NSIDC on arctic ice: It is now unlikely that 2009 will see a record low extent

Odd how NSDIC isn’t trumpeting the consistently above average sea ice extent in Antarctica.

It seems they have learned that their alarmism had gone too far last year (prediction of an ice-free North Pole by Mr. Serezze).

Another weather is not climate item from us up here in the balmy North, at least the bears are getting a break!!! Summer 2009 is “a one-off” but clearly not like 1998???http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090818/national/polar_bear_sea_ice

Do I hear Steven Goddard saying “May Day, May Day!” ?
p.s., anybody here seen our old friend Steven? Can you tell me where he’s gone?
REPLY: I took him to task over the post on the possibility of CO2 freezing solid at the South Pole. He left in a huff rather than own up to the mistake. So, he doesn’t guest post here anymore. – Anthony

I appreciate the kilometer to miles conversions Anthony. Thank You!
p.s. this North Pole ice news can’t overshadow the Brett Favre signing with the Vikings news. 😉

REPLY: Thank NSIDC, it is their release that I’ve reposted. Who’s Brett Favre?- Anthony

When discussing sea ice predictions, it is useful to visit the recent past to see how the “experts” have done…
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13779
North Pole could be ice free in 2008
16:03 25 April 2008 by Catherine Brahic
You know when climate change is biting hard when instead of a vast expanse of snow the North Pole is a vast expanse of water. This year, for the first time, Arctic scientists are preparing for that possibility.
“The set-up for this summer is disturbing,” says Mark Serreze, of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). A number of factors have this year led to most of the Arctic ice being thin and vulnerable as it enters its summer melting season.
—
http://in.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idINN3052467920080501
Arctic sea ice forecast: another record low in 2008
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Arctic sea ice, sometimes billed as Earth’s air conditioner for its moderating effects on world climate, will probably shrink to a record low level this year, scientists predicted on Wednesday.
—
And who can forget this … a mere 9 days ago!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/09/tech/main5228298.shtml
Vast Expanses of Arctic Ice Melt in Summer
Scientists Watch for Possible Record Low of Polar Ice Cap
Aug. 9, 2009
(AP) The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square miles of ice on Sunday in a relentless summer of melt, with scientists watching through satellite eyes for a possible record low polar ice cap.
…
As of Thursday, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported, the polar ice cap extended over 2.61 million square miles after having shrunk an average 41,000 square miles a day in July – equivalent to one Indiana or three Belgiums daily.
The rate of melt was similar to that of July 2007, the year when the ice cap dwindled to a record low minimum extent of 1.7 million square miles in September.
…
In July, “we saw acceleration in loss of ice,” the U.S. center’s Walt Meier told The Associated Press. In recent days the pace has slowed, making a record-breaking final minimum “less likely but still possible,” he said.

There is nothing wrong with our ice caps and there is nothing wrong with our climate.
There is only this spiral of Government induced AGW insanity which has the potential to destroy our economy to the level of a third world banana republic.
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/08/cap-and-trade-insanity.html

Just in case some of you are suspecting I may have exaggerated my prescience in my previous post, here is my comment from 21 April in it’s entirety
Dave Wendt (13:13:20) :
Anthony;
Given the spate of grim news on the political front of the AGW debate, I think it might be time for a bit of a diversion to introduce a little lightheartedness to the mood of your readers. I suggest a pool for the best prediction of the summer low of the AMSR-E sea ice extent. I’ve got dibs on 5.857142 mil. km2, a number I arrived at by strict adherence to all the rules of technique and methodology of the warmists playbook for climate estimation, i.e. I smoothly extracted a number from my anal orifice and then applied unjustified precision to make it look more “scientific”.
It would probably enhance the entertainment value if everyone kicked in a couple of bucks with their entries, but given the increasing number of times your name has appeared in pieces about opposition to the administration’s policies, there’s probably already an army of political operatives and liberal bureaucrats out there trying to do a Joe the Plumber rectal polyp count on you and you wouldn’t want to hand them the opportunity to nail you for running an illegal lottery.

So, when the extent is low it is because of global warming and not because of wind patterns, but when it doesn’t go low it is because of wind patterns and not because global warming isn’t the cause anyway?

Brett is a football quarterback and occasional actor. He has outlived his football knees and needs to hang it up. He appeared in “Something About Mary” as himself and in “Ace Ventura, Pet Detective” as himself.

I’m very pleased about this. I’ve been predicting since last fall we’d be looking at something very close to the 2005 line this year, and it is right on it at the moment. So I’m wearing the tight grin right now.
Tho I’m still conscious that “extent” essentially sucks as a metric, whoevers ox it is goring at the moment, and the nature of melting means extent can disappear in a hurry if volume (ie. extent times thickness) is low. So I’m not ready to rule out the possibility of a September crash in extent.
But I don’t really believe it. 🙂 Still a cool summer here in Minnesota. Feels more like Fall everyday.
And right now, if we don’t get that September crash, you’d have to say that the evidence suggests that so far as extent goes, 2nd year ice is just as good as multi-year ice generally.

By the way, I have said this before, but the ice up there is thicker than bees on honey! How do I know? Wind patterns shoved it together. In fact, if we were to measure the ice displacement before and after the melt season, I would bet the ranch that there was precious LITTLE melt this summer. The graph assumes the ice melted. I am thinkin a lot of it didn’t.

Pamela Gray (17:40:37) :

By the way, I have said this before, but the ice up there is thicker than bees on honey! How do I know? Wind patterns shoved it together. In fact, if we were to measure the ice displacement before and after the melt season, I would bet the ranch that there was precious LITTLE melt this summer. The graph assumes the ice melted. I am thinkin a lot of it didn’t.

Inclined to agree. The decline in extent was compacting due to winds. (rarely hear about winds with regard to melt though I have to admit it was mentioned as the reason for the record low.)
This year will start freeze with a lot of multi-year ice I think.
DaveE.

And I followed your lead Pamela, and have been fixated on the jet stream for months! I made a prediction of 5.8-6.0 a while back at CA and was ridiculed! I may still be wrong, but I have seen the jet stream light as far as northern polar ice is concerned. I’ll stake your reputation on it! 8-[)
BTW I used the same rigorous formula as Mr. Wendt in calculating the specific (?) number.

If this info from NSIDC is published by any of the “MSM,” it might be a first. Predictions of record low sea ice extent get coverage, along with the usual AGW bit. Let’s see how this reversal plays in the MSM. Will the importance of wind patterns that can push the ice out of the Arctic and down into warmer waters get mentioned?

It’s times like these I just have to ask the question:
Where’s Flanagan?
Regulars will understand.

