JPL: Missing ice in 2007 drained out the Nares strait – pushed south by wind where it melted far away from the Arctic

The Arctic is remarkably quiesced this year, with the deeply negative AO.
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/maps_daily_track-map.html
And as a result, the concentration of ice is extremely high.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png

“Until recently, we didn’t think the small straits were important for ice loss,” Kwok said.

Not to blame him as he is one who DID look, but…untested assumptions.

“If indeed these arches are less likely to form in the future, we have to account for the annual ice loss through this narrow passage. Potentially, this could lead to an even more rapid decline in the summer ice extent of the Arctic Ocean,” Kwok said.
Sorry, can’t resist: OMG it’s worse than we thought!

Finally, now there is a specific mechanism identified, and another direct refutation to the AGW assertion that ice is melting at an unusual rate due to warming.
I don’t suppose this will be announced and discussed on RC?
I wonder what the impact on SST in the north Atlantic would be attributable to 30 cubic miles of ice melting as it drifts south (difference between normal ice loss and 2007 ice loss)?
Larry

What?
Caltech’s JPL discovered that the wind must be considered too?
In another few decades JPL may even discover that changes in Earth’s climate are influenced by the Sun’s variability!
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo

This gives us a better idea of why the wind pushed a record amount of ice out to see — given that wind is not a new phenomenon:
“To find out more about the ice motion in Nares Strait, the scientists examined a 13-year record of high-resolution radar images from the Canadian RADARSAT and European Envisat satellites. They found that 2007 was a unique year – the only one on record when arches failed to form, allowing ice to flow unobstructed through winter and spring.”
No arches = lots of ice lost to wind. Why were there no arches?
“We don’t completely understand the conditions conducive to the formation of these arches,” Kwok said. “We do know that they are temperature-dependent because they only form in winter. So there’s concern that if climate warms, the arches could stop forming.”
One more time: “We do know that they are temperature-dependent because they only form in winter.”
There may be some other reason why the arches failed to form, but at first blush, this seems to imply that global warming set the stage for the wind to do its damage.

If indeed……
If of course it is not so or only seldom there will be nothing tor report.
Kindest Regards

I love how, on the one hand, they admit how much they don’t know…….
“Until recently, we didn’t think the small straits were important for ice loss,” Kwok said.
But of course there needs to be a “scare” quote.
“Potentially, this could lead to an even more rapid decline in the summer ice extent of the Arctic Ocean,” Kwok said.

Sounds like they are trying to spin it.
Hmmmm, 34000 square miles of ice drained out of one strait… that’s not a small number. Begs the question, how much more ice than usual is draining from all straits due to winds? If added back in how would that affect the extent totals? They probably know but aren’t saying.
If the decline in extent is mostly caused by winds and not melt, then it’s not a concern. Increased winds could also bring in warmer air, causing a bit more melt… also not a concern. Kind of sounds like a change in the Arctic Oscillation… (shhh, don’t tell NASA, its a secret.)

Heck, right here on wuwt,we learned that the ice was flushed out by the wind in2007. We saw a beautful movie of it made with nsidc’s own data while they were waxing strongly about a melting arctic and the extinction of ice caps in a few short yrs. Did jpl credit our poster for this discovery?

Robert (17:40:07) :
Well then Robert, why did it do an about face the following two years? Aren’t we just sizzling hotter and hotter each year? GISS says so!

This newer report does not seem to have considered whether the conclusions of the earlier report on the circulation change might have something to do with the arch formation.

Robert
“There may be some other reason why the arches failed to form, but at first blush, this seems to imply that global warming set the stage for the wind to do its damage.”
Yes Robert, and in the years when there was no wind, no one noticed.
Point being, no one knows how many years the arches formed or didn’t form.
Warming or no warming.
But it was the wind this time………..

Compared to average ice flow this may bring net cooling:
1. Ice melts further south => waters cooler further south
2. Earth albedo higher further south (in NH spring) => more reflection of incoming sunlight
3. Less ice in the arctic => more heat transfer from ocean to air to space in NH winter, but more energy absorbed during NH summer
Seems like a possible negative feedback effect.

“The ice lost through Nares Strait was some of the thickest and oldest in the Arctic Ocean.”
===========
How thick, and how old was it?
Thick enough to sink the Titanic, or was it just thick and “rotten” ice.
I want data. Not scary stories.
Also:
“They found that in 2007, Nares Strait drained the Arctic Ocean of 88,060 square kilometers (34,000 square miles) of sea ice, or a volume of 60 cubic miles. The amount was more than twice the average amount lost through Nares each year between 1997 and 2009.”
========
What did this do to the ocean heat content (Atlantic)?
This is used in the climate models, right?
(I won’t even comment on the last paragraph, which includes the terms: “if indeed”, “less likely”, “potentially” and “even more rapid”).
Why, always the doomsday prediction at the end 🙂

O/T
But this is the American way.
” legal action would seek to challenge the findings of climate scientists”
Prove the science in a court of law!
Let us see them try to keep this out of the media!
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2258194/virginia-alabama-crank-legal
“While a number of the suits are expected to focus on the EPA’s legal right to regulate emissions and whether or not the Clean Air Act is an appropriate mechanism for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, Virginia attorney general Kenneth T Cuccinelli II indicated the state’s legal action would seek to challenge the findings of climate scientists.”

Building a steel “arch” or shorter abutments out from the narrows of the strait would therefore lead to thousand year old ice if that’s what our future depends on would be a heck of a lot cheaper course of action than trillion dollar schemes being proposed by the polical engineers.

GaryPearse (18:44:27) :
Didn’t someone have an emergency plan that called for filling in the Bering Strait?

Poptech (18:35:29) :
The Wind Theory has been mentioned for some time but largely ignored,
Winds, Ice Motion Root Cause Of Decline In Sea Ice, Not Warmer Temperatures (University Of Washington)
Variations in the age of Arctic sea-ice and summer sea-ice extent
(Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 31, Issue 9, May 2004)
– Ignatius G. Rigor, John M. Wallace
The R&W paper is available free here
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/research_seaiceageextent.html
I highly recommend watching the animation that accompanies it
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/animations/Rigor&Wallace2004_AgeOfIce1979to2007.mpg
The combination of buoy drift paths and ice age clearly shows the “collapse”,one of the few times that oft used word seems truly applicable, of the old ice [up to a decade or more old] which occurred in ’89-’90 as a result of a dramatic shift of state of the Beaufort Gyre and the TransPolar Drift and how the persistence of that new pattern drove the continuing decline in ice age through 2007

“Watch the goal posts move before your eyes. ”
I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but I know of no climate scientist who has claimed that all or even most ice loss is the result of melting in situ. It melts enough to break apart, then it drifts out to sea where it melts completely. Nobody thinks the Wilkins ice shelf melted away in place.
Much like the fantasy in which Al Gore claims it will never snow again, this is a distortion of the past in order to try and construct a “win.”

