WUWT Arctic Sea Ice News #9

I guess that means you are estimating around 5.7 to 5.9 x10 ^6 km2 in extent then Steve?
Jaxa seems to have got stuck on the website again. Also, quite a few clear days on the northpole webcam this year compared to last year I seem to recall, just as an aside.
Andy

Looks like ice maps are now much more detailed. See this Loeb’s slide set:
http://science.larc.nasa.gov/ceres/STM/2003-10/pdf/Loeb.pdf
Slide 9:
“SSF ED1A used the NSIDC map incorrectly: It assumed that if snow/sea-ice was
present, it covered 100% of the area.
SSF ED2A will correct this problem: ED2A will account for fractional seaice.”
Now the question is: when this change did happen? Has something changed this year with JAXA and Cryosphere?
That are the datasets JAXA and Cryosphere are now using to calculate sea ice cover?

Facinating Steve! You of course know how much I completely disagree with your analysis, and believe that this years summer minimum will be just slightly more than the low seen in 2007, and I shall have a longer response later (as this is my favorite topic, as you know), but let’s look at just one of your faulty points of analysis. You claimed that you could not see the larger area of lower concentration in the Beaufort Sea as shown in the higher resolution UIUC maps. You indicated that you think the lower res map was more accurate, and the maybe even the higher res map was seeing clouds, or other inaccuracies. You seemed to gather all of this from a low res satelite image. Well, I would suggest that you, and the other readers take a look at this very high res image of the Beaufort sea:
http://ice-map.appspot.com/?map=Arc&sat=ter&lvl=7&lat=74.321318&lon=-140.843843&yir=2010&day=165
Now, oddlly, the trained and even untrained eye can clearly sea the ice is breaking up in a pattern extending outward that oddly matches the pattern of yellow, green, and blue shown in the higher res UIUC concentration map– not so oddly actually, as that concentration map is quite accurate, as the close up analysis of the high res pic shows. The concentration and extent are falling in the Beaufort Sea already this early in the melt season, as this accurate graph clearly shows:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.11.html
and according to one PIOMAS based model, we’re going to see a very big melt continue in this region this summer:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/IDAO/seasonal_outlook.html
More importantly, you’re absolutely dead wrong in discounting the early melt in both the Beaufort Sea, the Barants Sea, and the Kara Sea, as these have a much higher correlation to the condition of the sea ice later in the season than anything you’ve mentioned so far and all three are well below their 30 mean for this time of year, so early in the melt season. I strongly suggest that you and your readers read Ron Lindsay’s 2010 Arctic Sea Ice Analysis here, where he makes a great analysis of why the early season ice in these regions is so closely correlated with the summer minimum:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/lindsay/prediction.html
Dr. Lindsay’s prediction is also based on PIOMAS, but a little different slant (as you’ll see) from Dr. Zhang’s.
I have much more to say about your update, but I think this provides an early quick rebuttal. But as always, a nicely put together post and one that I couldn’t disagree with more!

I am in agreement still. I believe 2010 minimum will be close to 2006. Nothing about this year would indicate to me (yet) that we will see a dramatic summer ablation unless some odd winds come from somewhere.

R. Gates
In a few weeks there won’t be any need to speculate about the accuracy of my predictions ;^)

I recommend you view the lecture by David Barber at the recent IPY conference in Oslo
http://video.hint.no/mmt201v10/osc/?vid=55
Perhaps you will then be less sanguine.

I’d make a friendly wager with Mr. Gates regarding the minimum this year. I do not believe it will be close to the 2007 mark. I’ll
let him decide what “slightly more” than 2007 actually means and we can then set the
terms of the wager.

While Steve continues to show his miscalculated ice thicknesses, here is plot of the ice thickness, volume and area correctly derived from the PIPS 2.0 data:
http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/6466/pipshistorybig.png
The relationship between thickness and volume is worth examination. Within a few days we should expect to see the annual sudden drop in thickness. If this drop is precipitous, like on 2008, we would be heading for a low minimum volume. If the drop comes to an abrupt halt as in 2007 that might indicate a low ice extent. We should know which in just a week or two.

Regarding sanguinity, according to JAXA’s data, June is thus far having the fastest decline of the years that they display. It should be noted that ice extent has dropped below the value it had at 26 November last year, so not all of this decline has been melt of ice only a month or two old. (There is nothing that unusual in it reaching the 26 November mark by around this date – in both 2005 and 2006, this occurred. For 2007, 2008 and 2009, thing were a week or two later).

stevengoddard,
I would also be wary of a comparison that showed current ice in a healthier state now than it was 30 years ago. While it is possible that ice is recovering (although I do not think that it is) the proposition that it *has recovered* does not pass the smell test. The cryosphere today comparison images have problems, in that they are never the same as the image for the day that is on the main page – most of the detail is wiped out, as you have seen (due to differences in resolution, I guess).

R Gates is counting his chickens a little too early I fear, confusing ablation and current led break up with melting and ignoring mass for extent.
There are some early signs that point to a big melt and signs that point to an average melt, a confusing picture where the real outcome is still a couple of months away and we shall see what we shall see when we see it.
I certainly understand his eagerness to see what he wants to see, we all do that but in a month we should see a clearer picture so staking out a determined position at the moment is a little premature.

Cassandra King,
Is stevengoddard being a little premature, too? 😉

Has anyone heard at WUWT of the Southern Hemisphere?
(I believe AW is there right now).
CT has Nth Hemp sea-ice 1.1 million km^2 below averge.
CT has Sth Semp sea-ice 1.3 million km^2 ABOVE average.
So it appear world-wide sea-ice is above average.

It is said that everything you need to know about life, you learn in Kindergarten.
My compliments to Steven Goddard and R Gates for having learned to play so well together.
It is always a pleasure when intelligent people disagree while retaining thier mutual respect.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)

Perhaps it would be interesting if you would address the Plenary Lecture by Dr. David Barber at the Polar Science conference in Oslo. http://video.hint.no/mmt201v10/osc/?vid=55
Dr. Barber’s points cannot easily be refuted using fancy statistical tricks or graphical analysis. Good luck with this one. One note, do not attack Dr. Barber’s credibility, there is no one on this blog who has more expertise than him on this subject and I think even Goddard and Watts would have to confirm that. Furthermore, Dr. Barber wasn’t always a climate change proponent, he was originally a skeptic but finally he saw the truth.

