By Steve Goddard
We are seeing a number of interesting polar ice milestones this month. First, WUWT now has a new permanent Sea Ice Page, where you can find all of the live graphs and images in one place. Details here.
Second, it has been the slowest July (1-17) Arctic melt in the eight year JAXA record.
Ice extent has declined at less than half the rate of 2007, and total ice loss has been more than 200,000 km² less than the previous low in 2004.
DMI now shows Arctic ice extent as second highest for the date, topped only by 2005.
Closeup below.
Cryosphere Today shows that ice extent and concentration is about the same as it was 20 years ago.
The modified NSIDC map below shows in green, areas where ice is present in 2010 but was not present in 2007.
The modified NSIDC map below shows (in red) ice loss over the last week. Note that ice extent has increased slightly in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, while it has declined slightly in the East Siberian Sea.
The modified NSIDC map below shows the record low ice loss since the first of the month.
The modified NSIDC map below shows ice loss since early April.
The graph below shows PIPS ice thickness over the last five years. Average ice thickness in 2010 continues to track a little below 2006. It should bottom out in the next week or so between 2006 and 2009.
The low ice loss is consistent with the low Arctic temperatures we have seen this summer.
The North Pole webcam below shows that the meltponds are frozen over. Temperatures have been below -5°C this week. Very cold for July.
The video below shows ice movement since the start of June. Note that we are starting to see a clockwise circulation setting up again, which hints at increased ice loss over the rest of the month.
Another factor suggesting increased ice loss is the NCEP forecast, which projects warm temperatures over the East Siberian Sea and Arctic Basin for the next few days.
A third factor suggesting increased ice loss the rest of the month is that the the ice concentration has declined, due to winds exerting tensile stress on the ice. This allows more sunlight to reach the water and warm it. I expect to see the ice extent graphs showing steeper losses towards the end of the week, primarily in the East Siberian Sea.
GISS thinks it has been hot in the Arctic.
This is primarily due to the fact that they have almost no coverage there, and that they make up numbers extrapolate across vast distances with no data.
Meanwhile down south, sea ice continues at a record high level for the date.
July has been typified by record low ice loss in the north, and record high ice gain in the south. Global sea ice is above normal.
If the current trends were to continue, there is a small possibility that we will see a record maximum global sea ice extent towards the end of September. One thing is for sure – no matter what happens, the press will continue to be fed reports that the poles are “melting down” due to “record heat.”
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Volume matters when surface area is low…surface area matters when surface area is high. Got it.
Could you also include links to the latest cloud cover images (since cloud cover is related to temperature)? I just spent 10 minutes looking, and, lots of NOAA website links are broken or don’t actually have imagery.
REPLY: No
DR says:
July 18, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Technically OT, but has NCDC been monkeying with U.S. temp data? WUWT?
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2010&bmonth=01&year=2010&month=01&ext=gif&id=110-00
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Just where did you find THAT ???
That says it all, doesn’t it? Cold months do vary the most. Day by day, year by year there are some ups and some downs but over the many years it feels the same today as in 1960 or 1980, and guess what… it is exactly the same !!!!
(at least in the U.S. with our nationwide global heat energy shield in place since the roaring ‘20s :))
Anthony, post that one BIG and PERMANENT so all can link in emails to their family and friends (and adversaries) !!
Thanks DR, just what others like me have been looking for, at least one small smoking gun with NOAA’s logo on it!
REPLY: It’s a graph of January mean temperatures only, not the whole year mean. – Anthony
The melt rate may have already picked up. The JAXA AMSR-E Arctic sea ice extent data shows the last two days losing over 70k sq-km per day.
To quote Han Solo — “I got a really bad feeling about this.”
I’m new to this AGW debate but I have a question about the extent of sea ice in the artic.
If ‘during June, ice extent was below average everywhere except in the East Greenland Sea, where it was near average’ (NSIDC comment) why is everybody happy about the extent of the ice this July if it is below average?
Cryosphere Today shows that ice extent and concentration is about the same as it was 20 years ago.
Steve if you’re going to make stuff up at least make it plausible!
According to CT on this date in 1990 the area was: 6.8058658 Mm^2
whereas now it is: 5.5386882 Mm^2
Phil
Steve if you’re going to make stuff up at least make it plausible!
You continually want the reader to infer that Steven Goddard is deceiving people. Today is not the first time you imply it.
I’m just impressed at the correct use of both “infer” and “imply”!!
Tim McHenry says:
July 18, 2010 at 8:15 pm
The DMI is something to keep an eye on. It never gets very warm up there anyway, but it is curiously low this year, just like last year.
I appreciate the post and all, but this sentence confuses me:
…total ice loss has been more than 200,000 km² less than the previous low in 2004.
In English, please!
Frederick Michael says:
July 18, 2010 at 9:40 pm
The melt rate may have already picked up. The JAXA AMSR-E Arctic sea ice extent data shows the last two days losing over 70k sq-km per day.
To quote Han Solo — “I got a really bad feeling about this.”
I wouldn’t be too worried yet. 70,000 sq km is fairly average for this time of year. What we’ve had for the first couple of weeks in July was well below average. The east Siberian Sea still has a fair amount of ice to lose and when it does it normally does so quickly.
