By Steven Goddard,
In order to better visualize what is happening in the Arctic this summer, I generated an animation of satellite photos over the area of open water west of Barrow, AK. It reveals a very dynamic ice edge – with the ice moving as it is blown around by winds associated with the Beaufort Gyre.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/mag/2010/mag_2010062200.gif
The region of ice in the video is shown in blue below.
Here is what I see.
- The ice edge is moving left to right about 10 miles per day.
- Ice is being torn off the main ice sheet north of Barrow.
- A large chunk of ice in the center of the open water (on June 18) moves northwest, crashes into the main mass of ice, and disintegrates.
- Little evidence of melting.
- The landfast ice is not showing any changes.
- Lakes are still frozen solid.
What do you see?
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Tom
There was a lot of thin ice around the periphery of the Arctic which formed very late in March. It has since melted quickly, just as it formed quickly.
Also, the circulation patterns in the Arctic have tended to compact the ice towards the center of the Arctic Basin, which means lower extent now, and most likely a slow melt later.
The most important thing to realize though is that the extent graphs are being primarily controlled now by regions of ice that always melt before September, so looking too closely at graphs now can only lead people to meaningless conclusions.
stevengoddard says:
June 25, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Phil,
Have you located the sea ice west of Barrow yet, or do you still believe that the University of Alaska is running an elaborate hoax?
Yes it appears to be about 200 miles W of Barrow. It’s you who’s been doing the hoaxing not the U of Alaska, after all you posted a graph of ice thickness purporting it to be current, ten days after the instruments were shut down, with the following comment: “Ice offshore of Barrow, Alaska is showing little signs of melt so far.”
You also posted “The landfast ice is not showing any changes” in association with your animation despite the obvious growth of melt ponds on the surface of the landfast ice.
I still think Steve should investigate the gyre of the edge. Wind alone does not make sense. A speed of 0.42 mph is pretty good for flotsam not breaking on a shore.
Phil. says:
June 25, 2010 at 8:03 pm
“When it disintegrates like that piece did it’s pretty rotten.”
June 25, 2010 at 11:04 am you stated: “The disintegration of that “large chunk of ice” shows how ‘rotten’ it really is.”
Neither of those statements tells me anything about what measuring standard you applied in determining the two values for the extent off “rottenness”: “pretty rotten” and “how rotten it really is.”
That is insufficiently concrete to base a scientific observation on, but I grant you that it is good enough for an unsubstantiated opinion.
All I see is that the ice floe broke up when it hit something stationary. The broken pieces of the ice floe then drifted around that obstacle and merged with the ice sheet.
What is that stationary obstacle? Is it perhaps an area of ice that is frozen to the ocean floor, or is it maybe an artificial island that was constructed for a drilling rig?
As to the depth of the water in the area, Google Earth does not provide a good resolution for determining that very precisely, nor does it seem to indicate any of the many drilling islands that have been constructed during the last few years.
Regardless of what Google Earth shows, the series of photos provided by Steven does show a stationary object. It seems to me that stationary objects are likely to cause ice floes that hit them to break up, even if the ice floes are comprised of solid, “healthy” ice.
The amount of ice that formed in March melted off in the first few days of April. We’re down to an extent as low as it was in early to mid November.
stevengoddard says:
June 25, 2010 at 6:10 pm
Tom
The surface of sea ice is freshwater, because of snowfall and because the saltier ice tends to melt first.
I have to add that ice in the icebergs is also mainly salt free.
Ice is the crystal form of H2O and these crystals by the forces that form them are pure H2O. Now brine can be trapped in bubbles within large crystals, but there seems to be a process where even brine is squeezed out over time from the ice.
stevengoddard says:
June 25, 2010 at 8:41 pm
Tom
“There was a lot of thin ice around the periphery of the Arctic which formed very late in March. It has since melted quickly, just as it formed quickly. ”
________
Now, where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, I said it way back in March and April when it was forming, but the AGW skeptics were pointing to the charts and getting all a twitter-pated, saying, “look the ice is back to normal!”
