by Steven Goddard
Looking at the June 14 satellite photo above, you see the view which the Sun sees of the North Pole.
Well not exactly, because the elevation of the Sun at its peak (mid-June) is actually fairly low in the sky. At the Pole, it is only 23.5º above the horizon. The video below shows what the earth would look like now, viewed from perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. Note that the region north of 66.5º is in perpetual light. The image of the Sun is from the days when it used to have sunspots.
Now, looking at the satellite photo again, we see three different shades of white. Snow is the brightest white (highest albedo) and can be seen in Greenland. Clouds are next brightest white, and at least partially cover almost the entire Arctic. In a few locations, you can see dirty white sea ice peeking out through the clouds.
We often hear that sea ice controls Arctic albedo. There is some truth to this statement, but the real story is that the albedo of clouds actually controls the area of sea ice. When it is cloudy, little melting occurs. When it is sunny, the ice is more prone to melt.
Consider this chart from the University of Alaska.
They forecast the breakup of sea ice based on the total amount of sunshine received. When accumulated sunshine reaches 700 MJ/m², the ice breaks up. In a cloudy year (like 2009) this occurs later. In a sunny year (like 2007) it occurs earlier. 2010 is right in the middle. On a cloudy day, most of the sunshine reflects back into space from the top of the white clouds. That is why we see the bright white clouds in the satellite image.
The real key to Arctic albedo, and melt – is clouds. Can climate models effectively forecast cloudiness? Short answer – no. Clouds are one of the Achilles Heels of climate models. So next time you hear about a climate model forecasting an ice free Arctic, ask if they have the cloud problem under control.
It is cloudy at Santa’s Workshop right now.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/webphotos/noaa2.jpg
latitude says:
June 16, 2010 at 5:42 pm
“”Juraj V. says:
June 16, 2010 at 9:12 am
I say it is the sea temperature, which affects the ice melt/freeze the most””
Since most of the Arctic is floating sea ice, and almost all of an ice berg in under water – about 90% underwater –
I’m with you. I would say that something that affects 90% of floating ice will have a much larger effect than something that can only affect the top 10%.
Antarctica’s ice is mostly up in the air, on land, and it’s doing fine. It’s only having problems with floating ice too.
————————
Latitude, just to be clear, sea ice is the ice that forms from freezing ocean water. It is not the same as an iceberg, which comes from land. Sea ice that forms during one winter is usually about 1.5 to 2 meters thick, older ice can run 5m thick. When you are in the Arctic you can see heavily deformed/ridged sea ice that sticks out a few meters above the surface of the ocean. But that should not be confused with icebergs, which have most of their mass below the water surface.
Julienne says:
June 16, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Latitude, just to be clear, sea ice is the ice that forms from freezing ocean water. It is not the same as an iceberg, which comes from land. Sea ice that forms during one winter is usually about 1.5 to 2 meters thick, older ice can run 5m thick. When you are in the Arctic you can see heavily deformed/ridged sea ice that sticks out a few meters above the surface of the ocean. But that should not be confused with icebergs, which have most of their mass below the water surface.
Didn’t know ‘iceberg’ carried that specific definition. Thanks.
But ice is ice, Latitude is right on 89-90% under water, it always is, most of the mass is always under water no matter what kind of ice it is as long as it is floating.
Julienne, does sea ice float differently than ice bergs?
(I’m eating Oreos and have that sugar chocolate thing going on in my head right now)
@ur momisugly Charles Wilson:
Wow, there IS a real person there. Are you sure you are the same Charles declaring 300 MPH winds, reversing of the poles, tornadoes, hurricanes, world-wide floods, gloom and doom if that last cubic meter of arctic ice melts? 🙂
You ought to submit that for a movie, but, one seems to have already beat you. “Absolute Zero”. I’m ashamed to say I own. (Think my daughter bought it for me thinking “this is ‘science’ and ‘physics’ and my dad likes science and physics…”). If you’ve never seen it, don’t. OTOH, you might like it!
Yea, WUWT is a very unique spot isn’t it?
wayne says:
June 16, 2010 at 6:37 pm
Didn’t know ‘iceberg’ carried that specific definition. Thanks.
But ice is ice, Latitude is right on 89-90% under water, it always is, most of the mass is always under water no matter what kind of ice it is as long as it is floating.
What Julienne is talking about is the difference between ice bergs and flat icesheets contact area with the water.
