Pursuant to the previous post on The great 2007 ice crunch – it wasn’t just melt this is a follow up post for questions raised there.
By Steve Goddard
One of the favourite web sites quoted by the AGW faithful, is the University of Washington PIOMASS site – which claims to model ice volume. They show ice volume dropping off precipitously after 2006 and continuing downwards.
On their web site they include the verification graph below, which curiously stops verifying in 2007.
Obviously they have run their models post 2007, so why did they stop updating their verification? The image below gives a clue. I mapped NSIDC November extent (blue) on top of their verification graph, and something stands out like a sore thumb. Ice extent jumped back up after 2007, but their volume model didn’t.
‘
This in itself doesn’t prove anything, because it is possible that extent increased while volume decreased. (Not likely, but possible.)
Below is another one of their verification links, which actually verifies nothing because it only compares their model vs. extent. Since they undoubtedly fed the extent data as an input in to their model, it is rather bizarre that they would present this as verification evidence. It is like predicting the score of a game after it has already been played.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/IDAO/summer2007_2008_arctic_seaice.gif
So let’s try doing some real verification. Below are the Navy thickness images from November 2007 and 2009.
Note that across the majority of the Arctic, 2009 thickness is greater than 2007. Notable exceptions being the 2007 pressure bump in the Beaufort Sea, and along the north coast of Greenland.
Conclusion: The PIOMASS models are probably not an accurate representation of current ice conditions. Most of the Arctic has increased in thickness since 2007.
mb says:
May 28, 2010 at 4:11 pm
It is a model check the home page here.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/index.html
I have wondered how the extraordinary low of 2007 affects where the model goes moving forward.
SideShowBob says:
May 28, 2010 at 10:14 pm
Your point may be true but there do seem to be some serious inconsistencies between PIOMASS and PIPS (the Navy model).
Take some widely spaced time points say near the yearly maxima in 1999 and 2010 (March 1st). The navy images look almost identical.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/retrievepic.html?filetype=Thickness&year=2010&month=3&day=1
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/retrievepic.html?filetype=Thickness&year=1999&month=3&day=1
With AGW and the slow but inexorable rise of CO2, as well as the slow decline of annual arctic sea ice minimum,
it’s the long term trend that matters, not the year to year noisy fluctuations – aka “weather”.
I’m sure you’re well aware of that Steve, yet in your posts you insist on making big deals out of short term fluctuations.
Does a skeptic prediction model exist that predicts that the ice will stop shrinking decade by decade? That might actually qualify as a legitimate contrary piece of information.
SideShowBob says:
May 28, 2010 at 10:14 pm
“If you draw a line from November 2007 to November 2009 on the PIOMASS graph you get a slight recovery in ice volume which is perfectly consistent with the Navy images you gave?!…”
Ah, the folly of trying to use linear trends on a climate metric which is driven by deterministic chaos! To make matters worse, sea ice is an inhomogeneous fractal structure, whose Hausdorff dimension varies considerably during the polar melt/freeze season, so extrapolating/averaging from physical measurement is unreliable. Perhaps no surprise that we don’t know the real sea ice volume each year.
I’m amazed the even some of the ‘best’ climate scientists don’t understand this simple point, with some continuing to panic about the Arctic sea ice ‘death spiral’, despite the observed recovery in both area and extent since 2007. Fools!!!
It’s thought worse than wee.
I would like to know more about what the underside of the ice is like. Years ago I saw an illustrastion of a sub picking its way through a very irregular ceiling, which included some nasty-looking points jabbing downwards, and also thin channels (frozen leads) which it could rise up into to hide, and also break through for air.
More recently I’ve seen illustrations which make everything look smoothe, on the underside of the ice.
Is there a WUWT reader who served on a sub under that ice, who can end my curiosity about the nature of the underside?
Any estimation of volume needs to take into account the fact that nine tenths of a floating slab of ice is under water, and a pressure ridge that sticks up six feet should, in theory, stick down fifty-four feet.
