Gore says 5 years, now NOAA says 30 instead of 100 years. Place your bets.
Ice-Free Arctic Summers Likely Sooner Than Expected
NOAA News April 2, 2009
Mean sea ice thickness in meters for March (left) and September (right) based on six models. Top panels: September ice extent reached the current level by these models. Bottom panels: Arctic reached nearly “ice-free summer” conditions.
High resolution (Credit: University of Washington / NOAA)
Summers in the Arctic may be ice-free in as few as 30 years, not at the end of the century as previously expected. The updated forecast is the result of a new analysis of computer models coupled with the most recent summer ice measurements.
“The Arctic is changing faster than anticipated,” said James Overland, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and co-author of the study, which will appear April 3 in Geophysical Research Letters. “It’s a combination of natural variability, along with warmer air and sea conditions caused by increased greenhouse gases.”
Overland and his co-author, Muyin Wang, a University of Washington research scientist with the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean in Seattle, analyzed projections from six computer models, including three with sophisticated sea ice physics capabilities. That data was then combined with observations of summer sea ice loss in 2007 and 2008.
The area covered by summer sea ice is expected to decline from its current 4.6 million square kilometers (about 2.8 million square miles) to about 1 million square kilometers (about 620,000 square miles) – a loss approximately four-fifths the size of the continental U.S. Much of the sea ice would remain in the area north of Canada and Greenland and decrease between Alaska and Russia in the Pacific Arctic.
“The Arctic is often called the ‘Earth’s refrigerator’ because the sea ice helps cool the planet by reflecting the sun’s radiation back into space,” said Wang. “With less ice, the sun’s warmth is instead absorbed by the open water, contributing to warmer temperatures in the water and the air.”
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.
h/t David Walton
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New computer studies have revealed that the sea ice loss is directly caused by humans. The icebreakers that have taken untold thousands to view the disappearing ice are causing the premature breakup which allows the correct weather conditions of wind and currents to empty the Arctic Ocean’s ice down along Greenland’s coast and into the warmer Atlantic where it melts.
Sometimes you have to kill the patient to save him.
“I’m pretty sure that it will be 20 instead of 30 years next year. They need to keep it fresh.”
Not only that, but they need to get a major treaty or legislation passed pronto. I truly believe that the likes of Gore and Hanson are worried that temperatures will trend downwards for the next 5, 10 or even 20 years. If that happens, they can save face by claiming it was their treaty which turned things around.
My opinion only.
The NSIDC is going to hold a news conference on Monday and will trumpet the fact that the winter sea ice reached its maximum extent on February 28th, the earliest date for the maximum since their records began in 1978 – proof positive of global warming.
[Except their records go back farther than that and there was almost an earlier date on February 19th, 1972 but it was beat about a month later when there was a surge in sea ice freezing for a week or so. This is common in the arctic sea ice at maximum as there are ebbs and flows in the max depending on the margins of the arctic sea ice areas in the south – Hudson Bay, Pacific margins – Saint Lawrence and Newfoundland etc.]
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/pub/DATASETS/seaice/polar-stereo/trends-climatologies/esmr-smmr-ssmi-merged/gsfc.nasateam.extent.1972-2002.n
It was cold in late February in the Sea of Okhotsk and the sea ice anomaly in this region went very high which is why the maximum happened a little earlier than normal. The sea ice maximum this year is still higher than it has been in recent years.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.14.html
In terms of the sea ice completely melting on September 10th at some day in the distant future, I imagine someone could do a linear regression on the below chart and come up with one in 30 years or so. [But that would be the definition of spurious regression].
Arctic Sea Ice back to 1972.
http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/7721/nhseitotalsa.png
My question is: have they run their models starting in, say, 1970 and running through 2000 to see if the model reproduces the archived data? If not, then to have any sense of belief in their models with the input data starting in 2007 is ridiculous.
Well, I think the good news here is that the next 5 years are going to largely settle the question. Either the PDO will do its thing, or it won’t. And if it does, the modellers are going to be forced to halve their future predictions taking much of the urgency out of policy making. And if it doesn’t, the skeptics are going to be in a sticky place as well.
