Past the tipping point

“…the effects of greenhouse warming are now coming through loud and clear.”
What a weird mind Mark Serreze has. 😉
Do either of these gentlemen know the 60’s are gone?
BTW, where’s pictures of polar bears?? 😉 Prophetic statements from ‘manmade global warming’ say the polar bear population is supposed to be shrinking, like Arctic ice. But actually it’s growing.

Meantime back in Europe, as if the Icelandic ash clouds and the crashing euro weren’t enough, the self-flagellating climate commissars are poised to issue another edict:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7136639.ece

Oh dear, OT I’m afraid, but I clicked on the ad above about how to offset my carbon emissions (in the hope it helps to generate income for wuwt) and was told the following:
“Global warming is a serious environmental threat and a moral crisis. Buying high-quality carbon offsets can help us take more responsibility for our personal emissions.”
I shall go out immediately to my 24hr store and see if they have any high-quality charcoal biscuits. My family will be well pleased with the consequent reduction in my personal emissions.

Dr. Hansen is famous for his tipping point nonsense.
When it comes to temperatures, for the last 550 million years the Earth’s temperature has varied between 12C and 22C. (Scotese). About 22% of the time during that period temperatures topped-out at 22C; only about 6% of the time they bottomed-out at 12C. The atmosphere contains 750 Gigatons of carbon. If all the 4,000 GT of fossil fuel reserves were burned, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would increase from 390 ppm to 2,470 ppm. The resulting logarithmic temperature increase would be 1.4C, which would increase the temperature from the present 14.5C to 15.9C. So after burning all our fossil fuels, we would wind up 39% off the bottom of the historic temperature range.
So much for Dr. Hansen’s tipping points.

“The open water loses heat to the atmosphere (because it is not insulated by ice) meaning that declining ice cover is probably a negative feedback, not a positive one.”
The heat would not have been in the water to radiate out if the ice had been there. The amount of energy radiating out of the dark ocean is less than the amount that would be reflected and radiated back by the white ice. Are you even trying to make sense?

In the past, ‘predicting’ cyclical events (such as eclipses), and passing them off as cataclysmic, but avoidable or redeemable by sacrifice, qualified one for a highly paid post in a religious organization.
But apparently now such skills are marketable in scientific circles.

It’s still obvious to me that looking at the AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent, shows that no one should be looking at the highs and lows. Those are the extremes, and mean very little.
Arctic sea ice is very consistent every June/July and Nov/Dec, and that’s all that matters.

Again I wonder: How many times can one cry “wolf” over a 30 year period that continues today, before people recognize a Münchhausen?

Mike
Try again. Heat is transported into the Arctic by currents from the Pacific and Atlantic. If you read the NASA article you would know that the Arctic radiates out more LW than it receives SW + LW.
Instead of being rude, try using your brain.

mack28 says:
May 25, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Meantime back in Europe, as if the Icelandic ash clouds and the crashing euro weren’t enough, the self-flagellating climate commissars are poised to issue another edict:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7136639.ece
Yep.
The price of carbon crashed, and thats awkward, cos it means you can’t makes no Payolla offa the AGW BS.
So, we MUST get back to cutting emissions ergo – issue more useless carbon credits, up their value, pass on the pain to johnny public,… get the speculators(gamblers) running bets on $/ton going up/down/sideways – and create a carbon bubble…cos we’re post normal and we passed the end of history, what could possibly go wrong?
After which all those dubiously connected green gazillionaires and not-so-free-market traders can continue to roll around atop an emperor size bed, covered in our money, while snorting coal dust and coke of a $2000-an-hour hookers belly.
Kinda have too, since the Euro is heading the way of ENRON, and global Sovereign Default is surely on the way.
These loons are out to vacuum up the last scraps of wealth, and if they have to kill the worlds economy to do it, hell, its a small price to pay.
/rant set to hibernate. (Restart required to install updates)

ZT says:
May 25, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Yes, but in those time, if you got it wrong they chopped your head off or sacrificed you.

R. Gates: May 25, 2010 at 4:43 pm:
I think the disconnect you appear to have with most of the non-troll posters on WUWT relates to your treating those lists and graphs as one might normally do, i.e. as information. When I look at them, my first thought is to see if I can figure out how they’ve been manipulated. Anything that has come within sniffing distance of Hansen or a large batch of others, probably has been. In essence, then, you still believe, and the rest of us don’t. We’ve been conned too often. No mystery.
/dr.bill

The jist of this seems to be-
The sun ain’t doin’ it.

BTW – if anyone wants to download the UIUC maps, here is the csh script I used and ran on Cygwin

#!/bin/tcsh
foreach date (01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
    wget "http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/199005${date}.png"
end
foreach date (01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
    wget "http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/201005${date}.jpg"
end

R. Gates says:
May 25, 2010 at 4:43 pm First, looking at this chart, which represents the best continuous long term data we have:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
In looking at the trend line for anomalies, I see that on this date, May 25, 1990, it appears that the anomaly, while admittedly negative, was not nearly as negative as we are on May 25, 2010.
Whoops! There was a bit of a cherry dip in the anomaly right there in early 1990! Well, I’m sure this year will turn out just the same as 1990, with that anomaly sliding right back up.

stevengoddard says:
May 25, 2010 at 5:22 pm
R Gates,
It is extremely clear from the maps that sea ice concentration is greater now than it was 20 years ago. Some trend, eh?
There seems to have been more ice in the Barents and west of Greenland, and in Hudson Bay, from the maps. What kind of analysis did you do? A simple pixel analysis for color?

Cloud cover (whether it’s a positive or negative) was seen to increase in the last couple of decades. http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/climate-clouds.shtml
In my part of the world high pressure usually means clear skies and there’s been generally high pressure over the Arctic since the winter started. Not sure how you’d separate incoming from outgoing radiation, but there’s certainly been mostly clear skies over the Arctic since October.

Hey, sorry for all the posts, but this is quite interesting. Those are obviously low resolution archive images, because when I got to the sites, the large images show much more detail. Here is a good one for today: http://www.iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/arctic_AMSRE_nic.png
So, where can a high resolution image for some year past (like 1990) be found?

craig james,
I completely disagree. It is not obvious to me that the 1990 one shows more ice than 2010. It is made even more difficult by the fact that the second image (2010) is of a larger globe than the first (1990). Just eyeballing the image is not an objective measure of ice extent. It is clear from the data that 1990 had much less ice than 2010.

O/T but wondering if these figures are accurate:
24 May: Politico: EPA can’t regulate climate change
by SEN. JOHN BARRASSO (R-Wyo.), member of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, for example, would require all stationary sources that emit more than 250 tons of carbon dioxide — a threshold that catches even small emitters — to apply for “prevention of significant deterioration” permits for new construction or modifications. The typical PSD permit costs an applicant approximately $125,000, according to the EPA’s own estimate, and takes roughly 866 hours to obtain. If America’s small businesses are forced to operate under these sorts of conditions, it will crush them.
By June 7, the Senate has a chance to pass a resolution that would stop the EPA from regulating climate change through the Clean Air Act.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37660.html

craig james says:
May 25, 2010 at 5:43 pm
R Gates has ‘rotten’ views.