Jim,
discussing antarctic sea-ice is a moot point. see http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm
why is Antarctic sea ice increasing? There are several contributing factors. One is the drop in ozone levels over Antarctica. The hole in the ozone layer above the South Pole has caused cooling in the stratosphere (Gillet 2003). This strengthens the cyclonic winds that circle the Antarctic continent (Thompson 2002). The wind pushes sea ice around, creating areas of open water known as polynyas. More polynyas lead to increased sea ice production (Turner 2009).
Another contributor is changes in ocean circulation. The Southern Ocean consists of a layer of cold water near the surface and a layer of warmer water below. Water from the warmer layer rises up to the surface, melting sea ice. However, as air temperatures warm, the amount of rain and snowfall also increases. This freshens the surface waters, leading to a surface layer less dense than the saltier, warmer water below. The layers become more stratified and mix less. Less heat is transported upwards from the deeper, warmer layer. Hence less sea ice is melted (Zhang 2007).

BillD
“Rotten multi-year ice.” That is a new term. Where can I find a boat that cruises through four metre thick ice? Too bad the Titanic didn’t have that technology.

Przemysław
Measured temperatures near the pole have been below freezing.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/PAWS_atmos_recent.html

Steve,
This is slightly off topic yet may also have some contributing value.
Saskatchewan and Manitoba are close to the Arctic. Usually in the past they have had severe draughts yet this year, the basin is full of water. This is like 4 U.S. States growing fields underwater. This is flat land that grows mostly grains. The province beside it, Alberta was still recieving snow storms at the end of May.

Steve from Rockwood
Does ice melt faster at -30C or -33C?
Is there some reason why a 3C temperature anomaly in January in the Arctic is relevant to forecasting summer extent?

Don B,
Amundsen completed a three-year voyage after THREE winters trapped in ICE. Although his chosen east–west route, via the Rae Strait, contained young ice and thus was navigable, some of the waterways were extremely shallow (3 feet, or 1 meter, deep) making the route commercially impractical. Henry Larsen took 27 months the first time in an ice fortified schooner.
On May 19, 2007, a French sailor, Sébastien Roubinet, and one other crew member left Anchorage, Alaska, in Babouche, a 7.5 m (25 ft) ice catamaran. The goal was to navigate west to east through the Northwest Passage by sail only. Following a journey of more than 7,200 km (4,474 mi), Roubinet reached Greenland on September 9, 2007, thereby completing the first Northwest Passage voyage made without engine in one season.
Slight difference in the amount of open water between the two eh? Ice-forified schooner and no engine catamaran…

I find it cheering news that so many here are convinced of the expertise of the esteemed Dr. David Barber, and are so highly recommending his presentation. After all, he decisively demonstrated the inaccuracies of satellites, specifically with their identifying as thick multi-year ice what was in reality rotten thin ice.
Thus if you accept that he is indeed an esteemed expert on Arctic sea ice, you logically should also accept that the satellite data is best not used when discussing Arctic sea ice as it has been decisively shown to be flawed and unreliable.
Also, based on the expertise of the esteemed Dr. Barber, one must logically conclude that Steven Goddard is likely correct about the “phantom thin ice” of the UIUC images, as both he and the esteemed Dr. Barber are in agreement that the satellites do get it wrong.
Cheering news indeed.

Three months until ice reaches minimum. Time goes by fast.

In more important news, New Zealand scored with 30 seconds left to tie Slovakia 1-1. Something which actually affects people’s lives.

stevengoddard says:
June 15, 2010 at 5:11 am
Note how the low-concentration ice healed up between June 10 and June 13. Indicates a likely problem with the maps.
Thanks for pointing these things out. Some will say we’re not supposed to be focusing on Arctic ice like this, and I do see why they say it. But Al Gore has forecast that Arctic ice could be gone in summer of 2013 (he is now hedging his bets on that) and we’ve been told, and are still being told, Arctic ice is in a ‘death spiral’. But it looks like there is no alarming loss of ice happening. It looks like everything that is happening is within normal variation.

@BillD:
Did Professor David Barber try cruising at high speed through the ice in 1979 as well? Or in 2001? 2009? Or did he just try this last year, thinking that this must be unusual?
For this method to have any validity whatsoever, he should made this trip every year over a 20-year period, with the same speed, same ship, following the same route.
And even then, this doesn’t seem like a very scientific method to me: cruising at high speed through “rotten” ice one year, and drawing sweeping conclusions about the state of the arctic from this little trip.

I wonder how much more evidence some will need before they agree the PIOMAS graph cannot be right?

stevengoddard says:
June 15, 2010 at 6:23 am
In more important news, New Zealand scored with 30 seconds left to tie Slovakia 1-1. Something which actually affects people’s lives.
I think the blaring of those obnoxious horns is affecting people’s lives more. I have read there has been a run on ear plugs in the stores there.

Great football comment from the Guardian Web Site. Brazil and Portugal both have matches this morning.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/video/2010/jun/15/vuvuzela-an-idiots-guide?showallcomments=true#CommentKey:b6436cee-cda7-4c47-900c-ac551e180df1

The horrible drone of the vuvuzelas is sucking the life out of this world cup, ruining any atmosphere and replacing it will some dull, tiresome dirge that only a simpleton could seriously defend. It leaves the games with a weird, disconnected atmosphere, taking away any other crowd noise, and giving the effect that you are watching a training match near a very angry wasp nest. . It might be part of the South Africans fans culture, but that does not stop it being utterly shit and intolerable for the majority of viewers. So far this world cup has been the worst I can remember. The games have been very poor, and the atmosphere just terrible. The vuvuzelas need to be silenced.

Rotting ice can only come from a warming earth. But temperatures have decreased slightly since 2001. If you wanted to include El Nino warmth then there has been cooling since 1998.
Ice is ‘rotting’ in a cooling earth??

