Arctic Ocean ice retreating at 30-year record pace

It’s comical the obsession of the “warmists” with ice. Why do they love ice and cold temperatures so much? Are they not warm blooded mammals? Most folks are looking for warm weather. Do more people move south (Arizona and Florida) or north as they get older? All this nonsense of worrying about the north pole: it’s all natural variation…and even if it isn’t, who cares? So the planet gets warmer and all the ice melts. Big deal.

… and Mars’ northern polar cap is melting… melting… away… aaaahhhhhh…
Now fess up, who bumped up the Solar System’s thermostat?
http://www-mgcm.arc.nasa.gov/MarsToday/marstotal.gif #:-)

Robert says:{June 15, 2010 at 2:33 pm}
“Tom in Florida,
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.”
So you fear that less albedo in the arctic will fry the whole Earth?

jorgekafkazar says:
June 15, 2010 at 4:35 pm
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.
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Jorge, actually the albedo difference between open water and snow/sea ice is quite significant. I would direct you to recent publications and talks by Don Perovich at CRREL. He is a very good speaker, explains concepts thoroughly and in a way that most anyone can understand. Perovich has spent a large part of his life measuring the albedo over sea ice in various stages of evolution, including melt ponds and open water. You can view his publications here: http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/sid/personnel/perovichweb/index1.htm
You can also see a video here: http://www.exploratorium.edu/webcasts/explotv_player.php?id=00000960&type=flv

What they really don’t want you to know:
The ice in the Antatctic is growing faster than the Arctic.
If this pattern holds, and I see no current reason for it not to, the coming winter for the N. Hemisphere will be cruel.
SuperFasterDisasterTempestImaginationPhobius,
Global Warming Cap & Tax give us your money hoaxus,
SuperFasterGloomyDoomBarbecue&Roastus.

ya but they forget to mention that the antarctic is as much above normal as the arctic is below normal, and for the rate of increase it matches the rate of decrease in the arctic….interesting correlation if you ask me, this year may be a new record high for ice in the antarctic. as for the arctic i see a year much like the one past.

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? 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.”
+++++
It’s tongue in cheek – a little example of the type of levity that you’ll find sprinkled throughout this website.
In this case it’s aimed at the writers of this article, but the statement also serves as a reminder to those who take up the counterargument to not put too much weight on short term observations.
And you are correct: we cannot know that a short term pattern isn’t the first signs of a longer term pattern, but that doesn’t give us license to make assumptions.

Some wonder why sea ice is so … fascinating. Well, it changes faster than grass grows. I like to read and talk about sea ice because…it’s like weather. I like reading and talking about that too. Call me a square peg in a round hole. Bookish. Or easily entertained. Don’t care. It’s way better than TV.

FYI: Sometimes you hear someone say some data as: “We measured the temperatures north of 85º and found it to be…” and you don’t have the foggy how much area they are really speaking of. So I calculated them for you and myself so we can get a grip on the scale of the matter.
%area between 0º (Equator) and 23.5º (Tropic of Cancer) = 30.1%
%area between 23.5º and 66.5º (Arctic Circle) = 15.8%
%area between 66.5º and 90º (North Pole) = 4.1%
Totals of above = 50%
%area between 70º and 90º = 3.0%
%area between 75º and 90º = 1.7%
%area between 80º and 90º = 0.76% (DMI temps)
%area between 85º and 90º = 0.19%
Not as big as your mind imagined is it? And the tropic band is much larger that I thought.

I feel so prescient – I predicted this very claim some weeks ago in the very blog. I so wanted to not be right.
Some how everyone needs to agree on the importance of at least two characteristics of arctic ice: mass and area. They are loosely related but there are forces at work that have nothing to do with temperature trends (wind direction and speed, for example).
Area is important when you are advocating albedo while mass is important when you are making claims of ice quality. It seems to me the debaters on both sides play loose with the significance of each over time. My understanding is mass is up, relative to recent years. Since rate of decline is rather consistent year after year but with variations in when the decline reaches a certain area (another important characteristic not well discussed), starting with more will result in the loss of more and no change in climate needed. It’s a quirk of the math.

Whilst I would certainly grant there has been a degree of ice loss in the past 30 years I certainly don’t concede that AGW is the proven driving factor of this loss.
Until scientists can get a good grip on the impact of the different natural climatic cycles on wind and ocean currents and their subsequent impact on ice area and extent over the longer term, I cant see how anyone can claim that the loss of ice is primarily due to AGW.
I’ve seen far too little clarity in the logic put forth on the AGW side to back an “AGW has caused the Arctic ice loss” position.
On a side note I’d be curoius to see whether any studies have been done regarding the impact of shipping, if any, on ice area and extent. Seems to me all these ice breakers ploughing through the ice pack cant be doing it any favours. Is the amount of traffic heavy enough to do any damage and is there any correlation between the amount of heavy shipping in the arctic circle with ice loss?

Robert
With your regard to your comment
“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. ”
Can you explain what effect will the thickening of the much larger East Antarctic ice mass will have on your predictions?
What is causing the thickening of this huge ice mass?