Looks like Stever got the term “concentration” right off the images he pointed to. The legend is labelled “sea ice concentration (%)”.
For example, compare today (May 25) with May 25 of ’90:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/19900525.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/20100525.jpg
(open the above as new broswer tabs so you can flip back and forth)
Notice the satellite is closer to the Earth in today’s image than it was 20 years ago. (Either that, or the Earth is suffering from CAGE: catastrophic anthropomorphic global enlarging). Therefore, comparing the images side-by-side is useless in terms of getting a feel for the comparative cap sizes. You could scale the images until the horizons of the Earths are the same, but that would be forgetting that the Earth is in 3D, and when cameras come closer to something the middle scales up faster than the edges. So I think you would have to project the 2D images to orbs, scale the orbs in 3D to match, then project those to 2D image before making a cap size comparison.
But even if you did that, your missing the whole point of the images. Concentration has nothing to do with how big the ice cap is, or what shape it is, or whether or not the image is closer or farther. It is something measured all over the ice.
It seems to me Goddard is saying “ice cream sure is sweeter than it used to be” and Gates is saying “no way, the scoops are definitely smaller than the good old days!”
But I’m no expert.

The eye elevation changed starting with their September 12, 2009 image. It affects lower latitudes, but has almost no effect inside the Arctic Basin, which is what we care about wrt summer ice.

25 May: UK Telegraph: Richard Alleyne: Turning all cars electric in Britain needs boost in power supply
Switching all cars in the country to electric would drain the National Grid of nearly a fifth of its capacity unless the equivalent of another six new nuclear power stations are built, claims a report.
The Royal Academy of Engineering said that to convert the countries fleet of 30 million vehicles would increase current demand by 16 per cent or an extra 10 gigawatts of power…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7764110/Turning-all-cars-electric-in-Britain-needs-boost-in-power-supply.html

This is from Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper, so you know it’s true:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3341039.ece

The trap was sprung in February 2006. The White House ordered that Dr Jim Hansen was to be denied the oxygen of publicity forthwith. He was to be banned from appearing in newspapers and on TV and radio. He was effectively to disappear.
It was the kind of treatment that might be reserved for terrorists, criminals or, in a totalitarian regime, for political dissidents.
“All I had done was to give a talk to the American Geophysical Union, setting out how 2005 had been the warmest year on record,” recalled Hansen, in a visit to London last week. “But someone at Nasa got a call right from the top, from the White House. They were very annoyed.”
It was not quite all he had done. Hansen had also e-mailed a transcript of the talk to a raft of reporters before he spoke. “I did make sure it hit the headlines,” he recalls modestly. In his talk he declared that humanity, especially Americans and Europeans, were burning fossil fuels so fast that they risked transforming Earth into “a different planet”.
Government scientists were not supposed to say things like that. Shortly afterwards the head of Nasa’s public affairs office, one of George Bush’s political appointees, banned Hansen from speaking to the media.
“Then they also forced us to remove all our data about the latest temperature rises from the website,” says Hansen. “I realised they really were going to stop me communicating.”
It looked like a classic case of a naive scientist being ruthlessly crushed by a government machine.
In reality, however, it was Hansen who laid the trap – and the Bush administration that got caught. A few more calls to the media and soon the story of the lone scientist gagged by the mighty Bush administration hit the front pages all over the world, carrying Hansen’s warning about climate change with it once again.

The AVI files linked from Youtube show a somewhat different (softened) view of things at the pole though. The .PNG file attached http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/deetest/deetmp.81.png or http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=05&fd=24&fy=1980&sm=05&sd=24&sy=2010 show a fairly good comparative image of 1980 vs 2010. But the youtube video shows a more softened detail when compared to this file from the same site http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/CT/animate.arctic.color.0.html I like the clarity of data presented here better ( from http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ )

John_in_Oz
If the air temperature is lower than the water temperature, heat will move out of the ocean. This starts occurring near the end of August.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Freezing seawater does the same thing. The process of freezing moves heat from the water into the atmosphere. Melting removes heat from the atmosphere.

Mike says:
May 25, 2010 at 4:44 pm

“The open water loses heat to the atmosphere (because it is not insulated by ice) meaning that declining ice cover is probably a negative feedback, not a positive one.”
The heat would not have been in the water to radiate out if the ice had been there. The amount of energy radiating out of the dark ocean is less than the amount that would be reflected and radiated back by the white ice. Are you even trying to make sense?

Kind of reverse logic: “The heat would not have been in the water to radiate out if the ice had been there.” Ice does not cause cold, it is caused by cold.
Ice over water insulates and keeps water warm. It’s one of the many wonderful features of water that makes life itself possible on this planet. Lose that cover, and it gets colder. The water in the Arctic ocean is constantly on the move, and warmer water will constantly be replacing the cooler water, for no other reason than simple convection, but probably more so because of constant currents.
So the theory is sound. Can you give us data on the amount of heat radiated by the uncovered Arctic ocean vs that reflected by the ice cover, perhaps?

The ice was so thick in 1959 that a submarine surfaced at the north pole in December.

Dan Hawkins says:
May 25, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Charles and Smokey,
Thank you, gentlemen, for trying to keep us literate. IT’S a shame when a sentient being can’t handle ITS own language. The human race little realizes that IT’S likely to be ITS downfall one of these days. The tipping point draw’s nigh.
Dan, I was so filled with hope when I read the opening of your posting. Then…..along came “draw’s”. Please, just as “it’s” always means only “it is”, the third person singular of a verb is NEVER formed with an apostrophe. It takes me back to my days in Australia, where nearly every sign in a window seemed to form the plural with an apostrophe.
IanM

@Dan Hawkins who wrote: “The tipping point draw’s nigh.”
Is that misspelling supposed to be sarcasm about ITS vs IT’S?

stevengoddard says:
May 25, 2010 at 8:10 pm
Anu
In private industry, an employee discussing company business with the press without authorization would be fired immediately. In the military they would be court martialed.
Organisations require some discipline to be functional. If everyone in government was setting up press conferences to discuss their pet theories and their plans to save the planet, it would collapse.
Yes, that’s what the Bush Administration tried to argue.
They eventually fired the young political operative – turns out he had lied about his college degree before he joined the Bush campaign (the loyal work for which he became a political appointee). Close, but didn’t actually graduate – like Cheney at Yale.
Science is not the same as Business or Military – it it were, you couldn’t demand to see their data and get to make graphs and videos like you do.

Charles S. Opalek, PE says:
May 25, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Dr. Hansen is famous for his tipping point nonsense.
When it comes to temperatures, for the last 550 million years the Earth’s temperature has varied between 12C and 22C. (Scotese). About 22% of the time during that period temperatures topped-out at 22C; only about 6% of the time they bottomed-out at 12C. The atmosphere contains 750 Gigatons of carbon. If all the 4,000 GT of fossil fuel reserves were burned, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would increase from 390 ppm to 2,470 ppm. The resulting logarithmic temperature increase would be 1.4C, which would increase the temperature from the present 14.5C to 15.9C. So after burning all our fossil fuels, we would wind up 39% off the bottom of the historic temperature range.
So much for Dr. Hansen’s tipping points.
==============================
Nothing like the cut and dry analysis from an engineer. I wish climate scientists would take a few lessons from you guys.
But, if they did that, they would be out of a job…for upsetting the Hansen establishment.
Excellent post! Have saved for my own reference.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Cryosphere Today shows the present Arctic sea ice anomaly dropping like a stone past one million square kms below the 1979-2010 mean. Fearless prediction – it will continue lower. Will it be the 4th lowest, 3rd lowest, 2nd lowest, lowest by September? Who knows, but arguing that nothing significant is happening in the Arctic is drawing a very long bow indeed.

