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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Phil. says:
August 20, 2010 at 5:52 am
I’m glad I didn’t have you as my track coach. As a runner my whole life who’s been to a lot of races, I don’t remember ever seeing a mile race where runner 1 was 50 m behind runner 2 at 1200 m and had caught up at 1400 m to go on and lose. In fact, runner 1 pretty much always buries runner 2 in that last 200 m.
That said, I think there’s a chance for 2010 to go under 2008, but it’s a smaller chance than 2010 going over 2009. The current extent indicates a minimum of 5.004e6 km^2, and the mimina for 2008/2009 were 4.708e6/5.250e6.
Ahh, that’s the difference. You use day of year as my x-axis and I used month/day. 2008 was a leap year, so they aren’t equivalent.
Last two weeks’ losses (average km^2/day):
2005 = 49855
2006 = 43560
2007 = 54922
2008 = 74353
2009 = 51473
2010 = 55960
Thus, my analogy of the mile race. 2008 lost 33% more ice in the last 14 days than 2010, so I think I can make that distinction. If not, we can’t make a distinction between 2010 and any of the years since 2005. Thus, no pointing fun at Steve for saying 2010 is tracking 2006.
If I’ve made an error in any of my data statements in comment, please correct me. However, it looks like we’re looking at the same data and making different conclusions…and that’s just the way things go.
-Scott
stevengoddard says:
August 20, 2010 at 9:35 am
Julienne
Polar sea ice is above the 30 year mean. According to Hansen there should be symmetrical ice loss at both poles. Clearly that is not happening.
More misleading by Goddard, that publication is about 26 years old, there’s a lot of water under the bridge since then, not least and of extreme relevance the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985. Can’t you ever tell anything straight, who’d by a used car from this man?
Phil.
You accept projections 100 years in the future, and also think that projections 26 years in the future are unreliable. 26 years from now, people will look at the IPCC report as a work of fiction.
You are aware that the Ozone hole doesn’t even start to appear until August, and is gone by Christmas every year? How does it explain the trend from January through July?
Steve, the most recent estimate based on August 1st ice extent and using an average rate of decline until the minimum gives us 5 million sq-km for the minimum, well above the 2007 minimum. If the rate of decline is like it was in 2008 the minimum will certainly fall well below 5 million sq-km.
Also on the model sea ice issue….the latest climate models are not consistent with their forecasts on Antarctic sea ice. Some models show increases and some decreases during the observational data record. This is in sharp contrast to the Arctic where all the climate models show a decrease (even though it’s not as fast as observed). Antarctic model results indicate an increase in sea ice extent resulting from a strengthening of the winds around Antarctica that has been linked to ozone depletion.
Eventually by the end of the century these models indicate that sea ice in Antarctica will decline.
Gail Combs says:
August 20, 2010 at 9:24 am
In response to Günther Kirschbaum’s desire for “sustainability” she points out that this cleverly innocent idea was cooked up by corporate and banking elitists and pushed by the UN (Agenda 21) as a scheme for ruling the world and disenfranchising democratic voters. She points to a host of links, one of which a Rockerfeller speech on global governance, partially quoted below:
“The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
Rocky’s use of the past tense “practiced in past centuries” is a curious statement – he obviously thinks democracy is already dead. He is already proving to be right in Europe that ordinary folks have been dumbed down enough and easily brainwashed to buy into this nonsense of an elite knowing what is best for you. Thank God that America hasn’ t reached that point and still jealously hangs on to its belief in freedom to make choices. The whole world needs them to hang in there and resist this nouveau socialism of the elite that would totally destroy one of the few economic engines needed to work toward well-being and prosperity in the world (the wellspring of this New Order is, in simple terms, anti-Americanism).
Europe banded together to form the United States of Europe in the hope that they would duplicate the wonder of the US economy and be a competitive force. They failed because they clung to the economicide of socialism (a good example is the work police in France who prowl the parking lots of companies to see if they are breaking the law by working late!)- heck, with this model, they were actually duplicating the failed experiment of the USSR. Even with the still fresh model of failure they plunged ahead into an aggregated socialist nightmare. Sustainability my foot. Those who are our “betters” have dotted the EU landscape with an ugly medieval technology – windmills- that will never average more than 15-18% efficiency and will be breaking down and falling down and need replacement before they have paid for themselves with inflated energy prices (400% – how’s that for inflation).
A word on a world run by bankers – after how bankers managed their affairs in almost destroying the world economy recently, maybe Gunter would like to answer David Rockefeller’s rhetorical question about how people would rather be governed by such.
I think Gail Combs’s comment should be added to WUWT’s resources section
Julienne Stroeve
Antarctic models have produced meaningless results so far. What reason is there to believe the current ones are any better?
In 2006, Arctic ice extent loss pretty much stopped after the third week of August.
Here is how the game works.
1. Make alarmist projections
2. When they don’t happen, excuse them by saying “that was a long time ago.”
3. Make new alarmist projections
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3
Steve, as you know, I’m not a modeler, but instead work with observations, primarily from satellite. Thus I’m not an expert as to what all the factors may be in regards to the lack of consistency in the model projections in the Antarctic in regards to the sea ice cover, though how well the models are able to reproduce the variability of the Antarctic Oscillation index is important.
