Guest post by Steven Goddard
The WUWT Arctic Ice Thickness Survey has been conducted from the comfort of a warm living room over the last half hour, without sponsors, excessive CO2 emissions or hypothermia. The data is collected from the US military web site http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil. All of the active military buoys show significant thickening ice over the past six months to a year, as seen below.
Location of Catlin team relative to buoy 2008D and the North Pole
Buoy 2008B has thickened by more than half a metre since last autumn, and is more than 3 metres thick.
2008C also shows thickening by more than half a metre since last autumn, and is nearly 4 metres thick.
2008D has not been updated since early February, but showed thickening and is 3.5 metres thick. It is close to the Catlin team position.
2007J has thickened more than half a metre, and is nearly 4 metres thick.
2006C has thickened by nearly a full metre over the past year, and is more than 3 metres thick
UPDATE: The military site also has graphs which are supposed to show depth. It appears that many of these are broken, which is why I used the more reliable temperature graphs. The depth at which the ice drops below the freezing point of seawater (-2C) is of course the bottom of the ice. You can’t have water in a liquid state below it’s freezing point.
Some of the buoys have reliable depth data, and they correspond closely to the temperature data – for example 2007J which shows 400cm for both.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2007J.gif
http://imbcrrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/2007J.gif
Can you give us info on the WUWT team’s biometrics?
I don’t think that the average polar bear can bust through 3 meters of ice to get a poor helpless seal. I don’t think a poor helpless seal can break through 3 meters of ice to get a breath of air. Conclusion: 1. the polar bears are either starving or somewhere else. 2. we need global warming so the seals can breath. 3. either way; AGW or not; one of the two (seals, or polar bears) is going to drown.
Goes to prove the Catlin is a PR stunt that failed.
Would this be a much more relaxed “Starbuck’s hypothesis” version of the process?
Mark
“Without sponsors, excessive co2 emissions, or hypothermia” Tsk, tsk, goofing on those poor misguided Catlin fools–that’s cold (heh). On the bright side for Hansen, Gore et al., if any of the Catlin crew die as a result of this courageous but wrong-headed expedition, they will have the first deaths unambiguously linked to global warming.
But this is all just “thin” first year ice which will melt away if you so much as give it a harsh look… stop trying to make Walt Meir and NSIDC look foolish…
Well, Steven, that’s awfully inconvenient of you! Great work using alternate sources of data to give perspective!
Mannnn, I wonder how pen found those thin parts of the ice, maybe he is just pushin too hard on the ice drill…
Nice one Steven.
At least the rescue plane won’t have any trouble with thin ice for the landing…
From this article:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090406132602.htm
“First-year sea ice usually reaches 6 feet in thickness, while ice that has lasted through more than one summer averages 9 feet and can grow much thicker in some locations near the coast.”
It looks like the baby ice is pretty healthy. In fact it’s more like two year ice. Does that mean that the two year and the multi-year ice has also increased beyond expectations? This summer is shaping up to be very interesting.
How humiliating — all that data so easily harvested, in contrast to the Catlin debacle.
All:
Interesting data from International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska showing arctic ice variability over time.
Located in the Syun-Ichi Akasofu Building, the International Arctic Research Center (IARC) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) was established in 1999 as a cooperative research institute supported by both the U.S. and Japanese governments. Funding comes from the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S. and from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. More than 20 international groups and more than 60 scientists are collaborating with IARC, allowing the institute to meet our mission and goals through shared understanding and cooperation. Read more on our History page.
Examination of records of fast-ice thickness and ice extent from four arctic marginal seas (Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi) indicates that long-term trends are small and generally statistically insignificant, while trends for shorter records are not indicative of the long-term tendencies due to strong low-frequency variability in these time series, which places a strong limitation on our ability to resolve long-term trends. Ice variability in the arctic marginal-ice zone is dominated by the MDV and, to a lesser degree, by decadal fluctuations. The MDV signal decays eastward, and is strongest in the Kara Sea, whereas in the Chukchi Sea, ice-extent and fast-ice variability is dominated by decadal fluctuations, and there is no evidence of the MDV. This is consistent with the correlation pattern of SAT station data and NAO (last figure in section “Arctic atmosphere”). Adapted from Polyakov et al. 2003b.
Our analysis of potential causes for the recent central Arctic Ocean salinification suggests that ice production and sustained draining of freshwater from the Arctic Ocean in response to winds are the key contributors. Further research is required to provide quantitative estimates of impacts freshwater export and ice production may have on high-latitude freshwater content changes. Adapted from Polyakov et al. 2007.
http://research.iarc.uaf.edu/multidecadal_variability/index.php
This sort of thing must really take the wind out of the sails of people who are hoping for a government conspiracy, or something…
We live in interesting times – facts seem to have no relevance.
Example: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0407/1224244144850.html
DICK AHLSTROM, Science Editor (Tues. April 7)
“SEA ICE cover at the North Pole continues its inexorable melt-down, shrinking to a near record extent, according to new satellite data.
A related study also shows that the permanent ice cap over the Arctic is also thinning rapidly. . . .”
and then this “The data shows that climate change has not gone away, according to Oisín Coughlan of Friends of the Earth. The current focus on the global economic crisis was understandable “but this is a signal there is a much bigger crisis to be tackled”.
“That is really frightening,” said Tony Lowe of Friends of the Irish Environment. Reduced ice cover was speeding up the heating process because the sea absorbs more solar radiation than ice.”
I wonder what the requirements are to become a science editor of the Irish Times? Maybe learning to ignore facts and having several well-meaning but clueless agenda promoters contributing “information” to you.
Good Grief!
From the warmth of a British Springtime:
At the opposite end of the spectrum this article in a press release by the British Antarctic Survey 2005 and published in Geology by Bailey et al makes for interesting reading :-
“The retreat of Antarctic ice shelves is not new according to research published this week (24 Feb) in the journal Geology by scientists from Universities of Durham, Edinburgh and British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
A study of George VI Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula is the first to show that this currently ‘healthy’ ice shelf experienced an extensive retreat about 9500 years ago, more than anything seen in recent years. The retreat coincided with a shift in ocean currents that occurred after a long period of warmth. Whilst rising air temperatures are believed to be the primary cause of recent dramatic disintegration of ice shelves like Larsen B, the new study suggests that the ocean may play a more significant role in destroying them than previously thought.”
Are the Day/Month/Years correct? I think the charts need a bit more explanation for we lay persons. Either that or I drank too much wine last night, or both perhaps.
THERE GOES WATTS AGAIN! TRYING TO CONFUSE US WITH FACTS
Looks like 2006C is the only one going back 1 year (I am assuming 3/04/2008 really means april 4th so it is within a day of 1 year)… 2006C is also a lot closer to the pole now. The others that have less than 1 year will be discounted as “that usually happens in winter”.
It should be interesting to watch later this year when others will have 1 year of data. Or am I missing something?
Yes, yes. But where’s the biotelemetry data? What’s your current core temperature Steven? Surely you could spare a minute to drop a couple of lines into an XML for us?
Completely OT, but I wanted to note that in USAToday there is an article about decreased CO2 emissions due to the global recession. This seems an opportunity to perhaps extract out of the general CO2 signal that portion due to human fuel burning. Maybe the actual amount of anthropogenic CO2 can be measured if the recession continues as I would expect it would for awhile. Maybe some bad economic times could yield some good science.
My “Model supports” these facts.
The pictures from:
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/…gif
are not showing up.
Well I might as well be first at something.
Get a new ink cartridge for that printer.
The best year to year comparison would seem to be now vs April 3,08. I only see those small red squares on the last chart. Am I missing something about the others?
Wonder if this news will make all the newspapers and websites?
I’ve just posted comments on the Catlin thread regarding the build-up of rime-ice on the walls of the hand-drilled holes. Your graphs define ice temperatures beautifully, and they suggest that my concern about wall-ice build-up applies especially, to the upper metre of ice. With luck, you wouldn’t lose your instrument package in the first hole, but the loss wouldn’t be too long thereafter.
Good work, Anthony. I’m with you on the armchair research.
Well, year-over-year is certainly significant, but last six months? Surely that’s “water is wet” territory! Now, if you get Arctic ice thickening over the next six months, by all means send up a rocket! 🙂
Anthony, I’m with you regarding this global warming [snip], but wanted your opinion about this ice shelf that has broken away. Is it the Wilkens shelf?
Nice presentation, Steven.
It seems all buoys record ice thickness growth of 0.5 to 1.0 m since nov/dec 2008. But I suppose that is what you would expect during the cold winter season. For buoy 2006C there is also data from april 2008 showing an increase for the last 12 months of about 0.7 m. No indication whatsoever that ice thickness is reduced.
Although this is a fairly limited study in time and coverage, it’s certainly more significant, and dear I say robust, than what can possibly be achieved by the pathetic Catlin crew’s stunt performance.
Thanks again Steven and Anthony.
The open water encountered by the Catlin group should prove that this issue isn’t simply due to warming in the arctic – considering the open water was found at -30C or colder!
“When the Ice Worms Nest Again
(Conceivably by Robert Service; in any case, an Alaskan
tradition in the 20s and 30s. Recorded by Wilf Carter —Montana
Slim — sometime in the 1940s).
There’s a husky, dusky maiden in the Arctic
And she waits for me but it is not in vain,
For some day I’ll put my mukluks on and ask her
If she’ll wed me when the ice worms nest again.
cho: In the land of the pale blue snow,
Where it’s ninety-nine below,
And the polar bears are roaming o’er the plain,
In the shadow of the Pole
I will clasp her to my soul,
We’ll be happy when the ice worms nest again.
For our wedding feast we’ll have seal oil and blubber;
In our kayaks we will roam the bounding main;
All the walruses will look at us and rubber,
We’ll be married when the ice worms nest again.
And when the blinkin’ icebergs bound around us,
She’ll present me with a bouncing baby boy.
All the polar bears will dance a rhumba ’round us
And the walruses will click their teeth with joy.”
http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/folk-song-lyrics/When_the_Ice_Worms_Nest_Again.htm
Steven Goddard: Thanks for the post, and thanks to those who still provide truthfull data.
bsneath,
Format is day/month/year
No frostbite detected in my biometrics, but perhaps the possibility of some Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Unfortunately my CTS monitor is temporarily off line.
Stephen,
This is a valuable dataset, certainly compared to Catlin! But you’re showing plots of ice temperatures, not thickness. The ice near the bottom of has a very similar temperature to the ocean below it so the temperature profile cannot tell you the bottom ice/water boundary.
The buoys do determine the ice thickness, and 2006C has the most longest record to data:
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2006C.gif
This shows that the measured ice thickness took a 1 m hit in 2007 and the buoy nearly melted out in October 07. The lower ice boundary has not recovered in the last couple of years – this season’s profile looks very similar to last year, though the top melt refroze.
Of course all the buoys eventually melt out as the ice drifts south, most in under a year, so all the records should show an overall thinning profile. I’d look at publications from CRREL rather than individual buoy records to best determine multiannual trends.
It’s all down to man made clean air policy not man made CO2 :o)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/09/arctic_aerosols_goddard_institute/
could someone post this on newspaper sites that are reporting this caitlin thing? especially in the UK papers.
Thanks again for a top of the bill article.
It’s time for a clear message:
April 08, 2009
Climate Change
by Bob Hoye
Update on “Global Warming”
Mother Nature has been expected to be indifferent to the promotion of man-caused global warming.
The “bear market” in sunspots, and increase in volcanic activity are forcing a significant decline in global temperatures. As with data on solar activity, accumulating evidence on various factors of global cooling will be published by responsible sources.
It is fascinating that two great objectives of authoritarian political ambition – controlling the economy and the climate – are under serious assault at the same time. Natural forces are beginning to condemn the greatest intellectual blunder since the Vatican insisted that the solar system revolved around the earth.
When will the political mania to manage the economy and cure the planet fail? When the public, which can acquire common sense rather quickly, finally says a very convincing “No!”.
Are you cherry picking bouys?
[snip -off color comment]
…Now the race is on to see whether the upcoming winters will be sufficiently cold to convince the politicians that AGW is not a threat, before they pass economically destructive legislation trying to curtail it.
It’s going to be a close one…
Great work Mr. Goddard!
On a similar topic, I have been thinking about the Cryosphere Today website http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ and its use of a 1979-2000 mean on its ice anomaly graphs. I do not have the skills, but perhaps someone else on the forum can recalculate the mean form 1979 to current date and see what happens to the anomaly line in relation the the mean. May prove to be very interesting.
Thanks
Jack,
the polar bears and seals do not “break” through the ice, the seals actually follow the large cracks in from the edge of the ice, breathing along patches of open water that are there even in -45 weather as the ice is constantly moving and fracturing. I have stood beside these cracks on the Beaufort sea as they are forming, you can hear or feel 2m+ of ice snapping and poping beneath your feet… it is a sureal experience to say the least, it’s especially if you see the same cracks day after day growing and shifting.. perhaps later tonight i can post some pictures if i can find them….
by the way – these cracks I refered to have everything to do with ice mechanics, wind loading etc and nothing to do with global warming…
Richard Sharpe,
No cherry-picking. All of the active buoys are shown. Some of the ones still shown on the map drifted into warm water and melted last summer. It is he interaction between winter freezing and polar drift which determines the state of multi-year ice.
And of course the ice gets thicker in the winter. As Dr. Meier has patiently and often explained to me, this is about long-term trends. Stay tuned.
Tom P,
Many of the ice thickness graphs are broken, which is why I am using temperature. The depth at which the temperature drops below the freezing point obviously corresponds to the bottom of the ice.
Yes it has been a long day? Please see my earliest post.
The following is a link to Antarctic Ice shelfs, I agree it is not on topic exactly, but it has the words Arctic in it and its about Ice.
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?id=57
I am puzzled has the shelf broken off, is it about to break off, is it in danger of breaking off or is it still there just like the headlines are.
@ jlc (07:49:39) :
THERE GOES WATTS AGAIN! TRYING TO CONFUSE US WITH FACT
I AGREE WE DONT WANT FACTS WE WANT CIRCUMSTANCIAL EVIDENCE
Have a good holiday.
Steven,
As the CRREL website seems to be playing up the 2006C data is here:
http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/5204/ice2006c.gif
It’s actually very difficult to determine how much refreeze of the top surface there has been, as the data record is sparse to non-existent.
