It is still quite cold in the Arctic, with below normal air temperatures and sea surface temperatures surrounding the ice pack between around 2-4°C. Much of that has to do with meltwater. I’ve added this image to our new WUWT Sea Ice Page tonight.
Source: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/satellite/index.uk.php
But looking at another product from the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) there’s an indication of even colder temperatures, now hitting the freezing line in the middle of the Arctic summer.
While this most certainly could be a temporary blip, it seems the temperature in the arctic above 80°N as calculated by DMI has steadily declined and hit 0°C a bit early (just past midway) in the Arctic melt season.
See the graph below:
Source: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Here’s the 3x magnified view of the top of the graph:
Much of the melt season so far has been below the green “normal climate” line. While it is just another data point (i.e. weather) , it is a curious and interesting development worth watching. The past few days melt has been accelerating, a bit, but with a dropping Arctic core temperature it would seem to suggest perhaps this is limited to some traditional melt zones for this time of year, such as near the Chukchi sea.
Look for more in WUWT Sea Ice News #15 this weekend.
h/t to WUWT reader phlogiston
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Robert says:
July 20, 2010 at 4:46 am
Your temperature guage does not register anomalies.
Water does not necessarily freeze at an anomaly of -2C, but it does at a temperature of 0C.
The timing of maritime activity in Eastern and Northern waters of Canada is effected by sea ice so they monitor the conditions very carefully. They maintain very detailed charts including values for multi-year ice and thickness.
Latest sea ice conditions are here:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/glaces-ice/default.asp?lang=En&n=D32C361E-1
Here’s a July 1, 2010 look at the Northwest Passage:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/glaces-ice/default.asp?lang=En&n=0417829C-1&wsdoc=101D083D-C46A-4627-BF5A-CED5B8CE08E8
Here’s a look at July ice break-up and extrusion into the Nares Strait. The compression is pretty amazing:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/glaces-ice/default.asp?lang=En&n=D32C361E-1&wsdoc=C06B577B-1BC0-4C77-8F5D-5CAD406EEBB2
Path of the Petermann Ice Island as its carried down the coast toward the Grand Banks oil platforms and shipping lanes:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/glaces-ice/default.asp?lang=En&n=D32C361E-1&wsdoc=781FADE2-8FE7-44F4-9A2B-A9222ECB9E8D
Isn’t this just wiggle watching?
Seeing a climate-sceptic blog (weather is not climate, repeat after me) give prominence to an ‘event’ having a timescale of 1 week (yes, so far) seems a little, well, desperate.
Dermot
(AGW faith devotee index: zero)
REPLY: Not desparate, just interesting. Many people have been mentioning it in comments.
And I will add this. As a former TV meteorologist, I spent every day for 25 years “wiggle watching” (weather watching) to the delight and fascination of thousands of people. Just because I run a blog that is now the most visited climate related blog in the world, does not mean that I’ll give up weather watching. Please note the masthead.
Don’t underestimate the weather watchers. They have a better feel for wiggles than most scientists at the top of the climate food chain. Sites like Weather Underground and weather.com live for the “wiggles”.
– Anthony
I wish summer would start here.
We’ve had maybe 5 days so far this year that you could call “summery”, and in all cases it cooled off quickly in the evening.
Maybe if you’re in one of those red-tinged zones currently experiencing warmth it’s easy to believe in the warming/melting boogie man, but here in the blue-tinged zone it doesn’t seem very probable.
It’s freaking COLD… and a cooling world is NOT good for anyone or anything.
Tenuc says:
July 20, 2010 at 12:27 am
Interesting, in 2007 there was also a sudden dip in temperature around the same time as this one. WUWT?
The Arctic is a bunch of ice floating in salt water. That can easily get below 0C if the ice is melting fast. That seems to be the case right now.
Note, if it was sunny, that would overwhelm the cooling effect of the melting. Unfortunately, the weather data for latitudes >80 is sparse. See:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/latest/noaa2.jpg
(The camera lens is frosted/snowed over but you can tell it’s not sunny.)
http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm
(click on Alert and read a detailed weather report — partly cloudy as of 1200Z)
Robert says:
July 20, 2010 at 4:46 am
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/satellite/index.uk.php
Switch it to anomalies and suddenly goddard’s analysis doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t you show the anomaly map instead of the absolute temperature map. Is it because one shows warmth in the arctic and the other gives the impression of cooling?
So Robert, what’s the difference beetwen your map and the one shown at the start of this thread?
Icarus says:
July 20, 2010 at 4:46 am
https://sites.google.com/site/europa62/climatechange/rss-with-various-trendlines
If you do a 22 years average on a 30 years record, you will clearly not see much variation. Do a 22 years average on the Greenland temp record from ice core and you will see a lot of variations in the last 1000 years.
Icarus says: July 20, 2010 at 4:17 am
“There is no reasonable doubt that this anomalous and dramatic recent warming is due to human activity since the industrial revolution.”
First of all, you are misinformed, but anyway;
We can pretend that you understand that the ice comes and goes, sometimes it covers much of the land in Northern Hemisphere with km thick ice and sometimes there is no ice at all.
If (as you believe) human activity melts all the ice in then next 5 years (8,005 year total) instead of the next 200 years (8,200 year total), what does it matter, really, what does it change, what affect would it have in 5 years that it would not have in 200 years. It is going to happen no matter what.
What difference would it make? None. The only people really worried about the Arctic ice are the people who think that the Earth should be an unchanging environment, or that it has not happened before, or have placed bets on it.
