by Jeff Id
As we approach the Arctic Sea Ice minimum, a lot of eyes are looking and projecting what the minimum will be. In a previous post I calculated the centroid of the sea ice as a method for determining how the weather patterns were affecting the data. About a month ago, it seemed that the weather pattern was going to support a leveling off of the sea ice shrink rate so that’s what I predicted and that’s what happened. The curve cut across the 2008 line and reached over until it touched the 2005 line.
![AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent[1]](http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/amsre_sea_ice_extent11.png?quality=75 "AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent[1]")
Unfortunately, from this centroid video, it looks like the winds from the Southeast in the image which created the huge reduction in Sea Ice in 2007 appears the have restarted this year. It’s already starting to accelerate the melting which caused this year’s red line to dip below the 2005 green line.
The shift in weather pattern is most visible in the shadows on the ice which are actually clouds blowing through. The shadows indicate the 29GhZ microwave data is sensitive to clouds which is part of the noise in the long term signal.
Below is an updated 2007 – present video.
Click to play
If you missed the original video which is full record length and shows the unusualness of the current weather patterns in the last 30 years, it’s linked at this post below.
Arctic Ice Weather Patterns
That post explains the arrow vector and the source of the data.
I’m going to update my prediction from this shift in weather. Now I think the ice level will dip quickly downward in relation to 2005 but will still sit above the 2008 minimums. It looks like the ice has been thinned by the recent blasts of weather from the southeast and if this pattern maintains itself the dip will be fairly strong. Of course I’m an engineer and not a meteorologist so we’ll see.
Answer-
Apparently not. sad to say.
Hi George E. Smith-
Here’s their methodology:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/icesat-20090707.html
Nice video, showing delcine in ice volume, year by year.
http://www.nasa.gov/mov/326195main_winter_seaicethickness30fps.mov
“Leland Palmer (22:34:04) :
Answer-
Apparently not. sad to say.
Hi George E. Smith-
Here’s their methodology: etc etc”
So George was right. I still believe it is møch måre æccurate if you are møch nearer. But we have to wait whåt the Eisdeckendickemessinstrument said.
Leland Palmer (22:15:33) : Read it and weep: According to a study done using NASA ICEsat satellite data, ice volume shrank dramatically 2004 to 2008:…
Leland Palmer what is the gloom and doom all about? Why dont you go away and weep by yourself at your imaginary perils. Maybe they seem real to you, but you seem impervious to logic, so I really dont know how you can be helped.
Have a look at the temperature records of the GIPS2 ice core data. During much of the Medieval warm period the temperature in Green land was 1 to 1.5 C warmer than today. There was nothing catastrophic about this period, quite the contrary. The catastrophe happened when the world cooled after this period into the little ice age and didnt recover till we warmed up again.
During the last century and a half when we have warmed slightly we have addded billions to our population and yet managed to feed ourselves.
Just think about all this and then come back and tell me if this makes any sense to you.
Hi all-
The ice thickness declined by 2.2 feet over only four years, according to NASA. This is good, hard scientific data, gathered from an extremely good, well calibrated source. The measured decline is far above any reasonable experimental error.
[snip – waaaayyyyy off topic. When we have a thread on methane you can post this. Right now the discussion is sea ice, and I won’t have you hijack this thread to satisfy that whim. – Anthony]
Hi Anthony-
Since I’m not allowed to respond to questions about what the significance of a 2.2 ft decline in ice thickness in only four years is, beyond the narrowly defined limits of this thread, let’s talk about the ice/albedo feedback:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Atmoz/Climate_change_feedbacks
For readers who are interested, beyond the narrowly defined limits of this thread, in the significance of these findings from NASA, the Wikipedia article lists several other positive feedback effects that are very worrisome, IMO.
Hi all-
What the NASA satellite ICESat is telling us is that there was a massive change in ice volume, that coincided in time with the 2007 ice extent minimum.