_________
But then Steve went on to add:
“The most important thing to realize though is that the extent graphs are being primarily controlled now by regions of ice that always melt before September, so looking too closely at graphs now can only lead people to meaningless conclusions.”
___________
That’s right, only look at the charts when they are showing some kind of ‘bump up” or anything that might be proof that the AGW models of a melting Arctic are wrong. So Steve, not only do you cherry pick the data, you cherry pick when the sea ice extent charts should and shouldn’t be used or when they are or aren’t meaningless– is that the plan? The only time the data isn’t “meaningless” is when it is telling you something that you want and expect to see based on your skeptic’s perspective?
I would have to say that such selective use of when the sea ice charts are meaningful or not ought to be a big clue that more is rotten in the world than the ice in the Arctic basin.
AndyW says:
June 25, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Andy, actually in 2007 there was a positive AO during winter, and negative during summer.
According to Wang et al. (2009) (and note DA refers to the Dipole Anomaly)
It was also found that the 2007 summer falls into state 3: −AO+DA, with the AO and DA indices being −1.5 and +2.2, respectively, both higher than 0.6 standard deviation as shown in Figure 2f (the AO/DA indices in 2007 winter, spring, summer, and autumn are 0.58/0.53, 1.35/0.15, −1.5/2.22, and 0.34/0.03, respectively). The resulting SLP anomaly was a DA-dominated two-center structure, and the wind anomaly was meridional, blowing from the western to the eastern Arctic (Figure 4a). This DA-induced wind anomaly was dynamically responsible for the 2007 summer minimum (Figure 1). The positive AO during the 2007 winter (AO index = 0.5, see Figure 2e) and spring (AO index = 1.35) also contributed warming to the Arctic, further thinning sea ice. To illustrate that the +DA and +AO are the key factors for the past ice minima, we construct the climate states to identify the latest five ice minimum summers against summer DA and AO indices, as shown in Table 2. Except for year 2002 (climate state 1) during which +AO played an important role in the Arctic ice minimum, in all four cases, +DA played a leading role for the summer ice minima, although the −AO tends to converge the sea ice inside the Arctic Ocean.
Definitely as the summer progresses the AO has less of an impact and the DA becomes more important. The negative winter AO this year was different than a classic negative AO pattern. Really and AO index is just a small part of the story, the location of the sea level pressure anomalies and how much spatial area they coverage is more telling. So despite a very strong negative AO this winter, the ice export out of Fram Strait was actually normal (not reduced as you might expect during a negative AO phase). In addition, there was large transport of ice from the Canadian Archipelago into the Beaufort and Chukchi seas that didn’t turn northwards as you would expect under a stronger Beaufort Gyre, but instead transported that ice into the E. Siberian Sea.
My estimate based on typical survival rates of ice of different ages was 5.5 million sq-km. But I’m not convinced that will be accurate because we have seen that survival rates are changing. If survival rates of 2007 are more appropriate then this September is estimated at 4.3 million sq-km. So I think this DA will be important to watch, since if it persists all summer like it did in 2007, then the extent will most likely end up very close to that in 2007.
Steven Goddard,
Thank you for your last set of answers, they are pretty much as I understood them to be, especially the gyre forcing the ice inward towards the pole. I think that’s the biggest problem with the ice extent graphs, they do not speak to the volume (although I accidently used that word when I meant extent), density, or integrity (By which I mean ice brick opposed to ice cubes or slush?!?). That’s why I see such a disconnect about someone trying to prove global temperature increase with Arctic ice extent. It’s one thing to try and predict the outcome of such a chaotic system, bad enough, but taking the final result (ice extent) and reverse engineering it to glean the minuscule change of one input (global temperature) out of several unknown inputs (all else mentioned before plus I’m sure, many more) would strike me as rather implausible.
