Guest post by Steven Goddard
In spite of the excess global sea ice area and the freezing Catlin crew, AGW proponents have recently ramped up the rhetoric about “melting ice caps.” This has been based on a couple of points.
1. In the southern hemisphere, cracks appeared in a 200 metre thick ice shelf, as seen below.
http://www.ogleearth.com/wissm.jpg
The ice cracked, not melted – but that minor detail didn’t stop nearly every major news outlet in the world from hinting at the fiery and imminent end to the planet.
2. At the other pole, NSIDC released an interesting statistic that Arctic ice “older than two years” reached a record low this winter.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20090406_Figure5.png
So what happened to the three year old ice in 2009? The answer is simple. During the summer of 2007, almost all of the 1st year ice melted. Because of this, there was very little 2nd year ice in 2008, and 3rd year ice in 2009. The amount of second year ice in 2008 had to be less than or equal to the amount of first year ice at the end of the 2007 summer. Even if we had entered an ice age in 2008, there would not be much third year ice in 2009.
However, note in the NSIDC graph above that the amount of 2nd year ice (orange) approximately tripled in 2009 relative to 2008, from about 3% to 10%. The implication being that (barring a radical change in Arctic conditions) the amount of 3rd year ice will likely expand significantly in extent in 2010. Perhaps even triple in extent. Simply because the “terrible two” year old ice will be one year older. The red-brown portion of the graph should increase in height next year, as the 2nd year ice becomes more than 2 years old. The top of the orange should also move up significantly, as the red-brown region below it pushes it up.
No wonder people are pushing so hard for “climate legislation” in 2009. Graphs like the one below don’t look very scary, with global sea ice area 683,000 km2 above normal, and Catlin reporting wicked cold – day after day.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.anomaly.global.png
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CodeTech (19:05:41) :
…
It’s always been about following the money, but making the flow invisible covers up a lot of tracks. Nobody needs to fight a war anymore… just destroy your enemy’s economy, then walk in and buy them.
(Sorry for the OT)
While not believing in conspiracy theories, there are certainly orgasnised elements working within the AGW movement. A possible economic motivation is “Who owns the means to produce energy in the developed world – and will destroying the current means and producing a new means shift the ownership?”
I.e. Are the interested parties who are attempting to shift the ownership of energy production away from the current owners to themselves, thus effecting a major transfer of power and wealth?
I don’t know – but I suspect that this might be a core motivation for some AGW Backers.
Steven,
This is an interesting approach and presentation. So let us hope that no radical event happens to negate this.
The concept is a bit like population pyramids for a society or nation when something happens such as famine, war, or disease that takes a high number of a certain cohort away, or the reverse, when some subset undergoes an unusually large increase — illegal immigrations and young males come to mind. Then tracking the cohort that has decreased or increased, over time, allows planning for the changes. As the baby boomers aged new schools where needed. Now their looming retirements have to be planned for, and so on.
So, these ideas work for the ice – the other day someone was calling first year ice “baby ice” and so on. The main difference is that with the ice it is a short and sometimes violent activity. Was it you that said there is probably no ice up there over 5 years old? This probably doesn’t get mentioned often enough. I wonder what the oldest ice is there today and what it might have been in the past. Did it flush out as regularly during the maximum of the ice ages or even the Little Ice Age. Was there, say, 15 or 25 year old ice?
I’ll guess a lot of people have never thought about this regular freeze-age-flush system. Coupled with the time-lapse we viewed this week, this is a really interesting phenomenon.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
O/T but Fox News has a crazy ice story:
Global sea levels could rise 10 feet in 50 years if the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps rapidly melt, a new study suggests.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,516456,00.html
This is in fact one of the questions Walt Meier did not answer. Indeed it is clear that periodical melt occur and that arctic sea ice never really grows old. In 1980 ice 7 y or older represented only 20% or so of the total. Yet where is the ice that has seen Admundsen walk? Gone of course and without CO2 or Global Warming’s help. But that is not alarmist.
Also Walt Meier did not answer the question about the correlation between arctic sea ice decline and the climatic shift initiated in the 1970s well demonstrated by the atmospheric circulation patterns and the switch to a rapid mode of circulation described by Marcel Leroux and documented by his students and others. The inflexion point is quite brutal and independent of any CO2 curve. The fact no journalist would 1) mention these studies 2) confront Meier or Serreze -who cannot avoid mentioning atmospheric circulation patterns in their reports- is baffling. This is another example of the media being so unfriendly to AGW… not.
John F. Hultquist (19:47:53) :
…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
O/T but Fox News has a crazy ice story:
Global sea levels could rise 10 feet in 50 years if the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps rapidly melt, a new study suggests.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,516456,00.html
Love the “If”.
“If “ hostile, predatory aliens land next week, it is predicted that 50% of Humanity will be killed and eaten after one month…
It’s the ultimate “cover my behind”, “get out of jail free” card.
How about some real predictions like, “The 2009 summer Arctic Ice extent will be below the 2007 summer ice extent.” – nice and testable.