So, apparently, ice volume does correlate with ice extent. The wind does not significantly decouple this correlation, apparently.
The bottom line from this NASA data is that the Arctic is melting. These are huge changes, occurring far ahead of schedule.
Some expect the effects of Arctic melting to be good, or at least economically good.
Others, expect the effects of polar icecap melting to be very bad, and expect that those effects will extend far beyond the narrowly defined limits of this thread.
The climate is indeed all connected, fortunately or unfortunately.
Leland Palmer (07:13:41) : You seem to keep repeating like a parrot that the ice is thinning. This might be expected if the Earth has warmed and is in a warm phase. Why should you be surprised. You sound like a broken record stuck in a groove.
If this is happening now then, probably more than this happened during the several centuries in human historical memory (the Medieval warm period) when it was warmer than now.
Do you have anything to say about that?
Hi Richard-
We don’t know about Arctic ice extent in the Medieval warm period, or at least I don’t.
What I do know is that an extremely dramatic melting of the polar icecap has occurred in the last few years, at the same time as thousands of other well established scientific indicators of global warming are telling us that dramatic warming is occurring.
The data from the polar icecap melting (decrease in ice volume) is dramatic, and scientifically established to be far beyond any reasonable experimental error.
Ice volume decreased from 2003 to 2008, a fact that has been disputed on this blog.
Posters on this board who thought that the wind just happened to be piling the Arctic sea ice up were apparently wrong.
The original article, that says the the changes in ice extent in 2007 were due to the wind is wrong.
The changes in ice area that occurred in 2007 were correlated with measured changes in ice volume in 2007.
That ice area and volume are correlated is of course obvious, and should have been seen as the simplest assumption on this blog all along.
When taken in context with thousands of other indicators of global warming, including land and sea temperature records, this is another indicator of probable catastrophe. Certainly, such huge declines are totally unsustainable, if they continue. These changes in ice volume and extent are real, the ICESat data tells us, and appear to be orders of magnitude larger than in the reasonably undisturbed baseline period from the 1970’s through 2000.
Leland Palmer (13:42:11) : We don’t know about Arctic ice extent in the Medieval warm period, or at least I don’t…
Thats where your trouble lies.
Please educate yourself on this. If your realise that the Earth has been in warmer periods during many periods during our current Holocene interglacial, including during the Medievalk Warm Period, then you will understand that whatever is happeneing now has happened before in our recent past and thus there is no reason to fear any catastrophe.
Here is a good place to start: http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Now that I have brought you glad tidings of great joy, please treat yourself to a coffee. Relax and enjoy life.
Hi Richard-
Thanks, I think.
But, if runaway climate change accelerates, humanity won’t be doing much relaxing and enjoying of life, IMO. And if they do, fiddle while Rome burns, so to speak, should they?
Huge decreases in ice volume in only a few years are fully consistent with a runaway climate change scenario, unfortunately.
Leland Palmer (06:08:17) : … if runaway climate change accelerates, humanity won’t be doing much relaxing and enjoying of life, IMO.
IF… you seem to be stuck in a groove, caught in a closed loop of just one irrational thought. Please try and think beyond the square, or loop if you prefer.
Temperatures go up and temperatures go down. I told you that the Earth has been in warmer periods many times during our current Holocene interglacial, there is no reason to fear any catastrophe.
Did you have a look at the evidence of Medieval Warm Period? If you realise the above fact then all your subsequent arguments for a doomsday scenario become superfluous.
And if they do, fiddle while Rome burns, so to speak, should they?
Undoubtedly. Better than living in misery under the weight of carbon taxes to support the perpetrators of this scam in a life of luxury, which will accomplish nothing even according to the faulty science espoused by the doomsayers.
The southern route of the northwest passage is now showing an increase in sea ice. The northern, direct, route didn’t open.
That’s not good news for lots of folks. A reliably open northwest passage would be a shippers dream.