I’ll have to ask my brother if the Canadian military has been doing any coring as they are right there on Baffin’s northern shores. If the rumours are true, then CF presence in the High arctic are going to once again be commonplace as they are withdrawn from Afghanistan. There’ll be an opportunity for satellite data and models to be tested against actual measurements taken by real live humans without an agenda outside that of Canadian sovereignty.

Steven Goddard says:
“Does ice melt faster at -30C or -33C? Is there some reason why a 3C temperature anomaly in January in the Arctic is relevant to forecasting summer extent?”
I would turn it around and ask you does ice grow faster at -33C or -30C (I don’t know the answer myself but I assume colder temps lead to faster ice growth). If ice “grows” more slowly in the winter because of higher than expected surface temperatures it seems reasonable to assume there is less ice when it starts melting in the summer.

R Gates suggests a 4.5 million sq KM minimum this year?
I suggest we place bets on the minumum now, perhaps a widget on the side to vote for our favoured minimum, say from 6.5 down to 4.0?
My guess as a lay person is 5.8 million sq KM although making estimates now with any sort of determination could well make the person doing the guessing look quite foolish.
Perhaps a prize of a signed copy of Al gores new book for first prize and two copies for second place?

Julienne
As always, thank you for the very helpful explanations!

stevengoddard says:
June 15, 2010 at 4:48 am
BillD
“Rotten multi-year ice.” That is a new term. Where can I find a boat that cruises through four metre thick ice? Too bad the Titanic didn’t have that technology.
Steve;
Anyone who wants to understand what’s happening with the arctic sea ice should probably look at Dr. Barber’s presentation. My undertanding is that the multi-year sea ice is melting from below and breaking into chunks that ships can readily go through. Barber and his team and the ships crew were also very surprised to see swells penetrating miles into what was considered multiyear ice. This means that there were numerous gaps in this long term ice. His presentation is on the order of 40 minutes,with many photos and diagrams as well as graphs of data and I only watched it once. The point is that their ship was only supposed to be able to penetrate solid ice < 2 m thick, but there readily sailed through ice that was 4 m or more thick because it was broken into chunks. Presumably, the icebergs that the Titanic ran into were much more substantial than last year's sea ice. Since the ship's crew and a scientists with about 30 years of experience in the arctic were very suprised by the condition of the "multiyear ice", one would assume that the conditions that they observed were not routine. Barber and his graduate students are working on journal publications, but we need to wait for the peer-reviewed works.

Joe Lalonde says:
June 15, 2010 at 5:01 am

Steve,
This is slightly off topic yet may also have some contributing value.
Saskatchewan and Manitoba are close to the Arctic. Usually in the past they have had severe draughts yet this year, the basin is full of water. This is like 4 U.S. States growing fields underwater. This is flat land that grows mostly grains. The province beside it, Alberta was still recieving snow storms at the end of May.

No, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are not close to the Arctic, especially not any of the parts that actually see agriculture. And Alberta’s little skiffs of snow toward the end of May are not in any way unusual. Annoying, yes, but not unusual.
Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are all part of the zone that saw lots of precip and cooler overall temps as a result of El Nino, which is also not unusual. In fact, we (I’m in Alberta) look forward to the crappiest, coldest weather in the rest of the continent, that’s when we get the best weather (warmer is better… no matter what some people think).

Peter Miller says:
June 15, 2010 at 8:35 am
Julienne
You sound like you may know what you are talking about.
Which is better for estimating ice volumes and thicknesses – PIOMAS or PIPs2 (or 3 or 4)? Both use defense satellites to gather their basic data – yet once ‘interpreted’ both produce very different results. Or is this just a simple case of comparing apples with oranges?
———————–
Peter, since I haven’t actually done the comparisons between the two models (and validated them with observations of ice thickness) I can’t say for sure which one is better. I know PIOMAS was validated from 2003-2007 using ICESat ice thickness fields as well as sea ice concentrations from SSM/I and at least during those years, the model performed well. I don’t know what years/data sources PIPS2.0 was validated against.
Any comparisons between the two models should be done using the same fields and over the same spatial region. I’m not sure from the discussions on here if that has been done by Steve or anyone else.

Bill D,
I completely agree with your assessment and I think it is indeed a must watch for anyone who actually wants to understand the science behind current sea-ice conditions in the arctic. Many of the people here have their minds made up about arctic sea ice but those who actually feel they can learn should look up the plenary lecture.
The fact that Goddard is making commentary which suggests that what barber has to say isn’t important begs the question of whether the purpose of all these analysis of sea ice on this site is really to inform the viewers or whether it has another purpose.
I will give Goddard the benefit of the doubt on this one but ignoring the commentary of an actual true expert in studying sea-ice because what he has to say is not what you want to hear is not doing justice to the true state of the science

Peter Miller says:
“Which is better for estimating ice volumes and thicknesses – PIOMAS or PIPs2 (or 3 or 4)? Both use defense satellites to gather their basic data – yet once ‘interpreted’ both produce very different results.”
Agreement between the two, and to the measured data of IceSat, is actually pretty good. That is if, unlike Steve, you calculate the volumes properly:
http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/6980/pipsvspiomasvsicesat.png

Steve Goddard says:
“Water which is insulated from the air by two metres of ice and a foot of snow, will scarcely know the difference between -33C and -30C air temperatures.”
I’m not so sure. If a winter shows daily higher averages of a few degrees – even under very cold conditions – the rate of ice growth will be lower. As Phil points out (thanks Phil) there is a relationship between temperature and ice growth.
But I see your point. Summer ice extent varies more greatly than does winter extent, suggesting that summer temperatures are more important in determining minimum ice extent and the approaching summer temperatures appear very close to “normal”.
If you separate short term (year over year) from longer term (the downward trend from 1979) variations in minimum ice extent, the short term variations seem much higher than the error estimates given for ice extent predictions. So a year to year variation of 1.5 million sq km might be considered normal and we should expect a 4.0 – 6.5 million sq km range.
The real question is the downward trend from 1979. Is it part of a longer periodic trend or a worrisome sign of impending doom?

