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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Shawn Whelan,
It’s also interesting that the first east – west single handed passage was made by a Dutchman, W. De Roos, in a 42ft ketch in 1977. This was in the decade when there was much blather about the coming ice age!
In 1983 a luxury cruise ship, which people paid up to $23,000 to travel on, made the 4790mile (7712km) journey from St John’s, Newfoundland, to Point Barrow, Alaska, in just 23 days.
I ran a simulation once, not a climate one, but in a war game.
It was for the Battle of Hastings. The units were pretty much as at the battle, except for a Panzer Division I placed at the top of Senlac Hill on the side of the English.
After running the simulation, I concluded that history would have changed irrecovably if you made the small assumption that King Harold had had a Panzer Division at his disposal.
Do Climate Modellers ever put small assumptions, that they deem likely to be true (or want to be true) into their models?
Steven Goddard,
” Ice floats, so the concept of an “ice shelf collapse” doesn’t really make a lot of sense, does it?”
We do not have the data to decide, but, the ocean melts the bottom of the shelf while snow accumulates on the top. Along with variations in the sea level, this COULD HAVE led to a situation where it is actually a collapse.
Alternatively, it could have been the opposite where sea level was higher and the 10 ft wave action excaberated the situation. In that case collapse would not be appropriate.
Do you know of any on-site observations that would give us a hint as to the actual mechanical stress (bottom of ice/top of ice/varying) beginnings??
Just in case there is still a question, an ice shelf is ice “growing” from the shore due to glacial movement as opposed to floating sea ice that is purely seasonal. Sea Ice will grow around an ice shelf apparently extending it.
This came out yesterday. We’re getting close to the 30 year average. The southern pole is considerably above.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html
Jack Simmons (00:20:45) : (and others)
I agree that the timing of all this could be stretched out. Still, the AGW gang is up against a dreadful deadline. If they can get some draconian CO2 limiting measures passed FAST, then they can claim CREDIT for the what happens next. As you note, that doesn’t look like it will happen in the nick of time.
Also, it looks like China isn’t going to play ball anyway — so they’re stuck. Spin is the only thing they’ll have left. “The increase in arctic sea ice is a manifestation of global warming!” It will be fun to watch — if you’ve got the stomach for it. It will be pathetic and pitiful.
Both of you cannot be correct either the shelf has collapsed or it has not?
Phil thank you for the satellite images.
These show that the shelf has cracked in numerous places however it does not show the shelf to have collapsed.
The obvious interpretation of the word collapse when related to an ice shelf is that it breaks off and floats away or melts but of course it may well be that the shelf is badly cracked but still remains serviceable. The shelf appears to have remained insitu?
I am not sure whether the animation shows the sea ice in front of the shelf?
The satellite photograph provided was dated 13 Feb 2003 I am not sure of the significance in respect of the condition of the shelf as of the 15 April satellite image?
The original\question I posed was because the press was hysterical regarding the imminent collapse of the shelf but seem to have gone quiet.
Catlin: Bad biometrics, suspicious science.
kim (17:31:49) :
It’s both amusing and grim the extent to which the alarmists are now reaching for their rhetoric. It is becoming increasingly clear, though, what the answer is to a question I’ve been tormenting myself with for years. No longer is the alarmist campaign the honest result of genuine belief; it is turning out to be an increasingly corrupt endeavour. [snip – leave the brimstone out please] They are certainly damaging the edifice of science, and they are certainly damaging all of us personally, but the poorest of this earth the most. When are the suits for damages to commence, and how can the most egregious be assessed criminal penalties? This is a wrong which must be righted.”
========================================
Kim,
Download the PDF containing a letter from Mockton he send to the Senate House
Committee after his testimony, copy to President Obama:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/markey_barton_letter.html
P.s This is a “must read” and I think Anthony should publish it.
In his letter Moncton makes 50 acquisitions of climate fraud and the document is on the right desks as far as I know.
Politicians tend to act on cases if their content is known to the public domain (fear of loss of votes). Publication in any case will support the case.
Bruce Cobb (07:32:25) :
With any luck, by this time next year, the CAGW/CC ideology will have collapsed under the weight of its own exaggerations, faulty and misleading science, and outright lies.
Hope you are right but for sure THEY will strengthen up next summer. They will surely invent the legal figure of “apology of denial” for those, like WUWT, who dare to oppose the healthy measures to clean our “Mother Gaia’ s atmosphere”
Ron de Haan (09:37:00) :
Just had a look, I’m off to my printer.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/markey_barton_letter.html
Well what can you say?
“If they can get some draconian CO2 limiting measures passed FAST, then they can claim CREDIT for the what happens next.”
The only way they could claim credit is if atmospheric CO2 concentrations started to fall
Cold Play (09:30:10) :
Both of you cannot be correct either the shelf has collapsed or it has not?
I believe “collapsed” is alarmese for failed, or no longer viable. It’s all very ominous-sounding, of course, implying imminent doom, much better than saying it broke, or the ice calved.