This says it all:
…..which claims to model ice volume
Nothing but a grown up kids silly game!
Tenuc says:
May 29, 2010 at 4:36 am
“I’m amazed the even some of the ‘best’ climate scientists don’t understand this simple point, with some continuing to panic about the Arctic sea ice ‘death spiral’, despite the observed recovery in both area and extent since 2007. Fools!!!”
I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure area and extent are one and the same thing Tenuc 🙂
SideShowBob
Area and extent are not the same thing. Area is the measured area of ice, and extent is the area of ocean with a defined (15% or 30% normally) ice concentration. Ice extent is always larger than area.
Graphs of average and range overlayed with temps since 1990 have been posted for Anchorage. Show me warming.
http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/panctemps.php
OT but I thought by now someone would have written a post on the snowstorms over the past week (and continuing) in southern Alberta. May came in like a lion:
http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=Snow%20in%20Alberta%20May&mkt=en-ca&setLang=en-CA
And is going out like a sabre-toothed tiger:
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/storm_watch_stories3&stormfile=albertasnow_may_28_05_2010?ref=ccbox_weather_bottom_title
Put that in your PIOMAS and verify it. I know, snow storms in June are just weather and one day our children will know of snow only from old photographs (link somewhere to the Met Office in UK)
Just out of curiosity, what does the last ‘S’ in PIOMASS stand for? The linked site (Polar Ice Center) has PIOMAS = Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System.
To Gary Pearse:
Explain how this weather 1000’s of km from the Arctic Ocean should be at all relevant to Arctic sea ice volume…
@caleb
Multiyear ice can be very uneven on the underside. First year ice is generally smooth except for cracks.
How can you compare the Navy model results when THERE ARE NONE.
It is a tool for Icebreakers.
It does NOT sum total Ice Volume.
You look at the Navy Picture show & say “obviously thicker”.
But the pic you show for 2007 has less medium Ice but MANY TIMES THE REALLY THICK STUFF IN RED cf to 2008.
So: What is the Volume number ?
The Navy model gives none.
So you do not know & neither do I.
One Thing is clear however: PIOMAS EXACTLY MATCHED the Satellite that had a thickness measureing device ( ICESAT )
— except once.
When PIOMAS showed a LESS EXTREME MELT than ICESAT.
Please stop saying they are Crooks.
Their model UNDERESTIMATES ICE LOSS. If they were crooks it would Overestimate it.
My background is History & when “denier” Dr. Roy Spencer apologizes for his high temps from the Uah site, he shows he is Honest because he presents Data the OPPOSITE of what his bias is. Hansen is at least better than the European/Mann Frauders who never admit they were wrong, because when Stephen MacIntyre pointed out the famous error that put 1998 over 1934 for USA temps, he looked at the numbers, and made Stephen famous by going back to the old ranking. It is called “Argument Against Interest”. It does not indicate COMPETANCE — Hansen’s Forecasts are Notoriously BAD — but when every major GREEN Scientist condemns Cap & Trade (“Gaia” Lovelock, Hansen, “Dr. Ozone” Paul Crutzen, we can Trust it.
Piomas can “assimilate” Data to show the present situation as well as limited plane & ship coverage can. It is mainly used by modellers inputting assumed FUTURE data to get a Forecast but so What .
It’s not really the Best measure of Ice Volume — it is just the ONLY ONE.
PS there ARE analyses of thickness using SUBMARINES — but to keep their favored Location SECRET these are given a 5+year time lag. they show a radical drop to the early 2000’s but also show an early increase prior to the “Hot half” of the 60-year cycle (that Spencer is always touting as 85% of the Last 30 years’ Global Warming surge), cutting the Ice. These showed 3 meters (+1.2 in Winter) going to 4, then to 1 … this is why Sub Commanders urged the Producer of the “Green Berets” (a pro-War film) to make “the Day After Tomorrow (too bad it substituted an Ice Age for the High Winds, but then there would have been no Rescue/Love Story). Need to look up the pdf s on this to verify the sub figures, until then take my memory with a grain of salt
stevengoddard says:
May 29, 2010 at 12:09 am
Anu,
You are aware that Professor Wieslaw Maslowski forecast an “ice free Arctic” by 2013?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm
Now that you have shown your admiration for him, I will have to hold you to his prediction.