I’ve been following the individual sea ice areas along with low level wind vectors and oceanic current SST’s. There is nothing unusual about the melt patterns I see. Those that are under ice retaining conditions show average extent/area. Those that are under the influence of wind and currents show predictable extent and area patterns. You absolutely cannot have a conversation about ice extent, area, volume, and thickness data without taking into account – conditions on the ground. Those conditions are available. If you keep tabs on them regularly, Arctic conditions will not prove anything other than Arctic ice responds to wind and currents, neither of which are related to CO2.

‘Polar Heat Bringing Harder Winters by Stephen Leahy’ from IPS website (Jun 15, 2010):
“Barber says an ice-free summer may be just three or four years away, when icebreakers will no longer be needed to navigate the region.”
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51826
and…
‘Reports of Record Arctic Ice Melt Disgracefully Ignore History’ by Noel Sheppard (September 9, 2007):
“Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer who successfully navigated the Northwest Passage on August 26, 1905… this Passage was clear enough of ice for a wooden sailboat, with a crew of seven, to successfully navigate it more than 100 years ago”.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/09/reports-record-arctic-ice-melt-disgracefully-ignore-history
In view of Steven Goddard’s analysis, I am a bit pressed to accept the notion that the arctic will be ice free by 2014.
In the 1970’s, an impending ice age was all the rage by climate scientists – now it’s global warming and rapidly increasing in sea levels… unprecedented in earth’s history. What next?…
from ‘New Study Says Global Warming May Be Signal of Impending Ice Age
http://www.redstate.com/jeffdunetz/2010/03/04/new-study-says-global-warming-may-be-signal-of-impending-ice-age/
and, ‘Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age’
http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/106922-0/

Steve,
I always enjoy your articles. Thank you.
With all the points/counterpoints made about thickness, extent, minimums, averages, and means, fortunately there is one thing we call all agree on: No matter what happens in the arctic this September, it won’t have anything to do with CO2. We could just as accurately look to the outcome of the World Cup as a driver of sea ice extent. 🙂

Oslo,
Before you criticize the work of Canada’s Research Chair in Arctic System Science perhaps you should learn a bit more about him and his work
http://web.mac.com/barber1818/D.G.Barber/Welcome.html
If you think that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about then I believe you should read some of his publications and research work and then you will become more acquainted with non-blogosphere science and will actually learn to appreciate the mans work. I don’t think even Goddard or Watts would be naive enough to criticize this man’s knowledge on arctic system science. There is not a person on this forum and barely any in the world who have this kind of knowledge so give him a little respect. When an expert speaks, listen.

“Much of the remaining ice in the Beaufort Sea is rotten,” said Barber, who spent long periods on research icebreakers in the region. Such vessels can only break through ice a little over a metre thick but they were plowing through multi-year ice 14 metres thick, he said.
“We watched a piece of ice the size of Manhattan break up right before our eyes,” Barber said.

Sounds like a classic case of The Heisenberg Principle. Better break that ice up as quickly as possible to assure maximum melt.
No doubt Barber is correct and the Arctic will be ice free in three years.
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts”
Richard Feynman

Layne Blanchard
The big question is – can the US ever score a goal in the World Cup, or do they always have to rely on the other team to put the ball in the net for them?

stevengoddard says:
June 15, 2010 at 10:19 am
This is what the mountains above the National Snow and Ice Data Center look like this morning, covered with lots of fresh snow. View from the north.
__________
Thanks for that Steve…we are indeed quite fortunate to live in the beautiful State of Colorado…aren’t we!

Steven Goddard
“It appears that the precision of the newer maps is much greater than their accuracy. Better to use a low precision map which is matched correctly with its accuracy.
This useful set of animations would seem to reinforce the argument I have made several times on these Arctic ice threads, that higher imaging resolution does not necessarily translate to better detection of trends. Although as R Gates repeatedly shows its easy to be dazzled by such technical parameters in a nerdish sort of way. As you demonstrate, high resolution can introduce spurious phenomena which militate against accurate determination.

Stevengoddard says:

Water which is insulated from the air by two metres of ice and a foot of snow, will scarcely know the difference between -33C and -30C air temperatures.

Given that, I can’t see how multi-year ice can get significantly thicker than new ice – apart from snowfall on the surface.
And, as ice-covered water loses heat a lot slower than open water, ice thickness must be influenced far more by the speed, direction and temperature of the sea currents beneath the ice than by the air temperature above it.

I forgot to add: how did they explain the ‘short-term cooling trend’?

This is what Stephen Schneider looked like in the 70ies:

This is what Schneider looks like today:

The first video states that Schneider said in an interview “In 70, 71 i was more worried about cooling” so Hypno Toad might be right: The alarmist cause might have switched somewhere in the mid 70’s from cooling to warming, giving “warming” an opportunity to gain the pole position in that grand game of counting peer-reviewed papers we colloquially know as “science”.

Dang! The first video is a part of this:

and it’s from 1978 – so the imminent Dr. Stephen Schneider, grandmaster of global climate alarmism, didn’t switch from cooling to warming before 1978. Ok, Hypnos, i think your scecpticalscience link is a severe distortion of the facts.

jakers
I didn’t realize that there is a lot of sea ice in central Alaska.

DirkH, I really don’t get your point.
Someone states scientists in the ’70s were predicting an ice age. I show that as false, given that most scientists in the ’70s were predicting warming.
That is not to prove any kind of truth by consensus. I am not saying the majority of scientists predicting warming were right (even tho they proved to be right). I am saying the claim “Scientists were predicting an ice age in the ’70s” is demonstratably false because most of them were predicting the exact opposite.
You post some videos about one scientist changing his mind. So what? That goes to his credit. He refined his theory and discovered he was wrong. In fact, in 1977 he said: “we just don’t know enough to chose definitely at this stage whether we are in for warming or cooling— or when.” Sounds to me like proper science.
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Schneider1977.pdf
So, my point is: the claim that a majority of climate scientists predicted an incoming ice age is the ’70s is false.
If you want to counter it, you need to find a majority of climate scientists in the ’70s (the period given by Skeptical Science is 1965-1978) claiming an ice age was upcoming. One will not do. Two won’t either. It’s that simple.