Check out this site for sea ice data: http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/IceGraph/IceGraph-GraphdesGlaces.jsf
It never ceases to amaze me that there is all this speculation about “boil-the-planet” scenarios with decreasing Arctic sea ice. The math is simple – the Arctic circle receives only about 1.4% of the incident solar energy to the planet. We’re only talking about a potential loss of 25% of that area primarily in late summer, early autumn where the angle of incidence of this solar energy is so low that most ends up being reflected in smooth sea conditions. Add into this the previously mentioned fact that lack of ice actually allows oceans to cool faster and this notion of a drastic warming of the planet by loss of sea ice ends up being complete and utter garbage!
Maybe the ice will continue to decline, but not because of CO2. See http://ker-plunk.blogspot.com/2009/03/up-to-50-of-arctic-warming-caused-by.html
Could it be that the filthy atmosphere from China is drifting north to cover the ice with tiny black solar collectors?
Sorry, I meant to say the Sea of Okhotsk melted earlier than normal this year.
The only other area below the 1979-2000 mean right now is the Barents Sea.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.6.html
The global sea ice area has been above the 1979-2000 mean for parts of the past two years and is currently 75,000 km^2 above the average.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.recent.global.png
My car is fitted with one of these new-fangled (well, it’s pretty new-fangled in the UK) digital readouts that tells me how many miles I can do before I need to fill the tank again.
When I left the house this morning it said 302; when I got back later it said 318. So how far do I have to drive before it reaches infinity?
So what is the difference between my computer predicting that if I keep driving I may never have to fill my tank again and NASA’s computer predicting that the arctic ice will all met in 10/30/50/90/whatever years?
My common sense (and the fact that I don’t get paid zillions a year to churn out this rubbish) tells me it ain’t possible. How come theirs seems to let them down at crucial moments?
Maybe by the time the Arctic is ice free, the author will learn how to convert square kilomters to square miles.
REPLY: and spell it too! 😉 Actually there’s a neat tool in Google, just type this into the Google search box:
“4.6 million square kilometers to square miles”
and the result given is:
4.6 million (square kilometers) = 1 776 069.93 square miles
A little different than the Canwest author saying: (about 2.8 million square miles)
or the 1 million square kilometers (about 620,000 square miles)
when it is actually: 1 million (square kilometers) = 386 102.159 square miles
The Google calculator is a handy tool for all sorts of these conversions, pity the author didn’t use it. – Anthony
Well, there seem to be (in my mind) four questions with regard to arctic ice: 1) Is the summer ice declining, and by what measure? A corollary to that would be: is 30 years of data really enough to determine what is actually happening? 2) If the ice can be determined to be in decline, how much of a positive feedback effect will that have on our climate via loss of albedo? 3) How much of a proxie for global warming aka “climate change” is arctic ice loss? and 4) Is man responsible, and if so to what extent?
NOAA can make all the predictions it wants, but despite its claim to the contrary, it doesn’t really understand the changes in the Earth’s environment at all, primarily because they vastly overestimate man’s influence via “greenhouse gasses”. Thus, its predictions are always proven false by reality, and they continually have to move the goal posts. They also seem to greatly overstate the positive feedback (if indeed there is any) due to whatever loss of albedo results from lower arctic ice extent. They do not seem to be so much interested in the science as they are of pushing the CAGW/CC ideology. Such a sad state of affairs for science, and for humanity.
NSIDC conference? When there is no news, manufacture it…
Perhaps they should establish a comm link with the Catlin guys who for the occasion would don bikinis and enjoy a martini by the pool?
Mikey (22:19:32) wrote:
“You know what would be fascinating? If they took book against climate models at Vegas. Say five year payouts.”
The problem with bets in Vegas is that bettors have to go there personally to make a bet. It’s desirable instead that they can bet from their computers. This can be done on the Intrade.com website, which I’ve recommended recently in a different thread. (I repeat what I posted beneath the line below.) I haven’t suggested such a bet to their management myself, because I’m not expert enough to be confident I’d suggest proper questions, and because I’d like to make sure the other side agrees to the wording first.
It’s necessary for there to be a centralized site that will hold the bets and flexibly adjust the odds to reflect the money committed by each side. It’s impossibly awkward and problematic for there to be bets set up between individuals.
