While everyone seems to be watching the Arctic extent with intense interest, it’s bipolar twin continues to make enough ice to keep the global sea ice balance near normal. These images from Cryosphere today provide the details. You won’t see any mention of this in the media. Google News returns no stories about Antarctic Sea Ice Extent.
Here’s the graph, see for yourself.
Here’s global sea ice:
click image to enlarge
savethesharks says:
July 4, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Its like….um…..questioning whether or not the “small asteroid our way” is even real at all….since it has only been modeled….and not observed.
VILLABOLO:
The extensive and consistent thinning of the Arctic Ice Cap is a model? As opposed to something that has been observed?
villabolo says:
July 4, 2010 at 8:08 pm
Finally, as for your implication that Methane is not increasing the heat of our Earth that only shows a combination of ignorance and lack of deductive abilities with arrogance as the foundation.
I would refer you to this work
http://ams.confex.com/ams/Annual2006/techprogram/paper_100737.htm
The authors used spectral analysis of downward longwave radiation at the surface to attempt to quantify the contribution of of the various atmospheric component gases to the “greenhouse effect”. Given the data they gathered, their conclusions seem fairly overwrought, but wrt your comments on methane the data are quite interesting. Neither the predictive model they used to construct a historical record for comparison purposes nor their actual observations indicate that methane ever produces even 1% of DLR at the surface. The data also suggest that when DLR from H2O exceeds 200W/m2, as it does over most of the globe most of the time, the contribution of the nonH2O GHGs is dramatically suppressed, though that suppression is much more evident for CO2 than for CH4.
villabolo says:
July 4, 2010 at 8:56 pm
The extensive and consistent thinning of the Arctic Ice Cap is a model? As opposed to something that has been observed?
====================================
So what?? Is the sky falling?
Big f-ing deal.
I believe you know exactly what I am referring to in your little asteroid analogy.
Cheer up. There is no bl**dy asteroid.
The Arctic Ocean opens up every now and then. The Earth is 4.6 BILLION years old.
The Arctic has probably done this a few [many] times before. Mother Earth ain’t worried.
Its only our relatively young hand-wringing chicken little amygdala-driven species, that is.
Fight or flight. Fight or flight. Fight or flight.
Wring wring. Sweat sweat. Pant pant.
What do I do??
The sky is falling. The sky is falling.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Dave Wendt
Isn’t it more realistic instead of looking at downward radiation at the surface to look at the radiation balance to and from space to see what the real forcing and feedbacks are?
I’ve just read Dr Rooy Spencer’s book on this and it seems to be a sensible way of looking at it?
Coalsoffire says:
July 4, 2010 at 8:43 pm
R Gates says
I don’t know what an “extremely chaotic” system is, but Chaos theory does indeed say that the smallest of “whacks” can send a system into a whole new arrangement, seeking a new attractor or state of equalibrium. A big whack simply destroys the system entirely and that’s not what we’re talking about with CO2 and earth’s climate.
Coals asks: Isn’t the classic dictum of the chaos theory a declaration of sensitive dependence on initial conditions? That is, the first breath of air from the butterfly wing is important. I don’t think it postulates that after the hurricane gets roaring and the chaos is in full flower that the butterfly updraft has any effect. Just asking, because the climate surely is well established as a chaotic system is it not with multiple feedbacks that tend to keep the chaos within certain limits regardless of how many or how few butterflies flap their tiny wings? Just substitute C02 for “butterfly” if you want. I guess I need a lesson in chaos theory
_________________
I could use more than a few lessons myself. It is as complex field with many implications and special applications. However, in regard to chaotic systems, CO2, and increases in the atmosphere over the past few hundred years, there are a few things to keep in mind:
1) I’m not so sure the “butterfly effect” is all that appropriate when applied to CO2, but it could be roughly so if you allow that each flap takes decades (i.e. CO2 has been building up slowly since the beginning of the industrial revolution). Prior to the industrial revolution, CO2 averaged about 280 ppm for the past 10,000 years or so. So the rise to 390 ppm could be seen as a few hundred flaps (i.e. years) that the butterflys wings have been flapping.
