By Steve Goddard
Last month, a number of well known web sites and commenters were getting themselves worked up with comments like “Arctic ice dropping at the fastest rate in history” and “Arctic ice is dropping like a rock.” I advised repeatedly that prior to July, looking at the extent graphs is pointless.
July is here now, and the rate of ice extent decline has dropped dramatically over the last week. To put this in perspective, according to JAXA data, the June 28-July 4 rate is -53361 km²/day. In 2007 during the same period, ice was lost at -123104 km²/day.
In other words, 2007 was losing ice 2.31X faster than 2010.
This can be seen most dramatically in the DMI graph, which measures only higher concentration ice (30%.)
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Close up image below.
So why the dramatic difference in slope? One reason is that sea ice concentration is at the highest level in the satellite record. Compare below vs. 1980, when ice was considered very “healthy.” Current concentration is considerably higher.
Ice concentration is particularly important this time of year because the sun is relatively high in the sky. When the ice concentration is low, sun shines into the water in “Swiss Cheese” holes around the ice, warms it, and corrodes away the edges of the ice. This year, ice concentration has been close to 100% in most of the Arctic – which means very little sunlight is reaching the water in the Arctic Basin. As a result melt will occur more slowly than during low concentration years.
The videos below represent an exaggerated visualization of the process. The first video shows an idealized view of future Arctic Basin melt during 2010 – i.e. a single large circle of ice surrounded by water.
The next video shows what happens in years when the concentration is lower. The sun is heating the water between circles, and because of the smaller circles a much larger surface area of ice is exposed to warm water. Warmer water and more exposed surface area causes melt to proceed faster.
Conclusion : Cold temperatures, cloudy skies, favorable winds and high concentration ice – all point to continued slow melt over the next few days.
Mr. R. Gates,
Calm yourself. Data is data is data. Perhaps some is better than others, but discrepancies in data can always be worked out. Let’s not get lathered up, yet. Let’s wait and see how these numbers work out as measured, not projected. It’s only a few months away.
It doesn’t seem like the wind can lift the ice lid any further. It gets stuck in the Canadian Archipelago, where ice extent has grown to above normal!
Wind and waves, time and tides?
We are no better at predicting the future now with our super computers than our forebears were with their casting of the bones and costly visits to the Delphic oracle.
Puny ignorant man makes bold assertions only to be foiled by majestic and untroubled nature?
We have allowed ourselves to be seduced by models and predictions based on limited knowledge combined with overblown unwarranted confidence.
Models lie and statistics lie because they are simply not real, they will never be real even if they happen to be accurate, our love affair with predictions stems from our longing as a species to know what the future brings, to control the destiny that has controlled and foiled our grand plans for so long on our difficult journey of evolution.
One thing is for certain, an absolute certainty and iron hard immutable law that humanity has faced since we first daubed pictures on cave walls, the future will never conform to our petty plans and dreams and fears. The grand procession of nature passes us by and tramples on the plans of men and his petty doings as if he didnt exist.
July is here now, and the rate of ice extent decline has dropped dramatically over the last week. To put this in perspective, according to JAXA data, the June 28-July 4 rate is -53361 km²/day. In 2007 during the same period, ice was lost at -123104 km²/day.
Cherry picking again, of the worse kind, a mere snapshot. This is pure nonsense. You picked a period in 2007 with 6 successive 100k+ drops, including a 200k+. What’s the importance of the coincidence? These melt periods are not time or date bound, they can occur any time when conditions suit, not the date. Anyhow, what a difference a day can make, today’s melt 111,000 KM2 (unrevised), average just went up to 79,000. Imagine what a few days could do.
Bold heading; “In other words, 2007 was losing ice 2.31X faster than 2010.”
??????????????????Shouldn’t that read, between 28 June and 4 July, 2007 was losing ice…..How do six days represent a whole year? It’s the bold headline that deceives, as intended I guess.
