Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Inspired by this thread over at Bishop Hill’s excellent blog, I thought I’d write about sea ice. Among the many catastrophic things claimed to be the result of “global warming”, declining sea ice is one of the most popular. We see scary graphics of this all the time, things that look like this:
FIgure 1. Terrifying computer projections showing that we may not have any Arctic sea ice before the end of this century. Clearly, the implication is that we should be very concerned … SOURCE
Now, what’s wrong with this picture?
The problem with the picture is that the earth has two poles. And for reasons which are not well understood, when one pole warms, the other pole cools.
Looking at just the Arctic sea ice is like looking at someone who is pouring water from one glass to another and back again. If we want to see how much water there is, it is useless to observe just one of the person’s hands. We need to look at both hands to see what is happening with the water.
Similarly, to see what is happening in the frozen parts of the ocean, we need to look at global sea ice. There are several records of the area of sea ice. One is the Reynolds Optimally Interpolated dataset (Reynolds OI V2). A second is the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) record. Finally, we have the Hadcrut Ice and Sea Surface Temperature dataset (HadISST1). All of them are available from that most marvellous resource, the KNMI data portal .
It turns out that the NSIDC and the HadISST1 records are nearly identical. The correlation between the two in the Arctic is 0.995 (1.0 is perfect agreement), and in the Antarctic it is 0.999. So in Fig. 2, I have not shown the NSIDC dataset, but you can imagine that there is a third record almost identical to the HadISST1 dataset. Here is what has happened to the global sea ice area from 1982 to the present:
FIgure 2. Global Sea Ice Area 1982-present. Data from satellite observations.
As you can see, while it is certainly true that the Arctic has been losing ice, the Antarctic has been gaining ice. And the total global sea ice has barely changed at all over the period of the record. It goes up a little, it goes down a little, it goes nowhere …
Why should the Antarctic warm when the Arctic cools? The short answer is that we don’t know, although it happens at both short and long time scales. A recent article in Science Magazine Online (subscription required) says:
Eddies and the Seesaw
A series of warm episodes, each lasting several thousand years, occurred in Antarctica between 90,000 and 30,000 years ago. These events correlated with rapid climate oscillations in the Arctic, with Antarctica warming while the Arctic was cooling or already cold. This bipolar seesaw is thought to have been driven by changes in the strength of the deep overturning circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean, but some have questioned how completely that process can account for the fine details of Antarctic warming events.
Keeling and Visbeck offer an explanation that builds upon earlier suggestions that include the effects of shallow-water processes as well as deep ones. They suggest that changes in the surface salinity gradient across the Antarctic Circumpolar Current were caused by the melting of icebergs discharged from the Arctic, which allowed increased heat transport to Antarctica by ocean eddies. This mechanism produces Antarctic warming of the magnitude observed in ice core records.
However, not everyone agrees that this is the full explanation. Henrik Svensmark adds another factor to what may be happening:
The cosmic-ray and cloud-forcing hypothesis therefore predicts that temperature changes in Antarctica should be opposite in sign to changes in temperature in the rest of the world. This is exactly what is observed, in a well-known phenomenon that some geophysicists have called the polar see-saw, but for which “the Antarctic climate anomaly” seems a better name (Svensmark 2007).
To account for evidence spanning many thousands of years from drilling sites in Antarctica and Greenland, which show many episodes of climate change going in opposite directions, ad hoc hypotheses on offer involve major reorganization of ocean currents. While they might be possible explanations for low-resolution climate records, with error-bars of centuries, they cannot begin to explain the rapid operation of the Antarctic climate anomaly from decade to decade as seen in the 20th century (figure 6). Cloud forcing is by far the most economical explanation of the anomaly on all timescales.
Regardless of why the polar see-saw is happening, it is a real phenomenon. Ignoring it by looking just at the Arctic leads to unwarranted conclusions about what is happening to sea ice on our most amazing planet. We have to look at both hands, we have to include the other side of the ice, to see the full situation. The real answer to what is happening to global sea ice is …
Nothing.
Re: rbateman (03:26:52)
Then we are in agreement it is utter nonsense.
“Prudent action” says if you’re considering building where the IPCC says sea level rise could be an issue, don’t build there anyway since it is already vulnerable to possible flooding and large waves!
Steve Goddard (12:19:22) wrote: “Vincent (12:10:32) : Bears depend on the ice to hunt seals, which is their primary source of food.”
