Prediction: Arctic Ice Will Continue to Recover This Summer

I believe 2010 will be 2006-ish.

It still don’t get why drift favours thinner ice over thicker.

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=02&fd=01&fy=2007&sm=02&sd=01&sy=2010
Is it me or the ice looks much healthier than in 2007, before the record summer minimum?
I bet it is thicker as well. Recent slower growth and even temporary retracts are due to compaction (thicker ice). It will show its quality next September.

From the comments, it appears that the process of Artic Ice formation and loss is not fully understood by anyone. Does it give any indication of a warming/cooling trend? Or is there insufficient data to answer the question? As a mere taxpayer, I would like to know when I can have my barbeque Summer. Alternatively give me my money back.

Thanks Steve. I have enough balls in the air to keep track of right now; so it is nice to have someone who understands it, explain what is going on.
George

it’s good to see Steven Goddard back
he has a good track record for predictions too

http://portal.fma.fi/sivu/www/baltice/ice_forecast
http://www.smhi.se/oceanografi/istjanst/produkter/icechart.png
The bay of Bothnia has already frozen over
The Bothnia sea is freezing more and more every day now.
The bay of Finland is frozen .
In a few more weeks with this cold we can walk from Stockholm
to St. Petersburg on ICE.
//Lars

Marcia,
Thanks. I’m enjoying writing again for the #1 science blog.
Anthony’s blog has even educated the Guardian and NYT – no small feat.

TA,
My theory about January TLT warmth (I may write an article about this) is that a combination of El Nino and a deeply negative AO drove the temperatures at 14,000 upwards. A negative AO means that cold air is sinking from higher elevations and is being replaced by warm air from the ground. As dramatized in the movie “The Day After Tomorrow.”
http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/patterns/arctic_oscillation.html
Note the very warm spot over Canada and Greenland at + 4C.
http://www.remss.com/data/msu/graphics/tlt/medium/global/ch_tlt_2010_01_anom_v03_2.png
Ground temperatures in Canada and Greenland were above normal, but not that much. Also, the MSU near-surface readings had a much lower anomaly than TLT.
My point is that I think the satellite TLT readings are exaggerated for January because of the elevation they are measured at. In 1998, UAH and RSS showed a much larger spike than GISS or Had-Crut.

Phil,
Is minus 30C cold enough to freeze seawater?
The 2007-2009 minimums have been dominated by loss of ice in the western Arctic, not the east. Drift in the western Arctic has been close to zero this winter, and Bering Strait ice is above normal.

Phil,
WUWT predicted 2009 ice correctly last March – while NSIDC was still mulling about a possible record minimum as late as July.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/02/poll-and-polar-ice-trends/
I also called Serreze on his ice free North Pole prediction in 2008.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/goddard_polar_ice/

Phil,
This is what I am looking at:
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/DAILYMAPS/dailymap.60day.jpg
What is your source?

Phil,
Did you miss this sentence?
“Secondly, the likelihood of the North Pole being ice free this summer is actually quite slim. There are only a few weeks left where the sun is high enough to melt ice at the North Pole. “

Isnt the planet itself displaying an enourmous experiment, showing us the difference of air effect versus sea effect on ice?
Isnt the result there, for all of us too see?
Antarctica versus the Arctic?

Interesting and informative post. Certainly the negative AO of this winter has kept the ice in place and will preserve more multi-year ice, making it harder to melt during the summer, however, the negative AO has also kept the water warmer near Greenland. On balance, this will still slightly favor the multi-year ice.
Prediction: Summer sea ice minimum of Sept. 2010 will be lower than 2009 or 2008, but not as low as 2007. However, 2011 summer arctic sea ice minimum will be at a record low of somewhere around 2.5 million sq. km. As we head toward the solar max event of 2013, the increasing interplanetary A index, decreasing GCR, warmer oceans, decreasing cloud cover globally, increasing CO2 and methane levels could combine to see consecutive record low summer sea ice minimums in 2011, 2012, and 2013…but not 2010. Though 2010 will be the warmest year on record in the troposphere, baring any Mt. Pinatubo type eruptions…

Steve Goddard (10:13:13) :
Steve, thanks for the link to the helpful grpahic showing why january 2010 showed record warmth even in the northern hemisphere http://www.remss.com/data/msu/graphics/tlt/medium/global/ch_tlt_2010_01_anom_v03_2.png.
Correct me if I am wrong but it appears to me that much of the northern hemisphere land mass temperature was well above normal (e.g Canada, Greenland, Africa, Middle East). The cooler parts, (USA and Europe), are where most of the readers to this blog are located, so gave the impression to many on this blog at least that Dr Spencer’s satellite data did not match reality on the ground.

