An electromagnetic “bird” dispatched to the Arctic for the most detailed look yet at the thickness of the ice has turned up a reassuring picture.
The meltdown has not been as dire as some would suggest, said geophysicist Christian Haas of the University of Alberta. His international team flew across the top of the planet last year for the 2,412-kilometre survey.
They found large expanses of ice four to five metres thick, despite the record retreat in 2007.
“This is a nice demonstration that there is still hope for the ice,” said Haas.
The survey, which demonstrated that the “bird” probe tethered to a plane can measure ice thickness over large areas, uncovered plenty of resilient “old” ice from Norway to the North Pole to Alaska in April 2009.
There is already speculation about how the ice will fare this summer, with some scientists predicting a record melt. Haas said he doesn’t buy it.
He said the ice is in some ways in better shape going into the melt season than it has been for a couple of years. “We have more thick ice going into the summer than we did in 2009 and 2008,” he said.
Much will depend on the intensity of the winds, and how the ice fractures and is blown around, he said. “But any talk about tipping points, a sudden drop and no recovery . . . I don’t think it is going to happen.”
The more likely scenario is that the ice will continue a decline that has been underway for at least 30 years, he said. There is likely to be plenty of variability in that decline, he added, with “extreme” melts in some years, followed by “significant recoveries like we saw last year.”
Part of the problem with ice forecasting is that it based largely on data from satellites. They are good at measuring how large an area is covered by ice, but tell little about its thickness — which can measure in mere centimetres in the case of new ice, or metres in the case of ice several years old.
The thickness had “changed little since 2007, and remained within the expected range of natural variability,” the team reports in the Geophysical Research Letters.
Chris Y
You are SO off-base. Calling names (it’s big oil…”) is immature, naive, uninformed, and reflects absolutely NO research on your own of facts. Without carbon, there is no life. Without Co2 there would be nothing green. Without green stuff, there would be no OIL. And I’m guessing that you, like all Canucks, rely on the carbon fuels to keep warm, drive your likely big truck, to say nothing of have access to all the entertaining music, gagets, entertainment…and FOOD…that finds it’s way to Calgary. CO2 is NOT causative of “climate change”. Wrong premise = wrong conclusion. How about taking a look at historical geology? You just might find that at one time huge mammals lived in Northern Alberta, among tropics-like forests. Hence, OIL. Perhaps you, like many, do not think of mankind as “natural” on this earth. We’re on an awe-inspiring planet which finds a wonderful, beautiful, habitat for all life forms, and which, in spite of Frank slides, Mt. St. Helens and other more earth-shattering eruptions, nuclear-like hits of space objects in Eastern Canada, stuff grows back and our beautiful home heals and continues to sustain life.
It’s going to get COLD, buddy, and while I’m too old to experience the de-bunking of your mentality, you apparently will one day know the bitter truth if we continue the nonsense of taxing the very driver of life. By the way, I live in BC, and I drive to near-by Alberta to buy my carbon tax free gas!
Good science but no drama.
Too bad Canadians are such modest people.
chris y says:
June 16, 2010 at 7:31 am
(…)
Logically, it is clear that these researchers must be partially funded by ‘big tar sands’ and ‘big gas’, and therefore cannot be trusted. 🙂
—————Reply:
I suggest that if you’re going to call somebody a liar that you have evidence to back up your claim. Otherwise you are simply wallowing in misapproprianism (a word with no definition, by the way). Now I’m not saying you’re right or you’re wrong–you’re just setting yourself up for ridicule.
Some journalism, presenting a year old survey as describing current ice conditions, things are getting desperate.
If the more extreme ends of the pro-AGW element weren’t so hopelessly dedicated to their “it’s worse than we thought it was!” meme, they would understand that is a popular loser for them as it puts them in a much more difficult proof position that is much easier for the skeptics to poke gaping holes in.
They should be arguing it is “as bad as we thought it was, and that’s plenty bad enough”, and showing that even a bit of recovery in 2010 from 2009 would merely put the longer term ice loss roughly back on a pre-2007 trend line.
That ought to be their bench mark for whether there has been any improvement, not crazy “ice free arctic” claims, nor solipsistic logic that until arctic recovery hits 1980 levels that it is inappropriate to talk about “recovery” at all.
Has the long-term trend line 1980-2006 been regained or exceeded on the upside by anything that happened in 2008-2010? That’s the first milestone, and it is in fact a reasonably important one.
These guys likely have a small data set they are working with, though, so I don’t put a whole lot of stock in this one way or the other.
Well, there goes their funding. Or, the next “study” will say it is worse than we thought. It was nice to have an unbiased study like this. Too bad the priests hate objective studies.
chris y
If you’re going to use sarcasm here in the future, make it clear by using /sarc or some other more explicit notice. Many of the responders here fail to recognize it.
jakers says:
June 16, 2010 at 8:41 am
Map of the “soundings” they took.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/sea_ice_cdr/figures/air-em/map.jpg
hence, a realization of the cost of av-gas, sheer boredom of hours over ice, and the grandeur of the volume of area.
Seriously, you guys need to read chris y’s post again and recognize it for the sarcasm it is! Heck, there’s even a smiley emoticon after “cannot be trusted”!!!!
Has it been peer review by the Show Business Canadian Professor (and known Prophet Al’s bedwetter colleague) David Susuki?
Hey there RockyRoad, EH, jorgekafkazar- I guess sarcasm doesn’t transfer well. It seems you missed the smiley face at the end. Maybe I should have added something about asbestos face cream…Oh well.
