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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Unless of course we stop playing the game and give up on CO2 as a primary driver of global climate. Expectations from “basic physical reasoning” look OK in a static 2D mathematical model on the computer screen in my centrally heated office… but meanwhile back in the real world… “Deadliest Catch”
From my layman’s perspective it appears that 30 years of satellite data for Arctic ice extent is barely enough to establish a climate trend. To represent that 30 years of data is sufficient to establish a base line from which evaluate Arctic sea ice conditions is absurd when thousands of years of data are needed to determine the range of climate variability.
I hope that Anthony and other contributors to this Blog are making lists (evidence) of the self acclaimed “climate scientists” and their work and press releases. When the public comprehends the scope of the fraud and the costs contained in their “peer reviewed scientific research”, they will demand Nuremberg style trials to defrock and punish the perpetrators. These lists are the source of information needed to obtain accountability.
I submit that a purge will be necessary to preserve the credibility of ethical scientists whose work uses the scientific method and empirical data.
But..but..but… Al said it was different this time.
Reasonable questions for Dr. Meier
If there were to be a recovery in arctic ice minimums:
1. What would it look like?
2. How is that different than what we see in the last few years?
What percentage of the 30-year low in arctic ice extent was due to wind patterns pushing the into the Atlantic?
Paddy (17:58:08) :
From my layman’s perspective it appears that 30 years of satellite data for Arctic ice extent is barely enough to establish a climate trend. To represent that 30 years of data is sufficient to establish a base line from which evaluate Arctic sea ice conditions is absurd when thousands of years of data are needed to determine the range of climate variability.
If you subscribe to 60 year cycles then 30 is perfect so long as it is the ‘up’ 30.
I hope that Anthony and other contributors to this Blog are making lists (evidence) of the self acclaimed “climate scientists” and their work and press releases. When the public comprehends the scope of the fraud and the costs contained in their “peer reviewed scientific research”, they will demand Nuremberg style trials to defrock and punish the perpetrators. These lists are the source of information needed to obtain accountability.
It would be like pinning a doctor down for malpractice. Lobotomy was once the ‘cure all’ for what we might now treat with Lithium. They were ‘only using the best available science’. In any case, at the rate the ‘goal posts’ are changed, you wouldn’t know what to charge them with. Warming is cooling, more Ice is less, ‘the dog ate our source data’ …. it would take an army of lawyers the next thousand years to sort out the charges.
Ron de Haan, read the article by Mark Vogan and believe his predictions are correct. There is one small point, ‘those scary winters of the late 1800’s and 1900’s when regular freezing of the Thames…’
It should realistically say ‘late 1700’s and early 1800’s.’
NASA have a published sea ice data page, with graphs and datasets where the data ends Dec 2007.
Why is that?
http://polynya.gsfc.nasa.gov/seaice_datasets.html
From my layman’s perspective 30 year of satellite data sets are barely sufficient to measure climate trends once a proper baseline is determined. The baseline requires thousands of years of data to identify the scope of climate variability. The climate-modelers’ representations that satellite data alone is representative of the universe of climate change is absurd. They use rigged data and faux research to promote their alarmist message.
The AGW advocate-scientists have sold their scientific souls in order to confer political power and wealth upon themselves and their handlers.
I hope that Anthony and other contributors to this Blog are making lists of the AGW advocates along with their work product of “peer reviewed” research and
attendant press releases. When the public comes to realize the scope of their fraud they will demand Nuremberg style trials to convict, purge and punish the perpetrators.
I submit that this process is essential if the credibility of ethical scientists and their work based upon scientific method and empirical data is to be preserved.
[REPLY – Now, now, let’s not have any talk of Nuremberg. I am also a skeptic (lukewarmer), but I must object to that coming from either side. ~ Evan]
I think it is clear that 1st year ice doesn’t stand up as well as mature ice
A plausible and in my opinion high likely cause of the rapid reduction in Arctic ice in the few years up to 2007 and the even more rapid increase since. Is that the mature or old ice had accumulated airborne particles at the level of the previous years ice melt. These accumulated particles progressively over years reduced the ice’s albedo causing accelerating melt.
Of course once the mature ice melts completely the accumulated particles disappear into the ocean and the new ice that forms is free of the multi-year particle accumulation and will be less likely to melt in summer until it accumulates a number of years of particles.