Brian,
Phil posted vectors for one (carefully chosen?) week. The 60 day drift maps show the sum total movement of buoys since early December.
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/DAILYMAPS/dailymap.60day.jpg
Scarcely any movement outside of the Fram Strait.

Remember, the “record” low ice in 2007 was due to a wind pattern that blew more ice out of the Arctic than normal, not unusually warm temperatures.

Yeah, Steve, I know. But just using what he posted, the movement is more confined within the basin, and not so much out as in 2007. That’s what I was trying to get at.

MJK,
The large TLT January NH land anomaly is due mainly to Canada and Greenland. I’m hypothesizing that temperatures on the ground were not as anomalously high, and UAH Channel 4 seems to confirm this – as does weather underground stations I have looked at.

Some explanation of the Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations and how the AO affects ice formation, albeit with the usual AGW padding, courtesy of NCAR:
http://jisao.washington.edu/wallace/ncar_notes/

What amazes me is that all the climate scientists contributing to IPCC reports must understand the effects of ice drift and the effects of winds and currents on Arctic sea ice extent (and if they don’t what does that say about their knowledge of their subject).
Yet all public pronouncements seem designed to give the impression that the only factor that affects ice extent is average global temperature. This is so intuitive to the man in the street that it is unlikely to be questioned.
It’s a master-stroke of spin, but totally dishonest and completely unworthy of any true scientist.
If any fair-minded journos are reading this thread, then they could do their readers a great service by explaining that most arctic ice has to be moved out of the arctic before it will melt.

Steven, you said about the january NSIDC article that
” Oddly (but not surprisingly) the article failed to mention how this [the strong negative OA] affects drift”
however the mentioned article clearly states
“While a negative AO leads to warmer temperatures over the Arctic, it also tends to reduce the flow of sea ice out of the Arctic by affecting the winds that can export the ice to warmer waters, where it melts. In this way, a negative AO could help retain some the second- and third-year ice through the winter, and potentially rebuild some of the older, multiyear ice that has been lost over the past few years.”
so what is motivating your comment, exactly?

@ TA (09:54:34) :
This may be a dumb question, but if there is less Arctic drift, could that account for the record warmth in Jan. that is due to warmer oceans? Less drift would mean less ice melting and cooling the oceans. Or am I full of it?
Sounds like a smart question to me.
-psi

You need another option on your poll; “It depends on the wind and currents”.
Mike Ramsey

I have some comments / questions.
According to JAXA, the peak for 2008 was greater than 2009 so the second choice in the poll doesn’t make any sense.
What is “normal”?
I think it’s wishful thinking that there will be 500,000 km2 more ice than last year. At the rate the 2010 ice extent is growing, it will be lucky to be greater than the 2005-2007 group. If you look at the sea surface temperature anomoly on DMI, the water is unusually warm in the North Atlantic west of Greenland and in the Barents Sea, which are the two areas where the sea ice extent anomoly is is greatest.

Bets on when the Port of Churchill, Manitoba (on western Hudson Bay) will open for business in 2010, coinciding with sea ice breakup?
In 2009, an early opening was predicted (July 1) but the ice was actually 6 weeks later than that breaking up (Aug. 12), which was 3 weeks later than the average (July 21).
We heard about the late opening in 2009 but not about the fact that an early opening had been anticipated.

Rob,
Interesting. I actually wrote this piece about a month ago, and didn’t see that NSIDC AO drift discussion at the time. I wonder if the discussion has been updated since then? The web page has a more recent time stamp than the date of the article.

I think Doc lacota has it right. Increasing solar activity means:
1. Greater solar irradiance
2. Less GCR’s
3. Less cloud cover
4. More energy to troposphere & oceans
All this, combined with record amounts of CO2 and methane. Though I still think 2010 summer sea ice mimimum will come in right around 3 million sq. km, but a tiny bit above 2007’s summer minimum. But watch out for 2011, 2012, & 2013. I think we’ll hit 3 successive record lows in a row leading up to the solar max in 2013.

“”” Harry (14:54:41) :
Vincent (09:08:33) :
“It still don’t get why drift favours thinner ice over thicker.”
Hence, if the wind is blowing the sea ice apart(breaking it into smaller pieces), then it will melt faster. “””
Which means that having a bunch of busibodies charging around the arctic ocean on an icebreaker, carving up the sea ice, is not such a good, or a green idea.