Pls check for my post in the spam filter. I think it doesn’t like the PIOMAS links. Thank you.
Reply: Please do not waste time with requests such as this. The spam filter is checked regularly. ~ctm

“BillD says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:14 am
Oslo:
My understanding is that his [Barber’s] ship was in the actic for several months and that he has conducted similar criuses over the last thirty years. He was showing data and photos of conditions that he and others have not reported in the past. I assume that the peer reviewed journal articles will be more rigorous in documenting change, than this plenary lecture, aimed at showing something new.”
The arctic is mighty big BillD. Where did Mr. Barber go with his little boat that was supposed to only be able to crack 2 meters of ice but instead cracked 2 meters? Did he go all over the place? Did he sail the exact same route on the same days with the same boat all those times he has supposedly been in the arctic over the years? Did he go in the 1880s too? Or in 1950? or 1960? is his observations really abnormal?
Mr. Barber immediately comes over as an alarmist trawling for new grants. His methods and the way he draws conclusions from more or less anecdotal “evidence” seems a tad unscientific too me.

barry
If PIOMAS is correct, we certainly should expect to see a huge meltdown this summer.
Think about it. Ice volume is at a record low. Ice extent is at a record low. And even the multi-year ice is thoroughly rotten. Record temperatures in the Beaufort Sea. Warmest May on record for planet earth. Warmest year on record for planet earth. El Nino. Polar Bears drowning. Penguins drowning. Penguins drinking Coke with Polar Bears. How bad can it get??????
I can’t imagine why anyone who trusts the experts, wouldn’t go out and bet a lot of money on a record minimum. Seems like a done deal, based on the wealth of informative comments coming from the leading experts.
“And Brutus is an honorable man”
Mark Anthony

Paul McCulloch,
Piers Corbyn sees general cooling coming too over the next ~30 years and staying cooler than now for ~100 years.

“Freezing”
If you take the Surface temp of Ice, or the Sea Surface temp :
It is ALWAYS freezing.
If we needed it to be above Freezing for there to be melting, Melting would NEVER HAPPEN.
You have to look at the amount it is ABOVE AVERAGE to get an Idea, and until the last week, it has been FAR above average virtually continuously
see: uah Arctic Ocean air temp
(last 5 months’ anomaly: + 3.2 December, 1.6, 2.92, 2.53, MAY = +2.68 degrees C.) http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
This is a few 1000 feet up, but it gives an idea.
As to why melting off is a problem
1. It dries out the Plains States (& I mean a sand-dune DESERT)
2. IF and ONLY IF, it happens ALL IN 1 YEAR — with a HUGE El Nino, RECORD TEMPS, etc. and yet a high Ice extent to start with, THEN we might get Ocean Current Shutdown
= 300 mph Winds
= ALL structures above ground Destroyed
= We all DIE.
.. THIS year offers such a chance – – which is why I am worried.
Oh, & Milankovich cannot be the Ice Age Cause — it is a 108,000 year cycle — wrong: Ice ages have a 101,000..
Many favor a Jupiter interraction but Interplanetary dust was found to be only 4% less when in the plane of the Orbit (PS, yet I remember a “Zap” of Shoemaker-Levy — frankly, THAT explains the Sudden Ice AAge ends to me).

Anu says:
June 15, 2010 at 7:43 pm
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
Record contraction in the Arctic, opposite phenomenon + in the Antarctic.
Never heard of global climactic hopscotch?
I highly reccomend it. Been happening for over 2 years now.
It’s not a time to goad others to gamble, it’s a time to prepare.

Smokey says:
June 15, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Only Anu would refer to honest skeptics as “science doubters.”
I have a special category for you, Smokey.
It rhymes with “appropriate”.

rbateman says:
June 15, 2010 at 8:10 pm
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
OK then.
Record contraction in the Arctic, opposite phenomenon + in the Antarctic.
Never heard of global climactic hopscotch?
Never.
There’s a reason people are argumentatively interested in “Arctic Sea Ice News” and Antarctica won’t be on their radar for another 60 years:
http://nsidc.org/monthlyhighlights/august2009.html
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=42456&src=eoa-iotd
The Arctic meltdown is the “canary in the coal mine” – since you like animal sayings.
It doesn’t matter if 99 out of 100 clueless people you know don’t care about the Arctic summer ice disappearing – once it does, or close to it, the people that make the decisions that affect the world will be moving on to phase 2 – what to do about Global Warming.
I’ll miss these blogs when they’re gone.

Anu
In Hawaii, the leaders met regularly to decide how to stop those awful volcanic eruptions.
They recognized that a sacrifice had to be made, and threw thousands people into the volcano. Far fewer deaths than the number which will be killed by similarly useless carbon taxes.

1) Ice Age in the 70s
The link I gave lists 42 scientific papers published between 1965 and 1978 suggesting Co2 could warm the Earth (mind it, they were far less certain then they are now). Over the same time period, a total of 7 scientific papers claiming impending cooling were published.
If you want to claim the Ice Age scare of the ’70s had support from a majority of scientists, you should find at least 40 scientific papers published in the period stating an Ice Age was in the making. I will be more than happy to change my mind if presented with sufficient evidence. I am, after all, a skeptic.
2) Ships crossing the Arctic.
No ship sailed accross the Arctic in one season before the melt the 2000s. They all overwintered. And no commercial ship made it through before the melt of the 2000s – the St. Roch wasn’t a little wooden ship, it was a fortified shooner built specifically to withstand ice pressure. What’s remarkable of the recent melt is that it allowed commercial ships to make it through without ice breakers. That had never happened before.
3) Alarmism.
Suggesting that mankind modifying climate could have an harmful impact on civilization -> alarmism
Suggesting a tax on carbon will disrupt the world’s economies and kill millions -> coolheaded rationalism
It’s a wonder how the world managed to survive the oil shocks! Besides, the persistently high oil prices in the second half of the 2000s and the current disaster in the GOM should convince everyone that regardless of AGW, relying on fossil fuels isn’t a good receipt for the economic health of a country.