The Arctic ice extent (area of >30% coverage) is now making a record in these six years:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php

I sat there looking at Mann’s temperature graph, admiring the way humanity has kept the temperature trend level for hundreds and hundreds of years, solemnly pondering the sudden and unmistakable rise at the end that shoots up like… well… like the blade of a well-honed hockey stick and then it hit me like a ton of bricks:
THE TIPPING POINT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED!
The epiphany was unmistakable! Yup, folks, I’m SURE of it. That sudden temperature rise isn’t just a preparatory blip; it isn’t a mere perturbation suggesting some impending doom; nor is it some artifact caused by errant data entry or an inverted scale: Without a doubt THE TIPPING POINT HAS COME AND GONE!
We’re all doomed, folks! And there’s no way to put the genie back in the bottle. There’s absolutely no way to undo the Tipping Point. We are had; we’re finished!
We (and I’m speaking collectively for every man, woman, and child on the entire earth) could all hold our breaths for the next hour and a half (that should be sufficient) and even that horrendous self-sacrifice wouldn’t push the tipping point back. Not one bit; nada, nyet, never! We’ll never see a smooth, moderate temperature curve again–EVER!
We could turn off every automobile, truck, ship, train, motorcycle, snow thrower, and power saw and it wouldn’t be enough to reverse it!
We could extinguish every bonfire, barbecue, charcoal kiln and subterranean coal fire and that level of control would still not take us back to where we were!
We could throttle down every gas- and coal-fired power plant (and even those CO2-free nuclear plants for good measure) along with every hydroelectric and geothermal plant and STILL not reverse the Tipping Point!
We could plant every square foot of earth’s arable surface with the most efficient CO2-consuming plants known to mankind, throw away all the asphalt roads along with all that cement and our efforts would be completely futile!
Because folks, if you look at that graph, there’s no going back. There’s no way to undo the terrible injustice we’ve foisted upon ourselves, our kids, our grandkids, our great grandkids, and all our future generations until the sun extinguishes itself and becomes a black, smoldering dwarf star, illuminating the earth like the moon.
Oh, the agony not to have recognized it when it happened! Oh, the wasted time and money researching and discussing something we simply didn’t recognize even though it was so apparent! Oh, the mental anguish of having spent so many intellectual discussions on WUWT debating something that HAS ALREADY HAPPENED!
I’ll never forgive myself.
I should have skied as many glaciers as possible before they all disappeared.
I should have donned ice skates and traversed the North Pole on the last few inches of ice before ice was simply a thing of the past.
I should have pushed together the last remaining snowflakes, now so slushy with rotten heat that making snowmen or snowballs is an impractical, impossible task, just to relive the joy of smacking some unsuspecting, passing person.
I should have sat with my kids and soaked in the few remaining sunsets before the ocean’s mass inexorably took to the skies, rendering them far too dense with fog to ever see the bold splash of colors that used to emblazon the western horizon.
Yes, I should have. I know I should have. *Sob*

But it’s a rotten floe…
I’ve always said that if you could run a chain between Svalbard and Greenland you could change the climate, but that’s a bit foolish.

Did anyone find the reference to the ice that was lost being really old a little odd – Is there any scientific basis for saying the ice in that strait was unusually old?
Next thing you know they’re going to start talking about old growth ice being replaced by rotten ice, which would then imply that extent doesn’t matter because the quality of the ice is declining

Robert Wykoff (19:15:11) :
Can someone explain to me why even if all ice is gone in the north pole during summer is catastrophic? I remember watching a nature show some time back on the discovery channel that showed there were over 20 events in the last few million years where there was no polar ice at all for thousands of years at a time, despite this, the earth still spins, and trees still grow.
Good Luck with that question. I’ve posed it about a dozen times to various trolls around here and never did get a response.

Robert Wykoff (19:15:11) :
Can someone explain to me why even if all ice is gone in the north pole during summer is catastrophic?
1. The penguins would loose there summer breeding ground.
2. Polar bears can not swim and would be go extinct Thursday June 7th 2030 (2 PM GMT).
3. Greece would default and collapse the euro.
4. The increase in fresh water would decrease the salinity of the oceans and thus the density causing all ships to sink because of lack of buoyancy.
5. Russia would invade Canada.
6. Spain would default and collapse the Pound
7. The isostatic rebound in the North would tilt North America and drain the Mississippi.
8. The flood of water from the Mississippi would tear all Big Oil platforms from their moorings.
9. Britain would default and collapse the Ruble.
10. The French might surrender to the penguins.
How much WORSE does it have to get before you understand the seriousness of the PROBLEM !!!!!!!!!!!!

Interesting site for Arctic ice mass balance, ice thickness, etc.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/

RockyRoad (19:14:59) :
Your rant on the tipping point tipped me into laughter.
I’m still choking.

“Can someone explain to me why even if all ice is gone in the north pole during summer is catastrophic?”
“Catastrophic” is a loaded framing. Negative consequences include more warming (because of the change in the earth’s albedo) and loss of the habitat and the animals that live there.
“I remember watching a nature show some time back on the discovery channel that showed there were over 20 events in the last few million years where there was no polar ice at all for thousands of years at a time, despite this, the earth still spins, and trees still grow.”
This is a common misconception. Global warming is not going to damage “nature.” The threat is primarily to human civilization. The pole was last ice free tens of thousands of year ago. The earth was not supporting 6 billion human beings. If climate change costs us, say, 75% of our food production, “nature” could not care less. The consequences for human beings would be rather severe, however.