R. Gates (12:25:35) :
??? Janaury 2010 the warmest on record in the troposphere. How is that “headed down again”???
Dear defense secretary, I meant Arctic.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/icrutem3_hadsst2_0-360E_70-90N_na.png
But northern hemisphere is heading down as well, now reaching temperature of 1990. If 3-7C warming predictions till 2100 are correct, it should warm during these two decades by 1-3C (northern hemisphere should warm twice the global average).
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/icrutem3_hadsst2_0-360E_23.5-90N_n_1980:2010a.png

Drift favors thinner ice because the mass to surface area ratio is less and it is more easily moved by the wind.

R. Gates (14:44:43) :
I think Doc lacota has it right. Increasing solar activity means:
1. Greater solar irradiance
2. Less GCR’s
3. Less cloud cover
4. More energy to troposphere & oceans
All this, combined with record amounts of CO2 and methane. Though I still think 2010 summer sea ice mimimum will come in right around 3 million sq. km, but a tiny bit above 2007’s summer minimum. But watch out for 2011, 2012, & 2013. I think we’ll hit 3 successive record lows in a row leading up to the solar max in 2013.
But, but, but surely your IPCC bible says that the natural phenomena you cite above have no effect on climate?
If they do then CO2 has almost no effect, not to forget that industrial contribution to CO2 is ( and this is generous ) 3.3%.
How can you eat your dinner at a table without legs?

A point not noted by any comments so far is thet the scale against which the NAO is measured was extended in December to read as low as -6, previously it measured to -5 and that had never been reached.
As for those suggesting the Solar max causing record melt. Although the sun looks as though it is waking from i’s slumber with a succession of sunspots this year, the Sloar Maximum will still be much lower that the last 3 cycles, so the effect will be less pronounced, also, why do people think we have a 5 year lag in cooling but no lag on warming? The Solar max will not help stabilise temps much before 2015

Where’s Pen Hadrow when you need him? Send in Pen and his crack team of ice measurers… They’ll sort it out!

I’ve heard a few people comment about the “unusual” nature of 2007’s low sea ice anomoly as it relates to ice getting “blown” into the warm waters of the arctic. As though it was all wind (and not any temperature anamolies) that caused the low ice levels. Of course it was both. See:
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20071001_pressrelease.html
For a nice analysis of what happened.
But whether it be solar radiation, wind, or warmer oceans in the arctic region, they all ultimately represent energy, and AGW (whether it exists or not) is fundamentally about the energy budget of the earth. Wind is just one form of that energy budget.
If we don’t hit a new record low arctic summer sea ice minimum in the next 5 years, (and I maintain we will in 2011, and then again in 2012 & 2013) then I would have my serious doubts about the ability of human activity to seriously impact earth’s energy balance in any meaningful way, and even concede that all natural variability far outweighs any human forcings to the energy balance. i don’t however, think that is the case. We haven’t had a significant positive arctic sea ice anomoly since 2003, and have in fact averaged around a million sq. km in the negative or under the normal levels based on the average over the previous 20 years:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/sea.ice.anomaly.timeseries.jpg
If would take a huge amount of energy to be “pumped” out of the arctic, to reverse the negative trend. I don’t see that happening, in fact, with the negative AO’s of this winter, quite the opposite…energy is being pumped into the arctic and in general have been warmer than average in the region, especially over Greenland. Yesterday is was warmer in Greenland than in Nashville and Memphis.

“Ground temperatures in Canada and Greenland were above normal, but not that much. Also, the MSU near-surface readings had a much lower anomaly than TLT.
My point is that I think the satellite TLT readings are exaggerated for January because of the elevation they are measured at. In 1998, UAH and RSS showed a much larger spike than GISS or Had-Crut.”
I know it’s only one station, but the Summit camp station on the Greenland Ice Cap has had an outlandishly warm winter. Although I have been unsuccessful in finding climate normal info for Summit, the mean temperature for the month of Januarywas around -29 C. My best guess as to the avg Jan tmean temp is -40 C. January was warmer than December, which was warmer than November!.