I agree with Stephen that we’ll see an increase in the rate of ice loss for the latter part of July but I still think once the ice is gone from the East Siberian Sea it should start to reduce again.
Incidentally, the 312,000 sq km between 2010 and 2009 is likely to disappear very quickly over the next 2 weeks. During 2009, the average ice loss per day for the last 2 weeks of the month was over 93,000 sq km. I’d be very surprised if we see that level of ice loss for the corresponding period this season. If we maintain a 70,000 sq km average by 1st August, this years ice extent will be nearly identical to 2009.
I’m still looking for a similar result to 2006. Looking at ice loss rates over the entire JAXA data set I find it unlikely we will see the rate of ice loss climb above 60,000 sq km on a 15 day moving average for the remainder of this melt season.
“Better English” will not rescue the mathematically challenged.
“Ice loss” is an inverse term in relation to an “ice low” level, thus a smaller ice loss means the present ice level is greater (>200K km²) than at the previous low in ice level.
One look at the Cyrosphere Global Sea Ice Extent does it for me.
It says that when all is added up, the Global Temperature should be just about average.
A Global Climate reality check, if you will.
Steven Goddard: I don’t see any reason to revise my 5.5 estimate.
Phil: According to CT … now it is: 5.5386882 Mm^2
Hi Steven, can your 5.5 estimate be compared directly to the Cryosphere Today measure? If so, CT suggests it may be broken soon.
DMI artic mean temp has dropped back to ZERO today 19/7. 7/19 for our USA cousins
Oslo: July 18, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Another intereresting story is the norwegian expedition by norwegian polar explorer Børge Ousland, who started at midsummer on a trimaran sailboat, aiming to start from Norway (they are currently at the northern tip of Norway, then circumnavigate the pole, sail through the northwest passage, along the western shore of Greenland, and back to Norway. So a polar 360, one could call it. All during this summer season, of course.
Part of the deal is, of course, to “bring attention to global warming and melting ice”.
Will they be able to make it? Or will they put their warmist cause to shame?
Anyone want to make a calculated guess?
He’s already in trouble. He just doesn’t know it, yet.
“Afterwards we pulled our trimaran up onto the shore. The system of ropes and pulleys that we had made worked perfectly, and made it easy to haul the boat up onto a sandy beach just outside Kirkenes. We should be able to use this method in the Arctic, to pull the boat onto the ice – and it’s a relief that it worked so well.”
His hull and outriggers use straight bows, rather than reverse shear or spoon. Not a problem if you weight the aft and you’re hauling up onto a sloping beach, but those chisel bows will dig into the side of a good-sized floe rather than sliding up and onto the top. And if they need to pull the boat onto the ice, they’ll *need* to be pulling it onto a good-sized floe — the boat weighs almost three tons.
That said, he’s got a good-looking boat, and I hope he doesn’t have to find out the hard way.
Mike D – what it means is that 2004 had the lowest total ice loss. this year lost 200,000 less than 2004.
Anyhoo I’m quite amazed that you’ve put in so many maps but not the one showing that arctic sea ice extent is at an all time low for the date at NSDIC. You know it exists as you’ve put up the Antarctic equivalent pic. What gives?
Where’s Gates?
If someone were to plot a graph of how right or wrong warmists’ predictions are w.r.t. time…………………………………………………
And today I read on TVtext that 50, <5 year old kids died of extreme cold in Peru, while the most of south America is in a record cold, including the Amazon, where temperature is 9C instead of the normal 20C or thereabouts. (If my memory serves me well, this cold in the south of South America is the third consecutive winter). And all this happening while Antarctica has a record sea-ice cover, Australia under a continuous cold snap, the Arctic is not melting as it should and Europe is getting back into normal temps.
I dont see it at all going good for the warmists.
Give it time (five years?) to get back to average. We’re interested in continuing the recovering trend from the low of 2007.
Steve,
I find an interesting coincidence that the arctic air has been bottled up from travelling south. The high pressures around the lower latitudes have been keeping the cold north.
Coincidentally I posted a very similar post at my site a couple days earlier. Nice to the see an excellent supplement.
5.5 million sounds too high to me. There’s going to be a big meltoff this week. I think we’ll end up near 5 million.
Mattb
No such map or graph exists from NSIDC, so it would have been difficult to include.
Thanks for this resume , very revealing.
The two graphs under the heading “GISS thinks it has been hot in the Arctic.” are particularly revealing. I note even areas with data tend to get warmer during the processing.
see: Scandinavia, northern Alaska, Nova Scotia. Also the areas with no data around the pole end up hotter (greater anomaly) than the surrounding areas with data!
This matches a report I saw here yesterday detailing similarly dubious interpolation in the Sahara, where significant areas without data ended up with greater anomalies than any surrounding data.
However, I really would appreciate these graphs being properly sourced. “GISS thinks” is not a reference and they should be complete with title and a legend for the colour scheme.
I’m only guessing that these are temp anomalies, and if I want to relate this info to someone else I NEED to have a proper reference for the source of my information.
Anthony, could you add this please?
Thanks.