First let’s get a look at the current NSIDC graph:
and now the JAXA graph:
There’s an interesting news article from Canada that talks about what is being seen in the northwest passage areas.
Ice pockets choking Northern Passage: officials
By Randy Boswell, Canwest News ServiceAugust 1, 2009
excerpts:
Despite predictions from a top U.S. polar institute that the Arctic Ocean’s overall ice cover is headed for another “extreme” meltdown by mid-September, the Environment Canada agency monitoring our northern waters says an unusual combination of factors is making navigation more difficult in the Northwest Passage this year after two straight summers of virtually clear sailing.
…
“In the southern route,” Canadian Ice Service officials told Canwest News Service, the agency “has observed more ice coverage than normal. This is partly due to the fact that the ice in the Amundsen Gulf consolidated this past winter, which is something it didn’t do in 2007 and 2008.”
The result, the agency said, is that ice conditions “are delaying any potential navigability of the Northwest Passage this year. This is opposite to what Environment Canada observed in the last week of July in 2007 and 2008.”
…
Scientists believe the ongoing retreat is being driven by several factors, including rising global temperatures associated with human-induced climate change, and the associated breakup and loss of thicker, multi-year year ice that is being replaced only seasonally by a thin layer of winter ice that disappears quickly each summer.
============
Read the complete news article here
What they still don’t seem to be mentioning is wind patterns.
For example, watch this superb animation done by Jeff Id of The Air Vent:
Here is another video I posted on You Tube last month which shows the flow of sea ice down the east coast of Greenland. Clearly there is more at work here than simple melting, there is a whole flow dynamic going on.
Then read what NASA research has determined. It could explain a lot of what is observed from the news article published by Canwest.
NASA Sees Arctic Ocean Circulation Do an About-Face
PASADENA, Calif. – A team of NASA and university scientists has detected an ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decade-long time scales. The results suggest not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming.
Click for Larger image
It certainly would be nice to see this reported when stories on summer ice melt occur.
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Pamela Gray (15:32:36) : Thank you for your discription of wind caused artic ice buildup, an excellent word picture.
Phil… that makes absolutely no sense. Yearly comparisons are still relative to each other no matter what you call the “anomaly”. It is wrong to continue the fiction that this “average” line is anything other than a specifically cherry-picked value.
Look at the first chart. 2007 is way down low, and 2009 has this vague appearance of diving down there to join it. Meanwhile, way up high is the fictional “average” specifically chosen to represent a higher value. The whole point of that exercise is to frighten people into believing that “normal” or “average” or “where it should be” is that higher value.
My point is that it is dishonest to even use the term “anomaly” which implies “out of the ordinary” or “abnormal”, especially when your data is being used to frighten people into “action”. Heck, 1979-2000 is a completely meaningless 22 year period, barely even paying lip service to the alleged “30 years” that climate alarmists like to use.
With apologies, I will use non-science lingo here: How are artic winds divorced from total climate change? It appears that by trumpeting a hiccough in scientific understanding of artic ice processes we may undermine the global leftist industrial suppression strategy; however, the conclusions reached in the study aren’t earth- (or in this case, ice- ) shattering.
One thing that does make me happy is the increased detail of research in Earth processes. Hooray!
Hi all-
Once again, it is very strange to me how people here on WUWT can look at that graph, which clearly shows that 2009 is below the average of previous decades in ice extent, and see good news. There are also thousands of similar measurements, of animal migration patterns, sea level rise, and global temperature measurements that clearly show that global warming is happening.
Regarding ice volume and some sort of conspiracy to “move the goalposts”, doesn’t this argument ignore the simple fact that if ice volume is indeed below average, and may be at a minimum, this is yet another measurement supporting the “warmist” viewpoint?
It’s all very strange.
This is not an abstract debate, with no consequences for being wrong.
Leland Palmer (08:06:15)
Wrong as usual, Leland. Actually, I’m surprised you’re back after the hard spanking you got last time from several posters when you were here making similar, easily disprovable statements: click, click, and click.
