One of the common misconceptions pushed in the media is that Arctic sea ice simply “melts in place”. Much of this is due to the constant hammering of the AGW meme that the “warming in the Arctic” is the primary cause. Here is one of my favorite misconception lines from this WIRED Science article:
With arctic sea ice melting like ice cubes in soda, scientists want to protect a region they say will someday be the sole remaining frozen bastion of a disappearing world.
It is not difficult to imagine how many would think that Arctic ice is “melting like ice cubes in soda” when you see temperature anomaly maps like this one from GISS:
GISTEMP 11-12-08 – Click for larger image
The public (and sometime the media too) often mistakes these for “absolute” temperature and the colors give the impression of a “toasty” area around the arctic, when in fact the temperatures there are mostly below the freezing point. In contrast to that what looks like a heat wave in the Arctic, we have this NASA JPL study that suggests winds may play a key role in pushing Arctic sea ice into lower latitudes where it melts. The author suggests winds may be the dominant factor in the 2007 record low ice extent:
Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. “Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic,” he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.
Interestingly we can now watch this actually happen thanks to an animation of AMSER-E satellite 89Ghz sounder images. Koji Shimada of JAMSTEC (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology ). See the animation below (note- size is 7.1 MB, this may take awhile to fully load):
If you want more detail, a full sized Video animation is available here as a flash video or here as an AVI file (highest quality 7.3 MB) A hat tip to WUWT commenter Bill and to Thomas Homer-Dixon for this video.
What is interesting about this video is that you can watch sea ice being flushed out of the Arctic sea and pushed along Greenland’s east coast, where it then finds its way into warmer waters and melts. Also note how in the lower right, in the Beaufort sea, older multiyear ice gets fractured and broken up as winds and currents stress it.
While indeed we can watch some of the Arctic sea “melt in place” during this animation in the fall of 2007, we can also see that winds and currents are a signifcant contributor to breaking up the sea ice and transporting it to warmer latitudes.
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The scary GISS map at the beginning of the article is similar to the map linked below.
Someone started out with normal colors. Then obviously someone higher up gave him different marching orders, and the final product had lots of scary reds/oranges for exactly the same temps: click
John F. Hultquist,
“When the two are aligned and the attraction combined we get Spring Tides (nothing to do with the season, Spring) which pull the water up, away from Earth which is pulling down. Earth spins under the raised water. Or ice, as the case may be.”
I remember visiting the Foucault Pendulum exhibit at the smithsonian many years ago. The short sentence above reminded me of that visit. The phrase “Earth spins under the raised water.” seems counterintuitive, but I can assure you that this is precisely what happens.
From the Encyclopedia Smithsonian:
“If you start a Foucault Pendulum swinging in one direction, after a few hours you will notice that it is swinging in a quite different direction. How does this happen?
Imagine you are in a museum located at the north pole and that the museum has a Foucault Pendulum suspended from the ceiling at a point exactly over the pole. When you set the pendulum swinging it will continue to swing in the same direction unless it is pushed or pulled in some other direction. (This is due to a basic law of nature called Newton’s First Law.) The earth, on the other hand, will rotate once every 24 hours underneath the pendulum. Thus if you stood watching the pendulum, after a quarter of an hour or so, you would be likely to notice that the line of the pendulum’s swing has changed to a different direction. This would be especially clear if one marked the position of the line of swing in the morning and had the pendulum knocking down pegs arranged in a ring at the center.
At the north pole the apparent rotation would be a full circle of 360 degrees each 24-hour day, or about 15 degrees per hour. This case is fairly simple, because here the earth and the pendulum are not exerting much influence on each other. As you move off the north pole down to a more southerly point like Washington, for example, the earth not only rotates under the pendulum, but it carries Washington, the building, and the pendulum, in a great circle about its axis. That is, the motion of the earth is now mixed in a complicated way with the motion of the pendulum. As you can prove if you watch the pendulum for a while, the effect of this is to slow down the apparent rotation of the swing. Instead of seeming to rotate 15 degrees (about 1/24 of a full circle) in one hour, it only changes by about 9 degrees (about 1/40 of a full circle). The further south you go, the slower the apparent rotation gets, and at the equator there is no rotation at all. Below the equator the apparent rotation begins again, but in the opposite direction.”
As you watch the animation you can see that the earth is literally spinning beneath the Arctic Ice, which contributes to the breakup, the currents and the winds. The effect is obviously enhanced by higher tides that would raise the ice further above the earth. I wonder if the LOD has any effect here. Also are there any other mechanical aspects of the earth’s rotation that could enhance this motion?
