This is the press release sent out by NSIDC today (sans image below). Instead of celebrating a two year recovery, they push the “ice free” theme started last year by Marc Serreze. There’s no joy in mudville apparently. My prediction for 2010 is a third year of increase in the September minimum to perhaps 5.7 to 5.9 million square kilometers. Readers should have a look again at how the experts did this year on short term forecasts. – Anthony
Image source: NOAA News
Arctic sea ice reaches minimum extent for 2009, third lowest ever recorded
CU-Boulder’s Snow and Ice Data Center analysis shows negative summertime ice trend continues
The Arctic sea ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent for the year, the third-lowest recorded since satellites began measuring sea ice extent in 1979, according to the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center.
While this year’s September minimum extent was greater than each of the past two record-setting and near-record-setting low years, it is still significantly below the long-term average and well outside the range of natural climate variability, said NSIDC Research Scientist Walt Meier. Most scientists believe the shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases being pumped into Earth’s atmosphere.
Atmospheric circulation patterns helped the Arctic sea ice spread out in August to prevent another record-setting minimum, said Meier. But most of the 2009 September Arctic sea ice is thin first- or second-year ice, rather than thicker, multi-year ice that used to dominate the region, said Meier.
The minimum 2009 sea-ice extent is still about 620,000 square miles below the average minimum extent measured between 1979 and 2000 — an area nearly equal to the size of Alaska, said Meier. “We are still seeing a downward trend that appears to be heading toward ice-free Arctic summers,” Meier said.
CU-Boulder’s NSIDC will provide more detailed information in early October with a full analysis of the 2009 Arctic ice conditions, including aspects of the melt season and conditions heading into the winter ice-growth season. The report will include graphics comparing 2009 to the long-term Arctic sea-ice record.
NSIDC is part of CU-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and is funded primarily by NASA.
For more information visit http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/, contact NSIDC’s Katherine Leitzell at 303-492-1497 or leitzell@nsidc.org or Jim Scott in the CU-Boulder news office at 303-492-3114 or jim.scott@colorado.edu.
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BTW, in regard to the paper I linked in the above post, I would note that it was originally published more than five years ago and though there doesn’t seem to be a direct operational link between NSIDC and IABP, I would find it hard to imagine that Serreze et al are unaware of it. To me this makes it hard to put any but the most negative possible construction on their persistent efforts to blame declining sea ice on CO2 and AGW, unless they have magically discovered a link between CO2 and the state of the Beaufort Gyre that I haven’t heard about.
But most of the 2009 September Arctic sea ice is thin first- or second-year ice, rather than thicker, multi-year ice that used to dominate the region, said Meier.
September 2010, press release:
But most of the 2010 September Arctic sea ice is thin second- or third-year ice, rather than thicker, multi-year ice that used to dominate the region, said Meier.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961:
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
A quick question for somebody if anyone feels like doing the math.
At the moment the amount of ice left at the end of each Arctic summer year on year is increasing rather than decreasing. At the current rate of increase, how long will it be before the amount of summer ice exceeds the 1979-2000 mean?
“While the ice extent this year is higher than the last two years, scientists do not consider this to be a recovery. Despite conditions less favorable to ice loss, the 2009 minimum extent is still 24% below the 1979-2000 average, and 20% below the thirty-year 1979-2008 average minimum. In addition, the Arctic is still dominated by younger, thinner ice, which is more vulnerable to seasonal melt. The long-term decline in summer extent is expected to continue in future years.”
How can this be considered a valid analysis of the facts?
“scientists do not consider this to be a recovery”
What scientists? NSIDC ones? all of them? WHO? What would constitute a recovery? a mile of Ice over Manhattan?
Up nearly 20% off the lows of 2007 (which they seem to think is a noteworthy number when looking from the other direction) what a bunch of biased nonsense the text and language could have been lifted from any “Green” group website written by a volunteer.
I expect more from a group of scientists, like some objectivity, a framing of the analysis as to what they are looking for to determine a recovery or loss and perhaps a comparison from their projections?
Finally the Canadian Ice Service seems to be a much more reliable source for Ice Conditions and actual extents and thickness. I will not be referencing NSIDC any longer because they are obviously compromised from within politically.
But most of the 2009 September Arctic sea ice is thin first- or second-year ice, rather than thicker, multi-year ice that used to dominate the region, said Meier.
We have heard nothing about the effect of the wind on the extent of the ice melt.
