by Steven Goddard,
We have been watching temperatures and webcam images closely at the NOAA North Pole drifting weather station this year. Except for a few days in early July, they have looked like the series of images below – snow, ice and clouds. No open leads and little or no surface meltwater.
June 15 (NOAA 2) more images follow…
June 22 (NOAA 2)
July 6 (NOAA 1) Small ponds covered with ice
July 24 (NOAA 2) Small ponds covered with ice
August 2 (NOAA 2) Small ponds covered with ice
This correlates closely with the record cold temperatures this summer north of 80N
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
It hasn’t always been like this. John Daly did an excellent writeup on this topic a few years back. During May of 1987, Navy subs arrived at the North Pole and found lots of open water.
In 1959, the USS Skate surfaced at the North Pole, and reported this :
“the Skate found open water both in the summer and following winter. We surfaced near the North Pole in the winter through thin ice less than 2 feet thick.”
By contrast, the New York Times published this misinformation in 2000 :
The thick ice that has for ages covered the Arctic Ocean at the pole has turned to water, recent visitors there reported yesterday. At least for the time being, an ice-free patch of ocean about a mile wide has opened at the very top of the world, something that has presumably never before been seen by humans and is more evidence that global warming may be real and already affecting climate. The last time scientists can be certain the pole was awash in water was more than 50 million years ago.
This is in sharp contrast to the NYT prediction of an imminent ice free Arctic in 1969
Expert Says Arctic Ocean Will Soon Be an Open Sea”
Almost 200 years ago, the President of the Royal Society wrote this to the admiralty :
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.
(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
The image below from September 1, 1996 shows what summer ice typically looks like in the Arctic. Lots of open water between the ice. That is why places like NSIDC report extent as regions which have more than 15% ice concentration. The location below would be considered ice covered by NSIDC.
Sadly, UIUC seems to have “lost” their archive of ice concentration maps. It has been offline for two weeks now, so we can’t use that valuable resource for the time being. I wonder what’s up with that?
Oops! This link appears to be broken.
Two years ago, this news was famously reported :
(CNN) — The North Pole may be briefly ice-free by September as global warming melts away Arctic sea ice, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. “We kind of have an informal betting pool going around in our center and that betting pool is ‘does the North Pole melt out this summer?’ and it may well,” said the center’s senior research scientist, Mark Serreze. It’s a 50-50 bet that the thin Arctic sea ice, which was frozen in autumn, will completely melt away at the geographic North Pole, Serreze said. The ice retreated to a record level in September when the Northwest Passage, the sea route through the Arctic Ocean, opened briefly for the first time in recorded history. “What we’ve seen through the past few decades is the Arctic sea ice cover is becoming thinner and thinner as the system warms up,” Serreze said….Serreze said it’s “just another indicator of the disappearing Arctic sea ice cover” but that it is happening so soon is “just astounding to me.”
Later in the summer, Mark Serreze reported on WUWT
The north pole issue: Back in June, there was some coverage about the possibility of the North Pole being ice free by the end of this summer. This was based on recognition that the area around the north pole was covered by firstyear ice that tends to be rather thin. Thin ice is the most vulnerable to melting our in summer. I gave it a 50/50 chance. Looks like I’ll lose my own bet and Santa Claus will be safe for another year. There was indeed some coverage a some years back of an open north pole (and I was interviewed). This opening, however, was pretty clearly causes by unusual winds breaking up this ice, and not from melting out.
And yet, in 1959 the US Navy reported ice less than two feet thick at the North Pole. North Pole ice is probably 2-3 times as thick now as it was a half century ago. The Navy knows ice and ice thickness – that is why I trust Navy PIPS over academic models like PIOMAS.
Our global warming friends seem to believe that the Arctic data set began with satellites in 1978, and they appear to have difficulty interpreting even that time period in an objective fashion. Satellites (unfortunately) came on line right at the start a period of warming, after 30 years of cooling temperatures and dire forecasts of an impending ice age.
