File this under short term trends matter when we say they matter.
From The Montreal Gazette
BY RANDY BOSWELL, CANWEST NEWS SERVICE
Arctic Ocean ice cover retreated faster last month than in any previous May since satellite monitoring began more than 30 years ago, the latest sign that the polar region could be headed for another record-setting meltdown by summer’s end.
The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center had already warned earlier this spring that low ice volume — the result of repeated losses of thick, multi-year ice over the past decade — meant this past winter’s ice-extent recovery was superficial, due mainly to a fragile fringe of new ice that would be vulnerable to rapid deterioration once warmer temperatures set in.
And, driven by unusually hot weather in recent weeks above the Arctic Circle, the polar ice is disappearing at an unprecedented rate, reducing overall ice extent to less than that recorded in May 2007 — the year when a record-setting retreat by mid-September alarmed climatologists and northern governments.
The centre reported that across much of the Arctic, temperatures were two to five degrees Celsius above average last month.
“In May, Arctic air temperatures remained above average, and sea ice extent declined at a rapid pace,” the Colorado-based centre said in its June 8 report.
The centre pegged the retreat at an average of 68,000 square kilometres a day, noting that “this rate of loss is the highest for the month of May during the satellite record.”
Ice loss was greatest in the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, “indicating that the ice in these areas was thin and susceptible to melt,” the centre added.
“Many polynyas, areas of open water in the ice pack, opened up in the regions north of Alaska, in the Canadian Arctic Islands, and in the Kara and Barents and Laptev seas.”
Read the rest of the story here
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Perhaps Mr. Boswell does not learn from his own articles. In this one, he states that arctic melt in 2009 is greater than average. Of course, that came in a nearly a million sq km ahead of 2007.
http://www.canada.com/technology/Arctic%20meltdown%20greater%20than%20average%20again%20this%20year/1976227/story.html
The northern hemisphere has been heating up since March. At this rate of heating, we’ll hit 10,000 degrees in 400 years. Degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius? It doesn’t matter…humans won’t survive.
You realize that if, some skeptic, had made the claims in the article I posted that Tamino would be all over it like a fat kid on an ice cream cone.
Hey steve, which month in the past record showed the fastest rate of increase!
Joe Bastardi at Accuweather predicted a large ice melt this summer followed by three very cold winters when sea ice would begin to get back to levels in the 1960s. Its all to do with the warm surface ocean water dissipating around the globe with the Arctic and North Atlantic its last refuge
Now, if only we had a way of controlling the climate so that we could make just the right amount of polar ice…..let’s see, 100 km2 by 100,000 polar bears ….. well we still have enough for them it seems so we won’t have to start reducing water vapor emissions to control the greenhouse effect.
What about damming the Bering strait to keep out all of that nasty warm pacific ocean water.
There is also the gulf stream, while we are at it. I realize that trying to replace it with oil was a bad idea but perhaps we can use the booms from the GoM and make a line of defense from Iceland to Spitzbergen against that warm water.
Then there is the wind. We could set up wind turbines on the coast and blow the warm air back south where it belongs.
I’ll have to stop now as the strait-jacket is starting to chafe…
“Unusually hot” was 2-5 degrees above average for a few weeks. ”
And below freezing at that. So are they saying that temperatures of -10C melts more ice than temperatures of -13C?
I don’t doubt that a lot of thin ice ablated quickly this spring but I also believe their arm waiving will change when the ablation rate goes well below the normal rate in a few weeks time.
Remember, that the PIOMAS “mean” curve has an arbitrary standard deviation, fixed at a constant value for every month, whether the ice is shrinking, growing, or stable, which is probabilistically impossible and statistically unethical to use the fixed error method. So almost every measurement during melt times exceeds a standard deviation to the low side (because of the heteroskedastic nature of the distribution), sometimes 2 sigmas, because as the rate of change at any high melt month has large swings, it will swamp the fixed error for the entire record (that is averaged for shrinking, growing, and stable periods inclusive, not just melt times) almost every time.
