Sea Ice News #10 – September Outlook

We are all doomed any way…

Humans will be extinct in 100 years says eminent scientist
says: Professor Frank Fenner
http://www.physorg.com/news196489543.html

Forgive the OT:
Yahoo News has finally featured an article (from The Washington Post) about the current solar minimum. It is quite a good read and contains almost no AGW nonsense.

It is quite amazing the focus on the Arctic sea ice extent. If all the Arctic sea ice melted, sea levels would not rise at all. It is equally amazing the lack of interest, and in some instances false statements, about the ice conditions in the Antarctic. It is Antarctic ice that must melt to cause sea level rise yet the Antarctic had the most sea ice ever recorded in 2008 and the ice extent is currently 1 million square kilometers above average. Antarctica is the highest continent on earth, the average temperature is 55 below zero, it is classified as a desert, the driest place on earth. Even if the man made global warming theory was true, melting Antarctic sea ice would not cause any sea level rise, yet there would be more humidity and thus more snow fall in the interior, Antarctic snow levels would increase, and the land ice would build up.

5.5 is the only estimate I have made.

Does it mean that it endangers our whiskey on the rocks?

Mr. Alex says:
June 23, 2010 at 1:42 pm
It is quite a good read and contains almost no AGW nonsense.
Only mantras from Nasa church…how cool!

geo says:
June 23, 2010 at 1:52 pm
I agree with Geo. Dont modify the forecast now. Stand by your forecast until the date is here. Otherwise, whats the point?
Either do not come with any forecasts that early, or stick with it, and admit it was to high later. Your forecast might be right too. We have the whole month of July in front of us.

As to the point made about surface melting being visible by now, I looked at the North Pole Webcam website and went back 2009, 2008, 2007, and 2006 for the period covering June 20th thru 24th and in no images during those dates back 4 years is there any visible signs of melting or ponding

I also wanted to mention, right now the 2010 ice extent is nearly 700,000 sq-km below that in 2007 (10.14 vs 10.82 million sq-km)
And while the sun is now past it’s peak, another 5 million sq-km of ice will likely be lost by September.

Is there any news from Russian ice breakers on how thick the ice is from their point of view?

Just to pick a nit: 1990 was 21 years ago.
The ice 20 years ago looked like this
Totally agree with Julienne’s point about comparing with a single day 20 (or 21) years ago. It’s all about the trends.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/n_plot_tmb.png

Thanks Steven for another good sea ice update. Looks like the ice is better than we thought. Arctic-Roos are still showing area and extent tracking 2007/2008 coming out of the knot:-
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
Will be interesting to see where the minimum ends up – my guess is it will end up around the 5.9m km^2 level. The continuing quiet sun and cooler ocean will mean more ice than many of the ‘experts’ predict!

A breakdown in the Beaufort Gyre – perhaps occurring in a multidecadal cycle – is one of the primary reasons for the extensive melt in 2007 in the Arctic Basin. A strong Beaufort Gyre combined with significant increases in ice thickness would suggest that melting in the Arctic Basin will be minimal this year.

They are going about it all wrong. If they want to predict the melt in the Arctic Basin they should start measuring the flow of current through the Bering Strait and its water temperature. It is this warm water flowing through the Bering Strait that caused the record melt in 2007, and its annual fluctuations determine the variations observed. The other side of the Arctic Ocean is warmed by the Gulf Stream that annually eats up about a third of the sea ice that otherwise would exist in its absence.

geoff pohanka says:
June 23, 2010 at 1:59 pm
“It is quite amazing the focus on the Arctic sea ice extent. If all the Arctic sea ice melted, sea levels would not rise at all. ”
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
Geoff, sea level rise is a non issue concerning the Arctic Ice Cap. The real issue is what the exposure of open seas will do to the weather patterns.
Since ice REFLECTS 80-90% of the sunlight while blue ocean ABSORBS 80% it’s evaporation will increase tremendously and cause a chain reaction of events that will affect the entire Northern Hemisphere.

I plotted up the AMSR-E data for ice extent from June 1, 2002 to May 31, 2010. The data currently available, and the trend is slightly but insignificantly positive, at +79±132 km2/day. It is somewhat hard to see in the overlapped year lines on the AMSR-E standard plot in the side bar, but if you just plot the data as a straight series you can see how little change there has been over the last 8 years. there certainly has been a downward trend in the last forty years, but it is possible we are experiencing the flat trend at the minimum now.

Arno Arrak says:
June 23, 2010 at 3:06 pm
They are going about it all wrong. If they want to predict the melt in the Arctic Basin they should start measuring the flow of current through the Bering Strait and its water temperature. It is this warm water flowing through the Bering Strait that caused the record melt in 2007, and its annual fluctuations determine the variations observed. The other side of the Arctic Ocean is warmed by the Gulf Stream that annually eats up about a third of the sea ice that otherwise would exist in its absence.
———————
Arno, if it was all a result of ocean temperatures, then you would be more inclined to believe Dr. Maslowski’s predictions of when the Arctic would be ice free since that is what he bases his assessments on (the role of the warm Pacific water entering the Arctic Basin).
It’s important to understand that the warm SSTs in the Chukchi in 2007 were not shown to be a result of more warm water inflow through Bering Strait, but a result the timing of the retreat of the sea ice in that area. But earlier years have shown pulses of warm water entering the Arctic through Bering Strait that then circulate around the Arctic Basin. Rebecca Woodgate has many publications on this if you’re interested.
In general there is very little mixing of the warm Atlantic water with the sea ice because of the strong stratification in that part of the Arctic. But there was a recent paper that came out looking at how wave action could change that so it might be more important in the future as the ice cover declines. Ocean data do show a cooling of Atlantic water entering the Arctic the last few years (though it remains anomalously warm).

