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.
R. Gates writes:
“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.”
Now, you are talking. You have my attention. Show me the physical hypotheses which, when combined with statements of initial conditions, imply predictions about future states of the Arctic [Polar amplification of AGW]. If you can produce them, you will have produced the first set of physical hypotheses that imply predictions of climate. In addition, you will have produced the first ever prediction made by a climate scientist. Mann could make retrodictions only. I await with baited breath!!!
NSIDC has their monthly update out:
High-resolution (250-meter) visible imagery from the NASA Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor vividly shows the loss of the old, thick ice. A chunk of old ice has broken away from the main pack and come to rest along the north coast of Alaska, east of Point Barrow, where it has begun to melt in the warm shallow shelf waters. While cloud cover obscures some areas, it is clear that the old ice floe has broken up into many smaller floes. Whether this old ice will completely melt out by the end of summer will depend to some extent on weather conditions. However, smaller floes melt more easily than consolidated ice. This behavior is becoming more typical of the ice pack as the ice thins.
Barrow! Barrow played an essential in previous analyses here. What does this event at Barrow Point tell us about the rest of the Arctic? And why do we have to hear important news such as this somewhere else?
LucVC, might we worth caring since we now have nearly 7 billion people on the planet so that large shifts in climate have the potential to affect the lives of billions of people. It’s about caring about each other. Changing the energy balance of the Arctic changes atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns, which means changes in the distribution of water on the planet.
NSIDC is quoted as follows:
“Whether this old ice will completely melt out by the end of summer will depend to some extent on weather conditions. However, smaller floes melt more easily than consolidated ice. This behavior is becoming more typical of the ice pack as the ice thins.”
Obviously, this was written by a very nervous summer intern. Contrary to the intern, I would not say that whether the ice melts “will depend to some extent on weather conditions.” Can’t we say with absolute certainly that it depends entirely on weather conditions? Or maybe climate science has discovered that melting of ice is independent of temperature, wind, sunlight, and natural stuff like that. After all, looking at weather does take one away from the computer.
What I find most puzzling about all of this is the way people can ignore that there are both documentary & archaeological evidence stream to say that Greenland was producing grain from about 800ad to 1200ad. Those areas are now under permafrost and we’re expected to believe that somehow this is a 400 year localised warming period!
Were planetary dynamics somehow suspended for 400 years?
Sorry, I don’t buy it!
DaveE.
As for our 25% sceptic, you don’t have a sceptical or enquiring bone in your body. Sorry, that’s just the way I see it!
DaveE.
David A. Evans says:
“As for our 25% sceptic, you don’t have a sceptical or enquiring bone in your body.”
When Mr Gates is inevitably wrong, he thinks he is absolved by his fake contention that he is “25% skeptic”.
We all know it’s just an alarmist tactic. Either someone is a true scientific skeptic, or they’re a True Believer. There is no middle ground. 25/75 is just a fudge factor.
Theo Goodwin says:
August 4, 2010 at 1:51 pm
R. Gates writes:
“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.”
Now, you are talking. You have my attention. Show me the physical hypotheses which, when combined with statements of initial conditions, imply predictions about future states of the Arctic [Polar amplification of AGW]. If you can produce them, you will have produced the first set of physical hypotheses that imply predictions of climate. In addition, you will have produced the first ever prediction made by a climate scientist. Mann could make retrodictions only. I await with baited breath!!!
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Theo, start here:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/oce/pubs/03pubs_files/Holland-ClimDyn.pdf
There are pages and pages of well documented expectations for the effects of AGW. But I maintain 25% skepticsm anyway, just to make sure that I’m open to some new discovery about some previously unknown longer term cycle that could be causing the 20 and 21st century warming trend, other than the 40% in CO2 we’ve seen since the 1700’s.
Smokey says:
August 4, 2010 at 7:25 pm
David A. Evans says:
“As for our 25% sceptic, you don’t have a sceptical or enquiring bone in your body.”
When Mr Gates is inevitably wrong, he thinks he is absolved by his fake contention that he is “25% skeptic”.
We all know it’s just an alarmist tactic. Either someone is a true scientific skeptic, or they’re a True Believer. There is no middle ground. 25/75 is just a fudge factor
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Only a True Believer could think there is no middle ground as they can’t see it. Those who live in the middle ground know it well. As for my Inquiring mind…I dare say there probably not one area of science that I’m not completely fascinated by.
But you and I have tussled before on this 75/25 point Smokey, and I know it rattles the cage of your life to think that someone could believe that the AGW hypothesisis is likely correct without being an “alarmist”, or whatever other negative phrase that the supposedly “reasonable” skeptics want to place on those like me who can find room for both belief and skepticism in our minds.
