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.
What is with these people and black polo (turtle) necks?
I would say that Barber’s progressive, self indulging, science, is:
Decayed, decaying, bad, bad-smelling, corroded, corrupt, crumbled, crumbling, decomposed, decomposing, disgusting, disintegrated, disintegrating, fecal, feculent, festering, fetid, foul, gross, infected, loathsome, loud, mephitic, moldering, moldy, noisome, noxious, offensive, overripe, perished, polluted, purulent, pustular, putrescent, putrid, putrified, rancid, rank, rotting, smelling, sour, spoiled, stale, stinking, strong, tainted, touched, unsound.
I imagine rotten ice refers to ice with cavities. Cavities allow meltwater to run through and can lead to sudden melting of large surface areas that previously looked solid from above.
I though this was only a ground ice issue, though. Not sea ice.
Meanwhile, in Kyopenwarmin, world leaders are rushing their arrivals, carrying buckets overflowing with “rotten” money for the developing nations, to add to their own really, really rotten money.
They’ll claim next that “rotten air” is confounding the measurment of warming by satellite.
Concerns about global cooling
continued. Swedish scientist
Rutger Sernander also forecasted
a new ice age. He headed a
Swedish committee of scientists
studying “climatic development”
in the Scandinavian country.
According to the LA Times on
April 6, 1924, he claimed there
was “scientific ground for believing”
that the conditions “when all
winds will bring snow, the sun
cannot prevail against the clouds,
and three winters will come in
one, with no summer between,”
had already begun.
That ice age talk cooled in the
early 1930s. But The Atlantic in
1932 puffed the last blast of Arctic
air in the article “This Cold, Cold
World.” Author W. J. Humphries
compared the state of the earth to
the state of the world before other
ice ages. He wrote “If these things
be true, it is evident, therefore
that we must be just teetering on
an ice age.”
Concluding the article he noted
the uncertainty of such things, but
closed with “we do know that the
climatic gait of this our world is
insecure and unsteady, teetering,
indeed, on an ice age, however
near or distant the inevitable fall.”
Oh my, yes, it can only be delayed a few years by the lack of Solar Activity, this gospel
of Inevitable Warming by Hansen, and the rotten ice proves it.
For if the edge of the Arctic Ice Pack is frothed by churning seas in that small area visited
by Barber, then the whole pack must be full of bubbles.
Scrubbing bubbles.
He viewed it from an ice breaker? He viewed broken ice *from an ice breaker*?
Well now, who could have predicted that.
So has the amount of rotten ice increased? When did it reach its minimum before increasing? When was the previous year of maximum rotten ice? If rotten ice melts is that a good thing or a bad thing?
More complete and utter rubbish. Though what else would you expect from Briffa’s brother 🙂
This is what passes for science now.
Some guy, sea ice expert, riding an ice breaker sees what he thinks is something suspicious about the breaking ice and ponders that it could be causing a misrepresentation of the satellite sea ice talley. But only the recent sea ice talley?
Suppose he simply didn’t perceive it accurately?
Suppose areas of multi-year sea ice have always looked like that when being broken apart?
Suppose he is just another bozo making up things like other bozos have?
It’s too late now. It’s circulated the web and became science.
He’s “widely shared his prejudice and it’s turned into an irresistible authority”.
I ran across this guy and his rotten ice story last week on a Haloscan blog and for crying out loud, there’s people accepting it as conclusive and thanking him for his work?
What work? Making a video for his tall tale to be told?
This is not about truth.
This is not about science.
This is not about belief.
This is about money.
Now does it make sense?
Is he a member of the Catlin 2 team ? Or maybe he’s a member of Briffa’s Yamal team and he found one, rotten piece of ice – the most influential, rotten piece of sea ice in the world. Or just maybe, the whole Catlin team and and associates are rotten and aren’t that influential.
I watch ‘Deadliest catch’ on TV and have not yet heard those guy’s who fish the Bering sea moan about lack of Ice or global warming.
Brave lads.
vboring ‘ 10.44:
‘I imagine rotten ice refers to ice with cavities. Cavities allow meltwater to run through and can lead to sudden melting of large surface areas that previously looked solid from above.
I though this was only a ground ice issue, though. Not sea ice.’
Same here – I recall the expression ‘rotten ice’ being used by mountaineers having to choose routes over glaciers and ice hangs very carefully depending on the time of day, because the warmth of the sun, as during daylight hours, can make ice go rotten, i.e. one can’t walk on it or climb it, and the ice axes and crampons won’t hold.
That’s why they get up to a very very early start … like, in the middle of the night.
Rotten?
Yeah!:
Decayed, decaying, bad, bad-smelling, corroded, corrupt, crumbled, crumbling, decomposed, decomposing, disgusting, disintegrated, disintegrating, fecal, feculent, festering, fetid, foul, gross, infected, loathsome, loud, mephitic, moldering, moldy, noisome, noxious, offensive, overripe, perished, polluted, purulent, pustular, putrescent, putrid, putrified, rancid, rank, rotting, smelling, sour, spoiled, stale, stinking, strong, tainted, touched, unsound….climate change “science”.
It’s old and it’s rotten, the langoliers are coming
Having ice fished over the course of my life I am well aware of rotten ice. To me that means ice which lacks its hardness, most easily experience just before ice out in spring. It becomes spongy when walked upon. Think of it as ice with osteoporosis.
That rotten ice just isn’t going away!
darwin wrote: “If the satellites have been “duped” … then how we we be sure that previous satellite measurements were correct?”
Because the rotten ice “divergence problem” only occurs in years that show recovery, specifically this year when it was noticed and corrected thus, because a recovery did not fit with overwhelming evidence of Global Warming, just as the Argo Buoy network was corrected when cooling was noticed.
“Correcting Ocean Cooling”: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page1.php
There actually is such a term. Rotten ice is ice in the process of disintegrating. And so of course it is the normal state of ice at the edge of the icecap at the end of the melting season, and always has been. It sure as hell isn’t rotten now.
As so often it is instructive to read about Nansen’s experiences on the Fram expedition. In 1895 after his failure to reach the North Pole he and a comrade was sledging southward in order to reach Franz Josephs land before winter. By midsummer the ice was completely impassable and they had to lay still on a more solid ice floe for a month until the ice had melted enough so they could continue in their kayaks. And remember this was at about 82 degrees latitude during the tail end of the Little Ice Age.
From that picture of David Barber above, he could do with a few less rotten hamburgers. Might help him think better.
While it seems fishy to identify ice with qualitative factors, it does make sense that ice with holes in it would melt faster next summer. Of course, I doubt that this ‘rotten’ ice is a new thing in the Arctic, so:
1) What percent of the ice are we talking about?
2) How long is this ice supposed to be contributing to duping satellites?
3) Isn’t rotten ice surviving ice? Does this mean that more surviving ice is now something to watch out for?
4) Do the holes in ice fill up with anything? Say… ice?
5) Wouldn’t rotten ice mean that since (2009 > 2008 > 2007), we have more and more rotten ice about? Why doesn’t rotten ice melt like they expect it too?
Sorry “to” not “too”. Personal peeve of mine, and I can’t believe I just did it myself.
Rotter – deemed to be despicable or contemptible
This rotten ice is playing fair – the way it keeps fooling those poor satellites.
The ice is moving to Europe (forecast for Germany):
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20091214-23933.html