2) The big issue is how sensitive is the climate to the flapping wings. Chaos theory is about unpredictable but deterministic systems– systems that can change rapidly with a nudge in the right direction. These rapid changes create a whole new “attractor” or state of equalibrium which become self-reinforcing through positive feedback. These are not random changes (chaos theory is not about randomness) but again, they are unpredictable– hence, for example, no climate model predicted the advent of the Arctic Dipole Anomaly, yet, it is having a significant affect on the Arctic, and may be one of the reasons that perhaps we’ll see an ice free Arctic far sooner than climate models forecasted we would before the DA occurred. I think the Artic Dipole Anomaly could be one of those unpredictable yet deterministic effects of the flapping of the CO2 butterfly’s wings. And keep in mind, the wings are still flapping, (CO2 is still rising) so other unpredictable effects, and new attractors are probably “out there” someone, waiting for the right nudge to send the system toward them.
For your own research on Chaos and climate, I really like this link as a good general starting point:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/chaos.htm
savethesharks says:
July 4, 2010 at 9:57 pm
Nothing in particular that has any relevance to the specific facts that have been mentioned. Not any one of you have responded to the dynamics of how the weather would change as the Arctic Ice Cap melts and exposes more open water.
All one hears is meaningless ridicule about the sky falling and other nonsense. There isn’t even a response, meaningless or not, directed towards the statement savethesharks quoted from me.
You could tell yourself what the big deal is going to be when the Arctic does open. As for its opening in the past (though not in the historical past many here assume), to that I DO DECLARE, BIG DEAL!
You have been told over and over again that AGW is happening far faster than NGW. It has been emphasized how this will create a situation where this civilization will not be able to adapt. Yet you make mindless mention of Nature, that I suspect many people don’t even care about in the first place, as if this decrepit, Rube Goldbergian civilization we live in could withstand a fraction of what Nature has taken.
So let’s see if any of you have the guts to respond to the SPECIFICS of the issues that have been brought up. At least have the spherical, testicular flesh to say something like:
1) No, Villabolo, open blue water will not change the rate of evaporation because . . . (insert voodoo physics of your choice here)
2) It doesn’t matter how many will die during a massive phase transition in the Northern Hemisphere’s weather because, I’m a Misanthrope.
3) The Rapture is coming! The Rapture is coming!! Why fix your house when it’s going to be demolished!!!
villabolo says:
July 4, 2010 at 10:37 pm
“[…]You have been told over and over again that AGW is happening far faster than NGW. It has been emphasized how this will create a situation where this civilization will not be able to adapt. Yet you make mindless mention of Nature, that I suspect many people don’t even care about in the first place, as if this decrepit, Rube Goldbergian civilization we live in could withstand a fraction of what Nature has taken.
[…]”
We have been told again and again, but so far, it doesn’t seem to happen, so the people who told us must be wrong, sick or dense.
“So let’s see if any of you have the guts to respond to the SPECIFICS of the issues that have been brought up. At least have the spherical, testicular flesh to say something like:”
VILLABOLO, spherical, testicular flesh? Maybe you stem from a different culture than i so i won’t comment on that.
“1) No, Villabolo, open blue water will not change the rate of evaporation because . . . (insert voodoo physics of your choice here)”
Why should it matter.
“2) It doesn’t matter how many will die during a massive phase transition in the Northern Hemisphere’s weather because, I’m a Misanthrope.”
People die and people will continue to die, but this will not be a reason.
“3) The Rapture is coming! The Rapture is coming!! Why fix your house when it’s going to be demolished!!!”
That’s your words, Villabolo.
Thanks for this insight into your mind.
villabolo says:
July 4, 2010 at 8:20 pm
“[…]
VILLABOLO:
Tell that to Hex-Onmobil and the Kock Sisters who have spent 10s of millions in propaganda to maintain their Plutocracy. Yes, go ahead and hallucinate make believe conspiracies and money making schemes while being blind to the sight of your masters.”
That cuts both ways, Villabolo.
Dave Springer says:
July 4, 2010 at 5:15 am
“The earth’s surface temperature fluctuates slightly as the PDO, ENSO, and AMDO bring more or less of the vast cold deep of the world’s oceans to the surface. The PDO has been in its warm phase for the last 30 years and it appears to have shifted into its cold phase right on schedule. That’s the entire basis for the so-called anthropogenic global warming.
