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.”
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Arctic sea ice area is also at a record low:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Area.png
I’m glad to see the science doubters taking record melt rates, record extents, record areas, and record volumes in stride – I would have thought a graph like this would make a true “skeptic” stop and wonder if they were completely wrong:
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_n.png
Of course, there is a fine line between confident and oblivious:
http://nsidc.org/monthlyhighlights/august2009.html
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=42456&src=eoa-iotd
I wonder what happened to the Arctic sea ice during these periods and how much natural variablilities affected it as opposed to manmade co2?
MWP , Greenland, unprecedented!, 1817 situation.
They should have said “unprecedented since satellite monitoring began in 1979 for the Arctic.” By the way is if it’s so “hot” in the Arctic why don’t they tell the tour operators and people can arrange their summer holidays there and visit the famished polar bears which have been increasing in number. :o)
Jason Bair says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:40 am
How can they get away with bold faced lies like this?
This would have been kind of funny, if you had spelled “Jayson Blair” correctly.
☆ for effort.
John B (TX) says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:07 am
“And, driven by unusually hot weather in recent weeks above the Arctic Circle, the polar ice is disappearing at an unprecedented rate”
Where do they get this stuff? I can’t believe they can just make up the news like that.
If you read the article,
http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Arctic+Ocean+retreating+year+record+pace/3149267/story.html#ixzz0quIG37lp
they make it clear where they are “getting this stuff”:
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100608_Figure4.png
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Robert says: “Have you ever heard of albedo? The difference between energy reflected by ice towards what would be absorbed by dark open water is quite significant. You should look it up some time.”
Actually I did look it up, and the difference is insignificant. Zero, in fact, under some conditions, especially at the high zenith angles that pertain at the poles.
George E. Smith says:
June 15, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Ah, you missed one itsy-bitsy thing….planetary rotation.
Here is average daily ice loss for the months of May, June and July from 2003 to 2010 based on JAXA data.
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
May 38,231 35,827 43,145 42,762 40,832 44,153 52,006 65,257
June 53,536 41,995 57,531 59,609 63,328 58,500 55,938 58,025mtd
July 74,708 70,015 83,710 70,025 98,609 81,260 92,127 TBA
August 46,764 64,657 45,000 37,697 57,041 70,121 48,654 TBA
Interesting to see the numbers for 2009 appear higher than for 2008. I’m guessing this is likely due to greater growth during the previous winter giving a greater base of thinner ice for the following summer.
If this holds, despite the high rate of loss during May we could still potentially see a higher September minimum this year. It is clear though that level of loss during the month of July will play an important part.
Hengist McStone,
“short term trends matter when we say they matter”
Refers to the common practice of AGW supporters criticizing skeptics for taking short term trends (such as an anomalously cold year) as being evidence against global warming. AGW proponents often cite long term trends and say that short term trends are more or less climatic noise. The comment that the author was trying to make was that AGW proponents argue with skeptics over short term trends when they provide evidence against GW but when short term trends show evidence for it, they use it as evidence according to the commentator. I would argue that it’s not exactly the same as that but that’s the point up for debate.
JimB says:
June 15, 2010 at 2:19 pm
“….O/T, but speaking of C02, there were a dozen or so people walking around the F1 race in Montreal with big C02 graphic balloons during the qualifying and race laps.
Seriously?…how do you think a race crowd is going react to a C02 balloon?”
_________________________________________________________________
About the same way the rodeo cowboy did when he saw a PETA idiot untying his very expensive cutting horse. Too bad for the idiot that the cowboy was mounted on his roping horse…. The rope burns and road rash must have really hurt.
(I was boarding my horse at a rodeo stable when this occurred so I heard the story several times, from different people.)
