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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“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.