The first year ice is not going to melt if the surface of the Arctic ocean doesn’t get above -2.0C. If it gets to -0.5C, then only the multi-year ice will survive.
Normally it gets to about -1.5C by early September and then starts declining afterward so we will have to see.
Phillip_B,
“No. The ice floats on the water and any stresses from lower average sea level would be miniscule.”
At the shore, the ice is grounded. As in, the glacier flows into the ocean. That is why it is called an Ice Shelf and NOT Sea Ice .Changing sea level WILL stress the ice where the glacier pushes into deep enough water to start floating. The ice shelf is somewhat wedge shaped toward land as the sea water melts the underside of the glacier. The further out it is pushed, the more is melted. At the same time, there will be an accumulation of snow on top that increases the thickness above the sea and adds to the stress.
The area of the Wilkins Ice Shelf experiences 10 foot waves regularly. Not hard to see that there would be larger and smaller waves, not to mention the high variability of of the background sea level!!
“Would not all that water disappearing from underneath all that heavy ice be just as likely a cause of the cracking ice bridge as anything else?”
At approx 3mm/year sea level change, any such change would be within the plastic flow of the ice – after all, it had to flow to push out onto the sea – but as mentioned above, the two tides a day plus wave action will stress the ice past its breaking point. Key point here, glossed over by the MSM, is that the ice just keeps flowing from the land onto the sea, breaking off and being replaced – ALL THE TIME. Talking to some friends, I found that I could not, repeat not, get that point across and it’s implications compared to them listening to a sound byte from the TV. That sinks in, but not reasoned argument.
Graeme:
(Also sorry about the OT)
While I’m also not a conspiracy theorist, I’m also totally aware that huge multimillion dollar funding raised by “Internet” is going to be totally bogus. And I’m not actually advancing some far out AGW conspiracy because I think following the origin of that self-propagating delusion will be clear in hindsight. I expect many, many well-meaning people will be shaking their heads over the next 5-20 years and wondering what the heck they were thinking.
Isn’t it amazing that most people who attempt to raise huge $$$ via “Internet” fail miserably even with a pristine cause, but certain well-placed groups can “magically” pull it off with little or no fanfare. It is unfortunate that that does sound like a “conspiracy”, but I’m extremely familiar with computers and the Internet. It just plain doesn’t happen the way we’re being told.
And organized elements in the AGW movement? Definitely. Anyone with huge money can easily make even more. Just find a “cause” that the rubes will embrace, and the best part is they will defend even the most outrageous and ridiculous claims for you. All you have to do is get things started. I have been amazed as I’ve watched this one unfold. People who should know better are completely and totally convinced. (and I’m done with this one now)
KimW (20:52:43) :
Try polar bear population theory. I’ve found that “complex concepts”, such as sea ice extent, logarithmic CO2 forcing, etc. are way beyond the average pretend plant-saver.
Ask your friend(s) if polar bear populations are increasing or decreasing. After the inevitable answer … send them any random link that has the facts.
It has definitely been a wake-up call for many people with whom I’ve had earlier useless discussions.
I still wonder why nobody has given a coherent link of the tidal effect on ice at the poles.
Somebody said there are 16m tides in the arctic. When we had a 6.3 richter earthquake in my region, a part of the mountain fell 6 meters. A 16 meter tide pushing up and down should be making icecubes of the arctic :).
What are the tides in the antarctic,particularly when the moon has a far north inclination? 40cm is the number for bulk on earth, but what about in the region? How is the land approach at the bottom?
Please, if anybody has a link, post it.
“It seems to me that either rising or falling local sea level (caused perhaps by local winds) would tend to cause cracks between the grounded ice and the floating ice, as one chunk was lifted or lowered relative to the other.”
I would tend to think that lower sea levels would be more helpful in the breakage of ice. If sea-levels rose, the ice would have more support, and there would be a ridge at the point of break from the ice being smashed together. If sea levels fall, gravity takes over and the ice snaps off from it’s own weight.
There is one thing that we can be certain about next year – and that is that, all of a sudden, there will be a focus on the worrying lack of ice older than three years.
Anybody remember seeing third year ice mentioned last year?
The latest AMSR-E plot shows this year breaking out from the previous years.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
This breakout should continue as the difference between this year’s sea ice and the 1979-200 average is entirely due to the Sea of Okhotsk.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent_hires.png
This difference will disappear over the spring, as the Okhotsk ice always vanishes. Since this ice is separate and won’t contribute to the summer extent, the 2009 extent could converge on the 1979-2000 average.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
If that happens, this could be the year that the whole AGW hoax collapses. Gore and his minions have been unambiguous about arctic sea ice vanishing completely in the near future. A full, 100% recovery would stick it to them good.
The next step is lawsuits over their profiteering. Anyone who actually bought carbon credits will have standing to sue. Their over the top rhetoric and suppression of dissenting views will hurt them in court.
Will this be fun or watt? Where can I buy carbon credits from Al Gore now so that I’ll be able to join the class action suit later?