Off topic
Anthony and your great monitoring team, you don’t have to post this.
I want to make you aware.
‘WASHINGTON (AFP) – US labor unions and environmental groups on Tuesday announced plans for a nationwide campaign to boost support for legislation to promote “clean energy” and battle climate change.
The ‘Made In America’ Jobs Tour will open Thursday in Ohio — a critical political battleground in US presidential elections — and visit 50 sites in 22 US states, including other major toss-ups, the coalition said in a statement.
Leaders of the United Steelworkers, Service Employees International Union, Utility Workers Union of America were to join heads of major US environmental groups on a conference call Wednesday to formally launch the campaign.’
AFP on Yahoo ^

The press sometimes gets it partially right. Also both Northwest passages are still closed at last report. Expect several private venture yachts (or their crews) will have to be rescued in September.
Canadian NewsQuick read >
Sorry, feed cannot be read.Latest news:
Cold summer means thick sea ice, healthier Hudson Bay polar bears
at 16:26 on August 18, 2009, EDT.
Chinta Puxley, THE CANADIAN PRESS
WINNIPEG – A cold summer in many areas of the country may have meant fewer barbecues and camping trips this year, but lower temperatures have been a boon for the beleaguered Hudson Bay polar bears.
Experts say the summer sea ice has lasted longer than it has in years, which has given the region’s more than 1,000 bears extra time to hunt, feed and raise healthy cubs.
One scout captured a picture of a mother with three strapping youngsters – a rare sight that has heartened those who are fighting what they say is the probable extinction of the iconic mammal.
Andrew Derocher, a biology professor at the University of Alberta, said it’s good news in an area where the polar bear population has declined by 25 per cent. He’s been tracking some bears using satellite collars and said the extra time the animals have had on the ice can make all the difference.
“They’ve had longer to hunt which is a real benefit to them,” said Derocher, former chair of a polar bear specialist group run by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
“It really makes a difference. Even just one or two weeks out on the sea ice can make a difference in how many seals they kill and how much fat they’re able to store on their bodies.”
Canada is home to about two-thirds of the world’s polar bears but scientists warn that populations are starting to dwindle because of thawing sea ice, over-hunting, industrial activity and increased toxins in the food chain.
While experts say this summer is an anomaly and doesn’t mean the mammals are no longer under threat, Derocher said it bodes well for the coming winter on Hudson Bay.
When the sea ice takes longer to break up in the summer, the water doesn’t warm up as much, he said. That usually means sea ice forms earlier in the fall, which gives polar bears more time to procreate and bulk up on fat for the following summer.
“A respite from the long-term conditions is certainly good news, but … this is still a major concern. We’re talking about global change here. This is just one summer.”
In other parts of the Arctic, temperatures continue to be warmer than usual, scientists point out.
Robert Buchanan, head of Polar Bear International, said northern sea ice generally continues to melt at an alarming rate.
“The overall prognosis for bears on a worldwide basis still remains dim at best,” Buchanan said in an interview from Alaska. “This is an aberration.”
Polar bears will continue to suffer from greenhouse gases that are warming the planet unless we plant more trees, make more use of recyclable materials and reduce energy consumption, he said.
“We’re killing polar bears from the comfort of our armchairs.”
Even the biggest polar bears these days aren’t as big as they used to be, said John Gunter, general manager of Frontiers North Adventures in Churchill, Man.
But after years of watching polar bears shrink and dwindle in population, it’s nice to observe them doing well this summer, he said.
“It’s a one-off, but it’s still really encouraging to see.”
Gunter also pointed out that there is still some ice on Hudson Bay. Usually, it’s long gone by now.

1. For an interesting overlay of satellite JAXA data and that produced by the State of Alaska click on the following (or copy and paste):
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=globalwarming&action=display&thread=346&page=91
Once at the site, scroll down to the entry by kiwistonewall, who explains that the algorithm for the satellite data processing seems not to have been recalibrated for younger ice. Alaska thinks there’s a lot more ice up there than meets the satellite’s eye. Kiwistonewall has done similar overlays of Canadian Ice Service’s observations this year in presenting his argument that the alarmists are not presenting the most complete data at this point.
2. People have probably seen various murmurings regarding underwater volcanoes’ possibly having played a role in the thinning of the ice over the past decade. Scientists discovered a whole slew of active volcanoes along the Gakkel Ridge running the length of the Arctic basin in 2001. While there is no conclusive evidence linking the volcanoes to the melt, enough people have asked NSIDC about it that they have put up a FAQ response:
Have undersea volcanoes caused the Arctic sea ice decline?
A recent study discovered active volcanoes on the floor of the Arctic Ocean, and some people have wondered if they are causing sea ice to melt.
While volcanic eruptions surely warmed the ocean in the immediate vicinity of the eruptions, the amount of heat they produced compared to the large volume of the Arctic Ocean is small. The Arctic Ocean covers 14 million square kilometers (5.4 million square miles), about 1 ½ times the size of the United States or 58 times the size of the United Kingdom. The Arctic Ocean is 4,000 to 5,500 meters (13,000 to 18,000 feet) deep. The heat from the volcanoes would have dispersed over an enormous volume and had little effect on ocean temperature, much as a bucket of boiling water emptied into a lake would have little effect on the lake’s temperature.
Second, the eruptions would have introduced heat on the ocean floor, thousands of feet below the sea ice that floats on the ocean surface. The Arctic Ocean is strongly stratified, which prevents layer mixing and makes it difficult for any deep water, even deep water warmed by heat from volcanoes, to reach the surface and melt the ice. This layering results from a strong density gradient: water layers near the surface are less dense, while bottom waters are the densest. But unlike most oceans, where warmer, lighter water rises to the top, Arctic Ocean waters are heavily stratified because of variations in salinity. River runoff and sea ice melt into surface waters dilutes the salinity of surface waters, making them less dense.
-ends-
Again, I think it is possible, even likely, that NSIDC is correct and that the volcanoes have not played a role. On the other hand, the information in their FAQ response is not accurate.
I wrote the following e-mail to Mark Serreze (with whom I’d already exchanged a few e-mails) :
Dear Mark,
Having again mulled the NSIDC statement regarding possible volcano-related melt of sea ice (which I paste below for your convenience), I have some thoughts.
In fact, very little of the Arctic basin is as deep as this piece of writing suggests. I’m sure you have your own maps, but here are links of a couple to look at for convenience:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/IBCAO_betamap.jpg
http://gdr.nrcan.gc.ca/seisref/arctic_e.php
So, while the relatively impressive depth of the Litke Deep (between the Lomonosov Ridge and the Gakkel Ridge) adds considerably to the average depth of the basin, the majority of the Arctic Ocean is actually fairly shallow. The only way to get a figure for the Arctic’s depth such as the one given by NSIDC is to ignore the continental shelves, but much of the basin is shelf! Including the shelves, the average depth of the Arctic Ocean is just 4,300 feet.
Also, the presumption that whatever volcanism takes place does so in the deepest portions of the basin runs counter to the fact that it is the Gakkel Ridge that has been shown to be volcanic. Whether it proves to be the only volcanic feature in the entire basin remains to be seen, but the ridge is nowhere near 13,000 feet deep (let alone 18,000).
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v421/n6920/abs/nature01351.html
I wonder if you would consider having the text regarding undersea volcanoes edited, given all of the above?
Thank you in advance for your consideration.
Sincerely yours,
Harold Ambler
I have yet to hear back from Serreze on this one.
I had told him in my original e-mail that a warm feature on Unisys’ sst anomaly map south of Wrangel Island in the Chukchi Sea — http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html — seemed like a possible candidate for volcanic SST warming.
As I say, there is nothing like proof one way or the other here. Neither Serreze nor Walt Meier evinced anything like intellectual curiosity about the possibility of volcanic warming. They would do well to make their dismissal look better by posting an accurate statement on their website regarding the depth of the Arctic Ocean.

I wonder what the monthly PDO graph would look like on a min/max Arctic sea ice extent graph from 1900 to present.

