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.
Roy ….did you get my email about
Coupling of CO2 and Ice Sheet Stability Over Major Climate Transitions of the Last 20 Million Years…
Desperate times calls for desperate measures. It is not a coincidence this study came out at the time it did. The money and power hungry eco-commies can sense their power slipping and so they have to take action. Otherwise, the new UN communism ideal will have to rely on some other deception. If the UN has to use another avenue for global communism, the eco-commies will not be members of the elite, but turnip farmers like the rest of us. These “scientists” have to take drastic steps to avoid going from hero to zero.
Like quite probably most of the visitors here I was paying fairly close attention to developments in the area of Arctic sea ice over the last several Septembers. I don’t seem to recall any of the satellite imagery showing much in the way of multiyear ice in the part of the Beaufort Sea where Mr. Barber went for his little sail. At the end of the melt season over at least the last three years most of the multiyear ice has ended up stacked in eastern half of the Arctic. There has indeed been a dramatic decline in the amount of ice that survives in the Arctic for more than a couple of years, but the decline has been driven by dramatic shift in the circulation patterns, notably the Beaufort Gyre and the Transpolar Drift, which occurred in 1989 and is unrelated to CO2 or AGW. I’ve cited this paper a number of times before, but since there seems to be a lot of fresh faces around in the wake of climategate I’ll offer it again
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/research_seaiceageextent.html
This is from the commentary for the animation that accompanies it,
This animation of the age of sea ice shows:
1.) A large Beaufort Gyre which covers most of the Arctic Ocean during the 1980s, and a transpolar drift stream shifted towards the Eurasian Arctic. Older, thicker sea ice (white ice) covers about 80% of the Arctic Ocean up to 1988. The date is shown in the upper left corner.
2.) With the step to high-AO conditions in 1989, the Beaufort Gyre shrinks and is confined to the corner between Alaska and Canada. The Transpolar Drift Stream now sweeps across most of the Arctic Ocean, carrying most of the older, thicker sea ice out of the Arctic Ocean through Fram Strait (lower right). By 1990, only about 30% of the Arctic Ocean is covered by older thicker sea ice.
3.) During the high-AO years that follow (1991 and on), this younger thinner sea ice is shown to recirculated back to the Alaskan coast where extensive open water has been observed during summer.
The age of sea ice drifting towards the coast explains over 50% of the variance in summer sea ice extent (compared to less than 15% of the variance explained by the seasonal redistribution of sea ice, and advection of heat by summer winds).
Point number 3 seems most pertinent to present discussion. If you have time do watch this animation, the combination of ice age and buoy drift patterns really does make pretty clear what is happening in the Arctic.
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/animations/Rigor&Wallace2004_AgeOfIce1979to2007.mpg
“The world must take action on climate change at Copenhagen even if the science is not correct, Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister has suggested.”
“Following the ‘climategate scandal’, Mr Blair said the science may not be “as certain as its proponents allege”.
But he said the world should act as a precaution against floods, droughts and mass extinction caused by climate change, in fact it would be “grossly irresponsible” not to.
I wonder what the IQ level of the average politician is?
We had better do what Blair says otherwise he will probably invade all countries/nations who do not sign the COP15 treaty and hunt down their leaders and hang them. Despite if they have “weather of mass destruction” or not.
AdderW (13:15:27) :
But he had the right frame of mind.
“What are you so worried about?”.
Maybe the entire Arctic is rotten and should be replaced .. more warming please
Well looking at those two Cryosphere 2007 and 2009 pictures for 12/09, I can see evidence of a total cosmic disaster; that will relegate sea ice to a back burner.
It is quite clear from those two photograps, that the sun has moved and is no longer in the same place in our galaxy, so it now casts a totally different sunlight pattern on earth from what it did in 2007.
If it wasn’t for the sun moving between 2007 and 2009, one could easily see that the 2009 picture clearly shows more northern hemisphere land ice than was present in 2007.
So perhaps it is that gross shift in the position of the sun in tha galaxy, that we should be worried about, and not the sea ice; the earth surface solar radiation pattern has totally changed in just two short years.
We are all in for some terrible times ahead.
“The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and, in some places, the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.
Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 m showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while, at many points, well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds,”
This is NOT from David Barber’s report but a U.S. Weather Bureau report from 1922.
Mike McMillan (13:16:18) :
It bears repeating.
Cryosphere today doesn’t have any recent NH ice images after 12/9/09.
Is this normal ?
Richard (13:26:29) :
I wonder what the IQ level of the average politician is?
I don’t know about the rest of the world, but going by the fact that Obama is widely characterized as one of the most brilliant politicians we’ve ever had, I would confidently predict that if your inside the beltway in D.C. and your IQ is room temperature you are probably at least two sigma above the mean.
If AP says something, you know the opposite is true.
Cheap fodder for the AGW true believers.
