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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Pamela Gray says:
July 20, 2010 at 12:28 pm
R. Gates, is it the case that the data source has used the same methods to draw its graphs since way back when? Are they recording temps around the edges of the ice only or are they using other methods such as buoy’s? If so, then I would have to say that the source is reporting a true difference in temperature, since ice melts every year and according to your argument, should make the edges cold every year. However it appears that there have been times when the edge temps have been warmer and times when it has been colder. So the ice has melted like this in times past in the record. Therefore the current temp is not much different, nor is it unprecedented, nor is it very anomalous, or indicative of a warming trend.
The fact that temps are colder right now seems normal to me and would not tell me much about an AGW trend. It might tell me something about current conditions. And as you would agree, current conditions cannot inform us much about AGW or cooling.
___________
I completely agree that current weather conditions don’t tell us much about long term warming or cooling. The only interest to me related to AGW is anomalies over the longer term, as they inform us that something different is happening. This year’s melt is right in line with the longer term lower Arctic Sea ice downward trend. It is the most interesting (to me) of the frontline indicators the AGW might be happening. High or low Arctic SST’s, whether or not we have melt ponds, when Pt. Barrow short-fast ice breaks up, etc. are just weather curiousities– interesting in their own right and great for weather triva, but it is the longer term trend (10+ years) that means the most when if comes to looking at AGW.
“REPLY: In questions like this, it is always useful to visit the front page of WUWT first and use the amazing tool called the scrollbar. – Anthony”
I checked the front page of WUWT. I only saw an article referring to Schneider as having “jumped the shark”. Surely, I thought, no one would be a big enough cad to report his death under that headline. So I didn’t even read it.
REPLY: The article appeared the day before, and then when I learned of his death, I made the announcement there. Catch 22 whether I left it as it was or amended it as I did. – Anthony
Once more, look at this very accurate map of Arctic SST anomalies, and tell me that you see a “premature chill” going on:
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/color_anomaly_NPS_ophi0.png
Don’t think so…
REPLY: But see Gates, that’s the thing, the headline is not about your plot, but is about the DMI graph, which was curious to me. I don’t write posts for consensus, I don’t write posts in a way that can’t possibly offend warmists, I write them as I see them, and a number of commenters saw the same thing before I made a post out of it.
Be as upset as you wish. If I paid attention to such complaints, I’d never get anything done. You’ve made your point, you don’t like the headline, move on to something else. – Anthony
NOTE: Using Photoshop CS5 64-bit I have determined that the last red pixel, which is ABOVE the blue line, does indeed represent July 19, 2010.
Therefore the 19th is still above the blue line.
The 19th is the date shown on the graph.
Upper right; x =61 (pixel) = zero (Julian date), y = 13 (pixel)
Lower left; x = 579 (pixel) = 365 (Julian date), y = 347 (pixel)
Last red pixel; x = 345 (pixel) = 200 (Julian date), y = 63 (pixel)
Blue line; y = 64 (pixel)
REPLY: Which is what I said in the first place, that it was “hitting the freeze (blue) line”, You are the one that put words in my mouth insisting that I said I said it was crossing on the right. Still FAIL on your part. – Anthony
REPLY: Gosh Junior, you are stubborn. The point is that you can’t tell if the red line is under the blue line right now. So if it has crossed on the right side, at present, nobody can tell until it steps down 1 pixel. The same would be true on the left side, as I pointed out. Your fluffed up argument is moot anyway, since I never used the word “cross” in the original article. This is what I actually said in the article, emphasis mine:
…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.
I only used the word “cross” in a comment to describe the left hand side of the graph, when the temp in fact crossed the 273.15K line early in the season, to show you that you can’t see the red line crossing under the blue. You are the one insisting I said “crossed” on the right side, you are the one putting words in my mouth, and you are the one who is clearly in the wrong on this issue that you morphed from your original complaint about melt season > extent > pixel crossings. Still FAIL on your part, but entertaining FAIL. What next, argue about colors? Heh. – Anthony
____________________________________________________________
See my post above with the irrefutable and objective pixel counts.
The red linn is NOT “hitting” the blue line as of July 19, 2010, the red line is one pixel ABOVE the blue line on July 18, 2010.
Like I stated from the beginning, you jumped the gun, no getting around that one.
I do find it greatly entertaining and highly amusing reading WUWT, also known as Bizzaro World (left is right, up is down, + is -, you get the drill).
I’d use your FAIL word here, but it seems as if you, and only you, are the perfect example of that word.
