After writing my earlier piece showing changes in the Arctic maximum since 2007, Willis requested the same image for the minimum. NSIDC does not archive extent images, but fortunately UIUC does archive sea ice concentration images. Below is the equivalent image for September 15, 2007/2009. Yellow represents areas of 30% concentration ice common to both images. Green represents 2009 ice that was not present in 2007. Red represents 2007 ice that was not present in 2009.
Note the disappearance of the Northwest Passage.
DMI measures extent as areas of greater than 30% concentration, so the graph below is a good representation of the ~33% gain in summer ice seen between 2007 and 2009.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_2010.png
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It’s all been within the range of normal variability. I know because I’ve been checking it out for myself.
I also know that global warming predictions about Arctic Ice I not panning out. I think that’s what this post is about. Al Gore said Arctic Ice could be all gone in 5 years. He said that more than a year ago.
Predictions: you have to be careful if you’re going to make them. Here’s a few that failed:
“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”
~~Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895
“Space travel is bunk.”
~~Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of Britain, 1957, two weeks before the launch of Sputnik
“All attempts at artificial aviation are not only dangerous to life but doomed to failure from an engineering standpoint.”
~~editor of ‘The Times’ of London, 1905
“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”
~~Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”
~~Bill Gates, 1981
This is how terribly wrong science can go
http://www.uq.edu.au/news/?article=20962
This Nino is not long for the world. The SOI is starting to rock n’ roll. The 90day is, already, up to 6.04, and rising rapidly.
http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/SeasonalClimateOutlook/SouthernOscillationIndex/30DaySOIValues/
Isn’t using IJIS/Jaxa vs UIUC deceptive? IJIS/Jaxa measures sea ice extent to 15% and UIUC stops at a 30% concentration. Someone mentioned earlier that the 15% concentration shouldn’t be considered because it represents ice that’s breaking away from the polar cap due to wind and the measurements are questionable.
So the Arctic may have lost “450,000 sq. km since the peak on March 31” but a substantial majority of the loss should never have been counted in the first place?
Its also worth noting that minimum extent measurements have a greater degree of error due to the open waters.
magicjava (21:46:32) :
Not even Lemon Sorbet?
Phil. (20:31:23) :
But a yacht sailed through in the opposite direction without an icebreaker.
Which automatically means global warming is happening.
R. Gates (20:13:25) :
Just for an update: According the IJIS/Jaxa, the Arctic sea ice is now below where it was in 2003 on this date, April 11, and we’ve dropped over 450,000 sq. km since the peak on March 31.
It’s exactly at the same level.
Interestingly, 2008 was also very close to the current level, but if you look at the danish chart, which uses a 30% concentration threshold, current levels are quite a bit above 2008 levels.
Jeff T., R. Gates:
Have you compared the 2009 image with the 1904 image?
“Even after the claim of an Open Sea was disproved, the Passage retained its romantic allure, and when in 1905 the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen completed the first successful voyage through the Passage, the news electrified the world.” http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage
Or, “Sought by explorers for centuries as a possible trade route, it was first navigated by Roald Amundsen in 1903–1906.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_passage
Hmmm. 1903-1906. 2003-2006. Is there a 100-year cycle here?
What about all those newspaper articles in the 1920’s and 1930’s reporting the arctic ice melting at an unprecedented rate?
How absurd to base cap-and-trade and AGW hysteria on only a very short time span of evidence, excluding Michael Mann’s fraudulent hockey stick.
Steve, those are some real informational overlays.
Thanks for all of the the effort and fantastic insight!
Houston, we have a problem. The meme is dead.
Gates, why do you even try? Reality is the models are wrong. Get it? CO2 AGW is wrong! It does not matter about 2003 etc having more or less ice.It does matter that the Spring melt is on time. The Warmists’ models are wrong. The physics is wrong. The chemistry is wrong. The economics are wrong. It is simply wrong.
The comfort in the new Escalade is unmatched for those long Arctic expeditions:
http://photos.webridestv.com/datastore/images/user/68ac106295cef1abc54f93c860edc2eb/BeckerStrut_Cadillac_Escalade_ESV_109619_20080725.jpg
Dying corals – more evidence of global warming – except they are dying of cold!!
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/04/2010411184345919948.html
“Phil. (20:31:23) :
rbateman (19:26:13) :
33% Sea Ice is a lot. They had to escort the 2 German Freighters through with 2 Russian nuclear-powered Ice Breakers in that <33% Northeast Passage.
But a yacht sailed through in the opposite direction without an icebreaker.”
Who, what, when, & how? I'm not being sceptical, just curious! The last one I'd heard try it was a Brit a couple of years back, who wanted to demonstrate how little ice there was, got stuck & needed rescuing from the two Polar Bears that were left up there! I would have thought the warmists would have had a field day publicising this one?
We all know that most of the gain is just ‘rotten ice’.
/sarc
TomTurner in SF (23:04:09) :
“…Hmmm. 1903-1906. 2003-2006. Is there a 100-year cycle here?”
You could be right, 100y(ish)
1410-1500 cold – Low Solar Activity(LSA?)-(Sporer minimum)
1510-1600 warm – High Solar Activity(HSA?)