The guys who actually run this system do not agree with your conclusions:
Perovich, D.K. and J.A. Richter-Menge, Loss of ice in the Arctic, Annual Review of Marine Science, 1, 417 – 441, 2009
The Arctic sea ice cover is in decline. The areal extent of the ice cover has been decreasing for the past few decades at an accelerating rate. Evidence also points to a decrease in sea ice thickness and a reduction in the amount of thicker perennial sea ice. A general global warming trend has made the ice cover more vulnerable to natural fluctuations in atmospheric and oceanic forcing. The observed reduction in Arctic sea ice is a consequence of both thermodynamic and dynamic processes, including such factors as preconditioning of the ice cover, overall warming trends, changes in cloud coverage, shifts in atmospheric circulation patterns, increased export of older ice out of the Arctic, advection of ocean heat from the Pacific and North Atlantic, enhanced solar heating of the ocean, and the ice-albedo feedback. The diminishing Arctic sea ice is creating social, political, economic, and ecological challenges.
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.marine.010908.163805
Jeff:
Thanks and I know that. I too have stood on the ice and it’s scary because it’s all moving with the currents, cracks everywhere. I was just being silly with my post. Polar bears will bust through thin ice if they can smell a air pocket with baby seals and or their parent resting there. PB’s mainly ambush the seals at their breathing holes as I remember.
RE: Steven Goddard (09:12:37) :
Did you calculate in salt content to derive the freezing point?
http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/saltandfreezing/ofwater.html
Aren’t satellites neat? Now all we need is a team to go to the buoys and confirm the measurements …
Next you will be trying to tell us the satellite hot spot signature predicted by all the GCMs is missing, not as some have suggested, stolen by skeptics.
Bruce,
The freezing point of the seawater is -2C, as you can see in the graphs. That is where the temperature slope breaks from vertical.
Steven Goddard (09:12:37) :
It would seem sensible to use the feezing point to determine the bottom of the sea ice, but then perhaps not…
There was an interesting article in last week’s Science – KEN GOLDEN PROFILE: Cold Equations link here – http://www.math.utah.edu/~golden/News_articles/Science_April_3_2009_Golden_Profile.pdf
This suggests minus 5C as a Phase transition temperature, above which the ice is increasingly permeable. I’m not suggesting you are wrong – I haven’t had time to think it through. Apologies for a ‘post-and-run’ but i need to go cook supper.
Interesting article at NASA. It says, “much of the atmospheric warming observed in the Arctic since 1976 may be due to changes in tiny airborne particles called aerosols.” The article goes on to posit that most of the decrease in aerosols is due to more stringent environmental regulations.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_aerosols_prt.htm
Steven, did you at least shiver a little bit as you post this? We don’t want the Catlin crew to feel, well, foolish or anything.
Bill (at 9:03):
The politicians/enviromentalists will simply replace AGW with AGC (anthropogenic global cooling) as the nest great bogey man which must be fixed NOW or life as we know it will be over, and then continue on their merry way attempting to take full control over every aspect of all of our lives.
It’s nauseating to hear all the alarmists droning on about how if the ice cap at the north pole melts then the feedback from the open water will boil the planet! However, I’ve never seen any actual analysis on what the magnitude of the effect would actually be, notably also taking into account the fact that open ocean cools faster than ice covered ocean!
So I’ve taken a whack at it! I’m sure there are some small holes that could be picked in the approach (such as not taking into account whether or not the Arctic is more or less cloudier than the rest of the planet) but at the end of the day I don’t think this would change the overall picture much!
To begin, let’s figure out how much extra radiation would be absorbed into the Arctic ocean as a percent of the total radiation striking the Earth’s surface.
The Earth’s appears as a disc to incoming solar radiation. The portion hitting the Arctic Circle at Equinox is represented by the chord as defined by the latitude of the Arctic Circle at 66.561 degrees.
(180+2 * 66.561) /360*pi+ cos(66.561) * sin(66.561)
1 – —————————————————- pi
= 0.014
The current minimum ice extent (2008) was about 5 million sq. km. which occurs around Equinox. This represents just under 25% of the Arctic Circle area. Therefore the “melt area” in question represents 0.0035 of the total incoming radiation to the Earth.
So lets say this minimum ice “disappears” completely for the full 3 months centred on the Equinox. This means the total annual incoming radiation potentially affected represents 0.000875 of the earth’s total ANNUAL incoming surface radiation budget.
Ice albedo is 0.35. The minimum angle of incidence of incoming radiation affecting the melt area in question is likely to be on the order of 80 degrees at midday (corresponding to the average latitude of the melt area in question). If we average this with the 90 degrees realized at the start and end of the day we get an average angle of incidence of 85 degrees. The albedo of water at this angle is about 0.40 which corresponds to a 14% increase in radiative absorption over the equivalent area covered by ice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo
This means the total change to the Earth’s annual surface absorbed radiation budget would be on the order of 0.0001225 or 0.01225%.
Wow! If we just look at the potential HEATING impact of the ice melt, it just makes me want to run and turn up my air conditioner to full blast!!
Now let’s look at the potential cooling impact.
The 5 million square miles of melt area represents about 1% of the Earth’s total surface area. If we normalize this to the 3 months we get 0.25% of annual cooling from the Earth’s surface. The loss of sea ice should increase the transfer out of heat energy by at least 100 W/m2 in the Arctic. This compares to a global average of about 500W/m2.
http://seis.natsci.csulb.edu/rmorris/sic/sicins.htm
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/Kiehl_Trenberth-1997_Fig7.jpg
So the overall effect on annual heat loss would be on the order of 0.05% or 0.0005.
Offsetting the heating and cooling impacts to each other gives a total net impact of 0.0375% in INCREASED cooling!
It’s amazing what you can find out if you actually do a bit of thinking for yourself!!! This sort of analysis should be built upon so we can put to rest the myth that increased Arctic ice melt is going to boil the planet’s oceans any time soon!
RE: Steven Goddard (09:12:37) :
Sorry, I looked over your graphs again and see that salt content seems to be included (as the last point on the slope is still a few degrees below zero C ) and that it is not significant in any case for the point of determining ice depth, as the straight vertical line is enough to show the ice to water transition. Took me a while to understand the charts completely.
tarpon (09:32:15) : Don´t get upset, just sit and wait…hopefully, as the chinese proverb says: “Wait at your door and you´ll see the corpse of your enemy passing by”…chances are you´ll be frozen up before it happens. 🙂
Let me clean up the format on that equation!
1 – ((180+2 * 66.561) /360*pi+ cos(66.561) * sin(66.561))/pi
= 0.014
Steven,
“The depth at which the temperature drops below the freezing point obviously corresponds to the bottom of the ice.”
Well then on by your own analysis as the maximum temperature on the plots in -2degC it would appear you’re not seeing the bottom of the ice! But I’m afraid you’ve got your basic thermodynamics wrong. The salinity of the Arctic Sea means it has a minimum temperature of about -2degC, and so the much less saline ice can be in equilibrium at the bottom surface at that temperature.
Have a look at figure 9 in the publication I cited. In summer the ice has a very similar temperature to the underlying sea:
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/6347/icetempprofile.png
That is why CRREL do not use temperature profiles to measure the ice thickness.
“Possible Forecast for Continued Antarctica Glacier Loss and Sea-Level Rise Due to Climate Change ”
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2186
Ellie,
Even if you used -5C as your reference point for “very solid ice,” that doesn’t affect the relative change in thickness from last year.
We need our own http://xkcd.com type of cartoon.
Anaconda (08:15:42):
Wonder if this news will make all the newspapers and websites?
I don’t think so; however, my audience will know about this AGW faked operation, at least through my radio program on next Saturday. Of course, I’ll give the deserved recognition to this extraordinary team (WUWT).
It seems that NASA has released a report that all of our smog controls have worked and our air is cleaner. The result is melting arctic ice due to lack of aerosols to reflect the sunlight. A little more the door opens and the CYA continues.
Mark: Indeed! good work and very practical analysis without a computer model as well. Maybe you should publish a paper?
Bill Ryan (09:03:23) :
“…Now the race is on to see whether the upcoming winters will be sufficiently cold to convince the politicians that AGW is not a threat, before they pass economically destructive legislation trying to curtail it.
It’s going to be a close one…”
The politicians will continue to do the bidding of their masters (read “friends” and creditors) and this rubbish will be foisted upon us all no matter how much science is piled up.
The agenda will not be derailed just because someone somewhere discovered something. Heaven forfend that mere facts should get in the way of mighty dollars. There is wealth to be redistributed and power to be enjoyed.
As Aron pointed out recently, the manipulators of this world have leaned hard against this churning ball of funk and it has a life of its own now. We are too late. We have been assimilated. A very few will control riches that truly are beyond the dreams of avarice. More than all the oil companies ever had, or ever will have, and all they gotta do is print vouchers.
Even the green (environmental) movement had its’ teeth pulled when this issue was posited as a lifestyle one, not a cause to be crusaded. They have been absorbed into the gelatinous mass of misinformed, ill educated and wilfully ignorant humanity at large. Much easier to tune in to “The Apprentice” and tune out any dissonant edginess that reminds them that they once had a choice and that they chose to do nothing with that power except delegate it.
The “common man” tired long ago of
discoveringbeing shown that politicians do not have their best interest at heart. They just looks after number one and number one ain’t you. You ain’t even number two.Truth is the first casualty of war. The good guys lost. Everybody knows. Sorry.
Temperature “NORMALS” – one more time; probably applies to all like data
I’ve read this “why don’t they use all the data” thing and responded from memory a few times. So as to not be considered lazy, this time I found the answer.
Here: http://www.wral.com/weather/blogpost/1246650/
It says: “The idea behind using 30-year periods ending on the most recent “zero” year as the basis for climate normals is that 30 years serves as a reasonably good compromise between longer time periods that might obscure ongoing trends, whether they be related to global pattern changes or more localized effects (urbanization, deforestation, reforestation, etc) and shorter time periods that might be unduly influenced by short-term variability. Updating the normal every 10 years likewise allows for regular updates while maintaining some stability to the numbers for planning and engineering purposes. . . .
. . . this protocol for standardidizing international climate normals was selected at an International Meteorological Conference in Warsaw, Poland in 1935, with the first calculated normals based on the period 1901-1930. The values have been updated every ten years since, with our current normals based on 1971-2000.”
Can anyone comment on the rate of ice growth at, say -25C, -35C with a thickness of ice already at 1 m, 2m, 3m? I realize that currents beneath the ice thin it but lets assume no appreciable current. Intuitively, one can see that the thickening slows, perhaps to become in equilibrium as thickness increases. A brief tutorial would help visualize the effects of cooling and warming air above the ice. At Alert, Canada’s northnmost point, there are only 20 to 30 days a year when the temperature goes above 0 C and the mean for that period is only a few degrees above zero C. Does the fast ice under such conditions stay about the same thickness?
Steven,
Please do not read my submitted post, alter you previous response, and then discard my submission.
It leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth.
REPLY: Tom, none of your submissions have been discarded, they are all there. However I’ll point out I rescued one from the spam filter due to the number of URL’s/links in it. All of your posts are intact. Please don’t blame Steven for a post of your going to the spam filter, he does not moderate comments in any way. He also does not have the ability to alter any comments already posted. No comments have been altered here. – Anthony
Tom P,
The freezing point of the seawater is about -2C, so temperatures less than -2C correspond to solid, and temperatures at -2C correspond to liquid. Just as the graph you provided shows. As salinity decreases, the freezing point increases towards 0C.
Note the close correlation between these two crrel graphs. Freezing depth at 400cm.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/2007J.gif
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2007J.gif
Catalin have mentioned their drilling work
Meanwhile NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center have released their latest sea ice data for the Arctic, showing that the decade-long trend of shrinking sea ice cover is continuing. The new evidence, from satellite observations, also shows that the ice cap is thinning.
Catlin Arctic Survey expedition leader Pen Hadow says that, 37 days into the Project and having drilled into the ice in hundreds of different spots, his observations would seem to support this latest research.
“The drilling experiments I’m doing are showing the ice to be between 1.5 and 2 metres thick”, he told Independent Television News. “Scientists say that means it will not last the summer melt”.
Steven, yes you are right.
I thought this phase transition stuff was interesting, perhaps in relation to how some measurements are done and where ice is not continuous. Anyway that doesn’t apply here as the buoys seem well away from open water (basically now i have had time to digest the post properly along with my dinner. Just shows – you should never post-and-run).
John F. Hultquist (10:21:01) :
It says: “The idea behind using 30-year periods ending on the most recent “zero” year as the basis for climate normals is that 30 years serves as a reasonably good compromise between longer time periods that might obscure ongoing trends …
The part I bolded seems to be an admission of deliberate fraud.
Putting it in my own words, using the longer period might reveal the claimed trend does not, in fact, exist. Have I got the concept right?
Neil,
Earlier in the Catlin expedition they were on first year ice.
Last week they reported they were now on “much thicker multi-year ice.”
Clearly the military has joined the legions of duplicitous neo-con shills and lackeys of big oil by publishing actual real data that has not been massaged by the required statistical manipulations used by NASA climate “science” under Dr. James Hansen and NOAA.
This is OT, but appropriate for WUWT readers. The CBS TV station in Boston, Mass has an article that questions AGW on their website. Mish Michaels, on-air weather reporter, tells us about Dr. Soon, sunspots, and climate. I do not know if it was broadcast. See wbztv.com/curious/solar.min.sunrise.2.979838.html
“For example, from 1645 to 1715 there were no sunspots and it was a very, very cold period for our planet. Most call it the “Little Ice Age,” said Dr. Soon. “Based on my research, I tend to be in support of a very, very strong role by the Sun’s energy input as a climate driver. If you were to ask me about the role of CO2, I would say its very, very small,” he added.
““The drilling experiments I’m doing are showing the ice to be between 1.5 and 2 metres thick”, he told Independent Television News. “Scientists say that means it will not last the summer melt”.”
Wow, ground breaking research that! Let’s look at last year’s numbers! Arctic sea ice max = 14.5 million sq. km., sea ice min = 5.0 million sq. km. Looks like its standard practice for 2/3 of the ice to melt!
Move along! Nothing to report here! (Standard with alarmist claims!)
Here’s some bunk from the LA Times about AGW…
What will global warming look like? Scientists point to Australia
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-climate-change-australia9-2009apr09,0,65585.story?track=rss
Of course, they fail to mention that the entire recorded history of Australia is beset with floods and drought and the current situation is nothing new or unprecedented. They even go so far as to say this:
With few skeptics among them, Australians appear to be coming to an awakening: Adapt to a rapidly shifting climate, and soon.
I wonder if this is why Kevin Rudd has had such a difficult time trying to pass crippling cap and tax legislation.
Mark.
I have long thought that the polar ice is like a thermostat.
The Earth warms and the polar sea ice recedes creating additional cooling.
