Arctic Sea Ice Extent Update: still growing

@ur momisugly geo (10:55:35) [2 Apr 2010] :
Btw, it’s April 2nd. What’s the over/under on the first puzzled “wtf is that jog every year on June 1?” post?
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If you are referring to the sea-ice extent, follow the link to the IARC-JAXA/AMSR-E graph and info on the WUWT right sidebar, and see the 3rd para under the heading “Method for calculating sea-ice extent”:
The current version of data processing produces an erroneous blip of sea-ice extent on June 1 and October 15, which is seen in the graph of sea-ice extent as a small peak on these dates. The apparent blip arises due to switching of some parameters in the processing on those dates. The parameter switching is needed because the surface of the Arctic sea ice becomes wet in summer due to the melting of ice, drastically changing the satellite-observed signatures of sea ice. We will soon improve the processing to make the graph much smoother.
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Hope that helps.

Andew P said
I think after the last two winters, the vast majority of people in the Northern Hemisphere (with perhaps the exception of Eastern Canada and West Greenland) are fully aware that we have already had some global cooling.
Someone else here cracked a joke about there being a relationship between increased CO2 and global cooling —
however, this might not be such a far fetched idea…
My theory might be true after all, the cooling properties of CO2 might be greater than the warming properties. The net effcect of more CO2 causes cooling, not warming….This is what I have been suspecting all along…..:
We know that CO2 has absorption in the 14-15 um range causing some warming (by re-radiating earthshine, 24 hours per day) but as shown and proved it also has a number of absorptions in the 0-5 um range causing cooling (by re-radiating sunshine). This cooling happens at all levels where the sunshine hits on the carbon dioxide same as the earthshine. The way from the bottom to the top is the same as from top to the bottom. So, my question was: how much cooling and how much warming is caused by the CO2? How was the experiment done to determine this and where are the test results? If it has not been done, why don’t we just sue the oil companies to do this research? (I am afraid that simple heat retention testing will not work here, we have to use real sunshine and real earthshine to determine the effect in W/m3 [0.04%-0.06%]CO2 /m2/24hours).
When they analysed the spectra, did they look at all the absorptions, namely also at those of CO2 in the UV – that have only been discovered recently? I also doubt that spectra analysis would work here – you have to come up with a more real time experiment.
I think especially the cooling of CO2 caused at 4.3 um might be considerable because this is where the sun’s radiation is at its hottest (on your skin). Note that the temp. on the coast on a sunny day (no wind) is always a few degrees cooler than more inland. This is due to same cooling caused by water vapor in the sun’s solar spectra – I am saying CO2 does exactly the same thing.
So what is the net effect of CO2? How dow we all know for sure that CO2 is a greenhouse gas when clearly Svante Arrhenius formula has long been proven wrong and nobody has come up with a new formula?

@OldUnixHead (04:38:49) :
I knew that, but thanks anyway. I was having fun with an annual rite of spring here at WUWT that we are about to experience again.

Phil. (04:56:04) :
Phil, I’m quite aware of the fact that the temperature of the ice won’t increase during phase change. Instead all added heat goes into the phase change. I believe I never stated otherwise.
I live in a region where we have quite a bit of snow and ice during the winter season. This winter we had quite a bit more cold, snow and ice than usual. Actually, I think this has been the longest, coldest and snowiest winter I can remember since the seventies, or sixties even. What I notice during the melt season, like now, is that the air temperature can vary quite a bit. Some days may be around 0 to 2 degrees C, others maybe 8 to 10 C. When the air temp is higher, the ice and snow melt more quickly.
Are you suggesting it works very differently in the Arctic north of 80N?

why is 2008 left off the chart?

Phil. (05:19:51) :
I just saw your most recent post after I pushed submit, and the page refreshed.
For your further information, I still have about 6 or 8 inches of compact snow all around where I live, so we are now in the middle of the melt season here.
As an illustration, here are the temperatures we are experiencing:
http://pent.no/%C3%85lesund

Is that a hockey stick I espy on the last 3 weeks of ice extent?

It’s good that the Arctic sea ice is now back to ‘normal’, although only using 1979 – 2000 as a base period is a nonsense.
In my view anything less than 100y has no meaning. Without the proper comparison data no useful conclusions can be made about what this means in terms of climate. To make matters worse, seasonal sea ice growth and decline are driven by deterministic chaos and it is impossible to know with any precision what future levels will be.
It is fun to try and guess though, and I think 2010 summer ice extent will come in larger than last year.

@ur momisugly Phil. (05:19:51)
Al Gore said “There is a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice free within the next five to seven years.”
The video Anthony linked to was removed from youtube but the one below hasn’t been (yet) and it is Al Gore in Copenhagen saying exactly what I quoted above.

This was very widely quoted in newspapers and took only seconds to confirm with google. Try it out sometime.

Larry Sheldon (05:59:47) :
quote – Gore said polar scientists told him Sunday that the latest data “suggest a 75 percent chance the entire polar ice cap will melt in summer within the next five to seven years.” – unquote
But you are right–I wouldn’t trust CBS either.
More likely Uncle Albert told them polar *bears* had told him that, and CBS didn’t want to look completely ridiculous…
In the interest of full disclosure, my latest data suggest a 75% chance a camel will jump out of my desk drawer within the next five to seven years.

That was some pretty impressive wriggling there Phil. Worthy of Al Gore and the other fellows who engage in that non-political science type stuff. Perhaps they removed it as it was inconvenient. It is certainly inconvenient that you could not explain what he really meant by ” The Artic ice cap will be gone in 5 years”. I do not see any other way to interpret what was said. You never did answer my post on the other Artic sea ice extent thread, either. Typical.

@ur momisugly Henry Pool (09:02:04)
Sunspot chart on right is there because there is a strongly suspected relationship between solar magnetic field strength and global warming/cooling. Sunspots are a proxy for magnetic field strength and astronomers have been recording the number of them sporadically beginning in the year 1600 and continuously beginning in 1750.
This latest sunspot cycle, which reached its nadir last year, was the lowest in a hundred years and, probably not coincidentally, the northern hemisphere had a harsh winter.
The evident relationship is hypothetically driven by high altitude cloud formation. When the sun’s magnetic field is strong it deflects more cosmic rays (high energy particles originating outside our solar system) and when weaker it deflects fewer. These particles upon impact with the upper atmosphere cause a cascade of events that have been shown in laboratory simulations to result in greater formation of clouds. Thin high altitude clouds reflect a portion of sunlight directly back out into space.
The relationship can be seen as long as sunspots have been counted and the notorious Little Ice Age in Europe circa 1650 coincided with dearth of sunspots called the Maunder Minimum.
Probably not coincidentally the number of sunspots has been about 50% higher than normal from 1960 through 2000.
It appears to the casual observer that solar magnetic field strength can drive the average global temperature at least a couple degrees in either direction.
Complicating this is the fact that cosmic ray strength also varies due to both predictable (star density in region of galaxy that solar system is traversing) and unpredictably like when a star in our neck of the woods goes supernova.