REPLY: Oh puhlezze Junior. Not content with the fact that you’ve been called out on continually morphing the argument, and making a claim about something I never said in the original article, now you are down to arguing over the word “hitting”? Really? OK let’s call this “Junior’s morphed argument number 4”.
Hitting means “to come into contact with”. Will you now argue that? The blue line and red line pixels are not in contact? OK if “hitting” offends you I’ll let you pick any of these words: grazes, contacts, touches, meets, adjoins, reaches.
At least I have the courage to put my name to all this, while you whine from the safe comfort of anonymity, calling names like “bizzaro world”. Yeah, real class there, Junior. Have a look at XKCD and realize what you’ve been doing here. Still FAIL, and hilariously so. – Anthony
EFS_Junior says:
July 20, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Wow just wow. IMO you are one disturbed individual.
REPLY: Which is what I said in the first place, that it was “hitting the freeze (blue) line”, You are the one that put words in my mouth insisting that I said I said it was crossing on the right. Still FAIL on your part. – Anthony
__________________________________________________________
Perfect example of my previous post.
The RED LINE is ABOVE the BLUE line. By one FULL pixel to be EXACT.
Which happens to be a differential of +0.13C.
So in the end you are the one who has failed.
See ya, don’t want to be ya.
REPLY: So, you are saying the red and blue pixels don’t touch? Clearly and indisputably they are. My point in the original article was that they touched or “hit” each other, you keep morphing the argument to suit your purpose, which started out on an entirely different subject. You lost all the previous ones. This one is still FAIL Junior. – Anthony
“ABOVE the blue line on July 18, 2010”
next to last post should be;
“ABOVE the blue line on July 19, 2010.”
typo, my bad.
REPLY: Oh puhlezze Junior. Not content with the fact that you’ve been called out on continually morphing the argument, and making a claim about something I never said in the original article, now you are down to arguing over the word “hitting”? Really? OK let’s call this “Junior’s morphed argument number 4″.
Hitting means “to come into contact with”. Will you now argue that? The blue line and red line pixels are not in contact? OK if “hitting” offends you I’ll let you pick any of these words: grazes, contacts, touches, meets, adjoins, reaches.
At least I have the courage to put my name to all this, while you whine from the safe comfort of anonymity, calling names like “bizzaro world”. Yeah, real class there, Junior. Have a look at XKCD and realize what you’ve been doing here. Still FAIL, and hilariously so. – Anthony
____________________________________________________________
ROTFLMFAO!
They are one pixel APART. EXACTLY one pixel apart.
If they were zero pixels apart there would be no meaning to the y-axis. as they would be the EXACT same temperature.
They are NOT the EXACT same temperature, the red line is 0.13C ABOVE the blue line.
The red line is not zero, not on July 19, 2010 at least, the date of said graph.
But you know what?
It’s been fun proving you 100% WRONG!
REPLY: Rrrrrright these red and blue pixels aren’t touching?
That was my original point in the article, I never made any claims of numbers, I simply said “…now hitting the freezing line…”, based on the red and blue pixels touching. Unless you are prepared to say the pixels do not touch, you have no argument. And how much time have you wasted over that argument. ? – Like I said, you are amazingly stubborn, and hilariously confused over semantics.
Oh and I should add, that without knowing what the precision and resolution of the model is, you can’t really get into a numerical argument about 0.13C That may be below the resolution of the model output. – Anthony
At least I have the courage to put my name to all this, while you whine from the safe comfort of anonymity, calling names like “bizzaro world”. Yeah, real class there, Junior. Have a look at XKCD and realize what you’ve been doing here. Still FAIL, and hilariously so. – Anthony
____________________________________________________________
My real name is Everett Francis Sargent, Jr. you want a street address also?
REPLY: Nope, but welcome to the light, Frank. That’s the first classy thing you have done. – Anthony
[snip – you can attack the argument, but I won’t have you attack me personally, really low Frank. Feel free to resubmit without the personal attack- Anthony]
Simple question Frank: Do the red and blue pixels touch? Yes or No?
Getting a bit flustered I see.
You need to stop repeating yourself, as it theds to make you look rather …….
To close this case permanently and forevermore.
The graph is shown with one pixel thick lines.
The red pixel is one FULL pixel above the blue pixel.
Therefore if the line was 0.1 pixels wide, the red line and the blue line would not be “hitting” or “touching” as someone here has tried to claim, using the ad hominem repeatedly as their main line of attack, an all too obvious logical fallacy.
The width of the line has nothing to do with the actual values, which are definitely apart from each other, otherwise the red pixel would be beneath the blue pixel, clearly that is NOT the case.
