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.”
stevengoddard says:
July 20, 2010 at 3:41 am
“Phil,
You are completely out of control.
The Arctic is behaving exactly as I forecast, and you seem to be having difficulty coping with the fact that WUWT has made the most accurate Arctic forecast – three years in a row.”
———————————————————————————-
Steven, it is evident that you’ve lost the argument and are now sidetracking with a claim of accurate forecasting, entirely divorced from the issue under discussion. The same applies to just one of Phil’s rebuttals of your statements such as; “An individual molecule has absolutely no knowledge of vapour pressure. Molecules freeze below the freezing point. The dew point is where sublimation is equal to freezing.” Phil is right by calling it rubbish.
I sense that on this issue you have painted yourself into a corner. A simple admittance of being wrong would have saved you a lot of trouble. Not doing so carries an occupational hazard, such as going out of control, completely.
As for forecasting, would that relate to sea ice extent recovering in 2008/2009, followed by the claim that the arctic had recovered? Where is the third year by the way? Have you anticipated 2010? 2007-4.25 m/sq/km (record low), 2008 4.7 m/sq/km (part recovery 1), 2009 5.24 m/sq/km (part recovery 2), 2010 no recovery?
On the other hand, did you by any chance predict the 2007 minimum? That would make the 3 year prediction.
Smokey says:
July 20, 2010 at 2:28 am
“David Gould:
“If people ‘mentally operate’ in such a way that they jettison the Scientific Method in favor of true belief, then nothing will help them unless the scales fall from their eyes and they see the world as it is, not as they fear it might be.”
“Nothing can help a person who plays word games like that.”
————————————————————————————-
Good grief, some ridiculous discussion about the meaning or not of 100% and mixing it with belief? Talk about word games. To R Gates, give up please, don’t waste your time, after all none so blind as those who don’t want to see, I’m a just less than 100% person too, it makes sense.
David says:
July 20, 2010 at 6:43 am
stevengoddard says:
July 20, 2010 at 3:41 am
Steven, it is evident that you’ve lost the argument and are now sidetracking with a claim of accurate forecasting, entirely divorced from the issue under discussion. The same applies to just one of Phil’s rebuttals of your statements such as; “An individual molecule has absolutely no knowledge of vapour pressure. Molecules freeze below the freezing point. The dew point is where sublimation is equal to freezing.” Phil is right by calling it rubbish.
I sense that on this issue you have painted yourself into a corner. A simple admittance of being wrong would have saved you a lot of trouble. Not doing so carries an occupational hazard, such as going out of control, completely.
Thanks David.
It is now 20 July, the ice area according to Nansen is the same as in 2008 and 2009, so just enjoy the summer, and in September we will see if the minimum extend is 5.5 or 4.5 million square km. And show the same class as Flanagan did last year, who stayed polite to the bitter end, and then quietly left.
I see David does not understand scientific skepticism either.
Here is Nobel Prize winner [when the Nobel actually meant something] Richard Feynman explaining how rigorous and uncompromising skeptical scientists must be:
CAGW does not agree with any testable experiment. Therefore it is wrong. And on all time scales, a rise in CO2 follows a rise in temperature. Effect can not precede cause.
Finally, note what Feynman says that skepticism and the scientific method demand of scientists: “…the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.”
As an example of scientific charlatanism: Michael Mann has stonewalled giving his information to others for twelve years by using one prevaricating, mendacious excuse after another. Why? Because if he shares his data and methodologies, he knows that everything from MBH98 onward will be falsified for the whole world to see.
As it stands, his Hokey Stick was broken by McIntyre and McKittrick, who showed conclusively that if even one tree out of over a hundred Mann used had a hockey stick shape, Mann’s algorithm would always produce a hockey stick shape on the resulting graph — even if every other tree showed a reverse hockey stick shape that angled downward!
That is the kind of scientific misconduct that happens when a scientist isn’t 100% skeptic. You can’t be 25% skeptic, or 25% pregnant. It’s all or nothing. Playing both sides like that is not science; every honest scientist is a skeptic first, last and always. The others like Michael Mann are just pushing an agenda.