Think of a rectangular iceberg 10x higher than it is wide, it has an area of 5 exposed to the air compared with 37 exposed to the water. In contrast an ice sheet 10kmx10kmx2mthick, the area exposed to the air is 100km^2 and the area exposed to the water is also 100km^2 (the amount exposed on the edges is too small to worry about). At this time of year the sheet ice breaks up into smaller and smaller floes so the edge contribution increases but the area ratio doesn’t change much until the floes get very small. The mass ratio doesn’t really matter it’s the shape that counts.
stevengoddard says:
June 16, 2010 at 5:01 am
Here are temperatures at a couple of North Pole Buoys
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/PAWS_atmos_recent.html
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/POPS13_atmos_recent.html
Hi Steven- I’m pretty sure that these are water temps and not air temps. I have air temps at N 85° (-26.6°C) and N 87° (-25.8°C) currently, but would love to have air temps at N 89°. Thanks.
http://coolwx.com/cgi-bin/findbuoy.cgi?id=25593
http://coolwx.com/cgi-bin/findbuoy.cgi?id=48684
Then again, maybe they are not water temps. They might be inner instrument temp?
http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/100512Norris/index.htm
Dr. Joel Norris of Scripps Institution discussed clouds & albedo at a colloquium at Fermilab, see video link above.
“Enneagram says:
June 16, 2010 at 10:37 am
Stephen Wilde:
…just shift all the clouds 1000 miles equatorward or poleward in both hemispheres via more negative or positive Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations in the air and there will be found all the albedo change you need to significantly alter shortwave input to the oceans…
These words are to be saved. And if added to them what causes that shift…you got the whole picture.”
Thanks Enneagram. I think I have set out the whole picture elsewhere. The position of the jets and the ITCZ depends on an interplay between variable rates of energy release from the oceans and an effect on the polar oscillations driven not by absolute solar power output but instead by levels of solar surface turbulence (operating via the solar wind) which in turn affect the energy flux from tropopause to space.
Using infrared it’s easy to distinguish ice from clouds:
http://ice-map.appspot.com/?map=Arc&sat=367
The dark red color means the surface is actually not frozen – there is liquid water on top of the ice. Green indicates no ice at all and the ocean is black.
Going back one year shows even heavier melting:
http://ice-map.appspot.com/?map=Arc&sat=367&lvl=5&lat=82&lon=177&yir=2009&day=168
However, this year the ice is also disintegrating and no longer qualifies as an ice shield. Looking into my cocktail it reminds me of crashed ice.
I have tried to take the ice capades seriously. But I can’t. There is too much confusion. It’s as if everyone was trying to gauge the climate by looking out his (satellite) window and each seeing a different metric was reaching his own conclusion. Who declared the Arctic the be all and end all anyway? Al Gore? Enuff said. Let it go. If we left the Arctic to itself for 10 years and then came back to it it would still be its own little ecosystem troubled by wind, currents, ice, and (as we see everywhere) inhabitants who see an economic opportunity in exaggerating every little whiff of warmth, real or imaginary. Instead we are hovering over it hour by hour as if tomorrow’s report meant everything. It’s all sound and fury signifying nothing. I understand the knee jerk response to Gorian insults to intelligence. We feel we must respond to the insanity of his Truths. But you cannot descend to that level of foolishness without becoming equally tainted by it. Hour to hour, day to day, week to week, season to season and year to year variations in weather or ice don’t mean anything. Full stop. Come back in 50 or 100 years and see what has happened and maybe, just maybe, it will be meaningful. But probably not. A thousand years might give you a reliable trend. Emphasis on might. When it comes to Arctic ice we are all climate babies, flailing around and by what we touch, trying to describe an elephant even before our eyes are open and we’ve learned to talk.
Coalsoffire,
Exactly right. The reason for the incessant arm-waving over the entirely normal and natural fluctuations in Polar ice cover is because that’s all the alarmist contingent has left. One by one, each of their worries has been debunked in turn: fast rising sea levels, methane, ozone, drowning polar bears, disappearing coral, disappearing Himalayan glaciers, frog extinctions, etc., etc.
Now it’s Arctic ice cover — as they studiously ignore the fact that global ice cover is now above average, and the Antarctic is gaining ice.
They’ve been wrong about everything else, so now they’re desperately flogging the Arctic ice scare. It’s all they’ve got.
