By Steve Goddard
The Catlin Arctic Survey arrived at the North Pole this week.
Described as three of ‘the world’s toughest’ explorers, Ann Daniels, Charlie Paton and Martin Hartley reached the Geographic North Pole at on 12th May, ending a grueling 60-day trek across the floating sea ice of the Arctic Ocean…They made it with only hours to spare before a Twin Otter plane was scheduled to land on the ice to collect them.
Congratulations to them on completing a difficult journey against the Beaufort Gyre. They can now compare their Oceanic pH data vs. the non-existent database from past years, and predictably conclude that pH might be lower than it used to be – due to CO2.
The spring melt season continues to eat away at the periphery of the ice pack. The animation below (made from Cryosphere Today images) shows the changes since the first of the month.
Figure 2
As you can see, not much has changed during the last two weeks. The image below, made from NSIDC images, shows areas of anomalously high extent in green, and anomalously low extent in red.
Figure 3
As in past weeks there is excess ice in the Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk, and a deficiency in the Barents Sea – which are all always ice free during the summer anyway.
To keep the death spiral in perspective, the image below (made from Cryosphere Today images) compares mid-September 30% concentration ice from the years 2009 and 1990. Red shows areas of ice loss since 1990 and green shows areas of ice gain. I’m guessing that the Arctic will probably not be ice free by 2013, as predicted by researchers at the Naval Post-Graduate School.
Figure 4
The image below shows mid-September ice gain from 2007-2009 in green, and loss in red.
Figure 5
There continues to be a significant divergence in the extent graphs. Norsex in red is close to the 30 year mean, while NSIDC (blue) DMI (stippled) and JAXA (green) are closer to two standard deviations from the mean. The deficiency is almost entirely located in the Barents Sea, as seen above in Figure 3.
Figure 6
The modified NSIDC image below shows ice loss since early April in red.
Figure 7
The modified NSIDC image below compares April 14 2007 and 2010 ice. Areas in green have gained ice since 2007, and areas in red have lost ice since 2007.
Figure 8
It is still too early in the year to see much interesting. Still about six weeks before significant melting begins in the interior of the Arctic. Stay tuned.
Many thanks to Juraj V, Mostly Harmless, Smokey, Willis Eschenbach and Olaf Koenders. I think that I will have enough to read, digest and contemplate now for several days. If I still do not understand it will not be your fault.
Olaf Koenders says:
May 17, 2010 at 7:23 am
Solomon Green, you need not worry.
If you remember the Carboniferous Period (about 300Mya) as well as I do, CO2 levels were some 20x as high as today. In the Jurassic (around 200Mya) some 10-15x today’s CO2 was floating around, and generally not making its presence felt, where life clearly thrived and delicate aragonite corals evolved in blindingly obvious non-acid oceans, which is why we have shellfish and coral fossils from this time.
You apparently forgot about the Permian-Triassic extinction about 250 million years ago when marine life was devasted, coral reefs disappeared and didn’t reappear for 10 million years, rugosa corals went extinct. ” The extinction primarily affected organisms with calcium carbonate skeletons, especially those reliant on ambient CO2 levels to produce their skeletons.” Knoll, A.H. ((2004)). “Biomineralization and evolutionary history. In: P.M. Dove, J.J. DeYoreo and S. Weiner (Eds), Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry,” And guess what there was a CO2 spike.
toby
HadCrut has 2010 at #5 so far in 2010.
Toby: Two minor points for your post
First, Dr. Roy Spencer might have a mild objection to having the AMSUTEMP UAH data called his data. He does not own the data coming from the satellites which are used by more than one person.
Second, although GMT is likely up so far this year, the website you reference likely overstates it to some degree — those graphs are not adjusted for orbital decay / drift.
R. Gates,
I do read your comments with interest. I do not take them as gospel any more than I take Steve Goddard’s as gospel. For example, when references to GISS estimates of Arctic temperatures do little to persuade me given what I know of the GISS methodology. Still, you do insure rigor in the discussion. My question for you: the over-riding impression from your posts is that the Arctic will be at or near a near minimum this year — intended or not, that is the impression you create. Therefore, would you promise to be around in September, no matter how the minimum turns out?
All this debate about what is happening or not happening at either pole. How about some real world observations from an outfit like Ken Borek Air. This outfit has been flying the poles for decades. Would be interesting to see what they have to say. Have a look on line, very interesting outfit.