The gloom & doom control freaks have 30 years at a stretch to work up a good panic about catastrophic global warming or cooling. Nice try this time but no cigar. Time to change over to global cooling.”
Here it comes:
“The 58th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sitges, Spain 3 – 6 June 2010. The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, Global Cooling, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations.”
http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/meeting2010.html
Martin Mason says:
July 4, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Dave Wendt
Isn’t it more realistic instead of looking at downward radiation at the surface to look at the radiation balance to and from space to see what the real forcing and feedbacks are?
Longwave radiation emitted from the surface and intercepted by GHGs and re-emitted toward the surface should not be significantly different from that re-emitted out to space, as the interactions are theoretically random. The few sources I’ve found that attempt this type of spectral breakdown for TOA data have used methods that are model based and not instrumental measurements. And while the ERBE and CERES data for the TOA energy balance may be the best we have, they really aren’t that great and at this point probably aren’t up to the task they’re trying to complete.
I wouldn’t claim and do not think that E&P proves anything, but it does raise significant questions, in my mind at least, about the entire logic of the role of NonH2O GHGs in the climate and in this particular case about the potential for CH4 to create catastrophes without undergoing increases that are extremely unlikely in even the worst case scenarios. AFAIK, no one has done any work that contradicts their data, which I have always found interesting because one of my first thoughts when I came across this paper was “at last we have an experimental methodology to give us hard data on the contributions of he various atmospheric gases to the “greenhouse effect””.
Since E&P did their experimental work more than a decade ago, I fully expected to be able to find numerous studies that expanded on their methodology, but in several years I’ve only come across one other, done at the South Pole. It’s almost as if the people doling out the grant money for climate studies don’t want to know what this technique could tell them.
Dave Wendt says:
July 4, 2010 at 11:57 pm
Martin Mason says:
July 4, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Dave Wendt
Isn’t it more realistic instead of looking at downward radiation at the surface to look at the radiation balance to and from space to see what the real forcing and feedbacks are?
Longwave radiation emitted from the surface and intercepted by GHGs and re-emitted toward the surface should not be significantly different from that re-emitted out to space, as the interactions are theoretically random.
Not necessarily.
Longwave (IR) radiation within the very narrow window that interacts with CO2 can interact in 2 ways: (1) absorption resulting in heat energy deposition, or (2) scattering at a (presumably) randon angle.
If all interactions are type 1 heat depositing, then CO2 absorbs all photons within about 10 m, and thus the saturation argument, CO2 cannot be a factor in atmosphere heat.
However for longwave IR to penetrate a long distance through the atmosphere, most interactions must be of the scattering type, resulting in a diffusive movement of IR photons.
In principle the direction of this “diffusive radiation” should indeed be random, EXCEPT for one factor: the exponential reduction with height in air density.
An analogy: a one-celled animal – the paramecium – swimming in a pond homes in on food items in the following way: if it “smells” in the water an increasing food concentration, it reduced the number of times it changes direction (randomly) and if the food smell gets weaker, it increases the frequency of (random) direction changes. The result of this is, on statistical average, swimming toward higher food concentration and finding the source of the food smell.
So an IR photon going downward in the atmosphere will encounter air at increasing concentration, while going up it will “find” more rarified air, and fewer scattering events. So, like the paramecium, the IR photon will on average diffuse upward. And eventually out into space.
“”R. Gates says:
July 4, 2010 at 7:23 pm
I don’t know what an “extremely chaotic” system is, but Chaos theory does indeed say that the smallest of “whacks” can send a system into a whole new arrangement, seeking a new attractor or state of equalibrium. A big whack simply destroys the system entirely and that’s not what we’re talking about with CO2 and earth’s climate.””
Well at least you got the last part right.
It’s NOT what we are talking about with CO2 and earth’s climate.
Our planet has had major catastrophic events that obviously have not ‘destroyed the system’. Each time the climate has re-set and gone back to it’s “normal” whatever that is, we don’t know.