The Earth cools and the polar sea ice increases allowing warming.
An oscillation between warming & cooling ensues.
The time periods are long enough for the young to forget what their elders have taught them, that is where the cooling & warming scares come from.
DaveE.
This actually made me LOL…Steven, it looks like you’ve been rebuked by NASA!
Aerosols May Drive a Significant Portion of Arctic Warming
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_aerosols.html
So, if the ice is getting thicker but the Arctic is warming, what physical phenomenon can explain this? I guess we could ask the Catlin folks how warm it is up there in the Arctic!
Henry Galt:
“The good guys lost. Everybody knows. Sorry.”
Hope not this time, however the good hearted WUWT team will surely make an expedition to find the remains of the Gwrs. believers (not of course their most obnoxious and conveniently isolated by fat leaders) which by then will be covered by at least one mile thick ice.
Wait for it…. I expect many buoy sensor drift malfunctions.
Amazing! This would be funny if it weren’t sooo pathetic!
Steven,
I agree that in winter the interface is clear from the temperature profile. In summer though it is far from obvious. Although none of your posted profiles stretch back to maximum melt, the earliest profiles often show no clear discontinuity. In fact the CRREL thickness data seems to have difficulties measuring the maximum melt as can be seen from the 2006C plot:
http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/5204/ice2006c.gif
We would expect all of the Arctic ice to have thickened over the last six months just due to seasonal changes. The thickness profiles posted by CRREL show the most more complete record, though their website is rather unreliable, I agree. And it is from their complete dataset that CRREL have drawn the conclusions that the Arctic ice has been receding and thinning.
All my posts got published together! I don’t know what happened there.
The reason the ice is getting thicker over the last six months is because of the winter cold. The only buoy which showed a full year’s temperature data is 2006C. That one shows a significant increase in thickness, but also has drifted closer to the pole where it is colder.
The really interesting thing will be what happens during the summer and next winter.
Anthony,
Thanks for responding to my email – I can see what happened and fully accept it had nothing to do with Steven- I apologise for blaming Steven rather than the spam filter!
There’s probably another one lodged down there as I write…
In order for ice to go to 9m deep, it has to start at ZERO and build up thickness from there. If next summer follows the trend, and the fact that colder water is now flowing up there, the buildup will continue for years to come.
To assume that new ice will always completely melt during summer is a very bold prediction.
An icecube will melt more slowly in the fridge than outside. After the same time, if I put the ice back in the freezer, the one that was in the fridge will freeze much faster, and thicker for also an equal amount of time.
Thanks Steve, great post.
Mark, keep hatchin’ that little paper of yours.
From this recent satellite photo this team should be crossing lots of fissures, pressure ridges, and cracks in the ice on their way towards the pole. Notice the numerous cracks from the moving sea ice. It’s not just one sheet of ice that one would imagine.
http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/data/satellite/hrpt_dfo_ir_100.jpg
Steven Goddard and anyone else who might know:
Here is the extent of the ice at about minimum area for 2007 and 2008.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=09&fd=15&fy=2007&sm=09&sd=15&sy=2008
Could someone explain how the Caitlin expedition found all the fresh ice to drill when it would appear that they are on 1+ year ice their whole route??
JAN (08:31:05) :
It seems all buoys record ice thickness growth of 0.5 to 1.0 m since nov/dec 2008.
Except for the ones not mentioned which melted during that period!
2008D is mentioned as being nearest to the Catlin position, that;s where it was in February and hasn’t given any meaningful data this year.
Note that only one of those surviving buoys was initially placed on first year ice, most of the buoys, including the ones that melted, were sited on multiyear ice.
Also the buoys aren’t where they were when the ice was thinner, for example 2006C is at 85.409 N,70.930 W now, a year ago it was at 81.107 N,151.852 W. 2007F wasn’t so lucky a year ago it was at 77.976 N,135.005 W but didn’t make through the winter.
But I suppose that is what you would expect during the cold winter season. For buoy 2006C there is also data from april 2008 showing an increase for the last 12 months of about 0.7 m. No indication whatsoever that ice thickness is reduced
OK kuhnkat I can explain it to you. It’s because the Catlin expedition is here with Al Gore working on their next years plans to dog sled to the south pole.
http://www.accommodationnear.com/beach/bali.htm
Of course I’m being silly.
I understand that one of the motivations for the Catlin “explorers” is a post-expedition book deal. This is your big opportunity, Mr. Goddard!
I suggest the title “Triumph of The Climate Nerds” and a leader stating, “The untold story of how a computer nerd, while sipping a class of Sherry, deftly plucked the holy grail of “Arctic Sea Ice Thickness” from the shivering hands of a well financed band of manly men and women who were crudely digging for the prize.”
Would someone please explain to me which physical miracle leads to the fact that older ice is more resistant to melting than some younger one? Is it also true that water, which stayed longer in the liquid phase doesn’t freeze as fast as just melted one…
Here’s a quote on the Catlin expedition from the BBC’s David Shukman
“The expedition’s other research tasks include drilling through the ice by hand, on average four times a day.
With 102 holes drilled so far, hundreds of measurements have been made of ice thickness and snow cover over the 243km covered so far.
The drillings have revealed a typical ice thickness of between 1.5 – 2 metres which is far thinner than a previous generation of explorers encountered.
wonder if he’ll care to elaborate on whom these explorers from a previous Generation were
That ”knick” at -2 degrees is certainly the ice/water interface. Water is an excellent heat conductor while ice is a fairly good insulator, hence the knickpoint. However not everything above that knick is ice. The thermistor strings mostly stick up a bit into the air. This is the part at the top with almost constant temperature. Below this is a thin layer with a very steep thermal gradient. This is snow which is an excellent insulator. So it is only the distance between the two knicks that is actually ice. However 2008C seems to be all in ice, so there unly a minimum thickness is obtainable. It should be noted that this measurement method is only possible in winter. In summer air temperatures are close to zero, so there is essentially no thermal gradient, and hardly any knickpoints.
A couple of more points that need clarifying. Arctic sea-ice does not grow in in winter only. It thickens during spring and early summer too. This is because (fresh) meltwater from snow percolates through the ice and freezes on contact with the subzero water. This surprised Nansen quita a bit on the Fram expedition. There were big meltwater pools on the ice, and yet it grew thicker and thicker! Incidentally Fram recorded an average thickness of 3,1 meters in 1893-96 and Sedov 2,2 meters along the same route in 1937-38.
Also seals can actually make and maintain breathing holes in the ice if there is no convenient polynyas. However this is dangerous, since they have to come back frequently to keep it open, and polar bears have learned to keep watch at such holes. Here is a nice picture of a hole, complete with seal:
http://www.polarfoto.com/aktuell/ringel.jpg
Rabe (11:58:26) :
Would someone please explain to me which physical miracle leads to the fact that older ice is more resistant to melting than some younger one? Is it also true that water, which stayed longer in the liquid phase doesn’t freeze as fast as just melted one…
You’re quite right. It’s the thickness of the ice that matters. It happens that ice that survives more than one season is usually thicker than the new ice.
As Phil. noted in another thread, there are other physical mechanisms in play. If they are as important as stated in this link is another matter.
“John Galt (12:15:18) :
Rabe (11:58:26) :
Would someone please explain to me which physical miracle leads to the fact that older ice is more resistant to melting than some younger one? Is it also true that water, which stayed longer in the liquid phase doesn’t freeze as fast as just melted one…
You’re quite right. It’s the thickness of the ice that matters. It happens that ice that survives more than one season is usually thicker than the new ice.”
It’s not just a question of volume of ice. The density of the ice has much more to do with the “rate of melting”. The rate at which ice melts depends of course on the temperature of that ice but as well also on the temperature surrounding the ice. The thickness of the ice will have a role in compacting the ice to increase it’s density. In other words, the denser the ice, the more”frozen water molecules” are in there, the longer it will take to transform all the molecules contained in the chunck of ice from ice-water to liquid-water.
As for the question about the liquid water… the only thing that will play on the speed at which the liquid-water to solid-water is the temperature of that water and the temperature of the air above it. Of course, evaporation will certainly help in decreasing the temperature of the surface of the water, which could trigger the freezing. I don’t think we can have super-cooled water in the ocean… too much mixing and elements in there.
John W. (10:48:09) :
Reasonable people can disagree. Thinking historically now, would you want a normal or average temperature, say for Paris, to include all of the years of the Little Ice Age and the 50 years after its recovery. Anyone not over 75 would find the normal reported temperature a bit strange. By using the most recent 30 years, a person of about 50 would sense the average as being consistent with her or his own experience.
I think this is the sort of reasoning that went into the 30-year rule. It was done before all the AGW crap so I don’t think the intention was sinister, even though we interpret it as such in 2009. I think it will require an international conference to change it although, as has been suggested, someone else could take the raw data and chart a new running average of their choosing. That won’t be me!
Chuck Bradley (10:51:03) :
The Willie Soon thing you mention is on ICECAP with a nice photo.
Slightly off topic. The Register has an article with an interesting spin on polar ice cap melting. The study is from NASA
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/09/arctic_aerosols_goddard_institute/
Phew – that’s a relief then.
NASA inferred that three will be less Arctic ice this Summer simply because there is more young ice.
Well, the most melting ever recorded the last 30 years of satellite observation was in 2007 so I would have to assume there was a record amount of new ice in the refreeze after that.
But 9% less ice melted in the Summer of 2008, so I would have to believe there will be more multi year ice in the Summer of 2009 than in either of the two prior Summer.
Thus less melting, when using NASA’s reasoning.
Unfortunately too many scientists are predicting melting and they stop observing what is actually happening. No mention by NASA of cooling ocean currents.
Rabe (11:58:26) :
“Would someone please explain to me which physical miracle . . .”
{melting new versus old ice and other astounding miracles}
Heck of a link below but I searched on “old ice” +”new ice” density melting
and took the second link “Descriptive Physical . . . “
http://books.google.com/books?id=94GNMv57uH8C&pg=PA229&lpg=PA229&dq=%22old+ice%22+%2B%22new+ice%22+density+melting&source=bl&ots=kWGL3Ek-wL&sig=u_E1k8oLoNqzQK3JnTvqyAjd8U8&hl=en&ei=XQbcSYe5CYnAMoOS_eIN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2
The idea is that this is not tap water and you ought not to think of it as such. Being physics, it’s not a miracle, but it is interesting.
It seems like the more that sea ice is discussed here, the higher it goes!!!
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Just look at that anomaly…
Phil.
“For buoy 2006C there is also data from april 2008 showing an increase for the last 12 months of about 0.7 m. No indication whatsoever that ice thickness is reduced.”
I don’t see where you got that figure of a reduction of 0.7 m. For buoy 2006C the 2007 and 2008 thicknesses follow a very similar profile, though 1 m thinner than 2007. This is only one buoy, though – CRREL have a much more complete dataset and in their recent review paper they conclude:
SUMMARY POINTS
1. There has been a significant decrease in the extent of Arctic sea ice, particularly at the end of summer.
2. There has been a decrease in the amount of perennial sea ice, making the ice cover more susceptible to changes in atmospheric and oceanic forcing.
3. The observed changes in sea ice are a result of thermodynamic and dynamic processes.
4. The observed September minimum annual ice extent has decreased faster than model predictions.
5. The ice-albedo feedback is contributing to the decline of the sea ice cover.
FUTURE ISSUES
1. Has the Arctic sea ice cover passed a tipping point and is it heading toward a new state?
2. What impact will a reduced summer ice cover have on the global climate system?
3. How can we better forecast and plan for future sea ice changes on regional, as well as Arctic, scales?
4. What are the societal implications for an ice-free summer Arctic Ocean?
So while the WUWT ice survey might want to conclude there is thickening ice (which of course there will be if you take the last six months), the research team actually gathering the data has reached some rather different conclusions.
I certainly agree this is far more valid work than the Catlin stunt which is doing a disservice to polar science.
Mike Bryant (13:05:38) :
“It seems like the more that sea ice is discussed here, the higher it goes!!!
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Just look at that anomaly…”
Mike,
The anomaly looks very healthy to me.
Nothing to worry about.
Ray (12:36:08) :
“John Galt (12:15:18) :
Rabe (11:58:26) :
“Would someone please explain to me which physical miracle leads to the fact that older ice is more resistant to melting than some younger one? ”
It’s a matter of experience.
The older ice is floating around longer.
Steven Goddard – should have cheched the home page before I posted this on the otehr thread. You should be able to recreate a thickness transect to the pole from the current buoys out there.
my original post:
I while back there was some discussion on the Catlin site about a “record day” for ice core drilling near the first re-supply site where Pen stated he had drilled 48 cores. A satellite image was presented March 17th. See:
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/Difficult_decisions_
The airstrip has a noted thickness of 1.06m – I love the accuracy. But we also know that the radar system was non-operational from the BBC report, therefore my assumption is that much of Pen’s work was done around the map area, in the middle of a freeze/refreeze area. One could hardly call the airstrip first year ice as it was more like “last months”. So onto more statisitcs. The BBC articel goes on to state:
“With 102 holes drilled so far, hundreds of measurements have been made of ice thickness and snow cover over the 243km covered so far. ”
With 48 of the 102 measurements made most likely within the Radarsat image (that’s 48@1.06m), what can we learn about average thickness? If thier estimate of 1.5 to 2m meters is the average then the other half of the measurements must be 2 to 2.5m. What kind of independant information can we use to verify this? The international Arctic Buoy program site helps out.
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/maps_daily_northpole.html
You can see the drift and the buoy id’s. One examply bouy that is along the path is 30294. It has a 2009 max ice thickness of 292 cm. Specific information found here:
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/2008D.htm
kuhnkat,
Good question. The answer is that a lot of multi-year ice blew out into the North Atlantic and melted during the last two winters.
Funny, I was at a lecture last Saturday where http://www.soton.ac.uk/mediacentre/guidetoexpertise/simon_boxall.html Simon Boxall (an oceanographer and BBC pundit) made a clear prediction that the Arctic ice cap will be gone by 2020-2025.
Thing is, I almost believed him. Then he made the fatal mistake of telling those present that the Thames Barrier was being closed twice a month now, as opposed to two or three times a year – and that we will need to be replacing the Barrier “soon”. Little did he know that I was working at the Thames Barrier that Christmas (2002) when we closed 19 times consecutively – and it had absolutely nothing to do with climate change at all, but rather a change in the operating rule.
Then I knew he didn’t really know what he was talking about. I’d love to hear his response to these figures.