=====================
I think it would be an excellent idea for the partisans of both sides to be able to bet against the other side. But arranging such bets on an ad hoc, one-to-one basis imposes a high overhead (making bets that are under $1000 (say) impractical), a high risk of non-payment, a great potential for foot-dragging “denial” in the event of a loss, a great potential for inter-personal nastiness during the negotiation and afterwards, etc.
What’s needed instead is a neutral venue where betting can be done impersonally, in small amounts, at a low overhead, with assurance of being paid (or at least getting ones money back in the event of a “draw” or “inconclusive”), etc.
Such a venue already exists. Bettors “bid” for bets at odds that sellers offer, in terms of any number of small-amount “contracts.” This has the effect of causing the odds offered to adjust quickly to reflect the money placed on each side of the bet. One of the additional advantages of this site’s method is that a person can cash-out or reduce his bet if he changes his mind, or has an emergency for which he temporarily needs money. (Of course, the “house” takes a cut as its commission when this occurs.)
The site already has a category for climate-related bets (click “Climate and Weather” in the menu on the left side of the screen). Its current bets relate only to whether laws regulating CO2 emissions will be passed in five countries. It also has bets relating to numbers-of-hurricanes and snowfall-levels in various cities, here:
http://www.intrade.net/market/listing/showEventGroup.faces?eg=508
It deals mostly with political and economic events, like the price of gold in the future, etc. That sort of question is easier to settle, because of its sharp Yes/No boundary, than questions like whether arctic sea ice has retreated, sea levels have risen, global temperature has risen, glaciers have retreated, etc. It would be very desirable if Intrade could be persuaded to add these fuzzier sorts of bets. It would do so only if the bet could be settled by reference to a data point from an agreed-upon “authority.” It wouldn’t want to have to serve as an arbitrator or interpreter of the fine points of the question.
There are downsides (and disagreements) to every authority, and downsides to every indicator of global warming (arctic ice, sea level, etc.), and to every data point regarding that indicator. But that problem can be easily finessed if Intrade were to provide a dozen (say) separate questions relating to the matter. That would allow bettors who don’t trust the indicator or an authority cited in certain questions to bet on the other questions where they believe those are more reliable. And it would allow the question of overall global warming to be distributed over several data points, reducing the risk that an anomalous reading in one indicator or data point would improperly answer the question. By employing a majority vote among indicators, a bettor could compensate for the weakness of each of them.
I therefore suggest that a new thread be set up here (or somewhere else on the Internet–or in many sites) where a preliminary set of betting-questions can be proposed and their wording thrashed out. Once these have been debugged sufficiently that lots of folks on both sides have said, “I’d bet on that question,” then Intrade could be approached by e-mail and asked to start taking bets on one or more of those questions. I think it would be a good idea to start small, with only a couple of questions, and to approach Intrade with a statement endorsed by leading names on both sides of the debate that they are prepared to abide by the settling of the bet in the manner described. One can suggest a contract to Intrade by e-mail here:
markets@intrade.com
Here’s another link, this one giving access to a pageful of contact information (by mail, fax, etc.):
http://www.intrade.net/faq/contactUs.faces
Intrade desires more respectability, visibility, and trading volume. By adding bets on the impact of the highly contentious matter of climate change, it would be performing a great social service. It would also thereby get lots of visibility, as its site would surely be regularly alluded to during online exchanges whenever a disputant is tempted to say, “Put your money where your mouth is.” Finally, once people register with the site, some will no doubt be tempted to place bets on the hundred or so other propositions on offer there. So Intrade will do well by doing good.
Intrade has been in business since 1999, and the predictions of the odds set by its markets in choosing winners of elections have been more accurate than those of pollsters. It’s been widely cited by political pundits as having a high accuracy rate.
Intrade is located in Dublin, Ireland and can’t accept payment from US credit cards. One has to set up an account online (there is a real-time online assistant to help step one through the process), then mail them a check, and then wait ten days for it to clear. In the interim, you should “learn the ropes” by making play-money bets in its training-wheels section, on its “Labs” tab.
Here are links to the sections of Intrade’s site where the details of participating are discussed. (NOTE TO MODERATOR: Delete the remainder if it seems like too much of a “plug.” I’m just trying to be helpful with all this info.)
