Yesterday I looked at JAXA data and ventured that:
“Arctic sea ice melt appears to have turned the corner for 2009”
The Sept 15th JAXA Arctic Sea Ice extent graph was published this evening about 8PM PST (and updated overnight which is the image now shown) and shows an increase in sea ice for the second day in a row. It seems clear that Arctic sea ice is now on the rise.
The Sept 14th value was: 5,276,563 km2
You can see this minimum and upturn clearly in the zoomed graph below.
I expect this JAXA value will increase again in about 4 hours once JAXA finishes QC and final data analysis. I’ll post an update when it happens (assuming it is not too late). (UPDATED 7:45AM PDT) 9/16)
Here’s the table of data:
| 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 |
| 9 | 15 | 2009 | 5301094 |
Barring an about face by Nature, the 2009 Arctic Sea Ice minimum occurred on Sept 13th with 5,249,844 km2
UPDATE: WUWT reader Bruce Richardson made a nice zoomed comparison graph, which he offered in comments, that I have added to this article.
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Question .. do IARC-JAXA use the same data as Cryosphere??
The reason I ask is that when looking at the “tale of the tape”, as well as the ice coverage data on both IJ and cryo … it appears that there is close to 2 million sq. kilometers difference between 2007 and 2009, yet, in the anomaly graphs, there only appears to be about 1.5 million difference. I looking at the JAXA data, there is a bigger difference between 2009 and 2008, than there was between 2008 and 2007, … yet, the “tale of the tape” seems to indicate otherwise.
Wondering if this means anything . . . .
Yes, 2009 minimum is higher than 2007 and 2008.
But eyeballing the multi-year chart, it also looks like the 2009 inflection point is earlier than ALL the years plotted.
Yes, I see that 2008 has a little blip in the first week of September and we probably need to see a few more days but I wonder if/what the significance of an earlier turn would be?
From Time Magazine 1937.
“*Across the Pole is the Northeast Passage to China along the top of Norway & Russia. Sebastian Cabot initiated its search in 1553. Henry Hudson twice attempted a passage but it was not until 1879 that the route was navigated. Now Russia currently operates 160 freighters on summer schedules in the Northeast Passage’s more open but colder waters.”
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,770864-2,00.html
Question: Does the previous year have an influence on the current year? It would seem to make sense that it would. For example, if you have low sea ice one year, you have a low baseline as you enter the next year and it would take extremely cold weather to overcome that. I’m just wondering if some of the “trends” that people pick up are really just responses to the occasional outlier and it just takes time to revert to the mean. Thx
masonmart
What a gratuitously rude person you are!
“The merchant ships MV Beluga Fraternity and MV Beluga Foresight arrived this week in Yamburg, Siberia, their owner Beluga Shipping GmbH said Friday. They traveled from Ulsan, South Korea, in late July to Siberia by way of the Northeast Passage, a sea lane that, in years past, was avoided because of its heavy ice floes.”
WUWT?
This a real COLD POST
Note at the Arctic ROOS site that ice area is increasing but ice extent is still decreasing. Perhaps this suggests that the ice is being blown together and compacted. Hence, more free ocean surface will be exposed directly to cold Arctic air (as opposed to being insulated by first year ice). One might then expect enhanced ice production this winter.
I’m curious: are we using the same satellite(s) that were used to measure the extent in 1978 as we do in 2009? How many times have the instruments changed, if any? What is the history of malfunctions in said satellites?
I may be barking up the wrong tree, but the 1978 to 2000 variation seems too flat compared to recent variations, after detrending.
This could indicate two things:
The climate is undergoing rapid variations causing these wild swings;
The instruments today are much more accurate and capable of monitoring at a greater area resolution with a greater time resolution.
The former, I think is unlikely: ice doesn’t melt so rapidly in response to even a few degrees variation (but may in response to dramatic shifts in ocean current/winds – I don’t know the mechanics of ice thaw/freeze).
With cursory screwing around with the detrended error data, applying a similar error to earlier measured data (that is, creating a what-if scenario for earlier data) a similar trend that we are seeing today can be observed. This isn’t a scientific application, but a more pragmatic one.
Having dealt with randomly perturbed signals output from control systems, changes in trends such as shown by the cryosphere ‘tape’ data would *tend* to indicate a measurement/recording issue rather than a control issue (not always; a signal *can* exhibit larger absolute errors at a smaller setpoint than at a higher setpoint, but this is generally a figment of digital systems or poorly tuned analog systems).
Applicable to this issue, a long-term control (global temperature for example) would not directly influence the perturbations/error around the main trend, and yet we see a much more dynamic measured signal today than we did a few decades ago.
Fundamentally, the more you look, the more you see; but what you see may not be really there.
So, at least amongst the more thoughtful (who shouldn’t have been there anyway) we can turn off hysterical mode re Arctic Ice. If we get another good year next year, then the following year, 2011-2012, is when we’d really see if there is a possibility of breaking the long-term trend on the upside. That’d go beyond “let’s turn off the hysteria, please” to more fundamental questioning.
The reality is, it is a rube’s game on both sides to assign the most hysterical of the other side as the opposition that needs discrediting to bring the core assumptions crashing to the ground. Shooting fish in a barrel and then claiming to have killed Moby Dick is unworthy of all concerned.
Does one year influence the next?
Only if the maximum reliably influences the minimum and ’96 was the lowest max, but nearly the highest min.
So ‘trends’ of a few % of total annual variation are essentially meaningless.