Hypnos,
The St Roch traversed the passage in one season. What this proves, or disproves, about Arctic Ice Extent is another story, but the basic fact is not up for debate and it does not advance your argument when you begin it with factually incorrect statements.
As for the cooling vs warming trends in the 1970s, the Newsweek cover stories of the day captured the popular beliefs of the day, just as they do now. The popular beliefs were fed by a combination of scientific research and publicity, just as they are today. Speaking as someone who was there, and paying attention, I am here to say that the climatologists who were getting attention were telling the world the ice age was imminent, and it was all our fault. Those climatologists who expressed a skeptical or opposite view somehow failed to get equal time in the popular media.
Some things don’t change much.

June 6:
Steve Goddard: “Based on current ice thickness, we should expect September extent/area to come in near the top of the JAXA rankings (near 2003 [6.1 Mkm2] and 2006 [5.9 Mkm2].)”
June 16:
Steve Goddard: “Seems like JAXA 5.5 Mkm2 is a decent WAG at this point.”
Steve’s estimates of the minimum extent are dropping almost as fast as the arctic ice itself is melting.

I can’t imagine why anyone who trusts the experts, wouldn’t go out and bet a lot of money on a record minimum. Seems like a done deal, based on the wealth of informative comments coming from the leading experts.

This is rhetoric. Have you nothing to say about sources and data problems that I outlined in my post? The graphs at CT that you have used are clearly labeled as lacking information on sea ice at less than 30% concentration. You don’t see this as problematic regarding your conclusions? Why didn’t you alert us to the disclaimer in your original post? And have you yet contacted PIOMAS to determines whether or not they confine their analysis to a small are North of Greenland as you speculate?
As we all know by now, weather conditions (like wind patterns), have a large influence on final sea ice extent. Betting on a record-breaking year, even with low-volume indicators, is chancy. For the record, I will state that I am very confident this year’s minimum sea ice extent will be amongst the four lowest in the satellite record – i’d wager money on that. I am slightly less confident that it will be lowest or second lowest, and think it’s 50/50 that the record will be broken this year. That’s the best I can do. I don’t bet on the weather months in advance. But I’m willing to make bets based on longer-term trends.
I look forward to your post at sea-ice minimum.
(Thanks to the mods for explaining they regularly check the spam filter. I’ve lost posts before and didn’t know that this occurred)

A remarkable oddity is the persistence of the ice in the SW corner of the Sea Of Okhotsk.

roger says:
June 16, 2010 at 2:53 am
There are many other blogs where this childish type of posting can be found in spades, but this blog has until recently avoided them and remained an arena for grown up and civilised discussion.
There we go again – gleefully attacking official “enemies” while imagining it to be “grown up and civilised discussion”, e.g.:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/10/mann-erisms-where-did-we-get-that-idea/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/09/climate-change-have-we-reached-the-irreversible-stage/
and whining when someone voices an opinion you don’t agree with.
Those who predicted on earlier threads that the revelations of climategate and the subsequent debunking of the myths of CC/AGW would create a vituperative backlash from disappointed adherents have been proven correct in short order!
Climategate revealed little, AGW has not been “debunked”, the moderator saves people like you from my vituperation, I’m neither disappointed nor an adherent – but I do appreciate you putting all your errors in one succinct sentence.

Roger Knights says:
June 15, 2010 at 7:39 pm
The latest odds on this year being icier than last are 43% at https://www.intrade.com
————————-
Know what you are talking about. It is not 43%, it is the the price of the bet at $43.00 on a volume of trading of 48 since the start in April. I dare you to eplain how that came to be a percentage.
In any case, the September sea ice extent will be lower than 2009, perhaps lower than 2008, or even coming close to 2007. Don’t forget that there has only be a partial recovery (as expected) of the massive 2007 loss, remaining about 500,000 sq km’s below the average (don’t confuse with normal). 2008 and 2009 recovered about 1/3rd each leaving 1/3rd unrecovered. In order to return to average, 2010 needs to recover another 500,000 sq/km’s, yet as of today (May 16) 2009 trails the 2010 melt by nearly 700,000 sq/km’s. Hence, as of today the ice melt would have to slow dramatically, which is highly unlikely, nor do past records show that it has done so during the time of credible record keeping. In that context 1979 is a good starting point

Smokey says:
June 16, 2010 at 1:28 pm
“Climategate revealed little, AGW has not been ‘debunked’, the moderator saves people like you from my vituperation…”
How can one guy get everything so completely wrong?
Answer: Cognitive dissonance. When the flying saucers don’t arrive on schedule, it doesn’t mean there are no flying saucers. It just means their arrival has to be re-scheduled.☺
————————-
Good grief, the astonishing logic floors me. Just because pigs don’t fly by my window, doesn’t mean there are no flying pigs; just reschedule their departure! I’ll call the nearest pig farm asap. (not sarcasm but an analogy)
———————–
Just like Mrs. Keech’s flying saucers, seemingly breakthrough CAGW findings have all vanished, every one of them, after independent replication proved impossible. CAGW has now been downgraded from a hypothesis to an unsupported conjecture; a pseudo-scientific opinion kept on life support only by large infusions of grant money. Time to re-schedule.
————————–
All vanished after independent replication? Downgraded from a hypothesis to unsupported conjecture? Pseudo scientific opinion? The latter I am quite familiar with just by reading this blog. There are some people here that argue from a scientific basis but in between there is a lot of garbage too. I test Steven Goddard’s hypothesis, just like some others (gratefully) do and judge it on it’s merits. Sometimes he does indulge in sarcasm, as in; Amino Acids in Meteorites says: June 15, 2010 at 5:54 pm
stevengoddard says: June 15, 2010 at 4:38 pm, which is not becoming.
Putting a self-calculated ice volume curve on an ice extent chart was deceptive and silly. Maintaining the “arctic recovered” claim, smells of having painted oneself into a corner as is the “global cooling” claim. I nevertheless appreciate his knowledge of scientific data and use and/or manipulation thereof. We can always counter argue the right and wrong.