Video of rising temperatures during the satellite era.
All you skeptics, deniers, shame on you all. You killers of our future children and their future. How dare you? We’ll come and get you and put you all in prison for showing that the planet is cooling and that the north pole is not melting to oblivion. You will all lose your jobs, your books will be burnt and your websites bombed and you will all burn at the stake. You will all……brrrrrrr, its getting cold, I think I will go and buy those scarf and fur coat and mittens and snow shoes………….hey Lisa………., Lisaaaaaaaaaaa, switch on that damned heater ………Lisaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaachoooooooooo
>>>I was watching a drama on BBC1 tonight called The Deep
>>>about a polar submarine adventure. As the ship headed to
>>>the north pole through the melting ice the dialogue was as
>>>follows, “This will all be gone in 10 to 15 years”. That’s the
>>>good old BBC for you
Raymond Baxter will be turning in his grave.
.
Telboy says:
August 3, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Sorry biddyb, I didn’t mean to repeat your post at 2.55 ; I hadn’t read it before I jumped in. And you’re right, he did say ten to fifteen years and not twenty as I misquoted.
No offence taken! Wasn’t it a load of rubbish? I do wish these writers wouldn’t treat one like a complete imbecile. It wasn’t just that remark, it was the blindingly obvious signposting of so many “facts” that make you think that you are being given a very obvious lesson. It’s what I call Lowest Common Denominator television; all these Beeb superior types have to teach the proles…………Must be my age.
Dave Springer says:
August 3, 2010 at 5:13 pm
ABC went so far as to air forged documents about Bush’s National Guard service for Pete’s sake and if it wasn’t for bloggers discovering the forgery Dan Rather would be a liberal hero for it.
While I know there’s not a dimes worth of difference between the big 3, just a minor correction for the sake of accuracy: Dan Rather and his fake memos was not from ABC but CBS.
According to recent press photos from unnamed high government and DOD officials, currently the Arctic Ocean is experienceing a slight warming. A photo of the North Pole taken by a Navy Pilot 2 minutes ago gives a little indication of the extreme conditions at the Top Of the World –
http://www.thereheis.com/nucleus3.22/media/gallery/20071221-US%20Air%20Force%20Carrier.jpg
PS: We understand the President is currently on board and braving the elements.
Steven Goddard wrote:
“Julienne
Over the last couple of weeks a pretty substantial spread has opened up between NSIDC graphs and other data sources. Both JAXA and DMI have 2010 more than 500,000 km2 ahead of 2007, and NSIDC has it at about half that. DMI is actually nearly 1,000,000 km2 ahead of 2007.”
Okay, I’m going to try to raise an issue once again that I attempted to bring up a few weeks ago but received no replies. The AMSR-E data started in 2002 (intermittently) and we have it for 2003-present on a daily basis. Here’s my question (issue): Is it possible that there is a discontinuity in the extent data at 2002 due to a shift in sourcing of the data. In other words, were we using something other than AMSR-E data prior to 2003 and AMSR-E data thereafter? (By the way, I don’t even know what AMSR-E is, other than that a number is generated each day, supposedly a measure of arctic ice.)
The reason I ask is that if one imagines a discontinuity to be possible, and then assumes that discontinuity introduced a downward bias of about 600 to 800,000 km3 in the data, then the recent numbers do not look quite so interesting. That is, the slope of the 1979-2010 ice extent graph would be much flatter and we would probably not be having this discussion at all.
The reason I raise the issue again is due to this huge discrepancy that Steve raises between various interpretations of the PRESENT data. Three parties looking at the same data disagreeing by nearly 1,000,000 km3 even though they are looking at exactly the same ice cap on the same day with intense interest? As people are so fond of saying in here: WUWT? Until I saw this discussion, I was just curious. Now, however, knowing how politicized the data interpretation has become in this field, I ask again: IS IT POSSIBLE that the introduction of the AMSR-E data introduced a fairly significant discontinuity to the data stream?