All this science, and no engineering. Once one of these ice “tongues” protrudes beyond land, it becomes nothing more or less that what in civil engineering is called a cantilevered beam. Tidal and wind action are forces which create bending moments along the cantilevered beam. As these forces are always present, but varying, when the bending moment at any point along the beam becomes greater than the structural strength of the beam, the beam will fail from a structural standpoint. As Ice can weld itself back together, the beam can be somewhat self-healing. But when the bending moment gets large enough, the cantilevered beam fails competely, and the beam breaks. I.e., the protruding ice “tongue” becomes completely separated, and then is a large floating mass of ice, and will go where ever the wind and other forces acting upon it move it. If this cantilevered beam continues to lengthen, at some point in time, the bending moments caused by tidal and wind forces will cause it to fail, whatever minor temperature changes there are.
“”” KimW (20:52:43) :
“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. “””
Well actually Kim, it doesn’t have to flow to “push out” over the sea.
Just as in the Arctic, the Antarctic ocean water can actually freeze itself, and form a sheet. Precipitation can then deposit on that, to build it up. There doesn’t have to be any ice sheet or glacier feeding those ice sheets; although some could be of that type.
Have any of you folks ever been sailing on a sailboat in the southern ocean? Do you have any idea just how rough and unpleasant that place is ? Do you understand the concept of daily tides ? Are you aware that the Antarctic Peninsula on which both the Wilkins and the Larsen B ice sheets stand, sticks out into that southern ocean and towards Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia at the southern tip of South America ? Do you understand that the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the southern ocean slosh back and forth through that narrow gap twice a day in tidal bores? Do you have any concept of how high the tidal waves can get ; and that those tidal bulges drive STRAIGHT IN on both Larsen B from the East, and Wilkins from the West ? Why would you expect them to not break up ? Do you understand that ice is like concrete, and has almost no tensile strength, and hence almost no flexural strength ? Have you ever gone swimming or surfing in big waves and felt the power of those water bulges ?
Arguing that these ice shelves are holding back the land Glaciers from simply sliding in one swell foop into the ocean, is like saying that the ships tied up at the docks in San Francisco, are stopping the buildings on Russian Hill from all sliding into SF Bay; I don’t think so !
Great Story Steve; and some nice data for us.
George
The ice flows like a plastic.
As it builds in the center it flows outward.
I remember in my wayward youth drinking with my buddies in Lake Louise, Alberta.
Everytime the glacier dropped a chunk of ice we would drink and we would get plenty drunk. The glacier is still there and I am sure so are the drunken youngsters.
Chris Knight
Syzygy, eh? Last time I saw that word it was the last light in my local paper’s crossword. I didn’t finish!
When I here the term shelf, I think of the ice as a cantilevered beam with little structural support underneath, attempting to support it’s own weight. Increasing the thickness of the beam by snow on top or ice growth at the bottom will also increase the weight being supported. And the increase in weight will eventually overcome the improved strength because the length is so much greater than the thickness.
Low cycle fatigue would enhance any crack propagation because of the cycling forces due to the waves and tide. Thermal cycles from summer to winter temps, thermal stress from the difference in air and water temps would all have the shelf, popping and cracking, shifting and buckling. Trying to expand or shrink.
I find it hard to believe that a couple degree change in average temperature, that remains well below the melting point of the ice, would be the primary driving force.
It looks like a fascinating mechanical stress problem.
anna v (21:51:31) asked:
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.
Anna-
I live close to the Bay of Fundy which, we always claimed, has the highest tides in the world. The bay is shaped like a wedge and becomes progressively shallower toward the end. The Atlantic tide sweeps in and the water is squeezed ever higher, up to 60 feet.
We read not so long ago about a bay in the arctic where the tides are slightly higher. Maybe on Baffin Island, but don’t quote me. I believe that this a localized phenomenon, like our Bay of Fundy. I suspect that Arctic Ocean tides are otherwise unremarkable.
Ian
Jack Green (18:09:56) :
I agree Jim. A lowering MSL around the ice would cause tension in the Ice sheet and cause more cracks to appear. Someone with more experience than I chime in here. Ice like concrete doesn’t behave well in tension but is very strong in compression as I remember from my Strength of Materials. Correct my thinking?
Correct for concrete, that is why we have reinforced concrete. Typically, in our building rules, you are not allowed to assume that concrete takes any tension at all.
If Ice behaves like concrete, an ice sheet on land and sea would break if the water was rising or falling due to bending and shear. But Ice is probably softer so I guess it takes a bit more to break it.
It’s interesting that the same photo of Wilkins gets recycled each year. The Wilkins disintegration / re-growth is an annual event. SSTs show that the western south pacific warm pool is traveling southeast and hitting the Antarctic Peninsula. See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/AntarcticWilkinsIceShelf.htm
Commenting on…
LarryOldtimer (11:51:28) :
All this science, and no engineering…
[…]
I’ve often wondered if the Firn Densification Model method of aging the air bubbles trapped in ice has ever been seriously looked at from an engineering perspective…Or if the pressure effects of burial on the partial pressure compositions of the air bubbles has ever been seriously looked at from an engineering perspective.