But its not nearly so simple as correlation as the AGW gang wants everyone to believe. Here’s something from long before they hijacked the polar bear as their poster child:
From: Polar Bears. Proceedings of the 2nd Working Meeting of Polar Bear Specialists… Feb. 1970. IUCN Publications New Series, Supp. Paper No. 29.
Vibe, C. The Polar Bear Situation in Greenland.
Excerpt: “Following the decline in the polar bear population in Greenland after 1920… the situation has again stabilized with an increase in the total catch…
This increase is not due to increased hunting activity…
[It] must be considered along with the present alteration of the whole climatical and ecological situation in the Arctic…
The ecological conditions of the Arctic have changed as a result of this alteration of the climate. Some high Arctic regions get colder winters and less open water in summer. The productivity of the sea decreases in the Arctic and increases in regions nearer the Atlantic. The ringed seal moves to the areas of higher productivity, and the polar bear follows the seal…”
It then explains, with historical and ecological detail, why warmer conditions are actually better for the polar bears in most of Greenland than colder conditions.
“The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.”
Nov. 2, 1922, Washington Post: Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.”
jack mosevich (12:29:05) :
“According to a NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies computer model, Kansas would be 4 degrees warmer in the winter without Arctic ice, which normally creates cold air masses that frequently slide southward into the United States. Warmer winters are bad news for wheat farmers, who need freezing temperatures to grow winter wheat.”
Malarkey. Winter wheat is only called that because it’s more cold tolerant, but it sure isn’t *freezing* resistant — just ask any farmer.
Go ahead. I’ll wait…
conradg (12:43:29) :
True, but three years of testing and review suggests a likelihood of it being confirmed by others.
Not review by others. Oneself is the easiest one to fool.
Actually, it does, in that GR is not compatible with the notion of space being a quantum phenomena.
That particular notion is not new. [about a century old] and does not prove GR wrong. Every theory has a ‘domain’ of applicability and quantum effects have not yet been incorporated into GR, but that does not make GR ‘wrong’ in its domain.
The conclusion of
http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2006-3/ reads
“We find that general relativity has held up under extensive experimental scrutiny. The question then arises, why bother to continue to test it? One reason is that gravity is a fundamental interaction of nature, and as such requires the most solid empirical underpinning we can provide. Another is that all attempts to quantize gravity and to unify it with the other forces suggest that the standard general relativity of Einstein is not likely to be the last word. Furthermore, the predictions of general relativity are fixed; the theory contains no adjustable constants so nothing can be changed. Thus every test of the theory is either a potentially deadly test or a possible probe for new physics. Although it is remarkable that this theory, born 90 years ago out of almost pure thought, has managed to survive every test, the possibility of finding a discrepancy will continue to drive experiments for years to come.”
Now, these things may seem far from ‘ice’ but cut to the very core of verification and rigor in science, so may be permitted on those grounds, but that should be it for now.
Willis Eschenbach (10:52:51) :
That’s curious, because I didn’t think that I couldn’t be very sure that I hadn’t seen anyone that didn’t look like you who wasn’t in the area of the polynyas …
Then you’ll understand why I can neither confirm nor deny that your recollection to what may or may not be to the best of your ability due to other distractions or attractions may be either factual or erroneous, and besides, that picture was PhotoShopped.
Al Gored (13:13:30) :
Nov. 2, 1922, Washington Post: Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.”
While at the same time the other end of the Arctic was frozen solid!
http://www.answers.com/topic/wrangel-island#British_and_American_Expeditions
“In 1921 Wrangel Island would become the stage for one of history’s tragedies when Stefansson sent five settlers (the Canadian Allan Crawford, three Americans: Fred Maurer, Lorne Knight and Milton Galle, and the Eskimo seamstress and cook Ada Blackjack) in a speculative attempt to claim the island for Canada[14]. The explorers were handpicked by Stefansson based upon their previous experience and academic credentials. Stefansson considered those with advanced knowledge in the fields of geography and science for this expedition. At the time, Stefansson claimed that his purpose was to head off a possible Japanese claim [15]. An attempt to relieve this group in 1922 was thwarted when the schooner Teddy Bear under Captain Joe Bernard became stuck in the ice [16]. In 1923, the sole survivor of the Wrangel Island expedition, Ada Blackjack, was rescued by a ship that left another party of 13 (American Charles Wells and 12 Inuit).”
“Carl Lomen from Nome had taken over the possessions of Stefansson and had acquired explicit support (“go and hold it”) from US Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes to claim the island for the United States, a goal which the Russian expedition got to hear during their trip. Due to unfavorable ice conditions the Herman, commanded by captain Louis Lane, could however not get any further then Herald, where the American flag was raised.”