Volume has increased by about 40% since 2008.
PIOMAS show something different:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/images/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrent.png
Who to believe, who to believe……… 😉

Once again I see the need to remind folks that the Arctic comprises a multitude of variables and a multitude of sea ice areas that interact individually to these variables. I continue to be shocked regarding this obvious lack of knowledge. A case in point:
Keith Tax said:
“It looks to me that sea ice will make another record low this summer. People need to get off the oil addiction. The polution (sic) and warming is killing the planet.”
This kind of response reveals a near complete lack of knowledge (easily obtained) about individual arctic sea oscillations, topography, summer solstice variables, and individual arctic atmospheric oscillations. CO2 could not have warmed the incoming Atlantic current that is melting the edge of the ice next to Greenland. CO2 could not have caused the gyre to pull the ice from the land edges. The air over the Arctic basin is not any warmer and is in fact a bit colder than average right now.
Pollution and fossil fuels cannot be the cause. There is no mechanism that connects CO2 with Arctic melt.

I think it will pass the 2003 line when reaching the minimum… let’s wait and see!!!

The median equals the 50th percentile, or value that (approximately) divides the data in half. The mean is a center of gravity, which in skewed distributions can be quite a ways from the median, i.e. above (or below) much more than 50% of the data.

Indeed. Suppose we have a distribution of ten people, six of whom have no children, two each have one, two each have two, and the last has fourteen. The median is childless, but the mean is exactly two children.
Many people use the term “average” loosely, without defining whether they refer to the median, arithmetic mean, or something more exotic. If you don’t know by which definition someone means (heh) a word to be understood, then the sentence in which it’s used doesn’t convey a clear meaning.

Barrow Sea Ice Web Cam:
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_webcam
…nary a death-spiral to be seen!

Just The Facts says:
June 23, 2010 at 5:17 pm
We must not mention that stuff!!! ‘Cause if we start talking about Einstein and peer-review, some one might mention people like Newton, Galileo, Pasteur, Copernicus……well, all those guys that didn’t have the “benefit” of their peers reviewing their work in the manner it gets “reviewed” today. We’d probably have to invalidate all knowledge gained prior to the 90s. …………………………………….. Have we come up with anything useful since then using the peer-reviewed method of discovery?

Steve Goddard says:
June 23, 2010 at 2:05 pm
5.5 is the only estimate I have made.
++++
This is the piece I’m referring to, Steve: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/09/prediction-arctic-ice-will-continue-to-recover-this-summer/
If Anthony inartfully, and mistakenly, put you on the record for ~5.8M km/2 by saying you agreed it would be 500,000 km/2 greater than last year, and you corrected that later, then I missed it (always possible).

48K km squared per day until Sept 15 and Steve is right.
64K km squared per day until Sept 15 and we will have a new record minimum.
100K km squared per day until Sept 15 and Gore will be the winner.
OK, I’m calling less than a million ice free, so sue me.
The current pace has been averaging 63K for the last month, and most
years, the early summer pace held on for the summer.
Except 2007, where it increased.
So, my dollar says 4.3 to 4.5, no new record but it will be close.

Why is this;
http://climateinsiders.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/uiucjune222010vsjune221990.jpg
Totally different from from the following two higher resolution two sea ice concentration images for the 20-year difference between 6/22/1990 and 6/22/2010?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/19900622.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png
I mean 1990 looks way better than 2010, the small image you posted comparing 6/22/1990 and 6/22/2010 looks completely different for the current date, 6/22/2010.
Does this disclaimer “Sea ice concentrations less than 30% are not displayed in these images.” for the itty bitty teeny weenie Cryosphere image comparisonator have anything to do with this dramatic difference?

R. Gates says:
June 23, 2010 at 5:39 pm
as we are all tired of that I’m certain
You’re right, you are tiring.
And here you are again trusting in one climate model and ignoring EVERYTHING else.

Julienne, I am sure you understand the properties of LW and SW infrared and its ability to warm air versus water. I hope you do. CO2 is a greenhouse gas that absorbs and re-radiates LW infrared, and is one of the gases (water vapor being king of course) responsible for keeping air temperatures warm (but not oceans) which is way desert air cools so rapidly at night (no water vapor to keep things warm). So given that LW cannot warm oceans (it only penetrates the surface tension layer of water and then the thin layer of heated water is quickly evaporated), please explain your mechanism that says it does.

Richard Lindzen makes an illustration that computer models are like Ouija boards:

geo,
I think you are referring to a rough estimate Anthony made seven months ago. Looks like he may turn out to be amazingly close, particularly considering how early his estimate was made.

The evidence is clear: this has been the fastest melt season thus far and we are now at the lowest extent for this time of year – almost 400,000 square kilometres lower than 2006 and around 500,000 square kilometres lower than 2007.
Does that mean that we will get a record? No. But it certainly means that a record is easier to acheive than otherwise.
So, those predicting something close to a record do have a significant basis on which to make that claim – the observations to date.

Phil. says:
June 23, 2010 at 8:20 pm
And as in 2007 the thick, ‘old’ ice is ‘shooting out’ the Nares strait, so in that regard 2010 is as anomalous as 2007.
The Northern Ice Cube Maker can afford to do that. We in the Northern Temperate Zone, however, call ill afford to have the ice cubes lowering the Atlantic SST’s even further. As if the Eastern Pacific and the Northern Atlantic aren’t cooling fast enough already. Lastly, for all the ballyhoo about the Arctic, the Global Sea Ice Anomaly hangs right around zero.

David Gould says:
June 23, 2010 at 8:28 pm
And if we get a record melt in the Arctic, it will be at the expense a monsterously-cold Northern winter, El Nino being exhausted.

I said “I guess that if (bif if) weather patterns stay the same:”
I wanted to say: “I guess that if (big if) weather patterns stay the same:”

Don’t know if this has been mentioned, but the current ice extent is not below 2007, it is behind or ahead of 2007, depending on your calendaring logic. Regardless, it is within 2 weeks of 2007 and in the big picture that is not a significant lead or lag period. You know and I know that nobody knows what the norm is for this day of the year or for any other day of the year. We just know that the extent passes through this value about this time each year. The rate of change is also typical for this time of year.
Somebody wake me up if something important happens to the arctic ice.

Ewww cut and paste glich sorry

Keith Tax,
If you want to get off oil, then stop eating, using electricity or manufactured goods. Turn off all your appliances and heat, don’t ever use any medicine, and don’t access the Internet or read a newspaper. Don’t drive a car or use public transportation. Don’t go to the store, and don’t walk under a streetlight.

David Gould says:
June 23, 2010 at 8:28 pm
this has been the fastest melt season thus far
How much is from shear?