“Clean” energy, or green energy if you will, is so darned expensive, that the paychecks for the “Made In America’ Jobs” will be issued in India and China. Nice bit of irony there.
Robert Kral (18:55:53) :
What does the 1979-2008 average look like? Why is the 1979-2000 average considered to be some kind of magical reference point, and who considers it to be so?
I agree. These baselines (lots of them–not just polar ice extent) are very “warming centric”. What if the climate system is nontransitive and has a number of limit points, some above and some below current values, and spends all its time wandering from one to another? One chooses a low baseline, and lots of people get in a lather about a “secular” trend for no reason at all.
Gene Nemetz (16:57:10) :
… p.s. I appreciate this blog. I am so happy it exists. I think a lot of other people are too.
Hear, hear.
Finally, we are piling opprobrium on the MSM for not covering stories symmetrically (i.e. what we might consider fair), but the media always look for the “man bites dog” story. Ice growing at the poles is the exact opposite of “man bites dog”.

Summary:
1) It’s good but it’s not a trend. Only bad things can form a trend.
2) It only looks good because the underlying badness is masked – otherwise it would look bad.
3) It’s still worse than some other thing over there.
/sarcoff

How’s that Northwest passage working out for ya?
AUGUST 17, 2009
Last night, 16 Aug, we got hopelessly trapped by the ice. Despite a favorable ice report we encountered 8/10ths ice, with many old, i.e. large, bergs. We spent the night tied to one of them but had to leave this morning when another ‘berg collided with us and tipped Fiona over. We got away but the space around us is shrinking. I called the Canadian Coast Guard at noon and they are sending an icebreaker, due here tomorrow. We are NOT in immediate danger. Watch this space for developments.
http://www.yachtfiona.com/fnn.htm
and….
After reading ice charts and making our way fairly smoothly down Peel Sound for the past few weeks, three days ago Mother Nature decided to shake things up a bit. Not only did we have to push, plow, and break our way through ice, we also had fog and zero breeze (which didn’t help move the ice). Our radar was one big green blob, and we could only find leads heading the opposite direction we wanted to go!
http://northwestpassagefilm.com/arctic/

Experts feel free to correct me, but it has seemed to me for some time now that the ice issue is a bit of a red herring. Why?
Well, the warmist hypothesis holds that mankind’s CO2 emissions will cause an increase in global surface temperatures which will be amplified by water vapor feedback, which will in turn, melt polar ice.
However, it’s possible to measure surface (and ocean) temperatures directly.
If surface (and ocean) temperatures are not rising as predicted by the warmists, but polar ice is melting, the reasonable inference is that some other factor is causing the melt and the melting ice is not confirming evidence of the warmist hypothesis.
That’s how it seems to me, anyway.

Frank Mosher (18:30:00) said :
Vikes could use a QB.
I agree, they’ve been practically rudderless (or should I say leeboardless) for about 10 centuries now. Sure, Leif and the boys had some early successes around the North Atlantic Rim, but a little chilly climate, er, weather, and WHAM, back to Norge. Meanwhile, generations of Shetland Island spinsters have pined away their whole lives waiting for the ruddy horny-helmeted boys of legend to return.
Not sure Fav-re-uh is the right man for the job, though. I understand he winters in Miss-sippi (the native pronunciation) and of course the name sounds a little too Norman if you ask me.
Oh, and has anybody noticed that we’ve had 38 straight days of Spotlessness, with 10.7 cm flux hovering down below 70?
This stretch looks like it’s gonna break into the Top Ten List.
Any revisions from NASA lately?? Isn’t it about time for another “slumping” of the SC24 curve down-and-to-the-right?

Hmmm – more ice left than last year. And with 3 or 4 weeks to go it’s increasingly looking like there will be more ice than last year at minimum. And that’s got to wreck havoc on the “ice volume” fantasy when the amount of multi-year ice increases yet again next year. A couple more years of this and all that’ll be left will be extreme weather events with which to promote Mr. Gore’s fantasy.

So, does multi-year ice develop when winds push fresh one year old ice together in big piles? Or is multi-year ice just toughin it out from one Fram Strait breezy year to the next? Me thinks, being a redheaded spitfire, that I will bid my blown together ice against your toughin it out ice any day. It’s all in the jet stream baby.
By the way, where are the AGW’s on this thread? They seem to be absent and I wanted to debate!!!!

Frank K. (16:50:47) :
>When discussing sea ice predictions, it is useful to visit the >recent past to see how the “experts” have done……………
That’s indeed a hoard of LOL!!!!!

Dave Wendt said
“The polar webcam photos for the last few days would seem to indicate that the freeze up is commencing now which would put it well ahead of 07 and 08, and in line with what occurred in 04. In comment I posted here back on 21 April suggesting that Anthony start a contest for best prediction of the summer minimum of AMSR-E ice extent I offered my own completely non-scientific estimate of 5,857,142 km2, which now appears to be just a hair high, but it’s looking like the number I pulled from my a**, will be closer than anything all those guys with their fancy computer models could generate back in April”
But the refreeze is not starting now, it won’t for at least another 3 to 4 weeks. Your estimate is likely to be as much too high as the scientists were too low!
Pamela Gray said
“Good heavens. A decently educated Joe Schmo, or in this case, Sue Schmu, could have easily predicted a slow melt (and she did too) at the beginning of the season just by following the jet stream pattern. ”
But there hasn’t been a slow melt. There was a slow start to the melt season but since then there has been a very rapid melt that has only tailed off in the last 2-3 weeks.
So Dave’s prediction is likely to be wrong and yours already is. Mind you, so was mine! 😀
Regards
Andy

Thinking about this raises the point that the wind has more impact on global climate than CO2. Now, what makes the wind blow, and why?

DaveE (17:55:29) : This year will start freeze with a lot of multi-year ice I think.
Al Gore will be having a disappointing time with his 5 year to no ice at the North Pole prediction with multiyear ice getting thicker now.

For a reason that can’t be explained the sea ice graph omitted the 30 year (actually 28) average unlike this one.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
In other words sea ice extent is still much LOWER than the 30 year average. Given that we have had two years of negligible sun spot activity, preceded by La Nina, surely slower melting ‘is only to be expected’? But apparently sea ice is still melting faster than the the 30 year average that included 1998.

I wonder what the monthly PDO graph would look like on a min/max Arctic sea ice extent graph from 1900 to present.
I have made arctic ice chart related to AMO: http://blog.sme.sk/blog/560/195013/arcticamo.jpg

OT but IMHO important. Today’s Financial Times reports that Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the celebrated Lebanese-American, intellectual, mathematician and author of ‘The Black Swan’, is an AGW sceptic.
“When Mr Taleb suggested that climate change was not necessarily man-made, Mr Cameron’s reply was curt: “You know that’s not what I think.”
Full report at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/78ec4a8c-8c25-11de-b14f-00144feabdc0.html

Last year’s headline of “record low in second year arctic ice” will be reprised as:
RECORD LOW THIRD YEAR ARCTIC ICE!!!