This explains why the new ice stubbornly refuses to melt as predicted. And I expect the summer ice extent to increase for several more years, until the cycle repeats.
Note that Antarctic sea ice has nothing like the pre/post 2007 melt/refreeze, which means the cause must be restricted to the NH, which particulate pollution is.
Judging by this chart:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/sea.ice.anomaly.timeseries.jpg
… the statement that this is the third lowest extent “on record” is not even true.
It seems that late 2006 reached a lower extent than 2009 has so far which makes 2009 only the fourth lowest extent since 1979.
Ugh.
When did everyone decide to ignore Physics? Given the 2007 minimum, even a trend towards re-freezing will take recovery time. Everything in the last two years is exactly what would be expected in the early stages of ice recovery, and yet otherwise intelligent people just can’t see anything past “third lowest.”
Anyone who thought we’d jump from 2007 minimums to historical average in one or two years could not have been taken seriously. And given that, to lament about 2008 and 2009 levels being indicative of continued warming likewise cannot be taken seriously.
Re: Dave Wendt (23:22:02) [regarding 1988 Arctic Oscillation (AO) Shift & sea ice]
Thanks for the notes Dave.
Looking at their Figure 3 …
Rigor, I.; & Wallace, J.M. (2004). Variations in the Age of Arctic Sea-ice and Summer Sea-ice Extent. Geophysical Research Letters 31. doi: 10.1029/2004GL019492.
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/pdfs/RigorWallace2004.pdf
Abstract & links to arctic sea ice videos:
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/research_seaiceageextent.html
…in conjunction with the following …
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumAO70.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumDJFMwinterNAO.png
…it appears you have pointed out something worthy of further study.
Natural Hockey Stick Blade? …
“Over most of the past century, the Arctic Oscillation alternated between its positive and negative phases. Starting in the 1970s, however, the oscillation has tended to stay in the positive phase, causing lower than normal arctic air pressure and higher than normal temperatures in much of the United States and northern Eurasia.”
http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/patterns/arctic_oscillation.html
(Clearly UHI & AHI are only part of the story.)
Anecdotal evidence from Hudson Bay suggests it has ‘remained frozen much longer this year than it normally does.’
It seems ‘due to colder-than-usual subarctic weather this year, healthier polar bears are being spotted along the West Hudson Bay coast.’
http://themigrantmind.blogspot.com/
You won’t hear about this in the msm.
“The climatically sensitive zone of the Arctic Ocean lies squarely within the domain of the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO), one of the most robust recurrent modes of atmospheric behavior. However, the specific response of the Arctic to annual and longer-period changes in the NAO is not well understood. Here that response is investigated […] its most persistent and extreme high index phase in the late 1980s/early 1990s. This long-period shift between contrasting NAO extrema was accompanied, among other changes, by an intensifying storm track through the Nordic Seas, a radical increase in the atmospheric moisture flux convergence and winter precipitation in this sector, an increase in the amount and temperature of the Atlantic water inflow to the Arctic Ocean via both inflow branches (Barents Sea Throughflow and West Spitsbergen Current), a decrease in the late-winter extent of sea ice throughout the European subarctic, and (temporarily at least) an increase in the annual volume flux of ice from the Fram Strait.”
Dickson, R. R.; Osborn, T.J.; Hurrell, J.W.; Meincke, J.; Blindheim, J.; Adlandsvik, B.; Vinje, T.; Alekseev, G.; & Maslowski, W. (2000). The Arctic Ocean Response to the North Atlantic Oscillation. Journal of Climate 13(15), 2671-2696.
http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0442/13/15/pdf/i1520-0442-13-15-2671.pdf
Suggested: See Figures 4, 9, 12, 15, & 17.