Our Mr R Gates seems unable or unwilling to part from his beloved models and maybe he is correct but the history of models shows us they should be taken with a pinch of salt.
I remember R Gates posting that this year would be “one heck of a melt season” which could mean a high or low minimum.
BTW A team on the ice finding one spot of thin ice and then being “shocked” that the thin ice they looked for actually exists and then extrapolating that tiny spot as being representative of millions of square kilometers seems a little unscientific at best, it could be that if you want to find something and are being finananced to find something and your beliefs dictate that something exists then you will probably ‘find’ what you are looking for.
Of all the methods of measuring ice, sending a few people out on the ice using the easiest route which just happens to be composed of the thinnest ice must represent the worst method yet devised.
Its akin to digging up a grain of dirt in your garden with a sewing needle, not finding a worm and then declaring that worms do not exist.

Amino Acids in Meteorites,
A fair bit, as in every other year. However, weaker ice shears more easily than stronger ice, so if you are arguing that there has been lots of shear this year then you must also be arguing that the ice is weaker this year than in previous years.
As to things not being what they appear, at present the data is not suggesting that the ice is strong. The ice may well be strong. But there is no data available that indicates that.

Today the curve is perhaps 2 mm below 2006. If it continues to follow 2mm below 2006, it will be close to 5.8. So if Steves other observations is correct in this excellent post, I’d say the changes still are good for 5.8.
But noone can say what will happen in July, right?
Unless you have a crystall ball.

middle of september is coming soon. we all will know if the ice really is thin. even though we should already know because we see the data. computer models say it’s alarmingly thin. data says it isn’t. middle of september is soon.

Back in April “09 I posted my NSWAG for the summer minimum on JAXA of 5.714285 million km2. I actually thought it would be a little less, but I wanted a number that I could quote to the same totally unrealistic precision they used and still be able to remember it without writing it down somewhere. This Spring I figured the min would probably be be just slightly north of 2008, but going by that same requirement I had to go with 4.285714 Mkm2 for this year. The purely scientific methodology I used to smoothly extract each number from my anal orifice is based on a little recognized numeric phenomenon that used to quite frequently get me free beers from overly calculator dependent engineering types back in the day. I missed on the high side last year and expect to miss a bit on the low side this time.

stevengoddard,
Your analysis indeed suggests that average ice thickness is greater this year than any of the previous four years. However, I am my doubts regarding your analysis, particularly that reliant upon the cryosphere today comparions. You should carefully examine the image on the main page and compare it with that used on the comparion page. They do not match.
Phil has also pointed out that your point re Barrow is in error.
The ice is melting very fast – the fastest in any recorded year. The question is: do *you* think that thick ice melts faster than thin ice? Ice melting fast would seem to me to equate to the ice being thin – your view may differ, of course.

Phil,
Apparently one of us doesn’t know where Barrow is, and it is you. There are two miles of ice west of Barrow and at least 20 miles to the east.

“””SouthAmericanGirls says:
June 23, 2010 at 10:42 pm
What does PIPS means? WattsUpWithThat has one of the highest traffics in the world, but if you use UNEXPLAINED ACRONYMS you are losing a lot of readers. We normal people cannot go on reading EVERY post and EVERY paper and we cannot go on KNOWING every climate related acronym. You should do posts that any person with a reasonnable understanding of graphics can understand
Apart that, this an excellent post.”””
Perfectly agree with that. Being fairly knowledgeable in most areas of science and reading here constantly I find myself spending wasted time looking up forgotten sequences of letters. I might know what the letters mean but many times can’t remember the exact word.
Case of point: BoM, can’t tell you the exact words, can’t remember what the B is, something of Meteorology, however, I do know it is basically NOAA of Australia, a government agency.
Now if you only read here periodically or aren’t based in science I feel for you. You probably are totally lost and shouldn’t be if someone would just state the complete phrase or name.
Very good point girls down south!

Volume = area X thickness. The thickness is greater than 2009, and the area is less than 2009.

Amino Acids in Meteorites,
Mid September may be coming soon, but it still seems a long way away. 🙂

1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010=21 years…
Must be the new math…..

stevengoddard,
But weren’t those figures for volume and thickness for the Arctic Basin? As far as I can see – and you were arguing this, I am sure – ice extent in the Arctic Basin is about the same as it was in 2009. The melt has occurred – as it does in every year – at the lower latitudes first. So I am still a little confused. For what part of the Arctic are those volume and thickness figures – the whole Arctic or the Arctic Basin (the charts say ‘Arctic Basin’)? Further, what are the area figures that you are using (the values, I mean)? Thanks.

Steve:
Perhaps an explanation as to the difference between this
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png
and this
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/20100622.jpg
will clear things up a bit.

Hi there,
I’m sorry to come back with the PIPS 2.0 – PIOMASS thing, I know you’re all tired about this, but anyway I wanted you to know the opinion of people at the NSIDC (which is more than probably THE reference about sea ice). A French blogger asked them about the relevance of these two models, and here is the answer:
“Thank you for contacting NSIDC. Walt Meier, one of our sea ice scientists provided some thoughts which I will sum up along with a few other points from talking with other scientists here at NSIDC:
Unfortunately, there are no continuous, Arctic-wide measurements of sea ice volume/thickness which is why models are used to estimate volume/thickness. Sea ice extent on the other hand is derived from remotely sensed data from satellites.
The PIPS model is an operational model, and is designed to forecast the ice a few days into the future (for navy submarine use, etc). It is not proper to use it to study year to year changes. PIPS, is known to be not terribly useful for sea ice other than perhaps motion; definitely not thickness.
Our assessment at ( http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/) is based on (1) the ice age fields we get from data from our colleagues, Charles Fowler and James Maslanik, Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research, University of Colorado Boulder, (2) models better suited to tracking thickness year to year, such as the University of Washington, PIOMAS model we’ve discussed in the past couple articles, and (3) consultation with operational ice centers that have very high quality data and human expertise at assessing the state of the sea ice. The PIOMAS model is looking back in time and estimating what the volume was in order to monitor trends. It has the benefit of “hindsight” and can incorporate actual recorded measurements (weather, satellite data etc.) that by nature are not available to make a forecasts. The most recent update of the PIOMAS model looks to be May 30th.
Let me know if you have any more questions or need more information.
Regards,
Kara Gergely
NSIDC User Services”
here is the original blog post
http://www.climat-evolution.com/article-banquise-arctique-pips-piomas-52419993.html

