By Steve Goddard
“In everyone’s life, there is a summer of ’42 + 65”
By now, we have all been bludgeoned senseless with talk of how Arctic Ice dramatically declined in 2007 – “much faster than the models.” We were told by the experts that this rapid decline would lead to an ice-free Arctic in 2008, 2013, 2030, etc. – not to mention 1969 and 1922. I don’t buy it. The idea of an ice-free Arctic seems implausible to me without a dramatic change in climate.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
Let’s start by looking at what really happened in 2007. The graph below (calculated from PIPS maps) shows the average ice thickness in the Arctic Basin for 2006 – 2008. Note that the average thickness of the ice in 2007 was fairly constant through the spring and summer. In fact, 2007 had the largest average summer thickness. This is solid evidence that the low extent in 2007 was primarily due to horizontal melt and compaction of the ice, rather than vertical thinning.
Given that there was no change in average thickness, in order for the ice to disappear it would have to melt horizontally. As you can see in the graph below, the volume loss came to a hard stop in early September. The sun is too low by September for significant melt to proceed. There just isn’t enough time in the Arctic summer for all the ice to melt.
2006 was highest in the DMI record and had 30% greater summer extent than 2007 – but the 2007 late summer ice was almost 20% thicker. 2007 was never in any danger of a complete meltdown.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
The video below shows the thickening of the ice in 2007 as it compressed horizontally from the wind.
The next problem with an “ice-free Arctic” is that summer temperatures north of 80N have not changed over the last 50 years. You can see that in the DMI graphs. If anything, recent years have had colder summers near the pole. High Arctic warming has occurred in other seasons, but not during the summer. The melt season is very short at the pole, and some summers have no melt.
GISS doesn’t have much data north of 75N, but the few data points they do have show little or no summer warming.
In 2008, the North Pole started with first year ice. Mark Serreze bet that this would lead to an ice-free pole. It didn’t happen, in spite of relatively warm temperatures at the pole.
In summary:
- An ice free pole could not occur without dramatic summer warming.
- There has been almost no summer warming in the high Arctic over the last 70 years.
- The melt season is too short to have an ice free Arctic. Roger Pielke Sr. did a study which shows that the length of the melt season has not changed significantly.
- 2008 started with first year ice at the pole. It was a warm summer at the pole, and the ice did not disappear. There will never be a summer which starts with younger ice than 2008.
- Linear projections of an ice-free pole are incorrect. It is much more likely that the slope will tail off asymptotically.
- I propose that 2008 ice volume was close to the theoretical minimum, until Arctic summer temperatures increase dramatically.
- Dress appropriately the high Arctic. It is too cold for a bikini.
(Everyone agrees that PIPS2 is the best available data source of historical ice thickness. Please don’t start another conversation about that topic.)
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stevengoddard says:
June 10, 2010 at 10:53 am
Julienne
I find your comments about thick ice in southerly locations interesting. The concern has been that the location of the thick ice retreated to the north in recent years. Now you are expressing concern that it has expanded back to the south. That seems a little inconsistent to me.
——————————-
Steve, the thick ice in recent years has been confined to north of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago. Of course this wasn’t the case say back in the 1980s, but it is true the last several years as the % of MYI ice in the Arctic Basin has dwindled.
What happened this winter was that the Beaufort Gyre expanded, leading to transport of some of that old, thick ice in the Canada Basin towards the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas and that lobe of old ice is not turning back northwards to replenish the MYI as would be the case under a typical Beaufort Gyre pattern.
Basically the strong negative AO pattern this winter resulted in old ice transported to southerly locations in the Beaufort and Chukchi (and in fact there hasn’t been old ice in the Chukchi for several years now). If that ice survives summer melt, then some replenishment will occur. If not, then the strong negative AO pattern this past winter will have actually resulted in even more depletion of the Arctic’s store of old, thick ice. We will just have to wait and see…
I just submitted a paper on this topic.
Steve, I should have also added that the lobe of old ice in the Chukchi and southern Beaufort Sea is rather diffuse, so that means when the first-year ice melts out around those MYI floes, they will be subject to more lateral and basal melt than if the old ice lobe was more compact.