1610-1700 cold – (LSA) (Maunder minimum)
1710-1800 warm – (HSA)
1810-1900 cold – (LSA) (Dalton minimum)
1910-2000 warm – (HSA)
2010-2100 (cold???) – (LSA???)
Jack “In Oregon” Barnes (20:04:29) : Personally, I would like to visualize some Sunny *Dry* Warmth. I want my Global Warming, and I want it now.
The continuous cold rain blowing in off the Pacific continues. It feels like the highth of winter still… that is highs in the 40’s – 50’s, lows in the mid 30’s, rain almost every day. We are in our 5th month of El Nino Rains. Depending on who’s rain gauge you believe, we have had 3-6 ft of rain since Christmas 2009.
It’s not getting any warmer down here, so up there you ought to be getting whacked:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/winter-storm-warning-in-california-in-april/
TWC was saying about 2 feet of snow to dropped in the upper Sierra Nevada and about 2 inches of rain expected near Anthony… and with a ‘slope’ of about 2 inch per mile up there, that 2 inches can take a while to drain away… (about 35 foot elevation and about 210 miles to the ocean from where I grew up “near” there…)
Further, the place has loads of “Adobe Clay” soil. Great for growing rice as the flood irrigation water does not drain away into the soil. Not so good when the rains come.
I’m tired of cold and wet. I demand that Al Gore deliver on the Global Warming that was promised. If we don’t start warming Real Soon Now, I think California ought to file a class action suit against the IPCC for breach of contract… the PROMISED it was going to be warm…
Why does the NSIDC only show 2 standard deviations around the 1979-2000 average? It’s common practice to show 3 standard deviations of a normal distribution, to represent where 99.7% of the data should fall.
Only having data since 1979 is one thing that makes the standard deviation large.
Jeff T
“If you want to be honest about the claims of declining ice cover, then you must also include the Antarctic: click
Because the debate is about global, not regional, warming/cooling”
I’m sorry, I don’t get your point. The graph you linked to seems to be showing an upward trend in Antarctic ice extent.
“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 Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers 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 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. Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable. ”
November 2, 1922 The Washington Post..
Jeff T (22:08:45) :
If you wish to discuss probabilities on a statistic drowning in noise, fine.
If you are looking to gamble, then I would suggest Carbon Credits are right for you.
There are already too many in positions who are willing to bet the future of the Earth on no more information than the cosmological argument had 100 years ago.
Vincent (04:11:58),
I provided that chart, not JT. It shows the Antarctic ice cover is increasing.
There has been a slight decline in global ice extent for several years, which is well within the bounds of natural variability. Thus the null hypothesis remains intact, and the CO2=CAGW hypothesis fails because the ice loss is only in the Arctic, not both at the Arctic and the Antarctic. The effect is local, not global.
That being the case, people whose egos are invested in the belief that a rise in CO2 will cause runaway global warming are currently concentrating only on the Arctic, because the natural ebb and flow of ice cover shows the Arctic currently losing ice.
Climate alarmists don’t mention the Antarctic, because it makes clear that the Arctic ice loss is regional, not global: click
Dr A Burns (04:41:31) shows why the media has always alarmed people who have a predilection toward frightening themselves: it sells papers.
It’s always best to be skeptical of claims that what is occurring is anything but natural and normal climate variability, since there is no verifiable evidence to the contrary.
And there was never a skeptic who stood on street corners in 1922 with sandwich-board signs reading: “Repent! The End Is Nigh!” They were all alarmists.
Today, their true believer philosophical descendants post the same alarming stories on the internet.
E.M.Smith (01:55:11) :
Oh drat. Wouldn’t you know it, I’m in that purple stuff west of Redding.
If it isn’t pouring rain, it’s socked in with Transylvania Alps Fog.
Even a rare sunny day isn’t safe from biting winds. Oak trees are all late.
Monthly snowpack percentages for the Western US can be found here:
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/cgibin/westsnow.pl
Alan the Brit (01:27:49) :
“Phil. (20:31:23) :
rbateman (19:26:13) :
33% Sea Ice is a lot. They had to escort the 2 German Freighters through with 2 Russian nuclear-powered Ice Breakers in that <33% Northeast Passage.
But a yacht sailed through in the opposite direction without an icebreaker.”
Who, what, when, & how? I'm not being sceptical, just curious! The last one I'd heard try it was a Brit a couple of years back, who wanted to demonstrate how little ice there was, got stuck & needed rescuing from the two Polar Bears that were left up there! I would have thought the warmists would have had a field day publicising this one?
These guys for one:
http://www.skinnarmo.com/
Click on the tab ‘Nordost Passagen’ and Union Flag then ‘blog’ for english version. They were commemorating Nordenskiöld’s journey of 130 years before.
Another boat, the RXII, also sailed it, their plan was a total circumnavigation but after reaching the Bering Straits they were ‘escorted’ by the Russian coastguard to deal with paperwork issues, so had to cancel the NW Passage leg.
http://seilmagasinet.no/id/33192.0