CodeTech says:
June 15, 2010 at 9:26 am
“Well it was nice of them to “warn” us. I mean, Arctic sea ice is SO important to everyone’s day to day life.”
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Estimates for Arctic Ice Cap shrinkage has been consistently underestimated. First the year 2100 predicted by the IPCC which is notorious for gross underestimating. Then more serious Climatologists started playing the game. 2050, no 2040. How about 2020 through 2030?
They too were underestimating because they could not put in all the factors in their models. I myself am in the the 2020-2030 range though I’m starting to strongly suspect that it may be 8-12 years until ALL the ice goes including the ice north of Canada. It will hang on for a disproportionally long time compared to the rest that will quickly accelerate in its melting. This will be due to shallow colder waters underneath them delaying the inevitable.
BUT WE DON’T HAVE TO WAIT THAT LONG. In half the time range for the total melt to be accomplished most of the ice in the Arctic Ocean will be gone.
Now forgive me for boring you but why is this SOoooooo important in everyone’s day to day life? Because that’s how long we have until the weather starts to transform itself as the Arctic Ocean starts opening up in earnest. When it does, to the detriment of the entire Northern Hemisphere, with crop failures and massive flooding and droughts, perhaps you will be less sarcastic in your overall tone.
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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 . . .”
“The hysteria, if ( when) I am proven correct, will simply shift to the southern hemisphere, were the warmist refuse to look now.”
Actually, that’s what I always thought the naysayers would do. Migrate south for the extended Arctic summer.
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EthicallyCivil says:
June 15, 2010 at 2:20 pm
“Meta topic rant — Viewing the time lapses of the ice migrating south along the Greenland coast alway makes me want to scream — Arctic Ice melts because it’s no longer *in* the Arctic.”
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The increase in temperature from Global Warming and its cumulative results leading to the disintegration of the Arctic Ice Cap enhances the effects of forces that never bothered the ice cap until recently. These forces include wind/current, water warming, ponding and other factors.
It is not rational to say that WIND is responsible instead of WARMING when both of them interact. Global Warming in effect enhances the detrimental effects of wind.
The wind and the ocean current that work together have been there for millenia. They’ve been observed for 200 years or so and carefully observed for about 100 years. They have always been flushing a certain amount of ice from the Arctic Ice Cap which would then regrow what it lost. This was before Global Warming started to make an impact on the ice cap.
If the winds alone are responsible for our current loss then we should have had no ice cap at all by now. It would have all been flushed out a long time ago.
The current situation is that the cumulative results of Global Warming have thinned out the ice cap which by being thinner is lighter and therefore easier for the winds to pick up. Being easier to pick up, more ice can be flushed out at one time. And to add insult to injury the ice cap cannot repair itself because of the warmer water, which is what thinned the ice in the first place.
HOW CAN THE WIND HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THINNING THE ICE?
Then there is the warming water itself. At first the ice cap begins to shrink slowly, exposing more and more water at its edges. White ice reflects 80-90% of the sun’s light depending on it’s condition while blue water absorbs 80%. As it warms up out of proportion to the ice it nibbles away at the edges of the ice either around or within open bodies of water and cracks inside the ice cap.
Warm water also slips underneath the ice cap which then attacks the ice from beneath. Hence the ice cap is being attacked from three directions. From above due to warmer air. From the sides and from below by warmer waters.
HOW CAN THE WINDS BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WARMER WATER AS OPPOSED TO . . . AS HE SCRATCHES HIS HEAD . . . AH, I GET IT! AS OPPOSED TO THE WARMER ATMOSPHERE.
Ponding is what happens when the air temperature at summer melts puddles of water on top of the ice. Since the water absorbs more heat from the sun than the ice it starts melting the ice underneath until it bores a hole all the way to the bottom where the seawater is. Other than contributing to melting it aids in the disintegration of the ice which eventually becomes rotten ice.
HOW CAN THE WINDS HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR PONDING WHEN IT’S OBVIOUS THAT EXTRA WARMTH IS CAUSING IT?
Then the rotten ice itself, which is made up of chunks of fragmented ice created in part from ponding and ocean waves. The ice is glued together over the winter by a thin layer of young first year ice. It melts easier than ordinary ice of the same thickness.
The ocean waves have been directly observed by the crew of the icebreaker Amundsen in September of 2009. The icebreaker was sent to investigate the presence of multiyear ice in the southeastern beaufort sea. It went through extensive amounts of 20 inch rotten ice until it found one ten mile ice floe of multiyear ice.
Before the very eyes of the ship’s crew the entire ten mile wide floe disintegrated in five minutes as it was being pounded by ocean waves. The rotten ice, 20 inches thick, that surrounded the ice floe offered no resistance to the waves.
HOW CAN THE WINDS HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ROTTEN ICE?
The ocean waves themselves would never have been a problem in the Arctic Ice Cap area because thirty years ago the area of multiyear ice was so extensive (It actually made up 90% of a very large ice cap) that they would have been suppressed throughout the whole Arctic Sea area.
HOW CAN THE WINDS HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?
http://s0.ilike.com/play#Bonnie+Tyler:Against+the+Wind+(Radio+Mix):5421264:m14977243