About Intrade: https://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/help/general.html
Rules: https://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/help/index.jsp?page=rules.html
Safety & Security: https://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/home/safety_and_security.jsp
Help & FAQs: https://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/help/index.jsp?page=general.html
Rates & Fees: https://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/help/index.jsp?page=general.html%23fees
Forum (where bettors can argue for their positions: it’s pretty spicy): https://www.intrade.com/forum/
++++++++++
Incidentally, as a first step, there’s a site where “play money” bets can be made on a variety of topics, including the environment. (I’ve turned $2,000 to $700,000 in a little over a year, mostly by betting heavily at long odds on the stock market crash.) See here for the home page, where you can register to participate:
http://www.hubdub.com/
Here’s the page on the environment topic, which has other bets relating to AGW. (I just bet $1000 (in play money), at 10-to-1 odds, that the Wilkins Ice Shelf will hang on until 2010.):
http://www.hubdub.com/science/environment
Here’s a bet that was proposed to Gore. Here’s a link to this bet:
http://www.hubdub.com/m30611/Who_will_win_the_Climate_Bet__Al_Gore_or_Wharton_Professor_Scott_Armstrong
Who will win the “Climate Bet” – Al Gore or Wharton Professor Scott Armstrong?
Current forecast: J. Scott Armstrong (68% chance)
Combining all predictions, the current most likely outcome is J. Scott Armstrong with a probability of 68% (up 7% in last 1 day)
In June 2007, Wharton Professor Scott Armstrong offered Al Gore a bet of $10,000 on who could best predict global mean temperature over the next ten years. Al Gore declined the bet, citing the reason that he does not bet money (the full story can be reviewed at http://theclimatebet.com).
Now, assume that Armstrong and Gore had made a gentleman’s bet (no money) and that the ten years of the bet started on January 1, 2008.
• Armstrong’s forecast was that there would be no change in global mean temperature over the next ten years.
• Gore did not specify a method or a forecast. Nor did searches of his book or on the Internet reveal any quantitative forecasts or any methodology he relies on. He did, however, imply that the global mean temperature would increase at a rapid rate – presumably at least as great as the IPCC’s 1992 projection of 0.03°C-per-year; thus. The IPCC’s 1992 projection is to be taken as Gore’s forecast.
Settlement details: The criterion will be the mean absolute errors of Armstrong’s and Gore’s annual forecasts for the ten year period, with the errors to be measured against the UAH global temperature record (http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu). The win goes to the smallest mean absolute error.
PS: Individual Hubdubbers can post questions on the site themselves, without moderation. This could be a good way for both Warm-mongers and Cooler Heads to put forward their first versions of bets that could later be submitted to Intrade, for Real Money wagering.
REPLY: and spell it too! 😉
Not a chance…
Don you think “the prophet” could melt north pole in a few minutes if he contracts some nukes from koreans and iranians?
Well if the sea ice all melts, that will be good, because we know that every year when some of the sea ice melts it takes about 18ppm of CO2 out of the atmosphere; which is from 10-15 years of the background baseline increase in CO2. Melt enough of that arctic sea ice, and the CO2 curve could go to a negative slope instead.
In the northern summer the sun gets to about 23.5 deg North of the equator.
The arctic ocean is pretty much ALL north of 70 degrees north, which means the sun at the southern edge of the arctic ocean never gets above 46.5 degrees above the horizon. Actually a lot of the arctic ocen perimeter is north of 75 degress and higher above Greenland. But let’s leave it at 70 degrees.
So the minimum angle of incidence of the sun on calm Arctic ocean waters is 43.5 degrees.
Se a water has a refractive index of 1.333 in the visible, so the Brewster’s angle is 53 degrees, so we can conclude that at least at the soltice, the sea surface at the edge of the arctic ocean absorbs about 98% of the sunlight that strikes it, but the irradiance is reduced by cos (43.5 deg) or 72.5% of max .
At the north pole, the solar incidence angle never gets below 66.5 deg so the irradiance is only 40% of maximum, but the incidence angle is now well beyond Brewsters angle, so the surface reflection coefficient from flat open water is considerably higher than the 2% at normal incidence, but it probably doesn’t get above 6% reflectance.
