NSIDC seems to be saying: It’s slightly less worse than we thought. For another view, see Dr. Tony Berry’s sea ice analysis on WUWT yesterday.
From a University of Colorado Press Release
Arctic sea ice recovers slightly in 2009, remains on downward trend, says U. of Colorado report
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  IMAGE: This graphics show multi-year Arctic sea ice changes.
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Despite a slight recovery in summer Arctic sea ice in 2009 from record-setting low years in 2007 and 2008, the sea ice extent remains significantly below previous years and remains on a trend leading toward ice-free Arctic summers, according to the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center.
According to the CU-Boulder center, the 2009 minimum sea ice extent was the third lowest since satellite record-keeping began in 1979. The past five years have seen the five lowest Arctic sea ice extents ever recorded.
“It’s nice to see a little recovery over the past couple of years, but there’s no reason to think that we’re headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s,” said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze, also a professor in CU-Boulder’s geography department. “We still expect to see ice-free summers sometime in the next few decades.”
The average ice extent during September, a standard measurement for climate studies, was 2.07 million square miles (5.36 million square kilometers). This was 409,000 square miles (1.06 million square kilometers) greater than the record low for the month in 2007, and 266,000 square miles (690,000 square kilometers) greater than the second-lowest extent recorded in September 2008.
The 2009 Arctic sea ice extent was still 649,000 square miles (1.68 square kilometers) below the 1979-2000 September average, according to the report. Arctic sea ice in September is now declining at a rate of 11.2 percent per decade and in the winter months by about 3 percent per decade. The consensus of scientists is that 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, as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Sea surface temperatures in the Arctic this season remained higher than normal, but slightly lower than the past two years, according to data from University of Washington Senior Oceanographer Mike Steele. The cooler conditions, which resulted largely from cloudy skies during late summer, slowed ice loss compared to the past two years. In addition, atmospheric patterns in August and September helped to spread out the ice pack, keeping extent higher.
The September 2009 ice cover remained thin, leaving it vulnerable to melt in coming summers, according to the CU-Boulder report. At the end of the summer, younger, thinner ice less than one year in age accounted for 49 percent of the ice cover. Second- year ice made up 32 percent of the ice cover, compared to 21 percent in 2007 and 9 percent in 2008.
Only 19 percent of the ice cover was over two years old — the least ever recorded in the satellite record and far below the 1981-2000 summer average of 48 percent, according to the CU-Boulder report. Measurements of sea ice thickness by satellites are used to determine the age of the ice.
Earlier this summer, NASA researcher Ron Kwok and colleagues from the University of Washington in Seattle published satellite data showing that ice thickness declined by 2.2 feet between 2004 and 2008.
“We’ve preserved a fair amount of first-year ice and second-year ice after this summer compared to the past couple of years,” said NSIDC scientist Walt Meier of CU-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. “If this ice remains in the Arctic thorough the winter, it will thicken, which gives some hope of stabilizing the ice cover over the next few years. However, the ice is still much younger and thinner than it was in the 1980s, leaving it vulnerable to melt during the summer.”
Arctic sea ice follows an annual cycle of melting through the warm summer months and refreezing in the winter. Sea ice reflects sunlight, keeping the Arctic region cool and moderating global climate temperatures.
While Arctic sea ice extent varies from year to year because of changing atmospheric conditions, ice extent has shown a dramatic overall decline over the past 30 years.
“A lot of people are going to look at the graph of ice extent and think that we’ve turned the corner on climate change,” said NSIDC Lead Scientist Ted Scambos of CU-Boulder’s CIRES. “But the underlying conditions are still very worrisome.”
NSIDC is part of CIRES and is funded primarily by NASA.
The analysis is juvenile at best. Someone is looking at pixels and making statements based on a flat computer screen. The Arctic area is complex and is rightly divided into at least 14 areas, and so reported. In addition, floating summer ice is affected mostly by wind in a purely mechanical sense. Blown one way, it melts, blown the other way and it piles up. But on a flat screen, the extent looks like it has receded. When overlayed by wind patterns and thought of in 3-dimensions, one begins to understand how new first year ice can thicken to multi-year thickness in one season.
