By Steven Goddard
No matter what happens with the summer Arctic ice minimum, NSIDC will report that the long-term trend is downwards.
Why? Because of mathematics. In order to reverse the 30 year downwards linear trend, this summer’s minimum would have to be nearly 20,000,000 km². More ice than has ever been directly measured.
In other words, we could have a “Day After Tomorrow” scenario, and the mathematical trend would still be downwards.
Conclusion: You can count on NSIDC to continue reporting a downwards trend, regardless of what happens over the next few years. For now, it will be fun seeing what happens over the next eight weeks.
villabolo says:
June 25, 2010 at 4:45 pm
1) With the exception of a small stretch of ice north of Canada, where the waters are shallower and colder, I predict the following. Ice free summers in the Arctic Sea area by 2015-2020.
——
My respect for you has grown. You are prepared to stick your neck out and make a prediction. Now stick with it, just 10 years to go. I’ll stick my neck out and predict the opposite of yours for 2015-2020 with ice in summer on a small stretch of ice north of Canada.
I’m still waiting to the question I posed for you earlier.
The trend is downward because the Arctic is melting. Not because of the greenhouse effect or its magical “Arctic amplification” but because of warm water brought to the Arctic by ocean currents. It all started at the beginning of the twentieth century when a rearrangement of the North Atlantic current system directed the Gulf Stream unto its present northerly course. There was a pause and partial cooling roughly from 1940 to 1960. But the warming resumed after that and by 2003 had reached the level that existed in the twenties and thirties. Today it is beyond that point. Read “What Warming?” available on Amazon.com.
I think most people will be quite pleased with vast tracts of northern tundra becoming arable land and longer growing seasons further south.
Of course it won’t please everyone. Some people are simply afraid of change and desperately cling to the status quo. Others embrace it. Pessimist vs. optimist. Which are you?
stevengoddard wrote,
“The ‘purpose of this post’ is to point out that nothing which happens over the next few summers will change the 30 year trend.
We could have record high minimums for several years in a row, and the widely vaunted ‘long term trend’ would still be downwards.”
Well, there are three things here. One is arithmetic. It’s true that the 2010 minimum would have to magically rise higher than today’s level in order to overcome the previous 31 years and give us a flat trend. Even three consecutive years of minima above 10 million (where the previous high record is 8.36) would not totally wipe out that downward slope. But that’s just arithmetic.
The second thing is scientists. Contrary to the worldview that dominates this site, Arctic scientists are not stupid, they’re not corrupt, and they do know quite a bit about the Arctic. Many of them love the place, and its mysteries. If they *did* see the next three years setting record-high minima, you can bet they’d abandon that downward trend (rather than cling to the arithmetic) and search for better ways to understand what was going on.
But the third thing is reality. We have first-hand reports from the ice, and more distant calculations from the modelers, that confirm what NSIDC, Arctic residents and countless others have been reporting for years — the real downward trend in extent including the sharp jag of 2007 have left us with proportionately less multiyear ice, and the thinner ice that remains is less able to survive adverse treatment from wind, currents or temperature. The record pace of ice loss this month appears quite consistent with that view as well. So we are not actually going to see a record high minimum this year, or anything remotely close to it. That downward trend still looks real. A better question is, will it stay more or less linear?
Gneiss
Nobody made any accusations of scientists being stupid or corrupt, and I simply can not be responsible for other people’s paranoid interpretations.
Gneiss says:
June 25, 2010 at 8:25 pm
A better question is, will it stay more or less linear?
The main relevant question is: does anthropogenic CO2 have anything to do with this trend?
I have given a link above for figures ( 11, 12) that show that there has been a monotonic increase in sea level since the little ice age. This starts 100 years before any substantial hydrocarbons are introduced by man in the earth’s atmosphere. As ice is the main storage of water in the earth cycles one expects a corresponding decrease in ice.
So, there is an increase in temperature since the little ice age, an increase in sea level and a corresponding increase in diminishing ice globally.
Why is it not part of the natural cycle shown so clearly in the ice core records?
The reason I am interested in whether there is going to be a turning point is because , together with the sun minimum, it may be that this is the next part of the story, and we are entering the next little ice age. I hope not.
How does one violate the first and second law of thermodynanics? This orb is not a black body. It’s a rotating planet.
Conduction, convection, vaporation, precipitation (no feedback). There is no “greenhouse effect.”