It seems that many readers of this site are comfortable dismissing David Barber as just another warmist, less expert about the Arctic than Steve Goddard. In case there are others out there, I think it’s worth repeating the abstract of his article (with 9 coauthors) in Geophysical Research Letters last fall, which described the discovery that actual Beaufort Sea ice was much less substantial than satellite-based estimates had suggested.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL041434.shtml
“‘ Perennial pack ice in the southern Beaufort Sea was not as it appeared in the summer of 2009
In September 2009 we observed a much different sea icescape in the Southern Beaufort Sea than anticipated, based on remotely sensed products. Radarsat derived ice charts predicted 7 to 9 tenths multi-year (MY) or thick first-year (FY) sea ice throughout most of the Southern Beaufort Sea in the deep water of the Canada Basin. In situ observations found heavily decayed, very small remnant MY and FY floes interspersed with new ice between floes, in melt ponds, thaw holes and growing over negative freeboard older ice. This icescape contained approximately 25% open water, predominantly distributed in between floes or in thaw holes connected to the ocean below. Although this rotten ice regime was quite different that the expected MY regime in terms of ice volume and strength, their near-surface physical properties were found to be sufficiently alike that their radiometric and scattering characteristics were almost identical.”
Hi Robert, My criticism of your approach is twofold. How can you be sure you are not looking at the early stages of a long term trend? And how can any reasonable observer of this webpage conclude that the “we” in the statement at the top of the page is a rational responsible and qualified arbiter .
I’m still seeking the reasoning in the statement “File this under short term trends matter when we say they matter.”
I have to bid you good nite its 2a.m. here, will check back tomorrow
Salutations Hengist McStone
Z,
First of all,
Ice shelves off the Antarctic peninsula (with the exception of Wilkins) collapsed because melt pools formed on the surface of the ice shelves and the water penetrated down through the ice shelves causing them to shatter in thin pieces. This is commonly known and you can read Cook and Vaughan’s 2009 paper which summarizes all the information about the different ice shelves on the peninsula. The melt ponds were due to significant warming which has occurred over the last 50 years on the Antarctic Peninsula. I do suggest you educate yourself on this matter before you speak next time.
Secondly,
your 300,000 years value is wrong, but what is important is the acceleration of mass loss which has resulted in drastic changes on individual basins such as in Pine Island Bay (see rignot et al. 2008a and 2008b). An example is Greenland, WUWT said at one point not to worry because it would take 15 000 years to melt at current rates. Well in 2002 it would of taken 22 000 years…so a 7000 year change in just 7 years… Greenland’s ice loss is accelerating at 30 GT per year2… Antarctica’s situation is even more dire with Pine Island glacier being grounded significantly below sea level and poised to contribute significantly to sea level rise over the next century.
Thirdly,
I don’t need to be told about the different uncertainties pertaining to remote sensing of the cryosphere. I know that each method has their own errors but I also know that when 3-4 methods agree very well then its with a high certainty that assumptions can be made. Furthermore, using interferometry and speckle tracking we can see velocity changes almost perfectly which gives even more certainty as to how accelerated ice losses are occurring. Also, for the record, I actually am co-author on a poster at the IPY conference which pertains to using statistical validating techniques to identify overestimation of glacier losses from Silcast DEMs… Therefore, I don’t think your comment about “doing my own research” is necessary. Where is your research in this field? I’m at least doing my masters in glaciology, where are your credentials which give you the right to insult mine…
Why is Steve talking about APRIL ? Where are the Pips Charts?
Here is the reason: Navy Site shows:
A big Area of nearly open water (low concentration) in the CENTRAL Arctic.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/retrievepic.html?filetype=Concentration&year=2010&month=6&day=14
PLUS: I finally figured out why the Pips & now, Cryosphere’s CONCENTRATION Maps show INCREASES …
… in Near-Summer ! !
(PS Melting does not start in Summer = June: Arctic May has as much heat as Arctic June due to Clouds: more clouds form beginning late May as more water is exposed & gets hot by Sunlight = mist. A while back Steve commented there is little Sun after May 20 — which sounded utterly weird until I looked it up: Sun is brightest on June 21 of course, but actual Sun impacting the Arctic surfaces, AFTER subtracting for Clouds, peaks May 20 — though it does NOT END THEN. More than half is later. Melting continues into early September)
Contrast is the Key.
Pips gets Concentration from a Microwave satellite and INCREASES CONTRAST to get Concentration = percentage of Ice, in an area. An Algorithm from 1987 then gives thickness based on time of year, etc. Piomas is different near the Shore &/or Sea lanes because it calibrates the Concentration with measurements from ships.
