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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“”” A Climatologist is just a Meteorologist who has been studying weather for more than 30 years; and if he hasn’t been studying it for 30 years then why does he call himslef a Climatologist.
Well I prefer to call them Climatologers; which is more in keeping with the other soft sciences like Economics and Ancient Astrology.
When they stop computer guessing at what is coming down the pike; they may qualify as Climatologists (after 30 years on the job).
“”” villabolo says:
June 16, 2010 at 4:22 pm
George E. Smith says:
June 16, 2010 at 3:26 pm
“Take a look at that ice sculpture. Can’t you see how the refractive index of the water, has concentrated the sunlight and focussed it under the surface to melt the ice BELOW THE SURFACE !!”
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
You better watch out for the WRATH OF SMOKEY who dissed me on misspelling Anna’s name! Not that I’m a nitpick or care about misspellings at all, but Smokey might breath fire out of your monitor because you misspelled focused (with an extra ‘c’) and berg (with a ‘u’). Oops, I caught another one but I’ll let Smokey fume about it.
On a more serious note you may have a point about the refractive issue (I can’t see the picture you must be referring to since there is no link). “””
Well there is only one picture isn’t there; so that must be the one I was referrring to; you know; the one at the top of the page; the one from the Montreal Gazette; that picture of a sculpted ice burg.
And the refractive index thing was a bit of off the cuff comment there; not to be taken seriously; but the picture clearly shows the ice is being scarfed off AKA melted from underneath the water; while it looks pristine and unmelted on the top.
Those surface waterfalls that start at the top of Greenland glaciers; are most likely NOT all that hot; but once they get a bit of a hole in the ice; the gravitational energy they get, just falling down the hole, is enough to keep on carving till they get all the way through.
Some intrepid 8th grader could do the calculations to convert the gravitational energy of falling water into rate of ice melting.
But it’s a neat trick to pass off those perpetual Greenland surface waterfalls, as some kind of global warming phenomenon; well if I was cheeky enough, I would try it myself.
But no; it simply is 1/2 mV^2 —> 80 calories per gram.
Smokey says:
June 16, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Well, I can see the graph numbers better than Phil. But if you folks are asking for a different graph, look here.
If you want more graphs, just holler.
Sorry I made a mistake on the last graph the most recent data was from 1855.
Smokey’s latest graph is based on data that ends at ~450 years ago.
“Since you are so concerned about the harmless and beneficial trace gas CO2, kindly provide empirical [not model], testable, replicable evidence showing the fraction of warming that has occurred, which is specifically attributable to human CO2 emissions. Then it should be easy to show the climate sensitivity to CO2. When you have a solid climate sensitivity number, we can make accurate predictions. Easy, no? …No. You would be in line for a Nobel prize if you could demonstrate a testable and accurate climate sensitivity number.”
Very well put. You can trot out any number of symptoms that might point to warming temperatures but they wont prove whether the global warming of the past 30 years warming was due to natural or anthropogenic causes.
Arguing that declining Arctic Ice, rising sea levels, drought, flood, severe weather etc proves AGW is simply not logical. They may be a sign of warming global temperatures but I don’t see how they speak to the origin of that warming.
Phil, the first graph that Smokey thought proved his point shows Richard Alley’s GISP2 temperature reconstruction, which ends in 1905. That endpoint often gets deceptively labeled “present temperature,” for example in the PowerPoints for talks by Don Easterbrook. Faked-up versions of the graph are bouncing all over the Interwebs.
The graph Smokey cited is accurately labeled, however. The right-hand X value is “95,” as in 95 years before 2000.
Gneiss says:
June 16, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Phil, the first graph that Smokey thought proved his point shows Richard Alley’s GISP2 temperature reconstruction, which ends in 1905. That endpoint often gets deceptively labeled “present temperature,” for example in the PowerPoints for talks by Don Easterbrook. Faked-up versions of the graph are bouncing all over the Interwebs.
Agree apart from the 1905 part.
The graph Smokey cited is accurately labeled, however. The right-hand X value is “95,” as in 95 years before 2000.