“Can someone explain to me why even if all ice is gone in the north pole during summer is catastrophic?”
A little more on the warming this would cause. I couldn’t find anything calculating the precise positive feedback of the albedo loss from losing the summer ice. I did a very (VERY) rough calculation. (If anyone has the real numbers, please post them):
Arctic ice area (summer, 1979-2000 average): about 7 million sq km (1.4% of the earth’s area)
Sea ice albedo: .7
Open water: .08
Summer radiation: 400 Watt/m^2
Duration: 6m/yr
So . . . over 1.4% of the Earth’s surface (.014), for half the year (.5), you get the difference between .7 (120 W/m^2) and .08 albedo (368 W/m^2) (it’s 248 W/m^2). You get a total forcing of about 1.7 W/m^2.
That’s slightly more than the amount of forcing adding by all the anthropogenic CO2 added to the atmosphere to data, so it’s a potentially large source of positive feedback.

kim (17:29:53) :
<i.Paging Dr. Mark Serreze, STAT.
Since November 19 he might be busy watching Global Warming in its ‘death spiral’.

“”” rbateman (17:32:57) :
If I take a whole tray of ice cubes out of my refrigerator and place them in a bucket of water, 2 things happen:
1.) The refrigerator has to work harder to replace the ice
2.) the bucket of water gets much colder as the ice melts.
Now, what do you suppose is the effect of all that ice going south to cool off those oceanic waters? “””
Well in mid 2006, a British/Dutch team using a European satellite (presumably polar orbit) announced that after ten years of measuring the level of the arctic ocean, they show it was dropping at 2 mm per year, over that previous 10 years.
They said they were very confident of their data; but didn’t know why that had happened.
If they had read Physics Today for January 2005, they would have found my letetr written actually in mid 2004, in which I predicted that when floating sea ice melts, the sea level should drop; for reasons known to any 8th grade high school science student..
Melting of floating ice requires 80 calories per gram for latent heat of melting, and that can only come from the surrounding water since 9/10 or 10/11 or whatever of the ice is below the surface. So that can cool 80 grams of water by one degree C or one gram by 80 degree C (not likely).
Since salt water of more than 2.47% salinity has a positive temperature coefficient of expansion down to the freezing point, then the sea water must shrink, so the level goes down. If the temperature coefficient was constant with temperature (it isn’t), then the sea level fall, is independent of how much water cools how much. A tall column of water cooling a small amount shrinks the same amount as a shorter column cooling more (for the constant Tc rate.
so when all that ice that went out the gate, finally melted in the warmer waters, the sea level there would go down.
The author of the book whose revue in Physics Today, I was commenting on, responded that I was all wet ( in effect), and added that it was well known that when ocean waters heat up they expand and the level rises.
True (as is the converse) but totally irrelevent to my comment about floating sea ice melting.
That author is somewhat well known among AGW promoters.

Spector (22:29:39) :
“From the environmentalist point of view, I believe that some of them hold the position that all animal species are sacred and mankind”
The idea that mankind is not an “animal species”, and is often mentioned as being separate from the ‘animals’, as I see above; is a cornerstone of all religions.
Humans are animals until they become minerals due to decomposition and then vegetables due mineral uptake by plants or through global warming indoctrination.
Humans are animals, and that likely includes you Spector; Robert however may have skipped the mineral stage.

Robert (22:32:54) :
I can think of something really bad happening if the sea level were to drop:
Panama and Suez canals idled for starters.
All that cheap Global Seafaring stuff would take a hit.
Sea levels dropping would mean ports in difficulties, and northern sea lanes interdicted with treacherous icebergs.
You don’t know how good you got it until it’s gone.

Should these Marc Morano videos appear on the front page of WUWT some time soon?
ClimateDepot’s Morano: Global Warming Already Dead, ClimateGate ‘Withheld Embalming Fluid’
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2010/20100219103457.aspx

RE: mikelorrey (22:36:11) : “Please cite a peer reviewed, data transparent study not published by the Hockey Team, an advocacy group, or funded by an advocacy group (and I regard the UNIPCC and US and British government agencies to be advocacy groups) which actually makes these predictions….”
My statement was an observation of what I believe others may be thinking based on my general impression of comments I have seen elsewhere…

These arches form in winter. The winter of 2006-2007 saw more ice than the winter of 2005-2006 did. Spring and Summer 2007 air temperatures were below average. There is nothing to indicate that the lack of ice arch formation was temperature related. It has not happened since and arctic ice is recovering. The 2007 ablation season started with more ice than the 2006 ablation season did. Old ice has been accumulating since 2007.
So far it would seem that 2007 was some sort of fluke and it probably happens from time to time.
My guess is that 2010 will be close to 2006 at minimum.

Spector (22:29:39) :
Another issue is predicted rise of sea-level if all the Greenland ice melts and the even more catastrophic rise if some or all of the ground supported Antarctic ice also melts.
Given that the mass balance relationship between increased melting and increased precipitation in Greenland is so little understood, I’d say it’s even money whether the Greenland ice sheet would grow or shrink with all that open water available to fuel snowfall. Check out the lake effects snow records for Buffalo.

Speaking of sea level, anyone have any idea of how often ucolorado updates this:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/results.php
It hasn’t been updated since some time in 2009.

Tom P (17:50:56) :
“If indeed these arches are less likely to form in the future, we have to account for the annual ice loss through this narrow passage. Potentially, this could lead to an even more rapid decline in the summer ice extent of the Arctic Ocean,”
Tipping point?
As my mother used to say If Ifs and ands were pots and pans there’d be no need for tinkers.

mikelorrey (22:36:11) :
“Please cite a peer reviewed, data transparent study not published by the Hockey Team, an advocacy group, or funded by an advocacy group (and I regard the UNIPCC and US and British government agencies to be advocacy groups) which actually makes these predictions….”
I wouldn’t trust the a study from the CSIRO (Australia), either. It seems they have received instructions from Ms Wrong (mis-spelling intentional)

“Kwok and colleagues….”
hmmmmm …. kwik ,kwok and colleagues ?

