By Steve Goddard
CIRES photo of an Arctic ice pressure ridge
I generated an animation of 2007 sea ice thickness from the US Navy’s PIP database, and noticed something remarkable. Watch the video below, particularly inside the red square – the animation runs from May through October, 2007. The color scale on the left indicates the thickness of the ice. Watch:
At the beginning of May, ice thickness was about three metres in the center of the red square. By mid-June it was getting thicker, and by early September it was close to five metres thick! During the notorious summer of “record melt” which we have been told about ad nauseum, the ice thickness near the most affected area increased by 60%. What could have caused this? Simple – the ice was compacting to the north as it was pushed by southerly winds. It lost area – while it gained thickness.
The NSIDC news from September, 2007 touched peripherally on this idea, without actually mentioning the critical point.
The region over Siberia experienced fairly low pressure during the same time period. Winds blow clockwise around high-pressure areas and anticlockwise around low-pressure areas. The combination of high- and low-pressure areas thus fostered fairly strong winds over coastal Siberia that were partly from the south, pumping warm air into the region and also contributing to a warming Arctic. At the same time, these winds from the south acted to push ice away from the coast and into the central Arctic Ocean, further reducing ice extent in the coastal areas
Ice thickness in May 2007 was ~3 metres
Ice thickness in September, 2007 was ~5 metres
Exaggerated animation of thickness gain from compression. For effect only.
A good analogy would be shoveling the snow off your driveway. As you push the shovel forwards, the area of snow decreases – but the thickness of the snow increases in front of the shovel.
Now on to 2010. Note in the images below that ice in the Chukchi and East Siberian seas is thicker this year than it was on this date in 2007. In some locations it is as much as 5 metres thick in 2010.
May 27, 2007 Ice inside the vulnerable square (where much of the anomalous 2007 “melt” occurred) was 0.5 to 3 metres thick
May 27, 2010 Ice inside the vulnerable square is 0.5 to 5 metres thick
The AGW chameleon changes it’s colours constantly. It complains about area and extent when convenient, and about thickness when convenient. I am coming to the conclusion that the 2007 melt was more of a marketing event than a climatological event. The graph below gives a feel for just how much of a non-event it was. 2007 was 1.5 standard deviations off the 30 year extent trend, but apparently a lot of the supposedly “melted” ice just crumpled up into more survivable thick ice.
One of the ice experts must have known this. Surprising that it took the “breathtakingly ignorant” WUWT to point it out.
ADDENDUM for clarity:
Currently the NIC uses the Polar Ice Prediction System (PIPS) version 2.0 as the basis for its “operational” short-term (24–120 h) sea ice forecasts. These forecasts are evaluated daily and amended by skilled analysts using reconnaissance data (if available), the most recent weather charts and data, and historical knowledge of the conditions in the area to provide the highest quality forecasts possible out to 120 h. Special emphasis in these forecasts is placed on the location of the ice edge and the conditions in the marginal ice zone (MIZ), as these are the most critical operational areas for marine transportation and safety.
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stevengoddard says: May 28, 2010 at 6:34 am
Steve Keohane
I think we heard that the ice had been pushed and/or possibly compacted horizontally, but I don’t remember hearing any press releases discussing thickening. My take at the time was that the ice had been pushed out into the Atlantic where it melted.
I think you’re right. It hadn’t occurred to me at the time, but the same pushing/compacting horizontally would also thicken the ice not pushed into the North Atlantic.
I don’t understand. Can’t anyone here just Google ‘arctic sea ice volume anomaly’ ?
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/IceVolume.php
Climate scientists have been talking about the declining sea ice volume for years. They will be happy to know that the WUWT crowd now agrees that this is the metric for which to discuss the problem.
Gneiss says:
May 28, 2010 at 6:19 am
If that is true then would you contact Mark Surreze and have a talk with him about how wrong he is about his ‘death spiral’?
But now you agree that we should focus on ice volume?
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/IceVolume.php
———–
To be honest not concerned about are the claims of an ice free Arctic made for 2008, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2019 etc., or some other made up AGW date. This is the true test of a theory, the ability to make accurate predictions. Please note that the 2008 prediction was made and turned out to be a pile of horse crap. So, onto 2013 amd 2014 when you know we will be onto the likes of Gore who also made a prediction. I hope to see you back on WUWT on those deadlines :o(
See these please:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17953
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/10/climatechange.arctic
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/arctic-sea-ice-gone-by-2015-a-challenge-to-david-barber/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091015-arctic-ice-free-gone-global-warming.html
http://www.c3headlines.com/predictionsforecasts/
Correction
“To be honest [I am] not concerned about…”
Honestly guys, isn’t the red trend line at least a little concerning?