The ice circulates within the Arctic. If the wind direction favours the Iceland/Norway gap then ice loss will be greater.
The NSIDC also fails to mention the open water at the north pole in 1959,62,67.
What we have here is “a failure to communicate”. You guys just don’t understand “AGW Speak”! Let me translate:
“…the third-lowest recorded since satellites began measuring sea ice extent in 1979….” means “The arctic sea ice is rebuilding like a house afire!”
When you see an announcement that “Global average temperature was the 95th highest in 100 years”, you may assume we have entered a second “Little Ice Age”.
Gotta’ bend your mind just a bit to understand “AGW Speak”.
I just noticed my California State taxes are the tenth lowest in the last ten years! Any lower and I may just have to get out of here!
CH
Apologies to Dave Wendt.
His comment is much more detailed and profound.
I disagree that multi year ice is stronger than one year ice. 1 year ice may even be stronger. If a lake freezes up in a couple of days and it is 20cm thick and it is from one laye you have a nice solid peace. If you have periods of melting and re freezing you probally have the same 20cm but know it excist with 3layers. and one of the layers can break in a instant wich makes it weaker.
“September minimum extent …is still …well outside the range of natural climate variability.” (620.000 square miles)
this natural variability added about 1.000.000 square miles in the last two years alone, so this statement is complete rubbish.
jeroen (00:50:00) :
“I disagree that multi year ice is stronger than one year ice. 1 year ice may even be stronger.”
I agree. I was many times told at school, army etc. that new solid ice is much stronger than weak spring ice which can break easily although being thick. Per cm new ice is much stronger.
So does refreezing of old sea ice make it somehow stronger than solid new ice?
I’ve also read that sea ice don’t get any thicker after three years. So after that it doesn’t matter if its 3 or 1000 years old.
Flanagan, you should learn one rule: never negotiate against yourself.
what are the effects of snow(depth) on the ice growth dynamics
since snow slows down thickning of the ice (in september), but also slows down melt (april)
i can imagine cold(er) temps in september/october and little precipitation followed by massive snowfall would have a positive effect aswell?
the same goes for glaciers, this year in the alps got 2 major snowdumps during the summer. It protected the ice and slowed down the melt.
The Norwegian Prof. Ole Humlum’s site “Climate4you” is one of the best sites I have come across for information on northern hemisphere weather and climate both in the scientific sense and in the historical sense.
The section on Climate and History has a large amount of information on how the Arctic ice has varied over the decades and centuries and the history of a number of ships that have made the trip across the Arctic ocean.
The decades through the 20th century are particularly revealing as Prof. Prof. Humlum has used the reports and the the media of the times to trace the history of travel and ship movements in the Arctic.
For instance, few people would know that the German auxiliary cruiser , the Komet traversed the North East passage with the help of a Russian ice breaker in 1940 / 41 to go raiding in the Pacific.
Or the warming of the Arctic around Spitzbergen in 1922 or the sinking of the MV Hedtoft with the loss of all 95 of her passengers and crew on her maiden voyage in 1959 when she was hit by a severe storm south of Greenland as the ice spread southward after a warm period in Greenland from 1925 to 1947.
Much of the historical information Prof. Humlum has placed on his site gives the lie to the current fashionable attitude that the Arctic had a non changing and stable ice situation until mankind came along with his CO2 and warmed things up somewhat.
He has documented large changes over many decades and centuries.
and most of all, he has documented all of this from a north European perspective.
With apologies to our American friends, he has done a service in this in that we can see another climate viewpoint rather than just the American perspective which is all we seem to ever get.
There is an enormous amount of historical and technical information in Prof. Humlum’s site in an easily readable form and many hours can be spent going through his site.
Ole Humlum’s biography; Professor of Physical Geography at the Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, since 2003.
Adjunct Professor of Physical Geography at the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), since 2003.
Web site ; Climate4you; http://www.climate4you.com/
What a sad, sad, statement. Look at it.
“”The minimum 2009 sea-ice extent is still about 620,000 square miles below the average minimum extent measured between 1979 and 2000 — an area nearly equal to the size of Alaska, said Meier. “We are still seeing a downward trend that appears to be heading toward ice-free Arctic summers,” Meier said.”
An arbitrary 21 years of satellite surveillance is held up as the paradigm by which humans measure and judge millions of years of Arctic ice cover. Mr Meier seems to be counting numbers in the same style as a one time acquaintance I knew, who had married an unfaithful wife. She slept with 20 other men in the first year, 27 in the second year, 31 in the third, but only 18 in the fourth year and then 12 in the fifth year.