…Because we all know that insects eat recreationally, and instead of starving while engorged, will take the time they currently spend chilling out playing video poker and spend it more productively munching on more plants, digesting faster, and reproducing more fervently.
Ouch this makes my head hurt.
Doug in Seattle:
1) they take a varying amount of time to be sealed off from the atmosphere. The prominent cores are in the 70 to 120 year range.
2) they certainly must represent an averaged value, and as you surmised would not record the peaks. At best they can say there was no sustained CO2 level that matches our current annual average.
3) Instantaneous CO2 levels vary highly in the summer, with some ground stations which report on the internet showing values that vary from approximately 150 ppm during late afternoon, to over 500ppm just before sunrise.
toby says:
May 17, 2010 at 9:01 am
And one of the problems is that clearly the difference between say, 2007 temp, 2008 temp, 2009 temp, and 2010 temps is not explainable by a change in CO2 levels.
You’ve got a swing of over 1C, of which perhaps .05C is explainable from compounded CO2 effects of even the most hysterical AGW theories out there.
Phil., May 17, 2010 at 9:29 am,
Are you saying that life was ‘devasted’ due to CO2? The likelihood of that is vanishingly small. In U.S. nuclear submarines [my boy served on the Helena for six years], CO2 can spike well above 5,000 ppm with no ill effects.
During the time frame in question CO2 remained in the range of thousands of ppmv, for a hundred million years. Life flourished. See here [click on the image to embiggen].
Of all the possible reasons for the extinction, CO2 seems by far the least likely. But of course since it’s CO2, it goes to the top of some folks’ list; blaming CO2 might lead to grant money.
Arctic temperature – GMF Z graph updated
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC-CETfiles.htm
Well I watched some very interesting Science News programs from Japan yesterday on T&V.
Specifically this was the NHK TV “Science Zero” program all about the YDP monitoring and research; mostly at the University of Fukuoka; which is at the Western tip of the Japanese Islands.
YDP is a perfectly natural process and there a good thing; and it has significant local weather / climate consequences.
Oh I forgot; some of you mnemonic collectors maynot be familiar with YDP as in Yellow Dust Phenomenon. Some people mistakenly think it is Yellow Dust Pollution; but that is not correct as it is a perfectly natural phenomenon; so to call it pollution, is a travesty.
YDP arises naturally in the high deserts in central Asia; the Japanese Scientists were very reluctant to say either China or Tibet; but their strange three-D scanning pictures looked like they could have been in the Gobi Desert of Tibet.
The phenomenon manifests itself as a yellow fog in the skies over Japanese cities; and airborne capture of the particles from specially equipped research aircraft, show that the particles are 0.1-1.0 micron chunks of some sort of sulphate rock that is yellow. This stuff is all over the desert, hiding down between the comparatively boulder sized sandy grains. When the wind blows, the sand particles get blown around, and when they come crashing back down on the ground; they eject the much smaller YD particles into the atmosphere. Evidently some sort of adhesion/cohesion/stiction tends to bind the partilces to the ground so the wind doesn’t seem to dislodge them directly. Once airborne, they rise to great altitudes, and carry right across the Tibetan mountains, and across China to the Japanese Islands. At Fukuoka, they can get to the YDPPs before they get corrupted by Japanese effluents. They do however pick up sodium and other salts from the sea they cross.
The YD is also caught up in flooding in Tibet, and gets washed down into the Yellow river which is what makes it Yellow; fancy that; and the Yellow river dumps into the sea off the East Coast of China; which is called the Yellow sea.
Laboratory experiments (I actually watched that on TV; but it might have been photoshopped or done on a sound stage. They took a spherical flask that contained saturated water vapor, and showed no signs of condensation. Then they introduced a little turbo YD dopant; and immediately turbulent clouds formed in the flask; plain as day. No there wasn’t any thunder or lightning; but H2O clouds formed instantly.
Sop far, the data obtained by studies of the temperatures when YDP storms occur, is that the phenomenon leads to significant cooling.
It is also found that the YDP clouds interract with real atmospheric pollution from the Chinese cities; and arrives in Japan bearing various kinds of molds and microbes; so it does lead to respiration problems for asthmatics. Tests with lab rats; given pollen dust alone or pollen plus YDP dust, shows that the YDP rats develop much more antibodies that do the pollen only rats.