David Gould says:
June 23, 2010 at 11:51 pm
The ice is melting very fast – the fastest in any recorded year. The question is: do *you* think that thick ice melts faster than thin ice? Ice melting fast would seem to me to equate to the ice being thin – your view may differ, of course.
++++
The problem with generalities about an area covering millions of square kilometers is that they can be very misleading, as is yours above.
The ice that is “melting rapidly” is not the thick ice, it is the thin ice. Steve’s graphics make that clear. What is “the thin ice”, you ask? The thin ice is those areas *that melt every year*. Good year, bad year, medium year –those areas melt. They have no opportunity to achieve “multi-year ice” status.
This is why Steve (and me, for that matter) focus on the arctic basin, rather than, say, the Bering Sea or the areas along the east/west coasts of Greenland (not an exclusive list, just for example). To the degree there *can* be thick multi-year ice, the Arctic basin is where most of it will be found.

I hope no one is trusting the GISS data set to find what temperatures are in the Arctic
Even if you think it is trustworthy i think it is easy to see it is not the same as other sets from around the world

Hi Rob,
Thanks a lot for that useful piece of information.

Ron Broberg says:
June 23, 2010 at 2:48 pm
“Totally agree with Julienne’s point about comparing with a single day 20 (or 21) years ago. It’s all about the trends.”
Actually it’s straight line trends that I find pointless. A 2c/century straight line trend means in some 4000 years the Earth’s average temperature will boil water. IPCCs 6c/century lowers that to ~1300 years. I seem to remember even scarier predictions.

Hi Steven,
excuse me but the mail exactly states that
“It is not proper to use it [PIPS] to study year to year changes. PIPS, is known to be not terribly useful for sea ice other than perhaps motion; definitely not thickness.”
We’re not talking about forecasts here. They basically say that PIPS is absolutely not a relevant model for ice thickness. What do you think? How far can we trust your PIPS thicknesses? Why (in your opinion) do they diverge so strongly from PIOMAS, that NSIDC largely prefers?

JB says:
June 24, 2010 at 2:43 am
1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010=21 years…
Must be the new math…..

January 1, 1990 – January 1, 1991 <— This is one year
Therefore:
1990, 1991 = 1 year
If you like maths, the total number of year when a list of years is given as you gave =
T= n-1
Therefore if you list 1990 through 2010 the list has n=21, therefore the total T=20.
sorry for the old math.

Pamela Gray says:
“I hate to say this because I am an information freedom kind of gal, but it seems reasonable that the real ice forecast model the Navy uses might be held pretty damn close to the chest and away from public knowledge. A tenant of armed forces is to always have two sets of knowledge. Stuff that everybody can know. And stuff that the armed forces needs to win wars is to know.”
______
Exactly the point I’ve been making for weeks now. There is no way the Navy has its best model out on the web for the whole world (friend and enemy alike) to use. The Arctic is far too strategic an area. PIPS 2.0 is the old model that the Navy is happy to let any one use for any reason and it is essentially discounted by professionals in the business for any serious analysis. It doesn’t even use CICE which is accepted by most as the best sea ice model in the world.

R. Gates,
The US Navy should allow their enemies to steal your precious CICE. Since PIOMAS was off on last year’s minimum by 20% it would be a masterstroke of disinformation.

I think some of us might be talking at cross purposes regarding Arctic temps. There are air temps over land and then there are air temps over the Arctic Ocean basin. Maybe if we clarify which we are referring to, it would help.
I pay attention to air temps over the Arctic Ocean basin and SST temps of incoming warm oceanic Arctic currents. The air temps can change quickly as a function of weather system fronts (let alone the condition of the ice). Oceanic SST changes much more slowly as a function of ENSO-lag parameters and solar irradiance (clear sky versus cloud type cover).
These parameters do not affect the Arctic as a whole, because the Arctic environment is not one thing, but is made up of distinct parts. Simply adding the parts up does not accurately reflect the artificial statistical Arctic trend, and the artificial Arctic Trend does not reflect the condition of all its parts.

I didn’t say it was releasing misinformation. I was simply suggesting that they could be hot on the trail of better and better models, some of which we are not being made aware of, which would include proponents on both sides of this debate (meaning that Gates is likely in the same boat with the rest of us).
Our historical knowledge of armed forces information is filled with released data. The fact that we have this information does not make it “misinformation”. It just means that something better came along that was held back from public scrutiny for a time.
I remain unconvinced that the public models pointing towards a death spiral debated here are correct. Given that my skepticism is from an armchair observer, submariners would reasonably not be putting all their eggs in one modeled basket either. Our military history is filled with misconceptions, poor assumptions, and wrong decisions based on less than accurate information regarding theater conditions. That we would do so now means that we still have not learned to take into account the vagaries of the friend or foe “3rd” force known as “Earth”.

Pamela, I am sorry but I do not understand what you are trying to say. Are you trying to say there is no trend in Arctic sea ice? And what about Arctic temperatures? And melt extent over Greenland, and permafrost temperatures, and “greening” of the Arctic? When you look at the individual parts in the Arctic, you see a clear warming signal and the various components of the Arctic are responding accordingly.

Julienne,
I looked closer at the forecast link, and see that your forecast lines up pretty closely with mine. Interesting that Mark Serreze is talking about a possible record minimum.