I think of polar bears as wild animals that would eat me alive if the opportunity were presented. I think the argument that hotter temperatures will ruin agriculture are hysterical. I think that sea level rise, like Gore’s inconvenient forty feet, is laughably overestimated. I think the connection between CO2 and temperature is uncertain at best.
BUT we seem to be cheerleading for more ice just so we can thumb our noses and call the greens losers. There’s a clear trend, and we’ve no good reason to believe there will be more ice in 30 years than less. When the history is written on the stupidity of the AGW scare, we might end up as “the opposing group of fools” in the footnotes.
It ain’t a 30-year wind pattern anomoly.
Dusty Rhodes says:
May 28, 2010 at 6:03 am
Just a thought, but it seems to me that if thickness can be measured and area can be measured then using volume as the measure for comparison would resolve the argument.
————————–
JB in a previous post gave this link to the Polar Ice Center at the University of Washington:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/IceVolume.php
The Center says the ice volume can’t be measured continuously because sufficient observations aren’t available. The Center estimates ice volume on the basis of limited observations, and as I recall, from proxy data on ice age.
A related question: I think I remember seeing a video of wind-driven ice pack being pushed up onto the shore line (at least I think it was the shore line). It was pretty amazing to watch it happen in “real time”. Does anyone remember that video and possibly have a link to it?
Pamela Gray says:
May 28, 2010 at 7:02 am
For those posters who are opening their mouths and proving something, I’ve been talking about ice compaction since day one. It is a simple mind experiment involving ice behavior, surface wind, and the nearly landlocked bowl we call the Arctic. Hell, kids playing cotton ball airhocky can figure this out.
Unfortunately Pamela you keep spouting it even when the measured drift is expanding the ice and fragmenting it! Consequently you appear to be a one trick pony pushing the same line regardless of what’s actually happening.
The quickest way to measure volume would be to pull the images into Photoshop or some other image processing software and do a histogram on the colors.
Steve,
You do realise these ice thickness values are forecast model outputs, not measurements? I don’t know what validation has been performed on them – there are few details on the Navy’s PIPS website. You might want to understand the source of these thickness values a little better before trying to derive ice volumes.
As has been already pointed out, the variation of the Arctic ice volume is explicitly calculated from a model developed at the University of Washington, and these results have been validated against measurements:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/IceVolume.php
Wren
Here is 2009. A small pressure bump appeared in August, but quickly disappeared. Nothing like 2007.
mb says:
May 28, 2010 at 5:59 am
So we should ignore ice extent, and instead emphasize ice volume?
Ice volume would be the best parameter to describe melting/freezing over the years, and would put AGW to something of a test.
Ice extent remains important for albedo considerations.
NoAstronomer says:
May 28, 2010 at 7:19 am
I notice that the scale only goes up to 5m. It’s likely that some of the ice was/is even thicker than that.
To be sure, the article opens with a picture of a pressure ridge. Ice locally packs up to a thickness of a dozen metres or more in such areas. I wouldn’t know if the total of these areas also amount to a significant portion of the total volume.
stevengoddard WROTE (May 28, 2010 at 6:34 am):
“My take at the time was that the ice had been pushed out into the Atlantic where it melted.”
I’m glad to see that Steve mentioned the blowing of ice down into the Atlantic, for I have read several times that that was a major factor in “ice disappearance” (the term that I use in preference to the misleading “ice melting”) in 2007. I have also read more than once that the water flowing into the Arctic was “warmer” than usual that year.
I heard on our beloved (!) CBC radio that the number of “ice-free” weeks has increased in recent years. I don’t know what the “expert” (from Univ of Alberta) considered “ice-free”, for there seems to be ice over the north pole at all times, but is he onto anything useful in considering a supposedly increased period of time without ice? Or is this the successor to ice thickness as red herring of the month?
IanM
Skaters in the Stockholm archipelago know that air pressure is one of the most important factors when it comes to ice conditions. The level of the ice in vertical direction can change 0,5 metre over a short time period. One notices that by seeing the “old” level hanging from eg. kliffs 0,5 m above the curret level. Changes in air pressure (sea level) is a formidable ice breaker. Places where there was thick ice the day before can be open water the day after even during periods of cold (sub zero centrigrade). The reason – changes in air pressure. Another ice breaker are waves. Salt Sea Ice is softer than fresh water ice. The Baltic eg. is like a big bathtub where low fequency waves oscillate from north to south (less degree east to west)
Unfortunately, this is another consequence of the great I.P.C.C. political spin, where scientific reports have so routinely been sanitized to present the best scare scenario to suit the political and power agenda of a self styled world elite. Amazing that it became the “normal” (post normal?) route to follow the spurious spin and line up with hands outstretched to grab the billions of “research”?? dollars with Lapdog science where the spin not only hides the decline, it puts aside or conceals inconvenient truths, data, or explanations, and much worse rots the core by those that erected barriers to prevent or put down scientists who dared to question.