“In 1926, a team of Soviet explorers, equipped with three years of supplies, landed on Wrangel Island. Clear waters that facilitated the 1926 landing were followed by years of continuous heavy ice surrounding the island. Attempts to reach the island by sea failed and it was feared that the team would not survive their fourth winter.[17]
In 1929, the icebreaker Fyodor Litke was chosen for a rescue operation. It sailed from Sevastopol, commanded by captain Konstantin Dublitsky. On July 4, it reached Vladivostok where all Black Sea sailors were replaced by local crew members. Ten days later Litke sailed north; it passed Bering Strait, and tried to pass De Long Strait and approach the island from south. On August 8 a scout plane reported impassable ice in the strait, and Litke turned north, heading to Herald Island. It failed to escape mounting ice; August 12 the captain shut down the engines to save coal and had to wait two weeks until the ice pressure eased. Making a few hundred meters a day, Litke reached the settlement August 28. On September 5, Litke turned back, taking all the ‘islanders’ to safety. This operation earned Litke the order of the Red Banner of Labour (January 20, 1930), as well as commemorative badges for the crew.”
REPLY: Phil, too funny. -A
gryposaurus,
You say “I’m not sure what you mean here. The only work I have seen done regarding ice and winds is in Antarctica ”
I was referring to a statement that NASA has put out regarding the extreme arctic sea ice loss in 2007, which they have attributed to the effect of unusual winds.
Steve Goddard,
“Bears depend on the ice to hunt seals, which is their primary source of food.”
When Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he replied “because that’s where the money is.” If you ask a seal why he goes all the way across the ice to feed, he will likely reply “because that’s where the sea is.”
You seem to have spectacularly missed the point. Humans are prone to making the fallacy of reasoning that everything is the way it is because that’s the way it has to be. This is related to “the best of all possible alternatives” myth. The fallacy of reasoning works like this. An observation of a status quo is made, for example of polar bears and seals and an inference drawn – polar bears go on the ice to hunt seals. The next stage of the reasoning is where the fallacy occurs – if the ice wasn’t there the bears couldn’t hunt the seals.
The fallacy is in the assumption that the ice is a necessary prerequisite for hunting seals. It never occurs to anyone drawing these conclusions that it is not the ice that is a necessary prerequisite for hunting seals – it is the presence of seals that is necessary. And the ice is not a necessary prerequisite for seals to hunt fish – it is access to the ocean. Therefore, when the ice disappears, the seals will hunt fish from the shores and that’s where the bears will be found. Simples.
It always amazes me that people can have such tunnel vision. But I suppose that is why only a tiny handfull of individuals have made truly revolutionary discoveries.
kadaka (01:03:26) :
Re: Anu (23:19:11)
You’re bringing up Barber’s “rotten ice” claim that was demolished here last year and has become a running gag?
Why? Did you catch it?
—————
Thanks, I hadn’t been reading here last year, and missed that post:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/14/a-look-at-sea-ice-compared-to-this-date-in-2007/
I bet “rotten” was just Dr. Barber’s pet word for a condition well known to the satellite designers, but I won’t go and look into that now. I will note that the phrase “rotten ice” is used more and more on the NSIDC site, which was not the case last year when the above article was written:
It’s in the NSIDC glossary now:
http://nsidc.org/cgi-bin/words/word.pl?rotten%20ice
and used in other NSIDC webpages:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2010/010510.html
http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02159_ponds/index.html
The concept doesn’t look so “demolished” now.
Maybe they called it “honeycombed ice” before – but I know “ground truth” expeditions to check on satellite data (such as the nuclear subs measuring the ice from below sea level) are always considered a good idea.
——–
Of course, even without the rotten ice problem, the satellites are measuring a big decrease in this “thick, multiyear” ice:
http://www.nasa.gov/mov/326195main_winter_seaicethickness30fps.mov
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/326208main_seaicediscretecolorbar.jpg
If much of the thick, multiyear ice is actually honeycombed, then things are even worse, with respect to when we the reach ice-free summer Arctic ocean. If the “rotten ice” is just a local Beaufort Sea phenomena, perhaps that adds a few years to the deadline.
Just remember, Arctic sea ice melting in the summers is a 3D phenomena, not 2D.
Vincent (14:03:06) :
Polar Bears eat seals because there isn’t much else for them to eat. What do you suggest that a 3,000 pound mammal eat in a place where there are no trees and the growing season is only a few weeks long? Ladybugs?
Anu,
Disappearance of multi-year ice is mostly a 2D phenomenon. It is due to wind blowing the ice horizontally more than ice melting vertically.
