By Steven Goddard,
In my last post, we discussed how there has been no visible change in the landfast ice near Barrow, AK. during the last week.
The University of Alaska has been tracking breakup of this ice for the past decade. The latest breakup was July 11 which occurred last year. The earliest breakup occurred in 2004 on June 16. They have devised a model which forecasts the breakup, based on solar radiation already received and forecast into the future by NCAR’s WRF weather model. Their current forecast has it breaking up after July 10, which would at a minimum tie the record.
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_breakup
The current WRF forecast is predicting very cloudy conditions near Barrow through mid-July.
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_breakup/Barrow_SW.png
Temperatures in Barrow have been running well below normal this summer.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/PABR/2010/6/25/MonthlyHistory.html#calendar
This has been largely due to cloudiness. The current view of Barrow is seen below.
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_webcam
Long term weather forecasts change all the time. But for those of you expecting a big melt this summer, I hope you didn’t bet a lot of money on it.
Is it really a “record” late breakup if scientists at the U of A have been tracking the date of ice break-up for only the last decade? I mean, technically, it is a record, but as a practical matter, people have been living in Barrow for quite some time.
I would be more convinced by your scepticism if your data record went earlier than 1998. Even though we’ve never had a hotter year than 1998, isn’t it true that more than half of the ten hottest years “on record” (i.e., since weather data began being kept systematically) have taken place in the few decades? That seems like it should be the longer-term trend.
Phil. says:
June 29, 2010 at 5:48 am
What a wonderfully democratic free market of science we have! Whatever you wish to believe about global warming (negative or positive) or Arctic ice, a data source is available to suit your preconceived outcome. How nice to live in the free world!
So we apparently have a new SSMI sensor. But we dont know if the results it gives in terms of Arctic ice concentration/thickness is higher or lower than, or the same as, before.
One thing is clear however from the Cryosphere today images from this June: the “colour” of the Arctic ice (shade of purple) is more uniform than in the same dates in previous years. But we dont know if this means that the ice is uniformly thin or thick. What to do.
O yes, get some real data on thickness from the Arctic. In this thread we have an aircraft which towed a device finding the ice to be unexpectedly thick over a (needless to say totally unrepresentative) 2412 km transect:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/16/scan-of-arctic-ice-dispels-melting-gloom-researcher/
The meltdown has not been as dire as some would suggest, said geophysicist Christian Haas of the University of Alberta. His international team flew across the top of the planet last year for the 2,412-kilometre survey.
They found large expanses of ice four to five metres thick, despite the record retreat in 2007.
Someone help me with the logic here. If
(1) the ice thickness is uniform, BUT
we dont know what the thickness is
AND THEN
(2) Someone measured it and ….
ITS THICK !
Then can we say..
(3) It’s uniformly thick????
OK lets try again
Does UNIFORM and THICK equal UNIFORMLY THICK ?
or did I get lost somewhere?
Having said that – looking at today’s AMSR-E curve for 2010, now would be a good time for a dose of viagra.
phlogiston says:
June 29, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Phil. says:
June 29, 2010 at 5:48 am
What a wonderfully democratic free market of science we have! Whatever you wish to believe about global warming (negative or positive) or Arctic ice, a data source is available to suit your preconceived outcome. How nice to live in the free world!
So we apparently have a new SSMI sensor. But we dont know if the results it gives in terms of Arctic ice concentration/thickness is higher or lower than, or the same as, before.
It’s not a new SSMI sensor, it’s a different sensor with a different operating frequency, and different resolution.
One thing is clear however from the Cryosphere today images from this June: the “colour” of the Arctic ice (shade of purple) is more uniform than in the same dates in previous years. But we dont know if this means that the ice is uniformly thin or thick. What to do.
I think you can only say that in respect of the reduced images, at the original scale that’s not apparent. In any case it says nothing about thickness, just that the ice is continuous with no breaks, not that it’s uniformly thick.
Fail much, Steve?
Seems the prediction is the 6th, not the 10th… And has more to do with winds in January than heat now; Grounded pressure ridges are a big variable factor here.
Smokey says:
July 3, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Relax, Gates.
Relax is not in the alarmist vernacular.
Reminds me of the fundamental problem that gray whales have – they traditionally only feed in summer in the northern Bering Sea, so when it is ice clogged they have a serious problem.
Apparently last summer, 2009, was difficult so a noticeable number died on this spring’s trip north, at least judging by carcasses in the straits and sounds leading from the Pacific ocean to Seattle and Vancouver BC, they probably were desperately seeking food. But some found food – one was feeding right in the city of Vancouver in False Creek – apparently there were many herring this year. From memory, there are about 20,000. gray whales in the eastern Pacific – not an endangered species at all. Some are enterprising – a few hundred feed off of the northern BC coast, a couple of thousand never go north of Oregon.
Those who are versatile feeders will survive (and the clever in other ways – one in the Puget Sound area was observed to fend off Orcas by rolling over so his hard back was down (orcas aren’t called “killer whale” for nothing).
(Gray/grey whales are baleen type – their mouth has a comb that filters food out of the water, rather than teeth as some whales have – and scoop invertebrates from the muddy ocean bottom though they also eat small fish.
Archeopteryx said on July 1, 2010 at 5:39 am:
Go trolling much, small primitive extinct bird?
It should be noted the prediction has undergone significant tweaking as the time approaches. It was for July 7 on July 4, early in the day on July 5 it was July 8, then that got revised to July 5 on July 5, if you wish to consider basically saying “It looks imminent!” to be a prediction.
Crowing about ‘Ah-ha! It says the 6th not the 10th, you’re wrong Steve!’ is most unseemly and unwarranted. Way back on June 26 when this article was posted, July 10 was the prediction and it looked valid then. Why aren’t you criticizing the experts of the Barrow site that made the July 10 prediction?