The remarks by chad (23:38:11) would indicate a prime example of someone’s personal frame of reference. Each of us sees the world from our own starting point and estqablishes their views on history and the future from there. Some younger folks can’t understand how we older folks existed without the internet, cell phones, PDAs etc. I am old enough to remember no TV! How about that you whipersnappers!!
That is a really neat animation. There is always more to the story than the “believers” want to tell.
You don’t have to watch this video very long to realize that none of the ice is hundred year ice and little of it is over a decade old.
You also realize that it’s been going on like this for a long time.
“With arctic sea ice melting like ice cubes in soda, scientists want to protect a region they say will someday be the sole remaining frozen bastion of a disappearing world.”
Now, I wonder why they chose soda for their simile? It couldn’t possibly be because it’s pumped full of carbonic acid, which (supposedly) is what we’re doing to the oceans via our burning of fossil fuels, thus pushing another of their favorite alarmist memes? Nah.
Scientists want to protect a region? That’s a laugh. The only thing they (AGW “scientists”, that is) “want to protect” is continued government funding as well as their own careers pushing alarmist pseudoscience. The only thing scientists are supposed to want to do is science, a fact they seem to have conveniently forgotten.
While the rhetoric from NSIDC makes me cringe, they do have some excellent materials available. This first one is an animated alternative to the video posted, but shows the ice outflow from 1981 to 2007:
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/images/20070822_oldice.gif
This second on shows the circulation patterns in the arctic ocean:
http://nsidc.org/seaice/processes/circulation.html
The combination of these currents and winds eject massive amounts of new and old ice each year. One study I read recently cited 2.9 million km^2/year, + or – 600K. To my surprise, most of this occurs during the winter, showing how powerful the wind and currents are, and how fragmented the ice pack is. I will try to relocate and post later.
That is just about one of the most interesting animations I have ever seen. Thank-you for finding and posting it!
I have a question. In the Arctic Sea Ice Extent graph on this page, I am assuming that the sea ice extent includes windblown (and jumbled up) sea ice, in which case it becomes a measure of not just the ice that is formed, but how it gets moved around. Is that correct?
Thank you all for the education I have been getting over the past several months.
This is a great animation.
One can clearly see the ice flowing out with the wind-driven ocean currents.
But it is difficult to see from this animation where the ocean currents are flowing into the Arctic basin to replace the surface ocean flowing out.
At different times you can see a little coming in from the Pacific, but the ocean is too shallow there to have much of an ocean current. At times, it appears currents are flowing in from the North West Passage but this area is not normally known as having strong ocean currents flowing into the Arctic.
There is some movement in from Bering Sea north of Norway but it is not much.
Then I found this graphic of arctic ocean currents which seems to match up with some of the movements.
http://www.amap.no/mapsgraphics/files/surface-ocean-currents-in-the-arctic.jpg
Very interesting — Of course, education, which your posts do, is not the goal of the AGW alarmist and their media propagandists. Too bad, because the technology man now posses is capable of educating people about some of the most interesting things in our world.
Misused, it is likewise capable of misdirecting, and forcing erroneous conclusion.
Could the ice over the arctic be one of the negative feedbacks that’s not accounted for in the IPCC model? The feedback would go something like this. Global warming (manmade or natural, take your pick) increases the general strength of the winds on a global basis or at a minimum changes their patterns. During the summer, the ice is forced out to sea by these changes in wind patterns and melts, lowering the temperature of the ocean waters which in turn lowers temperatures over land (which I believe we have been seeing since the ice started declining in the arctic earlier this decade). This leaves a greater % of open water at the arctic during the winter to freeze up again. Since water with wind blowing over it allows for faster heat transfer than ice with wind blowing over it (due to stronger mixing of waters at the surface vs the weaker thermosiphon that would form below the ice, as well as the ice acting as an insulative layer to retard the heat being transferred between the water and air) more heat can escape the oceans and be radiated out into space during the winter, thus producing negative feedback in response to warming.
I haven’t read the IPCC model. Maybe this is accounted for. Maybe things don’t work this way. It’s just an idea to kick about, but the animation and the degree to which it shows the ice moving sparked the idea. Until I saw that, I really had no idea how uniformly in direction and how fast the ice had been moving out into the open water. I had this picture of the ice being mostly stationary, moving a few miles but that it was more of a back and forth rather than running out the chute into the ocean. Obviously a misconception after seeing the animation.