The next summer Big Fat Al will point his most marvelous Magic Wand made specially for him, by the nether world master magician, to the north polar ice and will demand it to melt down inmediately, if it doesn´t then his north koreans fans will send a transcontinental rocket magic wand to perform the magic; then with His most profound and weighty voice acting like “jericho trumpets” which tumble stone walls down, will admonish the unbelievers to surrender under his greasy power.,
The age of the ice matters, as salt comes out of the crystalline structure of ice, over time. The lower the salt content, the higher the melting point.
Also, as I recall, but don’t hold me to it, that fresher water ice has better physical strength, than ice with salt.
Bill Ryan (09:03:23) :
It would appear any sort of cap and trade legislation is dead for this year’s session. Which means it will be dead next year, as politicians become quite shy in an election year.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/is-cap-and-trade-dead-thi_b_183781.html
I have believed all along the cap and trade stuff was just empty rhetoric. People simply will not stand for a doubling of their utility or gasoline bills.
The great experiment continues. Mankind continues to dump CO2 in the atmosphere, the globe continues to cool, and certain predictions regarding the polar ice cap will be thoroughly tested. It will be another 3 years before cap and trade will even be considered. Only a year away from Hansen’s tipping point and two years from Al Gore’s ice free polar cap deadline.
Wonder what the ice cap will look like by then?
Shhh… Shhh…
It’s the Military Man… Don’t you know you can’t trust their data…
Wait… What’s that… Sounds like a Helicopter…
Huh…
(Mummph).
If this has already been posted, I apologize. But I would be remiss if I didn’t point out this part of this website:
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/change.htm
The Arctic sea ice cover is in decline. Observations show significant decreases in September sea ice extent. Satellite-derived estimates of the minimum ice extent suggest a net reduction between 1978 and 1998 at a rate of 3% per decade. The rate of decline of the summer sea ice cover has been consistently accelerating in recent years and was 15% per decade from 1998 to 2008. The 2007 summer sea ice extent marked a new record minimum for the period of passive microwave satellite observation beginning in 1979. At 4.3 million km2 the 2007 summer sea ice cover was 39 percent smaller than the long-term average from 1979 to 2000. An extended time series of sea ice extent, derived primarily from operational sea ice charts produced by national ice centers, suggests that the 2007 September ice extent was 50 percent lower than conditions in the 1950s to the 1970s [Stroeve et al., 2008]. Results from Stroeve et al. [2007] indicate that the observed decrease in Arctic summer sea ice extent is larger than that GCM ensemble mean prediction.
Jack Simmons (13:39:06) :
Bill Ryan (09:03:23) :
…Now the race is on to see whether the upcoming winters will be sufficiently cold to convince the politicians that AGW is not a threat, before they pass economically destructive legislation trying to curtail it.
It’s going to be a close one…
It would appear any sort of cap and trade legislation is dead for this year’s session. Which means it will be dead next year, as politicians become quite shy in an election year.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/is-cap-and-trade-dead-thi_b_183781.html
I have believed all along the cap and trade stuff was just empty rhetoric. People simply will not stand for a doubling of their utility or gasoline bills.
…
Wonder what the ice cap will look like by then?
If no CAP & TRADE, then a certain President will have a rather large hole in their budget.
Now how will that be filled?
Jack/Bill: Cap and trade is not dead, but it will be emasculated.
The Thune, Ensign and Johanns amendments all reduce how effective Cap and Trade would be.
The Thune and Ensign amendment limit how much could be charged, by stating that it can’t raise the price of gasoline or electricity (Thune), or increase taxes to the middle class (Ensign).
The Johanns amendment keeps it from being filibuster proof, and also shows Democratic opposition to such legislation.
If it can’t raise the price of gasoline or electricity, it will be most ineffective.
Say CAP & TRADE Dies a lonely death in Congress. What’s to stop the EPA going ahead and regulating CO2 emissions?
J; Your
Thing is, I almost believed him. Then he made the fatal mistake of telling those present that the Thames Barrier was being closed twice a month now, as opposed to two or three times a year – and that we will need to be replacing the Barrier “soon”.
Apparently your speaker didn’t know that experts have said that the barrier will be sufficient until 2070. Which, in geologic terms, is soon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7973623.stm
Les Johnson (13:37:09) :
Usually, mixtures don’t freeze. Sea water is a mixture of pure water and mostly salt. During the freezing process, the solvent’s freezing/melting point is depressed due to the presence of solutes (i.e. salts). But it is the pure solvent that freezes, extracting the solute in the process. Of course, there can be some solutes that gets trapped in the intertices but generally, if you would freeze a solution very slowly, you would get the pure solvent, as solid, and the liquid phase would get more and more concentrated, depressing even more the freezing point of the remaining solution.
Hydrogen bonds give water its impressive properties. Pure water when frozen very slowly will give a perfect lattice of very strong hydrogen bonds. Those bonds are so strong that a thin 10 cm layer can hold the weight of a fully loaded transport truck (that’s why they can use ice bridges in the winter). However, when you introduce impurities, the hydrogen bond structure is weaker than the case of the perfect cristal structure.
I attended James Hansen’s talk at the Conference on World Affairs today in Boulder. He covered the loss of sea ice quite extensively and several times he brought up warmth in the “pipeline”.
Interestingly, he acknowledged cooling in 2008 due to Southern Oscillation and claimed that global temps will exceed records again within 1 or 2 years.
Within an hour after his talk, a cold front moved in and a rain/snow mix is expected. That’s nothing unusual for Colorado in April and certainly not unusual for Hansen’s presence.
J,
“Little did he know that I was working at the Thames Barrier that Christmas (2002) when we closed 19 times consecutively – and it had absolutely nothing to do with climate change at all, but rather a change in the operating rule.”
Operational closures appear to be excluded from the record of tidal-surge closures – there were only two of the latter in 2002. The history for such barrier closures, triggered by an expected water level of 4.87m in central London, is here:
http://www.grdp.org/research/library/data/58613.aspx
Given the clear trend of increasing Barrier closures due to tidal surges, and indeed the CRREL data Steven has brought to our attention, I’d say Simon Boxall might know what he’s talking about.
Several people have asked recently about global sea ice.
Here is a very simple spreadsheet containing all the monthly sea ice data Nov 1978 through March 2009 ready tabulated for graphing, calculating or whatever. No graphs. No macros.
.xls which can be imported into most software packages
There are two months missing, no data. Up to you how you handle that. I’ve set to blank, not zero. Should xy graph just fine.
http://www.gpsl.net/climate/data/sea_ice/global_sea_ice.zip (29k)
Graeme Rodaughan (13:49:48) :
Say CAP & TRADE Dies a lonely death in Congress. What’s to stop the EPA going ahead and regulating CO2 emissions?
Ultimately, that is what will happen. The only bright side to that will be the resulting backlash and consequent one-term wonder phenomenon that results, and then the new EPA leadership and immediate revocation of the policy… or at least, one can hope.
Alternatively, once people see their utility bills rising rapidly, particularly in the so-called “blue states” in the NE, they’ll start screaming to their respective representatives and get enough pressure to drop the nonsense.
I place higher hope in the former, but you never know. The OLF is still riding high.
Mark
Global sea ice “area” is now 436,000 km2 above average.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.recent.global.png
And the Arctic sea ice area is only 390,000 km2 below normal now.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.anomaly.arctic.png
Mark T (14:34:41) :
…
The OLF is still riding high.
Mark
Thanks Mark – What is OLF?
I’m curious about the amount of energy required for the ice thickness to have grown this past season. How much energy has the Arctic sink sucked up this season so far?
With the cooling from sun spot activity that is ongoing maybe we need to warm up the planet before we enter a new ice age? Yikes, that’s a scary thought… just when the politicians are planning on terraforming the Earth the other way! Double yikes, could we make an ice age worse by removing C02 from the atmosphere?
If they really have it backwards we could be headed for big trouble with the terrorforming that is about to get underway. This is our only planet where we can exist at this point in the known universe! Certainly the only one we can get to likely forever (unless we terraform Mars or some other body in the Sol star system).
The reason that the amount of energy to grow the ice is important is that that has to come from somewhere… out of the atmosphere…
Also the temperature graphs shown are interesting in that as the depth gets to about 3.25 meters the water temp stabilizes at just below ~2c to ~3c while it’s much colder above.
Rabe (11:58:26):
“Would someone please explain to me which physical miracle leads to the fact that older ice is more resistant to melting than some younger one? Is it also true that water, which stayed longer in the liquid phase, doesn’t freeze as fast as just melted one….”
I may be on thin ice here, but I’ll risk the following hypothesis:
When sea water freezes, the salt is forced out of the ice. However, this may not be an instant reaction, but one that takes months and years, so much that multiyear ice is significantly less saline than baby ice. As can been seen from the graphs on top of the post, the freezing point for seawater is -2C. Thus the melting point of baby ice is also close to -2C. However, older ice with less salt content, will have higher melting point, closer to fresh water at 0C. Alas, the sea temperature will have to rise more to melt older ice.
Likewise, recent meltwater from sea ice with low salinity tend to float on top of the sea water column due to lower density, hence that water will refreeze at around 0C, while well mixed sea water freezes at -2C, as shown above.
Voila, mystery solved….maybe.
May I thank Steven Goddard for this excellent blog posting.
Comment to Randall (13:55:26)
Strangely enough I was just looking at the participants list of that Conference on World Affairs in Boulder
http://www.colorado.edu/cwa/participants.html?year=2009
It surprised me how few earth scientists were on it. Maybe it shouldn’t have.
As soon as I posted my above post (14:43:42): I see that other posters have commented on the same question, so please disregard.
I like the WUWT Ice Survey. Done for much less cost and greater accuracy and geographical reach than the Catlin mess.
(OK I know terh military paid for it really, but then that is an orgaqnization which needs to know this stuiff).
Tom P (13:09:03) :
Phil.
“For buoy 2006C there is also data from april 2008 showing an increase for the last 12 months of about 0.7 m. No indication whatsoever that ice thickness is reduced.”
I don’t see where you got that figure of a reduction of 0.7 m. For buoy 2006C the 2007 and 2008 thicknesses follow a very similar profile, though 1 m thinner than 2007.
Sorry that wasn’t mine, it was part of the piece I was quoting from and I failed to mark it. I agree that the gauge shows no increase, however Goddard prefers to use the temperature/depth plot to estimate the thickness of the ice and I think that’s where the 0.7m comes from.
As I pointed out earlier I find it a rather poor argument that Goddard uses. A whole bunch of buoys were scattered across the Arctic, mostly on multiyear ice, the only ones that survived washed up on the thick multiyear ice to the N of Canada, then ignoring all the ones that didn’t survive, he concludes that the sea ice is getting thicker!
“…without sponsors, excessive CO2 emissions or hypothermia.”
Well, you could have got carpal tunnel.
I have a few questions regarding NSIDC:
1) How come when you go to their website and click to the seaice index, the default graph (to the right of the page) that comes up is of the Arctic? It should be the Antarctic as 90% of the worlds ice is located there according to Discovery Channel’s ‘Planet Earth.’ Can anybody from the Southern Hemisphere confirm what graph you people get, maybe it defaults automatically based on the location of the internet surfer? Or maybe I’ve got a preference set with a cookie…?
2) How come the ice area means are from 1979 to 2000? Why can’t they be from 1979 to 2009?
But but but but but the world is warming by many degrees per decade and the ice will all be gone and we’ll be under water within four years according to our dear Prince Charles, James Hansen and Al Gore. Unless of course we pay many taxes and turn of all the lights. Who needs electricity, winters will be warm! Look…
I only see 4 buoys with good data, and 1 with poor data on the Navy site…??? Of those 4, 2 increased ice thickness a fair bit, like a meter; one a tiny bit; and one is all over the place. It looks like a couple others melted out this winter, and a couple melted out in the fall. Not really much to go on… must be something more…?
pwl (14:43:11) :
Sorry to break it to you, but you don’t ADD energy to make ice! You have to remove it from the water. We are not talking about a freezer here.
The heat energy is extracted to the atmosphere and eventually should leak in space. This is why it is warmer when it is snowing…
H2O(l) –> H2O(s) + heat
So everyone involved will be watching the Arctic ice melt this summer to see if it surpasses 2008 melt, or not, just like we were watching 2008 melt last summer and comparing it to 2007–worth blogging about. I’ll be clicking to the colored graph at JAXA a lot, from the comfort of my home, just like Steven Goddard.
I can see from the military website that the plots of the active buoy drift tracks track the differing historical drifts of the buoys, presumably mainly wind driven? What would be even more interesting would be if they recorded sub-ice ocean current vectors as well as temperature, or do they?. It seems bottom melt is the main ice consumer and ice thickness is typically thickest toward Canada and thinning south and east.
geoff pohanka (12:58:58) :
NASA inferred that three will be less Arctic ice this Summer simply because there is more young ice.
Well, the most melting ever recorded the last 30 years of satellite observation was in 2007 so I would have to assume there was a record amount of new ice in the refreeze after that.
But 9% less ice melted in the Summer of 2008, so I would have to believe there will be more multi year ice in the Summer of 2009 than in either of the two prior Summer.
Actually you have that backwards. In 07 the max was ~13.2Mm^2 and the min ~2.9Mm^2, whereas in 08 it was 13.9 and 3.0 respectively so the melt was ~5% greater in 08. Since the max this winter was only ~14Mm^2 then the most that could be 1st year ice is ~21%, minus any outflow through the Fram.
Phil.
Thanks for the clarification.
I give Steven full credit for bringing the CRREL dataset to our attention. His analysis of it is another matter. Rather like the sea-level data that shows quite clearly that current trends are above the historical values, Steven bravely presents time series that rather undermine his underlying hypotheses.
In this case I think there might be an understandable reluctance to accuse the US Army of massaging its data, though of course it is completely consistent with the findings of other polar scientists which show growing ice loss in the Arctic.
Steven,
Is it possible to get a longer record of data for these buoys?
It would be even more informative to look at -2 C isotherm depth vs time over multiple years. Obviously, a significant part of the observed “thickening” is due to it being “winter” – I am guessing the ice thickens every winter & thins every summer, but what is the trend year to year on these min & max thicknesses?
That would be much more informative if it would be possible to pull that analysis together.
…looking forward to seeing that analysis. Hope that you can provide.
JL
An interesting editorial in The Australian newspaper
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25310829-16382,00.html
Mr Garrett’s performance shows the way “global warming” has become shorthand for whatever environmentalists want to attribute to humanity. There is no denying part of the Wilkins ice shelf has separated from Antarctica and will sooner or later melt, as icebergs always do. But this does not prove anything other than part of an enormous iceshelf, one among many, has fractured along a fault line. This is neither unique nor in itself alarming, and to argue otherwise assumes Antarctica started to change only when humanity began generating coal-fired electricity and driving petroleum-powered cars.
