Antarctic Sea Ice Complete Video
by Jeff Id , reposted here by invitation. The video animation Jeff put together is well worth watching, see it below the “read more” line. – Anthony
Antarctic temperatures and sea ice are becoming quite a hobby. It should make for some interesting discussion around the campfire this summer – not really. It takes my computer about 15 hours to calculate this movie and it took all day to figure out how to make the movie work. Actually it takes a minute then wait, then a minute and wait again. I finally got a reasonable quality video at 15 frames per second, one frame per day from 1978 – 2009. Before you watch the video Figure 1 is a map of the Wilkins ice shelf which apparently is about to melt every hot January summer at the south pole.
The melting of the Wilkins ice shelf has happened over and over prompting numerous articles like the following.
Wilkins Ice Shelf About to Break Off and Alter the Map of Antarctica
Vast Antarctic Ice Shelf on Verge of Collapse
The headlines are truly endless and will continue this year as well.
Here is a video which is particularly pertinent in it’s discussion and the fact that it ends with a discussion of climate science by Hillary Clinton. I recommend it to everyone before watching the video below.
Wilkins Ice Shelf Collapse Video
Below is a plot of the sea ice area anomaly in the antarctic calculated from the NSIDC NasaTeam algorithm data. It shows an upward trend in sea ice extent over the last 30 years.
Figure 2I’ve pointed out here many times that the trends do in fact exist if the even if the statistical certainty created by typical high frequency climate activity can create a trend of the same magnitude. This is an important differentiation which certain ‘over the top’ scientists in AGW crowd tend to blur. Statistical certainty of a trend does not always mean the trend does or does not exist, a trend is a trend to the certainty of the measurement error (different than certainty created from other noise). Some global warming bloggers like to blur that distinction.
The interpretation of a trend’s meaning does change with the statistical certainty of the trend. In the case of Antarctic sea ice growth I have seen one example demonstrating the trend is statistically significant despite climate noise. However the point of ice shrinking or growing is to interpret the consequences of a trend with regards to global warming. When interpreting the consequences of ice growth or shrinkage in my opinion the arbitrary significance threshold and linear trend has little meaning.
The annual variance of the sea ice is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
The huge annual variation dwarfs any apparent trend with the signal dropping to near zero every year. The thermal inertia of the ice creates a smooth cyclical process allows us to make pretty anomaly plots like Figure 2 but trend wise there isn’t much to say. So I guess I’m fired from my budding climatology career again. The reason they have little meaning becomes apparent in the wildly dynamic sea ice video presented below.
Below is a link to a video file of the Antarctic sea ice trends for 30 years.
Figure 4 – Antarctic Sea Ice Video – Click to play
Now consider that each pixel of the Antarctic ice data is 25 km and in the video of the Wilkins ice shelf, the crack is 40miles long – that is about 2.6 pixels in the Figure 4 video.
What’s really interesting about the video is the clockwise rotation of the ice which becomes especially visible during maximum extent. Another interesting point is the peninsula acts as a shelter to the ice on its leeward side. The Wilkins shelf get’s blasted by air and water currents every year from the south in this image, once we understand that combined with in the CNN video (link above) the reason the ice bridge exists is obviously due to protection from ocean and air currents by a small island (look at the angle of the ice bridge in the CNN video compared to current flow). The Island has protected this very small piece of ice from cracking for some time probably because the amazing circularity of the Antarctic continent doesn’t experience very large current changes.
I’ve watched the above video a dozen or so times (wouldn’t you after a day’s work) I noticed that there does appear to be a change in weather patterns in more recent years as the upward flow below the peninsula cuts away at the maximum ice extent on the West side of the image. The same is true for the East side of the image.
I had the advantage of doing a trend by pixel plot previously which led me to look for the effect. The plot done by myself in a previous post using a slightly older version of the same data is shown in Figure 5. The loss of ice on the West and East sides of the Antarctic is visible as blue pixels at the extreme edges of the range.
