It appears Arctic sea ice has bottomed out and is now on the growth rebound. The NANSEN Arctic ROOS website shows that in terms of area, sea ice appears to have turned the corner as of Sept 13th data. While that is just one data point, it turned the corner about this time last year, and the year before.
More data and graphs from NANSEN Arctic ROOS are available here.
Many WUWT readers have been watching JAXA’s sea ice extent graph closely, so have I. Typically JAXA updates the graph twice a day; once around the start of their business day (in Japan), and then a second update that contains the corrected data (after going through processing and QC) a few hours later. Tonight (9/14) about 11:30PM PST JAXA updated their Sept 14th AMSRE data with this new number:
5,269,531 km2
UPDATE: JAXA updated the number again and it now stands at 5,276,563 km2
That is a gain of almost 20,000 26,719 km2 from the Sept 13th value of 5, 249, 844 km2 which may very well turn out to be the minimum extent for 2009. Here is the Sept 14th chart and the data from JAXA:
Source: IARC-JAXA Sea Ice page
Here is the tabular Arctic Sea Ice Extent data for September 2009 with the minimum highlighted in blue. A CSV data file for Excel is available here.
| 9 | 1 | 2009 | 5423750 |
| 9 | 2 | 2009 | 5398281 |
| 9 | 3 | 2009 | 5379844 |
| 9 | 4 | 2009 | 5387969 |
| 9 | 5 | 2009 | 5363438 |
| 9 | 6 | 2009 | 5345156 |
| 9 | 7 | 2009 | 5328906 |
| 9 | 8 | 2009 | 5330469 |
| 9 | 9 | 2009 | 5315938 |
| 9 | 10 | 2009 | 5295313 |
| 9 | 11 | 2009 | 5278594 |
| 9 | 12 | 2009 | 5259375 |
| 9 | 13 | 2009 | 5249844 |
| 9 | 14 | 2009 | 5276563 |
For 2008 the value reached minimum on September 9th, rebounded slightly, shrank again, and then turned the corner and started rebound again on September 17th.
| 9 | 1 | 2008 | 4957656 |
| 9 | 2 | 2008 | 4924219 |
| 9 | 3 | 2008 | 4927031 |
| 9 | 4 | 2008 | 4868906 |
| 9 | 5 | 2008 | 4825625 |
| 9 | 6 | 2008 | 4808281 |
| 9 | 7 | 2008 | 4739844 |
| 9 | 8 | 2008 | 4715469 |
| 9 | 9 | 2008 | 4707813 |
| 9 | 10 | 2008 | 4729688 |
| 9 | 11 | 2008 | 4751563 |
| 9 | 12 | 2008 | 4745156 |
| 9 | 13 | 2008 | 4742344 |
| 9 | 14 | 2008 | 4747188 |
| 9 | 15 | 2008 | 4731875 |
| 9 | 16 | 2008 | 4726250 |
| 9 | 17 | 2008 | 4718594 |
| 9 | 18 | 2008 | 4736406 |
| 9 | 19 | 2008 | 4745000 |
| 9 | 20 | 2008 | 4752500 |
Of course it is entirely possible nature has other plans, but the appearance of a change in direction is there and the time is about right historically. If this holds it will put 2009 542,031 km2 above 2008’s Sept 9th low extent, making it the third lowest extent in the AMSRE data set and the second year of increasing ice extent since the historic low in 2007 of 4,267,656 km2
The signs are right, and Nature will let us know in the next few days if we have indeed turned the corner and will be headed upwards.
UPDATE: Commenter Dave points out that the DMI extent graph, shown below, does a better job of illustrating the uptick.
Yep – Arctic sea ice extent from DMI appears to have turned up also. They use area with >30% concentration (others use >15%). Sorry, but I can’t locate the numeric data on the DMI site.
Michael
Not my best day – forgot to attach the DMI link:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Same info can be found on http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/sea.ice.anomaly.timeseries.jpg showing a clear 3 year trend of recovery of the 2007 low.