G
Jeff L,
“It would be even more informative to look at -2 C isotherm depth vs time over multiple years.”
CRREL have derived this data, though Steven has not presented it. The longest time series to date is from Buoy 2006C:
http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/5204/ice2006c.gif
This multiple year data is not consistent with the title of this thread.
Everybody knows that Arctic ice declined significantly prior to 2007.
The question is – what is happening now during the solar minimum and cool phase of the PDO?
Tom P (16:00:50) :
“This multiple year data is not consistent with the title of this thread.”
Indeed it’s not – Steven, what say you??
Unfortunately, this is still only a 3 year record of data from 1 buoy – not exactly a robust dataset to draw conclusions about the fate of all arctic ice – one way or the other.
Tom P,
Do you think that The Catlin Expedition is retroactively collecting data from past years?
Nice cherry picking there Tom P. Do you happen to have data for Ice extent or thickness during the MWP? The Holocene Optimum?
Suppose that someone from a well respected scientific institution told the press that since the last IPCC meeting in 2007, temperatures and sea level have risen faster than expected, and ice has diminished faster than expected.
Difficult to imagine that happening, since they would be wrong on all counts. Also difficult to believe that the bulldogs in the press would allow such nonsense to fly without double-checking the facts.
sort of on topic I guess….why doesn’t Google Earth appear to be showing any ice over the Arctic? Greenland comes up all nice and white, so too the Antarctic….but all blue over the Arctic??
Jeff L,
I say – read the entire first paragraph. All four sentences.
talking about ice grows thicker in the winter has no meaning. The absolute thickness is important regarding the summer melt.
The Arctic is so cold now, why did the ice already start to melt?
Anthony, I think you’ve coined a new term: “schadenfroid”
Defined as: “Taking guilty pleasure in someone else’s unnecessary chilliness.”
wenx-
As the days lengthen, the sunlight penetrates and warms the water beneath the ice. The ice melts from the bottom up.
The AMO would be the more important source of April melt. Not air temp and not PDO. The AMO has not completely flipped to its cold phase. It is much more erratic and shorter term than the PDO but also has long term trends as well. It is also true that cold and warm currents literally are bed fellows up in and around the Arctic. So it doesn’t take much to blow ice into a warmer current. All of this is well known, even by NOAA, so I wonder why people are still asking why.
Mark (15:04:03) :
See previous post regarding your question about years.
Above at: John F. Hultquist (10:21:01) :
Pamela,
The summer ice deficit in 2007-2008 was on the Pacific side of the Arctic, so the PDO is very important.
And I also want video cam and regular updates from Steve. We need to know if he stubbed his toe on the way to the John and other vitally important details of this armchair adventure, including the condition of your sleeping bag, mode of transportation, measuring devices and drills, and who your sponsors are. However, I am assuming your re-supply is Walmart?
Steven,
“The question is – what is happening now during the solar minimum and cool phase of the PDO?”
I’d hope for some recovery, though given solar activity was just about as low in 2007 as now, I’m not sure that is having much of an effect now. I’d have also hoped the current La Niña would help, though minimum 2008 Arctic ice looks like it had even less volume than 2007.
The long term trend in the Arctic Sea Ice index indicates some other effect is swamping solar activity and ENSO:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/n_plot_hires.png
“Suppose that someone from a well respected scientific institution told the press that since the last IPCC meeting in 2007, temperatures and sea level have risen faster than expected, and ice has diminished faster than expected.”
I’ve said nothing about expectations of the first two. As for the third, as I mentioned above CRREL wrote:
“The observed September minimum annual ice extent has decreased faster than model predictions.”
So you don’t need to suppose, unless you refuse to regard CRREL as “a well respected scientific institution.”
Richard Sharpe,
“Nice cherry picking there Tom P.
There is only one multiannual dataset to present, buoy 2006C. Therefore criticising presenting that data as “cherry picking” is obtuse. But as I said, read the CRREL publications if you want the broader picture.
“Do you happen to have data for Ice extent or thickness during the MWP? The Holocene Optimum?”
Do you really mean to imply that it’s pointless collecting any data that we can’t compare to similar measurements in the MWP or the Holocene?
Steven, I don’t quite follow you. The pacific side of the Arctic does not contribute much in terms of Arctic currents. Please share your thoughts about the PDO influence. I am curious. I have included the link for Arctic currents which I find instructive. I also follow jet stream patterns closely and it appeared to me that outward winds that pushed much of the ice out to warmer waters came from Atlantic sources. Tell me what you know.
http://www.aquatic.uoguelph.ca/oceans/ArticOceanWeb/Currents/frontpagecur.htm
And Tom, what can I say. You need to study jet stream behavior and Arctic oceanic currents and wind patterns. See my link above regarding Arctic currents. Visit any jet stream site to understand how these things work at the poles. During the melt season, follow WEATHER systems. Yes, WEATHER. Weather pattern variations explains a LOT about climate!!!!!!! Weathermen and weatherwomen rule! And by the way, why the ^%&#@$%^&& does my spell checker underline weatherwomen but not weathermen?????? Like I need to fix the spelling or something???????
Steven,
“Do you think that The Catlin Expedition is retroactively collecting data from past years?”
I think I’m with you there – I wouldn’t want to touch any of their data with a very long ice screw!
“The Arctic is so cold now, why did the ice already start to melt?”
Because CO2 lowered the freezing point of water, thus ensuring that the ice will melt in -30C conditions. CO2 is a very misunderstood pollutant. It is responsible for a wide variety of things. CO2 cost me my job. CO2 is how your steak gets overcooked when you go out to eat. CO2 slashed my tires. I even heard that there was a study done suggesting Bernie Madoff was high on CO2.
Pamela,
What I’m saying is that the low amount of multi-year ice now is largely due to the fact that an unusually large amount of first year ice melted on the Pacific side during the last two summers.
Pamela,
Weatherpeople are lovely – Anthony for instance has been very responsive in getting submissions past a very hungry spam filter.
But when you see multidecadal trends, I think climate scientists probably have some explanatory potential as well.
Sorry Bill, that’s not going to happen. They will pass CO2 taxation and Cap’N Trade policy. It has nothing to do with warming and everything to do with money and power. The string pulling masters will not let this go that easily. (sad but true)
I note that the Catlin team are already shifting the goalposts: http://margosmaid.blogspot.com/2009/04/shifting-goalposts-to-success-and.html
Unfortunately, I believe you are absolutely correct. Obama and company will not let this go that easily. They will implement this at all costs. Obama must have Cap’N Trade in order to pay for his budget, and to empower and enrich the people that put him into office (AIG, Goldman/Sachs, etc…). He has NO choice!
An even more disturbing part of this is that a recent Gallup poll shows that only 53% of Americans are opposed to a socialist America, while the remainder support American socialism. I am getting ready to move my family to some other part of the world, just not sure where yet. Bali maybe?
Also, to everyone here who really cares about the quality of life in our country, please attend a local Tea Party (they will be everywhere) on April 15th, and stand up for yourselves, your family and our quality of life! Please!
– Thank you!
Jeff Peterson (09:07:49)
Please post your pictures, or email them to me. You should be able to deduce the correct email from the link above. Thanks, Mike S.
wenx (16:49:33) :
“The Arctic is so cold now, why did the ice already start to melt?”
Craig Moore (17:16:09) :
wenx-
“As the days lengthen, the sunlight penetrates and warms the water beneath the ice. The ice melts from the bottom up.”
I must disagree with the analysis. It’s probably too early and too cold for the sunlight penetration effect. The answer for wenx lies in the regional behavior. Most of the early melt comes from the sea of Okhotsk which is really sub-polar, most of it being below 60 latitude (same as Oslo). Cryosphere Today has some good info on this. The only other region showing a declining trend at this time is the St. Lawrence basin. All other 12 regions are stable or even increasing at this time. The true polar ice decline will not get started for a couple of weeks. For details check this:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.4.html
Hey Tony, get this one:
NASA GISS admits that soot-ladened aerosol brown clouds have caused 45 percent OR MORE of Arctic warming for the past 30 years. That’s in addition to the ice-thawing & thinning effects of sootfall on ice that has modeled to show 90% of the thawing in the Arctic in the past 150 years.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_aerosols.html
See also: V. Ramanathan’s work on brown cloud heating effects. It turns out that when soot & SO2 are adjacent in atmospheric brown clouds they trap sunlight together, the SO2 drives more NIR into the soot particles, heating the soot more than the soot shades the Earth. The net effect of soot-driven temperature anomalies over the Pacific alone is around 40% total, about 50 – 60% of the effect the GCM’s model for CO2.
Ohioholic (17:44:57)
lol, you’ve got to stop it before I wet my pants
Thanks again Steven for an interesting analysis. As I mentioned before, it will take a while before some of the buoys yeild year to year differences.
I looked up your name on google and found this amusing link… It seems you’re a stooge of some sort (presumably for the oil and gas industry) that no one has been able to track down… So are you an anonymous insider from GISS? Well, let’s hope so, maybe there is an “Ice ceiling” over there you’re trying to break through:
http://frankbi.wordpress.com/category/climate-cranks-and-climate-inactivists/steven-goddard/
I guess that would amount to an honorable mention, eh? Mike S.
It stands to reason that much of what happens in the Arctic, or any other ocean, is driven by the distribution and temperature of ocean currents. It also stands to reason that changes in the behavior of those currents would lag changes in the energy inputs and other variables that drive them. So, why would one expect the apparent solar minimum that we just entered to have reached its maximal effect? I would not expect to see that happen for several more years. The effects that are entirely or mostly dependent on air temperature will probably happen faster.
By the way, since most of the Arctic is landlocked there are obvious physical limits on the extent of the ice. It could reach zero Kelvin and the extent of the ice in most areas would not increase beyond current maxima. How is this accounted for (if at all) in the analysis? I’m sure I’m not the first one to notice this problem but I have not seen any explanation of how it’s handled.
Tom, I’m a multidecadal person raised by grandparents who knew about silent movies up close and personal, and who drove through the dust bowl from Chicago to LA in a Nash. My greatgrandfather decided to homestead in Wallowa Valley because a blizzard blocked the passage through the Blue Mountains. At least in my little corner of the world, it has been a colder, warmer, dryer, and wetter April Spring than it is now at 8:25 PM in NE Oregon. I still have my studs on because snow is predicted in the pass again this weekend. Just because it is multidecadal doesn’t make it any less of a weather pattern variation tied to natural causes.
Steven, you might consider the Beaufort Gyre, the Arctic current that “slowly swirls the surface waters of the Arctic basin, turning the Polar Ice Cap along with it, making one complete rotation about every 4 years” (taken from the above link on Arctic Currents). This rotation (which can be faster or slower than 4 years, combined with strong outflow winds, can indeed make melt look like something is happening due to the PDO. But my opinion is that it is unrelated to the PDO and more likely the above rotation bringing ice flows into outgoing Atlantic currents.
Folks, for those who aren’t aware, CRREL is in Hanover, NH, a few miles from Dartmouth College (where Hansen had a little seminar the other night to grand approbium from the faculty, local Greens, CRREL staff, and World Federalist Society members). I would caution folks to get their raw data and be just as rigorous as you and CA are about anything the Hockey Team does with their data when they process it for publication.
Until Pete can come up with some detailed explanations for his criticism of Steve’s use of temperature profiles, I would suggest sticking with Steve using the temperature as a proxy for ice depth. Furthermore, while Pete may be trying to criticise Steve using temp as a proxy for depth, if you were to accept Pete’s arguments, then the ice should actually be significantly thicker than at the point where temp drops below -2C.
Should also look at how snow depth on top of ice affects ice thickness, and how snow coverage over ice changes albedo.
Anthony,
I think the temp plots show that some portion of the bouy is in the water (>-2C) and some portion is in the air (above the ice). The cold constant temp part of the plot is in the air , so only the slanted portion of each plot is ice thickness, representing the conductivity of the ice is a constant change in temp per unit length. The abrupt change in slope of the lines would at the snow to ice interface, with the snow being less conductive than ice and thus showing a larger temperature change in a short distance in the area between the ice and air.
The depths you described in the post are for the bottom of ice relative to the top of the bouy. The ice thickness is somewhat less. For example, the 2008B plot for April is 0-80 cm in the air, 80-120cm in snow (depth .4m) and 120cm-320cm in ice (depth 2m). greater than 320cm in in the water beneath the ice.
Jan, it seems most unlikely that salt is going to be “squeezed out of older ice”. Where is it going to go? Into the sea by reverse osmosis? I don’t think so.
A better theory seems to me to be that “old ice” carries a top load of ice that came from snow, not the sea. Snow ice carries no salt but its weight pushes the old ice deeper into the sea leaving the top layer reasonably salt-free and by your argument requiring a higher melt temperature.
Troppo (16:35:31) :
“. . .why doesn’t Google Earth appear to be showing any ice over
the Arctic? . . .”
Go here: http://nsidc.org/data/virtual_globes/
Take the second image: September sea ice extent, 1979-2008
Compare satellite images of September sea ice extent for the last thirty years
click on the link, then move the slider at the top
Alan Wilkinson (20:28:18) :
Jan, it seems most unlikely that salt is going to be “squeezed
out of older ice”. Where is it going to go? Into the sea by reverse
osmosis? I don’t think so.
Regarding ice, salt, water, freezing, melting
See the reference at the post above in this thread
John F. Hultquist (13:05:36) :
Pete,
2008B shows ice thickness and temperature profiles both at approximately 300cm, and nearly 50% gain in thickness since last April.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2008B.gif
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/2008B.gif
Hope this helps.
John F. Hulquist (21:44:26)
Cool….thanks
John F. Hultquist (21:59:36):
Alan Wilkinson (20:28:18):
John F. Hultquist (13:05:36):
Thanks, John, excellent link:
“Sea-ice in bulk is therefore not pure water-ice but has a salinity of as much as 15 for new ice (and less for old ice as gravity causes the brine cells to migrate downward in time.) With continued freezing, more ice freezes out within the brine cells leaving the brine more saline. Some of the salts may even crystallize out. The salinity of first-year ice is generally 4 to 10, for second year ice …. it decreases to 1-3 and for multi-year ice it may be less than 1.”
—
“Note also that less heat is needed to melt new ice (S=15) than old ice which has lower salinity.”
So indeed it seems that the salinity of frozen sea-ice is reduced over time, exactly what I was trying to suggest in my post above. Also the consequences for melting and freezing seem to hold water, as per my argument.
