strong recovery in 08 of Figures 1 and 4, which actually exceeds values of most of the record, matching data back to 1980. Much of this is first year ice so the melt in 08 was expected to be a new record.
If you recall, in 2007 and 08 we were treated to headlines like this, which most of us accepted with a shrug.
Scientists warn Arctic sea ice is melting at its fastest rate since records began
NASA data show Arctic saw fastest sea ice melt in August 2008
Arctic Just Witnessed Fastest August Ice Retreat in History
I processed and analyzed the NasaTeam land area and missing data masks spending hours understanding different variances they list on their own website. After nearly everything I could find (except satellite transitions errors) was corrected (a different post) and corrections for variance in the measured pixel size, the final result in 30 day trends of arctic sea ice looks like the graph below (Figure 5). This graph is a derivative of the ice area plot. The maximum peaks and valleys represent the maximum rates of change in 30 day periods through the ice record.
Looking at this plot of the 30 day slopes of actual NASA gridded data, the maximum ice melt rate occurs in 1999 and in 2004 not in 2007. Surprisingly the maximum ice growth rates occur in 2007 and 2008, I don’t remember those headlines for some reason. Don’t forget when looking at the 2008 – 09 peak, the data is preliminary and hasn’t been through the same processing as the other data. From looking at the unprocessed data I doubt it will change much.
Certainly the 30 year arctic trend in ice area is downward, even the most committed global warming scientist has to admit this happens regularly in climate along with regular 30 year uptrends. The questions are, did we cause it or not, and was CO2 the instigating factor. The rapid recovery of ice levels has to have some meaning regarding the severity of the problem. This goes directly in the face of accelerated global warming and the doom and gloom scenarios promoted by our politicians and polyscienticians.
Why are my conclusions different from the news reported records? I think it’s likely due to the fact that the scientists used the monthly data which is processed using a weighted filter of the daily data that incorporates a longer time frame than a single month. This means their use of the monthly data to establish a monthly trend was in error and the real record down trends were actually set in 1999, 2003 and 1984. While the record uptrends were in 2007, 2008 and 1996.
Sponsored IT training links:
If hankering after 642-591 preparation then CT0-101 online training is best answer to your problem. Just go through practice questions and pass your 1Y0-A23 exam on first try.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I’m as much of a skeptic as the next guy on this forum, but, on this one, I have to agree with DJ. Arctic sea ice has decreased, but reaches a similar maximum each winter, so of course the freeze rates are higher than ever. The melt rates look higher too if you ask me.
>Whilst there has been a retreat of Arctic ice in the past thirty years this is nothing unusual, we know from historical records going back five hundred years that this has happened before, most recently fifty years ago. We do not know why there are periods when the ice retreats and then grows in extent again.
Papers please. This is not supported by the scientific literature.
There are a range of studies of historical data which describe multi-year multi-metre thick ice. That ice is all now nearly gone, and as best as we can tell the current ice volume is the lowest on record.
This whole thread is built on a lack of understanding of basic climatology and climate change.
Philip_B (19:46:46) :
The NOAA global temperature anomaly is showing a huge +12C temperature anomaly for the North Pole. The same anomaly has persisted for the last week at least.
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_07a.rnl.html
I don’t know iff this anomaly is real or an artifact of processing, given the poor to non-existent polar coverage of the satellites.
A few days ago the Russian Station North Pole-36 was recording temperature of -5ºC which I can well believe is an anomaly of that order.
http://www.aari.nw.ru/resources/d0014/np36/data/plotimg.asp?par=0&width=1020&height=180&maxobs=-1&color=FF0000
At that time it was at 86.979450N 137.125446W.
And, re the melting of ‘meters thick ice”. This is pure speculation. There is no data to support this conclusion, over the same time period as this analysis.
Don’t fret. This data will be “fixed” just like GISS and the ARGOS data. AGW will be back on schedule shortly.
Anyone who thinks the artic has maintained huge areas of very thick ice can go here. http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh put in the date sep 3 2003 and see that there was very little thick ice. Most areas are 60 percent concentration.
The team who produced this in 2003
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6961/full/nature02050.html
also repored this late last year
http://www.lincolnweather.org/arctic-ice-thickness-drops-2008.html.
Regards
Andy
This could be huge.. climate conf Santa Barbara
“Klaus was invited to the conference in Santa Barbara by Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch.
They met at the economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Euro.cz writes.”
ie 99% papers in Australia are owned by this man.. they are nearly all 100% AGW (except The Australian)
@DJ
“your replacing metres thick once permanent ice ” –
“Permanent Artic Ice” is another Myth – What was the impact of the Holocene Optimum on Artic Ice? and all within the last 10,000 Years.