R. Gates says:
June 25, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Yes it’s important to find out what the SSTs and currents are doing this year. The Dipole Anomaly of 2007 did strengthen inflow of the warm Pacific water which no doubt played an important role that year. I haven’t looked at any of that for this year yet. It’s true air temperatures were anomalously warm all winter in response to the negative AO, but basically since about 2000, air temperature anomalies have been positive during all months. Guess it would be worth looking at the monthly air temperature anomalies for 2007 and 2010 and see how they compare. I do believe the ice is thin, and this is key to the fast pace of decline we’ve seen in May and June (and why June is now a new record low during the satellite era).
One way to look at it is if you have thick ice (> 3m), you could have anomalously warm conditions (SSTs, air temperatures) that would translate into large ice volume loss, but it would have little impact on the ice extent since the ice remains thick enough to survive. But when the ice is thin, you can have the same anomalously warm conditions that would cause the same ice volume loss, but now it also translates into ice extent loss because the ice has melted out entirely.
USCGC Healy Has some weather info for that area-
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=NEPP
What do you see?
Is this a Rorschach test?
rbateman says:
June 25, 2010 at 1:05 pm
What do you see?
A cold, miserable and lifeless place that nobody wants.
Then give that piece of land to me. I’ll take care of that oil. Leave it to me.
In my previous comment (June 25, 2010 at 9:17 pm), I mentioned drilling islands.
I came across something that relates to that, “Marine Geological Research in the Canadian Beaufort Sea”, at http://www.bsstrpa.ca/NaturalResources.htm
That web page shows fairly detailed sonar scans of various geological features that fall into a couple of subject areas that were covered at wattsupwiththat.com. One of those is methane bubbling from the sea floor. The other is geological features that could account for stationary obstacles to drifting ice floes: pingo-like mud-volcanoes, drilling islands and something that may be surprising, keels of ice pressure ridges that drag on the ocean floor and cause a proliferation of deep furrows in the ocean floor (mostly 50cm deep, with some up to more than 2m deep).
“The mud volcanoes range from a few meters to more than 20m high and have diameters that can be 50 to 300m across.”
As to the mud-volcanoes, one sonar scan illustrating one was taken in water at a depth of 60m. Moreover, that scan clearly shows a number of gauges that appear to have been left by ice keels.
I imagine that the marine-geological conditions in similar water depths in the American Beaufort Sea do not have any national distinctions.
The area of the Arctic Ocean that contains the stationary object against which the solitary large ice floe shown by Steven smashed itself appears to have a depth of about 36 to 38m (according to Google Earth).
Gavin says:
June 25, 2010 at 6:17 pm
I see a lot of clear skies over the Arctic in the satellite images (and surface photos linked). All that sun… I really do expect to break 2007′s record this year.
If it doesn’t happen will you be back here in the middle of September to say you were wrong?
Rbateman:
“Warmists just don’t get the concept: If your tropical warm water heads too far North, it’s no different that leaving your front door open in winter. The heat escapes and your house freezes.”
How far north is too far north and how are you privy this this limit? What are the natural and unnatural drivers that could put warm water “too far north”?
Global warming believers are showing up more and more for the Arctic ice posts. They should stop telling us that Arctic ice has no importance now and that it only will have importance in a decade or two. Because as it is now they are showing us by being here so persistently when Arctic ice comes up that it is important now.
Their slip is showing.
Phil. says:
June 25, 2010 at 11:04 am
The disintegration of that “large chunk of ice” shows how ‘rotten’ it really is.
Gosh Phil, you must be right! Because, after all, how could ice break up in summer!? You got us there man. You’re good, really good.
(yes, ‘sarc off’ now)
When sea ice breaks up there can be no other reason than it’s rotted from global warming.
When a huge snow storm hits there can be no other explanation than extra moisture in the air from global warming.
When there is less snow there can be no other explanation than global warming is drying the air.
When there is record cold there is no other explanation then global warming will soon be taking away all record cold. Or that all the cold in the earth is being pushed into a smaller region by all the warming thus concentrated cold is making record cold.