To cheer him up, I said that in the approaching sixth year, she’d probably be unfaithful only 4-5 times, but he had somehow become convinced that she was heading towards more infidelity, not less. My prediction for the sixth year was uncannily accurate. The figure was 4, but the cuckold killed himself at the beginning of the seventh year, as it seemed that his wife had reduced her wayward behaviour to zero. She wanted a divorce in order to marry a real man.
So it is in Boulder. NSIDC is going to have to divorce itself from the AGWarmists in its ranks as Global Cooling continues and desperately hope its paymasters do not question whether NSDIC is value for money. After all, is it really sensible to employ staff who read graphs upside down? Underlying downward trend! Huh! That’s political speak, not science.
The presence or absence of Arctic ice is as natural as is the inevitable and forthcoming extinction of the human race, especially if the US aids our self destruction with statements about CO2 being a pollutant. That’s barmy!!
Flanagan (23:34:59) :
References please, not hearsay.
” Ben (23:15:13) :
I’d like to coin a new term – “Debate Deniers”
The debate deniers at the BBC have described this 23% increase in Arctic summer ice compared with 2007 as a “pause”.
…Yes, amazing isn’t it? On the same page as reporting the Arctic is expanding and that temperatures have fallen two or three degrees in two years, they are also declaring that ” The UK ‘must plan’ for warmer future” and “Climate scenarios ‘being realised” and “Changes ‘amplify Arctic warming”.
The NSIDC seem reluctant to accept the concept of natural cycles of cooling and warming. The start of Satellite measuring in 1979 coincided with peak ice, which is why they always speak of subsequent decline;
Link 1
http://geology.com/articles/northwest-passage.shtml
Ice extent maximum- Depends if you are talking winter or summer but ‘decline’ starts around 1979 from a high point.
Link 2 This also shows the same;
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.jpg
link 3
The IPCC report confirms this p351/2 figures 4.8 4.9 4.10
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter4.pdf
Link 4
The concerns over global cooling in the 70’s did have some basis in fact. There were a series of low temperatures in many arctic areas during the 70’s which ice would have corresponded to by growing.
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Scientific/Arctic.htm
As the IPCC show, the start of the satellite period therefore roughly coincided with a period of peak ice-so it is not at all surprising that as part of its natural cycle it should subsequently decline.
link 5
The IPCC are not very good at their historic reconstructions and generally view actual observations as ‘anecdotal.’ They seem to believe that history did not start before 1979.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice/#comments
This article examines the arctic melting in the period 1810-1860 -see notes at bottom of article with additional references.
Link 6
These are two good studies showing the arctic melting from the 1920’s to 1940’s posted elsewhere;
“I will cite two of these studies, which show (a) a warm period during the 1930s and 1940s with temperatures as high as those of today and (b) reduced sea ice extent during this period, which only later returned to the high levels measured at the start of the latest retreating cycle in 1979 (when satellite measurements started), i.e. your point.
ftp://ftp.whoi.edu/pub/users/mtimmermans/ArcticSymposiumTalks/Smolyanitsky.pdf
http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Chylek/greenland_warming.html
link 7 The melting in the period 1920-1940 is very well documented. I have posted various articles on it including newspaper stories.
Expeditions to the arctic to view the melting ice became the equivalent of todays celebrity jaunts to the area. The most famous were those mounted by Bob Bartlett on the Morrissey. I have carried extracts from his diary before-remember the observation of the mile wide face of a glacier falling in to the sea?
There are pathe news reels of his voyages which your parents may have watched in their youth, and books on the subject. Here is a bibliography of material relating to him.
http://www.nlpubliclibraries.ca/nlcollection/pdf/guides/NL_Collection_Guide_11.pdf
Certain of us seem reluctant to learn the lessons of history-in this case that there are periods of melting and refreeze that appear to follow a roughly 60/70 year cycle. We may or may not be at the low point in the cycle-that will become clearer over the next five years.
Whatever the alarmists may believe, at present our modern era is not displaying any climate characteristics that have not been experienced in past ages of humanity.
tonyb
The minimum 2009 sea-ice extent is still about 620,000 square miles below the average minimum extent measured between 1979 and 2000 — an area nearly equal to the size of Alaska, said Meier. “We are still seeing a downward trend that appears to be heading toward ice-free Arctic summers,” Meier said.