Certainly improvements are needed and I hope the next round of models, which will include more sophisticated sea ice models, as well as more sophisticated terrestrial carbon feedback models and cloud models, will reduce some of this inconsistency. I do find it interesting that in the Arctic the models are all consistent with each other, and this is despite the fact that all models would be in their own phase of natural variability and could therefore be showing increases or decreases over the observational record. Because they are all showing a sea ice decline in the Arctic, that implicates GHGs as playing a role in the modeled sea ice decline.
Steve, I believe we’ll see a few more days of large reductions in extent. The MODIS and AMSR-E imagery clearly indicate regions of very diffuse, thin ice that will likely still melt out. Recent ship observations in the Chukchi also confirm less consolidated sea ice with thickness of 1-2 m.
Julienne
Well, I guess it all comes down to weather (not climate.) ;^)
Julienne
NCEP is forecasting freezing temperatures in the Beaufort Sea for the remainder of the month.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp2.html
Hey Steve ….
I posted this on the Cryosphere thread, but nuttin happening there anymore.
Why is that the sum of the individual sea anomolies does not equal the overall anomoly?
I calculated it up from Cryosphere …. adding all the individual anomolies, you get -0.850 million sq kms .. approximately. Yet, Cryosphere says the overall anomoly is -1.3 million sq kms.
I can see the added anomolies being a 100K or so off, but, we’re talking 500K or half a million.
WattsUpWithThat???
Deanster
I am not sure which numbers you are referring to.
Deanster says:
August 20, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Are they calculating the anomalies for only the first X number of years in the dataset? Try a running sum until there is a year where the value is 0…that’ll be the last year of the anomaly years. Note that by doing it this way when there’s a long-term downward trend ensures that recent numbers get portrayed as more negative than they would be otherwise.
-Scott
Totalling the Arctic Basin + other Regional Totals gives a Totally different — and MUCH smaller — Total Area as well.
But remember AREA is much less than extent. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.1.html
Also note AREA in the Cryosphere: 3.67 m.km2 vs 5.76 for Extent. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.area.arctic.png
>> Note the sudden DROP in Arctic Basin Ice.
Guess everyone is in Cahoots.
Including giving the Next day as = 0 gain.
Actually this is just that winds have blown a lot of low-density Ice all over. Area or DMI’s 30% Extent filter that out.
4-5 Days from now should be a MASSIVE Melt based on the Forecasts. Last 2 days have been weak BUT Pips continues to show a DIPOLE ANOMALY-type Ice Drift.and a Massive High is due see (and on click N. Hemisphere) http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsecmeur.html
Jaxa — 15% — extent data:
Daily: ___________2007___ to___ 2010__&__(2009__2010
Aug16-17_______ -56,718 _____ -79,687 ___(-47,500__68,750
Aug17-18_______ -28,438 _____ -33,125 ___(-75,937__77,344
Aug18-19_______ -44,687 _____ -40,156___(-67,032__68,750
Aug19-20_______ -46,563 _____ – ?___?___(-40,156__77,344
Aug20-21_______ -64,469 _____ – ?___?___(-34,219__27,343
Preliminary JAXA data for 08/20 in…a loss of just 16407 km^2. The low losses the last 3 days result in the lowest average loss in the JAXA record for 08/17-08/20. Doesn’t mean a whole lot yet since that really only gets 2010 to where it was (with respect to the other years) 9 days ago.
In a few days we’ll see how Charles Wilson’s prediction of huge melts plays out. Without a huge melt like he forecasts, there’s an excellent chance of beating 2008 now (we’re about 83000 km^2 up on 2008 for 08/20, and 2008 is the record loss from here to the minimum…about 128000 km^2 more loss than the next most, 2007, and a whopping 614000 km^2 more loss than 2006).
-Scott
Steve … Your Pips Map is More than a WEEK out of Date (as they forecast 2 days in advance).
14 August — it has the Date right on it.
You don’t like it when you are wrong – – so you Print Old Stuff & Allege Conspiracies. Gee.
PS the new mid-August Piomas Anomaly is down to -9650 km3, 1500 off the Peak but Still 2000 km3 less than 2007’s Anomaly. Also either AT the 2007 minimum — or 25% less, if PIOMAS is off by the same amount as recorded by ICESAT’s lasers in Nov. 2007.
>>> PSS I have been thinking about the 30-foot thick Greenland-Ellsmere “attatched” ice that broke off & Spread over the Basin.
We all assume it spread out to be less thick, say 2 feet to cover 15 times the Area.
But wouldn’t a bunch of 30 foot __CUBES__ be more likely ? ?
These would be MUCH more resistant to melting & would explain a lot of the Up-and-Down we’ve been seeing this year, as nothing we have is really designed to record them consistantly. The Satellites only record what is reflected over minimum areas of many square km.
