It’s refreshing to see NSIDC director Mark Serreze coming to grips with his role in stirring up Arctic ice scare stories (like the famous “death spiral”) in 2007:
“In hindsight, probably too much was read into 2007, and I would take some blame for that,” Serreze said. “There were so many of us that were astounded by what happened, and maybe we read too much into it.”
Here’s some excerpts from the article:
With sea ice levels in the Arctic at record lows this month, a new report comparing scientists’ predictions calls for caution in over-interpreting a few weeks worth of data from the North Pole.
The Sea Ice Outlook, which will be released this week, brings together more than a dozen teams’ best guesses at how much sea ice will disappear by the end of the warm season in September. This year began with a surprise. More sea ice appeared than anticipated, nearing its mean level from 1979-2007. But then ice levels plummeted through May and into June. Scientists have never seen the Arctic with less ice at this time of year in the three decades they’ve been able to measure it, and they expect below average ice for the rest of the year.
But looking ahead, the ultimate amount of sea ice melt is hard to determine. Some trends, like the long-term warming of the Arctic and overall decreases in the thickness of sea ice, argue for very low levels of sea ice. But there are countervailing factors, too: The same weather pattern that led to higher-than-normal temperatures in the Arctic this year is also changing the circulation of sea ice, which could keep it in colder water and slow the melting.
“For this date, it’s the lowest we’ve seen in the record, but will that pattern hold up? We don’t know. The sea ice system surprises us,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
The loss of summer sea ice over decades is one of the firmest predictions of climate models: Given the current patterns of fossil fuel use and the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere, sea-ice-free summers in the arctic are a virtual certainty by the end of century, and possibly much sooner. As the globe heats up, the poles are disproportionately affected. Warmer temperatures melt ice, revealing the dark sea water that had previously been covered. That changes the albedo, or reflectivity, of the area, allowing it to absorb more heat. That, along with many other feedback loops makes predicting change in the Arctic immensely difficult.
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we can STOP our harmful input and keep the ecosystem in an equilibrium that is favorable to us
humans have always worked on reducing pollution. to say they haven’t is to ignore history.
man is not causing disasters on the earth from co2. the sky is not falling.
geo says:
June 21, 2010 at 6:18 am
Markedly higher sea levels,
I see you have not checked the data. there is no level rise you speak of and not even the IPCC is talking about what you are saying.
the sky is not falling
Hypnos says:
June 21, 2010 at 2:54 am
So if volcanoes, or asteroids, or solar radiation can cause a mass extinction or a serious change in the planetary ecosystem’s balance, why can’t industrial civilization? It is but another natural input – and an extremely large one. Just look at a night picture of Earth to see the kind of impact human civilization has. You cannot deny that.
Not a good comparison. Volcanoes, asteroids and solar variability are have vastly greater impacts than man’s puny effects on climate. Hence the need for invoking “tipping points” by alarmists. The night sky does show the spread of modern industrial society, and while dramatic and picturesque, still reveals much more dark area than light. Past warming were good things for life, the major state being the ice age and the warm interglacials being the anomalies. Basically, you are invoking the “precautionary principal”. I vote we study this thing for another 50 years before shouting that the sky is falling.
Excerpt from: Hypnos on June 21, 2010 at 2:54 am
No we don’t.
Here, I found you a nice National Geographic article on the Permian Extinction. Major Thing Number One, no one knows for sure what caused it. The science is not settled. Asteroid, ongoing massive volcanic eruptions, etc.
What is known? Something happened. Whatever happened threw a lot of fine particulates up high into the air. There were noxious clouds, large amounts of acid rain and snow. The sun was blocked out. There was global cooling, increased glaciation. Nearly all the trees were killed. At some point oxygen levels were exceedingly low, seas went anoxic. With so much of the photosynthesizing organisms killed off, with rotting biomass all over the globe, the levels of atmospheric CO2 (and methane) grew.