The right hand X value is indeed 95, but it’s 95 years before present and BP refers to 1950 not 2000 (David Lappi who produced that graph made a mistake).
“BP refers to 1950 not 2000 (David Lappi who produced that graph made a mistake).”
Ah, then it confused me as well! The NOAA paleoclimatology site lists the end date as 2000, and links to data that start at 0.0951409 thousand years before present. So I assumed that meant 1905.
Either way, it makes the MWP look toasty to see it compared with LIA temps standing in for the “present.”
An Inquirer says:
June 16, 2010 at 12:37 pm
I am not sure that there is any useful information about ocean temperatures in a map of SSTs when the area covered by ice is estimated at -2 to 0 degrees Celsius.
Finally, you do not need to have temperatures above 0 degrees Celsius to melt ice. Strong sunshine — especially with some soot on the snow & ice — will do just fine.
Physics is funny. If the sun is melting the ice, the air temperature will be over 0C, and would be measured. It is not the air temperature that is melting the ice, it is the melting ice that generates the air temperature : air has very small heat capacity to be able to do much except cool rapidly over colder ice. And my point about winds and ocean currents was for the melt up to now, not from now on, when the plot shows over 0C.
villabolo says:
June 16, 2010 at 2:51 pm
anna v says:
June 16, 2010 at 8:55 am
“Because at some point meteorologists decided that averages over 30 years describe climate and not weather , and it has been carried over to the global warming studies.”
VILLABOLO REPLIES:
I believe they are called Climatologists not Meteorologists.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) glossary definition is:
Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the “average weather,” or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate
I supposed that it is meteorologists who belong to the World Meteorological Organization.
I was a barefoot girl sixty years ago in the summers, with calluses like soles on my feet from walking on hot sands and earth. At present I am a seventy year old retired particle physicist.
I can give you this very important insight in physics: it is the energy , and the differing ability of matter to retain and transmit energy that is important. Not the hand waving.
For ice to change phase and become water, energy must be supplied.Temperature is a proxy of energy but does not tell how much there is there. It is the heat capacity of the media that plays the role, and of course the energy from the sun.
Here is the logic.:
Up to a few days ago, not enough energy was radiated down to the arctic because the temperatures were below freezing. Nevertheless the ice area diminished appreciably. The energy must have been supplied somehow. Since the waters next to the ice are also quite cold ( ice has very little salt) the ice must be pushed to warmer ocean waters in order to melt. What is pushing it, if it is not ice breakers? Wind and water currents in tandem.
http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/forecaster_handbooks/Arctic/Forecasters%20Handbook%20for%20the%20Arctic.02.pdf
Breakup in the bay begins in May as puddles and cracks start to form. Strong easterly
winds can move most or all of the ice out of the bay as early as mid-June. Absence of
these winds may result in ice lingering in the bay as late as mid-July
…
In addition to winds, ocean currents have a major influence on the motion of the ice.
Several sources of oceanic currents exist causing the currents to be quite complex at times.
The motion of the water due to tides can also be complex, particularly in shallow andl ong
embayments.
The web is a great educator.
Knock me over with a feather!! 🙂
AnnaV
Physics is funny. If the sun is melting the ice, the air temperature will be over 0C, and would be measured. It is not the air temperature that is melting the ice, it is the melting ice that generates the air temperature : air has very small heat capacity to be able to do much except cool rapidly over colder ice.
Of course ! This is so basic that you would expect everybody knows it .
Even warmers .
But apparently no .
I am sure the guy you answered to seriously believed that melting ice can be surrounded by air below 0°C 🙂
What those people believe being physics is definitely not funny .
Phil wrote,
“Smokey’s latest graph is based on data that ends at ~450 years ago.”
Also, those data are from Antarctica, whereas my statement that Smokey was helping us debunk referred to the GISP2 Greenland core.
TomVonk says:
June 17, 2010 at 3:38 am
AnnaV
Physics is funny. If the sun is melting the ice, the air temperature will be over 0C, and would be measured. It is not the air temperature that is melting the ice, it is the melting ice that generates the air temperature : air has very small heat capacity to be able to do much except cool rapidly over colder ice.