I remain intrigued by DaveE’s idea that the ice-caps act as a long term thermostat since super-cold atmosphere above ice-caps reduces polar heat radiation allowing more heat to accrue in the tropics.
Ice melts.
Water freezes.
Repeat each year.
oh, and its worst than we thought, or is it better now?
I need the media to inform me…..
Enjoy the warmth folks…
The wind is still a big factor here, but in the development of pseudo-multi year ice. Which begs the question, is thick ice the result of growth rings aka like trees, or is thick ice the result of some kind of cyclical/oscillating wind change along Fram Strait? If this wind pattern continues (wind direction during melt season primarily inward instead of outward), we will continue to see less and less summer melt. If I were a cutting edge Arctic scientist bent on making a discovery, I would be pouring over summer wind, PDO, AMO, and jet stream data right now. Why? The historical Arctic SST and air temperature fluctuations cannot explain the degree of variation in ice melt patterns over time. And GHG (CO2) long-wave infrared cannot melt ice that quickly. That leaves wind, jet stream, and PDO, AMO factors. My instincts tell me that is where to look for correlations.
Andrew 00:20
You stated: ” But data from the last few years clearly indicates that the Arctic is cooling, and Antartica is if anything colder than the long term average.”
I don’t think even reputable skeptics can make those two claims based on all the data over the last 30 years no matter how much it has been massaged.
At best, the rate of Artic warming may have leveled off but there has been no Artic cooling that I’ve seen anywhere.
Thanks
William
What I find interesting is the acceleration graph. I use a 15 day smoothing of data which may be too much, but it takes the major variation out of the plots. The rate of change of slope (acceleration) is equal to the 2008 rate and is about the fastest for this time of year except for 2004. With a 15 day smoothing, I am two weeks behind in my actual plots though.
Maybe a 5 day smoothing would be just as good. Anyone care to comment on smoothing?
Regards
Bob
sorry I know this is off topic but:
The winter has started really early here in the Southern French Alps and Col du Baynette has just been closed to traffic due to snow.
Am I the only one who sees signs that Fall is coming just a bit earlier this year? Is this an El Nino, La Nina effect?
@ur momisugly Mark Fawcett (00:54:23)
……took the words right out of my mouth – than you, Mark, you saved me a lot of typing and grumpiness.
Michael
Sandy (06:41:57) :
I remain intrigued by DaveE’s idea that the ice-caps act as a long term thermostat since super-cold atmosphere above ice-caps reduces polar heat radiation allowing more heat to accrue in the tropics.
I’ve also thought about the following conjecture:
The ice-caps act as thermostats thus:
i. Ice cover acts predominantly as an insulator (a well established physical process, tis why fish don’t freeze in lakes) – trapping oceanic heat and preventing its loss to the much colder polar atmosphere (and hence to space) this effect is greatest during the coldest months and dominates any heat generation from the sun on open water during the briefer summer (due to low angle of incidence).
ii. Ice cover reduces (say by an increase in ocean temps, due to heating in the tropics + ocean circulation) – this reduced ice cover exposes greater areas of open ocean to the atmosphere causing greater heat loss, ergo the oceans cool down.
iii. Cooler oceans + cold atmospheric temperatures result in greater ice extent – negative feedback complete.
Now all that may be far to simplistic but it has always struck me that the positive feedback argument of “less ice = more exposed water = more water heating from sun = even less ice” simply can’t be right, the ice-caps would be gone in a flash.
Just my 2p’s worth.
Cheers
Mark.
“Daryl M (21:41:22) :
RE: Michael (21:20:10) :
“It seems that there has been a dramatic fall in September Arctic temps this year.”
Temperature is tracking the average. What’s dramatic about that?”
I believe he’s comparing to the previous few years. Both of you would be correct.
Roger (06:14:31) : to get a good handle of the travel of the 2 (German) ships in the Northeast passage, check out http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/09/turd-eaters.html
And please remember that passage through the Northeast passage was not uncommon 70 years ago.
William (07:31:40) : “At best, the rate of Artic warming may have leveled off but there has been no Artic cooling that I’ve seen anywhere.”
You may wish to look at what GISS has to say on this subject. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2009&month_last=08&sat=4&sst=0&type=trends&mean_gen=1212&year1=1940&year2=2008&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
Greenland has cooled in the last 70 years. And perhaps the rest of the Arctic is a question mark. There have been egregious siting issues in Canada and Alaska that have biased their trend upwards. And Siberia has had numerous problems with station drop-offs and incentives to overstate cold temperatures 70 years ago. I am not aware of similar problems in Greenland. Also, you might want to check out John Daly’s work on Arctic temperature trends.
If the 2009 low of September 13 does hold up, the increase in ice coverage since the 2007 minimum is a little more than the combined areas of Texas, Oklahoma, Maine and Vermont.
Extrapolation is a dangerous enterprise. Extrapolation beyond 10% of the length of the trend even more so.
Ice cover acts predominantly as an insulator (a well established physical process, tis why fish don’t freeze in lakes)
Fish don’t freeze in lakes because their body fluids are more saline than the water.
Where water is more saline than that in the fish, the fish will freeze.
Antarctic waters are particularly saline and as a result have few fish for precisely this reason.
Gene Nemetz thank you for providing the DMI Sea Ice Extent site. Do you know why the current value shown is 4 million sq km whereas the JAXA graph shows 5.3 million sq km? What is the difference between the two? Thank you.