Curious Yellow,
And despite the massive drops in 2007 over those days, 2010 still remains at a lower extent than 2007 in the Jaxa data …
Daniel M says:
July 5, 2010 at 9:32 pm
R. Gates says:
July 5, 2010 at 8:18 pm
…albeit either of our forecasts show there has been no “recovery” in Arctic Sea ice, and the 2008-2009 upward trend will have been broken.
Talk about damage control…
I would think that you as much as anyone, as often as you have castigated the oversimplification of Arctic ice loss dynamics, would avoid making such a nebulous claim. How are you defining “recovery”? Certainly it’s not extent. Wouldn’t the amount of multi-year ice be a better gauge? Either way, I’d like to hear how you can make such a claim at this point in the season.
As for your “broken” trend, I shouldn’t even touch that one…
…but, c’mon! You know trends don’t work that way. No one credibly believes the slope of arctic ice or any other climate variable will stay constant from year to year. So a decrease from one year to the next does not necessarily “break” a trend. Perhaps you might get some traction if Arctic ice dropped below the 2007 minimum.
_________________
Well, let’s take a look at the actual “trend”, mapped against where even those “pessimistic” GCM models say that Arctic Sea ice should be headed:
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/2009/stroeve.png
Steve’s 5.5 million sq. km, or my 4.5 million sq. km, still tracks Arctic Sea ice to disappear earlier than the most pessimistic GCM’s from just a few years ago. I guess we really need to define what a “recovery” is. I heard the term being thrown around this spring during the little “bump up”, and even heard such pundits as Rush Limbaugh talk about it, as though he really knew what he was talking about. One year, or even two or three years don’t equal recovery, and certainly, a few months of late season growth don’t amount to anything close to a recovery in my humble estimation.
By recovery do we mean the ice going back to the trend line that was leading to an ice free Arctic in the summer by 2100 instead of 2030? Or do we mean going back to having the ice bounce around on both sides of 7 or 8 million sq. km for the summer low each year, but not on the way to disappearing completely? What do you think a “recovery” of Arctic Sea ice means? I personally think it would be mean a stable mean summer minimum (maybe somwhere around 7 million to 8 million sq. km), that the ice bounces around both sides of from year to year. Instead, what we have is a chart that looks like this:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
Where we’ve not had a positive anomaly since 2004. But as person who believes that it’s not the sun, nor the PDO, nor GCR’s, (those these may play a minor role) but rather, it is more likely that the 30% increase in CO2 since the start of the industrial revolution that is causing the changes in the Arctic, and each year these amounts are increasing, I think (going back to chaos theory) that it’s highly unlikely to see a long term recovery (based on my definition of recover given above) and its more likely to see a continued long term decline of summer Arctic Sea ice until a new point of equalilbrium is found, and that point is likely a seasonal ice free arctic ocean by the year 2030.
Drop for today was 100+ on JAXA, not sure if that is the final corrected amount. Looks sunny on the Canadian side until Wednesday with Eureka 18C yesterday. Resolute 17C today 14C Wednesday. Then cloudy and cold. At the northpole webcam it is sunny again, there have been a lot more sunny days there this year than last.
On the Siberian side it is still rather cool but getting warmer.
Andy
The north pole now:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/2010/images/noaa2-2010-0705-133452.jpg
and a further view
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/2010/images/noaa1-2010-0706-025048.jpg
there are holes, they are growing. Lets play Pooh sticks.
Let us not loose the point that interesting though it would be if we are going into cooling and the next little ice age , the point is that even if it is melting, the melt is not anthropogenic. We have been coming out of the Little Ice Age, and coming out of an ice age means heating of the atmosphere and melting of the ice whether humans exist or not.
R. Gates
I have discussed the “high resolution” concentration graphs extensively. Their precision is much higher than their accuracy. The low res maps correlate much better with visible satellite imagery.
Curious Yellow
You must have missed the part about prior to July, the melt season extent maps are nearly meaningless.