I’m no scientist, but I follow the politics of this issue, and there is no question in my mind that, given the opportunity, someone in the AGW camp would attempt such corruption if it would help sell their story. So, all I’m asking is, Is it possible? If it’s not, fine, but if it is, then it just might have happened, with or without intention.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 4, 2010 at 12:18 am
From: R. Gates on August 3, 2010 at 9:34 pm
(…) Current trajectory of melt with a good solid 4-5 weeks left will put 2010 right below 2008 and above 2007. Of course anything can happen, but we’ve got lots of warmer than normal SST’s in the Arctic right now, and all that lower concentration ice is now surrounded by warmer than normal water, and I would think the majority of the melt now is being driven almost entirely by water temps. created partially by the rapid melt earlier in the season.
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/color_sst_NPS_ophi0.png
Currently most of the Arctic basin is minus 1.5°C and colder, with most of what’s left running 0 to -1.5°C. Offhand I don’t see those temps driving much melt of that mostly freshwater sea ice.
_______
Hmmm…well then we have a huge mystery on our hands, as Steve would show us melt ponds that are freezing over and you claim the water is too cold to melt ice, and yet the ice is melting like ice cream on a Miami sidewalk. Must be the polar bears with lasers mounted on their heads…
One question – in 1987, what happened to the polar bears? I’m assuming that if there was open water at the North Pole, then there must have been a lot of open water north and south of 80N with very little in the way of ice floes that seals need to breed. Did masses of the predatory polar bear populations starve to death? While the seal population was exploding?
Inquiring minds want to know.
R. Gates writes:
“I simply choose to watch the heartbeat of the canary for now, seeing if the coal dust is indeed causing irregular heart beats.”
I agreed with everything you said until you wrote this. There is no scientific reason to say that arctic ice is the heartbeat of the canary. In fact, the information in this forum should provide plenty of reason to believe that arctic ice is not the heartbeat or anything like the heartbeat. The reports of diaries and the photos on this forum provide overwhelming evidence that the Arctic has often experienced what alarmists call catastrophic loss of ice. The point is that the Arctic’s natural variation swings wider than the alarmists can imagine. They suffer from a failure of imagination and denial of factual reports on natural variation.
Rod Everson says:
August 4, 2010 at 6:48 am
Okay, I’m going to try to raise an issue once again that I attempted to bring up a few weeks ago but received no replies. The AMSR-E data started in 2002 (intermittently) and we have it for 2003-present on a daily basis. Here’s my question (issue): Is it possible that there is a discontinuity in the extent data at 2002 due to a shift in sourcing of the data. In other words, were we using something other than AMSR-E data prior to 2003 and AMSR-E data thereafter? (By the way, I don’t even know what AMSR-E is, other than that a number is generated each day, supposedly a measure of arctic ice.)
It’s a reasonable question, but this is the sort of thing that teams of scientists spend years making sure they get right – calibrating new instruments to old ones to make sure they were both measuring the same thing correctly.
AMSR-E stands for Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer – EOS (Earth Observing System). It is one of six sensors aboard the Aqua satellite, designed and provided by JAXA (the Japanese NASA), contracted out to Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. It is based on a similar AMSR designed for a JAXA satellite, “Midori II” (ADEOS-II) – this satellite had a problem that terminated the mission on Halloween, 2003.
None of the thread-article writers on WUWT are going to criticize the AMSR-E sensor or its data, since the AMSR-E Science Team Leader is Dr. Roy Spencer, frequent WUWT contributor and well-known skeptic entrepreneur:
http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftp_docs/amsr-e.pdf
I ask again: IS IT POSSIBLE that the introduction of the AMSR-E data introduced a fairly significant discontinuity to the data stream?
I’m no scientist, but I follow the politics of this issue, and there is no question in my mind that, given the opportunity, someone in the AGW camp would attempt such corruption if it would help sell their story.
Again, since this is a Dr. Roy Spencer sensor project, nobody at WUWT will suggest that AMSR-E data is “corrupted” such that it introduces serious discontinuities in the Arctic sea ice data.