stevengoddard says: May 25, 2010 at 6:04 pm {…} One of the discoveries that came out of that discussion was that the eye-elevation of the UIUC maps wasn’t what they thought it was, and they apparently corrected it. So post 2008 maps have a different perspective and do not line up exactly at lower latitudes.
Steven I have posted this before, and it looks to me like the change to a larger earth post 2008 has a smaller arctic overall. This is the 1979 shoreline scaled to the current larger diameter. http://i44.tinypic.com/2vrwuae.jpg
I suppose a higher altitude could cause this, if the first was too low to see the outermost circumference of the earth. That does not seem to be the case, it looks like the most change is at higher latitudes, least change toward the equator. It doesn’t look like an angular change either.
There was another change in late 2004, when snow was added to the depiction. This image has the snow from 2008 on the still smaller earth, overlaid with the shoreline from 1980. All of the white shows the decrease in area of the arctic sea and some lower lattitudes. http://i44.tinypic.com/330u63t.jpg
While I don’t think it is ‘sinister’, it is another peculiarly coincidental event in climate science that the area of shoreline change shows up in the NH anomaly graph as a step function late 2004.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png

Charles S. Opalek, PE says:
May 25, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Dr. Hansen is famous for his tipping point nonsense.
When it comes to temperatures, for the last 550 million years the Earth’s temperature has varied between 12C and 22C. (Scotese). About 22% of the time during that period temperatures topped-out at 22C; only about 6% of the time they bottomed-out at 12C. The atmosphere contains 750 Gigatons of carbon. If all the 4,000 GT of fossil fuel reserves were burned, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would increase from 390 ppm to 2,470 ppm. The resulting logarithmic temperature increase would be 1.4C, which would increase the temperature from the present 14.5C to 15.9C. So after burning all our fossil fuels, we would wind up 39% off the bottom of the historic temperature range.
So much for Dr. Hansen’s tipping points.
Are you aware that the Sun has been getting 1% brighter every 100 million years ?
And that people here argue about how powerful an effect 0.1% fluctuations in TSI (Total Solar Irradiance) caused by sunspots can be…
As for 2,470 ppm of CO2 – this is compared to the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm, not the current level – the warming in the pipeline from increasing from 280 ppm to 390 ppm is not realized yet (large inertia in planet-scale climate changes). The 280 ppm level lasted many centuries.
280 –> 2,470 would be a factor of 8.8. More than 3 doublings.
Each CO2 doubling causes 3 +/- 1.5 °C change in planetary temperature.
About 9 °C warming. On average. Some regions much higher.
So much for Charles S. Opalek, PE teacher
of climatology nonsense.

Steve, here is the May time-series from NSIDC:
year mo data_type region extent area
1979 5 Goddard N 14.06 11.04
1980 5 Goddard N 14.04 10.88
1981 5 Goddard N 13.90 10.93
1982 5 Goddard N 14.17 11.10
1983 5 Goddard N 13.54 10.80
1984 5 Goddard N 13.68 10.81
1985 5 Goddard N 14.23 11.19
1986 5 Goddard N 13.52 10.63
1987 5 Goddard N 13.81 10.91
1988 5 Goddard N 13.69 11.35
1989 5 Goddard N 12.98 11.30
1990 5 Goddard N 13.30 10.84
1991 5 Goddard N 13.51 11.44
1992 5 Goddard N 13.25 11.37
1993 5 Goddard N 13.54 11.35
1994 5 Goddard N 13.73 11.60
1995 5 Goddard N 13.04 10.76
1996 5 Goddard N 13.06 11.22
1997 5 Goddard N 13.32 11.17
1998 5 Goddard N 13.80 11.35
1999 5 Goddard N 13.86 11.61
2000 5 Goddard N 13.18 11.18
2001 5 Goddard N 13.72 11.32
2002 5 Goddard N 13.12 11.11
2003 5 Goddard N 13.00 10.82
2004 5 Goddard N 12.58 10.86
2005 5 Goddard N 12.99 10.83
2006 5 Goddard N 12.62 10.39
2007 5 Goddard N 12.89 10.71
2008 5 PRELIM N 13.16 10.83
2009 5 NRTSI-G N 13.39 11.08
As you can clearly see, 1990 is not the record low in sea ice extent or sea ice area. Given that the ice extent today is at the same level as in 2006, it would seem your conclusion that 2010 has substantially more ice than in 1990 is incorrect.
Also, I believe R. Gates linked to a ppt the other day that discussed non-linearity of the Arctic sea ice cover. In that ppt I saw a figure that showed cummulative anomalies in absorbed shortwave energy, the amounts of which show positive anomalies in recent years in total absorbed solar energy on the order of 150 MJ m-2 that would be equivalent to melting 49 cm of ice given an ice density of 917 kg m-3 and a latent heat of fusion of 334000 J kg-1. Thus, there is a positive ice albedo feedback happening. Don Perovich has written many papers recently about this, and even discussed how much energy was absorbed during the 2007 melt season and how much this contributed to bottom melting, which was quite extreme that year as evidenced in the buoy data. I believe the ppt also showed some data/figures from Perovich. The absorbed solar energy is cummulative over the entire summer melt season, just because the minimum happens in September does not mean that earlier melt onset, more advanced summer melt do not have an impact on the energy balance of the ice.
Thus, I do not understand how you reach conclusions such as 2010 has more ice than 1990, and that the ice-albedo feedback affect doesn’t matter.

Tommy says:
May 25, 2010 at 7:02 pm
Notice the satellite is closer to the Earth in today’s image than it was 20 years ago. (Either that, or the Earth is suffering from CAGE: catastrophic anthropomorphic global enlarging).
No, it’s just cropped different. Notice how the horizon is the same.

Arno Arrak says:
May 25, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Arno, can you point to a paper or figure that shows that 2007 showed more influx of warm water from the Pacific side? My understanding from papers I read was that the warm waters in the Chukchi that year were not a result of the inflow of warm water through Bering Strait, but rather the retreat of the sea ice combined with unusually clear skies allowed the ocean to absorb more of the sun’s energy, warming the SSTs.
Also, observations show very little mixing of the warm water entering through Fram Strait and the surface. This is because of the very stable mixed layer. Thus, this does not appear to be a factor of sea ice retreat in that region.

Charles Wilson says:
May 25, 2010 at 7:25 pm

… close to the edge. … Tipping, or Not ? … DO the Math. … “our ” Present El Nino is a 1.8. … El Nino (peak) in 2007: melted 4000 km3 more than in 2006, … Satellites, Ships, Planes ALL saw the Ice thinning. NO ONE saw it thicken in 2007.
Loss: by year: 2007 Loss x 2010 El Nino/2007 El Nino
Loss by km3: 4000 km3 x 1.8/1.1 = 6545 km3 loss
From 5800 (Piomas) or 6000 km3 (Seasat)
= a Negative Number.
= Death, for 99% of Americans, as the currents stop.
– OK, I only give it 25% … Because it may be going straight for it now but … it is the Weather. Will Katla Blow ? Did Cosmic Ray spikes increase Clouds ? (December was WICKED)
…
Again, the currents may change but are they changing FROM a pattern ENOUGH like 11,000 years ago to get the same result = 300 mph winds ?
….
Remember, even 1/4 the energy of 300 mph = “only” 150 mph sustained for 2 months = likely 225 mph gust = no Buildings survive outside the Tropics save the Pyramids.
No civilization, no food, no Rescue, no Hope. It’ll take 30 years for the Trees to grow back so we can build huts.
And to stop this costs 6 cents per American !
Why are we playing this Right Wing vs. Left when the NUMBERS say … what they say (above) ? The President must DO something and WE are the people who have to tell him THIS IS A RISK.
6 Billion Dead times 25% = 1.5 Billion AVERAGE dead.
Cannot you admit that there is a POSSIBILITY that this Extra-strong El Nino happenning EXACTLY at the Low-Ice point of the 60-year cycle
– COULD be a COLLOSSAL Killer ?
…
I cannot even get ESA to use the advertised “flash” result feature of Cryosat 2, to verify thickness. 75% of the time, we live, so they figure: we deserve Scientific Priority of Publishing — so they are keeping all results SECRET until next September … that is: 2011 !