Phil. (14:54:41):
Tom P (13:09:03):
Thanks for responding. Yes, that quote is from my first post JAN (08:31:05), and I can confirm that the 0.7m refers to Goddard’s temperature graph of buoy 2006C in the top article. As I mentioned, this is a fairly limited study in time and coverage, so one should be careful about drawing bold conclusions based on ice thickness from one buoy over 12 months, and a few other buoys over the winter season.
I’m curious about your comment on the missing buoys though. Provided these have been pushed out of the Arctic by easterly winds and currents through the Fram strait between Greenland and Svalbard, wouldn’t it be correct to disregard them when looking at ice thickness in the Arctic? Since they are no longer in the Arctic, their measurements of zero ice is not relevant for the ice thickness of the Arctic ice, no?
I guess that thickening of ice between autumn and early spring is hardly surprising.
What is a more relevant metric is a monitoring of this thickness year on year just like area is monitored.
Any data on that?
.
>>You can’t have water in a liquid state below it’s freezing point.
Well you can, its called supercooled water. But unlikely in this context dynamic, as it requires very stable conditions to form. Any movement and it instantly freezes.
.
Please checkout the bouy description [http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoyinst.htm] and my earlier post before estimating depths at “more than 3 meters”.
“Thermistor strings were [are] PVC rod with YSI thermistors spaced every 10 cm. These rods could [can] easily be connected to assemble strings that extended from the air through the snow and ice into the upper ocean. The thermistor accuracy is better than 0.1 C.”
Found it interesting that this blob of information was theorized and datafied towards the end of the POLAR Freeze.
Might be nice DATA proof if you could provide your statements and backup data when it changes through the POLAR THAW.
How about doing this again September 15th?
GOOGLE EARTHS PHOTOS ARE ANYWHERE BETWEEN 1 and 7 YEARS OLD!
After emailing and putting in a call to GOOGLE- and their EARTH data supervisor.
I was told that the data will NOT be updated anytime soon. (2007 summer this call took place.)
I was informed that Google did not have this on their agenda.
However, we could take photos of the areas and submit them for their usage with no compensation.
Google Earth is great for a map. Microsoft is good as well.
If you want better information, use http://www.NOAA.gov
Sure, I can post these a few more times if it makes it more clear.
2008B has increased in thickness by nearly 50% since last April
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2008B.gif
2008C has increased in thickness by nearly half a metre since last April
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2008C.gif
2008J has increased in thickness by more than half a metre since last April
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2007J.gif
Then there’s a headline on HuffPo “Arctic sea ice thinnest ever going into spring.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/06/arctic-sea-ice-thinnest-e_n_183777.html
What you seem to have forgotten to mention is that 4 of the bouys melted out.
Paul,
That is how the Arctic works.
The ice drifts towards the warm waters of the North Atlantic and melts after a few years. Putting a buoy on the ice does not stop polar drift.
Dear anybody who may be wondering what is going on here:
The poleward shift of temperate climate zones forces sea ice to retreat.
The surface area of ocean close to the poles increases and the distance from the poles to the ocean decreases.
Increased evaporation from the newly exposed water leads to increased precipitation (in the form of snow and ice, when surface temperatures are below freezing).
The net effect is that ice caps, (or continental ice sheets down south), become thicker but lose overall surface area.
A first year meteorology student could tell you that… or even an arts student picking up a generic climate change course to fill in some subject points.
Unfortunately, a second year student (myself) has forgotten the name of this phenomena so I can’t cite properly >.< apologies to the real scientists, if you are reading this.
David,
Thank you for the freshman meteorology lecture.
Now here is your freshman quiz. Try to find the open water near the poles you were referring to which is “causing increased snowfall.”
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent.png
One of the first rules of science is that if you make the wrong assumptions, you will come to the wrong conclusions. Maybe you will learn that in your junior year?
… I live in Australia and water manages to transport itself from the tropics to Melbourne easily enough.
Nearby is a relative term obviously, it depends what scale you’re looking at. The point is that there is more moisture in the air available for deposition at high latitudes.
Since the global temperature gradient requires air to trend poleward, and there is no circumpolar current in the north to isolate the region I see no problem with what I said.
I was unaware that all systems that could lead to precipitation over the poles were meso-scale.
If this is the case, my apologies.
oh, if you don’t know where Australia is, NT down to Melbourne is roughly 30 degrees latitude, or just over 3,000 km.
I know that we’re not a particularly well known country within America >.<
Steven Goddard (07:45:33) :
Paul,
That is how the Arctic works.
The ice drifts towards the warm waters of the North Atlantic and melts after a few years. Putting a buoy on the ice does not stop polar drift.
Except of course for: 2007E, 2007F, 2008F, which all melted out in the Beaufort Sea! Of the buoys shown on the map in the original post only 2008E took the Atlantic route. The only buoys that are likely to stay in the Arctic for more than a year or so are those initially deployed in the Beaufort Gyre, with the breakup of the multiyear ice in that region and the accelerated melt out there in recent summers even those buoys aren’t lasting very long now. It’ll be interesting to see how long the current Russian ice station lasts, it’s entering a region of strong flow towards the Fram Strait so I’d expect it to be into the Atlantic by fall.
http://www.aari.nw.ru/resources/d0014/np36/data/drift/drift_big.png
to cold play’s comment.
the last time there was significant recession of the ice shelf was 9500 years ago. That’s about the dawn of civilization. I think figuring out a way to avoid a repeat of that time would be prudent, as this tiny warm period (geologically speaking) is a sweet spot for humankind. I’d like to keep it around awhile longer thanks…
cmw
David,
This article is about the Arctic. Snow falls in the winter, when the Arctic basin is full of ice.
Phil.
I hate to rain on your melting parade.
2007E shows that it lost 3 meters of ice in about two weeks.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2007E.gif
2008F was 3 metres thick when it malfunctioned.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2008F.gif
2007F was 3.5 metres thick right before it appears to have malfunctioned.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2007F.gif
“”” JAN (14:43:42) :
Rabe (11:58:26):
“Would someone please explain to me which physical miracle leads to the fact that older ice is more resistant to melting than some younger one? Is it also true that water, which stayed longer in the liquid phase, doesn’t freeze as fast as just melted one….”
I may be on thin ice here, but I’ll risk the following hypothesis:
When sea water freezes, the salt is forced out of the ice. However, this may not be an instant reaction, but one that takes months and years, so much that multiyear ice is significantly less saline than baby ice. As can been seen from the graphs on top of the post, the freezing point for seawater is -2C. Thus the melting point of baby ice is also close to -2C. However, older ice with less salt content, will have higher melting point, closer to fresh water at 0C. Alas, the sea temperature will have to rise more to melt older ice.
Likewise, recent meltwater from sea ice with low salinity tend to float on top of the sea water column due to lower density, hence that water will refreeze at around 0C, while well mixed sea water freezes at -2C, as shown above.
Voila, mystery solved….maybe. “””
Well when water containing dissolved salts freezes; the loss of salt from the solid phase is instantaneous; it doesn’t take months and years; the solid and salts simply cannot co-exist.
Now that does not preclude the solid ice from having voids in it, which are holes that do not contain ice; but they may contain liquid water and high content salt; so-called brine. And if the temperature of the ice and its contained brine pockets drops further, even that saltier brine can then feeeze; and the salt in it will also be excluded from the new ice,leaving the remaining brine even saltier, with an even lower freezing temperature.
But the ice remains essentially fresh water, and as the thickness builds up and water and winds push it around you get physical breakage and pileups
which expose new surfaces to open water, and maybe new growth of ice at the interface.
Older ice is thicker, the briny void filled surface layers are much weaker, and they collapse over time and the excess salts slowly migrate away into the deeper waters.
When the new ice starts to form, it forms in small chunks so the amount of surface area to volume is much greater than with older thicker ice, and with so much briny surface the whole structure is structurally weak and is like a mush.
There’s one other consequence of that salty water freezing and expelling the salts into the water.
CO2 is also way less soluble in ice, so it too is expelled from the ice at the solid liquid interface. And since that very cold (sub zero) sea water is also saturated with CO2 (Henry’s Law); the newly expelled CO2 is also rejected by the sea water, and enters the atmosphere.
So as the arctic ocean freezes, all the CO2 in that megatonnage of sea water that freezes, ends up being vented to the atmosphere; which is why the CO2 abundance in the arctic atmosphere goes up by 18-20 ppm as the sea ice forms starting in early to mid September.
The same thing doesn’t occur in the Antarctic, because the ice build up there is mostly precipitation of snow and ice from temperate or tropical waters that evaporated without taking lots of CO2 with the water vapor.
The peripheral growth of sea ice at the edge of Antarctica is much less becaue it is much further from the pole that is the Arctic ocean rim, and rather than being land locked it is swept twice daily by tidal bulges, and the horrific storms of the southern ocean.
Steven Goddard (09:59:13) :
Phil.
I hate to rain on your melting parade.
2007E shows that it lost 3 meters of ice in about two weeks.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2007E.gif
2008F was 3 metres thick when it malfunctioned.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2008F.gif
2007F was 3.5 metres thick right before it appears to have malfunctioned.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2007F.gif
Only if you adopt your rather strange interpretation of the thickness plots and your personal incredulity argument! For example 2007F melted in August and gave a spurious signal which appears to show 3.5m ice which suits your agenda so you latch onto it.
I prefer to rely on a scientific reading of the graphs and the findings of the operator:
Buoy 2008E: Buoy melted out on 11/14/2008
Buoy 2008F: Buoy melted out on 01/06/2009
Buoy 2007E: Buoy melted out on 10/18/2008
Buoy 2007F: Buoy melted out on 09/08/2008
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/newdata.htm
Thanks for following up on the point I was making.
The title of this post is intended to make the reader think that ice is getting thicker all over the Arctic. Click-through on the links presents a more complete story. What is posted here is out of context and does not present the whole story. As such, it is misleading and dishonest.
Paul,
Every functional buoy shows an increase in thickness through their time of record. Perhaps it is you who is having difficulty with the truth.
Phil.
OK – so you believe that 3 metres of ice can melt instantly in the Arctic during the winter. I get the picture. Thanks.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2008F.gif
How does that compare with this? Also Phil appears to have busted you.
http://madrad2002.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/washington-post-refutes-itself/
Some references on research into desalination by freezing.
63. H.M. Hendrickson, R.W. Moulton, “Research and Development of Processes for Desalting Water by Freezing” R&D Report 10, Office of Saline Water, US Dept. Of Commerce, 1956.
64. G. Karnofsky, P.F. Steinhoff “Saline Water Conversion by Direct Freezing with Butane” R&D Report 40, Office of Saline Water, US Dept. Of Commerce, 1960.
65. H.F. Wiegandt, P. Harriott, J.P. Leinroth “ Desalting of Seawater by Freezing” R&D Report 376, Office of Saline Water, US Dept. Of Commerce, 1968.
66. Dravo Corp. “10,000,000 Gallon per Day Secondary Refrigerant Desalting Plant” R&D Report PB251906, Office of Saline Water, US Dept. Of Interior, 1973.
67. W. H. Denton, Desalination 14 (1974) 263.
68. H.F. Wiegandt, R.L. von Berg, Desalination 33 (1980) 287.
69. W. Rice, D.S.C. Chau, Desalination 109 (1997) 157.
70. M.F. Mitkin, Vodosnabzh I Sanit. Tekhn 2 (1963) 24.
71. J.W. Spyker “Natural Freeze Desalination of Brackish Water – Progress Report 1972-1973” Saskatchewan Research Council Report E74-1, January 1974.
72. D.L. Stinson Canadian Patent 782,784.
73. D.L. Stinson “Atmospheric Freezing Pilot Test of Salt Removal from Big Sandy River – Colorado River Water Quality Improvement Program” University of Wyoming Report for U.S. Bureau of Reclamation contract 14-06-400-5980 4010102100, July 1974.
74. D.L. Stinson, in “Water-1976” AIChE Symposium Series (1976) 112.
75. T. Szekely “Water Purification by freezing in Dugouts – Work Done in the Season 1963-1964” Saskatchewan Research Council Report E64-10, July 1964.
76. J.E. Boyson, J.A. Harju, C. Rousseau, J. Solc, D. J. Stepan “Evaluation of the Natural Freeze-Thaw Process for the Desalinization of Groundwater from the north Dakota Aquifer to Provide Water for Grand Forks, North Dakota” U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Water Treatment Technology Program Report No. 23, September, 1999.
77. A.J. Barduhn “Desalination by Freezing Processes” in Encyclopedia of Chemical Processing and Design, McKetta and Cunningham, eds., Marcel Dekker, New York (1982).
John F. Hultquist (13:05:36) :
Many thanks for the reference. It’s very interesting indeed.
Steven Goddard (11:16:41) :
Paul,
Every functional buoy shows an increase in thickness through their time of record. Perhaps it is you who is having difficulty with the truth.
And the ones that aren’t functioning are the one’s that had a decrease in their thickness until they ceased to exist. The truth is something that is a stranger to you.
Phil.
OK – so you believe that 3 metres of ice can melt instantly in the Arctic during the winter. I get the picture. Thanks.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2008F.gif
It was you who said:”UPDATE: The military site also has graphs which are supposed to show depth. It appears that many of these are broken, which is why I used the more reliable temperature graphs.” Although a year ago you resorted to abuse when I said that one of them was faulty!
The description ‘melted out’ is the Army’s term, I suppose they don’t know what’s happening to their own buoys?
2008F was in the area now described by Environment Canada as first year ice.
As on many other of your posts you show yourself here to be a cherry-picker of that data which supports your agenda.
More BS from Nasa:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=38192&src=eorss-manews
Mr. Goddard,
Sorry I called you Anthony in my initial post.
The temperature plots that you posted initially indicate depths for the snow and ice that are different than the snow-ice depth plots that you have switched to in your comments. For example, the 2008B temp plot indicates an October 08 depth near 1.4 meters while the depth data plot is near 2 meters. A system error may be indicated by the loss of the red snow depth output in the depth plot. I agree with your initial assessment that the depth plots are unreliable.
Unfortunately, the temp plots don’t show April 08 datapoints to compare to the Apr. 09 data.
Only the 2007J plot illustrates about 3 m of total depth. I don’t see any of the temp plots indicating 4 m.
Phil. (10:31:27) :
At least 2008F certainly can’t have “melted out”. The air temperature was -10 degrees centigrade and the ice-thickness 3 meters at the time. It may have been crushed by ice-press or lost in a crevasse, but not melted. There is any number of failure modes for unmanned weather stations. AWS on the Antarctic icecap fail with monotonous regularity and have to be resuscitated.