Following on from Cassandra King’s comments & one or two others, firstly this is an “average”, therefore there are always highs & lows to get an “average” & any result could be below the “average” & still be meaningless. However, as opposed to goal-post shifting as I am, shouldn’t they shift this 1979-2000 nonsense as we’re fast approaching 2010, some 50% of the aforementioned time period, & perhaps ditto for global temperatures from 1961-1990, etc. It’s just best-fit curve exercise after all!
Oh & could someone please define precisely what on Earth the natural climate variability is, (no grey areas please, no “liklies” or “unliklies” thrown in), over what time scale it is measured & why that particular time frame, & what evidence there is to support the such a definition? To my knowledge nobody has been able to do so to date.
O/T but displays the pro warmist mentality still prevalent despite global cooling:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/17/jeremy-clarkson-horse-manure-protest
At least Monbiot is no longer quite so cocksure as he was…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/sep/16/global-temperature-cooling
Anyone!
I have previously posted here about the findings of the Royal Society sponsored expeditions to the Arctic from 1820 to investigate previous melting. A considerable number of observations were made about the causes of melting, which, apart from direct warmth on the surface ice, revolved round wind patterns winds, and undersea temperatures warmed by currents (which they took to be a branch of the gulf stream as coconuts were found in it).
Most of the ice is under water so it is particularly vulnerable to melt by warmer water under the ice pack and around it.
I have tried to obtain modern sources of actual temperatures in the arctic at various levels at the sea surface and under it (measurements of old were taken to five fathoms and more) so I can compare. However there seems to be very litle information in order to make a fair comparision.
Can anyone point me in the right direction-I am not after a homogenised version that coivers a vast area but rather specfic locations.
tonyb
Do I spot a 7-year wave in Antarctic sea ice extent? http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.south.jpg Am I seeing things?
We are still seeing a downward trend that appears to be heading toward ice-free Arctic summers, Meier said. O.K.!!!!! I get it now. Assuming I understand this correctly, regardless of the fact that artic ice is growing again, we should still see the artic as warming because of man. I’m guessing that artic ice scientists (like Miers) got together and postulated that, if in one year the artic ice didn’t rebound to pre 2k levels, spells doom. Guys like this need to have their doctorates stripped from them for deceiving the American people and the world at large. What a joke these men will be . Mudd ring a bell? If there is any trend, it will take time. Artic ice growth, will take time. Cooling temperatures, will take time. What Meirs should have said was that artic see ice, despite concerns of man-made global warming, is rebounding. Just how about once, someone on the Al Gore/James Hanson payroll, break rank and tell the damn truth. Expose these frauds. So what you lose funding. So what you lose your job. In the end you would think that integrity would matter to scientists and engineers and law makers. If Einstien was alive, these men would hide from shame for discrediting the scientific community. Enuf said. -David Alan-
“…each of the past two record-setting and near-record-setting low years…”
So this year was actually an near-near-record setting low year.
“…it is still significantly below the long-term average and well outside the range of natural climate variability…”
Significantly below and well outside. Not inside the strike zone, eh? Sounds like Mother Nature is throwing us a curve ball…
“Most scientists believe the shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases being pumped into Earth’s atmosphere”
Wonder what the assertion of “most scientists” is based upon? Anyone get the poll?
Anthony,
“a two year recovery”?
How do you combine that with
“While this year’s September minimum extent was greater than each of the past two record-setting and near-record-setting low years, it is still significantly below the long-term average and well outside the range of natural climate variability, said NSIDC Research Scientist Walt Meier. ”
Even including the last two years, the downward trend in sea ice extent has accelerated! How is that a recovery?
Spin – spin – spin. I feel really sorry when a respected scientist like Walt Meier is forced to spout such a load of hogwash to keep the money comng in from those in power – it must really hurt.
This is yet another example of ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune.’ and is a good proxy for how science has been rail-roaded into providing the results the powers that be want to see. Should the climate fail to cooperate, then Spin – spin – spin.
“We are still seeing a downward trend that appears to be heading toward ice-free Arctic summers,” Meier said.
I’m sure Walt is fully aware that the amount of sea ice at the poles is driven by many interlinked and unpredictable chaotic climate factors. This means that the amount of ice at any one time is not forecastable, as evidenced by the poor estimates made by many ‘experts’ for the ice extent at the end of the 2009 melt season.
There are no linear trends in the outputs from a chaotic system, so no surprise that the models get it wrong (unless by lchance). It’s a great pity Walt couldn’t state this simple truth.