Of course this wasn’t a peer reviewed Science Show; and the whole thing could have been faked; but if so, they sure did a good job of it; it sure looked real to me.
Just a short note on the other show on the same channel; about farming in some place called Vie in rolling hills in Japan; that is northern enough and high enough to have total snow ground cover in the winter.
The Interesting part is that the Japanese farmers do; and have for generations used geo-engineering to increase their crop yields, and in the process enhance global warming. At the end of the snowfall season; the farmer drives around his field in his snow-mobile pulling a contraption that billows out carbon dust all over the place; so the farmer ends up looking like a coal miner. Teh cover the snow with carbon dust (soot) to accelerate the melting of the snow, so that they can lengthen their growing season, and increase the crop yield. In the process; they lower the albedo of the earth, and raise the absorption of both solar and thermal radiation. You know that if the soot looks black to the eye, then it is highly absorptive of solar spectrum radiation.
So Japan is engaging in deliberate global warming climate modification; because it happens to be in their own economic self interest.
So much for Kyoto accords; and other such international behavior modification nonsense.
T.C. says:
May 17, 2010 at 7:10 am
You are missing about 120 years of history, likely because you are told what to believe by the MET office instead of looking up the facts for yourself:
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/
I like high school teachers as much as the next person, and sure, one of them might stumble upon something the “experts” have missed (such as the Swiss high school teacher Balmer in 1885, discovering a mysterious mathematical relationship between lines in hydrogen spectrographs, which was solved by Niels Bohr in 1913:
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phys2020/phys2020_f98/lab_manual/Lab6/lab6.html )
Here is Mr. Beck signing a Heartland petition:
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/22621/Scientists_Speak_Out_Against_Alarmist_Warming_Theory.html
Ernst-Georg Beck, Dipl. Biol., Biologist, Merian-Schule Freiburg, Germany
The Merian-Schule in Freiburg, Germany, is a vocational high school for women:
http://tinyurl.com/2aydj3o
I don’t know if Mr. Beck teaches in the Biotechnology High School, or the Nutritional High School, or the one or two year Vocational College of Nutrition and Home Economics:
http://tinyurl.com/2albfyc
I hope for his sake he finds some Professor in Germany, or any country, that can help him co-author an actual scientific paper challenging the established science of CO2 measurement, since publishing your own website:
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/
© Ernst-Georg Beck 2006-2010; http://www.realCO2.de; last update 11 March 2010
contact: info*at*realco2.de
doesn’t really cut it in the world of science.
There must be some Professor, in Japan, or China, or Brazil, or Australia that can help him publish his work in a real journal. Doesn’t he meet real scientists at the Heartland conferences every year ?
R. Gates, just in case you missed my post following the previous Goddard article wrt Arctic sea ice:
I believe this is the official WUWT CAGW (Centre for the Arctic by Goddard and Watts) forecast: “Steven Goddard writes below that he agrees with the prediction I made in late 2009 that we’d see another 500,000 km2 of Arctic sea ice recovery in 2010″.
Of course, no mention of any data set, but I guess they mean the one by IARC-JAXA as it is the only dataset they show in the right hand bar. That would come down to a minimum extent of around 5.75 million square km.
I’ll go for a minimum sea ice extent of less than 5 million square km. If the El Niño dies quickly we might get some prolonged periods of clear skies. But anything can happen.
Dear Willis,
In the 4th report of the Working Group I of the IPCC, “Historical Overview of Climate Change Science” (chapter 1) the papers of Neftel et al. from 1982 and 1985 plaid a prominent role. Let me quote it:
“To place the increase in CO2 abundance since the late 1950s in perspective, and to compare the magnitude of the anthropogenic increase with natural cycles in the past, a longer-term record of CO2 and other natural greenhouse gases is needed. These data came from analysis of the composition of air enclosed in bubbles in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica. The initial measurements demonstrated that CO2 abundances were significantly lower during the last ice age than over the last 10 kyr of the Holocene (Delmas et al., 1980; Berner et al., 1980; Neftel et al., 1982). From 10 kyr before present up to the year 1750, CO2 abundances stayed within the range 280 ± 20 ppm (Indermühle et al., 1999). During the industrial era, CO2 abundance rose roughly exponentially to 367 ppm in 1999 (Neftel et al., 1985; Etheridge et al., 1996; IPCC, 2001a) and to 379 ppm in 2005 (Section 2.3.1; see also Section 6.4).”