What I see is lots of people attempting to analise numbers and numbers alone. Having majored in physics back when there was much less knowledge to be learned, and when the basics were thoroughly taught, what is happening is frightening to me. I absolutely shudder whenever I hear or see the term “trend” mentioned. There can be differences in temperature. There may be times when these temperatures can increase over time (and times when temperatures can get lower over time) but if anyone thinks that the temperatures can be projected into the future from past data is, in my opinion, way off the mark, and no good can come of it.
From about 1990, housing prices in the US increased, and increased by at least 10% per year. Financial “wizards” saw this as a trend, and projected this “trend” into the future. No effort was made to attempt to understand just why housing prices increased in successive years after 1990. Why bother, when the “trend” was so obvious?
We all have seen the folly which has happened due to this incomparable bit of stupidity. And all because of attempting to analyze “just the numbers”.
When I took a 5 unit chemistry course back in 1953, my professor spent an entire lecture period explaining how mercury thermometers functioned, and explained just why temperature readings using mercury thermometers were no more than an approximation, and why the temperature readings could not be depended on for exactness. Even using the same thermometer, and taking great pains to assure proper reading of temperature, a difference in temperature between a reading of 72.5º F and 87.2º F didn’t mean that there was an actual and real difference of 14.7 F degrees in temperature. Variances in the cross-section of the mercury tube could and would produce significant error.
He also explained just how difficult it would be to obtain the average temperature of a large bowl of water in the laboratory an why.
As far as I am concened, what is being attempted regarding the global average temperature is an exercise in futility. There is no possible way that any “average” global temperature can be determined.
Going back to thermometer readings of the 1930s and “adjusting” those temperatures by hundredths of a F degree is no more than folly, and just a way of making it seem as though there is some sort of “scientific” process involved, when all Hansen et all are doing is changing the numbers to suit their own purposes.
I sure would be nice if “climatologists” were required to take and pass a heavy duty course in thermo-dynamics. It would be really nice if all involved could understand the difference in meaning of the terms “heat”, “temperature” and “electromagnetic radiation”.
Since I made a career of professional civil engineering, I certainly took note of the significance of “margin of error”. And I have observed the disasters which have occured caused by civil engineers who didn”t understand the significance of “margin of error”.
Perhaps it was just easier to understand when the primary tool for making calculations was a slide rule, and only 3 significant figures could be obtained, and we darn well knew that the 3rd significant figure had a margin of error of at least +/- 2 , and more likely +/- 3. And when we determined where the decimal point went by approximation using scientific notation.
Hansen’s throwing the easily falsifiable CO2 theory into the mix was simply a subterfuge to make extrapolation look respectable.
Using “magical mathematics” to “smooth” historical data does no more than hide the large variance in observed temperatures, and make the tiny differences obtained by calculation or modeling seem to have far more significance than they actually have. When the margin of error is +/- 2 or 3 F degrees, calculated or modeled future temperatures which all are within the margin of error have no real meaning at all.
The level of FUD here is getting hilarious. All of the active buoys show increasing thickness across their period of record. Sad news for people with an emotional need to be alarmed.
tty,
Maybe the military zapped the 3 meter thick ice on January 9 with a giant laser beam, and instantly melted the ice!
Steven Goddard-
I would appreciate learning a bit about your credentials. Thank you.
LarryOldTimer
Well said!
We may have had the same chemistry prof. (Not really, of course, but I had the same or very similar lecture in 1972).
Have the same problems in reading a dial pressure gauge on a pipe in a refinery or chemical plant. The needle may be oscillating rapidly (a blur, actually) over about a 5 to 8 psi range. What reading does one write down? And if the reading is taken every 8 hours for a week, with readings by 3 or 4 different employees on shift, each time with a slightly different figure written down, can the engineer legitimately average those numbers and get a result having one decimal point? NO.
Yet these so-called climate scientists have no problem doing the equivalent to the temperature measurements.
If you cannot measure it, you cannot control it. Fundamental principle of process control.
Craig,
It is interesting to me how some AGW promoters want to be insulated from inspection by the public, and at the same time promote policy which has major consequences to the public.
It doesn’t work that way in a democracy. Everyone is credentialed in this debate.
Steven,
“The level of FUD here is getting hilarious. All of the active buoys show increasing thickness across their period of record. Sad news for people with an emotional need to be alarmed.”
I don’t think so (and you’ve seen this before so why are you insisting otherwise):
http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/5204/ice2006c.gif
Tom P,
Good try.
The 2006C depth graph is clearly broken. Look at the discontinuity around October.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2006C.gif
The 2006C temperature profile indicates ice to a depth in excess of 300cm.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/2006C.gif
ceashex,
This looks like about 400cm to me.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/2007J.gif
LarryOldTimer says:
Dude, that was two years before I was born! That was before Dien Bien Phu, where some Communist Vietnamese soldiers dragged some American 105mm howitzers captured by the Chinese in Korea up onto the hills ringing the French positions and caused havoc.
I salute you. I hope I can still think when I am your age.
Steven,
“The 2006C depth graph is clearly broken. Look at the discontinuity around October.”
That single October point reflects the difficulty of determining the bottom interface during the summer melt when the ice has a very similar temperature to the underlying sea, as I mentioned earlier. There is no reason to question the other data. The current ice thickness is more than 1 m thinner than the corresponding thickness in April 2007.
But as I have repeatedly said, look at what CRREL have published about their data as a whole in January:
“The Arctic sea ice cover is in decline. The areal extent of the ice cover has been decreasing for the past few decades at an accelerating rate. Evidence also points to a decrease in sea ice thickness and a reduction in the amount of thicker perennial sea ice. A general global warming trend has made the ice cover more vulnerable to natural fluctuations in atmospheric and oceanic forcing.”
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.marine.010908.163805
Why do you think you are better able to analyse the data than the CRREL Army scientists who actually are running these buoys?
looks like all ice back to normal or above including BTW NORTH POLE
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
The persistent SH anomaly is becoming a bit obvious. Me thinks “tale of the tape” on cryosphere is likely to be removed soon as well as Will’s comment on Daily Tech “normal ice levels” being not true LOL
Steven Goddard (15:01:19) :
Craig,
It is interesting to me how some AGW promoters want to be insulated from inspection by the public, and at the same time promote policy which has major consequences to the public.
It doesn’t work that way in a democracy. Everyone is credentialed in this debate.
============
Steven, I was asking from the point of science and the reason I read WUWT. In my case, I am a mere lay person. I try to get a sense of the expetise of those like yourself that write columns here. I did not mean to put you on the spot asking about your credentials.
Steven Goddard (16:04:25) :
Tom P,
Good try.
The 2006C depth graph is clearly broken. Look at the discontinuity around October.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2006C.gif
Goddard, you’re a piece of work, when I pointed out the problems with that buoy this is what happened.
Steven Goddard (19:37:26) :
There is a major difference in Arctic ice behavior this year compared to 2007. This military buoy shows ice thickness of 1.6 meters and increasing rapidly. In 2007 the minimum summer ice thickness was the same (1.1m,) but thickness didn’t reach 1.6 meters until the end of January.
Phil. “Trouble is that buoy depth meter is malfunctioning.”
REPLY: How do you know that? Where is that referenced from?- Anthony
“A couple of reasons: that meter has been behaving strangely for a couple of years, at the maximum the signal flattened out last year at ~1.1, even the noise was truncated, this year it flattened in the same way at exactly the same value. Earlier this fall that buoy stopped updating for ~1 month and then recently started down in a noise free straight line (similar behaviour to that seen in some buoys on rapidly melting ice in the Beaufort sea”
Steven Goddard (11:40:00) :
Phil,
The ice thickness data is consistent with the temperature/depth data. Ice temperatures are colder than last year. There is no indication that the buoy is misbehaving. Ice is growing in all three dimensions must faster than last year.
Stop the FUD. You are just generating needless CO2 and other noxious greenhouse gases.
So it appears you’ll take any position as long as it suits your agenda.
Hmmm – short-lived buoys, broken measurements, measurements open to individual interpretation.
It seems to me what is required is a few people to go out onto the ice to take some REAL measurements.
It would be good if these could be done continuously using radar, but if that fails they could at least take an occasional manual measurement.
Would of course need to do this every few years!
Bill
John F. Hultquist (12:40:15) :
… Thinking historically now, would you want a normal or average temperature, say for Paris, to include all of the years of the Little Ice Age and the 50 years after its recovery. Anyone not over 75 would find the normal reported temperature a bit strange. By using the most recent 30 years, a person of about 50 would sense the average as being consistent with her or his own experience.
I think this is the sort of reasoning that went into the 30-year rule. It was done before all the AGW crap so I don’t think the intention was sinister, even though we interpret it as such in 2009. …
Point taken (and well made, BTW). I’ll restate my concern to reflect it: Using a 30 year average to present current climatic conditions to non-scientists is reasonable and appropriate. Using the same average to “prove” a theory about long term climate change in scientific discussion is fraudulent.
Steven,
“All of the active buoys show increasing thickness across their period of record.”
The CRREL website is functioning better: the history of currently functioning buoy 2006C is here:
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/2006Csum.htm
I’ve captured the reduction in the ice thickness here:
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/7008/2006chistory.png
Do you still maintain your original statement above?
LarryOldtimer (13:23:12)
Very good points indeed. I work sometimes in education as a mathematics consultant at a tech school. I NEVER see them talk about significant digits as such, even though they want the student to know all about measurement! It would seem that some basic understanding of what you can and cannot know from your data is in order.
Steven,
Looking more closely at the data from 2006C it is clear why your use of the temperature profiles for the bottom interface is incapable of deriving a correct ice thickness.
During each melt cycle as ice is lost from the top surface, the ice rises with respect to the water, raising the buoy with it. Subsequent freezing at the bottom interface means lower temperature sensors are embedded in the ice so the bottom interface is lower on the buoy. This does not mean the ice is thicker, just that the buoy is rising and therefore the top interface needs also to be measured to determine the overall ice thickness. It is the difference between the two that gives the actual ice thickness. This is what is used by CRREL and what I presented from the start as inconsistent with your analysis using just the bottom interface.
The 2006C profile:
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/7008/2006chistory.png
is therefore not indicating that the ice is dropping below sea level, but that the buoy, which is embedded in the ice, is rising with respect to sea level during each melt season. It does show that the ice thinned in 2007 and has not subsequently recovered.
For the sake of scientific accuracy, please update your original article accordingly.
Phil.
Nice try again. The buoy malfunctioned in November – after our discussion. At the time, the depth data graph closely matched the temperature data graph.
This article was about the temperature data.
Steven Goddard (20:18:34) :
Phil.
Nice try again. The buoy malfunctioned in November – after our discussion. At the time, the depth data graph closely matched the temperature data graph.
Good grief man, give it up you’re just digging yourself in deeper!
Our conversation was in November and the problem was obvious by the beginning of October!
Yesterday you said:”The 2006C depth graph is clearly broken. Look at the discontinuity around October“.
The same ‘discontinuity’ I pointed out to you in the 3/11 post and which you vehemently denied.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2006C.gif
I believe that both interfaces are visible on those graphs – air to ice and ice to water. I did not spend too much time plotting them, but it is clear that top did not move much, while bottom interface had went down significantly, which means that thickness did increase.
In addition, I quote from http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/2006Csum.htm that you linked to in your previous massage –
The bottom melting would not cause buoys “raising” like you suggest.
“ceashex [crashex],
This looks like about 400cm to me.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/2007J.gif.”
The bottom of the ice is 400cm from the top of the bouy. The temperature profile indicates that about 110 cm of the bouy is in the air above the snow. The total snow/ice depth is 400-110=290cm. Roughly 3 meters, not 4.
My only point has been to make sure everyone is reading the temperature data plots correctly. You need older temperature plot data to make any comparison of the change in ice depth from one year to another.
‘…the greatest intellectual blunder since the Vatican insisted that the solar system revolved around the earth.’
Would that be the Vatican under Pope Ptolomey?
2006C from theplot above:
ice depth @2008/10/09 = 100cm to 170cm = 70cm (no snow?)
ice depth @2009/04/06 = 115cm to 310cm = 195 cm (+10cm snow?)
So going from 2008 polar ice minimum to 2009 maximum (approx) the ice depth increased by 125cm
This is min to max and, as crashex (05:26:28) says, does in no way compare year to year variation.
The same site used for the buoy data in the header has this page – note the ice thickness map has no increase anywhere!
bill
ralph ellis (05:29:21) :
If the thickness of Arctic ice were really the Global problem that these people make out, the US navy could do the measurements in a couple of weeks – from below.
To surface a sub in the Arctic, the boat needs to measure the thickness of the ice (presumably by sonar, or perhaps radar). If they have this kind of capacity, they could traverse much of the entire Arctic sea in a few weeks and accurately measure the entire damn area
http://www.damocles-eu.org/research/A_large_pool_of_freshwater_building_up_in_the_Arctic.shtml
Recent observations of Arctic Ocean outflow in the Fram Strait suggest that freshwater is piling up in the Arctic Ocean. A change in wind direction could release the largest amount of freshwater through Fram Strait ever recorded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
Causes of the Younger Dryas
The prevailing theory holds that the Younger Dryas was caused by a significant reduction or shutdown of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation in response to a sudden influx of fresh water from Lake Agassiz and deglaciation in North America.[12] The global climate would then have become locked into the new state until freezing removed the fresh water “lid” from the north Atlantic Ocean. This theory does not explain why South America cooled first.
Why doesn’t the navy publish their thickness records if they have them – I have not seen recent results?
Bill
Jack Green (05:36:56) :
This is how the Catlin group should have conducted their study.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/2003Reports.html
!!!!!!!!hang about!!!!!!!!! from the log
5/7 – Helo Ops – Twin Otter Hydro at station 5, problems with winch gearbox/motor, but successfully complete station. Repair winch at night.
5/8 – Helo Ops – Twin Otter Hydro Station 6 – Twin Otter makes afternoon evening flight to deploy fuel cache
5/9 – Helo departs – Twin Otter CTD -Hydro at Station 1 (North Pole) and Station 2 (60 miles south). Stops at fuel cache coming and going, arrive home at midnight, pack all night.
5/10- Finish pallet load and fly to Edmonton via Eureka, Resolute, Cambridge Bay, Yellowknife
So these people have forced the pilots of kenn borek air (and others) to fly where they should not, well into the melt season. Despicable!
Bill
Smokey (06:37:40) :
Who are all those contributors that ‘continually wish death/loss of limbs?’ [emphasis on “continually.”]
the comment referred to contributors plural. ie. there are continual references made by many contributors not just one contributor.