4 Degrees Warmer at the Arctic during this period than now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_Climatic_Optimum
John W: did you actually really write that Arctic ice is back to “normal”? And ready to set a 10-year record? We definitely don’t live on the same planet:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Unless hovering at about 1 million km^2 from the average is “normal” of course. And the ice tends to be more-or-less equal to the 2006-2007 values, which were a record of course.
TallDave: there is absolutely NO global warming model that predicts dropping maxima and minima each year. Actually, the decrease we saw over the last 10 years is way more rapid than first predicted.
WRT the initial post: I think the NSIDC gave some explanation as to why most rapid decreases/increases appear simultaneously during the long-trend melt. And I don’t know any source (that you don’t cite, either) about the fact that 30-years long trends appeared “regularly” in the past in similar conditions.
DJ (22:42:26) : >. . . multi-year multi-metre thick ice. That ice is all now nearly gone, and as best as we can tell the current ice volume is the lowest on record.
This whole thread is built on a lack of understanding of basic climatology and climate change.<
One need not have temperature or ice data or even papers on climate change to make reasonable and accurate deductions. Anthropology and even early literature are sources of direct and indirect evidence that refute your notion of “the lowest on record.” For example, recent anthropological work in northern Greenland have revealed Eskimo settlements and ancient sea shores that show a sea level more than a meter higher 800-1000 years ago compared with now. If one accepts anthropological studies and carbon dating as part of the “record,” one must therefore accept basic climatology and climate change that shows rather conclusively that it has been warmer than now within the confines of what most regard as “history.” Think Strait of Anián, Northwest Passage, the Eskimo migration east from Alaska, the Norse Sagas and ventures into Baffin Island (Helluland). It all destroys the notion that the Arctic is the “warmest on record” or the ice is the least “in history.”
Slightly off topic, but still related to ice and warming, or cooling….but this time in relation to the recent report that concluded that contrary to all the previous interpretations of the available data, the Antarctic is warming; Steve McIntyre has examined……and torn apart…. that particular report. I thought that readers of this blog, from all sides of the debate, would be interested. Here is a link to an Australian blog article about it:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/going_cold_on_antarctic_warming/
As this linked item concludes…. I also wonder if the mainstream media will report the fallacy of the warming with the same zeal that they reported the original report.
Personally I would be VERY surprised if the BBC report it at all. No doubt they will be claiming that Antarctica is warming from now on right up until Broadcasting house becomes encased in 200 feet of ice!!!
Sorry, silly me, when an inch of snow stops people getting to work in London…
Anyway, that’s a whole other topic, back on track….
If the only way to report Antarctic warming is to rely on statistical error, then the reportage and the “science” it is based upon is not worth a hill’o’beans!
a jones:
‘Whilst there has been a retreat of Arctic ice in the past thirty years this is nothing unusual, we know from historical records going back five hundred years that this has happened before, most recently fifty years ago. ‘
Could you provide a data source to this – it would appear a hugely significant tool in addressing the nonsense of the warmers………..I’ve been saying I’m sure that’s the case for ages, but a data source would be a gold mine.
WUWT – an article about that data perhaps?
Please correct me if I am wrong, but, surely new ice is cleaner (has less particulate pollution like soot) and therefore has an increased albedo?
So therefore if what we were told by alarmists in September-October 2007 is true, that the melting ice decreases albedo, thus absorbing more heat, thus increasing temperature in a positive feedback leading to more melting and the Arctic becoming ice free?
Then surely the reverse is also true and the increase in ice extent (if not thickness) of crisp new pristine ice will increase albedo and therefore reflect more heat back, lowering temperature over-all and thus causing more freezing, more ice and a negative feedback loop that if extrapolated in the way alarmists did, would result in a new ice age???
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08578.htm 9th and 19th photos down – shows submarine Skate SSN-578 surfacing at the North Pole in March (remember, that’s at the peak of ice build) 1959. Lots of open water.
Re:
VG (18:32:32) and
Paul Friesen (23:05:13)
“Sea Ice Concentration” is not thickness of the ice, but a value showing how much water is covered by ice.
100% Concentration says nothing about the ice being 10 cm or 10 m thick, just that there is ice and not open water in the actual measured crid cell
And regarding the “permanent” ice thing and lack of kilometre thick ice: Permanent does not mean that the same ice allways stays put on the same spot…remember…north pole is solely sea ice and drifts around making the maximum age of ice just a few years, but: The amount of ice older than one year is now very low, and consequently much thinner, and the NSIDC graphs showing that the extent now is very close to the record 2006/2007 season…hey…just combine those factors and use your logic, folks…
(“Best science blog of the year” – Yeah, right…)
Lots of very confident statements but not one single reference.
Lets be clear – this thread and its defence merely shows a misunderstanding that Arctic sea ice because of geography and climatology retreats much more rapidly in summer than winter in a warming world. This is predicted by climate models and is 100% consistent with global warming projections.