1962-1987 Last cool period [winters only]
Total number of winters 26
Number of winters below base line norm 1961-1990 18 or 69 % [say 70%]
Number of winters where AMO is negative 23 or 88%
Number of winters AO is negative 19 or 73%
Number of winters with AO negative all winter 10 or 38% [during 1988-2008 only 3 winters had negative AO all winter]
Number of winters where PDO is negative 15 or 58 % [Mostly early part 1962-1976] [affects jet streams and strength of westerlies?]
Number of winters NAO is negative 13 or 50 % [mostly 1960’s -8]
AO 1950-2009 [60 years]
Number of winters [DEC, JAN, FEB] negative all winter 18 or 30%
Of the 18 all negative winter AO 11 or 61% went negative to March as well[cool spring?]
Of the 18 all negative winter AO 13 or 72 % had negative months into the spring and summer [cool year?]
Severity of winter climate during the past cold spells was stongly influenced by the presence of negative AMO and AO and PDO
If a similar cool pattern develops for the next 20-30 years . then there will plenty of ice to go around in the Arctic.

cbmclean:
I was reading your post and noticed Yellowknife Canada is very much above its normal temp. On this webpage you can see current temps and look at the almanac for normal temps.
Current temp:
http://www.myforecast.com/bin/detailed_forecast.m?city=54390&metric=true
Historical information
http://www.myforecast.com/bin/climate.m?city=54390&metric=true
I can see that Yellowknife is well above normal temps at this time. I just do not undrestand this phenomena. I live close to Omaha Nebraska which is below normal temperatures at this time, the cold air we are receiving is coming from Central Canada. But the temps in Canada are well above their normals. I don’t know why this happens.

pt 1. Steve, you da man. Solar anything has nothing to do with Arctic Ice. The tilt of good ‘ol planet Earth drives Arctic ice formation.
pt 2. The AO does INDEED have lots and lots to do with Fram Strait ice exit. Maybe all the greenies can go up there and twirl their fingers really fast (before they freeze off) the other way and turn the wind around to send ice out of the Arctic basin. Then they can say, “See? I told you so!” What exactly that is I haven’t figured out yet, other than to surmise GIGO.
pt 3. Anybody worth a tinker’s dam should be coming up with a study on the AO, including 3 month running average, short term and long-term oscillations, and side indicators of change, along with a nifty name for positive and negative events and conditions. I think we should use names from the Eskimo language in the area in honor of the hearty souls who withstood this environment well enough to have babies in it. Anybody here know Eskimo?
SO….somebody download the AO data and get cracken on the 3 month running average thingy, stealing methodology unashamedly from ENSO (but with atmosphere data, not SST data), to come up with understandable understandings about the AO. And you have to be creative enough to come up with cute names that can withstand the cuteness of El Nino and La Nina.
Ready, set, go……….!

None of these really roll off the tongue do they.
Added – illaksak (eellaksak)
Adrift – savidyauyok
Blows (wind) – subluarpok
Blows a little – subluksungnartok
Coming (is) – krainyok
Departs (leaves) – audlarpok

Ref – It’s always Marcia, Marcia (09:52:21) :
“The North pole will be “ice Free” in 2010 2% (3 votes)
“Three trolls stopped by.”
____________
The “Trolls” are up a little as I type. I think you’re mistaken in your characterization however, at least I claim exception, and I doubt that any real trolls hang around in these temps for very long. I felt uneasy about the choices. I guess they didn’t give me enough choice and when I reached the last I thought for a moment about the old advice about taking the road less traveled. “D”, for a very brief instant, seemed the most likely to be true if you remember that we seem to know so little –no offense to anyone– about how climate works. Isn’t it amazing that we can (or could) walk on the Moon but we can’t be very precise about how much more or less ice we’ll have in the Arctic for the 2010 season? I guess I tend to be contrary at times. It seems, for all we “know”, that the Arctic could just as easily be iceless during most of an ice age:-)
How else do we explain all those glaciers? The cold must be down here and not up there.
I’m contrary tonight not trollish.

geo (17:17:21) :
Daryl M (13:52:47)
I have some comments / questions.
According to JAXA, the peak for 2008 was greater than 2009 so the second choice in the poll doesn’t make any sense.
++++
Peak? Did you notice the poll question said “summer”? We’re discussing predictions for minimums reached in September, not maximums reached in March.
Can they be related? Sure. I made that point upstream when I declined to go along (yet) with a prediction of > 2009. But the March peak is not the only factor in the eventual September minimum. . . multi-year ice, winds, tide, cloud cover in the summer, and (of course) summer temperatures and the early/late/average onset of Fall all play a role.
Doh! I never noticed the poll was for the summer minimum. I jumped to the conclusion we were talking about the winter maximum since we are coming up on it soon.
Notwithstanding that, I still question whether we are heading for an increase in the summer ice, since the winter maximum is not looking like it will it will set any records. In fact, it looks like it will be on the low side. So if the 2010 winter maximum is lower than normal, the summer minimum will be disadvantaged out of the gate.

