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 think you guys should give these ice researchers a break, it is not impossible that the satellites can be fooled.
I was drinking a few beers with the AMSR-E , (we call him Akky) at a bar near my house last Tuesday.
We had also ordered dinner and were eagerly awaiting its arrival.
Anyway, as the conversation drifted in and out between girls (Akky’s got a thing for Russian satellites), sports, and phenomenology, this homeless guy comes in and walks straight up to Akky.
Homeless guy: I have an offer you can’t refuse.
Akky (sits up and getting loud): Don’t go threatening me you homeless sleazebag.
Homeless guy: No, no you don’t understand, I have something you need.
Akky: And what could that possibly be?
Homeless guy: I have these magic beans. Seriously, these beans are magic.
Akky is already plastered, so this is enough to convince him to listen. Our food arrives at this point and I start to eat my burger. Akky is transfixed by the homeless guy.
Akky: Magic, really?
Homeless guy: Yeah
Akky: I want them. How much?
Homeless guy: Do you have a cow?
Akky: Crap no, wait how about this burger?
Homeless guy: Um…ok that will do.
Homeless guy gives Akky five kidney beans and leaves with a steaming half pound Utah burger.
Me: Dude you are a sucker.
Akky: Shut up loser. I have magic beans.
Akky puts the beans in his pocket and drunkenly falls off his barstool hitting his head on the floor.
I help Akky up and get an ice compress for his head. Akky in a daze yells to no one in particular.
Akky: Where did all this ice come from? It’s everywhere!
So you see, perhaps this study is on to something, I know from personal experience that AMSR-E can be one gullible sucker.
Maximum snow depth in continental USA has been steadily growing
http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nsa/
Sep 14, 2004 27.15′
Sep 14, 2005 37′
Sep 14, 2006 18′
Sep 14, 2007 34.5′
Sep 14, 2008 49′
Sep 14, 2009 61′
Of course the extra 43′ of snow depth since 2006 is all “rotten” snow.
For German readers:
ARD (Germany’s BBC) now seeding scepticism!
Quite a critical piece. Encouraging! If Germany goes sceptical on climate change, then it’s over.
Well it has been so warm in the Arctic lately, the ice has gotten too warm and has spoiled. It will really be an unpleasant task to gather up and dispose of all that rotten ice.
iirc Antarctic sea ice this year was at the highest recorded level since satellite data initiated in 1979
I thought it might be interesting to run the two ice cover photos through a blink comparison. There’s a nice piece of free software that permits this at http://www.thefalseprophet.co.uk/wwa/Blink-Comparator-Setup.Exe.
Turns out that you get a nice illustration of the change that’s pretty convincing. Someone so inclined could probably generate a nice little movie. (I suppose some enterprising person’s done that though.)
Rotten ice is the common term (at least in Scandinavia) for ice in the first stage of melting in spring when pores and holes begin to form. The ice may be 20-30 cm thick but it can not carry any weight.
Information of different kind of ice is given in the link below. It is in Swedish so it probably not of much help but the term “rotten ice” is defined at the end of the page.
http://www.smhi.se/kunskapsbanken/oceanografi/is-till-havs-1.4105
David Barber is a shameless activist paid $40million CAD for leading a research project on Arctic Sea-ice. Last year he “predicted” that the ice would disappear fast. So he needed to be proven right in order to continue to get funding:
But his game is up.
Since artic sea ice development is linked to atmospheric conditions see NSIDC Nov. 3, 2009 statement “Conditions in context
In the fall, cold conditions and polar darkness return to the Arctic. As is typical for this time of year, ice growth was brisk in October, growing at an average 96,000 square kilometers per day (37,000 square miles per day).
However, the growth rate slowed for a time in early October, coinciding with strong winds from the south over central Siberia. The winds helped prevent ice from forming along the Siberian coast. At the end of the month, extensive areas of open water regions were still present in the northernmost North Atlantic, and north of Alaska. The ice edge was north of both Svalbard and Franz Josef Land” and “Declining sea ice extent and Arctic storms
A new study by Ian Simmonds and Kevin Keay, at the University of Melbourne in Australia, finds connections between the decline in September sea ice extent and the characteristics of Arctic storms. As ice extent has decreased, Arctic storms have shown a tendency to become more intense, especially in the last few years. The study suggests that low September ice extent, with extensive areas of open water, provides more energy to autumn storms, allowing them to become stronger. The stronger storms also help to break up the ice.