Pamela Gray (21:11:21) :
By the way, where are the AGW’s on this thread?
They seem to be absent and I wanted to debate!!!!
Sorry Pamela – half have jetted off for the summer holidays… this means the other half are working overtime pumping out AGW hot air in the MSM!!!
Methane seeps from Arctic sea bed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8205864.stm
QUOTE
Scientists say they have evidence that the powerful greenhouse gas methane is escaping from the Arctic sea bed. Researchers say this could be evidence of a predicted positive feedback effect of climate change. As temperatures rise, the sea bed grows warmer and frozen water crystals in the sediment break down, allowing methane trapped inside them to escape.
UNQUOTE
There must be a big smelly joke in this story but I don’t want to lower the tone of the conversation…. 🙂

NSIDC show “1979-2000 Average +- 2 Standard Deviations”, which gives the impression that this year’s ice is abnormally low (in the bottom 1%).
But they assume that: 1) arctic sea ice extent is normally distributed; and 2) 1979-2000 is a representative sample for estimating both the average (by which I assume they intend to say the mean) and the standard deviation. The fact that the last 3 years are all below the 2sd margin suggests that one or both of the assumptions is wrong!
If we did assume a normal distribution, where would the 95% confidence limit be?

So we’re actually waiting now to see whether 09 will be the second lowest or third lowest extent of the satellite area? I really don’t see how that would be a proof of ice “recovering”… Because we’re actually already lower than the average minimum sea ice extent!
A linear (decreasing) trend on the last 10 years would give a minimum of 5.6 million km2.
http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2009_outlook/july_report/downloads/graphs/JulyReport_JuneData_Chart_small.jpg
Note that this is still largely below the predictions of the most pessimistic models
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/ctp/features/2007/10_23/iceloss_trend.gif
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2007/images/arctic_sea_ice_extent5_sm.jpg
Models predicted this year would end up somewhere between 4 and 5 million km2 (depending on the model). The sea ice concentration has been free-falling the last days, so we’ll see…
PS: Already 4 boats went through the Northwest passage in the last days. Yesterday, it was Fleur Australe and Bagan – without any icebreaker of course.

AndyW35 (22:36:45)
But the refreeze is not starting now, it won’t for at least another 3 to 4 weeks. Your estimate is likely to be as much too high as the scientists were too low!
The start of freeze up is not he same as the ice extent minimum. I still maintain that the webcam photos match what NOAA has called the start of freeze up in the previous years of webcam deployment with surface melt water absent and snow cover complete. That being said, there will probably still be a fairly significant loss of ice before minimum because of the large area of ice that has moved out past the tip of Greenland and will most likely be flushed before then. If I had to guess at this point, I’d expect the minimum to be in the 5.3- 5.5 mil km2 range, but if the freeze starts with a vengeance it might be able to stay ahead of the out flow and bring the min closer to my April estimate.
Phil. (00:00:54)
Well you’d lose that bet, your wind patterns are pushing the ice away from the Arctic Basin, that Russian station set up at 82.53N,174.94E last September has drifted over 2800km towards the Fram at about 8km/day passing fairly close to the Pole (88.5N). Similarly for the N Pole weather station installed at the Pole in earlier April, it’s even nearer the Fram at 84.1N, 2.1W. Like last year there will be less multiyear ice in the spring of 2010.
It seems to me that the information you provided actually supports Pamela’s contention of not much melting occurring. Given that the eastward drift of the buoys is fairly close match for the retreat of the ice mass on its’ western side, it would seem reasonable to contend that the majority of the ice loss was the result of the ice moving out, and not from any increase of in situ melting. Still there is a definite possibility of less thick ice surviving the minimum, but as I pointed out in a previous comment, since the satellites seem to rank age based on thickness alone, they don’t seem to be able to distinguish piled up first year ice from ice that has persisted for longer.

Why is the “average” from 1979 to 2000 instead of 1979 to 2008 ?

globaly we have a sea ice coverage which is only 2-3% less than the average 79-2000. this is, including the standart variation:
no change to the long average!
and for the alarmists this is dramatically and faster warming and melting as ever thougt…

Richard111
“If we had the technology we could put up a barrier to prevent the wind blowing the ice away to warmer waters. We really would be able to control the global climate then.”
It’s like they say in the cosmetics adverts – not so much controlling the climate but controlling the appearance of the climate

As a bit of advice never attack/put down the person, just attack the Science (only if you think its wrong). After all Hansen, Schmidt ect are just doing their jobs to the best of their ability.

I believe the ‘greenhouse’ effect primarily reduces the amount of ice that is frozen again in the winter dark season. I would think that melting would be driven by solar intensity, lack of arctic cloud cover, average ice thickness, and average wind velocity.
At this time, I see no clear signal either way, as the NSIDC July arctic ice extent plots show us to be dead in the center of the average fluxuation band of the long term average trend from 1979. The nearly complete recovery from the record ice melt of 2007 also indicates a near record arctic ice freeze in the winter of 2007-2008.
If solar activity remains minimal, I believe the next two or three years should tell the tale, one way or the other.

The NSIDC uses the 1979 – 2000 average, in part, because if you look at a long time series of the ice extent, this period was about average. It was higher in the early 1970s and lower in the 2000s with 79-2000 being about average over the years. (Besides that explanation, they do not have enough resources/prefer to use alarmist numbers/are too lazy to update their data and use the full record.)
If you use the full record from 1979 – 2008, the Standard Deviation of the ice extent is about 563,000 km^2 right now. The standard deviation shading should be bigger right now since there is greater dispersion of the extent numbers by year at the melt minimum than at other times of the year.
So, 2009 at -640K is just outside 1 Standard Deviation of the full record at this time of year (563K).

Leland Palmer (22:34:51),
Leland likes to scare himself. He probably likes ghost stories, too.
Smokey (05:57:56) : -Probably likes to read NOAA’s Hurricane predictions, too,
to him, like reading Steven King….

Innocentious 8/18 (23:00:30) :
If it “Bad” it is global warming. If it isn’t then it is just the wind. Why does the news media continue to publish activist scientists instead of real information.. Oh that is right, news organizations ARE biased… I have no idea where we as people came to the conclusion that they only report the truth. Any time you make a decision to report one side and not the other all semblance of truth just goes out the window… Sorry to rant I just get angry when I see things like this and remember the dire predictions if we don’t do something now.
“Why does the news media”????? Innocentious and others, I wish you would pay attention to me! You keep saying MSM as if the media is for the mainstream like it once was — as if it had investigative journalists like it once had. The MSM is the GCM (Global corporate media) today. Guess who paid bajillions of dollars for Obama’s election; guess who prevented any — yes any — veting of the faceless individual who became our president; guess who will make even more bajillions for cap-and-trade; guess who is paying gajillions for “health reform”; guess who owns the media; guess who will not pay for science, skepticism, truth.
Remember the old saying — capitalists do not like capitalism. Yes, they are making use of marxists and their cronies to achieve their purposes and to mislead conservatives (who are the majority of Americans using the most general definition of the word). Paulson and Bush (and Greenson) set up the financial debacle by lessening regulations for their cronies, who are similar to the marxist cronies (e.g., Obama’s czars and appointees) who have been infesting our academic institutions — all of whom are/will be raking in most of our tax dollars. (It is not just the Dems relaxing mortgage financing regulations.) Global corporations will make more profits if middle (most) Americans (and Europeans and Latin Americans) do not profit.
Why do I keep writing this stuff on WUWT? In the hopes that scientists/engineers/technology types (how I admire you) will also look behind the pseudo-science operating as propaganda and work for the truth of who is paying for it. WUWT is doing a great job in all respects.
I disagree with VG. When Hansen and Schmidt are propagating non-science, silly science, stupid activism, they no longer deserve their (public trust) jobs. Both the non-science and the job are fair game. When you put ’em both together — science and public-trust job — there is no person of integrity there.