They will look elsewhere to place any “blame”, such as sea ice area/extent algorithms that incorrectly use the perfectly good AMSR-E data to show that the Arctic ice is not recovering as expected…
Neman J says:
August 3, 2010 at 1:38 pm
A simmilar thought occurred to me the other day as news of a small rubber raft being floated between large chunks of ice into the McClure Straight to find the 150 year old wreckage of the HMS Investigator from 1854 that had been sent to find the remains of the Franklin Expedition from 1845. Just how did those big ships get around by sail on all that never before melted ice at the top of the world? Considering the Investigator did indeed sail the NW passage and the Franklin Expedition got at least part way I’d say there is pretty good eveidnce of melt in the mid 1800′s.
Blasting powder and rowboats to tow the ships helped. If you read the accounts of those journeys you’ll get a different impression of what it was like then as opposed to now.
Scroll down to see the pictures of the USS Skate at the North Pole in April, 1959. Also postal covers issued to commemorate the occasion of the first submarine surfacing at the NP.
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08578.htm
Theo Goodwin says:
August 4, 2010 at 8:01 am
R. Gates writes:
“I simply choose to watch the heartbeat of the canary for now, seeing if the coal dust is indeed causing irregular heart beats.”
I agreed with everything you said until you wrote this. There is no scientific reason to say that arctic ice is the heartbeat of the canary. In fact, the information in this forum should provide plenty of reason to believe that arctic ice is not the heartbeat or anything like the heartbeat. The reports of diaries and the photos on this forum provide overwhelming evidence that the Arctic has often experienced what alarmists call catastrophic loss of ice. The point is that the Arctic’s natural variation swings wider than the alarmists can imagine. They suffer from a failure of imagination and denial of factual reports on natural variation.
____________
I think the graph I linked to, of the historic data of sea ice anomaly could indeed be likened to the ‘heartbeat’ of the Arctic– this is a very appropriate analogy. I was not likening it to the heartbeat of the planet, and I think my earlier post made that quite clear.
Of course the the Arctic ice goes through cycles of growing and shrinking beyond the seasonal changes, but nothing there is no historic record of an ice free Arctic in recorded human history, and if this happens, it will be unique. Based on current longer term trends, this will happen while most of those frequenting WUWT are still alive. AGW skeptics would like to think this downward trend is going to suddenly reverse. I’d like them to explain by what mechanism or natural cycle they make this claim. Polar amplification of AGW has been predicted for decades, and now that it really is starting to show itself as a phenomenon, the AGW skeptics seem to want to try to find reasons why it isn’t significant. From a scientific perspective, these leaves me quite skeptical of their skepticism. Pictures of submarines coming up in open water at a single point in the Arctic during a year (1987) that the actual valid data shows we had higher than average sea ice over the Arctic seems like the same kind of rediculous attempt to disprove AGW when weather conditions combine to bring snow to Florida.
Jerry from Boston says:
August 4, 2010 at 7:20 am
One question – in 1987, what happened to the polar bears? I’m assuming that if there was open water at the North Pole, then there must have been a lot of open water north and south of 80N
__________
Valid satellite data shows that 1987 was generally a higher than average year for Arctic sea ice. Open water at the N. Pole (which can happen nearly anywhere in the Arctic at anytime) is not indicative of the condition of the ice over the entire Arctic. Furthermore, the thickest ice in the Arctic is NOT traditionally right at the N. Pole, but tends to build up further south, along the N. Canadian and Greenland coast as it piles up from the normal rotation of the ice pack.
“discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations”
From a time when change meant opportunity, not fear.
Why’d ya chop off the end of the quote from the Skate where he says “We came up through a very large opening in 1958 that was 1/2 mile long and 200 yards wide. The wind came up and closed the opening within 2 hours. ” ?
And are you suggesting the 1996 pic is what the geographic pole ice typically looks like in summer? vis “The image below from September 1, 1996 shows what summer ice typically looks like in the Arctic. Lots of open water between the ice.”