Great stuff! I’m still wiping my eyes and trying to get some breath back. Ever considered standup?

Tommy is correct. They changed the eye altitude from 5971 miles to 5941 miles.

The absorbed solar energy is cummulative over the entire summer melt season,
That cannot be right. Energy doesn’t accumulate over time if there is a temperature differential in operation.
Take two glasses of water. Allow one to be put in the microwave for a minute and then left on the bench for an hour, and the other to be left on the bench then put in the microwave at the end.
They will not have the same heat at the end, despite having similar energy histories.

Chris1958
The sun doesn’t produce much infrared.

stevengoddard says:
May 25, 2010 at 10:14 pm

Chris1958
The sun doesn’t produce much infrared.

I am sorry?
It looks to be about half of sunlight in energy.
quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared
Bright sunlight provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level. Of this energy, 527 watts is infrared radiation, 445 watts is visible light, and 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation
there is a reference for this quote.

I also am of the opinion that the amount of ice is less at this date than in 1990 simply due to the graphs at cryosphere, as pointed out before show it is
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
I’d take the graphs over eyeballing a map anyday. Steve hasn’t commented on this discrepency yet, so it would be good to hear his thoughts.
Andy

Steve,
Very interesting post. You wrote:
“The open water loses heat to the atmosphere (because it is not insulated by ice) meaning that declining ice cover is probably a negative feedback, not a positive one…”
Do you have any hard data to support this statement, other than the guess that it’s “probably a negative feedback” ???

Chris1958 says:
May 25, 2010 at 9:47 pm

However, the image is relevant to light in the visible spectrum. The real question applies to the infrared spectrum. This seems partially addressed by other comments relating to LW radiation. Even so, at the risk of being pedantic, I think this bears qualifying – does water have a much higher albedo when incident heat radiation strikes at an acute angle? If so, how does this affect the modelling (yes, I know no one here likes models but every scientific hypothesis must involve some form of model)?
We do know that infrared is absorbed in the first microns or millimeters of water, in contrast to visible, but obviously not all of it, since here are some lovely pictures taken by infrared.
http://www.photos-of-the-year.com/articles/digital-infrared-image/
I think one would have to sit down and calculate how much of the infrared is reflected and how much absorbed.

RE: Mike: (May 25, 2010 at 4:44 pm) “The heat would not have been in the water to radiate out if the ice had been there. The amount of energy radiating out of the dark ocean is less than the amount that would be reflected and radiated back by the white ice. Are you even trying to make sense?”
I think this statement applies only if the ocean were frozen solid all the way to the bottom at zero degrees K. Otherwise there *is* heat in the water. Reflected energy does not qualify as heat loss, it is only heat rejection, and also, this does not apply after sunset when most freezing occurs. I suspect that the primary protection that the ice provides is the reduction of conducted heat loss to subzero arctic winds during the winter. That is why the Eskimos build igloos.

Looks like one heck of a trend to me.
… yessiree bob it sure does
… so when do we tip over again ?

If the indication of sea ice concentration in the cryosphere graphics is reliable, the bulk of the Arctic Ocean has never had higher sea ice concentration than it has now. Even in 1979 there were areas with lower concentration:
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=05&fd=25&fy=1979&sm=05&sd=25&sy=2010
(forget about the borders e.g. in the Barents Sea – these parts of the Sea Ice melt every year anyway – look at the Arctic Ocean itself)

R .Gates,
“Now some people might be confused about what a “death” spiral is, and specifcally what it might look like as sea ice declines. It means it doesn’t go straight down, but has a few down years, and then a few up years.”
I see now. So whereas a trend would go straight down, a death spiral goes up and down.

Gates
You have a peculiar description for a spiral. I’d call it variation myself with an inconsistently measured negative trend w.r.t ice increase over a short period of recent time. A spiral goes in one direction. You know, like a helter-skelter. You really do have a peculiar view of the world.

RE: stevengoddard: (May 25, 2010 at 10:14 pm) “The sun doesn’t produce much infrared.”
[Speculation] It occurs to me that this may be the reason for what I have elsewhere called ‘The Tropopause Ice-locker Effect, ‘ as the temperatures there are much colder than the -18 degree or so surface temperature one might expect from a black-body in thermal equilibrium with incoming solar radiation. The tropopause, I believe, is at the top of the column of IR fog created by the Earth’s ‘greenhouse’ [or ‘earthshine resonant’] gases. I believe it represents the radiator coils of the Earth’s natural refrigeration system.
I now suspect that the low temperatures at the tropopause may be due to the low equilibrium temperatures established by the minimal fraction of solar radiation that is actually in the absorption-emission bands of the cocktail of greenhouse gases at this level. This equilibrium temperature would set the upper limit for average non-convecting surface temperatures as a function of the effective adiabatic lapse rate at the point of incipient, full-column convection. Of course, incoming short-wave solar radiation would drive surface temperatures to this limit.

Spector’s right – liquid water contains latent heat which is yielded up on freezing – just as water vapour yields thermal energy upon condensation – which is why warmer temperatures often precede rainfall or snowfall.
So Steve does make sense :-). However, it does also mean that an area of water comprising so-called poor quality ice contains more energy than a similar area comprising good quality ice even at the same ambient temperature. Hence, arguments about the extent of ice coverage and the quality of ice are relevant. At the same time, we need to remember that any recovery of ice coverage would have to be preceded by initially poor quality ice while the Arctic waters yield latent heat stored up during the 2007 melt (a process which must take time). Consequently, the obsession of some of the CAGW and sceptical camps with current ice coverage is utterly premature.

Vincent says:
May 26, 2010 at 1:08 am

I have another question though Anna. Can you explain why it is that IR feels warm on your skin but radiation in the visible spectrum only would not feel warm? What is it about IR that it can do this but visible can’t?

This needs a biologist to answer. I’d rather not handwave.

Pamela Gray says:
May 25, 2010 at 9:59 pm
While sitting out the entire month of May awash in storm after storm for N. Calif., I am reminded of the Alaskan Summer which comes every 10 years or so. 1976 or 1977 was one of those years.
Nice. The Arctic gets a rare summer, we get an extended winter, and the Alarmists go on a binge bummer.
To hell with the Arctic Ice I say: I want my garden to grow and the crops to make it in the Pacific Northwest.

Mike says:
May 25, 2010 at 4:44 pm
“The open water loses heat to the atmosphere (because it is not insulated by ice) meaning that declining ice cover is probably a negative feedback, not a positive one.”
The heat would not have been in the water to radiate out if the ice had been there. The amount of energy radiating out of the dark ocean is less than the amount that would be reflected and radiated back by the white ice. Are you even trying to make sense?
_________________________________________________________________________
“energy radiating out of the dark ocean is less than the amount that would be reflected and radiated back by the white ice….” is covered in the article.
FRESH SNOW not ice has the high albedo. The difference between fresh snow and ice, is as great as the difference between ice and water.
Also the albedo for water changes. “….Although the reflectivity of water is very low at low and medium angles of incident light, it increases tremendously at high angles of incident light such as occur on the illuminated side of the Earth near the terminator (early morning, late afternoon and near the poles). However, as mentioned above, waviness causes an appreciable reduction. Since the light specularly reflected from water does not usually reach the viewer, water is usually considered to have a very low albedo in spite of its high reflectivity at high angles of incident light.
Note that white caps on waves look white (and have high albedo) because the water is foamed up….” http://www.answers.com/topic/albedo#Water
Your statement would make more sense if you were talking about fresh snow vs still water at the equator The difference is a heck of a lot less when talking of ice and ocean at the north pole. Again notice the statement “….water is usually considered to have a very low albedo in spite of its high reflectivity at high angles of incident light.“ At the pole you are talking abouthigh angles of incident light. since the sun is close to the horizon most of the time.