Figrure 5 – Antarctic sea ice trend by pixelIts difficult to imagine after watching this video that this ice shelf hasn’t collapsed (or whatever it’s called) and re-formed in the last several hundred years, more than once. Remember the ice from the shelf forms on land and flows out to sea. Either way, considering the natural variation of Antarctic sea ice, can we really say the current Antarctic ice trend or the change of an ice shelf in such a tiny area has a powerful meaning for the future of Earth?
If you missed the Arctic version of the video the link is here: Arctic Ice Video
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Jeff: A Herculean task. One can see readily from this what extreme cherry-picking the selected news items represent. Norway’s environment minister also cinically chose Janurary to take a gaggle of european environment ministers for an Antarctica visit (no link chased down) to see melting ice. I wish someone would pay for another trip in July-August.
After so much work, I hate to suggest this: it would enhance the work to have an average circle around Antarctica to help judge the variations.
Egad—it’s alive!
Seriously, a splendid graphic demonstration of the cyclical nature of natural processes, and of the silliness of taking a very limited timeframe and claiming it constitutes a crisis.
Thanks for putting the time and effort into it. It should be part of a film shown to school students, to counter the apocalyptic nonsense promulgated by Algore.
/Mr Lynn
Great animation. Once again, a service to the community.
I didn’t realize there was so much melting and reforming in Antartica. Quite interesting, actually.
It seems to me (with one view only), that the Wilkins ice shelf was quite large in 2008, leaving more of it exposed to wind and currents. This may explain why part of it broke off.
Overall, based on the video only, I can’t see that much has changed in Antarctica over time. I didn’t see anything that would cause me to be alarmed one way or the other.
Beautiful stuff! Superb work Jeff.
Why not send the video to all the news agencies.
I do worry about the polar bears every summer though. Imagine how many must be stranded on the last remnants of ice all round Antarctica every year hundreds of miles from land…. Every year since 1979 anyway.
(The first warmist to point out that there are no polar bears in the Antarctic gets a prize.)
(The first warmist to point out that there are no polar bears in the Antarctic gets a prize.)
It must have been a AGW-caused die-off. I mean, what else could it be?
From Jeff’s introduction above: “Below is a plot of the sea ice area anomaly in the antarctic calculated from the NSIDC NasaTeam algorithm data.”
I just love the mathematical term ‘algorithm’. Do climate scientists use ‘Al Gore-ithms?”
I’m a Johnny come lately on this site so apologies if this is an old one.
Thank you for putting this together.
When the winds of rationality reassert themselves and blow the AGW hype away, people will be puzzled as to how the fear mongers ever captured the public square in the first place.
>(The first warmist to point out that there are no polar bears in the Antarctic gets a prize.)
Judging from that Wilkins Ice Shelf Collapse video, there are plenty of Lemmings hanging out down there now, although I think they’ll be temporarily migrating to Copenhagen later this year.
The warmistas need to put themselves on the endangered species list.
Oops, hit submit too quickly – the last remark about warmistas should have included “if current trends continue”. both with cooling climate and with cooling popular opinion.
Wow , didn’t realize there was so much melting and freezing either . I didn’t see anything alarming – it really looks as though the sea ice extent has remained fairly consistent through each cycle . Please forgive my ignorance , but is it possible that the collapse was , in part , brought about bt a lack of pressure from the mainland ? that is would a slowing of glacial movement relieve the forces that held the bridge in place cause its collapse ?
Sorry , I should have said shelf , although it bridged the mainland to an island . At least , that’s my understanding .
Jeff, wonderful job.
But again this begs the questions:
Why did YOU have to do this?
Why isn’t this standard information?
Why doesn’t the nsidc append a new image every satellite pass when it would take them only seconds to do?
I remember when I was but a lad hearing about lemmings jumping en-masse off of cliffs at the drop of a hat. And from a great height to boot.
Apparently a documentary crew went to film this common event and found that the lemmings did not – in fact – run helter skelter off the cliffs. So…. they chased them off.
