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
Phil. (10:51:54) :
Perhaps you should read the paper rather than erect a strawman?
Nice pics. The strawman here is access to the original data. Or, perhaps you could provide it?
Howarteh (21:40:31) :
“Who writes this tripe? I agree with Keith. “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.” This is hugely arrogant and reeks of elitism. Is this a science organization or a PR firm?”
Perhaps they’re stating they are proud to lead the rest of the government in the race into (ever-greater) arrogance and elitism.
Computer models are almost useless in macro-scenarios like global climate prediction. They can never fully cover all of the variables and even if they do, mathematical uncertainty (depending on how many dimensions or degrees of freedom are allowed for) makes any predictions based on such models tenuous at best.
But the worst thing about modeling like this is that computers don’t do what you want them to, rather, they do what you tell them to and they do it immediately.
Nature, on the other hand, does what it wants when it wants. Nature does not do what you tell it to do nor does it care when you issue the command.
Big difference there.
Robert (06:26:40) : & Anthony sq km to sq miles !!!
Do you suppose the writer just multiplied the number by 0.6 and rounded it off? . . . under the mistaken assumption that if 1 km = ~0.6 miles the same would hold for an area measurement ? No!
They must have meant to post this on April 1, not on the 2nd.
“Phil. (10:51:54) :
Perhaps you should read the paper rather than erect a strawman?”
That wasn’t my intent; instead if you will reread my statement, I was asking if such had been done. Now that you’ve provided access I can see they did start their runs at 1950. I also note that the models only run for September, and not the rest of the year. The graphs are vey tough to read, but from what I see the models follow the general trend of the HADISST data, but as far as I can tell there is a lot of “out of phase” oscillations between the data and the models. The CNRM seems to give the best results up until the past year or so.
My next question is then: how reliable is the HADISST data? i.e. has the ice decreased from 8.5 Msqkm to about 5.5 Msqkm? A large percentage decrease. And if so, can there be other explanations other than anthropogenic forcing which the paper seems to assume.
The have corrected their conversions.
I’m just glad the claims are finally starting to get ridiculous enough that we will be able to discredit the charade in the near future by their own claims.
After looking at the MONTHLY average sea ice trends on the NSIDC website… my curiosity got to me about the published percentage of growth or shrinkage of sea ice at the poles.
The monthly trend graph as of March 31 shows that the Arctic is shrinking at a rate of -2.7% per decade, and now the Antarctic growing at the rate of +4.7% per decade.
So, being a good little engineer, I imported the actual published data tables used for the NSIDC graphs. There are about 350 data points for the nearly 30 years of monthly averages of each type of ice trend: Arctic Extent, Arctic Area, Antarctic Extent, Antarctic Area.
Unless my spreadsheet and trend graphs are radically incorrect because of some typo or bad import of their data, I got different results from their graphs.
First off, the GLOBAL averages over all 12 months of the year are as follows:
Extent: 15.05 mIllion sq. kilometers (both poles averaged)
Area: 18.55 million square kilometers
But in graphing the trends, I got even more curious results that show a definite 30-year downward trend in global sea ice since the 1979 satellite data commenced, as follows:
Global Ice Area decline of 4.3 % in the last 30 years (1.4 % per decade)
Global Ice Extent decline of 3.3 % in 30 years (1.1 % per decade)
This included the 2006-2007 minimums in the averages, which did impact the trend. Obviously this does not include thickness.
What does this mean if my numbers are correct? It means that if the trend continues, it will take around 750 to 900 years or so for the poles to be ice free assuming the entire globe heats up for the next millenium. But somehow, I don’t think this is gonna happen considering natural cycles of little ice ages that occur from time to time. And of course, the south pole has been trending up almost constantly.
The less ice we have, the higher the CO2 taxes that we must pay. Yes, that’s it.
ROLLERBALL is coming, the G20 was the first meeting.
You know that cutting pollution would be a great idea even if the efforts of man have little to do with global warming, right? Saying that the pole may be largely ice free in 5 years is idiotic, but then so is burying your heads in the sand.
Funny thing about that Wilkins Ice Shelf breaking off, but no doubt a mere coincidence, as long as you bury your head deep enough. Mmm, sand.
I just read this one about the loss of a large section of the Wilkins ice shelf in Antarctica. See . Seems that the author is worried that the loss of the ice shelf will raise the ocean levels. My guess is that it won’t.
Well the link works, but the html is wrong.
“It’s a combination of natural variability, along with warmer air and sea conditions caused by increased greenhouse gases.” Says Dr Overland… perhaps he may want to explain to us the shape of the remaining sea ice during the 2007 melt and how “warmer air caused by increased greenhouse gases” can be that selective in melting sea ice… Or is the fact to repeat the mantra ad nauseum sufficient peer review justification?