While I am just an armchair teacher, I have taught basic atmospheric science at the middle school level to some very bright but emotionally different students. Here is what I know. There are several interesting things about the stratosphere, including that it heats up with increasing altitude, which stabilizes this gradient (the opposite of the thermosphere, which wants to overturn). Why does it heat up? The major cause is UV absorption.
Ozone absorbs more ultraviolet radiation than do the other gasses that make up our air. Ozone lives in the stratosphere. As a result, the stratosphere is heated, and air gradually increases in temperature to the top of the layer, called the startopause.
So Phil, what does the Sun do during minimum in terms of UV?
1. Ultraviolet irradiance (EUV) varies by some 1.5 percent from solar maximum to minimum.
2. Energy changes in the UV wavelengths involved in production and loss of ozone have atmospheric effects.
3. The 30 hPa atmospheric pressure level has changed height in phase with solar activity during the last 4 solar cycles.
4. UV irradiance increase causes higher ozone production, leading to stratospheric heating, while decreases lead to stratospheric cooling.
And because the stratosphere is not well mixed due to lack of turbulance, gasses layer themselves according to weight. CO2 is quite heavy and would be near the bottom, which seems to me would allow the Sun to do its heating and cooling UV magic unimpeded by CO2 in the stratosphere.
Match point
David Gould: “So in a sense you are correct: either you operate as if proposition X is true or you operate as if proposition Y is false (100%/0%). But looking at that in a binary way does not do justice to how people mentally operate, which in my case is ‘if the evidence for proposition X seems strong enough to me, provisionally accept it’.”
Smokey: “If people ‘mentally operate’ in such a way that they jettison the Scientific Method in favor of true belief…”
David, you will notice that Smokey’s response does not deal in any way with your wholly legitimate statement about provisional acceptance of evidence, which is of course the scientific method in practice.
Instead, Smokey talks about something of his own making unrelated to your claim. The technical term for this logical fallacy is “straw man” and it would be interesting to see whether Smokey makes a habit of peddling this fallacy. Let’s see.
Brendan H: “The claim that “everything observed today has happened many times over in the past” (in relation to climate) can be shown to be false by the observed levels of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere…”
Smokey: “The amount of CO2 emitted by human activity is miniscule…”
Yep. Looks like he does, I, of course, referred to “observed levels” of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere, that is, the long-term build-up of CO2, while Smokey refers to levels of emissions. Different measures.
Well, I guess twice is not a habit, but as they say, three times or more and you’re playing with it, so watch this space.
Thanks for responding Pamela
Pamela Gray says:
July 20, 2010 at 10:47 am
While I am just an armchair teacher, I have taught basic atmospheric science at the middle school level to some very bright but emotionally different students. Here is what I know. There are several interesting things about the stratosphere, including that it heats up with increasing altitude, which stabilizes this gradient (the opposite of the thermosphere, which wants to overturn). Why does it heat up? The major cause is UV absorption.
Ozone absorbs more ultraviolet radiation than do the other gasses that make up our air. Ozone lives in the stratosphere. As a result, the stratosphere is heated, and air gradually increases in temperature to the top of the layer, called the startopause.
So Phil, what does the Sun do during minimum in terms of UV?
1. Ultraviolet irradiance (EUV) varies by some 1.5 percent from solar maximum to minimum.
2. Energy changes in the UV wavelengths involved in production and loss of ozone have atmospheric effects.
3. The 30 hPa atmospheric pressure level has changed height in phase with solar activity during the last 4 solar cycles.
4. UV irradiance increase causes higher ozone production, leading to stratospheric heating, while decreases lead to stratospheric cooling.
And because the stratosphere is not well mixed due to lack of turbulance, gasses layer themselves according to weight. CO2 is quite heavy and would be near the bottom, which seems to me would allow the Sun to do its heating and cooling UV magic unimpeded by CO2 in the stratosphere.
Match point
My way I think, you have a few double faults in there. 😉
I’ll respond more fully later when I have more time, for now though I’d suggest that you look up the distribution of O3 and CO2 with height, the definition and extent of the homosphere, and consider why your suggested stratosphere doesn’t continue heating ad infinitum, i.e. what is its cooling mechanism?
