By Steve Goddard
Over the last three years, Arctic Ice has gained significantly in thickness. The graph above was generated by image processing and analysis of PIPS maps, and shows the thickness histogram for June 1 of each year since 2007.
The blue line represents 2008, and the most abundant ice that year was less than 1.5 metres thick. That thin ice was famously described by NSIDC as “rotten ice.” In 2009 (red) the most common ice had increased to more than 2.0 metres, and by 2010 (orange) the most common ice had increased to in excess of 2.75 metres thick.
We have seen a steady year over year thickening of the ice since the 2007 melt season. Thinner ice is more likely to melt during the summer, so the prognosis for a big melt looks much less likely than either of the previous two summers. More than 70% of the ice this year is thicker than 2.25 metres thick. By contrast, more than half of the ice was thinner than 2.0 metres in 2008.
So why did 2008 start out with so little thick ice? Because during the summer of 2007 much of the ice melted or was compressed by the wind. During the winter of 2007-2008, much of the remaining thick ice blew out into the North Atlantic and melted. So by the time that summer 2008 arrived, there was very little ice left besides rotten, thin ice. Which led to Mark Serreze’ famous “ice free North Pole bet.”
Can we find another year with similar ice distribution as 2010? I can see Russian ice in my Windows. Note in the graph below that 2010 is very similar to 2006.
2006 on the left. 2010 on the right.
2006 had the highest minimum (and smallest maximum) in the DMI record. Like 2010, the ice was compressed and thick in 2006.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_2010.png
Conclusion : Should we expect a nice recovery this summer due to the thicker ice? You bet ya. Even if all the ice less than 2.5 metres thick melted this summer, we would still see a record high minimum in the DMI charts.
Mark Serreze has a different take for 2010:
“Could we break another record this year? I think it’s quite possible,” said Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.
Bookmark this post for reference in September.
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“The report of my death was an exaggeration”
– Mark Twain
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Addendum By Steve Goddard 6/3/10:
Anyone betting on the minimum extent needs to recognize that summer weather can dramatically effect the behaviour of the ice. The fact that the ice is thicker now is no guarantee that it won’t shrink substantially if the summer turns out to be very warm, windy or sunny. Joe Bastardi believes that it will be a warm summer in the Arctic. I’m not a weather forecaster and won’t make any weather predictions.
Mike says:
June 3, 2010 at 5:50 pm
…..The Stern report projected a 20% loss in global GDP. You can dismiss all this as a vast conspiracy, but you cannot find a major scientific body that backs your claim.
__________________________________________________________________________
Mike, You will not find many here who respect the Stern report
If you truly care for the environment as most of us do (I was a Greenpeace and WWF member at one time) then I suggest you take a long hard look at Maurice Strong , Father of the environment and global warming movement.
You can start with Maurice Strong and Radio for Peace International:
http://www.w4uvh.net/dxldtd3g.html
So where does Maurice Strong stand as a CO2 emitter? If you thought Al Gore was bad, Strong has him topped by a mile as the biggest source of CO2 emissions in Canada!
…Ontario Hydro, an industrial concern, headed by Earth Summit secretary general Maurice Strong, which is the biggest source of CO2 emissions in Canada. This corporation is currently selling nuclear reactors to Argentina and Chile…. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27/061.html
I do not know about you but I dislike hypocrites who are trying to steal from me and reduce me to the level of a serf, all the while telling me it is for “my own good” I thought we out grew the middle ages.
For we are the worms of the earth
Against the lions of might.
All of our days we are tied to the land,
While they hunt and they feast and they fight.
We give our crops and our homes and our lives
And the clerics tell us this is right.
http://www-cs.canisius.edu/~salley/SCA/Bardbook/worms.earth.html
Roger Knights says:
June 3, 2010 at 8:46 pm
I think I’ll join you and put 3 or 4 trades on Arctic recovery this September.
Good for you. (Mind you, it’ll take awhile before your account is “charged,” because you have to send a check by mail (a $1 stamp to Dublin) and then wait 10 days for it to clear.)
