by Steve Goddard
In April, I pointed out that PIOMAS forecasts for the summer didn’t make much sense.
The computer model is predicting that 3+ year old ice (which is probably in excess of 10 feet thick) is going to melt by early August. That seems rather far fetched.
It is now early August. Let us see how they did. They expected most of the ice to be gone in the Beaufort Sea by now, and much of the remaining ice to be very thin.
The most recent NSIDC newsletter included this map, showing that the thick multi-year ice is still present in the Beaufort Sea. This is in stark contrast to the PIOMAS prediction of thin ice in that region.
The image below shows in red where PIOMAS mispredicted the ice edge vs. NSIDC August 6 map. Green indicates areas where they overestimated the amount of ice.
This discrepancy will get worse through the remainder of the month. PIOMAS extent/thickness predictions are way off the mark, and their volume calculations are much too low.
As I forecast last week, DMI now shows 2010 ice extent highest since 2006.
Ice thickness remains between 2009 and 2006, just as PIPS data indicated it should back in May.
JAXA shows that divergence from 2007 continues steadily, and is now in excess of 700,000 km².
The JAXA area graph show that ice melt has dropped off dramatically.
NSIDC maps show little ice loss so far this month. There has been nearly as much gain (green) as loss (red.)
NCEP forecasts generally below normal temperatures for the next two weeks in the Arctic.
DMI shows that summer is just about done north of 80N, and has been the coldest on record (for that dataset starting in 1958). Average temperatures have fallen below freezing there.
Conclusion : There will probably be minimal ice loss during August. The minimum is likely to be the highest since 2006, and possibly higher than 2005. So far, my forecast of 5.5 million km² is looking very conservative. Ice extent is higher than I predicted for early August.
Meanwhile, down south. Antarctica continues gaining ice at a record pace. NSIDC showed it the highest on record for July.
Bremen shows it likely headed for a new record.
In Greenland, we are bombarded with stories about “losing Manhattan sized chunks of ice.” The BBC made it one of their lead stories yesterday. Yet the ice isn’t lost and the Greenland ice sheet has been having an exceptionally cold summer, as seen in the NOAA anomaly animation below.
Perhaps “some scientists” might want to actually check the Greenland temperature data before talking to the press? Under any circumstances, how would “abnormally warm” temperatures cause a 700 foot thick block of ice to fracture? The concept doesn’t make much sense from from an engineering point of view. A few months of (imagined) warm temperatures might cause a little surface melt, but the thermal conductivity of ice is much too low to alter the temperature and material strength of ice more than a few feet below the surface. I had this same discussion with Ted Scambos at NSIDC a few years ago about Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves.
The whole story is a complete ruse.
We are bombarded with misinformation about the state of polar ice. People’s brains have been programmed to believe that the last few ppm of CO2 have made a huge difference in the behaviour of the ice, and that belief makes their thought process irrational. People will find what they expect to find. It is human nature.
Has anyone charted the DMI summer arctic temperature for the entire data period? We continually hear that the arctic is warming fast but the DMI data doesn’t seem to support that conclusion, at least not during the summer melt season from what I can tell.
I think it would be interesting to compare the arctic winter temperature trend to the summer temperature trend based on the DMI data.
Rod Everson says:
August 8, 2010 at 10:40 am
“Can someone please reconcile these two graphs, one of temps above 80 degrees north from DMI showing below average temps currently and the other from NOAA”
That one is easy. As has been discussed at length:
– DMI is doing its best to display the temperatures over the area north of 80, grabbing all the data it can including land station reports, balloon sonds, floating buoys and other sources – which can and will vary from day to day and year to year. Hence the data cannot be assembled into a long time series with clear rules and clearly understood replicability.
– NOAA (and more importantly GISS) use only data sources with long time series (either directly, or indirectly through clearly-explained splicing). Hence more interpolation and extrapolation. The objective is a long-term data series with stable rules and explanation.
Two different approaches, with two different objectives and sets of priorities. It is not surprising the result is two different interpretations.
But for my vote, just one person’s opinion, I put more credence on the more data-intensive approach in understanding the situation in a particular season.
R. Gates: August 8, 2010 at 11:14 am
I personally would think no “recovery” of Arctic sea ice extent could even be seen for several years, during which time the summer minimum would have to consistently rise into the 6, 7 and 8 million km. range. Anyway, that would be the scientific standard for a recovery, but I understand there may be other standards that have nothing to do with science.
So, the scientific standard of a recovery is seeing the same amount of ice in September that we normally don’t see until December.
Got it, chief.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 8, 2010 at 12:10 pm
stevengoddard said August 8, 2010 at 11:38 am
R. Gates
Six weeks of wind driven compaction in 2007 was enough to declare the imminent end of the Arctic. Doesn’t three years of recovery count for anything?