Related research at NSIDC reveals that when September ice extent is unusually low, precipitation linked to Arctic storms tends to be greater than when September ice extent is unusually high (Figure 5). Climate scientists are interested in these studies, because increased autumn snowfall could have effects on both sea ice and permafrost in the Arctic.”
So when David Barber pretends:
““It caught us all by surprise because we were expecting there to be multiyear sea ice – the whole world thought it was multiyear sea ice,” said Dr. Barber, who just returned from an expedition to the Beaufort Sea.”
He is either incompetent or a liar.
And that October 2009 was the third coldest October on record for the North American continent, the strength of polar air masses meant also that exceptional amount of warm air advection reached the polar region in the return path area where the freezing was delayed. These zones included the Beaufort sea where David Barber went in November.
There was no way he and his team could find anything but thin new ice there, especially at that time after the October conditions.
There is another amazing satellite video shoing the dislocation and the response of arctic sea ice to the atmospheric condition but i can’t find the link. Those who think the sea ice is static are grossly mistaken.
Barber is disingenuous at best and misleading. The journalists are too ignorant to corner him.
If he went unknowingly expecting solid ice he was incompetent at understanding meteorology. If he went knowing that only rotten ice would be found, then he is a liar and a manipulating activist. In any case, Dr Barber has been exposed.
Just by looking at this guy I CAN TELL YOU HE IS LYING….and even if he isn’t how does one transect tell us about the entire arctic sea…
Also what about the recent Polar-5 survey carried out by Alfred Wegener Institure and the University of Alberta…Ice transect…here are the details…flown using an EM unit as opposed to David Barber sticking his head out of the porthole..
“Another focal point of the campaign were large-scale measurements of ice thickness in the inner Arctic, which were conducted in close collaboration of the Alfred Wegener Institute together with the University of Alberta. An ice-thickness sensor, the so-called EM-Bird, was put into operation under a plane for the first time ever. To conduct the measurements, Polar 5 dragged the sensor which was attached to a steel cable of eighty metres length in a height of twenty metres over the ice cover. Multiple flights northwards from various stations showed an ice thickness between 2.5 (two years old ice in the vicinity of the North Pole) and 4 metres (perennial ice in Canadian offshore regions). All in all, the ice was somewhat thicker than during the last years in the same regions, which leads to the conclusion that Arctic ice cover recovers temporarily. The researchers found the thickest ice with a thickness of 15 metres along the northern coast of Ellesmere Island……
“never” observing that kind of ice before is either complete BS, or he is very susceptible to self-delusion.
“Rotten Ice” is refering to the ice that has a much higher percentage of air pockets in it.
To give an example: When you freeze water to make the old fashion square ice cubes the center of the cube is a whitish color because the air was pushed to the center as the water froze from the outside in. The center still has the air pockets because the rest of the water froze before all the air could be squeezed out. As that ice cube melts the outside melts first which leaves the air pockets in the center. If the cube is refrozen before the melting reaches the center then as it freezes more air is trapped and the encased volume of air pockets increases.
When that cube of ice melts and it reaches the air saturated region, then it melts much faster than the “solid” ice that does not contain any air pockets. It takes a great deal of pressure to get rid of the air pockets and make the kind of ice found in ice shelves and glacier ice. You can easily test this at home and see for yourself. Make a cube of ice with the solid outer ice encasing the air pocket saturated inner ice. Break it in half and place it in water. You will see that the air saturated portion of the ice melts much faster than the solid part of the ice.
You can have much more ice yet have a much higher percentage of “Rotten Ice”, “Lower Density Ice”, “LdI”, that does melt much faster. The sensors of the satelite cannot “see” that type of ice.
While I am sure that the good doctor is overstating the problem because he hasn’t really seen how much of that type of ice there really is, he did see something that no one else had really paid attention to. He should be commended for his astute observations. His theory that it makes any real difference leaves a lot to be desired.