Paul Vaughan (23:32:10) :
Paul Vaughan (00:41:00)
Thanks for the links, the CumuSum graphs were especially interesting. What got me obsessing about the Rigor-Wallace paper was actually the animation with ice age and buoy drift paths combined. Some time back when I began to suspect that the Trans Polar Drift might be a serious factor in the ice loss in the Arctic, I went looking for a map of Arctic currents and I kept coming up with seemingly mutually exclusive variants on these two maps
http://nsidc.org/seaice/processes/circulation.html
http://www.amap.no/?main=http%3A//www.amap.no/mapsgraphics/%3Fevent%3Dsearch%26q%3DArctic+currents
When I watched the animation It was almost amazing to watch Beaufort Gyre-TPD shift from one state to the other in a relative blink of the eye and see the ice go through a change of state that was almost a paradigm shift as a result. Undoubtedly, that the shift occurred at a point coincident with the dramatic spikes in the AO and the NAO will mean that CO2 and AGW will still be blamed, but to me the fact that the change has persisted long after the spikes petered out suggests that something else may have contributed to it, though I have no idea what it might be at this point.
Flanagan (08:19:40) : “. . .You might not like the way science works, but that’s the way it is. Are your negative comments on the peer-reviewing process based on a personal experience of scientific publishing . . .?”
Actually, that is not the way that science works; that is the way that publications work. We need not go back to Galileo to see how publication systems worked against true science. Aryan Physics rejected the work of Jewish scientists. The Soviet publication system advanced the Lysenkoism movement. To examine the credibility of the Kaufman paper, I would no more go to Science Magazine as I would go to The Republican Information Center to examine questions on the wisdom of the 2003 Iraq invasion. (Okay, slight exaggeration, but only slight.)
The peer review system in Climate Science is dysfunctional. One short example: as a matter of professional courtesy, the Wegman report in places mitigated its criticism of Mann et al, but then Mann et al took a few selected quotes and successively published that it had been vindicated by the Wegman report.
Since you asked, yes, I do have personal experience of scientific publishing. I was invited to join in a publication of an article. I thought the research was data mining and cherry picking, not advancing scientific knowledge. BTW, the research passed peer review and was published anyway. In another case, a scientist whose integrity I had previously respected was going to publish; and in response to my raised eyebrows, she explained that this publication would help her get a research grant that would enable her to visit a foreign country that she had longed to visit. (She was right.)
Not only the NSIDC is producing “spin”, so is NASA:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=40250&src=eorss-iotd
All over Europe in the news:
A combined message from scientists and Greenpeace:
The Arctic Ice is melting.
The winter freeze is not sufficient to compensate for the summer melting.
The only way to stop this process is to adapt legislation to curb CO2 emissions.
The propaganda machine is pumping out AGW/Climate Change propaganda at a level never seen before.
You can’t watch any documentary, tv commercial or news program without hearing the words “Green”, CO2, Climate Change, quick action, etc, etc.
Governments have opened web sites tht provide information about the carbon footprint of food. The basic slogan: “You decide what you eat because you pay for it”.
Another project to brainwash the people is “Climate Street”, a cometition wich street has come up with the best “Green Idea’s and Solutions to fight Climate Change”.
Any special interest program, no matter if it is about traveling, cars, inventions, housing, interior design, they are all infested with Green Propaganda.
WWF and Greenpeace dominate the news which is presented to the public without any journalistic scrutiny.
For those who believe the AGW/Climate Doctrine is dead, I don’t think so.
The establishment is continuing their quest until democracy is dead and “total control” is achieved.
We are truly in the front of this “war” and hopefully the winter of 2009 1010 will hit the US and Europe hard. We will need it.
[snip -ad hom]
Me thinks that at this time next year the readings will be back to where they were 10 years earlier and they will have absolutely nothing left to try and crow about!
Hi Smokey-
Trickster?
No tricks here.
Looking at your graphs, neither of them show the extreme rapidity of the changes we are seeing, compared to historical changes in ice extent and volume. The time scales are too long to show the sudden spike apparently caused by our geologically instantaneous addition of 300 billion tons of carbon from fossil fuels to the atmosphere and biosphere.
Lovelock himself was surprised that the climate system appears to be destabilizing, and appears to be in failure mode. I’m surprised too. But it does appear to be happening.
We appear to be seeing multiple destabilizations in multiple climate systems, and the increased sunlight absorption due to albedo changes due to loss of the polar icecap will only add to that.
I don’t really have time to argue with you, and it really is a waste of effort, I think. Arguing with you would be a full time job, and I already have a full time job, and other interests to pursue.
I urge you and others on this site once again, just to look at the graphs of ice extent, see that clearly ice extent is declining at a really huge rate, and go out on the Internet to other sources beside Watts up With That and other climate skeptic websites.