Does this mean that the Polar Bears will freeze to death this year, rather than drowning?
Actually it turned on the 9th last year.
9 9 2008 4707813
REPLY: Yes while Sept 9th was the numeric minimum for 2008 in the JAXA AMSRE data, it was not the date that sea-ice turned the corner and started the rebound.. But I’ve made some changes in the article to reflect this. Thanks – Anthony
It looks like the 2008 minimum occurred on the 9th Sept and not the 17th Sept? It’s a big ol’ jump lets hope for another big jump next year!
To put this type of increase in to perspective, this years increase is just slightly less than the land area of Manitoba, Canada (Ice Increase, 531250km^2 . . . Land in Manitoba, 553556km^2) . The two year increase is about the land area of British Columbia, Canada (Ice Increase, 982188km^2 . . . BC land area 925186).
It’s much worse than we thought. The average increase per year is 491094km^2, if this trend continues the surface of the earth will be completely ice covered in only 1038 years! We must act now!
Must be some mistake! Everyone knows the Arctic will be ice-free in just 30 years! I mean it was in the papers and everything……
My guess is the Arctic ice has turned the corner.
Been watching the NPEO Home Page and air temps are consistent.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/
Go Toddler Ice, Go!
==========
Scene: NSIDC offices Colorado, The 2009 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Appears Imminent
“Well, it’s happening again. What are we going to say this time?”
“Relax we’ve got it covered.”
“Relax! It looks like double-digit growth AGAIN this year. How are we going to hide that?”
“Easy. First, we always compare to a 1979-2000 average.”
“But that’s not the real average if you’ve been measuring for 30 years!”
“Nobody even notices. Besides, most “average” people can’t even calculate an “average.” Second, we did that little pre-acknowledgement that it won’t be a record, so people aren’t even paying attention. I’ll take credit for that one, thank you.”
“Pre-Surrender you mean.”
“Third, the Kaufman stuff was perfectly timed a couple weeks ago. What a headline, Arctic Hottest in 2,000 Years. Brilliant.”
“Ya, but all they did was look at pond scum, ice cores and tree rings. If you look at ACTUAL temperature measurements over the past century it’s all bogus.”
“Hello? Hellooo? Who got the headline? Besides they just did what every cost cutter in business does, shows there should have been a trend so flat means something happened.”
“I hope somebody doesn’t do that to us.”
“Fourth, we’ve got a lot of good data on our side.”
“You mean the Caitlin measurements?”
“God no! They almost froze to death and misrepresented data on their website. The only thickness there was their skulls. No, I mean WIND.”
“Ohhhh, you can’t use that. Don’t even. I mean people will say…”
“Hear me out. We say the wind is causing extent to INCREASE, and…”
“…that the wind COMPRESSED extent in 2007. I mean, when extent doesn’t work for you last year, you switch to volume, when the Germans fly over the Arctic this year and show thickness growing, you go to wind? People will never buy it.”
“You have to learn to be more audacious. Sure. Blame the wind in the headline. Then, we’ll call it the “Third Lowest Ice Extent.” Great headlines both. CNN will wet themselves. Throw in that August to August graph with misleading scale set so it starts at 5 M square kilometers, and we’re golden.”
“Boss. What if the sunspots don’t come back?”
“You’re so negative! Look, I got to catch a flight to Seattle. Doing some camping on Mt Rainier this weekend.”
“Dress warmly, I heard it’s snowing early in the Cascades.”
“In early September! Not again!”
While any intelligent person who understands science should know one data point usually matters little in the big picture, this is nice news to hear. I may trot this factoid out the next time I hear someone scream “OMFG, SAVE TEH POLAR BEARS!”
I await with baited breath for the corrected, up dated, homogenized, staticalized and regurgitated NSIDC data.
Bill Derryberry
PS I am not looking for agreement.
PPS Google spell check seems not to be working this morning.