Right, so ‘melting ice generates the air temperature’, but water in contact with ice will be at 0ºC so why would you expect the air temperature to be over 0ºC? That’s assuming that it’s freshwater ice, saltwater ice will melt at a lower temperature.
Of course ! This is so basic that you would expect everybody knows it .
Even warmers .
But apparently no .
I am sure the guy you answered to seriously believed that melting ice can be surrounded by air below 0°C 🙂
What those people believe being physics is definitely not funny .
Indeed Tom.
So does the sun, or the air, or the water melt the ice.
So let’s do an experiment (at night) so there’s no sunshine; and let’s suppose that we have a calving glacier; with an ice temperature of -8 deg C; and the air temperature is also at -8 deg C; so there isn’t anybody to melt the ice.
Well the glacier is hanging out over Glacier Bay or some place off Greenland, developing a shearing stress, since the ice doesn’t go very far below the surface; but let’s say that the glacier face is 250 feet high from the water surface to the top of the cliff. So how much ice is that ?
Well the glacier face is a random curvy line around the end of that thing; and let’s imagine another curvy line; at the shear face; where it is going to break off; maybe a metre wide; maybe a hundred metres; who knows. So the center line (length around the face) between those two lines; times the distance between the lines times 250 feet is the amount of ice above the surface; and it is going to break off. (this is the second Theorem of Pappus; in case anybody is watching).
Well actually it doesn’t matter; the amount of ice could be in Pyramid Tons for all I care; we’ll just call it (m) for short.
So if the cliff is 250 feet above the surface; the mean height (H) = 250/2 *0.3048 metres.
So when the ice breaks off that whole mass (m) is going to fall an average distance (H); and in the process develop some kinetic energy; 1/2m* v^2 = m.g.H = mx9.80665xH Joules which also equals m.H x9.80665/4.184 Calories if converted from mechanical energy to heat; and spread it over m total mass of ice.
So we get 250/2*0.3048*9.80665/4.184 = 89.3 Calories.
So our ice was at -8 deg C and the latent heat of freezing is about 80 Calories per gram; so we get enough energy from the gravitational collapse to raise the ice Temperature up to zero; then melt it, and warm the water up to +1.3 deg C.
So you see, there is no need to postulate any source of heat to melt the ice of a glacier. It carries enough gravitational potential energy as it marches slowly down the valley to melt itself; energy that was stored there when the snow was originally laid down up in the high lands.
So next time you go to Glacier Bay; and watch the ice calve off a cliff that is over 250 feet high over the surface; just remember that the collapse alone results in enough heat to melt all of the ice that collapsed; well the part that was under the water; will rebound upwards; and cool a bit so it will survive; but enough heat is released to account for the melt of the collapsed ice.
And some of those glaciers are way higher than 250 feet at the terminus face.
And as I pointed out before those perpetual waterfalls that never stop going down holes in the Greenland glaciers; are simply converting their gravitational energy to ice melting; so no external heat source is required to explain.
And if the sea water wasn’t warm before the collapse; it will certainly warm up as a result of the collapse.
Phil. says:
June 17, 2010 at 8:39 am
Are you just being confrontational? It is all about LW and SW after all, the same as with the ground. SW hits the ice and turns into LW and melts it , (fortunately normal ground does not melt.) While melting is going on there is not enough LW radiated to heat the air above. Look at the DMI plot on the right. The temperature does not go over 2C from melt.
but water in contact with ice will be at 0ºC so why would you expect the air temperature to be over 0ºC?
From left over LW that is not used in melting, since air is a bad conductor? There is a layer of water when melt starts, and that helps in getting some LW radiation to the air.
Any way the question was about the role of winds, at a time when melt had not started, and I think that is answered.
Smokey refers (links) to an Antarctic ice core temperature chart. This chart is from a 2010 peer-reviewed study. The authors state that YBP figure is pre-1950. Not 1905, not 1855, not ~450 years ago. Open the study’s PDF and do a search on 1950 and you’ll find the reference – at least that’s how we interpreted the author’s statement.