Personally, I am most happy for “sceptics” to keep talking about sea ice because these data are irrefutable evidence of a rapidly warming world.
The Washington post, ice age July 9, 1971 Hansen
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=275267681833290
“jmrSudbury (19:11:42) :
rss for January 2009 is 0.322”
Given UAH is at the same level, this analysis over monthly anomalies the last 7 years predicts 2009 to be another ‘non record’ year.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?m=200901.
In Denmark at least the scientific news commentators are beginning to change their wording. Now expecting a new temperature record within 1-2 years, otherwise….
Non-scientist AGW critics are now called ‘laymen’ … and not conspiracy nerds…
There is a British explorer named Pen Hadow who is going to measure the thickness of the ice and find out about melting. He will be starting in Februrary of this year
30 years of data on Artic ice only gives 1 climatic data point. It explains nothing about natural variability, nor AGW, nor climatic trends, it is just one point on an open-ended graph. It won’t be until the end of this century that climate scientists ( a very loose term these days) will have enough data to detect a climatic trend, man-made or otherwise. Until then a sceptical viewpoint has to be retained.
Didjeridust…… I think you forget that the PDO is now in a cooling phase, which evidently effects arctic ocean currents. I think your new Ice will become old ice in due course.
Did you notice that it is snowing quite heavily in London at the moment, that it has brought the city to a standstill with minus 10c degree temps? That London had it’s first October snow in 70 years?
It may be that you need to …. er, Cool it, for a while and observe the natural world going about it’s natural cycles…..
There is currently no evidence to suggest that anthropogenic CO2 is having a significant warming effect on Global average temperatures or effecting climate…. Though it apparently has been theorized to have an beneficial effect on increased crop growth, which is nice to know…. and something that can actually be measured and observed : )
With winter this cold, I cannot imagine the Arctic not freezing up big time.
Keep it up, the public is growing wary of these roasting & drowning stories.
The Arctic is actually much warmer than the long term average – and, despite what you might be experiencing locally, the NH is also much warmer than average.
RSS anomaly for January is +0.322
NH anomaly (0 – 82.5) is +0.449
I’m certainly growing wary (and weary) of the constant stream of unsubstantiated “global cooling” pronouncements.
If the AGW were true, and it’s way out there, then the resulting cold that has swept down on N. America and Europe would be displaced from the Arctic by warmer air from the tropics. That action would result in massive thinning of the Arctic Sea Ice. Come summer, there wouldn’t be jack left. I see the conveyor belts that ran up there just like I described in fronts spanning from Baja to Alaska. These are the result of impaired Sunspot heating that drive the Jet streams West to East.
What’s really going on? The shields are down in the Arctic. The Neutron Count is up and the upper atmosphere has shrunk by 1/3. The tropical heat, instead of warming the Arctic is escaping out the highly thinned atmosphere up there. Earth is losing heat. Just like it always does in deep solar minima. The returning flow of air is frigid.
You can fool some of the people some of the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you’re not going to put ideas in my head anytime soon. I do that all by myself, and I will paddle my own boat, thank you.
You can’t fake a spotless sun, and you can’t fake ghostly remnants of what once were dark sunspots when they do appear.
I see you.
Philip_B (19:46:46) : The NOAA global temperature anomaly is showing a huge +12C temperature anomaly for the North Pole. The same anomaly has persisted for the last week at least. Perhaps that’s because, thanks to the special stratospheric warming event, the North Pole has sent its cold surplus down to the UK.
DJ (22:42:26) : Papers please. This is not supported by the scientific literature. Papers from you too, in that case, please!
This whole thread is built on a lack of understanding of basic climatology and climate change. You make a much bigger claim than the author claims here. Jeff Id does not disagree with the warmist position that over the last 30 years there has been an overall decline in the Arctic sea ice levels. He’s simply looking at some interesting data – that is legitimate science AFAIK. As to the posts in response, look carefully. Some posters understand little; some understand a lot; some are questionable; some are pretty fault-free. This is a snapshot of the real scientific process in action. It’s one of the best ways to progress from “lack of understanding” to a robust understanding, with the present state of climate science, when the most basic official assertions have shown themselves to be questionable, but are not allowed space for debate. For references for this, click my name. Look at the reference given earlier here: http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh – it shows pretty little change between 2009 and 1980. Of course only a snapshot, but telling. US submarines were photographed surfacing at a pretty ice-free North Pole in 1986. A study from Finland referenced in this thread shows the MWP summers were likely warmer than today. And there’s lots more of those, re MWP, peer-reviewed. Just not IPCC fodder.
Since Anthony has left the WUWT ship in other crew members hands the ship has been steadily steering away from real science, beyond pseudo science and deeply into the murky realms of conspiracy theory. I suggest Anthony grabs the wheel and steers back to the real world quickly.