Internet sites like Real Science were created to perpetuate this corruption, to give “them” the ability to smear, ridicule and attack, to bolster the myth that their spin on Climate Science was the only legitimate one, backed by (pick a number) consensus, and the “validity” of their climate science as trotted out through the political spin of the I.P.C.C.
The fact that this crafted agenda initially worked and was not questioned, is an indictment on science, and indicative of the power and fear such a small group were able to wield against fellow scientists, power and influence that prevented scientists from pointing out obvious errors or advancing alternative explanations.
My initial thoughts on this paradox was along the lines, that Climate science is so fragmented with competing theories, pet agenda, distributed over so many scientific disciplines, that this disunity or competition enabled politicians and charlatans to divide and conquer science to serve their own ends and agenda.
The release of the CRU emails revealed the inner corruption and the extent that a small group could dictate and corrupt the peer review process, and prevent publication in so called prestigious science journals and also use the internet to smear the few well qualified that tried to point out the errors in their”spun science” or challenged their dominance in feeding scares to an unquestioning Main Stream Media.
Fortunately the in the lead up to this event (CRU emails) some courageous scientists had already engaged the spin brigade, asked questions, demanded answers, which so much helped those of us that were puzzled at the scary “science” but, lacked the experience and technical knowledge to back up our observations and gut feeling that something was so very wrong with the Al Gore “religious” bums rush, to bring on new political change and economic changes, don’t question, don’t ask, the science is settled, just get out of the way its already too late!!
Thanks to Anthony and all the dedicated people who have rallied and have the expertise to read the scientific literature, and to find the qualifications within that literature and question the methods and the models.
It is time to really ask those scientists who have obviously raised alternatives in their reports, but have allowed others to misrepresent their reports to create an agenda selling scary scenario. I hope the US Senate calls these scientists before them to explain why they could not point these things out, or reveal issues that prevented from speaking out.
That is the urgent action needed to prevent the political machine from galloping down a false path on the pretext of saving the world, and in the process masking their own agenda, be it removal of rights, social change, or outright corruption.!
My rant, but I think it so fits what is going on at this time.
Ice piles can be guestimated based on wind directions for any given year, thus can lead to what some call first year ice to be less than 12″ to greater than 45″. First year ice thickness is a function of both mechanics and freezing. Add the wind and you get a jumbled up mess of first, second, and multiyear ice that can be various thicknesses, not necessarily based on age.
For those who think 2007 was “awful” or that this year will be bad, you may not understand that ice mechanics combined with wind dictate whether or not ice melts in place or gets driven to warmer climate and melts there. Ice Extent and Area is therefore not a good measure of greater or lesser AGW melt reasons or records as much as it is a measure of whether or not wind is pushing it here or there during the melt season. Clear sky conditions with low wind can also be a factor.
So what we are really observing over time are weather pattern variations. Pure and simple. For those who consider that to be white noise, nature cannot produce white noise. Only carefully calibrated, gated, broad spectrum sound frequency emitting laboratory equipment can do that.
Pamela Gray
I do remember you talking about winds many times!
Yes, someone does put out a graph of Arctic sea ice volume. That would be the Polar Science Center. They produce a terrifying anomaly graph which tends to go only one direction, down. It is generated using PIOMAS, a numerical model.
Frankly, it should not be taken seriously, and certainly not considered a source of hard numbers. It’s basically a “first attempt” that yields a computerized guesstimate by making several curious assumptions. Note the assorted “disclaimers” at the first link like “The purpose of this page is to visualize recent variations of total Arctic Sea Ice Volume in the context of longer term variability” and “For the Ice Volume simulations shown here…” Measurements of ice thickness are sparse and considered to be of not much value, satellites like the recently-deployed CryoSat-2 will be taking measurements of how far an ice chunk floats above the water (the freeboard) which will be used for ice thickness calculations.
But without data on ice thickness for the Arctic area that’s taken on a continuous basis, we don’t even the basic data to compute a record of ice volume. And what looks like too many assumptions have already been built into PIOMAS. For example, that page mentions volume estimates using age of sea ice as a proxy for thickness, as in first year ice is thin while multi-year ice is thick. This contradicts the work of esteemed Arctic sea ice expert Dr. Barber, who verified by direct observation that what satellites were identifying as thick multi-year ice was actually thin “rotten” ice. Thus the PIOMAS model is at this stage less of a tool and more of a toy, interesting to look at but not of much use.
Oh, the terrifying graph just got done taking a long break from being updated. Previously it was dated May 13, showing a near-vertical drop, up until yesterday (May 27) it hadn’t been updated despite a posted schedule of updates every 3-5 days (depending on data availability). Then yesterday it updated, index on the server says Last Modified on “27-May-2010 11:44”, new chart dated May 24 on the chart.
