By Steve Goddard
August 16, 2010 offered a great opportunity to put all the Arctic data together in a coherent picture. DMI showed a large drop in extent.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
You can see the drop between August 15 and August 16 clearly in red in the modified NSIDC map below.
So what happened? Did 300,000 km2 of ice suddenly melt?
Not exactly. There were very strong winds pushing the ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas towards the pole on August 15. This compacted the ice, reducing extent while increasing the average thickness.
You can see the August 15 movement of ice in Beaufort Sea in the satellite blink map below. Note how the ice edge is tightening up and compacting.
Will this continue? Probably not. The weather forecast calls for a return to colder and calmer weather in a couple of days. Look for the DMI graph to flatten out by the weekend.
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http://www.zen141854.zen.co.uk/difference.jpg
sorry img tags included on previous post
“You can see the April 15 movement of ice in Beaufort Sea”.
Should that read “August 15”?
REPLY: Thanks, typo fixed -Anthony
R. Gates:
Ice extent is a function of multiple parameters that are not easily disaggregated. That is why it has limited utility in assessing AGW. It would be nice if the [snip] err pro-AGW crowd would acknowledge this.
OK, so how many Massachusetts is the decrease?
Its too bad there is such a rampant alarmist element in anything related to climate these days. I find posts like this to be very fascinating. If only cooler heads could prevail but I sense it could be another 5-10 years before this fizzles out into something that is harmless again. Some please one knock me senseless and tell me I’m wrong!
It appears that there has been some ice melting occurring in the NOAA artic cam in the past day. Have a look at this animation (GIF 1.62 MB):
http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/7198/ice00.gif
How can this be explained?
AndyW
Your video doesn’t distinguish between melt and compaction. This one is more informative because it shows that compaction was dominant.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeBatHtMtYY]
Akira Shirakawa
I don’t see any melting in the web cam images.
AndyW says:
August 18, 2010 at 10:56 am
I know melt is dirty word for closed minds though …
Andy
———
Andy, thanks for contributing! Many of us are extremely open-minded and seek scientific/statistical accuracy in this field more than anything. The AGW crowd seems to cook the books, cherry-pick etc. when presenting their scenarios.
I still think that oceanic acidification could be an emerging problem, but remain far more concerned about atmospheric deposition of mercury from all sources, particularly coal-fired utilities. However, the catastrophic warming scenarios painted by Hansen et. al. seem to be less & less likely, and many of these WUWT posters are onto it.
I used to be an AGW Kool-aid drinker myself, but Climategate was the tipping point for me. If the AGW cabal expects the world to undergo wrenching financial costs in order to reduce catastrophic climate change, they better have their story straight first. I’m waiting to be convinced….
CRS, Dr.P.H. said
August 18, 2010 at 11:21 am
AndyW says:
August 18, 2010 at 10:56 am
I know melt is dirty word for closed minds though …
Andy
———
Andy, thanks for contributing! Many of us are extremely open-minded and seek scientific/statistical accuracy in this field more than anything. The AGW crowd seems to cook the books, cherry-pick etc. when presenting their scenarios.
I still think that oceanic acidification could be an emerging problem, but remain far more concerned about atmospheric deposition of mercury from all sources, particularly coal-fired utilities. However, the catastrophic warming scenarios painted by Hansen et. al. seem to be less & less likely, and many of these WUWT posters are onto it.
I used to be an AGW Kool-aid drinker myself, but Climategate was the tipping point for me. If the AGW cabal expects the world to undergo wrenching financial costs in order to reduce catastrophic climate change, they better have their story straight first. I’m waiting to be convinced….
_________________________________________
Thanks for your off topic rant but I don’t see how you have answered my point that “melt” is a dirty word in these parts.
Is it me or have I gone bold as well? What is going on with this blog, I don’t want to be bold! 😀
Andy
[Reply: I think that was a WordPress glitch. Fixed now. ~dbs]
PIOMAS forecasts a record minimum of 3.96.
Walt Meier forecasts 4.74
Julienne initially forecast 5.5 but has lowered since.
My forecast is 5.5.
Who is going to be the closest?
Just sayin’ that if it beats the 2009 mark, which looks pretty likely by JAXA, there can be no increase in multi-year ice.
AndyW says:
August 18, 2010 at 10:56 am
[i]However, winds from the south are warm winds at this time of year and so melt also occurs. If you look at 2007 and watch the decrease you can see most of the loss is due to melt not compaction until the end[/i]
How much warm wind would be needed to melt that much ice so quickly?
AndyW
Nothing wrong with the word “melt.” The problem is when people use the word “melt” to describe other processes.
bob
The only thing which could prevent an increase in MYI (2+ year old ice) would be if a lot of ice blows out the Fram Strait this winter.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
August 18, 2010 at 11:21 am
“more concerned about atmospheric deposition of mercury from all sources, particularly coal-fired utilities.”
Good point and don’t forget the radioactivity in the effluent for coal. Just ’cause we aren’t “COO tipping” doesn’t mean we can give *actual* pollution a real break.
What makes me nearly uncivil is the wasted money on “carbon” control that should be used to control the mercury and fallout instead. Grr.. (civilly of course)
“COO tipping” — noun phrase. The destabilization of the climate by the introduction of CO2
stevengoddard
>I don’t see any melting in the web cam images.
The “pools” on the foreground and those on the brackground appear to have grown a bit larger in size (speaking of their darker portion) and to my untrained eye it looked like some melting has occurred. What is going on, then?
Just asking, because I am really not sure, if that cannot be defined melting.
Buffoon says:
August 11, 2010 at 11:11 am
Where was the jetstream in sept. 2005, and how hot was moscow-lat russia?
With all that heat flowing around northern russia, prevailing winds there should drive toward the pole.
… I would look for those to shore up and thicken due to wind compaction on the russia side and for 2010 to clear 2005[‘s minimum] slightly to the negative within 10 days
I still think there’s going to be some squirrely action later in the season, because all those soot deposits from wildfires should be heading north
Just imagine if all this money that was spent on “climate change” had been instead spent on space exploration/REAL NASA stuff.
How close to Mars do you think we would have been? And its my understanding that we would understand the climate just as well as we did 30 years ago. What a waste.
stevengoddard says:
August 18, 2010 at 11:48 am
bob
The only thing which could prevent an increase in MYI (2+ year old ice) would be if a lot of ice blows out the Fram Strait this winter.
And the steady flow of MYI between the QE Islands and through the Nares strait which is happening as we speak. Which is the thickest (oldest) seaice in the Arctic too.
You can see the August 15 movement of ice in Beaufort Sea in the satellite blink map below. Note how the ice edge is tightening up and compacting
Also note the melting ice behind the front (bottom r corner of image).
@AndyW says: August 18, 2010 at 11:31 am
“Thanks for your off topic rant but I don’t see how you have answered my point that “melt” is a dirty word in these parts.”
“Melt” a dirty word? Not in the least! All the Arctic ice could MELT tomorrow for all I care. What would it matter? Or signify? Or prove?
Sending the economy of the West (and the hopes of the world’s poor) to hell in a handcart because of a lot of rent seeking pseudo science and tax raising politicians’ scare stories? Dressed up as “the Precautionary Principle”?
That’s REALLY dirty talk!
Akira Shirakawa says:
August 18, 2010 at 12:08 pm
“The “pools” on the foreground and those on the brackground appear to have grown a bit larger in size (speaking of their darker portion) and to my untrained eye it looked like some melting has occurred. What is going on, then?”
Looks more like a spot where snow keeps getting blown off the ice to me?