By Steve Goddard
The last piece of ice remaining in the Arctic
The death spiral continues, with Arctic ice extent and thickness nearly identical to what it was 10 years ago.
The graph above shows superimposed volume data (calculated from PIPS) for 2010, on top of the NSIDC extent data. Interesting to note that volume continued to increase for about a month after extent started to decline. This is because the Arctic Basin has remained below freezing, while the lower latitudes have been melting.
In the video of 2010 ice below, you can see how ice has been piling up to a depth of nearly five metres (red) on the windward side of Wrangel Island, the New Siberian Islands, and the Taymyr Peninsula.
Ice thickness in Barrow, AK seems to have reached it’s maximum this week, at about 4.3 metres feet.
University of Alaska – Barrow Ice Sensor
Temperatures in the Arctic interior have remained cold, and well below freezing. Not much opportunity for melt.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
You can see the Arctic temperature anomalies over the last 30 days in the video below:
The four major extent indices continue to diverge, with the next couple of weeks showing almost no year over year variability.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_2010.png
The modified NSIDC image below shows in red where ice has disappeared since early April.
The modified NSIDC image below shows in red where ice has disappeared in the last week.
The modified NSIDC image below shows a comparison between 2010 and 2007. Areas in green have more ice than 2007. Areas in red have less ice than 2007.
The modified NSIDC image below shows in red areas of ice deficiency relative to the 30 year mean, with areas of excess shown in green. The cold Pacific side has excess ice, while the warmer Atlantic side has a deficiency..
This corresponds quite closely with sea surface temperature anomalies seen below.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
The image below from September 15, 2007 is the one which most interests me this week. After the big “melt” of 2007, it was widely reported that researchers expected the ice to be gone by 2013, and that “in the end, it will just melt away quite suddenly.”
How is five metre thick ice supposed to “just melt away quite suddenly?”
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From the linear predictions department :
Temperatures in Colorado have warmed up 20 degrees in the last two weeks. If that trend continues, it will become hot enough to boil water before Christmas. And the Arctic will be ice free by 2013.
Sources:
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_sealevel/brw2010/BRW_MBS10_overview_complete.png
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_sealevel/brw2010/BRW_MBS10_overview_complete.png
And finally, GLOBAL sea ice has returned to normal:
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Icarus says: “Given that Arctic temperature continues to rise (quite substantially in recent decades), and that this rise can only reasonably be attributed to anthropogenic influences, can anyone honestly expect the current long-term decline of Arctic sea ice to slow down, stop or reverse?”
Sure. It’s already done so.
Steve and rbateman:
Don’t get me wrong. I think we are in, and have been in, a cooling phase longer that most will agree with. I tend to watch the tiny underlying movements ignoring any few-year weather or short-cycle effects. I think the arctic ice will continue to grow for quite a while on the average from this point. How long, don’t know. One side of me even says possibly decades, but to me, it’s all to do with the sun and only over decades, not the short 11 year bumps. We’ll see. Follow the data (though it’s getting harder to get to the real stuff anymore, untouched by human minds and their computer models!).
Gary Turner says: “Ah, but metric is so nineteenth century. We’re in the digital age, now. Imperial volume measures were based on halves and doubling—in other words, computer friendly powers of two.
2⁰ 1 oz ounce
2¹ 2 ? <–[jack]
2² 4 gill…"
There are two jacks in a gill. Gill is pronounced 'jill'.
@Gail Combs
May 31, 2010 at 4:15 pm
Your link to “text” is broken and leads to domain.com. Would love to read what Schmidt and Mann have to say about what the sun did centuries ago (cough). Can you post the entire address or where you came across it?
Expat in France says:
May 31, 2010 at 9:50 am
This is all brilliant stuff.
The big problem being that WE can see the nonsense propagated about polar ice by those who, for their own reasons, dishonestly tell only half the true story.
Of greater importance, however, is how this message may be forcefully propagated to government, and the mainstream media so that Joe Public gets the truth of the full picture, …
Surely there is a duty somewhere, to make this stuff headline news?
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Those that OWN the presses CONTROL the news. I am sure the owners of the presses or in the case of the BBC the managers of the pension fund have placed big money in the carbon trade business.
Gaining control of the news presses to advance public policies favorable to the shearers of the sheep and not the sheeple being sheared is nothing new. J.P. Morgan Interests Buy 25 of America’s Leading Newspapers and Insert Editors: U.S. Congressional Record February 9, 1917, page 2947
“Mr. CALLAWAY: Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to insert in the Record a statement that I have of how the newspapers of this country have been handled by the munitions manufacturers…..