Scene: Conference call, NSIDC offices, early December 2009
“Ok, this climate-gate thing is killing us. Any ideas?”
“Ya, I’m wondering what would history have been like had they named it the Water-Change Complex.”
“Can you be serious for just one phone call?”
“Well, we seem to be getting some traction with the just-look-at-the-ice approach.”
“I agree ice is great. Nobody ever sees the poles. Most people have never even seen a glacier..”
“Except those cool, calving pictures. Blggggggghhh…” {pause} “Sorry.”
“What about this city-sized iceberg hitting Australia?”
“Mmmm, I don’t know. Icebergs near Syndey, in summer, doesn’t anybody think that looks, umm, worse for us?”
“We’ve got another cannibal Polar Bear report!”
“Carnage! Excellent. Let’s get that one out there. Any pictures?”
“Oh, gore and all.”
“Gore was there?”
“No, blood and guts.”
“Quick heads up, the Inuit are saying it’s normal and we’re ignorant.”
“Ignorant my GRANTS! Headlines, it’s all about headlines. What’s wrong with these people, too many snowmobile fumes? What else?”
“I’ve got this friend who last summer was on an icebreaker up by Tuktoyuktuk, and…”
“You broke up there. Where?”
“Tuktoyuktuk.”
“Are you on a cell?”
“In the Beaufort! He was on this icebreaker telling me about all this first-year ice.”
“Woah! We’re getting burned on that first-year ice thing. I mean, it keeps freezing back! People are catching on, it’s all first year ice at some point. We tried “old” ice, “young” ice, “thin” ice. Those Catlin knuckleheads, they were the nail in that coffin.”
“Yep! People say ice is ice.”
“Exactly! I say we stick to single-point data slices, truncated graph scales, and cherry-picked months.”
“I knew a guy who patrolled on those icebreakers. Months out at sea. He said the food was rotten.”
“Do you mind? Can you focus?”
“Hey did someone say ‘rotten’? You may have something there. What if we call some of the ice rotten?”
“Oooo, wait a minute, I like it, ‘rotten ice.’ You can’t count it’s age, track it, measure it. It’s all perceived quality. How rotten is rotten?”
“And you know, we get this to work, we can do all kinds of non-rotten ice trends going back centuries.”
“Even better than tree rings! All right people, let’s make ‘rotten’ ice float.” {sparse laughter}
“And you’re always criticizing me. Focus! Be Serious!”
“I guess I’m just not as creative. By the way, what have you been typing?”
“Meeting minutes. I was going to email them to everyone.”
“Minutes? Email? Are you crazy?”
Roy Spencer (11:31:28) ,
That implies that “rotten” isn’t an arbitrary word, but actually has some sort of definition. Am I correct? Is there some sort of system of ice taxonomy that we need to be aware of?
Absent knowledge about some sort of real meaning, talking about “rotten” ice sounds like talking about “dirty” air. It conjures images and invokes disgust, but it doesn’t actually mean anything.
Let us not forget the German study reported on WUWT here. They German-led international team measured ice-thickness (Eisdicken in German) flying across the Arctic using a DC-3 and towing an airborne sounder twenty meters above the ice surface. The results surprised the researchers. The ice was much thicker than expected: “Normally, ice is newly formed after two years, over two meters thick. “Here were Eisdicken [ice-thickness] up to four meters,” said a spokesman of Bremerhaven’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research.”
And where and when did they measure the ice. According to their route (seen here: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/polar5_route.jpg)
they appear to have passed the Beaufort Sea abou the 17th- 18th April 2009.
One should also note that the ice area (CryosphereToday) showed roughly zero anomaly for the Beaufort Sea during April (maximum extent) but reached its nadir in August/September when the anomaly was -0.1 million sq km (relatively insignificant in absolute terms, but in relative terms ca 50%.) Today the Beufort Sea is once again covered to the same extent as during the average for the 1979 -2000 period (zero anomaly).
Hardly surprising that one would find “rotten ice” during the August/September period in that area.
Al Gore a few minutes ago in Copenhagen . . predicts an ice free summer in the Arctic “within 5-7 years”
Way to go Al, way to go.
It is a bit disturbing that people get space in the media with almost any alarming “climate” message.