Therefore, it will frequently appear as if a low value is “significant” when it is not.
This is how they get away with making pronouncements of what is “normal” values, and that we are frequently “below normal”.
Add to that the trick of starting with a periodically high ice value for their “rolling averages”, and the warm-earthers “win” the statistics shell game every time.
Some of the oldest tricks in the book.
PJB says:
June 15, 2010 at 11:22 am
Loved your ideas! How about if we used a satellite mounted laser that would drill a hole in the ice every few centimeters to measure the depth accurately!
Reduce your carbon footprint!
Fly smaller jets!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cessna_525_citationjet_g-sfcj_arp.jpg
😉
HA! For some reason I thought that said some pollyannas…
“Hot” May weather in the Arctic means -6C instead of -8C. I hope it didn’t ruin the cherry crop in Barrow.
Western Arctic Ice coverage as at June 7, 2010
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS56CT/20100607180000_WIS56CT_0005022638.gif
Who gives a rats ass about the summer melting ice in the Arctic? Not me. It happens every year. Year in and year out. Decade in and decade out. Century in and century out. Millennium in and millennium out. I mean really. Enough with the scare tactics already. I just thank God every day for the extended solar minimum and the increased thousands of deaths that will occur around the northern hemisphere this coming winter because of it. People won’t understand until there are massive die offs this coming winter due to excessive cold because of the solar minimum.
Adrian Smits says:
“In fact the average temperature in the arctic has never varied from the mean by more than 2 degrees for more than 2 weeks during the melt season since they started keeping records.The arctic is a very boring place in the summer, temperature wise anyway!”
It’s simple, just think in terms of anomalies. If the range is 2 deg (±1 deg around an average), then a 1 deg from the average, would be a 100% warming, with obvious promise of more. Remember, they love to scare people with tipping points. Once the temperature gets anything over 1 deg (notice that they never talk about it getting >1 deg cooler and then tipping), they assume some kind of release mechanism that lets warming run wild, supposedly, because they want it to.
And its all about ice area and the thickness of the ice around the edges. Little mention of overall thickness.
Henry Waxman says the Ice cap holds down the tundra.
“The reality of the North pole is beginning to evaporate. If too much evaporates……the tipping point.”
Waxman needs to follow this blog for a bit. Our gubment education let him down. Ice doesn’t evaporate much.
“Joe Bastardi at Accuweather predicted a large ice melt this summer followed by three very cold winters when sea ice would begin to get back to levels in the 1960s.”
Carol,
He made his initial predictions, I might add, last winter. So far, his projections for ENSO and the AO are very good. Like he said, enjoy the warm weather while you can.
To clarify my ice forecast….We will be back to the levels we had in the late 70s by 2030. The forecast for ice, made back in April, was taking issue with people who did not understand that though we were back to “normal” ice wise, a crash was coming that I thought would take us to levels lower than 2009, but not as low as 07. Rapid cooling will be setting in for the fall, and the earths temps should fall to a 13 month running mean not seen since the 90s. Ice recovery should mean the summer of 2011 has more ice than 2009, and 2012 should be greater. Its all a moot point since when the northern hemisphere comes back, you will see the southern hemisphere go down. Total GLOBAL sea ice has not gone much of anywhere, nor will it. The hysteria, if ( when) I am proven correct, will simply shift to the southern hemisphere, were the warmist refuse to look now. Be of good cheer. JB
Ice thickness surprises, from May 2009;
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/05/04/lawrence-solomon-deep-arctic-ice-surprises-scientific-expedition.aspx#ixzz0qmnHzcd9
Michael says:{June 15, 2010 at 12:29 pm}
“Who gives a rats ass about the summer melting ice in the Arctic? Not me. It happens every year. Year in and year out. Decade in and decade out. Century in and century out. Millennium in and millennium out. I mean really.”
