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.
From
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
it looks like the Arctic temp is heading down at a pretty good clip.
Its time again to recall the now famous words of former Cousteau quill-master, commenter Jeez, who in 2008 posted this marvelous description at ClimateAudit (should be read with an empathetic french accent)-
“The baby ice is lost, confused, but will find its way home.
Seemingly plunged into a downward spiral of accelerating destruction, the baby ice cautiously and at the same time playfully relies on instinct, not courage to survive to another season.
It is this instinct, carved and molded by generations of ice that came before, that protect and sustain the baby ice throughout the treacherous long summer season.
After beating back the solar onslaught, the now exhausted baby ice crawls slowly towards the safety and comfort of the long winter nights, finally to rest, to heal, to strengthen, and thus to perpetuate nature’s glorious ice dance of the seasons.”
“Have our standards moved so far, so quickly, that what was an unprecedented meltdown in 2005 is now somehow good news? ”
Very much so, since it is rock solid proof that ‘runaway melting’ of the arctic was and is childish tosh.
The healthy recovery represents a strong indicator that the concept of a ‘trend’ in climatology is intrinsically flawed and that any apparent ‘trends’ are simply part of a larger cycle/drunkards walk.
Go baby ice, Go!!!
It turns out that the “thin, weak, salty” baby ice is actualy strong.
Imagine that, the Ice experts underestimated the baby ice’s strong will to live!!
Boudu: for me this is not good news. This is further proof that any global warming that might be or have been occurring is limited and is reversing.
What’s not to like about a warmer planet??
Similar profile to 2008 but with a less radical time constant and clearly a higher minimum that it’s asymptotic to.
“Have our standards moved so far, so quickly, that what was an unprecedented meltdown in 2005 is now somehow good news?”
Actually, this is the new “standard” in arctic ice reporting:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/09/tech/main5228298.shtml
Aug. 9, 2009
Vast Expanses of Arctic Ice Melt in Summer
Scientists Watch for Possible Record Low of Polar Ice Cap
(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.
__
The new “standard” is for government scientists to make ridiculous claims in the media and then not take responsibility for their claims when they don’t pan out. Please let me know when the AP or CBS publishes an “Arctic Ice Extext Higher Than Expected” news item. Maybe they’ll even cover the rapid refreeze this November, December – or the peak ice extent in March [cue crickets chirping…]
Tyler (05:33:16)
“Well, it’s happening again. What are we going to say this time?”
Great irony!
Bill W
I would submit that it is inappropriate to refer to them as the Main Stream Media any more. If you look at the readership or viewership numbers for the former mainstream media, like ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and the major papers like the New Your Times, they no longer have a legitimate claim for being mainstream in any sense.
Their coverage of major events have been so spotty and defective for so long that the viewer/readers have been abandoning ship as fast as they can load the life boats for several years.
Based on their market share, FOX is the mainstream media right now along with the web blogs like this one. The others have devolved into niche media that cater to an ever smaller audience and we should not give them credit for being movers and shakers in their field when they have obviously lost their way and are themselves in a death spiral melt down of their own.
Perhaps it would be more appropriate to refer to them as the “old line media”, or the “elite media”, or some other term that proper captures the fact that they are no longer journalistic benchmarks, and power players in their field but have made themselves into laughing stocks and caricatures not unlike the grocery store scandal sheet news papers like the National Enquirer. In fact they no longer qualify as “media” in my view, but rather entertainment and comedy outlets.
That said the DMI Daily Mean Temperatures North of 80 degree North data :
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Has gone into a nearly vertical free fall the last few days, so If I was inclined to make a wager it would be that refreeze this year will be as dramatic as last year.
Larry
Russia already has quite a fleet of nuclear powered icebreaker ships with more being added for the expressed intent to open shipping between Western Europe and the Pacific. Despite news coverage, the recent “historic” Arctic transit of two commercial ships really had nothing to do with global warming but with a focused effort to get foreign currency by operating a virtual ‘Arctic canal’. Enabling tourist cruises to the north pole looks to be lucrative as well.
http://www.nti.org/db/nisprofs/russia/naval/civilian/icebrkrs.htm
“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.”
FWIW, the 2009 maximum extent in March/April was well above average. (The maximum isn’t as reliable as the minimum–but it’s not nothing, either.)
Standby for deafening silence from MSM and RC types…or, more likely headlines along the theme of “3rd/4th lowest ice in recorded history” spin.
Can you just imagine the screaming hysteria that would be being bandied about if the last two years had seen a reduction of ~500,000 sqkm per year…
Cheers
Mark.
With some luck it will cut the 2005 ice extend the next two weeks.
It will be interesting to watch the speed of the refreeze and the temperatures this season.
Anyhow, it’s nice to know there is nothing wrong with our world and all is well within
normal parameters, including the Arctic.
Even the current Solar Minimum is nothing special.
According to scientists the sun spends 20% of the time “inactive”.
We have to be patient to see if the solar minimum is going to effect global temperatures because it takes about five to six years for the effects to kick in.
Eye witness reports from the times of the Maunder and Dalton Minimum report Northern Light events observed over London and Central Europe and even Crete, extreme weather events, droughts, hail storms and extreme winters.
