There’s plenty of stories about how Arctic sea ice is now “rotten”. There’s darn few that talk about yearly comparisons or what other scientific outlets are saying about the claim.
As many WUWT readers know, 2007 was the minimum year of summer extent in sea ice, a year that is routinely held up as a cause for alarm. Another cause for alarm has been the “decline of multi-year sea ice”. Most recently we’ve gotten claims of “rotten ice” in the news media. That “rotten” ice is “duping the satellites” they say. This all from one fellow, Dr. David Barber on a ship that took a short expedition in the Arctic and observed what he called “rotten ice”. Here’s Dr. Barber using the poster child for sea ice loss in a presentation.
Seems that his “rotten” message resonated, even the media in Alaska (who can observe sea ice on their own) are saying it: New study: Arctic ice is rotten (Anchorage Daily News)
Over at the Greenbang Blog, they say that: ‘Rotten’ sea ice creates false impression of Arctic recovery
They cite:
Satellite data in 2008 and 2009 appeared to indicate that Arctic sea ice cover had started to grow again after reaching a record low, leading some to claim that global warming was reversing. However, University of Manitoba researcher David Barber found that wasn’t the case after he viewed the ice firsthand this September from an ice breaker travelling through the southern Beaufort Sea.
What the satellites had identified as thick, multiyear ice, it turned out, was in fact thin, “rotten” ice, Barber and his colleagues discovered.
This apparently was the conclusion from watching Dr. Barber’s YouTube video:
You can read Barber’s study here (Word DOC file)
So if the satellites are “duped” into seeing more ice than actually exists, then 2007 ice must have been really, really, rotten:
Compare for yourself, here.
Looks like it has firmed up since then. So no matter how you spin it, there has indeed been improvement in sea ice in 2007. Going from “really, really rotten” in 2007 to simply “rotten” Arctic sea ice in 2009 is definitely an improvement.
One other note, if this “rotten ice” problem and satellite duping proposed by Dr. Barber is in fact real, I’d fully expect that the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) would make some sort of announcement or post a caveat about it on the “Arctic Sea Ice News and analysis” web page where they present the satellite data. I couldn’t find anything on that page about “rotten ice” or satellite data being inaccurate.
Looking further, I used a Google search for “rotten” within NSIDC’s web site (available from their search tool in the upper right of their web page) reveals no recent documents or web pages using that word. Odd.
OK maybe Cryosphere Today? Nope nothing there either.
JAXA‘s sea ice page? Their News page? Not a peep.
Nansen’s Arctic ROOS sea ice page? Or their news page? All quiet on the Arctic front.
Maybe the Danish Meteorological Institute (in Copenhagen no less) sea ice page? Surely, something must be “rotten” in Denmark, no? Alas, they don’t mention it either.
Gosh, the Arctic ice is rotten, the satellites are duped, and none of the major scientific organzations that track sea ice have anything to say about it?
It seems Dr. Barber’s conclusions are being left out in the cold by his peers.
I’m just guessing here, but a beer-swigging, educated, liberal, mouthy, redheaded Irish woman who suffers fools only if they be under her boots, would not be on the invitation list over at the nopenhogan.nationaljournal?
[don’t combine Copenhagen bashing with religion bashing ~ ctm]
I remembered this article at NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html
that explained the 2007 low arctic ice extent was primarily due to unusual wind patterns rather than any warming.
“Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic,” he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.
vboring (10:44:35) :
I imagine rotten ice refers to ice with cavities.
Maybe we need an Arctic Ice dentist.
counter evidence–
video with sound-
This past August(2009)
the Canadian icebreaker
was used to break old multiyear ice ahead
the USA icebreaker Healy–
no mention is made of “rotten ICe”-
just a path of lots of freshly broken big chunks
of icebreaker broken multiyear old sea ice
in a solid expanse of omultiyear old sea ice—
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cutterhealy/3872152298/in/photostream/
Melt ponds on multiyear ice-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cutterhealy/3812337687/in/set-72157622404060250/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cutterhealy/3862554261/in/set-72157622404060250/
Since it is now minus 30 C in the Arctic, all that
ice is now refrozen and not very likely to be “rotten”
unless there is a volcano erupting beneath it.
http://www.ogimet.com/cgi-bin/gsynop?zona=artico&base=bluem&proy=orto&ano=2009&mes=12&day=17&hora=00&vtn=Tn&enviar=Ver
And if anyone knows someone that has taken or is taking a cruise on one of those
russian nuke icebreakers,
it would be interesting to see what their videos are showing–
There must be literally hundreds of videos taken this summer and fall on
icebreakedrs by tourists.
Icebreakers commence this
year’s battle against
Great Lakes ice
(not so rotten and not so warm)
http://www.sooeveningnews.com/news/x1669486610/U-S-Coast-Guard-begins-breaking-ice
http://www.military.com/news/article/coast-guard-news/new-york-cgc-to-deploy-for-ice-breaking.html
http://www.76fsa.org/cgta/history.htm
Currently 80 thousand square km per day
arctic sea ice increase–
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=globalwarming&action=display&thread=346&page=150#37764
Finally had a chance to read through the study and look at the video. Interesting spin from one to the other.
The prime conclusions of the paper were that areas that show up on satellite images as thicker ice were not fully verified by actual observation. Some sights were much lower than indicated, others had thick, multi-year ice. Kudos to Barber for doing field work, and raising some interesting questions as to why radar images were different that observations.
There was a subtle, but big leap from the paper to the video, however. While there were no historical trend comparisons in the paper, suddenly Barber claims that this shows a decline of multi-year ice and implies a thinner and more fragile ice cap. Of course, the media gobbled this up and sexed up the headlines further.
The results: More science by press release, several stories for lazy journalists, and of course, more funding for Dr. Barber.
QUESTION from a newbie:
Could “rotten ice” serve as a sort of nucleus for eventually “non-rotten ice”?
What is the physics? In other words, if new ice keeps forming over the honeycombed ice, does the interior “rot” keep disintegrating within the newly forming shell, causing it to break and agglomerate new denser ice masses? Or does the interior “rot” somehow fill up and become refreshed, and integrated more strongly into the dominant new shell?
I need a micro course in ice-formation physics here. Any takers?
Robert Kernodle