I’ve been watching this NSIDC graph for a few days, figuring it was just noise. Now, it looks like “something worth blogging about“. The Arctic sea ice extent is continuing to grow past the normal historical peak which occurs typically in late February/early March. [Note: I added the following sentences since at least one commenter was confused by “peak point” in the headline above, which I’ve now changed to “peak date” to clarify what I was referring to. -A] Of course it has not exceeded the “normal” sea ice extent magnitude line, but is within – 2 STD. The point being made is that growth continues past the time when sea ice magnitude normally peaks, and historically (by the satellite record) is headed downward, as indicated by the dashed line.
Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center – link
To be fair though, the Earth seems to be suffering from “bipolar disorder” as we have a similar but opposite trend in the Antarctic:
Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center – link
If we look at Cryosphere Today’s dandy sea ice comparator tool, and choose a standard 30 year climatology period span, it looks like we may actually be ahead this year, compared to 30 years ago. Certainly the arctic sea ice today looks a lot more solid than in 1980. I wish CT offered comparisons without the snow cover added (which was added in 2008) so as to not be visually distracting.
We live in interesting times.
h/t to WUWT commenter “Tommy” for the “tipping point”.
Well today (3/30/10) the 15% concentration has exceeded the previous peak on 3/8/10 and now is at 14,405,781.
The only 3/30 date above this was in 2003, at 14,533,906.
In contrast, in 2007, on this date it was only 13,479,063.
With any luck, the Arctic sea ice will continue to grow for at least one morer day and if so, and if it exceeds the 14,428,281 on 3/31 in 2003, than it will be the highest ice amount for that date in the JAXA record.
Of course it won’t get mentioned in the MSM.
Arthur
Phil. (08:12:32)
Reading comprehension, me boy. You need more.
“Cherry picking a handful of weather related headlines from the NY Times is not support for a theory!”
It was an example – that flew right over your head.
“And the Ice ages didn’t happen!”
Says you. But as I have repeatedly said, the temperature trend goes back to the LIA. What is predictable is that the multi-decadal fluctuations above and below the trend stay within their historical parameters, while on the other hand, CAGW predicts catastrophic global warming due to human produced CO2, a catastrophe for sure – for those making the prediction.
The current climate is extremely benign, despite a one-third rise in harmless, beneficial CO2: click
Smokey you should stop inhaling before it’s too late!
D.Patterson: “That is a false statement, because we are both talking about the AGW hypothesis.”
Absolutely not. I have been focusing on one issue only. Let’s resolve that, then we can move on to your question.
The issue is simple:
1. Do climate sceptics make claims?
2. Does the claimant bear the burden of proof?
You can trot out the evidence, showing the changes in carbon dioxide and temperature have never happened before, anytime now….
Phil. (09:59:38) :
Phil, you should stop exhaling before it’s too late!
Smokey (16:10:17)
LOL!
And you are simply wrong about the raw data, code and methods backing the CAGW conjecture. Believe that it’s all there publicly archived if you want, but saying so doesn’t make it so.
What I’m saying is that all the data and code for many theories is not all in the public domain. Your argument would then encompass any theory which does not have every tittle online or accessible elsewhere. Climate science is one of the more open. Try getting *all* code and data for germ theory – which according to you can only be an hypothesis unless the public has free access to all the science behind it.
You can get pretty much all the code and data for GISSTemp, for example, as well as methodology.
This is a good resource for that kind of thing.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/#Climate_data_raw (links to various data sets, raw and adjusted, code etc)
That was my point
Your point was that a hypothesis becomes theory after all alternative criticism has been dispensed with. As relativity and evolution theory still attracts rebuttals from out there scientists, and will do for the foreseeable future, they must only be a hypotheses as not every criticism has been dealt with yet – that’s according to your model of the process. You may wish to modify it.
With any luck, the Arctic sea ice will continue to grow for at least one morer day and if so, and if it exceeds the 14,428,281 on 3/31 in 2003, than it will be the highest ice amount for that date in the JAXA record.
Of course it won’t get mentioned in the MSM.
The JAXA record is 6.5 years. A fluctuation that takes the extent to record levels for a brief period now will be a result of weather, not climate, so the MSM, which constantly confuses weather anomalies with climate trends (“look at all this snow!!”) might just repeat the error.
But probably not. I think they’re learning, s-l-o-w-l-y.
You refuse to discuss much less support the AGW hypothesis with credible and repeatable experimental evidence demonstrating the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide are equal to and greater than the natural changes in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide in Earth’s pre-human past.