This is what I see when I think of this complex system in 3 dimensions. The wind vortex has shifted (likely a result of a changing PDO/AMO) to prevent ice escape from Fram Strait after the 2007 melt year. If this wind pattern continues (moving summer ice mainly inward towards the Arctic pole) over a period of years, ice thickness will rebound rapidly, which will result in an eventual increase in extent and area. When the wind pattern returns to its summer direction out of Fram Strait, we will once again here Chicken Little calling out a warning of thinning ice, no ice, the Arctic is burning, and the bears are dying. And in some cases of over-abundant weed consumption, the penguins are dying.
Gawdamighty, all of these ivory tower groups need a runofthemill weather guy/gal to knock some sense into their heads.
By the way, anybody notice that at least in Oregon, low temp and snow fall records are falling all over the place?
I just love the mathematical trickery/dishonesty in the story. They say “Only 19 percent of the ice cover was over two years old — the least ever recorded in the satellite record and far below the 1981-2000 summer average of 48 percent, according to the CU-Boulder report”
Uh…yeah! If 2007 was the nadir, this is 2009 and we’ve had a SIGNIFICANT increase in ice, then that will obviously make the percentage of ice over 2 years old very low. Sounds scary the way they say it though, doesn’t it?? LOL!!!
Jeff Id (17:30:11) :
“Look at the last couple of plots which offset global sea ice anomaly by the average global sea ice.
Let’s just say, it aint too friggin’ close and this kind of insanity has got to stop.
If it’s not science, what is it?!”
Its “Consensusscience”, Jeff. Group-think at its worst.
Keep exposing the truth for what it is. I read your posts and check out your site.
Hooyah!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
By the way, anybody notice that at least in Oregon, low temp and snow fall records are falling all over the place?
My brother snapped a pic of his little daughter out in the in the 6″ plus they had in Bend on Sunday. Wish I was there.
“… we will once again here Chicken Little calling out a warning of thinning ice, no ice, the Arctic is burning, and the bears are dying.”
Har har har. Maybe change his name to Mark “Seabreaze”.
And maybe he is a blond…that would explain things a bit.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
“Second- year ice made up 32 percent of the ice cover, compared to 21 percent in 2007 and 9 percent in 2008.”
2007 21% second year ice, 1.580 million square miles ice
2008 9% second year ice, 1.804 square miles ice
2009 32%, second year ice, 2.070 million square miles ice
2007 second year ice, 332,000 square miles
2008 second year ice, 162,000 square miles
2009 second year ice, 662,000 square miles
A huge increase in second year ice in my opinion. And when it comes to the albedo, thin ice is about the same as thick ice.
It is fun to watch experts stand by their research rather then admit that they may have jumped the gun a little to early in predicting an ice free arctic… Not that I don’t think such a thing would not be a great boon to mankind, just think of the cost savings in bypassing the Panama canal for north american shipping companies… This is what happens when you take anomalies and make predictions. Now it is not to say it may not happen still but… I would guess that the arctic still has some cold left in it.
We’re doomed, we can’t win. If CO2 goes up and temperatures go up it’s AGW, If CO2 goes up and temperatures go down it’s just a slight pause in AGW and it will come back much worse than we thought. That pause can be anywhere from 10-50 years but we still need to bring CO2 down to the stone age.
What’s really going to happen? In 2 years, if enough price increases have occurred will the sheeple vote for another party? If they do, can that new controlling party break any of the commitments that Obama is about to grant?
E.M.Smith (16:22:05) :
Thnx for the H/T.
Educated ignorance drives me nuts.
20,000 years ago, North America was glacial packed a mile thick to a line a bit lower than Springfield, IL; Bloomington, IN; Columbus, OH. Warming started for unknown reasons and the ice pack retreated to Canada.