The red pixel is 0.13C above the blue pixel, centerline-to-centerline distance is EXACTLY one pixel.
The width of the line is arbitrary, they are not “touching” or “hitting” one another in the actual engineering sense.
Real units which are measurable in the engineering sense.
Real units that some people refuse to see, but they are right there for anyone truly qualified.
REPLY See response below, which was here, but now placed there for correct timeline order. – Anthony
Simple question Frank: Do the red and blue pixels touch? Yes or No?
See previous post, the width of the line, obscures your ability to see that they are in fact different values.
There can be absolutely no dispute on that one single salient FACT!
The lines ARE different, by one pixel, do you doubt that the two lines are one pixel APART?
Clearly you do.
And just as clearly, you are WRONG!
REPLY: I’m not arguing values. I said “hitting the freezing line”. Touching, etc. Why can’t you simply answer the question Frank. Do the red and blue pixels touch, yes or no? – Anthony
Cassandra King says:
July 20, 2010 at 9:04 am
Its interesting to see both how both alarmists and sceptics have been led into a blind alley of sorts, I watch with fascination the graphs every day but they mean little on their own other than short term variation based on short term weather patterns. Our esteeemed resident alarmist R Gates for example was himself trapped by a short term heavy melt at the start of the melt season and extrapolated from that a record low minimum stating confidently that it would be “one heck of a melt season”
__________
“Resident Alarmist”….so anyone believing the AGW might actually be occurring is now an “alarmist”– is that right? How very sad for you that you see the world in such extreme black and white terms. It is not possible to believe in AGW and not be an alarmist about it? Or believe it is occurring but it will not necessarily be a catastrophe? Hmmm… well at least you have me as an “esteemed” resident alarmist, if I must be classified as an alarmist simply because I believe that AGW is likely occurring.
But you next point– about my very early forecast of 4.5 million sq. km. for the summer minimum. I made this during the much trumpeted (by skeptics) March bump up. As certain skeptics were giddy with glee over the short-lived March “bump up” in sea ice, I had made my projection of a 4.5 million sq. km. summer minimum. I did not base my forecast on the heavy sea ice melt we saw in May and June, as my forecast preceded it and I knew the March bump up was truly just weather (as are most, if not all of Steve’s sea ice updates) and not a change in any longer term Arctic sea ice dynamics. My forecast is well documented as such here on WUWT.
In regard to the rest of the season, I applauded Steve many times for getting the slowdown in extent correct. But I disagree with him on the cause, and I still am keeping with my 4.5 million sq. km. minimum this year. Nothing has happened to change my projection, and the current placement of the sea ice extent curve, from JAXA et. al, shows that we are exactly where I’ve suggested we’ll end up at the end of the season– less than 2008 or 2009, but more than 2007.
I’ve also already given a long-term forecast that we’ll hit 2.5 million sq. km. in minimum sea ice extent some year before the ice begins to refreeze in the fall of 2015. If we get a good sized El Nino in 2012-2013 on top of the increasing total solar irradiance as we approach the solar max in 2013, we could even see lower than 2.5 million– but I’ll stick with 2.5 for now.
REPLY: Rrrrrright these red and blue pixels aren’t touching?
That was my original point in the article, I never made any claims of numbers, I simply said “…now hitting the freezing line…”, based on the red and blue pixels touching. Unless you are prepared to say the pixels do not touch, you have no argument. And how much time have you wasted over that argument. ? – Like I said, you are amazingly stubborn, and hilariously confused over semantics.
Oh and I should add, that without knowing what the precision and resolution of the model is, you can’t really get into a numerical argument about 0.13C That may be below the resolution of the model output. – Anthony
___________________________________________________________
You posted the misleading article, it’s something in sociology called “intellectual ownership” whereby the author of said statements/blog posts invests there intellect in said arguments, and refuses to ever give up, even once they’ve clearly shown to be completely wrong.
Your posts are an excellent example of this sociological process called “intellectual ownership” you own it so that you must defend it at all costs. Again your posts clearly show and bear this out.
I post BECAUSE you post. Not the other way around.
You are wasting your time, but you are not wasting my time.
As to the resolution issue, it’s there, otherwise all their values would be postes at a courser granularity.
In fact, since I’ve run numerical models on supercomputers at the USACE ERDC, they could show 15-digits of precision, because that is the accuracy needed for numerical stability.
REPLY:
“You posted the misleading article, it’s something in sociology called “intellectual ownership” whereby the author of said statements/blog posts invests there intellect in said arguments, and refuses to ever give up, even once they’ve clearly shown to be completely wrong.”