‘And of course the massive CO2 levels must have caused tremendous Global Warming.’
Seems to me you really got the cart in front of the horse that time, bud. 🙂
Sean says:
June 20, 2010 at 5:08 am
I don’t mean to be irreverent but why do we look so much at sea ice? It’s ups and downs are extraordinarily noisy and I submit a poor way to track which way the climate is heading. Looking at the total heat content of the oceans with the Argo bouys gives a much more consistent number indicator of the earth’s temperature and where its headed in the future.
____________________________________________________________________
We look at Arctic sea ice because the predictions were for an “ice free” Arctic in the very near future and that was going to be proof of AGW.
“They” were betting that the earth would see an “ice free” arctic during the peak of the 60 year cycle, since an “ice free” Arctic has happened before at the temperature peak of the 60 year [ocean] and 200 year [sun] cycles. Now the sea surface temperatures are headed back down, the cloud cover has increased and the sun is in a funk. If we do not see the arctic free of ice this year or next, chances are it is not going to happen during my life time at least.
BillD says:
June 20, 2010 at 7:07 am
Clearly, the trend over the last 30 years is most important and not what happens during a certain month or even a particular year. Like the stock market, one should not expect ice extent to go straight down or straight up.
________________________________________________________________________
WRONG, Wrong, wrong. The trend over the last 30 years can be made to look like a straight line. However the real trend is actually a cyclical sine wave over 60 – 70 years
“..The P Gosselin NoTricksZone corresponded with Dr Oleg Pokrovsky, the Russian scientist who was widely quoted by international newswires 4 days ago about his statement that the Arctic is cooling, not warming. Dr. Pokrovsky replied and provided a link to his recent powerpoint presentation. He bases his analysis partly upon the cyclical nature of the AMO and PDO, as shown in his wavelet analyses below. The simplistic explanation for interpretation of the wavelet analysis is to look for dark red horizontal bands, which show the primary cyclical component for both the AMO and PDO to range between ~60-70 years …” More On the 60 Year Climate Cycle
Bill Tuttle says:
June 20, 2010 at 3:53 am
R. Gates is running late…
*checking watch*
_______________
……Even though I don’t see a record low extent for this summer, I feel very confident we will by 2015, hitting near the 2.0 million sq. km. in at least one summer between now and then, and I do think we’ll see an ice free Arctic summer before 2030.
_______________
Is it me or did R. Gates just move the goal posts ???
First “The loss of summer sea ice over decades is one of the firmest predictions of climate models:” …….. and then “That, along with many other feedback loops makes predicting change in the Arctic immensely difficult.”
So which is it? If predicting change in the Arctic is immensely difficult, how can summer sea-ice be one of the firmest predictions of climate models? These are not mutually exclusive, as the accelerated loss of sea ice mainly depends on the feedbacks.
I love the “sea-ice-free summers in the arctic are a virtual certainty by the end of century, and possibly much sooner” quote however. I can picture the error bars in my head.
roger says:
June 20, 2010 at 11:55 am
R. Gates
“I also love it when the rather uneducated AGW skeptic points”
__________________________________________________
Please detail your educational attainments and your field studies in the arctic which enable you to make such superior observations.
This will enable us to judge whether your continued postings on this blog are worth reading in the future or whether you might be the source of the hot air causing global anomalies.
_________________________________________________
If you want to see R. Gates, without his “party manners” check out his comment here
“….When the ice cap melts completely, you can be certain that RAPID global warming is immenent. An ice free arctic will mean massive warming from the loss of temperature control (like breaking the thermistat in your home), as well as the POSITIVE FEEDBACK of releasing massive amounts of methane from the arctic region.
All this is assured, and already too late to stop.. .and still the fools are arguing about who will get all their precious oil reserves from the arctic…as though it will be business as usual in the future…such a foolish, blind, narrowminded, and selfish species.
Gaia will be bringing on the culling soon.