If you have an hour or so, this is well worth it:
Colloquium on The Peculiar Issue of Global Warming
Spreaker: Dr. Richard Lindzen
Hosted at Fermilab:
http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/100210Lindzen/index.htm#

We have known for many hundreds of years of the effect that warm currents and winds have on arctic ice. Each generation seems keen on reinventing the wheel, or in the warmists case trying to pretend there was never a wheel in the first place.
All the following references come from my article carried here last year. It demonstates the innumerable records and wealth of documentation collected from the time of the Huidson Bay co in the 1600’s, whalers, sealers, through to scientific expeditions held in the 1820’s to determine the reasons for the arctic ice melting at that time.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice/#more-8688
“The uncharted coastline of east Greenland became clear of ice around 1820, and in 1822 Scoresby, in the midst of an arduous whaling voyage, sailed along some 400 miles of this inhospitable landscape, charting it, and naming point as he went in honour of scientific and other friends, chief of which was Scoresby Sound, named for his father. Almost all his place names survive today.”
That Scoresby junior was a man to be believed when he claimed that the arctic was melting can be further seen here in this extract;
“Carrying on with great success the most demanding and arduous of all maritime activities -the hunting and capture of whales – he yet collected over a period of some 15 years data on sea currents and temperatures, ice formation and movement, wind directions and velocities, magnetic variations, marine organisms, biology of whales, structure of snow crystals and much besides, gathering all this original work in the historic-volume classic Account of the Arctic Regions. The publication of this work in 1820 marks the beginning of the scientific study of the polar regions.”
There are various interesting observations made by whalers in this book concerning the Arctic conditions;
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6dWY-gZTGLgC&pg=RA1-PA284&lpg=RA1-PA284&dq=ice+islands+1810+newfoundland+seal+fisheries&source=bl&ots=0CxEu02Mpq&sig=67q3SluOy-OIv4-3cO5vpgTmHag&hl=en&ei=R-UuSvrqLszLjAff4cmVCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#PRA1-PA291,M1
“ice could whirl about as if in a whirlpool”: ‘soft ice’ in February
‘the large fields of ice which drift southwards in March and April from the polar sea’: ‘Great stretches of open water.’
Nansens detailed records on currents/wind
http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02120_fram_hydro/
Within the article are further numerous measurements carried out by brave men who risked their lives to gatrher information that could be used as a direct record of the conditions at the time. They recorded wind directions/velocity, current strength and warmth at the surface and below, disappearing glaciers, and a whole host of other data. They may as well not have bothered.
Do ANY of our modern high profile climate researchers bother to read any history of the subject or do they want to rely on computer models?
Tonyb

looks like one big centrifuge to me!

Here is another graph that does not get any attention on Wattsup when talking about the arctic.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/MilankovitchCyclesOrbitandCores.png/600px-MilankovitchCyclesOrbitandCores.png
Milankovitch forcing. The high lattitudes of the nothern hemisphere should be at the coldest part of the past 5000 and probibly 10 000 years. Guess it does not rile the troops in the right direction.

The world’s most greatest scientific victory in the history of mankind was played out in almost all its entirety in the “Geekosphere”.
Call us what you will, Nerds, Geeks, Poindexters, or whatever. Like Sherlock Holmes or Columbo, we figured out who done it so to speak. We’re not 9/11 truthers or birthers chasing our tails, no, we just concern ourselves with the facts, creating constructs that make sense given all the data.
Do you think we will get any of the credit for exposing the greatest scientific fraud in history?

Having seen the videos of the 2007 wind blown ice departing the Fram Strait there’s no doubt that this was a key factor in the summer 2007 miniumum. I am surprised that there has been such little study of this subject. Also surprised at the researcher’s claim that summer 2007 was the only year they saw ice being transported down the Nares Strait / Kennedy Channel. I was keeping an informal eye on this in August last year using the NASA TERRA/MODIS images (http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/) when ice was clearly breaking up north of the Kennedy Sound and making its way south in early August. e.g. August 3rd 2009: http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?T092152205 and after a quick look just found the same thing in 2004 (July 28th): http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2004210/crefl1_143.A2004210162001-2004210162500.2km.jpg
I am sure there will be other examples. All this shows is that using the Arctic ice extent data as an indication of melting or temperatures, without also monitoring ice transport, is at best spurious.

Dear moderator
I am an editor of a swedish local daily newspaper, the Ystads Allehanda, and I have followed your blogg for some years now. I’t like to get in touch with mr Watts, but fail to find an email adress here at WUWT. The reason is I am about to go to the US and would like to ask him for an interwiev.
Best Regards
Ola Tedin
Reply: I sent you and Anthony emails. ~ ctm

TonyB (00:59:50) :
Do ANY of our modern high profile climate researchers bother to read any history of the subject or do they want to rely on computer models?

C’mon Tony! You know the answer already. Why read dusty old reports written by people who have actually been there years past when you can fake model it? They sure as heck don’t wanna go there themselves…might get eaten by one of them vanishing polar bears!

It’s a scam, it’s a scam. it’s a scam
Our climate is dominated by natural cycles.

u.k.(us) (18:33:29) :
“Why, always the doomsday prediction at the end”
Thats to ensure the grants for next year. No comments including the trick words, no happy smiles from the bean-counters.
Next, thats all a journalist picks up, and it becomes a headline in the news.

Antony, where is John Coleman’s latest film?
Have you already seen it?

So to try to pull the bits together:
The North Atlantic ocean circulation patterns have changed resulting in warm subtropical water reaching Greenland where they have been implicated in increased glacier melt.
The ice arches did not form in the two straits alongside Greenland in 2007, resulting in the loss of Arctic ice.
With the extra thermal energy showing up around the Arctic area,
The Arctic Oscillation (AO) went strongly negative.
The snow line went south. The Northern Hemisphere snow extent shot up.
Oh, and the permafrost line went North.
Sort of seems like the extra thermal energy caused the AO pattern to “blow up” and spread diluted cold (less than Arctic normal) southward, as noticed during this NH winter. There are also longer term trends around the Arctic area that have been cited as evidence of global warming, but now look like they could be related to the ocean circulation changes and the subtropical warmth being distributed differently.
Also, hurricanes were way down, indicating the warmth that usually generates them was not there this year. Were the returning currents colder, having lost more heat than usual up North?
A large and complex system full of interesting interactions is slowly being revealed. And we are to accept this has all been accounted for in the CAGW models long ago?

http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/seaice/hires/global.xml
(refreshed daily)
Note the huge rectangular area of sea ice
cut out of the sea ice by Canadian icebreakers
along the Labrador Newfoundland Quebec coasts–
Follow the red dots–they define this area.
The Canadaian icebreakers will be doing this
slicing of large blocks of sea ice repeatedly many times
over the next few months as the sea ice continues
to grow into the Labrador Sea–
I believe they do this to reduce the sea ice area
(to promote Canada’s AGW agenda) and also to enhance
the flushing effects of currents to clear the
northwest passage earlier and more easily and
thereby to continue to trumpet that canard.
Although this sea ice is probably less than 0.5 meter
in thickness, the continuous repetition of
the icebreakers deliberately slicing it will probably result in
the overall removal of at least 500 thousand
square kilometers of ice over the next few months–
thereby skewing ice measurements and
NW passage opening possibilities–
and has done so for at least the past 2 years–
So, to clear Hudson’s Bay and the NW Passage,
Nares Strait and others,
soon you will notice that
they will also be putting the
red dots from ice breakers into
Hudson’s bay over the next few months.
This sliced sea ice area also might
show up on some satellite photos
(but the red dots will not be in the photos).
Over the next few days you can observe this
current slab of sea ice
as it breaks up while being carried over to
the UK on the remnants of the Gulf Stream.
This type of large scale deliberate ice slicing by
Canada-USA icebreakers
has been ongoing for at least the past 2 years.
Save this link as a web page capture before it disappears.