Talk to you later.
Brendan H says: July 20, 2010 at 2:01 am
The claim that “everything observed today has happened many times over in the past” (in relation to climate) can be shown to be false by the observed levels of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere, and this phenomenon has not occurred in the past.
Therefore, since the premise of the argument is false, the conclusion: “there is no reason to think this isn’t simply natural climate variability at work” must also be false.
Are you arguing that [CO2] hasn’t been higher than ~380ppm in the past, or that man-emitted CO2 somehow magically reacts differently than naturally occurring [CO2]? Either way, your logic is transparently false.
There have not been very many measurements of CO2 in the stratosphere. Nor do we have any kind of a long term record. What has been measured so far shows that CO2 does not have a very regular height within the stratosphere (thicker in some areas, thinner in others) but it definitely decreases with increasing stratospheric height, an observation fully expected. There is also a night/day change of temp in the stratosphere that can easily be seen as Ozone waxes and wanes over the same period in concert with UV absorption as the Earth rotates. So mathematically, the day/night noise is there, overlayed by the solar cycle, especially significant with high TSI related UV maximums and low TSI related UV minimums.
Finally, none of this significantly affects our temps in the thermosphere.
FYI: I am familiar with both the ionosphere (the total depth at which the Sun is capable of ionizing our atmosphere), as well as the homo- and heterosphere, having to do with mixing of gasses.
Brendan H says: July 20, 2010 at 2:01 am
“The claim that “everything observed today has happened many times over in the past” (in relation to climate) can be shown to be false by the observed levels of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere, and this phenomenon has not occurred in the past.
Therefore, since the premise of the argument is false, the conclusion: “there is no reason to think this isn’t simply natural climate variability at work” must also be false.”
Brendan, if from A follows B and A is false, then it does not follow automatically that B is false. Maybe you understand this when i show it as a truth table:
A B Z::=(From A follows B)
0 0 1
0 1 1
1 0 0
1 1 1
IOW, if A is false and B is false, the premise “From A follows B” is not contradicted.
If A is false and B is true, it is equally not contradicted.
If A is true but B is false, it IS contradicted.
If A and B are both true, it is not contradicted.
What you had in mind was equality; not logical implication.
You can learn more about this here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_table#Logical_implication
Tim Clark,
Brendan H is not known for logical consistency. It went right over his head that I was specifically responding to David Gould’s comment on skepticism. Brendan just didn’t understand.
Brendan also didn’t do well on his reading comprehension. At 2:28 I wrote: “The amount of CO2 emitted by human activity is minuscule compared with the natural emissions of the planet — which are due to warming since the LIA…”.
I linked to this chart by the IPCC, showing both human and natural CO2 emissions. Anyone can see that for every 34 molecules of CO2 emitted in total, less than one of those molecules can be attributed to human emissions.
The current alarmist claim that human emitted CO2 can be separated from other CO2 was debunked years ago by a number of peer reviewed studies, listed in this University of Oslo page. But expect the warmists to keep making the [repeatedly falsified] claim that all the CO2 above 280 ppmv comes from human activity.
The vast majority of the rise in CO2 is the direct result of planetary warming since the LIA — not from the relatively minuscule human contribution.
Here’s an old AGW prediction for David, Phil and R. Gates–it requires you to put your children in an ice bath while they watch snow on youtube:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
Have a giggle at the prediction while you contrast it with the real world as it unfurled ten warming years later:
http://www.georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/
After completing the exercise, rate the AGW hypothesis on a scale of 1 to 10 for predictive prowess.
I’d also like to know how the suppression of raw data and processing algorithms can be categorized as “the scientific method.” Smokey mentioned this anti-scientific practice several times, but none of the responses from his detractors have bothered to address it.
Please try to do so!
Again, for the calendar-deprived:
the Arctic summer melt season is from June 21 to September 22, 2010.