“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, ship building and powder interests and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press in the United States.
“These 12 men worked the problems out by selecting 179 newspapers, and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers.
“This contract is in existence at the present time, and it accounts for the news columns of the daily press of the country being filled with all sorts of preparedness arguments and misrepresentations as to the present condition of the United States Army and Navy, and the possibility and probability of the United States being attacked by foreign foes.
“This policy also included the suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served. The effectiveness of this scheme has been conclusively demonstrated by the character of the stuff carried in the daily press throughout the country since March, 1915. They have resorted to anything necessary to commercialize public sentiment and sandbag the National Congress into making extravagant and wasteful appropriations for the Army and Navy under false pretense that it was necessary. Their stock argument is that it is ‘patriotism.’ They are playing on every prejudice and passion of the American people.”
I also have a problem with what Icarus says:
“Given that Arctic temperature continues to rise (quite substantially in recent decades), and that this rise can only reasonably be attributed to anthropogenic influences…”
Icarus, it is not a given that the Arctic temperature rise [or global rise in temperature for that matter] can “only reasonably” be attributed to human activity. On what premise do you base that conclusion?
As a matter of fact, there is no empirical, testable evidence to back your claim. None at all. The Arctic is being pointed at by wild-eyed climate alarmists as proof of… what, exactly? The Arctic is a region, and it is counterbalanced by the Antarctic, which is gaining ice. As a result, global ice cover is average, neither higher nor lower.
The planet, including the Arctic, is acting completely normally. Nothing out of the ordinary is happening. The observed cycles have been going on for many millennia, not just during the era of satellite observations.
Conclusion: the current Arctic cycle is not attributable to human activity. If you can falsify that statement, have at it.
Steven mosher says:
May 31, 2010 at 1:00 pm
The comeback would simply be that:
1. Gore is no scientist
2. Science makes flawed predictions all the time.
3. They will point to other predictions that were no as Dire.
4. They will argue that the trend is still down and that the tipping point is just around the corner.
5. The fact that the ice doesnt disappear doesnt directly contradict the theory of global warming.
6. That the ice retreat slowed because of some other reason.
Blah blah blah.
But if it proves correct, or even if the decline continues and 2007 is matched or exceeded, then you will probably regret the fact that you made it such a big issue.
Its far better to focus on the uncertainties of the causation RATHER THAN the actual figures. cause you know, the ice could just disappear for other reasons, soot, winds, and SST patterns. Then, you’d be in a tougher position in the debate.. having made such an ICON out of the issue. basically, the CAGW types made the ice into an ICON. I judge accepting that ICON as the field of engagement to be a risky strategy.
never let your opponent select the battle field. That’s just some friendly advice. Heck I told them to stop using the polar bear as an ICON. Looks like they are listening to that advice now.
This is good spin advice but I choose not to go that route; I want to battle the facts. CAGW skeptics are constantly battling against bogus data. Give me any playing field that cannot be manipulated and I’m happy. What playing field would you choose?
If Al Gore is discredited, and their spin is that he’s just a non-scientist, that’s progress. There is NO chance his prediction will come true — the Arctic can’t lose that much ice that fast. This won’t be a knockout blow but it’ll help.
Gneiss says:
May 31, 2010 at 4:13 pm
The National Geographic positive feedback you referred to:
If that is the case, in an Ice Age, a very large forest fire would deposit soot on the Ice Cap and begin inexorably melting it.
The positive feedback would make it nigh impossible for an Ice Age to get going, let alone last 80,000 years out of the 100,000 year cycle that describes the last 1 million years of Earth’s geologic history.
Got it?
Under the N.G. soot positive feedback mechanism, the record should indicate 80,000 years of Interglacial and 20,000 years of Ice Age, or no Ice Age at all, per 100,000 years.
Alan Simpson says:
May 31, 2010 at 10:13 am
I am not sure why Anthony and Steve are labouring this.
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Because the US Congress wants to pass a Cap and Trade law NOW and not in September. We need ammo to use against the scare mongers with their professional propaganda machine.
And it’ll be full of soot too (I’m talking about current soot from Asia).