On this occasion I think Leland is right in that current Arctic ice is about 1. 3m Km2 less than the 1970.. 2000 average
Of course he is right. But where did the ice go? It didn’t come out of the strait. It wasn’t warm enough to melt where it was that quickly. But it sure was windy. Just like in 2007 and less so in 2008. But this time it blew in the OPPOSITE direction. Back in to the Arctic. So if ice can be blown out of the Arctic, ice can be blown and compacted in to the Arctic. Did it melt as much as in 07 and 08? I don’t think so. In fact, I think this Summer was one of those Summers that ended up making the ice thicker by compacting it and piling it up, instead of relentlessly spreading it out the strait.
Colin Aldridge,
Check out click 3 again. [Going back to 1970 is irrelevant, since satellites weren’t in operation until ’79.]
Smokey – right I meant 1979 and you are right that total sea ice extent has not declined.. I was assuming that leland meant NH ice which is below its 1979..2000 average while SH ice is above.. all of which, IMO is due to wind/oceanic currents and nothing to do with polar air temperatures
Re: Leland Palmer (08:06:15)
To say there is evidence we have global warming contributes little to the debate here. The point is that the warming, what little there may be of it, is not proven to be caused primarily (if at all) by man.
I have no problem with warmth. Warmth is GOOD. Come on global warming! Let’s go El Nino!!
Here’s a group trying to SAIL the across the Arctic.
Three Norwegians, Trond Aasvoll, Hans Fredrik Haukland and Finn Andreassen are attempting to circumnavigate the North Pole aboard RX II, a 36 foot Jerry Cartwright designed yacht built in 1977. Global warming has melted much sea ice and will help them sail the North East and the North West passage in one season.
http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/auto/newsdesk/20090710113538ymnews.html
Arthur
global warming scam is just a cover up
of peak oil
http://www.peakoil.com
The BBC have a different edge on the story saying.:- ‘
One of the largest glaciers in Antarctica is thinning four times faster than it was 10 years ago, according to research seen by the BBC.’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8200680.stm
The past is prologue. It is unclear to me whether the arctic ice melt from 1979 to 2006 was due to unusually high average solar activity over that period or increasing industrial pollution.
As solar activity has gone into an unusually long slumber, beginning in 2008, and, so far, has not shown any sign of recovery, this change should be the reference point to settle the issue. If we see a continued accelerating ice-melt in the face of the recent reduction of solar activity, then I think we can make a good case for man-made pollution being the cause. On the other hand, if we see a solid ice re-growth trend developing in the years to come, then I believe we must assume that solar activity has been driving our climate.
” If we see a continued accelerating ice-melt in the face of the recent reduction of solar activity, then I think we can make a good case for man-made pollution being the cause. On the other hand, if we see a solid ice re-growth trend developing in the years to come, then I believe we must assume that solar activity has been driving our climate.”
So if we throw the witch in the lake and she floats then she’s a witch??
You watch this Northern Hemisphere winter, it’ll leave no doubt 😉
I have seen convincing, but not fully verified arguments that the whole issue of man-made climate change might be a fear-funded research stampede perhaps energized by over-inflated self-guilt for planet modification.
As we appear to have experienced a recent signal reduction in solar activity — the sun often going day-after-day without a single sunspot for the last 30 months, we have a unique opportunity to find out if human pollution really is the driver of our changing climate. As yet, for me, the jury is still out. The Arctic ice extent variations since 2008 still seem to be within the range of weather related effects. (At best it might be said to be ‘leaning solar.’)
We like to think of the sun as constant and unvarying. The record of solar flares and sunspot activity shows something quite different.
The reason that Polar Bear populations are increasing has nothing to do with sea ice and everything to do with them now being a protected species. Hunters are no longer allowed to blast away and get cool rugs. Canada has had The Polar Bear Protection Act since 2002 which has helped tremendously in increasing the polar bear population.
The summary of the act reads: “Hunting, killing, or capturing polar bears is unlawful and punishable by law except in special circumstances when a license is issued to capture them. A special circumstance might be a “legitimate scientific, educational or conservation purpose, or another purpose prescribed by regulation.”