It’s amazing what cloudiness will do to temperatures. During the summer, when a cloud comes over, it seems to be cooler. Albedo effect.
It’s all about the sun and the oceans.
By the way, I misspelled thermodynamics. I’m usually a good speller.
Someone who is much smarter:
Heinz Thieme
http://realplanet.eu/backrad.htm
The phenomenon of “atmospheric backradiation” is presently advanced as an explanation of thermal conditions on Earth, and as the basis of some statements about climate change. However, scientific evaluation in strict accord with the laws of physics and mathematics suggests that “atmospheric backradiation” is physical nonsense.
An assessment conducted in the light of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the principles of vector algebra of the key greenhouse theory concept of “atmospheric backradiation” suggests that it is simply a mirage. The only “Backradiation Phenomenon” that needs explaining is how this physical nonsense maintains its place in numerous earth sciences textbooks at both school and university level.
I interviewed a few physicists about this, and they seemed to concur:
“Heat-trapping gases,” you hear, and “Radiation goes in but can’t get out.” Well then, what is every explanation of the greenhouse effect pointing at but a radiation valve? Since heat rays are prevented from exiting to space, it is claimed, they have nowhere else to go but back to the earth which, by absorbing them, becomes warmer.
The notion of a radiation valve snaps these concepts into focus: Without such a valve, it is imagined, infrared rays from the earth’s solar-heated surface will pass freely into space. For every unit of sunlight going in, therefore, one unit of infrared goes out. Ergo, 1 – 1 = 0, zero referring to the heat gain. But with a proper valve in place no infrared is lost and the trapped rays are absorbed by the emitting surface, so the process goes thusly:
As you see, if the tenets of this theory are valid there can be no outcome other than a doubling of surface energy (a doubling at minimum, that is, since there’s no reason to suppose that radiation from the now-warmer surface would not continue to be back-radiated, absorbed, and amplified in a “runaway” heating cascade).
Simple as it is, though, no scientist in the world is able to construct a model that exhibits any radiative gain because the theory’s tenets (called “the basic science”) are not valid. On a theoretical basis alone, conservation of energy (the First Law) forbids a model like this from working. You can’t obtain more energy than you put in.
Just like temperature, radiant energy flows do not add. Lumping two 70° balls of clay together doesn’t result in a single ball that’s 140°, nor do 70 watts per square meter beaming back onto a body that’s radiating 70 raise it to 140. Frankly, it is stupid to think otherwise.
• Back-radiation cannot be absorbed by the emitter or else the conservation of energy law is meaningless. As I’ve noted before, the output of a weak battery can’t be used as an input to recharge it.
This is interesting. I was never sold on Stefan-Boltzmann’s Radiation Law, especially after interviewing Ferenc Mikolczi.
“We learn from this analysis that the 15 C at the Earth surface is not necessarily related to the presence of any socalled greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Similar conclusions have been drawn in The Thermodynamic Atmosphere Effect, by Heinz Thieme.
“Note that scientific evidence (experimental or theoretical) of major effects of greenhouse gases on the Earth surface temperature, seems to be lacking. The evidence put forward consists of differentiating Stefan-Boltzmann’s Radiation Law which connects socalled “radiative forcing” dQ to surface temperature change dT by the simple relation dQ = 4 dT.
“However, this evidence is not convincing, to me at least, because Stefan-Boltzmann’s Radiation Law concerns a simple system (one black-body) and not a coupled system of planet + atmosphere with internal temperature gradient.
“It is surprising to see large parts of the scientific community including academies of sciences embracing a hypothesis of global warming from atmospheric CO2, without any convincing scientific support. It appears that the mere mentioning of Stefan-Boltzmann’s Radiation Law has been enough to annihilate any further demands of scientific evidence.
“This may be a result a 2oth century physics education with both the Radiation Law and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics being based on statistical mechanics not understood by anybody. In any case, the acceptance by the scientific community of CO2 climate are much smarter.”
Alexander Feht (25 June 6:09)
When I went to your site I received this message
So, who is doing the attacking?
Gneiss, you seem to be overwhelmed by data. Mechanism is the key. Either the trend has a mechanism attached to CO2, or it does not. Which is it?
You gotta like the physics guys: They are not “climatologists.”