Phil,
Looks to me like TLT is 14,000 feet?
TLT = Temperature Lower Troposphere MSU 2 and AMSU 5
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html
Daily global average temperature at: 14,000 ft / 4.4 km / 600 mb (ch05)
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/data/amsu_daily_85N85S_ch05.r002.txt

Two claims here which are not quite accurate without addendum
1) Antarctic sea ice is increasing. The trend is very slightly up, but still not by very much at all. the last two years have been on the average for instance.
2) The exceptional melt of 2007 was not just caused by wind patterns, it was coupled with exceptionally clear sunny days too. The latter keeps getting forgotten in some quarters.
Andy

Pamela Gray (19:40:29) :
“I want to understand the AO a bit more before I feel I have what it takes to predict it’s winds and pressure systems that long out. What do we know about the predictive signs of this thing going positive or negative? It is quite obvious that NOAA/NASA hasn’t got it down.”
True. I wish they would take some time to explain this:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.shtml
Fascinating.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

2008, for example, was a warmer summer than 2007 was.

Why is the extent of the current ice only higher than the 2007 satellite record minimum? If it isn’t floating/blowing out to the Atlantic, and the temperatures are well below freezing where’s the ice?
Show me the Ice!

I’ve made available a simple version of a spreadsheet which is DIY calculation for Arctic sea ice deviation.
You have to download and add the new IJIS data, extend a couple of columns copy/fill and magic.
What you do with the result is your business. Plot of the whole set may pose a problem.
This is _daily_ data 1978 to date, long story which I won’t go into now, other than is compensated NASA stereo joined over common period 2003..2007 and IJIS continues. Can’t both be right and must be different projections, compensations works well.
Ice is low right now.
http://www.gpsl.net/climate/data/sea_ice/sea-ice-np-ext-daily-pub.zip
300k zip of .xls, no macros, is minimal data otherwise is large

Predicted value of the Sea Ice Index (extent) for September 2010 , estimated by the statistical method , is 5.55 (±0.62) x 10^6 km2 The method of the prognosis of the ice-extent in the Arctic was worked out (and is applied) in Dpt. Meteorology and Nautical Oceanography, Gdynia Maritime University (Poland).
Predictor for the prognosis is the index characterizing signal of the heat content in the subtropical zone of Northern Atlantic (DG3L – about the index DG3L and mechanisms of changes of the temperature in Arctic – look “Oceanic control of the warming processes in the Arctic – a different point of view for the reasons of changes in the Arctic climate” http://ocean.am.gdynia.pl/p_k_p/pkp_19/Marsz-Stysz-pkp19.pdf
Regards
aamarsz

DMI shows 2006 February extent as the lowest on record and 2006 September extent as the highest.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Point is again that February extent tells you literally nothing about the thickness of the perennial ice – which is a key factor in how much ice melts during the summer. The extent graphs don’t provide much useful information until mid-June, when the years start to diverge.

Thanks for the interesting data and analysis, and prediction Steven.
I find the use of anomalies regarding the Arctic somewhat specious. This is because it is largely landlocked. This means that as the ice fills the Arctic basin the area available for further ice extent is minimized. This biases the anomalies to be more weighted in the negative range. Since even no ice has occurred in the past, without NH glaciation, the upper boundry, or maximum, is limited. It is not a gaussian distribution.
The depiction of ice at CT for Feb. 9th in ’07 and ’10 seems to show far more density now as opposed to ’07.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=02&fd=09&fy=2007&sm=02&sd=09&sy=2010
I have complained about CT in the past, and notice it is rarely referenced by WUWT folks anymore. What I noticed in the past was the encroachment of the addition of snow into the arctic basin, making the sea smaller. That was in 2004, the loss of sea area pixels is ‘coincidentally’ equal to the step change in sea ice after 2004. In 2010, they have increased the size of the earth, but changed the perspective, it is not simply scaled larger. I will do a pixel count at some point and see if the scale of the sea matches that of the earth.