Here’s a link to Chris Field, one of the IPCC group leaders, whose work at Stanford is funded at least partially by ExxonMobil, telling it like it is on Democracy Now. This is actually a scientifically conservative position, and I believe that the real situation is much more “out of control” than he says:
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/26/member_of_un_environment_panel_warns
Leland Palmer, The danger is projecting one’s belief system onto data. I see you doing this throughout your comments. Many phrases like “apparently caused by” show this clearly.
You need to open your mind. You speak, for example, of historic changes in ice extent and volume, without understanding. You refer to ice extent declining at a “really huge rate”. Look at the graphs yourself. Even better, use a technique like break point analysis to determine trends rather than the arbitrary starting point of 1979. You’ll find that the answer you get is opposite to what you’re screaming. Let the data speak to you and you’ll find understanding.
Like a Rock: Look at the plunge in the DMI arctic temps in the side bar of WUWT:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
I’m going for Anthony’s higher number. I think it would be a gas for WUWT readers to make ice min predictions for 2010 and lets see if we do better than the experts used by NSIDC
Ron de Haan,
Joe Bastardi is indicating a cold one for Europe. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a cold snap in time for Copenhagen.
Leland Palmer (10:19:07) :
I don’t really have time to argue with you, and it really is a waste of effort, I think. Arguing with you would be a full time job,…..
Here’s a link to Chris Field, one of the IPCC group leaders, whose work at Stanford is funded at least partially by ExxonMobil, telling it like it is on Democracy Now.
I’d have to agree with you. If you’re taking guidance on this matter from the kind of mindless babbling that Mr. Field offered in that interview you definitely need to be filed under the heading of “Hopeless Case”.
Yes Leland, trickster. You pick one tiny slice of time and extrapolate to the moon with it. That may work on the National Enquirer website, but it doesn’t fly here.
The climate is completely normal. Nothing unusual is going on: click. Stasis is not normal in this universe; cycles are everywhere, including natural climate variability. Every cycle contains the seeds of its own reversal, and the climate is no exception. It will revert to its long term trend line, no matter what people and governments do or don’t do.
I know your mind is made up and closed tight, but for those who like to think about the situation:
The proper way to formulate a theory is to start with the minimum number of observable entities, otherwise you could add postal rates to the mix: click. [Or, since today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day: click.]
The established theory of natural climate variability has done fine in explaining the climate without the extraneous addition of the minor trace gas CO2 to the explanation. Occam’s Razor:
“Never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.”
~William of Ockham
By establishing the theory of natural variability, our climate is completely explained without the necessity of adding another variable such as CO2 or pirates. If CO2 were shown to be necessary to explain the current climate — and the climate could not be explained without the addition of CO2 — then CO2 would have to be considered. But the warm-mongers started with CO2 based on faulty reasoning, and now they’re stuck trying to explain why the planet is cooling as CO2 rises. They started with a faulty premise, so naturally their conclusion is wrong.
The alarmist crowd has turned Occam’s Razor on its head by adding an unnecessary variable. They did not do it for science, but for money, status and control. The argumentum ad ignoratum that Leland applies is an attempt to show that the climate would be noticeably different if CO2 had not risen over the past century. That is trying to prove a negative, which means, of course, that it is no proof at all. It is baseless and futile speculation.
If Leland were to stick with empirical facts, he would have to conclude that the effect of CO2 on the planet is so small as to be inconsequential. Its effect can only be found in always-inaccurate computer models — but not in the real world, which is currently contradicting the CO2=AGW conjecture.
The real world is telling us that CO2 can be disregarded because it obviously has little effect. By starving other scientific priorities in order to shovel $trillions into a non-problem, we are telling non-climate science that all they will get are the left over crumbs. That attitude is bad for everyone.
“We appear to be seeing multiple destabilizations in multiple climate systems, and the increased sunlight absorption due to albedo changes due to loss of the polar icecap will only add to that.”
It seems to me lack of ice-cap actually increases the heat radiated from the Poles and hence cools the Earth.
When one considers the amount of heat needed to keep the Arctic ice-free one can see a clear route for a substantial ocean current is required. So if Greenland was to magically disappear I’d guess the Gulf stream would strengthen and keep the Arctic ocean ice-free, maybe even in winter?