Chaos and chaotic are just words we use to describe something we don’t understand.
Obviously if we understood it, it would no longer seem chaotic to us.
Major events have not ‘destroyed the system’, the ‘system’ has dealt with many times higher CO2, asteroid impacts, volcanoes, ice ages, heat waves, etc etc and each time the system was not destroyed, the system went back to where it was…
A sensible person would realize that after all of those major events did not “whack” the system, the extremely small percentage of CO2 would obviously have little effect……..
….and it all looks chaotic to us simply because we don’t have a clue how it works
Until we understand how it works, all of these computer games mean nothing, have absolutely no accuracy, and are just mind fodder for the paranoid.
Just The Facts says:
July 4, 2010 at 10:47 am
Curious Yellow says: July 4, 2010 at 3:42 am
You’ve just proven it false.
If you don’t realise this, I won’t bother try preaching to the converted.
This blog is losing the arguments about the arctic, the writing is on the wall and now there is an attempt to switch attention to the Antarctic. Already voices are raised about the arctic having melted before. A reality check? Is that the fall-back position?
Well, the Antarctic will buy you some time. like your life time?
Jimbo says:
July 4, 2010 at 9:54 am
Curious Yellow says:
July 4, 2010 at 3:42 am
I am not inferring anything of the kind. Global warming does not mean that every inch of the world will warm, some places may be colder. The dynamics of the arctic and Antarctica are very different and this fact is very well explained by a number of posts. Warmer air temperatures may not affect Antarctica within the vortex but the GRACE satelites through gravity measurements, show that Antarctica is losing ice mass from melting below and glacial flow. Sea ice growing in winter and melting in summer are relatively irrelevant to the land based ice. The ice shelves are of more concern though.
Jantar says:
July 4, 2010 at 4:44 am
Curious Yellow says:
“R.Gates and villabolo provided all the information you need. Antarctic sea ice is seasonal ice, e.i. 1 year ice that accumulates in winter melts in summer. Can we always determine the the actual melt potential for Antarctic sea ice? No. There will be seasons when all the sea ice has melted before the melt season ends, so it could have melted more.”
This is news to me. Are you sure that there are seasons where “all the ice melts”? When was the last time that the Ross Ice Shelf melted completely as I seem to have missed it?
——————
Stay real, the Ross Ice Shelf is not part of the seasonal sea ice. Just look at historical minimum Antarctic sea ice charts. Remember Larssen A and B 1995? From ice shelf they’ve mostly turned into seasonal ice. The Larssen A shelf was about 4000 years old and the B shelf about 12000. The ice was some 220 metres thick. Would you call that seasonal sea ice? Perhaps the Ross ice shelf, the size of France, several hundreds of metres thick. Yes, you missed a non-event, keep waiting.
Jimbo says:
July 4, 2010 at 9:54 am
Curious Yellow says:
July 4, 2010 at 3:42 am
So you are stating on the record that IF Arctic sea ice continues its recovery of September 2008 and 2009 over 2007 then the Earth is cooling? On the basis of you post do you agree that 2008 and 2009 were cooler years than 2007?
I am not putting words into your mouth, as I would like you to either clarify for me or answer my 2 questions.
—————–
No the earth is not cooling, the twelve warmest years occurred in the last 14 years. The exceptions were 1995 and 1997. Slightly less warming one year is not cooling unless you are splitting hairs. It’s the trend, and 2010 is shaping up to set a new record. So your question is a moot one? You will see fluctuations between years but if the overall trend is warmer, is there any point in identifying if one year was a little less warm than another? It doesn’t prove a thing, most certainly the claim of “global cooling”. When 2010 becomes the warmest year on record doesn’t that end the 2008/2009 “cooling” argument? Perhaps you can speculate, 2011 may be a little less warm than 2010, ad infinitum.
Curious Yellow says:
July 5, 2010 at 8:12 am
No the earth is not cooling, the twelve warmest years occurred in the last 14 years. The exceptions were 1995 and 1997. Slightly less warming one year is not cooling unless you are splitting hairs. It’s the trend, and 2010 is shaping up to set a new record. So your question is a moot one? You will see fluctuations between years but if the overall trend is warmer, is there any point in identifying if one year was a little less warm than another? It doesn’t prove a thing, most certainly the claim of “global cooling”. When 2010 becomes the warmest year on record doesn’t that end the 2008/2009 “cooling” argument? Perhaps you can speculate, 2011 may be a little less warm than 2010, ad infinitum.