Julienne, I beat the drum for real debate behind statistical trends (especially since statistics provide no explanations). Statistics can tell us if what we are seeing is outside the normal range (if you have a large enough random data set- something I don’t think we have). Statistics cannot explain what we see, which is why I refer to trend lines as artificial. The Arctic has MANY natural systems that are quite capable of producing the melt pattern we are seeing right now. Let’s debate that. Do we have a decrease in outgoing LW over the Arctic as a result of an increase in CO2 molecules in the atmosphere there? Or do we have natural weather pattern variations combined with natural current oscillations that have resulted in the melt we see?
We need to be knowledgeable about all such possibilities in order to strengthen our respective opinions.

stevengoddard says:
June 24, 2010 at 9:27 am
I see that R Gates subscribes to the idea that the Navy is releasing misinformation, and that he also believes the University of Alaska Barrow webcam and ice breakup forecasts are a hoax.
__________________
Steve,
This is by far the worst twisting of my words that I’ve seen here on WUWT, and I’m surprized it came from you.
1) There is a huge difference between allowing an older models data to used on a public site and not releasing your best navigational information to your potential enemies.
2) I never said anything about a “hoax”– those are your words completely. I simply pointed out that it really doesn’t matter what the Barrow data is saying since it’s no longer operational, and the only ice in the area is shore-fast anyway, and so you even mentioning it in your update is irrelevent.
Finally, in your update you failed to mention the fact that EVERY basin the the Arctic, including your much beloved central Arctic is showing a negative anomaly.

R. Gates says:
June 24, 2010 at 7:03 am
This is definitely NOT the case this year. The thicker multi-year ice is further south, near Siberia (as Julienne et. al pointed out aleady), and as the video presentation I linked to yesterday showed, the central Arctic basin ice is weak and thinner than satellite images alone or PIPS 2.0 modelling would indicate. The PIOMAS model seems to be far more accurate in giving the true volume status of ice in the Arctic right now.
++++++
I did not mean to exclude the northern coast of Siberia from my definition of “arctic basin”.
The swirl continues. I expect that ice to be on the other side before all is said and done re minimum this year.

stevengoddard,
“Hopefully next year WUWT will make the list ;^)”
Why wait until next year – is there something in the rules stopping you from submitting your prediction for inclusion in the next update of the Sea Ice Outlook? I believe the deadline in June 30th.

Steve said:
stevengoddard says:
June 24, 2010 at 10:52 am
Julienne,
“I looked closer at the forecast link, and see that your forecast lines up pretty closely with mine.”
_____________
But you might want to note the important qualification at the end of Julienne’s et. als prediction.
“If the 2010 survival rates are similar to 2007, however, the September 2010 extent will rival what was observed in 2007 (4.31 versus 4.13 million square km).”
And so, if the survival rates are even slightly better than 2007, than the 4.5 million sq. km. prediction I put forth in March is also, quite reasonable I would think.

Zhang, leading figure in developing the PIOMAS model, is predicting 4.7M km/2. So, that should be an interesting comparison point for the predictive powers of his models, and will add/subtract from PIOMAS credibility as well depending on the closeness of his results.

Btw, last year Zhang (PIOMAS devleoper) predicted 4.5M km/2. Oops.
I just noticed an interesting difference between the 2009 panel of experts prediction graphic and the same graphic for 2010.
On the 2009 graphic, there is a line showing where the “Linear Trend” would be. On the 2010 graphic, that line does not appear.
Why not?
Could the reason be that in 2009, that Linear Trend line was safely above all of the predictions of the experts, but for 2010 it would show that two experts are predicting almost right on that Linear Trend, and a third expert is actually predicting a minimum *above* the Linear Trend?
Gee, I wonder. I can imagine the internal discussion about how it would make it that much harder to keep up the “worse than we thought” meme, and sneer at the word “recovery”, if they had to admit that some of their own experts were predicting above the Linear Trend for 2010.

Julienne @10.19
As a beginner, I find it difficult to appreciate how long are the lag time associated with the heat of a warmer earth, if it be warmer, affecting the Arctic. If it be true that there has been some warming – whatever the cause – but that it has now levelled off for the last ten years or so,(as seems to be the case) could the “warming signal” mentioned in relation to the Arctic just be a lagged response rather than an indication the warming is still going on? Or don’t we know?
I ak because melting Arctic seems to be a cause celebre, or do I mean poster child? Anyway, a lot of propoganda significance seems to be attached to it!
Myself, I ‘ll take warm over cold anyday. Staying the same isn’t an option I fear!

geo at June 24, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Whoa I don’t get any sense that they’re “hiding the trend”, anyway last year’s graph was extra tall to show a big scary line of what a “normal” ice minimum would be – and we’re not likely to get anywhere near that.
In any case I’m very grateful and impressed that researchers are willing to be so transparent by predicting something that will happen in my lifetime.
Perhaps they’ll accept a prediction from Messrs Watt and Goddard if they’re taking forecasts based on June data again this year.

Let’s settle this argument once and for all.
Here.
Now.
Does June 23, 2010 sea ice extent;
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi?lang=e&mode=img&size=L&date=set&y=2010&m=06&d=23
Look more like June 23. 2006;
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi?lang=e&mode=img&size=L&date=set&y=2006&m=6&d=23
Or does June 23, 2010 look more like June 23, 2007;
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi?lang=e&mode=img&size=L&date=set&y=2007&m=6&d=23
You decide?
Me?
I’ve already decided that 2010 will set a new record low sea ice extent for the satellite era.

EFS_Junior
Finally, the person in charge of Arctic ice has posted.

EFS_Junior says:
June 24, 2010 at 1:59 pm
Let’s settle this argument once and for all.
___________
:)) If only it were that easy. I love your attempt, but even when the Arctic is seasonally ice free sometime in next few decades, AGW skeptics will claim it is natural variation and show us their pictures of submarines coming up in polynya at the north pole and claim it is evidence the Arctic was ice free in recent past. This isn’t a matter of science, but of belief, so there will never be any “settling it once and for all”.
But to your point, 6-23-2010 is far more similar to 2007 than 2006, and so shall the September minimum for 2010.

Ammonite says:
June 24, 2010 at 2:46 pm
Has anyone done the same for the opposite result?
Since we are dealing with hypothetical outcomes not yet in evidence.