Icarus says:
May 31, 2010 at 12:34 pm
“Given that Arctic temperature continues to rise (quite substantially in recent decades), and that this rise can only reasonably be attributed to anthropogenic influences, can anyone honestly expect the current long-term decline of Arctic sea ice to slow down, stop or reverse?”
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Yes, anyone who is honest can. If climate ran in a linear trend mode then over the long term the earth would be a block of ice by now. Instead the climate runs in cyclical long term trends. The math is real simple. If the time period is short enough the slope of the curve is approximated by a line.
That is why the CAGW propaganda machine changed its tune from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change” recently and are in such a rush to get their carbon trading con in place. They need time to pick our pockets clean before we figure out it is just a con-game and reverse the damage. Unfortunately they will have skimmed the wealth from many nations leaving wreckage behind as they move on to implement the next con.
Would you please do a bit of research on the people and groups behind this con-game starting with the World Bank/IMF. You do remember the leaked Denmark text do you not??? It blew Copenhagen out of the water. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank A brand new article as of today shows the text was clearly advantageous to the US and the west, would have steamrollered the developing countries, and was presented to a few countries a week before the meeting officially started.
Here are a few articles you really should read whether you believe in AGW or not. Capitalist or liberal, most will agree the bankers are our real enemies once they are educated.
IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment Programs
Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund….
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man:
The Bankers Manifesto of 1892: History repeats itself in regular cycles.
Evidence of Mr. Graham Towers: Governor of the Bank of Canada, appearing in 1939, before the COMMITTEE ON BANKING AND COMMERCE:
1913 OUR MONEY SYSTEM: The Biggest Swindle in History!
US Banks Operating Without Reserve Requirements
1989: LEVERAGED BUYOUTS: AMERICANS PAYS THE PRICE
Let me get this straight. You found one research group headed by Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski that is projecting rapid Arctic sea ice with an ice free polar region by 2013. Now as your BBC link states: “…other teams have variously produced dates for an open summer ocean that, broadly speaking, go out from about 2040 to 2100. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm
So, your alarmist guy is an outlier. Maybe he is right, maybe he is wrong. But he does not represent mainstream scientific opinion at this time. And where is he from? Who is backing his work? Why the good old U.S. Navy!
See also:
http://earthsky.org/earth/ice-free-arctic-summers-within-a-decade
http://research.nps.navy.mil/cgi-bin/vita.cgi?p=display_vita&id=1023568034
Your composite graph …
http://climateinsiders.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/2010volumevsextent.jpg
… does not make sense to me as it is since you haven’t placed a parallel km^3 scale on the vertical axis. Also you don’t have a normal curve for volume. Could you clarify?
I suspect you haven’t understood the PR game being played here. And make no mistake, it is PR, not honest investigation, for if it were the latter, should there not be noisy objections from the AGW camp itself about the extremeness of this fellow’s views? But there aren’t, because the game is to scare the populace silly, not to uncover truth. And one nutcase getting crackpot views published as serious science serves the alarmist cause perfectly.
Let me give you another example on a different topic. At a feminist conference once, two feminists got up on stage and congratulated each other for their great work ‘for the cause’. One feminist had published papers castigating academic men for disadvantaging young women by not mentoring them. The other had published papers castigating academic men for demeaning and patronising young women by mentoring them. The two feminists had exactly opposite claims, yet they congratulated each other for good work in a common cause. How can that be? Only if the real game was to vilify men, and the two arguments each served that covert goal. That is the kind of thing we are up against in the GW field. Honesty and truth are not the real goal. You have to understand that before you can understand anything.
wayne says:
May 31, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Seems by that map even the Atlantic as a whole has cooled compared to the last few months. What’s up with that? Think the excess heat from the 80′s, 90′s and early 00′s is finally running bit low?
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Ocean temperature runs in cycles. Here are a couple of articles that will help explain.
The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation – not quite cool yet: July 14, 2009
Spencer: Global Average Sea Surface Temperatures Poised for a Plunge: May 20, 2010
text
New geologic evidence of past periods of oscillating, abrupt warming, and cooling: …Isotope data from Greenland ice cores and show a consistent pattern of fluctuating warm and cool periods over the past 500 years . The average period of warming/cooling oscillations over the past 500 years is 27 years, remarkably similar to the period of alternation between warm and cool Pacific Decadal Oscillation…
Ocean heat content and Earth’s radiation imbalance: A strong connection between Earth’s radiative imbalance and the heat content of the oceans has been known for some time…
wayne says:
May 31, 2010 at 2:39 pm
rbateman says:
May 31, 2010 at 11:09 am
How much warming can soot cause when it’s buried under another meter of fresh ice?