” Charles Wilson says:
[…]
…. Remember, even 1/4 the energy of 300 mph = “only” 150 mph sustained for 2 months = likely 225 mph gust = no Buildings survive outside the Tropics save the Pyramids.”
There are people who build their houses from concrete, you know.
But that was a great diatribe, especially the “costs only 6 cent per American”, great stuff! I’m european so i have a little bit of experience with the costs. At the moment i would probably say “costs only 6, maybe 10 eurocent per kWh, fuel tax rises not included and future prize hikes not included” so i found it refreshingly funny.

Vincent says:
May 26, 2010 at 1:08 am
I have another question though Anna. Can you explain why it is that IR feels warm on your skin but radiation in the visible spectrum only would not feel warm? What is it about IR that it can do this but visible can’t?
Very simple. Our skins contains nerve cells specifically sensitive to pain and temperature (which is why chilli tastes hot – it stimulates pain sensitve nerve endings in ourt tongue and palate). Other nerve endings are sensitive to light (eg, the rod and cone cells in our retina) or to light touch and pressure. However, we have no sensory nerve fibres responsive to Ultra Viloet radiation, x-rays, and other forms of very short wave lenght electromagnetic radiation (but we suffers its effects when for example UV burns our skin or radiation damages cellular DNA).
BTW, thanks for the response to the question, Steve 🙂

stevengoddard says: May 25, 2010 at 9:48 pm
Tommy is correct. They changed the eye altitude from 5971 miles to 5941 miles.
Steven, this is physically impossible. As one approaches an object from a distance, it gets larger, not smaller. Please explain how the Arctic area shrinks from a closer observation point.
Here is a scale drawing of the earth and the two points of observation. The satellite is obviously too close to capture the full diameter of the earth, so it is within the area where the relative size of the features can vary in area wrt the diameter of the earth, but not in the way you describe.
http://i48.tinypic.com/13z0tac.jpg

Smokey says:
May 25, 2010 at 5:25 pm
“…..And it’s interesting that Obama seems to be in fact muzzling Hansen, because we don’t hear a peep out of him now about death trains, prosecuting CEO’s, etc.”
_____________________________________________________________________________
Or perhaps Hansen has the good sense to see what is happening to Jones and Mann (criminal investigations) and decide the better part of valor was to keep his mouth shut……NAAHHhhh I don’t think he has the common sense to make that type of decision. I think you are correct, the Spinmeisters
, have decided to muzzle him so the administration doesn’t look like it is promoting an obvious fraud.
Note: David Hawkins is Director of the Climate Center of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Stan Greenberg is Strategic Consultant to the Climate Center of the Natural Resources Defense Council on its multi-year campaign on global warming. Greenberg is a very talented Spinmeister and advisor to Obama, Tony Blair, and Gordon brown among others.
It is worse than we thought they have been hiring campaign directors to manipulate our minds!

R. Gates says: May 26, 2010 at 7:34 am
Gail Combs says:
May 26, 2010 at 4:33 am
“At the pole you are talking abouthigh angles of incident light. since the sun is close to the horizon most of the time.”
____________
This might be true if the open ocean in the arctic was completely flat and horizontal and smooth like but the open ocean at the poles also has waves, and the incident light that falls on the sides of the waves actually strikes it much more directly than some realize.
Think for a moment, R. If what you describe is happening, then a fairly equal amount of water on the other side of the wave trough receives zero sun, plus even more water is in the shadow of the far wall of the trough, so it averages out to a even less insolation than a smooth surface.

Anu,
“No, each further doubling would produce another 3 °C of warming. That’s pretty much the definition of climate sensitivity.”
To argue what the future climate will be as the result of modelled outputs of a poorly understood non linear system is not even funny. It’s just dumb.

Anu says:
May 25, 2010 at 8:44 pm
stevengoddard says:
May 25, 2010 at 8:10 pm
Anu
In private industry, an employee discussing company business with the press without authorization would be fired immediately. In the military they would be court martialed.
Organisations require some discipline to be functional. If everyone in government was setting up press conferences to discuss their pet theories and their plans to save the planet, it would collapse.
Yes, that’s what the Bush Administration tried to argue.
They eventually fired the young political operative – turns out he had lied about his college degree before he joined the Bush campaign (the loyal work for which he became a political appointee). Close, but didn’t actually graduate – like Cheney at Yale.
Science is not the same as Business or Military – it it were, you couldn’t demand to see their data and get to make graphs and videos like you do.
__________________________________________________________________________
Anu, I consulted a lawyer about this issue.
The Corporation OWNS your information. You have no rights at all. If they wish to take 2 years of your work, slap the name of the company president’s son on it and present it to the world as the kid’s research (what happen to me) then they can and you have zero recourse under the law. The only exception to this is if you are a licensed professional engineer.
If you lie on your resume you can also be fired. Turns out lying on a resume is very common here in the USA. “The small Business Report found that 80% of job applications contain false information regarding prior work history, while 30 percent of the information related to educational background is false.” Employment Law for Business fifth edition by Dawn D Bennett-Alexander & Laura P. Hartman

R. Gates: May 25, 2010 at 4:43 pm:
So you take a (questionably accurate) graph that starts in 1900 and ends over a century later and want to panic about a ‘death spiral’ of ice cover.
What was it that finished around 1850 – the Little Ice Age – and since then global temperatures have been rising and glaciers retreating albeit with some variance – as the Earth returns to closer to the Holocene average heat content and temperature. This is nothing to panic about – it is perfectly unexceptionally normal and to be expected and its nicer to be warm than cold.
Now what WOULD be something to panic about would be a return to the Little Ice Age that would lead to death from starvation of many millions.

6 Cents per American = $20 million Sulfur tubes (e.g. as in Freakonomics)
I am not a Religiously Pure Environmentalist.
I refer to the cost for pumping Sulfur up to 20 miles high — studies of Mt. Pinatubo showing that 1/400th of her 20 million tons spewed out at all heights, could equal the Cooling effect of the Whole off it. Many people including the MOST famous Environmental Scientists on (even) the GREEN side are for this — eg “Gaia” Lovelock, “Dr. Ozone” (Paul Crutzen) — even Obama’s own GW advisor — and that was just as a PRECAUTION, to PREVENT A YEAR LIKE THIS.
— at present, I would use ten, 3 mile tubes as we need not have it last for years.
\
+ Heighten the Norilsk Nickel Plant smokestacks, & run an extra shift.
+$1/ American for those “Cloudships” (probably too late)
+Fly planes in circles = Contrails = Clouds
I would NOT spend the 7% of GDP on cutting Carbon by 85% as estimated by the OECD = $3,300/American.
>We may end up acting too late for anything except the Plane Option.
>At present the Left resists ADDING sulfur (though it is tenths of a percent of our Sulfur CUTS)
>The Right ridicules Cloud Ships
>Norilsk changes do not actually ADD sulfur (e.g. buying Nickel in Summer rather than later, adds nothing, or putting the same amount higher: adds nothing) — even though we are talking dozens of times the Sulfur that Sulfur tube plans use. Maybe though, the Left might like that. So I will be writing Putin.
Centuries from now, Schoolkids will learn that Putin SAVED THE WORLD.
Please, Right Wingers: Impeach Obama — instead of that.
OR:
Please, Obama, “Protect & Defend” like your oath says
(alas, “Cap & Trade” is favored by Politicians at Present, precisely BECAUSE it costs more! — Plus, for those who swill at the Government Trough, it makes even Carbon WORSE — thus not actually Solving the Problem & so ending their Free Lunch (so much so, that even HANSEN denounced it as a SCAM on Letterman !).

