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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To those few who are trying to hurt Anthony over Stephen Schneider’s death:
Anthony said he was saddened to hear about Stephen Schneider’s death. And it was sad news. Anthony offered his condolences. And he shut down the QOTW thread on Stephen Schneider. It is indecent to try to make Anthony look bad now because he had a thread about Steven Schneider. Hind site is 20/20. And in this case hind site is cruel. Please remember that Stephen Schneider had a vital role in the blacklist. That blacklist put some scientists into a bad light. If Anthony had intentions of harming Stephen Schneider in reaction to the blacklist he would not have offered his condolences. Please show some decency and stop these cruel snipings.
Anthony, your patience is truly astounding. There are people commenting in this thread who I would cheerfully strangle if my arms would reach, and all I did was read it. I bow in your general direction, sir.
REPLY: Thanks, it’s hard to teach the dead, so please lay off the idea of strangling somebody.
I prefer live interaction in the hope that I can reach people. – Anthony
I’m a lurker, but I figure I need about 3 to 6 months of lurking before I can begin to intelligently comment and also figure out the players. But, I must say, it was painfully obvious that Francis (I won’t call him Frank. Think of the movie Stripes. Sgt. Hulka: “Lighten up Francis!”) was simply out to waste the blog’s and Anthony’s time. Anthony showed remarkable restraint, even offering an olive branch, to agree to disagree over their differences; and Anthony turned this teaching opportunity: “How to handle a warmist troll who’s trying to waste your time and turn it into a teaching exercise.”
Splendid work Anthony! Keep it up. I couldn’t do it, but you are a great credit to freedom fighters everywhere! Good on ‘ya!
REPLY: Thanks, may you find a free “Hulka-Burger” in your future. – Anthony
Can we have “EFS_Junior” put on hold until he’s at least a Senior? I know high school is a hard time, but sheesh, a dozen or so posts about the semantics of ONE PIXEL?
I’d rather talk about what it means in terms of physics to have the arctic temps at zero now (and I don’t care if it’s -0.00001 or +0.00001 or which pixel of the two is ‘on top’!)
Is it because of air mass shift, winds, currents, ice melt absorbing heat via latent heat of fusion, or cloud cover blocking sun?
There’s a world of more interesting stuff to look at here…
(Maybe R. Gates could take him ‘under wing’ and teach him how to use the daily talking points and scripted arguments… at least it would be more interesting than pixel semantics…)
And I really need to take meditation lessons from Anthony. I’d have busted a gusset long ago…
Red pixels are Climate
Blue pixels are Weather
Empty pixels are Red.
Look at summer 2007. It was cold there too, in a way that resembles this year. In fact, during the phase of fastest melt it was coldest. Though never below the freezing point of sweet water, of course (sea-ice is predominantly sweet water).
Charles Wilson says:
July 20, 2010 at 5:49 pm
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Weather_map
Regards
Mr Anthony Watts,
Mr Everett Francis Sargent, Jr.
et al.
Gentlemen,
Mr Sargent looked at the graph from mathematical point of view where two lines are only abstract objects. When one line “hits” (touches) the other it means the two variables represented by the two lines have equal values at the “hitting point”. If there was a “gap” in values for a given time the two line were unable to touch or hit themselves. So says mathematics.
Mr Watts, probably, looked at the graph from meteo-maps point of view, where front lines are “hitting” one another on constant basis. There mathematical precision does not matter. Alas, Mr Watts described the DMI graph which was (is) mathematical representation of real physical variables and used unprecise “common” language.
From what I said, Mr Everett Francis Sargent, Jr. was right.
My best regards
The Gates and the Juniors et al on here are reduced to semantics, which shows they are confused by the contradictory weather data flooding their belief systems. The not to subtle shift of scientific data that is now flooding the climate community with alternate possibilities, that are based on real science, must give rise in these people to a feeling of trepidation, and an unease in their rabid certainty.
Advice would be hope that the arctic does not melt this year, Southern and tropic oceans have plunged in sub surface temps and the surface is below normal. The only warm water is impinging on the arctic ice, such that it will also plunge in temp. Our immediate future with the sun on holidays is bloody cold! Get over the CAGW it ain’t happening.
wayne Job says:
July 21, 2010 at 4:24 am
The only warm water is impinging on the arctic ice, such that it will also plunge in temp. Our immediate future with the sun on holidays is bloody cold! Get over the CAGW it ain’t happening.
So how come Niña-year AND sunspotminimumyear 2007 still made it to the top 10% of warmest years AND that melt in the Arctic Sea, please? Wouldn’t we have expected 2007 to arrive in the 10% coldest?
No better proof for GW than 2007!