The ice in the photo should be 25 to 30 meters above the waterline, if the shelf is 200 meters thick. Since the water in the opened channels is freezing over heavily, melting can’t be the cause.
I meant to add that the ridge in the gravity scenario would be on the bottom side of the fracture because that is where the ice is smashed together.
Thank you for this blog post (Steven), and thanks for all of the informative comments by the readers here. Sometimes, those of us who work in other fields just need it spelled out for us in terms that are easy to understand (call me a student of “Climate for Dummies,” I won’t be insulted 🙂 ).
My own personal experience has been that the most-used arguments by those who believe in AGW but don’t follow the subject daily as I do revolve around polar bears and melting ice at the poles.
This gives me a lot of new material to work with next time the subject comes up, and I’m all about instilling doubt in AGW one person at a time. It’s effective when you have a lot of participants, especially since this nonsense has spread like a virus at local bars and restaurants across the country.
CodeTech (21:30:22) :
Graeme:
(Also sorry about the OT)
… (and I’m done with this one now)
CodeTech – Agreed. Also done. Back to the main thread.
Isn’t this all a bit silly?
Steve is probably right for all the right reasons. And isn’t the top 5 meters or so of arctic ocean water constructively “fresh” water? Or at least considerably less salty than your typical ocean water?
Some years in the summer the wind flushes a lot of ice out, and some years it stacks it up like cordwood. In the ’70’s the barge traffic from Seattle to Prudhoe Bay was constructively shut down by ice. A few barges with very large (1,200 tons and up) modules pushed through, but my recollection is that all of them were damaged. They did get them unloaded, but they overwintered in the north.. The balance of the cargo went to Seward and was fed north over the winter. Believe that was 1975, but others may have a better date.
In 2008 the common refrain in Alaska in June and July was “quite a mild winter we are having.” This year looks to follow the same pattern, but it seems to have been colder so far.
The Pacific is colder and the sun is quiescent. Anyone have a source of warming?
John F. Hultquist (19:47:53) :
O/T but Fox News has a crazy ice story:
Global sea levels could rise 10 feet in 50 years if the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps rapidly melt, a new study suggests.
What’s sad is that they are so often accused of being in the tank for the oil industry, conservatives, republicans, and the great big AGW denialist machine. Accused by those that never actually bother to read their news, but accused nonetheless.
Journalism just plain sucks these days.
Mark
I would love to see a 3D model of the Wilkins ice shelve before and after the latest event.
Ted Scambos at NSIDC presented a theory that these ice shelf breakups were due to surface meltwater seeping down in the cracks in the ice. That is clearly not the case here, as there is no evidence of melt on the surface.
This breakup was mechanical in nature.
anna,
The Catlin site had a good discussion of the strong effects of the tides on the ice during the recent full moon.
James S (21:52:05) :
There is one thing that we can be certain about next year – and that is that, all of a sudden, there will be a focus on the worrying lack of ice older than three years.
Anybody remember seeing third year ice mentioned last year?
Yes here (fig 4): http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2007.html#22August
and here: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/040708.html
Frederick Michael (21:52:14) :
Based on the timing of Hansen’s and Gore’s dire predictions, I’ve come to the conclusion the AGW environmental-investment complex took a calculated risk this year. They were hoping for a big push by the current administration on some sort of cap and trade program, along with restrictive EPA regulations. To succeed, one of the key elements in all this was some cooperation from the climate. As you pointed out, nature is not cooperating.
We will have two years to watch climate trends unfold before any attempt can be made to initiate cap and trade legislation. This year is finished, as even the NYT has observed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/us/politics/11climate.html?scp=5&sq=climate%20change%20legislation&st=cse
Next year is an election year. Nothing will happen then.
Gore’s prediction for a missing northern ice cap in the next five years will be hard to explain away, even for true believers. Hansen’s ‘tipping point of no return’ within this term of Obama should be fairly easy to weasel out of. He could even claim it has already occurred.
Of course, as you pointed out, if lawsuits are filed for the return of money invested in carbon credits based on fraudulent science, people will be facing subpoenas to appear in court. It will be difficult for Gore, Hansen and others to avoid debates at that point.
I agree with your premise, but the timing is a little short. I would give it within five years, sort of painting myself into the same sort of corner Gore and Hansen are already in. But then again, I don’t have the sort of skin in the game they have.
Things could move a little move faster, as you feel they will. There are more desperate lawyers than in the past.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/business/12law.html?scp=1&sq=layoffs%20lawyer&st=cse
Perhaps they’ll take a look at the AGW industry?
In all events, these things will provide a lot of amusement.
A bit OT – from today’s online news: “Scientists from Arizona University tested pine trees growth in a giant greenhouses, exposed to normal and 4°C higher temperatures, which are predicted to happen in 2100. In dry conditions, the pine tree kept in higher temperature died sooner. It means, in future even shorter dry period would kill trees.”
These guys are desperate. Btw, there is one famous “we-have-to-get-of-this-medieval-warm-period” professor working at Arizona University.