Steve Keohane says:
May 26, 2010 at 7:58 am
R. Gates says: May 26, 2010 at 7:34 am
Gail Combs says:
May 26, 2010 at 4:33 am
“At the pole you are talking abouthigh angles of incident light. since the sun is close to the horizon most of the time.”
____________
This might be true if the open ocean in the arctic was completely flat and horizontal and smooth like but the open ocean at the poles also has waves, and the incident light that falls on the sides of the waves actually strikes it much more directly than some realize.
Think for a moment, R. If what you describe is happening, then a fairly equal amount of water on the other side of the wave trough receives zero sun, plus even more water is in the shadow of the far wall of the trough, so it averages out to a even less insolation than a smooth surface.
__________________
Thanks for your opinion, but I’d suggest you read this very well done study on ocean albedo and the effects of many factors, INCLUDING WAVES:
http://www-cave.larc.nasa.gov/jin/Papers/jingrl04.pdf
This is an excellent article, and I’d like to bring one quote to your from it:
“The wind has little impact on the albedo at high sun but has
a significant impact at low sun…”
Why does the wind affect albedo to a significant degree at a low sun angle? Well, it sure isn’t because it’s “blowing the photons around” 🙂
Nope, actually it’s because of the waves in the ocean produced by the wind.
Bottom line: The albedo of the open arctic ocean (and therefore, the amount of radiation absorbed) is affected to a greater degree by waves than the ocean is near the equator, specifically because the angle of incidence is changed so much. Specifically, refer to the above study and look at the chart (figure 2.) the shows wind speed as charted against albedo. As wind speed increases, albedo decreases…and of course, as albedo decreases, the amount of absorbed SW radiation increases…thus more wind=more waves=greater SW radiation absorbed by the ocean at low sun angles, which is exactly what we have in the arctic.

stevengoddard says:
May 25, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Not much light makes it into water at low angles. We are all very familiar with this in a practical sense.
___________
Only true if there is no wind. On a windy (i.e. lots of waves in the water) more SW radiation makes in into the water. See this article:
http://www-cave.larc.nasa.gov/jin/Papers/jingrl04.pdf
And refer specifically to the chart which graphs albedo versus wind speed. In short, for oceans with low sun angle, the higher the wind, the lower the albedo, and therefore the greater the absorption of SW radiation by the water.
It certainly goes against intution to think a clear but windy day in the open arctic ocean with the sun low on the horizon would see a greater insolation of the water, but that is exactly the case.
REPLY: And clear windy days in the Arctic are likely to be the exception, not the norm. This document (a class synopsis) at http://www.uccs.edu/~faculty/chuber/ges100/Chapt4-McK9.doc
From Carole Huber of the University of Colorado says in section 6C agrees with what Steve says
C. Latitudinal Radiation Balance (Figs 4-23 and 4-24)
1. energy surplus in low latitudes, from 28oN to 33oS
2. energy deficit in latitudes poleward of 28oN and 33oS
Section 7c says:
1) in water turbulent mixing and ocean currents (convection) disperse heat more broadly and deeply
So the question is then, on a clear windy day, does the wavy turbulent water gain more heat than it loses? Given the mass transport (spray, which increases radiative surface area) from wind and constant mixing, it would seem not.
The wave to greater insolation effect you propose certainly exists sometimes, dependent on weather, but is small in the overall radiation balance.
– A

Anu says:
May 25, 2010 at 9:25 pm
In a few days, it will probably drop below 2006, thus entering “lowest extent in recorded data for this date” territory.

Imagine you were back in 2006, and looking at that graph with the newly-minted “lowest extent in recorded data for this date” territory being produced as you watched. How very scary! From late April, all the way through July or so… record-setting low extents “for this date”.
Surely, this must imply ominous things for the minimum extent that will happen for that you. Why, that minimum is sure to be staggeringly low. I wonder how it will turn out?
Oh wait, I’m in the future too… so I know now how it turned out. That “lowest extent in recorded data for this date” turned out to have no predictive value whatsoever for how the minimum would turn out, or for that matter what the recovery leg would look like and the subsequent maximum, and therefore no reasonable predictions about ‘spirals’ can be made from something like this.
There is substantial jitter year-over-year with measurements that are this artificially crude. The graph should make that abundantly clear. I see these sorts of ‘records’ as “interesting” in much the same way that horoscopes, tea-leaf patterns or the I Ching are interesting.
We’ll know more about what happens this year after it has happened. Until then, continued plots of this nature will almost certainly create new excursions into ‘record breaking’ areas, if only because of the nature of how little data has been gathered so far in such a jittery process.

May 25, 2010 at 10:22 pm
How come that “effects of greenhouse warming” were not able to beat historical temperature records in Arctic so far?
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/icrutem3_hadsst2_0-360E_70-90N_na.png
Not speaking about the starting decline. Hide the decline! HIDE THE DECLINE!
__________________________________________________________________________
GEE, is that little hook at the end of the graph the “tipping point”???…if so it is a travesty it is not headed up instead of down.

This article has a graph showing Reflectivity of smooth water at 20 C (refractive index=1.333)” for those asking about the reflection of infrared light by water. The article also states “water is usually considered to have a very low albedo in spite of its high reflectivity at high angles of incident light.” That statement seems to indicate that steve was correct polar light, coming in at a “high angle” is going to get reflected and not absorbed. As indicated by the statement “Although the reflectivity of water is very low at low and medium angles of incident light, it increases tremendously at high angles of incident light such as occur on the illuminated side of the Earth near the terminator (early morning, late afternoon and near the poles)”
The article is here: http://www.answers.com/topic/albedo

Gail Combs says:
May 26, 2010 at 9:22 am
The Corporation OWNS your information.
Yes, private for-profit corporations pretty much have written the laws to protect themselves and their profits. Look at the way RCA stole FM radio from Prof. Armstrong and drove him to suicide:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong
(another Columbia professor, BTW).
However, NASA is not a private for-profit corporation.
Trying to muzzle a high-profile NASA scientist and Columbia Professor, while at scientific conferences, has a high political cost in the self-proclaimed “Leader of the Free World”.
It was an interesting story – snippets below:

A Young Bush Appointee Resigns His Post at NASA
Published: February 8, 2006
George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters’ access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word “theory” at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.
Mr. Deutsch’s resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.
The resignation came as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was preparing to review its policies for communicating science to the public. The review was ordered Friday by Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, after a week in which many agency scientists and midlevel public affairs officials described to The New York Times instances in which they said political pressure was applied to limit or flavor discussions of topics uncomfortable to the Bush administration, particularly global warming.
“As we have stated in the past, NASA is in the process of revising our public affairs policies across the agency to ensure our commitment to open and full communications,” the statement from Mr. Acosta said.
The statement said the resignation of Mr. Deutsch was “a separate matter.”
Mr. Deutsch, 24, was offered a job as a writer and editor in NASA’s public affairs office in Washington last year after working on President Bush’s re-election campaign and inaugural committee, according to his résumé. No one has disputed those parts of the document.
“George Carlton Deutsch III did attend Texas A&M University but has not completed the requirements for a degree,” said an e-mail message from Rita Presley, assistant to the registrar at the university, responding to a query from The Times.
Yesterday, Dr. Hansen said that the questions about Mr. Deutsch’s credentials were important, but were a distraction from the broader issue of political control of scientific information.
“He’s only a bit player,” Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Deutsch. ” The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies. That’s what I’m really concerned about.”
“On climate, the public has been misinformed and not informed,” he said. “The foundation of a democracy is an informed public, which obviously means an honestly informed public. That’s the big issue here.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/politics/08nasa.html?_r=1