Stephen Wilde 4:37:17
I agree with you and kadaka. Now make it about a hundred times more complicated and you’ll about have it.
I particularly liked your point that the Arctic melting was from the PDO in its warm phase, and the time between the onset of the cool phase and 2007 represents the lag time needed by the heat engine that is the earth to pump heat from the tropics poleward.
==============================

The current AMSR-E plot shows Arctic sea-ice extent plot value is now about mid-range for all data values recorded this time of year since 2003. This would seem to indicate that we need not worry about all this ice melting away any time soon.

Ola Tedin, you have a very cool name. Ya.

I would be looking at how the arches form. It is a natural phenomenon, thus the structure will be naturally different each and every time. Weak here, strong there, in a rather chaotic way from year to year. Add warmer currents underneath that naturally show up from time to time. Add a steady wind during formation that naturally shows up from time to time. And what you get is the wonderful infinite variety of nature’s structure building. Nature does not care, if this year, it builds something that isn’t quake proof. It has not and will not read the building codes or fork out money for a building permit. If we don’t like fickle mother nature thumbing it’s nose at how to build something that will last, I suggest we find another planet that has far less variety and live there.

The Albedo-feedback from the sea ice melting or not melting in the Arctic is very, very small. This has been way over-blown because people haven’t worked through the numbers.
First, the area we are talking about here is that above 75N. The ice already more-or-less melts out in the summer melt season up to 75N. This area above 75N is only 1.7% of the Earth’s surface.
Second, the Albedo above 75N is already pretty low in the summer melt season. Melt ponds and melted snow put the Albedo down to about 0.5 in the summer. It is only the freshly-snow-covered sea ice that has the high Albedos of 0.7 to 0.9.
Even if this ice melts, the Albedo is still going to be 0.3 or so just because of the cloudiness, some remaining ice etc. So the change is only 0.2.
Third, we are only talking about a month or two extra when the ice above 75N will melt. It is still going to be frozen solid well into August and then re-frozen again by early October even in a warmer world.
So overall, if the ice melted out above 75N in mid-August and then refroze in early October, the Earth’s Albedo would only decline by 0.0004 and the solar forcing would only increase by 0.03 watts/metre^2 – much less than that which occurs during a solar cycle. Throw in the ice melting out earlier in the season in the areas below 75N and you could double those numbers – still very little impact.

Ref – wayne (04:08:23)
“Robert, you are exaggerating again.
“Not going to do your math for you but, for one, you forgot your geometry.
“We don’t want to mislead here on WUWT if we can help it, do we?
“And don’t feel alone, your fellow AGWers do it all the time.”
__________________
Wayne? Why do you like playing with matches and gasoline?

@RockyRoad
I just read through Burt Rutan’s Intro for a future report on Global Warming Data Presentation Fraud:
http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm
The thing I get is, looking at longer periods, it is really hard to see how global warming could be bad — the system has always exerted a very definite strong downward correction. And even if we were somehow exceed limits, we’re still due for an ice age.
Whether the temperatures go up or down, something somewhere changes.
The irony is the AGW environmentalists and politicians are trying really hard to force changes upon us.

sorry Charles. I am content to share it only with you.

If I’ve understood it correctly, this article is talking about 44k km2 “more than normal”. . . isn’t that fairly small beer?

Robert:
“One swallow does not” a summer make. By the way, what is the temperature record at Nares Strait?

Rocky Road said: “There is no comparison. Warm is good; cold is bad!”
I would think that such blanket statements need to be put into boundaries. I am thankful there is a greenhouse effect going on right now on this planet. The water vapor, CO2, methane, and the other trace GH gases keep us at a nice moderately warm average global temperature. I wouldn’t want to be a whole lot warmer and I wouldn’t want to be a whole lot colder. The whole AGW issue comes down to this: Can human activity make this nice GH blanket we enjoy too thick, so that we do become a whole lot warmer too fast, like putting too many blankets on top of yourself on a cold winter night and waking up sweating. So fast that food crops, fresh water supplies, ocean fisheries, and the whole web of life can’t keep up and we see some mass species die-off.
But I digress…let’s get back to the issue of what “caused” the extreme summer ice melt of 2007. Was is just wind blowing ice out of the arctic through opened straits free from ice dams? Nope, nothing so simple of course. It was a combination of factors including warm water flowing into the region, high temperatures, high-pressure that lingered months at time, and older thicker ice being calved off and blown or drifting further south to melt. See this chart:
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/images/20070910_temperature.png
To see the very warm temps in the region during the summer. Now of course the question is, were these high-temps caused by AGW, or, were they part of some natural variation? I think the central issue for many seems to be a reluctance to believe that humans can impact the climate system in any meaningful way. And if the answer is yes, and second issue becomes this: We know that another glacial period would naturally be in the future and due any time for earth I(we are technically still in an “ice age”). So can human activity somehow mitigate these natural cooling that we’re due for? Skeptics remained unconvinced, and the so-called “warmists” say yes. I for one, knowing that the next advance of the glaciers is due any time, hope that we can warm the earth (by putting on that extra blanket) to mitigate or forestall the next advance of the glaciers….and wouldn’t it be ironic if a sudden and rapid cooling really did begin to appear and we we’re suddenly united in our efforts to figure out how to enhance the GW effect? Time will reveal all…

Oh, and by the way, global tropospheric surface temps are a full one degree warmer right now than this time last year:
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/