Phil. (13:36:49) wrote:
Al Gored (13:13:30) :
Nov. 2, 1922, Washington Post: Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.”
While at the same time the other end of the Arctic was frozen solid!
——————–
So I wonder which area the IPCC gang would have selected for their data?
Steve Goddard – Sorry but no such thing as a 3000 pound polar bear. The biggest ones are around the Bering Strait but never get that huge. Some say up to 2000 pounds but hard to actually weigh one and that would be a true giant.
It also matter what time of year you weigh them, of course. They can go very long periods without eating anything and their weight fluctuates seasonally.
Willis, have you heard about this? They are reprocessing old Nimbus data from the 60’s. Hoping to extend their artic/anyartic snow/ice knowledge by about 50%.
http://nsidc.org/monthlyhighlights/january2010.html
People have killed and weighed polar bears in excess of 2,200 pounds, but that really has no relevance to the discussion. Bears need to eat a lot to stay alive.
Steve Goddard – News to me. What’s your source on that weight?
Sorry but I’m a nit picker for accuracy in the details.
And it is somewhat relevant. The bigger the bear the more it needs to eat. That’s why some areas grow larger bears than others, depending on the food supply.
Compare the ‘little’ grizzly bears on the dry east slopes of the Rockies with the huge brown bears (same species) along the Alaska Pacific coast.
Or compare the little polar bears of Hudson’s Bay – the most convenient AGW poster bears because they are on the extreme southern margins of polar bear habitat – with the relative giants around the Bering Strait.
In any case, 2,000 pound polar bears, or even 1500 pound ones, are like 8 foot tall people. Extreme exceptions.
The largest polar bear on record, reportedly weighing 1,002 kg (2,210 lb), was a male shot at Kotzebue Sound in northwestern Alaska in 1960.[36]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear
Bob Tisdale (04:00:19) :,
I suspect you are correct in that short time periods will not necessarily demonstrate the longer term see-saw activity. It’s sort of like comparing weather with climate.
The chaotic nature of anything associated with weather/climate will create a fractal shape to the trends. Just like a jagged coastline has straight-lines if you look only at a specific subset, the see-saw will disappear at times too.
As an answer to the question “Why should the Antarctic warm when the Arctic cools? “, I think longer term cycles must be invoked for the longer term and chaos for the shorter term.
I think there’s another ice record that has been overlooked — the US Coast Guard’s record of icebergs that drift out of the Baffin Sea into the Atlantic. it’s not an easy record to interpret, since it probably needs to use a three-year running average (the mean time for iceberg freedom.) It deals with real big ice — bergs — but that may have a merit all its own, since it is not dealing with brash. I don’t think it shows significant warming, which one would assume would mean a major breakout of bergs and bergy bits.
Willis Eschenbach (01:41:04) :
For starters, the IceSat satellite is supposed to be the source of their data. But the IceSat satellite doesn’t cover any further north than the other satellites, about 82.5°N. And their lovely graphs show all the way to the pole … how do they do that? They don’t say …
——————–
Good point.
Where do they get the data for the hole at the top of the world ?
However, the hole is smaller than you think:
The orbit parameters for the ICESat satellite shows an inclination of 94°:
http://ilrs.gsfc.nasa.gov/satellite_missions/list_of_satellites/ices_general.html
This means the part of the Arctic not observable is 86°N to 90°N, less than the hole for the temperature satellites.
This map shows a latitude circle of 85°N, so you can visualize how small the 86°N circle would be:
http://clasticdetritus.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/arctic-svalbard-map.jpg
Still, it would take some digging to see how NASA filled in that hole – interpolation ? Nuclear sub data ?
Polar cyclones are semi-permanent features of the Arctic, which are stronger in winter and weaker in summer. How could there be “more cyclones”?
Frequency
Although cyclonic activity is most prevalent in the Eurasian Arctic with approximately 15 cyclones per winter, polar cyclones also occur in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic. Polar cyclones can occur at any time during the year. However, summer cyclones tend to be weaker than winter cyclones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_cyclone
I imagine if the Arctic Ocean waters are getting a bit warmer in the summers, those weak cyclones could get stronger, with waves that destroy more of the honeycombed ice. The frequency of these cyclones could be greater – maybe 16 or 17 now, instead of 15. I just threw this out as a discussion point, related to the “rotten ice” concept. There is more at work than just melting from the sun’s rays.