Steve Goddard says:
“I’ve never seen any evidence of sunspot count affecting ice extent. The 1980s had unusually high ice extent and age, when solar activity was at a 300 year high.”
——————
Steve, not necessarily “sunspot number,” but a more active sun, especially since our sun has been so cool for an extended solar cycle low, which had many starting to talk about the Maunder Minimum. Most scientists will admit an active sun will surely emit more energy, even if the CME’s and other solar flares are not in the direction of our Earth, there still must be an increase in irradiation, no matter how small.
I beg to differ with your remark about the 1980’s being the 300-year high of solar activity, since Solar Cycle 19 peaking about 1958 was the record, and we saw solar maximum activity between 1950-2004. Reconstructions of TSI goes back to 1611, and there is little doubt that the second half of the 20th century was by far the most active for TSI in the past 400 years.
While you might disagree with certain global temperature measurements by NASA/NOAA, the latest +0.72 degree C. Jan. 2010 global temperature anomaly that dr. roy spencer just added to his graph is quite telling, and even has amazed him. To me, this is quite interesting while at a time of such low solar activity and TSI. http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
My point is, the general consensus of the cause of the Maunder Minimum was extremely low solar activity and TSI coupled with above average volcanic effects, the possible increase in solar irradiance just since the 17th century — as small as it might be — seems to be having an effect of warming our planet. While it seems to also be the consensus that the Arctic is warming much more than the planet as a whole, especially during this winter of extreme negative Arctic oscillation, I seem to think that we’re about to experience some more rapid changes now that the sun has emerged from its funk, and Solar Cycle 24 is headed upwards to the high — maybe not in 2010, but surely in 2011, 2012 and 2013. We’ll see.

Here is the link showing the extension of the plot below (-4). It briefly hit (-5) and currently at about (-4.3).
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index_mrf.shtml

No problem, Steve and like you say, it supports your analysis.

Well I look at the JAXA ice graph more or less daily; mostly out of fascination; and no way do I want to get in the game of prediction of future data. I’m just looking at what has apparently happened since 1979. So I’ve read most of the explanations for the 2007 summer minimum (actually fall), and all that is interesting. I’m happy that people keep track of that. I also look at the DMI Arctic temperature which is even more fascinating; specially those wild five degree up and five degree down daily swings. Dare I suggest that those graphs scream of Nyquist sampling violation ? The whole of the Arctic can jump five degrees C in a day. Well I guess it is only north of +80 Latitude, so not really the whole of the Arctic.
Almost seems like just weather moving in, rather than climate change.
Phil talks about the ice thickening slowing due to the insulating effect of the thick ice abobe the ice/water interface; which almost by definition is underwater; and that doesn’t seem to be a debatable issue. Along the same line though, the growth of ice at that underwater interface; which by definition should be at the freezing point of sea water; also results in the expulsion via the segregation coefficients, of both salts, and CO2 from the growing solid. So I believe the boundary layer must be somewhat more saline than the bulk of the sea, and that is going to depress the freezing point of the boundary layer even further, so that too, must be a factor in the slowing of thickness growth, once a surface ice layer is formed.
I would think that the open surface water, should be somewhere near Henry’s law equilibrium as far as dissolved CO2 goes, so the expulsion of CO2 from the growing ice, could result in venting to the atmosphere, of excess CO2. Well we know from NOAA three D graphs, that the atmospheric CO2 over the North Pole cycles with about 18 ppm p-p amplitude. That 18 ppm decline seems to happen in about 5 months, while the recovery; presumably during the melt season takes seven months.
That doesn’t look like any 200 year residence time to me. If I took “residence time” to mean about five time constants, that would make for a 40 year time constant, and there’s no way, that a reduction of 18 ppm in 5 months, can go on for 40 years.
Remember in ordinary exponetial decay, that governs many kinds of physical processes, the INITIAL rate of change following a step change in the driving force, is such as to complete the complete transition to the new state in one time constant. So if that 18 ppm in 5 months was a linear decline, it would go 100 ppm (the present excess roughly) in 5.5 times five months or two and a bit years. But that 5 months fall is a bit curved rather than straight so the initial rate is even faster. So I would say the time constant is more like two years, than 40 years.
However a friend at Scripps in La Jolla, who is a CO2 expert, says that that NOAA graph is simulated, and not really measured data; so it is more of an “artists impression” than real scientific data. Maybe the Mauna Loa Data is real, but that global pole to pole 3-D graphs is not. Maybe that is why NOAA pulled it, and hid it away. But I have about a dozen hard color copies of it, so it isn’t going to stay lost.