Timothy, perhaps you may want to get familiar with the issue of iceberg calving. For your information the largest ever measured berg to calve from the Antarctica came from the Filchner Shelf, 335 km by 97km or 31,000km2, almost 10 times bigger than Larsen B. And do you know when this one was measured? In 1956 by the USS Glacier…
We have just had a summer of record low summer Arctic ice (by area), followed by a summer of record low volume. Complete meltback (in 30 years) would mean thin one-year ice the next year. With earlier meltback, the following year there would be earlier (and longer) warming of the darker water. And warmer temperatures would further increase the melting of the surrounlding permafrost, and release even more methane. Would this be one tipping point, or two?
I guess TWO YEARS…2007 and 2008…plus WHATEVER methods are used to measure and compute…makes highly accurate predictions.
Give me a break! And just wait….!
Why doesn’t the ICCP sue Al Gore & Jim Hansen and have them prosecuted for false statements and see if they can prove their case in court — that would give the ‘skeptics’ a chance to ‘debate’ AWG in front of the world!
maybe you should ask these guys
http://madrad2002.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/scientific-consensus/
NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_warming_worldbook.html
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarmingQandA/
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif (The graph)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Climatic Data Center
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html
World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
http://www.wmo.ch/pages/about/wmo50/e/world/climate_pages/global_warming_e.html
American Meteorological Society
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html
National Center for Atmospheric Research
“How do we know Earth is warming now?”
http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/research/climate/now.php
Earth System Research Laboratory – Global Monitoring Division
“Climate Forcing”
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/about/climate.html
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
http://www.ucar.edu/research/climate/warming.jsp
Jet Propulsion Laboratory – California Institute of Technology
“Global Climate Change” “How do we know?”
http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/evidence/
American Geophysical Union (world’s largest scientific society of Earth and space scientists)
“Human Impacts on Climate”
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/climate_change_position.html
American Association for the Advancement of Science
“The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now”
http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/climate_change/mtg_200702/aaas_climate_statement.pdf
http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/climate_change/
The United States Energy Information Administration
“Greenhouse Gases, Climate Change, and Energy”
http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/greenhouse/Chapter1.htm
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Report: Human activity fuels global warming”
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/climate.html
California Institute of Technology
“How We Know Global Warming is Real”
“The science behind human-induced climate change”
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~tapio/papers/skeptic_2008.pdf
Atmospheric Sciences – University of Illinois – Champaign
“Evidence continues to mount that human activities are altering the Earth’s climate on a global scale.”
http://www.atmos.uiuc.edu/research/01climate.html
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
“Global Warming”
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12457
The UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre
“Climate change – the big picture”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/index.html
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/
The UK’s Royal Society
“Climate change controversies: a simple guide”
http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=6229
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Based in Switzerland)
“Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report”
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf
Japan Meteorological Agency
“Global Warming Projection Vol.7”
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/gwp/gwp7/index-e.html
The Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
“Our climate has changed substantially.” “Global climate change and global warming are real and observable.”
http://www.amos.org.au/publications/cid/3/t/publications
Royal Society of New Zealand
“The globe is warming because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions.”
http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/Site/news/media_releases/2008/clim0708.aspx
National Geographic Magazine
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/
Scientific American Magazine
http://www.sciam.com/topic.cfm?id=global-warming-and-climate-change
Yes, we’ll ask those guys–when they’re in the dock, a dozen years from now.
“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.”
How’s that cycle 24 prediction going for you?
Francis (18:08:50) :
We have just had a summer of record low summer Arctic ice (by area), followed by a summer of record low volume. Complete meltback (in 30 years) would mean thin one-year ice the next year. With earlier meltback, the following year there would be earlier (and longer) warming of the darker water. And warmer temperatures would further increase the melting of the surrounlding permafrost, and release even more methane. Would this be one tipping point, or two?
Francis, the “record lows” are only for the period since 1979, a period of 30 years. Of course, Arctic ice extents prior to 1979 seem to be completely unknown to Arctic ice experts. Palaeoclimatologists can perform great feats of statistical legerdemain in reconstructing climate history from various climate proxies but I have yet to see the equivalent efforts devoted to reconstructing historical Arctic ice extents. Why bother, the 1979 to present records contain the proper message.
So I ask, do you really think it is solid science to extrapolate a 30 year trend ahead another 30 years? Were it that climate was so simple!
Matt Dernoga (22:11:22) :
maybe you should ask these guys
All big and respected names of impeccable credentials, but so were Bear Sterns, Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merril Lynch before they disgraced themselves and hurt a lot of people. Appeal to authority does not carry much weight these days
Stories of ice melts just don’t add up. For example, can someone explain to me how Meier and others can claim that ice is going at both poles (with whole shelves leaving us around Antarctica) according to this story I saw on FoxNews:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,512836,00.html
and yet the global ice anomaly is ABOVE the 1979-2000 mean???
Anthony,
What about this article from NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/arctic_thinice.html
andyschlei (21:04:42) :
Anthony,
What about this article from NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/arctic_thinice.html
This is all very interesting but it still suffers from unwarranted projections of the future of Arctic ice based on a short 30 years of data. Anecdotally, there is evidence that historical Arctic ice extents have gone through multi-decadal cycles. Could we not be witnessing a cyclical behavior rather than feared extropolation to zero summer/fall ice coverage?