Yet despite all of that, the ice area has increased every year since the 2007 low. Go figure …
Two years of “recovery” is not a big deal. But yes, that could explain some of the decrease in multiyear ice (in 2008). Since ICESat died last October, they won’t have full data for 2009, but I haven’t even seen the partial-year data yet. Maybe if I dug some more…
And Europes Cryosat-2 is scheduled for launch on April 8, so hopefully they will not take long to calibrate and start getting real data…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8568285.stm
So are you saying we can’t trust the satellite results? If so, why are you showing them? Not clear what the point is here.
Just saying that the measured, thick “multiyear” ice might not be as stable as they had assumed. The satellites are measuring what they were designed to measure, but ground truth expeditions seem to show some unexpected ice structures. “Raw data” is just the beginning of understanding.
Yeah, it’s only lasted for hundreds of thousands of years …
Yes, I’ll miss it when it’s gone.
Anu, was there a decrease in the ice area and thickness in the Arctic? Yes. Has the sea ice area increased since 2007? Yes. Was there less multi-year ice 2004-2008? Yes, and it would be surprising if that were not the case.
The satellite-era 2D extent low of 2007 would not explain the thinning of the ice in 2005, 2006. An inexorably warming Arctic, would.
Now, remember that this was all big news in 2007. At that time, all the ice savants were predicting that because there was less multi-year ice in the Arctic, that in 2008 the ice melt would be much larger and the ice area would be smaller … didn’t work that way, though.
2008 had more ice extent, but it was still thinning. Short-term fluctuation weather patterns can affect ice growth in the winters, as other articles on wind patterns and narrow straits being open or ice-jammed have mentioned here. But ice thinning seems a real concern – too bad the data I’ve seen is only for 5 years. I’ll try to find results for 2009.
But none of that happened … instead, the Arctic ice area has increased. At present it is within one standard deviation of the 1979-2000 average, and is continuing to rise well past the date of the usual peak. Seems like the savants must have slipped a decimal point somewhere.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
It seems to be hugging the 2 std dev line, up a bit towards 1 std dev. This summer melt will not be known until October. Yes, I know, watching the climate change is more boring than watching the grass grow…
Me, I suspect this is because of the shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)
Yes, I’ve heard the PDO advanced as explaining a lot of the climate for the past 30 years. Looks like this decade will convince a lot of people one way or another. Myself included.
The idea that a change in Arctic ice is going to wipe out polar bears is nonsense.
They usually feed on ringed and bearded seals. But like all bears, they are both smart and adaptable. From the usual font of misinformation (WWF)
They can also go for months without eating at all. They are fearsome predators both on land and sea. They can swim like fish, for miles and miles, they attack freakin’ whales in the water, for goodness sake. They usually hunt ringed seals from the pack ice for part of the year. If ice is not around, they hunt harp and hooded and bearded and harbour seals, which are not ice-dependent like the ringed seals. All of them hibernate when there is the most ice. Several populations live where there is no summer ice at all … but dang, they just keep surviving. They also survived the last ten thousand years, when the Greenland ice cores show that the Arctic was up to three degrees warmer than it is now, and there were summers when the Arctic was ice free. Go figure.
Here’s summer ice, July 1980 …
And here’s a map of the polar bear populations.
Note that some of them live where there is ice year-round, and some live where there is no ice for most of the year. Like I said, adaptable.
Are they declining? Truth is, we don’t know. Scientific population estimates range from a low of 15,000 to a high of 27,000. With that much uncertainty, who can tell? The Inuit, who live closest to the bears on a daily basis, say they are not declining. Of course, they don’t get invited to the meetings of the polar bear scientists.
The number one reason scientists say polar bears are declining? Three guesses, but you’ll only need one … computer models of bear populations.
Looks like the NH and SH tend to diverge to me, at least for the entirety of this interglacial:
http://s852.photobucket.com/albums/ab89/etregembo/?action=view¤t=Vostok_GISPS_AVG_DIV.jpg
LIA being very similar to the period ~5800yrs ago, and 11kyrs (though harder to see as we were climbing into the current interglacial.
Of course you can find periods where they don’t, but the majority of the time it looks to me that there is definitely an opposing relationship. There are certainly quite a few unexplained cycles as of yet.
Fascinating isn’t it.
The Inuit knowledge (would pretty much guarantee selectivity) is contained in the Polar Bear studies, known as “TEK/IQ”, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ) whatever that stands for.
Maybe it stands for, “yes, me tell what you want to hear for grant to study what you want to hear”.
Fun times…
C’mon AMO! SAVE US!!!!!!!! We need your negativity to reveal the truth to us all (skeptics and believers alike)!