I wonder if they were to print these graphs in their personal inkjet printer they would use such colors, of course they are happy to do it with YOUR money.
Flanagan (02:30:45) :
“predicted effects of AGW, particularly warmer temps, simply haven’t materialized.”
Are you sure?
I can hand-pick datat too, no rise in temperature since 2000 and decline since 2001:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/trend
Your graph started in a year with a volcanic eruption, and contained a 2nd volcanic eruption a few years later…both causing significant cooling. Isn’t anything less than 30 years was just weather anyway? IMO, less that 60 years is probably weather.
1- Even though 2007 was exceptional, the declining trend goes on with a quite regular slope – and you can hardly pretend the winds are behind this one.
Records start at the end of a cold period. “Real” skeptics agree we have warmed in 1979…PDO was in it’s warm phase, and the Sun was very active. PDO is now negative since about 2001, and the Sun is as inactive (or worse) as it was around 1912-13 minimum (COLD). Global temps (RSS, UAS, GIS, HADCRUT3) have dropped since 2001 at .1c/decade even with the el nino of 2006:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:2001/plot/wti/from:2001/trend
Flanagan (00:36:09) :
1- Even though 2007 was exceptional, the declining trend goes on with a quite regular slope – and you can hardly pretend the winds are behind this one.
It all depends where you start point is. For example if we take a longer term view, then we can see that the trend is clearly one of increasing arctic ice.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/21/researchers-find-arctic-may-have-had-less-ice-6-7000-years-ago/
You can hardly pretend that AGW is behind this one.
The video clearly shows the ice breaking up not melting. It is driven out to lower latitudes where it melts somewhere else. It would be nice for the modelers to factor this transport of heat into their computer models along with hurricanes. Nature’s way of balancing the heat around. Cool video.
For you trolls who keep posting comments without facts: I wonder why this is happening?
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/ask-the-experts/population/
The experts say the Bears are increasing in numbers.
Nice piece of evidence.
Looks like a big flushing toilet.
So, nothing to worry about.
I read somewhere that the reason Siberia shows a current high temperature anomaly goes back to the Soviet communist era. The allocation of fuel in the winter was a function of how cold any particular place got. So it was common practice to report the temperature to be several degrees C colder than it actually was. Since that time, temperature reports have become more accurate.
Wow, very nice video.
No wonder the polar bears are clinging to the ice… it is so dynamic up there they they need to cling so they don’t fall.
Anyone know of any good analysis of arctic rim station data vs. reported datasets? Looking at admittedly dated information from:
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm
the eyeball test shows only no to moderate warming. Yet all temp data sets show significant arctic warming during the recent past. I’m trying to rationalize this apparent (?) discrepancy, but haven’t located anything yet.
I think there is a need of choosing a standard set of colours for representing temperatures, because in the above graphic north east Canada it is burning up and Siberia has already melted down.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7998501.stm
“It’s never wise to imagine that either man or technology has the upper hand in the natural world,” he said. “It’s truly brutal at times out here on the Arctic Ocean and a constant reminder that Mother Nature always has the final say.”
They should apply the same argument to climate change.
The article says: “”All the indications are of huge change, and a huge response is needed if you want to have polar bears beyond 2050,” said Peter Ewins, the World Wildlife Fund’s Director of Species Conservation.
And the Patron of the WWF says:
“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth
as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
– Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh,
patron of the World Wildlife Fund
Bill Illis (05:29:28) :
“But it is difficult to see from this animation where the ocean currents are flowing into the Arctic basin to replace the surface ocean flowing out.
At different times you can see a little coming in from the Pacific, but the ocean is too shallow there to have much of an ocean current. At times, it appears currents are flowing in from the North West Passage but this area is not normally known as having strong ocean currents flowing into the Arctic.
There is some movement in from Bering Sea north of Norway but it is not much.”
Here is a link to the same graphic but with more detail of actual flows from the various currents:
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm
Scroll down about 2/3 of the way into the website and it will pop up. The major flows come in from the Atlantic through the Barent’s Sea. It’s almost 5x times the inflow through the Bering Straits
And the alarm continues (you are paying you tax money for it):
But such a life extension for the ice, warned USGS biologist Steven Amstrup, are only meaningful “if humans get their act together and reduce greenhouse gases so that the ice will come back.”
http://alaska.usgs.gov/staff/staffbio.php?employeeid=113