Hi Smokey and all-
Clearly, the Arctic icecap is melting, relative to the recent average, at least.
On this blog, the myth appears to have developed that the Antarctic is not melting.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8200680.stm

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.
A study of satellite measurements of Pine Island glacier in west Antarctica reveals the surface of the ice is now dropping at a rate of up to 16m a year.
Since 1994, the glacier has lowered by as much as 90m, which has serious implications for sea-level rise.
The work by British scientists appears in Geophysical Research Letters.
The team was led by Professor Duncan Wingham of University College London (UCL).
We’ve known that it’s been out of balance for some time, but nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier
Andrew Shepherd, Leeds University
Calculations based on the rate of melting 15 years ago had suggested the glacier would last for 600 years. But the new data points to a lifespan for the vast ice stream of only another 100 years.
The rate of loss is fastest in the centre of the glacier and the concern is that if the process continues, the glacier may break up and start to affect the ice sheet further inland.
One of the authors, Professor Andrew Shepherd of Leeds University, said that the melting from the centre of the glacier would add about 3cm to global sea level.
“But the ice trapped behind it is about 20-30cm of sea level rise and as soon as we destabilise or remove the middle of the glacier we don’t know really know what’s going to happen to the ice behind it,” he told BBC News.
“This is unprecedented in this area of Antarctica. We’ve known that it’s been out of balance for some time, but nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier.”

This is all very serious stuff.
My understanding of what is going on in Antarctica is that it is kind of a mixed bag, these days, but that glacial breakup and ice sheet movement in parts of Antarctica appears to be accelerating.
We’ve heard the word “unprecedented” so many times, from so many scientists, we are getting numb to it.
But for changes that generally happen over many thousands of years, it is a very nasty word, IMO.
Reply: So based on one glacier, you surmise the entire Antarctic is melting.? Let’s hear it for the record. Yes/No.

On the longer run, every person, institution, newspaper or Government body predicting future events that don’t materialize risk a total loss of credibility.
This is process is currently effecting all those involved in the current climate scam.

“The computer models predicted this right?
NOOOooooo?”
Don’t worry they’ll predict 2009 next year…..

“So we’re actually waiting now to see whether 09 will be the second lowest or third lowest extent of the satellite area? I really don’t see how that would be a proof of ice “recovering”…”
What do you expect Flanagan, “The Day After Tomorrow”? This isn’t a Hollywood fantasy.

Flanagan:
“The sea ice concentration has been free-falling the last days, so we’ll see…”
Free-falling? Looking at the AMSR-E graph, it looks to be falling about the same rate as 2006, and 2005, not “free-falling” like 2007 or 2008. Do you just like using alamist language?

The ice increases again!
The consensus of scientist’s are wrong again. And again. And again. And again.(broken record syndrome)

Flanagan (08:52:48) :
For those who plot sea ice extent when I’m talking about sea ice concentration, please find some dictionnary and then come back.
Hmm …

Flanagan (08:52:48) :
For those trying to show how rapidly the Antarctic is growing, please take alook at the trends you show – where the error is equal to the trend itself. How statistically relevant is that? Mmmm, that must be skeptics’ science!
For those who plot sea ice extent when I’m talking about sea ice concentration, please find some dictionnary and then come back.
For the one implying that academics take 6-8 weeks holidays in the summer, this answer should be self-sufficient.
PS: today, the Arctic lost 75937 km2. That’s more than last year, or 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002 and probably even before that but I don’t have the data here.
Flanagan,
If I were you I would be worried if the Arctic ice did not melt during the melt season.
Think about that.

Methane seeps from Arctic sea bed
We took a punt out on the Cherwell today. A beautiful warm English summer day – like they used to be. As I withdrew the punt pole we noticed bubbles rising to the surface. To our amazement these bubbles could be ignited with a match. Methane seeps from river in Oxford!

“And Phil, notice that global sea ice is increasing. Global is what matters.”
I’ve asked before but never got a satisfying answer: If all the Arctic sea ice would disappear in summer, but at the same time there would be an increase of this amount in Antarctic sea ice, ie global sea ice would remain the same, would this be alright? Would it not entail some major meteorological changes? Do the poles know that only global matters?
IMO this is like saying that it’s not a problem that millions of people worldwide are starving because there are also millions of obese Americans. Actually, I wouldn’t put it past certain free market think tanks to come up with such an argument. OMG, what have I done?

Many strange reactions to my post…
Mr green genes answers “mmmm”. And what do you mean by that?
Ron De Haan is talking about Arctic sea ice not melting during the melting season, while it actually had the second fastest melting rate in July, just after 2007 (see the NSIDC website). I mean: what do you need?
Juraj: here is a link to the Jaxa website: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
JAXA is publishing a preliminary value and then a final value each day. Today’s extent is thus 6037188 , yesterday it was 6113125. Now take any calculator and type “6113125” and then “-” and then “6037188”. Still with me? Ok so now what’s the result?

Why is the 2 std deviation band shown on these graphs rather than the usual 3 standard deviations ? Variations outside 3 std devs are seen as “abnormal”.
It would be interesting to see the 3 std dev band calculated using ALL available data, as is the usual practice.

Waw, so he actually did a complete post on A TYPO?
Now this is becoming a very constructive exchange of points of view.
BTW, I love your “none of the alarmist predictions have come true”
Do you mean something like: arctic sea ice should be decreasing on the long term, or the global glacier mass should be decreasing or the pH of oceans should become lower or the global earth temperature should be increasing on the long term or ice shelves should disappear on the Antarctic Peninsula or monsoons should intensify in China and India or the stratosphere should be cooling during the warming of the troposphere?

Or to put it another way, to support a charge of cherry-picking in baselining, there needs to be a much fuller bushel of cherries to choose from in the first place that were carefully overlooked and ignored.

Flanagan, please tell me what part of any sea ice graph tells you ice melted instead of being shoved back. I always pair sea ice graphs with jet stream wind strength and direction to inform me whether or not the graph is telling me the ice went outside the Arctic basin and melted, or got shoved back with only minimal melt. I do that because the graph alone does not tell me anything about where the ice went or how it melted. Graphs can’t do that. Unless you have found a graph that talks to you.