EFS_Junior says: “I’ve already decided that 2010 will set a new record low sea ice extent for the satellite era.”
That’s _kinda_ cute, but experience seems to suggest that it’ll be at least a month before anyone can use utilise current data to forecast the minimum.
Walter Dnes at 2:24 pm up there seems to have the JAXA rankings 100% by the end of August.
It all depends on how the winds blow I guess. The Arctic Oscillation is on its way up but it would have to get strongly positive to have much of an effect on the Beaufort Gyre flywheel that charged up in October, December and January (and defeat the Coriolis force).
The Fram Strait is open, but ice is still being dragged Pacific-ward of there and I believe it’s normally open by mid July anyway. There’s a plume of multiyear ice that has been dragged from Canada towards Siberia which will melt where it is or stay strong and be pushed by the Gyre toward the pole as the intervening newer ice melts and thus survive for another (3?) year(s).
Unless the extremely low Arctic Oscillation has compacted the ice which formed in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas (very possible since they lagged other years badly during the extreme low AO of October) dateline-wards of the pole then towards Siberia when the basin was too packed to take it [that appears to be PIPS’ 3m basin reasoning]. If that happened then there’s loads of ice, PIOMAS is way off the mark, the globe has (possibly measurably) cooled through the formation of many thousand km^3 of ice under cloudless skies and there’ll be a very healthy minimum.
Sorry if that was too long.

rbateman says:
June 24, 2010 at 3:00 pm
R. Gates says:
June 24, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Are you trying to say that the pictures of the USS Skate at the North Pole in 1959 that I witnessed in print in 1959 are not real?
______________
Nope, they probably are real, but a submarine surfacing in a polynya in 1959 doesn’t quite constitute scientific evidence of anything. I think’d we of all known if the Arctic Ocean had been ice free in 1959. The picture is a historical point of interest, not a climatological one.

rbateman says:
June 24, 2010 at 3:34 pm
“Dig deep within your pockets. Pull out a nickle if you have one.
Place nickle on side and view thickness.
That’s how much the average sea-level rise was last year.
Wow.”
I wish I had a nickle.
We had the harshest winter in 40 years here. And I’m paying a Carbon tax on my car’s fuel. And I’ll be paying a Carbon tax on heating my home heating come autumn. And I had to pay big on the damage to fix the damage to my Carbon–guzzling-deathmobile because my government didn’t bother ordering any road grit because climatologists told them that harsh winters were a thing of the past.
I pay Global Warming tax on my fuel and there’s no money to repair the roads destroyed by cold.
Go figure.

stevengoddard,
I do not think that you have answered my questions regarding your ice volume/ice thickness graphs.
There is also another potential problem with them. If average thickness is 2.5 metres, how is volume 55,000 cubic kilometres (the metric that I am assuming that you are using for volume, as the units are not marked)? This would imply an area of over 20 million square kilometres, something which seems a little tricky as ice area in the arctic does not reach that far even in the depths of winter.
Further, PIOMAS (and I know that you do not like them, but bear with me) suggest that average ice volume for winter is less than 30,000 cubic kilometres, with recent years being much lower. 55,000 is quite different from 30,000, and your 55,000 figure is not even the winter one, but rather taken from the middle of June.
Again, I apologise if this has been discussed elsewhere, but what are the area figures that you are using to calculate volume? As you say, volume = thickness * area. We have your volume and thickness figures, and they are indicating that you are using an unusually large area figure. Is this correct, or have I made an error in my assumptions or calculations?
Thanks
David

FergalR says:
June 24, 2010 at 3:58 pm
We are the unwanted masses, as well as the unwashed masses, that cannot possibly understand the genius of the Agenda.
Remember what the Alien in Independence day said it wanted?

What I like particularly of that submarine picture is to see that sea water that stretches all the way to the horizon. 🙂
But seriously: I used to think that the Arctic sea ice was one huge sheet of ice, like a skating ring. Now, thanks to the MODIS satellite images, I know that it actually consists of thousands of ice floes constantly grinding against each other, but with spaces in between them here and there. So it’s not that inconceivable that a submarine can pop up in a small strip of open water between ice floes on the North Pole. In fact, I see plenty of spaces in the North Pole area where a submarine could emerge and make pictures for the folks back home.
The probability that a submarine could have sailed all the way to the North Pole in the past is very low, however.
So, have I displayed the right kind of skepticism?

Phil. says: June 24, 2010 at 3:57 pm
RE: Ice, or lack of it or something
It might be helpful if you’d locate Barrow, Alaska on
http://ice-map.appspot.com/
for others?
On Firefox I can zoom in and click the chain-style icon in the upper left to get the location put in the address bar, then copy and paste from there. Here’s where I think (I’ve never been in Alaska) Barrow is:
http://ice-map.appspot.com/?map=Arc&sat=ter&lvl=5&lat=79.467223&lon=-117.133555&yir=2010&day=175
I’ve zoomed in a little and put a red dot near where I think Barrow is (I’m a bit tipsy, though, mind) hopefully it’s probably near thereabouts.
http://i45.tinypic.com/1zyems.jpg
If I’m somehow correct there seems to be a couple of km of sea-ice there, if shore-fast ice is qualitatively different but looks the same and extends visibly from the shore so much then please enlighten me. Thanks.

FergalR says:
June 24, 2010 at 3:58 pm
“We had the harshest winter in 40 years here. . . . because climatologists told them that harsh winters were a thing of the past.”
It forever amuses me to see people of a so called advanced culture/nation believe that their immediate environment is the center of the universe.
Last winter, according to NASA thermal imaging maps which display the Earth’s different temperatures in color coding, about 10-15% of it’s surface was cooler than usual. The other 85-90% was warmer, even blazing hot compared to our “back yard”.
The ARCTIC AREA was 10 degrees WARMER than usual, it appeared in two shades of dark red extensively overlapping each other.
The part of the Earth that was colder than usual, showing up as white in the heat images went, in our area, from approximately the Canadian border to slightly south of Cuba. Then it went all the way around the Earth from The US to Europe, Russia, Siberia, parts of China then back to the US.
The connection between the much warmer Arctic and the cooler band immediately south of it is clear and obvious to Meteorolists. There basically was a flip flop of heat and cold between the two areas.
This happened because, under unusual weather conditions, the Arctic basically spills it’s frigid guts down south as far as it will go and then sucks in warmer air from the south causing its temperature increase of 10 degrees.
South of this small cooler area and down to the equator, Global warming as usual.
Then you had the Southern Hemisphere which was in its Summer season. Which is allright, summers can be cooler than usual. But this Summer it suffered its greatest heat in all recorded temperature history. 122 degrees in South Africa, heat waves in Brazil and Australia.
MORAL OF THE STORY. THE BIG PICTURE IS WHAT COUNTS.