RR Kampen says:
July 21, 2010 at 6:13 am
wayne Job says:
July 21, 2010 at 4:24 am
…So how come Niña-year AND sunspot minimum year 2007 still made it to the top 10% of warmest years AND that melt in the Arctic Sea, please? Wouldn’t we have expected 2007 to arrive in the 10% coldest?
No better proof for GW than 2007!
________________________________________________________
Your viewpoint is way too narrow It takes a heck of a lot longer to turn an ocean liner than it does a sport car. You expect something with a heat capacity as large as the earth’s to change on a dime? If climate was that sensitive we would be flipping in an out of Ice Ages every time we turned around.
NASA solar scientist, Dr. Hathaway stated the last five solar cycles had been amongst the strongest in recorded history, that is over 50 years of strong solar cycles.
The influence on air temperatures by Multidecadal Ocean Oscillations is finally acknowledged in a 2008 study: “Oceanic Influences on Recent Continental Warming”, by Compo, G.P., and P.D. Sardeshmukh, (Climate Diagnostics Center, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, and Physical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), Climate Dynamics, 2008) click
“Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land. Atmospheric model simulations of the last half-century with prescribed observed ocean temperature changes, but without prescribed GHG changes, account for most of the land warming. … Several recent studies suggest that the observed SST variability may be misrepresented in the coupled models used in preparing the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, with substantial errors on interannual and decadal scales. There is a hint of an underestimation of simulated decadal SST variability even in the published IPCC Report.”
Or as some here have repeatedly said the oceans act as a giant heat capacitor. You have fifty years of active sun dumping energy into the oceans, it is going to take time for it to dissipate. (Think hot water bottle) and while you are think about this statement from a peer reviewed paper:
Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado states: “Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) not, vert, similar11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes.”
and this peer reviewed paper were the title says it all: Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception
Do you REALLY want the present warming to go away? Be careful what you wish for you might not like the result.
Bob from the UK says July 20, 10:11am
This is the really interesting story at the moment. The NOAA are talking about a reversal in the climate trend.
If Arctic recovery continues this fall of which there is a reasonable chance, then we will have the interesting situation of ice gain at both poles simultaneously, rather than the reciprocity that is supposed to be the norm. Interesting times indeed.
Gail Combs says:
July 21, 2010 at 9:17 am
Gail, fabulous response. The carbon dioxide freaks are either unable or unwilling to get it through their thick skulls that: 1) the sun’s radiation increases or decreases and 2) the oceans react to this increase or decrease in radiation with about a 10-year lag. And CO2 has next to nothing to do with it! I LOVE OCCAM’s RAZOR! I admit that it’s really not that simple and that clouds and volcanoes and cosmic rays and planet alignments and even solar system positioning in the galaxy or stray galactical objects probably have influences. But this piss-ant Civil Engineer, with a fabulous liberal arts foundation (although I paid little attention) intuits that Old Sol and Neptune are in cahoots on our near term climate future.
Amino:
last I heard, 1934 was fairly secure, but a year in the 1920s switches back & forth with 1998 for #2 USA temp.
They argue about every single weather station AND its history for the last 100 years.
(when did they install an air conditioner exhaust next to it, change the Parking lot to Asphault = black, so it HEATS, etc.)
Part of it is the USA/Hansen still includes the “urban Heat Island” adjustment that the IPCC & its clones have Eliminated.
It was proposed last year that we Stop, but a Dr. Roy Spencer study refutes that & suggests an EXPANSION of the effect to include downgrading FARM temps.
He claims there may be NO temp rise in Non-farm/non-city areas GLOBALLY. See hi8s site http://www.drroyspencer.com
Howdy HO!
Have you seen the DMI graph lately?
Well if you haven’t, let’s recap the time series from July 17, 2010 through July 21, 2010 inclusive, pixel-by-pixel, shall we?
7/17/2010,+0.54C
7/18/2010,+0.34C
7/19/2010,+0.13C
7/20/2010,+0.07C
7/21/2010,+0.27C
7/21/2010,+0.27C
You will notice that all temperatures were ABOVE 0.00C, from 7/17/2010 through 7/21/2010 inclusive.
Buy you say, but wait Mr. Sargent, of those three pixels, next to, but not equal to, the blue line, perhaps there is actually one or more additional companion pixels lying under the blue line?
Yes, you would be most correct, there could be one on more pixels under the blue line.
Thus, I’ve even included that possibility and assigned it to July 20, 2010, which would be the average of the two verticle pixels, or +0.07C.
As anyone can plainly see, I was right all along, from beginning to end, inclusive.
I rest my case.
Have a nice day.
Thank you , Gail Combs those are my sentiments exactly, one can only hope that those mired in the religosity of CAGW can come to terms with reality.