In the paper of Neftel et al. entitled “Ice core sample measurements give atmospheric CO2 content during the past 40,000 years” (1982, Nature 295, 220-223) one can find values of CO2 concentration more than 400 ppmV. These values, however, were neglected in their estimate range of the CO2 concentration during the past 40,000 years. The reason is explained by the authors as following:
“The originally recovered Camp Century and Boyd Station cores are generally of poor quality between the 400 and 1,200 m depths and the ice is heavily fractured. In these depth intervals the measured CO2 values exhibit large scattering. This might be due to contamination by drilling fluid, a mixture of diesel fuel (88%) and trychlorethylene (12%), penetrating through small cracks into the ice. In these fractured ice zones, we measured several samples at each sample depth. Its small size meant that the sample was probably uncontaminated and we conclude that the lowest CO2 values best represent the CO2 concentrations of the originally trapped air of these depth intervals. In the larger samples (300 g) contamination is almost inevitable and the measured CO2 concentrations tend to be higher than the air originally occluded in the ice. This is one reason for the high CO2 values obtained during the climate optimum given by Berner et al. for the Camp Century core.”
Note that two co-authors of Berner et al. (1980, Radiocarbon 22, 227-235), namely Oeschger and Stauffer, are also co-authors of Neftel et al. (1982). The excerpt from the paper of Neftel et al. (1982) clearly states that the ice cores were of poor quality, and it might be that they were contaminated also by drilling fluid. In addition, the choice whether a measured CO2 value was acceptable or not was made rather arbitrarily.
In another paper of Neftel et al. (1985) entitled “Evidence from polar ice cores for the increase in atmospheric CO2 in the past two centuries” (Nature 315, 45-47) the authors (again Oeschger and Stauffer were co-authors) stated:
“The measurements using the needle crusher, published previously [there are three references, one of them is Neftel et al., 1982 mentioned before], were performed using a slightly modified procedure and exhibited generally lower CO2 concentrations by 15 p.p.m.v. ….. In 1982 an intercalibration study with the Grenoble laboratory [it follows one of the three references mentioned before] was performed using the small crusher with the older measuring procedure. Based on our new results, the agreement of the intercalibration must be viewed as a discrepancy, which we will try to resolve in the near future with a new intercalibration series.”
Obviously, there were various problems with all these ice core analyses. It seems to me that the IPCC has ignored these problems because the results of Neftel et al. (1982, 1985) always serve to extrapolate the so-called Keeling curve back to the 18th century.
If Ernst Beck’s inventory of more than 90000 direct measurements since 1812 or so is correct than the ice core data will indicate the same weakness ,serving as proxy data, like the tree rings.
It is interesting to me that in the same issue of the Swedish journal Tellus in which Keeling’s (1960) paper was published also Walter Bischof’s paper entitled “Periodical Variations of the Atmospheric CO2-content in Scandinavia” occurred. Bischof showed notably higher CO_2 concentrations than Keeling. Keeling’s paper has a citation number five times higher than that of Bischof.
Sincerely yours
Gerhard
An Inquirer says:
May 17, 2010 at 10:42 am
Toby: Two minor points for your post
First, Dr. Roy Spencer might have a mild objection to having the AMSUTEMP UAH data called his data. He does not own the data coming from the satellites which are used by more than one person.
Second, although GMT is likely up so far this year, the website you reference likely overstates it to some degree — those graphs are not adjusted for orbital decay / drift.
He does put his name on that page and recommends it as a good daily source on his website. The post-processed data he presents on his website and certainly regards as his data show the same behavior (http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/)
nc says:
May 17, 2010 at 11:09 am
All this debate about what is happening or not happening at either pole. How about some real world observations from an outfit like Ken Borek Air. This outfit has been flying the poles for decades. Would be interesting to see what they have to say. Have a look on line, very interesting outfit.
They apparently lost a Twin Otter the other day due to it’s breaking through thin ice after landing about 150 miles of Ellesmere island a couple of days ago.
R. Gates says:
May 16, 2010 at 7:28 pm
“Another strong reason for the likelihood of a lower summer arctic sea ice minimum is the fact that January to April 2010 was the warmest first 4 months of any year in the lat 131 years. Look at this graph, and pay particular attention to the arctic regions”
I don’t know why you continue to reference data known by everyone (here) to be illegitimate. There is a wealth of evidence to show the 30’s/40’s were warmer than the present, and NOT just in the USA. There is an equal amount of evidence that NOAA and GISS have “adjusted” that inconvenient fact out of the data. The only legitimate data we have runs from the late 70s to the present. No one disputes we’re slightly warmer than that known cool period…. and there are few conclusions to draw from it.