R. Gates writes:
“Theo, start here:”
Do you really have no idea how offensive it is for you to assign me homework? What school of arrogance are you from? If you understand the hypotheses, or some of them, and can state them in your own words, please do so. If not, then why are you trumpeting your “predictions?” A sad truth about the blogosphere debate on AGW is that Warmista just love to assign homework. To me, what that proves is that they do not understand what they are saying, they have no response to make when asked for their hypotheses, and they hope that they can evade the matter by giving a homework assignment. I will say it one more time: the only physical hypotheses that AGW proponents have produced are found in Mann’s hockey stick, but those hypotheses are very low-level, are good for retrodiction only, and employ Mann’s invented statistical methods. Everything else coming from AGW proponents can be deduced from the characteristics of the CO2 molecule, known in the 19th century, and the theory of radiation. None of that involves even one reasonably confirmed physical hypothesis about actual effects of various CO2 concentratins on Earth’s atmosphere. Climate science is in its infancy.
Theo, you have said what I have wanted to say, and probably have, but not with nearly as much elegant phrasing. Successful scientific debate technique excludes the use of “talking down to one’s opponent”.
Warm air invading the Arctic can be explained by atmospheric global circulation modeling (IE short and long term weather events and oscillations) arising from natural causes. Warm water invading the Arctic can be explained by oceanic global circulation modeling arising from natural causes. That CO2 can have a measurable (IE outside the noise) effect on these two circulation components of our Earth’s environment requires several assumptions. One of those assumptions is especially tenuous. It is oft repeated by AGW’ers that the historical increases in temperatures found in proxies prior to the industrial age were of course natural but are now anthropogenic. I can’t begin to tell you how unscientific that statement is. The Arctic Dipole is one such argument that often gets this unscientific treatment. It has occurred in the past from natural causes but now it is related to anthropogenic CO2. An assumption is not a scientific argument, let alone a hypothesis and certainly not a theory. The assumption must fall back on natural causes till proven that the natural causes no longer exist. No one I know of has managed to prove that natural weather pattern variations no longer exists.
Theo Goodwin says:
August 5, 2010 at 8:06 am
R. Gates writes:
“Theo, start here:”
Do you really have no idea how offensive it is for you to assign me homework? What school of arrogance are you from? If you understand the hypotheses, or some of them, and can state them in your own words, please do so. If not, then why are you trumpeting your “predictions?” A sad truth about the blogosphere debate on AGW is that Warmista just love to assign homework. To me, what that proves is that they do not understand what they are saying, they have no response to make when asked for their hypotheses, and they hope that they can evade the matter by giving a homework assignment. I will say it one more time: the only physical hypotheses that AGW proponents have produced are found in Mann’s hockey stick, but those hypotheses are very low-level, are good for retrodiction only, and employ Mann’s invented statistical methods. Everything else coming from AGW proponents can be deduced from the characteristics of the CO2 molecule, known in the 19th century, and the theory of radiation. None of that involves even one reasonably confirmed physical hypothesis about actual effects of various CO2 concentratins on Earth’s atmosphere. Climate science is in its infancy.
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Theo,
My apologies for any offense taken by you. I find such statements as there is not “even one reasonably confirmed physical hypothesis about actual effects of various CO2 concentratins on Earth’s atmosphere” as cause to make me wonder if we even inhabit the same reality. How can you assert this when we’ve seen several confirmed physical hypotheses, from Arctic sea ice loss and permafrost melt, to stratospheric cooling? What exactly have I missed here? All these were predicted and have certainly been reasonably confirmed. Perhaps the point we differ on is the level of what is “reasonably confirmed”. You certainly don’t mean 100% iron clad linkage, as of course that will never happen. Or perhaps the difference is the linkage to CO2?
I never mean to insult, and links are only meant to provide clarity of my position and background. For example, if I showed you a picture of a submarine coming up in open Arctic water as proof for or against anything, that would tell you one thing about me, versus giving you links to scholarly research.
Excerpt from: R. Gates on August 5, 2010 at 10:41 am
Those “confirmed physical hypotheses” are the results of a warming trend, for which multiple natural causes have been proposed.
Then it is presumed this is anthropogenic since mankind has been active lately, for which several mechanisms of anthropogenic warming have been proposed.
Then it is presumed that CO2 is to blame as the atmospheric concentrations have continued to rise while the historical temperature records were showing warming.
Thus through the layers CO2 was selectively picked as the root cause, Global Climate Models were constructed that only work when CO2 concentrations are figured in, CO2 is confirmed as being the root cause as the GCM’s constructed only work when CO2 concentrations are figured in, and evidence of a warming trend is cited as further confirmation of CO2 being the root cause.
But Professor Phil Jones recently agreed there has been no statistically-significant warming from 1995 to the present. He also indicated that from January 2002 to the present the temperature trend has been negative although he did not find it to be statistically significant. Meanwhile the atmospheric CO2 concentrations have continued to rise, indicating that increasing CO2 concentrations may not be directly linked to temperature, while certain people, including 25% skeptics, continue to assert a direct relationship between CO2 concentrations and evidence of a warming trend because the GCM’s as constructed need to factor in CO2 concentrations to work.
Yup, truly an exemplary display of the scientific method at work there.
😉
Reply to kadaka (KD Knoebel)
August 5, 2010 at 12:43 pm:
Very clear and concise response. I’t helps me get a better idea of the heart of the issues that skeptics truly have with the hypothesis of CO2 induced AGW.
Thanks.
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