And, “Almost 200 years ago”, how did the polar expeditions fare, when they tried to actually explore the arctic sea areas? How correct was “the President of the Royal Society (when he) wrote this to the admiralty”?
Anyway, great to see the anecdotal accounts on a science site.
A photo of the USS Skate at the North Pole in March 1959 can be found here.
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08578.htm I was only 9 years old at the time but recall that it was a well publicized acheivement.
@Rod Everson
Even if there were some kind of difference / miscalibration between the older satellite data (SSM / I) and the newer one (AMSR-E), this isn’t responsible for the downward trend. NSIDC stuck with using SSM / I even after AMSR-E was launched, precisely in order to ensure continuity of methodology. Sites like the IJIS and Bremen sites that present AMSR-E data don’t go back beyond 2002 (when it was launched).
To my knowledge, the *only* site that mixes SSM / I and AMSR-E data is the low-resolution Cryosphere Today comparison maps: i.e. the ones that have just gone offline that Steve keeps complaining about. A couple of years ago, this particular archive transitioned to using AMSR-E data after having historically used SSM / I data. Given that the low-resolution images are intended for visualisation only and not for actual analysis, I’m not sure they cross-calibrated the two series quite as intensively as they could have. Certainly the data after the changeover seem to show higher concentrations than the data from before the changeover – Steve keeps using this to claim that 2010 has higher concentration than 1980. Given that it is *only* this archive that seems to show this, and this is the only archive that mixes data from the two satellites, I would treat that claim with considerable caution.
Further note: the ROOS site 9http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic)
Further note: the ROOS site (http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic) shows the same rapid decline in the last couple of weeks that can be seen at NSIDC, and which is at odds with Bremen / IJIS data. This perhaps indicates it’s a difference between SSM / I data and AMSR-E data, since both ROOS and NSIDC use SSM / I. Different cloud / melt pond / open water regimes may affect the two sensors differently?
[I accidentally posted a partial version of this post a minute or two ago: could a moderator please delete it?]
Peter Ellis
What is really bothering me about the NSIDC graph is that it doesn’t correlate well with their maps – which show 2010 well ahead of 2007.
From: R. Gates on August 4, 2010 at 7:12 am
Strangely enough, I had assumed reasonable people would be able to notice the dates on the North Pole cam shots above, realize the map I linked to shows current temperatures, and conclude while it may have been warm enough for melt previously that does not seem to be the case currently. Guess I was wrong, probably about whom here qualifies as “reasonable people.”
Note how those ponds haven’t changed much, if anything they’ve gotten icier looking and smaller.
Oh, I didn’t know Miami was getting that cold. Maybe we’ll get to see Horatio Caine in a winter jacket soon.
BTW, the canaries in the coal mines were for detecting buildups of invisible dangerous gases, primarily methane as that could lead to an explosion, not for detecting coal dust. Of course, this could be a case where you consider concentrations of dangerous gases to be a suitable proxy for coal dust concentrations…
😉
If you trim the URL, you can see the archive index ( http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ ), but hitting a link goes 404.
Interesting, and of questionable utility.
kadaka:
“Note how those ponds haven’t changed much, if anything they’ve gotten icier looking and smaller.”
Heck, those look too big to be ponds. I’d call ’em puddles.
Why is it bad if the ice melts? When you dig a hole in this region you dig up animal remains everywhere. “The current tunnel was excavated just north of Fairbanks, Alaska in the early 1960’s by the U.S. Bureau of Mines. The official reason for construction was to evaluate mining and construction methods in frozen soils. But the dig exposed a treasure of geological formations, animal fossils and ancient plant remains. Bones and teeth of bison, woolly mammoth and horse from 14,000 years ago protrude from the tunnel wall, literally frozen in place and time.” (from National Geographic) Why is what was not a disaster 14.000 years ago al of a sudden the end of the world? Guess the animals disappeared because of lack of food which a warmer world provided.