Julienne
So what is your prognosis for summer weather in the Chukchi and southern Beaufort Sea?
sphaerica says:
June 10, 2010 at 6:26 am
but summer warming is pretty much capped by the fact that there’s just no way to get more than 24 hours of sunlight out of a summer Arctic day, and any GHG (or any other) effect is of course dwarfed by that volume of non-stop sunlight.
I’m interested in that statement – would you expand on it?
Hey Steve!
You seem to have touched a nerve or something! There are more trolls on here than the number of “aid workers” that have to sail slingshots to Gaza.
(O.K. Not that many trolls. I exaggerate. Just to make a point. And to wind ’em up.)
But they are really coming out of the woodwork today.
For myself, I couldn’t care a fiddler’s fart if the Arctic ice melts “soon” or not. It will refreeze anyway. And if it has been “700,000 years” since last it did (someone’s got some pretty brilliant records, obviously. I wouldn’t put any money on it not having melted in the last 150 years) then perhaps it is about time it did again.
Is it really supposed to justify spending Trillions of dollars on “renewable energy” (which incidentally doesn’t work) just because some ice melts?
Anne van der Bom says:
June 10, 2010 at 11:19 am
How did Steve Goddard arrive to his conclusions? By estimating ice volume from the observations. What does the PIOMASS model do? It estimates ice volume from the observations.
Now, since both are essentially doing the same thing, explain to me why Steven Goddard’s work is better than that of the Polar Science Center.
Who knows? We shall see.
For those who haven’t read my recent articles, the numbers are calculated by doing a numerical integration of ice thickness across all pixels in PIPS images. There is no “estimation” going on. If the Navy images are correct, then my numbers are correct.
Julienne says:
“Even so, the Arctic Ocean saw more depletion of the oldest ice types out of the Arctic Basin this past winter (export out of Fram Strait was normal), so it is likely that the ice volume (and hence ice thickness) remain anomalously low.”
Concerning the above.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20091005_Figure5.png
Tim Clark says:
June 10, 2010 at 11:15 am
Ahh, I sure notice the old bait and switch. First you use this site to debate;
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv
Then switch to this site to make an unrelated point;
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
without commenting on the data provided.
Ahh, did I neglect to comment on the obvious for your benefit ?
Both IARC-JAXA and NSIDC show the most recent Arctic sea ice extent substantially below the value for the same date in 2007. And both IARC-JAXA and NSIDC data are widely quoted on WUWT.
That would make the Norwegian Nansen site the odd man out. Perhaps you could find some other site which confirms that 2010 is higher than both 2007 and 2008 for this date – kind of like I just did, confirming that 2010 was less than 2007.
Good luck with that.
Try not to get “alarmed” by what you find.
Tim Clark says:June 10, 2010 at 11:15 am
Ahh, I sure notice the old bait and switch. First you use this site to debate;
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv
Then switch to this site to make an unrelated point;
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
without commenting on the data provided.
Anu says:June 10, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Ahh, did I neglect to comment on the obvious for your benefit ?
Both IARC-JAXA and NSIDC show the most recent Arctic sea ice extent substantially below the value for the same date in 2007. And both IARC-JAXA and NSIDC data are widely quoted on WUWT.
That would make the Norwegian Nansen site the odd man out. Perhaps you could find some other site which confirms that 2010 is higher than both 2007 and 2008 for this date – kind of like I just did, confirming that 2010 was less than 2007.
Good luck with that.
Try not to get “alarmed” by what you find.
And what do your magical sites say about this (repeated for your benefit):
To refute your second point, the data from this site illustrates that 2009 was above the “average” extent and area for a period, then “fell through the floor” to ~1 mil. sq km above 2007′s minimum. Not an insignificant recovery.
Now that’s alarmingly inconvenient!
And I prefer the word contrarian. Odd has such unrefined connotation.
Julienne says:
June 10, 2010 at 11:54 am
Why do you think it is a bad thing to lose old ice? I have to periodically throw out old ice from my ice cube maker because it tastes bad. I prefer fresh, new ice.
