It looks like we’ll see the 2009 Arctic sea ice melt season bottom out in a few days and it won’t be a record setter. Even NSIDC admits this. Here is a magnified graph of the IARC-JAXA AMSRE sea ice extent plot that is linked in the sidebar of WUWT.
Here is the full sized image:
For reference here are some other sea ice graphs:
I made a prediction a few threads back that we’ll see a turn on September 9th. Many others made predictions then. Since JAXA is not on holiday tomorrow like we are in the USA, I expect we’ll see an update for Sept 7th in the next 12-18 hours. We have an update for Sept 6th data now and it is shown above.
In the meantime feel free to discuss the issue in this open thread.
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They’re baaaack. IAARC/JAXA’s 0300Z interim update shows Sept 5th still 25,000 km^2 above the 2005 min. The final number for the day is available just after 1400Z.
As I have also said before the day that Greenland once again becomes a green and pleasant land, on the coastal plains at least, where agriculture can flourish and settlements be built then indeed we shall be as warm as they were over a thousand years ago.
And very nice too. But alas it is not to be it seems.
Kindest Regards
Flanagan -I Got scrubbed again from the “scientists” over at RC for suggesting to look at the Rimfrost Arctica Average (average Arctic land station records for the past 50+ years).
http://www.rimfrost.no/
Or maybe it was for suggesting to look at the Upernavik (NW Greenland) data from 1873. That data show a higher temperature in the mid 1940’s then now. Nothing like a free an open discussion.
Something fishy is going on at the IJIS website.
1. They have only just posted the Sept 4 data, 5,365,781sq Kms.
2. Their first Sept 3 data showed ice at 5,363,594 sq kms. With this extent the ice would have shown its first increase of the season by 2,187 sq kms.
3. On the 4th they upped the 3rds ice extent to 5,379,844 sq kms. With this it now it shows a decrease by 14,063 sq kms.
4. They are still 3 days behind.
Hmmm….
“World’s climate could cool first, warm later”
“Forecasts of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter…Nature vs humans…This is bad timing….”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17742-worlds-climate-could-cool-first-warm-later.html
Polar Bears and BBQ Sauce (15:21:20) :
That really happened (winter of 1977) and with a neutron monitor count plateau significantly lower than the one we are working on. I cannot forget that time, it was no fun even out West.
So, even though the next winter brought relief as the Solar Cycle kicked in, here we sit with a dead duck Sun.
We should get Leanord Nimoy to pay a visit.
btw… how’s Baffin Island these days (ice age focus)??
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.4.html
No need to worry Flanagan, our Czars and politicians
are on cruises to monitor Climate Change. We’re going
to be OK.
http://www.youtube.com/user/megwhitmanonvanjones
Flanagan:
Pick your poison, which do you prefer the climate change to..
a.) Global Warming or
b.) Ice Age
We cannot expect the climate to stay put forever.
2008 arctic sea ice minimum was greater in extent than 2007. However, the trend got steeper (downwards). Can anyone figure out what the extent minimum this year needs to be in order to make the long-term trend shallower? Not that that will say much about the future, but at least its a start on something more robust than a couple of years. Interannual and weather variance is still being discussed as if it is climate.
Why ‘admits’, as if the information has been grudgingly conceded? I thought NSIDC was considered to be a reputable outfit.
The weather dynamics leading into melt are still interesting, though – winds, ocean currents, surface temperatures etc. My June guess for this year’s minimum extent was 4.8 mil sq/klms. No idea on a final date for melt, but I’d hope it was a week or two off to grab the sweep!
RE: K-Bob (14:13:57) :
And of course, you can read about all the predictions that were made at Realcliimate:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/arctic-sea-ice-watch/
I needed some humour, so I went over to RC and read some of the comments.
Looks like we will not near much from Walt Bennett soon as in 2006 he predicted an ice free Arctic in 2011.
Hi everybody,
2007 was indeed very low because of some wind pattern – but this pattern took place before without leaving such marks. Did you take a look at the 2006-2007difference? I can only imagine what would happen if the same wind pattern would tale place with the present-day state of the ice.
About the Antarctic: what models suggest is that the Antarctic should NOT start decreasing in extent before mid-21st century. That’s mainly because it is protected from “hot” waters and winds thanks to the westerlies, and because the thermal inertia of the Southern Hemisphere is quite high (more water than NH).
Adam Grey (21:25:17) : 2008 arctic sea ice minimum was greater in extent than 2007. However, the trend got steeper (downwards).
Can you explain the mathematical logic of how, if the last years ice extent was larger (upwards), the trend would get steeper downwards?
As a matter of curiousity I plotted the trendline of the the total ice (every day from 1st June 2002 to 4th Sept 2009), using IJIS data. It was dead flat at about 10.5 million sq kms.
Is the minimum arctic ice extent trending downwards – yes.
Will summer artic ice eventually disappear – it is possible, though I think improbable, because I think the climate will turn colder before that. It is also very probable it has disappeared in the past 10,000 years.
And I dont think, if it does, it will matter very much.
Just The Facts (15:38:55) :
“Antarctic Sea Ice Extent is currently about 1 million sq km above the average and trending higher.”
Can I ask where you are getting your figures from? The only links you have put in are for area and they don’t show anything much above average currently.
Regards
Andy
Hotrod,
“Ice extent measurements are so new in a historical sense we are very much like the fellow trying to guess next weeks tide from a week old record of daily tide measurements.”
Exactly so. Although anecdotally there has been even less Arctic ice than the most recent minimum if you read historical accounts. Inconveniently, said tales all occurred before man made climate change was invented.
AndyW (22:36:52) :
“Can I ask where you are getting your figures from?”
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
Would you agree that, based on NSIDC’s data, Antarctic Sea Ice Extent is currently about 1 million sq km above the average and trending higher?
