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
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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?