The vast majority of species alive today have lived through an ice free arctic, including humans like you and the polar bears.
Yeah, I’ve been watching this too the last few days.
Spent your whole life in Chico, Anthony? I lived 20 years in Sacramento, but another 20 split between Pennsylvania and Minnesota. Turns out ice will still slowly disappear when it is below freezing, particularly on sunny days. Tho I grant you it happens slower. . .
Russian scientists are saying that arctic ice is melting unusually fast according to Bloomberg. No details in this article, however.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-20/arctic-ice-melting-fast-may-reach-all-time-low-this-year-russia-says.html
Heat is motion, look for and watch the wiggles.
Stephen Schneider wrote on the coming Ice Age in the 70’s. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nprY2jSI0Ds&feature=player_embedded
“While this most certainly could be a temporary blip, it seems the temperature in the arctic above 80°N as calculated by DMI has steadily declined and hit 0°C a bit early (just past midway) in the Arctic melt season.”
____________________________________________________________
Actually we are not just past the half way point to the Arctic melt season.
If we use the actual dates of the maxima and minima of sea ice extent, based on JAXA data (2003-2009 inclusive, then we are through to 70% of the melt season.
70% != 50% (and some loose change)
REPLY: I’m referring to the green line in the DMI plot. Where it exceeds 0°C. You missed that. – Anthony
Stephen H. Schneider dies at 65; Stanford expert on climate change
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-me-stephen-schneider-20100720,0,254147.story
Our deepest sympathy and sincere condolences to his wife, son, daughter and the rest of the Schneider family.
REPLY:In case you did not see it, I reported this yesterday, see story on the main page of WUWT, scroll down – Anthony
Freddie,
And where’s the media with 175 dead from COLD?
If we were just past midway through the Arctic melt season, sea ice extent area-wise, than;
14.41E6 km^2 – 2*(14.41E6 km^2 – 7.78E6 km^2) = 1.15E6 km^2 (a new Arctic sea ice minima record by almost a factor of four)
w00t!
Jimbo,
This link is more up to date:
http://pgosselin.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/will-2010-stay-hot-and-joe-bastardi-return-to-1970s-cold/
(I hope Anthony and Joe Bastardi get along)
Joe’s been predicting record Arctic sea ice for next winter and next year. But he said this year’s ice will first reach below last year’s level.
Icarus says:
July 20, 2010 at 4:17 am
If only normal and natural factors were involved (i.e. no human influence), we would expect the continuation of a long and gentle decline in temperatures, but this is not what we see –
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/images/Fig.final_11.jpg
Ah, yes, Mann-made warming. Amusing that you Warmists still cling to that.
Icarus ignores the sun at his own peril.
The body count in the Southern hemisphere is piling up. The winter down there is just started.
175 people killed in South America cold spell
http://en.trend.az/regions/world/ocountries/1723309.html
So, in summary, whether we use date-wise or extent-wise, we are at least 70% through the melt season, since these are the metrics we’ve all been using, sea ice extent maxima/minima, we’re talking actual observational data on sea ice extent, not some spurious “I decide subjectively when the halfway point is.”
REPLY: We aren’t talking about sea ice extent here, we are talking about temperature above the melting point. – Anthony
For Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and other northwest states, this could be a very, very cold but very dry winter. The year the cold froze my sewer system (which is very hard to do if you think about it), there was hardly any snow. Remember, cold also means dry with drought knocking on the door if the Pacific stays cold through the spring and summer.
NOAA seems to sense the onset of global cooling:
http://www.glgroup.com/News/NOAA-Global-Temperature-Data-Reveals-Both-Warming-and-Cooling-Trends-49535.html
They report:
“The sea ice data needs to be placed in the context that the data set is limited, only going back to 1979. Nonetheless, it presents a problem for weather forecasters and climatologists because the Antarctic sea ice coverage indicates a cooling of ocean temperatures and a reversal in the climate trend. Large portions of the South Pacific and South Atlantic reflect this reversal, too, as sea surface temperatures dip below normal.
It won’t be known until November if the cooling trend will also begin in the Northern Hemisphere.”
Considering the weather pattern lately, it would seem we are getting colder air off Greenland being brought in across the North Pole. With lower pressure in the Basin, and higher pressure over Greenland (air flows from high to low pressure) that would be one of the possible causes for the well below normal temps. And the forecast trend for the rest of the month is for the same.
REPLY: I’m referring to the green line in the DMI plot. Where it exceeds 0°C. You missed that. – Anthony
__________________________________________________________
I’m not aware of anyone using temperature data north od 80N as a metric for the Arctic melt season, you are the first, and only person, to do so AFAIK.
Melt season has always been defined as from maxima-to-minima of the Arctic sea ice extent.
Also, unless you have an 100% accurate weather crystal ball, there is nothing stopping that red line from exceeding 0C at a later (future) date. If that happens will you revise your “just past midway” remark? I doubt it.
REPLY: Uh junior, this post was about the temperature plot, not extent. In fact the article doesn’t even contain the word “extent”. You are arguing extent. That’s fine if the post was about extent. The green DMI climate normal line goes above zero, stays above zero, then goes below zero. Above zero = melt, and lots of people scream about “melt” when in fact much of the melt is caused by wind patterns pushing ice out of the Arctic, where it does melt.
Argue semantics and misdirections all you want, but that’s what I was referring to. Yes, you can define melt season via extent also. I’m really not interested in what you think I should have said, when the post is clearly about temperature, not extent. – Anthony