My questions to the AGW advocates: Why did it warm? When did the post-glacial warming stop? Why? How long was your presumed post-glacial cooling? When did the most recent warming start? (Did that include the 1940-1979 cooling?)
If you cannot answer those questions with certainty, please do not try to predict my decadal climate changes.
I too have seen soot given as an ice melter, but soot in the air is a cooler. Not clear which would be the dominante effect. I have not seen a soot/ice time series.
Pamela said “By the way, anybody notice that at least in Oregon, low temp and snow fall records are falling all over the place?”
I did not notice, however I go to SIO (Scripps Institute of Oceanography) almost daily. And today while looking out over the ocean from the bluff we saw about twenty gray whales migrating south. I have never seen them this early. Usually December to February is when to expect them. What that means I have no idea, just kind of curious.
One time more to the other side of the world:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/10/antarctic-ice-most-resilient-in.html
and:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL039186.shtml
An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high-latitude and tropical climate variability
Marco Tedesco
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, City College of New York, New York, New York, USA
Andrew J. Monaghan
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA
A 30-year minimum Antarctic snowmelt record occurred during austral summer 2008–2009 according to spaceborne microwave observations for 1980–2009. Strong positive phases of both the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) were recorded during the months leading up to and including the 2008–2009 melt season. The 30-year record confirms that significant negative correlations exist at regional and continental scales between austral summer melting and both the ENSO and SAM indices for October–January. In particular, the strongest negative melting anomalies (such as those in 2008 and 2009) are related to amplified large-scale atmospheric forcing when both the SAM and ENSO are in positive phases. Our results suggest that enhanced snowmelt is likely to occur if recent positive summer SAM trends subside in conjunction with the projected recovery of stratospheric ozone levels, with subsequent impacts on ice sheet mass balance and sea level trends.
Received 13 May 2009; accepted 12 August 2009; published 24 September 2009.
Citation: Tedesco, M., and A. J. Monaghan (2009), An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high-latitude and tropical climate variability, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L18502, doi:10.1029/2009GL039186.
Met office at it again http://news.uk.msn.com/world/article.aspx?cp-documentid=150086045
Well, I guess it still slightly too soon to make a confident prediction on next summer’s minimum arctic ice extent, primarily as this years refreeze is taking slightly longer to kick into top gear than 2008 or 2006.
If it starts taking off in the next 5 days, I’d be confident making a bet of a slight increase again.
But if for some reason it is delayed 2 – 3 weeks, then it might be prudent to plan for a ‘no change’ or slight decrease bet.
My bet will be laid come end of October.
Dr David Jones of Ferny Creek (15:52:30) :
“Your repeated tendency to disclose personal information (which is wrong) and attack individuals when someone points out how comprehensively flawed your analysis is speaks volumes.”
Mr Jones, when you advertise your identity so openly by your blog name, you shouldn’t complain about disclosure. Googling your name is sufficient to know who you are and what you believe. I came across this jewel in a letter you wrote to The Age newspaper in 2004:
“Contrary to ill-informed opinions, climate models are in fact objective mathematical simulations of the atmosphere. These models have reached a level of sophistication that can accurately simulate the large-scale climate variability and change both in the present and in the past.”
Mr Jones, you have disqualified yourself as a credible climate scientist.
Boulder was hit with a snowstorm on the last day of summer.
Schadenfreude.
This does seem to be a worrisome trend. It’s worse than I thought. There could be a strong positive feedback at work: as the ice expands, it will reflect more sunlight, leading to local cooling and even more ice next year. If this trend continues, we could see ice at the equator in the next few decades. We may even have already passed the tipping point, or perhaps that can still be averted if we all do something.
This http://www.climatedepot.com/a/3212/Inconvenient-Questions-Stanford-U-Bans-Climate-Film-from-Airing-Interview-with-Cooling-turned-Warming-Prof-Stephen-Schneider–You-are-prohibited could do with some airing on WUWT. Amazing stuff! Of course, he would have been best advised to let them use the footage. Now he’s going to regret banning it!