Go to this posting, which has additional information on right side of chart:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/06/2010-antarctica-peerreviewed-research-ice-core-data-confirms-medieval-period-warmer-than-present.html
You’ll see why we label data end as “Current” – hint, the Antarctica high elevation polar plateau temps have not changed much since 1950.
And in the Month of April 2010 the IARC-JAXA Sea Ice Extent was larger than the previous 8 years. But that wouldn’t be news, right?
C3 says:
June 17, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Smokey refers (links) to an Antarctic ice core temperature chart. This chart is from a 2010 peer-reviewed study. The authors state that YBP figure is pre-1950. Not 1905, not 1855, not ~450 years ago. Open the study’s PDF and do a search on 1950 and you’ll find the reference – at least that’s how we interpreted the author’s statement.
The most recent data point in the datafile is -390 BP, hence 450 years ago.
Per Phil: “The most recent data point in the datafile is -390 BP, hence 450 years ago.”
Okay, the ice core chart is from this 2010 peer-reviewed research (see this PDF): http://epic.awi.de/Publications/Ste2009a.pdf
Here are the exact words from the research PDF: “(ky BP refers to thousands
of years before 1950 AD)”.
Phil, please provide the link to the actual datafile used by this specific study (Stenni et al. – Quaternary Science Reviews 29 (2010)) that counters their stated ‘pre-1950’ claim in their own published study.
Honestly, are you saying that their ‘pre-1950’ terminology in their PDF really means some 400 years “pre” 1950?
You are referring to the Dome C ice core datafile, not the multiple others that are available, correct?
C3 says:
June 17, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Per Phil: “The most recent data point in the datafile is -390 BP, hence 450 years ago.”
Okay, the ice core chart is from this 2010 peer-reviewed research (see this PDF): http://epic.awi.de/Publications/Ste2009a.pdf
Here are the exact words from the research PDF: “(ky BP refers to thousands
of years before 1950 AD)”.
Phil, please provide the link to the actual datafile used by this specific study (Stenni et al. – Quaternary Science Reviews 29 (2010)) that counters their stated ‘pre-1950′ claim in their own published study.
Honestly, are you saying that their ‘pre-1950′ terminology in their PDF really means some 400 years “pre” 1950?
You are referring to the Dome C ice core datafile, not the multiple others that are available, correct?
Years BP is standard terminology which refers to ‘pre-1950′, it doesn’t mean that the data runs up to 1950. In fact the data file used in that study has been corrected and the most recent datapoint is now 38yBP or 1912.
The datafile is edc3deuttemp2007.txt at the Epica_domec ftp server, here’s the early part of it:
DATA:
EPICA Dome C bag deuterium data
(LSCE, analytical accuracy of 0.5 per mille)
Temperature estimated after correction for sea-water
isotopic composition (Bintanja et al, 2005)
and for ice sheet elevation (Parrenin et al, 2007)
on EDC3 age scale (Parrenin et al, 2007)
Column 1: Bag number (55 cm sample)
Column 2: Top depth (m)
Column 3: EDC3 age scale (years before year 1950)
Column 4: dD data (per mille with respect to SMOW)
Column 5: Temperature estimate (temperature difference from the average of the last 1000 years)
Bag ztop Age Deuterium Temperature
1 0 -50.00000
2 0.55 -43.54769
3 1.1 -37.41829
4 1.65 -31.61153
5 2.2 -24.51395
6 2.75 -17.73776
7 3.3 -10.95945
8 3.85 -3.20879
9 4.4 5.48176
10 4.95 13.52038
11 5.5 22.21633
12 6.05 30.60813
13 6.6 38.37379 -390.9 0.88
14 7.15 46.81203 -385.1 1.84
15 7.7 55.05624 -377.8 3.04
Charles S. Opalek, PE says:
June 17, 2010 at 3:20 pm
And in the Month of April 2010 the IARC-JAXA Sea Ice Extent was larger than the previous 8 years. But that wouldn’t be news, right?
Wasn’t it news? There were a bunch of pieces done on here about it – guess you missed them. Check the archives.
OK, about sea ice, i.e. ice formed on the ocean without snowfall playing a role, here is
what is in wikipedia is as I thought: no salt in the ice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_ice
The sea ice is largely fresh, since the ocean salt is expelled from the forming and consolidating ice by a process called brine rejection. The resulting highly saline (and hence dense) water is an important influence on the ocean overturning circulation.