But CONCENTRATION is from Contrast & SOOT affects that — making “everything gray”. THAT is why Concentration-measures alone, give us INCREASING ICE these Days of Heat
>>Dust from the Unpronoucable Icelandic Volcano)
>> the Asian Brown Cloud
>> the expanding use of sootty Diesels in Europe.
Steve often leads with 2 Charts:
1. A Past-year Chart showing a lot of variance from place to place, &
2. A Recent Chart: a bland blob mostly – – which he interprets as UNIFORMLY THICK ICE.
In fact it is just Gray Soot.
Look at Pips again: http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/retrievepic.html?filetype=Concentration&year=2010&month=6&day=14
Pips makes its charts from the Microwave — that is why it is there
(like a Bible translation has the original on the facing page: because that is the SOURCE).
If the Microwave pic gets blurred, Pips looks THICK.
Remember the ICESAT satellite, & the “Icebridge” Overflights of the Central Arctic, actually MEASURED thickness DIRECTLY (with Lasers). Anything else is using a “proxy” or an “analog” e.g. the “Hockey Stick” and those pine tree Growth rings (which declined in the Medieval temperature maximum because the heat allowed Deer
to roam higher in the mountains & they ate the bark off the Bristlecone Pines — alas, Mann interpreted Low Growth as ALWAYS low temperature when actual it meant High Deer)
This makes PIOMAS unmatched as an Ice Thickness source – – but ONLY SOMETIMES = whenever there were Plane flights but no Satellites, e.g. from May 2008-to-May 2010 — but, oddly: not NOW.
PS: What does the Ice melting matter ? – – Ah, you have to have:
1. ALL the Ice Melt OFF
2. Early enough to get lots of SUN on the Ocean
3. the Pole gets MORE Sun than further South because the Days there are 24 Hours Long
4. The Arctic gets Hotter than the North Atlantic
5. The Gulf Stream reverses
6. After the Equinox the Pole gets 24-hour Nights, temps drop
7. BUT NO ATLANTIC WATER COMES TO WARM THE ARCTIC
8. = 300 moh Winds = NO structures survive.
9. = We all die (save a few million Cannibals). OOps !
.. PSS this must be PERFECT: a melt off over 2 years & no Deal. And we do not know if the Currents are similar enough to when this happened the last time (end of the Younger Dryas), to do the same thing. And: it is the WEATHER … complexities often derail a “sure thing” according to the Abrupt Climate Change Task Force.
I give it 27%
. . . but I’m always hoping for new data to make it Zero.
A key critter is the Salinity: there was a Currents-Stop scare a few years back from Salinity changes alone – – & if Salinity points the other way from the heat values, the currents may still run, even if they weaken. No Perfect Storm, no 6 Billion DEAD.
P.S.#3: Ocean Water does not reflect like a flat surface – – because it has waves.
Gneiss:
That’s exactly what we are referring to. How would you know that rotten ice 15 years ago would not be fooling the satellites in exactly the same way…there is no baseline for comparison.
Or for a different “data point,” there’s a nice animation showing the flow of ice through Nares Strait, between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, over June 7-14, on Neven’s new Arctic Sea Ice site:
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2010/06/nares-strait-animation-part-1.html
Noteworthy in this connection is not just the overall rate of flow, but the appearance of a solid-looking 50km ice floe that looked set to block the strait — but then began breaking apart overnight. From an armchair point of view, that seemed to fit Barber’s observation of ice less substantial than it looked from space.
Mmmmmmm! Do you mean like these? Most look like short-term alarmism to me, but I stand to be corrected. :o)
Gneiss says:
June 15, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Or for a different “data point,” there’s a nice animation showing the flow of ice through Nares Strait, between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, over June 7-14, on Neven’s new Arctic Sea Ice site:
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2010/06/nares-strait-animation-part-1.html
Noteworthy in this connection is not just the overall rate of flow, but the appearance of a solid-looking 50km ice floe that looked set to block the strait — but then began breaking apart overnight. From an armchair point of view, that seemed to fit Barber’s observation of ice less substantial than it looked from space.