I get 72 000 per day for those days in 2010 and 137 000 in 2007 or 1.9x as much ??? Perhaps my spreadsheet sums are wrong?
climatepatrol
Temperatures have been very warm in the Canadian Archipelago, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the NW Passage opens again this year.
I realize the University of Illinois has to use some ancient algorithm on modern data to get images “comparable” to what they were using in 1980:
http://climateinsiders.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/deetmp-13164.png
(stevengoddard’s image in the above article)
but isn’t it weird that this algorithm makes it seem like Hudson Bay is two-thirds filled with sea ice on 7/3/2010 ?
At least the 7/3/2010 blurry image shows the extensive melt in the Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, Barents Sea and Baffin Bay.
Now compare to modern data processed with modern algorithms:
here’s 7/3/2010:
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsredata/asi_daygrid_swath/l1a/n6250/2010/jul/asi-n6250-20100703-v5_nic.png
and 7/3/2009:
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsredata/asi_daygrid_swath/l1a/n6250/2009/jul/asi-n6250-20090703-v5_nic.png
Wow, 2009 Arctic basin ice looked like a solid purple mass compared to 2010, which is speckled all over with 70% to 100% concentration pixels. Probably a lot of melt ponds, but still indicative of a much warmer summer than 2009.
How did things work out in 2009, with that concentrated Arctic Basin ice ?
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsredata/asi_daygrid_swath/l1a/n6250/2009/sep/asi-n6250-20090913-v5_nic.png
Eaten away from the outside in, the warm water melting the ice shore like a cancer, until the end of summer saved the remaining ice. So much for “concentrated” ice.
And how much more warming Arctic water does 2010 have than 2009 ? 732,969 sq km
How much more warming water than in 2007 ? 222,813 sq km
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv
How much sea ice was lost in 2010 from 7/4 to 7/5 ? 111,563 sq km
To put this in perspective, according to JAXA data, 2007 had a 89,844 sq km drop.
In other words, 2010 was losing ice 1.24X faster than 2007.
This can be seen most dramatically in the JAXA graph, which shows the little hump of 2007 flattening out as 2010 begins dropping faster again.
(if this all sounds vaguely familiar, re-read Steve’s article, above.)
Every year, the details are different, but the trend is clear:
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20091005_Figure3.png
villabolo
I have learned to make copies of images and graphs, rather than use the original source.
Two reasons 1. It keeps the context of the article correct in the future. 2. It doesn’t matter if the external web site goes down.
TomRude says:
July 5, 2010 at 9:37 pm
R Gates believes in AGW and that its expression is Arctic sea ice… despite blaming it on wind patterns. And wind patterns do not favor AGW over the past 50 years… But hey, keep coming pal…
________________
Tom, have you ever heard of the Arctic Dipole Anomaly? This is a curious little positive feeback loop that’s developed in the Arctic over the past 10 years or so. Quite unpredicted by any of the GCM’s, just as chaos theory would say such “attractors” would be out there as changes are made in the composition of the atmosphere.
Anyway, the DA is a wind event, caused by warming, the in turn, causes more, warming, and so forth. So all this nonsense put out by AGW skeptics pointing at the wind, as though the wind exists as some separate phenomenon from temperature, is quite in error. The DA is a self-reinforcing wind AND termperature event, unpredictable but quite determinstic. I suggest you Google it and read up on it. It’s of great interest to the experts who study the Arctic, as well it should be as it could be just one of the reasons that the GCM’s were so far off in not seeing the dramatic decline we’ve seen in Arctic Sea ice these past few years…
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/2009/stroeve.png
This chart shows the GCM’s versus the actual sea ice extent. The two really start to diverage when the DA really started occurring on a more frequent basis. The DA is becoming a domiant player in the Arctic “regime”, and it is a wind/temperature self-reinforcing “attractor”.