Flanagan with his ‘ice concentration’ and phil. and others with their ‘ice volume’ last year are sophists atttempting to make lemon ices out of lemons. They are attempting to explain away an apparently emerging increasing trend in Arctic sea ice extent.
The best evidence is that the global temperature peaked around 2004-2005, despite the anomalous high in 1998, and has been cooling ever since. Since the earth is a heat engine that pumps heat from the equator to the poles over time, my interpretation is that the 2007 historical minimum in sea ice extent represents a three year lag from the peak heat in 2004. Insofar as Arctic sea ice extent is a proxy for global temperature, and it is not a perfect one, it was predictable that sea ice extent would grow from its nadir in 2007. And that is what I predicted nearly a year and a half ago, remember phil.?
We are cooling, folks; for how long even kim doesn’t know. My best guess is for another two to three decades because of the cooling phases of the oceanic oscillations. If the present unusual behaviour of the sun is presaging a new Grand or Lesser Minimum, and if the sun directs the climate, then we may well cool for a century or even longer.
We far more likely face a human holocaust from crop failures from global cooling than any adverse consequences from global warming. What insurance company, flanagan, is going to insure against that? Please, approach this topic with an open mind; it is desperately important.
======================================

Dave Wendt (02:45:28) said
“The start of freeze up is not he same as the ice extent minimum. I still maintain that the webcam photos match what NOAA has called the start of freeze up in the previous years of webcam deployment with surface melt water absent and snow cover complete”
What, you are saying that local conditions on just one camera is what governs when the end of the melt season occurs? That’s crazy. I think you’ll find people take the whole Arctic into the equation and it is when the net change in extent or area increases in value.
If you take the case that melt season has finished when melt ponds disappear then I presume you have to also say it starts when melt ponds appear, which is obviously not the case.
Regards
Andy

Pamela Gray: when both the extent and the concentration decrease, it can mean (i) that the ice has been melting like crazy locally (which very rarely happens) or (ii) that has has been transported to warmer regions where it melted. Following the NSIDC analysis, this is exactly what happened. All in all the ice “disappearance” (if you prefer that term) has been pretty fast ; much faster than usual in fact. So why is the ice this year more vulnerable to wind conditions as compared to the observations of the preceding 30 years?
Smokey: looks like you definitely prefer to play with words rather than with science. English is my 3d language, I’m teaching in French. Maybe we can compare my level with yours on this one? About the “proofs”, what do you want? Measurements of glacier thickness? Of Arctic sea ice extent? Tell me, I’ll find you at least 20 papers supporting my claims.
Richard: of course the current extent is a proof, as it is much lower than the most pessimistic predictions on Arctic sea ice extents. When observations are worse than predicted, what can be the conclusion? That it’s allright?

Hi all-
The main concern with Arctic melting, is it’s overall impact on the stability of the self-regulating climate system as a whole, I think, especially the chance of igniting a methane catastrophe.
Methane concentrations are increasing, not decreasing as was stated above:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ch4rug_multicolor.png
Note especially the increase in the Arctic (at high latitudes).
My most pressing concern is the stability of the methane hydrates:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/3647

Methane Burps: Ticking Time Bomb
by John Atcheson
The Arctic Council’s recent report on the effects of global warming in the far north paints a grim picture: global floods, extinction of polar bears and other marine mammals, collapsed fisheries. But it ignored a ticking time bomb buried in the Arctic tundra.
There are enormous quantities of naturally occurring greenhouse gasses trapped in ice-like structures in the cold northern muds and at the bottom of the seas. These ices, called clathrates, contain 3,000 times as much methane as is in the atmosphere. Methane is more than 20 times as strong a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.
Now here’s the scary part. A temperature increase of merely a few degrees would cause these gases to volatilize and “burp” into the atmosphere, which would further raise temperatures, which would release yet more methane, heating the Earth and seas further, and so on. There’s 400 gigatons of methane locked in the frozen arctic tundra – enough to start this chain reaction – and the kind of warming the Arctic Council predicts is sufficient to melt the clathrates and release these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Once triggered, this cycle could result in runaway global warming the likes of which even the most pessimistic doomsayers aren’t talking about.
An apocalyptic fantasy concocted by hysterical environmentalists? Unfortunately, no. Strong geologic evidence suggests something similar has happened at least twice before.
The most recent of these catastrophes occurred about 55 million years ago in what geologists call the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when methane burps caused rapid warming and massive die-offs, disrupting the climate for more than 100,000 years.
The granddaddy of these catastrophes occurred 251 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, when a series of methane burps came close to wiping out all life on Earth.
More than 94 percent of the marine species present in the fossil record disappeared suddenly as oxygen levels plummeted and life teetered on the verge of extinction. Over the ensuing 500,000 years, a few species struggled to gain a foothold in the hostile environment. It took 20 million to 30 million years for even rudimentary coral reefs to re-establish themselves and for forests to regrow. In some areas, it took more than 100 million years for ecosystems to reach their former healthy diversity.
Geologist Michael J. Benton lays out the scientific evidence for this epochal tragedy in a recent book, When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time. As with the PETM, greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide from increased volcanic activity, warmed the earth and seas enough to release massive amounts of methane from these sensitive clathrates, setting off a runaway greenhouse effect.
The cause of all this havoc?
In both cases, a temperature increase of about 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit, about the upper range for the average global increase today’s models predict can be expected from burning fossil fuels by 2100. But these models could be the tail wagging the dog since they don’t add in the effect of burps from warming gas hydrates. Worse, as the Arctic Council found, the highest temperature increases from human greenhouse gas emissions will occur in the arctic regions – an area rich in these unstable clathrates.
If we trigger this runaway release of methane, there’s no turning back. No do-overs. Once it starts, it’s likely to play out all the way.

Yup, no do-overs.
All our eggs in one basket, and we’re playing volleyball with the basket.

Flanagan
One of the elephants in the living room here is the archeological evidence from Greenland where there is evidence from Viking times of settlements, burials, where there is now permafrost – and, Scafetta says, trees as well – can somebody verify this?
Close your eyes, shut your ears, say “it’s not current science”, say you need a “peer-reviewed article” before you believe this one, shout lots of tangential remarks here.
Real science means being open to unwelcome evidence. Open, emotionally as well as factually. The unwelcome evidence that skeptics have to be open to, is the incomprehensible inability of believers to stop shouting and look again, and to question official pronouncements and practice true science which must always, by definition, be independent.

“There can be many reasons behind the medieval warm period, including the sun. But again, how does this disqualify a human interference in the present?”
Wrong way round.
The Earth was warmer than this in medieval times so what on earth makes you think this cycle is affected by man?

Sandy: maybe the fact that temperatures started de-correlating with the solar activity since the 40ies? How is it there’s such a good correlation between sun and temperatures and that, suddenly, the two take different ways? See the most recent Scafetta paper discusses in WUWT recently.
Lucy: it is now a well-established fact that the CO2 released by oceans after an initial increase of temperature led to a greenhouse effect that amplified and propagated the increase at the global scale. This was also discussed on this very blog.