The big question is what mechanism caused all of this and what part of the events could be described to the frequent volcanic eruptions that took place during these times.
This is quite a nice read about the subject and it’s available for free:
“The Maunder Minimum and the variable sun-earth connection”
By Willie Soon, Steven H. Yaskell
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HfdG-HPiBdMC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=weather+during+the+maunder+minimum&source=bl&ots=LcJ3R1P0E9&sig=ZvwHQEIP-suygtWe1rcSKvKQqE8&hl=en&ei=guKuSseMOoGangOerqm5BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#v=onepage&q=weather%20during%20the%20maunder%20minimum&f=false
14 09 2009
The fact that the sun does not show any sunspots does not mean that there is no activity.
Spaceweather today reports the following:
SOLAR ACTIVITY: Today, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is monitoring an enormous prominence on the sun’s southeastern limb. Behold three hours of fiery action:
The prominence has been growing for more than a day. As it towers higher and higher above the surface of the sun, the odds increase that it will erupt and come crashing down–a must-see. Readers, if you have a solar telescope, train your optics on the sun’s southeastern limb.
Sandy (07:54:24) : “…any apparent ‘trends’ are simply part of a larger cycle/drunkards walk.”
Izzat wha’ my ol’ buddy Aaal Gore means when he saysh we’re headin’ fer a tippling point?
Ron de Haan (08:30:39)
Is that it in the lower left there?
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/eit_304/1024/latest.html
Juraj V. (02:21:42) :
AMO index for August is out, being 0.205. Looks like it is going down now, possibly going neutral/negative around winter time like it did last winter. European folks, get your snow blowers ready.
To compare:
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2009/anomnight.9.14.2009.gif
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2005/anomnight.9.12.2005.gif
There were two previous low points in September, one on the 3rd and one on the 7th. In each case there was more ice on the following day, but the ice diminished again after that. Whether the 13th is indeed the bottom for the year remains to be seen. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. I’ll stick with my tradition of only making after-casts.
Ron de Haan (08:30:39) :
SOLAR ACTIVITY: Today, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is monitoring an enormous prominence on the sun’s southeastern limb. Behold three hours of fiery action
If there are no WATTS around nothing will happend 🙂
Btw, JAXA has inched up again to 5,276,563
Wow… 20,000 km^2 would correspond to a freezing speed of about 5.89 km/h if it was a cube… that is about the speed of a walking person.
oopppss.. I meant a square of 20,000 km^2
to-
MikeW (08:17:57)
more icebreakers–
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/14/north_eastern_passage/
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=globalwarming&action=display&thread=346&page=109#29638
p.s.–sunspots create
cooler earth –means shrinking crust–
POSSIBLY POSSIBLY
creating crustal shifts and
increasing volcanoes–
It has been adjusted UPWARDS another 7,000 so we had a 27,000 gain yesterday. Looks like I missed my prediction by a day. I had predicted September 8 for the minimum on another blog.
But we are seeing a continued recovery from the 2007 wind-driven anomaly. There is also the possibility of a recovery of a different sort.
If the period 1979 to present (the period over which we have satellite data) represents a time of warm PDO and if we have slipped into a longer term cool PDO phase, we could recover beyond the 1979 to 2000 mean in a few years time. In other words, 1979 to 2000 might represent the mean during a warm PDO and might not be the mean over an entire PDO cycle. 30 years is simply not enough data when we have muti-decadal cycles at work.
More of the new “standard” in arctic ice reporting, from the AP and none other than Mark “the arctic is screaming” Serreze:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090911/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_arctic_passage
2 German cargo ships pass through ‘Arctic Passage’
By MATT MOORE and SETH BORENSTEIN, Associated Press Writers Matt Moore And Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Writers Fri Sep 11, 2:35 pm ET
FRANKFURT Two German merchant ships have traversed the fabled Northeast Passage after global warming and melting ice opened a route from South Korea along Russia’s Arctic coast to Siberia.
…
“We are seeing an expression of climate change here,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. “The Arctic is warming; we’re losing the sea ice cover. The more frequent opening of that Northeast Passage is part of the process we’re seeing.”
“The Arctic is becoming a blue ocean,” Serreze told The Associated Press.
For the last few years, including this year, navigator Roald Amundsen’s famous Northwest Passage has been navigable. Then in 2007, the more crucial deep water channel called McClure Strait opened up and now the Northeast Passage, Serreze said. The passage “is the traditional choke point,” Serreze said.
…
This year is shaping up to have the third lowest amount of Arctic sea ice on record, just behind the worst year set in 2007 and in 2008. But just because 2009 is slightly up from the past two years, it is not an upward trend or a recovery, Serreze said. It reflects a change in local weather patterns that occurred in August, he said.
“It’s certainly part of the overall decline of sea ice that we’ve been seeing,” Serreze said.
It must be getting rather cold up there. Look at what’s in store for the eastern U.S. next week:
http://wxtalk.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/holy-cold-snap-batman/
Interesting to note the ridge in west, trough in east setup that usually doesn’t occur during El Nino events.