God Bless you all.
R. Gates”
JK says:
June 20, 2010 at 9:15 pm
“Get real! You just use (tiresomely!) Gore as a bludgeon to say “I’m an ultraconservative Bush Republican anti-global warming ideologue”, as a badge of proclamation. I’ve never seen his movie, or read his stuff, and I find all the AlGore-ism pathetic.”
Please point out to me where I bashed Gore? Please reconcile “ultraconservative” and “Bush” (hint bush is/was not a conservative). Please point out where I declared my political position, leanings and/or philosphy?
In fact you are the one that attacked Al Gore. Since you ignored my points and then attacked me and the person you accused me of attacking, I’ll just ignore you in the future as having nothing meanigful to say.
Hypnos says:
June 21, 2010 at 2:54 am (Edit)
It is exactly past natural variability that is the most worrying aspect of Global Warming.
There is nothing unnatural about industrial civilization. We as human being are part of Nature, and everything we create comes from Nature, using Natural laws to make it work. “Artificial” versus “Natural” is simply a mindframe, as faulty as the duality of body and mind. There is no such separation in reality.”
I love this argument. So did de Sade. hehe.
Looking at Cryosphere and Terra sat images, they are way off base on concentrations in the Arctic basin. I’m not sure if they are mistaking meltwater for open water, or what, but even a regular joe can see they are wrong. The Laptev and Siberian seas are especially off. Even the area on the Canadian side with lower concentrations is way off.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png
http://ice-map.appspot.com/?map=Arc&sat=ter&lvl=7&lat=73.190674&lon=-137.618661&yir=2010&day=161
Steve Mosher said:
“There is nothing unnatural about industrial civilization.”
___________
This is true…in the sense that it came from humans who are part of nature, but then, the black plaque, small pox, and cancer are “natural” too. More accurate is to talk about things that are harmonious to the whole web of life. An asteroid striking earth is a natural event, but may not be too beneficial for many life forms.
R. Gates says: June 21, 2010 at 10:01 am
“An asteroid striking earth is a natural event, but may not be too beneficial for many life forms”
That is a statement one would expect from someone who promotes the fear of change and maintains the idea that the current state is the optimum state.
An asteroid striking earth likely brought down the dominance of the dinosaurs; those that could not fly and able travel great distances became extinct. This opened up a whole set of empty biological niches that through natural selection became the domain of mammals. Like you.
It would appear that “An asteroid striking earth” was an absolute necessity for you, if it had not occurred you would not be.
Whether that consequence of the “An asteroid striking earth”, your existence, is “beneficial for many life forms”, is not something that I am qualified to comment on. 😉
geo says: June 21, 2010 at 6:18 am
“The estimate is in 1000, world population was something on the order of 400M. Now it is 6.6B.”
A few million hectares of farmland opening up in the North would help a lot, wouldn’t it?
A longer growing season thought the temperate zone would help a lot, wouldn’t it?
An increase in rainfall to recharge aquifers and push back deserts would help a lot, wouldn’t it?
Warmer is better, unless you feel that moving is more of an inconvenience that starvation.
Brian D says:
June 21, 2010 at 9:40 am
Looking at Cryosphere and Terra sat images, they are way off base on concentrations in the Arctic basin. I’m not sure if they are mistaking meltwater for open water, or what, but even a regular joe can see they are wrong. The Laptev and Siberian seas are especially off. Even the area on the Canadian side with lower concentrations is way off.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png
http://ice-map.appspot.com/?map=Arc&sat=ter&lvl=7&lat=73.190674&lon=-137.618661&yir=2010&day=161
——————————
Brian, it is important to understand what sea ice concentrations mean during summer. As soon as melt water appears, the passive microwave sea ice algorithms underestimate the sea ice concentration because that melt water “appears” as open water, thereby reducing the ice concentration (even when that pixel may still be 100% ice). That is why it’s better to focus on extent during the melt season if you want to know the area of the ocean surface covered by ice. If you are interested in albedo feedback issues, then the ice concentration provides a valuable metric.