Here we go, Smokey
Measurements of glacier thickness
——————————————
1. Title: Twentieth century climate change: Evidence from small glaciers
Author(s): Dyurgerov MB, Meier MF
Source: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Volume: 97 Issue: 4 Pages: 1406-1411 Published: FEB 15 2000
2. Title: Extracting a climate signal from 169 glacier records
Author(s): Oerlemans J
Source: SCIENCE Volume: 308 Issue: 5722 Pages: 675-677 Published: APR 29 2005
3. Title: Three-dimensional glacial flow and surface elevation measured with radar interferometry
Author(s): Mohr JJ, Reeh N, Madsen SN
Source: NATURE Volume: 391 Issue: 6664 Pages: 273-276 Published: JAN 15 1998
4. Title: Mass balance of mountain and subpolar glaciers: A new global assessment for 1961-1990
Author(s): Dyurgerov MB, Meier MF
Source: ARCTIC AND ALPINE RESEARCH Volume: 29 Issue: 4 Pages: 379-391 Published: NOV 1997
5. Title: Acceleration of Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers, West Antarctica
Author(s): Rignot E, Vaughan DG, Schmeltz M, et al.
Source: ANNALS OF GLACIOLOGY, VOL 34, 2002 Book Series: ANNALS OF GLACIOLOGY Volume: 34 Pages: 189-194 Published: 2002
6. Title: Mass balance of glaciers other than the ice sheets
Author(s): Cogley JG, Adams WP
Source: JOURNAL OF GLACIOLOGY Volume: 44 Issue: 147 Pages: 315-325 Published: 1998
7. Title: Mass balance of glaciers and ice caps: Consensus estimates for 1961-2004
Author(s): Kaser G, Cogley JG, Dyurgerov MB, et al.
Source: GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS Volume: 33 Issue: 19 Article Number: L19501 Published: OCT 4 2006
8. Title: Mountain and subpolar glaciers show an increase in sensitivity to climate warming and intensification of the water cycle
Author(s): Dyurgerov M
Source: JOURNAL OF HYDROLOGY Volume: 282 Issue: 1-4 Pages: 164-176 Published: NOV 10 2003
9. Title: Multispectral imaging contributions to global land ice measurements from space
Author(s): Kargel JS, Abrams MJ, Bishop MP, et al.
Source: REMOTE SENSING OF ENVIRONMENT Volume: 99 Issue: 1-2 Pages: 187-219 Published: NOV 15 2005
10. Title: Glacier monitoring within the Global Climate Observing System
Author(s): Haeberli W, Cihlar J, Barry RG
Source: ANNALS OF GLACIOLOGY, VOL 31, 2000 Book Series: ANNALS OF GLACIOLOGY Volume: 31 Pages: 241-246 Published: 2000
11. Title: The new remote-sensing-derived Swiss glacier inventory: II. First results
Author(s): Kaab A, Paul F, Maisch M, et al.
Source: ANNALS OF GLACIOLOGY, VOL 34, 2002 Book Series: ANNALS OF GLACIOLOGY Volume: 34 Pages: 362-366 Published: 2002
12. Title: Glacier evolution in the tropical Andes during the last decades of the 20th century: Chacaltaya, Bolivia, and Antizana, Ecuador
Author(s): Francou B, Ramirez E, Caceres B, et al.
Source: AMBIO Volume: 29 Issue: 7 Pages: 416-422 Published: NOV 2000
13. Title: Recent trends in melting conditions on the Antarctic Peninsula and their implications for ice-sheet mass balance and sea level
Author(s): Vaughan DG
Source: ARCTIC ANTARCTIC AND ALPINE RESEARCH Volume: 38 Issue: 1 Pages: 147-152 Published: FEB 2006
14. Title: Regional impacts of climate change in the Arctic and Antarctic
Author(s): Weller G
Source: ANNALS OF GLACIOLOGY, VOL 27, 1998 Book Series: ANNALS OF GLACIOLOGY Volume: 27 Pages: 543-552 Published: 1998
15. Title: Glacier mass balance: the first 50 years of international monitoring
Author(s): Braithwaite RJ
Source: PROGRESS IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY Volume: 26 Issue: 1 Pages: 76-95 Published: MAR 2002
16. Title: Glacier changes in southeast Alaska and northwest British Columbia and contribution to sea level rise
Author(s): Larsen CF, Motyka RJ, Arendt AA, et al.
Source: JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-EARTH SURFACE Volume: 112 Issue: F1 Article Number: F01007 Published: FEB 24 2007
17. Title: Late-twentieth century changes in glacier extent in the Ak-shirak Range, Central Asia, determined from historical data and ASTER imagery
Author(s): Khromova TE, Dyurgerov MB, Barry RG
Source: GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS Volume: 30 Issue: 16 Article Number: 1863 Published: AUG 28 2003
18. Title: Recent glacier changes in the Alps observed by satellite: Consequences for future monitoring strategies
Author(s): Paul F, Kaab A, Haeberli W
Source: GLOBAL AND PLANETARY CHANGE Volume: 56 Issue: 1-2 Pages: 111-122 Published: MAR 2007
19. Title: Mass balance measurements on the Lemon Creek Glacier, Juneau Icefield, Alaska 1953-1998
Author(s): Miller MM, Pelto MS
Source: GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES A-PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY Volume: 81A Issue: 4 Pages: 671-681 Published: 1999
20. Title: Alarming retreat of Parbati glacier, beas basin, Himachal pradesh
Author(s): Kulkarni AV, Rathore BP, Mahajan S, et al.
Source: CURRENT SCIENCE Volume: 88 Issue: 11 Pages: 1844-1850 Published: JUN 10 2005
So, do we really need to do this for every aspect I mentioned?
You should try and read at least one or two of these papers. My rapid research gave me 198 papers with “negative glacier mass balance measurement”

Flanagan 4:21:49
Your well established fact about the ancient effect of CO2 is not well established. The precision within the record is not there to establish all the ancient causes and effects. Now I know this is a bit ridiculous, but follow this time course; temperature rises, then 800 years later CO2 rises, then sometime later temperature drops. That time course might suggest that CO2 has an ameliorative effect on temperature rise or even an outright cooling effect. And you can’t prove it ain’t so.
=================================

Hi Smokey-
Ah, but the climate system is adapted to respond to higher CO2, via weathering of mafic rocks into carbonates for example, with extreme slowness. So, plotted on a more realistic x (time) axis:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/figures.html
Significant species adaptation can occur within small highly stressed populations in a few hundred years. In large populations, it generally takes much longer. If climate change is too rapid, as the paleocene-eocene and permian-triassic mass extinction events show, life generally dies rather than having sufficient time to adapt.
So, a long x (time) axis is the most appropriate plot. Modern increases in CO2 are geologically instantaneous, and under business as usual scenarios, we could easily go to 1000 ppm by the end of the century – one third higher CO2 concentrations than are plotted on the graph shown.

Neven, 6:24:19
I, too wonder at the consequences of the rapid release of all that CO2. My analogy is to shaking a bottle of champagne and popping the cork. But so far there is no documented damage from our sudden release, and some documented benefit, like for the plants. And, as dependent as the biosphere is upon plants, how can it not benefit the animals, also?
Flanagan, 6:44:41
Yes, I understand that the carbon isotope ratios are persuasive, and truly, I believe that man has made a significant contribution to present CO2 levels. The question is controversial, however, and not settled.
Both of ya’: Rising CO2 levels will inevitably create feedback which will speed the resequestration of carbon by plants, thereby altering the residence time of CO2 in our environment. The residence time of human released CO2 is also thus presently unknown. I happen to believe that hydrocarbons will be priced out of the energy market before we’ve done lasting damage to our ecosystem.
The fact is that our present era is CO2 starved. The action of the sun on the biosphere inevitably virtually permanently sequesters CO2 from the biosphere. The presence of huge stores of carbonates, and large stores of hydrocarbons proves that point.
But, it is an open question. Let’s understand more about it before jumping to lethal policy conclusions.
======================================

“kim: if the excess CO2 is not from human origin, then why have the isotopic ratios (C13/C12, C14/C12) of CO2 in the air been switching to the lower values of fossil carbon in the last decades?”
How accurate is the ‘isotope ratio’ over how many decades.
Lower isotopes are presumably released when rock erodes as well (since the C14 gets many 1/2-lives to decay.
Lower isotope ratio therefore Man and fossil fuels are responsible seems unlikely and unproven at least until the total carbon exchange of planet Earth is understood.
Still to those of the faith possible is proven, and there is always a grant-hunting charlatan who has written a paper on it.