I’ve been posting about this for several months now, it’s another link with 2007 when the strait also opened early (but not as early as this year). I’d been watching that floe approaching for a few days, it was the only big one in the vicinity, wondering whether it would block the strait and if so for how long. Last night it blocked the strait and almost straight away started to break up. Although this strait doesn’t transport as much multiyear ice to its demise as the Fram but it is some of the oldest and thickest ice from the Arctic, which is now in very short supply.
Hengist McStone says:
June 15, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Hi Robert, My criticism of your approach is twofold. How can you be sure you are not looking at the early stages of a long term trend?
———-
Indeed, that begs the question about the flat to cooling global temps in the past 15 years. How do we know that this is not the start of a cooling phase? Take a look at the following and you might get a feel about how scientists became confused about the weather over the decades and thought they might be seeing a long-term trend which suddenly went the other way!!! There have always been scares so don’t be. :o)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
http://www.almanac.com/sites/new.almanac.com/files/1895_cvr1_0.png
http://newsbusters.org/node/11640
And something more recent about projected cooling before a ramp up in ‘warming’ from a man at the IPCC.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17742-worlds-climate-could-cool-first-warm-later.html
The above and much more are the reasons I’m not worried about a runaway situation because it has obviously never, ever runaway beyond the point of no return. Why did it not runaway after September 2007 when huge areas of the Arctic were exposed to the sun as we have been told endlessly?
OT: Jo Bastardi, just a note I used to love Accuweather until you change the format. It is very unfriendly now to get a satellite animation compared to the previous scheme. Please do something about it. Thanks, Tom.
Robert writes: “First of all,
Ice shelves off the Antarctic peninsula (with the exception of Wilkins) collapsed because melt pools formed on the surface of the ice shelves and the water penetrated down through the ice shelves causing them to shatter in thin pieces. This is commonly known and you can read Cook and Vaughan’s 2009 paper which summarizes all the information about the different ice shelves on the peninsula. The melt ponds were due to significant warming which has occurred over the last 50 years on the Antarctic Peninsula. I do suggest you educate yourself on this matter before you speak next time.”
The Peninsula is warming for dynamic meteorological reasons that in fact invalidate your Global Warming pole warming. You should educate yourself too. As for Barber, even Revkin did avoid his rotten ice BS as once again, it is a question of meteorological conditions. Those freaks from Winnipoo love the oil barons when they cough dough for their buildings but promote their AGW agenda on DC, Joe Romm and Desmog…
Oh, I nearly forgot to add:
2007 Arctic ice retreat due mostly to wind, currents
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html
NASA says at least 45% melting since 1976 is most probably due to aerosols (soot)
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_aerosols_prt.htm
Arctic ice thicker than expected In 2009
http://www.awi.de/en/news/press_releases/detail/item/research_aircraft_polar_5_finishes_arctic_expedition_unique_measurement_flights_in_the_central_arc/?cHash=e36036fcb4
jeez wrote,
“How would you know that rotten ice 15 years ago would not be fooling the satellites in exactly the same way…there is no baseline for comparison.”
We have baselines of many kinds, spanning many decades.
But just staying with Barber, he remarked after last fall’s expedition that he had never seen anything like those ice conditions, during his 30 years in the Arctic.
@ur momisugly stevengoddard:
June 15, 2010 at 10:30 am
Steve, never got an answer from you (if you know), is most of the decrease this year strictly in the Hudson Bay area?
jeez says:
June 15, 2010 at 5:15 pm
Gneiss:
That’s exactly what we are referring to. How would you know that rotten ice 15 years ago would not be fooling the satellites in exactly the same way…there is no baseline for comparison.
They’ve got the PIOMAS graph now jeez. Didn’t you know? It’s ALL about that PIOMAS graph.
Robert says:
June 15, 2010 at 2:18 pm blah blah blah blah
Robert says:
June 15, 2010 at 5:11 pm blah blah blah ackphhhht
robert
no one believes all these dire prognostications anymore. no matter how long you sit behind a computer manipulating satellite data with statistics to make it fit the warmist agenda, there is just too much real evidence contradicting almost everything you people say.