In the last 10 000 years since deglaciations, CO2 levels have held fairly constant at 280ppm. Natural variability has occurred since that time, but CO2 hasn’t changed much until the post-IR period. Quaternary ice ages are accompanied by global temp changes of 5 – 6C and long-term CO2 changes of ~100ppm.
If we go back millions of years, we are now dealing with a reconfigured biosphere (different continental configuration, wildly different albedos, ocean heat transport, atmospheric heat transport etc), and straightforward comparisons lose meaning. The Earth has been warmer, CO2 levels have been higher before, but not (CO2) within the current configuration as far as we know, and the rate of change we’re experiencing now has no match in the geological record. Closest rate we know of is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, and that resulted in massive changes in the biosphere.
barry,
You’re losing the argument because the planet is falsifying what you want to believe. CO2≠CAGW.
You believe that the CO2 level has held steady at 280 ppm for ten thousand years. If so, then CO2 has no detectable bearing on temperature: click CO2≠CAGW.
You pick the past ten thousand years as an example. With CO2 staying flat at 280 ppm for 10,000 years [questionable], then what makes the temperature fluctuate so much, if not natural variability – which is certainly not completely explained: click CO2≠CAGW.
You also simply discard the climate of millions of years ago with a hand-wave. But the fact is that you don’t know nearly what the parameters were then. You are speculating. What we do know is that CO2 was up to almost twenty times higher in the geologic past, for millions of years at a time, with a lush, teeming biosphere more diverse than today’s, and CO2 was also very high at times during major Ice Ages. CO2≠CAGW.
We know that ΔCO2 follows ΔT on all time frames, and so is not the cause. So let’s pick a middle timeframe, which you avoided commenting on: click1, click2 CO2≠CAGW.
We are very fortunate to be living in an interglacial that is more temperate than most. A further rise in temperature would be beneficial, not harmful, and a further rise in CO2 would be beneficial, not harmful. CO2≠CAGW.
The wild-eyed, spittle flecked, red faced, arm-waving alarmists shouting about catastrophic AGW are backed by no solid evidence that a climate catastrophe is actually occurring, or even visible on the farthest time horizon, despite the one-third rise in CO2. CO2≠CAGW.
We are actually better off now, because plants grow better with a little more fertilizer: click CO2≠CAGW.
Planet Earth is falsifying the CAGW hypothesis, and you can’t even see it. But the majority certainly can. So who are we gonna believe? The planet and our lyin’ eyes? Or people with a financial motive, pushing an alarmist agenda?
I believe Mother Earth.
That is the questionable data and story Keeling and the other proponents of the AGW hypothesis have been trying to sell by their practice of advocacy science. Unfortunately for them, their data and story simply do not hold carbon dioxide, literally. Like Mann’s proxy tree ring charts, the ice core charts depict a profound hockey stick shape, which also shows little evidence of variability around 280ppm concentrations of carbon dioxide in the centuries and millenia before the early 19th Century. This hockey stick shape and low variability should have been a very striking clue to any observer that something is very amiss with the methodoogies and data used to prepare such a chart. The more you investigate the origins of the data, methodologies, and resulting charts of carbon dioxide measurements, the more problems you find with faulty sampling, cherrypicking of data and improper exclusion of outliers, disregard of confounding factors, and paucity of sampling.
Ignoring numerous earlier measurements of carbon dioxide reporting 19th Century and 20th Century levels of more than 400ppm, the AGW advocates rely on only a few ice cores analyzed and interpreted by dubious methods. Like the Yamal trees, the bristlecone pines, and so much more in the AGW advocacy science, their reported results simply exclude data and evidence which inconveniently invalidate or at least render their conclusions highly suspect. They make no effort whatsoever to properly account for the variability in deposition of the carbon dioxide, which their results fail to recognize and report. They make no effort whatsoever to properly account for the many processes which deplete carbon dioxide in the snow, firn, and ice. The ~175ppm to 280ppm concentrations they reported are only the residual quantities remaining after depletion by other natural processes and the sampling methods used. The extraordinary low variability around 175ppm to 280ppm represents the lower levels to which higher and more variable levels of carbon dioxide can be depleted by inorganic and organic processes.