Neven, 8:40:17
Ah, now you are talking about an entirely different ballgame. Why do you think changing the subject is persuasive?
==========================================

“Flanagan: …or the pH of oceans should become lower or …”
Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.179 to 8.104. If pH falls below 7.0 oceans will be acidic. As of now they are alkaline.

And the moral from my above post is NOT trying to type on a laptop in a hurry whilst travelling. Sorry for the spelling.
But the article in CO2 Science, listed on this board, is a very good one and well repays reading. They have a link problem so go via issue 31 vol 12, rather than the index. It is the leader, CO2 a question of timing etc.
Kindest Regards

kim (05:03:45) :
“Oh, fah! What is the matter with you? It is an almost two year trend now”
That’s priceless.
You are saying there is almost a trend of 2 results! Not quite two mind you.
Extrapolating from these almost 2 results the Arctic is freezing up again.
Considering you said the earth was cooling for the last few years how do you explain the result of 2007 and 2008?
Regards
Andy

The fastest ways to melt a glacier are all caused by oceanic influences on land temperatures and weather:
1. Direct Sunlight as in shortwave radiation
2. Warm rain
3. Warm wind
The slowest way to melt a glacier would be from long wave GHG radiation.
Glacier melt coincides with weather pattern variations. They have melted too fast to blame GHG long wave radiation. The same is true for Arctic sea ice melt. In every peer reviewed report I have seen regarding 2007 and 2008 Summer melt, weather pattern variation is the most likely candidate.

Alright, buster, just to be a little more repetitive, I explain 2007 as the tipping point, the nadir of sea ice loss, and 2008 the beginning of the rebound. That would put just around a three year lag from the maximum temperature of the globe, around 2004-2005. That’s the proposed time lag for the heat engine to move energy poleward. The tipping point of ice nicely marks the delay from measured maximum temperature.
=======================================

I also wonder about a nine year lag with the extraordinary 2007 melt being the image of the 1998 peak of temperature. God only knows how long and by all what methods the energy is transported polewards. I expect that in the northern hemisphere the transport is accelerated at the end, and in the southern hemisphere it is retarded, but I haven’t got a lot of proof of that, just intuition about the geography.
===============================================

Hi a jones-

1000ppm what stuff and nonsense. Bulk CO2 only remains in the atmsohere for a few years before being either taken up by vegetation or dissolved in the oceans. The partition ratio between the atmsophere and the oeasn is about 1:50 and is temperature dependant because it chiefly depends on Henry’s law.
Thus we an deduce that the burning of fossil fuels has negligible effect of CO2 levels, perhaps accounting for one percent or so of the rise over the last few decades, the primary driver is the temperature of the oceans.
Note that because of carbonate and other buffering the oceans’ capacity to adsorb CO2 is virtually unlimited and does not significantly affect their PH.
There is a very thorough discussion of this in CO2 Science vol 12 no 31.
It is very well worth reading, not least for its criticism of Solomon et al.

Uh, these MIT professional climate science guys don’t seem to agree with you…perhaps you ought to e-mail them and tell them about Henry’s law…
http://globalchange.mit.edu/files/document/MITJPSPGC_Rpt169.pdf
Check out figure 5. Their high estimate puts CO2 at 1100 ppm, and methane at about 6 ppm (equal to a couple hundred more ppm of CO2) by 2095.
But this is low, of course. Each estimate is higher than the one before, these days, it seems.
And this study leaves out methane from methane hydrates.
There’s enough methane in the methane hydrates to send methane concentrations to about 5000 ppm methane if it were released all at once, equal to tens of thousands of ppm of CO2 in greenhouse effect. Of course, it wouldn’t be released all at once, would it? And, it would be quickly oxidzed into CO2 by the hydroxyl radical, wouldn’t it?
Maybe not:

Methane concentrations are also a function of the atmospheric sink, mainly the hydroxyl free radical. As CO and CH4 emissions increase, the hydroxyl radical concentrations will drop as seen in section 4.1….

Mr. Leland Palmer.
I don’t feed trolls.
Especially those who do not bother to read the papers and reports they quote.
Kindest Regards

“Flanagan (14:01:46) :
But do you have any idea how much a DpH of 0.1 would mean for all the chemical equilibria involved? And don’t forget it’s a logarithmic scale. The difference you mentioned amounts to loosing about 16% of the protons.”
The 16% are correctely calculated, but it is questionable to use % when a log-scale is necessary (you would not do that to sound levels in dB). But “loosing protons” ? Doesn’t acid mean you have a concentration of more than 10^(-7) of H+ ? (and neither protons nor OH- do disappear).

Alexej: by “loosing protons” I wasn’t talking about quark recombination, of course. But hydroniums, if you see what I mean. Again, I didin’t say the sea was acidic, but that its pH is decreasing relatively fast. BTW, I made a small mistake as the hydronium concentration is increased, not decreased by 16%
Using a log scale in this case is the most questionable representation, in my sense. The concentrations of the different species having an acido-basic reactivity (such as carbonates) will change as [H30+]^n, depending on the equilibria involved, not on the log of this concentration. For example in the following equilibrium
CaCO3(s) + H+ = Ca2+ + HCO3-
[Ca2+] [HCO3-] = K [H+]
so if the concentration of H+ increases by a factor X, each of the concentrations in this case will increase by a factor sqrt(X).

Also: since the average water temperature is about 17 Celsius, the neutrality should be 7.13 and not 7.

Looking at the above quote, I think that Chris Field meant “ppm” rather than “percent”.
He misspoke a couple of times, during this interview. He was apparently nervous, and he said that the Arctic permafrost had about a billion tons of carbon in it, when he meant a trillion tons (the latest estimates are roughly 1.5 trillion tons of carbon in the permafrost).
Still, go there and watch the video, if you want a look at a real climate scientist. Judge his sincerity for yourself.
http://i1.democracynow.org/2009/2/26/member_of_un_environment_panel_warns
He appears to be honest, a nice guy, somewhat shy and nervous, not the world’s best public speaker, but sincere.

Hi Jim-

Much ado about nothing.

You could even be right. I doubt it, but it seems remotely, theoretically possible that the extremely complex Earth climate system will confound us yet again.
What are you willing to bet?
Are you willing to bet, for example, everything that’s most valuable to human beings that exists anywhere in the universe?

“”” If we look since 2000, we’ve seen a rapid acceleration in CO2 emissions, so that the actual trajectory of emissions has grown more rapidly than in any of the scenarios that were characterized in detail. The reason I say we’re on a trajectory of climate change that we haven’t explored is that we have only looked at scenarios where the growth of CO2 was limited to in the range of two to 2.5 percent per year. We genuinely don’t know what a climate will look like with the more rapid rate of increase that we’re actually seeing. “””
So Christopher; the present Mauna Loa CO2 level is about 385 ppm, so 1% of that is 3.85 ppm, and 2.5% of that is 9.625 ppm
So the ML bas line amount of CO2 is increasing about 1.5 ppm each year; so how does that gybe with your claim of 9.625 ppm per year.
That is a pretty large exaggeration fudge factor, even for an IPCC shill to explain away.
Back to the drawing board I am afraid; or perhaps a course in remedial arithmetic.

Red herring alert: Phil. is correct about the buffering but a drop of O.1 in human blood is quite easily compensated for. This whole issue depends upon how rapidly the ocean acidification is proceeding and it is pretty doggone slowly. Let’s see both sides of the question, Phil..
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