The Arctic Ice is for the time being about 12 millon km2 and – not far from 20 times the size of France. To say anything general about the sea ice in such a large area requires another observation method than a boat trip. But the journalists seems to work according to “if you check the story, you loose the story”.
Today the largest Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has a fascinating story:
http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=no&u=http://www.aftenposten.no/klima/article3422276.ece
Al Gore:
“Scientists accused in the climate debate is often to exaggerate. The fact is that in most cases it is the opposite. They are fundamentally conservative.”
Glaciers melted faster in 1940’s says new study:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iOEB1v8qRQaMGu_fAIW_eSvKSGyw
OK, I looked up the wiki on “rotten ice”. Basically means contaminated ice that is weaker and can’t hold as much weight due to air or impurities between ice crystals. OK, I can buy that.
But if there is more of it at point Z then their was at point A, does this still not imply colder sustained temperatures? Refreezing of previously thawed ice? whether or not the polar bears habitat has been disrupted isn’t the issue here. It is whether or not it has gotten colder or warmer the past few years. This is just an issue to play to bleeding hearts and distract from the core debate. Oh, I forgot, there is no debate and the decline is supposed to be hidden.
Rotten ice is weather. It takes 10 years for it to become climate.
Al Gore in Aftenposten.
From: http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=no&u=http://www.aftenposten.no/klima/article3422276.ece
Aftenposten.no met Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Vice President Al Gore just before he and Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre presented the report “Melting ice and snow – a call for action” on climate change summit today.
– We’re used to that crisis occurs acutely, and can to some extent relate to it. Climate change comes gradually, and the effects are long after emissions. It is abstract for many, and people and politicians think we have a lot of time. Unfortunately, there is an illusion, “says Al Gore to aftenposten.no.
Gore says he is not surprised by the conclusions of the report documenting the previous scenarios of melting ice in the world is greatly underestimated and that sea levels this century may rise more than twice as much as the IPCC said in 2007.
– Very worrying
– I was aware of how serious the situation is in our work. The most frightening is that it is now about to be scientific consensus that it is on a net ice loss in Antarctica. We thought that it would take decades before we would reach this tipping point, “he says
– It is very worrying. And the world’s politicians do not understand the scope of what is now happening.
– In addition to Antarctica is the very rapid warming and melting in the Arctic in the summer worrying. This means that the risk of rapid thawing of permafrost increases. Previously, science has believed that there is sufficient carbon in the permafrost to a doubling of CO 2 level in the atmosphere. New science shows that the potential is twice as big, “said Al Gore.
– No exaggeration
– Tells the report that the criticism against you and the IPCC to exaggerate the error?
– Of course. Scientists are often accused to exaggerate in the climate debate. The fact is that in most cases it is the opposite. They are fundamentally conservative.
– Do you think your report could help to get Obama’s climate through the Senate?
– I hope it will help. I will do my best, and send a copy to all members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, “said Gore.
– Only a few votes remain of getting the report adopted. Unfortunately, carbon lobby has even in the modern United States too much power.
I suggest this “rotten” ice be named “Hamlet Ice”…. to freeze or not to freeze, that is the question, since the real rot is in Denmark.
Bush actually had a “brilliant idea” for once a couple of years back
a “real” solution
“Climate change is real and it demands a real solution,” Bush said.
rbateman (10:36:47) :
“Captain MacMillan left … to determine whether there is beginning another ‘ice age,’ as the advance of glaciers in the last 70 years would seem to indicate.” Then on Sept. 18, 1924, The New York Times declared the threat was real, saying “MacMillan Reports Signs of New Ice Age.”
I guess I’m repeating myself.
.
Purakanui (11:28:11) :
… Al Gore has just said that there will be no Arctic ice in five years
It is painful to know how many there are of us deniers willing to take him up on that bet.
E.M.Smith (10:03:17) “The only thing rotten here is the ‘rotten ice’ theory. Ice does not rot.”
I assure you that rotten ice is a very real phenomenon. I have had the awareness-raising experience of falling through it. When people use “rotten” in this context, they do not mean rotten in the biological sense. Rotten ice is a very well-known phenomenon in areas where people’s lives depend on awareness of such things.
Note: I am not endorsing the media stunt.