A large increase over last year minimum. The sun continues to dominate with its extreme quiet.
yeah…my guess is that we have seen the bottom. even if we have another down day it is difficult to imagine it being for almost 20,000. i guess we could if we did 2 in a row, but with each passing day that becomes less likely, not to mention our down days were averaging less than 20,000. in fact, we have only had one day of more than 20,000 loss since the 3rd of September 11 days ago. i am going to be dogmatic and say that regardless of another melt day or not, we have already seen the bottom on the 13th and i am HAPPY to report that it was 2 days earlier than my prediction and 100,000 square kilometers ABOVE my prediction. (that is if my dogmatic pronouncement is correct).
here are some other interesting facts:
with today’s large jump upwards of 20,000 square kilometers we MAY already be past the minimum. however, another week of ups will confirm that. IF we have already reached the minimum, this year showed a 542,000 square kilometer increase over 2008’s low of 4,707,813 square kilometers, which showed a 453282 square kilometer over 2007’s historical low of 4254531. All in all, we are looking at 995,000 square kilometers of regrowth within 2 years. next year will be very pivotal.
Now, 2 years is hardly a trend worth mentioning although this one is admittedly fairly dramatic. But if we see a similar growth next year, then we will have a year with more ice than most of the past 8 years and a bit of a better argument could be made towards actual regrowth. all that can reasonably be said at this point is that the melting arctic has at least taken a 2 year respite from it’s dramatic downturn. we are currently only 65,312 below 2005’s low…..so any serious recovery next year would put us dramatically above years 2005-2009, but this year is still 782,187 below the minimum of 2003’s minimum of 6,032,031 so we still have a ways to go!
Go baby ice!
It will be interesting to note the reaction of the main stream media to what is undoubtedly good news, whatever side of the debate you are on.
For those of us sceptical of the anthropogenic global warming theory this bolsters our contention that what we are seeing are natural cycles in climate.
For the warmists this should be encouraging because it suggests that the Arctic ice cap is not disappearing as they feared.
However, I doubt that this will be given much coverage at all and instead will we continue to be bombarded with inaccurate predictions of doom.
Still, for me, this is good news.
So much for there not being any ice in five years. Now lets see if the refreeze moves along quickly as it did last year.
How about all that talk about the thin ice melting. Turns out that the ice was thicker than last years.
Well, I predicted 5.1M at RC right after the 15 experts NOAA asked ranged to a high of 5.0M. So I guess to my shame I’ll have to be lumped with the warmists, as I was still low! 🙂
The DMI Explorer shows today’s temp to be several degrees Kelvin cooler than this day in 2008.
I am glad to see stats and charts like this. Prove the facts right.
IF, (please note the word IF), the annual arctic sea ice continues to increase, will AGWers:
a. breathe a sigh of relief knowing that their beloved Arctic will not fall victim to climate change?
Or
b. will they be angry because they were wrong?
rbateman (06:24:53) : “The DMI Explorer shows today’s temp to be several degrees Kelvin cooler than this day in 2008.”
Isn’t this the instrument that has drifted south? So were the locations the same?
JamesG (02:01:52) :
Will this make everyone happier and more optimistic about the future?
———————————–
I think not. There are many out there with careers and paychecks linked to saving the Arctic ice. Perversely, they BS about saving the ice but, in reality, they desperately want it to disappear. I suspect that those people are more pessimistic about their future.
It strikes me as a little odd that y’all are taking this minimum so much in stride–sure, it’s higher than the last two years, but only four years ago ice extent this low would have been–and, well, was–startlingly low. Have our standards moved so far, so quickly, that what was an unprecedented meltdown in 2005 is now somehow good news? Take a look at this in context: the following data is for August, not September, but it’s still very relevant.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/n_plot_hires.png
The little upturn on the right side of the graph is our current “recovery;” note that we’ve had similar “recoveries” in the past–1990-1992, for example–that still did pretty much nothing to the overall downward trend. Just…keep that in mind, to those of you who haven’t noticed this, and apologies for insulting your intelligence, those of you have.