So to a large extent, they are right, that a considerable amount of sunlight goews into the ocean. But reme,ber that the earth doesn’t stop rotating, so those high sun angles don’t persist for more than a few hours even at the solstice.
In any case depositing all that solar energy some tens of metres deep, will set up a vertical convection that will bring it all back to the surface, which is very much colder than tropical waters, so the convection current should be stronger than in the tropics. That will then result in accelerated evaporation from the sea surface; particularly of surface waters from the tropics come into the arctic ocean, so there will be an anomalous amount of evaporation, and ultimatley precipitation of snow over remaining ice and surrounding land areas.
So far the predictions of their computer data generators haven’t been batting too high; so I plan to live long enough to see this model come into disrepute too.
George
Steven Goddard (20:20:52) :
The summer Arctic sea ice minimum occurs near the autumn equinox, when the sun is disappearing below the horizon. So it has very little effect on the earth’s radiation balance.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
But all that anomalously warm water, above freezing point, instead of ice at zero or below, does make a difference to the gridded temperatures, and thus the global temperature anomaly for July-October in the Northern hemisphere rises. Thus the recession in the sea ice causes global warming. Yet we must be losing more radiation from the warm ocean surface than from the cold ice, causing global cooling.
Perhaps they will cancel each other out.
Anthony,
Please do me a favor. If and when the arctic sea ice extent reaches the 1979-2000 average on the NSIDC website due to a slow melt rate, please post a story on it here. Watching the melt progress, I have a funny feeling that once the ice in the sea of Okhotsk is done melting, that the rate of melting will slow dramatically, causing the extent to catch up with the 1979-2000 average.
Thanks!
REPLY: Noted
Bruce Cobb asks:
With some of these ocean modes taking 30 years to play out, I suspect that we need something like 4 cycles worth of data to even begin to figure out what is going on.
Thanks for all the info Roger Knights. I think I’ll register at Hubdub, and I agree with you. The idea of a centralized climate betting site publicized through independent blogs, and websites agreeing to bets to be placed on the site has potential.
In this way there would be less strutting, and more actual odds to look at. Odds are important, I think. I like the idea of self-regulating odds, like at a horse race.
From the article:
analyzed projections from six computer models, including three with sophisticated sea ice physics capabilities. That data was then combined with observations of summer sea ice loss in 2007 and 2008.
So, what exactly did they do? Using “physics” they made some projections. Well OK. Then validated the computer models with only two recent years of data. Ummm-No thanks. I agree with:
Mike Monce (05:07:02):
If not, then to have any sense of belief in their models with the input data starting in 2007 is ridiculous.
Tim Clark (10:16:05) :
From the article:
analyzed projections from six computer models, including three with sophisticated sea ice physics capabilities. That data was then combined with observations of summer sea ice loss in 2007 and 2008.
So, what exactly did they do? Using “physics” they made some projections. Well OK. Then validated the computer models with only two recent years of data. Ummm-No thanks. I agree with:
Mike Monce (05:07:02):
If not, then to have any sense of belief in their models with the input data starting in 2007 is ridiculous.
Perhaps you should read the paper rather than erect a strawman?
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl0907/2009GL037820/figures.shtml#fig01
5? 30? 100?
How about NEVER!
Even knowing what Anthony has shown here for possible bias in surface measurements, here are some easy ones to look at, courtesy of the Government of Canada:
http://www.climate.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/climate_normals/results_e.html?Province=ALL&StationName=aler&SearchType=BeginsWith&LocateBy=Province&Proximity=25&ProximityFrom=City&StationNumber=&IDType=MSC&CityName=&ParkName=&LatitudeDegrees=&LatitudeMinutes=&LongitudeDegrees=&LongitudeMinutes=&NormalsClass=A&SelNormals=&StnId=1731&
that’s the 1971 to 2000 Climate normals for Alert, no big sign of extreme warming there, but here is the data link for the same site, daily, monthly or even hourly:
http://www.climate.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/climateData/hourlydata_e.html?timeframe=1&Prov=NU&StationID=1731&Year=2009&Month=4&Day=2
Just as a random check, I chose monthly data, and looked at August Mean Monthly from 1950 to 2006, if there is an “extreme climate emergency” in those numbers, I fail to see it.