villabolo June 24, 2010 at 5:55 pm
You’ve got it precisely ass-backwards. The negative Arctic Oscillation that brought cold weather to the Northern Hemisphere also increased ice production in the Arctic. The higher temperatures at the Pole this year were mostly due to the latent heat released when huge amounts of ice froze.

stevengoddard says:
June 24, 2010 at 5:38 pm
“There must have been strong winds bringing soot to western Greenland that summer, which no doubt was largely responsible for the melting of the ice sheet.”
VILLABOLO:
Steve, thanks for the comment on Greenland.
If that soot was a steady feature throughout Greenland then you may have a point. However, if you look at the images below, you’ll notice the following:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2010/03/100323161819-large.jpg
In 2005, Greenland had barely any melt in the West, except for one very limited spot. It also had a certain amount of melt in the East. Most curious of all, it had a very small growth in the center.
In 2008, however, it had a large growth of melt in the West. A much greater melt in the East and South. It also had a very expanded GROWTH in the center, high altitude regions.
On the basis of these observations, I ask the following questions concerning the possibility that soot is causing the melt:
!) Has this soot been a constant occurrence every year for the past 10+ years that
we have been having melt throughout Greenland?
2) Why is it that the fresh snow that falls throughout Greenland, fails to protect the
ice underneath by providing cover from the sun?
3) Why is it that the snow, covering the soot and then turning to ice, not compensate
for any previous loss of ice?
4) Why is it that the increasing area of the melting edges are spreading further
inland, throughout the years, as a result of soot?
5) Are the winds so constant and precise in their pattern throughout the years that
they happen to deposit soot equally throughout all of Greenland?
I look forward to further communicating with you Steve.

Günther Kirschbaum says:
June 24, 2010 at 5:14 pm
The probability that a submarine could have sailed all the way to the North Pole in the past is very low, however.
If the 1959 feat was claimed to have taken place by a submarine sailing on the surface, it’d be a farce.
They went under the ice, using upward looking radar, and surfaced in stages where the ice was very thin or non-existent.
Also, it was not the only such feat, as the Brits joined the U.S. Navy in many such forays in the years afterward.
This one is from 1962 : http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/0857805.jpg and you can see they had a bit of ice/snow to pop through.
The kicker for 1959 is that a series of pictures were taken along the way, under widely varying conditions. But the prize was in open water on March 17, 1959….before the sun had risen at the North Pole.
This is like trying to dismiss the Apollo Lunar Landings.

stevengoddard says: June 24, 2010 at 2:52 pm
“CO2 has risen from 280 to 400ppm with a 0.7C increase in temperature. That doesn’t extrapolate out to 3C at 560ppm. But math isn’t important to the politicians at the IPCC.”
How many are skeptical of Steven’s statement above? The reasoning is faulty and the misdirection to politics fails to rescue it.
A jug of water on the stove does not reach its final temperature straight away. It keeps heating as it absorbs energy until a balance is reached between the energy going in and the energy going out (assuming it doesn’t boil). The 0.7C rise mentioned above is a partial response so far to the increase in CO2, not an end-point. Extrapolating assuming it is an end-point yields an incorrect conclusion.

rbateman,
You can use concentration maps to examine that, but I imagine that it would be quite difficult to do. The only metric that we have available to us is the ice extent (which does include concentration in it). Ice extent is lower this year than in the years that we have on record and is dropping faster than in the years that we have on record. That cannot be construed as evidence for thicker ice.
If all you are saying is that I cannot prove that the ice is thin, fair enough: I agree. But the only evidence that we have is not something that points to the ice being thick.

Smokey writes.
“Actually, the Arctic in 1959, when the North Pole was ice free, doesn’t look much different than now.
But I guess some folks just aren’t happy unless they have something to worry about, even if it’s only natural variation due to wind and currents.”
Some folks take a more analytical approach. For example, Kwok & Rothrock (Geophysical Research Letters, 2009) compared declassified Navy submarine records (1958-2000) with more recent satellite-based measurements:
“Decline in Arctic sea ice thickness from submarine and ICESat records: 1958–2008
The decline of sea ice thickness in the Arctic Ocean from ICESat (2003–2008) is placed in the context of estimates from 42 years of submarine records (1958–2000) described by Rothrock et al. (1999, 2008). While the earlier 1999 work provides a longer historical record of the regional changes, the latter offers a more refined analysis, over a sizable portion of the Arctic Ocean supported by a much stronger and richer data set. Within the data release area (DRA) of declassified submarine sonar measurements (covering ∼38% of the Arctic Ocean), the overall mean winter thickness of 3.64 m in 1980 can be compared to a 1.89 m mean during the last winter of the ICESat record—an astonishing decrease of 1.75 m in thickness. Between 1975 and 2000, the steepest rate of decrease is −0.08 m/yr in 1990 compared to a slightly higher winter/summer rate of −0.10/−0.20 m/yr in the five-year ICESat record (2003–2008). Prior to 1997, ice extent in the DRA was >90% during the summer minimum. This can be contrasted to the gradual decrease in the early 2000s followed by an abrupt drop to <55% during the record setting minimum in 2007. This combined analysis shows a long-term trend of sea ice thinning over submarine and ICESat records that span five decades.”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL039035.shtml