re: your poll of vistors (“What will the 2010 Summer Arctic Sea Ice Extent Be?”)
One of the options is “It will be normal.” Like Daryl M and John Silver, I’d like to know the definition of normal. I imagine most WUWT readers (and those expected to pay for “carbon reduction strategies, too) would like to know as well.
I contend that we don’t know what the “normal” extent of Arctic sea ice is, nor do we know it’s full range for a reasonable period of time (beyond 30 years)…
What we DO have is a very short period of “comprehensive” historical records, with NASA’s (the AMSR-E data) being the shortest, but most accurate (reportedly), and the military’s (NSIDC) being longer but less accurate. (This short history of direct measurements is also the case with instrument records for temperature and atmospheric CO2.)
The satellite records only go back 30 YEARS [as pointed out by Alexej Buergin as well]. That’s far too short to really make any realistic assessment as we have nothing of similar accuracy or precision against which to compare for other periods, such as the 30’s and 40’s, but also versus the LIA, MWP & RWP. As I’ve tried to research the ice extent issue for some time, it’s clear that even choosing which statistical analyses to run is problematic. Do we, for example, assume that either the NSIDC or AMSR-E records reflect the REAL range, average and standard deviations for the entire range of conditions that have ever existed,or are they merely a subset of a larger collection for which we simply do not have records? If it’s the latter (which is I believe is more likely the case), how variable is the extent of ice in the Arctic? That’s the $10 billion question.
Statistical measures are based on assumptions of what the underlying date MIGHT look like, assumptions that could well be quite wrong. And we do know what may happen when we “assume” things. Plus, what period to pick — IFF we could just step into the time machine and create a dataset in the past– is problematic too. Hypothetically (this is a rhetorical question), would we expect that there was a small amount of Arctic Ice 70,000 years ago when the Wisconsonian Glacier was modifying the path of Ohio River at Cincinnati? Does using data such as that starts at the Little Ice Age make sense (since it’s been “warming” since)? Or would we want data that go back only somewhat farther, such as back to the MWP or the Roman Warm Period?
Unfortunately, we simply do not have comprehensive accurate and precise measurements (not proxy data) for Arctic Ice Extent for more than 30 years. We cannot therefore compare and contrast different periods of ice extent against each other or against other data (atmospheric temps and CO2, for example) as a means to see if there might be correlations.
———–
There’s also one other little, itty, bitty problem: “long-term” decreases in Arctic sea ice extent over time merely indicates “warming” but not the CAUSE of the warming, just as increases in ice extent might indicate “cooling.” Causation remains the object of hypothesis, conjecture, theory and great debate. Ice extent records, short as they are, tell us nothing about the cause, be it natural, anthropogenic, or some mix of the two.
Eugene Langschwager, Executive Director
Climate Science Coalition of America
http://www.climatescienceamerica.org

To use a tired cliche here, is there not a 600 pound gorilla in the room: ocean and ocean currents, and their decadal variations? Not SST – which comes from the upper 1mm of the water column – the rest of the water column from 2mm depth to the bottom, where practically all the climate energy resides. All this discussion about Arctic ice seems to assume only air temps and solar variations were significant. Ocean currents at all depths (deep circulation can be very different from upper circulation) will transfer much more energy around the Arctic than air or even sun in terms of rate at a given time.
Barents Sea variation of up to 4C (upper few 100 m) in correlation with the AMO indicates the oscillation is linked variation in the North Atlantic Drift. Other currents no doubt vary cyclically around the Arctic.
Solar input will of course affect ocean heat over long timescales. The atmosphere may be a passive player between ocean and sun.

Crosspatch said
“While it is true that the weather was sunnier than normal, the ice did not melt in place. The transportation of ice past Greenland into the Atlantic was quite dramatic. Sunshine notwithstanding, wind was the primary cause. Also note that while is was sunnier, it was also a colder than normal summer.”
From NSIDC
“Another factor that conspired to accelerate the ice loss this summer was an unusual atmospheric pattern, with persistent high atmospheric pressures over the central Arctic Ocean and lower pressures over Siberia. The scientists noted that skies were fairly clear under the high-pressure cell, promoting strong melt. At the same time, the pattern of winds pumped warm air into the region. While the warm winds fostered further melt, they also helped push ice away from the Siberian shore.”
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20071001_pressrelease.html
So the actual main melt reasons was not ice being pushed past Greenland and out, it was due to clear skies, warm winds ( melting in situe) and those same winds pushing ice away from Siberia to the north so reducing the extent.
Andy

I’m going to say slightly less than 2009 but more than 2008. I’m basing this off of two reasons.
The first is persistence. The long term trend puts us slightly below 2009. Also, ice has never recovered a million sq km and remained at such high levels. All previous 1 and 2-yr increases in ice extent were followed by a decrease. Through the 30 yr NSIDC record it has never increased for 3 straight years.
The second is the El Nino state and high global temperatures. The past 5 years ice has tracked the ENSO index perfectly. Nino summers had less extent than the previous year, Nina summer has more. Summer 05 was a fading Nino, ice extent decreased. Summer 06 was a fading Nina, ice extent was higher than previous years. Summer 07 was a fading Nino, ice extent decreased (dramatically). Summer 08 was a Nina, ice extent increased. Summer 09 was a fading Nina, ice extent increased. If you go back far enough in time this correlation breaks (03 was a mod-strong Nino and had very high extent). But it seems to have worked for the last 5 years particularly well, and there may be a significant correlation on longer timescales but I haven’t seen such a study. The relationship between high global temperatures and ice melt is obvious.