Thin Ice like PIOMAS implied _should_ melt REAL FAST. … But if it is CUBES — it might actually be HALF the area we think it is — or less — and: HARDLY MELTING AT ALL (Land Ice takes time to melt, as the inverse of the Square of thickness). It could be providing the Core for a REALLY strong Come-back this winter, as the La Nina takes hold.
Charles …
Like umm … since I was writing an article about August 15 I thought I would include the August 15 PIPS map.
Some conspiracy, eh?
Phil. says:
August 19, 2010 at 10:56 am
It’s not news anymore now it opens every summer.
Back in 2008 when the McClure Straits opened for the first time in years people were running around like they hit their thumb with a hammer and were screaming “The Northwest passage is open!!!!” That’s the year I saw Al Gore say the Northwest Passage is open. The media suddenly doesn’t like running around like that anymore?? PU-LEASE!! Be real. And has anyone else noticed that Al Gore hasn’t been on tv since 2008 talking about the Northwest Passage opening?
The McClure Straits haven’t opened since 2008—no, not this year, even though PIOMAS shows it open—so no one is talking about it. Various routes through the Canadian Archipelagos open now and then. But the McClure Straits have not been open 4 years in a row.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Northwest Passage and the McClure Straits
http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/7357/arctic.gif
Julienne Stroeve says:
August 20, 2010 at 10:47 am
Eventually by the end of the century these models indicate that sea ice in Antarctica will decline.
I’m sorry Julienne, but I shake my head over this one.
Do you see how anyone could predict that? It’s like the palm reader looking at the lines of your hand and saying “Some day you will go on a long trip.” So on the day you do is that the fulfillment of it?
Of course Antarctica will decline at some point over the next 90 years. Antarctic ice has always increased and decreased. If it did not decrease again that is what would be unprecedented.
Phil,
James Hansen has not recently said the earth is out of balance?
from 2008
JAXA and DMi continue their movement to the right. The flattening?
Remember it used to be “Come on baby ice! Come on baby ice” Now it’s “Come on flattening! Come on flattening!”
Of course that wouldn’t be the case for the global warming believers.
The polar circumnavigators Børge Ousland and Thorleif Thorleifsson:
http://www.corsairmarine.com/UserFiles/Image/The%20North%20Pole%20Passage_Ousland%281%29.pdf
The boat in now at the New Siberian Islands, having cleared the most difficult part of the planned journey. There’s a good chance now the crew will be the first people to have circumnavigated the Arctic in one season.
http://www.ousland.no/blog/
Steve …
If you go to Cryosphere, just below the pictures, there is a map of the arctic broke down into seas, Arctic Basin, Baffin sea, etc titled “Latest regional sea ice coverage and anomoly”… with a link menu to each sea [you can click on the map, or you can click on the name out beside the map]. When you click on each sea, it opens up an anomoly map, much like the one for the Northern Hemisphere at the top, but it for each sea. I clicked on each and wrote down the “anomoly” for each sea.
The Arctic, Baffin, Greenland, and Hudson Bay are all at about -50K sq kms.
Laptev, Siberian, Chuckchi, Canada, and Beaufort are all at about -100K sq kms
Kara is at -150K sq kms
Berring, Berrants, St. Lawrence, Okhotsck are all at 0 anomoly
When I add up all these individual anomolies of the seas that make up the “arctic”, I get a value of -850K sq kms … or expressed in millions, -0.850 million sq kms. However, when you open the Arctic coverage and anomoly graph at the top, the page also featured on the Sea Ice page here WUWT, it says the overall anomoly is -1.34 mill sq kms. [all for the date of 8/18/2010].
I have a hard time believing that there is a full 500Ks worth of melt that is not accounted for in the individual maps. There is a discrepancy between the overall arctic anomoly and the sum of the individual anomolies for any given day.
For example, for today, the adding up the individual anomolies as described above, you get approximately a -900K sq km melt [i.e, -0.9 mill sq km; all the increase in melt is in the arctic basin since 8/18]. Yet, the “arctic coverage and anomoly map reports a -1.394 mill sq km anomoly …. a full 500K melt more than the sum of the anomolies in the individual seas that make up the “arctic”.
This does not make sense to me.
Amino, I think it’s important to keep the model predictions in context. In these climate models it is clear that warmer atmospheric temperatures lead to the decline in sea ice. If you were to make a plot of the simulated global mean temperature versus the simulated Arctic sea ice for example you will find a nearly linear relationship. Thus, if rising concentrations of GHGs increase global mean temperature (which I know is something many of you doubt), the models predict this will lead to continued decline in Arctic sea ice.
In regards to the Antarctic, what the models show is that eventually the warming will become large enough that it will overshadow the effects of the strengthening of the Southern Annular Mode (that has been linked to Ozone depletion) so that Antarctic sea ice will begin to decline.
Of course the climate system is very complex and I would not expect the models to be 100% correct. What I was reporting on is what the current models indicate.
I agree that various processes and feedbacks may exist in our climate system that have not yet been fully considered in these models, both negative and positive. Many improvements are still needed and as more understanding is gained of all the various processes and feedbacks, and computer power continues to improve so that models can be run at higher and higher resolution, the models will continue to improve upon their ability to simulate past, present and future climate.