But Frank, you started out arguing on an entirely different subject, and you kept morphing it to a different argument when you lost the first ones. Look at my other post reply. – Anthony
REPLY: I’m not arguing values. I said “hitting the freezing line”. Touching, etc. Why can’t you simply answer the question Frank. Do the red and blue pixels touch, yes or no? – Anthony
___________________________________________________________
The lines are 0.13C apart, that is the resolution of said graphic, the width of the line is arbitrary, it has no bearing on the difference and spacing of the two lines, which happens to be EXACTLY one pixel.
End of discussion.
REPLY:Still can’t answer the question directly can you? Yes or No will do nicely. Comments passed in the ether, see above. And it’s my blog, so I get to choose when a discussion has ended, not you. Sorry. – Anthony
Icarus says:
July 20, 2010 at 4:17 am
Andrew30: 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
There is no reasonable doubt that this anomalous and dramatic recent warming is due to human activity since the industrial revolution.
______________________________________________________
YES BUT
Trenberth said in an e-mail
♫♫♫ “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” ♫♫♫
So Hansen made the warming up and up
“Will NASA GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) join the UK Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in the Climategate mess? Could be!
The UK CRU version of Climategate centered around whether the 1990’s were warmer than any time in the past 1000 years. The US GISS version could be about whether 1998 was warmer than 1934!
It seems the temperature readings were adjusted six times after analysis in July 1999 indicated that the temperature anomaly for 1934 was nearly 60% higher than for 1998. See the above graphic for how GISS adjusted 1934 down and 1998 up until 1998 was warmer than 1934 (the January 2007 analysis) or at least virtually indistinguishable (the March and August 2007 analyses). click GRAPH showing 6 adjustments in 1934 vs 1998 temperatures
Some comments from Frank, EFS_Junior passed in the ether, they are out of order above. So I’m moving here:
Replying to EFS_Junior @ur momisugly
July 20, 2010 at 4:12 pm (Edit)
REPLY See the image below Frank. Red and Blue pixels clearly touch, that’s indisputable. That’s where my “…hitting the freezing line…” came from.
Frank posted a must nastier version of this swipe earlier, which I snipped. He claimed I have no expertise.
Frank, do you see the computer graphics on the right sidebar? Sat/radar/widget etc?. I make these, with software I custom design. I work in pixels everyday, I make rendering systems, software, content, and display systems specifically about computer graphics for weather. I’d venture that you have no expertise in how to take raw weather data and make it into images like these, just like I’m not an expert in dynamic flow. But I’m not going to insult you because your chosen field is different than mine.
In retrospect, I think this argument boils down to what fields we work in. In my field of computer graphics for weather, two adjacent pixels touch each other as shown in the image.
In Franks engineering work, a difference of 0.13 (in any unit) could mean the difference between success and failure depending on what that unit and situation is. He thinks numerically, assigning a zero thickness to a pixel whereas I have to remember and deal with pixel thickness in all my programming, or graphic lines or objects don’t join or antialias correctly. The result is FAIL when viewed. In my world, line pixels have a physical size, depending on the rendering resolution, in Frank’s world they do not, they are points with no size or line thickness. When I have two weather images I combine, rendered at different resolutions, I have to match pixel sizes, and pixel aspect ratios to get things to line up correctly.
So I’ll give him his 0.13 if he’ll concede that in my world, which has a different set of definitions than his for the work I do, that the red and blue pixels “touch”. Which was my original point when I said “…hitting the freezing line…” Frank took that to be numerical, but I was talking graphical.
If you don’t want to say the pixels touch, and thus one line graphically “hits, contacts, etc. to the other” then I see no point in continuing. – Anthony
Gail …. when Steve MacIntyre showed Hansen that these small changes were introducing a bias … he redid it from the start, congratulated Steve, and had to defend his accepting Corrections from Outsiders ever since (HE says it means his OPPONENTS verify his Final Result & criticizes “Europe” for hiding Methods, source Code, refusing to hear Outsiders, never admitting any Error, etc. – – Naturally, when he said all this on Letterman recently — and Denounced Cap & Trade too – – so Naturally, Limbaugh crowed about it, & then said “But I still think he is in Cahoots with the University of East Anglia [Frauders]” Does not anyone recognize SCIENCE when they see it ? It’s all about giving the Victory to those Theories — NOT theorists – – who are actually RIGHT. The sad thing is his own Center — GISS — puts out World Maps using the Euro Data because they have none other for Surface Stations. Again, on Letterman, Hansen HISSED: “tenths of a degree, TENTHS OF A DEGREE !” … which kind of shows he trusts the Satellite data over the GISS maps of only Surface Stations, for Global anyway.