When nothing unusual happens there can be no other explanation but to be told wait because disasters are coming.
Believe in global warming so you can make Brooke Shields happy.
stevengoddard,
Now that my confusion regarding the units/area issue has been resolved, perhaps we can get to my main question.
According to your graphs, average ice depth today is 2.5 metres. Average ice depth last year was 2.1 metres. Volume, however, is about the same. This implies a decline in ice area of 15 per cent. That seems unlikely to me. As I pointed out, if we are just looking at the Arctic Basin that would imply an ice area this year some 750,000 square kilometres lower than at the same time last year.
Can you clarify whether you could the same result? I may be making another error, and would like to be sure of what it is that your analysis shows.
I would hesitate to draw conclusions about how rotten the ice is based on that one piece that broke up. That piece obviously has an unusual history to be separated off from the main pack from that in the first place. In other words it was clearly not typical of the rest of the ice. It’d be interesting to backtrack it and see where it came from.
Dave Springer says:
June 25, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Yes, its odd how the IPCC looks for CO2 and denies everything else. And the big research organisations do the same. Otherwise there will be no grants. Its a big Hoax.
Turns out there are many cycles superimposed pluss delay effects from ocean currents, and dips from vulcanoes. And pluss-minus feedback-loops from clouds.
These are the things that needs to be studied to fully understand.
Not that silly little trace-gas.
Here is a large cycle; Denied by IPCC CAGW crowd, as allways.
But clear for everyone else to see;
How much influence of it do we see from it today?
http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/Ice-ages/GSAToday.pdf
stevengoddard says:
June 25, 2010 at 8:27 pm
I have never produced any chart using cubic kilometres, and had you actually read my posts (as you claim) you would know that my measured units of volume are pixel-metres.
____________________________________________________________
Well then, your pixel-metre volume calculations are off by a country mile.
It’s extremely easy and straight forward to calculate square kilometers per pixel from the 354 pixel wide by 398 pixel high PIPS 2.0 imagery (hint 85, 80, 70, 60, 50, and 40 latitudes are shown and Photoshop CS5 is your friend);
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/pips2_thick/2010/pips2_thick.2010033100.gif
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/pips2_thick/2010/pips2_thick.2010062100.gif
I have done so (for the above two dates) and checked your volume calculations against the PIOMAS 1979-2009 trend line;
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/images/PIOMAS_daily_mean.png
And your volume numbers are off the chart(s), way off the chart(s), as it were.
Phil,
I was wondering if you could be any relation to the groundhog ?
Fred
As a lowly engineer I do not have what one may call scientific qualifications. My world is reality and observations. Loss of the arctic sea ice at this point in our climate cycle is very worrying.
The sun as it has every right to do is having a holiday, that is totally OK by me, but the timing is a little inconvenient. The up welling of the cold waters created by the LIA are starting to become apparent. This displacement of the warmer waters unfortunately appears to be impinging on the Arctic ice.
This is the bad news, that ice is enough to cool a large volume of water. Forget the lose of ice and worry about the cold oceans.
The oceans warm our planet and the sun warms our oceans, southern winter is not warm this year {ask Anthony} we have a ship load of ice in the Antarctic and very unusual sea ice around South Africa { cold killing penguins in SA}
The entire world acts exactly like a heat pump, an old fashioned one without a compressor. Heat comes in from the sun and our oceans are our refrigerant, it takes heat to make water vapour, this makes clouds to moderate the heat input, but the ocean warms.
The poles pump heat out of the system thus cooling the refrigerant. Cool it to much and the world gets cold. The loss of the Arctic ice normally is just getting rid of heat this time round it may be too much. I think soon sacrificing virgins to the sun may be too late. Interglacials always end often quickly, ours is much overdue.
I am hoping the portends are wrong, perhaps my usual canny sense of foreboding
has alluded me in my twilight years but investing in thermal clothing companies may be a good bet.