Compare to Alan Carlin, low level economist in the EPA, speaking out on FOX News and in the media against what he thinks is incorrect science being used by the Obama Administration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvBEvwCrwUg
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/science/earth/25epa.html?pagewanted=all
I guess his resume was in order 🙂

Anu says:
May 26, 2010 at 9:02 am
tonyb says:
May 26, 2010 at 12:23 am
It melted abnormally in the period 1915 to 1940
It melted abnormally in the period 1820 to 1860 (see my article here)
It melted abnormally in the period 1700-1740
It melted abnormally in the 1400′s.
It melted extremely abnormally around 1000 AD (the Vikings) and 1000 years before that (The Ipiatuk).
Did it ever disappear entirely in the summer melt during these times ?
No?
Then if it does this century, that would be “extremely abnormal”, would you agree ?
___________________________________________________________________________
Yes it probably melted around 1000 AD – the Vikings
Here are the Greenland temperatures: Greenland Ice Core Data
Please note, during the time when the vikings (Norse) were in Greenland, Greenland was a full 2C warmer than today. If everyone is bleating “It’s Melting” today then during the period 986 to 1121, when we know the Norse were sailing in that area to hunt whale, seal and polar bears, it would have to have been ice free during the summer. If it was not ice free, at that much higher temperature, then what the heck are the believers in AGW so worried about? (Sorry R. Gates you can not have it both ways – frozen for the vikings and melted for the future) Either that 2C is critical and means an Ice free Arctic during the time of the Norse occupation of Greenland or it is not critical and the Arctic is safe “from a death spiral”
And yes the Norse were all over the Arctic including on an island in the Arctic circle.
“…The settlers found that the area to the north of the Western Settlement, called the Nordseta, was good for hunting, fishing and gathering driftwood. A stone inscribed with runes has been found telling that in 1333, three Greenlanders wintered on the island of Kingigtorssuaq just below 73 degrees north. There is also evidence of voyages to the Canadian arctic. Two cairns have been discovered in Jones Sound above 76 degrees North and two more have been found on Washington Irving Island at 79 degrees north….” http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/vikings/Greenland.html
Washington Irving Island is at the entrance to Dobbin Bay, eastern Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada See the map and notice this area is well within the arctic circle and not that far from the north pole.
How the heck did they build a rock cairn on an island without sailing to it while it was warm enough to dig those rocks out of the ground, in other words while the sea was not frozen. Ellesmere Island is about 1000 km or 600 miles from the north pole (measured on the computer screen)

Vincent says:
May 26, 2010 at 1:11 am
I see now. So whereas a trend would go straight down, a death spiral goes up and down.
It’s <- called milking the audience.

I decided on a name for this polar bear – Triumph, the insult comic polar bear.
Triumph says… “Yes, Mr. Hansen your point that the Arctic is nearing a melt tipping point is a most excellent one – for me to poop on!”
—-

tonyb says: May 26, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Whatever the alarmists may believe, at present our modern era is not displaying any climate characteristics that have not been experienced in past ages of humanity

True but alarmists are alarmingly good at wiggling their way out from under the facts. Faced with the facts concerning past climate they predictably will turn to the rate at which those climates changed. As information becomes available to ascertain that today’s rate is comparably unremarkable they turn to ocean pH. When caught trying to explain how CO2 can lower ocean pH when CO2 being released from the warming oceans was part of their positive feedback argument, they turn to plant life transpiration being reduced by more CO2 as a ‘new’ positive feedback or that the MWP obviously didn’t happen in the southern hemisphere because no one wrote about it back then or it’s back to some ‘new’ worse news about disease or…. there’s just no end to their weasel ways.
People like Hansen just keep making one unproven claim after the next that are parroted by their shills in MSM leaving us to try to rebuff them in blogs like this one, (that progressive thugs would love to muzzle if they could).
So I think it’s time to encourage a permanent Anthony Watts spot on Fox News to counter the statements of political hacks like Hansen in the same media that they get to bathe in. My suggestion for a name is “Time for Climate Clarity” by Anthony Watts.
???

Vincent, Reur May 26, 2010 at 1:08 am

I have another question though Anna. Can you explain why it is that IR feels warm on your skin but radiation in the visible spectrum only would not feel warm? What is it about IR that it can do this but visible can’t?

Some visible light which is NOT reflected by the skin is in fact absorbed via dermal molecular excitation from photons, and is thus converted to HEAT, which is sensed by the nerve endings. (in addition to the solar near IR/near IR, a higher percentage of which is NOT reflected, but some is absorbed by the atmospheric GHG’s on the way in)

Does Dr. James Hansen make reckless extrapolations way beyond existing data or without any data at all? Sure.
Is the summer sea ice disappearing because of some mysterious “tipping point”? Probably not.
It doesn’t require a tipping point. All it takes is a slowly increasing arctic temperature decade after decade. The September 21 ice edge will slowly creep farther north every decade until most of the Canadian and Greenland northern shoreline is melt zone and then the wind or current will push the remaining ice into melt zones and bye bye summer ice.
At the rate the ice is disappearing, it will be totally melted by around 2040. (A reckless extrapolation of course.) Fortunately, it always comes back when the lights go out after the equinox.

R. Gates says:
May 25, 2010 at 4:43 pm
I don’t really care what the arctic does.
What would the impact be if the whole thing went away?
Nothing.
And if it did go away, what evidence is there that mankind had anything do to with it?

Ulric Lyons says:
May 26, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Not a whole lot different from the Vikings sailing as far as 79 deg. N Latitude.
Though, with the Vikings, cairns have been found.

Ancient records confirm Arctic warming due to man
If Arctic warming continues at its current rate, the Arctic Ocean could have ice-free summers by 2040 or even earlier, modelling studies suggest. The last time the ocean may have had ice-free seasons was around 10,000 years ago, when the region was getting much more sunlight than today due to Earth’s orbital fluctuations. By using geological records to piece together the history of Arctic sea ice over the last 50 million years, scientists have shown that the combined magnitude and abruptness of the recent ice loss is likely higher than ever before and can’t be explained by any known natural variables.
Leonid Polyak, from the Byrd Polar Research Center of Ohio State University, US, and colleagues employed marine sediment cores and ice-core and terrestrial Arctic temperature records. Palaeoclimate proxies found in these sediments, such as ice-rafted debris, microscopic organisms, driftwood, whalebone, and plant material, indicate the presence or absence of sea ice in a particular region. Historical records and satellite data complete the picture for modern times.
The proxy records show that around 50 million years ago the Arctic was a balmy place, with summer temperatures as high as 24 °C and subtropical aquatic ferns basking in the warm waters. Then around 47 million years ago sea ice started to form, most probably encouraged by a fall in atmospheric carbon dioxide and an accompanying drop in temperatures.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide continued to decrease – caused in part by weathering of rocks as the Earth reorganised its continents – and temperatures fell. Then around 3 million years ago the carbon dioxide decline slowed and regular glacial cycles started to dominate temperature changes, driven by orbital variations which alter the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth. Since then the Earth has swung predictably from glacial to interglacial and back again, every few tens of thousands of years. Emerging data suggest that Arctic sea-ice was probably much reduced during the major interglacials.
For the last 11,000 years or so we have been enjoying a relatively warm, low-ice interglacial period, with a gentle cooling as we head towards the next glacial. “From orbital variations, we’d expect the Arctic to continue to slowly cool as it has done so for the past several thousand years, eventually slipping into a new ice age,” said Mark Serreze director of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado.
But the last 100 years have bucked the trend in a big way. “We’ve lost about 30% of the summer ice extent and as much as 85% of the multi-year ice volume since the 1970s,” Serreze told environmentalresearchweb. And this decrease can’t be explained by natural variations alone. “If you ignored our recent atmospheric carbon dioxide rise, the recent reduction in sea ice in the Arctic would look highly anomalous, because it comes at a time when orbits favour extensive sea ice,” said Richard Alley from Pennsylvania State University.
Publishing their findings in Quaternary Science Reviews, Polyak and his colleagues conclude that the recent decrease in Arctic sea ice doesn’t fit any of the natural variabilities known from existing paleoclimatic data. This conclusion implies that the most plausible trigger for this warming is rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels coming from human activities. “Orbital variations, which are currently slowly cooling the Arctic, are still there, it’s just that climate warming due to human activities is now dominating and operating on a much shorter timescale – about 100 years – than orbital variations – [which operate over] thousands of years,” explained Serreze.
The implications of ice-free summers in the Arctic within a few decades are of great concern. Coastal erosion will likely increase and many ice-adapted species will struggle, which will inevitably affect the human inhabitants of the Arctic. Out beyond the Arctic, weather systems will alter as atmospheric circulation patterns adjust to the effect of an ice-free Arctic Ocean.
As the geological record shows, the Arctic has occasionally been ice-free in the past. However, the current speed of on-going change is exceptional. “In the past, one went from heavier ice to milder, or ice-free, conditions over the span of thousands of years,” said Serreze. “Now we are talking about doing it in 100 years, or less. Can species like polar bears adapt to such rapid change? We’ll see.”