And is it the old ice that is sinking? (See new article from this WUWT site). I would be upset if I put some old ice in my drink and it sank to the bottom.
The fact that ice concentration is a key variable for PIPS, but is assumed to be a constant (equal to 1?) under Steve Goddard’s method of deriving estimates from PIPS website images, obviously could lead to substantial divergence. As several writers have suggested, perhaps even to opposite conclusions.
But this hypothesis should be easy to test. If Steve will publish the data resulting from his method, anyone can check that against thesr published PIPS volume estimates.
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/content_images/09_Ocean_Posey.pdf
Total Central Arctic Ice Volume x 10^9 m^3
year,maxmonth,maxvalue,minmoth,minvalue
2000,May,0.90,Sep,0.59
2001,May,0.93,Sep,0.69
2002,May,0.99,Sep,0.75
2003,Apr,0.95,Sep,0.58
2004,May,0.91,Sep,0.58
2005,Apr,0.93,Sep,0.62
2006,May,0.85,Sep,0.52
2007,May,0.86,Sep,0.49
2008,Mar,0.67,Sep,0.38
Z says:
June 10, 2010 at 12:58 pm
sphaerica says:
June 10, 2010 at 6:26 am
Because of the tilt of the earth, the Arctic Circle gets sunlight 24/7 for a while around the summer solstice. Obviously, under such circumstances, the strength of the sun’s rays are locally a more powerful radiative force than greenhouse gases. If we suddenly had two suns, one on each side of the planet, giving 24/7 sunlight, then it’s clear that the planet would warm immensely. In such a scenario, I suspect GHGs would be relatively inconsequential.
In the case of the Arctic, this is what it experiences every summer, 24 hours of daylight. The point I was making is that it will be a long, long time before you see the Arctic get much warmer in the summer, no matter how many GHGs you add, because the radiative strength of 24 hours of sunlight is far beyond what even a tripling of CO2 would provide.
Winter, spring and fall are another matter, however, and at those times the effects of GHGs are quite noticeable, as can be seen by following the link in the OP to the seasonal graphs of Arctic temperatures. These increases in temperatures as a result of GHGs will, when temperatures get above freezing, increase the pace of ice melt, and could help to make the melt season longer.
The effects of GHGs are always most important at night (when the sun is gone) and in winter (when the days are short), and so the direct effects of the sun are then at their minimum… just like you put on a jacket or heavier coat at night, versus the daytime. Greenhouse gases are, after all, just like a coat or blanket, trapping heat that would otherwise escape into space.
Without a blanket, you get cold at night. With a blanket, you stay warm. In the daytime, you don’t really notice the difference because of the sun.
Z says:
June 10, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Because of the tilt of the earth, the Arctic Circle gets sunlight 24/7 for a while around the summer solstice, just as it gets no sun during the winter solstice, which causes arctic ice to form. Obviously, with 24 hours of daylight, the strength of the sun’s rays are locally a more powerful radiative force than greenhouse gases. If we suddenly had two suns, one on each side of the planet, giving 24/7 sunlight, then it’s clear that the planet would warm immensely. In such a scenario, I suspect GHGs would be relatively inconsequential.
In the case of the Arctic, this is what it experiences every summer, 24 hours of daylight. The point I was making is that it will be a long, long time before you see the Arctic get much warmer in the summer, no matter how many GHGs you add, because the radiative strength of 24 hours of sunlight is far beyond what even a tripling of CO2 would provide.
Winter, spring and fall are another matter, however, and at those times the effects of GHGs are quite noticeable, as can be seen by following the link in the OP to the seasonal graphs of Arctic temperatures. These increases in temperatures as a result of GHGs will, when temperatures get above freezing, increase the pace of ice melt, and could help to make the melt season longer.
The effects of GHGs are always most important at night (when the sun is gone) and so in winter (when the days are short and nights are longer), when the direct effects of the sun are then at their minimum… just like you put on a jacket or heavier coat at night, versus the daytime. Greenhouse gases are, after all, just like a coat or blanket, trapping heat that would otherwise escape into space.