@Phil. (05:50:21) :
AO status + March maximum should tell us something tho, right? That’s why I want to know if the AO was positive or negative in the winter of 2005-2006.
If I have grokked the conversation thus far, for a given March maximum amount if you know that’s been compacted by a negative AO, or spread by a positive AO, then you can say something useful about its comparison to other March maximum amounts as to their impact on the September minimums. . . if you know those other March’s AO status as well.
Said another way, presumably a larger March maximum is still good if it goes along with a strongly negative AO –that’s “best of both worlds”. And a small March maximum with a strongly positive AO would be “worst of both worlds”.

Phil,
3+ year old ice should nearly double this year.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20090406_Figure5_thumb.png
Look at the right edge of the lower graph to see why.

Phil,
MSU doesn’t cover much of the Arctic Basin, and the DMI graph looks neutral for January.
Are you always this contrary?

Roger,
So far as I know only the IJIS/JAXA data is published daily.
There is a provisional figure in plain view on the web page, plus the whole data in CSV format directly available. This is for Arctic extent only.
Work I have done shows that ice area and extent deviation figures are the same. Antarctic sea ice, a ring around a large landmass, is of low interest, doesn’t change much.
If you look further up this web page I posted reference to a dataset I have made available. This is so far as I know the only complete 1978 through to current daily dataset. This was done by joining a stale dataset (ceases Dec 2007) with IJIS/JAXA data and can be validly updated every day by you if that is what you want. Validity/accuracy: best I could do at the time but it hasn’t been reviewed by others.
Producing plots seems somewhat pointless. It takes time in return for nothing. A better move is try and make things easily accessible, enable other people. Not many will actually do anything.
A long discussion here is inappropriate. If you want to talk privately about this email me tc gpsl.net if you can get past the spam shark, if not, try again.

Phil,
Serreze predicted that 90N would be ice free in 2008.

doc,
Land temperatures in Canada and Greenland have been above normal. That isn’t the same as the Arctic Basin above 80N where the sea ice forms though.

“”” Steve Goddard (06:18:54) :
Tim,
Antarctic sea ice changes by nearly 14 million km2 between the winter maximum and the summer minimum.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
Arctic ice changes by less than that – about 11 million km2.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
Antarctic ice, being further from the pole, reflects more sunlight than Arctic ice, and thus has a stronger influence on the earths radiation balance. “””
Steve, the Antarctic Winter nights, also have the earth further from the sun; which might encourage more ice (extent) but lower sunlight to reflect off it. Then in the summer you would have the reverse, of a higher southern summer irradiance. I have also wondered about the annual loss of Antarctic sea ice, simply from the fact that the southern ocean sloshes all around it along with daily tides; whereas, the Arctic ice perimeter, is largely land locked.
Can you make anything of those specific differences; or is there data to take those into account ?

I found the Mark Serreze post where he says that he bet on an ice free North Pole.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/08/15/arctic-ice-extent-discrepancy-nsidc-versus-cryosphere-today/

Mark C. Serreze (08:14:28) :
” Looks like I’ll lose my own bet and Santa Claus will be safe for another year.”

Phil,
We are entering the coldest part of the Arctic winter now and temperatures are plenty cold in the Arctic.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
The point of this article is that a key factor in predicting summer ice extent is winter drift, rather than winter temperature. It makes little difference if the air temperature is minus 30 or minus 35 C during February.

The pack is starting to grow again at a better rate, even tho the AO is still strongly negative, which I feel better about. Logically you’d expect a transition in the AO from positive to negative to reach some practical limit of compaction and then start to grow faster in total extent again –wouldn’t you?

I think that this year will show lower sea ice in the Arctic , but not record lows , but could be close the thicker ice will slow the melt , the big variable will be if the wrmer water sitting off the pacific coast makes its way further north we have had a much warmer sea this winter on the pacific, the atlantic is mising ice allowing the sun again to warm the water open water heats ice reflects, Allso Canada on a whole has experianced the warmest winter on recoerd as a country and has extremly low snow levels on land so the continent will heat more than usuall this summer so the big facter will be air and ocean currents. I work on the water everyday and all I know is we are seeing much warmer water last summer was crazy warm in Canada yes -30 is cold but nothing to what we are used to