OK here are some of the nasty comments. Cannot be bothered looking for others (one I remember hoped they would loose their legs)
& some may have been pulled or snipped.
mojo (07:19:03) :
Even people who do foolish things do not deserve to die.
Since when? Ever hear the phrase “Hold my beer and watch THIS!” ?
Mike Lorrey (00:00:29) :
While I would like to hope they come off the ice alive and in one piece, frankly given the damage they and their kind are doing for the sake of an agenda, I don’t.
Jack (04:29:43) :
Stupid is as stupid does.
Or in this case, ~snip~ idiots. At least they didn’t force a well prepared guide to die with them.
Ethan (23:46:43) :
I hope they don’t give up. Imagine the headlines…People trying to prove the Pole is warming up er freeze to death! Rumours of AGW proved to be codswallop.
Oh yes ..well worth the cost. Freeze you [snip]s!
April E. Coggins (21:23:39) :
I hate the part of myself that looks forward to the demise of stupidity
philincalifornia (20:16:05) :
Don’t die Pen. It’s not worth it. If you do, the Guardian, the inbred pseudoscientist Prince, and the BBC will deny and/or cover up that you and your ill-fated expedition ever existed.
But we won’t, ha ha ha ha
Robert Wood (15:29:13) :
These people expected to be warm in the Arctic winter????
Cold-bloodilly, I say, let them live or die; it’s their choice, I don’t care for these worthless nitwits. They are fools; allow Darwin his due.
Adolfo Giurfa (11:05:30) :
If some of these guys dies, I am sure his or her death would be utilized by “The Prophet” himself for his cause.
Steve in SC (10:33:07) :
They are idiots pure and simple.
Perhaps they will reap the benefits of their folly.
My sympathies are extremely limited.
Bill
The army’s approach appears to be so much better thought out and systematic as compared to what the Catlin folks are doing. From the link “The Plan” ( http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/ourplan.htm ) on the website:
“collocating IMBs with oceanic and atmospheric measurement systems provides a complete profile of atmosphere, ice and upper ocean properties. Such an integrated set of observations is needed to be able to understand the environmental changes that are occurring. Data from these instruments can be used to validate and calibrate remote sensing tools, including satellite-based observations of ice thickness, snow depth measurements, and onset dates of melt and freezeup. They can also be assimilated into numerical models to provide a context for the data and a predictive capability.”
MikeF,
“The bottom melting would not cause buoys “raising” like you suggest.”
It is the top rather than the bottom melting that causes the ice to rise, by a factor of eight as per the well-known ratio of how much of an iceberg is below the surface. Hence there is absolutely no contradiction between having a large amount of bottom melt and the ice rising as there has indeed been substantial melt of the top surface.
“I did not spend too much time plotting them, but it is clear that top did not move much, while bottom interface had went down significantly, which means that thickness did increase.”
Well, CRREL have taken the trouble:
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/7008/2006chistory.png
and totally contradict your statement that apparently you can’t be bothered to prove!
In fact looking at this data and reading across horizontally, it is evident that even though the buoy has remained frozen in for longer than any other, no ice prior to the 2007 melt season has survived.
http://nsidc.org/noaa/moored_uls/IPS_tromso.pdf
Upward looking moored sonar bouys. Interesting and from here:
http://nsidc.org/noaa/moored_uls/
there is/are a lot of hard data out there. Are the satellite folks calibrating their work with the buoy information? This would be a reality check on their predictions.
Phil,
Give it a rest. The thickness data matched the temperature data until the November reading, when it broke upwards. We had that discussion in October.
So why did you think the thickness data was broken in October, and then try to present it as valid on this thread? Arctic ice has been getting thicker and more extensive since the 2007 minimum. Hate to spoil your party.
Steven,
What is currently wrong with the data from buoy 2007C, apart from the fact that it flatly contradicts your assertion that the CRREL measurements indicate the Arctic ice has been thickening?
http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/5204/ice2006c.gif
Steven Goddard (09:19:52) :
Phil,
Give it a rest. The thickness data matched the temperature data until the November reading, when it broke upwards. We had that discussion in October.
The conversation was on 3/11/2008 by which time the anomaly in the behavior had been apparent for 2 months.
So why did you think the thickness data was broken in October, and then try to present it as valid on this thread?
I didn’t! You argued that it was valid then and now it suits you to take the opposite line and got caught.
Arctic ice has been getting thicker and more extensive since the 2007 minimum. Hate to spoil your party.
Three strikes in such a short post, that’s a lot even for you. You’re wrong about the ice, in fact a contact in Resolute tells me that there’s extensive thinner ice around there, ~50cm thinner.
“What is currently wrong with the data from buoy 2007C, apart from the fact that it flatly contradicts your assertion that the CRREL measurements indicate the Arctic ice has been thickening?
http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/5204/ice2006c.gif”
A little confused with this. You say 2007C and post a 2006C plot.
If you look at the 2006C temp plot for comparison, it’s clear this depth plot has errors. The 10/08 thicknes was 0.5 m, much smaller than what’s on the depth trace. Note the erratic change in late 08.
The 2006C temp plot now shows the orange squares for 4/08. So a comparison of the 4/08 data at 1.8 m vs. the 4/09 data at 2.3 m demonstrates a 0.5m increase in thickness at that bouy. Ultimately, that was Mr. Goddard’s point from the post.
“What is currently wrong with the data from buoy 2007C [2006C] , apart from the fact that it flatly contradicts your assertion that the CRREL measurements indicate the Arctic ice has been thickening?
http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/5204/ice2006c.gif”
The 2006C temp plot now displays the orange squares for 4/08.
4/08 thickness ~1.7m
4/09 thickness ~2.3m
So the ice depth has increased year over year for the same month.
The depth data plot you reference clearly has an error in the “red line” measurement at the top and an erratic trace in late 2008. Note the temp plot depths for 10/08 at 0.5m and 11/08 at 1.2 m are not on the green line.
I would think that once the system can no longer make a measurement to determine the red line (upper surface), the entire direct measurement of the depth system is unreliable. The temp data, from a different part of the bouy, can still yield a reasonable estimate.
crashex,
Please read my previous posts to understand why the temperature discontinuity at the bottom surface does not measure the ice thickness. (Hint: to determine a thickness you need to make two measurements).
Why do you think CRREL are wrongly deriving the thickness measurements?
Phil,
The conversation happened in October, 2008 when the buoy was still functioning. If you thought it was broken then, why did you suggest it as valid data now?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/31/arctic-sea-ice-continues-rebound/
Steven Goddard (16:13:47) :
Phil,
The conversation happened in October, 2008 when the buoy was still functioning.
It wasn’t and I told you so on the 3rd November!
If you thought it was broken then, why did you suggest it as valid data now?
I haven’t, although as I pointed out then the problem was with the gauge’s inability to measure thickness less than ~1m because of its behavior the previous year and the repeat of that behavior starting in Sept 08. You of course were vested in the notion that the ice really had stopped melting and therefore refused to accept the facts. Now of course it’s convenient for you to believe that the gauge readings are faulty so now you switch, a bit like ‘the vicar of Bray’. This serves an example of your deceptive postings and your continued denials just show how unreliable anything you post is.
Phil,
I thought you were saying March 11 when you said 3/11. It makes no difference if the date was October 31 or three days later on November 3 – the discontinuity didn’t appear on the graph until later in November.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2006C.gif
The first bad reading was on November 9
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/2006C.gif
You come across as quite hysterical.
Steven Goddard (19:46:55) :
I thought you were saying March 11 when you said 3/11. It makes no difference if the date was October 31 or three days later on November 3 – the discontinuity didn’t appear on the graph until later in November.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2006C.gif
The first bad reading was on November 9
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/2006C.gif
You come across as quite hysterical.
Not at all, just persistent in correcting someone who is either unable to read a graph or who lies in support of his cause. You come across as someone who doesn’t like being caught out when he is wrong and tries to bluster his way out of the hole he’s dug by abusing anyone who challenges him. On this thread alone, apart from the above you’ve also attacked Tom P.
The two discontinuities in the record before Nov which I referred to earlier are shown below:
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/ice2006C.gif
Phil,
You interpreted September/October as a discontinuity. I didn’t, because the ice thickness increases in the autumn and because the depth data matched the temperature data. The first obvious discontinuity occurred in November, because the slope broke the wrong direction.
That is called a minor disagreement of interpretation over an irrelevant detail. Get a clue.
My interpretation of 2006C buoy:
2008/04/06 top of sea=240cm
2008/04/06 top of ice=70cm
2009/04/07 top of sea = 320cm
2009/04/07 top of ice = 120cm
see http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/7200/2006c.jpg
2008 ice depth = 170cm
2009 ice depth = 200cm
2009 depth is 30cm greater than 2008
However the buoy has moved:
from 81.05N to 85.40N
So this means it has moved into cooler waters and will thus have gained ice thickness
The graphic here:
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/buoy_plots/ice2006C.gif
Is very broken after April 07
Snow thickness has hit top limit for some reason. The lower troughs look as if they are recording snow thickness. When these troughs cease in Oct 07 the snow thickness is anyone’s guess.
The Ice thickness also exhibits saturation on its maximum – sept to December 07 is invalid as is sept 08 and dec 08
Bill,
Great graphic.
I used the air to water data for the depths I estimated, combining the ice and snow depths.
Tom P.,
You need to study Bill’s graphic, and maybe read my earlier posts, to see how both a top and bottom of the snow and ice can be determined from the temp data plots.
Ray (11:28:07) :
If new ice will always completely melt during summer, then the icecap minimum will never increase. However, last year, the icecap minimum did increase. My eyeball estimate from this graph is about 545000 sq. km. or about 2 Colorados.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
First year ice will always disappear if the temperature is high enough. Otherwise, a certain percentage will survive, as it did last year, to become 2 year ice.
bill,
I agree with your analysis and interpretation – and it is nicely consistent with the CRREL results:
http://img372.imageshack.us/img372/8902/2006cdepthcomp.png
The corresponding result for April 2007 is 300 cm, showing the large ice loss that melt season to 170 cm in 2008 and only a very partial recovery to 200 cm in 2009.
Crashex,
I take it we also agree that Steven was in error to use just the bottom thicknesses in the original article, and when he further insisted:
“All of the active buoys show increasing thickness across their period of record.”
he was incorrect.
Tom P.,
“error to use just the bottom thicknesses”
He incorrectly applied the bouy’s relative measurement of the water to ice (bottom) interface as the thickness. Yeah.. that was the point of my posts.
The 2006C historical depths from your graphic indicate the ice will likely continue to grow until June.
That graphic also clearly shows that the ’08 minimum was thicker than the ’07 minimum and the Apr ’09 thickness is greater than ’08. It will be interesting to see if the growth returns to the ’06 levels. Obviously, the bouy’s drift keeps it from being a “clean” one-to-one comparison.
In case anyone is interested; the 03April 2009 vol 324 issue of SCIENCE on page 32 has an interesting article about Ken Golden; a mathematician who has been working in Antarctica on sea ice, and the effects of the inclusions of brine.
He treats the brine included ice as a composite structure. The essay is authored by Dana Meckenzie; who is a writer from Santa Cruz CA.
The article mentions the severe artic ice meltback of 2007, and basically says no-one knows why.
Doesn’t say anything about winds blowing it all to someplace else.
I found another gem in the same issue of SCIENCE on page 36 in the letters section.
Thomas E. Bowman, Edward Maibach, Michael E. Mann, Susanne C. Moser, Richard C.J. Somerville propose creating a common language of climate science.
But it’s only window dressing, because it is still the same old “forcings”, “climate sensitivities”, and so on. No basic change in the “science” at all; just making sure everyone spells it properly I guess.
Nice to see Michael Mann for a change mentioned in an article that doesn’t have the word proxy in it. How about a paper about “climatology” as a proxy for Science, Dr Mann ?
Does anyone know what happened to
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil ?
It’s been down at least a week or two.
The links to the graphs in the article fail obviously.
I can find maps for drift tracks but no current buoy data.
Is that what happens when WUWT links to “data that should not be seen”?
I had never seen a problem with it for the prior two years.
Does anyone know of another site with current buoy data?
Regards,
Bob
I’m not going to read all those comments so forgive me if someone already said this.
Looking at a localized area over a short period of time is not evidence of anything. Global warming and climate change are incredibly complex and diverse. It’s the sum of everything happening all over the globe that dictates global warming. A local anomaly driven by local occurrences is not significant. If polar caps throughout the entire north and south pole were thickening it would be significant.
Global warming is measured by taking the average ambient temperature around the globe over a 365 day period. That number is rising. Heavier snowfalls and colder winters in some places with warmer milder winters in other places is part of the global climate change that global warming is driving.
Geonite:
Two errors in two sentences. The second is the critical error: global temperatures have not been rising for several years: click
However, CO2 continues its steady rise: click
That fact alone falsifies the CO2=AGW conjecture. I know it’s hard to adjust one’s world view, but try. Because the fact is that four molecules of CO2 rattling around in 10,000 molecules of air can not contain enough energy to measurably warm those ten thousand other molecules. It is physically impossible.
Follow this site daily for a couple of months, and you will clearly see that the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis can not be true. So why is it still around? The answer is money. Big money; over $5 billion this year alone to study “global warming.”
With tax money like that being shoveled around, corruption follows.
Attn Geonite
Of course there are variations in the weather around the globe.
And as you correctly point out if there is such a thing as Global warming and climate change, few here would dispute that climate does change from tme to time, then local events lasting a few years mean little or nothing.
Again as you say Global warming may be measured year by year but if so why is it that on this basis that you propose the globe itself has been cooling for somewhere between eight and twelve years.
Or is cooling the new warming? Or is 365 days long enough? Please explain.
And yes Smokey I saw the sign but I couldn’t resist. On principle when tempted I always fall. More fun I find.
Kindest Regards
Sources please.
.
You didn’t give me any sources. You gave me quotes.
And BTW my degree is in environmental sciences.
Geonite,
I sincerely hope I’m not replying to a crazy person. If so, I apologize.
I didn’t give you “quotes”, as you can see above. I provided actual charts, which deconstructed your claim. Look at them again. They’re charts. See?
For a guy who purports to have a degree in any kind of the sciences, and who then states…
…displays a what appears to be some kind of disconnect. Almost two-thirds of the planet is composed of hydrogen. Hydrogen is easily available in any big city.
Deuterium, too.
Smokey,
Almost two-thirds of the planet is composed of hydrogen
A rare case of imprecise speech by you. By mass? Or are you talking water on the surface?
Also, Geonite is female, so we should refer to her as “gal” instead of “guy”.
I’m sure you are aware that not all schools of environmental studies are “equal”. There are some very good and very bad environmental studies programs in academia these days.