Without a blanket, you get cold at night. With a blanket, you stay warm. In the daytime, you don’t really notice the difference because of the sun.
Z says:
June 10, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Because of the tilt of the earth, the Arctic Circle gets sunlight 24/7 for a while around the summer solstice, just as it gets no sun during the winter solstice, which causes arctic ice to form. Obviously, with 24 hours of daylight, the strength of the sun’s rays are locally a more powerful radiative force than greenhouse gases. If we suddenly had two suns, one on each side of the planet, giving 24/7 sunlight, then it’s clear that the planet would warm immensely. In such a scenario, I suspect GHGs would be relatively inconsequential.
In the case of the Arctic, this is what it experiences every summer, 24 hours of daylight. The point I was making is that it will be a long, long time before you see the Arctic get much warmer in the summer, no matter how many GHGs you add, because the radiative strength of 24 hours of sunlight is far beyond what even a tripling of CO2 would provide.
Winter, spring and fall are another matter, however, and at those times the effects of GHGs are quite noticeable, as can be seen by following the link in the OP to the seasonal graphs of Arctic temperatures. These increases in temperatures as a result of GHGs will, when temperatures get above freezing, increase the pace of ice melt, and could help to make the melt season longer.
The effects of GHGs are always most important at night (when the sun is gone) and so in winter (when the days are short and nights are longer), when the direct effects of the sun are then at their minimum… just like you put on a jacket or heavier coat at night, versus the daytime. Greenhouse gases are, after all, just like a coat or blanket, trapping heat that would otherwise escape into space.
Without a blanket, you get cold at night. With a blanket, you stay warm. In the daytime, you don’t really notice the difference because of the sun.
Z says:
June 10, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Because of the tilt of the earth, the Arctic Circle gets sunlight 24/7 for a while around the summer solstice, just as it gets no sun during the winter solstice, which causes arctic ice to form. Obviously, with 24 hours of daylight, the strength of the sun’s rays are locally a more powerful radiative force than greenhouse gases.
The point I was making is that it will be a long, long time before you see the Arctic get much warmer in the summer, no matter how many GHGs you add, because the radiative strength of 24 hours of sunlight is far beyond what even a tripling of CO2 would provide.
Winter, spring and fall are another matter. At those times the effects of GHGs are quite noticeable, as can be seen by following the link in the OP to the seasonal graphs of Arctic temperatures. These increases in temperatures will increase the pace of ice melt and could help to make the melt season longer.
The effects of GHGs are always most important at night (when the sun is gone) and so in winter (when nights are longer), when the direct effects of the sun are then at their minimum… just like you put on a jacket or heavier coat at night, versus the daytime. Greenhouse gases are, after all, just like a coat or blanket, trapping heat that would otherwise escape into space.
Without a blanket, you get cold at night. With a blanket, you stay warm. In the daytime, you don’t really notice the difference because of the sun.
Z says:
June 10, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Because of the tilt of the earth, the Arctic Circle gets sunlight 24/7 for a while around the summer solstice, just as it gets no sun during the winter solstice, which causes arctic ice to form. Obviously, with 24 hours of daylight, the strength of the sun’s rays are locally a more powerful radiative force than greenhouse gases.
The point I was making is that it will be a long, long time before you see the Arctic get much warmer in the summer, no matter how many GHGs you add, because the radiative strength of 24 hours of sunlight is far beyond what even a tripling of CO2 would provide.
Winter, spring and fall are another matter. At those times the effects of GHGs are quite noticeable, as can be seen by following the link in the OP to the seasonal graphs of Arctic temperatures. These increases in temperatures will increase the pace of ice melt and could help to make the melt season longer.
The effects of GHGs are always most important at night (when the sun is gone) and so in winter (when nights are longer), when the direct effects of the sun are then at their minimum… just like you put on a jacket or heavier coat at night, versus the daytime. Greenhouse gases are, after all, just like a coat or blanket, trapping heat that would otherwise escape into space.
Without a blanket, you get cold at night. With a blanket, you stay warm. In the daytime, you don’t really notice the difference because of the sun.