Please try to remember this is COMPLICATED, and make your deductions SPECIFIC.
So what if they changed something 8 or 800 times, if they Corrected it based on an ENEMY’s objection ? Hansen is Honest. Or Hansen PLUS MacIntyre, TOGETHER, are … not Perfect, but as true as REAL Science can get. Trust GISS for USA temps & forget it for Global, it’s Polluted by the Euro Frauds — trust the Satellites instead. Hansen does.
REPLY: Hansen trusts the satellites? News to me. Why does he need GISS then that only uses surface data?- Anthony
If I can squeeze in a word or two about different images….
Ric Werme says:
July 20, 2010 at 5:24 am
…if you want to use….
REPLY: … Is there a chance you could convert the compare.png to a JPEG? The PNG file is so large that it will really hose people on dialup. (Yes we have readers on dialup still).
– Anthony
Can do, and done. Cryosphere used to create .png files for the cryo_latest files, I was a bit surprised they didn’t create .jpgs for the compare files. Maybe they figured each would be seen about once.
At any rate – my files are now at:
http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/cryo_latest.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/cryo_compare.jpg
I’d still like to upload them to WUWT per Email.
Mr Pawelczck & R. Gates – – WOW to your Graphs & Charts finds ! !
But … can you give any guide to the symbols ? especially Cloud Cover :
http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/winfos/synNNWWarctis.gif
PS: apparently the Arctic’s Resident Meterologist had it all figured out – –
the SEA is warm – – from the El Nino,
the AIR is COLD — from the La Nina
BOTH happen at the same time (PPS this is what made the 2007 Melt so Big)
(the pokey water flows at 3 mph all the way round Africa &/or the Horn so it will STILL be arriving for Months after the Air has already turned Chilly – – get it ? )
http://www.eh2r.com
If this had happened sooner in the year I’d be getting a Visa for Brazil.
OK … we can discuss temperature graphs ad infinitum. But previously there have been discussions that the temperature is really not the main driver of ice melt but wind and ocean currents probably are.
And if you go back and look at the DMI temperature archives, you will see that the temperatures during the melt season are all over the place and from my limited review, they have little or no correlation to ice extent or volume in the arctic. But as we have seen, the wind and currents sure do.
And I bet the PDO and NAO have a lot more long term impact than short and highly variable melt seasons.
Weather (sic) the red and blue pixels touch is most likely irrelevant. Just weather – see below.
Wayne
PS – Some of my friends had to be helicopter out of the mountains near Jasper, Alberta on July 14 due to heavy snow trapping a bunch of European climbers in the mountains – see also http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/storm_watch_stories3&stormfile=jaspersnow_13_07_2010
Anthony,
EFS didn’t have anything of substance to say. His petty argument brought out the true colors of global warming for all to see clearly, i.e, they have nothing of substance, so they distract people to try to keep them from looking at the real science. And Arctic ice is not doing what they couldn’t stop themselves from saying a month ago it was going to do. They are feeling deep defeat now and being sore losers. Those graphs are killing them!! So what does one of them do? Try to make up arguments about lines in graphs being on top or behind another line
WHILE NEVER, NOT ONCE EVER, TALKING ABOUT WHAT THAT GRAPH IS SHOWING.
They don’t want people looking at what is happening in Argentina. They don’t want anyone to know about the below normal cold in Australia. The Southern Hemisphere, about 1/2 of the world, is colder than normal. And Antarctic ice is growing at an unprecedented pace (for the satellite record). Not a peep from them. But heat in a small portion of the world, the Northeast US and Southeast Canada, well, they couldn’t magnify that enough.
In June Arctic ice suited their global warming so everything was great for them—and they let us know it. Now their hopes are destroyed in July and they only have a losers limp. They have no substance. Their smoke screen can’t work and they know it.
Winter will be cold. Poll numbers will be worse for them. Elections in November will hurt them even more because Americans want the left out of Washington. Global warmers don’t a very easy road ahead of them.
They can always join the winning side though. 😉
Charles Wilson says:
July 20, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Gail …. when Steve MacIntyre showed Hansen that these small changes were introducing a bias … he redid it from the start,
Huh, ya, you’re right: he’s been redoing things. Hey, would you know Charles, that correction, 1998/1934—-is 1934 still warmer than 1998 in James Hansen’s record?