Now, I’m not suggesting that AGW documentary makers would blow up an ice bridge…
Oh good grief, there are no polar bears in the Antarctic because that’s the bottom of the world and they would fall off.
Thanks, very good.
Great video, thank you.
Re the “rotation” do you believe this is an actual rotation [as opposed to perhaps only a stroboscopic visual effect]?
Well, now I am worried about the Emperor Penguins. They have to walk to the sea edge from their breeding grounds. If there is too much ice the walk would be too long…..could be tough on them. Can’t we increase the melt rate so the penguins will have an easier time breeding?
This Wilkins Ice Shelf Break Off sounds like a baby (40 miles long) compared to the burg spotted by the USS Glacier 150 miles west of Scott Island on Nov 12, 1956. The burg was 208 miles long and 60 miles wide (12,000 sq miles).
I’m sure there were larger burgs that have not been recorded in the last 100 years.
TT (11:17:21) :
“This Wilkins Ice Shelf Break Off sounds like a baby (40 miles long) compared to the burg spotted by the USS Glacier 150 miles west of Scott Island on Nov 12, 1956. The burg was 208 miles long and 60 miles wide (12,000 sq miles).”
Wiki claims of Scott Island:
“There is an automatic weather station on the island, currently at an elevation of 30 meters. Weather records date back to 1988, with interruptions. [1] The records show an average temperature of a few degrees °C below zero in summer, and down to -40 °C in winter.”
Yet their reference to this appears dead
http://uwamrc.ssec.wisc.edu/aws/scottismain.html
Main page (http://uwamrc.ssec.wisc.edu/) has a simple message:
“This is artic! Its currently down for maintance”
An inconvenient truth?
Are you going to believe you lying eyes?
Very powerful when you can see it for yourself. The Wilkins Ice Shelf is hammered by strong ocean dynamics and the clockwise flow into the peninsula.
Thanks and get the word out. They have meaning.
Thanks everyone, and to Anthony as well.
It takes a huge amount of time to make these videos but like many here, I had no idea that sea ice was this dynamic. With the sea ice melting and regrowing and wind hammering away at the ice shelf it’s amazing it lasts at all – just an engineers view.
this is a pretty thorough link with more on Antartica, including info on the Adelie Penguins which many of have heard about. Nat’l Geo in 2007 warns us “Adelie Penguins are in the midst of a major upheaval as clmate change causes their icy habitat to warm up…” NOT!
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Antarctica.htm
My only question for Jeff is:
How could you pull this off without applying for a grant first? Surely something of this magnitude can’t be done by citizen scientists with no funding in a few days in spare time. If it was that easy, NSIDC would already have done it.
Oh, wait…
Great work again Jeff! Once again you have demonstrated how the relatively simple expedient of animating the data greatly enhances one’s ability to comprehend what is actually occurring in the polar regions of the planet. I have to wonder, given the vast allotments of grant money flowing through the climate sciences at present, why it has fallen on you to provide this rather basic service. That question of course relies on the obviously deluded assumption that the goal of all that spending is to increase public understanding of what is truly happening to the climate. As I have pointed out a number of times, here and elsewhere, between the Arctic and Antarctic the planet annually loses and recreates an area of sea ice that is about 3 times the size of the lower 48 and though the arctic has definitely increased its’ annual loss over the era of satellite measurement, the increment of the planetary total is small and balanced by the observed increase in Antarctic ice area. I also think it is worth mentioning that the sat record commences in 1979, which you long term subscribers to Time and Newsweek may recall was quite close to the time when the climate scare du jour was the impending ice age. I would also like to repeat my recommendation that graphic presentations that show Antarctica include a silhouette outline of the continental US so the layman may internalize the scale of the place, which at max sea ice extent is pushing four times the area of the country.
F Ross,
It is an actual rotation, I have the advantage of a less compressed video to watch which reveals more of the detail. The ice behaves visually like a slightly non-Newtonian fluid under the stresses from circumpolar water flow on this time scale.