What changed? One thing, the title now says “Arctic Sea Ice…” where before it just said “Arctic Ice…” so I guess they had to clarify that. As mentioned, May 13 had a near-vertical drop on the end, zoomed at 200% it looks straight and ends at about minus 8.8 anomaly units, with only about minus 9.5 anomaly units at the bottom of the scale. For May 24 they had to add some more units to the scale, the straight drop is now ending at minus 9.5 anomaly units. A drop of 0.7 anomaly units in just 11 days. Heck, at that rate it may all be gone by July.
Cute chart. Use at your own risk.
Great article. This demonstrates how the CO2-climate change as causal mindset limits the advancement of knowledge about climate.
Steve, I’m glad you are finally seeing the value of computer models.
They seem to be disparaged at WUWT.
Your ice thickness “images” are all simple model predictions from the Polar Ice Prediction System (PIPS 2.0) of the Naval Oceanographic Office.
Of course, models must be compared to measured ground truth to see how good they are doing. PIPS doesn’t attempt to show how good their “ice thickness” model works, but their “ice concentration” model is checked every 24 hours:
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/retrievepic.html?filetype=Concentration&year=2010&month=5&day=23
Pretty low resolution, and not so accurate around the edges, but not so bad for a simple 1990’s model.
If you want to see a 21st century model of Arctic sea ice thickness, and how that ice thickness evolved over that notable summer of 2007, watch this:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/IDAO/summer2007_arctic_seaice.gif
The modern U of W model doesn’t appear to show Steve’s “snow shovel” effect, but to be fair to the old Naval sea ice thickness computer model, it was developed many years before ICESat was launched – models weren’t that good in the 1990’s. The PIOMAS model had the advantage of being developed in the 21st century, and using ICESat data (launched 2003), plus other satellite, airplane, and field expedition data to be “assimilated” by their model.
The Navy is busy working on a better computer model for sea ice thickness:
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/info3.html
But it’s not clear how long this “final development” has been going on – 10 years ?
The major take-home message for everyone, especially the warm earthers among us, is that Arctic ice on a yearly basis follows weather events, and is not a global climate measure. Since it is a climate happenstance, and is not global, then it cannot, logically, be related to CO2 distributed uniformly in the atmosphere. Everyone should know this by now, but they don’t.
ITWS!
Wren says: “…I’m sorry Steve, but I don’t follow what you are saying about the 2007 melt being a non-event………”
It was a non-event. Here’s how it was a non-event; We didn’t all die. We had no sudden flooding. Polar bears continued to thrive.(even if penguins are still off of his menu.) Seals? They are still ok, too. Remember how the lack of ice would cause the earth to suddenly absorb more heat and then we’d really get hot. Didn’t happen. In fact, in spite of the dramatic decrease in ice extent, nothing in the world changed other than a considerably more blathering ringing from the halls of academia. Well, there also was a significant addition to the U.S. national debt(and other countries as well) in response to the hand wringing and demands for more funding to study the non-event. Shocking stuff this is! Ice dissipates!! It melts, it moves in water!! Currents and wind effect ice!! Wow! As it turns out, there was no tipping point achieved. Maybe this year is the year when we all die from flooding and polar bears……blah, blah, blah. What is simply astonishing is that since man became self aware and aware of his surroundings, one truth, he’s noted, it always changes. Yet, we have a group of supposed learned people that believe the earth should be static. Simply astonishing, “scientists” that would turn their back on thousands of years of experience in pursuit of an apocalyptic world view. AND PEOPLE BELIEVE THEIR BS!!!! (So much so that any past, present and future televangelist has got to be green with envy.)
Sorry for the coarse tone, but my wife scheduled and early morning eye exam…… on my day off. 😐 Can one imagine what we could have accomplished in terms of solving real problems if our resources weren’t spent on this contrived issue? The cost in terms of the human condition is immense.
About polar bears……..one of the few animals actually known to hunt and track for days, mankind. Does anyone really believe these animals were indigenous to the north pole? I believe their frailty is completely overstated. Of course, then, too is the entire ecological/climate system of earth. We could try to learn from history instead of prognosticating with computer models that don’t factor in known historical dynamics.
Hmmm, Real Climate have a post on verifying climate models. Thought I’d point out that one way of verifying a model would be to look for fluctuations in a variable (i.e. levels of man-made CO2 output) and compare with the presumed affected variable (i.e. levels of CO2 in the atmosphere). I pointed out that the Mauna Loa record doesn’t reflect the big drop in man-made CO2 caused by the 1970’s energy crisis, i.e. growing levels of global CO2 seem to be independent of man-made CO2 emissions.
Didn’t make it past the moderators. Again.