R. Gates (09:13:25) :
Rocky Road said: “There is no comparison. Warm is good; cold is bad!”
I would think that such blanket statements need to be put into boundaries. I am thankful there is a greenhouse effect going on right now on this planet. The water vapor, CO2, methane, and the other trace GH gases keep us at a nice moderately warm average global temperature. I wouldn’t want to be a whole lot warmer and I wouldn’t want to be a whole lot colder.
—————-
Reply:
What you want is irrelevant and unobtainable (with due respects).
First, I didn’t make a blanket statement such as “It will be warm forever”. As a geologist I can tell you earth’s climate change is far more intense than the vast majority of AGWers would have us believe (otherwise it quickly shoots down their hypothesis and renders their hysteria meaningless).
Simply look at the geological record to see what Mother Nature has provided; I’m absolutely convinced that what man can do TO the climate and what man can do to REGULATE the climate is 4 to 5 orders of magnitude LESS than the natural forces than control the climate. In other words, essentially meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
You or your kids or your kid’s kids (i.e., somewhere down the line) ARE going to see the next Ice Age. It’s a given and it ain’t gonna be pretty. It’s not as predictable as clockwork on our timescale, say within one generation or one lifetime, but it is inevitable. I’m too much of a believer in “the past predicts the future” and catastrophic uniformitarianism (or is it “uniform catastrophism”) to ever be convinced otherwise.
But like you say, time will reveal all.
It’s just not going to be a smooth ride forever. It only could be if man could control the earth’s thermometer, and that supposition is simply laughable.
I’m just glad we are (or is it were?) in a warming trend. If man’s contribution to CO2, which adds abundantly and beneficially to the biosphere, is in some small way helping that out, I’m all for it.

“For the alarmists, the Arctic ice melt in 2007 was incontrovertible ‘proof’ of AGW. Now that the Arctic ice extent is back to more normal levels – and in a El Nino year! – the alarmists say nothing.”
But it isn’t back to normal. Not even close. Right now it’s down 700,000 km^2 from the 1979-2008 mean (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png). Look at the trend. Arctic sea ice is disappearing much more rapidly than the models predicted.

@Stefan: “The thing I get is, looking at longer periods, it is really hard to see how global warming could be bad”
Oh, I don’t know. Global warming is now thought to be the proximate cause of the Permian–Triassic extinction event, which wiped out 96% of marine species, 70% percent of terrestrial vertebrates, and was the only known mass extinction of insects. Fifty-seven percent of all families and 83% of all genera were killed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian-Triassic_extinction_event
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091202205621.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061021115722.htm
I would say that meets the definition of “bad.”

Here is what they are talking about.

@ R. Gates (09:13:25) :
Wait, now you are being confusing.
We know that another glacial period would naturally be in the future and due any time for earth I(we are technically still in an “ice age”).
We are still in an ice age? We have been told recently we have the hottest years “on record” and also often told they are the hottest “ever.” We likewise have the “hottest decade,” etc. It is so hot all the glaciers are melting, the Arctic will be ice free, even the Antarctic will melt, and we may well all drown!
All this heat and we still are not out of the last ice age? So when are we ever going to be out of the current one? Unprecedented high temperatures, all the fault of mankind, and still it is not enough to get us out of an ice age? How can this planet have ever gotten out of any ice age if this unprecedented warmth won’t do it?
Truly, this CAGW theory can be most difficult to follow. One may think it makes no sense at all!

Poptech (00:33:29, 20/02):
re: Historically ice loss in the Arctic is nothing new” with a link to a report on less ice 6000-7000 years ago. I noticed that report when it came out, which was based (as many of these are) on a press release (Oct. 2008). I have since periodically looked for a peer-reviewed paper describing this study but have not found one. I looked again today, same result. If anyone knows of an actual paper, it would be nice to know. Otherwise, as far as I am concerned, that report remains in the realm of anecdote.
However, this reference suggests no evidence for an ice-free winter (ie. complete loss of perennial ice) within the last 14 million yrs:
“Arctic perennial ice cover over the last 14 million years.” Dennis A. Darby. Paleoceanography, Vol. 23, PA1S07, doi:10.1029/2007PA001479, 2008.

“Being wrong in a direction we prefer is just as much a reason to ignore them as the opposite case.”
Here, here Dave! Why this is not obvious to the scientists involved is beyond me. Wrong is wrong.

“Dave Wendt (12:52:12) :
You seem to be missing one large and fairly obvious point. Whether the models are in error in a direction that supports or contradicts one’s point of view doesn’t prove anything, except that in almost all cases the models are wrong.
Being wrong in a direction we prefer is just as much a reason to ignore them as the opposite case.”
Scientific predictions are not like Biblical prophecy — absolute truth, or the lies of the devil. They are estimates, based on physics and math, and every input has an error bar, and every model — from climate science to Newtonian mechanics — has a limited ability to predict the real world, because the real world is always more complicated than the model.
Should we ignore the model because it doesn’t tell us everything and is sometimes off? I don’t know. Should we ignore a doctor who tells us our child’s fever is likely to go up to 103-104, and it goes to 106 instead? Should we refuse antibiotics because the doctor clearly doesn’t know what’s going to happen?

Should we ignore a doctor who tells us our child’s fever is likely to go up to 103-104, and it goes to 106 instead? Should we refuse antibiotics because the doctor clearly doesn’t know what’s going to happen?>
When the doctor tells me the kid’s fever is going up, I listen. When he starts telling me that the only cure is to buy antiobiotics from a drugstore that he owns, I start to get suspicious. When the kid’s fever starts to go down on its own before I even buy the antibiotics, I start to get even more suspicious. When he insists that HIS thermometer shows that the kids fever is still going up even though mine says it is going down, and then he refuses to even show me his thermometer to see for myself, and then one of his colleagues pipes up and tells me the doctor doesn’t even HAVE a thermometer, I get very very very suspicious. When he starts to tell me that the fever will cause my kid to spontaneously combust while the kid is running around healthy as a horse and has no fever at all…. and the doctor STILL wants me to spend huge amounts of money at HIS drugstore….
Yeah, I’m not listening to that doctor anymore.