Tom P says:
June 16, 2010 at 6:49 am
June 6:
Steve Goddard: “Based on current ice thickness, we should expect September extent/area to come in near the top of the JAXA rankings (near 2003 [6.1 Mkm2] and 2006 [5.9 Mkm2].)”
June 16:
Steve Goddard: “Seems like JAXA 5.5 Mkm2 is a decent WAG at this point.”
Steve’s estimates of the minimum extent are dropping almost as fast as the arctic ice itself is melting.
Ah, but like a seasoned politician, Steve left himself some wiggle room:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/06/wuwt-arctic-sea-ice-news-8/
Conclusion : Based on current ice thickness, we should expect September extent/area to come in near the top of the JAXA rankings (near 2003 and 2006.)
The word “near” might not mean what you think it means. To a normal person, it would mean “near 6 million sq. km.”:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent_L.png
Certainly above 2009.
But to a person with an agenda, “near” will mean whatever it has to mean, come October: $4.2 billion is very near $6 billion.
Seems like JAXA 5.5 Mkm2 is a decent WAG at this point.
5.5 is just a wild ass guess – come October, that can be hand waved away as unimportant/very-approximate, and besides, Arctic sea ice melting away in the summer is no big deal.
Tom P
Given that 5.5 was the first numeric estimate I have made for this year, I would have to say that you are being quite dishonest.
Yes Tom P., how dare you hold Steve to his non-numeric predictions which merely used the years 2003 and 2006 ? (sure, the Year is a number, but you know what he means… he never said “near 6.1 Mkm2 and 5.9 Mkm2”)
As for my prediction of Arctic sea ice minimum extent being less than 2009 – maybe I meant 2009 * 10^6 sq. km.
I’ll let you know at the end of September.

http://climateinsiders.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/piomas.png?w=510&h=371
I really do detest Anomaly taxation without Data representation.
Anomaly study may be great for calculating a slope, but it doesn’t do anything for expressing the significance of said slope.
I’m sure someone could come up with a PIOTSI Anomaly map looking equally scary.

Anu
You appear to be getting really desperate.

Smokey says:
June 16, 2010 at 8:10 pm
“All vanished after independent replication? Downgraded from a hypothesis to unsupported conjecture? Pseudo scientific opinion?”
Yep.
——————–
Care to cite all the independent replications? Who did the downgrading from one supposition to another? Read this blog and others like it, then give me a definition of ‘pseudo scientific opinion’. Perhaps using ‘lay-person’s scientific opinion’ may be better? Generalisations seldom serve a purpose.

For a sobering look at sea ice extent visit COI (Centre for Ocean and Ice Denmark ) http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Using data from OSISAF and counting 30% cover as continuous ice, they calculate the extent now (June 16) to be 7.8 million km2 and the minimum of 2007 at 3.5 million km2

Halfwise, Codetech,
So you cannot find any scientific papers supporting this hypothesis of yours of a majority of climate scientists declaring an imminent ice age in the ’70s.
I’ll thus provide a summary of what the facts are:
1) There was no ice age predicted by science in the ’70s.
2) Popular media took a couple of comments from a few scientists and wildly exaggerated them to sell papers.
You have so far provided no refutation of these facts. Arm waving and derogatory remarks about revisionism aren’t facts. A list of scientific papers predicting an ice age in the ’70s would be fact. Google Scholar is but two clicks away. Have at it.
On the St. Roch: yes, I didn’t want to imply it didn’t cross in one season (once), I know it did. What I was saying is that it wasn’t an average ship, it was reinforced to cross through a partially iced arctic, breaking through if necessary. The ships that crossed in the 2000s were commercial ships. Big difference.

Yup, we have confirmation from the esteemed Dr. William Connolley, PhD Climatology:
“Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the ’70’s? No”
*cough*

To clarify a little: I am interested in “Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the ’70’s by scientists, in scientific journals?”. That means articles in scientific journals and reputable books. (…) We also need to know what we mean by “imminent”. Since the question arises in the context of the greenhouse gas/climate change debate, “imminent” is a timescale comparable to greenhouse-type timescales: ie, the next century or so.

This is confirmed by the authoritative Wikipedia Global cooling article, which rather than be some dry factual article providing a scientific description of possible actual cooling of the globe and its possible effects, is wisely instead a long thought-out historical treatise about global cooling myths and hysteria and the debunking thereof, since global cooling can absolutely never ever occur, and it will especially absolutely never ever occur without serious reductions of atmospheric CO2 concentrations to below pre-industrialization levels.
And of course Wikipedia is well known for its absolute unquestionable authority, absolutely especially on matters related in any way to climate. For example:

1980’s
Concerns about nuclear winter arose in the early 1980s from several reports. Similar speculations have appeared over effects due to catastrophes such as asteroid impacts and massive volcanic eruptions. A prediction that massive oil well fires in Kuwait would cause significant effects on climate was quite incorrect.

Compare that to this line from “Invasion of Kuwait”:

The invasion started on August 2, 1990, and within two days of intense combat, most of the Kuwaiti Armed Forces were either overrun by the Iraqi Republican Guard or escaped to neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Thus it is established as absolute unquestionable fact that Kuwait was known for massive oil well fires in the 1980’s, said knowing leading to a prediction of significant effects on climate, before the invasion by Iraq and Iraq’s subsequent expulsion during the Gulf War.

Anu,
My guess is that you will be gone in September, because you are too embarrassed.