Absolutely agree. If it is ever proven that Arctic ice area or volume or whatever is the true indicator of how the entire globe is acting, then, and only then, will I give a damn about it. And it is going to have to be more than just a higher anomaly based on the random 1979-2000 period.
jakers says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:58 am
stevengoddard says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:45 am
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
April ice was the highest on record. DOH.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Huh? You mean, for the last few years? I’m darn sure that graph does not contain the entire “record” DOH, indeed…
The record does indeed contain the entire record. The fact it’s only 30 years is actually the “joke”/”punchline” behind it. There have been press releases of the “it’s the worst since records began – we’re all going to die!” variety when the records began less than a decade before.
It’s difficult to satire something like that, when the satire is indistinguishable from the target. The usual way of flagging satire by over-exaggerating the importance of minor details (“eight out of ten mass murderers had eaten bread in the previous 24 hours!”) don’t work when the original uses the “we’re all going to die!” idea to begin with.
This article highlights the really alarming thinning of the Canadian press. As WillR mentions, Randy Boswell is available as pre-sliced, pre-packaged, ready to read, off the shelf news-like product from Daylife : http://labs.daylife.com/journalist/randy_boswell.
The package ingredients analysis shows that Randy is very objective, with a “low” level of “opinion markers” and unbiased “neutral sentiment”. Must be good healthy reading.
Daylife’s many clients.. “seamlessly integrate whole pages, sections, and destinations of fresh content, targeted promotions, and new categories of advertising inventory, all with little or no staffing.”
“Daylife gathers content from thousands of high-quality news and information sources, then runs scores of analyses so we understand a huge range of particulate information about that data to create intelligent, malleable content clusters. Publishers can then use our platform tools to mold that data into new pages, features, and entire destinations of targeted content and inventory, all with full editorial control.”
“Little staffing” but “full editorial control”? Sounds like the packaged cake mix you turn into “home made goodness” by just stirring with your own spoon.
Mmmm, delicious “malleable content clusters” anyone?
Joe Bastardi says:
June 15, 2010 at 12:53 pm
Total GLOBAL sea ice has not gone much of anywhere, nor will it. The hysteria, if ( when) I am proven correct, will simply shift to the southern hemisphere, were the warmist refuse to look now. Be of good cheer. JB
But that gives the opportunity to keep asking about the northeast/northwest passages which have opened up for the first time since the dinosaurs. Apparently. If people are going to highlight transient phenomona as “climate” just because they show warmth, there is no reason to not keep bringing them up in future.
Of course the fact they’re going to be all iced up is just more proof of global warming.
speaking of southern ice:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
global:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
As many posts here have shown NH ice concentration appears to be well above previous years so expect the Minimum to be about normal… my view anyway..
Joe Bastardi,
“The hysteria, if ( when) I am proven correct, will simply shift to the southern hemisphere, were the warmist refuse to look now”
Your forecast is based upon the AMO i’m assuming?
Firstly, many “warmists” are already forced to look down south because of thousands of years old ice shelves collapsing (see larsen A, B, Muller ice shelf, wordie ice shelf, prince gustav ice shelf, Wilkins ice shelf… etc…) as well as large land ice losses from the continent as a whole (250 GT/Year and accelerating) (Measured with altimetry, gravimetry, synthetic aperture radar and so on…)…
Secondly, if your “prediction” comes true then we will have a lot more to worry about than sea-ice in the southern hemisphere, we will undoubtedly have even large accelerations of ice losses from continental Antarctica. Particularly when the remaining sea ice is removed from the WAIS and Antarctic peninsula (although much is already gone).
Thirdly, and this is something you should know with your BSC in meteorology.
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).
Finally, one note for you. You may be a very public figure, but you should consider reading up on your glaciology before making proclamations that you have no evidence for.
I’ll take Barber’s thoughts over yours thank you very much. He spent a lot longer than 4 years studying arctic climatology…