Maybe he doesn’t like the wording. Let’s just say the Arctic Ice Death Spiral is “in remission” and wait until the Arctic Ocean has been “spiral free” for five years. Sound good to you? 😉
___________________
If 2008 and 2009 and now 2010 represent a “recovery” I’m glad you don’t manage my finanaces. The 2007 minimum was not an isolated event, but occurred after many years of a slow decline of summer sea ice. 2007 was simply an acceleration of that trend based on weather extremes. 2008 and 2009 were only marginally above the 2007 low, and this year will be pretty much the same. I’ve stated more than once that it my contention that the flattening in the rise in global temps we saw in the later half of this decade, and the flattening of the fall in Arctic Sea ice are both related to the long and deep solar minimum as well as the La Nina of 2008-2009. That solar minimum is well passed and total solar irradiance is increasing as we head toward solar max in 2013. Also, I don’t think the current La Nina will be as strong as the previoius. In short, the behavior of the sea ice prior two and after 2007 would only indicate that it was on the extreme of what should have been expected that summer (based on the winds) and likely a harbinger of things to come.
I believe Anthony covered DMI in a topic thread. DMI uses data points, lots of them, from real thermometers.
GISS uses precious few data points in the Arctic, and relies instead on interpolated NAN’s (IRAF speak) for thier anomalymometer data.
savethesharks says:
August 8, 2010 at 12:26 pm
R. Gates says:
Anyway, it is these longer term trends that I look at.
===========================================
I’m all about looking at longer-term trends, like on scales of hundreds and even thousands of years.
Seen from those high altitudes, the chicken-little “science” of CAGW, becomes meaningless and lost.
_______
If a person is really looking at things from a longer term perspective, then you would recogize the 40% rise in CO2 in a matter of a few hundred years is an extreme event, and have questions about how sensitive the climate might be to this change…and so I do.
rbateman says:
August 8, 2010 at 10:56 am
“Your links are trying to compare DMI 80N temps with SST anomalies.”
Yes, but if I understand how anomaly is used here, it’s quite easy to see that the daily DMI anomaly has been running negative all through the summer months. Yet Gates keeps putting up SST displays showing positive anomalies during the same period. I don’t understand, though his explanation is that the DMI “data” is just the output from a model. Well, except for each individual data point, EVERYTHING that is represented as a temperature of a region has to come from a model of some sort. That implies human intervention, along with all the potential biases that come along with such intervention, and the SST “data” would be no different. Clearly, two different “models” are yielding diametrically opposed results. Which is right, or at least closest to truth? I don’t know. But I do know that when one person says temps are warmer than average and another says the temps of the same region at the same time are cooler than average, one of them is apparently wrong. At a minimum it says that one should be wary of both presentations until more information is available.
R. Gates
My compliments – Hurrah for upholding the scientific method.
The amount of tap dancing that R.Gates does is incredible, but all too believable. No predictions, but plenty of explanations.
Much like the original anti-General Relativity “Scientists”. They could explain everything, but they had absolutely no predictions, no theories which admitted falsification – their theories were literally untestable.
The theories of CAGW have been tested over the last 22 years (making Hansen’s 1988 predictions the baseline). None of them have passed muster.
Now, all of the predictions are once again – 20, 30, 50 years out. But of course, we can’t wait to see if these are valid, we must act now. They don’t want to wait for their monetary compensation – Big Gov must give them grants NOW! Alms for the poor, alms for the poor!
Meanwhile BP, GE, and other “Green” organizations are aligning themselves to make money from Cap and Tax, and other “green energy” revenue sources. This makes me positively ill.
Yes, I’m a cynic, and I do follow the money. Given the mantra by the Collectivists that “It’s all about the money”, I think I’m justified in finding this the height of hypocrisy.
R. Gates
Look for a large increase in MYI next spring.
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
Thomas Jefferson
wsbriggs says:
August 8, 2010 at 1:02 pm
The amount of tap dancing that R.Gates does is incredible, but all too believable. No predictions, but plenty of explanations.
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How is seeing a new summer low of 2.5 million sq. km. by 2015 not a specific “prediction”? I’ve even given my early reasoning behind this forecast.
In regards to the rest of it…the politics of it all…I stay clear of it. Politics is ultimately about the rich and powerful waving whatever banner they think will get the most votes and figuring out ways to stay rich and powerful, all the while keeping the masses arguing about meaningless issues as a distraction from the truth of the plutocracy they’ve created. (this is the last politcial statement I’ll make, promise)
stevengoddard says:
August 8, 2010 at 12:17 pm
dp
Walt Meier tells me that the amount of ice in the early 1980s was unusual.
I think I disagree with him. Unusual is a relative term. It is unusual compared to what?