Re: Clark (12:33:26) :
The recovery is “slight.”
The downward trend is “significant”
Absolutely, As another poster noted on another thread (and as may have been noted in this thread, but I haven’t read down that far yet, apologies if I am repeating anybody). That there use of adjectives is very telling. The increase in ice each of the past two years has been over 10% over the previous years minimum. Of the that trend was reversed the alarmists would be very vocal about it and NOT calling it “slight”
In terms of the amount of ice increase in total kilometres then it is over 1.4 million square kilometres and yet that is “slight”?
How come when something like a 405 square kilometres ice sheet breaks away from the Antarctic, then that is described as vast and potentially disastrous?
@ur momisugly Ingsoc:
this is the original link of the AWI for Polar 5 flight results,
and this is the English translation of the report on a further website.
How to engineer a cooler earth.
If we wanted a cooler earth, could mankind use the Arctic to achieve this? Say a nuclear powered ice breaker sailed to the North Pole, or nearby, in winter. The ship’s crew could drill a hole in the ice, and use their ‘unlimited’ nuclear power to pump sea water out of the hole and out over the top of the sea ice. Now that the water isn’t insulated by the white ice, it will rapidly freeze, radiating its latent heat of fusion away into space. There will be no extra heat captured from the sun while the water darkens the surface, as in the winter up there, there is no sun. Once the water has frozen, it will go white like the rest of the ice cap. Indeed, some engineer would design a special nozzle to make the water freeze into special whiter ice, I expect. 😉 The energy required to pump the water isn’t a lot, as the surface of the ice is only a few metres at most above the nominal sea level.
This works because the pump makes the difference in temperature between the surface, now at 0°C in mid-winter instead of -30°C because of the pumped water, and outer space, 4K or something, larger than it was before. This means more heat energy gets transferred, as the rate of transfer depends on the temperature difference. Net result is we’ve pumped a bunch of heat into outer space, which, apparently, is what some people want.
NSIDC and polar bears get more ice. What could possibly go wrong?
Do I win £5? Or bindun?
In light of the comments from a late Spring story in WUWT that relates to the people in Boulder,
“University of Colorado-Boulder geography professor Mark Williams said Monday that the resorts should be in fairly good shape the next 25 years, but after that there will be less snowpack – or no snow at all – at the base areas”
Please see the new story about Loveland Ski Area is announcing its earliest opening day in 40 years. Apparently they have an 18″ base.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20091006/ap_tr_ge/us_travel_brief_ski_area_opens_3
I believe mark Serreze can be seen making his Arctic predictions on one of the History channels scare-a-thon shows. Don’t remember which one right now (and, no, he is not blond ;)). Naturally, since he has made this so public, he will defend that prediction forever.
The four satellite pictures show the extent of the sea ice at the end of the summer melt periods. Presumably all the ice that is going to melt each year melts during those periods. The 2009 picture shows that, while the cover is greater than in 2008, much of the “old ice” has been replaced by one to two year old ice. Where has the older ice gone? Has it melted into the sea below (where it is not covering land), has it been infiltrated by the newer layers (and if so how) or is it lurking below the one to two year old layer? Would someone please explain. .
This press release by Mark “the arctic is screaming” Serreze and his gang should be seen for what it is – a cry for more funding for the NSIDC. It is quite understandable after really botching this year’s ice melt forecast (going as far as suggesting that we would have an all time record low ice extent this year back in August!).
I really feel sorry for them that they are reduced to these kinds of misleading press releases in order secure their budgets for 2009 – 2010.
“Contrary to ill-informed opinions, climate models are in fact objective mathematical simulations of the atmosphere. These models have reached a level of sophistication that can accurately simulate the large-scale climate variability and change both in the present and in the past.”
This is hilarious! Dr. Jones actually used the words “objective”, “sophistication”, and “accurately” in connection with numerical climate models…