=========================
The past 14 years of the past 150 years of the “record”?
And the earth is 4.6 BILLION years old.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Calm down, Chicken Little (and the other chicken littles in this thread).
And after this bubble of warmth works its way out of the atmosphere from this past Nino, you will see a major downturn in global temps.
It has already begun….
And, years from now, when you and the rest of us are struggling to get enough food because of crop failures, famine, and killing frosts, you will be reminded of the tomfoolery of the BILLIONS of taxpayer money that has been wasted on a silly little myth about runaway catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
When those monies should have been spent on real environmental issues such as ocean and waterway pollution, shoring up coastlines like the Dutch have known for years, stopping overfishing, R&D for more “clean” energy, and last but not least and until then…..failsafe and environmentally safe oil drilling which is free of Big Oil special interest shortcuts and the SAME bl**dy special interests in our broken, shoddy, over-reaching, bureaucratic government.
In other words, and on all counts, learning as a species, to live WITH nature….rather than against it.
Yeah….you heard me right: In their current states, Big Oil, Big Government, and Big Science are all (in reality) very similar, and its time people start kicking in the legs of the behemoths and starting from scratch again.
You chicken littles would really have a stronger argument if you focused on the foregoing REAL environmental concerns rather than focusing on your tired and used up tenets of your dying faith: The International Church of the CAGW.
But I guess everyone needs a crutch for something to believe in!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
phlogiston
I don’t think that IR scattering vs. absorption is correct. An IR photon is either absorbed or it isn’t. There’s no deflection. It it’s absorbed it’s quickly reemitted in a random direction. Thus CO2 acts as a layer of insulation slowing down the transport of heat from higher to lower temperatures in accordance with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. It accomplishes this through absorbing IR photons coming from the direction of the higher temperature and reemitting them in a random direction. It doesn’t actually trap heat like a pane of glass in a greenhouse but rather simply slows down the transport like a layer of fiberglass insulation between wall panels.
The current warming phase which is a rebound from the LIA is now stabilising before in the near future starting its drop, question is not
‘Is it caused by extra CO2 in the atmosphere ?’
but
‘Is it to be followed by another warming phase or will the next drop be the big one into the next Ice Age ?’ .
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/03/global_warming_seen_before/
Curious Yellow says:
July 5, 2010 at 7:09 am
Just The Facts says:
July 4, 2010 at 10:47 am
Curious Yellow says: July 4, 2010 at 3:42 am
You’ve just proven it false.
If you don’t realise this, I won’t bother try preaching to the converted.
This blog is losing the arguments about the arctic, the writing is on the wall and now there is an attempt to switch attention to the Antarctic. Already voices are raised about the arctic having melted before. A reality check? Is that the fall-back position?
***********************************************************************
VILLABOLO: AMEN!
johnh says:
July 5, 2010 at 11:12 am
“The current warming phase which is a rebound from the LIA is now stabilising before in the near future starting its drop, question is not
‘Is it caused by extra CO2 in the atmosphere ?’”
VILLABOLO:
Why a rebound from the Little Ice Age? Why not from the end of our last Ice Age or 2,000 years ago? This is an arbitrary statement.
savethesharks says:
July 5, 2010 at 10:19 am
[–SNIP–]
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Calm down, Chicken Little (and the other chicken littles in this thread).
And after this bubble of warmth works its way out of the atmosphere from this past Nino, you will see a major downturn in global temps.
It has already begun….
And, years from now, when you and the rest of us are struggling to get enough food because of crop failures, famine, and killing frosts, you will be reminded of the tomfoolery of the BILLIONS of taxpayer money that has been wasted on a silly little myth about runaway catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
[–SNIP–]
***********************************************************************
VILLABOLO:
And you call us Chicken Littles?
phlogiston says:
July 5, 2010 at 2:46 am
“So an IR photon going downward in the atmosphere will encounter air at increasing concentration, while going up it will “find” more rarified air, and fewer scattering events. So, like the paramecium, the IR photon will on average diffuse upward. And eventually out into space.”