“In reality, greenhouses merely suppress convective heat-loss, preventing the heated air from dissipating. It is air that’s trapped, not radiation; glass’s response to infrared (IR) has nothing to do with it. Clear plastic bags will do just as well or even panes of polished salt crystals, which don’t absorb IR at all.
“So what does all this mean? Let’s put it together. It means that contrary to advertised, water vapor is a major “anti-greenhouse gas” — a term that has to be put in quotes, because assuming that carbon dioxide is in any way a warming agent is also wrong, as is the whole “science of radiative forcing.”
“Not only will the trace gases need more energy to reach the same temperature as the air that contains them, they will radiate it in all directions instantly and at the speed of light and thus increase the efficiency of the air mass in cooling it, not warming it, in line with the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
“There is also no need to provide a ‘blanket’ to keep earth warm. The vacuum of space acts like the most perfect thermos flask. Space is not cold; it is empty, void of matter, and thus has no temperature.”
Alan Siddons
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Greenhouse_Effect_Poppycock.pdf
Jimbo says:
June 25, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Please respond and explain why speculation of a “chain reaction” failed in the past. Read these links and explain as I can’t seem to match the past with your “chain reaction”.
VILLABOLO RESPONDS:
Jimbo, without having to speculate at all, the laws of physics are such that drastic weather changes HAVE TO occur when the Arctic Ice Cap goes from ice covered to open water. The laws of Nature are too simple to interpret otherwise. If this seems contradictory to what you’ve read elsewhere about hypothetical and sometimes questionable reconstructions of the ice cap’s history then ask yourself this. Which is
most likely to be true? Nature or speculation about the past?
I’ll respond to both the issues of inevitable change and why your citations either don’t conform to reality or have been misinterpreted.
_________________________________________________________
INEVITABLE CHANGE IN AN ICE FREE ARCTIC
First, sea ice reflects 80-90% of sunlight depending on how thin it is. Blue ocean water absorbs 80% of sunlight. This results in a rise in temperature in the water.
The disappearance of the ice cap increases evaporation from the ocean in two ways. It is no longer able to keep evaporation down by acting as a physical barrier. Also, the increased heat raises evaporation.
Increased evaporation generates more clouds which in turn rain or snow more intensely. It was previously predicted, in the 1990’s, that Global Warming would increase intense rain storms like the kind that affected Minneapolis, Fargo and Tennessee. This increase would be the result of the Earth’s oceans heating up.
The increased heat coming from the Arctic Sea would also change storm patterns.
__________________________________________________________
ABOUT THE ARCTIC’S HISTORY OF BEING ICE FREE
http://www.ngu.no/en-gb/Aktuelt/2008/Less-ice-in-the-Arctic-Ocean-6000-7000-years-ago/
The first citation you gave is the only one I lend credibility to. It does not however state with certainty that the Arctic Sea was totally open. Instead it says:
“We still don’t know whether the Arctic Ocean was completely ice free, but there was more open water in the area north of Greenland than there is today, . . .”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“However, the scientists are very careful about drawing parallels with the present-day trend in the Arctic Ocean where the cover of sea ice seems to be decreasing.”
“Changes that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today,” Astrid Lyså believes.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
However, this cannot lead to the conclusion you made that the “chain reaction” failed in the past. How do you not know that what I stated did not occur? You do realize that at that time North America was inhabited by hunter gatherers who were far more flexible to changes in their environment (through underpopulation) than “advanced civilizations” which are very fragile.
You also have to take into consideration that the geological record often times show that such natural transitions took longer to occur than our current situation which is taking place within decades. THE FASTER SOMETHING HAPPENS THE WORSE IT GETS.
For example, a single large hurricane can have the power of a 12,000 megaton nuclear bomb. Yet it obviously does not destroy as much, or even a fraction, as that amount would, in the form of an actual bomb. That is because nuclear bombs release their energy in a fraction of a second. This why a 3 inch circle of sunlight on your skin will do nothing unless you put it through a 3 inch magnifying glass.
With a more rapid shift and continued changes in the weather we will not be able to adapt our agriculture every few years to the demands of a very fickle and nasty climate.
**************************************************************************
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice-tony-b/
It is frustrating to try and verify secondary sources that are already on one side of the issue instead of primary sources. I did not find a link for the Royal Society quote but I’m aware that it concerns William Scoresby’s exploration of Greenland.