It’s normal. What happened in 2007 was normal. What is happening this year is normal. What happened in the Little Ice Age was normal. And what happened during the Medieval Warm Period was normal.
Nothing unusual is happening in climate. Climate always changes. As some scientist said (I don’t remember which to give him credit), “If climate didn’t change that would be what is unusual”.
stevengoddard says:
August 8, 2010 at 1:02 pm
R. Gates
Look for a large increase in MYI next spring
_____
This is consistent with your overall predictions. I have my doubts, but we’ll see. A lot of MYI has spread (i.e. diverged) into the Beaufort and is melting right now.
“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”
Thomas Jefferson
Bill Jamison says:
August 8, 2010 at 12:26 pm
I think it would be interesting to compare the arctic winter temperature trend to the summer temperature trend based on the DMI data.
Richard Lindzen did touch on that in this video
rbateman says:
August 8, 2010 at 12:46 pm
“I believe Anthony covered DMI in a topic thread. DMI uses data points, lots of them, from real thermometers.
GISS uses precious few data points in the Arctic, and relies instead on interpolated NAN’s (IRAF speak) for thier anomalymometer data.”
Thanks to both you and Bruce Friesen for explaining the difference. So is the SST display is based on one of those 1200km extrapolations that NOAA used to come up with the warm arctic this year?
Regardless, this display: http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/color_sst_NPS_ophi0.png
that someone helpfully provided shows the arctic at colder than minus 1.5 degrees C on Aug 7th, while this display: http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/color_anomaly_NPS_ophi0.png
provided by Gates as evidence of a warm arctic on Aug 7th are hard to reconcile.
If you look at the DMI summer data on their site, year after year show summer temps, including most of August, above zero degrees C. Yet NOAA on one display shows unusually low temperature (below zero) and on the other claims a positive anomaly across most of that same area. Does this really make sense?
As an aside, the more I learn about all this the more I’m convinced that data/model corruption is rampant even down to the slightest, most seemingly innocent detail. Are people just flat out lying to one another to support an agenda, or are they innocently deciphering data and just not bothering to check their work against others attempting to do the same thing using different devices?
R. Gates,
you really ought to quit while you’re ahead, and you’re not really ahead. But hey, it’s not my reputation.
Rod,
“Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity”
– Hanlon’s Razor
Steven Goddard wrote:
“R.Bates, Look for a large increase in MYI next spring.”
Just a request. I’ve been a reader for a couple of months now, and even then it took me a few seconds to translate MYI to “multi-year ice.” I really enjoy the back and forth in here, but it would be helpful if people would translate the acronyms the first time in a post for those of us relatively new to this who are trying to follow along.
R. Gates,
When you say that you expect just slightly above 2007, does that mean you are forecasting an asteroid impact in the next six weeks?
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Because that is the only way it is going to happen.
stevengoddard says:
August 8, 2010 at 1:34 pm
“Rod,
“Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity”
– Hanlon’s Razor”
Well said, and ordinarily, I would agree. But toss a few billion dollars of readily available government funding into the mix and perhaps “malice” becomes the more likely explanation?
R. Gates: August 8, 2010 at 12:58 pm
If a person is really looking at things from a longer term perspective, then you would recogize the 40% rise in CO2 in a matter of a few hundred years is an extreme event, and have questions about how sensitive the climate might be to this change…and so I do.
Looking at a *really* longer term perspective, a 40% rise in CO2 in a few hundred years is not an extreme event at all. Temperatures have risen while CO2 was rising, and temperatures have *fallen* while CO2 was going through the roof. Temperatures have fallen while CO2 was falling, and temperatures have *risen* while CO2 was falling.
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap01/icecore.html
Ice cores. Gotta love ’em.
stevengoddard says:
August 8, 2010 at 1:02 pm
R. Gates
Look for a large increase in MYI next spring.
Nah. We’re supposed to continue to believe PIOMAS even though we can see it diverges from reality. Because, after all, how could anyone believe PIOMAS could be that wrong? It’s the observed data that is wrong. Climate models and the scientists who make them are right. Data and the scientists who collect it, and the scientists that make forecasts from it, are wrong. Climate models are peer-reviewed. Data is not peer-reviewed.
That’s some more rules. 😉
evanmjones says:
August 8, 2010 at 9:20 am
Well, they say that there is nothing global warming cannot do. Or AGW alarmists.
That appears to be about right. They have made watching the ice melt exciting.
I have carried out extensive observations of paint drying over recent years and have also taken core samples from painted surfaces at many sites around the world. By direct measurement and correlation with tree rings and upside down Finnish mud, I have established beyond doubt that paint is now drying faster that ever before in the last 15 million years.
In fact the rate of drying has doubled in the past month.
Laugh that off, you skeptics!!