An interesting argument and comment. So interesting that I think you should repost it with the lads over at RC, with cc to all the folks on the Climategate email list. If you can get them to buy it, we can all get back to our lives and forget about this CAGW nonsense.
GeoFlynx says:
July 4, 2010 at 8:48 am
[–snip–]
Dave – Copernicus also “tweaked and twisted” his heliocentric model of the solar system nearly as much as the Ptolemaic model. Skeptics back then were quick to point this out and were quick to persecute those who would not place the Earth at the “center of all”. It was not until Kepler recognized that planetary orbits were elliptical rather than circular that the heliocentric theory gained popular acceptance. Global climate models are continuously being improved, but that does not mean that the underlying premise of AGW is incorrect, just like Copernicus.
You proceed from the false premise that the so-called ‘AGW’ models are essentially correct when no such thing is true.
Not one of them –NOT A SINGLE ONE– has produced a useful and decently accurate product worthy of being referred to as ‘accurately predictive.’
Hell, they can’t even predict the weather a week in advance, much less months or years in advance.
What you’re engaging in is making excuses for people who’ve made more excuses for themselves than than the worst sort of sociopath.
Just as with the stock markets, the only people who KNOW what’s going to happen are the ones who MAKE things happen because they have insider knowledge of events long before they occur.
I don’t know of anyone in the climate prediction business who’s got a unique inside knowledge of the future.
Certainly there are those people who have whole teams of researchers perusing all of the past historical records, combing through those to glean whatever small and pertinent fact might be useful to posit a claim, but virtually none of them knows what the Sun is going to do on the morrow, nor what other effects –internal and external– might present themselves and complicate matters beyond the ken of any mere human.
Therefor and therefore, what the ‘climate modelers’ are practicing is essentially the same thing as the alchemists of old: Divination, or the ‘reading of tea leaves.’
Good luck with that!
There is simply NO WAY that ANY climate model is going to foretell the future of climate, and that’s so for just this reason: Things change.
A climate model might be useful for several months at best, but that model would have to take into consideration the ENTIRETY of every geophysical nuance of the world as we know it, which includes what’s happening outside the Earth as well as what’s happening here.
So, until THAT happens, the ‘model’ business is a patent fraud.
R. Gates says:
July 4, 2010 at 11:37 am
Tom Jones says:
July 4, 2010 at 11:12 am
R. Gates says:
If you took the intergral of global sea ice since 2001, the anomaly has gone to the negative side. So, back the analogy of a healthy wide receiver– the patient’s looking a bit sick.
I don’t know of anything that happened then except for the aftermath of the 1998 El Nino. There would have been a very large slug of hot air sent to the Arctic, so that might be the cause. Can you suggest something else?
___________
I can’t, but many others have suggested an idea… it’s called anthropogenic global warming, and since the climate is a chaotic system, the smallest of factors, so I’m told, could take the system out of equalibrium and create unforseen and unpredictable effects. These are NOT random, but are deterministic. Many would suggest that the downward trend in Arctic Sea ice extent is one of those effects, and the fact that even the bulk of GCM’s didn’t forsee the more rapid downturn in Arctic Sea ice that we’ve had the past 10 years, shows the chaotic nature of the effects–unpredictable but quite deterministic.
So then –and according to yourself– the Earth itself could never possibly contribute to its own heat?
Nothing volcanic, nothing produced by the massive natural deserts, nothing at all in the way of the oceanic expanses which might cause in any way, manner, fashion, shape, or form a change in the energy values associated with either warming, or cooling?
And you’ve still not gotten back on how it is that what with all that CO2 locked into to matrix of the ice –both north and south– and the CO2 captured by the oceans, and verily floating above both in the atmosphere, that the ice isn’t changing into a bubbling, roiling mass of fiery hot water, that the waters themselves haven’t flashed into a steaming hot cauldron, and the atmosphere hasn’t turned into a seething expanse of hellishness every time the Sun shines …
You’ll be talking about that, won’t you?