Robert (10:39:35) :
@Stefan: “The thing I get is, looking at longer periods, it is really hard to see how global warming could be bad”
Oh, I don’t know. Global warming is now thought to be the proximate cause of the Permian–Triassic extinction event, which wiped out 96% of marine species, 70% percent of terrestrial vertebrates, and was the only known mass extinction of insects. Fifty-seven percent of all families and 83% of all genera were killed.
…
I would say that meets the definition of “bad.”
————–
Reply:
You’re grasping at straws, Robert. Truly grasping.
Of all the reasons for the P/T extinction event, I’d say the least tenable is global warming because, as they project in your refrences, it “caused changes in oceanic currents.”
How about considering the splitting of the supercontinent (Pangaea) to FORM the Atlantic at that time as a much bigger driver of changes in oceanic currents? Heck, before the Atlantic existed there weren’t even any ocean currents IN the Atlantic! Certainly that would be a bigger factor than whether sea water was another degree or two warmer.
There are much better mechanisms for driving extinction events (large and small) and much better geologic evidence such as impact events (the Gulf of Mexico astroblem for this extinction, among other astroblems), volcanism (plate tectonics was going stronger back then than it is now), and even methane hydrate gassification, kicked off by a very large lava flow into the ocean.
But “global warming”? Each of the above more plausible explanations would have warmed things up and it was perhaps a component, but it wasn’t the heat that brough down the asteroids from heaven nor did it speed up separation of the plates. And it certainly didn’t melt the lava flow that warmed up the methane hydrates to volatility.
It could likely have been a combination of all three events (it apparently didn’t happen overnight), although the Big-5 Extinctions are just about as bad as this one.
No, it is doubtful “global warming” was the causitive factor, and didn’t trigger the tipping point for the P/T extinction event. If by “proximate cause” you mean the earth warmed up from volcanism/impact/lava flows that is indeed a likely outcome, but it wasn’t the predominant reason by any means in my humble professional opinion. Just like CO2 now being a “proximate cause” of current warming with a contribution of perhaps 3-5% of the total.
Of course, “global warming” is being blamed for everything now:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2045/
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/10/07/blame-global-warming/
http://www.akdart.com/warming14.html
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/08/04/wapo-stop-blaming-everything-global-warming
http://www.alphecca.com/?p=492
http://disinter.wordpress.com/2010/02/17/global-warming-to-blame-for-everything/
http://www.philvalentine.com/GlobalWarming.htm
(There are ~1,160,000 more references but I’ll let you find and digest them all)

Well the Nares straight arches or bridges really collapsed in 2009, so much so that it was noted in MODIS images by the Canadian ice service. Yet 2009 summer minimum was higher than 2007. This shows ice flow out of the Nares straight has minimum amount of impact on the amount of melt on the Siberian side, where most of this is happening.
The massive melt in 2007 was down to wind patterns, but it was warm winds from Siberia melting it in situe and pushing it together, as well as clear sunny warm days.
Andy

Leo G (23:36:10) :

rbateman, are you sure that you have the date for the ice free sub picture right? March 17th?????????

Why not? Search the NYT years 1938/39.
The Soviet icebreaker Syedoff wasn’t frozen in @ 85ºN until Dec 18th 1938 & was free again in Feb of ’39. Reporter Harold Denny.
Sorry, can’t remember the day in Feb ’39 it was freed but recall it as mid Feb.
Some alarmists questioned the article & made pointed comments about the reporters name being a thinly veiled bastardisation of denier. Many people corrected them.
The report here was on Dec 12th in an on this day story.
DaveE.

“You’re grasping at straws, Robert. Truly grasping.”
Yeah, I think not. In fact you posit warming as a likely cause of the extinctions, but attribute it to “lava flows/volcanism/impact” (talk about grasping at straws!)
I can only suggest you read what the paleoclimatologists have to say on the subject. The real scientists paint a very different picture of the Permian–Triassic extinction event than your wishful thinking here.

@ DirkH (13:58:27) :
It’s a complaint about terminology. People know what an ice age is, and know we are not in one. We freely talk here about how we are overdue and will eventually enter a new one. Yes, we are in an ice age epoch, but that is freely understood as a long period of ice ages. So what point is there in saying we are technically still in an “ice age”, other than to attempt to convey a sense of some sort of “smarter-than-thou” smug scientific superiority?

Ice jams would form (and yes I have seen them) at different part of the narrow depending on the current and wind present at the time of the formation. Therefore it would still be unique in that some areas would lead to a more robust jam (IE longer lasting) than at other times. I stand by my statement. It should be rather highly variable each time it forms. Which is different from a flat shelf bridge.

[snip – I’m tired of these baseless claims that somehow all skeptics are in the employ of oil companies, I’m certainly not. >
Mods permitting….
Some time ago I posted my artificial intelligence simulation of the information exchange between a physicist and an IPCC climatologist. Despite repeated end state corruption in the simulation, it was well recieved. I’ve now taken the extra step and simulated an information exchange between an IPCC Climatologist and Big Oil. Big Oil turned out to be hard to simulate as an average, and I had to break it up into several simulations by geographical range. A bit long to post here (but happy to if asked) so here’s the link. Sorry, but that end state corruption loop showed up again. Don’t get mad…. just laugh
http://knowledgedrift.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/the-oil-tycoons-and-the-climatologist-follow-the-money/

Daniel H (05:56:06) :
I am aware of realplayer alternative that is not the point. I haven’t had to use anything but Flash in years and have no plans on changing that.
Susan C. (12:40:42) :
I will take the Norwegian Geological Survey as more than just “anecdotal”,
Less Ice In Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 Years Ago (Norwegian Geological Survey)
And they have presented a paper,
Driftwood and ice – a sketchy history of Holocene multiyear sea ice in the Arctic Ocean
(Arctic Palaeoclimate and its Extremes (APEX), pp. 27-28, 2009)
– Svend Funder, Kurt H. Kjær, Hans Linderson, Astrid Lyså, Jesper Olsen

Robert (15:48:13) :
[snip – I’m tired of these baseless claims that somehow all skeptics are in the employ of oil companies, I’m certainly not. Nobody with skeptical views that I know is. Since you have nothing to offer but innuendo from the comfort of relative anonymity, while I and other skeptics put our names to our words, I kindly suggest you shut the hell up. – Anthony]
I was at the gas station the other day and they gave me a coupon for 4 cents off a gallon, does that count?

Poptech (17:13:36)
Thanks for that reference, I hadn’t seen it.
But a conference presentation is not a peer-reviewed paper, where one can assess the data and methods to determine if the results are plausible. I would need to see that level of detail before I was convinced. A printed abstract is not the same thing at all.
I’ll continue to look because I would like to know what they did.

Susan C. (19:29:31) :
There have been other papers on this,
Holocene sea-ice variations in Greenland: onshore evidence
(The Holocene, Volume 14, Number 4, pp. 607-613, 2004)
– Ole Bennike
Just because a paper is peer-reviewed does not mean the data and full methodology is available. All peer-reviewed means is an journal editor’s hand picked reviewers signed off on the paper.