Sphaerica, still doing that yeoman work on behalf of RealClimate, I see.
Carry on.
Gneiss
The Posey data you presented is described as “Central Arctic.” I suspect that he is measuring in a smaller area than me, so you can’t do an apples to apples comparison with my data. He is looking at a smaller region.
Considering the entire Arctic, there was clearly a lot more ice in May, 2006 than May 2007 which disagrees with his numbers. The numbers I am presenting here are accurate representations of the maps. You obviously can’t expect to get the same numbers when measuring different regions.
Re: Smokey on June 10, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Now look what you did. You made sphaerica mad and he/she/it broke wordpress.
Down for over three hours on a rare night when I could be online during TV primetime, and no WUWT. Dang near blew a blood vessel over it.
😉
stevengoddard says:
June 10, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Gneiss
The Posey data you presented is described as “Central Arctic.” I suspect that he is measuring in a smaller area than me, so you can’t do an apples to apples comparison with my data. He is looking at a smaller region.
On the off-chance that you might want to check out how PIP actually calculates volume she’s Pamela Posey.
Tim Clark says:
June 10, 2010 at 2:14 pm
I see. You couldn’t find any.
Given that their 2008 curve is obviously the result of faulty data/processing, no respectable organization is going to claim “hey, we got the same results !”. Drastic drops for “unfiltered 2010” also hurt their credibility:
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
And to prove I don’t always disagree with Steven Goddard:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/04/500000-km2-discrepancy-between-nsidc-and-norsex/
“NORSEX has a history of making adjustments in mid-season, so my sense is that NSIDC is probably more accurate.”
Also, Phil. says: May 4, 2010 at 11:20 am had an interesting comment on NORSEX’s problem.
The fact remains, there has been no “recovery” of Arctic sea ice extent from 2007 as of June 10. Here’s another research group that agrees:
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_n.png
I’m sure “Amino Acids in Meteorites’ appreciates your odd efforts on his behalf.
Not that you accomplished anything, but that you tried.
( Original post: Anu says: June 10, 2010 at 8:05 am )
Tim Clark says:
June 10, 2010 at 9:37 am
CO2 says: June 10, 2010 at 7:34 am
” told by the experts”, which experts and how many. “would lead to an ice-free Arctic “, isn’t this usually preceeded with the proviso “if this trend continues”. Projections using “if” are not claims.
“How about the words potential, maybe, possibly, probable, etc. How many times are these words, including “if”, used in the 2007 IPCC novel? But you believe that now, don’t you. Hmmmm.”
What’s your purpose of belittling the 2007 IPCC Report? As Roger Whittacker sang, “No I don’t believe in if any more, it’s an illusion” Use the word “if” anytime you like, but don’t drop it when used by someone in order to deceive, by suggesting it is a claim. ( As in “the Arctic will be ice free in 2013 “IF”…)I see the use of “if” for what it is, a qualifier that is qualified. All the words you cited are valid, provided they are not taken out of context.
Jean Meeus says:
June 10, 2010 at 11:24 am
Anne van der Bom refers to an up-to-date chart of sea ice volume anomaly. However:”
(1) that graph doesn’t show what happened *before* 1980. What was the sea ice volume during the MWP ?
Yes we do.
You don’t have to know everything to know something. We don’t have to know about every economic crisis that happened in the past to know what caused the current crisis.
(2) There is no proof that the decrease of polar sea ice is due to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
‘Proof’ only exists in mathematics. All other fields of science must deal with the uncertainties of the real world. So there is no proof that smoking causes cancer. Let me ask you: how much certainty do you seek? 80%? 95? 99%?
(3) And, anyway, what is the inconvenient of less polar ice? of ice-free Arctic?
Ah, the safety catch. If my argumentation fails, then I can always say that it didn’t matter anyway.
Tim Clark says:
June 10, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Anne van der Bom says:
June 10, 2010 at 11:19 am
[…]
Who knows? We shall see.
Read here how the model works. Seems to me that it is just a little bit more sophisticated then counting pixels what Steven Goddard is essentially doing.