Cap. of the expedition boat: “What is that smell?”
Dr. Barber: “Ah, that my friend, is the smell of rotten ice.”
Cap. of the expedition boat: “Dr. Barber, they will surely give you a Nobel price next year for this discovery.”
Rotten ice is a real qualititive measure of ice consistency and strength. It is ice that is on the verge of melting and it has holes in and it does melt faster than solid compressed ice. BUT, This is exactly the sort of ice that I would expect to see at the edges of the ice sheet (going several miles in) in September, especially in areas that Ice Breakers can navigate.
The point is, there were millions of square kilometres more ice this September than there was 2007, Rotten or otherwise.
I fail to see what is so surprising about rotten (melting) ice in September? It ALWAYS melts in September!
I don’t know how much these chicken warmist can continue non-stop generation of hysteria by running around crowing that the globe is warming. I’m just hoping that payers of the world gets wise on the game. Clearly there’s plenty of money to change hands, but that’s all part of the con. Don’t get conned.
[snip – offtopic]
Just a reminder that the met office said it was partly the wind wot dun it:
“Analysis of the 2007 summer sea-ice minimum has subsequently shown that this was due, in part, to unusual weather patterns. Arctic weather systems are highly variable year-on-year and the prevailing winds can enhance, or oppose, the southward flow of ice into the Atlantic. Consequently, the sea ice has not declined every year, but has shown considerable variability — both in extent and thickness.”(http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091015b.html)
In 2007 the wind apparently enhanced the ice flow Alantic-wards. If the wind has opposed it this year, then that may explain the significant difference at the Bering Straits and the ice pattern in Hudson Bay.
As an aside, I suspect the unspoken objective of the mission was to follow the route taken by Pen hadow some 6 months earlier, so that they could repeat the measurements taken by Hadow, thus contributing to the robust science and showing that the ice was melting faster than previously predicted ( and for another example of climate dishonesty, the Catlin “Survey” web site still shows the straight line route to the pole – no mention that I could find of the actual route).
PS Wasn’t Hadow going to be one of the stars at Copenhagen? Does anyone know when his appearance is scheduled?
The new excuse for killing CO2
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6954527.ece
They are obviously preparing a fall back position.
What is the inuit term for “rotten” ice ?
P Wilson (10:31:53)
I think you are on the right track. What we’ve seen the last 4-5 years is “rotten cooling” where glaciers in Greenland slow greatly (since 2005), Arctic ice grows, etc. All of this rotten cooling is covering up the real warming which is building up strength in the center of the earth (up to millions of degrees now).
I’m pretty sure it’s unprecedented and much worse than we thought! Isn’t it always?
From the news report: “Indeed, through most of the journey the Amundsen sailed at an average speed of 24km/h; its open water cruising speed is about 25km/h. ”
I’d love to see them doing 14mph through sea ice, “rotten” or not!
Anthony: CORRECTION on my (12:58:25) post: (please remove my previous post)
==============
Clearly the GRL paper refers to September observations i.e. at the end of the melt season.
My initial comment referred to a story by the Canadian Press writer Chinta Puxley
Winnipeg — The Canadian Press Published on Friday, Nov. 27, 2009 10:22PM EST that appeared in the Globe and Mail.
In it I quote ““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.”
So despite being published in late November the story referred to the same September observations and not to November observations, as could be inferred from the journalist’s wording.
I therefore apologize for my mistake.
Yet the same line of thought can explain the Beaufort observations. In itself, it is quite a strange time to be “surprised” by thinner ice at this time of the year, at the maximum melt season. But the same meteorological comments about MPHs over North America can be made: looking at images from August 20 to 24, i.e. few weeks before Dr Barber’s observation one sees a large MPH extending all the way to Florida. The western advection path along Yukon is clearly shown, inducing the same regional melting and wind dislocation in the Beaufort.
Therefore I contend that Dr Barber’s observations have a simple meteorological explanation that are regionally specific. Either he knew the meteorological conditions and should have expected what he found and thus his surprise is made up, or if he did not understand that meteo conditions would influence the ice pack he found, then his competence should be re-assessed. In either cases, the GRL paper should never have passed peer review.
I Pledge Allegiance to Global Warming: British scientists sign a government loyalty oath.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703514404574587811671196406.html
The Met Office, Britain’s national weather service, “has embarked on an urgent exercise to bolster the reputation of climate-change science” in the wake of a whistle-blower’s revelation of widespread misconduct by climate scientists, London’s Times reports:
More than 1,700 scientists have agreed to sign a statement defending the “professional integrity” of global warming research. They were responding to a round-robin request from the Met Office, which has spent four days collecting signatures. . . .
One scientist told The Times he felt under pressure to sign. “The Met Office is a major employer of scientists and has long had a policy of only appointing and working with those who subscribe to their views on man-made global warming,” he said.