Ok, I just wasn’t clear on the fact that all ice needs to displace a certain of it’s percentage of water, in order to float, and that sea ice was different.
Just seems to me that since sea ice has more surface area, thin sheet, it would also have more surface area exposed to the water and water temperatures.
And would be even more affected by water temperatures than a more compact ice berg.
You live and learn. 😉
Can anyone tell me why more of the ice is turning turquoise in the satellite images? Now quite a bit of the Western? Arctic is looking that way. http://ice-map.appspot.com/
“”” One might almost say that we would be making a good trade, if we traded off ALL of that north polar sea ice, in exchange for clouds, and the resultant land snow that results from those clouds. And remember; there’s more land in the arctic (>60 N) than there is in the Antarctic (60 N) than there is in the Antarctic (<60 S); so plenty of substrate to snow on. """
jakers says:
June 17, 2010 at 8:50 am
Can anyone tell me why more of the ice is turning turquoise in the satellite images? Now quite a bit of the Western? Arctic is looking that way. http://ice-map.appspot.com/
Surface melting.
“”” George E. Smith says:
June 17, 2010 at 10:24 am
“”” One might almost say that we would be making a good trade, if we traded off ALL of that north polar sea ice, in exchange for clouds, and the resultant land snow that results from those clouds. And remember; there’s more land in the arctic (>60 N) than there is in the Antarctic (60 N) than there is in the Antarctic (60 N) than there is in the Antarctic (60 N) than there is in the Antarctic (+60 deg N.
So I guess I did say that.
If you calculate the surface area of a sphere beyond +60 deg Latitude; and then calculate how far North of that you have to go to get just half of the area; you end up at +68.9 deg North Latitude.
At the other end; only the tip of the Antarctic peninsula sticks North of the Antarctic circle; and about half the perimeter runs along that circle; but the Wedell Sea and the Ross sea go way south of that. Even so the Arctic ocean is smaller than the Antarctic continent.
I’m sure you can Google up the actual land areas of Antarctica, and the area of the Arctic ocean and all the surrounding land areas; and I think you will find there is more land in the Arctic; thanthere is in the Antarctic; which seems to be just what I said above.
Phil. says:
June 17, 2010 at 11:05 am
jakers says:
June 17, 2010 at 8:50 am
Can anyone tell me why more of the ice is turning turquoise in the satellite images? Now quite a bit of the Western? Arctic is looking that way. http://ice-map.appspot.com/
Surface melting.
I was looking at it again, and the locations where it shows up, and thinking to myself “ice with no snow cover”
Remember this ?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/10/17/earths-albedo-tells-a-interesting-story/
The rising albedo trend dates back to the late 90’s when the jets started moving back equatorward again though I first noticed in 2000.
As all those clouds move towards the equator their reflectivity increases, albedo rises, less solar shortwave enters the oceans.
Having lived in Edmonton for nine very cold years in the 1970’s (-30c to -45c for weeks at a time) you get to know a lot about snow and cold weather. Sometimes I was playing outside in a t-shirt on a day that was sunny and around -20c! It would not get above zero for weeks. Yup, and the snow would be melting. Strange was what I thought. Maybe it was sunshine warming the snow? Never did get the answer to that one… so I’m asking if anyone knows. It could be related to the arctic ice issues.
I found this comment and wonder if it’s correct?
“CAN ICE MELT WHEN THE AIR TEMPERATURE IS SUB-FREEZING?
METEOROLOGIST JEFF HABY
I have made this observation on days in the winter in which there was snow cover: The air temperature was below freezing yet ice and snow was melting off house roofs, cars and other objects. Why would this occur?
1. Air is a very poor absorber of solar radiation while objects on the earth’s surface are much better at absorbing. Even snow with its very high albedo and reflective ability is more absorbing of solar radiation than the air. While a temperature sensor exposed to the air may detect temperatures below freezing, the sun’s radiation can warm individual objects above freezing (especially objects with a low albedo).
2. The temperature of the earth’s ground surface and/or objects on the surface may be above freezing. The air temperature at the observing level may be below freezing while the temperature of air immediately surrounding certain objects may be above freezing. This can occur when the soil temperature has not yet adjusted to or modified the air temperature at the observing level.”
http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/230/
Thanks in advance if anyone can shed some, ahem, light on this. Thanks! [:)]
3. Houses and sometimes cars have internal heat. Even an unheated car in the sun can accumulate heat like an oven. It’s most noticeable in the summer, of course.