There is some good stuff here about ice movement, relating back to claims of massive losses from submarine data:
http://ipo.npolar.no/newsletters/archive/ice_climate_2001_09_no_01.pdf
Is Arctic Sea Ice Rapidly Thinning? Greg Holloway and Tessa Sou. Institute of Ocean Sciences, Sidney BC, Canada
Also in the same edition: Fram Strait Ice Fluxes and Atmospheric Circulation
1950-2000 Torgny Vinje, Norwegian Polar Institute

Certainly ice breakers seems a plausible explanation, if the same happened year in, year out. But there seems to have been a specific dip in 2007, and recovery since.
Maybe AO, maybe wind, but there is the suggestion of a higher temperature stopping the formation of arches. These I havn’t a clue about, but there may well have been an input of heat to Arctic waters in 2007 that could of had such an effect.
The Gakkel ridge.
http://temp.geobio.uib.no/View.aspx?mid=1062&itemid=90&pageid=1093&moduledefid=71
It ain’t global warming mind,
just a bit more “unnoticed” natural variation from one source or another…

OT, as this article is about Tropical Storms…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100221/ap_on_sc/us_sci_warming_hurricanes
WASHINGTON – Top researchers now agree that the world is likely to get stronger but fewer hurricanes in the future because of global warming, seeming to settle a scientific debate on the subject. But they say there’s not enough evidence yet to tell whether that effect has already begun.

To –
Tenuc (05:01:30) :
Your comments on my small contribution
here are greatly valued.
By the way , the Vinje “Ice Extent Variations During Last Centuries” paper
is certainly an eye popper even without its Bradley Jones reference –
http://acsys.npolar.no/meetings/final/abstracts/pos-ers/Session_2/poster_s2_092.pdf
Anyway, I do understand your viewpoint in leaving unspoken
my taboo subject of the “red dots”
(I doubt that anyone -other than myself-
will stick his neck out on this one)–
But it has been the red dots that brought me to this blog–
My point of view is
that I never would have written
anything in this blog (or probably have even seen this blog)
had I not serendipiditously started observing the
red dots on this ice chart.
I previously had no interest in
global warming before seeing those amazing red dots.
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/seaice/hires/global.xml
So please forgive my dogged perseverance
on the red dot issue.
I believe those red dots to be the most significantly
visible evidence of deliberate anthropomorphic
anthropogenic efforts intended to
skew the data, and graphs and promote
the AGW agenda–
The vast area extent and repeated execution
of the icebreaker manuevers required to produce this
sea ice slicing and trimming
(evidenced by the red dots
forming lines and curves and also the sliced sea ice slabs)
cannot possibly be related to shipping–
unless complete removal of sea ice
from all areas of the
Hudson’s Bay is the intent(removal
of sea ice from the Baffin/Newfoundland Bay labrador
area is first needed
so that the Hudson’s Bay ice slicing and flushing may
proceed
unimpeded by Baffin/Newfoundland Bay Labrador sea ice).
Because complete removal of sea ice is not
necessary for arctic shipping and is
merely a very expensive AGW perk.
For the next two months arctic shipping
(and its several hundred ice armored vessels)
will not be active in Hudson’s bay and
Labrador Sea.
And yet those straight and curved
lines of red dots will be proliferating
in those areas and not elsewhere
(except a few in the Russian icebreaker areas)
and the ice will be disappearing from those areas
while still growing elsewhere in the arctic.
The volume of effort and the thousands of miles
over which these icebreakers
traverse (as evidenced by the red dots)
cannot possibly
have any rational relationship to
the necessities of arctic shipping–
Clearing the entire Hudson’s bay
of ice every year by slicing it for flushing
does not seem to serve a commercial purpose.
(nor am I minimizing the equal
or greater overall
effects of arctic shipping itself on
the arctic ice cover —
my point is that the intent
of arctic shipping is commercial profit
and not to produce unnecessary unprofitable transits —
whereas the Feb March April activities of the
icebreakers appear to have no commercial purpose-)
Also it appears that in these animations –
-because of the reduced size of these animated maps–
the red dots are being replaced by blue dots or blue lines–
and the rapid repeated placement of these lines
cannot have any natural explanation-
–only the theory of multiple rapid icebreaker
transits does seem to fit the bill —
showing that the intent
has been to insure that Hudson’s Bay is recorded
as being ice free once again every year —
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/seaice/analysis/animation/nanim.200903.gif
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/seaice/analysis/animation/nanim.200902.gif
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/seaice/analysis/animation/nanim.200904.gif
An additional note is the unnatural sharp
right angle today appearing(it appears every year
about this time and is maintained until Hudson’s Bay
is cleared of ice) at the mouth of
Bay of Ungava and Hudson Strait
and also the unnatural straight line
extending from the mouth
of that gulf accross the Baffin/Newfoundland Bay
labrador sea almost to the Greenland coast–
these also seems to be part of the yearly
effort to clear Hudson’s Bay of ice and
encourage flushing of sea ice-
by trimming that line and angle, sea ice from Baffin/Newfoundland Bay
Labrador sea is cut adrift and prevented from entering
or reentering or blocking the Ungava Gulf
and Hudson’s Bay
Such a right angle and straight line are
totally unnatural and can only be maintained by
constant icebreaker activity.
The Canadian govt is extremely reticent
about the activities of its icebreakers at this time of year-
not surprising when the money is being wasted
on artificially generating “proof” of
politically motivated AGW “facts”.
And by the way, these red dot activities do correlate very well with
the Hudson’s Bay sea ice graphs from Cryosphere Today
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
That is to say, Hudson’S Bay Sea ice increases are invariably followed
by immediate increased red dot activity followed by immediate
graph reduction of Hudson’s Bay sea ice totals–
producing that jagged sawtooth appearance of the graph.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.13.html
Similarly in the Baffin/Newfoundland Bay
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.4.html
This is especially evident since the overall total arctic sea ice is
steadily expanding with few irregularities in other areas
at this time of year.
I exclude satellite anomalies as the source
of the red dots based upon
the red dots unique singularity and restriction to
Hudson’S Bay and Baffin/Newfoundland Bay
Labrador sea locations and their correlation with
the known yearly migration of the Canada
icebreaker fleet through those areas.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2009/08/27/arctic-icebreakers.html
Anyway these are the humble
observations,
theories and views
of this very amateur
observer.