I think R gates is one of many AGW trolls who has been instructed to try to “overcome” the Climategate problem by “appearing” to really know what he is talking about LOL but the answers here are not helping his cause so let him continue please…LOL. As I mentioned in previous posting some warmistas are going to be very surprised at NH minima this summer,
[REPLY – I don’t think he is being “instructed” by anyone. I just think he’s probably wrong. If Brother Gates wishes to argue climategate, he’s welcome to; most of us here have actually read the emails, anyway. He’s duking it out in “enemy territory”, which I can respect. Of course when we try that we tend to get censored rather heavily. #B^1 But Anthony and we mods here allow a free and open debate inasmuch as we can. We snip every now and then, but we do so at a minimum and tend to confine it to what we consider to be unduly abusive posts. ~ Evan]
I realise that our R Gates has a narrative to stick to which he does as best he can but I wonder if his recent obssession with what he calls the “dipole anomoly’ is just another mechanism to reinforce his narrative and linking this ‘anomoly’ with the alarmists beloved ‘positve feedback’?
“unpredictable but quite deterministic” huuuh?
” the DA is a self reinforcing wind and TEMPERATURE event” I find this statement quite confusing and it seems to fly in the face of thermodynamics laws, we have enough evidence now to state with some confidence that the so called ‘positive feedback’ theory has not worked as advertised yet it is still being pimped on the back of every event that seems at first glance to fit the AGW narrative.
It seems the so called DA is simply another convenient vehicle to explain a short term unpredicted event as a long term mechanism and as a temporary vehicle my guess is when the vehicle has outlived its usefulness it will be discarded and another will take its place.
At the moment this dipole anomoly is the latest in climate science fashion and one can only wonder how long it will last? I suspect the the DA theory will last as long as the current melt cycle and no longer.
Our Mr Gates is painting himself into the mother of all corners at the moment, if the melt cycle does not comply with his obviously set beliefs then his reputation will be damaged beyond repair and that would be quite sad, I can predict that nobody will listen to him on this blog again. Much better to show doubt and hesitation and humility now than face ridicule later I think.
“Hulme is conceding that more sophisticated versions are refusing to record the desired result, but in fact the reverse. If even the alarmists’ own tame technology, due to improved accuracy, is refusing to comply with their wish list of global warming symptoms, then the game is well and truly up…”
It’s an admittance that further ‘tuning’ of the CGM is not working. Anyone who has backfit a model to the past and seen it fail in real time, and succumbed to tweaking the model to fit the newer data, and it still fails. Eventually we figure it out. We got it wrong from the git go.
You can see how dodgy the “high resolution” concentration maps are here:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3usmIjfz7gU]
OT
Planck unveils the Universe – now and then
ESA PR-15 2010 ESA’s Planck mission has delivered its first all-sky image. It not only provides new insight into the way stars and galaxies form but also tells us how the Universe itself came to life after the Big Bang.
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMF2FRZ5BG_index_0.html
There’s a particularly alarmist article by Overpeck and Udall in the current issue of Science 25 June 2010, “Dry Times Ahead”, p1642. I’m trying to figure out how much is exaggeration, how much true, and how much nonsense. Can anyone help?
R. Gates, @ur momisugly 8.18,
of course you would think that! Any other thought might force you into the unomfortable region of seeing the truth. Of all the trolls on this blog, R.Gates has been the most persistenst, and obnoxious, in denying what the evidence clearly shows. Moderators, send him back under his bridge!
[REPLY – We shall continue to allow him to make his arguments. Time will tell who is correct. ~ Evan]
Wow, so much staked on a thing that nobody here can control.
Are the “modelers” and “anti-modelers” pitting their models against each other?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/07aug_southpole/
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1720024.ece
I am not saying any of you chaps are right or wrong about the future of the Arctic ice cap but I am saying that the proof of this pudding will be in the eating.
Steve
Bearing in mind the considerable margin of error of the satellites used for sea level rise, admitted to in AR4, I wondered the margin of error in sea ice readings, particularly as satellites seem to have trouble distinguishing between melt water lying on top of ice and sea water itself.
Should we take all the satellite era readings for ice with a large pinch of sea salt?
tonyb