For (hopefully) the last time, the region north of 80N is only about 20% of the Arctic and the DMI polar temp. is not the average temperature of the Arctic! Why don’t you use NCEP/NCAR instead, as you can see the anomalies everywhere. I’m beginning to suspect cherry picking because NCEP/NCAR shows the first 15 days of June being warmer than normal over almost the entire Arctic, with one major exception being the immediate vicinity of the pole. The NCEP/NCAR plot shows that the period from June 8-15 averages above +1 C over most of the Arctic Ocean (but again not the immediate vicinity of the pole which is what DMI sees.)
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/composites/comp.day.pl?var=Air+Temperature&level=Surface&iy%5B1%5D=&im%5B1%5D=&id%5B1%5D=&iy%5B2%5D=&im%5B2%5D=&id%5B2%5D=&iy%5B3%5D=&im%5B3%5D=&id%5B3%5D=&iy%5B4%5D=&im%5B4%5D=&id%5B4%5D=&iy%5B5%5D=&im%5B5%5D=&id%5B5%5D=&iy%5B6%5D=&im%5B6%5D=&id%5B6%5D=&iy%5B7%5D=&im%5B7%5D=&id%5B7%5D=&iy%5B8%5D=&im%5B8%5D=&id%5B8%5D=&iy%5B9%5D=&im%5B9%5D=&id%5B9%5D=&iy%5B10%5D=&im%5B10%5D=&id%5B10%5D=&iy%5B11%5D=&im%5B11%5D=&id%5B11%5D=&iy%5B12%5D=&im%5B12%5D=&id%5B12%5D=&iy%5B13%5D=&im%5B13%5D=&id%5B13%5D=&iy%5B14%5D=&im%5B14%5D=&id%5B14%5D=&iy%5B15%5D=&im%5B15%5D=&id%5B15%5D=&iy%5B16%5D=&im%5B16%5D=&id%5B16%5D=&iy%5B17%5D=&im%5B17%5D=&id%5B17%5D=&iy%5B18%5D=&im%5B18%5D=&id%5B18%5D=&iy%5B19%5D=&im%5B19%5D=&id%5B19%5D=&iy%5B20%5D=&im%5B20%5D=&id%5B20%5D=&monr1=6&dayr1=8&monr2=6&dayr2=15&iyr%5B1%5D=2010&filenamein=&plotlabel=&lag=0&labelc=Color&labels=Shaded&type=1&scale=&label=0&cint=1&lowr=-3&highr=3&istate=0&proj=Custom&xlat1=55&xlat2=90&xlon1=0&xlon2=360&custproj=Northern+Hemisphere+Polar+Stereographic&level1=1000mb&level2=10mb&Submit=Create+Plot
The areas below +1 C over that period are a small area near the New Siberian Islands, the Barents Sea, east of Greenland, and a large area of the Arctic Basin which remained ice-covered even in 2007. The vast majority of the area of the “bite” out of the ice pack in 2007 has been above freezing for the last week.

Smokey writes,
“You have to include the Antarctic.”
Sea ice around Antarctica is fine for now, the ice sheets not so much. From Geophysical Research Letters last fall:
“Increasing rates of ice mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets revealed by GRACE
I. Velicogna,
Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, California, USA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
We use monthly measurements of time-variable gravity from the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite gravity mission to determine the ice mass-loss for the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets during the period between April 2002 and February 2009. We find that during this time period the mass loss of the ice sheets is not a constant, but accelerating with time, i.e., that the GRACE observations are better represented by a quadratic trend than by a linear one, implying that the ice sheets contribution to sea level becomes larger with time. In Greenland, the mass loss increased from 137 Gt/yr in 2002–2003 to 286 Gt/yr in 2007–2009, i.e., an acceleration of −30 ± 11 Gt/yr2 in 2002–2009. In Antarctica the mass loss increased from 104 Gt/yr in 2002–2006 to 246 Gt/yr in 2006–2009, i.e., an acceleration of −26 ± 14 Gt/yr2 in 2002–2009. The observed acceleration in ice sheet mass loss helps reconcile GRACE ice mass estimates obtained for different time periods. ”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL040222.shtml

Well, Smokey, at least we can be pretty sure the sea ice in the Antarctic will pretty much all melt away, as it does each year. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
Yawn

Roger Knights says:
June 17, 2010 at 1:20 am
Perhaps it is better to keep betting out. Some may be shrewd but still subject to the law of averages. Good try though, the 43% that is, but it’s bound to muddy the waters for some. If that was the purpose, yes it works for some.

Smokey says:
June 17, 2010 at 5:39 am
CO2 says:
June 16, 2010 at 11:17 pm:
If independent replications were not possible, then what is the basis for the vanishing?
You said; “I and others downgraded CO2=CAGW from a hypothesis to a conjecture, which is what it is, by definition. And we pointed it out many moons ago, and repeatedly, not just in this thread. You’re new here, but you can check the archives. Absent falsifiability, refutability, or testability, CO2=CAGW is nothing but a non-scientific scare tactic.”
As for commenting, yes I’m new but I read a number of blogs from both sides of the argument. So you and others downgraded the hypothesis, so what makes that valid?
On pseudo science you said; “OK. For examples of pseudo-scientific opinion, I give you: RealClimate, DeSmogBlog, climate progress, tamino, etc. And any other source that still believes the repeatedly debunked idea that a tiny trace gas controls the Earth’s climate, and will bring about runaway global warming and climate catastrophe. The real world disagrees; who are you going to believe?
That’s not telling me what you understand pseudu science is. You state that all those opposing your view offer pseudo science, regardless of whether they are scientists or not. I am not about to start debating CO2 ‘the tiny trace gas’ with you, I don’t believe in preaching to the converted. If this is what you believe, no one is going to change your mind. Not even Mother Nature because whatever happens, it will all have happened before; if not hundreds, then thousands of years ago and failing that millions of years ago.
Then you say; “Perhaps — if the lay person’s opinion is independent, and not bought and paid for by organizations with a CAGW agenda. If you haven’t noticed, climate science has been corrupted by money.”
Does that apply to both sides of the argument?
Your final question;
“I’ve answered your questions. Now please answer just one of mine: what’s your favorite alarmist blog? You know, the one you came here from?”
In fact, until recently I have not commented on any blog whatsoever. I read a lot of scientific papers from both sides of the argument. I am saddened by the fact that science has become politicized and disturbed by allegations of a global conspiracy. I ask myself if someone like Lord Christopher Moncton has reached the point of emberrassment for even the global skeptics. His recent diatribe about arctic sea ice almost made me blush.