And how has this first month, of three, been so far ? Well, there’s still one day left (of JAXA updates), but threads on WUWT dry up after 3 days, so here’s the progress so far:
Second lowest sea ice extent on record (2010/07/19):
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent_L.png
Second lowest sea ice area on record (2010/07/19):
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Area.png
But, but, what about the Danish Meteorological Institute ? Didn’t they at least have bad news about sea ice extent, when the threshold is 30% (unlike NSIDC and IARC-JAXA, which uses 15%) ?
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Tue Jul 20 08:00:02 GMT 2010
Second lowest on record.
Gee, only the second lowest Arctic sea ice on record for this date in July.
Let’s see how the final 2/3 of the melt season plays out, shall we ?
Now, back to your premature celebration.
Nobody speaks more eloquently for the WishfulThinkers than “Jimbo” – you should elect him your Leader or something:
http://tinyurl.com/24vmlt5
Wow. I had no idea the Earth pays attention to calendar dates. Is she sentient? Now that’s a new AGW affect we haven’t heard yet.
Anu, you can come up with something better than this. Your point is too silly to consider seriously.
Smokey says: July 20, 2010 at 1:08 pm
“Anyone can see that for every 34 molecules of CO2 emitted in total, less than one of those molecules can be attributed to human emissions.”
If 33 molecules of CO2 are emitted and subsequently absorbed there is no net change to atmospheric concentration. If 34 molecules are emitted but only 33 are subsequently absorbed the atmospheric concentration of CO2 rises. The claim that man’s “small” additional levels of emission cannot have an effect is patently false. If you get one extra piece of clothing to wash each week but don’t do it what happens across a year?
Ammonite,
I posted peer reviewed sources showing that your conjecture is wrong. You make the false assumption that the biosphere is incapable of absorbing that one CO2 molecule out of every 34+ that are emitted. Prof Freeman Dyson states that the biosphere will expand to eventually absorb excess CO2.
So who should we believe? Prof Dyson and the University of Oslo? Or you, with your personal opinion based on a silly analogy about washing clothes?
Steve, ok I did a quick regional assessment:
On July 17th 1990 shows (all extents in million sq-km):
central Arctic = 2.03215
Beaufort = 0.800339
Chukchi = 0.563294
E. Siberian = 0.906707
Laptev = 0.637717
Kara = 0.637934
In 2010, the values are:
central Arctic = 1.99408
Beaufort = 0.694839
Chukchi = 0.589379
E. Siberian = 1.30243
Laptev = 0.669927
Kara = 0.604491
So you can see, in the interior of the ice pack, the ice extent is actually lower than in 1990. Thus, I don’t agree with your statement “I’m looking at areas of potentially perennial ice in the Arctic interior. There appears to be more ice there in 2010 than 1990 in the UIUC maps”.
Where there is more ice in 1990 than today is in the Chukchi, E. Siberian and Laptev Seas, and this reflects the advection of older ice into these regions under the negative AO state this past winter and the low pressure. In the Beaufort there has actually been a slight gain of ice during the first 2 1/2 weeks in July because of the ice divergence, and yet it remains lower than in 1990. All other ice regions still show overall ice loss during July, with the fastest rates of ice loss in the Laptev and Kara seas.
Right now the average rate of decline for the entire Arctic through July 17th is around 73,000 sq-km per day, way slower than in 2007, but I suspect it will start to pick up again, especially in the E. Siberian Sea.
I would agree about CO2 absorption. Under oceanic out-gassing conditions we are likely to be in a more productive world. It is also likely that there is a lag related to it but that it eventually catches up, as in the greening of the planet IE more food. With more food you eventually have more animals eating that food, thus emitting more CO2. Eventually the energy forcing that CO2 enriched productivity is used up and we begin swinging back the other way. It is likely this is not a pendulum swing but a bunch of shorter term noisy events with longer term oscillations.
The idea that CO2 absorption is static cannot be a reasonable in-situ tenant.
Smokey says: July 20, 2010 at 2:18 pm
“You make the false assumption that the biosphere is incapable of absorbing that one CO2 molecule out of every 34+ that are emitted.”
Total human land clearance and fossil fuel comsumption has produced roughly 500 billion metric tons of carbon, enough to have raised the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to nearly 500 ppm. Concentrations have not reached that level because the ocean and the terrestrial biosphere do have the capacity to absorb some of the CO2 we produce. So the truth is in the middle – a proportion of those extra molecules are being absorbed and a proportion are building up. It is the latter that are responsible for AGW.