My limited knowledge of him is that he explored the east coast of Greenland and was deterred by impenetrable ice from proceeding further. I would also be very wary of anyone, no matter what his reputation that relies on second hand information from whalers. They may either exaggerate or sincerely but erroneously assume that some open stretch of water, as far as the eyes can see, implies an opening through an ocean that stretches for hundreds of miles.
How does any of this prove an open Arctic Sea? At most it indicates a small region, relative to the size of the entire ice cap, open here or there-now and then.
**************************************************************************
http://co2science.org/articles/V12/N32/C2.php
Finally, a quote from a most arrogant and simplistic point of view:
What it means
“Since the change in sea-ice cover observed at the end of the 20th century (which climate alarmists claim to be unnatural) was far exceeded by changes observed multiple times over the past several thousand years of relatively stable atmospheric CO2 concentrations (when values never strayed much below 250 ppm or much above 275 ppm), there is no compelling reason to believe that the increase in the air’s CO2 content that has occurred since the start of the Industrial Revolution has had anything at all to do with the declining sea-ice cover of the recent past; for at a current concentration of 385 ppm, the recent rise in the air’s CO2 content should have led to a decrease in sea-ice cover that far exceeds what has occurred multiple times in the past without any significant change in CO2.”
First of all, it is a common canard to assume that climatologists believe CO2 is the only force in NATURAL Global Warming. Occasionally yes, such as the situation with snowball Earth (650 million years ago). It took huge amounts of CO2 to defrost an entirely frozen Earth that had both a weak sun and white slushy ice, from pole to equator, reflecting whatever weak sunlight there was.
Man made Global Warming is a different situation. It is we who are burning the coal and oil not Nature.
Also, what’s happening today was not far “exceeded” by what has happened in the past. What is happening today is a work in progress that will end up melting all the ice in the Arctic, not merely wide areas here and there, from time to time. Just because Nature does not use their timetable does not mean that they have proven anything.
Furthermore, they’re not taking into account the complexities of the early Holocene where there was extensive variation in temperatures between the warmer Northern and cooler Southern Hemispheres. These differences were due to the Milankovitch Cycles. Thus there is no need to assume that the 270 ppm of CO2 was the only force operating on the Holocene climate. Please check out the following link.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/holocene.html
“In summary, the mid-Holocene, roughly 6,000 years ago, was generally warmer than today, but only in summer and only in the northern hemisphere. More over, we clearly know the cause of this natural warming, and know without doubt that this proven “astronomical” climate forcing mechanism cannot be responsible for the warming over the last 100 years.”
Please cross reference that statement with the link you provided me: http://www.ngu.no/en-gb/Aktuelt/2008/Less-ice-in-the-Arctic-Ocean-6000-7000-years-ago/
Which says: “Changes that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today,” Astrid Lyså believes.
They also disregard the issue of thermal lag, which is predicted to increase our temperatures by a Global average of 1F (making a total of about 2.5F) within about 30 years if we were to stay at 390 ppm by some magic.
In fact, thermal lag would explain the so called discrepancy in the amounts of current CO2 at 390 ppm and its alleged under performance in melting the ice cap. If we had the 320 ppm that we had in 1960 that have been enough to melt the ice cap. It just would have taken several hundred years instead of the several decades that the current situation indicates.
Since they mock the claims of “climate alarmists” in saying that the current situation is “unnatural”, that is man made, it would be interesting to know, WHAT IS THEIR THEORY? Or are they even in a position to collect data, process it and come out with theories that can be verified independently?
All I have seen so far are descriptions of a partially open ice cap; a muddled attempt to prove a completely open Arctic Sea with historical accounts and a simplistic, arrogant attempt to explain a complex issue.
899 says:
June 25, 2010 at 11:17 am
Come to think of it, I was absent the day they taught us to be concerned about Arctic ice.
villabolo says:
June 25, 2010 at 2:28 pm
You did not answer my questions.
Past minimums of Arctic ice had no long term consequences for man or animal. History demonstrates this simple fact. We still have polar bears, seals, and penguins. When it got colder, the Vikings, who had been making a good living in the parts of Greenland they had settled, were wiped out. Not good.
You said “Perhaps because the weather will change throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere to our detriment.”
Perhaps? Baseless speculation. History teaches an ice free Arctic is to our benefit.