I see a suggestion that wind patterns could effect the outcome. We would need some intense lows to achieve that. Are they possible during the Arctic winter?
Wind certainly seems to have effected ice breakup during the year resulting in build up of ice blocks many meters thick at choke points. These will be incorporated into this winter’s freeze. Will need much warm water next year but reports are that the global seas are slowly cooling.
Whatever this years minimum will be, I predict it will have an impact at Copenhagen.
I can’t do that mathematically, but someone here will be able to.
The data is non-linear. If the last two consecutive values are exceptionally lower in data of sufficient population, the trend can get steeper, even if the second value is slightly higher than the first (the trends I’m referencing above are least squares analyses).
Yes, you get surprising results with small sample sizes. Just to be clear, the trend I was talking about is sea ice minimum (September extent, usually), not annual coverage.
Scott A Mandia posting on open minds has this to say about Anthony Watts about Arctic cooling
“This latest post by Watts is fairly typical. He does NOT read the journal article but he still attempts to discredit it. He posts the abstract but then, in his own words with a reply to RW, he states that he is really criticizing the press release of the article where there is an obvious typo (mid 1990’s instead of mid-1900s). Furthermore, his analysis is flawed – a common occurrence on WUWT”.
In response to a question Tamnio who runs “)pen Mind”
states
“[Response: I haven’t read the Kaufman et al. paper, so I don’t know whether or not it’s a reconstruction of summer temperatures only
But I do know (from their abstract) that Kaufman et al. look at the area 60N-90N while the data in this post are for Lat. 80N-90N (’cause that’s what Watts did). The NCEP/NCAR data for 60N-90N show greater warming in July than the 80N-90N data, at 1.0 deg.C/100yr, but they also show less January warming, a “mere” 3.9 deg.C/100yr. And even though the July warming 80N-90N is muted (due to the phase change from melting ice), it still turns out to be significant at 0.6 +/- 0.5 (2sigma) deg.C/100yr.]
Scott A Mandia of course has nothing at all to say about that.
So OK for Tamino to blog on the abstract of a paper but not OK for WUWT. Typical of AGW proponents. What is also typical is that I can’t reply to Scott A Mandia on Open Mind as all my posts to that blog are deleted. Open Mind my foot.
Pamela Gray (19:52:23) :
I believe those models do not take into account weather/wind variations and trends. They are based on greenhouse gas warming the air (certainly not the water since greenhouse gas warming of water cannot be justified as a viable mechanism scientifically). Warm air is not what melts ice in place. The Sun’s rays melt stationary ice. The rest of the ice that melts is pushed out of the Arctic where of course it melts. Their models are wrong if based on in-situ melting. This is probably why they don’t hindcast very well.
That’s an excellent point and one that is not appreciated by many people on both sides of the AGW debate. Even the NSIDC now explains the annual Arctic ice melt in terms of atmospheric circulation patterns and cloudiness. (In particular see their most recent report dated 8/18/08 at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/.)
Furthermore, the excellent animation of DMI Arctic Temperature graphs recently posted by Anthony seems to prove that trends in Arctic air temperatures cannot possibly explain recent ice melt trends since the air temps during the critical annual melt periods have been unusually close to normal over the entire 1958 to 2009 data range. (See http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/dmi_arctic_temp-vs-era40climate_animation.gif.) If the DMI data is correct, and if there is some question about that somebody please fill me in, it totally demolishes the scare stories about the Arctic getting hotter and causing the ice to melt. Global warming may influence Arctic ice melt, but only indirectly and to the extent that it affects regional atmospheric circulation patterns and cloudiness.
[i]”All I have to say is: the extent is already lower than the linear projection and lower than what the most pessimistic long-term models predicted” [/i]
That is the standard argument of the warmaholics when people find out that the arctic summer ice is increasing. Well, we know that there was a decrease in summer ice in the last ~10 years until 2007. At the beginning of this phase, the climate scientists (alarmists) made a forecast about decreasing summer ice. It was wrong like all of their forecasts, but this time the forecast was less alarming than the reality, so they are shouting: Oh, look, the ice is decreasing even more than we predicted! They use this argument until summer ice is back to average, which can take several years.
The IJIS data for the 5th and 6th have just been posted. Sea ice decreased by 2,343 and 14,375 sq kms on the 5th and 6th. The melt is definitely slowing down. I predicted a low of 5,100,000 sq kms and the minimum on the 10th of Sept
I feel more multi-year ice in Arctic for 2010. The spiral of growth has started.
Flanagan (14:20:24) :
Here is a comparison (reality check)
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/2009/stroeve.png
The models are thoroughly falsified by this. How can they be used for forecasting anything 100 years in the future
Johnny Honda (00:28:28) :
[i]“All I have to say is: the extent is already lower than the linear projection and lower than what the most pessimistic long-term models predicted” [/i]
That is the standard argument of the warmaholics when people find out that the arctic summer ice is increasing. Well, we know that there was a decrease in summer ice in the last ~10 years until 2007.
—
That standard argument is simply the fact.
Did you know arctic summer ice was at a record low level in 2008, not in 2007? Yes, the area-extent was a little larger last year, but the volume – that is, the total amount of ice – was record low.
Last year half the remaining multiyear ice, this is the thicker ice, disappeared.
Mike Abbott (00:07:08) :
Furthermore, the excellent animation of DMI Arctic Temperature graphs recently posted by Anthony seems to prove that trends in Arctic air temperatures cannot possibly explain recent ice melt trends since the air temps during the critical annual melt periods have been unusually close to normal over the entire 1958 to 2009 data range.
—
The Arctic ice melt can directly and fully be attributed to global warming. It is very simple. Over two thirds of the melting happens from below, caused by warmer sea surface water.