FergalR says:
June 24, 2010 at 6:29 pm
villabolo June 24, 2010 at 5:55 pm
You’ve got it precisely ass-backwards. The negative Arctic Oscillation that brought cold weather to the Northern Hemisphere also increased ice production in the Arctic. The higher temperatures at the Pole this year were mostly due to the latent heat released when huge amounts of ice froze.
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
Ah ha. Let’s see. As far as far as your concept of “precision” goes, the following is from the Arctic Sea Ice News put out by the NSIDC January 5th, 2010. Please read it “PRECISELY”:
*************************************************************************
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2010/010510.html
Warm air keeps ice extent low
December air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean region, eastern Siberia, and northwestern North America were warmer than normal. In contrast, temperatures in Eurasia, the United States, and southwestern Canada were below average. The strongest anomalies (more than 7 degrees Celsius/13 degrees Fahrenheit) were over the Atlantic side of the Arctic, including Baffin Bay and Davis Strait, where ice extent was below average.
Negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation
These regional contrasts in temperature anomalies resulted from a strongly negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation (AO). The AO is a natural pattern of climate variability. It consists of opposing patterns of atmospheric pressure between the polar regions and middle latitudes. The positive phase of the AO exists when pressures are lower than normal over the Arctic, and higher than normal in middle latitude. In the negative phase, the opposite is true; pressures are higher than normal over the Arctic and lower than normal in middle latitudes. The negative and positive phases of the AO set up opposing temperature patterns. With the AO in its negative phase this season, the Arctic is warmer than average, while parts of the middle latitudes are colder than normal. The phase of the AO also affects patterns of precipitation, especially over Europe.
The phase of the AO is described in terms of an index value. In December 2009 the AO index value was -3.41, the most negative value since at least 1950, according to data from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center.
While a negative AO leads to warmer temperatures over the Arctic, it also tends to reduce the flow of sea ice out of the Arctic by affecting the winds that can export the ice to warmer waters, where it melts. In this way, a negative AO could help retain some the second- and third-year ice through the winter, and potentially rebuild some of the older, multiyear ice that has been lost over the past few years. However, we do not yet know if the strongly negative AO will persist through the winter, or what its net effect will be
**************************************************************************
I’ll also link up to NSIDC’s satellite temperature image.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100105_Figure4.png
**************************************************************************
Just a reminder to those who may not have “precisely” read FergalR’s post to villabolo:
“You’ve got it precisely ass-backwards.”
PLEASE LINK TO THIS ICE THICKNESS IMAGE TO SEE HOW MUCH ICE FORMED IN THE WINTER OF 2009/2010.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100406_Figure6.png
AND NOW, PLEASE LOOK, WITH “PRECISION” FERGALR AT THE ACTUAL ICE BUILD UP THROUGH THE WINTER, YES, I “PRECISELY” SAID WINTER, OF 2009/2010.
LET ME BE VERY “PRECISE” ABOUT THIS FERGIE. THE GREEN ON THE MAP REPRESENTS MULTIYEAR ICE. WHEN YOU LOOK AT IT THROUGH THE HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGE (MOVE CURSOR TO SMALL IMAGE AND IT TURNS INTO A “MAGNIFYING GLASS”).
LOOK AT SEPTEMBER OF 2009 COMPARED TO MARCH OF 2010 AND YOU WILL NOTICE NOT MERELY A LOSS IN SURFACE AREA, BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, WHAT REMAINS THERE IS RIDDLED LIKE TERMITE HOLES
WITH A LOT OF MUCH THINNER ICE.
IN SEPTEMBER OF 2009 SUBSTANTIAL AREAS OF BLUE COULD BE FOUND IN THE GREEN. THE BLUE IS 2 YEAR ICE WITHIN ICE (GREEN) THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE 3-10 YEARS!
NOW LOOK AT MARCH OF 2010, THE END OF WINTER, AND PLEASE NOTICE THE DRAMATIC LOSS OF ICE. THERE IS, OVERALL, LESS SURFACE AREA OF WHAT USED TO BE THICK MULTIYEAR ICE (GREEN) . IT IS ALSO SEVERELY RIDDLED WITH 1 YEAR ICE (PURPLE) AS WELL AS 2 YEAR (BLUE).
NOW FERGAL, LOOK AT THE BLUE AREA IN GENERAL THAT REPRESENTS THE 2 YEAR ICE. IT NOT ONLY SHRINKS IN SURFACE AREA AT THE END OF WINTER BUT IT BECOMES EXTENSIVELY RIDDLED WITH 1 YEAR ICE.
THE SOLID PURPLE AROUND THE ICE CAP IS THE SEA ICE EXTENT. I LIKE TO REFER TO IT BY THE VERY “PRECISE” NAME OF “ICE PUFF”. HERE THIS WINTER GONE NEXT SUMMER.
I HOPE FERGALR THAT THIS RESPONSE HAS BEEN “PRECISE” ENOUGH TO STRAIGHTEN SOMEBODY’S POSTERIOR. I WON’T MENTION NAMES.

This is like trying to dismiss the Apollo Lunar Landings.

I’m not dismissing it, it really did happen. The point is that it isn’t proof of some natural variability that caused the North Pole (or the Arctic for that matter) to be ice-free in the recent past. I believe it was just a submarine that found a lead it could surface in, nothing more, nothing less. The North Pole wasn’t ice-free.

David Gould says:
June 24, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Candor appreciated.
What I am saying is that what we currently know is not definitive either way.
The open areas at the pole in 1959 during a cold period for the N. Hemisphere simply implies a zero-sum game.
We at least know that much actually took place.
Ammonite says:
June 24, 2010 at 8:07 pm
I am skeptical of the IPCC proclaiming that C02 feedsback to H20 vapor in a linear fashion in multiple chain reactions without the empirical evidence to prove it. C02 itself being logarhythmic I do accept.
Computer models & simulations prove nothing.
Let the IPCC bring forth thier empirical tests that can be duplicated and we’ll go from there. Else the IPCC can hit the road, Jack, and take their junkyard dogs with them.

I’ve put the Meat of this up before: The Sub & Icesat Charts Rise & Fall in the 60-year NATURAL Pattern:.
from: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/seaice.html
Their words … TWIST the data.
It’s really just (mostly)
1. the gradual 60-year Rise & decline Cycle
2. the sudden Jumps from El Ninos & drops from Volcanos
Note how they crow about how Gradual a decline it is – – then put the Lie to their own words when describing 2007
(but only if you read past the first words).
OK:
3. Maybe there is SOME Gradual Warming: One is supposed to compare :
Dip – with – Dip and
Peak – to – Peak
… the two cyclic dips are not equal, 2000+ being worse than 1954. AGW is real ! … but …. SMALL.
The Sub Peak is early 1980s – – just when you expect. BEFORE THEN IT DECLINES. Saying 1954 was less than later is meant to trick the reader into thinking there is a Continuous decline when it looks like the rolling Waves of the Sea.
We see that from the Piomas site too: go past the Sub data & see Ice Volume from 1948 : http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/IDAO/retro.html#Submarine_ice.