Stuiver, M., Burk, R. L. and Quay, P. D. 1984. 13C/12C ratios and the transfer of biospheric carbon to the atmosphere. J. Geophys. Res. 89, 11,731-11,748.
Francey, R.J., Allison, C.E., Etheridge, D.M., Trudinger, C.M., Enting, I.G., Leuenberger, M., Langenfelds, R.L., Michel, E., Steele, L.P., 1999. A 1000-year high precision record of d13Cin atmospheric CO2. Tellus 51B, 170–193.
Quay, P.D., B. Tilbrook, C.S. Wong. Oceanic uptake of fossil fuel CO2: carbon-13 evidence. Science 256 (1992), 74-79
Julienne,
You 1990 values add up to 5.578192 million sq km, while your 2010 values add up to 5.855146 million sq km. Maybe you gave incorrect data.
Ozone absorbs more ultraviolet radiation than do the other gasses that make up o
ur air. Ozone lives in the stratosphere. As a result, the stratosphere is heated
, and air gradually increases in temperature to the top of the layer, called the
startopause.
Nitrogen absorbs UV but at a higher energy than oxygen which also results in photochemistry, i.e., it blows it apart to produce ions.
Since nitrogen ions have a high affinity for oxygen, the nitrogen ions dominate
the mesosphere and the oxygen ions dominate the stratosphere.
The heating and cooling of the stratosphere is also a result of the mixing of the mesosphere with the stratosphere.
When mesosphere cools, there’s a downward flow of air and the nitrogen ions gobble up the oxygen ions in the stratosphere which depletes the ozone.
This cools the stratosphere and increases the volume of ice crystals which increases the Earth’s albedo resulting in cooling of the Earth’s surface.
3. The 30 hPa atmospheric pressure level has changed height in phase with solar activity during the last 4 solar cycles.
If I recall correctly, the high pressure region shifts its position as a result of the change in the electromagnetic fields. I just can’t remember in what direction. I would guess the shift is from lower latitudes to higher latitudes corresponds to a larger down draft over Antarctica (and to a lesser extent the Arctic.)
I’ll try to dig up a URL of a blog which provides a much better explanation of the dynamics of the ionosphere.
Smokey,
The observation that the atmospheric concentration has been way higher in the past is indeed a devastating blow to the CAGW theory. Or it would be *if CAGW theory argued that CO2 is the only determinant of the temperature of the earth*. But it does not.
Re the fraction of the total that are human caused CO2 emissions, the question is one of balance. As has already been explained, if the carbon cycle is in balance, then the atmospheric concentration will remain stable. We know from observation that over a relatively short period atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have increased significantly. Thus, we know that relatively recently the carbon cycle started to go out of balance.
We know that the thing that changed relatively recently was human emissions of CO2. We have pushed the carbon cycle out of balance, and thus the recent increases in atmospheric CO2 are due to us.
And re this comment:
“You make the false assumption that the biosphere is incapable of absorbing that one CO2 molecule out of every 34+ that are emitted.”
We know that the biosphere is incapable of aborbing that extra molecule. Observation has demonstrated that the CO2 fraction in the atmosphere is increasing. Thus, absorption is not occurring.
Julienne says:
July 20, 2010 at 2:24 pm
On July 17th 1990 shows (all extents in million sq-km):
central Arctic = 2.03215
Beaufort = 0.800339
Chukchi = 0.563294
E. Siberian = 0.906707
Laptev = 0.637717
Kara = 0.637934
In 2010, the values are:
central Arctic = 1.99408
Beaufort = 0.694839
Chukchi = 0.589379
E. Siberian = 1.30243
Laptev = 0.669927
Kara = 0.604491
~~~~~
That’s some interesting data you just posted Julienne, totaling and taking the difference says 2010 on July 17th has 277,000 km3 more sea ice extent than in 1990 on the same day, interesting.
If today’s arctic has more ice that twenty years ago, what is the real discussion?