Yes, thank you for the same link that I included in my “May 28, 2010 at 9:09 pm” Comment. A link that I included a section of quotes from, since many readers don’t bother to click on links.
Now I’m wondering if you missed this link also:
http://www.oc.nps.edu/~pips3/
U. S. Navy Polar Ice Prediction System Upgrade
The goal of PIPS 3.0 is to update PIPS using the latest physics and computational advances in a parallel computing environment.
Now that you have shown your admiration for the Navy PIPS model output, with ice thickness mysteriously “verified” using Special Sensor Microwave Imager ice concentration data, I will have to hold you to the data of the new, improved PIPS, as designed by Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski.
But keep writing about how “reliable”, “trustworthy” and “verified” that Navy PIPS data is. Yes, we can both agree on how rock solid the Navy data is – why, there are lives at stake, thousands of submarine commanders with no sonar desperate to surface through sea ice of unknown thickness.
Later this summer, after PIPS is a WUWT favorite, I’ll show you some PIPS 3.0 results I’ve found. You’re not going to backpedal and claim that PIPS 2.0 is “better” than the latest Navy model, are you ? It’s the Navy, and they know what they’re doing.
Am I understanding that verification of PIOMASS happened only for 5 recent years?
So what does the PIOMASS model say the ice volume was for 1906 when Roald Amundson successfully navigated the Northwest passage without an ice breaker – something I understand no one else managed again until 2007, then again in 2008, and it closed back up in 2009.
It sounds to me like the arctic ice cap is repeating what it did just about exactly 100 years ago.
What’s up with that?
What melted enough ice to open the northwest passage 100 years ago since CO2 can’t be the culprit?
Anu,
I learned a long time ago that the same organisation which does an excellent job of data collection, may not do so well with analysis. Seems to be prevalent in this field. You appear desperate to change the subject.
PIOMASS should be PIOMAS
It makes google scholar searches easier 🙂
kwik says:
May 28, 2010 at 5:12 pm
A bit OT, but;
The Norwegian Prime Minister has signed a deal with Indonesia;
We will pay approx 1 billion dollars to Indonesia.
Why; Indonesia has promised to cut down less rainforest.
It sounds like extortion to me. If you dont give us 1 billion, we will continue
to cut down the rain-forest…..
And how do you control it?
-”Well, you see, we cut only 1 million trees.If you hadnt paid us 1 billion,
we would have cut down 2 million trees”.
I see.
________________________________________________________________________
Sounds like typical Marxism to me – redistribution of wealth from ordinary folks to the pockets of the politicians. “What unites the many different forms of Socialism.. is the conception that socialism (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) must be handed down to the grateful masses in one form or another, by a ruling elite which is not subject to their control…” http://search.marxists.org/archive/draper/1966/twosouls/0-2souls.htm
So how many Norwegians agreed to labor for the politicians in Indonesia?
Gail Combs says:
May 30, 2010 at 3:25 am
Maybe you’re looking at this from the wrong side of the deal.
If there is a market in conscience solving then it’s only fair that Indonesia should take it’s slice.
Companies sell rubbish to people (and governments) every day. It called a free market.
Navy PIPS data.
Reliable.
Trustworthy.
Verified.
Data you can trust.
This Admiral seems to like it, and show the graphs to AMETSOC
http://www.ametsoc.org/atmospolicy/climatebriefing/Titley.pdf
I guess the argument will be solved at the end of summer when record temperatures melt all the ice. Will you believe the ice is getting thinner then? Of course it could be just the wind, or maybe all the ice moved to the south pole, or not to worry, this is a normal occurance that has nothing to do with the record increases in CO2 in the atmosphere.