Excuse my ignorance, but who posts as Joe at Climate Progress?
He has a real attitude problem, not to mention a definite inferiority fear about WUWT.
A second question, if I may? What is causing the steeper decline in ice extent during May of this year?
REPLY: 1st question, that’s Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress. Second, I’ll defer your question to Steve Goddard. – Anthony
Your readers may be interested in the following documents
http://rogerfromnewzealand.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/1974iceagereport.pdf
http://rogerfromnewzealand.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/washington-post-1922.jpg
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
Policyguy
A lot of thin ice formed late in the season in the Barents Sea. It got pushed back rapidly in April, causing a “steep” drop in extent.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.6.html
It is important to realize that a wide extent in spring often means a rapid summer melt, because the ice is thinner. This year the ice is very compact, which most likely means a slower summer melt.
Steve,
As I mentioned, your calculations are not giving the volume of the ice, as they do not take into account the ice concentration. You calculate:
VolumeGoddard = Sum(PixelArea x PixelThickness)
However, such numbers do not give good agreement with the Navy’s published volumes – in fact giving a negative correlation of -0.6.
I’ve had a chance now to derive the correct numbers, that is:
VolumePIPS = Sum(PixelArea x PixelThickness x PixelConcentration)
This did not need sophisticated software on a supercomputer, but free software, ImageJ, on my laptop, so anyone should be able to do these calculations.
The method is straightforward. First download the appropriate PIS thickness and concentration maps for the date. The next step is to convert the images to hue, saturation and brightness. The quantitative information is on the hue* of the images, while the saturation gives the ice area. Hence for each image perform an AND operation with the hue and a binary of the saturation values. This gives an image of just the ice area thickness and concentration. Finally multiply the two processed images of thickness and concentration together to get a map of the ice volumes.
Here are the results for the minimum of 2007:
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/4554/icecalcualtion.png
The calculation VolumePIPS on the histogram gives the ice volume. Comparing my values to published values at http://www.nrl.navy.mil/content_images/09_Ocean_Posey.pdf
gives a correlation coefficient of 0.99999, so I’m pretty confident that this is how the PIPS volumes should be calculated.
These PIPS volumes give rather a different history to the arctic ice volume than you present. In fact both the 2008 and 2009 minimums had less volume than 2007. Hardly a recovery.
I hope this indicates the importance of understanding the numbers you are calculating before leaping to the conclusions that PIPS undermines the PIOMAS analysis and shows a multiyear recovery in ice volumes.
*The PIPS images even cleverly put the hue into the black grid of the maps, so they disappear in once the image is transformed from RGB to HSV.
The plot of the distribution of ice thickness for the years 2008, 2009 and 21010 bear no resemblance to the PIPs maps to which they purportedly represent. If one looks at them it is clear that in 2008 there was thicker ice than in 2010. So how were the misleading plots constructed??
Thank you Anthony and Steven,
I noticed that Joe Romm writes extensively on that site, as if it were his own. Very opinionated, as if it is his job to interpret current events in the appropriate political context.
Also, Steven, I checked your link to the Bearing Sea ice extent and see your point.
Excuse me, Barents Sea.
Well, after 158 comments, finally someone shows that Steve Goddard’s analysis has an obvious mistake…. he didn’t use ice concentration in his calculation. This is a very elementary and basic mistake by Mr. Goddard.
Will we see a post admitting the error and correcting the analysis? Not on WUWT…. Mr. Goddard already has put up his latest version of Arctic ice propaganda.
This site has a serious credibility issue.
Tom, thank you for providing the correct method.
A breath of fresh air.
I know many of you have observed that AMSR data shows 2010 extent dipping below the past several years. The arctic-roos people still publish graphs using only the SSMI data which shows something different.
Fine. That all made sense, until I looked at the following artic-roos page on which they compare the AMSR and SSMI data, and definitively show that SSMI is trending BELOW AMSR not the other way around.
This is the graph motivating this inquiry:
http://arctic-roos.org/forecasting-services/topaz/forecast_images/mersea_topaz_ice_ext_2010small.png