Little Ice Age and North West Passage
Little ice age is given in Wiki and many other sources as:
Wiki
For this reason, any of several dates ranging over 400 years may indicate the beginning of the Little Ice Age:
1250 for when Atlantic pack ice began to grow
1300 for when warm summers stopped being dependable in Northern Europe
1315 for the rains and Great Famine of 1315-1317
1550 for theorized beginning of worldwide glacial expansion
1650 for the first climatic minimum
[edit] End of Little Ice Age
Beginning around 1850, the climate began warming and the Little Ice Age ended. Some global warming critics believe that Earth’s climate is still recovering from the Little Ice Age and that human activity is not the decisive factor in present temperature trends,[45][46] but this idea is not widely accepted. Instead, mainstream scientific opinion on climate change is that warming over the last 50 years is caused primarily by the increased proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere caused by human activity. There is less agreement over the warming from 1850 to 1950.
OK so little ice age was approx 1300 to later than 1850
Search for the North West passage
Presumably the explorers of the time would have realised that it was getting colder and the Arctic ice pack was enarging? However why did they start their hunt in the peak of the little ice age? indead how did Roald Amundsen navigate the passage during the end of the LIA (as would be claimed by skeptics)?
Sir Martin Frobisher, the English explorer, was the first European to explore (1576–78) the eastern approaches of the passage. John Davis also explored (1585–87) this area, and in 1610 Henry Hudson sailed north and visited Hudson Bay while seeking a short route to Asia. Soon afterward, William Baffin, an English explorer, visited (1616) Baffin Bay, through which the passage was finally found. English statesmen and merchants, anxious to have the passage found, encouraged exploration. Luke Fox and Thomas James made (1631–32) voyages into Hudson Bay.
…Samuel Hearne, a British explorer with the company, went overland as far west as the Coppermine River (1771–72) and demonstrated that there was no short passage to the western sea. …Captain James Cook was inspired to make the first attempt at navigating the passage from the west. He died before he could accomplish anything. The British, Spanish, and Americans, however, pushed explorations on the Pacific coast, and the explorations of the Russians about Kamchatka and Alaska, together with the voyages of Alexander Mackenzie, the Canadian explorer, and the expedition of the Americans Lewis and Clark, revealed the contours of the continental barrier.
…British explorers John Ross and David Buchan were sent out in 1818. Ross’s later voyages, and those of Sir William Edward Parry, F. W. Beechey, Sir George Back, Thomas Simpson, and Sir John Franklin pushed forward the knowledge of the Arctic and of the Northwest Passage. The last tragic expedition of Franklin indirectly had more effect than any other voyage because of the many expeditions sent out to discover his fate. In his expedition (1850–54), Robert J. Le M. McClure penetrated the passage from the west along the northern coast of the continent and by a land expedition reached Viscount Melville Sound, which had been reached (1819–20) by Parry from the east. The actual existence of the Northwest Passage had been proved, a…This feat, which had been attempted by so many men, was first accomplished (1903–6) by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen.
Perhaps the LIA was limited to northern Europe and not Canada. Maybe this was caused by changes in the thermohaline current.
I have previously posted here that there is a build-up of fresh water in the Arctic waing to (apparently) flow out via the fram stait
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.
The last big release of water into the north atlantic (lake agassiz) possibly caused the Younger Dryas stadial. Keep Cool!
Syzygy, eh?
I wouldn’t have known either, but I grew up near to a house with that name. The owners explained (rather coyly) that they called it that because it meant the alignment of two heavenly bodies, which seemed a bit pointless if you had to explain it. I preferred another neighbour’s house name: ‘Erewebe’, which I was at least able to work out for myself…
Slightly OT sorry
The Catlin Team are still trying to tell porkies about the Bio data. But their spokesman had to come clean when pressed by the Guardian Journalist…
From The Guardian
Bloggers including Watts Up With That also picked up on the fact that biotelemetry sensors designed to send the team’s individual heart rates and core temperatures to a “live from the ice” website appeared to be repeating the same data.
A spokesman for the Catlin Arctic Survey admitted that there had been a problem with the way it was presented. “The initial idea was to get updates on a daily basis showing biometric data from the previous day, but there was a technological glitch with the system which meant we couldn’t use it from the beginning. The results shown on the website are demonstrational, and it states this quite clearly.”
The data had previously been labelled on the website as “Operational” which Catlin Arctic Survey conceded had given the impression that they were live.However the spokesman conceded that data was initially displayed on the Catlin Arctic Survey website in a way that gave the impression that it was live. “The intended explanation that the data was delayed information was at first missing. We have subsequently corrected this.”
REPLY: Gosh. – Anthony
Anthony, the tide is turning in the UK when you get The Guardian using your blogs findings to question the integrity of ‘expeditions’ like this.
The sheer negativity towards the Catlin Jaunt in the comments section is quite unbelievable.
For all our sakes please keep up the great work.