CodeTech- I grew up in Edmonton. As a kid I froze toes playing outdoor hockey, when games were called only if it dropped below -25C. Family still living there said last winter was cold, and that’s saying something coming from lifelong Edmontonians.
“We have more thick ice going into the summer than we did in 2009 and 2008”
I arrived at the same conclusion several months ago albeit without any empirical measurement data. In fact, I will be willing to go out on a limb and say that barring a repeat of the 2007 wind anomaly, the amount of “old” thick ice should increase next year as well. This is based not on any fancy theory but on simple arithmetic.
In 2007 there was a great loss of “old” ( >= 5 year-old) ice. In 2008 we would have seen any remaining 4yo ice become 5yo. Only in 2011 would we see new ice that formed in the 2007-2008 season become 5yo. So actual full recovery from 2007 in the context of ice 5yo or greater doesn’t even really START until 2011 (assuming a larger than normal “loss” of ice < 5yo in 2007 along with old ice) and would likely not reach the normal ratio until 2016 or so ( 5 years of new 5yo ice coming into the mix).
So the data from the study are consistent with what I would expect to see using simple arithmetic barring a repeat of the 2007 wind pattern.
chris y says: (…) “Go bears!”
Would you kindly explain to us what that’s supposed to mean?!!
Tom_R says:
“If you’re going to use sarcasm here in the future, make it clear by using /sarc or some other more explicit notice. Many of the responders here fail to recognize it.”
Will do.
This is OT but I am increasingly annoyed at the sloppy use of the English language by respondents. It seems no-0ne can distinguish between hypothesis and theory.
A theory is an explanation of natural phenomenen which can be tested. A good example is Einstein’s theory of general relativty. Einstein proposed two tests to show his theory was correct. Both tests were used and his theory was accepted.
Here, we must add a cautionary note. That a theory can make predictions successfully does not mean it is valid. There is always a better theory waiting in the wings. So a theory might be described as an explanation that has been tested and appears to work until we get more information.
A hypothesis is a different animal. It is an explanation which by its very nature cannot be tested. This may be because of the nature of the explanation or because of our practical limits in testing. The classic case is Avagdro’s hypothesis which deternines the number of molecules of a gas in a given space at a given temperature and pressure. This formula does appear to work and has never been shown to be wrong but we can’t test it because it is beyond our physical limits to actually count the molecules.
So cheer up you creationists. Darwins ‘theory’ of evolution is not a theory at all. It is a hypothesis. Survival of the fittest is a self-fulling rule. It’s like saying that the fastest will win the race. It has no predictive quality and as such is not a theory.
We now get down to the hoary old question of models (computer or otherwise). A model is a simulation of natural phenomenom. Keep in mind the word ‘simulation’.
It is quite acceptable to use models to look at how natural phenomenom might change. They are widely used. The only question you put against a model is ‘how accurate is it’.
The more accurate, the more useful. Climate models appear to be woefully inaccurate since they cannot deal with past climate changes. This would suggest that their predictions are also inaccurate. Clearly, in the models, some vital factors are being ignored, eg the variability of the Sun.
From the many articles and responses that I have seen on this website (which I believe is a first class place to read the truth) I fear that there is no real distinction between theory, hypothesis, and model. If you’re out there Anthony, I hope you read this and might educate our respondents a little more and even some politicians.
Yours in despair.
It’s a good thing that a western Canadian news paper ran the story first. If the Montreal Gazette had gotten it, the headline would have been some far more akin to the line adorning the sea level rise story which detailed a whopping 40 micron rise per annum. Great work U of A! You’ve made us Albertans proud again.
Wonderful aircraft, those Gooney Birds still are. Last one off the production line was in 1946, the year of my 10th birthday. An aircraft at least 64 years old, and still a most dependable workhorse.
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bruce says:
June 16, 2010 at 9:47 am
jakers says:
June 16, 2010 at 8:41 am
Map of the “soundings” they took.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/sea_ice_cdr/figures/air-em/map.jpg
hence, a realization of the cost of av-gas, sheer boredom of hours over ice, and the grandeur of the volume of area.
True, true.
However, pondering it I would say that the small tracklines they made in 2009 only have a little relevant data for 2010. Off the North Slope of AK and off Banks Island, that melted last year, and already this year too. The ice north of Greenland/Nares Strait is pretty broken up this year, a lot different from last.
As always doom & gloom guesstimation garners media fireworks and headlines while actual measurements snag a footnote on page 100 opposite that coupon for GE fluorescent bulbs on page 99. This wasn’t on any Canadian news that I’m aware of. David Suzuki buying new hemp socks is more likely to end up on the CBC News with an in depth follow-up by CTV.
Andrew30: nice comment, Geophysicist != Climate Scientologist
Canada++
I know Christian Haas from my time at the University of Alberta. He is very level-headed in regards to climate matters and uses sound scientific arguments.
As Alan Clark says, it is a good thing the Vancouver Sun got this story out before an eastern Canadian news outlet.
The DC-3 is a tremendous aircraft. Was a backender for 183 missions in Vietnam – never spilled a beer once. That bird flew through 14K ft monsoon thunderheads when needed and said “bring it on, b*&^%h”.
Flew forever on one engine several times.
I’m buyin’ the data just for old times sake.
What no R.Gates? I miss the arm waving, ignore facts, PIOMASS Model is Awesome, and the “I said so” justifications 🙁
This story is very similar to the Polar 5 expedition in 2009 which found Arctic ice to be thicker than expected.