– –
You are touching something that has been in the back of my mind for quite a while. The answer is not much if any at all. And if the next year is similar with more snow, not much again.
But when a warmer period comes along the top layers melt which concentrates the soot at lower levels. Many years of this would cause all the multi-year soot to now be concentrated at the bottom thin layer. Presto, complete melt.
In other words, is that mechanism partially at fault in the 2007 melt? Was it temperature driven at all?
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AHHhhh so soot would act to amplify the effect of a warm period, but have little/no effect on a cold period. I wonder if the layer of soot found in the ice by scientists is the result of an increase of yearly soot or is the result of an increase in yearly melt???
Little facts like that always seem to get lost from CAGW type papers.
NONE of which explains Drudge, James O’Keefe (of ACORN fraud exposure video fame), FreeRepublic.com, BigGovernment.com or BigJournalism.com FoxNews, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck … have you NOT seen the decline of BIG media (Dinosaur Media Death Watch: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2398460/posts)?
Are you living under a rock?
Of course, Birchers NEED a cause, something to beat the drum with, something to start the stampede with, regardless of the validity of the issue they raise … you’re not one of those, are you?
.
wayne says:
May 31, 2010 at 4:46 pm
@Gail Combs
May 31, 2010 at 4:15 pm
Your link to “text” is broken and leads to domain.com. Would love to read what Schmidt and Mann have to say about what the sun did centuries ago (cough). Can you post the entire address or where you came across it?
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Sorry about that. I will do it again with out trying to get fancy.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20011206/
Reference
Shindell, D.T., G.A. Schmidt, M.E. Mann, D. Rind, and A. Waple 2001. Solar forcing of regional climate change during the Maunder Minimum. Science 294, 2149-2152.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2001/Shindell_etal_1.html
Ron: I found this:
Dr Serreze added: “I think Wieslaw is probably a little aggressive in his projections, simply because the luck of the draw means natural variability can kick in to give you a few years in which the ice loss is a little less than you’ve had in previous years. But Wieslaw is a smart guy and it would not surprise me if his projections came out.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm
Scientific debate is not as heated as blog debates. Interestingly Wieslaw Maslowski criticized Al Gore for over stating the case.
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/palin-vs-gore-climate-showdown/
You also have to be careful about just what “ice free” means. To researchers this does not mean zero ice, but media reports do not often make this clear.
“Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013’ …. Former US Vice President Al Gore cited Professor Maslowski’s analysis on Monday in his acceptance speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm
Steve,
I always find your characterization of the Arctic interesting. Most amusing is your graph of sea ice volume superimposed on the sea ice extent…wow, with the extent being the lowest in the past 8 years, based on IJIS/JAXA data, http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
And the volume you’ve projected not showing such similar decline, that means the ice that is there must be incredibly thick…off the charts thick…needless to say, I think you are highly mistaken, and if you’re still using the PIPS 2.0 data for your estimates, I am sure you are mistaken. It surprizes me that you would use this data when myself and others have gone to such lengths to show you why this data is suspect at best.
Oh well, another of your famous Sea Ice updates has come and gone, and now the 2010 melt season is really going to get started in earnest with the extent starting at the lowest in 8 years, we’ll see how your incredibly (and I say erroneously) high volume holds up as we head through the heart of the summer and head to the September low…
R. Gates
Nice FUD. Find me daily PIPS 3 maps and I will use them.
R. Gates
And BTW, if the PIPS 3 maps exist, they will show exactly the same thing.
As much authority was vested in the US Navy’s sea ice data in the last post on the subject, it might be worth posting an actual study from that institution.
http://soa.arcus.org/sites/soa.arcus.org/files/sessions/1-1-advances-understanding-arctic-system-components/pdf/1-1-7-maslowski-wieslaw.pdf
(5.6 MB download)
Their projection is a possible ice-free Arctic in fall by 2016. Strangely, they looked at a range of data sets over a long period, rather than picking out a couple of data points, but perhaps the Navy doesn’t know what it’s doing.
stevengoddard says:
May 31, 2010 at 9:21 pm
“Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013′ …. Former US Vice President Al Gore cited Professor Maslowski’s analysis on Monday in his acceptance speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm
But, as I recall, the Professor later stated that he never said that.
As you know, Gore makes stuff up.