The proponents of the AGW hypothesis keep reminding us that they can omit virtually all other natural factors, including all of the water vapor and clouds in the Earth’s environment, from their calculations, because they claim the physical properties of carbon dioxide trace gas overwhelm all other natural processes to warm the Earth’s climate. Whenever someone comes along and notices how the carbon dioxide levels of Earth’s past did not in fact overwhelm all other natural processes as claimed for the present time period, all we get for an explanation from the AGW proponents is a lot of handwaving denials and insistence upon ignoring the inconvenient evidence of Earth’s past experiences with carbon dioxide and temperatures. It ends up being somewhat like the trials of witches. If the witch remains alive by floating in the pond after being tied hand and foot for drowning, she is a witch and must be burned. If she drowns, she was a witch when convicted of witchcraft, but was saved at the time of her drowning. Here we have you acknowledging the Earth experienced higher levels of carbon dioxide in a natural environment, yet you deny carbon dioxide was higher under the environmental conditons we are presently experiencing, saying “straightforward comparisons lose meaning.”
The continents have undergone only a relatively minor reconfiguration by plate movements during the past 15 to 30 million years of the present ice age. The changes in the biosphere have occurred in response to changes in the planetary climate, because the continental plates are generally located in nearly the same locations today as they were at the beginning of the present ice age.
That’s utter nonsense. Global temperature changes of 10C in only 10 to 30 years are common to the inter-glacial periods. The climate even in the most recent geological period/s are subject to abrupt and very very high rates of change without any human influences whatsoever.
Gareth Phillips (12:04:22) :
Good call, Gareth: click
The continents have undergone only a relatively minor reconfiguration by plate movements during the past 15 to 30 million years of the present ice age. The changes in the biosphere have occurred in response to changes in the planetary climate, because the continental plates are generally located in nearly the same locations today as they were at the beginning of the present ice age.
Except for the ‘minor detail’ of closing off the exchange between the Atlantic and Pacific at Panama about 3 million years ago totally changing the global oceanic circulation patterns giving rise to the ice ages!
Yes, it was a minor detail RELATIVELY speaking, as I said before. There is a MAJOR difference between an exchange of a minor area of top water from peri-continental seas versus the benthic bottom waters of the deep ocean basins. The global ocean circulation patterns change quite often on geologic time scales, yet the global mean temperatures have remained very stable at around 22C-25C. Throughout most of the existence of the Atlantic Ocean basin, equitorial circulation of seawater between the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean basins has been either blocked by the intercontinental isthmus or at least greatly restricted to minor exchanges of topwaters across the continental shelves.
Nonetheless, the Earth did not enter an ice age or have an icecap in the Arctic during nearly all but the most recent few million years. Consequently, that minor detail could not and did not give rise to the ice ages by its sole influence. Otherwise, ice ages would have been occurring throughout almost all of the last 2 billion years, which quite obviously did not happen.
Phil. (09:38:20),
Sheesh, if it weren’t for the warmists always moving the goal posts, they wouldn’t even be in the game. Now the goal posts are moved out to 3 million years. So let’s just cover the gamut of the planet’s upper and lower global temperature parameters: click.
The Earth was usually much warmer than it is today. Life and human civilization thrived during warmer times.
Anyone who can’t see that the climate is variable on all time scales, and that it cycles within the same upper and lower parameters has blinders on.
There has been no “runaway global warming” in the geologic past, and there is none occurring now. Nor is there any sign of runaway global warming on the horizon, despite the recent one-third increase in CO2 — almost all of which is of entirely natural origin.
CO2 is still very low compared with the past. The tiny human fraction of global CO2 emissions during the past century is smaller than the average year over year fluctuations; it’s down in the noise. And since all measurable rises and declines in CO2 lag temperature changes, blaming the entire current natural warming cycle on the small fraction of human CO2 emissions is preposterous. If human activity contributes anything to warming, the effect is so small that it can be disregarded for all practical purposes.
Even completely eliminating all human produced CO2 would make zero measurable difference, and it would force everyone back into living in mud huts and caves, with over half the population subsistence farming, plowing fields behind teams of oxen, with their barefoot women washing rags on river rocks.
Furthermore, any fraction of a degree warming due to human CO2 emissions would be entirely beneficial to the environment. Runaway global warming is simply a political scare tactic based on a money and control agenda, and it does not qualify as science.
Smokey (09:01:16) :
Phil. (09:38:20),
Sheesh, if it weren’t for the warmists always moving the goal posts, they wouldn’t even be in the game. Now the goal posts are moved out to 3 million years. So let’s just cover the gamut of the planet’s upper and lower global temperature parameters: click.
The usual lack of reading comprehension by Smokey, Patterson was trying to stretch the period out to 30 million years, I don’t think he’s what you might call a warmist?
CO2 is still very low compared with the past. The tiny human fraction of global CO2 emissions during the past century is smaller than the average year over year fluctuations; it’s down in the noise.
You’re making things up again Smokey, every year human emissions are ~double the annual fluctuation.