Gail writes: since an “ice free” Arctic has happened before at the temperature peak of the 60 year [ocean] and 200 year [sun] cycles.
I’m not sure what you’re saying, but it seems that you’re saying the Arctic Ocean was ice free not too long ago. Yet there is absolutely no scientific evidence of this.
Andrew30 said: (about R. Gates)
“That is a statement one would expect from someone who promotes the fear of change…”
________________
Those are pretty powerful words Mr. Andrew30, and I hope you have equally powerful proof that I “promote fear of change,” othewise, I consider you to be someone not worthy of any further discourse with.
RGates you keep posting up barbers video, but anyone with a little education and some mild curiosity will see right through the man. barber may be an arctic expert, but he betrays his hack propagandist priorities in the first few minutes.
he sounds the usual dire ‘ice free arctic warning’. but then he says something like, “we can argue whether it’s been 1 or 14 million years since that happened.”
if he wants to argue that an ice free arctic is due to warming, than he omits the obvious recent periods when it was much warmer that today, and the therefore the arctic should have been ice free. Medieval optimum, warmer than today. Roman optimum, warmer than the medieval. holocene optimum, warmer than roman, etc. If we go back another 100ky, you have the previous interglacial. it was so warm that northern europe was under the ocean, forests grew above the arctic circle, and hippos swam in the rhine. do you suppose the arctic was ice free then?
R. Gates says: June 21, 2010 at 10:01 am
More accurate is to talk about things that are harmonious to the whole web of life.
So tell us, rgates, what is more harmonious to the world wide web, increasing the numbers of polar bears, or killing a few off to increase the seal population? I remember the pictures of bloody seal cubs with their heads bashed in by humans trying to survive. Is it more harmonious to kill them with one blow or let polar bears gnaw’em to death. What is the ideal numbers of each of these species, bear/human/seals. Why don’t we ship some polar bears to the S Pole and let them harmonize with the penguins. I’ll admit, I just don’t know what the “more accurate” harmonious balance is. Fill me in?
R. Gates says: June 21, 2010 at 12:42 pm
I hope you have equally powerful proof that I “promote fear of change,”
—
I did not say that you “promote fear of change”. I said “That is a statement one would expect from someone who promotes the fear of change”.
You might have indicated that such a statement could have another purpose, was naive in its scope, had an egocentric or hidden meaning, or that I misunderstood what you meant.
Instead you seem to have self indentified with what was actually written, odd choice.
That said, from above:
Gail Combs says: June 21, 2010 at 9:20 am
“….When the ice cap melts completely, you can be certain that RAPID global warming is immenent. An ice free arctic will mean massive warming from the loss of temperature control (like breaking the thermistat in your home), as well as the POSITIVE FEEDBACK of releasing massive amounts of methane from the arctic region.
All this is assured, and already too late to stop.. .and still the fools are arguing about who will get all their precious oil reserves from the arctic…as though it will be business as usual in the future…such a foolish, blind, narrowminded, and selfish species.
Gaia will be bringing on the culling soon.
God Bless you all.
R. Gates”
The above could possibly be interpreted by someone as a dire warning about the consequences of change, in this case warming; as an attempt to instill fear in the mind of the reader.
Of course it is possible that “releasing massive amounts of methane from the arctic region” was meant as a comforting statement to indicate that an new energy source would be available; and that “Gaia will be bringing on the culling soon” simply neglected to mention that the Malaria Virus was the sole target of the “Culling”, and thus the “Culling” was a good and beneficial thing.
R. Gates says: June 21, 2010 at 12:42 pm
‘othewise, I consider you to be someone not worthy of any further discourse with.”
Just to clarify that.
Do you mean that if I write something you will not respond to it? Or do you mean that you will write a response to someone else with the preface or “Please write this to Andrew30, because I’m not taking to him”.