Here are some positive results:
Open shipping through the region. Cruise liners could take people on “Doomsday” cruises. Or perhaps, “Tipping Point” cruises. Alarmists could lecture people on what happens when mankind fails to curb its appetites as the ship passes over the North Pole.
We can drill for oil in the Arctic.
Food production will increase in Russia, Canada, Norway, Greenland, etc.
Greater range of fish stocks. Cod returning to Arctic?
No more Caitlin expeditions. Diminishment of nonsense always a good thing.
Perhaps a warmer Arctic is a good thing?
Again I pose the question, why should I be concerned about all the ice going away from Arctic ocean?
Kirk Myers says:
June 25, 2010 at 10:18 pm
I agree. It looks like a huge misunderstanding to me.
The reason for it to last so long, is that the “non-climatologists” has been busy doing their work elsewhere. In the mean time the Hockey-Team has been busy.
When someone actually tried to give some inputs they where filtered out by the IPCC and the modified Peer Review process.
This is my personal impression of the whole story.
Keith Minto said on June 25, 2010 at 11:04 pm:
Info from the Google advisory (note: URL includes my particular browser, freely ignore):
Sounds like a bad advertisement popped up.
The point I was trying to make was perhaps lost in my convoluted assertion at 6/25 06:45am. It appears to me that the distribution of Arctic ice is not ‘normal’ nor Gaussian, rather has a cut-off at the upper end, rendering comparisons of negative and positive anomalies meaningless for the Arctic. Here is what I think the long term dataset looks like. Ice extent beyond the maximum in the basin is the onset of an ice age, which would render the negative excursions, even ice-free, to an insignificant statistic as the time duration for the interglacial is almost an order of magnitude shorter than the glaciated period.
http://i49.tinypic.com/160ucy0.jpg
CodeTech says:
June 25, 2010 at 8:11 am
Seriously, anyone who thinks that a straight “trend” line is what applies here doesn’t really understand the physical world. Where’s the curve? Where’s the wave? Who failed to comprehend the concept of “cyclical”?
A—-MEN!
By the way, with all the talk of extending the baseline, we ought to extend it back 4.5 billion years (zero ice) and see how the trend looks. I bet it’s a positive trend overall.
Anna V wrote,
“The main relevant question is: does anthropogenic CO2 have anything to do with this trend?”
Most scientists who have studied the question think yes, anthropogenic CO2 has much to do with this trend. Not because they haven’t considered alternative hypotheses, which they have. But because their evidence failed to support those alternatives one after another, while it continues to accumulate for CO2.
The WUWT writers and most readers remain certain all those scientists are wrong, I know.
David L says:
June 26, 2010 at 8:22 am
CodeTech says:
June 25, 2010 at 8:11 am
Seriously, anyone who thinks that a straight “trend” line is what applies here doesn’t really understand the physical world. Where’s the curve? Where’s the wave? Who failed to comprehend the concept of “cyclical”?
A—-MEN!
By the way, with all the talk of extending the baseline, we ought to extend it back 4.5 billion years (zero ice) and see how the trend looks. I bet it’s a positive trend overall.
—————————————-
David, that makes no sense at all. Why would you try to make a trend using data back that far when the continents were not even in the same positions 4.5 billion years ago as they are today? That is absolute nonsense.
Here is what will happen:
They will keep reporting a negative trend for a few years. Then they will say “well, it is still going down but the going down is slowing, so SEE! OUR MEASURES ARE WORKING… BUT… WE NEED EVEN MORE IF THEM OTHERWISE ARMAGUEDDON WILL BE BACK”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, will be used to justify more of their BS
Dave Springer says:
June 25, 2010 at 7:45 pm
“I think most people will be quite pleased with vast tracts of northern tundra becoming arable land and longer growing seasons further south.”
VILLABOLO RESPONDS (with mirth) :
Yeah, right! “Most people will be quiet pleased” at their native lands being turned to desert. You do realize that when ecozones shift polewards that deserts and arid lands expand as well? And do you realize, that when they do, they replace what you call “south”?
Take a good look at what’s happening to India:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64Q3AI20100527
And other regions “further south”:
Extreme heat wave sets all-time high temperature records in Africa and Middle East
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1516
Last, but certainly not least, what do you think of the huge amounts of Methane that will released by the Tundra? For a most amusing and ironic hint please watch this video. I know it will entertain a small child and make a young adolescent think. I’m not sure about some adults though.