So melt of this ice, no matter the lower temperature of saline water it needed to start freezing, is still 0C.
anna v says:
June 18, 2010 at 3:53 am
OK, about sea ice, i.e. ice formed on the ocean without snowfall playing a role, here is
what is in wikipedia is as I thought: no salt in the ice.
On these matters I find NSIDC to be more authoritative:
“New ice is usually very salty because it contains concentrated droplets called brine that are trapped in pockets between the ice crystals, and so it would not make good drinking water. As ice ages, the brine eventually drains through the ice, and by the time it becomes multiyear ice, nearly all of the brine is gone. Most multiyear ice is fresh enough that someone could drink its melted water. In fact, multiyear ice often supplies the fresh water needed for polar expeditions. See Salinity and Brine in the Characteristics section for more information.”
As we are frequently told much of the melting of sea ice occurs at the water/ice interface. Here’s an example of melting first year ice, note the temperature at the melting surface is less than 0ºC. In this case the upper surface being formed from snow will be fresh water ice.
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_sealevel/brw2010/BRW_MBS10_currTprof.png
Per Phil (June 17, 2010 at 8:52 pm): “In fact the data file used in that study has been corrected and the most recent datapoint is now 38yBP or 1912.”
Phil, thanks for the file location. I checked it out. Based on my reading of the information attached to the file, the first data point is actually year 2000 (Bag #1). The first temperature data occurs in Bag#13, which corresponds to 1912. My mistake (ignorance) I was off 38 years, not the approximate 400 years as implied in previous comments.
Now that we concur of year data (me wrong 38 years; you wrong ~400 years), the real question comes down to how much the polar plateau on East Antarctica, at 10k meter elevation, warmed/cooled since 1912. My impression is that specific part of the globe has not seen much temperature change over the last 98 years.
Thanks again for the data source.
“”” Phil. says:
June 18, 2010 at 6:29 am
As we are frequently told much of the melting of sea ice occurs at the water/ice interface. Here’s an example of melting first year ice, note the temperature at the melting surface is less than 0ºC. In this case the upper surface being formed from snow will be fresh water ice.
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_sealevel/brw2010/BRW_MBS10_currTprof.png “””
Say Phil,
Presumably the black line with dots is the actual Temperature data. What is that tan/brown area around the black line; some sort of uncertainty band or what is it.
Presumably the underwater/ice melting interface at minus 0.5 deg C or so, simply reflects that zero degree C is only the melting point at an ice/fresh water interface; and the melting Temperature is shifted for an ice/salty water interface.
My Infra-Red Handbook, in the section on Properties of Terrestrial materials, shows snow reflectances that are above 80% and sometimes 90% for the visibly range out to 800 nm; but then a roughly linear decline down to near zero at 1.50 microns; with a plateau in the 20-40% range at 1.2-1.4 microns; with the value very dependent on snow age. For one small angle reflectance for that 1.2-1.4 micron plateau, R goes from nearly 60% for 14 hour old snow down to 20% for 70 hour old snow. At longer than 1.5 microns snow is between zero and 20% reflectance in a bunch of wavy cycles.
The point being that snow can be quite absorptive in the region from 1.0 to 2.5 microns; where the solar spectrum still has a respectable remnant of energy.
The aging phenomenon I suspect is the result of micro melting; that renders the surface much more like an optical interface; permitting transmission of sunlight into the snow; where TIR trapping can retain it; thereby enhancing the absorption.
The handbook data, references as the source H.W. O’Broen, et al US Army Cold rEgion REsearch and Engineering Laboratory, Hanover NH, CREEL (AD-A007732), 1975 “Red and Near Infrared Spectral Reflectance of Snow”.
Data are plotted for a selection of source-detector angle siuations; and a variety of snow ages; from 0.6 out to 2.5 microns.
I would say that snow is not the ruthless rejector of solar energy that it is cracked up to be.
Ooops !
That is O’Brien; not O’Broen. Can you be a good chap and fix that for me Chasmod ?