Whether that is a threat or a promise, I don’t see the down side.
Gail Combs says:
June 21, 2010 at 8:23 am
BillD says:
June 20, 2010 at 7:07 am
Clearly, the trend over the last 30 years is most important and not what happens during a certain month or even a particular year. Like the stock market, one should not expect ice extent to go straight down or straight up.
________________________________________________________________________
WRONG, Wrong, wrong. The trend over the last 30 years can be made to look like a straight line. However the real trend is actually a cyclical sine wave over 60 – 70 years
Too bad for you they actually have satellite data back to 1972:
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_n.png
It’s now a 39 year downward trend on your imaginary “cyclical sine wave”. Since the rate of summer sea ice loss is not slowing down and bottoming out, and in fact is speeding up, that means we are still on the first quarter of your sine wave, starting satellite measurements at peak – care to re-wager on a 156 year “cyclical sine wave” ?
That way you might be able to put off admitting you are completely wrong for another 10 or 15 years – all the bad news is just part of your 156 year cyclical sine wave “real trend”. Of course, when the Arctic goes ice free one summer before that, you’ll have to come up with a different “explanation” in your spare time. Perhaps neutrinos from a massive solar flare are causing the temperature of the Earth’s core to increase rapidly – yeah, that sounds vaguely plausible…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_(film)
Well we never seem to hear the end of people trying to apply Total Internal Reflection to rays incident on a media boundary; from the low index side of the boundary.
And we seem to have a surfeit of statistical mathematicians here trying to prove MMGWCC using averages, and standard deviations, and trend lines, and regressions and other sleight of hand stuff. So try your hand at some real maths, and see if you can get TIR from air into water.
So here are the Fresnel Polarised Reflection and Transmission formulae. These are for field amplitude quantities, not squared intensity values. (of the Electric Field Vector)
A, A’, and A” are the Amplitudes of the Incident, Refracted, and Reflected Electric Vector (at the boundary); phi, phi’ and phi” are the incident, refracted and reflected angles (relative to the surface normal), and the (n) and (p) subscripts refer to the case of the polarisation components that are normal(n), and parallel(p) to the plane of incidence (the plane containing the incident, refracted, reflected rays, and the surface normal).
phi, phi’, and phi” are of course all related by Snell’s law and the refractive indices on the two sides of the boundary (say 1.0 for air, and 1.333 for water).
So we have:- Rn = (A”/A)n = -sin(phi-phi’)/sin(phi+phi’)
Rp = (A”/A)p = tan(phi-phi’)/tan(phi+phi’)
Tn = (A’/A)n = 2sinphi’.cosphi/sin(phi+phi’)
Tp = (A’/A)p = 2sinphi’.cosphi/(sin(phi+phi’).cos(phi-phi’))
There you have it plus Snell’s law N.sinphi = N’.sinphi’
So have at it; work it out for yourselves, and stop talking about TIR for light incident from the low index side of the media boundary.
But remember that this is only for simple cases where the refractive index is treated as a real number; and not a complex number. I’m sure that is good enough for IPCC work with their =/-50 % error tolerance bands.
And yes I wish we had a proper math editor too so it would be easier to input stuff.
Probably if you are google savvy you might be able to find these Fresnel formulae somewhere; I’m sure they must be in standard high school science text books; but I’m not up on modern text books; so I can’t refer you to any real text book that I know would have them; but I’m pretty sure I have them right; or else there’s a whole lot of my stuff out there that isn’t working properly.
Then maybe we can stop hearing about TIR stopping sunlight from entering the Arctic Ocean.
R. Gates – the black plaque ? Are we talking arterial plaque, dental plaque or the kind of plaque that you’re wanting to put on your wall ? Perhaps you meant the Black (bubonic) Plague that devastated Europe after the Medieval Warm Period. Warmer is better. Cheers.