So what’s up with figure 2 – it definitely doesn’t end with recent data… wrong month, or wrong year?
Pascvaks says:
May 17, 2010 at 8:12 am
PS: I understand too that Fat Albert’s real name is Alexander Goreovitch and he holds the rank of “Corporal” in the KGB, I believe he’s the only Corporal they have now. They must really think a lot of him. We’re toast!
__________________________________________________________________________
Oh is that why Mikhail Gorbachev, Maurice strong and Al Gore are referred to as “The Three Musketeers” of the environmental movement?
Smokey: “And the ARGO buoys show that the deep ocean is cooling, not warming as predicted.”
For those interested, please type any of Smokey’s claims into the Skeptical Science web sites and judge their responses. For example: “Early estimates of ocean heat from the Argo showed a cooling bias due to pressure sensor issues. Recent estimates of ocean heat that take this bias into account show continued warming of the upper ocean. This is confirmed by independent estimates of ocean heat as well as more comprehensive measurements of ocean heat down to 2000 metres deep.”
The ocean is warming.
So this Arctic Sea Ice Volume chart from the Polar Science Center looks very scary;
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/images/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrent.png
so one can’t help to wonder how they’ve measured Arctic Sea Ice Volume, especially back to 1980. According to their website;
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/IceVolume.php
“Sea Ice Volume is calculated using the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) developed at APL/PSC by Dr. J. Zhang and collaborators.”
Just what the world needs, another garbage model…
Anu says:
May 17, 2010 at 12:08 pm
I like high school teachers as much as the next person, and sure, one of them might stumble upon something the “experts” have missed
Ernst-Georg Beck, Dipl. Biol., Biologist
I don’t know if Mr. Beck teaches in the Biotechnology High School, or the Nutritional High School, or the one or two year Vocational College of Nutrition and Home Economics:
I hope for his sake he finds some Professor in Germany, or any country, that can help him co-author an actual scientific paper challenging the established science of CO2 measurement, since publishing your own website:…
Doesn’t he meet real scientists at the Heartland conferences every year ?
_______________________________________________________________________
GRRRRrrrrrr, So if someone does not have a PhD he is a subhuman who needs his hand held so he can publish???
As a college senior (chemistry) I and and sophomore English major were working on a topics paper (in geology) a field completely outside our majors. The dean of geology brought the paper to the attention of the state geologist. I and my buddy ended up at a conference being quizzed by a bunch of Phd’s.
Another friend is the head of research at a very large company, he barely graduated from high school but he is a brilliant chemist and the company knew it. Science is about the use of the scientific method period academic degrees have little to do with it.
Ammonite,
First, the “Skeptical Science” blog is not credible. How can it be, when it uses a propaganda tactic in its name? They are not scientific skeptics, they are climate alarmists just like RealClimate. So forget them, unless you want your climate propaganda spoon fed to you.
Next, that disingenuous claim about faulty ARGO buoys has been making the rounds for a long time, but it is false. This chart is from today’s official ARGO site. Does it look like the deep ocean is warming to you? No doubt some ARGO folks would love to show the ocean is heating up, but there are enough eyes on the project that it’s tough to diddle with the numbers.
Finally, other sources here and here show what’s happening in the deep ocean.
Gerhard Kramm wrote an interesting post @May 17, 2010 at 12:31 pm.
I have always wondered why the Keeling station on Mauna Loa doesn’t show CO2 spikes. I’ve been up there a number of times, and the caldera sometimes emits smoke. It’s a big crater, probably a mile or more across. You can see Mauna Kea on the big island from there.
It turns out that the Keeling numbers are “adjusted,” like so much of the raw climate data. I don’t question that they’re in the ball park, but I would like to see all the data, not just what they want to show us.
I was interested in this comment, regarding the Mauna Loa data:
“In particular, it appears that a sporadic CO2 emission from the volcano will trigger the “outlier detection” in the analysis, resulting in the replacement of the contaminated measurements with interpolations in the published curve.”
I am curious whether there is a public record of “outlier data” that they chose to throw out. Do they ever throw out data because it seems too low?
Just curious.