Jack Simmons says:
May 26, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Jack, really you think there would be no impact of the Arctic sea ice cover were to disappear during summers? Really? Do you understand what drives our atmospheric and oceanic circulation?

Jack Simmons says:
May 26, 2010 at 6:27 pm
I don’t really care what the arctic does.
_____________
I wonder if that is the common attitude of AGW skeptics? I would hope not, but if it is, it would explain a great deal…

And then there was 1…
Just one year had a lower amount of arctic sea ice than 2010 for this time of year in the past 8 years…and that was 2006, and then just baresly (based on IJIS/JAXA data), and from the steep rate of decline, it looks like 2010 will soon eclipse that year as well. See:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Of course it’s purely of interest in a statistical manner, but it shows how rapid the early melt has been when the sea ice extent can go from the highest in the past 8 years to very close to the lowest in just about 1 month. We would not expect this rapid melt to continue UNLESS, this graph:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/images/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrent.png
Is more accurate than some might think, and all that multi-year ice will also melt fast once the 1st year ice has been eaten away…

tonyb says:
May 26, 2010 at 12:32 pm
As for anecdotal evidence being inferior to computer models (which even the IPCC admit are unreliable) here are a series of links demonstrating that ‘abnormality’ is the norm as far as sea ice melt is concerned
I wasn’t implying that anecdotal evidence, such as ship captain’s logs, coastal Eskimo memories, or ancient Icelandic Sagas are “inferior” to computer models.
I was implying that they are “inferior” to global climate variable measurements by satelliteS, ocean floats and other global measurements. The last 5 decades have been the best, most precise, total-planet measurements of climatology variables in the history of humanity. This level of detail is needed to figure out what is happening, now, with Earth’s climate. It is interesting to paleoclimatologists to study weird climate events in the past, but since the data is so coarse and vague, it doesn’t help much with current climate models. Yes, it has some value pointing out expected variability, but it has no explanatory value – no predictive value, other than vague expectations of “60 year ocean cycles” – or “maybe 70”. This is how ancient Egyptians did astronomy – lots of observations, notice of some patterns, and “predictions” like – “there might be an eclipse sometime this year. Or maybe next. One is due soon”.
It took the Greeks to get Science rolling, and actually try to explain why eclipses happen, or what things are made of, etc. But they were grateful for the centuries of Egyptian, and Mesopotamian, observations that got them started. Just like the scientists were grateful to the South American fishermen that told them about El Nino.
As for the current warming not being “abnormal” enough:
If a doctor is treating a patient with a temperature of 104 °F, it doesn’t matter if some amateurs standing nearby start recounting stories of how they knew someone with a temperature of 1o4.5 °F, or 105 °F, or 106 °F once – and they wound up just fine after drinking water and resting in a cool place.
The doctor must determine the exact cause of this hyperthermia, and that underlying cause must be corrected. Exertional hyperthermia is very different than Kawasaki syndrome, thyroid storm, sepsis, serotonin syndrome, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, and certain drug effects – if you don’t want hyperpyrexia and death to follow, you better let the Dr. do his job.
If the majority of climatologists are saying that this hyperthermia is being caused by CO2 buildup in the atmosphere, based on their detailed diagnosis, and it is going to get much worse, telling stories about some Vikings enjoying a warm century a thousand years ago before it got cooler for awhile, doesn’t really help.
But I realize amateurs standing nearby love to talk… as do I.
And it is interesting to read about past climate changes. I recently finished
The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization by Brian Fagan:
http://www.amazon.com/Long-Summer-Climate-Changed-Civilization/dp/0465022812

Anu says:
Regional civilizations have collapsed in the past due to regional climate change. Many people cannot even conceive of global civilization collapsing due to global climate change, much less assess what the risk is.

True. And that’s why it is imperative to STOP wasting time and money on this hoax that human fossil fuel use has any significant affect on climate so we must therefore cut back on it. The climate is going to change no matter what we do and fossil fuel has now become ESSENTIAL to feed the world.
My fear is that progressives get their way and our food supply is reduced trying to plow fields with solar cells, fertilize with animal dung and then selling the food to some bio-fuel distillery for rich countries to burn in their machines.
So after third world is already starving from that and we are patting ourselves on the back that we got CO2 back down to 350ppm.. THEN nature proves in some big way that we have nothing to do with it and gives us a huge extended drought or severe cold resulting in world starvation – and we are totally unprepared to respond to it because we wasted all of our resources on ‘green’ technology to make people like Al Gore and Maurice Strong rich.
Then it’s too late. The way to save the planet for humanity is to make everyone RICH – not poor. The richest countries are the cleanest ones with the most static populations and, most importantly, the ones BEST able to deal with any disaster including climate disasters. (Does anyone expect the Zimbabwe navy to respond to a tsunami disaster area to supply water.)

Tommy says: May 26, 2010 at 11:35 am
Steve Keohane says: May 26, 2010 at 7:17 am
“Please explain how the Arctic area shrinks from a closer observation point.”
By “Arctic area” do you mean the boundary of ice?
No, I mean the shoreline of the arctic sea, that is the boundary.
“Here is a scale drawing of the earth and the two points of observation. The satellite is obviously too close to capture the full diameter of the earth, so it is within the area where the relative size of the features can vary in area wrt the diameter of the earth, but not in the way you describe.”
Good point. The diagram indeed explains that >50% of the surface is blocked by the horizon. In order to see the full diameter of the planet, the observation point would need to be at infinity distance, or the planet would need to be cut in half by divine intervention (preferably with me riding in a comfy cockpit of the satellite). As for the relative size of features, as an object gets closer, the nearest features should appear to enlarge at a faster rate than the farthest ones, unless the features themselves were changing in shape/size during the trip.
Since the arctic sea is the closest feature in a top down, from the north, point of observation, it should by your description, and my thinking, be larger and it is not larger, it is relatively smaller to the diameter of the earth.
http://i44.tinypic.com/2vrwuae.jpg

Vincent says:
May 26, 2010 at 8:17 am
Anu,
“No, each further doubling would produce another 3 °C of warming. That’s pretty much the definition of climate sensitivity.”
To argue what the future climate will be as the result of modelled outputs of a poorly understood non linear system is not even funny. It’s just dumb.
That’s why they use paleoclimate data from the Ice Ages to estimate climate sensitivity. Lot’s of people spent many man-centuries on the work.
But you’re right, I’m sure Science is hopeless.